Favorites from Foci for Analysis
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"...the best song Jagger and Richards have written in twenty years"
YoutTube: The story of Bitter Sweet Symphony | Andrew Oldham Orchestra - The Last Time (1965) | Original video | 2010 studio performance for Radio 1 Presents | 2008 concert performance | Live at Glastonbury 2008 | Glastonbury 2011 | potted history of The Verve at BBC News
Leaning Out
Love is the only motivating force, and while love can motivate some pretty awful things, it’s nonetheless impossible to do any good without it. I have no love left for my job or career.
Tim Chevalier on tech as a coping mechanism and a place of toxicity and moral stagnation.
This kid's got style!
Celles et Ceux des Cimes et Cieux
A graduation film by Gwenn Germain is a delightful, breath-taking homage to Miyazaki, Mœbius, and Syd Mead.
Proof of Concept AWS Spot gaming
Running your own high-end cloud gaming service on EC2
Playing games this way is actually quite economical – especially when comparing to purchasing a full-on gaming rig. Here are the costs you’ll need to consider:
GPU Instance runs about $0.11/hr (on a Spot instance, regularly around $0.70/hr)
Data transfer will around $0.09/GB, and at a sustained ~10mbit, itll cost you $0.41/hr (4.5GB/hr)
This comes out to around $0.52/hr, not bad, for the cost of a $1000 gaming pc, you get ~1900 hours on much higher-end hardware!
The crossovers that dare not speak their name
Do you dig Marvel and DC?
At the same time?
Only one man dared imagine.... that and more.
Cybernetics Behind the Curtain
"Computers, once vilified and now championed, were constant in one thing: They amplified the virtues and deficits of the system that implemented them." The Tangled History of Soviet Computer Science.
Let's Speak English
Let's Speak English! Cartoonist Mary Cagle's adorable tales of teaching English in Japan.
Browser-based Coding Playground
Coding Ground is an amazingly comprehensive set of free online terminals and IDEs for about 100 different computing languages. The list includes Unix languages (bash, ksh, awk), cross-platform languages (Ruby, Python, Perl, Java, etc.), web languages (coffeescript, Go, Dart, jQuery) MS Windows-specific languages, markup languages (CSS3, HTML, Markdown), and even a bunch of esoteric languages (Malbolge, LOLCODE, Brainf**k, and Whitespace). These (appear to) run in fully sandboxed Docker-based containers.
Wheel turning round and round
A South Carolina police officer shot at an unarmed, fleeing 50-year-old Walter Scott 8 times on Saturday, killing him. Officer Michael Slager claimed that Scott wrestled his taser away and he "felt threatened". But this time there was video of the incident, and Slager has been charged with Murder.
The truck drivers' troubadour
For years, Esakhelvi reigned supreme and unchallenged, in an universe that existed parallel to the cultured music salons of the elite. This was the world of the working classes of Pakistan, especially it seems the truck and long distance bus drivers. His songs were not classically derived, and his ghazals and folk songs were rendered somehow differently. Before Esakhelvi's arrival on the scene there really was nothing like him.
Bradley Ellison and the Homies, picking the pockets of little kiddies
Bradley Ellison, a.k.a. Sugarman, is "one of coin-op's most colorful characters." Vice profiled Ellison on his vending machine empire (also on YouTube, both with NSFW language) and his most lucrative toys, Homies, which he brought to the East Coast from David Gonzales' Los Angeles-based line of miniature figures. In 2003, New York Times profiled the minifigs, which Ellison credits for the downfall of his main moneymaker. But Ellison keeps plugging on, and Homies are still around (warning: auto-playing music).
The Virtues of Moderation
Included in volume 17 of The Yale Journal of Law and Technology is the article The Virtues of Moderation.
This Article provides a novel taxonomy of moderation in online communities. It breaks down the basic verbs of moderation—exclusion, pricing, organizing, and norm-setting—and shows how they help communities walk the tightrope between the chaos of too much freedom and the sterility of too much control. Scholars studying the commons can learn from moderation, and so can policy-makers debating the regulation of online communities.One of the case studies discussed is Metafilter.
Operation Red Falcon
Early on the morning of September 1, 1996, the Israeli military began moving troops to the Syrian border in preparation for a war they were convinced was imminent. The military’s actions were based on top-secret intelligence—that Syria was about to launch a surprise attack—passed on by an informant, a general at the center of Syria’s Supreme Military Council, code-named Red Falcon. Red Falcon’s information had caused panic at the highest reaches of the Israeli Defense Forces, and senior military officials and Mossad officers were urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to issue an order to the IDF to launch its own offensive before the Syrians could launch theirs.
African Game Development
Aurion looks to be a standard and mechanically unremarkable retro action RPG with heavy Japanese design influences. But its design and feel are unmistakably fresh, offering a bold color palette and interesting unit designs. Its fiction is rooted in stories of exploitation and division, and in a desire for harmony.This review of Cameroon's Kiro’o Games latest release is just one of the increasingly visible ways Africa's game developers are beginning to gain traction in their domestic and international markets. Last fall, Lagos hosted the inaugural West African Gaming Expo, bringing together startups, gamers, developers and investors for the first time. Games range from mobile only, extremely local - smash the mosquito or drive your matatu like a maniac - to educational - to full fledged RPG like Kiro'o's Aurion. Women are as much a part of this nascent industry, breaking barriers and encouraging others to join. Watch this space.
Lost in the Holacracy
In 2013, Zappos founder Tony Hsieh announced plans to reorganize the company as a holacracy, or a management structure that replaces job titles and hierarchical relationships with self-organizing units. The move has generated resistance from Zappos employees; so much so that, in a long memo, Hsieh says he is going to "rip the bandaid" and give employees until April 30 to either get on board with holacracy or take a severance package. Meanwhile, Hsieh and his close associates are having difficulty saying what the principles of holacracy even are. Commentary on the memo from Andrew Hill and Kim Nash.
When two fonts love each other very much...
Move over Brangelina. And Bennifer. And Kimye, TomKat*, and Desilu. And sporks. And ligers. EVERYONE MOVE OVER! We're making room for the world's first genetically engineered superfont.Comic Papyrus is finally here.
A New Skyscraper on the City Sim Skyline
Two years after the disastrous release of the much-hyped SimCity 2013 and just weeks after its legendary development studio Maxis was shut down by parent company Electronic Arts a new contender has arisen to stake its claim to the city sim crown. Cities: Skylines was released last week and has already garnered record-breaking sales and almost universally positive reviews.
Browser toys
Oskar Stålberg makes, among other things, nifty little toys to play with in your browser:
Create a block of flats as your desire dictates!
- Raise an archipelago from the sea floor by the force of pure will!
- Where once there was nothing, bring forth a whole town!
Via RPS; all links require Unity
Oh FUI
Fictional user interfaces in film, TV and games.
Kit FUI
UI BAKA
SciFi Interfaces
VisualPunker: UI
FakeUI
Screens on screen
How was Roman column formed?
This short, stop-motion film shows how Trajan's Column might have been constructed. The behind-the-scenes of the stop motion is also pretty neat.
They are taking the Techniker...to Isengard
An electric door at the University of Mainz in Germany breaks down, setting off an exuberant meme-off. Because "One does not simply inform...the Techniker" .
Karoshi: Japanese for dying TO work, AT work, and BECAUSE of work.
The Japanese government is attempting to end Japan's culture of "death by overwork" (now known as karoshi) by moving to make it illegal to not take mandatory paid vacation days. Why won't Japanese workers go on vacation? The Japanese work some of the longest hours in the world and fear taking paid holidays in case they are ostracised by colleagues. The stress is so extreme that every year thousands of workers succumb to “karoshi”, or “death by overwork”. They either commit suicide (the see suicide as salvation), or die of a stroke or a heart attack. The Japanese are literally dying for work and the phenomenon is spreading to other Asian countries such as China, South Korea, and Bangladesh. A "chapter" of the award winning documentary "Happy" (now on Netflix and other online venues) looks at this Japanese phenomenon of Karoshi. HAPPY (trailer here) takes you on a journey from the swamps of Louisiana to the slums of Kolkata in search of what really makes people happy. Combining real life stories of people from around the world and powerful interviews with the leading scientists in happiness research, HAPPY explores the secrets behind our most valued emotion.
Cooking by supercomputer
The robot cookbook: can a supercomputer write recipes?
Watson, IBM’s supercomputer, has (with help from the Institute of Culinary Education) written what IBM's Florian Pinel calls "the first specimen of a new generation of smarter cookbooks". Do the unusual ingredient combinations work, or is plum pancetta cider really as disgusting as it sounds? IBM sent a food truck to SXSW to (ahem) road-test the recipes. Reports are, the Bengali butternut BBQ sauce is delicious. Of course, there's a TED talk.
A glimpse into the past of the Dirty Dirty.
Photo sets of Atlanta neighborhoods from 1940s to the 1990s (Midtown, Cabbagetown, Ponce de Leon, Auburn Avenue).
Sixteen Years
After 16 years of doing a bit of everything under the sun here, I’m stepping away from the day to day of running MetaFilter and moving into the background. Never fear, I’m leaving it in the best of hands and things are looking good for the future.
Those Who Wrote in Small Letters
For much of the tenth century, the Qarmatians enjoyed supreme power in northeastern Arabia, exacting tribute even from the caliphs in Baghdad and Cairo. They were an esoteric Isma'ili Shi'ite sect from the oases of the desert fringe and the islands of the Persian Gulf, where they built themselves an egalitarian utopia—"probably the only communist society to control a large territory, and to endure for more than a generation, before the twentieth century." Utopia, however, depended on the agricultural labor of thirty thousand Ethiopian slaves and the proceeds from constant raiding and pillaging. In 930, the Qarmatians stormed Mecca, killed thousands of pilgrims at the foot of the Kaaba, and removed the Black Stone to Bahrayn. A year later, they identified the Mahdi, their prophesied redeemer, in the form of a young Persian prisoner. They believed that once he assumed control of the Qarmatian state, he would lead them to even greater triumphs...
The 27-year hunt for a mystery New Wave song: Solved!
In 1986, a German teenager hit "record" on his cassette player to catch a New Wave song from the radio. But he missed the intro, and so had no idea what the song was called or who the artist was. Contacting music journalists in the 1990s proved unfruitful, so in 2002 he posted it online on his "Most Wanted" music page. For 11 years, the mystery song - known as Stay (The second time around) for its lyrics - was the source of intense speculation and detective work (including in AskMe), with dozens of potential matches eliminated. A YouTube post in 2007 broadened the search, but still yielded no answers. It wasn't until 2013, when a Swedish Radio host chanced upon a Reddit thread about the song and played it on air, that the mystery was finally solved by two listeners.
I turn my back on you: black movie poster art
"Foregrounding the back of Martin Luther King’s head, Selma’s poster is an act of protest in itself. But as a recent book on black movie poster art shows, many past poster designs have obscured, caricatured or edited out black actors altogether." Isabel Stevens writes on black movie poster art at the British Film Institute (BFI).
The second flag was so much more photogenic
The Story Behind the Most Famous Picture from World War II
A story told with lots of photos and a little writing.
Walking in... single shot videos of city life
Kees Colijn's
"Walking in..." project is a series of fascinating single shot videos, each up to two hours long, filmed as he walks through cities such as Yangon in Myanmar, Varanasi in India, Makassar in Indonesia and Pokhara in Nepal (Youtube links). See and hear everyday life in these places, not just the slick travel show version.
How user perception matters - in zippers.
"a highly-automated, vertically-integrated manufacturer"
Visit a zipper factory and see how a perceived design flaw translates into a more labor-intensive process. From the blog, bunnie: studios.
"Press Only In Cases of Extreme Disbelief"
Instant Clay Davis.
Joining the many other buttons that are out there, you can now hear your favorite public servant from The Wire, Clay Davis, utter his quintessential drawn-out statement of WTF.
Heroic Devices
The University of Glasgow's French Emblems project hosts thousands of 16th century woodcuts and etchings. The archive boasts an unusually thorough metadata scheme, allowing you to browse cryptic images of beards, birds in cages, pointed fingers, triumphal conquerors, and fabulous animals, among many other categories.
A modern war story
FLAG
is a unique anime series: a fictional war documentary told entirely through a camera lens.
"disorder ... is cheap to create, but very costly to prevent"
The Galula Doctrine: An Interview with Galula's Biographer A.A. Cohen, who wrote Galula: The Life And Writings of the French Officer Who Defined Counterinsurgency, and an excerpt.
Gender and the Production of Islamic Urban Space in Iran
What does an Islamic urban space look like?
This question has dogged intellectuals and authorities in Muslim-majority lands for centuries, but in recent decades has acquired a renewed sense of urgency amid the emergence of modernizing Islamist political movements. These groups have not only articulated new visions of the public sphere, mass politics, and economy, they have also increasingly found themselves in positions of authority to shape the cities, regions, and lands they work in. As these groups have found themselves in control, the revolutionary mandate (and widespread protest slogan) to imagine a politics “neither East nor West, but Islamic” has taken on new meanings, forcing leaders long focused narrowly on legal or constitutional change to recognize the more diffuse and institutional nature of power, and how much the production of space is a part of it.
Iranian 1979 revolution: Rare footage from French television
A French institute has collected a series of rarely seen videos on the 1979 Iranian revolution, among other things on almost any topic.
The Mystery Of Faith
"In creating a work that portrays real internal struggle and transformation, Caravaggio converted painting.
Try to make you angles as non-euclidean as possible
Yoga Fhtagn A holistic workout were we tone our bodies while slowly losing our minds (SLYT 3d6 SAN loss)
Some Girls Want Out: Spectacular Saintliness
Hilary Mantel on St. Gemma Galgani, St. Therese of Lisieux, and "holy" and secular anorexia, stigmata, and hysteria.
"We can see, as ‘Catholic neurologists’ of the time did, that Gemma’s symptoms are a representational strategy. They are an art form and a highly successful one; they are also (possibly) the product of mental pain and distress turned into physical symptoms. . . . When we think of young adults in the West, driven by secular demons of unknown provenance to starve and purge themselves, and to pierce and slash their flesh, we wonder uneasily if she is our sister under the skin."
(warning: gruesome)
Know When To Run
Over Christmas engineering works on train lines into London failed. This is a review of the report into that failure
. It's a fascinating read about cascading failure and errors in project planning. And, for once, read the comments.
A very specific sequence of weird tricks that Bowsers HATE
Speedrunner Minecraft SethBling explains how he beat Super Mario World in around 6 minutes
by using in-game actions to manipulate the game's memory so that it glitches to the end credits. The glitch had already been pulled off in-game using emulators, but this is the first time it has been done on an actual SNES. Very technical details available here.
Yes: he still has the hair
John Romero Plays Doom, personably.
Doom history enthusiast and Spacebase creator JP LeBreton joins id Software co-founder John Romero as the two play though the first episode of Doom, “Knee Deep in the Dead,” in its entirety. John Romero’s run through each level turns up fresh and encyclopedic insight into how this genre-defining title was designed and set the stage for first-person action games for years to come.