wskent

This works. Created by Ezequiel López.

(Unrelated comment: I love the colors of 1960s movies. Please bring them back.)

(Thanks, Matthew!)

A 38,000-word answer.

via http://lovelypackage.com/hoxton-street-monster-supplies/

Taking inspiration from the opening sequence of Contact, lightyear.fm is a musical journey away from the Earth. As you get farther out (say, 10 light years away, just past star Ross 154 in the constellation of Sagittarius), you hear music that was broadcast on the radio at that time (Gold Digger by Kanye West).

Radio broadcasts leave Earth at the speed of light. Scroll away from Earth and hear how far the biggest hits of the past have travelled. The farther away you get, the longer the waves take to travel there -- and the older the music you'll hear.

This is the coolest.

Yesterday Donald Trump boasted on Twitter that he would "kick El Chapo's ass." When the recently escaped Mexican drug lord (or someone pretending to be him) tweeted back to Trump that he'd "make you eat all of your goddamn words," Trump complained to the FBI that he was being bullied.

Before I could string full sentences together, I used to wander outside past my bedtime. I would push open the sliding glass door and immediately look up, searching for stars sprinkled beyond the silhouetted trees. At the time, I couldn’t even begin to comprehend what I was seeing. Instead, each beacon of light represented a mystery, a final frontier in a vast, unknown universe.

Today, two-plus decades of personal discovery leaning on centuries of scientific discovery have given me much greater insight into the night sky. But plenty of mysteries still stand. You could say that most of the universe remains dark to us. And that includes some of our own backyard.

Pluto—that cold, small and lonely dwarf planet 4.7 billion miles away—is still a single dot in a vast, starry sky, only dimly visible through even our best telescopes. We know little about it, save that it’s very different from what we know well: completely unlike the rocky inner planets and outer gas and ice giants of the Solar System. It has held onto its secrets for nearly a century. But that is about to change.

After a nearly-10-year journey, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft came face to face with…
Read More…

Pin it

Thanks to science, you may be off the hook for some of your bad eating choices when you've had a bit too much to drink.

Scientists at the University of Indiana's medical school recently released a study that found that alcohol can make food smell better.

READ MORE »

♬ With the shovel out, the ice's less dangerous / Drop the shovel, entertain us / I feel stupid and contagious / Drop the shovel, entertain us ♬

Magisterial. I love the internet. This is even better than the door that sounds like Miles Davis. (via @slowernet)

Update: Oh, and this nightstand door sounds like Chewbacca. (via @steveportigal)

Mad Max Mayhem [JoopaDoops/Deviant Art] (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

This new GIF from NASA cuts deep — we’re so very, very close to seeing Pluto.

(Image credit: Christine Gallary)

Whipped cream is one of life's little luxuries that makes everything it touches just a wee bit better. Whether you like it to melt into your hot cocoa, crown your hot fudge sundae, or gild your pie or apple crisp, it's amazing how just taking a whisk to some heavy cream transforms it so beautifully.

But what about that leftover whipped cream that didn't get served? Should you just toss it? We're here to tell you that you should never, ever, throw away leftover whipped cream. Freeze it instead!

READ MORE »

Kendrick Lamar’s new video for To Pimp a Butterfly’s “Alright” is a beautiful piece of protest art. 

Believe. (more…)

Shadows of a Doubt: Hints of Emotional Conflict Within Black Metal Promotional Photography by Aleksander Jacobsen

Jerre Kalbas is one of the oldest living lesbians in New York. While so many young gay people consider women like Ellen and Wanda Sykes as household names, Jerre grew up in a time when being gay wasn’t something you ever celebrated with a parade—it was something you hid inside the confines of an underground bar. So when I called Jerre shortly after the Supreme Court made its historic decision, and asked if she ever thought gay marriage would pass in the United States, she had exactly this to tell me:

“Oh come on! Of course not.”

She added: “I didn’t even think gay would be recognized. This, to me, I can’t even believe it. It’s just so fantastic.”

Jerre grew up in a different era—actually, in many different eras—where gay marriage simply wasn’t a political issue, because gay people weren’t quite considered people. “Nothing was said,” Jerre told me, “You just didn’t talk about it.” While she remembers having feelings for women as early as the age of six, it would be years before she had the words and labels to identify the impressions as gay (“I didn’t know what I was doing!” she said). Still, that didn’t stop her from going out to New York’s underground bars to meet other young lesbians to date and befriend. While there were lesbian bars and gay men’s bars, sometimes, gay men and women would go to a venue together simply to avoid harassment from the police. “If there was a police raid, we would start dancing together, so everyone would think we were straight,” she told me.

But it wasn’t just her sexuality that Jerre had to watch—it was her gender expression as well. During high school, Jerre wore a tie instead of a scarf, which prompted one anxious mother to tell her daughter to, “stay away from me.” At the time, Jerre was confused. “I didn’t know there was anything wrong with me. I didn’t know anything was wrong until people pointed it out.”

And it wasn’t just high school, either—Jerre was always “tomboyish,” and grew up before World War II, when women were expected to wear skirts. So because Jerre couldn’t wear pants, she did the next best thing: “I wore skirts, with a man’s shirt, and a really short haircut. I didn’t want to use a purse, so I carried around a paper bag with cigarettes and my wallet.”  As much as she tried to blend in, she was still subject to harassment in the streets: “Guys in the street, they would shout ‘Dyke’ at me … I still hate that word.”

But Jerre persisted, because she is what scientists would call, “a badass.” She became a cook, and a silversmith, and ran her very own mechanical shop. She made friends and lovers and even more friends, and at 97—97—still flies around New York by bus. She’s an active member of SAGE, a nonprofit serving New York’s best LGBTQ elders, and a reader of the New York Times (“Did you see the cover of the Times this morning? Everything’s gay!!”). And while she has no plans to get married anytime in the immediate future, when I spoke with her this morning she had this to add:

“I had to struggle to make it. This is mind-boggling. This is wonderful … Did you see the White House in all the colors … I never thought it would be that way.”

Jerre is going out tonight, and tomorrow she’ll be celebrating the Pride she fought to build for 8.8 million people.

liartownusa:

Shameful Dawn by United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

“A terrifying look at America’s slick, glistening future…"—American Conservative

The president’s eulogy for the Reverend Clementa Pinckney.

Chicago Pride Parade, Belmont/Halsted, 1977 (via) 

(I posted this video before, but today seemed like a good day to re-blog it.)

Sound Effects Vol. 7: Neighborhood Nuisance conceived and written with Rachel Lichtman @DJRotaryRachel 

mightyriot:

I must decline, for secret reasons.

About a month ago, a new channel “Primitive Technology” popped up on YouTube. And it’s the best. As the creator notes, the videos on this channel are about “making primitive huts and tools from scratch using only natural materials in the wild.” The videos are without narration and the results are striking. It’s the kind of stuff that puts Bear Grylls to shame. Watch below as this guy, who I can only assume could woo away anybody’s girlfriend if he so desired, builds an impressive shelter. The videos are satisfyingly relaxing to watch and provide a glimpse into what the creative life may have been for our distant ancestors.

Subscribe to GOOD on YouTube

Ice-T Law & Order SVU Part I

Ice-T Law & Order SVU Part II

No surprise that Cars 2—a naked toy ad—is at the bottom. But placing Brave next to it ("textbook Idiot Plot movie … dumb slapstick") seems a little rough. Up ("completely overshadowed by the heartbreaking preamble") barely sneaks into Tim Grierson and Will Leitch's top ten.

All 15 Pixar Movies, Ranked From Worst to Best [via Kottke]

Mass shootings sadly seem to be almost a routine part of American life — as do the post-shooting rituals. As we mourn the nine people killed Wednesday night in Charleston, South Carolina, the conversation has already turned to politics and gun control. Most Republicans don’t want to talk about it. Some Democrats, most notably President Obama, do. In the end, public opinion and congressional politics will probably keep gun control legislation from becoming law any time in the near future.

Americans have turned against gun control over the past 25 years. We can see this clearly in Gallup’s data since 1990 and the Pew Research Center’s data since late 1993.

Americans clearly wanted stricter gun control during most of the 1990s. Even through 2007, a majority of Gallup respondents always answered yes to “more strict” gun control. Since that point, however, the position in favor of gun control failed to get a majority in every poll except one, a survey conducted after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Pew’s polling shows the same trend: Through 2008, a majority of Americans said it was more important to control gun ownership than protect gun owners’ rights. The only majority since then for controlling gun ownership came after Newtown.

You’ll note that there was also a clear rise in the percentage of Americans in favor of curbing guns after the Columbine High School shooting in 1999 in Colorado. What made Columbine and Newtown different from other mass shootings? There were a lot of deaths of young Americans at an elementary or high school, and the media paid much more attention to those massacres. As George Washington University’s Danny Hayes has pointed out, media mentions of “gun control” rose after Newtown to an extent they didn’t for other recent tragedies.

After a while, though, the media moves on, and the long-term trend against gun control continues. We saw this clearly after the Newtown mass shooting.

Still, after Newtown, Congress made a serious attempt at passing anti-gun legislation. Could Charleston have a Newtown-like effect on media coverage and public opinion, making it possible for a gun control bill to pass Congress? Obama seems ready to use his bully pulpit, as he was after the Newtown shootings. He argued Thursday that the United States was unique for its mass shootings and that “it is in our power to do something about it.”

Yet, Obama has tried to use his bully pulpit before without success. In 14 previous statements after mass shootings, Obama has called for taking action half the time. Four of the 14 times (and Newtown was not one of them), he specifically mentioned gun control.

We didn’t see a shift in national opinion after the shootings in Tucson, Arizona; Aurora, Colorado; Fort Hood, Texas; the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., or Isla Vista/Troutdale in California and Oregon.¹² In other words, whether Obama talks about gun control is not a good barometer of public opinion or congressional action.

Even if we saw a Newtown-style public opinion spike for more gun control, the political realities would make it nearly impossible for such legislation to go anywhere. The Senate is now firmly in Republican control; Democrats controlled 55 seats during their failed attempt to pass gun legislation in 2013. The House is even more impossible: Democrats hold just 188 seats out of 435. (And again, many Democrats haven’t and won’t vote for a bill that curtails guns.)

The 2013 vote is instructive. Almost every Republican voted against the highest profile piece of gun control legislation, an amendment proposed by Sen. Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, to institute national background checks. Background checks had overwhelming public support nationally. And yet, a handful of Democrats also voted against the measure. Those Democrats represented red states, where gun ownership rates are high. Most of the nation’s pro-gun-control sentiment is centered in cities, but the nature of House districts and the structure of the Senate give disproportional power, in terms of population, to rural areas that tend to oppose new gun restrictions.

Try as he might, Obama doesn’t have much of a chance of persuading Congress to pass any gun control package. And without Congress, there isn’t a lot the president can do. Obama himself acknowledged as much. After saying it was within Washington’s power to pass gun control legislation, Obama added, “I say that recognizing the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now. But it would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it.”

In "Documentary Now!" Fred Armisen and Bill Hader take the piss out of serious documentary films. (more…)