June 19, 2014
Planetary panoramas
What happens when you take four cameras and shoot a timelapse of the night sky, and then stitch the resultant videos together? Pure trippin' amazement.
Prince in the 1980s: a documentary
Knock knock. Who's there? Knock knock. Who's there? Knock knock
In 2004, pianist Branka Parlić performed a series of pieces by Philip Glass at the synagogue at Novi Sad. Metamorphosis One. Metamorphosis Two. Metamorphosis Three. Metamorphosis Four. Metamorphosis Five. [more inside]
Wes Anderson Analyzed
The Hands of Robert Bresson
'This elegantly beautiful supercut on “the tactile world of Robert Bresson” by Kogonada for Criterion shows the great French director’s notoriously precise skill is applied even at the slightest hand gesture. There are no faces in this video yet the drama of these scenes is palpable.'
SERVER SMASH
Waterson and Mattherson, the only two US east coast servers for the MMOFPS Planetside 2, are merging this month. On hearing the news, players from each server began talking smack, smack that quickly escalated to a call for a Server Smash, a 240 vs 240 campaign lasting 2 hours on one of the Planetside continents, to decide the surviving server name. [more inside]
The Secret to Getting Top-Secret Secrets
Rave On
For those of you unfamiliar with the history of Gary Busey (previously), a quick recap: His first appearance on film was in 1968. He would receive his breakout role ten years later playing the title role in The Buddy Holly Story. Ten years after that, Busey was involved in a serious motorcycle accident in which he did not wear a helmet, resulting in a fractured skull and suspected brain damage. In the years since, he has continued to work in Hollywood and also projected an increasingly erratic personality. How much of it is an act? Only Busey knows for sure. But given his recent commercials for Amazon Fire TV (and outtakes), we have to ask ourselves: Is this in poor taste?
Penta, Mariya: Rejected
Philadelphia's Cats in Windows
Otis
The Kiss That Changed Video Games
On the first day of [the 1999 Electronic Entertainment Expo], the game’s producers, Kana Ryan and Chris Trottier, watched in disbelief as two of the female Sims attending the virtual wedding leaned in and began to passionately kiss. They had, during the live simulation, fallen in love. Moreover, they had chosen this moment to express their affection, in front of a live audience of assorted press.
it's a free market
Ayn Rand's Harry Potter and the Prisoners of Collectivism
“In the marketplace of ideas,” Harry went on, “Voldemort has the same right to disseminate his philosophy as you do. If his philosophy is sound, it will flourish. If his philosophy is unsound, you have nothing to fear.”
The Near-Death of Grand Central Terminal
"[S]tock jobbers[,]... confidence men,... an impecunious transportation entity", politicos, judges, scoundrels and Jackie O.: the near-death of Grand Central Terminal, and how it foretold the 2008 financial crisis. [sl Harper's]
spiegel has opened fire on the NSA
“They finally asked me not to come back anymore.”
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the first real “slasher” film, and it changed many things—the ratings code of the Motion Picture Association of America, the national debate on violence, the Texas Film Commission, the horror genre—but it remained a curiously isolated phenomenon. The film itself, involving five young people on a twisted drive through the country, is a strange, shifting experience—early audiences were horrified; later audiences laughed; newcomers to the movie were inevitably stricken with a vaguely uneasy feeling, as though the movie might have actually been made by a maniac—but the story behind the film is even stranger." We begin with a couple of stolen barbecue chicken wings....
Jennifer in Paradise
Its subject is Knoll's then-girlfriend Jennifer, topless on the beach in Bora Bora, gazing out at To'opua island. The young couple worked together at Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm's special-effects company, and were enjoying some well-earned R&R after working 70-hour weeks on the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Looking back, Jennifer says: "It was a truly magical time for us. My husband actually proposed to me later on in the day, probably just after that photo." Little wonder that John would name the photo Jennifer in Paradise.If you were around when Photoshop was first released, you know the image, as it was the first photoshopped image in the world and use in a lot of the early demos for the programme. Bonus: for the twentieth anniversary release of Photoshop 1.0, John Knoll replicates the demos he used to do to sell Photoshop to Adobe.
It's last call to do your shopping at the last mall
The Guardian on the decline of America's shopping malls. "Dying shopping malls are speckled across the United States, often in middle-class suburbs wrestling with socioeconomic shifts. Some, like Rolling Acres, have already succumbed. Estimates on the share that might close or be repurposed in coming decades range from 15 to 50%. Americans are returning downtown; online shopping is taking a 6% bite out of brick-and-mortar sales; and to many iPhone-clutching, city-dwelling and frequently jobless young people, the culture that spawned satire like Mallrats seems increasingly dated, even cartoonish.
The trend is especially noticeable in the Midwest, a former blue-collar bastion where ailing malls have begun dotting suburban landscapes. Outside of Chicago, Lakehurst Mall was levelled in 2004 and the half-vacant Lincoln Mall is costing its host village millions in botched redevelopment plans. Dixie Square Mall sat vacant for more than 30 years after serving as the backdrop for the iconic chase scene in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers. It was finally demolished in 2012. Many others will similarly lie dormant as they wait for the wrecking ball."
The trend is especially noticeable in the Midwest, a former blue-collar bastion where ailing malls have begun dotting suburban landscapes. Outside of Chicago, Lakehurst Mall was levelled in 2004 and the half-vacant Lincoln Mall is costing its host village millions in botched redevelopment plans. Dixie Square Mall sat vacant for more than 30 years after serving as the backdrop for the iconic chase scene in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers. It was finally demolished in 2012. Many others will similarly lie dormant as they wait for the wrecking ball."
Clicked, where the cow was
Ian Bogost in the Atlantic, on Darmok. Ian Bogost, creator of Cow Clicker and noted contrarian, looks at the TNG episode Darmok.
As Seen On YouTube
Some genius inventor in South Korea has come up with a clean, easy way to unclog toilets without a plunger! (Maybe.) Introducing, the Pongtu!
Trigger Warning: Toilet with Brown Water
Trigger Warning: Toilet with Brown Water
Oh good GOD, it is a cake recipe site
Rainbow-Cake Recipe Inspires Comment Apocalypse - sometimes you should read the comments, because they're an amazing trainwreck.
Just because you used a computer doesn't make your idea new.
We hold that the claims at issue are drawn to the abstract idea of intermediated settlement, and that merely requiring generic computer implementation fails to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.The United States Supreme Court has ruled 9-0 [pdf], invalidating many but by no means all software patents, in Alice v CLS Bank. [more inside]
...
We must first determine whether the claims at issue are directed to a patent-ineligible concept. We conclude that they are.
Today in Geographic Microdata
Clarity Campaign Labs invites you to use TargetSmart U.S. voter data to discover, via seven yes/no/don't care questions, What town matches my politics? Business Insider uses it to determine the most liberal and conservative towns in each state.
Doom and gloom
Study says Earth on brink of mass extinction event The new study focused on the rate, not the number, of species disappearing from Earth. It calculated a "death rate" of how many species become extinct each year out of 1 million species. [more inside]
Bill Cosby's Greatest Comedy Album
"The routine Cosby was about to perform—immortalized on the landmark album To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With—represented a turning point in his career. A full 16 years before The Cosby Show debuted, the performance would serve as the blueprint for the themes that would define his work: the father as a loving disciplinarian; the siblings who could switch from screaming at one another to plotting together at the drop of a hat; the confidence that no matter what conflicts and tragedies arise, the bonds of family will hold. In To Russell, Cosby didn’t just find his voice; he tapped into something deeper." [more inside]
Mick Jagger Burping
Dancing in the Street with all music removed. A musicless musical video, with some interpretive dubbing.
What Is The Most Asinine Topic You've Had To Talk About?
The Hollywood Reporter Roundtable video: Comedy Actresses. Stacey Wilson sits down with The Big Bang Theory's Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, New Girl's Zooey Deschanel, Nurse Jackie's Edie Falco,The Mindy Project's Mindy Kaling, Shameless' Emmy Rossum, and Orange Is the New Black's Taylor Schilling, to talk about stupid questions from the media, disastrous auditions, odd fan interactions, the crazy stuff people tell them, and the state of American TV. (1:03:14, highlight transcription available)
Squirrel and Hedgehog
Squirrel and Hedgehog - Yes folks, this is a North Korean cartoon produced in house ... The animation is really good, (episode 24 and on is animated in Flash, while before it was all hand drawn) the story is pretty complicated sometimes, and the characters are cool. The only thing actually wrong with this show, other than it being blatant propaganda, is that the lipsync is awful. [more inside]
Alderaan Gambit or Mothma Opening?
Cubicles and Careers!
Love and Death In the House of Prayer
A former member of a tight-knit college prayer group describes his community's disintegration — and how one of its members ended up dead.
Marina Abramović's Video Diary.
Marina Abramović's Video Diary. The artist Marina Abramović's latest show is a 512 hour long performance piece at the Serpentine Galleries in London, where across the opening hours of seventy-two days, she's inviting a maximum of a hundred and sixty people into an almost completely empty gallery space (the whole gallery space is empty in fact) and asking them to share that space with her and now and then following her whispered orders to stand in various places including facing a wall. For the duration she's also posting a nightly video diary at thespace.org and at the Serpentine's own website in which she describes the days events.
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