December 15, 2016
“Otus is presented as an agent, not as a victim or a puppet—”
Owlboy Is A Masterful Tale of Transcending Disability [Kill Screen] “It is striking, to say the least, that a game which has the levity and freewheeling inventiveness of a Studio Ghibli film introduces its hero with a sequence of cold abuse. But this is the unlikely balance that Owlboy [YouTube] achieves. From its unforgettable opening sequence to its equally devastating conclusion, the game never lets us forget that its hero is an unusually vulnerable one. He can’t even defend himself when the local owl bullies—cheekily named Fib and Bonacci—tease him. Nor does Otus gain fabulous new powers as the story goes on to deal with all the strife; the most he can do is stun foes with a stylish twirl of his cloak and escape.” [more inside]
Hella Grits - In Maps
The great American word mapper
Where the top 100,000 words are used the most, as seen through Twitter data[more inside]
What happened to the gold from the S.S. Central America?
Thompson’s investors, who originally expected to make tens of millions of dollars from the venture, said that they believe he had hundreds of gold coins secreted in a trust account for his children. At first, their search for the coins looked promising. Thompson pleaded guilty to contempt of court in April 2015, according to the Columbus Dispatch. He said the coins were in Belize and agreed to reveal their exact location.
But that didn’t happen.
But that didn’t happen.
"That's where all my farts go."
Adam Rosenberg talks in his sleep. After several of his friends told him about it, he decided to start recording himself. [more inside]
Collateral Beauty is a real movie that actually played in theaters
Maybe you'll be at a dinner. Maybe nobody will believe you. Or maybe they will, and someone will say, "Hollywood is terrible at making movies about trauma." The Village Voice reviews Collateral Beauty.
[cw: death of a child, may contain spoilers] [more inside]
Good Grief! More Entropy
In an email to its users, Dropbox has announced that their Public folders would be made private. Problem is, there's a game that's exclusively hosted in such a way: the completely insane Mastaba Snoopy (previously). Fortunately, the Internet Archive (which recently made the news by being serious about moving to Canada, previously) has a copy, as it does of a ridiculous number of things. If right-clicked and downloaded, the formatting is slightly altered, but no biggie. You may also choose to download it from the original source while you can (everything past first space in filename including .html will be removed - easily fixed by hand). (Content warning: body horror, sorta-sexual-kinda reference.) (Official game thread - creator's last reply was just last October, wow) [more inside]
A ‘Stonehenge’ in Brazil’s Jungle
A ‘Stonehenge,’ and a Mystery, in the Amazon. "The conventional belief is that only small tribes could have inhabited the Amazon jungle, but new discoveries call that into question."
Just a normal guy, among normal guys
Classicists in Interesting Times
Eidolon is a general-audience webzine about the Greco-Roman classics. Subjects covered include a comparison by modern American and ancient Roman foodie cultures by Ben Thomas, Alexander Hamilton's self-identification with Catiline by Joanna Kenty, re-queering Sappho by Ella Haselswerdt, classical references in rap by Dan-el Padilla Peralta, and the contemporary popularity of ancient stoicism by Chiara Sulprizio. But by far the biggest splash was made by editor Donna Zuckerberg's How to Be a Good Classicist Under a Bad Emperor, about resisting the alt-right interpretation of Greco-Roman culture and society.
here's my number (6.022×10^23) so call me tasty
hi hello this is avocado. tyvm for asking. Avocado is a fruit. It tweets. At first for about 10,000 years avocado was just a fruit and didn't tweet, and tbh that was fine too, but now it tweets and plays with other human technology at a shockingly amateurish level that people still seem to enjoy; for example, avocado's Twine game, the time it made guacamole with Michel Foucault, and breathing.website, which just launched to several retweets' worth of acclaim tyvm.
Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor not a...oh! Right!
Seeker.com: "Two Star Trek 'Tricorders' Have Made It to the Final Round of XPRIZE. This week, Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE officials announced that two teams of finalists have made it to the last round of the competition, having designed tricorder-style medical devices that are actually pretty space-age in look and function. Weighing in at less that five pounds each, the devices can diagnose and interpret 13 different health conditions within minutes, while continuously monitoring five different vital sign metrics." [more inside]
Now here's something we hope you'll really like
Almost all the victims were girls. The youngest were 6 years old.
A nine-month IndyStar-USA TODAY Network review of hundreds of police files and court cases from across U.S. shows that at least 368 American gymnasts have alleged some form of sexual abuse at the hands of their coaches, gym owners and other adults working in gymnastics in the last 20 years. That’s a rate of one every 20 days. It's likely an undercount. Many predatory coaches appear to have been protected by USA Gymnastics, one of the nation’s most prominent Olympic organizations. (TW: Child Abuse, Sexual Assault, Molestation and Rape)
Knots on Mars
Knots on Mars : "It might surprise most people to learn that multitudes of knots tied in cords and thin ribbons have probably traveled on every interplanetary mission ever flown. If human civilization ends tomorrow, interplanetary landers, orbiters, and deep space probes will preserve evidence of both the oldest and newest of human technologies for thousands, if not millions of years."
Which version of "A Christmas Carol?" ALL OF THEM.
Over the last 18 months, YouTuber Heath Waterman has edited 400 versions of A Christmas Carol in film, television, songs, comics and more into one new, amazing supercut adaptation. [h/t]
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary
New Day rocks (and rocks, and rocks, and rocks...)
Earlier this week, the New Day's reign as WWE Tag Team Champions became the longest in the company's history at 479 days (and counting). To commemorate the occasion, New Day member Big E tweeted a picture of his team with Cruiserweight Champion Rich Swann and Women's Champion Sasha Banks titled "#BlackExcellence" (Swann and the three members of the New Day are African-American; Banks is biracial). A "What if the white champions did this" backlash predictably ensued. [more inside]
Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda
"Former congressional staffers reveal best practices for making Congress listen" [Single Link Google Docs] A guide, based on the Tea Party playbook, on how to use the tools of government to resist the Trump agenda.
A survival guide for travellers in a hostile land
The Green Book, a guide which informs you where you can safely fill up your car, where to eat without being attacked or where you can can sleep without fear on your dangerous journey.
It may sound like something from a post-apocalyptic fantasy novel but the hostile land in question is segregation-era America and the book is real.
First published in 1936 by a Harlem postal worker, Victor H Green - in his words, "to give the Negro traveller information that will keep from him running into difficulties and embarrassments".
These embarrassments included lynching. (SLBBCdoc) [more inside]
P-Model
P-Model was amazing They were a Japanese band, formed by Susumu Hirasawa in 1979. Over the next two decades their sound spanned everything from new wave, alternative, industrial, techno, and whatever style this is .
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