June 28, 2017
A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
National Geographic's Travel Photographer of the Year contest ends Friday. The Atlantic has samples here and here. For the rest of the photos, visit the galleries.
"Gratitude is probably, I think, the deepest lesson of this."
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg talks about returning to work after her husband’s death and the research about resilience with psychology professor Adam Grant. Insightful thoughts for when we grieve, and when people we are care for are grieving.
Rising From The Ash - Like A Phoenix
With the (mostly) successful launch of the game's second major expansion, Stormblood and a player population second only to reigning genre king World of Warcraft, it is easy now to say that Final Fantasy XIV is a well executed and successful MMO. But the game reaching this level of success is an amazing story of how a game that was panned and derided at its original launch in 2010 was brought back and remade into the title we see today through an incredible multiyear process built on the dedication of the development team. To showcase what that effort took, crowdfunded documentary team NoClip went to Japan to speak with key members of the FFXIV development staff in their three part documentary on the game's fall, death, and subsequent rebirth. [more inside]
Boing, boing, boing, boing...
What's with all the bunnies? The timid rabbit occasionally nibbles plants in the garden but usually lives unnoticed on the fringes of our yards. Mowing and raking yards can disturb rabbit nests. Cats and other animals catch and injure small rabbits. Sometimes people see newly independent young rabbits and think that such small creatures can't possibly get along without their mothers.
***squee trigger warning*** [more inside]
Immigrants: We Get the Job Done
From the Hamilton Mixtape: the music video for Immigrants (We Get the Job Done) by K'naan featuring Residente, Riz MC & Snow Tha Product. Directed by Tomás Whitmore.
“...gameplay is layered, thrilling and, most important, a blast.”
Diablo III's Necromancer Is The Best Spellcaster Yet [Kotaku] “The Necromancer [YouTube] [Trailer], which launched yesterday as a standalone purchasable class for $15, is an avatar of Diablo 3’s signature darkness. The dungeon-crawler’s gore and corruption are assets of the 20-year-old franchise that, when you’re grinding for levels on end, can fade into the background. After a few hours on Diablo 3, I’ve gone into unthinking destruction mode, killing monster upon monster as if I were a kid stomping on anthills. Diablo 3’s Necromancer lets you embody and manipulate D3’s darkness, and by becoming a part of D3’s morbid world, I felt more connected to it.” [more inside]
Origami
Chrono Trigger Warning
Rumor has it that if an NES Classic touches a mushroom, it grows into a regular-sized NES. If it touches a flower, it might transform into a SNES Classic Edition... or maybe shoot fireballs? Although untested, this method is probably more reliable than attempting to preorder an SNES Classic (which will include Star Fox 2, but not Chrono Trigger). [more inside]
It's a list unlike others you've seen before
NPR Music's Essential Songs, Albums, Performances And Videos Of 2017 (So Far) isn't going to rank anything. It's just going to explain why. And you'll be glad for it. [more inside]
Please look after this bear. Thank you.
Michael Bond, creator of Paddington Bear, has died aged 91. Paddington, Bond's most famous creation, was immortalised in statue and on film. [more inside]
Syrians' creative self-expression online
The Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution "The outburst of the uprising against oppression and tyranny brought on a surge of these remarkable, latent energies, the spontaneous and the organized, in a way never before seen in all of Syria’s years marked by repression and injustice. History relays similar experiences.
This project aims to archive all the intellectual and artistic expressions in the age of revolution; it is writing, recording, and collecting stories of the Syrian people, and those experiences through which they have regained meaning of their social, political and cultural lives." [more inside]
A Transatlantic Race
The Bridge 2017 is a transatlantic race featuring four trimarans and the RMS Queen Mary 2. [more inside]
This, sure as frickle frackle, was a fight for a Jewish-American lesbian
The ButHows are the bane of my career. "But how could they be lesbians if, but how could they be accepted, but how could they take the risk, but how if there are no hormones, but how if the first surgery was in the '60s, but how if she's never—" Shush. Just shush. She's not going to date you. Stop.Marguerite Bennett talks about her experiences writing a rather queer comic series based on a line of DC Comics 1940ties themed superheroine statues.
Parody rights on making fun of houses
Blogger Kate Wagner, known for McMansion Hell which educates and critiques McMansion architecture, was served with a cease and desist from Zillow, just as the McMansion is coming back into style. Thanks to efforts from the EFF, the blog is back up. McMansion Hell, previously, previouslier.
Almost Certainly Our Most Famous Painter of Medlars
Caravaggio's Fruit is a paper by horticulturist Jules Janick, originally published in Chronica Horticulturae, that examines we can tell about the fruit seen in 11 different paintings of Caravaggio. It includes a discussion of the fruits themselves, even exploring the different cultivars available in late 16th century Italy, and explains many of the fungal, insect, and nutritional causes for the blemishes Caravaggio famously depicted. [more inside]
Google News news
So, if Google News is your homepage you got a rather different look the last time you went to it. After seven years, Google has pushed out a redesign "to make news more accessible and easier to navigate". [more inside]
The Ur-Ikea, from whence all other Ikeas sprang
The fourth series of the fabulously otherworldly collaborative fiction project SCP Foundation was opened to submissions in April of this year. From here comes this tale of A Perfectly Normal, Regular Old IKEA. Readers unfamiliar with SCP format may want to just skip to the journal transcript near the bottom
It's easier to get into a war than get out of one.
US - led attacks in Syria 'kill 472 civilians in a month' The past month saw the highest civilian death toll in US-led coalition air raids since they began, says war monitor.
....as the US enforces its No Fly Zone over Rojava. Just the continuation of six years of genocidal war as Assad, Russia and the US pulverize Syria.
Seven decades, seven facts: US policy on Syria in brief.
What Is Trump's Syria Policy?
....as the US enforces its No Fly Zone over Rojava. Just the continuation of six years of genocidal war as Assad, Russia and the US pulverize Syria.
Seven decades, seven facts: US policy on Syria in brief.
What Is Trump's Syria Policy?
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Which group is protected from hate speech? The correct answer: white men
Julia Angwin at ProPublica reports on internal documents Facebook uses to train its thousands of human moderators. They contain broad rules for determining who is in a protected class and who is not. [more inside]
It's all been eaten; you can't have any more
Meredith Gran's webcomic Octopus Pie ended its 10 year run on June 5, 2017. The comic focused on the life of Everest 'Eve' Ning and her other twenty-something friends living in Brooklyn, NY. The comic is known for its emotional reality and experimentation with structure. [more inside]
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