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May. 17th, 2013 @ 08:33 pm I can't think of *anything* wrong with this idea
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Moviegoers in Jefferson City, MO called 911 when someone walked in dressed in armor wielding a gun, but it turned out to be just an incredibly ill-advised publicity stunt:

many moviegoers at Goodrich Capital 8 Theatres were, understandably, frightened when hired cosplayers came, some of which were wearing what appeared to be assault gear and carrying rifles.  Another cosplayer entered the theater dressed as Robert Downey Jr.'s character, but it was the fake gun-toting individuals that led some audience members to call 911.
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May. 16th, 2013 @ 07:52 pm you can't write "theater" without "hater"
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Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" features a disco-era guitar riff over a New Wave milieu, which together end up feeling dated rather than retro, and inane lyrics (i can't decide whether "jejune" or "sophomoric" would be more apropos) sung by voices so off-key that they're a case example for why Autotune happens. I can see why y'all are so excited about it.

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ronebofh
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May. 15th, 2013 @ 10:18 pm Shout-out link dump
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Paging rcfox: Scientific Consensus On Anthropogenic Climate Change: "The study is the most comprehensive yet and identified 4000 summaries, otherwise known as abstracts, from papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of recent global warming -- 97 per cent of these endorsed the consensus that we are seeing human-made, or anthropogenic, global warming (AGW) [...] The findings are in stark contrast to the public's position on global warming; a 2012 poll* revealed that more than half of Americans either disagree, or are unaware, that scientists overwhelmingly agree that Earth is warming because of human activity."

Paging schmengie: ( I am sooooo going to hellCollapse )
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evwhore
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May. 15th, 2013 @ 10:01 pm Neat concept
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xkcd_blag: Dictionary of Numbers

Phrases like "they called for a $21 billion budget cut" or "the probe will travel 60 billion miles" or "a 150,000-ton ship ran aground" don't mean very much to me on their own. Is that a large ship? Does 60 billion miles take you outside the Solar System? How much is $21 billion compared to the overall budget? [...]

A friend of mine, Glen Chiacchieri, has created a Chrome extension to help solve this problem: Dictionary of Numbers. It searches the text in your browser for quantities it understands and inserts contextual statements in brackets. It might turn the phrase "315 million people" into "315 million people [≈ the population of the United States]".

[...]

Dictionary of Numbers helpfully informs me that 300,000 acres is about the area of LA or Hong Kong.

[...]

The extension can even be surprisingly funny, like when it seems to be making an oblique suggestion for how to solve a problem -- e.g. "The telescope has been criticized for its budget of $200 million [≈ Mitt Romney net worth]." It can also come across as unexpectedly judgmental. Glen told me about complaint he got from a user: "I installed your extension and then forgot about it... until I logged into my bank account. Apparently my total balance is equal to the cost of a low-end bicycle. Thanks."
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May. 14th, 2013 @ 05:56 pm It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again
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Link dump:

via WWDTM, Nissan is developing a car interior that mimics the feel of human skin. Google for your choice of other links, this seems to have been in the news for a while. While it does sound incredibly creepy, apparently the qualities we most desire in terms of surface texture, resilience/response to pressure, etc., happen to be similar to skin-like qualities.

Why curling stones curl

Segment #2 of this week's Quirks & Quarks discusses using elephants as a modern-day proxy for dinosaurs in an experiment on metabolism in cold-blooded vs. hot-blooded animals. As part of this, the scientist had to develop an elephant rectal thermometer.

"... you can't just go to your local livestock/vet supply and buy an elephant rectal thermometer, so I built them, basically."

"What does an elephant rectal thermometer look like?"

"It's flexible tubing about 35 cm long, hooked to a fast-responding thermocouple thermometer... and a big container of lube."

"You must have raised some eyebrows at the hardware store..."

"... usually when someone walks up and asks if they can help me, I generally say 'I doubt it'"
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May. 12th, 2013 @ 02:08 pm Didn't really think about this at the time, but
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The new house is two stories (well, three counting the garage), which means when I'm about to get in bed I have to go downstairs to check that all the doors are locked and then go back up the stairs to sleep, pitting my OCD against my inherent laziness.
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May. 7th, 2013 @ 11:38 pm Wait, that was real?
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It's Hard To Tell When The Onion's Twitter Account Gets Hacked, Because It's The Onion

I saw the articles/tweets they ran afterward but didn't realize they were making fun of themselves for something that actually happened.

Which is why what now appears to be a hack attack on The Onion’s Twitter account was initially confusing to many, as the tweets featured fake links to fake stories about fake news. It now appears that The Onion was indeed, outfaked, further proving the need for a two-step verification process on Twitter.

[...]

The tweets (scroll down for a screengrab via TechCrunch) include things like "UN retracts report of Syrian chemical weapon use: ‘Lab tests confirm it is Jihadi body odor.'"

All have since been taken down since they went up earlier this afternoon [...]
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May. 7th, 2013 @ 11:27 pm Busted
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via quinquennia on Facebook:

CNN anchors pretend they're having a "satellite interview" even though they're in the same parking lot

Although does anyone take Nancy Grace seriously?

Tricky, CNN, very tricky. We understand, though. When a major crime story like the Cleveland Kidnapping breaks, you have to send in Nancy Grace. However, since Nancy Grace is a poorly-medicated vengeance demon who's always just a bad morning away from ending up on her own show, you also send in a real anchor with whom she can "correspond." Unfortunately, it's hard to get shooting permits in Cleveland on short notice, so you set up in the same parking lot. Do us a favor, CNN, just put them next to each other and have them talk into each other's faces instead of relaying their words through satellites to come back down 30 feet away like we're idiots.


(Yes, I'd forgotten I had a Nancy Grace tag too)
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May. 7th, 2013 @ 10:45 pm why do you fucknuts keep trying to bring back the fin de millénaire feel it is dead fucking stop it
Current Music: Dio - The Last in Line
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So Chris Jones brought this smug little tip list to my attention and, lo, did my gorge rise.  Find here my response:

  1. The "cool" perks are being phased out
    If you're sucker enough to go to a start-up because of the "cool" perks, then i guess you're shallow enough to believe that phasing out flashy crap is a bad sign.
  2. You stop trying to explain to your family and friends what your company does
    The assumption that your family and friends are "laymen" that need special translating skills is obscenely condescending.
  3. The job description you were hired for no longer fits what you do
    Is that a bad thing?  Then maybe talk to your boss about it.  A good company reëvaluates a contributor's role whenever necessary.  Things change.  Are you adjusting?  Do you want to adjust?
  4. You keep hearing "that's bullshit" in your head during the quarterly company pep talk
    Nothing special about start-ups in this regard.  And if your start-up has "quarterly pep talks", you're already in trouble.
  5. You realize that your degree got you here, but you're not using it
    So fucking what?  There are tons of people in tech who have degrees that are unrelated to their job.  Many of them are happy with their work.  We already know that college doesn't do a good job at preparing you for the working world.  Stop deluding yourself.
  6. Your angel investors become, well, demonic
    Finally, unreserved agreement.  I saw it happen at gBox 5 years ago.  I could not leave quickly enough.  VC can also be unwelcomely and destructively meddlesome (that was at Visible Path).
  7. You increasingly compare your life to the movie Office Space
    If this is happening at a start-up, you're utterly fucked.
  8. You increase your blog and web comic consumption, and your performance doesn't suffer
    Don't blame the start-up for your own suck-ass attitude.
  9. Grad school – any grad school – suddenly sounds appealing
    It's not merely about being bored.  Maybe you've just had an epiphany about a change of direction.  Again, this is a personal thing, not a start-up thing.
  10. The CEO defers going public for "another couple of years"
    Your company is massively fucked and you don't even know how bad it is.
  11. You stop recommending friends for positions at the company
    Huge red flag, but again, not start-up specific.
  12. Your job title is increasingly disproportionate to the amount of responsibility you have
    This is just a re-run of 3.  You might be fucked; you might simply be suffering from not having your voice heard.  Find out.
  13. The company overpromises and underdelivers
    See 10.
  14. Your move to full-time from contract keeps getting delayed
    See 10.
  15. Your company is no longer a start-up
    Guess what, you nincompoop: successful businesses are run by grownups. Stop trying to chase the eternal perfect start-up so you can keep being an overpaid adolescent. You want career growth; start-ups want to become a real company, too, either on their own merits or by getting acquired by a real company. Making it to the next level doesn't mean you can't keep going to work on your scooter.

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May. 6th, 2013 @ 09:35 pm Regional accents and verisimilitude
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(cross-post from Facebook)

This is the sort of thing that would bother me, if I had an ear for the various UK regional accents, and if I watched GoT.

What Is Going on With the Accents in Game of Thrones?

If you hate people who nitpick then definitely don't follow the link, although they do make some attempt to come up with vaguely plausible counter-explanations.

"The show has dragons, who cares if the accents don't match?": Well, first of all, I care. Second of all, the cornerstone of science fiction and fantasy fandom is nitpicking. Third of all, the fact that Game of Thrones doesn't take place within our collectively agreed-upon reality doesn't release it from its responsibility to verisimilitude or the maintenance of internal consistency within its own systems.


This put me in mind of a scene from REAMDE, which I only recently finally got around to reading, in which a huge global MMORPG features prominently, and there is a conference between the designers where they are arguing about gratuitous apostrophes in names that are supposed to sound exotic, and the pro-apostrophe guy basically says "it's an entirely fictitious language, so who gives a shit?" and the anti-apostrophe guy turns to the person responsible for the physical design of the world and asks something like "could I put a volcano in the middle of the ocean*?" to make his point.

* Of course, that was stupid because obviously we have volcanoes in the middle of the ocean -- the actual one in the book was better, but I forget what it was and I've packed it away already.

Update #2: huh, wouldn't have expected it to be on Google books but here it is.
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