March 6, 2019
"She advised the deputy that she was fine."
Police logs of Port Townsend. (SLYT, very safe for work.)
James Lunch, a history in cartoons
James Lunch was a working class Chicago diner in the 1950s & 60s. One of its patrons, a man named Paulson, was something of a cartoonist & frequently gave the owner a cartoon in lieu of payment for his tab. The owner passed these on to his son who now shares them with us on Twitter. They're a snapshot of a time & a place; witty, irreverent, all evocative of a hardscrabble life in the big city.
Orthographic voxel-ish art in the browser
Spritestack.io lets you draw and share pixel art brought into the third dimension by stacking image slices.
"and yet I wash myself anyway"
Tingeling is a cat in Oslo. Sometimes he wonders—as do we all—what is the purpose of existence. Find more of him and his buddy Tussetroll on Instagram. [h/t Miss Cellania]
"The move heralds a shift from the Prozac era of antidepressant drugs."
On Time, Everytime
"When a train starts running from one station to the next station, conceptually, these two stations will temporarily be closer to each other. And that is exactly what this visualization shows: whenever a train moves to the next station — and only for as long as a train is moving — the origin station moves towards the destination station. The faster the train, the closer it moves to its destination. " - Jan Willem creates a shifting, flowing, almost-alive rail map of The Netherlands. [more inside]
A Message From Alex
In a video to his fans and show watchers, longtime Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek announces publicly that he is undergoing treatment for stage 4 pancreatic cancer. (SLYT) [more inside]
one small step for man, one giant leap for tiny hockey player kind
🧀 cheesed challenge 🧀
The Feedback Fallacy
Why does feedback rarely do what it's meant to? The Harvard Business Review's cover article tackles the current state of feedback, and suggests a better way. [more inside]
The Console Killer?
The game Anthem, a loot shooter developed by Bioware for EA, promised to be a game-changer, as it were, for a company known better for the role-playing aspects of game series such as Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Bioware had high hopes for the game, which was code-named "Dylan" while in production because they hoped that it would be as revolutionary in the game world as Bob Zimmerman was in music. The game debuted last month, to mixed reviews(PS4, XBox One), with a range of complaints (list on Kotaku); the latest one is that the game would seem to not only crash, but actually brick the PS4 console in some cases. (Although there is apparently a fix.) [more inside]
“There is an untapped demographic of middle-aged women and mothers,”
Time to give rise to the rugged woman [Eurogamer] “How is it that it's perfectly okay and completely acceptable for a man to age and remain cool and for a woman it's seen as a lot more unattractive and uncool? Older men are continuously embraced for their rugged, rough-around-the-edges gruff looks and tough-as-nails demeanor and always seem to be leading man material for video games. I can't help but notice an absence of older female protagonists in video games and the invisibility of an entire generation. It's been deeply indoctrinated into our culture and society that as a woman, when you get older and mature you run out of fuel and you have less importance and less relevance.” [more inside]
The digital life of a Gen Z teen...
Pocket [NSFW] is an 18min fictional short film meant to be watched on a phone. Here's Vimeo's write up on it after choosing it as a pick of the week.
Gaming, back in the day. Your day.
From this twitter thread (“...what has been YOUR happiest gaming memory?”). @Jorden1506 recalls “Getting called out of bed (age of 6) because my mother couldn't get the golden banana in Donkey Kong 64” while @deana_isabel remembers “Being able to kick ass with the fam playing guitar hero band. I'd play guitar, my mom would sing and my sister would play drums!” and @andybrammall replies “Halo ODST - Driving around in a Warthog with my daughter Kathryn on the chaingun on the back”. Also @Paul_ASwift: “Saving the Gobbos on Croc”, @scottnicklin93: “Playing Super Mario 64 while my grandad helped me gain all 120 stars”, and @sennydreadful: “One of my earliest memories is of staying up late watching my mum play Pitfall on what must have been my brother's Atari...”
It's About Damn Time
And It's Not Even "She's All That"
China's 5G and fiber future, and potential impacts to the U.S.
China Will Likely Corner the 5G Market—and the US Has No Plan -- in which Susan Crawford, an Ideas contributor for WIRED, a professor at Harvard Law School, and author of Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution—and Why America Might Miss It (Yale Books), outlines how the U.S. can respond to impacts from China's Belt and Road Initiative (Wikipedia), which will include a fiber-optic silk road (The Diplomat) that "will allow China to do this across huge territories that 65 percent of the global population calls home" and allow Huawei, Now World’s Largest Telecom Equipment-Maker (Caixin), to set new global standards. [more inside]
Municipal Control for NYC Metro
“We have been living in Robert Moses’ New York for almost a century, and it is time to move on." Following years of MTA corruption, delays, stagnation, mismanagement, accidents, and scandals, NYC Speaker Corey Johnson delivers a bold solution: Give NYC Control Of The Subways, Five Questions raised By Speaker Johnson’s proposal, this is about “breaking car culture”, the entire 104 page PDF. Maybe a proposed Wall Street tax could help?
Best when viewed in full screen
2,650' rappel off El Capitan (SLYT)
The Mosaic of DNA, and the Woman who Can Rearrange It
You may have your mom's smile, but do you also have your older brother's DNA? Tim Flannery reviews Carl Zimmer's She Has Her Mother's Laugh, with fascinating insights into heredity, chimerism, and mosaicism. In January, the NYR also interviewed Jennifer Doudna, who discovered CRISPR and grapples with its implications.
If you’re 40 years old and surrounded by 25-year-olds, you’re an elder.
"Modern Elder Academy is aimed at workers in the digital economy — those who feel like software is speeding up while they are slowing down, no matter how old they really are." - Nellie Bowles, New York Times.
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