May 10, 2013
Cat Font
The Science of Optimizing Your Health
An in-depth talk at Google that sums up the scientific research on living a healthy life with lots of practical advice.
I've got to keep breathing.It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't
Dog listens to commands
This dog will shake that ass for you. Does what it says on the tin.
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
Their dull-eyed looks will haunt you
A Tumblr that features animated gifs and photos of the mass-produced Kenner Star Wars toys showing their deterioration and degradation over the decades.
General Mattis on Professional Reading
With Rifle and Bibliography. "In late 2003 a colleague of General James Mattis wrote to him asking for a few words on the importance of reading and military history for the officer, even where it might seem that one was “too busy to read.”"
His letter is found about 1/3 down in the linked page, also pasted the entire first letter after the jump. [more inside]
Take the last Xanax.
Column 7: The Young Man’s Guide to Wearing and Shopping for Women’s Clothes for the First Time. A hilarious column by Casey Plett at McSweeny's Internet Tendency.
Do you wear headphones? Do you like skeletons?
How about dancing Canadian skeletons? Avec les sous-titres et sonnaille.
Introducing mounties, a new Canadian supergroup formed by Hawksley Workman with Hot Hot Heat frontman Steve Bays and Limblifter/Age of Electric member Ryan Dahle. [more inside]
How The Gang Got Back Together and returned to the Pegasus Galaxy
Here is how Stargate: Atlantis' planned movie, Extinction, was supposed to follow up on the series finale of Atlantis cloaked in the San Fransisco Bay and its return to the Pegasus Galaxy. [more inside]
Always Look Both Ways .... and UP !
What may well be the first flying car crash happenned today in British Columbia. A Maverick flying car crashed today for unknown reasons. No one was killed in the collision even though the car crashed, while in flight mode, just short of an elementary school. Jalopnick has a picture of the treed vehicle. The Maverick is powered in flight by a propeller and parasail combination. Watch the Skies!
Films in the DPRK
Former Great Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il was a noted cinephile with a personal video library of over 20,000 movies. In 1970, he said "The motion picture industry, when dealing with the socialist reality, has not yet reached the standard set by our Party." To help it reach the standard, the Dear Leader wrote a treatise On the Art of the Cinema (PDF), took an interest in minute details of film production (as recounted by film stars), revamped the Taedongmun Cinema House, and kidnapped a director (previously 1, 2.)
But did this lead to better movies?.... [more inside]
Shall e’er revirginize that brow’s abuse
51 words in the Oxford English Dictionary, including couchward, extemporize, fringy, revirginize and chappelled have quotes from the same source, a mysterious book published in 1852 called Meanderings of Memory, written and published by Nightlark, a "well-known connoisseur". There are only two evidences of the book's existence. If you happen to have a copy of Meanderings of Memory sitting on your shelf, please contact the OED [previous OED mystery].
“Don’t go around asking the question, ‘Is this character likeable?’
Claire Messud: “A woman’s rant” [National Post] "Over the last week, discussion surrounding Claire Messud’s new novel, The Woman Upstairs, has shifted from the book to an interview its author recently gave to Publishers Weekly, in which Messud took issue with the following question: “I wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora, would you? Her outlook is almost unbearably grim.” [more inside]
Nothing so condescending as kindness.
Call it many names, but not kindness. Nothing so condescending as kindness.
An educator on why "patience" and "kindness" miss much of what is going on in the classroom.
An educator on why "patience" and "kindness" miss much of what is going on in the classroom.
Proof and Community Standards
In August of last year, mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki reported that he had solved one of the great puzzles of number theory: the ABC conjecture (previously on Metafilter). Almost a year later, no one else knows whether he has succeeded. No one can understand his proof.
Illustrators to Character Designers
Artists Peter de Seve and Carter Goodrich share similar career arcs. Both began their illustration careers in early 80's New York, drawing many businessmen and computers for trade magazines. Both became New Yorker cover artists. As the print market became challenged, both artists found new demand for the talents in emerging media, creating the look of the characters in animated films. Goodrich worked on Ratatouille, Despicable Me, and Brave. De Seve is responsible for all the characters in the Ice Age films. [more inside]
A Sort of Homecoming
Wigan Athletic will play tomorrow in their first F.A. Cup Final. Millionaire Chairman Dave Whelan has been there before, however. [more inside]
Little hand says it's time to rock and roll.
Sometimes eagles just gotta party.
Disney Isn't "Brave" Enough To Leave Princess Merida As Is
Merida, Pixar's "Brave's" red-headed heroine will be crowned Disney's 11th princess on May 11. And just in time for her royal coronation, she has been given a "Victoria's Secret" makeover. This makeover has caused some outrage in the blogosphere, and has even inspired a change.org petition launched by A Mighty Girl, a girl's empowerment website.
Precise yet Arbitrary Places
In 1998, Bruce Myren bought a portable GPS unit, and began a project he had been dreaming of since 1991: photographing each of the whole longitudinal degree intersections along the 40th parallel using an 8"x10" camera.
In June, 2012, he ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to raise money to finish the project.
He completed it last December, 21 years after conception: The Fortieth Parallel [more inside]
Don't believe anything until you read it in a sprawling historical novel
Comics made out of covers for books in the Oxford World's Classics series. For earlier editions, see here, here, here, here, and here.
Freaks out there who are freakier than I am...
Vinyl -- Alan Zweig feat. Harvey Pekar -- 2000 -- M VG+
"Yeah, the music is the most important thing. I wish it were the only thing. It's not. I'd be better off if it were the only thing."A documentary about the most noble mania.
Teenage Diaries Revisited
Teenage Diaries Revisited Beginning in 1996, Radio Diaries gave tape recorders to teenagers around the country to create audio diaries about their lives. NPR’s All Things Considered aired intimate portraits of five of these teens: Amanda, Juan, Frankie, Josh and Melissa. They're now in their 30s. Over this past year, the same group has been recording new stories about where life has led them for our series, Teenage Diaries Revisited. - The conversation at the end of the 2013 update on Josh is a complete gut-punch - it left me speechless and unable to breathe.
"The 1980s have been the trailblazing years for ... high-definition"
Happy Mother's Day
Happy Mother's Day - Leah Coleman was born profoundly deaf. Her mother, Rachel, decided that the best way to deal with it was to try to change the world and Leah tells us about it.
Dance break!
The odds seem long that a thin Leno segment, Pumpcast News, would stumble across a couple willing to karaoke at a gas station. Longer still that they'd be good at it. But Will and Monifa Sims beat those odds by a mile.
What seems to be the problem officer? I am not a crook!
Daily Happiness Averages for Twitter
Landsat Annual Timelapse 1984-2012
Explore different views into this global timelapse built from global, annual composites of Landsat satellite images. Watch change across the planet's surface beginning as early as 1984. See Vegas grow! Rainforests Shrink! Coastlines expand, and lakes vanish!
"You're pretty high and far out, aren't you?"
Greenboy: Prescription for Death is a purported lost Dragnet episode made by writers from Mr Show and Mystery Science Theater. It uses technology first seen in Forest Gump to digitally add actors into the psychedelic "Blueboy" episode of Dragnet 1967. The result is a hilarious story of bad cops chasing after Greenboy, the pusher of a dangerous strain of medical marijuana called Larry in the Sky with Diamonds. (NSFW due to language).
"Half of 'love' is just 'lo', which is how I feel."
Sad Cat Diary; Ze Frank provides narration to the misery that is the life of a house-cat. [slyt | previously | via]
Crazy like an Arctic Fox
Scientific American reports: "An isolated population of Arctic foxes that dines only on marine animals seems to be slowly succumbing to mercury poisoning." Though a definitive causal link is difficult to establish, an isolated population of arctic foxes on Russia's Mednyi Island is believed to be collapsing due to mercury contamination as a result of its seafood-heavy diet. Where does all that mercury in the environment come from anyway? Why, it's another biproduct of burning fossil fuels, of course, and predictably, rates of mercury pollution are only expected to increase. In some places in the US, even rainwater is showing high levels of contamination. [more inside]
Podcast about the highs and lows of female childhood and adolescence.
The JV Club is a podcast [iTunes, SoundCloud] hosted by comedian, actor and SF Sketchfest founder Janet Varney. The podcast takes the form of a longform interview with an actor, comedian, writer, or someone else that Varney wishes to interview. The conversation usually focuses on the childhood and teenage years of the interviewee, who is always female, and the interviews frequently get very raw and emotional. The first guest was Christina Hendricks, and some of my favorite episodes were the interviews with Kerri Kenney Silver, Maria Bamford, Tig Notaro (who came on again), Stephanie Escajeda, Morgan Walsh, Erica Rhodes, Lynn Chen, and Susan Orlean.
Something tasteful, but not too bland
Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis has been covered on MetaFilter before, but the most recent episode takes a turn for the wack at 1:38 with the debut of The Lonely Island's (also previously) newest video "Spring Break Anthem," which takes both a traditional as well as a different--but quite timely given recent events--take on spring break.
Portraits of the artists, rarely as young men
Veteran cartoonist Michael Netzer (who started out in the seventies as Mike Nasser) has been doing pen and ink portrays of comics artists, writers and editors, making them available on Wikipedia under a Creative Commons license. He explains why when discussing his latest portrait, of Fantagraphics co-owner Kim Thompson, recently diagnosed with lung cancer.
Mop Mop: bastard performances of modern jazz, afro funk, soul music, etc
Andrea Benini is a musician, music producer and composer from Cesena, Italy, and is more commonly known as Mop Mop, or at least the head of a changing group of musicians who use that name. In 2005, collective Mop Mop released an album of cool vibes, spare paino lines, tight grooves (5 sample tracks, streaming on Grooveshark). The group has changed over the years, releasing a total of four albums, with the most recent, Isle of Magic, containing 13 tracks of pure voodoo jazz, Caribbean flavors, Afro-funk, exotic rhythms and soul music. [more inside]
Fifty Shades Of Late Capitalism
While we are still recovering from the trauma that finance capital has inflicted on our public world, a late-capitalist fairy tale manages the pain in the more private and intimate reaches of the sexual daydream. In one version of the story, a wide-eyed mermaid cleverly disguises her essential self in order to win the heart of a prince (The Little Mermaid). In another, a hooker with a heart of gold navigates her way to a happy ending by offering some happy endings of her own (Pretty Woman). Or there’s the sassy secretary who shakes her moneymaker all the way to the corner office (Working Girl). Fifty Shades of Grey follows this long history of class ascendancy via feminine wiles, but does so cleverly disguised as an edgy modern bodice-ripper. [NSFW image]
Watching the world go by from orbit
Is it Pate or Dog-food?
Ni haor Kair Lanr, ni de Putonghuar tin haor!
Phonemica is a project to record spoken stories in every one of the thousands of varieties of Chinese in order to preserve both stories and language for future generations. (via) [more inside]
The shadowy cursor has come at last! The prophecy will be fulfilled!
Vim Adventures. Have you always wanted to learn vim but were too intimidated by its vimness? Then give vim adventures a shot! Combining fantasy adventure with learning an archaic terminal program, this game is so nerdy you'll surely alienate friends and family. But who cares, you'll know vim! [more inside]
(his holinesss) The Dalai Lama is in Oregon, live webcasts...and rocking
The Dalai Lama is hanging out in Oregon, catching a Red Hot Chili Peppers show, describing his environmental awakening, and making his lectures available both live and on demand. I was worried for a bit that it was the 'His Holiness the Dalai Lama brought to you by Nike', but I was wrong, he's just trying to be nice.
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