I’ve heard about this text presentation method before – flashing words up one after the other so you don’t have to move your eyes – but Spritz is the first company I’ve seen try to make a business out of it. (Curious about what tradeoffs are hidden in there – eyetracking data shows when we read text presented in the usual way, like this paragraph, our eyes jump around a lot, ahead of and behind where we are “up to”, grabbing context data as we go.) (Via d3vo)
Stephen Judd has offered a collection of fascinating articles about all manner of subjects – the first collection of many I hope! I’m particularly interested in this one about caste in India, Gandhi, and one BR Ambedkar who I haven’t heard of before, but as I write I haven’t read it yet. Hopefully by the time this goes up I have remedied that!
The AV Club discusses Dawson’s Creek. I link to it because they agree with me.
Parody of The Wolf of Wall Street trailer: The Worf of Starfleet
(Anyone know their Trek? The moment around 1:10 where they have an overhead pullback NOOOOOO – I have searched before for the origin of this cliche and am curious when this episode aired.)
Via Simone, Mongolian throatsinging rave music. Very throat.
Quite lovely timelapse tour through NZ
Have I linked to LOL My Thesis yet? Academic types provide pithy, hilarious, self-lacerating micro-summaries of their work.
Guy introduces new version of Chess! Yes there have been like eleven billion chess variants created with exciting new pieces like the Unicorn or the Starship Enterprise. I don’t even care about chess at all. BUT – this one still gets my interest by making one of the new rules both elegant and simple: you win if your King crosses the midline of the board. That’s an idea that feels like smart game design. Next step: playtest it for, oh I dunno, two or three centuries? The rules of chess have a high bar for entry. (The rest of his ideas are… less elegant)
Damian Hirst does art on a Star Wars stormtrooper helmet.
And finally, THAT scene from the first Alien film, depicted in Lego