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For those of you pining for the good ol' days of demented Chris Cunningham videos set to the music of Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, I give you Tony Truand's clip for Skrillex's First Of The Year (Equinox). most likely NSFW
posted by mannequito at 9:37 PM PST - 111 comments

This was a triumph. A very special, very custom Portal 2 mod serves as Gary Hudston's proposal to his girlfriend Stephanie. He commissioned Douglas “TopHATTwaffle” Hoogland and Rachel “Miss Stabby” van der Meer and a the talents of a special guest as the icing on the cake. Via RPS.
posted by Verdant at 6:52 PM PST - 85 comments

Best known as the butt of jokes among sports bloggers and for their ever-present slideshows, Bleacher Report is slowly taking steps to offer better content. [more inside]
posted by gladly at 5:52 PM PST - 10 comments

Chaos Cinema (Part 1, Part 2). The decline of extreme action in movies and the rise of overindulgent chaos. [more inside]
posted by blue_beetle at 5:41 PM PST - 92 comments

Four days ago Smithsonian Magazine published an in-depth examination of the Finnish education system (and what the U.S. can learn from the Finns). Here's a quote: "Schools provide food, medical care, counseling and taxi service if needed. Stu­dent health care is free... Besides Finnish, math and science, the first graders take music, art, sports, religion and textile handcrafts. English begins in third grade, Swedish in fourth. By fifth grade the children have added biology, geography, history, physics and chemistry." [more inside]
posted by bguest at 5:23 PM PST - 126 comments

The Doggie Diner was the name of a Bay Area chain of burger joints that had its heyday in the '60s and '70s. The last remaining restaurant in the Chain was located at the corner of 46th and Sloat in San Francisco, CA. Even after the place became a restaurant with a new name ("Carousel") the giant Fiberglass dachshund head remained as a piece of nostalgia until a storm toppled it on April 1st, 2001. The head was relocated in January 2005 to the median of Sloat Boulevard and became San Francisco city landmark #254. Now the restaurant itself is slated for demolition. [more inside]
posted by MattMangels at 4:37 PM PST - 32 comments

Europe's 'unitary patent' could impose software patents warns RMS. German courts have recently moved towards software patents upholding a patent on the automatic generation of structured documents in a client-server setting, i.e. XML, HTML, etc. (recently : the U.S. patent war)
posted by jeffburdges at 4:23 PM PST - 31 comments

Jerry Leiber, one of the greatest rock and roll songwriters to ever ply the trade, has died aged 78. Along with songwriting partner Mike Stoller, he was responsible for so many hits, including but not limited to: Love Potion No. 9 by The Coasters, Stand By Me by Ben E. King, Hound Dog by Big Mama Thornton, later popularised by Elvis Presley, and, solo, in conjunction with Phil Spector, Spanish Harlem, as sung by Aretha Franklin.
posted by Len at 3:45 PM PST - 63 comments

Microsoft released Age of Empires Online last week -- a free-to-play realtime strategy game, and it's getting some pretty good press. [more inside]
posted by crunchland at 3:37 PM PST - 42 comments

in salt lake city utah these cats brought out a race car track
and we had a BB/roots/john spencer blues explosion friggin battle royal.
we did midnight racing til 2am go karts.

More ?uestlove celebrity stories.
posted by swift at 3:36 PM PST - 40 comments

Terrorists for the FBI: Inside the Bureau's secret network that surveils and entraps Americans.
posted by homunculus at 2:40 PM PST - 36 comments

You've been rickrolled on the blue. And you've seen nyan cat on the blue. But not in this righteously metal way. These are youtube posts to 331Erock's page for his metal covers of crazy, pop culture stuff.
posted by TheBones at 2:39 PM PST - 19 comments

Famous Lives in Minimalist Pictogram Flowcharts: From Darth Vader to Jesus by Maria Popova.
posted by nickyskye at 2:15 PM PST - 24 comments

London Metropolitan Police formulated policy of refusing bail to all arrested in London riots which might have influenced high remand in custody rate.
posted by maiamaia at 2:05 PM PST - 30 comments

Phillip Howard argues here that rather than protecting our freedoms, the U.S. legal system has actually begun to restrict our liberties and paralyze society. Life as a working professional has increasingly become what Howard describes as "a legal minefield". In this talk from the TED 2010 conference, Howard suggests 4 ways of helping to fix what he deems "a broken legal system." [more inside]
posted by Vibrissae at 1:46 PM PST - 69 comments

Stories of bad dates in 140 characters. More stories. (Via.)
posted by slogger at 1:13 PM PST - 93 comments

"A sort of PC": how Windows 8 will invade tablets (and why it might work). 'For the first time in fifteen or more years, Redmond faces a genuine challenge to its Windows desktop monopoly.''The decision to call, or not to call, a tablet a "PC" goes beyond mere branding. It influences the entire approach that Microsoft takes. It colors the user interface design, the sales model, the hardware requirements, the options available to system integrators.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 12:55 PM PST - 192 comments

"Revenge" - A Minecraft Parody of Usher's DJ Got Us Fallin' in Love (SLYT). Surprisingly catchy.
posted by cp311 at 11:53 AM PST - 12 comments

The Washington Mall welcomes another hero. The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial is unveiled. Sitting directly between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, "the composition of the [King] memorial utilizes landscape elements to powerfully convey four fundamental and recurring themes throughout Dr. King's message: justice, democracy, hope and love." [more inside]
posted by darkstar at 11:50 AM PST - 72 comments

Your Data depends on a game of JACKPOT and other classic vir(ii/uses). Brought to you by danooct1 and a Compaq Portable.
posted by griphus at 10:48 AM PST - 5 comments

" ... there is a depth of field technique with a controllable aspect called 'bokeh,' which describes a certain quality of blur that we often notice in the more luminous parts of a film’s background and that varies considerably with lens and camera type. Bokeh is a photography term derived from the Japanese boké- blur, haze ... When implemented in games the technique encapsulates a certain kind of second-order removal from reality. We are simulating not the way things look, but how they look after they have been filtered through the eye of a camera." Independent game developer Mathew Burns takes a look at how video games reflect reality in his account of the 2011 Game Developer's Conference. Burns also writes the blog Magical Wasteland. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 10:35 AM PST - 28 comments

Panic inside a Mexican soccer stadium. In live footage that could be seen all over Mexico and some other parts of the world, audiences who were peacefully enjoying a soccer match between Torreón's "Santos" and Morelia's "Monarcas" watched as the sound of gunshots made players run out of the field and into the cover of their locker rooms, while spectators crouched in their seats and later, panicked, ran toward the exits. (SLYT, comments in spanish, but images are self explanatory.) [more inside]
posted by CrazyLemonade at 9:54 AM PST - 77 comments

The Decemberists recreate Eschaton from David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. The new video for "Calamity Song," from The King Is Dead, takes us into the dystopian world of the novel, Infinite Jest. [more inside]
posted by otherwordlyglow at 9:04 AM PST - 74 comments

Why Amazon Can't Make A Kindle In the USA. Does It Really Matter That Amazon Can't Manufacture A Kindle In the USA? Amazon & Kindle Part 3: It's Not Just Manufacturing! A cogent look at why today's prevailing approach to cost and manufacturing is wrongheaded.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 8:57 AM PST - 64 comments

Illusion or blockhead act? You be the judge. Caution: this performance is not for the squeamish. Tony Star presents iSight. (SLYT)
posted by PeterMcDermott at 8:55 AM PST - 39 comments

From 1935 to 1951, Time Magazine bridged the gap between print & radio news reporting and the new visual medium of film, with March of Time: award-winning newsreel reports that were a combination of objective documentary, dramatized fiction and pro-American, anti-totalitarian propaganda. They “often tackled subjects and themes that audiences weren’t used to seeing — foreign affairs, social trends, public-health issues — and did so with a combination of panache and subterfuge that today seems either absurd or visionary.” (Previous two links have autoplaying video.) By 1937, the short films were being seen by as many as 26 million people every month and may have helped steer public opinion on numerous issues, including (eventually) America’s entry to WWII. Video samples are available at Time.com, the March of Time Facebook page and the entire collection is available online, (free registration required) at HBO Archives. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 8:33 AM PST - 8 comments

Skincare company Nivea withdraws a controversial magazine ad after accusations of racism. The ad shows a black man in the act of throwing out a full-face mask which has a beard and an afro. The image is juxtaposed with the slogan "Re-Civilize Yourself." [more inside]
posted by overeducated_alligator at 7:28 AM PST - 276 comments

Happy birthday John Lee Hooker! Let's celebrate by listening to some of your older tunes! "Gonna take you down by the riverside, gonna tie your hands, gonna tie your feet, got the mad man blues" ... "Now the war is over, and I'm broke and I ain't got a dime" ... "You know I'm a crawling king snake, baby, and I rule my nest" ... "Gonna get up in the mornin', goin' down highway 51" ... "Well I rolled and I tumbled, babe, I cried the whole night long" ... "I feel so good, let me do the boogaloo"
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:06 AM PST - 19 comments

Jack Layton has passed away after a long battle with cancer. [more inside]
posted by Lemurrhea at 6:04 AM PST - 389 comments

Slap some retro on those photos with vintageJS. [more inside]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:26 AM PST - 34 comments

Post A Letter Social Activity Club: "Imagine a day when every personal e-mail you receive is in the form of a piece of mail, in envelopes of different sizes, papers of different colours and textures, handwriting of varying degrees of legibility. Wouldn’t that be pretty nice for a change?" [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:17 AM PST - 18 comments

Black Dynamite is COMING SOON to Adult Swim (who the PTC accuse of corrupting children - what part of the word ADULT don't they get? - but I digress). It's based on the blaxploitation parody movie and comic book of the same name, and the pilot posted online has a special treat for anyone who thinks MetaFilter loves the Muppets too much... the villain is That Frog Kurtis, leader of a familiar looking gang of puppets turned evil. Felt will fly, stuffing will be torn out and puppet ass will get kicked. Enjoy.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:42 AM PST - 24 comments

Fixing Films is a new blog that fixes classic films by a heavy application of mash-ups and MSPaint.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 12:18 AM PST - 20 comments