April 26, 2019
Orbital's The Box
Not a long album post, but can we just take a minute to bask in the utter glory of developing and shifting soundscapes that is the full 28m30s version of Orbital's 1996 track The Box? It's a thing unto itself.
“I was gonna keep going... But you blew it for me."
First, there was the sedated bear that was not named Ron, because "No one would name a bear Ron. I’m done here. No more silly questions."
Then, there was the professional juggler to teach kids how to juggle knives and fire.
Does the anti-vax community really want to host these fairs? (The previous sentence constructed with a healthy dose of Betteridge.)
"Chronic inflammation is uniformly damaging and is absolutely causal"
In 2017, two cardiologists at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who suspected such a link, published the results of a human clinical trial that will forever change the way people think about inflammation. The trial, which involved more than 10,000 patients in 39 countries, was primarily designed to determine whether an anti-inflammatory drug, by itself, could lower rates of cardiovascular disease in a large population, without simultaneously lowering levels of cholesterol, as statin drugs do. The answer was yes. (Jonathan Shaw, Harvard Magazine) [more inside]
Masters of the art of hyperbole
The point of this game is *not* to up the body count...
Autonomous cars and the trolley problem: We've talked about self-driving cars and the trolley problem before, but now there are adorable interactive graphics of people being squashed by a moving vehicle.
The End Of The Neoliberal Experiment?
"Like coal, capitalism has brought many benefits. But, like coal, it now causes more harm than good."(The Guardian) "First, as the recent American experience with hyper-capitalism has demonstrated, there are several functions that the public sector actually does more efficiently and more equitably than the private sector." (American Prospect)"....we must also invest in selective growth in certain sectors, from renewable energy to organic farming, as well as low-carbon, socially necessary activities such as education and the caring professions. This will involve reversing the neoliberal capitalist dogma that has imposed austerity for decades (In These Times). Jamie Dimon runs JP Morgan Chase, a bank with $2 Trillion in assets. Representative Katie Porter asked him to create a livable budget for a single mom working at his bank. He couldn’t do it. (Twitter) Why American CEOs are worried about capitalism: Fearing a backlash against business if a Democrat wins the White House, some chief executives are pushing for pre-emptive reforms (FT)
#RedCupProject | More Protection for Active Transportation
In cities around the world today, cyclists and transportation advocates are placing cups along the paint lines of unprotected bike lanes. This was a bit of flash activism spurred by the death last week of DC cycling activist Dave Salovesh. Check the FPP downstream to see why active transportation is making more vocal demands for specialized infrastructure.
AI, Indigenous Epistemologies and the Circle of Relationships
Making Kin with the Machines. Last year, MIT Media Lab's Journal of Design and Science (JoDS) had an essay competition for pieces responding to Media Lab director Joichi Ito's essay Resisting Reduction: A Manifesto. The essays "explore machine intelligence in light of diverse ecosystems in nature and its relationship to humanity." This piece, which brings Indigenous epistemologies to bear on the AI question, was one of the winners. [Via] [more inside]
'Builds up a hand of steam like no other'
SteamWorld Quest: Letting Off Some Steam [Gamespot] “It's easy to be immediately charmed by SteamWorld Quest's colorful fantasy world and the band of merry heroes you'll journey across it with. Their plight is simple and straightforward, making its adventure of confronting evil and its tightening grip on the kingdom around you palatable without feeling overbearing. Underneath this whimsical veneer, however, is a daunting strategy game, one which uses its clever take on turn-based card combat to create a wickedly complex system of decision-making opportunities. But it's also one that is designed intelligently enough to make each part easy to learn and engage with. With regard to gameplay, SteamWorld Quest bears no resemblance to the rest of the games in the series. This is first and foremost a turn-based strategy game, with a light sprinkling of role-playing thrown into the mix...” [YouTube][Game Trailer] [more inside]
I didn't want to be the only straight person on the team
UFO sightings by the US Navy
How angry pilots got the Navy to stop dismissing UFO sightings “It’s very mysterious, and they still seem to exceed our aircraft in speed,” [former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence and staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee] said, calling it a “truly radical technology.” [more inside]
Scoot The Future
Last year, people took 84 million trips on shared micromobility (ie bike and scooter share) in the United States, more than double the number of trips taken in 2017. This infographic-heavy report from the National Association of City Transportation Officials shows where and how these rapid increases are happening - including the stunning fact that almost all of that increase came from scooter share programs, which didn't even exist the year before. How are our cities grappling with this trend? And could it ultimately reshape the design of our streets?
Did a vigilante ROM leaker go too far to “preserve” a lost Atari ROM?
[W]hat started as a rare-game reveal has turned into a credible "heist" tale, perpetrated by an alleged MAME vigilante, no less. Betteridge's Law may still apply, but someone appears to have gone rogue to release the first-ever ROM image of the ultra-rare Akka Arrh ("Also Known As Another Ralston Hally") arcade game, of which only two or three exist.
Overwatch Workshop
Blizzard recently announced a new feature in Overwatch - the Workshop. This allows anyone on PC or console (currently only on the Public Test Region) to create new game modes using the existing maps and art, which can be debugged and then shared using a short code. [more inside]
Greenland's annual ice mass loss has increased sixfold since the 1980s
Greenland Is Falling Apart - "Since 1972, the giant island's ice sheet has lost 11 quadrillion pounds of water." (cf. Forty-six years of Greenland Ice Sheet mass balance from 1972 to 2018; viz. chasing ice) [more inside]
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