The Anachronist

This has been one of my huge projects the past few months. And...

Wed, 23 May 2012 01:02:00 +0300

This has been one of my huge projects the past few months. And now it’s a reality. So excited! I’ll be presenting/moderating/hosting the panel.

Also, I should credit Two Thousand for the excellent art on this poster.

betterworlds:

Better Worlds is very excited to announce a huge discussion event, about startups and immigration, headlining with Reddit co-founder and Breadpig founder Alexis Ohanian.

The event will take place at General Assembly in New York City, and is described in full at our meetup.com page for Immodest Proposals NYC.

This is a great thing, guys, and a huge step for us as we try to help you make the world a better place. Best of all: It’s FREE. But space is very limited, so sign up as soon as possible if you plan to come.

If you’re not in New York, or can’t come, feel free to invite your friends. There will also be a webcast—details on that to follow.

How Do Dog Whistles Work?

Tue, 22 May 2012 00:52:37 +0300

fakescience:

“Scary” is just one of the best words ever. When a word that seriously conveys fear...

Mon, 21 May 2012 18:39:33 +0300

“Scary” is just one of the best words ever. When a word that seriously conveys fear just won’t do…”scary” is there for you, to be ridiculous and ironic.

teal-deer: aeromachia: freshphotons: Poster by Klaas...

Fri, 18 May 2012 22:35:11 +0300

teal-deer:

aeromachia:

freshphotons:

Poster by Klaas Wynne.

aah oh wow this is great

my best friend in middle school wasn’t allowed to wash her hair with anything other than this weird lemon juice concoction because her terrifying mother objected to “chemicals”, I spent a lot of time being like BUT WE’RE MADE OF CHEMICALS at her, to no avail

This is so great. Chemicals are not inherently bad, people.

The Honest Scam: If I Were a Scam Publisher

Tue, 15 May 2012 22:19:00 +0300

Writers! My new anthology is looking to exploit you!

Here’s what you do. You have to send us your work. We’re not going to mention any formatting requirements like standard manuscript format, because honestly, we’re a scam and we just don’t care what you’ve written.

Your work should be somewhere between zero and seven hundred thousand words. Since you’ll be paying for all the copies of it yourself, we’re not too concerned about the shipping costs of a box of tremendous books.

Since we feel it’s important to at least pretend we’re being selective, we’ve decided that our anthology theme will be a cross-section of today’s most popular books—probably the same books that inspired you to be a writer!

Our anthology theme will involve stories about a television show where teenage wizard vampires battle to the death in an arena designed by the Norse god Loki.

Other than that, you have complete creative freedom!

READING FEE: $1/word. We’re a pro market, guys.

RIGHTS: By submitting, you give us exclusive rights to your work indefinitely, though you retain the copyright. HA!

Note: I’m writing this to help you recognize the telltale signs that a publication is trying to exploit you. Yes, this is way more blatant than anything will ever be, but when you read between the lines you’ll recognize that if a press takes away your rights to your own work and requires you to pay it, along with a number of other circumstantial shady signs, it’s time to turn and run.

Neil Gaiman: For Novice Writers: the quick test for Are You Being Scammed Or Not...

Tue, 15 May 2012 18:10:36 +0300

Neil Gaiman: For Novice Writers: the quick test for Are You Being Scammed Or Not...:

This is a really important thing that I find myself having to tell new writers about all the time. You don’t pay to play. They pay you for playing.

neil-gaiman:

I read a sad case today of a young writer who had had her story rewritten into illiteracy by a so-called publisher, who then abused her in email when she wrote to complain. She wsn’t getting paid for her story — instead she was actually buying copies of the anthology to show people that she had…

indiemaiden: newsweek: ragbag: bogman’s last supper last...

Thu, 10 May 2012 18:45:05 +0300

indiemaiden:

newsweek:

ragbag:

bogman’s last supper

last fall, with the aid of an attractive botanist who has the hots for my older brother, i began perfecting a 2,400 year-old recipe for gruel. there are older food recipes* out there but this one is certainly the most precise. it contains over 25 ingredients (one of which is fine sand) and takes days to make (mostly because gathering seeds is highly time consuming).

you might be wondering how such an old recipe was recorded—and the answer is neither parchment nor clay. in fact this particular gruel recipe was reverse-engineered from the stomach contents of a murdered european man from the age of iron. because his body was preserved for posterity in bog water, modern scientists have been able to determine (down to the smallest kernel) the type of gruel that the bogman had for dinner—and the answer is danish weedseed gruel.

i have written about the bogman and given my own recipe for his gruel over at the awl. if you’re so inclined, you can make your own tonight—you’ll just have to fly to denmark with your gleaning basket to do so*.

__

*for instance, check out this 3900 year-old sumerian beer-making poem.

*the fine print: some of the ingredients may cause photosensitivity and blistering of the skin.

bogman’s last supper illustration by niels bach

Honey! We’re cooking dinner tonight!

Tollund Maaaaaan!

"This is perhaps best exemplified by Christoph Büchel’s contribution to the Sculpture Park, several..."

Wed, 09 May 2012 19:06:53 +0300

“This is perhaps best exemplified by Christoph Büchel’s contribution to the Sculpture Park, several examples of his new series 1% which were placed, unmarked, around the fair’s grounds. Comprising six shopping carts, each filled with all of the belongings of a homeless New Yorker, purchased by Büchel for $300 to $500 apiece, the carts are being sold by Büchel’s gallery Hauser & Wirth, with prices ranging from $30,000 to $50,000; the “1%” in question refers to the fact that the amount Büchel paid for each cart represents 1% of its new value, once inscribed as a work of art. Though there is, I suppose, an argument to be made for the project as a critique of art-market capitalism, in which the authorial touch of the artist can transform objects that are otherwise considered not only worthless, but also downright squalid by most, into things of monetary and cultural value; it might function better if the artist himself—and his gallery—didn’t profit so heavily from it. Whatever Büchel’s aims for the project might have been, it struck me as exploitative”

- Rhizome. So we’ve gotten to this point, have we? Where poor people, when they make something, it’s just trash. But when fancy people touch that thing, their magic fancy transubstantiation touch makes it Art? How is this not the essence of class prejudice?

If I had my One Law About Art, it would be that something is what it is, trash or Art, irregardless of who made it, and how much money they spent on grad school. And that the person who made it (even if they’re the $10 an hour assistant) is the artist.

(via mollycrabapple)

Photo

Wed, 09 May 2012 18:56:15 +0300

I’ve got this song on my mind today, thanks to XKCD, and...

Mon, 07 May 2012 18:58:00 +0300

I’ve got this song on my mind today, thanks to XKCD, and it’s got me thinking about the Elements.

Elements, in science and alchemical philosophy, are supposed to be anything that is “irreducible.” Simply put, if you cannot break it apart and turn it into anything else, it’s an Element.

Here’s a brief history of the Element. I swear it’s gonna be worth reading.

In the early days of Western civilization, folks thought there were four elements. Air, fire, water, and earth. Heart, well-known from its appearance on Captain Planet, was later added in a form called “Quintessence” which has absolutely nothing to do with compassion and everything to do with driving forces and spirit. From these five things, the Aristotelian alchemist taught, you could make anything, but these things could not be broken apart.

People went on either not caring or believing in this system until the Enlightenment. As that ran its course, by the 19th century a guy named Mendelev had put together enough scientific data to create the “Periodic Table of the Elements,” which contained dozens of different arrangements of protons that all could not be broken down by the chemical science of the day. That table has grown. That table is brilliant, a spiral of the different things that stars spit out when they explode.

But, if you’re really looking for “irreducibility,” that table is dead wrong. Sure, we call them “Elements” but in the 20th century we learned to split the atom into protons, neutrons, and electrons. Then we learned to split protons, neutrons, and electrons into their component parts, and we’re learning about the components of those component parts now, and we’re gonna split those someday too until all that’s left is a forgettable high-energy string theory soup. Where’s the irreducible in that?

Maybe it’s in the four elements of hip hop. You know, breaking, DJing, MCing, and graffiti? But those four elements are all just spirit, mind, quintessence. They’re distillations of human drive, the thing that makes us “go,” whatever that is.

Now I’m starting to sound like a philosopher, right? But I can put this all together.

See, when you break down the atom or the quark or the human spirit, there’s one thing you get. The 20th century taught us that the distinction between matter and energy is all in state, in how it interacts with the universe. Matter and energy are interchangeable. Everything is matter, everything is energy, and it can neither be created nor destroyed. The matter/energy duality has a cute, simple name: Information.

All that there is, the fundamental concept of the universe, the thing that ties the heart of the sun to the heart of a DJ is simple, true, honest Information.

And you can’t lose it, you can’t break it down, you can’t kill it.

The only element is information.

"It’s awesome that Palmer’s Kickstarter has done so well — but look at what it’s entailed. It’s..."

Thu, 03 May 2012 21:32:36 +0300

“It’s awesome that Palmer’s Kickstarter has done so well — but look at what it’s entailed. It’s entailed time, effort, planning and work both backward and forward in time. That currently $439,000 isn’t a windfall for her; it’s a marker of what all that commitment to the work has earned.
If you’re one of the people looking at her Kickstarter money with stars in your eyes and awesome plans of your own in your head, ask yourself first: Have you put in the time? Earned the credibility? Scoped out the financial balance sheet? Made the commitment to fulfill every single thing you have promised?
Palmer has. If you haven’t — on any of this — be aware that your results, shall we say, may vary.”

- John Scalzi explains the ups and downs and behind-the-scenes of how you do a successful Kickstarter and what the money means. Whether you’re interested in Amanda’s Kickstarter or not, this one should be required reading for anybody interested in how it works, what it is, and what you want to do if you want the same results… (via neil-gaiman)

I'm trying to find any use for this "chat post" feature.

Thu, 03 May 2012 21:31:15 +0300

BITTERNESS: Your experiments are plodding along but since you're doing ten thousand things anyway, why not just sit in front of the computer?

LOVE OF SCIENCE: That's ridiculous. Don't listen to him. You need to finish your PhD so that you can go do things like eat food and replace clothes.

INNER CHILD: Stop fighting! I'm gonna go play SWTOR and check on my submitted short stories until you people figure yourselves out.

BITTERNESS: Fine by me.

You know, I see all these e-readers and suchlike, and I can’t help but think of the silliest...

Wed, 02 May 2012 18:28:37 +0300

You know, I see all these e-readers and suchlike, and I can’t help but think of the silliest thing. It was in one of the Animorphs books that I read as a kid, in a passage when Ax, the Andalite alien, was talking about humanity’s achievements.

One of the things he said was how amazing books are, containing so much information with absolutely no load time beyond turning a page, no downtime, nothing to break. I like e-readers, but…KA Applegate had a point.

I think I’ve heard of this. But I think their characters were way too...

Tue, 01 May 2012 22:31:38 +0300

I think I’ve heard of this.

But I think their characters were way too stereotyped.

teal-deer:

octoafterhours:

I’m of the opinion that someone should write a whole novel about two gay robots

It’s been done; I can send you some recs.

Sometimes when I think about Occupy, and the ten thousand...

Tue, 01 May 2012 20:43:52 +0300

Sometimes when I think about Occupy, and the ten thousand different directions it’s gone, I think about this.

"A proposal is being put forward by the Robot Companions for Citizens (CA-RoboCom) consortium has the..."

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 17:47:13 +0300

“

A proposal is being put forward by the Robot Companions for Citizens (CA-RoboCom) consortium has the aim of giving a robot to every citizen in the European Union (EU).

According to their press release, this new generation of robots will extend the active independent lives of citizens, bolster the labour force,preserve and support human capabilities and experience, provide key services in our cities, and help us to maintain our planet.

Robot Companions for Citizens are going to be soft skinned and sentient machines designed to deliver assistance to people. This assistance is defined in the broadest possible sense and covers all sorts of different settings.

Robot Companions for Citizens will be based on the novel solid articulated structures with flexible properties displaying soft behaviour. These companions will also have new levels of perceptual, cognitive and emotive capabilities.

They will also be aware of their physical and social surroundings and respond accordingly. Such sentient characteristics will be achieved through understandings of the behaviour of sentient living creatures. In undertaking the research into the Information and Communication technologies that will need to be developed, the research will also validate understandings of the general design principles underlying biological bodies and brains, thus supporting a symbiotic relationship between science and engineering.

”

- 33rd Square | Robot Companions For All Europeans? (via myserendipities)

From the “checking to make sure it’s not April 1st” department.

ensignau: My favorite shot of Enterprise flying over NYC.

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 21:48:31 +0300

ensignau:

My favorite shot of Enterprise flying over NYC.

Okay last one. After this I can’t get you any more...

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:04:40 +0300

Okay last one. After this I can’t get you any more shuttle porn.

This is a spaceship, guys. I just saw it.

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:51:18 +0300

This is a spaceship, guys. I just saw it.

I’m sure I have a follower or two who would want to make...

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:07:54 +0300

I’m sure I have a follower or two who would want to make themselves a pair of these.

dbsw:

Star Wars Heels: A Craft Project // by Star Wars and Wine

Click through to learn how to make your own.