June 19, 2015
Gimme Shelter
With a good game, hard work and a bit of luck you’ll do fine on Steam.
Sergey Galyonkin, creator of Steam data tool Steam Spy, offers some analysis of use to game developers and of interest to gamers: Some things you should know about Steam.
How To Make Grill Cookies
Charlie Rose Brain Series: Gender Identity
In an new episode of the Charlie Rose Brain Series, the topic of Gender Identity is discussed. Participating in the discussion are Ben Barres, chair of neurobiology at Stanford University, Norman Spack of Boston Children’s Hospital, Catherine Dulac of Harvard University, Melissa Hines of University of Cambridge, and Janet Hyde of University of Wisconsin. (SL Video) [more inside]
Opening up a national conversation: Ruby Rose and gender/sexual fluidity
This Is What Ruby Rose Thinks About The Entire Internet 'Going Gay' For Her - Erin Whitney, Huffington Post | Girl On Girl: Why We Never Talk About Male Sexual Fluidity by Morgan Cohn, The Frisky | We Heart: Ruby Rose on Gender Fluidity - Emma Niles for Ms. Magazine
Mechs, livestock and uhlans
Jakub Rozalski is a Polish illustrator whose artwork mixes retrofuturism and the Polish countryside of the 1920s (with special appearances of Wojtek the army bear), in a style reminiscent of the Kossak dynasty of realist painters, but with mechs. Note that during WW1 the Russians did experiment with the Lebedenko (aka Tsar Tank), a 12-m high, 60-ton war machine that was barely less fantastic than those painted by Rozalski.
RIP, a Great Indian architect
He was a prophet without imprimatur in his own city. Charles Correa, who passed away late on the night of 16 June, was among the great architects of our times. His institutional buildings across the world are all iconic. Yet, Mumbai, his lifelong home, boasts just one* residential tower designed by him – an irony as much as a travesty. Though the cubist Kanchanjunga is eye-catching, it’s still high-rise: a genre caustically savaged by this patron saint of low-slung architecture.[more inside]
Opisthoteuthis squeeeeee
Fiddle...sticks.
Taming of the Fuckery is graduate design student Sneha Keshav's 100 day project to identify colorful alternatives to the formerly taboo but now all too ubiquitous 'F-Word' and display them creatively. If you don't like it, you can Go Hug a Porcupine, because I Don't Give a Tiny Rat's Buttcrack.
Starfish Overlords
I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows
French magician and juggler Antoine Terrieux created a series of remarkably self-sustaining sculptures using different arrangements of hair dryers, and has also incorporated them in funny ways in his stage performance. He also plays with a diabolo in ways that seem to defy gravity. [via]
Taking the wide view
The Daily Overview takes a zoomed out look at our world to give us all a little perspective. There's a daily feed, or a top ten. Some highlights here on It's Nice That.
“They think, if we can save the bees, we can save the world.”
The Blight of the Honey Bee by David Wallace-Wells [New York Magazine]
The American honeybee is in peril, you might have heard, if you are the sort of person who likes a ghost story. In the last year, beekeepers lost 42 percent of their colonies, another peak in a string of mass die-offs on the scale of plagues: In the last five years, die-offs have hit 34 percent, 46 percent, 29 percent, and 36 percent. That’s more than one in every three colonies each year — whole impeccably networked societies, as big as small cities. In many areas, the figures were worse, and it was hard not to wonder how a species in crisis could possibly sustain annual regional losses as high as 60 percent without fast approaching extinction. “What are we doing on bees?” the president has been said to interject at the end of Oval Office meetings. “Are we doing enough?”
Explicit is better than implicit.
They even had a category for Spell listings which would prove that point
“Etsy seems to be only targeting those items of a pagan/occult nature while allowing items of certain faiths traditionally used for protection like St. Christopher medals, to still be marketed,” said another vendor in an email. “Personally I think it's probably unintended ignorance and failure to consider and think through what banning all spiritual, energetic and magickal claims will really mean.”Witches are furious at Etsy for banning the sale of spells (Previously)
Summer Reading List
22 Books by Black Authors to Add to Your Beach Bag this Summer In response to recently published summer reading lists from The New York Times and NPR that featured mostly White authors, Blavity shares a list of 22 summer reads from Black authors. [more inside]
A tiny obsession with a teensy machine.
It's Friday, so let's all relax and learn about Colin Riley's Z80 homebrew computer.
Part 1: Introduction, Part 2: Interrupts and timers, Part 3: File system, SD Card and VRAM, Part 4: VRAM, display modes and a simple shell, Part 5: Implementing preëmptive multithreading.
And the 2015 award for "Bad Timing in Cinema" goes to...
United Passions started out as a FIFA vanity project telling the story of the men who helped found the organization. Then one month before the film's release in theaters, Fourteen FIFA officials were arrested on corruption charges (previously) and president Sepp Blatter announced he would step down from his post. Now, in the wake of incredibly dismal box office and rock bottom ratings on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, Both director Frederic Auburtin and star Tim Roth (who portrays Blatter in the film) have publicly come out against the film and apologized for their involvement.
the age of foolishness, the epoch of incredulity
Lee McIntyre writes The Attack on Truth for The Chonicle of Higher Education
Nothingness
At Robert Krulwich's NPR science blog, a couple of reflections on nothingness: Building Me and 2 Ways To Think About Nothing.
There are no easy answers.
How to Love Your Father When He’s in Prison for Child Porn, an essay by Lindsay Popper. SFW. Some may find the content disturbing.
ANIMALS I HAVE SPOOKED IN VIDEOGAMES: A GUIDE
Luftwaffe Fotoalbum
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