November 5, 2014
Sea of Crises
Hexels, Brixels, Pixels, Crystals, Circles, Wiggles, Diagonal, and Zeez!
Hexels is a unique grid-based art tool for PC and OS X that has garnered some acclaim from game developers for its retro digital aesthetic. See what people are making in Hexels, or try it yourself for free. [more inside]
Ticket to Cheat
Ticket to Ride is a board game about trains. Specifically, it's about connecting cities by claiming sections of track via matching cards of the same color (or symbol, to give a little help to the color-blind).
The game (published by Days of Wonder) is quite popular, having sold many hundreds of thousands of copies, and it's won a ton of awards, including the prestigious Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) and the first Diana Jones award given to a board game*. There was even a world championship held this year to celebrate the game's tenth anniversary, featuring 25,000 players who were whittled down to 28 national champions (well, two from "North America," that is, the U.S.) for the finals in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France. The finals were broadcast over the Internet on Tric Trac TV -- which is how the cheating in the final match was discovered. [more inside]
Not enough chocolate to give a characteristic flavor or to warrant name
freely downloadable patterns: The Amazing Pattern Library
The Amazing Pattern Library is an ongoing project which compiles patterns shared by designers, available to be freely downloaded and used without restriction.
The fault is not in our stars, but in our bladders
The Philosophical Implications of the Urge to Urinate: Our Sense Of Free Will Diminishes When We Need To Pee Or Desire Sex.
EVERYTHING IS A KITTY
On race, feminism and allegations concerning Lena Dunham
In the wake of accusations that Lena Dunham sexually abused her sister (who denies the allegations) The Daily Beast looks at Dunham as an icon of feminism and whether that role means she receives less criticism. [more inside]
"...no one talked about the real issue, the victims."
The Shame of Borough Park by Rachel Aviv [The New Yorker] After a child-molestation case, many leaders of the Hasidic community turned against the whistle-blower.
Research methods: the heart and soul of knowledge
Hollaback and Why Everyone Needs Better Research Methods (And Why All Data Needs Theory), by Zeynep Tufekci:
I’ve taught "introduction to research methods" to undergraduate students for many years, and they would sometimes ask me why they should care about all this "method stuff", besides having a required class for a sociology major out of the way. I would always tell them, without understanding research methods, you cannot understand how to judge what you see.[more inside]
The Hollaback video shows us exactly why.
NO ELEPHANTS, NO CASTLES, ALL LIES
I don’t think I was born white. I think white children are manufactured.
Meet "Alex from Target"
Alex from Target is very important. His ride to meme-dom was seemingly instantaneous and has mystified us all.
Even Alex is confused by his rise to fame.
So who just is "Alex from Target?" [more inside]
Painting with feet
The pointe shoe in ballet is a piece of technology critical to the performance of dance. While mechanically tough, its design is simple and flexible enough for personal modification and tailoring to the individual dancer's needs. Spanish artist Lesia Trubat has taken the pointe shoe into the 21st century, sewing in LilyPad Arduino controllers and sensors and integrating their operation with iOS, allowing the dancer to turn pressure and motion into a dynamic and novel expression of this centuries-old art form.
Let's build a browser engine!
The health of the people should be the supreme law
Missouri state court judge Rex M. Burlison has ruled that Missouri cannot keep St. Louis officials from marrying same sex couples. [more inside]
How To Make The Perfect Grilled Cheese Sandwich
The other side of diversity
Here I’ll try to highlight how it has affected me, as I grew from a young black lady to a black woman in the predominantly white male tech industry.
Moon Eggs
Meet Stinger: Soccer's most subversive mascot
At the beginning of the 2014 North American Soccer League season, the San Antonio Scorpions unveiled a subversive mascot who—at the very core of his being—presents a critique of capitalism and the military industrial complex. Stinger the Scorpion forces the contemporary spectator to recognize the existential angst at the center of contemporary soccer.
Exes
What you're really saying when you first see an ex. (mildly nsfw - language) Vimeo or YouTube. Written and produced by: Ali Vingiano. Directed and shot by: T.J. Misny.
"Nobody had fooled around with the heart before."
Fearsome Architect
Who designed the tricorder, the flip-top communicator, the Vulcan lute, the the Romulan Bird-of-Prey? Wah Chang. Who made the Gorn and the salt vampire from M-113? Who commissioned the first 500 tribbles? Wah Chang. Who made Tarantula take to the hills? Who built the prototype for the time machine and created a monster too terrible to show on television? Who animated dinosaurs and adorned Cleopatra? Wah Chang, Wah Chang, Wah Ming Chang. [more inside]
"Banksy is a team of seven artists led by a woman"
Why Banksy Is (Probably) a Woman
The world's foremost street artist is a social justice warrior and a viral media master. She could be anyone.
The world's foremost street artist is a social justice warrior and a viral media master. She could be anyone.
Vasili Arkhipov: the man who saved the world in 1962
For 13 days in October 1962, the world held its breath while "the leaders of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba gambled with millions of lives to garner advantages for one country over another." One day before President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev reached apparent agreement today on a formula to end the crisis over Cuba, the nuclear doomsday clock was seconds away from midnight. Vasili Arkhipov, the Brigade Chief of Staff on submarine B-59, was one of three people who needed to approve the launching of a nuclear missile. When the USS Beale began to drop depth charges on the B-59 to force it to surface, not realizing B-59 was armed with nuclear-tipped torpedoes. The B-59's Captain Valentin Savitsky and political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov thought this was signalling an all-out attack. Arkhipov disagreed, and in doing so prevented the sub from launching a nuclear missile that could have triggered mutually assured destruction. [more inside]
"She's a little Jezebel, that one. Painted face little Jezebel..."
Jezebel. The Painted Face. She is, as we've defined her, a scheming and shamelessly evil woman. She's Lolita and Eve. A woman of easy virtue. A temptress, a mistress and a courtesan.Anna Vodicka: On Modesty. [more inside]
Call her a hussy, hootchie, hooker, whore. Harlot. Jade. Vamp. Vixen. Tart, tease, trollop, tramp. Siren, seductress, strumpet, skank. Coquette, floozy. Wench, hoe. Loose. Slut. Minx.
Find a male equivalent. Look up "gigolo" in your handy thesaurus. Find "playboy," "socialite," "pleasure-seeker," "ladies' man." A stud, a player. A father, an uncle. A boy toy. A bachelor. A groom.
What is Dance to me?
My evil dad: Life as a serial killer’s daughter
There isn't a book out there called, What Do You Do When You Find Out That Your Dad's A Serial Killer? (trigger warning: animal abuse)
Mechawhales!
In 2037 mankind almost destroyed its own planet through greed, pollution and war. Salvation came through the evolution of a new species of hyper intelligent whales. Via telepathy the whales send their grief over the planets sorry state into the minds of every man and woman on earth. This made humanity rethink its ways and the Whale-Human Alliance was founded. With the guidance of the wise whales mankind healed its planet and began to peacefully explore the universe. But peace was not meant to last long. In deep space humanity encountered an evil race of marauding aliens bent on enslaving anyone in its path. Vastly outclassed by the weapons and fighting skills of the aliens the humans had to turn to their brother whales to defend them against this new threat...[2:55] [all videos contain animated violence and gore][more inside]
You came back to see us. We are so glad to see you.
...system that really just administrates for large corporationsPARKLIFE!
UK comedian Russell Brand has released his mostly "unreadable" third book, which lays out his notions of peacefully overthrowing capitalism in a revolution that would... Well, it kind of goes on. Fortunately, the internet has found a one word reply to his "champagne Socialism": PARKLIFE!
That's a moray!
Conservative disgust > liberal disgust
"The researchers found that conservatives tend to react more strongly to disgusting images having increased activity in regions of their brain that are involved in processing disgust and regulating emotion. The liberals, on the other hand, had increased activity in different brain regions."
Study
20 years later
The poster of the 42nd Angoulême International Comics Festival has been unveiled and it's a brand new comic strip by Bill Watterson. Watterson won't be coming to France for the festival, but he did a very short interview for 20 Minutes (in French). Previouslies: STRIPPED (February 2014) and Pearls Before Swine (June 2014). According to this pattern, the next confirmed sighting of Bill Watterson('s art) should occur in February or March 2015.
The first step is admitting you got a problem...
James Sturm's short comic, the sponsor is perhaps relevant to more people than just cartoonists.
oy
Hello, operator... hello?
Panik to Crawford to Belt
MLB.com's StatCast dissects the World Series Game Seven double play seen as key to the San Francisco Giants win over the Kansas City Royals.
[more inside]
Vintage photo finds
Vintage Photo Finds is a site with vintage photographs. According to creator Joel Snow:
The following pictures were found as negatives at the bottom of a cardboard box at a flea market. I shot them with my SLR on a lightbox and inverted them back to positives with Photshop. I'm not sure if it was a single photographer, or many, but many of the shots show an artistic and creative eye and share a similar style.[more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »