A huge list of movies that are available to watch for free, online.
(openculture)

A billion stars revealed
Astronomers have today released a picture containing more than one billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy. It combines data from two near-infrared¹ telescopes – the UK Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii and the VISTA telescope in Chile ... The full image contains 150 billion pixels, and the detail it contains is only revealed by the three zoom levels, centred on G305, a large and complex star-formation region: the innermost zoom covers a tiny fraction of the full image, but still contains more than ten thousand stars.

America, you should be mad as hell about this (businessinsider)
An intuitive, statistical look at us and them.

The Hobbit production video blog

To conclude, the best way to mitigate interventionism is to ration the supply of information, as naturalistically as possible. This is hard to accept in the age of the internet. It has been very hard for me to explain that the more data you get, the less you know what’s going on, and the more iatrogenics you will cause.
from Nassim Taleb's forthcoming book about the diminishing value, and eventual harm, of too much information.

InstaCRT is brilliant
Take a digital photo, it gets sent to Stockholm to be photographed off of a CRT screen, and sent back to you.
youtube of how it works

Peter Brings the Shadows to Life 
A beautiful little piece of skateboard film.

 115MPH Superbus is just plain ridiculous

Slinky on a treadmill.  That is all.

A Brief History of John Baldessari, narrated by Tom Waits

Martin Grover's paintings of old 45s (via thingsmagazine)

Making a handmade cigar

Bricolo mechanical music system (w/vid)

A Russian satellite has taken the most detailed picture of earth ever captured, at 121 Megapixels

Recursive Drawing - a very cool in-browser drawing app that allows you to construct fairly complex fractals by recursively building on basic shapes.  Video tutorial is recommended.

Outer Limits Trading Cards are pretty great, and the very brief captions make the pictures even better.
And here is an interview with the circa 1964 editor of Topps who was responsible for releasing them.

Paul Gravett interviews R. Crumb
It was only later that I discovered bit by bit first the world of old-time illustration, I am very interested in that. And only fringely interested in most fine art. I got to liking those German guys like Dix and Grosz and I liked Salvador Dalí and other surrealist stuff like that. I like a lot of Outsider Art, primitive and strange stuff by crazy people. The thing about the fine art world is they have this pyramid, this hierarchy, and it’s very rigid. It’s breaking down a little bit but it’s according to how much money you can get for something. I don’t buy into that. I had zero interest in abstract expressionism, starting with the post-war American artists.

A Nation of Spoiled Brats (Foreign Policy Review)
Well, there are two types of decline. The first is relative economic decline, and I think this should be uncontroversial. Funnily enough, it isn't yet fully uncontroversial, but it should be: namely, that America's share of the global economy is diluting. In 2000, America had about 31 percent of the global economy, so just under a third. And by 2010 it was down to 23.5 percent, just under a quarter. That is a remarkable shift. So relative economic decline shouldn't be something we debate too much because it's happening and it's going to continue to happen. And I think the U.S. share would be likely to fall to a little more than a sixth in the next decade or so, unless there are dramatic changes in the pattern and distribution of global growth.

The US standard of Living has fallen more than 50% since 40 years ago. (the street)
"On several occasions, I have glibly referred to how it now takes two spouses working to equal the wages of a one-income family of 40 years ago. Unfortunately, that is now an understatement. In fact, Western wages have plummeted so low that a two-income family is now (on average) 15% poorer than a one-income family of 40 years ago."

World population density visualizer

Great talk on Mutilated Urbanism by James Kunstler

Some amazing stereographic wiggle-gifs from artist Dain Fagerholm

State rankings... by corruption!
(spoiler: no A grades were given out)

Where's _why? (slate)
"What happened when one of the world’s most unusual, and beloved, computer programmers disappeared."

I'm going to need to set aside some time to play with Google Input/Output.

ChronoZoom.org - an HTML5 implementation of a clickable, zoomable, open-source timeline that shows the history of the universe.

π

Don't miss this fantastic RadioLab podcast on Escape!.  The phone-phreaking story alone is a must-listen.

Why I am Leaving Goldman-Sachs (NYTimes)
What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

Why an MRI costs $1080 in America and $280 in France (Washington Post)

Museum of Forgotten Art Supplies (via metafilter)

I was a warehouse wage slave (mother jones)
As the sun gets lower in the curt November sky, I thank the woman for her help. When I start toward the door, she repeats her "No. 1 rule of survival" one more time.
"Leave your pride and your personal life at the door." If there's any way I'm going to last, she says, tomorrow I have to start pretending like I don't have either.

Drive Across Mongolia in 4 minutes (vimeo)

Drive Across Mongolia in 4 Minutes from Spots Unknown on Vimeo.

Make Your Thing: 12 Point Program for Absolutely, Positively 1000% No-Fail Guaranteed Success by Jesse Thorn (via boingboing)

Attacks paid for by big business are 'driving science into a dark era' (guardian, uk)
"Those of us who grew up in the sixties, when we put men on the Moon, now have to watch as every Republican candidate for this year's presidential election denies the science behind climate change and evolution. That is a staggering state of affairs and it is very worrying," said Professor Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California, San Diego"

City of Samba
A tilt-shift view of Rio

The Secret Life of Ice (Science Friday)

“Just wait. We’ll be sending you coupons for things you want before you even know you want them.”
NYTimes magazine on How Companies Learn Your Secrets

"He leaves his cellphone and laptop at home and instead brings “loaner” devices, which he erases before he leaves the United States and wipes clean the minute he returns. In China, he disables Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, never lets his phone out of his sight and, in meetings, not only turns off his phone but also removes the battery, for fear his microphone could be turned on remotely. He connects to the Internet only through an encrypted, password-protected channel, and copies and pastes his password from a USB thumb drive. He never types in a password directly, because, he said, “the Chinese are very good at installing key-logging software on your laptop.” 
Traveling Light in a Time of Digital Thievery (NYTimes)

Looks like google's drive-in-the-sky is coming soon...

Google launches We Solve for X
Solve for X is a place to hear and discuss radical technology ideas for solving global problems. Radical in the sense that the solutions could help billions of people. Radical in the sense that the audaciousness of the proposals makes them sound like science fiction. And radical in the sense that there is some real technology breakthrough on the horizon to give us all hope that these ideas could really be brought to life.

A great map showing block-by-block energy consumption (zoomable down to the building level) for NYC. (from Columbia.edu)

Who knew wall trampoline was a thing?

Detroit Re-Photography (designobserver)
Dave Jordano’s photographs of Detroit help provide an antidote to this process of mystification. Jordano was a student of photography at the College for Creative Studies in his native Detroit in the early 1970s. Following the example of his photography heroes — Walker Evans, Robert Frank and others who also stretched, but did not break, the bounds of the documentary tradition — he set out back then to photograph his city. More recently, Jordano, who now works as a commercial photographer in Chicago, has been revising his student photographs and rephotographing the sites of the originals

 Stephen Hawking: "Philosophy is dead."
Philosophy: "Excuse me?"
The Atlantic:  What Happened before the Big Bang.  The new Philosophy of Cosmology

The Rise and Fall of Personal Computing, statistically.

Today is PROTEST SOPA day.  Several sites have joined the blackout effort to raise awareness over just how horrendous and technically inept this bill is.

Please take a moment to write Congress through instructions at AmericanCensorship.org, or the EFF to voice your concerns about the legitimacy of this lobbyist-authored legislation designed to deliver unconstitutional power to law enforcement on behalf of special interests.  Or sign directly through google

Metafilter, google, BoingBoing, Wordpress, Reddit, Mozilla, MoveOn have all gone dark today.

Clean a record with wood glue!

The Coming War on General Purpose Computation (Cory Doctorow) (slyt)
From the description:
The upshot: a world of ubiquitous malware, where everything we do to make things better only makes it worse, where the tools of liberation become tools of oppression.
Our duty and challenge is to devise systems for mitigating the harm of general purpose computing without recourse to spyware, first to keep ourselves safe, and second to keep computers safe from the regulatory impulse.

Richard Stallman Was Right All Along (osnews, via slashdot)

"But here we are, at the start of 2012. Obama signed the NDAA for 2012, making it possible for American citizens to be detained indefinitely without any form of trial or due process, only because they are terrorist suspects. At the same time, we have SOPA, which, if passed, would enact a system in which websites can be taken off the web, again without any form of trial or due process, while also enabling the monitoring of internet traffic. Combine this with how the authorities labelled the Occupy movements - namely, as terrorists - and you can see where this is going."

Happy 2012!  With the new year, you may be firming up your dictatorial resolutions to guarantee absolute dominion over your subjects.  To this end, the Economist has published a handy guide:  "How to Be a Dictator"

Extreme Path-walking

Need a base for your super-villainy?  You need Project Utopia.

2012=1968? (nymag)
In 2008, Barack Obama lit a fire among young activists. Next year, Occupy Wall Street could consume him.

Zdenek Miller, Czech animator passed away today.  Miller created Krtecek, a black mole famous to European audiences.  His color, characterization, background styles are pure mid-century gold.  [youtube trail starts here]

Famous Magazines' First Covers

$35 Indian Android tablet

Brian Eno on bizarre instruments

Researchers in England are starting a 10 year project to build the 1830s Babbage Analytical Engine
(nytimes)

If you want to play the arcade game Off the Waffle, you'll need to make a trip to Eugene, OR.

"You've never heard of this game. It's in only one cabinet, playable in one city and, generously estimating, maybe it makes a dollar a day. Nothing about this video game suggests it's someone's meal ticket, but it is. For life."

Formula for complete and utter Bayhem!
(or, why Michael Bay films make so much money)

Secret iOS Business: What You Don't Know About your App

Dark Stores, a photo project by Brian Ulrich documenting retail casualties of the economic bust.

 Cartoon eyes! (with hints, only if you need 'em)

A Few Million Monkeys Randomly Recreate Every Work of Shakespeare

RIP Steve Jobs.  This is the end of an era.  I remember spending hours on the first generation Mac at the University of Delaware's computer lab in the summer of 85.  Under Jobs, Apple revolutionized technology, and the rest of the world was always playing catch-up.

Elizabeth Warren explains what happened to Wall Street during the last 30 year on Jon Stewart's Daily Show.

 

I really like Google's error-bot.

What if the secret to success is failure? (NYTimes)

Dr. Michio Kaku: America has a secret weapon.(4 min video, wimp.com)

How well do you see color?

I admire Jon Huntsman's bravery to stand apart from the crowd, but this tweet will probably get him thrown off the ticket.

Why Amazon can't make a Kindle in the USA
Great 3-part article on the (permanent, if the author is correct) decline of American hi-tech manufacturing.

Google bids π (or more precisely, π*$1,000,000,000) for some Nortel patents in a rope-a-dope move designed to cash-strap rivals.

Roubini warns of Global Recession Risk (wsj)

Stop Coddling the Super-Rich (New Yorker, by Warren Buffet)

Why the US will Lose a cyber-war (the diplomat)

Did the KGB have it in for Camus? (guardian)

Kesey's Prankster Footage becomes film.

“What they were doing was glorious, fun and magical in the best sense of the word,” Gibney says. The director sees Kesey as an artist and adventurer who was at heart a family man, the coach of his local school football and soccer teams. “In a way, the bus trip is kind of Kesey’s art piece,” Gibney argues. “I think part of his mission was to be a kind of Pied Piper for a country that was just enveloped in fear. He was saying, ‘Come out of your bomb shelter. Have fun. Don’t be trapped in a maze.’”

Don't miss this week's This American Life: When Patents Attack
Patent trolls, Intellectual Ventures, and the High Tech IP Protection Racket.  Highly informative.

Make Way for the Radical Center
Apropos article in this week's NYTimes as we watch our 401K balances plummet as the Republicans deliver bought-and-paid-for promises to corporations and the ultra-rich at the expense of everyone else.

"DID I mention that I’ve signed a pledge — just like those Republican congressmen who have signed written promises to different political enforcers not to raise taxes or permit same-sex marriage? My pledge is to never vote for anyone stupid enough to sign a pledge — thereby abdicating their governing responsibilities in a period of incredibly rapid change and financial stress. Sorry, I’ve signed it. Nothing more I can do."

Random Color Generator

Top 10 Most Extreme Substances

 25 Haunting Shipwrecks around the World

Metal! (and rubber)

[It was never meant to be]  Paleofuture

Temples of the Atom:  A view inside America's never-finished nuclear power stations.

A Laurel and Hardy Poster Collection

Scenes from Surrendered Homes

Designobserver Essay: How to Make Systems Thinking Sexy
The world needs a new kind of design based on an ethical framework in which life is the ultimate source of value.

A QR-Coded, "animated" tattoo

Looks like blogger is going to be rebranded.  Stay tuned.

 A huge set of photos from Six Flags New Orleans - 6 years after the flood.

Spongiforma squarepantsii

Confessions of a Nuclear Power Safety Expert
Nuclear engineer Cesare Silvi studied unlikely outside threats to nuclear plants in Italy, which soured him on the energy source and caused him to go solar.

Paul Chojnowski wets and burns wood to create fire drawings.

Dear NYC, ticket the people parking in the bike lanes, not the bikers (slyt)

Yesterday, a huge explosion occurred on the Sun.

Madison Avenue declares American 'Mass Affluence Over


The top 10 percent of American households, the trade journal adds, now account for nearly half of all consumer spending, and a disproportionate share of that spending comes from the top 10’s upper reaches.
“Simply put,” sums up Ad Age’s David Hirschman, “a small plutocracy of wealthy elites drives a larger and larger share of total consumer spending and has outsize purchasing influence — particularly in categories such as technology, financial services, travel, automotive, apparel, and personal care.”