September 17, 2012
My love is a fever, longing still for that which longer nurseth the disease
"I don't see anything anti-American about not wanting to become an American citizen; it's similar to the fact that I don't know how to swim. I'm not anti-water; it just never mattered that much to me and my life is fine without it." Why I'm Still Not An American, an essay from a British green-card-holder with complex roots and complex feelings.
Champion Spotlight
Welcome to the Champion Spotlight, featuring Sejuani, the Winter's Claw Wrath. Sejuani is a sub par tanker with terrible AP scaling and... no rider. [more inside]
The Story of the Two Yellowing Sheets of Paper.
Two old sheets of paper tell a story. Scroll down to the last big paragraph of the blog post, just above the photo of the two yellowed sheets of paper. (h/t Jane H.)
No Evidence
Maciej (previously: 1, 2) tells the story of his girlfriend's struggle with disease and her friend Stephanie, before the entire story goes sideways.
things you didn't know you needed
The Popinator - a voice activated popcorn launching machine. Kinda cool, but my money's still on the robotic tweet powered popper. (via @peeweeherman and keepoutofreach)
Giant database of current TV news transcripts and video
You know how Jon Stewart shows politicians contradicting themselves on news clips? Do it yourself by searching a giant database of TV transcripts and video on Internet Archive. The collection now contains 350,000 news programs collected since 2009 from national U.S. networks and stations. The archive is updated with new broadcasts 24 hours after they are aired. Older materials are being added. [more inside]
Chess: A Musical
CHESS MOVES [27m14s] was a 1985 VHS release hosted by Sir Tim Rice comprising of the five music videos made to promote the 1984 album Chess. The individual videos are One Night In Bangkok (Murray Head), Nobody's Side (Elaine Paige), The Arbiter (Björn Skifs), I Know Him So Well (Elaine Paige & Barbara Dickson), and Pity The Child (Murray Head). [more inside]
"Escalation Techniques"
How child molesters get away with it. 'Jerry Sandusky and the Mind of a Pedophile,' by Malcolm Gladwell. Some may find the descriptions within the article disturbing. Via.
Counting Rhos
Do you like biology? Do you like numbers? Like, actual numbers and not the television show? Take a look at BioNumbers. [more inside]
my job is is not to worry about those people
As internal leaks from the Romney camp suggest a campaign in serious disarray, and poll-of-polls meta-analyses show him with little time to recover his position before November, Mother Jones has acquired video from a private Romney fundraiser at which the candidate said of Obama supporters: There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. Ezra Klein puts aside the political ramifications and crunches the numbers about who does and doesn't pay income tax in America. The Romney camp responds to the leak.
Hop In
RidePost is a trusted ridesharing community where travelers meet and share rides across the U.S. It’s a friendlier way to travel—one that’s good for the environment, good for your wallet, and great for getting to know new people. It's a peer-to-peer ridesharing platform connecting those who need a ride with drivers who have extra space in their car. They are partnered with TrustCloud, another startup that assigns a “Trust Score” to individuals, to help increase security for both drivers and passengers.
Diamonds may be forever. Their apparent scarcity isn't.
The Russian Institute of Geology and Mineralogy announced an allegedly previously undisclosed 60-mile-wide field of "trillions of carats" of impact diamonds caused by a metor strike into graphite rock in Siberia. The media is reporting that this has been known about since the 70s but undisclosed, but this is misleading. As detailed by Vishnevsky [academic summary PDF], for example, the presence of large amounts of impact diamonds within the impactites was very well known; it is perhaps better to say that the market-distorting sheer yield of the field (around an order of magnitude of increase over known reserves) had not previously been discussed. The diamonds produced by such high temperatures and pressures are around twice as tough as normal diamonds, and the extreme hardness and compartively cheap availibility is likely to hugely widen the usage of industrial diamonds even setting aside the gemstone issues. This does however put the 2011 sale of the Oppenheimer family 40 per cent stake in De Beers in an interesting light, especially as the field at once offers the prospect of huge diamond stones whilst devaluing De Beers' existing stockpile hugely.
Sex crazed, but not too picky
No arms no problem
Tisha UnArmed was born without arms. In a series of videos she shows how she gets dressed, puts on makeup, showers, drives, eats a sandwich and sushi and a lot more. She also talks about her condition and requests questions. (MLYT)
CTSS
The Bionic Wiki
The Bionic Wiki is a collaborative project to create the most comprehensive information database for the Bionic universe as presented in the 1970's science-fiction, action-adventure series, The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. [more inside]
Annotated Filmography of Charlie Chaplin
Director and/or star of many of the greatest films ever made including The Great Dictator (2:05:16) [Globe scene and the eternally goosebump providing Final speech], The Immigrant (20:01), The Gold Rush (1:11:49), City Lights (1:22:40), Modern Times (1:27:01), and Monsieur Verdoux (1:59:03), Charlie Chaplin's movies have entered the public domain in most countries. Below the fold is an annotated list of all 82 of his official short and feature films in chronological order, as well as several more, with links to where you can watch them; it's not like you had work to do right? [more inside]
On Being Nothing
"... bitterness, instead of a form of disillusionment, is really the refusal to give up your childhood illusions of importance" - Brian Jay Stanley
She has no strings, Apollo...
she's a fraggle rock and I'm drowning slowly
10 myths of the UK's far right
"This is what anti-racism looks like. Equal opportunities are not handed down from on high by Westminster bureaucrats; they have been fought for by ordinary men and women. Even at its peak, the BNP never spoke for anywhere near the majority of working-class white people – in Dagenham, or anywhere else. Daniel Trilling, in The Guardian on Ten myths of the UK's far right. [more inside]
Justice for Vik - after 18 months
Italian peace activist Vittorio Arrigoni's kidnappers were convicted by a Hamas-run military court in the Gaza Strip today for their involvement in the abduction and murder of the Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni in April 2011. [more inside]
Blood, Guts, and Pussy
The DwarvesNSFW have been playing their variety of shockpunk for more than 25 years. Their stage showsNSFW and album coversNSFW are infamous for their nudity, dwarfsploitation, and glorification of violence (though they only manage #8 on the list of 10 most offensive punk rock album covers of all timeoh so very NSFW). And yet, despite the fact that sock rock does not traditionally demand much musically, they are really frigging amazingSFW, SFW, NSFW.
Glimpses of the live-action Akira(s) that could have been
In January 2012, the whitewashed live-action Akira remake was shut down for the fourth time, after years of on-and-off interest in the remake. In the months following, storyboard illustrations from various iterations and artists have popped up, including illustrations by Sylvain Despretz showing a blond Kaneda, artist Jeffrey Errico shared his opening scene storyboards, and artist Chris Weston posted his more detailed drawings of the hospital scene and other scenes. Compare and contrast with the art of Akira (twice previously), and the art in the original manga.
Space-Time Origami Engine of Dreams
In 1994, theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a scheme for virtual faster than light travel using a real-world analog to the familiar science fiction trope known as "Warp Drive." The basic premise exploited certain space-time warping effects predicted by General Relativity to fold space-time, theoretically allowing a specially designed space craft to reach distant destinations effectively at FTL speeds without actually having to accelerate to light speed or beyond at all. There was, however, at least one major problem with the proposal: The math suggested it would require as much energy as the mass of the planet Jupiter to power the thing. But according to newer calculations based on a modified version of Alcubierre's original proposal, warp speed travel may now theoretically be within reach (warning: eyeball-gouging Space.com link), requiring drastically less energy than originally thought. Of course, not everyone's convinced there's anything to see here. And even so, prohibitive energy input requirements may not be the only serious challenge facing the development of real-world warp drive technology, so don't go packing your bags for that long overdue vacation to Risa just yet.
52 Hertz
Ye Banished Privateers
arrrrr lass, so what do ye do when yer a pirate scavvie and want to spread yer music? of course, you release yer album on the pirate bay!
The Monkees give you Head
"Republicans stand the chance of controlling Congress for the rest of the decade if they don't screw it up."
"The Republicans’ dominance in races throughout the country in the 2010 elections eviscerated the Democrats’ farm teams in state after state." Former Bill Clinton political director Doug Sosnik offers an 8-page analysis of the U.S. election that discusses the likelihood of an Obama win, the chances of a complete Republican takeover of Congress, continued Republican dominance of governorships and state legislatures for the rest of the decade, and more. There's also a related slideshow. [more inside]
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