Russian Sledges

Silly, spinning Hawaiian Monk Seal

Lost Last Hurrahs Of #Menswear 1.

Royal Mail workplace posters, 1970s.

They may not have invented Facebook, but twin tech entrepreneurs Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss — better known to the world as the Winklevoss twins, or Winkelvii — are deep into the next big online trend. The brothers claim to have amassed one of the largest portfolios of Bitcoin in the world, worth around $1.3 million, or about 1 percent of the entire currency's dollar value equivalent, as the New York Times Dealbook reports.

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That staggering amount comes in a little less than a year, as the brothers are only reported to have begun "dabbling" in Bitcoin starting last summer. “We have elected to put our money and faith in a mathematical framework that is free of politics and human error,” Tyler Winklevoss told Dealbook. The 31-year-old brothers also seem unfazed by the market's tumult in the past few days: “People say it’s a Ponzi scheme, it’s a bubble,” Cameron said. “People really don’t want to take it seriously. At some point that narrative will shift to ‘virtual currencies are here to stay.’ We’re in the early days.”

• Source DealBook
• Image Credit Rory Cellan (Flickr)
• Related Items facebook investing bitcoin currency winklevoss twins

““There is a whole new sort of group of individuals now…that never hunt at all,” he said. “But they own guns for one of two reasons — self-protection, or they just like the feel of that AR-15 at the range.” “They like the way it feels,” Biden continued. “It’s like driving a Ferrari, you know. And so my impression is there’s not the same sort of cultural norm about gun ownership with a lot of people who are buying guns now.””

- Joe Biden: ‘Having Guns Is Like Driving A Ferrari’ [Video]

As an increasingly bellicose North Korea rattles its saber, an unusual sighting in North Korean border town Sinuiju: Female soldiers in platform heels, patrolling by the banks of the Yalu River.

Converse

We’re delighted to announce the immediate availability of Zotero 4.0, which offers loads of new functionality. Many of these features were requested and designed via our support forums and developer list, and we’re excited to put them into the hands of our users! Here are a few highlights:

Automatic Journal Abbreviations
Zotero now comes with built-in journal abbreviations that match publications to their standard shortened forms.

Colored Tags
Zotero 4.0 lets you to assign colors to up to six of your favorite tags to highlight important “to read” articles or other items that you would like to find quickly at a glance.

On-Demand File Syncing
The latest version of Zotero can be configured to download files only on demand to save bandwidth and disk space on devices where you don’t require your full Zotero library synchronized. A new attachment indicator UI lets you know at a glance whether a file has been synced and is available.

Automatic Style Updating
Zotero now performs a daily check for revised citation styles and automatically downloads them as needed.

Detailed Download Display
Our iconic one-click import just got better: Zotero now immediately shows which collection is receiving your newly saved items and indicates whether any attachments have been grabbed.

Beyond these highlights, Zotero 4.0 includes many under-the-hood improvements that set the stage for major advancements in the very near future. As always, if you have any questions about Zotero, a dedicated group of users and developers are happy to help you in our support forums!

Many thanks to Sebastian Karcher for contributing screenshots and text to this post.

Google has added a new way to control what happens to your account when you stop using it — most likely because you're no longer around. A new Inactive Account Manager, available in Google's settings, allows you to set a timeout period for your account. If you go three months to a year without signing in, Google will first notify a selected phone number or alternate email address. After that, it will let you add up to ten contacts, who will be notified with a custom-written email and optionally given access to data from any or all Google services. As a last step, Google can also delete your account once any contacts have been notified.

In a blog post, Google detailed how to plan for your "digital afterlife." It's not the first company to deal with what happens to data when you die, or to implement a kind of dead man's switch. Even if they have a policy in place, sites like Facebook must deal with how to adapt a running flow of information into a static memorial. But up until now, Google has relied on "authorized representatives" of the deceased to submit applications if they want access to a Gmail or other Google account. With the Inactive Account Manager, it's creating the online equivalent of a living will.

• Via TechCrunch
• Source Google Public Policy Blog
• Related Items inactive account manager death digital afterlife gmail Google

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has started a movement called Adjunct Action and will be meeting this weekend in Boston with adjuncts from more than 20 area campuses to talk about raising standards for adjunct professors.

A river in the east of Iceland called Lagarfljót has had its ecosystem collapse.

wildunicornherd:

Description, from the Wisconsin Historical Society: “View from behind of a young woman wearing a t-shirt with the title Dungeon Mistress printed on the back while she plays an adventure game on a computer. In the background is a blackboard.”

Via @auntiepixelante.

1957.

Harvard librarians.

Roughly 700 compliments were received in 2012. The following is a sampling of some of the more unusual entries, which include a story about a lost engagement ring and the offer of a gift made by a late relative.

The Bow Tie Crowd.

Samuel Eliot Morison, 1957.

There is more cloth for those, who enjoy the distinctive drape, texture and colours of vintage cloth. Most of it is woven by venerable Italian mills in the Biella area of the Piemonte region, for instance Luigi Botto, Reda and Mario Zegna.

I am having several jackets and suits in making for myself from the fabrics. There is no reason not to choose outstanding cloth for expensive bespoke clothing …

Buy vintage cloth at the store.

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The ‘green tea bitch’ is one term amongst a string of new words that categorize different types of Chinese women. The ‘coffee bitch’ (咖啡婊) is mentioned on Weibo and message boards to describe high-end office ladies who constantly mix English with Chinese, always dress according to the latest fashion craze and love to photograph themselves in fancy restaurants or on sunny beaches. The ‘black tea bitch’ (红茶婊) is a promiscuous girl who smokes, drinks, and likes eyeliner and low-cut clothes that show her cleavage. The ‘milk tea bitch’ (奶茶婊) is the kind of woman who talks in a girlish voice and has extremely sweet looks, always kind to everyone around her; although this is only to attract men who will give her presents that she will kindly accept.

When someone posts sad news to Facebook—the illness or death of a loved one, the loss of a job—or shares one of life’s little annoyances, like a particularly frustrating coffee spill, the sympathetic responses frequently include some variation of, “That’s why we need a ‘dislike’ button.”

For the devoted disliker, there are some options, like the Hater app and browser extensions. They are poor substitutes, but they’ll have to do, it seems. When Bob Baldwin, a Facebook product engineer, took part in an Ask Me Anything on Reddit on Tuesday, someone wondered whether we’ll ever see a “dislike” button. Baldwin responded:

“Actions on Facebook tend to focus on positive social interactions. Like is the lightest-weight way to express positive sentiment. I don't think adding a light-weight way to express negative sentiment would be that valuable. I know there are times when it'd make sense, like when a friend is having a rough day, or got into a car accident like my sister yesterday (she's okay!). For these times, a nice comment from a friend goes a long way.”

Baldwin is right that a few words of support would likely mean more to a sad Facebook friend than hitting a “dislike” button. But there’s another reason why we don’t need “dislike”: On Facebook, “Like” doesn’t mean like anymore.

At its light-weight heart, pushing the button really says “I hear you,” “Uh-huh,” “I acknowledge this,” or “Yup.” It says, “I read this and thought about it for a second.” Frequently, or even most of the time, genuine feelings of positivity are a big part of the “I acknowledge this”—you do like the photo from your friend’s vacation or her witticism about her subway trip home. But genuinely liking it isn’t the driving force behind the click—the motivation is to let the person know that you looked and considered, rather than skimming past her posts to find a cute cat video from someone else.

If we can accept that the “like” button is really about letting someone know that you acknowledge what they posted, then we can dispense with the “dislike” chatter that has been going on since Facebook unleashed the thumbs-up in February 2009.

You can dislike the idea all you want, but since Facebook won’t be giving you the thumbs-down any time soon, you might as well acknowledge it.

Via BetaBeat.

Google Street View Hyperlapse is a web app that lets anyone make motion control time-lapses using Google Street View imagery. The app was created as an experiment by Toronto-based digital studio Teehan+Lax. To demonstrate the app they created this globetrotting time-lapse video entirely out of Google Street View imagery.

via Jacob Bijani

Fox bans the sale of unlicensed Jayne hats from Firefly:

lol good luck with that

Today's haiku, about the MIT Press colophon, is from a fan!

Meena Vathyam sent in this photograph from Shanghaiist:

This one is very easy to solve. The sentence actually means:

huíxiāng chǎo bènjī dàn 茴香炒笨鸡蛋
("fried free range eggs with fennel")

The translator misparsed the last part as bèn jīdàn 笨 鸡蛋 ("stupid egg") instead of the intended bènjī dàn 笨鸡 蛋 ("eggs from free range chickens").

Bènjī 笨鸡 ("free range chicken") is a northeast topolectal word for what in Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM) is normally referred to as tǔjī 土鸡 (lit., "local / native chicken").  I've also heard this type of fowl referred to as cháijī 柴鸡 (lit., "firewood chicken").  In Shandong this type of poultry is called cǎojī 草鸡 (lit., "grass chicken").

The semantics of the epithet "stupid egg" were discussed at length in "Ma Ying-jeou and Xi Jinping: presidential language notes".

[Thanks to Cao Lin, Cheng Fangyi, and Rebecca Fu]

hey-assbutt-its-a-parade:

finndicate:

vjezze:

Amsterdam is turning rainbow for a visit of the Russian president Putin. The council of the city of Amsterdam has decided to hang out the gay pride flag on all council owned buildings and offices, in protest to Russia’s new anti-gay law.

there’s several of these as well;

pretty sure Amsterdam is now the sass capital of the world

Thatcher's funeral on Wednesday will be heavily policed for fear that the British tax-payer will want to finally express their view of Thatcher. They are certain to be tear-gassed out of sight by the police. United Kingdom? Syria? China? What's the difference?

How The Economist covered her political career

In covers: Margaret Thatcher

• 1975 “She has courage, a quality in short supply in politics everywhere and which she thoroughly deserves to be rewarded for.”
• 1979 “The British people have voted to take a gamble. Mrs Thatcher’s personality and her policies depart starkly from existing practice. The gamble is a bold one.”
• 1980 “Mrs Thatcher’s experiment is in trouble… with Britain’s gross national product lower than when she took office and with unemployment having doubled.”
• 1982 “Argentina’s continuing lack of concession will, if it continues, make the choice for her: Mrs Thatcher must let troops go in.”
• 1983 “She has changed the debate in the country she governs… However the Thatcher revolution is incomplete. It exists in the telling as much as the actual achievement.”
• 1984 “The vision she must project is of a post-Scargill Britain which is exciting enough to overwhelm the political handicap of unemployment.”
• 1987 “New policies–Thatcherism for short–have shaken up parts of the hide-bound economy and many millions of people.”
• 1989 “Britons know instinctively–that the NHS is a glorious idea, but is hopelessly hamstrung; that a railway in state ownership means journeys of squalor and frustration.”
• 1990 “Britain will not be transformed until the belief that money can be spent without being earned, that wages can be raised while output is flat, has been eradicated."
• 2013 “Only a handful of peace-time politicians can claim to have changed the world. Margaret Thatcher was one.”

It could reach even No. #1, reports The Independent. In contrast to the rather unpleasant street parties, this strikes me as a more perfectly British detractors' send-off for the Iron Lady.

Look! A blog devoted solely to cover versions of "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'."

1951.

Alec Guinness.

Leave it to Japan to produce a cute little kitty that does something so bizarrely cute. [ more › ]