March 20, 2013
The Long and Storied Career of Sole, The Sweaty Volcano
Rapper Sole, originally from the Northeast, but now more associated with the West Coast, has had an interesting career in hip hop. [more inside]
"All of your favorite shows are ratings dogs."
The Nielsen Family Is Dead. Nielsen Now Tracks (Almost) Everything You Buy: Credit, Debit and Bank Data Now Combined With TV, Online Viewing. Nielsen Offers Focus on ‘Zero-TV’ Homes. Nielsen Agrees to Expand Definition of TV Viewing. The 23,000 U.S. homes Nielsen currently samples are going to see some changes this year. [more inside]
Khaaaaaaaan!!!
Inside Secrets of the Making of Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan and "Space Seed" - of course Benedict Cumberbatch is totally not playing Khan, a genetic superman from 1993, in the new Star Trek movie. Maybe he'll sing a song.
Dashboard Camera + Timelapse = Drivelapse
Drivelapse: dashboard-camera footage of stretches of roadway, sped up via timelapse, often with annotations. For example, you can zoom through Zion Canyon or zig-zag down the Swiss Alps. Travel 250 miles from Beverly Hills to Las Vegas in 28 minutes. Or, Norwalk OH to Williamsburg VA: 550 miles in 17.5 minutes, approximately 1885 mph. Take a tour of Minneapolis surface roads or winding New England state highways. Or, tilt at windmills along the coast of the Strait of Gibraltar. ⚠MOTORIST WARNING: ANNOYING SOUNDTRACKS NEXT 10 MILES — PREPARE TO MUTE SOUND. ⚠ [more inside]
These kids are as old as the gap between albums
WNYC has a feature called Tough Critics, getting 5th-graders to review new music releases. Today they reviewed Godspeed You! Black Emperor's We Drift Like Worried Fire.
They decided it was missing something... [more inside]
I don't really like to be in Poland and that's frankly the truth...
Jodie: Life in Warsaw. A short film about an American woman trying to grow happiness, living in the socialist-era housing estate where her husband grew up.
Mommy, why is that spider coming out of the stargate?
Braiding machines can be used to create automobile parts, wiring harnesses, and art, among other things. It turns out watching them is pretty hypnotic.
Sounds like Sgt Pepper walking through a forest one foggy spring morning
Some know them for their astonishing pop sensibility, their tight rock performances, their theatricality, or of course for the fact that they sound like a fucking madhouse. But perhaps even better than the Cardiacs is their quiet little side project The Sea Nymphs, whose songs are calm and elegant, sometimes otherworldly or ethereal, sometimes jaunty and very grounded. The madness is more subdued, and the pop is lovelier (and more British) than ever; Appealing to Venus in particular sounds almost like it could have come from the Beach Boys. It's some of the most haunting and original music I know.
Laura Marling
Singer-songwriter Laura Marling will release her latest album, Once I Was an Eagle, this May. She's shared a first song off of it, "Where Can I Go?" [more inside]
Ping, Ping, You're Dead
"The Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare...is the result of a three-year effort to examine how extant international law norms apply to this ‘new’ form of warfare."
If You Rebuild It, They Might Not Come
Brad Pitt's Make It Right foundation has committed millions to try and revitalize New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward by building 150 affordable, green, storm-resistant homes from designs by the likes of Gehry Partners, Morphosis, Kieran Timberlake, and McDonough + Partners. Thing is, the ward doesn't have enough residents to attract stores and services, so no one wants to live there. Meanwhile, the city continues to follow through on millions in commitments to rebuild roads on streets where no one now lives, and to erect police stations and schools for a lonely, "barren moonscape" of a neighborhood. About 90 households, primarily elderly people, are living in futuristic homes that most Americans would covet, and yet there’s not a supermarket--or even a fast food restaurant--for miles.
Furore over sexism being called out at PyCon
Developer evangelist Adria Richards snaps a photo of two men at the recent PyCon whom she overheard making quips about "big dongles". PyCon responds, following which one of the men is fired. Adria justifies the callout as a step towards securing the future of programming for women. Full discussion at Hacker News.
First Openly Trans MMA fighter.
37-year-old Transgender MMA fighter Fallon Fox recently came out as transgender during an interview with Sports Illustrated.
She also doesn't believe she and other transgender MMA fighters should have to disclose their medical history to would-be opponents.
Fox, 2-0 in MMA, was born a man but underwent gender reassignment surgery and began supplemental hormonal therapy in 2006. [more inside]
A Life Well Wasted Returns
After a two-year dormancy, host Robert Ashley posted a new episode of the video game podcast A Life Well Wasted.
Ain't nobody got time for that
I don’t like the feeling of disappointing my kids. But I refuse to give into this holiday overkill. I’m overwhelmed enough as it is. Today I gave all of my kids a bath. We read with each of them for the recommended 20 minutes. We reviewed our Math Facts. We practiced guitar. We sat together at the table and ate a meal that was NOT procured at a drive-thru. We played outside. Most days, I’m struggling to achieve all these things. I can’t have these haphazard, once-monthly overblown holidays take over my life.One mom talks about "bringing the holidays down a notch," 'cause ain't nobody got time for that.
Star gazing girls of Georgian England
An intriguing essay on how young women in Georgian England were able to do science by hiding in the pursuits of the domestic arts.
"Women didn’t find it easy to participate in late eighteenth century science. Experimentation and discovery were not easily compatible with the ideals of domestic femininity – but there were women who rejected these social expectations and became active and renowned."
"We found so much."
As promised, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his team have recovered several Apollo F-1 rocket engines from the bottom of the ocean. [more inside]
The Artist is Present
Marina Abramović is a performance artist, who in 2010 performed The Artist is Present - sharing a minute of silence with each spectator that wished to. Over the 736 hour performance, hundreds of people sat across from her quietly. Marina had shared a passionate and tempestuous relationship with Uwe Laysiepen, with the relationship ending when they each starting walking from from one end of the Great Wall of China, met in the middle, shared a hug and left - never expecting to speak again. 20 years after that hug, Ulay attended the opening night of her performance without her knowing. This is their moment.
It scoresbetter on the Turing test than most of my actual IM contacts...
Can't get enough of the thrill of talking to an inattentive friend via instant message? Awkward Chatbot will have a halfhearted conversation with you at any time of the day!
I do believe in ghosts: life after death is too important to trivialise.
RIP British horror writer James Herbert, author of the modern classic of the genre The Rats among many others. [more inside]
"Internet in a Suitcase"
The Commotion Wireless Project is a free, open-source (but still early beta) software platform for creating decentralized wireless mesh networks. [more inside]
How To Have The Best Pregnancy Ever
We used to have these things called books, and some told you where to go
Does BBC Worldwide's sale of Lonely Planet at an £80 million loss (after writing down its value by £67 million over 6 years), on top of Google's purchase of Frommer's last year, herald the end of travel guidebooks? [more inside]
Tiny eagles eating fish
British family Robinson: the short stories of three illustrators
Thomas Robinson and Eliza Heath had three sons, Thomas (1869-1950), Charles (1870-1937), and William (1872-1944), who followed in their father's (and grandfather's) footsteps as illustrators of various sorts. The most widely know was the youngest, W. Heath Robinson, whose contraptions earned him the reputation as the UK counterpart to the US artist Rube Goldberg. But the other two brothers are not to be overlooked. [more inside]
Send to: TSR Hobbies Inc.
"Use the method of the grandmother"
Sugata Mitra's 2013 TED Prize talk argues that learning should be viewed as self-organizing and that our educational system is a relic of the victorians. His first TED talk has slightly more detail, while his blog has considerably more.
"If you're reading this, it's a safe bet you read magazines."
The Art Of Making Magazines "By making what they call "not a how-to book, but… a how-to-think-about-it-book," they help us look at something we've probably been taking for granted: What is a magazine?"
Eddie guested on Frasier with Moose who was in My Dog Skip w/Kevin Bacon
How I Know Eddie Van Halen (an exercise in the history of Rock & Roll collaboration, in 182 steps.)
"Ouga Chaka Ouga!"
OMGif! [Wired] "On Tuesday, Google announced via Google+ that Image Search now has an “Animated” filter. That means that if you’re only searching for animated magic, you need never be bothered with a still image again. Finally that search for Jennifer Lawrence GIFs from the Academy Awards just got a whole lot easier."
drawroF
How American wrestling is more honest than American politics
"Professional wrestling fans, we who are "smart marks" especially, are in many ways more sophisticated than the political junkies who populate political blogs and web sites (what are really fan boy and fan girl mark hangouts) like the Free Republic or The Daily Kos.
They know that professional wrestling is a work and a game.
Do the Obamabots, Tea Party zealots, and true believers on either the Right or the Left realize that politics is much the same thing?"
They know that professional wrestling is a work and a game.
Do the Obamabots, Tea Party zealots, and true believers on either the Right or the Left realize that politics is much the same thing?"
Slip the surly bonds of Earth, vicariously
Come along when Lainey, six years old, goes for her first ever airplane ride in her family's open-cockpit 1946 Champ (SLYT).
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