April 2014 Archives
April 30
Anthem of Dystopian America
Following in the footsteps of other songs switching up minor keys and major keys, Chase Holfelder's Star-Spangled Banner in minor key is particularly haunting.
The madness of the suburbs: who knows it but you?
Rob Ford is entering rehab
Following a new (audio) tape of Rob Ford drunk and swearing at a bar and a new (video) tape of his smoking crack in his sister's basement both earlier this week, the Toronto Mayor has announced that he will be taking a leave from his campaign to attend rehab. [more inside]
I wanted to incorporate the city and its inhabitants into my filmmaking.
No Your City
In a city of over 8 million people, it is impossible to walk the streets without running into interesting New Yorkers with unique relationships to the city. Whether it is Don Ward, the best shoe-shiner in Manhattan or Te'Devan the 6'7" Nomadic-Jewish-Healing-Freestyler. Everyone has a story that is worth hearing, but unfortunately most of them go unheard. New York City is the busiest place on earth and it is rare for someone to take a few minutes out of their schedule to stop and chat with a fellow New Yorker.
No Your City is an 8-part documentary series that offers a glimpse into the lives of these extraordinary New York City inhabitants. [more inside]
Math or Maths?
Math or Maths? A few minutes with Dr Lynne Murphy (an American linguist in England) should clear this right up. Via Numberphile.
Murphy, Murphy, burning bright
Font samples
Font samples from an 1892 specimen book (i.e. a type catalog for printers). They're a lot more interesting than "The quick brown fox..."
The Great Works of Software
There is nothing.
"Drowning in Problems" is a new incremental/clicking game by Notch, the creator of Minecraft. [more inside]
Chase declares war on porn
Various outlets are reporting that, over the past month, Chase Bank has sent out letters to American porn actors that their Chase accounts will be closed as of May 11.
One actress describes discovering her account had been closed without notice.
Chase Bank has remained quiet about their actions (other than to tell the customers that their accounts were considered "high risk"), leaving many to wonder why this has happened, seemingly out-of-the-blue. There are indications that the DOJ may be involved.
The Eternal Ingénue
SF/F legend Connie Willis pours a preview of a near-future version of the story of backstage back-stabbing, " All About Eve" with "All About Emily" for Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.
Terminally ill man throws himself a wake at NOLA jazz fest
Given word that he has a few months left to live, a man with lung cancer decides to throw a wake at the New Orleans jazz fest. Everyone at the party wore nametags with brief descriptions of their backgrounds. The honoree of the night, Louis Misko, wore one that was, like the man himself, abrupt and unflinching:
"The Louis," said the message written in red marker. "Soon to be deceased."
Gaunt, but smiling, Misko circulated through the crowd, relishing conversation with his guests at Pascal's Manale restaurant, most of whom he expected never to see again. He was holding his own memorial, in advance of his death from lung cancer.
A Eulogy for Twitter
The Atlantic: "Something is wrong on Twitter. And people are noticing. Or, at least, the kind of people we hang around with on Twitter are noticing. And it's maybe not a very important demographic, this very weird and specific kind of user: audience-obsessed, curious, newsy. Twitter's earnings last quarter, after all, were an improvement on the period before, and it added 14 million new users for a total of 255 million. The thing is: Its users are less active than they once were. Twitter says these changes reflect a more streamlined experience, but we have a different theory: Twitter is entering its twilight." [more inside]
When power evaporates and you’re just a 61-year-old without a job
"You resigned, though your office is the office that actually started this investigation. This would not have come to light unless your office would’ve started it. But as the leader at the top, you resigned. And people that were directly there making the decisions, signing onto the warrants, going through these fraudulent contracts, they’re still there."Two years after Martha Johnson resigned from her position as the head of the General Services Administration following an investigation of wasteful spending under her leadership, what is her life like now? Lillian Cunningham writes for the Washington Post's On Leadership blog about life after a scandal.
Piecewise linear functions are magic
Like a ticking whale bomb
The world is headed for a post-antibiotic era
WHO’s first global report on antibiotic resistance reveals serious, worldwide threat to public health. "The world is headed for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries which have been treatable for decades can once again kill." - Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO’s Assistant Director-General for Health Security. [more inside]
maybe this could've gone in my last post
Ever thought about making ramen in your hotel's coffee maker? Well, this lady cooks everything in her coffee maker (also available in svenska). [more inside]
I think you're incredibly brave to be a cisgendered woman in this world.
Janet Mock turns the script around and asks a cisgender woman the private / invasive questions trans people are asked regularly. [more inside]
How to not let the internet know you're pregnant
"And finally, I'm actually here today to win the 'Most Creative Use of Tor' award," she said, followed by roars of laughter in the audience. "I really couldn't have done it without Tor, because Tor was really the only way to manage totally untraceable browsing. I know it's gotten a bad reputation for Bitcoin trading and buying drugs online, but I used it for BabyCenter.com."-- How Janet Vertesi tried and hid her pregnancy from the internet and big data. (Direct link to her presentation.)
goodbye bob
Bob Hoskins, legendary British actor, has died aged 71. He is perhaps best known for his roles in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (clip), Hook (clip), Mona Lisa and The Long Good Friday, where he delivered one of the best movie endings ever. [more inside]
It was a night like any other night...
A bump on the head, a mysterious femme fatale and a strange encounter on a windswept peak all add up to a heck of a night for Manny Brot, Private Eye. Watch as he tries his hand at saving the dame and getting the cash! Shudder at the mind-bending geometric riddles! Thrill to the stunning solution of The Case of the Missing Fractals. (SLYT via via)
s/camel/_/
Right now someone who works for Facebook is getting tens of thousands of error messages and frantically trying to find the problem before the whole charade collapses. There's a team at a Google office that hasn't slept in three days. Somewhere there's a database programmer surrounded by empty Mountain Dew bottles whose husband thinks she's dead. And if these people stop, the world burns. Most people don't even know what sysadmins do, but trust me, if they all took a lunch break at the same time they wouldn't make it to the deli before you ran out of bullets protecting your canned goods from roving bands of mutants.
Flaws Only A Protagonist Could Have
“I just want to be normal,” she said, even though she had amazing powers and a super-family and was mega-gorgeous and better than normal in every way and the entire book would be terrible if she were normal and she had no conception of what normal was to begin with.
Open your mind or YCKMA!
“Beyond Appearances – The diversity song” is a series of portraits of supposed outcasts, and aligns wrong first impressions – because you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Open your mind or… you can kiss my ass! (NSFW, SLYT] [more inside]
April 29
What We Left Behind
I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it
A tribute to Breaking Bad, or rather to WW's implosion, by Alexandre Gasulla, part of his Tribute Series
Tiny Hamsters Eating Tiny Burritos
Mixing Memory and Desire: Music, Poetry, Sound, and Remembrance
Songwriter, singer, poet, memoirist, artist, icon Patti Smith performs in WNYC's The Greene Space. In a program of songs and poetry coordinated by her daughter Jesse Paris Smith, Patti Smith performs with Tree Laboratory (Jesse Paris Smith and Eric Hoegemeyer) and her long-time collaborator guitarist Lenny Kaye. They titled the event "Mixing Memory and Desire: An Evening of Music, Poetry, Sound, and Remembrance," celebrating the "chaos and transformation of spring." [~1h30m, scroll down for video] [more inside]
The Prodigy, still raving after 20 years
Twenty years after originally forming, the English electronic/ rave/ big beat group The Prodigy were back on tour for their fifth studio album, Invaders Must Die. On July 24, 2010, the "40-somethings bounce around a stage like men half their age, owning festival-sized audiences" like rising dance stars wish they could. The performance was recorded and released the next year, and you can see the hour plus of World's On Fire in full on Vimeo. (NOTE: NSFW lyrics) [more inside]
Two Muddy Pills
On the 10th anniversary of his wildly popular blog, Joe.My.God published Two Muddy Pills, a previously unpublished true story.
Male Scent May Compromise Biomedical Research
Jeffrey Mogil’s students suspected there was something fishy going on with their experiments. They were injecting an irritant into the feet of mice to test their pain response, but the rodents didn’t seem to feel anything. “We thought there was something wrong with the injection,” says Mogil, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. The real culprit was far more surprising: The mice that didn’t feel pain had been handled by male students. Mogil’s group discovered that this gender distinction alone was enough to throw off their whole experiment—and likely influences the work of other researchers as well. [more inside]
The secret ingredient is the shame
"If the accessories are not expensive, the customer is not worth the effort of even a simple hello" In a paper soon to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Sauder marketing professor Darren Dahl lays out the findings of his research, where he looked at the correlation between the quality of customer service that a shopper receives in a store with their likelihood to return to make more purchases in the future. [more inside]
I will love him and squeeze him and call him George.
Cute things are made for squeezing. Scientists study why we want to squeeze, squish, pinch, and eat cute things. "Volunteers were given bubble wrap and told they could pop as much of it as they wanted. When faced with a slideshow of cute animals, people popped 120 bubbles, whereas people watching the funny and neutral slideshows popped 80 and 100 bubbles respectively."
The movie opens worldwide on December 18, 2015.
"like I’m putting cartoons in bottles and pushing them out to sea"
Jen Sorenson is the first female winner of the Herblock Prize for political cartooning. Among the work that won her the prize were her cartoons on gentrification and paycheck debit cards. Don't miss the Comparison between Janet Yellen and Larry Summers, and so much great commentary on the Affordable Care Act.
The devourer and the devoured
"Nobody would believe how difficult it is to be the mother of a Wunderkind. Everything I do is wrong; everything the child does is “for effect”; everything we say is utterly untrue. If Vivien runs up to me and kisses me, I hear it murmured that she is trained to do so. (“Whipped to be affectionate in public!”) So I tell her never to do it again. Immediately people remark how cold I am to the child; how the poor little creature evidently fears me and prefers Fräulein Muller.
We take her with her hoop and skipping-rope to play in the park? It is said we make her pretend to be infantine, force her to act the “happy child” when people are looking on! So we take her toys from her and conduct her for prim walks between us. “Poor little unnatural creature!” say our friends: “she has no child-life at all.”
The Devourer and the Devoured is a long essay by Emily Hogstad about the intertwined lives of the novelist Annie Vivanti and her daughter Vivien Chartres, a world-famous violin prodigy, at the beginning of the twentieth century.
“What’s been the biggest challenge? Every single thing,” he said.
Twenty-eight years on, the struggle to build a permanent containment building at Chernobyl.
Whither Geoff Peterson and Secretariat?
Craig Ferguson is moving on. "The CBS latenight host also is resigned to the fact that few people will believe his assertion that he began thinking about ending his run on the show as long as two years ago, but he re-upped after CBS persuaded him to stick around a little longer. Early this year, he began laying the groundwork for his exit, before he had any idea that Letterman was preparing to announce his plan to retire in 2015." [more inside]
Continue petting it assiduously.
For the love of (someone else playing) the game
"Draft Day," "Moneyball," and the rise of the sports management movie. There’s a new breed of sports movie in town, one that does away with all that pesky team building and ersatz democracy. These films celebrate the real heroes of sports, the real heroes of any workplace: the bosses.
Contemplate the marvel that is existence
Though I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a valediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same. [more inside]
Fake war is the state's killer app
Politically speaking, "the most anticipated game was the Left Party who faced their arch rivals the Sweden Democrats." This was actually the first pairing of the tournament and pitted the Left's Prospect against the Sweden Democrats' Zaki. "It was truly a grudge match between the right and the left and it did not leave anybody disappointed." -- Reasoned debate is boring; in Sweden politicians settle their differences through Starcraft II battles.
In the future, every author will be in the public domain for 15 minutes
The non-profit digital library of Marxist texts, The Marxist Internet Archive, has received a copyright take-down request from the radical publishing house Lawrence and Wishart, asking that all material from the Marx and Engels Collected Works be removed from the site by May 1 2014. [more inside]
A- Z of Dance in 3 Min 33 Seconds (SYTL or S-VimeoLink)
Exactly what the title says. A celebration of 26 ways to rhythmically move one's body Although the video is a project that was sponsored by i-D and Diesel clothing, the corporate sponsorship in no way impacts the dancing.
Vimeo here: Vimeo link here.
If you prefer youtube there here is an alternative link. [more inside]
April 28
Friendship delivers what love promises but fails to provide
Friendship uniquely requires mutual self-knowledge and will. It takes two competent, willing people to be friends. You cannot impose a friendship on someone, although you can impose a crush, a lawsuit, or an obsession. If friendship is not reciprocated, it simply ceases to exist or, rather, it never existed in the first place. Andrew Sullivan's book Love Undetectable, illuminated via BrainPickings.
Dirty Harry...Only Hairier
"An argument that has the characterizing flavor of bullshit."
The entire first episode of John Oliver's new current-events comedy show on HBO, Last Week Tonight, is viewable on its official YouTube Channel. [more inside]
I will name him George, and I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him
The early film archive of Josef-Alexis Joye, Swiss Jesuit Abbot
Over a hundred years ago, a most impressive collection of early motion pictures was collected by the Swiss Jesuit abbot, Josef-Alexis Joye, who collected a trove of films as a way of educating children and adults. In total, he collected around 2,500 titles between 1902 or 1904 and 1915. The abbot's collection was not forgotten or lost after his death in 1919 -- it was stored and cataloged, though in danger of deteriorating by the 1940s. A few decades later, Italian film historian Davide Turconi, fearing that the films would be entirely through deterioration, decided to clip a few frames from each print and save something of the collection. Luckily, his fears were unfounded, and many the films were preserved in the 1970s by David Francis of the National Film and Television Archive of the British Film Institute, where approximately 1,200 of the nitrate prints still exist. [more inside]
The People Who Saw Evolution
"Peter and Rosemary Grant are members of a very small scientific tribe: people who have seen evolution happen right before their eyes."
Sub-5
[ --resist-object | --prove-photograph-log | --roll-berate-history ]
25 Years of Grassroots Environmentalism
The 2014 Goldman Environmental Prize winners were announced today. Known as the "Green Nobel", the Goldman Prize this year highlights grassroots champions working against industrial pollution, deforestation, dam-building, and legal land use. The awards ceremony will be streamed live on YouTube at 5:30 p.m. PDT. [more inside]
Polar bears, poop, and dogs!
Linda Gormezano, a researcher with the American Museum of Natural History, studies polar bear ecology by collecting and analyzing polar bear feces. "One thing I didn’t mention is I don’t find the scat, my dog Quinoa finds it." via.
An Illustrated Society of the Spectacle
Fifty years on, we're still coming to terms with Guy Debord's 1967 situationist text, The Society of the Spectacle. Debord presented an eerily-accurate portrait of our image-saturated, mediated times. You can find all kinds of insights into the spectacle of 2014, from Instagram and viral marketing to hipster culture and personal brands. Fittingly, he also did it with a series of short, aphoristic sections that could almost be described as proto-tweets.
Leveraging the Tumblr aesthetic, Ryan Oakley has created an Illustrated Society of the Spectacle (start there, then click "Newer Post" to progress.) The images aim to resonate with Debord's text, rather than provide on-the-nose illustrations. NSFW. [more inside]
Everyone tries to do a pull up, everyone.
For a refreshing delight supreme...
the Cambodians who stitch your clothing keep fainting in droves
It should have been an extraordinary scene: more than 100 factory hands fainting in unison as if possessed by spirits.
But in Cambodian garment factories (pdf, graphic violence depicted), which play a major role in supplying American malls, mass fainting is no longer a freak phenomenon. It’s disturbingly common.
But in Cambodian garment factories (pdf, graphic violence depicted), which play a major role in supplying American malls, mass fainting is no longer a freak phenomenon. It’s disturbingly common.
Genius
Walter Kitundu is an artist and MacArthur Fellow (previously). In this video, he gives a lecture at the San Francisco Exploratorium about his bespoke instruments and lighting experiments. At around 16 minutes in, he plays his digital revision of a kora.
"I want to make sure that I answer your question correctly."
Verbatim: What is a Photocopier? (NYT SLV)
It's like a Carousel
James Minchin's backstage photos taken during the filming of Mad Men show, among other things, Ken holding a Macbook.
17 Lies We Need to Stop Teaching Girls About Sex
Whether it's the constant fretting over Miley Cyrus' influence on school girls or the growing (and troubling) tradition of Purity Balls, it's clear that society has a fascination with young women's sexuality — especially when it comes to controlling it. But what are we actually teaching today's girls about sex? Fueled by outdated ideals of gender roles and the sense that female sexuality is somehow shameful, there seem to be certain pernicious myths about girls and sex that just won't die. That sex education in America has gaping holes in its curriculum hasn't helped much, either; in a recent Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report just 6 out of 10 girls said that their schools' sex ed program included information on how to say no to sex. This lack of personal agency was reflected in a forthcoming study by sociologist Heather Hlavka at Marquette University as well, which found that many young girls think of sex simply as something that is "done to them." Knowledge is power, and we can promote a healthier relationship with sex by encouraging a more open dialogue, teaching girls to feel comfortable with their sexuality and, most importantly, emphasizing that their bodies are theirs and theirs alone.
But first, we're going to need to stop perpetuating the following 17 myths about female sexuality.[more inside]
It's because you either found Jesus or had a baby.
The Humdinger - Extraordinary Quality
Inside the world of legal art forgery, for the sake of movies
TL;DR? Make a tiny hole with your hand
I give posting on MeFi 5 stars
Comedian Andy Daly is an expert at creating naive, offbeat characters with dark secrets. He has appeared in many places (and this AV Club article walks through them all in an interview with Daly), but now has his own show, Review on Comedy Central, in which his character, Forrest, reviews life experiences, from eating 30 pancakes to divorce to being Batman. All 8 of the episodes so far are now online, the funny/dark/uncomfortable parts really start with episode 3: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Andy Daly is also a comedy podcast regular, and ran a one-off series where he played a different character every week (the amazing one where he plays a German travel writer, with many other comedians as guests, is a good place to start).
Secret Merlings! Secret Merlings everywhere!
Who is Jon Snow's mother? What's up with the crazy seasons in Westeros? Why have the White Walkers returned after all this time? These questions and more have been the subject of much speculation and debate among fans of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire / Dunk and Egg universe for more than a decade. Fans have published their theories in forums, on fansites, and even as the occasional academic journal article.
(Spoiler warning: All sources -- show, books, cut scenes, DVD special features, pre-released chapters, interviews, visions you got from a tree, etc. -- are fair game in this thread!) [more inside]
Blowing soap in your eyes
And now for my magic marketing trick! (I mean, illusion.) By simply conflating surfactants and their main use, soap, I will now proceed to warn you that soap is in absolutely everything, and we should all freak the hell out, NOW. -- Through a handy demonstration Michelle Wong explains why the danger of chemicals is often inflated for The Toast's Gal Science column.
Barca Defender Eats Banana
"Barcelona's Dani Alves reacted to having a banana thrown at him during Sunday's dramatic 3-2 win at Villarreal by peeling it and then taking a bite. He was about to take a corner when the banana landed on the pitch". "We have suffered this in Spain for some time," said Alves. "You have to take it with a dose of humour."
Former Barca striker Gary Lineker praised Alves. "Picked it up, peeled it, ate it and proceeded to take the corner," he tweeted. "Top response." The ex-England striker added: "Utterly brilliant reaction from Alves. Treat the racist berk with complete disdain!"
Alves has been a regular target of racist abuse during his 12 years in Spain with both Sevilla and Barcelona.
Dani Alves: “If you don't give it importance, they don't achieve their objective”
Former Barca striker Gary Lineker praised Alves. "Picked it up, peeled it, ate it and proceeded to take the corner," he tweeted. "Top response." The ex-England striker added: "Utterly brilliant reaction from Alves. Treat the racist berk with complete disdain!"
Alves has been a regular target of racist abuse during his 12 years in Spain with both Sevilla and Barcelona.
Dani Alves: “If you don't give it importance, they don't achieve their objective”
Facebook gifts a police station
After moving two years ago to the
poorer and more crime-ridden neighborhood of Belle Haven, Facebook has simply
given the city $600,000 to open a police substation located one block from its headquarters.
April 27
Putnam 2013
“I wanted to use the intermediate value theorem but it just wasn’t happening.” MIT undergrad Zach Wener-Fligner reports from this year's William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, the nation's premier math contest for college students, a test so hard that the median score is often zero.
All these moments will be lost in time, like -
Internet personality Neil Cicierega (previously) has released a new mashup album based on Smash Mouth, "Smooth," "The Power of Love," Daft Punk, and other stuff: Mouth Sounds.
Her Majesty's High Court of Chivalry of England and Wales
In England coats of arms and other issues of heraldry are registered and administered by the College of Arms. But what if some base scoundrel displays your family's ancient and noble coat of arms without the right to do so? You sue them in the Court of Chivalry. [more inside]
Animals feared the hole.
Photographs of some historical & archeological artifacts
Michael Faraday's chemical chest, 19th century.
The end of Darwin's walking stick.
Galileo’s original telescope.
Napoleon’s toothbrush, c 1795 (with engraved "N“ at bottom).
Carved Olive Pit, China (1737).
Throne of Charlemagne (790). Until 1531, it served as the coronation throne the Kings of Germany, being used at a total of thirty-one coronations.
Ishtar Gate, ca 575 BC. Built on the orders of Nebuchadnezzar II, it was a gate to the inner city of Babylon.
Tolkien's service weapon from WWI.
Breastplate, North Peru - A.D. 1000/1470. [more inside]
The end of Darwin's walking stick.
Galileo’s original telescope.
Napoleon’s toothbrush, c 1795 (with engraved "N“ at bottom).
Carved Olive Pit, China (1737).
Throne of Charlemagne (790). Until 1531, it served as the coronation throne the Kings of Germany, being used at a total of thirty-one coronations.
Ishtar Gate, ca 575 BC. Built on the orders of Nebuchadnezzar II, it was a gate to the inner city of Babylon.
Tolkien's service weapon from WWI.
Breastplate, North Peru - A.D. 1000/1470. [more inside]
"Today, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home...."
Your balls are more beautiful than you think.
In an unlikely advertisement for Dove, a forensic artist draws men's testicles as they see themselves and then again as others see them. [sfw]
...until “the tiny errors became...so clear.”
Auditioning for the MET Orchestra: "Why is there so much pressure? In part, because the candidates must prepare an exhaustive list of some of the most important and demanding parts ever written for their instrument. For Boris’ audition, the list included a solo concerto plus eighteen excerpts from fourteen operas. Rob’s audition included even more excerpts from both the symphonic and operatic repertoire, in which he had to demonstrate his abilities on no fewer than nine different instruments." [more inside]
*=*
Actor/Astronaut/Asshole
(NSFW) Dan Bilzerian is ". . . a high-stakes gambler who drives an Italian supercar with a license plate that reads SUCK IT."
So *many* tiny, naked men.
"Objectifying men who objectify women in 3 easy steps:
1. Man sends crude opening line via internet.I bring you: Instagranniepants. Very NSFW.
2. Draw him naked.
3. Send portrait to lucky man and enjoy results."
Where is Laverne Cox?
This year's Time 100 List is out: conspicuously missing is trans activist and actor Laverne Cox, who had been consistently on the top of the poll. Many online are deeply unhappy, calling it a snub against trans women of colour (though not everyone agrees). Time has not responded; Laverne Cox is gracious and thankful.
Hugs and kisses.
In advance of the HBO release of "The Normal Heart", Frank Bruni writes about Larry Kramer in today's New York Times.
Lyttle Lytton 2014
Down the Rabbit Hole
Curious Alice is a 1971 anti-drug film produced by the National Institute for Mental Health. Meant to reach children 8-10 years old, the film didn't really get it's intended message across. You can read more about it at the National Archives.
Work Hard, Work Hard
"Work is a large component of many types of game. The professional chess player competing in a tournament game does not have the carefree, leisurely attitude sometimes implied by the term “playing”: she is performing massive amounts of cognitive work. Similarly with poker players or tennis players: they are not merely fooling around but labouring mightily. [...] But videogames seem more and more to resemble work in a different sense: working for the Man
."
[Previously]
Geo-cosmos, an interactive globe in 10 million pixels
Geo-Cosmos is one of the three interactive features that are part of the Tsunagari display at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, simply known as the Miraikan, in Tokyo. Geo-Cosmos consists of OLED squares configured a 6m (~19.7 ft) diameter spherical display of over 10 million pixels, which can map out clouds as captured by weather satellites, the expanding effects of the March 11 earthquake in Japan (Audience video), or pretty much anything you want to see on a spherical display.
should I eat this?
someone ate this is a food blog that celebrates the hilarity of cooking mishaps, bad food photography, and the grossest things people shove down their throats. [more inside]
Growing up without gendered pronouns
I didn’t know I was a boy until my younger brother called me one. -- Meredith Talusan talks about her childhood growing up in the Philippines without knowing her gender. (Trans 101.)
Donald Sterling has no place in our league.
Donald Sterling (previously), owner of the Clippers, recently had a conversation with his girlfriend, where he complained about the photo she posted to Instagram of her with a black man, who happened to be Magic Johnson. Reaction from players, former players, and coaches has been strong. From the owners? Not so much. The league? They want to wait and see. [more inside]
April 26
Lionpower!
Guaranteed Annual Income: a Canadian analysis
What the anti-poverty debate in Canada looks like. Conservative Senator Hugh Segal proposes a Guaranteed Annual Income: Scrapping Welfare. Jonathan Rhys Kesselman, a prominent Canadian economist and public policy analyst, analyzes the cost of three Guaranteed Annual Income options and concludes that they're not workable: A Dubious Anti-Poverty Strategy (full text). Armine Yalnizyan, an economist at the progressive Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, comments. [more inside]
Orphan Black is Back
Clones Are People Too: The Science and Science Fiction of BBC America’s Orphan Black. BBC America's science fiction series Orphan Black has returned for a second season, with Tatiana Maslany reprising her extraordinary performance playing half a dozen different clone characters. Meanwhile, in the real world, scientists have created cloned embryonic stem cells from the DNA of two adult humans. [Previously]
The Mind Readers
Thousands remain trapped between life and death. Three scientists are working to free them.
Another story from Mosaic Science via Longreads.
Extras:
A Measure of Consciousness
Proof of Life
Near-death Experience
Another story from Mosaic Science via Longreads.
Extras:
A Measure of Consciousness
Proof of Life
Near-death Experience
Gigantic, gigantic! A big, big -- um, wait a second... (possibly NSFW)
Apple's new iPhone commercial uses that ultra-catchy Pixies classic, "Gigantic". But... Do you think the producers of the commercial knew what the song is about? A calculated gamble that 98% of viewers would not? Clever marketing designed to create a stir? Or just plain cluelessness?
Why Choreographed Airplane Boarding Might be a Good Idea
Basically, it would be faster. The best part about the article is the short, embedded videos showing simulations of different boarding processes. There's the standard method, the Southwest pick-your-own-seat method, and the dehumanizing Steffen method.
Alien Found Buried in New Mexico Desert
The dig for the Atari dump in the Alamagordo, New Mexico desert started today. It didn't take long to find what they were looking for. Previously
It isn’t much, but you get quite a lot of vitamins in the malted milk.
From grilled kidneys to gruel to open faced sandwiches to sliced up grapefruits, photos of literature's most memorable meals.
NOT related to Monty Python's Argument Clinic
Argument Champion , a game that uses logical connections between words to pwn your opponent.
Is that a synth filling your apartment, or are you just glad to see me?
Moogfest is in full swing in Asheville, NC, and Moog Music just unveiled a faithful reproduction of Keith Emerson's original Moog Modular system. Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Lucky Man (SLYT) was one of the first professional recordings to feature a Moog synth. Apparently playing both the original and the facsimile simultaneously is a pretty orgasmic experience.
Deluxe Apartment In The Sky
The Tower of David skyscraper in Caracas was abandoned in 1994, and remained vacant until 2007 when squatters moved in. There is now a vibrant community living within its walls.
"DODGE THIS!"
First Class
How do you cram a bunch of strangers into an airborne metal tube, charge them a lot of money for the privilege, and get them to rave about it? Hire people like James Park to attract the one percent. [more inside]
Let's get smashed!
"Smashing...Live! was a live, orchestrated performance by the New Japan Philharmonic of many of the songs from the game Super Smash Bros. Melee. Unlike most other video game soundtracks, which are essentially recordings of game music, all of the pieces for Smashing...Live! are completely re-arranged and fully orchestrated." [SLYPlaylist] [more inside]
RIP Stone Crusher
1-0 lifetime record, defeated Daniel Bryan, all around badass Connor "Stone Crusher" Michalek, has passed away. Connor met Bryan around Christmas last year, where he put Bryan into the "No" Lock and made him tap out.
April 25
Surfing Superheroes to the Rescue
AJ Lindner, a 6-year-old fan of Spider Man and other superheroes, recently underwent surgery for brain cancer. Facing the start of chemotherapy, which requires him to keep out of the water, the avid young swimmer had one wish: he wanted to go surfing. But the waters off Long Island were too cold. After a plea for a child-sized wetsuit went out on Facebook, a “Justice League” of surfers went to work to fulfill the boy’s dream.
prioritize and continue to strengthen friendship with Joe and Dennis
MetaFilter is well acquainted with numbers stations (previously with previouslies inside of that). Well, they may just have migrated to YouTube. [more inside]
Whether @peace or angry at god, it's all hip hop
Roots Music....makes your guts hurt it sounds so good.
the Ben Miller Band...is one of the best. Treat yourself on this friday night. (SLYT) Roots rock is rock music that looks back to rock's origins in folk, blues and country music. It is particularly associated with the creation of hybrid sub-genres from the later 1960s including country rock and Southern rock, which have been seen as responses to the perceived excesses of dominant psychedelic and developing progressive rock. Because roots music (Americana) is often used to mean folk and world musical forms, roots rock is sometimes used in a broad sense to describe any rock music that incorporates elements of this music. (WiKi) Americana
is "contemporary music that incorporates elements of various American roots music styles, including country, roots-rock, folk, bluegrass, R&B and blues, resulting in a distinctive roots-oriented sound that lives in a world apart from the pure forms of the genres upon which it may draw. While acoustic instruments are often present and vital, Americana also often uses a full electric band. [more inside]
"Except that next season four of them are Cylons."
Parks & Recreation shook up the show's status quo in their season finale. Producer Mike Schur discusses next season - likely the show's last. Alan Sepinwall's review of the two-part finale.
It's Chocolate Milk For Me!
Elvis Costello and The Attractions on tour in 1978, go grocery shopping with Geraldo Rivera.
Carry on.
Carry on.
GATAACGCGGATGCGTAT
The Animated Genome is a spirited 5-minute film that uses graphics to explain the makeup of your genome and how it affects life and health. It's part of Genome: Unlocking Life's Code, an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History.
Putting a bug in your gear
Justin Gershenson-Gates makes insects and spiders from mechanical watch parts. The Verge shows more pictures including one of a piece under construction, more photos are on Inhabitat, there are yet more photos at Twisted Sifter, and the artist has a personal website.
Some might ask "What's the point then?"
How to drink all night and (mostly) not get drunk, advice from Jim Koch, co-founder and chairman of the Boston Beer Company.
Bigger than a breadboard II
Following on the heels of Phonebloks, a Google/Motorola formed a design group called Project Ara. The Verge recently interviewed Paul Eremenko, the project lead, about progress made towards modularization of mobile phone components, overcoming engineering issues, and the group assigning itself an ambitious timetable to succeed in delivering a sellable product within two years, or disbanding.
No Exit
Wired's Gideon Lewis-Kraus reports from the trenches of the Silicon Valley "ecosystem". [more inside]
I got lipstick stamps on my passport, I think I need a new one.
Which countries have visa-free access to more countries than others? Ranked at the top with 173 visa-free countries (out of a possible 218) are Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, which all share the Schengen visa policy; dead last is Afghanistan, which only has visa-free access to 28 countries. (Not included in the list were places like Wonderland, Neverland, Hell, Utopia, the Unconscious, or Pangea.) Regardless of nationality, though, it can still be devillishly difficult to get visas for some countries. With the advent of RFID passports, some countries are doing away with visa labels or passport stamps, so collect as many as you can and take a look at them so you can figure out what they say about the issuing country or even turn them into art (or ad campaigns).
Point, counter point, point, even more point
Six ways to stop your child from being brainswashed by mainstream rap.
Why the 6 ways...got it all wrong.
Why hipsters need to stop writing about hip hop culture.
Hipsters can't ruin hip hop.
Two fatal Air India crashes on Mont Blanc: jewels and conspiracies
On November 3, 1950, an Air India flight crashed into Rochers de la Tournette (Google maps), a face of Mont Blanc, killing all 48 people on board. A second Air India flight crashed at nearly the same location on January 24, 1966, killing the 106 passengers and 11 people in the flight crew. It is generally assume that the second crash was due to the pilot mis-judging their location based on faulty equipment and limited visual cues (embedded PDF), leading to a premature descent and the death of the 117 people on board. Also on board were 100 precious emeralds, sapphires and rubies that were recently discovered, but have been kept out of sight of the public and journalists, possibly to allow the Mayor of Chamonix and climber who found the jewels to split their loot. Then there is the conspiracy theory that the second crash was caused by a collision with an Italian aircraft that had gone missing the same day, with the goal of killing Dr. Homi Bhabha, the father on India's nuclear program. This theory is supported by Daniel Roche, a property consultant by trade who has spent years collecting a ton and a half of objects from the crash sites (French article; Google auto-translation). And of course, there's the theory that the CIA was trying to silence Dr. Bhabha as he was on his way to "stir up more trouble" in Vienna.
&what;
Title IX and the Clery Act
Yesterday, twenty three Columbia University students filed a federal lawsuit, alleging that the school "allows accused perpetrators of sexual assault to remain on campus, has too-lenient sanctions for perpetrators, discourages victims from reporting assault and denies accommodations to students with mental health disabilities (which they say result from their attacks)." The complaint is the first of its kind, linking Title IX and Clery complaints with alleged violations of Title II, part of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which provides that schools must provide accommodations based on disability status. [more inside]
Listen, we all know what the obvious joke is here, so
A pregnant woman's risk of experiencing pre-eclampsia or miscarriage is significantly reduced by long-term exposure to her partner's semen. Especially if she swallows it. [more inside]
Washington 1st State to Lose NCLB Waiver
No Money, Mo' Problems. "School districts throughout Washington will have to redirect roughly $40 million in federal funding toward private tutoring efforts next year, instead of using the Title I funds to pay for district programs for low-income students."
No big deal, right? Washington was probably the only school to even have a waiver for No Child Left Behind, you're thinking.
Nope.
Washington was one of forty three states and the District of Columbia that have federal waivers from NCLB.
Kate Tromble, the director of government relations for the Education Trust, said revoking the waiver was the right thing to do. "It is unfortunate because Washington students are going to bear the burden of the failure of adults' in the state."
NCLB previously.
Wow, are those real?
For forty years only cads bathed
"Whatever may be the merits of the spring fashions for 1978, it would appear to have been universal (to speak of the future in the past tense), for both these young gallants are dressed precisely alike. Of the three remaining designs, that of 1984 appears to us to exhibit the contour of the lady's figure most generously, and to have certain agreeable and distinctive traits of its own which are not only lacking in the gentleman's apparel, but are absent from the inane conception which appears to have obtained vogue five years later." -- Future Dictates of Fashion, as imagined in an 1893 issue of Strand Magazine. Click on the illustrations to enlarge them. (In general, Marcus Rowland's Forgotten Futures website is a treasure trove of Victoriana and steampunk related material.)
Spinning Steel into Gold
Vikings vs Creepers
The entire country of Denmark has been recreated in Minecraft. The Danish Geodata Agency has released a 1:1 model of the country of Denmark in Minecraft, complete with buildings and roads. The full model is made up of approximately 4000 billion blocks and takes up a hefty 1TB of hard drive space (first link contains Google Translated links to the agency's website where you can download the map in blocks of 10 km x 10 km).
"Otherwise...it would be unfair on the molester."
His Career Will Be Absolutely Fine: On Telling People About Being Molested
People who have no vested interest in your father’s job, other than as citizens of a country where he pays taxes, will suddenly be very interested in your father figure’s job. Your sister’s friend will say, “She’s going to ruin your dad’s career.” You’re not even sure she knows what he does. Other things people will say. “These are very serious accusations. This kind of thing can ruin a person’s career.” “You should be very careful what you say because stuff like this can end a person’s career.” “You know this could hurt his career?” It will hurt you, because none of these people give a shit about your career.A devastating and beautifully written article.
April 24
Here's to you, Shamus!
Supposedly verified real names battled it out in a fight to win the title of Name of the Year. Link.
That Time H.G. Wells Interviewed Stalin
Wells: I am very much obliged to you, Mr Stalin, for agreeing to see me. I was in the United States recently. I had a long conversation with President Roosevelt and tried to ascertain what his leading ideas were. Now I have come to ask you what you are doing to change the world . . . Stalin: Not so very much.
Happy Sad Songs and Sad Happy Songs, by The Gregory Brothers
Sex Advice From An Uncomfortable Guy
Volume 1 So there you are, having sex, on top of a guy, and you’re probably naked, and that’s, you know, that’s great. But now you’re wondering how to move around up there. Well, this one time I had sex once, and I was on top. I would get tired and fall across the body of the woman I was plowing love into. I got a cramp and, trying to get off, dug my elbows into her rib cage, which made her scream in pain. I thought that was an orgasm, so then I orgasmed, and then it was over. I blew it big time there. Just don’t do that. [more inside]
Who is that man?
Perhaps you've seen a shorter version of Heineken's commercial "The Odyssey" on television. If you haven't seen the full-length piece, or if you haven't watched closely, you may not realize that the lead role is played by 20 different men, each "legendary" in his own way. Heineken has created an interactive version of the short advertising film, allowing you to click on each non-actor to see his casting interview. (Or you can just let it play and watch each man in his turn.) [total time ~48m] [more inside]
“Why in the world would someone be doing this with a rabbit?”
You've heard of dog and horse shows, but are you familiar with rabbit shows? Rabbit Fever is a coming-of-age story that follows six competitors as they strive to win the top title at the National American Rabbit Convention - an event that draws more than 20,000 rabbits in one building, the largest mass of rabbits in the world. While adult members of the rabbit habit compete for BEST IN SHOW, the teenage enthusiasts quest for an even more coveted honor in the rabbit community - Rabbit King and Queen!
The unparalleled delights of escaping notice
Black Saturday
It is the mid 80's. You are a superfan of old fashioned southern style wrasslin. You are a loyal viewer of NWA World Champtionship Wrestling on TBS Superstation to the point where you curse the Braves for interrupting your treasured NWA stars on the mat. You HATE WWF, with all its glitter and glamour and Hollywood aspirations. That hatred is personified in Vince McMahon Jr., a smarmy troll of a man who is pushing his WWF promotion ever eastward, westward, and worldwide. Imagine your horror when you turn on your television and tune to TBS on Saturday, July 14th and see this. [more inside]
Kowloon Walled City
The Kowloon Walled City was once the most densely populated place on earth, a teeming hive of interlinking high-rises that few dared to enter but 33,000 people called home. Meet the people. Get lost exploring the alleyways. Learn the history.
Now you can haz cheezeburger
Please Let This Take Hold In The U.S.
The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities
Travels in the empty cities of World of Warcraft.
The Story of Starsound
Manuscript Scholars, to the MeFi Van!
Identify mystery text, win $1000. "The collection of Homer editions in the Special Collections Research Center – the Bibliotheca Homerica Langiana(BHL) – includes a copy of the rare 1504 edition of Homer’s Odyssey that contains, in Book 11 (narrating Odysseus’s journey into Hades) handwritten annotations in a strange and as-yet unidentified script. This marginalia appears only in the pages of Book 11 of the Odyssey; nowhere else in the volume. Although the donor of the BHL is suspicious that this odd script is a form of 19th-century shorthand (likely French), he acknowledges that this hypothesis remains unsupported by any evidence offered to date." And he's willing to pay for that evidence.
American Museum of Natural Unlocks 1000's Of Old Photos
The American Museum of Natural History will unlock thousands of old photos from their vault, they announced this week. The new online image database (officially launching on Monday the 28th) will take you behind the curtain, delivering images that span the 145-year history of the Museum. The collection features over 7,000 images—many never before seen by the public—and includes photos, rare book illustrations, drawings, notes, letters, art, and Museum memorabilia. They say "it’s like stepping into a time machine and seeing a long ago NYC or just catching glimpses of ghosts from a forgotten world now seen only by researchers and Museum staff." Previously. [more inside]
The Faulkner Truthers
"For good or ill, the public has been taught to believe that academics are held to a more rigorous standard even than journalists—the assumption being that a scholarly book is grilled within an inch of its life, with all potential inaccuracies headed off by the peer review process. That it may not always be the case is the most interesting, not to say alarming, aspect of the case of Ledgers of History: How many academic books are prepared and marketed with little attempt to corroborate their contents? And how easily might the claims of such an unsubstantiated book become accepted as 'fact'—and as 'history'?"
A Dangerous Dance of Frost and Flame:
Higher self-perceived attractiveness increases support for inequality
"seeing yourself as physically attractive leads you to believe you belong in a higher social class," according to a recent study by Peter Belmi and Margaret Neale of Stanford Graduate School of Business. Through a series of five studies, they found that "self-perceived attractiveness shaped people's social class perceptions, which in turn, influenced how people responded to inequality and social hierarchies." For example, higher self-perceived attractiveness "reduced donations to a movement advocating for social equality," while lower self-perceived attractiveness led to "greater rejection of inequality and social hierarchies."
Hygge, Danish for cozy, comfort, community, warmth and so much more
"Hygge" is a Danish word often associated with being cozy in winter, with candles, family and friends, but even if Christmas is the high hygge season, there is hygge in warmer months, too. Pronounced "hoo-gah" or "hYOOguh" or something like that, it may be as hard for non-Danes to pronounce as it is to define, but one thing is for sure: money can't buy you hygge (an academic article on Danish middle-class consumption, egalitarianism, and the sanctity of inner space, by Jeppe Trolle Linnet).
the endgame to every woman's story
"Of course women can have it all. Nor is the question should women have it all. The question is, must women have it all." The AV Club on Parks and Recreation's Leslie Knope, feminism, and a problematic sitcom trend. (Contains major spoilers for this season.) [more inside]
"Forensic Retrocomputing"
PITTSBURGH—A multi-institutional team of new-media artists, computer experts, and museum professionals have discovered a dozen previously unknown experiments by Andy Warhol (BFA, 1949) on aging floppy disks from 1985. [more inside]
*The New York Yankees were removed to make this map possible.
Up Close on Baseball's Borders is a detailed, zoomable interactive map which uses data from Facebook to present the team preferences of baseball fandom in the United States. Around the end of March, Facebook had released a map using the same data which despite being touted as most accurate ever, had significant problems. The most notable of these issues was a colorshift introduced as the main graphic went viral, rendering the map illegible. [more inside]
We're looking for someone with character
Soft skills, such as "grit" and "creativity," are being increasingly considered in school admissions and job recruiting while standardized test scores and knowledge are being de-emphasized. But can you measure what they're looking for, or even gauge it holistically? [more inside]
Everybody dies
Ken Tanaka and David Ury’s ‘Everybody Dies’. A book about death.
Avoiding analysis paralysis
Anyone can see the road that they walk on is paved in gold
The 1998 hit "The Way" by Fastball was based on the real-life disappearance of an elderly couple in Texas: The song’s lyrics -- about an elderly couple who disappears from their home, finding immortality on the road -- seem sweet. That is, until "shadows" on the highway are referenced. The promises that the unnamed couple will never go home, grow old, or be hungry again seem a great deal less reassuring. Perhaps, the listener thinks, the "immortality" they found on the open road is purely allegorical.
I didn't ask.
Defiant rancher and conservative hero Clive Bundy said in a NYTimes interview, “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro”. You'll totally believe what happens next. [more inside]
Help... ow... Stuck... ow... In... oh man... Dark...
Make Them Visible
The New York City Rescue Mission set up a social experiment with a hidden camera to see if people would notice their loved ones posing as homeless people as they walked past. [more inside]
Net neutrality "all but dead"
The Federal Communications Commission has announced that they would propose new rules allowing content providers to pay ISPs for priority "fast lanes," reversing their earlier position and effectively rejecting the principle of net neutrality held since the earliest days of the internet. The full set of proposed rules will be announced on May 15. [more inside]
The Quest for Randomness
Can you ever be reasonably sure that something is random, in the same sense you can be reasonably sure something is not random (for example, because it consists of endless nines)? Even if a sequence looked random, how could you ever rule out the possibility that it had a hidden deterministic pattern? And what exactly do we mean by “random,” anyway?
April 23
#000000 and #FFFFFF
Harmonized data sets with varying sample sizes....
The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest. The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction. Comparing income by country. About the data.
How Hip-Hop Failed Black America
The Root's ?uestlove on the invisibilizing of Black culture... "...you can point to this as proof of hip-hop’s success. The concept travels. But where has it traveled? The danger is that it has drifted into oblivion. The music originally evolved to paint portraits of real people and handle real problems at close range — social contract, anyone? — but these days, hip-hop mainly rearranges symbolic freight on the black starliner. Containers on the container ship are taken from here to there — and never mind the fact that they may be empty containers. Keep on pushin’ and all that, but what are you pushing against?" [more inside]
"For male action heroes, it's an arms race now."
Dying Of The Light
"These people want to believe in a false reality, they want to believe in conspiracy theories, they want to believe that their government is evil, they want to believe that the biblical Anti-Christ sits in the White House and that the so-called End Times are upon us, they want to believe that the President is plotting their demise because that justifies their hatred and bigotry and their miserable unhappiness."
Jim Wright, retired naval officer, occasional military intelligence consultant, craftsman and blogger, illustrates the process by which the media exploits lazy critical thinking to create a false narrative that alienates us from one another.
Identity Dominance: The U.S. Military’s Biometric War in Afghanistan
As part of its effort to combat insurgent forces interspersed within an indigenous population, the use of biometrics has become a central component of the U.S. war effort. Having expanded heavily since its introduction during the war in Iraq, biometric identification and tracking of individuals has become a core mission in Afghanistan with initiatives sponsored by the U.S. and Afghan governments seeking to obtain the biometric identifiers of nearly everyone in the country. [more inside]
Thirty Errol Morris movies that can be streamed
Inside, please find a list of twenty-eight movies, TV episodes, and short subjects by Errol Morris and two movies about Errol Morris, all of which can be streamed, along with some short descriptions of their content. [more inside]
"Black beauty. Dark beauty."
Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong'o has landed the cover of People's annual World's Most Beautiful issue. In February, she gave a moving speech (transcript) about how media depictions of "beauty" affected her. Why Lupita Nyong'o's 'People' Cover Is So Significant.
Hippocrat and Midas walk into a clinic.
UC OKs paying surgeon $10 million in whistleblower-retaliation case. 'The settlement ends a case brought by the ex-head of UCLA's orthopedic surgery department, who says the medical school allowed doctors to take industry payments that may have compromised patient care.' 'In 2012, the surgeon sued UCLA, the UC regents, fellow surgeons and senior university officials, alleging they failed to act on his complaints about widespread conflicts of interest and later retaliated against him for speaking up.'[SL LATimes, use privacy settings in browser] [more inside]
“Inaccurate maps are valuable aids.”
Made for French television to promote a map exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris Raúl Ruiz's (wiki imdb) Zig-Zag is a good place to begin one's trek through the Chilean artists work. [more inside]
"Let’s stop telling Adam and Steve jokes."
"We’ve run off at the mouth, said things we shouldn’t have said. We’ve run around like a peacock all over the platform. We have said things because we were playing to the home team, and they all liked our act. On this issue, nobody likes our act, except the redneck factor." That was Pastor Greg Belser speaking at the Southern Baptist Convention's first ever conference on human sexuality currently being held in Nashville. As promising as those remarks are, however, Slate notes that the SBC still has a long way to go.
Mery Talys and Quicke Answeres
Shakespeare Jest-Books: Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed to Have Been Used by Shakespeare.
Dedicated "to those who have held the bag on a Snipe hunt"
Published in 1910, William T. Cox's Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts is one of the earliest written accounts describing fabulous beasts of lumberjack lore, together called "fearsome critters." Read of tales of the peculiar wapaloosie, the spiky, hairless hodag that swallows trees whole, and the bizarrely violent splinter cat, which smashes trees with its head until it finds food. When you've been there a spell, take a gander through Paul Bunyan's Natural History, in which the goofang fish swims backwards to keep water out of its eyes and the teakettler walks backwards, nostrils steaming. For more harrowing yarns on yesterday's monsters, thumb through Henry Tryon's Fearsome Critters, which closes with a tantalizing snipet about an eternally elusive bird.
3 levels of lasers. It's rescanning the udder and looking for the teats
Something strange is happening at farms in upstate New York. The cows are milking themselves. Rise of the Milkbots.
“So… do you… do you suppose we should… talk about money?”
Introducing Sociology: Tim Kreider's influential 1999 essay (previously) on how Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut uses sex and infidelity to cover up a story of greed and murder by the elite gets a brand new afterward by the author to introduce a new site for his non-fiction writing, TimKreider.com
The Most Dangerous Mission...The Most Daring Escape...Behind Enemy Lines
VHS Cover Junkie showcases examples of the now lost art of the home videotape cover. [SLTumbr]
Inside the giant panda research centre
Photographer Ami Vitale was allowed exclusive access into the Wolong National Nature Reserve managed by the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda as it trains pandas to be released into the wild. [more inside]
Truception
The Truman Show, a critically (yt) acclaimed movie from 1998, is set to become a TV series. [h/t to mwhybark, ahere.]
ROMEO: I WILL NEVER LOVE AGAIN
HBO content to be available via Amazon Prime
"Amazon and HBO on Wednesday announced a first-of-its-kind deal that will make HBO content available to Amazon Prime subscribers. ... Content covered in the new deal includes The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Eastbound & Down, Family Tree, Treme, Band of Brothers, John Adams, and early seasons of Boardwalk Empire and True Blood." No Game of Thrones yet, however. Read more here. And here.
"Whip out your gun and follow that car." ~ Vladimir Nabokov
Dmitri Nabokov, Car Guy [Part One], Dmitri Nabokov, Car Guy [Part Two]: Dmitri Nabokov, son of Vladimir: his father’s work (Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada, etc.), and cars. [more inside]
36 ventilators, 4.7m³ packing chips
Interior Design
Curiosity led me to cut my collection of golf balls in half to see what the cores looked like. To my surprise, what I found inside inspired me to consider that I could discover, in the unlikeliest of places, elegant formal qualities and surprising metaphorical possibilities.
Bounty Mutiny
"If an NHS trust proposed today that it was going to introduce Viagra sales reps into men's genitourinary wards, or reps for walking aids to orthopaedic wards, the very least you'd expect would be some stout resistance. It is a measure of the strength of the association between "motherhood" and "buying stuff" that the presence of commercial representatives on maternity wards has been tolerated for so long."[more inside]
U.S. Supreme Court upholds Michigan's ban on affirmative action
The U.S. Supreme court has decided to uphold Michigan's ban on affirmative action. Here is a
a brief summery of the history behind the case. The court has made their opinions available
here. Also,
how states with affirmative action bans have fared.
There are options, so long as you choose ours.
It's simple. Just say Yes. Campbell Newman’s LNP government has asked the residents of Queensland to help balance their budget. Strong Choices is an online survey giving respondents the opportunity to suggest reduction targets by selecting taxation or reduction in services or benefits. Problem is, there doesn't seem to be much choice. If you’d like to play along, you’ll need a Queensland postcode. I chose Mooloolaba.
Danish blue
Denmark has a demographic problem. The birthrate is at a 27 year low and not enough babies are being born to support an aging population. ?It's a matter of some urgency then to get Danes to procreate more, but how? Send them on holiday to get it on.
The Bard's Beehive
Shakespeare is known for his brilliant use of language and rhetorical imagery. Now two antiquarian booksellers believe they have found his dictionary. The Bibliophagist has been keeping an updated survey of responses to the announcement.
The good that men do (sometimes) lives after them
Today is the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare's birth - "...The centenary of Shakespeare’s birth fell soon after the theatres reopened with the Restoration of the monarchy, following the period when the Puritans had closed them down for the duration of the Civil War. His plays formed a staple part of the repertoire, but those of Beaumont and John Fletcher were performed more frequently. Shakespeare only pulled ahead of the pack in the Georgian era. It was around his 200th anniversary, under the auspices of the great actor David Garrick, that he took on his status as National Poet and exemplar of artistic genius...."
More here
Guys don’t remember what chicks wear
"It’s like magnolia paint in rented accommodations. The tune is turgid. It’s like someone going 'la la la la la' in the shower. You don’t feel there’s a strong voice, and when I say voice, I don’t mean Chris De Burgh’s voice. I mean something that’s been lived. It’s like a soup from Walmart." Steve Coogan, on why he hates 'Lady in Red'.
The Moral Question Of Our Time: Can We Share The Planet?
UN Climate Report: We Must Focus On 'Decarbonization', and It Won't Wreck the Economy - "The basic message is simple: We share a planet. Let's start acting like it." [more inside]
April 22
Also, you will get your period soon.
Forrest Park Middle Schooler Melissa Bell reads her Ashton Kutcher fanfic for the Spring Talent Show. (SLYT) [more inside]
the sky's the limit
Disney Dconstructed (EDM)
Blue sky above, black death below, instrumental music between
Blue Sky Black Death are a duo of hip-hop/electronic producers from Seattle who took their group name from an old skydiving term for the yin/yang balance of a beautiful blue sky above and the possibility of death below. They have worked with a number of rappers (Cam'ron and P.A.P.I. (Nore), Hell Razah, Jean Grae, and Nacho Picasso [NSFW lyrics]), but they show that their music can stand on its own, "wringing strangely affecting emotional grandeur from the rudiments of sound ... [relying] less on glitch or drone and more on starry-eyed orchestral vastness," as heard in (the extended version of) Noir, and so much more of their discography that is on Bandcamp and their YouTube account.
A penny for your thoughts? OK, make it a nickle...
Across Canada a beloved and familiar face is silently disappearing. Everyday transactions in shopping centers and banks are slowly feeding a systematized extinction unnoticed by most. The object of destruction: the Canadian penny. -- via PBS NewsHour
Hurt Locker: The Musical
Neil Patrick Harris is getting glowing reviews for his turn in the title role in Hedwig And The Angry Inch, now playing on Broadway. But wait, why is "internationally ignored song stylist" Hedwig even playing Broadway in the first place? Because the Belasco Theater was suddenly available because Hurt Locker: The Musical opened and closed on the same night. In fact, the floor of the theater is found to be littered with discarded Playbill magazines for the failed production. [more inside]
sudo mknod /dev/netcat c 245 0; cat /dev/netcat | ogg123 -
netcat are a Seattle based free improvisation group that have released their album, Cycles Per Instruction as a Linux kernel module. [more inside]
former plantations that have been turned into bed-and-breakfast resorts
Why Aren't Stories Like '12 Years a Slave' Told at Southern Plantation Museums?
Evil is not a word you hear, though, when you visit one of the hundreds of plantation-house museums dotting the South. Instead, these historic sites usually lure tourists with their stunning architecture and wealth of antiques, as the privileged members of the planter-class denied themselves nothing. They had the finest china and silver of the 18th and 19th centuries; European-made furniture like settees and tea caddies; the most expensive rugs, drapes, linens, and clothing that money could buy. Even the toys and kitchen utensils offer a glimpse into the privileged life in the antebellum period, and tours play this aspect up, connecting these objects emotionally to the stories of the white planters. Many of these museums let visitors walk away without considering that all of these exquisite things were accumulated through the violence and forced labor of slavery.[more inside]
Flying RC Aircraft Carrier
Flying RC Aircraft Carrier , Last year we saw the first launch of an RC Aircraft from an RC Carrier. Now we have the first launch AND landing of an RC Aircraft on a Flying RC Carrier.
A Dog Who Has a Second Head Where His Butt Should Be
The behavior of a tethered helium balloon in a forward-moving van
The van goes forward, the balloon goes--wait a second. But truly, the cool balloon physics is the least terrific thing about this video. From Smarter Every Day. [slyt | via] Previously and previouslier
Flappy48
So you can get 4096 in 2048, and you're an old hand at Flappy Bird, but can you beat... Flappy48? (requires unity)
Racial and gender biases in faculty mentoring
"Faculty at private schools were significantly more likely to discriminate against women and minorities than faculty at public schools. And faculty in fields that were very lucrative were also more likely to discriminate. So there was very little discrimination in the humanities. There was more discrimination among faculty at the natural sciences. And there was a lot of discrimination among the faculty at business schools." (link to NPR story).
Katherine Milkman and colleagues conducted a field experiment in which professors were contacted by fictional prospective doctoral students and found that "faculty ignored requests from women and minorities at a higher rate than requests from White males, particularly in higher-paying disciplines and private institutions."
InBloom wilts under privacy heat
Controversial education tech company InBloom has shut down over student data privacy concerns. Backed with $100 million in grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, InBloom quickly announced nine states (CO, DE, GA, IL, KY, LA, MA, NC, NY) as partners, with more than 2.7 million students enrolled, with the goal of using big data to direct education emphasis and other decisions. With a recent decision by New York state to halt participation in any project involving storing student data in the way InBloom had planned (and the deletion of any such data already stored), all nine states had either put data sharing plans with InBloom on hold, made them voluntary, or pulled out completely. [more inside]
America’s Everyday Black-Market Economy
Your Friendly Neighborhood Drug Dealer (SLThe Atlantic)
What would Gregory XII have done?
Orson Wells' 1955 Podcast
The BBC put together a series of television commentaries from Orson Welles, "Orson Wells' Sketchbook" none of which need more than his then slightly unfamiliar face (without, he underscores, the usual false nose he wears for roles), his unmistakable voice, and his illustrations — taken, literally, from his sketchbook. In these six fifteen-minute broadcasts, which originally aired in 1955, Welles talks about not just the inauspicious beginnings of his illustrious working life but his experiences with the critics, the police, John Barrymore and Harry Houdini, the infamous radio production of War of the Worlds , and bullfighting Playlist here.
Vinum et musica laetificant cor
YouTube user Frank Huang posts full live sets of metal/grindcore, many from Brooklyn's St. Vitus bar, including: Pig Destroyer, Kylesa (@ Santos), Whores., KEN MODE, Sleep (@ Hellfest), Pelican, Deafheaven, Cobalt, and naturally Saint Vitus.
"We are resilient; we never gave up."
How 38 year old Meb Keflezighi became the first American man in more than 30 years to win the Boston Marathon. [more inside]
In the not-too-distant future?
"I've talked to a bunch of fans about their lives and what MST3K means to them. I'm overwhelmed by how people took to that show. It really affected them. I thought, if enough people still love it, maybe we can bring it back."
In today's WIRED article "The Definitive Oral History of a TV Masterpiece," Mystery Science Theater 3000 creator Joel Hodgson announced his intention to reboot the series online with a new host...this spring. (The lede is buried all the way at the end of the article.) [more inside]
"lasting friendship is the source of the deepest happiness"
"I often think about my long-ago friend, and I wonder what happened to her," wrote children's author Eric Carle in his book "Friends", published last year, inspired by his friendship, as a 3-year-old, with a young girl growing up in Syracuse, New York. He did not know her name, just that that she was the daughter of Italian immigrants. Last Sunday, over 80 years after he last saw her, he and his long-lost friend, Florence Ciani Trovato, reconnected.
Dorkiness fits the narrative
The NBA season has ended, and the playoffs have begun, causing a figurative ton of internet ink to be spilled on predictions and power rankings. But one word in particular seems to keep popping up in articles to describe white players like Steve Novak, Cody Zeller, Mason Plumlee, Andrew Bogut, and Josh McRoberts: "Dorky." And the writers that use it are inevitably white. Triangle Offense's Khalid Saalam (previously) thinks they should probably cut that out.
In the end, all one ever experiences is one's self.
Cobalt reunited and will be recording a new album. Who is Cobalt? Cobalt is a American black metal band consisting of Phil McSorley and Erik Wunder. They have only played live a dozen or so times, largely because McSorley is often abroad, where he serves as a Sergeant in the US Army. Not coincidentally, they refer to their form of metal as 'War Metal'. [more inside]
“Pawnee is literally the best town in the country.”
A Browser Extension That Replaces "Literally" With "Figuratively". Built by a programmer named Mike Walker, it’s an extension for Google’s Chrome browser that replaces the word “literally” with “figuratively” on sites and articles across the Web, with deeply gratifying results. Previously.
"Everybody dies someday - At least I saw Provence first"
"For most of my life my everyday choices were based on the assumption that I could not trust other people. I thought it was my job to foresee and prevent all harms from befalling me. [...] My life has been better since I've accepted two simple facts. ONE: everybody dies (sorry). TWO: I would like to live a little first." -- Don't let fear stop you from traveling, a cautionary comic by Natalie Nourigat, part of her webcomic/travel blog about living in France for a year. You may know Nourigat from her Oregon Book Award nominated autobio college comic Between Gears.
How did the clothes you're wearing get to you?
The Shirt on Your Back. Guardian writers trace the human cost of the Bangladeshi garments industry in video, pictures and words. (SL Guardian interactive documentary)
April 21
Famous Names, Lost Interviews
blankonblank.org takes unheard interviews with famous musicians, innovators, authors, Hollywood stars and cultural icons and animates them. Interviews include everyone from Johnny Cash to Carol Burnett, Tupac Shakur to Farrah Fawcett, and Tim Gunn to Al Jaffee. blankonblank.org previously and previously. (Most interviews are ~5 minutes long.)
The Missing Borges
The Missing Borges "Seven years ago, a stolen first edition of Borges’s early poems was returned to Argentina’s National Library. But was it the right copy?"
Mali's Ancient Manuscripts
Bonfire of the Humanities. "Nobody goes to Timbuktu, right? Patrick Symmes did, to discover what happened when jihadi rebels set out to burn one of the world’s finest collections of ancient manuscripts. Bouncing around by truck, boat, and boots, he got an intimate look at West Africa’s most mythic locale." [Via] [more inside]
American Football reunites; emo revival over!
American Football, the quintessential emo/math-rock band of the 90's, has announced their first two shows in 15 years. [more inside]
VIPUKIRVES™ has an ingenious design.
Oh God, we don't have to build a football field now, do we?
That's right folks, Field of Dreams is 25 years old. W.P. Kinsella reflects on how his novel "Shoeless Joe" was adapted into the timeless baseball/father-son movie, including how he made peace with the studio changing the name of J.D. Salinger's character. [more inside]
The deadliest day on Everest
The Value of a Sherpa Life - Grayson Schaffer reports on Friday's Everest avalanche that claimed the lives of 16 Sherpas in an instant. "And, yes" he says, "there is something that needs to be done about it." In the wake of this devastating tragedy, many Sherpas are threatening a strike and the government is mulling total closure for the upcoming season, which has 335 permits in the queue. Footage of the avalanche. Previously, in The Disposable Man: A Western History of Sherpas on Everest, Scaheffer spoke of the high risks, low pay and shocking mortality rate: "... no service industry in the world so frequently kills and maims its workers for the benefit of paying clients." [more inside]
You won't believe what happened next. Because you lack faith.
Please curb your dog.
The gutters in San Francisco's Buena Vista Park are made out of old headstones. Placed by the WPA program back in the late 1930s, the stones are said to be broken headstones and markers from unclaimed graves.
Pro-DPRK Americans revealed
White Power and apocalyptic cults- Pro-DPRK Americans revealed: An in-depth examination by Nate Thayer of the history, ideologies and personalities of American pro-North Korea political organizations.
Hashima Island: in 1974 the coal ran out, but the ghosts remained
A few miles off the coast of Japan lies "Battleship Island," or Gunkanjima (軍艦島), the Japanese nickname for Hashima Island, due to its resemblance to the Japanese Tosa battleship. The island was formerly a densely populated coal mining town, purchased by Mitsubishi in 1890, but by the 1960s the coal was running out, and in 1974 the island was quickly vacated as Mitsubishi offered residents jobs elsewhere. Now, the island is an urban explorer's dream, though the island is not completely open to the public for tours. Last year, Google trekker walked the island, providing a virtual tour of the island. And if the roughly 40 year old ruins aren't foreboding enough, Bryan James put together a Chrome experiment called Hashima Island: Forgotten World, based on the Google maps tour of the site.
Ditch the 10,000 hour rule!
Obsessive practice isn't the key to success. Spaced, interleaved, varied practice is.
"As far as I’m concerned this poster should be on display in the Louvre"
Psychedelic Gold
Comedians talk about psychedelic drugs:
00:10 - Doug Stanhope
05:07 - Joe Rogan
07:56 - Bill Hicks
13:22 - George Carlin
15:34 - Duncan Trussell
00:10 - Doug Stanhope
05:07 - Joe Rogan
07:56 - Bill Hicks
13:22 - George Carlin
15:34 - Duncan Trussell
Space: The Final Demoscene
Revision Demoparty was held this past Easter weekend. It's considered to be a rebirth and spirital heir of the Breakpoint Demoparty, and, arguably the flagship "Demoscene" event of the year. A lot of groups and individuals bring their A game to show off the most inspiring, technically-intense and memorable demos to the world. Every year has highlights and it's a big deal when a brand new platform gets a demo, but this year, the wildest demo went in an entirely unexpected direction: space. [more inside]
Saving The Bay
Why Are Twenty Far-Away States Trying To Block The Cleanup Of The Chesapeake Bay? After 30 years of attempts, a serious initiative to save the bay exists in the form of an EPA-led plan that limits the amount of agricultural nutrients entering the bay. This pollution causes the "dead zones" in the bay, which are so low in oxygen virtually no animal life can survive.
A group of twenty-one Attorneys General, including the AG of Alaska and Wyoming, "argue that the cleanup plan raises serious concerns about states’ rights, and they worry that if the plan is left to stand, the EPA could enact similar pollution limits on watersheds such as the Mississippi." Their actions are in line with the wishes of The American Farm Bureau, a powerful agricultural interest group. [more inside]
Nobody lives here.
Nik Freeman has created a map, based on census data, to illustrate the 47% of the United States where nobody lives.
Beats Unraveled
In Boiler Room's Beats Unraveled video series, Binkbeats (previously) performs live versions of electronic music songs that he loves. [more inside]
Gorme xoloo noqoney? -- When did we become livestock?
In early April, hundreds of Somali speaking Kenyans were arrested in a supposed anti-terrorist sweep in Eastleigh, Nairobi after an alleged Al Shabaab attack left six dead. The people arrested were taken to a local football stadium and kept in cages, unless they could afford to bribe the police. For The New Inquiry Aaron Bady uses Kenyan and other news sources to explain the background to these razzias, why Somalis are often the victim of police extortion and how this impacts Kenya as a whole. [more inside]
Why and When is Easter?
Easter is the most famous movable feast in our calendar. Its date appears to change unpredictably from year to year, and different branches of Christianity disagree on when exactly it should be marked. In some years, like 2014, western Christians and the Eastern churches (such as the Greek and Russian communities) celebrate Easter on the same Sunday – but that is not always the case. [via BBC]
April 20
"We made it for the audience, and we're taking it straight to them."
"It’s a very exciting night for us, because it’s not just the première of the film, it is the worldwide release date." - Joss Whedon's new film, "In Your Eyes" celebrated its global premiere and release simultaneously tonight. The Dissolve weighs in on the release, mere days after the first few minutes of the film were previewed online. TheWrap has further coverage on the film and on the evolving nature of self-distribution in the arts world. [more inside]
Everything is meaningless.
#PostModem [SLVimeo,nsfw:nudity] is "a comedic satirical sci-fi pop-musical based on the theories of Ray Kurzweil and other futurists. It’s the story of two Miami girls and how they deal with the technological singularity, as told through as series of cinematic tweets." [more inside]
Graeme Downes on Lorde
Black and White and Code All Over
hiddenenigma is an Instagram account featuring daily monochrome experiments created with the Processing library, currently on day 110 and going for 365.
Starring Robin Williams as "Everyman". Nuff said.
When the 20th anniversary of Earth Day rolled around in 1990, there was a desire to mark the occasion in a big way in order to teach a new generation about the environment. The celebration went global with events in 141 countries. Oh, and a television special. An earnest, all star, incredibly cheesy television special. [more inside]
Going Fishing, In Suburban Baltimore
The hottest poker room in the US is at Maryland Live, a casino just Southwest of Baltimore. The reason is that the poker rooms are well stocked with fish, amateurs that regularly lose large sums at poker, but keep coming back to lose again. The sharks are enjoying the feast.
Sad Panda No More
After being separated from her long time companion, who was sent to another zoo in China, Sijia the panda started showing worrying signs of depression. So the staff at Yunnan Safari Park decided to make things a bit more fun for her, and built an amusement park in her enclosure, including a plasma television showing her feeds from other pandas around the world. [more inside]
OMEGA
OMEGA - A Stop Motion Animated Short. "The mechanical life form Ohm inhabits a bleak and devastated planet. The thousands of mechanical creatures of this world share a single cycle of energy. In this cycle, Ohm is a rogue element. His nature is to devour and absorb others. When one day a gargantuan foreign object appears in the skies. Drawn in by mysterious creatures of light, the Ohm tracks them across the planet, changing the known order of matter, time and space." [Via]
Beating the Tinder Game
Blake Jamieson used his marketing background to game Tinder's system.
ref. Claude Lévi-Strauss
The trailer for the 2012 documentary The Raw and the Cooked stands alone as a work of art, by capturing perfectly the best scenes from this beautiful film. Created by German filmmaker Monika Treut. Background.
Jesse Winchester 1944-2014
Singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester passed away at his Virginia home on April 11 after a battle with cancer. Born and raised in the US South, Winchester brought his incredible talents north to Quebec's Eastern Townships in 1967 as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.
He wrote and sang about his choice in 1977's Nothing But a Breeze: “Me I want to live with my feet in Dixie and my head in the cool blue north.”
Winchester boasted that he was the fifth cousin of Robert E. Lee and that his father served in the second World War but he chose instead to renounce his family's militaristic tradition and "spend his time gardening". Despite having been pardoned in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter, Jesse remained in his adopted home for many more years, before settling in Virginia in 2002. [more inside]
Winchester boasted that he was the fifth cousin of Robert E. Lee and that his father served in the second World War but he chose instead to renounce his family's militaristic tradition and "spend his time gardening". Despite having been pardoned in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter, Jesse remained in his adopted home for many more years, before settling in Virginia in 2002. [more inside]
Artworks in The Goldfinch
A collection of every piece of art mentioned in Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch", latest winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Mild spoilers in comments. [via mefi projects]
A Northern California Love Song
♫ ♫ Well, you came out of nowhere like a Berkeley pedestrian[more inside]
You stole my heart just like a San Francisco crackhead stole my bike
You drive me crazy like those West Marin hippies
But you're the kind of Northern Californian that I like ♫ ♫
Moisture Is The Essence Of Wetness
Architecture And Vision has used warka trees and towers made of bamboo and fabric to harvest 100+ litres of potable water from the air (video) per day.
whoooooosh-BOING!!! oooWEEEoooWEEEoooWEEE… SPLOP!! VRROOOOM--scrEEEEch!
Here's 42 minutes and 27 glorious seconds of audio sound effects from Warner Bros. cartoons. And, should you want more (and of course you do), here's one hour and 17 seconds worth from Hanna Barbera studios.
Marshmallow Murder
April 19
Williamsburg, 2021
The Exit Room. "In 2021, an imprisoned journalist facing execution contemplates a desperate escape attempt in order to return to his wife and newborn child." [Via]
The 2014 Hugo Nominees
The finalists for the 2014 Hugo Awards and finalists for the 1939 Retrospective Hugo Awards have been announced in advance of LonCon3, the 2014 WorldCon of Science Fiction. [more inside]
Virgin? Check. Fed? Check.
New research suggests that it's the male black widow spider who chooses the female in order to avoid being post-coitally eaten, rather than the female who chooses the male. (article abstract)
"You can measure your life in a number of drops."
World's longest-running experiment captures elusive tar pitch drop fall on video after 84 years of waiting — though, sadly, too late for physicist and former pitch drop custodian Prof. John Mainstone, who passed away last year.
Data probably does have a fully-functional pornoraphic memory
Make It Social
Advertising trade paper ADWEEK is trying to handle 'viral marketing' and 'social media' the same way as it always handled TV commercials and magazine ads. So, it noted that one of the most successful 'social branding' promotions of the last six months was for Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart on Broadway.
Note: While McKellan was much more active on Facebook recently, Stewart has had many more MetaFilter FPPs (in fact, Ian's only post here was about him officiating at Stewart's wedding).
Note: While McKellan was much more active on Facebook recently, Stewart has had many more MetaFilter FPPs (in fact, Ian's only post here was about him officiating at Stewart's wedding).
15 famous landmarks, put into context
Sometimes, famous landmarks lose some of their draw when put in context, as seen in this Imgur gallery, which was expanded and modified slightly by Bored Panda. For more physical context, there are Google earth links below the break. [more inside]
Not 21 days
How Long does it actually take to form a habit? Answer: Not 21 days. ...Maltz's work influenced nearly every major "self-help" professional from Zig Ziglar to Brian Tracy to Tony Robbins. And as more people recited Maltz's story -- like a very long game of "Telephone" -- people began to forget that he said "a minimum of about 21 days" and shortened it to: "It takes 21 days to form a new habit." A study debunks a popular self-help myth.
Rachel Frederickson was doing exactly what we asked of her.
Roxane Gay on The Biggest Loser: "My body is wildly undisciplined and I deny myself nearly everything I desire. I deny myself the right to space when I am public, trying to fold in on myself, to make my body invisible even though it is, in fact, grandly visible. I deny myself the right to a shared armrest because how dare I impose? I deny myself entry into certain spaces I have deemed inappropriate for a body like mine—most spaces inhabited by other people. "
Do your civic doody.
Over the last six months, an unidentified person has been leaving feces on children's slides in the parks of Ypsilanti, Michigan. Despite deploying hidden cameras, the police have been unable to identify the mystery pooper. To enlist the help of the public, a series of billboards have been erected around Ypsilanti with such humorous taglines as "Do Your Civic Doody: Report the Pooper" and "Help us Catch the Poopetrator," as well as a Twitter campaign featuring the hashtag #ypsipooper.
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ GOOD GAME
Tabletop Simulator is a, well, simulator for tabletop gaming. The trailer shows a number of applications: classics like chess and chinese checkers, RPG campaigns, and games using a standard deck of playing cards. And if you're looking for something with less structure you can set up domino chains. The game supports net-play with friends (video has a bit of cursing), with the option of flipping the table if the game isn't going your way. [more inside]
Buzzfeed, it ain't
TheGuardian.com recently surpassed the 100 million Unique Visitor monthly threshold for the first time. To mark the occasion, its editors have compiled the 100 most read pieces of Guardian content since 2010. Refreshingly, the Top 100 is (mostly) click-bait and listicle-free.
(Though a Top 100 is inherently click-bait and a listicle, innit?)
Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations tops the list.
3D Reconstruction from Accidental Motion
Fisher Yu, a Princeton grad student, and David Gallup, a Google employee, have published a method for retrieving the 3D information of a scene from the small motion of the hands that occurs while taking video. They've given their paper a website that includes a video, the paper itself, and a dataset. One neat application of this is the ability to simulate short depth of field, a feature that has made it into the new Google Camera app.
"AH! Oh my God! Oh my God! Arg!"
Did you ever reach a point in Super Mario Brothers that you wanted to see them all pay? Here you go: Mario goes Berserk.
The Broadway community has always been at the forefront of this issue
If you go to see a Broadway or off-Broadway show this June, the masthead of your Playbill will look a little different; for the first time in its 130 year history, the program, along with their digital properties and social media sites will turn rainbow during the last week of June to commemorate Pride weeks in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, and other major cities around the world.
I hope that no one at the nursing home gets us confused
Grandma: What are you doing for a living? Because your mother says you’re "kind of like a model," and she wouldn’t say "kind of" if you were, and, no offense honey, but you’re a bit short.
Stoya: You know like Bettie Page, right? I do stuff like that except, because everybody runs around in skimpy clothing now, I do the modern version, where I have sex with people on video.
Grandma: Oh, you’re a nudie girl in the moving pictures!
Stoya: Yes!... I’ve got to tell you another thing.... I’m using your name.
Grandma: Ooooh no.
Coming out as a porn performer. (SLVox)
Stoya: You know like Bettie Page, right? I do stuff like that except, because everybody runs around in skimpy clothing now, I do the modern version, where I have sex with people on video.
Grandma: Oh, you’re a nudie girl in the moving pictures!
Stoya: Yes!... I’ve got to tell you another thing.... I’m using your name.
Grandma: Ooooh no.
Coming out as a porn performer. (SLVox)
What's New?
April 18
Feliz Pascua
Fanesca is a traditional soup from Ecuador and is a special soup or stew because it is only prepared once a year during Easter. From a blog of Ecuadorian dishes by Layla Pujol. A few ceviches.
Rose Rose I Love You
In 1952 Malaya, cabaret dancer Rose Chan's bra snapped on stage. Noticing the enthusiastic response from the audience, she decided to capitalise on this, and transformed herself into Malaysia's first (and so far only) Queen of Striptease. (Many of these links have NSFW pictures) [more inside]
"Be brave, but not too brave."
In Deep: The Dark And Dangerous World Of Extreme Cavers
On his thirteenth day underground, when he’d come to the edge of the known world and was preparing to pass beyond it, Marcin Gala placed a call to the surface. He’d travelled more than three miles through the earth by then, over stalagmites and boulder fields, cave-ins and vaulting galleries. He’d spidered down waterfalls, inched along crumbling ledges, and bellied through tunnels so tight that his back touched the roof with every breath. Now he stood at the shore of a small, dark pool under a dome of sulfurous flowstone. He felt the weight of the mountain above him—a mile of solid rock—and wondered if he’d ever find his way back again. It was his last chance to hear his wife and daughter’s voices before the cave swallowed him up.[more inside]
When your line manager's recreational reading is the IBM Handbook.
How I got here in the end. Picture this: you're a former drug dealer who has turned to hacking for a living. You're crashing in an apartment a bit older than Texas, surrounded by about seventeen computers, sleeping on a futon with a girlfriend with metre-long purple dreadlocks, and planning your defection from one net-based futuristic corporation to another over Korean take-away food. [more inside]
The hardest word
Before it was the Moonwalk, it was Backsliding, or The Buzz
Moonwalking is often attributed to Michael Jackson, but as summarized in this low resolution clip from Soccer AM, it was performed under various names in decades before MJ's live television performance in 1983. Let's backslide through the years, from Cab Calloway's 1932 version that he called "The Buzz" to Jeffrey Daniel performing the backslide as a member of Shalamar in 1982 on Top of the Pops in the UK. [more inside]
Forró, Baião, Rojão & sons do nordeste do Brasil
Bafo da Onça mix by Pepe Sol for Sabrosa
Sabrosa Son Sistema: purveyors of sound system cultures originating from the cities and islands of the Caribbean, Africa & Latin America.
Sabrosa Son Sistema: purveyors of sound system cultures originating from the cities and islands of the Caribbean, Africa & Latin America.
The Hundredth Anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre
Alan Prendergast writing in Westword reflects on the history of "Bloody Ludlow."
Top of the Pops 1968 - The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - Fire
Pyro Board
Pyro Board. Or flammable sound waves and music. Danish Fysikshow demonstrates a 2-D Rubens' tube (wiki, demo).
I Served My Country. Then It Kicked Me Out.
I was a veteran, a father and husband and a small-business owner. Then I was deported.
history, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived
The Dangers of the Monster Myth In 2012 Jill Meaghar was murdered. Today, her husband, Tom Meaghar speaks out about the dangers of the "monster myth". "I dreamed for over a year of how I would like to physically hurt this man, and still often relish the inevitable manner of his death, but wouldn’t it be more beneficial for Jill’s memory, and other women affected by violence to focus on the problems that surround our attitudes, our legal system, our silence rather than focusing on what manner we would like to torture and murder this individual? Adrian Bayley murdered a daughter, a sister, a great friend to so many, and my favourite person. I am the first one who wants to see him vilified and long may he be one of Australia’s most hated people, but it only does any good if this example highlights rather than obscures the social issues that surround men’s violence against women
Growing-ups
I was to discover, however, that there were many others who didn’t share my warm and benevolent views of emerging adults. Quite the contrary. Professor Jeffrey Arnett thinks 20-somethings are unfairly maligned.
Evenly distribute the future: Issuing more bio-survival tickets
VC for the people - "It's just that people who have options are much more likely to actually find success than people who don't." [more inside]
MetaFilterFrontPageBlogPostTitleContentString
Two of these Java class names from the Spring framework are made up. One of them is real. Can you guess the real one?
Digger: Now On Almost Every Platform
Digger is a classic IBM PC game from 1983 made by Windmill Software. You can play it online via HTML5, online via Java or download a version for platforms both common and obscure. More ports are on the Links page. [more inside]
New York's Erstwhile "Type Ward"
New York once had a concentration of type foundries near City Hall. "What did they find so vital about this one neighborhood?"
New York joins the National Popular Vote
The US is a little closer to a popular vote for president. Governor Cuomo added New York State to the National Popular Vote interstate compact. [more inside]
"Thank you for letting me watch."
Post-operative Check: "It's okay that you don't remember me. My name is Shara, and I'm part of the surgical team. I'm checking to see how you're doing after your surgery. Do you know where you are right now?" [more inside]
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dream Castle
Gorgeous castle, abandoned for 20 years. And, interestingly, it's a variation on a Calendar House, with 365 rooms--one for every day of the year. No idea what they did about leap years. Tent, maybe?
The quickest way to double your wardrobe
BOYFRIEND TWIN - a tumblr documenting the curious pattern of gay men dating themselves.
Why are you dancing? -- Because I'm Happy!
Scientists pinpoint when harmless bacteria became flesh-eating monsters
Bacterial diseases cause millions of deaths every year. Most of these bacteria were benign at some point in their evolutionary past, and we don’t always understand what turned them into disease-causing pathogens. In a new study, researchers have tracked down when this switch happened in one flesh-eating bacteria. They think the knowledge might help predict future epidemics. [more inside]
April 17
Speed Stacking is Still a Thing
History of the Cycle World Record brought to you by the World Sport Stacking Association. [previously] [more inside]
"I'm on my feet like Tough Actin'® Tinactin®."
How many rappers have name-checked Tough Actin' Tinactin brand anti-fungal skin products? More than you would think.
poop should be renamed “doof,” since that is food backwards
Cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt shadows chef Wylie Dufresne for a day.
I've always wanted to have a neighbor just like you
Won't you please, please won't you be my neighbor? NASA's Kepler Discovers First Earth-Size Planet In The 'Habitable Zone' of Another Star. Kepler-186f is a planet about ten percent bigger than Earth that orbits within the habitable zone of its star. The light there is dim and orange, and it only gets about a third of the sunshine we do, but that may be enough for life. If you go outside tonight, there might be someone 500 light years away looking back at you...
Please enjoy this cyberpunk hacking adventure!
Suicide, drugs, sex and other dangers of rock and/or roll
How Americans Die - a visual tour through surprising trends in mortality among Americans in the last several decades
Presenting the great poet and musician: Atahualpa Yupanqui
Yupanqui's gorgeous and meaningful songs have been covered by musicians, worldwide. Yupanqui's are songs about life, revolution, the worker, and everyday things (like a workers cart). Give a listen to some of his songs (and their covers) - even if you don't understand a word of Spanish, you will be rewarded lilting melody and the soul of a true musician/poet. [more inside]
Brushed chrome details and a shag carrying case.
ALT/1977 is a series of advertising mock-ups which imagines modern products with the aesthetics and production of 1970s consumer electronics. Faux-wood paneling, angular fonts, and more orange than you can shake a stick at.
"I'll apologize but I won't take off my glasses, because they're famous"
When his parents went out of town, 16 year old Corey Worthington threw a party. When 500 people showed up, things got out of hand. Eventually the police were called, who mobilized units including their air wing & canine teams to quell the disturbance (for which Corey is being billed $20,000). And in the aftermath, Corey gave this awesome interview.
"writers are going to get it wrong, and that’s okay"
"This is specifically challenging in science fiction and fantasy, where there are often so many ways to heal someone–from super-science to ancient sorcery. And yet there are issues with miracle cures in fiction. For one thing, they rob disability of its narrative power. For another, they play into the problematic narrative that people with a disability somehow “deserve” it." -- Elizabeth Bear talks about writing characters with disabilities in science fiction and fantasy in a guest post for Sarah Chorn's Special Needs in Strange Worlds column.
In this SF Signal column, Sarah Chorn explores how fantasy and science fiction treat disability, through reading lists, author interviews and the examination of characters with disabilities like Tyrion Lannister.
In this SF Signal column, Sarah Chorn explores how fantasy and science fiction treat disability, through reading lists, author interviews and the examination of characters with disabilities like Tyrion Lannister.
The Red Line and the Rat Line
"The post-attack intelligence on Turkey did not make its way to the White House. ‘Nobody wants to talk about all this,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘There is great reluctance to contradict the president, although no all-source intelligence community analysis supported his leap to convict. There has not been one single piece of additional evidence of Syrian involvement in the sarin attack produced by the White House since the bombing raid was called off. My government can’t say anything because we have acted so irresponsibly. And since we blamed Assad, we can’t go back and blame Erdoğan.’"A report by Seymour Hersh alleges that Turkish PM Erdoğan's National Intelligence Organization is responsible for last August's sarin attack in Syria, in an attempt to force Obama's hand on air strikes. [more inside]
2048 - Iron man mode
Stellar fusion in 2048 style.
Not quite just another 2048 clone.
(of which there have been many many many versions, most discussed here).
This version follows the fusion path of a main sequence star challenging you to create a stable isotope of iron.
Chronicle of a death foretold
Novelist Gabriel García Márquez has died at the age of 87. A giant of Latin American literature, he had struggled with lymphatic cancer and likely dementia (previously) in his latter years. To honor his memory, The Paris Review has reposted their interview with García Márquez from 1981, the year before he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
word has it, he got a deal for only $2350/month
An army of NYPD cops on Thursday evicted a homeless man from his Manhattan Bridge "home" — which was complete with a gas heater, hot sauce and beer.
DJ Faroff rides again!
Ladies and gentlemen, I share with you today – the latest beat from off the street, the mashup sensation that’s sweeping the internet nation. It's DJ Faroff’s latest groovechild Mash Machine, starring the Godfather of Soul, the Doors, dueling riffs from Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin and AC/DC. With special guest appearances from the Soul Train line dancers, the Pink Panther and a cowbell.
Hogwarts Is Here!
Ever wish you could actually take classes in Charms, Transfiguration, and Potions from Hogwarts for real? Now you can!
Where do you fall on the Smell/Likeability quadrant?
Is your business persona working for you? Stanley Bing as posted an exerpt from his new book, The Curriculum: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Master of the Business Arts. [more inside]
The Jews of Donetsk
On the first full day of Passover, Jewish people in the Eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk were handed leaflets ordering all Jewish residents over the age of 16 to pay the new pro-Russian revolutionary authorities $50 apiece for individual registration, otherwise “the guilty ones would be deprived of their citizenship and deported outside the republic; their property would be confiscated.” [more inside]
It's so dark in there, it took us a long time to notice
Cave insect species discovered in which the female has a penis and the male has a vagina.
Cringing Not Necessary
Wired on how Matt Fraction's Sex Criminals manages to be a comic book, about sex, that isn't completely awful.
You are in yet another maze of twisty little passages, all alike
Apparently created in a schism over a TV Tropes policy of content restrictions imposed by their advertising contract, All The Tropes covers much the same ground in a more conventional wiki inteface (Mediawiki).
Praise the sun!
Ambient Dark Souls. Virtual field recordings from the world of Dark Souls.
Bottles and ballast stones!
NOAA's Okeanos Explorer (previously 1, 2) is currently exploring the Gulf of Mexico. Today, they're exploring a 19th century shipwreck! Watch the discoveries on three live streams.
Resegregation in the American South
The most recent story in ProPublica's Living Apart: Examining America's Racial Divide series is "Segregation Now," which focuses on the Tuscaloosa, Alabama, city school district "and its fleeting experience with the challenges and virtues of integration." But beyond Tuscaloosa, "almost everywhere in the United States, the gains of integration have been eroded. And nowhere has that been more powerfully and disturbingly true than in the South – once home to both the worst of segregation and the greatest triumphs of integration. Freed from the federal oversight that produced integration, schools districts across the 11 former states of the Confederacy have effectively re-instituted segregation for large numbers of black students, in practical terms if not in law." [more inside]
How Does He Take Selfies When He's a Toy?
The Foodroom
McDonalds, Sorkinized for your pleasure. [SingleLinkComedyCentral]
the cow .. the cow ... the cow
From the mind of cartoonist KC Green (previously) comes The Ballad Of Dark Homer, a stranger take on our favorite animated family.
Why were the nineties so preoccupied with fatherhood?
What am I worth?
The Minimum Wage Worker Strikes Back - She notes that her hourly wage of $7.50 is less than a Wendy’s combo meal: “I make less than the Baconator.”
In sickness and in health...
A couple's final journey. "Chris MacLellan and Bernard Richard Schiffer never exchanged “for better or for worse” vows. As a gay couple, marriage wasn’t an option in Florida. Instead, they lived together and loved each other for 11 years."
April 16
When asked to describe his style he said "warm."
Chinatown Sartorialist. "We saw them at Portsmouth Square and frantically made a beeline for them, both in a brown, earthy palette with matching cheetah sweaters and furry hats."
King of the Ludicrous Lucrative
The Ket had seven souls, unlike animals, who had only one.
The Ket from the Lake Munduiskoye (2008, 30 min.) The Ket people are an indigenous group in central Siberia whose population has numbered less than two thousand during the past century. Although mostly assimilated into the dominant Russian culture at this point, a couple hundred of them are still able to speak the Ket language, the last remaining member of the Yeniseian language group. Recent scholarship has proposed a link between Ket and some Native American language groups.
SLYT * 85000
British Pathe releases 85K videos to YouTube. An archive of film from the late 1800s onward is now available on YouTube.
Mysterious Siberian mummies plated in copper
"Academics restart work to unlock secrets of mystery medieval civilization with links to Persia on edge of the Siberian Arctic. The 34 shallow graves excavated by archeologists at Zeleniy Yar throw up many more questions than answers. But one thing seems clear: this remote spot, 29 km shy of the Arctic Circle, was a trading crossroads of some importance around one millennium ago."
Dust and Echoes
The world of video game music has blossomed in recent years, enough to support live concert tours and bestselling albums. But while most such work is licensed or contracted out to third-party composers, a rare breed make their living at a single company, imbuing entire franchises with their unique sound. And apart from Nintendo's venerable Koji Kondo, there is perhaps no dedicated gaming composer more renowned than Martin O'Donnell. From humble beginnings writing the jingle for Flintstones Vitamins, O'Donnell and longtime collaborator Michael Salvatori joined developer Bungie in 1997, penning music for Myth, Oni, and most notably the Halo trilogy -- an iconic blend of sweeping orchestral bombast, haunting choirs, and electronic ambience that became one of the most acclaimed and successful gaming soundtracks of all time. O'Donnell also helmed Bungie's audio department, managing voice actors, sound effects, and an innovative dynamic music engine, and was most recently working with Paul McCartney on the score for the upcoming Destiny. So it came as a surprise today when it was announced MartyTheElder was being terminated without cause (flabbergasted reaction: HBO/DBO - NeoGAF - Reddit). With O'Donnell following Joseph Staten, Frank O'Connor, Marcus Lehto, and other Bungie veterans out the door, what might this mean for the company and its decade-long plan for Destiny? [more inside]
There's Nothing in the World Like Action Park!
Action Park was an amusement park located in Vernon, New Jersey, (in)famous for its dangerous rides. "You'd see a kid in the summer cover in friction burns, and you'd be like 'How was Action Park?' " (13 minute documentary on DailyMotion.) Relive some of those memories with 9 minutes of commercials from 1979-80, including an actual record of people on Cannonball Loop, and almost six minutes of rides and attractions from 1991.
"I got locked into the eyes of this woman and could not get out."
Not for scopophobes
Try to win a staring game against Dali (or a campbell's soup can or a giraffe) in this free staring game on the iPhone.
Or have characters from The Office stare at you instead, in The Office Stare Machine.
I hate this. I look like a superhero.
At least they're not juggling baby geese
What my autism classes didn't teach me
“Right before I went into high school, my parents enrolled me in a couple of social skills classes to prepare me for the change,” she tells me. “They taught me how to behave in certain social situations, like when girls go into the washroom together, or how to behave when you get invited to a party, or when you want to ask someone on a date. That’s where I think the classes switched from being useful to being controlling.”
Apparently, "Whatever" happens one time out of five
Last month, Beverage Industry published their 2014 US Beer Category Report, and Dylan Matthews at Vox.com has compiled the numbers into their favorite thing: charts! There's a few interesting details, but the biggest one is that not only is Bud Light one out of every five beers purchased in America, but sells more than all import, craft, cider and malt beverage sales combined.
Happy trees? Not all 381 times.
When it's time for some mellow craftiness it's time for Bob Ross. But what if you want to know how many times his paintings included palm trees? Cumulus clouds? What if it's time to apply some good ol' fashioned conditional probability to his oeuvre? Then this is the place to go.
"It’s possible I have bitten off more than I can chew"
"This is the petty tyranny of inconvenience — just as the heroine believes that her individual comfort somehow justifies the enslavement of roughly a hundred other human beings, romance readers feel it’s inconvenient and uncomfortable to reflect on the ways the genre not only has marginalized but continues to marginalize not only characters, but also readers and authors of color. This book was not written by an obscure self-published writer with a small niche audience. Sandra Hill is a New York Times bestselling author, a genre mainstay for the past two decades; she is still writing books set in the contemporary South, though I am certainly not going to read them." -- Romance author Olivia Waite reviews Sandra Hill's Frankly My Dear, set on a sugar plantation in 1845 Louisiana, as part of the blogging from A to Z challenge. [more inside]
"We're gonna need a bigger boat."
That Time The CIA And Howard Hughes Tried To Steal A Soviet Submarine | You may recall this (previously) epic post about this subject, but it is time to update the story with recently declassified documents (PDF: Search it for the term "Azorian" and you'll find some 200 pages of info.) Or just read the first link for the Cliff's Notes.
"Boxing is a business."
Honey, we're gonna need a load of quarters
These machines were always too darn hard .... a 3-year-old boy feared missing by his mother was found safe and sound inside an arcade claw machine in Nebraska on Tuesday.
Ferry with 470 Passengers Sinks off Korea
Ferry with 470 Passengers Sinks off Korea Scores still missing, many of them high school students on an excursion. According to comments on the Marmot's Hole Korea blog, passengers were told to wait in their cabins rather than gather on deck. Video from Japanese Fuji television.
keep his top half movies, he would blow everyone else out of the water
Behind the Stall Door
The Private Lives of Public Bathrooms "The public collides uncomfortably with the private in the bathroom as it does nowhere else, and the unique behaviors we perform stem from a complex psychological stew of shame, self-awareness, design, and gender roles. "
Une agreable surprise!
Victorian Prudes and their Bizarre Beachside Bathing Machines. If you were a beachgoer in Georgian or Victorian times, more specifically, a female beachgoer, your day at the seaside would’ve likely had all the fun sucked out of it by a little invention known as the bathing machine.
It's all one ghetto man, a giant gutter in outer space.
10 signs you're a buzzfeed clone
"They wanted to kill it and at some point they wanted to fire me"
Woodward is Elmore’s ‘Heart of Darkness’
A Magical Miniature World Of Snails
Talented Ukrainian nature photographer Vyacheslav Mishchenko has an eye for taking photos that bring small natural worlds up to our level, showing us how the world might look if we could see it through the eyes of an ant, snail or lizard. [more inside]
Women, submit!
Project ROSE is a Phoenix city programme that arrests sex workers in the name of saving them. In five two-day stings, more than 100 police officers targeted alleged sex workers on the street and online. They brought them in handcuffs to the Bethany Bible Church. There, the sex workers were forced to meet with prosecutors, detectives, and representatives of Project ROSE, who offered a diversion programme to those who qualified. Those who did not may face months or years in jail.
Did they call my birthday?
Waiting for your lottery number. James, Oklahoma, 1969, No. 365.
I arrived at the dorm and went to my friend’s room where 12 of us were watching the lottery. I remember we had cases of beers to help us through. We knew this day could forever change our lives. When I came into the room I could feel the tension and see that the lottery had already started. It wasn't a big show on TV; it was just a series of numbers scrolling across the bottom of the screen while “I Love Lucy” played above. [more inside]
...not a neutral exercise.
April 15
I FEEL SO ACCOMPLISHED
If I saw this as a kid I probably would have joined the gymnastics team
Lousiana State University sophomore Lloimincia Hall becomes an Internet sensation after her perfect 10 performances in the floor exercise, combining gymnastics technical proficiency with hot dance moves.
SpongeBob And The Ice King - One And The Same
You may or may not be aware that voice actor Tom Kenny performs as both the Number One Employee at the Krusty Krab, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the nemesis of Finn and Jake, the Ice King. It is a strange nexus between the two shows, which otherwise come from very different imaginations and sensibilities. A 2012 article from the cartoon insider magazine Hogan's Alley spoke with many of the people involved in the creation of SpongeBob, while today The Awl featured this extended look at the creative forces behind Adventure Time, which can be read in full here.
You cannot outrun the past, because the past is awesome.
If cruising through neon wireframe landscapes is your kind of thing, and previous mefi posts haven’t satisfied your burning desire for synth wave/retro electro/neo 80s, then perhaps you would be interested in a few of the following albums... [more inside]
Rowsdower vs. Trumpy: FIGHT!
What’s that you say? You need character drawings for your MST3k-themed RPG? Well, here’s 85 of them! Some favorites include Crenshaw, Krasker, Ryder and Rex Dart: Eskimo Spy!
A Report From The Front
TechCrunch's Kim-Mai Cutler delivers a 12,000-word deep-dive on San Francisco's Housing Crisis. Touching on: rent control, the Ellis Act, Dianne Feinstein, the mission, the Fillmore, Angelo Sangiacomo, Howard Jarvis, the failure of the Greater San Francisco movement, the perfidy if the Mountain View city council, and the Byzantine machinations behind the Twitter tax. If some of those names are unfamiliar to you, strap in: the story of San Francisco's property law may have found its Gibbon.
Money For Nothing
At first, the new Jerry Seinfeld show seemed reassuringly like the old one. Spontaneous coffees with friends. Mindless chatter that occasionally verged on the hilariously brilliant. But look closer and you see that this show isn’t that show, and that new realities are upon us in America. Anand Giridharadas editorializes about Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee: Seinfeld, His Show, and Inequality. (SLNYT)
guilt and shame, nouns and verbs, actions and words
"When our actions become a reflection of our character, we lean more heavily toward the moral and generous choices" asserts professor Adam Grant (of the Wharton School) in a NYT opinion piece entitled "Raising a Moral Child". Some research suggests that when parents "praise effort rather than ability, children develop a stronger work ethic and become more motivated" and Grant draws sharp distinctions between how shame and guilt affect us citing several experiments and studies which support the conclusions that when teaching children about moral behaviors "nouns work better than verbs" and "if we want our children to care about others, we need to teach them to feel guilt rather than shame when they misbehave." Grant has written an entire book about how these concepts influence our generosity and success, and how powerfully feeling "guilt rather than shame" as children can shape us. [more inside]
Wikipedia: Condensed For Your Pleasure
TL;DR Wikipedia (SLTumblr)
Poe, with a trunk full of ideas, is finally coming home to Boston
Edgar Allan Poe will come striding back into Boston this Fall as a life-size bronze sculpture, as designed by Stefanie Rocknak, who has created a number of fluid carvings from wood.
You'll never walk alone
It's incredibly tense in the English Premier League at the moment, with three teams fighting for the title. With Manchester United disintegrating and lucky to secure European football, the much anticipated Spurs title challenge fizzing out and Arsenal struggling to even reach their customary fourth place and access to the Champions League, it's up to Chelsea, Manchester City and Liverpool FC. The latter two met last Sunday in an emotional, stressfull match which saw Liverpool win 3-2, setting a giant step forwards to winning the title.
For Liverpool fans and many neutrals it would be wonderful for Liverpool to win it now, because it's been twentyfour years since their last one, because of Steve Gerrard who, a single childhood slipup aside, has always been loyal to Liverpool and who has won everything but the title with them, but mostly because it's been exactly twentyfive years since the Hillsborough Disaster and just weeks after a new inquest into the disaster and the coverup has started. [more inside]
For Liverpool fans and many neutrals it would be wonderful for Liverpool to win it now, because it's been twentyfour years since their last one, because of Steve Gerrard who, a single childhood slipup aside, has always been loyal to Liverpool and who has won everything but the title with them, but mostly because it's been exactly twentyfive years since the Hillsborough Disaster and just weeks after a new inquest into the disaster and the coverup has started. [more inside]
Condor Watch
France is totally down with extramarital affairs.
"The Pew Research Center’s 2013 Global Attitudes survey asked 40,117 respondents in 40 countries what they thought about eight topics often discussed as moral issues: extramarital affairs, gambling, homosexuality, abortion, premarital sex, alcohol consumption, divorce, and the use of contraceptives. For each issue, respondents were asked whether this is morally acceptable, morally unacceptable, or not a moral issue."
A love song for New Orleans, except in photos
Branding Nick at Nite
"Knowing we are watching something that doesn't fit in today's world and being completely self-conscious about our enjoyment of it is the essence of Nick-At-Nites's appeal." Fascinating memo from 1987 about Nick at Nite's brand and positioning. [more inside]
Now they are the same thing
The Color Of His Presidency
A few weeks ago, the liberal comedian Bill Maher and conservative strategist and pundit Bill Kristol had a brief spat on Maher’s HBO show, putatively over what instigated the tea party but ultimately over the psychic wound that has divided red America and blue America in the Obama years. The rise of the tea party, explained Maher in a let’s-get-real moment, closing his eyes for a second the way one does when saying something everybody knows but nobody wants to say, “was about a black president.” Both Maher and Kristol carry themselves with a weary cynicism that allows them to jovially spar with ideological rivals, but all of a sudden they both grew earnest and angry. Kristol interjected, shouting, “That’s bullshit! That is total bullshit!” After momentarily sputtering, Kristol recovered his calm, but his rare indignation remained, and there was no trace of the smirk he usually wears to distance himself slightly from his talking points. He almost pleaded to Maher, “Even you don’t believe that!” “I totally believe that,” Maher responded, which is no doubt true, because every Obama supporter believes deep down, or sometimes right on the surface, that the furious opposition marshaled against the first black president is a reaction to his race. Likewise, every Obama opponent believes with equal fervor that this is not only false but a smear concocted willfully to silence them.[more inside]
Gonzo ... Judas Iscariot
"so alive in the minds of those who loved him and so painfully gone"
Sasha Sagan talks about Lessons of Immortality and Mortality From My Father, Carl Sagan.
A 13-year-old golden eagle huntress in Mongolia
"To see her with the eagle was amazing. She was a lot more comfortable with it, a lot more powerful with it and a lot more at ease with it." The Kazakhs of the Altai mountain range in western Mongolia are the only people that hunt with golden eagles, and today there are around 400 practising falconers. Ashol-Pan, the daughter of a particularly celebrated hunter, may well be the country's only apprentice huntress. Photographer Asher Svidensky spent days trekking with the youngsters on horseback.
Everything old is new again
Why We’re in a New Gilded Age Paul Krugman reviews Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, and discusses the renewal of the importance of capital in preserving inequality across generations.
Ever imagine a bug is crawling on you? I do. A lot.
A book about human reaction to insects I have trouble in the summer because I am usually suppressing the urge to scream and freak out due to the imaginary bugs that are crawling on me.
Sølar-pøwered flashlights? But wait, there's møre!
The Nordic Society for Invention & Discovery has brought never-before-seen and totally exclusive technologies into the world, such as the Aaltopuck (an ice hockey puck modeled after Alvar Aalto's Savoy Vase), the Flower Shell (a shotgun shell that shoots seeds into the ground), the Wall of Sound (an 8000-watt iPod dock) and No More Woof (a device that wraps around your dog's head and translates his or her brain waves to computerized speech).
Mr. Poo, India's Dancing Anti-Public Defecation Mascot
In order to combat public defecation in India, the UN has created an anthropomorphic cartoon turd with a tune that's catchy as hell.
I've looked at Abbey Road from both sides now...
Flickr user Harvezt brings you The Dark Side of the Covers, which recreates 33 rock album covers as seen from the OPPPOSITE direction. Some of the covers are iconic, others are obscure, some of the interpretations are simple and obvious, others are creative and... interesting. (And some are NSFW, but then, some of the original covers were NSFW).
Supreme Court of India recognizes transgenders as 'third gender'
The Supreme Court of India directed the Indian Government to include a new gender category to include people who don't identify as the traditional male or female. My head spins as I write this. A combination of being woken up suddenly from heavy sleep and a sudden jerk of pleasant shock has left my head spinning. I am humming some sweet songs in celebration! Hurray!Supreme Court ruling grants transgender recognition and OBC status* in India. [more inside]
Toilets and kitchens really aren't like ebony and ivory
Do you lament the loss of the terrible real estate agent photographs that were curated at It's Lovely, I'll Take It (previously)? Or it's later extension as a wing of the Cheezeburger abode?
Well, fret no more!
Tumblr Terrible Real Estate Agent Photographs is here to continue the fine tradition of suggesting that some real estate agents may lack even the most basic sales skills.
The loudest thing in the world
"The thinking mind is like a perpetually-running chainsaw that thinks everything is a tree. It will use any excuse to rev up and start shredding something. Its purpose is to solve problems, so it wants everything to be a problem." How to stop your mind from talking all the time.
Mustard On The Beat
This beaver experience, it is amazing.
“The most amazing beaver experience.” [YouTube]
April 14
Gut Feeling
You Create Your World
Murder Dog Magazine has served as the voice of underground hip hop for over twenty years, printing unfiltered interviews with up-and-coming artists from regional scenes on their way to national prominence. The magazine's founder and editor, the Sri Lankan immigrant Black Dog Bone, shares the improbable story of how a boy from the jungle championed the voice of inner city youth in the U.S.
Female Pain
Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain. "The pain of women turns them into kittens and rabbits and sunsets and sordid red satin goddesses, pales them and bloodies them and starves them, delivers them to death camps and sends locks of their hair to the stars. Men put them on trains and under them. Violence turns them celestial. Age turns them old. We can’t look away. We can’t stop imagining new ways for them to hurt." [more inside]
A Floating Population
"81 Bowery - one of the last standing lodging houses in New York City has been home for more than a generation of immigrant Chinese laborers who work at construction sites and kitchens throughout Chinatown.
Today, dozens of individuals are left sharing the fourth floor - each occupying a 64-square-foot cubicle." [more inside]
"I think we've done beauty a great disservice by quantifying it."
Adam Pearson suffers from neurofibromatosis, a condition that causes tumors to grow on his face. They are sizable. You wouldn't fail to notice them, even from a distance. Nonetheless, he appears in a small but absolutely pivotal role in Under the Skin, opposite Scarlett Johansson, playing a sexy alien serial killer, in one of the most remarked-upon scenes in the film. "[Facial scars and other disfigurements are] always used very lazily" by filmmakers, he tells The Guardian. "In an ideal world actors with conditions would play the characters with these same conditions.... If they'd got Adam Sandler and blacked him up to play Nelson Mandela, there would have been an uproar ... but with scars and stuff, it seems like people are cool with that." [more inside]
13 Gods of the Internet
13 Gods of the Internet Featuring Listikles, Faprodite, Poseodon...
Ottomans not included
For those of you who prefer your science isolated with a side of moody furniture, I give you Lonely Chairs at CERN.
The story of how Yasiel Puig made his way from Cuba to Los Angeles
Escape from Cuba: Yasiel Puig's Untold Journey to the Dodgers
For close to a year Puig had been trying to force an answer, to extract himself from Fidel Castro’s state-run sports machine, which paid him $17 a month, and sneak across the tropics to a mythical north, where even benchwarmers lived like kings. Two, three, four times, maybe more, he had risked everything and fled, only to be detained by the Cuban authorities or intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard—each failure making the next attempt more urgent. Finally, in June 2012, the 21-year-old outfielder left his home in Cienfuegos, on Cuba’s southern shore, and set off by car for the northern province of Matanzas, just 90 miles from Florida. He was traveling with three companions: a boxer, a pinup girl, and a Santeria priest, the latter of whom blessed their expedition with a splash of rum and a sprinkle of chicken blood.
Probably Possibly Partially Parsley
If Smitty and Hoppy Are Still Hungry That Means It Was Marijuana. Organic gardening in 1974.
Ech!
Meet the majestic American WoodEch.
The LDS Church meets feminism: the quest of Mormon women to be ordained
An interesting look inside the Ordain Women movement seeking the priesthood in the LDS Church. This group of women are seeking the priesthood... not the priesthood that a Catholic bishop holds but a lay priesthood that would allow them to be on the same footing as their 12-year-old sons.
Focus testing and hard-light constructs
Giancarlo Volpe, the showrunner for the short-lived but critically acclaimed Cartoon Network program Green Lantern: The Animated Series, has posted a minicomic about his bad experience when the studio ran focus testing on the show. Executive producer of GL:TAS and creator of Batman: The Animated Series Bruce Timm shows up in the end to provide some perspective. [more inside]
Expos 8, Cardinals 7
45 years ago today at Montreal's Jarry Park, outfielder Mack "The Knife" Jones hit a 3-run homer and a 2-run triple to lead his Montreal Expos to an 8-7 win over the St. Louis Cardinals in the first Major League baseball game ever played outside the US (home opener coverage starts at 4:28 of the CBC video). [more inside]
The London Philharmonic Orchestra perform Górecki’s Symphony No. 4
Górecki's 4th Symphony premiered this past weekend. Left unfinished, but near completion, at his death, it has been now been finished by his son, Mikołaj Górecki, who describes the work as "very different from its immediate predecessor … and is closer to monumental works like Symphony No 2 or Beatus Vir and to later pieces with Tatra folk influences such as the Little Requiem." The immediate predecessor, Symphony No 3, was hugely successful, selling over a million CD copies. The Guardian hosts the video of the performance by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and tells the story behind the posthumous premiere.
Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced.
The Washington Post and The Guardian won the Pulitzer Prize in public service for their reporting on the widespread domestic spying by the US National Security Agency.
A full list of the mentioned articles can be found here for the Washington Post, and here for the Guardian.
Edward Snowden, who supplied the journalists with the leaked information, today said: "Today's decision is a vindication for everyone who believes that the public has a role in government. We owe it to the efforts of the brave reporters and their colleagues who kept working in the face of extraordinary intimidation, including the forced destruction of journalistic materials, the inappropriate use of terrorism laws, and so many other means of pressure to get them to stop what the world now recognises was work of vital public importance." [more inside]
Calvin and Hobbes in motion - sorry Bill, they had to move
Animator Adam Brown took two Calvin and Hobbes comics as keyframes and animated the pair in motion, with some sound: dancing in the forest (Vimeo; YouTube; GIF without the background) and a fireside tiger attack (Vimeo; GIF). [more inside]
Cheerio
Pop/ska duo The Monroes had a big hit in Norway with Sunday People in 1983. Perhaps the tallest musical duo ever they were often referred to simply as 4 meters of pop. Sadly, last year they both died of cancer. Their second hit was Cheerio.
Lawn maintenance for beginners
The approximate moment when grumpiness kicks in for men is around age 70. Researchers found that as men grow older — from, say, 50 on — they have fewer obstacles and annoyances to worry about in life and, furthermore, they are more equipped to deal with adversity. But around age 70, life — or at least the perception of happiness — begins to go downhill. [more inside]
A savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson, published in Rolling Stone, November 11, 1971.
It was almost noon, and we still had more than 100 miles to go. They would be tough miles. Very soon, I knew, we would both be completely twisted. But there was no going back, and no time to rest. We would have to ride it out. Press registration for the fabulous Mint 400 was already underway, and we had to get there by four to claim our soundproof suite. A fashionable sporting magazine in New York had taken care of the reservations, along with this huge red Chevy convertible we'd just rented off a lot on the Sunset Strip ... and I was, after all, a professional journalist; so I had an obligation to cover the story, for good or ill. The sporting editors had also given me $300 in cash, most of which was already spent on extremely dangerous drugs. The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers ... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. All this had been rounded up the night before, in a frenzy of high-speed driving all over Los Angeles County – from Topanga to Watts, we picked up everything we could get our hands on. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
"Nature doesn't need people, people need nature."
Harrison Harrison Ford, correspondent for Showtime's Years of Living Dangerously (previously), answered questions on Ask Me Anything (slreddit). You may also recognize Mr. Ford as Dr. Indiana Jones.
Fighting for the Federation
Why Most Brazilian Women Get C-Sections
Oxford University Press Celebrates National Library Week
In honor of National Library Week, Oxford University Press is making all of its non-journal products available online for free for the week of April 13th-19th, 2014. This includes the Oxford English Dictionary and the Oxford Handbook series. [more inside]
Six Scientists Show Six Super Surprises
New smartphone battery charges in 30 seconds •
Programmable nanobots injected into cockroaches I for one welcome our etc etc • MIT unveils shape-shifting furniture • Windtraps from Dune I mean the Smithsonian announces towers that distill water out of air • Body heat may soon power wearable gadgets • US Navy converts seawater to fuel
"I'm Martin's Dad"
The Boston Globe visits the Richard family, on the eve of the one year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings. The Richard's youngest son, Martin, was killed, and their daughter Jane, is still recovering, learning to navigate with her prosthetic leg.
The better robots of our nature
War! What was it good for? Quite a lot, argues historian and archaeologist Ian Morris. Over thousands of years humans used war to build our societies, then turned it against itself. With luck our newly acquired habits and forthcoming robots will keep the world from returning to older levels of bloodshed.
Which Dewey Decimal Category Are You?
We know you love your library! Ever wonder what it would be like to become a book? Where would you be in the library? Which Dewey Decimal [hundred] number would you be given? Take this quiz to find out!
April 13
I Would Die If I Were To Ignore You
The I Touch Myself Project uses the Divinyls' iconic song to encourage breast self-examination. [more inside]
That's right. Somebody called the cops on Jesus.
ALL THE GENRES!
Dark Horse in 20 different styles | One girl sings 14 genres | Multi-genre Gujarati (previously: 1, 2) [more inside]
A short film about sleep paralysis
"When You Realize What You Are Looking At You Will Be Blown Away"
Twenty Seven pieces of artwork that defy comprehension; not because of the quality of work, which is amazing, but for the quality of work performed in the mediums used. [more inside]
Glow-in-the-dark roads make debut in Netherlands
How Japan copied American culture and made it better.
There’s something about the perspective of the Japanese that allows them to home in on the essential elements of foreign cultures and then perfectly recreate them at home. "Part of what’s going on is simply the globalization of taste, culture, cuisine and the way that, in the modern world, you can get almost anything everywhere. But Japanese Americana is more than that. There’s a special way that the Japanese sensibility has focused on what is great, distinctive and worthy of protection in American culture, even when Americans have not realized the same thing."
On Doing an Evil Deed Blues
Lil Ugly Mane. What do we know about this person? Take a trip on through to the other side... [more inside]
Like A Boss...Lady
Getty Images launched the “Lean In Collection” Monday in partnership with LeanIn.org, featuring more than in contemporary work and life.
Lean In and Getty Images partner to create a collection of positive, power images of women.
“The most important thing for us is that you felt like the woman had agency, not like the image was happening to her, but she was the protagonist of her own story — they all should feel like the hero of their image," says Pam Grossman director of visual trends at Getty Images.
The Next America
"America is in the midst of two major changes to its population: We are becoming majority non-white at the same time a record share is going gray. Explore these shifts in our new interactive data essay."
At this rate, the 2031 master's champion will be born soon
20 year old Jordan Spieth is tied for the lead heading into today's final round at the Masters. If he wins, he'll become the youngest champion. Spieth, teeing off at 2:40 Eastern, is 20 years, 8 months and 17 days old. If he can hold off his playing partner Bubba Watson and the rest of the field, Spieth will continue an odd pattern of a new youngest champion every 17 years — going back more than half a century. [more inside]
Famine, Cholera, Opium, Romanticism and the Volcano That Binds Them
On 10 April 1815, Tambora produced the largest eruption known on the planet during the past 10,000 years. As described in Gillen D'Arcy Wood's new book, the explosion was only the first dose of Tambora's destructive power. In terms of its enduring presence in folklore, as well as its status in the scientific literature, 1816’s cold summer was the most significant meteorological event of the nineteenth century. After the tsunami and famine came cholera, opium, and failed Arctic expeditions. [more inside]
My friend, if we go in the ditch you ain't fuckin' around with Chrysler.
In 1984, the Canadian branch of the United Auto Workers, represented by Bob White, and General Motors Canada, represented by Rod Andrew, sat down to negotiate a new wage agreement. GM had gotten the American UAW to agree to profit sharing and was dead-set on doing the same in the North; the Canadians were bitterly opposed to the idea. By the end of the negotiation, workers had struck, negotiators had been stabbed in the back, White and his allies had split from the UAW to form the CAW, and a compromise was reached that left everyone a bit unhappy - but the workers less so than their managers. Filmmaker Sturla Gunnarsson used his unprecedented access to both teams of negotiators to craft Final Offer, "the best collective bargaining film ever made." You can stream the movie in its entirety at the National Film Board's website.
One giant leap
Experience the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing:
This project is an online interactive featuring the Eagle lunar landing. The presentation includes original Apollo 11 spaceflight video footage, communication audio, mission control room conversations, text transcripts, and telemetry data, all synchronized into an integrated audio-visual experience. [more inside]
Short sci-fi film about a meteor heading to Hong Kong, blocked by China
香港將於33年後毀滅 (Hong Kong will be destroyed after 33 years) is a near-future sci-fi short film about a fictional meteor that is headed for Hong Kong and expected to impact in 2047, but the public at large does nothing to address this impending doom. It might seem like an innocuous enough film, but China thought there was more to the story than that, and State Council Information Office requested that websites immediately remove video, text, etc. that advocates the short sci-fi film about Hong Kongers “saving themselves” titled Hong Kong Will Be Destroyed in 33 Years. The Diplomat has a bit more information about the film's not entirely coincidental use of the year 2047, the year in which China's Special Administrative Region (SAR) agreement with Hong Kong is set to expire, possibly bringing an end to one country, two systems.
Ever wanted to be Cary Grant in North by Northwest? Now you can.
Anarchy Sucks
I write for SkyMall
I write for SkyMall (SLTP)
they really said this.
It Happened to Me: I am the Most Popular Woman on OKCupid, and by most popular, I mean the "most messaged."
Pansy Club
“I was assigned to her and fell in love with her,”
The Toddler Who Survived, And the Cop Who Became Her Mom: [New York Times]
As a baby, Christina Rivera survived a massacre in Brooklyn whose 10 victims included her mother. Police Officer Joanne Jaffe was assigned to care for her that night, a task that was the first link in a bond that led Ms. Jaffe to adopt Christina. [Image][more inside]
We're going on a bear hunt
Former teacher, poet, socialist and writer Michael Rosen talks to illustrator Helen Oxenbury about the publication 25 years ago of their classic children's story We're Going On A Bear Hunt. Based on a skit Rosen did as part of his one man show, his own performance is still the best and just one of the many performance videos available at his Youtube channel.
I don't know what a spangle is to this day and now I can't ask him
Good Grief, an animated short film from Australia about the process of grieving and the lessons learned from adjusting to loss, made using stop-motion animation and recorded interviews with real people.
Up the Clapham Junction
How a pop song described a certain place in a certain time†, and how parts of the area were transformed from an industrial slum into a nightlife epicentre. Here's the radio version.
† 4 May 1979 - The Conservative Party wins the general election and Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Two weeks later Squeeze releases their single Up the Junction.↩
† 4 May 1979 - The Conservative Party wins the general election and Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Two weeks later Squeeze releases their single Up the Junction.↩
April 12
"You have to put on a mask. You have to dissemble. You have to cheat."
Failed Philosopher King Michael Ignatieff confirms Machiavelli in the latest edition [direct link to mp3] of the Philosophy Bites Podcast.
Jeremy Mann
Gritty Cityscapes by Jeremy Mann. Dramatically and skillfully rendered, the cityscapes and figurative works of Jeremy Mann give visual form to the emotive essence of modern life (nsfw).
The Free City Sourcebook: Primary sources on the Free City of Danzig
The Free City Sourcebook: Primary sources on the Free City of Danzig This website brings together all available primary sources (eg, government documents, newspaper articles, photos, etc) relating to the Free City of Danzig (1920-1939).
[via mefi projects] [more inside]
Affluence and Influence
Gilens and Page analyze 1,779 policy outcomes over a period of more than 20 years. They conclude that “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”
Average citizens have “little or no independent influence” on the policy-making process? This must be an overstatement of Gilens’s and Page’s findings, no?
Alas, no... (pdf)
Okay you got me.
Unsung Hero [SLYT] Warning: May cause intense sensation of heartstrings being tugged.
If I get killed, please don't bury my soul.
The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie. No grave site, no photograph. Forget that — no anecdotes. This is what set Geeshie and Elvie apart even from the rest of an innermost group of phantom geniuses of the ’20s and ’30s. Their myth was they didn’t have anything you could so much as hang a myth on.
Massacres, Toponymy, Inertia, Easter
In the Spanish province of Burgos, Castile y León, about 200 kilometers north of Madrid, is a tiny little village named Castrillo Matajudíos (pop. 60). The village is considering changing its name. [more inside]
For Richer Or Poorer
Ask Polly: Will Our Class Differences Tear Us Apart?
I've been with my current boyfriend for three years. We're really great together—similar interests, senses of humor, great sex. I love him so much—the only issue is that of our respective backgrounds. He grew up in a tony suburb, went to prep school, then to a very prestigious college, and finally the very prestigious graduate school where we met. I went to public school in a bad neighborhood, put myself through a not-so-prestigious college, made a name for myself in my field, then got into that same prestigious grad school. Our families could not be more different. I didn't think it would matter so much, but something happened recently that I can't shake.[more inside]
Quartos.org - Shakespeare's quartos online for review and comparison
The earliest Shakespeare quartos are over four hundred years old and constitute the rarest, most fragile body of printed literature available to Shakespeare scholars. Sold unbound and often read to pieces, they are among the most ephemeral books of the age and survive in relatively low numbers. In the absence of surviving manuscripts, the quartos offer the earliest known evidence of what Shakespeare might actually have written, and what appeared on the early modern English stage. Only about half of Shakespeare’s plays were printed in quarto during his lifetime (1564–1616), and before the first printed collection of his plays, the First Folio of 1623. They are living artifacts telling the story of how Shakespeare's Hamlet, Henry V, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet, to name just a few, first circulated in print.... Due to their rarity and fragility, the earliest quartos are often not accessible to those who need to study them. Today, six institutions in the United Kingdom and United States stand out as the main repositories of the pre-1642 quartos.... Through this international collaboration, many of the earliest Shakespeare quartos are now freely available for in-depth study to students of Shakespeare across the globe. You can read, compare, read annotations and overlay copies at Quartos.org.
A SAT Attack on the Erdos Discrepancy Conjecture
Computers are providing solutions to math problems that we can't check - "A computer has solved the longstanding Erdős discrepancy problem! Trouble is, we have no idea what it's talking about — because the solution, which is as long as all of Wikipedia's pages combined, is far too voluminous for us puny humans to confirm." (via; previously ;)
Drop Dropbox
On April 9th, Dropbox announced that Condoleezza Rice will be joining their Board of Directors. Some folks aren't happy about that decision.
Road trip!!!
Monday, Sam and his party set out for Rochester and Chatham, where they told ghost stories. On Tuesday he had a boat trip, got drunk, and kissed all the ladies. Wednesday he met a singing parrot and enjoyed some music but was a little distracted by Rebecca. More snogging and joking with friends. Thursday it was goodbye to Rebecca with a pang of guilt, and on the way home he stole some beer and played some practical jokes. So to bed very sleepy for last night’s work, concluding that it is the pleasantest journey in all respects that ever I had in my life.
So Android phones turn out to be too working class to be interesting
"Android users are less lucrative than iPhone users, and designers are iPhone users. It's a socio-economic split on class lines, in favor of iPhone over Android."
Cennydd Bowles, a design lead for Twitter, asks why developers don't take Android seriously. At the Business Insider, Jim Edwards response is that Android users are, well, poor. It also turns out that a lot of Android users use their phones disappointedly as just phones, while developing for Android is much more costly than for iOS. All of which may just explain why it's rumoured Samsung wants to abandon Android for its own operating system.
Cennydd Bowles, a design lead for Twitter, asks why developers don't take Android seriously. At the Business Insider, Jim Edwards response is that Android users are, well, poor. It also turns out that a lot of Android users use their phones disappointedly as just phones, while developing for Android is much more costly than for iOS. All of which may just explain why it's rumoured Samsung wants to abandon Android for its own operating system.
April 11
"I hate celebrity culture"
Given to the Oxford Union, I submit a lecture on the nature of celebrity by one Jack Gleeson, best known as "Little Boy" in Batman Begins, but also for his role in HBO's "Game of Thrones".
Recreational Vehicles
Older RVs aren't that hard to come by, and when you look past the rotting polyboard, aluminum and melmac 'home' really all you're left with is a motor. Usually a big motor, one that's attached to a gigantic sturdy frame and heavy-duty axles. No surprise then that it's crossed the minds of mechanics and/or the slightly insane to do something crazy with a crappy old motorhome. [more inside]
I'm giving it my all
In which Kings of Leon covers Robyn's "Dancing On My Own", complete with unchanged pronouns.
What Happened to Jai Alai?
This is what a dying sport looks like. For decades, the Miami fronton was known as the “Yankee Stadium of jai alai,” a temple to the game, the site of the largest jai alai crowds in American history. Since the 1920s, the best players in the world have gathered here every winter. Jai alai used to be a very popular spectator sport in this country, with frontons up and down the Eastern seaboard. Presidents watched jai alai with their wives. Ernest Hemingway bragged about getting to hang out with jai alai players. In fact, during World War II he concocted a scheme in which jai alai players would somehow lob grenades down the open hatches of unsuspecting German U-boats. Now, the sport seems like a relic, a vision into the past. It’s vestigial, like an appendix.
“I don’t speak much Arabic, so that was a hard problem."
The All-American Life and Death of Eric Harroun. Eric Harroun, a U.S. Army vet on disability labeled "The American Jihadist" until the case against him unraveled, has passed away at home in Arizona.
Tanks in Portola Valley
I bet Telly Savalas drove one of these! The collection has recently been sold to the East Coast, so the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation is now closed to the West Coast. Sad. Tesla's just don't quite match up with mobility or fire power. What protects Portola Valley now?
The Platinum Club
As part of the ongoing Periodic Video series (previously and more previously), Martyn Poliakoff takes us inside Johnson Matthey, where he shows us some "Super Expensive Metals" — a few of the rare platinum group metals — as they are refined and processed from raw ore into finished products.
The Rooster Sauce and the People Who Love It
Well, it has finally happened: The The Irwindale (California) City Council has ruled that a factory that produces the popular Sriracha hot sauce is a public nuisance. The factory has 90 days to better contain its fumes The resolution, issued this past Wednesday evening, enables city officials to make changes if the smells continue after the factory's deadline has past.
In other Sriracha news:
The Oatmeal provides a (somewhat) illustrated guide to the utility of the sauce.
Of course, Sriracha deserves its own movie.
Bon Appetit proves that there are (at least) twenty-five uses for Sriracha.
Do you like to drink Sriracha? Out of a mug (not advised)? Think Geek has got you covered.
If the worst-case scenario happens, fear not! Nom nom paleo teaches how to make your own Sriracha.
Font designer "supercouple" prepares to do battle in the courts
Popular font designers Frere-Jones and Hoefler split, with one claiming the other was his "employee". "For 15 years, Frere-Jones and Hoefler seemed charmed. They made typefaces that rendered the stock charts in the Wall Street Journal readable and helped Martha Stewart sell cookbooks. They created an alphabet for the New York Jets, based on the team’s logo. And they saw their lettering chiseled into stone as part of the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. Last year, the duo won the AIGA Medal, the profession’s highest award. It seemed to be one of those rare situations whereby two successful soloists had combined to make an even better supergroup. Hoefler was asked if there were any troubles in their working relationship for a video produced for the AIGA in 2013. “We do have a longstanding disagreement over the height of the lower case t,” he said. “That is the only point of contention.”
Not quite.
An interesting story about a business partnership of supposed equals - or were they? - going very, very sour.
True friends stab you in the front
Web comic artists Ryan North and David Malki have been "discovering" obscure books "written" by each other, and posting their finds at BOOKWAR. [more inside]
The Game of (a Writer's) Life
Aspiring writers often ask established authors, "How did you do it?" The truth is that there is no single path to literary success. We sent a nonscientific survey to writers participating in the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books: Did they keep a diary as a child? Did they ever have a book rejected? Did they earn a living from writing? We tabulated more than 200 responses to make the board game below. Roll a die and see where the writing life takes you.
"You're gonna be okay."
Writer David Dickerson tells the first time he used the word "homeless" to describe his situation to a stranger, and what effect that stranger's kindness had on his life. Now he's trying to reach out with an open letter of gratitude in hopes that he can find the amazing person who helped him. [slyt | via]
#WEEVFREE
"A federal appeals court Friday reversed and vacated the conviction and sentence of hacker and Internet troll Andrew "weev" Auernheimer." weev is free!
Have Plank Will Travel
The Persian Version is the latest video release by Patrik Wallner, from the description: Skating has taken root all over the world for decades now. Except in Iran. This is an incredible first-look at a country essentially experiencing skating for the first time. [more inside]
How Concussion Put Me On The Bench For Good
A farewell to bliss.
Rarely do we associate Windows XP with Bliss. Charles O'Rear is the photographer who took Bliss, the image that became the desktop of every single Windows XP computer in the world. Billions saw it and probably think the photo is so perfect and colorful that it is computer generated—or at least Photoshopped. O'Rear, known for his photographs of Napa Valley, discusses the origin of the video.
“Hollywood wives have a tendency to go into my closet without asking,”
....make your soul grow
Back in 2006, students at Xavier High School in New York were given the assignment to write to their favorite authors and ask them to visit the school, only one replied.
This is Kurt Vonnegut's letter to those students, made into a film by the folks at Dogtooth Films.
Médecins Sans Medicine
Meet the Bag Man
"Bottom line: if you're successful in landing a player who is in turn successful on the field, and you can't abide people not knowing you had a hand in the process, you're in the wrong field of athletic support."
Life Rolls On
"Pssssttt! What does the yellow light mean?"
"Slow down."
"What... does... the... yellow... light... mean?"
"Slow down!"
"Whaaaaaat... dooooeeees... theeeee... yeeeelllllllllllooowwww... liiiiight... meeeeeeaaaaan?"
"Slow down!!!"
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat…." [more inside]
"Slow down."
"What... does... the... yellow... light... mean?"
"Slow down!"
"Whaaaaaat... dooooeeees... theeeee... yeeeelllllllllllooowwww... liiiiight... meeeeeeaaaaan?"
"Slow down!!!"
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat…." [more inside]
Fire up that loud
In case you haven't hert / Lil Jon is back / with a new track / about getting turnt / and a video so cray / it may make you lose your shirt //
[& needless to say /
its NSFW].
The Ice Lady
"It gets pretty lonely working in the freezer on my own." A beautiful portrait of Anne Marie Taberdo, the only female ice sculptor in the UK.
Preserving a Sense of Discovery in the Age of Spoilers
At the 2014 Game Developers' Conference, Jim Crawford (creator of Frog Fractions) gave a talk (transcript).
Oh Hamish, you wer wan in a million
Turning back time & space with the orchestral pop music of The Long Lost
Five years ago, Alfred Weisberg-Roberts, aka Alfred Darlington (more widely known as Daedelus) finally released an album with his wife, Laura Darlington, under the group name The Long Lost. And it's beautiful, light and airy orchestral pop that owes a greater debt to Caetano Veloso than Coldcut, the style of music that might not out of place being played live in a knitting shop, which could seem a bit strange for a group releasing their music on Ninja Tune. For further fond words, The Gaslamp Killer considered their album one of his top picks for 2009, and here's a nice interview with Alfred and Laura. But we're really here for the music, so here's their self-titled album, streaming on Grooveshark. [more inside]
We’d love to say “It’s not you, it’s us” but it’s totally you.
Eat24 explains why they're done with Facebook. They're not the first to notice problems with Facebook' business model. (previously). But it's not just businesses affected. people have been noticing a drop in their friends posts for a while. Facebook limits the users reach, and asks them to pay to ensure your friends see it.
Barbie girl in a not so Barbie world
"And the amazing part is, it works, her thing. It does. In a place that expects a woman to prepare for marriage and motherhood "from the moment she is given her first baby doll as an infant," as Hutsol has put it, Valeria has gotten a degree of power, a degree of control, and a major say in her own destiny. It could be that the world and I have misjudged the Human Barbie in a fundamental way. Her steady drift from reality and into the twenty-first dimension is not about submissiveness, fame, or snagging a husband. It could be about finding a way out, however random, bizarre, and costly the route appears from the outside. It could be about gaining some measure of freedom." -- Russian GQ editor in chief Michael Idov visits human Barbie doll Valeria Lukyanova (previously).
GQ also aks the question, can what Valeria Lukyanova has made herself into be called feminist, considering the background culture in Ukraine?
GQ also aks the question, can what Valeria Lukyanova has made herself into be called feminist, considering the background culture in Ukraine?
lab-grown vagina
Four women have had new vaginas grown in the laboratory and implanted by doctors in the US. "A tissue sample and a biodegradable scaffold were used to grow vaginas in the right size and shape for each woman as well as being a tissue match.
They all reported normal levels of "desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction" and painless intercourse.
Experts said the study, published in the Lancet, was the latest example of the power of regenerative medicine. "
April 10
A book that reads as satire to adults & documentary to teens
Beloved British writer Sue Townsend, best known as the creator of the Adrian Mole books has died aged 68.
Townsend's creation was unleashed on the world in 1982 with his last literary outing in 2011's Aidrian Mole's Royal Wedding.
While Mole remains her best known creation (and made the jump to TV) she was also a playwrite, had written other novels [more inside]
AT&True Detective
Rust Cohle’s market research questions give the adorable kids a lot to think about. Infinity. Bigger. [more inside]
What If Everything You Knew About Poverty Was Wrong?
"A sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, Edin is one of the nation's preeminent poverty researchers. She has spent much of the past several decades studying some of the country's most dangerous, impoverished neighborhoods. But unlike academics who draw conclusions about poverty from the ivory tower, Edin has gotten up close and personal with the people she studies—and in the process has shattered many myths about the poor, rocking sociology and public-policy circles. [more inside]
Notre professeur à pris sa retraite.
Dr. Pierre Capretz, who taught French at Yale University for several decades, passed away at the age of 89 on April 1st of this year, qu'il repose en paix. Capretz is best known for his 1987 PBS series of half-hour French-language lessons, French in Action, which combined language immersion using to a simple romantic-comedy narrative followed by a classroom-style review, featuring Professeur Capretz, of the narrative with emphasis on the concepts, vocabulary, and grammar. [more inside]
Irene Fernandez 1946 - 2014
Malaysian human rights activist Irene Fernandez died on March 31st 2014 at age 67 from heart failure. She was arrested and charged with one year imprisonment in 1996 for "publishing false information with the intention to harm" after publishing a report on abuses of migrant workers in detention camps in Malaysia, and was acquitted in 2008 after multiple delays due to losses of important files. She received a Right Livelihood Award in 2005 for her human rights and migrant advocacy work. She is remembered by activists in Malaysia and overseas, politicians, and international media. [more inside]
A person can never be broken
Tom Lehrer Is Dead...Er...Alive And Well And Living In Cambridge, Mass.
I know what you thought -- you saw the name Tom Lehrer and thought "Shit! Obit thread! I loved that guy!" Well, sailor, it's your lucky day because he's not dead yet, he's 86 years old and still hanging in there. At least that's what this surprisingly in-depth and clickbait free article at BuzzFeed has to say. He's notoriously shy of interviews and did not do one for the reporter here, nevertheless you'll learn all about his brief-but-illustrious career and why he tossed it all away at a relatively young age. [more inside]
Machinima is a wonderful thing
"The waves, the waves, the waves..."
The Delian Mode (Kara Blake, 2009) - A 25-minute documentary about composer and pioneering electronic musician Delia Derbyshire, perhaps most familiar to Mefites for writing the theme song for "Doctor Who".
Lies, Damn Lies and Chicago Police Reports
The Chicago Police Department reported 415 Murders in 2013, the lowest number since 1965 . However, there were at least 18 deaths that according to Chicago Magazine, should have been classified as murders, but were not. The CPD has issued a response, however an interview with the mother of one of the unreported murders seems to support the Chicago Magazine article. [more inside]
HOW THE WOMAN GOT HER PERIOD
Dr. Suzanne Sadedin answers the question "What is the evolutionary or biological purpose of having periods?" on Quora with the best type of science-based storytelling.
“Quantum” means a condensing of the sublime.
No. No, no, no, and no.
Burnin' for you
The county vibrated with fire engines groaning over gravel driveways. The county vibrated with suspicion. The county went about its business. The county burned down. People assumed that the culprit must be someone who lived among them, and people would be right. It would be a love story. [more inside]
White Dwarf
Before Firefly, there was the television movie White Dwarf, a far-future pseudo-western scripted by Bruce "Wild Palms" Wagner. The story is essentially Kurosawa's Red Beard relocated to the tidally-locked planet of Rusta, a frontier world split between a Victorian dayside culture and a medieval nightside kingdom. Neal McDonough stars as an arrogant young Earth doctor dispatched to a Light Side clinic to complete an internship under the unorthodox Paul Winfield.
A New Nation
Stephen Colbert will take over for David Letterman as host of The Late Show. Just weeks after coming under fire for an out-of-context tweet, the former Daily Show correspondent and host of The Colbert Report will enter network late night. Will he drop the character? Would his fans embrace the real Colbert? Bonus footage: a young Colbert as a reporter for Good Morning America.
The Crossroads of America
A federal judge in Indiana has ordered that the state recognize the marriage of Amy Sandler and Niki Quasney. [more inside]
Gofor: Drones on Demand
Gofor is a Drones-as-a-service concept. "Drones are summoned much like taxis in other popular service apps. Your desired task is either noted at the outset using presets, or customized using voice commands." [more inside]
Boston Reunion
Photographs of survivors and responders from the Boston Marathon bombing as they convene on Boston a year later. Powerful stuff.
Protein Packing
Harvard University and XVIVO have come together again (Previouslyw/ a commercial focus, Previouslierw/an Academic focus) to add to the growing series of scientific animations for BioVisions -- Harvard's multimedia lab in the department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. 'Protein Packing' strives to more accurately depict the molecular chaos in each and every cell, with proteins jittering around in what may seem like random motion. Proteins occupy roughly 40% of the cytoplasm, creating an environment that risks unintentional interaction and aggregation. Via diffusion and motor protein transport, these molecules are directed to sites where they are needed.
Much of this is no doubt inspired by the beautiful art and explained illustrations of David Goodsell, a biologist at Scripps who has been accurately portraying the crowdedness of the cellular landscape for a long time now.[more inside]
"It’s mission: Take his 4-year-old daughter camping."
Inventor, adventurer and filmmaker Bran Ferren has built The BEST RV EVER!(even better than his previous MAXIMOG).
Melissa May-Dunn is a performance poet.
Melissa May-Dunn is a performance poet who dropped out of divinity school. A successful gofundme campaign sent her to this year's Women of the World Poetry Slam, where she placed seventh out of 72 with a tribute to a Disney villain, Dear Ursula. [more inside]
Tamiflu, Roche and the Cochrane Collaboration
Ben Goldacre, The Guardian: "Today we found out that Tamiflu doesn't work so well after all. Roche, the drug company behind it, withheld vital information on its clinical trials for half a decade, but the Cochrane Collaboration, a global not-for-profit organisation of 14,000 academics, finally obtained all the information. Putting the evidence together, it has found that Tamiflu has little or no impact on complications of flu infection, such as pneumonia." [more inside]
Cool London is dead, proclaims the Telegraph
A Song Of Rent And Maintenance
Timelapse Kelpies
Watch a seven minute timelapse of Andy Scott's work, The Kelpies being erected, a pair of 30ft steel equine statues situated near Falkirk, Scotland.
The BBC also has a sped up version, if you don't have the seven minutes spare. [previous, previous] [more inside]
Life imitates art.
Let us arise and plant
The legacy of John Evelyn’s Sylva— in 1664, on behalf of the Royal Society, the courtier, garden designer, entrepreneur, bee-keeper, connoisseur, author & celebrated diarist John Evelyn published Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest-Trees, and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesties Dominions, which is supposed to have significantly influenced [PDF] forestry in the UK over the succeeding centuries. Now, ‘silvologist’ Gabriel Hemery and artist Sarah Simblet have produced a new work inspired by Evelyn’s—The New Sylva: A Discourse of Forest & Orchard Trees for the Twenty-First Century.
"Here's a tape of our little visit."
In 2000, Conan O'Brien taped a comedy segment at the NYC offices of Foote, Cone & Belding. The premise: take a chainsaw-wielding furniture huckster from Texas, and try to turn him into a star using a top-tier ad campaign. In the segment, Conan is introduced to a team of FCB copywriters, who dutifully come up with an appropriately ridiculous TV ad.
The segment went as planned; Just another remote for Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Little did he know where it would lead. Conan and one of the on-camera copywriters took a shine to each other, and stayed in touch. Two years later, Conan O'Brien and Liza Powel were married. Today they live in Hollywood with their two kids.
In a 2012 interview, Conan told CNN's Piers Morgan: "Somewhere, in the vault at NBC, there's footage of me literally falling for my wife on camera."
Roll the tape.
The segment went as planned; Just another remote for Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Little did he know where it would lead. Conan and one of the on-camera copywriters took a shine to each other, and stayed in touch. Two years later, Conan O'Brien and Liza Powel were married. Today they live in Hollywood with their two kids.
In a 2012 interview, Conan told CNN's Piers Morgan: "Somewhere, in the vault at NBC, there's footage of me literally falling for my wife on camera."
Roll the tape.
April 9
I like large parties because they're so intimate
No 1 for quality of life
Rooms within rooms, endless cities and labyrinthine structures
"I hope that a viewer will be able to put themselves in my spaces. To that end I’ve avoided adding any figures of any kind to inhabit the rooms, so the viewer is free to imagine themselves inhabiting them if they choose. Some people find them claustrophobic, others want to linger. The detail draws in the viewer, though I’ve also seen it repel the odd person. I enjoy the combination of the creepy and the whimsical. Perhaps this boils down to wanting my drawings to be haunted in the same way that my dreams locales often feel haunted." Excerpt from an interview with Matthew Borrett, an artist/illustrator who draws black and white rooms, scenes from unreal worlds, and some more realistic settings.
Florida's Shame
"After Florida cut down on protections for children in troubled homes, deaths soared. The children died in ways cruel, outlandish, predictable and preventable." [more inside]
There's No Money Above The Fifth Fret
Target: Wendy’s, Publix, Kroger
The CIW’s Campaign For Fair Food has been very successful at improving conditions in Florida's tomato fields. Even Wal-mart has signed on, agreeing to pay an extra penny per pound. But some large corporate buyers continue to refuse to cooperate, including Wendy’s, Publix, and Kroger. [more inside]
Cats Against Guitars!
Cat vs. Electric Guitar. Two Cats vs. Acoustic Guitar. (Subtitled: Pay Attention to MEEEEEEE!!) Cat plays Electric Guitar. Cat plays Acoustic Guitar. This one just rolls with it. [more inside]
Reviving the Scarab of Ra
Rick Holzgrafe's Scarab of Ra is one of those early Macintosh shareware games that nostalgic players really really wish would be updated for OSX. Would you settle for a javascript version? The key commands and interface are a bit different, but the monkey will still steal your lantern and you can still earn academic credit by banking the gold you find, exploring the mazes, and collecting treasure. Just like real life. [more inside]
Mars Opposition Season 2014: Images From Around the World
The God of Cricket
A photograph of Sachin Tendulkar in his final Test appearance in Mumbai has been named the 2013 Wisden – MCC Cricket Photograph of the Year. Who is Sachin Tendulkar? Why, he's only the God of Cricket. See this photo and the runners-up on Cricket Australia's site. (Right-click on each photo to access the hi-res version of each one) See Mitchell Johnson's 'stache? It was quite useful earlier this year against England during the Ashes.
The Miracle of Bali: Music from the Village of Pliatan (1969)
What "When Do We Eat Already?" sounded like 370 years ago
Back in January, blogger Mississippi Fred Macdowell posted scans of the Rittangel Hagaddah [pdf], a 1644 Hebrew-Latin Haggadah that has the distinction of including musical notations for two of the songs. Last month, high school students at the Tannenbaum Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto performed them in concert. Here's his followup post with video of the performance.
AGOT since the year dot
A Geologic Map for Game of Thrones BASED ON CHARACTER OBSERVATIONS, OFFICIAL MAPS, AND EARTH PRINCIPLES OF THE GEOLOGIC SCIENCE [more inside]
JB and Bobby D, together at last
My head just exploded because the the two epic spiraling vortexes of iconic American pop have met and merged and made my head explode and it's exploded. Like a Rolling Sex Machine.
I'm finally on the right track
Even Ace Frehley Thinks Kiss Is a Circus. Frehley thoughtfully discusses the band's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Love Letter to Libraries
“When a library is open, no matter its size or shape, democracy is open, too.” Maria Popova calls the new book The Public Library: A Photographic Essay, which took eighteen years to photograph and compile, "a wistful yet hopeful reminder of just what’s at stake if we let the greatest bastion of public knowledge humanity has ever known slip into the neglected corner of cultural priorities."
[Warning-Autoplaying Tongue]
You can listen to the new song "Player" by LA dance-pop band Dessert. Or you can just go to Hello-Dessert.net and get the full experience.
So long as you don't sleep, you've nothing to worry about
Moths, spiders, mushrooms, foxes and other Lewis Carroll-ian delights stuffed and mounted for your delight and safety by the self-taught artist Mister Finch
He is tremendously tall and has a wonderful haircut.
It's been over a month since our last Jon Bois post, and longer then that since the end of Breaking Madden, so feast your eyeballs on his newest series, NBA Y2K. In this first installment, he aspires to take the Philadelphia '76ers to an 0-82 season.
"I don’t care what you call it," he says. "I care that we get it right."
About half of countries who attempt to build single-payer systems fail. That’s Hsiao’s estimate after working with about 10 governments in the past two decades. Whether he’s in Taiwan, Cyprus, or Vermont, the process is roughly the same: meet with legislators, draw up a plan, write legislation. Only half of those bills actually become law. The part where it collapses is, inevitably, when the country has to pay for it.Ezra Klein's Vox Media looks at the financial and administrative mechanics of Governor Peter Shumlin's quest to bring single-payer health care to Vermont. Bonus: 12 questions about single-payer.
100 Best Hoosier albums ever
NUVO is an alternative publication based in Indianapolis that released a list of the 100 greatest albums that in some way have roots in the state of Indiana. The list includes everything from hip-hop to punk to the obvious. Contributors include DJs and record store owners from across the state.
In Kyrgyzstan, there was one that was made like a traditional Kyrgyz hat
Photographer Chris Herwig (previously) has successfully kickstarted a photo book on the oddball bus-stops of the former Soviet republics, compiled over 12 years and spanning 12 countries. You can browse many of the photos at Herwig's website. Reporter Alina Simone reported on the project and the bus stops for PRI's The World. The PRI site also has a video slide show of the stops narrated by Herwig.
Teevee Dinner
Teevee Dinner is a femme punk transboy from
Australia who enjoys teen culture and eating outta trashcans. You can read an interview
or two, his tips on dumpster diving, and if you live in Vancouver, see his first full-length film premier tomorrow.
Not in Vancouver? You can watch a music video or read an interview about making it, see a short film about queer skaters learning that girl love is better than girl hate, swoon over a dreamy fairy-tale-inspired photoshoot, or watch his NSFW X-Rated directorial debut. [more inside]
Not in Vancouver? You can watch a music video or read an interview about making it, see a short film about queer skaters learning that girl love is better than girl hate, swoon over a dreamy fairy-tale-inspired photoshoot, or watch his NSFW X-Rated directorial debut. [more inside]
Do Johnny for me
"It looks like a ... "Dragon,” I say. "Artichoke,” says a colleague."
A day late and 23 cents short.
Yesterday was Equal Pay Day. President Obama signed an Executive Order to prevent discrimination and address the gender pay gap.
According to The National Women's Law Center, "In 1963, when the Equal Pay Act was signed into law, a woman was typically paid 59 cents for every dollar paid to her male counterpart — a 41-cent wage gap. In 2011, the most recent year for which data are available, women working full time, year round were typically paid just 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts. Although women have narrowed the gap by 18 cents over the past five decades, the wage gap today stands at 23 cents." [more inside]
Scanned images of seaweed
Such as Ulva lobata from Josie Iselin's new book An Ocean Garden: The Secret Life of Seaweed.
Feather boa kelp - Egregia menziesii
Sea grapes - Botryocladia pseudodichotoma [more inside]
Feather boa kelp - Egregia menziesii
Sea grapes - Botryocladia pseudodichotoma [more inside]
In the Name of Love
Madness is genius
The final season of Mad Men (which will take place over two half seasons, a la Breaking Bad) begins airing this Sunday. [more inside]
101 Years Have Passed Since I Wrote My Note
101 year old message in a bottle found in the Baltic and that's all there is to it.
In West Philadelphia, Born and Raised
W.B. Saul High School, the largest agricultural farm school in the United States, is part of the Philadelphia School District. This spring, the animal husbandry majors are tending to their latest additions.
For your midweek enjoyment - W.B Saul presents their live streaming of their little lambs, appropriately called Ewe Tube
How the Muppets created Generation X
"We all have our nostalgia. But, at least for me, my love of Henson’s work goes beyond that. I don’t think we love the Muppets simply because they came from our childhood. We love the Muppets because they gave us a worldview – a profoundly idealistic, yet profoundly realistic worldview – that many of us carry into our adulthoods. It is only rarely that we take the time to consider where we picked up such ideas."
This Machine Can Tell Whether You're Liberal or Conservative
John Hibbing and his colleagues are pioneering research on the physiological underpinnings of political ideology. They also eat worms. - via Mother Jones
Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism
David Harvey's latest book looks at the internal contradictions within the flow of capital that have precipitated recent crises and "why this economic engine should be replaced, and with what."
Available online are the Prologue, the last two chapters, and video & audio for his April 2nd talk at the London School of Economics.
April 8
His name was Dick
Sooner Or Later is a torch song written by Broadway idol Stephen Sondheim for the 1990 film Dick Tracey, Here's it performed by Bernadette Peters for the RuPaul show in 1997. Oscar performance by Madonna. Album version. Film version .
Speak to me, Warriors!
Less than 24 hours after delivering his first promo on Monday Night RAW in years, which came only days after his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame, WWE is announcing that Warrior, formerly Jim Hellwig, best known as the Ultimate Warrior, has passed away at the age of 54. (And before anybody asks, this appears to be real, rather than of the "ghost Warrior appears in a mirror but only Hulk Hogan can see him" variety.)
Mysterious, amnesiac man in Norway
Man found in Oslo with total memory loss - He speaks 4 languages, including Russian, and calls himself John Smith.
Previous "mystery people" discussions: Seattle and UK
Previous "mystery people" discussions: Seattle and UK
Researchers Use Stem Cells to Regenerate Muscle Nearly as Strong
Scientists Progress in Quest to Grow Muscle Tissue in Labs - "The researchers are now working on optimizing the growth of human muscle tissue, including finding a way to get blood flow to the tissue, the best source of cells and the best growing medium for the cells."
Bears, wolves and panthers, oh my: the return of predators to the US
Removing predators from the wild has thrown ecosystems off-kilter, triggering domino effects that scientists are just beginning to understand. In "Wild Predator Invasion," NOVA follows scientists who are trying a simple but controversial solution: returning apex predators—like wolves, bears, and panthers—to their natural environments. [more inside]
We can't all be Tommy Wiseau
"I've watched a lot of terrible films over the years... And even by these standards, Driscoll's output is atrocious. But whereas directors like [German] Uwe Boll will happily revel in a 'worst film director ever' title, Richard has absolutely no sense of humour about it. He genuinely thinks he’s creating art." --- This is the story of British actor/director Richard Driscoll, his 2012 film "Eldorado" and how it all landed him in jail.
Neo-Tokyo is about to EXPLODE!
A= Tokyo’s bid committee for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games appointed Fujio Fujiko’s famous robot cat Doraemon as a special ambassador.
B= Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga Akira predicted the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games way back in 1982.
A+B= I had to make this video.
[SL Vimeo - via]
B= Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga Akira predicted the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games way back in 1982.
A+B= I had to make this video.
[SL Vimeo - via]
Those acorns went straight to his legs.
This video is an eight minute tutorial on how to carve an Iberian ham. You might feel the need to pause it for a drink and a plate of jamon at your nearest tapas.
Let's all get on the same page.
What exactly is bullying, anyway? [PDF] Centers for Disease Control: The inconsistent definitions used to measure bullying coupled with evidence indicating the importance of distinguishing bullying from other types of aggression between youths highlight the need for a uniform definition. [more inside]
Acronymphomaniac, Banned Book Betty and the Thing on the Library Carpet
Execute
Untrusted , a game you can't win unless you change it.
Screw weight loss. I want to be able to benchpress a bear.
16 neato burrito body positive illustrations. (Some are NFSW). (slBustMagazine)
Churning for Eurovision
Just over a month out from the final of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest, to be held in Denmark, and the line-up of acts contesting semi-finals one and two, and getting a bye into the grand final, is clear. While there's the usual rivalries, and a special focus on how Ukraine and Russia will do in the voting, the entry that is receiving much early attention is from never-winning Poland... [more inside]
Abyssmal odds
The depth of the problem - this WaPo infographic hints at the immense challenges that Australian and Chinese search teams will face in recovering the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 black box from its suspected location at the bottom of the Indian Ocean
Baaaaaa....
Jackson Pollock, Mural
The restoration of Jackson Pollock"s 1943 painting "Mural" (6 minute autoplay video) In a project that has taken nearly two years, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles have employed various cutting-edge techniques to painstakingly restore Jackson Pollock’s 1943 "Mural". [more inside]
"IT'S UNDERNEATH US!"
POSEIDON REX: HALF DINOSAUR! HALF SEA MONSTER! ALL TROUBLE! [SLYT]
"A small, secluded island off the coast of Belize suddenly finds itself terrorized by a deadly predator from the planet’s distant past, when deep-sea divers accidentally awaken an ancient evil. Jackson Slate and his team of underwater cave explorers unearth much more than long-lost Mayan treasure while plumbing the depths of a world famous blue hole. They disturb a creature that’s been hibernating for over 60,000 years—a rampaging behemoth of death and destruction not only at sea but also on land."
Future52
Future 52. Fifty-two weeks, fifty-two creators, fifty-two creations of Hoverboards, Robots, Starships, Wearables, and Energy Weapons.
Feathers worth more than diamonds
For forty years around the turn of the 20th century, ostrich plumes were the height of fashion, and a major industry: at its peak, ostrich feathers were, ounce-for-ounce, nearly as valuable as diamonds, so much so that £20,000 of feathers went down with the Titanic. The market for feathers was, in large part, run by Jews: Sephardi Jews exported feathers, Jews in London and New York traded them, and Eastern European Jews left Russia and Lithuania in the thousands to farm feathers, flocking to Oudtshoorn "The Jerusalem of Africa." In 1914, the boom ended, leaving many destitute and leading to anti-semitic backlashes. A brief but entertaining history of the feather trade can be read in this PDF excerpt. Some of the beautiful "Feather Palaces" of Oudtshoorn still survive, as does a small Jewish community and some vintage fashion.
Banks to Feds: drop regulations or small businesses will get it
This is not the typical lobbying we think about; it’s more like lobbying-through-threat: try to regulate us, and we’ll make life so miserable for innocent bystanders that you’ll drop the regulations. Here, the regulation in question simply makes banks responsible for noticing the fraud happening over the payment system they nominally control. They don’t want to do it, because they don’t want to lose lucrative business from predatory scam artists while they look the other way. -- When a division of JPMorgan Chase refused to process payments for a small business selling condoms, it was not out of prudishness, but part of an attempt to force the US government to drop their payday loan regulation by hurting small business owners through overly liberal interpretations of federal guidelines.
RIP (in advance) Archie Andrews
36 variant covers of the upcoming issue of Life with Archie commemorate his upcoming death. The penultimate issue (#36) involves Archie "heroically sacrificing his life to save that of a dear friend", with the final issue reflecting on the lives of Riverdale residents one year on.
One of Christie’s flaws “is that he makes enemies and keeps them.”
When Christie was fourteen years old, he heard [now former NJ Governor Thomas] Kean, who was then a member of the state legislature, speak at his junior high school. He told his mother that he wanted to become a politician; she drove him to Kean’s house and told him to knock on the legislator’s door. “Sir, I heard you speak,” he told Kean. “I think I want to get into politics. How do I do it?” Writing for The New Yorker, Ryan Lizza provides an account of Chris Christie's political history from start to Bridgegate.
This is why we can't have nice things.
"Naturally, the record for the largest and most costly single engagement in EVE history was expected to stand for some time. It didn’t."
Liberal Majority in Quebec
After a 33-day campaign, the Parti Liberal du Quebec under leader Dr Philippe Couillard has emerged victorious in last night's provincial election. The final seat count is LIB: 70, PQ: 30, CAQ: 22, QS: 3, OTH: 0. [more inside]
Women's Work
Over Easy - "Elite education may impoverish and indebt young women and do little to get them a job, but at least it makes their eggs valuable."
Reproductive Medical Associates of New York, a fertility clinic associated with Mount Sinai Hospital, maintains separate websites for egg donors and egg buyers. The home page of the donors’ site features a large stock photograph of a young woman holding schoolbooks. Behind crossed arms the pretty brunette model is clutching what looks like but is not a copy of Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism, along with a white three-ring binder. She wears a zippered velor jacket in the same shade of blue as the graphic that emerges from behind her head in an oversize font: Become an Egg Donor[more inside]
Eppur si muove
The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown is a nine-part series posted by sci-fi author and statistician Michael F. Flynn to his blog last year, covering the historical conflict between heliocentrism and geocentrism, with a special focus on Galileo. They are based on an article (pdf) by Flynn which originally appeared in the Jan/Feb 2013 issue of Analog. [more inside]
Should've played more Risk on the Subway.
The less Americans know about Ukraine’s location, the more they want U.S. to intervene Mark Twain once said that "God created war so that Americans would learn geography."
"On March 28-31, 2014, we asked a national sample of 2,066 Americans (fielded via Survey Sampling International Inc. (SSI), what action they wanted the U.S. to take in Ukraine, but with a twist: In addition to measuring standard demographic characteristics and general foreign policy attitudes, we also asked our survey respondents to locate Ukraine on a map as part of a larger, ongoing project to study foreign policy knowledge. We wanted to see where Americans think Ukraine is and to learn if this knowledge (or lack thereof) is related to their foreign policy views. We found that only one out of six Americans can find Ukraine on a map, and that this lack of knowledge is related to preferences: The farther their guesses were from Ukraine’s actual location, the more they wanted the U.S. to intervene with military force." [more inside]
As big as pop gets
Diana’s challenge to the monarchy was that she took its nickname – The Firm – literally. She had been fired by the firm, and like a true entrepreneur she set up her own business as its competitor, disrupting it by doing exactly the same things – touring the world, visiting the poor or sick or industrious – with less protocol and more agility. The ultimate 80s icon was taking 80s politics to its unthinkable conclusion: privatise the monarchy. To do it, she used things the Royal Family could hardly touch – the media; youth; even pop.Music journalist Tom Ewing's ongoing coverage of every UK #1 single reaches the biggest seller of them all: Elton John's Candle in the Wind 97.
Le Douanier
Surveillance state reverse
Reuters: EU court rules against requirement to keep data of telecom users [different news sources: BBC, The Register] Considerably more detail is available in the ECJ press release (pdf) and the full judgement but the Court has invalidated Data Retention Directive 2006/24/EC and struck a very clear blow against metadata storage in national law as the authority of the directive will soon cease to exist. This has a particular impact for UK MeFites, as UK law was based on the Directive and crucially passed through Parliament via the European Communities Act and thus skipped some review steps but is founded on the validity of the directive being implemented. Remaining national law would of course also be open to challenge on the same grounds. [more inside]
Home. Sweet. Home.
"Squatters took up the fight where the homesteaders had shown the way, occupying abandoned buildings with a more DIY approach. Whereas homesteaders, beholden to the rules of the government programs that sponsored them, hadn’t been permitted to occupy a building until the work was complete, squatters moved in and lived in the raw spaces from the beginning, putting in the time and effort to transform the buildings without the financial support or sanction of the government. They scavenged materials where they could, and employed skill-sharing, learning building skills from those with experience and then passing that knowledge along. By 1989, there were an estimated two-dozen squatted buildings in the Lower East Side."
Ding Dong the Bits Are Dead
Internet Explorer 6, listed by PC World as the eight worst tech product of all time has finally been inhumed.
The Unprofitable Valley
Why is so much stuff mediocre? Matt Stohrer, saxophone repairman, has an explanation he has dubbed The Unprofitable Valley.
Baby elephants are the new cats [slreddit]
Crank up the Henry Mancini. At Baby Elephant GIFs, one of reddit's fastest growing new communities, over 20,000 Elephanthusiasts come together to share the joy of puerile pachyderms figuring out how to charge and how to eat, among other important life lessons. [more inside]
Horses nuzzling cats
Horse delicately nuzzling a cat | more nuzzling |mini horse nuzzling | paw nuzzling | nibbly nuzzler [music ] | possessive, wet nuzzle.
April 7
at least it's not a protocol bug
The Heartbleed Bug was introduced to OpenSSL in December 2011 and has been out in the wild since OpenSSL release 1.0.1 on 14th of March 2012. OpenSSL is the most popular open source cryptographic library and TLS (transport layer security) implementation used to encrypt traffic on the Internet. Your popular social site, your company's site, commerce site, hobby site, site you install software from or even sites run by your government might be using vulnerable OpenSSL.
All of the above is a direct quote and authored by the fine folks at heartbleed.com. It may be worth noting that one of the measures recommended (and indeed a good idea) - certificate revocation. Unfortunately, certificate revocation has some problems. [more inside]
Four live sets from Antony and (some of) the Johnsons, with orchestras
Antony and the Johnsons (Wikipedia) - live at Carre with the Metropole Orchestra (2009); live at St. Luke's with London Symphony Orchestra (2005) [more inside]
Greetings From Interzone
David Cronenberg: a virtual exhibition based on an exhibit at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Apparently, "Orange is the New Black" doesn't pay that much.
Kate Mulgrew (aka Captain Janeway) is narrating a new documentary called "The Principle", which posits that the Sun really does revolve around the earth. The film is the product of Robert Sungenis, who maintains the website Galileo is Wrong (previously). Geeks are understandably confused.
A slacker microhistory home video with mozzarella
you have to be venerated to be satirized
The Mike Judge HBO series Silicon Valley premiered last night. The AV club calls it "incisive satire" (while comparing it [favorably] to Entourage). Some people in the real Silicon Valley are not happy about it. Maybe Silicon Valley will have the last laugh: HBO has put the first full episode on youtube.com.
Visually stunning math concepts...
Dangerous
Years of Living Dangerously is a star-studded 9-part investigative documentary on the real impacts of global warming around the world. The first episode will air on April 13, but it is now freely available online (first link, 1-hour). Series backers and producers include James Cameron, Jerry Weintraub and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Globe says it's "a lavish, gripping production focused on the real effect of climate change in real people’s lives around the world."
Make your own solar system
The Kepler mission has changed the way we think about extrasolar planets and their abundance. It turns out that nature produces a bewildering variety of planetary systems, each in their own infinite majesty. But maybe, just maybe, you can do better? [more inside]
Most important product announcement that this corporation has ever made
On this date 50 years ago, IBM announced the System/360. IBM bet $5 billion and the company's future on the product. [more inside]
Do you ever feel, like, bad about working in a place like that?
Ducks is a five-part comic by Kate Beaton based on her time working at a mining site in Fort McMurray in 2008. It's 'about environmental destruction in an environment that includes humans,' and it's sad and disturbing and shrewd all at once.
Scattered Remnants of the Ship Could Be Seen in the Distance
"You'd see Britt and Brian and they were just like, little kids standing around with terrifying giant skinheads and weird dudes in dresses, it was heaven .... Slint were a unique band." [more inside]
IoT & Zero Marginal Cost Society
Jeremy Rifkin posted an article today on HuffPo titled The Internet of Things: Monopoly Capitalism vs. Collaborative Commons discussing his new book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society:The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism.
Wikipedia's page on IoT is here. There was some debate on a recent NPR Science Friday about whether it should be called the Internet of Bits.
See also, The Zero Marginal Society website.
The Grounds for Violence (slyt)
Less than you'd think.
Using food-stamps as a way for corporations to subsidize their payroll, keep people at minimum wage, and profit from tax-payer funded low-income support programs, has become an increasingly well documented phenomena. But how much would it cost companies like Walmart (the largest that takes in food-stamps from their workers) to just pay their employees a living wage, and what impact would that have on the prices? [via] [more inside]
Dazzle flies
"Zebras are obviously the chillest animals on Earth, but how did they get that way? As it turns out, their signature stripes may not have evolved as camouflage, but instead are largely a deterrent to blood-sucking flies." -- At first blush it may seem a hoax, considering the publication date, but it turns out very likely that zebras got their stripes not as camouflage, but as protection against biting insects.
Letterman Retires, Conan Waits by Phone
It's official: David Letterman, the bridge between Johnny Carson and today's viral-video-driven talk shows, is hanging up his desk at the end of his current contract next year. The news was broken by, of all people, REM's Mike Mills via Twitter. Letterman surpassed Carson's record for hosting longevity last year, and many thought that his latest extension would in fact be the last. [more inside]
"My love for him was real, and I didn’t want to be a single mother."
It Will Look Like A Sunset
Before our son turned two, we moved to Caleb’s home state of West Virginia. He wanted to be closer to his family. There would be more opportunity for work there. His parents owned a rental house that they would sell to us. There were many compelling reasons for the move, but once there, he was the only friend I had. The loneliness was inescapable. This was common, I told myself. My parents had been married for over thirty years, and I don’t remember my father ever having a close friend. I told myself that he was enough for me. When the older policeman saw the swelling, the black and blue, and the toes like little sausage links, his expression turned to dismay. “That’s bad. That looks broken,” he said. “Ma’am, does your husband have a phone number we can reach him at? We need him to come back.”
Maybe I Don't Want To Be A Princess After All
Game of Thrones: Being A Princess Is A Rough Gig "...The privileges held by princesses came at an enormous price. They were used and valued as diplomatic chess pieces, often sent at a very young age to far away places, often to places where they didn't speak the language to live among people who might not care for them or may even be openly hostile.... Game of Thrones does an extraordinary job of showing what being caught in that particular trap must have looked like and felt like. Some flail, some are lucky, some are doomed, some do their best to turn it to their advantage, some become monsters. In this post, I'm going to take a look at the various Game of Thrones princesses in the context of some possible real life counterparts"
Narrative is the metaphor of the moment
One should add that he was an extraordinarily gifted con man, persuading the most discerning intellectuals that he had credentials he did not possess and a heroic personal history, rather than a scandalous one, while he worked his charm on generations of students. Just who was Paul de Man?
In the hall of the mountain king, betrayal never tasted so sour
Time isn't really a flat circle.
Everyone old enough remembers the moral panic during the 1980s surrounding Satanic Child Abuse--a memory refreshed most recently by HBOs hit, True Detective. The most famous case, of course, was the McMartin Preschool trial, which exemplified the panic surrounding satanic child abuse in day cares. As time passed, many felt that the allegations of abuse constituted a modern day witch-hunt.
However, scholar Ross Cheit's new work (“The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children,”) dispels many of the myths surrounding the events which still loom large in the American memory. [more inside]
Let The Healing Begin
How politics has made us stupid
Ezra Klein's Vox.com launched yesterday, featuring such articles as What happens to low-income students on the way to college? and Amtrak’s insane train boarding rules, explained [more inside]
"The filmmaker Jim Jarmusch is old school."
April 6
Why Don't More Poor Kids Get to See Art?
Increasing the accessibility of cultural capital: "In New York, a place whose cultural institutions attract people from around the world, there are residents who not only have never visited those institutions but also some who have never even been uptown."
RTMFA
RIP the Number One Box Office Draw from 1939 to 1940
Mickey Rooney the former child star, who made his stage debut at the age of 18 months and was in show business for over 8 decades, died Sunday, aged 93.
He was known for his relationship with MGM where he played such roles as Andy Hardy and starred in several pictures with Judy Garland. For a period of two years, he was considered the top star in Hollywood. [more inside]
Homer's Iliad Happens.
"I'm mostly gluten"
They sometimes sound a little bit drunk.
Like, Degrading the Language? No Way
We may not speak with the butter-toned exchanges of the characters on “Downton Abbey,” but in substance our speech is in many ways more civilized....
We are taught to celebrate the idea that Inuit languages reveal a unique relationship to snow, or that the Russian language’s separate words for dark and light blue mean that a Russian sees blueberries and robin’s eggs as more vibrantly different in color than the rest of us do. Isn’t it welcome, then, that good old-fashioned American is saying something cool about us for once?
- John McWhorter on colloquial American English (SLNYTIMES) [more inside]
Decaying London properties of the rich, and otherwise.
In 2013, 85% of new houses in London were sold to non-UK buyers. Many stand empty and decaying, held as investments instead of homes. On the other end of the scale, desperate renters turn to leaking barges on the Thames.
The Simpsons = 11 days, 13 hours, 30 minutes. D'oh!
# of seasons × # of episodes per season × runtime of episode = total for 1 TV show. Repeat for more TV shows = total time. Tiii.me lets you select the name of a tv show, the number of seasons you've watched, and tells you how much of your life you've spent watching that show. Add more shows and it will keep a running total for you. [more inside]
"...said to be the messianic leader of an apocalyptic Islamic sex cult."
Step inside this surreal world where religious piety meets psychedelic softcore porn, led by the world’s foremost Islamic creationist. "Followers of Harun Yahya (1, 2, 3) wear drag make-up and practice a “sexed-up, Disney version of Islam” that helps promote conservative Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s vision of a modern, Muslim Turkey."
Slothified
The woman who lost a dog and gained 200 sloths. 'Monique Pool first fell in love with sloths when she took in an orphan from a rescue centre. Since then many sloths have spent time in her home on their way back to the forest - but even she found it hard to cope when she had to rescue 200 at once' a Sloth Armageddon. [more inside]
History Philosophy Without Gaps podcast
It has been more than a year since Peter Adamson's The History of Philosophy without any Gaps podcast has been on the front page of metafilter. Since then he has been plugging away at a podcast a week. Previously. [more inside]
"The Silly Walks Song"
As a preview of their upcoming Monty Python Live (mostly) shows this summer, the Pythons have released a brand new song called "The Silly Walks Song". The video that accompanies it is a frenetic mashup of Python bits from TV and film over the years and is certain to warm cockles of any Python fan's heart (Full story here).
It was forty years ago today, those Swedes taught the band to play
April 6, 1974 -- Final night of the Eurovision Song Contest [1h50m, auf Deutsch (but music is the universal language)] If you don't want the full, stuffy context, you can watch the winning performance. (You already know who won... ) And watch them perform again after they were named winners. [more inside]
Turn that camera OFF
The Jon Spenser Blues Explosion was (is) a groundbreaking rock and roll band (not a blues band) well known for its live performances. Not much video footage of their concerts is extant, but this performance on an Australian TV show in 1994 is pretty typical, if the word "typical" is suitable for someone trying to incite a riot. [more inside]
"What would work even against an infosec guy? Linkedin invites."
Unrecognized state continues to exist anyway
Somaliland is an odd land. In global limbo since its birth, it continues to develop economically and socially in a reasonably stable and secure environment. Recently, the British town of Sheffield was the first to recognize its very existence as an independent country. In the meantime, the capital Hargeisa city, which has only one paved road, recently installed streetlights for the first time, and an enterprising entrepreneur returned home from Australia to start a familiar city service - the yellow cab. Investors and businesses have started paying attention while the major powers still prefer to pretend it doesn't exist. Even while experts debate whether their model can be utilized in far more volatile Somalia, Hargeisa's residents want you to know they are Happy.
Blair Disease
"At a reception recently I met the former president of a small post-communist country. I know that’s what he was because he told me so immediately. He then began dropping names of London-based ex-Soviet oligarchs – his friends and business associates, he implied.
This man had Blair Disease, named for ex-prime minister Tony Blair: the growing propensity of former heads of government to monetise their service. Blair Disease is damaging but easily cured." -- From Simon Kuper in the Financial Times
This man had Blair Disease, named for ex-prime minister Tony Blair: the growing propensity of former heads of government to monetise their service. Blair Disease is damaging but easily cured." -- From Simon Kuper in the Financial Times
But who plays the wacky neighbor?
Dave Lamb is Home
Dave Lamb of folk duo Brown Bird (previously), husband of bandmate MorganEve Swain, died yesterday at the age of 35 after a year-long fight with leukemia. [more inside]
Jon Hopkins, "Immunity"
'Collider': bleakly euphoric music by Jon Hopkins; harrowing video - perfectly married to the music - by director Tom Haines. Hopkins says 'Collider' is the best track he's ever written. It's the centrepiece of his critically acclaimed and Mercury-nominated 2013 album Immunity. [more inside]
April 5
Peter Matthiessen
Peter Matthiessen’s Homegoing. "He is the only writer ever to win the National Book Award for nonfiction and fiction, but it’s not just the writing: Born into the East Coast establishment, Matthiessen ran from it, and in the running became a novelist, a C.I.A. agent, a founder of The Paris Review, author of more than 30 books, a naturalist, an activist and a master in one of the most respected lineages in Zen. As early as 1978, he was already being referred to, in a review in The New York Times, as a 'throwback,' because he has always seemed to be of a different, earlier era, with universal, spiritual and essentially timeless concerns." Peter Matthiessen, Lyrical Writer and Naturalist, Is Dead at 86.
Night Walk in Marseille
I feel like I'm floating above little worlds.
6 GoPros = 360º Video.
My name is Galt -- I'm a cop.
Cat Cafes move out of Japan
Turin is the latest city to claim a cat cafe, which opened today. Originally a phenomena only in Japan, other cat cafes are already open in Paris, London, Vienna, St Petersburg, Budapest, Munich, Berlin, Madrid and Devon. Coming soon: San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, Los Angeles, Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, and Lithuania.
Let beauty awake in the morning from beautiful dreams
The Nightingale and the Rose is an 8 minute film-opera by composer Emily Hall and filmmaker Gaelle Denis, and performed by the amateur voices of Streetwise Opera.
"therfore the holi fader, the pope, hath ratefied and confermed my book"
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville is a remarkable 14th Century book which tells the autobiographical story of Sir John Mandeville's travels from England to Jerusalem and beyond to Asia. The only problem is that the book "had been a household word in eleven languages and for five centuries before it was ascertained that Sir John never lived, that his travels never took place, and that his personal experiences, long the test of others' veracity, were compiled out of every possible authority, going back to Pliny, if not further." The book was very popular for many centuries and was illustrated many times. For more about the book there is the introduction to a recent scholarly Middle English version and an illuminating podcast interview [iTunes link] with Professor Anthony Bale, the translator of a new version of the "defective" version of the book, which was the best known version for centuries. The interview goes into the many errors and fantasias of Mandeville but also puts the work in the context of its time and place.
I should probably feed my cat, soon and often.
On Engastration
The Granddaddy of 'Em All
This weekend, the WWE Universe descends on the Superdome in New Orleans for WrestleMania XXX, the annual pay-per-view* that serves as the Super Bowl of professional wrestling. [more inside]
Deeedlydeedlydeedly... BUM, DUM-DUM, PUH-PUUUMM
Five minutes of the 70s PBS Logo spun 63 progressively weirder ways and pitch-shifted. Trance-inducing.
1:45 of the infamous Viacom 'V of Doom'. [more inside]
1:45 of the infamous Viacom 'V of Doom'. [more inside]
I'm trying to free Kansas City
Two friends and artists separately found troves of photos by the same photographer, documenting the drag balls of the 1950s and 1960s in Kansas City. [more inside]
Real Change
Homelessness in America Award-winning documentary by Michael Becker. (Vimeo)
Hand Cut Illuminated Paper Art by Hari & Deepti
Harikrishan Panicker and Deepti Nair, who both hail from India, go by the duo artist name of Hari & Deepti. Together they create small and large diorama artworks made of intricately cut layered paper lit by LED lights.
Exclusive Alternate Scene from Gravity which Redefines the Entire Movie
"Hard to believe, but Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuaron ("Children of Men") originally shot an opening scene for Gravity that would have radically changed the film. Too bad the brass at Warner Bros. rejected this version." [slyt | no spoilers | watch the last 15 seconds]
The beat goes on and on and on and on and on and on...
Everybody loves the drum fill from "In The Air Tonight". Here, have a 30-minute loop of it. (SLYT) (Previously.)
Are you ready to get really.rich with these domainname.solutions?
Back in 2011, ICANN started taking applications to expand the list of generic top level domains (GTDLs) from 22 to ... a lot more, possibly 1,400 new names. This tidal wave of new GTLDs started with شبكة (shabaka, Arabic for "web"), then expanded from there. Enter the promotions of domain names no one will remember: .guitars, .sexy, .tattoo, and more. [more inside]
Weekend Flash Fun
Remember Gemcraft? Or perhaps Gemcraft Chapter 0 or Gemcraft Labyrinth? Well after a characteristically long wait Gemcraft 2 has finally arrived.
(Previously 1 2 3)
Portraits of Reconciliation
Twenty years after the Rwandan genocide, reconciliation still happens one encounter at a time between perpetrators and survivors.
Like A World Without A Roof
Over a thousand people from around the world have made their own videos for Pharrell Williams' song Happy. [more inside]
Lovely retro future.
I once got Happy New Yeared in March!
April 4
Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York
Ten years ago, photographers James and Karla Murray released the book "Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York." In it, they documented the facades of the rapidly disappearing mom-and-pop businesses of New York City. Now they've revisited some of the same spots.
In Situ
BXL swings in the cracks is a "Collective who up-cycles waste (scrap wood, discarded domestic furniture, ...) into parasite interventions with the aim to vitalize public spaces." [more inside]
The Kuricorder Quartet
The Kuricorder Quartet play the recorder, and is probably best known in these parts for doing the theme song to Pythagoras Switch. However, they also play original music, and they all play other instruments. They've covered the Beatles, and John Williams. Here's a picture of all the instruments they play. This year is their 20th anniversary.
The Pink Zebra of Wall Street
Guitar Center, America's largest music equipment retailer, is facing some tough financial times. This in itself is not necessarily news. What's intriguing is that Guitar Center, which was previously owned by Bain Capitol -- yes, that Bain Capital -- was recently acquired by its major creditor, private equity firm Ares Management. At least one analyst is speculating that Ares Management may see more upside in peddling Guitar Center's junk bond rated debts to other suckers than in revitalizing it to sell more guitars and amps, a strategy that harkens back to the recent sub prime mortgage market implosion. [more inside]
Hey, why does this Wikipedia entry look different?
Girl Brothers
Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman may best be remembered as members of Prince's Revolution.
While still recording new music together, they have also been composing for film and television,
Come for the funk, stay for the Aerosmith easter egg inserted into one of their songs, but put on some sort of pads or protective gear, as these women are about to kick your ass.
While still recording new music together, they have also been composing for film and television,
Come for the funk, stay for the Aerosmith easter egg inserted into one of their songs, but put on some sort of pads or protective gear, as these women are about to kick your ass.
The world has changed in fifteen years. Except where it hasn't
It has been nearly fifteen years since a young sportswriter named Jeff Pearlman was given an assignment by Dick Friedman, the baseball editor at Sports Illustrated: write a piece about a soon-to-be 25-year-old Braves closer with a sinking 95 mph fastball and a wicked slider. The man's name was John Rocker. A sportswriter reflects upon the story that may have defined his career, if not the career of the man he covered.
Drop it like it's hot
How to melt an aluminum slug (action heats up around the 2' mark) with a DIY induction heater (obl. wiki).
Thousands of photographs of Tibet
Gorgeous photographs of Tibet, thousands of them by Jan Reurink with excellent, informative captions. Exceptionally detailed, clear photographs of a huge variety of Tibetan landscapes, architecture of all kinds, flowers, wildlife, cool details, monastic cities. Of course, all kinds of Tibetan people, from a high plains cowboy in a dusty town,
monastic staff, nomads to kids. [more inside]
Cutest. Deadpool. Ever.
Sir Roger Penrose: Cosmic Inflation Is ‘Fantasy'
(NPR Science Friday) Sir Roger Penrose calls string theory a "fashion," quantum mechanics "faith," and cosmic inflation a "fantasy." ... What's wrong with modern physics—and could alternative theories explain our observations of the universe? Full lectures: Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe (Lecture 1: FASHION)(Lecture 2: FAITH.)(Lecture 3: FANTASY.) [more inside]
Cannons Not Included, Sadly
In the game Full Steam Ahead, you design steamships under the glowering supervision of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
I thought it was amusing that you bought a budgeting app.
If you're going to read one piece on fictional, passive aggressive banking services make it Kelly Stout's short "Alert!" [more inside]
TileArray
TileArray creates a mosaic using Wikipedia Commons images of any picture you upload. [via mefi projects]
Gonna be confusing when they call the fifth film "Terminator THREE"
An actual robot is playing THREES live right now on the internet. It is probably better than you at THREES, but at least your arms are longer, so.
Dear Diary, my teen-angst bullshit now has a body count
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Heathers. The hellscape of Westerburg High was the setting for a dark comedy about teenage cruelty, murder, and suicide (or rather, the media glorification of it). While the initial release was a commercial flop, critics praised the film. "Heathers may be the nastiest, cruelest fun you can have without actually having to study law or gird leather products,” wrote Desson Howe, and Janice Maslin likened the film to a “demonic sitcom.” [more inside]
Let us now praise and mourn the wonderful photographer Anja Niedringhaus
"When you say ‘war photographer’ the first image that comes to mind is someone crazy for the bang bang. Not Anja. She was an artist. She used her sensitivity and sense of understanding to access the human side of war." In Memoriam: Anja Niedringhaus (1965—2014).
Her photographs are powerful and beautiful.
Being a superhero is awesome, everyone should try it
Captain America: The Winter Soldier is racing towards another blockbuster weekend and another hit for the Marvel cinematic universe. With future films planned out as far as 2028, can any other studio succeed in grabbing at Marvel's crown? And as the stars chafe at their multi-film contracts and grow tired of fame, waht next for Kevin Feige, the man behind Marvel's success?
"I was able to help shape a type of heroine that I wanted to see."
"To Celebrate the Phenomenal Music of Disney's Frozen, Cast Members took to the Stage to Treat a Small Audience to a Live Performance." Kristen Bell took it one step further, by performing her song, Do You Want to Build a Snowman with each stanza done as the main character Anna at a different age.
18 million reasons to go to two-factor authentication
German authorities have discovered yet another giant database of hacked passwords. The German Federal Office for Information Security says it will have a website allowing people to check if their accounts are affected up and running by Monday. Some 3 million Germans are believed affected; there is no indication that the impact is limited to Germans or Germany.
A link to an ARD article on the case is here, in German.
Surely This...
Controversial artist George W. Bush, whose paintings of dogs, cats, and portions of his own nude body were "hacked" and swept the Twitterverse by storm, has opened a new one-man show of paintings, consisting of portraits of world leaders, in a library in Texas. Though political content has not usually been a part of his work in previous years, his interest in the subject matter may stem from his brief stint in public service a few years back.
I felt the relief of being known.
Teaching The Camera To See My Skin. An essay by photographer Syreeta McFadden on "photography's inherent bias against dark skin."
"Photography is balancing an equation between light and documentary. Beauty and storytelling. Honesty and fantasy. The frame says how the photographer sees you. I couldn’t help but feel that what that photographer saw was so wildly different from how I saw myself."
Goth lolz.
Psychic Rites. Imagine Joy Division grew up in Moscow, Idaho, a small college town with a surprising connection to the Manchester scene. Imagine that Ian Curtis was exposed to hipster irony and decided he wanted to have a bit of fun with all that doom & gloom. You might have something like this. Or maybe this or this. (No, really.)
We Beat the Drum Slowly
Chad VanGaalen animates a surreal drive through Hollywood in the video for Timber Timbre's Beat the Drum Slowly. VanGaalen also produces animations for his own music: Molten Light, Flower Gardens, Clinically Dead, Peace on the Rise and Red Hot Drops. Some imagery slightly NWS.
Sold for $30,000
Each spring, the Broadway community raises money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and the Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative, leading up to the annual Easter Bonnet competition. After the curtain call, the cast, after a show has opened, normally asks audience members to donate spare cash, or to buy a signed poster. Last night, the cast of Broadway's "Beautiful" had a special guest star auctioneer.
Chuffs and squeaks
Moses of the prosthetic leg, an animated duo of a ghost girl and shoes
Take a bit of nonsense rhyming about Moses' toeses as set to a lively tap dancing number by Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor turns into something else in this short animation of a ghost girl joining a dancing pair of shoes (YouTube; Vimeo).
it’s actually crazy how much of your face is just eyes
From the year 800 AD to 1450 the entirety of Europe’s approach to painting was “It’s impossible to know what an animal looks like, just draw a guy’s head on it.” This is their story. Meanwhile in Byzantium, they're having trouble deciding how to draw Jesus in their painting: absolutely furious or else like his face was a candle and it was melting towards the floor just a little bit.
Is it a "geep" or a "shoat"?
What do you get when you cross a goat and a sheep?
Two weeks ago, Paddy Murphy, who also owns Murphy’s pub in Ballymore Eustace, saw that an unusual looking lamb had landed from a ewe. [more inside]
Nostril, Lip, Penis
The worst places to get stung by a bee "It started when a honeybee flew up Michael Smith’s shorts and stung him in the testicles." Smith's painstaking study adds another dimension to the well-researched Schmidt Sting Pain Index.
A wholesome response
Graham cracker manufacturer Honey Maid recently ran a commercial titled "This is Wholesome" that depicted many kinds of families, including gay and racially mixed. Said commercial evidently sparked the ire of social conservatives and prompted at least one letter writing campaign denouncing it. As sweet as the original commercial was, Honey Maid's response was just beautiful.
A message for the Secretary of State for Education
"Dear Mr Gove" - a poem by Jess Green.
Imagine the Ramones led by John Cage and managed by Andy Warhol
Who says you can't make money as a musician in the 21st century? Ann Arbor funk band Vulfpeck have figured out how to use Spotify royalties to fund their tour, enabling fans to attend shows for free. [more inside]
A slightly different format
April 3
Borderland
Theatre of Nightmares
NIN ACL
As Austin City Limits gets ready for a rare television appearance by Nine Inch Nails this coming weekend (check your local PBS listings), the audience can prepare with an interview with Trent Reznor about the reëmergeance of NIN, or with a preview of the ACL performance with this clip of Satellite, from the most recent NIN album. [more inside]
"it’s a murderous bloody hell that’s occurring in a country"
Political Hatred in Argentina: An Interview with Uki Goñi
Two days before I met with Uki Goñi, his analysis of president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and the crisis in Argentina was the top article on the Guardian website. Goñi is a correspondent for British newspapers, covering events in Argentina, but his professional experiences before this are enough for a number of lives. He arrived in the city in his early twenties and began work as a journalist at the Buenos Aires Herald, an English language daily and the city’s only newspaper reporting on missing people during the dictatorship. Over the next decade he focused on his band Los Helicópteros, and then wrote three books: El Infiltrado. La verdadera historia de Alfredo Astiz, on the activities of the ESMA, an illegal detention center during the country's National Reorganization Process (1976-1983) responsible for disappearances, tortures, and illegal executions; Perón y los Alemanes, on Perón's involvement with Nazi spies in the country; and The Real Odessa, on Nazi criminals' escapes to Argentina.
It's like the sun is going down on DC
Hrishikesh Hirway hosts and produces Song Exploder, a podcast on the Maximum Fun network.
This week's episode featured Jeff Beal, composer for Rome and Blackfish, explaining the process behind the development of the theme songs (and title sequences) for both seasons of Netflix's House of Cards. [more inside]
Out In The Cold, Cold Ground
A Certain Kind Of Death is a documentary about what happens to those who die with no next of kin. (Warning: Bodies, sadness)
Sci-Fi Spoilers!
I don't want to spend my life just breathing air, and doing nothing.
"The criminal's daughters" Mementos of childhood, meticulously documented by the secret police of Romania.
"Blue in the Face"
Back in 1995, Wayne Wang directed a film called "Smoke", which starred Harvey Keitel and William Hurt and whose story largely centered on a Brooklyn Cigar shop on the corner of 16th Street and Prospect Park West. The movie was very well received by critics and stands as one of the great films of the 1990's... but that's not the whole story. [more inside]
ESREVER OYKOT
"You see, there is a gay agenda. It’s true."
Going down?
A complete map, so far, of Krubera Cave, the current 1st place holder of the world's deepest cave award.
It is, of course, where you would find the world's deepest insect.
Exponential Binary Clock Countdown
Based on the Wheat and Chessboard problem, the Chess Board Clock is "a binary clock counting down 2 to the 63rd power in hundredths of a second". The first few squares go by super fast (a non-seizure mode is available) while the last square won't be reached for over 2 billion years. [via mefi projects]
These Are the Black Emojis We've Been Waiting For
"It’s easy to trip people up if that is your sole intention."
"So yeah, I (apparently) lost a game on Bill’s show that I didn’t know I was playing. The game was 'Gotcha!' And according to the Internet (and the number of misspelled and nigger filled — the word, not the people — tweets in my timeline), I got gotcha’ed!"
W. Kamau Bell writes about his recent appearance on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher [more inside]
W. Kamau Bell writes about his recent appearance on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher [more inside]
Skydiver meets meteorite
Norwegian skydiver nearly struck by meteorite. Although Helstrup is still not completely convinced that it was indeed a meteorite that flew past him, the experts are in no doubt. “It can’t be anything else. The shape is typical of meteorites – a fresh fracture surface on one side, while the other side is rounded,” said geologist Hans Amundsen, “It has never happened before that a meteorite has been filmed during dark flight; this is the first time in world history.” [more inside]
Bring the house down
The Red Road flats have been a feature of the Glasgow skyline for 50 years and inspired an award winning film. They will make their final contribution to posterity on 23 July when they will be blown-up as part of the opening ceremony for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
The Little Prince at The Morgan Library
The Little Prince: A New York Story As he prepared to leave the city to rejoin the war effort as a reconnaissance pilot, Saint-Exupéry appeared at his friend Silvia Hamilton's door wearing his military uniform. "I'd like to give you something splendid," he said, "but this is all I have." He tossed a rumpled paper bag onto her entryway table. Inside were the manuscript and drawings for The Little Prince, which the Morgan acquired from her in 1968. [more inside]
The tails sometimes look like little poops
A facebook page for fans of and pictures of hamster butts (SLFB). Most posts are in Japanese but you're not going for the text.
let's create a revolucion
US secretly creates 'Cuban twitter' for purpose of undermining the communist government and gathering data on its citizens' political leanings [more inside]
Inequality Kills
For nearly two hundred years America was one of the healthiest and longest-lived countries, but today, over thirty countries have better health by many measures. What happened? "If the culprit of the decline in health is not health care, are individual health-related behaviors, often blamed for the high death rates in some groups, causing our low ranking in health? Apparently not." [more inside]
The "Community" Weblog
Classic Book Titles with Sarcastic Quotation Marks [SLListicle]
Jeff Smith's newest comic, Tuki Saves the Humans, is free to read online
Jeff Smith, author of the highly lauded and much-awarded Bone comic series, and the subsequent RASL comic series, has returned with a new comic: Tüki Saves the Humans, a web series based on "the most current speculations of scientific experts" about a major ice age somewhere between 2 million and 975,000 years ago ancient Africa drying up, driving or allowing hominids to move from Africa. The first "season" of Tüki is now complete, which makes the Bones happy. [more inside]
These goggles, they do nothing!
The Worst NHL Hockey Jerseys Dave Delisle, designer of Geeky Jerseys, excoriates the NHL designers for such monstrosities as the Buffaslug and the Islanders Fishsticks (it really is an uncanny resemblance).
Keep your Cadburys, make mine Fabergé
“Jostling occurred for an extended period of time, then silence.”
"This will be final message from Saigon station"
"At that point when you say who were the people who stayed to the last, at that point I still had with me in Saigon, a couple of pretty determined and brawny types with whom I was able to get on the Embassy fence and we physically were lifting these people across. And we had a couple of military officers in the crowd with whom we had a deal that if they pick out of the crowd the people that we want, then in the end we will lift them in and they can go too. Well we did that. We made deals like that with the police all through the day. We were able to move people through the city of Saigon by making deals with police officers and saying, "Put your families in among these people and when we safely put them on the plane or safely put them on the bus then we are going to take you too. That worked very well." -- On Monday, The Washington Post published the obituary of Tom Polgar, the last CIA head of station in Vietnam and linked to his memories of the years he spend in Vietnam and the final evacuation of Saigon, written in 2013 for the Pushing on blog, which is largely dedicated to the War on Vietnam and the fall of Saigon.
Gimme an R! Gimme an A! ... Actually, just give me my paycheck.
The salon visits, the makeup, the eyelashes, the tights were almost exclusively paid out of her own pocket. The finishing touch of the Raiderettes' onboarding process was a contract requiring Lacy to attend thrice-weekly practices, dozens of public appearances, photo shoots, fittings and nine-hour shifts at Raiders home games, all in return for a lump sum of $1,250 at the conclusion of the season.A Raiderette has filed a class action suit alleging that the Raiders' practices violate the California Labor Code.
He definitely seems to have a fascination with the drums.
Dan Ozzi talks to Sheryl Zelikson, Late Show music producer, about how she selects guests, what goes into booking the musical segment, and how to get your band on the show. Tonight's Musical Guest: How Late Show with David Letterman Books Its Acts.
A connection between the Mandelbrot set and the way nature operates...
Arthur C. Clarke, Benoit Mandelbrot, Stephen Hawking, David Gilmour and many more trip the fuck out about Fractals, the Colors of Infinity.
Ketamine vs Depression
Short BBC report about a small study where people with depression were given small doses of ketamine:
"A team at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust gave patients doses of ketamine over 40 minutes on up to six occasions.
Eight showed improvements in reported levels of depression, with four of them improving so much they were no longer classed as depressed.
Some responded within six hours of the first infusion of ketamine.
Lead researcher Dr Rupert McShane said: "It really is dramatic for some people, it's the sort of thing really that makes it worth doing psychiatry, it's a really wonderful thing to see.
He added: "[The patients] say 'ah this is how I used to think' and the relatives say 'we've got x back'.""
On bitbuddychat everyone is talking about a scam some people fell for.
Curious about Bitcoin but nervous about risking your hard-earned fiat dollars? Get the whole experience with the Advanced Bitcoin Simulator!
April 2
Submachine: The Temple
Mateusz Skutnik has released the latest Flash point and click adventure game in the Submachine series: The Temple (previously, Submachine Wiki).
who ... ventures to live only by the aid of the Mutual Insurance Company
Risk Sharing
The furious to-do about Obamacare has obscured a basic fact about modern Americans: most of us, certainly the middle class, are sheltered by a complex web of insurance. Some insurance coverage is privately provided, such as life, accident, fire, flood, travel, liability, burial, and consumer product insurance. And some is government-provided or -required: Social Security, Medicare, unemployment, bank deposit, car, health, mortgage, food, crop, disaster insurance, and so on. All of these, without which American middle-class life as we know it would not be recognizable, are relatively recent developments.[more inside]
It would look A LOT like the NFL.
1.4 million chips and 5,000 Raspberry Pis
Dave Carlson runs North America's largest (known) Bitcoin mining operation, taking 10% to 20% all bitcoins made. It was reputed to be mining $8 million dollars a month during the peak prices a few months ago. The operation takes up two warehouses (video) and apparently Carlson has special deals on bulk electricity, near Columbia River hydro-power in Eastern Washington. Carlson partnered with a shadowy Ukrainian known only by his handle "Bitfury" who designed a custom ASIC chip controlled by a Raspberry Pi, "he taught himself microprocessor engineering and designed his chip by hand at his kitchen table".
I, I wish you could swim / Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim
I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be heroes, just for one day
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be heroes, just for one day
Bah Gawd, That's Ghostride The Whip's Music!
Legendary wrestling announcer Jim Ross adds a flourish to any occasion, even when it's not wrestling. After four decades in wrestling, he's moved on. SBNation takes a look at the man and his career.
Street Typography
In a remarkably satisfying video, London city workers painting street lines, show off some excellent freehand typographic craftsmanship. [va]
Supreme Court Campaign Finance Opinion Issued
Today, the Supreme Court issued its 5-4 opinion in McCutcheon v FEC.
The Government has a strong interest, no less critical to our democratic system, in combatting corruption and its appearance. We have, however, held that this interest must be limited to a specific kind of corruption—quid pro quo corruption—in order to ensure that the Government's efforts do not have the effect of restricting the First Amendment right of citizens to choose who shall govern them. For the reasons set forth, we conclude that the aggregate limits on contributions do not further the only governmental interest this Court accepted as legitimate in Buckley. They instead intrude without justification on a citizen’s ability to exercise “the most fundamental First Amendment activities.” Buckley, 424 U. S., at 14. The judgment of the District Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings. It is so ordered.The Supreme Court strikes down provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 ("BCRA") as an unjustified intrusion on First Amendment rights. The link also includes the concurrence of Justice Thomas and a dissent by Justice Breyer. [more inside]
It is the first self-taught and the longest-course I have ever taken
Long Island teenager Kwasi Enin made headlines this week for having the honor of being accepted at all eight Ivy League colleges, as well as Duke, Stony Brook University, SUNY Geneseo and Binghamton University. This is the essay he credits with a big part of his success.
Spanish for "The Niño"
Since January there have been signs of a possible El Niño brewing in the pacific, the first major one since 1998. While the US-funded ocean-monitoring system is in a state of partial collapse, the data has continued to grow stronger, and this may now be the largest ocean temperature anomoly ever seen. A major El Niño could significantly boost global temperatures, cause severe weather and storms, melt Arctic sea ice and help push the world into a warm phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, accelerating global warming. (more discussion)
Saudi Arabia declares atheists and political activists “terrorists”
The Sunni Islamic monarchy/theocracy's restrictive laws on political expression have become even stricter this year. This is in response to potentially dangerous dissidents returning to Saudi Arabia from the Syrian civil war. But the categories of offenses are so broad as to define virtually any non-Muslim as a terrorist, and to ban all independent political expression. [more inside]
Terrabyte Incognita
Africa Might Not Look Like You Think It Does
There is no such thing as an objective map. This was true of cave paintings, Roman tapestries, and colonialists' charts of Africa. It is also true of Google Maps.
Okay, but, street slang is an increasingly valid form of expression
Iggy Azalea channels Alicia Silverstone in a Clueless homage Australian Rapper Iggy Azalea [previously] channels Alicia Silverstone in this homage to Amy Heckerling's 90s Emma remake Clueless
This video (along with the cinematic BOUNCE) appears to have catapulted Iggy into the mainstream in a big way.
Many newspapers enter, no one leaves
Newspaper company Digital First Media is expected to announce today that it is shuttering Project Thunderdome, its three-year old experiment in news content creation and sharing. [more inside]
Visions of Impossible Things
The chaplain then explained how he had spoken with the dead man’s wife, who related a vivid dream she’d had that night of her husband standing next to her bed, apologizing and explaining that he had been in a car accident, and that his car was in a ditch where it could not be seen from the road...They recovered the body 20 minutes later. Most scholars have no idea what to do with such poignant, powerful stories, other than to dismiss them with lazy words like "anecdote" or "coincidence."...We should put these extreme narratives, these impossible stories, in the middle of our academic table. I would also like to make a wager, here and now, that once we put these currently rejected forms of knowledge on our academic table, things that were once impossible to imagine will soon become possible not only to imagine but also to think, theorize, and even test. Professor Jeffrey Kripal explains why the humanities needs to expand its field of acceptable topics for investigation.
When is a church not a church?
NPR reporter John Burnett and investigator Samantha Sunne examine the finances of Christian TV network Daystar.
At NPR's request, the Trinity Foundation, a watchdog group in Dallas that monitors Christian broadcasters, compiled a list of the nation's 30 leading evangelist broadcasters. Twenty-two of them are designated churches, meaning they don't have to report anything to anybody. Of those, two-thirds have churches, while a third of them — including Daystar — hold no regular services.
Travelers
The Dead Zoo Gang "Over the last several years, millions of dollars worth of antique rhino horns have been stolen from natural history museum collections around the world. The only thing more unusual than the crimes is the theory about who is responsible: A handful of families from rural Ireland known as the Rathkeale Rovers." (Via)
Wizards finding a path out of the dungeon
How did Pathfinder become the only table-top role-playing game ever to outsell Dungeons & Dragons, outpacing it 2:1? What were the economics of the Open Gaming License, whereby Wizards of the Coast effectively gave away the rules to its flagship D&D product? Why did the table-top market collapse?
This and more on Episode 73 of the Game Design Roundtable podcast, with guest Ryan Dancey, architect of the Open Gaming License strategy at Wizards of the Coast, and former marketing exec at CCP Games (makers of EVE Online). Dancey is now the business lead on Pathfinder Online, an upcoming sandbox fantasy RPG broadly in the mold of EVE and Ultima Online.
TGDRT is usually about game design, but this episode is a fascinating look into the business side of the RPG world, both online and off -- from someone who has been at the heart of the most interesting business cases in the space. The first 30 minutes are all about business history and economics. [more inside]
Katni$$ FTW
Do movies that pass the Bechdel Test make more money than movies that don't? Walt Hickey, writing for Nate Silver's new fivethirtyeight site, examines the data.
"Usually I just do a Google search"
Studying the "wisdom of the crowd" the Good Judgement Project has been asking average citizens to predict global events over the last 3 years. A weighted average shows these participants, who do not have access to classified materials, are more accurate than the Intelligence community. And the projects "elite" forecasters are 30% more accurate.
"Do What You Want To."
Dr. John Kitchin quit a medical career to pursue his passion: skating along the boardwalk of San Diego’s Pacific Beach. He calls himself “Slomo." But it's more than just a get-out-of-the-rat-race story; in the video, he has a lot to say about the neurological effects of skating as an activity. [more inside]
At least they don't follow Lazarus Long's philosophy
"The Church of All Worlds, registered as a religion in the United Statesin 1968 and now a significant presence in the contemporary Pagan revival,takes its name from the fictional church in Heinlein’s novel. Tim Zell, now Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, is one of the most influential of contemporary Paganleaders, and his church has developed a revolutionary programme for thetransformation of Western society. CAW core doctrines (‘Thou art God’), rituals (water-sharing), and church organizations (nests) are based on those of Heinlein’s fictional church." -- Carole M. Cusack examines how Heinlein's most famous novel gave rise to a pagan religion that still exists today. (Warning: you may get a pdf download popup, depending on your browser's settings.)
Listening to vinyl makes you better than those who don't listen to vinyl
April 1
Can you inflate the balloon in the form of a kitten?
The Google Archipelago
Google has been in Ireland since 2003, and some former Google employees and contractors with significant experience at the company say that Google’s reputation as a great employer is undeserved. Permanent staff are well taken care of, they say, but even many permanent staff are overqualified, overworked, and perform relatively menial tasks. In addition, entire layers of hidden contractors and temporary workers do much of the work without the benefits or opportunities accorded permanent staff.
Cyber Threats Map
The city as clip art
The "White City" of Tel Aviv is a World Heritage site with the world's largest collection of Bauhaus ("International Style") buildings. In his blog TLV Buildings Israeli artist Avner Givelter depicts these buildings' facades with local colors and typography in the style of the similarly-charming Windows of New York. [previously] [more inside]
High Maintenance returns
After a hiatus, the smart, sweet, sharp, and often surprising webseries High Maintenance returned in past months with three new episodes. [more inside]
I Don't Want To Hide My Love
Hidden treasures, in drying lakes and rivers, and in NYC street cracks
The drought in California has brought about a number of things, from exposing part of Mormon Island, an old mining town that has partially emerged from Folsom Lake (news coverage clip; aerial view of a re-emerged bridge with overly dramatic music; a tour of the exposed ruins), to being good news for gold prospectors. But if there's too much of a crowd in the Sierra Nevada foothills, you can always dig for gold in New York City (alt: YouTube), in the cracks of Midtown's Diamond District with Raffi Stepanian.
"If you're far enough ahead that people can't tell if you're joking"
Screw With A Smile
desreveR
April Fools' Day, everyone's (least) favorite day on the Internet, brought a 73-minute movie to Netflix of a rotisserie chicken uncooking. What a waste of reversed video. [more inside]
Wild animals
Katerina Plotnikova's portraits with wild animals are surreal. The photographer recently posted a behind-the-scenes shot along with an album of other shots showing how they stage each photograph.
Everybody? Everybody!
Homestar Runner is back. The Brothers Chaps have added new content to homestarrunner.com for the first time since 2010.
On the BeyHive and Cyborg Mrs. Carter
Detroit: Then & Now
The latest project of detroiturbex.com is Detroit: The Evolution of a City, showing incredible then and now photographs with a sliding interface, so you can see the changes (good and bad) across the decades. It's broken up into five sections: A Growing City, Deindustrialization, Unrest, Decay, and Revival.
Previously from detroiturbex: Cass Tech superimposed photos. [more inside]
RIP Hobie
Ebola spreads to new territory
There's been an ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. With 122 cases so far, this is the worst outbreak since 2007's 264-case outbreak. The worst outbreak was 2000-2001's 425 cases. What makes this one different is the way it has spread so widely. [more inside]
"It begins with an idea....."
The Yellow Umbrella and the Blue French Horn
The ending of How I Met Your Mother has been a bit controversial.
At least two people besides the writers knew all along what would happen: Ted's kids. They kept the secret for nine years.
(Some MeFites might not be entirely surprised either, based on these previous threads.)
The ending is a little melancholy, both for the characters and for the fans who have become attached to them over almost a decade. Don't worry, though, 20th Century Fox is already developingHow I Met Your Dad.
Milton Berle, Carlos Mencia, and Dane Cook walk into a bar
Given the expense and uncertainty of lawsuits, how does the comedy community enforce the proscription on joke theft? Part of an ongoing Slate series called The Humor Code.
The Passion of Rob Ford
Excellent Dissent magazine article on Rob Ford that looks beyond his disastrous single term as Toronto's mayor and examines the neoliberal strain in Canadian politics that has caused the larger problems facing Toronto, of which Ford's 2010 election is only a particularly appalling symptom.
So it's come to this: The canonization of Bob Dylan's 1980s albums.
"Dylan was bad in the '80s because to be anything else would've been dishonest." Steven Hyden (who else?) has found a way to appreciate '80s Dylan: "It's about appreciating the subtext of records that are more fun to think about than to listen to."