November 12, 2015
you've been hit by a smooth cardboard roll
Patrick Mathis performs a pretty rad arrangement of Smooth Criminal on an orgue de Barbarie. [more inside]
Schlock Mercenary: Pillage, THEN burn.
In the summer of 2000, carbosilicate amorph Schlock enlisted with third-rate mercenary band Tagon's Toughs. Since then, he's given us over 5000 comics' worth of hurting people, breaking things, and interspeciated offices, in the process garnering author Howard Tayler four Hugo nominations and a cease-and-desist letter. The archives are well-indexed, but given their length, may I suggest Archive Binge? [more inside]
Missy's back!!!
After ten years doing mostly production work, Missy finally drops a new track. And lord, it RAWKS. [NSFW, SLYT]
Recognize emotions from a photo
Recently, they've been helping us track our facial hair.
Now Microsoft's Project Oxford will recognize your emotions from a photo. In the demo, upload (or link to) an image, then roll over the face(s) and get a probability distribution for their emotion(s).
That's the way I like It baby, I Don't Wanna Live Forever...
Philthy Animal Taylor, drummer for Motorhead's golden age lineup*, has passed away.
RIP, you Philthy bastard.
*this clip shows that along with being a great drummer, he could really cut a rug
Old habits ...die hard.
"So many have died to defend what you see here."
"How I Fell in Love with Ghanaian Food… and How to Make It Yourself"
"The one who has not traveled widely thinks her mother is the best cook.” A short article describing the experiences which led the author to write a Ghanaian Cookbook. [more inside]
“Thou dids’t not know my gaze was fixed on thee,”
Unpublished Charlotte Brontë story and poem discovered. [The Guardian]
The short story features a public flogging, embezzling from the Wesleyan chapel, and a “vicious” caricature of the Reverend John Winterbottom – a religious opponent of the children’s father. Winterbottom is “in the middle of the night dragged from his bed” and then “by the heels from one end of the village to the other”, writes Charlotte in the story. The poem features Mary Percy, the lovesick wife of the king of Angria Zamorna, and “one of the leading Angria characters”, said Dinsdale.[more inside]
The Next Frontier of Fertility
Wait, is that show still on?
For the first time in more than 60 years, no new network TV series have been cancelled before the November sweeps period. Insiders say the change has a couple of reasons: DVRs and online streaming mean that people have many more chances to find and start to love a show (Quantico's audience nearly doubles when one takes these into account); non-network outlets are increasingly willing to grab "castoffs" (a la Yahoo's acquisition of Community, though that didn't work out as well as they had hoped); and lower ratings across the board means that it's not as easy for networks to throw away the millions they spend developing each new series. [more inside]
economics decide the contest, and wealth wins every time
"The number of people living in poverty in Portland’s suburbs shot up almost 100 percent between 2000 and 2011, according to the Brookings Institute. If the North’s poor black residents are driven to the same poverty in less desirable areas, then the Portland Boheme for middle-class whites has been purchased at a price of cultural disruption and displacement, even violence. And while immigration to cozier, comfortable climes, and gentrification and attendant displacement are not new phenomena, I find that people flocking Portland-ward rarely wish to accept their own culpability or complicity in this story—there is a desire on behalf of most newcomers to think of themselves as socially progressive and so properly enlightened, as if being anti-racist or super-considerate and well-meaning, responsible even, somehow makes this process of ‘urban renewal’ consequence-less and clean. It is not." Michael Copperman, La Boheme Portlandia.
Something Vast and Dragon-Like
The cruel mystery of ALS and military veterans
"Studies show that if you've served in the military -- any branch, any war, or even if you served in a time of peace -- you have a much higher risk of dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) than if you were not in the military. And no one seems to know why." [more inside]
Gaming tribunals and online community management
In an attempt to curb in-game harassment, online gaming
communities have tried
to develop a variety of workable solutions. One of the most prominent of these communities has been League of Legends (previously, previously),
an extremely popular game that uses a virtual judiciary of gamers' peers, among other tactics,
to identify problem players and mete out consequences. Two years ago, the tribunal drew public attention when it chose to expel a professional player from the game for a year (potentially ending his gaming career) for harassing other players. But is it working? Preliminary data indicates that the system is helping.
"I cannot recall ever being slighted in this way.”
To be completely honest, Chevy treated me like dirt.
Holy Cow, Home Alone Is 25!
Remember Winnetka’s most famous big-screen family, the McCallisters—especially the resourceful son who got left behind? An oral history of one of the most beloved Christmas comedies ever made.
Foods, Lewis argued, are always temporal, so all good tastes are special
There’s no private aviation in the Soviet Union
Neil Strauss grows up
Neil Strauss, author of the The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, says he has grown up. He talked with the CBC (and The Guardian, and GQ) about his new book, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships.
Getting Away from Legalese
Despite its reputation for being dense, awkward, and repetitive, legal writing can be simple, readable, and concise when done well. Legal writing blogs, such as Bryan A. Garner's Law Prose, are here to help. Non-lawyers may also find these useful when reviewing a lawyer's work, reading legal documents, or in their own formal writing. [more inside]
Make sure your tablet is in a secure place before pressing play
Videos for Cats To Watch Volume 1 - a playlist of 32 videos filled with birds and squirrels and suchlike. The latest one is 38 minutes long and features birds twittering about on a fence and a bench. Warning: my cat attempted to destroy my laptop keyboard.
Missed Connections Analyzed
Almost too cute to bear
Koala bear Imogen was born at Australia's Symbio Wildlife Park in November. Soon after, another koala in the park had a baby but, sadly, mom died a few days later leaving the new joey orphaned and in danger. Zookeepers Matt and Kylie decided to hand-rear Imogen because she was stronger and older, freeing Imogen's mother to raise the motherless joey.
The plan went well and Imogen turns one year old this weekend. She's had an adventurous young life that Matt and Kylie thoughtfully documented along the way. [more inside]
The Shipping Forecast Quiz
Race and the Free-Speech Diversion
Of the many concerns unearthed by the protests at two major universities this week, the velocity at which we now move from racial recrimination to self-righteous backlash is possibly the most revealing. The unrest that occurred at the University of Missouri and at Yale University, two outwardly dissimilar institutions, shared themes of racial obtuseness, arthritic institutional responses to it, and the feeling, among students of color, that they are tenants rather than stakeholders in their universities. That these issues have now been subsumed in a debate over political correctness and free speech on campus—important but largely separate subjects—is proof of the self-serving deflection to which we should be accustomed at this point.
Cosplay for Traditional Geeks
Malaysian illustrator Charis Loke designs geek culture-inspired traditional South/South East Asian outfits, primarily baju kurung and kebaya. Some of her inspirations include Tolkein, Pacific Rim, Watchmen, and the Hunger Games.
Don’t expect me to let you hog all the adventuring, by the way
The Worlds of Øyvind Thorsby
Øyvind Thorsby, creator of multiple strangely charming webcomics (previously), has recently begun his fifth series, Trixie Slaughteraxe for President (link is to the first page). Thorsby's comics bear multiple trademarks: distinctively simplistic art, strange creatures with strange adaptations to their environments, creative applications for magical and technologically advanced objects and phenomena, and, of course, complicated farcical situations often involving desperate wacky schemes. A list of his comics (including the new hosting for his first three comics) is inside. Content warning: violence, swearing and sexual themes. [more inside]
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