Month: November 2013

Watching movies is hard

Gay Bachelor

heh

The Website is Down

in honor of the healthcare.gov idiots, a few classics:

The Website is Down #1: Sales Guy vs. Web Dude
The Website is Down #2: Excel Hell
The Website is Down #3: Remain Calm

DIY synth

In 1979, 14-year-old Andy Popplewell built his own 6 track mixer, constructed his own synth, wrote a synth pop album in his mum’s garage and recorded it himself between 1981 and 1983; making 1 single cassette copy. That cassette has now been released as an album.

Fonts save lives

The Clearview typeface is a beautiful example of the way design helps to improve people’s daily lives. Clearview seeks to improve the readability of highway signage for drivers, especially those over 65, who constitute 16% of the driving public.

Why Aren’t Cities Taller?

local governments fail to coordinate to enable tall buildings. City density, and hence city size, is mainly limited by the limited abilities of the conflicting elements that influence local governments to coordinate to enable taller buildings.

Life extension solvency

it is a huge missed opportunity if you can’t contribute to society in the decades after retirement, and online opportunities might be a way out. whether it is fixing up wikipedia, or teaching kids halfway around the globe your language by video conference. i wrote about this half an eternity ago in 2005

The only realistic way to lower Medicare expenditures and keep the economy afloat is to develop therapies that improve human health and change the culture of retirement.

Microsatellite

sorry for the repost, but the size of this satellite is just amazing.

2014-11-20:

This satellite has 10x the resolution of the big satellite with 0.1% of the mass. Satellite imaging is big, expensive and slow. A typical satellite is 6m tall, 5m wide, weighs 3 tons — and costs $855M. What we actually need, is images of the whole planet every day, and the current satellites are simply not scalable. So what we actually need are small, ultra-compact and highly capable satellites: 10x10x30cm

letter to the Beastie Boys

We don’t want to fight with you. We love you and we are actually huge fans.When we made our parody version of your song, ‘Girls’, we did it with the best of intentions. We wanted to transform it into a powerful anthem for girls.

classy. none of that biz speak nonsense about reaching out etc.

Darien Gap

TIL you can’t actually drive from alaska to tierra del fuego, there is a pesky gap in southern panama:

The Darien Gap is one of the last places people really hesitate to venture to. It’s an absolute pristine jungle but it’s got some nasty sections with thorns, wasps, snakes, thieves, criminals, you name it. Everything that’s bad for you is in there.”