July 2013 Archives
July 31
I have to be clear. Clear as glass.
"Echo Point" is a chilling, sound-rich supernatural radio drama written by Australian author Louis Nowra. Originally aired on BBC Radio 4, it is now available on SoundCloud via producer/director Judith Kampfner. [more inside]
The Commodore 64: it's a pretty good computer, it has a lot of features
Let's go back to 1982 and let Jim Butterfield not only tell you about the Commodore 64, but really show you what it's all about, in a two hour demonstration and training video that takes you from opening the box to coding with the Commodore. (on YouTube, and with a different intro on Archive.org) [more inside]
Final Moments of Karl Brant
The Final Moments of Karl Brant. "In the near future, a neurologist and two homicide detectives use experimental brain taping technology to question a murder victim about his final moments." [Via]
Arachnophabulous
For Men, and People Interested in Pretending to be Men
Urinal Man asks players to choose the optimal urinal in a bathroom, and then grades their choices.
I found a cup of tea in a window of the Prince Hotel
You might want to check out this video primer first, just to get the idea, or you might just want to dive in and zoom, zoom, zoom into the Tokyo Tower Gigapixel Panorama
It Don’t Gitmo Better Than This.
It Don’t Gitmo Better Than This. Inside the Dark Heart of Guantánamo Bay By Molly Crabapple.
Who gets to speak, where, in front of whom, and about what
Why the controversial (and somewhat backfired) Lauren Green interview of Reza Aslan is is about more than just Fox News idiocy.
Congratulations Newlyweds
Marriage equality comes to Minnesota and Rhode Island at midnight, August 1, and the Minnesota DFL state senators wanted to congratulate their same-sex newlywed constituents. [more inside]
Bears, Mountain Cougars, and Biting Goats, OH-MY!
Nature is neat, so let's all go on a Neature Walk! [slyt]
Customer Service: It Gets Worse
Remember when Dan Savage started a campaign to convince LGBT teens that "it gets better"? It's a noble cause, but sadly there's still a huge subset of the population out there for whom it will only get worse...
Moses Sumney - Irreplaceable
LA-based singer-songwriter Moses Sumney performs his song "Replaceable" in a single-take video shot by famed director Brian Cross, aka B+. Recommended if you like loop pedals (previously-ish) &/or soul music. [more inside]
Not Featured: "Waterlillies" or "The Kiss"
Abbie the Cat, 1997 - 2013. He had a posse.
Abbie the Cat [Has a Posse] passed away on Tuesday, July 23, 2013. Started in 2001, the blog of Abbie the Cat was sometimes irregularly updated, but almost always written from Abbie's point of view. Readers were warned of Abbie's impending death on July 22 by Rob, Abbie's owner. (Previously.) [more inside]
"They didn't know what they were doing, so they tried everything"
"No one will be admitted after the start of the FPP."
We are watching
In a new batch of slides from an NSA presentation (originally leaked by now fugitive Edward Snowden), Glenn Greenwald of the Gaurdian goes into great detail about NSA tool "X-Keyscore" information gathering system, which allows the NSA to view "nearly everything a user does on the internet", including Skype, Facebook chats, and other social media activity. [more inside]
Next you'll be telling me The Record Peddler is back
Once upon a time, there was a little yellow house in Brampton, just northwest of Toronto, that housed what we used to know as CFNY. (Americans: think WKRP, but without Bailey Quarters.) Before it turned into the slick abomination 102.1 The Edge, CFNY was the commercial station that (along with community/university stations CIUT and CKLN) supported new and independent music. But starting at noon today, Indie 88 will be inheriting CFNY's mantle, except that kids these days don't wear mantles, so they will have Alan Cross in place as their Guidance Counsellor instead, which is way better than any silly old mantle. They're promising a pretty eclectic playlist, but for the next 12 minutes, this is the one song you'll hear (if you can actually pull in a signal on your terrestrial radio).
Iconic
work it, McDreamy!
Why don't we find men sexy when they're presented in pinup poses considered sexy for women? Photographer Rion Sabean's Men-Ups! project is "... aimed at reversing the stereotypes created by society, begging the questions, why is it sexual for a female to pose one way, and not sexual for a male? Why is it considered more comical or unsettling for males to act the more socially defined feminine?"
Fictitious Minneapolis street addresses: A guide for writers.
Let’s say you’re a writer, working a novel set in Minneapolis. Your protagonist arrives home after a long day of doing whatever it is your protagonist does all day. To this point, you’ve been very specific with local landmarks and a general feeling of the city — your protagonist rides the 21A, eats breakfast at the Grand Cafe, and meets his or her attorney in an office on the 12th floor of the Rand Tower. All good so far. You’ve set the scene very effectively. People are going to say, “This is a great Minneapolis novel" after they read it. However, the time has now come for you to insert a specific street address into the text. You like specifics, and you need a real-sounding mailing address for, say, a situation where the protagonist receives a mysterious letter. How will you accomplish this? Here you have a problem. You only have two options, neither one very good. [more inside]
Women are writing science-fiction! Original! Brilliant!! Dazzling!!!
100 great science fiction (short) stories by women, with links to the stories where available, as compiled by Ian Sales out of irritation with a 1978 anthology of great science fiction stories in which only five had been written by women.
John le Carré on The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
John le Carré on The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Interview recorded for the BBC Proms Literary Festival. Includes actor John Shrapnel reading extracts (SLYT). It's slightly longer than the version which appeared in that night's concert interval and includes audience Q&A as well as pictures.
July 30
Some tricks
"If I told you the words, you wouldn't believe them anyway." -- R. Berry
Louie Louie is a song with a curious history. Inspired by (and/or partially copied from) El Loco Cha Cha by Rene Touzet and Havana Moon by Chuck Berry (YouTube), the original song by Richard Berry and The Pharaohs (YT) is a mix of calypso, cha-cha, and rhythm & blues. The next version was by Rockin' Robin Roberts & The Wailers (YT), which added a certain rock and roll swagger that will sound more familiar to most folks. But the vocals are all wrong, as they're too sharp, too easy to understand. The Kingsmen made the version everyone was talking about, with concerns of obscene lyrics getting the FBI involved (choice excerpts on The Smoking Gun). [more inside]
A Few First Ladies of Jazz and Rhythm 'n Blues
Nellie Lutcher - Blue Skies, It Had to Be You & Let's Fall In Love
Martha Davis & Spouse - That's Life
Dinah Washington with Louis Jordan - What A Difference A Day Made & Makin' Whoopee
Ella Fitzgerald -- It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing
Count Basie & Helen Humes - I Cried for You
Sarah Vaughn -- The Nearness of You
Billie Holiday -- Fine and Mellow
Martha Davis & Spouse - That's Life
Dinah Washington with Louis Jordan - What A Difference A Day Made & Makin' Whoopee
Ella Fitzgerald -- It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing
Count Basie & Helen Humes - I Cried for You
Sarah Vaughn -- The Nearness of You
Billie Holiday -- Fine and Mellow
Bradley Manning found guilty of Espionage Act violations
Bradley Manning cleared of 'aiding the enemy' but guilty of most other charges. "Manning, the source of the massive WikiLeaks trove of secret disclosures, faces a possible maximum sentence of more than 130 years in military jail after he was convicted of most charges on which he stood trial." Transcripts from Bradley Manning's Trial. [more inside]
You may want to NOT "take the last train to Clarksville"!
The local school district in Clarksville, Arkansas will be arming 20 school employees. [more inside]
Keep the change: a restaurant without tips
Jay Porter had two restaurants: one used the normal restaurant business model and one banned tipping servers, which gained national notoriety for a practice that is all but unheard of in the US. Now that the gratuity-free restaurant, The Linkery, is closed, he is writing about the ultimate experience and the reasons for doing it. [more inside]
The Serial Killer Has Second Thoughts: The Confessions of Thomas Quick
In a remote psychiatric hospital in Sweden, there is a man known as Thomas Quick who has been convicted of unspeakable crimes. Over the course of multiple trials, he would tell his brutal stories—of stabbings, stranglings, rape, incest, cannibalism—to almost anyone who would listen. Then, after his eighth and final murder conviction, he went silent for nearly a decade. In the last few years, though, he has been thinking about all he has said and done, and now he has something new to confess: He left out the worst part of all.
BANDIT
kid robots, all of 'em
Crystal Castles' "Untrust Us"... masterfully covered by the Capital Children's Choir. (original, for reference)
(the oeuvre Capital Children's Choir has been referenced previously, but their Crystal Castles cover is new and it's awesome.)
Xtranormal gets X'ed out
Xtranormal (previously on Metafilter) is the animation website that launched with the slogan, "If you can type, you can make movies." Millions of cartoons were produced, and a few of them were very popular. The software was even used to create animation for TV shows (such as a recurring segment on Fox's Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld) and commercials.
But in recent months, the company made a series of controversial decisions and began showing clear signs of trouble. They stopped allowing users to monetize their videos on Youtube. They stopped posting new assets, shut down their user forum and blog, and frustrated users by becoming increasingly non-communicative. The site was hit with serious technical problems that made publishing movies almost impossible, and these issues went unfixed for months.
Finally, on June 28th, the company announced that it was shutting down the site.
"As of July 31, 2013," reads an announcement on the company's Facebook page, "Xtranormal will be discontinuing current subscriptions, points plans and existing services. Please use your existing XP points and publish and download your movies before that date."
Strangely, there has been very little coverage of the site's imminent demise. [more inside]
Kant Stop The Trolley
Input Translation Output Rotation
Rubix by University of Greenwich student Chris Kelly - an Escher-like surrealist film which mixes and rotates urban landscapes like a Rubik's Cube, created for his thesis "Time and Relative Dimensions in Space: The Possibilities of Utilising Virtual[ly Impossible] Environments in Architecture." (via)
Cortex considers this list worthless without Rogue
Professor Matthew Kirschenbaum, as part of his larger interest in the problem of software preservation, asks the provocative question What are the 10 most influential software programs of all time?
Amazon’s practices are detrimental to the nation’s economy
President Obama visited an Amazon facility in Tennessee today giving a speech proposing a "grand bargain for middle-class jobs" that would cut the U.S. corporate tax rate and use billions of dollars in revenues generated by a business tax overhaul to fund projects aimed at creating jobs.
The American Booksellers Association is not happy about the visit and called him out on it.
Wizarding Genetics
"I sent this paper to JK Rowling explaining how the wizarding gene could be singular, autosomal, and dominant despite the protests of a bunch of fans who stopped learning genetics after Punnett squares." See also: Wizarding Genetics: More Complicated Than Mendel! and Purple Orchids and Muggleborn Wizards: A Theory of Wizard Genetics
High-Frequency Trading - The Dog Days are here
How the Robots lost - The Fall of High-Frequency Trading. For the past few years High-Frequency Trading was where the money was but now it looks like the worm is turning. The scale of HFT is stunning - see, for instance, what happens in a half second of trading in Johnson & Johnson.. While profits are evaporating, serious concerns remain about systemic risk.
It Happened to Me: Creepy Dudes Made Me Stop Fatshion Blogging
They aren't the weakest link
A hillbilly and his zaftig racoon friend dance on the porch. [SLYT]
15 Over-Used Movie Poster Cliches
Sketch comedy made by men. Or whatever.
"Don't forget the cream" a video by the LA comedy troupe (and twitter masterclass) Women. Warning: many Women sketches are NSFW and almost none include actual women, or anyone else.
Guy on a Buffalo Buffaloes Buffalo. Sadly, Not in Buffalo.
Released in 1978, Buffalo Rider(Trailer) was a "feature-length exercise in padding out a movie’s running time as much as possible". But in another way, it was also about a guy on a buffalo(Full Movie, If You Dare). Decades later, Austin's The Possum Posse would retell the epic saga of the guy on a buffalo with the series, Guy On a Buffalo:
Episode 1 (Bears, Indians & Such)
Episode 2 (Orphans, Cougars & What Not)
Episode 3 Finale Part 1 (Origins, Villains & The Like)
Episode 4 Finale Part 2 (Rehab, Vengeance & What Have You)
Episode 1 (Bears, Indians & Such)
Episode 2 (Orphans, Cougars & What Not)
Episode 3 Finale Part 1 (Origins, Villains & The Like)
Episode 4 Finale Part 2 (Rehab, Vengeance & What Have You)
Camp Gyno: It's like Santa, for your vagina
Advertising about menstruation has often emphasized the down side - the inconveniences that "feminine products" can save women from. They have also often focused on body-shaming - suggesting that ideally, no one should know you're even using them. Until now - a menstruation-related ad for HelloFlo, a company that sends tampons delivered to your door, regularly, when you need them. It is voiced and acted by a spunky young girl, who is not embarrassed but flamboyantly and splendidly proud of having her period.
The World of Froud
As much as Metafilter loves Jim Henson's Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, neither of those films would be half as powerful without the work of Brian and Wendy Froud. [more inside]
Spain Privatizes The Sun
Spain Secretary of State for Energy, Alberto Nadal has signed a draft royal decree that levies a consumption taxes on solar power (El Pais translation, lol version)
Jealous, much?
Bubblewrap bike (SLYT)
Video of Violent, Rioting Surfers Shows White Culture of Lawlessness
A frightening and violent mob swept through the normally quiet seaside community of Huntington Beach last night following a surfing competition in the area. Businesses were vandalized and looted, portable toilets overturned, and brutal fistfights waged right out in the open. It was an ugly display and a sad day for California. But more than that, it was a reminder that we must begin to seriously consider the values of our thuggish white youth.
(Oddly enough, do make sure to read the comments, they're amazing.)
Report to the President: MIT and the Prosecution of Aaron Swartz
Viking Bowling Chess
Kubb is a lawn game that was (maybe) invented by Vikings, and is often described as a combination of bowling, horseshoes, and chess. This adorably-accented video explains the rules, as does the helpful infographic here. It's easy to make your own kubb set- and once you have, you can ask all about the finer points at Planet Kubb, read Kubbnation Magazine, and sign up for the National Kubb Championship.
Homeless person makeover
'Bro-Care' instead of Bum-Fights? A homeless person is offered retail therapy, a haircut, a hotel room, a ride in a car with a white leather interior and a substantial meal (oh, and a blindfolding) in exchange for being videotaped to encourage YouTube subscriptions for a channel.
Apparently it hits many users of reddit "right in the feels" (a euphemism for feeling emotional/empathetic about something that you're exposed to)
I'm all for diversity, but this is ridiculous
There's no where to hide anymore. The United States Air Force has a Brony squadron! Here's the squadron patch.
Coffins Within Coffins
Hey, remember when archaeologists discovered the remains of Richard III under a car park in Leicester? Well, apparently they also unearthed a stone coffin dated to at least a century before Richard. When it was opened, it was revealed to contain... another coffin, sealed and made of lead. None of us in the team have ever seen a lead coffin within a stone coffin before, says one of the archaeologists. Oh sure, it's probably just the remains of one of the founders of the monastery that used to be there, but if the movies have taught us anything, it's that if something is mysterious, it must also be evil, right?
Cantillon’s character has led some drinkers to declare the beer infected
Women ruled in bed.
Big Boy
"If only I'd spent more time engaging with brands."
After a series of death threats led her to quit blogging in 2007 (previously), the brilliant writer/UX designer Kathy Sierra is back with a new blog, and an excellent new post: "Your app makes me fat." In typical Sierra fashion, it's personal, entertaining, research-derived, and provocative. (An archive of old Sierra posts can be found either on her old blog, Creating Passionate Users, or in this 400-page-long fan-made PDF.)
Nom nom no AAUGH get off my face
Cat tries to eat octopus; octopus has other ideas. Perhaps not safe for cephalofiles. (slyt)
Alexander Whitelaw Robertson Trocchi 1925-84: 'cosmonaut of inner space'
Alexander Trocchi—A Life in Pieces is a short biographical film about the once notorious Scottish writer, provocateur and ‘ungentlemanly junkie,’ including reminiscences from William S. Burroughs and Leonard Cohen. [more inside]
Check yourself before you wreck yourself
A conduit to divinity
The ultimate celebrity interview! McFarlane writes the archetype.
July 29
"People treated it with respect, but didn't particularly enjoy it."
In 1973, The Who released their sixth album, Quadrophenia. The epic double album tells the story of a boy named Jimmy Cooper who deals with mental illness on top of the run-of-the-mill stresses of teen life. But Jimmy Cooper isn't just any London teen. Jimmy Cooper is a Mod. [more inside]
David Grisman and Jerry Garcia in Concert on Various Occasions
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Two Soldiers
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Handsome Cabin Boy
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Man Of Constant Sorrow
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- When First Unto This Country
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Dreadful Wind and Rain
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Russian Lullaby
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Sweet Sunny South
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Old Rockin' Chair
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Down Where The River Bends
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Shady Grove
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Friend of the Devil
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Ripple [more inside]
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Handsome Cabin Boy
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Man Of Constant Sorrow
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- When First Unto This Country
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Dreadful Wind and Rain
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Russian Lullaby
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Sweet Sunny South
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Old Rockin' Chair
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Down Where The River Bends
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Shady Grove
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Friend of the Devil
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman -- Ripple [more inside]
A year's worth of the life of a tree.
Mark Hirsch worked as a professional photographer for almost 20 years. He was laid off, then he was hit by a truck. He all but stopped working, until he got an iPhone. His friend goaded him into using the camera, and he started taking pictures of "That Tree." A little more than a year later he was profiled in "How a tree helped heal me."
Hotel Graffiti
If you're reading this it's already too late... Hiding messages in hotels since 2006. By David Bussell. [Via]
A Game of Brands
Game of Brands: The Game of Thrones Houses as Modern Corporations (Article contains spoilers if you're not up on the end of the current season of the series.) Ads, logos, the whole thing, for such companies as Air Targaeryen, the Lannister Investment Group... [more inside]
“I’m taking a picture of you,” the man says.
Another thing to blame your parents for
A layperson-friendly analysis of a seminal (1100+ cites) study on obesity that found no correlation between environment/upbringing and obesity, whilst finding very strong correlation between genetic heritage and obesity. To sum up: adopted children's body weight matches their biological parents, not their adoptive parents.
Would YOU want to be friends with Humbert Humbert?
The Tournament of Literary Friends. "Serious readers know we shouldn’t go looking for friends in fiction. Better to look for moral questions, social truths, emotional possibilities—the stuff of life. And yet, isn’t it sort of fun to imagine playing Eschaton with Michael Pemulis or cruising Mexico with the Savage Detectives? Isn’t imagining ourselves among fictional people actually pretty central to the experience of reading?"
Novelist Katherine Hill and her husband draw up a tournament bracket of their likely/ideal friends from literary fiction. From the Paris Review.
Accountability in the Indiana school system
"I hope we come to the meeting today with solutions and not excuses for me to wiggle myself out of the repeated lies I have told over the last 6 months." Tony Bennett, the Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction, had a big problem. Christel House Academy, a public charter school in Indianapolis founded by time-share magnate and major GOP donor Christel DeHaan, had come in with a C on the state's A-F grading scale, thanks to poor scores by 9th and 10th graders in English and math. "They need to understand that anything less than an A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work," Bennett wrote to a staffer. Fortunately, Bennett's team found a solution, revealed today in staff e-mails obtained by the AP -- change the state's grading scale so that the offending grades didn't count. Will Bennett be able to hold on as Indiana's top education official? Not to worry: in January, he moved on to the same job in Florida. [more inside]
Iconic Data Graphs
Top 10 most iconic data graphs of the last decade.
FastCoLabs enlisted three data visualization experts to compile this list to answer the question posed in Simply Statistics, a blog from three Johns Hopkins biostatistics professors. via [more inside]
FastCoLabs enlisted three data visualization experts to compile this list to answer the question posed in Simply Statistics, a blog from three Johns Hopkins biostatistics professors. via [more inside]
The Western Lands
50 shades of gray: A research story
Psychologists recount a valuable lesson about the fragility of statistical validity and the state of publishing. "Two of the present authors, Matt Motyl and Brian A. Nosek, share interests in political ideology. We were inspired by the fast growing literature on embodiment that demonstrates surprising links between body and mind to investigate embodiment of political extremism. Participants from the political left, right, and center (N = 1,979) completed a perceptual judgment task in which words were presented in different shades of gray. Participants had to click along a gradient representing grays from near black to near white to select a shade that matched the shade of the word. We calculated accuracy: How close to the actual shade did participants get? The results were stunning. Moderates perceived the shades of gray more accurately than extremists on the left and right (p = .01). Our conclusion: Political extremists perceive the world in black and white figuratively and literally. Our design and follow-up analyses ruled out obvious alternative explanations such as time spent on task and a tendency to select extreme responses. Enthused about the result, we identified Psychological Science as our fallback journal after we toured the Science, Nature, and PNAS rejection mills. The ultimate publication, Motyl and Nosek (2012), served as one of Motyl’s signature publications as he finished graduate school and entered the job market.
The story is all true, except for the last sentence; we did not publish the finding." [more inside]
There's Still a Little Place Called Albuquerque
Two nightmarish visions of Albuquerque collide in this Breaking Bad/Weird Al mashup [spoilers for Breaking Bad through the most recent half-season]
Red Stripes Mean Unsafe
A Boston inventor has created a cup and straw that detect the presence of date rape drugs. The cup and straw change color in the presence of the common date rape drug GHB.
Wired Love
“It would be dreadfully unromantic to fall in love with a soiled invisible, wouldn’t it,” Clive Thompson reviews Wired Love, a novel about romance over the network, in this case, the telegraph network, circa 1880. [more inside]
Post-industrial Silicon Valley
Theodosia Goodman to Theda Bara, from blonde lass to sultry vamp
On this day 128 years ago, Theodosia Burr Goodman was born in Avondale, a wealthy, largely Jewish, suburb of Cincinnati. An aspiring actress, she went to New York in 1908. Upon finding that there were no meaningful roles for blondes (Google books preview), she dyed her hair brunette. She gained notoriety some seven years later, with what would be her iconic black hair and dark eye shadow, in the movie version of a Rudyard Kipling poem called The Vampire. It was an overwrought melodrama called A Fool There Was, which starred Theodosia as Theda Bara, a femme fatale who lured men to their destruction. This film marked the first major motion picture publicity campaign and first studio-manufactured "star." [more inside]
see your face in the stars
Artist Sergio Albiac is creating generative portraits from selfies. You can be part of his new exhibition by submitting a photo via Google Drive. "In a nutshell, this experiment, with the participation of an Internet audience, will produce as many artworks as possible.... An automated process will create human portraits as generative collages, using as sources some images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Generated portraits will be exhibited at the flickr Stardust Portrait exhibition."
This is not a bad place, not the hell it had been..."
"Founded in 1912 as a farm colony of Brooklyn State Hospital, the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens [New York] became, by mid-century, a world unto itself. At its peak, it housed some 7,000 patients. They tended gardens and raised livestock on the hospital’s grounds. The hospital contained gymnasiums, a swimming pool, a theater, a television studio, and giant kitchens and laundries where patients were put to work. Today, Creedmoor, still run by the New York State Office of Mental Health, has only a few hundred patients" and houses The Living Museum, an 'art asylum within an asylum' where patients can create and exhibit their art. But what is life like inside the institution itself? In 2010, Katherine B. Olsen spent weeks interviewing staff and patients. Her essay, published this week, 'Something More Wrong' takes us inside Creedmoor's women's ward. [more inside]
Salad Engineering
You've just purchased a meal at a restaurant that offers a salad bar, with the stipulation that you can only take items from it once. How do you get the most out of your one trip? Simple: build a salad tower. [more inside]
"Visa Card Services here"
After explaining the situation to two or three people, my nightmare stepped up a notch with the most chilling phrase of all. "But Mr Welch, your cards haven’t been reported stolen." One man's experience of credit card fraud.
The End of Time
Spanning more than four months and 3,000 individual panels, spawing more than 50,000 posts and 1.4 million views on the official thread in the XKCD forums, and generating countless fan theories and speculations, Randall Munroe fame has brought his epic "Time" to an end. [more inside]
Underlined and triple-starred
By Heart is a series on The Atlantic's website where writers speak about their favorite passages, each illustrated by Doug McLean. Here are a few of the entries so far: Stephen King on two opening lines, Hanan Al-Shaykh on One Thousand and One Nights, Susan Choi on The Great Gatsby, Jessica Francis Kane on Marcus Aurelius, Fay Weldon on The Myth of Sisyphus, Adam Mansbach on Montaigne, Ayana Mathis on Osip Mandelstam, Anthony Marra on Jesus' Son, and Mohsin Hamid on Haruki Murakami.
"Coffins are hot and dark on the inside"
Science fiction and fantasy writer/editor Jay Lake has been living with cancer for years, but in early May received notice that unfortunately he wouldn't do so for much longer (diagnostic details), with the most optimistic forecast giving him just a year left to live. If nothing else, this has given him time to wind up his affairs, as well as do something few people get the chance to: attend his own wake.
July 28
The Vitamin Myth: Why We Think We Need Supplements
Nutrition experts contend that all we need is what's typically found in a routine diet. Industry representatives, backed by a fascinating history, argue that foods don't contain enough, and we need supplements. Fortunately, many excellent studies have now resolved the issue.(SLAtlantic)
Sting and Robert Downey Jr - Driven to Tears
Manchester man arrested after tweeting rape threats
A 21 year old man was arrested for tweeting rape threats. The target of the tweets, Caroline Criado-Perez, had successfully campaigned to have a woman (Jane Austen) shown on the UK's new 10 pound note, and has been subsequently receiving incessant rape and death threats via twitter, a violation of UK law. Twitter's Terms of Service are being repeatedly and flagrantly violated in this episode, and the company appears to be having issues responding to a backlog of reports; it responded to Criado-Perez only that she take the matter to the police. This resulted in shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper asking Twitter to review its policies for handling abuse complaints. [more inside]
2900 ships lost
Largest space battle in history claims 2,900 ships, untold virtual lives. After 5 hours of battle, CFC defeats the TEST alliance. [more inside]
US Energy & Carbon Flows
Estimated US Energy Use in 2012: 95.1 Quads - "Energy flow charts show the relative size of primary energy resources and end uses in the United States, with fuels compared on a common energy unit basis." (via) [more inside]
Stanley Kubrick's Favorite Films
Some insight into what Stanley Kubrick liked of what he saw in the world of film over the years, with a master list at the end.
"the correlation between country music and political backwardness"?
One Nation Under Elvis
My own conversion to country music came all of a sudden in 1990, around another campfire, also in Nevada. The great Western Shoshone anti-nuclear and land-rights activist Bill Rosse, a decorated World War II vet and former farm manager, unpacked his guitar and sang Hank Williams and traditional songs for hours. I was enchanted as much by the irreverent rancor of some of the songs as by the pure blue yearning of others. I’d had no idea such coolness, wit, and poetry was lurking in this stuff I was taught to scorn before I’d met it.[more inside]
Rebuilding the American Jury
Twelve Absent Men: Rebuilding the American Jury. "Juries hear only 4 percent of criminal trials in America. Their decline has fostered radical punitiveness, but reforms and novel institutions are breathing new life into the jury and civic participation more broadly."
Desmond Tutu compares fight against homophobia to that against apartheid
"I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place." Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu, former chair of independent advisory group The Elders, was in the papers today.
"I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this."
Also reported by BBC News and The Mail on Sunday.
A Li'l Dab'll Do Ya
A look at the phenomenon of "dabbing" and concentrated cannabis (butane hash oil, or BHO) - its potency, legality, and its exclusion from the 2013 Emerald Cup - from a Humboldt County perspective, courtesy of the Lost Coast Outpost. In pot-friendly towns like Arcata, it's got the streets on fire.
When biting the inside of your cheeks isn't enough
How I Recovered My Stolen iPad
How I Recovered My Stolen iPad - in which Facebook, Twitter, and Find my iPad work in tandem to find a doofus.
Hacker Barnaby Jack, dead at 35
Barnaby Jack, a hacker and security researcher previously known for his hacks involving ATMs and insulin pumps, has died in San Francisco. He was 35. His death came just days before he was to give a presentation about techniques for hacking implanted heart devices, which could kill a person from 30 feet away.
Counterculture legend Mick Farren dies with his boots on
Give The Anarchist A Cigarette: Counterculture legend Mick Farren dies with his boots on Mick Farren, rabble rouser, musician, and writer, collapsed last night on stage at the The Borderline, in London. He died soon after.
Hmm, sorry, I seem to be crap at this. Here's some more links to the story:
From Uncut:
Mick Farren 1943 - 2013,
From Vintage Vinyl News: Passings: Mick Farren of the Deviants (1943 - 2013),
and from Ultimate Calssic Rock:
Mick Farren Dies After Collapsing On Stage In London
That last has a pretty good version of "Let's Loot The Super Market".
The following notes were written at odd hours and strange places...
"We're not making mistakes; we're making experiences."
Dan Bergstein, Sparknotes blogger (and best known for blogging about the Twilight series), has posted some YouTube instructional videos on How to Knit a Scarf, How to Make a Pumpkin Pie, and How to Wrap a Present. Please note that Dan does not actually know how to do any of these things, and that if you do have these skills viewing these videos might be slightly traumatizing.
The Last Vestiges of the Old Republic...
The Clone Wars (previously) are over, with only a few last mopping up operations underway and a few Jedi unaccounted for. But there is another... Star Wars Rebels will be the new Lucasfilm animated series, and will be taking it's design direction from the work of Ralph McQuarrie.
A Race to Save the Orange by Altering Its DNA
The disease that sours oranges and leaves them half green, already ravaging citrus crops across the world, had reached the state’s storied groves. To slow the spread of the bacterium that causes the scourge, they chopped down hundreds of thousands of infected trees and sprayed an expanding array of pesticides on the winged insect that carries it. But the contagion could not be contained.They would have to alter the orange’s DNA — with a gene from a different species. (SLNYT)
With a precipitous decline in Florida’s harvest predicted within the decade, the only chance left to save it, Mr. Kress believed, was one that his industry and others had long avoided for fear of consumer rejection.
Time to collect firewood
Time to collect firewood - a short video showing how a solitary man harvests bark-beetle damaged trees using a home-made raft and a collection of specialized tools. For contrast, the same raft is used in the very social "Crayfishing in Ätran"
This might come in handy sometime...
Fez II Cancelled
Phil Fish, the volatile and sometimes controversial developer of indie game Fez, has abruptly announced its cancellation: "this is as much as i can stomach. this is isn’t the result of any one thing, but the end of a long, bloody campaign. you win." Though this follows in the wake of a popular podcast's host calling him a "tosspot", a "wanker", and a "fucking asshole", Fish has been the subject of massive Internet antagonism ever since his appearance in Indie Game: The Movie; he's been hounded for saying that Japanese games suck, though he claimed the comment was taken out of context, for Tweeting that "PCs are for spreadsheets" prior to Fez's PC release, and for not patching a save-corrupting bug that he claims Microsoft was charging him "tens of thousands of dollars". Fish has often responded poorly to critics in public, but Jonathan Blow (The Witness, Braid) and C418 (Minecraft) each claim that Fish has been at the receiving end of far worse, and far more frequent, vitriol.
Letting go
For a few days now, Scott Simon, host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, has been present at his mother's bedside in the intensive care unit of a Chicago hospital. He is documenting this time, what will apparently be his last days with her, in a series of heartwrenching messages on his Twitter stream.
July 27
Crazy like a texting fox
Fox steals cell phone. Fox sends texts with stolen cell phone. Cuteness ensues. [Cached version] [more inside]
Reading This Is Optional
Offenses attack; defenses react. This is a truism, but it's a truism on which almost all sports strategy is built. In the NFL today, no tactic more pressingly requires a swift, strong reaction than the so-called "read-option." Defending the Read-Option sends coaches back to college. If the read-option is dead, the next great offensive strategy may also be one of the oldest, it was good enough to beat Sean Payton and a bevy of NFL coaches.
The Annual World Bodypainting Festival
The annual World Bodypainting Festival is now over, but that means there are a ton of new images online, with galleries for each of the award categories, including brush/sponge bodypainting, airbrush bodypainting, special effects bodypainting, and facepainting. (Note: painted [mostly] naked bodies; previously, a decade ago)
Does a bear itch in the woods?
Guitar Stories
Mark Knopfler takes his former Dire Straits band mate John Illsley on a journey to discover the six guitars that defined his sound and music. [SLYT 44min]. An excellent documentary from SkyARTS.
Trouble with the Old Reader
The Old Reader is back up again (scroll down for updates), after several days of being down when the servers crashed. But many users are not happy and some are bailing.
Implied Contrapuntals
2001: A Space Odyssey - Discerning Themes through Score and Imagery: As Ligeti's music ends, the first image we see is a celestial alignment of the sun the earth and the moon as Richard Strauss' exhilarating Also Sprach Zarathustra begins. It's critical to note that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is also a novel by Friedrich Nietzsche. This musical choice thus signals that the film deals with the same central issues in this book. [via][more inside]
That belongs in a museum!
One of the last remaining copies of Schindler's List has been posted for sale on Ebay, with a starting bid of $3,000,000 USD. [more inside]
Another bomb "dowser" found guilty
Gary Bolton has been found guilty of selling fake bomb detectors to countries including Iraq. In May James McCormick was sentenced for 10 years for committing a similar fraud (previously, previously, previously). The original fraud is now 20 years old.
Ski-Boys
Look at those escargots
Being Dumb
Poet Kenneth Goldsmith writes in praise of dumb art.
No double entendre left behind
Boris Johnson unveils a giant blue cock in Trafalgar Square , causing an outbreak of terrible puns. Hahn/Cock is the work of Katharina Fritsch, better known for her Rat-King sculpture. The colour is (probably) an homage to (NSFW) Yves Klein's favourite colour.
Paddling 1,500 Miles for Science and Adventure
Starting on September 22 last year, Professor Robert Fuller of the University of North Georgia spent four months paddling down the Chattahoochee River system, from the Chattahoochee's headwaters in northern Georgia down through the Apalachicola into the Gulf of Mexico, studying water quality along the way. Then he paddled 200 miles through the Gulf, turned at the mouth of the Mobile River, and paddled another 750 miles upstream on the Mobile, Alabama, Coosa, and Etowah Rivers all the way back to northern Georgia—a total of just over 1,500 miles of solo paddling in his Kruger Sea Wind. Along the way, he kept a blog, "ate a lot of Beanie Weenies", and faced difficulties including cold, hunger, injuries, and river obstructions. Incidentally, he did all this while living with leukemia. [more inside]
Plowing at the Speed of Sound
Swedish farmer drops a turbo into his tractor.
Boom And Bust
Bankrupt By Beanies - A short documentary about what happened to people after the "Beanie Babies as investments" fad wore down. (YouTube, 8:30)
Final Encore Blues For Mister JJ Cale
Sadly true, at 74. (JJ Cale previously, and Wikipedia.)
Otherwise best to just let the man and his guitar speak for themselves via classic albums such as Troubadour, Grasshopper, Naturally, Okie and Shades.
"Eversmile, New Jersey"?
A Secret Folk Music Holds Firm In China's Badlands
"Beijing-based music critic Wang Xiaofeng says that when he heard Lao Qiang for the first time about 18 years ago, it reminded him of heavy metal: very physical and somewhat operatic."
In Lieu of Money, Toyota Donates Efficiency to New York Charity
The Food Bank for New York City is the country’s largest anti-hunger charity, feeding about 1.5 million people every year. It leans heavily, as other charities do, on the generosity of businesses, including Target, Bank of America, Delta Air Lines and the New York Yankees. Toyota was also a donor. But then Toyota had a different idea.
Instead of a check, it offered kaizen.
July 26
there's like - a bunch of mermaids here - and they definitely hate me
D - O - N - K - E - Y - K - O - N - G
Locals and Tourists
Some people interpreted the Geotaggers' World Atlas maps to be maps of tourism. This set is an attempt to figure out if that is really true. Some cities (for example Las Vegas and Venice) do seem to be photographed almost entirely by tourists. Others seem to have many pictures taken in places that tourists don't visit. Blue points on the map are pictures taken by locals (people who have taken pictures in this city dated over a range of a month or more). Map of photosets (scroll through photo thumbnails to discover new cities in the photoset [more inside]
Why Don't You Google It?
Maria Bamford* has a new Web series called Ask My Mom!, wherein questions asked by the viewers are answered by Maria, playing her mother.
Episodes thus far:
#1 - SAD SACK
#2 - SEX
#3 - RAISING KIDS
#4 - ABSTRACT
#5 - RELIGION
#6 - SHOW BUSINESS
#7 - FAVORITE
#8 - CHEERFUL
#9 - A PRIVATE MOMENT
[more inside]
I'm not ready for this!
Has anyone else put forth this theory before?
What’s Killing Minnesota’s Moose?
The iconic monarch of the North Woods is dying at an alarming rate. Is it climate change, a brain-piercing parasite, or is something else to blame?
Pico Horror: terror in two sentences
From Reddit: What is the best horror story you can come up with in two sentences. When /r/shortscarystories are too long, and you've already read through MicroHorror (previously) and Flashes in the Dark.
Walter De Maria, R.I.P.
Walter De Maria, R.I.P. (LAT) The famed but reclusive sculptor and composer was 77. In a loving tribute, Jerry Saltz writes of De Maria's Earth Room (previously), and of the effect it had on him personally.
Darryl Kelly was hired to clean out Harry Shunk's NYC apartment.
Darryl Kelly was hired to clean out Harry Shunk's New York City apartment. Things worked out well for Kelly.
'让我介绍一个哥们儿'
Xiaoou is a Norwegian artist who raps in Mandarin Chinese about income inequality in China, his love for Beijing, and going through a breakup.
"We have 10 different babies from which you can select."
Would you like to choose your baby? We definitely want to be able to avoid genetic mutations that could cause diseases or problems later on. But what if you could make your babies more intelligent? Or more Athletic? or More beautiful? Or affect their political orientation? (A 2011 study looked at differences between conservative and liberal leanings—and found, surprisingly, three areas that might be linked to political predisposition.)
Should you be able to choose what characteristics you want your babies to have?
[more inside]
Dream of the '90s
Full course meal
It goes back to honoring Thomas Harris and imagery we have in the books, in the Hannibal Lecter books. So we knew that we had to have fantastic imagery that you wouldn’t see on another crime-procedural show. Being competitive and wanting to be completely different from what you see on other shows, which is usually, on a crime procedural you see a body in a room splayed out and blood, but you rarely get to see people covered with mushrooms or impaled on severed stag heads or blood eagled and the totem pole. We would sit in the room and say, “What is the image? What is the death tableau? What are we going to see that’s going to be so striking and cinematic and beautiful at the same time, but will actually be a horrible crime scene?” So every crime scene that we have has to have this element of beauty and art to it.Bryan Fuller, showrunner for NBC's Hannibal (previously), discusses each episode of the first season with the AV Club. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.
"We All Lament the Difficulty We Have Persuading Americans"
"Believing they are losing the messaging war with progressives, a group of prominent conservatives in Washington—including the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and journalists from Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner — has been meeting privately since early this year to concoct talking points, coordinate messaging, and hatch plans for "a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation," according to documents obtained by [David Corn and] Mother Jones." Photo Gallery: Meet Groundswell's Major Players. Also: Groundswell's Secret Crusade to Crush Karl Rove // (Via) [more inside]
Boomtown
Wildcatting: A Stripper’s Guide to the Modern American Boomtown. Susan Shepard details her time stripping in Williston, North Dakota (previously).
They are called RANDOM patrols for a reason!
That's not a plot hole. Allow me to explain. Scott Nye discusses a movie trend that, once seen, cannot be unseen.
There's treasure in there
Books with borax crystals growing on them. Artist Alexis Arnold grows crystals on the pages of books.
"We are British. We are Liverpudlians. "
""He just went out to the shop, and my mum was waiting for him to come home, and he never came," Linda Davis said of her father." -- During World War II tens of thousands of Chinese seamen served in the UK's merchant navy, many of whom had settled in Liverpool and some of which developed relationships with local women. Yet in 1945, as soon as the war was won, Liverpool police forces, on orders of the Home Office mounted razzias and deported the majority of the 20,000 Chinese men living in the city, leaving behind their wifes and children. [more inside]
"By nature, I'm an optimistic person. No one believes it, but I am."
Tony Award winner Larry Kramer, author of The Normal Heart, Reports from the Holocaust, screenwriter of Women in Love, and founder of ACT UP and Gay Men's Health Crisis, has gotten married. [more inside]
Experiment Twelve
Experiment Twelve is an ambitious game (Windows download, 218 MB), a chapter by chapter collaboration between (in order of appearance) Terry Cavanagh, Ian Snyder, Jack King-Spooner, Zaratustra, Richard Perrin, Michael Brough, Robert Yang, Alan Hazelden, Benn Powell, Jake Clover, TheBlackMask, and Jasper Byrne.
July 25
A man of flesh and bone, who cannot be stopped!
Legie is a depressing Czech adventure game/dungeon crawler. The only record of it left is this Let's Play.
"I have no reason to expect compensation"
How DC Contracts Work. Mark Waid, author of Superman: Birthright (drawn on heavily for the recent film Man of Steel), "explains how professionals are generally compensated for working on company-owned characters".
Pyongyang Express
The Defector: Escape From North Korea, an interactive documentary. The Trailer. via. Flash required. [more inside]
Class Dublin Taxi Driver
One sunny summer day in Dublin, pub drinkers spill out onto the streets. Blocking traffic. And dancing. With taxi drivers. The taxi driver is part-time DJ Wayne Karney. His dance partner is Andrea Pappin, spokesperson for the Irish Presidency of the EU 2013.
"I hope no one's been killed because they'll be on my conscience"
Spain has declared three days of mourning following a deadly train crash that killed at least 80 people and injured many more. [more inside]
Mouseunculus
What I want, what I really really want.
Joe Engel (1893 - 1969): the Barnum of Baseball
At the age of 19, Joe Engel started pitching for the Washington Senators in 1912 (Google books preview), but he only played one game per year in 1917, '19, and '20, due to arm injuries. Unimpressed with his performance, Manager Clark Griffith shooed Engel off to swap himself for someone from the minors who could play ball. Engel sent back the catcher Edward Patrick ("Ed" or "Patsy") Gharrity. Gharrity turned out to be so good that Engel was hired to scout for Washington, and later manage the Chattanooga Lookouts, then the farm team for Washington. It was there in Chattanooga that Engel's true career in baseball took off, where he was given the title "Barnum of Baseball." [more inside]
If we can't protect the school, you can be well sure we'll avenge it
Burka Avenger is a new cartoon series (in urdu) scheduled to start running in Pakistan in early August. Created by the British-Pakistani pop singer Haroon, the series features a ninjaburqa-clad, pen-and-book-wielding superheroine / mild-mannered non-burqa-wearing schoolteacher who fights for her school against Taliban-like baddies (short interviews with Haroon and a slightly worried media analyst).
the maps, the rain, the pills, the place
Night Stroll by Tao Tajima. A visually stunning nighttime display of lights and shapes across the streets of Tokyo. [via / epilepsy warning] [more inside]
Life is like a hurricane, here in Duckburg
Scientifically accurate DuckTales. (SLYT, NSFW)
cloud rap is sort of the chillest of raps
Depending on who you ask, Cloud Rap either is "the best shit happening right now" or it doesn't exist. If you ask Killscreen, the genre owes a lot to Japanese Role Playing Games. But according to Philly cloud-rapper Lushlife, "All Rap Is Cloud Rap." [more inside]
Should summer vacation be abolished?
There are few more cherished nostrums in American life than the importance of equal opportunities. Unfortunately, one of them is the importance of summer vacation... A 2011 RAND literature review concluded that the average student “loses” about one month’s worth of schooling during a typical summer vacation, with the impact disproportionately concentrated among low-income students. “While all students lose some ground in mathematics over the summer,” RAND concluded, “low-income students lose more ground in reading while their higher-income peers may even gain.” Most distressingly, the impact is cumulative. Poor kids tend to start school behind their middle-class peers, and then they fall further behind each and every summer, giving teachers and principals essentially no chance of closing the gap during the school year. [more inside]
Rape Joke
Our illmatic stripy hero and his glucose-heavy sidekick
Best of Breed Solution
Are human beings the descendants of chimpanzee/pig hybrids? This radical theory might seem easy to disprove, but "decent arguments against the hybrid origins theory are surprisingly hard to find."
Santa's Little Helper
Sam Simon, an original developer for The Simpsons, is still listed on the opening credits despite leaving the show in 1993. He once told a magazine that he continues to make "tens of millions" of dollars a year from his contributions. In 2012 he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He has recently announced that he will give away his entire fortune to charity. The Sam Simon Foundation.
Beer Labels in Motion
she would often either fall asleep or cry after making an image
A talkative porcupine eats a banana
The price of security
PreCheck, a new program instituted by the TSA, will allow passengers to keep their shoes, jackets and belts during screening, as well as allow laptop computers and approved liquids to remain in bags for a fee of $85.
Crime is driven by proximity and opportunity
Call Me Jazzy
Questions. Morbidity. Incept dates.
Detroit, New Orleans, Oakland... some of the safer places in America to live! Sure, big cities might have more murders per capita... but residents in large cities are *MUCH* safer when it comes to injury deaths than those living in more rural parts of America, according to a new study in The Annals of Emergency Medicine.
"Cars, guns and drugs are the unholy trinity causing the majority of injury deaths . . . Although the risk of homicide is higher in big cities, the risk of unintentional injury death is 40 percent higher in the most rural areas than in the most urban. And overall, the rate of unintentional injury dwarfs the risk of homicide, with the rate of unintentional injury more than 15 times that of homicide among the entire population."
"Cars, guns and drugs are the unholy trinity causing the majority of injury deaths . . . Although the risk of homicide is higher in big cities, the risk of unintentional injury death is 40 percent higher in the most rural areas than in the most urban. And overall, the rate of unintentional injury dwarfs the risk of homicide, with the rate of unintentional injury more than 15 times that of homicide among the entire population."
Gnomeland
Gnomeland "New Hampshire's Premiere Gnome Destination!" Also known as, what happens when friends play a prank on you and install 500 handpainted gnomes in and around your house. Full Flickr set [via mefi projects]
Sicker, sadder world
"High school was a lot like the Civil War: it lasted four years, you were defined by what you wore, and I lost 1 in 10 of my friends to gangrene."
Daria: The Live-Action Movie, starring Aubrey Plaza. [more inside]
Daria: The Live-Action Movie, starring Aubrey Plaza. [more inside]
Android hack found
"All Android applications contain cryptographic signatures, which Android uses to determine if the app is legitimate and to verify that the app hasn’t been tampered with or modified. This vulnerability makes it possible to change an application’s code without affecting the cryptographic signature of the application – essentially allowing a malicious author to trick Android into believing the app is unchanged even if it has been." [more inside]
The Doom that came to Doom
The Doom that Came to Atlantic City was billed as something of a Monopoly meets Cthulhu. It was a Kickstarter that got great reviews and raised over $120K. Then, suddenly, it was over. [more inside]
Top Myths of Renaissance Martial Arts
The diverse range of misconceptions and erroneous beliefs within historical fencing studies today is considerable. But there are perhaps some myths that are more common, and more pervasive, than others. This webpage presents an ongoing project that will continually try in an informal and condensed manner to help address some of these mistaken beliefs.
4. A robot must not scalp restaurant reservations
If you find it impossible to make restaurant reservations online it might be because you're competing against bots. A developer explains how it works and just how common it might be in San Francisco. [more inside]
A is for ... aah you guessed
So back in the early thirties the Soviets had a problem: how to combat adult illiteracy in a country where millions of peasants had never had been to so much as primary school? How do you get these people to learn the alphabet? Well, by making an adult illiteracy campaign into an adult illiteracy campaign using an erotic alphabet book designed by Sergei Merkurov.
Burp.
A new article in Nature warns that "the costs of a melting Arctic will be huge", thanks in part to the likely release of "a 50-gigatonne (Gt) reservoir of methane, stored in the form of hydrates" beneath the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, "either steadily over 50 years or suddenly". An abrupt release is "highly possible at any time", says Natalia Shakhova of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, who has observed plumes of methane up to a kilometre wide bubbling to the surface in the area. [more inside]
It's not a conspiracy, it's a business opportunity
Had enough government rhetoric? Tired of following the sheeple? Fed up with believing what THEY want you to believe? Maybe it's time to branch out and discover THE TRUTH.
July 24
Meanwhile in Rio de Janeiro…
Brazilian people against the costs of Pope’s Visit.
Video of Clashes in Brazil Appears to Show Police Infiltrators among Protesters, including throwing a molotov cocktail.
Much of the reporting outside of MSM of these and earlier protests is being done by the Midia Ninja collective.
Video of Clashes in Brazil Appears to Show Police Infiltrators among Protesters, including throwing a molotov cocktail.
Much of the reporting outside of MSM of these and earlier protests is being done by the Midia Ninja collective.
What makes a hero?
The Avenging Page (In Excelsis Ditko) is an exhaustive essay on the recent self-published comics of legendary artist and writer Steve Ditko.
Diamond Dallas Page's Next Act
Former wrestler Diamond Dallas Page has recently emerged as a health guru of sorts, with an exercise routine based on Yoga. He's also reaching out to former wrestlers who are battling addiction problems, Scott Hall and Jake Roberts. via [more inside]
The rise of the religious left
According to a new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute [PDF], 1 in 5 Americans can now be defined as "religious progressives". These people, who eschew the current Republican agenda of religious social conservatism, have Republican leaders caught in the middle between an aging religious conservative majority and young religious progressives.
Awaken Human Nature and Perceive the Value of Life
For over five years, journalist and TV presenter Ding Yu headed up a massively popular Chinese TV talk show. Every week, She would sit down with convicted murderers and interview them about their life and crimes, before they were taken out and put to death by either firing squad or lethal injection. The show, "Interviews Before Execution", was taken off the air in March 2012. [more inside]
TUBA MIRUM SPARGENS SONUM
Isaac Cordal's Cement Eclipses, little concrete people
Isaac Cordal makes little figures out of concrete, painting some, while leaving others their native grey color. He then places them in various places and situations around Europe, and has set them up in gallery shows. You might find them in the street, sitting on rooftops, precariously balanced on a pipe, standing up to their waists in water with a life preserver, or standing in the snow. The figures are made in clay, then a silicone mold is made in which the concrete is cast. Street Art London has an interview with Cordal. [Cordal, previously]
Not their target demographic.
So, Boston's KISS 108 FM decided to hold a Taylor Swift Biggest Fan Contest. But they cancelled it. [more inside]
No magic here, fellow; it is but the charm of her makeups.
The modern male singer-songwriter has a type. She is thin. She wears a great deal of eye makeup. She is pale. She does not smile, and often walks in the rain. Most importantly, she is very, very sad....These Sad Girls are all terribly, terribly sad in their own unique ways, of course, but which one of them is the saddest? The Toast investigates.
Never Tell A Canadian What He Cannot Do
John Morillo of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, will apparently not turn down a dare, even if it causes an international incident and racks up fines in the five figures. For instance, if you tell him he can't swim from Windsor to Detroit across a busy shipping lane, he'll do it (with the assistance of eight beers). And he'll swim back, too, as evidenced by the fact that the U.S. Coast Guard found him on the Canadian side. As Morillo said, "If I’m going to be in the paper, I’d at least like them to say I actually made it, even though I got in trouble and everything." [more inside]
Comeback Album Comeback
The upside is that none of these records will go down in history like Chinese Democracy. The downside, of course, is that none of these records will go down in history like Chinese Democracy. Why it had to die in 2008 so that Random Access Memories, The 20/20 Experience, m b v, The Next Day and other records could live in 2013.
No Longer King of the Mountain
Chris Bucchere, the cyclist that killed a pedestrian last March in San Francisco while attempting to obtain Strava glory has pleaded guilty to felony vehicular manslaughter becoming the first bicyclist convicted of manslaughter in the United States. [more inside]
A journey across the highly caffeinated globe.
Can You Name These Cities by Their Starbucks Locations? (Single link Slate quiz)
The St. Louis Slinger Tour
The bloggers at The St. Louis Slinger Tour have completed their comprehensive 16 month review of the Slingers available at 58 different St. Louis area restaurants. Follow them chronologically or check out Tim and Tony's Top 10 for later enjoyment (consensus favorite: The Sidebar). Also available for your convenience is a list of the worst Slingers in St. Louis (e.g. Uncle Bill's), to be avoided or ordered out of morbid curiosity. [more inside]
Sometimes it's better to just let things go extinct...
Saskatchewan scientists are working hard to identify ways to preserve the habitat of the endangered Greater Short Horned Lizard, best known for shooting great streams of blood from its eyes when threatened.
In between "The Master" and "Inherent Vice"
While they were dating back in the 90's, Paul Thomas Anderson directed several of Fiona Apple's videos including "Across the Universe", "Paper Bag" and "Limp". Though they have long since broken up, he recently came back to direct the video for "Hot Knife" off of her most recent album. The result is hypnotic.
Danger is my surname
After gossip site The Dirty posted explicit Facebook chats between NYC Mayoral frontrunner Anthony Weiner (previously) and a young Democratic organizer who initially wrote to castigate him for his original scandal, he was forced to acknowledge that "his habit of sending racy messages to women had persisted long after his resignation." The New York Times has called for him to drop out. So has the Wall Street Journal. So have his opponents, somewhat predictably, for obcuring the issues with "a never-ending sideshow." His support is dwindling, but a lingering question is: will (and should) voters even care?
Let's go to the audiotape
Heard: a free iOS app that could solve a lot of arguments, and probably end a lot of marriages.
It continuously records audio into a 12-second buffer (extend it to 5 minutes for $1.99), letting you save what you just, um, heard. Part Orwellian, part Chappellian (NSFW).
P only equals NP if that bridge doesn't go out
Unhappy Truckers and Other Algorithmic Problems - What happens when the traveling salesman problem meets the real world at UPS and Yellow Freight.
Knightmare's back!
Fan's of cult 90's UK children Television shows rejoice, Knightmare, the virtual reality kids show is back for a one off episode. [more inside]
"Ice Ice Baby" Sung By the Movies
Wolf Watermelon Party!
Slideshow of wolves feasting on watermelons. The idea for the party came after park staff noted that the wolves were looking longingly at watermelon slices that the humans were eating during a July 4th celebration. [via]
Being in the Minority Can Cost You and Your Company
The racial wage gap in the United States — the gap in salary between whites and blacks with similar levels of education and experience — is shaped by geography, according to new social science research.
"The average racial gap [in wages] in metropolitan areas of around 1 million people — and you can think of a place like Tulsa, Okla. — is about 20 percent smaller than the gap in the nation's largest metro areas of Chicago, L.A. and New York," Ananat says. Ananat's research suggests that the racial gap is not directly the result of prejudice or, at least, prejudice conventionally defined. Rather, it has to do with patterns of social interactions that are shaped by race — and a phenomenon that economists call spillovers.
"The average racial gap [in wages] in metropolitan areas of around 1 million people — and you can think of a place like Tulsa, Okla. — is about 20 percent smaller than the gap in the nation's largest metro areas of Chicago, L.A. and New York," Ananat says. Ananat's research suggests that the racial gap is not directly the result of prejudice or, at least, prejudice conventionally defined. Rather, it has to do with patterns of social interactions that are shaped by race — and a phenomenon that economists call spillovers.
postmodern attack ads don't always shoot where you point 'em
Chasing the Whale: Examining the ethics of free-to-play games
Via Gamasutra: "I used to work at [company], and it paid well and advanced my career," the person told me. "But I recognize that [company]'s games cause great harm to people's lives. They are designed for addiction. [company] chooses what to add to their games based on metrics that maximize players' investments of time and money. [company]'s games find and exploit the right people, and then suck everything they can out of them, without giving much in return. It's not hard to see the parallels to the tobacco industry."
"stage lights and Lear jets, and fortune and fame"
Some punk from Iowa is hoping to go number one in the charts with an album that technically came out over a decade ago, was recorded on a boombox, and which has divided opinion. The record in question is called All Hail West Texas and that punk from Iowa (technically Indiana) is named John Darnielle and releases music as The Mountain Goats. The album can be streamed on the record label website as well as most of your favorite streaming services. You can download a couple of the outtakes here, listen to a recent interview Marc Maron did with John Darnielle that covers his youth and some of his Iowa period, and read Notes on imaginary extant, lost, deleted, and unrecorded tracks written, performed, recorded for or during the period of time in the life of John Darnielle that would produce All Hail West Texas not included in this collection because they are all imaginary by Matt Fraction.
Mapping the Midwest
How do you define the Midwest? As part of their exhibit Reinvention in the Urban Midwest (in most-certainly-not-in-the-Midwest Boston) Sasaki has created an online tool for people to contribute what the boundaries of the Midwest are for them. Results can be sorted by respondents' percentage of time spent in the Midwest and state of birth. An Atlantic Cities article shows one writer's opinion, and also links to Bill Rankin's similar Midwest mapping project on his always-excellent Radical Cartography site. An excerpt from The Midwest: God's Gift to Planet Earth has a more irreverent take on mapping the region.
July 23
Does Open Access Diminish Publishing Opportunities for Grad Students?
The American Historical Association just released a statement that "strongly encourages graduate programs and university libraries to adopt a policy that allows the embargoing of completed history PhD dissertations in digital form for as many as six years." The statement is aimed at publishers who are disinclined to consider books based on dissertations that have been made freely available in open access databases. Some responses cite a 2011 survey, "Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities?," that found most publishers self-reported they would indeed consider publishing such dissertations, but also suggested university libraries are refusing to buy books based on dissertations that have previously been available online. "The Road From Dissertation to Book Has a New Pothole: the Internet," a 2011 article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, quotes editors who are wary of publishing such books, and discusses the process by which students can restrict access to their work at companies like ProQuest, "the electronic publisher with which the vast majority of U.S. universities contract to house digital copies of dissertations." [more inside]
"Sometimes he talks about art in his sleep."
The Pixel Painter is a short documentary about Hal Lasko, a 97-year-old artist who paints in Microsoft Paint. [more inside]
"So a sardine is not a sardine is not a sardine!"
The Sardine Museum with host Tony Nunziata (part two, part three, part four, part five). Bonus: Tony tells a short story. [more inside]
Seeing.Thinking.Drawing
Francis Ching is professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Washington who keeps a blog of his city-focused sketches. Discussion varies from thinking about construction and layout to materials and focus when drawing scenes.
Grant Hart's new record The Argument finally out
Previously mentioned back in in 2012, The Argument, a concept album with influences from Milton's Paradise Lost and William Burroughs, has at last appeared. [more inside]
Zdeněk Burian
放浪息子 Hourou Musuko, Wandering Son
放浪息子 Hourou Musuko (often translated as Wandering Son) is one of the better depictions of transgender life in manga and anime (and maybe in any medium). It's a slice of life drama about two young people who are trans and starting middle school in Japan. The manga is being published in English by Fantagraphics, and the anime is officially licensed in English subs on Crunchyroll. [more inside]
Eat Ice Cream
In his meticulous diaries, written from 1846 to 1882, the Harvard librarian John Langdon Sibley complains often about the withering summer heat: “The heat wilts & enervates me & makes me sick,” he wrote in 1852. Sibley lived before the age of air-conditioning, but recent research suggests that his observation is still accurate: summer really does tend to be a time of reduced productivity. Our brains do, figuratively, wilt. [more inside]
Music Videos Without Music
Crowdsourcing Support for Creators: "Is it idealistic? Hell yes, it is."
John and Hank Green of the Vlogbrothers have launched a new subscription service called Subbable, that aims to crowdsource support for content creators through direct payments, rather than through the typical model that uses advertising. Subscribers can pay nothing and still view the content, but those who opt to pay earn Perks from the channels to which they subscribe. Right now, the vlogbrothers' educational channel Crash Course is the only content available, although applications are being taken for other content creators to join...assuming it works with Crash Course. [more inside]
Scrapped but not forgotten
The Science Museum in London closed their Shipping Galleries in 2012, having been open for almost 50 years. But in case you missed it, here's a narrated short virtual tour, as it looked then. [more inside]
Playing with nukes and fire: online simulations of explosions and plumes
Alex Wellerstein, an historian of science who specializes in the history of nuclear weapons and nuclear secrecy, has put together two online maps mashups: NUKEMAP2, and NUKEMAP3D, which use Google Maps and Google Earth, respectively. With those tools, you can see the blast radius for nuclear explosions of your own design, or from one of the presets. But this doesn't get into dispersion of fallout. If you're interested in that kind of thing, you might want to see various smoke modeling tools, which are used for wildfire management. [more inside]
Something is going to happen in 77 days
Pronunciation Book (previously), a YouTube channel started in April 2010, is known for providing mostly-accurate pronunciation guides for difficult words: acacia, ouroboros, Tlaxcala. But on July 9th, the channel started posting something new: a countdown. [more inside]
Sad YouTube
Degrassi Panthers
Degrassi Panthers "Degrassi Panthers is a blog dedicated to mapping out the shoot locations of all 3 seasons of the Canadian TV series Degrassi Junior High."
So best not to think of a pink elephant
Of cats, rabbits and monstrous births, about the persistent Medieval/Early Modern belief that a woman's pregnancy could be influence what she gave birth too, as in the case of Agnes Bowker, who supposedly gave birth to a cat.
Yes, I am both a speedboat and a speed train.
In 1980, two years before her death, she was offered a short column in “Parade.” Here are some excerpts.
Ask Ayn, by John Hodgman. (SLNewYorker)
"This one is SUPER lucky!"
At the dawn of the millennium, Japanese society has suffered a severe economic collapse, leading to widespread youth apathy and 800,000 students boycotting school. Adult society sought to reassert their authority by passing the Millennium Education Reform Act, otherwise known as the BR Act. - a look at Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale.
He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount
Milwaukee Brewer Ryan Braun has been suspended for the rest of the season due to his involvement with a former "anti-aging" clinic called Biogenesis that allegedly supplied athletes with human growth hormone, anabolic steroids, testosterone, and other performance-enhancing drugs (Taiwanese animation video). Alex Rodriguez is expected to be suspended next, along with 15-20 other Major League Baseball players, with punishments expected to linger into the 2014 season.
Shooting Porn With Glass Is... Different
POV is a trick used in both Hollywood filmmaking and adult filmmaking to let the viewer feel like the camera’s eyes are theirs. The problem is, no matter how skilled the Hollywood cinematographer or the porn videographer, traditional POV shots don’t have a true lifelikeness because the camera is still too big to get intimate, close-up line-of-sight shots as we would see with our naked eyes. Glass changes that. And while the quality of Glass-shot video isn’t good enough for Hollywood blockbusters, it’s more than good enough for porn. [SLFC] [NSFW]
ROCKY: I mean, c’mon - do I look like a Rambo to you?
In 2010, six friends sat down to watch all four Rambo movies in one day. Inspired, they realized how f&%king awesome it would be if Rambo were to fight his doppelganger Rocky. They plotted the movie in five minutes, split up the writing chores, and each wrote a section, without any of them reading the others' work.
This is that story.
(Not the story of how they wrote it, but the actual script they wrote, Rocky Vs Rambo)
I cry all the time thinking of my child
The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit yesterday (after a long investigation) against the state of Florida alleging the state is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in its administration of its service system for children with significant medical needs. [more inside]
Metamorphosis
A celebration of geek girls in song
Nothing to Prove (SLYT) The Doubleclicks rebut the "fake geek girl" meme in this awesome song. [more inside]
Adrift in the Corporate Shuffle
It hit me this morning that perhaps all of my endless toil and hard work has landed me here. I've transferred so much within the company that all paperwork on me has been long since misplaced. I exist only in a computer program that spits out a 4 digit paycheck to my bank account every other Thursday - just another tick on the underbelly of the corporate warthog. Too senior to be fired, too misunderstood to be bothered, I am truly the forgotten employee.
getting old doesn't mean sex has to
The Hebrew Home in Riverdale, NY has a comprehensive policy regarding sexual expression. The policy, which appears to be the only one of its kind among U.S. residential facilities for the elderly, says that residents "have the right to seek out and engage in sexual expression,” including “words, gestures, movements or activities which appear motivated by the desire for sexual gratification." As Baby Boomers age and begin to enter nursing homes in greater numbers, they're taking their freer sexual attitudes -- and their Viagra-- with them. An 80-something resident of the Hebrew Home says "she’d love to have someone special in her life.
'You want to have someone to pat you, someone to hold hands with,' she said. 'Age should not be a barrier to anything.'"
This pain... it is a glacier moving through you
Glacier, the concluding track from John Grant's 2013 album Pale Green Ghosts is "the song that I wish I would have heard when I was a teenager". [more inside]
"superior in their natural gifts on the average to the mass[es]"
"In Victorian England, getting a job was all about who you knew, [but] Charles Trevelyan, the permanent secretary to the Treasury 1840-59, was horrified by the Barnacle types in the civil service, once describing a colleague, as a "gentleman who really could neither read nor write, he was almost an idiot"."
July 22
unravelling before our eyes
The Constant Traveler
Good to the last note.
After 35 years, Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ, is closing. Once called "the best club in New York" by New York magazine, Maxwell's was ground zero for "The Hoboken Sound", with such bands as The Bongos, The Feelies, and Yo La Tengo playing there frequently. It was also the setting for Bruce Springsteen's Glory Days video. [more inside]
'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result
"Poverty is a more powerful influence on the outcome of inner-city children than gestational exposure to cocaine." [more inside]
Ask First!
[NSFW] "Ask First! was written by J. Mary Burnet & Kaleigh Trace in response to Robin Thicke's gross, unconsensual song and video Blurred Lines... We don't want to have to listen to Robin Thicke tell us he knows we want it over such a damn catchy beat. We wanna dance to music that's sexy and radical." [more inside]
"Good food, good fun, and a whole lot of crazy crap on the walls"
The Right to Childhood Should be Protected.
Our Contemplation of the Cosmos Stirs Us
Cosmos returns in the year 2014. "A Personal Journey" becomes "A Space-Time Odyssey". Presented by Neil deGrasse Tyson and produced by Seth MacFarlane, Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey will be aired on FOX and follow a similar format to the beloved Sagan classic, available here.
Wait.. how did this get by unnoticed thus far?
Apparently, since 2012 there has been new series of Mysterious Cities of Gold (previously) in production. Acting as a continuation, as opposed to a reboot. No English versions available, yet. French trailer. French opening.
Chicken of the sea
Have sketchbook, will travel.
Drawn The Road Again , artist Chandler O'Leary's "illustrated road trip blog."
I’ve logged a lot of miles in my life, visiting as many patches of earth as possible and getting as much down on paper as I can. And for the first time, I’m putting these sketches out into the world. So here we are: I’ve collected all my drawings of crazy tourist traps and Paul Bunyan statues and hidden gems and panoramic vistas, and I’m sending them out like postcards. To you.[more inside]
Crowd-sourcing patent searches
"There are a lot of people complaining about lousy software patents these days. I say, stop complaining, and start killing them. It took me about fifteen minutes to stop a crappy Microsoft patent from being approved. Got fifteen minutes? You can do it too."
Software Patents previously: 1 2 3 4.
Joel Spolsky previously: 1 2
Robotic gymnasts made by hinamitetu
No. 16 makes the quadruple backflip look easy (YouTube), but robotic gymnastics don't always go so well (YT). [more inside]
You don't win friends with salad
Iowa State Fair officials have announced 10 new food options for the 2013 fair, in addition to the eight announced earlier this month. These include maple bacon funnel cake and deep fried prairie oysters, and join old favorites including deep fried butter on a stick, pork chop on a stick, and over 60 other foods (on a stick). [more inside]
Ghost Beach Is Closed Due To Jellyfish
"On my great steed Sabermetric, I venture forth to distant shores."
Nate Silver will move FiveThirtyEight to ESPN when his contract with the New York Times expires in late August. Silver's new site will look to Bill Simmons' Grantland as a model for existing under ESPN's umbrella. His new move could be "genius," with a role at ABCNews and a larger audience, but did the New York Times know what it had in Silver? ESPN press release & Nate Silver 2.0 quote
Hello extremely! I hope you like to *play*.
Stardock buys rights to Star Control from Atari and plans a reboot! In 1992, Accolade released one of the most greatestest, or at least silliest, space adventure games of totally forever: Star Control II. [more inside]
:( sad boys :(
The concept of 'Sad Rap' has recently been explored by two rappers: Little Pain (Soundcloud, YouTube video for "High Cry") in the United States, and Yung Lean (Soundcloud, personal site, and video of "Hurt" (the video is... amazing?)) of Sweden. Pain and Lean have been compared to Lil B for their similar outsider art perspective on the genre, with the distinction that sad rap tends to focus singularly on the emotion of depression. For further reading, Vice's Noisey music blog has been chronicling both Pain and Lean in these articles: Meet Little Pain..., Meet Yung Lean Doer.... The Strangest New Thing in Music or a Logical Next Step for Hip-Hop from Pigeons and Planes. Hip-hop blog Refined Hype has a reaction piece which questions the very concept of 'Sad Rap' as a genre: Stopping Little Pain & Sad Rap Before It Starts. Producer Suicideyear provides the low key, somber beats for both artists.
"I'll get up and bury this telephone in your head."
...that Kilimanjaro of garbage was no metaphor.
Sharin' Morningstar Keenan. Please remember that name.
For 30 years, an ex-con drifter from Saskatchewan named Dennis Melvyn Howe has eluded police in connection with the abduction, rape and murder of a 9 year old Toronto girl. In 2008, an Idaho man named Robert James Miller wrote two long, bizarre posts on the forum at unsolvedcanada.ca. He claimed to have identified Howe and turned him in after seeing a 1998 episode of America's Most Wanted. The FBI is now investigating the possibility that Miller himself is Dennis Melvyn Howe. [more inside]
He doesn't know that his old bone is captured by all these cell phones
An Astronomical Acid Trip
Enjoy 200,000 images of Saturn, its rings and moons taken by NASA's Cassini over 8 years compressed into 4 minutes of video.
To Secure, Contain and Protect
"I am absolutely clear that the state has a vital role to play."
Online pornography to be blocked by default in the UK, announces Prime Minister David Cameron in a speech today. Internet users will have to contact their ISPs to opt out of the filter. Possession of pornography depicting rape will also be illegal. Here is the full text of the speech. Coverage by The Independent, the Telegraph, and a shortened video of the speech at the Guardian. [more inside]
The Great Kate Wait almost over
Days after British and International news reporters and photographers started claiming space in front of the Lindo Wing at St. Mary's hospital, (some have been there since July 3, or 10 days before Kate Middleton's suspected due date of July 13), the "Royal Baby" is finally on the way now that the Duchess of Cambridge is reportedly in labor. Millions around the world wait for the birth of the newest addition to the Royal Family, who will be third in line to the throne of the British Monarchy, whether it's a boy or a girl.
The Last Days of Big Law
Of all the occupational golden ages to come and go in the twentieth century—for doctors, journalists, ad-men, autoworkers—none lasted longer, felt cushier, and was all in all more golden than the reign of the law partner. Noam Schreiber on The Last Days of Big Law: You can't imagine the terror when the money dries up. Former law partner Steven J. Harper, author of The Lawyer Bubble, believes the profession to be in existential crisis. Another former partner weighs in. Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein presents a more sanguine view.
"what defines truth in the digital age"
Economic Mobility in the U.S. Varies Geographically
A team of economists from Harvard and UC Berkeley studying the effects of tax expenditures on economic mobility has released data showing that economic mobility in the U.S. varies dramatically between different geographic areas. The authors' website includes a summary of their findings. According the NY Times article on the study, which has a nifty map and tools to play with the data, the authors only found relatively small correlations between tax credits for the poor and higher taxes on the rich and economic mobility. However, the following four factors did correlate with greater economic mobility in a region: the size and dispersion of the middle class, more two-parent households, better schools, and more civic engagement (measured through membership in religious and community groups). Matthew Yglesias comments on the study at Slate. [more inside]
All My Exes Live in Texts
When 772 pitches isn't enough
Tomohiro Anraki might be the next big Japanese pitcher, if he manages to survive high school baseball in Japan. [more inside]
Chomsky vs Žižek
People sometimes assume that because Chomsky is a leftist, he would find common intellectual ground with the postmodernist philosophers of the European Left.
Big mistake.
Slavoj Žižek Responds to Noam Chomsky: ‘I Don’t Know a Guy Who Was So Often Empirically Wrong’
Chomsky responds, "Žižek finds nothing, literally nothing, that is empirically wrong." [more inside]
You've ruined my dreams.
When Nada Al-Ahdal discovered that her parents had sold her she ran away. She is 11 years old, and this is her message. [more inside]
Chuck Feeney is
The billionaire who is trying to go broke. Chuck Feeney is the James Bond of philanthropy. Over the last 30 years he’s crisscrossed the globe conducting a clandestine operation to give away a $7.5 billion fortune derived from hawking cognac, perfume and cigarettes in his empire of duty-free shops.
July 21
Fuck the Super Gameboy
"Fuck the Super Gameboy": Why the Super Gameboy was awesome and why it crashed and burned. By Christine Love, creator of Digital: a Love Story and Analogue: a Hate Story. [more inside]
The Saga of Rex
The Saga of Rex First conceived as a comic in the anthology Flight, Michel Gagne (previously, previously) created a 5 minute animated short of the work after a successful Kickstarter..
Point Break or Bad Boys 2?
New language born in Australia's Northern Territory
There are many dying languages in the world. But at least one has recently been born, created by children living in a remote village in northern Australia. The language, called Warlpiri rampaku, or Light Warlpiri, is spoken only by people under 35 in Lajamanu, an isolated village of about 700 people in Australia’s Northern Territory. In all, about 350 people speak the language as their native tongue. Dr. O’Shannessy has published several studies of Light Warlpiri, the most recent in the June issue of Language.
“They feel like they were tricked or betrayed.”
Some Mormons Search the Web and Find Doubt
"The church is grappling with a wave of disillusionment among members who encountered information that sabotages what they were taught about their faith."
"The church is grappling with a wave of disillusionment among members who encountered information that sabotages what they were taught about their faith."
Paleopathology
CSI: Italian Renaissance. "Inside a lab in Pisa, forensics pathologist Gino Fornaciari and his team investigate 500-year-old cold cases." [Via]
Two lovers lay / In a field of tall wheat / Quietly comes the combine
The "sadistic verses" are a genre of Russian schoolyard rhymes marked by extremely dark humor. For example, "Two lovers lay / In a field of tall wheat / Quietly, quietly comes the combine / Grandmother spits out the cloth / She has found inside her bread." Unfortunately, English compilations are a bit hard to find. Here's a blog post by a Georgian (US state) who moved to Moscow and collected a few, and here's a more scholarly PDF which also quotes many examples. [more inside]
Alan Turing today. Oscar Wilde tomorrow?
Enigma breaker Alan Turing will be posthumously pardoned. Turing helped the Allies win WWII by developing the methods that broke the German Enigma code -- which didn't stop Britain from convicting him of gross indecency under anti-homosexuality legislation in 1951 and subjecting him to chemical castration. Two years later, he committed suicide by swallowing cianide. The British government has now "signalled that it is prepared to support a backbench bill that would pardon Turing."
OFWGK†Δ
“I’ve always said the rubber duck is a yellow catalyst."
Giant rubber duckie artist appalled at imitation giant rubber duckie. “Shanzhai does not thrive on creativity, it thrives on reaching those people who can’t reach the original product, either without geographic proximity or monetary power.” (via)
Mysterious elderly lady drummer identified as 63 year old Mary Hvsida
For a short while now, a mysterious older lady has been coming into the Coalition Drum Shop in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where she rocks out on the drums and then leaves. The folks at the shop only knew her as Mary, or Grandma Drummer (YouTube), whose song of choice is Wipe Out (YT). A local new station, WKBT, learned that the mysterious drummer is Mary Hvsida, a 63-year-old lady who has been drumming in bands since she was 16. They later reported that she started out in an all-girl rock band, and has been playing in various bands until 1990, when her last band broke up. She couldn't find another band to play in, so she sold her drums. She reminisces over old cassettes, and rocks out in the local drum shop from time to time.
Being in Solidarity with Monsters
China Miéville talks about Marxism and Halloween in a 39 minute audio recording from the Socialism 2013 conference organized by the International Socialist Organization. Miéville, Marxism, and the Fantastic previously (and many more)
Autism means friendship
Tommy Des Brisay is a Canadian runner and para-athlete living with autism. While running, Tommy often chants "I think I can...", recites lines from Disney movies, or sings. He has a YouTube channel where he posts his dances with Disney princesses and mini documentaries about his life.
The Case Against The Confederacy
Why “Libertarian” Defenses of the Confederacy and “States’ Rights” are Incoherent
There is a strain of libertarian contrarianism that holds that the Confederate States of America were within their “rights” to secede from the Union. Such contrarianism on this particular topic is detrimental to the larger cause of liberty because the logic of this argument relies upon relinquishing individual rights to the whim of the state. Indeed, as there is no legal or moral justification for supporting the Confederacy in the Civil War, it is impossible that there could be a libertarian one.[more inside]
In the realm of the Purple Emperor
In The Realm of the Purple Emperor:
As I’m sure many of His Majesty’s loyal followers will agree, there’s nothing we love more than to roll around in the mud, dust, dung, poo, shrimp paste, flies, spit and wee to get those highly coveted photographs. [more inside]
"Things my little sisters have made for their Barbies."
"They pay a lot of attention to detail." A DIY miniature world made out of household scraps.
July 20
On Alfred Mainzer Cats Dressed As People Postcards, Take Two
Well, as the old links are all now dead, I guess that it's time to repost On Alfred Mainzer Cats Dressed As People Postcards... [more inside]
What It Would Look Like If You Dropped Manhattan Into the Grand Canyon
Through the use of Photoshop, Swiss photographer Gus Petro shows us what it would look like if Manhattan was dropped into the middle of the Grand Canyon.
The Vegas Hotspot That Broke All the Rules
“What would happen if some of those ‘priests’ in white robes started chasing you at 60 miles an hour?” Frank asked. “What would you do?” And Sammy answered, “Seventy.” The Moulin Rouge: The Vegas Hotspot That Broke All The Rules. Smithsonian Magazine on the brief life but long-lasting legacy of Las Vegas' first racially integrated casino.
Italy is in deep, deep trouble. Who will save it?
Bill Emmott, former editor of The Economist, is an Italophile who could no longer stand by and watch the country he loves so dearly go down the tubes. [more inside]
China's Black Market City
Chen Mingyuan has lived here all his life, but he still gets lost every time he drives into Wenzhou. “All the roads in this town were built by businessmen, so none of them make any sense,” Chen says as we back out of what we just discovered is a one-way street. For the last 30 years, private citizens in this southeastern China metropolis have largely taken over one of the least questioned prerogatives of governments the world over: infrastructure. Is Wenzhou, the richest city in China's richest province, a libertarian paradise?
"But seriously, I actually have a way normal life for a teenage girl."
18 years ago yesterday, on July 19, 1995, Clueless was released in theaters. Directed by Amy Heckerling and based on Jane Austen's novel Emma, it became known for its fashion and quote-ability, and has an 81% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. [more inside]
San Diego Comic-Con Memories: more than just comics
If you look at the attendance of San Diego Comic-Con, you'll notice that it started shooting up in 2000, you might be tempted to think it was because Hollywood finally found Comic-Con. But you'd be wrong, and you'd be overlooking decades of movie promotions, from the first Superman trailer and the Alien promotion in the late 1970s, to the (mostly) cult films featured in the early 1990s. io9 has some images from the early days, and you can spend hours (or days) perusing through Comic-Con memories.
Writing On Not Writing
Comedian Stewart Lee gave an hour long talk earlier this year on the place of writing, or not writing, in standup comedy. Last week, the UK comedy website Chortle took some of his comments mentioning comedians who use writers, and stirred up a minor controversy. Lee has since released a statement to clarify the context.
Alas Smith
RIP Mel Smith, British comedian, actor, writer, director and producer. First coming to fame in the ground-breaking Not The Nine O'Clock News he went on to make Alas Smith And Jones with Griff Rhys-Jones. He produced many theatrical productions and directed several films including The Tall Guy and Bean. He also played the albino in The Princess Bride. (Previous) [more inside]
The Dean of the White House Press Corp
Helen Thomas (Previously and Previously and Previously), who covered ten different administrations in her 49 years in the White House Press Corps (and maintained her rabble rouser image with both Republican and Democratic administrations), has died at age 92.
The World's End
The First Post, The Old Familiar, The Famous Cock, The Cross Hands, The Good Companions, The Trusty Servant, The Two Headed Dog, The Mermaid, The Beehive, The King's Head, The Hole in the Wall, THE WORLD'S END
The Injured Coast
Teju Cole (previously) live-tweeted on Friday his trip across the Slave Coast from Lagos, Nigeria to Ouidah, Benin.
Not Lying
Saga, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples , has swept the Eisners, taking home awards for Best Continuing Series, Best New Series and Best Writer. Here's why you should be reading it.
The Maple Leaf, but not forever
Before the 1980 Act of Parliament which made O Canada the national anthem of Canada, the anthem was functionally God Save the Queen, but there was another patriotic song which served as the unofficial anthem: The Maple Leaf Forever. The song was written by poet Alexander Muir in October of 1867 to celebrate the confederation of Canada in July of that year and was famously inspired by a silver maple which stood in his front yard on Laing St in Toronto. Last night's storms brought the tree down, after a century and a half. [more inside]
London Underground in the 80s
Moog Family Feud
Robert Moog's personal archives of notes, plans, drawings and recordings were donated to Cornell University Library by his wife this week and will be housed in the library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.
The donation came as a surprise to non-profit Moog Foundation in Asheville, which led by one of his daughters and has spent the last 8 years preserving his archives of instruments, photos and papers, reel to reel tapes, recordings and prototypes, with preservation grants from the GRAMMY foundation and had been working towards opening a ""Moogseum"" with the archives.
A personal statement from Moog's daughter on the Transfer of Bob Moog's Archives. [more inside]
Chaconne from Bach's Partita no. 2 for violin, on the hammered dulcimer
Chaconne from Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita no. 2 for violin (BWV 1004), played on the hammered dulcimer by Mihail Leonchik. Youtube.
Neutrino and meson breakthroughs
While perhaps not quite as errm climactic as yesterday's news of pitch dripping in Trinity College, physics news dripping out of Stockholm reveals that
The Super Kamiokande T2K group has verified with great certainty that neutrinos oscillate among 3 flavors in flight (which could help explain what happened to the antimatter in the universe), and CERN has used the LHC to measure the decay time of the rare B sub s meson, ending a 25-year search.
July 19
"General Franco was supported by right-wing panties"
Times Higher Education compiles its annual exam 'howlers.'
Paths of ...
Illustrator and artist Andrew DeGraff (Tumblr, blog, personal site) has made detailed "treasure maps" out of movies.
Go Backwards
How War in Syria Turned Ordinary Engineers Into Deadly Weapons Inventors
Makers
of War. "The arms manufacturers of Aleppo used to be ordinary men—network administrators, housepainters, professors. Then came the bloody Syrian crisis. Now they must use all their desperate creativity to supply their fellow rebels with the machinery of death." [Via]
Where the water burns
From Slate's 'Behold' photo blog: This Is What Fracking Really Looks Like. See more of photographer Nina Berman's documentation of Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale region at her website collection called fractured: the shale play.
The Games themselves should be open to all
The International Olympic Committee has issued a statement acknowledging the new anti-gay laws signed by Vladimir Putin last month. The Sochi Olympic Games are set to open on February 7. [more inside]
You are a prominent businessreplicant in the money business.
Porpentine (previously) has deployed her impressive hacking skillz to circumvent copy protection and made available an edutainment game from times past: Ultra Business Tycoon III (NFO file) [content warning for suicide, violence] [more inside]
Killer Whale
The release today of the documentary Blackfish has SeaWorld, the setting of the documentary, in an unusually aggressive yet defensive public relations battle with the makers of the film.
The film centers on the orca that perform in captivity at SeaWorld, and explores the 2010 death of Dawn Brancheau by the actions of the orca Tilikum.
In January, the documentary series Frontline explored the world of captive cetaceans, particualrly at SeaWorld in their film, A Whale of a Business. [more inside]
Grace Lee Boggs on reimagining work, food, and community
Philosopher Grace Lee Boggs speaks on reimagining work, food, and community in Detroit. [more inside]
Dinosaurification
Challenge: draw a dinosaur body on cardboard and have your pet stick his head through it. The Best Western Denver Southwest facebook page is having a contest for pets as part of dinosaur drawings.
Steinway & Sons
#splitsontrees
#splitsontrees (SLYT)
We saw your boobs
"The high street is becoming a no-go area for kids, which is really unfair. Why shouldn't they be able to go into a supermarket, or a newsagent? The people who make the displays aren't thinking about it from a child's point of view. I don't think David Cameron goes to a supermarket with his kids very much." Following the No More Page 3 campaign and a backlash against lads mags, the Guardian asks readers to send in and comment on sexualised images of women on the high street. But is this just another form of censorship, hypocrisy, or even sexual repression?
Portraitlandia
Armed With Madness: Mary Butts, writer associate of Cocteau and Crowley
Mary Butts (1890-1937) was a British modernist novelist whose frequently overlooked writing has had a cult following largely composed of fellow writers such as Robin Blaser and Robert Duncan. [more inside]
BUST IN / HELL NO
A SPOOKTACULAR ADVENTURE - Alex Roberts' charming mostly-ghostly obscenity-laden, Choose Your Own Adventure game is just filled to bursting with spooks, ooks, and skeletons.
Pope to offer Indulgences to his Twitter followers
Needs more Colin James
Hypersexuality does not appear to explain brain differences in sex
A new brain study questions the existence of sexual addiction. The study, posted in the Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology, concludes that so-called "hypersexuality" does not appear to explain brain differences in sexual response.
Mad dogs and Englishmen
An unusually sustained heatwave oppresses the UK, as temperatures have climbed above 82 degrees Fahrenheit for 11 days, the longest hot spell since 2006. Roads melt in England and Wales, rail lines buckle in England and Scotland, hospital admissions spike and wildfires burn. Swimming-related, army training and heat-related, deaths have increased. The Met Office currently hold a Level Three Heat Advisory for several regions (Level Four is "National Emergency"), while tabloids indulge in traditional "England is hotter than {exotic place}" headlines. [more inside]
Darth Pooh, or Winnie-The-Vader
In the spirit of the classic* Satan-worshiping Winnie the Pooh clip [YT, some NSFW language], the voice actor Jim Cummings read some of Darth Vader's lines from Star Wars in the voice of Winnie the Pooh [YT, SFW] [more inside]
I have a bad feeling that a huge and horrible crime happened.
Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way
"My Immortal" has now been brought to life in the only way that could possibly do it justice. My Immortal is classic fanfic which has now been filmed. Special fangz (get it, coz Im goffik) to ONTD 4 helpin me wif da link and spelling.
Timothy Leary as proto-Transhumanist
A new biography of Timothy Leary by R. U. Sirius emphasizes a Transhuman Leary and his SMI²LE (Space Migration + Intelligence Increase + Life Extension) material. Excerpted and discussed on Kurzweil dot net. [more inside]
"You guys...you're all the same!"
While at Cal Arts, before blogs and websites freely shared content, as animation students we would watch short films in a dark cage like room called the Palace. Projected onto the wall we screened “rare” short films, on bulky ¾ inch video cassettes or on mystical DVDs that a teacher had brought in. Of all the shorts we watched in the dingy palace there was one that was etched in my brain as both brilliant and completely insane. It was called “The Big Story,” and it starred three stop motion versions of Kirk Douglas: one as the young up and coming hero, another as the star in his prime, and the third the wise but curmudgie old man. [more inside]
"I didn’t die?"
A Life-Or-Death Situation. "As a bioethicist, Margaret "Peggy" Pabst Battin fought for the right of people to end their own lives. After her husband’s cycling accident, her field of study turned unbearably personal." Via.
The Rains of Castamere
A while back folk duo Paul and Storm created a song 'Write Like The Wind' urging G R R Martin to finish A Song Of Ice & Fire aka Game Of Thrones as soon as possible. During a recent live performance of said song the duo experienced an interruption. MLYT (previous)
Devon, GET THE TABLE.
A 45 minute interview with pro wrestler Bully Ray. Also known as Bubba Ray Dudley of the Dudley Boys. [more inside]
And who shall I say is calling?
Once upon a time, the telephone was a strange, intimidating invention. So in 1974, the fine folks at the phone company made a short film to help children overcome their telephone-related fear and uncertainty. Taking their cues from children's entertainment, they tried to create a fun-filled land of song and dance, not unlike, say, Sesame Street. The end result was not exactly successful along those lines (it turns out that not even a catchy song can make the white pages exciting), but is no less compellingly, weirdly watchable for it. Come with us (and with Telly, a strange, merry man who kind of comes off like one of the Telephone Elves of the Eschaton) to the magical land of Telezonia.
Who By Very Slow Decay
A junior doctor writes about the experience of watching the slow deaths-by-old-age of the elderly. (see also How Doctors Die).
"Can you have it ready for this NFL season?"
The secret history of football's TV first down line.
I Come With The Property
At age 99, Mr. Newton still gets up and goes to work 3X a week. The company doesn't need him to do the work, and in fact the company didn't actually hire him. He showed up at age 86 on a Monday after the property had been sold. He worked for the previous owner, and he came with the property.
"... this alchemist in a jar."
"The mystery of mayonnaise... is how egg yolks, vegetable oil, vinegar (wine's angry brother) salt, sugar (earth’s primal grin-energy), lemon juice, water, and naturally, a pinch of the ol’ calcium disodium EDTA could be combined in such a way to produce a condiment so versatile, satisfying, and outright majestic, that mustard, ketchup and their ilk must bow down before it (though, at two bucks a jar, mayonnaise certainly doesn't put on airs) or else slink away in disgrace. Who but the French could have wrought this gastronomic miracle? Mayonnaise is France's gift to the New World's muddled palate, a boon that combines humanity's ancient instinctive craving for the cellular warmth of pure fat with the modern, romantic fondness for complex flavors: mayo (as the lazy call it) may appear mild and prosaic, but behind its creamy veil it fairly seethes with tangy disposition. Cholesterol aside, it projects the luster that we astro-orphans have identified with well-being ever since we fell from the stars." [more inside]
Save The Cat!
Why Every Hollywood Movie Seems Exactly The Same. - A look at the book that's become Hollywood's new bible.
Sins of the fathers?
The Drone That Killed My Grandson — Dr. Nasser al-Awlaki, Fulbright scholar, founder of Ibb University and former president of Sana University, served as Yemen’s minister of agriculture and fisheries from 1988 to 1990. His 16-year-old grandson Abdulrahman (an American citizen born in Denver, Colorado) was killed by an American drone strike in Yemen on Oct. 14, 2011, two weeks after his father Anwar was killed by a previous drone strike.
Back To The Buzz
The Charlotte Hornets are back! This may signal a return to the iconic teal and purple color scheme made so popular by Starter jackets.
In the desert, the line between life and death is sharp and quick
Unicef Sweden have developed a machine that turns sweat into drinking water. They are asking participants in the Gothia Cup to hand in their sweaty clothes to produce water and are hoping they will "drink some sweat to support clean drinking water. The expectation is to gather sweat from more than 70 different nations".
The goal is to raise awareness about the lack of clean water in the world, with the main purpose of raising money for water purification tablets for children. 780 million people still lack access to clean drinking water. [more inside]
The crumbs off his plate are the entire careers of other people.
Neil Degrasse Tyson waxes eloquent about Isaac Newton [chopped YouTube link, full length video 'SciCafe: Life the Universe and Everything' here] [more inside]
July 18
A Fieldguide for Female Interrogators
"10. Mild Non-Injurous Physical Contact: (i.e.,“a little bit of smacky face“) Unlike other forms of contact that lead to physical injury, sexual contact is unlikely to leave scars and is more likely to induce guilt that can be taken advantage of by a good interrogator." (NSFW) [more inside]
So much blood!
Viscera Cleanup Detail is a free PC game that casts as a space station janitor mopping up after a hero who left the station encrusted with gore. Via Gamers With Jobs' podcast on 'mundane games'. It's actually the third game about a space janitor, after Space Quest and Space Station 13.
‘the poor man’s atomic bomb’?
Book designs by Ellen Raskin
Ellen Raskin (1928-1984) is best known as a writer, author of The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I mean Noel) and the Newbery Award-winning The Westing Game. But she always considered herself an artist first. Raskin designed over 1,000 book covers, including the iconic original cover of A Wrinkle In Time, the edition of Dubliners you probably read in college, and the New Directions edition of a Child's Christmas in Wales (Raskin did the woodcuts on the inside, too; further appreciation here.) More Raskin covers are collected in this flickr set from Bennington College. [more inside]
Meet the Saugets
"We were basically incorporated to be a sewer." The small village of Monsanto, Illinois was incorporated in 1926 to be a low-regulated tax haven for Monsanto Company's chemical plants. These days it's named Sauget, after the family which runs virtually every aspect of it—its real estate, its minor league baseball team (which plays on Sauget Field), and several of its nightclubs, of which there are so many that they are collectively known as the Sauget Ballet. The town's pollution has led to numerous lawsuits, and inspired the song Sauget Wind by alt-country group Uncle Tupelo. [more inside]
Acid and Architecture
What Three Words
What Three Words has changed the complex numbers of zip codes and post codes, longitude and latitude, into three English words. [more inside]
Welcome to Pismodise
A healthy, inexpensive, environmentally friendly solution for housing millions of retiring baby boomers is staring us in the face. We just know it by a dirty name. How The Trailer Park Could Save Us All.
depending how far beyond zebra you go
Why would a liberal education, the deeper acquaintance with a number of diverse modes of symbolic production, enhance our freedom? University of Chicago sociology professor Andreas Glaeser, in his 2005 Aims of Education Address to incoming students, muses: How About Becoming a Poet?
Detroit Files for Bankruptcy
Detroit, the cradle of America’s automobile industry and once the nation’s fourth-most-populous city, has filed for bankruptcy. (NYT) The decision to file for bankruptcy makes this "the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in American history in terms of debt." (Previously) [more inside]
So much cute
Having a rough day? Have a live look in on these future labrador service puppies. With a webcam hosted by Explore.org (previously, with bears), Warrior Canine Connection is a non-profit that specializes in training service dogs for wounded veterans. [more inside]
20 Minutes Into The Future
"20 Minutes Into The Future" (full length film on YouTube) was a sci-fi telefilm with a dinstinctly dystopian/cyberpunk flair produced by Channel 4 in 1985 primarily known introducing the character Max Headroom. The character portrayed by Matt Frewer though popularly believed to be a fully computer generated personality, became something of a pop culture phenomenon. In the UK, hosting a music video block with no wraparound intro, which eventually evolved into more proper chat program The Original Talking Max Headroom Show. In the US, the characters popularity led to Max Headroom (full episode 1x01 "Blipverts") a sci-fi television series with a distinctly dystopian/cyberpunk flair that aired on ABC for two seasons 1987-1988.
People will move mountains to earn a gold star by their name.
Reflecting upon 14 years of blogging and observing internet communities, Anil Dash proposes 10 Rules of the Internet, based upon the lessons that he learned during that time. (via ★interesting; anildash previously on Metafilter)
We took a blood oath to do that back in the oddest year of all.
Donald Fagen and Walter Becker have given an interview to Rolling Stone to promote Steely Dan's upcoming tour. Becker and Fagen developed a reputation for messing with the media in the '70s, and Becker keeps the practice alive in this interview. [more inside]
"A very primitive form that quickly becomes predictable."
Can Photojournalism Survive in the Instagram Era? (single link Mother Jones via) "It is no accident that so much of the most important work by photographers [on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan] has been on veterans as they return to the United States—one has more freedom in how one photographs."
How a Wife Should Undress for Her Husband
A photo essay on the Allen Gilbert School of Undressing , as featured in the 15 Feb 1937 issue of LIFE Magazine (now LIFE.com). Burlesque empresario Allen Gilbert wanted to help save American marriages from the evils of ... sloppy undressing on the part of the wife. His answer? A specialized school to teach women to improve their "disrobing methodology."
At least, that's what Gilbert claimed; in reality, the school -- and the LIFE spread (you should pardon the phrasing) -- were elaborate promotions for his new burlesque revue, "Sex Rears Its Ugly Head."
"Joke or no joke, however, one thing is as true today as it was three-quarters of a century ago: whether one wants to make a buck publishing magazines, staging burlesque shows or fostering adult education, sex sells."
The pitch just dropped
The three most exciting words in science concern one of the longest running experiments of all time that finally produced a recordable result.
We've got five years, stuck on my eyes!
Download The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com Nearly 4000 pages of some of your favorite authors for free. [Past offers not valid in all countries. Sorry if yours is one of these.]
Quinologie
Quinologie: the cinchona and issues in the present state of science and commerce (1865). The book has 23 hand-colored and extremely detailed plates of the many different barks of the cinchona tree, the world's original source of quinine. Don't get too excited - it's literally just some pictures of bark. Pictures begin on page 51.
A Song of Our Warming Planet
"University of Minnesota undergrad Daniel Crawford did something very clever: He took surface air temperature data and converted them into musical notes, one for each year from 1880 to 2012, and played them on his cello." Direct Vimeo link.
Millions of Egyptian Demonstrators Vanish in a Puff of Logic
How far in advance was the coup in Egypt planned? After the army overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood president, gas shortages that had crippled Morsi's popularity magically disappeared, and a local billionaire bragged about secretly financing the opposition. The coup was predicated on enormous street protests that seemed to represent another revolution, but one analysis suggests that the army and opposition massively exaggerated the scale of the protests in order to justify the seizure of power. Egyptian liberals however, defend the overthrow, saying that 'democracy is not reducible to the ballot box.'
Showdown of the Original Songs
The term EGOT, popularized by 30 Rock, refers to winning an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony award. Only eleven people have done it. Composer Alan Menken, just nominated for an Emmy, could become the 12th. 30 Rock, oddly enough, happens to be nominated in the same category. [more inside]
To the Collapse
To imagine the scale, picture this: almost every city in Western Europe and North America destroyed. Not reduced, not scaled down. People-don't-live-here-anymore-just-ruins destroyed.Between about 1200 and 1150 BC, civilization in the northeastern quadrant of the Mediterranean collapsed. Mycenae and the other Iliad-era Greek city-kingdoms; the Hittite Empire; the Levantine possessions of New Kingdom Egypt—cultures which had flourished for five hundred years fell and dispersed within a single lifetime, their palaces razed, their every city toppled, burned, and abandoned. [more inside]
It's Better Up There
District 9 director Neil Blomkamp talks to WIRED about Elysium, District 10, Halo, his desire to buy a skyscraper and almost casting Eminem or Ninja from Die Antwood in Elysium's Matt Damon role.
From Pong to Pizza Entertainment: Nolan Bushnell and Chuck E. Cheese
Nolan Bushnell was a co-creator of Pong and Atari, and he also sold Atari arcade machines. When he noticed that he sold the arcade machines for $1,500 to $2,000 but the new owners would earn twice that much in the life of the machines, he started thinking of how to make an arcade destination that wouldn't compete with his arcade machine clients. His solution: a pizza parlor, with an arcade for the kids and an pneumatic-powered animatronic coyote mascot to fool the parents it was restaurant with free entertainment. The coyote became a rat named Chuck, and what was code-named Coyote Pizza was briefly renamed Rick Rat's Pizza, but the marketing department thought the name wasn't such a great idea, and instead we got Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater. [more inside]
So Much Blood
It felt like you were inside a Bruce Springsteen song
"Armed demonstrators had attempted to break into the building...."
"I was right. HE KNEW WHERE MATT DAMON WAS."
Erin Faulk (@erinscafe on Twitter) tells the surprisingly compelling tale of going on a quest to find Matt Damon in Morocco, just cuz. (SLStorify)
Somali-American Success Stories
Minneapolis photographer highlights Somali-American success stories
For years, any time photographer Mohamud Mumin turned to local television channels or to newspapers for news about the Minneapolis Somali community, what he found left him disappointed.
Mumin said the media highlights the dark side of the community and abandons the many success stories and positive contributions Somali immigrants are making in their new home -- a remark many in the community agree.
“There are many great things the community is doing,” he said. “Why can’t I see those stories in the media? Why only the negative ones?”
Mumin, 36, recently took matters into his own hands. In 2010, he began capturing the images of 13 Twin Cities Somali-American men, documenting their stories in “The Youth/Dhallinyarada,” a multimedia project that focuses on the effort these men are making to improve the lives of those around them. (“Dhallinyarada” means “the youth” in Somalia.)[more inside]
Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model!
Catherine Bennett is a Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model. Taking time out from her work as a palaeontologist, Bennett has released two songs to date: debut single Apathy and a follow-up, Animal Kingdom. [more inside]
Who are you? I really wanna know.
Between 1959 to 1970, late English film director Ken Russell (The Who's Tommy and Women in Love) created art documentaries for the BBC, many of them unusual adaptations of artists' lives. The documentaries included The Debussy Film, Dante's Inferno, Isadora, Song of Summer, and Always on Sunday. Bonus: Ken Russell in Conversation and Ken Russell at Work. Previously.
...never believing the people who think they have you figured out.
"It's his charm. It's his gift. It's his political liability, and it's part of an American conundrum. We beg for authenticity, and then when we get it, oh man, it's hilarious. [Vice President Joe] Biden can be fantastic when he's on his game. At the 2012 Democratic National Convention, his speech got higher Nielsen ratings than either Bill Clinton's or Obama's. He killed the debate against Ryan, pumped air back into a campaign deflated after Obama's miserable first performance against Romney. Watching those performances, it's almost impossible to see him as a person once crippled by speech."
What’s worse there, the sex or the pretending to be dead?
The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure [PDF, there is a Word file direct from the DoD] is 167 pages of stories of elaborate frauds, scams, and abuses of power in the US government. Interestingly, the sarcasm-filled document is also published by the US government, to help illustrate how government workers get in trouble. Freakonomics radio has a amusing and interesting discussion with the Encyclopedia's editor and founding editor [link goes to transcript]. [more inside]
Starcher Trek!
Simply Irresistible?
The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled that it is legal to fire someone for being too attractive. An Iowa dentist fired his assistant because his (unreciprocated) feelings of attraction to her might have tempted him to try to start an extramarital affair. The Iowa Supreme Court, an all-male body, determined that it was not a case of sex discrimination because it was based on feelings rather than gender. Many disagree, seeing it as a clear case of cultural, institutional, and even religious sexism (the firing was advised and encouraged by the dentist's pastor.)
The Life of an Admin in the IT World
Pee into Power
Scientists working at England’s Bristol Robotics Laboratory have developed a technique for converting urine into electrons, enough to power a cell phone.
July 17
GiggedIn
On 7 November, Florida rock band The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus begins its Australian tour in Brisbane…or Gold Coast…or Toowoomba…or Gympie. Dubbed the 'Choose our Adventure Australian Tour', the band will play where the most fans commit to attend, in a new spin on crowdfunding/crowdsourcing. Six shows are scheduled for the tour - but the band is leaving it up to the fans to decide (by 'pledging') where they will play on each date, using Australia’s GiggedIn startup. "When you pledge on GiggedIn, you enter your card details but you won’t be charged unless we confirm that the gig goes ahead in your city. If your winning city wins, your card will be charged and tickets will be sent to your email." [more inside]
All pants are off, but the music is on
a novel idea for saving arcade games
In 2007, the arcade cabinet industry was still bringing in $4 billion per year, although down from $8 billion in 2004. By 2012, revenues for coin-operated machines dropped to $35 million. The decline correlates well with the advent for the smart phone, which seems to have created less need for coin-operated distractions in the venues in which arcade games still resided. This opened the door for a novel new idea that the market seems poised to support: All You Can Arcade, which allows you to "have your favorite arcade games delivered to your living room for only $75 per month. ... No delivery or pickup fees, and keep the games as long as you want." It's like Netflix, but for bigger things.
He she m'lady & man
"Here's an idea: BMO, from Adventure Time, is expressive of feminism" PBSIdeachannel's Mike Rugnetta gives the rundown on how BMO's existence is a skilled potrayal of 3rd wave feminism.
"Not another word!"
Tywin Lannister's Dinner Party, an extremely awkward recut of an episode in Game of Thones, third season (no spoilers).
Don't put cheese on your clam pasta.
Food Police: The Rick Steves Episode Dastardly doings in Rome. (Single Link Vimeo Post).
What the Dickens!
Here is a follow up to a previous post: An interview with AD Harvey, the man behind the Dickens meets Dostoevsky hoax. [more inside]
Son of Stormfront renounces White Nationalism
Derek Black the infamous Don Black's son, today renounced White Nationalism, saying in a .pdf document sent to the Southern Poverty Law Center "I acknowledge that things I have said as well as my actions have been harmful to people of color, people of Jewish descent, activists striving for opportunity and fairness for all, and others affected." Stormfront has long been seen as the leading white supremacist Web site on the internet, often considered the first.
I've got 99 Flowers; My Man Mitch ain't one
The AP has obtained e-mails showing that Mitch Daniels sought to censor academic materials while in office. [more inside]
Dirty Coursebooks
As the pornography course is about to be opened in Spring 2014, we've came up with a selection of course-books for the upcoming students. [NSFW]
By Pavel Fuksa and Karolina Galácz
Street Style Singh Style.
"I quickly realised that none of the fashion sites I looked at ever featured a turbaned Sikh man," he says. "I wanted to give the turbaned Sikh man a fair representation within the fashion world, and also show the blend of British and Sikh identities together." Pardeep Singh Bahra of street fashion blog Singh Street Style, profiled in the Guardian.
It's been one of the most popular rides in the park
This escalator takes people both up and down. Megan Lee of the Casper Star Tribune updated her earlier report on escalators in Wyoming with a trip to the Hilltop National Bank (and Amusement Park.) Watch her escalate with abandon in the video.
These animals are swimming in some highly toxic water
For the past several months, manatees, dolphins, and pelicans have been dying by the hundreds in Florida's Indian River Lagoon. [more inside]
Basil Pao: The Man Who Shot Everything
Basil Pao (鲍皓昕) is a photographer, among other things. He's probably most famous for his involvement with Michael Palin's travel series.
He was featured in the fifth episode of Michael Palin's Around the World in 80 Days*. After that, he became the stills photographer for subsequent series of Palin's travels (Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Sahara, Himalaya, New Europe and
Brazil, so far). [more inside]
Shady Grove and Foggy Bottom sound like Westerosi names anyway...
You know how you had heard there was a cool video out there showing the growth and construction on Capitol Hill rendered in 3D animation and you were all, eh, I'll watch it once somebody puts it on the same page as the Game of Thrones theme so that I can get the full experience? Well now you have no more excuse.
"We’re going from Bergdorf’s to Filene's here."
The New York Times is reporting that state health insurance regulators have approved 2014 prices for individual health insurance (SLNYT) in New York State that are on average 50% lower than 2013 rates. [more inside]
Does Anything Go?
Don't Give Your Heart To Anyone
melon slices with Maya Angelou
What abortions should be like. A safe, comfortable place. Kind people (Maya Angelou, maybe, and Billy Joel playing piano). A room to cry if you need to. Another room with "all the little things you like, the things you use when you want to feel beautiful, if you’d care to go in. Or ... healthy. Or handsome. Or safe, or strong." A swan boat to take you home. And lovely, fragrant melon slices.
Rock Star Terrorist
The cover of the Rolling Stone has been a cultural touchstone for a long time. Now, the dreamy, tape-it-to-the-bedroom-wall worthy image of terrorist eye-candy, Jahar Tsarnaev, rocks the magazine's legendary cover real estate. Teenage girls swoon, others fret.
Drone bounty, no bag limit!
The town of Deer Trail, Colorado is considering hunting licences for federal drones. Deer Trail is a small town in the plains of Colorado east of Denver, and claim they are the home to the worlds first rodeo (though that's open for interpretation). They've decided they don't want drones, and offer a bounty for licensed hunters who bag a federal drone. The mayor of the town shows the proper technique for hunting them...
Thrift Lab
Thrift Lab. Leukemias, urine drug screens, cytology, grossing, frozens, and managing the blood bank... to Thrift Shop by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. By UF Pathology.
"...we should take a close look at repealing compulsory education."
Utah State Sen. Aaron Osmond (R-South Jordan) has introduced a proposal to abolish compulsory education for children in his home state. [more inside]
No one should ever go there. You know it's bad, bad, bad.
Internet legend Brad Neely, known for his songs about Washington and JFK, his explanation of Sodom and Gomorrah, and, of course, his masterful Harry Potter dub Wizard People, Dear Reader, has a show on Adult Swim, China, IL, that co-stars him (voicing his old characters), Greta Gerwig, and wrestling legend Hulk Hogan, who voices an extraordinarily violent and manly dean at "America's worst college." Four episodes are available for free streaming:
Rewind, Pause, Play — Ronald Reagan travels through time to shit in a professor's mouth.
Dean vs Mayor — The dean loses control of his college to the town's God-fearing mayor.
Baby Boom — A scientist (voiced by Arrested Development's Jeffrey Tambor) accidentally creates an enormous baby that kills people.
Coming out of the Casket — A recently-dead history professor comes back to life to hit on people. [more inside]
Rewind, Pause, Play — Ronald Reagan travels through time to shit in a professor's mouth.
Dean vs Mayor — The dean loses control of his college to the town's God-fearing mayor.
Baby Boom — A scientist (voiced by Arrested Development's Jeffrey Tambor) accidentally creates an enormous baby that kills people.
Coming out of the Casket — A recently-dead history professor comes back to life to hit on people. [more inside]
Lincoln Highway, the first (attempt at a) transcontinental US highway
On July 1, 1913, a group of automobile enthusiasts and industry officials established the Lincoln Highway Association "to procure the establishment of a continuous improved highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, open to lawful traffic of all description without toll charges," and to be a lasting memorial to Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln Highway efforts started about three years before the first federal road act would provide funding to states to improve the broad network of roads. Never officially finished, the first transcontinental highway eventually became renumbered as various interstate and US routes. To celebrate its centennial, there was a cross-country tour in June. [more inside]
Let your feet be well boiled. Take half a pound of them chopped small...
Tom Scott's Language Files
For several years now, Tom Scott, a young man in Britain, has mostly done silly, entertaining things on YouTube, things like, "Two Drums and a Cymbal Fall off a Cliff," "The Matt Gray High Five Face Off," "Robocoaster Challenge: Reciting Shakespeare while attached to a giant robot arm," "Google Glasses: A New Way to Hurt Yourself," and "Welcome to Life: the singularity, ruined by lawyers" (previously). But recently, he's done a series of videos that are interesting more than they're silly: eight videos which introduce linguistic concepts like phonotactics, clusivity & evidentiality, and the contrast between descriptivism and prescriptivism (he's decidedly the former, fyi).
There's nothing negative I can say about the transit system.
Darius McCollum was recently arrested in New York for stealing a Trailways bus. Evidently he drove the bus to a Manhattan hotel where he picked up a flight crew and drove them to JFK Airport. On the way back to a New Jersey bus depot, he was pulled over by the cops. This wasn't the first time Mr. McCollum was arrested while (unlawfully) transporting the public. In fact, it was the 29th time. [more inside]
Under the Dumb
Ken Levine's network notes for Under The Dome, perhaps not the best example of Stephen King's TV work.
We'd love to play the Rocky music for you but we couldn't afford it
The Mighty T is a super cute animated short film describing the work going on at the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research. It's purely PR, but it's a well done short animation for a great cause. Directed by Colin Hesterly, who also directed the adorable When I Grow Up [more inside]
"A bone-crunching slab of murky distortion ..."
Originally I used the word stonegaze to describe a crowd response after one of our first shows. It was like they had all just spent 30 minutes staring at Medusa. Shortly after that I used it again to describe our sound and it stuck.Dallas, TX band True Widow are a collaboration between a woodworker, a screenprinter, and a makeup artist. They're Cormac McCarthy fans. Together, they make heavy, hypnotic, jam-based music that takes as much from slowcore and shoegaze as it does from stoner rock. Their new album Circumambulation is now streaming via Pitchfork. [more inside]
And they rode on in the friscalating dusklight.
Everyone knows that this book isn't real. What this Goodreads entry presupposes is...
Take a sip from the soul
Rainn Wilson, former beet farmer and paper salesman, interviews friends in the back of his traveling magical van. Questions focus on belief, the meaning(s) of life, life after death, and other oft-overlooked topics. Features exploding blenders, beards intertwining, suspenders, chess-related nightmares, chicken burgers, and more. (youtube channel) (previously)
July 16
Some Thoughts On Mercy by Ross Gay
One song, made up of 26 different music genres from A - Z
So Where Are They?
The Fermi Paradox poses the question, if intelligent ETs exist why haven't they shown up yet. Now a new mathematical study shows that self-replicating probes using sling-shot maneuvers (paper) could explore the entire galaxy in just 10 million years. Perhaps they're already here, hiding, waiting for our technology to reach a level that can de-cloak them.
Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth.
Thomas Oliver - Jurassic Park Theme (Weissenborn Instrumental)
"Hint: It's not about the kids."
In 2002, now-disgraced stock analyst Jack Grubman (previously) was the central figure in a preschool-placement scandal in New York's famously Wall Street connected 92nd Street Y.
The Price Of Perfection
The Price Of Perfection
Something to crow about
2,800 miles in 62 days.
At 9:45am on July 14, 2013, Alison Bradley met her mom on the steps of LA's City Hall and had a beer. Why? She'd just (unofficially) broke the previous World Record for a a Transamerica Run by a Female. Running mostly unaccompanied, Bradley covered 2,800 miles in 68 days (and burned through 6 pairs of shoes), starting at New York's City Hall. Why? Cancer research. [more inside]
yo dawg
Quine Relay. A quine is a program that produces its own source code as output. This is what happens when you write a program that outputs the source of a program in another language, that outputs the source of a program in another language, and so on through fifty different languages until you get out the source of the program you started with.
Dear Mr. Watterson
Joel Schroeder, with the help of Kickstarter, has finally finished a documentary about Calvin and Hobbes and its creator, Bill Watterson. It's scheduled to be released on Nov. 15, 2013.
A year of reading the world...
Writer Ann Morgan set herself a challenge – to read a book from every country in the world in one year. She describes the experience and what she learned. Here is her blog
uuuuuuuuAH? aaaaaaarooh? ooooooogh? however the hell you spell it...
Every Grunt from Home Improvement (SLYT, 14:37).
Dear Daily Mail, Up Yours
Dear Daily Mail [NSFW]. Recently the Daily Mail covered Amanda Palmer's breast being "left on show" while she was on stage at the Glastonbury festival. Amanda responds with a (sung) open letter.
whatever Mick was saying, it was a conversation with him
Spin magazine's GIRLY SHOW: The oral history of Liz Phair's 'Exile in Guyville.' It's 20 years old now. [more inside]
"Two please."
Movies in movies: A montage (SLYT).
"debates on politics, culture and society"
Symposium Magazine bills itself as "where academia meets public life". Its promotes long-form, accessible articles about a variety of topics.
The 25 Best Action Movies Since Die Hard
"A quarter of a century ago this week, John McTiernan’s action masterpiece Die Hard was released into theaters, and it's not an understatement to say that we're still reeling from the impact .... For the past few months, I’ve been watching and/or rewatching almost every major action movie made since then in an attempt to come up with the best ones. The good news is that a lot of awesome action movies have been made over the past 25 years. The bad news? Not all of your favorites will be on this list." [more inside]
The ship will suck us!
What if the movie Titanic was translated into Japanese with a crappy online translator then translated back into English?
Japanese Titanic, that's what.
Snapshot in the family album
Pink Floyd's The Division Bell tour in 1994 was the highest-grossing tour in rock music history to that date, and featured spectacular special effects. For the first time since 1975, the band played the entirety of The Dark Side of the Moon in many of the tour's shows. On October 20, 1994 the concert at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre in London was filmed, and the subsequent documentary P•U•L•S•E: Live at Earls Court was released in 1995. Fullscreen. Widescreen. [more inside]
Ping pong will never be the same
Dynamic target tracking camera system keeps its eye on the ball - motorized mirrors track a moving object of interest every thousandth of a second, reflecting its image into a camera
A Beautiful Angel
Talia Castellano , the 13-year-old terminal cancer patient whose makeup tips made her a YouTube star, an honorary Cover Girl and a guest on Ellen DeGeneres's talk show, has died at age 13. [more inside]
Dogs and water
Here is a video of a dog + some water. Here is another video of a dog + some water. Here is a third video of a dog + some water.
Music Bender
Curiosity piqued by the music behind Avatar: The Last Air Bender, Avatar: The Legend of Korra, or Kung Fu Panda: Legend of Awesomeness? If so, then you may already be fan of the work of Jeremy Zuckerman, one half of the music and sound design production company, Track Team. [more inside]
The Slandering of NY Jet Oday Aboushi
In the fifth round of the NFL Draft, the NY Jets selected a guard/tackle from the University of Virginia. His name is Oday Aboushi. While not a first round pick, Aboushi has garnered a lot of media attention.
Why? Oday Aboushi is a Muslim Palestinian.
MLB.com's New Media Coordinator Jonathan Mael compared Aboushi to Aaron Hernandez,the former New England Patriots tight end charged with murder. [more inside]
Trouble on the International Space Station
“Imagine having a fishbowl on your head with a half a litre of water sticking to your face, ears and nose. Then imagine you can’t take the fishbowl off your head for a minimum of 20 minutes, feel the panic?”
ISS astronaut Luca Parmitano developed a water leak in his helmet shortly after beginning a spacewalk, but is fine now.
ISS astronaut Luca Parmitano developed a water leak in his helmet shortly after beginning a spacewalk, but is fine now.
Do the Fiveish, Oorah!
Oorah is a non-profit Jewish organization providing year-round activities and educational opportunities to Jewish children and families (including funding for Kars4Kids. But they also have some amazing videos on YouTube.
We do the weird stuff!
The mad doctor is (temporarily) out. Five years ago this week, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog went live, in three separate acts. Since then, there has been confirmation of plans for a sequel dating back to April 2009 -- and July 2011 -- but something always seems to come up... though Mr. Wheadon did have time to perform live, singing commentary on his project, which led to the recording of "Commentary" in 2010, reuniting the cast. Felicia Day, Jed Whedon, and even Nathan Fillion seem a little bit less busy, however... welding kid-toting robots and preparing for the zombie apocalypse.
Giant Concrete Arrows That Point Your Way Across America
He listens to people a lot and uses his brain
I'm here today to help prevent Egypt from becoming a commodity owned by one person. A 12-year-old Egyptian comments on the political situation in his country. (SLYT)
Titum Arum Watch 2013
Washington DC's Botanic Gardens is livestreaming the blossoming process of its corpse flower. The corpse flower, aka titan arum, is well known for smelling absolutely awful. [more inside]
Lovin' It: Minimum wage budgeting without heat, food or gas.
McDonald's has a new website dedicated to showing employees how to properly budget their paychecks. Death and Taxes takes a look and concludes: "McDonalds' suggested budget for employees shows just how impossible it is to get by on minimum wage." It also notably excludes heat, food and gas.
"Hold my beer and watch this" said the CERN guy
Black holes are one of the most interesting, mysterious and cool things in the universe. So, why dont we make one in a lab? [more inside]
I'm me :D
What kind of pants does Super Mario wear? Denim Denim Denim
Nintendo's Famicom (the Japanese counterpart to the NES) launched in Japan three decades ago this week. Ars Technica and NintendoLife have posted tributes and history lessons of this console.
Corey Feldman - Ascension Millennium
Corey Feldman is probably most widely recognized as a child star of the 1980s, but since then he has branched out into music. Yet with two group albums and two solo albums, his only music video appearances have been cameos (Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night" [Funny or Die] and Mac Miller's "S.D.S." [YouTube]). That is, until now: "Ascension Millennium" (YT) is the first song off his forthcoming album, and it's "a musical journey through his 'Feldmansion' in this Day in the Life Adventure," complete with an appearance from his pal Sean Astin from "The Goonies" and tributes to Michael Jackson. [more inside]
Ah! They DO have a name!
Fixed that for you, Alanis
It's finally Ironic. Rachael Hurwitz fixes the lyrics to Alanis Morisette's "Ironic" to make them, y'know, actually ironic. (SLYT.)
Big Bad Bag Boys
Last month, New York PBS affiliate WNET launched a subway ad campaign that promoted several fake but totally plausible reality shows, to poke fun at the state of Cable TV. To follow up on the successful campaign, yesterday, the network released 3 TV spots with a similar theme. (Kinda previously...)
"The alphabet? You'd better learn to listen, kid."
Life in Five Seconds
The summer sexism was called out?
There have been some high profile examples of sexism in the UK media this summer. Are we seeing a groundswell of strong female voices calling out sexism? Big Brother has in the past caused the UK media to focus on uncomfortable issues such as bullying and racism. Following the removal of a housemate for aggressive behaviour towards a fellow female housemate, how will the conversation continue this summer? [more inside]
July 15
"Oh, no, we can't get that. Doesn't have a jingle."
Pining for Audrey Hepburn's unfulfilled destiny as a flight attendant?
Ever wanted to hear Judy Garland sing the Cream of Wheat jingle, or appear on Hollywood Hoarder, or go to the Piggly Wiggly with her daughter? The Punchy Players are here to answer your prayers!
Meet co-creators Chris and Jeff, who have been goofily re-imagining Old Hollywood icons since 2009.
There’s nothing about Brian Wilson that isn’t tragic
Punish the perpetrator, not the victim
"In reality, it's surprisingly hard to stop someone who really wants to murder you, especially if he has easy access to a gun. Restraining orders don't create a magic force field around the victim. Shelters help, but they are underfunded and depend on the victim giving up substantial rights to hold a job (which gives the abuser the ability to find you), have a social life, or even speak to family members," writes Amanda Marcotte, before summarising a Domestic Violence High Risk Team model of monitoring and escalating controls on the abuser, not the abused. Plus, the approach appears to be making a difference. [more inside]
ring of fire
A truck carrying 119 gas cylinders caught fire after colliding with a bus carrying 28 people on Moscow's Ring Road. The truck driver had minor injuries and everyone else escaped unharmed. Then the cylinders began exploding.
World's Finest
DC has uploaded tons of DC Nation animated shorts to YouTube Including My Little Pony creator Lauren Faust's Super Best Friends Forever (previously). Not yet included: Robert Valley's super awesome 70s Wonder Woman.
Is it blissful?
Deafheaven are a black metal/shoegaze/post-rock/emo/ambient/pop-metal/what-have-you band from San Francisco. The band consists of vocalist George Clarke and guitarist/songwriter Kerry McCoy and are signed to Deathwish Inc. [more inside]
"align the nation’s political landscape with its natural resource base"
our highly speculative proposal for the reconfiguration of the political geography of the United States to better conform to the spatial distribution of various water resources, such as rivers, aquifers, and man-made infrastructures.[more inside]
Debo Band: Ethiopian pop, and then some
Debo Band's Ethiopian pop music mixes traditional folk music with American soul and funk rhythms. Listen to their critically acclaimed self-titled album from 2012 for gems such as Akale Wube, Not Just a Song, Asha Gedawo, And Lay and Habesha.
Gumshoes are on the case
Someone is cleaning up part of the Gum Wall, a 100-foot (ish) stretch of Post Alley (between Pike St. and Union St.) beneath the Seattle's Pike Place Market. (wikipedia)
Begun in 1993 around the entrance to the Market Theater, the city's most unhygienic visitor attraction is a brick alley covered on both sides, from toe to a considerable heights, with wads of chewed gum. [more inside]
The Last To Die
For their new album and new tour, Pet Shop Boys have recorded and are performing a cover of Bruce Springsteen's 2008 song The Last To Die.
Cold Chain
"The diet of the average American is almost entirely dependent on the existence of a vast, distributed winter--a seamless network of artificially chilled processing plants, distribution centers, shipping containers, and retail display cases that creates the permanent global summertime of our supermarket aisles." -- The Atlantic
The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw.
Jack Handey Is the Envy of Every Comedy Writer in America. The New York Times profiles funny guy Jack Handey as his first work of fiction, The Stench of Honolulu, goes on sale tomorrow. (Read the first three chapters here.) Handey, of course, is best known for his Deep Thoughts, and for his SNL sketches, including the classic Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. He's also a hilarious essayist: some of my favorites include What I'd Say to the Martians, Ideas for Paintings, My Nature Documentary, The Plan, and How I Want to Be Remembered.
Going green
If anything can turn Westerners on to entomophagy for sustainable protein (or just the perfect beer snack), surely it's an attractive, well-designed kitchen appliance. Introducing LEPSIS, a modular terrarium for growing grasshoppers as a food source in an urban home. Nominated for the 2013 INDEX: Award.
That's no moon...
The 14th moon of the planet Neptune has been confirmed. New Scientist: "...its existence is an enigma. The object, known for now as S/2004 N1, is the first Neptunian moon to be found in a decade. Its diminutive size raises questions as to how it survived the chaos thought to have created the giant planet's other moons." [more inside]
Vaccines: How Do They Work?
Noted anti-vaccination activist Jenny McCarthy is going to replace Elizabeth Hasselbeck as The View's newest panelist. So, now, she can take her anti-vaccine roadshow to the masses. Even though she admitted that her son never had autism.
A Slate columnist is even trying to petition The View to not hire Ms. McCarthy.
"Is this the justice we want?"
The Flying Man. A short film about superheroes, criminals, and the idea of justice.
Served with softened rice poles.
Communication not as a state of emergency.
Love is abundant, and every relationship is unique. Love and respect instead of entitlement. Find your core set of relationship values. Heterosexism is rampant and out there, but don’t let fear lead you. Build for the lovely unexpected. Fake it til’ you make it. Trust is better. Change through communication. Customize your commitments. The Short Instructional Manifesto for Relationship Anarchy by Andie Nordgren.
The terrible and wonderful reasons I run long distance
Love that Dirty Water....no, really, dive in!
For the first time since the 1950s, Boston's Charles River opened for public swimming. [more inside]
Smells like wet bear
Boring day job? Watch a grizzly bear hunt for salmon at Brooks Falls or the Lower Brooks River in Katmai National Park, Alaska. [more inside]
Nadezhda Popova "Night Witch" Dies at 91
The Nazis called them “Night Witches” because the whooshing noise their plywood and canvas airplanes made reminded the Germans of the sound of a witch’s broomstick.
Ms. Popova was a member of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment of the Soviet Air Forces during WWII. Composed entirely of women, most in their teens and early 20's, the Night Witches flew over 23,000 missions with only 40 2-woman crews. Popova herself flew over 850 missions and was shot down several times.
Orange is the New Black
New Netflix original series "Orange is the New Black", based on a memoir by Piper Kerman about her year in a women's prison, and created by Jenji Kohan of Weeds, has been garnering heaps of critical praise.
Plus, it's super gay.
Of the show's "naïve yuppie" lead character, Jenji Kohan says "I don't think I could have sold a show about black and Latina and old women in prison, you know? But if I had the girl-next-door coming in as my fish out of water, I can draw a certain audience in through her that can identify with her, and then I can tell all of these stories once she's in, once we've signed onto this journey. She's just a great entry point for a lot of people."
The Egg Hunters
Who watches the watchers?
Mark Holman was a severely disabled teenager who had been living in an institution since his mother became ill. Upon her death, her lawyer petitioned for his guardianship before Judge Kristen Booth Glen, who asked a simple question: when did you last see Mark?
"I haven't seen him since he was eight or nine," responded the lawyer. "His mother used to bring him to our office with his brother, just to show him my face and so forth and so on, so I haven't seen him probably since 1995 or 1996."
Appalled by both the poor standard of care in Mark's case and the breathtaking lack of regulations compelling anything better, Judge Glen set about writing an opinion that would change the way trusts for people with disabilities are managed in New York State in very, very significant ways.
Cory Monteith, dead at 31.
Cory Monteith, star of Glee, was found dead yesterday in a Vancouver hotel room.
Although it will take some time for the autopsy results to become available, the police do not suspect foul play, and most media outlets have been referring to Monteith's history of substance abuse as a likely cause of his unexpected death. Unlike many other young stars, his struggle with addiction began long before fame hit, as he first recounted to Parade Magazine in 2011. This past March, he voluntarily checked into rehab for a second stint. After the release of the article, he spoke with George Stroumboupoulos to discuss his reasons for disclosing his past mistakes in such a public way.
Early during the show's first season, Monteith recorded a video diary of his first trip to New York City.
The Talk: how to de-escalate a situation, for young people of color
"It's a lesson that many of us got from out folks at some point, often before we got that other uncomfortable parent-child conversation about the birds and the bees. Don't move suddenly. Answer questions clearly, and with yes, sir and no, sir. Don't raise your voice. If you're handcuffed, don't say anything until we [your parents] get there. The details differed depending on where you lived and your parents' particular concerns, but the point was for us to get through any encounter with the police without incident." [more inside]
"Hey nerd, wanna see some magic?"
Soviet Futurism
Tekhnika Molodezhi was the Popular Mechanics of the Soviet Union. The magazine, whose name means Technology for the Youth, had illustrations of everything from space stations, computerized farming, transport of the future, friendly robots, to more abstract images. If you don't want to hunt through the archive, Mythbuster's Tested website has a gallery of 201 great images from the magazine.
Thom Yorke to leave Spotify
"The music industry is being taken over by the back door. And if we don't try and make it fair for new music producers and artists, then the art will suffer. Make no mistake. These are all the same old industry bods trying to get a stranglehold on the delivery system." [more inside]
July 14
Who Ruined the Humanities?
So you see, I am not making a brief against reading the classics of Western literature. Far from it. I am against taking these startling epiphanies of the irrational, unspoken, unthought-of side of human life into the college classroom and turning them into the bland exercises in competition, hierarchy and information-accumulation that are these works' mortal enemies. An essay by Lee Siegel (SLWSJ)
anthropomorphised animals
Good evening, boils and ghouls!
Spooktacular is a blog dedicated to preserving the history of the Horror Host, old and new.
PBJ 2.0 & the chick-check apple
My dad made me a pbj 2.0 when you close it you get 9 different flavor combos. 1
My brother uploaded the pic of the PBJ 2.0 yesterday, here's another creation my dad always made for us, the "chick-check" apple 2 [more inside]
The Build
Explore the world of custom motorcycle making through the stories of three independent builders in Portland, Oregon [more inside]
To get married, they left Ohio
New York was the closest to drive to, but they’d both need to be there for the license and return for the wedding. Out, they decided. California and Washington, and the knot of northeastern states that have legalized same-sex marriage, were too far. Maryland required only one partner to come for the license. Then a 48-hour waiting period. It was an hour and 10-minute flight. This might work, they decided: A destination wedding in Baltimore.
COMEDIANS IN CARS GETTING COFFEE
It has been mentioned before around these parts, but COMEDIANS IN CARS GETTING COFFEE is now into Season Two, and it's just wonderful. Concept: Each episode, Seinfeld picks up a friend in one of his many, many cars, they go get coffee, and along the way they talk. And that's it. My favorite episode: Alec Baldwin.
Turn Around, Go Home, and Never Return to This Place
What we saw was... something else. A drugged-out looking dancer in a white thong, white athletic socks, and white sneakers marching in place on a lighted platform. Just marching, marching. Sometimes he would lift his stiff arms and make grabby hands at the old dudes watching him. The best part was the CD player was broken, so "Don't Cha?" by the Pussycat Dolls played on repeat. Marching, marching, marching. One Star Yelp Reviews Of Strip Clubs
Are you being served?
A survey by a high-end estate agent has revealed that there are more domestic servants in the exclusive London district of Mayfair now than 200 years ago, and indeed, in the élite London neighbourhoods which have been bought up by absentee oligarchs, often only the lights in the servants' quarters are on at night. For those who fancy a life of serving the super-rich, there are courses to prepare them for catering to their masters' exacting whims. But it's not all rosy at the top; the prices of luxury goods (including foie gras, Patek Philippe watches, paintings by artists such as Cézanne and Rothko) in the basket used to calculate the Affluent Luxury Living Index have been rising at a rate exceeding inflation.
The 14th July 14th
Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
The jury's in... and they can't deny that view, either.
A month after its release, Naughty Dog's sweeping interactive epic The Last of Us is being hailed as one of the best games of all time, with perfect scores even from notoriously demanding critics.
Inspired by an eerily beautiful segment from the BBC's Planet Earth, the game portrays an America twenty years after a pandemic of the zombiefying Cordyceps fungus (previously), leaving behind lush wastelands of elegant decay teeming with monsters and beset by vicious bandits, a brutal military, and the revolutionary Fireflies.
Into this bleak vision of desperate violence journey Joel, a gruffly stoic Texan with a painful past, and his ward Ellie, a precocious teenager who may hold the key to mankind's future.
Boasting tense, immersive gameplay, compelling performances from a diverse cast, a movingly minimalist score from Oscar-winning Gustavo Santaolalla, and an array of influences from Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men to Cormac McCarthy's The Road, it's already being slotted alongside BioShock Infinite and Half-Life 2 as one of modern gaming's crowning achievements. And while it's hard to disentangle plot from action, you don't have to buy a PS3 to experience it -- YouTube offers many filmic edits of the game, including this three-hour version of all relevant passages.
And don't miss the 84-minute documentary exploring every facet of its production. [more inside]
Just Run That Escape Plan By Me Again....
"It's almost tragic that the most badass escaped slave story most people know is Django Unchained. Because in real life, not only did slaves frequently escape, but they often did it without help from free whites, and without murdering several hundred people. Instead, what they had was cleverness and the audacity to try ridiculous plans that by all rights should never have worked." [SLCracked but a decent effort]
He Loves It That Way
What happens when the executive director of your lobbyist organization is hosting the national conference with a technical theater degree burning a hole in his pocket? A bewildering and Christopher Guestian piece of musical theater called "I'm In Payroll."
First!
"Just setting up my twttr". This Was First archives the first posts on some of the world's biggest websites. (Metafilter is sadly absent from the archive.)
July 13
Zimmerman acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin
After more than 16 hours of deliberating, a six-woman jury in Florida has acquitted George Zimmerman in the murder of Trayvon Martin. Many commentators are outraged by what they see as another failure of the criminal justice system to deliver justice for an African-American. Others point out that this verdict depended on the unique nature of the law in Florida.
Changing the Creepy Guy Narrative
How being a writer helped me rewrite a sexist trope...for real. Submitted for your approval: a writer (Chris Brecheen) uses his narrative skills to turn the tables on an everyday creeper.
"No doubt about it, journalists are targets now,"
Shooting The Messengers
So, what guides a journalist's decisions in these unlovely places? The frequently repeated maxim that "no story is worth dying for" rings a little hollow. The awkward truth is that, in this field, personal bravery is simultaneously discouraged and rewarded.[more inside]
Earplugs and PVA Glue
"In a rare feat..."
The pseudonymous author behind the critically-acclaimed mystery novel The Cuckoo's Calling has been outed. And it's J. K. Rowling.
How Redditgifts is making money on altruism
Does giving gifts to strangers make you happier? The people behind redditgifts think so, and are trying to monetize it.
Forensic Topology
Forensic Topology. "In his 2003 memoir Where The Money Is: True Tales from the Bank Robbery Capital of the World, co-authored with Gordon Dillow, retired Special Agent William J. Rehder briefly suggests that the design of a city itself leads to and even instigates certain crimes—in Los Angeles’s case, bank robberies. Rehder points out that this sprawling metropolis of freeways and its innumerable nondescript banks is, in a sense, a bank robber’s paradise. Crime, we could say, is just another way to use the city."
The True Cost of Living Here
This Atlantic article about the EPI Family Budget Calculator tries to calculate the required income to live a comfortable yet modest lifestyle in various parts of the US.
An Enormous Waste of Time
Clocks By Time: for when you absolutely, positively need to find multiple photos of clocks from around the world displaying every conceivable time. [more inside]
Where did the Boiled Hot Dog Go?
Scorekeeping at baseball games is becoming a lost art. Many other traditions are vanishing from professional baseball as well. "Other traditions lost from our list included boiled hot dogs taken from tepid water and slathered with mustard by vendors, and dugout agitators formerly known as “bench jockeys,’’ and bad-breathed managers such as Billy Martin and Earl Weaver kicking dirt on umpires, while league officials look at it as entertainment."
Transit Activity Data Visualizations - Now With Muzak!!
Pour Yourself An Old Spanish And Close The Door
We've seen the cast of AMC's Mad Men be Mean Girls and an international spy agency, but what if the gang moved across the street to 30 Rockefeller Plaza? (via)
You Are Not an Artisan
"So long as you stop thinking in terms of crafts and aim to practice a trade instead, there is more work for humans than people realize... When people talk about saving work or jobs, they mostly talk about saving sexy, income-generating conspicuous production packaged as creative work, in a debt-fueled de facto leisure society."
Writer and speaker Venkatesh Rao weighs in on the difference between "Sexy Jobs and Schlub Jobs," and what it means for the future of work. For a slightly different take, see The Death of the 'Prestige Economy'…
Fred Ni, dog publicist...
The dog "basically just sat in that Quebec shelter for over a year and no one looked at it... And overnight here – I post about it, 8 people show up - and it gets adopted the next day." Fred Ni, who blogs at Pound Dogs, talks with the Toronto Standard.
Welcome to Fhloston Paradise (among other places)
In the mood for some ginormous LEGO dioramas from beloved films? Of course you are! Besides the usual suspects of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Batman, there are some equally impressive projects to be found based on Logan's Run, The Fifth Element, 300, Mothra, and even The Wizard of Oz.
Who Edited Shakespeare?
New technology has changed scholarship. Whereas previous generations of experts have sought to reconcile the differences between quarto and Folio, current thinking highlights the difficult relationship between the various incarnations of Shakespeare's texts, something made easier by the availability of rare Shakespeare quartos in digital databases such as Early English Books Online. The scholar Eleanor Prosser thus detects "considerable evidence" for the elimination of metrical and stylistic "irregularities" in the Folio: short lines are lengthened to 10 syllables, verbs agreed with subjects, double negatives resolved. In addition, a range of unusual words are added to the text, words not used elsewhere by Shakespeare. Prosser concludes: "somewhere behind the Folio … lies a conscientious and exacting editor with literary pretensions", albeit one "more experienced in the transcription of literary than of theatrical works". But who was it?—Who edited Shakespeare? by Saul Frampton. [more inside]
The art of Jost Amman: woodcuts, some pared with poetry by Hans Sachs
Jost Amman (1539 – 1591) was a Swiss artist, best known for his woodcut illustrations. He was a prolific artist, with some 1,500 prints attributed to him, in the era when engravings were replacing woodcuttings. Amman also made stained glass (Google books preview) and jewelry, but there are more examples of his woodcut illustrations, as found on the colored cover of this bible from 1564, and the black and white images of biblical scenes. Amman's most widely know work is "the book of trades," Eygentliche Beschreibung Aller Stände auff Erden (Google books; PDFs of sections of the book). Ptak Science Books has 25 images with (most) job titles in English, and here is a full index of English titles, linking back to Wikimedia Commons. But that's only half of the book. The other part is the descriptions of the jobs, which are short poems by Hans Sachs, some of which are translated on the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Confusedly being alive is more important than being neatly dead
Five Reasons Why I Am Not An “Artist”, an essay by
Tom Ellard (formerly of 1980s industrial electropop band Severed Heads and now an academic and media art practitioner in Australia; previously), touching on areas such as artificial divisions between art and technical practice, the politics of the role of the artist and the conflict between creative exploration and artistic recognition and success.
July 12
"Do we need to produce billions of new garments a year?"
But this post ain't one
twink has become a non-specific word
What Comes After The Twink?
"Somewhere along the way "twink" has stopped being just a cutesy, mildly negative stereotype and become something more malignant: An easy shorthand for a lot of vicious stereotypes about gay people, a way to covertly make fun not just of someone's mild gender variance but really their "gayness" as well."
"Somewhere along the way "twink" has stopped being just a cutesy, mildly negative stereotype and become something more malignant: An easy shorthand for a lot of vicious stereotypes about gay people, a way to covertly make fun not just of someone's mild gender variance but really their "gayness" as well."
Moving a very large magnet to measure very small particles.
By making a very precise measurement of the muon g-2 value and comparing the results to its predicted value, researchers at Fermilab hope to uncover evidence of new, undiscovered particles and forces. This continues work done at Brookhaven National Laboratory a decade ago. To do so, Fermilab needs their 50-ft ring magnet and its fragile, precisely assembled superconducting coils. After six months of planning, the magnet was slowly hauled on an eight-axle trailer through the streets of Long Island, loaded onto a barge, and tugged down the Atlantic coast and into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will go up the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway to the Mississippi and then through Illinois waterways before it's trucked again through suburban Chicago. Fermilab has a photo and video gallery and is posting updates. [more inside]
"The bloodiest battles took place in the marketing meetings"
Plagued by the realities threatening many retail stores, Sears also faces a unique problem (alternate link): [CEO Eddie] Lampert. Lampert runs Sears like a hedge fund portfolio, with dozens of autonomous businesses competing for his attention and money. An outspoken advocate of free-market economics and fan of the novelist Ayn Rand, he created the model because he expected the invisible hand of the market to drive better results. If the company’s leaders were told to act selfishly, he argued, they would run their divisions in a rational manner, boosting overall performance.
Talk to the gals just like any old man
Singing the Lesbian Blues in 1920s Harlem.
In Jazz Age speakeasies, dive bars, and private parties, blue singers had the freedom to explore alternative sexuality, and on a rare occasion, they even expressed it in song.
Don't tell Wil Short about this technology.
Regular Expression Crosswords Do you like regular expressions? Do you like crosswords puzzles? Then you're going to (hate|love) this.
Fine art Deer Butt alien heads
They are afraid of women. The power of the voice of women frightens them
Malala Yousafzai, sixteen-year-old Pakistani education activist, has delivered her first public address since she was shot in the head and neck by Taliban gunmen in October last year. Yousafzai's speech at the UN headquarters in New York today is available in full as text or video. She has been credited with bringing the issue of women's education to global attention, a crucial concern given that a quarter of young women around the world have not completed primary school.
But can you praise a "choice" if there is no choice?
(Links in English except where marked with '*' (Spanish))
Amnesty International urges Chile to allow an 11-year old to abort a pregnancy due to rape after President Sebastián Piñera, who has a strong anti-abortion position, congratulates the girl's "mature and profound" decision to continue with her pregnancy (CNN.cl video)*. The Association* of Chilean Physicians also speaks in support of making an exception as well as liberalizing existing laws.
This case highlights the discrepancies between the political elite's conservative ideals and reality in a country of extreme and highly institutionalized inequality. [more inside]
Right on schedule for development of the Terminator
"The bald eagle sounds like a cross between a squeaky toy and a seagull"
The expanding canvas
The Sad and Rapid Decline of the Ball Cap: Including photos of the 67 hats that survived of the author's 90s-era Hat Collection. [more inside]
Wave your arms to let the animal know you are human.
John Hodgman On Full Metal Jacket
"But The Shining speaks to what makes Kubrick such an interesting and, for a lot of people, troublesome filmmaker, because he does not give you what you want. At all. He does not give you a Vietnam movie set in the jungle, and he does not give you a horror movie that is just like Stephen King’s The Shining. He doesn’t even give you scares for a long time, [just] ominous foreboding. And it takes people a while to figure out, “Oh, maybe I don’t know what I want. Maybe this is better.” - Mefi's Own Jon Hodgman talks about Full Metal Jacket with Scott Tobias for "The Last Great Movie I Saw."
"Cruel, but most entertaining for the DM."
Some wonderfully enterprising nerd has created a mod for the real-time grid-based 3D dungeon crawler Legend of Grimrock (twice previously) based on the the Dungeons & Dragons module Tomb of Horrors (previously, funny SA rundown here). It's available via nexusmods and Steam Workshop. Have a nice weekend.
Goodbye World.
RIP Alan Whicker globe trotting reporter and 'television natural'. In a career that spanned 60 years he presented the BBC/ITV documentary series Whicker's World for nearly 30. He was the inspiration for the Monty Python Whicker Island sketch. (previously) [more inside]
Young Dutch boy leads PSV crowd in booming chant during pre-season match
"It's a shame we don't share the same courage in our convictions as this little 10-year-old Dutch lad, who - with a little help from his Dad when it came to the words (come on you boys in red, Eindhoven we love you), proudly led the PSV crowd in a chant during a recent pre-season friendly against FC Eindhoven..."
(SL Youtube) [more inside]
The Woman Who (Maybe) Struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig
In 1931 a 17-year old girl faced off against baseball Hall of Famers Babe Ruth and Lou Gherig. They both struck out swinging. Was Jackie Mitchell for real?
A Scary Story (by Sean Demory)
Sean Demory’s short story The Ballad of the Wayfaring Stranger and the Dead Man’s Whore is built round the mythology and atmosphere of classic American murder ballads like Knoxville Girl and In the Pines. It spooked the bejaysus out of me, and may do the same for you…
It’s almost as if a domestic war is about to be formally declared.
Creating a military-industrial-immigration complex.
In a world where basic services are being cut, an emerging policing apparatus in the borderlands is flourishing. Since September 11, 2001, the United States has spent $791 billion on “homeland security” alone, an inflation-adjusted $300 billion more than the cost of the entire New Deal.
In a world where basic services are being cut, an emerging policing apparatus in the borderlands is flourishing. Since September 11, 2001, the United States has spent $791 billion on “homeland security” alone, an inflation-adjusted $300 billion more than the cost of the entire New Deal.
"Never, ever, think outside the box."
New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff picks his 11 favourite cartoons.
Quiet place on the river to enjoy a lobster roll
No question mark required.
"Are We on the Threshold of the North American Decade" is the title the new course taught by four star general and Visiting Professor at CUNY, David Petraeus. For his two courses at CUNY, Petraeus will be paid over $150,000, which is much more than CUNY's average adjunct salary of $3,000 per course. [more inside]
I'm a mathlete!
You Can't Do Simple Maths Under Pressure (autoplay music)
Native American dogs
"Pre-Columbian origins of Native American dog breeds, with only limited replacement by European dogs, confirmed by mtDNA analysis." [more inside]
THE PIXAR THEORY
Every Pixar movie is connected. I explain how, and possibly why. Several months ago, I watched a fun-filled video on Cracked.com that introduced the idea (at least to me) that all of the Pixar movies actually exist within the same universe. Since then, I’ve obsessed over this concept, working to complete what I call “The Pixar Theory,” a working narrative that ties all of the Pixar movies into one cohesive timeline with a main theme.
She and the children have a great deal in common.
I regret to inform you that my wedding to Captain Von Trapp has been cancelled. Comedian and author Melinda Taub's piece in McSweeney's, a letter from Baroness Elsa Schraeder to the guests of the wedding she thought she was going to have.
Related: An Update on the Problem of Maria. A memo from the Reverend Mother to The Nuns.
[For those not in the know]
Finally, Did You No Wrong
Sex Pistols vs Ce Ce Peniston. Music from an alternate, better, universe.
Bertrand Russell had it right
As machines take over more of our work, we are going to have to find other ways of letting people fulfil these human needs. Forcing them to send 500 CVs out every week is not a good start. In stripping out inefficiencies and pushing digital goods to near-free prices, the Internet kills middle-class jobs. Digitization has already largely de-monetized academia, film, music, journalism, and lots more besides. More industries will feel the pain, including the legal professions, real estate, insurance, accounting, and the civil service, all of which are built on inefficiency, and all of which will be stripped of jobs in the years to come. As it becomes clear to those with established positions that there are no jobs for their children, they’ll push for a more radical solution.
"THE MAN THEY CALL MISTER BANJO, MISTER GEORGE BANJO!"
1931's top investigative journalist, Mr Chomondley-Warner, aims to find out whether professional players are a good thing for association football by pitting Liverpool's 1991 team against Arsenal's 1931 squad. [more inside]
“It's exactly what you think it is—a tornado full of sharks”
The rise of video-on-demand services like Netflix and dedicated cable-TV channels has created a new industry in low-budget B-movies; meet Asylum Films, an outfit in California following in the footsteps of historical B-movie auteurs like Roger Corman, Menahem Golan and Uwe Boll, with films with titles like Sharknado, Transmorphers, Sex Pot and Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies. Asylum's new B-movies are made quickly and cheaply to ride the coattails of the big studios' fads, filling gaps in the market for more films about, say, adorable puppies, alien battleships or apocalypses. The films are made to a strict formula, are played entirely seriously, with no hint of irony or knowingness, and are designed primarily to pad out rental lists and appeal to recommendation engines, though the producers point out that often mainstream Hollywood fare is often no less hackneyed and formulaic. (Previously...)
July 11
"Seeing you in action is a joke"
Moving in stereo
Stereophoto maker lets you make anaglyphs and stereo animated gifs, like these. (You can control the point of focus with your mouse in the flash versions.) Instructions for making it work on a Mac.
Stock violining is harder than you think
Useful visual lessons in the art and etiquette of holding your violin and bow, illustrated by stock photos. You can also use some random violin, it doesn't have to be yours, or even used to produce music. Because violins are apparently very sexy props that show how very sexy you are. You don't need to already know how to hold a violin to appreciate this tumblr.
Grunge's not dead, man.
To kick off the celebration of Sub Pop Records 25th anniversary, Mudhoney played a live set on top of the Space Needle today. Performance begins at about 21:00. [more inside]
Drowning World
Photographer Gideon Mendel's stunning portraits of flood victims in the UK, India, Haiti, Pakistan, Australia, and Thailand. (via)
Presented By
Willy Pogany, born in 1882 in Hungary, was an artist and illustrator in the first half of last century, who worked on everything from children's books to books of poetry, history, magazine articles and ads, and much, much more. [more inside]
One man's treasure is another man's trash
Ireland's Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013
With a vote of 127 to 31, Ireland has passed a law allowing limited rights to abortion when the mother's life is at risk or she is at risk of suicide. Amendments to include rape and incest were defeated. Last year, almost 4,000 women travelled to the UK for abortions, including termination of more than 1,000 non-viable fetal abnormality pregnancies. [more inside]
The Heliotail
Because life is sometimes surprising...
Pat-down
"All of us in TV have had people try to sabotage one of our reports before, so I figured if they want to be on TV so badly, I'll put them on TV." Parts 1 and 2, and related.
I'm the new Jean Michel, surrounded by Warhols
"By then, somehow, he'd taken me around my waist, and we were strutting around the room. My hands were ice cold. I was shaking. My reactions were shot. The entire time were together, there was no doubt in my mind that he was controlling me, taking my energy and giving it back, manipulating the space around us. I felt like my internal ship was on fire and useless. I loved it. And him. And this." Jerry Saltz visits Jay-Z's performance art piece at the Pace Gallery in Chelsea: performing his new song, "Picasso Baby", for six hours. To one person at a time.
"You're barred from Trivia Night!"
That's it. The Internet is done. Courtesy of The Nerdist, Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) hits up Karaoke Night with a stirring version of "West Coast" at everyone's favorite hive of Star Wars scum and villainy, the Cantina on Tatooine! Also: Making-of.
Terran Trade Authority - Spacecraft 2000-2100AD
"Government was created in this equal footing for men and women."
"The country has cheaper medical care, smarter children, happier moms, better working conditions, less-anxious unemployed people, and lower student loan rates than we do. And that probably will never change."
In The Atlantic, a comparison of some of the socio-economic aspects of Finland and the USA. [more inside]
"Dog Eat Dog"
Five Feet of Books
"During his days as Harvard’s influential president, Dr. Charles W. Eliot made a frequent assertion: If you were to spend just 15 minutes a day reading the right books, a quantity that could fit on a five-foot shelf, you could give yourself a proper liberal education. Publisher P. F. Collier and Son loved the idea and asked Eliot to compile and edit the right collection of works. The result: a 51-volume series of classic works from world literature published in 1909 called Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf, which would later be called The Harvard Classics." (Via) [more inside]
"We were not asked for our approval, and we did not give our approval."
This was not the act of a fringe contingent. The letter—which, until now, has never been published in its entirety—is signed by 154 staffers, including J.D. Salinger, Calvin Trillin, John McPhee, Jamaica Kincaid, Saul Steinberg and Janet Malcolm. There are a few notable abstentions, including John Updike and Charles McGrath, who would soon be named Gottlieb's deputy. At the bottom, it reads "cc: S. I. Newhouse."The Letter: Robert Gottlieb's Tenure as the New Yorker's Managing Editor, Elon Green, The Awl (SLTheAwl)
Pen Ultimate
In an idle moment, you've probably drummed on a desk with your pen. But chances are middle schoolers could show you some skills.
Masters like Shane Bang and many less well-known practitioners are pushing the old idea of pen-as-drumstick - Pen Beats, aka Pen Tap - to new heights. [more inside]
Nerdy Love Song with bonus kitten
DeAnne Smith and Her Kitten Perform a Nerdy Love Song (some lyrics NSFW)
Each week on our show we choose a theme...
Tomorrow, public radio show This American Life airs its 500th episode. Started in 1995 by Ira Glass, with the initial title Your Radio Playhouse, the show is a popular reference point here on the blue, covering everything from the minute goings-on of ordinary people, to allegedly unearthing the secret recipe for Coke, to the 2008 financial collapse.
Ahead of the occasion, Ira Glass talked to Buzzfeed about the episodes that stand out in his mind. [more inside]
One Strategy, One Microsoft, One Xbone
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced a reorganization of the company today to focus on devices and services.
Ballmer said that the goal was to have "One Microsoft" where "our strategy will focus on creating a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value most". [more inside]
"[Amazon's] alleged violation of antitrust laws is not an excuse..."
U.S. District Judge Denise Cote has found that Apple conspired with publishers to fix the prices of ebooks. Publishers Weekly describes Apple's defeat as "a major blow". Writing before the ruling, Roger Parloff at Fortune Tech delved into Apple's "agency model" for ebook sales and noted that Amazon's business model is "the missing piece... of this jigsaw puzzle". Philip Elmer-Dewitt reviews Judge Cote's findings. (Review the decision and other trial information yourself here.) Michael Clarke at Scholarly Kitchen explains why he considers this a loss for the public.
Sikorsky Prize Claimed
Originally set forth in 1980, the Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition is deceptively simple: keep a human-powered helicopter aloft at 3 meters within a 10m by 10m square for 1 minute. The prize? $250,000.
In the past 33 years, great progress has been made (Davinci III, Yuri I, Gamera I, Gamera II Previously), but no one has succeeded until Aerovelo's Atlas.
Architects, Ethics, and Prison Design
The American Institute of Architects’ Code of Ethics [pdf] states that “Members should uphold human rights in all their professional endeavors." Raphael Sperry, president of Architects, Designers and Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), wants to amend the code further so it reads "Members shall not design spaces intended for execution or for torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, including prolonged solitary confinement." From Architect Magazine: “Should Architects Design Prisons?” [more inside]
Konami meets Couture
1. Visit the website of British Vogue.
2. Enter the Konami code (↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A).
3. Be delighted.
2. Enter the Konami code (↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A).
3. Be delighted.
The Sentinelese people of North Sentinel Island, an "ancient" tribe
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are a string of 572 islands that run roughly north-south in the Bay of Bengal between Myanmar and Indonesia, but are formally a part of the Republic of India. Of the hundreds of islands, less than 40 are inhabited. While you can travel and visit some of the islands, but as of 2005, there are also a few that India has declared closed to outsiders to preserve these distinct cultures, living much as they have for hundreds to thousands of years, remaining distant from all outsiders. The most extreme example are the Sentinelese people who live on North Sentinel Island (Google maps). [more inside]
"And then he shot you twice for flinching."
Dave Shumka's account of being shot after a comedy show is equal parts hilarious and terrifying. (Starts at 4:25) [more inside]
We Do Phoshop (포샵해드립니다)
Korean Photoshoppers Make the Internet a Better Place (Kotaku) On June 26, a Korean language Facebook page called "We Do Phoshop" appeared online. The site solicited Photoshop requests, and the ensuing 'shops weren't exactly what askers had in mind. Or what anyone had in mind, for that matter.
If your suffering leads to our suffering, you may be liable for damages.
The new documentary "Terms And Conditions May Apply," about the privacy overreach of major tech companies, presents its trailer on a cleverly written page of terms and conditions.
Factual Errors in your Column
The journalistic practices of the Washington Post and Walter Pincus.
What the Snowden Affair Reveals About US Journalism. The Snowden Effect: definition and examples.
It's as if Corporate Media is at War on Independent Journalism.
Back in June as the story broke it was noted that If Edward Snowden Is in Trouble, So Is Journalism,
and from zdnet The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism.
So what does the Snowden Affair Reveal About US Journalism.
It should definitely force media self-examination.
What the Snowden Affair Reveals About US Journalism. The Snowden Effect: definition and examples.
It's as if Corporate Media is at War on Independent Journalism.
Back in June as the story broke it was noted that If Edward Snowden Is in Trouble, So Is Journalism,
and from zdnet The real story in the NSA scandal is the collapse of journalism.
So what does the Snowden Affair Reveal About US Journalism.
It should definitely force media self-examination.
Ever leave your coffee on the bumper of your truck and then drive away?
Visualizing Numbers with WebGl
How To Fold a Julia Fractal. A beautiful interactive introduction to complex numbers, fractals and waves. (Requires WebGL). To Infinity And Beyond is a similar introduction to calculus.
Why not?
After a six-month hiatus, Surveillance Camera Man (previously) is back with a new video, and a site of his own. (via waxy) [more inside]
"Oddly enough, ...in most of my dreams, I'm not disabled."
Seeking Sexual Surrogates is a short (5:28) documentary by NYT's Stefania Rousselle looking at sexual surrogacy for the disabled in France, where the practice is illegal. And continues, regardless. [more inside]
July 10
The camera never falls over during a scene. Actors are always in frame.
Music for FLAC Player
"Back in the golden age of the compact disc, 1994, Jos Smolders [discogs.com link] released Music for CD Player, a collection of 99 short tracks intended for the listener to sequence.
He’s now released a sequel in the form of an 1,100-track album, titled Music for FLAC Player. Yes, that is 1,100 tracks, the overwhelming majority of which are one second or less in length, and all but 30 or so of which are under 45 seconds. [more inside]
Basically, She's A Lannister
Let us come together this, July the eleventh, to celebrate the feast of
Saint Olga, Olga the Beauty, descended of the Izborsk princes, Princess of Rus, Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Olga. Please, allow me to tell you the tale of this fine Christian woman, sainted in both the Roman Catholic and Russian Eastern Orthodox Churches. [more inside]
She's not quirky
Trailer for the newest indie romance movie about a guy who falls in love with a girl who's just not...quirky or anything.
"Are you John Schlitt?" "You know it - the one and only!"
For Petra fans: The Making Of Back To The Street. A 3 minute excerpt from a 30 minute home video documenting the making of the 1986 album. Includes a brief tour of the studio and accommodation, and features (at 1:02) some isolated vocal and instrumental tracks from the song 'Whole World'.
the scenic route to nowhere
Photographer Dietmar Eckell has taen a series of pictures of wrecked airplanes. It's called "Happy Endings," and no one was killed in any of the 15 crashes.
Boris The Bear
Boris The Bear was the second original series to be released on the Dark Horse Comics imprint. A meta-referential comedic take on the the independant comics of the era, the series was about a comic book obsessed bear who, three or four frames into the first issue learned he was in fact a robot. What proceeded was one of the all time greatest mass-slaughters of popular comic characters. Copyright be damned.
"These are good people! Strong people! Part of my family is a Mexican!"
The Republican Party is in a bind on immigration; after being saddled last year with a presidential nominee who notoriously suggested "self-deportation" as a solution to the issue and earning a mere 27% of the Latino vote, it was widely expected that the Republicans would find a way to appeal to that important—and growing—voting bloc. They may well yet, but it currently appears that the bill recently passed by the Senate is most likely dead on arrival in the House, to the satisfaction of certain voices on the right.
But compare the rhetoric of 2013 with the remarks made by then-candidates Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush at a forum in 1980 and consider how far the Republican Party has shifted...
Pimps don't commit suicide.
The World Ends with a Handshake: Unraveling the Apocalypse of 'Southland Tales' A writer meets Richard Kelly, writer/director of Donnie Darko, and talks about his flop Southland Tales and its enduring cult of fans.
Toshi Seeger, R.I.P.
Toshi Seeger has passed. In the fullest sense of the word, the partner of Pete Seeger, and of some seventy years, has passed away. Pete once said that without Toshi, "the world would not turn nor the sun shine.” She was 91.
Disney Voce
This is a video I’ve wanted to dish for years--a video that contextualizes Disneyland within the political and cultural events of the early 1950s. “Disneyland Voce” is distilled down from a dozen home movies, all shot in 1955, during the first five months that Disneyland was open to the public. Here’s one reason I love home movies: they reveal the vacation experience as taken by the average guest. Disney has produced reels of film documenting the park during its early years (most notably “Disneyland U.S.A.” in 1956 and “Gala Day at Disneyland” in 1959), but professional footage presents the park under ideal conditions. Home movies lay down the scenery as a typical guest would have experienced it. If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to visit Disneyland when it first opened, buckle into your DeLorean and hit the play button on YouTube. [more inside]
How is this less realistic than a guy with radioactive spider powers?
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly for this month's cover story, Andrew Garfield, the current star of the rebooted Spider-Man movie series, offered a new take the character's love interest:
“I was kind of joking, but kind of not joking about MJ,” he tells EW. “And I was like, ‘What if MJ is a dude?’ Why can’t we discover that Peter is exploring his sexuality? It’s hardly even groundbreaking!…So why can’t he be gay? Why can’t he be into boys?” Garfield even has an actor in mind: “I’ve been obsessed with Michael B. Jordan since The Wire. He’s so charismatic and talented. It’d be even better—we’d have interracial bisexuality!”[more inside]
Foul Deeds Will Rise
"Is it possible to kill 1 million people and then forget about it? Or if it has been erased from consciousness, is there an unconscious residue, a stain that remains?" Filmmaker Errol Morris writes about Josh Oppenheimer’s documentary film The Act of Killing [trailer]. The film, which was produced by Morris and Werner Herzog, is an examination of the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-66, in which between 500,000 and 1 million people died. It is getting amazing reviews. Previously.
Visualizing the Bechdel test.
Visualizing the Bechdel test. Datawankery and female representation in film.
"You are very welcome to this sad, tattered and abused old world."
"We have not learned, even, to live with our fellow man. Instead we have perfected more means to annihilate him -- to wipe him (and ourselves) from the face of the Earth." A 1974 letter from Lieutenant Colonel Clyde S. Shield, lead test pilot for the Manhattan project, to his newborn grandson.
The Dissolve
Music review site Pitchfork has branched out. Today marks the debut of The Dissolve, which will be dedicated to film. With talent acquired from Slate, NPR and the AV Club, the website is starting with a high pedigree.
Startup 101: Decency
On Monday, Toronto received over 100mm of rainfall, leading to severe flooding, power outages, and hundreds of thousands of stranded drivers and transit users.
Uber, a startup that matches taxis with passengers, instituted "surge pricing" - did they break the cardinal "don't be an asshole" rule?
Stately, plump Buck MullZZZZZZZZ
What makes you put down a book? A Goodreads infographic on the what, when, and why of abandoning a book, and what keeps people reading.
A life well lived.
"In life, things happen twice if you're lucky. There's the father you get and the father you choose." [more inside]
Out in the streets. Out with my robots
The Other Person is You
There is a lot about Kundalini Yoga and White Tantric and Solstice that is very unbelievable. Does a turban really hold your brain together? Does one day of White Tantric Yoga really equal years worth of meditation? If you revolve your life around Solstice, as Yogi Bhajan says, will everything really be taken care of? I laugh at all of it, but I keep coming back, so I either believe it, or I want to...
Drink not included
Coffitivity is a website that allows you to listen to the sounds of a coffee shop on your computer. The New York Times's Well Blog has the details.
"It's not clear we have that much time."
As Andrew Haldane, director of stability at the Bank of England, put it in a historical overview a few years ago, ‘there is one key difference between the situation today and that in the Middle Ages. Then, the biggest risk to the banks was from the sovereign. Today, perhaps the biggest risk to the sovereign comes from the banks. Causality has reversed.’ Yes, it has: and the sovereign at risk is us. The reason for that is that in the UK bank assets are 492 per cent of GDP. In plain English, our banks are five times bigger than our entire economy. (When the Icelandic and Cypriot banking systems collapsed the respective figures were 880 and 700 per cent.) We know from the events of 2008 and subsequently that the financial sector, indeed the whole world economy, is in an inherently unstable condition. Put the size together with the instability, and we are facing a danger that is no less real for not being on the front page this exact second. This has to be fixed, and it has to be fixed soon, and nothing about fixing it is easy.- "Let's Consider Kate," John Lanchester, London Review of Books (via)
Blink and you'll miss it
In response to a listicle on pop-punk where "most of the picks were just early 2000s-era crapcore Warped Tour bands" the Jaded Punk Blog has a more 'authentic' list,"36 Pop-Punk Albums You Need To Hear Or Just Go Fucking Die.". A list which seems to beg the question "What is pop-punk? Is this more like this, or more like this? [more inside]
We should keep going and see how many titans we can lose in ten minutes
How does your EVE Online alliance top losing 400 billion ISK to corporate espionage? Why, by losing 309 billion ISK on a single ship of course! [more inside]
#toomucheffortfortoolittlereward
I came to Twitter because I had a book to sell, and my misgivings about the whole enterprise meant that I would never be any good at it. A phrase comes to mind: I was “pissing into the void.” For 1 year, 4 months and 22 days—or 508 days total—Twitter became part of my daily thinking ritual.
Writer Benjamin Anastas says Goodbye to Twitter Village. VQR editor Jane Friedman comments.
Dan Akroyd and Tom Hanks would not approve
Somebody make them stop - they're so soft!!
Because everyone needs a little (slyt) adorbz in their life.
Here's my secret: I practiced everywhere.
"People who watch me dance today sometimes assume I've been dancing for many years. I made this video so you could see the awkward body that started just one year ago." (SLYT) Via Kottke
Shipwreck Log, Marine Traffic and Sailwx, for your ship tracking needs
Have you found it difficult to find information about a specific shipwreck when you only have its location, date or vessel's name? How about a find information on maritime accidents 3 weeks ago, 6 months ago, or even last year? Shipwrecklog.com was created to solve these issues. We designed our site and tools to make researching recent and historical maritime accidents easier. If you'd prefer to track active ships, you might enjoy Marine Traffic (prev: 1, 2), which tracks ships by way of their Automatic Identification Systems (prev. And as can be expected from any *spotter website, there's also a gallery of images from users. For even more sea-faring information, check Sailwx (prev), where you can track ships by type, locate bouys, and see tides, currents and weather.
Hunger Strike Against Solitary Confinement
30,000 prisoners in California have launched a hunger strike to protest the conditions under which "segregated" prisoners are being detained.
The Five Core Demands:
1. Eliminate group punishments and administrative abuse.
2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria.
3. Comply with the recommendations of the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons (pdf) recommendations and end long-term solitary confinement.
4. Provide adequate and nutritious food.
5. Create and expand constructive programming. [more inside]
The Five Core Demands:
1. Eliminate group punishments and administrative abuse.
2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria.
3. Comply with the recommendations of the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons (pdf) recommendations and end long-term solitary confinement.
4. Provide adequate and nutritious food.
5. Create and expand constructive programming. [more inside]
The Decline of North Carolina
The New York Times' lead editorial on the Moral Monday arrests (Previously on Metafilter), ending federal unemployment benefits, failing education programs, racial discrimination, and new abortion laws.
I am plant, and as such I should be watered by my master
Houseplants of Gor, an extract from a sadly unpublished entry in Dave Langford's favourite exploitative bondage sci-fi pulp series. Not written by John Norman.
Assume A Cylindrical Cow
D.O.G.
For all those times you spent bored under the merchandise sign at an urban jazz festival, sweating, wrapping your head in striped garments, ripping the soles off your shoes in a primal fury, this man would like to dance for you.
July 9
N-Words
They came from test tubes. They came pale as ghosts with eyes as blue-white as glacier ice. They came first out of Korea. N-Words - a science fiction short story by Ted Kosmatka. Audio version.
Gene Wilder at 80
Gene Wilder sat down with Robert Osborne at 92Y on June 12 for a rare public appearance. He spoke about the Willy Wonka remake, working with Richard Pryor and Mel Brooks, Gilda Radner, Young Frankenstein, and more. SLYT
Listicles all the way down
The Benefits of Nostalgia
Home Sweet Home "'I told him I did live my life forward, but sometimes I couldn’t help thinking about the past, and it was rewarding,' he says. 'Nostalgia made me feel that my life had roots and continuity. It made me feel good about myself and my relationships. It provided a texture to my life and gave me strength to move forward.' The colleague remained skeptical, but ultimately Dr. Sedikides prevailed. That lunch in 1999 inspired him to pioneer a field that today includes dozens of researchers around the world using tools developed at his social-psychology laboratory, including a questionnaire called the Southampton Nostalgia Scale. After a decade of study, nostalgia isn’t what it used to be — it’s looking a lot better."
“Not many antagonize Goldman just for the hell of it,”
The Lonely Redemption Of Sandy Lewis
“The complicity on Wall Street is sickness!” Mr. Lewis says. He fixes you with his laser stare. “If you think the big firms are being honest” — his tone slides streetwise — “well, sweetheart, go think something else!” The temptation is to dismiss Mr. Lewis, 73, as a crank, except he once ruled as an eccentric genius of arbitrage, with a preternatural feel for the tectonic movements of the markets. He has railed for decades about venalities now on daily display. Rude truth is his currency.[more inside]
Subway-to-slope
The Dorfbahn Serfaus is arguably the tiniest subway system in the world (technically, an underground funicular), built to alleviate congestion in the tiny ski resort town of Serfaus, Austria (pop. 1,081). The line is just 1.3 km long with 4 rather picturesque stops. Bonus video (German).
Back on the streets
The first official gameplay video for Grand Theft Auto V has been released. The highly anticipated open-world game, which lets you control 3 different characters, will be released in September for the PS3 and XBox 360.
But they'll get theirs and we'll get ours if you can / Just hold on
Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me. With drummer Jody Stephens as their sole surviving original member, "the definitive story of the greatest band that never made it" is finally in theaters around the U.S. and on iTunes. One of rock's most mythic acts, the music fanatic's secret handshake, and (in the words of Robyn Hitchcock) a letter written in 1971 that didn't arrive till 1985 -- whatever metaphor best conjures up the mixture of beauty, chaos, and tragedy that defines the band, newcomers and long-standing members of the cult also shouldn't miss Don’t Lie to Me: An Oral History of Big Star. [more inside]
"The one with no legs, being carried by the one who could not see."
In 2009, ESPN producer Lisa Fenn worked on a story about two high-school wrestlers, Leroy Sutton and Dartanyon Crockett. Sutton was hit by a train when he was a child and had both his legs amputated; Crockett is legally blind. After the story aired, Fenn stayed in Sutton and Crockett's lives, and the three formed a surprising, enduring bond. [more inside]
Astonishing Chutzpah
Badass Digest and the A.V. Club both have some choice perspective to offer concerning Orson Scott Card's public statement about the boycott of the "Ender's Game" film.
Happy Little Trees
Lorenzo Triburgo has photographed what he calls "Transportraits". He shoots his transgender subjects from a slightly upward-facing angle in order to portray a sense of heroism. Triburgo painted the backgrounds of his portraits himself after learning how from Bob Ross's The Joy of Painting.
AT THE DAWN OF THE DANCE APOCALYPSE
Janelle Monae's latest music video/single is a 60s-esque, funkadelic, symbol-heavy, all-white fur and all-female hammer to the head - THE DANCE APOCALYPTIC
The Rauschenberg Research Project
The SFMOMA has launched the Rauschenberg Research Project, an online database of the Rauschenbergs in their permanent collection. Each piece of art is available in high resolution (click 'download' for the high-res image), along with commentary, interviews, essays, maps, contact prints, or other pertinent information, including its ownership history, any markings on the piece, and its exhibition history. All the files related to a particular piece can be downloaded in one go (bottom link of every page).
Suddenly, I was rage-reading millennial trend pieces every day.
In "Can We Stop Worrying About Millennials Yet?", editorial cartoonist Matt Bors highlights the absurdity of blaming millennials for inheriting a lousy economy.
Fourth floor, please
Does elevator music make you buy more stuff? Skeptoid's Brian Dunning explores the history and science of the insidious beast that is Musak. Can carefully crafted, topically tempoed, thoughtfully themed music cause consumers to part with more of their money?
Don't stop 'till you get enough
Boxer puppy tastes a lime wedge. (SLDogV)
...T is for Tripod who caught a bad cold...
Not just preaching to the choir
How the rise of Fox News helped Republican candidates Is Fox News primarily reinforcing Republicans or persuading Democrats? [more inside]
"Games are a special medium, completely separate from our wider culture"
There's no sexism in gaming: "Furthermore, reasonable people would see that asking to put male soldiers in the Call of Duty series is simply not do-able. Since the age of the Amazon, women have waged wars, because they have a higher pain threshold than males and have more stamina in every area of war. Who would take a male Battlefield seriously? Including men would simply cloud the matter; when crawling through tunnels, as is often necessary in war, our eyes would fall on the male backside - from then on women would be irreparably compromised."
Further Materials Toward a Theory of the Man-Child
In an essay for The New Inquiry, Moira Weigel and Mal Ahern consider The End of Men, global recession era capitalism, and ironic sexism.
"Mancession Lit portrays the Man-Child as pitiful, contrasting him with women who are well-adjusted and adult. But it rarely acknowledges the real question that this odd couple raises. Namely, are women better suited to the new economy because they are easier to exploit?"
RIP Chase, a famous baseball dog
It is with great sadness that the Trenton Thunder pass along news that 13-year-old team bat dog, Chase That Golden Thunder, passed away on Monday. [more inside]
"It's here, but I have no names for it."
They're called Pirsig Pilgrims, the motorcycle enthusiasts who follow the route from Minnesota to California that inspired Robert Pirsig's surprise 1974 chart-busting book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."
Grave symbols of many faiths
There are 50 symbols currently allowed on the gravestones of US military personnel. The Wiccan pentacle was only approved in 2007 after a fight that invoked President George W Bush's views on the faith, though other symbols, such as Thor's Hammer, have been added with less of a fight. Most recently a Sandhill Crane was approved for the first same-sex spouse member buried in a military cemetery. Military gravestones are very light on symbolism, however, compared to older religious gravestones or, say, the Victorians.
Green tide in the Yellow Sea
For the sixth year in a row, green algae have invaded the beaches of Quingdao, China (video). This year's algal bloom covers 28,900 km² (about the size of Massachussets or Albania), more than twice the 2008 record (13,000 km²). Bonus: two research papers (PDF) dealing with the identification of the species (Ulva prolifera) and the origin (possibly aquaculture ponds on land) of the 2008 bloom (5 years ago on MeFi).
You fooled 'em Chief. You fooled 'em all.
Voices inside my head... telling me to follow them on Twitter
German media company Sky Deutschland is looking at ways to promote its app. One of the ways it is considering is advertising directly inside people's heads, through bone conduction. The ads would be heard by commuters leaning their heads against train windows and would be otherwise inaudible. Ad agency BBDO said it had received "highly encouraging first reactions" from commuters who tested the kit; feedback from the public at large has been less than enthusiastic.
The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia
Tomorrow, the 2013 Ashes series (England verses Australia) begins with the start of the first match at Trent Bridge (Nottingham). Though England and Australia have battled since 1861, the Ashes were first contested in 1882. Australia lead England 31-30 in series victories. England start as strong favorites with the bookmakers. Glenn McGrath cautiously predicts a 2-1 Australia series win, whilst Ian Botham predicts a 10-0 wipeout for England over the two series. The 2013 Ashes will be streamed live to 53 countries over YouTube. With Britain in the grip of unusual summer weather (sun), much play is likely. [more inside]
Hackers Testifying at the United States Senate, May 19, 1998
Here is L0pht Heavy Industries testifying before the United States Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Live feed from CSPAN, May 19, 1998. Starring Brian Oblivion, Kingpin, Tan, Space Rogue, Weld Pond, Mudge, and Stefan von Neumann. This is the infamous testimony where Mudge stated we could take down the Internet in 30 minutes. Although that's all the media took from it, much more was discussed. See for yourself. (59:04)
Man see like, you don even know man
He was disqualified for loose talking
In the 1920s and 1930s, endurance marathons were all the rage. Most folks know about marathon dancing and eating contests, but people would step up to test their endurance in every arena possible. One of least successful was the The Noun and Verb Rodeo, sometimes called the World Champion Gabfest, (1928), where "[p]rofanity was grounds for disqualification, but no points were awarded for style, diction, grammar, or even for making sense. All that mattered was that an individual kept talking." [more inside]
Tech Tips
Gustav Jens Tech Tips. Start with the basics, then works your way through programming HTML, CSS, Java, LUA and Python . For anyone interested in learning programmings.
Edmund S. Morgan
"Curiosity is the principle motivator of all important work." Distinguished historian Edmund S. Morgan died on Monday at the age of 97. [more inside]
July 8
Monster Smash
“What I wanted was for kids to see a movie where they don’t need to aspire to be in an army to aspire for an adventure. And I used very deliberate language that is a reference to westerns. I don’t have captains, majors, generals. I have a marshal, rangers . . . it has the language of an adventure movie. I want kids to come out of the movie and say, I want to be a Jaeger pilot! I really think that would be my dream come true.” - Guillermo del Toro on being a monster loving pacifist. Designer Wayne Barlowe talks about Pacific Rim's creatures. But has maneuvering at Legendary doomed the film before it has even opened?
Gothic American folk music from Glasgow's Sparrow & The Workshop
The first thing you notice about Glasgow trio Sparrow & The Workshop is how unGlaswegian they sound. That's mostly down to lead singer Jill O'Sullivan, [Belfast-born, Chicago-raised] with a Joni Mitchell-via-Nashville voice, a stunning instrument that often justifies the price of admission on its own. When she sings about the devil, darkness and violence, fever, rapture and fear, it's the old American west she evokes, not Glasgow's West End. Behind the voice is a rhythm section that's not afraid to step forward: baritone harmony vocals; pounding drums, clicks and whips; pained, plaintive and passionate folk-rock melodies. That's from the Clash Music review of Crystals Fall (Grooveshark stream), the debut from the trio. [more inside]
Six Months at Sea in the Merchant Marine
Martin Machado's short and serene documentary about his experiences working on a container ship. [more inside]
"This one time, at band camp..."
In case of emergency please contact the Senate Appropriations Committee
This week the US government began furloughs of over half a million employees, reducing their pay and work hours by 20%. Members of a corresponding Facebook group who will be out of work one day a week had some ideas regarding how to set up out-of-office email auto-replies.
Banana Wisconsin
Bulletproof Security is a paramilitary security company. They have provided security to Habitat for Humanity and Empire CAT among others. [more inside]
The Hut Where the Internet Began
When Douglas Engelbart (previously) read a Vannevar Bush essay on a Philippine island in the aftermath of World War II, he found the conceptual space to imagine what would become our Internet...
Disaster in Lac-Mégantic
Last Saturday morning, a town in Quebec exploded. A runaway train carrying roughly 100,000 liters of crude oil derailed and subsequently exploded in the small Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic in the early hours of Saturday morning. A significant amount of the downtown is burnt or leveled, and as the search for survivors continues, residents are beginning to realize the scope of the destruction [more inside]
Liquid City
"For 400 years, New York has embraced, spurned, ignored, harnessed, and feared the water that made its greatness possible. Now our relationship must get even more complex." [more inside]
Five Essays on Literature by Novelist Adam Thirlwell
Adam Thirlwell has written five essays in as many years for The New Republic. They all concern themselves with literature, especially French, though the first one was about Charles Dickens and how he was the most avant-garde writer of the 19th Century. The second was about Roland Barthes' plans to write a novel which came to nothing when he died. In Visionary Materialism, Thirlwell explores Rimbaud's Illuminations from several angles. Genocide and the Fine Arts is about Claude Lanzmann, the director of Shoah, and his complicated relationship with his famous work. The latest one, Baudelaire's Humiliation as a Way of Life, is about Baudelaire's place at the crux of the 19th Century revolution in letters.
Beauty (and title) only go so deep.
Having your phone taken away and using a bucket for a bathroom for even a single day might sound like a nightmare to the average teenager, but for Eleana Frangedis, winner of Miss Teen America 2012, it turns out to be a much needed respite. Miss Teen America finds freedom, for a day.
#newrules
"For the record, I think Tattoo You is a much better album than Magna Carta … Holy Grail, and that Samsung makes a much better product than Jovan." (Steven Hyden for Grantland)
Beyond the Finish Line
The NYTimes tracks the recovery of Jeff Bauman, one of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing
I spy Party Planning Committee, Finer Things Club, & Here Comes Treble!
Immersion is a tool from the MIT Media Lab that analyzes the metadata from your Gmail account, displaying a beautiful visualization of the networks of people you contact most frequently. [more inside]
When Facebook posts lead to prison
In February, 18-year-old Just Carter was talking about League of Legends on Facebook. “Someone had said something to the effect of 'Oh you're insane, you're crazy, you're messed up in the head,’ to which he replied 'Oh yeah, I'm real messed up in the head, I'm going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still, beating hearts,’ and the next two lines were lol and jk.," said Carter.
What happened next has been the subject of a recent spate of stories from, among others, the Huffington Post, National Review, the World Socialist Web Site, and NPR. A woman in Canada saw the post and called the police in the Austin area. Carter, who lives a few miles from a school, was arrested, charged with a 3rd degree felony of making terroristic threats, and put under $500,000 bail. He has been in jail since March. [more inside]
What happened next has been the subject of a recent spate of stories from, among others, the Huffington Post, National Review, the World Socialist Web Site, and NPR. A woman in Canada saw the post and called the police in the Austin area. Carter, who lives a few miles from a school, was arrested, charged with a 3rd degree felony of making terroristic threats, and put under $500,000 bail. He has been in jail since March. [more inside]
Ryan Davis, 1979-2013
Ryan Davis, co-founder of gaming website Giantbomb, passed away on July 3rd. He was 34 years old. He had been married less than a week and was on his honeymoon. [more inside]
When Good Dogs Do Bad Things
"I threw up 40 times and was put in the hospital. I felt like I was dying. Our producer's back totally went out completely. He couldn't even move. The whole recording he was on pills and steroids and anything he could do to get through it. On our first day of recording, the engineer's assistant's car got broken into outside the studio, and everything inside it, including, for some reason, every CD he owned, got stolen." While heavy metal comes with a host of occupational hazards, from excessive consumption to accidents on tour, the physical toll that being in the Dillinger Escape Plan has exacted on members sets the band apart. [more inside]
How does it feel to be 100?
A New York woman turned 100 recently and she only has one thing on her mind. (NSFW)
Don’t Say Goodbye. Just ghost.
"Ghosting—aka the Irish goodbye, the French exit, and any number of other vaguely ethnophobic terms—refers to leaving a social gathering without saying your farewells. One moment you’re at the bar, or the house party, or the Sunday morning wedding brunch. The next moment you’re gone. In the manner of a ghost. “Where’d he go?” your friends might wonder. But—and this is key—they probably won’t even notice that you’ve left."
Hobby Beekeepers destroying the honey industry in the U.S.?
Your farmers market honey, you have no idea. '“Those universes are so separate,” Barry continued, “that you could go to a hobby bee-keeping meeting and mention commercial bee-keeping, and they’ll say, well, we just don’t have any commercial bee-keeping in North Carolina. They don’t even know those guys exist. They’re completely different worlds.” He paused. Then he added, “And they hate each other.”' [more inside]
"And tell me, how long have you been combin' your hair with a wrench?"
Though it became an epic flop and forced Francis Ford Coppola to declare bankruptcy, the 1982 musical One From the Heart (previously) did produce one hell of a soundtrack featuring the unlikely collaboration between Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle. Here's the story of how it all came together. [more inside]
What if Disney Princes were in a Boy Band?
What if Disney Princes were in a Boy Band? Appearances by:
Ariel and Eric;
Beauty and Beast;
Cinderella and Prince Charming;
Jasmine and Aladdin;
Mulan and Li Shang
They're Hip. They're Young. They're 32 years Old!
While it's widely known that US television likes to hire actors in thier 20s to play characters in thier teens, have you ever wondered what actors playing teenagers actually looked like as teenagers? Actual Teen Vs Adult Teen has you covered.
Ovaries! Time MAchines!
British comedian Josie Long explores All the Planet's Wonders in a very short series on BBC radio: Collecting. Animals. Astronomy. Plants.
The Past is a Different Color
Helping to put to rest the "Are Video Games Art?" debate
Animation artist Dan the Ad Man created this very cool visualization of video game characters as moving paths of abstract art in his piece Street Fighter Motion Sculptures. [via]
Doodle the alien home
Google Doodles Roswell A minigame for your Monday morning alien exile pleasure.
Whaling in the Antarctic (Australia v. Japan: New Zealand intervening)
A case currently before the International Court of Justice has Australia (supported by New Zealand) seeking to either stop the flagrant abuse of a loophole in the International Whaling Commission's rules by Japan, or a nasty cultural imperialist "moral crusade" attempt to suppress a sustainable, ancient tradition of killing whales with factory ships around Antarctica.
You can watch Court arguments here.
Some viewers may find these images distressing
As Ramadan begins, more than 100 hunger-strikers in Guantánamo Bay continue their protest. More than 40 of them are being force-fed. A leaked document sets out the military instructions, or standard operating procedure, for force-feeding detainees. In this four-minute film made by Human Rights organisation Reprieve and Bafta award-winning director Asif Kapadia, US actor and rapper Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), experiences the procedure.
The powdered ashes of Susan B. Anthony
Portishead at Glastonbury 2013
The enduring appeal of an act with such a relatively small oeuvre is understandable based on their 2013 Glastonbury set. Fantastic live act cinematography. [SLYT]
Eight Years and Counting
The Girls Who Haven’t Come Home (NYT) The last time they took Vernice Hill’s children away, the time they didn’t give them all back, was the afternoon she went to see her neighbor. Ms. Hill lives in a hulking building on East 188th Street, in a frayed neighborhood in the Bronx. It was May 1, 2005. [more inside]
What's in a name?
Sometimes the way you live your life is going to make a name for you, and sometimes your name is going to shape your life. Especially if your name is Harley Rider.
July 7
Explore a new world each month with Illustrated Aliens
Andy Martin has a plan to draw a different alien every day for a year, and animate and score a different alien world each month. He's now on month #7. You can see the aliens on the Illustrated Aliens tumblr, or jump right to The Planets on Vimeo. You can read more about his process in this Skwigly interview.
A field of mystical mushrooms and buried treasure
Director Ben Wheatley's latest film A Field in England was released last friday to cinemas, TV, home video, and VOD platforms in the UK. Mark Kermode, with full flappy-handed fervor calls it "very powerful, very strange and very hard to describe."
To coincide, distributor Film4 has published a digital masterclass (contains spoilers) describing the making of the film all the way from commissioning to scoring.
A Plant, a Perch, and a Prophylactic
Huey's taking what they're givin' 'cause he's working for a living
Grantland checks in with 1980s megastar Huey Lewis, who is "hard at play," still relentlessly touring at the age of 62.
After tonight's concert, the band will shower, the crew will load out, and Lewis's 25-person caravan (which he refers to as his "small business") will hop back on their buses and drive 403 miles to Anderson, Indiana, for tomorrow night's gig at a horse track and casino. In the next seven days, Lewis will play five shows in places like Paducah, Kentucky, and Quapaw, Oklahoma, along with bigger cities like Dallas and Cincinnati. Even with the gaudy 1980s sales statistics, Huey Lewis and the News has the work ethic of a 2010s indie band.
After tonight's concert, the band will shower, the crew will load out, and Lewis's 25-person caravan (which he refers to as his "small business") will hop back on their buses and drive 403 miles to Anderson, Indiana, for tomorrow night's gig at a horse track and casino. In the next seven days, Lewis will play five shows in places like Paducah, Kentucky, and Quapaw, Oklahoma, along with bigger cities like Dallas and Cincinnati. Even with the gaudy 1980s sales statistics, Huey Lewis and the News has the work ethic of a 2010s indie band.
"..isn't a huge amount of money compared to what you save in welfare.."
The Center for Investigative Reporting has found that in 2006-2010 nearly 150 female inmates in California were coerced into sterilization without state approval. [more inside]
It's what the words mean.
The dictionary of the Global War on You
A first attempt to “rectify” American names in the era of the ascendant national -- morphing into global -- security state.
Secret: Anything of yours the government takes possession of and classifies.
A first attempt to “rectify” American names in the era of the ascendant national -- morphing into global -- security state.
Secret: Anything of yours the government takes possession of and classifies.
Heavily Distorted
Content Aware Scaling is a Photoshop technique which allows you to selectively change the scale of one portion of an image without affecting the rest of it. This technique can be used on still images (like so) to create insanely proportioned compositions, or on moving images to create shifting, disorienting, and often hilarious animated .gifs (like so, and also). Digital artist Neil Cicierega provides a tutorial and a Photoshop script to do this yourself. [more inside]
not just used to assess how well Harvard first-years carried themselves
"Posing For Posture"
"Posture photos," as they were then called, were taken of every incoming student at many prestigious colleges in the first half of the 20th century, as a part of the registration process. George L. Hersey '51, now a professor of art history at Yale, says, "I was told to show up at the swimming pool, I took my swim test and posed. We were expected to show up and do this." Students acquiesced in the days of single-sex colleges because nudity was a normal part of the college experience, Knight says. "We never wore bathing suits in the swimming pools, it was considered more hygienic that way," he says. "The House [swimming] races were in the nude." And so posture photos were snapped and collected--and saved for later research which was intended to link physique to temperament. This practice--led nationwide by a Harvard researcher--remained widespread through the 1950s and 60s.[more inside]
Az utolsó pákász
Az utolsó pákász (The Last Fisherman) 1977. For those of you who are as into education films of traditional Hungarian fishing techniques as I am.
It cannot, however, keep your cat from messing it up
LEGO Mindstorms can be used in a great many ways, but in terms of building something that perform a task better than your average human, you can't beat a steady hand for lining up dominos. [more inside]
Hunger is hidden
A 5-year-old girl saw the dust trail of the bus and pedaled toward it on a red tricycle. Three teenage boys came barefoot in swimsuits. A young mother walked over from her trailer with an infant daughter in one arm and a lit cigarette in the other. “Any chance there will be leftover food for adults?” she asked. It was almost 1 p.m. For some, this would be the first meal of the day. For others, the last.
In rural Tennessee, a new way to help hungry children: A bus turned bread truck
Don't look at the comments. Do look at the photos.
In rural Tennessee, a new way to help hungry children: A bus turned bread truck
Don't look at the comments. Do look at the photos.
Limited nuclear exchange, pandemic, hypercane, supervolcano...
"While the light of humanity may flicker and die, we go gently into this dark night, comforted in the knowledge that someday Wikipedia shall take its rightful place as part of a consensus-built Galactic Encyclopedia, editable by all sentient beings."
"He then looked up, and saw . . . former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal."
Why Did You Shoot Me? I was reading a book. - A look at America's warrior cops.
PLEASE STOP THINKING ABOUT ZOMBIES
Coming Out Country
Five days ago, young Chicago lounge musician Steve Grand released his first single with no agent, no label: All American Boy. Free download (and donations) here.
Although his Facebook Page is only 6 days old, he is approaching 20,000 subscribers. He writes: I fought with who I was for most of my life. In every way a young person can fight with himself. But starting today... I'm laying it out there. I'm done playing it safe… This is the story I've been aching to tell… it is what I hold dearest to me.
Steve Grand on Twitter.
I have never been a very sound sleeper...
The Moon is Rolling in Her Grave is a video adaptation of the first chapter of the ongoing (since 2003) comic series "No Rest For The Wicked" by Andrea L. Peterson, a fantasy / adventure / horror tale that takes traditional fairytales and turns them on their heads: "Ms. Peterson uses, in conjunction with several more popular fables, folktales that you may have never even heard of. The entire plot actually centers around a little known Grimm fairytale called 'The Buried Moon', while also making reference to 'Red Riding Hood', 'Hansel & Gretel', 'The Girl Without Hands', 'The Boy Who Went Forth and Learned What Fear Was', and many MANY others." [more inside]
"Embarrassed" rap about breastfeeding.
Hollie McNish, Poet Shamed By Breastfeeding In Public, Has The Last Word on breastfeeding in public. [Warning! very uh... colourful language]
"That was never a comedy for me"
"I know I'm an interesting woman when I look at myself on the screen. And I know that if I met myself at a party I would never talk to that character because she doesn't fullfill pyhysically the demands that we're brought up to think women have to have in order for us to ask them out." -- Dustin Hoffman talks about Tootsie and what the movie meant to him personally. Bonus commentary by Jack Lemmon, Robin Williams and Sydney Pollack. Bonus bonus: Siskel and Ebert review Tootsie.
July 6
Drugs in context
Dr. Carl Hart, psychopharmacologist at Columbia, bust pernicious drug myths and talks provocatively about race and the "War on Drugs."
Bon Mashups
The Bon Iver Mashup Album is now available for download, and it's excellent. Check out the trailer for a preview.
Jim Henson's lost Tale of Sand, in graphic novel form by Ramon Perez
Let's think back to the 1960s, when more people were writing surreal, paranoid themes. Now place Jim Henson in that context, and you get Time Piece (YouTube, excerpt; behind the scenes clip, YT). Add in collaboration with writer (and puppeteer) Jerry Juhl and you have The Cube (YT, full film), as well as the setting for the hypnagogic story of a man pursued in the desert, called Tale of Sand. This was first written up as a screenplay and pitched as a movie in the late 1960s, then revised and re-pitched in 1974. But no one bit, so the screenplay was shelved, and then Jim gained fame for Sesame Street and The Muppets. Elements of Tale of Sand appeared in The Muppet Movie (YT, full movie) and other places since then, but the work was largely unseen and forgotten. Jump ahead three decades, and the Henson Company teams up with Archaia, first releasing Fraggle Rock and Dark Crystal comics, then digging in the Henson Company vault to bring Tale of Sand to light with cartoonist Ramón Pérez. You can see a preview of the graphic novel on Graphicly (including a nice dynamic display) and Amazon (static images, but more pages in the preview). [more inside]
Plane crashes while landing at San Francisco International Airport
Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed just before noon today while attempting to land at SFO. [more inside]
Godmother of Unix admins, presumed lost
The schooner Nina was last heard from on June 4th, as it fought high winds and seas off the coast of New Zealand. It carried a crew of seven, including Evi Nemeth - well known to sysadmins for co-authoring The Unix System Administration Handbook. As of today, the search has been suspended, and all are presumed lost at sea.
Do me a favour: cancel all your other bookmarks
Dear Wizard, Do you like stickers?
Christy Chan was 7 when she moved with her parents to a town in Virginia. As people of Chinese descent, they found themselves at first unwelcome. Christy, translating the mail for her parents, started getting "very formal letters, with crosses on them" signed by a mysterious Wizard.
Audio story. Film trailer.
1.5 years of Toronto Street Style
Daniel Goodbaum is dadaDan and makes "street style" videos of interestingly-dressed men and women on the streets of Toronto. The videos make great use of music and often have intro and outro 'cutscenes' that showcase Toronto's graffiti. Earlier this year he made a special "50th Street Style" video that is totally gorgeous. There are now 66 of them and counting. They are addictive. [more inside]
15 Ways to Open a Bottle
HandsFree
Recently, at the BBC Proms, the National Youth Orchestra performed a piece by the composer and electronic musician Anna Meredith. The name of the piece is HandsFree. It's not your typical Proms fare. The musicians put down their instruments and commence twelve-odd minutes of clapping, stomping, shuffling, shouts and even singing. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
And that's a wrap.
Sam Javanrouh's Toronto-centric photoblog Daily Dose of Imagery (previously 1, 2) called it a day on Friday after a highly-acclaimed 10 year run. [more inside]
Hang On, I Turned Into Two Ugly Guys And A Dog
Splitsider presents - The Top Eleven Sketch Comedy Groups On The Internet , featuring many Metafilter favorites. [more inside]
The Golden Age of Iron Men
Arthur Saxon, born April 28 1878, was a famous strongman and renowned member of the Saxon Trio. He famously beat Eugene Sandow in the bent press.
The Development of Physical Power is his most famous book, some of which has been excerpted here: [more inside]
"The Lyf So Short the Craft So Long to Lerne"
"In the interests of art, they seek to substitute the luxury of taste for the luxury of costliness; to teach that beauty does not imply elaboration or ornament; to employ only those forms and materials which make for simplicity, individuality and dignity of effect."
Every issue of Gustav Stickley's influential journal of the American Craftsman movement,The Craftsman.
T. rex and guest. Sharktopus and guest.
Photoshopping monsters into your wedding photos is now a thing. It started not that long ago, when a wedding photo featuring a T. rex chasing the wedding party went very, very viral. Now it seems every couple getting married wants a shot of the wedding party fleeing a threat to be pasted in later. From the Maclean's article: "'We're still trying to figure out what goes in the background,' [photographer] Tony [Lombardo] says. 'The couple hasn’t figured out yet what they want to be chased by.'" AT-ATs and Sharktopus have already been done. It's already getting old. Has it already gone too far [via]?
Hel on Earth
Why Are Things Creepy?
"Between the mountains of safety and danger there is a valley of creepiness, where the limits of our knowledge and trust and security aren't very clear." (SLYT).
A closer look at the science behind the third element in Stephen King's taxonomy of scary stuff: terror. Which is coming home to find that everything that you own has been replaced with an exact copy.
A closer look at the science behind the third element in Stephen King's taxonomy of scary stuff: terror. Which is coming home to find that everything that you own has been replaced with an exact copy.
Well, he wasn't a Grand Moff for nothing
July 5
Bow. String. Gourd. Bliss.
You think you need more than one string to make some totally captivating, subtly expressive and utterly soulful music? Well, you wrong!
STERANKO
Tinkertown, on the far side of the mountain from Albuquerque
It may take months for this odyssey of a place to completely sink in: quirky and utterly fascinating, Tinkertown Museum contains a world of miniature carved-wood characters. The museum's late founder, Ross Ward, spent more than 40 years carving and collecting the hundreds of figures that populate this cheerfully bizarre museum, including an animated miniature Western village, a Boot Hill cemetery, and a 1940s circus exhibit. Ragtime piano music, a 40-foot sailboat (that traveled around the world for a decade), and a life-size general store are other highlights. The walls surrounding this 22-room museum have been fashioned out of more than 50,000 glass bottles pressed into cement. This homage to folk art, found art, and eccentric kitsch tends to strike a chord with people of all ages. [more inside]
RIP: Randy Udall
Randy Udall was the son the late Mo Udall brother of Colorado Senator Mark Udall and cousin of New Mexico Senator Tom Udall. He died of natural causes while hiking to Titcomb Basin in Wyoming. [more inside]
50th birthday of the favorite radio station of clocks
Today is the 50th birthday of WWVB, a low frequency broadcast time service and frequency standard station of the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology that can be received in much of the Northern hemisphere. Along with high frequency sister stations WWV and WWVH, WWVB continues to evaluate and deploy new technologies to provide easily received and decoded time and frequency signals, which unlike GPS signals, will penetrate buildings and propagate past many terrain feature shadows, like hills and canyons.
Audio recordings of 1964 interviews with Civil Rights activists
Robert Penn Warren's book Who Speaks for the Negro? was a collection of interviews with various men and women involved in the Civil Rights Movement published in 1965. Vanderbilt University has made all the interviews available as audio and transcripts, taken from the original reel-to-reel recordings. Among the interviewees were Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Septima Poinsette Clark, Ralph Ellison, Stokely Carmichael, James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin. On the page for each interview there are links to related documents, such as letters, photos and contemporary news articles.
It's Minimal. But the *Parts* are Maximal.
Lou Reed Reviews 'Yeezus' for The Talkhouse: "This guy is seriously smart. He keeps unbalancing you. He'll pile on all this sound and then suddenly pull it away, all the way to complete silence, and then there's a scream or a beautiful melody, right there in your face. That's what I call a sucker punch."
Hello Again Goodbye Horses
Hayden Thorpe and Jon Hopkins cover Q Lazzarus' Goodbye Horses. The cover will be paired with the original song, which is being reissued. More on the mystery diva, Q Lazzarus.
There never was a golden ratio
There are many subjects that will get people mad on the internet, but in cinephile circles, the reddest flag is aspect ratio. Ever since the bad old practice of pan and scan was abandoned, DVD and Blu-Ray releases have tried to echo the widescreen aspect ratio that a film was released in, but that's often very hard to get right. Most recently, the Blu-Ray reissue of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon resulted in prolonged arguing and triumphant research. How did things get so confused? Filmmaker John Hess is here to explain, with an extensive and excellent history of aspect ratios.
I prefer a wet San Francisco to a dry Manhattan.
"Adrift is a love letter to the fog of the San Francisco Bay Area. I chased it for over two years to capture the magical interaction between the soft mist, the ridges of the California coast and the iconic Golden Gate Bridge."
Being a mermaid "is a lot more fun than bagging groceries."
Tourists have been visiting the roadside attraction since 1947. Don Knotts filmed a movie there, and Supergrass made a video. A few men have tried to join, but mostly it's a women's (underwater) world at Weeki Wachee. Now the New York Times visits The Last Mermaid Show.
Can I see the iPad? "Patience", he said.
Anagramatron is a tumblr blog that hosts algorithmically detected pairs of twitter anagrams.
[via mefi projects]
"I don't push anything on my kids," he said, again and again.
Balloon Boy's Tween Heavy Metal Career Lifts Off Remember the Balloon Boy hoax of 2009 when the Heene family falsely claimed that young Falcon Heene had stowed away in his father's large balloon as part of a stunt to bring the family some sort of reality TV show fame? Not one to go quietly into that good night, the Heene family is back to trying to be famous. They've become the self-proclaimed world's youngest metal band: the Heene Boyz! Patriarch Richard Heene has roped his family into another of his get-famous-quick schemes with songs like "Duct Tape Man" and "Cactus People" off their four-track debut album, American Chili, based on his own failed B-movie script. [more inside]
At least someone in Jackson is thinking of the children
"Counter-clockwise seating is unnatural" according to Jackson City Council member LaRita Cooper-Stokes. It's confusing innocent school children who are taught to read from left to right. Fortunately the reporter provides a helpful diagram to clear things up for us (drawing not to scale).
The Star-Spangled Fork-Flip, the Freedom Fork-Over, the Homeland Handoff
The American way of using a fork and knife is inefficient and inelegant. (SLSlate) Do you cut-and-switch? Well, you've got to stop. The more time you waste pointlessly handing utensils back and forth to yourself, the less time you’ll have to cherish life and liberty, pursue happiness, and contribute to America’s future greatness. And also—though that snob at dinner surely didn't know this—the supposedly all-American cut-and-switch is in fact an old European pretension, of just the sort we decided to free ourselves from 237 years ago.
It's My Day
Do modern Western weddings encourage narcissism?. From the large budgets to the phenomenon of self marriage, many people skirt the line between narcissism and individuality.
Things get a little crazy in the scriptorium after compline
Skeleton doodles, crappy D's, cat hats, embroidered book repair, dentistry, and a duck going queck, from the tumblr of Erik Kwakkel, a medieval book historian at Leiden University.
Examined Life - Judith Butler & Sunaura Taylor
Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor went for a walk and engaged in a terrific conversation about disability as not merely some physical status but largely a social status, and that is also true for so called "able-bodied" persons. (14:23) [more inside]
The Men Under the Influence
Jon Uriarte on Feature Shoot: Portraits of men wearing their girlfriends' clothes. (Photographer's own gallery)
Huh, so that's what it's like to feel like a superhero.
'My kids were in your library before me. I was really interested.'
Burma's Lucky Bibliophile
When the Ministry of Information’s director general visited Ye Htet Oo’s library in 2010, it could have been disastrous. Ye Htet Oo, then a recent college graduate, was running his new library in downtown Rangoon on the sly, without approval from the former military regime, and was told he could face three months in jail for every book he lent without permission from the censorship board. Unable to get a library license from the government, which saw libraries as a way to spread subversive ideas, he fronted his operation as a bookshop but kept a collection of unapproved library books hidden in a back room. Then one day, unknown to the young bibliophile, the ministry’s director general—who has since become the deputy minister of information and President Thein Sein’s spokesman—entered the “bookshop” and walked straight into the secret room.[more inside]
Omniscient spung
"Imagine a female pov character is going along about her protagonist adventure, seeing things from her perspective of the world as written in third person. She hears, sees, considers, and makes decisions and reacts based on her view of the world and what she is aware of and encounters. Abruptly, a description is dropped into the text of her secondary sexual characteristics usually in the form of soft-focus Playboy-Magazine-style sexualized kitten-bunny-I-would-fuck-her-in-a-heartbeat lustrous-eyes-and-nipples phrases. Her breasts have just become omniscient breasts." -- Kate Elliott on the male (and female) gaze in literature.
Project Souvenir
On Tuesday, details began to emerge about a failed attempt to detonate a pressure cooker bomb outside the BC Legislature in Victoria on Canada Day, a day on which few politicians would be present and the lawn packed with families. Independent publication The Tyee examines what role the RCMP played in the bomb plot while reviewing the history of so-called 'honeypot' investigations used by the FBI in the US.
July 4
It's Friday somewhere, right?
Friday Flash Fun: Ending, a hybrid of roguelike and puzzle game, or chess, or something. Maybe "it's like turn-based Gauntlet" would be a good description? There's an on-your-phone version if you're willing to spend a buck, too. DANGER: Very addictive to certain types. You've been warned.
And as I recall, I think, we both kinda liked it.
For Anal Retentive Comic Fans (As If There Were Any Other Kind)
The Complete Marvel Reading Order is a website representing one man's attempt to figure out what order a picky reader should follow if attempting to reading the entirety of Marvel Comics' in-continuity canon. You can check the entire list, commencing with "Fantastic Four #1" from 1961, or filter on particular titles, characters, or story arcs. The site is highly customizable and also includes an active blog and links to two different site podcasts.
"Stalemate."
Greg Shahade, an International Master of chess, plays an impromptu blitz game with Samuel Sevian (age 10).
Citizen McDuck
The Road From Karakol
In 2011, American alpinist (twice the winner of the prestigious Piolets d'Or award) and coffee shop owner Kyle Dempster, went on a two-month solo biking and climbing odyssey in Kyrgyzstan. He took a video camera with him and the video he shot from his two months was edited to form The Road to Karakol.
Cor, a slap up feed of comics links!
In the wake of the rumoured demise of The Dandy, artist Jamie Smart writes about the necessity of All-ages comics and how to make them work. Bonus links: The origins of new British weekly kids comic, The Phoenix. Al Ewing on that most British weekly comicsy of institutions: The readers voice. Tips for aspiring comics creators.
Bicycle Tours around the World in the 1890s
In 1891, William L. Sachtleben and Thomas G. Allen Jr. graduated from Washington University and set off to travel around the world. But their adventure was unusual for that time, in that they would travel on bicycle, following in the tire tracks of the Englishman Thomas Stevens. The two young lads returned safely to the US after three years, after traveling some 15,044 miles on wheel. Sachtleben was then asked to find another young traveling bicyclist (and photographer), Frank G. Lenz, whose goal was to surpass Stevens' journey "in both distance and daring." Lenz had disappeared in Turkey, where Sachtleben learned of Frank Lenz's untimely demise. [more inside]
Try some of this at home
The King of Random shows us how to make sparklers, shaken butter (that you can turn into a candle), instant ice (tutorial), and melting metal with microwave parts. [more inside]
Enlightenment
Zen photon garden is a 2D ray tracer in your browser. A blog post gives examples of what's possible and explains some of the unique details of its implementation.
"This is America Charlie Brown."
A sweet little tribute to American composers.
Put a little kid in your lap tonight, and let them watch this after the fireworks.
Rupert Everett, Really Into Dead Victorian Dreamboats
In 2008 the actor Rupert Everett hosted (seemingly from his apartment) a rather strange documentary: The Victorian Sex Explorer ( 2 3 4 5 ), an attempt to follow in the footsteps of famed Explorer, translator, and author Sir Richard Burton and convince us of Sir Burton's passion for sexual experimentation while laying in lots of bathhouses and visiting brothels. [more inside]
Navajo Star Wars
Running with the jackalopes
Abubakar Suleiman, a 15 year-old Boston student whose hobbies apparently include taking condescending local reporters for a ride. When one of the more august organs of the American press, the Boston Globe (founded 1872), came calling this week at his school in Boston’s suburbs in order to tell his story, he was only too happy to provide them with some quite remarkable copy.via
derspiegel article Kirschbaum book Springsteen 1988 Berlin concert
A new book about Bruce Springsteen's 1988 Berlin concert and the fall of the Wall. In July, 1988 Springsteen performed at the bicycle racetrack in Berlin and reportedly 300 000 people showed up. Everybody in the country who was not at the concert watched it on television. [more inside]
by the dawn's early light
It's a damn tough song to sing, that one we often hear on July 4th, but that didn't stop 'em from designating Francis Scott Key's clunky and tortuous little tune as the US national anthem. People have struggled with it ever since. There was one guy, though, who, back in 1969, performed a soaring, acid-drenched, whammy-barred and noise-punctuated version of it that still stands as one of the most daringly adventurous and poignant moments in American musical history: Mr Jimi Hendrix and his amazing rendition of The Star Spangled Banner.
Looking At Something
Possibly the worst film ever
The Lone Ranger is now in movie theaters. Currently rated an amazingly low 23% at Rotten Tomatoes, this film is a train wreck. Even the horse is lousy. It could be worse.
July 3
Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs
Because you are familiar with internet, you have already guessed what Laser Frasier might be like before clicking it. And if you consider it a moment, you'll probably (and correctly) agree that someone, somewhere, must maintain a collection of fiercely imagined plot synopses to 'unproduced' episodes of the long-running Cheers spin-off. But can you explain why these comic strips are so wonderful? (I can -- it is because KC Green made them.) [more inside]
Looks Great (Duh)
"You might remember artist Nickolay Lamm for his work removing doll's makeup to show that they looked just as lovely without that extra layer. Now, as promised, he's created a "normal"-sized Barbie, made to show us more realistic proportions of American women." (also via)
BRICKbricksmashSMASH
You know the old saying.
Grenades, Bayonets, and Tasers. Oh My!
The TSA has started an Instagram page showing confiscated items from TSA checkpoints in airports around the country.
Shelf Esteem
Shelf Esteem. Stories about people and their book collections.
Q. Why are ducks hard to understand? A. It's because they're on quack.
Sponsored by Math-Based Asset Services LLC
The Winklevoss twins have created and filed an SEC S1 for the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust for people who wish to invest in a fund that invests in Bitcoins. They also funded BitInstant, a site for brokering sales of bitcoins.
Look out, there are llamas!
People who keep llamas as pets will readily offer you any number of reasons: llamas are quiet, they’re gentle and affectionate, they don’t take a lot of work to maintain and, for outdoor animals, they don’t smell bad. Most people start with two or three, since llamas are sociable and don’t like to live alone. But as Katrina Capasso, a llama owner in Ballston Spa, N.Y., discovered, “They’re like potato chips.” It’s hard to stop at just a few. [more inside]
My Legoleg
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (mlyt)
Season 1 Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex is an anime TV series from 2002. The series takes place in 2030 in Japan after World Wars 2 & 3. The story centers on the activities of Section 9, an anti-cyber cribe and anti-terrorist group. The continuing bad guy of the series is the cyber terrorist known as the Laughing Man. Here is Season 1 on YouTube: [more inside]
Kit Cameo is a special snowflake indeed
Kit Cameo is an artist whose themed paper snowflakes include everything from Doctor Who and famous Archie McPhee items to Cthulhu and Batman. She describes some of her commissioned snowflakes and her process on her Facebook page. [more inside]
Very few imaginations beat an awesome playset
Doug Engelbart has died
Reports abound that Douglas Engelbart most famous for creating the computer mouse and for demoing much of what we take for granted in desktop computing in 1968's Mother of All Demos (YT), died last night at age 88. [more inside]
The Banality of Evil: NSA Recruitment Edition
Madiha Tahir, a journalist and PhD candidate, presents a transcript of her interaction with NSA staff who came to recruit at the summer language program where she is studying. "I had intended to go simply to hear how the NSA is recruiting at a moment when it’s facing severe challenges," says Tahir. Recruiters apparently discussed their "fun" after work, doing karaoke, having costume parties, and getting drunk. One of their slides asked the language students at the event "Are you good at manipulating people?" In the Q&A, Tahir and other students held their feet to the fire over surveillance of Germany and other EU countries.
Mail Covers for everybody.
Concerned about privacy and government surveillance? Not even snail-mail is safe: With Mail Isolation Control and Tracking, the US Postal Service is now photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail in the United States, and storing the data indefinitely.
The Guédelon adventure
In the heart of Puisaye, in Yonne, Burgundy, a team of fifty people have taken on an extraordinary feat: to build a castle using the same techniques and materials used in the Middle Ages. [WARNING EMBEDDED YOUTUBE AUTOPLAYS] The wood, stone, earth, sand and clay needed for the castle's construction are all to be found here, in this abandoned quarry. Watched by thousands of visitors, all the trades associated with castle-building - quarrymen, stonemasons, woodcutters, carpenters, blacksmiths, tile makers, basket makers, rope makers, carters and their horses - are all working together to complete the castle.
May I introduce to you the act you've known for all these years?
A visualization of the four final "master" tracks - Deconstructing Sgt. Pepper (SLYT) (via OpenCulture.com (so not really single link anymore, is it?))
SHARKNADO
SHARKNADO [slWTFSYFY]
"Keystone is worse than Heineken and murder."
Just in time for your 4th of July party shopping: 36 Cheap American Beers, Ranked
Ancient Greek Geometry: The Game
The regular polygons have been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude/tte to construct the regular polygons with nothing but a virtual compass and straightedge? [more inside]
The Underpants Revolution and other stories from the past...
"Whereas yesterday's Cora Pearl was eccentric, charming and a little cold-hearted, today's Victorian courtesan, La Païva, is straight-up eerie. Like, so eerie that a lot of people thought she was a vampire. My hand to Baby Jesus, people actually believed she was a supernatural being. " Bizarre Victoria shares (what else) bizarre, scandalous, and noteworthy stories form the Victorian era (and more). What do you serve at a country club for fat men? Devil's footprints! Lola Montez: servant whipper, de facto ruler of Bavaria. Empress Sissi and her No Good Very Bad Life. Aristocratic marriage at gunpoint. Public pubic hair trimming. Specialties of the Victorian Brothel. Curing hiccups by setting your shirt on fire. Gilded Age Arranged Marriages.
"smoke can add an element of interest to the shot."
To get you ready for Independence Day, National Geographic has provided some useful tips for photographing fireworks, complete with a pretty gallery.
Warmer and wetter
The last decade (2001-2010) was the warmest on record. According to The UN World Metereological Organisation's report, the average land and ocean-surface temperature for 2001-2010 was estimated to be 14.47°C, or 0.47°C above the 1961-1990 global average and +0.21°C above the 1991-2000 global average (with a factor of uncertainty of ± 0.1°C).
"Should the poet be with the czar, or against him?"
Poets appeared in Russia in the eighteenth century. They wore officers’ uniforms and mostly wrote odes for the accession of German empresses onto the Russian throne. In a country where life was lived according to the wartime principle of unity of command, everyone including poets served the government, which was personified by the autocracy. But everything changed with Pushkin. Born in a country where serfdom was only the formal expression of a deep internal psychological slavery, he achieved the most important Russian coup, the greatest Russian revolution: in opposition to the pyramid of power, at the head of which the Czar administers the fates of individuals and nations, he created an alternative pyramid, at the head of which stood the poet. The juxtaposition of the czar and the holy fool—the old divided paradigm of authority—was exchanged for the juxtaposition of the czar and the poet.— Poets and Czars — From Pushkin to Putin: the sad tale of democracy in Russia by Russian novelist Mikhail Shishkin, who caused a stir earlier this year when he withdrew from participation in literary events sponsored by the Russian state with a strongly-worded letter. His action was equally strongly criticized by the state and several Russian writers. Shishkin spoke to The American Reader about recent events. He currently lives in Switzerland and recently wrote an essay about being separated from his native language community.
The Lazy, Free-Thinking, Leisure Loving Japanese
How development leads to cultural change, and not the other way around. Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang shatters stereotypes, showing how common descriptions of the Germans, Koreans and Japanese right before their nations' intensive economic development mirrors current slurs against workers from African and Latin American countries today.
Let's talk about bikini waxing!
It's not a Tour without some Heartbreak
Ted King, everyman cyclist from New Hampshire and Middlebury Alum, riding with a separated shoulder, was cut from the 100th Edition of the Tour de France after missing the time cut during the Team Time Trial by 7 seconds. [more inside]
Science-themed radio plays available for free streaming
Some of the plays are about the lives of scientists, such as Richard Feynman (Moving Bodies), Alan Turing (Breaking the Code), Galileo (The Life of Galileo), and Rosalind Franklin (Photograph 51). [more inside]
Jujitsu Suffragettes
When the constables pulled out their truncheons, the Bodyguard responded in kind, drawing hardwood Indian clubs . . . from the bustles of their long dresses.
The fight for women's suffrage was not always a metaphorical one.
If another nation was doing this to our children, we'd be at war.
"The story of American families facing food insecurity is as frustrating as it is heartbreaking, because the truth is as avoidable as it is tragic. Here in the richest country on earth, 50 million of us — one in six Americans — go hungry. More than a third of them are children. And yet Congress can’t pass a Farm Bill because our representatives continue to fight over how many billions to slash from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps. The debate is filled with tired clichés about freeloaders undeserving of government help, living large at the expense of honest, hardworking taxpayers." Bill Moyers spends an hour with two of the creators of the documentary "A Place at the Table." [more inside]
Reporting Harassment at a Convention: A First-Person How To
"Although their behavior was professional and respectful, I was stunned when I found out that mine was the first formal report filed there as well. From various discussions in person and online, I knew for certain that I was not the only one to have reported inappropriate behavior by this person to his employer. It turned out that the previous reports had been made confidentially and not through HR and Legal. Therefore my report was the first one, because it was the first one that had ever been formally recorded.
" -- Well known science fiction fan Elise Matthesen was sexually harassed at Wiscon and decided to formally complain to both the convention and the harasser's employer. [more inside]
Seeing things without looking, since 2006
Discovering the strange beauty of the utterly everyday, Simon Sharville's Economy Custard is quotidian voyeurism at its gentlest. It certainly "...sits uncomfortably close to the boring", in a wonderful way. [more inside]
"an early 1960s self-portrait as a pitchman"
"Indiana Jones and the Book of Solomon!"
"A search that will save his love. A search that will save his life. A search that will save the world." Google Operating System uncovers an old Google/Airtel commercial from 2007 that references Indiana Jones (a bit) and is at least half as entertaining as Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. These were the tie-in billboards, here are the storyboards and this is a contemporary news article about the production.
July 2
A Medical Experiment with Positive Results
Health Quality Partners is an experimental program that uses home visits to Medicare patients to improve health. It also cuts costs. Scheduled to shut down this week, the program has gotten a reprieve. [more inside]
Antidemocratic in spirit, design, and operation
Bill Moyers interviews Sheldon Wolin in two parts.
Moyers: This will strike you as a very simplistic question, but I need to ask it. Do we have a democracy?
Wolin: It isn't a simplistic question, and the answer is I think we don't.
Moyers: *Spock eyebrow raise*
[more inside]
Moyers: This will strike you as a very simplistic question, but I need to ask it. Do we have a democracy?
Wolin: It isn't a simplistic question, and the answer is I think we don't.
Moyers: *Spock eyebrow raise*
[more inside]
BS 2000, the merging of punk rock, hip-hop, and a bunch of keyboards.
BS 2000 was the short-time collaboration between Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz of the Beastie Boys, and Amery "AWOL" Smith, best known as a punk drummer. They released a couple albums on the now-defunct Grand Royal label. They toured live, performing with the keyboards, drums and vocals (YouTube) that was the sound of punk rock and hip-hop combined into something funky and weird (Grooveshark stream). Bestie Mania has more on the band. Oh, and Adam and Amery shared their record collection on WFMU back in the day, so the show is only available in Real Media.
"The Inner Light" at 21
In the article "'The Inner Light' at 21", writer Morgan Gendel reflects on what fan-favorite and Hugo award-winning Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Inner Light" means to him. [more inside]
Let's have a teeny-tiny dinner
Come over my house and we'll cook up a tiny Re-Ment dinner...do you prefer Japanese cuisine? Maybe something European or Chinese? Perhaps fresh from the farm? Save room for Decoration Cake and Gummy Crepes for desert. RRcherrypie's YouTube channel has served up mesmerizing meals to millions. [more inside]
The marshmallows are not innate
An old Stanford study famously found that preschoolers who could leave a marshmallow alone for 15 minutes in order to gain a second one would go on to do better at life. A new study suggests that the important factor here may not be the self control of the child, but the child's level of trust that the second marshmallow would ever appear.
The Weirdest Language in the World
Idibon, a company that specializes in language processing, decided to rank the world's languages to see which had the most unusual features. The winner was Chalcatongo Mixtec, a language spoken by 6000 people in Mexico. The most normal language? Hindi. [more inside]
The Expendables
Many of America's biggest corporations rely on temp workers to make up an ever increasing portion of their work force. This has led to a boom in the temp agency industry and a sharp decline in temp workers' quality of life.
The Granite Mountain Hotshots and the Yarnell Hill Fire
On Friday June 28, 2013 a wildfire broke out in Yarnell, Arizona. Of several hundred firefighters sent to the scene, 20 were from the Granite Mountain Hotshot Crew out of nearby Prescott. A thunderstorm on Sunday produced lightning and high winds, causing the wildfire to explode from 200 to 2,000 acres in the matter of hours. By Sunday night, 19 of the Granite Mountain hotshots had died, trapped in the fire by rapidly shifting winds. [more inside]
Reviews that mention hangover in San Francisco
The new Yelp Wordmap uses review keyword density to depict which big city neighborhoods are the most "sketchy", "yuppie", "hipster", "bacon" and much more.
In Saturn's Rings
The first official trailer of In Saturn's Rings (formerly Outside In) has been released to universal acclaim. The movie (to be completed in 2014) is made exclusively from real photos taken by spacecraft, mostly Cassini-Huygens.
Private Varnish Usually Costs At Least $300 A Gallon
Many folks who play Powerball in the U.S. dream of private jets. But that's so passé. All the coolest, richest kids are buying, rebuilding and riding "private varnish" (29 page .pdf file) and those that don't have the scratch for that, charter. [more inside]
Lynch + Reznor
Came Back Haunted: David Lynch directs the video for the first single off the upcoming Nine Inch Nails album, Hesitation Marks, due out in a few more months. [Seizure warning: lots of flashing lights and such.]
40 years, one outfit
PE teacher Dale Irby wore a polyester shirt and coffee-colored sweater for school picture day in 1973. And for every picture day since then until his retirement this year.
Racial Slur or Honorific?
The Other Redskins. 62 US high schools in 22 states currently use the name "Redskins" for one of their sports teams. 28 high schools in 18 states have dropped the mascot over the last 25 years. As public pressure continues to intensify on the Washington Redskins football team to change their name -- one many consider a racial slur that disparages Native Americans -- similar debates are being waged in towns across the country about their local high school teams.
The Rock ’n’ Roll Casualty Who Became a War Hero
Jason Everman has the unique distinction of being the guy who was kicked out of Nirvana and Soundgarden, two rock bands that would sell roughly 100 million records combined. At 26, he wasn’t just Pete Best, the guy the Beatles left behind. He was Pete Best twice.
Then again, he wasn’t remotely. What Everman did afterward put him far outside the category of rock’n’roll footnote. He became an elite member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, one of those bearded guys riding around on horseback in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban.
Of course, James Blish sent it into space
Filling the East River. Filling the HUDSON River. Building a dome over Midtown.
Borderline crazy proposed infrastructure projects for New York City.
11,000 Miles in 11 Days on a Motorcycle
Today marks the beginning of the 2013 Iron Butt Rally, a long distance motorcycle rally in which participants ride 11,000 miles in 11 days. It rained on today's start in Pennsylvania, but the challenges are only beginning for these riders. [more inside]
~
Who was that masked man?
The utter failure of the Lone Ranger movie - the 1981 one, that is.
How to Steal a Mountain
Buried Secrets How an Israeli billionaire wrested control of one of Africa’s biggest prizes.
SO OLD AS TO BE MOSTLY NONEXISTENT, CURRENTLY
In response to Senator Mitch McConnell and his assertion that in 2016, Hillary Clinton will be too old to run for POTUS, Jezebel presents 101 Things Older Than Hillary Clinton.
Silly Point
No skin, please.
The doings of the Egyptian post office (SLpicasa, SFW?)
Wine Is Elegance
Drama
James Cameron is being sued by Roger Dean.
Best known as the creator of classic Yes album art, artist Roger Dean has filed a complaint against James Cameron and 20th Century Fox seeking more than $50 million in damages over Avatar.
Full 17 page complaint here.
Practically Incomprehensible
Russian rocket explodes in Kazakhstan
Let your voice be heard
This month, citizens and planning officials in Cape Cod, Mass., will get a chance to do what almost no one else in the U.S. is allowed to do when deciding whether to approve or reject a big-box retail development: weigh the likely impacts on the region’s economy. [more inside]
“She would live now, not read.”
Alice Munro Puts Down Her Pen to Let the World In: Accepting a literary prize in Toronto last month, Alice Munro, the acclaimed short-story writer — “our Chekhov,” as Cynthia Ozick has called her — winner of the Man Booker International Prize and just about every important North American literary award for which she is eligible, told a newspaper interviewer, “I’m probably not going to write anymore.”
22, Female, Kottayam
The Malayali Nurse on the Moon
She is everywhere, so it becomes difficult to see her. At some point you have to squint to see past the chimera that is the Malayali nurse. You have to ask why even Libya — broken, bullet-scarred and currently in possession of 14 psychiatrists for the whole nation — a better choice than any place in India? You have to ask why she chooses nursing at all. And if we don’t see her as a martyr to the family coffers, who is the woman emerging out of the smoke then?
If that sounds like it makes no sense that's because... well, it doesn't
This Simple Math Puzzle Will Melt Your Brain
"Adding and subtracting ones sounds simple, right? Not according to the old Italian mathematician Grandi—who showed that a simple addition of 1s and -1s can give three different answers."
"Adding and subtracting ones sounds simple, right? Not according to the old Italian mathematician Grandi—who showed that a simple addition of 1s and -1s can give three different answers."
Compact(ing) Cars
Immigration services actually acting reasonably shocker
"For the last two years, the agency has kept a list of same-sex couples whose green card petitions were denied, the officials said, anticipating that the Supreme Court would eventually weigh in on DOMA. Those denials will now be reversed without couples having to present new applications, if no other issues have arisen." -- The US Immigration and Citizenship Services agency has issued the first green card to a partner in a gay marriage.
L'escholle des filles (1668)
The School of Venus, or the Ladies Delight, Reduced into Rules of Practice (digitized by Google Books) is a delightfully raunchy sex manual from 1680, captured in wonderfully engaging detail. [more inside]
"We each have our own stories. This is mine, a season with the sheep."
A Tale of Transhumance: Herding Sheep with Livestock Guardian Dogs (print) in the Upper Green River Basin. [more inside]
July 1
“Er…I’ve got this idea about a fish.”
An interview with architect-turned-filmmaker Kibwe Tavares about his new film, Jonah. "Something I noticed while I was travelling in East Africa was the segregation between tourists and local people. I felt strange. None of the locals expected me to be a tourist because I was black – but I was staying in these weird campsites which were really isolated – so I was in Africa but surrounded by white people. Somehow I was the only black guy in a very black place." (previously)
FYI, We Just Won a War in the Philippines
Did you know the U.S. was at war in the Philippines? An excerpt from David Axe's new book. Previously.
HUGO: MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES
This memory was added on: May 3, 2009
gotta love him!..I found him in the attic recently and was reminded of the times my friends and I would take him out with us to concerts, culbs and parties in the late 70's early 80's...he does not have his disguises .. just his beautiful bald head and blue eyes...I was tempted to sell him..but i know he would haunt me in my dreams...he's here right next to me now giving me the unhairy eyeball just talking about it...I hear Hugo...and I obey....
gotta love him!..I found him in the attic recently and was reminded of the times my friends and I would take him out with us to concerts, culbs and parties in the late 70's early 80's...he does not have his disguises .. just his beautiful bald head and blue eyes...I was tempted to sell him..but i know he would haunt me in my dreams...he's here right next to me now giving me the unhairy eyeball just talking about it...I hear Hugo...and I obey....
It's Hardly Noticeable: anxiety portrayed in photography
John William Keedy is a photographer who was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder 9 years ago. Since then, he's been thinking of thoughts and feelings that are considered not "normal," and he has displayed some of these thoughts in a series of photos titled It’s Hardly Noticeable. Wired's Raw File has larger images and more thoughts from Keedy.
"I sing high and I look like fuckin' Rob Reiner."
Brian Christinzio, a.k.a. B.C. Camplight, is a former semi-professional boxer and an extraordinary Philly-bred piano-pop singer-songwriter who got some mainstream exposure when Blood and Peanut Butter, off his first album "Hide, Run Away," landed on an episode of Grey's Anatomy. He's also spent much of his life struggling with mental illness, and wrote his second album, "Blink of a Nihilist" -- a minor hit in the UK, but barely released stateside -- from a mental institution. (Here's Lord, I've Been on Fire, the lead single from that album.) [more inside]
I like to look at men… the way they look at women.
[All links probably NSFW] Ingrid Berthon-Moine is a London-based photographer whose latest series Marbles focuses specifically on the testicles of Classical Greek statuary. Hyperallergic asks her why.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dad
Lost Words in the Chamber
Lost Words in the Chamber. "This blog will post the last words of criminals executed in the United States, starting with Texas, the state with the highest annual number of executions." Via NYT.
Morsi, more like Lessi.
A sense of foreboding is rising across an increasingly troubled land.
One year after being democratically elected Egypt's President Morsi defies threat of military coup.
Some say the Egyptian Army Can’t Oust President Without ‘American Approval'
Al Jazeera - Egypt opposition to continue mass protests.
Background: Financial Times Egypt in transition.
One year after being democratically elected Egypt's President Morsi defies threat of military coup.
Some say the Egyptian Army Can’t Oust President Without ‘American Approval'
Al Jazeera - Egypt opposition to continue mass protests.
Background: Financial Times Egypt in transition.
Kid Snippets
Live recital at Miami's Gusman Concert Hall
Daniel Lessner plays Liszt's piano transcription of the overture to Tannhäuser.
[note the lack of use of the word "'eh"]
On July 1st, 1867, an act creating a federal dominion and establishing the Government of Canada came into effect. While citizens of the world's second largest nation may celebrate by reminiscing over tear-inducing beer commercials, bemoaning the craziness of its mayors, or feeling bad about the tar sands, I posit to you that there is no more Canadian thing on the internet than this video of Chris Hadfield singing a song with the Barenaked Ladies.
“I’m dismantling the Death Star to build solar ovens for the Ewoks.”
Oilberta
Canada has lost its famous politeness. With oil and gas now accounting for approximately a quarter of its export revenue, over the last decade Canada has not so quietly become an international mining center and a rogue petrostate.
I want to be totally confident that I’m offending the right people
F**k, I Need Some New Swear Words: Too many curse words strengthen the kind of social structures that we should be dismantling. [more inside]
In a world dominated by humans....
Photographer Linda Kuo's work focuses on "animals and their encounters with human civilizations". Displaced shows exotic animals being cared for at the Center for Avian and Exotic Medicine in NYC, while Hit and Run shows the aftermath of wild animals' encounters with vehicles upstate. (warning: Dead Animals).
James Lloydovich Patterson
Black Soviet Icon's Lonely American Sojourn: For decades Jim Patterson was arguably the most famous black man in the Soviet Union, a debonair homegrown poet whose childhood role in an iconic film cemented his celebrity and who later roamed the vast country reading his work to adoring audiences.
These days Patterson, whose African-American father emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1932, is convalescing in a threadbare subsidized apartment in downtown Washington, where he has led a reclusive life plagued by illness and depression since his Russian mother died more than a decade ago.
new to New York City and friendless
Until this point, your friendships happened through a vague combination of forced institutional socializing, classes, sports and booze. None of your friends can remember exactly how they became friends with each other. But now you are an adult, and now that friend-making is a conscious act, you realize you don’t know how to do it.
Only in America
Hippo potty humor
Measuring the fecal output of hippos. If you wanted to spend the first day of July watching a timelapse video of a Hippo enclosure being cleaned, filled & then dirtied again, you've come to the right place. Full details of the research being done are on this blog post.
In 2012, $34 billion was loaded onto 4.6 million active payroll cards
The media informs the public and holds government accountable.
Light, Reflection, and Shadow
Diet Wiegman takes using light and darkness to a new level in his sculptures. What may, at first, seem like an abstract composition, often made of mundane recycled items, reveals its amazing secrets when a light is applied. [via]
Crocheting the world
Olek is a crochet artist that is furiously crocheting anything that enters or leaves her life. She's crocheted the Wall Street Bull, a Pedi Cab Rickshaw(piloted by an acrobat), a billboard, text messages, automobiles, bikes, shopping carts, and people. When she's not crocheting the streets she is probably weaving her next art exhibit. This woman has made crocheting her life.
Got a style from the guts of the most irrational beast in the district
El-P (also known as El-Producto, formerly of Company Flow), founder of Definitive Jux and producer and rapper of note, and often political rapper (don't call him one), "mayor of Atlanta underground rap" Killer Mike have teamed up to release a free mixtape. It has already gotten some good reviews. (El-P Killer Mike, and R.A.P. Music previously, previouslier.)
"I will break my arm voluntarily if these are made"
Breaking a bone often means a stinky, itchy cast that hinders personal hygiene arrangements and means your friends seem to suddenly think it's ok to scrawl obscene graffiti on you (although some people find ways of making them super awesome). But what about a 3D-printed cast? [more inside]
Disclaimer: The opinions on this page are the property of the writers
www.altavista.digital.com
DEC - I mean Digital - I mean Compaq - er, CMGI - no, Overture; rather - Yahoo ... will shut down AltaVista for good next week.
No kangaroos were tied down in the making of this post
From Australia Day 2011 to Australia Day 2012 (26 January, natch) John Thompson posted a different Australian folk song on his blog each day, starting with Mortom Bay and ending of course with Waltzing Matilda. For those who'd like the full audio visual Aussie folk experience, there's also Raymond Crooke's Youtube playlist.
Cats puking to techno music
Cats puking to techno music (SLYT). Exactly what it says on the tin.
Coen Brothers do Paris in 5 minutes (SLYT)
Paris Je T'aime - a short 5 minutes film by the Coen Brothers.
In Tuileries, a short film by Joel and Ethan Coen from the 2006 anthology, Paris Je T’Aime, Steve Buscemi plays a mild-mannered tourist caught completely out of his element. What transpires is a rather bizarre five-minute cultural lesson they won’t teach you at Berlitz. via Open Culture
And they say Blizzard games don't have bugs
Why StarCraft crashed frequently during development,
How we could have fixed the most common causes,
The Starcraft Path-finding Hack
The making of Warcraft - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 .
Game development articles thanks to Patrick Wyatt (about) who led the development efforts on Starcraft, programmed extensively on Diablo and Diablo II and later left Blizzard to help run ArenaNet and release Guild Wars.
Lynn climbing the Matterhorn.
"This is a story, a picture story, of two very lucky people before whom was spread out the greatest of treasures, the planet Earth. We traveled aboard a magic carpet, the one with the yellow borders, National Geographic magazine. During four decades we wandered over all the continents and left wakes across the seven seas." [more inside]
Skybox - satellite imaging startup
"Inside a Startup's Plan to Turn a Swarm of DIY Satellites Into an All-Seeing Eye" - Wired on Skybox Imaging. [more inside]