May 14, 2015
There's, like, a billion characters!
100 Years of Beauty: Aging
Soon-to-be-married couple gets to see themselves and each-other as they might look over the years. (slyt)
Bloooop, Hissss, Chugga Chugga
Sometimes you wake up in the morning and you think, "Hey, I wish it sounded like a train station in here". Turns out this mysterious person* recorded a bunch of Japanese stations for your benefit! [more inside]
The insults of age
I hadn’t thought direct action would be so much fun. Habits of a lifetime peeled away. The world bristled with opportunities for a woman in her 70s to take a stand. I shouted on planes. I fought for my place in queues. I talked to myself out loud in public. I walked along the street singing a little song under my breath: “Back off. How dare you? Make my day.” I wouldn’t say I was on a hair-trigger. I was just primed for action. Helen Garner's assault on condescension in The Monthly.
Drone Delivery From Trusted Breeders
Why wait until next-day when you can have the puppy of your dreams hovered straight to your doorstep, today?
Presenting Same Day Pups. [more inside]
Presenting Same Day Pups. [more inside]
350 Years of All-Science, All the Time
The Guardian celebrates 350 years of the publications of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society by asking are journals the best way to communicate science? They also propose another way.
Mike Grost's Auteurist Checklists
Diligent lists of the recurring images, events, themes, and subjects in the films of Orson Welles, George Cukor, Michael Antonioni, Jacques Tourneur, Frank Capra, John Ford, Anthony Mann, Agnès Varda, Howard Hawks, Robert Siodmak, Louis Feuillade, and many other directors.
What are you sharing with me anyway?
Disruption’s Tragic Flaw The case of Uber shows why European companies should not follow the example of their American competitors too closely. It pays to take the needs of customers and contractors into account.
International Space Station Toilet Tour
Italian Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti shows us the out(erspace)house: International Space Station toilet tour
[more inside]
Cubepusher
The video for Squarepusher's ‘Stor Eiglass’ is an immersive psychedelic VR extravaganza (see video description for full details) Creative Review on the making of
The jackal-snouted problem man named Ernest Hemingway
Playground Purgatory
ANNA: I’m always so happy when I’m here, and never feel strange or despondent.
SARA: Me, too. So happy. The sound of all the kids laughing and screaming is so joyous, and doesn’t sound anything like nails on a chalkboard.
ANNA: I’ve never cried behind that tree.
SARA: Me neither.
(SLNewYorker)
SARA: Me, too. So happy. The sound of all the kids laughing and screaming is so joyous, and doesn’t sound anything like nails on a chalkboard.
ANNA: I’ve never cried behind that tree.
SARA: Me neither.
(SLNewYorker)
Funeral stripping in China, Taiwan: rural tradition vs urban modernity
[Note: *starred* links contain images of scantily clad women, making them possibly NSFW] If you've caught some of the *shorter "Crazy China" articles* circulating around recently, you've heard that the Chinese government is trying to crack down on stripping at funerals in rural communities. While you generally won't find stripping mentioned in descriptions of Chinese funeral traditions, other sources like *CNN* and *NPR* try to add context to this news. NPR notes that this **also occurs in Taiwan (Nat. Geo. video)**, but the article doesn't delve further. Luckily, we have the *research from University of South Carolina anthropologist Marc L. Moskowitz* to elaborate, capturing the more varied and complex reality of Taiwanese Electric Flower Cars and *the culture of dancing for the dead.* There's also a great Q&A recorded at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), which addresses questions of class division, safety of the women, gender equality, and other related topics. [more inside]
Bones!
(there is sometimes cake and tarot readings)
On the Rebirth of Orlando: A Vibrant Literary Scene, in the Shadow of the Mouse (Ryan Rivas, Literary Hub)
"American Idol" has been canceled
The Fox network's once-mighty "Death Star," which for years easily dominated any other show in its time slot, has revealed that next season will be its last. Meanwhile, somewhat creepy season 14 mentor Scott Borchetta, head of Big Machine Records, talks about his plans for Nick Fradiani, the season 14 winner who was crowned last night.
Dead Malls Make Excellent ReEducation Camps
"To spell out the law of the land in the dead language of your time: on a Letterman Top Ten list of this situation, we are all number one, and you are numbers two through ten. The fleek have inherited the earth." -- A Millennial Revenge Fantasy ( The Hairpin)
"There needs to be sound solidarity between people of color in general"
"If you look at the history of rock and roll and punk, they came from a black style of music, and that’s the history of popular music in general. It was created by blacks, then re-recorded to play for a white audience. Some of the first punk bands to ever create the 1977 sound were all-black bands." - Monica Estrella Negra, in an interview about the Black & Brown Punk Collective [more inside]
The World’s Largest Safari Vehicle
Twice a day you can join a live safari drive in the Djuma and Arathusa reserves of South Africa’s Sabi Sands adjoining Kruger National Park. The WildEarth Safari departs 9AM–12 Eastern Time and 12:30AM–3:30AM Eastern Time and also broadcasts on NatGeo Wild and UStream. [more inside]
Santa Monica says "Later, dude!" to AirBnB
Tuesday night, the Santa Monica (CA) City Council unanimously passed one of the most restrictive laws in the nation on short-term rentals. The ordinance (which strengthens and enforces laws already on the books) explicitly bans vacation rentals – rentals of 30 days or less where the primary occupant of the home or apartment is not present – while legalizing and taxing “home-sharing” – i.e. renting a couch, spare room or backyard cottage - providing at least one of the primary residents lives on-site throughout the stay. Santa Monica (pop. 92K) receives over 7 million visitors annually; Salvador Valles, the city's acting chief administrative officer for Planning and Community Development, estimates the number of available listings on home-share sites would go from 1700 to 300. The ordinance goes into effect June 15. [more inside]
Era uma vez uma menina
Regina Pessoa is a Portuguese animator. «I lived in the countryside in a small village near Coimbra until I was 17 years old. My entire universe was rural. We didn’t have television, which was very boring… but in retrospect, thinking things over, maybe it saved me. We read and listened to our elders telling stories. My uncle used to draw on the walls and on the doors of my grandmother’s home, with pieces of coal. Seeing my uncle drawing on the walls gave us a sense of freedom because we didn’t have paper and pencils but we always had walls and doors – maybe this stayed with me unconsciously because now, much later, it’s already the second film that I’m making in engraving technique…» [more inside]
The next Googleplex goes way beyond free snacks and massages.
Big and Weird: The Architectural Genius of Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick
The vision outlined in these documents, an application for a major expansion of the Googleplex, its campus, is mind-boggling. The proposed design, developed by the European architectural firms of Bjarke Ingels Group and Heatherwick Studio, does away with doors. It abandons thousands of years of conventional thinking about walls. And stairs. And roofs. Google and its imaginative co-founder and chief executive, Larry Page, essentially want to take 60 acres of land adjacent to the headquarters near the San Francisco Bay, in an area called North Bayshore, and turn it into a titanic human terrarium.[more inside]
I'd just need to exercise more, and hide my shell-cordovan boots
A Silicon Valley Community of Excellence Has Bunk Openings. "Educate. Liberate. Disrupt." At Startup Castle.
Looking at female superheroes, contentiously
Jill Lepore, author of The Secret History of Wonder Woman, recently reported on the state of women in comics. A few comics insiders, such as Ms. Marvel writer and Leia Calderon, took issue with Lepore's claims.
I want to ride my cat-cycle
Taking your cats on a trip from Amsterdam to London isn't that uncommon, but it is if you do it on by bike, specifically a converted cat friendly bakfiets, all to promote your cat orientated company.
“You can’t rape someone who’s gay."
The New York Times and Jezebel profile Texas' refusal to comply with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act. (trigger warning: sexual assault, violence)
Lambing season in the north of Iceland
For the next 24 hours you can watch live as lambs are born on a farm in Iceland courtesy of Icelandic state broadcaster RÚV. This is their experiment in slow television. The farm, Syðri-Hofdalir, is in the north of Iceland.
Marvel: We Get Girls
[insert human interest story here]
Interview with a fast talker. Interview with a hand model. Interview with a Joss Whedon. Interview with the relentlessly positive. Interview with a cat lady. Interview with a racist. [more inside]
It happens every day and that day she didn't want to let it slide.
“It has nothing to do with you, it has everything to do with everyone else.” Canadian reporter Shauna Hunt confronts the young men who were vulgar and sexually harassing her as she tried to do her job. [more inside]
Her legacy is rooted in resisting the foundation of American capitalism.
Keep Harriet Tubman – and all women – off the $20 bill. "Harriet Tubman did not fight for capitalism, free trade, or competitive markets." [more inside]
I, for one, welcome our new soundalike overlords
On the heels of renewal through its 28th season, a perennial contract dispute (with a twist) has at long last claimed one of The Simpsons' foundational cast members. Harry Shearer, the versatile artist behind such indelible characters as Ned Flanders, Mr. Burns, Smithers, Principal Skinner, Kent Brockman, McBain, Dr. Hibbert, Rev. Lovejoy, Dr. Marvin Monroe, Otto-man, Lenny, and dozens of others will be departing the show at the end of the current season. Of course, the show must go on.
Like Threes, but with a mouse
Twenty is a game where you put tiles on other tiles in order to get higher numbers.
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