September 24, 2015
Once in a blue moon
Beardyman's One Album Per Hour session at the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe Festival (SLYT)
The Apocalypse Will Not Be Digitized
Life After A Total Hack. "A short story about the biggest fear you don’t even know you have," by Jon Methven. LinkedIn, eHarmony and Last.fm were all "hacked wide open this week [June 6, 2012] .. But what would happen to us if everything got compromised?" [more inside]
Color my world
The iBookGuy explains how graphics worked within the memory constraints of the Commodore 64 and NES, and the Apple II and Atari 2600
The Rent Is Too Damn High
More than just parks: tranquil videos of America's National Parks
More Than Just Parks is "a project started in an effort to effect a greater awareness of the treasures that reside within America's National Parks." So far, there are four short videos: Olympic 4K (info) // Smoky Mountains (info) // Joshua Tree (info) // Redwood (info) // the tumblr blog
When science catches up to the pet trade: Geosesarma crabs
Geosesarma is a genus of small, colorful, land based freshwater crabs, roughly the size of an American quarter. Scientists struggle to properly catalog and describe the varieties of crabs they find in pet stores. [more inside]
Space Patrol (The Puppet One)
Space Patrol was a 1962 TV series featuring puppets a la Gerry Anderson's Supermarionation. In fact, the creator, Roberta Leigh, had worked with Anderson previously. Its fans include some guy named J. Michael Straczynski. It features the first music completely realized through electronic means. [more inside]
A particular emphasis on the word "dread"
Dreadpunk feels like a perfectly natural term for the recent trend in Gothic-inspired horror and fantasy. Typified by the popular series Penny Dreadful, the word implies a subversive take on fog-drenched Victoriana, tales of the supernatural mixed with late 19th-century aesthetics, and the recent wave of Gothic horror like The Woman In Black and Crimson Peak.
Ten million viewers were glued to it: Andrew Davies' Pride and Prejudice
"'I was reading an article in the Radio Times the other day,' says Andrew Davies. 'The journalist was asking, "Why have all these classic serials got to be about the male lead getting his kit off?" And I thought, 'Hey! I started that!'" - Pride and Prejudice at 20: The scene that changed everything, by Nicholas Barber for BBC Culture. [more inside]
The Little Prince Only Had Three
Baobab Trees I was not aware that baobab trees grew anyplace but Africa, so it blew my mind to find out that they also live in India and Australia.
They were likly introduced by Africans in both cases.
A is for Autumn.
3d laser printer
The Glowforge 3d laser printer "The Glowforge simplifies laser cutting by moving software to the cloud and making use of smartphone sensors. " [via]
Teacher required ... may need their own boat
About that password ...
Utility for testing (and cracking) "Is your password secure? We’ve all heard a lot of advice about what sorts of passwords you should never pick – and there are various tools that claim to assess the security of your password online. However, these can only be dubiously accurate. The only way to really test the security of your passwords is to try to break them.
FUD
and previously
[more inside]
C= C= COMMODORE FOREVAR C= C=
Here's a retro computing oddity, info on the first portable color computer, the Commodore SX64, with a 5 1/4-inch floppy drive and a seriously tiny CRT monitor. Here's a demonstration and teardown. Here's a somewhat ridiculous commercial for it. Commodore had a lot of unreleased prototypes, but the SX actually made it to market. Not a prototype but still interesting is Steve Gray's hack on an old monochrome Commodore PET to display color. And he also has an archive of old Commodore brochures.
William Fakespeare
If you want to read the latest work of Shakespeare, written and performed 200 years after his death, look no further! Vortigern, an historical play(sic) is it! Performed for the first time on April 2, 1796 it was not performed again until 2008, when the Pembrooke Players put on a revival.
Why not? [more inside]
Last Mass and the Canonization of Junípero Serra
"In some ways I see it as my personal protest of Father Serra and his anticipated canonization." In light of the recent canonization of Father Fray Junípero Serra by Pope Francis yesterday, (the first canonization ceremony to be held in the United States and Serra being the first native saint of the Balearic Islands), it seems a good time to recommend Last Mass a new book by former Californian, current Georgia, (USA), resident, Jamie Iredell. [more inside]
This is another sure sign of intellectual dishonesty
From the Neurologica blog: "Creationists are engaged in science denial—denying evolutionary science. The purpose of denial is doubt and confusion, so they don’t have to create and defend a coherent explanation of the origins of life on Earth. They don’t have to provide an explanation for all the available evidence. All they have to do is muddy the waters as much as possible." [more inside]
Hear that lonesome whistle howl
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80 High-Resolution, Textless Movie Posters (SL Imgur)
SOMA: CogSci, AI, weird robotics, underwater bases
SOMA, the new sci-fi horror game by the creators of Amnesia, the Dark Descent, came out this week. It was influenced by the works of Greg Egan, China Mieville, Philip K Dick, and (MeFi's own) Peter Watts. [more inside]
Is the Prevent strategy demonising Muslim schoolchildren?
'You worry they could take your kids' Teachers [in the UK] now have a statutory duty to spot signs of 'non-violent extremism', with children as young as three being referred for anti-radicalisation. Does the policy safeguard vulnerable pupils – or discriminate against Muslims?
Vic Onion
A comic about the interior struggle of onions. This is not a gag-a-week webcomic, it is a long form comedy about opposing philosophies of growing up, love, work and friendship. It is also about an onion who lives with a sphinx cat.
The Ballad of Steinbjørn Jacobsen
I Sing for You an Apple is an account by writer and translator Eric Wilson of "escorting a Faroese poet-hero around the USA" in 1978. The poet-hero from the Faroe Islands was Steinbjørn Berghamar Jacobsen, who wrote fiction, poetry, plays and children's books in the language of his North-Atlantic archipelago. His works have not been translated into English, but they have been set to music. On Tinna og Tám he reads his own poems, accompanied by Kristian Blak and Heðin Ziska Davidsen (YouTube: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 ). And after his passing in 2012, two of his children, Kári and Eyð Jacobsen, made an album, Tungl, where they turned his poems into indie songs (YouTube: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).
The Family Album
Lines Are (Sorta) More Efficient From the End
Danish researchers Trine Tornøe Platz and Lars Peter Østerdal have modeled a counterintuitive queueing system -- the last person to arrive is served first -- and found that it makes the entire process more efficient. The key is telling people that getting there earlier won't mean you're served earlier. [more inside]
the closest you'll ever come to getting hit by a mail truck, hopefully
Watch This Pro BMX Rider Terrify All Of NYC (vertigo/nauseating camera angles warning) [more inside]
Death is the Mother of Beauty
Death is the Mother of Beauty The doom metal band named, uh, DoOoM, has churned out seven instrumental tracks of…doom, written by MeFi's Own gwint! (I'm only on track five, but I'm that excited.) In the vein of Sleep or Trouble, they are heavy and chill. Over giant-heartbeat-like kick drums, elegant and grounded riffs flow. They are wrapped generously in hearty, fibrous fuzz. Let your brain sink through the layers of the earth guided by a wise capybara as your body pretends to work this afternoon!
[via mefi projects] [more inside]
Preserving skin art after death
(Pictures of pieces of skin) We preserve books, games, images, videos, memories, so why not tattoos? NAPSA, the National Association for the Preservation of Skin Art, are offering such a service. (website currently down) [more inside]
"we pick and choose, the creators pick and choose"
"First of all, in terms of history I’d like to say the vast majority of the medieval world as we think of it was all kinds of people with various shades of brown skin moving back and forth across borders. Yes, there were people in remote little areas who might have never encountered anyone who looked any different than themselves, but overall there was a lot of movement and a lot of contact and a lot of exchange of ideas, crossing transcultural, trans-religious, trans-ethnic zones." -- Arthur Chu and David Perry talk about The Inaccuracy Of “Historical Accuracy” In Gaming And Media.
Beware the novelist . . . intimate and indiscreet
Morrissey’s debut novel List of the Lost is published today. The author has explained that “The theme is demonology … the left-handed path of black magic. It is about a sports relay team in 1970s America who accidentally kill a wretch who, in esoteric language, might be known as a Fetch … a discarnate entity in physical form.” The initial reviews have not been kind: “an unpolished turd of a book” reckons Michael Hann at The Guardian; “a bizarre misogynistic ramble” opines Nico Hines of The Daily Beast. [more inside]
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