April 1, 2013
The hottest prospect in Mets history is a lifelong Cubs fan
"I called Joe," Stewart remembers, "and asked if he wanted to come to spring training with me. I said, 'The Mets have this pitcher they picked up. They got him pitching in secret, under a big tarp. He has a 168 mile an hour fastball and he plays the French horn and went to Harvard and he was raised in Tibet by Buddhist monks and he pitches with one foot bare and one foot in a boot. And guess what? You're going to be him.'" [more inside]
Escape From The Planet Of The Pink Monkey Birds
Ronan the sea lion gits down to Boogie Wonderland
Ronan keeping the beat | Sea Lion is First Non-Human Mammal to Keep a Beat | Study done at the Pinniped Cognition & Sensory Systems Laboratory.
The Dapper Rebels of Los Angeles, 1966
In the summer of 1965, riots broke out in the Watts neighborhood of southern Los Angeles. Over a six-day period, 34 people were killed, 1,032 injured and over 3,438 arrests were made. In 1966, LIFE magazine revisited the site of the worst riots America had ever seen in its history. The photo essay depicting the region’s ‘fearsome street gangs’ however, turned out more like a fashion shoot for dapper style… [more inside]
They could be talking smack about seals
For this April the first, NPR has a touching story on the efforts to record the stories of retired Navy dolphins.
YouTube, and perhaps the greatest online April Fools ever
It's finally time to pick the winner… and we're 10 hours in. Earlier today, YouTube declared that it is finally time to pick a winner with the service shutting down at midnight upon declaring the winner. YouTube has been livestreaming the nominee ceremony for 10 hours now. [more inside]
Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears
Recently on BBC America they have been running a promo for the upcoming second season of Copper featuring a compelling cover of Hard Times Come Again No More, a song written more than 150 years ago by the "father of American music" Stephen Foster. If you don't recognize the name, you will certainly recognize his work - "... he virtually invented popular music as we recognize it today ..." reads his bio, and that is not an exaggeration. "Camptown Races", "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" -- just a quick scan through this list of his more than 200 songs and you will soon realize that when you think of traditional American folk music, you are probably thinking of Stephen Foster. [more inside]
The forgotten story of a dramatic imperial adventure
As a companion to his fascinating Raffles and the British Invasion of Java, Tim Hannigan has a blog — Footnotes and Sidelights from the Story of the British Interregnum in Java, wherein he shares interesting stories that could not find space in the published book. [more inside]
WHAT IS
What is the Internet anyway? What is Internet, anyway? What is the Internet?
What is the Internet, really? [more inside]
Pluck
Prior to their southward migration, the godwits eat up large, until up to 55 per cent of their body weight is fat. They then reduce the size of their gut, kidney and liver by up to 25 per cent to compensate for the added weight. Godwits are amazing migratory shorebirds who travel many thousands of miles at a go. Here's a brief documentary of people studying them (12 minutes on youtube + ad, shows invasive surgery). Here's some science on their flights (creative commons). [more inside]
The average human vagina
You can't ground Spiderman!
Josh Keaton, the voice of Peter Parker/Spider-Man from 2007-09 for the TV series The Spectacular Spiderman reads a whole bunch of 60s Spider-Man Image Macros (Bleeped Audio) (Know Your Meme - video)
You've always wanted to know who it was...
Press the Power Button!
The Power Button is the podcast from Press the Buttons, a site about gaming that's run by one man, Matthew Green, but has such extremely professional standards that you'd never know it apart from the tag line. Contained within are several interesting regular themes, like Beyond Beeps that covers early video game music which is actually quite good despite the beepy-ness, and Secret Origins relating personal and remarkably interesting stories concerning when and how he obtained various games, really. The latest entry is about him proposing to his girlfriend. There's a new weekly poll approximately every Monday, and articles like Open Up The Zelda Box about unique and interesting things that you don't see on a day to day news site. In the podcast, he talks with a couple co-hosts and occasionally has guests. Here are some of the more interesting episodes … [more inside]
Louis Kahn: the brick whisperer
"Inspired by ruins, DNA and primary geometry, Louis Kahn was one of the 20th century's most influential architects. Why isn't he more famous? Oliver Wainwright on the life and legacy of a man who died bankrupt" ~ The Guardian
There’s no sound like it.
Every Day We Are Dying and Outer Space Does Not Give One Single Fuck, a 60 minute ambient piano suite by Jared Brickman of One Hello World. [more inside]
Snitches get lines and have to stay behind after school
Until Jackie Parks, Georgia state investigator Richard Hyde had never tried to flip an elementary school teacher. Ms. Parks admitted to Mr. Hyde that she was one of seven teachers — nicknamed “the chosen” — who sat in a locked windowless room every afternoon during the week of state testing, raising students’ scores by erasing wrong answers and making them right. She then agreed to wear a hidden electronic wire to school, and for weeks she secretly recorded the conversations of her fellow teachers for Mr. Hyde.
I have no idea how these people got their cats into their porn, or why.
Indifferent cats in amateur porn. [SLTumblr, NSFW]
Not So Evergreen
"India's supreme court has ruled against Swiss drug giant Novartis in a landmark case that activists say will protect access to cheap generic drugs in developing nations." [more inside]
Magnus Carlsen will play Vishy Anand for the 2013 World Chess Tournament
Magnus Carlsen will be playing Viswanathan Anand for the 2013 World Chess Championship. [more inside]
You Win Fights By Being More Willing to Permanently F-Up The Other Guy*
"I would advise you when You do fight Not to act like Tygers and Bears as these Virginians do - Biting one anothers Lips and Noses off, and gowging one another - that is, thrusting out one anothers Eyes, and kicking one another on the Cods, to the Great damage of many a Poor Woman." Thus, Charles Woodmason, an itinerant Anglican minister born of English gentry stock, described the brutal form of combat he found in the Virginia backcountry shortly before the American Revolution. Although historians are more likely to study people thinking, governing, worshiping, or working, how men fight -- who participates, who observes, which rules are followed, what is at stake, what tactics are allowed - reveals much about past cultures and societies."Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch" The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry [more inside]
What's the secret to a happy marriage?
Anyone who tells you their rules for a happy marriage doesn't have one.
"Marriages are made of lust, laughter and loyalty - but the three have to be kept in constant passage, so that as one subsides for a time, the others rise”
"Marriages are made of lust, laughter and loyalty - but the three have to be kept in constant passage, so that as one subsides for a time, the others rise”
The legendary giant of free jazz
Stockholm syndrome
The Meme Hustler
"The enduring emptiness of our technology debates has one main cause, and his name is Tim O’Reilly." (Evgeny Morozov, for The Baffler)
The Gleaners Kitchen
Tufts University senior Maximus Thaler is raising funds to start a Freegan, pay what you can restaurant out of a Somerville, MA apartment. Food for the restaurant comes from local dumpsters.
It was bound to happen sooner or later.
It was as if older cats didn't even care.
Mobile Usability for Cats: Essential Design Principles for Felines. "Even the simplest video of a cat using an iPad app easily gathers millions of viewers. Bowing to this takeover, our clients are increasingly asking us, 'How can we improve our site or app for cats?' With their lack of opposable thumbs and ever-shifting focus, cats are certainly a challenging target audience." [more inside]
DENIED!
Open source pictures to liven up any website
The Dutch National Archive (Nationaal Archief) can trace its history back to 1802. It's main task is to maintain governmental archives of the Dutch rijksoverheid and its predecessors, as well as similar archives from the province of Zuid-Holland. It also maintains several other collections from non-governmental institutions like the Dutch football association and the Spaarnestad photo collection. Through its work it has amassed a vast pictorial database, parts of which have now been opened up to the public through its own website as well as their Flickr photostreams. [more inside]
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