July 31, 2018
ZZZT CLANK ARF WREEK HISS
When puppies meet a robot they want to be friends. Contrast that to Maya the cat's more cautious approach. But a mess of kittens vs. BB-8 will not end well. Bonus: various pets vs. various machines. Extra bonus: okay, it's just an excuse to post Cat vs Printer - The Translation again. (h/t Miss Cellania)
“So why the hell are there so many staircases in space?”
Staircases in Space: Why Are Places in Science Fiction Not Wheelchair-Accessible? [io9] “Once you start realizing how many stairs there are stopping you in real life, it becomes impossible not to notice them existing in the sci-fi you adore. Turns out they’re everywhere, in all of our sci-fi. Whether it’s decades-old or shiny and brand-new, our sci-fi imitates a real-world reliance on steps and stairs in our architecture.”
What happened when I tried talking to Twitter abusers
There’s a lot of discussion about how we need to reach out and talk to people who disagree with us – how we need to extend an olive branch and find common ground – and that’s a lovely sentiment, but in order for that to work, the other party needs to be … well, not a raging asshole.
if you're not upside down you're not dead
This tiny Eastern Hognose snake really overplays the death scene. [SLYT]
Space Robots for Everyone
Sprint final à l'arrivée (Tour de France, Tour de France)
Texan Lawson Craddock is the first American to complete the Tour de France... in last place, earning the Lanterne Rouge. He accomplished this despite a fractured shoulder blade due to a crash on the first day of the race. [more inside]
Ernest Gaines and Wiley Cash
Mentor Gaines and Student Cash and their evolving friendship. And here's Cash's plan to expand literary access and mentorship: Wiley Cash Bookclub
Biological in appearance, intriguing in character and wildly irrational
Evolving Floor Plans is an experimental research project exploring speculative, optimized floor plan layouts. The rooms and expected flow of people are given to a genetic algorithm which attempts to optimize the layout to minimize walking time, the use of hallways, etc.
Rethinking the Lorax, with facial analysis and some linguistic musing
Theodor ‘Dr Seuss’ Geisel's environmental book, The Lorax (Wikipedia; the text of The Lorax ; preview in Google Books), he once explained, "came out of my being angry. The ecology books I'd read were dull. . . . In The Lorax I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might." It came to him in an afternoon, written in a burst after he suffered from writer's block. New research suggests that he was inspired by a trip to the exclusive Mount Kenya Safari Club, where he may have been inspired by the patas monkeys and whistling thorn acacia, which co-exist in commensalism. [more inside]
as far as I’m aware, I’m really the only one trying
Allow me to summarize. In less than two years from the time of this article, hundreds of thousands of games are likely to disappear from the internet, forever. Simply no longer playable. Hundreds of millions of views, likes, 5-star reviews, 1-star reviews…all gone. The companies who helped bring these games to life don’t seem concerned. The people who made these games aren’t exactly talking about it, to my knowledge.That's because Ben Latimore is talking about saving Flash video games once Adobe's support for it expires in 2020.
The Bad Idea That Keeps on Giving
Scott Timberg (L.A. Review of Books) investigates the pernicious persistence of Ayn Rand and Objectivism in: The Bad Idea That Keeps on Giving. [more inside]
Horror and Mystery, in a Podcast
The Magnus Archives is a weekly horror fiction anthology podcast examining what lurks in the archives of the Magnus Institute, an organisation dedicated to researching the esoteric and the weird. Listen to a trailer or two. Start with episode 1. [more inside]
[a] time capsule of how desperate and deranged 2018 can make any of us
(Mild spoilers in all links) Nick Drnaso's Sabrina is the first graphic novel to ever be nominated for the Man Booker Prize. From the Guardian article by Rachel Cooke: Sabrina, which has already drawn extraordinary advance praise – Zadie Smith describes it as a masterpiece that combines all the political power of a polemic with the “delicacy of truly great art” – could not be more prescient if it tried. Its narrative touches with perfect ease on such contemporary matters as fake news, the isolation of the digital age, conspiracy theories and gun control... Review by fellow graphic novelist Chris Ware (The Guardian). Interview with Nick Drnaso (Vulture). Excerpt from Sabrina (Drawn and Quarterly). [more inside]
"Highbrow but delightfully bizarre"
The Believer, a five-time National Magazine Award finalist, is a bimonthly literature, arts, and culture magazine based at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas, Nevada. In each issue, readers will find journalism, essays, intimate interviews, an expansive comics section, poetry, and on occasion, delightful and unexpected bonus items. Our poetry section is curated by Jericho Brown, Kristen Radtke selects our comics, and Joshua Wolf Shenk is our editor-in-chief. All issues feature a regular column by Nick Hornby and a symposium, in which several writers expound on a theme of contemporary interest. [more inside]
Flowers + Christmas Trees = Maple Syrup
Here's How America Uses Its Land, a graphic presentation by Dave Merrill and Lauren Leatherby.
Two Dozen Nuns, 300 Endangered Salamanders
The achoques have nearly disappeared from Lake Pátzcuaro in Mexico. A colony in the care of Dominican nuns offers hope the species can be saved. (slnyt)
This one's for fighting, this one's for fun
Behemoth, bully, thief: the English language is taking over the planet
Within the anglophone world, that English should be the key to all the world’s knowledge and all the world’s places is rarely questioned. The hegemony of English is so natural as to be invisible. Protesting it feels like yelling at the moon. Outside the anglophone world, living with English is like drifting into the proximity of a supermassive black hole, whose gravity warps everything in its reach. Every day English spreads, the world becomes a little more homogenous and a little more bland. [sl Guardian Longread] [more inside]
Artificial intelligence has learned to probe the minds of other computer
Building neural networks to understand Theory of Mind “Theory of mind is clearly a crucial ability,” for navigating a world full of other minds says Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. By about the age of 4, human children understand that the beliefs of another person may diverge from reality, and that those beliefs can be used to predict the person’s future behavior. Some of today’s computers can label facial expressions such as “happy” or “angry”—a skill associated with theory of mind—but they have little understanding of human emotions or what motivates us. [more inside]
Trolls thought I was a man. That saved me.
The time A. E. Osworth was almost targeted by Kotaku In Action. "The cause isn’t in the content, or the severity of the imagined offense. It’s in the gender presentation of the author. Those that the heteronormative world deems masculine people can talk; those they deem feminine people better watch their backs."
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