"The Kyoto Ectoplasm Girl"

Ectoplasm cat

photos by Hine Mizushima

“The Kyoto Ectoplasm Girl” by Hine Mizushima, appearing in the “Kokeshi: From Folk Art to Art Toy” show taking place July 11th through October 4th at Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

filed under Art

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Ze Frank warns that if you don’t send this video to five people you will have Hard Times.

filed under Humor

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Clear

Clear, the service located at serveral airports that provided express lanes allowing travelers to bypass TSA security lines, has ceased operations due to financial reasons.

via Dan Gillmor

filed under Travel

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The Story of Twitter

Manolith has a great graphic by Infoshot showing “The Story (so far) of Twitter”.

via Scott Rafer

filed under Twitter

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Mobypicture iPhone

For a while I’ve been looking for a good way to simultaneously post photos from my iPhone to multiple services. Mobypicture looks like it might be a really good solution.

It has a native iPhone app that you can use to shoot a photo, set the title, add description, tag and even publish GPS location. I’ve been using it to post to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Tumblr (several other services are available as well). All the services are cross-referenced to the original photo uploaded to Mobypicture.

Mobypictures also supports several video services, but it doesn’t look like it works yet with video shot on the new iPhone 3G S, but hopefully they will be able to add that feature in the future.

Here’s my account on Mobypicture.

Here’s the Mobypicture “Shoot n Share” animated promo video.

filed under Apple, Photography, iPhone

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Su.pr

StumbleUpon recently launched Su.pr, their new URL shortening service that allows you to cross-post to StumbleUpon, Twitter and Facebook at the same time. It provides various traffic statistics and also allows you to schedule posts in the future.

It’s currently invite only, but I have a few invite codes to give out. Just use suprsquid when signing up.

Check out Tim Ferriss’ write-up on Su.pr for more info.

UPDATE 1: You guys are fast! All 250 of the invite codes have been claimed.

UPDATE 2: SU just gave us another 250 invite codes to give out.

filed under Internet

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“He’s Barack Obama”, the latest video by JibJab about our superhero president.

He's Barack Obama

There a are a bunch of great behind-the-scenes posts on the JibJab blog showing how the video was made.

filed under Animation, Politics

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Don't let the fact that Obama became president without having a father in his life make you feel unimportant this Father's Day

Happy Father’s Day to all of the Dads out there.

filed under Humor

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Tiki Cat Food

photo by Scott Beale

I agree with John Gruber, the quality of low light and macro photos shot with the new iPhone 3G S has greatly improved over the previous generation of iPhones.

Here’s an example I shot of a can of Tiki Cat Food.

UPDATE: More iPhone 3G S photos from Dave Shea (via Daring Fireball).

filed under Apple, Photography, iPhone

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Tumblarity 666

Throwing devil horns in your general direction.

filed under Blogs

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World of Warcraft special limited edition of Mountain Dew Game Fuel, available in Horde Red and Alliance Blue. Choose your side carefully. Here’s the TV promo.

World of Warcraft Mountain Dew Game Fuel

via Adam Koford

filed under Games

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John Hodgman did a hilarious roast of President Barack Obama at the 2009 Radio & TV Correspondents’ Dinner, making fun of him being the first nerd president of the US.

Here’s President Obama’s keynote talk from the dinner.

See Previously: MaxFunCon 2009 Keynote Address by John Hodgman

via Charlie Todd

filed under Humor, Politics

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US To Trade Gold Reserves For Cash Through Cash4Gold.com

filed under Economy, Humor

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The San Jose Museum of Art has a new exhibition “Todd Schorr: American Surreal” that is a retrospective of the amazing work by Los Angeles based surrealist painter Todd Schorr. The show runs from June 20th through September 16th.

Schorr is a leading figure in Southern California’s cartoon-based movement, dubbed “Pop Surrealism,” which embraces low-brow culture and a ribald graphic style indebted to pop sources such as Mad magazine. Schorr’s astonishing, highly polished realism, (inspired by Bosch, Brueghel and Dali), sets him apart from his best-known peers such as Camille Rose Garcia, Gary Baseman, and Mark Ryden. The exhibition, curated by SJMA’s Senior Scholar and Curator of Collections Susan Landauer, is accompanied by a book published by Last Gasp, San Francisco.

Todd Schorr Surreal Night

On Thursday, July 16th the San Jose Museum of Art is hosting “Todd Schorr Surreal Night”, a panel discussion and book signing with Todd Schorr sponsored by Hi-Fructose.

American Surreal: The Art of Todd Schorr

The exhibition is conjunction with the release of American Surreal: The Art of Todd Schorr, a new book by Last Gasp that also serves as a catalog for the show.

This is the latest collection of paintings by one of contemporary surrealism’s most influential artists. American Surreal picks up where Dreamland, Schorr’s previous bestselling collection of mind-bending paintings, left off. The viewer can look forward to countless hours of eye bulging investigative thought while examining the impeccably rendered subject matter that has become the hallmark of Schorr’s outrageous vision.

One of the seminal figures in what has come to be known as the Lowbrow or Pop Surrealism art movement, Schorr has continually and systematically set the bar ever higher in his quest to bring classic old master painting technique to his pop-culture-infused subject matter. This latest collection continues that journey culminating with the epic masterpiece Ape Worship, included in this volume. Schorr’s paintings are the subject of museum retrospectives in 2009 and 2010, and are highly prized and coveted by collectors the world over. American Surreal is sure to satisfy those with an overly-developed visual appetite.

San Jose Museum of Art has a series of video interviews with Todd about his work.

parade-of-the-damned-todd-schorr

The Parade of the Damned, 2004

filed under Art, Books, Events

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Ze Frank on Time

Time.com is featuring a new video series by Ze Frank called “That Makes Me Think of…”. In the first episode he discusses the Iranian presidental election.

Congratulations Ze, your “time” has come!

via Jay Goldman

filed under News

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Find My iPhone

The new iPhone “Find My Phone” feature rocks! It’s part of the OS 3.0 update.

filed under Apple, iPhone

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Here’s the trailer for “Prélude au sommeil”, a documentary by Gilles Weinzaepflen about French electronic music pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey.

Prélude au Sommeil

See Previously: Jean-Jacques Perrey & Dana Countryman Photos

via Boing Boing

filed under Film, Music

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guest post by Aaron Muszalski

East Bay Rats MC Fight Party

This Saturday night, the East Bay Rats Motorcycle Club are holding their annual Fight Party. Already a legend in the Bay Area underground, this year’s event promises to be bigger than ever before, thanks to the increased size of its home at the new NIMBY space.

Organizers promise two full-size boxing rings and an MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) ring for your pugilistic pleasure, as well as a full night’s lineup of musical entertainment, burlesque, stunt riding and fire art, the latter courtesy of acclaimed East Bay fire art collective THERM.

Psyche - Two women square off at the East Bay Rats Fight Party

photo by Craig Morse

As always, the braver or more foolhardy attendees are invited to step into the ring and test their mettle against a friend or other willing adversary. (Note that, for safety, all bouts are gloved and fully officiated.) Women are especially encouraged to participate, and regularly do. And given that this is an MC-hosted event, be sure to keep an eye out for prospect fights, which can be especially… memorable.

For the uninitiated, here are a couple of videos of past Fight Parties as well as a Yelp review.

filed under Events

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guest post by Aaron Muszalski

FOUNDRY - A Mad Scientist Cabaret to Benefit Rathskellar

Rathskellar, a new Burning Man nightclub “risen from the ashes of Spike’s Vampire Bar” is holding a fundraising benefit at San Francisco’s infamous DNA Lounge this Saturday, the 20th of June.

In German-speaking countries, the word “rathskellar” refers to an alehouse in a room set below street level. For its organizers, the term means underground, or as their website says:

…and here, underground means everything from the seedy, Jungian shared underbelly of Black Rock City to the stays-in-Vegas cabaret glam that unfolds on playa. This a den of inventors and innovators, drinkers and dancers, builders and breakers, barkeeps and bar rats, merrymakers and motorcycling miscreants and all that lies in between. Rathskellar is where we Mad Scientists make our monsters, create our machines, ply you with libations, and see where your inspiration leads you. Dark and industrial, sexy and corseted; Rathskellar is a little bit of spooky to balance out the endless techno. This is where the wild things continue to roam. Come, brave souls, and roam with us!

Or as Rathskellar co-founder Zak Scott puts it, “Think of Rathskellar as Goth/Industrial… Revolution.”

Saturday’s event, entitled “FOUNDRY“, will feature live music by rising local stars Unwoman and Rhubarb Whiskey, and burlesque performances by Ariyana La Fey, Sparkly Devil, L’il Miss Never, Miss Kittie, and more. If you’d like to help Rathskellar become a reality, please consider attending.

UPDATE: Slim also has a post up about the Rathskellar on the Burning Blog.

filed under Burning Man, Events

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Anonymous Iran

The online protest group Anonymous, who have been fighting the Church of Scientology, have teamed up with the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay to help out Iran democracy activists with their new forum Anonymous Iran.

We are not a government agency, nor are we Iranian. We are simply the internet and we believe in free speech.

via Wired Danger Room

filed under Internet, Politics

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