Deep Breath Linky

Oh man this comic strip wrecks me. (Pixar related.)

Lots of fruit and veg never makes it to retail because it doesn’t look perfect. One supermarket chain has figured out an ingenious way to reduce this food waste: they, um, just sell it anyway. Lovely. (via Craig N)

Cinefix’s top 10 most effective editing moments of all time

Is Neko Case mocking nerds, or mock-mocking nerds? U DECIDE!

Weird Al doing Weird Al stuff, releasing a bunch of new videos in a rush. The man is a treasure. I particularly enjoyed this one:

Grantland intereviews Al and wonders how relevant he is in this digital era

What is weird? What is cool? (both of those via the excellent Nextdraft – I recommend signing up to the emails!)

Women just don’t have much upper body strength, and so there are certain things they just cannot – er, wait just one second while I watch this – oh. OH.

Billy’s come across some interviews with a fascinating scholar with a surprising perspective on many things – trees decide to take psychotropic drugs? Bacteria build roads? Wild stuff, read his summary.

Classic album covers minus their deceased members.

Neat 10-minute short film about a basketball agent making an offer to a promising high school player. Watch the film before you read the (great) interview.

And finally, via Robert Whitaker, wrestling promos edited so only the sound of breathing remains

8 thoughts on “Deep Breath Linky”

  1. “Women just don’t have much upper body strength…”

    Content rejected. This video has been removed due to a copyright claim etc.

  2. Bother! It’s a woman who came out of gymnastics just dominating the American Ninja obstacle course. Apparently there is a thing called American Ninja. That was the only un-regionlocked copy I could find.

  3. Yep that’s the one Pearce. There is some fascinating stuff going on in that video with the commentary (from the presenters, not the youtube clip comments). I’ve been involved in a number of discussions about gender segregation in sports (in particular in relation to esports) recently and ANW came up a couple of times, this will be great fodder for those conversations.

  4. “Why the heck would you segregate esports by gender?”

    There’s all sorts of arguments being made about it – the key one that seems to come up is about “community building” and allowing a safe space for female competitors. My issue with that is that it’s still working from the premise of gaming being a male (and young, nerdy at that) dominated field – which is both kind of true but also not nearly as true as the discourse suggests (I’m loving paradox’s at the moment).

    It also relies heavily on the “sports” component of esports – where the idea of fairness (usually grounded in a biological difference between men and women – won’t even get into the issue of the binary gender constructs) is pretty big. My issue with that is that it’s a really specific definition of “fairness” and an assumption that there is some sort of prototypical male or female range of abilities.

    It also ties into the fact that as a “sport” it’s a commercial product which is aimed at commodifying the culture surrounding the game (and the act of play in of itself).

    Actually this sort of outlines my interest in the commentators in the ANW video because as a “sport” it plays into some of those ideals – but as an entertainment product it revels in a competitor breaking those ideals and assumptions.

    Oh and here’s some other links (also from Polygon) about the debate.

    Esports/Chess and Gender Segregation
    http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/11/5870331/esports-gender-league-of-legends-starcraft-female-leagues

    Gender Segregation Ruining Esports
    http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/2/5864437/hearthstone-esports-gender-blizzard
    [I’ve got some comments in this one – about 3/4 of the way through the comments – user name is K1500]

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