September 15, 2015
"He’s vowed never to take an invention to school again."
A 14 year old in Dallas builds a digital clock. He takes it to school to show his teacher. The school has him arrested. [more inside]
The Wreck of HMS Erebus
"The Franklin shipwreck is one of the biggest, most celebrated discoveries in 21st-century marine archaeology. It also cleaved open a nasty dispute over the facts of — and credit for — the historic find. As the news went public, the civil servants, researchers, and others who played major roles in the discovery said they found themselves elbowed to the sidelines as the political messaging machine kicked into gear." [more inside]
Time for me to fly...
Gary Richrath, guitarist for REO Speedwagon, and writer of classic rock songs like "Riding The Storm Out", "Golden Country", and "Take It On The Run" has passed on at 65.
Ordering from the special menu
A few weeks ago, the restaurant critic for the East Bay Express found himself duped by reviews of a phony Chinese restaurant in the hills of El Cerrito. Was it a hoax or a glimpse of a possible future?
This place is 100% free of bees.
Georgia Brown: Shoulder to Shoulder
Georgia Brown was a well-known singer and star of musical theater, film and television in Great Britain. She defined the role of Nancy in the original 1960 production of Oliver!, a musical created by her childhood friend Lionel Bart, and went on to appear in dozens of stage and screen productions. But by the early 1970s, Brown had become increasingly dissatisfied with the television roles available to women, and the BBC asked her to choose a project. From her discussions with then-script editor Midge Mackenzie and with the help of producer Verity Lambert, the 1974 mini-series Shoulder to Shoulder was born. [more inside]
The Opposite of Hoarding
"Today, women’s magazines routinely urge readers to purge; personal organizers offer to coach clients in their pursuit of minimalist perfection; earlier this year, Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which promises to help people achieve “the unique magic of a tidy home,” became a bestseller. But for some people, the cultural embrace of decluttering can provide cover for more problematic behavior."
From The Atlantic: The Opposite of Hoarding [more inside]
From The Atlantic: The Opposite of Hoarding [more inside]
Using traditional stories to advance science
"This turns out to be a story about stories—how they merge into histories, how fragile they are, and how urgent." [more inside]
Just another day in the Hammock District
$ git clone hwy://car
Local and international manufacturers, people, and companies collaborate in different ways on Open Source cars.
Breaking the communication barrier between dolphins and humans
“Head trainer Teri Turner Bolton presses her palms together over her head, the signal to innovate, and then puts her fists together, the sign for “tandem.” Comparative psychologist Stan Kuczaj records several seconds of audible chirping between [the dolphins] Hector and Han, then his camera captures them both slowly rolling over in unison and flapping their tails three times simultaneously. [...] Either one dolphin is mimicking the other [...] or it’s not an illusion at all: When they whistle back and forth beneath the surface, they’re literally discussing a plan.” [more inside]
A Progressive Defense of Respectability Politics
Lifting as We Climb by Harvard Law's Randall L. Kennedy argues for, and covers the history of, respectability politics. From this month's Harper's.
Camera Restricta
A disobedient tool for taking unique photographs Camera Restricta is a speculative design of a new kind of camera. It locates itself via GPS and searches online for photos that have been geotagged nearby.
If the camera decides that too many photos have been taken at your location, it retracts the shutter and blocks the viewfinder. You can't take any more pictures here.
Daily Fantasy -- It's Like Gambling Without the Risk of Winning!
If you've been seeing a lot of ads for DraftKings on your (U.S.) TV as the college and pro football seasons ramp up, you're not alone. The "daily fantasy" site has spent more than $100 million on television advertising this year, and last week outspent AT&T, Ford, Warner Brothers, GEICO, and everyone else. But what is this "daily fantasy" thing, and why is there enough money in it to outspend Fortune 500 companies? [more inside]
I have never turned heads
Replace X with Y
Here is the Chrome extension Word Replacer II, and here is the Firefox extension FoxReplace. You can use them to replace words on web pages you visit with other words of your choosing. They could be used to duplicate the action of previous extension cloud-to-butt, or you might think of other things you could do with it. There's another extension for Chrome that automatically changes all uses of "millennials" to "snake people".
"Of course, this data has some problems. "
Televised storytelling is often characterized as “episodic” storytelling. Whereas a movie generally tells one long story, successful TV in the United States is often about the creation of an engine for continued storytelling. You can’t just tell a story and stop, you have to keep telling stories, until you hit that magic 100 or 200 episodes and the syndication checks start rolling in.Towards A "Case of The Week" Quotient [more inside]
An American Void
“I didn’t take him seriously,” is what Joey says again and again to the people who keep asking the same questions again and again, including investigators who arrived at the trailer after one of the most notorious mass killings in recent American history.
Why did he do nothing? they asked.
What kind of people would do nothing? (Longform WaPo)
“What are you doing so deep in the jungle?”
The Jungle Book [YouTube] [Trailer] First trailer for Jon Favreau's live-action Disney adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's 'The Jungle Book'. Cast includes Scarlett Johansson as 'Kaa', Bill Murray as 'Baloo', Ben Kingsley as 'Bagheera', Idris Elba as 'Shere Khan', Lupita Nyong'o as 'Raksha', Christopher Walken as 'King Louie', and Neel Sethi as 'Mowgli'.
Where's the one with the chef hat?
World's largest fire-breathing dragon-shaped bridge
In 2013, construction was finished on a bridge in Da Nang, Vietnam. It is six lanes wide, made of steel, has more than 2500 LED lights, is shaped like a dragon and can both breathe fire and spray water. The road is closed on weekend evenings for pyrotechnic shows. [more inside]
'Girl' clothes are for girls. 'Boy' clothes are for everyone.
"As long as 'feminine' is treated as a synonym for 'weak,' girls are going to continue to be underestimated and boys are going to continue to be bullied when they step out of the gender box they've been put in." Why does gender neutral clothing always mean 'boy' clothes for girls? [more inside]
Ewoks and Feminist Criticism
If you like Return Of The Jedi but hate the Ewoks, you understand feminist criticism - (slavc) An article by Caroline Siede at the A.V. Club. [more inside]
Whiteness is not synonymous with greatness.
In the wake of the murder of Shayan Mazroei by a white supremacist gang member in Orange County, Negeen Sadeghi makes the argument a lot of young Iranian-Americans are having with their elders. We are not white by American standards. We never were.
“The Pixar of human rights stories”
In March 2012, a human rights organization’s documentary about a central African despot became the most viral video of all time, and the ensuing furor resulted in its leader’s bizarre public meltdown. On the second anniversary of the phenomenon, everyone involved is still figuring out what it all means.
--Two Years After KONY 2012, Has Invisible Children Grown Up?
--Two Years After KONY 2012, Has Invisible Children Grown Up?
"You know, I'm not going to go around reciting Pi to the 19th decibel'
Set the Controls to the Heart of the Sun
Watch the ESA's Sentinel-1A Earth observation satellite launched and deployed into Earth orbit via rocket-mounted cameras (SLYT).
Offshore Ownership of the UK
"OVER the last year Private Eye has revealed the extent of ownership of British land by offshore companies, generally for tax avoidance and often to conceal dubious wealth. Now the Eye has created an easily searchable online map of these properties, revealing for the first time the British property interests of companies based in tax havens from Panama to Luxembourg, and from Liechtenstein to the South Pacific island of Niue. Using Land Registry data released under Freedom of Information laws, and then linking more than 100,000 land title register entries to specific addresses, the Eye has tracked all leasehold and freehold interests acquired by offshore companies between 2005 and 2014."
‘Are they that desperate if they have a smartphone?’
I guess this was a show about some aliens?
"Right around the time I first joined the cast of Under the Dome, I was smoking a bowl with the Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey."-a review of sorts of the final episode and series of the American tv show.
20 Mistakes Into the Future
Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot, or "We predicted cell phones, but not women in the workplace" by Tom Vanderbilt (previously)
from Nautilus Magazine's "2050" issue, which also features Lee Billings on Stanislaw Lem's futurism and Rachel B. Sussman visiting NASA’s Ames Research Center
from Nautilus Magazine's "2050" issue, which also features Lee Billings on Stanislaw Lem's futurism and Rachel B. Sussman visiting NASA’s Ames Research Center
The Joy of Popping
(Secretions, secretions everywhere, alert) As a zit popping video nears seven million views, the Guardian asks (popping video autoplay alert): "Millions are watching videos of cyst extractions, botfly removals and blackhead treatments. But what’s fuelling the explosive growth of the online community?" Also 12 pimple-popping videos, man pops tooth infection, a speciality website and reddit/r/popping. But, in medical advice, "think of a pimple as a little sack that holds oil, debris, and acne bacteria". On AskMeFi: "It tastes funny when I pop a zit." Previously (broken, but comments).
10 cent stories, typewritten while you wait
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