October 27, 2014
THUD
Bringing back memories of the Windows OS that never was...
Experience Windows93, the OS that never was and never should be. Managing to sit somewhere between nostalgia for 1990s-era Windows (is that a thing?) and an OS from an alternate timeline, Windows93 is... something. Enjoy the CRT graphics, watch the entire ASCII version of Star Wars (mentioned on MeFi in 2000!), play Windows Solitaire, and use a full fledged browser. Also, watch out for viruses and amazing 1990s easter eggs. I don't think there is anything NSFW, but there is so much here, a it is hard to know...
“The desserts are over there,”
Water, Air, Fire, and the Drop
Heroes of Cosplay's Holly Conrad's Advice on Dressing up for Halloween
just remember that it’s “all about passion about your character, what you can wear to connect with people on a different level of being a fan of something. Cosplay and Halloween can be merged together for a better world!”
Markets in Clinical Trials for the Mega Rich?
If mega-rich people could buy places on clinical trials, would this help drive forward the development of new treatments that could benefit everyone? [more inside]
A people of four lands.
Kurdistan
The Kurdish people have had a pretty brutal recent history.
Adam Curtis explains that the Kurds have a vision of creating a completely new kind of society that is based on the ideas of a forgotten American revolutionary thinker, Murray Bookchin. [more inside]
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The Kurdish people have had a pretty brutal recent history.
Adam Curtis explains that the Kurds have a vision of creating a completely new kind of society that is based on the ideas of a forgotten American revolutionary thinker, Murray Bookchin. [more inside]
Dead ant, dead ant. Dead ant dead ant dead and dead ant dead aaaaaaaant.
Pipino, the real-life gentleman thief. Pipino had a simple philosophy: Aristocrats liked to flaunt their wealth; thieves liked to take it. Sometimes the burglar took something important and aristocrats would pay to get the item back. Pipino had heard that some palazzo owners took it as a badge of honor that he had slipped through their windows because it confirmed their good taste.
The Naysayers
Alex Ross writes for the New Yorker: Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and the critique of pop culture.
OK Go won't let you down
OK Go's latest video for their new song "I Won't Let You Down" is as always, a great video with interesting choreography mixing modern dance numbers with stuff often seen in old musicals and then goes kind of nuts at the end.
"What do you do when you think you have a murderer in the family?"
My Grandma the Poisoner. And now, once again, I feel like I’m supposed to care. Like there should be closure. Either I purge my past, forgive her, and arrive at a higher vibrational state, or I find proof of what she’s done over the years and expose her once and for all. I’d always planned to search her house one last time, but now the house is gone. And nobody is exhuming any bodies, and Grandma doesn’t even know what Grandma did. And there’s not going to be any grand finale. And as I sat there listening to Grandma sing with my children—not quite crying, I wasn’t quite crying—I realized that I didn’t care what had happened, that nobody cares what happened, that caring is for cops on CSI and doctors on ER and muscle-bound Marines in the movies. [more inside]
Begun, the Wallet Wars, have.
Apple recently launched Apple Pay, a contactless payment system that uses NFC, tokenization, and TouchID for an easy and secure payment experience. Now retailers like CVS and Rite Aid are turning off their NFC support to lock out Apple Pay (and other payments systems that use NFC such as Google Wallet). Why? [more inside]
Get these M*therf*cking snakes out of my theater!
I kick people out of my Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters without a refund for texting and talking. AMA. From tales of snake handlers spraying blood all over the theater, to angry patrons yelling at security guards, the Alamo Drafthouse still remains raucous after all these years. [more inside]
How to Win the Lottery
Darius Kazemi: Every Talk Ever Given by a Successful Creative Person (SLYT)
Note: It's worth watching to the end.
Star Wars in Real Life
Bye Bye Mrs. Kot-ter
Marcia Strassman most famous as Mrs. Kotter, but also known for roles on M*A*S*H, Honey I Shrunk The Kids, and her brief foray into music recording has died of breast cancer at 66. [more inside]
Read a pristine copy of Action Comics #1 online, starring Superman!
There are a ton of free sources of Golden Age comics (Comic Books Plus, Digital Comic Museum, Fury Comics, and more scans on Archive.org, to name some of the major sources), but Certified Guaranty Company (CGC) has recently posted a very significant issue in near pristine condition: Action Comics #1, with the first appearances of Superman, Louis Lane and Zatara, which was recently auctioned off for a record-breaking $3,207,852 USD. [more inside]
Jian Ghomeshi fired from CBC
Jian Ghomeshi, host and co-creator of Q, has been fired from the CBC ‘over “information” the public broadcaster recently received that it says “precludes” it from continuing to employ the 47-year-old host of the popular Q radio show.’ [more inside]
Riding on a high and windy day
Rest In Power: John Holt, composer of The Tide Is High, early hero of the Legalize It movement, and singer of the spookiest reggae song ever, "Ali Baba", passed away October 19th. Long Live His Music.
What the garbageman doesn't know
After a New Yorker piece (previously) on one of Cairo's trash collectors went viral in Cairo, several issues regarding consent of the illiterate Sayyid, as well as possible threats against him, have come up. The author, Peter Hessler, responded in a Facebook post to some of these issues, but it seems that the story is more complicated with accusations that Hessler did not adequately inform Sayyid of what had been written, resulting in retaliation by the people he works for.
"At least, boobs should be able to fire lasers, shouldn’t they?"
What if, wrote Jenn Frank (previously), there was a computer game that involved a sexy character shopping for a bra but ended with her crying softly because she could not find one that fitted. "Everyone thought I was kidding," Ms Frank told the BBC. "I thought I was kidding, and then two hours later I was building a website for it." "It" is Boob Jam, a weekend-long event during which game developers will go without sleep to create games that offer players a more truthful and accurate depiction of breasts and what it means to have them. [more inside]
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