Similar:My Anti-Linkbait Pledge: Cynical Overhyping vs. Simply Being OnlineWhen I find something interesting that a…CultureI've got a lot to learn, but my #blender3D #neovictorian #steampunk cruiser, and this…AestheticsBrother Stuck in the BathroomThe girl posted this story on Instagram …AmusingAfter Halloween where do all the pumpkins go? Now we knowIn the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,…
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According to a somewhat dry AFP article (posted on a URL that will probably expire soon), “The researchers estimated that in 2008 Australian adults aged 25 and older spent 9.8 billion hours in front of the small screen, and that this time was associated with 286,000 years of life that ended prematurely. | Every single hour…
Our iPads will one day be stacked on a pallet, like these old PCs. They’ll be retro curiosities, having done their jobs — empowering us to build even better tools. Similar:A Mind Forever Voyaging reviewWhen it comes to gameplay, A Mind Foreve…CybercultureRussian troll factory paid US activists to help fund protests during electionRussian trolls posing…
The business of journalism is changing. The approaching anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks is an occasion to reflect on how we received news in the days when newspapers updated their web pages once a day, and Google did not constantly monitor newspaper home pages looking for fresh stories. For journalists thinking about the future,…
A popular handout from my site, Short Stories: 10 Tips for Creative Writers, includes a phrase uncommon enough that Googling for it (“practiced scream therapy“) leads me to short story exercises that develop an example into more detailed studies, or pages that remix the content of my site in order to make a similar point.…
There is a lot to like about Google+, and getting to 25 million users so quickly certainly seems promising for the Google social network. But, it doesn’t bode well if the excitement is already fading. Google needs to not only create a capable social network, but it needs to make that social network compelling enough…
This rhetorical power derives from the “-ification” rather than from the “game”. -ification involves simple, repeatable, proven techniques or devices: you can purify, beautify, falsify, terrify, and so forth. -ification is always easy and repeatable, and it’s usually bullshit. Just add points. Game developers and players have critiqued gamification on the grounds that it gets…
I was doing a lot of impulse buying during the $9.99 days, but since then, on occasions when I’ve seen the ebook offered at a higher price than a paperback, I have just turned to interlibrary load instead. “Terrified” by Amazon’s Kindle e-reader and discounted e-book pricing, five major publishers allegedly acted together to increase…
David Mahokey of Dunbar, a senior at Point Park University, and Greg Kerestan of Greensburg, a senior at Seton Hill University, wrote the 20-song score and script, respectively, for ″In Control,″ a musical that focuses in part on Mahokey’s real-life battle with bone cancer. Two free performances of ″In Control,″ directed by Anthony Marino, artistic…
Which is cooler? That my 13yo son was just sitting at the kitchen table singing lyrics to MC Frontalot’s “It Is Pitch Dark,” or that my 9yo daughter was chiming in with corrections? It Is Pitch Dark Similar:Greensburg student wins Shakespeare contest A Greensburg student did the Bard pr…CultureThe new marshmallow test: Resisting the temptations…
The heartbreaking thing is that this fall, over 10,000 bookstore employees across America will be out of work. The way the publishing industry is going, many of those people won’t be able to find jobs that are even tangentially related to books anymore; they’ll go on to work in movie theaters and grocery stores and…
The layout of this display at the Carnegie Science Center almost makes it look like the Maria duplicate in Metropolis came before Karel Capek’s play RUR (which was written in 1920, first performed in 1921). Similar:The Bonding ( ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Three Episode 5) — Character-driven analysis of grie…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….EmpathyHomage to PoeMichael…
The control panel. Similar:College student makes masks for the deaf & hard of hearing Other than one trip to the grocery sto…Current_EventsIn August, 2001 I was blogging about… Broken Links and Poor Information Ar…AestheticsThe neglected history of videogames for the blindWhat kind of a “videogame” has no video?…CybercultureThose mean fake news people at the Washington…
Images from an extended tour of a cold war submarine. (We liked the tour we took last year so much, my son and I came back.) [portfolio_slideshow size=medium trans=scrollHorz ] Similar:Fathers' Day: Showing "The Princess Bride"My kids have never seen The Princess Bri…Current_EventsFrom The 'London Times' of 1904A Mark Twain short story, written in 189…CybercultureChatGPT…
My daughter, as the wizard, with her talented castmates, in our local theater school’s preteen summer camp musical. Similar:Forward is the officers' wardroom. To the right is an airlock. Left leads to the on-call o… AestheticsMeme alleging Trump said “Africans Are Lazy, Good at Sex, Theft” is a hoax I’ve seen this meme shared by…
As for Starbucks, the decision to pull the plug is reportedly up to individual stores thought to be only in New York. —Many New York City Starbucks Locations About To Put An End To Squatters « CBS New York. Awkward phrasing… Who is doing the reporting if this fact is “reportedly” so? Who is doing…
In 2008, when her scientific publication, the Journal of Zhejiang University-Science, became the first in China to use CrossCheck text analysis software to spot plagiarism, Zhang was pleased to be a trailblazer. But when the first set of results came in, she was upset and horrified. “In almost two years, we find about 31 percent…
Interesting story about a performance artist who bought what was once high-tech military gear, but ended up sold as scrap on eBay. A glimpse into the hardware and software suggests some interesting critiques of the industrial-military complex. There was no password on the gear that was supposed to be outfitted on the robot, so he…
My friend and colleague, Balázs Tarnai, shared these pictures of a bluejay catching a bug on his garage roof. Similar:They Smiled Too!Victorians had to stay still for 3 secon…AestheticsStage Right Water SpriteLast week my daughter and I were a littl…AestheticsA Merry Look at Journalism in "The Year Without a Santa Claus"In the classic stop-action TV…