Linkblog | Richard Westenra

Linkblog archive

Lost in translation: a primer for cultural differences in design and analytics
Inside OpenAI, Elon Musk’s Wild Plan to Set Artificial Intelligence Free
The English question - Little England may have undone Great Britain. Will a nation of dark fascism or one of green and pleasant lands emerge?
Is Artificial Intelligence Permanently Inscrutable?
How algorithms rule our working lives
How Nextdoor reduced racist posts by 75%
Should Prostitution Be a Crime?
Brexit Blues
The Languages Which Almost Became CSS
Edward Snowden’s Strangely Free Life – As a Robot
Design Better Forms
America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny
How “Silicon Valley” Nails Silicon Valley
Why Do the Poor Make Such Poor Decisions?
How Dating Has Always Been Like Work
This Is What the Future of American Politics Looks Like - For political observers, 2016 feels like an earthquake.
The Chernobyl Story
Uncanny Valley - I would say more, but I signed an NDA.
Hillsborough disaster: deadly mistakes and lies that lasted decades
How to Negotiate a Raise (If You’re a Woman). - First, as you are a woman, stop crying.
Words, Words, Words: On Toxicity and Abuse in Online Activism
How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell
The Deep Roots of Javascript Fatigue - I recently jumped back into frontend development for the first time in months, and I was immediately struck by one thing: everything had changed. When I was more active in the frontend community, the changes seemed minor.
Change your channel (video)
None of the Above - What I.Q. doesn’t tell you about race.
Against Activism
The 100 Funniest Jokes in the History of Twitter
Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems With Digital Colonialism
Out of the Mist: An Alternate History of New Zealand Film
You probably know to ask yourself, “What do I want?” Here’s a way better question
How to Cultivate the Art of Serendipity
Brave New War - A new form of conflict emerged in 2015—from the Islamic State to the South China Sea.
How Pauline Hanson was stopped
The Middle East Friendship Chart
Why Attacking ISIS Won’t Make Americans Safer - For close to a decade, the trauma of the Iraq War left Americans wary of launching new wars in the Middle East. That caution is largely gone.
What I Learned From Dating Women Who Have Been Raped
What do sex workers want? (video)
Why millennials go on holiday instead of saving for a pension
No Shame: The Science Behind Why Most Australians Feel Okay About Tormenting Asylum Seekers
Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?
How 26 Tweets Broke My Filter Bubble
Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years
No, I Don't Want To Configure Your App!
The difficulty of ‘neoliberalism’
How to debug things. A guide for non-developers
What It's Like to Go Clubbing When You Have Asperger's
2015: The Year in Visual Stories and Graphics
I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup
They Pretend To Be Us While Pretending We Don’t Exist - To be Other in America is to be coveted and hated at the same time.
How Doctors Take Women's Pain Less Seriously
The Myth of Welfare’s Corrupting Influence on the Poor - Does welfare corrupt the poor? Few ideas are so deeply ingrained in the American popular imagination as the belief that government aid for poor people will just encourage bad behavior.
The Drugs Won’t Work - The Rise and Fall of Rational Drug Design
The Mystery of ISIS
Sex and the Muslim Feminist
Paris: The War ISIS Wants
Fearing Fear Itself
Unfollow - How a prized daughter of the Westboro Baptist Church came to question its beliefs.
Living and Dying on Airbnb - My dad died in an Airbnb rental, and he’s not the only one. What can the company do to improve safety?
How to Write with Style: Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Keys to the Power of the Written Word
Paul Graham’s Startup Advice for the Lazy
The Final Leaked TPP Text is All That We Feared
How to Lose Weight in 4 Easy Steps
Donald Trump Is Saving Our Democracy - Far from destroying our democracy, he’s exposing all its phoniness and corruption in ways as serious as he is not. And changing it in the process.
The Corbyn earthquake – how Labour was shaken to its foundations
Users don’t hate change. They hate you.
Web Design : The First 100 Years
What Is Code? - Software has been around since the 1940s. Which means that people have been faking their way through meetings about software, and the code that builds it, for generations.
The Really Big One - An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when.
Hostage Negotiation Techniques That Will Get You What You Want
The Designer's Guide to DPI
Pixar’s films put technology and storytelling hand-in-hand
Should We All Take a Bit of Lithium?
Why is Learning to Code so Hard? - Why can some people learn how to code with relative ease, yet others fail?
Paul Krugman Goes for a Knockout Against Scrappy Austerians
How Tesla Will Change The World
23 Tips From Comedians to Be Funnier in Your Next Presentation
Your Presentation Needs a Punch Line
Who Will Be Hurt Most When The Tech Bubble Bursts? Not VCs
Colorblind: On Witcher 3, Rust, and gaming's race problem - Survival indie MMO Rust recently changed how players were assigned characteristics for their avatar. Everyone used to start as a bald white man, then the developers decided to alter avatars’ race and face.
They Write the Right Stuff - As the 120-ton space shuttle sits surrounded by almost 4 million pounds of rocket fuel, exhaling noxious fumes, visibly impatient to defy gravity, its on-board computers take command.
How Our Engineering Environments are Killing Diversity
On Some Qualities of Respect
The Moral Bucket List
I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss. Here's How.
The Friend - His wife was just thirty-four. They had two little girls. The cancer was everywhere, and the parts of dying that nobody talks about were about to start. His best friend came to help out for a couple weeks. And he never left.
Consider the Oyster
Out of the ashes - It took a lot of fossil fuels to forge our industrial world. Now they're almost gone. Could we do it again without them?
The Brutal Ageism of Tech - Years of experience, plenty of talent, completely obsolete
How The New York Times Works
Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness?
The Deadly Global War for Sand
Men, Get On Board With Misandry
The Night My Girlfriend Dissociated and Forgot Who I Was
Coding Like a Girl - Heartbreakingly, at some age, we become convinced that doing anything like a girl means that you are doing it ineffectively.
Why the American Founding Fathers Would Have Hated the Anti-Vaccination Movement
Silicon Valley Could Learn a Lot From Skater Culture. Just Not How to Be a Meritocracy
Audio landscapes (audio)
Snowboarding Vs Skiing: The Dying Feud
The Sounds of the Downhill (interactive)
Robot Wars: An oral history of the birth and death of Battlebots.
The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence
The Case for Reparations - Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
Chris Rock Talks to Frank Rich About Ferguson, Cosby, and What ‘Racial Progress’ Really Means
Everything is problematic
How New Zealand's rich-poor divide killed its egalitarian paradise
Policing is a Dirty Job, But Nobody's Gotta Do It
The astonishing rise of Angela Merkel, the most powerful woman in the world.
Parable of the Polygons (interactive) - A playable post on the shape of society.
The Language of the State of the Union (interactive)
Surviving a night in A&E: A doctor’s story
The Dawn Wall: El Capitan’s Most Unwelcoming Route (interactive)
The invasion of America - The story of Native American dispossession
To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This - Psychologist Arthur Aron succeeded in making two strangers fall in love in his laboratory.
A story about Jessica - Information security is broken, but whose fault is it?
Our 'Rape Problem' Can't Be Solved By Colleges
Stop Trying to Save the World - Big ideas are destroying international development
The skiing line of the year (video)
How to Get a Job at Google
Mapping on iOS - An in-depth comparison of the Google Maps and Apple Maps iOS apps as a design lesson.
Berlin’s digital exiles: where tech activists go to escape the NSA
What Book Changed Your Mind? - The Chronicle Review asked 12 scholars what nonfiction book published in the last 30 years has most changed their minds—not merely inspired or influenced their thinking, but profoundly altered the way they regard themselves, their work, the world.
On Kindness - Cord Jefferson with a beautiful piece about his mother, illness, and the importance and difficulty of being kind.
‘Bitcoin is Teaching Realism to Libertarians' - An Interview With Old-School Cypherpunk Vinay Gupta
The Three Breakthroughs That Have Finally Unleashed AI on the World
The Political Economy of Ebola
The Great Paper Caper
Relationship skills: a checklist
One of the most amazing feats in chess history just happened, and no one noticed.
Privilege 101: A Quick and Dirty Guide
Password Security: Why the horse battery staple is not correct
13 Ways Designers Screw Up Client Presentations
The Sound So Loud That It Circled the Earth Four Times
Intent vs. Impact: Why Your Intentions Don’t Really Matter
The Weight of Rain (video) - A talk about finding the story in data-visualisation.
12 things white people can do now because Ferguson
From Muhammad to ISIS: Iraq’s Full Story
Transgender People Can Explain Why Women Don't Advance at Work
The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit
America Is Not For Black People
Are the robots about to rise? - Google's new director of engineering thinks so…
Humans need not apply (video) - 'Technology gets better, cheaper, and faster at a rate biology can't match' + 'Economics always wins' = 'Automation is inevitable.'
How The Most Expensive Game Jam In History Crashed And Burned In A Single Day
How the Recession Reshaped the Economy, in 255 Charts (infographic)
From Watch Dogs to GTA V, why 'video games are going to reshape our cities'
Lies Trans People Tell - You should never lie to your doctor. Unless you’re trans, and then sometimes you have no choice. Although things are getting better, trans people are still expected to jump through some ridiculous hoops in order to access transition healthcare and legal protection.
Game of Hacks (game) - This game was designed to test your application hacking skills. You will be presented with vulnerable pieces of code and your mission if you choose to accept it is to find which vulnerability exists in that code as quickly as possible
Privilege (webcomic)
Game about Squares (game)
Guy Walks Into a Bar - So a guy walks into a bar one day and he can’t believe his eyes. There, in the corner, there’s this one-foot-tall man, in a little tuxedo, playing a tiny grand piano. So the guy runs into the men’s room and, sure enough, there’s this genie.
Pacific Standard - How did toast become the latest artisanal food craze? Ask a trivial question, get a profound, heartbreaking answer. All the guy was doing was slicing inch-thick pieces of bread, putting them in a toaster, and spreading stuff on them.
Words, Words, Words: On Toxicity and Abuse in Online Activism - To all new readers: I’ve written a follow up to this article.
TED talks are lying to you - The creative class has never been more screwed. Books about creativity have never been more popular. What gives? The writer had a problem. Books he read and people he knew had been warning him that the nation and maybe mankind itself had wandered into a sort of creativity doldrums.
Silicon Valley's Youth Problem - In start-up land, the young barely talk to the old (and vice versa). That makes for a lot of cool apps. But great technology? Not so much.
The Kindly Brontosaurus - The amazing, prehistoric posture that will get you whatever you want, whenever you want it.
A good man in Rwanda - Twenty years ago, Rwanda descended into the madness of genocide. UN peacekeepers were stretched to breaking point – but one stood out, taking huge risks to save hundreds of lives.
Most of What You Think You Know About Sex Trafficking Isn’t True
Casual Love - Maybe it’s time to reexamine our definition of ‘love’.
The Talk - A new sex ed for boys
The Distress of the Privileged - “Honey, I’m home! Where’s my dinner?”
The Value of a City (video) - Three years on from the Christchurch earthquakes, locals reflect on the destruction of the CBD and how it’s changed what they value in a city.
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century - A short guide to the economics phenomenon by Cory Doctorow
Oops, You Just Hired the Wrong Hitman - That moment when your hitman turns sides and then you realize that you were his target all along.
Programming Sucks
Adapting Ourselves to Adaptive Content - Excellent talk on separating form from content in order to make it work across multiple platforms. Includes transcript.
The Destruction of Black Wall Street
Prestige TV in the Time of Climate Change - Watching Game of Thrones while sea levels rise is the new fiddling while Rome burns.
Visualizing Algorithms - Mike Bostock (creator of d3.js) consistently blows my mind. If nothing else, skim through the text and play with the visualizations. They get much better as you go down the list.
Print Starts to Settle Into Its Niches
David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show' - The creator of The Wire, David Simon, delivered an impromptu speech about the divide between rich and poor in America at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney, and how capitalism has lost sight of its social compact.
Feminism’s Tipping Point: Who Wins from Leaning in?
Bad Jobs
Growing Up Unvaccinated
Can Snowboarding Be Saved? - Shortsighted marketers are riding snowboarding into the ground, but there may still be hope to keep the sport alive.
Old Fashioned 101
Feminism’s Toxic Twitter Wars - Empowered by social media, feminists are calling one another out for ideological offenses. Is it good for the movement? And whose movement is it?
The truth about structuring an HTML5 page - Why we shouldn’t be bothering with the new HTML5 markup.
Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath
How I Lost My $50,000 Twitter Username
Single Point of Failure: The Day Google Forgot To Check Passwords (video) - Tom Scott hypothesises about the consequences of a catastrophic password leak at Google.
This Old Man - Life in the nineties.
A Story About A Tree - A poignant tale from the early days of the internet about real loss in a virtual community.
According to a New Study, Nothing Can Change an Anti-Vaxxer’s Mind - There is literally no evidence sufficient to change the mind of someone who has committed to an anti-scientific position.
The Great Language Game (game)
How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in History
Omens - When we peer into the fog of the deep future what do we see – human extinction or a future among the stars?
Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail - How HSBC hooked up with drug traffickers and terrorists. And got away with it.
We Aren’t the World - Joe Henrich and his colleagues are shaking the foundations of psychology and economics—and hoping to change the way social scientists think about human behavior and culture.
The Other Side of Hate - In 2000, Zimbabwe’s psychotic dictator began invading and destroying the country’s white-owned farms—in the name of “reparations” for decades of colonial rule. Most of the whites fled. But not Jim Steele. How one man resisted hate and turned it into som
The Not-So-Great Professor: Jeffrey Sachs' Incredible Failure to Eradicate Poverty in Africa - Jeffrey Sachs was certain he knew how to rid the world of poverty. He even said it would be easy. The world had other ideas.
'The top half of the web looks down on the rest' - Rob Manuel on the relationship between web journalists and commenters.
The Last Ice Merchant (El Último Hielero) (video)
Are coders worth it? - In today’s world, web developers have it all: money, perks, freedom, respect. But is there value in what we do?
Usability experts are from Mars, graphic designers are from Venus
Welcome to Google Island
‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative
Scott Adams' Secret of Success: Failure - What’s the best way to climb to the top? Be a failure.
My Son Wears Dresses; Get Over It
1491 - Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought—an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe. New evidence of both the extent of the population and its
Facebook Feminism, Like It or Not - Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In movement helps women advance in the workplace – provided they’re already members of the privileged elite.
37 Conversation Rules for Gentlemen from 1875
Every Every Every Generation Has Been the Me Me Me Generation - A takedown of Time’s ‘Me Me Me Generation’ cover story about Millenials
Living in space - Living in space was meant to be our next evolutionary step. What happened to the dream of the final frontier?
Why You Should Ski In Afghanistan
Lying For The Revolution: John Roughan Defends Neoliberalism - Chris Trotter lambasts John Roughan’s misrepresentation of the history of Neoliberalism in New Zealand.
Alfred Anaya Put Secret Compartments in Cars. So the DEA Put Him in Prison. - US authorities take a dim view of calculated ignorance of criminal activity and the hacker/maker refrain that ‘technology is morally neutral’.
The coming civil war over general purpose computing - Cory Doctorow asks: ‘Even if we win the right to own and control our computers, a dilemma remains: what rights do owners owe users?’
Diving Deep into Danger - A fascinating portrait of commercial deep-water divers.
Is Having A Child A Rational Decision?
How one man escaped from a North Korean prison camp
The Fireplace Delusion - Want to know how it feels to be a theist stung by atheist criticism? Read Sam Harris’s argument that we ought to ban recreational burning of wood.
Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek - A riveting multimedia experience from the New York Times.
Overview (video) - The Overview Effect, first described by author Frank White in 1987, is an experience that transforms astronauts’ perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it. Common features of the experience are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound und
Happiness Is a Worn Gun
The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent - First fourteenth-century Venice, now twenty-first century America?
The Brain on Trial - Advances in brain science are calling into question the volition behind many criminal acts.
G.N.A.R. (video) - A ski movie by Scott & Robb Gaffney, and Shane McConkey.
Robots Say the Damnedest Things
Louis C.K. And The Rise Of The 'Laptop Loners'
Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can't Protect Us Anymore
Monopoly Is Theft - The antimonopolist history of the world’s most popular board game.
The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race - Was the adoption of agriculture a catastrophe, rather than the miraculous advance that conventional wisdom suggests?
The Movie Set That Ate Itself - On the set of director Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s sprawling film cum totalitarian society, Dau.
Here Be Monsters - The story of three Tokelau teenagers lost in the Pacific Ocean in a tiny dinghy for 51 Days
The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama
A Letter To The Guy Who Harassed Me Outside The Bar
Big Med: Can Hospital Chains Improve the Medical Industry?
For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of WWII
A Pickpocket's Tale: The Spectacular Thefts of Apollo Robbins
Inside the meat lab: the future of food
What If the World's Soil Runs Out?
The Squid Hunter - Can Steve O’Shea capture the sea’s most elusive creature?
Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa? - Ethical consumers should be aware poor Bolivians can no longer afford their staple grain, due to western demand raising prices.
Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa? - Ethical consumers should be aware poor Bolivians can no longer afford their staple grain, due to western demand raising prices.
America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
Look Out—He’s Got a Phone! - How a Simple Smartphone Can Turn Your Car, Home, or Medical Device into a Deadly Weapon
The On1on: Sadly, this is not The Onion - Headlines worthy of The Onion, except true.
The end of the creative classes in sight - With the advent of outsourcing and growing automation, will Britain’s tech-savvy middle-class suffer the same fate as past industrial workers?
California and Bust - Michael Lewis investigates the troubling future of state and local government in America.
Climbers - A team of young Rwandan cyclists tries to outrun the past.
Mind vs. Machine - An insight into the Turing Test from one of the human foils.
Watching the Murder of an Innocent Man - Vigilante lynch-mobs in South Africa
Could Conjoined Twins Share a Mind?
The Stoner Arms Dealers: How Two American Kids Became Big-Time Weapons Traders
The Infinite Jukebox - Make your favourite songs loop endlessly
Deep Intellect – Inside the mind of the octopus
Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant
100 Māori words every New Zealander should know
How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy - Could tiny organisms carried by house cats be creeping into our brains, causing everything from car wrecks to schizophrenia?
The Possibilian - What a brush with death taught David Eagleman about the mysteries of time and the brain.
Robots Say the Damnedest Things
Apocalypse - What the Haitian earthquake revealed.
How I Lost Faith in the 'Pro-Life' Movement - One woman’s story about how she became Pro-Choice because of her desire to save unborn babies.
Buddhist monk is the world's happiest man
Apocalypse Prep: How to Preserve Food Without a Fridge
The Island Where People Forget to Die
The IMF's change of heart - The International Monetary Fund has (belatedly) realised that a nation’s economic well-being depends on social equality and justice.
The War Nerd: Obama's Wars - Why Americans want a cheerleader for a war chief, not a strategist.
The crayola-fication of the world: How we gave colors names, and it messed with our brains - Part one of an excellent two-part series on the psychology of colour.
Beginner's Guide to Police Harassment
No, you're not entitled to your opinion - In the philosophy classroom, you are only entitled to what you can argue for.
Ten Myths About Welfare
METRO (video) - A gorgeous animated short film.
Metagames: Games About Games
A Case So Cold It Was Blue
Global Warming's Terrifying New Math
The best podcasts to work to - Decent list, but the wonderful Radiolab is conspicuously absent.
Things that are proven to make you happier - How to be happy, with science!
Quora: What are the best UI elements (controls, patterns, etc.) that have cropped up in modern web sites and web apps recently?
The People's List - Pitchfork’s crowd-sourced and fancily-designed list of the top 200 albums from 1996-2011. (TL;DR: Radiohead)
Forget the Olympics: The summer's most stunning sports ad Is for the Paralympics (video)
Will you still medal in the morning? - ESPN spills the beans on what really goes on in the Olympic Village.
Suicidal termites use chemical weapons to defend colony - European biologists have discovered a species of termite that develops an explosive and poisonous defensive ‘backpack’ once an individual is too old to use its jaws effectively.
Where's _why? - What happened when one of the world’s most unusual, mysterious and beloved computer programmers disappeared.
The Man Who Broke Atlantic City - Don Johnson took Atlantic City’s Tropicana, Borgata and Caesars casinos for nearly $15 million in just a few nights, single-handedly decimating their monthly revenues. Mark Bowden explains how he did it.
'Their souls are to be laughed at…' - In 1880, the top attraction at a zoo in Hamburg, Germany was an Inuit family who performed seal hunts and other Eskimo-like activities for huge crowds.
The Chameleon: The many lives of Frédéric Bourdin.
Why don't Americans walk more? The crisis of pedestrianism.
The devaluation of everything: The perils of panflation
At 92, a Bandit to Hollywood but a Hero to Soldiers - Hyman Strachman is one of the biggest bootleggers of Hollywood movies. He’s also 92 years old, a WWII veteran, and gives his movies away to American troops serving overseas.
Cocaine Incorporated: How a Mexican Drug Cartel Makes Its Billions - Wall Street could learn a thing or two from the cartels’ surprisingly cautious attitude to risk.
The Strongest Man in the World - A new era of strength competitions tests the limits of the human body.
Essentialist Explanations - A large collection of expressions in which languages are explained in terms of other languages.
All Work and No Play Make the Baining the 'Dullest Culture on Earth'
A Conversation With My 12 Year Old Self: 20th Anniversary Edition (video)
Behind the scenes at a McDonald's photo shoot (video)
Portal: Terminal Velocity (video)
Mosquitoes don't let the rain get them down - To survive raindrop impacts, mosquitoes are able to cope with over 100 Gs of acceleration.
Uncatchable - A sympathetic but fascinating profile of George Wright, America’s most elusive fugitive, and his forty year run.
Aaron Sorkin to graduates: You're 'incredibly well-educated dumb people'.
33 Stunning Photos Of Our Amazing Planet Earth Taken By A Guy In Space
Startups, This Is How Design Works
How To Blog Anonymously (and how not to)
The best intro book for any topic
What Intersections Would Look Like in a World of Driverless Cars
The World's Best Countries (infographic) - An interactive study of health, education, economy, and politics ranks the globe’s top nations.
The Mouse Trap - A series of three articles by Slate about the dangers of using one lab animal to study every disease.
Everything Is a Remix (video) - A fascinating four-part web series on creativity, innovation and copyright.
Minimalist posters explain complex philosophical concepts with basic shapes
Paintballing with Hezbollah
Anthrax Redux: Did the Feds Nab the Wrong Guy?
The Case Against Google
Wind Map (infographic) - Gorgeous interactive animated map of wind routes in the US
The Jimmy McNulty Gambit - How #StopKONY is a bit like season five of The Wire.
The Body Counter - Meet Patrick Ball, a statistician who’s spent his life lifting the fog of war.
Number One With A Bullet: India's Antipoaching Policy in Kaziranga National Park
A Low Impact Woodland Home - A real-life livable hobbit house in Wales, built in four months for only £3000.
You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You - Hollywood needs to re-think their entire business model in the face of changing technology, instead of putting their fingers in their ears and yelling.
10 Commandments for Con Men
Da Chip - 8 bit versions of Daft Punk songs.
Trials and errors: Why science is failing us - Wired Magazine ruminates on the problem of induction and diminishing returns in scientific reductionism.
A Viewer's Companion to 'Citizen Kane', by Roger Ebert
Beautiful Brains - Moody. Impulsive. Maddening. Why do teenagers act the way they do? Viewed through the eyes of evolution, their most exasperating traits may be the key to success as adults.
The Blind Man Who Taught Himself To See - Daniel Kish has been sightless since he was a year old. Yet he can mountain bike. And navigate the wilderness alone. And recognize a building as far away as 1,000 feet. How? The same way bats can see in the dark.
The Beer Archaeologist - By analyzing ancient pottery, Patrick McGovern is resurrecting the libations that fueled civilization, and concocting new beverages using ancient recipes.
The Obama Memos - The making of a post-post-partisan Presidency.
Happiness Takes (A Little) Magic - Spending considerable amounts of time on multimedia/technology may make us unhappy.
Redmond aviation engineer's lifelong work has saved thousands of lives - The crash-avoidance technology pioneered by Don Bateman has virtually eliminated what used to be the most common type of airplane disaster.
The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician
Food Project Proposes Matrix-Style Vertical Chicken Farms
Meat Eaters Downplay Animal Minds
Christchurch finding its way back from devastation
Innovation and the Bell Labs miracle
Nighttime snowboarding in LED suit (video)
For Your Soul - If you had to choose one athlete in his/her prime to play on your behalf for your soul, who would you choose?
Guy has a level created in Portal simply to propose to his girlfriend (video)
5th Grader Accidentally Makes Explosive in Class, Gets Co-Authorship on Subsequent Paper
BANG! - A desk lamp with a gun-shaped remote controller. User can fire the “gun” to turn the light off.
Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus (video)
To My Old Master - A former slave politely and eloquently replies to his former owner’s request to return to the farm.
Let the Robot Drive: The Autonomous Car of the Future Is Here
WHAT were you raised by wolves? (comic) - In a word, poignant.
Between the Lines - Parking is expensive to create – up to $140,000 per space in an underground garage – but is low-cost or even free to use, which results in strange economic situations and irrational human behavior.
The Human Lake - How the ecology of lakes can inform how we think about human health.
What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence.
You Say You Want a Devolution? - For most of the last century, America’s cultural landscape—its fashion, art, music, design, entertainment—changed dramatically every 20 years or so. But these days, even as technological and scientific leaps have continued to revolutionize life, popular
Fotoshop by Adobé (video) - Fotoshop is a new beauty product from Adobé (say aah-DOE-bay) that slims, gets rid of wrinkles, and can even lighten your skin color.
The Curse of Cow Clicker: How a Cheeky Satire Became a Videogame Hit
Visualizing the World's Food Consumption - plug
MOON8: Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in 8-bit
The Definitive Post On Why SOPA And Protect IP Are Bad, Bad Ideas - In case anyone was still harbouring any doubt.
That Which Does Not Kill Me Makes Me Stranger - Inside the mind of Jure Robic, the Slovene soldier who might be the world’s best ultra-endurance athlete.
Ordering the vegetarian meal? There’s more animal blood on your hands - This vigorous riposte to ethical eaters of the Peter Singer school is intriguing food for thought. (Yes, it’s a pun and no, I’m not proud of myself.)
Steve Jobs Was Always Kind To Me (Or, Regrets of An Asshole)
Getting Bin Laden - What happened that night in Abbottabad.
The Apostate - Paul Haggis Vs. The Church of Scientology
Smoke Screening: Does airport security really make us safer? - Bruce Schneier argues that the post 9/11 tightening of security is “so much inconvenience for so little benefit at such a staggering cost”.
The dark side of Dubai - Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging.
Anti-Piracy Movie Ads Caught Using Pirated Music - Schadenfreudetastic
Swiss Govt: Downloading Movies and Music Will Stay Legal - At last, a government that’s taken a reasonable approach based on evidence.
How Doctors Die – It’s Not Like the Rest of Us, But It Should Be
India Talent Show – Warriors of Goja (video) - Possibly the craziest thing you’ll ever see on the web.
Can You Say … 'Hero'? - A portrait of Mr Rogers.
Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?
The End of Cheap Coffee: Why the Diner Staple Is About to Become a Luxury
When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?
Bob Schieffer, Ron Paul and journalistic “objectivity”
It’s the Economy, Dummkopf! - With much of Europe in economic shreds, only one nation can prevent financial Armageddon: a highly reluctant Germany.
How economic inequality harms societies (video) - “If Americans want to live the American Dream, they should go to Denmark.”
Wouldn’t It Be Cool if Shakespeare Wasn’t Shakespeare? - ‘Thanks to “Anonymous,” undergraduates will be confidently asserting that Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare for the next 10 years at least, and profs will have to waste countless hours explaining the obvious.’
How Music Travels – The Evolution of Western Dance Music (infographic)
OWS's Beef: Wall Street Isn't Winning – It's Cheating
Lord Monckton is actually Sasha Baron Cohen (video) - ‘Yo dawg, I heard you like parody so we put a parody in yo parody!’ One of the best pieces of satire I’ve seen in ages.
Occupy Wall Street's Age Divide: Why Baby Boomers Don't Understand the Protests
Quantum Levitation (video) - Superconductors = SORCERY
Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance
Beware online 'filter bubbles' (video) - Eli Pariser’s TED talk argues that the tailoring of search results will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.
Temple Basin Speed Flying Boogie 2011 (video) - Mind: blown.
Mr. Bungle – Pink Cigarette - I normally dislike Mr Bungle and anything by Mike Patton, but this fan-made video is simply outstanding. Made on a budget of $200!
Radiohead: 01 and 10 - Summary: If you combine the tracks of OK Computer and In Rainbows, it’s pretty awesome.
What People Don't Get About My Job: From A(rmy Soldier) to Z(ookeeper)
The Weather Wheel
Michele Bachmann's Holy War
The World Without Scholars: A Fable for Our Time
Nietzsche’s Angel Food Cake. - Allow the angel to reach room temperature. Then kill it.
The $300 Million Button - How Changing a Button Increased a Site’s Annual Revenues by $300 Million
AI vs. AI – Two chatbots talking to each other (video)
How TV Ruined Aspiration (video) - Charlie Brooker delivers a scathing and cynical attack on a society obsessed with the acquisition of posessions as status symbols.
Why Iceland Should Be in the News, But Is Not - A follow-up on Iceland’s political and economic dramas post-bankruptcy, and why the major Western players are refusing to acknowledge their existence.
Don’t look down - Researchers have found that lower income individuals become more opposed to programs designed to help them if people they perceive as below them will also be helped.
'Stop Coddling the Super-Rich' – Warren Buffet
Lexadecimal - Hexadecimal colour codes whose letters and numbers form an English word in 1337.
The painful truth about trainers: Are expensive running shoes a waste of money?
Generation F*cked - How Britain is Eating Its Young.
Who Had the Best Civil War Facial Hair? - Vote for your favourite beard, moustache, mutton chops or sideburns.
5 Scientific Reasons Your Idea of Happiness Is Wrong
London riots: the underclass lashes out - London’s rioters are the products of a crumbling nation, and an indifferent political class that has turned its back on them.
Celebrity portrait photographer Martin Schoeller (images)
Where's The Octopus? (video) - Bet you can’t spot the camouflaged octopus before it reveals itself.
Lessons of the Debt-Ceiling Crisis - According to Jacob Weisberg, the recent debacle revealed that politics is broken in every possible way and there’s no point in explaining complicated matters to the American people.
The Big Mac index - The Economist’s ‘fun’ measure of how purchasing power varies from country to country.
Sounds of CCentury (audio) - A small (but embeddable) collection of historically significant audio clips on SoundCloud.
Turning Writers Into Motherfucking Rock Stars
Mother Earth Mother Board - The hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, chronicling the laying of the longest wire on Earth.
The Great American Bubble Machine - From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression — and they’re about to do it again.
Consider the Lobster - David Foster Wallace investigates the Maine Lobster Festival.
The Road to Gay Marriage in New York - An insight into how the American political sausage gets made.
My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant
BOOM - Lost in the catastrophic aftermath of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is the gripping tale of the rig workers and the Coast Guard crewmen who rescued them.
The Someone You're Not - What it’s like to spend nearly thirty years in prison for something you didn’t do.
Toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein in Iraq - How the media inflated a minor moment in a long war.
He Knew He Was Right - A New Yorker profile of Christopher Hitchens
Capitalism's Dismal Future
The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science - How our brains fool us on climate, creationism, and the vaccine-autism link.
What Happened When I Went Undercover at a Christian Gay-to-Straight Conversion Camp
Secrets of the Little Blue Box - ‘A story so incredible it may even make you feel sorry for the phone company’
Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good - An excerpt From Eric Schlosser’s ‘Fast Food Nation’
Nurse reveals the top 5 regrets people make on their deathbed
Liveable v lovable - How exactly do you measure “liveability” in a city?
How can you tell if a policy is working? Run a trial.
On the Floor Laughing: Traders Are Having a New Kind of Fun - The modern trader is playing the most sophisticated, dynamic, immersive game in the world.
Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young - Mary Schmich’s legendary 1997 essay, better known as ‘Wear Sunscreen’ and often falsely attributed to Kurt Vonnegut.
The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything - ‘The vast majority of the world’s books, music, films, television and art, you will never see. It’s just numbers.’
Religion Comedy: Tim Minchin (video)
Unhappy Meals - ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’
Everything popular is wrong: Making it in electronic music, despite democratization - Stefan Goldmann on why Web 2.0 can work for you but won’t for most, where all the money went and how working against the market consensus can be a winning strategy.
The Safe House - For when the zombies come a calling…
A Murder Foretold: Unravelling the ultimate political conspiracy - The New Yorker investigates the incredible tale of Rodrigo Rosenberg’s murder in Guatemala.
Dubai on Empty - First stop on my upcoming OE, the world capital of crazy money.
Photos of Elderly Animals
Gravity satellite yields 'Potato Earth' view
When Failure Looks Like Success (Infographic) - Lessons learned from the global effort to bring clean water to Bangladesh.
America's Great Passport Divide - United States Passport Ownership Per Capita, by State
CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs – The Onion (video)
The Dickensian aspect of Ogden's 1846 serial 'The Wire'
The lost art of pickpocketing - The venerable crime has all but disappeared in the United States. What happened, and should we miss it?
Bioware Tells Straight Men to 'Get Over' Being Hit on By Gay Men in 'Dragon Age 2'
Social Media as a Tool for Protest - STRATFOR discusses whether twitter and facebook genuinely influenced the Arab revolutions.
'Deaths Of 20,000 Japanese Afford Planet Solid 15 Minutes In Which Everyone Acts Like A Human Being' – The Onion
Why I Am Not an Environmentalist - Best taken with a grain of salt.
How to give an elephant a vasectomy
Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power – George Monbiot
Identifying photocopy machine poses problem for Cuyahoga County official - A lawyer in a public-records case being heard by the Ohio Supreme Court last year has a difficult time getting a Cuyahoga County worker to say whether the county recorder’s office has a photocopier.
War on drugs has failed, say former heads of MI5, CPS and BBC - British MPs and members of the House of Lords have formed a new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform, and are calling for new policies to be drawn up on the basis of scientific evidence.
Cosmonaut Crashed Into Earth 'Crying In Rage' - The story behind the 1967 death of Vladimir Komarov.
Super Moon - During the full moon on March 19th 2011 the moon was the closest it’s been in almost 20 years. It appeared 14 percent bigger and 30% brighter than usual.
How China Won and Russia Lost - The difference between the two superpowers’ transitions from communism to capitalism.
I Do Anything - The most brilliantly desperate Craigslist resume ever created.
What being a New Zealander means
Back to the Future, - Photographer Irina Werning recreates old family portraits, decades after they were originally taken.
Fact-Free Science
Famous Objects from Classic Movies (game)
Is the Personalization of the Web Making Us Dumber? - Are search & feed algorithms creating a personal ‘filter bubble’?
Public Sees Both Parties Cutting Deficits The Wrong Way - Study shows that if the public were to set the budget, they’d do things vastly differently than either of the major US parties.
It'll Never Work! - A collection of well-known and respected people and publications and the things they were wrong about.
Cutting out the middle men - The most efficient way to spend money on the homeless might be to give it to them.
When Irish Eyes Are Crying - An excellent and entertaining insight into the Irish economic meltdown.
Pixelfari - An 8-bit version of Safari.
The Loneliest Whale in the World
The Day the Movies Died - Why Hollywood movies suck worse than ever and “the potential death of the great American art form”.
Hawking contra Philosophy - Is philosophy of science an obsolete pseudo-discipline? Stephen Hawking thinks so.
Middle-earth according to Mordor - A newly translated Russian novel retells Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” from the perspective of the bad guys.
Sex-Positivism, or The Unthinking Slut Chronicles - A pretty good modern feminist’s manifesto.
Search Optimization and Its Dirty Little Secrets - The NYTimes investigates JC Penny, discovers they’re using Black Hat SEO, and tells on them to Google.
What is the best way to use a Li-ion battery?
If all stories were written like science fiction stories
Pick Your Cupid (image)
Beyond Intellectualism - If you want to build a better society, advises Robert Wright, don’t bother reading fancy philosophers.
Radiohead Defies Convention Again With Latest Album Release
AHumanRight.org - The ‘A Human Right’ group plans to buy satellite and provide free Internet access for entire world.
The Deepening Mystery of Raymond Davis and Two Slain Pakistani Motorcyclists
Greenpeace co-founder talks biotech, nuclear and climate - ‘Why do they hate science, and why are they so miserable?’
The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator
Internet '96 - The ‘tremendously humiliating’ dark ages of the internets.
The Julie Project - An 18-year photographic portrait of an HIV-positive, drug addicted, nearly homeless mother.
'Death by GPS' in desert
The Sopranos: Definitive Explanation of “The END”
Revolt of the Elites
Tyranny of the Alphabet - A new study explores how your last name influences how fast you buy stuff.
4-Hour Dentist - Charlie Nadler presents an uncommon guide to rapid fat-loss, incredible sex, and becoming a dentist.
Lower Costs and Better Care for Neediest Patients
Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science
The Future of Advertising - Advertising is on the cusp of its first creative revolution since the 1960s. But the ad industry might get left behind.
Surface detail (video) - ‘Do all of the drugs on Earth and then watch this video full-screen. Fuckin’ fractals, how do they work?’
Let’s help germinate this seed - An epic story about meeting god on a train.
The Philosophical Novel - Novelists and philosophers ask big questions and impose order on the world. But can a novelist write philosophically?
Left Behind: The Ruins of Detroit
New Language Discovered: Prairiedogese
Turbine-free wind power (video)
James Randi's fiery takedown of psychic fraud (video)
In Investing, It’s When You Start and When You Finish (Infographic)
The Rise of the New Global Elite - ‘When the high priest of capitalism himself is declaring the growth in economic inequality a national crisis, something has gone very, very wrong.’
Why New York City is about average - Researchers investigating the superlinear scaling of city populations have found some interesting results.
In praise of the sci-fi corridor
Face-Off With a Deadly Predator (video) - Leopard seal adopts photographer, attempts to feed him penguins.
Twitter’s Response to WikiLeaks Subpoena Should Be the Industry Standard - ‘Twitter introduced a new feature last month without telling anyone about it, and the rest of the tech world should take note and come up with its own version of it: Twitter beta-tested a spine.’
Rocket launch blows away the sky (video) - Supersonic rocket shockwave ripples through clouds, blowing away a sundog.
The 7 most memorable columns of 2010 – The Week
The Lie Guy
The incredible shrinking sound bite - Since 1968, the length of the average TV political sound bite has dropped from 43 seconds to a little under eight seconds.
The United States of Autocomplete
Children's Drawings Painted Realistically
The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist
Twitter, Facebook, and social activism
2010 Year Lists - List of the best ‘best of 2010′ lists of 2010. Yeah.
The A.I. Revolution Is On
Cambridge university refuses to censor student's thesis on chip-and-PIN vulnerabilities - Entertaining smack-down letter from a Cambridge professor to a bank.
My Blackberry Is Not Working! – The One Ronnie (video)
The Most Important Free Speech Issue of Our Time - Al Franken argues for Net Neutrality
A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais: Why I'm An Atheist
Study Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid - A new survey of American voters shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. Possibly misleading title though: Corellation != causation!
15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will
Stem Cell Transplant Cures HIV In 'Berlin Patient'
Map of Metal - A gorgeously illustrated guide to the history of metal genres.
Why money doesn't motivate file-sharers
Wikileaks row stops someone from buying a Chris De Burgh album
Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music - Hugely entertaining and informative guide to the scores of electric music genres.
Kawah Ijen by night - Gorgeous photos from inside a burning sulfur mine in East Java, Indonesia.
Rescued Humpback Whale Thanks Divers That Cut Her Free
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
Dr. Seuss does Star Wars
Wall Street, investment bankers, and social good - According to the chairman of Britain’s top financial watchdog, Lord Adair Turner, “much of what investment bankers do is socially worthless”.
Student Unveils Instrument Made Out of PVC Pipe, Plays Pop Culture Medley (video)
Twitter Movie Trailer (video) - ‘The Social Network’ parody
What if the largest countries had the biggest populations?">
“We live underground. We speak with our hands.” - A set of hilariously expensive speaker cables on Amazon has attracted dozens of excellent spoof reviews, including a concise work of SF.
Everybody's an expert - Experts and specialists are no better at making predictions than the rest of us.
How to properly preheat your frying pan
McAllen, Texas and the high cost of health care - Why does McAllen, Texas have double the healthcare costs of nearby El Paso?
Responding to spec work requests
'It gets better' – Love, Pixar
The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist - Unbelievable story straight out of a film script.
Selling Out - You sold out long ago in one way or another. The specifics of who you sell to and how much you make – those are only details.
Ditch the Cord, Let the Road Charge Your EV
20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web - A fun guidebook from Google on things you’ve always wanted to know about browsers & the web (but were afraid to ask)
Stealing Life - An in-depth profile of David Simon, principal creator of The Wire.
How America Lost the War on Drugs
What Does Iraq Cost? Even More Than You Think.
What the World Eats
Right Brain v Left Brain - Is the woman turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?
Harry Potter and the X-Rated Trailer (video)
Pearls Before Breakfast - As a social experiment, the Washington Post arranged for internationally acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell to play outside a DC subway station. Would anyone notice?
The world's flags given letter grades
The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2009
A Selection of Perfect Ads
The 25 Best News Photographs – Vanity Fair
Better – Merlin Mann
Mindfuck Movies
Inside the Minds of Animals - One of the best articles I’ve read in ages. Summarises quite neatly the reasons why I went vegetarian.
A Walk Through The Suicide Forest (video) - A short, riveting documentary on Japan’s Aokigahara forest, the country’s most popular location for those wishing to end their own lives
An empirical perspective on religious and secular reasons - This is my kind of philosophy: politically relevant, empirically rigorous, and ever so slightly dull.
Lost in the Waves
The Peekaboo Paradox - Long but fascinating article about Washington’s No. 1 preschool entertainer.
Higher, Colder, Deadlier - Four boarding school friends (the charmer, the looker, the student, and the joker) attempted to scale Mont Blanc and only two came back alive.
Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget (Interactive Feature)
How to Tour in a Band or Whatever
Malmesbury appoints UK's first town philosopher
Lucky Tower (game)
The Myth of the Self-Made American: Why Progressives Get No Respect
David Cameron’s Culture War
Modern art was CIA 'weapon'
Alcohol worse than crack, heroin
Mini Cannon Firing and Destroying Targets (video)
Goats climb near vertical dam wall - SPIDERGOATS!
If You Believe In Yourself (video)
Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money
Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request
Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio Duck (video)
Rube Goldberg and the Irreducible Strangeness of Electricity
What The Fuck Is My Social Media Strategy?
One-line arguments from Global Warming Skeptics and what the science really says
Caricature Map of Europe 1914
Play Asteroids on any website
Hello, want to kill some time?
Is long-term solitary confinement torture?
The scale of the universe
Treadmillasaurus Rex (game)
Crowd-sourced Radiohead concert - A group of Radiohead fans capture the band playing using as many different angles as possible.
Clock Blocks (game)
Access Main Computer File - From War Games to Iron Man, a visual study of internet use in Hollywood cinema.
Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds - The fascinating story behind the Greek financial crisis.
Bridging the Chasm between Two Cultures - A former leader in the New Age culture chronicles her difficult and painful transition to skepticism.
I chose Hampture - The scientific pursuit of underwater hamster objectivism
Luck : A Compilation of Close Calls (video)
Minesweeper – The Movie (video)
How To Be Alone (video)
The More Victims, the Less Severe the Judgment - Empathy isn’t a good guide for ethics. The more people harmed by a crime, the less we care.
Christchurch Quake Map - Here in Christchurch, we got hit with a 7.1 magnitude earthquake a week ago. My buddy Paul set up a time-lapse map to track the location and depth of the quake and aftershocks.
Societies without God are more benevolent
The REAL ‘Stuff White People Like’ - Statistical analysis of 526,000 OkCupid user profiles grouped by race and sex
BIG BANG BIG BOOM (video)
Washington, We Have a Problem - A long but revealing insight into the contemporary American political machine.
Or so they say (video) - Gorgeous HTML5/javascript demo. Best viewed in Chrome.
Violence breeds violence. The only thing drug gangs fear is legalisation.
The Wilderness Downtown (video… kindof) - The most mindblowing use of HTML5 I’ve encountered yet.
Hipster Dinosaurs
Solipskier (game)
Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he's from the future - “Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I’m here to stop it ever happening.”
Big Dog (video) - An incredibly proficient (and surprisingly creepy) four-legged walking robot.
Covert Operations: The billionaire Koch brothers’ war against Obama
Complicated Mechanisms Explained in Simple Animations
Yakuza video game reviewed by real Japanese gangsters
Brilliant Plans to Rescue Dying Industries - Inspired by the RIAA’s idiocy
20% of Americans think Barack Obama is a talking car
'Portal' on the required booklist at Wabash College
Top 12 Banksy Pieces of 2010
Human pylons carry electricity across Iceland
Complete History Of The Soviet Union, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris (video)
Battleground God - A quiz to test whether your philosophical beliefs about religion are logically consistent.
Sumotori Dreams (game)
Hospice medical care for dying patients
'Talk to an Iraqi' from This American Life (video)
Old wartime images overlaid over their present-day counterparts.
How WikiLeaks is Changing the News Power Structure - Expertly curated, contextualized and summarized article. Recommended.
If the Earth Stood Still
Wayward Alzheimer's patients foiled by fake bus stop
Brownlee’s energy strategy: dig and burn
Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning
Dueling Carls, a 'Talking Carl' Scream Fight (video)
David Mitchell deals with Climate Change (video)
No plans to redesign your site? Now is the time to hire a web design agency.
File-sharing has weakened copyright—and helped society
Pulsate - Sublime, pulsating, chiming, relaxing circles. Recommended.
The City that Ended Hunger
The Process a.k.a. Designing The Stop Sign (video)
My Competitive Advantage: I Hire Artists
Ragdoll Cannon (game)
My Four-Year-Old Son Plays Grand Theft Auto
ALT/1977: WE ARE NOT TIME TRAVELERS - 2010 gadgets redesigned for 1977
Making a tiny star on Earth? - Scientists at the LIFE project in California expect to develop controlled fusion (and thus an almost limitless supply of safe clean energy) within the next 2-3 years. !
8 Month Old Deaf Baby's Reaction To Cochlear Implant Being Activated (video)
Stuff no one told me (but I learned anyways) - Sharing cheap yet deep knowledge since a couple weeks ago
Norton Cries Wolf - Insight into Symantec’s alarmist and disingenous report on child internet usage, which has been credulously reported by NZ media such as Stuff.co.nz
Black on Beck – Does Glenn Beck have Nazi Tourettes? (video)
Your Videogame Driving Skills Don't Apply in Real Life (video)
Cognitive Biases – A Visual Study Guide
Economic growth cannot buy the planet more time
Great Literature Retitled To Boost Website Traffic
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty
Is Bill Gates delivering a new Einstein letter?
In Sweden, the Men Can Have It All - The NY Times investigates Sweden’s radical parental leave laws, and their effects on traditional gender roles.
Is Meth a ‘Smart Drug’?
My once-in-a-generation cut? The armed forces. All of them.
Gimme back my son (video) - ffs give him back his son, jeez
Warner Brothers Sued for Pirating Anti-Pirating Software
Best Cry Ever (Wookie Song) – Fearfarts Remix (video)
The Empathic Civilisation (video)
World's most and least touristy places - Google map color-coded by level of touristiness, based on distribution of photos on Panoramio.
Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us (video)
Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative - This catalyzing article by Wired Mag has tapped into a growing wave of anti-facebook sentiment and spawned the race for a replacement
Can you build your way out of traffic congestion? - *spoiler alert* The answer appears to be ‘No’.
The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook
Ground Zero - Google Maps + Javascript = Nuclear damage simulation.
Street Accountants (video)
Cleanternet.org | campaign for a cleaner and safer Internet (video)
Antipodes Map - Apparently my flat is on the exact opposite side of the world from Vilaude in Northern Spain.
Meet the 'sabre-toothed sausage' - A guided tour of a naked mole rat, one of the world’s strangest mammals
How Dr. Seuss would prove the halting problem undecidable
Why women are starting to pay for sex
Potato gun, lightning, and sonic magic: Unconventional speed tests for the browser (video) - Google Chrome team up with a few creative minds to bring Chrome’s speed to life.
Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work? - Since abandoning drug prohibition in 2001, Portugal has seen an astonishing decline in drug abuse.
Pot, meet kettle: a response to Steve Jobs' letter on Flash
Clever Crows, Complex Cognition? (video)
Only Christians should be exposed to ethics? - Australian religious leaders object to non-christian students being taught secular ethics while their christian counterparts are taught scripture.
jCharacterfall (game) - A small, addictive jQuery game that may improve your typing skills.
I hate computers: confessions of a sysadmin
Logorama – The Logo Design Movie That Won an Oscar (video) - This 16-minute movie took 6 years to produce, and has some sweet animation.
Time for an Intervention - ‘Dear Christchurch, you really just can’t go on picking mayors because you’ve heard of them before.’
Cows on Treadmills Produce Electricity for Farms
Betting on Climate Change: Corporations Stand to Make or Lose Billions - While politicians and pundits distort climate science any way they want, serious industrialists cannot afford to engage in that sort of self-delusion.
The trustworthiness of beards">
A handy guide of what to do if you make first contact with aliens">
Engineered Virus Harnesses Light To Split Water - A possible efficient method of generating hydrogen?
Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In Again
How Wikileaks shone light on world's darkest secrets - Wikileaks has had more scoops in 3 years than The Washington Post has had in 30.
Digital Economy Bill: The Now Show gets it spot on. (audio) - An hilarious, accurate and important dissection of the UK’s version of Section 92A.
70km-wide scale map of the solar system
Climate Catastrophe: A Superstorm for Global Warming Research
Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be
Radiohead – 2+2=5 (video)
The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon (video)
I think my argument is so powerful that it's not necessary to talk about it (video)
Five browsers and the modes of transportation they resemble
The Last Advertising Agency On Earth (video)
HTML5 & CSS3 Browser Support Checklist
How A $500 Craigslist Car Beat $400K Rally Racers
A Template For Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever (video)
Lessons of a $618,616 Death - Two years after her husband’s death from cancer, Amanda Bennett examines the costs of keeping one man alive.
Here's a bargain: five dollars to overthrow the US government - Are you a political subversive? If so, please fill out this form and send us $5.
Destiny Church pastors replaced after walk-out - More than half the Brisbane congregation walked out of last Sunday’s service over concerns the church was becoming a money-making cult. Win!
Snatch Wars (video) - Darth Vader + Bricktop = comedy gold
When using open source makes you an enemy of the state
Algae to solve the Pentagon's jet fuel problem - US scientists believe they will soon be able to use algae to produce biofuel for the same cost as fossil fuels!
This is the Title of the Story Which is Also Found Several Times in the Story Itself
The annotated Rodney Hide: treating parliament with contempt - Rodney Hide lied to the House yesterday. Relentlessly and repeatedly.
Google Offers Cash For Bugs - Google is offering hackers up to $1337 if they find a new security flaw in Chromium.
Born Poor? - “Prior to about 20 years ago, most economists thought that inequality just greased the wheels of progress. Overwhelmingly now, people who study it empirically think that it’s sand in the wheels.”
Selleck Waterfall Sandwich - I am lost for words
20 Years of Adobe Photoshop
Why do people often vote against their own interests?
Study shows Kiwis want to see cigarettes banned by 2020 - Hey you know what works really really well? Prohibition! People used to do lots of drugs, but then they made it illegal and nobody does drugs anymore and there has been no downside whatsoever!
Horizontal and vertical: The evolution of evolution - Important developments in biology herald a possible paradigm shift
Beatles infographics
The future of UX design has arrived
The most useless machine ever!
Colonel Sanders Botches KFC Ad Voiceover (video)
Offline Book 'Lending' Costs U.S. Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion
The universe is a REALLY big place - The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D
Boots hit by mass homeopathy 'overdose'
Animator vs. Animation (video) - Yeah, making flash videos kinda feels like this sometimes
The Killer Elite - If you enjoy good war journalism, I highly recommend this article from an embedded Rolling Stone journalist during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
US Blockading Costa Rican Sugar Unless It Agrees To Draconian IP Laws Citizens Don't Want
We don't give a damn about the monarchy - Prince William’s entourage of British gossip columnists has been shocked to discover that Kiwis no longer care about royal visits
A Risky Proposal: Gay marriage, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, and the Supreme Court
Goodnight Keith Moon
Two Gentlemen of Lebowski
The Ballad of Colton Harris-Moore - The story of a modern outlaw folk hero
Small Talk With A Web Designer">
When skyscrapers signal a downturn - The ‘irrational exuberance’ in the markets that accompany the construction of super-tall buildings is often a sign that a recession is on the way.
Kant Attack Ad (video)
NZ's cyber spies win new powers
The True Odds of Airborne Terror Chart
Global healthcare spending Vs. Life expectancy - The US is off the chart (and not in a good way)
Uranium Is So Last Century: Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke - Nuclear scientists are rediscovering Thorium, a cleaner, safer, more abundant, more efficient, less weapon-proliferating alternative to Uranium
Star Wars Weather
Browser Pong (game)
Style versus design: Why understanding the difference is what it's all about. - “Not enough designers are working in that vast middle ground between eye candy and usability where most of the web must be built.”
Kiwiright (video) - A 12 minute documentary about how NZ’s copyright laws have been contorted to beneﬁt the ﬁnancial needs of corporate rights holders and no longer beneﬁts the public nor the artists who create the work itself.
The Physics of Space Battles
Inside Afghanistan – Fighting Alongside Stoned Afghan Soldiers (video)
Best Man Rigs Newlyweds’ Bed To Tweet During Sex. Not Kidding.
How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell
Atheist bus ad campaign hits a nerve
The climate denial industry is out to dupe the public. And it's working.
Google Chrome – Features (video)
Everything is OK Montage (video)
Canadian record industry faces massive liability over copyright infringement - Ah, sweet sweet irony.
Photos Taken From Unusual Angles
Dutch scientists grow artificial meat in lab, see end to the need for factory farming within a decade.
ikea lamp (video) - Hilarious ad directed by Spike Jonze
Macho Trap Shooting (video)
Link This Bookmarklet - Hooray! Quick linking ahoy!
Is Global Warming Unstoppable? - Scientist argues that rising carbon dioxide emissions cannot be stabilized unless the world’s economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day.
The Zoomquilt II - A trippy flash animated collaborative art project
IEBlog: An Early Look At IE9 for Developers - Check out all the hilarious vitriolic comments from pissed-off developers.
38 Ways To Win An Argument — Arthur Schopenhauer - Advice for budding Sophists (or forum trolls) from one of the philosophical greats.
Algae and Light Help Injured Mice Walk Again - Optogeneticists are figuring out how to control brain neurons with viruses that carry genes taken from pond scum, activated by beams of light.
The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”
I'm Doing My Inconsequential Part For The Environment
Most. Realistic. War Game. Ever. - A sneak peak at Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, currently in development.
New Zealand was a friend to Middle Earth, but it's no friend of the earth - The Guardian blows the whistle on NZ’s ‘100% pure’ reputation.
Pirate Bay closure sparked file-sharing boom - Web-policing fail
The Gay Animal Kingdom
Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter
Aristotle's law petition confounds blase Berkeley - Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats wants Berkeley to legally acknowledge Aristotle’s law, commonly expressed as A=A.
Fullsize: a new IMG attribute - A campaign to get a new attribute called fullsize into the next version of HTML
2010 California Marriage Protection Act: Safeguarding marriage from the evils of divorce - excellent satire of the Californian Anti-Gay Marriage law change
What the F**K is Social Media?
Designers Who Are Technical: The More You Know, The Better Your Work - …Counter-Point.
Designers are not Programmers - Point…
2012: It's a Disaster!!! (video) - The trailer for the new disaster flick ‘2012’, recut as a comedy.
Skiing Robot Not Very Useful But Totally Fun To Watch (video) - Damn robots, stealing our freshies
In Deep (video) - Teaser for the new Matchstick Productions ski flick. Music by Ennio Morricone.
“Last, Loneliest, Ugliest” – NZ Last in Aid Ranking - Action Aid ranks New Zealand last among 22 donor countries in sustainability, social protection and hunger alleviation.
DJ Steve Porter featuring Vince Offer – 'Slap Chop Rap' (video)
Police Ten 7 – Safer Communities Together (video) - NZ’s latest internet meme
Heavy Footing (video) - If you liked the cross-country snowboarding video, check this one out. It’s the next, next big thing,
Performance Comparison of Major Web Browsers - *spoiler alert!* Chrome wins. *spoilers end*
Cross Country Snowboarding – next big thing in snowboarding (video)
'Putting on a show of resistance' - My mate Graham was featured in a Stuff.co.nz article today
Afghans: Question Of More US Troops Beside The Point - Afghans want more US troops! Kinda sorta! In a way!
BBC Survey: Kiwi accent most attractive and prestigious form of English outside the UK - Screw it, I’m moving to Europe.
Dove – Evolution (video) - No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.
Air NZ chief blasts climate change 'circus'
Crazy Animation Starts Normal, Goes Full Retard (video)
NZ's murder rate halved in past 20 years - The national crime rate appears to be radically dropping despite an overwhelming public belief that crime has got worse.
9 of the Strangest Bone Churches of Europe
5 Ways the Government Used Our Money to Save Big Banks and Screw Us - A clear explanation of the banking bailouts.
Dan Bull – Dear Lily [an open letter to Lily Allen] (video) - A brilliant and hilarious dissection of current copyright controversies, particularly Lily Allen’s recent comments.
Avalanche Skier POV Helmet Cam Burial & Rescue in Haines, Alaska (video) - Terrifying and mind-blowing video, a much-watch if you’re a backcountry enthusiast.
Colour Picker pen - Remember the colour picker tool from MS Paint and Photoshop? Jinsun Park have created a pen that works the same way.
Antarctica Time lapse: A Year on Ice (video)
Black Diamond Big Mountain Competition at Temple Basin (video) - what did you get up to last weekend? I got to watch this unfold, and then go skiing at midnight with some of these dudes.
Contemplating the scale of the universe makes a mockery of household chores - News that the galaxy Andromeda is eating stars makes it hard to care about putting out the rubbish
If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers
Roundhill tow to set world record - Roundhill are about to build a 1.4km ropetow, the longest in the world.
Sneaky whales (video)">
Traffic Wave Experiments - How a single driver can fix a traffic jam
4th Police review of Crimes (Substituted section 59) Amendment Act 2007 - is the anti-smacking law working as intended? Instead of consulting the uninformed public, why not read a police review?
Cyriak's Animation Mix (video)
Demolition City (game)
Drop The Rate Mate - NZ cellular providers are ripping us off.
Temple Basin Freeriding (video) - Our own resident ski legends Neil Williman and Todd Windle carve some epic lines at the Basin.
Amateur (video) - Another hit Youtube clip, this time featuring a stop-motion musician.
Kiwi! (video) - Cute and touching hit Youtube animation
'Blameless Babes': Dame Sian's last stand - Chief Justice Sian Elias’ controversial but accurate speech, and why it will sadly be ignored.
Referendum Generator - Should surfing a parody website as part of a good work ethic be a criminal offence in New Zealand?
Monster squid terrorise divers (story + video)
Eternal Moonwalk - A mad tribute to Michael Jackson.
Why prompting IE6 users to upgrade might be pointless (and perhaps a little sadistic)
Cargo Bridge (game) - if you like this physics-based construction game, you should also check out World of Goo.
Alpure Peaks (video) - Some dudes I know hit Alpure Peaks for some catboarding on Saturday with an NZ Snowboard TV film crew.
What about Norway?">
Let's Panic About Babies!
New Zealand 'world's most peaceful nation'
Gallows humour in Fiji - Censorship fail, newspaper win.
A brief history of cannabis criminalization
RIP Shane McConkey (video)
Aid is about poverty, not politics
Could GM crops be good for the environment?
Achievement Unlocked (meta-game) - Who needs gameplay when you have ACHIEVEMENTS?
QWOP (game) - If you can beat 10 metres you are a champion.
Love in the Time of Darwinism
An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief
5 Scientific Theories That Will Make Your Head Explode
I Met The Walrus (video) - Interview with John Lennon featuring incredible animation.
Tangled up in Seuss - When a musician recorded “Green Eggs and Ham” in the voice of vintage Bob Dylan and posted it online, the Grinch estate promptly replied: One fish, two fish, cease and desist.
If Iran Were America (And America Were Iran): A Timeline
The Future of Marriage - attacking the myth that modern lifestyles are ruining the once-sacred ritual of marriage.
John Stuart Mill - turns out one of my philosophical heroes was also a thoroughly nice chap.
Prohibition Returns!
America’s Next Top Model Democracy
The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness
David Lange's 1985 Oxford Union address, arguing that ‘nuclear weapons are morally indefensible’. One of the great New Zealand speeches; I recommend listening to the 30 minute sound recording whilst reading the transcipt.
The Singer Solution to World Poverty