Monthly Archives: January 2015

Mubi

You know the way on Netflix, there’s a ton of films, but they’re all shite? And the way that discovery on Netflix is next to impossible, so you have to go to third-party sites to see what they recommend, or even to find out what’s just been added (you know things are bad when you’re going to a fucking blogspot site to find out what’s new). So I’ve been looking for something new.

A few years ago, I remember trying Mubi and it wasn’t much better. It was like Netflix with an arthouse bent: hundreds of films, but hardly anything you’d want to actually watch. A broad selection of films so it looked impressive, but they were shallow as mud.

I don’t know when exactly, but somewhere in the last few years, they completely changed their focus. Now they’ve got an extremely narrow, extremely deep selection. How narrow? They’ve got thirty films. That’s it. Every day they add something new, every day they take something off. And they take care with the films they add. These are thirty tightly curated films that are almost always worth watching. Here’s the current list of films as of today:

There are some amazing films on there that I want to watch again. There are some amazing films on there that I’ve been meaning to check out for ages. And the ones I haven’t heard of? Well, the overall quality of the rest of the films means I’m comfortable knowing that they’re probably worth checking out.

Mubi isn’t paying me to write this blog post. I’m writing this for completely selfish reasons: I only just discovered how great this service is and I want to make sure it sticks around. So do me a favour and give Mubi a shot?

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The Fleshlight Model Visits the Fleshlight Factory

My favourite part of this video is where she’s standing next to the owner of the fleshlight factory and the interviewer asks the owner “have you ever used the fleshlight?” and he’s like “of course!” then realises he’s standing next to the lady whose fake vagina he masturbated into. I haven’t seen anything that awkward in ages.

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Broad City Meets Sleater-Kinney
I don’t know who in NPR thought it would be a good idea to invite the stars of Broad City (one of the best shows on tv right now, btw) to interview Sleater-Kinney, but that person should be given a massive promotion.

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How PAPER Magazine’s web engineers scaled their back-end for Kim Kardashian

One of the things nerds love to do is look at other people’s stacks and say, “what a house of cards!” In fact I fully expect people to link to this article and write things like, “sounds okay, but they should have used Jizzawatt with the Hamstring extensions and Graunt.ns for all their smexing.”

I rarely link to articles that relate to the kinds of things I do at my day job because they’re usually so dry and boring. But remember when I said Paul Ford was one of my internet heroes? Well, this shows why. So terrifically written.

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An Oral History of the Poop Emoji
Fun fact: the computer I’m typing this on is called :poop:. Every time I see this in a list of network devices, it cheers me up.

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Atropa

http://vimeo.com/77761436

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How to Season a Cast Iron Skillet

Owning a cast iron skillet requires stability. It requires an ability to think in the long term. Can you live up to it? As you will see, this is not the kind of pan you can expect to cook with for a couple years and throw away once it starts to show signs of use. It’s not goddamn Teflon. Your cast iron skillet will outlive you, and your care is important, even crucial. More than anything, you should only have cast iron in your life if you love it. Now ask yourself, are you ready?

I bought a cast iron skillet a couple of years ago and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. We live in a disposable world of planned obsolescence and to have something that you know will outlast you — well, that’s a special feeling. Plus, it’s an amazing tool to cook with. But this article is totally right: taking care of the skillet is something you have to take very seriously.

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