December 30, 2013
Best Longform of 2013
2013 had a lot of great longform writing. Longreads and Longform lead the way with their best of lists.
Lots of sites provided year end lists: The American Prospect, The Atlantic, Business Week Buzzfeed, The Daily Beast, Dazed Digital, Deadspin, Esquire UK, Flavorwire, Gawker, Inc., Impose Magazine, Indiewire, i09, Lifehacker, Maclean's, Mashable, Mother Jones, National Geographic, National Journal, The New Yorker, On Earth, Out, Pocket, ReadWrite, Slate, Spin, Sports on Earth, The Electric Typewriter, The Verge, The Voice Media Group, and The Washington Post. [more inside]
Broken Pledges
Bloomberg has been publishing a series of articles on the misdeeds of the fraternity system in the U.S., particularly how Greek organizations "dodge liability for mayhem at their local chapters, oppose anti-hazing bills in Congress and pressure colleges to drop restrictions on recruiting freshmen as pledges. Colleges face litigation from fraternities and the withholding of donations by wealthy alumni." [more inside]
Tatsuo Horiuchi: The David Byrne of Excel
Tatsuo Horiuchi came to art late in his life, and with an unusual tool. At age 60, he was inspired by graphs he saw, and started using Microsoft Excel to make art in the style of traditional Japanese scenes. See more on Spoon & Tamago and Bored Panda.
Your funk says a lot about you
Bacteria have a Hobo Code. Next month's Science News carries a pretty interesting overview about the cutting edge of microbial science, including recent studies showing "in many mammals a microbial community ferments various sweats, oozes and excretions into distinctive scents that reveal age, health and much more to knowing noses in a select social circle". That's right, microbes are posting status updates to each other through smells, sharing with other microbes what they've learned about host animals.
Owlbears, rust monsters, and bulettes - common ancestor found.
Inspiration comes from strange places. During that time that I was playing with these “Prehistoric Animals”, somebody else was playing with them too – a fellow named Gary Gygax.
Why did the chicken cross the Möbius strip?
Occasionally NSFW.
11 Reasons to Be Optimistic in 2014
It's not all bad news. People are living longer, we're winning the fight against malaria, worldwide poverty is down, and eight more reasons for hope in the coming year.
I will be gone, but not forever.
Former bandmates of singer-songwriter Jason Molina have announced a string of January tribute shows called "Songs: Molina - A Memorial Electric Co." They will feature the members of Magnolia Electric Co., joined by M.C. Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger, performing material from throughout Molina's career. [more inside]
m01$tRoACh31!4
Passweird - Passwords too gross to steal. This website will create for you a password that is not only secure*, but is also so utterly repulsive that not even the most hardened criminal, identity thief, NSA agent, or jealous boyfriend would ever want to use it. *ish, but probably not. Don't use these for real.
"We are going to get rid of the horse carriages. Period."
When Bill de Blasio takes the oath of office on Wednesday to become New York City's mayor, one of the first things on his agenda will be the fight to ban horse drawn carriages in Central Park. [more inside]
Digital Black-Bag Ops:
Der Spiegel reports on the NSA's "plumbers" at the Office of Tailored Access Operations, who collect and deploy exploits to infiltrate computers and even redirect shipments so they can install malware and hardware backdoors on electronics ordered by those they are targeting.
Jacob Appelbaum [AKA ioerror] reports on the NSA's 'catalog', which ranges from $30 monitor cables that send back screenshots, to exploits for network security hardware from Cisco and Huawei, to backdoored BIOS code and firmware for all major hard drive manucfacturers. While some of the NSA's malware requires physical access or proximity, much of it is remotely installable over the Internet.
At the 30c3 conference in Hamburg, Appelbaum gives an in-depth talk about the NSA's Tailored Access Operations hacking activities and its 'interdiction' process, whereby computers are tampered with during shipping or as part of a 'black-bag' operation. Appelbaum, a Wikileaks affiliate who has reported on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, has been personally targeted by such operations, as have his family members.
At the 30c3 conference in Hamburg, Appelbaum gives an in-depth talk about the NSA's Tailored Access Operations hacking activities and its 'interdiction' process, whereby computers are tampered with during shipping or as part of a 'black-bag' operation. Appelbaum, a Wikileaks affiliate who has reported on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, has been personally targeted by such operations, as have his family members.
Mads Mikkelsen is absolutely stellar as the Mad Hatter
"they run a body of code that can be modified"
The Quenelle - Anti-establishment or a reverse Nazi salute?
With his celebration during a match on Saturday, French striker Nicolas Anelka has brought renewed attention to a gesture originating in France, known as "The Quenelle". Anelka has vehemently denied any racist intent and has argued he was merely expressing solidarity with the inventor of the gesture, the controversial French comedian known as Dieudonné. Dieudonne and others maintain that the gesture is merely anti-elite in nature (signifying a fuck you to the establishment), but given Deudonne's past, in which he coined the term Shoananas and expressed particular support for Hezbollah and Hamas, many disagree.
a US presidential slave ownership reference table
Middlebrow megachurch infotainment
Let me tell you a story. I was at a presentation that a friend, an Astrophysicist, gave to a potential donor ... After the talk the sponsor said to him, “you know what, I’m gonna pass because I just don’t feel inspired… you should be more like Malcolm Gladwell” ... So I ask the question: does TED epitomize a situation where ... a scientist... is told that their work is not worthy of support, because the public doesn't feel good listening to them? I submit that Astrophysics run on the model of American Idol is a recipe for civilizational disaster.Benjamin H. Bratton (Dept. of Visual Arts, UC San Diego) uses a TEDx talk to critique the medium of the TED talk itself. Does TED—"weird, inadequate and symptomatic"—encapsulate the twenty-first century's inability to face the challenges of the future in any honest way?
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