August 6, 2012
The American Military's Most-Trusted News Source
Duffel Blog is the military version of The Onion. They recently scooped the Army's decision to replace their beloved bayonet with an Inverted Multi-Purpose Ballistic Tomahawk Bayonet, a versatile but sturdy weapon mounted on rifles. It was picked up by some, who spread the news.
Just about 3 seconds
How fast are today's Olympic runners? Pretty darn fast. But maybe not as fast as you think?
Yet More Pop-Up Video
A second new season of Pop-Up Video started today on VH1. (Previously, recommended) Videos featured in today's two half-hour shows include Katy Perry "The One That Got Away", Jet - "Are You Gonna Be My Girl", and Alanis Morrisette - "Hands Clean". [more inside]
How Not to get Screwed Over
DontGetScrewedOver.com features a video called "What it Feels Like to be a Freelancer." They also provide tips on how not to get screwed over, for freelancers, clients, and subletters alike. The site and video were brainchild of Docracy- aimed at offering free, open-source legal documents that are edited and fine-tuned by the community that uses them. They range from a variety of subjects, from personal [subletting, wills] to business [freelancers, consulting].
The Cheesecake Factory as a model for the American health care system
A new model for the American health care system: The Cheesecake Factory
Robert Hughes died in New York yesterday.
Influential Australian art critic Robert Hughes, author of The Shock of the New and The Fatal Shore, has died aged 74.
Icelandic landscapes, set to Japanese post-rock
Legend: A Journey Through Iceland is a 12 min. 31 sec. long time-lapse video of Icelandic landscapes, set to the music of MONO, a Japanese post-rock band. A bit more MONO and pleasant landscapes inside. [more inside]
Vixen, Virgin, Victim
In a controversial piece for the New York Times, Jere Longman argues that US Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones garners publicity based "not on achievement but on her exotic beauty and on a sad and cynical marketing campaign. Essentially, Jones has decided she will be whatever anyone wants her to be — vixen, virgin, victim — to draw attention to herself and the many products she endorses."
Save the D'ast Lance for Me
"It’s a long, long time from now, and machines have developed into sentient beings. Starting with the high-tech space stuff, a whole new set of different mechanistic species have come into existence. The machines are not only sentient; they are alive in other ways as well. They even produce offspring and evolve.
At first, it was just the super high-tech orbiting stuff that achieved self-awareness, but soon more terrestrial devices gained intelligence. Unfortunately the machines loathed each other, and war broke out between orbiting and earthly devices. Humankind had already moved out into space, but at the discovery that our original home world was in a crisis situation, we returned.
By the time we reached Earth again, all the original machines had been destroyed. The descendants of those original devices were still battling, trying to obliterate each other, an ancient blood feud where one planetary region wasn’t big enough for the two mechanical clans.
The future humans had to make a decision that would end the war. But it was clear that humankind had been in space too long as there was no sympathy for the terrestrial machines. And that’s when we found ourselves backing the satellite kin." [more inside]
At first, it was just the super high-tech orbiting stuff that achieved self-awareness, but soon more terrestrial devices gained intelligence. Unfortunately the machines loathed each other, and war broke out between orbiting and earthly devices. Humankind had already moved out into space, but at the discovery that our original home world was in a crisis situation, we returned.
By the time we reached Earth again, all the original machines had been destroyed. The descendants of those original devices were still battling, trying to obliterate each other, an ancient blood feud where one planetary region wasn’t big enough for the two mechanical clans.
The future humans had to make a decision that would end the war. But it was clear that humankind had been in space too long as there was no sympathy for the terrestrial machines. And that’s when we found ourselves backing the satellite kin." [more inside]
Many are calling him 'douchebag' of the month!
"If your $257,000 Ferrari is parked in the valet zone of The Mercer Hotel in SoHo and a cop starts writing your ass a ticket for being parked in the valet zone, you should just take the ticket, drive your car to a $75-a-day parking garage (and that's probably the cheapest parking garage in that neighborhood)" ... [more inside]
bunny-core
Danish band Sleep Party People seems like something out of a David Lynch film, composing music for those moments between consciousness and sleep.
Moebius Drawing
In preparation for his then upcoming retrospective Transe Forme, Fondation Cartier recorded Moebius doing a series of digital drawings. Recorded in late 2010, these are some of, if not, the last recordings of Moebius drawing that we are likely to see. - Moebius Drawing
'how casinos have created a new kind of crowd'
The Touch-point Collective: Crowd Contouring on the Casino Floor -
'Historically, casinos have been eager adopters of technologies that help them to gather knowledge about their customers. The knowledge-gathering repertoire of the modern casino has shifted from telephone surveys, focus groups, and rudimentary datasets to complex feats of reconnaissance and analysis enabled by player tracking systems, data visualization tools, and behavioral intelligence software suites. Many surveillance techniques first applied in casinos were only later adapted to other domains—airports, financial trading floors, shopping malls, banks, and government agencies.' There are some large, embedded .avi files in the page, be careful. [more inside]
return armada;
If Hemingway wrote JavaScript [SFW, despite the .xxx URL]
Contortionists Unite!
Contortionists Unite! is a public network for professional contortionists, where they can exchange photos, videos, and advice. Want to hire a contortionist, aerialist, or circus performer? Be prepared to offer what they're worth.
Unbaby.me, baby
Tired of looking at your friends' baby pictures on Facebook?
1. INSTALL unbaby.me
2. BROWSE Refresh Facebook. Any baby pics will now be cats.
3. REJOICE Now you don't have to look at all your friends' annoying kids.[more inside]
Chop, slice, and dice Amazon reviews
Have you ever wanted to sort a particular Amazon's reviewer's reviews by their number of stars? Amazon has never added this feature to its user profile pages, but here's a workaround. Or perhaps you need a tool that lets you see ratings, dates of reviews, helpful and unhelpful votes, and number of comments, all in a helpful sortable list. Maybe you need to download and install the Amazon Reviewer Analysis Tool.
What came before Pangea? What comes next?
A history of the world. As seen from space. Over a really long stretch of time. If the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and Pangea split up only about 200 million years ago, what happened before then? I never knew that geologists could reconstruct the continents' movements from before Pangea. Not only that, but they can give us a preview of what comes next. Here's three possible ways the continents might be joined in 250 million years. In the big picture, researchers from U.C. Lancashire have just finished a model of the way the Milky Way Galaxy formed. [more inside]
Thank you, thank you, I have cancer, thank you, I have cancer, really, thank you.
Comedian Tig Notaro has had extreme highs and extreme lows. She is moving to New York to work on Amy Schumer’s new television show, and she was recently on This American Life. But then she had a debilitating bacterial infection in her digestive tract for which she was hospitalized. Days after being released from the hospital, her young mother died suddenly and tragically, then she and her girlfriend broke up. Now she has cancer, in both breasts. Last Friday, Tig performed a stand-up set at LA's Largo at the Coronet where she talked all of this. Everyone laughed and wept. Louis CK said, "In 27 years doing this, I've seen a handful of truly great, masterful standup sets. One was Tig Notaro last night at Largo."
At 5:00 PM, they remote wiped my iPhone. At 5:01 PM, they remote wiped my iPad. At 5:05, they remote wiped my MacBook Air.
Yes, I was hacked. Hard. Mat Honan, a tech journalist, had his iPhone and Mac remotely wiped and his gmail account deleted within the space of 5 minutes. Password cracked? No. Security question leak? No. Social engineering Apple tech support.
Bow Ties are Cool
Sat Sri Akal, Sardarji
The history of the Sikh Diaspora in USA and Canada goes back to Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 1897. Emerging as a casteless alternative to the ongoing Hindu Muslim wars in India, the Sikhs have always been known as a martial tribe, their prowess and courage respected by the British and others alike. Colloquially addressed respectfully as Sardarji, the men take Singh (lion) as their middle name while the women bear the name Kaur (princess). This custom further confirmed the equality of both genders as was the tradition set by the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak.
The first Sikh Organization was The Pacific Coast Khalsa Diwan Society organized in the spring of 1912. [more inside]
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