Month: February 2014

Via John Fouhy: Dungeons and Dragons Ability Modifier Sequence from the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences. As John said in his tweet, “This is some kind of nerd congruence. I struggle for words.”

Rare Star Wars posters from around the world. Some of these are very odd.

Lovely illustrations of kids playing Star Wars. There’s a bunch, click “next” to move through them.

Also, Star Wars invades Sochi (via Mike Upton)

Boromir death simulator. (via Darcy)

Barbie defends her decision to appear in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition and Slate points out how vile this “defence” is (via Simone)

Music for Making Love (via Pearce)

Elsa from Disney’s Frozen calls out the other Disney princesses. In song, of course!

College Humour on the engagement ring diamond scam…

This piece owes a debt to: the classic, all-time famous Atlantic magazine feature on the scam that is the engagement ring diamond. Still viral thirty years on! (Blaise put this on my screen this time ’round but it keeps cycling.)

Via my mum, maps of stereotypes

For my mum (and other Austenphiles), 15yo Jane Austen’s satirical history of England

And finally, The saga of Moon Moon the derp wolf.

(No Nijinsky included)

Get prepared tomorrow

Star Wars as told in the original tapestry

Listen to the music that was inscribed on a random butt in that one Bosch painting.

Woman recreates the selfies of the guy who took her phone (via Camilla)

Young people swap clothes with their grandparents (also Camilla)

Nature offers a clear, humbling account of how my discipline ended up accused of being mostly wrong.

Go Make Me a Sandwich patreon – sponsor a blog about women and games. I played a small part in inspiring this blog’s existence, funnily enough.

Conversational map: when a London Kiwi meets a London Kiwi (via Ian Hicks)

The Typefight: typefaces fight it out.

Evolution of the Vertigo zoom – haven’t watched this yet but, come on.

Evolution of the Dolly Zoom from Vashi Nedomansky on Vimeo.

And finally, someone went to an awful lot of trouble to remove the baby from “Full House”, and it doesn’t work at all, but it exists, because the internet.

This February 22, join me and a whole mess of other people and check your disaster preparedness kit. That’s the anniversary of the big Christchurch quake. Mark the anniversary by checking you are ready when trouble comes your way. Join the Facebook group or follow us on Twitter (Eek I really haven’t promoted or used the Twitter much, huh.) Spread the word.

How the Beatles went viral in the USA – a detailed account from Billboard. Beatlemania happened because a bunch of social, technological and political events converged in unexpected ways. They were always going to be big, but there were a lot of lucky connections that led to them getting that big, that fast.

Perfect fluid group movement: 2-second F1 pitstop.

Interesting French short film imagining a gender-flipped society as a way of highlighting the inequalities in our own. It doesn’t all work (the limitations that are built right into language can’t be evaded, and it shares the widespread French misunderstanding of Islamic dress) but there are some powerful moments here, most of them small details.

Star Wars as 80s high school movie: character designs, sketches of key scenes.

Gaddafi’s Point Guard – memoir of guy in a Qadafi-owned basketball team who found himself in the middle of the revolution. Some unpleasant stuff in here, no doubt.

Dick Cheney gets a hard, hard look in this epic NY Review of Books piece. He’s part of my axis of evil, with Blair and Rove on either side of him.

13 portraits of homeless people as they wish to be viewed (via Gem Wilder’s reliably superb Wilder Web)

Prochronisms – looking at TV shows set in the past, and using some data mashing to find words that are out of place. Not to shame the writers (boring) but to look at how language, and society, changes (interesting!) – mostly looking at Downton Abbey and Mad Men. (via Dylan H)

I took off my hijab (via Camilla S)

Epic list of monster-themed boardgames, mostly from the 60s and 70s. Lots of photos! I’ve never even heard of 90% of these.

The little girl from that famous 1981 Lego ad has been found.

And finally, via the beloved David R., Bad Romance vs. The Avengers

Bad Romance x Avengers from Fishball51 on Vimeo.

Skeletor voice actors play with Skeletor action figures.

Perfect parody of a Trent Reznor song

Who better to smack down Kirk Cameron than a whole mess of other grown-up child TV actors?

Map of USA, each state labelled with the IMDb’s top-rated film set there.

How toast got trendy: actually a really, really interesting story.

Booth babes don’t work

The entirety of Reservoir Dogs, told via tweet

Angelo Badalamenti recounts devising the haunting theme to Twin Peaks. Great!

Best New Yorker cartoons, according to New Yorker cartoon editor. New Yorker cartoons are such a special case – always, perfectly, consistently sort-of-amusing.

Tracking flu trends using google search results

Comic-form open letter to newly-crowned chess world champion Magnus Carlsen

And finally, Feeling Cagey