June 17, 2015
Does there happen to be a historically interesting Erin Burr for this?
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has announced that a woman will be joining Alexander Hamilton on the US $10 bill in 2020. [more inside]
teaching the machine to hallucinate
Google Photos recognizes the content of images by training neural networks. Google Research is conducting experiments on these simulated visual brains by evolving images to hyperstimulate them, creating machine hallucinations - like that image of melting squirrels that's been going around lately.
The Nightwalker and the Nocturnal Picaresque
Bernie Sanders on income inequality
Not tricks, Michael, illusions
The Best Illusion of the Year Contest (previously, previouslier) has announced the 2015 winners.
[more inside]
...oh my God! -- it’s full of pixels!
• 1.47 Gigapixel panorama of Barack Obama's 2009 Inaugural Address
• 4-Gigapixel panorama of the surface of Mars
• 34-Gigapixel panorama of Prague
• 152-Gigapixel panorama of Rio de Janiero taken from Sugarloaf
• 272-Gigapixel panorama of Shanghai
• 320-Gigapixel panorama of London
• Currently the largest: this 365-Gigapixel panorama of Mont Blanc. [story]
• GigaPan has a wide variety of panoramas in their gallery.
• Blakeway Gigapixel specializes in sports stadiums in full attendance (where you can tag people you recognize) and National Parks sites like the Grand Canyon
"I don’t think it belongs here."
"In other words this bomb is so sensitive that the slightest movement either inside or outside will cause it to explode." In 1980, a bomb was smuggled into Harvey's Wagon Wheel Casino in Lake Tahoe. In an attempt to defuse it, it exploded and severely damaged the hotel. It was the largest domestic bomb to be detonated in the US until the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. And yet, no-one was killed. [more inside]
That thing you want? It sucks
It's E3! As various tech companies demo, talk up and otherwise flog their entries in the great VR headset race, John Walker of RPS suggests they may be wasting their money.
Leon Bridges: like that 60's rhythm and blues sound never left
Taking on the dreamy, compelling sound of the lost soul decades is a damn high bar to set for yourself. Soul revivalists usually don’t get very far in my book, because what’s the point of competing with the likes of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding? Listening to Leon Bridges made me do a 180 on that stance. See, if you actually can hold a candle to legends like Cooke and Redding — and Bridges can — then there’s no reason not to indulge in some nostalgia.NPR has a first listen of Coming Home, Bridges' debut album, and you can see and hear plenty more of him on YouTube, from a live cover of Cooke's "Nothing Can Change This Love" to a solo performance of "Lisa Sawyer," a reflective song about his mother. [more inside]
Make Way for Brosé
Why More Men Are Drinking Pink "You go to a table where people are sitting outside and they're like, 'I'll take a magnum of Bedell,' and maybe it's seven dudes and you're a little surprised. You thought you were going to be talking to them about scotch, but they want some Provence rosé, and that's totally cool."
Ramadan begins
From waking up in the early hours for a quick bite and sip of water, to the waiting – date in hand – for the seconds to tick by until the call to prayer at sunset, why do Muslims fast and what is Ramadan? -- and why Muslims in Alaska will fast 9 hours more than Muslims in Cape Town (and what 1 scholar is doing about it).
Running a marathon while solving equations
Rock Band Rush Finally Makes the Cover of Rolling Stone | Great interview with Neil Peart.
Well, let’s not go there yet, and let’s certainly not start there.
The Seven Minutes In 2000 When The Clinton White House Considered Endorsing Marriage Equality (SL Longform Buzzfeed)
“And I promise, I will never be in a bicycle race—that I can tell you.”
Real-estate mogul and reality-television star Donald Trump said Tuesday he will seek the Republican nomination for President of the United States. [New York Times]
The garrulous real estate developer whose name has adorned apartment buildings, hotels, Trump-brand neckties and Trump-brand steaks, announced on Tuesday his entry into the 2016 presidential race, brandishing his wealth and fame as chief qualifications in an improbable quest for the Republican nomination.[more inside]
Social attraction
More than four decades ago, budding ornithologist Stephen Kress picked up an old field guide, and read that colonies of puffins had once nested on a tiny Maine island called Egg Rock, the last ones disappearing around 1885.
That fact so captivated him, he decided to try something that no other ornithologist ever had – he would attempt to restore a native bird population to the Maine islands where they had once thrived.[Stephen Kress previously] [Bonus Puffin: PUFFIN CAM]
That fact so captivated him, he decided to try something that no other ornithologist ever had – he would attempt to restore a native bird population to the Maine islands where they had once thrived.[Stephen Kress previously] [Bonus Puffin: PUFFIN CAM]
the rejected
A life in motion, stopped cold
After an attempt to return to Olympic glory ended in paralysis, Laís Souza rebuilds her life one movement at a time. [SLNYT]
Completely enclosed in the hollow of his hand
There is popular music and popular cinema and there is actually popular sculpture. Much of it is what we would usually call ornaments. Some of it is minis — i.e., miniatures. Minis are sculpture for the masses in the same way as pop is music for the masses. (If you are trying to explain this to someone suspicious with an arts degree you can call them Kleinplastik, which means almost the same thing but is German and therefore a valid intellectual construct.)For HiLoBrow Patrick Stuart starts a new, ten part series analysing the mini figures and models used in wargames as art. In the first he looks at the constraints that go into designing and manufacturing minis. (Originally published at his own blog.)
short video: Avalanche! Run rabbit, run!
Some pretty interesting footage of a rabbit tangling with an avalanche on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
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