March 17, 2015
Cranked
The Manual of Psychedelic Support
"The Manual of Psychedelic Support is a comprehensive guide to setting up and running compassionate care services for people having difficult drug experiences at music festivals and similar events." You can download it for free here.
Best Tractor Square Dance Ever Video
Funny money
Comic's Comic provides a graphic of the top 25 richest living comedians. Seinfeld: $800 million. (derived from Celebrity Networth's list of the top 50 of all time)
Journey to the center of the Earth.
How far would you have to travel to reach the Earth's core? And what would you see along the way? Discover what lies beneath...
"https://https..." is not from Department of Redundancy Department
Don't want some random hacker looking over your shoulder when you surf U.S. federal government websites? You may be in luck!
Today the White House announced a proposal — https://https.cio.gov/ — to make all public-facing U.S. government websites use HTTPS across the board within two years. Want to give your two cents on the idea? Forget writing a letter, make a pull request! [more inside]
Today the White House announced a proposal — https://https.cio.gov/ — to make all public-facing U.S. government websites use HTTPS across the board within two years. Want to give your two cents on the idea? Forget writing a letter, make a pull request! [more inside]
He has a face like a hoosier Michael Angelo
"The stereotype is all about cheap beer, fast cars and fat girls. But there's a little bit of hoosier in all of us." — from a 2003 Riverfront Times article about the other "hoosiers," the ones from St. Louis.
Scarlet Mustard, in the satin basque, with the top hat fascinator
Found Object Burlesque Names. They're all around us.
V U L C A N
Thar she blows!
Hummingbird lost, hummingbird found
"An intense and prolonged dry season in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta combined with fires set by Kogi indigenous people for agricultural purposes has devastated its fragile high-elevation habitat (páramo), home to a suite of endemic plants and animals. Two conservationists Carlos Julio Rojas and Christian Vasquez who work at ProAves’ “El Dorado” nature reserve in the mountain range, carried out investigations to document the fires. On March 4th 2015, the photographed the spectacular Blue-bearded Helmetcrest – a hummingbird that was last seen in 1946 and feared quite possibly extinct. Unfortunately, the habitat of the three birds they saw is threatened by ongoing fires." [more inside]
Nooooooooo kindle style
No really, these are real "covers" on Amazon. Each cover for these self published books is fine tuned to attract a specific demographic.
100 Years of Beauty
In Cut.com's new video series, a model runs through iconic makeup and hairstyle looks of her country for each decade from 1910 to 2010. This is an ongoing series, but there are now four videos up: one each for Anglo-American and African-American women, one for Iranian women, and one for Korean women. [more inside]
Over or under?
Beauty Tips, for Girls, from Lego
Milk and cookies kept you awake, eh, Sebastian?
Blade Runner Model Shop: Images from slides taken during the construction of the miniatures for the film "Bladerunner". (via)
"P-hacking is widespread."
P-hacking, or inflation bias, is the selective inclusion of experimental results that suggest statistical significance, as well as the selective exclusion of results which argue against the hypothesis. Skewing work towards positive results helps investigators publish in high-profile journals, which in turn improves access to funding. In a recent PLOS publication, Michael Jennions and Megan Head use text-mining and meta-analyses to determine the extent to which this influences a broad array of published research, offering recommendations on how to reduce this practice.
"Art to me means life" - Wanda Gág
Wanda Gág (1893–1946), best known for her book Millions of Cats - one of the only picture books to ever win a Newbery Honor award and the book that pioneered the two-page spread - wrote and illustrated her stories, the stories of others, and her own diary with what she called a "full-flavored, conversational style, and with a sly peasant humor." [more inside]
Human sex pheromone myth engineered by (...wait for it...) a corporation
As Smithsonian.com notes, researchers have found hints that human pheromones exist: The smell of tears, for example, seems to tamp down men’s sexual arousal and testosterone levels. Despite decades of research, a true human sex pheromone has yet to be found. Perhaps you thought otherwise. You are not alone. Tristram Wyatt, an Oxford biologist, explains how one corporation successfully created a scientific myth . [more inside]
This does not make the use of blackhead strips any less fun
You know all those blackheads on your Biore nose strip? Turns out they mostly aren't blackheads; they're sebaceous filaments and they were supposed to be in your nose. They help channel the flow of oil in the pore, and cannot be permanently removed (the pore will refill within 30 days).
You've got to be joking!
DC Comics pull cover of Batgirl menaced by Joker after online protests
In celebration of the 75th anniversary of The Joker, DC Comics is releasing variant covers in June, depicting their popular villain. After threats of violence and harassment the artist, Rafael Albuquerque, agreed to pull the cover. Who was being threatened and harassed? Not the artist. Rather, the people objecting. Predictably the backlash #CHANGETHECOVER has generated backlash #SAVETHECOVER in a standoff reminiscent of Gamergate.
In celebration of the 75th anniversary of The Joker, DC Comics is releasing variant covers in June, depicting their popular villain. After threats of violence and harassment the artist, Rafael Albuquerque, agreed to pull the cover. Who was being threatened and harassed? Not the artist. Rather, the people objecting. Predictably the backlash #CHANGETHECOVER has generated backlash #SAVETHECOVER in a standoff reminiscent of Gamergate.
30 Species in pieces
30 species in pieces, "an interactive exhibition turned study into 30 of the world’s most interesting but unfortunately endangered species — their survivals laying literally, in pieces."
Bobcats live in houses too
Fort Griffin State Historic Site, just north of Albany, Texas, recently had one of its historic buildings claimed as a den by a mother bobcat and her two kittens. The site's trail cameras have been documenting their lives since: the first glimpse into the lives of roly-poly inhabitants of a well-protected stone building came in January. With uninvited visits by raccoons, skunks, coyotes, and male bobcats... [more inside]
Star Blazers
Star Blazers Got Me Through The Shittiest Year Of My Childhood. Charlie Jane Anders: "I was a happy child, but I didn't have such a happy childhood. Other kids didn't get my weird vibe, especially in elementary and middle school. And one year in particular, we moved to a new city and a new school, and things got ugly. Only one thing kept me from losing my shit: Star Blazers..." [Previously]
Dinosaurs: Terrible Lizards
Dinosaurs: Terrible Lizards (SYTL - via B3ta.com)
Who will win the race?
Starbucks announced a new campaign to start conversations about racial issues by inviting baristas to pen the words Race Together on the sides of their ubiquitous cups. Unsure how to talk to your baristas about race? Jezebel has you covered. Of course, some people are less than thrilled with the campaign.
Mars One or MLM?
"As Roche observed the process from an insider’s perspective, his concerns increased. Chief among them: that some leading contenders for the mission had bought their way into that position, and are being encouraged to “donate” any appearance fees back to Mars One — which seemed to him very strange for an outfit that needs billions of dollars to complete its objective." [more inside]
Until I pulled out my Parakeet
Sometimes you just want a quick story before bed. (SLYT, NSFW)
"I asked him a very old Jewish question: Do you have a bag packed?"
Just as the process that transforms shamrocks into McFlurries is murky..
It's St. Paddy's Day, Not 'St. Patty's Day' (Gawker). Also, everything you know about St. Patrick's Day is wrong (HuffPo).
How Pixar Fosters Creativity
A few years ago, I had lunch with the head of a major motion picture studio, who declared that his central problem was not finding good people—it was finding good ideas. Since then, when giving talks, I’ve asked audiences whether they agree with him. Almost always there’s a 50/50 split, which has astounded me because I couldn’t disagree more with the studio executive. Pixar President Ed Catmull on the culture that generates Pixar's artistic and commercial success.
"There's a cowman who knows how to use an airplane!"
"Prior to the explosive tragedy that turned the Hindenburg into a synonym for disaster, the famous zeppelin transported [antelope] across the Atlantic to German zoos." [more inside]
"...hollow out a heel of french bread and stick a whole onion into it"
Irish-American Dining. A history of and guide to food that is expressly Irish-American, by Mefi's own Max Sparber. Irish Egg Rolls! Early onion-based pub food! The hidden history of the Shamrock Shake! [via mefi projects]
♫Do you want to scrape a website?♫
Did you ever just want a bunch of web data as painlessly as possible but don't know a thing about command-line webscrapers (curl, wget) or parsing libraries (BeautifulSoup, JSoup, pandas)?
import.io will try to auto-magically hash any website you give it into structured data. (Here's MetaFilter.)
Need a bit more control over those results?
Kimono gives you a point-and-click environment for choosing page elements and pagination indicators. (Requires a Chrome add-on or browser bookmarklet.)
import.io will try to auto-magically hash any website you give it into structured data. (Here's MetaFilter.)
Need a bit more control over those results?
Kimono gives you a point-and-click environment for choosing page elements and pagination indicators. (Requires a Chrome add-on or browser bookmarklet.)
Yam cake for everybody!
A baby gorilla who had to be delivered through an emergency cesarean section and had some rocky early days has celebrated her first birthday at San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Includes video of gorillas eating yam cake.
Rethinking the solar system
With the discovery of life beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, the abundance of water in our solar system and a huge salty ocean under Ganymede's ice, scientists are rethinking the possibilities of life on other worlds.
"I'm concerned that if you wait 'til you have symptoms, it's too late."
ESPN's Outside the Lines has reported that promising 24-year-old football player Chris Borland, who was drafted last year by the San Francisco 49ers as a linebacker, will retire as a "proactive" move to avoid the long-term effects of repetitive head trauma. [more inside]
The Mid Century Menu, as seen in cookbooks and brochures
Have you ever looked at a recipe in a mid-century cookbook and thought, “Ew. That is so nasty.” But you couldn’t stop looking at the recipe. Or thinking about it. As time went on, you kept going back to the book, thinking, “I wonder what it tastes like?”
Then the Mid-Century Menu is for you. And so is: Barbecue Bean Jello Mold. Spaghetti Subs. Candied Crackers. Oh, and Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! [more inside]
It's Ikea's World, We Just Live In It
Today research is at the heart of Ikea’s expansion. “The more far away we go from our culture, the more we need to understand, learn, and adapt,” says Mikael Ydholm, who heads research. Rather than focus on differences between cultures, it’s his job to figure out where they intersect.
White Line
Does Star Wars ask: whose worldview and style of life will triumph? Yes
John Powers (of Star Wars: A New Heap) writes The Future of Art: Rosalind Krauss is a Jedi - "If Krauss is Leia, Le Corbusier is a pretty great candidate for General Tarkin."
Star Wars Semiotics - "At HiLobrow we’re wary of structuralist heuristic devices. But we do enjoy tinkering with them — and we’ve noticed that the logical expansion of binary oppositions does help stimulate the imagination. However… does Powers’ square function properly?"
A Crisis in Criticism: Star Wars is not Literature, it is an Object. - "Glenn's post is good natured and whip smart - but he's dead wrong. While he is no doubt the superior semiotician ... and I can't hope to outsmart the guy, mine is the better diagram."
Star Wars Highbrow: Thesis Antithesis Synthesis - "In addition to describing the square above Glenn's original post also discussed his choices for the cardinal points at some length in terms of a "highbrow-lowbrow-middlebrow-nobrow-hilobrow schema." It is a scheme he has charted elsewhere, admitting that "aesthetic and lifestyle choices aren't entirely independent of social class."" [more inside]
The White Christian experiment is almost over
Earlier this month, a newly released report indicated that White Christians are no longer a majority in 19 states. Furthermore, according to the same report the United States is no longer a majority Protestant nation. [more inside]
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