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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]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:46 PM PST - 44 comments

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]
posted by not_on_display at 9:33 PM PST - 9 comments

Every 70s Movie: The Best, The Worst, The Weirdest, and Everything in Between. A new review a day since October 2010.
posted by MoonOrb at 9:14 PM PST - 39 comments

"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."
posted by veedubya at 8:30 PM PST - 12 comments

538 crunches the numbers behind 255 years of professional sumo tournaments.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:28 PM PST - 14 comments

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.
posted by marienbad at 5:49 PM PST - 101 comments

So what are the chances of encryption technologies being viewed as a "bearable arm" under the Second Amendment?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:37 PM PST - 26 comments

HILF! HILF! DIE GLOBOLINKS
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 4:19 PM PST - 8 comments

“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]
posted by Talez at 3:33 PM PST - 125 comments

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.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:09 PM PST - 54 comments

They were the stories that have charmed an entire generation. From the books, to the television series, people around the world have grown up with the Railway Stories. But the truth behind Thomas and his friends is no childrens story. It is a story that begins in wartime Germany, and ends with a discovery that would change Thomas, and his friends, lives forever.

posted by Small Dollar at 1:58 PM PST - 24 comments

Robert Caro takes Mark Rutte on a tour of Robert Moses' New York. [NYT] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:56 PM PST - 13 comments

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]
posted by Bella Donna at 1:49 PM PST - 29 comments

A restored Victorian rolling machine for making drop candy. So that's why it's called drop candy. More machines. [more inside]
posted by carter at 12:47 PM PST - 117 comments

We had a spare afternoon so naturally we decided to recreate Goldeneye on Alcatraz.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 12:28 PM PST - 3 comments

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.
posted by storybored at 12:13 PM PST - 9 comments

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]
posted by MCMikeNamara at 11:59 AM PST - 22 comments

Heat vision. The ability to see heat was something I wanted for a while.
posted by michaelh at 11:51 AM PST - 5 comments

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.
posted by ignignokt at 11:48 AM PST - 11 comments

"Of course there are some people who can dedicate their lives to good health and still be mentally well, just as there will always be people who suffer from disordered eating, "healthily" or otherwise. But when wellness balloons beyond the individual, swelling from personal lifestyle choice to sweetheart of the diet industry bolstered by supermarkets who see kale, coconut oil and chia seeds as a great profit opportunity, that's a problem for all of us. When the pursuit of health becomes obsessive and fearful, that's not healthy. Still worse, it's becoming more and more clear that the wellness we chase might not even want us back." (slViceUK)
posted by Kitteh at 11:30 AM PST - 98 comments

Jamie Mantzel (previously) has posted an condensed video about his Giant Spider Robot Project.
posted by bonobothegreat at 11:25 AM PST - 6 comments

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.
posted by sciatrix at 10:33 AM PST - 34 comments

Miss Marple and the Problem of Modern Identity, Alan Jacobs
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:10 AM PST - 28 comments

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]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:59 AM PST - 19 comments

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)
posted by jillithd at 8:46 AM PST - 8 comments

How do you address the elephant in the room with a live audience?The Axis of Awesome shows us the way. [more inside]
posted by sparklemotion at 8:23 AM PST - 18 comments

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.
posted by fight or flight at 7:33 AM PST - 44 comments

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]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:33 AM PST - 208 comments

"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]
posted by Room 641-A at 7:04 AM PST - 12 comments

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]
posted by Artw at 6:17 AM PST - 187 comments

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]
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:09 AM PST - 13 comments

Mother goose leads officers to her entangled baby.
posted by Meatbomb at 3:32 AM PST - 23 comments

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.
posted by ellieBOA at 2:17 AM PST - 12 comments

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]
posted by DoctorFedora at 1:16 AM PST - 11 comments