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MeFiMusicSwap'20?
What are the general feelings on doing a digital-only MeFiMusicSwap?
Meet Star Stable, a horse game for girls 8 to 17
According to a 2015 profile in Venture Beat, Star Stable Entertainment broke a lot of rules when it launched (in 2011, according to various sources other than Venture Beat). "It created an online horse game, Star Stable, for girls and young women. It charged a subscription fee and built its own game engine. And it stayed online rather than diving into mobile with a million other competitors."
The feelgood story of the day
From homeless refugee to chess prodigy, 9-year-old dreams of becoming youngest grandmaster. Follow up on a Nicholas Kristof story from last year on M-F
I'll have one Chicken Dump Truck and Blinfolded Ordinary on the side...
Humorous mistranslationfilter, SLT - Twitter user @vladadraws had an appeal to her followers yesterday: "So my mother's friend's husband is stuck in a hotel in Saudi Arabia and this is the order menu they gave him, Do I have any Arabic speaking followers that can help make sense of this?" The Arabic-to-English translations on said menu are....unconventional.
Bonus take: hot dogs taste better cold
David took his first sip of warm, flat Pepsi about eight years ago at a Christmas party. As bored 12-years-olds are wont to do, he recalls “constantly fiddling around” with his Pepsi bottle the entire night, to the point that the soda lost all carbonation and turned into syrup-y sugar water. Still, he swigged away nonetheless. “I enjoyed the taste so much more, and the carbonation didn’t upset my stomach or burn my eyes and throat,” he says. The Absolute Masochists Who Love Drinking Flat Soda (Quinn Myers, MEL Magazine)
The Dark Angel
Merle Oberon’s Remarkable Life.
"In 1935, Merle Oberon became the first biracial actress to be nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, an incredible achievement in then-segregated Hollywood -- except that nobody in Hollywood knew Oberon was biracial. Born in Bombay into abject poverty in 1911, Oberon's fate seemed sealed in her racist colonial society. But a series of events, lies, men, and an obsession with controlling her own image -- even if it meant bleaching her own skin -- changed Oberon's path forever."
The hero Britain so desperately needs right now
A Soprano Warms Up
A soprano warms up. The less I say, the better. SLYT.
"They are wild and free, when the rest of us feel trapped."
Canada’s largest city was politely abiding by a strict coronavirus lockdown. But when a family of foxes set up a den in a prime Toronto location, all bets were off: NY Times | non-Times link
Please don't use Unicode to make fancy fonts in posts
I've noticed more and more posts that make use of Unicode characters to simulate fancy fonts in FPPs. This breaks screen readers, often in very annoying ways. For example, “𝒎” is read out by my screen reader as "mathematical bold italic small m". So whole words or sentences of this makes a post impossible to understand. Please avoid.
Another COVID communication post
Recently, I've seen several AskMe posts where posters have felt the need to engage in harsh critique of self or others in order to fend off AskMe judgment concerning their taking actions during the pandemic that are clearly driven by need (even potential life-or-death emergencies) and not frivolous. This troubles and saddens me.
Kana Chan TV
Kana Chan TV
is a Japanese youtuber/vlogger like many others, she records herself preparing and eating food or playing video games like American Truck Simulator (badly).
oh yeah, as of about a week ago, she's also the current WWE RAW Women's Champion
oh yeah, as of about a week ago, she's also the current WWE RAW Women's Champion
Do you have a flag?
The U.S. Space Force has unveiled its service flag, based upon the logo approved in January; the design remains oddly familiar.
Taste The Rainbow
Researchers from the ETH Zurich university have discovered a sweet gimmick: Iridescent Chocolate.
may cause tetris effect
Welcome to Jstris, a simple online multiplayer block game. Jstris is known for its fast gameplay and is attracting talented players from all around the world. This guide will introduce you to the basic features of the game.
"…flagrantly disregarding social distancing guidelines"
Because 2020 couldn’t get any weirder, residents in San Jose, Calif., came face to face with about 200 goats wandering through their neighborhood Tuesday evening. The scene, which looked like some bizarre version of the first few minutes of Dawn of the Dead, was captured on video by new local hero Zach Roelands. “This is the craziest thing to happen all quarantine,” he wrote in a tweet sharing the footage. We’re not sure that’s completely accurate, but it’s definitely up there on the list.
If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.
Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic.
A public historical archive documenting how the extreme new conditions are changing the routines, expectations, and dreams of people from all walks of life, nationalities, communities, genders, and aged groups across the globe. Archives have to be made.
A doctoral student from Colombo, Sri Lanka. A winemaker in Denman, Australia. An ultra-marathoner from Piracicaba, Brazil. A retired special ed. administrator from Normal, IL.
Go ahead and Share your Story.
A public historical archive documenting how the extreme new conditions are changing the routines, expectations, and dreams of people from all walks of life, nationalities, communities, genders, and aged groups across the globe. Archives have to be made.
A doctoral student from Colombo, Sri Lanka. A winemaker in Denman, Australia. An ultra-marathoner from Piracicaba, Brazil. A retired special ed. administrator from Normal, IL.
Go ahead and Share your Story.
Fatal exceptionalism and lack of humility to learn from Asian example
Covid-19, or how the West was undone by its assertion of civilizational difference bordering on provincial narcissism, by Mukul Kesavan
"It is as if best practice in policy and civil society behaviour was discounted because it didn’t originate in the West, as if city streets filled with masked citizens represented an assimilation of the individual into the herd. What began as an assertion of civilizational difference turned out to be no more than provincial narcissism."
The Weather, Courtesy of David Lynch
David Lynch used to record short video weather reports for his website, then he stopped. Now, he’s started again, using YouTube.
Weather Report 5/11/20
Weather Report 5/12/20
Weather Report 5/13/20
Weather Report 5/11/20
Weather Report 5/12/20
Weather Report 5/13/20
What Happened to Val Kilmer?
Cancer has taken his voice, but the unlikeliest movie star in Hollywood history still has a lot he wants to say. Content Warning: This story is not about coronavirus, but it is very much informed by the pandemic.
Creating a COde-Free RPG using Sable
Sable
is a new game development system which just entered alpha testing. The main thing which distinguishes this from many similar tools is that it is explicitly intended to be used by developers who are blind.
“We have nothing to lose but our leashes and the whole world to gain.”
Tired of seeing socialist messages in games compromised by both-sideism and wanting to make an unapologeticially left wing game, the developer collective Pixel Pushers Union 512 have created Tonight We Riot (available on Steam and the Switch), a side-scrolling beat um up where the player controls a proletariat mob bent on tearing down the old order, focusing not on the actions of one character, but having the player needing to control a group movement to succeed.
The Floor Is...
Game designer Holly Gramazio ran a survey to find out what floors were made of.
So how's that work from home working out for you at home?
Managers turn to surveillance software, always-on webcams to ensure employees are (really) working from home
, Washington Post, Drew Harwell, 4/30/2020 — Always-on webcams, virtual “water coolers,” constant monitoring: Is the tech industry’s new dream for remote work actually a nightmare? With nearly half of office employees working from home to avoid COVID-19 exposure, management tracks their work using: digital avatars in virtual offices; always-on webcams/microphones; productivity stats; monitored web browsing and active work hours; multiple daily check-ins (via email, calls, text messages and Zoom video calls); not-so-optional company happy hours, game nights and lunchtime chats; hidden screen captures; logging of apps used and websites visited; key word flagging; keyboard/mouse usage; unscheduled video conferences; and endless online meetings, meetings, meetings.
Create your own 1980s police sketch, online via virtual Mac
MeFite odinsdream recently came across some old abandoned police sketch software for Macintosh systems from the 1980s, then wrapped it up in a web-based emulator, and now you can play with it in your browser! Make your own face sketches. [via mefi projects]
a podcast for people who are scared to watch horror movies
The Scaredy Cats Horror Show is a new Gimlet podcast from the hosts of Reply All, where PJ Vogt (self-declared scaredy cat and non-horror movie watcher) watches a horror movie and then discusses it with Alex Goldman (horror fan) in an attempt to see if PJ can possibly learn to enjoy scary movies. First episode: The Exorcist, with guest host Jason Mantzoukas. Next week will be Nightmare on Elm Street.
"Deep in rococo imagery of fairies, princesses, diamonds and pearls"
Terri Windling (03/2020), "Once upon a time in Paris...": "As the vogue for fairy stories evolved in the 1670s and '80s, Madame d'Aulnoy emerged as one of the most popular raconteurs in Paris ... she soon formed a glittering group around her of nonconformist women and men, as well as establishing a highly successful and profitable literary career ... So how, we might ask, did Perrault become known as the only French fairy tale author of note?" Elizabeth Winter (12/2016), "Feminist Fairies and Hidden Agendas": "the term contes de fées ... was coined by ... d'Aulnoy in 1697, when she published her first collection of tales." Volker Schröder (2018-2019): this collection "is often described as 'lost' or 'untraceable'" and its "sequel has become just as scarce"; but d'Aulnoy's tales are available online, and mixed reviews such as those of the Brothers Grimm may call to mind her childhood marginalia: "if you have my book and ... don't appreciate what's inside, I wish you ringworm, scabies ... and a broken neck."
Dave Greenfield (29 March 1949 – 3 May 2020)
I am very sorry to hear of the passing of Dave Greenfield. He was the difference between The Stranglers and every other punk band. His musical skill and gentle nature gave an interesting twist to the band. He should be remembered as the man who gave the world the music of Golden Brown.Hugh Cornwell on the death of Dave Greenfield, due to a covid-19 infection.
Computer games set in London
In 2016 the Museum of London held an exhibition about computer games set in London. Here is an interview with the curator, Foteini Aravani, and a post by her about London in video games. There were reviews of the exhibition from St John Street News and Londonist. Dave Curran, who was involved in restoring the hardware for the exhibition, also wrote about it.
MST Club: Joel's chatriff thing
As foretold in prophecy, at 6 PM Eastern time tonight Joel Hodgson will be hosting a special "social distancing" MST3K show, with the cast of the live tour riffing, in a chatroom setting, the season one episode Moon Zero Two, which is a kind of "space western." We watch MST frequently in our own chat room, keeping each other distantly social long before it was cool or necessary. We're going to be trying to watch and riffing them watching and riffing their old riffshow, in a pleasantly recursive showing, assuming we can set it up correctly. You all are all invented to watch and riff along if you like!
It is not down in any map; true places never are.
The New Bedford Whaling Museum
takes its popular annual 25-hour Moby-Dick reading marathon online, with chapters read during a YouTube "Story Hour" each night since April 17. Volunteers from across the US signed up to read a chapter from home (NYT).
The real viral content was the friends we made along the way
I Used The Sims To Perfect My Apartment
is not what it says on the tin. Instead, this 15 minute video from gaming site Polygon.com unravels into a bizarre meditation on depression, loneliness, and friendship which in These Trying Times scratched an itch I didn't know I had. (However, it will almost definitely not help you perfect your apartment.)
Bad Seed TeeVee
Nick Cave has launched a 24/7 streaming channel of his music on YouTube. In the past few hours, I've seen about a 50/50 mix of live performances and videos and one very brief interview. Link to the channel.
The Islamic History of Coffee
Sufi Muslims in Yemen would boil up the grounds of their coffee cherry leaves and pass around a dark potion as they prepared for a night of dhikr, or meditative chanting.
A sixteenth-century Muslim writer named Abd al-Qadir al-Jaziri noted the habits of the mystics:
The Doctor, The Disease, and The Division
Outside the hospital, cut off from friends and family like everyone else in New York, I’ve spent much of my social isolation on my PC. I keep logging into Ubisoft’s accidentally, unfortunately prescient 2019 online action game The Division 2. Here I am, a physician in a time of pestilence, spending my few free hours playing a game set in a fictional America torn apart by plague.
MST3K, pandemic style
Joel Hodgson has announced via the AV Club that they're doing a special live show of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on May 3 (Sunday) at 6 PM Eastern, over a variety of venues including Twitch, YouTube, Facebook and others, riffing over the Season One episode Moon Zero Two.
It's a helluva thing, the gift of walking the world.
“Let me emphasize that this is not a guide, but it's also not not a guide. It's a collection of notes, tips, and, I guess, "travelogue" entries about walking the Ise-ji route of the Kumano Kodō. I wrote this because I love the Ise-ji, and want you, also, to think: Damn, that looks like a fine hike.
So consider this a persuasion or seduction, a thing to bookmark and return to, for when you decide to give this walk a go. Consider it a playful dare, for when we can all go out and walk again.”
Craig Mod (previously 1, 2, 3) walks along, photographs, and records ambient sounds from the mountain/coastal Ise-Ji pilgrimage route. (via Kottke)
My Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore
SLNYTimes essay by Gabrielle Hamilton
Hamilton is a great writer, and this brought tears to my eyes.
It has the Covid tag, so may be free.
Hello, Gordon! Hello, Gordon! Hello, Gor--
Half-Life 1, in VR, except it's absurdist improv comedy. Act I, part 1 in a continuing series.