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).
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.
The folly of youth may also contribute to blown deadlines
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.
Warning: contains a few NSFW moments.
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
“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]
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]
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)
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?
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]
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.
Where Are You Dear General?
An eerie electronic ballad plays across Pyongyang every morning. One outsider pieces together its history.
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.
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]
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?
I will not leave Voyager until it ceases to exist. Or until I cease to.
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]
'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]
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]
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]
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."
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]
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]
The Soccer Academies Preparing African Children for D-I Competition
Help me get the mysterious library to my sister
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.
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]
The Grandest Stage of Them All
Mueller convenes a Grand Jury while Trump tweets concern about our relationship with Russia. [more inside]
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