Favorites from forbiddencabinet
Subscribe:
Displaying post 51 to 89 of 89
Not Your Everyday Pet
Keeping A Grocery Store Lobster As A Pet
Brady Brandwood bought a live lobster from the grocery store to see what would happen if it was kept as a pet in a saltwater tank. Watch as Leon gets accustomed to a new home and new lease on life.
Indie TTRPG bundle for Trans Kids in Texas
The TTRPGs for Trans Rights in Texas bundle features nearly 500 different downloadable tabletop roleplaying games, for a minimum donation of $5, in response to the heinous policies recently announced by Texas's government. Donations are to be split between the Transgender Education Network of Texas and Organización Latina de Trans en Texas. A google spreadsheet provides an alternate way of browsing the titles on offer. Another huge itch.io bundle, for Ukraine, is just wrapping up submissions and hopes to release on Monday.
An open source alternative to Instagram
Pixelfed: a potential open source alternative to Instagram.
Tired of the algorithm telling you what to watch? Or maybe you want a little less Meta/Facebook in your life? Not trying to make a bunch of money and just share your photos? Check out Pixelfed. It's like the Mastodon of image sharing apps.
Open source, distributed, no algorithm and no advertising.
CC will have them 'quaking in their boots'
For the first 14 years the Creative Commons (CC) license stated that the it would “terminate automatically upon any breach.” Basically the five terms included naming the creator and license, providing a URL for the work and license and noting if the work was modified. Falling short means that you are no longer a licensed user. Copyleft trolls are taking advantage of that framework to automate finding copyleft infringement - using willing artists, automated search tools and robosigning mills to find and threaten anyone infringing on the copyright with the $150,000 in statutory damages for “wilful infringement.”
Of course Cory Doctorow has been targeted by Pixsy on behalf of photographer Nenad Stojkovic.
Of course Cory Doctorow has been targeted by Pixsy on behalf of photographer Nenad Stojkovic.
What Goes Up...
Line Goes Up is a very long, highly detailed, and meticulously researched investigation into and polemical take-down of the NFT and crypto scene by Dan Olson.
37% of orders were mistaken, but 99% of customers were happy.
The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders (Japan): All of our servers are people living with dementia. They may, or may not, get your order right. However, rest assured that even if your order is mistaken, everything on our menu is delicious and one of a kind. This, we guarantee. Street Roots gives the history of how Japanese journalist Shiro Oguni got the idea for the pop-up restaurant when he visited a dementia care facility. The home, run by dementia care specialist Yukio Wada, treated residents with dignity and gave them opportunities to contribute to the daily routine via cooking. This charming 2 minute video shows the restaurant, happy customers, and waitstaff in action.
The Inky Depths #3: Pink See-Through Fantasia (Headless Chicken Monster)
Damp greetings! Dip your toes back into the murk and discover the Pink See-Through Fantasia, a gorgeous sea cucumber with a visible digestive system! Splash this way!
The Inky Depths #1: The Whalefish
More than a century ago, in 1895, two Smithsonian scientists described a new kind of deep sea creature living at least 1000 m (3,280 ft) below the ocean’s surface.
(This section of ocean is called the Bathyal zone, or "midnight zone.")
The scientists named their find the whalefish because of its whale-like appearance. Little did they know that this fish would become one of the prime suspects in a mystery that took scientists from around the world decades to solve.
Kleptogenesis
Salamanders have no use for the gender binary or, honestly, speciation. (SL Popular Scientist, some popup ads)
Animal reproduction continues to be wildly innovative. "The promiscuity of Ambystoma can be hard to wrap your head around if you think of species in the way most of us learn about them in school: individuals that can reproduce with one another. Hybrids like the unisexual members of Ambystoma muck that all up: they actually need to mate with multiple species in order to avoid extinction."
Starship Impossible, or, White Giant
Remember Spamland, the bizarre 2006/2007 animated short trilogy set in a world where the gibberish they used to put in spam emails is real? Recently, its creators, The Brother McLeod, have released a twelve-part animated sci-fi comedy parodying Star Trek and its ilk, Starship Impossible. Total runtime: a little over half an hour. Contains extremely simply drawn nudity.
Paris is taking space back from cars. Here's how.
The Liberation of Paris From Cars Is Working
- "The French capital is quickly cutting automobiles out of daily life. David Belliard is the deputy mayor behind it."[1,2] (previously)
Rewild Your Attention
"If you want to have wilder, curiouser thoughts, you have to avoid the industrial monocropping of big-tech feeds. You want an intellectual forest, overgrown with mushrooms and towering weeds and a massive dead log where a family of raccoons has taken up residence." Clive Thompson's "Rewilding Your Attention" (Medium) is a brief reflection on the value of seeking out idiosyncratic content. Time to go for a random walk in the woods.
The most popular Canadian compilation of all time
An oral history of Big Shiny Tunes, a series of alt rock compilation albums (example) released by MuchMusic.
Trees are Magnificent, and so can be the words about them.
A Tall Tree Reading List.
Featuring five essays: The Wolf Tree and the World Wide Web. Do Trees Talk to Each Another? Illuminating Kirinyaga. Inside the Pacheedaht Nation's stand on Fairy Creek Logging Blockades. When the Toughest Trees meet the Hottest Fires.
Increasingly Strange Stories for an Increasingly Strange Year
It’s late summer 2021, and here’s another roundup of weird audio dramas! Since many of us are facing new isolation restrictions, here’s something disturbing to raise your spirits. Most of the series are audio dramas with paranormal elements, but anthologies, fantasy, and science fiction are included. This time, a rather startling number of shows featuring the smooth voice of Soren Narnia of Knifepoint Horror are included.
Limber Up! It's Cartooning Workout Time!
The Center for Cartoon Studies (previously, previously, previously) is offering a free, self-directed One-Week Cartooning Workout eCourse. Just remember: "The awful comic you make is always going to be better than the perfect comic you never make."--Inky Solomon, CCS Legend
Frank Herbert heard "shows within shows" and got excited
Do you like fake movies and shows that only exist within the fiction of real movies and shows? Then you will enjoy Nestflix, a catalogue of metafictional entertainment from Lynn Fisher.
Women Make SF Across the Media Universe
#WomenMakeSF
is a project by Dr. Amy C. Chambers, where she intends to watch and review every feature film, short film and TV show created or co-created by a woman. She introduced the project in the blogpost Women Make Science Fiction: Gender is not a genre. There's also a podcast, cohosted by Dr. Lyle Skains, with eight episodes so far, which are most often discussions between Drs. Chambers and Skains about a small set of movies and a related topic. They have had two guests, Katie Heffner in a conversation about women in SF fandoms, and Cheryl Morgan, discussing trans representation across different forms of science fiction.
The Unscreamables: Short Films Rising from the Frothing Chaos
In under thirty minutes, Scream It Off Screen (previously with website and YouTube channel links website features an image of the event's host in a milk bath - should have mentioned that last time, honestly) will stream their next short film contest of chaos, with the audience voting on whether each of fifteen completely randomly selected short films plays to completion, and which of those that fully played wins the Big Nasty Prize of $101.01. But this time, click 'more inside' for a full list of past winners (and second, third and notable next places where listed on the website and Facebook page), with links to watch them wherever possible - all no more than fifteen minutes long. (Warning: films may include blood, violence, non-sexual nudity and who knows what else.)
be loud, be real loud!
“One member suggested car alarms. We researched the township’s noise ordinance laws and found out that a car alarm can go off for 15 minutes before the owner of the vehicle would be cited for a disturbance. On our breaks—every single break—we turned on our car alarms for 14 minutes and 59 seconds.”How one local union managed to win their best contract in years.
whip spiders
Making Sense of the Great Whip Spider Boom
"She [Hebets] couldn’t stop looking at the creature’s front legs. These are the whips that give whip spiders their name — elongated, antenna-like — and they were sweeping around in all directions, as if piecing together a picture of the world. Even now, over 20 years later, she isn’t sure how to describe the grace of that movement. It was like a blade of grass fluttering in the wind, if a blade of grass were purposeful. It was like an octopus tentacle. “I just immediately fell in love,” she said."
The Third Thumb
Robotic ‘Third Thumb’ use can alter brain representation of the hand
“Body augmentation is a growing field aimed at extending our physical abilities, yet we lack a clear understanding of how our brains can adapt to it. By studying people using Dani’s cleverly-designed Third Thumb, we sought to answer key questions around whether the human brain can support an extra body part, and how the technology might impact our brain.”
The most gigantic lying Smile of all time
After weeks of cryptic TikTok teasing reminiscent of Kid A-era blips, Radiohead fans were pleasantly surprised this weekend when two of the band's leading members, frontman Thom Yorke and lead guitarist Johnny Greenwood, joined Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner to perform at this year's (virtual) Glastonbury festival as a new band called The Smile (or as Thom put it, "the smile of the guy who lies to you every day"). Their eight-song set, clocking in at over half an hour, is an aggressive melange of funk, post-punk, and math rock, their most guitar-driven material since 2007's In Rainbows, all kicking off with a beautiful version of unreleased Radiohead gem "Skirting on the Surface" [background]. Best of all? Since the livestream DRM shat the bed, the event's organizers released the whole show free online: Part One video - Part Two - Part Three - individual track downloads. Full tracklist, lyrics, and other goodies inside.
Efficiency is the enemy
Why people and organizations need to not look busy
"Any time we eliminate slack, we create a build-up of work. DeMarco writes, “As a practical matter, it is impossible to keep everyone in the organization 100 percent busy unless we allow for some buffering at each employee’s desk. That means there is an inbox where work stacks up."
A new concept of understanding the sea as a garden.
A Spanish chef is cultivating a grain that needs neither irrigation nor fertilizer to grow: It comes from the sea.
Return to Yes
Remember The Creatures of Yes (trailer, particularly good example, previously), the beautifully weird and weirdly beautiful puppet show made using 1970's equipment and techniques? Last week, it returned with an epic short film, Shadow of a Splintered Mind, which leads directly into today's new video, The Road Follows the Undulations of the Countryside, the first in a weekly (Saturday morning, in fact) series.
Playing to Find Out What Happens
“There was a whole ruleset with a welcoming community, of an easy to learn system with gatekeeping kept to a minimum. It’s Powered By the Apocalypse. And it is my favourite system. And in my opinion, the gayest.”
@ThatAceGal writes about her experiences exploring queer identity and seeing a queer community form through the Powered By the Apocalypse RPG system(s).
Books like The Starless Sea to help me escape from real life this winter
I just finished Erin Morgenstern's The Starless Sea and it gave me such a cozy, warm feeling at times and a lot of magical wonder at the complexity. There have been other books that made me feel this way: Kate Atkinson's Life After Life, Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. Can you suggest some more books to read that will take me to another world this winter?
The Wild, the Savory & the O Sweet Wiggle
Ever found yourself wondering about the first flavors of Jell-O? Or which flavors you could have used to make a gelatin salad in 1965? No? Mid-Century Menu's creator has long been bothered by these and other Jell-O-related questions, and has, at last, assembled The Timeline of Jell-O Flavors From 1897 to 1997.
Best Catalogs, esp. Museum Shops
I like catalog shopping, especially museum stores with arty gifts and cool jewelry. And the sort of catalogs whose list you get on because you're a PBS donor. I know about Novica, Metropolitan, Art Inst. Chicago, Smithsonian, Wireless, Signals, MuseumStore, others, but maybe you have some cool favorites.
The fascinating gory details of how purple dye used to be made
"This is a colour that pretends to transcend the vulgar vagaries of this world, all the while remaining mired in its muck."
This piece by Kelly Grovier stood out for me, because of his lyrical writing, and artfully-composed phrases, like:
"Though purple may have symbolised a higher order, it reeked of a lower ordure."
The Most Feminine Black Metal Album of All Time
Smashing Nazism Through Tolkienist Thematics with Feminazgul
- Astral Noize
I think it’s fair to identify with either side of the conflict in Lord Of The Rings, in some ways. I’ve long held that the orcs should become the proletarian analogy they were born to be and overthrow Saruman and Sauron. But the Feminazgul, in particular… what do the Nazgul do besides find men who have power (the ring) and take that power away from them? Sure, the regular Nazgul then give it back to Sauron, but hey, since I’m making this shit up, the Feminazgul can do whatever they want. So yeah… in short, Feminazgul hunt men who hold power.
Winner of The White Review Short Story Prize for 2018
"The Great Awake" by Julia Armfield (The White Review, April 2018): "When I was twenty-seven, my Sleep stepped out of me like a passenger from a train carriage, looked about my room for several seconds and sat down in the chair beside my bed. This was before it became so usual, the shadow-forms of Sleep in halls and kitchens, before the mass displacement left so many people wakeful at uncertain hours of the night." Shortlist announcement. Winning story announcement. Two nominees previously.
Page:
1 2