July 19, 2014

Boyhood

Richard Linklater's newest film, Boyhood (trailer), breaks new ground by condensing 12 years of filming one cast into a single three-hour film and is receiving almost uniformly glowing reviews. "And yet the story in 'Boyhood' is blissfully simple: A child grows up." (Manohla Dargis, NYT). [more inside]
posted by sallybrown at 10:22 PM PST - 36 comments

Do true blondes have more fun?

"The residents of Denmark regularly report the highest levels of life satisfaction in the world. Economists Eugenio Proto and Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick cautiously submit that there is a genetic component to this high level of contentment."
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:12 PM PST - 44 comments

the default Internet feeling: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The life and times of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
After seeing the light of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, it's hard to not notice it everywhere. Han Solo makes the gesture in Star Wars, as Reddit noticed in 2012. Daily Dot writer Miles Klee caught the Spider-Man super villain Mysterio doing it. In 2013, it appeared in a Reddit post that commanded users "lol idk just upvote." "Lol idk" seems like a fairly apt description of the shruggie's meaning, but it also doesn't begin to describe the nihilism that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ embodies today.
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:04 PM PST - 63 comments

The Miura fold: art and mathematics of origami

The Miura fold, a type of rigid origami that works by folding flat, rigid sheets with hinges, has a number of uses. For instance, It's great for folding a map, because Interdependence of folds means that it is very difficult to reverse them and the amount of stress place on the map, and can be used on solar panels that need to be folded and unfolded by automation, as deployment only requires one motor, and to transport materials for telescope lenses that originally would be too big to fly into space. Here's one schematic for duplicating the Miura fold (PNG), and a simplified version (YouTube). More information and fun with scientific origami at Robert J. Lang's origami website.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:53 PM PST - 17 comments

García Márquez and Kurosawa.

In October 1990, Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez visited Tokyo during the shooting of Akira Kurosawa’s penultimate feature, Rhapsody in August. García Márquez, who spent some years in Bogota as a film critic before penning landmark novels such as One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, spoke with Kurosawa for over six hours on a number of subjects.
posted by shakespeherian at 6:34 PM PST - 8 comments

Saving Haiti

"The current list of the "25 most interesting people in the Caribbean," published by the magazine Carib Journal, lists names such as Usain Bolt and Rihanna, but it also includes two Haitians: Mario Joseph and Stéphanie Villedrouin." "Human rights attorney Mario Joseph and Tourism Minister Stéphanie Villedrouin are both trying to improve Haiti, but they are following radically different paths. The one wants justice, the other wants tourism."
posted by travelwithcats at 6:04 PM PST - 1 comments

"'Aha' Moments: Biblical Scholars Tell Their Stories"

On his blog, biblical scholar Peter Enns is hosting a series of guest posts by other scholars about their "Aha!" moments--the "moments that convinced them they needed to find different ways of handling the Bible than how they had been taught." He has ten posts in the series so far, with more on the way. [more inside]
posted by Pater Aletheias at 5:24 PM PST - 88 comments

Cross-cultural experiences of schizophrenia

A new study by Stanford anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann and others found that voice-hearing experiences of people with serious psychotic disorders are shaped by local culture – in the United States, the voices are harsh and threatening; in Africa and India, they are more benign and playful. This may have clinical implications for how to treat people with schizophrenia, she suggests.
posted by Rumple at 4:51 PM PST - 24 comments

Frozen fruity goodness

The Science of the Best Sorbet
Though it's just as easy to make as ice cream, sorbet is a little less forgiving—its lack of fat and eggs mean you have to be more careful with your recipe. Now the good news: sorbet has a science like anything else, and once you learn a few things you'll be ready to turn any fruit into fresh, full-flavored, and creamy sorbet—something so creamy you might confuse it for ice cream.
[more inside]
posted by Lexica at 4:36 PM PST - 11 comments

loop-the-loop

Loop Findr
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:57 PM PST - 23 comments

Exobiotanica

Botanical Space Flight [more inside]
posted by BlooPen at 3:12 PM PST - 8 comments

People first

The Editorial Team of Substance Abuse make[s] an appeal for the use of language that (1) Respects the worth and dignity of all persons (“people-first language”), (2) Focuses on the medical nature of substance use disorders and treatment, (3) Promotes the recovery process, and (4) Avoids perpetuating negative stereotype biases through the use of slang and idioms. We ask authors, reviewers, and readers to carefully and intentionally consider the language used to describe alcohol and other drug use and disorders, the individuals affected by these conditions, and their related behaviors, comorbidities, treatment, and recovery in our publication. [more inside]
posted by rtha at 2:48 PM PST - 43 comments

Well, that settles that.

Tip The Pizza Guy is the most exhustive, detailed, old-school website about Tipping and Pizza Delivery I have ever seen. (last seen in 2001 and still being updated.)
posted by The Whelk at 2:32 PM PST - 60 comments

Magazine covers you wanna lick

Coverjunkie celebrates creative magazine covers. Classic covers, sexiest, typographical, controversial. [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 2:09 PM PST - 11 comments

Twitter: More Educational Than You Thought

The Race Swap Experiment What happens when a black woman uses a white male avatar on Twitter? Something a lot more positive than what usually happens for her when she uses a picture of herself. [more inside]
posted by Michele in California at 10:37 AM PST - 42 comments

W56.22xA Struck by orca, initial encounter.

V91.07xD Burn due to water-skis on fire, subsequent encounter I did not know water skis can catch on fire. Presumably, somebody's water skis did catch on fire, resulting in a trip to the hospital. [more inside]
posted by otto42 at 10:24 AM PST - 20 comments

"Perhaps not white, but white enough"

How Turbans Helped Some Blacks Go Incognito in the Jim Crow Era (SLNPR)
posted by Ndwright at 8:46 AM PST - 34 comments

Currency Wars

Currency Wars, or Why You Should Care About the Global Struggle Over the Value of Money In October 2010, the Brazilian Finance Minister made news by claiming an 'international currency war' had broken out. The term 'currency war' promptly became a buzz phrase with commentators and public officials warning about the dangers of these wars and their historical roots in the Great Depression. The U.S. government, in turn, has applied the idea to China, which it has accused of currency manipulation for the better part of a decade. So why does this matter? And how unusual is this all? Historian Steven Bryan puts currency wars in historical perspective and reminds us that currency policy is inextricably linked to national interests and that manipulation is the historical norm, not the exception. [more inside]
posted by infini at 8:16 AM PST - 25 comments

You Died. Again: A Review of Dark Souls by Someone Who Didn’t Play It

To be fair, I did watch someone play most of the game. Many of those moments repeatedly. And if I wasn’t in the room, the plaintive “Nooooo” that would echo from the living area told me that I’d be able to see whatever it was in another ten minutes. And probably again another twenty after that. And another twenty after that.
Kristin Bezio reviews Dark Souls through her husband's gameplay
posted by MartinWisse at 6:40 AM PST - 114 comments

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