April 24, 2017
No I Can't Even Is Just The Beginning
Weirdly, thinking about Graham’s number has actually made me feel a little bit calmer about death...
On coming to grips with g_64.
“Prey feels, on a conceptual level, like madness.”
Why Prey is Frontrunner for Game of the Year 2017 [GamesRadar+] “Prey asks 'What if BioShock was fuelled not by weapons, traps, RPG-flavoured FPS and the guided use of weird abilities, but by an unguided set of powers that we don't even want to predict, let alone control? What if we gave players not a Metroid-like set of tools for passing certain obstacles, but left our obstacles open-ended, in terms of both interpretation and solution? What if we didn’t design a set of player abilities, and then built puzzles to fit, but rather designed our world with a rough idea of how things worked, and then played around to see what was really possible? And what if we then redesigned the game on the fly to accommodate everything we could?’ ” [more inside]
Beau Geste
At the Legion’s tomblike headquarters there is a shrine: a wooden prosthetic hand that once belonged to Legion Captain Jean Danjou, who died in Mexico in 1863 defending a road for a long-forgotten cause. Around the roped off hand-shrine hang placards inscribed minutely with the names of the dead – all 40,000 of them, dating back to the Legion’s inception in 1831. The message is clear. Sacrifice is essential but you will not be forgotten.
Wikitribune, evidence-based journalism and combating fake news
From the founder of Wikipedia comes Wikitribune, a platform for evidence-based journalism. NiemanLab. Guardian.
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive
John Muir, not the naturalist but a descendent, was the bestselling self-published hippie author of the ultimate guide for VW bus repair. The book was part R. Crumb comic, part auto manual, and part philosophical musing that detailed in simple terms how to fix VW microbuses for the mechanically uninformed. His publishing company produced a similar book for Subarus and the format may have inspired the line of For Dummies and For Idiots books of later years.
He also penned a treatise on societal justice called The Velvet Monkeywrench
Goodbye, Phaedrus
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was one of “the” books of 70’s, and has sold over 5 million copies since it was released in 1974. It’s story of a narrator calling himself Phaedrus who explores the philosophical concept of quality while on a motorcycle journey with his son. It’s author, Robert Pirsig, died today at age 88. [more inside]
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader (The ORIGINAL launch)
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. An interesting look at the early days of Warhammer 40K, before it forgot it was a satirical.
Cities Seek Deliverance From the E-Commerce Boom
It’s the flip-side to the “retail apocalypse:” A siege of delivery trucks is threatening to choke cities with traffic. But not everyone agrees on what to do about it. "While truck traffic currently represents about 7 percent of urban traffic in American cities, it bears a disproportionate congestion cost of $28 billion, or about 17 percent of the total U.S. congestion costs, in wasted hours and gas. Cities, struggling to keep up with the deluge of delivery drivers, are seeing their curb space and streets overtaken by double-parked vehicles, to say nothing of the bonus pollution and roadwear produced thanks to a surfeit of Amazon Prime orders."
Super Collier shares the gist of why he's so precocious
Jacob Collier discusses harmony and music theory. The jazz wunderkind shows off his ridiculously precise perfect pitch by, among other things, singing the super-ultra-hyper-mega-meta lydian scale PERFECTLY.
300
How fast can a bowler roll 12 consecutive strikes and achieve a perfect game? For Ben Ketola, the answer is 86.9 seconds.
Thank you for being my neighbor.
After years of sharing a wall, saying goodbye to my Upper West Side neighbor:"Here’s what I do know: She worked in radio for years and was a pioneer of sorts, being one of only a handful of female executives at her office in the 1980s. She loved WWD magazine and other fashion publications; her subscriptions showed up regularly at her doorstep, hand-delivered. (Weeks after S.'s death, I opened my door to see one in the middle of our landing right by the elevator—her subscription hadn't been cancelled yet—and my heart ached a little, seeing it just lie there; I grabbed it and propped it by her front door, even though I knew she wasn't there to read it.)"
"Actually, I think I can sort this out myself"
Join me.... for Unsolved Mysteries
Finally at long last, full-episodes of the classic masterpiece: Unsolved Mysteries are streaming on Amazon Prime.
Join me... perhaps you may be able to help solve a mystery! [more inside]
What the Hell is This Beautiful Thing?
Thanks to social media and the power of citizen scientists chasing the northern lights, a
new feature was discovered recently. Nobody knew what this
strange ribbon of purple light was, so … it was called Steve. Also labeled a ProtonArc (
video) [more inside]
“So how else have you fucked me on this deal?”
Sean Tejaratchi, better known as the mind behind LiarTownUSA (previously), has produced a book. He is pleased to announce that the publisher "has honored my desire to keep all the bad words and bird dicks and lunchbox tits and other improprieties. I was not asked to change a single thing." [Readers who wish to avoid the eyestraining retro white-on-black page design should acquire the appropriate bookmarklet.]
Reindeer herding with NRK
Join NRK, the Norwegian national broadcaster, live as they follow a reindeer migration across Finnmarksvidda and down to their summer pastures by the coast. The broadcast is expected to last for five to seven days as the reindeer herd travels around 100km. [more inside]
The Myth of the Monolith "Millennial"
Don’t Call Me a Millennial — I’m an Old Millennial [nymag] Old Millennials, as I’ll call them, who were born around 1988 or earlier (meaning they’re 29 and older today), really have lived substantively different lives than Young Millennials, who were born around 1989 or later, as a result of two epochal events that occurred around the time when members of the older group were mostly young adults and when members of the younger were mostly early adolescents: the financial crisis and smartphones’ profound takeover of society.
with the furrrrrrrrrrrrr
We voted, we debated, and we have our answers: Billboard's list of the 100 greatest choruses of the 21st century, ranked by no metric other than the songs that most immediately came to mind when thinking about everything that a great chorus should be -- clever, catchy, singular, and utterly unforgettable. And perhaps most importantly: When you see the song title, does the chorus immediately jump to mind, not to leave anytime soon? If so, it's the right song for this list.
a gap between my head and the piano
"I could play fluently. Then I struggled to play the song. Then I struggled to remember that I used to play the song. Then I struggled to remember I was the person who wrote the song." A story about Alzheimer's and music, from the Oregonian.
Concise and austere but not necessarily brief
Postal Pieces is a series of 11 musical compositions (on 10 postcards) by written by James Tenney between 1965 and 1971. Details and images from an essay by Larry Polansky. I'm particularly fond of the look and sound of Cellogram.
1941 State Fair
Reports of Her Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
Emily Gould covers author Cat Marnell in her piece Cat Marnell is Still Alive for NY Magazine. Gould writes "There’s always a fine line between appreciating the art that someone’s making out of her fucked-up life and feeling like your attention makes you complicit in her self-destruction." [more inside]
Japan Made Secret Deals with the NSA that Expanded Global Surveillance
Ryan Gallagher of The Intercept provides a fascinating look at the complex relationship between the US and Japanese surveillance organizations who have been cooperating and surveilling each other since the end of the second World War. [more inside]
Lifestyles of the Rich and Tasteless
TOTALLY STOAKED = VERY HAPPY!
Remember awesome Mario miscellany Tumblr Supper Mario Broth? (Previously) Here's some equal time for the other side of the console war: Sonic the Hedgeblog! SPECIAL STAGE: Sonic Retro's epic list of romhacks. [more inside]
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