August 4, 2017

KITTEN DOESN’T WANT TO BE FED. KITTEN WANTS TO HUNT.

It's hard to tell which is uppermost in your mind, "Awwww" or "Ahhhh!": behold Jurassic Kitten, (including outtakes). Some like the sequel even better: Purrassic World. But if light sabers are more your thing, you may prefer Darth Kitten, or Star Wars: The Kitten Awakens (also with outtakes).
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:41 PM PST - 7 comments

WHO'S ABOVE THE LORDS

Classics of Game (previously), the mysterious YouTube channel that posts bizarre game videos free of pesky context, has suddenly resumed updating, this time after a two and a half year absence.
posted by BiggerJ at 10:22 PM PST - 8 comments

The folly of youth may also contribute to blown deadlines

Yes, Your Manuscript Was Due 30 Years Ago. No, the University Press Still Wants It.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:29 PM PST - 20 comments

Michael Stipe & Douglas Coupland talks about Ego

In which Michael Stipe and Douglas Coupland talk about ego at the 2017 Heartland Festival.

Warning: contains a few NSFW moments.
posted by philip-random at 9:08 PM PST - 15 comments

Playing for Change - Song Around the World

Today our heroes and soul brothers, Roger Ridley and Grandpa Elliott, return for a new song around the world, "Sitting on the dock of the bay" To learn more about the work of the PFC Foundation, visit http://www.playingforchange.org
posted by lungtaworld at 7:32 PM PST - 4 comments

“The heart wants what the heart wants.”

"In a Heartbeat" - Animated Short Film by Beth David and Esteban Bravo [YouTube] “It’s hard to forget your first childhood crush — and the anxiety that accompanied it. (Do you like me? Circle yes or no.) That heart-pounding, sweaty-palmed infatuation is nothing new in children’s animation, but two students decided to tell the tale in a different way, creating an animated short film that is drawing the interest of big production studios. Here, the enamored characters are both middle-school boys. And their dovelike innocence is charming a huge audience on YouTube. Posted on Monday, the four-minute film has already been viewed more than 14 million times.” [via: New York Times]
posted by Fizz at 5:59 PM PST - 16 comments

Enema Man Lives

For twenty years, the same prank caller has dialed the payphone at McSorley's Old Ale House, the landmark pub in Manhattan's East Village, most every Sunday afternoon to say "your enema is ready." [via]
posted by killdevil at 5:31 PM PST - 29 comments

Millennials are Killing

Millennials are Killing is a horror-comedy RPG about the ceaseless need of all people born between 1982 and 2004 to destroy all that we hold dear. (Single link Google Docs RPG)
posted by Artw at 5:19 PM PST - 23 comments

Who, Or What, Is Geedis?

Geedis is a character on an old enamel pin. But a character...from what? "'Nerd culture is so good at archiving...The fact that there is so little information as there is on The Land of Ta is proof that it wasn’t a comic book, or a TV show, or even a game.'" Or was it?
posted by Charity Garfein at 3:18 PM PST - 47 comments

So long and tanks for all the data

Attackers recently penetrate a North American casino's network via an Internet-connected fish tank and made off with more than 10GB of data. [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 2:46 PM PST - 48 comments

DC independent label makes its back catalogue available for streaming

Dischord Records' Bandcamp page has most of their back catalogue available for streaming (via Open Culture which also has a nice introductory article about the label). The DC based independent label is home to such legendary bands as Rites of Spring, Nation of Ulysses, Autoclave, Minor Threat and Fugazi, and also many, many others.
posted by Kattullus at 2:07 PM PST - 11 comments

Where Are You Dear General?

An eerie electronic ballad plays across Pyongyang every morning. One outsider pieces together its history.
posted by JanetLand at 12:59 PM PST - 10 comments

Ta-ta towel, anyone?

Variously described as "a bizarre boob hammock" and "the breast accessory you didn't know you needed," it's an absorbent towel for women that only covers their breasts. (SL BBC) A woman with a broken AC unit in Los Angeles invents a clever way to prevent under-boob sweat, and the women advertising it are larger breasted than average runway models. It's also gaining appeal with breastfeeding moms.
posted by stillmoving at 12:54 PM PST - 42 comments

Family Values

All in the Family Debt: How Neoliberals and Conservatives Came Together to Undo the Welfare State by Melinda Cooper at Boston Review. The essay is adapted from Cooper's book Family Values: Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism, published in 2017 by Zone Books. [more inside]
posted by sapagan at 12:48 PM PST - 9 comments

Periodic haikus

The shame of your name/now lost except to the Greeks/no need to fume. (bromine). A personal note/could mefites reply on this/only in haiku?
posted by auntie-matter at 11:44 AM PST - 70 comments

I will not leave Voyager until it ceases to exist. Or until I cease to.

In a rental suite in Altadena, CA, a small team of engineers work to keep Voyager 1 and 2 flying, just as they have for the past few decades.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:40 AM PST - 27 comments

Parenting Respectfully When Triggered

"The trouble with triggers is that they can rob us (at least temporarily) from being able to be the parent we want to be. We can act impulsively in a protective way to stop our own emotional discomfort instead of how we genuinely want to for our children." Racheous.com on Parenting Respectfully When Triggered [more inside]
posted by jillithd at 10:50 AM PST - 31 comments

'You know, I could mow that mess for you.'

A handful of pioneer cemeteries in Illinois also represents some of the last remaining acres of virgin prairie in the state, as described in this long piece from Christopher Borrelli of the Chicago Tribune. [more inside]
posted by orthicon halo at 9:34 AM PST - 10 comments

The go-to company for all things immediately.

Everything now has cut out the middlemen, absorbed competitors, and dodged anti-trust violations in order to bring savings to you on billions of products that matter. [more inside]
posted by mysticreferee at 8:48 AM PST - 16 comments

Why the Bronx Burned in the 1970s

It was game two of the 1977 World Series, a chilly, blustery October night in the South Bronx. The Yanks were already down 2-0 in the bottom of the first inning when ABC’s aerial camera panned a few blocks over from Yankee Stadium to give the world its first live glimpse of a real Bronx Cookout. “There it is, ladies and gentlemen,” Howard Cosell intoned. “The Bronx is burning.”
Cosell's quote is a myth, but the game was real, as were the fires. It wasn't due to riots or hoodlums, but a failed attempt to streamline NYFD. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:28 AM PST - 14 comments

Nazis. I hate these guys.

In a new book, Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich, historian Eric Kurlander examines the fascination with supernatural and occult ideas in the Third Reich, including Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler's sponsorship of "a fanciful doctrine known as “World Ice Theory,” which posited that history, science, and religion could be explained by moons of ice hitting the earth in prehistoric times. Even in 1945, as the Third Reich was collapsing, the Nazis cobbled together a guerrilla band of Nazi “Werewolves” to combat Communist partisans, who were in turn accused of vampirism by ethnic Germans fleeing the Russians."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:05 AM PST - 39 comments

6 of some calories, half a dozen of the other calories

Researchers at the NIH have completed a controlled study of Gary Taubes’ theory that efficient body fat loss requires carbohydrate restrictions, with some interesting findings. In an in-patient setting with obese volunteers eating 1900 calories/day, a carb-restricted diet (140 g carbs/day) led to sustained increase in fat oxidation, decreased insulin secretion, and loss of body fat compared to subjects’ baseline diets. However, restricting dietary fat to 17g/day instead caused subjects to lose significantly more body fat (500g/day) than on the carbohydrate-restricted diet (53g/day), with no change in metabolic fuel selection. [more inside]
posted by deludingmyself at 7:29 AM PST - 86 comments

The caves, the daylight, the present moment, Mrs. Dalloway's flowers

"I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters: I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humor, depth. The idea is that the caves shall connect and each come to daylight at the present moment," wrote Virginia Woolf in her diary, an insight that Carole Burns explores in her lovely personal essay for Literary Hub, "Rereading Mrs. Dalloway at the Same Age as Mrs. Dalloway." [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:32 AM PST - 9 comments

The Soccer Academies Preparing African Children for D-I Competition

A rising number of academies are opening across the continent with the goal of giving children a better education on the way to a better life.
posted by Etrigan at 6:30 AM PST - 5 comments

Help me get the mysterious library to my sister

So: a recurrent neural net would read 14 years of [Ask MetaFilter] posts, and I’d ask it to write new ones.
posted by Monochrome at 6:21 AM PST - 76 comments

If lightning is the anger of the gods, they care mostly about trees

Taking a photo of a lightning strike is difficult, as is creating a gigapixel image. Doing both together is pretty much impossible - you need multiple exposures stitched together for the gigapixel image. Dan Piech's blog covers in exhaustive detail how he created a photographic artwork of a lightning strike with a resolution of 5,449 megapixels.
posted by Stark at 12:53 AM PST - 11 comments

Caste in urban India

The caste system is almost non-existent, at least in urban areas… How caste prejudices work in urban India - not very detailed but paints a picture. [more inside]
posted by hawthorne at 12:43 AM PST - 12 comments

The Grandest Stage of Them All

Mueller convenes a Grand Jury while Trump tweets concern about our relationship with Russia. [more inside]
posted by AlexiaSky at 12:26 AM PST - 2825 comments

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