April 21, 2016
It's Raining Humvees
Stripes: Humvees plummet to ground in Hohenfels parachute drop fiasco.
Popular Science (with GIFs): Parachuting Humvees Crashed in Germany.
I felt many of the murals with children came across as creepy
For years, foreign visitors to North Korea were only able to see two stops on the Pyongyang metro. Until now: for the first time ever, photos from all across Pyongyang's subway.
Out of the goodness of our mammaries
On inequity in job applications
"Our hiring practices are inequitable and need to change", says Vu Le from Nonprofits with Balls, who then lays out a comprehensive list of factors that companies should change in their hiring processes.
The Secret History of Tiger Woods
ESPN's noted longform writer Wright Thompson charts the decline and fall of Tiger Woods in the years after his father's death.
"The death of his father set a battle raging inside the world's greatest golfer. How he waged that war - through an obsession with the Navy SEALs - is the tale of how Tiger lost his way."
"The death of his father set a battle raging inside the world's greatest golfer. How he waged that war - through an obsession with the Navy SEALs - is the tale of how Tiger lost his way."
We offer every customer the same price. It doesn’t matter where you live
Amazon Doesn’t Consider the Race of Its Customers. Should It? - Bloomberg This is a logical approach from a cost and efficiency perspective: Give areas with the most existing paying members priority access to a new product. Yet in cities where most of those paying members are concentrated in predominantly white parts of town, a solely data-driven calculation that looks at numbers instead of people can reinforce long-entrenched inequality in access to retail services. For people who live in black neighborhoods not served by Amazon, the fact that it’s not deliberate doesn’t make much practical difference.
This is one Big Dance they're all winning
How's your Running Man these days? Some members of the Maryland Terrapins basketball team challenged people to a dance off. Several other teams responded with enthusiasm. The #runningmanchallenge was ON.
It is my one recreation and I think it should be done well
Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson when he wasn't teaching at Oxford or writing fiction under the name Lewis Carroll was an avid photographer. Over 200 of his images originally contained in five of his personal albums are collected at the UofT Harry Ransom Center whom have posted 47 of them online in the Lewis Carroll Photography Collection .
When Dungeons & Dragons Set Off a ‘Moral Panic’
"It was just a bunch of s***."
"They called me once and said, 'We found a torture chamber!' I go over there and it was a fuse box." An oral history of that two-hour live television special in which Geraldo Rivera broke into Al Capone's vault. [more inside]
Cancer is Stupid
Richard Lyons, Negativland Founder, Dead at 57 A founding member of audio collage band Negativland, passed away from nodular melanoma today, on his 57th birthday. According to the band's Facebook posting, he died "peacefully and pain free." [more inside]
It's a blog that mashes up Rushmore and Sonic the Hedgehog
The Ninth Wonder of the World falls - Chyna, 1969-2016
Pro wrestler Joanie "Chyna" Laurer has died. Known as the Ninth Wonder of the World (André the Giant had long been billed as the Eighth) for her physique and dominance in the ring, Laurer was 46. [more inside]
Nothing Compares
His full name was Prince Rogers Nelson. He was 57 years old when he passed away today at his home, Paisley Park, outside of Minneapolis MN [more inside]
Bittersweet
Water will flow once more in Maui streams long diverted to feed the island's thirsty sugar cane industry. The water will now be available for the cultivation of kalo, or taro, a plant with historic and cultural significance whose cultivation has had a complicated history. This marks a win for local taro farmers, who had been fighting for some time for the return of water. The water returns as the sugar industry departs the island for good, taking a number of jobs with it. [more inside]
The smug style in American liberalism
Vox: The smug style in American liberalism: "There is a smug style in American liberalism. It has been growing these past decades. It is a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really —but by the failure of half the country to know what's good for them."
A Ghost in the Freezer
A moving little essay about the power of food, family, and memory.
Liscarians
"That term—library anxiety—is hardly a household name among students, but say it to a college librarian, and he or she will know exactly what you’re talking about. It’s the feeling that one’s research skills are inadequate and that those shortcomings should be hidden. In some students it’s manifested as an outright fear of libraries and the librarians who work there. To many librarians it’s a phenomenon as real as it is perplexing.
"'Why would anyone think we are intimidating?' writes Michel C. Atlas. 'What is intimidating about a master’s-prepared professional earning $35,000 a year?'”
"'Why would anyone think we are intimidating?' writes Michel C. Atlas. 'What is intimidating about a master’s-prepared professional earning $35,000 a year?'”
The Killer Hiding in the CDC Map
What caused Haiti’s cholera epidemic? The CDC museum knows but won’t say. The U.N. soldiers at that base had just arrived from their home country, Nepal, where a cholera outbreak was underway. Thanks to negligent sanitation practices, such as the open dump pits above, there was a multiplicity of ways that their choleraic feces could have gotten from the base into the river, including latrine pipes leaking over a drainage canal that emptied into the river.
Nut Job
A $10 million nut heist is a window into the shady, lucrative world of large-scale food theft. Food and beverages have replaced electronics as the most-stolen good in the US. Criminals are concentrating their efforts on fewer heists of larger value, and as stolen goods go, nuts have a lot of appeal. They’re expensive. They have a long shelf life. They have no serial numbers and can’t be electronically tagged or traced.
“There was big hype over the video, the stream had a good 2.8K views,”
When Rape Is Broadcast Live On The Internet by Rossalyn Warren [Buzzfeed News] Sexual assault, domestic abuse, and attempted murder are among the crimes recently captured on live video services. BuzzFeed News uncovered one apparent incident of a rape aired in real time and asked what it means for the companies that host this content. [more inside]
Gunnerkrigg Court - "Traveller" "(Viaxeiro)"
Gunnerkrigg Court, Tom Siddell's webcomic about a mysterious school (apparently) for children with unusual abilities, has progressed and expanded considerably since we first saw it here nearly nine years ago - both in-universe and out. It's now up to fifty-seven chapters and counting, and the many new and different characters and plotlines can make it a bit daunting to jump into cold. Fortunately, Siddell has also published collected books of the series as well as two stand-alone side comics. The second of these, "Traveller", was just put up on the website last week. It's a quick read at 40 black and white pages, and about the only thing you need to know going in is that the girl can communicate with animals.
Behold the Kickmen
Dan Marshall (@danthat) knows nothing about football. Is that going to stop him from making a football game? It is not! [more inside]
It's Confederate Heritage Month!
Back in February, Mississippi (Goddam) Governor Phil Bryant declared April Confederate Heritage Month, joining other southern states in in the practice. Orcinus blogger and SPLC contributor David Neiwert thought it would be appropriate to devote his blog this month to exploring the history of the Confederacy, although perhaps not in the way Bryant intended. [more inside]
Even though ye are naughty, I still luv ye... aye!
Who is this naughty raven? It's Izzie of the Knaresborough Castle Ravens. Read about the adventures of Izzie and her fellow ravens on their website: "One Saturday I was busy chatting to a local resident when Izzie decided to get up to mischief, she spotted a potential victim and like a spider drawing a fly into its web, Izzie did like wise with this poor unsuspecting visitor..." [more inside]
AAAAAALLLLLVIAAAALVIIIINNNAAALVIIIINNNNII
The Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossible” EmDrive
The EmDrive (previously 1, 2) is still getting attention from the scientific community. MIT Technology Review sums it up: The Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossible” EmDrive Thruster
If cities are sexed, then Cork is a male place.
Low-sized, disputatious, stoutly built, a hard-to-knock-over type. He has a haughty demeanour that’s perhaps not entirely earned but he can also, in a kinder light, seem princely. He is certainly melancholic. He is given to surreal flights and to an antic humour and he is blessed with pleasingly musical speech patterns. He is usually quite relaxed, and head over heels in love with himself”
Algorithmic sampling
Music Mappr will take any uploaded mp3 or soundcloud link, chop the linked piece of music into short fragments, reorder the fragments based on sonic similarity and let you play back clusters of these fragments independently.
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