brucesterling:

*Face recognition algorithm

(via screenshotsofdespair)

Origin Stories of Six Arrested Development Jokes — Vulture

{Carl Weathers}

livingluster:

leahstuff:

gorgonetta:

[Color pic: a cluster of punks shielding their mohawks under one small umbrella]

Is it a cluster of punks? Is that the appropriate wording? It seems like it would be like a stink of punks or a shove or something.

An Oi! of punks. 

A crust of punks!

{Boston}

thisistheglamorous:

The University of Illinois has giant banners, about 20 or more feet in the air, hanging in Union Station to advertise their MBA program. One of them has a QR code for you to scan. You know, 20 feet up in the air.

*headdesk*

Which is worse, this, or the ridiculous Save the Chief billboards? I mean, I’d think perpetuating an embarrassing racist caricature in a ridiculous and spiteful lost-cause campaign would win hands down, but then I weigh that against 600,000 MBAs + egregious mis/over-use of QR codes, and it’s a pretty close thing.

(via oldtobegin)

1. LA Times | As employers push efficiency, the daily grind wears down workers
2. Wash. Post | Teacher’s resignation letter: ‘My profession … no longer exists’

(Felix Salmon - The Bitcoin Bubble)

Such people, including Satoshi Nakamoto, are far from unique in their mistrust of all existing financial institutions. What sets Nakamoto apart is that he turned that mistrust into a philosophy, the most important driving force behind the bitcoin project. When he introduced bitcoin to the world in February 2009, Nakamoto boasted that his new currency was “completely decentralized, with no trusted parties”. And he explained in some detail what he saw as the problem in need of a solution:

The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts.

There are all kinds of amusing ways in which you can poke fun at Bitcoin and the subculture that has grown up around it. But, taken seriously, this is yet another big bet by the privileged techno-libertarian class that those of us who believe in society and a commonwealth and democracy and all that rot are the dumb money in the room. 

You don’t fix problems of trust by eliminating trust from the equation. You fix them socially, democratically, empathically. The answer to a failure of trust isn’t further atomization (neatly disguised as techno-utopian transcendence). It’s justice.

(Which, easier said than done, yeah. People mistrust our institutions because our institutions are profoundly broken. And there has been precious little justice or reckoning with the events of the past decade and more. But the answer sure as hell isn’t to run away and hide in the Singularity. Social problems have social solutions. Broken institutions have to be mended, and absent justice has to be created. Put your shoulder to the wheel. Start doing what the online community used to do best: inventing new systems of trust and new ways to connect.)

(via oldtobegin)

holajupiter:

fourteenacross:

holajupiter:

Okay, true life story time, the summer that holajupiter and I worked at summer camp together (like, when we were in college. This was only about seven years ago.), we were visiting a friend in St. Louis and saw that this museum was open all night, so we decided to go. I think we specifically wanted to go to the aquarium bit of it because our AAA guide said that it had a touch tank?

GUYS. THIS MUSEUM. Like. I need to go back again. Maybe in daylight. With a camera. Because some of the shit I remember about it CANNOT BE REAL. As summer camp counselors, we were constantly cognizant of children’s safety, but in that summer camp-y kind of way where you’re like, “Well, okay, you can climb on that log, but be careful.” You know, safe, but with a sort of loose knowledge that kids will be kids and you are at a place where they are encouraged to run around and have fun. That being said, THERE IS NO WAY THIS PLACE WAS UP TO CODE. We spent the whole night, despite our summer-camp-y-safety mindset, being horrified that a child was going to die in front of us.

Giant, open aquarium tanks with no attendants and, in one place, ladders and stairs that led right into the water! Exposed pipes and beams and nails! THERE WAS NO SUPERVISION ANYWHERE. It was seriously like a bad trip. I distinctly remember us going to the gift shop to try and look for some sort of post card or souvenir book that had some information on HOW ANY OF THIS WAS OKAY.

I just googled “How many kids have died at City Museum”

However many it is, it’s totally worth it.