March 8, 2016
A History of Rock in 15 Minutes
Ocus Puzzle
Beatles producer-arranger George Martin is dead at 90
Ringo tweeted the sad news early this A.M. His accomplishments are too numerous to mention. But he signed them and believed in them, and made them sound so much better. What he helped create at Abbey Road Studios lives forever.
R.I.P.
The surprisingly gripping discussion of Minesweeper world records
Minesweeper: a competitive sport Did you know Minesweeper had major competitions for rankings? And that there is a surprisingly large controversy about them in the community? And how many hours did you spend flagging mines?
The Cats Who Came in From the Cold
Tinykittens is a Canadian cat rescue that Livestreams foster kittens (previously). Now playing: Sable and Neelix, a tortie and tabby tuxie respectively, both pregnant, with Sable due any day now. Right now, four feral cats are in residence at TKHQ, all of them from the same colony... and two former ferals waiting on adoption. This is where things get interesting. [more inside]
April 24th is coming
A completely not safe for work trailer for season 6 of Game of Thrones has arrived, along with intensive speculation about what's going on in it. [more inside]
"While our numbers are not great, we are mighty."
Eight Democrats are filibustering the latest attempt to legalize anti-same-sex-marriage discrimination, known as SJR 39, which "Prohibits the state from penalizing clergy, religious organizations, and certain individuals for their religious beliefs concerning marriage between two people of the same sex". The filibuster has been going since Monday afternoon, and you can listen here.
Second Wachowski filmmaker sibling comes out as trans
Lilly Wachowski, 48, sibling of Lana, 50, came out in a statement to Windy City Times, after being threatened with outing by other media.
This dog isn't just a family pet - he's a lifesaver
Jedi is a diabetic alert dog who keeps watch over Nuttall's seven-year-old son, Luke, who has suffered from type 1 diabetes since the age of two. Jedi is trained to monitor Luke's blood sugar to keep it from getting too low or too high, and to let Nuttall know when something is not right.
depressed binge HoC rinse repeat
...binge-watchers reported higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression than their non-binge-watching counterparts. The study found 77 percent of participants watched TV for two hours... link to paper: Viewing Patterns and Addiction to Television among Adults Who Self-Identify as Binge-Watchers
AlphaGo and AI progress
The first game between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol is scheduled to begin at 23:00 EST tonight, in Seoul. There will be a livestream with commentary in english. Since the Deepmind Go-playing computer's previous victory against Fan Hui, Go professionals and AI researchers alike have had time to consider what it means. [more inside]
Cyclists chased by an ostrich
Irate ostrich hits 50kph in awesome high-speed pursuit of cyclists [RT] - "So we were on our training ride, around Cape Town, South Africa. The route was following the Cape Argus racing course with a detour to Cape of Good Hope. The road through the national park is quiet and a little deserted. Suddenly I heard a noise on my left and saw a big ostrich in the bush, most likely a female." (via)
"I guess I think of that Sid Meier as another person."
The Man Who Made A Million Empires by Colin Campbell [Polygon]
Not many creators have the brazen audacity to slap their name in the actual titles of the things they create. John Lennon didn't call his 1971 album, "John Lennon's Imagine." Mrs. Dalloway isn't called "Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway." James Cameron has so far managed to keep his name out of all his movie titles. But a lot of Sid Meier's games flash the words "Sid Meier" right there in the title. Most famously: the Sid Meier's Civilization series, which has sold more than 33 million units over the past 25 years. The most recent is 2010's Sid Meier's Civilization V. It's one of the greatest strategy games ever made.
Syntax and Bird Calls
8,000 vintage Afropop songs, streaming online
An amazing treasure trove of 8,000 Afropop tracks. The British Library just released this archive as part of their first online sound project within their Endangered Archives Programme (EAP). The recordings are from the state-supported Syliphone label and were released between 1958 to 1984. [more inside]
Bobos in Existential Crisis
A senior editor at The Economist poinders, painfully, what it exactly he (and others like him) finds so compelling about being a workaholic: Why Do We Work So Hard?
Is group chat making you sweat?
RIP E3?
At 20 years old has the concept of the Electronic Arts Expo expired? [Warning Wired.com link] In 2003 MeFi discussed the possible death of E3, yet it's still happening in 2016. But after this year will any of the big software or hardware names be in attendance? [more inside]
Print is back in fashion
Transplantable human bone and cartilage made with 3D printer that creates a matrix in the desired shape and injects cells that can integrate with the patient's blood vessels on implant
No two days exactly the same
Communitymanagement.org : a community for community managers : "If you manage an online community and would like to learn from other community managers, this is the place. Built by community managers, for community managers, and completely free. Come here to ask questions, share challenges, and network with fellow CMs." From Mefi's own gone2croatan (Community Manager/Co-Founder). via MetaFilter Projects. [more inside]
How to Get Motivated
How to Get Motivated (the Poster) [1980x1080.png]. Here are the instructions. Based upon the Procrastination Equation.
There is an app for everything. Including death.
Death apps promise to help people curate their afterlives From The Guardian: Death apps promise to help a person organize his or her entire online life into a bundle of digital living wills, funeral plans, multimedia memorial portfolios and digital estate arrangements. It could be the mother of all personal media accounts, designed to store all of a person’s online passwords in one spot, for a successor to retrieve after he or she dies.
What the Koran really says about women.
Queen of Cups
Harley is an umbrella cockatoo. She loves cups. No, wait, maybe she hates cups? Anyway, Harley has a ton of cups. (mlYT)
Everything That You’ve Come to Expect
Up close and a little too personal with The Last Shadow Puppets. As I walk away, I try to suppress my ballooning sense that something wasn’t right back there. Is it normal to be asked up to a male musician’s room — even as a joke? Or cheek-kissed, repeatedly high-fived, and stared down? Even if he’s entirely harmless (and I’m sure that he is), is this the sort of thing that I should let go for the sake of my job? After music journalist Rachel Brodsky interviewed the U.K. orch-rock duo, she came away with a very different article than she'd set out to write.
Tell me how do I feel
The BBC teams up with the Orkestra Obsolete on the anniversary of New Order's Blue Monday to find out what it would sound like played on a diddley bow, hammered dulcimer, harmonium, zither, musical saw, and singing glasses.
Well, my spin classes won't save me from death but I like them.
Getting fit in middle age: a marathon addict, a couch potato and others share their pain. Included: How to get fit after 40.
(dlTheGrauniad)
To erase the line between man and machine
Erotic souls kicked toward saintliness chained in a mad dead house
Max Nelson is writing a series on prison literature for The Paris Review. The first entry from 15 September 2015 concerns Dostoevsky's "Notes From a Dead House", the latest so far, from 25 February 2016, deals with Austin Reed's "The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict". [more inside]
More bunny than badass
Harvest Moon: PC
Stardew Valley is a farming, fishing, mining, exploring, crafting game from Concerned Ape. Think a little Harvest Moon, Terraria, Animal Crossing and Minecraft, but also a little more than those. The game is currently topping the charts of Steam. Critical reception has also been great, seeing the game as an evolution of the Harvest Moon formula with several major improvements. Others highlight the somewhat addictively relaxing nature of the game.
1:41:07
Nathan Sexton finished his first half marathon this past weekend in Chattanooga, Tennessee, finishing at a 7:44-mile pace for 13.1 miles. Last summer, Sexton was diagnosed with stage 4 glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer that brings an average life expectancy of 15 months.
“They could sell doorstops when they couldn't sell skillets”
Among the most prized objects owned by Southern families are the cast-iron skillets passed down from generation to generation. The ones in your kitchen probably came from Lodge Manufacturing Co., in the tiny eastern Tennessee town of South Pittsburg. Most of us know well the memories contained in those old skillets, but we know very little about the integrity of the people who make them. A visit to the Lodge foundry certainly has lessons to teach us about the South and its culture. But more importantly, Lodge also exemplifies something remarkably rare in today’s business world: a family-run company that has built a booming, global business without selling out its hometown. —Chuck Reese of the Bitter Southerner with a surprisingly touching piece of corporate portraiture.
The Vast Bay Leaf Conspiracy
In search of confirmation, as well as freedom to ignore the bay leaf portion of future recipes I might encounter, I reached out to a number of chefs and asked them, “Are bay leaves bullshit?”
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