Blog: The Sly Oyster

It's  through iTunes, and it's streaming as one long track , but it's DAVID BOWIE'S FIRST NEW RECORD IN A DECADE! I quite liked the first song that dropped from the record. Get on it. [via vulture ]

Here's a great vid of Marcelo Gutierrez's winning run at the most recent Valparaiso Urban Downhill race as shot on a Contour Camera . This is one of the most unique downhill mountain bike races, which we previously wrote about in 2011, you will ever see as racers bomb down a course through the steep and tangled streets of Valparaiso, Chile. Could do without the shitty music though.

Ah, are you kidding me. Someone at Culver City, Calif.'s Coolhaus restaurant - known for their exhorbitant ice cream sandwiches - deserves a Nobel Prize for Awesome after combining Lucky Charms and Whiskey into an ice cream and smashing it between cinnamon toast crunch cookies. It's like they made this specifically for the 30-year-old version of me that time-traveled back into the 11-year-old version of me. [via doobybrain ]

For $4.99 per month, Outbox picks up your mail, scans it, and provides access to view it on iOS devices or through the web. If you want the physical version of a piece of mail, you designate the item to be delivered, and Outbox drops it on your doorstep. Sounds great, right? Basically, Outbox wants to digitize the blue USPS mailboxes . But, is something like this really necessary? Maybe if it was coming from the post office as an added service. For me, sorting my mail every couple of days for bills, letters [...]

The reason we keep watching and loving sports is because of this - in spite of the steroids, money, bad behavior of athletes, etc. [via thedish ]

Disappointed by the Oscars James Bond retrospective? Yeah, we all mostly were. Thankfully, we can thank Kees van Dijkhuizen jr. for his stupendous efforts. Sure, it seems to lean heavily in favor of the Daniel Craig-era and shortfalls the rest, but still, this is a great retrospective. [ Thanks, Tommy! ]

There's something going on when d ozens of big U.S. companies and some 75 noted conservatives have signed an amicus brief in support of gay marriage. “The die is cast on this issue when you look at the percentage of younger voters who support gay marriage,” said Steve Schmidt, who was a senior adviser to the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, and who signed the brief. “As Dick Cheney said years ago, ‘Freedom means freedom for everybody.’ ” As noted in the article, opposition/support [...]

Don't take it from me, but listen to the likes of Bill Gates (Microsoft/Philanthropy), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Jack Dorsey (Square), Tony Hsieh (Zappos), Drew Houston (Dropbox), Gabe Newell (Valve/Steam), and um, Chris Bosh (Not LeBron James or Dwayne Wade) and Will.i.am (sometime hologram, occasional Black Eyed Pea) on the importance of learning to computer program in school. The effort is driven by Code.org , part of Khan Academy, which also has several great resources . Basic programming - or at least the ability to better read and write code - is on [...]

The inventor of  Crystal Pepsi  has an epiphany to create a soft drink called “ Brown Sprite .” Looks good. [via LS ]

Mark Seal continues the golden age of oral history for Vanity Fair with an oral history of the making of 'Pulp Fiction '. All the expected people are featured, including Tarantino, Thurman, Jackson, Travolta, Willis, Harvey Weinstein, and others, including Marvin! “Like a lot of guys who had never made films before, I was always trying to figure out how to scam my way into a feature,” Tarantino tells me. Though he was indisputably king of all movie knowledge at Video Archives, the suburban-L.A. store where he worked, in Hollywood he was a nobody. [...]

Well, this is certainly an interesting development in the disruption of cable TV. Cablevision has sued Viacom for “ illegally forcing Cablevision to carry and pay for 14 lesser-watched ancillary networks its customers do not want. ” Interesting. Especially when you consider that Cablevision and Viacom signed the deal in December 2012. So what's the implications of the lawsuit? Probably not a whole hell of a lot. All that said, if the case does go all the way through the court system and ends up in Cablevision’s favor, then we might [...]

Tomas Tunguz : It's a refrain for excellence day in day out, through the dark cold winter and the lazy dog days of summer. Whatever you call it, rowing blades square or every damn day, the idea is the same. Leaders have to demand excellence from their teams and drive teams to expect excellence from themselves. Every damn day. I love this snippet of an essay and want to blockquote the entire damn thing. It's a succinct rallying cry of excellence for 2013. [via @ryanswarts ]

Last week, NPR's Planet Money went inside an Amish trade show . The story focused mostly on the availability of power tools and conveniently glossed over the booths selling computers . Those computers are basically 802s-era technology, allowing them to run a suite of Microsoft Office applications, CAD drawings, parts inventory, etc. What they can't do is surf the web, play music, download porn, etc. It's another reminder that the Amish aren't against technology, they are just slower to adopt and more purposeful about the kinds [...]

The NYT has a fantastic "op-art" on Sunday about the intricacies of the billing blocks found at the bottom of movie posters, which you wouldn't think would be fascinating as all hell. For instance, did you know that the directors and writers guild require its member names to be at least 15 percent of the type size of the movie's title on a poster? Crazy right. That's not even the tip of the iceberg, but I promise you should go for the article's design and stay for the information. Double win!

I skipped the Oscars last night to watch the season finale of 'Ripper Street' - an exceptionally great BBC cop show set in London's White Chapel neighborhood in the wake of the Jack the Ripper crimes. Anyway, apparently by skipping the Oscars I didn't miss much . The show was a hot mess by all accounts and sadly frat boy Seth MacFarlane won the day over old timey Hollywood MacFarlane. There were even few surprises in the winners , save for maybe Ang Lee winning best director over Spielberg and Christoph Waltz winning best supporting [...]

For her  Let’s Move!  campaign, FLOTUS  went on  Late Night With Jimmy Fallon   and demonstrated with Fallon the “ Evolution of Mom Dancing .” If it's possible, I think I love Michelle Obama more than I love Hillary Clinton. Probably depends on the time of day you ask me though. [via flavorwire ]

Ever since Gary Busey’s stupendous  Hobbit lecture  took the world by storm, his YouTube channel, The Busey Zone (YES REALLY), hasn’t put out anything that great - especially nothing to rival him selling pizzas back in 2010. Until now. [via deathandtaxes ]

The new season returns on March 31st. If you aren't excited then either you haven't started watching the show, or you haven't read the books, or you have no pulse.

Nate Silver takes his electoral voodoo magic into the world of Hollywood to suss out who will walk away with the Oscar for the top six categories . He's predicting huge wins for 'Argo' as Best Picture, Daniel Day-Lewis as Best Actor, Jennifer Lawrence for Best Actress, Tommy Lee-Jones and Anne Hathaway for supporting actor and actress respectively, and Spielberg for Best Director. The 85th Academy Awards air this Sunday with Seth MacFarlane as your host. Expect to be terminally bored and lose interest halfway through the seven hour ceremony. See [...]

You would think it is fairly easy to identify and label fish sold at restaurants and grocery stores. But, then you'd be wrong . I wasn't that bent out of shape until reading this: "84% of fish samples labeled “white tuna” were actually escolar, a fish that can cause prolonged, uncontrollable, oily anal leakage."