“Ah, that must be exhausting.”
Odds are, Brooker probably thinks it’s broken:
But this is just one small part of the ongoing, almighty detox of everything. There’s been such an immense purge, such an exhaustive ethical audit, no one’s come out clean. There’s muck round every arse. But if the media’s rotten and the government’s rotten and the police are rotten and the city’s rotten and the church is rotten – if life as we know it really is fundamentally rotten – what the hell is there left to believe in? Alton Towers? Greggs the bakers? The WI?
But, good heavens above, do not call this “ahead of its time.” This shit is old.
quote out of context
Turing cleverly shows why the supposed test is misleading and the real question is how to educate both children and machines, not how to distinguish them.
THE HOMOSEXUAL IN AMERICA
Homosexuals are present in every walk of life, on any social level, often anxiously camouflaged; the camouflage will sometimes even include a wife and children, and psychoanalysts are busy treating wives who have suddenly discovered a husband’s homosexuality. But increasingly, deviates are out in the open, particularly in fashion and the arts. Women and homosexual men work together designing, marketing, retailing, and wrapping it all up in the fashion magazines. The interior decorator and the stockbroker’s wife conspire over curtains. And the symbiosis is not limited to working hours. For many a woman with a busy or absent husband, the presentable homosexual is in demand as an escort —witty, pretty, catty, and no problem to keep at arm’s length. Rich dowagers often have a permanent traveling court of charming international types who exert influence over what pictures and houses their patronesses buy, what decorators they use, and where they spend which season.
(via marginal revolution)
Formula 1 Racecars at 1,500 frames a second
At 1500 fps, they almost look as if they could come apart at any moment.
Video at the link.
(thanks, Jason)
For Deron
The key, Deron, is to hover over the comic with the cursor to get the pay-off.
Dear clusterflock
What personality trait in others most rubs you the wrong way?
Sears Tower unveils glass balconies on Skydeck
dear clusterflock
How’s the weather?
Donde el agua viene
Fisher-Price Kid-Tough [Waterproof] Camera shot. July 2009.
Scene from an imaginary remake of Chinatown.
Weekly Picture 157
Water Shoes, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX 7.10.2009
Golf, Nudity, Flowers, Cemetery
Everything about this just makes me happy.
Reggie Watts: Out Of Control
The music was all done on the fly.
Case in point
This is just a simple paint job on a simple delivery van.
Tzermiado (Τζερμιάδο) Lassithi Plateau (Οροπέδιο Λασιθίου, Κρήτης.) Crete.
Having just returned from another Cretan journey I’d hate for you to think that all my time is spent in the sun sipping long cool ones! Most of my day is spent seeking out mosquito infested derelict houses and stealing Wi-Fi. This is my first from the trip. I was kind of happy with it so wanted to share.
paltry string
I’m getting a kick out of the automatic soap dispensers that squirt a paltry string into your hand.
Relatively accurate
portrait of the artist as gangly profile.
You can see more definition, if you care for such, at flickr.
“Fail and Googasm”
I just keep reading certain sentences of this article over and over:
When Google Chrome was released last year, pundits completely lost their shit over it, claiming that Chrome was a new web operating system. Meanwhile, I pointed out that in fact it’s a web browser and that an operating system is a very complicated piece of software that can’t really be written off as “implementation details.” Now, I guess Chrome is going to be even more operating-systemy, by way of including, uh, an operating system. Journalistic logic rocks.
The pundits are losing their shit all over again, which is fairly impressive, because multiple Googasms from a single product are very rare. Last year, I highlighted the glorious incompetence of writers who fancy themselves tech journalists. Much in the way that everybody who saw Sideways is now an expert on wine, the tragedy of blogging is that anybody with a laptop and a Gmail account is an expert on technology. So now that Chrome will actually be a full-fledged operating system, let’s see what the experts have to say.
I’m always in the mood for Tom Waits
If I could only ever eat one food again it would be bread and if I could only ever listen to one artist it would be Tom Waits.
You’re Always Welcome At Our House
Paul Constant is correct, this is the creepiest Muppet sketch ever:
cybugs
The military is developing insect cyborgs for potential use in spying.
Originally researchers sought to control insects by gluing machinery onto their backs, but such links were not always reliable. To overcome this hurdle, the Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) program is sponsoring research into surgically implanting microchips straight into insects as they grow, intertwining their nerves and muscles with circuitry that can then steer the critters. As expensive as these devices might be to manufacture and embed in the bugs, they could still prove cheaper than building miniature robots from scratch.
Who controls whom?
Cats or humans?
McComb said she thinks this cry occurs at a low level in cats’ normal purring, “but we think that cats learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans.” In fact, not all cats use this form of purring at all, she said, noting that it seems to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners rather than those living in large households, where their purrs might be overlooked.
snapshots
Audi gifts hometown with 10-ton TT
Thanks?
happy birthday
A three-year-old boy drove his toy truck into the Peace River and floated eight miles downstream.
“He was on a battery-powered children’s toy truck,” said Nardi. “His mom said he really likes driving through puddles in it.”
the magic of the Presidential blow job
Yesterday, Marcy Wheeler had the audacity to say blow job on television.
[T]he DC press corps, I think, is apparently still horrified by the possibility that you can just say it, like that, blow job, and in doing so, expose it for all its tawdry but ultimately minor import. Perhaps just saying it like that would break the spell they were under for two years, break the magic of the Presidential blow job. I don’t know. At some point, though, we as a country have to be willing and able to weigh what the Village did in the late 90s against the massive illegality of the Bush White House and, finally, realize there are more important things than a blow job, and we need to take those more important things at least as seriously as that magic blow job that captivated the press for so long under Clinton.
The rules of social engagement make me want to crush my testicles in a garlic vice.
