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:The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse This was probably the wealthiest, most…BusinessStudy finds AI tools made open source software developers 19 percent slowerCoders who used AI self-reported that th…BusinessThe Horror… The Horror!…

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

Similar:Trees (an "Interpretive Travesty")A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed Ag…AestheticsClicking, collaborating, and talking in the libraryOur local paper did a story on how libra…AcademiaFlorida Woman Bites CamelIdentifying her as a “Florida woman,” as…AestheticsResponding to Literature at the College LevelA new handout, based on the opening lect…AcademiaWhat Modern Humans Can Learn From The Neanderthals' Extinction“You…

Sports hooligan evolves advanced stadium camoflage skill

Dude! Your shirt looks just like the blue walkway and the brown sand! How do you do that? From the MailOnline, via. Similar:'Robot Journalist' Out-Writes Human Sports ReporterSports journalism is full of colorful fi…GamesThe Internet Archive Is Digitizing & Preserving Over 100,000 Vinyl Records: Hear 750 Full …These people do important, amazing work….CultureLet Me Explain…

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:Annie — Cabinet TomorrowMy 10yo daughter Carolyn played Annie in…AmusingViral App FaceApp Now Owns Access To More Than 150 Million People's Faces And NamesViral app FaceApp has been giving people…BusinessSomething to Ponder — Let Me…