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Last year, after Halloween, Jimmy Kimmel had parents troll their kids for cheap laughs by telling them that they had eaten all their candy. While many observers, including some Mefites, felt that lying to your kids in this way was being willfully-mean, it garnered 34 million hits on YouTube, so naturally, he did it again. Whether you think this is funny or not is definitely debatable; but if you're an old curmudgeon, like me, perhaps 3 year-old Madeline might just restore your hope for humanity.
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 8:04 PM PST - 125 comments

Coyote Man, Mr. President & the Gunfighters. A prose poem, written by Gary Snyder, that should be required reading for whoever is in the White House on January 20.
posted by John of Michigan at 7:56 PM PST - 14 comments

On November 3 1957, Лайка, also known as Laika The Space Dog is launched into orbit around the planet earth. A small mongrel chosen for her patient temper, the Soviet Space Program gloried in her achievement, but when she was sent into space, there was no plan in place for a proper re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere. When pressed for details, the USSR media eventually claimed that she was peacefully euthanized with drugged food after six days in orbit. Documents released years later revealed that after six hours and four orbits, she died from a faulty heat-shield malfunction. Her spacecraft disintegrated five months later... But what if Laika didn’t die? [more inside]
posted by ovvl at 5:33 PM PST - 75 comments

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television series of one hour shows written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, that was aired at the tail end of 1980 and was - at the time - the most widely watched series in the history of American public television. It is best introduced by an audio excerpt of one of his books, The Pale Blue Dot. Inside is a complete annotated collection of the series. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb at 5:07 PM PST - 46 comments

Iron Baby and Dragon Baby, the inevitable prequels for two movie franchises, from Patrick Boivin, creator of AT-AT Day Afternoon (previously).
posted by Doktor Zed at 4:16 PM PST - 5 comments

Beautiful Georgia, my adopted state as I finish life’s journey ... my last year ever to vote in a presidential election. I wanted to feel part of this great privilege, wanted to again walk out of my precinct tapping my Georgia Peach voter sticker. Even if the day were dark, gloomy and cold, the sun would be shining. One Georgia nonagenarian's quest for voter ID
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 3:46 PM PST - 46 comments

The Long Con: Mail-order conservatism From The Baffler.
posted by zoo at 2:08 PM PST - 77 comments

Street art; we see it every day from Rio to Paris and even the Lebanon.
But then there is Guerrilla Crochet.
posted by adamvasco at 1:53 PM PST - 14 comments

Eighty years ago Australia went to war against a fierce and terrible enemy threatening the very foundations of life in Western Australia. An enemy so tough the Australian commanding officer described them as "like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop". Though the army did have the upper hand in the first engagements, dreams of a quick victory were dashed when the enemy's central command let its "unwieldy army split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month". Yes, it's eighty years since the Emu War.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:37 PM PST - 27 comments

NOLA to New York Katrina survivors reach out to Sandy survivors
posted by ColdChef at 1:20 PM PST - 8 comments

The Indonesian Street Art Database (ISAD) is an artist-run project that aims to archive street art in Indonesia as a documentation of the country’s urban culture. Art Radar delves into the ISAD archives to explore the breadth of street art in Indonesia and the concerns of the country’s urban artists.
posted by infini at 1:04 PM PST - 2 comments

Let's call a bigot a bigot.
posted by Artw at 12:58 PM PST - 52 comments

Saturday flag links: Colorful EU flags (and more) and the old national food flags. A natural Canadian flag. Proposed Earth flag. A couple Inception flags. The flag of Oceania. Evolution of the US flag and wikipedia’s timeline of national flags. Dannebrog, the oldest state flag still in use (since 1219) and the flag of Christiania. One of the most famous photos of a flag, Soviet troops raising the flag of the Soviet Union atop the German Reichstag. The powerful flag of the NSDAP. A flag designer, the principles of flag design, and flags by design. 204 pixel art flags made for an Olympics video game. [more inside]
posted by growabrain at 11:21 AM PST - 28 comments

The Post-Apocalypse Survival Machine Nerd Farm. The goal: "... to create a completely self-sufficient community that produces not only its own food, but also energy, tools, and raw materials for making those tools. "
posted by blue_beetle at 11:05 AM PST - 32 comments

It’s a fierce object, many-layered yet taut as could be. It’s a dense field made of raw materials so rarefied that even in combination the resulting effect is singular, tensile. The album in question is Fugazi Edits, for which Chris Lawhorn took the extensive discography of the hardcore band Fugazi and combined multiple songs into new hybrid compositions.
posted by Egg Shen at 11:02 AM PST - 10 comments

The Caretaker of Dreams Wins The first time the rainbow mysteriously appeared on a tunnel visible from the Don Valley Parkway, the North York parks department painted over it. But the guerrilla mural artist — known as “the Caretaker of Dreams” — persevered, eventually winning them over. Now, 40 years later, the city has officially restored the psychedelic mural that has brought smiles to countless grim commutes — just as the artist intended.
posted by modernnomad at 8:20 AM PST - 25 comments

The Toolchest Site does what it says on the tin. Possibly the most mind blowing tool chest on the site is this masterful 1/12 scale reproduction based on the Hewitt chest at Colonial Williamsburg, done by celebrated miniaturist William Robertson. Everything works like the original, down to the lock and the included tools like the plane and the folding rule.
posted by Harald74 at 3:20 AM PST - 27 comments

In China, hipsters are called “cultured youth” when they're not being called "dumbassess", that is. [more inside]
posted by telstar at 1:43 AM PST - 72 comments