April 4, 2016
flushable computing
In electrical engineering class, I was told to think of electric circuits with a kind of hydraulic analogy. But could you extend this to entire computers? The Rube Goldberg Machine That Mastered Keynesian Economics, built by John Horton Conway[PDF] from a urinal flush mechanism. [more inside]
Power poses: stand like a boss (and catch more eyes on dating sites)
Forcing a smile genuinely decreases stress, so what if you were to stand with pride even when you feel less than super? You don't have to pretend to fly like Superman (previously), but it does help to stand like Wonder Woman. Your body language shapes who you are. TLDW: Business Insider's summary with screencaps, or read the slightly more lengthy summary of the study at Harvard Business School by Amy Cuddy and coauthors Dana R. Carney and Andy J. Yap of Columbia University. Such power poses can also better your chances on quick-reaction dating apps.
It's a... well, you know.
2016 is turning out to be a tragic year for the voices of iconic Star Wars characters. Only three months after Jason Wingreen (who voiced Boba Fett) passed away, we now have the passing of radio dramatist Erik Bauersfeld, who once upon a time stepped into a recording booth and spent an hour or so voicing Admiral Ackbar and Bib Fortuna.
“Let’s get one thing absolutely clear: Robin isn’t gay.”
Glen Weldon, writing in Slate: A Brief History of Dick: Unpacking the gay subtext of Robin, the Boy Wonder. [more inside]
[James Brown] had all the pageantry of the Catholic Church.
$5, same as in town
"Swipe Buster, he said, was an attempt, albeit perhaps a prurient and sordid one, to use a popular company (Tinder) and a juicy lure (cheating) in order to educate people about how much of their personal data is out there and how easily people can get access to it without hacking or breaking rules. (Swipe Buster was originally called Tinder Buster. It changed its name and URL on Sunday evening.)" — Here’s How You Can Check if Your Partner Is Cheating on Tinder by Emily Jane Fox for Vanity Fair. Previously: Tinder Confidential, and relatedly: Ashley Madison has been hacked. [more inside]
Kitty Genovese's killer dies
"Winston Moseley, who stalked, raped and killed Kitty Genovese in a prolonged knife attack in New York in 1964 while neighbors failed to act on her desperate cries for help — a nightmarish tableau that came to symbolize urban apathy in America — died on March 28, in prison." (NYT link) [more inside]
“As a practical matter, the ruling mostly helped Democrats.”
Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to ‘One Person One Vote’ by Adam Liptak [The New York Times] The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously ruled that states may count all residents, whether or not they are eligible to vote, in drawing election districts. The decision was a major statement on the meaning of a fundamental principle of the American political system, that of “one person one vote.” Until this decision, the court had never resolved whether voting districts should contain the same number of people, or the same number of eligible voters. Counting all people amplifies the voting power of places that have large numbers of residents who cannot vote legally — including immigrants who are here legally but are not citizens, illegal immigrants, children and prisoners. Those places tend to be urban and to vote Democratic. [more inside]
"I took my love for my own children and I put it on these girls"
The Cost of Caring: After Emma realized that her white-collar job in the Philippines would never pay her enough to send her children to college, she came to New York and became a nanny. She hasn't seen her kids in 16 years.
shame, anger, alienation, and other hallmarks of the masculine psyche
Teaching Men to Be Emotionally Honest [NYT]: "By the time many young men do reach college, a deep-seeded* gender stereotype has taken root that feeds into the stories they have heard about themselves as learners. Better to earn your Man Card than to succeed like a girl, all in the name of constantly having to prove an identity to yourself and others." [more inside]
Your attention: please?
Blaming technology for the rise in inattention is misplaced. History shows that the disquiet is fuelled not by the next new thing but by the threat this thing – whatever it might be – poses to the moral authority of the day--Frank Furedi, The Ages of Distraction [more inside]
Thought You Owned That Device You Paid For?
Guess again. In a move that is sure to provoke a little discussion about licensing/ownership, privacy, and Internet of Things, Nest plans to brick customers' older devices on May 15.
(via the always entertaining Pinboard twitter feed.)
Two very enthusiastic thumbs up
"We live in a box of space and time. Movies are windows in its walls." Three years ago today, Roger Ebert passed away. [more inside]
Jailhouse Stories
In Texas county jails, thousands of people wait for justice. Many have not been convicted but are held in dangerous and inhumane conditions while their cases are decided. Read their stories at JailhouseStories.org. (Warning - there's some tough reading in here, including abuse of the mentally ill and of pregnant women.) [more inside]
Kill the tyrant Kal-El before his rise to power
Everything you never suspected about the perils of raising a young Clark Kent. [SLTumblrFanfiction]
Jonathan Katz, Larry David, and Joel Hodgson walk into a room...
Comedy Central turned 25 years old on April 1st. The AV Club commemorates the anniversary with an oral history of the network that brought us South Park, Jon Stewart as a serious pundit, and an ongoing revolution for women in comedy.
This can't be happening at Macdonald Hall!
If you experienced children’s pop culture in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the nostalgia cycle has caught up with you, and the entertainment industry has accelerated the process of harvesting even your faintest memories. The sheer volume of revivals means that at some point a story small and forgotten enough to feel like a personal memory will be unearthed and dragged into the sunlight. The sudden reappearance of a once-loved TV show/book/slice of intellectual property forces you, the viewer, into an existential anxiety. To merely be the target of this deluge of content is a weird sensation. To be one of the creators—dusting off past work, bringing old versions of yourself into a new world and hoping to find the public’s affection—must be infinitely more bewildering.
Lego Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus
A Texan sheriff stumbles upon a vast secret civilization. A loophole enables the resurrection of one of history's greatest monsters. And it's all in Lego. Harry Potter Comics (page one), currently over seven hundred pages (three 'books' going on four) long. (Warning: spoilers for the official books; current character page spoils comic but there's different versions for each 'book').
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