January 2015 Archives
January 31
"My psychological time had compressed by a factor of two."
Cabinet Magazine interviews Michel Siffre, whose work helped found the field of human chronobiology. He spent months isolated in a subterranean cave, with no clock, calendar, or sun. He slept and ate only when his body told him to.
RIP Joe Franklin
He held the world record for the longest-running talk show in history, interviewing everyone from notables to nobodies from 1950 to 1993, continuing to work on NYC radio up until his death. He was an early advocate of film preservation and got his start selling jokes to the likes of Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson.
Joe Franklin has died at age 88. [more inside]
Joe Franklin has died at age 88. [more inside]
"It's hard to get animals to look at you like humans do."
In Audubon Magazine, Brad Wilson's amazing photographs of owls. Or photographs of amazing owls. Either works. [more inside]
The ship is the best lifeboat
"I will drop you like Greece's GDP."
Several months ago, Epic Rap Battles of History (previously) decided to try something new: They teamed up with Forest Fire Films to create "Zeus vs. Thor"... in stop motion LEGO [NSFW]. Here's a look behind the scenes (Parts One and Two) for some insight into both the stop motion work and the song writing process.
I had developed an enormous fondness for making tiny, fussy things
Can time heal these wounds?
In 2001, Josh Kaplowitz was a recent Yale graduate and Teach for America worker in a Washington D.C. public school. After pushing 7 year old Raynard Ware--something still he still disputes--Kaplowitz was arrested and then the subject of a $20M lawsuit. Eleven years later, Kaplowitz, by this point a lawyer, received a friend request on facebook from Ware: the Washington Post Magazine has the story of their reconnection. [more inside]
Canada introduces new "anti-terrorism" powers
Canada's government on Friday introduced its new anti-terror legislation, a sweeping range of measures that would allow suspects to be detained based on less evidence and let CSIS actively interfere with suspects' travel plans and finances. [more inside]
"Oh no! You've found my only weakness!!"
Dogs Sitting on Cats [slyt | Turn Off Annotations]
Get in Trouble: Speculative Magiks of Kelly Link
This is the central tension of "Get in Trouble," between the artificial and the actual, between what we think we want and who we really are. The stories here are effective because we believe them — not just their situations but also their hearts. [more inside]
“That must have been rough.”
Comedians Tig Notaro and Sarah Silverman sit down with the NYT at Sundance for a long conversation about their upcoming films (Tig and I Smile Back, respectively) and end up giving us a peek into their wonderful friendship. [SLYT]
This is about American Football
Here's a horrifying game you can play during this Sunday's Super Bowl and the nearly 12 hours of pre- and postgame content: count the number of times you hear some variation of "deflated balls" and compare that to the number of times during Super Bowls XLV or XLVII you heard the phrases "two-time accused rapist" or "accused co-conspirator in a double murder." Or just compare "deflated balls" to "brain damage." Then see if the first number dwarfs a combination of the last three by an order of magnitude. It will.
January 30
You got your kayfabe in my bad lip reading...
endless, ecstatic play with thousands of little yellow plastic balls
Suck the Balls! is an installation by Niklas Roy, the first version in Krakow, the second in Prague.
"When sucking the balls which are surrounding his feet, the balls race through the transparent pipe system, creating a visually stunning scene. The journey of the little balls ends in a container above the ball pit, waiting for the climax of the operation: When the visitor pulls the release handle of the container, a fountain of balls splashes down onto his head in a joyful shower."
Not exactly The Rumble In The Jungle
Rope-A-Dope 2 , a short film. Basically Jackie Chan meets "Groundhog Day". (via MeFi fave Tony Zhou)
"It’s a scary a movie. I was not allowed to watch it."
American Dynasty
Congressional Democrats for the past six years have lamented their chilly relationship with President Barack Obama. He doesn’t schmooze enough, they say. He is missing the glad-handing gene that makes politics fun. He just doesn’t get it.
But they are starting to see light at the end of the tunnel: the prospect of a Clinton back in the White House.
But they are starting to see light at the end of the tunnel: the prospect of a Clinton back in the White House.
zara zara goro goro poki poki zaku zaku
The trailer is dark and full of spoilers
The final two episodes from Season 4 of Game of Thrones were shown again, in remastered IMAX format, along with a trailer for the upcoming season 5. Unsurprisingly, the trailer was posted online, in all its blurry goodness. So HBO decided to release the high quality version and photos from the upcoming season, prompting much speculation on what will and won't be in the tv version of the popular books.
A rising tide lifts Iceland — literally
A rising tide lifts Iceland — literally A team of geoscientists has detected evidence that Iceland is literally rising along with sea levels. [more inside]
Georges will watch this all day.
“Writing is not a linear process. It’s all work. This is work.”
Je Suis Newsweek?*
The 5000 word cover story on "What Silicon Valley Thinks of Women" in Newsweek is getting a lot of attention, but mostly for the illustration on the cover, which very simply (or simplistically) depicts high-tech sexism, and which writers like Rachel Sklar and Alexia Tsotsis consider to be sexist itself.
Responding to Lloyd Grove of the Daily Beast**, article author Nina Burleigh says "It’s provocative because it quite powerfully and accurately depicts the disgusting behavior and attitudes toward women that dozens of women in tech described to me and that tens of thousands more must navigate on a daily basis, to the detriment of their professional advancement." [more inside]
Responding to Lloyd Grove of the Daily Beast**, article author Nina Burleigh says "It’s provocative because it quite powerfully and accurately depicts the disgusting behavior and attitudes toward women that dozens of women in tech described to me and that tens of thousands more must navigate on a daily basis, to the detriment of their professional advancement." [more inside]
A modern war story
FLAG is a unique anime series: a fictional war documentary told entirely through a camera lens. [more inside]
"disorder ... is cheap to create, but very costly to prevent"
The Galula Doctrine: An Interview with Galula's Biographer A.A. Cohen, who wrote Galula: The Life And Writings of the French Officer Who Defined Counterinsurgency, and an excerpt. [more inside]
These players really are the creme de la creme!
Jordan Peele and Keegan Michael Key star in a series of East/West Football videos wherein they play a number of increasingly uniquely named characters playing in a fictional football game.
East/West Bowl 1, East/West Bowl 2, East/West Bowl Rap, Hingle McCringleberry's Excessive Celebration and East/West Bowl 3 (Pro Edition). [more inside]
The Myth of the Gay Community
This wasn't a slamma-lamma-ding-dong trip. Something was off.
"Grease delay," he said once more. "We should be back to full-throttle in a jiff, but there's a lot of grease paving the path to Flavortown."Tabitha Blankenbiller takes us on the Train to Flavortown. [h/t] [more inside]
The woman did not nod, but tilted her gaze ever so to the left to see the view herself. No marinara monsoon, no blitzkrieg of bacon. Nothing but awesome blossoms as far as the eye could see.
Everyone knows you can’t be in love with a robot
HOW TO BECOME A ROBOT IN 12 EASY STEPS by A. Merc Rustad. (short story)
A Bowl of Red, AKA a Plate of No Beans
Don't Mess With Texas' Chili. 'So when a cookbook author like Mark Bittman writes—in How to Cook Everything—that chili means “slow-cooked red beans seasoned with cumin and chiles,” he betrays his ignorance of the dish and its history. When he writes that a true chili dish, one made with meat and no beans, has “entered the realm of cassoulet,” he might confuse chili-heads who don’t know what cassoulet means—but they’ll always recognize when someone’s messin’ with Texas. It’s when Bittman advises amateur cooks to make chili with tofu or espresso that he is doing something worse than disrespecting the dish—he is suggesting that the names of foods can mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean.' [more inside]
The Queen Of Code
Erik Ferguson
If you enjoy Erik Ferguson's short films VEv and Kometh, you might also like his Birth series and Worm series. Lots more horrifically lifelike rendering on his Vimeo page. (Possibly NSFLunch.)
1976 was a crap year for music, but it got better as I got older.
Rediscover your musical past. Enter your birthday with day and year and this fun site gives you what was popular from your date of birth right up to when you graduated college (provided that you went at all or didn't graduate like me).
Vocal Color in Public Radio: "authentically black, but not too black"
This summer during the Transom Traveling Workshop on Catalina workshop, I produced my first public radio piece. While writing my script, I was suddenly gripped with a deep fear about my ability to narrate my piece. As I read the script back to myself while editing, I realized that as I was speaking aloud I was also imagining someone else’s voice saying my piece. The voice I was hearing and gradually beginning to imitate was something in between the voice of Roman Mars and Sarah Koenig. Those two very different voices have many complex and wonderful qualities. They also sound like white people. My natural voice — the voice that I most use when I am most comfortable — doesn’t sound like that.On the sound of public media, on the air and in the podcast world, from Chenjerai Kumanyika, communications professor and hip-hop artist. (via NPR) See also: All Things Considerate, How NPR makes Tavis Smiley sound like Linda Wertheimer.
I have no idea how these people got these things wedged into themselves
amazing radiology images: how sharing them is changing medicine (radiopaedia.org) (radiopedia tumblr)
That's not cricket! No, it's tennis. (SLYT)
The Australian Open takes an...innovative approach to tennis in this short video from Melbourne-based filmmaker Michael Shanks.
How the Seahawks are Keeping Football Weird
"Does football offend you to your very core? If there was any town in this country that was poised to agree, it’s Seattle. But then the Seahawks got good. Like the best. So what’s a town full of anti-establishment nerds to do? Scurry to find a justification for loving them of course!" Nerd City Jocks, a cartoon by Sarah Stuteville and Eroyn Franklin at The Nib.
Jeb put me through hell
Politico writes about the Terry Schiavo case and how it helps us understand Jeb Bush's mindset.
How To Tell If You Are In A Soft Science Fiction Novel
Racism no longer exists now that all of humanity has banded together to speak English, vote democratically, adhere to 20th-century American social standards, and battle alien intruders in a thinly veiled metaphor for anti-immigration sentiment.By Mallory Ortberg. [slthetoast]
The Litvinenko Inquiry
Alexander Litvinenko died on 23 November 2006 (previously). The inquiry into his death is currently underway in London following a detailed investigation by the Metropolitan Police into his poisoning with polonium. The Guardian summarises six key things we have learned so far. These include some pretty casual applications of proper handling procedures for nuclear material, news of a previous assassination attempt and some forthright words from Marina Litvinenko's barrister concerning Vladimir Putin's character that may have led to two unauthorised Russian military planes flying up the English Channel two days ago. [more inside]
End of an era: iconic L.A. video store Vidiots closing after 30 years
- L.A. Weekly: I Went to UCLA, But My Real Film School Was Vidiots
- Laist: Filmmakers And Fans Mourn The Loss Of Los Angeles' Greatest Video Store
- Academy Originals: Rewind: The Story of Vidiots
- KABC-TV:
Vidiots video store set to close in April after 30 years
- Vidiots Foundation
SLSJWT
Pinomenon Do doo be-do-do
On other social-networking sites, the most-followed members read like the guest list for Vanity Fair’s Oscar party. There’s Bieber, Miley and the rest of the red carpet crew. But Pinterest, the online scrapbook that showcases pictures of domestic bliss for an estimated 70 million members, is dominated by women who are mostly unknown, even to their followers.The most popular people on Pinterest aren’t famous celebrities or pop-culture icons.
We'll celebrate a woman for anything, as long as it's not her talent.
The celebrated Australian author Colleen McCullough, probably best known for The Thorn Birds, has died at 77. McCullough's contribution to writing contributed well after her most famous book and she will be sadly missed.
What has caused ire has been the way that her obituary was written in the Australian national newspaper, The Australian, where the second line refers to her physical beauty and weight. The Guardian compares this with other obituaries of people who do not have to be classified by weight or beauty or, as you would know them, men.
January 29
Fire up the retro rockets
NAMM , the big music equipment show in Los Angeles, featured a remarkable retro trend in synthesizers this year.
The legendary synth company Sequential Circuits is back with a Prophet 6! Oberheim is back. Korg is making updated versions of the ultra-cool ARP Odyssey synth from the 70s. In fact, because the ARP designs are effectively public domain, anyone can make an Odyssey, so Behringer is also talking about making their own cheaper version. The really big news though was is that Moog is restarting production of their massive modular synthesizers from the early 70s albeit at matchingly massive prices.
OMG, it's full of cars!
games about killing should probably make you uncomfortable
"[...] She kills for a living, and her mission cannot be overlooked as you make her traipse through the maze. She’s not the type to nuke a planet from orbit. No, Samus is hands-on: she likes to explore and kill to her satisfaction. She insists on landing on a planet’s surface and fucking-up whatever network of bubblegum and barbed wire is holding the entire planetary house of cards together—usually doing this so thoroughly that the world collapses around her ears as she just barely escapes. It’s a singular talent of hers." Rei writes about homelessness, genocide, and Metroid II: Return of Samus on SelectButton.net. (SelectButton previously.)
Gender and the Production of Islamic Urban Space in Iran
What does an Islamic urban space look like? This question has dogged intellectuals and authorities in Muslim-majority lands for centuries, but in recent decades has acquired a renewed sense of urgency amid the emergence of modernizing Islamist political movements. These groups have not only articulated new visions of the public sphere, mass politics, and economy, they have also increasingly found themselves in positions of authority to shape the cities, regions, and lands they work in. As these groups have found themselves in control, the revolutionary mandate (and widespread protest slogan) to imagine a politics “neither East nor West, but Islamic” has taken on new meanings, forcing leaders long focused narrowly on legal or constitutional change to recognize the more diffuse and institutional nature of power, and how much the production of space is a part of it. [more inside]
Andrew Sullivan retires from blogging.
"It’s been a strange relationship, hasn’t it? Some of you – the original white-on-navy ones – went through the 2000 election and recount with me, when I had to explain the word “blog” to anyone I met; we experienced 9/11 together in real time – and all the fraught months and years after; and then the Iraq War; and the gay marriage struggles of the last fifteen historic years. We endured the Bush re-election together and then championed – before almost anyone else – the Obama candidacy together. Remember that first night of those Iowa caucuses? Remember the titanic fight with the Clintons? And then the entire arc of the Obama presidency.
You were there when it was just me and a tip jar for six years, and at Time, and at The Atlantic, and the Daily Beast, and then as an independent company. When we asked you two years ago to catch us as we jumped into independence, you came through and then some. In just two years, you built a million dollar revenue company, with 30,000 subscribers, a million monthly readers, and revenue growth of 17 percent over the first year. You made us unique in this media world – and we were able to avoid the sirens of clickbait and sponsored content. We will never forget it." [more inside]
An ode to libraries
A toronto artist, Daniel Rotsztain, (video) is drawing all of Toronto's libraries. Current count, 46/102.
The Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental to Replace Air Force One
The United States Air Force (USAF) announces the long-awaited decision of what aircraft will serve as the replacement for the presidential transport, known as Air Force One (when the President is on-board).
The aircraft is still years away from being fully designed and certified; it doesn’t even have a USAF designation yet (like VC-25A, for it’s predecessor). The aircraft will be heavily modified to fulfill the requirements of not only the Air Force but also the U.S. Secret Service.
The Fire on the 57 Bus in Oakland
This happened where I work and live, it's a devastating read about ignorance, healing and forgiveness Well balanced NYT article about Sasha Fleischman, an agender teen who fell asleep on a city bus and was set on fire by a 16 year old named Richard Thomas.
A bad day and a dark, dark tango played on the accordeon, out of a boat.
Head-butt Victims: 2 Goblins (Pig Men?)
The Head-butts Of Our Lives: The Filmography Of Jason Statham
Buy high, sell low
Treading Water by Laura Parker [National Geographic]
Phil Stoddard, in his third term as mayor of South Miami, is one of the few politicians willing to talk about when that time might come... He drew a graph with three lines that show population, property values, and sea level all rising. Then abruptly, population growth and property values plummet. “Something is going to upset the applecart,” he says. “A hurricane, a flood, another foot of sea rise, the loss of freshwater. People are going to stop coming here and bail.”[more inside]
It was called the Golden Age of Civilization for a reason
Women Murdering Men in Western Art History: "The Venn diagram of “female devotees of Dionysus who savagely tear apart Orpheus” and “parties I would love to attend” has an overlap of roughly 100%."
"oh my god your life is a slim erotic novel..."
"Realizing you were gay/bi" - Anecdotes shared via Twitter to Mallory Ortberg (The Toast, @mallelis) about realizing the first time that you were gay or bisexual. This is a Storify piece assembled by AKATheReader (@akaTheReader).
The Cuervo Gold, the fine Columbian
"And forget the relaxed cheeriness of the context that slotted them into the yacht-rock ranks with Loggins & Messina and the Doobie Brothers — shared sessionman personnel and L.A. neighborliness notwithstanding, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were New York to the core, all Brill Building gone Burroughs, using the language of pop as their foot in the door to ease in creepier, more unsettling things. No amount of multi-tracked studio trickery, woodshedder scrubbed-up arrangements, or perfectionist, precise ultra-virtuoso slickness could really obscure the existential dread and hip-panic self-consciousness that made their lyrics resonate. So they piled on as much gloss as they could, stitched together all manners of hopped-up jazz and rhythm & blues permutations into the weave of their sound, and infiltrated the subconsciousness of future yuppies everywhere like some kind of Manchurian Candidate virus to make them eventually realize there’s futility in optimism." Steely Dan albums from worst to best. (You're seeing them at Coachella this year, right?)
How the War on Drugs targeted Billie Holiday
The Hunting of Billie Holiday. "How Lady Day found herself in the middle of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics’ early fight for survival." [more inside]
Second, you will have stomach issues.
Andy Jones-Wilkins writes A Letter to the 2012 Western States 100 Runners
Now, while you’re out there running, even though you’ll be enjoying what is forecast to be the coolest day the race has seen since 1997, remember that things can, and likely will, go wrong out there. With that in mind, here are a couple of last minute pieces of advice: First, try not to blame your pacers or crew for your mistakes. I’ve seen it happen often and it is true that sometimes crews and pacers actually forget who the runner is but remember, it’s “autopsies without blame” out there. The goal is finishing and anything that is said or done on Western States weekend, especially after about 6:00 pm Saturday night, should be quickly and completely forgotten.[more inside]
If You Want, We Can Pretend To Be Crows. No? Okay.
Jeff Bridges (The Dude himself) has released an album called Sleeping Tapes. It's a collaboration with Squarespace to raise money for No Kid Hungry. It's also deeply, deeply weird.
[GREEN] JOBS FOR ALL
Let Us Face the Future - "All parties pay lip service to the idea of jobs for all. All parties are ready to promise to achieve that end by keeping up the national purchasing power and controlling changes in the national expenditure through Government action. Where agreement ceases is in the degree of control of private industry that is necessary to achieve the desired end. In hard fact, the success of a full employment programme will certainly turn upon the firmness and success with which the Government fits into that programme the investment and development policies of private as well as public industry." [more inside]
The men in hoodies and crocs
"I want to decide what to do when. That is a major reason why I decided in 2005 to self-publish rather than chase after a record deal. I am independent because I didn’t want a bunch of men in suits deciding how I should release my music. For 10 years I have managed to bushwhack a circuitous path around them, but now I’ve got to find a way around the men in hoodies and crocs."
Cellist Zoë Keating (previously) on the new Youtube music services agreement.
Cellist Zoë Keating (previously) on the new Youtube music services agreement.
if only Soundcloud was higher quality than 128kbps
Aphex Twin is (apparently) unloading over 100 rare and unreleased tracks from his 20+ year vault, now streaming for free on Soundcloud. [more inside]
Tick Tick Boom
Along the western coast of England, under a half-moon hidden by clouds, a dark Audi sports car with fabricated plates followed an empty road toward a Barclays bank. Inside were five men, dressed all in black, and their gear: crowbars, power tools, coils of flexible tubing, and two large tanks of explosive gas. It was 1:51 a.m. The job would take just under seven minutes.
Do not look directly into the eyes of the World Science Fiction Society.
Worldcon is the "world science fiction convention." It's been around in one way or another since 1939 and is typically hosted at a different existing convention every year. (The Hugo awards are voted on by Worldcon members.) Last year it was in London; this year in Spokane. To get the event hosted at your convention, there is an elaborate bidding process. There is a long tradition of hoax con bids (which sometimes take on a life of their own, as in this Westercon story). The latest in the tradition: Nightvale Worldcon. If you have further questions regarding the bid, please contact the Help Desk with your bloodstone. [more inside]
Do not add "bruh" or "fam" to your post title just to sound black.
Almost five years ago Metafilter was introduced to Black People Twitter, but Metafilter has no chill. Since then Black People Twitter has become hot af. Compilations of black people being hilarious on twitter that were posted to reddit and a Black People Twitter subreddit was created, and has since grown to over 165,000 subscribers. [more inside]
“I can’t breathe,”
On Trial for Rape by Ann Brocklehurst [The Walrus Magazine]
"Late last year, in a Toronto courtroom, a young woman faced off against the university student whom she accused of raping her in a school parking lot. The media ignored the story. This is a series about a criminal rape trial that took place in Toronto late last year. The trial lasted eight days; the judge announced his verdict earlier this month." —Ann Brocklehurst[more inside]
Piratenpartei accessing to Berne?
Piratenpartei MEP Julia Reda’s draft report on copyright (pdf) has been heavily criticized by former Swedish Pirate Party MEP Amelia Andersdotter (previously).
Theatre should be written on water.
punchlines for a global audience
Last summer, Tilbury, Essex became Grimsby, North Lincolnshire. Detritus was strewn across the streets to affect the temporal change. Caricatures of slags and obese scroungers marauded up and down the road. Across one of the pulled-down shop shutters was scrawled "HULL R WANKERS", a rivalry that might have made sense a four-hour drive north.Tim Burrows asks, When Are We Going to Stop Laughing at 'Shit Britain'?
Offline underclass
75 million Americans don’t have internet. Here’s what it’s like.
January 28
Who owns Los Angeles?
Using publicly available data and open source tools to find answers to questions about Los Angeles. What are the most expensive pieces of land in LA County? Which of these has the most expensive “improvement”, or building? What is the assessed value of Dodger Stadium? What are the most expensive cities by area in LA County? Who owns the most land? What percentage of the land in the city of LA is devoted to public space? where is the geographic center of LA County? [more inside]
Sorry, Canada
Reddit user TeaDranks has made a map of the world resizing every country in proportion to its population. The results are fascinating. NPR has a look. As originally seen on Reddit.
Random Game Map Maker
Dave's Mapper automatically generates tiled RPG/adventure game maps by recombining tiles submitted by artists, with a pile of customization map generation options. Have fun and be inspired, or submit your own tiles.
"This is not Guantanamo Bay"
A San Francisco deputy public defender was handcuffed and arrested at the Hall of Justice after she objected to city police officers questioning her client outside a courtroom, an incident that her office called outrageous and police officials defended as appropriate. [more inside]
"No academic institution... is particularly great for family."
An associate professor of biology with two children speaks more negatively about the effects of balancing work and family on his career: “It's a disaster.” [1][more inside]
The Good, The Bad and The Furry
Push Comics Forward
It’s primarily about joining the conversations that are happening in this comics community of ours, helping to support and amplify those messages, and encouraging others to join. I love this industry. I’ve been working in it, when I’ve had the good fortune to have the opportunities, since I was like 17 years old. To see the way the industry has evolved in even the last few years is amazing–we’re seeing things (slowly!) become more representative. We’re ahead of the curve in many ways in comics and we’re also behind the curve in many ways. - Boom Studios Editor-in-Chief Matt Gagnon talks to Comics Alliance about Push Comics Forward, "a movement to actively shape what the comics industry SHOULD look like in 10 years."
WWE stepped in it
WWE, the Royal Rumble, Corporate Entertainment Culture, And When It All Goes Wrong.
"Was it a bad shoot? Or a good shoot?"
Your Son Is Deceased The shooting of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, looked almost routine to people in Albuquerque. The city has one of the highest rates in the country of fatal shootings by police, but no officer has been indicted. Of the sixty-three officers who joined the Albuquerque police force in 2007, ten eventually shot people.
In C Mali
A documentary-esque, full-length music video for Africa Express's rendition of Terry Riley's In C.
The recording includes: Adama Koita on kamel n’goni; Alou Coulibaly on Calabash; Andi Toma on assorted percussion and kalimba; André d Ridder on violin, baritone-guitar, and kalimba, as well as conducting; Badou Mbaye (perhaps) on djembe and other percussion; Brian Eno, Bijou, and Olugbenga on vox; Cheick Diallo on flutes; Damon Albarn on melodica; Defily Sako and Modibo Diawara on kora; Guindo Sala on imzad; Kalifa Koné and Mémé Koné on balafon; and Nick Zinner and Jeff Wootton on guitar.
Olugbenga's diary of the trip. The WSJ on the group's origins. Previously
The recording includes: Adama Koita on kamel n’goni; Alou Coulibaly on Calabash; Andi Toma on assorted percussion and kalimba; André d Ridder on violin, baritone-guitar, and kalimba, as well as conducting; Badou Mbaye (perhaps) on djembe and other percussion; Brian Eno, Bijou, and Olugbenga on vox; Cheick Diallo on flutes; Damon Albarn on melodica; Defily Sako and Modibo Diawara on kora; Guindo Sala on imzad; Kalifa Koné and Mémé Koné on balafon; and Nick Zinner and Jeff Wootton on guitar.
Olugbenga's diary of the trip. The WSJ on the group's origins. Previously
it took me a while to figure out what made Chaturbate special
Are You Internet Sexual?[NSFW]
Welcome to Chaturbate[NSFW], where live-cam performers engage in the wild and the weird. But watch it long enough and you realize that social media has created a whole new sexual persuasion. So, how “internet sexual” are you?
Welcome to Chaturbate[NSFW], where live-cam performers engage in the wild and the weird. But watch it long enough and you realize that social media has created a whole new sexual persuasion. So, how “internet sexual” are you?
Remember these classic themes?
Youtube user dotflist has a playlist collecting classic TV themes and openings ....except something seems to be slightly off
© Potomac Avenue 2015
From the King of Clickbait to the "President" of Instagram to the Parody Twitter Illuminati...As The Washington Post says: "Everyone's stealing jokes online--Why doesn't anyone care?"
Profile: Gene Hackman
"'I'm not that kind of guy. He was a physical man,' Hackman said of Popeye [Doyle] in the Ebert interview. 'We had to go back and re-shoot the first two days of scenes because I hadn't gotten into the character enough. I wasn't physical enough.'" (Steven Hyden's piece on actor Gene Hackman at Grantland.) [more inside]
Blackbeard's Flagship...er, I mean Medical Ship Found
Medical equipment recovered from wreck of Queen Anne's Revenge Marine archaeologists have found evidence of medical equipment used to heal the sick and wounded on board the pirate captain's flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge. [more inside]
Iranian 1979 revolution: Rare footage from French television
A French institute has collected a series of rarely seen videos on the 1979 Iranian revolution, among other things on almost any topic. [more inside]
Old World Wandering
"According to Islam, traveling to space is encouraged."
A Bike Lock You'll Never Forget to Bring
Seatylock, a successful kickstarter, is a clever, high-strength bicycle lock that lives inside your bike seat. [more inside]
Getting (Stuff) Out Of Afghanistan
No one in this convoy is looking for a fight. They’re mostly logistics guys, the United Van Lines of the U.S. Army. Their mission is to pack up the last of the gear from Combat Outpost Chamkani so that the place can be handed over to the Afghan army. America’s longest war is over for U.S. troops for the most part. All these guys want to do is bug on out.
Obituary for the Marlboro Man
25,000 Transcribed Texts From 1473-1700 Published Online
The University of Michigan Library, the University of Oxford's Bodleian Libraries and ProQuest have made public more than 25,000 manually transcribed texts from 1473-1700 — the first 200 years of the printed book. Full text access. Multiple format downloads, including ePUB. Or just download the entire corpus. [more inside]
Perpetual Pizza, because .Pizza is a TLD
"you’re too young, you’ll change your mind...how can you be so selfish?"
Holly Brockwell has requested voluntary sterilisation four times in the last three years, and she's been refused every time because she's under 30 and doesn't have any children. [more inside]
Mormon church softens (a little bit) on gay rights
Yesterday, the leadership of the Church of Latter-Day Saints announced support for "some legal anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people".
Though church officials emphasized that there was no change in doctrine, the move went further than other traditional faith groups have by placing religious freedom and gay equality on an equal moral footing.
Taking aspirin daily has a 1-2000 chance of preventing your heart attack
This fundamental lesson is conveyed by a metric known as the number needed to treat, or N.N.T. Developed in the 1980s, the N.N.T. tells us how many people must be treated for one person to derive benefit. An N.N.T. of one would mean every person treated improves and every person not treated fails to, which is how we tend to think most therapies work.So it turns out that e.g. you need 2000 People to take a daily aspirin for two years to prevent one heart attack. [more inside]
January 27
The Dream of the '90s? Jon Chait on P.C. 2.0
Today’s political correctness flourishes most consequentially on social media, where it enjoys a frisson of cool and vast new cultural reach. And since social media is also now the milieu that hosts most political debate, the new p.c. has attained an influence over mainstream journalism and commentary beyond that of the old.
"If ASMR has a godfather, it is television painter Bob Ross."
I open up my wallet and it's full of blood
Spider-Man in Love
"I knew, from a very early age, that there was love in my house, imperfect love, love that was built, decided upon, as opposed to magicked into existence. That was how Peter loved Mary Jane." In The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates reflects on love and marriage as portrayed between Peter "Spider-Man" Parker and Mary Jane Watson. [more inside]
Diary Of A B Grade Hooker
Kinja user "Curious Squid" is an Australian woman who moonlights as a prostitute. She keeps a diary of her life as a sex worker, writing about the banal (arranging jobs) to the very interesting (sexual violence against sex workers).
'We Are Koch'
Kochs Plan to Spend $900 Million on 2016 Campaign - "an unparalleled effort by coordinated outside groups to shape a presidential election that is already on track to be the most expensive in history... These donors represent the largest concentration of political money outside the party establishment, one that has achieved enormous power in Republican circles in recent years. Now the Kochs' network will embark on its largest drive ever to influence legislation and campaigns across the country, leveraging Republican control of Congress and the party's dominance of state capitols to push for deregulation, tax cuts and smaller government."
♪ ♫ ♬ ♩
The Thurston Moore Apartment Tour (1988) [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] An interview with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore recorded in his apartment in September 1988.
I ain't afraid of no ghost
Last October, director Paul Feig announced he was working on Ghostbusters 3 along with the writer of The Heat, Katie Dippold, and said it "will star hilarious women". Today, the all-female cast of the Ghostbusters reboot was announced: SNL alum (and star of Bridesmaids) Kristen Wiig, two current SNL performers Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon, and star of The Heat & Bridesmaids, Melissa McCarthy. The movie starts shooting this Summer.
California has no business subsidizing intellectual curiosity.
In 1967, Ronald Reagan began a revolution in education by altering the scope and purpose of California's public universities: A higher education should prepare students for jobs. Full stop.
Burlesque
"All The Glamour That Was Never There!" Brief essays by, and material from, the collection of Jim Linderman
“I’m sorry, I’m just so happy to see another brown person at Fest!”
En garde!
Sword Fights Movie Montage (SLYT)
you can't name him that.
Don’t Even Try to Pick the Perfect Baby Name: "I was left with the same old words I’d had before, the same short list of names worn thin by the lives of other men ... For every boy name there is a man in the world who has ruined it."
This plan isn’t for the next two weeks or three months.
EFF’s Game Plan for Ending Global Mass Surveillance
For years, we’ve been working on a strategy to end mass surveillance of digital communications of innocent people worldwide. Today we’re laying out the plan, so you can understand how all the pieces fit together—that is, how U.S. advocacy and policy efforts connect to the international fight and vice versa. Decide for yourself where you can get involved to make the biggest difference.
For years, we’ve been working on a strategy to end mass surveillance of digital communications of innocent people worldwide. Today we’re laying out the plan, so you can understand how all the pieces fit together—that is, how U.S. advocacy and policy efforts connect to the international fight and vice versa. Decide for yourself where you can get involved to make the biggest difference.
Live-Action Dwarf Fortress
The Rat Tribe of Beijing. A photo-essay about diverse folks who live in former bomb shelters turned into private apartments underneath the streets of Beijing. By Al-Jazeera America.
It's been too long, Manny
Grim Fandango, the brainchild of Tim Schafer (also known for such greats as Full Throttle and Psychonauts), has been on Best Game Ever lists since its release in 1998. Like other games that stand the test of time in terms of gameplay, it has not always been updated for newer technology, and as such, has left fans yearning for a pure game experience. There have been work-arounds over the years, albeit not always easily implemented. Today, however, like other "lost"games that eventually found the light, Grim Fandango has been released remastered on platforms like Steam, GOG.com, and PS4 to be reappreciated by fans, old and new alike. Please consider this product from Double Fine Games as you anticipate your gaming library for 2015. [more inside]
Totally Unrelated
Reasons You Were Not Promoted That are Totally Unrelated to Gender. You don’t smile enough. People don’t like you.You smile too much. People don’t take you seriously. (Single link McSweeney's).
"Basketball would be bad enough. But hoops?"
The Mystery Of Faith
"In creating a work that portrays real internal struggle and transformation, Caravaggio converted painting. [more inside]
"...a woman who becomes a mother cannot have the same career as a man."
Can the U.S. Ever Fix Its Messed-Up Maternity Leave System?
Most new mothers are in their 20s or 30s, which means they grew up in a world of female Supreme Court justices, politicians, and astronauts. They have more college degrees than men, they entered the workforce in near-equal numbers, and they chose their careers assuming that having children wouldn’t mean losing money. Almost two-thirds of women with children under 6 work, about twice the rate of the previous generation. "I went to college and found something I loved. I got a job. I married and had babies and just assumed maternity leave was something that existed," says Annalisa Spencer, 31, an electrical engineer in Salt Lake City who has three children, and got no leave for the third. "Nobody told me it would be like this."[more inside]
idiopathic hypersomnia
what if you could sleep 50 hours straight and still never feel truly awake?
welcome to the bizarre, distressing, and totally exhausting world of the hypersomniac. (wiki) [more inside]
welcome to the bizarre, distressing, and totally exhausting world of the hypersomniac. (wiki) [more inside]
In the living room the voice-clock sang
Deathhacks: Tech tips for people who are going to die (someday) Jessamyn West (Mefi's own) describes the challenges that came with being executrix of her father's estate, and his house.
"I sometimes think I am working in a madhouse."
Maybe the real state secret is that spies aren't very good at their jobs and don't know very much about the world. Adam Curtis entertainingly discusses the competence (or lack thereof) of MI5 and other spy agencies in this rather aged but still relevant article for the BBC.
Note that you'll probably need a proxy of some sort to see the videos outside the UK.
"Where is the door?"
Profile: Breaking down the problem of bound gaps [New Yorker]: After graduating with a Ph.D. in algebraic geometry from Purdue in 1991, Yiting Zhang kept the books for a friend's Subway franchise and found other odd jobs before taking up a part-time calculus teaching position at the University of New Hampshire in 1999.
“For years, I didn’t really keep up my dream in mathematics,” he said.He published one paper in 2001. Then, in 2013, he submitted "Bounded Gaps Between Primes" to Annals of Mathematics, one of the most prestigious journals in the field, which contained a proof for a finite bound within which there exist an infinite number of pairs of primes. It was a stunning mathematical breakthrough. [more inside]
“You must have been unhappy.”
He shrugged. “My life is not always easy,” he said.
"Hands on your neck. Squeeze it tighter." (SLMINDFUCK)
Tom Brady Cannot Stop
Ahead of Super Bowl Sunday, the New York Times Magazine's Mark Leibovich dives deep into Tom Brady, one of the "most famous [people] in the world nobody knows," and finds a man "bent on nothing less than subverting the standard expectations of how long a superstar quarterback can play like one." Meanwhile, questions continue to swirl about whether the Patriots deflated balls in their playoff game against the Indianapolis Colts -- and if so, how and why, with Coach Bill Belichick appearing to point the finger at Brady, the superstar quarterback himself. Others question the Deflategate/Ballghazi hype. [more inside]
Sea smoke in Maine
Sea smoke or steam fog, fog caused by cold air flowing over a body of comparatively warm water, the vapor condensing in small convective columns near the water surface and giving the appearance of smoke or steam. It is common in the Arctic and Antarctic, but if it is cold enough, it sometimes it happens in Maine; youtube links follow (some with music of varying quality): one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
This summer is starting to look Fantastic.
Fantastic Four, that is. The first teaser for Marvel's 3rd kick at the can of rebooting the Fantastic Four dropped this morning.
A new face
Violet Pietrok was born with a Tessier Cleft, a skull defect. Surgeons at Boston Children's Hospital used 3-D prints of her skull to practice before cutting into Violet's own skull to repair the damage.
I hear you people like cats.
The Rescued Film Project
The Rescued Film Project found 31 rolls of undeveloped film shot by a soldier during WWII.
The WWII photos
Early culinary self-sufficiency
The History Kitchen takes a quick look at the food of the California Gold Rush, and has a recipe for Hangtown Fry.
Each time I feel I am on the cusp of nirvana, I hit a wall
Ashwin Rodriguez visits a strip mall sensory deprivation clinic
"This place has not done proper soundproofing, and it is unnerving to head the occasional footstep or shutting door. I know it’s not going to happen, but part of me thinks maybe someone will open the door to this tank and steal my kidney. I begin to think, does anyone know I came here? Why didn’t they take down any of my information?"
A ring around the sun
"The details that we see in the light curve are incredible. The eclipse lasted for several weeks, but you see rapid changes on time scales of tens of minutes as a result of fine structures in the rings," says Kenworthy. "The star is much too far away to observe the rings directly, but we could make a detailed model based on the rapid brightness variations in the star light passing through the ring system. If we could replace Saturn's rings with the rings around J1407b, they would be easily visible at night and be many times larger than the full moon."The first extrasolar ring system found turns out to be some 200 times larger than that of Saturn, easily eclipsing its parent star for days.
January 26
Take THAT, evil-doers!
Islamophobic Bus Ads In San Francisco Are Being Defaced With Kamala Khan. From the article: "Well, this is just brilliant. Racist adverts promoting hatred against Muslims are currently being run on buses in San Francisco - but someone has started covering them up with anti-hatred messages from Marvel's première Muslim superhero, Ms. Marvel." [more inside]
These old photographs are in color. The world was black and white then.
Animated stories that parents tell their children: How milkshakes are made (really bouncy grass) and why you have to be quiet on trains (beware of bears, they're unstoppable). But if you're grown up now and want to really know if your parents were full of ... molasses, let Ken Jennings share the truth behind 17 things parents tell their kids, and five more excerpts from his collection of such because-I-said-so-isms.
How the price of paint is set in the hearts of dying stars
The Smithsonian Magazine reminds us that "Barns are painted red because of the physics of dying stars", summing up a more detailed post by Google employee Yonatan Zunger on the nature of stars, the atmosphere, and cheap paint found on barns.
It also means "unboil" is now a word.
Scientists unboil an egg, and it may be a big deal. "This method … could transform industrial and research production of proteins," Such as new, and much faster ways of producing anti-bodies to fight cancer and cheese-makers who could use recombinant-proteins to improve their products.
"What kind of life is this?"
Aftenposten, Norway’s largest newspaper, flew teenage fashion bloggers, Anniken Jørgensen, Frida Ottesen and Ludvig Hambro, to the Southeast Asian country’s capital of Phnom Penh, where they experienced a modicum of a Cambodian textile worker’s life for a month in 2014. Their experience is the subject of a five-part reality show available online, titled "Sweatshop - Deadly Fashion." [more inside]
Of course I’m a classics teacher. There’s a Parthenon behind my head.
The Jennifer Lopez vehicle "The Boy Next Door" opened this past weekend and earned a paltry 12% on the Tomatometer. There's nothing terribly unique about this number deep in the cinematic dumping ground that is January, but people are quickly taking notice on how absolutely bonkers the film really is. This starts with the trailer and then moves on to the film itself, which is that rare beast in this era of boring SyFy Channel schlock: A bad movie that never stops being fun. If you need further convincing, witness one moment from the film that was recently singled out by Slate. It's a thing of beauty.
Let it Plow, Let it Plow, Let it Plow
Find yourself elsewhere than in the grips of Juno, the Blizzard of 2015? Want to play the home game? Track the plows of NYC using the PlowNYC map. Want something faster than 15 minute update intervals, or less NYC-centric? Twitter's got you covered.
Carles is back bb!!!
Albums That Never Were
A new way to tackle ultra-poverty
A new approach to assisting the "ultra-poor" – the poorest people on the planet – is showing promising results. In up to 95% of cases, the approach has been shown to help people exit the category of ultra-poverty, defined as living on less than 50 cents per day. [more inside]
“Let’s ask, in the 21st century, are there limits to free speech?”
UK should consider ban on Mein Kampf, says Scottish Labour MP [The Guardian]
Ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day, Scottish Labour MP Thomas Docherty has written to culture secretary urging a ‘sensitive debate’ on allowing its sale.
don't forget your empathy at home
On Running and Street Harassment
This past Saturday, eight different men verbally harassed me. Two stepped into my path and said they wouldn’t move unless I gave them a high five. The murmurs, the coos and looks, all serve as reminders that I am not a person to them.[more inside]
By the seventh man, I was tired. He told me he could look at that ass all day. I told him to shut up. He said to me, “Don’t worry, baby, I still love you,” and my skin went clammy with defeat. And there was something about hearing the word “love” come out of his mouth that made me want to push him into traffic.
Whistling at Your Mom
Oh my God, I'm ashamed that your are my son. The Peruvian show Sílbale a tu Madre (Whistling at your Mom) takes a...creatively confrontational approach to fighting street harassment. They enlist the mothers of chronic catcallers to catch their offspring in the act, a process involving makeovers, hidden cameras and very public shaming. [more inside]
Beautiful People Get What They Want
I need another outlet. And there follows my return to art. 📚 🎨
PhDs: Creative Writing - from the PhD research blog Deathsplanation:
"I almost went to college to study art. I even interviewed for a place. I had a portfolio and everything. That was more than a decade ago and honestly, I can’t even remember if I got in. But I didn’t go. Things changed, life took a drastic turn, and I wanted to leave everything behind. And so I did. I ended up at university, pursuing another passion of mine: archaeology; history, anthropology. [more inside]
"I have never strayed that far from art. It’s always been there, in my life. But recently, it’s been a lot more… present."
Try to make you angles as non-euclidean as possible
Yoga Fhtagn A holistic workout were we tone our bodies while slowly losing our minds (SLYT 3d6 SAN loss)
Arithmeticfilter
Nothing but an endless supply of mental arithmetic problems. Five levels of difficulty, from "10 - 6" to "√370881." [more inside]
100 milligrams twice a day of "shut up and deal with it"
"But here's the facts: Like most other psychiatric disorders, we are really unlikely to hurt another person. Even when we're really upset at someone, we're still convinced that it's entirely our fault, so we mostly take it out on ourselves. That's a big reason why we self-injure -- it's punishment as much as relief -- and why suicide attempts are as routine as daylight saving time for many of us."5 Realities of Life for People With Borderline Personalities
Are You Ready For Some Football?
GOOD EMAIL
The youth of Greece are revolting
In a functional market economy, the classic couple in a posh restaurant are young and close in age. In my travels through the eurocrisis – from Dublin to Athens – I have noticed that the classic couple in a dysfunctional economy is a grey-haired man with a twentysomething woman. It becomes a story of old men with oligarchic power flaunting their wealth and influence without opprobrium. [more inside]
Why you should stop relying on your phone, and buy a nice camera
Like beer and pop music, it was easy to make do with what’s cheap and available, only to look back on a life of Dave Matthews and Bud Light and wonder why I’d gotten by on “good enough.” Because I am aging, and because I have the memory of the original Tamagotchi, I am profoundly grateful to have these clear, high-resolution photos of the people I loved and love. [more inside]
B is for Bevan and his Bogan Mates
Adam Curtis's Bitter Lake.
Bitter Lake "is a new, adventurous and epic film by Adam Curtis that explains why the big stories that politicians tell us have become so simplified that we can’t really see the world any longer." [available on the UK BBC iplayer for a month] [trailer with Curtis's preview]
January 25
And Canada's most racist city is....
Maclean's brings to the forefront the dark reality faced by the country's aboriginal population. Maclean's article on Winnipeg has generated a lot of buzz in the city and beyond, and a mixed reaction. What's more, the statistics speak to those still tempted to claim the problem isn't as bad as America's race issues.
Lindy West and her troll
Former The Stranger and now GQ writer Lindy West talks on This American Life with an abusive troll who pretended to be her dead father immediately after his death. Don't let the description put you off: he apologizes, for real. [more inside]
BaconCat, 2003-2015
MeFi's own jscalzi suffers the loss of his beloved pet. Ghlaghghee (pron. "Fluffy"), a.k.a. the world-famous BaconCat, has passed away after a brief illness. John writes a quiet, typically wry eulogy and appreciation.
Fingers Crossed for Next Time ROU_Xenophobe
Just Read The Instructions and Of Course I Still Love You are the names Elon Musk has chosen for the east coast and west coast SpaceX spaceport drone ships. The names are from the late Iain Banks Culture novel Player of Games, and are indicative of the attitudes taken by Culture AI spaceships in naming themselves (a full list of Culture Vessel Names may be found here) An introduction to Iain Banks on Mefi previously, and on Mefi again at his passing ("The Culture represents the place we might hope to get to").
"They all love them some Founding Fathers"
"DES MOINES, IA – Word must have gone out early, either by word of mouth, or by all those social media platforms that conservatives have discovered since 2008, or perhaps by that strange wingnut telepathy only practiced by the true initiates who know all the conjuring words. (People could make Lois Lerner jokes secure in the knowledge that every single person in Iowa who would find them funny was somewhere in the hall.) In any case, the rhetoric at the Iowa Freedom Summit, hosted by Steve King and Citizens United, was startlingly muted. Oh, they hit all the proper notes. Liberty! Constitution! American exceptionalism! And the melodies were consistent; the first few bars were gloomy as they meandered through the many failures of the current administration, many of them largely imaginary, and then the final movement was all sunshine and rainbows and Republican promises of a brighter day. Every speech was like a Requiem Mass that concluded with a rousing chorus of 'Tomorrow.'" Charles P. Pierce of Esquire has some colorful choice words to say about the recent
Iowa Freedom Summit.
SS Pieter Schelte
The "world's largest ship" is named after a Nazi war criminal. Unsurprisingly a few people have a problem with that.
British Actors, American History
“I played a soldier confronting President Lincoln in the film Lincoln, and I say to him, in the winter of 1865, ‘When are we going to get the vote?’ and then there I am, 100 years later, depicting Dr. King, alongside the very same actor, Colman Domingo — we confronted President Lincoln together — we are now in a jail cell, asking for the vote again, in 1965,” Oyelowo said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. “I’ve played a preacher in The Help, I played a fighter pilot in Red Tails, I played someone who was in a sit in, was a Freedom Rider, was a Black Panther, then goes on to be a senator in The Butler. They’re all characters that took me on this journey through what it has been to be a black person for the last 150 years.”
Oyelowo stopped, paused, and corrected himself slightly here. In nearly every role he’s taken on since he arrived in the United States, he’s portrayed the sojourn for what it’s like to be a black American for the last 150 years. [more inside]
Oyelowo stopped, paused, and corrected himself slightly here. In nearly every role he’s taken on since he arrived in the United States, he’s portrayed the sojourn for what it’s like to be a black American for the last 150 years. [more inside]
Money, privilege, luck, connections
Straight Masterpiece
L. Young & Da Youngstaz get funky! An amazing a cappella version of the already amazing funktastic anthem Uptown Funk. [more inside]
Anime Eyes
Anime Eyes with MAC- A how to.
Optical Illusion art of Robert Gonsalves
A massive gallery of Incredible Optical Illusion Art by Robert Gonsalves
Some Girls Want Out: Spectacular Saintliness
Hilary Mantel on St. Gemma Galgani, St. Therese of Lisieux, and "holy" and secular anorexia, stigmata, and hysteria. "We can see, as ‘Catholic neurologists’ of the time did, that Gemma’s symptoms are a representational strategy. They are an art form and a highly successful one; they are also (possibly) the product of mental pain and distress turned into physical symptoms. . . . When we think of young adults in the West, driven by secular demons of unknown provenance to starve and purge themselves, and to pierce and slash their flesh, we wonder uneasily if she is our sister under the skin."
(warning: gruesome) [more inside]
10th Century Travels among the Norse, Bulgars, Khazars and Others
The Risala of Ahmad ibn Fadlan is a tenth century travel narrative of an emissary of the Caliph to the Iltäbär of the Volga Bulgars. He described his encounters with many peoples on his journey, but the Risala is most famous for his account of the Rus and their funeral rites, who probably were Norse people who had settled along the Volga. If these were indeed the Norse, ibn Fadlan gives one of the most detailed contemporary descriptions of the Norse before they started writing down their own stories some centuries later. He was not the only Muslim to have encounters with the Norse, as Judith Gabriel explains in Among the Norse Tribes. Another 10th Century description of the Norse was by the Jewish al-Tartushi from Al-Andalus. Michael Crichton used the Risala as the basis for his novel Eaters of the Dead, which later was made into the movie The 13th Warrior. Both book and film left something to be desired in terms of historical accuracy.
"Mr. President, is you OK? Is you good? 'Cuz I wanted to know."
In addition to posting the State of the Union to Medium before the end of the press embargo, the Obama administration has delivered another sop to the young whippersnappers of today by having the president get interviewed by three stars of YouTube: comedian GloZell, designer Bethany Mota, and vlogbrother Hank Green.
You can watch the interviews, read takes on how they went from Hank Green himself, the WaPo, NPR, and the NYT, and enjoy some grousing from FOX and Bloomberg Politics's response to said grousing.
You can watch the interviews, read takes on how they went from Hank Green himself, the WaPo, NPR, and the NYT, and enjoy some grousing from FOX and Bloomberg Politics's response to said grousing.
The Debt? (trigger warning)
"In an essay in the New York Times, psychiatrist Richard Friedman writes that the relationship of adults to their abusive parents 'gets little, if any, attention in standard textbooks or in the psychiatric literature.' But Rochelle is not alone. I have been hearing from people in her position for years, adult children weighing whether to reconnect with parents who nearly ruined their lives. Sometimes it's a letter writer such as 'Comfortably Numb' who has cut off contact with a parent but is now being pressured by family members, and even a spouse, to reconcile and forgive. Sometimes a correspondent, like 'Her Son,' has hung on to a thread of a relationship, but is now fearful of being further yoked emotionally or financially to a declining parent." [SLSlate] (Trigger warning for descriptions of abuse.)
“And all of a sudden, it’s a homicide.”
A Twist in the Murder of a 97-Year-Old Man: He Was Knifed 5 Decades Ago: [New York Times]
The New York medical examiner determined that an operation after a stabbing in the 1950s led to Antonio Ciccarello’s death in September at 97. The police have opened a murder investigation.
Bringing Boredom Back
Inspired by recent research on how boredom and mind-wandering contribute to creativity, public radio show New Tech City is launching a pro-boredom project. Bored and Brilliant invites participants to track how they use their phones to prevent moments of mental idleness, to try to reclaim free brain space and find oases of time, complete a week of creativity challenges, and contribute their responses to the conversation. BrainPickings' Maria Popova and artist Nina Katchadourian (who both joined the project's launch party to talk about how they"owe their careers" to boredom)and RadioLab's Jad Abumrad.
"To change anything, start everywhere"
"that it ain’t no gun they can make that can kill my soul"
No other lyrics more perfectly captured the spirit bubbling under the surface of hip-hop in the latter half of 2014 than those sung in J. Cole’s cracking, raspy-voiced performance of “Be Free” on The Late Show on December 10. Clad in a “Fuck Money Spread Love” hoodie, and rocking the post-natural, 2014 version of the revolutionary ’fro, Cole used the venerable Ed Sullivan Theater as a pulpit, bringing attention to Ferguson and the #BlackLivesMatter movement. He provided an anthem for protests taking place just blocks away.What’s Going On: Kendrick Lamar, D’Angelo, J. Cole, Kanye West, and the New Sound of Protest Music.
Fish and CHiPs all over the place
Know When To Run
Over Christmas engineering works on train lines into London failed. This is a review of the report into that failure . It's a fascinating read about cascading failure and errors in project planning. And, for once, read the comments.
Inside Amsterdam's efforts to become a smart city
Amsterdam wants to be smarter than you. And it’s well on its way.
The Netherlands capital is on a mission to turn itself into the smartest city in the world. Through a collaboration with government officials, private companies including telecom giant KPN, and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, the city is quickly becoming a futuristic tech hub.
January 24
Graffiti artist INSA made a massive animated GIF
A few days ago, Graffiti artist INSA made a massive animated painting in Rio de Janeiro. Over four days he painted an area of 154,774 square feet (14,379 square meters) with the help of 20 assistants. The painting states were captured by a satellite to create this GIF, the biggest ever.
The Household Mentoring Approach in Uganda
Household mentoring "is an innovative extension methodology used to work with poorer households. The specificity of this approach is that all adult members of a household, including both women and men farmers, are visited and assisted by a trained mentor selected from the local community. During these visits, men and women in a household learn how to better plan their livelihoods together, work together to improve their food security and income, and to share the benefits equally." [more inside]
With fewer voices, Auschwitz survivors speak
The voices of Auschwitz. "The 70th anniversary of the liberation of the notorious Nazi concentration camp could mark the last major commemoration for many Holocaust survivors." [more inside]
"I don't want you to hate me, and I don't want you to disown me."
Oklahoma. This was a place where Kathryn's workplace had a cussing jar, a quarter per swear, and the words written on it, “Let Go and Let God.” Here, Christianity was the religion — Tracy and Kathryn were believers — and Oklahoma football was the religion — Tracy and Kathryn were believers — and people could be decent and kind and judgmental, sometimes all at once, which was why, when Tracy told some Rotary Club friends that she and Kathryn were getting married, she kept her eyes planted above their heads so she wouldn't have to look at their faces.
America's Angriest White Men
"A longtime feminist, Kimmel maintains a delicate balance when handling his sources. He wants to be sympathetic to the people he interviews and yet loyal to his academic principles. After a series of humbling recessions and other economic shifts, men like Rick feel emasculated and humiliated, he writes, 'betrayed by the country they love, discarded like trash on the side of the information superhighway.' Their sin, according to Kimmel, is a failure to adjust. These guys refuse to admit they’ve been handed privilege all these years by a world that puts white men on top. White men, he writes, 'have been running with the wind at our backs all these years,' and 'what we think of as ‘fairness’ to us has been built on the backs of others.' The New York Times reviews sociologist Michael Kimmel's 2013 book Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. [more inside]
SCREAM CHOIR
I thought this was ridiculous... ...until I realized that Artaud might have loved it. So maybe it's great. (SLYT) [more inside]
Who Owns the Copyright to Vivian Maier's Photographs?
John Maloof and Charlie Siskel’s Finding Vivian Maier is nominated for an Academy Award, Best Feature Documentary.
Most people have read about the nanny who worked in complete obscurity, yet may be one of the greatest street photographers of the 20th Century. The filmmakers tell the story of her art and also track down people who knew this eccentric and perhaps troubled artist.
Meanwhile, and problematically for Maloof and other owners of Maier’s work, it’s one thing to own the negatives and quite another to own copyright that allows for printing and publishing those negatives. Maloof thought he had that covered, but in 2013 that came into question.
Finally and most recently (2015), perhaps sensing an opportunity for much-needed revenue, the State of Illinois has belatedly opened a file on the Maier Estate and notified owners and galleries to be prepared for legal inquiry.
The documentary is streaming on the major distributors (Netflix, Amazon, GooglePlay).
He strives to impress his guest with a collection of blue gifts.
Just how good is the flu vaccine?
Ontario's former Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Richard Schabas and infectious diseases specialist Dr. Neil Rau question the utility of mass, annual influenza vaccination: "Vaccines, in general, are perhaps the biggest success story of modern medicine. But in the league tables of vaccines, influenza vaccine hovers near the relegation zone."
An Unincorporated Historic Neighborhood Gets it Place on the Internet
Isla Vista LocalWiki From the description in mefi projects:
Isla Vista has a lot of interesting characteristics that make it a good subject for a community writing project: it's an unusually walkable place with many local institutions and traditions, and it's an unincorporated quasi-town with a complex relationship with the university and the county. But one part that I find really appealing is that this is a relatively unexplored topic... [more inside]
In short, in matters lexical, semantic, and homologous ...
Token Sucking
The Kiss of Desperation: A Disgusting Practice Vanishes With the Token/A Lewis Grizzard take on the subject from 1991
A quick trip downtown and 30 years ago...
"All in all he "shot over 1,900 hours of tape over a period of seven years, capturing himself and his friends in the glossy façade of Manhattan's downtown life... He sought to tape all of New York's citizens, including its outcasts, striving to candidly capture their lives. He taped anything and everything that interested him—outrageous performances in bars and clubs, swinging house parties, chaotic gallery openings, park and street festivals, late-night ruminations of his friends, absurd conversations with taxi drivers, prosaic sunset walks with his dog on the then-still-existing west side piers." Sullivan died of a heart attack in 1989, just as he was preparing to produce his own cable television show." -- Nelson Sullivan's New York City.
Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway turned forty recently
The sixth Genesis studio album (and their last with Peter Gabriel), it's a two record, 94 minute conceptual monster which, "... tells of how a large black cloud descends into Time Square, straddles out across 42nd Street, turns into a wall and sucks in Manhattan Island. Our hero named Rael crawls out of the subways of New York and is sucked into the wall to regain consciousness underground." [more inside]
La Feria de la Alasita
Every January 24, Alasitas or La Feria de la Alasita, a fair specific to Bolivia and especially La Paz, commences. Though its origin is somewhat unclear (Spanish-language), for the next three weeks, the fair will draw Bolivians seeking material abundance ("Alasita" translates as "buy me" in Aymara) in the year ahead by buying miniatures at the fair of those things they want and giving them to Ekeko, the Aymara god of prosperity, represented by a small figurine (Spanish-language video) covered in all the goods the petitioner would like to receive.
As with a number of cultural and culinary items of the region, there is some debate as to whether Alasitas is properly Bolivian or Peruvian (Google translation).
Infamous. Thoughtless. Careless. Wikipedia and Gamergate. 💻
Infamous. Thoughtless. Careless. Mark Bernstein on recent editorial decisions at Wikipedia: "The infamous draft decision of Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee (ArbCom) on Gamergate is worse than a crime. It’s a blunder that threatens to disgrace the internet." [more inside]
🎨💯👊
Fishing with mosquito nets
Across Africa, from the mud flats of Nigeria to the coral reefs off Mozambique, mosquito-net fishing is a growing problem, an unintended consequence of one of the biggest and most celebrated public health campaigns in recent years.
Unintended consequences and complicated trade-offs: Mosquito Nets for Malaria Spawn New Epidemic: Overfishing (SLNYT)
The Wolfpack
‘The Wolfpack’ Tells of One New York Apartment With Seven Children Locked Inside (NYT). Crystal Moselle's documentary "The Wolfpack," premieres this Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival. A video interview with Crystal Moselle. [more inside]
In other words, this is janky and imperfect and totally a hack.
That’s Netscape 1.0n, released in December of 1994, running inside Windows 3.11, released in August of 1993, running inside of Google Chrome 39.0.2171.99 m, released about a week ago, on a Windows 7 PC, released in 2009.Welcome to the Emularity: as tools and processes improves it's becoming easier and easier to emulate historical computer (programme)s within your browser. By Jason Scott.
January 23
Dealing with the transition to the information age
BIG and BOT Policy Proposals (transcript) - "Many of our current economic policies originated during times of scarcity. But now, says investor Albert Wenger, we live in an era of 'digital abundance', when creating new products costs virtually nothing. To adapt to the resulting economic upheavals, we won't need just more tech, says Wenger, but some strong policies. Here he explores two: basic income guarantee and the right to be represented by a bot." [more inside]
Very Borgesian
A reflective view of the main core of The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale.
The building was designed by Gordon Bunshaft, of the firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, and completed in 1963. When visitors first enter the building they are faced by two large marble staircases that ascend up to the mezzanine level and a large glass tower that is the central core of the building. The mezzanine level allows for people to rotate around the glass tower which holds 180,000 volumes. [more inside]
The building was designed by Gordon Bunshaft, of the firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, and completed in 1963. When visitors first enter the building they are faced by two large marble staircases that ascend up to the mezzanine level and a large glass tower that is the central core of the building. The mezzanine level allows for people to rotate around the glass tower which holds 180,000 volumes. [more inside]
what is a 'robot,' anyway?
The Random Darknet Shopper is an art piece by !MEDIENGRUPPE BITNIK for the exhibtion From Memes to Onionland. So the bot bought 10 pills of Ecstasy (among other things in the name of art and got 'arrested' by the Swiss police. So what happens when a bot gets 'arrested?' It seems robots are starting to break the law and nobody knows what to do about it. [more inside]
Let's play two for Mr. Cub.
Catherine the Great's Erotic Cabinet
Catherine the Great had a room decorated with penises and vaginas. The furniture has vanished, but some pictures (NSFW) remain
River's Edge
Chilling Effects
We Should All Step Back from Security Journalism. I’ll Go First. Quinn Norton (previously) responds to the sentencing of Barrett Brown (previously.) [Via]
All Sports Illustrated Staff Photographers Fired
Sports Illustrated director of photography Brad Smith confirmed the move this morning to News Photographer magazine.
"It's true," Smith said. "There was a decision made through the company to restructure various departments, including at Sports Illustrated. Unfortunately economic circumstances are such that it has cut the six staff photographers."
Enchilada knife!
The TSA Blog has posted their 2014 year in review, including 2,212 confiscated firearms and a variety of other prohibited and suspicious items. FiveThirtyEight has a breakdown by airport of the confiscated firearms. [more inside]
reeeee~wind!!
"A good rewind is that rare thing in life: a product of the moment. If the timing is right, a rewind will bring excitement to the dancefloor, a celebration of the music being played, an energy charge for the place and the people."
Laurent Fintoni goes deep on the history of pulling the record back across a variety of genres, from reggae and dub, to dubstep and hip-hop.
WHAT ON EARTH WAS THOMAS FRIEDMAN TALKING ABOUT?
The Arab Spring is failing not for lack of bandwidth, but for lack of human understanding that can only be forged when someone is late for breakfast, and you say, "Thank you for being late."
...a lot of people have asked me whether it’s real, and, if so, what on earth Tom Friedman was saying. The answer to the first question is that yes, it is absolutely real. Tom Friedman really did say this, and it really did elicit a hearty round of applause from the assembled plutocrats. The answer to the second question is that I don’t honestly know what Tom Friedman was talking about. But at least I can give you a bit of context. ...
Bread for Him, Bread for Her
You may have assumed that some products were immune from blatantly gendered advertising. Bread, say. But you'd be wrong. Stonemill Bakehouse has introduced Men's Wellbeing Barley & Rye Bread and Women's Wellbeing Hemp & Quinoa Bread. The label for the women's bread is, helpfully, pink.
I'd like to see the CarFax.
BikeFax? (SLYT)
The friend who brought this to my attention tagged it thusly:
"This guy is amazing! (I wouldn't want to buy a bike from him though!)"
Another one bites the dust
“If anything, Alabama’s prohibition of same-sex marriage detracts from its goal of promoting optimal environments for children,” U.S. District Court Judge Callie V. S. Granade wrote in a brief 10-page opinion, concluding, “[T]he court finds that Alabama’s marriage laws violate the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
Netrunner
You probably know Richard Garfield as the creator of Magic: The Gathering. But his favorite creation is actually Netrunner, intended to be a "richer game" with bluffing and skill "more like Poker." Android: Netrunner is an asymmetrical Living Card Game based on the original Netrunner (which still has its fans).
Set in a cyberpunk future, you play a megacorp using "ICE"
to protect servers hiding company agendas (like The Future Perfect and Hostile Takeover)
or the hacker "runner" trying to steal them.
Chose from five megacorps and three runner factions and get started with a few data packs, important jargon, and deck-building.
For the initiated, prepare for this year's regional championships and read up on quantitative analyses of cards, runner economies, corporation economies, ICE and icebreakers, opening moves, studies in variance, and the ever-changing metagame.
Still not sure? Watch the Worlds 2014 Final (or read the champ's recap) and practice online using OCTGN or newcomer Jinteki.net, a browser-based version in development by World Champion finalist Minh Tran. And as always, beware Scorched Earth.
Syriza stretches poll lead as Greek election campaign ends
Greece’s anti-austerity party of the left, Syriza, has stretched its election lead to six points, putting it on course for a historic victory in Sunday’s crucial elections. Barely four weeks after the failure of parliament to elect a president, triggering the ballot, Greece’s fate now lies in the hands of 9.8 million voters. All the polls show, with growing conviction, that victory will go to Syriza. A poll released by GPO for Mega TV late on Thursday gave the far leftists a six-percentage-point lead over Samaras’s centre-right New Democracy, the dominant force in a coalition government that has held power since June 2012. A week earlier, GPO had the lead at four percentage points. [more inside]
I didn't know squirrels could vote!
Cold Cream, or Galen's Cerate
Cold cream is mostly known from the beauty routines of old ladies or as a makeup remover for stage actors. However, its lengthy history goes back a ways further, to a medical treatment from the Renaissance, perhaps even to the ancient Greeks.
Fish Live Beneath Antarctica
And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily
In the Middle Ages, the nation that was to give the world the full English widely skipped breakfast. Yet, by 1600, a culinary non-entity had become a key part of our daily routine. Why the change?Ian Mortimer investigates "How the Tudors (re)Invented Breakfast" for History Extra. See also: Breakfast, lunch and dinner: Have we always eaten them? (BBC, 2012); and Meals of the Day in the early and classical Roman empire, which counters the statement about Romans eating only one meal a day. Extra credit: Merienda - South American-style Afternoon Tea.
...insist, instead, that the absence of “yes” always indicates assault.
Rape on the Campus by Zoë Heller [New York Review of Books]
"Few would disagree that the systems for preventing and prosecuting sexual assault on US campuses are in need of change. But the efficacy and fairness of recent reforms that focus on making college grievance procedures more favorable to complainants and on codifying strict new definitions of sexual consent remain highly questionable."
"The Bible is true, and some of it actually happened."
Marcus Borg has died at age 72. The liberal Christian theologian was one of the leading figures in the modern-day "quest for the historical Jesus," participating in the Jesus Seminar and writing prolifically about how best to interpret the Bible. [more inside]
I shot an arrow into the air It fell to earth I know not where...
Will you fulfill your destiny and become a tangerine octodecillionaire?
"Tangerine Tycoon is a realistic tangerine economy simulator. Get your hands on quadrillions of tangerines by harvesting, gambling or trading them on the stock market. Most likely a combination of all 3. They say money is the root of all evil but surely tangerines can't do any harm." [more inside]
Edgar Froese, 1944-2015
Word has arrived that Edgar Froese, founding member of the massively influential electronic group Tangerine Dream, has passed away. Froese was a pioneering figure in the German Krautrock and Kosmische styles, and contributed an unfathomable amount to the world of ambient/psychedelic electronic music. [more inside]
I had this muzzle on with all these wounds and I couldn’t tell anybody
Behind the Mask - Revealing the Trauma of War "Brain injuries caused by blast events change soldiers in ways many can’t articulate. Some use art therapy, creating painted masks to express how they feel."
Maura is a “she.” It’s one of the central points of the show.
Restoring a Punched Monet Painting
Three years ago, a man punched a hole in a Monet painting as it hung in Ireland's National Gallery. Conservationists have restored it. This is their story. [more inside]
Foot push at 50 seconds... 🐈
Pixel Dungeon: a gentle introduction to roguelikes
Pixel Dungeon is a coffee break roguelike, one which distinguishes itself with pixel-art graphics and distilled roguelike gameplay. [more inside]
Gone to the great mall in the sky
America's favorite in-flight purveyor of ridiculousness, SkyMall, has filed for bankruptcy, blaming the increased use of electronic devices on planes for the drop in sales. [more inside]
Thar she blows!
The whale approached them, stopped, pointed straight downward, and then, in the words of underwater photographer Keri Will, “the storm began.” Keri and his fellow divers were caught in the thick of a massive whale poop. As he described to CBC Radio, "If you held your hand in front of your face you wouldn't be able to see your hand any more because the water was so thick with the faecal matter." [more inside]
no such thing as a cinema audience... It is a television audience
Ten o’clock on a grey, wintry morning and Mr David Niven marched up a deserted Champs-Elysées, some of the insolence of his erect Sandhurst carriage slightly curbed by a blinding hangover. 23 January 1965: David Niven on the golden days of Hollywood
The Aging of Abercrombie & Fitch
"Mike indelibly linked his entire persona, his soul, to this brand’s image. He even tried to make himself look like his customers. He used to run around in ripped jeans and a T-shirt. He had plastic surgery,” says Lewis. “For him to change the brand would have taken the greatest psychologist in the world."Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries steps down.
How to Be a Futurist
Jamais Cascio's "Futures Thinking"
Asking The Question
Scanning the World
Mapping Possibilities (Part 1, Part 2)
Writing Scenarios [more inside]
Asking The Question
Scanning the World
Mapping Possibilities (Part 1, Part 2)
Writing Scenarios [more inside]
What is machine language?
A gigabyte and a half was a lot of data, once. It’s thought that the last person to have read every available published text was the fifteenth-century Italian philosopher and original Renaissance man, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. To do the same thing today would be impossible.
And as it turns out, the greatest collaborative literary project in human history isn’t really human at all.
January 22
2015: The year that sci-fi becomes real
"After locking away all my recording instruments and switching to the almost prehistoric pen and paper, I had a tantalizingly brief experience of Microsoft's HoloLens system, a headset that creates a fusion of virtual images and the real world. While production HoloLens systems will be self-contained and cord-free, the developer units we used had a large compute unit worn on a neck strap and an umbilical cord for power. Production hardware will automatically measure the interpupillary distance and calibrate itself accordingly; the dev kits need this to be measured manually and punched in. The dev kits were also heavy, unwieldy, fragile, and didn't really fit on or around my glasses, making them uncomfortable to boot. But even with this clumsy hardware, the experience was nothing short of magical." ... [more inside]
aphextwin
Diskhat ALL Prepared1mixed [snr2mix] Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments Pt2
que será, será
Soot is not food.
If, like me, you're a sucker for a vaguely Eastern European accent, you may well enjoy the tale of Little Greggorio, in which a family dreams of journeying to America, where a little boy can become... a legend.
Why sell Thin Mints when you could be starting a revolution?
Meet the Radical Brownies. In Oakland, activists from Black Lives Matter have started a Girl Scout-style troop of girls of color ages 8-12 that puts the focus on social justice, taking the girls on marches for police accountability and offering merit badges in "Radical Beauty" and "LGBT Ally." [more inside]
A very specific sequence of weird tricks that Bowsers HATE
Speedrunner Minecraft SethBling explains how he beat Super Mario World in around 6 minutes by using in-game actions to manipulate the game's memory so that it glitches to the end credits. The glitch had already been pulled off in-game using emulators, but this is the first time it has been done on an actual SNES. Very technical details available here.
Yes: he still has the hair
John Romero Plays Doom, personably. Doom history enthusiast and Spacebase creator JP LeBreton joins id Software co-founder John Romero as the two play though the first episode of Doom, “Knee Deep in the Dead,” in its entirety. John Romero’s run through each level turns up fresh and encyclopedic insight into how this genre-defining title was designed and set the stage for first-person action games for years to come.
Mop Top Not
In the early 60s, the Beatles' signature haircuts rapidly became de rigueur for any and all rock bands seeking a crack at the big time. Conformity to the new look became, almost overnight, the norm. One band, though, said later for all that, and went for a truly radical look. That band, of course, was The Eggheads. [more inside]
Veeptopus
Hey, Spirits. Y'all Look Creepy.
Does she get any respect?
Serena Williams, America's greatest athlete (New Yorker)
... But it’s not enough to say that Williams would be more uniformly adored if she were a white woman, or a man. Instead, the failure to fully appreciate her importance is perhaps evidence of our inability to appreciate the stubbornly unfamiliar narrative arc of her career. Williams is underloved because, at times, she has been unlovable and, in the end, mostly unrepentant about it—something that might be admired as iconoclastic in a male athlete, but rarely endears women to a wide audience. ... [T]he great crisis in her public persona came later, in 2009, when she was penalized the final point in her U.S. Open semifinal against Kim Clijsters after berating a line judge over a foot-fault call on the previous serve. Williams is indeed singular: she is likely the only person ever to utter on a professional tennis court, “I swear to God, I’m fucking going to take this fucking ball and shove it down your fucking throat, you hear that? I swear to God.” (Of course, John McEnroe said things that weren’t so different, and he is beloved for it.)Just the other day, she was asked to twirl in front of male reporters during an interview.
"Haskel programmed the world's first video game inside joke"
Reaching for inspiration, Haskel based his first program on the prevailing trend in the video game market: sporty, ping-pong type games popularized by the [Magnavox] Odyssey and Atari's Pong arcade machine. The games made a big impact on Haskel, who vividly recalls the first time he saw the Odyssey in action during a visit to a department store. "I was going to see the furniture department, and there was a little kid playing Odyssey," recalls Haskel. "I sat down and played with him for probably an hour. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. I couldn't get that out of my mind."—The Untold Story of the Invention of the Game Cartridge by Benj Edwards of Vintage Computing and Gaming, who started researching the subject after interviewing one of the people involved, Jerry Lawson, in 2009.
Tour the US with the Tichnor Brothers' full color postcards, ca. 1930-45
From the Boston Public Library's Postcard Collection, enjoy approximately 25,000 office proofs of postcards of the United States published by the Boston firm Tichnor Brothers Inc. The collection is sorted by state, plus a few miscellaneous US-related cards and other postcards, including two different color charts. Some images are also available on Digital Commonwealth, and Wikimedia Commons.
What Value-Creating Winners Do All Day
Artist Tony Ruth has turned Richard Scarry's BusyTown into the Silicon Valley inspired BusinessTown. (via)
You can never have too many hockey sticks.
Yes, it is that time of year again. Prepare your senses for the wonder and spectacle that is the 2015 Miss Universe National Costume Competition. Do this years entries live up to the understated subtlety of their predecessors? Has the bar for taste and refined class once again been raised? Are there any giant robots, aliens, or costumes thrown together at the last minute with materials bought at Target? Let's find out!
The dream of the 1890s is alive in Portland
As Neda Maghbouleh pointed out for an article in the January 2009 issue of Center for New Racial Studies, the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama gave Portland newspapers a striking image of its racial makeup. Just look at the photo above from Portland during Senator Obama's presidential campaign. You'd be forgiven for thinking that maybe Dave Matthews Band was about to go on stage.There's a reason why Portland, and Oregon in general, are so whitebread: it was founded as a whites-only, racist utopia with no room for black or Asian people.
Tarnished Silver
The New York Times is reporting that Speaker of the New York State Legislature Sheldon Silver has been arrested on federal corruption charges related to income received from a NYC legal firm specializing in real estate. New York has background on the investigation and charges. [more inside]
Narcodrones
"Police in a Mexican border city said Wednesday that a drone overloaded with illicit methamphetamine crashed into a supermarket parking lot." Fox News, AP. [more inside]
Don't Try Too Hard to Please Twitter
The NYT Social Media team pulls the curtain back on how Twitter works for them with detailed examples of how changing text and descriptions and focus in their short messages resonated with readers, and which fell flat. Really interesting bit of transparency on their process, and results.
An intersex perspective on gender critical ideas
Mickey has the measles
At least 67 cases of the measles have been reported in the last month, largely stemming from an outbreak that began at Disneyland in mid-December. Although largely considered to have been eradicated in the United States in 2000, this latest outbreak follows the 400 cases reported last year in Ohio. [more inside]
Relief. Anguish. Certainty.
Do you know the time?
Today, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will set the hands of the Doomsday Clock again. You can watch it live at 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT).
How doomed are we?
As in past years, the board said climate change and nuclear warheads are the two major threats in 2015 that will influence its decision to move the hands of the clock.
You’d think it was Dominion Day
A presentation about Ontario's lost villages, ten communities which were flooded as part of the creation of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1958.
Before Zack Morris
The Mobile Telephone in Bell System Service, 1946–1993. Descriptions and photographs of car phones and briefcase phones on the "0G" pre-cellular mobile systems.
January 21
Death of Banks
The End of Banking: Money, Credit, and the Digital Revolution - "Unregulated banking with access to government guarantees is an enticing business model. It offers the profits of excessive risk-taking in good times, and allows passing on the inevitable losses to taxpayers in bad times." [more inside]
Beyond belief: HeroRats 🐀
HeroRats: "If people step on landmines, they will get hurt, but the HeroRats are too small to press the button that explodes the bomb. Then people can dig up the landmine without it exploding and no one gets hurt." (PDF document). The associated Twitter account: @HeroRATs. They tweet at celebrities for the LOLs and to raise awareness, as well as interacting with fellow Tweeters. [more inside]
Confusion Through Sand
Confusion Through Sand. (YouTube.) An animated short in which "a nineteen year old finds himself alone in a hostile desert, scared as hell, and trained to react." [Via]
The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered
And It Is Not What You Think. "The rats with good lives didn't like the drugged water. They mostly shunned it, consuming less than a quarter of the drugs the isolated rats used. None of them died. While all the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had a happy environment did."
A camera on a squid
Image of the squid wearing a Crittercam.
"The Humboldt squid uses pigment sacs on its skin to 'flash' and to 'flicker,' both previously-unknown behaviors".
Article with a gif showing the squid 'flashing'.
"The Humboldt squid uses pigment sacs on its skin to 'flash' and to 'flicker,' both previously-unknown behaviors".
Article with a gif showing the squid 'flashing'.
The mating call of Mustang
VROOM! The “aural experience” of a car, they argue, is an intangible that’s just as priceless as what’s revving under the hood.
Call now for a free start-up kit!
Another frantic day of trading at the New York Sock Exchange
It was 30 years ago today, Dan Piraro made "Bizarro" de...but. One of a bunch of "Far Side Copies" (and with a name borrowed from a Superman comics character), it may have never reached Gary Larson levels of success, but it stayed away from LOOKING like a copy, and almost 11,000 daily panels later, it still frequently lives up to its name.
Better Call Jimmy McGill
The Last Hurrah of Difficult Men , commentary on a tv show, a book and an essay in Esquire. "I'll just say it: The first few episodes that I saw are better than Breaking Bad. They are smarter. They are sharper. I have never seen a prequel handled so cleverly." [more inside]
"He's just a platypus; they don't do much."
Meta Hip Hop
“I’m not a killer. I’m really not. I’d just had enough.”
Wolflandia: The Fight Over the Most Polarizing Animal in the West
Twenty years after wolves were reintroduced in the Northern Rockies, many politicians would still love to see them eradicated, and hunters and ranchers are allowed to kill them by the hundreds. But the animals are not only surviving—they're thriving, and expanding their range at a steady clip. For the people who live on the wild edges of wolf country, their presence can be magical and maddening at once. [more inside]
Twenty years after wolves were reintroduced in the Northern Rockies, many politicians would still love to see them eradicated, and hunters and ranchers are allowed to kill them by the hundreds. But the animals are not only surviving—they're thriving, and expanding their range at a steady clip. For the people who live on the wild edges of wolf country, their presence can be magical and maddening at once. [more inside]
People are nowhere to be found
'The Cloud' and Other Dangerous Metaphors. What’s notable about dominant data metaphors is that they consistently compare data to naturally occurring physical resources. And just as the history of resource exploitation in America—from westward expansion through the Gold Rush, and beyond into modern-day debates about water and air rights—involves the appropriation of resources that belonged to someone else, online data collection policy treats personal information as a natural, inexhaustible good—ripe for exploitation in the name of economic growth and private gain.
It's enough to make you want to stop teaching kids poetry.
Our presence together ... is evidence that we all have screwed up.
In the Basement of the Ivory Tower. A 2008 article about a place where the dream of sending every American to college has an ugly encounter with reality.
Making himself a moot point
"The Solution to Pollution is Dilution"
You're Not Just Imagining Things
Pitchfork interviews Björk about the inspiration for and methods behind her newest album. Awesomeness ensues.
Crisis on Infinite Gauntlets
This is the thread about threads that dance across your screen
For your viewing pleasure: one music video made with sewing and embroidery tools, one music video made of sewing and embroidery tools.
The Burpo-Malarkey doctrine
"I did not die. I did not go to Heaven. I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to. They should read the Bible, which is enough."Alex Malarkey co-wrote a bestselling book about a near-death experience – and then last week admitted he made it up.
That's a damn fine cup of synth...and hot!
If David Lynch had made Twin Peaks back in 1984 instead of Dune, this might have been what the soundtrack would have sounded like.
How Harry Potter fans won a four-year fight against child slavery
Right before Christmas, Warner Bros. quietly gave “Harry Potter” fans what was, for some of them, a long-wished-for gift. In a letter to Andrew Slack, the founder of the Harry Potter Alliance, Joshua Berger, the company’s president for Harry Potter Global Franchise Development, announced, “By the end of 2015, and sooner when possible, all Harry Potter chocolate products sold at Warner Bros. outlets and through our licensed partners will be 100-percent UTZ or Fair Trade certified.”[more inside]
Gaming while Black
"Just because I sit here and say I haven't felt overt racism or harassment doesn't mean I don't know what it is and that I haven't experienced it elsewhere in my life, or that my mother didn't grow up in a world where there were colored drinking fountains," Harvey said. "This is stuff that happened and stuff that we think is relevant still today, on a lot of levels. And I think many people are very aware of this, a lot of gamers are very aware of this stuff in their daily lives. Games are a way of processing, a way of playing through an experience that is maybe more intense than you've ever felt it – you're sort of living in that avatar's skin. I guess, in a way, we're trying to put them in a skin they're maybe not used to, or maybe they would be interested to inhabit."Jessica Conditt looks at the realities of videogaming's treatment of race and is cautiously optimistic.
Robbie Rogers World Cup Qatar Russia
Russia and Qatar World Cups are 'insane' due to homophobia, says Robbie Rogers. Soccer/Football's first openly gay player, RR has things on his mind. Will Klinsmann come around? On Mefi Previously.
No! Don't make me talk to celebrities!
Legolas and Tauriel kept bursting in with their gymnastics routine
I Have Recut Peter Jackson’s Hobbit Trilogy Into A Single 4-Hour Film
Back in 2012, I had high hopes of adding The Hobbit to my annual Lord of the Rings marathon, but in its current bloated format, I simply cannot see that happening. So, over the weekend, I decided to condense all three installments... into a single 4-hour feature that more closely resembled Tolkien’s original novel. Well, okay, it’s closer to 4.5 hours, but those are some long-ass credits![more inside]
The estate we’re in: how working class people became the ‘problem’
Being held up as “beating the odds”, “done good”, or “escaped” does not make me happy. (slTheGrauniad)
Chronodex - the radial time management system
Chronodex is a personal time management system developed by Patrick Ng that naturally matches the clock. It's free! Here's the printable 2015(a) edition sized for Traveler's Notebooks [more inside]
Everything in its right place
SPCA Dogs are Smart
Almost as appealing as a nailclipper next to a plate of eggs
Get the doll
Asteroid 2004 BL86
Asteroid 2004 BL86 will safely pass about three times the distance to the moon on January 26. It will not be bright enough to view with an unaided eye; however, astronomy sites including Earthsky and Universe Today have instructions for amateur astronomers with suitable equipment. [more inside]
January 20
All This and Gargantua-2
The Venture Bros. return in a one hour special! "Join the Ventures--and pretty much everyone they've ever crossed paths with--as they rocket to the Gargantua-2 space station for an epic, hour-long adventure that will change the Ventureverse as we know it forever."
Bigger & Better
remembering past experiences to inform us on our present. 🍺
There'll be a hell of a Mardi Gras in heaven next month
It's time to say so long to legendary Mardi Gras Indian Big Chief Bo Dollis, who, for many years, led his Wild Magnolias through the streets of the Crescent City. Handa Wanda, Big Chief, Ho Na Nae and Jockomo Jockomo. Oops Upside Your Head [more inside]
The new male body
It’s ‘Brad Pitt in Fight Club’. That’s the body blokes ask for. Yesterday: Roided out bodybuilders. Today: V-lined ab-focused fat free men ready for their HD selfie. Bye bye Arnold. Hello Dan Osborne. One reporter spends three months in the gym " to find out what ripped-to-shit feels like." [more inside]
You Don't Say?
@YouDontSay
Duke student-athletes join forces with You Don't Say? campaign
Duke student-athletes join forces with You Don't Say? campaign
You Don’t Say? is a campaign founded by senior Daniel Kort and juniors Anuj Chhabra, Christie Lawrence and Jay Sullivan that aims to raise student awareness about the offensive nature of phrases and slurs used in everyday conversation through photographs shared using an online campaign. Starting Jan. 7, the group began to roll out its second online push, only this time instead of 17 students, the project featured 41 Duke student-athletes.[more inside]
“Sports are really integral to our campus culture, and with that comes a pretty big microphone around our athletic culture,” Kort said. “It’s easier to dismiss a message if it’s coming from a social justice-oriented group on campus…. By getting people who aren’t traditionally seen as the social justice kids on campus to stand up for this message, it carries a lot more weight. It’s also that these student-athletes care a lot about the issues.”
Penlings.
Oscar nominee Benedict Cumberbatch can't say the word penguin. (SLGrahamNorton)
suspended jaccuzzi, Gueuroz bridge
The length of the cables was absolutely critical, because the water does not forgive the slightest error, as it always flows to the lowest point, increasing the error and making the system unstable. The next challenge was to find a way to make the rappelling (abseiling) and climbing up the rope as easy as possible and absolutely safe, with at all moments two independent safety lines, well protected from the friction on the concrete bridge.
I ran against Rob Ford and suffered the consequences
Tonight I ask Congress to ... confirm Judge Anthony Kennedy to the Moon
State of the Union Machine allows you to mix previous State of the Union speeches from Obama's pre-State of the Union tour, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington in differing ratios to make something new, courtesy of the Sunlight Foundation.
Bloodborne, Miyazaki, and the lasting impact of the Souls series
“On the other hand, I see advantages to having a smaller team, a smaller, more conceptual project. Why do I say that? I get down to the details when it comes to direction — the story, the art and everything. I’m a pretty anal person. I tinker with every little thing. In five or 10 years, my guys aren’t going to want to work with me. At that point, maybe it will be smarter for me to work on my own little idea.” Hidetaka Miyazaki, the director of the Souls series of games, talks to the LA Times about his philosophy of design, and his future in games. The article references his upcoming project, a spiritual successor of the Souls series, Bloodborne. [more inside]
Lady Di and Dodi demise film, "Unlawful Killing"
Lawyers allegedly demanded 87 cuts to Keith Allen's film - about the death of Lady Diana, Dodi and Henry Paul - before it could be broadcast. So online - and specifically - here is probably the only place where you will get to see it. "Unlawful Killing" deals with the incident and the subsequent Operation Paget investigation in 2008. It alleges a good deal of foul play. [more inside]
Always Strive And Prosper
"You're in the penumbra of fear."
Terms of Service is a a graphic novella about privacy and surveillance in the Internet age, by Josh Neufeld and Michael Keller, and presented by Jazeera. It combines elements of oral history, opinion journalism, and diary comics. The comic also advertises Pulp, a free and open-source library for webcomic layouts, maintained by AJAM.
Shades of William Gibson
Removing Fish From a Surreal Abandoned Shopping Mall. Thousands of carp, tilapia and catfish will be relocated to less absurd settings by Bangkok officials.
The failure to reclaim the word "slut"
"For them it was an amazing feminist experience, but it didn’t last." Feminist blogger Jessica Valenti questions the attempt to turn "slut" into something positive:
Tanenbaum told me that, when women are in closed circle or close-knit community – like a protest with like-minded people, or among friends who understand the cheeky appropriation of the word – identifying as a “slut” can be empowering. But what inevitably happens, especially in today’s digital culture where revenge porn, stolen pictures and cyber harassment is the norm, is that “it always spills outwards.”[more inside]
The Nicaragua Canal
Land of opportunity – and fear – along route of Nicaragua’s giant new canal "In an era of breathtaking, earth-changing engineering projects, this has been billed as the biggest of them all. Three times as long and almost twice as deep as its rival in Panama, Nicaragua’s channel will require the removal of more than 4.5bn cubic metres of earth – enough to bury the entire island of Manhattan up to the 21st floor of the Empire State Building. It will also swamp the economy, society and environment of one of Latin America’s poorest and most sparsely populated countries. Senior officials compare the scale of change to that brought by the arrival of the first colonisers."
[tw: suicide]
A stranger e-mailed saying he planned to kill himself. What was I supposed to do?
What doesn't kill me should have tried harder.
Tumblr site Tober Ziegly mashes up Tumblr comments with stills from The West Wing to great effect.
The Sun has got its top on
RIP Page 3. There has been no formal announcement but it seems the long tradition of having a photograph of a topless woman on Page 3 of Rupert Murdoch's flagship British newspaper, The Sun, is no more. [more inside]
Song name haiku
Song name haiku Pop in an artist, and it will generate haiku based on their song titles. Reload for more. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
moontalk
An Innocuous Everyday Phrase Imbued With Sinister Meaning Due To Context
Rebuilding Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddhas
Plans are afoot to restore giant Buddhist symbols destroyed by the Taliban, but experts cannot agree on best way forward. [more inside]
Every X-Man Ever!
Every X-Man, X-Woman, X-Whatever, ever... A written and video-illustrated timeline of all X-Men since day one.
It's pronounced Gee-AW-guh not Gee-AH-guh
In 2001, the once-humble Geauga Lake Park in Aurora, Ohio was bought by Six Flags and transformed into one of the largest amusement parks in the world. Seven years later, it was gone.
5 Tragic Reasons Why the World's Largest Theme Park Stands Abandoned in Ohio
5 Tragic Reasons Why the World's Largest Theme Park Stands Abandoned in Ohio
LMGTFY
What happens when you type google.com into your browser and press enter? [I]nstead of the usual story, we're going to try to answer this question in as much detail as possible. No skipping out on anything.
Where is the Internet’s memory, the history of our time?
“Every time a light blinks, someone is uploading or downloading,” Kahle explains. Six hundred thousand people use the Wayback Machine every day, conducting two thousand searches a second. “You can see it.” He smiles as he watches. “They’re glowing books!” He waves his arms. “They glow when they’re being read!”The Cobweb: Jill Lepore on whether the internet can be archieved, the Wayback Machine, the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, the complications of attempting to put a time dimension on a two dimensional medium and the almost destruction of the footnote. Featuring a cameo by MeFi's favourite archivist, Jason Scott.
I bring you a Pankaj Mishra longread in The Guardian
After the Paris attacks: It’s time for a new Enlightenment We must move past the tired debate that pits the modern west against its backward other and recover the Enlightenment ideal of rigorous self-criticism
↑↑↓↓←→←→ B A
Face-Stabbing and Cop-Killing: Inside 2015's Most Controversial Video Game [VICE]
"Destructive Creations' Hatred has drawn plenty of criticism for the fact that its main character, a big hairy man, seems intent on killing innocent civilians for no particular reason."[more inside]
People have phenomenal capacity.
"What Obama would say at the State of the Union if he were being brutally honest": They do it because that's how the game works. They do it because the rules are you line up in front of the other team and then you hit them as hard as you can. They do it because, for one side to win, the other has to lose. And they do it because, if they don't do it, they're off the team. Football has no place for conscientious objectors. [more inside]
A Lovely Chat with Marilyn Manson
During the interview, Manson brought up the Doors before I did, calling Morrison “my whole inspiration” back when he first started writing poetry as a teenager. Later in life, Manson plugged into keyboardist Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger; the trio jammed on some Doors songs in 2012, giving Manson serious Lizard King vibes.
“They just went with me,” he said. “That’s what they did with Jim because he was chaos and they were the tornado, and they just had to go with it. They didn’t really have any choice.”
US v. Jeffrey Alexander Sterling
"The CIA would have [given] Iran the actual [nuclear bomb] already constructed for them, but didn't because it wouldn't have been credible for their Russian to have it." [more inside]
the Tesco Express where I’d wander round in a come-down haze
Deep Lab
Deep Lab is "a congress of cyberfeminist researchers, organized by STUDIO Fellow Addie Wagenknecht to examine how the themes of privacy, security, surveillance, anonymity, and large-scale data aggregation are problematized in the arts, culture and society."
The Documentary
The Lectures
The Book
The Documentary
The Lectures
The Book
I'm sure they'll let you reenroll once you're done saving the kingdom!
Cucumber Quest is a hilarious and endearing webcomic built out of affectionate parody of '90s Japanese RPGs, with a healthy dose of Kirby in the art style.
January 19
In your wildest schemes...
Australian comic artist Sam Wallman (previously) has released a scary/optimistic new piece that looks at Climate Change.
we will rest upon the ground and look at all the bugs we found
A Tasmanian artist is repainting, reclothing, and re-"homing" Bratz dolls. Underneath the heavy eye-makeup, high heels and porn-star pouts, the artist finds children. [more inside]
That's Not What Joe Strummer Had in Mind
"From the pictures and videos that accompany the NBC News and Buzzfeed stories, the crowd appears to have been predominantly white... which explains why they're described in the media as 'celebrating' rather than 'rioting'. But every time this happens – that is to say, every time sports fans, predominantly of the white variety, go on rampages after wining (or losing) various championships – many of us with a few gray hairs on our heads are reminded of the Clash's seminal punk anthem, 'White Riot,' which was released as a 7-inch single (that would be on vinyl, kids) in March 1977, and was later included on both the UK and the US versions of the band's debut album, The Clash." Whites Riot: That’s Not What Joe Strummer Had in Mind, by David Von Ebers (TwiB! / Valid magazine).
“finance is a practice oriented industry”
Paper Sculpture by Ito Wataru
Ito Wataru is a paper artist from Saitama, Japan, who graduated from Tokyo National University a few years ago. A Castle on the Ocean 海の上のお城 (2007) is the product of four years of work and has lights and a little paper train (which moves, but alas, no video). [more inside]
The trigonometry of relationsips. Who is responsible...?
Embodied Cognition
The Deep Mind of Demis Hassabis - "The big thing is what we call transfer learning. You've mastered one domain of things, how do you abstract that into something that's almost like a library of knowledge that you can now usefully apply in a new domain? That's the key to general knowledge. At the moment, we are good at processing perceptual information and then picking an action based on that. But when it goes to the next level, the concept level, nobody has been able to do that." (previously: 1,2) [more inside]
"Justice is Our Creed and the Land is Our Heritage"
#24 Get used to the bear behind you.
24 pieces of life advice from Werner Herzog (SLWH) Paul Cronin's book of conversations with filmmaker Werner Herzog is called Werner Herzog - A Guide for the Perplexed. On the back cover of the book, Herzog offers a list of advice for filmmakers that doubles as general purpose life advice.
MOM, an inflatable incubator, and winner of the 2014 James Dyson Award
The annual James Dyson Award is open to current and recent design engineering students. The winner this year is James Roberts with his inflatable incubator MOM. The device costs around £250 compared to £30,000 for modern incubators and could prevent up to 75% of fatalities in premature birth cases in the developing world.
How's your subway IQ?
It's 2015 and inequality looks like it's going to be here for a while
Oxfam's latest report ahead of the World Economics Forum in Davos says that "by next year, 1% of the world’s population will own more wealth than the other 99%." [more inside]
The most popular cuisine in Utah? Hawaiian.
You will come down too soon
A Mexican restaurant has started a Sunday brunch to expand its revenues beyond dinner. A Mercedes dealer, anticipating reduced demand, is prepared to emphasize repairs and sales of used cars. And people are cutting back at home, rethinking their vacation plans and cutting the hours of their housemaids and gardeners.
In Texas, they're hunkering down for the Oil Bust.
In Texas, they're hunkering down for the Oil Bust.
Solving the Web's Deepest Mystery
He was sitting on his bed, surreptitiously surfing the science and math board on 4chan, the notorious underground forum, when he came across a strange image that had appeared on the site three days earlier. It contained a message written in a thin white font against a black background. "Hello," it read. "We are looking for highly intelligent individuals. To find them, we have devised a test. There is a message hidden in this image. Find it, and it will lead you on the road to finding us. We look forward to meeting the few that will make it all the way through. Good luck." It was signed "3301." [more inside]
2015: The year /baph/ /b/reaks?
Gamergate documenter @a_man_in_black has written another article for BoingBoing, this time about /baphomet/ on 8chan: The Invasion Boards That Set Out To Ruin Lives.
Mefites with long memories might find some of the terminology that comes up familiar if they read this 2008 article by Julian Dibbell: Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World.
Meanwhile, /baph/ monitor and current bête noire @Cernowatch has put up yet another storify about why "Don't feed the trolls" is not a sustainable strategy for dealing with 8channers.
Mefites with long memories might find some of the terminology that comes up familiar if they read this 2008 article by Julian Dibbell: Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World.
Meanwhile, /baph/ monitor and current bête noire @Cernowatch has put up yet another storify about why "Don't feed the trolls" is not a sustainable strategy for dealing with 8channers.
"Would you like to play a game?"
Mario AI - "Mario's inner emotive states cause behavior-determining drives. For example, Mario will collect coins if he is hungry. Whereas, when he is curious, he will explore his environment and autonomously gather knowledge about items he does not know about yet."
if, however, the solution requires deep collaboration, EQ trumps IQ
Eyes on the exercise prize
You're Not Beautiful
Labour's Shadow Culture Minister Chris Bryant has said the art world must address lack of diversity “I am delighted that Eddie Redmayne won [a Golden Globe for best actor], but we can’t just have a culture dominated by Eddie Redmayne and James Blunt and their ilk,” James Blunt has replied. Bryant has replied in turn. The dog from Downtown barks up.
Stephen Hawking is not part of the solution, he is part of the problem.
The equations on the blackboard may be the problem. Mathematics, the language of science, may have misled the scientists. “The idea,” says physicist Lee Smolin, “that the truth about nature can be wrestled from pure thought through mathematics is overdone… The idea that mathematics is prophetic and that mathematical structure and beauty are a clue to how nature ultimately works is just wrong.” [more inside]
“Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”
“Murakami-san no tokoro” or “Mr. Murakami’s place”: [Japanese] an agony uncle column by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. [more inside]
Sort
In this essay I argue that an important recent development in the struggle to represent algorithms is that computer algorithms now have their own public relations. That is, they have both a public-facing identity and new promotional discourses that depict them as efficient, valuable, powerful, and objective. It is vital that we understand how the algorithms that dominate our experience operate upon us. Yet commercial companies -a recent phenomenon- now systematically manage our image of algorithms and the information we receive about them. Algorithms themselves, rather than just the companies that operate them, have become the subject of mass marketing claims. To make this clear, I analyze a variety of visual and multimedia depictions of algorithms. I begin by reviewing a variety of historical and contemporary attempts to represent algorithms for novices in educational settings, and then I compare these to recent commercial depictions. I will conclude with a critique of current trends and a call for a counter-visuality that can resist them.
"This is whataboutery with a TARDIS"
It was with a heavy heart and no small amount of anger that I decided it was necessary to write a public refutation of the insidious myth that the Irish were once chattel slaves in the British colonies. The subject of this myth is not an issue in academic circles, for there is unanimous agreement, based on overwhelming evidence, that the Irish were never subjected to perpetual, hereditary slavery in the colonies, based on notions of ‘race’. Unfortunately this is not the case in the public domain and the ‘Irish slaves’ myth has been shared so frequently online that it has gone viral.For OpenDemocracy, Laim Hogan writes a short article on the myth of Irish slavery, extracted from his larger essay 'The myth of “Irish slaves” in the colonies'. This has become relevant again in the wake of Ferguson as white supremacists and others use it to disparage and minimise African-American history and suffering: "the Irish don't ask for reparations and they were slaves".
January 18
"Something different? What can we do different? Okay..."
Insane first person view skiing, rules be damned
Candide Thovex in "One of those days 2" a 5min first-person GoPro video of a perfect day at the Val Blanc, France resort.
Needs More Flamadiddle.
Dave King, drummer for the avant jazz trio The Bad Plus has posted a series of videos on YouTube that are, arguably, the best instructional music videos ever attempted. The series is entitled Rational Funk and will reward serious attention. This link is for the second video in the series of six, and concerns itself with the art of the one handed roll (think one hand clapping). If you are not a drummer you should watch these anyway because they are f***ing hilarious.
"Adobe stepped in like an incompetent quango to administer"
First Donut of the Night
Women Slash Gay Men
Body of Knowledge: New Machine Can See Bones, Organs in Stunning Detail
"Computed Tomography (CT) scanners ... use a narrow beam of X-rays processed by a computer to create slices of the body and assemble them into detailed 3D images." In 2013, GE introduced a line of fast CT scanners called Revolution CT. West Kendall Baptist Hospital in Florida recently concluded a six-month clinical trial using the new machines. Posted on a GE blog are incredibly detailed high-resolution images of blood vessels, soft tissue, organs, and bones obtained from the Revolution CT scanners.
The Bombay Royale, music for daring Bollywood-style adventures
Snakes! Bullets! Super secret agents! Bandits! Monkeys and tigers! Espionage and romance! Are you excited yet? Are you on the edge of your seat? Does this sound like a movie to you? Ah, these are the recurring themes in some of classic Bollywood’s greatest cinematic extravaganzas, where acting and plot took a backseat to some of the craziest, over-the-top song and dance scenes ever committed to celluloid. Enter The Bombay Royale, a local 11-piece musical powerhouse who have taken the themes and soundtracks from these films and have infused them with all the colour, production and energy one would expect from a four-plus hour Bollywood movie. The Bombay Royale had first set down to do strictly covers from the gilded ‘60s era of Bollywood, but soon evolved into writing their own material.Sit down with Parvyn Kaur Singh AKA "The Mysterious Lady," one of the singers of the band, for an introduction to the cast of characters behind the albums You Me Bullets Love (Soundcloud; track-by-track description with musical director and saxophonist Andy Williamson, AKA "The Skipper") and The Island of Dr. Electrico (Soundcloud; a review of the Bollywood inspired surf / disco / funk album). [more inside]
The Blues of Arabia: The history of sawt al-khaleej
If you climb into a taxi in Doha, capital of Qatar, and Arab music is on the driver’s radio, the station may well be 99.0, Sawt al-Khaleej, one of the most popular and powerful radio and digital streaming broadcast networks in the region. Based in Doha, its name translates to “Voice of the Gulf”—a fitting name for a network that seeks to appeal to a broad, Arabic-speaking audience with pan-Arab popular music up and down the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, from Kuwait to Oman. [more inside]
"Well, I dunno. You have a crazy-ass job, sir."
The Alabama legislature has introduced a unique dimension to the debate over reproductive rights in the United States: the allocation of state funds to provide lawyers to fetuses in abortion cases involving minors seeking an exemption from parental notification laws. The appointment of fetal guardians ad litem is enumerated in House bill HB 494, which went into effect on July 1, 2014.
Last week, Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams -- recently named one of TIME's 12 New Faces of Black Leadership -- sat down to interview one of the lawyers, Montgomery civil rights attorney Julian McPhillips, about some of the ramifications of HB 494: The Unborn Ultimatum. [more inside]
Last week, Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams -- recently named one of TIME's 12 New Faces of Black Leadership -- sat down to interview one of the lawyers, Montgomery civil rights attorney Julian McPhillips, about some of the ramifications of HB 494: The Unborn Ultimatum. [more inside]
In Praise of Sweet Dee
"I think a lot of men are scared to act opposite a woman who is as funny as they are, and who will give them a run for their money for being the funniest person in that project,” he says. “And I think a lot of times she doesn’t get cast in things because she’s so funny, and I think that’s fucked up.”Kaitlin Olson And The Perils Of Being A (Funny) Woman In Hollywood [more inside]
Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood
In honor of Winnie-the-Pooh Day, here is a webpage with horrible formatting but lots of great photos of Christopher Robin, and an old CNN story about Ashdown Forest.
I drink your milkshake
The Digital Arms Race: NSA Preps America for Future Battle.
New Snowden documents show that the NSA and its allies are laughing at the rest of the world.
New Snowden documents show that the NSA and its allies are laughing at the rest of the world.
we have inherited a ring of wolves around a door covered only by a quilt
No-man's Land. (Fear, Racism, and the Historically Troubling Attitude of America's Pioneers)
DISCUSSED: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Kansas, Bonnets, “A Great Many Colored People,” Copper Gutters, Martin Luther King Jr., People Who Know Nothing about Gangs, Scalping, South Africa, Unprovoked Stabbing Sprees, Alarming Mass Pathologies, Chicago, Haunted Hot Dog Factories, Gangrene, Creatures from the Black Lagoon, Tree Saws, Headless Torsos, Quilts, Cheerleaders, Pet Grooming Stores, God
Viper
Buried deep within a labyrinthine maze of broken links, hastily formatted webpages, Youtube videos with less than 5,000 views, there is transcendent internet magic just waiting for someone stumble onto it and share it with the world.
Enter Viper and “You’ll Cowards Don’t Even Smoke Crack,” which the Chicago Reader highlighted last week both for its idiosyncratic sonics and creative approach to grammar. It’s a title that demands attention but it’s also a hell of a trip, a hypnotic anchor oozing with ominous, sluggish menace via Viper’s tar pit bubble of a voice and that glitchy, needle-stuck-on-the-record “beat.”
Road trip
Yini Bo by French band / collective Le Peuple de l'Herbe (SLYT)
Pictures of decay and ruin
Runs smiling face infinitely looped
We Know How You Feel Computers are learning to read emotion, and the business world can’t wait.
January 17
NEON GLITCHY PIXART MADNESS
It's gloriously incomprehensible and very Japanese, but still: BUGGG, a game, or rather several games. (Requires Unity) [more inside]
"A fetishized nostalgia for the 1970s and early '80s"
They Say Art Is Dead in New York. They're Wrong. – Alan Feuer, NYT (December 2014):
Somehow, in the last few years, it has become an article of faith that New York has lost its artistic spirit, that the city's long run as a capital of culture is over. After all (or so the argument goes), foreign oligarchs and hedge-fund traders have bought up all the real estate, chased away the artists and turned the bohemia that once ran east from Chumley's clear across the Williamsburg Bridge into a soulless playground of money.
Last year, the foremost proponent of this doomsday theory was the rock star David Byrne, who complained in The Guardian that artists, as a species, had been priced out of New York. This year, others joined him. The novelist Zadie Smith lamented in October, in The New York Review of Books, that the city's avant-garde had all but disappeared. The musician Moby wrote a comparable essay in February, describing how creative types are fleeing New York and referring to his former home, accurately but narrowly, as "the city of money." Just a couple of weeks ago, Robert Elmes, the founder of the Galápagos Art Space in Brooklyn, declared the indigenous "creative ecosystem" was in crisis — so, naturally, he was moving to Detroit.
goin' jukin' tonight
LAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI JUKES is Robert Mugge's 86-minute film from 2002, focussing on the juke joint tradition in Mississippi, with special emphasis on Jackson's Subway Lounge and Clarksdale's Ground Zero Blues Club.
"Is this what you want? he asked, and I said yes, so..."
He Took His Skin Off For Me. "The story of a man who takes his skin off for his girlfriend, and why it probably wasn't the best idea..." Based on the short story by Maria Hummer. [more inside]
"the pull of sentimentality away from reality’s hardness"
Lyrical Extinction
Wild Ones Live is an arresting reading accompanied by music, a collaboration performed as part of a live magazine by author Jon Mooallem, a science and nature writer whose book Wild Ones ruminates on the strange, ignorant, hopeful and poignant ways humans imagine other animals, and the musical project Black Prairie. Listen at your desk if you must, but if you can, pop in your earbuds and go outside for a long walk while you take it all in. [more inside]
"...we are alive and they are not."
'Are we becoming too reliant on computers?' by Nicholas Carr [The Guardian]
Freak Like Me
Empowered by cheap car insurance, Dave lets it all hang out. (Single Link Brit Ad YouTube)
Words of the Year of the World
Were you dismayed at the lameness of "vape" and "culture" being named by Oxford and Merrian-Webster (respectively) as the 2014 words of the year? Are you wondering what words English should steal from other languages? Mental Floss has you covered with its roundup of 13(ish) words of the year from other countries. [more inside]
Alt Animation
From The Adventures of Prince Achmed to The Lego Movie, check out this list of Non-Disney, Non-Pixar and Non-Studio Ghibli Animated Films. [more inside]
"in the old-world timber beam there may be lurking some treacherous knot
Michael Green, a Canadian architect responsible for the Wood Innovation and Design Centre at UNBC presents The Case For Tall Wood Buildings [PDF]. He also gave a TED Talk: Why We Should Build Wooden Skyscrapers (transcript) [more inside]
A few ways to take 20 minutes a day for a better you
Despite the hyperbolic title Scientists recommend 20-minute daily walk to avoid premature death, The Guardian has a good summary on the study that looked at 334,161 European men and women over a mean follow-up time of 12.4 years, and comments from Study leader Prof Ulf Ekelund. 20 minutes is a common time period when it comes to recommendations for better health, from the suggestion to stand up for 2 minutes every 20 minutes for those who are sedentary much of the day, to exercising your eyes by looking 20 feet away for 20 seconds for every 20 minutes you spend reading a book or computer screen. If you're looking for some mental well-being from a cleaner home, Apartment Therapy has a plan for cleaning your house in 20 minutes a day for 30 days. For something more strenuous, there are a number of 20 minute workouts, from Men's Fitness, Fitness Magazine, Shape, and Military.com.
Karl Lagerfeld's Muse: Brad.
The Jet Set Life of Karl Lagerfeld’s Favorite Male Model
He let the thought linger. “There’s no other male model in the history of the world doing these kinds of things,” he said. “I’m not bragging or anything, it just is what it is.”
Two great films about 1980's youth counter culture in Europe
We are the best (2013) is a Swedish film set in 1980's Stockholm, about three young punk girls who form a band (mainly to play a song dedicated to their gym teacher called "Hate the Sport"). It's fairly lighthearted, but there are some deeply poignant moments that really capture what it's like to be that 13 year old girl with the short hair and all the usual insecurities, finding solace in friends, music, and giving the finger to mainstream society.
This is England (2006) is another counter-culture-coming of age film, about a group of skinheads in England, c. 1983. This is a much heavier film, exploring serious issues of race, gender, social class, family relationships, and how these tensions eventually lead to the adoption of skinhead culture by white nationalists. All of this is set to an awesome soundtrack featuring the likes of Toots and the Maytals, The Specials, Jimmy Cliff, and Soft Cell.
Feta than ever
The second annual Big Block of Cheese day (previously) will take place on Wednesday, January 21st, using the hashtag #AskTheWH.
The festival of Sant’Antonio
She's out back counting stars
Blooming Zoetrope Sculptures
"When the sculptures are spun at just the right frequency under a strobe light, a rather magical effect occurs: the sculptures seem to be animated or alive!"
These 3D printed sculptures were designed by artist, inventor, and Stanford design lecturer John Edmark using Fibonacci's sequence to determine the placement of the appendages. They appear animated when their rotation speed is synchronized to a strobe so that one flash occurs every time the sculpture turns 137.5º - though in the video above, the camera was set to a very short shutter speed (1/4000 sec) to achieve the effect without using a strobe. Here's a clip of just one sculpture with the strobe going.
These 3D printed sculptures were designed by artist, inventor, and Stanford design lecturer John Edmark using Fibonacci's sequence to determine the placement of the appendages. They appear animated when their rotation speed is synchronized to a strobe so that one flash occurs every time the sculpture turns 137.5º - though in the video above, the camera was set to a very short shutter speed (1/4000 sec) to achieve the effect without using a strobe. Here's a clip of just one sculpture with the strobe going.
Homocentric Spheres
What Eudoxus and Aristotle thought about planetary motion. You'd think there would be nice animated illustrations of this stuff on the Web somewhere, but I didn't manage to find any, so I made my own.
Twang!
If you still think Saturday morning is a good time for cartoons, enjoy The Son of 666, a short but sweet clip by animator Vivienne Medrano. It concerns banjos, fiddles, and evil.
What do you think of machines that think?
'We should be as important as Oasis or Blur'
The Prodigy have a new album, The Day Is My Enemy, out soon. Interview in the Guardian. Nasty [more inside]
Enter The (4-year-old) Dragon
Friends. Family. Purpose. Burritos.
A subtle thesis on the art of not giving a fuck. And conversely saving those fucks for the things that matter.
Veni, Veni Emmanuel
The Gesualdo Six is a new group of young undergraduates and recent graduates from Cambridge who specialise in singing renaissance polyphony. Hear them sing Veni, Veni Emmanuel, a traditional carol arranged by Philip Lawson.
Fare Thee Well
"Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of Grateful Dead" at Chicago’s Soldier Field on July 3rd, 4th, and 5th, 2015. "To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Grateful Dead, the four original members — Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, and Bob Weir — will reunite at Chicago's Soldier Field, nearly 20 years to the day of the last Grateful Dead concert, which took place at the same venue. 'Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of Grateful Dead' will occur over three nights on July 3, 4, and 5, 2015, marking the original members' last-ever performance together. The band will be joined by Trey Anastasio (guitar), Jeff Chimenti (keyboards), and Bruce Hornsby (piano). The group will perform two sets of music each night." Jerry Garcia's daughter Trixie Garcia announced the shows. [more inside]
That Annie should magically combine meekness and moxie is so important.
The Teflon Kid: How ANNIE enables apathy about inequality.
Little Orphan Annie on going to public school for free (November 8, 1935 comic strip):
"Free!" Hun~ Nothin' is free -- It all costs somebody-- Too many people are livin' "free" off o' other people -- I'll keep trying to earn my way. [more inside]
Little Orphan Annie on going to public school for free (November 8, 1935 comic strip):
"Free!" Hun~ Nothin' is free -- It all costs somebody-- Too many people are livin' "free" off o' other people -- I'll keep trying to earn my way. [more inside]
"A long torture trip was being prepared..."
Extracts of Mohamedou Ould Slahi's Guantanamo diary are read by Stephen Fry, Colin Firth and others as part of the Guardian's Guantanamo Diary series.
Previously on Metafilter. [more inside]
January 16
Photos- The 1940s, Detroit
Detroit in the '40s, thriving industry (note: some photos of racial conflict)
Katie Queen of Tennessee
This video of The Apache Relay song Katie Queen of Tennessee is great - kids from the Nashville Dance Center dancing their hearts out while the band plays a sweet country song in a 19th-century barn owned by Vince Gill and Amy Grant. And the kids aren't even dancing to the song.
Sad drone on ground
Canciones De Mi Padre
Linda Ronstadt - Canciones De Mi Padre Complete Concert (YouTube) "Entire performance of Canciones De Mi Padre, Spanish for Songs Of My Father. During Linda Ronstadt's Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony on April 10, 2014, Glenn Frey of The Eagles speech mentioned the album is the biggest non-English language seller in American record history. Linda Ronstadt's 1987 album has been RIAA certified Double-Platinum with over 10 million copies sold worldwide. Linda Ronstadt won the Grammy Award for Best Mexican/Mexican-American Album at the 31st Grammy Awards." [more inside]
A Sticky Wicket
It's summer in Australia and that can only mean one thing: lots and lots of cricket! (Some previous discussions of cricket on Metafilter.) Cricket has long had a reputation as a "gentlemanly game", which quietly ignores the increasing popularity of women's cricket that has existed since 1745. Times change and some substantial technology is now being used to assist the umpires and referees. As the sport becomes more professional and attracts more money, controversy is increasing in these less genteel times. However, there is now one great ethical dilemma facing cricketers: should the batter voluntarily walk (dismiss themselves) when they know they are out, even if the umpire fails to give them out? [more inside]
U.S. Supreme Court to rule on same-sex marriage
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear cases on same-sex marriage. The focus of the Court’s review will be a decision issued in early November by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which upheld bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The Court will rule on the power of U.S. states to ban same-sex marriages or refuse to recognize such marriages when performed in another state. Hearings will likely take place in April, and a final ruling is expected in late June. [more inside]
“I have great faith in fools - self-confidence my friends will call it.”
On Edgar Allan Poe by Marilynne Robinson [New York Review of Books]
"Edgar Allan Poe was and is a turbulence, an anomaly among the major American writers of his period, an anomaly to this day. He both amazed and antagonized his contemporaries, who could not dismiss him from the first rank of writers, though many felt his work to be morally questionable and in dubious taste, and though he scourged them in print regularly in the course of producing a body of criticism that is sometimes flatly vindictive and often brilliant.
Family Recipe
Isabella Rossellini's daughter Elettra has a witty, attractive food/recipe blog where she shares a customizable pasta dish her grandfather, the iconic director Roberto Rossellini, used to make.
Paddle Boarding Among Icebergs in Lake Michigan
Eric Holder (mostly) ends Federal asset forfeiture
The Justice and Treasury Departments no longer authorize local police to take people's cash, cars, and homes without evidence of a crime. Maybe police will do that less then! Previously: they've been doing that a lot.
MORTDECAI IS COMING
News of a late Friday
In the 21st century, it almost goes without saying the past year was the hottest year on record. But it's worth mentioning 2014 was the hottest ever recorded, according to NASA and NOAA who independently confirmed. Drum roll: it was the 38th consecutive year of above-average temperatures. 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000. Nobody born since 1976 has experienced a colder-than-average year on Earth. The coldest spot on Earth during 2014 (on average) was the eastern half of the United States. The hottest on average was most of Europe. British wine growers rejoice. [more inside]
Another type of pole dancing
The average fit male in the United States can do eight pull-ups. The average fit female can do one. For this woman, numbers are kind of beside the point.
#BossWitch
Hermione Granger and the Goddamn Patriarchy. (slBuzzfeed)
That was close. We almost passed the Bechdel Test.
How to write an Oscar-nominated movie, 2015 edition by Alexandra Petri.
We let the crazy flag fly here at House Crazy
House Crazy is a blog about weird and/or beautiful houses, like this "bizarre house-like thing in the [California] desert", this obnoxiously opulent ski chalet or thismagical San Francisco Victorian. There are also interesting articles on crime scene houses like the the House at Hex Hollow and the house where Sharon Tate was murdered.
I. M. Poster
A picture is worth a thousand calories
The music of Kiasmos curls itself around you, snug as a glove
If a band opened their set saying they were going to wake people up with techno music, you would probably not expect the musicians to be a BAFTA-award winning modern classical composer and a member from an electronic pop/dance group, but that's how Kiasmos introduced their music during Iceland Airwaves/KEXPort in Reykjavík. If you like what you hear there, here are a few more tracks on Grooveshark, and read on for more on the members of Kiasmos, Ólafur Arnalds and Janus Rasmussen. [more inside]
Someone spent a lot of time thinking about this.
But his favourite game is Scrabble, so what does he know
The game ends in nuclear war only about 5 percent of the time. That’s a good thing. It gives Ananda Gupta faith in humanity.Twilight Struggle is the best board game in the world (and Ananda Gupta is its designer) and is all about replaying the Cold War. The worst games? Tic-tac-toe, Snakes and Ladders, Candy Land, The Game of Life and Monopoly, according to Oliver Roeder and based on ratings taking from BoardGameGeek. (Twilight Struggle previously.)
Who is Dread Pirate Roberts?
The trial of supposed Silk Road chief Ross Ulbricht is now underway. His defense rests on the claim that while Ulbricht did found Silk Road as an experiment, he relinquished control a number of years ago and is now the "fall guy" for those who were truly in charge. According to Ulbricht's defense, he was not Dread Pirate Roberts, and that there may be a number of other people who were. One of those possible operators? According to a DHS agent who took the stand yesterday, it could have been Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès.
You look good, girl
Bea A Day
Mike Denison made Bea Arthur art every day for a year. He is now working on #BettyADay, art inspired by Betty White
Flavorstone Blue
Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?
From guilty pleasure to Emmy Awards: The delightfully weird history of Lifetime movies
New York: A Documentary Film
The much esteemed eight-part history of New York City "New York: A Documentary Film" is available. (approximate length 17 hrs. 30 min.) [more inside]
dating while autistic
Idle vapourings of a mind diseased
Some corner of a foreign planet
Beagle probe found on the surface of Mars 12 years after contact was lost with the probe on its descent it has been spotted by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter [more inside]
Stories as agents of personal transformation
recently on Aeon: not only do stories shape our thought processes in many ways similar to lived experience, they may also strengthen empathy as readers map the narratives of authors.
January 15
Four Translations of Dante’s Inferno
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura che la diritta via era smarrita Zappulla: Halfway along the journey of our life, Ciardi: Midway in our life’s journey I went astray Mandelbaum: When I had journeyed half of our life’s way, Hollander: At the midpoint in the journey of our life[more inside]
ACCESS FLASH
Gridman is an animated short created by Studio Trigger (Previously on Metafilter for Little Witch Academia) as a giant love letter to tokusatsu shows, as part of Japan Animator Expo. [more inside]
Between denying my conscience and facing excommunication
Seven months after being initially notified of a pending disciplinary council (see previously), John Dehlin, founder of Mormon Stories Podcast, now faces discipline from the LDS church on charges of apostasy. [more inside]
Stupid Sexy Four-armed Gorilla Dragon!
This video showcases a mod for Mortal Kombat Komplete that switches character animations. Specifically, it switches all of the fatality animations of the female characters, and gives them to the burly, manly main bosses of the game. Not work safe for gore and pole-dancing gorilla dragons.
Flashbang Grenades
Hotter Than Lava: Every day, cops toss dangerous military-style grenades during raids, with little oversight and horrifying results. [Via]
Green Bay's Board-Game Obsession
“At first we’re like, ‘What the hell is this? Brick? Wool? What kind of game is this?’” said starting center Corey Linsley. But that quickly faded. “We are completely addicted to it, we play it whenever we can,” said tight end Justin Perillo.
Thanks, Common Core.
Thanks, Common Core. Physics blogger Chad Orzel writes about the way kids do math now. (Spoiler: he likes it.) [more inside]
You know how the Solar System works, right? Same thing with King.
Den of Geek:
"If Warner Bros. were smart, they'd mine the King Universe for that much-needed franchise. Apart from fun little easter eggs here and there, the films have never been acknowledged as part of a larger universe. Yet this universe has one of the most coherent backbones ever known in fiction. World-building wouldn't be difficult at all. Just look at how all of this stuff connects..." Previously: "That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery." [spoiler alert for both links]
Why do employers care about grades and diplomas?
The blind tyranny of low expectations
Daniel Kish is blind. He navigates the world without a cane; he climbs trees; he even rides a bicycle. NPR's new show/podcast Invisibiilia took over This American Life for the episode Batman, which explores how, perhaps, it is society's expectations about blindness which limits their ability to see. Transcript is available, but listening is the best way to really get the full impact. [more inside]
"...not a reliable way for a user to express their desire..."
Late last year, a number of outlets reported that both AT&T and Verizon Wireless were injecting customer-identifiable, permanent tracking cookies into web requests. After this activity was made public, AT&T ceased injecting the cookies, claiming that they were only testing the practice. Verizon, however, did not.
Now, computer scientist and lawyer Jonathan Mayer at Stanford University has reported that Verizon's advertising partner The Turn is using these super cookies to re-instate tracking cookies after a user clears their browser cache. [more inside]
A sudden urge overtakes her to help mankind.
Be My Eyes is an app which connects blind people needing assistance with a sighted person who can help them by providing a description of what they're seeing. You can be Amelie!
When proto-Russians met a bear, a dessert was born
In 1952, a group of Belgian-Jewish investors founded the first modern popsicle factory in Israel. They called their brand artik, a corruption of the French word for the frozen Arctic. (Hebrew doesn’t abide with consonants placed in a row without a vowel between them, thus the ‘c’ had to go.) (Cache for the subscription-free). [more inside]
Educational equity, propinquity and school choice
New Study Reveals Much About How Parents Really Choose Schools (perhaps) Link from NPR. For more discerning readers the Executive Summary from the Educational Research Association associated with Tulane is linked. New Orleans as a laboratory for School Choice in process.
Are there no workhouses?
Steve Albini's cooking blog
Steve Albini is many things: a recording engineer, a guitarist and singer, a curmudgeon. He's also a surprisingly talented food blogger. [more inside]
DEEDS NOT WORDS
"Look around Endell Street in Holborn today and you could be forgiven for thinking it just an average London street. But one hundred years ago this year, this non-descript spot just off of Shaftesbury avenue was home to an important, and now near-forgotten, part of British history – the Endell Street Military Hospital, the first British Army hospital staffed, and managed, entirely by women.”In WW1 Dr Flora Murray and Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson (daughter of the first Englishwoman to qualify as a physician) were determined to show that there was a place in military medicine for women. This is the story of the Women’s Hospital Corps and the now-forgotten pioneering London hospital they founded.
Ballard's stance is that it takes humans to connect humans, not machines
The Hello Machine is a corporate documentary from AT&T that documents the construction of the 1ESS automatic telephone switching system.
When Walmart Leaves
The Ghost Stores of Walmart. "The biggest downside to a Walmart opening up in your community is that after all the protests, the negotiations, and, almost inevitably, the acceptance, the retail giant might just break its lease, pack up shop, and move a mile down the road. The process starts all over again, and Walmart’s giant, hard-won original behemoth of a structure sits abandoned, looming over its increasingly frustrated neighbours."
The Code We Can’t Control
David Auerbach for Slate discusses the dangers of the algorithm-driven data collection and organization of Big Data in a review for law professor Frank Pasquale's book on the subject, The Black-Box Society. [more inside]
It's expensive to be poor.
What do poor people buy that no one else does? [askreddit post]
The 'Malware' page sure is popular
The "other" pipeline: hijacking the 'public interest'
How do we, the public, decide what's in the public interest? Specifically, in the context of eminent domain: In 2005, in Kelo v. City of New London, the concept of eminent domain, or taking of private property to benefit public interest, was expanded to allow governments to take private property and turn it over to private commercial interests, if deemed to benefit the public. Although some states later passed legislation designed to curb abuses of this power, the state of Virginia is now taking it to the next level. [more inside]
I yam what I yam what I yam what I yam what I yam what I yam what I yam…
Jim, I'm a doctor, not a designer
Endless self promotion to sell a few hundred more copies
A lot of people think that once you publish a book, that’s it – you go on publishing books. The publishing world opens its arms to you and welcomes every book like a precious squealing babe. The reality is that publishing your first book is when the real work starts. All that time you spent leveling up your craft, on dealing with rejection, on editing and revision: that was just a warm up for the crushing reality of life day-in, day-out as a published author.Kameron Hurley on the realities of being a critically acclaimed science fiction writer.
Release of the Oldest Film of Football Footage in Existence
Recently released into the public domain - the oldest known football footage in existence.
The 45 second film is of a First Division match between Blackburn Rovers and West Bromwich Albion at Ewood Park, which took place on the 24th September 1898. [more inside]
That is *not* Harley Quinn. Harley Quinn wears clothes.
What Taking My Daughter to a Comic Book Store Taught Me “All their…” …and her voice dropped to a whisper… “boobies are hanging out, Dad."
January 14
“Parenthood is an exercise in risk management”
It was a one-mile walk home from a Silver Spring park on Georgia Avenue on a Saturday afternoon. But what the parents saw as a moment of independence for their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, they say authorities viewed much differently. [more inside]
No one fights like Gaston, debates little tykes like Gaston
It's a lot of work defending the title of manliest man in town. There are the stubborn children who don't concede when they've lost a verbal bout, and that time a tricky eleven-year old girl who bested you at arm wrestling. But every now and again, Gaston gets the chance to shine. After all, he has biceps to spare.
Starivores
I seldom use it myself, sir. It promotes rust.
Robert Kinoshita, the production designer and art director who created Forbidden Planet's Robby the Robot and Lost In Space's B-9 Environmental Control Robot [previously], has passed away at the age of 100.
The Dukes of Hazzard
This project analyzes The Dukes of Hazzard as a representation of the contemporary white southern working class and its validity, and how this characterization fed the appetites of both Southerners and non-Southerners alike in the early 1980s. [more inside]
“Words are all we have.” ― Samuel Beckett
“Modern Literature Collection: The First 50 Years: is a digital exhibit to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Modern Literature Collection (MLC), part of the Special Collections in the Washington University Libraries. The digital exhibit is a companion to the onsite exhibit in Olin Library, on display November 2014 – March 2015, and contains everything available onsite, and much more. We hope that through these digitized materials you will enjoy exploring the history of the MLC, as well as the rich contents of some of the writers’ archives." [more inside]
Whipping Boy
A writer spends forty years looking for his bully. Why? Allen Kurzweil's book "Whipping Boy: The Forty-Year Search for My Twelve-Year-Old Bully" will be released next week. A short piece on a bizarre aspect of the fraud of Prince Robert and the Badische Trust Consortium, for which Viana, the object of Kurzweil's search, was a shill: “I Dub Thee Sir Sammy."
All hail the complicated woman: the 2015 Golden Globes
"As Maggie Gyllenhaal put it in accepting an award for her performance in 'The Honorable Woman': 'What I see, actually, are women who are sometimes powerful and sometimes not, sometimes sexy, sometimes not, sometimes honorable, sometimes not. And what I think is new is the wealth of roles for actual women in television and in film.'" The 'strong female character' is dead. All hail the complicated woman., by Alyssa Rosenberg for The Washington Post. [more inside]
2001: The Director's Cut (different director)
Steven Soderbergh decided to re-cut 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now it's only 110 minutes.
Trial by Ebola
When Ebola reached America, arriving in Dallas on September 20, the city had no real plan to handle the outbreak. Nor, it appeared, did the federal government. As epidemiologist Wendy Chung, county judge Clay Jenkins, and other local officials quickly realized, they were largely on their own. Bryan Burrough has the untold story of their heroic response.
Being Buddhist, Being Gay — George Takei
When the Supreme Court of the State of California ruled for marriage equality in 2008, we seized the opportunity. Having founded the Japanese American National Museum (I’m still a trustee on the Board there), we wanted to have our wedding there, in the “Democracy Forum” building. It was, after all, democracy that made our formal union possible. And Brad too had embraced Buddhism by now, so it could be a Buddhist wedding. We chose Rev. Briones of the Nishi Hongwanji Temple to be our officiant because he personifies Buddhism’s diversity, being that he’s a Mexican American Buddhist minister.[more inside]
He's not Latverian, for one thing
Zombie Blue
Parkour vs zombies short film to promote a forthcoming video game Dying Light (slightly NSFW)
End of Empire. End of Days. End of Everything.
Since the controversial 2010 takeover of the British company Cadbury, by the makers of processed cheese slices Kraft, consumers of chocolate have been dismayed at the many changes brought in by the new owners. But the breaking point of many has been reached as the recipe for Cadbury Creme Eggs in the UK is changed, replacing dairy milk chocolate with standard cocoa mix chocolate. To add insult to culinary injury, Mondelez International, owned by Kraft Foods, is also introducing five eggs in a pack instead of three and six-packs. The opinions of actors and wallpaper designers. [more inside]
This Girl Can
"It's a celebration of active women up and down the country who are doing their thing no matter how well they do it, how they look or even how red their face gets." Aiming to inspire more women to be active without fear of judgment, the This Girl Can campaign features British women of different ages and sizes working out, getting sweaty, and enjoying it.
A British moon on a British stick!
Comedian Al Murray has decided to stand in the UK General Election against Nigel Farage, leader of right-wing, populist UKIP. His initial appeal to the people of South Thanet is here. [more inside]
No Pentagons
Imperfect Congruence - It is a curious fact that no edge-to-edge regular polygon tiling of the plane can include a pentagon ... This website explains the basic mathematics of a particular class of tilings of the plane, those involving regular polygons such as triangles or hexagons. As will be shown, certain combinations of regular polygons cannot be extended to a full tiling of the plane without involving additional shapes, such as rhombs. The site contains some commentary on Renaissance research on this subject carried out by two renowned figures, the mathematician-astronomer Johannes Kepler and the artist Albrecht Dürer. [more inside]
Broad Fucking City
“I think what we are doing differently is we never try to force emotional turns or aim to shock anyone. If you feel for Abbi and Ilana, it’s because they remind you of people you know.” - Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson talk about Broad City, which returns tonight with a new season.
a quiescently frozen confection
Frank was just a boy in 1905 in Oakland, California, when one night he accidentally left a glass – filled with water, powdered soda mix and a wooden stick for stirring – outside overnight. When young Frank found the glass in the morning, the soda mixture was frozen solid, so he ran the glass under hot water and removed the ice pop using the stick as a handle. Frank knew he had a great idea on his hands, and he kept making the pops for his friends, and when he became an adult he made them for his own children. In 1923, Epperson filed for a patent for his invention. [more inside]
The Pitch
Je est un braqueur de banque.
Inspired by Rimbaud, video artist and former MIT professor Joe Gibbons robbed two banks as an "art project" (and for the money).
"Of Course!"
An hour of Murder She Wrote's Jessica Fletcher having Epiphanies by Isaac Royffe (actual epiphanies begin at 2:37)
A perspective from a distance.
A mother estranged from her adult sons searches for answers in American culture. She has started a social network (now a nonprofit organization) for others in similar circumstances. A documentary may be in the works.
Project Blue Book
Project Blue Book was an ongoing study by the US Air Force which investigated claims of UFO sightings over the course of 18 years. Now the entire results of that study are online for your viewing pleasure.
"We said, this is something strange, and we need your telescope badly"
January 14, 2005. The Huygens probe was falling to Titan(yt). Released after a seven year trip on Cassini, the tiny lander was mankind's first attempt to land on a moon of another world - and nobody knew what would happen next. Its signals, no more powerful than a walkie-talkie, were to be gathered by the mothership and the science relayed back to Earth. More than a light-hour away back at home planet, radio telescopes were also listening not to decode data - far too weak at that distance, even for the most powerful receivers - but to see whether they could hear Huygens at all. A job for radio engineers, not for heroes. Sometimes, though, you have to be both. [more inside]
Chicago Tribune 1934 Chicagoland Road Map
Chicago Tribune 1934 Chicagoland Road Map Pre-O'Hare Airport, pre-Interstate Highways. Click 'Download full resolution' to download file.
"Please use the brand-new desk lamp we just purchased for you."
The Awl has obtained a copy of a memo from Scott Dadich (Wired Editor in Chief) to all Wired employees in San Francisco.
"You can't hit me, I'm a Presidential candidate!"
“People see so many flying saucers, they’re just not a novelty any more"
For two eccentric Californians, Frank Critzer and George Van Tassel, the immense girth of Giant Rock was not simple geological happenstance but a sign portending mystical significance. A meeting place for flying objects, identified and unidentified. Undated postcard of Giant Rock during the Van Tassel family’s occupancy of the site. The café sign features an image of a UFO. By Sasha Archibald
"Love in Ulster"
Danderin' down the loanin'
On a day of spring wi' Kathy McIlvenna
Says I, "The whin's a tidy thing,"
Says she, "I wouldn't wonder,
But I never thought much about whins," says she,
An' me just studyin' to be polite,
Ach, girls is a mystery to me, girls is quare! [more inside]
On a day of spring wi' Kathy McIlvenna
Says I, "The whin's a tidy thing,"
Says she, "I wouldn't wonder,
But I never thought much about whins," says she,
An' me just studyin' to be polite,
Ach, girls is a mystery to me, girls is quare! [more inside]
"We are culturally destitute in America, and this is our ground zero."
Eddie Huang on the making of a tv show about his memoir growing up Chinese in the US. (slVulture) [more inside]
Why do the Cylons come every thirty-three minutes?
ramen 🍜
- the state of ramen: Dave Chang
- the state of ramen: Peter Meehan
- a guide to the regional ramen of japan
- Harold McGee on the science of alkalinity (on alkalinity article)
- a timeline of ramen development
- Momofuku Ando and the invention of instant ramen
- an interview with the ramen rater, Hans Lienesch
- how to make tonkotsu-style broth (recipe)
- how to make instant ramen cacio e pepe (recipe)
- how to make instant ramen gnocchi parisienne (recipe)
- how to make instant ramen fideos (recipe)
- how to make instant ramen encrusted skate (recipe)
- more recipes: momofuku ramen 2.0, ramen broth 2.0, fresh alkaline noodles, momofuku pork belly
A movie for the cassette generation
Back to the Future, Time Travel, and the secret history of the 1980s "...we are now as far removed from 1985, the year the first film premiered, as that film was from 1955, the past it lovingly recreated and gently mocked." By Tim Carmody.
Hebdo, Piketty, Smart Houses, Surveillance
The Well's State of the World 2015: here's the annual summary of trends and speculations from Bruce Sterling, Jon Lebkowski, and Cory Doctorow.
Not affiliated with Wolfram Research.
They Took Him to Church
When Irish singer-songwriter Hozier played Paris this month, a surprise was waiting. When he reached the chorus of his hit song, "Take Me to Church," a 20 person choir in the front row joined in with him. More here.
Visualize Hurled Peas
Priscella P. Holley, principal at the W.F. Burns Middle School in Valley, AL, sent a letter to parents asking them to have their children bring an eight ounce canned food item to class. Not to eat, or help the needy, or make a craft project, but to arm themselves against potential school shooters. Other schools have refined these plans: science classrooms equipped with cans of soup, and English classrooms with heavy books.
I am the actual worst.
You asked me to write my life.
My name is Omar ibn Seid (pdf, 163 kb). My birthplace was Fut Tûr, between the two rivers. I sought knowledge under the instruction of a Sheikh called Mohammed Seid, my own brother, and Sheikh Soleiman Kembeh, and Sheikh Gabriel Abdal. I continued my studies twenty-five years. Then there came to our place a large army, who killed many men, and took me, and brought me to the great sea, and sold me into the hands of the Christians, who bound me and sent me on board a great ship and we sailed upon the great sea a month and a half, when we came to a place called Charleston in the Christian language. There they sold me to a small, weak, and wicked man.[more inside]
Sometimes security risks hide in plain sight
Do you use a wireless keyboard? For those of us who worry about the security of our wireless devices, every now and then something comes along that scares even the already-paranoid. (from Hackaday.)
The remains of Bradbury’s home
The lovely house where Ray Bradbury lived for 50 years is being torn down by its new owner, architect Thom Mayne.
The Positive Value of Negative Reviews
I think a lot of fan coteries miss the fact, as they rally round their authors and go after the so-called bullies, that we all exercise critical judgements every day. Something as mundane as 'I prefer apples to oranges' is a critical judgement, but I've never noticed orange-lovers hounding apple-lovers because of it. There is a clear understanding that a preference for one fruit is not a judgement about the people who prefer another kind of fruit. And yet, these days even a slightly less than totally stellar review can have people behaving very oddly, trying to suppress reviews or silence an errant reviewer.The Nerds of a Feather roundtable discusses negative reviews and the antipathy against them online.
"For five kilometres, I kept stepping on dead bodies."
In the week before Paris grabbed the world's attention, Boko Haram (previously) staged an attack on the northeastern Nigerian town of Baga which reportedly forced 20,000 people to flee and left hundreds or even thousands dead. A Baga survivor who hid for three days said that, after breaking cover and escaping, "for five kilometres, I kept stepping on dead bodies". [more inside]
"This is our war for peace."
Since 2010, Freelance Afghan journalist Bilal Sarwary has been tweeting photos with the hashtags #AfghanistanYouNeverSee and #EveryDayLifeInAghanistan showing sides of the country that rarely make it into Western media. [more inside]
January 13
We only come out at night, the days are much too bright
Projections in the Forest is a micro-scale projection video ("making of" short) that imitates a bioluminescent forest (project site), with projections to look like foxfire and such bioluminescent mushrooms, plus some animals and elements that usually don't generally glow in the dark. If you like such projection techno-magic, 3hund have a few other projection projects on their Vimeo account.
"I'll be honest: I don’t want to stay up until 4 AM any more at shows"
Music critic Sasha Frere-Jones is leaving The New Yorker to annotate lyrics at Genius. Here's his first post.
That last line sounds kind of familiar
If they say I never loved you, you know they are a liar.
Orthogonal
Greg Egan's Orthogonal Trilogy is perhaps the ultimate in hard sci-fi world building: starting by simply "changing a minus sign to a plus sign in a simple equation that governs the geometry of space-time", Mr Egan then derived, from first principles, how light, matter, energy, motion, gravity and time would work in this alternate universe. The result is 80,000 words on his web site describing the physics and cosmology of the universe (minor spoilers) and three novels: The Clockwork Rocket (extract), The Eternal Flame (extract) and The Arrows of Time (extract) [more inside]
Something cold about this investigation
Locals couldn’t understand why police hunting the murderer of a 13-year-old girl were taking DNA samples of elderly women. A high profile Italian murder investigation exposes the secrets of more than one family, with controversial collateral damage. [more inside]
How can I learn? How can I help?
"I want first to thank you, watching/reading you advocate is an inspiration. I hope to one day be as articulate and hard-working as you. If you're able, could you point me to some favorite writings on privilege/intersectionality/feminism? I'm interested to see what's inspired/informed you. Thank you!" Writer, feminist (and crafter) Ijeoma Oluo provides ten solid links to educational resources online (caveat: she does state, though, that these links barely scratch the surface.) [more inside]
Fist Full of Dollars isn't listed
Open Culture has published Akira Kurosawa’s 100 Favorite Movies
His daughter Kazuko Kurosawa described the list’s selection process:
His daughter Kazuko Kurosawa described the list’s selection process:
My father always said that the films he loved were too many to count, and to make a top ten rank. That explains why you cannot find in this list many of the titles of the films he regarded as wonderful. The principle of the choice is: one film for one director, entry of the unforgettable films about which I and my father had a lovely talk, and of some ideas on cinema that he had cherished but did not express in public. This is the way I made a list of 100 films of Kurosawa’s choice.
What's Wrong With 'All Lives Matter'?
When we are taking about racism, and anti-black racism in the United States, we have to remember that under slavery black lives were considered only a fraction of a human life, so the prevailing way of valuing lives assumed that some lives mattered more, were more human, more worthy, more deserving of life and freedom, where freedom meant minimally the freedom to move and thrive without being subjected to coercive force. But when and where did black lives ever really get free of coercive force? One reason the chant "Black Lives Matter" is so important is that it states the obvious but the obvious has not yet been historically realized. So it is a statement of outrage and a demand for equality, for the right to live free of constraint, but also a chant that links the history of slavery, of debt peonage, segregation, and a prison system geared toward the containment, neutralization and degradation of black lives, but also a police system that more and more easily and often can take away a black life in a flash all because some officer perceives a threat.George Yancy interviews Judith Butler for NYT: What's Wrong With 'All Lives Matter'? [more inside]
newborn calves are a sensitive bunch
Farm Animal Winter Wear from modern farmer. What the coziest animals are wearing this season.
By leaves we live
"Why applaud ‘cripping up’?"
“If you do a film about the Holocaust, you’re guaranteed an Oscar,” goes the famous Kate Winslet joke in Extras. The same can be said for an actor doing a film about disability. Unless you’re a disabled actor, that is. Then you’re lucky to even get the part.
vermontism
Tourist: Whaddya call that window over there?
Vermonter: Which window?
Tourist: Thanks! drives off [more inside]The confused, contradictory charm of Yerba Buena Island
A lovely meditation / photo essay about California's Yerba Buena Island.
The place of Saussure’s Memoire in historical linguistics
You may be familiar with Ferdinand de Saussure as the founder of structuralism or as one of the defining contributors to semiotics but did you know that he also did ground-breaking work in Proto-Indo-European linguistics at the age of 20? Welcome to the Laryngeal Theory. [more inside]
KidZania, KidZania, you’re always in my heart
At Kidzania, the theme-park chain where children pretend to be adults , children from Mexico to Kuwait can learn about responsibility and citizenship by renting go-karts, making Quaker granola bars, delivering packages for DHL, cleaning up dog poop, making plastic gewgaws, and flying planes, but they may not be able to answer the important questions "Is it a school? Is it a nursery? Is it some devil-run thing that isn’t acceptable in our culture?"
Abstract of Underpinning Rthymns
"In short, goats are pretty much everywhere."
Pixel's Revenge
The best team won
"Gregg Nibert had something he needed to discuss.
The Presbyterian College head basketball coach had just seen his team lose its season opener to Duke, 113–44. “We’re not 69 points worse,” Nibert would say in his post-game press conference. No one in the room cared. Nibert wasn’t the story, nor were his Blue Hose players.
“We’re never gonna forget this night,” Nibert said. He repeated it. Then he collected his box score and walked out the door. But then Nibert stopped. He had to speak for those without a voice." -- From The Cauldron, a story of a NCAA Basketball Coach who has cared for 37 foster children, and his ongoing attempts to get the sports media to care about the issue more than sports.
The Presbyterian College head basketball coach had just seen his team lose its season opener to Duke, 113–44. “We’re not 69 points worse,” Nibert would say in his post-game press conference. No one in the room cared. Nibert wasn’t the story, nor were his Blue Hose players.
“We’re never gonna forget this night,” Nibert said. He repeated it. Then he collected his box score and walked out the door. But then Nibert stopped. He had to speak for those without a voice." -- From The Cauldron, a story of a NCAA Basketball Coach who has cared for 37 foster children, and his ongoing attempts to get the sports media to care about the issue more than sports.
First on the list: Cut the disabled people
On the first day of the new Congress, a Texas Republican is leading an effort to make deep cuts in Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) to take effect within about a year. Democrats appear to have little recourse due to the recent election results. Fraud in SSDI is not a major problem despite Republican claims and mythmaking by NPR and 60 Minutes. The inspector general found only about 0.4 percent of cases were approved by fraudulent judges. [more inside]
They're here. Oh god! They've found you!
Birds on a wire
Birds on a wire ....."One morning while reading a newspaper, Jarbas Agnelli saw a photograph of birds on an electric wire. He cut out the photo and was inspired to make a song using the exact location of the birds as musical notes. He was curious to hear what melody the birds created."
Time May Change Bowie
For David Bowie's 68th birthday (Jan. 8), artist Helen Green drew all of his hairstyles over time. The colorized, animated version is even better.
What do you anonymously send the person you can't stand?
Glitter. Piles and piles of loose, dandruffy, get-into-everything glitter. Ship your Enemies Glitter is a welcome disruption in the vengeance market. For the low, low cost of 9.95 they'll send your enemy an anonymous note buried in a mess of glitter. [more inside]
What defines Dutch cycling?
My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward
We met at 18. We wed at 24. At 27 I checked my wife into a psych ward—for the first time. How mental illness reshapes a marriage. [more inside]
January 12
Velvet Batcave
Tomaž Šalamun is a sphere rushing through the air.*
Late in 2014, master avant garde Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun passed away at his home in Ljubljana. During his life, he published 30 books of poetry, and was honored with the Prešeren Fund Prize, the Jenko Prize (twice), a Pushcart Prize, a visiting Fulbright to Columbia University, and a fellowship to the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. [more inside]
The Rise and Fall of the US Government - John J. Dilulio, Jr.
"...in examining [Francis] Fukuyama’s theories, [John] Dilulio’s essay also is a compelling and thoughtful analysis of the state of American liberal democracy, the current dysfunction of its government and what could be done to repair the damage wrought by greed, interference and ineptitude."
SE BUSCA, WANTED: For causing generations in Mexico to read and think
The Mexican political activist and critic Carlos Monsiváis once said that cartoonist Eduardo Del Rio, a.k.a Rius, was more important than the Ministry of Education in getting Mexicans to read.
Rius' work forms the basis for a wide-ranging new exhibition at Mexico City's Museo Del Estanquillo, along with the lesser-known output of his spiritual predecessor, Andrés Audiffred. [more inside]
Additive-noise methods
How to tell correlation from causation - "The basic intuition behind the method demonstrated by Prof. Joris Mooij of the University of Amsterdam and his co-authors is surprisingly simple: if one event influences another, then the random noise in the causing event will be reflected in the affected event."
Design off the beaten path
Trail Type is a site showcasing loads of examples of type found out on the trail. You probably thought there were only a couple standard fonts used by Forest Service and National Park organizations, but it turns out there are loads of different examples of handmade, routered-into-wood, and quickly made letterforms, and they're all beautiful.
Entomologist-Eye View of a Botfly
We all know what happens if you search "botfly" on YouTube. This, however, is a much more rounded and interesting video about the botfly life cycle from Piotr Naskrecki, an entomologist who, having been infected serendipitously, decided to allow the parasite to complete the stage he was hosting, in the interests of scientific filmmaking. [more inside]
That's how you do it.
Master Technician Service Conference Films - Chrysler's Training for Mechanics.
These materials were sent to each MoPar (Chrysler Products) dealer's repair department every month from 1948 through at least the late 1970's. They covered a different topic each month, and they were written to educate the simplest of minds. Now they are an invaluable resource for people wanting to maintain their classic Chrysler car. [more inside]
Inside Woodstock with organizer Michael Lang
It's in Coke Zero and Diet Coke, too.
Non-alcoholic beverages, unknown influence on cell proliferation – an in vitro study. If the results are correct and true, an ingredient in Coca Cola (and to a lesser extent, Pepsi) from the USA (less so from Egypt and Canada, and not from Poland or Mexico) dramatically increases cell proliferation when given to cells growing in a plate. [more inside]
Snake & Bacon take on the Grey Lady... and get slaughtered
New York Times n'est pas Charlie? In which Michael Kupperman (previously here) relates his own "freedom of speech" experience when he and David Rees (previously here) were hired to create editorial comics for the Week in Review section of The New York Times.
A fox guarding the hen house.
Ted Cruz, Senator from Texas, global warming denier, and (attempted) NASA funding slasher, has been appointed to chair the Senate subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness. In other words, he will be overseeing NASA. [more inside]
"...but I figured she had earned it."
The Tragedy at Kufra
A grim and forbidding land, devoid of human habitation, intolerant of the inexperienced, and merciless when it judges the foolhardy. On May 4, 1942, twelve men of the South African Air Force boarded three Bristol Blenheim Mark IVs and took off from the oasis of Kufra in the Libyan Desert. Only one made it back alive. [more inside]
But will it support the "Pile of Poo"?
Google Chrome for Mac OS X will soon be supporting emoji natively, as reported by Slashdot. As of yet, there's no word of support for emojis on Chrome running on non-Apple operating systems. [more inside]
The care of ~11 million people in America has fallen to emergency rooms.
It's easy to break a patient like Rogelio—Mexican and poor and chronically ill—down to his potassium level and to make medical decisions according to a number. But that's only part of the story of how the undocumented ill are cared for here in Houston. Within this city's history—a history that includes segregation during the 1960s, a large immigrant population, strong economic growth over the past half century, not to mention the world's largest medical center—is the story of how Houston sought local solutions to provide compassionate care to its indigent and undocumented, the latter of which, some might say, have helped the city grow.Dr. Ricardo Nuila reports from the emergency room at Houston's Ben Taub Hospital, where Harris County's undocumented ill can avail themselves of some of the country's best health care: Taking Care of Our Own. [more inside]
E. Alex Jung Essays
"I was born at a very early age."
Gerard Hoffnung was best known for his artwork. Or was it his interviews? Maybe it was his public speaking, or perhaps the Hoffnung Music Festivals? He also played the tuba! [more inside]
It's Never Too Late To Change... Into A Truck
Animator Trevor Van Meter has been adding cool little face animations and drawings to his Instagram regularly for the past few months. Some are political, some nerdy, some historical, some philosophical, some inspirational, all adorable, even Sad Palpatine.
"You guys must have to relearn tons of shit, huh?"
Sleater-Kinney's new album No Cities To Love is streaming at both NPR and the CBC. While you listen, read some of the justifiably hagiographic praise of the band within. (Or just rock out?) [more inside]
"It’s hard to stay away from religion when you mess with acid."
Robert Stone, Novelist of the Vietnam Era and Beyond, Dies at 77 [New York Times]
"Robert Stone, who wrote ambitious, award-winning novels about errant Americans in dangerous circumstances or on existential quests — or both — as commentary on an unruly, wayward nation in the Vietnam era and beyond, died on Saturday at his home in Key West, Fla. He was 77.[more inside]
Consider the chicken
The future was then
HAL, Mother, and Father Watching the sixties and seventies through 2001 and Alien.
"T.S. Eliot, the stink-bombing Nobel prizewinner"
[T.S. Eliot] both recognised and skewered in Four Quartets the routines of "eminent men of letters" who became "chairmen of many committees". As a banker, then as a publisher, he worked at jobs where committees were de rigueur and he accomplished his work with aplomb. Yet part of him always sought an escape hatch, a way to elude his official self. His nephew Graham Bruce Fletcher remembers Uncle Tom taking him as a boy to a London joke shop in the 1960s. They bought stink bombs and let them off at the entrance of the Bedford Hotel, not far from Eliot's workplace in Bloomsbury's Russell Square. With a fit of giggles, Eliot put on a marked turn of speed as, Macavity-like, he and his nephew sped from the scene of the crime, Eliot twirling his walking stick "in the manner of Charlie Chaplin".—TS Eliot: the poet who conquered the world, 50 years on by Robert Crawford, poet and biographer of Eliot. You can listen to a lecture by him entitled T. S. Eliot's daughter on the poem Marina. You can hear it, and other poems, read in between classical music as part of an episode of Words and Music. And if you want to get to know the poet, the T. S. Eliot Society keeps tabs on what works are freely available online.
NO NO NO NO NO! AAAAAAHHHHHH!
YouTube user Mario Wienerroither (previously) has turned his attention away from music videos to something new to remove music from: The opening credits of "Macgyver".
Traditional Japanese Wood Construction and Framing Techniques
Some short videos from a Japanese construction shop that practices traditional joinery techniques. The tools are modern, but the components and joinery techniques are traditional. For instance, joining two beams end-to-end. [more inside]
You aint tht good luv
"For many men, beauty, coolness, [and] desirability are gifts they alone can bestow upon women. They get baffled, even aggressive when you show you've known you possess those things all along." (BuzzFeed, trigger warning for hate speech) [more inside]
gotham from above
Imagine leaning out of an open door of a helicopter 7,500 feet over New York City on a very dark and chilly night... (making of)
The failure of My Husband's Not Gay is one of style, not substance.
"...remember, you're not in Lahore, you're in Birmingham."
From Guardian Docs: Muslim Drag Queens
who's stealing time from whom?
It turns out that slacking off is serious business: “ ‘Doing nothing’ while at work can be a very demanding activity requiring planning, collaboration, risk calculation, and ethical consideration,” Paulsen observes. Some subjects turned shirking into a game they found more meaningful than their actual jobs.So it turns out a lot of people rather shop or watch porn than actually work at work. And why not?
January 11
The ethics tutorials end when dissent quiets
August Never Ends -- by Zoe Quinn: The machinations of online abuse aren't going away - we need to talk about it.
It’s a head splitting cognitive dissonance to be fielding requests for help from friends who have just gotten swatted at the same time as giving someone else numbers on the harassment and abuse perpetrated by GamerGate because someone he’s talking to thinks it’s over and never had a big impact on people in the first place. This entire week has been spent putting out fires started by scriptkiddies and adults who should know better but are too empty to care about their victims. I’ve been trying to take a day to just be a regular person, recenter myself, and have the energy to get back to work with the same enthusiasm I tend to have, but every attempt gets cut short by some fresh, new, horrible news about someone trying to get into my accounts, a new asinine conspiracy theory being used as an excuse to dox people I went to high school with, friends freaking out because anonymous message board people are talking about how to mail them bombs, or just another death threat. At least the death threats have become somewhat routine.
Go on, say it.
But your blade it might be too sharp
Singer/songwriter Sia's dancer mini-me, Maddie Ziegler, and actor Shia LaBeouf put on a captivating (and to some controversial) performance in the video Elastic Heart
"discard anything that doesn’t spark joy"
De-cluttering your house with love: "Marie Kondo has built a huge following in her native Japan with her “KonMari” method of organizing and de-cluttering. Clients perform a sort of tidying-up festival: time set aside specifically to go through belongings. Each object is picked up and held, and the client needs to decide if it inspires joy. If it doesn’t, it needs to go." [more inside]
The Secret History Of Thoughts
Locked-In Man - "Martin Pistorius spent more than a decade unable to move or communicate, fearing he would be alone, trapped, forever. NPR's new show Invisibilia tells how his mind helped him create a new life."
Empire Zinc strike and Salt of the Earth: by Labor, for Labor
From October 1950 to January 1952, the Mexican American miners at the Empire Zinc mine in Bayard, New Mexico were on strike, protesting the racial discrimination between them and their Anglo counterparts in pay, safety standards, and quality of life in company housing. Two events make this particular strike stand out from similar strikes at other mines are the involvement of the miners' wives in both requesting better living conditions and later in taking to the picket lines themselves, and after the strike was over, the feminist and pro-labor docudrama made by blacklisted Hollywood film makers, Salt of the Earth (YouTube; lower quality on Archive.org; Wikipedia). [more inside]
Flowers of the sky
Flowers of the Sky - Depictions spanning almost a whole millennium – in chronological order – of comets, meteors, meteorites and shooting stars.
He was just a giant tortoise, the last one of his kind
Two NYRB essays on recent biopics and their issues with history
Christian Caryl on The Imitation Game: "Either you embrace the richness of Turing as a character and trust the audience to follow you there, or you simply capitulate, by reducing him to a caricature of the tortured genius. The latter, I’m afraid, is the path chosen by director Morten Tyldum and screenwriter Graham Moore[.]"
Elizabeth Drew on Selma: "[T]hough Johnson was an extraordinarily dramatic figure in real life, dramatists don’t seem to be able to settle for that. In fact, Selma is a reverse twist on the portrait of LBJ in last year’s Broadway hit All the Way, in which Johnson’s role in winning passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, while crucial, was way overblown." (Drew's essay on the show.)
Elizabeth Drew on Selma: "[T]hough Johnson was an extraordinarily dramatic figure in real life, dramatists don’t seem to be able to settle for that. In fact, Selma is a reverse twist on the portrait of LBJ in last year’s Broadway hit All the Way, in which Johnson’s role in winning passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, while crucial, was way overblown." (Drew's essay on the show.)
To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This
Through a series of increasingly intimate questions, the author sees if she and her acquaintance can make themselves fall in love. (NYTimes link)
Comfort Objects
MH17: Searching for the Truth
Starting from Belling the Cat's research German investigative organization Correct!v has put together a compelling case that the 53rd Russian Air Defense Brigade was responsible for the shooting down of Malaysian Air flight MH-17. [more inside]
January 10
You may not have known his name, but you definitely knew who he was
Comedian and actor Taylor Negron, dead at 57 from cancer You may remember him from such movies as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Better Off Dead, or The Last Boy Scout. You may also remember him from his work as a writer and producer, notably in The Aristocrats. [more inside]
There's a camera in the fuel tank of this rocket
Early Saturday morning, Space-X launched CRS-5, another supply run to the International Space Station. It was also an attempt to land the first stage on a barge in the Atlantic ocean, in hopes of recovering the booster to keep costs down. It failed, but came really close. But the most impressive aspect of this launch were the views from the internal LO2 tank camera of the 2nd stage. [more inside]
challenging traditional notions of masculinity
Former football player & star of the popular series of Old Spice commercials Terry Crews speaks on CBC's "Q" about rejecting caricatures of manhood (both video & audio-only available at the link) [more inside]
East of Palo Alto’s Eden
A history of East Palo Alto (SLTechCrunch) "a story of how two neighboring communities [Palo Alto and EPA] followed entirely different trajectories in post-war California — one of enormous wealth and power, and the other of resilience amid deprivation"
A researcher, a data journalist, and a designer walk into a bar.
The good people at Information Is Beautiful took the data from the "75+ classic cocktail recipes from the International Bartender’s Association’s list of drinks every bartender should know" and turned into into a beautiful reference chart. As an added bonus, they converted the ingredients to proportions for easy scaling. Cheers!
That's a lotta books
Over the past ten years, an organization called PJ Library Has distributed more than ten million free children's books and music with Jewish content directly to children ages 0 to 8 across the United States. The program is modeled on Dolly Parton's Imagination Library. Not always without controversy, books contain information about Jewish-American culture, Israel, general values, Jewish holidays, and even occasionally mysticism.
In 2014 PJL announced a new program to distribute books to Arab-Israeli preschoolers. Sign up here.
A little Willie and more on a Saturday night
Just a Saturday night reprieve A celebration of Willie Nelson , a songwriter and singer who never fails to evoke some emotion. With these vids he does not fail. I think he is our modern day Hank Williams Enjoy these duos with some of the worlds most contemporary artists. Diana Krall and Elvis Costello , Norah Jones and finally Wynton Marsalis.
Another game folds to computers.
Two player limit hold 'em solved , say University of Alberta researchers. You can try it yourself here. Poker (at least this variant) now joins such solved games (solved games previously) as tic-tac-toe, connect four, and checkers. [more inside]
BBC Mini-Documentary on South Dakota's Underground Music Scene
"There's situations where it limits you in terms of where you can play, but the people who want to hear you are starving to hear you. Starving like you'd have no idea." A rumble has been increasing in volume for the past few decades in South Dakota, disrupting American's perceptions of a state widely known for cattle ranches and desolate landscapes. The music scene has been growing steadily, stuffing sweaty bars and underground venues with punk, heavy metal and rap groups made up of the city's teenagers and twenty-somethings. (5min21sec video) [more inside]
"Salt, salt, salt, salt, salt, salt"
Why is this white man so angry?
White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable. A 2011 paper by Robin DiAngelo, author, Associate Professor of Multicultural Education, and workplace diversity trainer, explores the challenges of confronting racism which result from the inability of white people to accept that they are beneficiaries of a racist system.
(PDF)
How People Steal Houses in Philadelphia
A tip on a shady deed transfer involving a man who died in 1980 is continuing to uncover many other instances; an on-going nine-part (so far) investigation. [more inside]
Improving public policy (gov't) using behavioral economic evidence
Raj Chetty gives the 2015 Richard T. Ely Lecture (video, slides; talk begins at 9m) for the AEA: [more inside]
Dawn Wall 2015
Rock climbers Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson are nearing completion of an attempt to free climb the Dawn Wall (pic, route map) of El Cap in Yosemite. Over 3000' tall and consisting of 30 pitches (14 rated above 5.13), this will become the hardest free climb in the world.
[more inside]
[more inside]
Star Wars feat. The Joker and Bane
The Emperor Voiced by Mark Hamill's Joker * Darth Vader with Bane's Voice - Luke vs Vader * Mark Hamill's Emperor takes down Jar-Jar Binks
The Ancient Greeks were, I'm afraid, faceist.
"A rather different story though when it comes to the female of the species. Hesiod - an 8th/7th Century BC author whose works were as close as the Greeks got to a bible - described the first created woman simply as kalon kakon – 'the beautiful-evil thing'. She was evil because she was beautiful, and beautiful because she was evil. Being a good-looking man was fundamentally good news. Being a handsome woman, by definition, spelt trouble." [more inside]
Boston Will Bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics
The Olympic Rings over Fenway? Are you wicked stupid? On Thursday the U.S. Olympic Committee chose Boston as America’s bidding city for the 2024 Olympics, beating out San Francisco, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles in the Olympic sweepstakes. As would be expected from Bostonians, reaction is less than enthusiastic. [more inside]
Does rehabilitation means getting to play professional football again?
How nice it would have been if the whole sorry saga of Ched Evans had been left in 2014. Unfortunately, Oldham Athletic are the latest team to suggest that they are considering signing the convicted rapist to play for their side, here on the other side of December 31st. If you - like me – think this is a truly terrible, awful decision, then you will be used to hearing the same arguments put forward in his defence, so here is a handy rebuttal guide.Lucy Hunter Johnson on why convicted rapist Ched Evans shouldn't play football. [more inside]
The new London is a dream that strangers are dreaming in your bed.
David Sedaris talks to UK MPs about Litter.
On 6 January 2015, MPs on the Communities and Local Government Committee took evidence on litter. David Sedaris gave evidence and the whole session is available here. The Guardian has highlights. [more inside]
1977: A Year in a Day
1977: A Year in a Day. Here you go. Twenty-four hours - yes, a full human day - of songs from the year 1977. Carefully compiled over the course of two years. Scroll down to day one. Download. Enjoy.
January 9
How Women of Color Are Driving Entrepreneurship in the US
Women of color are a principal force behind one of the most important components of America’s current marketplace and our nation’s future economy: entrepreneurship. Today, women of color are the majority owners of close to one-third of all women-owned firms in the nation. Increased access to business capital—including microenterprises, venture-capital-funded firms, and crowd funding—has helped the number of women entrepreneurs grow substantially. But women of color face significant obstacles in starting their own businesses, leading to the question of why so many of them turn to entrepreneurship. The growth of women of color as business owners is part of a long-term trend, but the question of why this trend is occurring is often left unanswered. Looking at the alternative to entrepreneurship—the traditional workplace—sheds light on some of the reasons.
Ensign Mary Amethyst Star Enobi Aiko Archer Picard Janeway Sue
The "Ensign Sue" Saga has finally come to an end. It began as a Star Trek parody with chibi-styled Kirk, Spock and the New Enterprise Crew facing the challenge of the ultimate Mary Sue under the title "Ensign Sue Must Die" (SPOILERS FOLLOW, BUT HEY, YOU SHOULDN'T BE TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY) which she does, but Mary Sues don't really die, they multiply, and so there was "Ensign Two: The Wrath of Sue", which begins with a meeting with a Doctor from Another Fictional Franchise and soon, they're bouncing around other alternate realities with familiar characters, leading to the usual downbeat 2nd movie ending and the inevitable "Ensign³: Crisis of Infinite Sues (Because Everything's a Trilogy Now)", with a climactic battle of cute cartoon forms of more pop culture icons than Lemon Demon's Ultimate Showdown. Come for the inside jokes, stay for more regenerations than authorized by the BBC.
I bet I could move this glass with my mind...
Charge the Barrel of Monkeys with your intent by shaking it
The Monkey Fortunetell (first known as the Monkeybalah as having its roots in Monkeyccultism) is an ancient divination casting game (most common to Tansylvania), used from the mid-15th century in various parts of the Carpathian region. From the late 18th century until the present it remained largely unheard of until now. [more inside]
new theories regarding depression
"We know that people may be genetically pre-disposed to depression and anxiety disorders. We also know that specific life events may trigger depressive episodes in those who have previously been the picture of mental health. But so far we've been unable to identify one single, definitive catalyst. However, new research suggests that, for some people, depression may be caused by something as simple as an allergic reaction – a reaction to inflammation; a product of the body, not the mind." [more inside]
Madonna on hacks, music leaks, and attempts to regain control
Madonna has had an interesting relationship with leaks, specifically in how she has responded to them. In 2003, when she was gearing up for American Life (YT), she also spread mostly silent MP3s with the short message "What the f**k do you think you're doing? to dissuade would-be downloaders. The message got spun into "remixes" and some got pressed to CD. Jump ahead to 2012, and Madonna's album MDNA (YT) leaked a week ahead of its release date, which seems pretty minor, compared to what happened this past December. 13 tracks and artwork identifying the album with a title of Iconic or Unapologetic B*tch were leaked, ahead of any formal album announcement. But that wasn't the end of it. [more inside]
When Scottish islands blogged
As part of an emerging online technologies project, the BBC set up Island Blogging in the early 2000s to allow residents of three groups of sparsely populated and often windswept Scottish islands (the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles, Argyll and Clyde Islands and the Northern Isles) to blog for free. As nearly all were on often unreliable dial-up, the service was simple and web-based, allowing comments (by anyone) and posts and pictures (blogging residents only). Moderation and rules were light; controversies were infrequent. [more inside]
This photo was taken as the bear was giving the murder weapon a shove
2014 Box Art Walk Of Shame At the end of each year, GamesRadar's Lucas Sullivan reviews the past fifty-weeks worth of new video game box art and compiles a list of the worst of the bad art offenders. From major first-party releases to the latest in shovelware and beyond, no game with stock art, Photoshop errors, or uninspired ideas is safe. [more inside]
he hides in the dark waiting to strike
Medieval Japanese Poetry and Minecraft
"Tanka poems place emphasis on the environment and emotions – a natural bridge to connect poetic verse and model landscapes in Minecraft."
Here is a link to poems written by the students as part of this project.
"Tanka poems place emphasis on the environment and emotions – a natural bridge to connect poetic verse and model landscapes in Minecraft."
Here is a link to poems written by the students as part of this project.
Drugged out
Endtrip - We enter the mind of a drug overdosed girl and go on a journey through her subconsciousness (SLVimeo) (Possible NSFW surreal imagery)
Links to outside pages are a problem to be solved
From Facebook's blog: What the shift to video [posts on Facebook] means to creators. From The Awl: What the shift to video [posts on Facebook] means to Facebook.
Here's to more aural deliciousness in 2015!
What's floating in cyberspace?
Just about everything. On January 8, 1995, a reporter from the Dallas Morning News wrote that 1994 was the "Year of the 'Net, the turning point where everyone with anything to say, sing or display raced to stake a claim in cyberspace." Take a few minutes out of your Friday and enjoy this blast from the past.
Something is very wrong in Arkham
Armchair detectives and Miskatonic enthusiasts: Spend this weekend solving the first two cases in the free-to-print-and-play Arkham Investigator mystery game. [more inside]
Millions, trillions, and biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllllllliiiions
Supercut of all the times Carl Sagan said "millions, billions, and trillions" on Cosmos. [SLYT]
Carl Sagan saying "billions" just once, but stretched out to an hour. [SLSOUNDCLOUD]
Carl Sagan saying "billions" just once, but stretched out to an hour. [SLSOUNDCLOUD]
I realise that the Hogwarts Express does not actually stop at Pottertown
Recently, Buzzfeed writer Daniel Dalton belatedly sat down to watch the Harry Potter movie series. [more inside]
Do what it says.
Will your grandkids being able to view a .jpg file?
We all know printed photos, properly stored, have an extended shelf life; as many of us likely have at least a handful of family photos that are 75+ years old. Will our grandkids be able to read the DVDs they find in the attic, or the thumb drive full of jpg files that had been sitting in a box for 50 years? Will the media even be readable that far in the future? Maybe we should all be printing to paper the photos we really care about.
When it clicks, it clicks.
How LEGO Became the Apple of Toys Fast Company details LEGO's near collapse and subsequent rise.
Heart of Whiteness
Could I have played with these words if I had been a racist? No—I couldn’t be a racist. Even as a boy I had been shocked by what happened in Little Rock, the spectacle of pompadoured thugs and women in curlers yelling insults and curses at black kids trying to get to school. With my brother, I joined the March on Washington. We were there.Yet there was that joke: in the New Yorker Tobias Wolff writes about how deep racism has seeped into his consciousness despite his best efforts.
January 8
You say potato scallop, I say potato cake (and I'm right)
Mel Campbell mines the Macquarie and her own Melbournian experience to come up with six divisive regional slang terms that just might result in an Australian civil war, if last year's Scallop War is anything to go by. [more inside]
This is how we roll while chillin' it in our pick up trucks
The formula works. A mashup of 6 top-40 country songs.
Goats in Coats. GOATS IN COATS.
caring for AIDS patients "when no one else would"
In the darkest hour of the AIDS epidemic, Ruth Coker Burks cared for hundreds of people whose families had abandoned them.
Courage, love and the 30-year secret of one little graveyard in Hot Springs, Arkansas. [more inside]
The Worst Critic In The History Of The World
Artist, The Toast contributor, adult movie star, and all-round very sharp guy Zak Smith talks about the absolute worst way possible to do art criticism.
Zak Smith previously.
Free Community College
President Obama posted a Facebook video today, and will formally announce tomorrow in Tennessee a plan to provide any American student with good grades two years of community college, for free. Tennessee is the president's last stop on his pre-State of the Union tour. [more inside]
The Seven Deaths of the Empress
recite to us some new story... to while away the waking hours of night
The general structure of this tale are well known; a young lady tells a king a series of stories, enough to fill one thousand and one nights, ensuring her survival. The themes became common enough that L. Frank Baum listed the "stereotyped genie, dwarf, and fairy" as traditional fairy tale characters to exclude from his attempts at modern tales, yet there's enough to unpack and discuss to consume multiple lifetimes. This is One Thousand and One Nights, the multinational compilation of folktales and stories, passed as word of mouth, then written and compiled into one large volume. But it was only when one of these collections was translated into French, at a time that fairy tales were already in vogue, did this large frame story and its contained tales really catch on. But it's history is not all that simple a tale. [more inside]
THIS IS JUST TO SAY
I have taken /
the poem /
that was your /
favourite
and which / you were probably / not expecting / in an FPP
Forgive me / it was fantastic / from Toast / and Ortberg
and which / you were probably / not expecting / in an FPP
Forgive me / it was fantastic / from Toast / and Ortberg
Jihadi Uncool
Average Mohamed [AP text|AP video] is a cartoon series by a Muslim convenience store manager in Minnesota who seeks to provide a counter-narrative to Jihad extremism and Islamic State propaganda videos, rap, etc. The target audience is young (8-16) Muslims and the site is multilingual. "It takes an average Mohamed to recruit and radicalize our youth," he said. "It will take another average Mohamed to counter that perspective."
Wolf on the Rock
"Great athletes sometimes find themselves in these clarifying final acts. Shaq retired in a cloud of chummy nonchalance. Jordan went out on a play that completed the perfection of his all-important legacy (and then came back to screw it up, in a move that told us just as much about what drove him). Most of the time, though, careers wind down in ways that mean nothing except that time is passing. Remember Karl Malone in Los Angeles? This season is the distillation of the go-it-alone challenge Kobe set for himself back when O’Neal and Phil Jackson left L.A., or even sooner — Kobe, remember, is the star player who invited none of his teammates to his wedding. (It’s a wonder he invited his wife.) He can’t win, a fact that has no apparent bearing on the fury with which he is trying. We’re seeing Kobe stripped of everything except the will to succeed, a will that persists despite being hopeless. We’re seeing him face his doom with a fearlessness that is ludicrous, profane, and maybe slightly inspiring. We’re seeing the existential Kobe Bryant." Grantland's Brian Phillips on Kobe Bryant. [more inside]
It's difficult to improve upon perfection
It may have taken him over ten years to do it, but Tommy Wiseau has finally followed up on his cult hit "The Room" (previously). "The Neighbors" originally existed as some rarely seen footage Wiseau shot in 2004 (only the wacky trailer was ever released to the public). Cut to ten years later when a newly shot pilot for a "Neighbors" TV series (Official website and trailer) has been making the rounds in big cities across the country to give Wiseau fans the follow up they have been craving.
Both the Gothamist and the AV Club weigh in on the show (with a bonus AV Club interview with Wiseau).
Darth Vaders, a Storm Woopers and a People!
A different Star Wars Kid watches the opening to Episode IV A New Hope for the first time. [SLYT] [more inside]
All They Need Now Is a Groovy Van and a Talking Dog...
George Rodrigue's painting Wendy and Me was stolen from a New Orleans gallery on Tuesday. The painting, one of the late artist's famous Blue Dog series, was valued at approximately $250,000. But the story had a happy ending later that evening when the members of local punk band Stereo Fire Empire, on their way home from a gig, discovered the painting and another artwork abandoned on a sidewalk. Guitarist (and apparent art aficionado) Even Diez recognized Wendy and Me and knew it had been stolen. The band turned the paintings in to police in what they admit is basically a real-life Scooby Doo episode .
GIS: coming up with solutions for the problems no one asked!
Mitch Hedberg and GIS Disproving “La Quinta” is Spanish for “next to Denny’s.”
"Writers are always selling somebody out."
Céline Unveils Its Latest Poster Girl: Joan Didion [New York Times]
“I don’t have any clue,” said the 80-year-old author of well-thumbed classics such as “The White Album,” “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” and “The Year of Magical Thinking,” reached by telephone on Wednesday at her Upper East Side residence (where the photo, by Juergen Teller, was taken). “I have no idea.” Whose idea was this? “They got in touch with me,” Ms. Didion said, as crisp as one of Phoebe Philo’s cotton tunics."[The Céline ad featuring Joan Didion.] [more inside]
How to grow fresh air
Why you should water your house plants more often... Kamal Meattle describes how common houseplants can result in measurably cleaner indoor air. His work stems from earlier NASA research by Bill C. Wolverton who first investigated how to grow air in a space station before researching the indoor environmental impact of plants themselves. [more inside]
You think your character is cool?
Who The Fuck Is My D&D Character Gonna Be? Click to find out!
an impossibly large, semi-persistent realm of items
If you’ve ever said, “markets are conversations” you’re quoting the words of The Cluetrain Manifesto, the ’90s-era opus on the promise of the Web [previously]. David Weinberger and Doc Searls (two of the original authors of Cluetrain) are publishing another provocative work today called New Clues. [more inside]
Meet Shani Hilton, the youthful conscience of Buzzfeed News.
"I like to like things, and it's nice that I work at a place where our default stance is to like things." More about Shani Hilton the news manager at Buzzfeed.
"I will be content with the smell."
University of Washington meteorologist Cliff Mass offers a hypothesis about an inversion fog event that brought Seattle various unpleasant smells yesterday
Sacred Typography
Come and listen to my story 'bout a hoofer named Buddy...
Before he was folksy detective Barnaby Jones, before he was folksy hillbilly-millionaire Jed Clampett, before he was folksy hubby Doc Golightly, and before he was folksy frontiersman George Russell (Davy Crocket's sidekick), Buddy Ebsen sang and danced his way to stardom. Yeah, he was folksy back then too, even in white tie and tails. His original dance partner was his sister Vilma... [more inside]
NASA Exoplanet Travel Posters
3 awesome downloadable NASA designed Travel Posters for places we haven't been to yet NASA's Kepler telescope is still discovering new, distant exoplanets in our corner of the Milky Way, but oftentimes they're hard to visualize and easily forgotten about by some of us normal folk.
Now, to get everyone dreaming about these potentially habitable worlds, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has drawn up a trio of beautiful posters by the "Exoplanet Travel Bureau." All three echo the WPA's iconic travel prints from the mid-1930s, with classic typefaces and swathes of flat, contrasting color.
"What is occurring everybody?"
Xhosa, one of the Bantu languages used in South Africa has often confounded non-native speakers with its use of "clicks". Fortunately, you can learn how to use them yourself! [more inside]
Dieselpunk: Myth and Metaphor
Black Empire: George Schulyer, Black Radicalism and Dieselpunk "Sometime in the 1930s, a black journalist is kidnapped in Harlem by the charismatic Dr. Henry Belsidius, leader of the Black Internationale—a shadowy organization determined to build a Black Empire and overthrow the world of white racial hegemony with cunning and super science." [more inside]
I said “I feel like these characters should be guys.” She said, “Why?”
"Hello! I am going to answer your question, and then I am going to talk a little bit about GENDER IN COMEDY…" [more inside]
The OED in two minutes
The OED in two minutes is a visualisation of the change and growth of the English language since 1150, showing the frequency and origin of new words year by year. Notes and explanations about the project. [more inside]
January 7
Where No Kerbal Has Gone Before
KSP History is an ongoing webseries which combines information and photos of historic events in human spaceflight with near-perfect recreations of those missions in Kerbal Space Program. The most recent entry recounts the first operational Space Shuttle launch. Highlights below the fold. [more inside]
Pepsi Cough Blue Filter
Life after a viral nightmare: from Ecce Homo to revenge porn
What happened to the Spanish artist behind ‘the worst restoration job in history’? Where is the woman who sent the Quentin Tarantino toe-sucking email now? And how does a victim of internet harassment recover? Survivors of online humiliation tell their stories. SLGrauniad
"Wait, what?!?"
Stuff you Learn in Your 40s
There are no grown-ups. We suspect this when we are younger, but can confirm it only once we are the ones writing books and attending parent-teacher conferences. Everyone is winging it, some just do it more confidently.
"Technological Disobedience" in Cuba
How economic embargoes turned Cuba into an island of hackers & DIY engineers . (Accompanying photo essay). In 1991, Cuba's economy began to implode. "The Special Period in the Time of Peace" was the government's euphemism for what was a culmination of 30 years worth of isolation. It began in the 60s, with engineers leaving Cuba for America. Ernesto Oroza, a designer and artist, studied the innovations created during this period. He found that the general population had created homespun, Frankenstein-like machines for their survival, made from everyday objects. Oroza began to collect these machines, and would later contextualize it as "art" in a movement he dubbed "Technological Disobedience." See also, the short film: Havana Bikes (previously). Oroza catalogs and calls these things the Architecture of Necessity.
How to load the dishwasher. Every dishwasher.
Writer Joe Clark downloaded user guides from every dishwasher manufacturer he could find, and collected the illustrations showing the correct way to load each model into the most deeply satisfying Flickr album you will ever see.
Not even with a flower.
We meet a gaggle of adorable little Italian kids, ranging from 7 to 12 years old. The children are asked by the filmmaker what they want to be when they grow up. And why they want to be those things. Then the boys are introduced to Martina, who captures all of their hearts. She charms the boys — they all exclaim how much they love her hair and her smile. One even wants to know if he can be her boyfriend. The filmmaker encourages the boys to make funny faces at Martina to try to make her laugh. Then he tells them to caress her. And then he tells them to slap her...
The Devil and John Holmes
John Holmes was a porn star. Eddie Nash was a drug lord. Their association ended in one of the most brutal mass murders in the history of Los Angeles. The Devil and John Holmes [more inside]
what's in a name?
"For any given profession, it turns out that there are certain names that appear more often in that profession than in the general population. Here's a chart with 6 of the names that are the most disproportionately common in 37 professions." [more inside]
Computer Scientists Make the Same Salary, Whether Male or Female.
Female Computer Scientists Make the Same Salary as Their Male Counterparts - for a while. Whatever the reasons for the gender disparity in programming, at least to begin with, there's no actual salary difference between female and male programmers. According to a new study by the American Association of University Women, [PDF] there is no statistical difference between female and male programmers salaries one year out of college. The same holds true for women who go into engineering, mathematics and physical sciences" [more inside]
The Art of Saving a Life
The Art of Saving a Life , sponsored by the Gates Foundation, is a collection of stories about vaccination and immunization, as told by more than 30 world-renowned photographers, painters, sculptors, writers, filmmakers, and musicians. The intent is to promote vaccination just in time for an international effort to raise funds to inoculate millions, especially in poor nations. The full collection of art will be unveiled over the course of January 2015.
Resistance is futile?
For the first time in nearly thirty years, a new class of antibiotics may be on the way — and the good news doesn't end there. [more inside]
Mrs. Twitty was not having it.
Award shows used to be a little different than they are today: 1975 Charlie Rich lights John Denver's award ballot on fire (SLYT)
Intel Includes
Intel Wants Diversity in the Workplace, Puts $300 Million Where Their Mouth Is - Also they have a cool stabby spider dress.
A Gronking to Remember
A Gronking to Remember: Book One In the Rob Gronkowski Erotica Series is rather involved novella about one women's imagined relationship the Patriot's tight end by the Jacey Noonan, also author of I Don't Care if My Best Friend's Mom Is A Sasquatch, She's Hot and I'm Taking a Shower With Her ... Because It's the New Millennium (link, in case you need that one, too). The author gives a rather delightful interview to Slate, or you can just hear Gilbert Gottfried read you choice passages. [Links are SFW, subject is, well NSFW]
" diabolically chortling like Batman villains"
Restaurant Review: Kappo Masa on the Upper East Side: The cost of eating at Kappo Masa is so brutally, illogically, relentlessly high, and so out of proportion to any pleasure you may get, that large numbers start to seem like uninvited and poorly behaved guests at the table. [more inside]
19 LIBERADOS. SIGUEN USTEDES. ANIMO.
In 2010, the Colombian army wanted to send a message of hope to soldiers held hostage by FARC guerrillas deep in the jungle. But how to send a message the hostages would recognize, but their captors wouldn't? Morse code, hidden in a pop song.
Has Technology Killed the Jewelry Industry?
"Even my own diamond-business owning, non-millennial father is turning away from jewelry when it comes to gift giving. Sure, he’s made my mom a handful of statement pieces over the years, but at the same price point, he’s more likely to gift something that has actual purpose, aside from aesthetic value. The last few birthdays and Christmases have yielded vacation getaways, iPhones of every generation, even a smart home thermostat. What hasn’t shown up under the Christmas tree in the last five years? Diamond anything."
Bao Bao's Big Snow Day
French left wing satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo attacked by extremists
The French left wing satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo (currently blank, Wikipedia entry) was attacked by extremists this afternoon. At least 12 people were killed.
Among those killed are the cartoonists Wolinski, Cabu, Charb and Tignous.
Previously: the firebomb attack on Charlie Hebdo in 2011.
Of Mahatma Gandhi’s few possessions, his watches were the most beloved.
Guys In Pajamas Looking at Viewscreens and Sitting In Chairs
I get it. The show is impenetrable, watching the whole thing takes 178 hours. It’s also extremely silly — nearly every episode has a moment when grown men in pajamas throw themselves around in their chairsBut I want to make the case Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) is important and worth your time in 2015, and I want to suggest about 40 hours of Star Trek viewing that will cover all of the great episodes.
Baby with the bathwarter
The Government of India in the last week of 2014 asked Internet service providers (ISPs) to block websites including code repository Github, video streaming sites Vimeo and Dailymotion, online archive Internet Archive, free software hosting site Sourceforge and many other websites on the basis of hosting anti-India content from the violent extremist group known as ISIS. The blanket block on many resourceful sites has been heavily criticized on social media and blogs by reviving the hashtag #GoIblocks that evolved in the past against internet censorship by the government. [...] After agreeing to remove anti-India content posted by accounts that appeared to have some association with ISIS, some were unblocked.via Global Voices
Lucy, in the sky, with 1x 10^12 diamonds
January 6
A Movie For Ants
Marvel has released the first
trailer (and minimalist poster) for Ant-Man, the twelfth theatrical film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. [more inside]
we used to be friends
She Looks Like Sunday Comics: Watching The Brenda Starr movie (1989)
She Looks Like Sunday Comics: Watching The Brenda Starr movie (1989) (The Toast) Mefi's own The Whelk (John Leavitt) and Josh Fruhlinger of The Comics Curmudgeon [previously] discuss a glorious 80s flop-turned-cult-movie. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
Kirby Delauter, meet Barbara Streisand
Frederick County Councilman, Kirby Delauter, threatened to sue the Frederick News-Post if they continue to reference him by name without authorization. The News-Post's editorial on the subject is exactly as amusing as you would expect. [more inside]
In the 2000s, there will be only answers.
"We will have screens everywhere, in the kitchen, in the restrooms, in the office, in the streets." Marguerite Duras was asked in 1985 what she thought the future would be like. [more inside]
The Return of Dial-A-Song
They Might Be Giants have just kicked off an effort to produce a song every week in 2015 , and they're releasing the tunes via a revived Dial-A-Song line (MLYT). [more inside]
What did ancient Babylonian songs sound like?
But how does one reincarnate music that no human voice has uttered for millennia? Conner says a key step was to really understand the language. She carefully studied historical analysis of the stresses and intonations of Babylonian and Sumerian for hints as to how it may have sounded, and researched how language is converted into music in similar Semitic languages.The Lyre Ensemble—singer and composer Stef Conner, ancient-lyre-builder and lyrist Andy Lowings, and engineer and harpist Mark Harmer—breathe life into ancient Babylonian and Sumerian literature and poetry. [more inside]
A Flying Bird that can't quite see where it's going.
On January 22nd, the Art Deco ferry boat Kalakala, from the Chinook word for "Flying Bird, will be towed to the Blair Waterway where she will be dismantled for scrap. The vessel is renowned for her streamlined appearance and storied history. The 80-year old vessel was operated at times by the Black Ball Ferry Line and Washington State Ferries. In less glamorous times, the vessel was operated as a cannery in Alaska The vessel was towed from Alaska to Seattle in 1998 for restoration. Despite ambitious plans, the restoration was never completed, resulting in what now seems her inevitable demise. Amusingly, it was impossible for the bridge crew to see the bow of the vessel while it was in operation
More Kalakala at UW Libraries Special Collections. Previously.
Don't be scary
Republicans in state governments plan juggernaut of conservative legislation - "Enjoying a majority of unprecedented breadth, Republicans plan a new tide of conservative initiatives targeting the Common Core, abortion, income taxes, labor unions and the EPA." (via) [more inside]
All Of These Works Should Be In The Public Domain, But Aren't
'Every year for the past few years, Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain has put up a list of works that should have gone into the public domain on January 1st'. Should have, that is, 'had Congress not massively expanded the law. As a reminder, when these works were created, the creators knew the terms under which they were created and knew that they would have gone into the public domain by now -- and they found that to be more than enough incentive to create those works.' 'Current US law extends copyright for 70 years after the date of the author’s death, and corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years—an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years. Under those laws, works published in 1958 would enter the public domain on January 1, 2015, where they would be “free as the air to common use.” Under current copyright law, we’ll have to wait until 2054. And no published works will enter our public domain until 2019. The laws in other countries are different—thousands of works are entering the public domain in Canada and the EU on January 1.' [more inside]
"Yo, I had to reinvent, I put the V in vent"
I wonder what my son’s name is. Perhaps it is Jonathant.
Non-working women are more likely to spend their weekdays doing housework or caring for others, while non-working men are more likely to spend that time watching TV. Perhaps, then, it's not surprising how William Giraldi spent his paternity leave (spoiler alert: not parenting). Mallory Ortberg responds.
Okcupid post ahead
When Your OkCupid Date to the Museum Shows Up Totally Wasted.
These are speed holes. They make the computer go faster.
"Frankly, I had enjoyed the war."
Save that dance
Who Is Agent Carter? A brief history of the starring character of Marvel's latest TV show - and now also a comic.
The World at War
The acclaimed 26-episode WWII documentary "The World at War", produced by Thames Television and aired in 1973-1974, is available in full (clocking in at over 22 and a half hours). [more inside]
Still not a good idea to keep money in a bitcoin exchange.
Bitstamp halts trading after a $5,000,000 bitcoin theft. Most of the bitcoin services in the US and western countries are heavily dependent on the Bitstamp market to buy, price and sell coins. This hack may put the entire, fragile, bitcoin ecosystem at risk.
"Enhance 15 to 23."
"By zooming in on high-resolution face photographs, we were able to recover images of unseen bystanders from reflections in the subjects' eyes." Science catches up with Blade Runner.
“Wasn’t anything we could do about it.”
'the Senate women are not a caucus, but a zone of civility'
Hubble Goes High-Definition
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has revisited one of its most iconic and popular images: the Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation. A new, higher quality image of the structure as seen in visible light recreates the original image, while a high quality image as seen in infra-red light reveals different aspects of the structure and hints of new stars being born. [more inside]
Come fry with me.
Some of you old timers here at MeFi will no doubt recall how pancakes used to play a big part around here: we loved pancakes, we respected pancakes, and we mentioned or discussed them with great frequency. In recent times, however, the noble pancake is seldom seen here on the blue. I think it's time to get back to our roots. And let's do it with monkey and ape pancakes. Beatles pancakes and beetles pancakes. The Walking Dead pancakes. Skull pancakes and zombie pancakes and, dooby dooby doo, Frank Sinatra pancakes. Not to mention pansnakes. Bon appétit! [more inside]
Of Anger and Shame in Africa
In a Ghana hotel I overheard a western-sounding white male utter the following to a listener on his phone: “The people in Africa are so simple, I can do whatever I like here. They never challenge me.” My body froze, and of course I said and did nothing.
Sex workers and the city
Despite the claims of reformers like Judge Lippman, [Human Trafficking Intervention Courts] are as controlling as any other court. Prostitutes might be called victims, but they're still arrested, still handcuffed, and still held in cages. The only difference is that they're now in a system that doesn't distinguish between workers and trafficked people. To the courts, anyone who's been arrested for sex work is raw material, incapable of making his or her own choices. Those like Love, who did sex work out of financial necessity, before leaving of her own volition, might as well not exist.Molly Crabapple: Special Prostitution Courts and the Myth of 'Rescuing' Sex Workers.
January 5
nettarot
Southwest Airlines safety announcement.
And if you're traveling with small children, we're sorry. Flight attendant gives the obligatory safety talk, with a twist.
My goal has always been to get this story right
Jay Speaks: The man that many listeners to the popular podcast Serial consider the antagonist and even prime suspect for the murder that is its subject speaks to the Intercept in a 3 part interview, in which he describes the events of the day of the murder, his interactions with Sarah Koenig, and what its like to be hunted by Reddit. [more inside]
A March to the Grave
Joseph Roth and the End of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
No standard biography of Roth exists in English, but this collection of his letters, superbly translated and judiciously edited by long-time Roth advocate Michael Hofmann, provides a more intimate portrait than any biography could. Roth’s letters are a study in authorial candor: in vino veritas, at least in part, for some of them were composed while he was drunk, getting that way, or hungover—the grim trinity that dominated his life more and more until he died of it, plus weltschmerz, in Paris in 1939. He was just short of 45 and had come a long way to die so young. He left behind one masterpiece, The Radetzky March, in which, in a series of vivid set-pieces, he evokes the reality of life high and low during the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s long decline, a vast theme encapsulated in the Trotta family, who ascend to nobility and imperial favor from provincial origins on the obscure fringes of the realm.[more inside]
“I don’t remember exactly,” I say. “It was so long ago.”
On Not Remembering.
For me, dwelling on the past has become a habit of mind. Even more than that, it’s become the material of my work. My drive to make art out of the miserable, the glorious, the confusing material of my past, seems deeply embedded in my creative DNA. If I were a different kind of writer, my past might become merely the trace elements underlying my fiction; if I were a different kind of writer, I could have the multiple “I”s of the lyric poet without being held to any one of them as the absolute autobiographical truth. Instead, I seem condemned to the limited material of my own past.
Braiding Bread
Perhaps you would like to watch some videos of a dentist and self-published cookbook author from Chile
braiding bread beautifully. [more inside]
David Bowie Is
"There was an interesting video installation that featured part of an old BBC documentary on Bowie. The commentary on the then-burgeoning star was fairly contemptuous, including a haughty sniff about how most of his fans were '14-to-20-year-old girls.' This is something that feminist and womanist cultural critics still observe — how a largely young female fan base is used to discredit the integrity and value of artists. This, despite the fact that, over and over, young women have 'discovered' and launched the careers of dozens of influential men and women. Like David Bowie, who is now considered so culturally important that he has a globally renowned exhibit dedicated to his career, which tens of thousands of people have clamored to get into." [more inside]
A Constant Drizzle of Disappointment
The Real Roots of Midlife Crisis In The Atlantic, Jonathan Rauch writes about why the forties are such a hard age for so many people.
Long ago, when I was 30 and he was 66, the late Donald Richie told me: “Midlife crisis begins sometime in your 40s, when you look at your life and think, Is this all? And it ends about 10 years later, when you look at your life again and think, Actually, this is pretty good.”(Previously on Metafilter: another thoughtful essay by Rauch.)
Browser-emulated MS-DOS games
60 Years of Urban Change
Use a slider to compare aerial views of major US cities from c. the 1950s and today from the Midwest, Oklahoma and Texas, and the Southeast. From Shane Hamilton at the University of Oklahoma's Institute for Quality Communities.
HFR till end of the world confirmed
When CNN launched in 1980, then-owner Ted Turner bragged that the 24-hour cable channel wouldn't sign off until the world ended--and would play "Nearer My God to Thee" when it did. It turns out he wasn't kidding: This Is The Video CNN Will Play When The World Ends
The Dignity of Risk
In the wake of increased compliance enforcement of the 1999 Olmstead Decision, which ruled that the unnecessary institutionalization of persons with mental illness was a civil rights violation, a man who suffers from schizophrenia and cerebral palsy struggles with the challenges of independent living after years of homelessness and psychiatric facilities.
"This world is not easy,” he said. “You can’t deal with it yourself. You gotta have somebody."
Wasted
Wicked Professor!
Tops Blooby!
Bored? Like Adventure Time? Try playing one of these many, many Adventure Time games.
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"
It really looks like something straight out of a nightmare what the guys at Film Shortage picked this time. Venetian masks are haunting.
Open F|S
The Smithsonian's Freer|Sackler galleries has digitized the entire collection of 40,000 works for high-resolution download for non-commercial use.
Disneyland time-lapppppse
An entire day in Disneyland, compressed to 90 seconds using composites of over 20,000 images taken in time-lapse. Kind of amazing day to night transitions, immense crowds, and nice slow pans across the landscapes show a familiar place in a whole new light.
listen to this in the dark and you will LOSE YOURSELF
The Morning News' Andrew Womack's Top Albums of 2014, with help from youtube commenters. (mlyt + Spotify and Rdio playlists)
"Internet Famous"
That's a lot of science
Every year, Australia designates a week in August and spends that week actively celebrating and promoting science with events, activities, and general sciency-ness. Everybody has a great time doing hands-on experiments, looking at exhibitions, talking, laughing, viewing, inhaling, tasting science. This is known as the National Science WeekWhich is why in August of last year Signe Cane started her Common Year of daily science blogging, inspired to do so by Sarah Keenihan's 2012 (and still going) Science for Life daily science blogging project.
As a science writer and passionate nerd I would like every week to be science week.
Slave songs, songs of hope.
Béatrice "Betty" Bonifassi (wiki) has been exploring music rising from slavery for some time now.
About 10 years ago she recorded a song called No Heaven (4min) with DJ Champion et ses G-Strings, where the influence is present.
She recently released a self titled album with the subtext of chants d'esclaves, chants d'espoir or slave songs, songs of hope. A taste from a live presentation of Prettiest Train / No More my Lawrd . (5min 27sec)
Here is a short interview she did in English talking about the music. (5min)
Lomax audio recordings of prisoners with hoes preforming Prettiest Train (3min45sec). And prisoners with axes give rendition of No More, My Lord (2min50sec) [more inside]
January 4
Some of The Best American Essays 2014
The Best American Essays of 2014 Many of the essays are behind paywalls, or subject to monthly article limits. I've linked to those as well because some of you have access through work, school, or subscription. [more inside]
From Churchill to Doctor Who
Royal Mail 'special stamps' have been produced in the UK for fifty years since 1965 , when the new postmaster general, Tony Benn, expanded the criteria for commemorative stamps to include representations of British life and culture.
Writing as the pursuit of enigmas
Andre Aciman, professor of comparative literature at CUNY, on writing, his work, and inspirations (SLYT).
The end is not near
Thanks to science, most of us accept the deep past – so why are our imagined futures so shallow? [more inside]
Indigenous rights struggles and victories 2014
Eleven worldwide victories for 2014 -
Ten Indigenous Stories of Note in Canada in 2014 [more inside]
Bhangra dancers, Marlboros, and a girl in a pink dress
The Indian wedding that exploded in violence: a short story by Ranbir Singh Sidhu
Almost 18 in a row.
Michael van Gerwen throws 17 perfect darts during the 2013 World Darts Championship. The crowd goes WILD.
Nintendo Character Guide Revealed
The Nintendo Character Guide from 1993 is a sort of "bible" for for Nintendo Partners to use as a guide for creating media involving Nintendo's characters, and has been revealed by Blake J. Harris. This affords us a behind-the-scenes look at the official backstory as it was in 1993.
Empathetic tenants need not apply
In what is being heralded as a "neo liberalist capitalist dystopic future present nightmare", a "UK version of American Psycho" or simply the "end of days", an upmarket property agency in England releases a (serious) video advert for luxury London apartments. Social media is abuzz with analysis, wondering about his day job / cover, and photoshopping, while the Independent newspaper gapes with incredulity. Comments on the video have been disabled. [more inside]
What is your interest: Politics, NFL, Soccer, Scrabble, Weather
Ask Not What Time It Is, Ask Instead...
The most colorful clock/time-waster that'll brighten up your day, albeit slowly: What Colour Is It?
Does Climate Change Mean the End of Killer Whales? [SLSalon)
A TV drama that puts gay characters centre-stage is still a novelty
"What was striking about the recent film The Imitation Game wasn't just the incredible story of Alan Turing, the man who helped the Allies win the Second World War by cracking Germany's Enigma code, only to find himself chemically castrated for being gay. It was the epilogue that informed us that the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, criminalising homosexual activity, led to 49,000 gay men being convicted of gross indecency in the UK. If you subtract Turing and Oscar Wilde from that total, that’s 48,998 stories that still haven't been told." Why is television still ignoring gay lives? – Matt Cain for The Independent. [more inside]
Michael Caine on Acting in Film
Michael Caine on Acting in Film is 58 minutes from a 1987 BBC documentary in which Michael Caine teaches some actors about how to adjust their performance for the movie camera instead of the stage. Worth watching if you're interested in acting or movies, or if you just like seeing someone who's very good at his job explaining how he does it. [more inside]
As cool as the other side of the pillow
Orange is the New Black--NOT! Cartoonist in LA County Jail
"The Master Switch of Life."
Your Body's Amazing Reaction to Water: The strange physiological effects of freediving.
"We have yet to have a big flop."
“I guess I don’t hate superheroes. I just hate the kind of superhero books that are usually out." The death and rebirth of Valiant Entertainment, superhero comics' strangest success story. [more inside]
No laughs, maybe teers
SLBBC - Three cheers for the onion: onions are eaten and grown in more countries than any other vegetable but rarely seem to receive much acclaim. It's time to stop taking the tangy, tear-inducing bulb for granted and give it a round of applause. [more inside]
We Don't Need No Education
"At least not of the traditional, compulsory, watch-the-clock-until-the-bell-rings kind. As a growing movement of unschoolers believe, a steady diet of standardized testing and indoor inactivity is choking the creativity right out of our kids. The alternative: set 'em free."
Preserving Lonesome George
The AMNH team preserving Lonesome George for display. As the last known Pinta Island tortoise, Lonesome George became a worldwide icon of conservation decades before he died from natural causes in the Galápagos in 2012. When Lonesome George arrived at the American Museum of Natural History in early 2013 to be preserved as a taxidermic specimen, Museum scientists and a master taxidermist faced a number of crucial decisions as they worked to prepare a mount that was both scientifically accurate and beautiful. [more inside]
Ordnance Survey Maps - England and Wales, 1842-1952
Ordnance Survey Maps - England and Wales, 1842-1952: ‘The most comprehensive, topographic mapping covering all of England and Wales from the 1840s to the 1950s,’ courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. You can browse the maps as individual sheets using a zoomable map of England and Wales; as a seamless zoomable overlay layer on modern Google and OS maps; or as a seamless zoomable layer side-by-side with modern Google and OS maps. Also, Maps of Scotland: ‘Access high-resolution zoomable images of over 91,000 maps of Scotland and beyond.’
January 3
Carole King- Library of Congress Gershwin Prize
Carole King- Gershwin Prize 2014 You've got a friend.
Geomantic Information Systems
The Occult Street Plan of Chico, California
Chico, California, like Santa Rosa is a beautiful small California city that enjoys a mild Mediterranean climate. Chico is tucked in neatly on the east face of the interphase of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges. It says "The city of roses" with a silhouette of John Bidwell, Chico's founder, on the original crest of Chico. The city has recently changed the crest to a more modern design that hides the estoteric meanings of the old one. This has also been happening also at many major universities and colleges. The new crest does have a nice big oak tree which can be interpreted in Celtic lore as the center of the world or a version of the Roman Axis Mundi. The city of Chico is also a model of occult or Masonic city planning that is oriented on a ley line (latitude) of ancient origin and symbolism.[more inside]
On finding unexpected things
Fools and their money...
If your choice of hard drive is affecting the sound of your music, perhaps you can fix it up with an ambient field conditioner. [more inside]
Pressing the equality button
"Women and men should have equal prize money". Helen Wyman, UCI pro cyclist and newly-minted UCI commissaire, has been working diligently this year in her new role to ensure, among other things, gender equality in pay and treatment for women in the demanding and rapidly growing sport of cyclocross. [more inside]
"Do you want the truth, or what I said?"
Anna Broinowski's acclaimed documentary Forbidden Lies, about literary hoaxer Norma Khouri, is available on YouTube. (TW: family violence) [more inside]
This is no time for a flat tire.
Wheels on Mars. "There are holes in Curiosity wheels. There have always been holes -- the rover landed with twelve holes deliberately machined in each wheel to aid in rover navigation. But there are new holes now: punctures, fissures, and ghastly tears." A detailed look at the condition of the wheels on the Curiosity rover.
The Last of the "Creative Moderates"
Edward Brooke, the first African-American to be popularly elected to the U.S. Senate, has died at the age of 95. Immediately a prominent media figure after his election in 1966, he served for two terms. After leaving office, he became known as an advocate for male breast cancer awareness. Although a loyal Republican to the end, in 2004 he found cause to criticize his party for its close-mindedness. In recent years he received renewed media attention when Barbara Walters revealed in her autobiography that she and Brooke had had a secret affair.
Magicians of the Miniature
Matte Shot (previously) presents: Magicians of the Miniature, an overview and image gallery of miniature effects work.
Fan Art Friday: Disney's The Haunted Mansion
"Disney's Haunted Mansion has a devoted fan following. I get it. It's a classic attraction packed with beautiful artwork, memorable and creepy characters, and grand rooms with tons to look at. Even though I've gone on the ride dozens of times at Disneyland, I still come across new things. The ride is deserving of piles of fan art so I've gathered not quite 999 spooktacular examples from around the web. From Ghost Hosts, to Hitchhiking Ghosts, to Madame Leota – it's all right here. Ignore the hot and cold running chills and browse the below gallery." [more inside]
"A Terrible Scene With Lingering Bad Feelings"
In 1981 Vivabeat was a new wave pop rock band with a college station hit "Man From China." The rest of their story can be found in a wonderfully entertaining internet cul-de-sac:
"Vivabeat's is the uncanny story of a band that helped define the sound of an era; a band that experienced remarkable strokes of good fortune and tragic twists of fate; got a taste of the best the record industry could offer, and also the very worst. They left behind a hit dance single, an album on Charisma records, an impossibly rare European EP, and a clutch of unreleased tracks."
Radioactive blood
Nerdist talks to Sam Raimi about fruit, his career in retail sales, how he got started making movies, the links between comedy and horror, the Evil Dead TV show and of course why Spider-Man 3 was "awful".
The New(ly discovered) Animals of 2014
Last year wasn't all bad. Scientists discovered/confirmed 15,000 new species of living things, including the bone house wasp and four kinds of carnivorous sponges. Mental Floss thoughtfully rounds up the best of the best for us. (Warning: big picture of punk rock sea snail.)
Chapstep
Mr B, The Gentlemen Rhymer - who you may know for his chap-hop ditties 'Chap-Hop History', 'Songs For Acid Edward and Hip-Hop Was To Blame After All' has a side project as The Gentlemen Selector with Acid Ragtime and has dropped the first gramophone platter 'Vegetables' [more inside]
Every Beatles Song. In order.
Every year a bunch of musicians in Columbus, Ohio get together and play every officially released Beatles song, in order, in about 12 hours. [more inside]
"Simple four-stringed lute set to invade North America"
Possible Supreme Court cases that could rein in the NSA in 2015
If the Supreme Court tackles the NSA in 2015, it’ll be one of these five cases. Detailed, thoughtful piece with lots of links from Ars Technica.
I'm not your buddy, bro. I'm not your bro, dude. I'm not your dude, pal
Texas is bro country. But the term also covers the entirety of Oklahoma, and almost all of Louisiana and Arkansas, plus good chunks of Kansas and New Mexico. A mid-sized gathering of bros straddles the Michigan-Indiana border, and a tiny bro community lives by the seaside on either side of the Virginia-North Carolina state line.American regional variations in what you call your male best friends. By Frank Jacobs.
"How the ancient poets of Greece and Rome were imagined and re-imagined"
Living Poets is a Durham University website with short guides to various ancient Greek and Latin authors, such as Homer, Orpheus, Anacreon, Catullus, Ovid, and Virgil. The guides focus on the extant sources and how the authors were received in their lifetime and by later generations, avoiding the "perils of autobiography."
Cara Ellison and the Poetics of Space
In Kentucky Route Zero Act II Shannon asks Conway, "Are we inside or outside?"
Shannon's line is a reference to Gaston Bachelard's "The Poetics of Space" written in 1958.
Bachelard's "Poetics of Space" is probably the most important book that most game designers have never read; it explicitly connects architecture to how people will experience it, rather than the trend in 1958, which was to treat architecture like spectacle. Bluntly speaking, Bachelard said back in 1958 that games are not just graphics. They are architecture that create an experience.
He would have made an excellent level designer.
January 2
Papers, Please?
Little Jimmy Dickens, Oldest Opry Member, Dies at 94
This is how much a Kickstarter would cost you.
Some breakdowns and analyses of earnings and costs from Kickstarter: Oh Joy Sex Toy (This particular page might be SFW, but most of the site isn't), Fate Core, Video Game High School Season 1 and Season 2, Corporate America. The overall sentiment seems to be that Kickstarters cost more money than assumed, though some disagree on the usefulness of budget breakdowns.
Our deep integration is because of confidence, but our disagreements are
China seeks to export its vision of the Internet. The Internet should be “free and open, with rules to follow and always following the rule of law,” Lu Wei said, in somewhat contradictory fashion, at the November conference. Asked whether he would consider allowing Facebook in, he was more direct: “I can choose who will be a guest in my home.” He wants others to assert the same power. [more inside]
Your skin color has been causing us a lot of problems
Being a black man in Ukraine showed me everything that's wrong with race in the U.S.
My introduction to racism in Eastern Europe had come swiftly and severely. Over my next 18 months in Ukraine, race would remain a constant obstacle to normal life and interactions with Ukrainians. Certainly, black skin creates hurdles in the United States, as well. Here, racism systemically – but usually covertly – obstructs African-Americans from fully enjoying all the freedoms afforded to white people. But racism in Ukraine was much more blunt – always in my face, unabashed and in plain view. I never had to guess whether a person’s remarks carried racist undertones or if an officer’s stop was fueled by prejudice. Ukrainians always let me know where I stood with them, good or bad. And I appreciated it.[more inside]
Happiness is harder to put into words.
Leviathan - a short story by David Sedaris
The Dystopian Future is Now
Living under permanent surveillance and what that means for our freedom This article is about Ai Weiwei, his house arrest and constant surveillance. The article describes his guards as "...actually being used as a small piece of human cognitive processing inside a giant automated surveillance system. They have to do the pattern recognition that computers aren’t capable of yet." [more inside]
"There is hope!"
As the West African Ebola epidemic stretches into its 10th month: researchers have identified the likely cause of the initial outbreak: a young boy playing with bats in a village in Guinea. The NY Times considers how the opportunity to contain the epidemic was missed and the effects of Ebola on West African economies. Vanity Fair takes a look at the failure to contain the disease within Guinea, Frontline goes to "Ground Zero" in Guinea, and searches for a missing Ebola patient. Meanwhile, West Africans welcomed Christmas (previously) and the New Year. Africa Stop Ebola!
Indifference is a power
Why Stoicism is one of the best mind-hacks ever. "As legions of warriors and prisoners can attest, Stoicism is not grim resolve but a way to wrest happiness from adversity." [more inside]
Elly May has passed away
Donna Douglas, who played Elly May Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies, has died at the age of 81. Her surviving co-star, Max Baer Jr., says "She Was Elly May Until The Day She Died". Here's a reprint of a profile of the "Prettiest of the Beverly Hillbillies*" from Parade magazine from almost 50 years ago.
*which, from what I remember of the show, was faint praise.
“My mama always said, ‘Life was like a box of chocolates."
3D food printing seems to be the next big thing - Create everything... out of chocolate.
Technocracy
Maotanchang caters mostly to such students and prides itself on eliminating the distractions of modern life. Cellphones and laptops are forbidden; the dormitories, where roughly half the students live, were designed without electrical outlets. Romance is banned.
Inside the Chinese cram school, “there’s nothing to do but study.”
Inside the Chinese cram school, “there’s nothing to do but study.”
From That Guy On Your Fantasy Football Team, With Love
From That Guy On Your Fantasy Football Team, With Love — Denver Broncos tight end Julius Thomas writes for The Players' Tribune about the pros and cons of being a prominent fantasy football asset
B is for Bono
U2 frontman Bono Vox writes an end-of-the-year letter.
Hamlet on the Hudson
The same day that his son, Andrew, was inaugurated as the second term governor of New York, Mario Cuomo died yesterday at the age of 82. [more inside]
Let's shop outside the box
Follow the trend lines, not the headlines.
How can we get a less hyperbolic assessment of the state of the world? Certainly not from daily journalism. News is about things that happen, not things that don’t happen. We never see a reporter saying to the camera, “Here we are, live from a country where a war has not broken out”—or a city that has not been bombed, or a school that has not been shot up. As long as violence has not vanished from the world, there will always be enough incidents to fill the evening news. And since the human mind estimates probability by the ease with which it can recall examples, newsreaders will always perceive that they live in dangerous times.
"facts are chiels that winna ding and canna be disputed"
So the question of Why We Lost? is really why did 33% of the electorate who are Heart Yes vote Head No?Gordon Guthrie on Scottish Independence: why we lost.
Melk Abbey
Melk Abbey is a Benedictine abbey founded in 1089 CE in the Wachau valley, Lower Austria. Today's baroque abbey was built in the early 18th century. A dozen 360 panoramas of the interior and exterior of the abbey. Three more 360 panoramas, including the library. Melk Abbey-Austria-UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Danube and Melk Abbey. [more inside]
January 1
They opened up a bank account in her name with it.
A liberal application of fireworks
Future so bright
Yes, yes—We live in the Gibsonian tomorrow, the grim meathook future, the ever-weirder cyberpunk dystopia. But it won't be that way forever. Well, it might get weirder. But good-weird. To that end, the latest anthology from The Sockdolager, You Gotta Wear Shades, contains an astonishing seven tales of brighter futures. Because we happen to think things are in fact gonna get better.[more inside]
If I couldn’t have meat, I needed something damn close.
Health aside, some of my friends were just weirded out. Why turn plant proteins into burgers and dogs? Why not just eat them as peas and soybeans and seeds? To which I say: taco, chimichanga, empanada, crepe, pierogi, wonton, gyoza, stuffed roti, pupusa, pastie, pig in a blanket, croque monsieur, pastrami on rye. Culture is a lump of flesh wrapped in dough. If you want to save the world, you’d better make it convenient.The Beyond Meat people, already known for their plant-based chicken (previously), are taking on plant-based beef. Is it really The Top-Secret Food That Will Change the Way You Eat? Probably not, but it's still interesting.
Final Gasps of Amendment 2
Three Flordia counties are doing away with courthouse weddings. In response to the ban on the issuance of same-sex marriage licenses being lifted on Tuesday we've also seen county clerks threatened by the state while the Attorney General asks the federal judge to clarify that he didn't just mean the clerk named in the case.
“Witch flee, flee from here, or it will go ili with thee.”
The Periodic Expulsion of Evils (From Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough)
"The expulsion of evils, from being occasional, tends to become periodic. It comes to be thought desirable to have a general riddance of evil spirits at fixed times, usually once a year, in order that the people may make a fresh start in life, freed from all the malignant influences which have been long accumulating about them."[more inside]
Pete Souza's 2014 White House photos
How Emily Brontë met Mickey Spillane
Book publishers back then didn’t always have much interest in books as such. They were experts at merchandising. They manufactured a certain number of titles every year, advertised them, sold as many copies as possible, and then did it all over the next year. Sometimes a book would be reprinted and sold again. Print runs were modest and so, generally, were profits.
Then, one day, there was a revolution...Pulp’s Big Moment
Then, one day, there was a revolution...Pulp’s Big Moment
I Think the Storm Ran Out of Rain, the Clouds Are Moving
Kanye West surprise released a new song (scrool down for lyrics) last night featuring Paul McCartney on the keyboard. [more inside]
“It was like I was five and got lost at the swimming pool”
The European Parliament building regularly makes visitors and employees break down and cry. The disorienting effect probably wasn’t an accident. “Our buildings offer themselves to their inhabitants and to the city as ‘mysteries,’ or stories for which we provide ‘keys’ and signs so that they can be deciphered,” is how Architecture-Studio’s website describes its approach.
It looks a bit empty. Try to make everything bigger.
Wreck of the Kulluk
Wreck of the Kulluk (SLNYT) Three years ago, Shell spent millions to send a colossal oil rig to drill in the remote seas of the Arctic. But the Arctic had other plans. [more inside]