September 5
great little fixer-upper
Entrepreneurism is alive and well in America.
It was inevitable. We should have seen it coming. A Florida marketing genius and an Illinois company have teamed up to bring us Carlos Danger brand weiners. 100% beef, but I found no indication on the company's website that they're kosher. Carlos Danger claims that they're roughly twice as big as the average weiner!
Meeting Real Live Poor People
First Nations peoples are on the cusp of change
First Nations and the Future of Canadian Citizenship (CBC Ideas) Part history lesson, part memoir, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations takes to the stage to share stories of the people he represents and his own past. In his lecture titled It Feels Like We're On the Cusp, National Chief Shawn A-in-chut Atleo sets out why he believes First Nations peoples are on the cusp of change. via CBC Ideas [more inside]
Last one off the bridge has to turn out the lights.
A film shot from the last passenger car across the old Bay Bridge Listen for cop yelling at car "quit filming, and get off the bridge!"
Safety First
While filming Star Trek Into Darkness, Simon Pegg decided to play a prank on his costars and convinced them that they needed to use something called “Neutron Cream” whenever they were shooting in a specific location. Their reactions are fantastic. [via]
Reason is larger than science.
[Pinker] conflates scientific knowledge with knowledge as such. In his view, anybody who has studied any phenomena that are studied by science has been a scientist...If they were interested in the mind, then they were early versions of brain scientists. If they investigated human nature, then they were social psychologists or behavioral economists avant la lettre. Leon Wieseltier pens a response to Steven Pinker's essay on scientism, both in the pages of the New Republic. Others, including some prominent atheists, have taken issue with Pinker as well.
In the Wild with President Roosevelt
Go camping with President Roosevelt John Burroughs received a personal invite from President Theodore Roosevelt to go camping with him in 1903. Though what they call 'camping' we would probably call an 'expedition' today. What follows is an interesting look at the President out in the wild, exploring and reveling in the beauty of Yellowstone Park though the eyes of an invited guest.
An Open Letter to Bigot Diners
"Why yes, we do have a female sushi chef. She also happens to be Caucasian. Her name is Mariah Kmitta, and we are blessed to have her behind our sushi bar." Sushi chef Hajime Sato of Mashiko in Seattle responds to customers who find a non-Japanese sushi chef distasteful with "An Open Letter to Bigot Diners". The opinion is not universally accepted. Slate author LV Anderson wonders, "does raising your eyebrows at a white sushi chef really make you a bigot?" [more inside]
Brokeback Mississipi
Your Annual Fantasy Football Post
Fantasy football is back, and this year brings with it the rise of Fantasy Football Insurance. Marketplace explains. [more inside]
How would you have died in 1769?
Spin the wheel to see what manner of highly unpleasant death might have befallen you in the past. The "tool serves up causes of death in proportion to how many lives they claimed in the chosen year." Consumption? Childbed? Plague? Putrid fever? Test your fate; you may decide time travel doesn't sound like such a cool idea after all.
RINGDINGDINGDING DINGDINGERINGEDING
Dog goes woof
Cat goes meow
Bird goes tweet
And mouse goes squeek
Cow goes moo
Frog goes croak
And the elephant goes toot
Ducks say quack
And fish go blub
And the seal goes ow ow ow
But there’s one sound
That no one knows
What does the fox say?
Cat goes meow
Bird goes tweet
And mouse goes squeek
Cow goes moo
Frog goes croak
And the elephant goes toot
Ducks say quack
And fish go blub
And the seal goes ow ow ow
But there’s one sound
That no one knows
What does the fox say?
Other lines just aren’t interested in it. But why is it so different?
You might think that Waterloo & City Line couldn’t even have a Myers-Briggs Type, being a tunnel in London with some trains in it, but you’d be wrong. Whilst the normal way to establish a Myers-Briggs Type is get someone to fill in a questionnaire, it’s apparently possible to use a sample of text to analyse the personality of the author. And while the Waterloo & City Line didn’t have much to say for most of its 115 year history, for the last couple of years, it, and all the other London Underground lines, have been tweeting. So I use samples of tweets to discover what kinds of personalities they have.
I ♥ I ♥ NY
By now, the story is well known. A man sits in the backseat of a cab, sketching on a notepad as night falls over a crumbling city. He scribbles the letter I. He draws a heart. And then an N, and then a Y. Right away he knows he’s got something. This is it, he thinks. This is the campaign.
The man was a designer named Milton Glaser. The city was New York. The year was 1977. [more inside]
Then like my dreams, they fade and die
The day Harry Redknapp brought a fan on to play for West Ham. According to one of football's most endearing fairytales, Harry Redknapp once pulled an abusive fan from the crowd and put him on the field for West Ham. This allegedly happened in 1994, but no video and scant evidence of the incident exist. Jeff Maysh chased this mystery for over a decade before finally catching up with the fan in question.
How A Gasoline Car Engine Works
Given the number of automotive related questions on Ask MeFi, this animated infographic should be useful for most of us. And even if you are a gear head you'll probably think it's cool.
(It takes a few seconds to load - give it time.)
Jii! Jii! USB!
Don't put your phone on the dining table...
The guardian of the nation’s etiquette, Debrett’s, has now issued a handy 10-point guide to mobile (cell) phone etiquette in the digital age
September 4
Meet The Beatless
Being a fair sport
A History of Typography
Ben Barrett-Forrest offers a paper animation History of Typography. (slyt)
Flight to safety, flight to liquidity, flight to quality.
Always totalize! This is the majuscule axiom — the maxiom, let us say — for revolution. Revolution is a total thought, a thought of the totality; they are necessarily entangled. Reform, repair, regime change, recuperation: all of these are the politics of the partial, of isolating specific problems as if they admitted of independent solution. Ezra Pound said that the epic is a poem that contains history. What matter that we might amend the last word, a minor amendment at that, a swapping out of inseparable concepts? The epic is the poem that contains totality. [more inside]
"Power tends to corrupt..."
The Chasing Out Room
With mass layoffs still taboo in Japan, senior workers who refuse to resign are sent to "chasing-out rooms" instead of being allowed to work. (SL NYTimes)
Stop whining, we're living in the Space Age
Look, I get that some of you want to go to Mars even if it means dying there. I know you're bitter that there are no giant ads for Coke on the surface of the Moon. But what would it say about our species if we let you go and do stupid shit like that? The fact that our scientific community is mostly on board with not murdering you to explore Mars is a good thing. The fact that we are trying to figure how to safely and sustainably build on the Moon before doing it — that is a sign of progress.
We are simply passing through history....
"It’s not often that one finds buried treasure, but that’s exactly what happened in Wayland High School’s History Building as we prepared to move to a new campus. Amidst the dusty collection of maps featuring the defunct USSR, decades-old textbooks describing how Negroes are seeking equality, and film strips pieced together with brittle scotch tape, was a gray plastic Samsonite briefcase, circa 1975."
The line for "first come first serve" jokes starts here
The Trojan Vibrations Pleasure Cart continues its altruistic mission of free vibrators for the public in Portlands Pioneer Square 9/10. Making the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile, against all probability, the second most sexually suggestive corporate promotional vehicle.
What if the real problem is school itself?
School is a prison - and damaging our kids - We’re not surprised that learning is unpleasant. We think of it as bad-tasting medicine, tough to swallow but good for children in the long run. Some people even think that the very unpleasantness of school is good for children, so they will learn to tolerate unpleasantness, because life after school is unpleasant. Perhaps this sad view of life derives from schooling.
Colorado and Washington rejoice!
Justice Department Announces Update to Marijuana Enforcement Policy. For states such as Colorado and Washington that have enacted laws to authorize the production, distribution and possession of marijuana, the Department expects these states to establish strict regulatory schemes that protect the eight federal interests identified in the Department’s guidance.
A 21 year old girl who likes tea, photography, and books.
Inspired by the Lizzie Bennet diaries (previously) comes The Autobiography of Jane Eyre, a smaller, more introspective webseries featuring Jane as a bookish teenage tumblr addict. The story starts here...
Our country is the whole world, and our law is liberty.
Accidental Death of An Anarchist is a 1983 television version of Belt & Braces Theatre Company's adaptation of Dario Fo's Morte accidentale di un anarchico, a satirical farce based on the real death in police custody of an Italian railway worker and and anarchist; featuring an entirely fictional Maniac invading a police station to expose police corruption and brutality. It contains more than traces of slapstick, Thatcher-era left-wing agitprop, terrible jokes, swearing, vigorous fourth-wall obliteration, great jokes, a fully-functional mock-up of a bomb (that is to say, a bomb), a musical number, a coffee break and a multiple-choice ending. Among other things.
If you speak Italian, here is a presentation of an elderly Fo himself as the Maniac, for comparative purposes. If you don't speak Italian, you can still make the comparison, though somewhat less precisely. [more inside]
The music of Keats Collective: future funk / glo-fi / spacebop
Dear music lover and inquisitive individual, have you wondered what the funk of the future might sound like? You have (not)? Well, you're in luck! The good people at Keats//Collective show you a glimpse of what could possibly be future funk, available in a handful of solo albums and four compilations of what they classify as electronic / chillwave / disco / future funk / glo-fi / spacebop. But you really should stop reading and just take a listen to ... [more inside]
Invading New York City is one thing, but THIS is evil.
Gaze Correction for Home Video Conferencing
"Effective communication using current video conferencing systems is severely hindered by the lack of eye contact ... [Our] system is a face replacement algorithm that synthesizes a novel view of the subject’s face in which the gaze is correct and seamlessly transfers it into the original color image." [auto-playing sound+video]
All the spheres revolve about the sun as their mid-point
Ken Condal built an orrery (a mechanical model of the solar system - wikipedia), milling the parts himself using CNC machining. Among the videos are those of the orrery in operation and a time lapse of the construction process.
Bring me the head of Boba Fett!
In 2002 the Eltingville comic-book-science-fiction-fantasy-horror and role playing club made the leap from the pages of Evan Dorkin's Dork comic into an animated pilot for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, as Welcome to Eltingville. Sadly the series wasn't picked up, but the pilot is available on Youtube: part 1, part 2, part 3 (bonus title music by the Aquabats. Sadly so far the Northwest Comix Collective hasn't made the same leap.
The Moth: True Stories Told Live
Formed in NYC in 1997, the Moth celebrates the art of story through performances of true, first-person stories without notes in front of a live audience.
Stories are told by celebrities including Steve Burns dealing with his fame and DMC of Run-DMC discussing how Sarah McLachan helped him overcome his depression as well as everyday people like:
a research scientist detailing her relationship with her parrot and a woman with CP falling in love for the first time.
These stories are recounted in several cities across the USA and are later disseminated through weekly podcasts, a weekly radio show distributed by public radio stations (requires a free account), and a book out today.
An interview with George Dawes Green, novelist, and Founder of the Moth from the Rumpus.
More stories are available on youtube and their website.
America's Dog. 3/24/2004-8/31/2013
Blue II, the beloved mascot for Butler University, died of Cushing's Syndrome on Saturday. After his show-stopping appearance on the court during March Madness 2008, Blue maintained a high profile on various social platforms. His webcam was one of the most popular sites visited at Butler. He is survived by his owners, the Kaltenmarks, and by his protege, Trip.
Blue II's last words.
"Diana" - The Brave One, Mexico Style?
Reportedly a female vigilante killer shot two bus drivers to death last week in Ciudad Juarez. Via emails, the woman has indicated she is acting as an "instrument of vengeance" for sexual assaults against herself and other women by bus drivers. Ciudad Juarez has a notorious history, dating from about 1993 to the mid 2000s, for murder of women, frequently involving sexual assault. Previously.
說奶酪！
Cow Tipping Truthers Say That the Lack of Video is Itself Evidence
Another myth busted: Drunk young men do not, on any regular basis, sneak into cow pastures and put a hard shoulder into a cow taking a standing snooze, thus tipping the poor animal over.
Whoops...The correct answer was Double Dutch
Wikipedia on Chelsea Manning
This is the story of how the fifth largest website in the world came to actively embrace transphobia and hate speech. [more inside]
Articles for ArchAndroid's
An amazingly-designed article about R&B performer Janelle Monae. And an interesting article too!
Suited for Space
The Smithsonian's National Air and Space museum is running an exhibit showing the ingenuity of design inherent in the spacesuits used by NASA astronauts. It includes some very cool x-ray photographs of the equipment by Mark Avino. [via]
Ask a slave. Go on.
Ask a Slave, part 2. Part 1 is here.
According to the YouTube description:
"Ask A Slave is a comedy web series directed by Jordan Black based on the actress' time working as a living history character at the popular historic site, George Washington's Mount Vernon. All questions and interactions are based on true events."
Compilation Blues
He's back
Amazon MatchBook
Amazon has announced that "MatchBook" will launch in October, allowing you to buy Kindle versions of select physical books you've purchased from Amazon, for $2.99 or less. The service will be retroactive to 1995. Reactions from TechHive, Time, and Engadget.
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