Month: June 2014

Unexpectedly, for the first time in literally years, I’m having twinges of hope about fate of the planet this week. Prompted by these two things:

(1) A new Al Gore piece in Rolling Stone, in which he points out that the climate change battleground is shifting, using Obama’s recent moves to point out a whole lot of significant positive changes like rapid changes in solar.

(2) Climate Voter, an apolitical initiative by a number of NGOs (350, WWF, Greenpeace, Forest & Bird, Gen Zero, Oxfam) to basically build up a petition of people indicating how climate will drive their voting behaviour. This is a really elegant way to put these issues on the table. They’re hitting 15K as I write which is pretty solid but if climate change is an important issue for you I urge you to sign up as well. Do it now! I’ll wait!

Grantland has a great account of a convention for Diplomacy players – this game’s reputation as “the game that destroys friendships” is well-deserved.

I wondered out loud when someone would write about how Tumblr has changed comics. Kieron Gillen pointed me at this great article on how Marvel Comics is being shaped by Tumblr. I think there’s more to say – like how gender-bent/race-bent cosplay pics are changing the visual vocabulary of supers storytelling – but this covers a bunch of good stuff. Recommended to comics nerds of course but also anyone interested in social media as a phenomenon.

David R celebrated the 25th birthday of Tim Burton’s Batman with this supercut of Batman mentions:

Manfeels Park – hilarious new webcomic mashing together Pride & Prej images with man-pain internet comments. (by Marrog & Erin, hello Marrog & Erin)

Make up routine to make you happy. I have never learned as much about the intricacies of feminine psychology. (via Sophie O’Doom)

Charting the adaptation of Game of Thrones – which chapters to which episodes

Pugs as Game of Thrones characters

Homemade Hoth

Being a neocon means never having to say you’re sorry

This story is amazing: guy who ended up irrevocably lost when he was 4 years old later tracked down his home by searching google maps for familiar scenes (via Sarah E)

And finally… Nick Offerman narrates this very funny short about an intrusive narrator in an old west saloon

It was Bloomsday! Here’s Jung writing to Joyce about Ulysses.

Aucklanders – The Black Hoof, restaurant/tapas bar/gastropub/place – opens in August. These are my friends, so maybe think about checking it out sometime? (Facebook page)

As a child I thought I knew what the coolest thing in all the universe was: Boba Fett. But, this photo.

58 cognitive biases that screw up everything you do. I quibble over some of the specifics, but the length of this list should give you pause. We are no so smart. (via Stephen Fox)

FBI lexicon of twitter slang. The existence of this document is delightful. In my mind’s eye, Albert Rosenfeld is trying to describe it to Gordon Cole.

I dip into Rookie Mag from time to time because, although I am not the audience (teenage girls) I appreciate the fact that Rookie is pretty much perfect. Here’s another example of why: they reposted for father’s day “Ask A Grown Man” featuring special guest advice guru Steve Gevinson aka the father of Rookie founder Tavi Gevinson. It’s kind of perfect. Hits a peak about 3 minutes in, if you just want the quick version.

Amazing graduation photos mocking movie posters. The Captain America one is gorgeous.

Rap Battle from History – featuring Weird Al as Isaac Newton. The man is a legend.

Where to get coffee in Edinburgh? A blog. For y’all in Edinburgh. (via Erik)

Grab your next desktop background from here – cells from Miyazaki movies (via Mundens!)

Well-researched essay on how “mana”, a Polynesian word and concept, ended up used in loads of video games to mean “magic points”.

The Ruminator reviews a sausage

Key & Peele’s Mexican Standoff is amazing.

The internet means long literary novels will die out, says grumpy old white man. Sharing this one for the lulz.

Ah, Tony Blair, you do make it easy to keep my rage white-hot. The money quote: “We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that ‘we’ have caused this.” This is completely wrong, and staggeringly poorly-phrased. Yet there is some sense to the claim – the invasion of Iraq was not the sole cause of the troubles of an entire region. Witness how self-serving Blair is, however, in drawing his big picture: “Poor governance, weak institutions, oppressive rule and a failure within parts of Islam to work out a sensible relationship between religion and Government have combined to create countries which are simply unprepared for the modern world.” And yet no mention of Western exploitation and interference in the region, from the celebrated (e.g. the Balfour Declaration) to the criminally ignored (e.g. the British and American overthrow of Mossadegh in ’53). I do not know what punishment could possibly fit Blair’s crimes, but I am confident he will be forever incapable of comprehending his own wilful blindness.
(see also Giovanni Tiso‘s acidic rewriting)

Sad footballers (via Bruce, who says “you just don’t get to see things like this in rugby”)

Why didn’t Harry use Avada Kevadra vs Voldemort? Answered on stackexchange’s new SF/F platform (via d3vo!)

Insane record collections & their people

And finally…

Who likes massive orchestras of theremins inside Russian dolls? http://t.co/tks4OhfaBT

— Michael U/Jet Jaguar (@Nonwrestler) June 16, 2014

NO NO WAIT BEFORE YOU GO
even more finally, via Jenni Talula:

Rik Mayall, eh? Bugger. This is the clip to watch – my first thought was to seek it out but then lots of other people had the same thought before me (including you Jet). The Bottom stage show, when Mayall and Edmondson go a bit off-script. (Some of this out-of-character banter was apparently scripted, but they both corpse out completely about halfway through.) It’s marvellous stuff. NSFW of course.

VERY well done – Aliens in Lego

Marvellous – Bill Watterson, of Calvin and Hobbes fame, emerged from retirement to secretly be a guest artist on another comic strip. (WaPo coverage)

Mark Hamill does the Joker meets Luke Skywalker

Many, many recreations of classic photos and paintings using Star Wars figures

19yo blogs watching Star Wars for the first time

Game of Thrones characters as 80s yoofs… some of these seem to absolutely nail the characters, and some seem really really wrong to me.

The shocking moment from the most recent Game of Thrones ep (s04e09), with appropriate musical sting (via Paul Wilson)

The More Things Change Dept: when playing Chess was going to make kids more violent (via Craig Oxbrow)

Amazingly this week a 13-year-old boy convinced some adults he was a human being.

Britney as feminist icon? Lengthy article about her Vegas residency musters part of an argument in this direction. I skimmed it, and mean to come back to it – the phenomenon of Britney is fascinating.

Also Vegas: man stuck at Vegas airport overnight makes a music video (via Nick Tipping)

Newspaper ad for an 1890s detective agency, the only one with “lady detectives”.

Can you identify the book from its map? (Guardian quiz, via Elizabeth Knox)

Shakesville: we need to talk about the abuse women receive when they are visible online. (That’s a conversation that’s been slowly starting to gain momentum in the last year or so, and I’d expect this post will be a significant moment when we look back say a year from now.)

Why the Dog Whisperer should not be your idol. (Includes: the surprising connection between Nazi science and dog whisperering!)

Chimps regularly beat humans in strategy games.

Disney Doctor Who (scroll down for the slightly adjusted version he made in response to feedback)

Western Art History: women ignoring men

And finally… The ultimate Nicolas Cage prank

Get nostalgic for how we did nostalgia in the good old days: The Wonder Years cast reunited

This sounds craaazy. WaPo headline: Female-named hurricanes kill more than male hurricanes because people don’t respect them, study finds (Via Tom Crosby)
Of course, there are methodological issues, so maybe it’s all just a hurricane in a teacup.

Marvellous, unusual Ukrainian art for Lord of the Rings (via Craig Oxbrow)

The person who mapped Batman’s Gotham City

D-Day photographs – then and now

You stay here. I’m going out there alone to check it out. (A supercut.)

All of Star Wars, intercut with the sequences that inspired Lucas. Amazing. (I’ve only dipped into it but was very impressed with the bits I saw.)

Or, Star Wars, in alphabetical order:

Rankin-Bass does Star Wars

And finally… YouTube is full of “unboxing” videos. If you’ve ever seen one, and you’ve seen the film Seven (or “Se7en” depending on how frustrating you are), then you’ll appreciated this. Um, spoilers.