June 3, 2014
I Dreamed I Held You In My Arms
There should have been a weight limit sign on that dock...
Game of Thrones: The dragons and nuclear weapons nexus
The dragons in Game of Thrones as a metaphor for nuclear weapons is discussed in a recent edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. (Spoiler alert)
Folie a deux, 2014
Two twelve-year-old girls of Waukesha, Wisconsin, are currently in custody following the attempted murder of a classmate. According to their confessions, they and stabbed her nineteen times in order to prove their devotion to Slender Man. The girls believed that by murdering for Slender Man, they could become his "proxies," and live with him in his mansion in the Nicolet National Forest. [more inside]
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
A Surreal Underwater Photoshoot in Bali
Doesn’t your life feel like his?
This week sees the publication of the third volume of “My Struggle,” the thirty-six-hundred-page autobiographical novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard, the Norwegian novelist. It’s hard to overstate the strangeness of the book’s success. The six volumes of “My Struggle” chronicle, in hypnotic detail, episodes from Knausgaard’s life. There is no plot to speak of, unless you consider real life a plot. [more inside]
"...spotlights on the side, an altimeter and, yes, a Remington shaver."
Peak Advertising and the Future of the Web
"Advertising is not well. Though companies supported by advertising still dominate the landscape and capture the popular imagination, cracks are beginning to show in the very financial foundations of the web. Despite the best efforts of an industry, advertising is becoming less and less effective online. The once reliable fuel that powered a generation of innovations on the web is slowly, but perceptibly beginning to falter. Consider the long-term trend: when the first banner advertisement emerged online in 1994, it reported a (now) staggering clickthrough rate of 78%. By 2011, the average Facebook advertisement clickthrough rate sat dramatically lower at 0.05%. Even if only a rough proxy, something underlies such a dramatic change in the ability for an advertisement to pique the interest of users online. What underlies this decline, and what does it mean for the Internet at large? This short [PDF] paper puts forth the argument for peak advertising—the argument that an overall slowing in online advertising will eventually force a significant (and potentially painful) shift in the structure of business online. Like the theory of Peak Oil that it references, the goal is not to look to the immediate upcoming quarter, but to think on the decade-long scale about the business models that sustain the Internet." [more inside]
Make the Economy SCREAM!
What Really Happened in Chile '“A coup attempt will be initiated on 11 September,” the cable read. “All three branches of the armed forces and the carabineros [Chile’s national police] are involved in this action. A declaration will be read on Radio Agricultura at 7 a.m. on 11 September. . . . The carabineros have the responsibility for seizing President Salvador Allende.”'
"That is how the U.S. government learned of the coup in Chile. This might be hard for many Americans, Chileans, and people elsewhere to believe, since it has become conventional wisdom, especially on the left, that Washington played a crucial role in the military-led overthrow of the democratically elected Allende, which resulted in the nearly 17-year authoritarian rule of General Augusto Pinochet." [more inside]
Drunks passed out on the streets of Tokyo
photographed for an ad against overindulgence. "After a stressful week, Friday and Saturday are the days when hard-working Japanese men and women 'let their hair down' by taking part in post-work 'drinking until you drop,' says Yaocho Bar Group, which launched the alcohol awareness campaign.
Combined with a low alcohol tolerance common among the Asian population, consequences of the wild weekend partying can be less than ideal." [more inside]
Tank for sale. Driven only by a little old man while crushing cars.
In all the discussion over gun collections, one subset is often overlooked - the few, the rare, the heavy armament collectors. With a television presence, they are beginning to get more notoriety - but among them all, one stood out - the eccentric Jacques Littlefield. He passed away in 2009, but his estate has now listed several of his tanks for sale. If you've got a cool 3 mil, you could pick up this fully restored Panzer tank. On a budget? Try this Sherman tank instead, for only $250,000.
Turnin' and tossin' a-tossin' and turnin' through space
Star Trek scenes of crews reacting to collisions and/or explosions + video stabilization software + soundtrack from Lil Jon = Turn Down for Trek. [more inside]
National Spelling Bee Co-Champions VS Urban Dictionary
Urban Dictionary Spelling Bee: In an attempt to determine a final winner from last week's Scripps National Spelling Bee, Mashable challenged National Spelling Bee co-champions Sriram Hathwar and Ansun Sujoe to words that really matter in life: selections from the Urban Dictionary.
Solve for (D)emocracy
This programmer thinks he's solved the gerrymandering problem. Gerrymandering has been discussed on the blue many times. But with very little eye towards solving the problem. A programmer named Brian Olsen has come up with the idea of mapping districts using compactness. It's fun! Check your state!. [more inside]
My first language is Norwegian
There are lots of dialects of English. Which one do you speak?
Do you hear the echoes of Carlos Boozer?
"You Crazy Bastards. What Have You Done? Now I Have To Rebuild!"
In 2003, Andy "waxpancake" Baio created Upcoming, "a collaborative event calendar focused on interesting arts and tech events around the world, curated by its community. It surfaced weird and wonderful events that usually fell under the radar of traditional event listings from newspapers and local weeklies." In 2005, it was acquired by Yahoo!, who killed the site last April with little warning, and no way to back up events. Fortunately, the complete site was saved by the Internet Archive. But Upcoming isn't dead yet! Two months ago, Yahoo! offered to sell the domain back to Baio. And now, with a fully-funded kickstarter, he's planning on "rebuilding it for the modern era using tools and platforms that weren't available when it was first designed." Welcome to the brilliant life, stupid death, and improbable return of Upcoming.org. [more inside]
Still we give thanks for life every day of the week
Well Prepared (Lorde - Royals Refix) (Soundcloud, static video at YouTube) from Jamaican dancehall singer Busy Signal. Pitchfork says "It's an effortless track that makes something incredibly familiar feel eerily and pleasantly brand new." [more inside]
Remedial Dungeons & Dragons
Tired of grinding your way through overly-complicated RPGs? Looking for a game where user input is kept to an absolute minimum? If so, One Tap Quest is the game for you.
The University of Illinois' Altgeld Math Models
The Altgeld Math Models. Below you will find around 170 of the models that were photographed in March 2005 when the third floor model cases had to be emptied and moved. The models were carefully moved into the undergraduate lounge and arranged in a miniature "model museum" for two weeks, where each was carefully photographed and is now available for your enjoyment below. [more inside]
Conflict of Exclusivity Within the LGBT Community
Eric Berry goes to the International Mr. Leather event "Much like the leather community in general, IML is overwhelmingly represented by gay males. While leather fetishes are by no means exclusive to gay men, the amount of women I encountered at the event could more or less be counted on two hands, as compared to the thousands of men I saw.
But the more time that I spent at the event, the more I had to question whether or not the ratio of men to women I saw was truly representative of those within the leather community, or whether or not there was some sort of institutionalized segregation of women." EVERYTHING IS NSFW [more inside]
"Don’t Forget to Be Awesome"
The Teen Whisperer by Margaret Talbot [New Yorker] How the author [John Green] of “The Fault in Our Stars” built an ardent army of fans.
“scarifying and fetching off a great part of the Skin.”
Indelible Ink: The Deep History of Tattoo Removal
By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, documentation of tattoo removal was often found in accounts of Europeans in contact with cultures overseas—particularly, although not exclusively, societies in the New World. The failed effort to remove the English pirate’s facial tattoo was not the only attempt at such a procedure in the early modern Atlantic world. A number of French, Spanish, English, and Native American sources suggest that people of the period could regret their permanent body modifications just as much as modern people do. Tattoo removal in the past, however, reflected something more powerful than transient personal taste.[more inside]
'Hunger Games' salute banned in Thailand
The greatest spell in cricket history
Elmer and Gertrude? They are likely pretty old.
The median living Brittany is 23 years old. Nate Silver (and Allison McCann) perform some pretty impressive data wrangling and graphical analysis on the age of living Americans with a given name.
be disappointed if you expect sexy times though
Most research on casual sex is done with college students. As a consequence, we know very little about hookup experiences of non-college students: those who never went to college, those who just finished college, and those who can barely remember their college years. At The Casual Sex Project, everyone is welcome, regardless of age, gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation… The more stories – and the more diverse stories – the better!The Casual Sex Project was set up by doctor/sex researcher Zhana Vrangalova to, well, share stories about casual sex in a non-prurient, non-judgmental matter. It's of course NSFW.
Angelina Jolie’s Perfect Game
"I Love, I Love, I Love My Wife—But Oh! You Kid!"
Ragtime’s slaves-to-the-rhythm weren’t just figments of Billy Sunday’s fevered imagination—and “I Love, I Love, I Love My Wife—But Oh! You Kid!” wasn’t just a novelty ditty. It was, like the other hits of its era, a generational marker, an anthem of changing times and freedom and youth. The old songs sound goofy to us, but a hundred years ago they carried a teenybopper throb and the impish menace of punk rock. Lengthy (6000 words) link-rich article by Jody Rosen at Slate.
« Previous day | Next day »