May 7, 2013
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
"This Is Water" -- a short film based on David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement speech.
How many people would pay $5.95 a month to watch you talk about JBieber?
Alex Jones: Conspiracy Inc. examines the finances behind conspiracy mogul Alex Jones. The Gospel Of Alex Jones talks about his views in more detail. MeFi's own MightyGodKing explains what's wrong with the belief in false flag attacks.
OK. 3, 2, 1. Let's Jam!
The year is 2071. Humanity has spread across the solar system and the Space Police have reinstated the bounty system of the Old West: catch wanted fugitives alive, deliver them to the cops and get paid. Cowboy Bebop chronicles the adventures (and misadventures) of a group of bounty hunters as they try to catch bad guys and make a living. [more inside]
"a tool handle, particularly for knives."
How-To: Paper Micarta, Micarta from blue jeans, How To Make Homemade Micarta. Micarta is a genericized name for any paper or fabric, layered, soaked in resin, then dried, shaped, and polished.
Bradley Manning and the mainstreaming of gay pride
For about a day, Wikileaks leaker Bradley Manning was going to be one of the Grand Marshals in this year's San Francisco Pride Parade. Since Manning continues to languish in a military brig, his* frequent champion, the Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, agreed to attend in his stead. Manning was selected by Pride's "electoral college," a jury of former Grand Marshals that elects some of the Grand Marshals for each year's parade. But almost as soon as his selection was announced, it was revoked by the Pride board. Here is the statement from board President Lisa Williams.
The SF Pride board is meeting right now, and Manning's advocates will be gathering outside and possibly inside the meeting. @lizatblackrose is livetweeting the meeting. [more inside]
The short sci-fi/fantasy/noir/b-movie stories of Richard Kadrey
Richard Kadrey is not the most prolific novelist in the world. Still, every five, six years or so out comes another book like Metrophage, or Kamikaze L'Amour, dark, violent, intense works mostly set in and around Los Angeles with characters straight out of a good punk rock song. The self-confessing film nerd is probably best known for his Sandman Slim series, and if you're impatient for the forthcoming Dead Set novel, you can bide your time with a ton of short stories online. [more inside]
Being the Adventures of Two Young Engineers in Silicon Valley, c. 1976
Patrick Farley of Electric Sheep Comix (previously, 2 , 3, 4, 5) has a new series featuring a young Steve Wozniak and a young Steve Jobs: Steve & Steve
Capturing the [British] digital universe
100 websites: "To mark the beginning of an ambitious attempt to archive the entire British internet, librarians from across Britain put their heads together to select the most seminal websites of the twenty-teens. Experts from the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Wales, Bodleian Libraries, Cambridge University Library and Trinity College Dublin chose high-street stores, hyper-hyper-hyper local blogs and niche interest webpages as must-reads for tomorrow's children."
via The Register, which points out that the list includes the Unst bus shelter website, Shit London, Chavtowns, Transport for London, a page for young Welsh farmers, as well as the predictable choices like BBC, Facebook, the NHS and the Old Baily online.
via The Register, which points out that the list includes the Unst bus shelter website, Shit London, Chavtowns, Transport for London, a page for young Welsh farmers, as well as the predictable choices like BBC, Facebook, the NHS and the Old Baily online.
Delaware Legalizes Gay Marriage!
When Delaware Governor Jack Markell signed a gay marriage bill into law just minutes after its passage by the state Senate earlier today, Delaware became the eleventh U.S. state to legalize gay marriage. Gay marriages will become legal July 1st of this year.
No longer sci-fi: world's first 3D printed (almost) all-plastic firearm.
Defense Distributed, creators of the controversial printable AR-15 receiver, have now released CAD files and video of the first firing of the Liberator, a real plastic pistol capable of firing between one and 10 .380 calibre rounds before exploding. [more inside]
SHROOM TRIP ARIA
SHROOM TRIP ARIA Italiano [6m48s] is a music video of a section of Joseph Keckler's one-man show I Am An Opera. [more inside]
First Taste
First Taste - slow motion reactions of children trying foods such as anchovy, Vegemite and olives for the first time. [from TEDxSydney]
Rap Game Soap Opera?
A DREAM IS NOT SOMETHING THAT IS ACCOMPLISHED.
Fixed
"This was never meant to be so easy to watch" NIN art director Rob Sheridan on the controversial Broken video which surfaced briefly on Vimeo this week.
Hiking the Appalachian Trail
Ordinary special elections rarely merit wide attention, but tonight features no ordinary special. Republican Mark Sanford and Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch face off in South Carolina's 1st Congressional District tonight. Sanford, famous for resigning in disgrace after abandoning his state in search of an Argentine mistress while claiming to hike the Appalachian Trail, faces Colbert Busch, sister of Stephen Colbert. Latest polling shows the race within 1 point, with Green Party candidate Eugene Platt potentially playing spoiler. Stretching along five counties on South Carolina's Atlantic coast (PDF), the district is primarily in the mustard-based barbecue sauce region, one of four in the state.
1% exciting and 99% heartbreaking
During a show in Minneapolis at the end of April, a fan of rapper Danny Brown jumped on stage and and performed oral sex during his performance. Originally reported in this [deleted] reddit thread (probably nsfw), and quickly spread across the internet (definitely nsfw)
Touring partner, and BFF Kitty (formerly Kitty Pryde) ) weighs in on the issue., and Stereogum has a follow-up interview.
Kitty previously on MeFi: 1 , 2 , 3
Touring partner, and BFF Kitty (formerly Kitty Pryde) ) weighs in on the issue., and Stereogum has a follow-up interview.
Kitty previously on MeFi: 1 , 2 , 3
Spock vs. Spock
The greatest car commercial ever !! Old Spock (Nimoy) and New Spock (Quinto) come together (and battle it out) in what is likely the best car commercial that you ever saw (or will see). Chock full of Star Trek references there's even a scene with Nimoy humming along to "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" . Awesomeness follows ...
The red planet or else!
RIP Ray Harryhausen
The Rain in Westeros Falls Mainly in the Riverlands
What Is Going on With the Accents in Game of Thrones? Gawker beanplates the accents used on-screen by the actors in Game of Thrones.
Like most fantasy television shows, Game of Thrones is largely populated by English actors speaking with English accents. This is because Americans are still unconvinced that England is a real country, and associate English speech patterns with kings and magic and sorcery and frequent stabbings. [more inside]
I've come twenty-seven hundred miles from Chi, Illinois.
A Parcel's Eye View
In this hidden-camera video, designer Ruben van der Vleuten answers the question, "What happens when you send something by mail?" (SLV)
CSS Zen Garden is 10 years old, open for business
Today is the 10-year anniversary of the CSS Zen Garden Originally created to showcase and inspire the kind of design possible with CSS2 and standards-based design, the CSS Zen Garden is 10 years old today. [more inside]
Sorry, I didn’t realize you were going to be good
'Before their show in Seattle last month, London four-piece Savages posted a sign around the venue that laid out a couple of ground rules: no Instagramming, no video, no tweets-- in short, "SILENCE YOUR PHONES." This could be seen as a part of a growing trend of bands pointing out how sick they are of looking out into a sea of smartphones rather than human faces (the Yeah Yeah Yeahs posted a similar missive at their recent New York homecoming show), but it felt more like an extension of Savages’ overall manifesto. And no, “manifesto” is not too dramatic a word; especially in contrast with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ sign, which tempered its message with chatty humor, Savages’ fiery imperative read like something hammered onto a door.' --Pitchfork has both a review and cover story on Savages well-named new record "Silence Yourself"
He's going to be straightironed, of course
No, if we thought there might perhaps, just maybe, be even a little safe psuedo-subversion of the straightironing with a secondary character, if we thought there might be some hints of homosexual dalliance on the side, or at least a little homoerotic tension to be shipped or slashed with a flighty sprite, a Renaissance Robin to his Batman, that avenue is closed off pretty quickly. NO! shouts the Slash Nazi. NO SLASH FOR YOU! NO SLASH FOR YOU! -- Hal Duncan is not impressed by the way Leonardo Da Vinci's sexuality is handled in the new Starz/BBC Da Vinci's Demons television series and is impressively rude in saying so. [more inside]
Five Young Men From Mamaronek New York
The moment you've been waiting for... I give you the winners of the talent contest held under the auspices if the Westchester County Recreation Commission... The Continentals! Click for the music, stay for the dancin'! [more inside]
Little Monsters
Anya Stasenko and Slava Leontiev are Ukranian porcelain artists who create monsters both real and imaginary. The magic is how they're painted-sometimes with shapes, sometimes with organic patterns, sometimes with a scene, and sometimes containing a whole story.
The Persistence of Arab Anti-Americanism
Marc Lynch reviews Amaney Jamal's Of Empires & Citizens, which argues that "anti-Americanism has very little to do with cultural resentments or civilizational hatred... Instead, Arab anti-Americanism reflects a deeper rejection of undemocratic political systems in Arab countries, which for decades have been underwritten and supported by the United States."
Why I Despise The Great Gatsby
There are a small number of novels I return to again and again: Middlemarch, The Portrait of a Lady, Pride and Prejudice, maybe a half-dozen others. But Gatsby is in a class by itself. It is the only book I have read so often despite failing—in the face of real effort and sincere intentions—to derive almost any pleasure at all from the experience.
Head shaking: universal language for "I'm up! I'm up!!..."
Rollin' & Scratchin'
Here's a video of a cockatoo dancing to Daft Punk. Bird's got moves.
These words are more than fifteen thousand years old.
Researchers in Britain have identified twenty-three words from a postulated “proto-Eurasiatic” language spoken before the end of the last Ice Age. [Washington Post report; original paper] [more inside]
Around and Around and Around....
This Time YOU'RE The Hapless Idiot
Elizabeth's Escort Mission (SLYT)
The Thinker at the Gates of Hell
A twenty-five minute doctumentary about Auguste Rodin's monumental sculpture "The Gates of Hell," which exists in two radically different versions. From the first version spring many of Rodin's best known sculptures, including his most famous, "The Thinker," originally conceived as a portrait of Dante gazing at Hell from above. It was never cast in bronze during his lifetime and was somewhat notorious for never having been completed, but is now considered to be one of the greatest sculptures of the modern era.
Malaysia's Election: An Indonesian comparison
"For the two weeks of Malaysia’s election campaign, I was one of a group of researchers from the University of Malaya and various overseas institutions that toured through every one of Malaysia’s 13 states, witnessing the night time election rallies (ceramah), speaking to campaign workers and candidates, and generally trying to take the political pulse of this highly varied country." [more inside]
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