September 26, 2015
"...you either die young or you get old. There is nothing in between.”
"But the other thing you learn is that your fear and nervousness and insecurity is your own business, nobody else’s.”
Helen Mirren is interviewed by The Guardian.
Helen Mirren is interviewed by The Guardian.
To design the Fremen is to design the Stillsuit
Dune: The Animated Series - Dragon Age: Inquisition concept artist Matt Rhodes reimagines the classic SF story as a Legends of Korra style animated show inspired by the art of Tarsem Singh.
"The other funny thing was that he kept adjusting my hat."
"I'm not a model. I went to a military college on Long Island called the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. At the end of the four-year program I got a marine engineering degree and a commission as an officer in the naval reserve. I recently spent time on a ship in the Gulf of Mexico. Luckily, I had Wednesday off, because Kanye's show was the very next day." what it was like to walk in yeezy 2 (and make kanye cry) (i-D) [more inside]
The time when the Soviet Union reverse-engineered a B-29.
How difficult would it be to take apart this airplane and use it to manufacture this airplane?
Very difficult.
Very difficult.
Recent Windows update breaks SafeDisc DRM
What's going on, and how to work around it. If you play some older PC games, you may have noticed that they don't work after a recent Windows update. They don't work because the update broke SafeDisc DRM. Another reason to hate SafeDisc DRM, as if we needed one.
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The Tangled History of Barbed Wire by Robert Zaretsky [Boston Globe]
“Like inventors from Joseph Guillotin to Alfred Nobel, whose creations escaped their original purpose and were yoked to evil ends, Joseph Glidden would have been shocked at what became of his. In 1874, the Illinois farmer and New Hampshire native, fastening sharpened metal knots along thick threads of steel, created barbed wire. Thanks to its high resilience and low cost, the rapid installation of the coils and lasting dissuasion of the barbs, the wire transformed the American West. Ranchers could protect their cattle against predators, both wild and human, as they pushed the frontier ever further west. The wire itself came to be called 'devil’s rope.'”Previously. Previously. Previously.
Where's Herb?
Here's an old Burger King ad campaign, created by New York firm J Walter Thompson, that was a legendary flop. 30 years ago Burger King failed to get the whole country asking: Where's Herb? He was supposedly the only person in the country not to have had a burger from their chain. They offered food discounts, but only to people who weren't Herb (weird cameo at the end of that one). They even talked to Herb's parents. Eventually Herb did have a burger and visited a BK in every state as part of a contest. The sites Go Retro and Burgatory have articles about the non-phenomenon (with an interview with Jon Menick, who played Herb). It was all an attempt to duplicate Wendy's success the year before with Where's The Beef? [more inside]
Don't wake up Jessica Jones!
Cats are the Best
One monster tries to heal you with lava. Another is simply depressed.
Laura Hudson at Boing Boing has a thoughtful, in-depth review of Undertale, the new RPG by Toby “Radiation” Fox, the creator of the new RPG Undertale. (Kickstarter) The game was inspired by the Shin Megami Tensai franchise and Earthbound. All combat can be resolved through pacifist means, and the consequences of subsequent playthroughs stack and change the environment. In her review, Hudson compares playing the game to the classic spider-man piñata video –at least, if you want it to be. [more inside]
The Rise of Rape Culture
We demand that women live in fear and behave impeccably to avoid 'asking for it.' "In an extract from her book, Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture — and What We Can Do About It, author Kate Harding explains how women order their lives around the fear of rape – and of being blamed for not preventing it." [more inside]
Would you like to play a game?
Stanislav Petrov Day
On this date in 1983, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov saved the life of every man, woman & child on the face of the Earth. [more inside]
Of course I'd like to sit around and chat... but someone's listening in
Fresh from The Intercept (that fearless vanguard of journalism helmed by Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras): disturbing documents exposing the unfathomable reach of the United Kingdom's GCHQ in its quest for total awareness of global internet traffic. A hundred billion user actions logged per day. A "Black Hole" database of 1.1 trillion logs. Frightening programs like KARMA POLICE, MEMORY HOLE, and MUTANT BROTH that correlate the kilo-crore corpus -- IP addresses, cookies, forum posts, search histories, emails, and passwords all compiled and cross-referenced into a real-time "diary" that gives penetrating insight into the relationships, beliefs, and desires of every web user on the planet. Internal documents suggest only widespread encryption can threaten the regime -- a movement the UK is determined to subdue (previously). [more inside]
For the Acrophobic who has everything
Could you roller skate across this bridge? It's 300 meters long and 180 meters above the ground, and the entire bridge floor is made of glass.
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