April 27, 2016
Chatbots: Next Big Thing or Cash Grab?
At the Facebook F8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced that businesses would build chatbots on the Messenger platform, bringing the already strong hype around chatbots to a fever pitch. Chatbots, some argue, are the solution for all our problems. But are chatbots really the solution for everything? Or is it just an attempt to have a "next big thing" in order to generate more cash? [more inside]
This is How an FPP Works
@ThingsWork tweets short GIFs abstracting how things work. Sometimes informative, always hypnotic.
How an octopus cleans itself. How chicken and rice is made in space. How a male seahorse gives birth. How crowd control at a comic book convention in Japan works. How Nintendo’s controllers have evolved How metallic coral is made. How the Genie from Aladdin is drawn. How a ladybug takes flight. How walruses sleep while floating.
How an octopus cleans itself. How chicken and rice is made in space. How a male seahorse gives birth. How crowd control at a comic book convention in Japan works. How Nintendo’s controllers have evolved How metallic coral is made. How the Genie from Aladdin is drawn. How a ladybug takes flight. How walruses sleep while floating.
Art is a conversation between you and someone you’ve probably never met
Years With Yoko. For a long time Ono was basically despised, the inevitable lot of someone married to a person whose fame actually may have eclipsed Christ’s. Fools hate foreigners, and fools hate women, but a lot of people who ought to know better hate the avant-garde, and a lot of people who ought to know better hate the politically engaged, and a lot of people who ought to know better hate polymaths, and Ono is all those things. (SLTheMillions) [more inside]
Program music of Kashiwa Daisuke, telling stories without words
"When it comes to modern day composers, the most prominent ones out there are names like Brian Eno, Steve Reich, Toru Takemitsu, Varèse and a couple more.... But when discussing these modern composers, the name ‘Kashiwa Daisuke’ is unlikely to be mentioned. The guy doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page.... But he’s up there along with those ‘big’ names I just mentioned. Program Music I is the very proof of this." Consisting of two long pieces, Stella and Write Once, Run Melos, each evokes the feelings of specific stories, told with modern classical instrumentation, spacious post-rock, jazz piano, and some intentional digital glitches. Almost nine years after that first album, Kashiwa Daisuke has released Program Music II (video for the track "Meteor"), with less glitch and more euphoric elements. [more inside]
Where is my Owooooo?
a room of many doors
Lego and trains. Two great tastes that taste great together
A lego train with a GoPro on it touring 50 meters of track, indoors and outdoors. There were also horrible rail disasters [more inside]
Sweating Blood: The Deaths of Sarah Ottens and Ana Mendieta
The violent sexual assault of Sarah Ottens at the University of Iowa inspired a famous art work by Ana Mendieta. But that wasn't the end of the connection between the women. Mendieta would go on to create more artwork invoking the female body, violence, and disappearance (some images NSFW; many are distressing). Twelve years after Ottens's murder, Mendieta would die in suspicious circumstances in a case that has been called the art world's version of the O.J. Simpson trial. [more inside]
Guess who doesn't care that humans are researching this?
I prefer the term "acticulated figurine" myself...
not really 'wrong,' just suboptimal.
“Rooms full of fifth-graders always want to know if I’m married.”
Why I Came Out As A Gay Children’s Book Author by Alexander London [Buzzfeed] “What happens if I tell the truth about why I’m not married? What happens if I reveal this part of myself? Does my career in children’s books end? Will teachers and parents look at me askance? Ban my books? Run me out of town as some kind of creep trying to “recruit” or pushing a “gay agenda”? Will I never be invited to another school again?”
I Wish Everyone Else Was Dead
Pretty Good, episode 7: 'I Wish Everyone Else Was Dead'. Jon Bois looks at 24.
Scots are mad for citrus!
Scurvy Dogs - A brief overview of the history of the scurvy, brought to you by naval cartoonist Lucy Bellwood
“The idea of murder is represented a lot in the brain"
BioWare Goose Cam
The roof of video game developer BioWare's Edmonton studio has been chosen by a pair of Canada geese as their nesting site for the spring. For the next few weeks, you can watch Ganders (female), Arishonk (male) and hopefully some eventual goslings on the BioWare Goose Cam. [more inside]
Country of the future; always the future
Perry Anderson - Crisis in Brazil
Long read but probably the most comprehensive account I have read about how this enormous country got to the more chaotic state than usual that it is in today.
(Via LRB and previous).
Long read but probably the most comprehensive account I have read about how this enormous country got to the more chaotic state than usual that it is in today.
(Via LRB and previous).
Why Do Taxonomists Write the Meanest Obituaries?
Rafinesque’s “absurd” botanical legacy, Gray wrote, amounted to little more than a “curious mass of nonsense.” Gray’s note wouldn’t be the last unkind obituary in the annals of taxonomy, nor would it be the worst. That’s because the rules dictating how taxonomists name and classify living things bind these scientists in a web of influence stretching far back into the 18th century. When an agent of chaos like Rafinesque enters the scene, that web can get sticky fast. In a field haunted by ghosts, someone has to reckon with the dead.
"I can't sentence you for being a child molester"--judge to Hastert
Former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert admitted to sexually abusing boys on his wrestling team. He was sentenced today to 15 months in prison for structuring bank withdrawals, after a hearing in which "Individual D" took the stand, identifying himself as 53 year old Scott Cross (brother of a former GOP political ally of Hastert), and described Hastert's abuse.
These are the Chicago Tribune's live tweets from the sentencing hearing. [Trigger Warning]
Diabolical beaver holds Daugavpils in its thrall
A man in Daugavpils, Latvia's second-largest city, was attacked by a beaver in the middle of the night. Pinned to the ground, the man - known only as Sergei - phoned for help but rescue services doubted his tale of rodent assault and thought it was a prank call...
New short story from Paolo Bacigalupi
The shelter that gives wine to alcoholics
the marketing team jokingly referred to as a “lesbian suicide musical.”
Leicester City: Dirty Dozen or Harvard Case Study?
With three matches to go, Leicester stands seven points clear at the top of the Premier League. If I had bet on Leicester, I would need to keep the ticket in a bank vault: it will be worth 100,000 pounds if the team wins just one of its remaining three games (and Leicester may not even need to do that if the second-placed team, Tottenham Hotspur, slips up). Earlier this month, fearful bookmakers started offering Leicester fans the chance to cash in their betting slips early for around 75 percent of their potential value. [more inside]
I fully support whatever this is.
A Fox In Space. A year in the making, episode one of this fully voiced and animated riff on Starfox has landed. And it is fiiiiine.
Your Media Merger Update
Almost exactly a year after rejecting the merger of Time Warner Cable and Comcast, both the FCC and the Justice Department have given their blessing to the marriage of TWC and Charter. As first reported by the New York Times*, the New Charter - or Time Charter or Charter Warner or Charter Time Warner Bright House (because there's a third much smaller partner - it's complicated) will become about as big as Comcast, and be operating under restrictions, like NO data caps, usage-based pricing or peering fees (for seven years).
But The Company Known On 30 Rock As Kabletown hasn't been doing nothing since their mega-cable merger was squashed... [more inside]
But The Company Known On 30 Rock As Kabletown hasn't been doing nothing since their mega-cable merger was squashed... [more inside]
Power to the [snake] people, right on!
A majority of millennials now reject capitalism, poll shows. The Harvard University survey, which polled young adults between ages 18 and 29, found that 51 percent of respondents do not support capitalism. Just 42 percent said they support it.
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