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Arundhati Roy on the Complex, Shifting Politics of Language and Translation in India
posted by aniola at 10:53 PM PST - 8 comments

Gaming’s toxic men, explained, Colin Campbell for Polygon. With Kate Miltner [site, twitter], Anita Sarkeesian [twitter], Dr. Kishonna Gray [site, twitter1, MIT, twitter2], Soraya Chemaly [WMC, site, twitter, tumblr], Mattie Brice [site] , Bridget Blodgett [site, twitter], Thom Avella [youtube, twitter], Carolyn Petit [twitter, tumblr] , Kahlief Adams [twitter, podcast], Jen Golbeck [site, twitter], and Paul Booth [site]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:39 PM PST - 34 comments

Deep in Italy, One Man’s Surrealist Mini-City Sleeps. t’s a labyrinthine citadel more surreal than even the weirdest of Fellini sets. “La Scarzuola” is a modern wannabe-Utopian estate imagined by one man and built amongst the pointy trees of Italy’s Montegabbione in the 1950s. This esoteric wonderland and its elaborate surrealist structures are awaiting your visit. It's what happens when an idealistic Milanese architect, Tomaso Buzzi, finds a ruin.
posted by MovableBookLady at 12:22 PM PST - 10 comments

Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man: Mel Brooks in His 90s (David Denby, The Atlantic) “I’m just a Jew comic!” Brooks said to me at the beginning of our talk in Los Angeles, as if to ask, Why are you interested? But this comic has stormed through 75 years of show business, working in almost every medium imaginable (Borscht Belt, television, comedy albums, movies, musical comedy, one-man shows), and he may have contributed as much as anyone, in his manic style, to the formerly shaky but now sturdy arc of Jewish survival and success.
posted by Room 641-A at 11:09 AM PST - 27 comments

Ahead of Cambodia's July 29th national election, regarded by rights groups as a sham after the opposition party's forced dissolution, Voice of America has released a rich special issue: Cambodia Adrift. [more inside]
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 9:50 AM PST - 8 comments

Heirloom seeds are defined, at least by USDA (PDF), as at least 50 years old. So what do you call 1,500 year old seeds? When she was in New Mexico, Jackie Clay was given old seeds that a neighbor had found in an old clay pot that was sealed with pine pitch. The neighbor's son apparently had a seed radiocarbon dated circa 500 CE. Some 15 centuries later, some of the seeds germinated, producing giant, tough seed pods with soft beans. She calls them Folsom Indian Ruin beans for their proximity to the Folsom Site. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:58 AM PST - 42 comments

You Sing Into Your Mic To Solve Puzzles In This Indie Game [Kotaku] “One Hand Clapping is a experimental project from the University of Southern California’s games program. It mixes music and puzzles—the player needs to hum or sing to create walkways and raise platforms to proceed through a colorful world. It’s short but memorable.” [Northernlion Let's Play] [Trailer] [itch.io]
posted by Fizz at 8:29 AM PST - 13 comments

Vowelless Crossword Puzzles from
Peter Broda [1: .PUZ | .PDF] [2: .PUZ | .PDF],
Neville Fogarty [.PUZ | .PDF],
Trip Payne [.PUZ | .PDF],
Andy Kravis [.PUZ], and
Evan Birnholz [.PUZ | .PDF].
From Broda’s Made Without AEIOU introduction: A vowelless crossword is just like a regular crossword except that the grid contains only the consonants from each answer…Other than that, it's business as usual. [more inside]
posted by carsonb at 8:00 AM PST - 10 comments

The BBC's Ask a Stupid Question explores what a cat's purr means. "Most of us feed the cat before ourselves, which shows how effective their communication is.”
posted by Helga-woo at 7:06 AM PST - 66 comments

See the punderful vegetable sculptures at Lambeth Country Show (For non-Brits: RIP KDale Winton) (previous)
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:59 AM PST - 8 comments

Six women accuse the C.E.O. of harassment and intimidation, and dozens more describe abuse at his company.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 2:08 AM PST - 39 comments