May 22, 2016
WHY'D THEY MAKE THEM INTO SQUARES
As far as I can tell, Da mother fuckin share z0ne is basically what you get when you add a lot of skulls and pretty rad, metal-ass fonts to Laughapalooza.
These shots lived, died, and live again!
These earbuds are like Instagram filters for sound
What if you could cut out the noise in your life? No more crying babies on planes. No city sirens. No rude people on cellphones in the subway. Silicon Valley startup Doppler Labs has created earbuds that will let you filter out some of the more migraine-inducing sounds in your life.
Olivia de Havilland: still alive and in Vanity Fair
“I loved her so much as a child,” Olivia says wistfully. Ever the lady, she has steadfastly refused to discuss her sister or their relationship since the 1950s.
Not so Joan. In a 1978 interview with People—a forceful blast of sua culpa meant to publicize No Bed of Roses—Joan flatly contradicted Olivia’s recollection of sibling tenderness, saying, “I regret that I remember not one act of kindness from Olivia all through my childhood.”--Olivia de Havilland and the Most Notorious Sibling Rivalry in Hollywood
Blue flash
The demonstration began on the afternoon of May 21, 1946, at a secret laboratory tucked into a canyon some three miles from Los Alamos, New Mexico, the birthplace of the atom bomb. Louis Slotin, a Canadian physicist, was showing his colleagues how to bring the exposed core of a nuclear weapon nearly to the point of criticality, a tricky operation known as “tickling the dragon’s tail.” - The Demon Core and the Strange Death of Louis Slotin
Learning Chess at 40
What I learned trying to keep up with my 4-year-old daughter at the royal game. Although it scarcely occurred to me at the time, my daughter and I were embarking on a sort of cognitive experiment. We were two novices, attempting to learn a new skill, essentially beginning from the same point but separated by some four decades of life. I had been the expert to that point in her life—in knowing what words meant, or how to ride a bike—but now we were on curiously equal footing. Or so I thought. (Tom Vanderbilt, Nautilus)
Children of Heroin Crisis Find Refuge in Grandparents’ Arms
A NYT photo essay: "Not since the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, analysts say, have so many children been at risk because of parental drug addiction."
Winner Takes All Morality and the Movies
The Goblin's Dilemma: class soildarity, selfish families, and the working class heros of Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan and Spider-Man By Bud White and Tim Kreider (Spider-Man discussion begins here)
Apple today for Milk tomorrow
Don't bring your feelings to prison, son... They'll only wind up getting hurt. (SLImgur)
5FrogMargin relates a month spent in the Baldwin Alabama County Jail.
5FrogMargin relates a month spent in the Baldwin Alabama County Jail.
Juanald's Old-Fashioned Granolarrhea
It's getting hot in there.
Newsfilter: India just set a new all-time record high temperature — 123.8 degrees
Taking it to a different level
LEGO Pop-up Himeji Castle. Himeji Castle, Japan. According to the creator, he used no adhesives. Several years ago he made a pop-up of the Buddhist temple of Kinkaku-ji (a previously).
Feeding A Billion People
Steve Lichman
Steve Lichman - a comic by Dave Rapoza and Dan Warren about a lich and his friends, hanging out in a dungeon and facing the challenges of life and un-death together.
A/C: the problem began with paper, but the solution changed the world
The problem began with paper. Humidity wreaked havoc with the color register of fine, multicolor printing. Ink, applied one color at a time, would misalign with the expansion and contraction of the paper stock. A solution was designed in 1902 and patented in 1906 (as an Apparatus for Treating Air), starting the "air conditioning" industry, though it would be decades before air conditioning changed the American landscape and beyond, making hot, muggy climates more livable around the world. [more inside]
How the Pentagon punished NSA whistleblowers
Long before Edward Snowden went public, John Crane was a top Pentagon official fighting to protect NSA whistleblowers. Instead their lives were ruined – and so was his. [more inside]
Twenty-something
Sometimes a music video completely recontextualizes the song. Pet Shop Boys' most recent single Twenty-something is one thing when you just hear the song, but the video makes it something else entirely.
Elderly BASIC programmer yells at moon debris
Bill Gates blogs his reading list at gatesnotes.com -- usually just a quick summary of what he found interesting. For Seveneves, he and author Neal Stephenson went for burgers and recorded their (admittedly brief) conversation in VR and in-browser 360 video. (Gatesnotes previously and previously)
We are obsessed with you.
Miranda July (previously), Paul Ford (MeFi's own; previously) and Starlee Kine (previously) team up for a presentation with a twist at Rhizome's Seven on Seven 2016. (Spoilers below.) [more inside]
A Rock Solid Ethos
The Babson Boulders of Dogtown were one man's endeavor to leave a mark... by carving brief mottos in the large boulders in a vacant field he owned.
“Questa piedra maladetta — this cursed rock”
The remote south Atlantic island of St. Helena has largely lived apart from the world. For decades travel to the tiny (roughly 10 x 5 miles) island and British territory of 4000 has been entirely dependent upon a monthly visit from the Royal Mail Ship - a week-long voyage from Cape Town that has kept the island on the margins of the global travel market. You have to be a very determined traveller to see where Napoleon died and have a visit with a the oldest living land animal - a 184 year old giant tortoise named Jonathan. That is until last week when the first commerical airplane flight landed at the island's brand new airport. After five years of construction, hundreds of millions of pounds, and 450,000 truckloads of dirt and rock, Saint Helena Airport (airport code: HLE) is open for business, but how will St. Helena (now branded "The Secret Of The South Atlantic") adjust to the end of its isolation? Will the island's culture itself survive? [more inside]
@chevalier_cygne comes into her own
Ukip councillor attempts to blast BBC for 'historical inaccuracy', gets destroyed by actual historian [more inside]
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