October 1, 2013
Learn Git branching interactively!
If you think of Git as "fun," you can play this fun Git branching tutorial game!
Feast Days
It's an open secret that many bands and solo artists allow fans to audio record their live performances for non-commercial trading. The Internet Archive's Live Music Section is maintained by volunteers from etree.org, and currently offers over 120,000 live performances from nearly 6000 bands, for in-browser streaming as well as download in a variety of formats. [more inside]
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Chain Restaurants
Snowden documents shed light on Shiban, Akbar, and Trojanov cases
New documents released by Glenn Greenwald from trove leaked by Edward Snowden show that the agency officially viewed arguments about 'due process' to be an 'adversary propaganda theme', listed alongside military threats to drones. [more inside]
Next to being a Hollywood movie star, nothing was more glamorous.
"After all I had gone through, I couldn’t believe I was finally wearing the uniform. I had made it. I was going to fly. It was such an accomplishment." International Politics and the First African American Flight Attendants [more inside]
Teahupo'o... ohhh... whooooah!
As Teahupo'o gains notoriety as one of the biggest monsters in the surfing world, the tiny area it covers gets more and more crowded. If you want to dig some fingernail-marks into the armrests of your chair, watch 2013's Inside the Monster (25:43, French with English Subtitles). Then, explore The Mechanics of Teahupo'o in this slideshow about what makes this slab tick. [previous, previous]
Because even bad Bowie is better than no Bowie
How to Read Like Bowie - David Bowie's Top 100 Books Don't miss Meta-Bowie or Bowie on metafilter music or in MetaTalk (just because).
What could possibly top Valve's announcement of the Steam Box?
"October is a fine and dangerous season in America"
Happy Political Clusterf*ck Day (U.S.)!
In one corner: the first federal government shutdown since 1996, born of the House GOP/Tea Party faction's crusade to delay, defund, and destroy Obamacare (and the Democratic Senate and President's resolve to not do that).
"Continuing resolutions" have ping-ponged between the two houses, fighting over language to cancel healthcare reform (plus a few other items, such as the implementation of Mitt Romney's entire economic agenda). National parks are closed, contractors are hamstrung, and 800,000 federal workers furloughed until Speaker Boehner drops the "Hastert Rule" and passes a bill the other branches can agree to.
In the other corner, heedless of the chaos (though not without glitches of its own): the official rollout of the Affordable Care Act and its state insurance exchanges. The portal at Healthcare.gov is your one-stop shop for browsing, comparing, and purchasing standardized, regulated insurance coverage with premium rebates, guaranteed coverage, and expanded Medicaid for the poor (in some states). A crazy day, overall -- but peanuts compared to what might happen if the debt ceiling is breached in 16 days. [more inside]
Fight For Your Right To Octobong
It was never pretty. On Sunday afternoons, you’d walk through the parking lot and swear you could hear the sound of human evolution giving up: “Screw it. I’ve done all I can for you people.” Bottles were hurled. Flaming debris spilled from garbage cans. Men (and at least one woman—I will always remember this woman) used porta-potties by peeing against them, not inside them. It was the kind of bleak dystopian hellscape that would have made the guy in Mad Max feel better about his situation. A Canadian journalist's take on the American tradition of tailgating.
*heavy breathing*
The Ninth Doctor
The pre-2005 series had a Doctor who was dressed in vaguely Edwardian clothing, who spoke with an RP accent, who had his stories adapted into books. That’s just the way it was. - Andrew Hickey's Fifty Stories For Fifty Years, one for every year of Doctor Who, reaches
2004 and Scream of the Shalka (previously) - arguably the end of the line for "Classic" doctor who. Previous instalments had covered the TV series from start to end, as well as the odd novelisation or movie. Possibly of greatest interest are the years before the new TV series where, TV movie aside, the franchise survived and evolved in strange directions via novels and audio stories. Then, at the outmost reaches of Whodom, there is the Book of the War and the strange world of Faction Paradox, which THERE IS NO FACTION PARADOX, THERE IS NO EVIL RENEGADE, YOU DID NOT READ THIS POST.
Paolo Bacigalupi's dystopian near-future cyberpunk / hard sci-fi
Paolo Bacigalupi writes hard sci-fi set in the near future, inspired in part by the stories from his science journalist friends and the imminent future of cyberpunk. Some of his works have been classified as "biopunk," due to his focus on bio-engineered products that run rampant, with involvement for battling mega-corporations that (try to) run everything in a world where oil is expensive and human labor is cheap. His first published novel, The Windup Girl (Google books preview), won both the Hugo and Nebula awards in 2010. He has published three novels since then, all categorized as Young Adult fiction, but Bacigalupi sees his only adaptations for a younger audience to be to shift the focus to pacing, and less sexuality, but otherwise similar to his "adult" works. He has also written a number of short stories (plus a few non-fiction pieces) over the years, many of which can be found online. [more inside]
Buffalo politics--They shoot buffalo don't they?
Tradegy of the Buffalo Commons Everything you know about buffalo is wrong. They're bison. But most aren't completely bison. They don't play a significant role in transmitting brucellosis. Bison are political. Which makes better sense management or culling the small, but genetically endangered, pure herd? Bison is actually better for you! [more inside]
American Gothic
The Elvis Impersonator, the Karate Instructor, the Fridge full of Severed Heads, and the Plot to Kill the President. In March, Kevin Curtis of Tupelo, Mississippi, was arrested for mailing ricin-laced letters to a local judge, Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, and the President - only to be released a week later when another man was arrested for the crime. In the latest issue of GQ, Wells Tower sets out to get to the bottom of the tale and finds himself falling down the rabbit hole into a whole other universe of lost American weirdness.
(Know that Moo Cow the dog is okay.)
A "Protest with Every Purchase."
Breaking Good
Deadly lake turns animals into statues....
Deadly lake turns animals into statues-Photographer Nick Brandt, who has a long association with east Africa, took a detour from his usual work when he discovered perfectly preserved birds and bats on the shoreline.
We don’t have the $7 million that we need to go forward with the season
I spilled my secret and he almost picked it up!
1970s Pursettes tampons ad campaign. Featuring stilted dialog and drawn by Mad Magazine's own Mort Drucker.
Don't Cry, Don't Raze Your Eye
One year ago, the face of music changed forever. Today, it has changed foreverer, again:
GWAR covers Billy Ocean's Get out of My Dreams (Get into My Car) [more inside]
GWAR covers Billy Ocean's Get out of My Dreams (Get into My Car) [more inside]
a giant machine designed to give people what they want
"Twenty years after people began using the web en masse, it’s time, Williams said, to accept that the internet isn’t a magical universe with boundless potential. It’s just another engine for improving quality of life." Twitter, Blogger and Medium founder Evan Williams on the triumphs and dangers of convenience.
The strangers - Blood and Fear in Xinjiang
"Putting the kids out front echoed the Chinese depiction of ethnic minorities, regularly represented—as in the 2008 Olympic opening ceremonies—as children. It created a familiar, comfortable world for the majority Han clientele, especially since the kids, unlike their parents, spoke fluent Mandarin. When the back door opened, I sometimes got a glimpse of another world; a cluster of Uighur men and one woman smoking, cooking, and joking in their own language, entirely isolated from the diners." -- James Palmer on the ethnic tensions between Han Chinese and Uighur in Xinjiang.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Library
“I was there in Moscow for a year and a half, without anything, we thought we were going there for only a few days. I didn’t even have a coat with me. But the Rebbe had a policy: You don’t come back until you come back with the books.”
Extra History - The Punic Wars
Extra Credits (Previously, [1] [2]) was recently approached by Creative Assembly, the team behind the Total War series of games. With Total War: Rome II coming out and Creative Assembly determining what to do with the remainder of their marketing budget, they decided to finance Extra Credits on doing a history of the Punic Wars. Extra Credits gladly accepted, of course, and has now completed the saga. Extra History: The Punic Wars (2, 3, 4)
Singing is Serious Business Until You Find a Stick
The Coming Eucatastrophe
Over the past few years, the zombie apocalypse has come to represent an alternative to neoliberalism – an ideology that admits no alternatives.
The Political Economy of Zombies by John Powers [previously, previouslier]
Bonus: What Terrifies Teens In Today's Young Adult Novels? The Economy
The Mysterious Phantom Scoop
Fraudulent & hoax manuscripts submitted to academic journals typically present false findings by real authors. This time, however, the paper contains real (and previously unpublished) results... by fake authors. (via retractionwatch) [more inside]
It's Marven Gardens, Actually...
Florida Waterspouts
After a good day of lobstering in the Florida Keys a thunderstorm blows in, spawning multiple waterspouts. Most people would hightail it for shelter, but these guys decided to take a closer look. SLYT via
For Safer Food, Just Add Viruses
In March 2012, inspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture uncovered a problem in Elgin, Texas. Beef sausage from a small family-run meat processor appeared to have been contaminated with a nasty bacterium called Listeria monocytogenes. The bug can make people sick and, in rare cases, be deadly. The processor had to recall more than a ton of sausage. It’s the kind of story that strikes terror in the hearts of other sausage peddlers, including Mike Satzow, so he uses phages to keep his small company's sausages safe to eat.
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