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"Behind the Facebook profile you’ve built for yourself is another one, a shadow profile, built from the inboxes and smartphones of other Facebook users. Contact information you’ve never given the network gets associated with your account, making it easier for Facebook to more completely map your social connections." [SL Gizmodo] [more inside]
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 9:43 PM PST - 62 comments

The Columbia Journalism Review did an analysis of election 2016 election coverage and found "the various Clinton-related email scandals—her use of a private email server while secretary of state, as well as the DNC and John Podesta hacks—accounted for more sentences than all of Trump’s scandals combined (65,000 vs. 40,000) and more than twice as many as were devoted to all of her policy positions." Meanwhile"the breathlessly repeated numbers on fake news are not as large as they have been made to seem when compared to the volume of information to which online users are exposed." [more inside]
posted by mrmurbles at 9:37 PM PST - 36 comments

The Year in Protest Music 2017 -- A list of 20 urgent tracks that spoke truth to power this year. Pitchfork has had a few other lists of protest songs in the past few years: We Shall Overcomb: Music as Protest at the Women’s March (Jan. 25, 2017) and 15 Ways to Protest Trump by Buying New Music (Jan. 20, 2017), and earlier with Protest Soul: Music for Healing a Broken World (Dec. 14, 2016), Sounds of Black Protest Then and Now (Sept. 15, 2016), and The Sounds of Black Lives Matter (Oct. 17, 2016). Handy song links listed below. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:24 PM PST - 6 comments

Truly delicious psychedelic rock from 1969: It's A Beautiful Day. [full album] Side A: White Bird, Hot Summer Day, Wasted Union Blues, Girl With No Eyes [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:52 PM PST - 30 comments

The "light organ" and "light piano" are the instruments. As I understand it, in the early 1900s Mary Hallock-Greenewalt devised a method of creating light instead of sound when playing these instruments. "Nourathar" is her name for this visual music (the name honoring her Beirut heritage). Here is another photo of the organ, (an earlier version) early organ showing the non-linear rheostat she invented and patented (and which General Electric and other companies stole and used, but she sued them and won). [more inside]
posted by MovableBookLady at 8:34 PM PST - 5 comments

Making water run uphill.
posted by Sebmojo at 4:53 PM PST - 15 comments

The first trailer for Battle Angel Alita (US version) is here
posted by Artw at 12:16 PM PST - 220 comments

How long does it take an English speaker to learn a foreign language? The map shows the number of weeks required for European languages. Scroll down to see the global results (from the Foreign Service Institute).
posted by storybored at 11:59 AM PST - 95 comments

RIOT - Civil Unrest [YouTube][Gameplay Trailer] “In 2013, Riot - Civil Unrest was announced by developer Merge Games and went on to have a successful Indiegogo campaign. Four years later the game has finally arrived on Steam Early Access. Riot is a real-time riot simulator that puts you in control of either a large group of rioters or the police. As the rioters, you attempt to hold a position or reach a specified destination. As the police, it’s your job to hold back or disperse the crowd. Riot was an interesting idea back in 2013, and it now holds even more weight with 2018 on the horizon. Set in real world political conflicts like The Arab Spring, the game establishes the context for each riot prior to jumping in. However, it doesn’t do much beyond telling you what happened or what strides have been made as a result.” [via: Kotaku] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 11:22 AM PST - 7 comments

Twitter's #WarOnChristmas is different this year: Sam Sykes has created an avalanche of atrocities. Peppermint-tinged, sleighbell-ringing atrocities.

SamSykesSwears: I have but one request this Christmas, guys. Take the #WarOnChristmas hashtag and fill it with accounts of the horrors of battling elves across snowy fields and firing anti-aircraft missiles at sleds streaking overhead.

[more inside]
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:58 AM PST - 67 comments

How the Cook County Assessor Failed Taxpayers: Joseph Berrios’ error-ridden commercial and industrial assessments punish property owners, benefit lawyers. (slProPublica)

"In 2014, for instance, a building on Oak Street in the Gold Coast neighborhood sold for $14.9 million. The next year, the assessor’s office valued the building at $3.6 million — less than a quarter of the sales price. A year after that, in 2016, the building sold for even more: $23 million.

Eight miles west, a small industrial shop in the working-class Belmont Central neighborhood sold for $110,000 in 2015. The assessor’s estimate that year was $207,140, nearly double the sale price."
posted by crazy with stars at 10:45 AM PST - 20 comments

Tuned Up in the Spirit: Lined out hymnody with the Old Regular Baptists "the oldest English-language religious-music oral tradition in North America, a tradition with roots stretching back to parish churches in England in the early 1600s and perhaps further still. Some people find it a strange sound. One researcher who went hunting for descriptions of lined-out singing from turn-of-the-century travelers in Appalachia told me that a few words kept popping up: mournful, wailing, confusion."
posted by OmieWise at 10:41 AM PST - 9 comments

Beyond thrilled 2 share my holiday single "All I Want For Christmas Is You But Just The Alto 2 Part From When My High School Chorus Sang It" [Twitter]

Writer/performer Natalie Walker draws on memories of high school choir to sing her own highly-specialized version of the Mariah Carey hit "All I Want for Christmas is You". [YouTube version] [more inside]
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:35 AM PST - 38 comments

Want to take over a city?

You’re in luck.

I’ve built a couple of hyper-local membership models.

I’ve even managed seven city memberships at one time.

Number of members?

Over 5,000 people. [...]

LinkedIn power users are gaming the social network with elongated self-help posts that look like poems. We're calling them broetry. [SLBF]
posted by not_the_water at 9:28 AM PST - 23 comments

"Perfect Crime" is the longest-running play in New York, and its star, Catherine Russell, is in the Guinness Book of World records for playing the same lead part since its premiere in 1987. And by many, many accounts, it's awful. [more inside]
posted by knownassociate at 9:18 AM PST - 21 comments

A "Gold rush" for cricket snack startups as Finland legalises edible insects. At the beginning of November, Finland's food safety authority allowed the sale of insects as food. Entocube is a Finnish company that builds insect farms out of shipping containers, and established Finnish food giant Fazer has already begun selling bread made from cricket flour (sirkkaleipä). Insects as a food source previously here and here. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:52 AM PST - 34 comments

Interested in historical curiosities from Hawaii, but prefer New England's climate? You're in luck! The American Antiquarian Society, located in Worcester, Mass., is "a hotbed of Hawaiiana," with archives housing and preserving an extensive collection of early Hawaiian engravings, newspapers, "laws, brochures, broadsheets, hymnals, almanacs, cookbooks, primers and spelling books." The Honolulu Civil Beat brings us the story behind the collection. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:51 AM PST - 6 comments

Artist and ocean advocate Courtney Mattison creates large scale ceramic installations and sculptures inspired by science and marine biology. Her intricate hand-crafted porcelain works celebrate the fragile beauty of endangered coral reef ecosystems and promote awareness to conserve and protect our natural world. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 6:51 AM PST - 5 comments

Slovenian Spies Stage Secret Strike.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:45 AM PST - 12 comments

PUT YOUR TIN FOIL HATS ON, we are about to go on a VERY wild ride.

I haven't been this excited since I first found out about the incredibly strange world of quicksand porn.

Let Robyn Pennacchia tell you about the conspiracy to make square dancing the national dance of the US and how it originated as part of an even madder ploy by Henry Ford to destroy Black, Jewish jazz with folk music. Quicksand porn briefly discussed here.
posted by MartinWisse at 5:50 AM PST - 100 comments

Irish uileann pipes have been recognised as an important and unique cultural heritage symbol by UNESCO. But not many people know that there is a long tradition of uilleann pipe playing among Irish Travellers. [more inside]
posted by night_train at 5:32 AM PST - 11 comments

The woke Slim Shady – understanding Eminem in the age of Trump (previous)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:28 AM PST - 32 comments

Russian photographer Andy Seliverstoff loves dogs and the kids who love them. His recent series, Little Kids and their Big Dogs, showcases both. (Instagram | 500px | Facebook)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:48 AM PST - 7 comments

Mataku is basically the Māori X Files, and it’s a national embarrassment that this show isn’t every part as much cultural canon as The Lord of the Rings or Outrageous Fortune.

[more inside]
posted by Start with Dessert at 12:37 AM PST - 7 comments