November 17, 2014
give! it! 100!
If you gave yourself a challenge to try something for a hundred days in a row, what would you do? Learn a new language? Pick up a musical instrument? Push your body's limits? Get married, have a baby, keep the love going?
British Breakdown
People that like Slugs are mostly males, aged 25-39, live in Northern Scotland, are far right politically and work in mining and quarrying. Favourite dishes are Spinach Risotto followed by Fidget Pie. They like bird watching and cycling. They describe themselves as alternative but on occasion silly. They are online for 36-40 hours per week and read the Guardian and New Scientist.
Whereas people that like Jellyfish are likely to be female, aged 25-39, live in the north east, are far left politically and work in research and development. Their favourite dish is Vegetarian Sausage Roll followed by Hunter's Stew. They like looking after their pets and archery. They describe themselves as idiosyncratic and on occasion withdrawn. They are online for 50+ hours per week and read the Guardian and New Scientist. [more inside]
Whereas people that like Jellyfish are likely to be female, aged 25-39, live in the north east, are far left politically and work in research and development. Their favourite dish is Vegetarian Sausage Roll followed by Hunter's Stew. They like looking after their pets and archery. They describe themselves as idiosyncratic and on occasion withdrawn. They are online for 50+ hours per week and read the Guardian and New Scientist. [more inside]
A man's house is his 3d printed castle
The first concrete 3-D printed building in the world was completed in a Minneapolis, Minn. suburb in August, 2014. Engineer Andrey Rudenko “printed” out the authentic looking castle layer by layer using a machine he invented in his garage.
I am not foul Mr Carson. I may not be the same as you but I am not foul.
"With the fifth series of Downton Abbey having recently drawn to a close, I have taken some time to consider why domestic service dramas fascinate me so much." [more inside]
Information Superhighway? That sounds like Super hype to me!
Andy Baio has created a YouTube channel of early internet informational videos: The VHS-Era Internet (1984-1995)
BE GARBAGE OF CESSPOOL HA HA HA
Classics Of Game, a series of short-and-surreal context-free game videos, has mysteriously resumed updating after seventeen months. (MLYT)
Male TV presenter wears same suit for a year. Nobody notices.
No, it wasn't because of velociraptor attacks
Roughly 9,000 years ago, humans had mastered farming to the point where food was plentiful. Populations boomed, and people began moving into large settlements full of thousands of people. And then, abruptly, these proto-cities were abandoned for millennia. It's one of the greatest mysteries of early human civilization.[more inside]
“the human element was vital for this series”
“Best Before End”: Photographing Energy Drinks [The New Yorker] In “Best Before End,” Stephen Gill in processes film negatives in a variety of popular energy drinks. [more inside]
Nicholas Vreeland: Monk with a Camera
Diana Vreeland, noted fashion columnist and editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine from 1963 until 1971, once famously said, "Pink is the new black." This post is about her grandson, Nicholas Vreeland, who as a teenager worked as an assistant to legendary photographers Irving Penn and Richard Avedon (both friends of Grandma). Nicholas began studying Tibetan Buddhism in 1977. This (8:39) PBS Video from 6/15/2012 provides some background: "Buddhist Abbot Nicholas Vreeland". Now, the trailer to Monk with a Camera: The Life and Journey of Nicholas Vreeland", a documentary film by Guido Santi and Tina Mascara, has a North American release date of 11/21/14. A Leica Camera Blog article: Nicholas Vreeland: Capturing Photographs to Honor and Preserve His World. Perhaps you would just enjoy seeing some of what Nicholas Vreeland can do with that camera. Enjoy!
Into The Wild: interview with Carine McCandless, sister of Christopher
Carine McCandless's memoir tells the story of a childhood marred by domestic violence - and ended by her brother’s tragic death in the Alaskan wilderness. Q&A: The True Strife Behind 'Into the Wild'.
DIORAMA-RAMA TODAY
"The cosmorama consisted of rather small landscape scenes displayed conventionally in a gallery, but viewed in relief, through an arrangement of magnifying mirrors. The pleorama was a form of moving panorama shown in Breslau in 1831, in which viewers sat in a boat that rocked as though tossed by waves, while moving canvases on each side recreated the changing views of the Bay of Naples, which was thus traversed in the space of an hour...The myriorama, or "many thousand views" was, by contrast, a more personal visual device, consisting of numerous cards depicting fragments or segments of landscapes that could be arranged in infinitely different combinations." [more inside]
Discover Us
In an attempt to combat years of poor public relations, Monsanto has decided to take their case directly to the people through various campaigns. On a new site called The Conversation they are answering questions directly from consumers. [more inside]
More on those photogenic Japanese macaques, aka snow monkeys
Last February, a Japanese snow monkey got hold of someone's smart phone (as discussed on Reddit and elsewhere), and Marsel van Oosten captured a great view of that same Japanese macaque, winning accolades and awards around the 'net and globe. If you'd like to know even more, he chatted with the 500 px ISO blog, discussing these hot-tub bathing macaques and nature photography in general. If you'd like to know more about Japanese macaques in general, here's a broad overview of the photogenic monkeys, and an hour long PBS documentary to delve even deeper. (Snow Monkeys bathing in hot springs previously)
a fragment of a holographic reality that a higher consciousness made
I’m certain I would have become a right nuisance to the Ramones
Steve Albini on the current state of the music industry: "It was the beginning of what we would call the peer network. By mid-90s there were independent labels and distributors moving millions of dollars of records and CDs. And there was a healthy underground economy of bands making a reasonable income owing to the superior efficiencies of the independent methods... So, that was the system as it was. That’s what we lost when the internet made everything available everywhere for free. And make no mistake about it, we have lost it.
But for a minute I want you to look at the experience of music from a fan’s perspective, post-internet. Music that is hard to find was now easy to find. In response I had more access to music than I had ever imagined... This audience-driven music distribution has other benefits. Long-forgotten music has been given a second life. And bands whose music that was ahead of its time has been allowed to reach a niche audience that the old mass distribution failed to find for them, as one enthusiast turns on the next and this forgotten music finally gets it due." [more inside]
Dumping Smartphones on West Africa is a Bad Idea
At this point I believe it might be better to dump the container of smartphones into the ocean than to dump them onto the Ebola emergency response. The leader of UNICEF's innovation unit explains why Amazon's offer to donate unsold Fire phones to West Africa will likely cause more harm than good.
Math is hard.
Barbie Fucks It Up Again “This is great!” I said. “Barbie wants to be a computer engineer! And fifty stickers!” [more inside]
Mexico on the brink
Protests over the disappearance of 43 missing students raged across Mexico and the United States over the weekend. 'Activists blamed a government they say has ties to organized crime and called for people in Mexico and the U.S. to support a Mexico-wide strike on Thursday.
Coinciding with the Nov. 20 strike, protest marches will be held in Mexico City, as well as dozens of cities across the U.S. including New York City and Los Angeles.' [more inside]
Out of the Tar Pit: Analysis of Software Complexity
Out of the Tar Pit (SL-GitHub to PDF) by Ben Moseley and Peter Marks. Abstract:
Complexity is the single major difficulty in the successful development of large-scale software systems. Following Brooks we distinguish accidental from essential difficulty, but disagree with his premise that most complexity remaining in contemporary systems is essential. We identify common causes of complexity and discuss general approaches which can be taken to eliminate them where they are accidental in nature. To make things more concrete we then give an outline for a potential complexity-minimizing approach based on functional programming and Codd’s relational model of data.[more inside]
Danny Macaskill: The Ridge
"The main action plan when I am riding along the high stuff is just not to fall off. "
Scotland's own professional mountain biker Danny Macaskill takes on the Cuillin Ridge on the Isle of Skye. [more inside]
Somewhere in-between Chop Suey and Pork Roll, the truth lies.
Recently on The Blue we've had discussions about American Chop Suey and New Jersey Pork Roll, but what about other regional favorites, like Lutefisk, Scrapple, or the French Dip Sandwich? Just in time for Thanksgiving, here are a few links to get you started:
Outlaw gentlemen with guitars and harmonicas
Volbeat are a "rockabilly metal band" from Copenhagen. Formed in 2001, they list among their influences Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, along with many metal and punk bands. Some particularly rocking cuts inside, to help you get through Monday afternoon. [more inside]
Anybody want a Burnt Rubber Special from Randy's Donuts?
Drift master Ken Block's newest video, Gymkhana 7, is a tire smoke-filled drift romp through the deserted streets and freeways of Los Angeles. A commemoration of the Ford Mustang's 50th anniversary, his vehicle this time is a custom-built, 850hp, all wheel drive 1965 'Stang lovingly named the Hoonicorn RTR . [more inside]
Zombies + poi
Put your dungarees on and go get some spuckies and tonic!
A Boston Globe reporter talks to his dad about some old-school Boston-area colloquialisms.
Have milk at the ready
Bunker mentality
It's a trifecta! fear, loathing, and paranoia, meet Money. For those below the 1%, but above the 90%, a new kind of status symbol - long-term rentals for surviving the Apocalypse (but what if the Rapture comes while you're underground?). A chiropractor and a health care executive team up to offer pricey reassurance about the long odds.
Is Texas getting ready to kill an innocent man?
Eleven years before he raped and threatened to kill Lear, Fennell’s own fiancee, 19-year-old Stacy Stites, was found brutally murdered along a country road in Bastrop, Texas. That crime eventually sent a man to death row. His name is Rodney Reed—and he is scheduled to die in January. Lear, like many people who have followed the case in Texas —believe that Reed is innocent. And they believe that the real killer is Jimmy Fennell.
Is Texas about to execute an African-American man for a crime seemingly committed by a white rapist police officer? The Intercept (previously on MeFi) reports.
Is Texas about to execute an African-American man for a crime seemingly committed by a white rapist police officer? The Intercept (previously on MeFi) reports.
The Worm in the Machine
A Worm's Mind In A Lego Body: Timothy Bubisce of the OpenWorm project (previously) has uploaded a neural mapping, or connectome, of the C. elegans worm as software into a Lego robot. The result? It kinda sorta behaves like a worm would. So, not quite the Kurzweillian dream of uploading one's consciousness into a machine, but still fascinating.
“Remember me as a revolutionary communist.”
Stop calling me 'the Ebola nurse'
good game
I confess to being bewildered, still, by what is often said to be the greatest game of StarCraft II ever played. Fall, 2013. New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom. Scarlett vs. Bomber. Third game in a best-of-three series, a quarter-final in a tournament sponsored by Red Bull. It lasted about forty minutes, although I gathered, from the live commentary on the video that I have watched many times, that it nearly ended far sooner. A couple of minutes in, there came this exchange:
“Uh-oh. Oh, my God! Scarlett is going gas!”
“Oh—oh, God!”
“Gas pool! And it’s a double proxy. Bomber is walking into the worst possible situation.”
The Truth About Anonymous’s Activism
A look behind the mask reveals a naïve techno-utopianism.
what happened when i wore a low-rise bikini
Why no one can design a better speculum
“If there was anything I hated, it was investigating the organs of the female pelvis.” [more inside]
A laptop of one's own
Now, however, the internet has created a revolution in the place of young women in our culture, granting millions of them the chance to represent themselves to the world in all sorts of ways that Ruby Tandoh argues are both tremendously exciting and profoundly empowering. She'll look back at the development of the place of girls in youth culture over the decades, examining the importance of the private space of the bedroom in providing a crucible in which identities are actively formed, and find out about those young women in movements like punk and Riot Grrrl who blazed a trail for today's girls as they take the reins of cultural production through their vlogs, blogs and zines.From Radio 4's Archive on 4 programme comes A Girl's Own Story.
Insight: "A major cause of being poor is not having enough money..."
"It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that giving them money is a great way to reduce that problem." Giving small amounts of money to poor people works more efficiently than any other anti-poverty approach, doesn't lead to "laziness," improves health and happiness, fights crime and addiction, and just might lead to the kind of minimized consumption needed to prevent ecological crisis. (Works even better when it's enshrined as a right, as a few real life examples have shown.)
Pas d'erreur
Mistakes were made - a Viennese snippet of Jerome Robbins' The Concert (or The Perils of Everybody) (wiki)
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