July 8, 2014
Radio Ambulante
Radio Ambulante [Español] has been called "This Latin American Life". It is long-form non-breaking-news documentary journalism from across Latin America. It was recently featured in an episode of On The Media which looked at Latino and Hispanic media in the US. While the majority of its content is in Spanish, they do have some stories en Inglés.
Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see?
I see the internet looking at me. Just like last year and the year before, you can once again stare at bears staring at water as they wait for salmon to swim upstream in Katmai National Park. [more inside]
Moving to a Wealthier Neighborhood Is as Traumatic as Going to War
Over the past few decades, urban policy has focused on breaking up clusters of poverty, planning cities so that poor residents could live in areas that also had middle-class people. Does this new research mean projects like MTO are actually a bad thing?
“When we first showed these results, somebody said, ‘Well, don’t send them to new neighborhoods,’” says Kessler. “Well wait a second, you’re now dealing the girls some pretty bad outcomes. But if you do send them, the boys are getting bad outcomes. What if you have one boy and one girl?”
Juggalos Vs. The FBI, The Verdict
The FBI will continue to get to refer to Juggalos as a gang. "A federal judge has dismissed Insane Clown Posse's lawsuit against the FBI and the Justice Department, allowing the agencies to continue classifying the group's fans, called Juggalos, as a "gang." According to the Associated Press's Tuesday report, U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland ruled last week that because a 2011 FBI report on gangs is "descriptive," and not " prescriptive," it doesn't break any laws." Violent J plans to appeal. [more inside]
Whaaaaat's thhhhe deeeeeal wiiiiiith aiiiirliiiiine peeeanuuuutttss?
Aunties with swag
Upping the Aunty, a photography project by Indian-born, Toronto-raised artist Meera Sethi [more inside]
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BAD ROBOT
44 tiny teeth
A hedgehog goes to the dentist (a story in photos)
Pizzendämmerung
Monaghan and Ilitch barely know each other. The Domino’s founder says in an interview he can’t recall ever tasting a Little Caesars pizza, “though I must have a long time ago.” A sculpture hanging in the archives at Little Caesars’ headquarters makes fun of a Domino’s slice as having “hard, tasteless crust, topped with artificial, flat, and runny cheese.” It’s a fluke that the chains emerged from the same corner of Michigan at roughly the same time more than 50 years ago. Yet, in different ways, Domino’s and Little Caesars changed the way Americans eat pizza, helping to make it one of the country’s most popular foods. The pizza barons were great at selling pies. Now one wants to save Detroit, and the other wants to save everything else.[more inside]
Wheel turnin' 'round and 'round
Jason Mitchell, a scientist in the Harvard Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab recently published an essay on his website titled "On the emptiness of failed replications". In the essay he makes several controversial arguments, the most notable of which may be his assertion that studies designed to replicate previous work have no inherent scientific merit:
Because experiments can be undermined by a vast number of practical mistakes, the likeliest explanation for any failed replication will always be that the replicator bungled something along the way. Unless direct replications are conducted by flawless experimenters, nothing interesting can be learned from them.[more inside]
Three-Legged Recycling
Tsilhquot’in victory in the Supreme Court
On June 26, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of the Tsilhquot’in people in their title claim to more than 1700 square km of land in British Columbia. The case is a landmark, and was a unanimous decision, supported 8-0 by the justices. The decision, is the first time the Canadian courts have recognized full aboriginal title to a specific tract of land by, and experts in the field expect the ruling to have an impact on future title questions worldwide
(from Vancouver Island to New Zealand, or, one might say, from PKOLS to Aotearoa) [more inside]
legO, Canada!
Show Boat in the hands of its makers
The New York Public Library has posted four original typescripts from Show Boat, the 1927 musical by composer Jerome Kern and lyricist and bookwriter Oscar Hammerstein, along with a blog post for some historical background.
Like Mortal Kombat, but in real life
Imagine if you could toss two trained fighters into a ring, give them whatever weapons they want, and and let them go full-on Spartacus on each other without anyone getting seriously injured. With the death element removed, even the most die-hard pacifists would have to admit that it’d be pretty damn entertaining. With their new carbon fiber damage-measuring armor, that’s exactly what Australian startup Unified Weapons Master wants to do.
"it was clear, immediately, they wanted to be together"
For these endangered lemurs, it was love at first sight
There's puppy love, there's muskrat love, but there is nothing like the love of two middle-aged, critically endangered lemurs.… Dern, 17, had lost her mate at the Waco, Texas, zoo several months ago, and Anthony, 16, had recently been separated from his brother when he was sent to another zoo. Although both were accustomed to living with ring-tailed lemurs, it wasn't the same…. Both were lonely.
www.pranksters.gop
The Republican Party began selling new web domains ending in .gop today at www.join.gop. Public interest has definitely been sparked, but perhaps not for the reasons Republicans have hoped. [more inside]
Traction Park, redux
The World's Most Dangerous Amusement Park Opens Its Gates Again: (Class) Action Park, perennial MetaFilter favorite, is back in business! [more inside]
Nature's Perfect Killing Machine Can Be Killed With Soap
Israel bombing Gaza again
"Israel and its Palestinian adversaries in Gaza sharply escalated the latest deadly resurgence of hostilities on Tuesday, with the Israeli military conducting an intense aerial bombardment that targeted at least 50 Gazan sites, including homes, and militants in the enclave responding with a long-range missile volley aimed at Israeli population centers, including Tel Aviv." [more inside]
Audio to make the Kessel Run seem a little shorter
SF Signal today finished a top 50 countdown of short SF/fantasy podcast fiction: 50-41, 40-31, 30-21, 20-11, 10-1. The Parsec Awards for SF podcasts honor many other stories annually, as well as related non-fiction, comedy, and music: 2014 nominees; 2013; 2012; 2011; 2010; 2009; 2008; 2007; and 2006. And since 2012, the Hugo Award nominees for Best Fancast have been two-time winner SF Squeecast!, plus The Coode Street Podcast, Galactic Suburbia, SF Signal, The Skiffy and Fanty Show, StarShipSofa, Tea and Jeopardy, Verity!, and The Writer and The Critic with the popular Writing Excuses podcast often appearing in another category. [more inside]
Social Justice and Language
Several recent articles draw attention to the power of demonisation, outrage and weaponised language within contemporary activist culture - and question whether this focus is doing more harm than good.
Jack Halberstam, director of the Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California: When groups that share common cause, utopian dreams and a joined mission find fault with each other instead of tearing down the banks and the bankers, the politicians and the parliaments, the university presidents and the CEOs? Instead of realizing, as Moten and Hearny put it in The Undercommons, that “we owe each other everything,” we enact punishments on one another and stalk away from projects that should unite us, and huddle in small groups feeling erotically bonded through our self-righteousness. [more inside]
Dumbledore's Army Reunites at Quidditch World Cup Final
The famous lightning scar has company: Potter is sporting a nasty cut over his right cheekbone. Requests for information as to its provenance merely produced the usual response from the Ministry of Magic: ‘We do not comment on the top secret work of the Auror department, as we have told you no less than 514 times, Ms. Skeeter.’ So what are they hiding? Is the Chosen One embroiled in fresh mysteries that will one day explode upon us all, plunging us into a new age of terror and mayhem?
Rita Skeeter reporting: J.K. Rowling has today published a return to the world of Harry Potter, a 1500-or-so-word short story that catches up with Harry, now 34. It's behind a registration wall at Pottermore, but NBC got permission to run it in its entirety here. [more inside]
Your bike is never going to be a car, but you can pretend.
Ride like a girl. Ever wanted to know what it’s like to be a woman? Go get your bike. All set? Great. Go ride to work. Ride everywhere. [...] No matter where you are, you know that the cars around you could really mess you up if something went wrong. Welcome to being vulnerable to the people around you. Welcome to being the exception, not the rule. Welcome to not being in charge.
Judges Explaining Technology
"As a matter of science, traditional adoption does not provide a woman with the opportunity to be pregnant.” Reber v. Reiss, 42 A.3d 1131, 1138-39 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2012). Judges Explaining Technology.
Squueee....wheeeeeeeeeeee
Pandas on a slide (SLYT).
You remind me of the babe.
Toby Froud may not be a household name, but you've probably seen him before - as the baby from Labyrinth. Now thirty, Toby continues to work with magical creatures: his short live-action puppet film, Lessons Learned, recently premiered in Portland. [more inside]
Gyo Fujikawa, Godmother of #WeNeedDiverseBooks
What do vintage ads for Beech-Nut, Q-Tips, and Eskimo Pie have in common with some of the earliest depictions of multiethnic babies in children's books? They were all the work of pioneering illustrator Gyo Fujikawa. [more inside]
Cheatbook
New research finds a correlation between social network use and divorce rates. "We don't know whether Facebook is causing divorce or divorce is causing the use of Facebook," said a study author. A Facebook spokesman says it's "ludicrous" to suggest a link between the social network site and divorce. [more inside]
The Beautiful Moments in the Beautiful Game (Game Day Edition)
The World Cup is hardly an unmitigated joy - bone crushing injuries, protests in Brazil, FIFA being FIFA, backshoulder biting. But lets forget all that and embrace the feel good moments of World Cup 2014. Friends helping a deaf and blind fan experience the World Cup. The victors comforting a heartbroken opponent. A player stopping to tie the shoe of his child escort. The Greek team returning their bonuses to build a new training center. The Brazilian team being generally awesome with starstruck fans. [more inside]
“Living in a Trailer”
James Jones, the author of From Here to Eternity, wrote about life as a trailerite for Holiday magazine in 1952. [more inside]
"She was actually not even in the United States on Sept. 11."
The Woman Who Wasn't There. Her husband died in the attacks. She barely escaped from the south tower. But a new book chronicles the (literally) unbelievable story of 9/11’s most famous ‘survivor.’ [more inside]
Give Respect to Get Respect
Cotton + Steel is five Southern women - fabric design artists - who convinced "an industry giant to let them build an entire new division of the company according to their own particular vision." Tough, creative women making beautiful fabric in a time of renewed interest in sewing and quilting, and succeeding in business. interview with company founder Melody Miller here.
N’existe Pas
For many years Bruce Sterling has been writing about the battle for freedom on the internet, a subject he first wrote about in the highly acclaimed book The Hacker Crackdown in 1992. In this book, Sterling predicts that the term “privacy” may already be obsolete, along with those who once thrived on violating the integrity of others. Like spies, the paparazzi, rumour mongers—who actually has the most to lose in this transparent world?
Yes, yes, hadouken, but why hadouken, and when?
"How to play Street Fighter: a fighting game primer for everyone" explains the dynamics of how 2D fighting games work and why.
Laaaarge collection of Legally Free Microsoft Books.
FREE Microsoft eBooks! Who doesn’t love FREE Microsoft eBooks? Ymmv - but, Did I mention FREE! MSDN (Microsoft Developer network) writer Eric Lightman provides links to approximately 150 free ebooks, that anyone interested in MSDN matters might find useful. [more inside]
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