interesting things

Randomness for 11/25

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1) Parents convince kids their toys come alive at night and take pictures. Actually, there’s no proof these toys are owned by kids or their parents. They might belong to a lonely middle-aged guy who figured out a way to get page views. Still: fun.

2) English has a new preposition, because internet.

3) Male novelist jokes.

4) Shit Roleplayers Say. Video. Why does “I attack the darkness” sound so familiar?

5) An extremely funny and very short video: Carpark. Video. h/t +Jonathan King

6) Marvel, DC, and The Problem, a really great longread by Chris Sims about the history and evolution of superhero comics. Even if you’re not a comics fan, you might be interested in the history of two behemoth competitors in a creative field.

7) Six ways to beat reader’s block. I needed this.

Randomness for 11/19

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1) 16 People talk about the things they didn’t know about the U.S.A. until they moved here.

2) A girl draws self-portraits before and during an LSD high.

3) Man Buys 10.000 Undeveloped Negatives At a Local Auction and Discovers One of The Most Important Street Photographers of the Mid 20th Century.

4) Fate Core Kickstarter price breakdowns, in detail.

5) Attn: Screenwriters: Man makes explosive from items purchased in the post-TSA area of an airport. h/t @hradzka

6) Yearbook photos of heavy metal and rock musicians.

7) A long study that measured the harmful effects that video games have on kids.

Randomness for 11/11

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1) Surgeons make fewer mistakes when they warm up by playing Super Monkey Ball first.

2) Steve Rogers: Premature Anti-Facist. h/t James Nicoll

3) 5 Reasons Packages Get Destroyed (Learned Working at UPS).

4) Unfortunate Publishing Layouts of Our Time.

5) A History of Los Angeles as Told Through 232 Objects.

6) Pacific Rim in the Power Rangers style! Video.

7) Want to deter pests without using chemicals or traps? Try an automatic lawn sprinkler with a motion-sensor attached.

Randomness for 10/19

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1) Brides Throwing Cats

2) Your request to play Devil’s Advocate has been denied.

3) A Captain America motorcycle suit. No turned-down pirate boots, though.

4) Honest Slogans.

5) “Blonde Bombshell” model finds herself out of work at 31, so she cuts off her hair to be a male model.

6) We’re more creative when we’re tired: ten surprising facts about how brains work.

7) Tips For Improving Street Harassment, in comic form. So. Good.

Roleplay Twenty Palaces!

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Last night my Kickstarter hit 925 backers, unlocking Stretch Goal: Monitor, the second to last stretch goal. This morning we reached 1000 backers, which unlocked Stretch Goal, Mask, the very last one.

So I created something new: Stretch Goal: You. I encouraged backers to create their own stretch goals so they could create anything they wanted and share it with the other backers, if we hit their goal.

Already we have an indie composer who has promised 20P music, and…

Fred Hicks and Rob Donoghue have promised that, if we reach 1200 backers, they will expand on the Voidcallers section of the FATE Toolkit to let people role play in a Twenty Palaces-style setting. See here.

I’ve said before that there was no need for me to create a 20P supplement because Voidcallers is already it. But if you want sample stunts, special character creation rules, the whole deal, you probably want to join in on this.

We’ve already gone far, far beyond anything I had a right to expect. Can we manage to hit this goal, too?

I have to run out for a meeting, if you can believe it, but I can’t wait to see how this plays out.

And if you have something you want to share with the other backers, please do.

Randomness for 10/10

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1) Another drive-through prank, skeleton edition. Video. This one is funny and Halloween is coming up, so… (h/t Nick Kaufmann)

2) Banksy kicks off an art institute on the streets of New York.

3) What your style of beer says about you.

4) Hyperbole and a Half explains power, identity, and changing yourself with costumes.

5) 44 of the Best Scared Bros at Haunted House (2013 pictures). I will confess to enjoying these pictures of absolute terror to an unhealthy degree. Oh, and the body language is instructive for any writer, I guess.

6) Test your color IQ with an online test. My wife, who took the analog version of this test in art school, scored a 26, which is pretty good. Then my son took it and scored a perfect zero. I haven’t tried it myself.

7) The internet is full of “life hacks” but how many of them actually work? 30 Common Life Hacks Debunked. Video.

Randomness for 9/27

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1) How to clean your ear buds. I had no reason to google this. Nope. No reason at all.

2) Ladies and gentlemen, a cat playing a theremin: video.

3) Classical sculptures dressed as hipsters, and they look great.

4) THE MATRIX as retold by Mom. Video.

5) Hilariously Bad Book Covers.

6) Attention filmmakers: The future is already here. I have been tricked by an April Fools article in September! It even says “April Fools” right there in the tags! Let’s pretend that’s a rare thing, and thank you Rose Fox for catching that.

7) A gif that demonstrates that, when the martial arts ref tells you to stop fighting, you should stop fighting.

Randomness for 9/12

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1) Myths over Miami: Homeless children create an elaborate mythology of the city all on their own. I swear, this is the most amazing thing.

2) Amazon collects the funniest reviews on its site.

3) A convention attendance discussion for authors on reddit.

4) What every New Yorker should know, in .gif form.

5) Gifs of gelatin cubes dropped onto solid surfaces. There’s something strangely healing about this.

6) Take a virtual tour of the world’s largest cave, discovered recently in Vietnam. Video.

7) “Attacks of Opportunity” helpfully explained and demonstrated. Video. This is funny enough that I’m looking up other videos on this channel. h/t Tracy Hurley

Speech is free at first, but you have to pay hidden fees later

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Popehat has a great post about a subject that comes up all the time now: freedom of speech and the so-called censorship of public condemnation. Here’s a quote:

Speech has consequences. It ought to.

In America, we have an elaborate set of laws strictly limiting the government’s ability to inflict those consequences. That is right and fit; the First Amendment prevents the government from punishing us for most speech.

Private consequences are something else. Speech is designed to invoke private and social consequences, whether the speech is “venti mocha no whip, please,” or “I love you,” or “fuck off.”1 The private and social consequences of your speech — whether they come from a barista, or your spouse, or people online, or people at whom you shout on the street — represent the free speech and freedom of association of others.

Yes, this, very much. Everyone is fine when speech has consequences that they approve of. Tell a nasty joke that makes your friends laugh, hey, that’s a nice consequence. Tell one that pisses a bunch of people off, to the point that they call you an asshole?

Well, there are certain people who think that’s completely out of bounds.

There’s a culture tug of war going on, in which one side wants to call out racist and sexist statements, and the other wants to call out all criticism of racist and sexist statements. I happen to be on the side of the former but people need to work this out and it’s going to take time.

Still, trying to frame criticism as censorship is ludicrous. Keep the link handy for the next time your Facebook comments turn toward the ridiculous.

(Trigger warning: the blog post at the other end of that link has examples of criticized speech–specifically the Pax Dickinson dudebro bullshit that created a stir recently, so people who can’t handle racist rape jokes or other asshole behavior shouldn’t click.)

Randomness for 9/2

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1) Darkseid is impressed by Thanos’s coffee.

2) 40 Maps That Will Help You Make Sense Of The World. James Nicoll, some of these are relevant to your interests.

3) High-speed camera captures the amazing details of insect flight, and teach us a little something about how it works.

4) How to build a cat fountain in Minecraft. Video. Note: that’s not a fountain for cats to drink from. No, it is not.

5) The Most Important Book on Color Theory Is Now an iPad App.

6) Online order forms for pizza delivery places let people ask for special requests, like “Draw a wizard on the box…” and they do.

7) A printer with no paper tray. You just set it on top of a stack of paper and let it go. h/t @KeithCalder