June 5, 2014
"You're all slightly mad, aren't you?"
Loafing with puffins. RSPB staff can be isolated for up to three weeks at a time on tiny Coquet Island, home to approximately 44,000 nesting seabirds, including rare terns, and puffins.
Wardens Paul Morrison and Wesley Davis showed the BBC's Helen Mark around, and described their conservation work and what they get up to on rainy days.
"They look very Glam Rock but I have a suspicion it's going to be Abstract Jazz."
"They look very Glam Rock but I have a suspicion it's going to be Abstract Jazz."
"War on the impossible"
Anatomy of a failure, with vampires. Icelandic Eve-creator CCP's World of Darkness MMO was shut down recently. This Guardian article gives a behind-the-scenes rubberneck at what went wrong.
Blair, Nebraska Hail Storm Damage
Terrifying hail storm aftermath photos. Via r/weather.
How To Fall Up While The Nation Falls Down
Tim Geithner says he doesn't know how he went from a "mediocre student" to leading the response to the "largest destruction of GDP in world history." His resume highlights were from addressing economic crises in developing countries in ways that correlated strongly to increasing poverty and reducing growth. His main response to critics of his "bailout the top" approach is that disaster was the only alternative.
Redefining DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME (or do, it's cool.)
Fabricator, garage inventor, and enthusiam personified, Colin Furze decided to make some of the neater aspects of the X-Men universe a little more real. [previously] [more inside]
Tickets for Restaurants
Alinea was the first restaurant I was ever involved in and our own managers viewed me as an outsider to hospitality – and in many ways rightly so. When I said, “We should just sell tickets,” it was mostly laughed off completely. The attitude was – that’s not fine dining, that’s not hospitality, that’s not soigné. (...) I assumed at the time, about a year before we opened, that I would simply adopt the ticketing software from a theater system, sports ticketing software, or event tickets to use at Next. But it was immediately clear that none of these would work. Restaurants have a very different type of seating template than a theater show or sporting event. None of the ticket software systems met even half of our needs.
Could This Kill Internet 'Journalism' As We Know It? (Probably Not)
@SavedYouAClick brings a new functionality to the 'joke twitter account' by retweeting click-baity headlines and spoiling them with well-under-140-character explanations:
...Sending text messages. RT @Upworthy: They could've waited till they got home. Doing it in a car is SO not OK.
...A piano. RT @HuffingtonPost: You won't believe what just washed up in the East River
...The article doesn't answer this. @alistdaily: How #Beyonce became a #marketing star
...Use 2005 as your baseline instead of 2014. RT @Slate: This one weird trick will help you cut carbon emissions overnight
...RT That's me! @jackshafer: New @ReutersOpinion: The guy who reads crap on the Web so you don’t have to
...Sending text messages. RT @Upworthy: They could've waited till they got home. Doing it in a car is SO not OK.
...A piano. RT @HuffingtonPost: You won't believe what just washed up in the East River
...The article doesn't answer this. @alistdaily: How #Beyonce became a #marketing star
...Use 2005 as your baseline instead of 2014. RT @Slate: This one weird trick will help you cut carbon emissions overnight
...RT That's me! @jackshafer: New @ReutersOpinion: The guy who reads crap on the Web so you don’t have to
the life and daily struggle of a 72-year-old can collector
Archaeological Records
“I’ve used the contemporary archaeology of Olompali to address the concept of stereotype, in this case, what we generally consider to be the ‘hippie,’" - California state archaeologist, E. Breck Parkman has published a paper analyzing the diversity of vinyl records excavated from the ruins of Rancho Olompali in Marin County, California. The site, formerly closely associated with the Grateful Dead, was the home of the Chosen Family commune from 1967 to 1969. The commune and the mansion both met their end in '69, razed by an electrical fire. [more inside]
Against YA
Jedi is not the 2nd most popular religion in any state? How disapointing
The second-largest religion in each state
Christianity is by far the largest religion in the United States; more than three-quarters of Americans identify as Christians. A little more than half of us identify as Protestants, about 23 percent as Catholic and about 2 percent as Mormon. But what about the rest of us?
Christianity is by far the largest religion in the United States; more than three-quarters of Americans identify as Christians. A little more than half of us identify as Protestants, about 23 percent as Catholic and about 2 percent as Mormon. But what about the rest of us?
All I know for sure is it's not the guy that draws Ziggy.
Somebody is providing guest art for this week's Pearls Before Swine strips. Somebody who can draw a fantastic scene of Martian robotic destruction. Somebody who hasn't drawn a comic strip in 19 years?
Let's Face It, Leaves Are Dumb
Butter Ya'self - Gettin' hot and heavy in the oven like a casserole
Butter Ya'Self (Vimeo; YouTube) is "basically ... the story of Drake and Lil’ Wayne [as told with an anthropomorphic banana, hot dog bun, and stick of butter]. ButterKrust is 100% based on Wayne – Nana Splits isn’t based on anyone real but his relationship to ButterKrust is based on Drake’s relationship to Lil’ Wayne. The most important thing I wanted to express in this video is the relationship between them, how tight they are and how much Nana Splits looks up to ButterKrust." That's the story from Julian Petschek, who is studying at The California Institute of the Arts. [more inside]
It was a-him, Luigi.
Nintendo would like to remind you that the Year of Luigi isn't over. And how could it be, when the best part of Mario Kart 8 might just be Luigi's Death Stare? Spawning a number of gifs, videos, remixes, oh so many parodies, and a subreddit (r/LuigiDeathStares) already more popular than r/MarioKart, Luigi and his angry eyebrows are having a moment.
Following The Beautiful Game In The USA
"It was the dark ages of American soccer, with the United States preparing to host a World Cup for a sport that its public had virtually no common appreciation for. Since the collapse of the North American Soccer League in the 1980s, the country didn’t even have a professional top division – Major League Soccer was a mere glimmer in Doug Logan’s eye.
It was a time when the notion that airing football matches in the US could be a viable, lucrative endeavour received “zero respect”, in Keane’s words, from broadcasters. Burdened by extortionate broadcasting agreements with pay-per-view carriers, Keane would often record European matches for diehard fans who had no idea which teams won over the weekend."
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"Elephants are obviously amazing, or rather, they are obvious receptacles for our amazement, because they seem to be a lot like us. They live about as long as we do. They understand it when we point at things, which our nearest living evolutionary relative, the chimpanzee, doesn’t really. They can unlock locks with their trunks. They recognize themselves in mirrors. They are socially sophisticated. They stay with the same herds for life, or the cows do, anyway. They mourn their dead. They like getting drunk. When an elephant keels over, its friends sometimes break their tusks trying to get it to stand up again. They bury their dead. They bear grudges against people who’ve hurt them, and sometimes go on revenge campaigns. They cry. So why would you want to put a bullet in one?" ... Journalist Wells Tower accompanied one of Botswana's final elephant hunts. This article contains graphic content of an elephant hunt which some may find disturbing.
2776: A Millennium of American Asskickery
Celebrate the (admittedly still in-progress) first millennium of American awesomeness on July 4, with the release of a new comedy-music benefit compilation titled 2776: A Millennium of American Asskickery. Proceeds go to OneKid OneWorld. The album tells the story of America's past, present and apocalyptic future. Put together by Daily Show writer Rob Kutner, Tonight Show writer Joel Moss Levinson, and Steven Levinson, the album features a stacked roster of indie musicians and comedians, including Will Forte, Aubrey Plaza, Patton Oswalt, Aimee Mann, The Sklar Brothers, Reggie Watts, Right Said Fred with Reggie Watts and Mayim Bialik, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog with The Rebirth Brass Band, Maria Bamford & Jonathan Katz, Andrew WK, Bobcat Goldthwait & Sally Timms, Paul F. Tompkins, Yo La Tengo with Ira Glass and Eugene Mirman, Neko Case & Kelly Hogan and more... [more inside]
“I thank the Gods of War we went when we did"
Today, June 5, would be the 70th anniversary of D-Day if not for the last-minute prognostication of British meteorologist James Stagg. The planners of the Normandy landings originally designated June 5, 1944 as D-Day, basing their decision on a favorable combination of tide patterns and a full moon, which would help with pilot visibility. On the evening of June 4, however, Royal Air Force meteorologist Captain James Stagg met with Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower with a dire last-minute warning: a large storm brewing just north of Scotland would bring heavy winds, turbulent seas, and thick cloud cover over the English Channel. Ike's decision to change the invasion to June 6, on the advice of a lone meteorologist practicing an emergent and unreliable science, may have been the turning point of the war. Historian John Ross, author of The Forecast for D-Day and the Weatherman Behind Ike’s Greatest Gamble, contends, "Had Ike listened to his countrymen's predictions and launched D-day on June 5, it would have failed with catastrophic consequences for the Western Allies and world history."
“Let’s, Like, Demolish Laundry”
"In Silicon Valley, where The Work of creating The Future is sacrosanct, the suggestion that there might be something not entirely normal about this—that it might be a little weird that investors are sinking millions of dollars into a laundry company they had been introduced to over email that doesn't even do laundry; that maybe you don’t really need engineers to do what is essentially a minor household chore—would be taken as blasphemy."
A Dutch seascape and its lost Leviathan
"Earlier this year a conservator at the Hamilton Kerr Institute made a surprising discovery while working on a 17th-century painting owned by the Fitzwilliam Museum. As Shan Kuang cleaned the surface, she revealed the beached whale that had been the intended focus of the composition."
Pat Perry
Wrong Number
This Hotline Miami 2 trailer has insipred this Source Filmmaker remake of the same trailer with TF2 characters. [more inside]
or maybe it was the spam filter
Study finds strong evidence for discriminatory intent behind voter ID laws State legislators who support voter ID laws are motivated in no small part by racial bias, according to a new study from the University of Southern California. The study finds strong evidence that "discriminatory intent underlies legislative support for voter identification laws." [more inside]
J.C. Leyendecker
The modern Mike Mulligan
The challenge of adding new subterranean floors to London houses has become a highly lucrative business. The difficulty is in getting the digger out again. To construct a no-expense-spared new basement, the digger has to go so deep into the London earth that it is unable to drive out again. What could be done?
Mirror shades, satanism, cyborgs, hover bikes... it has it all!
The video for Perturbator's (previously) She is Young She is Beautiful is an amalgam of Gothic horror, cyberpunk science-fiction, late 80s anime aesthetics, post-apocalytpic Miami and the best parts of b-movie cinema. All done up in a pixel art style reminiscent of the classic Out of This World (recently) series of adventure games.
"C'mon! C'mon!"
Throwback Thursday: Japanese kids dancing to classic house music
Japanese kids house dancing (SLYT) Does exactly what it says on the tin.
Explore the world and beyond!
In August, Lego will launch a new line depicting women scientists, that will include an astronomer with a telescope, a paleontologist with a dinosaur skeleton and a chemist in a lab. The idea for the set was submitted by Dr. Ellen Kooijman, a geochemist in Sweden. [more inside]
Logan, even as head chef using your claws to cut vegetables is wrong
That time Wolverine teamed up with "celebrity" chef Chris Cosentino and made fun of vegetarians.
Contributing to the delinquency of a minor
Open defecation solves the child mortality puzzle among Indian Muslims
“Hindus are, on average, richer and more educated than Muslims. But oddly, the child mortality rate for Hindus is much higher. All observable factors say Hindus should fare better, but they don't. Economists refer to this as the Muslim mortality puzzle. In a new study, researchers believe that they may have found a solution to the puzzle. And, surprisingly, the solution lies in a single factor – open defecation.” [more inside]
Going back to Antikythera
The Antikythera mechanism (wiki), the world's oldest computing device, has fascinated mankind since it was discovered by sponge divers in 1900. Modern technology has revealed much of how the mechanism works, but there is still plenty of mystery surrounding the artefact. One example is "Fragment D", which doesn't fit in with the rest of the recovered pieces. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is setting up an expedition to explore the wreck, this time using a nifty hi-tech exosuit, eliminating many of the disadvantages of using regular diving equipment or remotely operated submersibles. The hope is to recover a hypothetical second mechanism, in addition to the other valuable archaeological finds still waiting at the shipwreck site.
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