July 28
How I Recovered My Stolen iPad
How I Recovered My Stolen iPad - in which Facebook, Twitter, and Find my iPad work in tandem to find a doofus.
Hacker Barnaby Jack, dead at 35
Barnaby Jack, a hacker and security researcher previously known for his hacks involving ATMs and insulin pumps, has died in San Francisco. He was 35. His death came just days before he was to give a presentation about techniques for hacking implanted heart devices, which could kill a person from 30 feet away.
Counterculture legend Mick Farren dies with his boots on
Give The Anarchist A Cigarette: Counterculture legend Mick Farren dies with his boots on Mick Farren, rabble rouser, musician, and writer, collapsed last night on stage at the The Borderline, in London. He died soon after.
Hmm, sorry, I seem to be crap at this. Here's some more links to the story:
From Uncut:
Mick Farren 1943 - 2013,
From Vintage Vinyl News: Passings: Mick Farren of the Deviants (1943 - 2013),
and from Ultimate Calssic Rock:
Mick Farren Dies After Collapsing On Stage In London
That last has a pretty good version of "Let's Loot The Super Market".
The following notes were written at odd hours and strange places...
"We're not making mistakes; we're making experiences."
Dan Bergstein, Sparknotes blogger (and best known for blogging about the Twilight series), has posted some YouTube instructional videos on How to Knit a Scarf, How to Make a Pumpkin Pie, and How to Wrap a Present. Please note that Dan does not actually know how to do any of these things, and that if you do have these skills viewing these videos might be slightly traumatizing.
The Last Vestiges of the Old Republic...
The Clone Wars (previously) are over, with only a few last mopping up operations underway and a few Jedi unaccounted for. But there is another... Star Wars Rebels will be the new Lucasfilm animated series, and will be taking it's design direction from the work of Ralph McQuarrie.
A Race to Save the Orange by Altering Its DNA
The disease that sours oranges and leaves them half green, already ravaging citrus crops across the world, had reached the state’s storied groves. To slow the spread of the bacterium that causes the scourge, they chopped down hundreds of thousands of infected trees and sprayed an expanding array of pesticides on the winged insect that carries it. But the contagion could not be contained.They would have to alter the orange’s DNA — with a gene from a different species. (SLNYT)
With a precipitous decline in Florida’s harvest predicted within the decade, the only chance left to save it, Mr. Kress believed, was one that his industry and others had long avoided for fear of consumer rejection.
Time to collect firewood
Time to collect firewood - a short video showing how a solitary man harvests bark-beetle damaged trees using a home-made raft and a collection of specialized tools. For contrast, the same raft is used in the very social "Crayfishing in Ätran"
This might come in handy sometime...
Fez II Cancelled
Phil Fish, the volatile and sometimes controversial developer of indie game Fez, has abruptly announced its cancellation: "this is as much as i can stomach. this is isn’t the result of any one thing, but the end of a long, bloody campaign. you win." Though this follows in the wake of a popular podcast's host calling him a "tosspot", a "wanker", and a "fucking asshole", Fish has been the subject of massive Internet antagonism ever since his appearance in Indie Game: The Movie; he's been hounded for saying that Japanese games suck, though he claimed the comment was taken out of context, for Tweeting that "PCs are for spreadsheets" prior to Fez's PC release, and for not patching a save-corrupting bug that he claims Microsoft was charging him "tens of thousands of dollars". Fish has often responded poorly to critics in public, but Jonathan Blow (The Witness, Braid) and C418 (Minecraft) each claim that Fish has been at the receiving end of far worse, and far more frequent, vitriol.
Letting go
For a few days now, Scott Simon, host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, has been present at his mother's bedside in the intensive care unit of a Chicago hospital. He is documenting this time, what will apparently be his last days with her, in a series of heartwrenching messages on his Twitter stream.
July 27
Crazy like a texting fox
Fox steals cell phone. Fox sends texts with stolen cell phone. Cuteness ensues. [Cached version] [more inside]
Reading This Is Optional
Offenses attack; defenses react. This is a truism, but it's a truism on which almost all sports strategy is built. In the NFL today, no tactic more pressingly requires a swift, strong reaction than the so-called "read-option." Defending the Read-Option sends coaches back to college. If the read-option is dead, the next great offensive strategy may also be one of the oldest, it was good enough to beat Sean Payton and a bevy of NFL coaches.
The Annual World Bodypainting Festival
The annual World Bodypainting Festival is now over, but that means there are a ton of new images online, with galleries for each of the award categories, including brush/sponge bodypainting, airbrush bodypainting, special effects bodypainting, and facepainting. (Note: painted [mostly] naked bodies; previously, a decade ago)
Does a bear itch in the woods?
Guitar Stories
Mark Knopfler takes his former Dire Straits band mate John Illsley on a journey to discover the six guitars that defined his sound and music. [SLYT 44min]. An excellent documentary from SkyARTS.
Trouble with the Old Reader
The Old Reader is back up again (scroll down for updates), after several days of being down when the servers crashed. But many users are not happy and some are bailing.
Implied Contrapuntals
2001: A Space Odyssey - Discerning Themes through Score and Imagery: As Ligeti's music ends, the first image we see is a celestial alignment of the sun the earth and the moon as Richard Strauss' exhilarating Also Sprach Zarathustra begins. It's critical to note that Thus Spoke Zarathustra is also a novel by Friedrich Nietzsche. This musical choice thus signals that the film deals with the same central issues in this book. [via][more inside]
That belongs in a museum!
One of the last remaining copies of Schindler's List has been posted for sale on Ebay, with a starting bid of $3,000,000 USD. [more inside]
Another bomb "dowser" found guilty
Gary Bolton has been found guilty of selling fake bomb detectors to countries including Iraq. In May James McCormick was sentenced for 10 years for committing a similar fraud (previously, previously, previously). The original fraud is now 20 years old.
Ski-Boys
Look at those escargots
Being Dumb
Poet Kenneth Goldsmith writes in praise of dumb art.
No double entendre left behind
Boris Johnson unveils a giant blue cock in Trafalgar Square, causing an outbreak of terrible puns. Hahn/Cock is the work of Katharina Fritsch, better known for her Rat-King sculpture. The colour is (probably) an homage to (NSFW) Yves Klein's favourite colour.
Paddling 1,500 Miles for Science and Adventure
Starting on September 22 last year, Professor Robert Fuller of the University of North Georgia spent four months paddling down the Chattahoochee River system, from the Chattahoochee's headwaters in northern Georgia down through the Apalachicola into the Gulf of Mexico, studying water quality along the way. Then he paddled 200 miles through the Gulf, turned at the mouth of the Mobile River, and paddled another 750 miles upstream on the Mobile, Alabama, Coosa, and Etowah Rivers all the way back to northern Georgia—a total of just over 1,500 miles of solo paddling in his Kruger Sea Wind. Along the way, he kept a blog, "ate a lot of Beanie Weenies", and faced difficulties including cold, hunger, injuries, and river obstructions. Incidentally, he did all this while living with leukemia. [more inside]
Plowing at the Speed of Sound
Swedish farmer drops a turbo into his tractor.
Boom And Bust
Bankrupt By Beanies - A short documentary about what happened to people after the "Beanie Babies as investments" fad wore down. (YouTube, 8:30)
Final Encore Blues For Mister JJ Cale
Sadly true, at 74. (JJ Cale previously, and Wikipedia.)
Otherwise best to just let the man and his guitar speak for themselves via classic albums such as Troubadour, Grasshopper, Naturally, Okie and Shades.
"Eversmile, New Jersey"?
A Secret Folk Music Holds Firm In China's Badlands
"Beijing-based music critic Wang Xiaofeng says that when he heard Lao Qiang for the first time about 18 years ago, it reminded him of heavy metal: very physical and somewhat operatic."
In Lieu of Money, Toyota Donates Efficiency to New York Charity
The Food Bank for New York City is the country’s largest anti-hunger charity, feeding about 1.5 million people every year. It leans heavily, as other charities do, on the generosity of businesses, including Target, Bank of America, Delta Air Lines and the New York Yankees. Toyota was also a donor. But then Toyota had a different idea.
Instead of a check, it offered kaizen.
July 26
there's like - a bunch of mermaids here - and they definitely hate me
D - O - N - K - E - Y - K - O - N - G
Locals and Tourists
Some people interpreted the Geotaggers' World Atlas maps to be maps of tourism. This set is an attempt to figure out if that is really true. Some cities (for example Las Vegas and Venice) do seem to be photographed almost entirely by tourists. Others seem to have many pictures taken in places that tourists don't visit. Blue points on the map are pictures taken by locals (people who have taken pictures in this city dated over a range of a month or more). Map of photosets (scroll through photo thumbnails to discover new cities in the photoset [more inside]
Why Don't You Google It?
Maria Bamford* has a new Web series called Ask My Mom!, wherein questions asked by the viewers are answered by Maria, playing her mother.
Episodes thus far:
#1 - SAD SACK
#2 - SEX
#3 - RAISING KIDS
#4 - ABSTRACT
#5 - RELIGION
#6 - SHOW BUSINESS
#7 - FAVORITE
#8 - CHEERFUL
#9 - A PRIVATE MOMENT
[more inside]
I'm not ready for this!
Has anyone else put forth this theory before?
What’s Killing Minnesota’s Moose?
The iconic monarch of the North Woods is dying at an alarming rate. Is it climate change, a brain-piercing parasite, or is something else to blame?
Pico Horror: terror in two sentences
From Reddit: What is the best horror story you can come up with in two sentences. When /r/shortscarystories are too long, and you've already read through MicroHorror (previously) and Flashes in the Dark.
Walter De Maria, R.I.P.
Walter De Maria, R.I.P. (LAT) The famed but reclusive sculptor and composer was 77. In a loving tribute, Jerry Saltz writes of De Maria's Earth Room (previously), and of the effect it had on him personally.
Darryl Kelly was hired to clean out Harry Shunk's NYC apartment.
Darryl Kelly was hired to clean out Harry Shunk's New York City apartment. Things worked out well for Kelly.
'让我介绍一个哥们儿'
Xiaoou is a Norwegian artist who raps in Mandarin Chinese about income inequality in China, his love for Beijing, and going through a breakup.
"We have 10 different babies from which you can select."
Would you like to choose your baby? We definitely want to be able to avoid genetic mutations that could cause diseases or problems later on. But what if you could make your babies more intelligent? Or more Athletic? or More beautiful? Or affect their political orientation? (A 2011 study looked at differences between conservative and liberal leanings—and found, surprisingly, three areas that might be linked to political predisposition.)
Should you be able to choose what characteristics you want your babies to have?
[more inside]
Dream of the '90s
Full course meal
It goes back to honoring Thomas Harris and imagery we have in the books, in the Hannibal Lecter books. So we knew that we had to have fantastic imagery that you wouldn’t see on another crime-procedural show. Being competitive and wanting to be completely different from what you see on other shows, which is usually, on a crime procedural you see a body in a room splayed out and blood, but you rarely get to see people covered with mushrooms or impaled on severed stag heads or blood eagled and the totem pole. We would sit in the room and say, “What is the image? What is the death tableau? What are we going to see that’s going to be so striking and cinematic and beautiful at the same time, but will actually be a horrible crime scene?” So every crime scene that we have has to have this element of beauty and art to it.Bryan Fuller, showrunner for NBC's Hannibal (previously), discusses each episode of the first season with the AV Club. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.
"We All Lament the Difficulty We Have Persuading Americans"
"Believing they are losing the messaging war with progressives, a group of prominent conservatives in Washington—including the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and journalists from Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner — has been meeting privately since early this year to concoct talking points, coordinate messaging, and hatch plans for "a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation," according to documents obtained by [David Corn and] Mother Jones." Photo Gallery: Meet Groundswell's Major Players. Also: Groundswell's Secret Crusade to Crush Karl Rove // (Via) [more inside]
Boomtown
Wildcatting: A Stripper’s Guide to the Modern American Boomtown. Susan Shepard details her time stripping in Williston, North Dakota (previously).
They are called RANDOM patrols for a reason!
That's not a plot hole. Allow me to explain. Scott Nye discusses a movie trend that, once seen, cannot be unseen.
There's treasure in there
Books with borax crystals growing on them. Artist Alexis Arnold grows crystals on the pages of books.
"We are British. We are Liverpudlians. "
""He just went out to the shop, and my mum was waiting for him to come home, and he never came," Linda Davis said of her father." -- During World War II tens of thousands of Chinese seamen served in the UK's merchant navy, many of whom had settled in Liverpool and some of which developed relationships with local women. Yet in 1945, as soon as the war was won, Liverpool police forces, on orders of the Home Office mounted razzias and deported the majority of the 20,000 Chinese men living in the city, leaving behind their wifes and children. [more inside]
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