Tag: fridaylinky

It’s Boo-urns Night! Here’s “The Raptures of Folly” in entirety:

Thou greybeard, old Wisdom! may boast of thy treasures;
Give me with young Folly to live;
I grant thee thy calm-blooded, time-settled pleasures,
But Folly has raptures to give.

The Gator found this neat interactive: rhyme with Rabbie Burns!

Via Nate: QWOP, a running game you play right in your browser! This is AMAZING.

Also via Nate: Quote Investigator – was that inspirational quote really said by the person you think it was?

6-year-old girl writes a grindcore song about pancakes

Splendid drive-thru prank: the invisible driver

Buffy’s stunt co-ordinator releases a bunch of behind-the-scenes footage

Wade Davis vs. Jared Diamond

How many people did the Friends sleep with? Someone spent a lot of time working this out.

Lousy Book Covers – your new favourite tumblr

Spot the Quality Cafe in many films! (via David R esq.) – and – 6 places you’ll recognise from the background of every movie (via Dylan)

The spectacular thefts of Apollo Robbins, pickpocket – great New Yorker article, went viral for a reason!

Indiana Jones trilogy as maps

“My mom was an underground railroad for abused women”

Science comes clean: Overly Honest Methods

Toy train company bids for a major UK railroad. It gets a reply. (via Alan Jackson)

The girl who played Veruca Salt in the classic Willy Wonka film wrote a book about it that is (a) free to download [EDIT: nope, not any more, it’s now US$10!], and (b) apparently really great. (via Gino)

Beware the occult hand! (via Allen Varney)

The Fresh Prince theme song lyrics, after google translation:

The “But Thens” of This American Life

Photographer visits Wellington and blogs about it (via Pearce)
And another one does the same thing (via Gem Wilder)

Spanish unemployment office is flashmobbed with a lovely “Here Comes The Sun”. Just a nice thing.

Sounds like the new Before… film is actually good. And, exhale! Here’s a neat essay about Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, to get you in the mood. (I remember when the first film was released, this was the scene everyone was talking about.)

What did Homer singing his epics sound like?

A lawyer goes, in enormous detail, through that giant contract from The Hobbit

Some quite lovely and unusual LotR fan art

The Skywalker Paradigm (gotta have a Star Wars link, huh)

Via Gilmans, some travel advisory: Cruise Ship Deaths! Miss Travel!

And finally, the weirdest thing I’ve seen in a while: Sharon Tate models Mao Tse Tung.

End of the Long Count, baby. Waste some time as the world comes crashing down with linky distractions!

It ain’t the Mayan apocalypse that’s destroying the world, anyway. George Monbiot reckons the real culprit is those rubbish Christmas presents you buy when you’ve run out of ideas.

William S. Burroughs reads his short story, The Junky’s Christmas. Plus claymation.

Captain America’s diary comic (by Robyn E. Kennealy)

This Homeland Security video is kind of amazing

A very short interactive text story about a round-headed kid who really wants to kick a football (by Tof Eklund)

These pics of the Syrian civil war are gloomy, as you’d expect, but you have to see the home-made warfare device in pics 14-16… (via Kathleen)

Star Wars sequel debacle simulatron

NASA Gangnam Style riff is great fun

How many people are in space right now?

Check out also this tour of the International Space Station by its departing commander (via Nate)

Also from nate – an elegy for the web we lost. It really is a different online world out there compared to a decade ago.

What to do when the bus refuses to show up

Is evolutionary psychology worthless?

On the occasion of his 80th birthday, NZ’s official national wizard speaks vividly about what he’s been doing these past few decades. I find it weird that Gandalf is now more famous in NZ than our real-life official wizard.

Movie posters recreated at home

And finally, Christopher Lee’s Heavy Metal Christmas Songs

(Merry christmas & happy new year folks. I’m off on holiday for a bit so no bloggery for a little while.)

Vanity Fair has published an extensive feature on Freaks & Geeks, my pick for second-greatest TV show of all time (after The Wire). There’s an oral history, new behind the scenes pics, and an amazing reunion photoshoot that brought back all the main cast, most of the secondary cast, and plenty of bit players. LOVE IT.

A eulogy for Occupy: fantastic first-hand journey through Occupy’s successes and failures. Includes plenty of details I’d never heard before, including a brutal analysis of the failure of the General Assembly process that was at the heart of Occupy, and some great insights into what Occupy created that wasn’t easily visible from the outside.

This one time, Yoko Ono and Jim Henson hung out online with Ayn Rand. No, it really happened [No it didn’t – see below], and the transcript is fascinating. (via Allen Varney) [It is fictional! My factchecking on this was pretty limited. D’oh! Thanks David R esq. for the save.]

An ambitious high concept, this: making an improvised opera out of live stock market data. (Also via Allen)

Rap battle: Santa Claus vs your actual Snoop Lion. Not exactly a fair match.

Lengthy research (with many pics) exploring the story behind that unusual hat worn by Archie’s Pal Jughead.

Gem Wilder’s link collection this week included several gems, but my fave was this clever and funny takedown of the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl phenomenon

Also from Gem this week: the problem with Margaret Mahy

Return of the Jedi had some female space pilots in it, but it cut them out.

The alternate moose has made his documentary on Kiwiburn (the NZ cousin of Burning Man) free to watch online. Check it out!

And while you’re watching things online, David Ritchie esquire has endorsed a browser plugin that lets you watch overseas video content without needing to mess about. I tried it: two clicks later, I was suddenly able to view loads of Hulu content that had been closed to me before. You want this.

David esq., also linked to a helpful Hobbit Dwarf Identification Flowchart. Test your knowledge on this collection of photos of the Hobbit actors meeting their Lego minifigures.

Speaking of Lego: here’s a Lego model of the spaceship from Alien, the Nostromo. (via Malc)

Via Sonal: your new TV is ruining the movies you watch

And finally, via Pearce, a classic animated GIF now with its own homepage: BEES BEES BEES

Frank N shared this with me, and it pretty much makes Friday Linky redundant: The Useless Web.

Neil Patrick Harris dreams in puppets (via everywhere)

Art History, with captions (via Cat T)

Oh I love this so much: the Hawkeye initiative

The end of simplistic macho masculinity? (via Mrs Meows)

Question everything you know about dinosaurs

Superhero dinosaurs (via Svend)

Can art be games? (also via Svend)

The Baby Rancor

Africa is finally coming to the aid of the needy in Norway

Via @saniac, the amazing repository or mirth that is Bad Kids Jokes.

(& improve the experience of those jokes with the helpful Instant Rimshot, via Rui)

TV Tropes has a story generator

Interesting defence of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”

And finally, via Ed, the creepiest advent calendar you will ever find (note that most of the animations have multiple parts)

Polygon’s coverage of the explosive conversation on the challenges faced by women in the games industry – 1 Reason Why. My favourite spin-off thread, Jane McGonigal noting the conspicuous absence of a 50 Shades Of Grey game (and then building a team and tossing concepts around).

Scientific journal Nature looks at its gender balance numbers and faces up to some uncomfortable truths about itself (via MrsMeows)

Toy laptop for boys vs. toy laptop for girls. Can you guess how they are different? Well, one of them looks like a laptop, and the other is bright pink. But that ain’t even the worst thing. (via Theremina)

Letters of Note: Will & Grace producer owns.

Y’all seen that rather fantastic and possibly going-too-far elevator ghost prank? How about this other elevator prank, with a collapsing floor? (via Naomi Guyer, warning: this is marketing for LG). Elevators = fundamentally freaky places.

The first bootlegs of The Hobbit are already out there. Watch it before it gets taken down! The special effects aren’t quite as good as I expected.

(via Pearce)

Lego Blade Runner street (Via Malc)

On Paleofuture – 1936 literary folk predict which authors will endure

The awesomely creepy background art from the original Scooby Doo cartoons.

A new explanation for some famous psychology experiments, the prisoners vs wardens one and the electric shocks one. And if anything we humans come out looking even less admirable.

Online worlds after all the players stop turning up – abandoned fantastic cities (via Ed)

Thoughtful & detailed look at Occupy’s Rolling Jubilee idea, finding it nice but deeply flawed. (via Making Light)

The Secret Histories Project – 50 people who never turned up in your history classes (via Gem Wilder)

GATE, a puzzle game about Mars, robots and logic (free to download)

Kiwi dark crime webcomic Moth City – really good! (supported by Creative NZ no less) – sequential art peeps will want to see how it layers and changes elements.

What if a cat & a dog were your (human) flatmates? (via Mike Foster)

And finally: apparently I never got around to sharing this linky: Nic Cage as cats (via Bef)

Awesome volcano action in the central North Island. Worth a look, non-Kiwis. Walking over this volcano is a very popular day expedition.

Juan Cole lays out his 10 requirements to get a lasting peace in Israel/Palestine. It seems to me like a pretty realistic list, and as he puts it: good luck.

And, um, here’s an indie comic with an ambitious premise… an American baseball coach recruiting as his new pitcher a “Palestinian rock-thrower”. Hmm.

Ryan North, who I mostly know through links from Kate Beaton but has been linkied here before for his in-depth analysis of the Back to the Future novelisation, has a kickstarter up for a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure version of Hamlet, illustrated by Ms Beaton and many others. Sounds groooovy, and actually quite interesting too. Blew through its target in the first few hours of day one – 29 days to go!

Speaking of Kickstarter and Hamlet – here’s one for a project to adapt Hamlet into a six-episode series. Also sounds very interesting. I really need to get more familiar with this play.

Short but lovely piece on the politics of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books (via Tof Eklund), as a companion piece to Laurie Penny’s interview with the man (via Laurie Penny).

Here’s a comic that mashes up the Muppets and the recent Thor movie. (Drawn to roughly follow Roger Langridge’s character redesigns.) It’s worth a look – way more than you might think.

Problems with the different cloud storage services, and what to do to fix them.

In comments last week, Stephanie reminded me about the Lizzie Bennett Diaries, which I linked back in July & promptly forgot about. This video-diary adaptation of Pride & Prejudice has racked up 65ish episodes of their core storyline plus loads of other bits and pieces by other characters. Check it out!

Mashup oddity: Nine Inch Nails with, er, the sound effects from Super Mario Bros.

1946’s Disney short teaching girls about menstruation.

Which Bond villain plan would have actually worked? (via Allen Varney)

The colour palette in Nolan’s Batman trilogy progresses from dusk to dawn. (via Allen Varney)

Why the world loves soccer and America doesn’t (via Gareth Michael Skarka) – I just don’t feel the deep love in my heart for the beautiful game, but this is a good short account of where the appeal lies.

Neat profile of “the world’s most patient gamer”, Triforce Johnson (via Quinn Murphy)

Amazing Street Art – 2012 collection

6-year-old schools Hasbro on gender equality. Via Emily Care Boss.
Also: a new study finds girls are increasingly into boy brands. (Unsurprisingly there’s no examination of the way these gendered brands are constituted, so the explanations given are pretty weak, but it’s an encouraging trend.)
Also also: See Jane, a neat little video about representation of women in media from Geena Davis’s project…

Vending machine dispenses random books

We are entering the post-password age. An amazing article that breaks down what we’re all reluctant to admit – that passwords don’t work any more.

Revered alt-culture magazine Coilhouse has announced it’s taking a rest – and they’ve made every acclaimed issue a free download on their beautiful site.

Obama’s war council of supernerds.

And finally… Trotify (via William Gibson)

Via Frank N, and then most of the internet, a lovely zoomable view of the galaxy. (The tech behind it is super neat too!)

So the IDF livetweeted their attack on Gaza. Leave aside for a minute the rights and wrongs of the action (and yup I have some pretty strong opinions on that) – and you have another reminder of the fascinating and troubling future that is already happening, a world where the PR war is directly overlaid on the physical conflict in realtime. Did I mention that IDF opponents in Gaza were tweeting right back?
UPDATE: WHAT THE HELL? IDF gamifies war

Waiting for Elmo. (via Dangerous Minds)

And here’s 10 Sesame Street performances worth seeing. Stevie Wonder (not that clip, a different one)! Herbie Hancock! Cab Calloway! More than half of these were completely new to me. (via Vivian)

RPG folk – grab the free quickplay edition of my buddy Dale’s new horror RPG, EPOCH! It’s got some really interesting stuff going on in it. Check it check it out.

Everyone’s been sharing this highly informative Reddit thread explaining the nuances of New Zealand culture. e.g. “Something people who come to New Zealand might not be aware of is that the government provides four sheep for every person. Be sure to ask at the airport! Even if you’re just visiting, you can have four sheep to follow you around while you’re here. Some people feel quite bad that they missed out on their sheep.”

Anyone out there wanting French to English translation services? My friend Heather is in the game and now she has a website ho ho ho. (Also, editing.)

SFX covers 10 episodes every sci-fi show must have (via Craig Oxbrow)

Via Calum Dow, a cringingly funny but VERY unpleasant tale of a pregnant lady getting a massage that goes very very wrong. Better for listening than reading, but the page gives you both options.

Via Gem Wilder, 21 very awkward situations (told in animated gif form) (gif was the US word of the year!) (oh hai john key) (my favourite is the basketball player accidentally rubbing the wrong knee)

Pearce sent me this Prometheus review that’s even more scathing than my one was. A pre-Damon-Lindelof script draft has turned up online too, and the big news is, it pretty much makes sense, unlike the released version. Google for “112142280-Alien-Engineers” and you should find it.

Illustrations of dozens of characters from The Wire. As a poster.

When a woman cries, she’s emotional and irrational. But when a man rages, that’s just being direct.

A dad hacks video game to switch all the pronouns around so his daughter can have a hero character who is a girl. Groovy. (Don’t read the comments though unless you want to be exposed to much rage about how he DESTROYED THE INTEGRITY OF GAMING CULTURE RAARGH.)

The MIT game lab has produced a game that demonstrates the effects of the theory of relativity – by setting the speed of light really close to walking speed. Fascinating.

These photos will tell you all you need to know about the David Petraeus affair scandal.

If you find a free photoshop service online, be wary, because it might be the Photoshop Troll! (via d3vo)

Irish graphic designers create a group exhibition out of their most frustrating client instructions.

So last linky I shared a “Occupy fizzled out as a failure” essay. Right on cue, Occupy has launched something very real using exciting new thinking that has people talking everywhere – a plan to buy out and write off debt (debt is bought and sold at a fraction of the debt value). Making Light here discuss and dismiss one objection to Occupy’s Rolling Jubilee

And finally, Windows95 tips and tricks.

After 8 years of Dubya, Americans were so out of control they accidentally elected a black man. Four years later? Four years of relentless obstruction and lunatic rage at his presidency? I kinda think re-electing a black man is the greater achievement.

US election retold in cleverly animated webcomic form

Iconic album covers reimagined with superheroes

Cutting, important argument about why Occupy Wall Street failed – because it was too mired in academia, for a start. Don’t agree with everything here but there are definitely some home truths for supporters of the Occupy movement. (via Amund)

Craaaazy amazing: a mental abacus “sport” that goes SO FAST. Wow! (via Maire)

& a potential breakthrough in mathematics – turns out there’s something more to know about a + b = c. The guy who’s advanced this proof sounds like a very interesting cat. (via Ivan)

Who said it: Hitler or Lovecraft?

The Necronomicon – it’s like the Bible, but different! (via Craig Oxbrow)

In praise of the hashtag. The hashtag as new literary device? This writeup is actually off on several things, but it gets a lot right. The # is the symbol character of the ’10s just like the @ was the symbol character of the ’00s.

Christopher Walkenthrough: computer game walkthroughs in the voice of Christopher Walken (via Dave Chapman)

Samuel L Jackson Lorem Ipsum

How can there not be a movie of this? An amazing slave escape story. Edge-of-the-seat true life adventures!

That Kate Nash performed the Buffy musical episode. (Kate Nash gets a lot of flack, but Scroobius Pip rates her, so.) (That Buffy musical episode is a great episode of TV, but I still think it really doesn’t work outside of that context.)

Big Sugar has been weirding the evidence of the dangers of sugar for years. Like Big Tobacco, only successful. Fascinating.

The National Office of Importance

And finally… The Snuggery (via Pearce)

How to learn: Mastering linear algebra in 10 days

Star Wars girl gets a treat. Couple years back this girl was bullied at school for liking Star Wars more than pink princesses. This is the tale of her great costume for this year’s Halloween. (via Anthony Kitt)

Linda Blair’s on-set dialogue delivery for The Exorcist (via Pearce and loads of other places)

Mean Doses offers up the PSYning

12-year-old uses D&D monsters to help his dad with some eye-tracking research. And is lead author on the paper! NEAT.

H.P.Lovecraft Institute of Software Design
The physics of “The Call of Cthulhu” (PDF)

Amazing! A magical feature of the London underground, one I never heard of before. (via Making Light)

You’ve seen that pic of the baby-as-Ripley-in-power-loader costume, yeah? Mat Gritt found video. Yay!

I read about this project when it was a plan. It rather exceeds expectations. Check it out: boxes of english-language android tablets dropped, with no instructions, in isolated & poor Ethiopian villages. Within six months the kids not only have taught themselves to use them – they’re HACKING THEM.

Ha! The game Monopoly? Was stolen! From a game in the public domain! (via Allen Varney) (still a sucky game)

Wgtn cartoonist Grant Buist created a complete webcomic adaptation of Waiting for Godot’s act one. Using clip art of cacti.

Big History – an alternative curriculum for schools, that puts our place in the world in perspective. Nice. (via Ivan) (actually this reminds of the curriculum my high school history teacher Michael Fowler invented for the junior-school class he made up “heritage studies”)

Can I buy you a coffee? This is an analogy. It seems like a pretty sharp one.

James Bond: the nymphographic

and finally, ELECTRIC BOB’S BIG BLACK OSTRICH (or, LOST ON THE DESERT)

and also finally, the ultimate educational game, FROG FRACTIONS. Just play it, to the end.

Gangnam juggernaut continues. Amazing Big Trouble in Little China riff:

And, even better, legendary dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei does his own version:

Dangerous Minds, who have been supplying Friday Linky with content for years now, has blown up big with a massively-shared post about Facebook’s (frankly insane) monetisation idea that breaks the core functionality of their own service and makes you pay to get it back. I fully expect it to be rolled back almost entirely before the year is out, but FB is experiencing financial pressure for the first time so maybe they’ll double down on this craziness? It ain’t like G+ is gonna take all the users away…

Also from Dangerous Minds: super-realistic sculpture of Ripley in Alien

Speaking of Facebook, that’s where Pearce has been sharing a horror movie a day. Here’s one to share, 1979’s ‘Zombie’. Sayeth Pearce: “If you don’t want to watch the entire movie, go straight to 33:30 and watch one of the most legendary scenes in horror movie history.”

The Exorcist as 80s sitcom.

Alan Moore sings on the hard-to-find/copyright-spiked Black Dossier record – listen to it here

Lady computers for your delicate lady computing hands. Built-in horoscopes! No I’m serious.

A history of photomanipulation
(via Maire)

Amnesty International’s new thingy, that uses your Facebook timeline to suggest what would happen to you in a repressive regime

The hard numbers behind the gender gap in academic publishing (via Amanda Lyons)

This guy is kinda my hero today, too: high school dude goes and does social-good health research, gets published, is awesome – then identifies a technical weakness in *his own paper* and *retracts it himself*. Legend.

Kiwipsum – A kiwiana themed dummy text generator, bro (via Heather)

The 10 best films of the 1890s. (Includes the actual films, which are mostly about a minute long each.)

This sounds groovy! The mysterious package company (via Anna Klein)

Arranging your bookshelf is like deciding seating at a dinner party…

Decoding the Canadian “sorry”

And finally, first seen via Mike Foster, here is CAT BOUNCE