September 17, 2014
It's now or never.
God bless Mike Brown and his family. This young man's murder has exposed corruption and evil and incompetence at every level in Missouri. Shaun King lays it all out on Ferguson. Previously, originally.
I.P. Freely
What happened to pay toilets in the USA? In the early 1900s, when railroads connected America’s biggest cities with rural outposts, train stations were sometimes the only place in town with modern plumbing. To keep locals from freely using the bathrooms, railroad companies installed locks on the stall doors—only to be unlocked by railroad employees for ticketed passengers. Eventually, coin-operated locks were introduced, making the practice both more convenient and more profitable. Pay toilets then sprung up in the nation’s airports, bus stations, and highway rest stops. By 1970, America had over 50,000 pay toilets.
By 1980, there were almost none.
The anime of Makoto Shinkai: beautiful, somber, with moments of humor
"If I had been born 10 years earlier, I don’t think I would be an animator," wrote Makoto Shinkai. Despite the fact that even his earliest animations were completed with a Mac and a tablet, his style is influenced by the works of prior Japanese animators, even earning him the title "the next Miyazaki," which he says is an honor, but overstating his skills. From his earliest short, Other Worlds, he set some of the tone and pacing featured in his subsequent works, which are discussed in the lead up to an interview Shinkai did with Tested. [more inside]
"remove line breaks? where have you been all my life!"
Welcome to TextMechanic.com! A suite of simple, single task, browser based, text manipulation tools. [more inside]
Jessica Hernandez and the Deltas
For those of you that haven't discovered her yet, I present Jessica Hernandez (and the Deltas).
Demons,
Sorry I Stole Your Man,
Tired Oak,
No Place Left to Hide,
and Cry, Cry, Cry.
(here's a handy Spotify playlist.)
C-H-A
This is not the stirring tale of macho crew cuts and heroic deeds from The Right Stuff that is now a fat chapter in every U.S. high school history book. This is a tale replete with fumbling, bumbling, bickering and at least one insane-sounding notion. To nuke the moon.
25 Of The Most Creative Sculptures And Statues From Around The World
Our cities are full of majestic monuments, stunning sculptures and artistic statues, each having a story to tell. Thousands of them have been made but only a few of them are really extraordinary and picture-worthy. That’s why our readers set out to find the world’s most creative statues and sculptures, which add color and emotion to the most boring areas of the cities. Brought to you by Bored Panda 25 Of The Most Creative Sculptures And Statues From Around The World
BRING ME MY MUTE COMPANIONS
A movie star names things. The Toast tells us what movie stars really think as they film the films.
You won't believe the data on this Star Trek: TNG character!
Search for word usage in movies and television over time.
Movies and television shows often reflect cultural trends of the time they are made in. Even movies that take place during the past or future can say something about the present through metadata or production style. Using the Bookworm platform, Benjamin Schmidt, an assistant professor of history at Northeastern University, provides a tool that lets you see trends in movie and television dialogue.
Calculus without limits
Hyperreal numbers: infinities and infinitesimals - "In 1976, Jerome Keisler, a student of the famous logician Tarski, published this elementary textbook that teaches calculus using hyperreal numbers. Now it's free, with a Creative Commons copyright!" (pdf—25mb :) [more inside]
It's-a me, Mercutio, gimme all your money or I'll cut you!
Walk, Don't Walk, Dance!
The Smart car folks have come up with an idea to make crosswalks a little safer (SLYT, Smart Blue), the Dancing Traffic Light.
Chipmunks!
Falling from grace... and walking on your own
Kumari in Kathmandu, Nepal: Living pre-pubescent girls are believed to be the earthly manifestations of divine female energy, incarnations of the goddess known as Taleju. There can be as many as 13 Kumari at any one time, and the practice can be dated as far back as the 17th century. At the onset of menses, the Kumari are retired and begin life as mere mortals, experiencing the world for the very first time. [more inside]
For fifteen hours, we hold sovereignty in our hands
Polls will open in less than twelve hours for a referendum to end the 307-year Union between England and Scotland. With an unprecedented 97% voter registration, including hundreds of thousands of 16 and 17 year olds, there are predictions of turnout well over 80% across the country. [more inside]
The Chew-nited Nations
Looking at Russian Valery Nosal's collection of 25,500 chewing gum wrappers may seem like a mere curiosity, but you gotta wonder about the ethnography of chewing gum around the world. Perusing the catalog you can find the some expected regional flavors, fascination with far away places, functional over taste chews, odd promotions, and, for a Scandinavian country, a surprising disregard for sustainability. Oprah and other chiclephobes should not click.
Future Politics
Future Politics (PDF link) is a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign class by Jake Bowers on the political theory of science fiction and a great recommended reading and discussion list for the rest of us.
How can imagining the future help us understand the present? How does considering the future help us think critically about politics today?...The future hopes and imaginings of past political thinkers do not include either enough detail or enough information about our rapidly changing technological, social, political, and economic landscape to provide us with enough practice to confidently confront the future as citizens as it happens to us. Science fiction allows us a much more detailed view of life in alternative futures, and the writers that we choose to read here tend to think seriously and logically about how current cutting edge technology might have social and political ramifications — however, science fiction authors are also mostly working on a narrative and thus may skim over core concepts that ought to organize our thinking about politics and society. Thus, we read both together in order to practice a kind of theoretically informed futurism (which is not the same as prediction or forecasting, but is more like the practice of confronting the unexpected).
How can imagining the future help us understand the present? How does considering the future help us think critically about politics today?...The future hopes and imaginings of past political thinkers do not include either enough detail or enough information about our rapidly changing technological, social, political, and economic landscape to provide us with enough practice to confidently confront the future as citizens as it happens to us. Science fiction allows us a much more detailed view of life in alternative futures, and the writers that we choose to read here tend to think seriously and logically about how current cutting edge technology might have social and political ramifications — however, science fiction authors are also mostly working on a narrative and thus may skim over core concepts that ought to organize our thinking about politics and society. Thus, we read both together in order to practice a kind of theoretically informed futurism (which is not the same as prediction or forecasting, but is more like the practice of confronting the unexpected).
Twitter Detective FanSince09
FanSince09 is a Twitter celebrity. He’s known for retweeting some of the worst people on Twitter. Recently, he played detective and was able to use social media to track down some alleged Philadelphia gay bashers.
How to become your own Brewmaster, even in a smallish kitchen
How To Home Brew Beer in Your Kitchen, from Drink [Craft] Beer:
Brewing beer in your home can be as simple, or as complicated, as you want to make it. Here, we’re going to present the simple way. There is a lot of science you can get into, but we’re going to skip a lot of that as there are a lot of people who can tell you about it a lot better than we can. And they have books out (John Palmer’s How to Brew (online), and Charlie Papazian’s The Complete Joy of Homebrewing). We’d recommend reading these books at some point. You’ll learn a lot about why everything happens, how brewing really works and just a lot more in-depth information. If you want to make this a serious hobby, those are two can’t miss books.[more inside]
In this article, though, we’re going to run through step-by-step how to brew in a small kitchen setting. We know many of you live in apartments (we do), and we’ve heard too many people say they can’t brew because of this. You can! We know this, because we do it. We’ll show you how to go about brewing your first batch. Plus, we’re including pictures to really show you how it’s done. So, let’s get brewing!
He also fights crime
Since 2009, a statue of Buddha has been quietly reducing criminal activity and increasing community in one Oakland neighborhood.
Too insignificant to matter
Rebuild the Universe an incremental game that starts with the smallest unit possible to end with the universe itself. Bonuses, special effects and more await you in this incremental game.
In his basement, not the Alamo's.
Have you ever wondered who owns the largest private collection of artifacts related to the Alamo? Well, wonder no more. The answer is vocal mega-creep and platinum-selling recording artist Phil Collins.
worst thing about being asexual? others trying to fix me all the time
You’re about as sexually attractive to me as a turtle: Coming out as asexual in a hypersexual culture
plus, more from the author: the author's tumblr, essays (on the inside, your reason, "playing devil’s advocate" with someone else’s identity, missing out, coming out as asexual, asexuality pre-and-post-transition), other writings and articles ("Enjoy Your Houseful of Cats": On Being an Asexual Woman), videos (introduction to asexuality, a talk @ UVA about asexual relationships, shit people say to asexuals), and a list of arguments she's had with other people on the internet (but, why be asexual?)
plus, more from the author: the author's tumblr, essays (on the inside, your reason, "playing devil’s advocate" with someone else’s identity, missing out, coming out as asexual, asexuality pre-and-post-transition), other writings and articles ("Enjoy Your Houseful of Cats": On Being an Asexual Woman), videos (introduction to asexuality, a talk @ UVA about asexual relationships, shit people say to asexuals), and a list of arguments she's had with other people on the internet (but, why be asexual?)
some saying it's proof of a failing justice and health system
The art of Zhong Fengua
What will time be like in 100 years?
A beacon, shining in the darkness of a world left behind...
The Online Legacy of a Suicide Cult and the Webmasters Who Stayed Behind. A short history of the Heaven's Gate Millenarian Cult and the (ex?) members who still keep the page running seventeen years after their last contact with the leader and members.
Fan Fiction and Midrash
Fan stories, like midrash, give voice to characters who aren't front and center in narratives as we've received them. Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, who blogs at Velveteen Rabbi, has published an essay in Transformative Works and Cultures on the parallels between fan works that fill gaps in pop culture stories and midrash used to fill gaps in the Torah.
I AM GROOT.
We believe objectivity to be antithetical to good games coverage...
Yes, we could more easily aim toward something considered more “objective” at this point, simply listing the facts as presented by the developer/publisher. But oh my goodness, what now? See – see where this notion of objectivity has so quickly taken us? Objectivity is now demanding that we parrot information given to us by the creator/publisher of the game, and not apply our own critical faculties – our own subjective expertise – to this.-Some Subjective Thoughts On Objectivity [in Games Criticism]
Geopolitical duct tape and costly disasters.
...the reality of ISIS and what this group seeks is opaque to the public, and to policymakers not clued into the private salons where the details of secrets can be discussed. Even among those policymakers, the compartmentalized national security establishment means that no one really grasps the whole picture. The attempt to get the US into a war in Syria a year ago was similarly opaque. The public cannot make well-informed decisions about national security choices because information critical to such choices is withheld from them. It is withheld from them at the source, through the classification-censorship process, then by obfuscations in the salons and think tanks of DC and New York, and then finally through the bottleneck of the mass media itself.The Solution to ISIS Is the First Amendment by Matt Stoler [more inside]
this world is an illusion
Nairobi Noir - a street photography project
Nairobi Noir is a beautiful collection of photographs taken at night on the streets of Nairobi. Sometimes chilling, sometimes grim, always evocative
"That Saturday was really a normal Saturday, like any other Saturday,"
In This Horror Film, Blood Is All Too Real [New York Times] ‘Terror at the Mall’ on HBO documents an Attack in Kenya.
One year ago, gunmen from the Shabab militant group in Somalia laid siege to the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Armed with AK-47s and grenades, they stalked their victims from a gourmet burger restaurant at the entrance to the vegetable aisle of a grocery store at the back. The British filmmaker Dan Reed assembled thousands of hours of footage gleaned from more than 100 security cameras inside the mall, video from television crews and modest cellphones, as well as still photographs. Then he and his team tracked down more than 200 people and interviewed 82 of them on camera, many survivors or their rescuers.[more inside]
Dead swathes of zombie town
In superheated London, where stratospheric land values beget accordingly bloated developments – authorities are allowing planning policies to be continually flouted, affordable housing quotas to be waived, height limits breached, the interests of residents endlessly trampled. Places are becoming ever meaner and more divided, as public assets are relentlessly sold off, entire council estates flattened to make room for silos of luxury safe-deposit boxes in the sky. We are replacing homes with investment units, to be sold overseas and never inhabited, substituting community for vacancy. The more we build, the more our cities are emptied, producing dead swathes of zombie town where the lights might never even be switched on.The Guardian's architecture and design critic Oliver Wainright discusses housing development policy in London and the new city it is ushering in. [more inside]
The culture of poverty does not exist
The importance of the culture-of-poverty approach is that it allows for recognition of the accumulated history of racism and inequality, but posits the ongoing effects of these as mediated through black cultural pathologies. It therefore permits American liberals to identify with opposition to racism while pushing them towards policy solutions geared towards the transformation of black people, and not American society.With every crisis in Black America the same pathologies the Black community supposedly suffers from -- veneration of the criminal lifestyle, lack of proper family structures, abhorrence of education as acting white -- are trotted out as an explanation, by conservative commentators as that's just how those people are, by supposed liberals as the unfortunate end product of Black history in America. There's just one problem: they're lies. The culture of poverty does not exist.
Race the Tube
Dumpster thriving
A heavily-illiustrated article on Jeff Wilson ("Professor Dumpster") and the evolution of his thirty-six square feet of open-air accommodation: Living Simply in a Dumpster
(previously)
(previously)
« Previous day | Next day »