firehose

Need In My Life: Portable Console Cushions

Axel Pfaender created cushions based on his posters of cute, anthropomorphised handhelds! He says these are just “prototypes,” and that he’ll release these soon. Go ahead and buy me all of these once they’re out plz.

BUY Nintendo 3DS and 3DS XL consoles, upcoming releases

cylonlover writes "Boston Dynamics' BigDog may have already been replaced by the beefier LS3, but that doesn't mean it's totally obsolete. Today the company unveiled a version of the quadruped equipped with an arm where a head (or tail) would go. As can be seen in a slightly disquieting video, it's powerful enough to lift and toss a heavy cinder block. Key to this work, funded by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, is that BigDog uses the dynamic forces of its whole body to help it throw the cinder block. It begins by taking several steps to the side before quickly accelerating as it swings its arm, temporarily launching itself into the air in the process. This approach is similar to the way an athlete winds up before throwing a discus, for example, and greatly enhances the robot's throwing power. Since few robots are as capable as BigDog when it comes to balance, it's an excellent platform to test these sorts of strenuous actions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket this morning. The Falcon 9 is on its way to the International Space Station, carrying a Dragon cargo capsule with additional supplies.

LIFTOFF!!!

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 1, 2013

#Dragon separated successfully, on its way to #ISS! spacex.com/webcast

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 1, 2013

images via SpaceX

“Tanner Galvin’s Noys Toise” is a short documentary about Tanner Galvin, a Portland artist who creates custom musical instruments out of old electronic toys and instruments in a process known as “circuit bending.” The documentary was directed by Craig Mederios. To see more of Galvin’s creations, check out his YouTube page.

photo by Tanner Galvin

video by Tanner Galvin

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Mr_Blank writes "Organizations like the EFF and ACLU have been raising the alarm over increased government surveillance of U.S. citizens. Legislators haven't been quick to respond to concerns of government spying on citizens. But Texas legislators are apparently quite concerned that private citizens operating hobby drones might spot environmental violations by businesses. Representative Lance Gooden has introduced HB912 which proposes: 'A person commits an offense if the person uses or authorizes the use of an unmanned vehicle or aircraft to capture an image without the express consent of the person who owns or lawfully occupies the real property captured in the image. ('Image' is defined as including any type of recorded telemetry from sensors that measure sound waves, thermal, infrared, ultraviolet, visible light, or other electromagnetic waves, odor, or other conditions.)' Can you foresee any unintended consequences if this proposal becomes law?" Another reader notes that New Hampshire has introduced a similar bill: "Neal Kurk, a Republican member of New Hampshire's House of Representatives knows that those drones present a growing privacy concern, and in response has introduced a bill that would ban all aerial photography in the state. That is, unless you're working for the government. The bill, HB 619-FN (PDF), is blessedly short, and I suggest reading the whole thing for yourself." Here's part of the bill: "A person is guilty of a class A misdemeanor if such person knowingly creates or assists in creating an image of the exterior of any residential dwelling in this state where such image is created by or with the assistance of a satellite, drone, or any device that is not supported by the ground."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Youtube Direktbrains, via /.

Wissenschaftler haben die Hirne von zwei Ratten auf zwei unterschiedlichen Kontinenten miteinander kommunizieren lassen. Die eine Ratte („Encoder Rat“) in Südamerika haben sie so konditioniert, dass sie auf ein bestimmtes Signal hin einen bestimmten Schalter betätigt. Die Gehirnaktivitäten wurden aufgezeichnet und über ein Implantat per „intra-cortical microstimulation (ICMS)“ an das Hirn einer Ratte in den USA geschickt, die dann dieselben Schalter gedrückt hat, ohne vorher darauf trainiert zu werden. Ist das erste mal, dass man zwei Gehirne direkt miteinander kommunizieren lies.

The brains of two rats on different continents have been made to act in tandem. When the first, in Brazil, uses its whiskers to choose between two stimuli, an implant records its brain activity and signals to a similar device in the brain of a rat in the United States. The US rat then usually makes the same choice on the same task.

Miguel Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, says that this system allows one rat to use the senses of another, incorporating information from its far-away partner into its own representation of the world. “It’s not telepathy. It’s not the Borg,” he says. “But we created a new central nervous system made of two brains.”

Nature: Intercontinental mind-meld unites two rats
Scientific Report: A Brain-to-Brain Interface for Real-Time Sharing of Sensorimotor Information
BBC: One rat brain ‘talks’ to another using electronic link

Deadliest Catch

Garment Dyed Field Jacket: Coach (Wyatt)  |  Beanie: Vintage (XCVB alternative)  |  Sweater: Club Monaco

not shown:  Twill Pants: Gant  |  Boots: Clark’s Desert Mali  |  Shades: Shauns (Clyde in Matt Havana Tortoise)

Yep, this happened.  And while it’s probably more accurate to call it a galette, I called it a tart for no reason. So, a tart it is…

I don’t have much of a sweet tooth but if a desert include apples, I’m powerless to resist its charm.  This was an awesome dessert and it’s really easy to make as well!

You’ll need to start with our pie dough (the recipe for awesome pie dough, including right portion is here).  We rolled the crust into a big circle, placed it on a slightly floured pizza stone (a cookie sheet would be fine) and loaded the center with filling.  After that it was a rough fold of the sides, a quick brush with a beaten egg and we were done!

One of the tricks to this pie is to roll the sides fairly high – the higher the sides, the more liquid you can add from the filling.  The liquid will be runny when it’s really hot but will thicken as the pie cools (and will set at the consistency of sour cream when served cold) so the high sides help keep it in.

I don’t know how to describe it other than by its ingredients.  We used a spicy whisky, mixed it with maple syrup and sour cream.  You could replace the whisky with bourbon, regular whisky or even dark rum.  But spicy whisky really added warmth in the middle of our cold winter.

Maple, Whisky and Sour Cream Apple Tart Recipe – Ingredients

• 3 apples cut into slices (the peel is fine)
• 1 pie crust, rolled in a big circle.
• 0.5 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 – 1.5 ounces maple syrup
• 1 – 1.5 ounces spiced whisky (or whisky or bourbon or dark rum or…well, you get it…)
• 1/3 cup of thick sour cream (if your sour cream is runny, reduce to a 0.25 cup and use the lower measure of whisky and maple)
• Juice of 0.5 lemon
• 1 egg, lightly beaten

Maple, Whisky and Sour Cream Apple Tart Recipe – Instructions

1. Heat oven to 350.
2. Place the rolled-out crust on a lightly floured cookie sheet or pie stone.  This will make it easy to move into oven once it’s filled.
3. Toss the apples in the lemon juice (this will help stop them from browning)
4. Mix the sour cream, maple and whisky together.
5. Toss apples in cinnamon.
6. Toss apples with sour cream mixture.
7. Create a pile of apples in the center of your crust by transferring them with your hands or a slotted spoon (do not pour them onto it or too much liquid will be included.
8. Fold the sides of the pie over top of each other.  There’s no magic to this step – your hands will figure it out so just go with the flow!
9. Brush the exposed crust with eggs.
10. Pour sour cream liquid into the pie, watching the level of the liquid.  Stop about 1 centimeter (1/3 inch) away from the top of the lowest bit of crust.  You can always add more liquid part way through cooking as it evaporates.
11. Place in oven.  After 20 minutes, apply another egg wash to the crust.  Bake till golden and flaky (about 25-40 minutes depending on your oven).

What’s your favorite tart?

The post Maple, Whisky And Sour Cream Apple Tart Recipe appeared first on WellPreserved.

Superfriends David Byrne and St. Vincent have announced a number of summer tour dates together. The duo behind last year's Love This Giant is playing a bunch of outdoor amphitheaters, small-town arts centers, and even a couple of wineries throughout June and July. A full list of dates is below.

 

David Byrne And St. Vincent tour 2013
June 11-12—Wellmont Theatre—Montclair, New Jersey
June 13—Meyerhoff Symphony Hall—Baltimore, Maryland
June 15—Thomas Wolfe Auditorium—Asheville, North Carolina
June 16—Bonnaroo Music Festival—Manchester, Tennessee
June 18—Blumenthal Performing Arts Center—Charlotte, North Carolina
June 20—Shubert Theatre—New Haven, Connecticut
June 21—State Theatre—Portland, Maine
June 22—The Green At Shelburne Museum—Shelburne, Vermont
June 23—Confederation Park—Ottawa, Ontario
June 25—Kodak Hall At Eastman Theater—Rochester, New York
June 27—The Zeiterion Performing Arts Center—New Bedford, Massachusetts
June 28—Count Basie Theatre—Red ...

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Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe - How to Report the News.  

*full sketch here. 

call -151 writes "An editorial appearing in the ACM notices complains about the effects of the Elsevier boycott particularly with respect to academics refusing to do unpaid review for for-profit journals, particularly the extortionate Elsevier journals. Mathematician Tim Gowers's post gave energy to this about a year ago and recently he reflected on progress in several directions, including developing new arXIv overlay journals. Not disclosed in the ACM editorial is that the author serves on three Elsevier editorial boards; I take it that his complaining about the difficulty of finding referees is an indication that the boycott is having some good effect. Open access issues in academic publishing have been discussed on Slashdot before and it's a good sign that the broader issue has been getting good exposure, including a reasonable White House directive in response to a strong petition effort."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tim Harris owns Tim’s Place, an Albuquerque restaurant that serves “breakfast, lunch and hugs.” What makes his story unique is that he is the only restaurateur in the United States with down syndrome. In this heartwarming short, which is part of the Aol “You’ve Got” series, we learn what makes Tim tick: simply, the joy of hugs.

“Tim has served up over 30,000 Hugs!!! Oh Yeah!!!”

image via Tim’s Place

via Neatorama

Dungeons & Dragons by Ben Collison

D & D is an upcoming group art show at Mission: Comics & Art, curated by artist Ben Collison, that will feature original Dungeons & Dragons themed artwork by a group of great artists. The art show will open at 7 PM PST on Thursday, March 7, 2013 at Mission: Comics & Art in San Francisco. You can RSVP for the event online via Facebook.

Participating artists include:

Katie Bacigalupi, Ben Collison, Beth Dean, Matt Delight, Jason Dryg, Josh Ellingson, Jason Furie, Omar Gonzales, Wednesday Kirwan, Rick Lucey, Shiu Pei Luu, Mark Nagata and Reuben Rude.

Dungeon Master by Josh Ellingson

Kaiju Zanga by Mark Nagata

images via Mission: Comics & Art

Thanks Chicken John!

Professional skydiver Erik Roner recently channeled his inner Mary Poppins by skydiving while clinging to an umbrella. The stunt was recorded for posterity with GoPro cameras.

via Viral Viral Videos

(via Sensopia - Capture the Floor Plan of your House with MagicPlan)

Having decided to shift its Cars spinoff Planes from the safely suburban realm of straight-to-DVD to theatrical release, where it will play in the actual theaters of the rough-and-tumble city streets, Disney has made the last-minute decision to replace star Jon Cryer with someone who can properly capture the edge of the urban jungle. Naturally, it’s gone with Dane Cook, a comedian known for the edgy boundary-pushing that children look for in their cartoon characters, and cast him in the lead role of Dusty The Cropduster, a plane who dreams of air racing, even though his function is to cover as broad a base as possible with his noxious bullshit.

“Dane Cook brings unmatched charisma and brilliant comedic timing and instincts to the character,” director Klay Hall said of the comic actor who has a brilliantly instinctual sense of when to yell things and then yell things even ...

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titularhumour:

blech:

Driving directions between two houses in Florida (specifically, a suburb of Orlando) that share a back garden fence: “7.0 mi, 17 mins”. Via Eric C, via Eric Fisher.

Amazing.

Roll20 is a fully customizable, virtual Dungeons & Dragons platform that allows you to organize and play through campaigns with your friends whether they’re close by, in another state, or on the other side of the world. As the Dungeon Master, you can add your own tokens, maps, character portraits, and background music, or choose from Roll20′s libraries. The DM and players can draw diagrams and roll dice directly on the virtual tabletop in real time, and Roll20 also supports video, voice, and text chat. The service is completely free, though some artwork and tokens can only be purchased through the Roll20 marketplace.

Thanks Dan Patterson!

Nobrow, the most art- and design-obsessed of the new generation of U.K. graphic novel publishers, has started a new kids’ books imprint, Flying Eye Books, and its first crop of releases are as typically gorgeous as the parent company’s output. Nobrow favorite Ben Newman and animator Jambonbon have created an exceedingly cute animation to celebrate the new endeavor:

The first book to be released is Welcome to your Awesome Robot by Viviane Schwarz.  Anyone who regularly brings their children to the library should be familiar with Schwarz’s earlier picture books, which always revealed a subtle influence from comics upon her story-telling. This book is more overtly comic book, but with a post-modern, multimedia approach: The book is also a manifesto-cum-manual for all those kids that prefer the empty box to the toy that arrived inside it, or that the huge expanse of cardboard the new flat-pack furniture came in is really a fort. In Schwarz’s own words:

“I am very proud of it indeed. It’s a comic, it’s a craft book, it’s the manual you’ve always wanted – the one that helps you to upgrade that big old cardboard box no-one appreciates you running around in. And once you’ve upgraded it, EVERYONE WILL SEE HOW AWESOME IT IS. Yes, it’s a Robot Manual.”

Flying Eye already have two more titles near publication, Akissi by Marguerite Abouet and Mathieu Sapin and Topsy Turvy World by Atak, and another two to follow quickly after. Nobrow managing director Sam Arthur promises there’ll be plenty more to follow this year. As a jobbing librarian, I regularly get to see beautiful new children’s books, and often think about the possibilities for cross-pollination between those two boom areas in publishing, the large format picture book and the graphic novel. Good to see a comics publisher also seeing that potential, and stepping so manfully into the breach.

Harrison Krix of Volpin Props has made a number of stunning prop replicas — a Portal Gun, a Gravity Gun, both Daft Punk helmets, and a functional Big Daddy costume — and one of his latest projects is a Whiterun shield from The Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim. After finishing the shield, Krix built a side table out of it to adorn his game room.

images via Volpin Props

US Army Private First Class Bradley Manning has pleaded guilty on 10 counts involving disclosing information to an unauthorized person, but has pleaded not guilty to 12 charges, including "aiding the enemy." The guilty pleas cover less serious offenses and carry a combined maximum sentence of 20 years. If convicted of aiding the enemy, Manning could be imprisoned for life.

According to The Guardian and corroborated by other news sources, Manning's guilty pleas confirm that he was Wikileaks' principal source for the following:

the so-called "collateral murder" video of an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq; some US diplomatic cables including one of the early WikiLeaks publications the Reykjavik cable; portions of the Iraq and Afghanistan warlogs, some of the files on detainees in Guantanamo; and two intelligence memos.

Manning denies intentionally helping Al-Qaeda; prosecutors seek life in prison

Manning denied that while transmitting this information to WikiLeaks he had "reason to believe such information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation." Manning's prosecutors have charged that through leaking this information, he knowingly gave help to Al-Qaeda. They also charge that by helping to make classified information available on the internet, he knowingly made it accessible to the enemy, which Manning also denies.

35-page personal statement will detail Manning's actions and motives

In court, Manning will read an extended personal statement detailing both what he did and his motives for doing so. The document is believed to have been written and hand-typed by Manning himself, running 35 pages. According to an earlier article by The Guardian, the document describes in detail an incident referenced in his now-public chat logs with Adrian Lamo, the hacker who informed military authorities of Manning's actions. (In the chat excerpt below, Manning is identified as "bradass87," and Lamo as "info@adrianlamo.com.")

(02:31:02 PM) bradass87: i think the thing that got me the most… that made me rethink the world more than anything

>(02:35:46 PM) bradass87: was watching 15 detainees taken by the Iraqi Federal Police… for printing “anti-Iraqi literature”… the iraqi federal police wouldn’t cooperate with US forces, so i was instructed to investigate the matter, find out who the “bad guys” were, and how significant this was for the FPs… it turned out, they had printed a scholarly critique against PM Maliki… i had an interpreter read it for me… and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled “Where did the money go?” and following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet… i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on… he didn’t want to hear any of it… he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees…

(02:35:46 PM) info@adrianlamo.com : I’m not here right now

(02:36:27 PM) bradass87: everything started slipping after that… i saw things differently

(02:37:37 PM) bradass87: i had always questioned the things worked, and investigated to find the truth… but that was a point where i was a *part* of something… i was actively involved in something that i was completely against…

As part of today's plea, Manning has also requested to be tried by a military judge alone, rather than by the military equivalent of a jury. His court-martial is currently scheduled for June 3; since Manning's admission of guilt is not part of any plea bargain with the prosecution, the court-martial is expected to proceed as planned.

Developing…

• Source WiredThe Guardian
• Related Items bradley manning wikileaks iraq army military

Outbox, which bills itself as "recreating the US Postal Service," launched yesterday in San Francisco after being announced last year. Recreating the troubled US Postal Service certainly sounds like a good idea. So how does Outbox work?

For $4.99 a month, you sign up online for an Outbox account, and then an Outbox employee comes to your house, picks up your mail, takes it back to Outbox HQ, opens it, scans it, and gives you access to it via your account. From there, you can "unsubscribe" from junk mail, and even request to have your mail "delivered" to your house (even though it was definitely already delivered once, the other day). That's it: a new, "disruptive" service that PandoDaily wrote about at length last year.

There are a few problems that are immediately obvious with this idea. First of all, it is bloated from start to finish: building a "revolutionary" product by piggybacking onto the nation's most laughably bureaucratic, least agile institution seems shortsighted and doomed, but it actually makes the mail experience less efficient than it is today. Whereas it currently takes three or four days for my letter to get to me from Chicago to New York it will now take... five? Maybe six? Outbox says it picks up your mail three days a week, so it seems likely that the turnaround time will be significantly less fast than if I simply bite the bullet and open the mail myself. A startup with this kind of inefficiency built into its bones is misguided.

Outbox isn't "recreating the Postal Service" at all, it is needlessly complicating the already relatively straightforward interaction we have with our paper mail, by turning it into... electronic mail? Outbox also says it can help you get your billing strategy under control... but haven't we already largely solved that problem, too? I don't get many paper bills, and for most of my accounts, I have instantaneous access to years' worth of bills in a secure environment. And it's not as if Outbox is actually making you a usable, digital bill: it's generating an image of a bill, in another inbox separate from your actual email, complete with to do lists and trash bins.

it's generating an image of a bill, in another inbox

In fact, the more one thinks about this idea, the more preposterous it seems, especially in light of the fact that it has around $2.2 million in funding from people such as Peter Thiel, and is a company which has at least eight executives. To be clear, the mail system has serious, real problems. The USPS is a failing business, and junk mail is annoying and hugely wasteful; but so is paying someone else to burn fuel on coming to your house to read your junk mail for you. It's essentially inefficient in the most obvious way. It takes the annoyance of mail and makes it someone else's problem, while not actually trying to solve the real problem: cutting down on the existence of unwanted mail. There are real issues with billing and mail which could be and should be fixed, but Outbox misses the point and appears to flail in executing.

A lot of media coverage of Outbox has focused on potential privacy and security issues which can arise from giving someone else access to your physical mail, and Outbox goes to great lengths to tout its security measures. Of course, if you do give another human being permission to open your mail, well, that's your problem, isn't it?

If you were hoping to see a revelatory smartphone from Motorola in the coming months, you might want to tone down those expectations. Google's Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President Patrick Pichette today said that products in Motorola's current and upcoming pipeline "aren't 'wow' by Google standards." The surprisingly honest admission came during Pichette's session at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference. When questioned on where things stand with Motorola at the moment, Pichette didn't mince words. "The case with Motorola is that we've inherited a pipeline," he said, which Google executives have previously stated in the past. "Motorola has a great set of products, but they're not really like 'wow' by Google standards. Dennis Woodside and his team have inherited 18 months of pipeline that we have to drain right now."

Recent releases from that pipeline including the Droid RAZR Maxx HD and Droid RAZR M have been met with positive feedback from consumers and critics, but Google's most avid fans have made it clear they expect to see something more. Judging by Pichette's words, it would seem a Motorola-branded device with true Google inspiration is several months away.

• Related Items pipeline droid google phone patrick pichette Droid RAZR Maxx HD Droid RAZR M Google Motorola

An absurdist joke is spreading across Twitter in a viral pattern. No one has control, no one is safe, and after two days, the contagion is still growing. The virus will likely hit your stream soon if it hasn't already, but it's not so easy to spot — it looks like any other normal tweet. "Wow," it reads, with a link. But click that link, and it will lead to another person's tweet. "Wow," this one says, with a link. That link leads to another tweet, from someone else. "Wow," this person says, appending a link.

It's wows all the way down.

The beauty of this game is that everyone joined in without knowing the rules. "I have no idea. I just saw it and played along," Alex Godin, a 19-year-old startup founder based in New York, said in a Twitter direct message. "I did have the patience to click through to the end... and it's just a disappointing Donald Trump tweet about 'Shark Tank.'"

Indeed, the tweet at the end of the chain is from the real estate mogul and reality television star, spouting some typical self-promotional drivel. "Shark Tank is a dead Friday night filler compared to the Apprentice which has been number one show for week in the T. V. ratings!" Trump grumped at 8:02 p.m. on Monday.

Mark Gurman, a senior editor at the Apple blog 9to5Mac with 11,957 followers, tweeted a link to this comment, prefaced with the word, "Wow." Gurman was patient zero. He had no idea what he'd started. "I didn't intentionally start the chain, and I wasn't expecting it," he told The Verge in an email. "I actually saw the chain fairly early on, I clicked through and realized that it ended at me (surprise)."

Erik Schmidt, a student in Arizona, had a funny idea. He tweeted the word, "Wow" followed by a link to Gurman's tweet. Days later, he was amazed that the joke had traveled all the way to the Middle East and back. "How far has this gone?" he asked followers yesterday. "How far has this traveled?" Patient one.

Schmidt's tweet was picked up by a Twitter friend, a Canadian student who lists his name as Paco. This was patient two. Even though he only has 186 followers, Paco's stream shows he's up on all the latest microblogging trends, including SnapChat, subtweeting, and tweeting about tweeting. He quickly caught on to the half-formed joke, and tweeted Schmidt's tweet with the identical format. He was just as surprised as Schmidt when he tried to reconstruct what had happened. "What the actual eff. Are we famous now?" he asked a Twitter user named Jamil, patient four.

This is where the tree branch splits. Two Twitter users, named Mark and Danny, copied Jamil's tweet. Together, they have just over 600 followers. This was truly a grassroots movement. No one tweeted Danny's tweet, but two people picked up Mark's: Conor Reid, who tweeted it to his 1,375 followers, and Brandon, who tweeted it to his 298. No one tweeted Brandon's tweet, but four people picked up Conor's: Tyler Flowers (454 followers), Alex Dixon (1,308 followers), Zayd Humsy (206 followers), and Eugene Ho (133 followers).

Tyler got a tweet from Jorge Danny, 1,244 followers. No one tweeted Alex's or Eugene's tweet. But Zayd got three tweets, from James Gordon (207 followers), Avery Penn (530 followers), and Eva Giselle (3,490 followers). No one tweeted James's, one person tweeted Avery's, and a whopping 13 people tweeted Eva's tweet. It was unstoppable now.

Ben Jacobs, a New Yorker with 1,306 followers, caught the beginning of the "wow" chain when it was about a dozen tweets long and traced it back to Gurman. "I'm very surprised it took off like it did," he said in an email. "If I remember right, the Gurman tweet had one retweet and favorite each when I found it, I think I was the second person to favorite it. Honestly, I think the whole thing is pretty dumb. If I was annoyed... the day after, I can only imagine what folks are feeling now. This is the first I've encountered anything like this but I doubt it'll be the last after how it's caught on.

"It's really bizarre," he continued. "I joked yesterday that some company will co-opt it like Viacom did with "hacking" recently and now I'm afraid that'll actually happen."

"If I was annoyed after a dozen the day after, I can only imagine what folks are feeling now."

The trend hasn't been coopted by corporations yet, but it's still going strong, even reaching as far as the Arabic-speaking world, where Twitter users changed the opener to "woow." Users seem happy to jump into the game with no context — for people embedded in the Twitter world, the behavior is instinctive, even though no one can recall seeing something like it before. The closest inception-like meme is perhaps "the old Reddit switcheroo," in which an exhaustively long chain of images with swapped captions kept users clicking for hours. Meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to tweet blithely about his show's ratings.

• Image Credit Contemplicity (Flickr)
• Related Items twitter weird twitter wow mark gurman woow

Die hard

The Internet is full of interesting things to read outside of The A.V. Club—no, really! In our periodic Read This posts, we point you toward interesting or noteworthy pieces that caught our eye.

Henry Rollins fans have a new way to get up the ex-Black Flag singer’s ass now. In his weekly column for LA Weekly, Rollins detailed his recent colonoscopy, where he says he was “knock[ed] out” with a tube snaked “up [his] keister.” That alone might make coprophobics squeamish, but his description of his preparation for the procedure is even worse. Rollins was given MoviPrep, “a wonderful mixture of sodium sulfate, sodium chloride, potassium chloride, sodium ascorbate, and ascorbic acid,” which he says made him, “a human hydrant, venting great, spasmodic, thundering jets of fluid,” and caused him to ponder “the incredible wretchedness of humankind.” Daring souls can read even more about Rollins’ procedure ...

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Proving there is no business that is 100-percent safe in uncertain economic times, not even the proud American industry of drunk girls flashing their breasts, Girls Gone Wild has been forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to Bloomberg News, in order to protect itself against debts stemming from a nice, firm pair of lawsuits. Naturally, the company has maintained the sense of pride that’s synonymous with the Girls Gone Wild name, claiming in a statement that their current situation is just “like American Airlines and General Motors having sought reorganization under Chapter 11”—an implicit reminder that as goes Girls Gone Wild, so goes the nation, with a threat to the shamelessness and self-pleasure that is our very way of life.

But fear not: While filing for bankruptcy does mean that Girls Gone Wild will have to expose itself to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, holding up ...

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