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Hungarian inventions that have shaped the modern world: Laszlo Biro's ballpoint pen, the telephone exchange and holography, and the Magyar microcar, "how Hungary circumvented Stalin and also had a bit of fun." This is just one of a number of weirdly awesome microcars of Hungary from the 1940s and '50s.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:23 PM PST - 39 comments

David Bordwell's Observations of Film Art explains the blocking of Elia Kazan's Panic In The Streets
posted by the man of twists and turns at 6:56 PM PST - 9 comments

Zelda Day 2015:

• If you love the NES original but are sad you know where everything is, try the Zelda Randomizer! (Windows EXE, requires ROM). Tries to guarantee solvable games! YouTube play.
• Did you know that, in the original releases of N64 Ocarina of Time, if you hold the R button down when you get a certain item, you get a different one instead? Info with more OoT glitches.
• From Double Fine! Devs Play The Legend of Zelda, four parts: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
• Fan animation, "Racing For Rupees".

posted by JHarris at 6:06 PM PST - 32 comments

Folk musician Pete Seeger was under investigation by the FBI for decades from his time as a soldier during World War II until the 1970s. David Corn of Mother Jones magazine got over 1700 pages of surveillance reports, which have been released online. Seeger first came to the attention of the FBI because he wrote a letter protesting calls to strip all Japanese-Americans of citizenship and deport them. [via RÚV]
posted by Kattullus at 3:13 PM PST - 36 comments

Vice Motherboard on the immortal jellyfish and Shin Kabota, the man who sings their praise. Shin Kubota music video.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:13 PM PST - 3 comments

TV episodes about abortion, reviewed by women who've actually had one. The recent episode of Scandal was excellent, as was an earlier one. The episode on Parenthood was very good. That notorious one on the The Facts of Life was terrible (and their other one wasn't much better). You know what you're getting from 90210, but you'd expect something better from House. An early treatment of abortion was on Buffalo Bill and Maude had an abortion prior to the Roe v Wade decision! There's also Felicity, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, Call the Midwife, and Friday Night Lights. There's Star Trek: The Next Generation and Degrassi: The Next Generation. A full alphabetized list of reviews (to date) is below the fold. [more inside]
posted by McLir at 10:42 AM PST - 40 comments

Where to Find the Best Sci-Fi & Fantasy Short Fiction Recommendations Online. As Hugo Nomination season approaches, everyone needs some help sifting through the huge volume of short fiction (novellas, novelettes, and short stories). Tor.com published a post about where to find the best online recommendations. It's worth a look.
posted by Greg Hullender at 9:23 AM PST - 21 comments

Photos of everyday life in 1950s NYC found in an attic decades later.
posted by The Whelk at 9:21 AM PST - 41 comments

Meta, Irony, Narrative, Frames, and The Princess Bride - Jo Walton takes a look at William Goldman's (or if you will S. Morgenstern's) classic novel.
posted by Artw at 9:03 AM PST - 38 comments

Kansuke Yamamoto was a Japanese Surrealist, known mainly for his Photography (large Gallery some NSFW). He was also a Poet.
Photographs from The Magician's newspaper (NSFW) Tumblir and Pinterest.
posted by adamvasco at 7:36 AM PST - 3 comments

An unexpected revival for the ‘bard of empire’. [The Guardian] ‘Vulgar rabble-rouser’, ‘rootless cosmopolitan’, ‘mouthpiece of the empire’ Rudyard Kipling has had his share of detractors. But, 150 years after his birth, interest in India’s greatest English-language writer is growing.

They are not alone. Kipling, the “bard of empire”, has always been difficult to place in the cultural pantheon. Britain, too, has done remarkably little to officially mark the sesquicentenary of its first winner (in 1907) of the Nobel prize for literature (and still the youngest ever from anywhere). Indian-born, yet British? We are already entering the muddy field of contradictions that sometimes bog down the reputation of this mild-mannered man. Yet it is these that make him uniquely appealing and that, belying top-level institutional indifference, are sparking an unexpected revival of interest in him, and in particular in his role as a commentator on the origins of an integrated global culture.

[more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:29 AM PST - 90 comments