wskentKEEP SENDING THEM YOUR OPINION!
After hearing from so many angry Americans who wanted to preserve net neutrality rules that they had to invent a seemingly fictional "denial of service" attack to explain their servers melting down, the FCC has solved the problem by telling the public to go fuck themselves. (more…)
wskentDo your daily protest. www.gofccyourself.com (click: EXPRESS and comment)
It's been three years since John Oliver's amazing Net Neutrality rant brought the term "Cable Company Fuckery" into common usage, crashed the FCC's website, and delivered a neutral internet to a desperate nation. (more…)
wskentwe're lucky to have a moon.
wskenthahahahahaha. this got me.
I love Alex Schaefer impasto works depicting branches of Chase bank going up in flames in daytime. They were from a series by him called "Disaster Capitalism," and apparently the banks (and cops) would pretend he was planning acts of arson to try and make him stop painting. [via mutantspace, via Janie]
On July 30, 2011, Alex Schaefer set up an easel across the road from a Chase bank and began painting the building in flames. However, before he had finished the police arrived, asked him for his information and if he was planning on actually carrying out an arson attack on the building. Ridiculous. Later they turned up on his doorstep asking about his artwork and looking for any signs that he was going to carry through an anarcho – terrorist plot based on his paintings. If this wasn’t bad enough a year later he was arrested for drawing the word ‘crime’ with a Chase logo in front of an LA bank.
wskentthis is oddly amazing in many ways. so dark. and playful? so, so german.
wskentI know there was another share about Fearless Girl, but as great as TOR is, its search kinda sucks. So here's another, WITH THIS IMPORTANT LINK: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/fearless-girl-is-not-your-friend-9918110 which talks about how scummy the Fearless Girl campaign was. I'm so torn about good symbols that come about in bad/unethical ways...but this is a really good symbol...from bad people. Ugh.
Located in the heart of the financial district in New York City, the Charging Bull statue has long been an icon of the industry, but now faces its first opponent: a young girl cast in bronze.
Sponsored by city officials and a local firm and crafted by sculptor Kristen Visbal, The Fearless Girl was erected in recognition of International Women’s Day. Its intended message is to encourage companies to put women on their boards, but of course it carries a series of meanings in the face of Wall Street and the political climate.
“One of the most iconic images on Wall Street is the charging bull,” explains a representative of State Street. “So the idea of having a female sort of stand against the bull or stand up to the bull just struck us as a very clever but also creative and engaging way to make that statement. Even though it’s a little girl, her stance is one of determination, forwardness, and being willing to challenge and take on the status quo.”
Whether the statue will stand the test of time remains to be seen, but its persistence would certainly not be without precedent. Per Colossal, the “Charging Bull was originally an act of guerrilla art by Arturo Di Modica, and only became permanent after its soaring popularity, leaving some to wonder if Visbal’s statue could follow the same story.”
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free!" These words, bronzed into the foundation of the Statue of Liberty have been a symbol of hope and freedom for nearly ...
Anyone passing through New York City's Bryant Park can avoid the headache of searching for free outlets at coffee shops to juice up their phones, powering up at outdoor tables with built-in solar ...
Soon, you'll be able to charge your iPhone at strategic locations around New York City - but you'll have to put in a little leg work. The Charge Cycle is a stationary bike equipped with an iPhone ...
wskentkottke is really impressive lately. innanet love.
I asked Kottke.org readers to tell me what were the best web sites that they knew about that most people have never heard of. Normally, each of these sites would be worth a blog post on its own, either a longer or shorter one. But this week, we’re…
The rest of the suggestions are really quite something. I’d never heard of most of them. A few others I’ve loved and shared as a secret handshake between friends. In lieu of lengthy explanations, I’m just going to link them all and let you explore.
(This is what most web pages used to be: just long lists of links. We were such dorks back then. But maybe we were on to something.)
Note: The order is not a ranking, but simply an easy way I can count how many links there are.
Also Note: No money changed hands to feature any of these sites on Kottke.org, although in retrospect, that would have been a good idea..
Final Note: If the site required a login, or I couldn’t figure out what it was doing or why it would be interesting to anyone, I didn’t include it. Sorry.
wskentI wish this museum all the success in the world.
What do "Bic for Her" pens, electric facial rejuvenation mask, and Trump: The Game have in common? They were all bizarre and ridiculous commercial products that tanked in the marketplace. This summer, the Museum of Failure will open in Helsingborg, Sweden to celebrate such bumbles and fumbles, along with other products that were bested by competition or simply too ahead of the times for their own good. The curator is Samuel West, a psychologist who studies the science of creativity. From Smithsonian:
"I got tired of all of this glorifying of success, especially within the domain of innovation where 80 to 90 percent of all projects fail," he tells Smithsonian.com. Perhaps as a way to counter the trumpets of success, he started collecting products that represented failure. He says he had no purpose at first, but thought that it was a fun hobby...
Technological gadgets that failed are a big category at the museum. "I could open a whole museum with only smartphones," West says. But other industries are good at making duds as well. Colgate tried to sell beef lasagna. Harley Davidson marketed a perfume.
wskentMEME INSIDER MAGAZINE. NO SHIT.
This is a thing. We could learn a thing or two (more).
wskentew/aww. i forgot about this. and then this post made it real all over again.
wskentlife is a circle forever collapsing on itself.
wskentbrilliant
Research scientist Janelle Shane writes: "I’ve been training a neural network (based on this open-source neural network framework from Andrej Karpathy) on datasets from recipes, to lists of Pokemon, to superhero names. I decided to see if it could invent names for new fruit varieties - I fed it a list of apple, peach, pear, plum, and cherry varieties, and asked it to generate more."
Sunbrown
Stanker
Pork Gala
Horspest
Shivercell
Hencough
Moregall
Brown Soften
Ruby Wally
Ruck
Nagtort
Blee Red
Redcells
Zuby Glong
Zeelcher
Hacker Gala
Soften Fuji
Klunk 134
Horking
wskent@swdp party moment
wskentclick this link: https://thenib.com/who-makes-emoji
four eggplants!
Over at The Nib, excellent historical cartoonist Andy Warner, author of the wonderful Brief Histories of Everyday Objects, tells the story of how the Unicode Consortium brings new emoji into our online lives. From The Nib:
Read the full comic: "Want a New Emoji? Good Luck."
wskentbrighten your week.
Ross Marquand (Walking Dead) is also a great voice impressionist. Here he is impersonating actors delivering lines for movies they never appeared in: John C. Reilly in Taxi Driver, James Gandolfini in The Godfather, Jack Nicholson in Taken, Brad Pitt in Jaws, and so on.
wskent***not a painting***
just a bigass boat.
Behold, the Blue Marlin, a "semi-submersible heavy lift ship" that is capable of hoisting and transplanting other, full-sized ships (that is ships as big or bigger than a US Destroyer-class vessel) all around the oceans. (more…)
wskentANCESTOR?! this is all too familiar.
Behold the 540 million-year-old fossil remains of the earliest-known human ancestor! Saccorhytus was "likely an egg-shaped creature that ate and expelled from the same gaping orifice," just like Senior Counselor to the President Stephen Bannon.
"This may represent the primitive beginnings of a very diverse range of species, including ourselves," said co-author Simon Conway Morris, a professor at Britain's University of Cambridge. Saccorhytus belongs to a broad category of organisms called deuterostomes, and is the most ancient specimen unearthed so far...
The sack-like animal's most distinctive feature is a large -- relative to the rest of its body -- mouth ringed by concentric circles of raised bumps. It probably ate by engulfing food particles and microscopic creatures. Intriguingly, the researchers did not find anything corresponding to an anus.
wskentfridaymood
Song: Bag Raiders, 'Shooting Stars.' One Hour Version is here, and below. It's making me happy. (more…)
wskentfucking brilliant.
We Are 52 USA—a spinoff of the French feminist group Noussommes 52—created this mock front page demonstrating what it would look like to live in a world where a group of women regularly passed legislation controlling men’s bodies.
https://twitter.com/weare52usa/status/825001790970089472The image parodies photos of Donald Trump signing an order to block U.S. aid to foreign organizations that perform or discuss abortions, otherwise known as the "global gag rule."
https://twitter.com/MartinBelam/status/823637000783798272?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwThe image went viral after it was shared by student and model Molly-Mae.
https://twitter.com/xnicorn/status/824617379464441858wskenthow did it take so long to find you?
wskenthaunting and awesome.
This post is part of a CityLab series on wastelands, and what we squander, discard, and fritter away.
wskentheart swells at 2:11.
When director Sasha Rainbow heard “Alpha Female,” the latest single from Wild Beasts’ album Boy King, she immediately thought of India where an explosive skateboarding scene is empowering a generation of young women. “In places like Afghanistan, Cambodia, and India, skating has not been solidified as a male sport and, therefore, has had a massive cultural impact, teaching values about self-empowerment through skateboarding,” Rainbow explained in a statement. The video follows Atita Verghese, India’s first professional female skateboarder, along with skateboarders from Girl Skate India and the Holystoked Skate Crew.
“Sasha told me that in India time has a different quality; it slows down when you move through it as if made of thicker stuff,” Wild Beasts’ singer Hayden Thorpe explained. “The skateboarding girls and women in ‘Alpha Female’ appear to have found a sublime vehicle for slicing through time more quickly. They are in a hurry, speeding time up, pulling their generation along.”
Rainbow filmed in Bangalore, India, and was so impressed with the growing community of female skateboarders that she plans to return to film a proper documentary.
“Because of the current political climate in the West and attitudes of intolerance and sexism across the world, I wanted to create a video that celebrates everyone who takes the risk to be themselves,” she explained. “The Holystoked Skate Crew and the girls that I worked with are an inspiration that cuts through age, gender and class barriers. I wanted to commemorate this incredible moment in India and show how massive cultural change can start with just one person.”
wskentokay, it got me, so what?!
ALSO: any comments on the TOR design tweaks?
wskentthese are potent. translatable into all parts of live. go on and stay sharp, be a genius, and be bold.
In 1960, saxophonist Steve Lacy wrote down a list of advice from jazz pianist Thelonious Monk on how to play music. Among the items on the list:
Just because you’re not a drummer, doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep time.
Don’t play the piano part, I’m playing that. Don’t listen to me. I’m supposed to be accompanying you!
Always leave them wanting more.
What should we wear tonight? Sharp as possible!
Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along & do it. A genius is the one most like himself.
As is the case with most thoughtful advice, many of Monk’s points apply to things other than music. (via swiss miss)
Tags: lists music Thelonious Monkwskenti want someone to describe me like this someday.
In a world that’s been overtaken by fake news and talking heads spewing “alternative facts,” people are falling in love with a used car salesman for his brutal honesty. Shelmar Roseman works at Journee Autos in Florida which uses Craigslist and Facebook to advertise their cars. When faced with getting rid of a beat-down 2002 Oldsmobile Alero, Roseman created the most honest used car ad ever written. And it’s been shared over 31,000 times on Facebook and retweeted nearly 75,000 times on Twitter.
Roseman’s NSFW Facebook ad reads:
PLEASEEEEEE READ CAREFULLY SO THERE'S NO MISUNDERSTANDING
2002 OLDSMOBILE ALERO LOCATED AT JOURNEE AUTOS
Nothing special or pretty about this car.
200k miles
Rust on the side. I even zoomed in on the rust so you can see it. This car runs and drives. The air blows cold and it has a CD player. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. Don’t bring your ass down here saying it looks different in the pics or you didn’t know it had that much rust. I’m telling you right now. This bi**h rusty. This shit is $900 dollars. You’re getting $900 worth of car. No, I do not have any wiggle room. You can wiggle yo’ ass down to another dealership.
Don’t ask me about ‘check engine light’ or ‘this light’ or ‘that light’. Its $900. It’s gone be some lights on in this mothafu**a’. As is. Don’t bring this shit back for nothing. It has 200k plus miles. You damn right you gone find something wrong with it, but as for now it cranks. Steers and drives. Blows cold-ass air. And won’t leave your pockets bare. This will get you from A to B. Just don’t try to make it to C. And don’t bring that bitch back to me. This car will last you at least ALL SPRING ‘17.
Let’s just say the ad isn’t a ringing endorsement, but low and behold a woman bought it. “We test drove it to her house,” Roseman told NBC2. “She had to get her ID and it was pretty much a done deal. Every light was on in the car. So she couldn’t bring it back for a new light because there was no new lights to come on.” But now the car has generated so much attention for the dealership, Journee Autos wants to buy it back.
wskenti know this is an ultra-local share, but what a cool historical lens...combustible relics.
wskentahh, this would be great for so many shows.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/The_Wonder_Years_logo.svg/250px-The_Wonder_Years_logo.svg.png
https://www.hbokids.com/images/og.jpg
http://joelcomm.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/bob-ross-paints-on-revolution-20060331053203723.jpg
wskentseems self evident to me. that said, if anyone wants a bike to work buddy, i'll join you! i don't care where you live!
With so many commuting choices—bikes, trains, buses, and those god-forsaken, gas-guzzling death-boxes also known as cars—and so many variables—cost, time, distance, traffic, and weather conditions—we transit nerds at CityLab are constantly reconsidering the virtues of one mode of travel or another.
But here’s a consideration that might hit especially close to home when we bicker about the best way to roll up to the office: What kind of commuters are more likely to feel energized and arrive on time?
To get at this, a new study by McGill University’s Charis Loong, Dea van Lierop, and Ahmed El-Geneidy analyzed the commuting patterns of the students, staff, and faculty at the school located in downtown Montreal, surveying 5,599 people at the campus in 2013.
The survey asked participants how they commuted to campus—walking, cycling, driving, or taking public transit—and paired those patterns with their responses of feeling energized and whether their commute negatively impacted their punctuality.
The researchers also asked respondents to detail explanatory factors such as their distance from campus, the amount of time they spent commuting, or the weather. The results were published in Science Direct this week.
A key caveat: The study did not control for demographics in their analysis. Walkers skewed significantly to younger students, while drivers tended to be older staff and faculty, and cyclists and public-transit riders fell somewhere in the middle.
Overall, 36 percent of the respondents said they felt energized when they arrived to campus. Commuters who drove or took public transit were slightly less likely to feel energized (28 percent and 29 percent) and commuters who walked were slightly more likely to feel that way (42 percent).
Respondents who felt energized arriving to work or school
The majority of cyclists reported feeling energized after their commute, regardless of the weather. As the chart above shows, even snowy days don’t discourage intrepid riders. Though small numbers skew their enthusiasm, cyclists who endure cold, snowy weather do so with greater energy than their counterparts in their heated cars, trains, and buses.
Certainly, cyclists and walkers must be so chill because they’re rolling or strolling into work or class late, while drivers breeze to work. Wrong.
Transit riders, followed by drivers, were more likely to say their commute negatively affects their punctuality, attendance, or amount of hours they put in at work.
Respondents who said their commute negatively affects their punctuality
Cyclists and walkers were less likely to report having their commute negatively affect their work attendance, though a snowy day will set pretty much everyone back. Bus riders were especially more likely to have difficult commutes, which correlated to long wait times.
For the commuters at McGill University, pedestrians had the shortest average commute (about 18.5 minutes), followed by cyclists (23.5 minutes), drivers (32.5 minutes), and transit riders (43.5 minutes).
That order flips a bit when you consider who budgets out the most additional time: Cyclists had the least buffer time (5.10 minutes), followed by walkers (5.80 minutes), transit riders (13.77 minutes), and finally, drivers (17.03 minutes).
However, the study found that factors other than travel time affected commuters’ punctuality and energy level. Comfort, safety, consistency, or reliability matter as much, sometimes more, in whether commuters felt ready to go.
Whether the McGill study results can be replicated, we’ll have to wait and see. We know that not all commutes follow the same patterns everywhere—you could be a miserable cyclist in a place that has poor infrastructure for it, and snow might make more of a difference to a commuter outside of Canada.
wskentnot useful now, but maybe later.
