April 16, 2019
Siamese Jets
What's bigger than an American football field and flies? The Stratolaunch. April 13 saw its first flight, a two and half hour shakedown over the Mojave. Previously.
I have sailed around here and your compass will spin erratically...
Long day at the studio, pouring a drink, and we should probably talk about this thing sitting at the bottom of Lake Ontario Thats marked on my navigational chart no one really wants to talk about....who’s in for a discussion about an extra terrestrial impact? (single-link Twitter thread)
Transforms Hearing Aids Into Smart Wearables
AI hearing aid translates 27 languages in real-time and also doubles as a hands-free earpiece. The language translation works in conjunction with a smartphone app. If an English speaker wearing the device says something to a Chinese speaker, the Livio AI system would translate the words and display them in Chinese characters on the English speaker’s smartphone screen. If the Chinese speaker said something in return, those words would be directly translated into spoken English in the ears of the hearing aid wearer. [more inside]
"[unable to catch breath] eereeess um pizza"
Twelve years ago, after a mid-game rain delay, a couple of front-row fans grabbed a pop foul, ruining an easy out for fielder Garret Anderson. Unremarkable play, not worth remarking on. But then, 1.62 seconds later, here comes the pizza.
A VOID
A Common Policy, Anna Aslanyan writing at LRB Blog
La Disparition, a lipogrammatic classic, turns 50 today [29 March 2019]. You probably know who it’s by; if not, you can look it up to find out why I’m unwilling to say who did it. From its first publication on 29 March 1969, this book built a cult following. It’s primarily famous for what’s missing from it, a basic but important thing that forms a part of words you can’t usually do without. Staying strictly within this tight constraint, it says what it wants to say about its protagonist, Anton Voyl, and his vanishing act – a conundrum for his companions – in a grippingly ludic, rigidly formulaic way.[more inside]
Game of Thrones lied! Obsidian casting is not a thing!
Dragonglass (Game of Thrones wiki), the common name in Westeros for volcanic glass also known as obsidian, was recently forged or cast in Game of Thrones, but don't try that at home. While you can knap obsidian, trying to cast an obsidian sword is a very hot, messy process, and glass blowing and bending a obsidian knife doesn't go much better, if your goal is to make an actual weapon (How To Make Everything YouTube videos x3).
So, two Shoggoths walk into an opticians…
In Cultist Simulator, Death Is Only The Beginning [Kotaku] “The most fun thing to do in Cultist Simulator is die. Cultist Simulator is a new game about running a cult, interpreted as a virtual card-based board game. There are no instructions for what to do, really, so you begin picking up cards, putting them in different slots, and hoping for the best. Sooner or later, you’ll die—usually as a sacrifice. Then the game opens up. You play the game by putting cards in slots and then waiting for them to resolve.” [YouTube][Trailer] [more inside]
Free reign on global trade is what corporate titans hope for
“Much of the modern economy, pioneered by Walmart, is reliant upon increasingly complex supply chains that push production costs down onto subcontractors, giving them incentive to wring every cent of profit out of workers and protecting large corporations from responsibility. This must end. Companies claim they cannot patrol their supply chains but this is a choice. They do a great job of controlling for cost and quality, yet when it comes to labor standards, they plead ignorance. That is not acceptable. If a Walmart supplier refuses to pay its workers the minimum wage, then Walmart is responsible for that by choosing that contractor. Holding Walmart financially accountable for its supply chains through U.S. courts would alone raise global workplace standards.” The Democrats’ Yawning Silence on Trade (Boston Review)
Mice in Spaaace
In zero G, it helps to have a tail – NASA scientists have now published the first detailed study of how mice behave in the NASA Rodent Hardware System, which has housed almost a dozen experiments on the International Space Station since 2014. They found that the rodents engaged in all the typical mouse behaviors, even in the “weightlessness” of the microgravity environment [video at end of article].
"Viewers 'don’t want to hear about science from a woman.'"
The AV Club takes a look at why there are so few science and nature documentaries narrated by women.
TELL "\"It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."
<SETG SCORE <+ ,SCORE 25>> <SETG MARVIN-COUNTER 4> <MOVE ,MARVIN ,PANTRY> <MOVE ,TOOL-REQUIRED ,MARVIN> <TELL "Marvin fiddles inside the " D ,MECHANISM " with the " D ,TOOL-REQUIRED " for about three-tenths of a second. He limps away. \"And me,\" you hear him mutter ashe goes, \"with this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side.\"" CR>)A whole bunch of Infocom's original source code is now available on github. [more inside]
Face the ball to be the ball to be above the ball
eBay Robbery = Bayrob
In which ZDNet puts together a pretty good summary of a Romanian malware gang whose members were found guilty by a US federal court just this last week -- The Bayrob malware gang's rise and fall: The story of how a talented computer science student and his friends created and ran a multi-million dollar botnet. [medium length read, pretty fascinating really]
On all other nights we eat many kinds of fruits... On this night...
The shape of the jelly, like the shape of the McDonald’s McRib, pays homage to something that it is not - The Secret History of those Passover Jellied Fruit Slices. Still don't appreciate them? Economy Candy says Don't Diss Passover Fruit Slices (audio) [more inside]
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