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Here's the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: Instrumental Complete and Vocal Complete. Nice, eh? Well, there's more: Abbey Road Instrumental Complete and Vocal Complete.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:32 PM PST - 42 comments

Decking the halls just wouldn't be the same without the mysteriously stripy hooks of sugar and cavities we call candy canes. But from whence did these delicate, tongue-spearing delights come from? The answer is still shrouded in mystery. (Includes a link to The Complete Confectioner, Pastry-cook, and Baker's striped candy recipe from 1844, for the old-school DIY types.) Hat tip to Gizmodo for the video. [more inside]
posted by jetlagaddict at 11:15 PM PST - 8 comments

Swedish journalist Robert Aschberg, the television show Troll Hunter, Research Group and the ethics of exposing trolls.

The goal of Troll Hunter is not to rid the Internet of every troll. “The agenda is to raise hell about all the hate on the Net,” he says. “To start a discussion.” Back at the Troll Hunter office, a whiteboard organized Aschberg’s agenda. Dossiers on other trolls were tacked up in two rows: a pair of teens who anonymously slander their high school classmates on Instagram, a politician who runs a racist website, a male law student who stole the identity of a young woman to entice another man into an online relationship. In a sign of the issue’s resonance in Sweden, a pithy neologism has been coined to encompass all these forms of online nastiness: näthat (“Net hate”). Troll Hunter, which has become a minor hit for its brash tackling of näthat, is currently filming its second season.

posted by frimble at 10:56 PM PST - 25 comments

Bill Gates: Good News You May Have Missed in 2014
posted by gwint at 9:59 PM PST - 51 comments

“My past is littered with the bones of men who were foolish enough to think I was someone they could sleep on.”
posted by mr. digits at 8:28 PM PST - 11 comments

"Imagine a medical student who is training to be a surgeon but who fears that he’ll become distressed if he sees or handles blood. What should his instructors do?" -"Criminal-law teachers face a similar question with law students who are afraid to study rape law." The author worries about "a growing rape exceptionalism, which allows fears of inflicting or re-inflicting trauma to justify foregoing usual procedures and practices of truth-seeking."
posted by anewnadir at 8:27 PM PST - 63 comments

Tonight! He's "a well-meaning, poorly informed, high-status idiot." An it-getter. A knight. A doctor (of fine arts). A Real American Hero. And after tonight, his arched eyebrow of justice will never again grace American television screens in quite the same way. "Stephen Colbert": a brief retrospective. Truthiness - The White House Correspondents' Dinner - Better Know a District - Formidable Opponent - Tek Jansen - Papa Bear - I Am America (And So Can You!) - Americone Dream - The ThreatDown - Late Night Fight! - Testifying to Congress - The Rally to Restore Sanity - Colbert Super PAC - Maurice Sendak - Wheat Thins - Lorna Colbert - Tolkien-off - Ask a Grown Man - The Decree. So much more inside. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 8:15 PM PST - 133 comments

Colorado shoulder-level double-amputee Les Baugh successfully controls two robot arms by thought alone, allowing him to put cups on shelves and perhaps buy a soda from a machine. BusinessInsider has more details. [more inside]
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:58 PM PST - 8 comments

Dalhousie Dental School is embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal. A group of about a dozen seniors known as the DDS 2015 Gentlemen's Club have been posting crude jokes about sexual violence and female subjugation in a closed Facebook group, targeting female students and including jokes about using dental anesthetic as a rape drug. The administrations choice to go with a restorative justice approach has not been met with much approval. Dalhousie is still trying to recover from it's last sexual violence scandal not that long ago.
posted by thelaze at 7:54 PM PST - 59 comments

Interactive-fiction-game makers Simogo have coded up a free, five-minute long story as a a gift to fans: The Sensational December Machine. (Download required, but worth it.)
posted by Going To Maine at 7:49 PM PST - 1 comments

In April 2003, the day after Steve Jobs announced the iTunes store, Esquire's Andy Langer interviewed Jobs at Apple. Although Jobs cut the interview short after less than twenty minutes, it's nevertheless an interesting read, as is Langer's more recent recollection of the interview.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 5:01 PM PST - 17 comments

Ayn Rand reviews children's movies. By Mallory Ortberg.
posted by Mchelly at 2:28 PM PST - 50 comments

"To be frank, these chips taste exactly like they are named. Simply, nothing more, and nothing less. The relatively spicy Tapatío hot sauce burns, while the acidic, and citrusy lime flavor shocks the tongue. The classic combination of chile and lime is once again revealed, and executed. Probably the only thing we find a bit unsuspecting about these chips is that there is no cheese flavor at all. Each, and every one of the other Tapatío-FritoLay snacks, seemed to have an underlying cheese flavor among them. For good, or for bad, the cheese flavor was there in all the other; but with these, they simply delivered spicy hot chile and lime." Chip Review takes a look at Lay's "Tapatío and Lime" flavor. More reviews in the Tapatio category of chips. Lime/Limón reviews; salt-and-vinegar. These are general reviews, for their 2014 countdown, see below the fold. [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 2:10 PM PST - 56 comments

Nick Quah of Hot Pod briefly interviews Jesse Thorn about how the rest of the media world reports on podcasting. "The recent boom in podcast coverage that we’ve been seeing over the past few weeks, while wonderful, has also tended to gravitate around a few shows: Serial, Radiolab, Marc Maron, Comedy Bang Bang, etc. That coverage has also exhibited a tendency to frame podcasting as experiencing something of a renaissance, or revival. [But] this isn’t the case. Podcasts have been steadily and quietly growing for the past decade [...] So why has the revival narrative stuck?"
posted by ocherdraco at 1:30 PM PST - 68 comments

The Department of Justice issued a memo today (pdf) stating that the litigation concerning gender identity employment discrimination regarding transgender Americans working in the federal government will be covered under the sex discrimination prohibition in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:07 PM PST - 28 comments

drowning in corn - the story of one teenager's near-death experience inside the grain bin that killed his friends

npr has a series on grain entrapment (wiki): Buried in Grain alongside a database of grain entrapment deaths including teenagers as young as 13.
posted by and they trembled before her fury at 11:13 AM PST - 88 comments

Ever had a song stuck in your head?* Investigations into earworms, musical hallucination and memory are shedding some light on the link between music and memory. [more inside]
posted by asok at 11:13 AM PST - 54 comments

"Now we get to the part that moves from jokes and silliness to serious, which is: This is not just now a case study in how not to react to cyber threats and a case study in how to not defend your networks, it's now also a case study in how not to respond to terrorism threats." Cybersecurity expert Peter W. Singer discusses the Sony's reaction to the "Guardians of Peace" hack. [more inside]
posted by quin at 11:05 AM PST - 187 comments

Sometimes getting together with family for the holidays feels like the entire event has gone to the dogs (and cat).
posted by hippybear at 10:38 AM PST - 10 comments

"From righteous fury to faux indignation, everything we got mad about in 2014—and how outrage has taken over our lives." The Year of Outrage (SLSlate)
posted by naju at 9:13 AM PST - 101 comments

Conveniently, LEGO® vines growing on the outside of the museum provide handgrips the thieves can use in climbing up to the skylight.

[more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 9:12 AM PST - 22 comments

"It’s all about burn rate / Bout burn rate / slow spending" -- This years holiday video from First Round Capital, the venture capital firm that convinces dozens of its entrepreneurs to participate in parodies of the past year’s most popular songs.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:11 AM PST - 5 comments

10 football (soccer) experiments that were doomed to failure.
posted by josher71 at 8:50 AM PST - 27 comments

Although doctors have noticed that fathers-to-be can experience weight gain, morning vomiting, heartburn, and restlessness, as well as more random symptoms like toothaches and leg cramps, there hasn't been any agreement as to what causes it. Say hello to Couvade Syndrome aka 'Male Sympathetic Pregnancy'. [more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:46 AM PST - 22 comments

Strong Language is a new blog about profanity, cusswords, vulgar fuckin' language. Started just a week ago by James Harbeck and (MeFi's own) Stan Carey after discovering their shared frustration at not having a place to talk (swearily) about swearing, it already has ten posts by various authors covering such topics as the phonology of cusswords, whether shit is a contronym, the effectiveness of swearing in John Carpenter's The Thing, and a post reviving the cult classic linguistics article "English sentences without overt grammatical subjects" (previously).
posted by narain at 8:29 AM PST - 38 comments

Why you love the Charlie Brown Christmas special
posted by pjern at 7:20 AM PST - 69 comments

Governor Shumlin announced he would not pursue single-payer healthcare for his state. Reasons include high costs, high complexity, and Shumlin barely eking out reelection.
posted by doctornemo at 7:03 AM PST - 55 comments

In Serial withdrawal? Well, perhaps you can help the Toronto police out. Inspired by the success of the Serial podcast, Toronto police are tweeting out clues in the unsolved murder of Mike Pimentel.
posted by Mrs. Rattery at 6:48 AM PST - 24 comments

India's New Comic Book Hero Fights Rape, Rides On The Back Of A Tiger

She's a not a superhero in the comic book tradition. Her power is the power of persuasion and the power of an idea. She's riding the tiger all over India and creating a movement [to] deal with sexual violence.

posted by Librarypt at 5:49 AM PST - 7 comments

Derby was born with very deformed front legs... With the aid of 3-D printing, the world is moving a lot faster for him. (article here)
posted by HuronBob at 3:09 AM PST - 20 comments

There was a lumberjack who chopped trees all day and would yell "TIMBER" just before each tree would fall… There are plenty of versions of the “Timber” joke on YouTube, many done as part of a beginning ASL course. Most of these retellings seem identical to on another. For a refreshing take on the joke, check out this over-the-top version in Pidgin Signed English. [more inside]
posted by Deathalicious at 2:50 AM PST - 8 comments

Contributors to The Toast are paid a flat, one-time fee of $50 on publication. No further compensation is due, even if The Toast re-publishes the contribution. The Toast also reserves the right to edit at will.
These aren't ideal provisions, but they're not uncommon. What is uncommon: contributors must hand over copyright and waive all moral rights (including the right of attribution).

MeFi favourite The Toast came under fire on Tuesday, as according to Writer Beware, it turned out they paid their contributors a flat $50 fee for all rights in perpetuity. This is not surprising behaviour for an internet content farm, but what may be surprising was the resolution. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 2:00 AM PST - 99 comments

in the iliad helen speaks the last lament for hector. the only man in troy who showed her kindness is slain—and now, helen says, πάντες δέ με πεφρίκασιν, all men shudder at me. she doesn't speak in the iliad again. homer isn’t cruel to helen; her story is cruel enough.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:33 AM PST - 28 comments