November 21, 2013
I get annoyed by artists who take themselves a little bit too seriously.
Need some vaguely disturbing furniture, sculpture, paintings or miscellaneous? William Robins, aka Elmer Presslee has your back. Visit his drive through exhibition.
"Continuity, Marty! Something has gotta be done about your continuity!"
“But, Commodore! It’s the WEEKEND!!!”
Get ready for Thankgiving
Go Down With The Ship
Sweltering
Snakes Wearing Hats
Snakes wearing hats. That is all.
Let Me Live That Fantasy
A jazz cover of Lourde's "Royals" by Postmodern Jukebox, featuring guest vocalist "Puddles" - Trigger Warning: Real Life Angry Clown Giant Lounge Singer (who's really good, which makes it scarier) [SLYT]
One down, five to go.
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The Good Old Days
8 reasons I'm happy it isn't 1963 A refreshing take from a small business owner about how good the good old days really were.
Dr Who 50th Anniversary Google Spectacular
A Fair Chance?
For the first time, three women, identified as Pfc. Julia Carroll, Pfc. Christina Fuentes Montenegro and Pfc. Katie Gorz will graduate from enlisted infantry training today, having passed the two month course at the School of Infantry-East at Camp Geiger, a satellite of Lejeune. However, they still won’t be allowed to serve in an infantry unit, until the Marine Corps finishes its study of women in combat, in two more years' time. [more inside]
US Senate Democrats vote to change filibuster rules
You may find this brief history of the US Senate's filibuster fight timely and interesting, as the chamber just voted to end it for "executive branch and judicial nominees, except for the Supreme Court."
Microphone Check and Mate!
How will you celebrate?
Today is World Philosophy Day. Celebrate by reading the Euthyphro, Al Jazeera's Defense of Philosophy, or the first chapter of the new book Why We Argue? (And How We Should.) But don't just sit there interpreting the world! The point is to change it, so maybe spend some time advocating for early-childhood philosophy education.
"The man who told me it had a moustache."
I can't rightly vouch for this story but a fellah told me when he was a young'n, didn't his mother wake him early on a weekend...Norm MacDonald has spent the last 9 hours tweeting a set of rambling Faulknerian jokes.
'The FASTEST pianist in the world'*
Lubomyr Melnyk is a musician and composer who developed, in the 1970s, a distinctive way of playing piano very rapidly over extended periods of time, a style he terms ‘music in the continuous mode.’ Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in his work, including: re-releases of his 1979 debut LP KMH (in 2007) and of his 1985 collaboration with tubaist Melvyn Poore The Voice of Trees (in 2011); the release of a CD† of joint improvisations with the guitarist James Blackshaw (The Watchers, 2012);
performances with Nils Frahm and with the artist Gregory Euclide (previously); and at least two new solo releases: Corollaries and Three Solo Pieces (both 2013). [more inside]
A concept restaurant with a focus on the refined tastes of children.
Lil' Buco: fine dining for kids
1854 Map of the world's tallest mountains and longest rivers
Behold, a 1854 Map of the world's tallest mountains and longest rivers (alt. link), as understood at that point in time, when Dhaulagiri was thought to be the tallest mountain in the world. This is taken from the General Atlas Of The World: Containing Upwards Of Seventy Maps, which can be read (awkwardly) on Archive.org as scanned from black and white microform, or go straight for the good stuff and browse the full color maps in David Rumsey's collection of high-resolution scans of historic maps (via Dark Roasted Blend and io9).
A Short History of Modern Music, One Instrument at a Time
Collective Cadenza (CDZA) has been releasing musical histories of the guitar solo, the drums, the accordion, and the bass. [more inside]
A reluctant and minor footnote.
"With no mourners around to serve as pallbearers, it was a task that fell to me and a few other reporters covering the funeral of John F. Kennedy's assassin." An ex-AP reporter remembers the funeral of Lee Harvey Oswald. No one showed up to mourn, and the press had to step in to serve as the pallbearers.
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Who Killed Michael Hastings? (SLNYMAG) Reflexively distrustful, eager to make powerful enemies, the young journalist whose Mercedes exploded in Los Angeles one night couldn’t possibly have died accidentally, could he? [more inside]
"I will not post any casualty reports for 24 hours as I am celebrating."
The Far Post is a journalism series by Roads and Kingdoms and Sports Illustrated on global soccer culture that will run every other week until the start of "the largest theater that has ever existed in human history," the World Cup. So far there are five articles: Brazil 2014 Starts Now by Laurent Dubois gives an overview of the history of the World Cup and what it means now. Messi in Kolkata by Kanishk Tharoor is about a visit by the Argentine national team to Kolkata and the state of the game in India. Afghanistan United By May Jeong is the story of the incredible triumph of the Afghan national team at the 2013 South Asian Championship. Soccer and the Street in Istanbul by Izzy Finkel reports on the links between soccer and politics in Turkey. The Long Revolution of the Ultras Ahlawy by Patrick Kingsley is the account of how hardcore soccerfans in Egypt, at the center of the 2011 revolution, have fared in the aftermath.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot requests clearance to taxi to pad charlie and cry.
Boeing's largest, and ugliest, aircraft today is the 747 LCF, better known as the DreamLifter. The primary job of the DreamLifter is delivering entire 787 fuselages for final assembly. Yesterday evening, one DreamLifter was supposed to land at Wichita, Kansas... [more inside]
High Frequency Dating
Automate your love life.
Facial attractiveness is surprisingly uncomplicated to quantify. Essentially, evolution has us seeking partners that are as “normal” as possible. Anything that is unusually big or small, any ratio that differs from \phi, or about 1.618, hurts the score. After the face(s) are identified in the image, a mask of 25 anthropometric proportion indices is overlaid and mean compliance is measured.[more inside]
Am I shaving you?
Regular viewers of the delightful weekly public-access program The Chris Gethard Show know that last night, host Chris Gethard announced that the show has received a pilot order from Comedy Central. For those not caught up on the madness, TCGS's full archive is available on Youtube and Blip. [more inside]
Don't ruin that Bogart story with inconvenient facts
A parakeet infestation that started when Humphrey Bogart left the door to the set of The African Queen open, pigeons taking the Tube, foxes learning to sit pretty for sausages, a colony of pigeon eating pelicans gifted by a Russian ambassador in 1664 and underwater warfare between rival gangs of invasive crayfish species are just some of the miracles found in the unnatural history of London's wildlife.
Instructional shaving video
How to shave. There comes a time in everyone's life where they have to start shaving, so it's important that you know how to do it correctly and safely without causing an injury.
Flexible posturing around religion
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