June 28, 2015
Live From Austin ‘75
"Why did I write so much about this shit. Who cares. Enjoy!"
Giant 800-track alt/indie-focused 90's playlist in chronological order "This is a behemoth of a playlist I put together, focusing primarily (but not exclusively) on the alt/indie/college side of the 90's experience. It's 800+ tracks, about 55 hours, and features plenty of songs that tend to get overlooked in the "remember these 90's hits?" pieces that pop up from time to time. Not definitive by any means, and extremely subjective, but it's a decent chunk of curated history in one convenient place. Also it's a fully chronological playlist, on a week-by-week level. So a track released on May 7, 1994 will come before a track released on May 14, 1994. Time and research went into this. Think of it as the Boyhood of 90's playlists!" (From Mefi's own naju, via MetaFilter Projects.)
Quit shaking your eyes!
"There are no personal solutions at this time."
They could sometimes admit that women were oppressed (but only by “the system”) and said that we should have equal pay for equal work, and some other “rights.” But they belittled us no end for trying to bring our so-called “personal problems” into the public arena—especially “all those body issues” like sex, appearance, and abortion. Our demands that men share the housework and childcare were likewise deemed a personal problem between a woman and her individual man. The opposition claimed if women would just “stand up for themselves” and take more responsibility for their own lives, they wouldn’t need to have an independent movement for women’s liberation. What personal initiative wouldn’t solve, they said, “the revolution” would take care of if we would just shut up and do our part. Heaven forbid that we should point out that men benefit from oppressing women.is from the 2006 introduction by Carol Hanisch to "The Personal Is Political" [more inside]
“Dead people have taught me how to live better,”
The Lonely End. "Three months ago in an apartment on the outskirts of Osaka, Japan, Haruki Watanabe died alone. For weeks his body slowly decomposed, slouched in its own fluids and surrounded by fetid, fortnight-old food. He died of self-neglect, solitude, and a suspected heart problem. At 60, Watanabe, wasn’t old, nor was he especially poor. He had no friends, no job, no wife, and no concerned children. His son hadn’t spoken to him in years, nor did he want to again."
One step closer to the hydrogen economy
Nikon COOLPIX P900 83x optical zoom video test on moon
This is a Nikon COOLPIX 9500 with 83x optical zoom. This is what you can do if you point it at the moon.
Amazon tribe creates 500-page traditional medicine encyclopedia
"The Matsés Traditional Medicine Encyclopedia marks the first time shamans of an Amazonian tribe have created a full and complete transcription of their medicinal knowledge written in their own language and words.
One of the intentions is to stall Biopiracy and at the same time preserve knowledge which up to now was passed orally.
Steer the hallucinations of a neural net
Watch a Large Scale Deep neural net hallucinate while onlookers supply topics in a chat room. Almost magically, after a few seconds the psychedelic representations of those suggestions begin creeping out of the woodwork into which you infinitely zoom. Jonas Degrave writes about how the thing came to be on his blog.
Previously.
Worth a Potosi
Potosí (Silver Mines of Colonial Peru) In 1545, the population of Potosí and its environs stood at around 3,000. Thirty-five years later, in 1580, the numbers had swelled to around 120,000, and by 1650 to around 160,000, making the remote mining center one of the largest urban concentrations in the world. [more inside]
A Shaggy Dad Story
As Bethesda is gearing up for the release of a new game in the Fallout franchise, Shamus Young of Twenty Sided considers the writing in Fallout 3. In a five part series, Shamus details the "blistering stupidity" of the concept, the world, the protagonists, the antagonists, and the conclusion. Young has been featured previously on the blue talking about both Skyrim and Star Trek.
I don’t like any food adjectives that are superlative. I hate them all.
An interview with “America’s Test Kitchen” founder Christopher Kimball on how cooking is like woodworking, the business model behind “Cooks Illustrated,” and the awesome powers of baking soda and gelatin.
"It's all keywords and being in Amazon's system"
Peter was surprised to find that vampires actually aren't all that popular, either, as fetishes go. Apparently, they're more of a flash-in-the-pan, while werewolves are a stolid, reliable source of salable smut. "I had assumed that vampires would be popular, but werewolves -- they're the sexy ones. They've been sexy for decades. It's because they're so big and muscley and out of control."For Cracked, Robert Evans interviews Peter Hayward aka Pandora Box about his career writing female orientated Kindle fetish porn. That is, fetish porn produced for the Kindle, not fetish porn about the Kindle
Viva San Pietro
Yesterday, "Surf and Turf" Joey DaSilva slid, slipped, and skipped to the end of a 45-foot-long telephone pole suspended over the water and covered with grease and slop. By grabbing the flag at the end, he became the 2015 Saturday champion of the annual Greasy Pole contest, making him one of the elite crew eligible to compete again on Fiesta Sunday for the rest of his life. It's one of the highlights of the unique St. Peter's Fiesta, an annual festival sponsored by the Italian-American fishing community of Gloucester, MA. The festival is a five-day celebration including a procession of St. Peter's effigy accompanied by bands and Sicilian chants, a Sunday mass on a large outdoor altar, seine boat races, a carnival, food, and drinking - lots of drinking. The annual festival is a defining force in Gloucester's tight-knit community, even as the fishing industry that generated it continues a long decline. [more inside]
And now, some news from Lake Wobegon
After more than forty years, humorist and radio personality Garrison Keiller has announced he is stepping down as host of the long-running public radio variety show A Prairie Home Companion. During the 2015-2016 season, Keillor will be phasing himself out and handing over the reins to Chris Thile, best known for his singing and mandolin playing in Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers. [more inside]
Making Space Tortillas With Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti
ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti is currently living on board the International Space Station for her long duration mission Futura. In this video Samantha shows us how she manages to cook one of her bonus food recipes in microgravity: a quinoa salad with dried tomatoes, mackerel and leek cream, all wrapped in a warm tortilla. [via TwistedSifter]
The latest best image of Pluto and Charon
Raw images of Pluto document our progress to the dwarf planet! We are about 15 days away from the close encounter with Pluto. Raw images are being uploaded here, every day.
Other information and goodies can be found here.
In the Shadow of Sigourney
On the heels of their recent discussion of "Aliens" in their Movie of the Week series, the folks at the Dissolve have put together an impressive list inspired by the last survivor of the Nostromo: "The 50 Most Daring Film Roles For Women Since Ripley"
“A very difficult time, you say. A very very difficult time.”
The Detainee’s Tale by Ali Smith Over the last few weeks, writer Ali Smith has taken part in the Refugee Tales project, a group of volunteers who befriend and support immigration detainees. This is her response:
So: the first thing you remember knowing is that there isn’t any more school. Your mother dies when you are three, you don’t remember. You never see your father, so you can’t remember him. You know, from being told, that your father’s family fought with your mother’s family; his were Hausa, hers were Christian. So you get given by your father’s family to a man in the village and for a short while there’s school under the great big tree, where you sit in the shade on the ground and the teacher sits on a seat and you get taught letters and reading. Then the school has to have money so the man you’ve been given to takes you to the farm. You are six years old. There is definitely no school on the farm.Story contains descriptions of trauma/distress.
Plasma-Based Midair Displays
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