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#freekesha
Wondering why pop star Kesha (or Ke$ha) hasn't produced any new music since 2013? Sony refuses to release her from her contract, which bars her from producing music with anyone else but producer Lukasz "Dr. Luke" Gottwald, until she's made eight more records. So why is she refusing to work with Dr. Luke? Because, she alleges, he coerced her into drinking and taking drugs and sexually assaulted her when she was just 18, and his ongoing abuse led her to develop an eating disorder. Sony has called the allegations a "transparent and misguided attempt to renegotiate her contracts."
Think You're Done? You Thought Wrong.
25 Steps To Being A Traditionally Published Author: Lazy Bastard Edition. Your brief guide through the process, from drafting (5. All First Drafts Are Word Vomit Made Of Horse Shit) to querying (14. I Have Queried Every Agent In The Entire Universe, And No) to post-publication (25. My Book Sales Did Not Exceed My Wildest Dreams And I’m Disappointed Because My Publisher Didn’t Get Me Enough Publicity And Barnes And Noble Doesn’t Carry It And I Wasn’t On Oprah And 50 Shades Sucked Butt And Wah).
Go ahead and make your 'balls' jokes; it really is stunning in person
Greensboro, NC has a unique holiday tradition: the lighted Christmas balls. Every year, the trees of Sunset Hills and surrounding neighborhoods are suddenly filled with thousands and thousands of lighted Christmas balls. Here's a video explaining the history of the balls - and here's how you can make your own!
And this year, there's finally drone footage!
Four Hamlets
The Many Facets of Hamlet: Hamlet's most famous monologue, spliced together from performances by Mel Gibson, Laurence Olivier, David Tennant, and Kenneth Branagh.
'The choice for governor couldn't be more clear.'
The gloves are coming off in the race for the Louisiana governorship, as a new attack ad from Democrat John Bel Edwards states that Republican rival David Vitter 'chose prostitutes over patriots'.
How Could They?
Violence does not stem from a psychopathic lack of morality. Quite the reverse: it comes from the exercise of perceived moral rights and obligations. So says Tage Rai, whose research with anthropologist Alan Fiske analysed violent practices across cultures and history.
"For all things wood!"
We've heard before about the Wood Database, which lists detailed information ranging from crushing strength to odor to sustainability for close to 200 different types of wood. But now, the project has a beautifully simple Pinterest page as well. You can browse images of burled wood, striped wood, golden wood, and even pink and purple wood - and every image links back to the database, if you want to find out more.
13. Snakes
#maybe she's born with it #maybe it's bear blood
Historie of Beafts combs through Medieval bestiaries to bring you the finest in olde-tyme animal facts.
Please try to keep your eyes above my waist.
Men Who Rock II: Not Only Are These Six Up-and-Coming Male Seattle Musicians Hot, They Also Know How to Play Their Instruments!
Netflix-o-Matic
Netflix-O-Matic lets you browse a randomly generated list of real Netflix microgenres, like Gritty Drug Movies based on Contemporary Literature or Foreign Slice of Life Documentaries or Goofy Werewolf Comedies. On the main page, click on the arrow to view actual Netflix titles, or click any individual term in a subgenre title to browse a random list of other subgenres containing it (like "understated" or "visually striking"). And if you click on a given movie, it will show you what other categories that movie might come up in.
Meet Skylar
Skylar is an experimental AI who 'learns' from the questions she is asked. The trouble is, she's on Tumblr, so she has mostly been learning about anime and bees. She's actually sort of obsessed with bees.
Random art to class up your feed
Museum Bot tweets a random high-res Open Access image from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, four times a day. From the fertile mind of Darius Kazemi.
Blue Crude
Actual-health-spo
MotiveWeight is a submission-based Tumblr dedicated to showing healthy weight loss before and afters. Among the submission rules are: You must be using healthy means to lose weight. Your picture will not be posted if you are underweight for your height. And you can't describe your before picture as ‘disgusting’.
The biggest challenge for a woman working in construction? Bathrooms.
Twenty Questions for Women in Construction was a series of blog posts about female construction workers in NYC which ran on Huffington Post in 2013. Kicking off the series was the article A Day in the Life of a Woman in Construction by Ana Taveras. Many of the respondents to the Twenty Questions series are graduates of Nontraditional Employment for Women.
TedCruz.com
Ted Cruz dot com: A domain name cautionary tale "On March 23rd, Texas Republican senator and Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz announced that he was going to run for president. If you [go] running to his website, tedcruz.com, to see what he had to say you [will be] shocked to see the message, "SUPPORT PRESIDENT OBAMA. IMMIGRATION REFORM NOW!""
"I got this book for free. I hate it."
"What the hell is 'Wild Animus'? It's a book with a story big enough that I could write an entire column about it without describing a single plot point. With the exception of religious texts, has anyone, ever, given away this many copies of a book in physical form?"
MB(ecket)TA
MB(ecket)TA: Samuel Beckett quotes on photos of Boston's snow. Frankly, a little too real right now.
My name is Cybele May and I love candy.
Candy Blog. Mentioned in passing in a couple previous FPPs, this incredibly in-depth and long-running site deserves a closer look. Candy obsessive Cybele May has ranked thousands of candies since 2005 on a ten-point scale from 'superb' to 'inedible'; taken an in-depth look at candy purveyors from from Just Born to Trader Joe's to See's; brought back news of the yearly All Candy Expo; and of course, compiled The 110 Essential Candies for Candivores. And as if all that weren't enough, there is now a podcast, Candyology, with the first three episodes devoted to Halloween candy, peanut butter candy, and chewing gum.
The Worst Idea of All Time
Guy Montgomery and Tim Batt have a podcast. A podcast with the very appropriate title The Worst Idea of All Time. It's a bad movie review podcast, but with a horrible, hideous twist: the hosts review the same bad movie, Grown Ups 2, every week. For a year.
Half of all marriages - oh, wait
"It is no longer true that the divorce rate is rising, or that half of all marriages end in divorce. It has not been for some time. Despite hand-wringing about the institution of marriage, marriages in this country are stronger today than they have been in a long time. The divorce rate peaked in the 1970s and early 1980s and has been declining for the three decades since."
OQueerCupid
After complaints and boycotts over the limited options it gave for users to describe their gender and sexuality, internet dating site OKCupid has begun testing a far more inclusive self-identification system.
A pound of flesh for 50p
Artist Alex Chinneck has constructed a full-sized wax building which is slowly being melted from the top down. For the last twelve months the artist has collaborated with chemists, wax manufacturers and engineers to develop visually convincing wax bricks that transform in the most sculpturally effective way. The installation is part of the 2014 Merge Festival.
15 and Learning to Speak
The majority of deaf people in sub-Saharan Africa have never been taught sign language. "Patrick Otema, 15, was born profoundly deaf. In the remote area of Uganda where he lives there are no schools for deaf children, and he has never had a conversation. Raymond Okkelo, a sign language teacher, hopes to change all this and offer Patrick a way out of the fearful silence he has known his whole life."
What is an 'unusual' sexual fantasy?
The existing scientific literature on paraphilias, or atypical fantasies, does not define what these types of fantasies actually consist of. Christian Joyal and colleagues conducted a survey among the general population Of Quebec to find out. The survey shows that the nature of sexual fantasies are very varied among the general population, with surprisingly few fantasies actually being statistically "rare" or "unusual." The researchers urged professionals to be careful when labeling a sexual fantasy as deviant or unusual, given that so few sexual fantasies are actually rare or uncommon.
My evil dad: Life as a serial killer’s daughter
There isn't a book out there called, What Do You Do When You Find Out That Your Dad's A Serial Killer? (trigger warning: animal abuse)
“Oh my God! If it had hit the train, you could forget about it!"
Ladies and Gentlemen: Power Coffee
Fake Food in Japan
Making Japanese Food Samples. A look at some of the techniques used in the creation of sampuru, the multi-million yen industry of handcrafted custom plastic fake food.
The One Crime the Media Won't Blame on Black Men
Among other common myths and misconceptions regarding serial murder in America, one curious myth bears closer examination: the idea, propagated heavily in the media, that serial killers are almost always white men. This fascinating (though weirdly formatted) essay discusses this phenomenon, and suggests possible reasons for the anonymity of African-American serial killers, including historical racial bias, stereotypical media portrayals of African-Americans, and the FBI’s promotion of static ethnocentric criminal profiling.
A Medical First: Woman Successfully Gives Birth With A Donated Womb
In January, we heard that several women in Sweden had received uterine transplants. This weekend, for the first time in history, a woman born without a womb gave birth to a living child.
Censorship of the Arts in Australia
"Not since the days of Mike Brown’s conviction of obscenity over 50 years ago have Australian police successfully prosecuted an artist over such charges. These repeated failures have not, however, stopped the police from trying."
Women make up only 29% of all movie characters
The Herculean Effort Taken By One Group To Show Hollywood Is Sexist. "In dissecting the top 100 grossing films each year, Smith and her team have analyzed a total of 26,225 characters in 600 films for gender, body type, age, race and more. In their most recent annual review, released in July, they found that in 2013, only 29 percent of characters were female, and a mere 28 percent of the films had a female lead or co-lead."
Jon's Bushcraft
Ever wondered how to make a basket out of willow rods or birch bark? How about a bow drill for lighting fires? Maybe you'd rather make your own cordage out of nettles and then use it to make a wood-and-thorn fishing hook? All this knowledge and more can be your at Jon's Bushcraft. (Bonus: he also makes fine art.)
DIY Ramen
The Food Lab: Make Your Own Just-Add-Hot-Water Instant Noodles. "Wouldn't it be great if you could get all of the convenience and pleasure of instant noodles—the portability, the just-add-water cooking, the lunch-sized portions—but pack it full of fresh vegetables and real, honest-to-goodness flavor? Here's a secret: you can, and it's easier than you think."
“Son, Men Don’t Get Raped”
"Sexual assault is alarmingly common in the U.S. military, and more than half of the victims are men. According to the Pentagon, thirty-eight military men are sexually assaulted every single day. These are the stories you never hear—because the culprits almost always go free, the survivors rarely speak, and no one in the military or Congress has done enough to stop it." A tough read from GQ. Could be triggering.
You're a gay man. You drew a vagina. It goes here.
Gay Men Draw Vaginas! But why? "It's neat to tease out all this convoluted psycho-sexual-cultural stuff through drawing," plus "Sometimes they turn into heated arguments about gay men's disrespect for women's bodies and gay male social power blah blah blah. Awesome."
(In case you couldn't tell, this is in no way work-safe.)
PickYourOwn.org
Find a pick-your-own farm near you! Then learn to can and freeze! On this charmingly Web 1.0 site, you can learn via rainbow-colored Comic Sans how to find a pick-your-own food farm near you (or add and correct listings), and how to pick and preserve just about anything you can imagine.
"Just A Phase"
30 Bisexual Women Discuss Their Long-Term Relationships With Men. Even though more people self-identify as bisexual than gay and lesbian, there is a widespread belief that those who identify as bi are either in a transitional stage or are lying to themselves or others.
The Patron Saint of Defense Attorneys
Ted Kaczynski. Jared Lee Loughner. Eric Rudolph. Susan Smith. And now, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. They all stood (or stand) accused of committing heinous crimes. They all faced (or face) the death penalty. And they all have something- or rather, someone- else in common.
Listen, we all know what the obvious joke is here, so
A pregnant woman's risk of experiencing pre-eclampsia or miscarriage is significantly reduced by long-term exposure to her partner's semen. Especially if she swallows it.
Solidarity
In possibly the largest Southern progressive protest since Selma in 1965, 75,000 to 100,000 people marched on Raleigh, North Carolina this Sunday in protest against the recently elected conservative government’s radical agenda.
Once a comparatively moderate Southern state, the government North Carolina elected in 2010 has begun a systematic campaign [previously] to remove 50 years of progressive legislation from the state. Weekly Moral Mondays protests [previously], beginning in April 2013, have been ongoing, but this march represents the biggest gathering so far in protest of the NC government.
Measure of a Man
2003 American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken is running for Congress in North Carolina. Aiken is a long-time political activist, and his campaign seems serious and sincere, as shown by the heartfelt five-minute video announcing his campaign. But the odds are against him in a district which voted for Romney by a twelve-point margin, and being a gay father is a possible liability in a state which recently voted to ban gay marriage.
(But of course, electing entertainers to political office is an American tradition.)
Inside the Iron Closet: What It's Like to Be Gay in Putin's Russia
"Putin needs external enemies and internal enemies. The external enemies are the U.S. and Europe. Internal enemies, they had to think about. The ethnic topic is dangerous. Two wars in the Caucasus, a third one, nobody knows how it would end. Jews? After Hitler, it's not kosher. We—" she waves a hand at herself and Zhenya—"are the ideal. We are everywhere. We don't look different, but we are. It's our turn. Just our turn."
A GQ reporter visited Russia to speak to gay rights activists, and also to their enemies (some of whom, warning, describe committing acts of violence). Previously.
Uterine Transplantation
Nine women in Sweden have successfully received transplanted wombs donated from relatives and will soon try to become pregnant. Many of the women, who were either born without uteruses or who had them removed for medical reasons, have already begun to menstruate. Some doctors question whether uterine transplantation is worth the risk to the patient, but many women say that they would be willing to accept the risks in exchange for being able to bear their own children.
Enough is Enough
Rhiannon Schneiderman's delightful photography series Lady Manes was just featured on HuffPo. It is very much not safe for work.
For all your ghost town needs
Do you like obsessively cataloged information? Do you like abandoned, semi-abandoned, and/or semi-repopulated ghost towns? Do you like amazingly poor web design? Then you will love ghosttowns.com, an exhaustive collection of thousands of ghost towns in the US and Canada. Find out how to visit ghost towns, and then click on the map to find one near you!
One of the most emotional pieces of radio ever recorded
Friday November 22, 1963, at the Boston Symphony Orchestra: "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a press report over the wireless. We hope that it is unconfirmed, but we have to doubt it. That the president of the United States has been the victim of an assassination. We will play the funeral march from Beethoven’s Third Symphony."
Bare Sticks, Unite!
Singles' Day, or 光棍节, began as a joke holiday invented by some lonely Chinese college students, an anti-Valentine's Day on which singles could either revel in their singledom or double down on attempts to hook up. November 11th was chosen for the date because of a simple visual pun on the slang term for bachelor: a "bare stick," symbolized by the date 11/11. But in a few short years, this joke holiday has become the biggest retail sales day on Earth, surpassing Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.
So, what do all the 'bare sticks' do on Singles' Day? It varies. Aside from eating four stick-shaped foods to symbolize the date, you could try one of these 11 ideas from Beijinger. Or watch this bizarre condom ad, featuring a compilation of animals having air sex.
Points for creativity?
"In a bizarre case involving threats of kidnapping, beatings and physical torture — including the use of an electric cattle prod— two rabbis were charged in New Jersey on Wednesday in a scheme to force men to grant their wives religious divorces."