The second-best LeBron James highlight from Sunday’s Cavs-Lakers game might’ve been the ball-fake that sent two defenders scrambling, evacuating the lane for a no-look pass to Ante Zizic. In first place was this one, pointed out yesterday by a keen eye on Twitter:
The Mirai and Reaper botnets were just the beginning. xkcd's graph on the fragility of IoT systems is a warning of things to come.
Patrick KennedySome very cool Studio Ghibli-esque stuff here from the Oregon tourism board
Based on actual events. More or less.
Credits:
Written and produced by Wieden + Kennedy
Animation by Psyop & Sun Creatures Studio
Music by OregonSymphony
See more: https://traveloregon.com/only-slightl...
Patrick KennedyNot sure if this hits anyone's radar of interest, but it popped up in my feed and reminded me this is the exact video which made me fall in love with Stevie Nicks as a performer/musician. The vocal goods start at 1:08 or so.
Thanks for following along this week while I filled in here! As my final post, it seems important to share the best YouTube video ever*.
Here you have songbird Stevie Nicks, every makeup artist’s worst nightmare, belting out an early version of her song “Wild Heart” during an Annie Leibowitz cover shoot for Rolling Stone in 1981. If this sends you down a rabbit hole of live versions of “Silver Springs” and corresponding levels of emotion between Buckingham and Nicks, I don’t blame you.
*Feel free to tell me otherwise or to keep in touch on Twitter.
Tags: Annie Leibowitz music Stevie NicksPatrick KennedyThat picture is ridiculous/hilarious
For the second time in just a few hours, the United States showed Canada who’s best on ice.
Patrick KennedyFor all those trying to nail that podcast co-host LEWK
I prefer to think that the name and description for the "Podcast Co-Host Sleeveless Top in Fog" was written by a neural net:
Even a late night in the studio deserves your best style effort. Show you agree by sporting this black top to record your next episode! Boasting a notched neckline and deep blue trim down the center, this loose 'n' flowy ModCloth namesake label top makes your outfit just as clever as the insights you share with your digital audience.
[via]
The Oregon Trail adventure game, published in 1974, was a classroom favorite, teaching students about managing resources and making good decisions in order successfully cross 2000 miles of rugged terrain with your family in a covered wagon in 1848. You can play it at Archive.org with their online emulator.
Basic Fun has just introduced a handheld version and it looks cool. If you want "The Oregon Trail Hand Held Portable Classic Computer Video Game" for $25 you have to go to a Target store. (Amazon has it but it's $44).
Charlie Hall of Polygon got the portable version and was impressed:
This little gem is as full-featured as it gets. Onboard is the complete game, in full color and including the original sound effects. You can choose your starting career, name your party of five travellers, load up the wagon and, yes, even hunt for food.
...
The most exciting part of this handheld for me, however, isn’t the game itself. I can play The Oregon Trail online or with a laptop pretty easily. No, it’s the way that the game is presented. The little handheld is clearly modeled after the Apple II, big chunky gray buttons and all. To turn it on and off you even have to push the floppy disk into the slot. It’s the same computer on which I first encountered the classic game in grade school.
For twenty-five bucks, it’s a small price to pay for some nice nostalgia. I can’t wait to show it to my seven year-old when she gets home from school.
Patrick KennedyThis is so good
HomePod. The new sound of home. Directed by Spike Jonze. Starring FKA twigs.
Order now at https://apple.co/2D2kyzw
Song: ’Til It’s Over’ by Anderson .Paak
Only on Apple Music: https://apple.co/2tjWSXQ
Patrick KennedyWant.
The Dude's Gran Torino got a little dinged up. He did get the Creedence tapes back, tho.
This model will tie whatever space you put it in, together.
GreenLight The Dude's 1973 Ford Gran Torino (1:43 Scale) via Amazon
(Thanks, allenk for the reminder.)
Patrick Kennedy"Our famous doctor of candles, John Benjamin Expert, gives mental health advice for anyone having to let their wait staff go for the season"
Botnik used its predictive AI to generate a Gwyneth Paltrow-style website full of woo: goob! It's all very Poe's Law. (more…)
Patrick Kennedy* shivers *
The fact that characters on The Simpsons rarely face forward is one of those things you don’t realize until somebody points it out. But once you see it, it’s nearly impossible to stop thinking about. First, there’s the absolute horror of that flat, bulbous nose. Then, the unnatural placement of the ears which…
Patrick KennedyLOL
The results:WHAT: This is a Chrome browser extension that can help readers contextualize news stories with hype about blockchain technology, by reminding you that blockchain is, in essense, a giant Excel spreadsheet.
WHY: For fun.
https://twitter.com/cynthiablee/status/969097421815820293
Patrick KennedyDaaaang
Every night LeBron James plays a basketball game, there is a strong probability he does something you’ve never seen a human being do before. So here’s one of those things.
As you're probably aware, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is against the legalization of cannabis. At a Senate drug hearing in 2016, he even said, "Good people don’t smoke marijuana."
Now some enterprising folks are selling General Jeff's "Old Rebel" Session Papers, $5 packs of rolling papers that feature a cartoon image of Sessions smoking a fat joint. It started out as a joke but now they report they are close to selling out.
They write:
#JeffSesh is a campaign to tell Jeff Sessions:We’re not criminals, junkies or idiots. Regular Jeffs all over the country—good, responsible, patriotic Americans—have a sesh now and then… and it's OK!
Patrick KennedyIn today's "uh, doy!" Trump news...
Remember when Donald Trump made a big stink about he personally liberated three UCLA basketball players who were arrested for shoplifting in China? According to a new report from ESPN, Trump didn’t actually do shit.
From Nasa; check out the space agency's 3D Pluto globe.
Patrick KennedyDeclan and I are equally excited for this.
The original Wreck-It Ralph came out in 2012 and was the first inkling of Disney Animation’s revival that has continued with Frozen, Zootopia, and Moana. In Wreck-It Ralph 2 (which is properly titled “Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2”), the arcade gets an upgrade in the form of a modem, which gives Ralph and his pals access to the internet. And if you watch the trailer, the movie’s view of the internet is pretty dystopian (but sadly not all that inaccurate). They’re dumped into a a massive shopping mall where they’re constantly interrupted by the IRL equivalent of the chumbox, attend an eBay auction for bad cat-related art, and digitally overfeed a video game bunny until it explodes, perhaps a sly metaphor for how relying on digital treats such as likes or retweets for self-esteem is problematic.
But the movie looks fun! I guess? Like the internet! The internet is fun! I guess? Right? Hello…
Tags: internet movies trailers video Wreck-It Ralph
Don't just look at the image here--click through to the interactive feature at National Geographic that details the towers under construction or proposed in Manhattan. The Nordstrom Tower, to be completed next year, will be the tallest roof in the USA; the Freedom Tower will remain the official #1, but much of its height is a spindly antenna.
Patrick KennedyYay! The only racing game I ever loved.
Patrick KennedyHi, mystery kitty!
A woman who goes by @brenaclifton on Twitter insists she doesn't have a cat, but was greeted by this cute kitty who popped out of the vent on the floor of her house. Just passing through!
Two things:
— brena. (@brenaclifton) February 24, 2018
1. I don’t have a cat............
2. I DON’T HAVE A CAT pic.twitter.com/6WQRIQpA86
Patrick KennedyLove it
Want to see the making of a badass, one-of-a-kind highchair that's fashioned after an AT-ST Walker from Star Wars?
Of course you do. Matt of Never Not Making leads the way.
Dina Leygerman is a high school teacher who teaches George Orwell’s novel 1984 to her students every year. Before she does, with the assistance of other teachers and the school’s administration, she turns her classroom into a totalitarian regime to give the kids a taste of life in Oceania. Rules are strict and favor is given to students who report on rule-breaking by their classmates.
I tell my seniors that in order to battle “Senioritis,” the teachers and admin have adapted an evidence-based strategy, a strategy that has “been implemented in many schools throughout the country and has had immense success.” I hang posters with motivational quotes and falsified statistics, and provide a false narrative for the problem that is “Senioritis.” I tell the students that in order to help them succeed, I must implement strict classroom rules.
However, when Leygerman tried the experiment this year, the students weren’t having it. They rebelled. They protested. They fought harder as the rules became more onerous.
The President of the SGA, whom I don’t even teach, wrote an email demanding an end to this “program.” He wrote that this program is “simply fascism at its worst. Statements such as these are the base of a dictatorship rule, this school, as well as this country cannot and will not fall prey to these totalitarian behaviors.” I did everything in my power to fight their rebellion. I “bribed” the President of the SGA. I “forced” him to publicly “resign.” And, yet, the students did not back down. They fought even harder. They were more vigilant. They became more organized. They found a new leader. They were more than ready to fight. They knew they would win in numbers.
An upcoming book edited by Cass Sunstein asks if authoritarianism can happen in America. The experiment in Leygerman’s classroom and the inspiring movement started by the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL suggest perhaps not. The nation’s youth, raised on The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, are reminding the baby boomers that considering what their own parents went through in the Great Depression and World War II, they should fucking know better than to slam the door on succeeding generations.
Tags: 1984 books Dina Leygerman George Orwell politicsPatrick KennedyHoo boy, that sounds uniquely terrible
These Japanese single color jigsaw puzzles are appropriately named "Pure Hell." They're available with 1,000 or 2,000 tiny pieces, black or white.
Pure Hell jigsaw puzzles (Amazon via Laughing Squid)
Tree Mountain is a man-made mountain 125 feet high covered in 11,000 trees planted in a configuration according to the Golden Ratio. This art installation was conceived and built by artist Agnes Denes in Finland and is designed to endure for 400 years.
A mountain needed to be built to design specifications, which by itself took over four years and was the restitution work of a mine that had destroyed the land through resource extraction. The process of bioremediation restores the land from resource extraction use to one in harmony with nature, in this case, the creation of a virgin forest. The planting of trees holds the land from erosion, enhances oxygen production and provides home for wildlife. This takes time and it is one of the reasons why Tree Mountain must remain undisturbed for centuries. The certificate the planters received are numbered and reach 400 years into the future as it takes that long for the ecosystem to establish itself. It is an inheritable document that connects the eleven thousand planters and their descendents reaching into millions, connected by their trees.
Here’s Tree Mountain on Google Maps and a lovely video of the mountain shot from a drone:
You may have seen another of Denes’ projects: a 2-acre wheat field she planted in 1982 near the World Trade Center in Manhattan.
(via shane)
Tags: Agnes Denes art Fibonacci sequence mathematicsPatrick KennedyTHIS FRIGGIN' GUY
Speaking to the Heritage Foundation last night in honor of Ronald Reagan's birthday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reckoned himself to be an expert on drug addiction and had some sage advice for opioid users: “Sometimes, you just need to take two Bufferin or something and go to bed.”
Other words of wisdom: “We think a lot of this is starting with marijuana or other drugs too.”
However, according to Think Progress:
New federally funded research, however, finds a link between the availability of medical marijuana and fewer opioid deaths. A RAND Corporation study published earlier this month showed “an approximately 20 percent decline in opioid overdose deaths associated with the passage of any state medical marijuana law.”WATCH: Attorney General Jeff Sessions says his goal for 2018 is to see a further decline in prescriptions of opioids, and says, "we think a lot of this is starting with marijuana and other drugs." pic.twitter.com/paWSsEuNrl
— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 7, 2018Image: Gage Skidmore / Flickr
In response to a New Yorker article by Jill Lepore about fashion dolls like Barbie and Bratz, 11-year-old Violette Skilling sent in a letter to the magazine with her take on the dolls. It reads, in part:
I never wanted a Barbie or a Bratz doll until I discovered doll reconstruction. What you do is erase the features of the doll with nail-polish remover, and then remove the hair and make other body modifications. Then you give the doll a new face, new hair, and new clothing. (My favorite part is ripping out the hair, which is very therapeutic.)
What I like about doll reconstruction is that I am in control. I can make them pretty, or not. The two dolls that I have reconstructed represent two parts of me: one nerdy and very unfashionable, and one strong and cool. I make up their stories, and they represent my passions, my hopes, and my feelings.
Doll reconstruction is definitely a thing. Sonia Singh repaints the faces of Bratz dolls in a “down-to-earth style” and displays the results on her blog; that’s one of her doll makeovers pictured above. A profile of Singh on YouTube has been viewed more than 20 million times:
She sells a PDF guide to doll re-styling on Etsy. But you can also find tutorials for removing your doll’s “factory paint” on YouTube.
Tags: fashion Jill Lepore Sonia Singh Violette SkillingPatrick KennedyI really thought the answer to the headline was "Sign up and just start being a dickhead to anyone and everyone"
I’ve utilized social media for over 25 years, way before it was referred to as “social media.” From AOL chatrooms to IRC (internet relay chat), I’ve seen the internet evolve over a quarter of a century. But much hasn’t changed in terms of its being a fount of knowledge, as well as a cesspool of harassment and…
Patrick KennedyWonderful
On his Instagram account, Igor Lipchanskiy is imagining what’s happening just “offscreen” of musical album covers.
