If you're still living back in the days when a Chromebook was just some cheap tech trinket that couldn't do much more than take notes or check emails, it's time to catch up.
Over the past decade, Chromebooks have grown up, hanging on to their slim profiles and low price points while expanding their functionality to the point that many top models can go toe-to-toe with most much more expensive laptop models. — Read the rest
In August, internal research at Facebook showed that ~70% of the platform's most active Groups were considered too toxic to recommend to users, reports Jeff Horwitz at the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. It's a well-documented tale of Facebook knowing it was amplifying domestic terrorism, and failing to address it. — Read the rest
Reuters: "Former U.S. President Donald Trump's office on Sunday said trial lawyers David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor will lead Trump's legal team during his Senate impeachment trial."
This announcement follows the not-entirely-surprising news just yesterday that Trump and *all of the lawyers* on his legal team had suddenly parted ways. — Read the rest
"Hours after the United States voted, the president declared the election a fraud — a lie that unleashed a movement that would shatter democratic norms and upend the peaceful transfer of power." — NYT 1/31/2021
Just out on Sunday night, this extensive New York Times reconstruct of Donald Trump's failed 77-day attempt to subvert American democracy, and overthrow the 2020 presidential election. — Read the rest
There's something peaceful about watching this lime green blob of Jell-o gelatin succumb to entropy, and sprout a crown of mold. From Temponaut on YouTube. This channel produces interesting time-lapse videos. The gross ones are my favorites! Grody slow destruction is the best. — Read the rest
Filmmaker Roman De Giuli created "Satellike" from local materials for the National Palace Museum of Taipei.
— Read the restThe museum ran an exhibition on culture treasures of the history of Taiwan in 2020. I was hired to create fluid and abstract interpretations of some iconic items, a collection of several drawings and artworks.
For his innovative hip-hop odyssey "Enough," Nathan Nzanga spent ten years filming his thoughts and experiences Congolese-American coming of age in the United States. It's pretty amazing to watch someone grow up over the course of a short film, reminiscent of Boyhood. — Read the rest
This one-handed chainsaw by "F.Easy.D" seems to make light work of small gardening projects without having to fire up the full-on big guy chainsaw. It also looks freakin' excellent as a hand-to-hand combat action movie tool or slasher movie killing device and don't act like you didn't think about that the moment you saw this thing too. — Read the rest
Saturday Night Live's 46th season resumed on Saturday, Jan 30th, after the Christmas break with Kate McKinnon playing herself interviewing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Cecily Strong), a GameStop investor (Pete Davidson), Jack Dorsey (Mikey Day), Mark Zuckerberg (Alex Moffat), O.J. Simpson (Kenan Thompson) and Tom Brady (John Krasinski) discussing current events. — Read the rest
The shoppers from the grocery app I use sometimes got the wrong produce. This guide to PLU codes helped me make sure I get a tasty Honeycrisp (3283) and not a disgusting Red Delicious (3284).
This is the most first-world problem I have had in some time, but I added these PLUs to Instacart's instructions for the shoppers, and the errors went way down. — Read the rest
When was the last time you sat down and actually wrote something with a pen? Not just an appointment reminder or a three-word note, but an actual written document with sentences and paragraphs and stuff? We're willing to wager that it's probably been a very long time. — Read the rest
YouTuber Contrapoints spends 90 minutes going over not just how J.K. Rowling got lured into the anti-trans movement, but also the tactics they use to present trans people as a threat to women, free speech, society, and so on.
J.K. — Read the rest
Makeup artist Kazu Hiro also creates larger-than-life sculptures of notable people. Each one is very realistic. YouTuber NAKIzm stopped by his exhibit at last year's LA Art Show
Hiro won the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling for Darkest Hour (2017) and Bombshell (2019). — Read the rest
If you follow legendary musician David Crosby on Twitter, "unrestrained" is likely a word that comes to mind for how he conducts himself. He does not mince his words as he expresses his strong opinions about current events and the music biz, or responds with brutal honesty when musicians send him their music and ask what he really thinks. — Read the rest
For decades in film and TV, we've been tantalized by the idea that one day soon, robots will step up to become a child's indispensable learning and emotional support companion. Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, we're getting closer to the possibility of that day, although it's hard to imagine a human teacher ever being truly replaced by a machine. — Read the rest
The Bay of Fundy in Saint John, New Brunswick, has areas with extreme tides. Artist Hula painted a four-story mural during low tide, and completed the top during high tide.
Image: YouTube / Kapu Collective
Now that we're all way too accustomed to remote video meetings, you're probably noticing some alarming patterns, like how some of your co-workers position their cameras in very funky places. Or how people can't seem to get their technical issues in order, then talk all over each other when they do. — Read the rest
Former president Donald Trump's legal team didn't last long.
As of Saturday night, CNN is reporting that all five lawyers identified as part of Trump's impeachment defense — Butch Bowers, Deborah Barbier, Josh Howard, Johnny Gasser, and Greg Harris — have departed. — Read the rest
Anti-vax and other right-wing conspiracy theorists caused a temporary shutdown at LA's largest COVID-19 vaccination site.
— Read the restDodger Stadium's mass COVID-19 vaccination site was shut down Saturday afternoon as about 50 protesters gathered at the entrance, stalling hundreds of motorists who had been waiting in line for hours.
(This is an item from my newsletter, The Magnet. Subscribe here! — Mark)
During the pandemic my family has watched anime almost every night. Here are some of our favorites. Most are available on multiple streaming services.
The Promised Neverland Now in its second season, this series is about a group of kids living in an orphanage in the year 2045. — Read the rest
Here we go again: Another chatbot is trained on a big pile 'o online utterances, and — surprise, surprise — having soaked up Internet bile, begins repeating it.
Haven't developers learned anything from Microsoft's Tay? Man, this happens basically every time someone tries digesting online talk through the four stomachs of their neural network. — Read the rest
Have you ever wondered what would happen if your resin-ized packing cardboard and then turned it on a lathe? Me neither. But this guy did. The results are rather beautiful.
Image: YouTube
Beginning with "Coronasweeper" this week, I am on a tear of bringing you the finest-quality reskinnings of Minesweeper available on the intertubes. I am losing sleep over this, people.
Now: Behold "Hexceed", a version of Minesweeper, except with hexagons.
As Graham Smith describes it at Rock Paper Shotgun:
— Read the restEach puzzle begins with a board of blank hexagons, with one pre-marked safe-to-click title.
In the city of Valencia, Spain they have orange trees along many of the streets producing a great amount of the fruit. Unfortunately, that particular variety of orange is bitter and sour, not meant for consumption, just decoration. This tractor helps mitigate the street waste by spreading giant orange-catching bat wings and shaking it until they fall in. — Read the rest
Hell hath no fury like a redditor enabled with a cash bounty.
Other folks are making really awesome donations, tho the strategy is to hold as far as I understand.
Corridor Crew's work fixing visual effects is always entertaining. Improved Luke is pretty fantastic.
You undoubtedly know at least one mouse hater. While 95% of the computing world points and clicks, there are still those hard-boiled types who live and die by the keyboard and the keyboard only. While many of those devotees were often trained that way as programmers, others just can't stand trying to make ultra-precise cursor placement and action with an often very imprecise mouse. — Read the rest
Andrew Callaghan travels the United States for his All Brakes No Gas YouTube Channel. VICE has a great profile about his approach to covering the high weirdness that is America.
Here's his coverage of the pandemic year's Independence Day celebrations:
Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim's Abso Lutely Productions is reportedly developing a series with Callaghan. — Read the rest
Hearsay, rumor and innuendo won't stand up in a court of law, but they are the lifeblood of the tabloids, which need only the merest molehill of a story to build a mountain of speculation.
And if you search hard enough, you can find smallest fraction of a fact buried beneath the wild imaginings in many of this week's offerings. — Read the rest
The fine folks at powerwashing firm Blast Away also offer a cool stenciling option where they will powerwash your logo or other stencil onto the sidewalk. So satisfying, and perhaps not technically illegal, since there is probably no law against partially cleaning something. — Read the rest
The front may conform to society
But the back says I have personality
In this charming little artifact over a century old, Russian-born French actor, Sacha Guitry, employs newfangled technology, the motion picture camera, to capture some of France's great artists at the ends of their lives. We find Monet, at 74, painting in his Giverny garden, Renoir, at 74, smoking like a fiend while painting, Rodin, at 75, walking around rather aimlessly and chiseling away in his studio, flecks of marble clinging to his beard. — Read the rest
On the latest episode of Team Coco's podcast "Good Game Nice Try," comedian Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley) goes down memory lane with hosts Bley and Sonja about LAN parties of yore and how nasty they smelled. Then, voila, there's a candle that is reminisce of those LAN parties. — Read the rest
In this Dark Corners Review, they offer their choices for the ten best creations of legendary stop motion animator and filmmaker, Ray Harryhausen.
Besides seeing scenes from Harryhausen's pioneering work in stop motion, we also get to see a lot of his concept art and test animation for many projects that sadly never happened. — Read the rest
Dark Patterns at Scale is a thorough collection of the high-pressure and deceptive tricks used on websites to get you to do things you didn't intend. Some are merely the online equivalents of the late J.C. Penney's neverending sales (96% off socks!), — Read the rest
An elderly couple has just left their apartment to walk the dog. That's when almost everything in their home becomes an instrument in the hands of six stealth musicians. "Music for one apartment and Six Drummers," a short film by the Swedish musical-comedy group Six Drummers, is a nine minutes of visual and auditory fun. — Read the rest
It's one of the most recycled memes in the history of meme-dom. Fry from the TV show, Futurama, his animated eyes bugging and a raised, clenched fist clutching a wad of cash, shouting, "Shut up and take my money!"
It's the sentiment that drives e-commerce in 2021. — Read the rest
During the pandemic, musical artists have raised the bar on NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts. Because they can't actually perform from Bob Boilen's "tiny desk" in NPR's music office, they've been given carte blanche to imagine outside the box. The performances themselves are what you'd expect from these artists — terrific — it's the sets that they're having fun with. — Read the rest
A series of billboards created by Canadian author and artist, Douglas Coupland, can now be seen along the new Arbutus Greenway in Vancouver. The slogans on the boards are Holzer-esque "truisms" like: Doing Nothing is Very Different from Having Nothing to Do, Everybody on Earth Is Feeling the Same Way, and Hoard Anything You Can't Download. — Read the rest
As an expression of your innermost deeply held feelings, Valentine's Day should be one of the easiest holidays of the year. But as any husband, wife or significant other can attest, the Day of Love can actually end up being pretty darn stressful. — Read the rest
Whew. The replies.
O.J. Simpson [@TheRealOJ32], on Twitter today, shared an image of himself receiving the coronavirus vaccine, and captioned it: 'Get your shot. I got mine!!!'
I did not know that movie trailer mash-ups were a thing. I guess they now are.
There are a hundred different directions you could take a career in tech. You could become a cybersecurity expert or create video games. You could design and run cloud-based systems or build your own artificial intelligence. But, whether you want to do DevOps, web development, or even work a tech help desk, one skill is paramount and virtually universal. — Read the rest
My dog really loves to chew Roku remotes.
I am currently running a 2020 Roku Ultra on my plain ol' 1080p tv. I upgraded last year from a Roku 3 and the speed improvements were more than worth it. The remote, however? — Read the rest
I'd love to know what is going through this dog's head as it bares its teeth, sneers, and even grins at itself in the mirror.
