In the past year, Stephen Colbert decided he no longer wanted to utter the barbarous name of our former president. After using asterisks like a swear word, he decided to crowdsource euphemisms with the hashtag HeWhoShallBeNamed. Here are the best of these, chosen by The Late Show staff.
My personal preference has been Lord Dampnut (anagrams are sexy), but Марионетка is pretty good too.
Inside Apple Park: first look at the design team shaping the future of tech
In the distance is a rectangular frame of foliage. In the foreground, a conference table, placed with architectural rigour so that the focal point is dead centre of the screen. The scene is a tiny cross section through Apple Park, the tech giant’s mighty circular HQ in Cupertino, by Foster + Partners. There are 12,000 employees on site here, including the Apple Design Team. This agile but hugely significant department thinks in terms of scope, not scale.
Wingdings redrawn in the style of Comic Sans to create the "worst font ever" | Boing Boing
Tom Goulet's Comic Dings [.otf, Google Drive] is an intentional atrocity of type design: Wingdings, the unweildy dingbat font, redrawn to use the crudely-weighted linework of Comic Sans. Some people just want to watch the world kern.
There is no fire hot enough, no pit of hell deep enough, to cast this into…
Official account of fatal police shooting in Austin, Minn., disputed
… But police have never lied about the circumstances they killed someone if there were no cameras present to dispute them, right?
Family members and community activists are disputing the official account of a fatal police shooting last week in Austin, Minn.
The man, who has not yet been officially identified, was fatally shot by a police officer in the parking lot of a gas station in Austin on Thursday night, after he left his home following a lengthy standoff.
A statement from Austin police alleges the man was shot because he confronted officers while armed with a knife.
Michelle Gross with Twin Cities-based Communities United Against Police Brutality has been in contact with the man’s family, and is raising money to help them. She said Sunday that the man was having a mental health crisis and was not threatening anyone.
“It’s a wrongful death situation. There’s no question about it. And we are definitely saying that the police are … lying about the situation,” she said. “If they think that they’re so right, they should release the body camera footage immediately.”
Authorities have not said whether the officers involved were wearing body cameras, or whether they were activated. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is investigating the shooting; the BCA did not provide updates on the investigation over the weekend.
Gross also said actions by law enforcement during the standoff that preceded the shooting caused major damage to the family’s home. The money being raised was going to help them with living expenses.
"We feel strongly that this is a wrongful death. We're appalled at the conduct of the Austin Police Department that not only left a man dead but that left the household of the whole family uninhabitable," she said.
From my grandparents' flowery explanation and frequent use of the word "miracle," I went in expecting to be blown away by the production. Unfortunately, the church moms and the pathetic excuses for actors that they called their offspring failed to bring the characters to life in the way I had hoped. And the story just seemed to center around everyone being really impressed with Jesus and there wasn't much suspense and not a single battle scene.
This is now the greatest* story ever told.
*For certain values of great
What wipes in Star Wars teach us about the brain and also interface design (Interconnected)
The brain has a limited amount of resources, so it has to choose what’s going to be regarded and what’s going to be ignored. The feeling of this resource allocation is what we call attention.
This seems to match with my experience.. From a technical point of view this was the point of the doorway transitions in Resident Evil, but narratively it really worked well too.
52 things I learned in 2021 by Tom Whitwell from Fluxx | Fluxx Studio Notes
Productivity dysmorphia is the inability to see one’s own success, to acknowledge the volume of your own output. [Anna Codrea-Rado]
The world’s second most popular electric car (after the Tesla Model 3) is the Wuling HongGuang Mini, which costs $5,000 and outsells vehicles from Renault, Hyundai, VW and Nissan. [Brad Anderson & José Pontes]
With omicron, you need a mask that means business | MPR News
With another coronavirus variant racing across the U.S., once again, health authorities are urging people to mask up indoors. Yes, you've heard it all before. But given how contagious omicron is, experts say, it's seriously time to upgrade to an N95 or similar high-filtration respirator when you're in public indoor spaces.
McCaffrey’s books frequently center around women with special abilities, talents, and gifts. Along with these protagonists, she often included unique species like dragons, unicorns, and aliens. She also collaborated with other authors on multiple books and series. These peers included authors Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Mercedes Lackey, and her own son Todd McCaffrey.
TWO brand new Tom the Dancing Bug books!Tom the Dancing Bug Awakens; and Tom the Dancing Bug, Without the Bad Ones! Order today, RIGHT HERE AND NOW.
"Delve into the dementia, the dread, and the delightfulness of this collection of Tom the Dancing Bug's strips — it's history through the lens of a self-loathing insomniac. — Read the rest
The speed limit is America’s most broken law. Why can’t we fix it?
Speeding is a national health problem and a big reason why this country is increasingly an outlier on traffic safety in the developed world. More than 1 in 4 fatal crashes in the United States involve at least one speeding driver, making speeding a factor in nearly 10,000 deaths each year, in addition to an unknowable number of injuries. Thousands of car crash victims are on foot, and speed is an even more crucial determinant of whether they live or die: The odds of a pedestrian being killed in a collision rise from 10 percent at 23 mph to 75 percent at 50 mph. And we’re now in a moment of particular urgency. Last year, when the pandemic shutdowns lowered total miles traveled by 13 percent, the per-mile death rate rose by 24 percent—the greatest increase in a century, thanks to drivers hitting high velocities on empty roads. “COVID,” Roberts said, “was midnight on the day shift.”
An Astronaut Steers an Elaborately Constructed Paper Spaceship in a Window Display by Zim & Zou | Colossal
Equipped with joysticks and panels of gauges and knobs, an intricately constructed spaceship built by Zim & Zou (previously) navigates through a starry expanse of whimsical planets and alien creatures. The pink-and-blue craft, which was designed as a window display for Hermès, is the latest project from the French artists, whose elaborate scenes and characters are constructed from precisely cut paper sculptures. This fantastical work, titled “Journey of a Lifetime,” peers over the adventurous protagonist, who traverses an unknown world amidst a chaotic scene of levers, monitors, and tea that’s flung into the air of the weightless environment. You can see details from the installation and more of Zim & Zou’s work on Behance and Instagram.
20 Years On, What I Learned From 'The Fellowship of the Ring' Movie
December 19th, 2021 marks the 20th anniversary of The Fellowship of the Ring—the film that introduced the majesty and mythos of Middle-earth to countless viewers worldwide, as well as to the fictional characters that now feel as familiar as old friends. Rewatching Jackson's movie brings back fond memories of my teenage years and gives me a chance to re-evaluate the life lessons I learned from it.
This is an excellent post to keep in mind when you see another recent post criticizing the current trend of dystopian sci-fi and going on about how sci-fi used to be about hope and wonder.
Back in 2017, rapper Logic released a song called ”1-800-273-8255”. That’s the number for America’s National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, and the song was written to encourage those in need of help to call. With over a billion plays on Spotify, it’s no stretch to assume this song has saved lives, but a new study confirms it.
Our history is a battle against the microbes: we lost terribly before science, public health, and vaccines allowed us to protect ourselves - Our World in Data
Ultimately we have no idea what time travel would actually look like, but we all have ideas of how to understand time travel because of movies like these. Here is a list of some of the best time travel movies, ranked in descending order of how much the time travel adheres to internal consistency and sense .
I don’t know anything about this movie and its directors (Daniels? Oh, Swiss Army Man!) but it has Michelle Yeoh kicking ass in it and I want to see it at the first possible opportunity. Getting some Jackie Chan meets Marvel multiverse meets Being John Malkovich vibes here.
I had never heard of this movie coming, but I think I’m totally here for it…
More on Roblox's exploitation of children | Boing Boing
Last year, People Make Games released a thorough expose of the company's practices. Roblox "pressured us to delete it", says presenter Quintin Smith. So they dug deeper, talking to employees and others, and today published a follow-up report.
I think the overall pitch - Roblox is currently a libertarian dream where there is 0 oversight or moderation, where the worst practices are amplified, and there can be no meaningful accountability.
Michael Dorn, Actor-Director-Star Trek: The Next Generation-ENCORE - Storybeat with Steve Cuden
Michael has appeared more times as a regular cast member than any other Star Trek actor in the franchise’s nearly 55-year history, spanning some 272 TV episodes and 5 feature films. He also appeared as Worf’s ancestor, Colonel Worf, in the film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Officials who later visited the restaurant suspected that the pork had not been stored at a safe temperature. They found that Smokehouse 1776 had no "cold holding" or "hot holding" mechanisms in place, and that the restaurant "does not maintain temperature logs so there was no way of showing that food was kept at proper temperatures." [...] They also reported "bare hand contact with ready to eat foods, no handwashing station [and] no barrier protection from insects."
No wonder she’s anti-regulation.
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has a "position on, you know, Jews, right?" | Boing Boing
She asked, "Is there any kind of — I mean, how would you even know if a — if a school taught all religions are bigoted and biased or, you know, Catholics are bigoted or, you know — or we take a position on the Jewish-Palestinian conflict because of our position on, you know, Jews, right?"
The glass armonica, invented by none other than Benjamin Franklin (working with glassblower Charles James), produces ethereal sounds from friction on a series of extremely delicate nested glass bowls, which form a keyboard.
I’ve loved hearing these since I first heard about them… This is an excellent video covering the how and why of their operation.
USBefuddled: Untangling the Rat’s Nest of USB-C Standards and Cables - TidBITS
