WATCH: Darth Vader quotes cruel passages from the Bible
-Darth Vader is showing less mercy than usual here. [via]
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Darth Vader is showing less mercy than usual here. [via]
Play videoJames Islington's first novel, The Shadow Of What Was Lost" is an epic fantasy. I read this slowly to catch all the detail and appreciate the wonderful world building and terrific characters.
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What do you do if you sell a product on terms that legally bind your customers not to complain and they complain anyway?
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Today, people buy books on Amazon based on recommendations and reviews. But before that, people browsed in bookstores, airport kiosks, drug stores, and newsstands with precious little information to go on (unless the author was famous).
Read the restAnd those things aren't true, according to an Ipsos-Mori poll that put the USA second-from-the-top in the race to see who's the most ignorant, preceded only by Italians.
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In this week's New Yorker, Allen Kurzweil details his forty-year-long hunt for his childhood boarding-school tormentor, and his discovery that the former twelve-year-old bully had grown up to be a convicted felon. He has also written a book about it, called Whipping Boy.
Read the restChrystal "Digital Soaps" Doucette makes soap in the form of detailed replicas of gaming gear and tropes: Minecraft creepers, NES cartridges, N64 cartridges, Xbox controllers, Mountain Dew shampoo, Gameboy cartridges and more. (via Geeky Merch)
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Above, Hartmut Esslinger's incredible Wega Stereo Concept 51 (1978), from the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition "Making Music Modern: Design for Ear and Eye" opening this weekend.
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A hunter in Celje, Slovenia shot and killed a unicorn that has almost certainly been misidentified as a roe deer with an antler deformity caused by an injury.
Read the restMatt Haley, you are cruel. This is his poster for an imaginary sequel to John Carpenter's 1988 social satire classic, They Live.
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Last month, during my many-city book tour, I signed up for Gogo's in-flight wifi service; today I discovered that it's much harder to get shut of it.
Read the restJM Schwartz's 3D printable T-Rex shower head is just about the best thing I've seen all week. It's a mashup of a T-Rex skull produced by Makerbot Academy and Schwartz's own shower-head design.
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Parisian crafter Big Stuffed makes beautiful, cuddly, handmade undersea creatures -- the big ones are huge, like the 90 cm whale made from fun-fur and jersey. (via Crazy Abalone)
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Even when you factor in dark money, Super PACs and the rest of it, politicians are willing to sell out the nervous system of the 21st century to the worst companies in America for less than $100K.
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We've known for years that the FBI spied on Martin Luther King's personal life and sent him an anonymous letter in 1964 threatening to out him for his sexual indiscretions unless he killed himself in 34 days. Now we have an unredacted version of the notorious letter.
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The first space-bound Orion capsule has arrived at a NASA Kennedy Space Center launch pad.
Read the restHaving lost his trademark over its overt racism, Daniel Snyder has taken the unusual step of suing the five Native American people who testified before the US Patent and Trademark Office hearing, which led to the finding that Snyder's team's name was "disparaging to Native Americans."
Read the restA friend left me with some Trung Nguyen Vietnamese coffee, so I bought this filter and went to town. I am buzzing and addicted.
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The Pew Internet Project has updated its must-read 2013 work on privacy perception in the post-Snowden era with a survey of American attitudes to privacy and surveillance that shows that the number of Americans who worry about privacy is steeply rising.
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Peter Brown grinds up plastic jugs and bottle caps in a blender, then melts them into bricks. He uses the bricks as stock to turn on his lathe.
Read the restA mother who purchased an "Evil Stick" for her 3-year-old was unhappy when she found it contained a disturbing image. She wants the store to remove the item from its shelves.
Play videoSo says a report from The Brazilian Forum on Public Safety, an NGO that singles out the Rio police for "abusive use of lethal force."
Read the restEthan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, delivered this TED Talk at TEDGlobal 2014 about the insanity of the drug war.
Read the restThis week on the Cool Tools show Veronica Belmont shared some of the tools that make her life as a professional podcaster for the show Sword & Laser a little easier: Patreon and Levelator. She also recommends Rootcup and Ello.
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I’m a huge fan of the Game of Thrones HBO series, and yet I admit I don’t retain half the details in this richly layered, complex, many-threaded fantasy series.
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Cartoonist Reed Crandall was one of EC Comics' many superstars in the 1950s, drawing stories for Crime SuspenStories, Shock SuspenStories, Tales from the Crypt, Two-Fisted Tales, The Vault of Horror, Extra!, Impact, Piracy, Weird Fantasy, and Weird Science-Fantasy.
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The Time Is Money Chrome extension converts prices on online shopping sites to the number of hours you'll have to work to pay for them. [via]
Read the restListen to the "truly hypnotic, pounding, buzzsaw drone [The Ramones] made as complete amateur unknowns" in this collection of demo recordings.
Play videoEvan from Battle for the Net sez, "We're throwing a kickin' dance party to celebrate the power of the open web -- right on the FCC's doorstep, to keep the pressure on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler so he knows we want real net neutrality without delay!"
Read the rest"In this surveillance video from Treasure Coast Lawn Equipment a man is seen allegedly stealing a chainsaw by putting it in his pants."
Play videoIf 29 year old Megan Rothbauer had been taken three more blocks to Madison, WI's, Meriter Hospital when she had a freak heart attack, she'd have owed $1500, but since the comatose woman was brought to St Mary's Hospital, which Blue Cross Blue Shield won't deal with, she owes $50K and is facing bankruptcy.
Read the restRob Pegoraro feels like he's playing with someone else's hobby rather than using serious handsets Read the rest
Imagine never having to take a pill again for anxiety, depression, or your heart condition. Imagine epilepsy or Parkinson’s disease being managed by the patient without drug interventions. What if control of these conditions were possible with a thought? Kiki Sanford reports on the advent of mind-genetic interfaces. Read the rest
Each one of us has a relationship with our own ignorance, a dishonest, complicated relationship, and that dishonesty keeps us sane, happy, and willing to get out of bed in the morning. By David McRaney Read the rest
"One night I went to a party and got pretty loaded. When I got home I passed out on the couch." Originally published in Real Stuff #6, April 1992. Read the rest
Tom the Dancing Bug, IN WHICH Lucky Ducky realizes he's screwed. Read the rest
Book designer Peter Mendelsund interviews the author of Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance—a trilogy now collected in a single volume as Area X Read the rest
"Recently, on a beautiful Fall day, my sister, my Mom, and I went to visit the local brothel." Kelly Kittell reports from the world famous Mustang Ranch Read the rest
With Dr. Pangea's crew crippled and his plan foiled, his captive is left rescuable (if not ungrateful). By Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca. Read the rest
Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons conspire to create their own record company in this week's Hip Hop Family Tree strip by Ed Piskor, Read the rest
Games that pit players against their own ignorance and paranoia are exploding in popularity. Matt M. Casey finds our love of society and storytelling at the heart of the Social Deduction genre. Read the rest
Jason Louv on the short life of James Dallas Egbert III, and the long shadow his death casts on those used him as a prop in the age of Satanic Panic Read the rest
Glenn Fleishman reports on a hack in the wild that may trick users into installing malicious apps. But don't panic! Though potent, the malware has significant real-world limitations. Read the rest
Ethan Gilsdorf talks to the Monty Python's Flying Circus alum about his career, his new autobiography, and his limbs. Read the rest
The classic 2011 animated poem about a party where Minchin unloads the full weight of his love of science and reality to refute homeopathy and psychic phenomena is now a beautiful book, which Cory Doctorow read over the weekend. Read the rest
Robin Higgins presents a series of excerpts from the life of one of science fiction's most beloved half-Betazoids. Read the rest
To celebrate the release of my new book, Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age, I've invited some of my favorite creators and thinkers to write about their philosophy on the arts and the Internet. Today, Martha Lane Fox, founder of lastminute.com and UK Champion for Digital Inclusion, talks about the promise of an Internet-enabled fairer world. -Cory Read the rest
To celebrate the release of my new book, Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age, I've invited some of my favorite creators and thinkers to write about their philosophy on the arts and the Internet. Today, Jeffrey Cranor, co-writer of the amazing Welcome to Night Vale, shares the secret of his success. -Cory Read the rest
What is only slightly more annoying than trying to decipher your doctor's handwriting? Trying to decipher their language. Thanks to a new translator extension, however, your life is about to get a little easier to understand. By Thomas Goetz. Read the rest