October 2, 2014
Mark Your Calendars and Create Your Bookmarks and SCREAM!
Fun Size Horror is a film collective which is creating enough variety of scares to make this Halloween really special. Starting October 27, five websites (DreadCentral, Bloody Disgusting, Shock Till You Drop, Hitfix, and Collider) will each host one of 31 horror shorts for 24 hours, and then the next day each will bring you a new horror short. The trailer for the entire series is on Vimeo. I assume you can get links and information from @FunSizeHorror on twitter.
"art-typing"
Here is a picture of sexy ham!
How the law turns battered women into criminals
Arlena Lindley’s boyfriend Alonzo Turner beat her for months and murdered her child — so why was she sent to prison for 45 years? "...looking back over the past decade, BuzzFeed News identified 28 mothers in 11 states sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for failing to prevent their partners from harming their children. In every one of these cases, there was evidence the mother herself had been battered by the man." [article contains graphic descriptions of abuse]
"I hope Jason has a bedpan or something in his car..."
Jeff Gerstmann and Dan Ryckert of Giant Bomb infamy (previously) were looking for a more challenging mode in Super Mario 3. How about playing on a roller coaster?
"Mess with the best, Die like the rest!"
JPMorgan Chase Says More Than 76 Million Accounts Compromised in Cyberattack [New York Times]
"The breach is among the largest corporate hacks, and the latest revelations vastly dwarf earlier estimates that hackers had gained access to roughly 1 million customer accounts."
It's the bravest satellite of all.
"[M]y 5-year-old son goes to bed worried, sometimes in tears. He is worried about the Voyager Interstellar spacecraft, the fact that it is out there all by itself. He wants it to come home to be safe. What do we tell him?"
Commander Hadfield responds. [more inside]
Cheese your patter
A Dictionary of Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words, by A London Antiquary. If Lord Palmerston is known by name to the tribes of the Caucasus and Asia Minor as a great foreign diplomatist, when the name of our Queen Victoria is an unknown title to the inhabitants of those parts—as was stated in the Times a short time ago,—I have only to remark that amongst the costers and the wild inhabitants of the streets he is better known as PAM.
The people who take the bullet
The United States Secret Service finds itself deep in turmoil, with Director Julia Pierson resigning this week after an increasingly alarming series of security failures and oversights in the agency's role protecting the President of the United States.
Pierson had been widely criticized for scaling back security around the White House, during international summits, and a recent visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She startled supervisors with her view that the Secret Service needed "to be more like Disney World. We need to be more friendly, inviting." (multiple WaPo links) [more inside]
"The Odd Couple" at UCLA, 1971
Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau speaking at UCLA 12/1/1971 (audio with rotating pictures, 45 min 25 sec) [SLYT]
Why do you watch me on the toilet?
My cat's a dick. But he's, like, my dick. SLYT Drunk Dudes Talk About Their Cats.
It's not all that easy to 'just cook healthier meals'
Three North Carolina researchers spend 18 months learning about the food and cooking choices of almost 200 households. They learned, perhaps unsurprisingly, that simply encouraging households to cook healthier meals at home was unlikely to address the challenges to healthy eating most families face. [more inside]
Organic mega-flow batteries, inspired by rhubarbs
There are a number of grid energy storage methods, including flow batteries, which have the potential to be scaled up with increased tank sizes, but that would be expensive due to the cost of metals involved in the process. Enter a research team from Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, who have developed an organic mega-flow battery that utilize quinones, similar to those found in rhubarbs. The quinones serve as charge-carriers in chlorophyll during photosynthesis, with minimal degradation during the process, which is ideal for batteries used in large-scale energy storage and distribution. Some day, energy may be stored in "rhubarb batteries." (Abstract on Nature, paywalled article).
The Ultimate in Misdirection
Why They Called It the Manhattan Project By nature, code names and cover stories are meant to give no indication of the secrets concealed. “Magic” was the name for intelligence gleaned from Japanese ciphers in World War II, and “Overlord” stood for the Allied plan to invade Europe.
"Homeland Is Good Again: For now, at least."
Homeland season 4 debuts this Sunday, Oct. 5 at 9:00 pm EST on Showtime. (Spoilers in the links following) After receiving heavy criticism for season 3 (previously), reviewers who have had the chance to view the season 4 opener seem cautiously optimistic. Slate: Homeland Is Good Again. The Daily Beast: A Stripped-Down and Surprisingly Badass Return to Form. Variety: Meet the new, improved Homeland. [more inside]
Dutee Chand & Sport & Gender
"Like South African 800m sensation Caster Semenya before her, Chand discovered - in bold newsprint - that she had natural levels of the hormone testosterone normally only found in men. It did not take long before reporters were outside her parents' humble home asking them and her six siblings if she was a boy or a girl." [Via BBC Sport] [more inside]
Some Essays on Heidegger's Black Notebooks
Heidegger in Black. The King is Dead: Heidegger's Black Notebooks. Heidegger's Black Notebooks: Extreme Silencing. Release of Heidegger’s ‘Black Notebooks’ Reignites Debate Over Nazi Ideology. Is Heidegger Contaminated by Nazism?
The Toast and The Butter
The business side of The Toast. FastCompany profiles everybody's favorite feminist humor site (previously) on the heels of the announcement of a spin-off site to be headed by Roxane Gay (previously).
Wonder
Spotlight on HAY
"Welcome to the inaugural issue of Dagger & Dill. If it’s local, we love it. If it’s handmade, we fetishize it. If it’s old, we worship it. If it’s baked in a wood-burning oven, painted on a salvaged farmhouse door, or hand-engraved on a pewter cup, we dig it." With step-by-step plans for the perfect fall dinner party. ("Three hours before: Write out name cards for each jam at the jam-tasting station. Roast the vegetables, roll out the crust, and assemble the pot pie lovingly in a heavy cast iron pan. It must be cast iron.")
bot love
Beautiful image conversations between Twitter bots: @badpng and @pixelsorter, @a_quilt_bot and @pixelsorter
Cats drink water "as if they're doing the equations in their head."
"You've been cockblocked by Zeus, stupid boy, she says. "
"He makes love to her, his first time with a woman, but she's not really a woman—is a woman, then a man, then his exact double, then a peacock, feathers alluringly erect. " Rumaan Alam's "Scene From A Marriage" imagines the domestic bliss of Zeus and Hera and assorted boytoys.
La Carnada
Josh Soskin's latest short film La Carnada is about a 13 year old drug mule named Manny. Funded by Kickstarter, it is a prequel to a planned feature-length exploration of the drug trade.
The Distortion of Sound
The Distortion of Sound is a documentary about the decline of sound quality and how technology has changed the way we listen to music. It will open your ears and inspire you to reach for richer, more soul-stirring musical experiences.
"I am a planet, not minor-planet designation 134340"
Is the epically orbiting Pluto, the only planet to be named by a female, about to be reinstated its first class status asks the Independent, eight years after the International Astronomical Union controversially downgraded it to dwarf or minor planet. Since this move, more moons have been discovered and the case for righting this alleged planetary prejudice has continued to be made. While some headlines of today misleading claim that its planetary status has been restored, the public vote has so far been in favor. Scientists have debated, but questions remain over whether returning planetary citizenship to Pluto would also mean having to greencard the larger Eris, Ceres or other bodies in our solar system.
An Alternative Tour of Northern England
Let's start with Fred Dibnah (RIP) whose house (complete with a mine in the garden) is now a heritage centre. His TV career gives an idea of the sheer scope of his interests. [more inside]
True, False, Unverified
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