A Pittsburgh neighborhood pulled together to stage a work of street theater for the benefit of the Google Street View van. See it here.
Two teachable points here. One, it’s funnier when people don’t know they’re on Street View. And two, I really don’t ever want to move to Pittsburgh.
The walk from 8th Avenue over to the Javits Convention Center on 11th Avenue in Manhattan is one of the most depressing walks in existence. It’s straight up industrial urban wasteland, and it’s not even wasted enough to be picturesquely post-apocalyptic. I’ve done it many times, and never without experiencing some form of suicidal …
This is microculture news, but too bizarre and delicious not to click on. Band of Brothers, a massive, longstanding, malevolent alliance within EVE — a game I don’t play, but which is, for my money, the most beautiful game in existence — was abruptly hacked apart this week by a double agent from the rival alliance GoonSwarm. Its assets …
New York Comic Con starts today. I’m not there, because I have a job. But I’ll be there tomorrow to sign galleys (that’s publishing-speak for early, cheapo, paperback versions) of my book and generally to enjoy the free access that my autographing gig gets me.
Though I’ll be missing the Futurama premiere, which is today, and the Joss …
The deal: apparently there is a new educational institution, headquartered at the NASA Ames Campus (i.e. right next door to Google), that is entirely devoted to the study of the Singularity. The Singularity being a term borrowed by Vernor Vinge from astrophysics and re-borrowed by boy genius Billy Quizboy …
Maybe you’re not used to seeing the word GROW in all caps. Or used as a noun. And yet, weirdly, when you see a GROW you feel like you recognize it, as if surreal Flash sculpture/games have been with you all your life — indeed have evolved to co-exist with us as a species. Like dogs. The new one is here.
For those to whom family honor …
I mean great as in, really big, as opposed to, say, absolutely terrific.
As avidly as I follow the many subtle and well-tempered arguments in Wikipedia’s Village Pump section (yes, that was cheap sarcasm), I missed the fact that a few days ago Wikipedia jefe Jim Wales proposed an experiment: requiring that changes to Wikipedia pages …
America’s first nerd has issued his first annual letter since he took up a full-time position at his eponymous foundation. He held a press Q&A this morning (afternoon here on America’s time-shifted eastern coast), and I got a print copy FedExed to me first thing this morning. It’s a classy package: brown and cream, wide margins, bound …
Well, Circuit City died. And I want to be clear about something: it is a terrible, terrible thing that those people are losing their jobs. I would hate for that to happen to me or anyone I know. The fact that I loathed Circuit City is a completely separate thing.
They all felt the same, those windowless caverns crammed with consumer …
I just had to put that on the record. I assumed Twitter was one of those stunt-start-ups — like, oh no they di’n’t, I can’t believe they went there, let’s see how long it takes people to figure out that this Twitter thing is a stone cold joke. How long can it last? The answer is, almost 3 years, and counting. Now John Hodgman uses it. …
In 1982, when my friend Joel got cable, and we sat in his dad’s office watching MTV and waiting for them to play “Land Down Under” once an hour, I had no idea that a) that song was about Australia, and b) I would one day in fact go to Australia, a place where winter is summer, night is day, beer is measured in units called “schooners,” …
