Category: Friday Linky

Quite enjoying having a new short chapter of “in move” pop up in my news feed every day at noon! I don’t remember writing most of what I read. Surprised by quite how much pashing has been going on in the first few chapters, too. But that’s teenage boys for you, just always pashing everything.

This new Kiwi webseries is really well done! Gets the editing right to maximise the comedy, something a lot of webseries struggle with. It’s by the woman behind the excellent, little-seen and poorly-trailered film “My Wedding & Other Secrets”, if that’s any additional recommendation?

Governments now answer to business, not voters. Mainstream parties grow ever harder to distinguish. Is democracy dead? Long article about the post-democracy era that I haven’t read, but @saniac recommends it and he knows his onions so here it is.

At UCLA, one class taught game theory by throwing out all the rules for how you run an exam. (via Joe Murphy)

At the Ruminator: On the death penalty and other brutal punishments

Little girls dressed as superheroes, turned into hero designs

Understanding cultural difference through the medium of McDonalds website designs

Michael Shannon reads the Deranged Sorority Girl email. More dramatic readings of this text, sure to become a staple in audition rooms all over Hollywood.

Fascinating. An internet guy gave up on the internet, and then a few years later came back – but came back in a really, really interesting way.

My buddy Stephen Fox unravels some of the context and meaning of terrorism and how we respond to it.

Star Wars in 60 seconds

Via Rachel B: it’s a chemical party!

Stories about Prince

Historians need to wake up as Yahoo destroys huge amounts of history

Radio Time Machine – a neat gadget – how has popular music changed from 1940 to today?

Complete video of Freaks & Geeks reunion at Paleyfest, 2011 – pleased to have found this!

And finally, via Robert W: old people wearing vegetation

I’m setting this one to go live at the departure time of our flight – we’re doing a weekend in the South Island for a wedding. It’ll be the Wee Beastie’s first time on a plane. She’s pretty good at spotting them in the sky and is I think equal parts excited and intimidated by the prospect of being inside one of these noisy machines. Here’s hoping that excitement prevails.

Anyway, here’s some linky for your Friday. Raiding the earliest stuff in my linky folder, 2010 and 2011 links…

Every anime opening ever made

Inflatable bag monsters (via Leon)

Limericks using abbreviated names of US states

Public domain super heroes

A simple model of cults of personality

Lego minifig art: cool photos, one-panel gags; the Little Artists, including a take on Hirst’s shark

A map of voices, using the story of Mr Tickle

Writers no-one reads (via Draw)

Hitchcock & Me – blogger reviewed everything Hitchcock did. That was in 2011, still going with a more general Hitchcock brief – there’s been a lot of Hitchcock happening lately, most recently the new show Bates Motel.

Colour idioms in different languages. Fascinating!

A 2006 essay tearing up the myth of the almighty MBA. One of the classic texts in the crowded (and still vibrant) arena of MBA-hate.

The craziest running race I’ve ever heard about. Beautiful, memorable article that I can’t believe I haven’t linky’d before now.

Okay, a few more recent links for those who like their internets freshly baked:

Russ Meyer meets Star Wars, in action figure form (via Andrew Watters)

Open-access academic journals are bringing with them some very dodgy operators

Ant Comics (via Andrew Salmond) – marvellous, just marvellous. There’s about a whole book’s worth of stuff here to read through.

The zombies bit you. You have a baby in your care. What do you do? An Aussie short film being widely circulated because it’s good.

The Apollo 11 lunar landing as it went down – marvellous, just marvellous. Wear headphones to track the separate audio channels.

How far is it to Mars?

The entire archive of Starlog magazine for free download at the Internet Archive.

And finally… in 2011, one blog did something amazing: ZARDOZ WEEK

I turned, if my calculations are correct, 37 this week. In my brain it feels like a perfectly balanced age, because 3+7=10. Throughout the coming year I will expect everything I do to be quickly matched by a complementary response.

Star Wars! Fan film of a lightsaber fight. Neat stuff, nicely done. Lens flares! (via Craig Oxbrow)

Explore gender bias in music playlists (via Nick Tipping)

A script for countering telemarketers. (this is old – I think I first saw it a full decade ago – but still good)

25 minority characters that Hollywood whitewashed – man, old Hollywood sure was racist, huh! It’s great that things have – oh wait. I’ve just reached the second half of the list. (via Sonal)

5 things about ubiquitous computing that make me nervous

Little girls dressed up as superheroes will never stop being awesome. Ballerina Hulk is the best ever.

Fully-dressed superheroines – this isn’t a new idea but these images have been massively discussed this week.

Hogwarts: the next generation

Was the Harlem Shake truly a viral phenomenon, or a corporate one? Is there even a difference any more? Forbes has some interesting comments to make.

Huey Lewis does American Psycho doing Huey Lewis This made me LAUGH. And it disturbed me. So that’s a win for them.

Some folks have made a viable random comic generator. I enjoyed clicking through for a while. It works because they’re really strict about the structure – first panel is always a setup, second is always a twist, third is always a resolution.

The Shadowy Residents of 1 Hyde Park (via mundens) – an interesting exploration of the super-super-rich. Curiously it has a very boring opening, while hiding a killer hook a few paras further down – The really curious aspect of One Hyde Park can be appreciated only at night. Walk past the complex then and you notice nearly every window is dark. As John Arlidge wrote in The Sunday Times, “It’s dark. Not just a bit dark—darker, say, than the surrounding buildings—but black dark. Only the odd light is on. . . . Seems like nobody’s home.”

The Guardian does a lovely infographic of 50 years of Doctor Who

Apparently Paul McCartney asked Delia Derbyshire to do a version of ‘Yesterday’?

Conspiracists ahoy – check out the fascinating multilayered links between Rosemary’s Baby, The Beatles White Album, and the Sharon Tate murder…

Oh, I missed this completely! The Edinburgh Book Sculptress made an encore appearance late last year.

Movie supercut of breaking the fourth wall

Game of Thrones cheat sheet for those starting s3

And finally, via theremina, Des Hommes Et Des Chatons

Cavalorn, aka Adrian Bott, he of the Prometheus decoding that was linked all around the world, has also been doggedly debunking claims around the pagan origins of certain Easter traditions.

Toy Story 2 was nearly deleted during production. Reading this story made me anxious.

Rock Paper Shotgun apologises for using female writers.

Latest Japanese schoolgirl trend: fake martial arts explosion blast photos

Oliver Stone’s JFK implicated a Christchurch newspaper in the conspiracy. David R pointed me at this Chch library page with details of the newspaper in question and the whole story.

Map of Doctor Who in London

Map of Awkward Moments in NYC

Boy’s high school choir performs choral version of a ballad by Kiwi rock legends Shihad.

(The only comments on the youtube video are two members of Shihad saying ‘this is awesome’.)

How many historians does it take to change a lightbulb? (via Hamish C)

Architecture Daily: can we please stop drawing trees on top of skyscrapers? (via Allen Varney)

Albums reimagined as book covers

A potent visualisation of drone strikes in Pakistan over recent years

50 perfectly-timed photos

I was gonna link to a YouTube video: Watch all six Star Wars movies at once! But it has been removed from lots of places. Give it a google, you might get lucky – well worth a look…

And finally… one way to sell a used car

Laurie Penny on Steubenville. And, the Good Men Project has a potent primer on rape culture. That’s all I can bear on the subject right now.

Cthulhu cakes

Music videos have been done as action movies before, but this one is a particularly fine example of the form.

In 1988, the LA Times described the far future world of 2013… (via Miri)

Movie guns changed to movie thumbs

Undergraduate history, illustrated (via Hamish Cameron)

The AV Club rounds up 13 great stand-up stories about meeting celebrities. This is good stuff, I actually listened to more than half of these. They lead with one by Tig Notaro that my fellow This American Life listeners will recall.

Mr Spock’s great advice to a biracial teenage girl (via tof)

Dylan Horrocks draws critters from the Monster Manual

Lovely new food blog by a friend of this parish: Nom All The Things

She started out in nudie films, and ended up making your mobile phone work. Along the way she met Hitler. Hers is a very unlikely story, nicely told here – I knew most of the dots here, but not how they connected. (via Peter B)

Great Disney spoof: After Ever After

Clear explanation of the logic behind those dumb Facebook posts that get tens of thousands of comments and likes. (via Julian von Sligo)

That “plus-sized” Swedish mannequin that burned up the social media last week? It was a hoax. [No it wasn’t! Check the link! Thanks Evie & Gem!] Which actually interests me even more.

Candid superhero moments

Luke’s Change: a Star Wars conspiracy theory? (via everybody & their brother)

Star Wars family tree

And finally, via John Machin, the Procatinator. This is a hit or miss kinda automated thing, but the hits made me laugh beyond the power of speech.

Marriage equality passed second reading! Here’s my buddy’s vid again

Photos of children around the world with their most prized possessions
(this kinda risks that thing of “look how poor those brown people are” but, nah, it’s good.)

D&D 80s cartoon starring Brian Dennehy! Sort of.

Espionage on Twitter?

School of Thrones

Game of Thrones 90s style

Game Of Thrones creator reads children’s stories

Game of Bones

Great New Yorker feature on the Bolshoi Ballet

The original Bond babe (via Mash)

“Vodou is like a gun”

Star Wars Angelus (via Edel) (it is an Irish joke for Irish people but I need to have a Star Wars link here so)

Ten years since Iraq. I can’t bear to think about it. We who protested were right in every way, and those in power were just as much wrong. Here’s a short essay on the matter that I did read, and appreciated.

Smithsonian photo contest (via Ivan)

Every one of these things is made of paper. Incredible. (via Allen Varney)

Passive voice in newspaper headlines on sexual assault. Damn. (via Karen)

The first Feminist Frequency video is out! Really great exploration of the Damsel in Distress trope, its origins, and how it pops up in early video games. Very pleased that Cal and I kicked in a few bucks to support this. And in a freak of timing, this news broke: a reworking of Donkey Kong so the princess is the hero.

And finally (via Tof): skeletor is love

Robert W pointed me at this great text-only street fashion blog, which is satire so deadpan it hardly even knows it’s satire.

NYC past – large-format historical photos of the greatest city in the world

Everyf***ingwebsite – yeah, they’re all like this, pretty much.

Amazing bootleg Star Wars figures from Turkey. So good!

A blog named “Monster Legacy” makes a longer, more detailed version of the exact argument I made in my Prometheus review (in the section ‘Les Cousins Dangereux’). It’s the only other place I’ve seen this argument made, which I think is a bit weird, because to my eyes it is both obvious and fundamental. Although I think I was kinder than Monster Legacy, because I decided to treat Prometheus as a conceptual remix, not a thematic betrayal.

You may not have listened to the mashup of Nine Inch Nails and Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe. I only succumbed after about fifteen people had already raved about it, and to my surprise, it really lived up to the hype. If you haven’t, do yourself a favour.

This one gif has been everywhere lately, showing the sun in motion through the galaxy with the planets swirling around it. Trouble is, it’s wrong.

What Coke contains (via Lew, kinda mindblowing for what it says about humanity)

Kathleen’s tales of her time in Afghanistan continue with this great one about local monster stories.

Via d3vo – remember that movie, The Fifth Element? Remember that crazy singer in there, who was singing something that (it was claimed by the filmmakers) couldn’t be done by a human voice? Turns out, it can be done by a human voice. Here’s the human in question, doing the thing.

Write academic papers right into your web browser??

I enjoyed watching this speed painter do his thing. If you like thinking about how perception operates, you’ll enjoy it even more, because it demonstrates some of the freakiness inherent in the apparently simple act of seeing.

Enterprise vs. Enterprise

Via Ivan: irrefutable theories of book cover design

The alternate moose, some months back, shared the complete text of Tesla’s brief autobiography. I am certain this is worth reading, although I haven’t done it yet myself. (Tesla!)

And finally… gizoogle.

Wonder Woman fan-made trailer. How can it be 2013 and still there’s never been a big film featuring a woman action hero kicking bad guys around like this? Or even a medium film? (Am I forgetting one?)

Female Super Hero Fan Film from Jesse V. Johnson on Vimeo.

An indication of how complicated it is dealing with climate change: some wind farms are making the problem worse

Popular Science magazine has made its archives fully available online!

The US Foreign Service’s official policy on Yeti-hunting. (via Craig Oxbrow) (& here’s Ed Hillary with a yeti drawing, from the buildup to his 1960 yeti-hunting expedition)

Frat boys mobilise to support a transgender frat brother – this is great.

Full audio performance of a Han Solo adventure, Smuggler’s Gambit

The only Simpsons infographic you’ll ever need

Key & Peele do the Gandhi vs MLK rap battle

Colour photographs of segregated USA

Michael Upton shared this YouTube channel where songs you know are transposed into a different scale, usually minor to major, and… the results are consistently weird. Find how your favourite song’s integrity has been violated!

A Norwegian prison where prisoners are treated like people. Great piece by a long-term inmate of the UK prison system who now writes for The Guardian.

Massive Lego Hogwarts

Zeus Blog writes a lovely piece giving due respect to Ray Cusick, designer of the Daleks, who has just died.

Myths about NZ wildlife

Albums that should have been

And finally… scientifically accurate Spider-Man

Two years on from the big Christchurch quake that still casts a very very long shadow over this country. I’ve decided that this is the perfect occasion to check my emergency preparedness kit every year. I’ve been encouraging people to join me, mostly via Facebook – your Like would be welcome, but what I really want is for you to check your kit, too. Here’s the government’s advice site.

Stephanie left this in comments last week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUL6MBVKVLI
http://stevemccurry.com/galleries/last-roll-kodachrome
A photographer called Steve McCurry took the last roll of Kodachrome film made by the Kodak factory and turned it into a special project. Well worth a watch.

What is James Bond’s actual favourite drink? A loving and exhaustive article (that still manages to mis-spell whisky). (via Pearce)

Couples switch clothes. A photo series. (via Dylan)

The extraordinary science of addictive junk food – if our biological system is like a computer, junk food makers are like hackers.

Run, Tom Cruise, Run (via David R)

Candyman: the David Klein story – feature documentary about the guy behind legendary American candy ‘Jelly Belly Jellybeans’, made by Wgtn’s own Costa Botes, music by friend of this parish Tom McLeod, and a good watch. It’s on Hulu so you’ll need Media Hint or something to watch it from outside the US. (also via David R) (Here’s my review from when I saw it at film festival – basically, a fascinating character study, very good film, but too long for me to call it great)

Dangerous Minds has the rundown on the Harlem Shake – what the meme is, where it comes from, what it means, and why the people of Harlem think it’s dumb. Sorry, Harlemites, this is bigger than you. Dale Cooper is doing it.

That writer who said those mean things about Our Kate the Princess – read what she actually said, guys. It’s smart stuff. You might not agree, but the media storm over this is embarrassing. (via Marie)

Animated GIFs that do something other than make you laugh: they look amazing. (via Tim Denee)

Strategic blunders in the Battle of Hoth. Comments are good, too.

And carrying on the Jared Diamond attacks, here’s a piece from Slate. I have never read Diamond, but to the best of my knowledge this kind of attack is absolutely in line with the general academic view on his works, but it seems like it really hasn’t escaped that sphere – I’ve seen scientists and other smart people writing off this stuff as sour grapes, even. It’s worth knowing that there’s controversy around him.

Middle-earth linguist, who created languages for Peter Jackson (starting from Tolkein’s baseline), starts a blog.

Goats yelling like humans (via Darshi, and lots of other people)

Alasdair wrote something very cool about short stories and novels and Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett. If you like writing or reading or detectives, read it.

Mosh pits: just like particle physics, apparently (that’s one for all the bogan physicists out there)

Jet Jaguar, aka friend of this parish Michael Upton, has released a 3-track EP: Single-Digit High – the first of a bunch to be released this year. Listen to it, download it, pay something if you like. I’ve only listened once so far but it was good. There are beats in it. Give it a try.

you had one job

And finally, via James Dodwell – the cutting edge of fairground rides is quite scary stuff. This piece starts out a bit dry but it is absolutely worth it to see the breathtaking rare footage within.