July 2011
June 2011
2 tags
1 tag
2 tags
3 tags
J-Pop Idol is Actually a CGI Composite →
Welcome to the future of media, where the frontman of your group lives on a hard drive owned by the sponsor:
This past Sunday, Ezaki Glico, the candy company which aired the commercial,confirmed what many of AKB 48’s fans had come to suspect: Aimi Eguchi wasn’t real. The new group member, it turns out, was a computer-generated composite of the real band members. Her pretty face was actually made...
Tobey Maguire Sued Over Multi-Million Dollar... →
They caught him because a fund manager embezzled funds to attempt to cover his legal losses with illegal winnings. Your craziest story of the week:
Maguire, 35, won more than $300,000 from a Beverly Hills hedge fund manager who embezzled investor funds and orchestrated a Ponzi scheme in a desperate bid to pay off his monster debt to the star and others, it’s alleged.
An FBI investigation...
2 tags
1 tag
1 tag
“Any proper discussion of the riot and why it occurred has to start with the...”
– Potter Gold on First World riots and discussions of Vancouver.
“The semi-iconic photo of a couple making out in the street as the world burns...”
– Rob Horning on the Vancouver Riots.
Read the whole thing. The closing point is a pitch-perfect insight for this era:
I think there is something generally applicable about this apparent contradiction, in that we apparently enjoy the perks of self-surveillance and exhibitionism as emblems of our...
1 tag
“There is substantial evidence that some of these fires have been caused by...”
– John McCain. What a jerk. (Via CNN.com)
"HTC Evo 3D: Oh My God Make It Stop Hurting" →
Sam Biddle reviews the horrendous idea that is the 3D phone. Honestly, such a beast would have to develop for at least 9 months and pass by 200 people. It doesn’t bode well for HTC’s culture if this thing made it out intact.
“A new Gallup poll shows sad person Barack Obama down by 5 points in a generic...”
– Wonkette, on Barack Obama’s decline in the polls vs. imaginary candidates.
1 tag
A Brief History Of The ‘Some Of My Best Friends’... →
When did the token minority best friend defense first come in vogue? Experts I talked to couldn’t pinpoint an exact origin, but a search back through newspaper archives reveals that the line has been around for more than a century. (There are a number of “Dear Abby” queries that have opened along the lines of this letter, from 1971: “DEAR ABBY, First let me say some of my best friends are...
Bntr’s Twitter conversation import feature is really, really smart.
2 tags
2 tags
“We are more than proud to announce that we have just completed recording a full...”
– Metallica
Werner Herzog Reads "Go the Fuck to Sleep" →
“What we do know is that Apple has been internally testing Time Capsules to cache...”
– 9 to 5 Mac on the rumored new AirPorts and Time Capsules.
Updates are just the start. Expect Apple to use this as a local iCloud cache. It’s easy to see a future Time Capsule extending your 1,000 photo stream to several multiples more.
EA Starts Breaking from Steam →
At least EA’s culture of hubris is consistent.
This comes in the wake of an E3 announcement that BioWare’s upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, would be released exclusively on Origin. Coupled with the upcoming high-profile launch of Battlefield 3, which is rumored to be headed for Origin exclusivity, EA seems to be poised to make a big push against Steam, which has enjoyed virtually...
List of Car Crash Songs, Wikipedia →
The car crash song emerged as a popular pop and rock music teenage tragedy song during the 1950s and 1960s at a time when the number of people being killed in vehicle collisions was rising fast in many countries.
So, so many.
“Despite the competitive sense of journalism in which people are vying with each...”
– Mother Jones’ David Corn, on he different types of bounties within a room full of physical documents (in this case, Palin’s emails).
As we become a world of broadband connections and ubiquitous capture devices, journalism will continue to fragment. There seems to be three...
2 tags
Sports in the Age of Digital Reproduction →
Chuck Klosterman wonders what makes “watching a prerecorded sporting event less pleasurable than watching the same game live”. (Via Grantland)
1 tag
“The Attorney-General’s kind remarks are noted and appreciated. I’ve...”
– David Simon, responding to Attorney General Holder’s request for more seasons of The Wire. (Via The Atlantic Wire)
1 tag
Sony hack reveals 'Seinfeld' is most common...
mikeelgan:
Passwords belonging to members of the SonyPictures.com site were distributed via BitTorrent by hacktivist group LulzSec. One surprising point of trivia: The word “Seinfeld” was the most common password.
Not Bosco?
1 tag
1 tag
The Cable Xbox →
parislemon:
So if I’m reading this correctly, Xbox will now be a cable box?
That’s cool, I guess — the interface is much better than any cable box out there (which isn’t really saying anything as cable boxes are huge pieces of shit across the board). But it will still require a full-on cable contract, where you pay for tons of crap you don’t want.
I’d prefer a bit more thinking outside of the...
1 tag
1 tag
“When I read about what people are like or what they believe, if it’s more than...”
– Calvin Trillin 