UK's comics industry mag TRIPWIRE turns 21 Exclusive: Where the inmates really do run the asylum One Hundred Watts 120 Volts: a lightbulb manufacturing ballet (1972) When a patient says "no thanks" to surgery Evolution doesn't like you Drone-delivered pizza Drowning without a sound Horska: Gypsophilia mixes ska and klezmer Depressed Cake Shop: a pop-up shop selling grey cakes to raise money for mental health charities Mind-controlled architecture, drones, and costume cat tails A profile of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's personal sushi chef A small victory for open access: Crowdfunded public stenographers will transcribe Bradley Manning trial How a convicted killer became my friend: Gary Rivlin's "Stray Bullet." Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Dr. Dre Actually, it's good for low-income kids if their mom works Lauren Beukes's Shining Girls serial killer novel is out in the US Last chance for an ORGCon2013 ticket! Porno copyright trolls Prenda: expert says they pirated their own movies to get victims to download Drawing arbitrary 8-bit images by playing Tetris Anno NTK: 15-year-old tech news just keeps on getting better This American Life on the awful, crooked mess of the patent system HPV can cause throat cancer Little Brother is San Francisco's One City/One Book pick for 2013 Red crab migration on Christmas Island Interview with Turkish woman occupying Gezi Park Boing Boing joins media coalition asking Manning judge to provide court access to public stenographer BBC airs documentary on accused cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski Breaking Bad Walter White Hazmat Suit limited-edition toy Jus Reign's YouTube comedy channel: "Punjabi Poetry and Thug Sh*t", and Instagram critiques Fine retorts, collected UK's comics industry mag TRIPWIRE turns 21
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 04, 2013 01:00 pm Joel sez, "
TRIPWIRE is a magazine that for over two decades has covered comics, genre and related fields. Described by Guillermo Del Toro as 'the touchstone of comic book culture in the UK and one of the leading periodicals dedicated to this narrative art form', this year sees the publication of
TRIPWIRE 21, a book that celebrates 21 years of covering comics and its related culture.
Read in browser Exclusive: Where the inmates really do run the asylum
By Mark Aitken on Jun 04, 2013 12:49 pm Video Link In 2011 I set off with a camera to explore a mental asylum in Mexico run by its own patients. The place is just beyond the last junkyard on the curdled fringe of Juárez, the world's most violent city.
Read in browser One Hundred Watts 120 Volts: a lightbulb manufacturing ballet (1972)
By David Pescovitz on Jun 04, 2013 12:38 pm During a visit to the (incredible) new
Exploratorium in San Francisco, I was captivated by Carson "Kit" Davidson's "One Hundred Watts 120 Volts," a 1972 short film where the manufacturing of Duro-Test light bulb is presented as a ballet for Bach's Brandenburg concertos.
Read in browser When a patient says "no thanks" to surgery
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 04, 2013 12:33 pm The Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine has a really interesting essay they've published in full online. It's written by Anna Petroni, a 77-year-old California woman who recently decided against undergoing surgery on her ankles and knees to correct recurrent foot abscesses and arthritis.
Read in browser Evolution doesn't like you
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 04, 2013 12:03 pm Sure, you've got those great opposable thumbs, complex culture, and the ability to walk on two legs. But don't let those facts lull you into thinking that evolution is on your side. It's not. It's not really on anybody's side. Which is why the same process that produces super-smart, super-creative apes (like us) is also responsible for
helping cockroaches evade our attempts to murder them.
Read in browser Drone-delivered pizza
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 04, 2013 12:00 pm Here's a video showing off a publicity stunt in which Domino's delivers one of its "pizzas" using a drone (and, it appears, two or three cameradrones to document the event). The "pizza" is packed in an electrified, heated bag to keep it warm during the high altitude flight.
Read in browser Drowning without a sound
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 04, 2013 11:56 am Drowning, in real life, doesn't look or sound the way it does on TV. It's not loud. It's not thrashy. And it can happen just a few feet away from you without you even noticing.
At Slate, Mario Vittone explains the Instinctive Drowning Response — a physiological knee-jerk reaction that pretty much prevents all the signs and signals most of us look for in order to identify a person in the water who needs help.
Read in browser Horska: Gypsophilia mixes ska and klezmer
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 04, 2013 10:57 am I'm
very fond of
Gypsophilia's brand of klezmer-infused jazz, and so I'm very excited to learn that they've got a new release. Ross from Gypsophilia sez:
"Horska" is our newest release and is many things: a 7" vinyl single with a dub remix, a 6 song digital EP, and a brand new stop motion animation music video.
Read in browser Depressed Cake Shop: a pop-up shop selling grey cakes to raise money for mental health charities
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 04, 2013 10:00 am Miss Cakehead writes, "The Depressed Cake Shop will be like nothing ever seen before as it will sell ONLY grey coloured cakes. Raising money for mental health charities, it will also provide a platform for discussion of the illness. The pop up is based in the UK but with other events starting to be planned around the globe."
The Depressed Cake Shop Read in browser Mind-controlled architecture, drones, and costume cat tails
By David Pescovitz on Jun 04, 2013 09:59 am This post is brought to you by Jaguar. Experience F-TYPE.
I remember the first time I controlled a computer with my brain. It was in 2008 at Institute for the Future and Neurosky's CEO Stanley Yang was visiting to demonstrate their system mobile headset and software that measures brainwaves and translates that information into a digital signal.
Read in browser A profile of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's personal sushi chef
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 04, 2013 09:33 am GQ magazine sent Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist
Adam Johnson to meet a "humble sushi chef from Japan—who infiltrated the inner sanctum, becoming the Dear Leader's cook, confidant, and court jester,"
Kim Jong-il's Sushi Chef Kenji Fujimoto.
(via @stevesilberman) Read in browser A small victory for open access: Crowdfunded public stenographers will transcribe Bradley Manning trial
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 04, 2013 09:27 am Over the past month,
Freedom of the Press Foundation (I'm on
the board) has been
crowdfunding money to hire a professional stenographer to provide daily transcripts of the court martial of accused WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning. His court martial started this week and will be
very important for the future of journalism, whistleblowers' rights and government secrecy—yet, paradoxically, the government refuses to provide public transcripts of the proceedings.
Read in browser How a convicted killer became my friend: Gary Rivlin's "Stray Bullet."
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 04, 2013 09:23 am "Fat Tone" at California's Calipatria prison, December 1993. Courtesy The Atavist.
Mother Jones today published an excerpt/adaptation from a new
Atavist piece by Gary Rivlin titled "Stray Bullet." Mike Mechanic of
Mother Jones explains,
In 1995, Gary wrote his first book, Drive-By, about a drive-by murder of a 13-year-old by an 18-year-old, pretty emblematic of the knuckle headed shit that went on at the murderous peak of the crack trade in places like Oakland, where the story took place.
Read in browser Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, Dr. Dre
By Ed Piskor on Jun 04, 2013 09:15 am Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics! Read in browser Actually, it's good for low-income kids if their mom works
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 04, 2013 08:50 am At the PsySociety blog, Melanie Tannenbaum looks at the meta-analysis cited by Erik Erikson of Redstate.com as proof that low-income families fare worse when mom works outside the home —
and finds that it says exactly the opposite. This post is notable not only for deconstructing a "common sense" belief, but also for doing a great job of explaining what a meta-analysis is and why it matters.
Read in browser Lauren Beukes's Shining Girls serial killer novel is out in the US
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 04, 2013 08:41 am I
reviewed Lauren Beukes's time-travelling serial killer novel
The Shining Girls back in May, and mentioned at the time that the US release was today. And here we are! Here's some of that review:
Shining Girls is the story of a serial killer named Harper Curtis, a savage psychopath who hunts the alleyways of a stinking Hooverville in Depression-era Chicago.
Read in browser Last chance for an ORGCon2013 ticket!
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 04, 2013 06:28 am Ruth from the Open Rights Group writes,
There are still some tickets left for ORGCon2013! Don't miss out on a rare opportunity to hear John Perry Barlow speak in London, this Saturday June 8th! John Perry Barlow, co-founder of Electronic Frontier Foundation, will be headlining ORGCon2013 along with writer of The Master Switch, Tim Wu.
Read in browser Porno copyright trolls Prenda: expert says they pirated their own movies to get victims to download
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 03, 2013 11:00 pm The saga of porno-copyright-trolls Prenda Law (
previously) just keeps getting more tawdry. Prenda is a mysterious extortionate lawsuit-threat-factory that claimed to represent pornographers when it sent thousands (and thousands!) of legal threats to people, telling them they'd get embroiled in ugly litigation that would forever tie their names to embarrassing pornography titles unless they paid hush money.
Read in browser Drawing arbitrary 8-bit images by playing Tetris
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 03, 2013 09:52 pm Holy. Crap. Michael Birken lays out, in detail, a method for teaching a computer to draw arbitrary 8-bit images by
playing Tetris, strategically deploying blocks of various colors to cause exactly the picture you want to emerge. The method is (as you'd imagine), starkly terrifying in its complexity, but the video speaks for itself.
Read in browser Anno NTK: 15-year-old tech news just keeps on getting better
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 03, 2013 09:00 pm It's been just over a year since
Anno NTK launched, a kind of Wayback Machine for the wonderful old-school UK tech newsletter Need to Know. Each week, Danny O'Brien will send you a fifteen-year-old edition of NTK, letting you catch up on the tech news of the late 1990s.
Read in browser This American Life on the awful, crooked mess of the patent system
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 03, 2013 08:00 pm This week, This American Life revisits the question of patents (a subject they did a very good job with in 2011), a move sparked by the attempt to
shake down podcasters for patent royalties for a ridiculously overbroad patent from a company that went bust recording magazine articles to cassette and putting them in the mail.
Read in browser HPV can cause throat cancer
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jun 03, 2013 07:45 pm Michael Douglas offers us all a good reason to a)
get vaccinated against the two most cancer-causing strains of human papillomavirus (even if you're a dude) and b)
embrace dental dams (even if you're straight)
Read in browser Little Brother is San Francisco's One City/One Book pick for 2013
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 03, 2013 07:08 pm I am as pleased as is humanly possible to announce that the San Francisco Public Library system has chosen my novel
Little Brother for its
"One City/One Book" program, the first ever young adult novel to be so honored by the SFPL.
Read in browser Red crab migration on Christmas Island
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 03, 2013 05:59 pm Photographer
James D Morgan chronicled the annual migration of the red crabs across Christmas Island for Australian Geographic, documenting the amazing swarms of adorable scuttlers as they rush to the sea in order to reproduce:
The mass migration is headed by the males, quickly followed by the females.
Read in browser Interview with Turkish woman occupying Gezi Park
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 03, 2013 05:18 pm Rene from the German site Nerdcore sez, "A friend of mine who is staying in Istanbul right now contacted me this morning and I had the opportunity to interview a girl who is occupying Gezi Park in Turkey right now. The situation calmed down, but she told me that actually the whole city of Istanbul is up on their feet roaming the streets."
D: The protests started with only a bunch of people who sat on at Gezi Parc so they don't turn the only green area at Taksim so it becomes a mall.
Read in browser Boing Boing joins media coalition asking Manning judge to provide court access to public stenographer
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 03, 2013 04:58 pm Photo: ReutersToday, a coalition of more than twenty media organizations—including Boing Boing, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Fox News, the New Yorker, Bloomberg News, Newsweek, New York Magazine, and Reporters Without Borders —wrote a letter to the US military court urgently requesting two additional press passes for professional court stenographers so they can provide the public with accurate transcripts of the trial of Bradley Manning, which started today.
Read in browser BBC airs documentary on accused cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 03, 2013 04:41 pm Houston, Texas-based doctor Stanislaw Burzynski sells "hope," not actual scientifically proven treatment for cancer. When people say they are selling hope, I always assume that means they "hope" to get rich off of our desperation and desire not to die.
Watch the BBC News program, and decide for yourself.
Read in browser Breaking Bad Walter White Hazmat Suit limited-edition toy
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 03, 2013 03:49 pm "He comes complete with a fifty-five gallon chemical drum and a trio of lab bottles. Mug is not included, it is shown to give a sense of scale." Ships last week of July, 2013. $35. Order:
Mezco Toyz presents Breaking Bad Walter White Hazmat Suit Edition (Thanks, @marzinka) Read in browser Jus Reign's YouTube comedy channel: "Punjabi Poetry and Thug Sh*t", and Instagram critiques
By Xeni Jardin on Jun 03, 2013 03:27 pm My brother
Carl shares the YouTube channel of
Jus Reign, whose bio reads, "Im brown. I wear a turban. Old white ladies are scared of me." As Carl rightly explains,
the video above is "basically a takeoff on Punjabi traditional singers who are seen here singing versions dirty south style rap songs.
Read in browser Fine retorts, collected
By Cory Doctorow on Jun 03, 2013 02:42 pm If you liked
Al Jaffee's Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions from MAD Magazine (and if you didn't, boy are you in the wrong place!), I think you'll enjoy this Reddit thread: "What was your best "comeback line" that left the other person totally speechless?" There's plenty of stuff that I'm betting is really esprit d'escalier, but if even half of it is genuine, it is proof of some fundamental rightness woven into the very fabric of the universe.
Read in browser Meet SparkTruck, an “educational build-mobile” for the twenty-first century.
Dreamed up by a group of Stanford d.school students and funded through Kickstarter, SparkTruck is a mobile maker space currently traveling across the United States. At schools and summer camps and libraries around the country, the SparkTruck team offers workshops to help kids “find their inner maker” as they design and build projects like stamps, stop-motion animation clips, and “vibrobots.”
[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmRKXqDwieY&feature=plcp]
This might seem all shiny and new. And it is—but only in part. What’s so striking (and exciting) about SparkTruck is the way it combines old and new. It does so in the tools it gets kids using, which range from pipe cleaners to laser cutters. It does so in its educational approach, which combines cutting-edge (get it?) STEM and design pedagogy with the fundamentals of an old-school shop class. And it does so in its method, which combines the iconic, century-old technology of the bookmobile with the hot new form of the maker space.
In doing so, SparkTruck joins a growing number of libraries which are combining time-tested principles (like equal access to information) with new technologies (like 3-D printers), putting in maker spaces and media production labs alongside bookshelves and meeting rooms. As I’ve argued over on bookmobility.org, these combinations make sense because reading and making actually have a lot in common. They’re both creative processes that take existing materials and combine them in new ways. Getting people engaged in those kinds of processes—through imaginative thinking, contemplation, hands-on problem-solving, and collaborative learning—is what both maker spaces and libraries are all about.
Taking that commitment on the road with scissors and hammers and 3-D printers and a great big bookmobile-like truck, SparkTruck serves as a laboratory for new approaches, as well as a reminder that trying new things doesn’t have to (and probably shouldn’t!) necessarily mean tossing old ones out.
After all, what would those vibrobots be without classically crafty pipe cleaners and tongue depressors? And what would a library be without the creative, participatory, straight-up awesome experience of reading?
SparkTruck schedule [sparktruck.org]
How to arrange a visit from SparkTruck [sparktruck.org]
SparkTruck YouTube channel [youtube.com]
Signature: --Derek Attig, bookmobility.org
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