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by Cory Doctorow on (#2FDTD)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETtFvFDSLysFuturacha is a successfully crowdfunded typeface that makes use of Open Type's wizardry to switch its ligatures as you type, producing beautiful effects -- before the crowdfunding campaign, Futuracha users had to hand-set those ligatures, but now it's just type and go. $50 for a commercial license, $15 for a personal license. Ships in May. (via Red Ferret)
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| Updated | 2025-01-11 06:47 |
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by Andrea James on (#2FDTT)
How can a film's 40-minute battle scene hold its tension? Nerdwriter breaks down the Battle of the Hornburg (aka the Helm's Deep battle sequence) into 24 beats to show why it works so well. (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#2FDRC)
A small (51 men aged 24 +/- 3 years) study published in Neuron tasked experimental subjects with practicing the ancient Greek mnemonic technique of "memory palaces" and then scanned their brains with functional magnetic resonance imaging, comparing the scans to scans from competitive "memory athletes" and also measuring their performance on memorization tasks. (more…)
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by Andrea James on (#2FDTW)
The Principle of Proportional Ink is a great primer on how to avoid what Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West call "visual bullshit," like this craptacular graph above. The rule is very simple: (more…)
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#2FAY8)
If you use a water bottle you may have noticed that no matter how much you wash them, they still retain a musty smell. This bottle brush set from OXO Good Grips has three brushes to take care of that problem. One cleans the inside of the bottle, one cleans the cap, and the third cleans the straw (if it has one). It's $10 on Amazon.
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#2FAVX)
https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJcZoologist Richard Dawkins coined the word "meme" in his book on evolution, The Selfish Gene, in 1976. In it, he wrote:
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by David Pescovitz on (#2FAQK)
"Before a finger leaves a key, the next key is already being pressed. She is making 9 keystrokes per second."(From the Japanese TV series Begin Japanology)
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by David Pescovitz on (#2FAN7)
These eyelash-sized bits of minerals found in rock from northern Quebec may be the oldest traces of life ever found. The tubes of hematite are 4.28 billion years old, beating out 3.7 billion year old microbial remains found in Greenland. Nadia Drake tells the story at National Geographic:
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by Cory Doctorow on (#2FANB)
Nolan Lawson is burning up the free/open source web with an essay called What it feels like to be an open-source maintainer, where he describes the contradictory and negative experiences of trying to please hundreds of people who are just trying to get his code to work, where the more emotional and technical work he does to make them happy, the more he ends up with. (more…)
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by Andrea James on (#2FAK5)
Implementing an on/off switch on a general artificial intelligence is way more complicated than it sounds. Rob Miles of Computerphile looks at what could go wrong. Hint: lots. (more…)
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by Rob Beschizza on (#2FAD6)
tv.pouet.net plays a random computer demo. Then it plays another, and another, and on until you are bored of demos. [via HN]
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by Andrea James on (#2FABE)
German photographer Robert Götzfried has published his latest series on the original high-tech wall of sound: church organ pipes. His beautiful symmetric photos show the remarkable variations possible. (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#2FA9T)
Donald Trump's new FCC boss, Ajit Pai, has nuked an Obama-era rule that banned ISPs from selling off your browsing data, location, financial and health information, children's information, Social Security Number and contents of your messages, without your permission. The now-defunct rule also required ISPs to notify you when they got hacked and your sensitive personal information got out into the wild. (more…)
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by David Pescovitz on (#2FA97)
As a wise man once said, "It's funny 'cause it's true."
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by Cory Doctorow on (#2FA6Z)
Donald Trump has been slow to fill administrative positions that require Senate confirmation (and thus public scrutiny), but he's quietly hired 400 "beachhead team" members "to serve as his eyes and ears at every major federal agency, from the Pentagon to the Department of Interior" -- a rats' nest of ex-lobbyists running agencies they used to lobby, campaign staffers being given cushy jobs, neo-nutjobs from the Breitbart depths who endorse birtherism and other, more exotic conspiracy theories, and a whole Mos Eisley Cantina's worth of scum and villainy. (more…)
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#2FA71)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#2FA57)
Robbo Mills writes, "Here's the poster for the 1941 film 'Mister V,' directed by and starring Leslie Howard. I love the look of it with his defiant pose and the big red iconic V. Mister V was the title used for the US release of the film. It's best known by the original British title: 'Pimpernel Smith' - being a riff on a previous Leslie Howard film 'The Scarlett Pimpernel.' (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#2FA4G)
Last December, I published my review of Andrew "bunnie" Huang's astoundingly great book The Hardware Hacker: Adventures in Making and Breaking Hardware -- without realizing that the book's release had been delayed because the published decided to do some very fancy and cool stuff with the printing process. (more…)
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by David Pescovitz on (#2FA4J)
Miami lawyer Stephen Gutierrez was in court defending an alleged arsonist when his pants literally caught on fire. However, please don't assume that Gutierrez is a liar, liar. Apparently he had been playing with an e-cigarette in his pocket. From the Miami Herald:
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by David Pescovitz on (#2FA25)
The Geo. Graham Orrery Tourbillon integrates a mechanical solar system model with meteorites as planets. It is just $330,000. From Graham1965's description of the dial:
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by Rob Beschizza on (#2F9TY)
Alex Wood is an addict but won't give up his smartphone. But he has five strategies for limiting its control over him: "I used to wake up tired. My body would ache and my head felt sore, like waking up with a hangover. Finally, I took control, like attending an AA class for addicts, I faced my tech demons. Now I wake up refreshed and realise how much it was a ‘real’ addiction that affects your health."tldr:1) Don't charge it by your bed.
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by Andrea James on (#2F9MA)
A college student in Arkansas got pulled over for a broken tail light, then passed a sobriety test by living up to his car's vanity license plate: JUGGLER. (more…)
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by Andrea James on (#2F9MC)
This Finnish PSA never gets old, because it has everything: awesome music, great acting, edgy graphics, and brilliant practical advice. Watch this street cretin back down under the power of her mitten-encased palm! (more…)
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by Andrea James on (#2F9KB)
Five-year-old Edith Fuller correctly spelled jnana to advance to the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. She's the youngest competitor in the bee's history. (more…)
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by Andrea James on (#2F9KD)
Eighty years after its founding as one of the first prosumer publications for the then-expensive hobby of photography, Popular Photography is ceasing both print and online operations following the next issue. (more…)
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by Andrea James on (#2F9EY)
MIT researchers looking into how raindrops can generate microbe-bearing bioaerosols captured this cool footage of the process: (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#2F7WN)
Celebrate International Women's Day in stfnal style with Nevertheless She Persisted, a free anthology of original flash fiction by some of science fiction's leading women voices, from Catherynne M. Valente to Amal El-Mohtar to Jo Walton to Nisi Shawl to Charlie Jane Anders to Seanan McGuire to Alyssa Wong to Kameron Hurley -- and more! (more…)
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by Marykate Smith Despres on (#2F7PM)
Once I started reading this book, I couldn’t put it down. Thi Bui’s debut illustrated memoir, The Best We Could Do , is an exploration of family and identity, past and present. In the preface, Bui explains that the evolution of the work, from an oral history project turned handmade book 15 years ago to its current form as a graphic novel, meant she needed to learn to draw comics, an undertaking she describes as having a “steep learning curve.†Based on her stunningly narrative art which breathes and runs and wonders and mourns and serves as the perfect medium for the story of survival it tells, I’d say she made it over that learning curve just fine. Though her own understanding of self — as a parent and a child — is inextricably tied to, and informed by, her specific experience as a Vietnamese American whose family fled to the US in the 1970s after the collapse of South Vietnam, the pressure, guilt, and confusion she feels as a mother and daughter are easily recognizable. Bui begins with her own labor and delivery, long and complicated. It yields, of course, the birth of her son but also a deeper empathy for her own mother. With the new found perspective of a parent trying to understand her role and relationships within her family of origin and that which she has now created, Bui takes readers back through her own childhood and her parents’. Through Cambodia, Vietnam, and the US, through the First Indochina War, to the Vietnam War, to the aftermath, in boats and bunkers and shared beds, through two generations of both unknowing and surety, of flight and fight, we come to know the Buis, Thi, Má, and Bố especially, as individuals within a family. This book is beautiful. It is personally meditative while also deeply informative, telling the history that lives in one family’s bones while spanning multiple nations, borders, and generations.The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir
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by Peter Sheridan on (#2F7P8)
Extraordinary!!!Exclamation points have over-run the tabloids like Macaques monkeys swarming the streets of New Delhi - and with much the same effect.Every story on the cover of the 'Globe' merits its own angry exclamation point: "Hillary Caught Taking Bribes!" "Barack okayed the shady deal!" "Scandal: Her ties to Russia exposed!" "Now they'll both go to jail!" "Priscilla Elopes With Tom!" "Now they're raising Lisa Marie's twins, 8!" "Travolta secret sex swap!"The 'National Enquirer' is no better: "Prez Trump Tell-All: How I'm Cleaning Up Obama's Mess!" "Making Medicine Cheap Again!" "25 Million New High Paying Jobs!" "$3 Trillion Economic Jump-Start!" "Jackson's Diary Proves He Was Murdered!" "Daughter Paris Is Right!"So many exclamation points! It's exhausting!Exclamation marks are intended to emphasize something of major interest, but punctuation inflation has infected the tabloids, so that every story is screaming for attention, and as a result nothing seems shocking any more."Judy Garland Was Murdered!" screams the cover to the 'National Examiner.' Yawn. "Tom Selleck Secret Medical Crisis!" Okay - he reportedly has arthritis. Shocking. And the exclamation points keep coming: "Warren Beatty Turns 80! Inside His Amazing Life!" "Judge Judy's $200 million Garage Sale!" "Cruise Ship Murders!"Virtually every story in this week's 'Enquirer' is cursed with an exclamation point, with only a handful of notable exceptions: the "Ask The Vet" column offering pet advice, the so-dubious-we-don't-believe-it-for-a-minute headline about country singer Blake Shelton: "Blake Back On The Bottle?" and the photo of Caroline Kennedy in a swimsuit under the headline: "Camelot Comes to the Caribbean," for which I assume a sub-editor will be fired for failing to add the obligatory exclamation point.Otherwise, exclamation points are called upon to add urgency and importance to such dubious news stories as: "Caitlyn's Crushing on Boy George!" "Judge Wapner's Verdict on Judy: Overpaid!" "Hard Workouts Weaken Sex Drive!" and "Keeping A Cool Head!" (a story about the so-called "International Hair Freezing Contest" at Takhini Hot Springs spa.)The celebrity glossy magazines are hardly immune to punctuation inflation."My Dream Baby!" screams the cover of 'People' magazine, reporting on 'Today' show host Hoda Kotb's baby adoption. "Ben & Jen Divorce on Hold!" 'Us' magazine offers us "Ali's Wedding Album!" with the assumption that we all know TV's former 'Bachelorette' Ali Fedotowsky, and are shocked - shocked!! - that she's finally tied the knot.The celebrity magazines appear to use exclamation points more as decorative touches than to mark an extraordinary story."Life's a Beach!" screams the 'People' headline above a photo of 'Dancing With The Stars' alumnus Julianne Hough, who is intriguingly not pictured at a beach or even near a beach, but instead is seen aboard a luxury yacht in Mexico. "Harry And Meghan's Date!" yells a 'People' headline above a blurry long-distance photo of Prince Harry and girlfriend Meghan Markle holding hands in Jamaica. "Brie Larson: She's Also a Photographer!" Extraordinary - an actress who can take photos too! Whatever next?'Us' magazine seems more enamored of the exclamation point, capping all its photo headlines in its "Hot Pics!" section: "Royal Island Romance!" ""J. Lo Shimmers!" "Olsens Under Cover!" "Taking Paws on the Go!" "A Girlfriends' Getaway!" "Good Times, for Shore!" "Love's Afloat for Dev!" "Smooth Political Moves!" "An Emerald Queen B!"Enough already!Fortunately, we have the crack investigative team at 'Us' mag to tell us that Kendall Jenner wore it best, Emily Deschanel loses her keys or phone "multiple times a day," 'The Catch' star Sonya Walger carries lip gloss, anti-perspirant and her son's model toy car in her Mansur Gavriel satchel, and that the stars are just like us: they share snacks, ride bikes, play soccer, and run errands. "Stars: They're Just Like Us!" proclaims the headline. Because nothing could be more extraordinary than seeing a star eating or playing tennis.The award for the most appropriate use of an exclamation point this week goes to the 'Examiner,' with its headline: "Jet Has A Near Miss - With A UFO!" This supposedly occurred before "hundreds of air show spectators" who saw a jet pass an unidentified object in the sky. A weather balloon? An orbiting satellite? "Nobody knows for sure what exactly the mysterious disk is . . . " reports the 'Examiner,' " . . . but it could be alien-based."Onwards and downwards . . .
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by Rob Beschizza on (#2F7HQ)
The BBC reports that an "ordinary rabbit's hole in a farmer's field leads to an underground sanctuary once said to be used by the Knights Templar."
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by Carla Sinclair on (#2F74R)
If you're on the paleo diet, you might want to rethink what you're eating. Not all Neanderthals ate a meat-and-fat paleo diet. In fact, some were vegetarians.In a recent study, researcher Laura Weyrich and her team, from the University of Adelaide in Australia, examined the dental plaque – and its DNA – of five Neanderthal skulls to see what these folks used to eat.According to The Atlantic:
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by Rob Beschizza on (#2F71D)
Fans of old computer RPGs will doubtless agree that best part of many was the character creation screen, where you get to fool around with portraits, characteristics and classes and all the other little details.I wondered "what if a whole game took place in a classic 8/16-bit style character creation screen?" So I made a prototype browser game called Character Creation is the Whole Game.When you spend one of your allocated points, your character ages and automatically experiences the adventures that in life might have resulted in greater strength, wisdom or skill. Random events take place -- dungeon plunges and hauls. Stat choices would lead down different paths of life: with clever balancing to epic jobs and rewards, and mediocrity to those who dumbly max or spreading . And eventually you die or retire or become King. (more…)
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by Jason Weisberger on (#2F710)
My daughter called me, laughing, to say she'd need another tempered glass screen protector for her iPhone.These extra layers of glass on your phone really work. $8 every 4 months is a lot better than losing $100 every 2.OMOTON 2.5D Round Edge 9H Tempered Glass Anti-Scratch Screen Protector for iPhone SE/ 5S/ 5C/ 5 - Clear (2 Pack) via Amazon
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by Jason Weisberger on (#2F6XT)
At release, in 1980, Raise the Titanic seriously disappointed me. As an 8-year-old young Titanic wreck fan, I was full of hope. Watching it as 45-year-old who now thinks the Andrea Doria is far more interesting, this movie put me right to sleep.Of course there is a rare and special mineral secreted about the wrecked Titanic that both the U.S.S.R. and U.S.A. need. This is 1980, and before Donald Trump would just let the Russians take whatever they want, so the good ol' Americans send their most awesomest rogue agent guy to save the day and incidentally Raise the Titanic.Here is the full version:https://youtu.be/9PYla-XON4s
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by Cory Doctorow on (#2F6VF)
In January, the Russian Duma passed a law decriminalizing wife-beating, and so to celebrate International Women's Day, the Russian Socialist Movement snuck fake ads into the St Petersburg subway system highlighting violence and discrimination against women in Russia. (more…)
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#2F6VH)
I bought this set of 13 kitchen towels on Amazon in July. They've held up well, and do a good job of absorbing water. At $15 for 13 towels, they are not expensive to replace, but I haven't even started to think about getting a new set.
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by Cory Doctorow on (#2F6RH)
For decades, the Japanese magic trick company Tenyo has delighted amateur conjurers with their little magic gimmicks, which can be very clever indeed, but which are nearly guaranteed to fall flat when performed for friends and strangers. (more…)
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by David Pescovitz on (#2F6KJ)
My friends in The Afghan Whigs released a stunningly weird and and dark new video for their track "Demon in Profile," from their just-announced album In Spades to be released May 5. I've listened to the entire album and it's a phantasmagoric, expansive, soulful masterpiece that to my ear harkens back to the noir magnificence of my favorite Whigs record, Black Love (1996).“It’s a spooky record,†says Greg Dulli. “I like that it’s veiled. It’s not a concept album per se, but as I began to assemble it, I saw an arc and followed it. To me it’s about memory – in particular, how quickly life and memory can blur together.â€A few weeks after the release of In Spades, the Whigs take their magick to Europe.
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by Jason Weisberger on (#2F6KM)
Snuggie, a specialist warming item designed to allow docile and nearly immobile United States citizens to consume chips while bundled in a blanket and watching Oprah, sued the US government and won. Seems the feds wanted to designate the Snuggie as "apparel" because it reminds them of priest's robes, and shockingly tax it more than a mere "blanket."Via WaPo:
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by Rob Beschizza on (#2F6KP)
Phil Huddy, parked at an intersection, has little time to respond to an oncoming driver fleeing the cops. Salty language ahoy!
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by Cory Doctorow on (#2F6KR)
This is indeed an up-to-the-minute text [PDF], dated Mar 7, 2017. It's written by Googler/MIT prof Eric Lehman, MIT/Akamai scientist F Thomson Leighton and MIT AI researcher Albert R Meyer, as a companion to their Mathematics for Computer Science open course. (via 4 Short Links)
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by Andrea James on (#2F6FA)
Ned Desmond shares the scary story of how a small site he managed that advertised fishing expeditions ended up with 565,192 scam pages. He also suggests five ways to avoid the same fate. (more…)
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by Cory Doctorow on (#2F6FC)
Polymath historian-novelist Ada Palmer has just published Seven Surrenders, the long-awaited sequel to her astounding debut novel Too Like the Lightning, in which she continues to spin tales in an intricately devised, wonderfully original 25th century. (more…)
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by Jason Weisberger on (#2F6CZ)
One of the two Ford Mustang automobiles used in the filming of the Steve McQueen classic 'Bullitt' has been found. Long missing, the green pony car was found wasting away in a Baja, Mexico junkyard.https://youtu.be/31JgMAHVeg0The car is now being restored.Via the LA Times:
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#2F6CA)
I'm playing this recording of soft droning engine noise from Star Trek TNG as I type this and I can hardly keep my eyes open. This is just one of several space ship sounds recordings featured on Open Culture. There's also the USCSS Nostromo from Alien, Dr. Who's Tardis (yes, not really a spac.... ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz
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by Cory Doctorow on (#2F6CC)
Lots of people think they're allergic to penicillin, but aren't -- so when they have infections, doctors are obliged to skip the front-line drugs, which accelerates the pace of antibiotic resistance in common bacteria. (more…)
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by Jason Weisberger on (#2F6CE)
Serially unlucky small plane pilot Harrison Ford will reprise his role as the greatest action hero of all time, Indiana Jones.Via the Mouse:
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by Cory Doctorow on (#2F6AV)
For many years, the SXSW festival's standard contract with its non-US artists contained an over-reaching, frightening clause that seemed to threaten them being turned over to immigration authorities if they violated the terms of their deal with the show -- say, by playing unauthorized gigs. Though the festival never invoked this language, it took on a new salience in light of the Trump administration's scapegoating of migrants. (more…)
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by Mark Frauenfelder on (#2F6AE)
Casual Carpool is a longtime San Francisco Bay Area tradition where people line up at certain spots in Oakland and San Francisco to be picked up by people driving over the Bay Bridge. It's a win-win deal. Riders pay just $1 for a ride (voluntary), and drivers get to take the speedy carpool lanes. Thousands of people do it everyday. It's a lot cheaper than BART, too! (The last time I took BART from the Oakland Airport to the 16th Street Mission station in San Francisco it was over $20 round trip - wtf? That would be $400 a month for a commuter. Is BART just for rich people?)The Wall Street Journal has an article about Casual Carpool, written by Laura Stevens. It is paywalled, but somehow I got access to the article after the third or forth try. The video from the article is above.Snip:
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by Andrea James on (#2F5NT)
True's beaked whales spend much of their time deep underwater, so much of what we know about the mysterious species comes from stranded corpses. That's why a live sighting of a pod including underwater footage is so remarkable. (more…)
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