March 10, 2015
Can any of you old-timers confirm or deny this or have any recollection?
The Quantified Hive
The Urban Bee Project builds bee hives kitted out with a wide array of sensors, and uses the gathered data to visualize the state of the hive. Includes great visualizations of the sound of the hive, and timelapse of bees building their combs from inside the hive.
JackDurden.com
Media consumption habits of liberals and conservatives in US
When it comes to getting news about politics and government, liberals and conservatives inhabit different worlds. The project – part of a year-long effort to shed light on political polarization in America – looks at the ways people get information about government and politics in three different settings: the news media, social media and the way people talk about politics with friends and family. In all three areas, the study finds that those with the most consistent ideological views on the left and right have information streams that are distinct from those of individuals with more mixed political views – and very distinct from each other. [more inside]
I wonder if he lives in a valley?
The new host of Q has been announced! It's Shad / Shadrach Kabango. Some coverage at the Globe and the Mothership. [more inside]
The lines just got blurrier.
In a move that will delight people who hate Robin Thicke but dismay those who care about limiting the scope of copyright, Thicke and co-writer Pharrell Williams have been ordered to pay the Gaye family $7.3 million for infringement based on stylistic similarities between "Blurred Lines" and "Got To Give It Up."
Living off the grid: portraits
Since 2010, photographer Antoine Bruy has travelled from the Pyrenees to Romania tracking down urban refuseniks
No, Mr Abbott, we are sick of cruelty*
The UN has released a report finding that Australian policies may breach the international convention against torture. Prime Minister Tony Abbott's response? "I really think Australians are sick of being lectured to by the United Nations." * Not so much. Meanwhile, thousands of letters of support to detainees in Nauru have been returned, undelivered. [more inside]
We are the world...
It's been a long winter, everyone's a little loopy, and that's probably as good a reason as any for the Internet to have delved into the 30th anniversary of "We Are the World" a bit more (and more entertainingly) than strictly necessary: [more inside]
Jeremy Clarkson suspended by the BBC.
Jeremy Clarkson has been suspended by the BBC ater allegedly aiming a punch at a BBC producer. He was already on a final warning, after a series of incidents where he embarrassed the BBC. The final three episodes of the current series have been pulled pending an investigation.
How Reddit Became a Worse Black Hole of Violent Racism than Stormfront
The world of online hate, long dominated by website forums like Stormfront and its smaller neo-Nazi rival Vanguard News Network (VNN), has found a new — and wildly popular — home on the Internet. [NSFW racist language]
Keegan Hanks of the Southern Poverty Law Center discusses racism on the "front page of the internet".
Keegan Hanks of the Southern Poverty Law Center discusses racism on the "front page of the internet".
Graphic Journalism
The phone rang. It was my college rapist. (TW) "a comic account of my friend’s sexual assault in college. 33 years after the incident, she received a phone call from her assailant." [more inside]
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale
The Guardian: Researchers at CRNS in Paris have created artificial positive feelings in a mouse’s memory for first time during sleep, highlighting a possible new treatment for depression. In the study, positive feelings about a particular place were artificially written into the animal’s memory, which caused them to seek out that place in search of a reward when they woke up. [more inside]
He's the one who sucks.
Pop singer and extremely talented ass-clown Michael Bolton has shown his comedy chops before in his collaboration with The Lonely Island (previously). Now he takes his place in a role that was literally named for him.
Wikimedia v. NSA
Today, the Wikimedia Foundation is filing suit against the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) of the United States. The lawsuit challenges the NSA’s mass surveillance program, and specifically its large-scale search and seizure of internet communications — frequently referred to as “upstream” surveillance.
Let's go sunning / It's so good for you
Leafy, verdant Elysia chlorotica (the Eastern Emerald Elysia) is a sea slug with a secret: they photosynthesize. These marauding mollusks slurp up chloroplasts from their favorite algal snack, Vaucheria litorea, incorporating them into their own digestive cells and putting them to work soaking up sunshine (and, incidentally, acquiring a healthy green glow). But how? [more inside]
Pink Slimer for girls, blue Slimer for boys...
Don't Worry, Be Happy
Playing for Change presents a video of children around the world performing the Bobby McFerrin classic. PFC works with local community groups to "inspire and connect the world through music". Some of their initiatives include helping to create a new music school in Cajuru, Brazil, providing resources to the Mother’s Society in Tintale, Nepal who help educate women and girls about their rights through music drama and dance, and a music program for children in the slums of Khlong Toey, Bangkok. They also create videos of performances by musicians around the world, like this fantastic version of Guantanamera performed by 75 Cuban musicians from Havana and Santiago to Miami, Barcelona and Tokyo. [more inside]
Why don't rodents vomit?
A few years ago, it occurred to a few scientists that neither mice or rats are capable of vomiting. What about other rodents? It turns out that being unable to vomit is a trait common to all rodents, not just mice and rats. Interests piqued, the researchers set out to find out why.
"The fact that she is still in jail is the prosecutor."
Cherelle Baldwin has been in prison for 21 months for killing her abuser, despite the fact that a Connecticut jury refused to convict her of the crime. [more inside]
Shitphone: a Love Story
Gods and Gopniks
Simply said, we have reached a moment in Western history when, despite all appearances, no meaningful public debate over belief and unbelief is possible. Not only do convinced secularists no longer understand what the issue is; they are incapable of even suspecting that they do not understand, or of caring whether they do. David Bentley Hart on Adam Gopnik's review of the state of theism and atheism.
The Great 2015 Indie Press Review
"The feature began originally as an idea born from a discussion online with a number of indie press editors, authors, and readers about the deluge of 'best-of' and 'most anticipated' features and how the majority of these articles continue to be disproportionately favorable to the larger publishing houses. A lot gets lost in transit among the smaller presses, and I wondered why this was the case; the question I asked had been, Why wasn’t there a comprehensive gathering of what the indie community has to offer?" [more inside]
Power85 - your source for non-stop synth
Power 85 is non stop streaming of the best dreamwave, synthpop, outrun, and neo retro 80s music, featuring instant requests. (previously)
“...characters arise out of our need for them.”
It looks like a brain...
The Heslington Brain is a well-preserved 2600 year old brain that was found in an Iron Age excavation site in York in 2008. Its preservation was likely due to the low-oxygen environment of the mud in which it was found. The fact that the man was decapitated and the body disposed of elsewhere protected the brain from the ravages of gut bacteria as well. [more inside]
Karzai's life is split between Baltimore and his native Afghanistan
Last September, Hamid Karzai, the outgoing president of Afghanistan, made a number of disparaging remarks about U.S. involvement in that country. “America did not want peace for Afghanistan because it had its own agendas and goals here,” he said after pointedly leaving the U.S. out of the group of countries he thanked for helping during the course of his largely U.S.-backed administration. John Oliver, the former “Daily Show” correspondent, responded on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” by reading a series of negative Yelp reviews of The Helmand, one of the four Baltimore restaurants owned by Qayum Karzai, the president’s older brother.
“It was a funny joke,” Qayum says, pulling up in front of the restaurant in what he calls his “mujahideen Jeep—because you can only jump in and jump out.”
“They did not do their due diligence,” he adds. “It is known to everybody that my politics is not the same as my brother. I’m sorry that [Oliver] is thinking about collective guilt. My brother is a different person.”
The Indo-European Wars
Over the past few years, some researchers have been arguing using mathematical tree-building and dating techniques, that the Indo-Europeans originated in Anatolia. In an article [.pdf] in the latest issue of Language, a group of historical and computational linguists using similar techniques say otherwise . [more inside]
"the uncanniness of recorded music"
For a hip-hop fan, listening to ’60s and ’70s soul albums means regularly encountering familiar breaks. When I first heard “Are You My Woman (Tell Me So)” by the Chi-Lites, I immediately recognized the horns and drums from Beyoncé’s “Crazy In Love.” While I understand that, logically, the breaks in the Beyoncé song are really from the Chi-Lites, I still hear them as “belonging” to Beyoncé’s producer Rich Harrison.In the first of four posts about music composition, Ethan Hein looks at sampling, hiphop, copyright, the moral rights of artists and the idea that breaks only exists once they're used by a producer, starting out from “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” by Pete Rock and CL Smooth.
Peace as an existential threat.
The recent Republican letter to Iran has received an impressive, diplomatically amusing response on Twitter from Iran's Foreign Minister, in which he schools the Republican Party on the intricacies of international law and the US Constitution.
The letter, penned by a freshman senator who recently advocated regime change and an end to talks with Iran, appears to have violated the Logan Act, but probably can't be prosecuted. President Obama's response was short and classic.
Not suitable for corsage or boutonniere
Secrets of the orchid mantis revealed – it doesn’t mimic an orchid after all
In his 1879 account of wanderings in the Orient, the travel writer James Hingston describes how, in West Java, he was treated to a bizarre experience:[more inside]I am taken by my kind host around his garden, and shown, among other things, a flower, a red orchid, that catches and feeds upon live flies. It seized upon a butterfly while I was present, and enclosed it in its pretty but deadly leaves, as a spider would have enveloped it in network.What Hingston had seen was not a carnivorous orchid, as he thought. But the reality is no less weird or fascinating. He had seen – and been fooled by – an orchid mantis, Hymenopus coronatus, not a plant but an insect.
American academics read too much Hegel
The Importance of Compost -- Lots of Compost
Writing for The Guardian, Charles Eisenstein argues that regenerative agriculture is crucial to an effective response to climate change, which in his view includes both technological and philosophical shifts: [more inside]
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