April 17, 2014

Speed Stacking is Still a Thing

History of the Cycle World Record brought to you by the World Sport Stacking Association. [previously] [more inside]
posted by ennui.bz at 9:31 PM PST - 28 comments

"I'm on my feet like Tough Actin'® Tinactin®."

How many rappers have name-checked Tough Actin' Tinactin brand anti-fungal skin products? More than you would think.
posted by not_on_display at 9:27 PM PST - 25 comments

poop should be renamed “doof,” since that is food backwards

Cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt shadows chef Wylie Dufresne for a day.
posted by moonmilk at 7:12 PM PST - 27 comments

I've always wanted to have a neighbor just like you

Won't you please, please won't you be my neighbor? NASA's Kepler Discovers First Earth-Size Planet In The 'Habitable Zone' of Another Star. Kepler-186f is a planet about ten percent bigger than Earth that orbits within the habitable zone of its star. The light there is dim and orange, and it only gets about a third of the sunshine we do, but that may be enough for life. If you go outside tonight, there might be someone 500 light years away looking back at you...
posted by Kevin Street at 4:55 PM PST - 75 comments

Please enjoy this cyberpunk hacking adventure!

High End Customizable Sauna Experience by Porpentine
posted by bile and syntax at 4:14 PM PST - 46 comments

Suicide, drugs, sex and other dangers of rock and/or roll

How Americans Die - a visual tour through surprising trends in mortality among Americans in the last several decades
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:59 PM PST - 58 comments

Presenting the great poet and musician: Atahualpa Yupanqui

Yupanqui's gorgeous and meaningful songs have been covered by musicians, worldwide. Yupanqui's are songs about life, revolution, the worker, and everyday things (like a workers cart). Give a listen to some of his songs (and their covers) - even if you don't understand a word of Spanish, you will be rewarded lilting melody and the soul of a true musician/poet. [more inside]
posted by Vibrissae at 3:58 PM PST - 4 comments

Brushed chrome details and a shag carrying case.

ALT/1977 is a series of advertising mock-ups which imagines modern products with the aesthetics and production of 1970s consumer electronics. Faux-wood paneling, angular fonts, and more orange than you can shake a stick at.
posted by codacorolla at 2:50 PM PST - 60 comments

"I'll apologize but I won't take off my glasses, because they're famous"

When his parents went out of town, 16 year old Corey Worthington threw a party. When 500 people showed up, things got out of hand. Eventually the police were called, who mobilized units including their air wing & canine teams to quell the disturbance (for which Corey is being billed $20,000). And in the aftermath, Corey gave this awesome interview.
posted by scalefree at 2:37 PM PST - 84 comments

"writers are going to get it wrong, and that’s okay"

"This is specifically challenging in science fiction and fantasy, where there are often so many ways to heal someone–from super-science to ancient sorcery. And yet there are issues with miracle cures in fiction. For one thing, they rob disability of its narrative power. For another, they play into the problematic narrative that people with a disability somehow “deserve” it." -- Elizabeth Bear talks about writing characters with disabilities in science fiction and fantasy in a guest post for Sarah Chorn's Special Needs in Strange Worlds column.
In this SF Signal column, Sarah Chorn explores how fantasy and science fiction treat disability, through reading lists, author interviews and the examination of characters with disabilities like Tyrion Lannister.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:24 PM PST - 27 comments

The Red Line and the Rat Line

"The post-attack intelligence on Turkey did not make its way to the White House. ‘Nobody wants to talk about all this,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘There is great reluctance to contradict the president, although no all-source intelligence community analysis supported his leap to convict. There has not been one single piece of additional evidence of Syrian involvement in the sarin attack produced by the White House since the bombing raid was called off. My government can’t say anything because we have acted so irresponsibly. And since we blamed Assad, we can’t go back and blame Erdoğan.’"
A report by Seymour Hersh alleges that Turkish PM Erdoğan's National Intelligence Organization is responsible for last August's sarin attack in Syria, in an attempt to force Obama's hand on air strikes. [more inside]
posted by p3on at 2:11 PM PST - 49 comments

2048 - Iron man mode

Stellar fusion in 2048 style. Not quite just another 2048 clone. (of which there have been many many many versions, most discussed here). This version follows the fusion path of a main sequence star challenging you to create a stable isotope of iron.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:05 PM PST - 31 comments

Chronicle of a death foretold

Novelist Gabriel García Márquez has died at the age of 87. A giant of Latin American literature, he had struggled with lymphatic cancer and likely dementia (previously) in his latter years. To honor his memory, The Paris Review has reposted their interview with García Márquez from 1981, the year before he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
posted by Cash4Lead at 1:41 PM PST - 121 comments

word has it, he got a deal for only $2350/month

An army of NYPD cops on Thursday evicted a homeless man from his Manhattan Bridge "home" — which was complete with a gas heater, hot sauce and beer.
posted by and they trembled before her fury at 1:12 PM PST - 59 comments

DJ Faroff rides again!

Ladies and gentlemen, I share with you today – the latest beat from off the street, the mashup sensation that’s sweeping the internet nation. It's DJ Faroff’s latest groovechild Mash Machine, starring the Godfather of Soul, the Doors, dueling riffs from Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin and AC/DC. With special guest appearances from the Soul Train line dancers, the Pink Panther and a cowbell.
posted by jason's_planet at 12:58 PM PST - 10 comments

Hogwarts Is Here!

Ever wish you could actually take classes in Charms, Transfiguration, and Potions from Hogwarts for real? Now you can!
posted by divabat at 12:02 PM PST - 38 comments

Where do you fall on the Smell/Likeability quadrant?

Is your business persona working for you? Stanley Bing as posted an exerpt from his new book, The Curriculum: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Master of the Business Arts. [more inside]
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 11:10 AM PST - 18 comments

The Jews of Donetsk

On the first full day of Passover, Jewish people in the Eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk were handed leaflets ordering all Jewish residents over the age of 16 to pay the new pro-Russian revolutionary authorities $50 apiece for individual registration, otherwise “the guilty ones would be deprived of their citizenship and deported outside the republic; their property would be confiscated.” [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:05 AM PST - 99 comments

It's so dark in there, it took us a long time to notice

Cave insect species discovered in which the female has a penis and the male has a vagina.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 11:04 AM PST - 35 comments

Cringing Not Necessary

Wired on how Matt Fraction's Sex Criminals manages to be a comic book, about sex, that isn't completely awful.
posted by Ipsifendus at 9:54 AM PST - 19 comments

You are in yet another maze of twisty little passages, all alike

Apparently created in a schism over a TV Tropes policy of content restrictions imposed by their advertising contract, All The Tropes covers much the same ground in a more conventional wiki inteface (Mediawiki). posted by Herodios at 9:50 AM PST - 55 comments

Praise the sun!

Ambient Dark Souls. Virtual field recordings from the world of Dark Souls.
posted by neuromodulator at 9:29 AM PST - 18 comments

Bottles and ballast stones!

NOAA's Okeanos Explorer (previously 1, 2) is currently exploring the Gulf of Mexico. Today, they're exploring a 19th century shipwreck! Watch the discoveries on three live streams.
posted by mudpuppie at 8:41 AM PST - 17 comments

Resegregation in the American South

The most recent story in ProPublica's Living Apart: Examining America's Racial Divide series is "Segregation Now," which focuses on the Tuscaloosa, Alabama, city school district "and its fleeting experience with the challenges and virtues of integration." But beyond Tuscaloosa, "almost everywhere in the United States, the gains of integration have been eroded. And nowhere has that been more powerfully and disturbingly true than in the South – once home to both the worst of segregation and the greatest triumphs of integration. Freed from the federal oversight that produced integration, schools districts across the 11 former states of the Confederacy have effectively re-instituted segregation for large numbers of black students, in practical terms if not in law." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:37 AM PST - 90 comments

How Does He Take Selfies When He's a Toy?

Meet the Lego Pilot. Circling the globe from the flight deck.
posted by Xurando at 8:21 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

The Foodroom

McDonalds, Sorkinized for your pleasure. [SingleLinkComedyCentral]
posted by tonycpsu at 7:16 AM PST - 22 comments

the cow .. the cow ... the cow

From the mind of cartoonist KC Green (previously) comes The Ballad Of Dark Homer, a stranger take on our favorite animated family.
posted by The Whelk at 7:11 AM PST - 12 comments

Why were the nineties so preoccupied with fatherhood?

The Dadliest Decade
posted by valkane at 7:01 AM PST - 13 comments

What am I worth?

The Minimum Wage Worker Strikes Back - She notes that her hourly wage of $7.50 is less than a Wendy’s combo meal: “I make less than the Baconator.”
posted by anastasiav at 6:45 AM PST - 205 comments

In sickness and in health...

A couple's final journey. "Chris MacLellan and Bernard Richard Schiffer never exchanged “for better or for worse” vows. As a gay couple, marriage wasn’t an option in Florida. Instead, they lived together and loved each other for 11 years."
posted by HuronBob at 3:33 AM PST - 27 comments

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