August 26, 2013
Hubble Ultra Deep Field 3-D Fly-Through
Sex, cats and introverts
The Internet's Love Affair With Introverts
Online might just be the introvert's natural environment, where conversations can be staged, staggered and stopped at their discretion – all from a distance. Thoughts can be edited to perfection, solitary hobbies and pursuits can be meticulously researched before being shared online, friendships maintained without the obligation to meet face-to-face … plus it's never been easier to uncover other introverts and forge friendships without the inconvenience of meeting.
Rocky's Road
"Life is so difficult," reads one reply. "It breaks us down, challenges us, pushes us to the very depths of desperation and darkness. These are the times when we need each other the most." Via. [more inside]
Support Neighborhood Public Schools
While students return to class today, Tribune photojournalist Brian Cassella visits the buildings that sit empty after being shut down by the Chicago Public Schools. More on CPS closings on metafilter here and here.
Fried Twinkies With a Side of Obamacare
A middle-aged man in a red golf shirt shuffles up to a small folding table with gold trim, in a booth adorned with a flotilla of helium balloons, where government workers at the Kentucky State Fair are hawking the virtues of Kynect, the state’s health benefit exchange established by Obamacare.
The man is impressed. "This beats Obamacare I hope," he mutters to one of the workers.
“Do I burst his bubble?” wonders Reina Diaz-Dempsey, overseeing the operation. She doesn't. If he signs up, it's a win-win, whether he knows he's been ensnared by Obamacare or not.
llama love
Of the 10,000 therapy animals currently in use in the United States, only 14 are llamas. Jen Osborne tells the story llama therapy in photos for Colors: Beat Your Intimacy Issues. (via @pourmecoffee)
Here's Why America Stopped Caring About The Public Good
Not even Democrats still use the phrase “the public good.” Public goods are now, at best, “public investments.” Public institutions have morphed into “public-private partnerships” or, for Republicans, simply “vouchers.” [more inside]
The Replacements Reunite
Learning how to live
I was surprised by how many of the weird things ......came form the book
You find more drifters in dusting and spraying
Mississippi Delta Crop Duster Pilot (7 minute video)
"And Lincoln wasn't a douchebag. He was like, ok, I'll meet with him."
Do you like history? Do you like drunk people? If you answered yes to these two questions, you may like Drunk History, where you get to see what happens when a drunk historian explains what happened. The original web series was previously discussed twice on metafilter. Now there's more: [more inside]
To The Dudebro Who Thinks He’s Insulting Me by Calling Me a Feminist
John Scalzi responds to a troll Cheezburgering "This is what a feminist looks like" on a photo of him in a regency-era gown.
Over the weekend, some dudebro with a history of shitting on women took this picture of me and meme-ized it, with the intent, given his personal history and predilections, of mocking me — both for my views as regards women, and for wearing a dress. Dudebro: Let me detail for you the various ways this picture has utterly failed you as an attempt to ridicule me.[more inside]
The Bottle Beach at Dead Horse Bay
Dead Horse Bay was the site of a 19th-century horse rendering plant on the far edge of Brooklyn. It was also a massive landfill that was capped in the 1930s. In the 1950s, the cap burst. The organic debris rotted away, but the remaining glass, ceramic, and metal spilled onto the beach. At low tide, the sand is covered with a dense layer of bottles, broken dishes, and other hundred-year-old detritus. More is washed free every day. [more inside]
Haters Gonna Hate
"New research has uncovered the reason why some people seem to dislike everything while others seem to like everything." Yes, this finding comes from the field of psychology, in an area of research called "attitude theory," but maybe they've struck upon something we've suspected is true all along.
From the paper: "The dispositional attitude construct represents a new perspective in which attitudes are not simply a function of the properties of the stimuli under consideration, but are also a function of the properties of the evaluator."
From the paper: "The dispositional attitude construct represents a new perspective in which attitudes are not simply a function of the properties of the stimuli under consideration, but are also a function of the properties of the evaluator."
Wait for the drop. Obviously.
Video Game 3,000
A world in upheaval
A map of every protest everywhere since 1979 (some caveats are noted in the accompanying article).
What That Pet is Really Thinking
Schrodinger's cat new Cheshire grin
Physicist Art Hobson disentangles 'Schrodinger's cat' debate. The solution is within the framework of standard quantum physics. 'In an article published August 8 by Physical Review A, a journal of the American Physical Society, Hobson argues that the phenomenon known as "nonlocality" is key to understanding the measurement problem illustrated by "Schrodinger's cat."'
A short but sweet story
Phantasmagoria
Stalin's Rope Roads
The best movie ever made about Facebook
Network of Blood: "Videodrome’s depiction of techno-body synthesis is, to be sure, intense; Cronenberg has the unusual talent of making violent, disgusting, and erotic things seem even more so. The technology is veiny and lubed. It breaths and moans; after watching the film, I want to cut my phone open just to see if it will bleed. Fittingly, the film was originally titled 'Network of Blood,' which is precisely how we should understand social media, as a technology not just of wires and circuits, but of bodies and politics. There’s nothing anti-human about technology: the smartphone that you rub and take to bed is a technology of flesh." Nathan Jurgenson writes about Videodrome (previously) as a way of understanding our present social media technologies for Omni Magazine (previously).
On Saturday Mornings in 1967
In 1967, Fran Allison, along with her friends Kukla and Ollie, began hosting The CBS Children’s Film Festival. It offered many American children their first look at foreign films, and their contemporaries from other cultures. [more inside]
Hic Sunt Dracones
A collector has found what may be the oldest globe to depict the New World, dated 1504 and engraved two half ostrich eggs.
The Hunt-Lenox Globe may be, according to analysis by Stefaan Missinne in The Portolan, designed after this new discovery. [more inside]
Popped At
Popped At is a real-time stream of images being shared on Twitter. Unfiltered, potentially nsfw.
Buffalo School Board stages theater of the absurd
Buffalo News theater critic reviews a recent school board meeting.
letter letter letter left paren argument argument right paren
Hemiscyllium halmahera
Ruth Calderon: "The Time Has Come To Re-appropriate What Is Ours"
"Every new member of Israel’s Knesset gives a debut speech, and this year, with 48 rookies, the docket was full, with parliamentarians introducing their résumés, their proposed policies, and their hopes for the coming four-year term. One decided to ignore convention altogether. This member of Knesset used the allotted time to teach Talmud. A full third of the 19th Knesset are observant Jews, but it wasn’t any of them. It was a woman named Ruth Calderon, a Talmud scholar and the founder of two Jewish houses of study. She was elected to Knesset as No. 13 on the list of Yesh Atid, a new party headed by former journalist Yair Lapid that swept the recent elections, earning 19 seats on a promise to bring about a more equal Israel..." [more inside]
To the honorable doctor, hello
Casualties from the Syrian civil war are being treated in Israeli hospitals, some of them with referrals from Syrian doctors. The identities of the patients and the route they have taken is being kept secret for fear of repercussions from authorities in Syria, which is formally at war with Israel. [more inside]
Amélie: The Broadway Musical
French film Amélie (2001) is going to be adapted into a Broadway musical by American composer Dan Messe (Hem), who will be creating new music for the score. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is disgusted by these plans, but sold the rights anyway to support a charity.
"[This blog] does not endorse the use of lizard hair conditioner"
Would you like to learn how to make pink-colored pancakes? Or practice 13th-century dental care? Or garden with lobster claws? Or perhaps 12th-century hair care or choosing the right cravat is more your speed? Fortunately, Ask the Past has answers to all those questions--and more!
sssShawnnnn - Pizza Rolls (metal x EDM mashup)
"GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW YOUNG MAN."
Deep Sea Mystery Circle – a love story
"Video footage of the little artist at work recently surfaced. It was uploaded to YouTube by MarineStation Amami, a hotel and dive center that assisted Yoji Okata and NHK in producing the video segment that aired last year. Of note, watch at around 1:20 when the fish takes a small shell in his mouth and plants it in the sculpture. Scientists believe that the shells are filled with vital nutrients and this is the soon-to-be-father’s way of preparing nourishment for the babies." UPDATE [Aug 26, 2013] [more inside]
"Read you a story? What fun would that be?"
Adam Cadre's Photopia is a short, heartbreaking work of interactive fiction. You can play it in your browser. Cadre writes about the making of the game here—spoilers, obviously.
AAAOOOUUUUUAAAAAHHHH!!!
It's time for MIND YOUR MANNERS with BILLY QUAN, a recurring spoof on martial arts movies from classic Seattle sketch comedy group Almost Live! Today's episode:
YARD SALE, 8 BALL, BLADES, HOOPS, WICKETS, RACKETS, FUMES, TOOLS, JOCKS, TRICKS OF FURY
ENTER THE BOWLER, TIPSTER, PYRAMID, DOGGIE, JUGGLER, NEW YEAR, GARDNER
FIVE DISKS, LIBRARY, OFFICE, FIVE IRON OF DEATH
Remember kids, BE LIKE BILLY. BEHAVE YOURSELF!
YARD SALE, 8 BALL, BLADES, HOOPS, WICKETS, RACKETS, FUMES, TOOLS, JOCKS, TRICKS OF FURY
ENTER THE BOWLER, TIPSTER, PYRAMID, DOGGIE, JUGGLER, NEW YEAR, GARDNER
FIVE DISKS, LIBRARY, OFFICE, FIVE IRON OF DEATH
Remember kids, BE LIKE BILLY. BEHAVE YOURSELF!
Radiation! Violent protests! Spaniards! Welcome to 2020.
IS ☻ JAPAN COOL?! The International Olympic Committee votes in 15 days on whether Tokyo, Istanbul or Madrid will host the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, and major efforts are underway to cajole the committee. Promotional videos have been released, royalty, major sports figures, and robotic cats have been dragged out. A few nasty remarks have been flung, which were subsequently dismissed. Meanwhile, activists, petitioners, protesters, and economic instability are potentially hurting the Olympic bids in Madrid, Istanbul, and Tokyo, Turkey has experienced a major doping scandal, and radiation continues to leak from Fukushima. And what would the Olympics be without a logo design failure?!
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