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On the Moscow metro and being gay
posted by latkes at 10:36 PM PST - 25 comments

UFO is a 1970 British science fiction television series about a secret military organization which defends the Earth from Alien invaders. The series was created by Gerry & Sylvia Anderson, who previously created the "Supermarionation" puppet TV series in the 1960's (Thunderbirds, Fireball XL-5), and would later create Space: 1999. The production is highly stylized, from the cars, hair styles, and future fashions to Ebert-worthy parties of the future, mesh space shirts and groovy theme music. [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A at 9:38 PM PST - 44 comments

An amateur film shot in 1939 by French tourist Jean Vivier documents a trip to New York City, in color.
posted by The Whelk at 8:30 PM PST - 43 comments

The German Granddaddy of Crystal Meth
posted by Confess, Fletch at 6:46 PM PST - 59 comments

Fashion blog Ivy-Style.com posted an article today hypothesizing that four-term Republican North Carolina State Representative Bryan R. Holloway is the anonymous blogger, known as Richard, responsible for the much criticized WASP 101 fashion blog, widely excoriated around the internet for its frequent racist, sexist, and classist overtones (and for having bad fashion sense, too). [more inside]
posted by something something at 5:14 PM PST - 219 comments

The University of Southern California, Dartmouth College, Swarthmore College, and the University of California, Berkeley are among higher education institutions facing recent scrutiny for their alleged failure to comply with Clery Act reporting requirements. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 3:58 PM PST - 23 comments

A lovely recollection of pop-culture mentors, and finding culture pre-internet. "Uncle Mike didn’t play D&D; paintball battles in the Everglades were more his thing. But for the next few years he kept passing along books he’d finished, including 1984’s Dragons Of Autumn Twilight. The first installment of the D&D-based Dragonlance series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, it’s by no means a classic in the genre. But it helped solidify my devotion to what would eventually be called geek culture. Back then, the term would have been meaningless to me. And it would have made my macho Uncle Mike laugh his ass off."
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 3:51 PM PST - 17 comments

The Department of Homeland Security released its list of monitored keywords on social networking sites.
posted by DecemberBoy at 3:07 PM PST - 113 comments

31 charts that show improving long term trends. Same charts, but with titles that will destroy your faith in humanity.
posted by bartonlong at 2:39 PM PST - 37 comments

Watch Near Earth Asteroid 1998 QE2 live as it makes its closest approach to Earth. Basically NOW. [more inside]
posted by Westringia F. at 2:05 PM PST - 26 comments

Fears of white extinction and calls for a white homeland. In pockets throughout the Western world, a race-based nationalist ideology is on the rise. In Britain, there is the British National Party. In Greece, there's Golden Dawn. In Hungary, the gypsy-fearing, anti-Semitic Magyar Nemzeti Gárda. There's a growing conservatism of this sort in many other European countries too. [more inside]
posted by ChuckRamone at 1:58 PM PST - 111 comments

"This morning, Turkish police surrounded protesters in Taksim Gezi park, the central square in Istanbul, blocked all exits and attacked them with chemical sprays and teargas. An Occupy-style movement has taken off in Istanbul." [more inside]
posted by suedehead at 1:44 PM PST - 85 comments

The Vampires, a secret federation of thieves and killers, rule the Paris underworld through intimidation, murder, and a certain diabolic je ne sais quoi. After the headless body of the police inspector in charge of the Vampire investigation turns up in a swamp, dauntless reporter Philipe Guérande steps up his efforts to bring the gang to justice. But is he equal to the schemes of the protean Grand Vampire and his lieutenant, the cat burglar, assassin, and sometime torch singer called Irma Vep? And can anyone hope to prevail against the rogue criminal Moréno and the unearthly power of his gaze?

Les Vampires (1915-1916), Louis Feuillade's six and a half hour film serial, still communicates the nerve, pace, and delirium that inspired Lang, Hitchcock, Assayas and Maddin. Here are all ten episodes of this "supreme delight of cinema." Three more of Feuillade's best serials wait below the cut. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 1:37 PM PST - 12 comments

Celie Smith is an outdoorswoman unlike any other you've ever met. And here she is four years ago.
posted by 256 at 1:15 PM PST - 13 comments

"[Peer Steinbrück, the chancellor-candidate] is a good man, with quite a bold programme for ‘social justice’. Tax increases for the better-off, a proper minimum wage, dual citizenship for immigrants, less elbowing individualism and more solidarity in a society where das Wir entscheidet – ‘it’s the we that counts.’ The German public, surprisingly, mostly agree that increasing taxes is a sound idea. What they resent is that the idea comes from the SPD. In the same way, the Augsburg programme is widely thought to make sense, but the voters don’t fancy Peer Steinbrück. They are pissed off with Angela Merkel’s governing coalition, but reluctant to let go of Mutti’s hand. In short, the public are in one of those sullen, unreasonable moods which make politicians despair." The LRB reports from Germany. [via]
posted by rollick at 12:53 PM PST - 20 comments

Ballroom Luminoso is a series of six chandeliers made of recycled bicycle parts, installed under a freeway overpass in Texas. The chandeliers were commissioned by Public Art San Antonio (PASA) and created by Joe O'Connell and Blessing Hancock Public Art. When the globes are lit up at night, the results are what O'Connell describes as a cross between a ballroom and shadow theatre.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:46 PM PST - 9 comments

Some claim it is the worst video game ever. What is certain is that five million of them were dumped by Atari in a New Mexico landfill. Now, Fuel Industries, a Canadian film production company, has received permission from the city of Alamagordo, to unearth E.T.
posted by pashdown at 12:02 PM PST - 67 comments

"The Texas SkyScreamer is now the park’s tallest attraction at 400 feet and will hold a world record title as the tallest tower swing ride in the world. Up to twenty-four riders sit in open-air swings while spinning in a 124-foot circle at speeds up to 35 mph. At its 40 story peak, guests have the ultimate view of the Arlington, Dallas and Fort Worth." Watch it in action.
posted by jbickers at 11:53 AM PST - 98 comments

Actor, comedian, screenwriter, and graphic artist Phil Hartman died fifteen years ago this week. The Vulture and Legacy.com look back at some of his most memorable characters. KCAL talks to John Hartman about his brother's death and plans to develop his posthumously-released comedy album Phil Hartman's Flat TV as an animated feature. [more inside]
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:43 AM PST - 72 comments

Why the Venture Bros. creators want you to know nothing about Season 5. Not sure what happened in the last 4 seasons? The story so far (video).
posted by Artw at 10:05 AM PST - 180 comments

"Ariane Kambu Mbenza grew up with her uncle in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When she was seven years old, he asked her to be in charge of preparing food. Sure, Uncle. No problem. She had grown up watching her mother cook and played kitchen plenty of times. "In Africa, you know how to cook automatically." Now a mother herself, Ariane showed me how to make what in Congo would be called, " Riz aux legumes avec poisson grillé avec la sauce tomate à l'ail." Text Via followed by Congolese mini Waffles as seen in the photo in the linked newspaper.
posted by infini at 9:09 AM PST - 16 comments

Scientists now have definitive proof that many of the landscapes seen on Mars were indeed cut by flowing water.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:39 AM PST - 62 comments

The Dancing Saints is "a 3,000 square foot icon wrapping around the entire church rotunda, showing ninety larger-than life saints; four animals; stars, moons, suns and a twelve-foot dancing Christ." Among the icons are traditional saints like Francis of Assisi and Mary Magdalene, but most of them are non-traditional saints, like Florence Nightingale, John Coltrane and Lady Godiva's Horse. The Dancing Saints Icon is inside the St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. You can watch a video tour of the church's architecture, read an interview with iconographer Mark Dukes, and a short essay on the Dancing Saints Icon by Richard Fabian.
posted by Kattullus at 8:34 AM PST - 25 comments

Last spring, Chance the Rapper got suspended from High School for 10 days. Faced with an ultimatum from his Dad to make real progress as an artist or drop it and get serious about his studies, Chance spent his suspension making the mixtape #10Day, a critical hit. Now, Chance has released another mixtape, Acid Rap, that delves even deeper (and with even more complex wordplay) into his favorite subjects: hallucinogens, nicotine addiction, the 90s, his mom, and the current dire situation of the south side of Chicago. Many critics are calling it a masterpiece. Download for free here, or listen here.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:27 AM PST - 60 comments

...Though the poster contained no painted imagery, it did introduce a new logo to the campaign, one that had been designed originally for the cover of a Fox brochure sent to theater owners….Suzy Rice, who had just been hired as an art director, remembers the job well. She recalls that the design directive given by Lucas was that the logo should look “very fascist.” (via)
posted by octothorpe at 8:17 AM PST - 38 comments

Who was your first pop-culture crush? (single-link AV Club)
posted by box at 8:14 AM PST - 178 comments

"Mm! Tastes like corn candy." MFA project by Maya Weinstein [more inside]
posted by Divest_Abstraction at 7:59 AM PST - 15 comments

Baby elephant tries to get up. Fails for a bit. [slyt | cute | via]
posted by quin at 7:58 AM PST - 23 comments

"Recent statistics from the Office for National Statistics suggest residents of this city have the lowest household disposable income of anywhere in the UK. The average income per individual householder after tax, but including benefits, is £16,034 a year. In Nottingham it is £10,834. That may be only one measure of poverty, but at a time when there has been a sustained assault on living standards for everyone it is surely a difficult extreme. " [via BBC]
posted by marienbad at 7:55 AM PST - 15 comments

"From the day of it's release in 1977, every time you heard it, you knew 2 things - you had never heard anything like it and this was something special. Energy, sophistication, soul. Birdland." | Weather Report live in 1978 at Stadthalle Offenbach | Maynard Ferguson Big Band live in 1982, Maynard Ferguson Band, live at Disneyland '83 (decent audience recording), Maynard Ferguson Band live on TV (year unknown) and a studio recording of Maynard Ferguson | Bruce Kaphan Quartet recording Birdland in their studio | Manhattan Transfer Vocalies Live in Tokyo in 1986, the same year when Weather Report disbanded | Future Corps, live
posted by filthy light thief at 7:11 AM PST - 15 comments

Northern Ireland Town Fakes Prosperity for G8 Summit.
posted by ennui.bz at 6:21 AM PST - 50 comments

"A fundamental shift in the relationship between the government and the governed is taking place: by restricting access to the law, the state is handing itself an alarming immunity from legal scrutiny. There are several aspects to this: the partial or total withdrawal of state financial support for people who lack the means to pay for legal advice and representation; and for those who can pay, a restriction on which kinds of decision by public bodies can be challenged. In the area in which I work, criminal law, defendants who receive legal aid will lose the right to choose who represents them in court. Specialist criminal barrister Francis FitzGibbon on the impact the UK government's legal aid reform plans are having on the English & Welsh justice system. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 4:57 AM PST - 40 comments

Today is the last day in session for the Illinois House before the summer break, and LGBT advocates are hoping that when they convene at 10:30am, they will address and vote on SB10, legislation already passed by the state Senate to enact marriage equality in the state of Illinois. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:35 AM PST - 97 comments

Paolo Soleri Is The True Legend Of The Arizona Architecture Scene. print version. Soleri passed away last month at the age of 93. He is best known for the arcology, Arcosanti, in the Arizona desert. Remembering Life in Arcosanti, Paolo Soleri’s Futuristic Desert Utopia [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:56 AM PST - 11 comments

Horrible Histories tells the story of Rosa Parks in song. [more inside]
posted by feelinglistless at 2:22 AM PST - 8 comments

The Guardian Food blog's How to Eat series finally gives into the regular demands of their fans* from below-the-line and delves deep into how to eat boiled eggs. [*YMMV]
posted by halcyonday at 1:49 AM PST - 52 comments

The WHPK Record Library. Scans of notable (or notably commented-on) records from WHPK's rock collection.
posted by kenko at 9:41 PM PST - 13 comments

"40 years ago, in millions of living room across the British Isles, a strange alien creature was beamed on to our television screens. With bright red hair and multicolored spacesuit, his unearthly appearance shocked the nation. But for many teenagers who experienced this televisual visitation, he would change their lives forever." Jarvis Cocker narrates the BBC Four documentary, David Bowie -- The Story of Ziggy Stardust.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:02 PM PST - 18 comments

Footage of the "Sync" level from the indie game Fez. While Fez is mainly known for its central gimmick – it's a 2D platformer set in a 3D world – and for the complexity of its puzzles (which include a constructed alphabet, a code based on Tetris tetrominos, and a "practically impossible" final puzzle) – "Sync" is a retro-colored world with blocks whose rhythmic appearances and disappearances trigger notes when the player is near them. The result is somewhat enchanting (as is the rest of the game). [the Fez soundtrack with the Sync backing track; a Fez remix soundtrack with the various block rhythms added in; Fez previously on MetaFilter]
posted by Rory Marinich at 7:45 PM PST - 67 comments

Attraction turns people and a few props into a story (video) [more inside]
posted by Deoridhe at 7:10 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

On the eve of their 4th internet pay-per-view extravaganza, rumours abound of a cataclysmic denouement for the unique independent wrestling company. With wrestlers prone to accidental time-travel, dimensional warping and mind-control by ancient, cursed artifacts (not to mention outbreaks of goblins vs balloons and international games of duck-duck-goose whenever Osaka Pro come to visit), the Chikara workplace is stressful enough, but under the power-crazed directorship of Wink Vavasseur, and purported backstage strife, the promotion has been hemorrhaging talent for several months... [more inside]
posted by Kandarp Von Bontee at 6:41 PM PST - 24 comments

Local People With Their Arms Crossed
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 6:20 PM PST - 47 comments

First-ever high-resolution images of a molecule as it breaks and reforms chemical bonds. Remember those college textbook diagrams of molecules? They're surprisingly accurate.
posted by bitmage at 6:03 PM PST - 32 comments

How Stravinsky's Rite of Spring has shaped 100 years of music
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:21 PM PST - 32 comments

"Fabiola has been a beloved subject for countless painters, most of them amateurs. The portrait’s format is almost always the same: Fabiola is seen in profile facing left, her head covered by a rich red veil. Mr. Alÿs, who was born in Belgium in 1959 and moved to Mexico City in 1990, began collecting Fabiola paintings — as the genre is called — about 15 years ago, buying them at thrift shops, flea markets and antiques stores primarily in Mexico and Europe. He has previously shown his collection three times, when it was much smaller; the current presentation includes more than 300 works. Photos of the exhibition
posted by The Whelk at 4:54 PM PST - 18 comments

Patrick Rodgers, who (previously) "foreclosed" on Wells Fargo, is now suing eBay over a case of mistaken identity.
posted by ancient star at 4:20 PM PST - 13 comments

108 stitches per ball. One stitch every 8.3 seconds. For a 10.5 hour shift*. 97 degrees Fahrenheit. Complicated? [more inside]
posted by basicchannel at 3:38 PM PST - 54 comments

Fitzcardboardaldo: an all-cardboard Fitzcarraldo. [more inside]
posted by neroli at 2:14 PM PST - 25 comments

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou (previously) is serving a 30 month sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pennsylvania, and has sent a letter describing his experiences there. [more inside]
posted by benito.strauss at 2:03 PM PST - 42 comments

The Chicago Sun-Times has laid off its entire photography staff, reports the Chicago Tribune. The Sun-Times plans to use freelance photographers and reporters to shoot photos and video going forward. The Chicago Newspaper Guild, the union that represents the photographers, immediately said it would consider taking action against the company over the cuts. [more inside]
posted by The Girl Who Ate Boston at 1:23 PM PST - 121 comments

Before Jason Collins, there was her. "Owning The Middle: Brittney Griner wears bow ties, dates women and dunks with abandon. Call her names if you like -- she is done hiding from haters."
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:30 PM PST - 47 comments

WTF is my startup pitch?
posted by Nomyte at 12:01 PM PST - 71 comments

At the 17th annual Webby Awards, Steve Wilhite accepted a lifetime achievement award for the creation of the .gif format. During his acceptance speech, he reiterated his stance: It's pronounced "JIF", not "GIF". [more inside]
posted by DynamiteToast at 11:53 AM PST - 238 comments

Christopher Pound combines and weights lists and ratings from Project Gutenberg, Goodreads, and elsewhere to produce novel sortings of familiar data—Shakespeare's plays by popularity, for example. The most successful fiction writers at Gutenberg, and the top thousand most popular works of fiction found there. The most highly rated films of 2012 and 2011. The most popular Sci-fi and fantasy sub-genres at Goodreads. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 11:01 AM PST - 25 comments

"Two weeks ago, it took a team to lift [Mery] Daniel from bed; now she can walk 100 yards on her own. But she is also fatigued and frustrated, six weeks after a blast at the Boston Marathon tore through her legs...Now she has a new worry: Making up for lost time fund-raising." [more inside]
posted by gottabefunky at 10:49 AM PST - 6 comments

An unnamed West Coast Conference school has a golfer who received extra benefits. Washing her car with a hose not available to all students. And on Wednesday we learned from Portland basketball coach Eric Reveno that a WCC coach committed a violation by texting a recruit. The message? "Who is this?"
posted by theichibun at 10:46 AM PST - 24 comments

The Essayification of Everything (SLNYT)
posted by shivohum at 10:30 AM PST - 15 comments

The Tucson Show 2013 Mineral Rooms. [more inside]
posted by Think_Long at 9:56 AM PST - 15 comments

Let me tell you a thing, about an amazing man named Patrick Stewart.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:38 AM PST - 60 comments

A pop-up feast based on dishes from the TV show Hannibal June 18th Food Stylist Janice Poon and Chef M. Kantor will present an evening of Hannibal-inspired dishes at the Cookbook Store in Toronto.
posted by milovoo at 9:22 AM PST - 41 comments

Psychological Science, “the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology", recently published two controversial journal articles. One claims that ovulation might change women's political and religious views (PDF warning). The other tries to link physical strength with political conservatism. Some people disagree and find serious flaws in the methodology. [more inside]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:34 AM PST - 65 comments

I’m 23 And I Still Have A Babysitter! I Really Hope This Is How You File For Divorce! Wait, What is the Stock Market? There’s Nothing Punk Rock About Sriracha Anymore. All this and more from Thought Brochure: Where Thoughts Are Thinked. (some stuff NSFW) [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:59 AM PST - 58 comments

Harvard chemists induce microscopic crystal "flowers" to grow on the edge of a razor blade with beautiful results.
posted by quin at 7:49 AM PST - 8 comments

Open-source reimplementations of great old games in one place. Previously.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:44 AM PST - 15 comments

In the 19th century, in Roermond, The Netherlands, lived a man who was Colonel of Cavalry, and a Protestant. He married a Catholic noblewoman (likely quite a scandal in a country which was heavily segregated along religious lines at the time). The husband died in 1880 and was buried on the Protestant side of the cemetery. When his wife died eight years later, she could not be buried next to him, as a wall separated the Catholic and Protestant sides. A novel, and rather touching, solution was found.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER at 7:30 AM PST - 19 comments

The Talk Shop is the world's first conversation salon. An artist opened up a space in Manhattan where patrons spin a conversation wheel to talk with total strangers.
posted by rageagainsttherobots at 7:17 AM PST - 24 comments

"Ian Jones flies under the handle of Parisian, resides in St Louis, is influenced in part by a lot of UK-bass-related music; and this global melange in a microcosm sums up the multifarious sounds as created by the burgeoning producer." If that's a bit too wordy, check out six tracks on Parisian's Soundcloud page, and his complete catalog (more or less) below the break. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:00 AM PST - 8 comments

Jazz pianist Mulgrew Miller is gone too soon at 57. His music lives on, including this streaming NPR recording of the Mulgrew Miller Trio live at the Kennedy Center Jazz Club.
posted by .kobayashi. at 6:34 AM PST - 14 comments

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) has found something in the sonar data from their 2012 summer expedition to Nikumaroro atol.
posted by hat_eater at 6:14 AM PST - 25 comments

Football coach Todd Hoffner took a 92 second cell phone video of his children goofing around after bathtime. [autoplaying (sfw) video] A few months later, he lost his job and was under investigation for child pornography. [more inside]
posted by desjardins at 5:59 AM PST - 118 comments

"On Sunday, Joseph S Blatter attended a ceremony on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius to celebrate the renaming of the country's FA headquarters in his honour. The Fifa president would perhaps say it was a fitting tribute, given his promotion of African football and the amount of "development" money poured into the continent over recent decades. His critics would say it was typical of his egomania and note the importance of African votes in keeping him atop world football for 15 years." [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 5:43 AM PST - 9 comments

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posted by Fizz at 5:10 AM PST - 41 comments

It's been 20 years since ground-breaking, TV-defining science fiction TV show Babylon 5 debuted. Join Phoenix Comicon in celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Babylon 5 with creator J. Michael Straczynski and 14 of of the surviving Babylon 5 actors. Part 1. Part 2. Learn secrets such as why Michael O'Hare really left Babylon 5. [more inside]
posted by Mezentian at 3:59 AM PST - 32 comments

io9: 'Everyone's A Sellout'

But the "selling out" thing isn't about whether the work is any good, so much as the question of "artistic integrity." Which assumes a simple model in which the artist has a "vision," that forms perfectly in her head, and she then executes that vision with perfect precision — unless she pauses to think about how best to attract an audience of paying customers, in which case the vision becomes compromised and, I guess, blurry. That business, of having a vision and executing it, describes none of the actual process of creating something from scratch, unless you're some kind of minimalist who writes a six-word story or just paints a big dot on a canvas.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:42 AM PST - 41 comments

95 minutes of John Coltrane live in 1960-61-65 ... with Elvin Jones (drums), Jimmy Garrison (bass) and McCoy Tyner (piano), and Stan Getz, Eric Dolphy, Oscar Peterson.
posted by philip-random at 10:07 PM PST - 15 comments

Stormy Kromer .... a sacred place. [more inside]
posted by HuronBob at 9:17 PM PST - 9 comments

The bones had been boiled, the skins salted and soaked in formalin, the hoofs and horns measured and labeled, and the disassembled parts crated and shipped to the Upper West Side. There, on Akeley’s production line, the remains were reassembled and processed into a perfect likeness of what had once been, a “real” copy of reality. The animal had become an “animal."

[more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 9:00 PM PST - 13 comments

Do you turn off Old Yeller before the end so you can pretend that he lived a long and happy life? Did a cute pet on a movie poster make you think it would be a fun comedy but it turned out to be a pet-with-a-terminal-illness tearjerker instead? Are you unable to enjoy the human body count in a horror movie because you're wondering whether the dog's going to kick the bucket? Have you ever Googled "Does the [dog/cat/horse/Klingon targ] die in [movie title]?" If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then welcome - DoestheDogDie.com is here for you! [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 8:40 PM PST - 142 comments

The 2013 Man Booker International Prize went to Lydia Davis, best known as a short story writer—some just a single sentence long—but also a novelist and translator. There is a wealth of material by and about her online, and here are few favorites: Video of Davis reading some very short stories, PennSound MP3 collection of readings, talks and interviews, writer James Salter reads and discusses Davis' story Break It Down, interview by Francine Prose, Frieze Talks reading and interview, video of reading followed by Q&A, "A Position at the University" and a a discussion about the story, and finally, a number of links to her short stories: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. [Lydia Davis previously on MeFi]
posted by Kattullus at 7:22 PM PST - 16 comments

Jason Anderson, the singer who's "equal parts Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison" has remastered and rereleased his classic EP 'Omaha' and is offering it for free from his website. You can read an interview with him here, which talks about meeting Calvin Johnson and his days as Wolf Colonel.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 6:17 PM PST - 7 comments

Who Wore It Better is an ongoing visual research project presenting associations and common practices in contemporary art.
posted by clearly at 6:01 PM PST - 31 comments

For years, Google Maps has been the map of our world in a historically unprecedented way. The new Google Maps (announcement) will eschew the uniformity of the old Maps and instead customize the map experience based on a user's behavior. Some are concerned how this artificial narrowing will affect the way we experience places and relate to our urban spaces. Others believe the customization makes the new maps more honest. Most, however, will probably just want to comment on the huge overhaul to the interface.
posted by Defenestrator at 5:12 PM PST - 102 comments

The Olympus Microscopy Resource Center digital video gallery, with: live cells, pond life and more, crystals and more.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:59 PM PST - 4 comments

Panos Cosmatos 2010 feature film Beyond The Black Rainbow (previously) was largely panned as being a self-indulgent, incoherent mess. But just about every reviewer who couldn't stand the homage to 70's/80's mindfuck cinema agreed with one thing: Jeremy Schmidts original score for the film, itself distilling all the best essences of 70's/80's era synth experimentation was a triumph.
posted by mediocre at 4:53 PM PST - 23 comments

Hasbro's TV channel The Hub has premiered what it hope will be its next breakout hit after My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic... SheZow. The premise: a 12-year-old boy finds the magic ring that transformed his late aunt into a superhero. He tries it, and gains superpowers... and a girl-hero pink costume, pink lightsaber and a pink batmobile. The Daily Dot covers the inevitable mixed (and mixed-up) reaction. Transgender? Transvestite? Trans-silly? SheZow's creator Obie Scott Wade (a dude) who's on Twitter, explains simply "It's Tootsie with super powers." (Rated Y-7)
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:40 PM PST - 73 comments

As May evaporates into the lazy haze of June, why not take some time to reflect on that which really matters: The Best May News Bloopers (Some cursing), compiled by NewsBeFunny - a veritable treasure trove of flubs, goofs, spills, and camera-crashing.
posted by The Whelk at 3:34 PM PST - 28 comments

Prancercise. [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie at 3:20 PM PST - 65 comments

Let me lay it plain: I have been, by a childish and ignorant member of the online community, banned. More: My input regarding Charli and Nico’s wedding is no longer even considered for publication! I have no idea why, and no one will give me the courtesy of a proper response. At first, I thought perhaps it was benign neglect, to re-appropriate a phrase, but I’ve since realized something much more sinister is afoot, so now—since I am no longer even allowed on Charlico.com—I am bringing this matter before you here on this august and humane recipe blog you call, surely in jest, BrendaCookingFun.com. The More You Ignore Me: a novel excerpt by Travis Nichols. From Electric Literature's Recommended Reading.
posted by jokeefe at 2:16 PM PST - 39 comments

“While we are alive we should sit among colored lights and taste good wines, and discuss our adventures in far places; when we are dead, the opportunity is past.” ― Jack Vance (1916-2013) [more inside]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:45 PM PST - 109 comments

I wonder where the garbage goes ? (slyt)
posted by sgt.serenity at 1:14 PM PST - 7 comments

During the decade 2000-10 in the USA, for the first time the number of poor people in major metropolitan suburbs surpassed the number in cities. Between 2000 and 2011, the poor population in suburbs grew by 64% — more than twice the rate of growth in cities (29%). By 2011, almost 16.4 million residents in suburbia lived below the poverty line, outstripping the poor population in cities by almost 3 million people. These are some of the grim findings of ‘Confronting Suburban Poverty in America’, a report by the Brookings Institution, and the implications of this report and its contents are that much more significant for Brookings is conservative in its outlook and advocacy. via
posted by infini at 12:20 PM PST - 57 comments

What kind of Asian are you?
posted by kmz at 11:59 AM PST - 250 comments

Joss Whedon speaks at Wesleyan commencement
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:40 AM PST - 41 comments

An Alternative History of 11 American Female Doctors: "A new producer, Glen A. Larsons, changed up almost everything fans knew about Doctor Who. Gone was the constant traveling, and in its place Jennifer Jones' Doctor was now a scientist working exclusively for the United States military in exile on Earth. The comedic style that had always been a tremendous part of the show was left behind in order to capitalize on the drama skills of the Academy Award-winning actress." [more inside]
posted by feelinglistless at 11:28 AM PST - 40 comments

Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who opened the first abortion clinic in Canada and broke the law in doing so - which resulted in the Supreme Court of Canada ruling that criminal laws against abortion were unconstitutional - and who was subsequently made a member of the Order of Canada, has passed away at the age of 90.
posted by mightygodking at 11:19 AM PST - 86 comments

The Library of Babel is online! Recently digitized classics include Rtvcdg Lxcxahssds Qgflvab mge Bjbpd Orrq, Dgqqjv Iqfold xpx Ljg vjd Vapdophr, and Vmcyogxmvyrnle Lgjmyqsh Hfmni Lyvvdahec Bajvp Hlibiov, which appears by the gracious permission of Lbtddnbdqh Pjnghbdtvmi. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 10:21 AM PST - 42 comments

"Behind the Candelabra" and the Queerness of Liberace
posted by Artw at 10:08 AM PST - 69 comments

This Monday the Belgian rapper/musician Stromae released his latest single Formidable to Youtube, where it has already gotten well over two million views. If you've heard of Stromae it's probably because of the success of his 2010 single Alors on Dance, which was an Europe-wide hit, later remixed by Kanye West and Gilbere Forte. That this song became such a huge hit was not entirely a coincidence, as Stromae and his manager hit upon a novel way to promote his music, as he explained in a TEDx talk in Brussel in 2010. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 9:48 AM PST - 11 comments

Recently, Quebec's annual comedy award show, Le Gala les Oliver opened with its host, Mario Jean, coming out in blackface to imitate a black comedian. Of course, there has been considerable stunned and angry editorials. But this is not the first incident of the use of "blackface" in high profile in the province. In 2011, a McGill student filed a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights commission after his classmates donned blackface and imitated Jamaican stereotypes. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 9:26 AM PST - 77 comments

You should care because the unexotic underclass can help address one of the biggest inefficiencies plaguing the startup scene right now: the flood of (ostensibly) smart, ambitious young people desperate to be entrepreneurs; and the embarrassingly idea-starved landscape where too many smart people are chasing too many dumb ideas,
posted by Lord_Pall at 9:21 AM PST - 53 comments

Controversial US Representative Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), announced on her website today she will not seek re-election in 2014 (NYT). Bachmann, whose 2012 campaign is currently under investigation by the FBI for alleged financial improprieties by top officials, was first elected to statewide office in 2000, defeating long term Republican (18 years) incumbent Gary Laidig in the primary and winning Minnesota's (state) Senate District 56. Two years later she defeated another incumbent, Jane Krentz (DFL) in the newly redrawn district 52. Her term in the MN Senate was marked by a series of cultural conservative initiatives and positions, including repeated attempts to introduce a MN Constitutional Gay Marriage ban (2003) (2005), as well as an attempt to insert creationism into the science curriculum in MN in 2003. [more inside]
posted by edgeways at 8:26 AM PST - 158 comments

Pick up after your dog! And if you see someone who doesn't do so - inform them, possibly using these dance moves.
posted by peagood at 7:50 AM PST - 9 comments

Shaped on all Six Sides: A short documentary about the craft and philosophy of wooden boat carpentry. [via]
posted by quin at 7:45 AM PST - 8 comments

A train derailed after hitting a truck near Baltimore yesterday. TV news / Raw helicopter footage and citizens on the scene. (NSFW Audio and explosion is about a minute or so in)
posted by josher71 at 7:30 AM PST - 41 comments

"I was a liberal mole at Fox News": Joe Muto explains how Fox News works on the inside and outlines how a day on The O'Reilly Factor works.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:18 AM PST - 38 comments

It started as an afternoon hacking project with your Twitter API. I called it @timebot. I set it running just over a year ago.
posted by xqwzts at 5:37 AM PST - 58 comments

"Trading Faith for Wonder: On Judaism's Literary Legacy". The LARB reviews Jews And Words, by Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:24 AM PST - 6 comments

"Idiosyncratic Terrorist Breaks Out on His Own in Sahara Bloodbath" International terrorist Moktar Belmoktar, responded the way talented employees with bruised egos have in corporations the world over: He quit and formed his own competing group. And within months, he carried out two lethal operations that killed 101 people in all: one of the largest hostage-takings in history at a BP-operated gas plant in Algeria in January, and simultaneous bombings at a military base and a French uranium mine in Niger just last week.
posted by artof.mulata at 10:04 PM PST - 37 comments

Do you contribute to open source projects on github? Want to know how you're doing? Check your Open Source Report Card.
posted by empath at 9:23 PM PST - 40 comments

Eric Schliesser is collecting some memorable opening lines of philosophy journal articles.
posted by LobsterMitten at 6:46 PM PST - 40 comments

Abbi Jacobson got a letter in the mail, sent from Lt. Joseph O. Matthews, addressed to his wife, and was sent to her exact MacDougal Street address 70 years ago. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:17 PM PST - 20 comments

Anita Sarkeesian has uploaded the second video in her Tropes vs. Women in Games series. The video was temporarily removed after "her harassers abused YouTube's flag function to get the video removed".
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 6:00 PM PST - 216 comments

Fat City. Physician Karen Hitchcock writes eloquently in The Monthly on obesity in Australia and the obesity-as-disease paradigm.
posted by nicolas léonard sadi carnot at 5:12 PM PST - 104 comments

A very sad tale of one of the most respected action movie directors in cinema history.
posted by shimmerbug at 3:34 PM PST - 105 comments

An honest, heartbreaking, and ultimately informative postmortem on the positively rated game Retro/Grade presented at the 2013 Game Developers Conference.
posted by SpacemanStix at 3:07 PM PST - 15 comments

If product reviews annoy you with their lack of a definitive answer, you may already know electronics and gadget review site The Wirecutter, which tells you, definitively, what the best TV, office chair, smartphone, umbrella, and $100 earbuds are. Now there is The Sweethome, which does the same for home goods: ice cube trays, shower caddies, skillets, household drills, and the best toilet paper (unless you don't live near Walmart).
posted by blahblahblah at 2:08 PM PST - 75 comments

"Britain's poor were absolutely and relatively better off until Thatcher was elected in 1979. Since then, the bottom half of society is worse off than it was in 1983." "In 1945, when Thatcher turned 20, the richest 0.01 per cent people in Britain received 123 times the mean national average income. By the time she turned 40 in 1965 that had halved to 62 times, and the year before she came to power, in 1978, it was at its minimum: just 28 times the average income."
posted by marienbad at 1:27 PM PST - 105 comments

Russian scooter driver has a pretty crappy day.
posted by mudpuppie at 12:52 PM PST - 50 comments

"Arrested Development's fourth season is triumphant when it's not completely falling apart." That seems to be the critical consensus, which sees the season as ambitious but flawed—a "hot mess", if you will. The American Prospectcompares Season 4 to the housing crisis; Daniel Fienberg simply calls the season's length "exhausting". But how has binge watching affected the critical response? Showrunner Mitch Hurwitz asked viewers not to watch the whole season in one glut: "[Y]ou can’t really laugh the whole time. You have to take a break. There’s so much material." Some critics agree with Hurwitz; others argue that this season is "essentially a 7-1/2 hour long episode" and that binge watching is the only way to appreciate the new show. (Sadly, Hurwitz's original plan—to have the new episodes be watchable in any order—fell through.)
posted by Rory Marinich at 12:31 PM PST - 369 comments

Shut Up and Listen is a radio show by and for artists and DJs with learning disabilities aired on five stations in the UK. Produced by the Brighton-based charity Carousel, the organizers also run Blue Camel Club, England's largest music night for learning disabled artists and their fans in the UK with regular attendance of more than 600 people.
posted by parmanparman at 9:53 AM PST - 2 comments

Anatomy of a hack: How crackers ransack passwords like “qeadzcwrsfxv1331” Hackers get %90 of an MD5 password database using multiple analysis techniques including Markov chains, mask, combinator and hybrid attacks. These attacks combine dictionaries of previously-recovered passwords and passphrases with brute force and statistical analysis to expand the power of password cracking.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:41 AM PST - 148 comments

This summer will be an exciting one for fans of renowned light artist James Turrell. While his masterwork, Roden Crater, near Coconino, AZ is as yet unfinished, there are 3 large-scale retrospectives of his work opening at the LACMA (May 26th, 2013 - April 6, 2014) , Guggenheim (June 21, 2013 - September 25, 2013) and the MFA Houston (June 9, 2013 - September 22, 2013). To whet your appetite you can watch a short PBS documentary on his work or peruse this NY times slideshow of some of his installations with the stories behind them. Previously.
posted by nathancaswell at 9:19 AM PST - 12 comments

Chris Sims, formerly of Comics Alliance (previously) , takes a look at 7 awesome moments in the greatest police training video ever.
posted by Artw at 9:13 AM PST - 29 comments

Do you like libraries? Do you like comics? Then Library Cartoons, Comics and Drawings is relevant to your interests. Need more? There's always Libraries in Pop Culture. Not satisfied yet? Unshelved is the internet's longest running librarian comic, previously featured for its pimped out bookcarts contest, but also worth visiting for the regular Friday bookclub.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:05 AM PST - 5 comments

Cecil Crowninshield, resident mystical defender of Salem Massachusetts, has put down his Lumurian Quartz topped wand and picked up the keyboard to help keep his neighbors informed of goings-on around town via a series of local news columns - Impress your date! - The Top Five Salem Sandwiches and the ghosts who stole them! - Magick On A Budgetk! When not writing his regular column, Cecil enjoys commenting on others. [via mefi projects]
posted by The Whelk at 9:04 AM PST - 12 comments

For three days in May of 2012, seventeen cartoonists gathered at the University of Chicago to discuss the philosophy and practice of comics. [more inside]
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:04 AM PST - 2 comments

The history of people finding Australia goes a little something like this: Aboriginal Australians separated from a migration out of Africa into Asia about 70,000 years, and Australian archaeological sites have proof of humans going back 50,000 years. Jump ahead to 1606, when there were two European voyages that made landfall and charted portions of Australia. First was Willem Janszoon's voyage in late February or early March of that year, and then Luís Vaz de Torres came a few months later. Abel Jansen Tasman was the first European to come across Tasmania, and between 1642 and 1646, his crew charted the Australian coast, more or less (Google auto-translation, original page). Then of course, there was James Cook's 1770 voyage. With all these dates in mind, how did five copper coins from an African sultanate that collapsed in the early 1500s (Google books) end up on an uninhabited island in the Northern Territory of present-day Australia? [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:43 AM PST - 83 comments

As part of the Affordable Care Act, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has released data that show significant variation across the country and within communities in what hospitals charge for common inpatient services. (via) [more inside]
posted by dubusadus at 6:52 AM PST - 68 comments

Here's that bad advice you were hoping for is a Tumblr featuring carefully curated scathing advice column responses.
posted by Harald74 at 5:39 AM PST - 56 comments

"Jobbik is one of the most politically successful far-righ parties in Europe. The Hungarian party is anti-EU, anti-semitic and anti-roma,
and have thrived since the financial crisis." SLYT (Channel 4 report from Budapest, Hungary.)

Also on Vice: My Week with Hungary's Far Right

Previously about Hungary:
Roma in Hungary: A Hard Life
The Frightening Hungarian Crackdown
Hungarian Democracy Under Threat
posted by bdz at 5:17 AM PST - 24 comments

NYT Editorial Filter -- "Now African-Americans make up about a fifth of the military. The idea that today we ask any of these soldiers to serve at a place named for a defender of a racist slavocracy is deplorable; the thought that today we ask any American soldier to serve at a base named for someone who killed United States Army troops is beyond absurd. Would we have a Fort Rommel? A Camp Cornwallis?" [more inside]
posted by bardic at 10:41 PM PST - 767 comments

"In 1872 two men began work on a lexicon of words of Asian origin used by the British in India. Since its publication the 1,000-page dictionary has never been out of print and a new edition is due out next year. What accounts for its enduring appeal? Hobson-Jobson is the dictionary's short and mysterious title." [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:47 PM PST - 10 comments

My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity…
All a poet can do today is warn.
Two 20th century choral masterpieces share more than Biblical texts. Benjamin Britten’s well known War Requiem, Op. 66 and Rudolf Mauersberger’s lesser known Wie liegt die Stadt so wüst were both written in response to the destruction of medieval architecture and major churches in WWII bombings. Since 1956, the cities of Coventry and Dresden have been twinned to promote peace and understanding. [more inside]
posted by Madamina at 9:32 PM PST - 9 comments

In the Crosshairs: Chris Kyle, a decorated sniper, tried to help a troubled veteran. The result was tragic. [Previously, Via]
posted by homunculus at 5:45 PM PST - 67 comments

Jack the dog is very good at balancing objects on his nose and head. (via)
posted by insectosaurus at 5:42 PM PST - 24 comments

German Brewers Say Fracking Will Mess Up the Country's Beer (via The Atlantic) Brewing the world's best hefeweizen, you see, requires great drinking water -- and fracking, they said, "could reduce or even completely eliminate the security of the water supply." In a letter (in German), the organization (Deutscher Brauer-Bund) argued that this newfangled way of extracting energy would conflict with Europe's oldest food purity law, the Reinheitsgebot of 1516.
posted by michswiss at 5:17 PM PST - 34 comments

A shrine in Mystic, Connecticut contains the right arm of Saint Edmund, former Archbishop of Canterbury.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 4:58 PM PST - 32 comments

The WeiboScope - Displays the most widely reposted posts on Weibo with pictures within a 10K user sample with 10,000 or more followers. Combine it with Google Translate and you get an insight into what's being talked about on Weibo! (from the good people at University of Hong Kong's Journalism & Media Studies Centre)
posted by awfurby at 4:40 PM PST - 7 comments

Sarah Ferri serves up blues and jazz and other good stuff. A Place on the Moon. The Hungry Villain. Dancing at the Supermarket. And the ear-worm that is On My Own. That is all.
posted by IndigoJones at 4:37 PM PST - 2 comments

@HuffPoSpoilers. "I give in to @HuffingtonPost click-bait so you don't have to." [more inside]
posted by Lexica at 3:41 PM PST - 38 comments

Journalist Brody Levesque and military widow Karen Morgan on what Memorial Day means for LGBT Americans. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:35 PM PST - 3 comments

The annual cheese-rolling event, now unofficial and unsanctioned, has taken place at Cooper's Hill. 3,000 people attended this year, watching several races down the steep Gloucestershire hill. After a police warning to the 86 year old maker of previous cheeses concerning legal liabilities, a foam disc was used as a stand-in cheese. Despite failing to raise funding for a inspirational documentary, Kenny Rackers, an American cheese racer, attended and won the first race. [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 1:37 PM PST - 26 comments

YouTube user AKAcronny has an interesting animation style, which he applies to making fan videos for They Might Be Giants songs:
Can't Keep Johnny Down ( <-- best, watch this one) - Certain People I Could Name - Skullivan - Everything Right is Wrong Again
posted by JHarris at 1:08 PM PST - 8 comments

Women soldiers fought, bled and died in the Civil War, then were forgotten
posted by maggieb at 11:41 AM PST - 11 comments

The high salaries of the Silicon Valley are not enough to send your children to college, buy a house, and retire when looked at alongside living expenses. You need to play the equity game. [more inside]
posted by straight_razor at 11:30 AM PST - 204 comments

The folks at Mellow Pages, a community-run library/salon in Brooklyn (recently profiled in the NYT), have put together a how-to guide for building a similar kind of space in your neighborhood: short version here, long version (and Google Doc) here.
posted by Cash4Lead at 11:08 AM PST - 12 comments

A secret asian man has spoofed his way into numerous VIP parties in Cannes pretending to be PSY of Gangnam Style fame. Now revealed as a French Korean adoptee living in Ireland, Denis Carré gave a short interview to GQ.
posted by Iteki at 9:57 AM PST - 37 comments

English singer-songwriter Keaton Henson's video for Small Hands, directed by Joseph Mann. [more inside]
posted by threeants at 8:41 AM PST - 8 comments

There have been countless words written about Stanley Kubrick’s visionary masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey — some good, some bad — but after 45 years, this superb book remains the only one you’ll ever really need. It is such a shame that this book is out-of-print. It is filled with everything you ever wanted to know about 2001. It leads off with Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel” and closes with a complete reprint of Stanley Kubrick’s interview with Playboy magazine. In between are profiles, interviews with technical advisors, effects secrets revealed, letters to Stanley from the moviegoing public, as well as reviews of the film, both good and bad. A fascinating snapshot of a moment in history when the world was caught off guard by a motion picture. Search your local used book stores, like I did. If you’re a Kubrick fan, it’s worth the effort.

Long out of print, The Making Of Kubrick's 2001 (edited by Jerome Agel, known for his work coördinating McLuhan's The Medium Is The Massage and his coauthoring of Buckminister Fuller's I Seem To Be A Verb) is now available to read online, thanks to Cinephilia and Beyond.
posted by hippybear at 8:23 AM PST - 52 comments

What with the American mortgage scandals of a few years back and the resulting global financial death crisis, quite a few cities have had problems with long term abandonment of housing stock. Buffalo is trying to do something about it, by offering houses for sale for one shiny dollar. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 8:11 AM PST - 43 comments

On May 24th, 1813, Jane Austen visited a blockbuster art exhibition--the first major retrospective of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the premier English portraitist of the 18th century. Debuting 200 years to the day later, What Jane Saw is a room-by-room virtual recreation of the exhibition, based on the original catalog of the paintings and contemporary depictions of the building where it was held.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:38 AM PST - 8 comments

Fire School
posted by zarq at 5:59 AM PST - 13 comments

Kiernan Shipka uses her Mad Men character Sally Draper's experience as child-in-counselling to help other child stars in need of psychological help.
posted by orange swan at 5:42 AM PST - 26 comments

I’ve given a great deal of thought to the topic of different ways of thinking. In fact, my pursuit of this topic has led me to propose a new category of thinker in addition to the traditional visual and verbal: pattern thinkers. ~ Temple Grandin
posted by infini at 5:28 AM PST - 51 comments

The very funny design/performance art work of Phil Jones.
posted by Toekneesan at 4:57 AM PST - 6 comments

Jens Risom talks about his family's prefabricated beach house.via [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:39 PM PST - 17 comments

On January 4th, 2013, in the midst of a national heat wave, Tasmania experienced some of the most extreme weather on record, with Hobart recording a record temperature of 41.8°C in the afternoon. Fires blazed around the state, covering almost 50,000 acres, claiming hundreds of properties, and destroying the town of Dunalley. The Tasman peninsula was cut off by the fires, necessitating a sea rescue of over 2,000 people. An image of a family clinging to a jetty in the water to escape from the fire captured the attention of the world. With the launch of their Australian edition, The Guardian have produced a frightening and fascinating multimedia article exploring the human side of the inferno.
posted by Jimbob at 8:58 PM PST - 42 comments

Student loans? WHATEVER Not quite so "dope" when they try to drag you out of your window and kill you. (SLYT)
posted by passerby at 7:50 PM PST - 36 comments

On Feb 2, 1943 a B-25 with 5 crew members crashed into the side of Sharp Top Mountain, near Bedford VA during a training flight. There were no survivors. [more inside]
posted by COD at 7:04 PM PST - 16 comments

Do you have Gephyrophobia? Are you afraid to cross that scary bridge? Now there's a service to help you get across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge instead of going miles out of your way to go around. "Some people go miles out of their way to avoid crossing the George Washington Bridge — for example, driving to Upper Manhattan from Teaneck, N.J., by way of the Lincoln Tunnel, a detour that can stretch a 19-minute jog into a three-quarter-hour ordeal. Other bridge phobics recite baby names or play the radio loudly as they ease onto a nerve-jangling span — anything to focus the mind. Still others take a mild tranquilizer an hour before buckling up to cross a bridge."
posted by Xurando at 6:22 PM PST - 66 comments

The Los Angeles Times' Women becoming priests without Vatican's blessing The world's oldest corporation has a problem. The same one it's always had. Well, at least since the founder died. If you've been to mass recently, I'd bet the female attendees outnumbered the men...in the pews. There's a ways to go, but... [more inside]
posted by issue #1 at 6:03 PM PST - 90 comments

Quincy, M.E. + Inception + St. Peter + Reservoir Dogs II + a cameo appearance by Snake 'n' Bacon + some other stuff = Michael Kupperman's new online comic book thingy (because Houghton Mifflin decided publishing this story would be too legally risky) "Quinception" [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:27 PM PST - 9 comments

The secret at the centre of Peter Molyneux's iOS game, Curiosity, has been revealed. The winner, Scotland's Bryan Henderson, will be 'God' over Molyneux's next game, Godus. Peter Molyneux explained that "You, the person who reached the center, will be the God of all people that are playing Godus. You will intrinsically decide on the rules that the game is played on. "You will share in the success of the product. Every time people spend money on Godus, you will get a small piece of that pie."
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 4:55 PM PST - 38 comments

Can fecal transplants save 14,000 lives a year?
posted by Artw at 4:50 PM PST - 51 comments

The Missing Right: A Constitutional Right to Vote is an essay regarding the proposed constitutional amendment to provide all Americans the affirmative right to vote and empower Congress to protect this right. The right to vote is the foundation of any democracy and yet, surprisingly, such a right is not part of the constitution. U.S. Reps. Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) are trying to create that right and limit the power of special interest to chip away at it.
posted by 2manyusernames at 3:37 PM PST - 29 comments

Perl Cannot Be Parsed: A Formal Proof In the man page for PPI, Adam Kennedy conjectures that perl is unparseable, and suggests how to prove it. Below I carry out a rigorous version of the proof, which should put the matter beyond doubt. [more inside]
posted by jenkinsEar at 2:44 PM PST - 70 comments

Yesterday, thousands of runners participated in One Run Boston, an one mile event organized for those who were injured in the Boston bombings, and those who were stopped on the course without a chance to finish. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:18 PM PST - 4 comments

In the hostile, arid suburbs of Phoenix AZ, Dennis McClung and his family have created a lush and ingeniously efficient food-production system from an unused swimming pool. HuffPo is also there.
posted by ominous_paws at 12:02 PM PST - 85 comments

Held once every four years, the 14th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is being livecast. Running from May 24th to June 9th, performers — some of the best young pianists in the world — are currently in the preliminary round.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:39 AM PST - 11 comments

Wikileaks responds with line by line refutation of the new documentary We Steal Secrets. {via}
posted by dobbs at 11:06 AM PST - 113 comments

You've probably never heard anything quite like the musical documentary More About Henry. Remixing interviews with musical interpretation, composer Adam Goddard has woven a unique work of art from the stories of his grandfather, Henry Robert Tindale Haws, who spent a half-century farming in rural Ontario. More About Henry first aired on CBC Radio's Ideas. [more inside]
posted by oulipian at 10:48 AM PST - 1 comment

"I don't think the pronoun "it" can have "whoever you want to be" as an antecedent." The Pinterest Skeptics Board mocks widely shared inspirational quotes.
posted by escabeche at 7:15 AM PST - 120 comments

A culmination of a series of unanticipated circumstances — and, finally, a most unfortunate programming bug — has over the last few weeks produced a new and unforeseen dimension of hellishness within Diablo 3: hyperinflation. [via]
posted by Pyrogenesis at 6:09 AM PST - 95 comments

Chic - Good Times
Chic - I Want Your Love
Chic - Just Out of Reach
Chic - City Lights [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 11:17 PM PST - 35 comments

Slugabed has released his newest 5 track EP, This Is A Warning, for free. If you're looking for more of his wonky electronic/hip-hop stuff, you can also grab his remixes of Busta Rhymes, Leon Ware and Kankick for free. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 10:53 PM PST - 5 comments

Among the many quarterbacks taken in the fabled 1983 NFL draft was the first Division I-A quarterback to rush for more than 1,000 yards and pass for more than 1,000 yards in a single season. He was Reggie Collier, the player who could have--should have--revolutionized the NFL three decades ago. But he wasn't one of the six QBs drafted in the first round. He wasn't white, either. His name wasn't called until pick 162, when the Dallas Cowboys took a flyer on him as a wide receiver. See, this was 1983, and the NFL wasn't going to change right away for Reggie Collier. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 8:56 PM PST - 13 comments

Wonderful Life With The Elements, in PDF form too. Via WIRED: Call Me Lithium: "The posters dance with humor and so does his version of the Period Table in which every element becomes a character, and a hard-working character at that." [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:50 PM PST - 6 comments

Tonging doesn't hurt the cat, but it definitely annoys them.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:20 PM PST - 37 comments

Rusty the kitten likes kicking! With commentary. (SLYT | kitten) From the same treasury of cute that brought you Captain Pugwash the broccoli kitten.
posted by nicebookrack at 7:53 PM PST - 27 comments

Where are you from? Or, how I became a Pakistani? [more inside]
posted by threeants at 6:27 PM PST - 93 comments

You may remember the 7.5 hour documentary released in 2009 which allowed you to travel the journey between Bergen to Oslo from the comfort of your home. If your wanderlust was fired up watching that video, then you may enjoy some of the other trips you can take. Switzerland:

• Zermatt to Gornergrat in Summer (50m)
• Zermatt to Gornergrat in Winter Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 (30m)
• Le Train de Vignes (11m)

[more inside]
posted by jontyjago at 5:39 PM PST - 28 comments

Get yourself to the thrift store and channel Andie.
posted by HuronBob at 5:31 PM PST - 24 comments

Billy Joel on Not Working and Not Giving Up Drinking
posted by MattMangels at 4:35 PM PST - 103 comments

Third-grader Asean Johnson schools Rahm Emmanuel on the mayor's plan for Chicago's public schools. (YT) [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A at 3:50 PM PST - 37 comments

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah gave a major speech today to a large gathering of party leaders where he confirmed that Hezbollah militia members have been sent to fight in Syria. Watch him explain in his own words his reasons behind this decision (English Subtitles). (via LiveLeak) Hezbollah soldiers are said to be playing a key role in the battle for Qusayr a strategic rebel held town situated on the road between Lebanon and Homs. More background on the battle of Quasyr is available at Syria Deeply a site featuring the works of independent journalists covering the Syrian civil war. [Previously]
posted by humanfont at 3:10 PM PST - 125 comments

When We Held Kings: The oral history of the 2003 World Series of Poker, in which an amateur named Moneymaker turned $39 into $2.5 million and the poker boom was born.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 3:09 PM PST - 18 comments

Advice for college grads from two sociologists From the writers of the always-amazing Sociological Images, it is directed towards college graduates, but useful for everyone.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 12:08 PM PST - 117 comments

Universal Studios has revealed their concept art for a real life Simpson's theme park. Io9 asks how many references you can spot.
posted by The Whelk at 11:21 AM PST - 55 comments

Every Indianapolis 500 Pace Car and its driver, in reverse chronological order.
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:47 AM PST - 42 comments

Craig Ferguson seems to have a special liking for conversation with Stephen Fry. Previously. On Wednesday night, Stephen was back on the Late Late Show as the only guest. The naturally wide-ranging discussion includes Arthur Conan Doyle, America, mortality, religion, philosophy, science, homosexuality, Wagner, and more. Enjoy. [more inside]
posted by lazaruslong at 8:05 AM PST - 93 comments

La Petite Mélancolie (NSFW)
Is mainly a French photo blog which has plenty of excellent timesink in it. From Hannah Hoch to Romy Schneider and from Edward Steichen to Jorge Caceres
It is difficult to describe this site which sometimes verges on the pornographic but also has many pages on surrealists such as Paul Eluard and Jacques Prevert,
as well as other avant garde people such as the Czechs Karel Tiege and Milan Kundra.
posted by adamvasco at 4:20 AM PST - 7 comments

Pictures from South Sudan by a UNHCR aid worker (MeFi's Own™ tarvuz)
posted by elgilito at 3:04 AM PST - 14 comments

Whether you love him for his role as the Sweet Transvestite in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the Lord of Darkness in Ridley Scott's Legend, Pennywise the clown in the TV adaptation of Stephen King's It, Wadsworth the butler in Clue, Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island, his voice work for scads of cartoons, his countless theater performances, his many unforgettable, wonderfully strange guest spots on various TV shows, his absolutely amazing voice, or for (quite possibly) all of these things at once, the fact is, you love Tim Curry. Spare a thought tonight for this acclaimed, ubiquitous character actor, singer, dancer, and odd-looking, sexy little man. Tim Curry, 67, has had a major stroke at his home in Los Angeles. Early reports said that he was left unable to speak, but his agent now tells the Daily Mail that he's "doing great (...) He absolutely can speak and is recovering at this time and in great humor."
posted by Ursula Hitler at 11:05 PM PST - 88 comments

SLYT: "Earlier this evening [...], Will Smith and Alfonso Ribeiro (AKA Carlton) reunited on-air and took us on a stroll down memory lane. With DJ Jazzy Jeff behind the deck, watch as Smith raps The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song before he and Ribeiro dance along to 'It’s Not Unusual' and 'Jump On It'." [more inside]
posted by raihan_ at 9:57 PM PST - 36 comments

Call it municipal disobedience: communities like Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, are defying laws they deem illegitimate.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:46 PM PST - 82 comments

Although ranked tenth in "America's Favorite Architecture," compiled by the American Institute of Architects, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial - sometimes referred to as simply 'The Wall' - was the at the center of political and artistic controversy and opposition from the time of its announcement in 1981. The Wall, situated in Constitution Gardens adjacent to the National Mall, is "...often referred to as the veterans 3rd battle. The 1st being survival in Vietnam. The 2nd, was dealing with the rejection experienced upon returning home from war. And, the 3rd, building the Wall." [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:18 PM PST - 58 comments

Catbeards is a Tumblr of beards made from cats, not cats with beards. It's new, and it's convenient, but it doesn't capture the best of catbeards. Cat-Beard.com is similar: good but not great. Mashable collected some of the best, and Buzzfeed is in on the trend, and of course, there are also dog beards. Know Your Meme covers its history.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:43 PM PST - 35 comments

This Roller is a chariot for the glittering Eloi, and if we’re not exactly Morlocks yet, that does seem to be the way things are going. [more inside]
posted by lalochezia at 7:09 PM PST - 73 comments

Welcome to Daily Star Wars
"2009 marks the 30th anniversary of the original Star Wars daily strip that was published in newspapers by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. In honor of that I've decided to start this blog where I'll be posting a new strip everyday to recreate the series original run. These strips were some of the only Star Wars stories going on at the time and generally had a more serious tone than their Marvel cousin. They're also officially recognized as part of the EU and fill in the gaps between films." [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:01 PM PST - 12 comments

Where have you been? We've been waiting for you! He helped you sweat to the oldies, sweat and shout, and boogie down the pounds, even if you, too, were an oldie. And we know he isn't dead. But where is he? [more inside]
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 6:18 PM PST - 45 comments

James McDonald of Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, collects bikes--at least one from every era of bikemaking. "If there were 200 bicycles here," he explains, "they would have been culled down out of probably two to three thousand bicycles that I've brought home over the last two years, and those two thousand would have been culled down from maybe tens of thousands of bicycles that I've gone to look at and left behind." Check out this 3 minute video for more!
posted by MoonOrb at 5:15 PM PST - 17 comments

In 1942 a British forest guard in Roopkund, India made an alarming discovery. Some 16,000 feet above sea level, at the bottom of a small valley, was a frozen lake absolutely full of skeletons.
posted by Renoroc at 4:52 PM PST - 65 comments

Augusten Burroughs got married.
posted by barnoley at 4:39 PM PST - 33 comments

The Final Days of 'Macho Man' Randy Savage [more inside]
posted by zarq at 2:08 PM PST - 28 comments

Eric Weinstein has a PhD in mathematical physics from Harvard, but has spent most of the last 10 years outside academia working as an economic consultant for a New York hedge fund. Now he apparently has a new theory of everything that claims to be able to explain quantum gravity, dark matter and dark energy. Actual details have not yet been provided and some physicists are dismissive. But his work has received enthusiastic endorsement from Oxford's Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding Marcus du Sautoy, with whom he has been discussing the theory over the last two years. [more inside]
posted by leibniz at 1:51 PM PST - 102 comments

Giant Ants is a wall-to-wall Facebook graffiti made by two giant ants as they plan for summer, have NSFW encounters, and even answer some fan inquiries! [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:18 PM PST - 7 comments

Only a lucky few MeFites have the ability to view vaudevillian, commercial actor, inventor, and photographer George Mann's gorgeous vintage Kodachrome survey of Los Angeles coffee shops in 3-D as he intended.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 11:29 AM PST - 21 comments

Make way for the $21 Long Island Ice Tea: The trshy summer cocktail goes upscale (The Awl)
posted by The Whelk at 11:13 AM PST - 98 comments

Where did the formula that a dog ages 7 years for every 1 human year come from? No one knows for sure, but the BBC, using data from the UK Kennel Club and US Veterinary Medical Database, have come up with a more accurate online dog years calculator. The truth about how dogs age is more fascinating, and less straightforward, than we thought. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus at 10:18 AM PST - 59 comments

“We did our first show in a bar...all of a sudden, the whole room was quiet. And then we got everyone to sit on the floor cross-legged to watch our crankies.” [more inside]
posted by Miko at 10:06 AM PST - 10 comments

Daft Train That Friday happy place where Daft Punk overlaps the Soul Train cakewalk. SLYT.
posted by perhapsolutely at 9:57 AM PST - 67 comments

Khaki Dance by The NSJ Crew. SLYT
posted by catch as catch can at 9:49 AM PST - 14 comments

Actual conversations with my 2 year old daughter, as re-enacted by me and another full grown man - Episode 1.
posted by quin at 9:23 AM PST - 77 comments

Detroit Institute of Arts collection could face sell-off to satisfy Detroit's creditors Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr is considering whether the multibillion-dollar collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts should be considered city assets that potentially could be sold to cover about $15 billion in debt.
posted by R. Mutt at 9:13 AM PST - 87 comments

In 1997, Last Unicorn gave Zug the chance at recreating Frank Herbert's 'Dune' through a new trading card series. He was originally told to base his work off of David Lynch's film, but after complications with licensing, "they told me to avoid similarity to Lynch's visuals" says Mark Zug. Mark Zug's Dune trading cards.
posted by Artw at 9:12 AM PST - 49 comments

Nowadays, fortified wines are the butt of jokes. (previously) However, there was a time when they were considered mainstream and there were even a few commercials made. Of course, we can't leave out the best commercial for fortified wine ever made.
posted by josher71 at 9:06 AM PST - 69 comments

Eine murul / Breakfast on the Grass is a stop-motion animation answering one of Art's most enduring mysteries: why are those people sitting like that? (SLVimeo, 4:30)
posted by theodolite at 8:57 AM PST - 6 comments

Skeleton of teenage girl confirms cannibalism at Jamestown colony. [more inside]
posted by elizardbits at 8:41 AM PST - 64 comments

In April, French cartoonist Boulet (previous, more previous) was invited to go on tour in the US, courtesy of the French embassy in New York. As a good 'webcomic', he kept a diary of his impressions of New York, the language barrier and going to the MoCCaFest, and also had a book to sell, a reworked edition of his 2012 24-hours comic Darkness (previous).
posted by MartinWisse at 8:32 AM PST - 23 comments

A rare disease is defined as any condition affecting fewer than 200,000 patients in the United States. More than 7,000 such diseases exist, afflicting a total of 25 million to 30 million Americans.. One of them, fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), might be approaching a cure. [more inside]
posted by dmd at 7:01 AM PST - 21 comments

You might have heard at one time or another a 60s band called Canned Heat, who made a wee bit of a splash way back when with a little number called Going Up the Country. The song featured a simple but very catchy little flute riff between verses. If you ever wondered where that riff came from (not to mention the melodic contour of the tune itself) you need look no further than a 1928 recording by Henry Thomas, who played the flute melody on his quills, or, panpipes. The song was called Bull Doze Blues. [more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:14 AM PST - 36 comments

Tech writers and their secret shame - outdated gear.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:11 AM PST - 119 comments

Corporate Spirit uses stock photography to tell a deranged tale about living the corporate life.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:41 AM PST - 36 comments

Railroad bridge domino collapse in Lampasas County, Texas. (SLYT) No reported injuries, and the bridge dates from 1910, according to the AP. The Infrastructure Report Card, released this week (in which America received a D-), may need a small update to "8,680 of the 52,260 bridges in Texas (16.6%) are considered functionally obsolete."
posted by Erasmouse at 5:16 AM PST - 80 comments

Bernie "Whistling" Smith, a legendary, no-nonsense Vancouver cop was the subject of this 1975. Oscar nominated documentary. [more inside]
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 3:52 AM PST - 3 comments

At age 9, Josie Romero -- born a boy but living as a transgender girl -- sought out a controversial hormone treatment that would begin transitioning her body into the opposite sex. NBC Dateline (21:48)
posted by Blasdelb at 1:32 AM PST - 113 comments

Research finds that same-sex unions are happier than heterosexual marriages. What can gay and lesbian couples teach straight ones about living in harmony?
posted by Long Way To Go at 11:10 PM PST - 46 comments

FFF: A long time ago, a child turned on a home gaming console for a little Saturday morning fun — unaware that inter-dimensional demons were using it as a portal into our world! MISADVENTURE! [via freeindiesgames]
posted by lemuring at 10:47 PM PST - 9 comments

Lindsey Stirling in Kenya..
posted by HuronBob at 10:37 PM PST - 16 comments

The Madon­nas of Sci­ence, plus selected other work (possibly nsfw) by Chris Shaw. [more inside]
posted by homunculus at 9:45 PM PST - 6 comments

“We’ve seen the price of food become more expensive than ever three times in five years. Normally we’d see three price spikes in a century,” said Kaufman. “And part of the reason is this new kind of commodity speculation in food markets.” In an article published Oct. 24 in Nature[subscription required], Kaufman describes what he calls “Wall Street’s thirst for water” — the push to turn water into a commodity like food, with the same instruments that produced the mortgage-backed security collapse and 2008 financial crisis.

Public or Private: The Fight Over the Future of Water [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:34 PM PST - 54 comments

Au revoir, Georges Moustaki. The French chansonnier, who got his start writing for Edith Piaf, and later had a lengthy career of his own, has passed away. His simple, languid, contemplative songs include "Le Métèque", "Ma Solitude", "Votre Fille a Vingt Ans" and many, many, many more. He was 79.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:12 PM PST - 8 comments

Ask Strax! The famed warrior from the Sontaran Empire answers questions from miniature humans for Monster Day Out.
"The last time a human called me a 'Potato Head' I simply turned and walked away calm and collected ... once I had crushed him to a pulp him with my monster fists!!"
posted by Podkayne of Pasadena at 4:06 PM PST - 46 comments

The former singer for Freshkills talks about playing in a band no one likes
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 3:27 PM PST - 93 comments

By a vote of 61%-38% the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America has finalized a decision to lift sexual orientation from the criteria to discriminate for youth membership. Previously and previously. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:17 PM PST - 102 comments

Next to a beautiful, elegant woman, between the silky spirals of her train, on the back of a chair, in a dark angle in the background, he accurately painted, although almost invisible, the animal that recalled the face of the protagonist. He thus had a series of ladies and gentlemen from the squirrel, from the lizard, from the sea horse, etc.

From "The Real Face," by Guido Gozzano, "first and finest representative of the Crepuscolari, the poets of the Twilight." [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 2:54 PM PST - 1 comment

Park Slope Family Circus: Old Family Circus panels combined with jokes poking fun at denizens of Park Slope, Brooklyn.
posted by mathowie at 2:50 PM PST - 62 comments

When news came through of Yahoo! buying Tumblr, everyone wanted to know what that meant for all the porn on Tumblr. But it turns out that long before Yahoo! signed a check, Tumblr had been quietly doing something about it on its own: stopping adult blogs from being indexed. [NSFW links] [more inside]
posted by themadthinker at 1:13 PM PST - 150 comments

"Against all probability, a device that purports to use cold fusion to generate vast amounts of power has been verified by a panel of independent scientists . . . The cold fusion device being tested has roughly 10,000 times the energy density and 1,000 times the power density of gasoline. Even allowing for a massively conservative margin of error, the scientists say that the cold fusion device they tested is 10 times more powerful than gasoline — which is currently the best fuel readily available to mankind." [more inside]
posted by Just Another Entity at 12:30 PM PST - 142 comments

Chris Hadfield has captured the world's heart, judging by the 14m YouTube views of his free-fall rendition of David Bowie's "Space Oddity", recorded on the International Space Station (ISS). The Canadian astronaut's clear voice and capable guitar-playing were complemented by his facility in moving around in the microgravity of low-earth orbit. But when the man fell to Earth in a neat and safe descent a few days ago, after a five-month stay in orbit, should he have been greeted by copyright police?
posted by DiesIrae at 11:42 AM PST - 57 comments

In a new book, a historian reveals that during WWII, the British kept three groups of Nazi prisoners captive under condititons that an outraged Churchill demanded be stopped. [more inside]
posted by never used baby shoes at 11:06 AM PST - 31 comments

ROM corruptions are games played in emulators where the files have been run through a program (for example: Corrupster, and The Vinesauce Corrupter) which makes changes to the game data while still allowing it to remain playable. This results in strange graphical and audial glitches, like character models exploding in to chaotic swirls, garbled sprite assignments, and music distorted in to fascinating new compositions. Some other still image examples from Max Capacity (previously). This forum thread has a guide on how to corrupt ROMs yourself. Some Youtube links NWS due to swearing.
posted by codacorolla at 10:36 AM PST - 18 comments

Magic Hat Brewery is facing a ban in several Lexington, Kentucky establishments after a recent lawsuit against local business West Sixth Brewery. Many are dubious about the claims being made regarding copyright infringement. The Consumerist offers a visual guide to some of the potential similarities between the designs. West Sixth claims that they are experiencing corporate bullying and have asked the community to sign a petition and stop drinking Magic Hat, while Magic Hat argues that West Sixth has been less than straightforward with the public. West Sixth responds with further claims of corporate chicanery.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 9:52 AM PST - 159 comments

While national media coverage of state politics has focused on hot-button topics like gun control and gay rights, a storm has been quietly brewing in Raleigh, NC, where the NAACP has organized protests calling attention to the regressive agenda of the Republican governor and NC General Assembly. Known as "Moral Mondays," these protests have resulted in nearly 160 arrests -- and they're getting bigger each week. With the GA taking a break for Memorial Day, the next showdown is set for June 3.
posted by Shoggoth at 9:16 AM PST - 74 comments

The Boston Marathon bombings may be fading from the front pages, but the numerous conspiracy theories that sprang up in the wake of the incident continue to rage on, spurred by professional conspiracists such as Alex Jones. Book reviewer and skeptic Anita Dalton (previously), at her new website devoted to skeptical examinations of conspiracy theories and paranormal claims, has kicked off a meticulous and in-depth series of posts comprehensively debunking the Boston Marathon conspiracy theories. (Related: Why rational people buy into conspiracy theories.)
posted by El Sabor Asiatico at 8:41 AM PST - 70 comments

Scientists have discovered a 10-metre-high rock of granite deep in the Atlantic, more than 8,000 feet beneath the sea in a region known as the Rio Grande Elevation (Google auto-translation; original Portuguese webpage). It is believed that this formation could be part of a lost continent, something formed when South America split from Africa, around 100 million years ago. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:09 AM PST - 47 comments

The series of Project Mathematics tapes regularly brought the house down at the annual SIGGRAPH video show; these mathematical animations were glowing jewels among the over-produced, techy-commercial animations usually shown at SIGGRAPH. -- Edward Tufte via edwardtufte.com

I wonder where these jewels might be found ... [more inside]
posted by tarpin at 7:23 AM PST - 8 comments

Rave and Hardcore YouTube Comments Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity
posted by Artw at 6:44 AM PST - 57 comments

The Night Heron (SL NYTimes), an invitation-only club held in an abandoned water tower in Chelsea for 8 weekends in March, April and May.
posted by dabug at 5:16 AM PST - 102 comments

The female artists who shaped the American Dream Girl (mildly NSFW) "...according to pin-up art expert Louis K. Meisel, three of the most talented pin-up painters from the Golden Age, roughly the 1920s to the early 1960s, were women. “Pearl Frush, Joyce Ballantyne, and Zoë Mozert were terrific, as good as any of the men—in fact, better than many of them,” Meisel says." A fascinating look at three very interesting women and their work in an area of art that is overwhelmingly known for its male artists. [more inside]
posted by halcyonday at 3:06 AM PST - 13 comments

Steven Universe is an upcoming series by Rebecca Sugar, who has written many songs for Adventure Time. It will be the first Cartoon Network series created by a woman. Check out some screenshots here.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 12:38 AM PST - 37 comments

A rather surreal story seems to be developing around rapper Tim Dog, who recently died (previously) - or did he? Enough people believe he actually faked his death that an arrest warrant has been issued for him. [more inside]
posted by DecemberBoy at 9:49 PM PST - 32 comments

If you were watching late-night television in July 1998 you may have seen the half-hour informercial parody that the Beastie Boys produced to promote their upcoming album, Hello Nasty. The ad features Mike D, MCA , and Ad-Rock taking on roles to shill everything from the services of phone psychics to get-rich-quick scams to a food processor that plays songs from the upcoming LP. (Warning: video auto-loads.) [more inside]
posted by Room 641-A at 9:21 PM PST - 8 comments

The Legend of Malacrianza: Costa Rica’s badass, killer toro. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 9:10 PM PST - 19 comments

So you’re at a gallery—now what?

The fact is, nobody knows what art is or why people make it. This is blatantly disturbing. Some say the function of art is to generate conversation—an unpleasant thought. I’m not sure we want to put art in the same category as skin disease and Carl Winslow: things to talk about on the internet.
This is why so many of us have a bad time at galleries: we try to make art Interesting when we should just let it be weird. Art should never be Interesting.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:10 PM PST - 181 comments

Héctor Espino landed in Florida on Aug. 6, 1964. A helicopter reportedly flew over Jacksonville, Fla., trailing a banner with the words ESPINO HAS ARRIVED.
posted by klangklangston at 5:09 PM PST - 24 comments

At just after 2:20pm this afternoon, two men exited a crashed vehicle in Woolwich, South East London, close to the Royal Artillery Barracks near the corner of John Wilson St and Artillery Place. Armed with a knives, they proceeded to attack young male pedestrian. [more inside]
posted by hydatius at 4:41 PM PST - 452 comments

Which country has the highest gambling losses as a percentage of GDP? Which US states have the most skewed gender ratios among single adults? Which countries have the highest minimum wage to median wage ratio? How many hours per day does the average American full-time worker spend sleeping and working? Which US state's residents spent the most on lottery tickets as a percentage of their personal income? Which US state had the highest percentage of seniors with no natural teeth? Answers to all these questions and more at Bloomberg Best & Worst.
posted by pravit at 4:06 PM PST - 13 comments

The New Yorker is publishing excerpts from Italo Calvino: Letters, 1941-1985, translated by Martin McLaughlin, on its book blog. (via) [more inside]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:30 PM PST - 15 comments

Triple conjunction. The long-awaited sunset sky show of May 2013 is beginning. In only a few days, Venus, Jupiter and Mercury will form a tight triangle in the western sky, visible to the unaided eye around the world.
posted by Long Way To Go at 3:07 PM PST - 23 comments

It's religion week over at Everything Is Terrible. [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie at 3:01 PM PST - 14 comments

Fraud in the organic farming sector has become a thriving international industry made up of a complex network of companies that bears all the marks of traditional organised crime. Excerpts.
posted by infini at 2:50 PM PST - 48 comments

Because you’ve seen this story so many times, because you already know the nature and history of llamas, it sometimes shocks you, of course, to see a llama outside of these media spaces. The llamas you see don’t have scales. So you doubt what you see, and you joke with your friends about “those scaly llamas” and they laugh and say, “Yes, llamas sure are scaly!” and you forget your actual experience. -- We Have Always Fought: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative by Kameron Hurley.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:33 PM PST - 34 comments

Blackwater is a gorgeous photo-series by Joshua Lambus which features luminous squid, jellyfish, and other beautiful creatures of the deep. [via]
posted by quin at 1:53 PM PST - 5 comments

A new wave of female sexual desire drugs may soon be on their way to market. Still entrenched in the rigors of the FDA’s approval process, two drugs, Lybrido and Lybridos, should be available by 2016 if they pass their tests. But talking reasonably about these drugs—their risks and benefits and what societal shifts, if any, could stem from them—means thinking about them in the right way. (Link is to summary article in Smithsonian News; full in-depth article in New York Times Magazine
posted by SweetTeaAndABiscuit at 1:03 PM PST - 176 comments

A linguistic dissection of 7 annoying teenage sounds
posted by iamkimiam at 12:32 PM PST - 105 comments

Professor Dumbledore's Advice for Law Deans [more inside]
posted by magstheaxe at 10:38 AM PST - 39 comments

Whey Too Much: Greek Yogurt’s Dark Side For every three or four ounces of milk, Chobani and other companies can produce only one ounce of creamy Greek yogurt. The rest becomes acid whey. It’s a thin, runny waste product that can’t simply be dumped. Not only would that be illegal, but whey decomposition is toxic to the natural environment, robbing oxygen from streams and rivers.... And as the nation’s hunger grows for strained yogurt, which produces more byproduct than traditional varieties, the issue of its acid runoff becomes more pressing. Greek yogurt companies, food scientists, and state government officials are scrambling not just to figure out uses for whey, but how to make a profit off of it.
posted by Cash4Lead at 10:26 AM PST - 223 comments

4-year old Mia Grace really knows her Marvel trivia. (SLYT, via Mashable) [more inside]
posted by quiet coyote at 10:16 AM PST - 18 comments

New Xanax for gay summer weddings.
posted by modernnomad at 9:48 AM PST - 79 comments

Why we're not allowed to work less. Machinery offers us an opportunity to work less, an opportunity that as a society we have chosen not to take -- by 2000 the average couple with kids worked 500 hours a year more than in 1979. This is the story of how the a few companies like Kellogg's at first bucked the trend, and the massive propaganda campaign against shorter hours that's nearly won it's battle to make capitalism synonymous with the “American Way.”
posted by blankdawn at 9:36 AM PST - 137 comments

Amazon introduces Kindle Worlds, allowing fanfic authors to profit from works based on settings and characters not their own. Kindle Worlds is set to roll out this summer. Don't dust off your classic Kirk/Spock opus just yet, though - at this point they're only working with properties owned by Warner Brothers' Alloy Entertainment (Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and Vampire Diaries). [more inside]
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:53 AM PST - 128 comments

Swedishness. What it says on the tin. (SLYT.)
posted by three blind mice at 8:42 AM PST - 16 comments

Dr. Harley A. Rotbart recounts his father's graduation from Auschwitz survivor to American equal. (SLNYtimes)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:33 AM PST - 5 comments

Data visualization guru Edward Tufte has a hobby: erecting stone megaliths. (SL,via)
posted by AceRock at 8:21 AM PST - 48 comments

Will Portland have fluoride in its water? This is a hot button issue with people on the pro and the con sides feeling strongly about the issue. See also "Why I’m voting for fluoridation in Portland today".
posted by josher71 at 8:00 AM PST - 233 comments

A South Carolina couple are suing doctors and social workers who determined that their adopted son should undergo surgery to make his genitals look female. Mark and Pam Crawford explain the background of their lawsuit, the intent of which is to bring up constitutional principles and the integrity of a person's body. [more inside]
posted by Athanassiel at 6:09 AM PST - 64 comments

"Soon, however, with the strength of eight men, Pépée became an uncontrollable tyrant who would strip guests – including once a government prefect and wife – of their clothes and valuables, bite others who failed to accede to its whims and once stole a baby, which it took to the roof despite Leo waving a toy pistol at it and shouting: "Daddy's not happy. Daddy's going to shoot."
posted by unSane at 5:48 AM PST - 39 comments

"Toby Hockley was on the 100-mile Boudicca Sportive ride in Norfolk when he says he was struck by a car and flung into a hedge. The driver didn't stop. Hockley emerged from the hedge, sore but intact. It sounds like a run-of-the-mill depressing incident from the UK's roads. But the shocking part came later. A young woman tweeted: "Definitely knocked a cyclist off his bike earlier. I have right of way - he doesn't even pay road tax! #Bloodycyclists."" [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 4:53 AM PST - 308 comments

A titanium engagement ring that lights up via magnetic induction.
posted by GuyZero at 10:09 PM PST - 62 comments

Like father, like cubs: After watching Papa Wei Shand play with his food, Pallas Cat kittens try and do the same. [more inside]
posted by maryr at 8:08 PM PST - 30 comments

Jane's Jihad: the new face of terrorism. A Reuters series in four parts.

The case was so serious, authorities said, that they charged the woman, Colleen LaRose, with crimes that could keep her in prison for the rest of her life. Now, as she awaits sentencing, a months-long Reuters review of confidential documents and interviews with sources in Europe and the United States -- including the first and only interview with Jihad Jane herself -- reveals a far less menacing and, in some ways, more preposterous undertaking than what the U.S. government asserted.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:42 PM PST - 9 comments

Meet the Iranian Parkour Girls, the Gaza Parkour Team (while bombs fall) and the first Iraqi Parkour team.
posted by elgilito at 2:32 PM PST - 23 comments

"The comedian and actor lives with his wife, Jeannie Noth Gaffigan, and five children — that's not a typo — in a two-bedroom apartment in lower Manhattan." An NPR interview with Jim Gaffigan on kids, comedy, and apartment living. [more inside]
posted by SpacemanStix at 1:39 PM PST - 163 comments

"That a woman of color on a major network show should have a character this focal and active without any romantic angle is a rare bird. It's also deliberate." --- But -- "Remember the time Sherlock and Watson looked up a clue on a sponsored computer product while he sat on the toilet? I sure do! Bing me!" -- However -- "We have, at last, a true partnership for Holmes and Watson, couched in that particular soulmate simpatico of 221-b, and moving distinctly forward without losing sight of the canon." -- Why Elementary is the bestest if flawed modern Holmes television adaptation, according to sf/fantasy author Genevieve Valentine. Some spoilers.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:37 PM PST - 194 comments

People have long been interested in the architectural endeavors of animals. The internal structure of bee hives, the hexagonal combs of wax, have been amongst these ponderings, going back to Marcus Terentius Varro's Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres, a volume on Roman farm management. He wrote, "The geometricians prove that this hexagon inscribed in a circular figure encloses the greatest amount of space," and over the years, mathematicians have studied the hexagonal structures made by bees, and in 1998, Thomas Hales produced a mathematical proof for the classical hexagonal honeycomb conjecture, which "asserts that the most efficient partition of the plane into equal areas is the regular hexagonal tiling." [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 12:42 PM PST - 24 comments

Microsoft has unveiled their new console, and it wants to dominate your living room. How Xbox One plans to fight Sony, Steam, and everything else.
posted by Artw at 12:05 PM PST - 492 comments

From the innocents at the New York Times: how to attend a Premier League match.
posted by shothotbot at 11:36 AM PST - 41 comments

Private Ceremonies. "Most women don’t talk about their abortions and miscarriages. Virtually none go through the experience with a loved one at their side. The greatest gift an abortion counselor can give is to bear witness, to be with a woman as she goes through this private journey, to witness her strength and weakness, her grief, her relief, her pain." A first person essay from a former abortion counselor.
posted by zarq at 10:45 AM PST - 34 comments

Every parent wants his or her kid to be great at something. That's only natural. But it's also natural to read Word Freak and hear John Williams talk about the assorted cast of rogues who populate the grownup tournament and worry that your kid will love Scrabble TOO much, that they'll end up consumed by a game, one day fleeing to Iceland and writing anti-Semitic screeds on rolls of toilet paper. Inside the 2013 National School Scrabble Championship.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:42 AM PST - 26 comments

How to Convince People WiFi Is Making Them Sick [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 9:19 AM PST - 126 comments

In the wake of the impending loss of google reader on July 1 (Previously) it was perhaps inevitable that someone would come up with a suitible and bloat free replacement, meet CommaFeed [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 8:14 AM PST - 148 comments

In 2011, the CIA reportedly hired a doctor in Pakistan to conduct espionage while giving vaccinations to children. In response, Pakistan expelled Save the Children from the country. The New England Journal of Medicine comments on military operations masquerading as humanitarian relief. [more inside]
posted by painquale at 7:47 AM PST - 41 comments

Back in 1994, Mimi Haist was a volunteer at the BEST laundromat in Santa Monica. The then-struggling young comic Zach Galifianakis was a patron of that laundromat, and he and Mimi became friends. Flash-forward to 2011 when the now-successful Galifianakis learns that Mimi has become homeless. What does he do? Pays for her apartment and makes her his date at his movie premieres.
posted by jbickers at 7:34 AM PST - 43 comments

Brave Chihuahua protects Kittens from Evil Puppy. [slyt | cute]
posted by quin at 7:32 AM PST - 59 comments

Voodoo, also titled Mini-Me, is a stop animation short created by Wonky Films featuring two knitted characters named Knit and Purl. Wonky Films has also produced two more films featuring the same knitted characters: Stuffing Up and Tickle. These knitted little guys have won the Bablegum film festival's Jury Runner Up Award and appeared on BBC Big Screens across the U.K. to help promote Children in Need.
posted by orange swan at 6:39 AM PST - 3 comments

How Apple Used Shell Companies to Save $44 Billion in Taxes [more inside]
posted by Elementary Penguin at 5:25 AM PST - 203 comments

A&W is paying to put mini ads in men's beards [more inside]
posted by dubold at 5:11 AM PST - 48 comments

Bail is Busted - How Jail Really Works
posted by lalochezia at 4:08 AM PST - 22 comments

A few handwritten pages with poems and photographs from The road is wider than long
During July and August 1938, as Europe prepared for war, Roland Penrose and Lee Miller (slideshow) drove from Greece through the Balkans.
This was his record of the journey and declaration of love for her.
LEAVE YOUR TONGUE STUCK TO THE BARK
This will avoid all danger
of not meeting next year.
(Previous Lee Miller).
posted by adamvasco at 3:23 AM PST - 7 comments

io9: "After making a mere $84 million at the U.S. box office, Star Trek Into Darkness is considered by some to be a disappointment. Perhaps the problem is that it was a touch confusing. To help our readers better understand it, we've compiled and answered these Frequently Asked Questions about the movie." (Maximum Possible Spoiler Warning)
posted by davidjmcgee at 12:27 AM PST - 442 comments

I know how much can be at stake when a man takes a four-hour walk: Everything. The incomparable Gary Smith relates the tragic tale of 2004 Olympic hopeful Albert Heppner. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 10:52 PM PST - 7 comments

For the past three months, the Art Institute of Chicago has been putting their Launchpad videos, designed to provide more context of museum-goers at the Institutes, on YouTube. The short videos include modern artists recreating art using ancient, medieval, and newer techniques in mosaics, glassblowing, pottery, painting, silversmithing, marquetry, and coin production plus conservation of art. There are also a few videos focusing on individual pieces in the collection.
posted by julen at 10:05 PM PST - 7 comments

The (odd and funny) drawings of Will Laren.
posted by zardoz at 9:51 PM PST - 13 comments

"Every teenager out there feels invincible. And they'll never admit it. It's not the kind of invincible like Superman. It's the kind of invincible like - I'll see you in five months." [20-minute YouTube documentary by SoulPancake.]

At age 14, Zach Sobiech (previously) was diagnosed with bone cancer. Given months to live, he turned to music to say goodbye. Zach's song "Clouds" received 3 million hits, and inspired a celebrity cover video featuring dozens of actors and musicians. Zach died today at his home in Minnesota. He was 18.
posted by Sfving at 9:18 PM PST - 13 comments

"Everyone Only Wants Temps" - My stint doing "on demand" grunt work for one of America's hottest growth industries

It's not a pretty formula, but it works. With 600 offices and a workforce of 400,000—more employees than Target or Home Depot—Labor Ready is the undisputed king of the blue-collar temp industry. Specializing in "tough-to-fill, high-turnover positions," the company dispatches people to dig ditches, demolish buildings, remove debris, stock giant fulfillment warehouses—jobs that take their toll on a body.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:47 PM PST - 120 comments

Dance Of Reality is the first film in twenty-three years by Alejandro Jodorosky, visionary director of surreal masterpieces El Topo and The Holy Mountain, writer of the never-directed Dune film that is the subject of a new new documentary, and comics like Metabarons. Both Dance of Reality and Jodrowosky's Dune have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. If that's too much, check out Everything Is Terrible's Holy Mountain remake made with dogs.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 6:44 PM PST - 19 comments

Polyamory as noisy iterated prisoner's dilemma. [more inside]
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 5:59 PM PST - 51 comments

Several Hours ago a massive tornado hit the town of Moore Oklahoma. The tornado is now being estimated by some sources to be to be an EF-5 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. This means winds at or over 200 mph as well as a damage area of close to 30 square miles. [more inside]
posted by Podkayne of Pasadena at 4:52 PM PST - 367 comments

How Far Did PBS Go To Avoid Offending David H. Koch?
posted by indubitable at 4:23 PM PST - 55 comments

Flickr announces 1TB free for all users.
posted by blue_beetle at 4:00 PM PST - 224 comments

Ray Manzarek, keyboardist for The Doors, has died at the age of 74. Not a lot of links. Just a place to share your thoughts, your faves... and to remember.
posted by markkraft at 3:58 PM PST - 98 comments

Anthony Moore, known as Romanthony, has died at age 46. [more inside]
posted by Taft at 2:53 PM PST - 19 comments

59 marvelous photographs taken between 1903 and 1920 by Frédéric Boissonnas (1858-1946), a franco-Swiss photographer who loved Greece. This is him being hauled up to the Meteora monastery in a net. Boissonnas was also a mountaineer and was the first to scale Mt. Olympus successfully in 1913. During the first 30 years of the 20th century he became the most influential photographer in Greece, between the two World Wars. Traveling extensively, landscapes, everyday people and life in Greece were photographed in detail for the first time. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 2:21 PM PST - 19 comments

"In the past inequality in South Africa was largely defined along race lines. It has become increasingly defined by inequality within population groups as the gap between rich and poor within each group has increased substantially." Is this what's led the BBC to report a growing sense of insecurity among poor (chiefly Afrikaans-speaking) whites? Or are they just blatantly misreading the statistics? [more inside]
posted by theweasel at 2:02 PM PST - 21 comments

How to ensure food and drink water safety during a flood or other natural disaster, courtesy of the FDA and the USDA.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:12 PM PST - 12 comments

A judgmental survey of America's state birds, with suggestions for improvements.
posted by Iridic at 11:59 AM PST - 164 comments

"YOU SOLD ME OUT AND SHATTERED MY DREAMS TONIGHT; ALL I WAS LOOKING FOR WAS 75 MINUTES OF ONE OF YOUR PEERS' TIME" It started when Tim Heidecker (previously) tried to set up a creative meeting between an old friend—Tom Scharpling (previously)—and an unnamed "high profile player" at the Adult Swim TV upfronts. But then the meeting fell through. [more inside]
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:33 AM PST - 83 comments

George RR Martin created the series, then let it hang around for decades without resolution. In the last couple of years however, there's been renewed interest, new novels and a screen adaption in the works. No, not Game of Thrones: Wild Cards! [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:22 AM PST - 26 comments

The Royal Horticultural Society has temporarily lifted a ban on garden gnomes - normally deemed too "tacky" - at the Chelsea Flower Show. Garden historian Twigs Way charts the public's long love-hate relationship with these figurines.
posted by marienbad at 11:01 AM PST - 26 comments

Rebound. A simple physics game with 2 controls. How far to the right can you go? [more inside]
posted by garlic at 10:06 AM PST - 30 comments

Tumblr's $1.1 Billion price-tag instinctively seems very high to most of us, but without context, numbers this huge are often literally unfathomable to the masses. To help readers gain perspective on the huge numbers commonly tossed around by the media, researcher Glen Chiacchieri has created Dictionary of Numbers, a Google Chrome extension that automatically adds context to huge numbers printed in the web pages that you read. [more inside]
posted by schmod at 7:57 AM PST - 51 comments

Guitar Warfare. Because sometimes a guitar bandit needs to be flattened. [slyt | via]
posted by quin at 7:27 AM PST - 19 comments

Late Friday night, a young man named Mark Carson was killed, shot point blank, in Greenwich Village. Carson's death was the 22nd anti-gay hate crime in New York so far this year, and the fifth this month. [more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:59 AM PST - 103 comments

Finnegans Wake, Joyce's famously unreadable masterpiece (read it online here), was considerably more readable in one of its earlier drafts. Watch Joyce cross out decipherable words and replace them with less decipherable ones! Watch him end, not with a whimper, but with a slightly less impressive whimper! Sadly, Shem's schoolbook, which in the finished version is a House of Leaves-esque compendium of side columns and footnotes, was not written until much later (according to the footnotes of that section). The introduction to this draft by David Hayman, who assembled it, is worth a read.
posted by Rory Marinich at 6:39 AM PST - 54 comments

Since February of this year, Autostraddle ("News, Entertainment, Opinion and Girl-On-Girl Culture") has been running a very interesting series of articles about trans experience (primarily focused on trans women) called Trans*Scribe. [more inside]
posted by jiawen at 10:43 PM PST - 46 comments

Structural Archaeology

Geoff Carter's radical view of building in the ancient world, especially the archaeology of the lost timber built environment of Southern England. It is new research into of prehistory of architecture

With the ultimate conclusion that Stonehenge is the remains of a roofed shelter. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 10:14 PM PST - 74 comments

"That was sort of a triumphant, 'fuck you,' to build a bike with no seat and keep riding." The experience of custom bike-builder Ezra Caldwell is chronicled in a 12 minute documentary by the folks at This Is Made By Hand, and also on Ezra's own blog, teaching cancer to cry. This Is Made By Hand, previously. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb at 9:40 PM PST - 13 comments

The Long Swath is a satellite image by NASA's Landsat Data Continuity Mission that captures, in a single continuous image, a strip of land 120 by 6,000 miles stretching from South Africa to Russia. The image can be explored in Gigapan, Google Earth, and fly-over videos and high resolution images.
posted by carter at 7:35 PM PST - 7 comments

Daniel Dennett's seven rules for thinking. "A deepity (a term coined by the daughter of my late friend, computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum) is a proposition that seems both important and true – and profound – but that achieves this effect by being ambiguous. On one reading, it is manifestly false, but it would be earth-shaking if it were true; on the other reading, it is true but trivial. The unwary listener picks up the glimmer of truth from the second reading, and the devastating importance from the first reading, and thinks, Wow! That's a deepity."
posted by Sebmojo at 5:56 PM PST - 147 comments

The autonomous town of Marinaleda, Spain is doing well.
posted by artof.mulata at 5:49 PM PST - 17 comments

"My intentions here are simple: avoid discussions about what exactly constitutes Chinese photography, evade overwhelming information, and instead visually examine the role that such photographs play in shaping China’s image" (English, French, Chinese). Some whimsical — Alain Delorme Totems, others moving — Song Chao Miners, Migrant workers and Hold.
posted by unliteral at 4:52 PM PST - 5 comments

Lee Buchheit, fairy godmother to finance ministers in distress

Lee Buchheit, a lawyer at US firm Cleary Gottlieb, has been present at all the major debt crises of the past three decades. His reputation among investors is as a fearsome and aggressive litigator, but finance ministers in distress see him as something of a fairy godmother.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:12 PM PST - 5 comments

Web2.Hell collected the names and taglines of real web2.0 start-ups that somehow were actually funded. "Remember Nothing! Zukmo Everything!" "Unlike on other sites, your posts must be one word long!" (The phenomena of baffling name choice lives on in current day successes like Snotr, LiveMocha, Magoosh, Squidoo etc., etc., etc.)
posted by blankdawn at 2:56 PM PST - 51 comments

On June 6th, 2013, Mel Brooks will be presented with the 41st AFI Life Achievement Award, but this post is about his Tomato and Onion Omelette. Bon Appétit talks cooking, coffee, and career with Mel Brooks, Omelette King.
posted by Room 641-A at 2:19 PM PST - 22 comments

What It’s Like When A Label Won’t Release Your Album
posted by reenum at 12:44 PM PST - 38 comments

Yahoo Inc.'s board has approved a deal to acquire blogging startup Tumblr, people familiar with the matter said Sunday. Yahoo has agreed to pay $1.1 billion in cash for the company, one of the people said. Tumblr would continue to operate largely as an independent business, the people said. Yahoo! acquired Ludicorp and Flickr in March 2005. The reported acquisition cost was $35 million. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 11:17 AM PST - 218 comments

BATTLE OF THE PRAIRIE CHICKENS (slyt). [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie at 10:07 AM PST - 12 comments

"Our research shows that people love two things: failed Microsoft technologies and obscure Javascript libraries. Naturally, we decided to combine the two." Thanks to Smore, you can now put Microsoft Clippy (or one of its friends) on your websites.
posted by barnacles at 8:25 AM PST - 33 comments

Improv Everywhere: for our latest mission we posed as city workers providing a ridiculous solution to the “texting and walking” epidemic in New York.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:14 AM PST - 38 comments

Men Getting High: Falsettists, Countertenors, Pop, Rock, and Opera
posted by rollick at 4:45 AM PST - 31 comments

As Hegel presumably remarks somewhere, all great Tory crises appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as farce, the second as farce. -- Chris Brooke presents a history of "swivel eyed loon" as an insult used against a certain kind of rightwing Tory. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse at 3:42 AM PST - 51 comments

Animated Aliens in 60 Seconds. (with some barely intelligible NSFW language) [more inside]
posted by fuse theorem at 12:00 AM PST - 13 comments

Sexts From Marxists (SLTumblr)
posted by SkylitDrawl at 9:11 PM PST - 25 comments

The thrill and rush of possibly winning started to wear off after about the twentieth losing ticket. Each card had a couple of “Life” symbols on them, and every time you got a second you just dreamed of seeing the third one under the remaining graphite. However it never appeared and never will and it just kind of turned depressing. How could people put themselves through this humiliation and teasing every day of their lives?
The classic criticism of the lottery is that the people who play are the ones who can least afford to lose; that the lottery is a sink of money, draining wealth from those who most need it. Some lottery advocates . . . have tried to defend lottery-ticket buying as a rational purchase of fantasy—paying a dollar for a day's worth of pleasant anticipation, imagining yourself as a millionaire. But consider exactly what this implies. It would mean that you're occupying your valuable brain with a fantasy whose real probability is nearly zero—a tiny line of likelihood which you, yourself, can do nothing to realize. . . . Which makes the lottery another kind of sink: a sink of emotional energy. [via]

posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 8:33 PM PST - 150 comments

Most people visit the city of Burlington, Vermont, for the pleasant waterfront of Lake Champlain, the quirky shops and restaurants on Church Street, and the various cultural benefits that come with being a university town. Those are all the right reasons. I, on the other hand, went to Burlington for the flying monkeys... [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:40 PM PST - 12 comments

How one episode of a TV show, became a movie.

Take Barney Fife, Otis Campbell, Clara Edwards, Homer Bedloe, Grandma Walton, Darren Stevens 2.0, and the oldest motherfucker who ever lived. You know what you got there?

[more inside]
posted by timsteil at 6:55 PM PST - 23 comments

Where are my dragons‽ Because if I didn't, some other munchkin would have.
posted by cjorgensen at 5:57 PM PST - 12 comments

A recollection of hacking the N64 with Action Replay and posting about it on Codejunkies with a Dreamcast.
posted by michaelh at 4:45 PM PST - 9 comments

Door Does Impression of Miles Davis.
posted by codacorolla at 4:28 PM PST - 25 comments

Each event has a different theme, revolving around a past era. Previously, Steam Garden did a Meiji-themed party — a fascinating time when Japan was opening its doors to the West, and fusing Victorian fashion with traditional kimonos and obis. This time, the code word was Celtic Fantasy. Luke describes it as “a blend of industry, fantasy, and epic adventure set to a soundtrack of exciting tribal and Celtic music.” - Japanese Steampunk, complete with bagpipes, medieval food, fire dancers and wood elves.
posted by Artw at 3:45 PM PST - 6 comments

The atlas is more than a cartographic genre. It is a way of thinking, of ordering, and experiencing the world... In the age of Google Earth, this online exhibition of maps from the 16th to 20th centuries is meant to stir public interest in the history of the atlas and cartography.
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:11 PM PST - 13 comments

"On a beautiful sunny day last week, the Turning Over a New Leaf project team decided to take a day off from the office to visit a spectacular chained library in the small town of Zutphen (located in the eastern part of the Netherlands). Built in 1564 as part of the church of St Walburga, it is one of only five chained libraries in the world that survive ‘intact’—that is, complete with the original books, chains, rods, and furniture."
posted by brundlefly at 3:01 PM PST - 18 comments

Somtimes a guy just wants a curiously asexual sprite to whimsicaly break the chains of his workaday world for an hour or so - cue the Manic Pixie Prostitute!
posted by The Whelk at 2:57 PM PST - 61 comments

Rome2Rio is a handy travel search engine site where you put in the place you want to start and where you want to go. It shows you the map, the cost of the ticket (air, rail, coach, ferry and mass transit routes), duration of the journey, etc.
posted by nickyskye at 1:00 PM PST - 16 comments

Daniel Handler, best known for A Series of Unfortunate Events and his accordion work with Stephin Merritt and The Magnetic Fields, reads a chapter from his novel Adverbs, which made Dave Eggers describe Handler as "something like an American Nabakov". An excerpt from another chapter, Immediately, is available courtesy of the New York Times. Handler's first adult novel, the nightmarishly satirical The Basic Eight (think the movie Heathers with a less reliable a narrator), is also well worth a read (excerpt from Google Books).
posted by Rory Marinich at 12:47 PM PST - 16 comments

First editions, second thoughts. [The Guardian] "Interactive: From Amsterdam to Wolf Hall, Booker winners and bestsellers – authors annotate their own first editions.
posted by Fizz at 12:44 PM PST - 2 comments

The panda gangbang took place deep in the basement of the Kink armory, where rivulets of the long-suffocated Mission Creek still trace a path between moisture-eaten columns, and the air hangs heavy with a stony dampness. Emily Witt explores the experiences and motivations of participants in acts of extreme pornography. Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic considers "Is some sex wrong even among consenting adults?" [Language NSFW, possible trigger warnings, as descriptions and language are graphic]
posted by MoonOrb at 11:58 AM PST - 206 comments

Widespread fraud has been discovered in the case of an Indian generic drug manufacturer that makes generic Lipitor (atorvastatin calcium) and many other drugs. Ranbaxy has "pleaded guilty to seven federal criminal counts of selling adulterated drugs with intent to defraud." [more inside]
posted by fiercecupcake at 11:32 AM PST - 28 comments

The horrifying, little-known story of how hundreds of thousands of blacks worked in brutal bondage right up to the middle of the 20th century. It was a crime for for a black man to lack employment and a crime to change jobs without his previous employer's permission. It was a crime to sell the proceeds of his farm to anyone other than the man from whom he rented land. A crime for a black man to speak loudly in the company of a white woman, to walk beside a railroad line, to fail to yield a sidewalk to white people, to sit among whites on a train and, in practice, generally a crime for blacks to be accused of any crime by a white person.
posted by blankdawn at 11:27 AM PST - 59 comments

"What was most perplexing of all to me was that, although I was certain that the ads contained Chinese phrases and sentences, every Chinese person to whom I showed them emphatically maintained that they could not understand a single word."
posted by roll truck roll at 10:48 AM PST - 56 comments

PITCHF/x and SportVU data analysis shows... [more inside]
posted by Groundhog Week at 10:27 AM PST - 7 comments

On the 15 May, Max Fisher of the Washington Post penned an article titled A fascinating map of the world’s most and least racially tolerant countries. Fisher surmised that Anglo and Latin American countries are the most tolerant, linking racism to economic freedom based off of a study by two Swedish economists. Siddhartha Mitter responds, who, in The Cartography of Bullshit writes, "Although the results don’t pass the sniff test in the first place, I took a look at the data as well, in an effort to identify the exact problems at play..." [more inside]
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 9:12 AM PST - 32 comments

Bootstrapping the Industrial Age So you survived the apocalypse. Here’s what would it take to rebuild the world.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:38 AM PST - 21 comments

We've read about Florentijn Hofman's giant rubber duck before (previously), and it made it's way earlier this week to Hong Kong to spread joy :D

Well, unfortunately, the duck was also viciously murdered (warning: may be graphic to younger viewers), and many already blame chinese mainlanders for it. [more inside]
posted by yeoz at 8:16 AM PST - 23 comments

A large portion of scientific research is publicly funded. So why do only the richest consumers have access to it?
posted by reenum at 8:01 AM PST - 62 comments

The Myth of Nazi Efficiency
posted by Miko at 7:21 AM PST - 84 comments

Running in the The Times Educational Supplement (¹), between 1971 and 1972 the comic strip Wokker featured a strange wooden bird who commentates sarcastically on the world, and who can talk to animals, inanimate objects and readers alike.
Here are some galleries and a short history by the co-creator Tony Earnshaw, also a painter and maker of boxes.
His funeral in 2001 was slightly unconventional.
posted by adamvasco at 6:36 AM PST - 4 comments

The project centers on nine women in the feminist lesbian porn industry who are recorded for a 24-hour period, with 10-second blips of their everyday lives playing out in five-minute intervals. What’s revealed is an intimate portrait of a marginalized community opening up about sex, gender politics, depression, and their daily grind in a way that’s downright real.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:20 AM PST - 4 comments

Guest Photographers or: Why You Should Have an Unplugged Wedding

Pro photographer Corey Ann explains, with examples, what causes her so many problems in getting the wedding photographs her clients have paid her for: their guests.

Pushing in front of her, standing in the frame of posed photos, flooding pictures with flash, and above all assuming that their invitation entitles them to take precedence over a photographer who is being expected to get a perfect record of the couple's perfect day.

Her proposal: politely, but firmly, ask your guests to enjoy the highlights of the wedding themselves, and leave taking photographs of those parts to the photographer.
posted by Major Clanger at 4:33 AM PST - 93 comments

Street Children - Can you look them in the eye?
posted by Gyan at 1:03 AM PST - 7 comments

How syphilis took Europe by storm during the 1490s, and the far reaching effects it's had ever since
posted by Mister Bijou at 12:46 AM PST - 25 comments

On March 26th, 1827 Ludwig Van Beethoven died in Vienna. The day after, a twelve year old boy took a lock of his hair as a souvenir. 167 years later the hair was sold at an auction in London. Its new owners were two Americans, Ira Brilliant and Che Guevera. Between those dates the lock of hair undertook an extraordinary historical odyssey. From hand to hand, from country to country, and from century to century. This is the story of that journey. [more inside]
posted by 23 at 12:34 AM PST - 15 comments

Mooseheart Orphanage, 1948 A haunting image of children's faces from the Mooseheart Orphanage, 1948. The photo was taken by Stanley Kubrick for the June 8th, 1948 edition of Look.
posted by HuronBob at 9:43 PM PST - 19 comments

John Merritt, Wood Carver. SLYT
posted by Lutoslawski at 9:21 PM PST - 7 comments

A New Theory of PTSD and Veterans: Moral Injury

But as clergy and good clinicians have listened to more stories like these, they have heard a new narrative, one that signals changes to the brain along with what in less spiritually challenged times might be called a shadow on the soul. It is the tale of disintegrating vets, but also of seemingly squared-away former soldiers and spit-shined generals shuttling between two worlds: ours, where thou shalt not kill is chiseled into everyday life, and another, where thou better kill, be killed, or suffer the shame of not trying. There is no more hellish commute.

[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:43 PM PST - 19 comments

Nicholas J. Johnson is a no good dirty rotten cheat. So when he invites you to play an incredible new game that he’s invented, you probably shouldn’t come…
posted by filthy light thief at 7:18 PM PST - 18 comments

The sweetest chopper on the planet is the "Red Baron", a custom-built motorcycle powered by a 9-cylinder radial aircraft engine.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:07 PM PST - 35 comments

Little pug puppy dries off after a bath! (slyt) [more inside]
posted by elizardbits at 5:39 PM PST - 67 comments

Nicolas Guéguen is a researcher in human behaviour who runs curious and somehow whimsical experiments. With the help of a small army of "confederates", he studies the effects of various stimuli, including dogs, smiles, fireman uniforms, bust size (inflatable), hair color, music, flowers, figurines, touching, mirrors, names etc. on the courtship, sexual, helping, chivalrous, tipping, buying, hiring, compliance or eating behaviour of unsuspecting victims. Because not all experiments are successful, he has also published one failure in the Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis. Selected papers are listed below the fold. [more inside]
posted by elgilito at 4:42 PM PST - 6 comments

ADA is a kinetic sculpture by Karina Smigla-Bobinski. Video of ADA in action. [via]
posted by shakespeherian at 3:06 PM PST - 9 comments

What was the hottest New York Fashion Week party? Why the first annual NYC Doggies & Tiaras Pageant of course. (NYmag.com/Slideshow)
posted by The Whelk at 2:29 PM PST - 20 comments

A Burlingame, California restaurant, Monkutanya, that serves grilled exotic meats has announced on its facebook page that it has added lion to the menu, stirring up some controversy and publicity.
posted by agatha_magatha at 2:16 PM PST - 79 comments

"This is What Winning Looks Like is a disturbing new documentary about the ineptitude, drug abuse, sexual misconduct, and corruption of the Afghan security forces as well as the reduced role of US Marines due to the troop withdrawal." [via vice] [more inside]
posted by Drexen at 1:13 PM PST - 45 comments

Street Fighter II: Hula Hoop Style International hula hoop star Marawa the Amazing always wanted to be in Street Fighter II and now she's gotten her wish.
posted by philohagen at 12:54 PM PST - 19 comments

Flash Friday: Gods Will Be Watching
posted by Uppity Pigeon #2 at 12:20 PM PST - 21 comments

Here's what it's like to be chewed on by a grizzly bear. (Video footage, SFW, no gore.)
posted by mudpuppie at 11:40 AM PST - 39 comments

Photographer Arne Svenson has sparked a bit of controversy with his recent show "The Neighbors," about which he says, "I turned to the residents of a glass-walled apartment building across the street from my NYC studio. The Neighbors don’t know they are being photographed; I carefully shoot from the shadows of my home into theirs. I am not unlike the birder, quietly waiting for hours, watching for the flutter of a hand or the movement of a curtain as an indication that there is life within." [more inside]
posted by taz at 10:42 AM PST - 322 comments

The Stephen King Universe [Infographic] Via: coolinfographics.com
posted by Fizz at 10:08 AM PST - 35 comments

Why Australia hates thinkers, an essay on anti-intellectualism in today's Australia and the populist hostility to “intellectual elites”, by Alecia Simmonds.
posted by acb at 10:05 AM PST - 60 comments

Released in 1971 at the height of the Brazilian dictatorship, dedicated to the bittersweet struggle of those exiled to freedom, Construção was Chico Buarque's most stylistically adventurous studio record, and by many accounts, his masterpiece. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:22 AM PST - 12 comments

"Oh, the indignities of pregnancy! They told me it would be beautiful and glowing. They did not tell me about farting loudly at bus stops." -- Sophia Collins writes about the horrible truth of being pregnant and why consent matters.
Rachel Coleman Finch concurs and explains why it made her more pro-choice: One of my mantras for getting through the hideousness that was my last pregnancy was "I consented to this".
posted by MartinWisse at 8:48 AM PST - 63 comments

Kitten Eats Ice Cream. [slyt | cute]
posted by quin at 7:35 AM PST - 73 comments

Clinical psychologist Meg Jay has a bold message for twentysomethings: Contrary to popular belief, your 20s are not a throwaway decade. In this provocative talk, Jay says that just because marriage, work and kids are happening later in life, doesn’t mean you can’t start planning now. She gives 3 pieces of advice for how twentysomethings can re-claim adulthood in the defining decade of their lives. (copied from description on TED website). [more inside]
posted by myriad gantry at 7:32 AM PST - 121 comments

Milada Horáková, a member of a Czech resistance movement, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1940 and imprisoned until the U.S. Army liberated her in May of 1945. Elected as a member of the Czechoslovak postwar parliament, she resigned after the communist coup in 1948. She remained politically active with groups opposed to the communist regime and was arrested again, this time by the communists, on September 27, 1949. After a televised show trial (she was tried with 12 others), she was executed on June 27, 1950. Translations of Horáková's poignant final letters to her mother-in-law, husband, and daughter are available here. A brief excerpt from her show trial, with english subtitles that can be turned on, is available here. The prosecutor's closing argument is here. Pages from an english-language comic book released in 1950 in the United States about Horáková can be seen here. In addition to being an opponent of both the Nazi and Communist regimes, Horáková was a feminist involved in the Czechoslovakian and International womens' movement. Biographical information is available here and here.
posted by Area Man at 7:21 AM PST - 9 comments

I turned around to face an approaching figure. It was Larry Page, naked, save for a pair of eyeglasses. “Welcome to Google Island. I hope my nudity doesn’t bother you. We’re completely committed to openness here. Search history. Health data. Your genetic blueprint. One way to express this is by removing clothes to foster experimentation. It’s something I learned at Burning Man,” he said.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:49 AM PST - 30 comments

Two days ago M15 the original Spanish "occupy" movement celebrated its second birthday. Earlier this year it publicised a campaign of civil disobediance. Now Catalunya has Teresa Forcades, a nun on a mission who opposes the excesses of capitalism. Here is a recent interview.
posted by adamvasco at 6:06 AM PST - 39 comments

What won the war? The weather helped. For while the Allies had access to all the Atlantic meteorology, the Axis couldn't easily predict what systems were rolling in from the West - and with the Battle of the Atlantic the one thing that Churchill said kept him awake at night, knowing which way the wind blew certainly needed a weatherman. Or Britain would never be starved into submission. The Weather War was complex and engaging, [more inside]
posted by Devonian at 5:46 AM PST - 16 comments

A contestant on a Spanish talent show builds a mobile using natural materials. It's worth watching to the very end.
posted by carmicha at 5:42 AM PST - 32 comments

A couple of discussions of recent Google design trends, one in The New Yorker (via Bruce Sterling), and one from Fast Company (via waxy).
posted by cgc373 at 1:50 AM PST - 33 comments

116 years ago, bicycle superhighways were the future of California transit. The notion that anyone could profit from charging tolls on such a system seems insane now, but a wealthy businessman and an ex-governor conceived of elevated wooden platforms for bikers that would connect LA to the surrounding suburbs, and they even cleared and built the first section. [more inside]
posted by blankdawn at 11:44 PM PST - 34 comments

Faith the Dog has only her hind legs, so she does what any other biped would do and walks upright! She was until very recently involved in morale work with returning soldiers and would travel by air sometimes, and it's just fun to watch her go. Bonus: watch Oprah's heart just melt in real-time! [more inside]
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:01 PM PST - 26 comments

Behavioral Economics for Kids [pdf] is a free ebook from the Ivey School of Business that illustrates (to adults, really) the basic principles of behavioral economics, including the Endowment Effect (we value what we have more than what it is worth), Hyperbolic Discounting (the time we wait for rewards influences value in non-linear ways), the dishonesty of honest people, and Base Rate Neglect (why we make bad assumptions based on inherent biases). Though the findings are well-established, the labeling is subject to change, as many social psychologists argue, this is not behavioral economics, it is well-established psychology.
posted by blahblahblah at 9:13 PM PST - 30 comments

Electronic band Pigeon perform a medley of DAFT PUNK tunes live in the studio using a microKORG, NORD lead 2x, KORG microsampler, Roland SPD-SX, T.C HELICON Voice Live Touch, Rocktron Banshee Talkbox, Bass, Gibson SG Guitar, Tambourine and a 3 piece horn section.
posted by lazaruslong at 8:38 PM PST - 23 comments

Long out of print, "A Doonesbury Special." That is all.
posted by timsteil at 8:23 PM PST - 37 comments

I will die alone, like a dog, and my cats will eat my face.
posted by ereshkigal45 at 8:10 PM PST - 70 comments

"Old Polymaths Never Die ...they just keep on publishing. Adrian Wooldridge explores the unstoppable legacies of Isaiah Berlin and Hugh Trevor-Roper." [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:32 PM PST - 7 comments

Obscure Videogames presents obscure Japanese videogames as gorgeous animated gifs.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 6:53 PM PST - 5 comments

As you may know, large areas are measured in Rhode Islands. For example. Now a handy web site will tell you how big countries are using this vital geographic method. Plus, you will learn some fun facts about Rhode Island.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:14 PM PST - 56 comments

"Rob Ford, Toronto's conservative mayor, is a wild lunatic given to making bizarre racist pronouncements and randomly slapping refrigerator magnets on cars. One reason for this is that he smokes crack cocaine. I know this because I watched him do it, on a videotape. He was fucking hiiiiigh. It's for sale if you've got six figures." [single link Gawker]
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:39 PM PST - 1047 comments

What's the point of teaching a man to fish, if someone else owns the river? Berkeley professor Ananya Roy narrates a hand-drawn video about who is profiting from poverty.
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:32 PM PST - 40 comments

19 people were shot at a New Orleans parade on Mother's Day, including 2 children. 3 are still in critical condition. David Dennis asks: "So why am I allowed to go outside? Where's the city quarantine or FBI and Homeland Security presence for this act of 'terrorism'?" [more inside]
posted by Starmie at 2:24 PM PST - 96 comments

You Can Be Better Next Season, American Idol. Here’s How. By Dave Holmes [more inside]
posted by nadawi at 2:02 PM PST - 13 comments

We visited Weirdo Video back in 07 for propaganda films, but the YouTube channel has been steadily updating with yesterday's ephemera. Why not enjoy some vintage newsreels about STRIKES! SULTANS! SUEZ! SAN FRANSISCO! or some FITNESS FADS!
posted by The Whelk at 1:50 PM PST - 2 comments

The thirteen types of armor female characters are forced to wear in the majority of MMORPGs (via)
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:34 PM PST - 109 comments

Cleaning: The Final Feminist Frontier It's macho to be a "dad" and do childcare, and cooking is for tough guys, but cleaning? That's still women's work.
posted by DMelanogaster at 1:31 PM PST - 180 comments

Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts: From 1958-1973, composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (Previously on MeFi) played live, educational concerts with the New York Philharmonic that were televised nationwide on CBS. Tapes of the broadcasts were eventually syndicated to 40 countries, introducing an entire generation of children to a wide range musical concepts, styles and composers. The first concert to air was "What Does Music Mean." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 1:11 PM PST - 5 comments

The New Elitism of Internships "Now we have fresh evidence, straight from the highest halls of power, that the world of internships is a morally bankrupt free-for-all, a new glass ceiling in the making: the Tories have been auctioning them off at a recent fundraiser, as reported in the Mail on Sunday and called out by Jackie Ashley on Comment is Free. The Mail reported that prestigious internship positions in a range of industries (finance, hedge-fund work, fashion, media and so on) recently raised more than £20,000 for the Conservatives at the exclusive Black and White party." [more inside]
posted by marienbad at 10:31 AM PST - 38 comments

The goal of Red Letter Christians is simple: To take Jesus seriously by endeavoring to live out His radical, counter-cultural teachings as set forth in Scripture, and especially embracing the lifestyle prescribed in the Sermon on the Mount. [more inside]
posted by No Robots at 9:27 AM PST - 361 comments

Spag's, started by Anthony "Spag" Borgatti in 1934, and run by him until his death in 1996, was a pioneer in discount retail, and an icon in Central Massachusetts. It will close its doors, again, for good, this Friday. [more inside]
posted by dirtdirt at 8:22 AM PST - 66 comments

You're at a Broadway or off-Broadway show. Suddenly, a cell phone goes off, or the person next to you starts texting. If you're on stage, you could do what Patti LuPone did at Gypsy. You could write an open letter to the offender. Or, you could do what Kevin Williamson did last night.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:56 AM PST - 435 comments

The Science Fiction and Fantasy art of Yuko Shimizu
posted by Artw at 7:54 AM PST - 10 comments

If you fancy diversity in cheeses, you might have come across queso Chihuahua, or Chihuahua cheese, a Mexican semi-soft cow milk cheese. But if you're in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, the cheese is called Queso Menonita or Campresino Menonita, for the Mennonites who first made the cheese in this region. The Mennonites in Mexico are a small but growing socio-religious pocket of that has retained much of their traditional Dutch and German heritage, despite a series of moves, from Russia to Canada, and finally Mexico. Mexican photographer Eunice Adorno spent time with Mennonites in Durango, capturing moments in their lives. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 7:51 AM PST - 18 comments

UBC psych prof Dr. J. Kiley Hamlin: "Across two experiments with combined samples of more than 200 infant participants, we found that 9- and 14-month-old infants prefer individuals who treat similar others well and treat dissimilar others poorly." Popularization at The Atlantic. Full paper (Psychological Science, paywall). Researcher profile.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:47 AM PST - 16 comments

Newegg, who previously fought to free the online shopping cart wins another patent case on appeal together with Overstock.com against Alcatel. [more inside]
posted by juiceCake at 7:35 AM PST - 21 comments

Amazingly cool timelapse of the annular solar eclipse at sunrise in the Pilbara, Western Australia.
posted by quin at 7:32 AM PST - 5 comments

Retail prices 'rigged for a decade': The European offices of BP and Shell were raided by European officials earlier this week in the beginning of an investigation into allegations of illegal market collusion and price fixing dating back to at least 2002. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman at 6:39 AM PST - 59 comments

It was a tiny town of farmers, a village where everyone knew everyone and nearly all struggled to make ends meet. But then, a few days before Christmas, they won the largest lottery in the history of Spain. The entire town. All of them. (Well, almost all of them.) Instantly, Sodeto became known as the luckiest place on earth. Michael Paterniti visits the town that fortune smiled upon and finds that the people there—now flush—are still uncertain of just how lucky they really are.
posted by empath at 2:14 AM PST - 26 comments

Frank Deford, a 50-year veteran of Sports Illustrated, once labeled Meltzer the most accomplished reporter in sports journalism. “You could cover the Vatican or State Department,” Deford said recently, “and not do as good a job as Dave Meltzer does on wrestling.”

For nearly 30 years, Dave Meltzer has published the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, featuring weekly behind the locker room door insight into the business of professional wrestling. How far reaching has Meltzer's impact been? In one famous incident, Hulk Hogan, frustrated by what he perceived as consistently negative coverage in the publication, burned a copy of the newsletter during a live Pay-Per-View event.
posted by The Gooch at 10:21 PM PST - 14 comments

Put in your preferred beer style, and Beer Viz will tell you about similar beers using data collected from Beer Advocate.
posted by shivohum at 8:51 PM PST - 73 comments

A gigantic list of browser-based emulators and classic game ports covers everything from the Amiga to the ZX-Spectrum. Some things not to miss for either the nostalgic or the lover of classic games: Play Dune 2 (the original RTS) in HTML 5; Command and Conquer; an authorized version of many Sierra adventures (works on iPads too); beautiful versions of the Nintendo Game and Watch games; a nice Apple //e emulator (Bard's Tale! Neuromancer! Karateka!); and, of course, every NES game [a few of these mentioned before]. All in your browser!
posted by blahblahblah at 7:42 PM PST - 32 comments

In 2011, Raquel Nelson was convicted of vehicular homicide in the death of her four-year-old son, A.J., because he was hit by a car and killed while he, his mother, and his siblings crossed the street without using a crosswalk. Nelson and her three children were crossing the street to get from a bus stop to their apartment complex. In order to use a crosswalk, she would have had to walk a third of a mile in each direction. Streets with marked crosswalks are significantly more common in high income areas than in middle income or low income communities. (.pdf) A 2012 New Jersey study found that poor pedestrians are more likely to be struck by cars. [more inside]
posted by southern_sky at 7:37 PM PST - 133 comments

Chicago is bringing the co-operation in all kinds of ways these days. First the opening of New Era Windows Cooperative last week, now this: [more inside]
posted by deliciae at 7:23 PM PST - 3 comments

In the beginning, Phillip Patterson decided to write out every word in the Bible.
posted by Fizz at 6:35 PM PST - 21 comments

The Weirdest Band in the World is a blog devoted to singers, musicians, and bands that are crazy, silly, improbable, eccentric, grotesque, idiosyncratic, inexplicable, insane, or otherwise unusual. Bloggers Andy and Jake write about bands both successful and obscure, whether metal, jazz, hip-hop, or whatever other genre, always with an unflagging appreciation for what makes these bands unique, and with none of the snark and jeering that often laces articles elsewhere about people doing weird things. [more inside]
posted by narain at 6:08 PM PST - 20 comments

Turing Drawings is a simple web app that uses Turing Machines to draw randomly generated compositions on a digital canvas. The results vary from stuff like striking static designs, organic forms that slowly devolve in to chaos, repeating animations, and systems with complex interactions. If you find a combination that you like, you can copy and paste the URL in the lower right hand corner of the site to share it. The creator, Darius Bacon, has some other cool stuff that mixes computer science with the humanities on his blog.
posted by codacorolla at 6:02 PM PST - 71 comments

A picture of you plus name, age, SS# in a National Database ACLU of Northern CA call to action. via [more inside]
posted by snaparapans at 6:01 PM PST - 81 comments

Literature and Form is a series of four lectures by Oxford literature academic Dr. Catherine Brown. The lectures are on the themes of unreliable narrators, chapters, multiple plotting and what comparative literature is. You can listen to it as a podcast or through iTunes U. In this lecture series Brown primarily looks at some central structures of the novel as well as examining what the study of literature entails. Brown weaves in examples from world literature, especially English and Russian literature of the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries.
posted by Kattullus at 5:12 PM PST - 6 comments

The Post-Punk / New Wave Super Friends by Butcher Billy. [Via]
posted by homunculus at 4:55 PM PST - 35 comments

Many languages have "high" and "low" layers of vocabulary. But in most other languages, the two sets are drawn from the same source. By contrast, contact between Old English and French, Dravidian languages and Sanskrit, Japanese and Chinese, Persian and Arabic, and other pairings around the world have created fascinatingly hybrid languages. These mixed lexicons are, for linguistic and social historians, akin to the layers of fossils that teach paleontologists and archaeologists so much about eras gone by. Some people even think English is descended from Latin, or Kannada from Sanskrit. That’s frustrating not only because it’s wrong, but also because the reality is far more interesting. - The Economist, Unlikely parallels (via)
posted by beisny at 4:55 PM PST - 31 comments

Why Are Barns Red?
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:16 PM PST - 26 comments

Use "Metatalk" skill to discuss communication problems.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:55 PM PST - 46 comments

"It was one of those things that was a gift to humanity... We’re all going to lose for sure." Kepler's career is over, but not before answering one of mankind's most profound questions.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 2:28 PM PST - 30 comments

Speed up Imagine, slow down Band on The Run. WTF?
posted by timsteil at 2:23 PM PST - 49 comments

Science fiction novels for economists [via Paul Krugman]
posted by brundlefly at 12:50 PM PST - 53 comments

The longest-delayed reveal in television history has been unveiled: I give to you: the mother from How I Met Your Mother. [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:32 PM PST - 195 comments

Ever wondered what the view at the very top of the Washington Monument is like? Construction workers erecting scaffolding (for repairs needed after the 2011 earthquake) donned helmet cams on the day they reached the tip of the monument, so you need wonder no longer.
posted by EvaDestruction at 12:03 PM PST - 42 comments

The Seth McFarlane reboot of "Cosmos" will air on Fox in 2014. The host will be Neil DeGrasse Tyson. [more inside]
posted by scrump at 11:48 AM PST - 99 comments

SLYT KTLA 5 News Los Angeles invited the actors of the Mortal Kombat: Live Tour to the station to promote their tour in 1996.
posted by jcterminal at 11:47 AM PST - 8 comments

Slate's Matthew Yglesias 'Boldly Went Where Every Star Trek Movie and TV Show Has Gone Before,' by watching every Star Trek movie and television series,* and offers his position on why Star Trek is great. [more inside]
posted by Atreides at 11:31 AM PST - 594 comments

A confluence of factors has pushed me to post the following missive from one Benjamin Franklin–a noted American humorist who also did some other stuff. If from an overindulgence in rich and fatty foods on Fat Tuesday, you find yourself surfeit with internal pressure, follow the advice of a founding father…
posted by Blasdelb at 10:29 AM PST - 27 comments

How America Commie-Baited A Baseball Hero [more inside]
posted by Elementary Penguin at 10:17 AM PST - 9 comments

Dystopia 2.0 "...while spending millions bending the political process to pad their bottom lines, they’ve remained far more popular than past plutocrats, with 72 percent of Americans expressing positive feelings for the industry, compared to 30 percent for banking and 20 percent for oil and gas." by Joel Kotkin (wiki) referred to previously as "America’s leading cheerleader for suburban sprawl" has taken the "creative class" to task before.
posted by victors at 8:47 AM PST - 46 comments

Today The New Yorker unveiled Strongbox, a service that allows sources to share information with TNY journalists securely and anonymously. As explained in this infographic, Strongbox relies on the Tor network, a dedicated server, PGP encryption, VPNs, and multiple laptops and thumb drives to prevent files from being intercepted or traced. The codebase, which is open source, was designed by the late Aaron Swartz (Previously). Kevin Poulsen, one of the organizers of the project, chronicles how Swartz developed the code and how the project managed to carry on after his death. TNY hopes that Strongbox will help the magazine continue its long tradition of investigative journalism.
posted by Cash4Lead at 8:46 AM PST - 34 comments

Six science projects that kids and adults will love! (and you can do at home).
posted by quin at 7:24 AM PST - 17 comments

Neither a borrower nor a lender be. 198 movies and shows cut together to reform, Voltron-like, as Hamlet
posted by yerfatma at 7:14 AM PST - 32 comments

Take a slippery, wooded floor, two stoic lizards and a somewhat too energetic for its own good kitten and you have all the makings of a successful cat video.
posted by MartinWisse at 6:29 AM PST - 53 comments

Snooky and the metronome
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:29 AM PST - 28 comments

Joseph Tomaras reflects on the Mauna Loa data and concludes that the main tasks of the moment are neither political nor economic, but ethical or moral. [more inside]
posted by Gilgongo at 5:44 AM PST - 38 comments

A female data scientist working on HAWKEN (a videogame) takes issue with the poster of a scantily clad comic character her CEO displays on his wall, and while he is away, replaces it with something else... [more inside]
posted by xdvesper at 4:39 AM PST - 162 comments

For the first time in Kitchen Nightmares history, British chef Gordon Ramsay walks off his own show. In the segment that aired this week, the difficult owners of Amy's Baking Company in Scottsdale, AZ - Samy and Amy Bouzaglo - are shown stealing tips from their waitstaff, admitting to firing more than 100 employees over a one year period, firing a waitress for asking a question, telling a customer who had been waiting over an hour for his food to go fuck himself (yes, the police were called during filming), and passing off frozen, pre-made raviolis and desserts as if they were homemade. The couple was so resistant to criticism that even the typically steadfast Ramsay decided he couldn’t help them and shut the show down before beginning the rehab phase. [more inside]
posted by phaedon at 3:20 AM PST - 480 comments

Two lengthy appreciations of Jacques Barzun's influence: Barzun's grandson remembers the letters of his well-known grandfather, and Helen Hazen reminisces about Barzun's unexpected effort to help her write her first book.
posted by cgc373 at 3:13 AM PST - 2 comments

The Talkhouse gets musicians to review albums, so you get articles like Hunter Hurt-Hendrix on Death Grips, Laura Jane Grace on Savages and Matthew Friedberger (Fiery Furnaces) on Vampire Weekend.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 2:10 AM PST - 13 comments

The Department of Homeland Security has apparently seized Mt.Gox's Dwolla account, a key US mobile payments account associated with the largest Bitcoin exchange. Mt.Gox has confirmed that their Dwolla account is disabled, but have not been party to the court order themselves. [more inside]
posted by ArkhanJG at 12:54 AM PST - 146 comments

Not to make you feel old or anything, but The Breeder's Last Splash just turned 20. Time for a deluxe reissue and a tour! [more inside]
posted by bardic at 12:31 AM PST - 31 comments

The Queen of Snakes is a point and click flash game featuring the intricate artwork of JO99 (via JayIsGames) [more inside]
posted by juv3nal at 9:45 PM PST - 15 comments

Kings and Sharks Dance Offs started when both teams first met in the playoffs. It took over the series talk thread and Game Day Threads until it got it's own thread. Since then, it has become a tradition.
posted by blob at 9:19 PM PST - 18 comments

For more than 50 years, Linear B was an ancient language that hadn't given up its secret. Professor Bennett spent much of the 1940s hammering out a list of about 80 characters, and in 1951 he published the first definitive list of the signs of Linear B. The next year, archaeologist and Linear B enthusiast Michael Ventris finished "breaking" the code, with some hope from the research of Bennett, and another scholar named Alice Kober, but apparently she was rather hard to get on with and they went their separate ways. Except the magnitude of Doctor Kober's painstaking and self-sacrificing work is still largely unacknowledged. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:34 PM PST - 20 comments

One man's attempt to rebrand Abercrombie & Fitch as "The World's Number One Brand of Homeless Apparel". SLYT
posted by dobbs at 7:11 PM PST - 49 comments

Researchers at Humboldt State University have mapped hateful tweets. Dr. Monica Stephens, at Humboldt State, has teamed up with undergraduate research assistants to study the geographical distribution of hate speech in tweets. The graphical map breaks down by "genre" of hate (homophobia, racism, disability) as well as by individual words flagged. Far more details are available on floatingsheep.org; the data was provided by the DOLLY Project at the University of Kentucky.
posted by obliquicity at 5:20 PM PST - 109 comments

MOOOOOOM, WE'RE BOOOORED Didn't I buy you that Mario Kart game for your Wii, like, two years ago? Five? YEAH, BUT WE'RE BOOOOOORED But kids, didn't it include something like thirty tracks? YEAH, BUT WE'RE TIIIIIRED OF THOOOOOSE Well, I didn't want to do this so early in the year, but I've got a Christmas present for you that I've been holding on to. You know how you've been saying how you wanted 184 new tracks for Mario Kart Wii? YEAH! WE WERE REALLY SPECIFIC ABOUT THAT NUMBER Well, bust out that Mario Kart Wii disc and an SD card, because Merry Christmas, kids!
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:10 PM PST - 30 comments

In 1985, Houston was preparing for a party: 1986 marked the city's 150th birthday, the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Texas, and 25 years since the opening of NASA's Johnson Space Center, the hub around which the city's aerospace industry blossomed. In comes French synthesizer pioneer Jean Michel Jarre, the "composer of the future", known for his spectacular 1979 Bastille Day show that attracted a million people to Place de la Concorde, and for being the first Western musician to play China in 1981. With the Space Shuttle Challenger due to take off on mission STS-51-L in January, Jarre penned a piece for Mission Specialist and saxophonist Ron McNair to record in space. The nation watched as McNair and his crewmates prepared for their journey and waved goodbye, only to perish in a haunting and iconic explosion. As Houston mourned the loss of the seven crew, who called the city home during their preparation for spaceflight, Jarre wasn't sure if the upcoming festivities should be held, but was convinced by astronaut Bruce McCandless that the show must go on. On April 5, 1986, 1.5 million people gathered downtown to witness Rendez-vous Houston, a massive tribute to America's pioneering spirit that used the city as its backdrop. [more inside]
posted by avocet at 4:29 PM PST - 19 comments

Sarah Polley, previously, is a Canadian actress and director whose new documentary Stories We Tell is about her own family's story. Or stories. And how storytelling shapes us. Sarah Polley's Meta Masterpiece [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:06 PM PST - 18 comments

Recurring Developments: An interactive visualization of running jokes in Arrested Development
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 3:38 PM PST - 88 comments

Contractors Raked in $385 Billion on Overseas Bases in 12 Years "I began with publicly available government contract data and followed a methodology for tracking funds used by the Commission on Wartime Contracting. This allowed me to compile a list of every Pentagon contract with a "place of performance.... There were 1.7 million of them."
posted by HuronBob at 2:10 PM PST - 54 comments

How do you solicit freelance scripts for a science fiction television series that breaks the mold? You create a comprehensive guide to writing an episode of Star Trek. [more inside]
posted by Sara C. at 1:38 PM PST - 189 comments

To complement the rapid political climate change of the past few days, here in Minnesota we have freak ice destruction followed by a gorgeous day of 90 degree temperatures. I've seen the ice out on Mille Lacs Lake many times, but this YouTube video is pretty incredible, and features commentary in authentic Minnesotan.
posted by finnegans at 12:51 PM PST - 76 comments

Modern Manele is a deliciously vulgar, cheesy-fun, bouncy Eastern European pop music. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 12:07 PM PST - 19 comments

Skylab, NASA's budget space station, launched 40 years ago today. Designed as an orbiting optical laboratory, she served as a cold war weapon, underwent an historic salvage job, and was the site of America's first space mutiny before landing hard in Australia while waiting for the Space Shuttle to be invented.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 12:03 PM PST - 37 comments

The Boston easy listening station WJIB has developed a cult following among senior citizens, children, and young artsy types. Before local radio legend Bob Bittner revived the call letters and format of the beloved beautiful music station, the 740 frequency had an unusual and eccentric history. [more inside]
posted by pxe2000 at 11:53 AM PST - 15 comments

Suspended in Void - a lovely collection of Italian ex votos depicting people who survived falls under the watchful eye of the Virgin Mary. Previously: a larger collection of ex votos from various cultures. (Via Heading East)
posted by madamjujujive at 11:02 AM PST - 9 comments

"The Sound of Stigma: An essay by Mark S. King—an AIDS advocate, an author and a blogger living with HIV since 1985—on why HIV stigma among gay men persists."
posted by andoatnp at 9:50 AM PST - 148 comments

"'If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.' So goes the old saying. Yet conditions in some American facilities are so obscene that they amount to a form of extrajudicial punishment." Mother Jones is profiling "America's 10 Worst Prisons." Facilities were chosen for the list based on "...three years of research, correspondence with prisoners, and interviews with reform advocates." [more inside]
posted by zarq at 9:15 AM PST - 86 comments

Jason Richwine has resigned from the Heritage Foundation. Richwine is the author of a the Heritage report, "The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer." In 2009, Richwine earned his doctorate from Harvard University, and his dissertation was titled "IQ and Immigration Policy", which argued that Hispanic immigrants have lower IQ than white native immigrants. [more inside]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:46 AM PST - 139 comments

The Top 5 Beards In (Recent) Surf History [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:45 AM PST - 15 comments

Is Your (U.S) State's Highest-Paid Employee A (Football) Coach? and why they deserve it. [more inside]
posted by mrgrimm at 8:38 AM PST - 67 comments

Just under a year ago the company that owns the Times-Picayune (Advance Publications, a Newhouse family operation) newspaper of New Orleans, stunned the city and journalists nationwide with the announcement that it would be cutting its print edition to three days a week, while focusing more intensely on its online operations. But now more print (and digital, for that matter) options are available in the Crescent City than last June. [more inside]
posted by raysmj at 7:50 AM PST - 20 comments

"WNYC and The Record asked, separately, for documentation of NJ Transit’s hurricane preparedness plans. Both news organizations received the same reply: a three-and-a-half page document with the words “New Jersey Rail Operations Hurricane Plan” atop the first page. Everything else was blacked out." [more inside]
posted by 1970s Antihero at 7:33 AM PST - 37 comments

Peaches the cat and Lucky the one eared dog battle in slow motion. [slyt | via]
posted by quin at 7:20 AM PST - 43 comments

Facebook Software Updates in Real Life: Parody [SYTL 2min 20sec] 'Facebook Updates in Real Life' illustrates that not all of the mobile user base is happy with the current 'Facebook Home' improvements. [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 6:31 AM PST - 53 comments

Not a Doodle, but an Easter egg Google has a fun way to celebrate Atari Breakout's 37th anniversary.
posted by doctornemo at 6:19 AM PST - 42 comments

"My brother Danny lost his virginity at age 25. To a call girl named Monique. Hired by our mother." -- Mara Cohen Marks writes about her brother Danny, suffering from familial dysautonomia and how her mother went above and beyond the call of duty to give him as normal a life as possible.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:44 AM PST - 86 comments

A zoomable, searchable map of subreddits and how they're connected by crossposting.
posted by Zarkonnen at 2:35 AM PST - 46 comments

"When a leather and tortoiseshell handbag (later found to be the rare 19th-century Italian work) was shown to Mrs Nevin, she said: "That's my shopping bag. I bought it in a shop."" The museum curator who stole thousands of artifacts to decorate his home.
posted by mippy at 1:54 AM PST - 13 comments

JR pledged to “use art to turn the world inside out” but does this mural strip away historical meaning and leave only the commodification of authenticity? "In contrast to Dr. King's and the sanitation workers' demands for significant economic change, JR's demands are for vague existence."
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:14 AM PST - 3 comments

Days after Hitler’s suicide a group of American soldiers, French prisoners, and, yes, German soldiers defended an Austrian castle against an SS division—the only time Germans and Allies fought together in World War II. Andrew Roberts on a story so wild that it has to be made into a movie.
posted by cthuljew at 10:47 PM PST - 25 comments

Angelina Jolie describes having a preventive double mastectomy in a NY Times op-ed. Her mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, died of ovarian cancer at age 56, and Jolie inherited the BRCA1 gene, which carries a vastly higher risk of breast and ovarian cancers. [more inside]
posted by restless_nomad at 10:09 PM PST - 128 comments

The New Yorker takes on the MOOC: “One of the edX people said, ‘This is being sponsored by Harvard and M.I.T. They wouldn’t do anything to harm higher education!’ What came to my mind was some cautious financial analysts saying, about some of the financial instruments that were being rolled out in the late nineties or early two-thousands, ‘This is risky stuff, isn’t it?’ And being told, ‘Goldman Sachs is doing it; Lehman Brothers is doing it.’ ” Previously
posted by oinopaponton at 9:07 PM PST - 134 comments

Blisters, Cramps & Heaves documents his experience running "The Last Marathon" in Antarctica with two detailed blog posts incorporating elevation maps, photography, video, cartoons, and final stats. First post covers pre-race experience, second post the race itself. Act 1 | Act 2 [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 8:31 PM PST - 4 comments

This afternoon, Yitang Zhang of the University of New Hampshire gave a special seminar at Harvard, in which he announced that he had proved that there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers separated by no more than 70,000,000, a result differing only by a constant factor from the venerable twin prime conjecture. Dan Goldston, who together with Yildirim and Pintz made the last major advance on prime gaps, said, ""I was doubtful I would ever live to see this result." Not enough excitement for one day? Harald Helfgott has just posted to the arXiv a proof of the ternary Goldbach conjecture: every odd number is the sum of three primes.
posted by escabeche at 8:26 PM PST - 54 comments

For your listening pleasure: Unearthing, an audio project by Alan Moore, with musical accompaniment from a "rock supergroup," to tell a vivid story of Shooter's Hill and one of its residents, Steve Moore (not related to Alan, but a long-time friend). [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:08 PM PST - 8 comments

Cat Imagery in the Suffrage Movement: Cats were a common symbol in suffragette imagery. Cats represented the domestic sphere, and anti-suffrage postcards often used them to reference female activists. The intent was to portray suffragettes as silly, infantile, incompetent, and ill-suited to political engagement. [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 6:35 PM PST - 25 comments

" When I look at Las Vegas, I see a concrete and flashing neon message to the universe that humanity won't settle for caves and foraging. Both the churches and casinos are decadent monuments in the desert saying we are so highly evolved that we can afford to devote large amounts of time to indulging ourselves or morally policing those who do. Our beliefs and the specifics of our rituals may differ, but at the end of the day, the instincts that drive us are very much alike." Stoya (NSFW), the 'Pop Star of Porn', talks about Las Vegas in Vice Magazine.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 6:13 PM PST - 43 comments

"Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value" The Canadian scientific research and development agency has announced a major policy change. Going forward, they will only perform research that has "social or economic gain".
posted by bitmage at 5:21 PM PST - 93 comments

After a receiving a poor prognosis after suffering severe head/body trauma as a six-year-old, Bret Dunbar is now a 39-year-old who runs marathons. [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie at 4:51 PM PST - 18 comments

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the publication of Swann's Way, the New York Times is publishing a series of blog posts on In Search of Lost Time. (via) [more inside]
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:47 PM PST - 11 comments

For the past eighteen years, Gil Garduño has been chronicling his adventures in New Mexican cuisine on his NM Gastronome blog. With over seven hundred reviews of restaurants around New Mexico, Gil's got you covered, whether you like classic New Mexican food, green chile cheeseburgers, or even other types of food that happen to be well-represented in the state. Gil is fierce in his defense of homegrown eateries over chains, saying that "word of mouth is crucial to survival and through this bully pulpit, I’ll do my best to extol the great value and virtue of supporting local restaurants." A warning, however: if you like food, and particularly New Mexican food, Gil's excellent and evocative writing about (and photography of) great dishes is likely to make you more than a little bit hungry.
posted by koeselitz at 4:04 PM PST - 50 comments

He was an eighteenth-century Irish statesman, but Edmund Burke still has plenty to say today. Charles Hill reviews Edmund Burke: The First Conservative by Jesse Norman.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:58 PM PST - 14 comments

"The U.S. Department of Justice notified The Associated Press on Friday, May 10, that it had secretly obtained telephone records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP journalists and offices, including cell and home phone lines." [more inside]
posted by BobbyVan at 2:34 PM PST - 291 comments

A Logic Named Joe is a short science-fiction story by Murray Leinster. Published in 1946, the story depicts data-mining, massively networked computers, search engines, privacy/censorship filters and internet porn. Read it here.
posted by The Whelk at 1:34 PM PST - 35 comments

Beginning later this year, Amtrak will begin replacing its 30-year-old fleet of locomotives on the Northeast Corridor and Keystone Corridor with brand new trains. [more inside]
posted by backseatpilot at 12:51 PM PST - 59 comments

The fourth studio album by Daft Punk is now available for streaming. For a limited time, the new Daft Punk album, Random Access Memories, will be available to stream for free in the iTunes store. The official release date is expected to be May 21.
posted by 4ster at 12:04 PM PST - 214 comments

Coming this September: Joss Whedon has a new TV show set in the Avengers verse starring Agent Phil Coulson: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. [slyt]
posted by Jacqueline at 11:23 AM PST - 235 comments

Bess of Hardwick's Letters brings together the correspondence of one of the most powerful women of the Elizabethan era, the builder of one of England's greatest houses and the founder of one of its greatest political dynasties. As well as telling the story of Bess's life, it offers an introduction to early modern letters and a guide to reading early modern handwriting.
posted by verstegan at 10:59 AM PST - 9 comments

Five reasons why news outlets are even worse than you think. Brett Arends describes five corrupting influences that keep the public from getting the facts. [more inside]
posted by Longtime Listener at 9:58 AM PST - 72 comments

Fum, the feline half of the Internet-famous cat/owl duo Fum and Gebra, passed away on May 4 from renal obstruction due to feline urologic syndrome. He was three human years old. [more inside]
posted by mykescipark at 9:56 AM PST - 17 comments

Transit Maps. Designer Cameron Booth's blog and review of transit maps, diagrams, design and artwork from all over the world. [more inside]
posted by andrewesque at 9:34 AM PST - 8 comments

The original discotheque DJs of the 70s weren’t restricted by genre – they mixed up soul, funk, rock and experimental music to create the nascent disco sound. The Sofrito sound starts from the same point but draws from the tropics - combining bassline soukous, cosmic highlife, stripped-down drum edits, raw carnival rhythms, Manding vibes, scratchy calypso and modern productions that continue in the grand tradition of the discotheque, from Abidjan to Detroit via London, Paris and beyond...
posted by Tom-B at 9:21 AM PST - 11 comments

An Oral History of Brooklyn's Most Notorious Bar
posted by slogger at 8:40 AM PST - 51 comments

$8mil Basquiat painting disguised as a $100 painting by an unknown artist
posted by Yellow at 7:55 AM PST - 26 comments

The history of baseball stadium nachos.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:42 AM PST - 56 comments

While visiting Mexico on their 20th anniversary, one lucky couple captured a rare moment of wonder: Several killer whales frolicking in the wake of their boat. [via]
posted by quin at 7:17 AM PST - 46 comments

Today, at noon (central daylight time) the Minnesota Senate will begin debate on a bill to legalize same sex marriages. The bill already passed the Minnesota House. As Reuters reports, the Senate will likely pass the bill, and Governor Mark Dayton has promised to sign it into law. [more inside]
posted by Area Man at 6:30 AM PST - 710 comments

Follow Debbie and Robin and their parents as they attend the premiere of 2001: A Space Odyssey. As a tie in to their product placement on the rotating space station in 2001, Howard Johnson published a comic book explaining the movie to kids.
posted by octothorpe at 5:24 AM PST - 70 comments

Godville is a text-based "massively-multiplayer zero-player game" in which you play a god with rather tenuous control over a hero. Changes to the game, including quests and items, are crowd-sourced and voted on by the community The game is playable in browser and via Android and iOS apps. Official game wiki.
posted by NoraReed at 11:59 PM PST - 13 comments

On topics ranging from the capitalist dynamics of gentrification to the casualization of employment among ostensibly middle class Millennials, the “fucking hipster” show beats structural analysis The confluence of heavy-handed tactics and the seeming collaboration between landlords, city agencies, and a violent Hell’s Angel-like gang is telling and in many ways typical. A year before their biker piece, the New York Post ran an article entitled “W’burg has art attack: Hipsters facing boot” which covered the final stage in the long battle between long-time residents of the 338 Berry Street Lofts — artists who had moved into and transformed both building and neighborhood during the mid-1990s — and their landlord. This is the now familiar story of gentrification in New York City. [more inside]
posted by artof.mulata at 9:48 PM PST - 123 comments

Grant Morrison tells the story of Batman's life to Kevin Smith. With illustrations. NSFW. (Via.)
posted by Kevin Street at 9:20 PM PST - 22 comments

BBC America has shipped the ‘Doctor Who’ Season 7B Blu-Ray/DVD set early to those who pre-ordered it. Only one problem: it includes the season finale, which airs next week. The BBC confirms on Facebook (where people are having fun in the comments,) and Steven Moffat has promised that if fans keep spoilers off the net, they'll release a special video featuring the 10th and 11th Doctors after the finale airs. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 7:35 PM PST - 144 comments

Mosses Make Two Different Plants From the Same Genome, and a Single Gene Can Make the Difference

One of the most astonishing secrets in biology is this: every plant you see makes two different plants from the same genome. And, scientists recently reported, a single gene from an ancient, powerful lineage can make the difference.

posted by Joe in Australia at 7:00 PM PST - 23 comments

The self-storage unit is a portal to an alternate dimension. A single-topic blog on the news of the weird in storage units (via bldgblog)
posted by spamandkimchi at 6:29 PM PST - 16 comments

I Don't Want Your Fucking App
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 5:45 PM PST - 80 comments

In what could be the largest strike of its kind, hundreds of fast food workers in Detroit walked off their jobs on Friday, echoing the rallying cry heard (or not?) across the country that the currently underpaid workers deserve $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation. Friday's strike in Detroit comes on the heels of similar actions in other cities—Wednesday and Thursday in St. Louis, and in Chicago and New York City last month.
posted by SkylitDrawl at 5:43 PM PST - 107 comments

Clipping Magic is a single-service website which allows you remove the background from images algorithmically. For example: a dog in a tub can become a dog on a white background with a few simple marks to identify what in the image is foreground, and what is background.
posted by ocherdraco at 5:39 PM PST - 18 comments

Asterix: Latin Jokes Explained. Andrew Girardin is working his way through Asterix, and explaining the latin bits. [more inside]
posted by jenkinsEar at 5:28 PM PST - 15 comments

Chubby Checker, dubbed "King of the Twist" due to his hit song "The Twist" and assorted twist-related singles, went to Holland in 1971 and got psychedelic. He released a limited Europe-only album called Chequered! that included soul/psych track Goodbye Victoria ("Goodbye, Victoria. Everybody's going to the moon…"). The possibly drug-related departure may have been an attempt to reach stardom sans the novelty of "The Twist." The album was produced by known scam artist Ed Chalpin and recently remastered and reissued.
posted by dayintoday at 3:56 PM PST - 36 comments

A visualization of Wikipedia edits in real time. [more inside]
posted by codacorolla at 3:37 PM PST - 13 comments

Maria Yudina (1899-1970) born Jewish, devout Christian, staunchly anti-Soviet, and one of the greatest Russian pianists. "Yet she was hidden behind Soviet Russia's iron curtain during her lifetime and was unknown to what is now a rapidly growing and wildly enthusiastic international audience." [more inside]
posted by snaparapans at 3:25 PM PST - 4 comments

Today. the day after astronauts detected and repaired a "serious but not life-threatening" ammonia leak on the space station, Commander Chris Hadfield has passed over command of the space station. Planet earth is blue and there's nothing left to do ... except to release this video. Sorry, Tilda Swinton does not make an appearance. Video is suitable for all audiences. Hadfield previously on MeFi.
posted by maudlin at 3:18 PM PST - 91 comments

What Terrence Malick was doing for those 20 years. "The thing that really, really bothers me about the perception of Terrence Malick is the idea that he made Days of Heaven and then sat with his thumb up his butt for twenty years. That’s not what happened; he never stopped working. Terrence Malick is not a recluse. A recluse is Howard Hughes holed up in a hotel pissing into a milk bottle."
posted by goatdog at 1:44 PM PST - 26 comments

Ten Buildings premiers today on PBS. Web-exclusive video [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:23 PM PST - 41 comments

“Used to steal clothes, was considered a thief/Until I started hustlin’ on Fulton Street.” The mean streets of the borough that rappers like the Notorious B.I.G. crowed about are now hipster havens, where cupcakes and organic kale rule and “Brooklyn” now evokes artisanal cheese rather than rap artists.
posted by four panels at 10:49 AM PST - 84 comments

Kids photographed as famous role models - White women and African-Americans.
posted by divabat at 9:47 AM PST - 32 comments

A variety of Bay Area data sources are combined to highlight a problem common to many of the performing arts in the US. The good news? There is a healthy and vigorous discussion in the community around this issue.
posted by Dr. Fetish at 8:58 AM PST - 51 comments

Three young filmmakers from Melbourne, Australia were set to make a short film on the serenity of fly fishing, focusing on a man named Phipps who lived on a lake in central Tasmania. Once they met Phipps, however, that all changed. Here is a glimpse into Phipps' beautiful, quiet world. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:10 AM PST - 44 comments

It's that time of the year again, when the (television network) continent of Europe comes together to sing, wear interesting clothing, and gyrate before an enthusiastic/baffled world. [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 4:18 AM PST - 128 comments

"There's nothing ergonomic about being a parent." Writer Shawnee Barton talks about the non-Hallmark, less discussed aspects of being a mother: the physical changes that come from pregnancy and giving birth. "Turns out, we are all mama soldiers returning from the battlefields of life-creation. And like most stories from the frontlines, the physical scars inevitably stir genuine emotions and sentimentality that those greeting cards fall far short of replicating."
posted by ichomp at 12:47 AM PST - 78 comments

These photos are the first official releases of radar imagery before and during D-Day.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 10:09 PM PST - 33 comments

On Friday afternoon, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) apologized to conservative non-profit 501(c)4 groups for singling them out for heightened scrutiny during the 2012 campaign season. While the abuses were initially blamed on "low-level" workers in the agency's Cincinnati office, new questions were raised Saturday with a report that senior IRS officials were aware of the practice as early as 2011. That senior IRS officials knew of the politically-selective practices "seemingly contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner." [more inside]
posted by BobbyVan at 8:22 PM PST - 365 comments

May 9 was the grand opening of Chicago's New Era Windows Cooperative, a unionized, 100% worker owned and operated window manufacturer with an interesting history. "In 2008, the boss decided to close our windows factory on Goose Island and fire everyone. In 2012, we decided to buy the factory for ourselves and fire the boss. We now own the plant together and run it democratically. This is our story."
posted by deliciae at 4:44 PM PST - 45 comments

How to be German in 20 easy steps; also, from the same author: how to be English. Elsewhere: how to be a really hip German.
posted by acb at 4:09 PM PST - 84 comments

South Bank, home to skateboarding in central London for 40 years, is to be turned into retail units. Part of South Bank, namely The Undercroft, has been hallowed ground to 3 generations of skateboarders. In response to plans to redevelop the site users have responded with a campaign to save the existing space, along with an attempt to have it classified as a village green. One skateboarding magazine ex-editor suggested the alternatives should be explored, but the skateboarders did not agree.
posted by lawrencium at 3:25 PM PST - 13 comments

Did my wife's cosmetics give her breast cancer? During her first round of chemo in 2009, some volunteers at the hospital came calling with a little red bag [from the Look Good Feel Better program] that contained products from Clinique, Estée Lauder, and Del Laboratories. Upon reviewing the contents of her bag, she realized that several of the products contained parabens — chemicals that mimic estrogen and that according to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics are linked to cancer. (previously, previouslier, previousliest in AskMe)
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:11 PM PST - 38 comments

Pierre Carreau's photographs of waves. via Laughing Squid
posted by snaparapans at 2:23 PM PST - 17 comments

The Siege of Paris, during the Franco-Prussian War, lasted from September 1870 to January 1871. As the Prussian army blockaded the city, Parisians turned to ever more desperate food sources. Like the zoo animals. And other animals not normally eaten.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:06 PM PST - 18 comments

An excerpt from Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing, by Melissa Mohr. (Salon article; be warned.)
posted by Scattercat at 12:22 PM PST - 7 comments

Lotteria will release a ramen sandwich later this month. Back in February, McDonald's announced the return of its Texas and Idaho burgers. [more inside]
posted by ChuckRamone at 12:15 PM PST - 34 comments

Chris Richards, formerly of DC post-punk outfit Q and Not U asks: Are foodies quietly killing rock and roll?
posted by capnsue at 10:24 AM PST - 95 comments

Now married and father to two, Kevin Berthia's life has changed dramatically in the 8 years since he climbed over the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge to take his own life. He probably would not have had that opportunity had it not been for the dedication of California Highway Patrolman Kevin Briggs, "The Guardian of the Golden Gate Bridge". Following the overwhelming response to the short documentary on Briggs' efforts to reach out--sometimes literally--to would-be jumpers, he got the opportunity to meet the young man whose life he saved in 2005. [more inside]
posted by drlith at 10:14 AM PST - 19 comments

British capitalism already has many of the hallmarks of Brezhnev-era socialist decline: macroeconomic stagnation, a population as much too bored as scared to protest about very much, a state that performs tongue-in-cheek legitimacy, politicians playing with statistics to try and delay the moment of economic reckoning. Will Davies on the stagnation and repetition of neoliberal economic culture.
posted by downing street memo at 9:55 AM PST - 45 comments

Also no conductor and no sheet music: the Eastman Saxophone Project performs The Rite of Spring [more inside]
posted by neroli at 9:21 AM PST - 15 comments

"For the vast majority of people who have done this work, it has been the hardest job they have ever done, and also the best job they have ever had. but if this work is not for you — if you consider it dull or drudgery or just too hard cuz you would rather watch TV or text someone, then please don't reply because you will have a miserable summer." - A Kennedy Seeks A Deck Hand ....on Cragslist.
posted by The Whelk at 9:16 AM PST - 60 comments

abandonedography.com is a seemingly-endless photo collection of abandoned places and things. Explore random sites, check out the favorites, see everything at once in the archive, or submit your own.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:02 AM PST - 19 comments

Feeding Hannibal. The blog of food stylist Janice Poon covers interesting recipes such as Lambs' Tongues en Papillote and Tomato Brain Barquettes as well some of the less savory aspects of the TV show Hannibal, such as creating fake mold and mock human loin.
posted by milovoo at 8:10 AM PST - 49 comments

Hello. DJ Flula (who's commentary on English idioms was discussed previously on MeFi) has discarded the conventional wisdom that the best place to make your recordings is the bathroom, choosing instead to record in cars. [more inside]
posted by radwolf76 at 7:57 AM PST - 13 comments

Petswitch: "It puts your face on your pet". Uh, OK. There's a gallery of recent updates. Here's a dog. Here's a cat. Another cat. Another dog. A cat. A dog. A pig.
posted by dgaicun at 7:51 AM PST - 24 comments

"I have a huge collection of fighting game backgrounds as gifs. Figured you guys might appreciate it."
posted by filthy light thief at 7:28 AM PST - 27 comments

NASA needs your help. Match the picture taken of a random location on Earth to the map, see how close you can get and "help NASA qualify their huge photo repository".
posted by MartinWisse at 7:06 AM PST - 12 comments

About 200 indigenous people on the Xingu, Tapajós and Teles Pires rivers began an occupation of the largest construction site of the Belo Monte Dam, demanding the withdrawal of troops from their land and the suspension of dam construction. Powerful and searing, this statement from a people pushed to the brink by their own state, Brazil, and who have begun an indefinite protest at the main construction site of the Belo Monte Dam, which is in the Xingu and Tapajós river basins
posted by infini at 5:26 AM PST - 39 comments

Don't make fun of renowned author Dan Brown. "Renowned author Dan Brown hated the critics. Ever since he had become one of the world’s top renowned authors they had made fun of him. They had mocked bestselling book The Da Vinci Code, successful novel Digital Fortress, popular tome Deception Point, money-spinning volume Angels & Demons and chart-topping work of narrative fiction The Lost Symbol."
posted by zoo at 5:22 AM PST - 176 comments

Well, folks, Eric Burdon turned 72 today. And the man deserves some props, you know, for Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood and It's My Life and We Gotta Get Out of This Place and Don't Bring Me Down and a few other tunes as well. Oh, and he brought House of the Rising Sun to, yeah, a whole new generation. Happy birthday, Eric.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:58 AM PST - 24 comments

The end of blink, the beginning of Blink... The Evolution of the Web, in a Blink
posted by Mister Bijou at 1:39 AM PST - 61 comments

Input text; output text in cats via The Bloggess
posted by HMSSM at 11:34 PM PST - 11 comments

An in-depth talk at Google that sums up the scientific research on living a healthy life with lots of practical advice.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:31 PM PST - 15 comments

Time history of atmospheric carbon dioxide from 800,000 years ago until January, 2012.
posted by Brent Parker at 10:54 PM PST - 32 comments

This dog will shake that ass for you. Does what it says on the tin.
posted by Uncle at 10:45 PM PST - 7 comments

Spacewalk in Oculus Rift. Vs. teaser trailer for Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity.
posted by Artw at 10:18 PM PST - 31 comments

A Tumblr that features animated gifs and photos of the mass-produced Kenner Star Wars toys showing their deterioration and degradation over the decades.
posted by Mezentian at 10:00 PM PST - 25 comments

With Rifle and Bibliography. "In late 2003 a colleague of General James Mattis wrote to him asking for a few words on the importance of reading and military history for the officer, even where it might seem that one was “too busy to read.”" His letter is found about 1/3 down in the linked page, also pasted the entire first letter after the jump. [more inside]
posted by amitai at 8:53 PM PST - 14 comments

Column 7: The Young Man’s Guide to Wearing and Shopping for Women’s Clothes for the First Time. A hilarious column by Casey Plett at McSweeny's Internet Tendency.
posted by loquacious at 8:27 PM PST - 28 comments

How about dancing Canadian skeletons? Avec les sous-titres et sonnaille. Introducing mounties, a new Canadian supergroup formed by Hawksley Workman with Hot Hot Heat frontman Steve Bays and Limblifter/Age of Electric member Ryan Dahle. [more inside]
posted by arcticseal at 7:30 PM PST - 8 comments

Here is how Stargate: Atlantis' planned movie, Extinction, was supposed to follow up on the series finale of Atlantis cloaked in the San Fransisco Bay and its return to the Pegasus Galaxy. [more inside]
posted by Atreides at 6:09 PM PST - 58 comments

What may well be the first flying car crash happenned today in British Columbia. A Maverick flying car crashed today for unknown reasons. No one was killed in the collision even though the car crashed, while in flight mode, just short of an elementary school. Jalopnick has a picture of the treed vehicle. The Maverick is powered in flight by a propeller and parasail combination. Watch the Skies!
posted by Podkayne of Pasadena at 4:01 PM PST - 28 comments

Former Great Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il was a noted cinephile with a personal video library of over 20,000 movies. In 1970, he said "The motion picture industry, when dealing with the socialist reality, has not yet reached the standard set by our Party." To help it reach the standard, the Dear Leader wrote a treatise On the Art of the Cinema (PDF), took an interest in minute details of film production (as recounted by film stars), revamped the Taedongmun Cinema House, and kidnapped a director (previously 1, 2.) But did this lead to better movies?.... [more inside]
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:28 PM PST - 11 comments

51 words in the Oxford English Dictionary, including couchward, extemporize, fringy, revirginize and chappelled have quotes from the same source, a mysterious book published in 1852 called Meanderings of Memory, written and published by Nightlark, a "well-known connoisseur". There are only two evidences of the book's existence. If you happen to have a copy of Meanderings of Memory sitting on your shelf, please contact the OED [previous OED mystery].
posted by elgilito at 3:05 PM PST - 43 comments

Claire Messud: “A woman’s rant” [National Post] "Over the last week, discussion surrounding Claire Messud’s new novel, The Woman Upstairs, has shifted from the book to an interview its author recently gave to Publishers Weekly, in which Messud took issue with the following question: “I wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora, would you? Her outlook is almost unbearably grim.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 2:55 PM PST - 23 comments

Call it many names, but not kindness. Nothing so condescending as kindness.

An educator on why "patience" and "kindness" miss much of what is going on in the classroom.
posted by klausman at 2:54 PM PST - 14 comments

In August of last year, mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki reported that he had solved one of the great puzzles of number theory: the ABC conjecture (previously on Metafilter). Almost a year later, no one else knows whether he has succeeded. No one can understand his proof.
posted by painquale at 2:51 PM PST - 59 comments

Artists Peter de Seve and Carter Goodrich share similar career arcs. Both began their illustration careers in early 80's New York, drawing many businessmen and computers for trade magazines. Both became New Yorker cover artists. As the print market became challenged, both artists found new demand for the talents in emerging media, creating the look of the characters in animated films. Goodrich worked on Ratatouille, Despicable Me, and Brave. De Seve is responsible for all the characters in the Ice Age films. [more inside]
posted by TimTypeZed at 2:28 PM PST - 1 comment

Wigan Athletic will play tomorrow in their first F.A. Cup Final. Millionaire Chairman Dave Whelan has been there before, however. [more inside]
posted by tigrefacile at 2:02 PM PST - 29 comments

Point Break, remade by ___________________.
posted by brundlefly at 1:49 PM PST - 14 comments

Police broke up an eagle party in the parking lot of an Alaska Safeway. Evidently this is a thing.
posted by functionequalsform at 1:48 PM PST - 60 comments

Merida, Pixar's "Brave's" red-headed heroine will be crowned Disney's 11th princess on May 11. And just in time for her royal coronation, she has been given a "Victoria's Secret" makeover. This makeover has caused some outrage in the blogosphere, and has even inspired a change.org petition launched by A Mighty Girl, a girl's empowerment website.
posted by SkylitDrawl at 1:17 PM PST - 131 comments

In 1998, Bruce Myren bought a portable GPS unit, and began a project he had been dreaming of since 1991: photographing each of the whole longitudinal degree intersections along the 40th parallel using an 8"x10" camera. In June, 2012, he ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to raise money to finish the project. He completed it last December, 21 years after conception: The Fortieth Parallel [more inside]
posted by 1367 at 12:22 PM PST - 44 comments

Comics made out of covers for books in the Oxford World's Classics series. For earlier editions, see here, here, here, here, and here.
posted by Cash4Lead at 11:55 AM PST - 1 comment

Vinyl -- Alan Zweig feat. Harvey Pekar -- 2000 -- M VG+

"Yeah, the music is the most important thing. I wish it were the only thing. It's not. I'd be better off if it were the only thing."

A documentary about the most noble mania.
posted by OmieWise at 11:33 AM PST - 15 comments

Teenage Diaries Revisited Beginning in 1996, Radio Diaries gave tape recorders to teenagers around the country to create audio diaries about their lives. NPR’s All Things Considered aired intimate portraits of five of these teens: Amanda, Juan, Frankie, Josh and Melissa. They're now in their 30s. Over this past year, the same group has been recording new stories about where life has led them for our series, Teenage Diaries Revisited. - The conversation at the end of the 2013 update on Josh is a complete gut-punch - it left me speechless and unable to breathe.
posted by Slap*Happy at 11:19 AM PST - 8 comments

A half-hour episode of Innovation about this exciting new video technology. [more inside]
posted by RobotHero at 11:14 AM PST - 18 comments

Happy Mother's Day - Leah Coleman was born profoundly deaf. Her mother, Rachel, decided that the best way to deal with it was to try to change the world and Leah tells us about it.
posted by plinth at 11:02 AM PST - 15 comments

The odds seem long that a thin Leno segment, Pumpcast News, would stumble across a couple willing to karaoke at a gas station. Longer still that they'd be good at it. But Will and Monifa Sims beat those odds by a mile.
posted by EvaDestruction at 10:59 AM PST - 32 comments

Disco the parakeet is on a roll with many of his (and possibly your) favorite phrases
posted by Blasdelb at 10:58 AM PST - 16 comments

Daily Happiness Averages for Twitter, September 2008 to present. Description.
posted by stbalbach at 10:56 AM PST - 12 comments

Explore different views into this global timelapse built from global, annual composites of Landsat satellite images. Watch change across the planet's surface beginning as early as 1984. See Vegas grow! Rainforests Shrink! Coastlines expand, and lakes vanish!
posted by The Whelk at 9:12 AM PST - 22 comments

Greenboy: Prescription for Death is a purported lost Dragnet episode made by writers from Mr Show and Mystery Science Theater. It uses technology first seen in Forest Gump to digitally add actors into the psychedelic "Blueboy" episode of Dragnet 1967. The result is a hilarious story of bad cops chasing after Greenboy, the pusher of a dangerous strain of medical marijuana called Larry in the Sky with Diamonds. (NSFW due to language).
posted by Blingo at 8:17 AM PST - 25 comments

Sad Cat Diary; Ze Frank provides narration to the misery that is the life of a house-cat. [slyt | previously | via]
posted by quin at 8:15 AM PST - 25 comments

Scientific American reports: "An isolated population of Arctic foxes that dines only on marine animals seems to be slowly succumbing to mercury poisoning." Though a definitive causal link is difficult to establish, an isolated population of arctic foxes on Russia's Mednyi Island is believed to be collapsing due to mercury contamination as a result of its seafood-heavy diet. Where does all that mercury in the environment come from anyway? Why, it's another biproduct of burning fossil fuels, of course, and predictably, rates of mercury pollution are only expected to increase. In some places in the US, even rainwater is showing high levels of contamination. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman at 8:07 AM PST - 24 comments

The JV Club is a podcast [iTunes, SoundCloud] hosted by comedian, actor and SF Sketchfest founder Janet Varney. The podcast takes the form of a longform interview with an actor, comedian, writer, or someone else that Varney wishes to interview. The conversation usually focuses on the childhood and teenage years of the interviewee, who is always female, and the interviews frequently get very raw and emotional. The first guest was Christina Hendricks, and some of my favorite episodes were the interviews with Kerri Kenney Silver, Maria Bamford, Tig Notaro (who came on again), Stephanie Escajeda, Morgan Walsh, Erica Rhodes, Lynn Chen, and Susan Orlean.
posted by Kattullus at 7:36 AM PST - 9 comments

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis has been covered on MetaFilter before, but the most recent episode takes a turn for the wack at 1:38 with the debut of The Lonely Island's (also previously) newest video "Spring Break Anthem," which takes both a traditional as well as a different--but quite timely given recent events--take on spring break.
posted by zombieflanders at 7:06 AM PST - 41 comments

Veteran cartoonist Michael Netzer (who started out in the seventies as Mike Nasser) has been doing pen and ink portrays of comics artists, writers and editors, making them available on Wikipedia under a Creative Commons license. He explains why when discussing his latest portrait, of Fantagraphics co-owner Kim Thompson, recently diagnosed with lung cancer.
posted by MartinWisse at 6:56 AM PST - 1 comment

Andrea Benini is a musician, music producer and composer from Cesena, Italy, and is more commonly known as Mop Mop, or at least the head of a changing group of musicians who use that name. In 2005, collective Mop Mop released an album of cool vibes, spare paino lines, tight grooves (5 sample tracks, streaming on Grooveshark). The group has changed over the years, releasing a total of four albums, with the most recent, Isle of Magic, containing 13 tracks of pure voodoo jazz, Caribbean flavors, Afro-funk, exotic rhythms and soul music. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 6:45 AM PST - 3 comments

While we are still recovering from the trauma that finance capital has inflicted on our public world, a late-capitalist fairy tale manages the pain in the more private and intimate reaches of the sexual daydream. In one version of the story, a wide-eyed mermaid cleverly disguises her essential self in order to win the heart of a prince (The Little Mermaid). In another, a hooker with a heart of gold navigates her way to a happy ending by offering some happy endings of her own (Pretty Woman). Or there’s the sassy secretary who shakes her moneymaker all the way to the corner office (Working Girl). Fifty Shades of Grey follows this long history of class ascendancy via feminine wiles, but does so cleverly disguised as an edgy modern bodice-ripper. [NSFW image]

posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:14 AM PST - 84 comments

David Bowie continues his return with The Next Day, the third video from his latest album. [YouTube link, requires age verification] This time around, he has assistance from Gary Oldman and Marion Cotillard. Some controversy surrounds this release. Bowie himself finally broke his silence about his new album by sharing 42 words with The Ice Storm author Rick Moody. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:50 AM PST - 16 comments

Serene and hypnotizing video of a Russian Progress spacecraft docking with the International Space Station.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:49 AM PST - 16 comments

Wine-tasting is Bullshit and Here's Why.
posted by empath at 5:12 AM PST - 179 comments

Phonemica is a project to record spoken stories in every one of the thousands of varieties of Chinese in order to preserve both stories and language for future generations. (via) [more inside]
posted by dubusadus at 4:43 AM PST - 4 comments

Vim Adventures . Have you always wanted to learn vim but were too intimidated by its vimness? Then give vim adventures a shot! Combining fantasy adventure with learning an archaic terminal program, this game is so nerdy you'll surely alienate friends and family. But who cares, you'll know vim! [more inside]
posted by Alex404 at 1:48 AM PST - 42 comments

The Dalai Lama is hanging out in Oregon, catching a Red Hot Chili Peppers show, describing his environmental awakening, and making his lectures available both live and on demand. I was worried for a bit that it was the 'His Holiness the Dalai Lama brought to you by Nike', but I was wrong, he's just trying to be nice.
posted by jdaura at 12:36 AM PST - 36 comments

Garage Swim is a free, downloadable garage rock compilation put together by Adult Swim. It features the leading lights of the scene, including Jeff The Brotherhood, Thee Oh Sees, and King Khan.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 11:14 PM PST - 7 comments

At Slate.com, Ted Scheinman has written a nice appreciation of John LeCarré. Confessions of a John le Carré Devotee

"...I could tell there was more than politics, class, and acts of stratospheric treason to be found in these pages. I adored the psychological acuity with which he roamed his characters’ heads..."

posted by Trochanter at 9:51 PM PST - 18 comments

2013 is the centenary of the establishment of Canberra, and to mark the occasion the ACT Government has commissioned a piece of art to embody the true spirit of the city: the Skywhale (video; official site; parental advisory warning: huge inflatable mutant whale nudity). By former Canberra resident Patricia Piccinini (site loads random picture; not guaranteed SFW), the Skywhale has attracted predictable controversy.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 9:08 PM PST - 55 comments

Since the end of March, the Wall Street Journal's new Middle East Real Time blog has written about Turkey's "unstoppable" export boom in soap operas, Saudi Arabia's "life after jihad" rehab program, the persistence of obviously fraudulent bomb detectors across Iraq, YouTube branding discussions among Syrian rebel factions, a rising media star Sunni cleric in Lebanon, a post-revolutionary Cairo arts festival, and attempts to overcome conservative objections and change the Saudi Thursday-Friday weekend to match the rest of the business world. Previous non-paywalled WSJ Real Time blogs include Korea, China, Canada, India, Brussels, Emerging Europe, Japan.
posted by mediareport at 8:47 PM PST - 16 comments

The '00s were a the decade for people to laugh at overweight teenage boys. We all remember Numa Numa kid and Star Wars Kid. Well guess what - Star Wars Kid is now Star Wars Man, and he's speaking out. [more inside]
posted by amitai at 7:06 PM PST - 94 comments

Moggie? Moggie? No, Moggie! The Morgan Motor Company, not to be confused with MG (Morris Garages), is a lesser-known British sports car manufacturer building Morgan cars in scenic Malvern Link, Worcestershire, since 1910. Perhaps most famous for selling cars with wooden frames to this very day, Morgan continues building their most traditional cars alongside their swoopiest new offerings. The founder, H. F. S. Morgan, started out building three-wheelers in what is known as the tadpole configuration, and their production continued until 1952, when Morgan moved entirely to four-wheelers. Until 2011. [more inside]
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 6:31 PM PST - 47 comments

2013 Jefferson Lecture with Martin Scorsese (text) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 4:32 PM PST - 3 comments

Lloyd Kaufman meets the Angry Video Game Nerd. Trash cinema impresario Lloyd Kaufman of Troma Films visits the Angry Video Game Nerd to play some Toxic Crusader games based on the cartoon that was based on his most famous movie creation. (WARNING: Last link has unstoppable audio.)
posted by dortmunder at 4:32 PM PST - 12 comments

Paul McCartney's show invaded by vast swarm of GRASSHOPPERS! Video HERE!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:22 PM PST - 46 comments

Man with virtual reality headset films his friends trying it out for the first time. Hijinx ensue.
posted by MegoSteve at 4:18 PM PST - 26 comments

Eschersketch is a fun online web-toy for making symmetry/tessellation drawings. It was created by the likably interesting brainiac, Anselm Levskaya with the tessellations of MC Escher in mind. On Twitter he says it is as yet unfinished.
posted by nickyskye at 4:09 PM PST - 24 comments

Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal. What it says on the tin. A Ryan Gosling meme.
posted by sweetkid at 3:09 PM PST - 28 comments

Big tech is saying we need to issue more temporary visas so high-skill STEM workers can enter the US, because there's a shortage of Americans who can do the work. But according to this essay in the Columbia Journalism Review, there might be plenty of US citizens available, in fact maybe even a glut, and immigration reform proposals might just be a way to keep STEM labor costs down for corporations and universities. [more inside]
posted by tommyD at 3:03 PM PST - 134 comments

Trailer for The World's End, the final film in Edgar Wright's "Cornetto Trilogy" (following Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz).
posted by Rory Marinich at 2:45 PM PST - 111 comments

Exercise or pay 20% higher health insurance premiums. 'It was a controversial move when a health insurer began requiring people who were obese to literally pay the price of not doing anything about their weight – but it worked, a new study finds.' 'Faced with a choice between higher insurance prices or exercising, people who were obese enrolled in and stuck with Internet-tracked walking program for a year.' [more inside]
posted by VikingSword at 2:24 PM PST - 101 comments

On November 5, 1622, the poet and clergyman John Donne continued the tradition begun by Lancelot Andrewes of delivering a Gunpower Day sermon before the monarch. What would it have been like to hear a sermon like this delivered outdoors at St. Paul's Cross? The Virtual Paul's Cross Website tries to answer that question. Drawing on contemporary evidence from paintings, written records, and Donne's own manuscripts, the site offers both visual and audio reconstructions of the site (including a fly-through of the model), the sermon, and how the sermon might have sounded from multiple vantage points.
posted by thomas j wise at 2:14 PM PST - 7 comments

For all of you time crunched people: you can get fit doing these scientifically studied exercises (NYT). All you need are yourself, a floor, a chair, and time to do a 7 minute set 2 to 3 times. Caveat: it's a painful 7 minutes, and some say that you should already be at a decent fitness level, and may need to warm-up beforehand. Here's the academic journal article.
posted by JiffyQ at 2:04 PM PST - 62 comments

The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has a Flickr account. A few highlights. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
posted by goethean at 1:50 PM PST - 34 comments

Turns out moths are pretty good at operating small robotic vehicles.
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:41 PM PST - 15 comments

What I learned from parenting a terminally ill child.
posted by dfm500 at 1:33 PM PST - 16 comments

Ha-Joon Chang on why separating politics from economic policies is bad for democracy. What free-market economists are not telling us is that the politics they want to get rid of are none other than those of democracy itself. When they say we need to insulate economic policies from politics, they are in effect advocating the castration of democracy. (Related FPP.)
posted by asnider at 12:39 PM PST - 13 comments

GeoGuessr: 1. Look around the random Google Street View and try to figure out where you are. 2. Click the world map to guess! A game by Anton Wallén.
posted by oulipian at 12:21 PM PST - 241 comments

Last night in Cleveland, the visiting Oakland A's were down by one run with two outs in the ninth inning. A's shortstop Adam Rosales hit a ball that struck somewhere on the center field fence and was either a double or a home run. A home run would tie the game. To make sure they got the call right the umpires went to the instant replay. [more inside]
posted by dirtdirt at 11:39 AM PST - 63 comments

Political reporter John R Stanton (aka Big John) has been thinking about the gentrification of DC. Late last night, he tweeted up a story about DC in the old days, personified by a junkie named Raymond.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:38 AM PST - 16 comments

Vivian Maier was a photographer who made some incredible images of 20th century America. But almost no one knew about her until 2007. And now a new documentary is being made about this enigmatic character whose incredible eye documented street life and characters in New York, Chicago and beyond.
posted by salishsea at 11:31 AM PST - 13 comments

"No one is sure when the idea of cheetah dogs started, but Anatolian shepherds helped advance it. The San Diego Zoo was given a pair of cheetahs in 1981 on the condition they be given dogs because they were used to them." [more inside]
posted by ursus_comiter at 10:54 AM PST - 24 comments

Consumer Reports says the Tesla Model S is a truly remarkable car.
posted by I'm Doing the Dishes at 10:24 AM PST - 229 comments

Funeral home director Peter Stefan: "This is what we do.... I'm burying someone who is dead." While protesters demonstrate in front of his funeral home, creating a burden for local law enforcement, Peter Stefan works the phones to find a cemetery willing to accept Tamerlan Tsarnaev's body and field media inquiries. Meanwhile, Tsarnaev's body is washed by his uncle in preparation for burial. No cemeteries agree to accept the body and plans to inter it at a prison fall through. Ultimately a "compassionate individual" steps forward so the saga can come to an end.
posted by carmicha at 9:38 AM PST - 171 comments

The turnout rate of black voters surpassed the rate for whites for the first time on record in 2012, as more black voters went to the polls than in 2008 and fewer whites did, according to a Census Bureau report released Wednesday. (SLNYT)
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:23 AM PST - 31 comments

Accessibility is what allows me to use things like a phone, computer, or an ATM. May 9th is all about this. -Tommy Edison, the Blind Film Critic. (previously)

Global Accessibility Awareness Day is today. It's a day to consider how people with disabilities experience the web, software, mobile devices, games and so on, targeted towards designers, developers, usability professionals and others without much experience with accessibility. There are public events scheduled all over the world, as well as other accessibility-related events. To participate on your own, try one of the suggested activities: turn off your mouse or trackpad and use only your keyboard to navigate websites, try using a free screen reader, such as NVDA for Windows or the built in VoiceOver for Mac and iOS, try watching some streaming videos or movies with captions or add some of your own to a video you've uploaded. Then relax with a sample of described video: Katniss, from the Hunger Games, goes hunting. [more inside]
posted by shirobara at 8:43 AM PST - 9 comments

Lessons from a Dog: Short, sweet advice from man's best friend in the form of a comic from Patrick Moberg.
posted by quin at 8:11 AM PST - 21 comments

Everyone farts. And now your web pages can too. (From The Onion.)
posted by jbickers at 7:23 AM PST - 22 comments

Who is Calvus? I see him as the embodiment of the average Roman. He doesn't wage war on distant peoples, he doesn't work as a gladiator...he can't even afford a slave.
posted by h00py at 6:56 AM PST - 23 comments

The most influential photographer you've never heard of, Peter Belanger, on shooting product shots for Apple
posted by brilliantmistake at 6:09 AM PST - 18 comments

"The memory is stil with me - the most sickly and sweetish smell of rancid gasoline combined with rotten water melons, with undertones of stale sweat, pig carcass, a hint of garlic, moldy oranges, russian-made aftershave and a cheap household air freshener… its a whole package, and rather sweet one – like isonitriles or cyclopentadiene but magnified thousand times. A whiff of that thing and you feel that your nose just suffered a stroke and will hopefully die and peal off so that you never smell that thing again." A young lab tech, whose absent-mindedness in the lab gets him nicknamed "“Bořivoj” (”the one who tears down the places”), meets PhePHMe, the worst-smelling compound in the world. Things happen.
posted by escabeche at 5:47 AM PST - 36 comments

A blog discussion of Charles Palliser's intriguing novel, The Quincunx, began in 2003, and is still going. Despite a wealth of theories, the participants are still no nearer solving the book's key mystery - who is the hero's father?
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 5:14 AM PST - 25 comments

The strange discordian journey of the KLF. In which John Higgs, writing in the current issue of Darklore, explores the discordian heritage of the KLF.
posted by hydatius at 5:10 AM PST - 16 comments

Russian born composer and pianist Sonya Belousova has begun a new series of performances in combination with Stan Lee’s World of Heroes titled Cospay Piano. Episode 1 was The Walking Dead, Episode 2 is Batman.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:03 AM PST - 2 comments

Matt Kemp signs the ball of a young man who has 90 days to live. This kid has an inoperable tumor that has grown so large that it prevents him from being able to lift the ball he wanted signed. What happens next is beautiful.
posted by Yellow at 5:01 AM PST - 24 comments

Caroline Lawrence looks at ten things the Romans used instead of toilet paper, Roman pee and poo and what's the deal with the sponge stick. All part of the research done for her series of young adult historical mystery books set in the ancient Roman world.
posted by MartinWisse at 4:39 AM PST - 16 comments

Youtube video of "Americas last steam powered mill."
posted by Faux Real at 4:26 AM PST - 17 comments

"But something happened. Once industrial music had fully transitioned from avant-garde venues into nightclubs, the stench of Axe body spray began to dominate the subculture as a certain douchey, bro-tastic vibe emerged. Where the goth/industrial scene had once existed as a safe haven for artists, weirdos, outcasts, geeks, dreamers and rebels, a disturbing trend of sexism, racism and anti-intellectualism is driving people out."
posted by cthuljew at 1:53 AM PST - 94 comments

Jaywalking, in time and space
posted by eotvos at 1:22 AM PST - 8 comments

Cosas Feas (Nasty Stuff) is a short, gooey Lovecraftian coming-of-age comedy by Mexican director Isaac Ezban. Its recomended for fans of Stuart Gordon and anyone who had an awkward childhood.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 10:46 PM PST - 3 comments

"Now, my friend Adams was accused of a crime he didn't commit, so he escaped into the mountains, leaving behind the only life that he ever knew." In 1977, three years after the popular movie The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams introduced the story of John "Grizzly" Adams to the public, a TV show of the same name premiered. [more inside]
posted by zarq at 10:46 PM PST - 45 comments

Write this song down: WORD. UP. This'll get you $106 if you count to win ON THE Q! [more inside]
posted by absqua at 9:55 PM PST - 11 comments

Jeffrey Skilling, the former Enron Corp chief executive, could be freed from prison nearly a decade sooner than originally expected, under an agreement with federal prosecutors to end the last major legal battle over one of the biggest corporate frauds in U.S. history.
posted by Leisure_Muffin at 9:12 PM PST - 70 comments

The Krugman Times, the beloved liberal economist version of Malkovich Malkovich.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 8:45 PM PST - 13 comments

Last month, HBO Documentaires released "Which Way Is The Front Line From Here? The Life And Times Of Tim Hetherington." It is a "posthumous recounting of one of the most impressive photojournalism careers to date." "'Restrepo' director has sorrowful Sundance return. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:37 PM PST - 3 comments

Hyperbole and a Half is back. After a long hiatus due to depression, which she memorably wrote about in her last strip in October 2011, Allie Brosh has returned to posting.
posted by jokeefe at 7:04 PM PST - 269 comments

My Psychic Garburator by Margaret Atwood [The New York Review of Books]

"Most dreams of writers aren’t about dead people or writing, and—like everyone else’s dreams—they aren’t very memorable. They just seem to be the products of a psychic garburator chewing through the potato peels and coffee grounds of the day and burping them up to you as mush."

[more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:25 PM PST - 17 comments

Meet the 17-year-old kid who won a Boston hackathon by creating a killer hack for Twitter, blocking out TV show spoilers. Also, she's a girl, and the only solo entrant.
posted by shiu mai baby at 5:19 PM PST - 19 comments

Travelling Salesman: The Movie
posted by Westringia F. at 4:44 PM PST - 42 comments

BBC Radio 4 has begun to transmit Tweet of the Day, a 90 second 5:58 A.M. weekday broadcast (also podcast!), featuring the songs of UK birds. The program is set to last for 265 episodes, and will feature a revolving door of presenters, beginning with Sir David Attenborough.
posted by Omon Ra at 4:34 PM PST - 7 comments