Cooper Griggs

After the Sandy Hook shootings, at presidential behest, $10 million was allocated to to explore links between gun violence and video games. A year later, Mike Rose reports that nothing seems to be happening.

It's been more than a year since the meeting with Biden, and more than a year since Obama called for $10 million to be set aside for research into whether new media, such as violent video games, influence root causes of gun violence. In that time, you probably haven't heard much about that research. That's because it never actually happened, nor did any funding change hands. As discovered in my various talks with individuals and researchers close to discussions, any potential research efforts from Congress broke down fairly rapidly following the meeting with Biden, and hardly anything has been said since.

An unsuprising P.S. to this round of the game scapegoating scarehouse: despite screaming tabloid suggestions that he was inspired to kill by Call of Duty, it turned out that Adam Lanza wasn't a hardcore gamer at all. He liked innocuous kid-friendly fare such as Dance Dance Revolution and Super Mario. The report into his rampage focused on the fact that he was a) mentally ill and b) had easy access to guns and ammunition.

Here's what we know in a nutshell: The best research into the field has found very little evidence of a link between violence in games and real-life violence, and past research suggests that video game violence has even less impact that other media, like television for example. There is absolutely no consensus amongst researchers -- and even when a group does claim to find that link, they are quickly rebutted by numerous others.

"Even the most ridiculous design has a purpose" says the creator of this virtual countdown timer in the building game Minecraft. Well, the purpose of this design is to remind us of our place in the universe with a clock that will run for longer than there will be computers to simulate it.

YouTuber spumwack wanted to make the most useless machine he could think of in Minecraft. After a few designs, he eventually came up with a door attached to a clock. The useless part? The clock won't finish counting until after our entire (real) universe has decayed to inert nothingness. He does an excellent job explaining all of the changes the world, society, and the universe will go through as he shows off the contraption.

Although amid all the large scale explanations, I thought the second clock was the most relevant:

The second clock is a little more ambitious. 22 hours from now, it will finish its cycle and most people who have watched this video will forget what they saw and will likely never think about it ever again.

If you'd like to run the clock yourself, you can download his Minecraft world from a link in the video's description.

The Universe Death Clock via @tweetsauce

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Russian climber Kirill Oreshkin has made a habit of climbing tall buildings and other man-made structures and photographing himself standing on or hanging precariously from the top of them. The wide-angle lens that Oreshkin uses in some of these shots only serves to further induce a sense of vertigo, but they’re no less impressive.

images via Kirill Oreshkin

via Gizmodo Sploid

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McGruff the Crime Dog was sentenced to 16 years in prison on Monday for possession of 1,000 pot plants and more than two dozen weapons, including a grenade launcher. John Russell Morales, 41, an actor who once played McGruff, was arrested in 2011. (NBC News)

nevver:

A brief history of cool

Like the design of functional objects such as chairs or tables, it would seem new ideas for the humble door would be completely exhausted, and then along comes Austrian artist Klemens Torggler. This 4-panel entryway called the Evolution Door opens and closes in a surprisingly elegant way at the slightest touch, folding in on itself like pieces of paper. Torggler calls this system a “flip panel door” (Drehplattentür), and it’s almost more of a kinetic sculpture than functional door, but I would be happy to have one in every room of my house. And for those of you who envision a crushed finger or hands, he’s already solved that problem.

Currently the door is meant as a prototype, an extension of his artistic practice where Vienna-based Torggler has been creating similar kinetic doors for many years, several of which are available through Artelier Contemporary. (via hajohinta, nsfw)

Photo by Jonas Nordby via forskning.no

For the past several years researchers have been trying to crack a Viking rune alphabet known as Jötunvillur, a perplexing code dating back to the 11th or 12th century that’s been found in some 80 inscriptions including the scratched piece of wood found above. Recently runologist (!) Jonas Nordby from the University of Oslo managed to crack the code and discovered the secret message etched into this particular 900-year-old object reads “Kiss me.” Via Medievalists.net:

For the jötunvillur code, one would replace the original runic character with the last sound of the rune name. For example, the rune for ‘f’, pronounced fe, would be turned into an ‘e’, while the rune for ‘k’, pronounced kaun, became ‘n’.

“It’s like solving a puzzle,” said Nordby to the Norwegian website forskning.no. “Gradually I began to see a pattern in what was apparently meaningless combinations of runes.”

However, those thinking that the coded runes will reveal deep secrets of the Norse will be disappointed. The messages found so far seem to be either used in learning or have a playful tone. In one case the message was ‘Kiss me’. Nordby explains “We have little reason to believe that rune codes should hide sensitive messages, people often wrote short everyday messages.”

The act of coding secret messages appears to have been a leisure activity amongst the Vikings, as some of the other translated inscriptions turned out to be playful taunts at the person doing the decoding. The story was originally reported on forskning.no. (via Erik Kwakkel, Neatorama)

Where are the craters on asteroid Itokawa?

Montreal artist Roadsworth (previously) continues to make his mark on the streets of Montreal by introducing elements of wildlife and humor onto an asphalt canvas. In his latest pieces we see flocks of geese swooping down tree-lined streets and schools of sardines move with the flow of pedestrian traffic (or end up wedged inside a tin can), unexpected symbols against an urban backdrop.

This year marks a decade since Roadsworth was charged with 53 counts of public mischief, after which he received considerable public support and was let go with a slap on the wrist. Since then the artist has created artwork for municipalities, exhibitions, and arts festivals around the world. You can see much more on his website, and he also has a book.

Victor Hankins was sat in queuing traffic the moment a mobile traffic enforcement vehicle snapped his vehicle allegedly 'parked' in a bus stop, resulting in a fine winging its way through the post.

jumpingjacktrash:

monthofmay:

Redditor’s wife knitted a beautiful star chart shawl.

this is the pattern i just reblogged the ravelry link to, except they apparently left out the yarnover eyelets, and i think i like it better.

ughhhh i want this so bad it hurts

Created by Dutch bedding designers Snurk, this set of duvet covers and pillowcases turns your place of sleeping into a place of swimming by making your bed look like a photorealistic sun-filled lap pool. Available here. (via Swissmiss, The Awesomer)

James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the architect of the Patriot Act, has repudiated his Frankenstein's monster -- though it took the NSA mass-spying scandal to do it (yo, James, where were you for the 10-ish years of horrors before Snowden's leaks?). He's told American spooks that if they keep on blocking reform to their habits, he'll lead an effort to tank the Patriot Act's spying provisions when they come up for renewal this June, and he sounds serious: "Unless Section 215 is fixed, you, Mr. Cole, and the intelligence community will end up getting nothing because I am absolutely confident that there are not the votes in this Congress to reauthorize 215." (via Ars Technica)

larabarakara:

I was studying in my room, turned around to grab something and saw this…

So, basically, this is not my cat. 

But she’s all like chillin’ in my bed like she pays rent.

How the did she even got into the freaking house. WHO ARE YOU CAT?

theycallmeaj:

Turn up

[happyjar]

How October Jones Passes Time on the Train

Related: Subway Snapchat Art

pi4nobl4ck:

Break’n the ice 

zidannibal:

First and last look, they Broke us pretty Bad.

automotivated:

Ferrari 458 italia engine - Singapore (by Creative l Studio)