December 21, 2016
"It's like the taste of my Grandma's sofa."
Washington Post writer Monica Hesse ruminates on an annual office party snack tradition (The giant tri-flavor holiday popcorn tin sends a message, which is, “I was thinking of you, but not until I was already in the checkout aisle of Big Lots.”) and speaks with the CEO of one of the major producers (“If you lined up all of our holiday popcorn tins that we produced in 2016, you could start at the White House and end at Fenway Park in Boston.”).
Meanwhile, Post staffers compare an expensive tin to a cheap one to answer the culinary question "Is there really a difference between holiday popcorn brands?" (video, no captions).
Your performance this year gave us paws
the early seasons look pretty rough
“Cheers love, the calvary's queer.”
A New Overwatch Comic Celebrates the Holidays and Establishes That Tracer is Gay [PC Gamer] “The newest Overwatch digital comic, entitled Reflections, follows the high-speed holiday adventures of Tracer as she races through the streets of London in search of the perfect gift for her partner. Because yes, as it turns out, Tracer has a partner in Blizzard's official lore, and her partner is a woman. The comic itself is a fairly straightforward heartwarming tale of what really matters during the most hectic season of all. But the reaction to Tracer's identity has been anything but. Messages decrying Blizzard's "mistake" have cropped up all over the Overwatch forums and other social media, countered by others praising the studio for explicitly stating—in a low-key fashion—that the face of one of the biggest games of the year is gay.” [more inside]
The David Foster Wallace disease
He had the brain that ate itself | Wallace was depressed, and so his terribly powerful intelligence was, in fact, his terrible master. [more inside]
The World's First Māori emoji app
"I have a crazy laugh."
2016 sucked for most of us, for many reasons, but there was one thing that consistently made me laugh or smile, no matter how bad things were:
Amy Poehler's Laugh Is The Best Laugh
Amy Poehler Laugh Tribute
Both contain scenes from Parks and Recreation blooper reel laughs
Amy Poehler's Laugh Is The Best Laugh
Amy Poehler Laugh Tribute
Both contain scenes from Parks and Recreation blooper reel laughs
Distributed Algorithms
‘Why is it,’ [Henry] Ford complained, ‘every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?’ Ant colonies and radical possibilities for human societies.
Ullevaalsalléen 5, Oslo
The Baby in the Plastic Bag. A non-fiction story in nine chapters, translated into English from Norwegian. Each chapter contains a brief autoplaying sound.
We wish you a scary solstice (mlyt)
A murder of dancers and crows
French dancer Marie-Laure Agrapart performs beautifully choreographed routines that most notably involve her dance partner, an exceptionally trained black crow. [more inside]
"I just want Bruce Lee to hold me as long as he can"
Jeopardy Champion
When Cindy Stowell was called by the Jeopardy producers about having earned a chance to audition, she told them it would have to be fast; she had Stage IV colon cancer and an estimated six months to live. Stowell passed away on December 5, eight days before the first day of her winning streak began to air. After Tuesday night's show Cindy’s six-day total is $103,803 (U.S.), which she donated to cancer research.
All the NOPE
Cahokia was bigger than Paris—then it was completely abandoned.
"The more they dug, the more obvious it became that this was no ordinary place. The structures they excavated were full of ritual objects charred by sacred fires. We found the remains of feasts and a rare earthen structure lined with yellow soils. Baires, Baltus, and their team had accidentally stumbled on an archaeological treasure trove linked to the city's demise. The story of this place would take us back to the final decades of a great city whose social structure was undergoing a radical transformation." Annalee Newitz for Ars Technica: Finding North America's lost medieval city [more inside]
Furiosa’s Cat Feeder
Yes, Heinlein is the progressive one.
Why do you care so much about lunar phase, anyway?
Do you have a sweet 1989 ST:TNG calendar in your attic? Good news: it will totally work in 2017, except for Riker looking really strange without the beard. Or if your grandma's Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore calendar from 1922 is still hanging in the kitchen, you're in luck. Check what other old calendars are still useful at WhenCanIReuseThisCalendar.com.
“He doesn’t do much plumbing, or talk about his heritage”
The Economist: How Super Mario became a global cultural icon.
Children—and their parents—lost days of their lives inside Mr Miyamoto’s kingdom. “Super Mario Bros.” sold 40m copies and the Mario franchise never looked back; it went on to produce more than 200 games, several television shows and one memorably lousy movie. By 1990 American children were more familiar with Mario than with Mickey Mouse.
Children—and their parents—lost days of their lives inside Mr Miyamoto’s kingdom. “Super Mario Bros.” sold 40m copies and the Mario franchise never looked back; it went on to produce more than 200 games, several television shows and one memorably lousy movie. By 1990 American children were more familiar with Mario than with Mickey Mouse.
Is YouTube changing how young children act and see the world?
Zapp Lazerbeem (Second Baseman, Atlanta Braves, 92-99)
The physics of melanin; the joy of colors
Technically, melanin is a set of biomolecules that we think are synthesized by enzymes and that are notably very visibly colored. There are three types of melanin: the most common, eumelanin, which appears black or brown and occurs in skin and hair; the less abundant pheomelanin, which is on the yellow-to-red spectrum; and neuromelanin, which appears in high concentrations in the human brain, but the function of which we essentially don’t understand at all. For the most part, it seems, we don’t understand melanin. Despite this lack of scientific understanding, the social consequences of melanin are understood intimately by many of us.
Good news, everybody! Seriously. Good news!
From any perspective, the progress humanity has made in recent history is astonishing, as this fantastic analysis by Oxford economist Max Roser shows. Economically, 130,000 people have exited extreme poverty every day since 1990. In 1800 1-in-10 people were literate, now it is 85%. Child mortality has dropped a 100x in the same period, even as populations levels are expected to peak in 2075. The stats for education are no less impressive. There is a nice infographic summarizing these and other trends as well. You can put together your own interactive own charts using the amazing data gathered by Prof. Roser's Our World in Data site.
Refugees-The-Right-Thing-to-Do.pptx
Jim Estill put up $1.5 million to bring 58 families to Canada. He found them homes, gave them jobs and even bought one man a dollar store. How the mild-mannered CEO of an appliance company became the Oskar Schindler of Guelph. [slTorontoLife]
Why tell your lover you aren’t into them when you can just fadeaway?
A fadeaway is when someone quietly disappears from someone they are dating; Ignoring texts and never fessing up to their disinterest. The fadeaway is a close cousin to ghosting: the act of totally cutting off communication with someone you are dating but no longer wishes to date.. [more inside]
Meet New York's 11-year-old subway therapist
If you’re in need of some emotional advice, but have neither the time or the money to waste on a qualified therapist, this 11-year-old kid has you covered. Also see the Daily Telegraph link.
it's all about the light.
Captain *William* Trigger, not just Captain Trigger
Practical philosophers
The Early Sports and Pop Culture History Blog discusses the history and etymology of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ nickname in The Grim Reality of the “Trolley Dodgers”. Don't miss the link to Jeff B's A Trip Down Market Street 1906 With Street Sounds with its first-person view from a trolley in San Francisco, filmed days before the famous earthquake of 1906.
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