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Guns n' Roses, Welcome to the Jungle: guitars and bass only (impeccably clear tracks); lead guitar and bass removed (highlighting the vocal and drum tracks).
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 11:34 PM PST - 30 comments

After a decade and $40 billion, U.S. missile defense system can't be relied on, even in carefully scripted tests. But U.S. lawmakers and the Obama administration 'have protected flawed missile defense system's funding and want to spend billions more to expand it'. 'Despite years of tinkering and vows to fix technical shortcomings, the system's performance has gotten worse, not better, since testing began in 1999. Of the eight tests held since GMD became operational in 2004, five have been failures. The last successful intercept was on Dec. 5, 2008.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 8:25 PM PST - 56 comments

Whisper is an app that allows users to "anonymously share your thoughts and emotions with the world, and form lasting and meaningful relationships in a community built around trust and honesty." Secret is an app " to openly share what you're thinking and feeling with your friends. Speak freely, share anything." The Genius of Whisper, the Massively Popular App You Haven't Heard Of. With New Anonymous Social App Secret, the Merit Is in the Message. Two Apps, One Hot Trend [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 5:11 PM PST - 73 comments

The World's Ball - the NYT reviews the design evolution of the soccer/football from 1930 to the present
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:00 PM PST - 23 comments

Hairless Animals: some are born that way, some suffer from stress or alopecia. All look quite a bit different from their furry or feathered kin.
posted by quin at 2:21 PM PST - 51 comments

Pistola Derringer hecha en casa. The same builder also documents his build of a "Colt Derringer modelo 3"
posted by 445supermag at 1:41 PM PST - 16 comments

Some people familiar with the LessWrong memeplex have suffered serious psychological distress after contemplating basilisk-like ideas ... The notion is taken sufficiently seriously by some LessWrong posters that they try to work out how to erase evidence of themselves so a future AI can't reconstruct a copy of them to torture. Yudkowsky considers the basilisk would not work, but will not explain why because he does not consider open discussion of the notion of acausal trade with possible superintelligences to be provably safe.

If it's the first time you've heard of Roko's Basilisk, this post may have unfortunately put (a perfect future simulation of) you in danger of eternal torture by a Friendly Artificial Intelligence.
posted by crayz at 1:04 PM PST - 283 comments

Earlier this year venerable academic publishers Springer and IEEE were impelled to remove more than 120 physics papers from their published proceedings because the papers were computer-generated nonsense. The SCIgen program (and its math-oriented fork) is available for the non-discriminating would-be author to generate such word salad. It's previously been used to perform hoaxes (previously, previouslier) of the kind that Alan Sokal wrought on a post-modern journal. (After the papers are published, the hoaxers claim incompetence by editors.) But in this case the papers don't appear to be hoaxes -- they're instead perhaps generated to pad academic CVs, with the publishers all too willing to take the publication fees. [more inside]
posted by zittrain at 12:39 PM PST - 39 comments

Sialoliths are typically small, like María’s. But occasionally physicians run across monsters (sometimes referred to as megaliths): One paper describes a seven-centimeter stone the size of a “hen’s egg.” The big ones, of course, must be surgically removed, something I learned when I stumbled across a horrifying, yet mesmerizing video of a sialolith excision. (That video led me to another, and then another, and . . . well, let’s just say the rabbit hole of sialolith surgeries is bottomless. I’ll save you some time and just point you to the best one.) For smaller stones, however, doctors like to avoid the scalpel. While surgery might save some pain and suffering, the salivary glands are really close to some facial nerves that you definitely don’t want to cut.

So it turns out the salivary glands can also suffer from something like kidney or gall stones. Yes, the author, Cassandra Willyard, is so kind as to link to a video of a sialolith extraction. Link via Io9, who have a nice image of a megalith taken out of somebody's salivary glands.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:13 PM PST - 36 comments

Francis Fukuyama on 'The End of History?' twenty-five years later: "liberal democracy still doesn't have any real competitors," but to get there... [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:11 AM PST - 29 comments

Cleopatra's Needle, the 3,500 year old obelisk that has been installed in Central Park for the past century, is about to cleaned, with lasers.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:04 AM PST - 23 comments

The psychedelic, Tangerine-Dream-like, light dances of time lapse filmmaker Richard Bentley:
The Atomium in Brussels
Dubai skyline
Washington DC
Others
posted by growabrain at 9:53 AM PST - 1 comments

Casey Kasem, the resonant voice of Top 40 radio and a vocal fixture on cartoon programs for the past 40 years, has died, according to his daughter. He was 82. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 9:00 AM PST - 82 comments

How corporations became people you can't sue.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:01 AM PST - 77 comments

Tim Jenison had a theory that Joseph Vermeer had made used of particular lens technology to make his paintings almost photo-realistic. To test this, he recreated the setting of The Music Lesson from scratch, harpsichord and all, and even recreated the theorised lenses using 17th century tools. For someone who doesn't know how to paint, he sure did a good job.
posted by divabat at 1:18 AM PST - 89 comments