September 26, 2014
Sparked
Sparked is a short film by Cirque Du Soleil about a solitary inventor. And his lampshades.
Dling!
After eight main instalments and two collaborative instalments (including July's Minnano Hoshi Saga 2), Nekogames' classic Hoshi Saga series returns with a new instalment that changes the formula a little: Hoshi Saga Reishiki. The goal, as always, is to find the star in each level, but this time, you can only use the arrow and Enter keys. Also, there is now a gift hidden in each level. (Previously - see also Nekogames' Ouka, Kikka and Touka, also previously.)
This is where we turned it up to 11
Where is the Drama takes any song input recognized by Spotify and analyses it to find the 30 seconds or so of highest drama, defined as the portion of the song with the largest increase in loudness. [more inside]
Dust. Wind. Dude.
"Dave Beeth-Oven. Maxine of Arc. Herman the Kid. Bob Genghis Khan. So-Crates Johnson. Dennis Frood. And, uh... Abraham Lincoln." Hadley Freeman revisits Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure with Alex Winter, and Ben Child reports on the long-awaited follow-up to Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.
Madonna as serious Classical Hollywood cinephile
The exhaustively researched Hollywood history podcast You Must Remember This (Previously) presents a two part episode focusing on Madonna's use of classic Hollywood imagery and references as a form of conceptual art and her early attempts to trade pop idol success for movie stardom within the context of two high-profile relationships with Sean Penn and Warren Beatty. Episode One. Episode Two.
Meanwhile, Todd In The Shadows creates video reviews for every movie Madonna was ever in. So far he's done Desperately Seeking Susan, Shanghai Surprise, A Certain Sacrifice, and Who's That Girl.
Free Museum Day!
Nothing to do tomorrow (Sept. 27th, 2014)? Well, it's Museum Day Live, and you can score free admission for two at over 1,500 museums in the United States by registering at Smithsonian.com.
(Search here to determine if there are any participating museums in your area.)
Nello. The marvellous Neil Baldwin, a real-life Forrest Gump?
"Marvellous" - the amazing story of Neil Baldwin on BBC IPlayer (UK only) When I was at Keele University back in the early 90s, Nello was already a legend. A campus fixture, I had no real idea what he did there, or what he was doing there. But the stories were legion. A circus clown turned kit man for Stoke City FC, and a "very good friend" to bishops, politicians, footballers, and, well, just about everyone.
A confession from mimi smartypants
Online diarist mimi smartypants has been typing about her life for just over fifteen years, and now she's considering quitting the gig. "Next week marks fifteen years of this online diary thing, and I have been toying with the idea that maybe that is quite enough, thank you. In fact, I had not updated in so long that I sat down to type a mic-drop “thanks for the memories”-style entry, but then this crap came out instead. So maybe I’m not quite done yet? I don’t know." [more inside]
PROJECT OMOTE
GUTS Canadian Feminist Magazine
GUTS is a new online feminist magazine. Topics from the first two issues include Canadian feminist documentary filmmaking; feminist strategies for commemorating gender-based violence; "postfeminist" parliamentary political discourse; Canadian novelist Sheila Heti's genre-bender on women's relationships, How Should A Person Be?; women's paid and unpaid labour; institutionalized gender inequality in organized sport; Indigenous women, decolonization, and institutionalized racism. There's also a blog.
Bypassing the self elected gate-keepers.
Radiohead's Thom Yorke just released a surprise album, Beyoncé-style [vox.com]
Tomorrow's Modern Boxes is only available on BitTorrent, where listeners can download the track "Tomorrow's Modern Boxes" for free, and watch the video. The full album can be downloaded for $6, and will also be available on vinyl and in a box set.[more inside]
Hope Solo - Does Domestic Violence Have A Double Standard?
Female football star Hope Solo was recently arrested and charged with two counts of domestic abuse in connection with an assault on her sister and 17-year-old nephew. Although domestic abuse has rightly ended the careers of male athletes like Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson and Greg Hardy, Solo continues to play for two teams (including the US National team) and maintains her sponsorship with Nike. The BBC asks; does domestic violence have a double standard?
Addicting Clicker Game Friday
The new hottest clicking game is Clicker Heroes. For more advanced discussion there's a subreddit with a helpful strategy FAQ section.
Christopher Hogwood CBE, September 10, 1941 – September 24, 2014
Christopher Hogwood, conductor, scholar, musician and champion of historically informed performance, died on September 24 at the age of 73.
[more inside]
"Good light costs so little."
In 1924 a consortium of lightbulb manufacturers formed the Phoebus cartel. Its goal: planned obsolescence. The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy. [more inside]
Not as simple as dumping a can of dog food, it turns out.
Doggie Drawings!
Dogs of the World: adorable illustrations of dog breeds, grouped by the regions where they originated.
By Lili Chin, whose Doggie Drawings include numerous infographics on dog training and behavior. Some examples: Greeting a Dog, Space Etiquette for Dogs, Positive Reinforcement Training, How to Create a Dangerous Dog.
Wondering about the Boston Terrier who keeps popping up in these infographics? Meet Boogie.
By Lili Chin, whose Doggie Drawings include numerous infographics on dog training and behavior. Some examples: Greeting a Dog, Space Etiquette for Dogs, Positive Reinforcement Training, How to Create a Dangerous Dog.
Wondering about the Boston Terrier who keeps popping up in these infographics? Meet Boogie.
Mark Saltveit profiles Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly
Metafilter's own Mark Saltveit profiles eclectic Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly for Philly.com. Saltveit already wrote the book on Kelly, and the profile is part of a follow-up effort called "Controlled Chaos: Chip Kelly's Football Revolution." [more inside]
You're not real, I'm real.
"You poked my heart." SLYT. A group of tow headed toddlers get in a row about the weather, adorableness ensues.
The Rapping, Galloping, and Kicking Dead
Season five of The Walking Dead starts in two weeks, and the Internet is getting excited [NSFW]:
- Bad Lip Reading presents "MORE WALKING (AND TALKING) DEAD: PART 1" - A Bad Lip Reading of The Walking Dead Season 4, featuring KORL! rapping.
- A supercut of the best Walker kills, set to "Infernal Gallop", aka the "can-can".
- The official AMC trailer for season five of The Walking Dead. Clocking in at 3:28, it was first released at Comic-Con this summer.
One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer x3. And then one other thing, too.
Washington Post's Wonkblog, leveraging data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) and economics and public policy professor Philip J. Cook's "Paying the Tab" looks at how much Americans drink. 30% of Americans don't drink at all. Another 30% consume fewer than one drink per week. To be in the top 10% of American, you'd need to drink the equivalent of 74 drinks per week, every week, or a little over 10 drinks per day.
Who Is Su
She was 22 when her memory was obliterated. Twenty-six years later, Su Meck is still learning about the family she raised and the husband she has no recollection of marrying.
Su has no earliest single memory and resents the question (it is the one she’s asked most frequently). She begins remembering around 1992, when she was roughly three months pregnant with Kassidy and a friend who was aware of her condition explained why her period had likely ceased, and went with her to a drugstore to buy a test. [more inside]
Arrr, thanks Obama, ye scurvy sea lover!
US Creates Largest Protected Area in the World. Over 3x larger than California, the Obama administration has enlarged the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. Fishing, dumping, and removal of coral are now prohibited.
Now that we have met with paradox we have some hope of progress.
Somaly Mam [previously] responds to the Newsweek article last spring that raised questions regarding the legitimacy of her work as a Cambodian anti-trafficking activist, tainting the nearly two-decades-long work on behalf of victims that catapulted her into the global spotlight. "I didn't lie."
The best care that money can buy?
She was determined to fulfill her father’s dearest wish, the wish so common among frail, elderly people: to die at home. But it seemed as if all the forces of the health care system were against her — hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies, insurance companies, and the shifting crosscurrents of public health care spending. The NYT reports in depth on a single case, a snapshot of the typical end-of-life care situation in the United States. A worthwhile but disturbing long read, potentially very upsetting if you've lost a loved one in a similar managed care setting. [more inside]
"It feels like I'm breathing through a straw"
OneRepublic just released their latest music video, I Lived, which tells the story of Bryan Warnecke. He's a fifteen year old boy who cycled over a thousand miles in 43 days over 8 mountain passes, raising $260,000 for Cystic Fibrosis research. He also suffers from Cystic Fibrosis. [more inside]
"YOU EXIST ONLY TO REDUCE OVERTIME"
Missing vessel, Foveaux Strait area
He does not believe himself to be an exceptional person but now understands that if you push yourself exceptional things can be done.Eight men and one young boy left Bluff, near the southern tip of New Zealand's South Island, on a fishing and mutton-birding trip on the evening of 14 March 2012. Only one man made it back. This is the story of how he survived and his colleagues didn't. [more inside]
Sachs Tapes
The NY Federal Reserve is supposed to monitor big banks and prevent another financial crisis. But when Carmen Segarra was hired, what she witnessed inside the Fed was so alarming that she bought a tiny recorder, and started secretly taping. This American Life reports. [more inside]
Cookies, caches and cows
Translating technological terms throws up some peculiar challenges
Ibrahima Sarr, a Senegalese coder, led the translation of Firefox into Fulah, which is spoken by 20m people from Senegal to Nigeria. “Crash” became hookii (a cow falling over but not dying); “timeout” became a honaama (your fish has got away). “Aspect ratio” became jeendondiral, a rebuke from elders when a fishing net is wrongly woven. In Malawi’s Chichewa language, which has 10m speakers, “cached pages” became mfutso wa tsamba, or bits of leftover food. The windowless houses of the 440,000 speakers of Zapotec, a family of indigenous languages in Mexico, meant that computer “windows” became “eyes”.
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