April 5, 2017

My little dog—a heartbeat at my feet

When Brazilian illustrator Rafael Mantesso divorced with his ex-wife, she took all of the furniture with her, leaving behind an empty house with white walls. All he had was Jimmy Choo, his bull terrier. Mantesso started painting and drawing again, which is when his buddy Jimmy lent him a paw by posing for some silly illustrations. [more inside]
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:35 PM PST - 9 comments

Occupiers! Stop Using Consensus!

Consensus process (the idea that a group must strictly adhere to a protocol where all decisions are unanimous) is the absolute worst idea that has ever been introduced to the activist community.
posted by the hot hot side of randy at 8:11 PM PST - 60 comments

This, of course, was back when fucking anime pillows was fresh and new.

Fuck You And Die: An Oral History of Something Awful [SLMB]
posted by not_the_water at 7:07 PM PST - 56 comments

Don't be yourself. Be your best self.

"...the researchers actually found evidence for the opposite – that is, feelings of authenticity in a relationship seem to arise not from being our actual selves in the relationship, but from feeling that we can be our best or ideal self." [abstract]
posted by clawsoon at 5:22 PM PST - 27 comments

Most of the males were managers

Being a woman in programming in the Soviet Union as well as her perspective on the same job in the US. I started with punch cards too.
posted by kingless at 4:25 PM PST - 11 comments

Computer Games for the blind

This article is a look at how some blind people are able to play roguelike games, which are often regarded as hard for people who have full sight.
posted by Alensin at 1:16 PM PST - 17 comments

Italian Style

Master of None - Season Two Trailer (slyt)
posted by Artw at 11:52 AM PST - 24 comments

Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation using Cycle-Consistent Adversarial

Berkeley's software turns paintings into photos, horses into zebras, and more [more inside]
posted by bodywithoutorgans at 10:37 AM PST - 14 comments

Being alive means you have a lot of work to do.

The Last Game Before I Die: The Crashlands Postmortem (SLYT ~1hr, h/t RPS)
posted by curious nu at 9:28 AM PST - 7 comments

Forging Nature

There is perhaps no better word than “counterfeit” to describe cultural representations of the natural world: Colin Dickey reviews the newly translated book "The Rhinoceros and the Megatherium: An Essay in Natural History” by Juan Pimentel.
posted by Rumple at 9:23 AM PST - 6 comments

Something about dark lords, with rhyming couplets

When Tolkein helped create the modern fantasy genre, he also re-introduced a key fantasy trope, the prophetic poem that is key to the plot of the novel. Whether elegantly written (as in Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising poem or Clarke's Prophecy of John Uskglass) or rather awkwardly accumulated (as in the Wheel of Time's Karaethon Cycle), the prophetic verse is often a tired trope, but one which a variety of fantasy novels have used to good effect.
posted by blahblahblah at 8:42 AM PST - 83 comments

Children are our future [journalists]

High school journalism students uncovered some questions about their soon-to-be principal, after said principal had been hired by the school district. Days later, the principal resigned. [more inside]
posted by cooker girl at 8:42 AM PST - 58 comments

It's college admissions week!

As teenagers check their email even more obsessively than usual for college acceptance letters, it's been a pretty good week for some particularly high-achieving ones. Ifeoma White-Thorpe was accepted at all eight Ivies (plus Stanford). The Wade quadruplets Nick, Aaron, Nigel, and Zach each got in to Harvard and Yale (and a bunch of other places among them). Ziad Ahmed wrote "#blacklivesmatter" 100 times on his Stanford application and got accepted. (via the Root)
posted by Etrigan at 8:30 AM PST - 67 comments

"Kevin's work has easily been the most significant and groundbreaking"

"The thing about the [field-programmable gate array (FPGA)] is, it replicates the hardware at a very low level [...] It's not emulating it per se; there's no code running. What it does is, it's like a chip that you can program to turn into another chip, which I program to act exactly like an old Nintendo. It's so close to a real Nintendo console that you can actually run the game right off the real cartridge."
Kevin Horton Is a Cryogenics Engineer Turned Retro Gaming Savior [more inside]
posted by griphus at 7:52 AM PST - 19 comments

It was not how I had imagined spending Christmas Eve.

Twelve years after reporting on the conflict in Darfur, film-maker Phil Cox returned. But this time, the Sudanese government put a price on his head.
In the early morning of 24 December 2016, my friend Daoud and I lay side by side on a blanket, our legs chained at the ankles, secured with heavy padlocks. The sun beat down on the desert. We pleaded with our captors to be moved to the shade, but they ignored us. [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 7:48 AM PST - 4 comments

Craig Is A Contradiction, But He Does Not Know It.

Every Story I Have Read About Trump Supporters in the Past Week - Alexandra Petri, WaPo
posted by Navelgazer at 7:09 AM PST - 127 comments

True Norwegian Cat Metal

When buying clothing online—a t-shirt, for instance—you may find it helpful to see the item on a realistic model.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:52 AM PST - 6 comments

Best in Fashion, Make it Yours

The Vintage Pattern Wiki is a collaborative dedicated to Vintage Sewing Patterns (25 years old or older) and well worth browsing through for how some styles rarely change dramatically and how some things really do. Currently it lists over 83,500 patterns from companies you probably recognize (Vogue, Burda, Butterick, McCall/McCall’s) and ones you may not (Academy Patterns, ABC Schnitt, Pictorial Review). And lots of Mail Order Companies. Not sure about those vintage fabric suggestions (Barathea? Vicara? Poor boy?)? The Vintage Fashion Guild has got you covered.
posted by crush at 6:37 AM PST - 9 comments

"Could you fix yourself on the inside by shaking up what you wore"

How Clown Pants Saved My Life [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:22 AM PST - 10 comments

Central European University in Peril

Central European University, an English-language postgraduate institution in Budapest that offers degrees that are accredited in both Hungary and the state of New York, is threatened with closure by a new law passed by the Hungarian parliament that imposes overly (and intentionally) onerous requirements on the CEU for its continued ability to enroll students. [more inside]
posted by dhens at 5:49 AM PST - 18 comments

"I will not change and I will not be nice"

Morrissey, We're Through. (slNoiseyVice)
posted by Kitteh at 5:48 AM PST - 43 comments

The hospital where parents care for premature babies

On a hospital ward in Leeds, parents of premature babies are encouraged to help care for their newborns. How does the approach benefit families?
posted by threetwentytwo at 5:15 AM PST - 7 comments

Rock’n’Roll Animals

Rock’n’Roll Animals: Musicians Tell Us All About Their Pets — an article at Pitchfork by Quinn Moreland. Previously. [more inside]
posted by misteraitch at 4:21 AM PST - 3 comments

Say Hello

Is Vancouver lonelier than most cities or just better about addressing it?
posted by ellieBOA at 3:50 AM PST - 11 comments

The 50 Most Famous Cars From The Last 50 Years

Illustrations of 50 Famous Cars in just 2 minutes 15 seconds. [slyt]
posted by veedubya at 2:15 AM PST - 15 comments

I assume the inside is also succulent.

Sure, you could get a cake covered in icing roses, but what if you're more into water-friendly Xeriscaping?
posted by jacquilynne at 12:40 AM PST - 13 comments

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