November 4, 2013
Graphing the Marvel Universe
"He calls this the Tao of Hawkeye. You can’t just have a database around Hawkeye, right? Not if you really want to understand Hawkeye over time. Because Hawkeye isn’t just Hawkeye. He’s also Ronin and Goliath and Clint Barton. Sometimes he’s dead. Oh, and by the way: he started as a villain. Who remembers that? -- Back in the eighties people like Mark Gruenwald and Peter Sanderson guarded Marvel Comics' continuity. These days Peter Olson tries to do the same for a much bigger Marvel using science and math.
The Box of Crazy
"So a friend of mine found this box by the trash, it is full of wonderful, crazy illustrations. Clearly something happened to this guy that was very memorable."
The Sound of Sorting
you make me wanna get up and SCREAM
Newly unearthed footage of the Jimi Hendrix Experience performing Foxy Lady at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival is totally effing awesome.
all these men end up being killed in a horrific and astonishing fashion
In the 1933 movie King Kong, the titular hero kills a group of sailors by throwing them off a log. But some were supposed to have survived the fall, only to meet a gruesome end at the bottom of the ravine. When King Kong was edited, this terrifying scene was lost. So director Peter Jackson decided to re-create it!
The Lost Spider Pit Sequence [more inside]
This never happened to the other fellow
Steven Soderbergh shares his thoughts on his favourite James Bond film, ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. [more inside]
Erica Chenoweth
Erica Chenoweth studies political violence and non-violent resistance. Her research indicates that nonviolent campaigns have been more successful than armed campaigns and that movements are effective when they (1) attract widespread and diverse participation; (2) develop a strategy that allows them to maneuver around repression; and (3) provoke defections, loyalty shifts, or disobedience among regime elites and/or security forces.
Her TED talk and an interview.
The best time for your coffee
"If you are drinking your morning coffee at 8 AM, is that really the best time? The circadian rhythm of cortisol production would suggest not."
There may as well be an old British Invasion song playing over it
You have to realize: you're a little speck. NO ONE CARES WHAT YOU THINK.
People interested in murder are a naive and trusting lot
Say you want someone, you know, eliminated —a lover, a business partner, a mother-in-law. There are guys out there who will do that. For a price. Then there's another kind of guy. A guy who looks and acts just like a regular hit man. Prison tats, do-rag. But instead of doing the job, he turns sides and then you realize that you were his target all along. Oops, You Just Hired The Wrong Hitman.
Virtual pedophilia
‘PRISM: The SIGAD Used *Most* in NSA Reports!’
How would you, as a junior analyst in S2C41, the branch of the Signals Intelligence Directorate, navigate the millions of records logged daily, in order to find the nugget to get you noticed? “EVILOLIVE, MADCAPOCELOT, ORANGECRUSH, COBALTFALCON, DARKTHUNDER: the names are beguiling. But they don’t always tell us much, which is their reason for existing: covernames aren’t classified, and many of them – including the names of the NSA’s main databases for intercepted communications data, MAINWAY, MARINA, PINWALE and NUCLEON – have been seen in public before, in job ads and resumés posted online.” Daniel Soar sorts through the possibilities in the London Review of Books, 24 Oct 2013. (See also William Arkin's blog on codenames) [more inside]
About 4 billion
A barrage of zeroes and ones
1imb0 (SLYT) - At the end of the production line, into God's realm, we fall. Warnings for: singing robots, high-pitched Japanese voices, English subtitles, and copious amounts of animated ascii art. [more inside]
Nightwatch: The Haunting Light Painted Nightscapes of Noel Kerns
Nightwatch: The Haunting Light Painted Nightscapes of Noel Kerns: Dallas-based photographer Noel Kerns specializes in capturing haunting night scenes of ghost towns, decommissioned military bases, and industrial abandonments. His creative use of different colored lights combined with moon light helps these old abandoned places come alive as vivid nightscapes. [...]
By very carefully planning out his shot and using flashlights, strobes and colored gels to strategically add light, Kerns captures the final product in-camera during exposures that last, on average, one to three minutes — very little, if any, post-production is done at all. [more inside]
cats can wear stockings
Meowfit of the day is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their hosiery, or why.
"So how did you get your name?"
"He also played piano obsessively after school, deconstructing the harmonies of The Four Freshmen by listening to short segments of their songs on a phonograph, then working to recreate the blended sounds note by note on the keyboard"
-- regarding Brian Wilson, from "The Lost Beach Boy", by Jon Stebbins
Please take pause to be absolutely charmed by The Four Freshmen.
It's like you want to take them all home and introduce them to your mother.
-- regarding Brian Wilson, from "The Lost Beach Boy", by Jon Stebbins
Please take pause to be absolutely charmed by The Four Freshmen.
It's like you want to take them all home and introduce them to your mother.
A Better Wayback Machine
A Much Better Wayback Machine. Mefi's own rajbot programs for the awesome Internet Archive, and recently helped add some sweet new features. You can now instantly save a page and get a permanent URL; insert a 404 handler on your site to lead users past broken links; use new APIs; and plenty of other good stuff. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
“I’d say it was a pretty solid year."
Yesterday, Tatyana McFadden, a ten-time Paralympic track medalist, became the first athlete in history to win the "Grand Slam" of marathon racing, having won the 2013 women's wheelchair athlete divisions in Boston, London, Chicago and now New York. [more inside]
"Degenerate Art" found in man's house.
About 1,500 modernist masterpieces – thought to have been looted by the Nazis – have been confiscated from the flat of an 80-year-old man from Munich, in what is being described as the biggest artistic find of the postwar era.
The most powerful graphic design tool you never knew you had
Was iOS 7 Created in Microsoft Word? Graphic designer Vaclav Krejci makes it seem so in this time-lapse video. Check out his YouTube channel for more detailed explanations of each technique. Interested in doing some graphic design in Microsoft Word on your own? Check out his free ebook at ISSUU. (An iBookstore version is coming soon.)
"You are never alone at the mannequin factory."
Inside the Proportion>London factory in Walthamstow. - Not an invasion force, honest.
Scooby-Doo! Mystery Inc: the gang is back together, and better than ever
The Meddling Kids + Sidekicks + Mysteries formula for cartoon series is not terribly unique, but Scooby-Doo has been at it for 11 iterations. Until the latest series, it has been a campy episodic series for Saturday mornings, with the occasional campy movie. The kids come across a mystery, then one way or another, they solve it. You learn about the villain behind the crimes, but never about the crime-solvers. All that changed with the newest series, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, which some folks consider to be the best Scooby-Doo series ever, with an over-arching story, character development (spoilers!), and a ton of geeky references, as picked apart in depth on TV Tropes.
He's a better dancer than I am
A Russian bodybuilder shows off his build with a routine that brought a smile to my face almost as large as his.
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