March 8, 2014
Let's go to Death School!
Deathigner is an animated, charming look at how mortality personalities learn to do what they do.
The multiple characters and series of Chris Lilley, Australian comedian
Chris Lilley is an Australian comedian, television producer, actor, musician and writer, who got his major start as the drama teacher, Mr. G., in the sketch comedy series Big Bite. The series ended after one season, and Lilley went on to create four subsequent mocumentary-style series, We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year, Summer Heights High, Angry Boys, and most recently Ja'mie: Private School Girl. Each show consists of primary characters all played by Lilley, ranging from a 47 year old woman with skeletal dysplasia, a 13-year-old school boy with a Tongan accent (NSFW language), a 24 year-old African American rap artist from Los Angeles (NSFW language), and a 16 year old girl from a grammar school, to name a few. [more inside]
Office computer overheating? I'll get right on it.
You may be familiar with the 'business cat' memes I Should Buy A Boat Cat (aka Sophisticated Cat) and Business Cat (see also). And perhaps you followed Matthew Inman's workplace adventures of the Bobcats at The Oatmeal. More recently, Tom Fonder at Happy Jar has been developing a subset of comics centered on his own version of a cat who also happens to be a CEO. So far: Coffee; Briefcase; Pay Rise; Poster; and Fight and Flight.
The Collaborative Consumption Trap
"A film that instead of making sense is sense."
Jamestown Baloos (1957) [SLYT] by Robert Breer [PDF] (previously) "is a frenetic, three-part stop-motion animation that features an army of everyday forms and figures — geometric shapes, a piece of string, newspaper clips, a pin-up girl, even Napoleon Bonaparte — flashing across the screen. Placed in increasingly compromised situations and choreographed to a jingoistic tune, the figures essentially become puppets of their former selves. Such unrelenting visuals recall not only Fernand Léger’s early experimental film, Ballet Mécanique (1924), as Breer himself has mentioned, but also early twentieth-century Dadaist collage. Dada artists like Kurt Schwitters and Hannah Höch created witty, unapologetic works that reflected the chaos and violence of modern existence. Jamestown Baloos serves, as their works did, as a pointed indictment on the absurdity of war."
"Nuh-uh, I talk *normal.*"
In Defense of Talking Funny: an examination of dialects and how people deal with them.
Twenty-one days hath September...
Yeah, it sucks that we're losing an hour tonight. But it could be worse. We could be losing eleven days.
What Defines You
The Identity Project "seeks to explore the labels we choose to identify with when defining our gender and sexuality." Accompanying each portrait are words the subjects prefer to use to describe themselves -- "Boi," "Provocateur Lesbian Dandy," "Queer Femme Beefcake," "Gold Star Gay Wife," "Gay Masculine of Center," "Lezzer Queer Bossy Mama," "Inbetweener," "Legally Married." By San Francisco photographer Sarah Deragon. [more inside]
First and last refuge
We can't create Jurassic Park era (yet) but there is a place on Earth lost to time, a modern proxy of the Pleistocene (35,000 to 12,000 years ago). Other than the mammoth and a few other species, the flora and fauna remain largely unchanged, even the climate is similar to the last ice age (cold and dry). There are wild horses, reindeer, saiga antelopes, argali sheep, wolverines and snow leopards. The Altai and Sayan mountains of western Mongolia and southern Russia (map)... [more inside]
Why hello there, future recurring nightmare.
Space Replay is a floating black sphere that follows people around and plays back ambient sounds it has recorded. It was designed and built by Francesco Tacchini, Will Yates-Johnson and Julinka Ebhardt.
To boldly diagram what no one has diagrammed before
The Almighty Star Trek Lit-verse Reading Order Flow Chart by TrekBBS members Thrawn and 8of5 is an optional but relatively complete guide to the modern continuity in Star Trek novels, including "relaunch" titles and crossover series. [Via.] [more inside]
In Focus: Mothers and Daughters
Today, March 8, is International Women's Day, a day to celebrate the social, political and economic achievements of women, and focus attention on areas still needing action. In the run-up to the event, Reuters photographers in countries around the globe took a series of portraits of women and their daughters. They asked each mother what her profession was, at what age she had finished education, and what she wanted her daughter to become when she grew up. They also asked each daughter at what age she would finish education and what she wanted to do in the future. (SLAtlantic)
plant sex in silico
Monsanto Is Going Organic in a Quest for the Perfect Veggie - "The lettuce, peppers, and broccoli—plus a melon and an onion, with a watermelon soon to follow—aren't genetically modified at all. Monsanto created all these veggies using good old-fashioned crossbreeding, the same technology that farmers have been using to optimize crops for millennia. That doesn't mean they are low tech, exactly. Stark's division is drawing on Monsanto's accumulated scientific know-how to create vegetables that have all the advantages of genetically modified organisms without any of the Frankenfoods ick factor." [more inside]
They endured.
The Men of Atalissa
PBS's POV collaborates with the New York Times on a 35-minute documentary about the intellectually disabled men exploited for thirty-five years by Henry's Turkey Service in Atalissa, Iowa. (The documentary at the NYT or embedded in a Q&A with the journalists at PBS's POV.) [more inside]
PBS's POV collaborates with the New York Times on a 35-minute documentary about the intellectually disabled men exploited for thirty-five years by Henry's Turkey Service in Atalissa, Iowa. (The documentary at the NYT or embedded in a Q&A with the journalists at PBS's POV.) [more inside]
a clear, logical, geometrical ending
After 12 years of anticipation, the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere is ready for its close-up. How 10,000 workers lifted 104 floors, gave new life to an international symbol and created one spectacular view.
Dishy Literature
This site has the aim of encouraging a wider reading of all types of literature, through a series of recipes inspired (directly or indirectly), by those works. It explores the ways in which descriptions of food are used to elicit meaning for a character trait, a foreign country, or social etiquette. [more inside]
"In fact, there are no places that are not for ladies anymore."
Earlier this week, the captain of a Westjet flight received a note from a passenger regarding her place in the "cockpit". At the time Westjet declined to comment, feeling no need to "lend credibility to the author of the note." In honour of today being International Women's Day, Westjet has provided a more subtle response.
Only coincidentally posted on International Women's Day
It turns out that fish may need bicycles after all. Or, more accurately, fish need more bicyclists, and fewer motorists. "Water pollution attributable to automobiles includes oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, antifreeze, [copper], etc." (via rootsimple.com) See also
Oh seven nine oh four seven nine
Next time won't you sing with me
London Calling
Britain will betray the United States and Ukraine to keep laundering dirty Russian money. "The city has changed. The buses are still dirty, the people are still passive-aggressive, but something about London has changed. You can see signs of it everywhere. The townhouses in the capital’s poshest districts are empty; they have been sold to Russian oligarchs and Qatari princes."
YOU IN THE HUGE DRESS GET OUT OF THE FUCKING SHOT
Masterwork versions available for an additional 300 GP.
Melee combat enthusiasts rejoice! Cold Steel (previously) are back with a whole bunch of new videos showing off their newest armaments. The more exotic selections include the Battle Star, the Boomerang, the Viking Axe, the Grosse Messer, the Sergeant's Halberd, the War Hammer, the War Club, the Sword Cane, and a brand new video for the beloved Two Handed Great Sword. (WARNING: Pig carcass butchery and tactical dummies full of blood ahead.) [more inside]
O Woman's Day
Talking gender to Africa
International donors have sought to improve the social, political and economic position of women in Africa through an approach known as “gender”. This donor-driven strategy is failing. The jargon of gender programmes is ambiguous and easily misunderstood. It fosters inaction and lip service on the part of patriarchal African governments and civil servants. Gender has become the preserve of the educated elite. The voices of African women have been lost.[more inside]
Time In Motion
The one that is the smaller is the larger
The Teaching of Arithmetic: The Story of an experiment. In the fall of 1929 I made up my mind to try the experiment of abandoning all formal instruction in arithmetic below the seventh grade and concentrating on teaching the children to read, to reason, and to recite - my new Three R's. And by reciting I did not mean giving back, verbatim, the words of the teacher or of the textbook. I meant speaking the English language. I picked out five rooms - three third grades, one combining the third and fourth grades, and one fifth grade. I asked the teachers if they would be willing to try the experiment.
Ooo La La! That French for Cowabunga!
Jean Bon-Bon is a very sad guy in pursuit of cookies on the streets of Paris. Les Mousserables is a Sesame Street parody which explores the many emotions which a powerful musical can create.
Power Laces coming in 2015
Transformation: Photo to Mural to Prison to Out
Artist Jesse Krimes created a 39 panel allegorical mural while incarcerated in a federal prison in Butner, NC. The multi media piece is made primarily from prison bedsheets and photos from the NY Times. A little more about Krimes.
Standing by...
Glasgow graffiti artist Rogue One casts some new light on a dark and dank local underpass. [more inside]
Geek Love at 25
"Geek Love touched a nerve at the beginning of the ’90s, as grunge rock poured from the Pacific Northwest and independent movies like Reservoir Dogs (1992), Clerks (1994), Kids (1995), and Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) flourished. In the same way that punk and grunge felt real—not like slick stadium rock, big-budget studio movies, hokey scripted TV—Geek Love achieved a fresh kind of authenticity. The Binewskis felt real, even as their lives and their story were fantastical. There was something about the idea of a freak show, an entertainment that hadn’t thrived in American culture for generations, which felt just right in the early ’90s."
Poetry Everywhere
Poetry Everywhere, produced by WGBH, in cooperation with the Poetry Foundation, presents videos of poetry being read, often by the author.
And, if you want to introduce a child to poetry, don't miss the animated films made by students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
(there even seems to be one written and animated especially for MetaFilter, Spacebar)
Text-Book of Seamanship, 1891, is an updated age of sail textbook...
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