January 2012
“Jean Baudrillard always insisted that the Apocalypse had already taken place....”
– Fallout 3. The apocalypse that never happened. | Notgames blog
Every day the same dream - molleindustria →
The Food Police →
“Why Michael Pollan makes me want to eat Cheetos”
December 2011
“Acupuncture is a slippery beast. It has been practiced for thousands of years in...”
– POCA
“No CAPTCHA can survive a human that’s receiving financial incentives for solving...”
– Inside India’s CAPTCHA solving economy | ZDNet (2008!)
vegansaurus!: iPad App Lets Humans Play With Real... →
vegansaurus:
Playing with Pigs: Pig Chase from Utrecht School of the Arts on Vimeo.
eds: use this photo if the video embed doesn’t work?
Designers in the Netherlands have created an iPad app called Pig Chase that lets humans and pigs play a game together in a weird form of…
“The United States is stepping in to help bail out another American industry...”
– U.S. orders $40 million worth of chicken to help industry - Aug. 16, 2011
“If you think you’re paying too much for a gallon of milk these days, it...”
– Dairy Industry Making a Killing, by Killing Cows?
the $150k solution →
An article was published yesterday in one of Austin’s local papers about Austin’s tech talent shortage. I was job hunting just a couple months ago and get a lot of calls from recruiters and hear about friends’ companies who are hiring and I think it’s pretty damned accurate. And by accurate I mean that it points out how fucking ridiculous some of these companies are being. Flying out to SF to...
The New Aesthetic: Earlier this year, Jeremy... →
new-aesthetic:
Earlier this year, Jeremy Hutchison sent emails to manufacturers around the world, asking them to produce a fairly simple and common item. He added a special requirement though: the product had to be imperfect, come with an intentional error. Moreover, the worker was in…
November 2011
“But the debate about tools like Twitter Trends is, I believe, a debate we will...”
– Can an algorithm be wrong? Twitter Trends, the specter of censorship, and our faith in the algorithms around us « Social Media Collective (via new-aesthetic)
October 2011
“You’re creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature....”
– ‘You’re creating a vision of the sort of society you want to have in miniature.’ - The Washington Post
September 2011
“When you hold a book in your hand, nothing will happen unless you work to make...”
– Jonathan Franzen, from Perchance to Dream, his 1996 essay for Harper’s, which I mentioned last week.
Interesting to find this quote in the afterglow of Facebook’s announcement of its “friction-less sharing.” Any physicist knows that it’s impossible to exist in a frictionless universe, and that...
August 2011
Recent(ish) Reading
Aerotropolis: This is a book that begs for counter-arguments. The basic premise is that air transport (of people and goods) is reshaping physical and economic landscapes in particular ways, and that the results are Really Awesome. I think the main author (Greg Lindsay) is actually aware that the world he’s describing is not exactly as fabulous as promised for many of the people affected, but...
C.I.A. Claim of No Civilian Deaths From Drones Is... →
July 2011
5 North Koreans at Women’s World Cup Tested... →
The team’s claims just get wackier.
For Hispanic Teams in Germany, Three and Out -... →
Commentary on the perception of soccer as a men’s sport only in some countries, and how that affects the women’s teams’ ability to compete.
June 2011
Infrastructure and the State | Ben Hammersley's... →
As small as a government you might want, or as market-based as you think the country should be, there are still some things that only the state can do, and it’s that category that holds all the difficult bits.
“Because the Internet is so new we still don’t really understand what it is. We...”
– How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet by Douglas Adams in 1999 and just as relevant today. (via onthenetwork)
A Saudi Activist, in Her Own Words - NYTimes.com →
I hadn’t watched any of the driving protest videos yet, but this is really interesting. It makes me want to get a drivers license for the sake of solidarity.
May 2011
Food Environment Atlas →
CV Dazzle by Adam Harvey →
CV Dazzle™ is camouflage from computer vision (CV). It is a form of expressive interference that combines makeup and hair styling (or other modifications) with face-detection thwarting designs. The name is derived from a type of camouflage used during WWI, called Dazzle, which was used to break apart the gestalt-image of warships, making it hard to discern their directionality, size, and...
Fanboy by Alexander Chee - The Morning News →
Wonderful essay on race, comics, dreams, and America. Via the Geek Feminism blog.
Was It Something I Wrote? - NYTimes.com →
The dangers of journalism in Russia, and public indifference.
“Kaufmann and his two Ordnungsbehörde colleagues are not cops, and they’re not...”
– You Are Here - Germany’s Anti-Chaos Crusaders - NYTimes.com
Disintegrating Computers | Quiet Babylon →
Tim says: “This is my slowly disintegrating computer. It’s bursting apart into gadgets and modules, each one good for what it does, but none a full experience. Sometimes when I go out, I carry the screen and the speakers but not the keyboard. Other times, I don’t bother with the speakers but want the keyboard and the screen.”
I used to make diagrams of this when I was in high...
“It would be an interesting practice to conduct a series of mini-Disciplines,...”
– Information Half-Life II | Quiet Babylon
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? | Rolling Stone... →
“We’re not very good at endings, not in this bright, shiny era of continual...”
– Russell M Davies: On endings (Wired UK)
Russell M Davies: What we need is a non-conference... →
E.U. Panel to Propose Tighter Data Protection -... →
How To Make Scallion Pancakes | Apartment Therapy... →
Veronique is Visiting From Paris →
This is really amazing and wonderful.
April 2011
“When a reporter asked, ‘What can sex workers do to prevent...”
– Getting Away With Murder on Long Island