[Video Link] What is this I don't even. The artist is HGich.T, the song "Tutenchamun." Original video sans subtitles and explanations are here. It's several years old, but new to me. (HT: @treyka)
My friend Sean Bonner just pointed me to a wonderful music history project, put together by Brian Stefans: at lapostpunk.blogspot.com, an MP3 compilation of post-punk and experimental pop music in the Los Angeles area from the mid-seventies through the mid-eighties.
I kind of think of this as a portrait of the city at the time more than a collection of tracks that will change the world (though more than a handful I think are unfairly neglected). I’m wondering if someone like Rhino Records would want to do a Nuggets-type collection from the period? They already have one of Los Angeles from 1965-1968 called Where The Action Is.
Incredibly comprehensive. What a labor of love. There's a Volume one, and a Volume two.
From multiplesources today: One of the three Bee Gees has died. Robin Gibb was 62 years old, and was diagnosed two years ago with colon and liver cancer that responded to treatment, then returned and spread.
UPDATE, 4pm PT: Reports from Chicago of police attacking protesters and journalists, chemical weapons being readied for use, and possibile imminent "weaponized" use of LRAD.
Josh Stearns has an update on police harassment, detention, and arrest incidents involving journalists at protests this weekend. He says, "I have been tracking, confirming and verifying reports of journalist arrests at Occupy protests all over the country since September. Help me by sending tips and tweets to @jcstearns and tagging reports of press suppression and arrests with #journarrest." According to his tracking, 85 journalists have been arrested in 13 cities while covering Occupy-related protests. — Xeni
"Occupy" movement participants and an array of protest groups are among those gathering in Chicago this wekeend to demonstrate outside the NATO summit. Sunday, protesters are ramping up for the largest demonstration of the weekend. So are police and Homeland Security agents. Today, thousands of demonstrators are marching to the convention center where President Obama and other world leaders are meeting. Four men have been arrested on terror charges. Lawyers for the men now referred to by some protesters as the "NATO 4" claim undercover agents set up a bomb plot, and entrapped the suspects.
Saturday night, at about 10:40PM local time, a Chicago Police van "drove into a crowd of demonstrators who were attempting to cross westbound over the Jackson Street bridge at the Chicago River," according to this video report and testimony from people who were present.
Starbucks generates 4 billion paper cups a year, or 12 cups for every man, woman and child in America. The coffee giant knocks ten cents off beverage price for customers who bring in their own mugs, but Mark Gunther writes: "If Starbucks really wanted to save trees, it wouldn’t offer discounts to people who bring mugs. It would charge a dime to everyone who does not." — Xeni
The joint JAXA/NASA Hinode mission captured this image of the January 6, 2011 solar eclipse.
On May 20-21 (this coming Sunday night through this coming Monday morning), sky-watchers in Asia and much of the U.S. will be able to view a “ring of fire” eclipse or a partial eclipse of the Sun, depending on their location. The rest of the world, including our readers along the East Coast of the US, will have to settle for viewing this special celestial event online.
The shadowandsubstance.com astronomy website has a totally awesome animated map showing how the eclipse will look to viewers in each U.S. state. But more importantly, he gives the best eclipse advice you'll get anywhere:
The safest way to view this event is to attend a planetarium, observatory or local astronomy club on May 20th.
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." — Xeni
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 as a crucible for democratic activism. But, in the shadows, a second narrative unfolded, one that demonstrated the Internet’s equal potential for government surveillance and repression on a scale unimaginable with the old analog techniques of phone taps and informants. Today, with Gadhafi dead and a provisional government of former rebels in charge, we can begin to uncover the secret, high tech spying machine that helped the dictator and his regime cling to power.
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. But shortly after the open, despite all the bubblicious hype leading up to FB's debut: share price dropped. At the time of this blog post, the price is hovering around $38.
The WSJ reports that trading volume was more than 375 million in first three hours of listing, more than 6.5% of total market volume. Trade volume is expected to set a new record in trading volume on IPO day.
STOCKENFREUDE (n): That feeling you get, as someone who loathes Facebook, seeing FB shares crap out on IPO day.
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 @elonmusk on Twitter. He'll live-tweet from mission control during launch.
And below, Miles and NewsHour host Hari Sreenivasan talk about the details of the mission, the engineering challenges and the other spaceflight companies vying for a chance at delivering cargo and people to low-Earth orbit.
