April 12, 2016
Enter the Sorcerer Supreme
that bad that hard that street
When The Corporations Exploiting 3rd World People Are Also 3rd World
The face of corporate exploitation in the third world is increasingly local, and thus even more invisible than usual. Most land in Africa is technically owned by "local chiefs," and bribery and collusion between chiefs, state and corporations are dispossessing huge numbers of rural families of their land, health and livelihoods.
Dreaming of Mars, again
Ginger Baker had one.
Inside Erik Prince’s Treacherous Drive to Build a Private Air Force
Jeremy Scahill continues keeping tabs on MrBlackwater; Xe; Reflex Responses Erik Prince now Chairman of the Chinese Fsgroup set to loot Africa.
(Previous)
Jeremy Scahill continues keeping tabs on Mr
(Previous)
Digital Neurons in your Browser
Browser-based Neural Network Demo
What is a Neural Network?
It’s a technique for building a computer program that learns from data. It is based very loosely on how we think the human brain works. First, a collection of software “neurons” are created and connected together, allowing them to send messages to each other. Next, the network is asked to solve a problem, which it attempts to do over and over, each time strengthening the connections that lead to success and diminishing those that lead to failure. [more inside]
What is a Neural Network?
It’s a technique for building a computer program that learns from data. It is based very loosely on how we think the human brain works. First, a collection of software “neurons” are created and connected together, allowing them to send messages to each other. Next, the network is asked to solve a problem, which it attempts to do over and over, each time strengthening the connections that lead to success and diminishing those that lead to failure. [more inside]
This is what it feels like to be hunted by U.S. drones
"I am on the US kill list. I know this because I have been told, and I know because I have been targeted for death over and over again."
Little Pink Houses
Did This New Nonprofit Crack The Code For Building Developing World Housing? "We ask families for their input about the location, the style of home, broader community needs, etc. In Haiti, we built our community about 10 minutes away from the tent slum so that home recipients still had access to their jobs and support networks."
Shocking News: Rage Yoga Invented by Canadian
Istace is now holding Rage Yoga classes in the dimly lit basement of Dickens, a bar in Calgary, Canada. “You should expect there to be foul language, laughter, and shenanigans. If these offend you, Rage Yoga is not for you.” Istace promises that her special brand of yoga will leave you “zen as fuck.” By the way, when you sign up, you get tickets for two draft pints at the discounted price of $4.00 each. Classes have been held on Monday and Wednesday nights since January.
A Thing So Rucked in the Vernacular ... Such an Epic Quality
The wayward greatness of the towers — resolutely local and eccentrically universal — and the scale of Rodia’s achievement were attested to by admirers such as Buckminster Fuller and Jacob Bronowski. Whether or not Rodia created a work of art is another question. Or at least the question “Is it a work of art?” brings with it another: what kind of work of art might it be? Geoff Dyer visits the Watts Towers for Harper's [more inside]
It’s amazing when you have professional people design a front end!
"I’m glad people have stopped asking whether the schools are better"
“Thou shalt not...”
The Bible makes most challenged books list in US for first time. [The Guardian] Americans have objected to titles as diverse as the Bible and Fifty Shades of Grey over the last year, according to a list of the most challenged books which has just been released by the American Library Association. [more inside]
1870s Olmstedian vision of the pastoral context alive and well in 2016
Take a peek inside the development of Apple's new spaceship headquarters, designed by Norman Foster, in this video from 2013. Here's a fly-by of the development from November 2015, and an update from early April 2016. That's nice, but why are America's most innovative companies still stuck designing workplaces set in 1950s suburbia? The ghost of Olmsted reaches beyond urban parks.
You know what they say the best thing about prison is: ladies drink free
Terriers’ perfect one-season run defied description, marketability “Five years later, I still have not been able to think of a title that works,” Terriers creator Ted Griffin told TV critic Alan Sepinwall in a 2015 interview. “Beach Noir? Dolworth & Pollack, P.I.? Our Brand Is Competence?” [more inside]
The worst-reviewed actors and actresses in Hollywood
Vox attempts to take a scientific look at the actors and actresses who most consistently appear in terrible movies. [more inside]
I didn't understand rape culture until I was attacked
Spaceward ho!
Great Blacks In Wax
“African American history’s been smoothed out. You lose focus of how it was, how cruel. But this is the most impacting museum I’ve ever been to. It’s amazing, it’s face-to-face, like reading Nat Turner’s Rebellion—though that was written by a white man.”
How a museum in Baltimore shapes African American history—in wax.
individualistic and subjective, tailored to insecurity and desire
"The mix of things presumed to transmit and increase female power is without limit yet still depressingly limiting."
How 'Empowerment' Became Something for Women to Buy, by Jia Tolentino for NYT Magazine [more inside]
How 'Empowerment' Became Something for Women to Buy, by Jia Tolentino for NYT Magazine [more inside]
"I've gone through my whole life trying to avoid this moment"
Lesbians Touch Penis For The First Time! By the women who brought you Gay Men Touch Vagina for the First time (featuring Stevie), Straight Women Touch Another Vagina For The First Time and Straight Men Touch Another Penis For The First Time
Bringing Gender Equality to the Apocalypse
Rust, a popular multiplayer survival video game, has just added female character models to their game. In an interesting twist, rather than being able to choose your gender, one is randomly assigned to your Steam account, permanently, when you first join. They did something similar previously with skin colour and body shape. Some players are not happy. (NSFW warning: screenshots contain pixelated CGI nudity, since players are dropped into the game naked and must, among their first objectives, find clothing) [more inside]
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TO ABANDON CAPSLOCK
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICES HAS ANNOUNCED THAT STARTING May 11, 2016, their announcements will no longer be all upper case. [Via Slate] [more inside]
Don't Read the Comments?
The Guardian Investigates What Goes On "Below the Line" Comments allow readers to respond to an article instantly, asking questions, pointing out errors, giving new leads. At their best, comment threads are thoughtful, enlightening, funny: online communities where readers interact with journalists and others in ways that enrich the Guardian’s journalism.
But at their worst, they are something else entirely. [more inside]
The Absurd Primacy of the Automobile in American Life
Considering the constant fatalities, rampant pollution, and exorbitant costs of ownership, there is no better word to characterize the car’s dominance than insane. "The car is the star. That’s been true for well over a century—unrivaled staying power for an industrial-age, pistons-and-brute-force machine in an era so dominated by silicon and software. Cars conquered the daily culture of American life back when top hats and child labor were in vogue, and well ahead of such other innovations as radio, plastic, refrigerators, the electrical grid, and women’s suffrage.
A big part of why they’ve stuck around is that they are the epitome of convenience." [more inside]
50 Cent Is Really Big In Europe
This is our Really Big Coin. It is big because it makes other things look small when photographed next to it. [more inside]
I of course had to adopt the dog bc i'm not a monster
Turns out adopting a dog in Skyrim is the hardest quest in the game... [via Alas! A blog] [more inside]
This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.
The profound impact of LSD on the brain has been laid bare by the first modern scans of people high on the drug. The images, taken from volunteers who agreed to take a trip in the name of science, have given researchers an unprecedented insight into the neural basis for effects produced by one of the most powerful drugs ever created. [Guardian link] [more inside]
Baltimore and Baltimore-A Tale of Two Cities
“That’s the thing, though,” he continues. “All that is surrounded by vacant lots, boarded-up homes, and that junkyard—the scrap metal and salvage place where there’s always a line of people hauling stuff in. Down the street from Jubilee Arts, where those little girls do ballet in their pink leotards, I saw a metal coffin once being scrapped for cash.”
Nell pauses.
“But that’s the way Baltimore has always been",he says. “It’s what a good friend of mine who is no longer around used to say: ‘In Baltimore, beauty and chaos live side by side.’”
Blood, sweat, tears and cobblestones
Last Sunday was the day of Paris-Roubaix, one of the most important races of the year in cycling. Today, the team of surprise winner and ultimate underdog Mathew Hayman posted the latest episode in their ongoing series Orica Greenedge backstage pass.
Enjoy! [more inside]
People always call me an asshole - that’s because I don’t stop.
Skaters call it “the bible,” but we’re prone to hyperbole. Maybe it’s Vogue, but for degenerates, and Phelps is skateboarding’s Anna Wintour.A profile of skateboarder & Thrasher editor Jake Phelps, by Willy Staley.
Go Puff Yourself
If it's not enough to have made personal avatars based on characters from Peanuts, The Simpsons, South Park and MeFi Favorite Cartoonist Boulet (previously; BTW Our Boulet has just won this year's Cartoonist Studio Prize, but I digress), Cartoon Network is celebrating/promoting the revival of its classic toon The Powerpuff Girls (but without the original creator or the original voices of the girls, I digress again) with a webapp you can use to make yourself into a Powerpuff Girl... or Powerpuff Boy.
« Previous day | Next day »