March 17, 2013
something something "face off"
The Legend of Cage: Beneath the Mask is a texture pack modification for Majora's Mask based primarily on the face of actor Nicolas Cage. Via.
Murica
My fellow Mefites, I implore you. Don't even think about clicking the more inside if you have anything pressing to do. [previously] [more inside]
Too much blood
Ennio Morricone, the film composer behind the iconic scores to The Good The Bad and the Ugly, A Fistful of Dollars, The Thing, and many other films, has said he wouldn't like to work with Quentin Tarantino because he "places music in his films without coherence". He also said Django Unchained had 'too much blood'.
The Problem with Video Game Reviews
All The Pretty Doritos:How Video Game Journalism Went Off The Rails Article from forbes.com detailing the pressures video game reviewers and publications come under from gaming companies. These range from the relatively subtle (gifts, gratuities, entertainments put on for visiting journos), to overtly pressuring/punishing publications for not playing ball (cancelling interviews and exclusives in response to less-than-flattering editorial, threatening to pull advertising in response to bad reviews). At the extreme end, the article mentions one journalist who was fired two weeks after publishing a 'bad' (6/10) review for Kane & Lynch.
Dina Kelberman is google
Les érections de Stephen Harper
Les érections de Stephen Harper. (SL video) (SFW). Speaking in French, Prime Minister Stephen Harper asks the hard questions about Canadian "érections". (Via MontrealMemes)
Somewhere between Elvis and the Lone Ranger
Like a weird game of Rock Paper Sissors Lizard Spock
Inventions that Changed the World is a 2004 BBC Miniseries in the vein of Connections (previously) hosted by Jeremy Clarkson (yes the Top Gear guy).
The Gun.
The Computer.
The Jet.
The Telephone.
The Television
hifalutin talk about photoshop
"An examination that begins from the classical dichotomy shape-substance and that questions itself about the nature of purity and the unavoidability of the corruption, without taking itself too seriously, because in the end, you know, children like to play."
Faster Than Light
Davis and Ma wrote up a long list of one-paragraph game pitches to prototype. They would be small, manageable games that two people could complete on their own. The game they chose to go with would have to be finished within a year, because that was all they had budgeted for. Among the pitches inspired by board games, roguelikes and all the genres that excited them was a 2D, top-down management game called FTL. The Opposite of Fail
- The making of FTL (Previously)
I'm A Princess
French group Golden Mustache contemplates the sex lives of various video game characters (video, English subtitles, surprisingly SFW, wait for Tetris)
Dreams of the Sonora Aero Club
Sometime in the mid-1960s, a junk dealer in Houston, Texas acquired 12 large notebooks that had been thrown out to the curb after a house fire. [more inside]
The Mazel of the Irish
"[The Loyal Yiddish Sons of Erin]'s biggest event was the annual Erev St. Patrick's Day Banquet. It was a formal gala at the Americana Hotel, complete with a big band, kosher corned beef and green bagels." American-Irish-Jews still celebrate St. Patrick's Day: “It’s an American-Irish holiday, surely not Jewish. It has nothing to do with Jewish people. But I’m Irish, and I have a feeling for it.” [more inside]
Plip plop plip plop
Jumping never felt so deliberate
Take the twitch out of platforming with Bump, a delightful new little turn-based randomly-generated roguelikelike by clever game dev and creative fellow Aaron Steed. Jump at or on or over things! Collect diamonds with head-bumping! Avoid and/or destroy spikes and bad guys! Try not to die! Die anyway! It's a good time. [more inside]
Is Pope Francis a Fraud?
After a right-wing coup crushed the reforms of Vatican II, one scholar says the last two popes are illegitimate. It comes near the end of a thousand-year history of the Vatican’s global rise to power, ambiguous flourishing and rapid decline. It also comes after 40 years of internal counterrevolution under the previous two popes, during which a group of hardcore right-wing cardinals have consolidated power in the Curia and stamped out nearly all traces of the 1960s liberal reform agenda of Pope John XXIII and Vatican II. A handful of intellectuals, both inside and outside the church, quietly believe that means Pope Francis isn’t a legitimate pope at all.
Yes! We'll be your neighbor!
To commemorate the anniversary of his birthday on March 20th, cracked.com's Brendan McGinley has put together a remarkably touching collection of facts about the influence and importance of Mister Fred Rogers. [previously] [more inside]
Untied & weightless
Debugging
Every programmer knows that debugging is hard. Great debuggers, though, can make the job look simple. " That attitude is illustrated in an anecdote from IBM's Yorktown Heights Research Center. A programmer had recently installed a new workstation. All was fine when he was sitting down, but he couldn't log in to the system when he was standing up. That behavior was one hundred percent repeatable: he could always log in when sitting and never when standing." [more inside]
“Happy shopping! Enjoy the 1st.”
The food stamp economy of Woonsocket, RI, profiled in The Washington Post.
Not there yet, but cause for hope...
Fourteen adults have also been "functionally cured" after they were given combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) for their HIV infection. [Warning: autoplay] They have been able to stop taking the treatment while still keeping their infection under control, according to a new study in the journal PLOS Pathogens.There is an important distinction between 'functionally cured' and 'HIV negative'. [more inside]
Haircut in Cyprus
On Saturday the EU mandated that all bank deposits in Cyprus pay a 6.75% "stability levy" on the first €100,000 and 9.9% on the excess to help pay for €6 billion of the €10 billion bank bailout.
This is despite opposition from the Cyprus finance minister, who stated earlier this month that "there really couldn't be a more stupid idea" and more recently that "I wish I was not the minister to do this". The scale of the bailout is nearly 50% of Cyprus' entire GPD, and many officials are concerned that the money will go to Russian gangsters and oligarchs.
The Saturday announcement lead to a run on the ATMs, which caused banks to restrict electronic transfers and set a €400 withdrawal limit. Most ATMs were out of money by the end of the day and a frustrated man threatened one bank with a bulldozer.
The plan was scheduled to be voted on by parliament on Sunday, but it has been delayed to Monday and might not be passed by politicians who have heard complaints from their Cypriot constituents all weekend. The Cyprus President warned of total financial collapse and euro exit if it is not approved.
Can a porn map be map porn?
Global Internet Porn Habits: An interactive map that lets you see the most commonly searched porn terms by state or country. No porn images, but obviously porn-related language and the word porn in the URL, so whether it is SFW is up to you.
The art of marquetry
Marquetry is the art of making pictures composed of cut pieces of wood veneer which are then attached to a piece of furniture. Silas Kopf is perhaps the best known American doing marquetry. He works in Easthampton, MA on cabinets, desks, and at one time, pianos for Steinway. He also decorated a piano for Walden Woods using indigenous wood. [more inside]
“What you cannot do, a Cossack can.”
The Cossacks Are Back. May the Hills Tremble. [New York Times]
"In his third term, President Vladimir V. Putin has offered one clear new direction for the country: the development of a conservative, nationalist ideology. Cossacks have emerged as a kind of mascot, with growing financial and political support."
"Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" Jeremiah 8:22
Hepatitis C has possibly been cured, but... In April, 2012 a human study with a combination of Gillead Sciences' Sofosbuvir, and Bristol-Myers' Daclatasvir led to a 100 percent cure rate for hepatitis-C, the world's leading cause of liver disease. Unfortunately, Gillead, which paid billions for Pharmasset, the company that developed Sofosbuvir, refused to allow additional studies with Bristol-Myers, choosing instead to try developing a proprietary cure, possibly using highly toxic Ribavirin. They are also backing away from a similarly successful study completed this year, previously approved by Pharmasset. Since Gilliad's delay of additional human studies, approximately 300,000 people worldwide have died from liver disease related to Hepatitis-C and 40% of all available liver transplants have been diverted to a treatable disease, while up to 200 million additional infected people worldwide -- many of whom do not know they are infected until the end stages of the disease -- are still waiting for a cure. Meanwhile, Hepatitis-C activists are trying to petition the White House to find a way to resolve the impasse. [more inside]
Abercrombie & Fitch & Zizek
In 2003, Abercrombie and Fitch approached Slovene philosopher and culture critic Slavoj Žižek to write ad copy. The results were odd. (And NSFW.)
Go, Gibson guitar gals!
As American men went off to war during World War II, women stepped in to fill the jobs they left behind, keeping the factories and shipyards running, and the economy humming.
While most were praised for their patriotism, one unheralded group of women worked in the shadows building Gibson guitars. The maker of the famous instrument never confirmed that women crafted its guitars during the war, and in an official company history, even reported it stopped producing instruments for those years. But now the time has come to shed some new historical light on the Kalamazoo Gals. [more inside]
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