March 15, 2014

Missed it by this much.

Goodnight Clock. In which the celestial accuracy of the children's classic Goodnight Moon is analyzed.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:49 PM PST - 24 comments

Your Culture Is Stupid And I Hate It

Transcontinental Yelling With Jo (An Englishwoman) and Mallory (An American)
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:16 PM PST - 89 comments

Did'ja hear what I'm saying to you, or have you gone deaf with the soup?

Delivering ten-minute chunks of surreal Irish humor, Soupy Norman may be the best series you've never seen. [more inside]
posted by Itaxpica at 5:43 PM PST - 15 comments

FLCL: Nothing amazing happens here, everything is ordinary.

' “Episode one, and a robot sprouts from a lump on a boy’s forehead. I certainly did not see that coming” (Tamplin 304). Director Tsuramaki was quoted in an interview, “I'd like you to think of FLCL as imagination being made physical and tangible, just as it is for me when I take whatever is in my head and draw it.” (Surkult). [FLCL, pronounced] Furi Kuri, or Fooly Cooly, keeps its audience on its toes waiting for the next bizarre turn of events. However, if the viewer pushes past the first layer – which can at first be confusing – they can reach the heart of this anime. This series is, quite simply, a coming of age story.' Of course, it's not really that simple, so let's dig in! [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 4:30 PM PST - 67 comments

Pipeline Primer

Factcheck: The Keystone XL Project. An evenhanded summary of the controversy around the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
posted by bitmage at 4:07 PM PST - 75 comments

A low-gravity ballet.

The effortless grace of an astronaut on the lunar surface is a thing of beauty. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by griphus at 3:11 PM PST - 32 comments

Hargreaves & Levin

Henry and Caitlin.....met over several glasses of rose and quickly recognized their shared passion for all things food, photography, travel, and art. Their collaborations have spanned a decade, and they continue to push the boundaries always attempting to find a balance between beauty and the far fetched. With food as their favored medium they always manage to turn the mundane into works of art. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:09 PM PST - 3 comments

why can't they dance?

As the twittersphere ridicules a White Man March in NYC, perhaps now is the time to watch Aamer Rahman, one half of the comedy tour Fear of a Brown Planet (with Nazeem Hussain), on the topic of Reverse Racism.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 1:43 PM PST - 99 comments

L'épicerie magnifique et l'épicerie horrible

The delightful Bill Cunningham covers the latest trends in groceries gone awry at this year's Paris Fashion Week.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:50 PM PST - 9 comments

Reddit's "Ask Me Anything" Made Readable

Interviews with interesting people, pulled from Reddit, organized, and made prettier.
posted by Renoroc at 10:51 AM PST - 55 comments

Make Everything Awesome For Everybody: Bridging The CP Snow-Style Divide

The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution - "[Charles Percy Snow] was pleading for a more adequately educated ruling class so that the suffering of the poor might be ameliorated... Snow wanted to believe something like this: political decisions in the modern world often concern how to deploy science and technology, so people well-trained in science and technology will be better prepared to make those decisions. But that's a syllogism without a minor premise." (previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 8:32 AM PST - 37 comments

Move your TOILET PAPER to the belt, you putrid jockey of filth.

A Preliminary Phenomenology of the Self-Checkout. An essay in six parts. [more inside]
posted by Cash4Lead at 7:29 AM PST - 61 comments

If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try, try, try, try, try again.

In his series of blog posts How to Make Master in 300 Difficult Steps, John Chernoff, with humour and modesty, recounts his numerous attempts to surpass 2200 USCF and become a Candidate Master in the game of chess. (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8)
posted by Quilford at 7:10 AM PST - 4 comments

How do you make your mom robot angry? Keep pushing her buttons.

You thought Google buying robot technology was scary? We've discussed here the unease brought on by Google's purchase of Boston Dynamics, the maker of "terrifying robots", and recently the prediction of robots rising by Google's Director of Engineering, but it turns out that Google may not be the problem. Truly terrifying robots are already here and could show up in your home if you happen to have mounds of disposable cash and no sense of boundaries. No this isn't April 1, yes this is legit.
posted by jeremias at 6:52 AM PST - 55 comments

The refreshment stand is closed forever

Here are some compilations of old drive-in theater intermission shorts, obsolete advertising for vanished venues. Won't you please visit our celestial snack bar? The show starts in ∞ minutes. Hover over links for more detail.
1 (10m, corn dogs, Dairy Queen) - 2 (10m, Butch, Eskimo Pie) - 3 (7m, public displays of affection) - 4 (3m, cable TV)
5 (10m, PSAs) - 6 (10m, performing food!) - 7 (9.5m, racist indians, snack bar gnomes) - 8 (10m, Jay Ward-like cartoon roundup)
9 (4m, daylight savings time) - 10 (13m, shrimp rolls, local ads) - 11 (10.5m, Dr Pepper robbery, conformity, PSAs) - 12 (14m, Creepy the Clown and "Dutch Treete")
13 (10m, Optigan music spectacular!) - 14 (2m, EAT CANDY BARS) - 15 (9m, Swiss people are magical) - 16 (5m, assorted animation)
17 (17m, Snacks in Space) [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 4:14 AM PST - 50 comments

Clogs and windmills and tulips oh my

"Picture the scene: you’re on Family Feud (US) or Family Fortunes (UK), and the oily host summons you to go head-to-head with a member of the opposing family. “Hands on the buzzers, please. Top eight answers in this round. We asked 100 people…to name something associated with Holland.”

Suppress lewd thoughts of red-light districts, window brothels, and sex clubs—this is a family show—and quick, the buzzer!

[...]

And that, in essence, is Huis ten Bosch, a $3bn theme park answer to a quiz show question nobody asked."
posted by MartinWisse at 4:03 AM PST - 26 comments

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