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For the second time, Memorial University professor Ranee Panjabi refuses to wear an FM transmitter that will allow a hearing-impaired student to hear her lectures. The student, history major William Sears, is forced to drop out of her History of Espionage course. Now Memorial University has discovered an agreement that it signed with Panjabi nearly 20 years ago that allows her to refuse to wear the transmitter on religious grounds.
comment posted at 9:33 AM on Sep-18-15

A 14 year old in Dallas builds a digital clock. He takes it to school to show his teacher. The school has him arrested.
comment posted at 2:34 AM on Sep-16-15

A few weeks ago, the restaurant critic for the East Bay Express found himself duped by reviews of a phony Chinese restaurant in the hills of El Cerrito. Was it a hoax or a glimpse of a possible future?
comment posted at 7:51 PM on Sep-15-15

Guy annoys girl with puns at IKEA. [SLYT, 2:03]
comment posted at 6:41 PM on Aug-24-15

Last month, Pearson sold the Financial Times to Nikkei (the media corp, not stock market), as reported in the Economist. Today, Pearson sold its 50% stake in the Economist to its other owners, as reported in the Financial Times. Thoughts from Slate Money, Quartz, The Week UK, and the New York Times.
comment posted at 8:18 PM on Aug-12-15
comment posted at 8:49 PM on Aug-12-15

"Leading technology companies are increasingly soliciting their users to take political action on their behalf to defend controversial business models from regulation, support new programs, and promote their moral values in active political battles." Matt Stempeck explores the implications [alt link] of Uber and Facebook (among others) turning their users into lobbyists for the companies.
comment posted at 6:02 PM on Aug-11-15

The nicer a place Singapore becomes, the more it is flooded with outside capital and migration. That raises the cost of land and thus rents and home prices. Imagine if I didn’t own a home and suddenly Fairfax, VA became like Beverly Hills or Palo Alto. I would have to pay more, but wouldn’t benefit much from the proximity of the movie stars or the tech titans.

The political reaction is to make Singapore an even nicer place to live, which is what you would expect from a competent government. That’s great, but in some ways it makes the underlying problem worse by attracting additional foreign capital and labor. The city becomes more Westernized and more corporate and land values rise all the more.

A simple theory of Singaporean complaints.
comment posted at 8:43 PM on Aug-9-15

Yesterday, journalist Melody Kramer used her column on the website of the Poynter Institute to publish "a list of every hidden journalism-related social media group I could find”. Reaction to her column has been decidedly mixed.
comment posted at 9:56 PM on Aug-4-15
comment posted at 6:19 AM on Aug-5-15

A new London accent strikingly different from Cockney has emerged in the last few years. Linguists call it "Multicultural London English" (or MLE) and although it has obvious roots in the London black community it's now displacing Cockney to become a universal accent for working class London youth, regardless of race. Change is spreading so fast that London teens often have radically different accents from their own parents.
comment posted at 2:34 AM on Jul-29-15

A never-before-released set of photos show the anxiety of the Bush administration as it reacted to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The documentarian Colette Neirouz Hanna, whose work with PBS has focused on the Bush administration, received the photos in response to a freedom of information request. They were taken by the vice-president’s staff photographer. The full set is on Flickr: 1, 2, 3, 4
comment posted at 7:52 PM on Jul-25-15

“Possibly, the person who ends up being gored or attacked is maybe not the one who is harassing the animal,” Bartlett said, according to CNN. The animal “may have been approached all day long … eventually the animal reaches its breaking point and charges people.”
comment posted at 6:51 PM on Jul-23-15

Kiwi Nigel Richards wins French Scrabble contest, doesn't even speak French. - Finale
comment posted at 9:15 PM on Jul-21-15

Husband films wife giving birth in the front seat of the (moving) car. "Should I stop or should I keep going?
comment posted at 12:07 AM on Jul-21-15

Early results indicate Greeks have voted No in a landslide.
comment posted at 4:16 AM on Jul-13-15

François Hollande calls emergency meeting after WikiLeaks claims US spied on three French presidents.
comment posted at 9:47 PM on Jun-23-15

As we approach the final 500 days to the 2016 US presidential election, and with a smorgasbord of POTUS wannabes, John Ellis Bush has revealed, through the medium of the Twitter, his campaign logo. A day before the bid of "Veto Corleone" is launched in Florida, and a day after Hillary Clinton formally launched her campaign through a rally and smalltown networking, Jeb is the betting favorite to be the Republican candidate, with strong showings for Marco Rubio and Scott Walker. He's also raised a bit of money; however, this hasn't been spent on a completely new logo (also here and here and here and possibly here). Parodies are also starting, as are enhancements. Despite this, Hillary remains the clear favorite to be the next POTUS, with George Clooney a 150/1 outsider at several bookmakers).
comment posted at 5:13 PM on Jun-14-15

On Medium's Cuepoint, MC Big Data analyzed data from all rap lyrics available on Rap Genius to determine the most popular ride in Hip Hop.
comment posted at 1:32 AM on Jun-13-15

US vs. Nordic Policing How many shots are needed?
comment posted at 8:08 PM on May-28-15

Unicode is Kind of Insane
comment posted at 8:26 PM on May-26-15
comment posted at 6:45 PM on May-27-15

John Nash, notable mathematician, died yesterday, with his wife Alicia, in a taxi accident. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994 for his contributions to game theory, in particular his discovery of the Nash equilibrium. (previously)
comment posted at 9:32 PM on May-24-15

Legendary Blues Musician B.B. King died last night at Age 89. He was a member of the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame, was widely considered one of the greatest guitarists ever, and owned the most famous guitar ever played. He will be missed.
comment posted at 1:32 AM on May-16-15

A Study of Globally Time Zone-Shifted Collaboration
comment posted at 1:25 AM on May-12-15

It began with a walk-in. In August 2010 a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer approached Jonathan Bank, then the CIA’s station chief at the US embassy in Islamabad. He offered to tell the CIA where to find bin Laden in return for the reward that Washington had offered in 2001. Walk-ins are assumed by the CIA to be unreliable, and the response from the agency’s headquarters was to fly in a polygraph team. The walk-in passed the test. ‘So now we’ve got a lead on bin Laden living in a compound in Abbottabad, but how do we really know who it is?’ was the CIA’s worry at the time, the retired senior US intelligence official told me.

Seymour Hersh on new revelations about the operation to kill Osama bin Laden
comment posted at 1:27 AM on May-11-15

Printing a wall-sized world map and what I've learned from it : One man's epic journey to possess a wall-sized world map, which he loves.
comment posted at 8:15 PM on Apr-30-15

What's My Starbucks Name is like a bad barrista simulator, showing all the ways they can get your name WRONG.
roasted by dumbbelldupe
comment posted at 2:07 AM on Apr-28-15

Though nowadays somewhat stereotyped as being massive group dance numbers in traditional dress, Bollywood musical sequences have tended to follow the fashions of Hollywood. Though from 1957, this Marx Brothers influenced Ina Mina Dika shows a 30s/40s aesthetic. The James Bond influenced Baithe Hain Kya Uska Paas is the spirit of the jet age. Disco is taken on with Jab Chhaye.
When Hollywood films stopped having musical numbers, music videos became the main influence. Take a little Michael Jackson and a little Madonna and see what Bollywood does with it.
comment posted at 11:32 PM on Apr-13-15

For the Safe Cities Index 2015, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) ranked 50 of the world's biggest cities on:

Digital security: Identity theft, online privacy
Health security: Environment, air and water quality
Infrastructure safety: Buildings, roads, bridges
Personal safety: Crime, violence

Lifehacker looks at the results.
comment posted at 8:45 AM on Mar-11-15

In 1959, iconic Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí agreed to design several holiday greeting cards for Hallmark, "with several stipulations. He asked for $15,000 [$122,200 in 2014 dollars] in cash in advance for 10 greeting card designs, with no suggestions from Hallmark for the subject or medium, no deadline and no royalties."
comment posted at 4:59 PM on Dec-26-14

The land of fjords, trolls and vikings is a nation of 5 million people, and snow. Photographers like it, as do jumpers and skateboarders. Norway is pretty and has a long coastline due to the lovely crinkly edges, making it nice to sail in. There are islands such as the Lofoten archipelago, long train journeys, steep train journeys, the Northern Lights, ferry journeys that last 134 hours, road tunnels, cathedrals, more Aurora Borealis, mountains, lights, some skiing, sunrises and sunsets, cosy hotels, long walks and whales. And the Aurora. Their tourist board has an unfair advantage. Camping is nice, either with other people or on your own. Svalbard is quite north. Did we mention the scenery and Aurora?
comment posted at 7:49 AM on Dec-10-14

There is little trace of the presence of the South Asians who lived and worked in Mexico during the colonial period except for one woman whose legend lives on even today. She was purportedly born Mira in the kingdom of the Gran Mogol, or the Great Mughals, where she was captured by the Portuguese who eventually sold her to the Spanish at the port of Manila.

The 'Mughal Princess' of Mexico: At the South Asian American Digital Archive, Meha Priyadarshini briefly explores the myths and realities of Catarina de San Juan (1606-1688), a religious mystic/visionary who sailed on the Manila galleon to Mexico nearly four hundred years ago and over time became associated in popular legend with a well-known style of dress. The etymological complexity of one keyword involved should not be underestimated and itself tells another story about the history of colonialism.
comment posted at 3:29 AM on Nov-29-14

59 years after an all-white jury in Mississippi acquitted Emmett Till's murderers, a majority-white grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, decided not to indict Darren Wilson, the man who killed Mike Brown.
comment posted at 2:42 AM on Nov-25-14

When Prince Charles becomes king, will he be able to stop his compulsive ‘meddling’? And if he can’t, what will it mean for the monarchy and the United Kingdom? (SLGuardian)
comment posted at 2:13 PM on Nov-20-14

How do you get your VIPs from A to B? The motorcade, that seemingly endless stream of steel and blue light which takes possession of however much public highway it likes. If you're America, Russia or China, it's almost a competitive sport over who has the longest, with city blocks and motorway lanes locked off for the security bubble. London does it a little differently...
comment posted at 12:30 PM on Nov-11-14

The second televised debate between Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling is to be shown across the UK tonight. After a lacklustre first debate, the final days of the referendum campaign are ticking down. There are signs of growing momentum for the Yes side, with undecideds moving to Yes in some polls and the 'Yes Declaration' recently hitting a million signatures. But the Better Together campaign still has some heavy hitters on side, with Sir Ian Wood recently casting doubt on oil extraction figures he had previously agreed with.
comment posted at 7:02 AM on Aug-26-14

The Victoria & Albert Museum is hosting Disobedient Objects, an exhibit on 'out-designing authority.'
comment posted at 7:08 PM on Aug-20-14

The 2014 Fields Medals have been awarded to Artur Avila, Manjul Bhargava, Martin Hairer, and Maryam Mirzakhani. Mirzakhani, a professor at Stanford, is the first woman to win math's highest prize, and Avila is the first South American. Erica Klarreich at Quanta Magazine has profiles of all four winners.
comment posted at 8:44 PM on Aug-12-14

The closure of the Hindustan Motors factory in Uttarapara, West Bengal, is the end of an era in Indian history. The Ambassador is the perfect example of all that was wrong with Indian policy towards industrialization, manufacturing and business. Protectionism and the license raj created a seller's market where people waited years to buy a car. Until liberalization in the 1990s, the Amby hadn't known any real competition, and there was no pressure to either modernize or improve quality. None of this mattered, at least we had a car. And there wasn't any other quite like it in the world. RIP, motor gadi.
comment posted at 11:41 PM on Aug-10-14

data.gov.in : the Indian counterpart of the US data.gov, features 10280 resources in 3215 catalogs for public perusal. There's a visualization gallery charting developments like village electrification or domestic air traffic or sales of automobiles. And also a community section featuring apps offering mobile access to some of the data.
comment posted at 7:34 PM on Aug-7-14

The CIA Must Tell the Truth About My Rendition At 12 Years Old.
comment posted at 9:45 PM on Aug-6-14

A right-wing Indian politician's racist, xenophobic, and anti-Muslim books are making their way to schools in Gujarat.
comment posted at 8:02 PM on Jul-28-14

Pharrell Williams-HAPPY (Swahili version)
comment posted at 3:34 AM on Jun-25-14

So earlier today Luis Suarez, striker for the Uruguay side, bit Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini on the shoulder during their respective teams' final group play match for the World Cup. This is not the first time he's done this--in fact, folks were taking bets that Suarez would bite someone during World Cup play. Biting is a major taboo in sports, and sure enough, Suarez is now facing a ban of up to 24 games by FIFA. Indeed, Suarez has a history of violent behavior and racist statements, even when you leave aside the biting incidents. And yet, despite all this, Suarez is generally regarded as one of the best soccer players in the world today. So it's fitting that, just before this year's World Cup began, ESPN published an essay by Wright Thompson (previously) on the many myths and contradictions that surround Luis Suarez.
comment posted at 12:52 AM on Jun-25-14

Which countries have visa-free access to more countries than others? Ranked at the top with 173 visa-free countries (out of a possible 218) are Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, which all share the Schengen visa policy; dead last is Afghanistan, which only has visa-free access to 28 countries. (Not included in the list were places like Wonderland, Neverland, Hell, Utopia, the Unconscious, or Pangea.) Regardless of nationality, though, it can still be devillishly difficult to get visas for some countries. With the advent of RFID passports, some countries are doing away with visa labels or passport stamps, so collect as many as you can and take a look at them so you can figure out what they say about the issuing country or even turn them into art (or ad campaigns).
comment posted at 1:02 AM on Apr-26-14
comment posted at 7:26 PM on Apr-26-14

香港將於33年後毀滅 (Hong Kong will be destroyed after 33 years) is a near-future sci-fi short film about a fictional meteor that is headed for Hong Kong and expected to impact in 2047, but the public at large does nothing to address this impending doom. It might seem like an innocuous enough film, but China thought there was more to the story than that, and State Council Information Office requested that websites immediately remove video, text, etc. that advocates the short sci-fi film about Hong Kongers “saving themselves” titled Hong Kong Will Be Destroyed in 33 Years. The Diplomat has a bit more information about the film's not entirely coincidental use of the year 2047, the year in which China's Special Administrative Region (SAR) agreement with Hong Kong is set to expire, possibly bringing an end to one country, two systems.
comment posted at 8:06 AM on Apr-14-14

"Android users are less lucrative than iPhone users, and designers are iPhone users. It's a socio-economic split on class lines, in favor of iPhone over Android."

Cennydd Bowles, a design lead for Twitter, asks why developers don't take Android seriously. At the Business Insider, Jim Edwards response is that Android users are, well, poor. It also turns out that a lot of Android users use their phones disappointedly as just phones, while developing for Android is much more costly than for iOS. All of which may just explain why it's rumoured Samsung wants to abandon Android for its own operating system.
comment posted at 12:24 AM on Apr-13-14

Turin is the latest city to claim a cat cafe, which opened today. Originally a phenomena only in Japan, other cat cafes are already open in Paris, London, Vienna, St Petersburg, Budapest, Munich, Berlin, Madrid and Devon. Coming soon: San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, Los Angeles, Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, and Lithuania.
comment posted at 7:23 AM on Apr-6-14