Dan Jones

What if Merida existed in the modern day? She might carry a crossbow and rock a kilt. That’s how cosplayer Zoisite-Virupaksha sees her. Her take on the wild ginger from Brave has the princess riding a motorcycle and donning a leather jacket and boots. I think it’s perfect. I love the inclusion of the crossbow and that the t-shirt has the familiar bear emblem from the necklace Queen Elinor gave to Merida.

Photos by Jade.

See more of the series and her more traditional Merida costume after the break.

Send your cosplay pics to tips@fashionablygeek.com.

(Tumblr via Cheezburger)

People had assumed that the name of the secretive creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, was a pseudonym designed to protect his anonymity. Newsweek's Leah McGrath Goodman tracked down a man who could be the Bitcoin founder and discovered that his real name is...Satoshi Nakamoto.

Two police officers from the Temple City, Calif., sheriff's department flank him, looking puzzled. "So, what is it you want to ask this man about?" one of them asks me. "He thinks if he talks to you he's going to get into trouble."

"I don't think he's in any trouble," I say. "I would like to ask him about Bitcoin. This man is Satoshi Nakamoto."

"What?" The police officer balks. "This is the guy who created Bitcoin? It looks like he's living a pretty humble life."

I'd come here to try to find out more about Nakamoto and his humble life. It seemed ludicrous that the man credited with inventing Bitcoin - the world's most wildly successful digital currency, with transactions of nearly $500 million a day at its peak - would retreat to Los Angeles's San Bernardino foothills, hole up in the family home and leave his estimated $400 million of Bitcoin riches untouched. It seemed similarly implausible that Nakamoto's first response to my knocking at his door would be to call the cops. Now face to face, with two police officers as witnesses, Nakamoto's responses to my questions about Bitcoin were careful but revealing.

Tacitly acknowledging his role in the Bitcoin project, he looks down, staring at the pavement and categorically refuses to answer questions.

"I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it," he says, dismissing all further queries with a swat of his left hand. "It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."

Nice bit of sleuthing by Goodman. But given the interest around Bitcoin, it's amazing that it took this long, even with Nakamoto's first name change.

Update: The subject of Newsweek's story now denies he was the creator of Bitcoin.

Nice visualization of the solar system; the Moon is one pixel across and everything else is scaled to that, including the distances between planets. Get ready to scroll. A lot.

It would be neat to do this with a plutonium atom or something. Related: typographically speaking, what's the point size of the Moon?

In his post about 1990s web development techniques, Zach Holman praises the 1-pixel transparent GIF.

1x1.gif should have won a fucking Grammy. Or a Pulitzer. Or Most Improved, Third Grade Gym Class or something. It's the most important achievement in computer science since the linked list. It's not the future we deserved, but it's the future we needed (until the box model fucked it all up).

Given all of the awards Holman desires to present, I'm surprised he didn't mention the inventor of the spacer GIF, David Siegel. Siegel was perhaps the first celebrity web designer -- well, a celebrity among web designers anyway. He dispensed opinionated design knowledge from his personal homepage and used the High Five award to showcase his idea of cutting edge web design. (Fun fact: Siegel's own site was the first High Five award winner.)

Somewhere along the way, Siegel came up with the idea of using a 1x1 pixel transparent GIF to introduce whitespace on web pages. The file size was very small but you could scale it up visually using the height and width attributes of the tag and use it hundreds of times on a site because it was cached by the browser the first time it loaded.

Popularized in the pages of his web design book, Creating Killer Web Sites, Siegel's spacer GIF was completely non-standard and hacky but had the great advantages of 1) giving designers superb control over a site's design and 2) working more or less the same in every graphical browser. The designers of the time weren't content to wait around for the SGML nerds at W3C to figure out better ways of displaying web pages, so when Siegel pulled this beautiful kludge out of his pocket, everyone quickly adopted the technique. For years the spacer GIF dominated web design, for better and for worse. So yeah, maybe Siegel does deserve a Grammy or something.

So the JoCoCruiseCrazy IV was amazing. I have many feelings and memories and pictures to share, but I’m in this sad little bag of post-cruise ennui, and until I can get past it, here’s a video that the amazing Molly Lewis shot on the cruise.

People think they’re so darn smart, but they’re not at all as clever as they believe. You can show them just how dumb they are with a little thing called science.

Product Page ($22.99)

Come on, Japan, how come you always get to have all of the cool stuff? Talking robots. All the best video games. And now a college that lets its students wear whatever they want on graduation day?

Reddit user baybaybey posted a link to an album that shows what the graduating students choose to wear at their recent ceremony, and it’s all kinds of weird and awesome.

Check out the pics after the break…

If you liked this, check out what happens in Korean yearbooks.

(via Reddit)

zohbugg:

Well let me tell you, it was quite the pragmatic purchase. It has endless uses in my morning routine.

Such as making the bed:

Making toast:

Getting things off high shelves:

Making coffee:

Reaching the remote when it’s too far away:

And assisting me when I ran out of toilet paper:

I don’t know how I survived life without it.

Come at me, bro.

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I’m like:

A poster on Reddit asks: What are two events that took place in the same time in history but don't seem like they would have? A few of my favorite answers (from this thread and a previous one):

When pilgrims were landing on Plymouth Rock, you could already visit what is now Santa Fe, New Mexico to stay at a hotel, eat at a restaurant and buy Native American silver.

Prisoners began to arrive to Auschwitz a few days after McDonald's was founded.

The first wagon train of the Oregon Trail heads out the same year the fax machine is invented.

Nintendo was founded in 1888. Jack the Ripper was on the loose in 1888.

1912 saw the maiden voyage of the Titanic as well as the birth of vitamins, x-ray crystallography, and MDMA.

1971: The year in which America drove a lunar buggy on the moon and Switzerland gave women the vote.

NASA's Gemini program was winding down at the same time as plate tectonics, as we know it today, was becoming refined and accepted by the scientific community.

Spain was still a fascist dictatorship when Microsoft was founded.

There were no classes in calculus in Harvard's curriculum for the first few years because calculus hadn't been discovered yet.

Two empires [Roman & Ottoman] spanned the entire gap from Jesus to Babe Ruth.

When the pyramids were being built, there were still woolly mammoths.

The last use of the guillotine was in France the same year Star Wars came out.

Oxford University was over 300 years old when the Aztec Empire was founded.

Related: true facts that sound made up, timeline twins, and the Great Span.

Editor’s Note: This guest post by Creek Stewart first appeared at willowhavenoutdoor.com.

I am a big fan of the bow and arrow for a variety of reasons, and I personally think that anyone who has an interest in primitive survival skills or modern urban survival should seriously consider purchasing a good bow and arrow and become proficient in using it. There are hundreds of bows to choose from, but my particular bow of choice is an October Mountain Blue Ridge Hunter Take Down Recurve Bow. Below are six reasons why you should consider owning a similar survival take-down bow.

1. Portability

“Take-down” simply means that the bow comes apart in three pieces: the middle grip section and the two limbs. It is simple to take down – just the twist of a couple lug screws and voila. The fact that it comes apart makes it very portable. You can stash the bow in your pack or Bug Out Bag. It’s perfect for a Bug Out Vehicle or BOL (Bug Out Location) cache as well. And, it weighs very little. My bow weighs only a couple of pounds – if that.

2. Affordability

A good take-down bow should only cost you a couple hundred bucks and if you take care of it, you can expect it to last your lifetime. Not only is the bow itself affordable, but the ammunition (arrows) are cost effective too. Once you hone your shooting skills, you should be able to retrieve your arrows after shooting and reuse them over and over again. With a little practice, you can also easily make your own arrows using wooden dowels or even natural-found wood and plant shafts.

3. Versatility

Modern arrow points vs flint arrowheads.

Modern arrows have come a long way. Most new carbon fiber arrows are ultra lightweight and have a tip that accepts different screw-in arrow tips. I have an extensive selection of tips to choose from: small game stunner tips, broad-head razor large game tips, standard practice tips, hook tips and line for bow fishing, etc. I’ve killed both squirrel and deer using my take-down bow with various arrow tips. A good selection of arrow tips can be easily kept in a pack or vehicle. I also practice flint knapping regularly so that if I was ever in a situation when I need to make my own arrow points, I would know how.

4. Laws, Red Tape, and Paperwork 

Legal limitations and laws are much more lax on the bow and arrow than they are with guns and bullets. You don’t have to mess with paperwork and permits, even though, in the right hands the bow and arrow is equally deadly. The less you have to deal with this stuff the better.

5. Silent

The bow and arrow is a very quiet weapon. You never know when you might need the convenience of a weapon that is nearly completely silent as well as deadly.

6. Multi-Use

Some pieces of a take-down bow kit can be multi-use items, which is always a plus. I like for everything I pack to have at least 2-3 other uses. The first and most obvious multi-use piece is the bow string. Bow strings range in length from 4 feet to 6 feet and are incredibly strong. You could use a bow string in a variety of ways:

• Bow drill for fire
• Snares/traps
• Cordage for shelter building
• Trotline fishing

If you are packing a bow then you are probably packing a few arrows as well. Arrows can be used as spears and gigs for small game and fish. They can also be lashed to a longer shaft and used as a larger spear for big game such as wild pig. This larger spear can be used in self defense as well. Imagine a spear with three arrows lashed to the end and each of the arrows with a razor broad-head on the tip – you can’t even buy a spear that effective. I would love to hear any ideas you have on the subject of multi-use with a bow and arrow kit!

Final Thoughts on the Take-Down Survival Bow and Arrow 

Creek with a homemade hickory bow.

Pros of the Bow and Arrow:

• Very Portable for such an effective long range weapon
• Silent
• Affordable
• Multi-Use
• Can reuse arrows
• Can make arrows in the bush
• Lax laws

Negatives of the Bow and Arrow:

• Requires practice and skill to be effective
• Arrows can be a little cumbersome to pack

What I enjoy most about the bow and arrow is that it requires skill to use. It is also a weapon that carries a certain amount of respect. Ninety-nine percent of being able to effectively use the weapon is the skill itself – not the equipment. The skill will always be with you. Even if your bow is damaged or broken in a survival situation or stolen in a bug out situation, you can even make a bow as long as you have a strong piece of cordage. I made the bow at the top of the conclusion from a hickory sapling using only my knife. I also made the arrow. Making a bow and arrow in the bush is definitely an option. However, it will do you no good if you don’t know how to shoot it. Preparation is the key. Practice now for the situation later.

Remember, it’s not IF, but WHEN.

~Creek

__________________

Creek Stewart is a Senior Instructor at the Willow Haven Outdoor School for Survival, Preparedness & Bushcraft. Creek’s passion is teaching, sharing, and preserving outdoor living and survival skills. Creek is also the author of the book Build the Perfect Bug Out Bag: Your 72-Hour Disaster Survival Kit. For more information, visit Willow Haven Outdoor.

The might of Cthulhu.

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Should you shave? This handy flowchart gives you a series of options that will help you determine if you need to use that razor immediately, or if you’re free to head out the door with a glorious beard.

See the full flowchart after the break…

(via College Humor)