wskent

Found by crephoto

Found by nathangodding

Lloyd Kaufman, cofounder of Troma Entertainment (the people who brought us such films as the Toxic Avenger) has a brilliant, profane, and stirring editorial in support of Net Neutrality on Techdirt. Kaufman explains how an open Internet is the only competitve hedge against the communications giants that own "cinemas, newspapers, T.V. stations, radio and even Broadway 'legitimate' theaters." Thanks to the failure of the FCC to give Net Neutrality their full protection, and the court ruling that gutted the FCC's weak protections, Net Neutrality is in real trouble. Kaufman's editorial a great arguments for its preservation.

The giant devil worshiping international media conglomerates want to create a super highway with expensive prohibitive tolls with faster and better internet for themselves. This will make it impossible for independent artists or innovators because they simply can’t compete. The result will be similar to US television, where the biggest companies own the networks and cable systems etc. and air constant iterations and reruns of their own content. It will become harder to get anything independent into the consciousness of the public. The Internet will become an NBC-ABC-CBS kind of world unless we the people take action.

In 2010, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) created the Open Internet Order which set anti-blocking and anti-discrimination Network Neutrality rules. While the FCC claimed the rules would protect Open Internet, many of us Net Neutrality advocates felt the proposed rules had many loopholes and were made with the purpose of winning support from the telco lobbyists. Of course, we were right. The FCC stated that the rules would make it illegal for ISPs such as Verizon to block services or charge content providers like Netflix for faster Internet highways to their customers. Now, just a few weeks ago-the rules were invalidated by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia because the FCC chose years ago to classify broadband providers in a manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers and therefore has no right to regulate them.

Innovation And Our Better Future Depend On Preserving Net Neutrality [Lloyd Kaufman/Techdirt]

Loux the Vintage Guru's Tumblr is full of photos of snazzily dressed models clad in the vintage clothing Loux discovers in the markets of Namibia and the styles he creates based on them. In a revealing interview, Loux (a self-described "hipster") vividly describes the process of thrifting in Nambian markets, and the fashion potential he's unlocking by reimagining the clothes of his parents' generation.

From a young age, I was inspired by my late grandfather, the old man always dressed in suits and shiny shoes and would tell me, “my son, fashion is what you adopt when you don’t yet know who you are, make sure you are always well-dressed”. So I grew up loving fashion from childhood...

I learned from local tailors in Namibia as well as some friends I made from Japan. But I do believe the ability to design well is a God-given talent. I didn’t go to school to study it but I do have plans to further improve my skills and go to fashion school one day soon. For now, I have a very small workshop, I’m an emerging tailor and get training from professional tailors. I often use their workshops where they assist me in bringing my pieces together...

I call my style sophisticated-punk, it’s a bit of a mixture, but I think true style is an expression of your day to day mood. I fell in love with vintage pieces, especially from the 1960s, and normally alter them to fit me and modernise them in my own way. Most of the suits I wear are actually my late Dad’s suits. I wear a hat with every outfit as well as vintage club ties– I think they’re both stylish and respectful.

Loux the Vintage Guru [Tumblr]

Interview with the Vintage Guru of Namibia [Messy Nessy]

Found by matranson

Downworthy is a Chrome plugin that converts hyperbolic headlines from viral mills into sarcastic -- and much more realistic -- semantic equivalents. For example, the word "literally" is replaced with "figuratively"; while "go viral" is translated to "be overused so much that you'll silently pray for the sweet release of death to make it stop."

* "Literally" becomes "Figuratively"
* "Will Blow Your Mind" becomes "Might Perhaps Mildly Entertain You For a Moment"
* "One Weird Trick" becomes "One Piece of Completely Anecdotal Horseshit"
* "Go Viral" becomes "Be Overused So Much That You'll Silently Pray for the Sweet Release of Death to Make it Stop"
* "Can't Even Handle" becomes "Can Totally Handle Without Any Significant Issue"
* "Incredible" becomes "Painfully Ordinary"
* "You Won't Believe" becomes "In All Likelihood, You'll Believe"
* ... and so on.

Downworthy (via Waxy)

What do you think you get if you add 1+2+3+4+5+... all the way on up to infinity? Probably a massively huge number, right? Nope. You get a small negative number:

This is, by a wide margin, the most noodle-bending counterintuitive thing I have ever seen. Mathematician Leonard Euler actually proved this result in 1735, but the result was only made rigorous later and now physicists have been seeing this result actually show up in nature. Amazing. (thx, chris)

Update: Of course (of course!) the actual truth seems more complicated, hinging on what "sum" means mathematically, etc. (via @cenedella)

Update: As usual, Phil Plait sorts things out on this complicated situation. (via @theory)

Tags: Leonard Euler   mathematics   video

Bill “Dollar Bill” Wirtz in an ad for Old Fitzgerald Bourbon, photographed at the Chicago Stadium, 1973, Chicago.

Often vilified, Bill Wirtz died in 2007, passing ownership of the Blackhawks to his son Peter who then shortly after, passed leadership to his brother Rocky.

Since taking the helm, Rocky has been credited with the revival and success of the current franchise.

Steelyard, 1948, Chicago. Alexander Haug

There are several good articles quickly appearing regarding the DC Court’s rulings in favor of Verizon’s case against the FCC. I encourage readers to take a look at Sam Gusten’s Time Business and Money article, Dian Schaffhauser’s Campus Technology article, and Barbara Stripling’s Wired article for impacts related to business, education, and libraries, for instance.

I side with those who believe this will have significant ramifications for the type of Internet services we will see in the United States. The emphasis added is to highlight that this is a US ruling and I suspect it will mean a bifurcation in the essence of the Internet-in-use between the US and allies who like us continue to move towards neoliberal policies that prioritize trickle-down innovation, and those countries whose policies maintain a neutral Internet and open innovation. In the US I expect we will see improved services in cases in which our hardware manufacturers, our broadband providers, and our Internet service providers (e.g., cloud computing providers, streaming providers) have mutually supportive contractual agreements. We will see innovative ways to more tightly integrate services between hardware, software, and network in such cases. The innovation will thus be very top-down in nature in the US, with the strong favor going to the well-heeled established corporations.  The user experience to seamlessly and effortlessly consume select products will be vastly enhanced. To the extent that the corporate innovation is reflective of our true needs and opportunities, we will be better off because of this ruling.

By comparison, in countries where net neutrality is maintained as a policy, we will see equal treatment of all Internet traffic and opportunities for innovation to happen at all levels from garage to major corporate research labs. To the extent that corporate innovation is not reflective of individual and community needs and opportunities, opportunities for bottom-up, from-the-middle, and startup corporate innovation will help address those unmet needs and opportunities.

For ultimately the Internet is not one universal global entity, but rather a federation of the locals. Studying the Internet-in-use, then, is a way to also study the society and priorities that it reflects. From electorate to our three branches of government to the dominate corporate structures, we in the US have put our money on laissez-faire free-market capitalism and top-down innovation, whether consciously or blindly. Our Internet and other socio-technical systems are increasingly coming into alignment around this framing, and we’re doubling down our bets that this is the best way forward. In the US, the exceptions come in small chunks as municipalities (and tribal sovereign nations) choose to implement their own broadband-to-the-home services reflecting their own community values. But in many states now, future such municipal networks are now prohibited, so this is not a growth area at the moment.

One other thought comes to mind in reading the referenced articles. There is one thing in particular I haven’t seen mentioned in relation to the fateful decisions made by the FCC in 2002 in which they ruled broadband an information service instead of a common carrier like phones, a decision that setup the DC court’s ruling. The chairman of the FCC at the time was Michael Powell. He is currently the president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, a strong advocate and lobbyist on behalf of policies that open up innovation through decreased government regulation of broadband by the FCC and congress.

The ruling came as no surprise to me, nor do I expect action in the near term to implement policies that will reverse the ruling. The course the US broadband development is on was set a decade and more ago and has slowly been playing out since. We are living through a comparison of different Internet-in-use scenarios that will still take many more years, and perhaps decades, to fully play out. The course is not finalized yet, but only a more informed and active citizenry will be able to change the path.

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Frozen lighthouses on Lake Michigan. (Spoiler alert: they look like giant icemonsters).

[ By Steph in Design & Graphics & Branding. ]

Data is much easier for most of us to process when it’s presented in visual form, and these 15 infographics and visualizations give us a (literal) picture of New York City that would be hard to come by otherwise. Exploring things like income inequality, building age, how the city has evolved and what its most popular hot spots are, these maps and charts illuminate the city in new ways.

Inequality and New York’s Subway

New York City’s inequality problem is even clearer when viewed by subway line, as this interactive infographic from The New Yorker illustrates. Using data on median household income from the U.S. Census Bureau, it allows you to see the areas where earnings range from abject poverty to sky-high wealth.

Building Age, NYC

Where are the city’s oldest buildings? You could read a list of them, but seeing them laid out visually on a map makes them easier to spot. See the ages of one million New York buildings mapped in vivid colors, zooming in and exploring by neighborhood, at BDON.org.

10,000 NYC-Based Tweet Locations

Ten thousand New York City-based tweets are laid out on top of a map in this interesting data visualization. The creator, Eric Fischer, asks “Is this the structure of New York City?” Perhaps it’s really just bored people in subways and cabs taking a moment to tell the world what they ate for lunch.

Growth of Manhattan Island, 1650-1980

It’s easy to forget that  much of Manhattan Island (and the rest of New York City) used to be a marsh. The borders of the island were much further inland way back in 1650 when the first settlement was founded. By 1980, they had extended by a good 1,000 feet.

Manhattan Past, Present and Future

Here’s another visualization that shows the drastic changes in the island from the way it was when European settlers first arrived to how it looks today. The composite image shows the left side of the island as it was 400 years ago and the modern-day city on the right. How will it change in another 400 years?

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Virtual Reality 15 New York City Data Visualizations

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[ By Steph in Design & Graphics & Branding. ]

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Rent-A-Man Inc., most likely the 570 block of W Madison (aka Skid Row), 1963, Chicago.

Por Karissa Rosenfield, vía ArchDaily.

La oficina de arquitectura Foster + Partners ha dado a conocer un plan que tiene como objetivo transformar los rieles de los trenes de Londres en autopistas de ciclismo urbano. Si se aprueba la propuesta, diseñada con la ayuda de la firma Exterior Architecture y con la consultora de transporte Space Syntax, conectaría más de seis millones de habitantes en una red elevada de ciclovías construida en las líneas ferroviarias de Londres.

“SkyCycle es una aproximación a encontrar espacio en una ciudad congestionada”, dijo Norman Foster, quien es a la vez un ciclista regular y el presidente de la organización británica National Byway Trust. “Mediante el uso de los corredores por encima de los ferrocarriles suburbanos, podríamos crear una red de clase mundial de rutas de ciclismo seguras y libres de automóviles”.

Más info a continuación.

“Para mejorar la calidad de vida para todos en Londres y para fomentar una nueva generación de ciclistas, tenemos que hacer que sea seguro”, agregó. “Sin embargo, el mayor obstáculo para la segregación de los autos y los ciclistas es la restricción física de las calles de Londres , donde el espacio ya es un bien escaso”.

El SkyCycle de 220 kilómetros, que ya ha recibido el respaldo de Network Rail y Transport for London, proporcionaría una alternativa más segura y más barata para la construcción de nuevas carreteras. Los residentes cercanos tendrían acceso a la vía suspendida a través de 200 puntos de entrada, todos conectados a la calle a través de rampas y plataformas hidráulicas.

“Se trata de tener un ojo en el futuro”, dice Sam Martin de Space Syntax. “Si Londres sigue creciendo y expandiéndose, con las personas obligadas a viajar distancias cada vez más largas, en 20 años que sólo va a ser un gueto para las personas en trajes. Después de los aumentos de tarifas de trenes de esta semana, un porcentaje mayor de la gente se está tomando con el transporte. Tiene que haber otra manera de permitir a todos el acceso al centro”.

En la actualidad, el equipo de diseño ha centrado sus esfuerzos en la obtención de financiamiento para un estudio de viabilidad y que detalla una ruta 6,5 kilometros juicio de Stratford a la estación de Liverpool Street , que se espera que cueste £ 220 millones .

Si se aprueba, SkyCycle podría hacerse realidad dentro de los próximos 20 años.

Arquitectos: Taller 13 Arquitectura Regenerativa
Ubicación: Viaducto Miguel Alemán, Mexico City, Federal District, Mexico
Área: 4000000.0 m2
Año Proyecto: 2013
Fotografías: Cortesia de Aldo Urban, Cortesia de Taller 13 Arquitectura Regenerativa

“Cuando uno trabaja en proyectos con beneficios ambientales, sociales y económicos para la ciudad, ésta debe ser considerada como un sistema único integrado por diversos elementos como montañas, ríos, avenidas, calles, cuadras, edificios, parques, plazas, entre otros. Es así como vemos la unión de estos dos proyectos; los ríos se alimentan de las montañas y desembocan en cauces. Por su parte, Ciudad Deportiva se encuentra en el cauce de dos de los ríos más importantes de la Ciudad de México: Río La Piedad y Río Churubusco.

Entendemos la importancia de hidratar y cuidar nuestros bosques para poder alimentar nuestras ciudades cumpliendo la función de continuidad en los ciclos, como por ejemplo, el del agua, que a su vez nos llega en forma de ríos para satisfacer nuestras necesidades básicas. El proyecto de Ciudad Deportiva, más allá de todos los beneficios urbanos, implica una nueva visión de vivir en la ciudad, una regeneración de sistemas vivos, proyectos de movilidad; es un espacio idóneo para tratar las aguas de los ríos así como para lograr espacios en donde converjan el agua, la vegetación, la recreación, el arte y la música.

Al ver este tipo de proyectos como generadores de una nueva forma de vida con mejor calidad de aire, con espacios públicos generosos y bien mantenidos, con espacio comercial, con todas las opciones de movilidad y con un esquema de plusvalía de las propiedades que lo rodean, podemos empezar a visualizar un nuevo urbanismo sostenible.

De cara al incremento poblacional y a la migración del campo a las ciudades, se tiene que replantear el sentido que le queremos dar a nuestro futuro. Nos encontramos en una situación desfavorable en muchos aspectos en cuanto a nuestra calidad de vida y al estado de nuestros recursos. Queremos lograr una planeación de ciudad en conjunto con las autoridades, con la ciudadanía, con el sector privado y con el sector comercial, para obtener así buenos resultados pensando y vislumbrando el futuro, a largo plazo”.

At The Awl, Matthew Phelan created something wonderful: the text to go with a fake cover article from The Atlantic, "The Politics Of The Next Dimension: Do Ghosts Have Civil Rights?", that appeared for barely a moment during a montage during 1984's Ghostbusters.

Until the beginning of the current fall semester—when Columbia University abruptly shuttered its psychology department's program in paranormal studies—Dr. Egon Spengler, Dr. Ray Stantz and Dr. Peter Venkman had been conducting research into extra-sensory perception and recurring manifestations of what they call vaporous apparitions and psychokinetic activity. "Psychics, ghosts, floating stuff, to the lay person. But to us it's way more technical," Dr. Venkman explains, half ignoring me as he rifles through the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet, then fixing me with a cold stare. "Stuff floats for a lot of different reasons."

It'd be neat if The Atlantic quietly slipped this into their archives.

An interactive map that taps into user posting patterns to surface subreddits you might be interested in.

Better than swimming with the dolphins (though maybe not as awesome as wading with the platypuses), Pig Island in the Bahamas is home to miniature piggies who paddle around the bay seeking handouts from charmed tourists.

A reader writes, "You've heard about the fire that destroyed one of the thirty-two scanning centers last month. But here's what you may not have heard: the good news. An incredibly generous anonymous donor is helping the Internet Archive rebuild -- and grow -- by matching every donation made before 2014 three-to-one. That means your $50 donation results in a $200 contribution. They are raising $1,000,000 before the end of the year to fund more machines and five petabytes -- that's five thousand terabytes! -- of storage."

Lachlan writes, "My friend Aamer Rahman is an Australian comedian, one half of the duo Fear of a Brown Planet who makes race, religion and capitalism a central part of his comedy. Here he is, looking like Malcolm X, with a fantastic rant on reverse racism in his comedy."

Aamer Rahman (Fear of a Brown Planet) - Reverse Racism (Thanks, Lachlan!)

there’s a librarian code of conduct that we all learn about, but there should really be a patron code of conduct too, one that doesn’t police our visitors, but instead reinforces why we’re all here:

1. you’re not “bothering us” by asking a question, i swear! i work here mostly to help you find what you need. it’s nice of you to be considerate though, and i’m sorry if others have made you feel less welcomed.
2. it’s okay to ask questions more than once- in fact, it’s brave to approach a stranger for help at all, even if they’re sitting at a desk marked “information.” even we want to be able to find things ourselves all the time, but opening a dialogue is wonderful and we’re so glad when you do.
3. you have the right to read whatever it is that you want to read, whether for school, personal enjoyment, enrichment, book clubs you didn’t mean to join, or mere curiosity. you don’t ever have to be embarrassed to ask for something you think we might deem “unacceptable,” and if any library employee makes you feel that way, they don’t belong there.
4. when you compliment us on our service, or our collection, or our programs, or that comfy chair in the corner, it makes our hearts swell as big as a gutenberg bible.

in other words, thank you to those who visit the library, and all other library professionals who aim to make it a welcoming place. you make what we do meaningful, and we care more than you know.

Un 40% de la superficie de Hamburgo, la segunda ciudad más grande de Alemania, está cubierta de áreas verdes, como cementerios, centros deportivos, huertos, parques y plazas. Para unirlas entre sí con caminos peatonales y ciclovías, el municipio acaba de lanzar el plan Green Network, el que tiene como meta que en los próximos 20 años las personas se puedan mover por la ciudad sin la necesidad de ocupar autos.

Por la ubicación de los espacios verdes en la ciudad, el proyecto sería el primero que conectaría estas zonas que no están en el centro de la ciudad y que según explicó Angelika Fritsch, miembro del municipio, ayudaría en la “creación de un sistema integral”.

A continuación más detalles.

Hamburgo tiene dos grandes núcleos verdes, uno en el norte y otro en el sur. La unión de éstos haría que las personas visiten la naturaleza que también es parte de la ciudad, pero que está en los bordes. También lograría que las personas lleguen de un punto a otro de una manera sostenible, porque van a tener la opción de trasladarse por la nueva red de ciclovías que comprende el plan que se sumaría a la que ya existe en el centro de la ciudad.

Como hay ciertos lugares de Hamburgo en donde se tendrán que construir espacios verdes, la ciudad contará con nuevos lugares que ayudarán en la absorción de CO2 y que servirán para regular las temperaturas, ya que en los veranos de los últimos 60 años han aumentado en nueve grados en promedio. Asimismo, serán de gran ayuda para contener las inundaciones, ya que se estima que en el mismo período de tiempo el mar ha aumentado su nivel en 20 centímetros y se calcula que suba otros 30 centímetros hasta el año 2100.

Para asegurar que la creación del plan también sea de forma integrada, se está trabajando con un equipo central y con una persona en cada uno de los siete municipios de la ciudad.

Para visitar estos espacios, Fritsch explica que se podrá hacer a pie o en bicicleta y que así las personas no tendrán la necesidad de tomar el auto para llegar a estos lugares que antes sólo tenían esta vía de transporte.

Con este red, Hamburgo seguirá una tendencia que ya se puede ver en Copenhague, en donde en el último tiempo se han construido autopistas para bicicletas que conectan las zonas que son parte de la ciudad, pero que están en la periferia. Como dice Fritsch, este plan también tiene como objetivo que “el campo esté en la ciudad (…) y que las personas tengan la oportunidad de  caminar, nadar, practicar deportes acuáticos, disfrutar de un picnic y ver la naturaleza justo en la ciudad”.

From the mind of an animator whiz behind Tron: Legacy.

Great maps that show you the etymology of words in Europese languages.
Interesting stuff right?

When a roundabout intersection in the bicycle loving Netherlands became too busy for cars and bikes to share space, the design agency ipv Delft came up with a beautiful solution to separate the two transportation forms completely: an elevated bicycle roundabout. Located on the border of Endhoven and Veldhoven, the bike path is fittingly called the Hovenring (yeah, we read that hover-ring at first too). The structure holds the distinction of being the first suspended bicycle roundabout in the world.

The entire futuristically styled ring is supported by the needle shaped central pylon, lending the delicately designed structure an appearance of levitation. This is only enhanced by a shape that resembles a flying saucer and night time illumination around, above and below the ring.

See Also Just Bolt it On: Smart, Powered Bicycle Wheels are on the Way

The design completely changed the traffic layout of the intersection. Car traffic is now a conventional street crossing controlled by traffic lights – deemed more efficient for traffic flow – while the circular bike path is now served by on-ramps flowing into the ring from 6 different locations. Yes, bike traffic is busy in the Netherlands, and that makes us happy. For more details on this project see the Hovenring website.

Just look at it.

banana MRI for scale

@badmocap's latest, via Max Read at Gawker, who writes, "No Headline Will Do This Video Justice".

I could swear we posted about the earlier entry in the series, but the search query site:boingboing.net mannequin nightmare "via jwz" is failing me today.