August 13, 2014

Ruth Crawford Seeger, American composer

In 1930, a 29-year-old composer named Ruth Crawford (wiki) became the first woman to ever receive a Guggenheim fellowship—despite the chairman of the awards wondering, of women composers, "Is there any such beast?" The next year she wrote her modernist masterpiece String Quartet. [more inside]
posted by Zephyrial at 10:29 PM PST - 8 comments

SORRY, I'M DEAD.

Chronicler of the gross and creepy Bogleech presents a look at the bosses of classic NES weirdfest Monster Party and the sprites recently discovered in a ROM dump from a Japanese prototype cart.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:16 PM PST - 7 comments

In the eye of the storm: Typhoons in Hong Kong

South China Morning Post interactive graphic detailing the effect typhoons have had on Hong Kong since settlement.
‘When the typhoon was at its height a Chinese was blown down Pedder Street toward the wharf, and unable to stop went headlong into the harbour… A European rushed across the windswept space and boldly jumped in to the rescue. He succeeded in securing the drowning man with the aid of an Indian constable who unrolled his turban and threw the end to the rescuer.’
posted by awfurby at 10:04 PM PST - 3 comments

Shades of the Masked Man!

BAH GAWD! (exp.) — A shocked evocation of the deity in order to underscore the gravity of a moment or situation, popularized by announcer Jim Ross. Must be screamed loudly in a pinched Southern tenor. (Related expressions: MAH GAWD!; GOOD GAWD ALMIGHTY!; slobberknocker — an unsightly brawl; shades of [wrestler X] — when a wrestler uses a move in a manner reminiscent of a previous wrestler; business has just picked up — an unexpected entrance that raises the stakes in a segment; bowling shoe ugly — a roughneck or plainly (and woefully) uncoordinated match; That’s [wrestler X]’s music! — a surprise appearance by a wrestler, as forewarned by his entrance music playing before he appears in person.)

Feeling overwhelmed by wrestling, sorry, sports entertainment lingo? David Shoemaker at Grantland presents the Grantland Dictionary: Pro Wrestling Edition.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:01 PM PST - 32 comments

Behold, the fish cannon

Behold, the fish cannon. Fish ladders are passé. If you want to move your salmon upriver, shoot them there!
posted by pjern at 5:21 PM PST - 65 comments

BuzzFeed Motion Pictures President Ze Frank

Producer Michael Shamberg Wants to 'Invent the Future' With BuzzFeed Motion Pictures - "I don't think there's ever been a Hollywood R&D model like we have here." (previously 1,2,3) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 4:04 PM PST - 28 comments

“not that many guys knew about stretching.”

The Rise of Beefcake Yoga. (slnyt) Not the trend piece the title suggests, instead a very particular story centered around Diamond Dallas Page.
posted by PMdixon at 3:49 PM PST - 14 comments

Don't Look Down on Me

Jonathan Novick gives us a bit of his background and shows us a day in his life as an achondroplastic dwarf living in New York City.
posted by gman at 3:09 PM PST - 24 comments

Collectif Textile

The Collectif Textile has the most kickass Pinterest feed. [more inside]
posted by clavicle at 3:00 PM PST - 2 comments

Walk a mile in her face.

Men Try Women's Makeup For The First Time (SLYT) Five ordinary, average Joe's get women's make-up applied to half their face. The film includes their comments about the experience as it occurs, a split screen at the end showing the "male" and "female" halves of their faces (it can help to pause and compare each one), and an interesting effect where they slowly turn from one side to the other. [more inside]
posted by Michele in California at 2:56 PM PST - 107 comments

Mining and mapping comments to the FCC on Net Neutrality

Despite the comment collecting engine crashing on the last day to submit comments on the very popular topic of Network Neutrality, the system worked well enough to collect 1.1 million comments, which the FCC has made available to the general public as six XML files, totaling over 1.4 gigs of raw data. Mailed comments postmarked prior to July 18 are still being scanned and entered, so this isn't everything, but it's a lot of data. TechCrunch graphed the frequency of certain words, with the high score going to Comcast, with 4,613 mentions. NPR shared the visualized results of Quid's analysis of a sample of 250,000 comments, and Quid's analysis of a sample of 317,000 comments to map geographic sources of the public comments and adjusted them based on state populations to depict which states care more about net neutrality, while The Verge dug deeper, mapping comments by zip code.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:52 PM PST - 12 comments

BGP Hijacking for fun and profit!

Dell SecureWorks has discovered that a blackhat used spoofed BGP announcements in order to steal cryptocurrency worth about $83,000 over the course of a few months earlier this year. [more inside]
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:36 PM PST - 40 comments

Gaming's race problem

GenCon, the best four days of gaming starts tomorrow. It is also very white.
posted by cuscutis at 12:28 PM PST - 57 comments

It's perfect! Everything we need is right here!

A 14-year-old Texas boy ran away from home on July 28. Rather then flee to a friend's or relative's home, or hiding out in nearby woods, the boy chose a location with more abundant resources. A Corsicana, Texas, Wal-Mart. The boy managed to remain undetected inside the store for roughly two and a half days (some reports count it as four days based on the dates) through some surprisingly sophisticated techniques to avoid discovery using the materials available to him. The boy is now back with his family, and Child Protective Services was not formally brought into the case as police report he did not appear to be suffering from neglect or otherwise living in a dangerous environment.
posted by Naberius at 12:18 PM PST - 64 comments

memes that demean

"Having influential figures like George Takei publishing a meme that reinforces disabled=fake is incredibly damaging to disabled people." [more inside]
posted by flex at 12:00 PM PST - 144 comments

15,000 Useful Phrases

Being a practical handbook of pertinent expressions, striking similes, literary, commercial, conversational, and oratorical terms, for the embellishment of speech and literature, and the improvement of the vocabulary of those persons who read, write, and speak English. (Grenville Kleiser, 1917)
posted by Iridic at 11:58 AM PST - 19 comments

You poor thing — were you overserved again?

"In a society obsessed with comfort, it’s only reasonable for someone to come up with a solution to this self-inflicted problem. Since hangovers stem from lack of hydration, water is the secret weapon. But imbibing one fluid after over-imbibing many isn’t always in the cards, especially when the thought of consuming anything at all makes you gag." Enter, the I.V. Doc. [more inside]
posted by heyho at 11:44 AM PST - 52 comments

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade The eyes of men without an orator.

Folger Shakespeare Library Releases 80,000 Images for Creative Common Use. The Folger Shakespeare Library announced yesterday, that they have released the contents of their Digital Image Collection under a Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA) license. Full database can be accessed here.
posted by Fizz at 10:49 AM PST - 18 comments

Flat and happy

"However you look at this style, truth is, it's the best cluster of masculine, feminine, chic, laid back, basic, put together & casual and does really work with everything: skirts, dresses, trousers, jeans for either work or not." Oxford shoes, "flat and happy". [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 10:44 AM PST - 111 comments

Sorting our world: The Nairarbi and the Diiwi code

Even the first-year student of anthropology quickly learns that cultural groups are “varied” and “diverse.” Yet one group that has not been studied in all its diversity is the Nairarbi, an information-working caste scattered through many societies in the modern world.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:28 AM PST - 13 comments

You're gonna need a bigger haringbuis.

Selected pages from Adriaen Coenen's Visboek, an illustrated guide to the strange and wonderful world of fish. No sixteenth-century mariner should leave shore without it. The National Library of the Netherlands has the complete book, with commentary.
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:50 AM PST - 8 comments

An Angel, A Flower, A Bird

Cross-dressing trapeze and tightrope artist Barbette seems to have sprung out of a Jean Cocteau fantasy, but surely was a real person. Exact birthdate and parentage subject to dispute, but somewhere around the dawn of the 20th Century in Texas. Subsequent to highschool, he replaced a deceased woman in the Alfaretta Sisters aerialist circus act. Barbette toured the vaudeville circuit and debuted in Europe in 1923. Barbette's curtain-call wig-ripping-off move was ripped off for Victor/Victoria. [more inside]
posted by larrybob at 9:27 AM PST - 3 comments

Dougiestan: A clear mind and a full heart

A north Texas man in the "sovereign citizen" movement attempted to take over a mansion in north Dallas on Monday. Upset with the current state of affairs in the United States, Douglas LeGuin attempted to occupy a mansion in far north Dallas. After knocking on the door and threatening a nanny, he started a dumpster fire. When first responders arrived, he began shooting at them, but no one was injured. LeGuin had also set up propane canisters around the house as explosives but none were detonated. He called 911 and it really is a doozy. [more inside]
posted by LizBoBiz at 8:22 AM PST - 286 comments

"This stuff isn't science fiction. The robots are here right now."

Humans Need Not Apply. Video essayist CGP Grey explains why we need to start preparing for a post-human economy.
posted by ocherdraco at 8:20 AM PST - 103 comments

The most wanted man in the world

Edward Snowden - The Untold Story, from Wired's Threat Level.
posted by nevercalm at 5:31 AM PST - 103 comments

photos of home

Breathtaking collection of images at The Atlantic: Viewing the Earth From Space
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:13 AM PST - 13 comments

« Previous day | Next day »