February 15, 2013
In Soviet South Africa, frog squeeees at you.
A tiny, sandy, round and loud frog expresses his dismay at your existence.
Eternal Arcanum
Chris Avellone, a writer and designer who worked on Fallout 2, Fallout New Vegas, Planescape Torment and Neverwinter Nights, plays and comments on the steampunk RPG Arcanum to celebrate raising almost 4 million dollars toward his upcoming RPG, Project Eternity
My Strange Grandfather
Addicted to Vine?
Adam Goldberg is making something really weird with Twitter's new 6 second video service Vine. Follow along on via Twitter with characters like: Adam and Merrit or within the Vine App itself on the tag merritxanadu44. A journalist tries to figure out what is going on.
Post-Posterous Haven
Blogging platform Posterous, which was acquired by Twitter in March 2012, has officially announced it is to close on April 30th 2013. [more inside]
Uptown to the Bronx: Vignelli's standards
They found a copy of the New York City Transit Authority's Graphic Standards Manual in a locker covered with gym clothes. And decided to put it online. [more inside]
Wood, Leather, Steel, Blood
Wood Central is a long lived forum for woodworkers predating even young upstart Metafilter. Having been around for so long the forums are a source of immense knowledge of all things wood and some of that has been collected into posting archives and essays on their Articles and Reviews page. So if you ever wanted to know
- How to make a Double Twisted Dovetail joint
- How a totally blind wood worker manages his craft
- How to Age Cherry with NaOH
- How to construct a paddle
- How to safely use a chainsaw
- How to use electricity to remove rust from tools
- How to make a fancy bow saw
- How to make a Fibonacci Gauge and why you would want to.
Be forewarned: sometimes (often?) there are guts
The Brain Scoop: Videos About a Zoological Collection. "I'm Emily, the volunteer Curatorial Assistant for the Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum at The University of Montana, and I'd like to share some of the amazing things we have in the collection with the Internet.
Let's talk about your favorite animal."
Civil War hero Robert Smalls seized the opportunity to be free
Robert Smalls sat at the conference table next to Frederick Douglass as they tried to convince President Abraham Lincoln that African Americans should be allowed to fight for their own freedom. He served five terms in Congress. He ran a newspaper and helped found a state Republican Party.
But first, he had to win his freedom.
om. nip. o. tent.
Architectural Piracy?
How good is Zaha Hadid's new building? So good it's already being copied. And the copy may be finished before the original. [more inside]
Dude, you had one job
Trouble in Paradise an ongoing tale of greed and corruption
It all started last July when S/Y Phocea, one of the world's largest sailing yachts was arrested in Vanuatu.
There was speculation that it was running drugs or arms or was involved in money laundering.
A few days ago the owner Mr Pascal Anh Quan Saken and his brother had their passports detained in Papua New Guinea after the private jet they flew in arrived without proper clearance.
What the Vanuatu news media are saying, with added spice.
The past owner's of Phocea have been a colorful bunch as well.
There was speculation that it was running drugs or arms or was involved in money laundering.
A few days ago the owner Mr Pascal Anh Quan Saken and his brother had their passports detained in Papua New Guinea after the private jet they flew in arrived without proper clearance.
What the Vanuatu news media are saying, with added spice.
The past owner's of Phocea have been a colorful bunch as well.
The Man Behind The Brilliant Media Hoax Of "I, Libertine"
"In the 1950s, a DJ named Jean Shepherd hosted a late-night radio show on New York's WOR that was unlike any before or since. On these broadcasts, he delivered dense, cerebral monologues, sprinkled with pop-culture tidbits and vivid stretches of expert storytelling. 'There is no question that we are a tiny, tiny, tiny embattled minority here,' he assured his audience in a typical diatribe. 'Hardly anyone is listening to mankind in all of its silliness, all of its idiocy, all of its trivia, all of its wonder, all of its glory, all of its poor, sad, pitching us into the dark sea of oblivion.' Shepherd's approach was summed up by his catchphrase: a mock-triumphant 'Excelsior!', followed by an immediate, muttered 'you fathead ... '" (via) [more inside]
America's Hardest Working Know-It-All
Parlaying TV ubiquity into a stable career is hard enough. The fact that Jeopardy legend Ken Jennings has done this merely by being the smartest guy in your living room seems like nothing less than a minor miracle.
Because I did remember.
In accordance with tradition--dating back all the way to 2007--today is Phil Collins Day. Hitch a ride to 112th Street Beach in Rockaway, and circle your drum.
Previously. Previously-er.
Oh hey, I made space!
Alchemy, sort of. Happy Friday!
House Music
Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away
50 Years Ago: The World in 1963 Let me take you 50 years into the past now, for a look at the world as it was in 1963.
Dogs On A Treadmill
A Tiny Vietnamese Village Where Women Chose to be Single Mothers
LOI, Vietnam — They had no plan to break barriers or cause trouble. But 30 years ago in this bucolic village in northern Vietnam, the fierce determination of one group of women to become mothers upended centuries-old gender rules and may have helped open the door for a nation to redefine parenthood.
So good they cancelled it.
Somewhere between Buggin' Out and Gus Fring, Metafilter favorite Giancarlo Esposito starred as Paul Gigante, a city cop transplanted by family circumstances into a dysfunctional small town police department and frustrating partnership with the imbecillic Wade Preston, in Bakersfield P.D., a short-lived comedy gem from Fox Network.
Partially available for your viewing pleasure in grainy video on a YouTube playlist, with German subtitles and no laugh track. [more inside]
putting the high in high fantasy
FYI: Chivalry is now a game about knights in low gravity, screaming and screaming and screaming. [more inside]
An image of a soundless voice
Only two works of Nonnus of Panopolis (fl. AD 400), arguably the last great poet of the Homeric tradition, survive complete. The first is his Dionysiaca, ostensibly an account of the adventures of Dionysus but embracing everything that touches chaos and fire and sound, "the longest surviving poem from classical antiquity and one of the most entertaining, outrageous and vivid epics ever conceived west of the Ganges." The second is the Metabole kata Ioannou [PDF]. It's a paraphrase of the Gospel of John into the idiom of Homer.
A part of this nutritious vibraty feeling all through your guttiwuts
Coke Engineers Its Orange Juice — With an Algorithm: Black Book isn’t really a secret formula. It’s an algorithm. Revenue Analytics consultant Bob Cross, architect of Coke’s juice model, also built the model Delta Air Lines (DAL) uses to maximize its revenue per mile flown. [more inside]
"Slow paced, very spacey, the music is so intriguing..."
Montag's Gay Porn Archives Lo-Fi Mix. Carpark Records signee Antoine "Montag" Bédard has put together a mix using nothing but gay porn movie scores for your listening pleasure.
Get your hi-hat on.
Real-time MRI study of human beatboxing, with lots of videos. See what snares, kick drum effects, cymbals and more look and sound like as they happen inside the head. Here's a BBC radio segment on the project.
vu par David Lynch
David Lynch on his favorite photographs. As the honorary curator of the 2012 Paris Photo collection, David Lynch discusses some of his picks.
Influential- though vile and ponderous
The Roadmap to Saving the Sounds of America, Though the Road is Bumpy
The National Recording Preservation Board was mandated by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, but it didn't have a preservation plan in place to address saving everything from the oldest tin foil recordings (prev) to recent "born digital" creations. That changed with the National Recording Preservation Plan (full 89 page PDF). Except, "the recording preservation provisions under current law are so restrictive you literally can't make — legally — a digital copy of an older analog recording without permissions which are very hard to get" (NPR). [more inside]
Spiel mit dem Tod
A german documentary about a war game in Russia. Watch it until the end, it's worth it. The version with english subtitles was the best I could find.
NAAAAAAH! (R.I.P. Tim Dog)
''Les Paul Echo Guitar'' by Carl Perkins and George Harrison
''Les Paul Echo Guitar'' -- Carl Perkins and George Harrison, a clip from A Rockabilly Session with Carl Perkins and Friends [more inside]
David and Nikki Lee
A Study of 10,000 Porn Stars and Their Careers: For the first time, a massive data set of 10,000 porn stars has been extracted from the world’s largest database of adult films and performers. I’ve spent the last six months analyzing it to discover the truth about what the average performer looks like, what they do on film, and how their role has evolved over the last forty years.
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