Instapaper

Brace yourself, baseball fans, and behold the inexorable rise of the bat flip. Self-expression has long been a fraught issue in Major League Baseball, where impassivity — the ability to “act like you have been there before” — often feels as highly regarded as power hitting and foot speed. Yet times…

Oct 15, 2015

The Inning That Was Everything Baseball | FanGraphs Baseball

fangraphs.com

You’re in a pickle, see. The Devil wants to take your soul, and he’s pretty intent on doing it, but he’ll leave you be on one condition: in the span of one hour, you are to teach him everything there is to understand about the game of baseball. Up to this point the game’s been over his head, and…

Oct 15, 2015

53 Minutes of Madness in Toronto: An Oral History of the ALDS Inning That Broke Baseball

grantland.com

On October 14, 2015, the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Texas Rangers 6-3 in the fifth and final game of their American League Division Series. But Toronto’s win came at a steep cost to the sport, as the game’s senseless seventh inning pulled back baseball’s logical outer layer to expose the fetus…

Oct 15, 2015

Son Little Is Dissolving the Barrier Between R&B and Rock 'n' Roll One Tearjerker at a Time | NOISEY

noisey.vice.com

Photos by Anthony Saint James Son Little is the one man band/alter ego of Aaron Earl Livingston. You know him (or not, what you know is your business) from collaborations with the Roots and as one half of the very fine “psychedelic soul” outfit Icebird with RJD2. With a sure-footed foundation made…

Oct 15, 2015

The Best Record Stores In Europe — Medium

medium.com

Photography by V.Raeter The Best Record Stores In Europe No matter how many “Vinyl Records Are Back” headlines you see in mainstream news publications, the reality is that thousands of record stores have shut down in the last 10 years all over the World, mainly because everybody started to buy…

Oct 15, 2015

At Military Parade, a Rare Public Speech by North Korea’s Leader

nytimes.com

SEOUL, South Korea — Long columns of goose-stepping soldiers, accompanied by what North Korea claimed were nuclear-tipped missiles, marched through central Pyongyang, the capital, on Saturday, as the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un , gave his first public speech in three years to emphasize his “love…

Oct 15, 2015

DJ Shadow Interview: New Album Plans, The Shifting Tides of EDM Culture and More

craveonline.com

Exclusive Interview: DJ Shadow on New Album Plans, The Shifting Tides of EDM Culture and More by Jul 9th, 2015 You’ve had a unique viewing position for the rise of EDM culture in America. As far as the EDM thing, that’s been interesting as well because I threw myself into the fire doing this tour in…

Oct 15, 2015

Django, the N-Word, and How We Talk About Race in 2013

grantland.com

2013 is going to be incredible, if for no other reason than because this will undoubtedly be the year the cultural discourse shifts from simple discussions of “race” or “racism” to the majestic land of “how we talk about and react to race in mixed settings.” While ideas of a “post-racial” society…

Oct 15, 2015

Why are the baby boomers desperate to make millennials hate ourselves? | Eleanor Robertson

theguardian.com

‘Of the surveyed generations, Millennials had by far the lowest regard for their own cohort.’Photograph: Jon Hicks/Corbis B ack in 1999 Chris Sidoti, then-head of the Australian Human Rights Commission, called the baby boomers “the most selfish generation in history”. “I don’t think there’s been a…

Oct 15, 2015

Danny Meyer Is Eliminating All Tipping at His Restaurants

ny.eater.com

Danny Meyer 1 is eliminating all tipping 2 at his restaurants and significantly raising prices 3 to make up the difference, 4 a move that will raise wages, 5 save the hospitality industry, 6 and forever change how diners dine. 7 Here’s why it matters ⟶ by Ryan Sutton , October 14, 2015 @qualityrye…

Oct 15, 2015

Why the creators of Little Inferno just want to watch the world burn.

killscreendaily.com

The undisputedly deranged virtual fireplace simulator Little Inferno made its iPad debut a few weeks ago, and since then I’ve set to flame a corncob, letter blocks, a toy pirate with a hook for an arm, a photo of me taken from my iPad’s camera, an analog TV, a floppy disk, a Russian nesting doll, a…

Oct 15, 2015

The Making of ‘Ready To Die': Family Business - XXL

xxlmag.com

Originally appears in XXL 's April 2004 issue The Notorious B.I.G.’s 1994 debut Ready To Die is a double threat: a serious, artistic album equipped with catchy, radio-friendly singles. Rap Svengali Sean “Puffy” Combs encouraged his hardcore young MC to put his mack down on records like “Big Poppa”…

Oct 15, 2015

The Gonzo Vision of Quentin Tarantino

nytimes.com

“I READ, IN A BOOK about Bette Davis, that anybody who does an interview while drinking alcohol is a damned fool. When I saw that, I thought, ‘Oh my god, she’s right! What have I been doing my whole career?’ ’’ Quentin Tarantino offers me a glass of red wine from a recently opened bottle that’s…

Oct 15, 2015

Jennifer Lawrence: Why Do These Dudes Make More Than Me?

us11.campaign-archive1.com

In Letter No. 3: J. Law on the gender wage gap in Hollywood, Lena and Jenni’s advice column, and much more. View in Browser October 13, 2015 | Letter No. 3 Hollywood’s Wage Gap Jennifer Lawrence Letters to Lenny Lena Dunham & Jenni Konner Second Wave Style Laia Garcia Sports Gave Me Swagger Gina…

Oct 14, 2015

Patti Smith’s M Train Is the Happiest Depiction of Melancholia

pitchfork.com

Tucked away in the backwater of New York City’s West Village was a cafe called ‘ino. The Bedford Street spot was quintessential New York circa 1855, where you’d expect someone like Walt Whitman seated at one of their hardwood tables chomping on the end of a primitive pen. Instead there was Patti…

Oct 14, 2015

Could this election trigger a constitutional crisis?

cbc.ca

Most Canadians rarely give much thought to their Governor General. But with the polls forecasting a minority government, Democracy Watch founder Duff Conacher says it's time we start addressing the unwritten authority of the vice regal. Conacher warns that if no party wins a majority in Monday's…

Oct 14, 2015

There Is a Porn Monopoly, and Its Name Is MindGeek

slate.com

Illustration by Robert Neubecker Video sites are by far the biggest consumers of bandwidth on the Web: Netflix, YouTube, Twitch … MindGeek. Or maybe that last one doesn’t ring a bell? MindGeek (formerly known as Manwin) has over 100 million daily visitors and is one of the top 10 consumers of…

Oct 13, 2015

How MindGeek transformed the economics of porn

fusion.net

Kent HernÃ¡ndez/Fusion There’s an economic paradox at the heart of the porn industry. Consider: The amount of porn that has already been produced is more than anyone could possibly watch. A single tube site, like Pornhub, can have well over 200 terabytes of porn on it–which works out to something…

Oct 13, 2015

A Very Revealing Conversation With Rihanna

nytimes.com

I DRESSED VERY CAREFULLY for her, the way I would for a good friend, thinking hard about what she likes. What I think she likes. I ordered Uber Black — the highest level of Uber I’ve ridden. The driver said it would be about an hour and a half to Malibu, a long time to resist telling him where I was…

Oct 13, 2015

Inside Reddit’s Plan to Recover From Its Epic Meltdown

wired.com

It began on the Thursday night that much of Reddit—the eleventh biggest site on the American Internet, the one that Steve Huffman helped found when he was barely more than a teenager—went dark. Huffman didn’t work for Reddit then, hadn’t worked there in five years. A towhead who, at 31, still looks…

Oct 13, 2015

'A Pep Talk for People in the Grip of Decay': An Interview with Dan Bejar | Hazlitt

hazlitt.net

Credit: Fabiola Carranza In rock music, destruction comes in many forms. There’s Iggy Pop’s scorched-earth “Search and Destroy;” the ribald excess of Kiss’s Destroyer ; the Soft Boys’ melodious “I Wanna Destroy You.” Then there’s Dan Bejar, the protean singer-songwriter who, for almost twenty years…

Oct 12, 2015

It’s Still a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World; Or, Who is Nathan Drake?

killscreendaily.com

On the surface, Nathan Drake is unremarkable. The star of Naughty Dog ’ s Uncharted series looks, at least at first glance, like the platonic ideal of a videogame protagonist. Load up a save file and spin the camera around Drake. He ’ s a white guy with short brown hair. He is neither too tall nor…

Oct 12, 2015

'If the Camera Moves it’s Got To Be for a Reason': An Interview with Roger Deakins | Hazlitt

hazlitt.net

Richard Foreman, Jr., SMPSP / Lionsgate Nobody shoots movies as well as Roger Deakins. He is without question our greatest cinematographer: an exemplar without comparison. A twelve-time Academy Award nominee, longtime partner of the Coen brothers, and indispensable collaborator of, among others,…

Oct 12, 2015

Black characters in video games must be more than stereotypes of the inhuman

boingboing.net

America’s “vision” of the Black male body is one of threat, menace, and labor. Unfortunately, that's exactly how they end up represented in games. In the TIME Magazine article " All the Ways Darren Wilson Described Being Afraid of Michael Brown ," the former Ferguson police officer describes the…

Oct 12, 2015

'A Little Outside the Gates of Hollywood': An Interview with Bruce McDonald | Hazlitt

hazlitt.net

A still from Hellions. It’s been six years since Pontypool vaulted Bruce McDonald into the pantheon of Canadian horror greats. This week he returns with another in the same style: a low-budget, hallucinatory home-invasion slasher called Hellions , arriving in theaters after its premiere at Sundance…

Oct 12, 2015

An attempt to explain the oddly compelling TLC special 'My Husband's Not Gay'

fusion.net

The male stars of the Sunday night TLC special “My Husband’s Not Gay” openly speak about their attraction to men, and even past sexual and romantic experiences with men. But they’re not gay, okay ? The whole show basically tries to explain how these men explain that contradiction to themselves and…

Oct 11, 2015

7 Important Tips On Using Archives & Recreation in Documentary

nofilmschool.com

If you ask a doc filmmaker about archival research, you’re likely to be met with groans, wringing hands, and the sudden need to order a stiff drink. Horrifying picture quality, reluctant or missing rights-holders, or the nonchalant absence of footage whatsoever are pretty standard fare. But when…

Oct 11, 2015

Two writers on Rachel Dolezal: "What is she getting from all this?"

fusion.net

YOUTUBE/KXLY Where do we even start with Rachel Dolezal? The former (?) leader of the Spokane, WA chapter of the NAACP, came under fire last night for what we can only describe as reverse passing, living as a black woman for more than a decade for reasons that are currently unclear. Fascinated by…

Oct 11, 2015

Here's why the NFL's annual pink campaign does almost nothing to fight breast cancer

chron.com

UPDATE: The Houston Texans responded with a statement to the story that's included below. The article also contains more links on the issues with screening mammograms. All this month NFL fans will see pink on the football field for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Houston Texans’ most vibrant pink…

Oct 11, 2015

In California, Electric Cars Outpace Plugs, and Sparks Fly

nytimes.com

SAN FRANCISCO — Of all the states, California has set the most ambitious targets for cutting emissions in coming decades, and an important pillar of its plan to reach those goals is encouraging the spread of electric vehicles . But the push to make the state greener is creating an unintended side…

Oct 11, 2015