Month: April 2012

My parents today arrive in their new home, which is approximately 30 seconds drive from their old home. Touching to farewell the Pohutukawa Palace, where our family moved way back in 1989. Did a lot of growing up there (and the little long-leggedy beastie has been doing the same), had a lot of crazy times with family and friends, and it has continued to be a shared social destination right up until earlier this week. End of an era. Thank you Pohutukawa Palace.

Maire put this in comments last week: dumb things at 2500 frames per second

Extended (full) version of China Mieville’s essay on London as postapocalyptic place – the shorter version (previously linkied) was splendid reading, this will probably be more so.

Daily Mail-o-matic

Here’s a short, sharp dismantling of libertarianism that will stick in your memory.

Via Ivan – an outstanding example of someone using game theory to outmaneuver a game show

Huge water resource under Africa? This would change a lot of stuff (via Damon)

Via Andrew Salmond – the entirety of legendary visual feast Baraka

Byliner’s 101 best nonfiction journalism of 2011. And I’ve hardly skimmed the surface of the 2010 list (previously linkied). This is the real deal – all sorts of amazing stuff here. (Thanks to the other moose for the headsup that this was out.)

Chomsky on Occupy

Chris M beautifully remembers a game that never actually existed

And finally… spoon-playing grandma rocks out to the Black Keys

(via Dangerous Minds)

Aliens Epilogue – a half-hour fan film set between Aliens and Alien3. Contains some very ambitious staging and plenty of in-jokes. Probably incomprehensible for non-fans. Everything is very amateur, but with an amateur’s deep love. I thoroughly enjoyed this.

The most badass alphabet ever

Google as an 80s-era Bulletin Board system. It works, too.

Film criticism as spiritual discipline

Message to a daughter

Determine your degree of colour blindness (via edel)

The Atlantic profiles dissident art-focused game designer Jonathan Blow – the chap who made Braid, if you’ve heard of that. Pushing for art, rather than artfulness, in game design is an extremely worthy goal. (Although, I think this article undersells though the interesting stuff going on in the indie and small-scale game design scenes, an ecosystem that has exploded thanks to the App Store and various freemium revenue models.)

Theremina linked to the helpful Calming Manatee service, which will calm you down most pleasantly.

Salon.com published an Imprint article about a classic advertiser whose work was satirised on the cover of a very early issue of Mad. Here is that cover. It’s amazing. Mad was so far ahead of its time!

This week’s Star Wars content courtesy the other Moose: a highschool that looks like a Star Wars spaceship.

Which fictional characters share your birthday? Here’s a helpful calendar (thanks Amanda L!)

Double Oh:

Realistic anatomies of cartoon characters (via Maire)

And finally… the most copied comics panel of all time (includes a naked lady so probably not safe for work)

Just watched the NZ Breakers basketball team win a thriller in game one of a 3-game final series. I get so invested in these big games! Sigh. Deep breaths.

Ian McEwan on the time his son had to write a book report on one of his novels (via d3vo)

Also from d3vo, one for film design & sci-fi people: spaceships that became other spaceships. one, two, three

Self-portraits in airplane lavatories, wearing classic Flemish style

Via Naomi, an excellent reaction to a friend coming out: act shocked by his website coding choices

I think I’ve linked this before, but it’s been redesigned. Or this is a different site doing the same thing, better. The Food Timeline

Dangerous Minds has turned up a true Monty Python rarity

Hitchcock’s Rear Window – amazing video assembles all the different elements of the scene to construct the whole view

Viking Movies, evaluated by viking history enthusiasts

You might have seen that Daily Mail column by Samantha Brick that was about how tough it is being beautiful because all the other women hate you? The Guardian’s Hadley Freeman has a refreshing take on that whole thing. (I really like Hadley Freeman, whose column got me reading the fashion section of the Grauniad first each Saturday. I was completely thrown when they introduced photo bylines, and I discovered she was a she. I had just figured she was a guy who really understood women’s clothing… Sherlock Holmes I ain’t.)

Via Mike Upton: Existential Crisis and Dragons. (I have actually played games not too dissimilar to this.)

The Pentametron constructs verse from tweets that happen to be in iambic pentameter

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi writes an eye-opening, rage-inducing explanation of what Bank of America did and what “too big to fail” actually means.

Top 10 lessons of the Iraq war.

Vulture had a series of face-offs to determine the greatest TV show in the last 25 years. Here’s part one: The Wire vs. My So-Called Life. No prizes for guessing the ultimate winner, but there are some surprises along the way I think.

This fantastic Lego ad has been all over social media, with the attribution stripped off.

The hallowed DavidR found a detailed read-through and description of the Back to the Future novelization. It is… just click through and see, actually.

And finally, the launch issue of “Conservative Teen” magazine, which shut down its site and disappeared after being mocked a whole lot, can still be found and enjoyed by those who really want to combine their teenage thrills with their conservative political spills.