Five hundred years after the publication of The Prince, the informative BBC documentary “Imagine… Who’s Afraid Of Machiavelli” asks how relevant is The Prince today, and who are the 21st century Machiavellians? [Via]
If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.
Niccolò Machiavelli | The Prince
DEATH BY WHEEL
Last October, archaeologists surveying the site of planned road work on federal highway 189 in Groß Pankow, Brandenburg, Germany, unearthed human remains. Further examination revealed the deceased was a man in his mid to late 30s who had been executed on the wheel. His bones are in more than a thousand pieces. [...]
HOOKER’S DIVISION: A 1890s MAP OF VICE WITHIN SIGHT OF THE WHITE HOUSE
At the end of the Civil War “a vast hoard of enfranchised slaves, discharged soldiers and a cloud of riffraff, bummers and camp followers” descended onto the city of Washington D.C., doubling it’s size from 75,000 people to 150,000 and turning it into one of the most disorderly places in America. Crime was out of […]
LU.CU.MA.: FROM PSYCHO KILLER TO PAINTER
After spending 27 years in prison for multiple murders, Peruvian folk artist Luis Cuevas Manchego (aka Lu.Cu.Ma) has spent the last decade dedicating his to life to social change through art. In the documentary “From the Knife to the Brush” Vice Magazine examines Manchego’s criminal past, how he uses art as a way to repent and the message that even a stone cold killer can change. [...]
THE DIVINE IMPRESSION
These are the footprints of Buddhist monk Hua Chi burned into the floor of a temple in Tongren, China by the simple act of praying in the same spot for the last twenty-some years. [...]
CANNABIS COLLEGE: HOW TO GET RICH IN THE MEDICAL MARIJUANA BUSINESS (OR GO BROKE TRYING)
Francisco Alvarado of the Miami New Times takes an in-depth look into the cannabis “training school” industry and some of the things you may (or may not) learn there: Inside a conference room at a Sheraton Hotel in Miami, Bob Calkin paces in front of a small stage, holding a microphone. The 50-year-old Los Angeles […]
GET SHORTY: THE HUNT FOR THE WORLD’S MOST NOTORIOUS DRUG LORD JOAQUÍN GUZMÁN
After escaping from a maximum security prison in a laundry basket, one of the world’s biggest drug traffickers and Mexico’s most-wanted fugitive Juaquín “El Chapo” (“Shorty”) Guzmán Loera spent thirteen years on the run, smartly evading authorities while continuing to operate the massive Sinola drug cartel from hiding. All that came to end last February, when agents of a joint U.S./Mexico operation burst into a seaside condominium in Mazatlan [...]
THE ROARING TWENTIES: NOISE COMPLAINTS FROM THE JAZZ AGE NEW YORK CITY
The Roaring Twenties is a sonically charged interactive map of nearly 600 noise complaints made in New York City from 1926 to 1932. Each marker represents one complaint and is often accompanied by old news-reel footage offering the sights and sounds of those responsible for the ruckus. [...]
CONVERSNITCH: THE LIGHT BULBS ARE LISTENING
Conversnitch is an inconspicuous recording device that automatically tweets snippets of overheard conversations onto twitter. Disguised as a light bulb or a lamp, the Conversnitch works anywhere that has wifi — a restaurant, library, or home, for instance — and uses a Raspberry Pi and a microphone to record audio. [...]
THE BRUTAL DIY WEAPONS OF THE UKRAINIAN REVOLUTION
Photographer Tom Jamieson shows Wired magazine his series of photographs detailing the nasty homemade weapons that Ukrainian protesters used when they filled Maidan Square to battle the army and topple President Yanukovych. [...]
COMING OUT AS A PORN STAR
Vox talks to 15 porn superstars about what it’s like to tell your friends, family, and romantic partners that you work in the adult entertainment industry. For us, the highlight of this piece has to be the conversation that the lovely Stoya had with her grandmother.
HOW TO PICK A LOCK USING NOTHING BUT HAIRPINS
NightHawkInLight shows us how to pick locks like a secret agent using nothing but a pair of strategically bent hairpins .
A CERTAIN KIND OF DEATH
The documentary A CERTAIN KIND OF DEATH takes an unblinking look into the mysterious process of what happens to people who die with no next of kin.
THE MILLWALL BRICK: HOW TO MAKE A WEAPON FROM A NEWSPAPER
The Millwall Brick is a home made baton constructed out of a carefully folded newspaper. It was invented by English football hooligans who were getting all their other weapons confiscated at matches.
..to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on Heaven is to create hell. In their desperate longing to transcend the disorderliness, friction, and unpredictability that pesters life; in their desire for a fresh start in a tidy habitat, germ-free and secured by angels, religious multitudes are gambling the only life they may ever have on a dark horse in a race that has no finish line.
Tom Robbins | Skinny Legs and All
ARCHENEMY: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE DEVIL
History Of The Devil is an entertaining documentary about the origins of Satan that Top Documentary Films sums up best: “The History of the Devil is wickedly good, informative and concise. A no-frills Welsh film produced in association with SBS Australia and distributed by Siren Visual, it’s roughly 52 minutes in length and packs a […]
MUSHFAKES: PRISON DIY INGENUITY
“Mushfaking” is prison slang for the construction of any contraband object made from whatever materials are at hand. Inside you will find a home made shotgun constructed out of bed posts, jail house hot plates made from a brick and much more.
NAKED CITIZENS
Increasing numbers of ‘terror suspects’ are being arrested on the basis of online and CCTV surveillance data. Authorities claim they act in the public interest, but does this intense surveillance keep us safer? “I woke up to pounding on my door”, says Andrej Holm, a sociologist from the Humboldt University. In what felt like a […]
