March 9, 2018
PannenKoek's Mario 64 Videos
So it's "Mar10 Day," har har. How better to celebrate it than by looking at what PannenKoek, aka Scott Buchanan, the "A button challenge" guy (MeFi), has been up to lately? The channel to watch for that sort of thing is UncommentatedPannen, where you can find a pair of awesome videos detailing how SMB64's platforming collision detection works, the complete details of when characters blink their eyes, the internal units the game uses for its coordinate systems, everything about SM64's random number generator, the limits of SM64's floating point representation, what is pause buffering, the nuts and bolts of held items and the circumstances in which Mario will fall asleep. Meanwhile, the mobile versions of Google Maps will feature Mario in a go-kart for the next week. [more inside]
Ring Her Bell and Get Jazzed
Her tiny apartment is New York's most secret jazz club. And she's the direct descendant of Harlem's Rent Parties.
A+ globiform, not supposed to swim well just look cute
Zoos, aquariums, and natural history museums on twitter are rating the animals on #rateaspecies. Adorable photos included. [more inside]
"It's quite handy if you're trying to avoid being eaten."
[Hawaiian bobtail squid are] colonized by microbes. But they are selective about their partners: Of the thousands of species of microbes in the ocean, only one—Vibrio fischeri—is allowed to enter the squid’s body. Once inside, it begins to glow. And that glow, it is said, perfectly matches the moonlight welling down on top of the squid, masking its silhouette from predators looking up from below. The bacteria provide the squid with a kind of luminous invisibility cloak. But they do much more than that. [more inside]
How celebrity book clubs are changing the literary world for good
At this point, your intuition no longer serves you.
Much like with quantum physics, when looking at Super Mario Bros. at the very lowest levels, things stop resembling the phenomena we're familiar with and start to act pretty weird. No, I'm not talking about that Super Mario World-based demonstration of the idea behind the Many Worlds hypothesis. Instead, let's take a look at an in-depth yet highly accessible explanation of the weird, unintuitive stuff involved in a world-record speedrun of Super Mario Bros. [YouTube link. Warning: Half an hour long and interesting enough that you will probably wind up watching the whole thing.]
America's junk epidemic
The reason we can't have nice things in America in 2018 is that we don't want them. Think about the last pair of socks you purchased. Unless you spent upwards of $25 on them, they were probably made of Chinese acrylic. Getting them on your toes resembled an attempt to strangle a zebra with a sandwich bag. And afterward you couldn't shake the feeling that your feet were encased in a substance not unlike paint. They probably had a hole in them after a single wear. But, hey, who could pass up 12 pairs for $12 with Prime shipping? [more inside]
A short history of internet booms and the creation of culture.
Bitcoin Is Ridiculous. Blockchain Is Dangerous You could even make a distributed magazine called Information of Vital Public Interest About Peter Thiel that would be awfully hard to sue into oblivion. It’s the marketplace of ideas. Literally. [more inside]
Vampire capital, undead labor, toxic assets, and possessed houses
“Gothic Marxism then allows for these texts (Paranormal Activity, Insidious, Sinister, The Purge, Get Out) to be interpreted as sites of social production rather than a mirage to be dispelled but solutions to the concerns and material anxieties to which they respond and draw from seem far less evident. The shadow of the crash earlier this century is still haunting popular culture as the development and persistence of these films concerned with the issue of housing goes to prove. Furthermore, these cultural expressions of anxiety reflect the persisting material and political issues still plaguing the ways in which capitalist society handles the question of housing. “ - Your Home May Be Repossessed if You Do Not Keep Up With Your Payments: A Marxist Approach to Post-Recession Horror Film, Jon Greenaway. [more inside]
Fast. Slow. Weird. Taxi.
Pick a country on the map. Pick a decade between 1900 and now. Lean back and listen.
Use Taxi-mode to create a round the world trip sampling the sounds of the continents. [more inside]
Use Taxi-mode to create a round the world trip sampling the sounds of the continents. [more inside]
Future farms, today: autonomous agriculture and robot-assisted fieldwork
Wired is looking to the (near) future of farming in a series of pieces out recently: from the autonomous, multi-purpose "farm bot" that is capable of performing 100-plus jobs, from hay baler and seeder to rock picker and manure spreader, via an arsenal of tool modules [YouTube], farmer-assisting robotic lettuce picker and other advanced technologies to improve farm and orchard efficiencies (Wired video), to how new Phone-Powered AI Spots Sick Plants With Remarkable Accuracy and a quick look at 6 ways of extending the shelf-life of foods. The first article cites a 2016 Goldman-Sachs "Equity Research" report (PDF) that provides some context and forecasts for where there are current inefficiencies that this AgTech is now working to address. [more inside]
This is What Happens When Bitcoin Miners Take Over Your Town
Eastern Washington had cheap power and tons of space. Then the suitcases of cash started arriving. EAST WENATCHEE, Washington—Hands on the wheel, eyes squinting against the winter sun, Lauren Miehe eases his Land Rover down the main drag and tells me how he used to spot promising sites to build a bitcoin mine, back in 2013, when he was a freshly arrived techie from Seattle and had just discovered this sleepy rural community. [more inside]
'Twelve hours I spent in jail'
In 1946, Viola Desmond went to see a movie in the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Instead of the blacks-only balcony she was supposed to sit in, she sat in the main level of the cinema. She was arrested, spent the night in jail, and charged with tax evasion -- of the one cent difference in taxes between the two tickets. Her appeal was denied, but she helped start the civil rights movement in Canada with her actions.
In 2018, the Bank of Canada unveiled the new 10 dollar note, with the portrait of Viola Desmond. Her sister, Wanda Robson got a sneak peek. [more inside]
In 2018, the Bank of Canada unveiled the new 10 dollar note, with the portrait of Viola Desmond. Her sister, Wanda Robson got a sneak peek. [more inside]
The Rooster Returns
The Morning News' Tournament of Books begins today! Meet this year's judges, check out the books, and take a look at the bracket (pdf). Unfamiliar? Here's a Brief History of the Tournament of Books.
Can I write for Sprite?
Copywriter Chase Zreet would like to work on advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy's Sprite account. This is his cover letter.
Joint Enterprise
How do 11 people go to jail for one murder? The increasing visibility of such convictions in the last decade-and-a-half has caused joint enterprise to suffer from what the Prison Reform Trust calls a “deficit in legitimacy”.
A Guardian long read on joint enterprise, 'gangs', racism and the justice system. [more inside]
Nostalgia porn
"We did have to collect magazines from a vicar once.” Clearing a house after a death in the family can uncover some surprises, sometimes welcome, sometimes not, and sometimes problematic. A specialist shop on London's Holloway Road can help with one particular class of head-scratcher: what to do with Uncle Harold's collection of gentleman's entertainment? And who's buying it thereafter? A study in subculture evolution from the unmentionable to the collectible.
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