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Q: What happens when you leave a Wal-Mart store brand "Great Value" ice cream sandwich in the sun for 75 minutes?
A: Not what you'd think! [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 10:49 PM PST - 136 comments

Peeling a City Apart to Show How Structures Survive Disasters [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:48 PM PST - 5 comments

The best part of playing solitaire
posted by aubilenon at 8:08 PM PST - 44 comments

Five Lessons the Faltering Music Industry Could Learn From TV
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:01 PM PST - 49 comments

Stephen Colbert steps out of character and offers up some earnest advice to young women [more inside]
posted by Philby at 7:14 PM PST - 61 comments

The first episode of the TV series Outlander -- brought to us by Star Trek writer and Battlestar Galactica producer Ronald D. Moore -- has been made available by Starz online, with the official premiere set for next Saturday. Outlander, based on a series of historical fiction/romance books by author Diana Gabaldon, has built up a massive fanbase over the last 20 years, due in large part to its well-developed main character Claire, the explicit but emotional (and occasionally entertaining) sex scenes, extensive historical research and detail, and romantic chemistry between the two main characters. Between the devoted fans and the historical/quasi-scifi/fantasy components to the story, many are already comparing it to the Game of Thrones TV phenomenon. But will it be as successful (some spoilers), given that the current fanbase is predominantly female? Is Starz making books that used to be filed under "Romance" in bookstores into something too Fifty Shades of Grey for a wider audience to enjoy? Is the marketing of the show and the GoT-like recipe for success at odds with the author's stance on fanfiction based on her work? And most importantly, should fans of the books just STFU so everyone else can enjoy it? [Note that fans of the books may not want to STFU in this thread, so book and first episode spoilers may abound] [more inside]
posted by olinerd at 6:59 PM PST - 126 comments

Minimally Minimal, a blog by visual designer Andrew Kim. [more inside]
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 6:02 PM PST - 21 comments

Toshio Suzuki, a Studio Ghibli producer and general manager, has announced on Japanese television that Studio Ghibli will be closing its animation studio. The announcement comes not long after the retirement of legendary Studio Ghibli director and animator, Hayao Miyazaki. The studio is well known for its masterpieces such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away, and many, many others.
posted by Atreides at 5:24 PM PST - 67 comments

The Good-Luck Charm That Solved a Public-Health Problem ¸.·´¯`·.´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸><(((º> [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 3:33 PM PST - 44 comments

DA Hamilton Burger may be the best-known loser of early TV, but his portrayer William Talman's life (content excerpted from the Perry Mason TV show book) was far more interesting. At the height of his fame in 1960, Talman arrested at a nude pot party, and was fired and blacklisted as a result. It took Raymond Burr, the cast, and the fans to eventually get him his job back. At the end of his life, on the verge of dying, he made a powerful anti-smoking PSA (the PSA itself)
posted by julen at 1:02 PM PST - 23 comments

“It’s just like something from science fiction. It’s something that you’d see in a movie or in a book on aliens from another planet. It’s out of this world.” [closeup images of human skin that may be disturbing] Morgellon's disease [no images] is the topic of this week's Stuff You Should Know podcast. [no transcript] A CDC study could not identify a cause, and the medical community's consensus is that it is a form of delusional parasitosis, but conspiracy theories abound [images]. (previously)
posted by desjardins at 12:31 PM PST - 59 comments

Remember the floating training remote in Star Wars? Some people have done DIY versions of the remote that can levitate on your desktop. However, leave it to NASA to create the real thing and call it SPHERES: Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites: robotic bowling balls (OK, 18-sided polyhedron satellites) with autonomous propulsion, power, avionics, software, communications, and metrology subsystems, that fly freely in the ISS. First tested in 2006, they have been upgraded with Android smartphones, which makes them (for now) the less terrifying item in Google's growing robotic arsenal.
posted by elgilito at 12:26 PM PST - 3 comments

The simple chilled soup is perfect for steamy August days.

Gazpacho is so easy that children old enough to manage a food processor or a blender can make it themselves. But whether or not you have pint-size sous chefs at your disposal, a recipe that requires minimal effort and in most instances no heat is always a good thing this time of year. So, here is that ubiquitous summer standby done a few ways that you’re probably familiar with and a bunch more that you’re probably not. (If Thai melon gazpacho is already in your rotation, good for you, and I surrender.) The “recipes” here amount to little more than lists of ingredients and quantities, because the method doesn’t bear repeating 12 times: Combine everything in a blender or food processor, process to your desired texture, chill in the refrigerator if you like, garnish and eat.

[more inside]
posted by Lexica at 11:09 AM PST - 75 comments

"No one knew who killed (13 year-old) Mackenzie Howard that cold February night last year — and people were terrified that the killer was still in their midst. But in the remote community of Kake, only accessible by air or boat, there was no law enforcement officer."
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:17 AM PST - 19 comments

The most adorbs puppy in the universe.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:13 AM PST - 39 comments

Strangely mesmerising geese herding on horseback to Mongolian throat singing. From French equestrian theatre impresario Bartabas, who staged a horse version of Rite of Spring (video starts at prettiest part). Follow up with sheep herding with horse and dog as terribly French art video.
posted by Erasmouse at 9:43 AM PST - 5 comments

Performances of Shakespeare are common enough that various reimaginings are often deemed necessary. One of the latest? King Lear With Sheep.
posted by rhymes with carrots at 8:03 AM PST - 13 comments

Forty years ago, a vast molten cavity known as the Darvaza crater – nicknamed the "door to hell" – opened up in the desert of north Turkmenistan, and has been burning ever since. Last year, George Kourounis became the first person to descend to the bottom of the crater. [more inside]
posted by frimble at 6:49 AM PST - 29 comments

Back in 2009, Pixar animator (and LEGO enthusiast) Angus MacLane posted over one hundred pictures of his own personal LEGO creations he called Cube Dudes. The builds were pop culture characters that had squared off heads with one corner where the nose would be. It was a unique concept that immediately caught fire within the LEGO online community. Other builders emulated the style with builds of their own. The LEGO corporation even produced a pair of special LEGO Star Wars Cube Dude sets that were sold only at conventions. But if missed out on these sets and you'd like to build your own Cube Dude Boba Fett, there are instructions available online.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 6:27 AM PST - 16 comments

Since the merger of the Universal and United Media newspaper syndicates, GoComics.com has been the place to find 80%+ of all newspaper comics online*. And it has been noticed that two of the most popular comics, both in papers and onsite, haven't had new content in decades: Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes. As a result, GoComics is giving many other defunct funnies a second online run, including Bloom County, Kliban cartoons alternating with Kliban's Cats, and, most notably among recent syndication casualties, CulDeSac (as well as Richard Thompson's Poor Almanac). With the artists of FoxTrot and Doonesbury cutting back to Sunday only, the site (as well as some papers) is filling in the other 6 days with reruns. While Dilbert is exclusive to its own website, Dilbert Classics from the early 1990s are now rerun on GoComics. Even Luann, who just graduated high school (finally!) has a parallel run of Luann Againn (sic) showing her as 13 years old back in 1986.

But the most interesting example of recycling old comics comes from the current custodians of the 80-year-old Nancy, who, after observing "the Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn" become a meme, now offer a daily feature of a single non-sequitur panel from a classic Ernie Bushmiller strip in Random Acts of Nancy**. And they ARE random. [more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:43 AM PST - 43 comments