Simon Stålenhag

• Developed: the good for 1000 years, 5-dimensional memory crystal
• Forget LED bulbs—the future of interior lighting is lasers
• After 50,000 generations, bacteria continue evolving greater fitness
• Fourier Transform: The Math Trick Behind MP3s, JPEGs, and Homer Simpson’s Face
• Recent surface warming has probably been underestimated
• What Happens to Google Maps When Tectonic Plates Move?
• How a hatred of bureaucrats and a wall saved a Japanese nuclear plant from meltdown after tsunami
• China will look to Thorium Salt reactors for energy starting in 2040
• China unveils boldest reforms in decades
• Why Scandinavian women make the rest of the world jealous
• Pope’s unprecedented survey signals far-reaching reform
• Abandoned Walmart is now America’s largest one-floor Library
• How One Man Earned 4 Million Airline Miles by Buying Dollar Coins
• Alison Bechdel on the Bechdel Test
• Fuck yeah! AMC Ordering ‘Preacher’ Pilot
• Rave and Hardcore YouTube Comments Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity
• Some of history’s weirdest and fiercest combat helmets
• White Teen In Blackface Responds To Black Critics: ‘Worry About Finding Your Dad’
• Brazil referee decapitated after stabbing player

Plus, Howard, the world’s first Kim Jong-un Impersonator. I want one for my birthday party.

These come from a fantastic collection of lesser-seen Vietnam War photos that can be viewed here.

I can’t recall where these were referred onto from (came back from the weekend to find this buried amongst tabs and that I also have amnesia), so I’ve little context on this collection, apart from the fact that they’re all great.

[ link ]

An X-Ray of a Heliotrygon Gomesi Stingray

• What your crutch word says about you
• Tracking LiveJournal: the demise of the social media platform
• Oddly (if not depressingly) plausible: The Onion gives up
• From The Atlantic: How Google builds it’s maps
• Amusingly, author Philip Roth needed a second source to correct his own book’s wiki page
• Amazon’s approach with it’s new Kindle is looking pretty good yo
• Declassified: footage from the “Starfish Prime” tests
• From Foreign Policy: Why environmentalists should reconsider nuclear energy
• May is still the operative word: Too much light at night may lead to depression
• John Cusack interviews law professor Jonathan Turley about Obama administration’s war on the Constitution
• Looking back at the year 1555 AD
• Four geeky laws that rule our world
• 7 Urban Wonders of the Modern World

Also, this automated bar-tending drinks machine. Wants it.

Tech/Science Stuff
• Harvard creates cyborg flesh that’s half man, half machine
• Heat-proof face paint to withstand bomb heat
• Researchers Believe They Have Found a Single Dose Cure for Malaria
• Researchers have also potentially deciphered the ‘manic gene’
• High quality Denisovan genome sheds light on human evolution
• Of course, the Antarctic may host large stores of methane
• Illuminating tales of modern mainframes
• A litigator’s love/hate relationship with Apple
• The History of the Floppy Disk
• From The Atlantic: How Can Bioscience Push the Limits of Lifespan?

Internet/Sociological Stuff
• Placing some context into the ‘odd’ Eastwood bit at the recent RNC: The Long History of Americans Debating Empty Chairs
• But then, #eastwooding twitter trend was pretty amusing
• The Samsung/Apple jury foreman’s explanation for verdict? Yeah, he doesn’t understand prior art
• Twitter Says It’s Going To Start Aiming Ads At Users Based On Content Of Tweets
• 4chan wants Taylor Swift to perform at a school for the deaf
• The Attention Economy is now the Location Economy
• A poll on polls shows they’re not very accurate
• From Ars Technica: How video copyright went insane

Culture/Media
• Another Willy Wonka letter of note: If ever an actor can do it – Gene can
• Inside Author Ray Bradbury’s FBI File: Was He a Communist Sympathizer? 
• Manga Artist Lets Anyone Use His Work, Royalty-Free
• This beer chase ad is pretty damn good
• Watch on this Youtube channel: every Troma film online
• This online tournament of movie sequels will be awesome!

Other Things
• Badass of the Week: Neil Armstrong
• An animation of the growth of Walmart in America
• What Happens to Stolen Bicycles?
• 12 Hotel Secrets by Hotel Staffs, From Minibar ‘Refills’ to Ritz-Carlton Largesse
• https://hackertyper.com/

And just because; here is some Maru…

History of Comics in 6 Panels with write up via Paul Lopes

• The first color 360-degree panorama from Curiosity
• The Internet May Have Upended Traditional Institutions, But It’s a Brittle Weapon
• The Internet Archive Now Offers Torrent Downloads
• New software that helps employers read your emotional state
• New Global Warming Culprit: Dams
• New salt-based battery a leap for green energy
• How rogue biohackers are revolutionising the human body
• The science of Staring
• A new prehistoric species of humans identified
• Conservative pundits are plain wrong: Barack Obama hasn’t lost Europe. That was his predecessor’s doing.
• How billionaire backers pick America’s candidates
• The Fog of War: How can we talk about the military if we can’t define what it is?
• The Elephant in the Map Room: The Israel/Palestine Border
• The 1916 Shark Attacks that were the inspiration for Jaws
• Wait… There’s a 30 minute longer cut of The Shining?

• How “The Power” Literally Rocked the House
  

  On July 5, 2011, the 39-story “Techno-Mart” mall in Seoul, South Korea shook for ten minutes, causing a two-day evacuation and an investigation. The cause of the tremors? Seismic experts concluded that “The Power,” a dance hit by the band Snap!, simply rocked too hard.

• Mitt Romney to Announce VP Pick Via Smartphone App
• Sad: Pianos are increasingly more likely to end up at the dump
• NY Times profiles the life of a drone pilot, the guy that waits for a kill shot 7,000 miles away
• A black momma with a white baby’s open letter to Louis C.K.
• How Being Wired to the ‘Net Poses an Existential Threat
• An Editorial on: Being too ‘plugged-in’ and tools to help get your life back.
• Advice from 1821 on How Imagination Can Save Us From Information Overload
• Nielsen Sued For Billions For Allegedly Manipulating TV Ratings Data (also, fuck Nielsen)
• On: What Does a Killer Think? and the latest research on mass murderers
• Haha, oh you (America): Man Charged With Illegally Feeding Alligator (That Bit Off His Hand)
• 13 People Who Don’t Know What ‘Literally’ Means
• Twitter account: @JamesHolmesDies

• Military Strategy: What are the optimal siege tactics for taking Magic Kingdom’s Cinderella Castle?
• John McCain Comes to Huma Abedin’s Defense
• The real reason Marissa Mayer left Google: She had to
• Also: Marissa Mayer on the day she ‘broke’ the Internet
• Green streets can cut pollution, says study
• Study: Users more satisfied with Google+ over Facebook
• Texting overtakes talking in UK, says Ofcom study
• What Central Europe thinks of Britain and why
• Broken down: How an executable file works
• 90’s Nostalgia: A Windows 3.1 interface with a working command prompt too!
• The intensity of auditioning for the Boston Symphony Orchestra
• Twitter account: Bane Capital
• 10 Famous Roles Almost Played by Bill Murray
• 10 Bizarre Crimes in Walmart Parking Lots

Also, using a high speed camera, the good folks at MIT have recorded the properties of a drop of water at 10,000 frames/second, revealing a ‘behaviour’ that’s normally invisible to the human eye.

During the 1960s and 70s, thousands of monuments commemorating the Second World War – called ‘Spomeniks’ – were built throughout the former Yugoslavia; striking monumental sculptures, with an angular geometry echoing the shapes of flowers, crystals, and macro-views of viruses or DNA. In the 1980s the Spomeniks still attracted millions of visitors from the Eastern bloc; today they are largely neglected and unknown, their symbolism lost and unwanted. Antwerp-based photographer Jan Kempenaers travelled the Balkans photographing these eerie objects, presented in this book as a powerful typological series. The beauty and mystery of the isolated, crumbling Spomeniks informs Kempenaer’s enquiry into memory, found beauty, and whether former monuments can function as pure sculpture.

– Roma Publications

Many more of these incredible structures at retronaut

This.  The animation is of minimal quality, the sound is stock and the song is well past the point of being overused; and yet… the imagery and scale one gets from watching this is damn impressive.

It really puts into an odd visual perspective just how bloody our planet’s history has been and despite the atrocities of just the last 100 years, I still maintain the position that our world today has finally learned something about large scale conflicts and will never as a globally communicative engage in such large scale operations again…  well, I find the concept of that inconceivable at least.