June 11, 2017
VIDEO GAME TRAILERS.
Does what it says on the cover
recommendmeabook.com shows you the first page of a book. If you're curious, you can click to find out what it is.
Architect to Early Hollywood Luminaries
Paul Revere Williams designed over 3000 buildings in 1920s-30s Hollywood. The website for the Paul Revere Williams Project has researched many of these buildings and has an ongoing gallery thumbnails with links. Research is still underway and the project is still looking for info on his work.
The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth, SO HELP ME GOD
Juror removed for using secret knowledge from the Holy Ghost ("A higher being told me that Corinne Brown was not guilty on all charges, and I trust the Holy Ghost." 27:10-11) . Defendant convicted. Defendant appeals on the grounds that the Holy Spirit is not real but was actually just the Juror's judgment that one of the witnesses was lying. Welcome to Congresswoman Corinne Brown's very unusual appeal. [more inside]
Referendum on Statehood
In 1898, Puerto Rico became an unincorporated territory of the United States of America. In 1917, the people of Puerto Rico were granted US citizenship. Today, the voters of Puerto Rico have cast their vote to seek admission into the United States of America, and assume the rights, privileges, and duties of its 51st state. (NPR) People are tweeting with #Estado51 and #Plebiscito2017. But the results are contested, and ultimately, the referendum raises more questions than it answers. After more than fifty years of debate, it is still not over.
Meanwhile, on the mainland, the Puerto Rico Day Parade took place today in NYC, and local radio stations are bumping Despacito for the occasion. [more inside]
You look familiar. Have we met before?
AI learns how to create human faces from scratch. Dr. Mike Tyka, a biophysicist working for Google, has been using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) to create images of human faces with a fair amount of success. The Dr. breaks his process down for us in his blog post Work in progress: Portraits of Imaginary people.
The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques
"[Nielsen Norman Group] conducted a survey with 452 adult respondents from the United States who were not employed in an IT- or marketing-related industry. In this survey, participants were shown 23 wireframes corresponding to different types of advertisements and rated how much they disliked them on a scale of 1 to 7."
Who is Mister P?
The catchily-named Multilevel Regression and Poststratification (MRP or Mr. P) is a newish technique for estimating opinion in states, cities, or legislative districts too numerous for there to be really solid sample sizes in every one of them. Yougov.uk recently used an MRP model to be among the first successfully predicting a hung parliament, getting about 93\% of constituencies right. Why do MRP? How does it work? [more inside]
A slug, a dandelion, a camera
For your viewing pleasure: time lapse video of a slug eating a dandelion. 30 minutes in 30 seconds, from Canadian photographer R. Jeanette Martin.
How not to review Wonder Woman
Though the Wonder Woman movie has received almost universal critical and box office success, David Edelstein's review of it was less than glowing, musing that all the "gushing reviews of Wonder Woman suggest that people are grading on a big curve." His review prompted Gavia Baker-Whitelaw's
acerbic response in The Daily Dot, a piece in Daily Kos calling it one of the most sexist movie reviews ever, and a satirical piece in Jezebel titled Gal Gadot Did Not Give Me a Hard Enough Boner. Feeling misunderstood, Edelstein then
wrote a defense of his review, prompting Drew Magary to
marvel at his "non-apology". Ultimately, Edelstein's review is a good reminder of the point raised previously by Emily McCarty:
we need more female film critics.
Green Goddess
The Martha Stewart of Marijuana Edibles, Lizzie Widdicombe/The New Yorker: It’s a category that used to begin and end with the bone-dry pot brownie, served in a college dorm room. Laurie Wolf is a leader in its gourmet revolution. ~ Female Chefs Are Leading the Cannabis Cuisine Revolution, Avital Norman Nathman/Vice Munchies:
Legal cannabis is one of the fastest-growing industries in the country, and more of its leadership roles are held by women than in almost any other sector. [...] And when it comes to consumption, women are not only excelling in the cannabis kitchen, but leading as pioneers in this nascent field. ~ 91-Year-Old Nonna Marijuana Is the Queen of Weed Cuisine, David Bienenstock/Vice Munchies
Meet Juniper, the happiest fox in the world!
"It is not known whether Hawaiian pizza will be served at the wake."
Philosophy, Cyberpunk, Politics and Jungle
"Private frustration is converted into collective satisfaction"
Stump the Bookseller is a blog run by Cleveland's Loganberry Books, in which the community helps people identify books they only vaguely remember, AskMe-style. Found thanks to Alice Gregory, in NYT Mag's Letter of Recommendation column. [more inside]
A rolling example of economic sadism
The tramp chair was a strange bit of fin de siecle sadism that made its way to your vacation postcard. Featured in Popular Mechanics and an inspiration to escape artists, it was on display in 2015(video) and will be so again this year.
Between an aging sailor's memory and contradictory written sources
The Norwegian who knew his tortoises so well that he changed the course of history What happened was, of course, not that simple. Nothing rules the world more than mere chance, and a long chain of events paved the ground for Darwin's groundbreaking discovery. One of these events was ‒ incredibly enough ‒ meeting a Norwegian along the way, a man who just like Darwin grew up not knowing what a tortoise was.
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