Month: February 2016

Tracing the origins of fairy tales using a genetic methodology – “The Smith and the Devil” may be 6,000 years old.

The secret lives of tumblr teens – while insightful, I found this depressing reading. It starts as a discussion of why the clever weird kids gravitate to tumblr, and then, like the kids in the story, gets entirely caught up in the mechanics of making money through the network.

Via Hamish C: Vader’s Redemption: The Imperial March in a major key.

Typography guru/comics letterer Todd Klein on the logos used for the Marvel movies.

How the internet is trying to design out toxic behaviour. Good. The problem can’t be solved this way, but there is lots and lots of space for mitigation.

The New Yorker has an interesting profile of Mr Money Mustache, who gives advice on living frugally, retiring early, biking everywhere, that sort of thing. (My Cal is something of an enthusiast.)

And finally, via Gareth S, the most unsettling channel on Youtube. Weird stuff out there on the internet, huh.

via Theron – if you read Marvel Comics in the 80s, this will be a bit surreal.

Interesting look at how a wholesome TV personality in Japan was undone by scandal, and what that reveals about sexism within the culture.

What happened after Sweden started putting Bechdel test results on films.

Some insights into the crazy US conspiracy thing that is the Sovereign Citizens Movement.

Via Angus Dingwall – “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” turns 15. Contentious claim there from the NY Mag that it was the first real internet meme – expect fierce warfare from “Mr T Ate My Balls” partisans.

Ima link to Kendrick Lamar’s performance at the Grammys because I’ve seen a lot of hiphop performed at awards shows and I always look forward to those performances and they always, always suck. Hiphop is the opposite of award shows. But Kendrick killed. Watch it.
The Hamilton performance is also very much worth your time.

The BBC has a great explainer on those gravitational waves and what the discovery means.

Hot sauce in her bag – how this Beyoncé lyric reveals a whole food culture. Great article!

Clay Shirky makes clear how social media has broken the structure of US politics and opened the way for Trump and Sanders.

Two links about academic publishing’s ongoing crisis: Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge, and “Get Me Off Your ****ing Mailing List” is an actual science paper accepted by a journal (profanity censored so I don’t set off workplace filters)

Investigative journalism from Buzzfeed would have been the setup for a joke about cat pictures a short time ago, but now some great work is coming out of the viral content giant. Here’s a glimpse of how they work, and maybe what the future of journalism looks like.

And the flip side of the same issue: how TMZ pursues its ruthless celebrity news journalism.

There’s no such thing as everlasting love (according to science” says The Atlantic. Interesting piece about one line of research into “love”. I appreciate anything that busts up the love mythology so prevalent in Western culture, but this article, like so much science reporting, skates over a lot of nuance that presumably exists. It reminds me of a forum post I wrote two decades ago declaring love is “a trick of the light” – I stand by that post, inasmuch as I remember what I said, but suffice it to say I have been steadily adding nuance to my understanding for twenty years since.

And finally… a ranking of all 118 sweaters seen on Twin Peaks. As my brother put it, “An intersection of obsessive, cult, and pointless that may be the most perfect snapshot of what the internet is all about.”

Maire shares her top ten heroines from YA fantasy, her top seven feminist villains, and her top seven feminist supporting characters.

Via Ben S, the history of the original run of Star Wars comics from Marvel. They have a goofy rep because of the green talking bunny rabbit alien, but they did some interesting stuff as they went along.

That Spinoff list of NZ non-fiction had very little Māori content in it. The site follows up with a Team Brown remix.

Smiling slaves and the real censorship in childrens’ books.

A search engine that digs up the appropriate screen captures to go with any Simpsons quote.

via Hannah Shaffer, Worst Draft: “”Worst Draft is a minimalist word processor that removes the two biggest roadblocks for writers: editing & distractions. Users will be unable to delete anything more than a few most recently typed words, and they will also be unable to access any other applications without first closing Worst Draft.”

via Jenni, Anil Dash writes against the internet wisdom that is “don’t read the comments”

via Debbie, the Melbourne Museum has a great computer animated video of the destruction of Pompeii.

via Fraser, the secret of the writing on Poe Dameron’s jacket in the new Star Wars film.