February 27, 2014
Democratic and demanding
Introducing tricot
Batman vs. The Terminator
The great Medieval water myth
"The idea that Medieval people drank beer or wine to avoid drinking bad water is so established that even some very serious scholars see no reason to document or defend it; they simply repeat it as a settled truth. In fact, if no one ever documents the idea, it is for a very simple reason: it's not true."
AirPnP
Going to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and finding yourself worried about bathroom options? Try AirPnP. Like Airbnb, but for bathrooms. [more inside]
"There is no humor in heaven.”
The Dark Psychology of Being a Good Comedian. The Atlantic discusses humor's role as a coping mechanism, as a defense mechanism and as a cognitive tool. Also compares funny people to psychotic ones.
Meanwhile, back in the People's Republic of Zuckerstan...
...taking a critical look at the dark side of the "Innovation Economy" There is no Google bus controversy in the Bay State. But the similarities between Boston and San Francisco now include a growing debate over the shadow side of the Innovation Economy: [more inside]
De-extinction
The Mammoth Cometh. "Bringing extinct animals back to life is really happening — and it’s going to be very, very cool. Unless it ends up being very, very bad." [Previously, Via]
Trapped in the House of the Beautiful Sleeping Athlete
This is the story of Jean-Pierre Adams, the French international footballer who as part of surgery was given anaesthetic that should have knocked him out for a few hours. 32 years later, he is still in a coma.
It was really just a matter of time.
Just a Lady
The Kutiman Orchestra performs "Just a Lady" live. "Just a Lady" was one of seven songs on the masterful found-footage sampling project Thru You (previously, samples and downloads) and was my personal favorite, so I'm very happy to see a live version. [more inside]
Taking the Mickey
The Very Merry Un-Gangs of Disneyland These social clubs are a new generation of hardcore Disney fans, powered by Instagram and Facebook and made up of grandparents in their 60s, as well as teens and toddlers plodding along beside their parents. Only 10 years ago, their style—tattooed and plugged—would have banned them from the parks and made them outcasts among Disney fans. But now, with tolerance, if not approval, from the Mouse, the social clubs have found a playground to call their own.
Warner Bros. Logo Design Evolution
"All studios have their main logo that appears at the beginning of a film, but some occasionally use custom logos that reflect the theme of the movie. When I noticed that Warner Bros. does this a lot I wanted to find out how often this happened and what these logos looked like. I couldn’t find a good overview with all logos gathered in one place, so I started to collect them myself, in 2009. Now, five years later, I think I have enough to paint a picture of Warner Bros logo design evolution. "
Corpus Libris
Corpus Libris. Books and bodies.
Scale invariant art
Astroblast and Overstepping Artifacts are music videos by the project Musicians with Guns, which take the viewer through detailed tours of some beauty. Relax and enjoy.
honor bound to defend freedom
Writing In The Gray Areas - "Are some acts so revolting that the people who commit them do not deserve a hearing?" [more inside]
Code Name: Funiculì, Funiculà
Neapolitan spirit at a London supermarket; SLGTV. Never happens where I shop.
Supergeil
Edeka has managed to insert an earworm into the German internet with their advertising reworking the The Tourist/Friedrich Liechtenstein track, Supergeil into an advertisement for the grocery store. [more inside]
Spoiler: The cat said 'fuck you' at the end
The Brie People
"Yahoo webcam images from millions of users intercepted"
Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.
"We were not aware of nor would we condone this reported activity," a Yahoo spokesperson says in a statement to The Verge.
But...what about all the webcam sex?
Rise of bot traffic: websites seen more often by non-humans than humans
In a survey performed in 2012, Incapsula found that 49% of the visitors to 1,000 selected sites were human, compared to a growing percentage of "good bots" like search engines, and "bad bots" including hackers, scrapers, spammers and spies of all sorts. Last year, human web visitors accounted for 38.5% of site visitors, with an increased percentage of search engines and other good bots, and similar ratios for the "shady non-human visitors." [more inside]
3+3+3+2+2
Fiedel was at heart an improviser... he first set up a rhythm loop on one of the primitive, early-’80s devices he was using. He recorded samples of himself whacking a frying pan to create the clanking sounds. Then he played melodic riffs on a synthesizer over the looped beat. Amid the throes of creation, what he hadn’t quite noticed—or hadn’t bothered to notice—was that his finger had been a split-second off when it pressed the button to establish that rhythm loop. What is the time signature of the theme from The Terminator?
Love the True Detective theme? A brief intro to The Handsome Family
The Handsome Family are an alt-country and americana band based in Albuquerque via Chicago, Texas and Long Island. They have currently finding a new audience thanks to having their song Far From Any Road used as the theme from True Detective on HBO. [more inside]
That thing the sun does that makes it so hot
GLaDOS teaches fusion and fission for NASA. Ellen McLain lends her autotuned voice to IRrelevant Astronomy, a video series produced as part of the education & public outreach mandate of the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope. [via]
The real reason Ben & Jerry's released their new 'Core' flavors
There Is No Childhood Obesity Epidemic Paul Campos in TNR reviews the latest report from the Journal of the American Medical Association. [more inside]
In honour of Loretta
26 year-old Inuk woman Loretta Saunders was working on an Honours thesis studying the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal women of Canada. Her supervisor called her proposal "the most beautifully written and cared-for assignment I had ever read in seven years of university teaching." Two weeks ago, Loretta disappeared and fell out of contact with family and friends. Yesterday police confirmed that her body had been found in the median of the Trans-Canada Highway. Her disappearance is now being treated as a homicide. [more inside]
Handen Wasschen is Beter
Wear Something Gold.
It's a UNIX system! I know this!
There is much to be learned from Reggie Watts.
The 28 Rules of the Oscars Party
10. If you are throwing an Oscars party, you need to decide if it's going to be a cinema lover's party or an Oscars party. "At a cinema lover's party, people dress up and have thoughtful conversations about the nominees and the year in cinema. At an Oscars party, everyone sits in their sweatpants and trashes every single thing that happens for four hours." This was written by a WSJ sportswriter, who doesn't understand that you can do both at either type of party.
making of fluffy
Maru the shibu inu shows that being fluffy doesn't just happen, it takes a lot of work. [more inside]
Leonard Nimoy's Mother Tongue.
Normalizing torture
"Fringe is a modern reincarnation of the X-Files. . . However one major difference that jumps out when you compare them is the huge amount of torture that happens in Fringe compared to the X-Files . . . Everywhere you see it it promotes the lie that torture works."
An Immodest Proposal
EAT CELEBRITY MEAT: BiteLabs grows meat from celebrity tissue samples and uses it to make artisanal salami. "If it's just a joke—as any half-concious participant in the age of viral marketing ploys and social media hoaxes immediately assumed it to be—then its creators are willing to take it pretty far."
Your clever relationship wingman.
Really babe, you're using Arial?
Down with this sort of thing
It's blue, baby blue.
The Theoretical Minimum
How condensed might one expect an overview of all modern physics to be? Leonard Susskind has an answer, and provides The Theoretical Minimum. [more inside]
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