November 24, 2014
Internet culture puts trolling on a pedestal
Developer Randi Harper came up with a simple solution to help people deal with the harassing tweets they've been receiving from Gamergators: the GG Autoblocker, a perl script that identifies likely GGers and adds them to an ever-evolving block list. This has been a popular move in some circles, and an unpopular one in others. In response to some of the "feedback" she's been receiving, Harper has written Still Here, a two-part post on being a woman in tech: A Memoir, Call To Arms
From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin -- and now Mike Brown
59 years after an all-white jury in Mississippi acquitted Emmett Till's murderers, a majority-white grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, decided not to indict Darren Wilson, the man who killed Mike Brown. [more inside]
Billy Joel: life/career overview
A lengthy New Yorker overview of Billy Joel's life and career: Thirty-Three-Hit Wonder.
Open your eyes and smile
This wasn’t a reality show, nor was it one of the elite bookings Anna enjoyed back in New York or Milan. We were there for a fake beauty pageant, one our Beijing modeling agency had booked us for, telling us it was a “fashion show” and providing no further details. It was only after we boarded our early-morning flight to Ordos that the true nature of the event was revealed. “We’re on our way to another ‘Miss’ thing,” a Ukrainian girl said from her seat with a groan. I was hired as Miss America; Anna, despite being Brazilian, as Miss Chile. It would have been the strangest 36 hours of my life—if, over the previous two months, I hadn’t done it twice before.Life as a Fake Beauty Queen in Small-Town China
"Lunch: the most real you can get"
"HVNGRY is an online publication for teen girls (and boys) wanting more from mainstream media. It’s a belly full of inspiration, motivation, passion, power, and taking-over-the-world." [more inside]
The Governor of New York Owes an Apology to a Bunch of Meteorologists
The Governor of New York Owes an Apology to a Bunch of Meteorologists Governor Cuomo’s attempt to scapegoat the National Weather Service for an inaccurate forecast in advance is not only completely in error–the NWS did an outstanding job–but is a disservice to the public and to the hard-working staff of this federal agency.
YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG
this will answer all of your questions but it is in Chinese
The Shack Up Inn is a hospitality institution just outside of historic Clarksdale, Mississippi. Their FAQ page helpfully provides information regarding any questions you might have about amenities, bedding quality, or Didelphimorphia reproduction.
Hiding the Hollywood Sign through Garmin 'n Google
You're not really supposed to try to find this sign up-close in person, you're supposed to look at it from a distance. Arguments begin on how short that distance can be... [more inside]
Almost 530,000 words long—still a little shorter than “Infinite Jest.”
Paul Ford explains the long road to HTML5 and the web standardisations process in the New Yorker.
In “Gathering of the Player Men at Buffalo,” the Music Trade Review described a heady scene in which Mr. P. B. Klugh, speaking for the Cable Company, said that it had adopted “the nine-to-the-inch scale” and that “they were not open to argument on the subject, as such a scale had given entire satisfaction.” Swayed, the manufacturers resolved the issue in favor of Klugh. As a result, we now live in a world where nine-holes-per-inch piano rolls are the standard. You would be a fool to build a player piano to any other metric.
Of course, the Web page is far more complex. It requires dozens of standards, governing words, sounds, pictures, interactions, protocols, code, and more. The role of Web parliament is played by the W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium. This is a standards body; it organizes meetings that allow competing groups to define standards, shepherding them from a “working draft” to “candidate recommendation” and “proposed recommendation,” and finally, if a standard has been sufficiently poked and prodded, granting the ultimate imprimatur, “W3C recommendation.”
Seven great movies expiring from Netflix on December 1st
"Every month, Netflix quietly clears its virtual shelves to prepare for the arrival of new offerings. There are roughly 80 movies expiring from Netflix Instant at the end of November. We've picked seven that we think you should make sure to watch before they’re no longer streaming – one for each night until Dec. 1." (Paste Magazine)
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Ex-Maple Leaf coach Pat Quinn dead at 71 [Toronto Star]
"Former Toronto Maple Leaf coach and general manager Pat Quinn has died at the age of 71. Quinn died Sunday night in Vancouver after a lengthy illness, the Hockey Hall of Fame and Vancouver Giants said Monday. Quinn, who was co-owner of the WHL’s Giants, was 71.
"Bonding with owners is much more important for dogs than other pets,"
"Dogs don't just seem to pick up on our subtle mood changes — they are actually physically wired to pick up on them." A recent neuroimaging study shows how closely tied to humans dogs have become over the last 30,000 years.
Professor and the boomerang
Professor Yutaka Nishiyama is a mathematician and a boomerang enthusiast. His Boomerang International Project page contains instructions in multiple languages for making your own paper boomerang and several videos of the boomerang in action. [more inside]
It pretty much landed in my lap
I’ve been watching Odell Beckham practice similar one-handed catches for the past several weeks. He caught half a dozen in practice before Sunday’s game, and had an amazing one-handed fingertip catch in practice several weeks ago. So he was definitely on my radar screen. Today I was making a point of keeping track of where Beckham lined up, so I would be ready. -- The New York Times interviews photographers about how they themselves caught this incredible catch in the Giants game last night.
A Sassy remembrance
Theresa DeLucci got a letter published in the only publication for girls that really attempted educational journalism—amid Twin Peaks fashion spreads and celeb interviews with grunge luminaries like Kurt Cobain and Kim Gordon.
Fashion behind bars
Project Pietà clothing is the brainchild of Thomas Jacob, a French designer who moved to Lima in 2011 to pursue a job with a Peruvian fashion label. A chance visit to a neighbouring jail, Casto Castro, with a friend who was teaching the inmates French opened Jacob’s eyes to the possibility of a clothing project behind prison walls. “There are all sorts of initiatives when it comes to art or music, but fashion is popular with prisoners because it’s about the body. In prison, it’s the body which is imprisoned as well as the mind. And fashion allows a degree of physical self-expression which enhances the body.” [more inside]
Drugs, stolen credit cards, and lots of free pizza
The weird, disturbing, and hilarious things for sale on the Internet's largest black market. Evolution: The not-so-secret place on the Web that sells drugs, uranium and a guide to texting girls
Glove Save, And A Beauty
At a Gander Flyers game against the Corner Brook Royals, a fan suffered a heart attack in the stands. The first two people there were the Mayor of Gander and the starting goaltender, Patty O'Brien, who moonlights as a paramedic. The victim is fine, Patty's a hero, and this story couldn't be more Canadian if the Trailer Park Boys were in the ambulance, feeding everyone poutine & Eric's Red beer and singing "I's The By".
Elizabethan Costume Page
Elizabethan Costume Page. From patterns and instruction to social history, and lots of resources collected therein. [via]
On Japanese Farewell Ceremonies for Things
Destruction and sacredness of life are often reasons for conflicts in Western culture; on the contrary, ceremonies like hari kuyo can become, even for Westerners, precious opportunities for reflection. In our habit of first producing and then acquiring, often with craving, a great quantity of objects destined to be thrown away like useless, harmful, and cumbersome rubbish shortly after their acquisition, are hidden the germs of attachment and hate that, together with nescience (avidyā), form the sad trio of spiritual poisons. We generally believe we are good custodians of the environment when hurriedly, even with a bit of resentment, we throw in the rubbish bin all that has been discarded. In transforming "removal" into "restitution," the getting rid of useless objects can instead become a stimulus, and not a mere gesture of refusal, for considering our relationship with activities, objects, and the environment, by carrying out, through decorous and at times melancholic farewell ceremonies, daily exercises of kindness and giving.Farewell Ceremonies for Things, from Dharma World, providing context for a number of Japanese ceremonies, including Hari-Kuyo, the Festival of Broken Needles, Fude-Kuyo, a ceremony for brushes, Ningyo-Kuyo, "a doll funeral", and other ceremony for valued items, activities, and professions.
According to one senior official, “He wasn’t up to the job.”
President Obama will announce today that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is submitting his resignation. According to the New York Times, "The officials described Mr. Obama’s decision to remove Mr. Hagel, 68, as a recognition that the threat from the Islamic State would require a different kind of skills than those that Mr. Hagel was brought on to employ." [more inside]
"Some things belonged to both of us from day one"
"A song, a poem, a scene from a film triggers memories. You’re startled, moved, shaken. And you’re faced with two options: 1) engage with the work and the memories it calls up, or 2) retreat, postpone, avoid.
Option 2 is very attractive." Matt Zoller Seitz remembers his wife Jennifer, who would have turned 44 today. [more inside]
"Why even make a harsh story about surviving war into a video game?"
This War of Mine is a computer game by Polish developers 11 Bit Studios about being a normal citizen during a modern Eastern European civil war, drawing especially on the Siege of Sarajevo. It has been called an antidote to Call of Duty for its unremittingly bleak depiction of war, though it has been criticized for being an unrealistically grim portrayal of life in a besieged city by some, including a survivor of the Siege of Sarajevo. These and other issues are discussed on the strategy game podcast Three Moves Ahead. [This War of Mine previously]
It's all about the water in your head
Lost your car? This might help.
Just "do the damned experiment".
Newtown's Adam Lanza and Missed Opportunities
Connecticut's Office of The Child Advocate Releases Report on Sandy Hook Shootings "Newtown shooter Adam Lanza was an isolated young man with deteriorating mental health and a fascination for mass violence whose problems were not ignored but misunderstood and mistreated, according to a report released Friday by a Connecticut state agency." [more inside]
The Cloud Colonies of Venus
While talk of a moonbase or terraforming Mars has tended to dominate the discussion for the first step in human colonization of the solar system, another possibility exists: floating habitats above the cloud tops of Venus. [more inside]
Below the Row
Who lives in the year Three-ee Thousand A.D.?
On December 31, 1999, a fast-food employee was cryogenically frozen, waking up centuries later to find himself in a bewildering future. This is his story. (SLYT)
What Wikipedia Taught Me About My Grandfather
To me Frederic M. Richards was Grandpa Freddy, a jolly man who always wore a silly brown jacket with elbow patches, who delighted in showing me how to spin the lazy Susan at the breakfast table, who insisted I help him move a one-ton rock up his path, who challenged me to fruit-eating contests. To his parents and siblings he was the weird youngest son. To a generation of biophysicists he was, apparently, a defining thinker.Thanks to Wikipedia and the tireless efforts of one 73 year old volunteer, Ben Lillie discovers his grandfather could've won a Nobel Prize.
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