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Commie American Football
Manifesto: People’s Union of American College Football: Make American Football Strong Like Bull, Smart Like Tractor. Under former capitalist system, American college football very unfair. Only few teams is climbing to top of heap, and is making all the money, especially more dollars on the television contract. Best, powerful teams is playing cupcake opponent, then flying across country to form conference alliance with faraway team, while also ignoring strong opponent right over next hill. People’s Union of American College Football is creating much better system. Each team is playing best quality opponents throughout season. Each team is being organized by geography, and must fight way out of home District to qualify for national playoff. Champion is last team standing, and is TRUE champion over all other teams in whole country.
The best kind of movie spoilers? (SPOILER ALERT)
I'm looking for the most mind-blowing things you've discovered or realized about a major motion picture, during or after the watching. Bonus points: what are these called so that I can google more of them?
80 years of electronic music, heard in a selection of 55 tracks by Bleep
A bit over a year ago, Warp Record's digital music shop, Bleep.com, presented their guide to recorded* electronic music, spanning from 1930 to 2010 (also as a Facebook timeline, which apparently kicked the whole thing off). The overview of recorded electronic music was presented as a selection of 55 tracks, almost five and a half hours in full. Part of this presentation was a (now expired) promotional deal to purchase the collection of songs as a lot, but you can still read about each piece of music on Bleep and hear 49 of the tracks in a playlist on Grooveshark. There's more to hear and read below the fold.
The Bandwidth Tax
Most people, including social scientists, think about poverty in one of two ways. Either they view the behaviors of the poor as rational, "calculated adaptations to prevailing circumstances", or as the result of deviant values and character flaws stemming from, and perpetuating, a "culture of poverty".
A third view is emerging in which "the poor may exhibit the same basic weaknesses and biases as do people from other walks of life, except that in poverty, with its narrow margins for error, the same behaviors often manifest themselves in more pronounced ways and can lead to worse outcomes."
"It's not that foolish choices make you poor; it's that poverty's effects on the mind lead to bad choices." (original research, pdf)
Mind Your Manners
Mind Your Manners is only the 14th music video from Pearl Jam across their 23 year career. It was directed by Danny Clinch, and includes animations from Andy Smetanka.
The US 'cannot incarcerate our way to becoming a safer nation'
Sentencing reform for drug offences is expected be announced by the US Attorney General.
Eric Holder will announce Monday that he is mandating the Justice Department modify its policies so that certain non-violent drug offenders will no longer endure “draconian mandatory minimum sentences,” according to excerpts of his remarks to American Bar Association.
What Freetown lacks in high street shopping, it makes up for in style.
Freetown fashpack
shows you where it's at fashionwise in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Jo Dunlop's blog was covered today in the Guardian.
Meanwhile Sierra Leonean fashion model Kadiatu Kamara has launched her own fashion brand called "Kadiatu". (via brandsierraleonetv).
Jo Dunlop's blog was covered today in the Guardian.
Meanwhile Sierra Leonean fashion model Kadiatu Kamara has launched her own fashion brand called "Kadiatu". (via brandsierraleonetv).
Making It There: Dvorak, the Rich Lady, and the Big Score
Droning around New York's Cooper Union (a free-tuition school since 1859 - until this year) on OpenStreetMap, I discovered that it really ties the room together. Nearby are the offices of Village Voice news, Kristal's CBGB site, the Anthology Film Archives, Washington Square, Union Square and ... Antonin Dvorak?? Why's a Czech composer a site in Lower Manhattan? Lets do the James Burke ...
Music like The Social Network soundtrack
Introduce me to music similar to the soundtrack for the movie The Social Network.
Seeing.Thinking.Drawing
Francis Ching is professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Washington who keeps a blog of his city-focused sketches. Discussion varies from thinking about construction and layout to materials and focus when drawing scenes.
The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw.
Jack Handey Is the Envy of Every Comedy Writer in America. The New York Times profiles funny guy Jack Handey as his first work of fiction, The Stench of Honolulu, goes on sale tomorrow. (Read the first three chapters here.) Handey, of course, is best known for his Deep Thoughts, and for his SNL sketches, including the classic Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. He's also a hilarious essayist: some of my favorites include What I'd Say to the Martians, Ideas for Paintings, My Nature Documentary, The Plan, and How I Want to Be Remembered.
You Are Not an Artisan
"So long as you stop thinking in terms of crafts and aim to practice a trade instead, there is more work for humans than people realize... When people talk about saving work or jobs, they mostly talk about saving sexy, income-generating conspicuous production packaged as creative work, in a debt-fueled de facto leisure society."
Writer and speaker Venkatesh Rao weighs in on the difference between "Sexy Jobs and Schlub Jobs," and what it means for the future of work. For a slightly different take, see The Death of the 'Prestige Economy'…
Iconic and oft-cited, at a glance, to be sure...
You've seen one university's annual Banished Words list posted here (mostly by me). And then there are Matt Groening's Forbidden Words from his dear departed Life in Hell comic. But do real journalistic entities have similar lists of words to avoid? Well, Journalism Journalist Jim Romenesko has received a list (leaked?) from the editor of the Washington Post Outlook section of Things We Do Not Say. And yes, it's growing.
Explore design
The Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum is the only museum in the nation devoted exclusively to historic and contemporary design. While its home, the grand Andrew Carnegie mansion in Manhattan, is currently undergoing a major renovation, you can still experience the richness of the collections through its Object of the Day blog. Recent highlights range from scratch & sniff wallpaper to the elegant simplicity of an Eames dining chair.
The Work-Life Balancing Act, Again
“What would you do if you weren’t afraid?,” Sandberg asks women in the opening chapter of Lean In. She obviously does not work in journalism (as my wife does) or academia (as I used to), let alone manufacturing. The question for most American women, and for most families, is much simpler: “How do I survive?” Sandberg’s book has been compared with feminist classics like The Feminine Mystique, but it really belongs in the category of capitalist fantasy, a tradition that originated with Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help and was popularized by the novels of Horatio Alger. The success of Lean In can be attributed, at least in part, to its comforting espousal of an obviously false hope: that hard work and talent alone can now take you to the top. This is pure balderdash, for women and men. Class structures have seized to the point where Denmark has more social mobility than the United States. The last myth to die in America will be the myth of pluck; Lean In is the most recent testament to its power.
What cool and unusual things can be done with low-power community radio?
Some friends are interested in starting a low-power community radio station in my hometown.
What fun, interesting, and unusual things we could do with this?
Peter Molyneux picks his favourite iPhone fart app
"Peter Molyneux has had a long and storied career. As the creator of Populous, Black & White, Fable, and the recent iPhone experiment Curiosity, he's been no stranger to ambitious concepts throughout his 30-year history in the industry. I had a chance to sit down with Peter at E3 this year, and picked his brain about three of the top fart apps on the app store."
12 in the corner pocket
Amadeus is a chihuahua who likes to play ball. On a pool table.
Pangea with modern national borders
There was a time
when New York was next to Casablanca.
Proletariat isn’t just the name of a race horse my family owns
I’m 23 And I Still Have A Babysitter! I Really Hope This Is How You File For Divorce! Wait, What is the Stock Market? There’s Nothing Punk Rock About Sriracha Anymore. All this and more from Thought Brochure: Where Thoughts Are Thinked. (some stuff NSFW)
Free tracks from wonky electronic music producer, Slugabed
Slugabed has released his newest 5 track EP, This Is A Warning, for free. If you're looking for more of his wonky electronic/hip-hop stuff, you can also grab his remixes of Busta Rhymes, Leon Ware and Kankick for free.
Well I walk into the room, passing out hundred dollar bills
When We Held Kings: The oral history of the 2003 World Series of Poker, in which an amateur named Moneymaker turned $39 into $2.5 million and the poker boom was born.
A Frenchman in Brooklyn
In April, French cartoonist Boulet (previous, more previous) was invited to go on tour in the US, courtesy of the French embassy in New York. As a good 'webcomic', he kept a diary of his impressions of New York, the language barrier and going to the MoCCaFest, and also had a book to sell, a reworked edition of his 2012 24-hours comic Darkness (previous).
Aliens in 60 Seconds
Animated Aliens in 60 Seconds. (with some barely intelligible NSFW language)
Mac twitter+facebook client (replacement for Tweetdeck)
Twitter is breaking shit because they hate their users/want to monetize. I used to use Tweetdeck to send out coordinated facebook and twitter posts for work; I'd like to avoid using two different programs (doubling my work). HootSuite seems close, but for semi-irrelevant reasons, not currently an option. I run a Mac.
What are the best options out there?
Photography as Technology
The George Eastman House is producing a series of nicely produced videos, each about 10 minutes long, demonstrating every major technological development in photographic process with guidance from historians, curators, and artists and illustrated by objects from their collection. There are more to come, but you can start now with The Dageurrotype, The Collodion Process, The Albumen Print, The Woodburytype, The Platium Print, and The Gelatin Silver Print.
"a watchful eye on technology and marketing"
Back in the day, Ken Segall helped create Apple's Think Different campaign and helped name the iMac. More recently he worked on JC Penney's Yours Truly, commercial, before JCP ousted Ron Johnson as its CEO. He writes a sharp, entertaining blog called Ken Segall's Observatory, where he offers opinions on advertising and design geekery. His take on Ron Johnson's failure is interesting, as is this post on what it takes for an advertisement to stand out in a crowd. He calls attention to surprisingly decent ads from Microsoft and Dell, critiques terrible ads (from Microsoft and JC Penney and even Apple, and comments on whether skeuomorphism has its advantages. He's also fond of discussing product names. Give this one a skip if advertising gives you hives, but for those of you who're interested in things like this Segall's blog is especially choice stuff.
Environment mapping for the masses
Microsoft's IllumiRoom takes gaming visuals outside the box and onto the living room. Basically projection mapping for your living room, based on a 3D scan using Kinect, Microsoft Research's IllumiRoom lets you show either all of a game's environment, or only certain parts, projected on your living room walls.
the history of Taco Bell's disruptive faux cheese-dusted taco
Deep Inside Taco Bell's Doritos Locos Taco
In fact, the companies ended up creating a proprietary seasoner in the process, not least because for workers on the manufacturing line, the plumes of Doritos seasoning would create an almost Nacho Cheese gas chamber.
Likely named for merchant William Fell
How the streets of San Francisco got their names:
a fun little history lesson, nicely formatted as a giant clickable map (with search if you just want to look up a specific street).
CRAPCHA
CRAPCHA
CRAPCHA stands for Completely Ridiculous And Phony Captcha that Hassles for Amusement. It doesn't keep spammers out. It doesn't crowdsource book scanning either. CRAPCHA's only job is to baffle users, and you can add it to your site today.
[via mefi projects]
"Publishing is tremendously susceptible to the availability heuristic"
What Is the Business of Literature?
Publishing is a word that, like the book, is almost but not quite a proxy for the “business of literature.” Current accounts of publishing have the industry about as imperiled as the book, and the presumption is that if we lose publishing, we lose good books. Yet what we have right now is a system that produces great literature in spite of itself. We have come to believe that the taste-making, genius-discerning editorial activity attached to the selection, packaging, printing, and distribution of books to retailers is central to the value of literature. We believe it protects us from the shameful indulgence of too many books by insisting on a rigorous, abstemious diet. Critiques of publishing often focus on its corporate or capitalist nature, arguing that the profit motive retards decisions that would otherwise be based on pure literary merit. But capitalism per se and the market forces that both animate and pre-suppose it aren’t the problem. They are, in fact, what brought literature and the author into being.
Grimes is not your waif
"I don't want to have to compromise my morals in order to make a living"
- Claire Boucher, a.k.a. Grimes, has apparently canceled her 2013 tour via Tumblr. (previously)
Imagined Interfaces
The difference between (Graphical) User Interfaces in movies and in real life is that the former have to convey information to the viewer, not the user.
Star Power
"No GPS or weather reports—just a sailboat, the wild open ocean, and the constellations. Think you could find your way across the South Pacific? James Campbell rides along with a master navigator in the Caroline Islands, where they’ve been sailing this way for thousands of years."
Electrical Banana – Masters of Psychedelic Art
Sci-Fi-O-Rama is proud to present a selection of ‘far out’ imagery sequestered from the fantastically titled ‘Electrical Banana’ Psychedelic art book – and yes that title is indeed derived from a reference to a certain type of ladies sex toy.
Thrown for a Curve in Rhode Island
"“It just felt really good, when this all started, to have the sexy sports celebrity from Boston who seemed to like Rhode Island and showed up in Rhode Island, and who built this exotic new business, even though no one knew what it was,” says the historian Ted Widmer, who grew up in Providence and works at Brown. “It seemed like the digital economy, or biotech, or whatever. But then it turned out that it wasn’t the new digital economy. It was some 13-year-old’s medieval fantasy.” "Curt Schilling, Rhode Island, and the Fall of 38 Studios.
Talking about the Simpsons
Conan O'Brien recently reunited with some of the other writers of The Simpsons who he worked with during his tenure on the show. The panel touches on "... how Jub-Jub became the name of Selma's iguana, how Tracy Ullman always hated the cartoon, and how Conan was the only person in the show's history to have three episode ideas accepted in one story idea day."
Michelle Rhee's "Reign of Error"
DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee oversaw radical reforms to Washington, DC's failing public schools. Amongst the results were widespread
irregularities on standardized tests that suggest they were tampered with by adults.
By this time next year, coffee will no longer work.
The Secretary of Agriculture stepped forward with a big briefcase. "Sir, I’ve spent years working to develop a synthetic coffee substitute for just such an emergency." He pulled out a big test tube filled with liquid. "This little concoction is the answer. It’s just as good as real coffee."
The room was silent.
"It’s orange," said the President.
"Yes. That can’t be changed."
"Does it have any other shortcomings?"
"It has been known to cause occasional... body-death."
The room was silent.
"But it tastes like coffee?" the President finally asked.
"Moderately so."
Everyone in the room nodded solemnly. It would have to be.
The Day Coffee Stopped Working, by John Bailey Owen.
The room was silent.
"It’s orange," said the President.
"Yes. That can’t be changed."
"Does it have any other shortcomings?"
"It has been known to cause occasional... body-death."
The room was silent.
"But it tastes like coffee?" the President finally asked.
"Moderately so."
Everyone in the room nodded solemnly. It would have to be.
The Day Coffee Stopped Working, by John Bailey Owen.