November 17, 2015
"Remember rugby is a team game so all 14 of you pass the ball to Jonah"
Horse With Hands Riding A Bike
Horse With Hands Riding A Bike. A horse is difficult to draw.
Hands are difficult to draw.
Bicycles are difficult to draw.
So to draw all three is just cussing mind blowing.
But these guys have given it a go!
The [Star Wars] universe never ends, really. It ebbs and flows....
The Star Wars galaxy is vast, and it's universe will expand for decades to come. In fact, it is quite likely that you won't live to see the final Star Wars movie - a Wired article on the ever-growing paracosms of the Star Wars and Marvel cinematic universes, and accolades for Chris Carter's expansive X-Files universe.
Nebula Awards Suggested Reading List 2015
The 2015 The Nebula Awards Suggested Reading List, selected collaboratively by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in the run up to the Nebula Award. Categories include novella, novellete and short story, within which most entries have links full stories.
Revealing the invisible library
Ever since the the Villa dei Papiri and its cache of at least 800 papyrus scrolls was discovered in Herculaneum in 1752, this potential treasure trove of information and insight into the classical world has fascinated scholars with what it could possibly contain. The difficulty has been in how to read them without destroying them. As John Seabrook describes for The New Yorker: "One scroll was peeled apart into many fragments; the other dried up and then, like a disaster in slow motion, split apart into more than three hundred pieces." Now, thanks to new imaging techniques, the contents of the scrolls could—slowly—be revealed.
threw on his Beefsquatch costume and let everyone know “THIS IS ME NOW!”
The $700 billion man
The kids are quite possibly all right on average
"[F]or a while now, think pieces have been fretting over the increased fragility of American college students, and blaming it on … well, whatever the writer thinks is wrong with kids and/or society today."
What if it's just not true? [more inside]
The rise of ISIS and its threat
Counterterrorism "expert" David Kilcullen discusses the rise of ISIS with historian Robert Manne. Kilcullen was a senior adviser to General David Petraeus in 2007 and 2008, when he helped to design and monitor the Iraq War troop "surge".
Don't Worry, It's Just a Name
According to ancient texts, Athenians and Spartans clashed at the isle of Kane in 406 BC, one of the last battles of the Great Peloponnesian War. Some 100 ships were sent to the bottom of the Aegean Sea as a result of the prolonged, hard-fought naval battle. Archaeologists have long debated the location of Kane, but none of the islands in the Aegean seemed to fit the descriptions. At long last, thanks to artifacts and core samples, the location of Kane has been identified, as has the reason it took so long to find it: It isn't an island anymore.
Paul Laffoley (b. August 14, 1935 - d. November 16, 2015)
From his obituary: "The visionary artist and luminary, Paul Laffoley, has died today after a long battle with congestive heart failure. He had an extraordinary grasp of multiple fields of knowledge compulsively pursing interests that often lead him into uncharted territory. His complex theoretical constructs were uniquely presented in highly detailed mandala-like canvases largely scaled to Fibonacci's golden ratio." Some of his better known works are available on his website. HuffPo offers a surprisingly good survey of his more recent works. Previously. Apologies for the workmanlike quality of this FPP - I am genuinely upset at the news of Mr. Laffoley's passing.
A’o ‘Ana (The Warning)
"Series of murals painted on a few of the thousands of icebergs freshly broken off from a nearby glacier. In the short time I was there, I witnessed the extreme melting rate first hand as the sound of ice cracking was a constant background noise while painting. Within a few weeks these murals will be forever gone, but for those who find them, I hope they ignite a sense of urgency, as they represent the millions of people in need of our help who are already being affected from the rising sea levels of Climate Change.” [more inside]
RIP Rdio
Streaming service Rdio is filing for bankruptcy, and Pandora is set to buy its assets for $75 million. Never heard of Rdio? The service was a lesser-known competitor to the likes of Spotify and Apple Music, and did a lot of things right in a low-key way. Its userbase is savvy and fiercely loyal. The service is set to wind down over the next few weeks. The Atlantic: A Eulogy For Rdio. David Greenwald: What Spotify and the rest could learn from Rdio. The Verge: Streaming music has an economics problem. [more inside]
There's a font for every broken heart on Broadway
13 miles of typography on Broadway from A to Zabar's, New York City's showiest street shows off its signage (and yes, it includes an example of Broadway font)
Beware of ads that use inaudible sound to link phone, TV, tablet, and PC
The ultrasonic pitches are embedded into TV commercials or are played when a user encounters an ad displayed in a computer browser. While the sound can't be heard by the human ear, nearby tablets and smartphones can detect it. When they do, browser cookies can now pair a single user to multiple devices and keep track of what TV commercials the person sees, how long the person watches the ads, and whether the person acts on the ads by doing a Web search or buying a product. Dan Goodin reports for Ars Technica on cross-device tracking software already in use today. [more inside]
but why
UCLA Game Lab: cultivating the subversive in game design and game play
"the [UCLA Game Lab] fosters research and development in not only computer or video games, but also physical, tabletop, and other game forms. Known for its annual Game Art Festival at the Hammer Museum in Westwood, California, the lab supports the production and exhibition of student work, but it also curates and promotes vanguard game design from around the world. Through its tripartite mission to push the envelope of game aesthetics, game context, and game genres, the lab nurtures game projects that often adapt contentious, controversial subjects not found (overtly, anyway) in many commercial games: issues of politics, gender and identity, industry and commerce, the environment, experiences of alterity, the silly and the surreal…. In short, all that composes lived experience becomes fair game, so to speak, for adaptation.." -- Playfully Subversive: the Many Roles of Adaptation in Making Games at the UCLA Game Lab by David O'Grady [more inside]
Not without my floured hands at the wheel.
Christopher Kimball, the 'kitchen stickler' behind the beloved Cook's Illustrated magazine and PBS' highly-rated America's Test Kitchen show, is leaving the kitchen amidst a leadership shakeup at the company he founded. The last letter from Vermont has not yet been published.
Previously
The mother lode of cinematic food puns
Over 150 recipes from the early run of TBS' Dinner and a Movie, including "Peter Pancakes with Lost Boys-enberry Syrup" (originally paired with a presentation of Hook), "Two Hot Peppers on the Lamb" (Thelma and Louise), and "Jane S'mores" (Somewhere in Time).
Reality IS Satire
Real or Satire? Copy and paste any article URL. They'll tell you if it's satire. A useful tool for your easily-fooled neighbors. [more inside]
One of the Original (Adorable) Endangered Species Has Recovered
The Delmarva Peninsula fox squirrel is bigger and meeker than the common grey squirrel, but neither of those attributes saved it from being endangered -- it was on the very first list of species to be protected under the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966. Nearly half a century later, the Delmarva Peninsula fox squirrel will be delisted, indicating that its numbers and habitats have recovered enough to no longer need federal protection. [more inside]
Hardy Boys Covers
Relentless
None of them wanna pay taxes again. Ever.
Surfin' Shetland Otters
Surfin' Shetland Otters! That is all.
How Apple is giving design a bad name
For years, Apple followed user-centered design principles. Then something went wrong.
Former Apple designers Don Norman and Bruce Tognazzini on how Apple has sacrificed core principles of usability and good interface design on the altar of visual simplicity and prettiness.
You feel like you're going to have a blue time.
[Spoilers ahoy!] Toby Fox's Megalovania, possibly inspired by Castlevania and Live a Live, started life as the soundtrack to his Earthbound Halloween Hack. It then gained major prominence as part of Homestuck's sprawling multi-album soundtrack, featuring in a pivotal Flash page and consequently being associated with a certain cerulean crook due to the incorporation of her theme. Recently its popularity soared due to being used as the boss battle song for a sapphire skeleton in Undertale (though there's some speculation that it really represents the player). Its inclusion in Homestuck and especially Undertale has inspired a lot of fanwork: all three versions layered, two orchestral versions, major key, muzak, mashups with Kana Hanazawa, DMX, Panic! At the Disco, and Eminem, with Super Mario Maker and Plants vs Zombies, on hard drives, music boxes, and violins, metal, 8-bit, acapella, and kazoo covers, even a mindboggling DDR-style game which the creator and his girlfriend played through. Let's dance in the sandstorm! [more inside]
Not sure I'd want to live in a world inspired by Microsoft though
Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Stories Inspired by Microsoft features work by Elizabeth Bear , Greg Bear, David Brin, Nancy Kress, Ann Leckie, Jack McDevitt, Seanan McGuire and Robert J. Sawyer, "also includes a short graphic novel by Blue Delliquanti and Michele Rosenthal, and original illustrations by Joey Camacho" and is available for free from the usual ebook retailers.
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