September 13, 2015
Cube Composer
A puzzle game inspired by functional programming, by David Peter. There are only a few levels available now, but with a bit of PureScript programming you can also create your own puzzles.
Bite my shiny metal ass
People of the United Kingdom! Will a robot take your job? (previously for data from the USA) [more inside]
The peasant, the gate, the guardian: Kafka's 'Before the Law,' animated
Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.”Franz Kafka's Before the Law, animated as a pinscreen prologue to Orson Welles' film adaptation of Kafka's The Trial (Pop Matters review), and a stand-alone "free interpretation" short titled The Guardian by N9ve Studios. [more inside]
Branching out.
Tree Goats. That is all.
Josef Sudek
Josef Sudek (1896 - 1976) was a Czech photographer, best known for his haunting night-scapes of Prague. [more inside]
The Children of Strangers
The Badeau family have adopted over twenty children over the course of their marriage, spurred on by a mix of religion and a desire to help those who have no one left to turn to.
Sous-vide cooking allows you to cook better than the best steakhouse
The Food Lab's Complete Guide to Sous-Vide Steak (J. Kenji López-Alt, Serious Eats)
"As you can see, the steak cooked for just one hour stretches and pulls when you tear it. This gives the steak a pleasant amount of chew. It's still tender, but it tastes like a steak. By the time we hit four hours, that chew has been reduced a bit. Connective tissue has broken down and individual muscle fibrils split apart easily instead of sticking together, though a four-hour steak is still pretty decent."[more inside]
A Butterfly Journey
A 17th-Century Woman Artist’s Butterfly Journey Despite her long career, her influence on contemporary natural knowledge, her vivid descriptions of distant Suriname, and her intrepid spirit, when she died in 1717 the city of Amsterdam’s register of deaths described her simply as a woman “without means.”
"Who wants to go to Vancouver?"
Tony Zhou is back with a love letter / lament for his cinematically ubiquitous hometown: "Vancouver Never Plays Itself".
What? Everything is normal here. Go away.
College Scorecard: low salaries, gender gaps, and loan defaults
The US Department of Education has released the College Scorecard, matching financial aid data to federal tax returns. At some expensive colleges, the salaries of students 10 years after enrollment are bleak, and there is an earnings gender gap at every top university. [more inside]
The inner life of the fig
The Queen of Trees is a documentary (52 minutes) on the sycomore fig tree, focusing on the intricate mutualism between a fig tree and its fig wasp. Filmmakers Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble spent two years camped out in the Kenyan bush to capture fascinating scenes of life around the sycomore, including inside the figs.
The last believers in an ordered universe.
"It is simply easier for some people to believe that the United States government has concocted a vast conspiracy to take away all of our guns than it is to believe that it is too easy for a mentally ill person to acquire one and shoot anyone they want.
And now those same people are taking it out on the families of the victims of gun violence after a tragedy."
What Do You Say To A Roanoke Truther? Ben Collins, The Daily Beast
Bugs in old arcade games
Here is what causes the kill screens of Ms. Pac-Man and why they happen long before level 256. Here is why you can sometimes control the attract mode demo in Galaga. Computer Archeology explains the "no fire" cheat in Galaga, which causes the enemies to stop firing if you keep two specific bugs alive long enough. (What, you don't know what Galaga is? galaga.info has you covered.) [more inside]
They both have cold, dead eyes
Kim Suozzi, Cancer, 23 - For Now?
A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future - (SLNYT)
Kim Suozzi knew she was dying, but believed that cryonic preservation had a “1 or 2 percent chance” of offering her another shot at life. And for that, it was worth trying.
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