Disney to buy Marvel in $4bn deal

Is your Spidey-sense tingling? Disney will take over ownership of 5,000 Marvel characters, such as Spider-Man and the X-Men.–BBC Similar:Why Photojournalism Matters World Series: Chicago Tribune & th…AestheticsPreparing for some serious nerd time with the family this summerSet phasers to “nerd”! This summer I’ll…CultureLooks like somebody’s webmaster accidentally preloaded a headline that would be easy…

Birdhouse: Existential Philosophy, Biology, Aesthetics, and Re-enactment of a Literary Entombment

Similar:Misaligned interior and exterior portholes. Bulkheads from the deck below visible above th… AestheticsHollow Pursuits (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 21) Misfit Crewmember Faces…Rewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….AmusingA little better all the time.A little better all the time.PersonalA familiar performer choreographed and dances the "Canaan Days" tango in Stage Right's Jos…AestheticsQuidditch Comes to Seton…

Bill would give president emergency control of Internet

OMG! The prez is in ur internet, killin ur freedomz! The new version would allow the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” relating to “non-governmental” computer networks and do what’s necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for “cybersecurity professionals,” and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the…

Wikipedia Will Limit Changes on Articles About Living People

Although Wikipedia has prevented anonymous users from creating new articles for several years now, the new flagging system crosses a psychological Rubicon. It will divide Wikipedia’s contributors into two classes — experienced, trusted editors, and everyone else — altering Wikipedia’s implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries. That right was never…

Student writing is getting worse- or wait, it's getting better!

Wonderful stuff from Steven Krause. Representing the world champion, the “going to hell in a hand-basket,” the eternal the youth are getting worse and worse, and carrying on the tradition of complaining about students that dates back in western culture to at least Isocrates, I give you Stanley Fish’s “What Should Colleges Teach?” on his…

Idea to Implementation

I’ve been sitting on a particular interactive fiction work-in-progress for ten years. Ten years! Every so often I dust it off and add a little more, but I still haven’t finished the chore of converting it from Inform 6 to Inform 7.  And while hiding from this project, I went and released a different project…

Auto-Tune the News #7

People on the road can turn an LOL into a great big O-M-G. — Katie Couric, advocating a “designated texter.” Similar:Gettysburg Address event marks 150th anniversary of President Lincoln’s historic speechOn the Civil War battlefield where Presi…CultureMicrosoft “lobotomized” AI-powered Bing Chat, and its fans aren’t happyMicrosoft limits long conversations to a…Current_EventsSchiller schools internet on correct…