- Facebook vs. Twitter, and user privacy: slow and steady wins the race?
The NYT's Nick Bilton compares Facebook and Twitter to the tortoise and the hare. "Facebook exploded because it slurped up endless amounts of data about its users," writes Bilton. "This race is not judged by speed, but a stopwatch with a much longer lifespan, one that is tied to trust."
 
- Libya: Inside Gadhafi's secret surveillance network
An excellent long read in the new Wired magazine: Jamming Tripoli: Inside Moammar Gadhafi's Secret Surveillance Network. Matthieu Aikins examines how activists suffered "greatly at the hands of Gadhafi?s spy service, whose own capabilities had been heightened by 21st-century technology." By now, it?s well known that the Arab Spring showed the promise of the Internet [...]
- Do not freak out about the white babies
Shutterstock In a new Ill Doctrine video, Jay Smooth advises white Americans on "this baby thing"—the recent news that white births are now a minority in the US. Black, Hispanic, Asian and mixed-race births made up 50.4% of new arrivals in the year ending in July 2011. Watch the video at Animal New York, and [...]
- Report from America's jailbreaking hearings
Wired's David Kravets reports from the Copyright Office's triennial hearings on exceptions to the DMCA's rules against breaking DRM. Every three years, public interest groups supplicate themselves before the Copyright Office and beg for our right to jailbreak our devices and look inside our own property. Every three years, entertainment lawyers show up and demand [...]
- Roasted gold-leaved foetus collection was for black magic
Earlier today, a mysterious report from Thailand simply noted that a man was arrested for "possession of a foetus." The Telegraph has more: Six human foetuses which had been roasted and covered in gold leaf as part of a black magic ritual have been seized from a British citizen in Bangkok, Thai police said today. [...]
- Popular social networking service begins offering stock for public trading
Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seen on a screen televised from their headquarters in Menlo Park moments after their IPO launch in New York. (REUTERS) Shares of Facebook (FB) opened at $42.05 on today, up about 11 percent from the IPO price of $38. At this valuation, the company is worth around $115 billion. [...]
- Touring indie band picks up hitchhiker who looks like John Waters. It was John Waters.
Indie band Here We Go Magic is driving across America on tour. Earlier this week, they spotted legendary director John Waters hitchhiking by the side of the road with a hat that said "Scum of the Earth." DCist has the story, and a followup interview with the band. So what happened once the car pulls [...]
- HOWTO make cupcakewurst
What happens when you stuff sausage casings with cupcake-batter? That's what Stef from the Cupcake Project set out to discover. Short answer: sheer, heart-stopping deliciousness. Stef's produced a detailed HOWTO for making your own cupcakewurst. Suggested serving: "Serve warm on Long John doughnuts with raspberry sauce." It took a lot of experimentation to conquer Cupcakewurst. [...]
- A Dallas Scooby-Doo enthusiast keeps sending white powder to churches & schools
Nick Rallo of the Dallas Observer alerted me to this report, written by Eric Nicholson, about someone who has sent nearly 400 packets of white powder to organizations in Texas. The FBI is offering a reward for her (or his) capture. The FBI finds last week's scare even less funny because agents believe the same [...]
- Typewriter skull
Jeremy Mayer, the titan of typewriter-part sculptures, has sacrificed some more old beasts for a good cause, producing this wonderful 9"x12"x15" skull. Skull I (Thanks, Jeremy)
- Kevin Mack and Snow Mack art show in LA
Gweek podcast guest Kevin Mack and Snow Mack have an art opening this Saturday at the Barbara Mendes Gallery in Los Angeles. I love their work. Snow was in the 25th Anniversary show of La Luz de Jesus in 2011. Her painting, "Cheesy Rider" is included in the book La Luz de Jesus 25, The [...]
- SpaceX readies for launch this Saturday, May 19, 2012
If all goes according to plan, tomorrow, Saturday, May 19th, SpaceX will become the first commercial space flight company in history to head for the International Space Station. You can watch online, live, at SpaceX.com starting at 1:15 AM Pacific / 4:15 AM Eastern / 08:15 UTC. You can also follow SpaceX founder and CEO [...]
- Lego marijuana art show
The infamous art collective / brand, LA-GO has a show at Known Gallery in LA opening on May 26. It's called Legolize it, and features marijuana plants made from plastic hobby construction bricks.
- What we teach children about police
"Someone is causing a lot of trouble." Josh Stearns, a reporter who has covered the Occupy movement extensively, asks, "Why is this children's book teaching my kid about SWAT vehicles and Riot Control practices?" From his blog post: Visiting the local library yesterday my son picked out a book all about police. I was stunned [...]
- Associate editor of Elsevier's Genomics resigns, vows to devote energies to open access
Winston Hide, is an associate professor of bioinformatics and computational biology at the Harvard School of Public Health. He was also -- until recently -- the associate editor of the prestigious (and expensive!) Elsevier journal Genomics. In a column in The Guardian, he explains why he resigned from Genomics: people are dying because scientists in [...]
- Judge suspends US law that provided for indefinite detention without trial
U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest has issued a preliminary injunction against the clause in the National Defense Authorization Act that gave the administration the power to arrest people and hold them indefinitely, without a trial, if they were believed to support terrorism. She dismissed the government's arguments in support of the clause (NDAA §1021), which [...]
- Being gay in the world of Mad Men: what It was really like
What was is like to be gay during the 1960s on Madison Avenue? David Leddick (who was worldwide creative director for Revlon at Grey Advertising and international creative director for L'Oreal at McCann-Erickson) wrote an entertaining essay for Huffington Post about his personal experience of being a gay mad man. After I left BBDO, a [...]
- Terry Gilliam, 1970, explaining his stop-motion animation
Here is Terry Gilliam in 1970 explaining how he made the classic "fig leaf" stop-motion animation for Monty Python's Flying Circus, in a spare bedroom at his apartment. (via Dangerous Minds)
- Interview with author of "Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America"
Andrew Leonard of Salon interviewed Charles Ferguson (director of Inside Job, the documentary about the unpunished criminals who caused the current financial collapse) about his new book, Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America Ferguson: I recently was at a dinner in New York City and one of the people there [...]
- RIP Jay Kay Klein: Fandom's Photographer Rests in Peace
Spider Robinson writes: I just received word that Jay Kay Klein, THE photographer of science fiction and fantasy, passed away on Sunday morning, May 13, in a Catholic hospice (a "Francis House") in Syracuse, NY, at age 80, of esophageal cancer. This sad news came to me today by phone from Craig Peterson, a local [...]
- Astronomical fidget ring made from a meteorite
Jewelrydesignsformen.com's Nine Planets ring is made of gold and meteoric iron, set with gemstones representing all the planets of the solar system, including Pluto*. And it's a fidget ring, which is my favorite kind of ring, because holy crap, can I ever fidget. The meteorite has been etched with nitric acid to reveal the characteristic [...]
- Zombie baseball comic on Kickstarter
Zack sez, "If you've ever seen the sociopathically-detailed artwork of James Stokoe, you'll want to support his new graphic novel written by Mark Andrew Smith, SULLIVAN'S SLUGGERS, which pits a baseball team against an army of flesh-eating monsters. A trailer and information on the book is available on the Kickstarter page -- which has already [...]
- Raising money to free classic volume on Africa's oral literature
A campaign on Unglue.it is seeking to raise $7,500 to pay for a Creative Commons Attribution-only licensed edition of Oral Literature in Africa, an out-of-print classic on the subject that is widely sought by African libraries. Once the money is raised, they will produce the new edition and make it widely available. First published in [...]
- Tesla Gun
Rob Flickenger made a handheld Tesla coil gun. It's amazing and amazingly dangerous. Don't do this. Live vicariously through Flickenger instead. "The Tesla Gun" (d?/dt)
- Man arrested for fetus possession
"It is not known why the arrested man was in possession of the foetuses." [BBC]
- Space Hijackers create Official Protesters programme for the London 2012 Olympics
Leah sez, Bespoke troublemakers, the Space Hijackers, have announced that they are the Official Protesters of the London 2012 Olympic Games. To this end, they've launched a site where you can register for tickets for the official protests. They have also outlined the top ten reasons why the Olympics are worth protesting against. A spokesperson [...]
- Vileness of cilantro explained
People who cannot stand The Detested Herb are beneficiaries of a genetic mutation. [MSNBC via The Awl]
- Crap cellphones
Sam Biddle rounds up the most appalling, terribly-made cellphones money can buy. Pictured right is the Pantech Jest (as in "surely you"). Why are these awful phones for sale?some for very much money!?when you can buy phones that aren't awful and cost zero dollars? Corporate apathy, manufacturing antipathy, a large populace of people who will [...]
- Ukiyo Link
Jed Henry paints Nintendo heroes in Ukiyo-e style. Here's Link about to find out that arrows are futile against enenra. [via Gamovr]
- $22,000 routers "economical"
Ultra high-end $22,000 routers were bought in huge quantities by the government in West Virginia, many destined for rural offices with minimal IT footprints. [Ars Technica]
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