May 13, 2016
o'er the land of the free (that is, the unconstrained by *pitch*)
Shoot the piano player? Hell no! The poor fellow is just doing his level best to follow the, um... creative modulations that the singer is exploring as she delivers her breathtakingly adventurous rendition of the Star Spangled Banner at a recent rich asshole rally in Oregon. Matter of fact, buy that piano player a beer! [more inside]
And now for something completely different.
The Kipper Kids are Harry and Harry Kipper, one character played simultaneously by two people. He certainly are an entertaining people since 1971. • 32-minute performance at The University Art Museum, 1979 • Kipper Kids channel on Youtube • Excerpts from "Your Turn to Roll It #54" (via their Facebook Page [NSFW]), which they also performed on Bette Midler's Mondo Beyondo [pbhffhhrthiously]
Those 70s Shows
Every 70s Movie: The Best, The Worst, The Weirdest, and Everything in Between. A new review a day since October 2010.
Jeepney Journey on Manila's 'Avenue of Death'
"This is what rush hour in Manila looks like: a Mad Max-style ride down Fury Road aboard vehicles with names like "Cold Fusion" and "Soldier of Fortune." First hacked together more than 70 years ago and manufactured nowhere else outside the Philippines, the ageless, endlessly patched jeepney is both an icon of national ingenuity and testament to its utterly dysfunctional public transportation. Filipinos affectionately refer to them as the "Kings of the Road," with a mixture of pride and eye-rolling resignation."
Wins above replacement ozeki
538 crunches the numbers behind 255 years of professional sumo tournaments.
Women in flat shoes still able to do job shock!
Grauniad: Women share flat-shoe photos in solidarity with dismissed receptionist - Women at work on Friday were snapping pictures of their flat shoes in a show of solidarity with a receptionist sent home from her temp job after she did not wear high heels.
The Twitter trend was initiated by the Fawcett Society following a backlash against sexist dress codes imposed by some employers.
"dangerous munitions"
An opera for children and those who like children
Mass Produced Death Penalty is Over
“With Pfizer’s announcement, all F.D.A.-approved manufacturers of any potential execution drug have now blocked their sale for this purpose,” said Maya Foa, who tracks drug companies for Reprieve, a London-based human rights advocacy group. [more inside]
Move Over, Sam
On Monday, President Obama signed HR 2908 into law, making the American Bison the National Mammal of the USA! (Bison bison bison and bison bison athabascae, as The New Yorker explains in its coverage.) At least some of the credit should go to the Vote Bison and Beards For Bison campaigns and affiliates.
Celebrate by reading up on Bison at the NWF, the WWF, the DOI, U of M, and Wikipedia, looking up some Bison on BISON, adopting a housebroken Bison, joining the NBA, visiting the Minnesota Zoo, or drinking a beer and having a burger.
Celebrate by reading up on Bison at the NWF, the WWF, the DOI, U of M, and Wikipedia, looking up some Bison on BISON, adopting a housebroken Bison, joining the NBA, visiting the Minnesota Zoo, or drinking a beer and having a burger.
Thomas the Tank Engine Like You've Never Seen Him Before! (NSFW, SLYT)
We’re Like Groupies
Screw, spend, sleep: My battle with bipolar disorder
Mania goes like this: It’s 3 am and I’m wide awake and ready to conquer the world. The rest of the world is sleeping, but I just don’t seem to need sleep. Nope, too much to do, and here are the priorities: buy a $200 belly dancing costume online, break out my oil paints and finish a painting, put shelves up in my room, work on my book (I’ll get another idea for a different book and have to start that too), start an heirloom yogurt business, research farmer’s market permit laws for said yogurt business, go to a meeting and take on a new sponsee, buy a book on the ancient myths of Egypt, read the book on the ancient myths of Egypt, fuck my boyfriend twice, practice playing finger cymbals and practice my Spanish online. Right now I’m learning conditional future tenses. [more inside]
Hand cranked candy
A restored Victorian rolling machine for making drop candy. So that's why it's called drop candy. More machines. [more inside]
GoldenIRL
We had a spare afternoon so naturally we decided to recreate Goldeneye on Alcatraz.
Friday Flamenco
Flamenco at 5:15, is a short, Oscar-winning documentary about students in their final year at the National Ballet School of Canada who are seen learning the flamenco from Susana and Antonio Robledo, in classes which are held after the day's regular schedule has ended.
"You're not going to grab Rock Hudson's gusto on my show."
In 1980, Bea Arthur and Madame* sing "A Good Man is Hard to Find" after some banter about each other's respective styles and sexual innuendo about the puppet seducing Rock Hudson that has aged...let's just say....interestingly. [more inside]
Artem vs Predator
Products as far as the eye can scroll
Akvariums! Robot-Hund! Star Wars merchandise! A sort of mail-order Sharper Image kind of store, www.ARNGREN.net offers many, many products and rejects modern design sensibilities by putting quite a few of them on their front page in a vast, scroll-requiring field of boxes.
The Unhealthy Truth Behind "Wellness" and "Clean Eating."
My name is Jaimie and I've decided to build a giant robot...DAMMIT!
Audubon Made Up At Least 28 Fake Species To Prank A Rival
Rafinesque (previously) was not known for his social graces; as John Jeremiah Sullivan writes, Audubon is the "only person on record" as actually liking him. During their visit, though, Audubon fed Rafinesque descriptions of American creatures, including 11 species of fish that never really existed. Rafinesque duly jotted them down in his notebook and later proffered those descriptions as evidence of new species. For 50 or so years, those 11 fish remained in the scientific record as real species, despite their very unusual features, including bulletproof (!) scales.
Turns out we missed another 17 species that Audubon threw in there for fun.
"if people are who they say they are"
Friday the 13th, or 17th, or Tuesday the 13th - superstition history
What's so bad about Friday the 13th? Well, what's so unlucky about the number 13? It's largely a modern, Western superstition, merging suspicion about Fridays and the number 13, which once concocted, felt ancient. Some give credit to the Thirteen Club, formed in 1881 or 1882, who flaunted so-called cursed actions, breaking glasses with abandon. Meanwhile, Martes Trece, or Tuesday the 13th is bad luck in Spanish speaking countries, and it's an ominous date for Greek history as Constantinople fell on the specific date in 1204, while Friday the 17th is a national day of sfortuna, or bad luck, in Italy. [more inside]
Be careful, the road of faith is rocky
Swinging with Absalom Sometimes I envy Absalom. He had recourse. He had power. He raised up an army in his rage. He did something. He turned his rage into an insurrection. All I’ve ever done is turn my anger into words. How can a sister avenge her sister? How can a brother mourn his loss? How can a child reconcile the sins of her parents? (TW: rape)
So one member of your band has transitioned.
How do you address the elephant in the room with a live audience?The Axis of Awesome shows us the way. [more inside]
fight on
Darwyn Cooke, author and illustrator of the Eisner award winning DC: New Frontier, is currently receiving palliative care for aggressive cancer. He is also well known for his work on Catwoman, The Spirit, animated series such as Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond as well as the odd miniseries for Marvel.
Dear Colleague Letter on Transgender Students
This morning, the Obama administration sent a letter (PDF) to all public schools in the United States, signed by the Department of Justice and and Department of Education, issuing guidance (PDF) that discrimination against transgender students’ rights violates schools’ legal obligations under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. All students must be allowed to use the restroom and locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity, and "schools are prohibited from publicly disclosing a transgender student's birth name or biological sex, and are required to change the gender on school records and directories when asked." [more inside]
The Holy Trinity – Paddle, Ball and Blocks
"Although it will seem remedial to mention this, all Breakout-style games have at least three things in common – each contains paddles, balls, and target objects for the balls to hit." -- Lego Bricktopia level designer, Mark Nelson, shares his vast of knowledge of Breakout-style games (previously 1, 2) in Breaking Down Breakout: System And Level Design For Breakout-style Games. [more inside]
Toasted
In a sea of imperfect options, this is the one I feel best about! We made something great for three years, and now we’re going to go do something else. The only regret I have is that Bustle will outlive us and I will never be able to icily reject a million-dollar check from Bryan Goldberg, but that’s pretty much it. - The Toast will be closing on July 1st. [more inside]
YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD
One of the most infamously bad NES licensed games ever released, Friday the 13th is known for its obtuseness and difficulty. Still, there's many who see an interesting design buried beneath Pack-In Software's incompetence, even inspiring an action figure based on its odd Jason Voorhees sprite, and it's for those people that YouTube filmmakers TripleZeroFilms created a 50-page, full-color, illustrated strategy guide (with its own trailer video!) for this unpolished gem in the extremely rough. [more inside]
And he'll still grow up to be an asshole.
Check in with the velociraptor at the world’s first robot hotel
Japan has a national gift for holding in balance the stateliness of tradition and the marvel of novelty. So it ought to come as no surprise that on the western margin of the archipelago, on a serene bay in a remote area of the Nagasaki Prefecture, there is an enormous theme park dedicated to the splendors of imperial Holland. It follows with perfect logic that the historical theme park’s newest lodging place is the world’s first hotel staffed by robots.
With a name like that, of course he became a game maker.
Based originally on a description in a story by Andy Looney, the game of Icehouse was a board game without a board, played in real time without turns with a set of colored pyramids in three sizes. It still has its fans, and you can find some pretty detailed fan stuff out there on the internet regarding the game of Icehouse. Over the years, though, people found ways to use such enticingly generic game pieces for far, far more… [more inside]
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