March 19, 2015

How Google Skewed Search Results

The Wall Street Journal reports on how Google favored its own shopping, travel services over rivals, and the U.S. antitrust probe of Google:
The 160-page critique, which was supposed to remain private but was inadvertently disclosed in an open-records request, concluded that Google’s “conduct has resulted—and will result—in real harm to consumers and to innovation in the online search and advertising markets.”
Is Google an unelected superpower? A truly sinister social networking platform could manipulate public opinion even more effectively. (Previously)
posted by Little Dawn at 11:23 PM PST - 68 comments

I'm not saying it's aliens ... but

"What is amazing, is that you can see the feature while the rim is still in front of the line of sight". Unreleased images of "feature number 5" aka the bight spots on Ceres suggest it might be an ice plume. Also we're naming everything after agriculture deities and festivals.
posted by Long Way To Go at 8:50 PM PST - 20 comments

First and final frames

This video plays the opening and closing shots of 55 films side-by-side. Some of the opening shots are strikingly similar to the final shots, while others are vastly different--both serving a purpose in communicating various themes. Some show progress, some show decline, and some are simply impactful images used to begin and end a film. [Obvious spoilers for the final shots of the 55 movies listed in the video's description]
posted by mediareport at 8:32 PM PST - 18 comments

unmute for full effect

Maple is a majestic dog on Vine; she is musically accompanied by her owner, Trench
posted by NoraReed at 7:24 PM PST - 20 comments

bell hooks talks to John Perry Barlow

bell hooks [iconoclastic feminist, leading African-American intellectual, progressive Buddhist, self-proclaimed homebody] and John Perry Barlow [cyber philosopher, retired cattle rancher, world traveler, Grateful Dead lyricist, self-proclaimed Republican, EFF founder] have a conversation in the September 1995 issue of Shambhala Sun.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 6:21 PM PST - 8 comments

Malcolm Fraser, 1931-2015

Malcolm Fraser, former Australian Prime Minister, has died aged 84. [more inside]
posted by acb at 4:24 PM PST - 30 comments

"It was produced in a hurry."

The CIA Just Declassified the Document That Supposedly Justified the Iraq Invasion [more inside]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:02 PM PST - 87 comments

Your Goo Goo Googly Eyes

Last week, a trio of Google researchers published a paper on a new artificial intelligence system dubbed FaceNet that it claims represents the most-accurate approach yet to recognizing human faces. FaceNet achieved nearly 100-percent accuracy on a popular facial-recognition dataset called Labeled Faces in the Wild. The paper.[pdf] (title song reference)
posted by sammyo at 3:54 PM PST - 29 comments

"Restaurants look, taste, sound, and smell more and more the same."

A tourist in Buenos Aires ponders how to have an immersive experience in an age when the city's restaurant culture is adopting international standards. The answer: listen to what old people recommend.
It’s been a longstanding fear of travelers (or travelers like myself, at least) that global conglomerates like McDonald’s or TGI Friday’s might use the bludgeon of the Big Mac or the bluster of Flair to wipe out everything unique, provincial and good. But what struck me on this trip, not having seen BA for a decade and thus being more sensitive to what had changed, was how a different kind of sameness was permeating Porteño restaurant and bar culture—much more indie and elevated, but just as insidious.
[more inside]
posted by maskd at 3:17 PM PST - 30 comments

Ironically, it's the only state with its own Broadway musical.

Speaking on behalf of HB 1371, "The Oklahoma Religious Freedom Act", State Senator Joseph Silk told the NYT: "[Gay people] don’t have a right to be served in every single store.... People need to have the ability to refuse service if its violates their religious convictions." State Representative Emily Virgin proposed an amendment with a powerful message to business owners who would turn away gay couples: Own your bigotry. Publicly. [more inside]
posted by supercres at 3:16 PM PST - 79 comments

Once upon a time, there was a building full of books...

In cash-strapped Philly school district, a hidden treasure trove of books
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 2:55 PM PST - 19 comments

The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things

A heroin-addicted teen prostitute from West Virginia, 15-year-old JT LeRoy was hailed as the next great American literary star in the late 1990s. Mentored by acclaimed writers and nurtured by a protective throng of celebrities, JT's story was as inspirational as his untaught genius was astonishing. But JT wasn't real; he was an invention of Laura Albert, a woman in her 30's who wrote the books, carried on phone conversations in JT's voice and hired her boyfriend's half-sister to appear in public as JT. After filming JT in the peak of his fame, documentarian Marjorie Sturm continued unraveling the story after Albert's hoax was revealed in 2005. Her film, The Cult of JT LeRoy, is now playing in theaters but Albert, who calls JT's persona performance art, has threatened to sue. [more inside]
posted by rogerrogerwhatsyourrvectorvicto at 1:29 PM PST - 38 comments

Meeting Bro Orange.

How Matt Stopera became a minor Chinese celebrity. A romance for the spring festival. Single link buzzfeed, but worth it.
posted by idiopath at 12:55 PM PST - 19 comments

Yo ho, Yo ho, A Podcast's Life For Me

Accordion cover of Serial Podcast themesong. (via)
posted by ericbop at 11:08 AM PST - 7 comments

Get your pies for the great pie fight!

How did pie become the perfect comedic projectile? It started with Mr Flip (1909), which may well be the first pie-to-the-face in movie history (although the first thrown pie was in A Noise from the Deep in 1913). Director Mack Sennett loved the gag so much, he began using it in most of his films, and turned it into one of the most famous slapstick moves in history. [more inside]
posted by specialagentwebb at 10:39 AM PST - 36 comments

Next up: More clones? Woodhouse's location? Still more Rush references?

Season 6 of Archer has been sprinkled with clues, and an imgur user has been following the trail — the highlights of which so far have been a Flickr account and Algersoft.net (Login: Krieger Password: guest).
posted by rewil at 10:36 AM PST - 65 comments

That's why it's tail is so poofy, it's full of secrets.

Doggie DNA test. You gotta do it!
posted by phunniemee at 9:55 AM PST - 45 comments

Gifs explaining immigration law

For real. House Judiciary Committee press release in gif form.
posted by MsDaniB at 9:51 AM PST - 74 comments

Swift, silent, and with razor-sharp claws

Rogue owl caught after year-long reign of terror in Dutch town
Dubbed the “terror owl” by residents of Purmerend, north of Amsterdam, the aggressive European eagle owl is suspected of more than 50 attacks on humans, swooping silently from above and leaving many of its victims bloody and bruised. “The animal was trapped by a falconer today,” the Purmerend city council said on Friday evening. “It’s in good health and is currently being kept in a temporary facility awaiting a transfer once a proper permanent home has been found,” it added.
[more inside]
posted by Lexica at 7:49 AM PST - 54 comments

BASP+NHSTP=0

Academic journal bans p-value significance test An editorial published in the academic journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology (BASP) has declared that the null hypothesis significance testing procedure (NHSTP) is 'invalid', and have banned it from future papers submitted to the journal. [more inside]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:45 AM PST - 59 comments

Bisland v. Bly: A Race Around the World

In 1889, Elizabeth Bisland’s boss sent her on a trip around the world. Her goal: to beat Phileas Fogg’s record of going Around the World in 80 Days. She was not thrilled at the prospect, and even less happy to learn she would be chasing Nellie Bly, who had left that morning on the same journey. But sure enough, she was on a train that evening. [more inside]
posted by julen at 7:07 AM PST - 6 comments

What, no Van Morrison?

The Faded Glory Invitational: 16 Icons Battle to Determine the Greatest ‘Down’ Period in Pop Music History What once (and possibly future) great artist had the greatest "down" period? '90s Springsteen, '80's Dylan, Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines, and many others battle it out for "supremacy".
posted by Optamystic at 6:45 AM PST - 80 comments

The Cold Rim of the World

Pyramiden was abandoned in 1998. The town’s population, then somewhere around 300 people, was given four months to leave, and they left behind everything non-essential. Walking through those buildings, it felt as if some vague poisonous gas had swept through and killed everyone in a matter of minutes. There were signs of life everywhere—trays still on tables, rolls of film in the projection booth, musical instruments strewn about—alongside the inescapable fact of decay and abandonment. In the gymnasiums lay sports equipment that would never again be used, books that would never again be read. The world’s northernmost swimming pool is now empty; the world’s northernmost grand piano now badly out of tune. The triumphant gaze of Soviet monuments now look out over nothing but emptiness. The rise and fall of Pyramiden, a Russian mining town located in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.
posted by ellieBOA at 6:17 AM PST - 23 comments

“For me, to live in Pakistan is to know extremes of hope and despair.”

Globalization is a brutal phenomenon. It brings us mass displacement, wars, terrorism, unchecked financial capitalism, inequality, xenophobia, climate change. But if globalization is capable of holding out any fundamental promise to us, any temptation to go along with its havoc, then surely that promise ought to be this: we will be more free to invent ourselves. In that country, this city, in Lahore, in New York, in London, that factory, this office, in those clothes, that occupation, in wherever it is we long for, we will be liberated to be what we choose to be.
- Discontent and Its Civilizations (excerpt), by Mohsin Hamid (previously); reviewed [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:08 AM PST - 31 comments

Frodo may have lived, but fantasy was effectively dead

The Sword of Shannara, the debut novel from American novelist Terry Brooks’, was released in 1977 into an SF literary ecosystem that looks very different than it does today: there was no Harry Potter, no Game of Thrones, and Peter Jackson was only just discovering Tolkien’s work as a pubescent teen. Readers were still riding Science Fiction’s new wave, and Fantasy looked like little more than a fading fad in the barren landscape left behind by Frodo’s departure to the Undying Lands.
Aidan Moher thinks Terry Brooks saved epic fantasy.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:48 AM PST - 169 comments

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