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What We Laugh About When We Laugh About Pyongyang
Is there a nation in the world that the Internet laughs at more than North Korea? We create gag Twitter accounts. We reblog awkward photographs. We struggle to hold back giggles as we write deadpan...
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Justice Is Fleeting in the Era of Digitized Rape
The internet’s main asset, its essence and reason for being, is the ability for anyone to share pretty much anything with a theoretically infinite audience. Any image that exists in one place, that is...
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Brazil Is Doing Lots of Bolivian Cocaine
Cocaine production in Bolivian jungle kitchen (Photo: Marco Vernaschi) At what point does the new cocaine underdog become pound-for-pound the most tireless and rabid hound in the fight? As of last...
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This Dutch Edward Scissorhands Robot Can Trim 5,000 Hedges an Hour
They may lack the whimsical naiveté of Burton’s warped fairytale hero, but they can certainly out-shrub old Scissorhands in a heartbeat. Dutch Agricultural equipment company Gebroeders Ezendam B.V....
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To Avoid Copyright Concerns, Mega May Be Blocking Indexing Sites
Kim Dotcom's new Mega cloud-based file storage system is already off to a roaring success. The service hit one million users in just one day, largely on the basis of the site's encryption system. That...
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No One Knows Why 'Finnegans Wake' Is a Hit in China
James Joyce, who wrote like a psychopath. Well, the Chinese are reading Finnegans Wake, what’s your excuse? The first translation of James Joyce’s notoriously abstruse work to be sold on the...
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The FTC Is Picking the Wrong Bad Guys in the War on Pedophiles
Let's get one thing clear right at the outset: Nobody likes pedophiles. Nobody likes the idea of pedophiles using the Internet to find children to stalk or get off on or do whatever sick things it is...
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The Great American Hack: David Foster Wallace and Aaron Swartz
I just finished Infinite Jest. Like anyone who's spent months reading a 1,008-page book, particularly this one, I'm at a loss. It's sprawling, and by this point, all the important details from the...
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British Animator Cyriak Built Bonobo a Universe Made of Loops
Maybe you know the British animator Cyriak as the guy who destroyed the Large Hadron Collider. Or, at least he did on 4chan and, a quick search reveals, a whole bunch of other more conspiracy-minded...
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Does the U.S. Want to Lock Up Barrett Brown for a Century for Sharing a Link?
(Via Vice.com:) It was announced on Wednesday morning that Barrett Brown, a man who became a very public talking head for AnonOps (the brain trust that is arguably the cortex of the hacktivist group...
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Despite the Tuxedo, Iran's Space Monkey Is a Hoax
Iran made waves earlier this week with the big news that it had successfully launched a monkey into space and back. That "and back" part is rather important, not just for the safety of the little...
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Forget Solyndra: Steven Chu Fought Anti-Science Politics to Make America Smarter
Stephen Chu, the Nobel Prize-winning Secretary of Energy, tendered his resignation today. He was a quiet presence during these exceptionally loud past few years on the Hill, and his legacy risks being...
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This Is What Your Brain Looks Like While You're Belting Out a Pop Song
Last week, the video for Sivu’s “Better Man Than He” bounced around the blogosphere on the strength of a catchy hook and its novel concept. The video features James Page, the songwriter for Sivu,...
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Did Weird Weather Fluctuations Cause a Manhattan Water Main to Burst?
Image: @erik_stinson A 36-inch wide cast iron pipe, installed in 1950, started spewing into 23rd street in Manhattan at 10:30am today. It flooded the local subway station and caused train delays on...
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This Is What Thoughts Look Like
Science has given us some pretty great images of the brain over the years thanks to fMRIs, CT scans, and the like. But we’ve never seen anything quite like this: A “thought,” however simple, captured...
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Give Your Eyeballs a Gift and Watch Four Volcanoes Erupt at Once
Have you ever heard of the Kamchatka Peninsula? It's near Siberia. You've heard of Siberia. That's where the Stalin and his homeboys used to send the poor bastards who betrayed the Motherland or...
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Anticipating Super Bowl Ads Is Still A Thing
I remember a number of school teachers who would ask, "Who is watching the Super Bowl this weekend?" Some classmates hoorahed, their hands flailing in the room. She would continue, "I don't even know...
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A Brief History of the Wah-Wah, a Musical Accident
The wah-wah pedal, which first hit its stride in the opening guitar solo of Jimi Hendrix's 1968 Voodoo Child (Slight Return), defined the trippier side of funk ever since the genre started making...
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The World's Sexiest Deaf Guy Upstaged Jennifer Hudson and Alicia Keys at the...
Who is this guy here on the field during the pre Super Bowl ceremony sharing the spotlight with Jennifer Hudson and Alicia Keys? He managed to take fairly run-of-the-mill performances of "America the...
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The FCC Wants to Blanket the Country in Free Wi-Fi (Update)
Internet access is an essential need on par with education access, but at what point do regulators recognize that? When will government officials acknowledge that widespread, guaranteed access is...
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