September 22, 2015
The only thing I don't want to do is to raise the white flag.
What can we do about the privacy threat posed by online ad networks? And how much trust should we place in Silicon Valley to design the future of our society? What Happens Next Will Amaze You: Slides from a recent talk by (Mefi's own) Maciej Cegłowski.
It's no accident how much the ad racket resembles high-frequency trading. A small number of sophisticated players are making a killing at the expense of everybody else. [...] I don't believe there's a technology bubble, but there is absolutely an advertising bubble. When it bursts, companies are going to be more desperate and will unload all the personal data they have on us to absolutely any willing buyer. And then we'll see if all these dire warnings about the dangers of surveillance were right.[more inside]
Feel free to sing "Happy Birthday"
Gillian Wearing
Gillian Wearing herself. Gillian wearing Warhol. Gillian wearing many faces, one of the ten most important artists today. [more inside]
Bury Me In Smoke
"By all accounts, work on NOLA began at some point in 1991. The demo work hammered out during those sessions was captured on tape, and as the story goes, was then distributed to unsuspecting headbangers far and wide accompanied with only a word-of-mouth seal of approval."
In which Invisible Oranges discusses Down's superb debut album, a slab of southern doom titled NOLA. [more inside]
In which Invisible Oranges discusses Down's superb debut album, a slab of southern doom titled NOLA. [more inside]
Hi, I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.
A New Caption That Works for Every New Yorker Cartoon (SLTheAtlantic). (via Frank Chimero). [more inside]
Shiny and Monochrome
"George Miller has said that the best version of his film is in black and white, with no dialogue. BLACK & CHROME is an attempt to realize Miller’s alternate vision. The cinematography, the editing, the sound design, and the score, are now represented in a completely new experience." [more inside]
No means no.
A survey of 150,000 college students across 27 high-profile universities supports previous studies that sexual assault and misconduct is widely prevalent on college campuses.
Discussion of sexual assault within. [more inside]
“Each person that has difficulty has different reasons,”
Can’t Swallow a Pill? There’s Help for That [New York Times]
Most children start swallowing pills around age 10, said Dr. Tanya Altmann, a pediatrician in Calabasas, Calif., and a spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics. And 20 percent to 40 percent are unable to swallow a standard-size pill or capsule, according to a recent study in the journal Pediatrics. [...] Many never outgrow the problem.[more inside]
It's BiWeek
It's the 2nd Annual Bisexual Awareness Week. An expansion of International Celebrate Bisexuality Day (Sept. 23) of events, articles, and posts for the week. An infografic of issues (huffpo). The twitter hashtag #biweek. The #StillBisexual video campaign. A pastor talks about coming out (Advocate).
A new pharmaceutical business model
Martin Shkreli was a hedge fund manager who started out short-selling biotech stocks before founding Retrophin, a company with a new goal: "acquiring the rights to obsolete remedies Shkreli says can be put to new and lucrative purposes". In 2014, Retrophin hiked the price of Thiola, a drug to treat rare kidney disease, from $1.50 a pill to $15. Shkreli was ousted from Retrophin and later sued for $65 million, but returned to form Turing Pharmaceuticals, whose aim is to "buy forgotten and orphaned assets from Big Pharma—any drug that’s had weak supply or weak support." They bought the rights to market Daraprim, an obscure drug used to treat parasitic infections, and raised the price from $13.50 to $750 per pill. In response to the price rises for Daraprim, and for other vital drugs, Hillary Clinton has unveiled plans to tackle prescription drug pricing, while Bernie Sanders introduced a bill in September that would also allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. Pharma industry blogger Derek Lowe (previously) also has some ideas about what to do about Turing. Meanwhile, Shkreli has defended his price hike and says that anyone who cannot afford the drug will not be forced to pay. [more inside]
We're good at this Chief Wiggum. In this town, we're as good as it gets.
The opening credits of series three of The Wire, reworked using scenes from only series three of The Simpsons. (original Wire intro)
In Hebrew, the word is “Ivri,” which translates as “the other”
"I’m too mad to love anyone right now"
"There
Aren't Enough Bricks in the World to Throw at Roland Emmerich’s Appalling Stonewall" - The first reviews of Roland Emmerich film about the Stonewall riots are in. They are not favorable.
"Some people find it easier to talk to someone they don’t know."
Hana Feels is a short, dialogue-driven interactive story from teacher, performer, and Zombies, Run! writer Gavin Inglis. When four different characters get the chance to help Hana through a personal problem, subtle choices make the difference between painful and painfully funny.
Bundles and game discounters
It started with the Humble Indie Bundle. (Previously, and multiple times.) But there's now plenty of other places to get indie games bundled cheaply: IndieGala, Bundle Stars, Groupees, and, because you can't get cheaper than free, Freebie Bundle and Free Bundle. There's also Indie Game Stand, Buy-Some-Indie-Games, Fire Flower Games, Shiny Loot and GreenManGaming's Indie section.
How Could They?
Violence does not stem from a psychopathic lack of morality. Quite the reverse: it comes from the exercise of perceived moral rights and obligations. So says Tage Rai, whose research with anthropologist Alan Fiske analysed violent practices across cultures and history. [more inside]
The tough, round heart of North American Jewish cuisine
Daniel Thompson, Whose Bagel Machine Altered the American Diet, Dies at 94. The obituary doubles as an abbreviated history of the bagel's fortunes, and the fortunes of bagel-makers:
As vaunted as it was in American cities, the traditional bagel for years remained so obscure — so ethnic — that as late as 1960 The New York Times Magazine felt obliged to define it for a national readership as “an unsweetened doughnut with rigor mortis.” … “Every bagel that was made in New York City up until the 1960s was a union bagel — every one,” Mr. Goodman said. … “Bagel Famine Threatens in City,” an alarmed headline in The Times read in 1951, as a strike loomed. (It was followed the next day by the immensely reassuring “Lox Strike Expert Acts to End the Bagel Famine.”)
Ta-Nehisi Coates to Write Black Panther Comic for Marvel
His passions intersected in May, during the magazine’s New York Ideas seminar, when he interviewed Sana Amanat, a Marvel editor, about diversity and inclusion in comic books. Ms. Amanat led the creation of the new Ms. Marvel, a teenage Muslim girl living in Jersey City, based on some of her own childhood experiences.
“It was a fruitful discussion,” he recalled.
Yellow or white, w/ or w/out germ, but always plural, unless true grit
Just add water and salt; perhaps something else, too: add some Italian and it becomes polenta.
Grits are principally coarse ground corn kernels. But there’s so much more to it. [more inside]
"I think when the guests meet me they're pleasantly surprised"
Held by the TSA because of an "anomaly" (my penis)
Transgender woman live-tweets her expulsion from Orlando airport
Shadi Petosky, a transgender woman, was detained unexpectedly at the Orlando airport on Monday after the TSA allegedly decided that her genitalia didn't match up to their (mis)perceptions about gender. The TSA had yet to release a statement by the time that comedian Tig Notaro tweeted to her 39,000 followers to watch Petosky's tweets.[more inside]
moot Does Barrel Roll, Brings 4chan Full Circle
2channel (NYT, 2004) is an anonymous, Japanese-language bulletin board which regularly ranks as one of the 50 most visited websites in Japan, and one of the top 500 worldwide. In 2004, the Times described it as a site of casual freedom in an otherwise staid public arena, "the place where gays come out in a society in which they mostly remain in the closet, where users freely broach taboo subjects, or where people go to the heart of the matter and ask, 'What's for dinner?'" and Wired in 2007 called it "an anonymous anarchy" and a "refreshing liberation." From the perspective of 2015, 2ch's history as an anonymous board might seem less novel: a kinetic creative culture, persistent hate speech (and subsequent DDoSes), mainstream media inspiration, threats and hoaxes, animal cruelty and shock content, severe data leaks, and, of course, increasingly urgent legal and moral questions about exactly who is responsible for the anonymous voices on 2ch.net. Today the site is still going strong, but in 2014 the founder and original owner of 2ch (apparently) stepped down. Sound familiar? Well, yesterday 2channel's founder acquired a new, English-language anonymous image board. moot no longer owns 4chan. [more inside]
"This is a really stupid movie, but I don't think that's a bad thing."
Three weeks ago, The AV Club quietly launched Film Club, a conversational weekly review show hosted by film editor A.A. Dowd and critic / former At the Movies host Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (previously, previously). New releases covered so far include The Visit, Transporter: Refueled, and Black Mass and Sicario. [more inside]
During Egypt's Ice Age
You wake in a strange room. Your clothes are foreign and the walls are covered in objects from a different world. Jumping up, you race out of the room and into the streets. You have just entered.... the Ice Age. Or a North America ruled by Aztecs. Or the first days of the Carthaginians' colony on Mars.
The Twilight Histories is an alternate history audio drama podcast, described by the creator, Jordan Harbour, as a blending of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History with the Twilight Zone. Stories are told in second person, with artful music and sound effects that make you feel like you've stepped sideways into another universe where Hitler won WWII or robots took over the world.
The Twilight Histories is an alternate history audio drama podcast, described by the creator, Jordan Harbour, as a blending of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History with the Twilight Zone. Stories are told in second person, with artful music and sound effects that make you feel like you've stepped sideways into another universe where Hitler won WWII or robots took over the world.
The reinvention of HENSE
Don't you just hate things?
"The Disgustings" (12:12 ) is a short film starring Drew Droege and written, directed and starring Jordan Firstman. It's about two gay men living in Los Angeles who just happen to be completely, utterly awful. The Disgustings return in "Save The Date." (5:45)
Not you, Zeppo. Not you, Gummo.
"In the Marx Brothers films, [Margaret] Dumont often played a society matron, usually a wealthy widow. During the Depression, this was a type of character that the audience loved to see humiliated, and it happened. At the same time, Dumont played the type sympathetically, because no matter how Groucho treated her, her characters obviously found him attractive, funny, and even sexy. Whereas the perfectly stereotyped society matron character would be constantly offended at the Marx Brothers antics, Dumont’s characters wavered between perfectly-timed embarrassment and full-on collaboration. Groucho simultaneously courted Dumont’s characters out of greed and opportunity and genuine attraction." The Fifth Marx Brother (Miss Cellania) [more inside]
why do empires care so much about women's clothes?
"Whether it is the covering of breasts in Southern India or the wearing of burqas in Afghanistan, women's comportment and clothing have offered an emotionally powerful shorthand for all that is wrong with native culture and all that must be corrected by the empire." Rafia Zakaria for Aeon: Clothes and daggers. [more inside]
Look at you, Hacker (yet again)
It seems that with little fanfare, gog.com released System Shock: Enhanced Edition. This is not System Shock 2 (see previously) that was released to the happy tears of many in 2013, but the game that started it all in 1994. And it's ENHANCED. Although we already know that gog.com rocks the house, the takeaway here is that this is an official, supported re-release that has been years in the wanting, with a lot of creative workarounds before now. [more inside]
I am Fundi
"I Am Fundi" is a short documentary depicting the education system in Uganda and the measures that the organization, Fundibots, is taking to create change. Victor, a Fundi teacher with a challenging past, is changing the future of Uganda by preparing and instilling excitement for science in young children so that when they grow, they will be confident, supported, and prepared for contemporary practices and technological advances.via
She seems really free of hives and overall like a nice girl—nay, woman.
Let’s just be honest with ourselves: of course people gossip about us [...] This month’s One Big Question is what do you want people to say about you after you’ve left the room, because it’s a way for our deepest insecurities to mingle with our private aspirations and come up with something honest and hopeful, and quite possibly, true.
Enterprise-D Construction Project
The Enterprise-D Construction Project is an ambitious one-man project to recreate the Enterprise-D in its entirety using the Unreal engine, drawing from a variety of sources including both the official blueprints by Rick Sternbach and the earlier Ed Whitefire blueprints. It's not yet publicly available, but you can take a virtual tour showing off decks 1–4, including the bridge and main shuttle bay.
As Far Back As I Can Remember I Always Wanted To Be A Gangster
Your Body Is Surrounded by Clouds of Skin and Fart Bacteria
The human microbiome is the subject of intense scrutiny for a variety of reasons -- probiotic yogurt, as a replacement for bathing, even down to the viral level -- but what we really want to know is How incredibly gross am I being by merely existing in the world? It turns out that the answer is Way gross -- like Pigpen, each of us sheds a unique cloud of bacteria that could conceivably be used to track criminals and to more precisely survey disease outbreaks.
The heroes of Mad Max and disability
Our hero, one of the few surviving, is someone like me. An individual who you’d think would be the first gone — not last surviving — due to physical disability. Here was a game presenting Max and saying "He survives." The subtle message, vital message that goes unsaid is the next part: "And so can you".Tauriq Moosa at Polygon writes about representation of physical disability in the new Mad Max video game.
"To Give Yourself Great Advice, Get Outside Yourself"
via Bigthink's writeup - "European researchers created a virtual reality simulation where participants could give advice to themselves — as Sigmund Freud. In the experiment, "volunteers wore very sophisticated VR (virtual reality) devices (headset and sensors) and were immersed in a virtual room where there was a duplicate representation of themselves and Sigmund Freud. The subject could alternately be in the avatar body representing themselves or in Freud's body. The movements of the avatars ... were perfectly synchronized with the subject's real movements, and this produced a powerful illusion of embodiment." The result was not only that people felt better, but also their advice was much more effective."
But did the researchers pick the "best" psychoanalyst for this job? [more inside]
Snake Oil Supplements?
Scientific evidence for popular health supplements from information is beautiful [Snake Oil not included]
"Cage stated that 4'33" was, in his opinion, his most important work"
“Food tasted like wet noodles and grill gristle"
"I Reviewed Jail on Yelp Because I Couldn't Afford a Therapist." Why people are using sites like Yelp to vent and offer tips about prison and jail.
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