urbansheep@gmail.com

Laughing Squid: Still Alive, the Portal song by Jonathan Coulton, featuring Sara Quin, from his new album Artificial Heart. Терменвокс удерживает позицию самого магического из музыкальных инструментов благодаря тому, что каждый исполнитель играет не «на инструменте», а собой, всем телом в пространстве инструмента. #музыкальная_шкатулка - × × ×

«Славься, Джей!» После всех страданий мы дождались новой версии лучшего (и практически единственного) ридера под iOS-устройства. Stanza обновилась под iOS5, стала нормально запускаться и этим сняла вопросы о том, как жить и чем читать дальше у сотен тысяч людей. Трудно передать словами то, насколько это прекрасно. Даже то, что Амазон говорит, что это последнее обновление для Stanza, не слишком огорчает — приложение достаточно близко к идеалу, чтобы прожить с ним ещё несколько лет без ощущения его «морального устаревания», и опасаться придётся лишь следующих крупных обновлений операционной системы. - × × ×

“— Can you clarify the genders of the people on the cover, or is that giving away some sort of secret? — The verdict isn’t in; that’s the whole point. Banning gay marriage is ridiculous because how are you supposed to tell what fucking gender anybody is if they’re bending it around? It could be anything—a she-male marrying a transsexual, or what the hell. People are capable of any sexual thing. To ban their marriage because someone doesn’t like the idea of them both being the same sex, that’s ridiculous. That was the whole point of the cover; here is this official from the marriage-license bureau, and he can’t tell if he’s seeing a man and a woman or two women. What the hell are they? You can’t tell what they are! I had the idea of making them both look unisex, no gender at all. On TV once I saw this person who is crusading against sexual definition, and you could not tell if this person was male or female—completely asexual. I was originally going to do the cover that way, but when I drew that it just looked uninteresting so I decided it should be more lurid somehow.” - × × ×

“— Вася, домой! — Мама, я замерз? — Нет, ты проголодался!” - Из смешного соционического форума, в обсуждении про «10 признаков того, что вы нравитесь Джеку». - × × ×

(у меня почему-то упорно подставляется вариант «Нет, ты доигрался») - 50 оттенков кошкости

«Если рассматривать подробно карту России (она вверху на карте Евразии), то бросаются в глаза несколько «чёрных дыр» – север Европейской части РФ (Коми, Ненецкий округ, Карелия, Мурманская область) и северная часть Приморского и Хабаровского краёв. Это настоящие «медвежьи углы» России, вроде китайского Тибета. Больше в Евразии таких необжитых, необустроенных территорий нет (лишь небольшие островки в джунглях Лаоса). Особенно печально смотрится та же Карелия по сравнению с соседними финскими территориями.» - × × ×

Комментарии эти все из ФБ/ВК неизменно наводят на мысль о том, что медиа по-прежнему идут на сделку с совестью и на «ну, пусть немножко мусора нальётся, его никто не прочитает, а зато плюс двадцать читателей из числа контактов этого горе-комментатора у нас в статистике прибавится». - × × ×

“Older adults with reduced attentional regulation seem to display greater knowledge of seemingly extraneous co-occurrences in the environment than younger adults. As this type of knowledge is thought to play a critical role in real world decision- making, older adults may be the wiser decision-makers compared to younger adults because they have picked up so much more information.” #схватил_за_мозг - × × ×

“The older brain has experience and knows that nothing is gained by jumping the gun. It was already known that aging is not necessarily associated with a significant loss in cognitive function. When it comes to certain tasks, the brains of older adults can achieve very close to the same performance as those of younger ones," explained Dr. Monchi. "We now have neurobiological evidence showing that with age comes wisdom and that as the brain gets older, it learns to better allocate its resources. Overall, our study shows that Aesop's fable about the tortoise and the hare was on the money: being able to run fast does not always win the race -- you have to know how to best use your abilities. This adage is a defining characteristic of aging.” #схватил_за_мозг - × × ×

“Stories made from: microspores, fog maps, infected bass samples, mathematics, patterns of decay, broken machines, blood, code bugs…” - × × ×

“I am the last of the mechanisms. The coded remains of Planet Earth. Databanks broken. Only fragments left to me: cascade of numbers, images, lost memories. From these I will build pulse signals. Flicker of readout: red, green, yellow. Seeking output texts. 140bit limit, intermittent bursts. Commencing…” - × × ×

также ремиксы - кот от котов

"Whether or not it's difficult to accept that the desire to be demeaned is not a product of a society that seeks to objectify women, I would argue that, regardless of appearance, by its very nature BDSM is constantly about consent. Of course, its language and rules differ significantly from vanilla sexual scenes, but the very existence of a safe word is the ultimate in preventing violation -- it suggests that at any moment, regardless of expectations or interpretations on the part of either party, the act can and will end. Ignoring the safe word is a clear act of violation that is not up for any debate. Because of this, BDSM sex, even with all its violent connotations, can be much "safer" than non-safe-word sex. While not very romantic in the traditional sense, the rules are clear -- at any moment a woman (or man) can say no, regardless of the script she (or he) is using." - × × ×

“The safe, sane, and consensual BDSM landscape is made up of stringent rules and safe practices designed to protect the feelings of everyone involved and to ensure constant, enthusiastic consent. The culture could not exist if this were not the case; a submissive participates in power exchange because a safe psychological space is offered up to do so. That space creates an opportunity for a display of endurance, a relief from responsibility, and feelings of affection and security. Before any "scene" begins, the rules are made clear and the limitations agreed upon.” - × × ×

"Jon Briggs only discovered he was the voice of Apple's Siri in the UK when he saw it on television. He speaks openly for the first time." - × × ×

Здесь традиционный тег #depression_therapy из ютх, которым отмечались посты, адресованные в будущее, «командор, если вы читаете это, значит, я уже мертва и сообщение вам доставлено моим поверенным» и пр. http://utx.ambience.ru/users... - × × ×

С одной стороны, удручает, что nothing is new under the sun. С другой, радует, что раньше мы не были моложе и глупее. Но переписывать, конечно, надо почти всё. - × × ×

"62 эссе Айзека Азимова, исследования сэра Кена Робинсона, текст 24-летней Пулитцеровской лауреатки, одна из самых важных работ на тему образовательных институций XX века и книга-спутник главного документального хита прошлого года — все это книги, посвященные реформе образования, которая неизбежна в эпоху информационной перегрузки и творческого предпринимательства. T&P перевели подборку самых важных книг об обучении, составленную сайтом Brainpickings.org." - × × ×

“Wired.com photographers have the enviable job of shooting the coolest stuff and most intriguing people in the technology world. Now we’re giving away many of those photos to you, the public, for free. Beginning today, we’re releasing all Wired.com staff-produced photos under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC) license and making them available in high-res format on a newly launched public Flickr stream. To mark our new licensing policy, we’ve compiled this gallery of 50 great pictures from our past stories. Included are portraits of Steve Jobs, Woz, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer, Trent Reznor and JJ Abrams, to name a few. Plus, there’s a cross section of photo coverage from events like ComicCon, Maker Faire, CES and more.” - × × ×

“When looking at the present as an indication of where we’ll stand a year from now–much less a decade–feeling optimistic may not come easy. We look out to the universe and see an infinite, lifeless abyss enfolding upon our own small pocket of civilization, while the people we look to for guidance and information seem to be little more than straight-faced bearers of bad news. Yet while we can’t predict what the future holds for our unending political discourses, we can look at how far we’ve come with technology in merely the last decade and realize the present we know now will, very soon, find itself memorialized in nostalgia. Here’s some technology emerging down the road that’s poised to change your life on a much greater scale than any outcome of a political debate.” #trendtaste - × × ×

“Now, take out your favorite Magical And Revolutionary Technology Device. Use it for a bit. What did you feel? Did it feel glassy? Did it have no connection whatsoever with the task you were performing? I call this technology Pictures Under Glass. Pictures Under Glass sacrifice all the tactile richness of working with our hands, offering instead a hokey visual facade. Is that so bad, to dump the tactile for the visual? Try this: close your eyes and tie your shoelaces. No problem at all, right? Now, how well do you think you could tie your shoes if your arm was asleep? Or even if your fingers were numb? When working with our hands, touch does the driving, and vision helps out from the back seat. To take this to an extreme, imagine that you're completely blind. Yeah, that's a tough life, but you can still pretty much take care of yourself and do the things that people do. Do you know what it's called when you lose all sense of touch? It's called paralysis, and they push you around in a wheelchair while you calculate black hole radiation. Pictures Under Glass is an interaction paradigm of permanent numbness. It's a Novocaine drip to the wrist. It denies our hands what they do best. And yet, it's the star player in every Vision Of The Future.” - × × ×

"Типогаджеты — символы, которыми можно сделать многое и сразу. Кажется, этим функциональным штуковинам нужно найти применение, и если вам не нравится исходный смысл этих закорючек, вы легко можете придумать свой. Вот лишь несколько примеров." - × × ×

Irony Punctuation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - × × ×

“What touchscreens lack is something called affordance. It’s a lofty term for an object’s built-in ability to tell you how it works. A doorknob affords turning. The button on a car stereo affords pushing. A touchscreen affords nothing. It relies on software for any affordance, which in turn relies on total immersion for the user.... The days of analog affordance are gone. What we want, apparently, is to surround ourselves with touchscreens of varying size—tiny ones in our pockets, medium-size models for our laps and dashboards, and massive versions for our walls. We want tomorrow’s vintage shops to be lined with identical, blank, anonymous slabs. We want things to be vessels for software, and nothing more.” - × × ×

"What does it take to make such an extraordinary event happen? How did the gallery manage to prise some of the most precious works in art off the walls of the Louvre and the Vatican and get them to London?" - × × ×