January 9, 2014
"And for this, Australia, we are sorry."
Bossy
I got thrown out of my first band because they told me my guitar was too cheap. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame interviews Bruce Springsteen: the seven other parts [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]. [more inside]
"An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar..."
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 ... = -1/12 -- Numberphile explains a counter-intuitive summation of an infinite series. [more inside]
The Stupidity of "The Internet of Things"
Ars Technica Op-Ed discusses how the Internet of Things will create a proliferation of security vulnerabilities and lead to faster obsolescence of durable goods for no discernible benefit: "If you believe what the likes of LG and Samsung have been promoting this week at CES, everything will soon be smart. We'll be able to send messages to our washing machines, run apps on our fridges, and have TVs as powerful as computers. It may be too late to resist this movement, with smart TVs already firmly entrenched in the mid-to-high end market, but resist it we should. That's because the 'Internet of things' stands a really good chance of turning into the 'Internet of unmaintained, insecure, and dangerously hackable things.' These devices will inevitably be abandoned by their manufacturers, and the result will be lots of 'smart' functionality—fridges that know what we buy and when, TVs that know what shows we watch—all connected to the Internet 24/7, all completely insecure."
Cats are {awesome|jerks}
Cats are cute, I'm sure we'd all agree. But sometimes, cats are jerks.
Here's how to live without fucking things up, asshole!
It's an entirely different kind of flying, altogether.
The History Channel ranked the world's ten most extreme airports in a program of that same name. The airports on the list are included because of their extreme locations at high altitudes, difficult approaches, or short runways, all of which make landings challenging, and some would say even dangerous. Folks in the Pilots of America forum discussed the picks, and the most extreme airports they've flown. [more inside]
Designer locomotives? You bet.
Steam locomotives weren't always brute machines. About 220 of them in the United States were streamlined for (mostly) competitive reasons. Some of them were masterpieces.
Intergenerational mouse trauma
...Ressler... and Dias wafted the scent [of acetophenone] around a small chamber, while giving small electric shocks to male mice. The animals eventually learned to associate the scent with pain, shuddering in the presence of acetophenone even without a shock. Despite never having encountered acetophenone in their lives, the offspring exhibited increased sensitivity when introduced to its smell, shuddering more markedly in its presence compared with the descendants of mice that had been conditioned to be startled by a different smell or that had gone through no such conditioning.
Volcanic Lightning in a lab
Scientists make volcanic lightning in a laboratory "A team of researchers at Germany’s Ludwig Maximilian University led by Corrado Cimarelli built an experiment that allowed them to study the conditions that trigger lightning at the base of the eruption plume."
Dancing, from the Audubon Ballroom to Deep Space.
10 iconic mixes from the dancefloors of New York. "It’s the city that gave birth to disco, house music and hip hop, the home of iconic, seminal clubs like The Loft, Studio 54, Paradise Garage and the Sound Factory. If you were going to pick one city on earth where you could track the history of dance music through a series of classic sets, then New York would be it. Back in the early 90s, inthemix writer Jim Poe worked as a DJ in New York City, and here he’s selected ten iconic mixes from the history of NY clubs, tracking the city’s evolving sounds from Grandmaster Flash in 1978 to Francois K at Output this year."
The replicator is working perfectly well
A clever little examination on the replication of musical motifs.
Granite Face Pumptoberfest Winter Spice Blackberry Sprummer Wheat
Every Cocktail Bar Menu Ever. By College Humor, formerly the purveyors of The Complete Guide to the Craft Beer at Your Local Bar.
The craven and bitchy hostility of a Scottish tribute band
Structure
I had done all the research I was going to do, assembled enough material to fill a silo. And now I had no idea what to do with it - John McPhee, on narrative structure. [more inside]
Chiraq, Drillinois
WorldStar HipHop has released a 40 minute mini-documentary on violence in Chicago and the young rappers who are a part of the scene surrounding it. The Field: Chicago features appearances from up-and-coming rappers such as Lil Durk, Lil Reese, King Louie, Lil Bibby, Katie Got Bandz, and more. [more inside]
I have failed many times
Is accepting failure essential to empathy? Reading this made me think of how we are very fortunate to experience failure and how it's essential to human progress. Interested in reading about the greatest failures that lead to your success in another area of your life.
They Must Sleep in the Center of the Bed
Would you take a mentally-ill stranger into your home to live with you like family, possibly for the rest of his life? What if your town had been doing it successfully for 700 years? Welcome to Geel, Belgium. [more inside]
Bringing Unicorns Back to Our World
Nonprofits With Balls. Sometimes you just need to laugh to make it through. Nonprofit agencies, whatever their missions, face common problems such as outcomes, sustainability, budgets, and even the physical plant.
Oh, and unicorns.
Labeoufs in Space
The sale of Glenn Brown's "Ornamental Despair (Painting For Ian Curtis) Copied from the Stars Like Dust, 1986 by Chris Foss" (1994) for roughly $5.7 million has again raised questions over whether copying something but larger and slapping your name on it constitutes art and how it can sell for so much. Here's why it does. Just don't talk about Shia LaBeouf.
Whether You're High or Low
CHVRCHES (previously) covers "Tightrope" by Janelle Monáe (previously). At the Billboard Women in Music 2013 event. With Janelle Monáe in attendance. No pressure. [SLYT]
Where does he get those wonderful toys?
"When I first saw Oliver had something called a "Stickum-Shaft Arrow," I worried that it was some kind of Silver Age, Native American racist caricature arrow. Nope! It's just a long, hard shaft he fires at his eventual lover Black Canary, which covers her in sticky goo. No problems there!" -- Rob Bricken looks at Green Arrow and his less than useful trick arrows. Not that Hawkeye does better.
“We are able to see just a narrow angle, whatever we do."
It was not the first time that Adam Magyar has had to explain his work to mystified observers. Born in Hungary in 1972, Magyar began taking pictures in his late twenties, roaming the streets of Asian cities and capturing images of Indian street vendors, Hindu holy men, and Himalayan students. His work evolved rapidly from conventional documentary photography to surreal, radically experimental imagery that reflects his obsession with finding innovative new uses for digital technology. A self-taught engineer and software designer who assembled his first computer while in his teens, Magyar captures his images using some of the world’s most sophisticated photographic equipment, modified with software he writes himself. Additional code, also of his own design, removes nearly all distortion, or “noise,” from his data, producing images of remarkable clarity.[more inside]
"The height of deep-fried achievement"
“It’s a cornmeal dough,” McDaniel says. “You can’t tell me that somebody in the South didn’t try frying that before the 20th century.” [more inside]
The Giants of Potsdam
"The most beautiful girl or woman in the world would be a matter of indifference to me, but tall soldiers—they are my weakness." Thus confessed Frederick William, second king of Prussia, whose passion compelled the creation of an elite regiment of six-foot-plus grenadiers. Recruitment, diplomatic gifts, and the occasional abduction of a spindly peasant or acromegalic tradesman supplied thousands of "giants" for the ranks; experiments with breeding programs and stretching machines were somewhat less successful. Frederick II, Frederick William's son and successor, dispersed the regiment when he succeeded to power in 1740. The Potsdam Giants had never actually seen combat, the main part of their duty having been to drill and parade before their enraptured king. [more inside]
All around me are familiar faces
clmtrackr is a novel javascript library allowing realtime face detection, fitting and tracking within a browser. The demo applications (which recommend Chrome, although other recent browsers also appear to work) will accept input from your webcam if available, and include facial tracking, emotion detection (requires webcam input) and the creepier face substitution and masking. [via] [more inside]
"Everybody Loves Sondheim, You Guys"
M&F&Q&A
Laverne Cox (activist and actress on Orange Is the New Black, previously) and Carmen Carrera (model and competitor on Season 3 of RuPaul's Drag Race) sat down with Katie Couric to talk about their lives as transgender trailblazers. Couric's questions about genital surgery led Cox to push back and began an outpouring of journalistic advice on the issue. What you shouldn't ask. What Couric could have asked. Can the media stop?
"Are you sure you know how to do this?"
Silent Technical Privilege. "Even though I didn't grow up in a tech-savvy household and couldn't code my way out of a paper bag, I had one big thing going for me: I looked like I was good at programming."
I could have had a stable of white elephants
Looking for a gift under $20? $15? $10? Maybe you just want to know where all the shit you can afford on Amazon or ThinkGeek is hiding. We've all been there: a birthday or wedding coming up and no clue what gift to buy. Maybe your family disowned you after the last Secret Santa (and you were so sure that Heifer International donation was the way to go!), but 2014 is your year to shine.
A new cookbook by Sylvia Plath
Ladies Against Humanity (single-link tumblr, NSFW language). This is what happens when Cards Against Humanity is written by women.
Objects in your crosshairs are exactly the size that they appear to be
This tech demo video from Pillow Castle Games (of Carnegie Mellon) showcases an innovative first person puzzler using the optical illusion of forced perspective.
There's no such thing as purple urine.
Moms
Two very different commercials about mothers.
1. Old Spice "Momsong"
2. P&G "Pick Them Back Up"
Bring your tissues for that second one.
1. Old Spice "Momsong"
2. P&G "Pick Them Back Up"
Bring your tissues for that second one.
Hoop Nightmares
There's some confusion surrounding Dennis Rodman's most recent visit to North Korea and his espoused 'Basketball Diplomacy' mission. He sung Happy Birthday (potential auto-play sound) and bowed deeply to 'Dear Leader', before his team of ex-NBA players scored 39 points to 47 against the NK team. Rodman played only in the first half and then sat next to Kim during the second half. [more inside]
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