March 16, 2016
They belong in a museum
As news arrives of a fifth Indiana Jones film arriving in 2019, here's a look back at the Indiana Jones films that never were.
Amazing sand artistry
Artists in Vietnam Can Create Photorealistic Designs Using Sand (narration in Russian). Commentary from a tv show in English. [more inside]
sinking down
How to market a budding industry
Pot businesses are, above all, businesses, and they’re responding as businesses do: with marketing aimed at convincing longtime pot users that their brand is better than the others—and, just as important, at increasing demand by encouraging curious nonusers to try their product first. --The Art of Marketing Marijuana [SLTheAtlantic]
The woman for whom a (micro)nation was founded
Princess Joan of Sealand (née Joan Bates) has died after a long illness, spending her last days in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. The Principality of Sealand (previously) was declared an independent nation by Roy Bates on September 2, 1967, making the former carnival queen Joan a princess on her 38th birthday. Her Royal Highness is survived by her daughter Penny and her son Michael, who serves as the Prince Regent of the abandoned nautical military fort.
USA Football/Soccer :(
ESPN estimates nearly a third of young Americans play soccer, so why can’t a sports powerhouse of 320m people produce a Messi – or even a João Moutinho?
Unproblematica
The classification of Illinois's state fossil, the Tully monster, has been a mystery since its discovery in 1958. But now a team at Yale has determined that it is a vertebrate ancestor of the lamprey, after studying over a thousand fossils and noticing the presence of a notochord, among other distinctively vertebratey features. The (paywalled) Nature paper is here.
"I want to make this sport legal."
Just when you think you've heard all the grizzled-fighter-taking-one-last-swing-at-redemption stories, along comes Gunn — the first bare-knuckle boxing champion the U.S. has seen in more than 120 years. Undefeated in 71 fights, Gunn rules the circuit, a nationwide underground network of pro boxers, mixed martial arts fighters, and accomplished street brawlers who enter the ring without gloves for as much as $50,000 cash. It's dangerous and bloody and illegal almost everywhere. And if things go Gunn's way — for once in his life — it just could be the next major fight sport. Bobby Gunn: Champion of the Underworld
Cryptowall being served by ads on major sites like BBC and NYT
Ars Technica reports that the tainted ads may have exposed tens of thousands of people over the past 24 hours alone. According to a blog post published Monday by Trend Micro, the new campaign started last week when "Angler," a toolkit that sells exploits for Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and other widely used Internet software, started pushing laced banner ads through a compromised ad network. Spiderlabs has found ads with more than 1200 lines of obfuscated code designed to slip past security software. Malwarebytes reports that the surge started this weekend, and includes sites like msn, nytimes, bbc, aol, my.xfinity, nfl, realtor.com, theweathernetwork.com, thehill, and newsweek. Affected networks included those owned by Google, AppNexis, AOL, and Rubicon. [more inside]
Thunderbirds Are Gone
Sylvia Anderson, ex-wife and co-creator-producer with Gerry Anderson of all the "Supermarionation" series (as well as a couple 'full-sized-actor' shows), and best known as the voice of Thunderbirds' Lady Penelope, has passed away at the age of 88.
Love black? A suriken whiz? Super silent sneakery skills? Nunchuk this
It's Back (Sort Of)
Nina Simone's Face
Ta-Nehisi Coates on the trouble with the upcoming Nina Simone biopic:
"Simone was able to conjure glamour in spite of everything the world said about black women who looked like her. And for that she enjoyed a special place in the pantheon of resistance. That fact doesn’t just have to do with her lyrics or her musicianship, but also how she looked."
[more inside]
"...and do equal right to the poor and to the rich..."
At 11am Eastern time, President Obama will nominate Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, to the Supreme Court. Judge Garland is a centrist who was previously considered by the President for SCOTUS nomination in 2010, during the selection process which gave us Justice Sotomayor. He is reportedly "well known, well respected, and tremendously well liked in Washington legal circles; even Republicans have nice things to say about him." [more inside]
What's next?
An episode-by-episode discussion of The West Wing, one of television’s most beloved shows, co-hosted by one of its stars, Joshua Malina, along with Hrishikesh Hirway of Song Exploder.
the pipes the pipes are calling
“if he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad.” That's what Jerome K. Jerome said about bagpipes in Three Men in a Boat. But here's 16 Songs Actually Improved By Bagpipes according to A.V. Club.
(He Talks in His Sleep)
“Oh, that doesn’t complete my collection at all! No! Oh no! Well let’s see, I have a dodo, and a rock, and a phoenix...oh dear! A pterodactyl, yes, the unicorn, the griffin, dear, oh yes, well a mermaid doesn’t count, she’s out in the pool! No... well, if she ever gets out I’m gonna mate her with the centaur! Yes! What do you think?! Certainly! Well, I don’t know. What do you think? Well, if you don’t mate them you know they’ll die off!”The Dream World of Dion McGregor [more inside]
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