Kara Jean

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 27, 2018 is:

rubric • \ROO-brik\  • noun

1 : an authoritative rule; especially : a rule for conduct of a liturgical service

2 : heading, title; also : class, category

3 : an explanatory or introductory commentary : gloss; specifically : an editorial interpolation

4 : an established rule, tradition, or custom

5 : a guide listing specific criteria for grading or scoring academic papers, projects, or tests

Examples:

"… Katharine Briggs (1875-1968) and her daughter, Isabel Myers (1897-1980), … devised a rubric that identified personality according to four 'easy to understand and easily relatable' categories: extravert or introvert, thinking or feeling, sensing or intuiting, judging or perceiving." — Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2018

"The whole rubric of employer-employee relations is undergoing a transformation—and the approach of treating employees as mere units in an assembly line is fast becoming outdated. In today's context, the extent of a company's employee engagement does play a role in a professional's decision to join it." — Avik Chanda, quoted in Business World, 27 Apr. 2018

Did you know?

Centuries ago, whenever manuscript writers inserted special instructions or explanations into a book, they put them in red ink to set them off from the black used in the main text. (They used the same practice to highlight saints' names and holy days in calendars, a practice which gave us the term red-letter day.) Ultimately, such special headings or comments came to be called rubrics, a term that traces back to ruber, the Latin word for "red." While the printing sense remains in use today, rubric also has an extended sense referring to any class or category under which something is organized.

Josh Klein became a TED talk sensation a number of years ago when he created a vending machine that taught crows how to exchange lost coins for peanuts. Now Josh has a new project based on his vending machine -- an "experimentation platform designed to autonomously train corvids (the family of birds crows belong to)." I asked him to write a bit about it. Here it is:

Ten years ago I walked out on the TED main stage in one of my very first public appearances and poured my heart out about the craziest, weirdest, most unlikely thing I'd ever attempted: building a vending machine for crows.

The response was immense, and for several months I was convinced that we were on the verge of transforming how the entire human race interacted with animals. We built an open source version of the box so anyone could make one, assembled dozens of kits so people could buy them and do their own tests, and I ran around in a media-fueled frenzy trying to get people to understand that crows really could change the world.

Then bad things happened. The community of fans stopped trying to assemble the design as they found it too hard to work with. Those who bought kits generally didn't finish building them. A big news outlet misreported my results and then redacted the piece by basically calling me a liar. Worst of all, I got so hurt that I stopped trying.

For a while. For whatever reason my inner ten year old wouldn't stop insisting that despite sinking a decade into obsessing over corvids (the family crows belong to) and other synanthropes (animals which live close to humans), I needed to do more. That my delicate ego didn't really mean much when humanity was increasingly ready to turn the corner on how they think about and live with other species.

In short, the work still matters. Enough that I spent another ten years working with a partner, Steve (a genius at hardware/software design), to develop and test over a dozen new prototypes of the CrowBox. While we were at it, folks like Steve Joy and Christophe Vieren built their own machines and shot videos of wild corvids using them, and most recently a team from University of Cambridge ran a series of experiments proving New Caledonian crows can use a vending machine they created.

All of which helped push us to finally release an updated version of the CrowBox: an appliance designed to facilitate experiments in training corvids. This design is cheaper, tougher, and easier to assemble - and is completely open source, of course. We've tested it with a few different groups of crows and jays with positive results, and have developed complete documentation, assembly videos, and community software support to help folks get up and running quickly. Now we're looking to build a community of like-minded folks to expand the design, test and improve the training protocol, and see how much we can learn about autonomously training corvids.

Download the design, build a box of your own, and jump in by testing it with your local birds. Nobody's likely to get rich off this and there are no guarantees of success, but with a little luck we'll be able to move the needle on how people think about their relationships with animals and learn a ton in the process.

the official CrowBox site

GayBlade (RJ Best - Mac/PC - 1992)

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 28, 2018 is:

curfew • \KER-fyoo\  • noun

1 : the sounding of a bell at evening

2 a : a regulation enjoining the withdrawal of usually specified persons (such as juveniles or military personnel) from the streets or the closing of business establishments or places of assembly at a stated hour

b : a signal to announce the beginning of a curfew

c : the hour at which a curfew becomes effective

d : the period during which a curfew is in effect

Examples:

"In addition to park areas designed for them, adolescents can go into almost all places in Berlin, including dance clubs and bars. There are some rules, including a curfew: teens under sixteen must be out of the clubs and restaurants by ten p.m., those under eighteen must leave by midnight." — Sara Zaske, Achtung Baby: An American Mom on the German Art of Raising Self-Reliant Children, 2017

"He walked with her back to the chateau; the curfew had tolled for the laborious villagers of Fleurieres, and the street was unlighted and empty." — Henry James, The American, 1877

Did you know?

In medieval Europe, a bell rang every evening at a fixed hour, and townspeople were required by law to cover or extinguish their hearth fires. It was the "cover fire" bell, or, as it was referred to in Anglo-French, coverfeu (from the French verb meaning "to cover," and the word for "fire"). By the time the English version, curfew, appeared, the authorities no longer regulated hearth fires, but an evening bell continued to be rung for various purposes—whether to signal the close of day, an evening burial, or enforcement of some other evening regulation. This "bell ringing at evening" became the first English sense of curfew. Not infrequently, the regulation signaled by the curfew involved regulating people's movement in the streets, and this led to the modern senses of the word.

kazucrash:

thebuttkingpost:

kazucrash:

thebuttkingpost:

kazucrash:

This is a real game.

This is not homebrew.

This was a (or rather, the only besides the pack in Cybermorph) launch title for the Jag.

A store near me has a copy of this new in box

Seeing it was the weirdest goddamn thing

Playing it is the weirdest goddamn thing too. Like, here’s a screenshot.

This barely even looks like a real game to me. It doesn’t even feel like one. I honestly thought I had downloaded homebrew for a second, but no, it’s an actual retail game published and developed by Atari for their ‘64-bit’ platform.

Do the math.

I legit almost thought this was a FPS for a second because the ship blends into the background like that

Enemy bullets sure do.

Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy (Atari - Jaguar - 1993) 

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 2, 2018 is:

canicular • \kuh-NIK-yuh-ler\  • adjective

: of or relating to the period between early July and early September when hot weather occurs in the northern hemisphere

Examples:

On weekend days in the canicular season, the wait at the town's only ice cream shop was often 20 people deep.

"Maggie had from her window, seen her stepmother leave the house—at so unlikely an hour, three o'clock of a canicular August…. It was the hottest day of the season…." — Henry James, The Golden Bowl, 1904

Did you know?

The Latin word canicula, meaning "small dog," is the diminutive form of canis, source of the English word canine. Canicula was also the name for Sirius, the star that represents the hound of the hunter Orion in the constellation named for that Roman mythological figure. Because the first visible rising of Sirius occurs during the summer, the hot sultry days that occur from early July to early September came to be called dies caniculares, or as we know them in English, "the dog days."

  “Yes, yes, yes! Balls, balls, balls!” -

Waku Waku 7 (Sunsoft - NeoGeo - 1996)  

Roger Bacon? - Shadow Hearts (Sacnoth - PS2 - 2001)  

Personal items surrendered by migrants, taken into custody by USCBP (US Customs and Border Protection). 

Recovered and photographed by Tom Kiefer, an ongoing project since 2007. 

See more: @tomkiefer.photographer 

These next-level Transformers costumes are not only cute, but they are very well-designed! It's especially cute because the kids are so young they seem a little unclear on how cool their final forms are. (more…)

Andrew Hill was stand-up paddleboarding off Gracetown, Western Australia when a pod of dolphins interrupted his fun.

“Eight or nine of them decided to catch that wave and surf straight at me, which has happened lots of times in the past to me and generally they just take off to one side left or right,” Hill told PerthNow. “It's good to see dolphins. Surfers like seeing dolphins, but obviously I'd prefer them to stay a little bit further away than they did yesterday.”

I'm sure they'd prefer the same of Mr. Hill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ISe0fdoaPs

Behold the hauntingly beautiful strains of Gheorghe Zamfir, master of the panflute, viral once again in 2018 due to the retro 90s' charms of his cable TV ads. It strikes me that Zamfir's extraordinarily formulaic magnificence, which is not sold in stores, is something that machine learning might mimic convincingly. Then we could have every song made and all possible songs yet to be made performed for us by Zamfir; an infinity of Zamfir spread from man's darkest hour to the brightest vaults of heaven.

Zamfir is often sampled by contemporary musicians. Here's "Graze" by Animal Collective, which gets lit about 3 minutes in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq6IIB-VmX4

Since 1847, non-discerning Americans have been eating slices of flavored chalk branded as NECCO wafers. With the company possibly closing soon, they're panic buying the inedible grim-tasting "candy" to torture one last round of guests or trick-or-treaters with their terrible taste in candy. (more…)

The Atlantic posted a big-picture gallery of unusual homes from around the world. My favorite is this profusely overgrown shack built on top of a high-rise tower in Guanghzhou. The owner has evaded legal service for 10 years. Photo: Reuters / China Daily

I've lived in British Columbia and Nova Scotia. This is, hands down, the best story I've ever read that involves both coasts.

According to The Times Colonist, 17 years ago, Nick Burchill, a naval reservist from Nova Scotia, was in Victoria, British Columbia for a work-related conference. He chose to stay at the Fairmont Empress Hotel: a high-falootin' luxury joint that's been a fixture on the city's downtown waterfront for decades. When Burchill came from the east coast, he knew that he'd be meeting with friends from the navy when time allowed for it. He brought them a gift: Chris Brothers Pepperoni sticks: a much-loved Nova Scotian delicacy. Not wanting anyone to feel left out, he brought, well, a lot. To keep the meat cool and edible until he could hand it over to his pals, Burchill cracked the window in his hotel room and laid the pepperoni out on the windowsill. He figured that the cool spring air would be enough to refrigerate the food. What happened next is the stuff of legend:

From the Times Colonist:

He spread the packages of pepperoni out on a table and along the window sill, then went for a leisurely four or five hour walk.

“I remember walking down the long hall and opening the door to my room to find an entire flock of seagulls in my room,” Burchill wrote. “I didn’t have time to count, but there must have been 40 of them and they had been in my room, eating pepperoni for a long time.”

Burchill discovered that spicy pepperoni does not agree with a seagull’s digestive system. The room was covered in guano.

Burchill’s unexpected entry startled the birds.

The birds, losing their shit over their being a human in the room, began to literally lose their shit, everywhere they flew in the room, spreading poop over everything. As they took to the air, the seagulls knocked over lamps, decorations and anything else that wasn't bolted down. As Burchill put it, the resulting chaos was "...a tornado of seagull excrement, feathers, pepperoni chunks and fairly large birds whipping around the room." Fighting his way through the flock, Burchill managed to open the rest of the windows in his suite so that the birds could escape. As one of the birds tried to re-enter the room in search of more food, Burchill threw his shoe at it. The shoe ended up on the front lawn of the hotel, narrowly missing a group of vistors.

Burchill has been, understandably, banned from staying at the Empress for the past 17 years. This past week, his lifetime ban was lifted by the hotel's management after he wrote them a passionate letter explaining his part in the pepperoni-and-seagull related disaster.

That Burchill included a pound of Chris Brothers pepperoni with the letter as a peace offering may have had something to do with it too.

Image via pixabay, courtesy of cocoparisienne

Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (Animation Magic - CD-i - 1993)  

Following the unprecedented success of his film Black Panther, director Ryan Coogler shared this sweet thank-you letter via the Marvel Studios Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/marvelstudios/status/966115769388998656?s=11

The letter reads:

I am struggling to find the words to express my gratitude at this moment, but I will try. Filmmaking is a team sport. And our team was made up [of] amazing people from all over the world who believed in this story. Deep down we all hoped that people would come to see a film about a fictional country on the continent of Africa, made up of a cast of people of African descent.

Never in a million years did we imagine that you all would come out this strong. It still humbles me to think that people care enough to spend their money and time watching our film. But to see people of all backgrounds wearing clothing that celebrates their heritage, taking pictures next to our posters with their friends and family, and sometimes dancing in the lobbies of theaters often moved me and my wife to tears.

For the people who bought out theaters, who posted on social about how lit the film would be, bragged about our awesome cast, picked out outfits to wear, and who stood in line in theaters all over the world, all before even seeing the film…

To the press who wrote about the film for folks who hadn’t yet seen it, and encouraged audiences to come out…

And to the young ones, who came out with their parents, with their mentors, and with their friends…

Thank you for giving our team of filmmakers the greatest gift: The opportunity to share this film, that we poured our hearts and souls into, with you.

Sincerely,

Ryan Coogler

P.S. Wakanda Forever

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

H/t (via retweet) Hugo Mercier.

UPDATE:

On Twitter, nothing worth saying is said only once.

If squeezing pimples until they pop and ooze pus sounds appealing to you, then you'll want to check out the Pop It Pal. It's a fleshy, blemish-blowing novelty toy that lets you obsessively squeeze out "pus" without tearing apart your own skin.

The married couple behind it, Billy and Summer Pierce, came up with the idea one day while driving. Billy explains:

You see, one day, my wife and I were driving down the road.

She said:

"How awesome would it be if we could make a pimple that felt real and the pop was huge, just like those videos we watch?"

I thought: "You might be on to something Dear."

Maybe, just maybe, this means she would STOP picking on me all the time. Ladies and Gentlemen, I KNOW you know what I'm talking about.

So, I spent the next year figuring out how to make it happen.

It's now available in their online shop for $19.99. "Pus" refills are available for $5.99.

In 1969, Irv Teibel(1938-2010) released a record that would have a profound impact on ambient and New Age music that's continues to this day. "Environments 1: Psychologically Ultimate Seashore" was the first in a catalog of albums that melded pop psychology with environmental sound recording to sooth the mind. Over the years, Treibel's company Syntonic Ressearch Inc. produced 11 albums with 22 soundscapes ranging from "Optimum Aviary" to "Wood-Masted Sailboat" to "Ultimate Heartbeat."

"The music of the future isn't music," Teibel said.

Now, audio archaeologist Douglas Mcgowan, curator of the sublime I Am The Center New Age compilation that I raved about here, Syntonic Research Inc, and the fine folks at Numero Group have brought the Environments catalog to iOS. Environments is now a fantastic $2.99 app with all 22 remastered long-form soundscapes in easily swipeable form. It's intuitive, beautifully minimalist, and a perfect evolution of the original work. Turn on, tune in, chill out.

Environments for iOS (iTunes)

For the whole Environments story, read: Natural Selection (Pitchfork)

https://youtu.be/V10Df3GKvfs

Inspired by the Purple One himself, this cookbook is the work of Cat Food, a "super small, super busy, super tiny bakery" in South East London. Inside its pages you'll find Prince-ly recipes for Purple Rain ombre cakes, Raspberry Beret tarts, Darling Stikki toffee puddings, Most Beautiful Swirl in the World brownies, and more.

The book is available to preorder now for £9.00 from Belly Kids. It's set to ship in March.

I have to wonder though, as cute as this is, how long it will be before the Prince estate shuts it down?

Purple Rain ombre cake

Little Red Velvette cupcakes

Previously: Prince and his purple piano inspired this new Pantone Color

(Nerdist)

planet-kinniku:

Winpose - Teapackman, Kinnikuman Muscle Fight

Given the many historic records for dreadfulness that 2017 handily destroyed, let's try and find some a tiny moment of joy upon which to end the year, shall we?

So: Behold Chowder, a 6-year-old Vietnamese potbellied pig. He lives with five rescue dogs, all of whom are apparently fast friends. There are several shots of this crew hanging out at at My Modern Met, and if you need a steady stream of such imagery to survive whatever horrors 2018 is nursing its in cradle, there's an Instagram feed for these animals at @piggypoo_and_crew.

Images used with permission of @piggypoo_and_crew

attract-mode-collective:

I Can’t Believe More People Aren’t Talking About That Persona X Golden Girls Game In Development

Last week, while sharing some oldies but goodies for Attract Mode’s Medium feed, I was reminded of the existence of The Golden Girls Take Manhattan DX, which I first wrote about in April. And I cannot believe I’m still the only person to have written about it! So time for a deeper dive, to help spread awareness take two.

This meant souring the creator’s Tumblr, who goes by grawly, a self-identified software engineer at Midboss (btw, 2046: Read Only Memories is finally available on the Vita, in case you haven’t heard). And Golden Girls Take Manhattan is something he’s been developing, on the side, since January 2017.

grawly’s dev posts paints a fairly straightforward picture of the work in progress, who also does an excellent job of showing us, the observer, of where he/she (sorry, am unfamiliar with the preferred pronoun) has been and where he/she is going…

It’s also clear how, like many things in life, Golden Girls Take Manhattan began as a silly joke that has since morphed into a serious, concerted effort (relatively speaking), and it’s fascinating in such instances to see when and where the switch was flipped.

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure if it has been fully flipped.

Keep reading

Heard a guy talking about Belgian whistles.

"A basic website costs 10k, or 25k upwards if you want all the Belgian whistles," he said.

Belgian whistles.

— C:temp (@BryceElder) December 5, 2017

This one isn't in the Eggcorn Database, and doesn't seem to be mentioned in the forum either. [But googling the phrase is not recommended…]

There are a few other gems in the Twitter commentary:

Read a letter once at work, evidently dictated, referring to the “customer’s neck size”.
It was about VAT.

— Steve Heeley (@HeeleySteve) December 5, 2017

Local vintage furniture shop sells 'Chester Drawers'.

— Anna (@bythebirchtree) December 5, 2017

I once had somebody tell me they wouldn’t be made an escape goat.

It was in a letter too, so they’d actually written it out by hand.

— Kevin Clarke (@Socrates1882) December 5, 2017

Recently heard "I'm not sure it will pass mustard."

— Dan (Person) of the Year (@WarioDraghi) December 5, 2017

A colleague making a request via e-mail wanted to ensure me that he was not being a pre-Madonna.

— mowa542 (@mowa542) December 5, 2017

https://twitter.com/thef1nnegan/status/938166930531237888

I like these, pacifically the one about Belgian Whistles.

To my in-laws, the tiniest slice of cake is a "slither" of cake.

— CapShoddy (@CapS45) December 5, 2017

I got an email offering me "Paper click" advertising #VoicetoText

— TitleIXbaby Sez: NoRacists NoRapists NoNazis (@Titleixbaby) December 6, 2017

https://twitter.com/narrowingworld/status/938225636325318656

pic.twitter.com/BRTHlHCsCn

— Nick (@fools_n_kings) December 5, 2017