February 2014 Archives
February 28
The Box
Twilight in the Box. "The suicide statistics, the squalor and the recidivism haven’t ended solitary confinement. Maybe the brain studies will." [Via]
What it is like to grow up in Hezbollah culture
A tale of a young woman in Lebanon, related in a manner that should resonate with many Americans. "This story is an analogy to what the Shia, most of whom belong to Hezbollah culture, are like in Lebanon. I tell it because it presents things in familiar terms to many Western readers. When people ask me what it was like, to grow up in the lands where Hezbollah structured the predominant culture, I hesitate to answer, because I want them to understand."
there's no reason to have a boat on a basketball court
Inspired by video games such as NBA 2K14, SBNation's sports blogger Jon Bois decided to create a sports video game of his very own. It went terribly.
"Sex workers have the same human rights as other workers"
A sex worker has been awarded $25,000 as compensation for sexual harassment from her manager. [more inside]
"I worked VERY hard on it." - steve brule
After two long years, season three of Check it Out! with Dr. Steve Brule returns to Adult Swim with a look at Planes. A spin-off of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, it stars John C. Reilly as Dr. Steve Brule. Every week, Dr. Steve Brule "checks stuff out" like Relationships ("If your body's lonely it's gonna get sick, probably!"), Food ("Try going a day without it. You'll miss it, Charlie!"), Space ("One small mankind, I'm gonna leap the hell out of this rocket!"), and Animals ("Just turn around and look, you dingus. Your best friends are animal.") All 13 episodes and two special presentations are available online. [more inside]
"Arguably the Coolest High School Chorus in the World!"
Chapel Hill's The Chorus Project sings songs by artists as diverse as R.E.M, The Kinks, Adele, David Byrne, St. Vincent, and Justin Timberlake. Loosely inspired by the 70’s Langley Schools Music Project, Glee and Polyphonic Spree, the chorus is made up of singers from different schools and diverse backgrounds.
Subscribe to their YouTube channel to get their latest releases, and to enjoy the songs they've already done. [more inside]
You are a little high..and bored with the same old munchies (slyt)
you will so want to make some up...like about a dozen..or two! Chili Relleno simply means ‘stuffed chilies’ that form a part of the Mexican cuisine. This dish traces its origins to the city of Puebla and consists of roasted poblano pepper, a mild pepper variety named after the city it comes from. Sometimes instead of poblano pepper, hatch green chile, Anaheim, pasilla or even jalapeño chili peppers are used. Commonly, queso Chihuahua or queso Oaxaca cheese is used for the stuffing. Generally, masa flour or egg whites with a pinch of salt is used as the batter for the chili relleno dish. [more inside]
The Cold War Revives, Heats-Up
Dozens of armed men in Russian-marked military uniforms occupied an airport in the capital of Ukraine's strategic Crimea region early Friday, Obama warns Russia against any military intervention in Ukraine.
But what is so dangerous about Crimea, and what is 'The Budapest Memorandum?'
“Cost-wise, it’s expensive.”
Indeed, heated sidewalks are an uncommon luxury.
“So many things have been done — the playrooms, the gyms, the sky lounges, the media rooms. But very few developers have looked at the experience entering the property.”
Tea and Sympathy
If you dare, here is a live feed of William Corgan's 8 hour long synthesizer improvisation about Herman Hesse's Siddhartha.
He already threw out a reporter trying to cover it.
He already threw out a reporter trying to cover it.
¶¶˄↗][#
It's nice to have an old friend for dinner.
Tonight at 10/9c! The critically-acclaimed, criminally-underviewed NBC thriller Hannibal returns for a second season. There will no doubt be copious live-tweeting (not least from the showrunner himself) and much flailing from the intelligent, dedicated, and hilarious fanbase. [more inside]
Off Brand Portlandia
World of Tomorrow
Live, from Washington, D.C., out of 2500 submissions, it's the 16 official selections of the first ever 2014 White House Student Film Festival [more inside]
Russian ice mountains, the original roller coasters
The first roller coaster was patented in the US almost 130 years ago, but what came before the patent? Russian ice slides from the late 1600s. As discussed in The Incredible Scream Machine: A History of the Roller Coaster (Google books preview), the ice slides, or Flying Mountains, started as basic frozen ramps one would ride on a block of ice, but as soon as royalty became interested, the designs improved, as discussed and depicted in this PDF. Royalty moved some of these tracks indoors, replacing ice with waxed or soaped planks. Though some sources credit an unnamed French traveler for furthering this general design towards something more akin to the modern roller coaster, but The Incredible Scream Machine gives that credit to Katalnaya Gorka (Sliding Hill) at Oranienbaum. If nothing else, the Russian origin of ice mountains lives on through the term for "roller coaster" in a number of languages translating to Russian mountain (though in Russian, it's American mountain).
We are flowers. We just grow.
Mr. B Talks about Ballet:
Only with these people now, on stage, does it exist. It is not sad at all. It is wonderful, it is now. It is alive. It is like a butterfly. I always say butterflies of yesterday don't exist.[1965 Time magazine Google Books warning. You can zoom in to read using the buttons, and note that the pictures start 4 pages earlier.]
Nintendo is shutting down the Nintendo Wii and NDS Wifi Connections
On May 20, Nintendo is shutting down Nintendo Wifi Connection that was used for the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii [Nintendo WiiU/3DS will be unaffected]. Perhaps the most upset groups are the devoted players of a hacked Super Smash Brothers Brawl, called Project M. This community has devoted time and effort into the 6 year old game, and will have no replacement until the sequel arrives this fall. [more inside]
For Egypt's Startups, Unstable Government Is the Least of Their Worries
Egyptian startup culture vs. Silicon Valley: how to lock down bugfixes & VC funding in midst of military takeover? Via
You once tried to make a hot air balloon out of bedsheets.
St. Vincent Has Crafted a Magnificent Mythology on Her Own Terms: The Village Voice interviews Annie Clark, who's touring for her latest album. Videos from the album thus far: Digital Witness and Birth in Reverse.
Pizzanomics
You Should Always Get the Bigger Pizza (SL NPR blog post w/interactive graph)
Democracy, Kleptocracy or Oligarchy?
What’s gone wrong with Democracy? It was the most successful political idea of the 20th century. Why has it run into trouble, and what can be done to revive it? Excellent Essay of the Economist.
Dementiavillage
De Hogeweyk is a self-contained dementia-focused living centre, complete with restaurants, cafes, a supermarket, gardens, a pedestrian boulevard, and much more.
Pop has eaten itself and has a sugar high
Give me Choco! (SLYT) is the new single/video from Babymetal. Babymetal is what you get when a J-Pop Idol group goes full Death Metal. As the wikipedia article drily remarks, "none of the three members knew what metal music was before the inception of the band." Ear-meltingly metal and eye-meltingly kawaii, in a disturbingly perkygoth way, you can find more here, here, and here. [more inside]
I WANT YOU, NA NA
Ali Graham's Beyonce VS Zombies
Keys to the Domain
Meet the people who hold the master keys to the internet. Hear all about their quirky sci-fi get together.
The Anatomy of the Deep State
"My analysis . . . is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day." Former longtime Republican Congressional aide Mike Lofgren on the illusion of US political "paralysis", the limits of the visible government, and the anatomy of the deep state. [more inside]
The Cannibal and the Badger
The Amazing True Story Of Victor, The Wrestling Bear
"I mean, my God," Chet Coppock said. "We're 35 years removed from this, and I still have people who when I go to Indianapolis will see me and go, 'You know, I still remember the night you wrestled Victor the Bear.'"
The average lifespan of a Saul Bass logo is 35 years
"The fals fox came vpon a day, And with our gese he made affray."
“The Fox” tells the simple story of a fox who attacks a farmer’s birds. In most versions, he is spotted by the farmer’s wife and chased away by the farmer himself, but gets away with a duck or a goose. Although it often sounds thoroughly modern, it is in fact one of the oldest folksongs we have in English. The earliest texts are in Middle English and come from the 15th century.Folklife Today, a blog from the Library of Congress, provides a short history of this well-loved song. [more inside]
Sing, kitty, sing.
"I want to go back to the bookshop"
Sophia McDougall: "I don’t want to be a rare successful female writer; I just want to be a successful writer."
February 27
Democratic and demanding
Introducing tricot
Batman vs. The Terminator
The great Medieval water myth
"The idea that Medieval people drank beer or wine to avoid drinking bad water is so established that even some very serious scholars see no reason to document or defend it; they simply repeat it as a settled truth. In fact, if no one ever documents the idea, it is for a very simple reason: it's not true."
AirPnP
Going to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and finding yourself worried about bathroom options? Try AirPnP. Like Airbnb, but for bathrooms. [more inside]
"There is no humor in heaven.”
The Dark Psychology of Being a Good Comedian. The Atlantic discusses humor's role as a coping mechanism, as a defense mechanism and as a cognitive tool. Also compares funny people to psychotic ones.
Meanwhile, back in the People's Republic of Zuckerstan...
...taking a critical look at the dark side of the "Innovation Economy" There is no Google bus controversy in the Bay State. But the similarities between Boston and San Francisco now include a growing debate over the shadow side of the Innovation Economy: [more inside]
De-extinction
The Mammoth Cometh. "Bringing extinct animals back to life is really happening — and it’s going to be very, very cool. Unless it ends up being very, very bad." [Previously, Via]
Trapped in the House of the Beautiful Sleeping Athlete
This is the story of Jean-Pierre Adams, the French international footballer who as part of surgery was given anaesthetic that should have knocked him out for a few hours. 32 years later, he is still in a coma.
It was really just a matter of time.
Just a Lady
The Kutiman Orchestra performs "Just a Lady" live. "Just a Lady" was one of seven songs on the masterful found-footage sampling project Thru You (previously, samples and downloads) and was my personal favorite, so I'm very happy to see a live version. [more inside]
Taking the Mickey
The Very Merry Un-Gangs of Disneyland These social clubs are a new generation of hardcore Disney fans, powered by Instagram and Facebook and made up of grandparents in their 60s, as well as teens and toddlers plodding along beside their parents. Only 10 years ago, their style—tattooed and plugged—would have banned them from the parks and made them outcasts among Disney fans. But now, with tolerance, if not approval, from the Mouse, the social clubs have found a playground to call their own.
Warner Bros. Logo Design Evolution
"All studios have their main logo that appears at the beginning of a film, but some occasionally use custom logos that reflect the theme of the movie. When I noticed that Warner Bros. does this a lot I wanted to find out how often this happened and what these logos looked like. I couldn’t find a good overview with all logos gathered in one place, so I started to collect them myself, in 2009. Now, five years later, I think I have enough to paint a picture of Warner Bros logo design evolution. "
Corpus Libris
Corpus Libris. Books and bodies.
Scale invariant art
Astroblast and Overstepping Artifacts are music videos by the project Musicians with Guns, which take the viewer through detailed tours of some beauty. Relax and enjoy.
honor bound to defend freedom
Writing In The Gray Areas - "Are some acts so revolting that the people who commit them do not deserve a hearing?" [more inside]
Code Name: Funiculì, Funiculà
Neapolitan spirit at a London supermarket; SLGTV. Never happens where I shop.
Supergeil
Edeka has managed to insert an earworm into the German internet with their advertising reworking the The Tourist/Friedrich Liechtenstein track, Supergeil into an advertisement for the grocery store. [more inside]
Spoiler: The cat said 'fuck you' at the end
The Brie People
"Yahoo webcam images from millions of users intercepted"
Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.
"We were not aware of nor would we condone this reported activity," a Yahoo spokesperson says in a statement to The Verge.
But...what about all the webcam sex?
Rise of bot traffic: websites seen more often by non-humans than humans
In a survey performed in 2012, Incapsula found that 49% of the visitors to 1,000 selected sites were human, compared to a growing percentage of "good bots" like search engines, and "bad bots" including hackers, scrapers, spammers and spies of all sorts. Last year, human web visitors accounted for 38.5% of site visitors, with an increased percentage of search engines and other good bots, and similar ratios for the "shady non-human visitors." [more inside]
3+3+3+2+2
Fiedel was at heart an improviser... he first set up a rhythm loop on one of the primitive, early-’80s devices he was using. He recorded samples of himself whacking a frying pan to create the clanking sounds. Then he played melodic riffs on a synthesizer over the looped beat. Amid the throes of creation, what he hadn’t quite noticed—or hadn’t bothered to notice—was that his finger had been a split-second off when it pressed the button to establish that rhythm loop. What is the time signature of the theme from The Terminator?
Love the True Detective theme? A brief intro to The Handsome Family
The Handsome Family are an alt-country and americana band based in Albuquerque via Chicago, Texas and Long Island. They have currently finding a new audience thanks to having their song Far From Any Road used as the theme from True Detective on HBO. [more inside]
That thing the sun does that makes it so hot
GLaDOS teaches fusion and fission for NASA. Ellen McLain lends her autotuned voice to IRrelevant Astronomy, a video series produced as part of the education & public outreach mandate of the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope. [via]
The real reason Ben & Jerry's released their new 'Core' flavors
There Is No Childhood Obesity Epidemic Paul Campos in TNR reviews the latest report from the Journal of the American Medical Association. [more inside]
In honour of Loretta
26 year-old Inuk woman Loretta Saunders was working on an Honours thesis studying the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal women of Canada. Her supervisor called her proposal "the most beautifully written and cared-for assignment I had ever read in seven years of university teaching." Two weeks ago, Loretta disappeared and fell out of contact with family and friends. Yesterday police confirmed that her body had been found in the median of the Trans-Canada Highway. Her disappearance is now being treated as a homicide. [more inside]
Handen Wasschen is Beter
Wear Something Gold.
It's a UNIX system! I know this!
There is much to be learned from Reggie Watts.
The 28 Rules of the Oscars Party
10. If you are throwing an Oscars party, you need to decide if it's going to be a cinema lover's party or an Oscars party. "At a cinema lover's party, people dress up and have thoughtful conversations about the nominees and the year in cinema. At an Oscars party, everyone sits in their sweatpants and trashes every single thing that happens for four hours." This was written by a WSJ sportswriter, who doesn't understand that you can do both at either type of party.
making of fluffy
Maru the shibu inu shows that being fluffy doesn't just happen, it takes a lot of work. [more inside]
Leonard Nimoy's Mother Tongue.
Normalizing torture
"Fringe is a modern reincarnation of the X-Files . . . However one major difference that jumps out when you compare them is the huge amount of torture that happens in Fringe compared to the X-Files . . . Everywhere you see it it promotes the lie that torture works."
An Immodest Proposal
EAT CELEBRITY MEAT: BiteLabs grows meat from celebrity tissue samples and uses it to make artisanal salami. "If it's just a joke—as any half-concious participant in the age of viral marketing ploys and social media hoaxes immediately assumed it to be—then its creators are willing to take it pretty far."
Your clever relationship wingman.
Really babe, you're using Arial?
Down with this sort of thing
It's blue, baby blue.
The Theoretical Minimum
How condensed might one expect an overview of all modern physics to be? Leonard Susskind has an answer, and provides The Theoretical Minimum. [more inside]
February 26
"What is...." from the Notices of the American Math Society
Each month, the Notices of the American Math Society runs a column called "What is...." which aims to explain an advanced mathematical concept in two pages, at a level accessible to a good undergrad math major. Armin Straub, a postdoc at Illinois, has collected them all in one place. [more inside]
(you) | Call | Me \ Ishmael
Swan Song
How Johnny Cash was nearly killed by an ostrich in 1981. Surprise toy in the bottom of the box: "Folsom Prison Blues" covered by a band called Ostriches.
"I like to see you in peril"
"You've had me in a luge. You've had me on a Brahma bull, that thing with a big, big hump. Then you had me zipline on the world's fastest zipline. Then you had me walk on the lovely CN Tower." This week, Rick Mercer and Jann Arden's big date involves harnesses and winches and also donkeys, but not at the same time.
Yo La Tengo WFMU All-Request Marathon TONIGHT
Yo La Tengo are once again playing requests for pledges beginning at 9pm US EST TONIGHT on WFMU. Every year, Yo La Tengo perform requests live on-air in exchange for pledges, to help keep freeform noncommercial radio station WFMU (91.1 FM in Jersey City, NJ) on the air. This year is no exception. They will begin playing at 9pm US EST tonight, and will be playing listener requests for several more hours.
"...a beauty and an elegance..."
The comic strip documentary STRIPPED not only landed the first ever on-camera interview with Bill Watterson, but he liked the film so much he drew the poster. This is his second piece of art for public consumption and his first cartoon since December 31st, 1995.
The Yellow King
HBO's controversial new True Detective series has sparked a renewed interest in an unlikely subject: an 1895 book called The King In Yellow. Praised by H. P. Lovecraft, the book is a collection of short stories in which a play called The King In Yellow is somehow involved. A play, which, in an alternate world, "could not be judged by any known standard" but in which it was "acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck" leaves its readers changed, and perhaps insane. It's inspired other authors (and the occasional imitator) ever since, and you can read it for yourself in your browser or, still free, on your e-reader. True Detective's bleak world view and story of lives tinged with madness fits right in, whether the mythology eventually pans out in the series or not.
A very short film about time travel
Timeholes is a 2 minute film that introduces a concept (time travel is happening!), the problem with it (a lot of assholes are using it!), and executes a perfectly short story around those two things.
CG Mockbusters
The Asylum gets all the attention (and the lucrative gig filling time for "SyFy") but they're far from the only company out there making "mockbusters," those ultra low budget, direct-to-DVD movies named similar to big Hollywood blockbusters, in the hopes that an inattentive purchaser will buy their movie in the hopes they're getting something better. But The Asylum's not the only ones making them, and a prominent mockbuster subgenre is that of companies making really poor CG movies that resemble Pixar and Dreamworks hits only to the extent that they can maintain plausible, legal deniability, their profit margins relying on clueless grandparents getting something nice for the little ones.
Two of these companies are Video Brinquedo (trailer for their Little & Big Monsters and some clips from its sequel) and Spark Plug Entertainment (trailer for An Ant's Life). Far more of their output, including whole movies, awaits you than you could ever hope to stomach.... [more inside]
Two of these companies are Video Brinquedo (trailer for their Little & Big Monsters and some clips from its sequel) and Spark Plug Entertainment (trailer for An Ant's Life). Far more of their output, including whole movies, awaits you than you could ever hope to stomach.... [more inside]
Sing it
Nat King Cole. Eartha Kitt. Mahalia Jackson. Pearl Bailey. Cab Calloway. Ella Fitzgerald. Billy Preston. All assembled for a single musical: the 1958 W.C. Handy biopic St. Louis Blues. [more inside]
Involuntourist Reflex
The Problem With Little White Girls (and Boys): Why I Stopped Being a Voluntourist
It turns out that I, a little white girl, am good at a lot of things. I am good at raising money, training volunteers, collecting items, coordinating programs, and telling stories. I am flexible, creative, and able to think on my feet. On paper I am, by most people’s standards, highly qualified to do international aid. But I shouldn’t be.
[...] I don’t want a little girl in Ghana, or Sri Lanka, or Indonesia to think of me when she wakes up each morning. I don’t want her to thank me for her education or medical care or new clothes. Even if I am providing the funds to get the ball rolling, I want her to think about her teacher, community leader, or mother. I want her to have a hero who she can relate to – who looks like her, is part of her culture, speaks her language, and who she might bump into on the way to school one morning.
81 Cantonese proverbs in one image.
This cartoon by graphic designer and cartoonist 阿塗 (Ah To) contains 81 Cantonese proverbs and idioms in one image. It was originally published on the Hong Kong website Passion Times, and was inspired by a 1559 oil painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder called Netherlandish Proverbs. [more inside]
Sex! Drugs! Apps!
Normcore: millennials reject individualism for inclusion
Jeremy Lewis ... calls normcore “one facet of a growing anti-fashion sentiment.” His personal style is ... “exhaustingly plain”—this winter, that’s meant a North Face fleece, khakis, and New Balances. Lewis says his “look of nothing” is about absolving oneself from fashion, “lest it mark you as a mindless sheep.”
As Easy As Folding A Waffle
"the first manga to be released stateside"
In 1931, at a time when the American comic book barely existed, Henry (Yoshitaka) Kiyama wrote and drew the semi-autobiographical Manga Yonin Shosei, possibly not just the first graphic novel, but certainly the first manga published in the US, written in a mixture of Japanese and English. [more inside]
The Greatest Thing on The Internet... today...
And the winner is...
Life After Pi : How Rythm & Hues declared bankruptcy and 11 days later won an Oscar for their work on 'Life of Pi' (SLYT). [more inside]
Lunchbox Doodles
"Q: What is the story behind Lunchbox Doodles and how long have you been doing it?
A: It really started as a result of the fond memories I have of opening my lunch at school and reading notes my mother would place inside. While I can't remember specifically what they said, they had an impact on me. They served as a reminder that my parents were thinking of me even when I wasn't with them."
It matters to me
In March 1993 Bikini Kill toured the UK. "It Changed My Life" is a film about that tour, with openers Huggy Bear, & contributions by the Raincoats, Sister George, and Skinned Teen. [more inside]
Keeping tradition and history intact is not a justification....
U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia has ruled that Texas' ban on the recognition of marriage equality is unconstitutional. The ruling comes days after the launch of Freedom To Marry's Southern Campaign, and almost a week after a judge in Illinois ruled that gay and lesbian couples there had the right to marry immediately, rather than June 1, as the legislature had previously passed. The Texas ruling has been stayed pending appeal.
We “tolerate” mosquitoes. But we should accept people.
"What you’re about to see are hundreds of men across two sports not merely tolerating a gay player because he’s a peer in their league, but actually accepting him because he’s their friend." Former NFL linebacker, current sports analyst, and long-time equal rights proponent Scott Fujita writes about 'Michael Sam, Jason Collins paving the way for a better workplace, world'.
The Murders Before the Marathon
Ibragim was a womanizer. He was kind to children. He had a sweet tooth, and a temper. Who killed three men in Waltham, Massachusetts, on September 11 2011? And could solving that case have prevented the Boston Bombings? The answers may never be clear, because the chief surviving suspect, Ibragim Todashev, was shot by the FBI while allegedly on the brink of confessing. Journalist Susan Zalkind's investigation turned up many more questions about the Bureau's handling of the case than it answered. It's also been featured on This American Life. Warning: the first link contains photos of Todashev's dead body.
"How much my novel cost me" by Emily Gould.
How much my novel cost me: "It’s hard to write about being broke because brokeness is so relative; “broke” people run the gamut from the trust-funded jerk whose drinks you buy because she’s “so broke right now” to the people who sleep outside the bar where she’s whining. But by summer 2012 I was broke, and in debt, and it was no one’s fault but mine." (Previously)
(but we can fix it)
I almost became a victim of human trafficking
Writer and sports personality Brittney Cason thought she had been recruited for what seemed like a legitimate network job covering the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Only days before she left, flags started going up.
Mutato
Perhaps you would like many pictures of mutant vegetables , or a look back on how animals have been perceived or a short guide to the museum of supernatural history. If so, Uli Westphal has you covered.
This rescue was considered challenging but feasible.
The audacious rescue plan that might have saved space shuttle Columbia. As part of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board's investigation, NASA devised a plan to save Columbia's crew had they known that the foam strike damaged the shuttle. Previously.
Just a flesh wound
Science journalist and NOVA correspondent extraordinaire Miles O'Brien was working on a story in Japan and the Philippines when a piece of luggage fell on his arm causing minor swelling. The next day his arm was amputated due to Acute Compartment Syndrome. He recounts his experience with as much humor and grace as one can muster.
Grateful Dead vs. Phish and Other Distinctions
Music Machinery presents a map of each U.S. state's most distinct favorite band or recording artist, as well as an app for playing with the data.
DRR... DRR... DRR...
Technology concentrates power.
Our Comrade the Electron. Maciej Cegłowski (previously) delivered a talk at Webstock in Wellington, New Zealand on theremin inventor Lev Termen (previously), futurism, the Dutch Golden Age, and the modern surveillance state.
Adios Maestro
Paco de Lucia (1947 - 2014) legendary flamenco guitarist and composer has died aged 66.
His death is an ‘irreparable loss’ to world of culture.
Entre dos Aguas and his YouTube page and a brief biography.
His death is an ‘irreparable loss’ to world of culture.
Entre dos Aguas and his YouTube page and a brief biography.
The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals By Adolph Reed Jr.
The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals "The left has no particular place it wants to go. And, to rehash an old quip, if you have no destination, any direction can seem as good as any other."
(Originally in Harpers)
Judith Butler explained with cats...
Broke all the rules, played all the fools
2CELLOS (Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser) have released a new music video. The period audience are...Thunderstruck. [more inside]
February 25
Something For Everyone
Never Gonna Wake Up - a mashup of AVICII and Rick Astley, featuring Chumbawamba and John Travolta [SLYT]
Welcome to the Chicago Precrime Department
When the Chicago Police Department sent one of its commanders to Robert McDaniel’s home last summer, the 22-year-old high school dropout was surprised. Though he lived in a neighborhood well-known for bloodshed on its streets, he hadn’t committed a crime or interacted with a police officer recently. And he didn’t have a violent criminal record, nor any gun violations. In August, he incredulously told the Chicago Tribune, "I haven't done nothing that the next kid growing up hadn't done.” Yet, there stood the female police commander at his front door with a stern message: if you commit any crimes, there will be major consequences. We’re watching you.
Raags To Riches
But if Urdu is the refined language of power and privilege, Punjabi is the powerful words of the streets. And the streets are where lyrics overwhelmingly situate rap.
Pakistani rap positions Punjabi as Ebonics is positioned in the U.S.
That's why you don't let the puppy sleep on your head
New state of matter found in chicken eyes
Disordered Hyperuniformity "Along with eggs, soup and rubber toys, the list of the chicken's most lasting legacies may eventually include advanced materials such as self-organizing colloids, or optics that can transmit light with the efficiency of a crystal and the flexibility of a liquid. ..."
Article does not provide recipes.
Nyalan and Deshi
These cats are the "image characters" (mascots) for Jalan, a travel site in Japan. Stars of many adverts, the older cat is "Nyalan" ("nya" is "meow" in Japanese), and his apprentice is "Deshi." They also have their "own" Twitter account and more pictures are on the Jalan Facebook profile. And yet more pictures.
"Whose this beautifull man with a lovely voice, its Annie Lennox."
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa international trailer. Oh, you're an American and thusly only vaguely aware of Steve Coogan as that guy who did Hamlet 2? Well here's Alan Partridge (official US release title) trailer. [more inside]
Double Vision
Stephen Soderbergh combines both versions of Psycho to create "Psychos" Director Stephen Soderbergh has just posted, via his blog a link to Psychos, his combining of Alfred Hitchcock's classic Psycho and the slightly less well received Gus Van Sant "shot for shot remake".
Potvin Sucks !!
Tonight is the 35th Anniversary of one the most famous chants in American Sports. On Feb 25, 1979, Denis Potvin, NHL Hall-of-Famer, 5 time Stanley Cup Champion, and Captain of the New York Islanders laid a hard check on New York Rangers forward Ulf Nilsson. That hit effectively ended Nilsson's career, and made Potvin the target of unending abuse from Ranger fans. Rangers fans have never forgotten nor forgiven Potvin. To this day, regardless of which team the Rangers are playing that night, if someone whistle's the first few bars of "Let's Go Band," all of Madison Square Garden will erupt in a chant of "Potvin Sucks!"
28 Books You Should Read If You Want To
Watch snowflakes grow
Ivanov Vyacheslav has captured video of snowflakes growing. Here's why they grow that way (via snowflakes, previously). But how can one arm know what the other is doing? Here's how. More snowflake formation video from Caltech physicist Kenneth Libbrecht.
"the only widely published author on the Florida payroll."
The following represents a sample of Zora Neale Hurston music from the Folklife Collection.
Above is a compilation of all of the known Zora Neale Hurston sound recordings* created while she worked for the WPA in the 1930s. Today, the original recordings are housed at the Library of Congress. Hurston made recordings for the WPA in 1935 and again in 1939.[more inside]
"The arrogance of man is thinking nature is under our control..."
"...can you get them to stop playing that fucking song on the radio?"
On June 8, 2014 it will have been 30 years since those paranormal janitors cleaned up the town in the most successful comedy of the 1980s doing over $291 million in gross box office sales. Who you going to call? Everyone in the cast (except Bill Murray, sadly): Ghostbusters: An Oral History. Some choice quotes below the fold. [more inside]
Good news for webhosters (and scientists)
PLOS’ New Data Policy: Public Access to Data "PLOS has always required that authors make their data available to other academic researchers who wish to replicate, reanalyze, or build upon the findings published in our journals.
In an effort to increase access to this data, we are now revising our data-sharing policy for all PLOS journals: authors must make all data publicly available, without restriction, immediately upon publication of the article. Beginning March 3rd, 2014, all authors who submit to a PLOS journal will be asked to provide a Data Availability Statement, describing where and how others can access each dataset that underlies the findings." Openscience.org also have a primer on why open science data is important.
Below West 38th Street
House of Cards OG
Once, more, you mangle it more
Lord Cobham was burnt alive, but I forget what for
Ageism in the tech industry?
Vivek Wadhwa's article about hiring in the tech industry makes some startling assertions.
Legendary
After coming it at #19 in 2012, the great state of North Dakota was the happiest state to live in for 2013, according to The Gallup-Healthways Well Being Index. [more inside]
All lives are excellent.
Life is not a marathon.
There is no single path. There is no single finishing line. There are as many goals and finishing lines as the number of people on this planet.
Music From The Grand Budapest Hotel
Pitchfork is streaming the soundtrack to Wes Anderson's upcoming movie The Grand Budapest Hotel (previously). [more inside]
Pain
Do invertebrates feel pain? "Boiled alive and torn limb from limb – it's time we took seriously the question of whether animals like squid, octopus and lobsters suffer"
Flash Photography Crash Course
Deep Sea Dubstep
Watch out for tongue splinters. Deep sea scientist Craig McClain is investigating communities which thrive on wood that falls to the bottom of the sea, so he "chunked 36 logs overboard". You want to see footage of the experiment set to dubstep? Course you do.
[via mefi projects]
Not too big to fail.
Mt Gox, what had been the world's largest bitcoin exchange, seems to have shut down. According to a supposedly leaked document, they're missing 744,000 bitcoins, which even at Bitcoin's current, rapidly falling price, would be worth somewhere around $300 million dollars.
A collection of bitcoin businesses and markets have issued a statement. [more inside]
ITER
A Star in a Bottle. "An audacious plan to create a new energy source could save the planet from catastrophe. But time is running out."
February 24
She's got it.
Your Ability to Can Even
A Defense of Internet Linguistics --because "sometimes “AODEHwhddhwdwebw” is far more eloquent than saying “I’m so overtaken with emotion, I can barely type so I smashed the keyboard with my forehead.” [more inside]
Fawlty Towers without the Fawltys
John Cleese: "I remember at a party I met these chaps from Viacom, who said they were working on a new Fawlty Towers. My ears pricked up at the sound of cash registers and said, 'That's wonderful, are you going to change anything?'. They said, 'Well we have changed one thing, we've written Basil out'. And that's absolutely true, they took Basil and Sybil's lines and gave them all to Bea Arthur." The resulting effort was a 1983 ABC series called Amanda’s By the Sea which could charitably be described as a fiasco. [more inside]
Expand your mind
Not like those grumpy drummers
Quincy Jones And Bill Cosby: The Original Jam Sessions, and remixes
Later this year will mark the 45th anniversary of Bill Cosby's first self-titled sitcom, The Bill Cosby Show. Ten years ago, the original jam sessions were released, which are notable for the "various collection of notables who steal the show with contributions at various points." Pianist Les McCann, sax man Ernie Watts, and guitarist Arthur Adams get things going on "Groovy Gravy," Tom Scott shows some legit chops on "Toe Jam," while Jimmy Smith offers sampling of his Hammond B3 on the interlude "Jimmy Cookin' On Top." If seeing Quincy Jones and Bill Cosby get top billing confused you, the album credits reference their roles, which are not front-and-center, except for some vocal improv by Cosby on "Hikky-Burr." You can hear more tracks on Grooveshark, and if you're into more of that modern dance remixery, you might (also) enjoy The New Mixes, Vol. 1, which can also be sampled on Grooveshark.
Welcome to Bell Labs
The legendary Bell Labs Complex in Holmdel, New Jersey was designed by Eero Saarinen and is a gargantuan example of modernist architecture. Though it was shuttered in 2007, there are plans to revitalize it into a mixed use commercial area. However those plans eventually play out, it's fun to have a look at the place both then and now. As a bonus, feast your eyes on a pair of back-to-back videos that first show the construction and opening of the facility in 1962 and then (starting at the 2:35 mark in the second video link) a commemoration of the facility's 20th anniversary in 1982 (Part one, Part two, Part three).
John Chen's Plan to Save Blackberry
John Chen's Plan to Save Blackberry Over all, Chen wants BlackBerry to transform itself from being a “mobile technology company” that pushes handset sales to “a mobile solution company” that takes a broader approach to serving the mobile computing needs of its customers. Remaining in the handset business is important—for now, at least. “I think devices are still one component of the solution,” Chen says. “The question is, Do we need to be in the device business? That remains to be seen.”
The Nimitz Graybook: The WWII Operational Diary of Chester W. Nimitz
December 7--The war opened with the attack of Japanese aircraft on Oahu.
So begins the Command Summary of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, USN, now available online as part of the U.S. Naval War College's Naval Historical Collection, in eight pdf volumes. Downloading is currently a little slow, as demand for site access has been high.
Bespectacled ballplayer trolls baseball
Major league baseball is doing something dumb. They asked fans to nominate a player from their team to be THE FACE OF MLB, whatever that means. Yankees fans picked Derek Jeter. Angels fans picked Mike Trout. Oakland A's fans picked a 4-eyed utility infielder named Eric Sogard. And he's winning.
This guy
On Tim Wagner's instagram account, everything, from everyday items to persons of interest, comes with an elaborate backstory.
Amtrak choo-choo-chooses writers for residencies
Satisfaction knows no species
Basketball Diplomacy
Borders
Please lick responsibly
I realize that it is only Monday. I also realize that it is still very much Winter in much of the Northern Hemisphere. But I also realized today that the word "Poptails" has never before been mentioned on the Blue. Time to change that: Booze + Popsicle Recipe = POPTAILS ! What's your poison? Dirty Pirate Popsicles, Corona Beer Popsicles, Three Musketeers Poptail, Bourbon Butterscotch Latte Popsicles & more, much more. Or just invent your own. (Keep in mind that if you use too much alcohol it won't freeze. (Worst case scenario: SLUSHIE!) Just how much alcohol to use for a poptail.
You, and me, and parent number three
FDA weighs risks of 3-person embryo fertilization , making "designer babies". This is explored with the goal of preventing mothers from passing on debilitating genetic diseases to their children. Daily Mail says 30 GM human babies have already been born in the United states. Half of them developed defects so the FDA stepped in.
I thought I’d moved beyond my days of Panicking in Northeast Iowan Malls
"Girls who wanted to be my friend wanted to help me get better at being a girl. Like a Bridget Jones-esque makeover montage, I let them burn my forehead with curling irons, poke me in the eyes with eyeliner pencils, and look me up and down in dressing rooms. I was so thrilled for the friendships I was convinced I enjoyed the forehead burning (my same friend, always burning me in the same place, before every quarterly Junior High dance, as reliable as the changing of the seasons). What began in early adolescence– genuine friendships forged through drag-like gender performance– continued well into adulthood." -- Molly Knefel writes about growing up gender nonconforming.
Teach your audiences to want surprises - not pacifiers.
"Every play in your season should be a premiere—a world premiere, an American premiere, or at least a regional premiere. Everybody has to help. Directors: Find a new play to help develop in the next 12 months. Actors: Ditto. Playwrights: Quit developing your plays into the ground with workshop after workshop after workshop—get them out there. Critics: Reward theaters that risk new work by making a special effort to review them." -Ten Things Theaters Need to Do Right Now to Save Themselves
Scouting Long Island’s Decommissioned Nuclear Power Plant
"A month ago, I heard that the now vacant Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was available as a filming location..." Scouting New York's Nick Carr photographed the inside of the first nuclear power plant in the US to be dismantled.
Hopefully he didn't cross the streams
Harold Ramis, SCTV alumni, Ghostbuster, and director of films such as Caddyshack and Groundhog Day (previously discussed on the blue here and here, among other moments), passed away this morning at 69.
Fail Better
Fail Better "The goal of FAIL BETTER is to open up a public conversation about failure, particularly the instructive role of failure, as it relates to very different areas of human endeavour. Rather than simply celebrating failure, which can come at great human, environmental and economic cost, we want to open up a debate on the role of failure in stimulating creativity: in learning, in science, engineering and design."
The Lion of the Union is No More
One hundred years ago today, General Joshua L. Chamberlain - the "lion of the union" - linguist, professor, mason, soldier, Medal of Honor winner, public servant, and author -- died at the age of 85, from the lingering wounds he had suffered at the Siege of Petersburg, fifty years earlier.
"the tide-turner, the shiny hinge"
Neville Longbottom is the Most Important Person in Harry Potter—And Here’s Why
See, Rowling largely operates Harry’s generation in a clear system of parallels to the previous generation, Marauders and all. Harry is his father—Quidditch star, a little pig-headed sometimes, an excellent leader. Ron is Sirius Black—snarky and fun, loyal to a fault, mired in self-doubts. Hermione is Remus Lupin—book smart and meticulous, always level-headed, unfailingly perceptive. Ginny is Lily Evans—a firecracker, clever and kind, unwilling to take excuses. Draco Malfoy is Severus Snape—a natural foil to Harry, pretentious, possessed of the frailest ego and also deeper sense of right and wrong when it counts. And guess what? Neville Longbottom is Peter Pettigrew.[more inside]
It's smaller on the outside - The mechanical furniture of the Roentgens
But who is the Best Boy?
Assembling a Film's Billing Block. The blurb at the bottom of a movie poster is called the "billing block." And while it might look like a bar code of haphazardly packed type, it is in fact the product of detailed legal agreements and intense contract negotiation. Below is the the billing block for a fictional film and an explanation of how it was constructed. (via kottke.org.)
Jason Collins signs a 10 day contract with Brooklyn Nets
He played last night in a 108-102 win against the LA Lakers. After a 10 month hiatus from playing in the NBA, Collins became the first openly gay athlete to compete in any of the US's 4 major team sports. [more inside]
Extraordinary scenery shots
A simple poster
I Give Up
Mind, blown
Experience just how big the Universe is, using this interactive graphic made by 14-year-old Cary Huang. Click on individual objects for factoids.
Insider/outsider in South Africa
The women of Gugulethu and Khayelitsha township. The third installment of photographer Julia Gunther’s ongoing project ‘Proud Women of Africa,’ which is in many ways is an outsider's continuation of visual activist Zanele Muholi's 'Faces and Phases' series, “marking, mapping, and preserving an often invisible community for posterity.” In an interview with the New Statesman, Muholi grappled with the ethical implications of documentary photography: “It’s been done for many years. Africa has mostly been projected and documented by the outside world.” (previously)
The Lost Art of Funerary Violin
The book An Incomplete History of the Art of Funerary Violin, published in 2006, tells, for the first time, the story of a lost art and one that was eventually supressed by the Church.
"During the Protestant revolution in Europe, a new kind of music emerged, one that ultimately sought to recognize the deceased and to individuate the sense of loss and grief. But the tradition was virtually wiped out by the Great Funerary Purges of the 1830s and 40s. Kriwaczek tells the fascinating story of this beautiful music, condemned by the Catholic Church for political as much as theological reasons, and of the mysterious Guild of Funerary Violinists that, yes, defends its secrets in our time."
The 220-page book is written in an academic tone and outlines the entire history of the Society along with biographies of some of its key figures - George Babcotte and Herr Hieronymous Gratchenfleiss and even Paganini. [more inside]
"During the Protestant revolution in Europe, a new kind of music emerged, one that ultimately sought to recognize the deceased and to individuate the sense of loss and grief. But the tradition was virtually wiped out by the Great Funerary Purges of the 1830s and 40s. Kriwaczek tells the fascinating story of this beautiful music, condemned by the Catholic Church for political as much as theological reasons, and of the mysterious Guild of Funerary Violinists that, yes, defends its secrets in our time."
The 220-page book is written in an academic tone and outlines the entire history of the Society along with biographies of some of its key figures - George Babcotte and Herr Hieronymous Gratchenfleiss and even Paganini. [more inside]
Much sledding. So university. Wow.
The University of Tromsø, Norway, is the world's northernmost university. Finnmarksløpet is the world's northernmost sled dog race. Starting winter 2015, "dog sledding and the Finnmarksløpet sled dog race are now being offered as a part of their own university course for the first time ever in Norway and Europe." [more inside]
Give me compliments. Bitte schnell.
According to their YouTube profile, "Kollektivet is a comedy-show aired on Norwegian TV2." Here they are with a teutonic-dry take on underappreciation: Give Me Compliments [2:15].
February 23
Each night, you must curl up on their face or they will freeze to death
Noise for kids
My favorite new tumblr: Experimental Music On Children's TV.
Music saves me still
Alice Herz-Sommer, the oldest known Holocaust survivor and subject of the film "The Lady in Number Six" has died at the age of 110. Before World War II, Alice was a concert pianist who travelled across Europe. During the war, Alice's mother and husband were sent to Auschwitz where they were murdered, and Alice and her six year old son were sent to Theresienstadt. Alice performed more than 100 concerts at Theresienstadt, and immigrated to Israel with her son after surviving the camp. [more inside]
The dangers of A/B testing
A/B testing has become a familiar term for most people running web sites, especially e-commerce sites. Unfortunately, most A/B test results are illusory (PDF, 312 kB). Here's how not to run an A/B test. Do use this sample size calculator or this weird trick.
American Deep Blues Touring 1960's Britain
The American Folk Blues Festival 1962 - 1966; Vol 2; Vol 3 - The festival was an annual event with dozens of classic blues greats like Sonny Boy Williamson, Muddy Waters & Howlin' Wolf playing to appreciative UK audiences. "Attendees at Manchester in 1962, the first ever venue for the festival in Britain, included Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Jimmy Page. Subsequent attendees at the first London festivals are believed to have also included such influential musicians as Eric Burdon, Eric Clapton, and Steve Winwood. Collectively these were the primary movers in the blues explosion that would lead to the British Invasion." [more inside]
The Occupation of the Channel Islands
Winston Churchill famously said, "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills". And although Winston never had contend with an invasion force on the streets of London, he was not entirely successful in keeping the Germans from occupying British soil. [more inside]
Next up: actually swinging all the way over the top of the swingset
The Age of Anxiety
Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy And Doom is a new book by Elaine Scarry, author of The Body In Pain (NYRB, LRB), in which she contends that the existence of nuclear weapons creates an unaccountable monarchy. [more inside]
Are you a bad enough dude to be the President?
"ensuring the financial security of this company for years to come"
"The way I interpret this video is a guy parked a car on a beach and a bunch of people are stealing it bit by bit." A $2 million "design exercise" from 1989, the Pontiac Stinger in no way answers the question, "Dad, how come there aren't any Pontiac dealerships any more?" It does, however, pose the question, "Why didn't my new car come with a garden hose?"
"Give me LI-berty or take the blinking phone out."
"In the mid-20th century, in response to the United States’ rapidly expanding telephone network, executives at the Bell System introduced a new way of dialing the phone. Until then, for the most part, it was human operators — mostly women — who had directed calls to their destinations." The new system, which eliminated letters from phone numbers and set the stage for an automated national (and eventually international) dialing system. was met with a minor rebellion against "creeping numeralism." The Atlantic examines "Our Numbered Days: The Evolution of the Area Code." [more inside]
It's Action, Reaction, Diffusion Interaction
Reaction-diffusion reactions used to design housewares, puzzles, and more. If you want to experiment yourself, you might get some ideas from the demos at WebGL Playground or you might use this brief intro as a jumping-off point.
Conspicuously by Gallantry and Intrepidity
Obama to award Medal of Honor to 24 after discrimination review. WASHINGTON — President Obama will seek to right a historical wrong next month when he awards two dozen veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam
— including 17 Latinos — the Medal of Honor after a lengthy Pentagon review into racial and ethnic discrimination in the awarding of the nation's commendation for combat valor. [more inside]
February 22
A political, emotional, even moral issue.
Growing Up in a Cocoon
In an ongoing revisionist history effort, Southern schools and churches in the United States still pretend the Civil War wasn't about slavery.
Featuring the "Barship Enterprise"
Hops Wars & Alchemy Business
Growing up in the San Fernando Valley among divorced parents, Grossman developed the characteristics of a proto-entrepreneur–inventiveness bordering on larceny. He stole the motor out of a neighbor’s lawn mower to build a go-kart, used a rudimentary plastic explosives recipe to blow up every mailbox on the block and dropped homemade stink bombs in his junior high. The day before his 12th birthday he was caught shoplifting a small bag of circuit board clips from the local RadioShack. Then he started channeling his creative urges toward photography, bike repair and (pre-legal drinking age) distilling. His first batch used a gallon jug of Welch’s grape juice he hid in the closet. Forbes profiles 'The King Of Craft Beer', Sierra Nevada's Ken Grossman.
What Really Happened to Michael Rockefeller
A journey to the heart of New Guinea’s Asmat tribal homeland sheds new light on the mystery of the heir’s disappearance there in 1961: What Really Happened to Michael Rockefeller
Demolishing Great War Haigiography
"Nevertheless, one lands the real killer blow against the rather silly ‘what if’ justification for the 'just' Great War by looking at its actual results. The militarist German-dominated Europe envisaged in the counter factual just mentioned would have been worse than the one that did actually eventuate, worse than fascism, Nazism, Stalinism, the Great Depression, the influenza epidemic … how, exactly? Surely a war allegedly fought to prevent one particular outcome but which, even when won, at the cost of millions of dead, produced an even worse situation is the very definition of pointless slaughter." -- In the wake of the Michael Gove led attack on the socalled "Blackadder view" of the First World War as a pointless slaughter, historian Guy Halsall does his best to pour cold war on their idea of WWI as a just war.
Documentaries and talks from the USC US-China Center
The University of Southern California's US-China Institute has a huge number of videos on YouTube regarding China, Taiwan, history, global diplomacy, etc. [more inside]
Bulldozers poised to target Mecca birthplace of Muhammad
Saudi Arabia's royal family are planning to demolish a library sitting on the remains of Prophet Muhammad's birth home to make way for the imam's residence and a presidential palace. The Saudi royal family are adherents of Wahhabism, a radical branch of Islam; by their beliefs, they have destroyed many Islamic heritage sites as they consider the preservation of relics of Muhammad's life to be akin to idolatry.
Just Don't Go
Cincinnati news anchor Bob Herzog sings the traffic report to the tune of 'Let it Go' . (SLYT)
Nobody needs to see "Interiors" anyway....
Prisoners and Their Dilemma
goto fail;
Yesterday, Feb 21, Apple computer released a security patch with a vague description of SSL fixes. It turns out that it's quite a bug which would trivially allow Man in the Middle attacks for assumed-secure connections via SSL. Folks dug into the code and found the code resulting in the bug. If this affects you and your devices, you might want to go upgrade.
Paul WS Anderson looks back on his directorial career (Grantland)
"If you were a sexually repressed British butler, then you were well represented in British cinema, but otherwise there was nothing for young people." Grantland invites Paul WS Anderson to reflect on the highlights of a 20-year directing career by picking out his favorite scenes. [more inside]
Five Lessons in the Development of Successful Comics
In December 2005 I was 17 years old and consumed with being a cartoonist. My father knew Achewood was my favorite comic, and bought me the five self-published volumes of it that were then available for me as a Christmas present. He told me later that he had informed Chris Onstad that his daughter was an aspiring cartoonist, and asked him to give me some advice.
Keep an eye out for WebGL
Geogebra
Geogebra is an interactive geometry tool which started as a free clone of Geometer's Sketchpad, but is now also an algebra, statistics and calculus tool. It is available for download for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android, or as a web app. [more inside]
Ghosting: Julian Assange's nonexistent autobiography, by Andrew O'Hagan
"In a lengthy, nuanced essay for the London Review of Books, a version of which he delivered in a lecture in London on Friday, O'Hagan describes working with a mercurial character who was, by turns, passionate, funny, lazy, courageous, vain, paranoid, moral and manipulative. The book deal ultimately collapsed, O'Hagan writes, because 'the man who put himself in charge of disclosing the world's secrets simply couldn't bear his own. The story of his life mortified him and sent him scurrying for excuses. He didn't want to do the book. He hadn't from the beginning.'" (via)
February 21
Flight, try setting SCE to AWESOME.
This dad puts us all to shame. All I ever got from my dad was a train set.
Vampire Squid
The Vampire Squid Strikes Again: The Mega Banks' Most Devious Scam Yet. "Banks are no longer just financing heavy industry. They are actually buying it up and inventing bigger, bolder and scarier scams than ever." This is the latest and last article for Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi, who is moving on to join First Look Media.
What fire dies when you feed it?
Game of the Year. Some words and a comic on success, depression, insecurities and validations by the writer of The Stanley Parable
Netflix Neutrality
Verizon and Cogent Communications are at odds over how much money needs to change hands to deliver decent Netflix performance. Verizon has developed a rival to Netflix, Redbox and have been accused of tinkering with Netflix and AWS speeds due to the recent FCC Net Neutrality ruling. Things may change again, but then again, maybe not really.
Da-da-dah-da-da-DAH!
The Super Mario theme played on a sheng. Li Li-chen performs the Super Mario theme on a sheng, an ancient Chinese musical instrument that is at least as old as 1100 BC.
"Who is Dependent on Welfare" With Ananya Roy
It is time for America to reconsider who is dependent on welfare. Poverty is not only the lack of income and wealth but also the poverty of power. A key part of the poverty of power is to be defined as dependent: dependent on charity, handouts, welfare. Yet, it is the wealthy, not the poor, who are dependent on government subsidies. To transform dependency into self-determination is the work of poor people's movements. To demonstrate the dependency of the wealthy on welfare as well as on the labor of the poor must be our collective work.
I think I can...
On this date in 1804, at Penydarren Ironworks in Wales, the first locomotive hauled passengers and freight for the first time.
Richard Trevithick was the inventor who created it.
Truth & Beauty
The emotional experience of mathematical elegance. A new study by the perceptual neurobiologist Semir Zeki and the great mathematician (& Fields Medalist) Sir Michael Atiyah examines fMRI scans of mathematicians viewing formulae which they'd previously rated as beautiful or ugly, and reports that mathematical beauty elicits activity in the same brain regions as great art or music.
Putin Will Teach You to Love the Motherland: Pussy Riot's new song
Pussy Riot's new song and video, "Putin Will Teach You to Love the Motherland", rocks. This video features both Nadia and Masha (just released from jail) performing in public and hugging the Winter Olympics mascot - before being beaten with whips by cossack soldiers. And the song is actually catchy...
"I'm a lefty, liberal, lezzer cook."
Have you met Jack? Author of the popular "eat just as well when you have less" blog, A Girl Called Jack, Jack Monroe came to widespread attention in the UK and the rest of the world when she wrote a blog entry called "Hunger Hurts", in which she detailed how heartbreaking it was for her to realize that she had run out of money and yet she still had a small child to feed and needed to keep the lights on. The NYT has called her "Britain's Austerity Celebrity"; the Daily Mail hates her as does Edwina Currie, but whether you like her or not, she has created a delightful set of frugal yet elegant recipes. She even beat Jamie Oliver in an austerity challenge cook-off.
"Do not throw yourselves with your own hands into destruction."
The General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment has issued a fatwa banning Muslims from participating in a Mars colonization effort, citing pervasive risk for no "righteous reason." The Mars One project (previously) has penned a remarkably erudite reply.
A town dedicated to rememberence
Jacques-André Istel is the father of American skydiving, Honorary Soviet Master of Sports and French Legionnaire, and the founder, mayor, and only resident (with his wife) of the desert town of Felicity, California. Felicity is a wondrous place. Inspired by a children's book he wrote, Istel managed to have the town officially designated as the Center of the World. It is also the home of the Museum of History in Granite, 431 carved panels of the history of the world, written by Istel and copy-edited by his wife with a modern Rosetta Stone to help people 4,000 years from now interpret it. Seriously, just look at the panel about the moon.
Goonswarm didn't get where they are today by "playing it smart."
The first issue of the new EVE Online comic book from Dark Horse comics is now available for free download (free registration required). What's particularly interesting about the "EVE: True Stories" comic series is that the stories are retellings of actual player-driven game events. The first story to be adapted is the downfall of the Band of Brothers alliance, which we talked about previously.
Building Goes Up, Building Goes Down
KEEP TALKING NANCY
When audio failed on the WGN Morning News today, the intrepid anchors persevered with pen and paper. [more inside]
The Legographer
"UK-based photographer Andrew Whyte has documented the adventures of a brave lone LEGO photographer in his 'The Legographer' photo series." (via)
the generations and the blues
Commodore 64 web synth
Irrational Games, journalism, and airing dirty laundry
No one talks to the games press officially. I wish they did, but I get it. They want to keep their jobs. Let's just say multiple people within a studio were willing to risk their careers to confirm to me that yes, in fact, if their game didn't sell extremely well, like exponentially more than its predecessor or "well" according to a matrix of time and cost investment and desired profit, that their studio would be closed in a year.[more inside]
Economic Ephemera
"These gargantuan Lego blocks flattened global capitalism and erased human labour from industrial history in the process; they are the perfect tool for an economic system only interested in short-term, pop-up solutions." The shipping container (previously) an innovation that both revolutionised global trade and caused mass job loss, is now being reborn as the pop-up shop.
Kumi Yamashita, "Constellation"
This body of work consists of three simple materials that, when combined, produce the portraits: a wooden panel painted a solid white, thousands of small galvanized nails, and a single, unbroken, common sewing thread.
Al Jazeera tracks the violence and the unfolding humanitarian tragedy
10 Famous Writers Who Don't Use Modern Tech to Create
February 20
I'm Still Here
Ex-Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker performs I'm Still Here from Stephen Sondheim's Follies in a brilliantly subtle and effective video by Todd Haynes. [more inside]
I haven't got a stitch to wear
Drag queen and insult comic Bianca del Rio (a hopeful on this season of RuPaul's Drag Race) makes herself a dress in less than 5 minutes live on stage.
Brian Williams performs "Rappers Delight"
The Official API of the Marvel Universe
You mean Prince JSON of Spartoi? Marvel Comics has released in beta an API for access to part of its character and comic book database. Currently, it covers 30,000 comic books across 7,000 series and 8,000 characters in work by 5,000 creators, and provides results to queries in standard JSON format. [more inside]
1000 kids sing National Anthem USA
Awesome choir (SLYT) When most people check into a hotel and realize a large group of high school students are there, there is a hesitation as to if you really want to be checked into that hotel.
Thankfully, the guests at one Kentucky hotel stuck around, even though 1,000 high school students were there.
The Kentucky State Choir conference meets at the Louisville Hyatt every year. It is a tradition that every night of the conference, at 11 p.m., the students come out onto the balconies to sing the National Anthem.
000500
"Well, I did it. This is THE lowest possible score you can finish [Super Mario Bros.] with (without continuing)." via
ShotKit
ShotKit, A Peek Inside the Camera Bags of Professional Photographers (Browse by subject, brand, or submit your own.)
Even at 16, Mike Patton & Co. knew how to troll audience expectations
M&M’s Grossest Flavors of All Time
XRI needs volunteers!
Volunteer as a rover driver for Extrasolar, a crowdsourced citizen-science initiative sponsored by the Exoplanetary Research Institute. Help scientists classify the flora and fauna of Epsilon Eridani b! However, not everyone seems to be on board with the project.. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
Kids Oscars 2014
What the hell are you staring at?"
"I'm just one more duck detective who works with a pig and lives with the twin sister of his dead wife, three sons on two bodies and a comatose mother-in-law who's got so much gas she's a fire hazard."~ Eric Tiberius Duckman [more inside]
Florida's Century of Abuse
From January 1, 1900, to June 30, 2011, Florida School for Boys (aka Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys) was operated by the State of Florida as a reform school for boys ranging in the age from 8 to 21, in the panhandle town of Marianna. With a notorious reputation for inflicting severe abuses(pdf) on its minor inmates, including beatings, rape, torture and even murder, going back a century, Florida authorized archaeologists and anthropologists from the University of South Florida to conduct an investigation of the school's graveyard.
Last month, after a several month long excavation, researchers and forensic anthropologists have announced the discovery of remains adding up to 55 people on school grounds, five more than previously known, and 24 more than listed in school records. [more inside]
the proof may be in the protein
Approximately 176 million women and girls worldwide suffer from endometriosis; 8.5 million in North America alone. Associated costs of the disease are estimated to be a staggering $22 billion annually. The pain can be debilitating and infertility is a common outcome. Yet after decades of research, the jury is still out on what causes it, and many doctors still don't even know when they should be looking for it. Now, a group of researchers at MIT have taken a new approach, one with a characteristic engineering slant.
When a tree falls in the forest..
Global Forest Watch uses satellites to monitor forest loss in near real-time (videos+images). It is now possible to see when forests (or even a couple big trees) are being cut down at the the time it happens, allowing officials and the public to notice and possibly take action. There is also a timeline showing forest loss/gain over time - how has your neighborhood fared?
(:-{~
Alphabeard: New York City-based designer Michael Allen has sacrificed many beards in the creation of a typeface shaved away from his own facial hair. [image1] [image2]
![[image1]](http://www.designboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/beard818.gif){kind=link}
![[image2]](http://www.designboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/michael-allen-shaves-a-font-from-his-face-for-alphabeard-typeface-designboom-01.jpg){kind=link}
Delicious Delicious
"Liquid Sky is one of the most visually ambitious films ever made about fashion, heroin, New Wave clubs, UFO saucers, ordering Chinese food and having them put it on your tab, the Empire State Building, androgyny, neon and tin foil. The 1982 cult classic may be the perfect embodiment of camp. "
The Awl talks to the director of the film about his plans for a sequel.
anti-pasta and autarky
In 1929, Italian artist (author of The Futurist manifesto) Filippo Tommaso Marinetti opened a restaurant, La Taverna del Santo Palato [Tavern of the Holy Palate] in Turin. In 1930/31, Marinetti went on a polemical crusade against pasta, decrying it as holding the Italian people back.
In 1932, he wrote La Cuicina Futurista [The Futurist Cookbook]. Part manifesto, part cookbook, all promotional, it contained a host of sensational delights, like "Chicken Fiat": chicken roasted with steel ball bearings, on a bed of whipped cream, as well as desciptions of banquets, and a recounting of his success against pasta. [more inside]
What's the best book of 1963?
"In an effort to correct the missteps of literary history, Bookslut has launched the Daphne, a prize for the best book published 50 years ago. Sure, there was a National Book Award in 1963 -- but Bookslut thinks it went to the wrong title." There will be excerpts, vintage cover art, old reviews and other ephemera from longlisted books on Spolia's Tumblr.
The Book, the Medium and the Library.
Medium has made available the first book-length content (perhaps) on its writing platform. Demanding Better Libraries For Today’s Complex World by R. David Lankes is cited as a 164 minute read. For works of this length, Medium offer a feature for bookmarking where you have read to. [more inside]
One look at the Fiji house and he gets the message
The Atlantic's yearlong investigation on the current state of fraternities in America, and the lawsuit industry that rides alongside.
Would make for some steamy slash
Tim Hall wonders if model railways are a form of fanfiction.
February 19
Mandala-Rama
Creation and Destruction of Sand Mandalas. Spontaneous Temporary Sand Paintings by Joe Mangrum. New Flower Mandalas by Kathy Klein. Geometric Paintings Inspired by Sacred Mandalas by Amy Cheng.
Art in Medicine
Here are some links to online galleries that combine science, medicine, and art in some way.
(previously: psychiatry and art)
"But is it authentic?"
A comic on food and feeling like a repository of ethnic food advice instead of a person, by Malaysian-born artist Shing Yin Khor. Directly informed by Soleil Ho's essay "Craving the Other". “Oh, you’re Vietnamese?” they’d ask. “I love pho!” And then the whispered question—“Am I saying that right?”
Where's... Walther?
Can you spot the sniper in these idyllic landscape photographs? I'm sure they've spotted you...
Venezuela Riots
Venezuela opposition's Leopoldo Lopez hands himself in as police crack down on protestors. Students have been rioting on rising inflation and shortages. Pictures from Caracas. "I present myself before an unjust justice, before a corrupt justice,"
The Evolution of Hip-Hop Dancing
Big Oil, Bad Air
Here's a multi-media webpage (text and photos, plus scroll down for the enlightening and well-made video) that spells out what's going on right now down Texas way: Fracking the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas.
Tim Burton's Batman, the opposite of Pee-wee's Big Adventure
This year marks the 25th anniversary of 1989 Batman movie, which is remembered for everything from the logo "that helped set the course for superhero movies" to the ways the movie was true to the comics, or was really a "noir" update to the 1960s Adam West Batman. While preparing yourself for what may come in the lead-up to the June 23 anniversary date, enjoy Batman: The Making of a Hero documentary, a rare 25 minutes behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film, from the folks at 1989 Batman, a fansite dedicated to the movie, and its sequel, Batman Returns. [more inside]
Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine
Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine (NYRB) An analysis of the Ukrainian revolt by Timothy Snyder, Housum Professor of History at Yale and a visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He is the author of Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. [more inside]
Facebook Acquiring WhatsApp for $19 Billion
Sequoia Capital, which invested in WhatsApp, blogged this handwritten note, "No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!" "It serves as a daily reminder of their commitment to stay focused on building a pure messaging experience." [more inside]
sow seeds of doubt, but not try to win arguments
“It ain’t no fun if you don’t get to make some shots,” Strickland says.
More than 50 million Americans play pool on a regular basis, according to L. Jon Wertheim’s Running the Table. Yet this is maybe the worst shape the sport has ever been in. More detrimental than just dwindling tournament fields, it’s the shuttering of pool halls, the disappearance of pool on television, the absence of any endorsement deals for top players. It isn’t at all clear how such a beloved game can be in such dire straits. But it is. Can't Knock The Hustle: Earl Strickland, Scooter Goodman, and the struggle for the soul of pool.
And this one's the Half Double Decaf Half-Windsor, With A Twist of Lemon
House of Cards spoilers within
Want to talk about House of Cards online without spoiling other, slower viewers? Slate offers a few a reasonable guidelines.
Shelf-Reading
Abusing old hardware to make music
Freaky Friday
Photographer Qozop persuades the older and younger generations to swap clothes. Spoiler: everyone looks fabulous.
Visibility
Legal groups say Kenya’s justice system rarely prosecutes homophobic crimes, but that may soon change: In 2011 the incoming President of Kenya’s Supreme Court Dr. Willy Mutunga called gay rights the “other frontier of marginalization” in Kenyan society in a signal that he may pressure Kenya’s judiciary to decriminalize homosexual acts.
In the wake of author Binyavanga Wainaina (previously 1, 2) coming out and the release of Invisible: Stories from Kenya’s Queer Community, hope that Kenya may be going against the tide regarding gay rights in Africa.
Girls Wrestling: Facing the competition
You might get an even better tan when we get to Hanford
Eric Nusbaum tours the largest environmental cleanup operation the United States government has ever undertaken , the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
Over the last 20 years, Hanford has also become something else: a tourist destination. If you want to see just how big the reservation is, or get an idea of how much work remains to be done there, you can sign up for an official government tour of the site. About 60 public tours are offered per year. The tours are free, but highly sought after. Last year, registration opened at midnight on March 6, and closed by 5 a.m.
The Flaming Shits of Leonard Cohen
The Whitecard Game
An occupational safety training videogame for construction workers with horrifying accident simulation. [more inside]
Hand-stitching the living moment
When Photos Come to Life: The Art of the Cinemagraph. Husband and wife team Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg speak to Time about the Cinemagraph. [more inside]
Moving 360
Mercedes F1 uses Visualise for an onboard 360 degree video demonstration. Also in use for stills at Sochi.
And getting caught in the rain
'contemplating the nexus between meat and mortality in a post-BBQ frenzy
Food And Loathing In Charleston: Cook It Raw comes to Charleston, including the world's best hog roast
"You hear me, baby? Hold together."
Sometimes I feel I've got to *zzzt zzzt*
Marc Almond saw the original video of 13 FDDs and 1 HDD playing the song his band Soft Cell are most famous for, Tainted Love, and decided to add some vocals. This is the result!
"What a bunch of a-holes."
February 18
He said that in the end it is beauty that is going to save the world now
La bella vita: True beauty pleases the eye and the mind – but can it help us to become better people? "In 1795, the German dramatist and poet Friedrich Schiller published a book with a fearsome title – On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters. It has never become well-known, which is a pity, because it contains some of our most useful insights into the nature and value of beauty. Schiller’s starting point is an analysis of the human condition. He wants to understand our delight in what we find beautiful. Instead of asking which things are beautiful, Schiller is curious about what is going on in us when we respond with this distinctive, intimate thrill and enthusiasm that leads us to say ‘that’s beautiful’. Different things might provoke this response in different people. But why do we have it at all?" [Via]
The alpha female's job is now complete
The ice is getting thicker
For the first time in five years, Lake Superior, the world's largest freshwater lake, has frozen enough to allow visitors from northern Wisconsin to walk across the lake to the ice caves of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. [more inside]
Why It’s Nearly Impossible to Castrate a Hippo
You and you and me and baby makes four.
A Vancouver child has become the first person in B.C. to have three parents named on their birth certificate, under province's recent Family Law Act that features a provision permitting up to four parents. [more inside]
Lord of the Jing(le)s
Miami Ad School Berlin student Valerio Amaro combines his two passions in life (advertising and The Lord of the Rings) by asking himself, "What would happen if J.R.R Tolkien worked in advertising?" His answer: One Ad To Rule Them All . [more inside]
Well, maybe a little fallible
Toronto Historical Map viewer
The Toronto Historical Map viewer (created by Nathan Ng, also behind the Historical Maps of Toronto website) is a zoomable map that allows the viewer to shift between maps of the city at numerous points from 1818 to 2012. [more inside]
You're in big trouble, mister!
Did Danny Tanner deal with the grief of losing his pregnant wife in a fatal car crash by creating an imaginary daughter named "Michelle"? (SLYT)
Trusting God
Patrick Henry College has been called "God's Harvard." The tiny, elite school is considered a safe haven for fundamentalist evangelical Christians. It teaches a dominionist "Biblical Worldview" and has a uniquely religious campus culture (pdf) that emphasizes evangelical moral values. Which leaves female students in a particular bind: How do you report sexual assault at a place where authorities seem skeptical that such a thing even exists?
Just when you thought it was safe to feed the bunnies.
Banished: the widely anticipated city-building strategy game released.
You control a group of exiled travelers who decide to restart their lives in a new land. They have only the clothes on their backs and a cart filled with supplies from their homeland.
Created by a single developer, Luke Hodorowicz, Banished reached 13 500 active players* on its first day of release on Steam. [screenshots] [more inside]
Created by a single developer, Luke Hodorowicz, Banished reached 13 500 active players* on its first day of release on Steam. [screenshots] [more inside]
A cartographic history of why North, not East or South, is up
How the north ended up on top of the map is an article by Nick Danforth, author/curator of (The/Mid) Afternoon Map blog, detailing how the north-up orientation came to be the default orientation, looking beyond Eurocentrism to Byzantine monks and Majorcan Jews who set the path for modern cartography. If you want more information, you might enjoy the Wikipedia article on the history of cartography, or you can really dig deep with the three-volume text, The History of Cartography, which is available in full from the University of Chicago Press online, split into individual PDFs for each chapter. [more inside]
I would hide it by talking to people with my hands over my face
A young woman with hirsuteness caused by PCOS talks about living as a "bearded lady." Previously: another young woman with a beard who observes the Sikh practice of kesh (uncut hair).
The return of the mighty Afghan Whigs.
Sixteen years after their last album, '1965' (it wasn't only Madonna making kick-ass music in 1998), Bob Odenkirk outs The Afghan Whigs' return with a new album on SubPop, 'Do to the Beast'. For your viewing pleasure, the video for the sublime new western 'Algiers'. The album sees light of day on April 14 & 15, 2014. Greg Dulli on getting the band back together and how Bob Odenkirk happened to tweet first.
Citizen Ailes
A few years back, Fox News head Roger Ailes moved to Garrison, NY, built a house, bought the local newspaper, and got involved in local politics. New York Magazine has the story of Ailes' efforts to remake the small town in his own image, and the rage, paranoia, and narcissism those who've interacted with him have come to expect.
Looking for versatile
'Looking': On Bottom Shame. The fifth episode of HBO's Looking, "Looking for the Future," focused solely on the relationship of Patrick and Ritchie. Ritchie will be your Rachel (and your Ross).
“I developed games to escape. This was my own world I created."
The New Yorker profiles Klaus Teuber: The Man Who Built Catan
"These choices are unavoidably ideological"
"Finlayson’s attitude to language can be related to his politics. As an admirer and advocate of free market capitalism, he considers human society nothing more than the sum total of the actions of an aggregate of free and rational individuals. Just as these free and rational individuals are wholly responsible for their beliefs and choices, so they are entirely responsible for the meanings of the language they use. If there is any ambiguity in a piece of language, then this is the result of some individual’s failure to stop splitting infinitives, or breaking some other rule. " -- At Reading the Maps, Scott Hamilton rejects New Zealand's Attorney General and Minister of Treaty Negotiations Chris Finlayson's reductionist calls for "clear" language, in favour of the more complex approach to English as articulated by H. W. Fowler.
Where no photographer has gone before
Oh, No! Bob Casale, Devo founding member, dead at 61.
Bob Casale passed away last night from conditions that lead to heart failure. Mr. Casale formed the band Devo in 1972 with his brother Gerald Casale, and brothers Mark Mothersbaugh and Bob Mothersbaugh, and drummer Alan Meyers (who passed away last year).
On Not Going Home
On Not Going Home "Logically, a refusal to go home should validate, negatively, the very idea of home, rather in the way that Said’s idea of exile validates the idea of an original ‘true home’. But perhaps the refusal to go home is consequent on the loss, or lack, of home: as if those fortunate expatriates were really saying to me: ‘I couldn’t go back home because I wouldn’t know how to anymore.’ And there is ‘Home’ and ‘a home’. "
Man bites dog
"My dog bit my child" A thoughtful post from blogger Lola the Pitty with excellent tips on how to monitor play and help kids to successfully interact with family pets. [more inside]
carefully cut up a straight stretch to the tip of the nose
Sandra Holmborn does bloody makeup, nails and lips and also offers tutorials like this one, making lips into an eye.
frugal engineering can boost your space program
Trip to Mars Doesn’t Have to Break the Bank
Just days after the launch of India’s Mangalyaan satellite, NASA sent off its own Mars mission, five years in the making, named Maven. Its cost: $671 million. The budget of India’s Mars mission, by contrast, was just three-quarters of the $100 million that Hollywood spent on last year’s space-based hit, “Gravity.” “The mission is a triumph of low-cost Indian engineering,” said Roddam Narasimha, an aerospace scientist and a professor at Bangalore’s Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research. “By excelling in getting so much out of so little, we are establishing ourselves as the most cost-effective center globewide for a variety of advanced technologies,” said Mr. Narasimha.(NYTSL)
"We're not just making music together, we're making history"
Deep Elm Records, which turns 20 years old next year, today announced that all 200+ of its albums are available on a "name your price, no minimum" basis: "If you have means please show them love by naming your price. If you do not have any means, in exchange for each download we kindly request that you post, share, tag and tweet to tell your friends about each album as our bands depend on your word of mouth." [more inside]
From the Fifteenth Arrondissement
Mavis Gallant, one of finest writers in English of the 20th century, has died. Gallant was 91, and had been suffering from osteoporosis for many years. [more inside]
@BarackObama Tomorrow: @HouseOfCards. No spoilers, please
On Valentine's Day, Netflix released the second season of House of Cards. 16 percent of Netflix users on one particular Internet service watched at least one episode of the show over the weekend, and shares of Netflix hit an all-time high of $439.49 on Thursday. But when, exactly, Does Watching a Lot of Netflix Become a 'Binge'?
Wall Street Debutants' Big Party
"I wanted to make the sound more like rock."
45 years ago today, Miles Davis and the remnants of the second quintet recorded In a Silent Way. Produced by Teo Macero, its release in July of 1969 marked (for some) the beginning of something different. [more inside]
Visual Patterns.
Visual Patterns. Here are the first few steps. What's the equation?
Jerry Orbach Tours the Law and Order Set (SLYT)
Codename: ANTICRISIS GIRL
Top-secret documents published by The Intercept reveal how GCHQ and the National Security Agency have targeted Wikileaks and "the human network that supports Wikileaks", with tactics ranging from covert surveillance to prosecution, targeting The Pirate Bay and Anonymous, urging countries to file criminal charges against Julian Assange, and secretly logging visitors to the Wikileaks website. [more inside]
February 17
"The street finds its own use for things"
Graffiti: 40 Years of Hacking New York City. "City as Canvas is a reminder that this is, in a very literal sense, criminal artwork." [Via]
Can you dig it?!
Shaqzine. What is Shaqzine? A zine about Shaq. A weird, supernatural, timely, informative zine full of truthiness. [more inside]
Wanna get pregnant? There's an app for that.
Conversely, it can be assumed the app might be useful as a sexual enhancement tool. Max Levchin, of PayPal fame, has the new app, Glow. There are, of course, with experience and a little thinking out of the box, alternate possibilities for the thing.
Competition in Germany is already working on a competitive app, Clue, for women to likewise track their fertility cycle.
Watch a near-miss LIVE tonight.
Monday, Feb. 17, at approximately 9:00p.m. EST, the Slooh space telescope will broadcast a live video stream . Asteroid-NEA 2000 EM26, will come no closer than 8.8 lunar distances from Earth -- a measure of the distance between us and the moon. [more inside]
Unhung Hero
Patrick Moote's marriage proposal was rejected in front of a large crowd at a UCLA basketball game. When he asked his former girlfriend why, she told him it was because his penis was too small, which led to him creating a cockumentary called Unhung Hero. [more inside]
Quicker Than A Ray Of Light
Sixteen years ago, on February 22, 1998, Madonna released her seventh studio album, Ray Of Light, followed the next day by lead-off single Frozen. Popular music and culture would never be the same. [more inside]
Grand by Design
Grand by Design is a Centennial Celebration of Grand Central Terminal. It's a looong page with a lot of nice images and facts from the history of the Grand Central Depot/ Station/ Terminal. (Previously)
Goats on a bendy metal thing
We've talked about goats before, but I don't think we've collectively experienced the joy of goats frolicking on a bendy piece of metal.
United Nations report on human rights within North Korea
A Cathedral of Rainbows
Imagine the bright spectrum of colors you would bask in while walking through a cathedral full of rainbows. To Breathe - A Mirror Woman is Kimsooja's 2006 site-specific installation for the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid, Spain. To expand and unite the architectural structure of the space, Kimsooja had the whole floor tiled in mirrors. She then covers the vault and the entire glass surface of the palace with a translucent diffraction film. When outside light filters through the glass and reflects off the film, it creates a rainbow spectrum that is mirrored in every part of the atrium. [more inside]
Jewish-Muslim unity
No triggers afaik
"We want to work in partnership with companies to succeed."
On Friday, the results of an unionisation vote in Volkswagen's Chattanooga, Tennessee plant were announced. The United Auto Workers had worked with German union, IG Metall, to encourage the creation of a works council, common in Germany, in the plant. [more inside]
He's smiling cause he's full of vodka.
Extra innings
"Why am I not constantly grieving?" The wonderful Roger Angell on love, loss, sex, death, time, and the view from age 94.
Shouldn't Sue her for trying
And so I ask myself: Is Mary Sue - obnoxious and world-distorting as she can be - simply making up for a lack in the world she has entered? When we see Mary Sue, should we be deriding the fanfic writer? Or questioning the gender breakdown of the original universe?
Racial Disparity in Private Prisons
A new study "The Color of Corporate Corrections, Part II: Contractual Exemptions and the Overrepresentation of People of Color in Private Prisons" theorizes an interesting reason that the population of people of color is larger in the private prison system than in the general population. Mother Jones breaks it down in simpler terms.
From "Tarzoon" to "Monuments Men"
The broken-down grace of Bill Murray: The Dissolve takes a look at the career of Bill Murray and reviews his films. All of them.
The cost of staging a modern World Cup
Qatar has proposed a bold vision of its future in 2022, but at what cost? In September 2013, the Guardian reported that up to 4,000 migrant workers would die during the construction process for Qatar's staging of the football World Cup in 2022. The Pravasi Nepali Coordination Committee, an advocacy group representing Nepalese and South Asian migrant workers, estimates that 400 Nepalese have died on Qatari construction sites since 2010. Nepalese make up around 20% of the migrant workforce. In the past two years 450 Indian workers have died on construction sites.
[more inside]
Rocky Flats - From plutonium trigger factory to wildlife preserve
Kristen Iversen wants to better inform Colorado residents about the history of the Rocky Flats Plutonium processing facility and recommends this brief YouTube documentary as an introductory primer. [more inside]
February 16
The Studio One Story
The Studio One Story. 2. Described by Chris Blackwell as the Motown of Jamaica, or ‘The University of Reggae’, Studio One is where the careers of literally hundreds of reggae artists began: Bob Marley and the Wailers, Alton Ellis, The Heptones, Ken Boothe, The Skatalites, Burning Spear and Sugar Minott, to name but a few! Studio One is the ‘foundation’ label of Jamaican Reggae and Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd is seen by many as its father.
[more inside]
Hijacked flight lands in Geneva
At 5:00pm Pacific Time, Ethiopian Flight 702, a Boeing 767-300 (registered ET-AMF) was flying over Sudan when it started squawking 7500. The transponder code, is supposed to indicate a “hijacking.”
With less than 25 minutes of fuel remaining, it landed safely in Geneva. [more inside]
Further refinements in the inhalation of marihuanas
Together, they resolved to invent a vaporizer of their own, one that would do for smoking what the iPod did for music. It would be the perfect meeting of form and function, a sleek, intuitive device that would make vaping “as quick as lighting up.” Why an Apple developer quit his job to help develop the Firefly, the elegant portable weed vaporizer.
Gentlemen
Gentlemen, Formerly. "A gentleman in 1720 could read Greek while mounting a running horse. Today’s gentleman reads GQ in the bathroom. From rapists to stylists, a history of the American gentleman." [more inside]
Look! Up in the Sky! It's a dot! It's a speck! It's the ISS!
When can I spot the Space Station? The International Space Station can easily be spotted with the naked eye. Because of its size (110m x 100m x 30m) it reflects very much sunlight. This simple tool will tell you all of the opportunities you can view the ISS over the next ten days, along with a brightness index and a map tracing its transit across your local sky. The red line shows where the ISS is sunlit and visible. On the blue line the ISS is in the Earth's shadow and invisible or it is less than 10° above the horizon. [more inside]
The Beatles: Anthology 4
Isolated mixes of vocal/instrumental elements of Beatles' recordings have been featured on MetaFilter previously - notably a breakdown of the elements of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the epic mix of the original Revolution 1/Revolution 9 session, and the vocal mix of the Abbey Road Long Medley. Since hearing that Long Medley mix, I've been enjoying a months-long trawl of YouTube, listening to all I can find in this vein, and identifying mixes of notable interest. [more inside]
Publish or perish
Look Who Nick Kristof’s Saving Now. Political scientist Corey Robin on today's public intellectuals, an "entire economy of unsung writers with PhDs," and what Nicholas Kristof doesn't understand when he writes academics have marginalizes themselves and "just don’t matter in today’s great debates." As Aaron Bady wrote, ”He only reads The New Yorker, and then complains that everyone doesn’t write for The New Yorker.”
On some level a director has to be a good general.
“But I think, Wes is by anyone’s definition , an auteur and there aren’t that many. Hollywood doesn’t really… that’s not their game anymore.” (previously)
American Promise
American Promise is a PBS documentary (live streaming through March 6) that follows two middle class African-American boys, Idris and Seun, who enter The Dalton School as young children, and follows them for 13 years. [more inside]
They killed the Giggler
How many people die in Death Wish 3? The answer may surprise you! (SLYT)
Putting off writing
Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators "Over the years, I developed a theory about why writers are such procrastinators: We were too good in English class. This sounds crazy, but hear me out."
Victorian Calling Cards: Let's get acquianted, for fun and results
Victorian calling cards were a social grace, with their own detailed guidance for design and use (Archive.org web view of Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home, by Emily Post, 1922). Calling or visiting cards ranged from basic engraved cards to rather elaborate pieces with flaps and frills, hand-tinting and transparent images, though men typically had more sparse cards. Men also could use acquaintance cards to politely declare their interest in a young lady, with text and/or illustrations.
How Wolves Change The Flow of Rivers
And then he died, of course.
Editta Sherman was a portrait photographer who shot celebrities from Elvis Presley to the young Angela Lansbury to Andy Warhol to Joe DiMaggio to Tilda Swinton. [more inside]
Before Blazing Saddles, America had not come to terms with the fart.
In 1975, Mel Brooks was riding high on the back-to-back successes of Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, and he became the first person to be interviewed twice by Playboy Magazine.
Angel eyes, that old devil sent
"Angel Eyes" is a 1946 popular song composed by Matt Dennis, with lyrics by Earl Brent. It was introduced in the 1953 film, Jennifer. Because of its colourful harmonic changes "Angel Eyes" has become a popular jazz standard. When Sinatra held what he intended to be his farewell concert in 1971, he closed with "Angel Eyes". Some notable recordings include: Frank Sinatra 1958 (interpreted as a heartbroken drunk) , Bob Thompson & His Orchestra 1958, Anita O´Day 1960, Ella Fitzgerald 1960, Chet Baker 1975, Roberta Flack 1993, Sting 1995, Bruce Springsteen 1995 (at Sinatra's 80th birthday tribute), Aleka Kanellidou 2000, Fiona Apple 2007 [more inside]
More LaBeouffary
The Legitimizing of Shia LaBeouf... Let the conversation cease: “Shia is a committed, brilliant and fearless artist and will bring that commitment to anything he does. Shia is on a creative journey right now, and I am sure he is pleased with the conversations it is causing.” - David Ayer, Screenwriter. [more inside]
The Snows Of Sbarro's
In 2011, the upscale White Flint Shopping mall was closed and planned for demolition, but not before someone went in and photographed the interior and food court in all its pastel-neon-plastic 80s glory.
The California Drought: Water and Power
"During the medieval period, there was over a century of drought in the Southwest and California. The past repeats itself." After three consecutive years of below-normal rainfall, California faces its most severe drought emergency in decades. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that the deserts of Southern California have been turned into livable spaces only by huge feats of engineering that divert massive amounts of water from other parts of the state and the country. Marc Reisner's 1986 book Cadillac Desert documents the history of acquiring and diverting water to the American Southwest. A four-part documentary based on the book was released in 1997. Part 1: Mulholland's Dream // Part 2: An American Nile // Part 3: The Mercy of Nature // Part 4: Last Oasis
All the bees for my necklace of enemies
Morally ambiguous honey badgers, or what happens when creative people get bored on Twitter.
The Miss Triggs Question: Mary Beard on the Public Voice of Women
"My aim here – and I acknowledge the irony of my being given the space to address the subject – is to take a long view, a very long view, on the culturally awkward relationship between the voice of women and the public sphere of speech-making, debate and comment ... We have to focus on the even more fundamental issues of how we have learned to hear the contributions of women or – going back to the cartoon for a moment – on what I’d like to call the ‘Miss Triggs question’. Not just, how does she get a word in edgeways? But how can we make ourselves more aware about the processes and prejudices that make us not listen to her." Mary Beard, "The Public Voice of Women," from the London Review of Books. [more inside]
"Looks like we're... looks like we're shy one horse."
The movie itself is a classic, and that greatness is evident right off the bat with one of the best opening scenes in film history. [more inside]
On the Killing of Jordan Davis by Michael Dunn
Michael Dunn was convicted on three counts of attempted murder, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charge of the first degree murder of Jordan Davis. Davis and friends were sitting in an SUV listening to music outside a convenience store, when Dunn initiated an argument with them that ended in Dunn firing 10 rounds into their vehicle, including several as they drove away. Dunn fled the scene and then remained silent for many hours before eventually claiming self-defense. Ta-Nehisi Coates interviewed Davis's mother in the days before the verdict, and in response to the verdict, he writes a sweeping indictment of America's treatment of young black men.
"We are all staying"
"In early 2013, roughly 300 West African refugees reached the German city of Hamburg, following a long and perilous journey from Libya...The Lampedusa refugees hoped to receive refugee status from the German state. But German authorities, deferring to EU guidelines, refused to provide them with any sort of accommodations, instead attempting to expel them from the city. As refugees, of course, they had nowhere else to go. So they decided to organize a solidarity campaign to counter the intimidation and bullying of the authorities." [more inside]
February 15
What Exactly Is Curling?
The Wisdom of Crowds
For the past three days, the world of streaming gaming has been riveted by an unlikely phenomenon: Twitch Plays Pokemon. Consisting of a live Twitch.TV chatroom hooked up to a classic Game Boy emulation of Pokémon Red, the program is set to recognize a limited number of commands and execute them in real time, allowing an audience of tens of thousands to collectively control the action as they watch. An astonishing amount of progress has been made, including the dramatic last-second defeat of a third gym leader (GIF) and the solution of a notoriously tricky puzzle on the very first attempt. But all for naught, it seems, as Team Twitch finds itself hilariously stranded on the ledges of Route 19 where, as one viewer explained, "they basically have to walk a small path for about ten spaces without anyone pushing down and jumping Red off the ledge," a grim democratic reality the dedicated subreddit /r/twitchplayspokemon has had all kinds of fun with over the last dozen ludicrous hours.
Somtimes Some Frisson
Alex Boyé is a British-born singer of Nigerian descent who does some pretty sweet covers: Let It Go (featuring 11 year old Lexi Walker), Royals, Ho Hey (with Brigham Larson), Paradise (with ThePianoGuys).
An old view of the Old City
Wooooopwootwooopwootootoot
HTML Theremin Headphones optional. Supposedly better in Chrome or IE, but I had no problem in FF.
Where I See Fashion
Where I See Fashion is a tumblr which pairs fashion-related pictures with images containing art/architecture/nature/design/texture elements that could have conceivably inspired them. The "Click to Hide Text" link on the left offers more streamlined viewing experience, or check them out on Instagram. Via: 1, 2
Sleep Sweet, Sweetums
John Paul Henson, who has been playing beloved Muppet Sweetums since 1991, has died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 48.
Florida's Python Patrol
'One trainee, 70-year-old Eric Raits, has now caught three pythons while working as a tour guide at Shark Valley Tram Tours in Everglades. Once, lacking a bag into which to deposit the snake, he simply held on to the 9-foot python for the remaining half of the two-hour tour. “I was sitting in the backwards-facing seat with the snake coiled up around my arm,” he says. “Unsurprisingly, no one sat in the two rows closest to me. They were all in the back, sitting on each other’s laps.” ' [more inside]
Schwinn 1890's Photgraphs
Whale Ho
The Charles W. Morgan is the world's last remaining wooden whaleship. Her unusually long career included 37 whaling voyages between 1841 and 1921. Over the past few years, she's received a full restoration by the skilled shipwrights at the Mystic Seaport Museum Shipyard, and is in the final stages of outfitting for her 38th voyage, an ambituous plan to make her seaworthy enough to sail her one final time and visit her original homeport of New Bedford, MA, along with many of the ports she frequented in her working days, before she returns to her permanent berth. Among the crew will be one stowaway, a crew member chosen via a selective process including a video application, who'll use video and social media to tell the stories of the voyage, the crew, the accompanying scholars and artists, and what it's like to make amends with whales.
Should we talk about the weather?
Pronbably to no one's surprise, Southern California leads the nation in the number of pleasant days per year (mean temperature between 55° F and 75° F, no precipitation). How does your city stack up?
"What did you do? Did you do that?"
A collection of guilty dogs caught bang to rights. If you are a dog and are confronted for some misdeed, just follow these steps: avoid eye contact, roll over, or simply walk towards your owner veeeery sloooowly.
The Hindus
Why free speech loses in India “The Hindus: An Alternative History,” an eight-hundred-page book by Wendy Doniger, an eminent professor of religion at the University of Chicago, will be removed from Indian book shops. Penguin Books India, which first published the book, in 2009, signed an out-of-court settlement with an advocacy group, the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, who claim to be defending 'the sentiments of Hindus all over the world.'"
808 State, interpreted through steel drums, and a brass band
Last year, English conceptual artist Jeremy Deller went to Trinidad to have "Pacific State", the English dance anthem by 808 State, reworked on steel drums. He gave the project to Michelle Huggins-Watts and the Valley Harps steel pan drum group to see where they'd take it. Here is the result. Before that, he also brought a similar idea to the Williams Fairey Brass Band, and they re-arranged 808 State's "Pacific 202" (original version, for comparison).
Happy cows are happy
For those of you trapped in frigid climes, here is a vision of spring to look forward to: Happy Cows [more inside]
I GET MY IRON FROM BEEF LIVER! SAME AS STAN LEE!
DC vs Marvel: Kitchen Stadium Edition -- In The Mighty Marvel Superheroes Cookbook, "Mighty Marvel Superheros show you how to perform heroics in the kitchen creating meals that are out of this world!" Meanwhile.... The DC Super Heroes Super Healthy Cookbook simply promises "good food kids can prepare themselves." Let the battle begin! [more inside]
Suction Cup 2.0
Celebrate Design
AIGA, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, is celebrating its centennial year in 2014 with a microsite called 100 Years of Design. It highlights the intersections of design and society through exemplary works from the AIGA Design Archives, interviews with living masters, quotes from leading designers and significant moments from the organization’s history. Together, these elements form a narrative about the impact of design; how it connects, delights, influences and assists us.Via
At some point I tried drugs, and it turned out that I loved them.
"I don’t feel like I deserve a second chance. I just want one." He lost it all to meth. The marriage. The money. The job covering crime. "Everybody that I talked to later said that they knew. Knew I was doing it. The police, who were my sources, City Council members, knew I was high. I was like why didn't they say something? They just accepted it." [more inside]
You believe that true love is a zero-sum game traded in sex.
Italian Author Eugenio Corti has died.
Born in 1921 in Besana, Brianza the first of ten children (his younger brother was Dr Piero Corti), early fascinated by Homer. At age 21 he entered the Italian army as a lieutenant of Artillery and volunteered for the Russian front, less in order to further Hitler's ambitions than to retard Stalin's. Ordered to retreat in mid-winter, he led his men back to Italy where he eventually reconnected with the King's army and fought with the Allies. [more inside]
"I’m here today because I am gay. "
Juno star Ellen Page announced she is gay during a speech at a human rights conference in Las Vegas on Friday. [SLYT] Transcript of her remarks here. [PDF]
Scalia: the unlikely hero of gay rights
Happy Valentine's day from Justice Scalia: (video) how his dissent in DOMA case US v. Windsor (PDF here) helped lead to recent rulings against state gay marriage bans.
Steam Tags
This past week the digital game distribution service Steam unveiled a new beta feature: user contributed tags for games. Unsurprisingly, the feature was quickly abused, leading to Steam introducing means to moderate tag usage. The plus side to all of this is that you can now play a game where you match Steam tags to the games they describe! Steam Tags: The Game
life, death, pity and accusation
March 11 will mark the tenth anniversary of M 11 - the Madrid train bombings in which 192 people were killed. Projet 192 coordinated by Ciro Prota sees 192 photographers each making one black and white image to remember a victim.
One photograph for each victim, and each name written “inside” the picture, on a piece of paper...
(Controls for zooming and reducing of page turning sound are at the bottom left of the gallery)
"That’s an awful long nap she’s taking"
"I thought you were sleeping. It seems silly now, but you must understand, when one sees a person slumped over inside a parked car, the most reasonable conclusion is rarely that the person slumped over is dead. It was the lights from the dashboard that caught my eye." – This Crappy Obituary – For the Woman I Found Dead in the Starbucks Parking Lot. You know you should never read the comments, but read the comments.
Eat your K rations and like it
Hundreds of newsreel and publicity films from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s -- the golden era of instructional, scientific, government, and industry films -- are now available on YouTube via users like Ella's Archive (focusing on transport and technology), Val73TV4 (British Council portraits of English towns & more), NuclearVault (war and diplomacy) and others.
How about starting with The Big Delivery Wagon (1951) a Heinz-sponsored spot about nationwide food distribution? Or Native Foods: Commandments For Health (1945), a U.S. Navy animated training film featuring Private McGillicuddy, who neither likes Vienna sausage nor seems to know that local foods are full of "poison more treacherous than a Jap warlord." Maybe Choosing For Happiness (1950) has some choice dating tips for even today's women? Or show your kid Defense Against Invasion (1943) in which a doctor explains to a fearful child exactly why he ought to get immunized.
How about starting with The Big Delivery Wagon (1951) a Heinz-sponsored spot about nationwide food distribution? Or Native Foods: Commandments For Health (1945), a U.S. Navy animated training film featuring Private McGillicuddy, who neither likes Vienna sausage nor seems to know that local foods are full of "poison more treacherous than a Jap warlord." Maybe Choosing For Happiness (1950) has some choice dating tips for even today's women? Or show your kid Defense Against Invasion (1943) in which a doctor explains to a fearful child exactly why he ought to get immunized.
February 14
A linguist explains the grammar of doge. Wow.
"...In this sense, doge really is the next generation of LOLcat, in terms of a pet-based snapshot of a certain era in internet language. We’ve kept the idea that animals speak like an exaggerated version of an internet-savvy human, but as our definitions of what it means to be a human on the internet have changed, so too have the voices that we give our animals. Wow."
It's a dog eats pretzel world out there
Accuracy Rate
Wanderlust
Three random walks through eastern food markets: One in Bangkok, one in Taiwan and one in Delhi. [more inside]
It ain't Baroque, don't fix it.
The New Debunkonomy
@PicPedant (mefi's own) has attracted a loyal following in doing the Sisyphean work of calling out Twitter photo spammers and scraper accounts by tracking down, correcting and debunking images and giving attribution to the source. Twitter is awash in "interesting photo" accounts particularly since images started appearing in timelines -- some of the most successful of which may be the wildly popular @HistoryInPics and @EarthPix founded by 2 teenagers who allegedly earn $40,000+ a month. PicPedant's debunking can be vastly amusing. Here are a few greatest hits: no, not a baby panda but an Etsy doll; no, not Japanese cherry trees but an infrared scene from Stockholm; no, not a real moon, but a photo manipulation. He's even called out Madonna for lack of attribution on an image that went viral after her tweet. Keep on keepin' on, you crazy pedant.
The Locker Room and Smarts
Today, saw the release of Ted Well's report on the ongoing harassment of Jonathan Martin by his Miami Dolphin teammate, Richie Incognito. One tidbit from the Stanford educated Martin writing to his mother "I mostly blame the soft schools I went to, which fostered within me a feeling that I'm a huge {deleted}, as I never got into fights."
Does the NFL distrust players who are educated? What happens when a player chooses academics over immediate NFL success? The Rejection of Myron Rolle [more inside]
Tom Finney (1922-2014)
Tom Finney, one of the all time greats of English football, has died at the age of 91. [more inside]
I'd buy that for a dollar...
"If you want to predict the future, just think about how bad it could be and make a joke out of it, and there you go."
Ed Neumeier on the writing of the original RoboCop.
Ed Neumeier on the writing of the original RoboCop.
May you lie in the ground and bake bagels
"I'm mad about you baby. Mad About You...."
New Age Revival
Is it wrong to say Bon Appetit?
P-hacking
P values, the 'gold standard' of statistical validity, are not as reliable as many scientists assume.
Don't Talk
Queen's 1982 dance funk single "Body Language" represented a rare move away from their glam stadium anthems into a more spare, disco-driven beat inter-cut with a moaning Freddie Mercury. The accompanying video, full of exposed flesh and suggestive lyrics, was deemed inappropriate for US TV and was one of the first music videos barred from MTV.
No spring can follow past meridian
Figure skater Evgeni Plushenko (wiki) withdrew from the men's individual event at the Olympics in Sochi and announced his retirement from amateur skating (NYT) only days after winning gold in the team event. Plushenko has won medals at four Olympic Games* (2006 gold: Short Program, Free Skating; 2014 gold; 2002: SP, FS, 2010: SP, FS); he has won 17 gold, 8 silver and 2 bronze medals in major competitions in spite of a 2006-2008 hiatus and he holds 10 titles in the Russian Nationals in a career spanning over 17 years. He was famous not only for his technique, but also for his grace and showmanship. [more inside]
Planning Love
V-Day cards for planners, architects, urban designers, landscape architects, transportation engineers, and those who love them.
Goodnight, daddy
Ralph Waite has died, at the age of 85. You might know him for his Emmy-nominated performance as Slater in the mini-series "Roots," or from countless other stage and screen roles, or from his three unsuccessful attempts at a Congressional seat in California. But odds are you know him as John Walton, Sr. (the third-greatest television dad of all time, according to a 2004 TV Guide poll) on "The Waltons." [more inside]
Steel is real!
Unhurried extemporizations
Valentine's Day means the latest edition of Hudson Mohawke's annual mix of gooey '80s pop, soul and RnB: Slow Jams VII. You can also listen to all five hours of Slow Jams I-VII, which also has separate links to each mix.
Fifty Years of Falling in Love and Fifty Years of Moving On
Whatever you’re feeling today, you’re not alone. If you’re not sure what you’re feeling try listening to fifty years of music history in five minutes and see what sticks. CollectiveCadenza (previously) presents a history of men moving on, a history of women moving on, a history of love songs by female artists, and a history of love songs by male artists. [more inside]
Reet good.
De La Soul to give entire back catalog away for free
De La Soul will make their entire back catalogue available for free for a 25 hour period to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their debut record 3 Feet High and Rising. The catalog will be downloadable from De La Soul's website starting at 11am EST. This might just kickstart the D.A.I.S.Y. Age.
The Plaintiffs today also ask for fairness, and fairness only.
"Our nation's uneven but dogged journey toward truer and more meaningful freedoms for our citizens has brought us continually to a deeper understanding of the first three words in our Constitution: we the people. "We the People" have become a broader, more diverse family than once imagined." In the case of Bostic v. Rainey, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia's Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen has declared Virginia's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional [more inside]
The imperfect but honest image of a woman's body
OK, in our defense, Europe is really complicated.
Americans Try To Place European Countries On A Map, Brits have similar results attempting to place US States on a map.
the work of looking at love, rather than being in it
Looking At Love, a selection of photographers' images of other couples, from the New Yorker. Be sure to click through to the photographers' websites, where there are many more fantastic photos! Deslided. NSFW. Happy Valentine's Day!
Cute cute in a stupid ass way!
Jacky! (SLYT) La chanson des Miaou, le retour ! La chanson des miaou, la grande finale!
La chanson des Jacky! Jackie! Nicky! Jacky! Jackie! Jacky! Jackie! Nicky! Jacky! Jacky!... Henr?i!
La chanson des Jacky! Jackie! Nicky! Jacky! Jackie! Jacky! Jackie! Nicky! Jacky! Jacky!... Henr?i!
February 13
Squarepusher x Z-Machines - Music For Robots
In mid-2013, Zima Japan unveiled Z-Machines, a "social party robot band" featuring a 22-armed drummer, and a guitarist with 78 fingers. While Z-Machines was initially seen by many as a nightmarish reincarnation of the Chuck E. Cheese Band, the Japanese developers have since collaborated with other musicians, and now Warp Records is announcing an upcoming collaboration EP: Squarepusher x Z-Machines - Music For Robots to be released in April. [more inside]
Archive.org Makes Microcomputer Software Lives Again, in Your Browser
Archive.org is known for archiving a great number of things, broadly classified in terms of the web, written and printed text, studio audio and live music, and video. The most recent addition comes in various realms of software, as outlined by Jason Scott (MeFi's own jscott). But the newest addition is notable because it brings old software back through online emulation - behold, the Historical Software collection, from productivity software like VisiCalc (1979), WordStar (1981 Osborne 1 version), and The Print Shop (1984, NYT review) to vintage games including Eastern Front 1941 (1981), The Hobbit (1982), and Karateka (1984). If you're interested in the way this all works, you can read more on the Archive.org blog.
My 2003 Receipts
Brian Finkelstein got all of his receipts from 2003 following a credit card dispute. He is reposting them every day with commentary about what he was doing at the time.
1 Adverbs. Aim for 0 or fewer.
What happens when the works of Ernest Hemingway meet the application Hemingway, which claims to make your writing "Bolder and Stronger?" Oh really?
Anti-war Music, 1915-Style
Ever wondered what anti-war music would have sounded like a hundred years ago? Listen to the song that enraged a Roosevelt, inspired any number of diss songs and riffs, and set pacifism to a Sousa-like tempo: "I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier." [more inside]
ThE MasTeR SaYs YoU Can'T sTaY HeRE
"What pronoun do you prefer?"
Facebook now offers its users "Custom" gender options and a choice of what pronouns to be referred to by. (I guess this makes MetaFilter a trend setter?)
100 Not Out
When British forces pull down the union jack for the last time in Afghanistan this year, it will be a hugely symbolic moment. It is not just that the departure marks the end of 13 years of British involvement in combat in that troubled country. The surprise is that it could also signal the end of a century or more of unbroken warfare by British forces.
Next year may be the first since at least 1914 that British soldiers, sailors and air crews will not be engaged in fighting somewhere. [more inside]
dancing (with the) stars
Enra dance troupe performs Pleiades, synchronizing body movements with projected light and animation. [more inside]
Morrie Turner, December 11, 1923 – January 25, 2014
"Morrie Turner, a cartoonist who broke the color barrier twice — as the first African-American comic strip artist whose work was widely syndicated in mainstream newspapers, and as the creator of the first syndicated strip with a racially and ethnically mixed cast of characters — died on Saturday in Sacramento. He was 90. " [more inside]
Let's Roll
Tire Ski Jump [slyt]
The World They Made
Mark Danner has been writing a series in the New York Review Of Books: Rumsfeld's War And Its Consequences Now
A bare two weeks after the attacks of September 11, at the end of a long and emotional day at the White House, a sixty-nine-year-old politician and businessman—a midwesterner, born of modest means but grown wealthy and prominent and powerful—returned to his enormous suite of offices on the seventh floor of the flood-lit and wounded Pentagon and, as was his habit, scrawled out a memorandum on his calendar:[more inside]Interesting day— NSC mtg. with President— As [it] ended he asked to see me alone… After the meeting ended I went to Oval Office—He was alone He was at his desk— He talked about the meet Then he said I want you to develop a plan to invade Ir[aq]. Do it outside the normal channels. Do it creatively so we don’t have to take so much cover [?]
Fish are stupid
No, Valenstein is the saint, not the adorable monster
Scaaaary Valenstein's Day cards for your ghoulfriend or blemmya. By Brian McLachlan, creator of the long-running (but now retired), pun-filled Princess Planet webcomic. [more inside]
The 500 Year-old Butt Song From Hell
"[We] were looking at Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights and discovered, much to our amusement, music written upon the posterior of one of the many tortured denizens of the rightmost panel of the painting which is intended to represent Hell. I decided to transcribe it into modern notation, assuming the second line of the staff is C, as is common for chants of this era." via Dangerous Minds
The ‘Mustache of Justice’ has left the building.
Thomas Scully, the Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services under President George W. Bush, once said, “Fifty percent of the social safety net was created by Henry Waxman when no one was looking.”
After 40 years and 17 consecutive terms, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) is retiring from Congress. [more inside]
The Empowerment Elite Claims Feminism
Eye of the beholder
Nigerian photographer J.D Okhai Ojeikere passed away last weekend, but at the age of 83 he left behind a truly incredible body of work celebrating Nigerian culture. These photos from his Hairstyles series are part of an archive of nearly 1000 pictures showing the intricate hair-dos of African women taken at work, social engagements and in the streets of Lagos. The beautifully composed black and white images draw attention to the sculptural quality of the hair, almost elevating it to an art form in itself. It goes without saying that his work is a unique treasure of historical and anthropological importance.Via
Stop, Collaborate, and Listen
Sometimes it's hard to be a woman (who likes comics)
Early-20s comic artist Noelle Stevenson recently entered a comic shop for the first time. She drew a short comic showing her experience. Comics news writer Heidi MacDonald took a look at the issues some comic shops have with welcoming half the population. It sparked a Twitter spat with the stars of Comic Book Men.
In the weeks after Ms Marvel seemed to establish a new era where it's okay for "the weaker sex" to enjoy comics, especially when it seems around 40% of readers may be women, why do some shops apparently not want customers?
Just Like Figure Skating. Only Not Really.
The international swap trade in useful words
"In very many cases, English has borrowed a word from one language that had previously borrowed it from elsewhere. Among those Portuguese and Spanish words there are many that originated among speakers of very different languages. For instance, piranha comes ultimately from Tupi (a language of Brazil) and acai comes from a related language called Nheengatu, while mango is probably ultimately from Malayalam across the other side of the world in India, and monsoon is ultimately from Arabic (and in a further twist, Dutch may also have played a hand in how it came into English from Portuguese). " (There was a previous BBC article on this topic which is linked in the post which contains more examples.)
BBC article about how words have flowed back and forth over the centuries.
The genome of the Anzick boy
The genome of the Anzick child, who died 12,600 years ago at the age of three and was buried with ceremony in the American Rockies, has been fully sequenced. The results shed an incredible light on the history of the peopling of the Americas: his people seem to have been direct ancestors to most tribes of Central and South America, and close relatives of the Canadian tribes. The discoveries have had an emotional impact on Native Americans, and the boy's remains will be reburied with great respect. Still, tribal belonging is about much more than genetics, as anthropologist Kim Tallbear reminds us. You can see replicas of the heirloom artefacts left in the boy's grave here, or visit the collection at the Montana Historical Society if you're in the area.
February 12
You know who else liked Winter Olympics?
This amazing set of photographs reminds us that months before the famous 1936 summer Olympics, the Winter Olympics took place in Garmish-Partenkirchen in Bavaria. Today the ski resort is trying to just forget it ever happened, so please do not mention it.
"IT'S ALIVE, ALIVE!! ... I've always wanted to say that."
"It's an epic Urban Fantasy, a sci-fi thriller set Twenty Minutes into the Future, and a gritty crime-drama. And a tribute to William Shakespeare, where Puck, Oberon, Titania, and the Weird Sisters have prominent roles, and Macbeth kicks ass in a trenchcoat with a laser gun."Plus, Star Trek alums lend their voices to many regular characters and guest stars. On the eve of its 20th anniversary, Gargoyles is now being offered legally on YouTube by Disney. [more inside]
I thought that only happened in Florida
A sinkhole appeared inside the Corvette Museum in Kentucky, swallowing 8 classic cars. [more inside]
to climb the Shanghai Tower
Vadim Makhorov and Vitaliy Raskalov climb the 632 meter Shanghai Tower, the second tallest building in the world after the Burj Khalifa. The video of their climb, Shanghai Tower (650 meters), is riveting.
Cheap Air Tix
Disney's Lilo & Stitch, everything is blown up, more fun, also more real
Lilo & Stitch is an odd movie to come from Disney for a number of reasons: a rare work based on an original story, set in a realistic version of the "island paradise" of Hawaii, focusing on strong female characters who have a realistic/varied bodyshapes. For more insight into the making of the "affordable" Disney film, here's Lilo & Stitch revisited, Part I, interviewing the creators Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, and Part II, featuring master animator Andreas Deja. For a taste of the animation, here are four teaser clips of Stitch invading other Disney films, the official full version of the Lion King interrupted trailer, and making of Lilo & Stitch short docu-clip.
Gender Specific Listening
"Exploring Gender Bias in listening
Do men listen to different music than women do? Anecdotally, we can think of lots of examples that point to yes – it seems like more of One Direction’s fans are female, while more heavy metal fans are male, but let's take a look at some data to see if this is really the case." An examination of music listening data from Paul Lamere of The Echo Nest.
The disillusionment of Edward Snowden
Edward Snowden was politically conservative, a gun owner, a geek - and the man behind the biggest intelligence leak in history. In an exclusive extract from Luke Harding's new book, The Snowden Files, Harding looks at Edward Snowden's journey from patriot to America's most wanted. In the second exclusive extract, Harding looks at the role of Russia's intelligence agency (the FSB) in securing Snowden's exile - and whether they have been able to access his secret files.
Lifespans predictable at early age
Worm study suggests that activity in mitochondria determines ageing. More evidence for the mitochondria theory of ageing?
on literature and elitism
These days, the idea of being a “good reader” or a “good critic” is very much out of fashion — not because we believe that such creatures do not exist, but because we all identify as both. The machine of consumerism is designed to encourage us all to believe that our preferences are significant and self-revealing; that a taste for Coke over Pepsi, or for KFC over McDonald’s, means something about us; that our tastes comprise, in sum, a kind of aggregate expression of our unique selfhood.
We are led to believe that our brand loyalties are the result of a deep, essential affinity between the consumer and product — this soap is “you”; this bank is “yours” — and social networking affords us countless opportunities to publicise and justify these brand loyalties as partial explanations of “who we are”.
I wasn't impressed
"33" is a video made by the students of color at UCLA Law School. There are 33 black law students at the UCLA law school out of 994 J.D. students, not including those pursuing an LL.M. degree, a one-year law degree program for international students. [more inside]
Hail Caesar!
Funnyman Sid Caesar is dead at 91. "A comedic force of nature who became one of television's first stars," Sid Caesar brought madness and hilarity into the homes of millions. He was a master of dialect, non-sequiturs and breathless pacing.
Follow the red dot.
Yesterday saw the surprise release of PolyFauna (Android - iOS), a free, movingly minimalist art game produced by Radiohead in collaboration with digital art studio Universal Everything. In the tradition of previous projects such as Proteus (previously) and Björk's Biophilia (also previously), the game turns players loose in an open world of moody vistas and fog-shrouded wilderness, accompanied by music and visuals from 2011's earthy, naturalist The King of Limbs. With an associated redesign of the band's website, could work on the long-awaited LP9 be far behind? [more inside]
This is what Anglo-Saxon scholars do with their ancient knowledge
I HAVE BROUGHT ENOUGH FOR THE ENTIRE CLASS
We have often thought that these transmissions leave something (if not everything) to be desired: namely, pictures. Perhaps there are out there among you individuals who have thought the same thoughts, felt the urgent press of the same fascination. Indeed, perhaps you have sighed mightily or railed at the sky, wishing only that there could be pictures. Pictures, along with words. Pictures, instead of words. Imagine. -- Legendary twitter account @dogsdoingthings calls for submissions of illustrations on their new Tumblr, starting tomorrow.
vanishing beauty
Joshua - a time-lapse tribute to the beauty of Joshua trees, native to southwestern U.S. Photographer Sungjin Ahn embarked on his project after learning that climate change could "eliminate Joshua trees from 90 percent of their current range in 60 to 90 years." via PetaPixel
Still stupid hard, but somehow less annoying with a Muppet.
An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Or Gone
"All of the Pleasure. None of the Guilt," an article from this past Sunday's NY Times Magazine, was inspired in part by a similar article posted recently on the New Yorker's Page Turner blog, "Against 'Guilty Pleasure.'" It has, in turn, inspired another article in the Los Angeles Times: "The art of the guilty pleasure." All author's opine, "Is it time we retired the idea of 'guilty pleasure(s)'?" [more inside]
Maggie Estep, 1963 - 2014
Maggie Estep, the writer-poet-performance artist and all-around cool person who came to some fame while living in the East Village in the early 1990s, has died. After suffering a massive heart attack on Monday, Estep died at age 50. Before publishing her first novel, Maggie worked as a horse groom, a go-go dancer, a dishwasher, a nurse’s aide, and a box factory worker. She initially received national attention in the 1990s, when MTV covered the spoken-word movement on an all-poetry episode of "Unplugged." [more inside]
Payola at PBS
The Wolf of Sesame Street. What do you get when you blend together a billionaire former Enron trader, a conservative vendetta against public pensions, and $3.5 million dollars? Corruption at the heart of public broadcasting. PBS is allowing corporate sponsors to dictate the content of its news programming, and failing to disclose that conflict of interest to its viewers, Pando Daily's David Sirota alleges.
"Jeff and My Videos Spread Slowly (Like Bacteria) and Refuse To Die"
What Planet Are You From?
How many of the 114,580 people in Estadio Azteca on June 22, 1986, missed one or both of Diego Maradona’s goals against England because they were in the bathroom or buying a Budweiser? The two legendary goals that decided the World Cup quarterfinal occurred in quick succession shortly after the start of the second half. In the 51st minute, the Hand of God beat the hand of Shilton. Only four minutes later, while the outrage of English fans and players was still raw, El Diego received the ball in his own half, facing his own net. It took him 11 touches and 10.6 seconds to beat six opponents—Beardsley, Reid, Butcher (twice), Fenwick, and the goalkeeper, Shilton—and bury what many consider to be the greatest goal of all time.
Wendy Davis and the hard road to the Texas Capitol
Political narratives are necessarily reductive, invariably gauzy and thus often misleading. They tell two conflicting tales at the same time: I’m absolutely amazing and unique, and I’m just like you. But it seemed undeniable that female politicians were far more constrained than men in how they recounted their stories.... Bill Clinton could be seething with lifelong ambition; George W. Bush could be a beneficiary of immense privilege; Barack Obama could be a self-described outsider, marijuana smoker, community rabble-rouser. Any of these qualities might, if so espoused, disqualify a woman from high office. Meanwhile, no one ever stopped Clinton, Bush or Obama in his biographical tracks to say: “Wait. If you were out there, conquering the world, then you could not have been here, with your family.” Wendy Davis and the challenges of running for governor, as a woman and a Democrat, in Texas. [more inside]
NSA operation ORCHESTRA: Annual Status Report (FOSDEM Keynote)
(TOP SECRET/COMINT) NSAs operation ORCHESTRA has been a resounding success again this year. This year's status report will update decision makers and programme liasons on the goals, achievements and means of ORCHESTRA.
This is the NATO headquarters, right? Cool! No, no, I was just surprised that nobody was in uniform today, but I guess it's the weekend, eh? That's so cool -- I wish we were allowed to do that too. It's quite a crowd isn't it? I had no idea you had so many people with COMINT clearance over here... Amazing really. Anyway, lets get started, shall we?
[more inside]
La Voz del Pueblo/Voice of the People
More than 12,000 Catholics from five continents answered questions in a massive survey commissioned by Univision and conducted by Bendixen & Amandi International. Topics covered included all the issues most likely to generate lively discussion among Catholics all over the world. Here's how they responded. [more inside]
Network Nonsense
Open warfare erupts in the world of mathematical biology, as Lior Pachter of UC-Berkeley writes three blog posts attacking two papers in Nature Bioscience, accusing one of them of being "dishonest and fraudulent": The Network Nonsense of Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, The Network Nonsense of Manolo Kellis, and Why I Read the Network Nonsense Papers. Kellis (MIT) and his co-authors respond (.pdf.)
Apartheid in South Africa (1957) Documentary
This film produced by the United States Federal Government in 1957 explores South Africa's apartheid policy, focusing on issues such as race relations, political practices, and segregated dwellings. The footage very radically contrasts the bleakness of black life with the privileges enjoyed by most whites as well as including several interviews with black leaders, while also giving the architects of Apartheid a platform to defend themselves and their policies. (34:11)
A fascinating snapshot of the time.[more inside]
Seeing New York
"I’ve been thinking about the art of looking. The importance of focusing and what we see. This past March I bought a pair of Giorgio Armani frames in Geneva, classic per usual, and I decided to put them in front of the frame. To see what I see. To show you a day in New York through my lens…" [more inside]
The Missing Christians
For years, Fred "Slacktivist" Clark has been dissecting, page by page, the Left Behind series of Evangelical Christian potboilers. Clark, a Christian himself, goes far beyond merely mocking them but also analyzes the theology, philosophy, and politics underlying them. As an aside, he's looked at other Rapture narratives and is asking, "Why are Rapture stories always so dull?"
To this end he examines The Missing Christians, a 50-minute 1952 movie about the Rapture, which is available to watch on YouTube. Clark warns: "This is far, far worse than you’re expecting even if you take into account that it will be far, far worse than you’re expecting."
As usual, Clark goes beyond (but certainly by way of) just mocking the film to get at the core of what he argues the Rapture idea is really about, and why, despite the Apocalyptic material, these stories always end up so dull.
Part of the problem here, as in Left Behind, is that the “storytellers” of Evangel Films aren't nearly as interested in telling their story as they are in settling the score with their perceived enemies. These are the same enemies that haunt the sleep of Tim LaHaye — those sophisticated “liberal” Christians who refuse to concede the expertise of “Bible prophecy” experts. Just like Left Behind, The Missing Christians is a revenge fantasy in which those evil sophisticates are “proved” wrong and the righteous are proved right.(More Slacktivist on MetaFilter)
Fierce Moves
Dakh Daughters
Dakh Daughters are a band/theatrical performance art group from the Dakh Theatre in Ukraine, based around "rapid merging of styles and unexpected sound collages". A handful of songs on youtube: Rozy/Donbass, Gannusya, Papirosy, Блудница, Доля (a performance at/in support of the Euromaidan protests in Kiev).
Security authorities are increasingly hindering the work of journalists
Reporters without Borders has released their World Press Freedom Index 2014.
Finland tops the index for the fourth year running, closely followed by Netherlands and Norway.
US ranks 46th down 13. UK ranks 33 down 3.
The last three positions are again held by Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea, three countries where freedom of information is non-existent.
Finland tops the index for the fourth year running, closely followed by Netherlands and Norway.
US ranks 46th down 13. UK ranks 33 down 3.
The last three positions are again held by Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea, three countries where freedom of information is non-existent.
Money and finance: For an anthropology of globalization
There is much talk today of a financial and economic crisis comparable to the 1930s. With the threat of a currency war and the euro’s collapse looming, the specter of the Great Depression’s bloody aftermath has returned with a vengeance. Several versions of how to make human beings and build society co-existed during the Cold War, when much of the world won independence from colonial empire. Yet, discussion of humanity’s growing interdependence is today limited to a one-world capitalism driven by finance. What have anthropologists to say about that? It would seem very little. But a positive case can be made for the discipline’s contribution to public debate. We make such a case here. We review recent developments in the anthropology of money and finance, listing its achievements, shortcomings and prospects, while referring back to the discipline’s founders a century ago. Economic anthropologists have tended to restrict themselves to niche fields and marginal debates since the 1960s. We hope to reverse this trend by focusing on money’s role in shaping global society and bringing world history into a more active dialogue with ethnography.Money and finance: For an anthropology of globalization by Keith Hart and Horacio Ortiz
Sins of The Past
The Association of Hungarian Jewish Congregations (MAZSIHISZ), has announced that it is boycotting government-sponsored events to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust. This decision follows recent controversies over how the government of Viktor Orbán is choosing to mark the anniversary. [more inside]
A dungeon simulator that does not make your eyes bleed
KeeperRL is a Dungeon Keeper and Dwarf Fortress inspired dungeon simulator built on top of roguelike mechanics. [The] vision is that you are a Sauron-like character, searching for ultimate knowledge of destruction. What makes the game different from other RTS is that you can, and are encouraged to, control your main character and lead your minions to an open war. Caution: the game's still in early alpha, though it already looks like a lot of fun. [via Dwarf Fortress Facebook community]
February 11
Alienating Atmosphere
"I can't choose whether someone is offended by my actions. I can choose whether to care. . . . While I cannot be responsible for what my ancestors did, I can take responsibility to play what small part I can in cleaning up their mess." By Martin Fowler, author of many books on foundational concepts of modern software engineering.
Looks like I'm moving to North Dakota...
National unemployment is high, but business is booming in some states. Vermont needs teachers. Nevada needs bartenders. North Dakota needs truck drivers and just about everything else. Is your job in another state?
Tencent Maps, China's Answer to Google Streetview
Tencent Maps - Look at some of the remotest parts of China. While some of the off-the-beaten-path images on Tencent Maps are actually static panoramas, other more quirky routes offer full coverage for mile after mile, as seen on the Li river in Guangxi province where you can cruise on a boat amidst the famous karst peaks that don’t look like any other hill or mountain range you’ve ever seen before. [more inside]
Oh, yeah, about that Monet in the other house...
Works by Monet, Picasso, and Renoir are among the 60 additional works found in the Salzburg home of Cornelius Gurlitt, who made headlines last year when it was revealed that he had more than 1400 works stashed in his Munich apartment that had been lost or stolen during WWII. This comes just weeks after Gurlitt indicated for the first time that he is now willing to consider returning works that are determined to have been looted by the Nazis. Determining rightful ownership of the works is an ongoing and complicated process. (Previously)
Goat Simulator, apparently a real thing: "Okay internet, you win"
Goat Simulator is a small, broken and stupid game. It was made in a couple of weeks so don’t expect a game in the size and scope of GTA with goats. In fact, you’re better off not expecting anything at all actually. [WARNING: virtual goats, violence]
Middle Names Considered
"I know, I know, it sounds more like Nine Inch Noise!"
A camera attached to weather balloons touches down in a farmer's field, revealing shocking footage. The year is 1991, and Hard Copy is mad at Trent Reznor.
Yes, Kazakhstan should change its name. This map shows why.
"Life-long Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev has suggested changing his country's name to make it friendlier to investors and tourists. It's obviously a little silly to change your country's name for marketing purposes. But there may be more meaningful reasons for the country to change its name..." An interesting perspective from Max Fisher at the Washington Post.
Children haven’t changed, but adults who market to them have.
There is a surprise at the end.
A Camera falls out of a plane. It records the journey. It is found eight months later. [Video contains flashing images.]
The True Story of America's First Black Female Slave Novelist
In 2002 Henry Louis Gates jr. published The Bondwoman's Narrative. It was the first publication of a novel written in the 1850s by a former slave who wrote under the name Hannah Crafts. The original manuscript has been digitized by Yale's Beinecke Library. The book caused a splash at the time, sold well and was reviewed widely, including an essay by Hilary Mantel in the London Review of Books. The identity of Hannah Crafts was uncertain, which cast a slight shadow on its provenance, but Prof. Gregg Hecimovich discovered the writer's true identity. Her name was Hannah Bond and after escaping slavery she became a teacher in New Jersey. Journalist Paul Berman further fills in the story of Colonel Wheeler, the slaveowner whose family was depicted in The Bondwoman's Narrative. Wheeler was the US ambassador to Nicaragua in the 1850s and played a major part in the administration of General Walker, the American who became a short-lived dictator of Nicaragua and tried to set it up as a slave state.
Git For Grown-ups
You are a clever and talented person. You create beautiful designs, or perhaps you have architected a system that even my cat could use. Your peers adore you. Your clients love you. But, until now, you haven’t *&^#^! been able to make Git work. It makes you angry inside that you have to ask your co-worker, again, for that *&^#^! command to upload your work.
It’s not you. It’s Git. Promise.
On Mammography
Annual mammography in women aged 40-59 does not reduce mortality from breast cancer...
Researchers sought to determine whether there was any advantage to finding breast cancers when they were too small to feel. The answer was no.
Dogs Helping Their Owners Shovel Snow
Door
Entrance worthy of...? SLYT. Lingering in the doorway not advisable.
How To Drive A Tank
Fish on Wheels, a short video in which a goldfish drives around the room.
The Sixth Extinction
In his 1996 book The Song of the Dodo, David Quammen observed that if you destroy most of a habitat and leave only a small patch of wilderness behind, you have effectively created an island—and islands, for complex ecological reasons, sustain far fewer species and far more extinctions than mainlands. Now watch things get complicated. At the same time that our logging, mining, farming, road-building, suburban-sprawling species is turning the entire planet into an archipelago, “global trade and travel do the reverse: they deny even the remotest islands their remoteness.” The result, as Kathryn Schulz reports, is that we are living through The Sixth Extinction.
Nice basic guide to the three new-ish tools for rewriting Genes
Zinc-finger-nucleases, TALENs, and CRISPR, oh my! The three tools, especially the last one, CRISPR, make rewriting Genes doable. Now the "fun" begins.
Every government is a liar. That's a prima facie assumption.
I.F. Stone's Weekly , a 1973 documentary about one of the greatest American journalists of the 20th century (Part 1). Part 2 of 6 here (incomplete). Isidor Feinstein "Izzy" Stone discusses how he exposed widely-accepted fictions about the Vietnam War and the escalation of the Cold War—merely by reading what the government published. He was blacklisted in 1950 and began his own newsletter, which railed against McCarthyism, racial discrimination, and the complacent establishment media. [more inside]
Hillside Special And Hamazing and Mcmagic's Candied Ham Of Pebblesrun
All of the best of breed winners from this year's Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, courtesy of the New York Times. [more inside]
Happy-Go-Lucky Brand
Comedian, Mefi's own, and transgender woman Avery Edison is currently being held in a men's jail in Ontario on immigration charges, separated from the general population. Avery tweeted about her detention last night.
Dude, I’m not an old fart
Why Abercrombie Is Losing Its Shirt
"...sensibilities have since evolved; casual prejudice is not as readily tolerated. Today’s teens are no longer interested in “the elite, cool-kid thing” to the extent that they once were, says Gordon, the Michigan professor. “This generation is about inclusiveness and valuing diversity. It’s about not looking down on people.” And with the help of social media, for the first time critics have succeeded in putting Abercrombie on the defensive. Last year, blogger Jes Baker drew blood with her spoof photo series “Attractive & Fat,” which satirized the iconic Bruce Weber images."
What's next? Criticial attention to videogames?
Ng Suat Tong presents the best online comics criticism of 2013. Particularly recommended (by me): who white washes the Watchmen.
The Day We Fight Back
The Day We Fight Back is a protest against mass surveillance. "The SOPA and PIPA protests were successful because we all took part, as a community. As Aaron Swartz put it, everybody "made themselves the hero of their own story." We can set a date, but we need all of you, the users of the Internet, to make it a movement. [more inside]
Luddites were "the original gangsters of anti-technology."
"In which you may a Scholar be, for spending of a Penny..."
"For centuries, coffee was used as a conversation stimulant. But in the present-day U.S., it functions primarily as productivity booster." In London, in Prague, Paris, Cairo, coffeeshops were the place to gain information and to discuss it. Taverns and saloons have had their historical role as well, especially as a place where people from all walks of life could mingle and share ideas. "Crucially, these are also semi-public spaces that can deliver a measure of privacy, a place where it’s easy to congregate yet hard for authorities to monitor."
In America in the internet age, however, coffeeshops are where we work and bars are...well, not where we go to talk, anyway, if the decibel levels are any indication. Where then are we to foment our revolutions? Begin our art movements? Or dissect our dolphins? [more inside]
relentless.com
How Do You Code?
The final frontier of intimacy
A few months ago, my husband and I decided to mix our books together. We had known each other for ten years, lived together for six, been married for five.
Knees
The Hierarchy of Hexagons
The Hierarchy of Hexagons. School geometry seems to me one of the most lifeless topics in all of mathematics.
And the worst of all? The hierarchy of quadrilaterals.
A Catholic Showdown Worth Watching
The deep philosophical differences between the two main conservative factions of the Catholic Church, pitting adherents of John Courtney Murray against the followers of Alasdair MacIntyre is the root cause of the mixed messages being put out by the Church on public policy matters. It is the fight worth watching.
American History: a very qualified "Yaaay"
Awww... Australian fauna.
Peacock Spiders don't hurt humans (they're tiny and 'insignificant'). Here's one on a human fingernail in Western Australia where they live. Peacock Spiders (Flickr image search results) are quite something. (Previously). The still images don't capture the mating performances properly. [more inside]
Nailed it.
Dates is a series of vignettes featuring same-sex couples definitely not meeting the loves of their lives.
Shirley Temple Black, 1928 - 2014
Shirley Jane Temple Black, actress and US Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia, has passed away, aged 85.
God Is Love
Out in a forgotten, dusty corner of Southern California, just east of the Salton Sea, Leonard Knight let his love and devotion to the Lord inspire a Technicolor vision on the desert floor. His creation came to be known as Salvation Mountain. On Monday, Leonard Knight passed away at the age of 82. [more inside]
February 10
Even a permethrin-treated bednet looks exciting next to Brad Pitt
The new TV show "The Samaritans" is a mockumentary inspired by The Office about the perils – and pleasures – of the “NGO world”. Created by a Kenya-based production company, it chronicles the work of Aid for Aid – an NGO that, in the words of its creator, “does nothing.”
Over at Warscape, some wry advice for a "development officer of a not-for-profit yearning for a celebrity of your very own" after Downton Abbey's Elizabeth McGovern flubbed her "African adventure," mixing up Dakar with Darfur. “We have to break in our new celebrities slowly,” confides Sarah Wilson, a World Vision representative who is chaperoning McGovern on the trip. “There will be lots of breaks so she doesn’t get overloaded.”
(previously) (previouslier) (more previouslier)
Apparently, Geraldo Rivera is immortal.
Forty years before "Modern Family" and "The Bachelor", ABC was... well, you can see for yourself: A thirty-three minute promo for the American Broadcasting Company from 1974.
How Iowa Flattened Literature
How Iowa Flattened Literature
The Iowa Writers’ Workshop emerged in the 1930s and powerfully influenced the creative-writing programs that followed. More than half of the second-wave programs, about 50 of which appeared by 1970, were founded by Iowa graduates. Third- and fourth- and fifth-wave programs, also Iowa scions, have kept coming ever since. So the conventional wisdom that Iowa kicked off the boom in M.F.A. programs is true enough. [...] Over the past 40 years, creative writing’s small-is-beautiful approach has served it well, as measured by the discipline’s explosive growth while most of its humanities counterparts shrink and cower. The reasons for this could fill many essays. For one thing, creative writing has successfully embedded itself in the university by imitating other disciplines without treading on their ground. A pyramid resembles a pedagogy—it’s fungible, and easy to draw on the board. Introductory math and physics professors like to draw diagrams too, a welcome analogy for a discipline wishing both to establish itself as teachable and to lengthen its reach into the undergraduate curriculum, where a claim of pure writerly exceptionalism won’t cut it.
Dear Fake Geeks, Go Away?
Stop Stop Winny!
Alien is a very strange but alluring music video from Japanese hardcore band Maximum the Hormone. [more inside]
Translations of Stefan Grabinski, Poland's Poe, Lovecraft, of sorts
Stefan Grabiński is often called "the Polish Poe" or "the Polish Lovecraft," which are both useful for short-hand, but don't quite capture Grabiński's style. As suggested by China Miéville in the Guardian, "where Poe's horror is agonised, a kind of extended shriek, Grabinski's is cerebral, investigative. His protagonists are tortured and aghast, but not because they suffer at the caprice of Lovecraftian blind idiot gods: Grabinski's universe is strange and its principles are perhaps not those we expect, but they are principles - rules - and it is in their exploration that the mystery lies." If you haven't heard of Grabiński, it is probably because only a few of his works have recently been translated to English. The primary translator is Miroslaw Lipinski, who runs a site dedicated to Grabiński. You can read Lipinksi's translation of Strabismus (PDF linked inside), and The Wandering Train online. [more inside]
You may find that even your rock-bottom expenses aren’t met
Can you live on the minimum wage? NYTimes.com has provided you with a handy calculator to find out.
It takes every guy in Wakaliwood to help with Medinah's costume
"I saw the trailer for Captain Alex [previously on mefi], and two weeks later I flew from NYC to Uganda." Redditor Uncle_Benon shares a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at filming an action flick in Wakaliwood, a studio based in the slums of Wakaliga, outside Uganda's capital city. [more inside]
New York legal AR-15
New York's SAFE act sought to ban so-called "assault weapons" by making certain physical features of such guns illegal in the state. Enterprising machinists have now created a modified version of the venerable AR-15 which complies with the law. The New York State Police have declared that the gun is legal, and prototypes are being shown in gun shops all over the state.
Hannah Horvath = Jo March?
"How Girls is Like Little Women": Chiara Atik argues that the characters in the HBO show Girls are essentially modern-day versions of the March sisters in Louisa May Alcott's classic American novel Little Women. "The characters of the show are analagous in a way that suggests these four girls — the writer, the responsible one, the sweet one, and the wild-child — are time-honored archetypes for American women, rather than products of their creator’s imagination. Or maybe American society and American girlhood just haven’t changed that much in the past 150 years." [more inside]
Na Thing Left Unruinated
447 years ago this morning, the Provost's house at Kirk o' Field, Edinburgh, was annihilated in an explosion. Lord Darnley, king consort to Mary, Queen of Scots, had been staying in the house to recuperate from a bout of pox; his body was found in a nearby orchard, unburnt but asphyxiated. Rafael Sabatini recounts the possible course of events in his Historical Nights' Entertainment, a two volume anthology of murders, court intrigues, and scandals. [more inside]
The first taste is free.
The deathspiral of the "like". Australian science vlogger Derek Muller of Veritasium makes a convincing case for why Facebook likes are becoming less and less useful for brands --- and why paying for ads on Facebook locks you into a cycle of dependency which actually makes it harder to reach people who actually care about your content. (SLYT, 9min).
I Took Off My Hijab
I Took Off My Hijab By adding more layers. A knit hat and scarf around my neck to be exact.
Stuart Hall, 1932 - 2014
Stuart Hall, influential theorist and founder of New Left Review, has died aged 82. Born in Jamaica on February 3rd, 1932, Stuart Hall became a beacon of the New Left in Britain, a hugely influential cultural theorist (as one of the founding figures of British Cultural Studies) and an incisive critic of Thatcherism.
The Made Up Words Project
The Made Up Words Project is an on-going undertaking by illustrator Rinee Shah (who you may remember from her Seinfood poster series.) The goal is to collect and catalog the made up words that we share with family and friends.
Marginally better than mistaking Brazillian electricians for terrrorists
"Such esoteric partnerships can confuse the authorities. Last November the Home Office invited journalists to accompany officers on a raid of an apparent sham wedding between an Italian man and a Chinese woman in north London. After interrogating the bride, groom and guests, the officers emerged sheepishly to admit that the union was probably real." -- The Economist looks at the rise of mixed race Britain and the changing ethnic makeup of the UK.
AAAAAAND!!!...
Jimmy Fallon signs off The Late Show with an homage to The Last Waltz (SLYT). With Muppets. Lots of Muppets. (Past awesome Late Show musical numbers: previously and previously and previously but that's really just a start.)
Solidarity
In possibly the largest Southern progressive protest since Selma in 1965, 75,000 to 100,000 people marched on Raleigh, North Carolina this Sunday in protest against the recently elected conservative government’s radical agenda.
Once a comparatively moderate Southern state, the government North Carolina elected in 2010 has begun a systematic campaign [previously] to remove 50 years of progressive legislation from the state. Weekly Moral Mondays protests [previously], beginning in April 2013, have been ongoing, but this march represents the biggest gathering so far in protest of the NC government. [more inside]
Everyone's An Architect
Children See, Children Do
The Orc misses Boromir
LIBERTÉ OU LA MORT
Deklarasyon Endepandans Ayiti: Rechèch pou jwenn dokiman ki pèdi nan Achiv Mond Atlantik la [more inside]
Geo Cell: ‘We Track ’Em, You Whack ’Em.’
"The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people." - Scahill and Greenwald @ The Intercept [more inside]
Helping you beat Turnitin.com Since 2012
With recognition software making the use of recycled term papers impractical, a new service is now allowing students to hire unemployed professors to write term papers from scratch.
Long Story Short.
"A college student who's very unlucky. Sounds like me." Long Story Short. [YouTube comedy web series] [more inside]
February 9
Scientific magic and the humble pickle
Even Robots Get The Blus
Luckily most of these songs aren't dreck
The Music Scene is a television series aired by ABC as part of its Fall 1969 lineup. The show featured performances from the top musicians of the week as compiled by “Billboard Magazine” and had a number of hosts, including David Steinberg and Lily Tomlin. Many huge names of the era, including The Beatles, James Brown, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Three Dog Night, Tom Jones on the initial program and Janis Joplin, Bobby Sherman, The Miracles, Sly & the Family Stone, Isaac Hayes, Stevie Wonder, Bo Diddley and Mama Cass Elliot, (who co-hosted as well as performed) among many others, appearing on subsequent shows. [more inside]
A tragedy of epic proportions.
What tools did the Vikings use to construct their ships? During the early years of the Song dynasty, while Sridhar Acharya's concept of "zero" was making it's way westward and a pair of anonymous Anglo-Saxon poets was committing the tale of Beowulf to animal skin, a Viking craftsman lost his tool chest. It is speculated that the chest fell overboard off a ship or through the ice into what was then a swamp on the modern island of Gotland, Sweden. The chest was unearthed in 1936 when a chain attached to the chest got caught on a farmer's plow. In it were the tools a Viking blacksmith/ship builder would need to ply his trade.
Named the Mästermyr chest its discovery was a boon to archaeologists, historians, re-enactors, woodworkers and blacksmiths. The original tools (catalogue of the items) were restored and put on display. Numerous copies and tributes of the chest or selected tools have been made over the years including a complete replica of both the chest and contents made using period techniques as a 'net project of a blacksmiths and woodworkers. [more inside]
So yeah, don't even worry about it, it's just an e-card, not a big deal
Just in time for Valentine's Day, Scarleteen launches rad e-cards for "hookups or friends with benefits, open or poly relationships, friendships, sexually exclusive relationships, exes turned friends, and even the love relationship one has with oneself." Art by Isabella Rotman.
Supernormal Stimuli
The key word is "publicly"...
Michael Sam blazes a trail. Michael Sam, University of Missouri star football player, Southeastern Conference Defensive Player of the Year and prospective draft pick in this spring's 2014 NFL draft, may become the first publicly gay player in the NFL. [more inside]
Got vinegar?
Grandmothers knew it, but commercial technology made it passe... What other substance can burnish your scissors, clean your piano keys, deodorize lunch boxes, footlockers, and car trunks, purge bugs from your pantry, and keep corned beef from shrinking....as well as 145 other things? Not much.
The Geneva Beatus: Not what anyone was expecting.
The Beatus Cycle refers the nearly 30 surviving illuminated manuscripts based on an 8th century commentary on the Book of the Apocalypse by Saint Beatus of Liebana. The commentary is primarily composed of excerpts from works by theologians such as Augustine, Ambrose and Irenaeus. While the original manuscript had illustrations interspersed with the text, beginning with Maius in the mid-10th century, the paintings were moved to more prominent full or double pages with borders. (Here’s an example of the Maius manuscript format.) As the manuscript was repeatedly copied throughout the Christian portions of the Iberian Peninsula, the original iconography combined with Maius’ layout was preserved mostly intact. In 2007 a new Beatus manuscript came to light – the 11th-century Genevan Beatus. [more inside]
Catch Olympic Fever!
And who doesn't love a little luge? SLYT The Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Diversity has created a brief response to Russian homophobia.
Rainwave: video game music radio stations, programmed by voting
Rainwave is not an online video game music radio station that plays songs at at random. Rather, the site lets the users program the playlists, based on voting for individual tracks. As an anonymous user, you can still listen to the default station with all styles mixed together, or focus on game, chiptune, cover or ocremix songs.
Yuletide + Youtube = Festivids
Need to take a quick break? Check out the masterlist for Festivids, a multi-fandom fanvid exchange., a multi-fandom fanvid exchange. Over 200 fanvids went live this year, including one about a day in the life of a stormtrooper in Lego Star Wars, a stark look at life in the Ozarks in the Winter's Bone, and a tribute to Ruby Rhod in the Fifth Element. Vidding Previously 1, 2, 3; Festivids Previously [more inside]
Assembled DNA with a different backbone seems readable by cell machinery
Much easier to put together custom DNA An interdisciplinary study led by Dr Ali Tavassoli, a Reader in chemical biology at the University of Southampton, has shown for the first time that 'click chemistry' can be used to assemble DNA that is functional in human cells, which paves the way for a purely chemical method for gene synthesis.
Writing in Angewandte Chemie International Edition Dr Tavassoli's team and his collaborators, Dr Jeremy Blaydes and Professor Tom Brown, show that human cells can still read through strands of DNA correctly despite being stitched together using a linker not found in nature.
eStonia
Estonia, with a population of 1.3 million, might just have the most technologically forward-thinking government around.
Walking City
Walking City - "Referencing the utopian visions of 1960’s architecture practice Archigram, Walking City is a slowly evolving video sculpture. The language of materials and patterns seen in radical architecture transform as the nomadic city walks endlessly, adapting to the environments she encounters."
I'd like a dumb grande wuppy duppy latte, extra hot, please
On Friday, a Starbucks opened in Los Feliz, Los Angeles. There is something a bit "weirdly off-kilter" about this location according to one customer. In particular, everything there, including the store name has the word "dumb" in front. The store is claiming parody-based fair use exemptions to intellectual property law, and so far, the (non-dumb) Starbucks appears not to have responded. In case you want to pick what you want before hand, their menu of dumb drinks is posted on Twitter.
"Distressed babies"
AOL chief cuts 401(k) benefits, blames Obamacare and two "distressed babies". "AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong Thursday offered a number of unusual explanations for why his company pulled back its 401(k) benefits for employees this year. The first reason: Obamacare. The second: two women at the company who had 'distressed babies' in 2012." [more inside]
You Can't POP Your Cherry (HYMEN 101)
I beg-ee, oh, make you hear me well!
Forty eight, uh-huh, count 'em, FORTY EIGHT Fela records are now available for streaming. Make you hear this one!
People held umbrellas over the people holding umbrellas over him
A man collapses on Oxford Street, London, England and convulses in a fit. Bystanders rush over and help. That evening, on Twitter, victim and helpers find each other again and tell their stories.
How it's made, when it's not made in the human pancreas: Insulin
In the 1920s, two tons of pig parts were needed to produce eight ounces of purified insulin. In 1982 Humulin, human insulin produced by recombinant DNA, became the first such product approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration. Diabetes Forecast offers a look into modern insulin production.
Apollo of Gaza
Fisherman find an ancient Greek bronze statue in the waters off the coast of Gaza. Now the question is how it can be preserved and what its ultimate fate will be. Here Apollo is lying on Smurf sheets (photo from an Italian article). (Previously on underwater archaeology in the Mediterranean.)
February 8
mega-culture
A huge "yet mysterious" chimpanzee 'mega-culture' discovered in remote Congo - a community of perhaps tens of thousands of individuals with its own unique customs and behaviors, the Guardian reports. Observed unique behaviors include feasting on leopards and using tools to harvest giant African snails. See earlier report "The giant lion-eating chimps of the magic forest" and new camera trap videos and survey results. [more inside]
Because tits are scary just like spiders
Everyone knows new mothers are ex-hib-ition-ists
Taking every chance they get to ruin your day with tits...
Possibly NSFW. No real nudity but two women and a chorus sing the word 'tits'.
Taking every chance they get to ruin your day with tits...
Possibly NSFW. No real nudity but two women and a chorus sing the word 'tits'.
"I Could Easily Become Too Tasteful In My Old Age"
"Neil Finn’s one of the great underappreciated treasures — a songwriter with a four-decade catalog so deep and evocative it stands up against most anyone in the rock era."
On the eve of the release of his latest solo album, Dizzy Heights, Salon talks with Neil Finn about Crowded House, Split Enz, and growing up in a musical family.
Bonus: Checkout Neil's Twitter feed - if you add him, he'll add you back.
On the eve of the release of his latest solo album, Dizzy Heights, Salon talks with Neil Finn about Crowded House, Split Enz, and growing up in a musical family.
Bonus: Checkout Neil's Twitter feed - if you add him, he'll add you back.
“Car for criminals!” said Vlad
Sexual harassment, conferences, and you
How well do you know (American) sexual harassment law as it relates to conferences? Attorney and Popehat blogger Ken White has created a short quiz to find out. [more inside]
Clap!
Fairy coffins, or murder victims remembered?
The mystery of the tiny coffins of Edinburgh, Scotland, found in 1836. Still of unknown origins, the meaning behind these tiny coffins could have various answers. Were they to honor the victims of Burke and Hare? Perhaps instead, some answer to a sailors superstition? Maybe they had an obscure meaning regarding the superstitions of 19th century Scotland. Whatever the case, it's open to speculation.
Plain But Sturdy Frontier Cake
In every courthouse....
Attorney General Eric Holder will announce tonight at the annual HRC gala that the United States federal government will treat lawful same-sex marriages sweeping equal protection under the law in every program it administers, from courthouse proceedings to prison visits to the compensation of surviving spouses of public safety officers. [more inside]
Oh no! The Produce Manager!
Around 2009, the Idaho Potato Commission created a series of 8 comic book ads where a dastardly fellow tried to outwit your friendly neighborhood produce manager. Those eight ads were expertly narrated with voices and sound effects and put on YouTube: ADVENTURES OF THE IDAHO POTATO RETAILER!! Episode 1: Disaster Strikes [more inside]
We stood in line for 120 minutes to receive thrilling punishment?
[Two Guys] decided that they have spent too much time in paradise and decide to take a vacation to Japan. Through the entirety of the film, there is no major conflict, there is no primary antagonist, there is no massive plot that involves saving the world or some other thing like it. It is a simple, but comic, slice of life story, their small daily adventures while exploring a modern Japanese culture, such as shopping, going to amusement parks, saunas, and pools, with it all ultimately culminating in a celebration of the Christmas holiday and a ushering in of the new year. Saint Young Men, a buddy/room-mate comedy anime about Buddha and Jesus that is perfect for the online GIF culture. [more inside]
They say you just have to find a direction and walk
"Last week I saw two visions for the future. The first is Her...and the other was this Infinity Augmented Reality concept video which had me in fits of laughter because it was so… well, just watch it for yourself. I liked seeing both. However accurate or ridiculous (and how can we truly know until the future is here?), the act of inventing is what sparks the realities of tomorrow." - Julie Zhuo imagines The Future.
Man As "Meaty Robot," A Capitalist Fairy Tale
As an antidote to the "economic calculator" view of behavior, OWS's Graeber offers a counter principle: "The free exercise of an entity’s most complex powers or capacities tends to become an end in itself."
Death of a Playmate
Here is a 1981 Pulitzer Prize winning article about the death of Playboy Playmate and rising star Dorothy Stratten.
Rarely can you say "Worse than Comc Sans" with sincerity.
The design studio Kerozen has melded body horror with font design and produced a human flesh font. Not safe for anyone, really.
Paper Haiku
What happened to the people who walked
Photographer Shannon Jensen's series “The Long Walk” documents the shoes belonging to some of the 30,000 refugees who traveled by foot across the border from Sudan’s Blue Nile state over to neighboring South Sudan. Additional background on the Amnesty award-winning project. [more inside]
A place to hang your cape and anti-telepathy helment
The economy of movement
Databall. With an ocean of new statistical information available, the NBA could be on the verge of understanding the value of every single movement on the court.
Cube
Oppressed Majority
On what seems to be just another ordinary day, a man is exposed to sexism and sexual violence in a society ruled by women. [SLYT; NSFW; Nudity; Sexual violence]
"Hollywood Hotel Good Morning"
February 7
Pussy Riot
What Does Pussy Riot Mean Now? "With all eyes on Russia, two members of the country’s most notorious band of shit-stirrers are free after nearly two years of political imprisonment and enjoying the rock-star treatment during their first trip to the U.S. But the group’s unlikely journey from art-school project to international icons shows just how rotten Russia has become and how much the mission has changed."
Audio Histories of the Birmingham Black Barons
Peruse the Birmingham Public Library's collection of audio histories given by former Birmingham Black Barons players of the Negro Leagues. [more inside]
Pangs piercing every muscle, every labouring nerve
In The Natural History, Pliny the Elder mentioned "the Laocoön [...]* in the palace of the Emperor Titus, a work that may be looked upon as preferable to any other production of the art of painting or of statuary." Pliny ascribed the sculpture to three sculptors from Rhodes, Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydoros; it is possible that they (or some of their descendants) were also responsible for a cluster of similarly-themed statues found in the 1950s at Sperlonga. In any event, the Laocoön was discovered in 1506 and purchased by Pope Julius II. [more inside]
"Black Angel"
As a thank you gift for his work on "Star Wars", George Lucas gave art director Roger Christian 25,000 pounds in 1979 to make a short film. Christian used the money to shoot a 25 minute medieval fantasy titled "Black Angel". Lucas liked the film so much that he had it precede theatrical showings of "Empire Strikes Back" in the UK, Australia and Scandinavia. In the intervening years, the film was thought lost until a negative was discovered at Universal Studios in 2011. The film was restored and given a premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival in Marin County last October. It will be shown again later this month at the Glasgow Film Festival and will eventually find its way to a streaming services like Netflix later this year. The BBC recently talked to Christian about the film and its rediscovery.
Toasters. Beautiful old toasters
Turning bread brown has never looked so pretty. Who doesn't love toast? Toast may be the incoming hipster craze, but trying to find a toaster that won't cack out on you after a few months can be tricky. Of course, if retro refurb's not your style, you could always go high-end.
The number of the beast- by sixth graders.
"Nobody on the outside believed how bad it was in there."
A former Serco (previously) employee tells of his experience working as a guard in the Australian refugee detention centers, illustrated by cartoonist Sam Wallman.
turgid, stuffy little packages of institutional sanctimony
It's well known among the small world of people who pay attention to such things that the liberal-leaning reporters at The Wall Street Journal resent the conservative-leaning editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. What’s less well known—and about to break into the open, threatening the very fabric of the institution—is how deeply the liberal-leaning reporters at The New York Times resent the liberal-leaning editorial page of The New York Times.The New York Observer reports that the journalistic staff of The New York Times is in "semi-open revolt" against the opinion pages. Chris Bray asks: "When was the last time you were surprised by something in the opinion pages of the New York Times, leaving aside the moments you were surprised by how awful something was?"
How can nothing can be something?
While the concept of shunya or "zero", both as place holder in the decimal system and as "null" or "nothingness" has been historically attributed to the Indian mathematician/astronomer Aryabhata, it was when I went to search for its history and impact that whole new world was revealed. From culture and art to spiritual practice, the concept of zero has captured the imagination of many throughout the ages. Books have been written, its origins debated while the etymology of the word itself sometimes replaces understanding. From a disconcerting concept of nothingness to the ubiquitous misspelling of the one followed by a hundred zeros, Shunya today is more than just the gaping void it originally represented.
The art of possibility
I'd have used MY robot hand for good.
Louisburg High School junior Mason Wilde had some free time on his hands after giving up football. The perfect project soon fell into his lap: Nine-year-old Matthew, who was born with a condition called limb difference, has only a thumb on his right hand. Wilde modified the free Robohand plans to fit the young boy. Then, using the 3D printer at the Johnson County Library, he created a prosthetic hand that can even hold a pencil. [more inside]
Note: not the Spurs keeper
Slow Loris eating a banana, Slow Loris eating a rice ball, Slow Loris being brushed, Slow Loris endangered for being too, too cute and getting their teeth pulled out so they can be sold illegally.
R.I.P. Michael Sporn (1946-2014)
Can you believe he even existed? Did we conjure him up in a strangely unexplainable collective? On January 19th, the animation world lost one of its most idiosyncratic and principled voices, Michael Sporn. Sporn not only gathered accolades for his work, including an Oscar nomination for his short Dr. Desoto (excerpt) and four Emmy awards, he also won the respect of the animation community and the affection and high regard of those who worked with him, and for his wonderful Splog, which has been linked previously, 1 2
High quality clips of his work can be viewed at his website (see link in the comments.) [more inside]
Why The Fighting Game Community Is Color Blind
...the fighting game community is one of the only communities out there where you're playing next to somebody — right there. There's no booths, there's nobody playing on the other side of the country or whatever. You're playing right next to each other.How the [fighting game community's] roots grew the most racially diverse community in gaming.
it's right under Trader Joes
How an obsessed explorer found and lost the world's oldest subway. "The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel was sealed in 1861, shortly after Brooklyn banned steam locomotives within city limits. Legend has it that the tunnel was reopened in the 1920s when it was used for mushroom growing and bootlegging, and in the 1940s when the FBI opened it looking for Nazis. But soon after, it was lost. In the 1950s two historians attempted to find it and failed."
Hello, is this thing on?
ISEE-3 seeks the creator. ICE/ISEE-3 to return to an Earth no longer capable of speaking to it.
Still trying to make fetch happen
"...mournful, joyful, delicate, or kind of badass..."
Got 57 minutes to spare? Then sit back and let David Garland, host of WNYC's "Spinning On Air" take you on a whirlwind tour (with insightful commentary) of over 50 excerpts from pieces of music that all use a common musical DNA: the Diatonic Phrygian Tetrachord, aka the The Andalusian Cadence, aka the world's most used musical sequence. Check it out.
Can It Actually Be THAT Good?
Maybe the creators are benefitting from really low expectations. "The LEGO Movie" is getting some implausbly positive reviews . [more inside]
Black Is the Day, Black Is the Night
Artist Amy Elkinsbegan corresponding in 2009 with prisoners on death row in California. Of the seven men with whom Elkins made contact in June 2009, she remains in touch with only one, Freddy, who has been held in solitary confinement at Pelican Bay since 1995, when he was 16 years of age. Freddy has been incarcerated since he was 13. Parting Words is "a visual archive of the 500+ prisoners to date executed in the state of Texas."
Some sort of... robot... cop
"Our RoboCop Remake is a crowd-sourced film project based on the 1987 Paul Verhoeven classic. Connected through various filmmaking channels ... we're 50 filmmakers (amateur and professional) from Los Angeles and New York who have split the original RoboCop into individual pieces and have remade the movie ourselves. Not necessarily a shot-for-shot remake, but a scene-for-scene retelling. As big fans of the original RoboCop, and as filmmakers and film fans admittedly rolling our eyes at the Hollywood remake machine, we've elected to do this remake thing our own way ... Because if anyone is going to ruin RoboCop, it's us. Extremely not safe for work. [more inside]
Building a Foundational Library for the Long Now
"As we near completion on the construction at the new Long Now space in Fort Mason, we are also building the collection of books that will reside here. We have named this collection The Manual for Civilization, and it will include the roughly 3000 books you would most want to rebuild civilization. ... So… If you were stranded on an island (or small hostile planetoid), what books would YOU want to have with you?" The Manual for Civilization begins. Previously, from 2010, on the project's announcement.
"I have a lot of gay stuff to do."
In response to India's Supreme Court re-affirming an anti-gay law, the comic strip Dilbert has announced that Asok the Intern is officially gay. Of course it's not the first time that a comic character has come out.
Artist Roxy Paine built a space for you
Carcass is a replica of a fast food counter, carved entirely out of wood.
February 6
"We Have Not Received A Valid Membership Login"
Just Ella. A short film from Jim Munroe, the creator of Ghosts With Shit Jobs, for the Lo-fi Sci-fi 48 Hour Film Challenge. "Just Ella posits a future overrun by gibbering monstrosities. Ella takes refuge in a 'the Ossington Safehouse, a collectively-run space dedicated to human sovereignty.' But despite doing the assigned tasks on the chore list, the Safehouse isn’t safe — the terrors outside are nothing compared to those within." [Via]
Nagasaki Mon Amour
Unedited footage of the bombing of Nagasaki: This silent film shows the final preparation and loading of the "Fat Man" bomb into "Bockscar," the plane which dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. It then shows the Nagasaki explosion from the window of an observation plane. This footage comes from Los Alamos National Laboratory. (SLYT)
If you’re a gay man, pose outdoors
Grumpy Disney: illustrations of Grumpy Cats as Disney Princesses
Eric Proctor, aka Tsaoshin, draws cute monsters, dragons, Disney characters and Grumpy Cats. The last two merge in a short series of images he calls Grumpy Disney, with the various Disney characters (mostly princesses) replaced with Grumpy Cats doing suitably Grumpy Cat things.
Cigarette TV Commercials
On January 2, 1971, the Public Health Cigarette Smoking
Act went into effect. In addition to adding a stronger health warning to cigarette packs, it banned
cigarette advertising on radio and TV in the United States. (MLYT) [more inside]
There were difficulties.
"This project started with my dad on Thanksgiving. He was reminiscing about Doug Williams, who in 1988 became the first black quarterback to start and win a Super Bowl. All these years later, he was still proud of Williams, whose name to some may be that of a half-remembered player from the past but to millions of others remains a powerful symbol of progress. It stayed with me, and it seemed that it was worth telling the story not just of Williams, but of everyone—of all those generations of players who struggled so that Russell Wilson could be, simply, a good young quarterback." Deadspin's The Big Book of Black Quarterbacks.
not flowers
*sniff* I'm getting some citrus...I'm getting some vodka...
Watch that space.
You should try slacklining. You could maybe try highlining. You should definitely not try the Balloon highline. [more inside]
Love for Sale
"Love for Sale" is a song by Cole Porter, from the musical The New Yorkers which opened on Broadway on December 8, 1930 and closed in May 1931. The song is written from the viewpoint of a prostitute advertising various kinds of "love for sale": "Old love, new love, every love but true love".
Originally considered in bad taste, even scandalous. In the initial Broadway production, it was performed by Kathryn Crawford, portraying a streetwalker. As a response to the criticism, the song was transferred from the white Crawford to the African American singer Elisabeth Welch. Despite the fact the song was banned from radio airplay, or perhaps because of it, it became a hit, with Libby Holman's version going to #5 and "Fred Waring's version (NSFW) going to #14, both in 1931.
Other notable recordings since include:
Frances Faye 1955, Billie Holiday 1956, Ella Fitzgerald 1956, Miles Davis 1959, Cannonball Adderley 1959, Eartha kitt 1965, Boney M. 1977, Elvis Costello 1981, Maude Maggart 2003, Jamie Cullum 2013 [more inside]
All players die after about 29,000 days.
When "Roses are red, violets are blue" just isn't going to cut it.
Not got a way with words? PayPal has made available a number of working poets to write custom poems for your love, just in time for Valentine's Day. [more inside]
Sochi is the Florida of Russia
The Sochi Project: An Atlas of War and Tourism in the Caucasus “Sochi used to be much prettier... These days crooks from Moscow come here to build and sell skyscrapers and apartments, although it used to be such a small, lovely town." via The New York Review of Books article on "Why Sochi"
Putin explicitly links the Games to the humiliations of the recent past: “There is also a certain moral aspect here and there is no need to be ashamed of it,” he said. “After the collapse of the Soviet Union, after the dark and, let us be honest, bloody events in the Caucasus, the society had a negative and pessimistic attitude.” The Olympics, he explains, are a necessary part of an effort to “strengthen the morale of the nation.”
A rare liberal acknowledgement of the failure of liberal race policies.
Part 1 of a series by Slate: "Resegregation is a misleading term because it implies that the left’s large-scale integrationist schemes were working, and would have continued to work, if not for the meddling of Republicans. But to believe that premise, you’d have to accept the assertion that the peak year for school integration happened 25 years ago. Does anyone remember the mid- to late-1980s as a flowering of adolescent racial harmony in America? I don’t. The truth is that the left has crafted a narrative about the death of Brown v. Board, a convenient one that serves its own ends. The reality is much more grim, and it starts in the place where Democrats drove the school bus into the ditch: Detroit."
Privatization of Justice: Probation for Profit
"Every year, US courts sentence several hundred thousand misdemeanor offenders to probation overseen by private companies that charge their fees directly to the probationers. Often, the poorest people wind up paying the most in fees over time, in what amounts to a discriminatory penalty. And when they can’t pay, companies can and do secure their arrest."
The Human Rights Watch releases a report on the for-profit probation industry in the US. The Atlantic weighs in.
The Human Rights Watch releases a report on the for-profit probation industry in the US. The Atlantic weighs in.
Hate Sinks
[W]e may not stop to think much about moderation as a form of labor that composes the Internet. But as the need to grant the audience “a voice” has become conventional wisdom, almost every media organization now needs this work done. [...] This complex tension—between voice and civility, eyeballs and deliberation—is one that future-of-news enthusiasts are good at waving away, but that comment moderators must bear. Within representative democracy, we can think of moderators’ bodies as being like that element of an electronic circuit that dissipates excess energy and allows it to function. They absorb the excess affects in a period of political dysfunction, and allow institutions to appear stable and unchallenged.Jason Wilson argues that, in the comments section, "the facade of liberal democracy only stays clean by putting young women [moderators] in hate’s way."
DevArt
DevArt: An exhibition of art created with code - skywriting quadcopter drones programmed with c++, room dividers reimagined as 3D screens for psychedelic projections, using raspberry pi to rename WiFi networks as lines of poetry. They are collaborating with the Barbican in London for the Digital Revolution exhibition and are currently seeking an emerging creative coder to be funded to present at the exhibition alongside world-class interactive artists Zach Lieberman, Karsten Schmidt, and the duo of Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet.
Full and Partial Belief
One HTML5 game per week
"As a developer and a gamer I always wanted to make games, but I never actually did it. To change that I threw myself a public challenge: build a new game every week in html5." [more inside]
I used to be like you, then I grew a brain, a dick, and a heart.
Every episode of Brad Neely's China, Il is currently available at adultswim.com.
Previously: 1,2,3. [more inside]
I can think of at least two things wrong with that description.
Called "Japan's Beethoven", composer Mamoru Samuragochi is known for his Hiroshima Symphony and various video games soundtracks, many of which were composed after he became deaf at age 35. But in a surprise confession this week, he revealed that a ghostwriter was actually responsible for his work over the last two decades. The ghostwriter, music teacher Takashi Niigaki, has revealed even more damning allegations.
Scotland is an unwon cause.
It is beginning to be appreciated, even in London, that Alex Salmond might just win his independence referendum in September. The break-up of Britain will have begun, David Cameron will have to contemplate being Prime Minister of a rump country — and HMS Britannia will be sunk, not with a bang but a whimper.
Fighting segregation in housing: There’s a map for that
A single mom, Nicole just completed a degree in early childhood development at the local community college. She has been patching together part-time work around her studies and Joe’s schedule. Until 2009, Nicole and Joe lived in a poor neighborhood in Baltimore. Now they’re in Columbia, Md., half an hour away by car, but a world away in terms of opportunity.
At Joe’s former elementary school in Baltimore, 97 percent of the students are low income, and 97 percent are African-American. His middle school in Columbia is one-third low income, with white, Asian, Hispanic and multiracial students making up just over half the population. In their old Baltimore neighborhood, Nicole says, she saw a man get shot in the leg in front of a corner bar as she held baby Joe in her arms.
ANIMAL FRIENDS
The Rocky Ridge Refuge is home to a lot of animals and a lot of interspecies friendship. [more inside]
Woodland Journeys of Self-Discovery
The next year would change his life forever, challenge him in ways he couldn’t imagine yet and unsettle an entire town. But his first leap was simple. On an unremarkable day in September 2012, after so many other frustrating and unremarkable days, he stepped into the woods carrying only a tarp and a hunting knife. He walked through the thickets and pines he’d fallen in love with as a child, and busied himself with the most worthwhile job he could think of: survival. Into The Pines.
Measure of a Man
2003 American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken is running for Congress in North Carolina. Aiken is a long-time political activist, and his campaign seems serious and sincere, as shown by the heartfelt five-minute video announcing his campaign. But the odds are against him in a district which voted for Romney by a twelve-point margin, and being a gay father is a possible liability in a state which recently voted to ban gay marriage.
(But of course, electing entertainers to political office is an American tradition.)
Olympic figure skating fashion
Figure skating competition begins today in Sochi and the costumes of the competitors are sure to generate interest. No longer homemade like some of Dorothy Hamill's costumes in the 1970s, these days even notable designers like Vera Wang create them.
Lists of best and worst costumes abound including on tumblr where some reviews bring the snark.
The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean
Over the course of nearly 20 centuries, millions of East Africans crossed the Indian Ocean and its several seas and adjoining bodies of water in their journey to distant lands, from Arabia and Iraq to India and Sri Lanka.
Called Kaffir, Siddi, Habshi, or Zanji, these men, women and children from Sudan in the north to Mozambique in the south Africanized the Indian Ocean world and helped shape the societies they entered and made their own.
Free or enslaved, soldiers, servants, sailors, merchants, mystics, musicians, commanders, nurses, or founders of dynasties, they contributed their cultures, talents, skills and labor to their new world, as millions of their descendants continue to do. Yet, their heroic odyssey remains little known.
The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean World traces a truly unique and fascinating story of struggles and achievements across a variety of societies, cultures, religions, languages and times.
You Like-a the M&M's? The M&M's is good?
Forget West-bank selzer. Who cares about Zohan's hummus? The dawn of a new era: Chocolate. Schwarma.
I got a girl that live on the hill, she don't love me her sister will
Walking to The Far Lands in Minecraft
Simon Parkin writes 1600 words for The New Yorker online about The Far Lands or Bust!, an ongoing effort to walk to the end of a world in Minecraft. [via Boing Boing] [more inside]
Discursive use of time, ambivalence, banality, and wonder.
What's it really like to be in comics
Throughout February, comics blogging giant David Brothers is doing a twice weekly series of interviews for the Inkstuds podcast, talking about "what cartoonists, academics, bloggers, critics, and other people in or adjacent to comics do". The first episode, in which he talks to Jimmie Robinson about Bomb Queen, Five Weapons and surviving in comics, is up now at Inkstuds and Comics Alliance. (Which has a lot of Five Weapons artwork up, so you might want to use that.)
No, you probably don't want to insert it there.
Simple new invention seals gunshot wounds in 15 seconds. (SLPopSci)
February 5
Watch them all, since you'll never afford the pedals
From the Electro-Harmonix Effectology series, in which the amazingly well crafted pro grade guitar pedals of Electro-Harmonix are used to ends that blur the line between guitar and synthesis. The original 1963 theme for Doctor Who recreated from scratch using only guitar and Electro-Harmonix pedals.
The 2014 Sony World Photography Awards
The Sony World Photography Awards, an annual competition hosted by the World Photography Organisation, has recently announced its shortlist of winners. This year's contest attracted more than 140,000 entries from 166 countries. The organizers have been kind enough to share some of their shortlisted images with In Focus, gathered below. Winners are scheduled to be announced in March and April. All captions below come from the photographers. [33 photos]
"Images of poverty are the Congo’s most lucrative export"
What if poor people capitalized on their own natural resource, poverty? This is the central question of Renzo Martens' 2008 documentary, Episode III - Enjoy Poverty, the second film in a triptych exploring power relations between photographers and their subjects. [more inside]
La-La Land
Vintage Los Angeles is Alison Martino's YouTube channel featuring a look back at Los Angeles during the 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. There's an accompanying blog and a facebook page, too.
A One-PDF History of European Socialism and Communism
music as fibre design
Beautiful music makes better materials "It is not the building block itself that is limiting our ability to create better, more durable or stronger materials, but rather our inability to control the way these building blocks are arranged. To overcome this limitation, I am trying to design new materials in a similar way to nature. In my lab we are using the hidden structures of music to create artificial materials such as designer silks and other materials for medical and engineering applications. We want to find out if we can reformulate the design of a material using the concept of tones, melodies and rhythms. Can a composer come up with a radically different approach to design?"
"My life has been reduced to nothing by an intolerable insult."
The Simple Facts About Mass Shootings Aren't Simple At All
The first step in stopping future mass shootings is figuring out what we know and working from there. Unfortunately, the real first step is getting rid of a bunch of stuff we “know” that turns out to be wrong.[more inside]
Carpetbagging in the jet age
Allan Levene really — really — wants to serve in Congress. But he's 64 years old, and says he has no time to build a political resume step by step by getting elected to lesser positions and working his way up. So, he is maximizing the odds by running in four different states simultaneously. He has entered primaries in Hawaii, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia, which is where he lives. Is this legal? Apparently so, as long as he is a resident, at the time of the November general election, of whichever state he may manage to get elected in. Politifact checked it out with constitutional experts. NPR interview transcript.
The mysteries of the planarian
Animal Loses Head But Remembers Everything: "What we do know is that memory can be stored outside the brain - presumably in other body cells - so that memories can get imprinted onto the new brain as it regenerates."
Con Men! Artistocrats! Nancy Boys! Radiothearpy and More!
A government of the many, not a government of money
The “Government by the People Act”, proposed by N. Pelosi and J. Sarbanes in a WP op-ed, is presented as one of the first concrete steps towards the removal of the influence of quasi-unlimited money in US politics.
The act doesn’t limit the amount of money that corporations, PACs, etc can pay but rather takes the opposite approach, by encouraging and subsidizing citizen participation.
The influence of money on American politics has exploded since the Citizens United ruling… resulting in often disturbing bias. [more inside]
We are not your goddamn beer salesmen.
Budweiser paid for Super Bowl advertising that supposedly was trying to honor the troops. But the troops and veterans themselves have strong and thoughtful opinions about the existence of the ad, their choice of returning soldier, and what it says about companies and organizations who use veterans as props. [more inside]
In this position, it's quite easy for me to dislocate his elbow
Franck Bohbot takes pictures
Franck Bohbot is an up-and-coming photographer, already seen in HuffPo and Vogue, among others. His eye and choice of subjects seem to draw one to infinity. Or to take one to a recent past, seen from younger eyes. And then there's my favorite collection, all about parked cars.
When things get too heavy, just call me helium.
[SLYT] PBS Digital Studios has fancied up Jimi Hendrix's final interview with some whimsical animation.
February Made Me Shiver
Bob Dearborn was a disc jockey at WCFL in Chicago. He had some thoughts about a particular song. [more inside]
Too poor for pop culture
Odd guitars made via 3D printing
This Les Paul inspired guitar body was created via 3d printing.
Here are some more ODD guitars.
ODD was started by Olaf Diegel. His day job is professor of mechatronics at Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand. [more inside]
Draw a bunch of question marks on the shoes and socks. See what I care.
It's not paranoia if....
“He’s treating them like street punks, and they view themselves as captains of industry.” The most exciting article you will read all year about frog genitals, the FDA, and an eccentric, larger-than-life UC Berkeley scientist navigating class and culture issues while being psychologically profiled and pursued by a pesticide giant he's locked himself into mortal combat with for the last decade.
Previously.
Coin Rules Everything Around Me
In 2014, Bitcoin (BTC) has become established as increasingly "real" money with government regulatory interest, law enforcement, and growing acceptance in commerce, but also as the reserve cryptocurrency for hundreds of "altcoins," making them also convertible to legacy money. Foremost among these is Litecoin (LTC), which introduced the scrypt hashing algorithm to cryptocurrency, democratizing coin mining by being best suited to common GPUs rather than Bitcoin's dedicated mining equipment. Recently donated LTC paid for a forest in Madagascar. Peercoin (PPC), next in prominence, introduces "proof of stake" where less energy is spent mining and existing coins pay interest. Dogecoin (DOGE), a fork of Litecoin (previously covered on Metafilter), continues heading to the moon, with more transactions than all other coins combined, thriving markets in digital goods, tipbots, an upcoming party in NYC's Bitcoin Center on Wall Street, much charity, and the recent announcement that new Dogecoins will be generated indefinitely. A selection of other foremost and interesting cryptocurrencies is within. [more inside]
Undercover - Keep it all out of sight
George Monbiot - "...Before I explain it, here’s a summary of what we know already. Thanks to the remarkable investigations pursued first by the victims of police spies and then by the Guardian journalists Rob Evans and Paul Lewis (whose book Undercover is as gripping as any thriller), we know that British police have been inserting undercover officers into protest movements since 1968(2). Their purpose was to counter what they called subversion or domestic extremism, which they define as seeking to “prevent something from happening or to change legislation or domestic policy … outside the normal democratic process”(3). Which is a good description of how almost all progressive change happens."
American finance has finally caught up with breakdancing
Morrissey, George Michael and radio DJ Tony Blackburn discuss the week's pop culture on a TV panel show from deep, deep, deep in 1984. Michael is unimpressed with a breakdance film. Moz is blasé about Joy Division. Blackburn dismisses vintage Atlantic Records reissues, preferring his current options in soul. Pastel color schemes and harsh opinions aplenty. (SLYT, 27 minutes, via the Guardian Tumblr)
Panti Bliss Abbey Theatre Speech.
Drag Queen Panti Bliss, aka Rory O'Neill, received a standing ovation after speaking at Dublin's Abbey Theatre on homophobia, and oppression. [more inside]
Barrieres incendiée
Images of the French Revolution. 14,000 individual visual items, primarily prints, but also illustrations, medals, coins, and other objects included as part of the French Revolution Digital Archive, a collaboration between Stanford University Libraries and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. "The use of these contents for non-commercial purposes is free of charge, subject to compliance with applicable French legislation and notably the inclusion of the source’s statement." Post title taken from this print, "Barrieres incendiée"
February 4
J Dilla: don't know what you got 'til it's gone
Since 2006 (if not before), February has been Dilla month for some music fans. Sadly, it's mostly due to the fact James Dewitt Yancey, better known as J Dilla, was both born and died in February (Feb. 7, 1974 to Feb. 10, 2006). Looking at the mere timespan of his musical career, from his first release in 1992 [YouTube sample] to his death 14 years later, you might think the story and impact wouldn't be too large or lasting, but you'd be mistaken. For example, Giovanni Russonello wrote a piece for NPR last year, titled "Why J Dilla may be jazz's latest great innovator," and in their recently released long-time-coming mixtape, Busta Rhymes and Q-Tip included a couple nods to "one of the godfathers of this boom-bap shit". Where did Dilla come from, where did he go, and why is his legacy still so strong? [more inside]
oh, what a nice drug
"Everything is fine and the world is beautiful. It's raining, it's dark, I woke up at 5:30AM, I'm commuting in traffic. I would have had a headache, I would have been miserable, I would have wondered how my life took me to this point. This point I'm at right now. But no, no, everything is fine. Life is beautiful. The rain drops are just falling and in each one I see the reflection of every persons life around me. Humanity is beautiful. In this still frame shot of traffic on this crowded bus I just found love and peace. Heroin is a wonder drug. Heroin is better than everything else. Heroin makes me who I wish I was. Heroin makes life worth living. Heroin is better than everything else." [more inside]
Hop, hop, slide-slide hop!
The English Baroque Festival Orchestra performs Händel's The Water Music with the English Bach Festival Dancers. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) [more inside]
The state of ebony
The state of ebony Bob Taylor on why your next guitar's fretboard may show some striation.
The snow is almost like nature's tracing paper
Desire paths [previously] show us where we want to walk. Snowy neckdowns, or "sneckdowns," show us where we don't need to drive. [more inside]
A Medical Actor Writes Her Own Script
The Empathy Exams: Acting out pain until that pain becomes real, for $13.50 an hour. "My job title is Medical Actor, which means I play sick. I get paid by the hour. Medical students guess my maladies. I’m called a Standardized Patient, which means I act toward the norms of my disorders. I’m standardized-lingo SP for short. I’m fluent in the symptoms of preeclampsia and asthma and appendicitis. I play a mom whose baby has blue lips..."
Can a slavery system include a middle class?
I had a stroke. I’m a healthy 30-year old woman and I had a stroke.
It was Anne who fell into the wrong hands
The Prisoner's Dilemma For $100, Alex
Arthur Chu has won "Jeopardy" over the last few days by employing strategies rooted in game theory. This has caused consternation among some purists.
mapschool
The Synchronized Bowel Movement Venue is ready
The media have begun to arrive in Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics, which kick off this Friday. Aside from the typical local colour, journalists have flagged some, shall we say, idiosyncratic aspects of the facilities and accommodations. The quirk that has generated the most discussion? Well that would have to be the double-toilet stall, and the official PR response. Or it might be the hiring of a local company to kill stray dogs.
Last minute dashes to the construction finish line are certainly nothing new for Olympic hosts. Perhaps this is just the Russian take on a time-honoured tradition.
Previous coverage of the run-up to the Sochi Olympics here and here.
The Rapist Next Door
Alaska's rape rate is the highest in the country -- three times the national average. To find out why, I went to Alaska to talk with victims, politicians -- and the rapists. [more inside]
He ain't smart, he just gestures that way
The black British actor in America
Distributed Data
The Last Stand
Marc Wilson’s series The Last Stand documents the remains of coastal fortifications that lined Northern Europe during the Second World War — bunkers swallowed by the sea, pillboxes barely clinging to land, buildings ripped from their foundations and wrecked on the rocks — from Allied positions on England’s east coast and the far tip of the Northern Isles, to the once German-occupied archipelago of the Channel Islands and the remains of the Atlantikwall, the colossal Nazi defense network which stretched from Norway to Spain.Slideshow
STRENGTH YOUR BLOOD AND SHADOW
At first sight the search for peace and stability in Iraq, and the search for physical and mental fitness in the extreme contortions of modern Yoga seem to have absolutely nothing in common. But curiously they do. Both the terrible structural problems and distortions that underly Iraqi society today, and the strange, contorted poses that millions of people perform every day in things like Bikram's Hot Yoga, actually come from the fevered imagination of the British ruling class one hundred years ago. As they felt Britain's power declining they wanted desperately to go back into the past and create a purer and more innocent world, uncorrupted by the messiness of the modern industrial world - a new Eden forged both by strengthening and purifying the human body and by inventing new model countries round the world. And we are still suffering from the consequences of that terrible nostalgia. BODYBUILDING AND NATION-BUILDING
Every morning she reads the comic and kinda gives me critique
Ordinary Bill is a perfectly good comic strip loosely based on creator Will Wilson's and his girlfriend's lives. Last Sunday that connection was more noticable than usual, as Wilson used his cartoon stand-in to propose to her. Fortunately, she said yes.
Chanel, Dior, Lagerfeld, Givenchy, Gaultier
The women's magazine parody The Reductress (previously) has unleashed the end-all be-all of brand-dropping, pill-popping nightlife columns: Slave To The Night Thoughts by Our Nightlife Editor, Dafna VanClifton
MRS. P.J. GILLIGAN
Inside the Iron Closet: What It's Like to Be Gay in Putin's Russia
"Putin needs external enemies and internal enemies. The external enemies are the U.S. and Europe. Internal enemies, they had to think about. The ethnic topic is dangerous. Two wars in the Caucasus, a third one, nobody knows how it would end. Jews? After Hitler, it's not kosher. We—" she waves a hand at herself and Zhenya—"are the ideal. We are everywhere. We don't look different, but we are. It's our turn. Just our turn."
A GQ reporter visited Russia to speak to gay rights activists, and also to their enemies (some of whom, warning, describe committing acts of violence). Previously.
The Unsolved Murders of Jeff Davis Parish
Who Killed the Jeff Davis 8? A serial killer has allegedly been preying on Louisiana prostitutes. But a new investigation reveals a far scarier theory.
Not only does Lorenzen play, he DOMINATES
Jared Lorenzen briefly played backup quarterback in the NFL and became famous for his unusual size (for a quarterback). When videos of him dominating minor league arena football recently appeared online, SBNation tracked his entire fascinating post-NFL history in Jared Lorenzen: 300+ pound QB, American folk hero.
New attempt to decipher the Voynich manuscript.
A new attempt to decipher the Voynich manuscript has been made - this time from a botanical perspective. The Voynich manuscript, is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. The book has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and may have been composed in Northern Italy during the Italian Renaissance. The manuscript is named after Wilfrid Voynich, a book dealer who purchased it in 1912.[Wiki]. [more inside]
Best thing since Time Magazine named you Person of the Year
Happy birthday Facebook! To celebrate ten years, Facebook has created a special "A Look Back" movie for each user with some highlights of the user's timeline. (Requires Facebook account.)
How in-app purchase is( not really)? destroying the games industry
Thomas Baekdal writes on How In-app Purchases Have Destroyed The [Game] Industry:
We have reached a point in which mobile games couldn't even be said to be a game anymore. Playing a game means that you have fun. It doesn't mean that you sit around and wait for the game to annoy you for so long that you decide to pay credits to speed it up. And for an old geezer like me who remember the glory days of gaming back in the 1990s, it's just unbearable to watch.Drew Crawford answers:
See, in the in-app purchase model actually predates phones. It predates video game consoles. It goes all the way back to the arcade, where millions of consumers were happy to pay a whole quarter ... to pay for just a few minutes.
Memphis's finest, in top form
Fans of classic southern R&B and soul, and I'm talking the Stax variety, should get down on their knee and genuflect toward Norway, and then sing the praises of the BBC down every corner and alleyway of the city of Memphis. Why? Well, for hosting and for documenting a sweaty, burning, solidly funky evening back in 1967: Otis Redding & Friends Stax Volt Revue
Microsoft names Satya Nadella CEO
Satya Nadella , a 22 year veteran of Microsoft, is the company's new CEO. Founder Bill Gates will step down as Chairman. [more inside]
Daft Gump
Icons, a promotion for The Sunday Times’ Culture section, is a short video that features a cleverly done shifting series of iconic cultural images done in a single take. [slv(imeo) | via]
Making peace with death
Ten Minutes of Transformers Transforming
Watching Ten Minutes of Transformers Transforming did make me a little dizzy. Three movies worth of transformations in 1080p.
Introducing Former UKIP Spokesman, Mujeeb ur Rehman Bhutto
A man who served as UKIP's Commonwealth spokesman for a year is the former leader of a kidnapping gang in Pakistan, BBC Newsnight can reveal.
Mujeeb ur Rehman Bhutto's gang were behind a high-profile kidnapping in Karachi in 2004 and he then took a £56,000 ransom payment in Manchester.
In 2005, Bhutto, of Leeds, admitted being the gang's "boss" and was jailed for seven years by a UK court.
UKIP said Bhutto, 35, had "recently" resigned his party membership.
Superstitious Scots
When the Song Dies
In Scotland, folk songs serve as memories, of places and the dead who once inhabited them. Exploring the theme of change, When the Song Dies seeks to bring the audience under the captive spell of the old ways. Featuring a range of contributors, the film is a poignant reminder that the dead linger on, all around us, in the houses and landscapes we live in, and in the language and music of our culture. Whilst Scottishness is at the heart of the film, this story is as universal as it is specific. It is the story of a culture that is, like so many, in danger of fading from human memory.A 15-minute film directed by Jamie Chambers.
February 3
OnlyTheBestRecipes.com
OnlyTheBestRecipes.com : The top 1% of recipes from sites like allrecipes, food.com, epicurious, and foodnetwork.
[via mefi projects]
She died well because she was willing to die too soon....
The Ultimate End of Life Plan. "...Torn, I called my mother's internist. 'I know your mother well enough, and I respect her,' he said. 'She doesn't want to risk a surgery that could leave her debilitated or bound for a nursing home. I think I would advise the same decision if it was my Mom.'
I called my mother and said, 'Are you sure? The surgeon said you could live to be 90.'
'I don't want to live to be 90,' she said.
'I'm going to miss you,' I said, weeping. 'You are not only my mother. You are my friend.'
That day I stopped pressuring my mother to live forever and began urging her doctors to do less rather than more. A generation of middle-aged sons and daughters are facing this dilemma, in an era when advanced medical technologies hold out the illusion that death can be perfectly controlled and timed."
Don't Dream It, Be It: The Rocky Horror (Picture) Show
In 1975, Tim Curry gave what would become a rare interview on his role as Dr. Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Show and The Rocky Horror Picture Show on STOIC, the Student Television Of Imperial College. Here, in all its black and white glory, is that clip. If that's not enough RH(P)S, here's The Rocky Horror Picture Show - On Location, part 1, part 2, and part 3, also from 1975. And for your reading pleasure, the transcript of another interview with Tim Curry, writer and actor Richard O'Brien and composer Richard Hartley remember how three weeks at the Royal Court turned into a gender-bending 20th Century Fox extravaganza, plus history of the Rocky Horror Show, even more history (including how the audience participation began), and last but not least, the Rockypedia.
BUT I DIDN'T FREAKING TOUCH IT!!
Do not play this game. You will be dead in seconds. Did it get popular using sneaky tactics? Probably not. But do you want it to haunt your dreams? No, you don't. Stave off your existential despair in some other way. I repeat, do not play this game.
Scandal, Subversion, and Sensitivity: W.S. Burroughs
Barry Miles' biography of William S. Burroughs -- Call Me Burroughs: A Life -- has just been published. [more inside]
Jasper Dog (1995-2014)
Nineteen years with an old friend: In today's installment of his blog The Bleat, James Lileks recounts the final two days of his dog Jasper, who passed away Friday afternoon.
2014 Newbery Award winer
The 2014 Newbery award goes to Kate DiCamillo for Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures
This is the second Newbery win for DiCamillo having also won top honors in 2004 for The Tale of Despereaux, and a Newbery Honor Book for her first book Because of Winn-Dixie.
(main page for DiCamillo's website) [more inside]
But it's very AWESOME
The Millenial Gospel
If Jesus and company were around today, the Bible may look like a art & fandom Tumblr project, complete with meta essays, headcanons, and playlists. Their writers aim to "follow in the Judeo-Christian tradition of questioning, evolving, and shaking up the status quo in order to update scripture for a secular audience, offering it up as a volatile mix of narrative, social commentary, spirituality, and punk rock." In this version Jesus is a cat-loving activist, Mary Madgalene is a hijabi punk, and the mystics are spoken word artists, musicians, and bloggers.
Would you like to buy some drugs, "Larry".
THE FRIEND ZONE: STAR WARS EPISODE 2. Anakin Skywalker is a Nice Guy™, stuck in the zone, but at least Obi-Wan has some some dope bass. Related: Dance of the Fates. (Auralnauts previously.) Language NSFW.
Barrel Bomb
Life After Jan. 1
As a result of new coverage under the ACA, many previously uninsured people in eastern Kentucky are giving the nation a glimpse of life under the new health care law.
Why should someone get to profit from something they did fifty years ago
"So why should a singer get to profit from a recording of his doing some work thirty-five years ago? The answer “because it’s his song” just isn’t good enough. It was PC Ironburns’ arrest. “But creating that song may have taken years!” PC Ironburns spent years investigating the crimes before he caught that pesky crim! The electrician had to study for years to become proficient enough to rig up lighting. The doctor spent seven years in medical school! Imagine if this system we wholly accept from creative industries were accepted elsewhere – the ensuing chaos would be extraordianry. Take Broussard’s claim above, that “Creatives have a right to be paid indefinitely on their work”, and switch out “Creatives” for any other job. “Dentists”, “teachers”, “librarians”, “palaeontologists”… It starts to appear a little ludicrous." -- Rock Paper Shotgun's John Walker on copyright and the need for videogames to enter the public domain.
Nuke 'em till they glow, shoot 'em in the dark
The Littlest Boy - Twenty years after Hiroshima, elite American troops trained to stop a Soviet invasion -- with nuclear weapons strapped to their backs. [more inside]
Science Guy versus "God" Guy
Bill Nye is debating the head of the Creation Museum tomorrow. Ken Ham, founder of Northern Kentucky tourist attraction "Answers in Genesis" Creation Museum, has challenged Science Guy Bill Nye to a duel, errr, a debate. Nye, while tolerant of Ham's religious beliefs, draws the line at creationism creeping into science curriculum. More pre-event throwdowns are here. [more inside]
Paul is Dead. There will never be another.
Every psychic animal dreams of claiming the throne vacated by the late Paul the Octopus. Super Bowl XLVIII crushed many of those dreams. Especially disappointing was the fall of Buffett the Manatee who, from his tank at Sarasota, Florida's Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium, had correctly called the last six Super Bowls.
The Light that will Be
After Michael Mann set out to direct Collateral, the story’s setting moved from New York to Los Angeles. This decision was in part motivated by the unique visual presence of the city — especially the way it looked at night. Mann shot a majority of the film in HD (this was 2004), feeling the format better captured the city’s night lighting. Even the film’s protagonist taxi needed a custom coat to pick up different sheens depending on the type of artificial lighting the cab passed beneath. That city, at least as it appears in Collateral and countless other films, will never be the same again. L.A. has made a vast change-over to LED street lights, with New York City not far behind. Why Hollywood Will Never Look the Same Again on Film: LEDs Hit the Streets of LA & NY
Knock it down to two buttons. Come on, this is crazy.
Street Fighter 2 is one of the game industry's biggest success stories, but its history is often told secondhand... In an effort to remedy that, over the past year we tracked down more than 20 former Capcom employees and business partners and asked them to tell it in their own words.Street Fighter 2: An Oral History
Jamie Casino's got murder, vengeance, and a flaming sledgehammer.
Personal injury lawyer Jamie Casino of Savannah, GA really went all out with his Metal as ___ Super Bowl ad (SLYT).
A Normal Day in the Unusual Life of Michael Keaton
- Monday. I am asked to interview Michael Keaton. They tell me he lives in Montana.
- I tell my brother, who texts back: 220, 221, whtvr it takes.
- A call from my editor: "They said maybe you should go pheasant hunting. He's making a movie called Birdman. Stay tuned. It might be soon."
The perfect billiards break
Those lips, those eyes...
Chimpnology Another perfectly normal and sweet animated short by that lovable scamp Cyriak. (The dreaded SLYT)
Flipping the corruption myth
Dr. Jason Hickel, LSE lecturer who was born and brought up in Swaziland, writes on Transparency International's latest Corruption Perception Index and its eyecatching global map. Here's a tiny snippet to encourage you to read the rest of the article on Al Jazeera:
Many international development organisations hold that persistent poverty in the Global South is caused largely by corruption among local public officials. In 2003 these concerns led to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, which asserts that, while corruption exists in all countries, this "evil phenomenon" is "most destructive" in the global South, where it is a "key element in economic underperformance and a major obstacle to poverty alleviation and development". There's only one problem with this theory: It's just not true.[more inside]
February 2
Ask Me, Ask Me, Ask Me
Kati Morton is a videoblogging MFTI who has created an extensive library of chatty and engaging informational videos on topics such as "What is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?" "What are intrusive thoughts?" "How do I forgive others? Or myself?" and "Neediness, dependency, & boundaries," as well as many potentially triggering issues, usually prompted by questions taken via social media.
Taking Over Planet Earth
On February 2, 1981, an experimental New Romantic band from Birmingham released their first single. It was the beginning of the still-continuing, at times tumultuous, hugely successful tenure of Duran Duran. From 33 years ago: Planet Earth. B-side for the single was Late Bar, or in the US was To The Shore. Plus the Planet Earth (Night Version) extended remake.
This was the first of many, many singles from Duran Duran. [more inside]
This was the first of many, many singles from Duran Duran. [more inside]
Gelatin, from calf's hoof jelly to Jell-O, "America's Favorite Dessert"
Gelatin foodstuffs have a long culinary history. The ancient Egyptians made a gelatin-like substance from protein-rich animal materials that they used in their cuisine. It wasn't until the 17th century invention of pressure cooking devices that the process of creating gelatin became significantly less labor and time intensive. The process was refined in the following decades, with the US inventor Peter Cooper filing the patent for Improvement in the preparation of portable gelatine in 1845. He never made much of the patent, and sold it to Pearle B. Wait, who's wife, May Davis Wait, helped turn the gelatin into Jell-O, both naming the product and turning it into a sweet, fruit-flavored dessert. They, too, had no luck selling Jell-O, and sold the patent for $450 to Orator Francis Woodward, who struggled for a period, before turning to marketing to increase interest in the dessert (NYT). By 1902, Jell-O was "America's Favorite Dessert," at least according to the advertisements. And now you know the history of gelatin and Jello. [more inside]
"hey are you cool"
The first person I met in DayZ said "hey are you cool"
What he meant was "You're not going to try to kill me, right?"
This is a record of the other players I've encountered in DayZ [more inside]
What he meant was "You're not going to try to kill me, right?"
This is a record of the other players I've encountered in DayZ [more inside]
Hashes to Ashes
Transmediale keynote Art as Evidence by Trevor Paglen (recently), Jacob Appelbaum (recently), and Laura Poitras (previously), moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli. Also, Bruce Sterling gave the opening ceremony, perhaps more to come.
On Aging Out of the Modelling Industry
To Kill a Child, by Stig Dagerman
To Kill a Child, by Stig Dagerman (Wikipedia). Translated by Steven Hartman. For a meager fee of seventy-five kronor Dagerman was commissioned by the National Society for Road Safety to write a cautionary tale as part of a campaign designed to get Swedish motorists to slow down on highways when speeding was becoming an increasingly difficult social issue with serious consequences for public safety. What could have been an ephemeral and gimmicky work of public service fiction became perhaps the greatest short short story in the history of Swedish letters, for in this tale Dagerman took the simple redressing of a particular social problem as the starting point rather than as an end in itself and out of these mundane materials created a poignant tale of choice, chance, and human loss that rises to the highest levels of art, literary balance, and philosophical concision.
Hvis googly tar oss
In the proud tradition of attaching googly eyes to things, I present for your consideration: Metal Albums with Googly Eyes. As noted on Invisible Oranges, "...it only takes tiny modifications to turn grim visions of suffering and evil into total goofiness." (One or two may be NSFW) [more inside]
"...but for a second you were, like, CW hot."
Sexy Pool Party (SLYT)
Award-winning Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman Found Dead in Manhattan
Police say Hoffman, 46, was found dead with a needle in his arm. Hoffman's struggles with substance abuse have been well documented, and he had told 60 Minutes in 2006 that he was grateful to have gotten sober before getting famous.
Before and after: underwater edition
Scientists have created peanut butter and jellyfish, feeding moon jellies a slurry of creamy peanut butter and sea water. The jellyfish are growing fine and brown and smell like peanut butter. [pdf of study]
"Here's how you run a short con, pay attention:"
The Dove Sketches Beauty Scam
"Dude, are you doing the Dove ad now? That was so April 15th...?" Yes, I realize I missed the meme train, but it's better to be right than part of the debate, especially when there is no debate, this is all a short con inside a 50+ year long con. Remember House Of Games? "It's called a confidence game. Why, because you give me your confidence? No: because I give you mine."[more inside]
SodaStream, the Super Bowl and Scarlett Johansson
The argument against Scarlett Johansson doing Super Bowl ads for SodaStream [pdf] This report provides an extensive analysis of SodaStream (Soda Club), a manufacturer of home carbonating devices whose main factory is in the industrial park of Mishor Edomim in the West Bank, territory occupied by Israel. Using SodaStream as a case study for corporate activity in the illegal settlements, the report explores the concept of industrial production in settlements....Examining the performance of this company is important in order to understand how its success is based, at least in part, on the structural advantages that production in Israeli settlements enjoys. Settlement production benefits from low rent, special tax incentives, lax enforcement of environmental and labor protection laws, as well as additional governmental support. Summary: Scarlett Johansson’s Super Bowl Ad Becomes An International Controversy. More, from Baltimore Jewish Life: SodaStream Boss Admits West Bank Plant Is 'a Pain.' [more inside]
The hard drive started smoking after the chorus.
Welcome to Richmond County
A brief history of Staten Island Chuck not-having-it from New York City's mayor. He bit Michael Bloomberg in 2009, and he almost squirmed away from Bill de Blasio this morning.
From the XFL to the NFL
Paris Lenon, the last active player from the XFL, is playing today for the Broncos. The XFL disbanded in 2001 after one season. (The XFL didn't have a coin toss, it had a mad scramble for the ball. Watch Lenon's Memphis Maniax play the Orlando Rage.)
When to Separate the Art From the Artist
Controversy about Woody Allen is in the news again due to an open letter by Dylan Farrow, who explicitly details sexual abuse allegedly committed by Allen when Farrow was seven. The letter appeared shortly after Allen was awarded the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement, prompting the old question, is it possible to separate the person from the art and if so, how?
Buried Treasure
Jeremy Cutts of Idaho, his wife Stacey and their two little girls age 10 and 11 are all big Volkswagen fans. So when they spotted a VW pickup truck that had been abandoned for 45 years and gradually buried in the foothills outside of Idaho Falls, they weren't just going to leave it there...
Need something to read?
The
John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (not to be confused with the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel) has been running since 1974 and featured some amazing writers over the years. Want to sample some of it? You're in luck, as a massive anthology featuring 111 Campbell winners and nominees is now available for free, drm free download. It's a limited time offer only, so act now while supplies last.
Another Holiday Tradition IS A LIE
Apparently the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil has been wrong more often than he has been right.
(year-old article does not include 2013 results, but does it really matter?)
(year-old article does not include 2013 results, but does it really matter?)
February 1
Signpainters, short cut from a documentary
"This is the only thing I could do, and I could do whatever the fuck I wanted to do, and make a living." From a special edit of the feature length documentary Sign Painters.
“This world is a veil, and the face you wear is not your own.”
Last week's episode of True Detective featured a stirring tent-revival sermon from a wildly charismatic preacher. It was heavily edited with dialogue between the stars of the show. Nic Pizzolatto (the writer/creator of the series) thought it so good, he released the full 6-minute sermon for you to enjoy. [more inside]
Miklós Jancsó has died.
Famed Hungarian film director, Miklós Jancsó, has died at age 92. Winner of Cannes in 1972 for Red Psalm/Még kér a nép[SLYT, NSFW], which deals with a doomed uprising of farm workers, he also directed The Round-Up/Szegénylegények [SLYT, entire film], widely regarded as the greatest Hungarian film of all time. Hughly influential, he made great use of the long take with Elektreia/Szerelmem, Elektra having just 12 shots in its 70 minutes. Béla Tarr, another exponent of the long-shot, called Jancsó the greatest Hungarian film director of all time. [more inside]
J.K. Trolling
In a an interview conducted by Emma Watson appearing on the front page of today's Sunday Times (embiggen), Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling admits she regrets Ron and Hermione's relationship and that Hermione should have wed Harry. Maybe she should have killed Ron after all. [more inside]
R.I.P. Arthur Rankin, Jr.
Arthur Rankin Jr., the animator behind holiday classics such as Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus Is Coming To Town passed away on Thursday, January 30. [more inside]
Push the Envelope, Watch it Bend
RADIO1HEAD
Do you want to listen to a 2-hour DJ mix by Thom Yorke and Nigel Goodrich (of Radiohead and Atoms for Peace)? Of course you do. [more inside]
Dubbel Dutch: "I think we need more [musical] schizophrenics"
Marc Glasser started making electronic music when he was a teenager, and now produces music under the name Dubbel Dutch and releasing it most often on the eclectic Mixpak label, whose general sound often leans towards weird takes on reggae riddims. But as Glasser mentioned in a 2010 interview, he has been "opening up to music from everywhere. Cumbia, dancehall, kuduro, South African house, Dutch bubbling, Bmore club, Chicago juke and footwork*, old skool jungle and hardcore, garage, UK Funky and all that mingles with, or shares influences with, these sounds." What does this "schizophrenic" collage of musical styles sound like? Start with Self Help Riddims and the title track video, Self Help Riddim, then go from there. [more inside]
New HD Footage of the most awesome skydive ever.
you have seen the rest, here is the best Felix Baumgartner jumped from really (24-miles) high up . This new footage will make your skin crawl.
Hotdish!
Starting in 2011, Senator Al Franken (D-MN) has hosted a Minnesota delegation Hotdish competition - a friendly bipartisan and bicameral competition for all of the Minnesota congressional delegates. [more inside]
Brandon from Beijing.
Based in Beijing, Zhang Bin aka Benjamin(his blog in Chinese), works with brilliant colors in a sequential style to create eye catching graphics which include the covers of Marvel Comics and his own, manhua graphic novels. His subjects are generally young and urban, produced in splashes of color (A video slideshow of his art - watch out for the music). An interview with Benjamin about his art from his first visit to a comic convention in New York. [more inside]
suing to abolish tenure for teachers in California
"nine public school students are challenging California’s ironclad tenure system, arguing that their right to a good education is violated by job protections that make it too difficult to fire bad instructors." (SLNYT) [more inside]
Disk Around a Star
An Alderson Disk is a science fiction megastructure imagined first by scientist Dan Alderson. It's a solid disk that is thousands of kilometers thick, with a circumference equal to the orbit of Mars or Jupiter. The habitable zone would be on both sides of the disk and would be millions of times the surface area of the Earth. Not much theoretical work has been done on its feasibility, but some have tried. Missile Gap, by MeFi's own Charles Stross, which won the Locus readers' award for best novella of 2006, features a 1960s Earth transposed to an Alderson disk and is available for free on the publisher's website.
Cursing Cursive
No longer swearing by cursive writing
Cursive handwriting: Seven states fight for cursive writing in school
Learning Cursive Is a Basic Right
Cursive writing could become part of Common Core
Superbowl Commercials
Some of you will be watching football, some of you will be watching the commercials (I suppose some of you will be watching both, and, let me acknowledge that some of you will not watch a damn thing and get that out of the way..)..
For you commercial fans...here's a preview of many of the 2014 Superbowl Commercials...
And, going back, here's HuffPo's list of the 50 best all time Superbowl Commercials.
Warning PepsiEverythingBlue
"The Mind of the South"
Earlier in the week, Slate posted an article on the massive Atlanta traffic jam. The article quoted a book about the Southern character that stated it was "Proud, brave, honorable by its lights, courteous, personally generous, loyal." Yet the same book also stated the South had the less admirable qualities of "suspicion toward new ideas, an incapacity for analysis, an inclination to act from feeling rather than from thought, an exaggerated individualism and a too-narrow sense of social responsibility." The book was 1941's "The Mind of the South" and its author was W. J. Cash. [more inside]
Le Skate Moderne
13:52:05 GMT First Clear Indication of Off-Nominal Aero Increments
Eleven years ago, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over the skies of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana. It was the result of an incident that had taken place at take-off fifteen days earlier that saw a large piece of foam being hit by the leading edge of the orbiter wing at roughly 970 feet per second (630 MPH or 1013 km/hr). It took some time to convince engineers that a foam impact could have had such monumental effect. For that reason, Scott Hubbard and the rest of the CAIB ordered a test at the Southwest Research Institute to recreate the conditions of the strike. The first test on June 16th did not yield much interesting insight. The results of the second impact test on July 7th did. A loud gasp could be heard from the crowd attending the test. Here is the leading edge of tested orbiter wing before and after the July 7th impact.
Bollywood Inspired Film Music from Hausa Nigeria
The Hausa people of the north of Nigeria like Bollywood films so much that around 20 years ago they started making their own local productions. The films of Kannywood (for Kano, the capital city) feature song and dance - and the incredible music that defines Northern Nigeria: autotuned robotic vocals combined with frenetic drum machine rhythms and intricate, interwoven synths in a hybrid of local styles and Indian influence. Hear a generous sampling of it here.
The radical consequences of public conveniences
It drips on her head most days, says Champaben, but in the monsoon season it’s worse. In rain, worms multiply. Every day, nonetheless, she gets up and walks to her owners’ house, and there she picks up their excrement with her bare hands or a piece of tin, scrapes it into a basket, puts the basket on her head or shoulders, and carries it to the nearest waste dump.A chapter from The Big Necessity, a book exploring the world of human waste: A Brief History of Class and Waste in India [more inside]
Computer History According to Law & Order
Artist Jeff Thompson received a Rhizome commission in 2012 for his project Computers on Law & Order, for which he watched every episode of the long-running television series and took screenshots of all the computers. Thompson will present an illustrated lecture based on the project this Saturday, Feb 1 at 4pm at the Museum of the Moving Image, followed by a discussion with Law & Order graphic designer Kevin Raper. In this article, he shares some of his findings.
Please let me hold your hand
On February 1, 1964 the Beatles conquered the top of the Billboard Top 100 for the first time with I Want to Hold Your Hand. A week later they made their first American tour stop on the Ed Sullivan television show. The music business and the entire country were rocked. It's fifty years of Beatlemania. [more inside]