July 23
Playing with nukes and fire: online simulations of explosions and plumes
Alex Wellerstein, an historian of science who specializes in the history of nuclear weapons and nuclear secrecy, has put together two online maps mashups: NUKEMAP2, and NUKEMAP3D, which use Google Maps and Google Earth, respectively. With those tools, you can see the blast radius for nuclear explosions of your own design, or from one of the presets. But this doesn't get into dispersion of fallout. If you're interested in that kind of thing, you might want to see various smoke modeling tools, which are used for wildfire management. [more inside]
Something is going to happen in 77 days
Pronunciation Book (previously), a YouTube channel started in April 2010, is known for providing mostly-accurate pronunciation guides for difficult words: acacia, ouroboros, Tlaxcala. But on July 9th, the channel started posting something new: a countdown. [more inside]
Sad YouTube
Degrassi Panthers
Degrassi Panthers "Degrassi Panthers is a blog dedicated to mapping out the shoot locations of all 3 seasons of the Canadian TV series Degrassi Junior High."
So best not to think of a pink elephant
Of cats, rabbits and monstrous births, about the persistent Medieval/Early Modern belief that a woman's pregnancy could be influence what she gave birth too, as in the case of Agnes Bowker, who supposedly gave birth to a cat.
Yes, I am both a speedboat and a speed train.
In 1980, two years before her death, she was offered a short column in “Parade.” Here are some excerpts.
Ask Ayn, by John Hodgman. (SLNewYorker)
"This one is SUPER lucky!"
At the dawn of the millennium, Japanese society has suffered a severe economic collapse, leading to widespread youth apathy and 800,000 students boycotting school. Adult society sought to reassert their authority by passing the Millennium Education Reform Act, otherwise known as the BR Act. - a look at Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale.
He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount
Milwaukee Brewer Ryan Braun has been suspended for the rest of the season due to his involvement with a former "anti-aging" clinic called Biogenesis that allegedly supplied athletes with human growth hormone, anabolic steroids, testosterone, and other performance-enhancing drugs (Taiwanese animation video). Alex Rodriguez is expected to be suspended next, along with 15-20 other Major League Baseball players, with punishments expected to linger into the 2014 season.
Shooting Porn With Glass Is... Different
POV is a trick used in both Hollywood filmmaking and adult filmmaking to let the viewer feel like the camera’s eyes are theirs. The problem is, no matter how skilled the Hollywood cinematographer or the porn videographer, traditional POV shots don’t have a true lifelikeness because the camera is still too big to get intimate, close-up line-of-sight shots as we would see with our naked eyes. Glass changes that. And while the quality of Glass-shot video isn’t good enough for Hollywood blockbusters, it’s more than good enough for porn. [SLFC] [NSFW]
ROCKY: I mean, c’mon - do I look like a Rambo to you?
In 2010, six friends sat down to watch all four Rambo movies in one day. Inspired, they realized how f&%king awesome it would be if Rambo were to fight his doppelganger Rocky. They plotted the movie in five minutes, split up the writing chores, and each wrote a section, without any of them reading the others' work.
This is that story.
(Not the story of how they wrote it, but the actual script they wrote, Rocky Vs Rambo)
I cry all the time thinking of my child
The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit yesterday (after a long investigation) against the state of Florida alleging the state is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in its administration of its service system for children with significant medical needs. [more inside]
Metamorphosis
A celebration of geek girls in song
Nothing to Prove (SLYT) The Doubleclicks rebut the "fake geek girl" meme in this awesome song. [more inside]
Adrift in the Corporate Shuffle
It hit me this morning that perhaps all of my endless toil and hard work has landed me here. I've transferred so much within the company that all paperwork on me has been long since misplaced. I exist only in a computer program that spits out a 4 digit paycheck to my bank account every other Thursday - just another tick on the underbelly of the corporate warthog. Too senior to be fired, too misunderstood to be bothered, I am truly the forgotten employee.
getting old doesn't mean sex has to
The Hebrew Home in Riverdale, NY has a comprehensive policy regarding sexual expression. The policy, which appears to be the only one of its kind among U.S. residential facilities for the elderly, says that residents "have the right to seek out and engage in sexual expression,” including “words, gestures, movements or activities which appear motivated by the desire for sexual gratification." As Baby Boomers age and begin to enter nursing homes in greater numbers, they're taking their freer sexual attitudes -- and their Viagra-- with them. An 80-something resident of the Hebrew Home says "she’d love to have someone special in her life.
'You want to have someone to pat you, someone to hold hands with,' she said. 'Age should not be a barrier to anything.'"
This pain... it is a glacier moving through you
Glacier, the concluding track from John Grant's 2013 album Pale Green Ghosts is "the song that I wish I would have heard when I was a teenager". [more inside]
"superior in their natural gifts on the average to the mass[es]"
"In Victorian England, getting a job was all about who you knew, [but] Charles Trevelyan, the permanent secretary to the Treasury 1840-59, was horrified by the Barnacle types in the civil service, once describing a colleague, as a "gentleman who really could neither read nor write, he was almost an idiot"."
July 22
unravelling before our eyes
The Constant Traveler
Good to the last note.
After 35 years, Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ, is closing. Once called "the best club in New York" by New York magazine, Maxwell's was ground zero for "The Hoboken Sound", with such bands as The Bongos, The Feelies, and Yo La Tengo playing there frequently. It was also the setting for Bruce Springsteen's Glory Days video. [more inside]
'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result
"Poverty is a more powerful influence on the outcome of inner-city children than gestational exposure to cocaine." [more inside]
Ask First!
[NSFW] "Ask First! was written by J. Mary Burnet & Kaleigh Trace in response to Robin Thicke's gross, unconsensual song and video Blurred Lines... We don't want to have to listen to Robin Thicke tell us he knows we want it over such a damn catchy beat. We wanna dance to music that's sexy and radical." [more inside]
"Good food, good fun, and a whole lot of crazy crap on the walls"
The Right to Childhood Should be Protected.
Our Contemplation of the Cosmos Stirs Us
Cosmos returns in the year 2014. "A Personal Journey" becomes "A Space-Time Odyssey". Presented by Neil deGrasse Tyson and produced by Seth MacFarlane, Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey will be aired on FOX and follow a similar format to the beloved Sagan classic, available here.
Wait.. how did this get by unnoticed thus far?
Apparently, since 2012 there has been new series of Mysterious Cities of Gold (previously) in production. Acting as a continuation, as opposed to a reboot. No English versions available, yet. French trailer. French opening.
Chicken of the sea
Have sketchbook, will travel.
Drawn The Road Again, artist Chandler O'Leary's "illustrated road trip blog."
I’ve logged a lot of miles in my life, visiting as many patches of earth as possible and getting as much down on paper as I can. And for the first time, I’m putting these sketches out into the world. So here we are: I’ve collected all my drawings of crazy tourist traps and Paul Bunyan statues and hidden gems and panoramic vistas, and I’m sending them out like postcards. To you.[more inside]
Crowd-sourcing patent searches
"There are a lot of people complaining about lousy software patents these days. I say, stop complaining, and start killing them. It took me about fifteen minutes to stop a crappy Microsoft patent from being approved. Got fifteen minutes? You can do it too."
Software Patents previously: 1 2 3 4.
Joel Spolsky previously: 1 2
Robotic gymnasts made by hinamitetu
No. 16 makes the quadruple backflip look easy (YouTube), but robotic gymnastics don't always go so well (YT). [more inside]
You don't win friends with salad
Iowa State Fair officials have announced 10 new food options for the 2013 fair, in addition to the eight announced earlier this month. These include maple bacon funnel cake and deep fried prairie oysters, and join old favorites including deep fried butter on a stick, pork chop on a stick, and over 60 other foods (on a stick). [more inside]
Ghost Beach Is Closed Due To Jellyfish
"On my great steed Sabermetric, I venture forth to distant shores."
Nate Silver will move FiveThirtyEight to ESPN when his contract with the New York Times expires in late August. Silver's new site will look to Bill Simmons' Grantland as a model for existing under ESPN's umbrella. His new move could be "genius," with a role at ABCNews and a larger audience, but did the New York Times know what it had in Silver? ESPN press release & Nate Silver 2.0 quote
Hello extremely! I hope you like to *play*.
Stardock buys rights to Star Control from Atari and plans a reboot! In 1992, Accolade released one of the most greatestest, or at least silliest, space adventure games of totally forever: Star Control II. [more inside]
:( sad boys :(
The concept of 'Sad Rap' has recently been explored by two rappers: Little Pain (Soundcloud, YouTube video for "High Cry") in the United States, and Yung Lean (Soundcloud, personal site, and video of "Hurt" (the video is... amazing?)) of Sweden. Pain and Lean have been compared to Lil B for their similar outsider art perspective on the genre, with the distinction that sad rap tends to focus singularly on the emotion of depression. For further reading, Vice's Noisey music blog has been chronicling both Pain and Lean in these articles: Meet Little Pain..., Meet Yung Lean Doer.... The Strangest New Thing in Music or a Logical Next Step for Hip-Hop from Pigeons and Planes. Hip-hop blog Refined Hype has a reaction piece which questions the very concept of 'Sad Rap' as a genre: Stopping Little Pain & Sad Rap Before It Starts. Producer Suicideyear provides the low key, somber beats for both artists.
"I'll get up and bury this telephone in your head."
...that Kilimanjaro of garbage was no metaphor.
Sharin' Morningstar Keenan. Please remember that name.
For 30 years, an ex-con drifter from Saskatchewan named Dennis Melvyn Howe has eluded police in connection with the abduction, rape and murder of a 9 year old Toronto girl. In 2008, an Idaho man named Robert James Miller wrote two long, bizarre posts on the forum at unsolvedcanada.ca. He claimed to have identified Howe and turned him in after seeing a 1998 episode of America's Most Wanted. The FBI is now investigating the possibility that Miller himself is Dennis Melvyn Howe. [more inside]
He doesn't know that his old bone is captured by all these cell phones
An Astronomical Acid Trip
Enjoy 200,000 images of Saturn, its rings and moons taken by NASA's Cassini over 8 years compressed into 4 minutes of video.
To Secure, Contain and Protect
"I am absolutely clear that the state has a vital role to play."
Online pornography to be blocked by default in the UK, announces Prime Minister David Cameron in a speech today. Internet users will have to contact their ISPs to opt out of the filter. Possession of pornography depicting rape will also be illegal. Here is the full text of the speech. Coverage by The Independent, the Telegraph, and a shortened video of the speech at the Guardian. [more inside]
The Great Kate Wait almost over
Days after British and International news reporters and photographers started claiming space in front of the Lindo Wing at St. Mary's hospital, (some have been there since July 3, or 10 days before Kate Middleton's suspected due date of July 13), the "Royal Baby" is finally on the way now that the Duchess of Cambridge is reportedly in labor. Millions around the world wait for the birth of the newest addition to the Royal Family, who will be third in line to the throne of the British Monarchy, whether it's a boy or a girl.
The Last Days of Big Law
Of all the occupational golden ages to come and go in the twentieth century—for doctors, journalists, ad-men, autoworkers—none lasted longer, felt cushier, and was all in all more golden than the reign of the law partner. Noam Schreiber on The Last Days of Big Law: You can't imagine the terror when the money dries up. Former law partner Steven J. Harper, author of The Lawyer Bubble, believes the profession to be in existential crisis. Another former partner weighs in. Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein presents a more sanguine view.
"what defines truth in the digital age"
Economic Mobility in the U.S. Varies Geographically
A team of economists from Harvard and UC Berkeley studying the effects of tax expenditures on economic mobility has released data showing that economic mobility in the U.S. varies dramatically between different geographic areas. The authors' website includes a summary of their findings. According the NY Times article on the study, which has a nifty map and tools to play with the data, the authors only found relatively small correlations between tax credits for the poor and higher taxes on the rich and economic mobility. However, the following four factors did correlate with greater economic mobility in a region: the size and dispersion of the middle class, more two-parent households, better schools, and more civic engagement (measured through membership in religious and community groups). Matthew Yglesias comments on the study at Slate. [more inside]
All My Exes Live in Texts
When 772 pitches isn't enough
Tomohiro Anraki might be the next big Japanese pitcher, if he manages to survive high school baseball in Japan. [more inside]
Chomsky vs Žižek
People sometimes assume that because Chomsky is a leftist, he would find common intellectual ground with the postmodernist philosophers of the European Left.
Big mistake.
Slavoj Žižek Responds to Noam Chomsky: ‘I Don’t Know a Guy Who Was So Often Empirically Wrong’
Chomsky responds, "Žižek finds nothing, literally nothing, that is empirically wrong." [more inside]
You've ruined my dreams.
When Nada Al-Ahdal discovered that her parents had sold her she ran away. She is 11 years old, and this is her message. [more inside]
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