A Brief History of Mold-A-Rama, Rob Lammie, Mental Floss, March 18, 2014
Long before 3D printing was a thing, kids of all ages were plunking quarters into Mold-A-Rama vending machines to get plastic sculptures made right before their eyes. Let’s take a look back at the history of these mid-century manufacturing marvels.
GOP Plutocrat Ken Langone And New Dem Wall Street Shill Jim Himes Are Waging Class War Against American Families, Down With Tyranny!, March 18, 2014
Langone’s siren song, while extreme and filled with the class warfare hatred the entitled rich feel towards working families, isn’t just a Republican song. When it comes to serving the interests of great wealth, conservative Democrats– particularly Blue Dogs and New Dems– are no better than garden variety Republicans.
Two Reasons That Explain Why We’re All Obsessed with Game of Thrones, Charlie Jane Anders, io9, March 18, 2014
Why is Game of Thrones such a huge cultural phenomenon, among all other fantasy series? It comes down to two huge cultural trends, that are rooted in our widespread anxieties about life in the 21st century.
***
Game of Thrones captures the real anxiety at the root of our apocalyptic fascination — the sense that disaster is coming closer at an almost imperceptible rate, and we can never really know when it will arrive. We all sense that our unsustainable economic system will collapse, and/or our biosphere will no longer support so many humans, but we don’t know if the crunch will come next week or in 50 years.
And the endless wars and scheming show how short-sighted people can overlook a looming disaster, due to political infighting and stupidity. You wonder why they don’t look over their shoulder and see the ice zombies creeping closer — until you realize that their denial is nothing compared to our own.
***
When we’re not consuming futuristic dystopias and world-breaking disasters, we’re obsessing about a somewhat idealized past in which men were men and women were women, and everybody Knew Their Place. Often, these visions of the past include a soupcon of social change, a hint that the Times They Were a-Changin’, and the seeds of today’s world were already in place.
***
Game of Thrones is like the perfect idealized-but-awful past. Especially in the television version, everybody looks beautiful and has perfect teeth, but almost everybody takes a turn of being that peasant in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who shouts, “I’m being oppressed!”
