February 7, 2018
A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels
Morgan the dog runs a snowblower and vacuums (& fetches beer too)
As most of British Columbia digs itself out from under a record-breaking snowfall, one family has it made: their six year old Newfoundland dog, Morgan, is trained to clear their driveway with a snowblower (she recently graduated from using a shovel). She knows other tricks, too: "She can cook hotdogs on fires, she can get beverages out of coolers, she can go in the fridge and get a beer for me...and she vacuums," said Morgan's owner, Dean Edwards of Sunnybrae, near Salmon Arm, BC. Morgan is also trained in water rescue and is a registered therapy dog for local seniors' homes. [more inside]
Science Needs You!
Zooniverse [previously] currently has 73 active projects they need your help with—ranging from transcribing the handwritten correspondence of anti-slavery activists to annotating the Tate; from tagging animals captured on camera traps throughout Africa, zooming in to cordon off cell nuclei in electron microscope snapshots, or zooming out to explore our home galaxy's wierdnesses . There's something in there that will that pique your interest and send you down the rabbit hole of searching and tagging. Why? Because you are still a better spotter of stuff than a computer at these tasks, you will be doing a mitzvah for the corpus of SCIENCE!, and you may see a heckin' fuzza cheetah kitteh along the way.
John Perry Barlow has died.
Barlow, a Lyricist for the Grateful Dead and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, died in his sleep. Barlow met Bob Weir, founding member of the Dead in 1971 and began a songwriting collaboration that would last until 1995, penning lyrics for “Cassidy”, “Mexicali Blues”, “ Looks like rain” and other tunes.
In 1990 he, John Gilmore (cypherpunk, Usenet alt., Cygnus) and Mitch Kapor (Lotus) founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation to “defend civil liberties in the digital world.”
In 2012 Barlow founded the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
He was a great protector of human rights and a true hero of the internet.
On a personal note: I met him once at a TTI Vanguard conference, on which he served as a a board member. He was as charming and fascinating as you might imagine.
Trying to defeat the Culture would be like trying to eradicate a meme.
Why the Culture Wins: An Appreciation of Iain M. Banks by Joseph Heath, Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.
“In Thailand, they have this thing called the Dog. You see the Dog wherever you go, hanging around by the side of the road, skulking around markets. The thing is, it’s not a breed, it’s more like the universal dog. You could take any dog, of any breed, release it into the streets, and within a couple of generations it will have reverted to the Dog. That’s what the Culture is, it’s like the evolutionary winner of the contest between all cultures, the ultimate basin of attraction.” “I’m in,” I said.
Modesty Blaise is Still a Heroine
At 15, the author found Modesty Blaise, the story strip heroine. Modesty Blaise, the ex-criminal and adventuress, has been an icon for women (and men) since it began in the mid-1960s and lasted for almost 40 years. She provided this author with an image of a women who was unafraid and was the boss. As the author says, "for the first time, I imagined what it would be like to be physically unafraid in the world, to walk down any city street I wanted, at any time of night, and not give a second’s thought to the special care a girl has to take. I thought about what it would be like to be deeply loved by a man, deeply known, but still be the main character in my life story, the only one with her name in the title." The author has most of the particulars of Modesty's story correct. [more inside]
Mural, Mural on the Wall.
Stunning Street Art courtesy of the Museum of Public Art. Despite the name the Museum is not your typical air-conditioned gallery. Check out the video. [more inside]
Your own personal panopticon
The House That Spied on Me - "Thanks to the Internet of Things, I could live in my very own tech-mediated Downton Abbey. That’s the appeal of smart homes for most people, and why they are supposed to be a $27 billion market by 2021. But that wasn’t my primary motivation. The reason I smartened up my house was to find out whether it would betray me."
THE DIMMED LIGHTS ENCOURAGE CYBERPUNKS TO GATHER … YOU LOSE 10 HAPPINESS
CHOOSE YOUR PLAYER
LINDA is a business magnate who made her fortune franchising juice bars and is now a judge on ‘Orca Tank.’ She knows in her heart she has what it takes to flip a local mall.
MAXIMILLIAN is a tech-savvy angel investor who made his fortune monetizing reaction GIFs. He wants to put some of that money in a traditional mall to diversify his wealth.
COLTON inherited millions and became independently wealthy when he sold his Beanie Babies collection at the height of the craze. Buying a mall and turning it around would finally prove to his parents that he’s an adult.
BARBARA wrote a massive one-hit wonder in 1983 called ‘It’s Your Birthday II’ and amassed a small fortune. She wants to invest it in a mall.
The American Mall Game: A fully playable mall strategy experience for the year 2018
LINDA is a business magnate who made her fortune franchising juice bars and is now a judge on ‘Orca Tank.’ She knows in her heart she has what it takes to flip a local mall.
MAXIMILLIAN is a tech-savvy angel investor who made his fortune monetizing reaction GIFs. He wants to put some of that money in a traditional mall to diversify his wealth.
COLTON inherited millions and became independently wealthy when he sold his Beanie Babies collection at the height of the craze. Buying a mall and turning it around would finally prove to his parents that he’s an adult.
BARBARA wrote a massive one-hit wonder in 1983 called ‘It’s Your Birthday II’ and amassed a small fortune. She wants to invest it in a mall.
The American Mall Game: A fully playable mall strategy experience for the year 2018
“Their speech is like no other in the world:"
On a small Greek island, practitioners of an ancient whistling language are holding onto their culture as it slowly dies out.
Antia is home to the last whistlers of Greece. Sfyria, as the whistling language is called in Greek — it comes from the Greek word sfyrizo, to whistle — is not technically a language; linguists refer to it as a speech registrar, like shouting or whispering. It’s the same as modern Greek — the grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure all remain intact — but the sounds come out in high-pitched musical notes. Each letter of the alphabet is individually whistled (alpha, beta, gamma), and strung together to create an ariose warble.[more inside]
the notion that they’ve turned the weathermen against us seems unlikely
The BBC is launching a new look for its weather map - and Scots will be happy to know that the map of the UK will now be flat. Says the BBC: With this new modern look, lots more data and the latest in technology and forecasting science, this is the biggest change to BBC Weather, both for UK and international audiences, for more than ten years.
John Carpenter's "Logitech"
Monster Breeder
Breed some monsters Monster Breeder is a simple in browser game made by Neil Cicierega in which you must catch, and then breed some monsters. Previously.
I did not even want enough to want to want again
My wanting was the leash that pulled me through my life. It kept leading me to the right things.
Until one day the leash was off. I can’t identify what occasioned it, I don’t think it even works that way—with a single, switch-throwing moment—but at some point in the last year my urgency to sustain or possess something (an emotional state, a relationship, a milestone of financial success) evaporated, and my me-ness along with it. I can still put one foot in front of the other, but without conviction. I recall what goals used to be important to me—making a home in a city I love, establishing myself as a writer, arranging a life of regular adventure—but those lures aren’t baited anymore. I am radically disincentivized. [Heads up: some discussion of depression and ideation.]
What makes a murder 'perfect'?
What elevates it to a crime so gruesome and compelling that it deserves its own podcast? In new true crime podcast 'A Very Fatal Murder,' David Pascall heads to Bluff Springs in the heart of small-town America, where the small town is reeling from the death of 17-year-old Hayley Price. Review here.
Debt Jubilee Now!
“The idea of canceling student debt is not just some crazy idea out of left field, but is actually something that could be done, and done in a way that has a moderately positive economic impact,” Marshall Steinbaum, a fellow and research director at the Roosevelt Institute and a coauthor of the report said in an interview.
“The way this and similar polices are often discussed is in a mode of ‘well can we really afford this?’ and the answer is definitely yes.” Let’s Cancel Student Debt And Grow The Economy (Mic)
“The way this and similar polices are often discussed is in a mode of ‘well can we really afford this?’ and the answer is definitely yes.” Let’s Cancel Student Debt And Grow The Economy (Mic)
"BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ORANGUTAN?"
there’s something endlessly hilarious to me about the phrase “hotly debated” in an academic context.
The Last Scan
Despite spending the majority of last decade as a piece of unwanted trash left on the curb, there are now desperate measures being taken to keep CRT monitors and televisions alive. Vintage arcade games need them, and you'll need to keep one around if you want to use that old Zapper. If you can't think of anything else, why not turn one into an oscilloscope? [more inside]
A start, not an end point.
Science journalist, blogger and author Ed Yong has spent the last two years trying to fix the gender imbalance in his stories. [more inside]
Rethinking JT in the age of #metoo
Justin Timberlake seems lost in the woods. No longer can a star like Justin Timberlake — a white artist who has spent his career connecting with black music and popular culture, a straight male artist who has released countless dance-floor seductions that sometimes veer into pushiness, let's say — expect for people to just accept this point of view.
Regardless of your feelings about Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl halftime show (I enjoyed at the time), NPR gives an interesting perspective on his Super Bowl performance, his new album, and how the time just "is not right" for JT.
The most badass photograph ever taken in New Zealand
Boxers, a hairdresser, a stuffed kiwi, an accordion player, a gun, a newspaper, a lute, and a stack of whiskey bottles. Charles Anderson discovers the story behind this portrait of a unique part of New Zealand history (The Spinoff) [more inside]
Honey, I shrunk the video store
With video-rental stores consigned to recent history, British artist and movie enthusiast Andrew Glazebrook (fb only) decided to open his own, armed with little more than glue and discarded candy boxes. In painstaking detail, right down to the drink-stained counter, charity donation tin and membership forms, he has recreated all the grime and glamour of long-forgotten classics like Cannibal Holocaust, Dolls and Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce on a tableau less than six inches high. (via)
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