The Overmountain Men
John Sevier (governor of the would-be-great-state-of Franklin) was a member of this militia and the name is badass. Have fun diving deep into wikipedia on this one
FINALLY a use for your insane skills in Microsoft Paint
So if you always wanted to be a part of a Johnny Cash music video (ADOOYIE) you can go to the website and make a frame.
Magnets Are the Devil?
Ok, so researchers found that exposure to magnets can alter a person’s sense of morality. Now what the FUCK does that MEAN?! Weird, slightly terrifying, but shit is interesting.
Utz Carolina Style BRAIN CHIPS
More people putting more stuff in brains. This one’s supposed to help though, not control your mind OR SO THEY SAY
Take this video with a mildly ironic, almost hilarious grain of salt. The first thing you see is a Hillary Clinton quote. AND THE GUY TALKING SOUNDS LIKE A FUCKING COMPUTER
In the Book
So this journalist did a one month experiment on facebook to understand how it works, and its insane. Fuck the bullshit at the beginning of the article, check out the 10 biggest secrets of facebook. the way the algorithm works in a cultural context is disturbing. This is the craziest one.
“Having Friends Who Stalk You WILL Help Your Popularity. After Phil spent days posting updates in vain, with most of our volunteers seeing none of them, we tasked a handful of friends to start showing more interest in Phil. Even though he wasn’t showing up in their feeds, they sought out his Facebook page repeatedly, clicking on links he had posted and viewing his photos. This was the point at which Phil finally began to break through. It took a few days of constant clicking, but not only did the friends doing the stalking begin to see Phil in their Top News feeds—others who weren’t stalking began noticing him as well.”
The Golden Age
Gotta love those crazy cats in the 60s
Here is a playlist of A bunch of old sci fi trailers. Fun to get high to. Don’t get too caught up in the first documentary thing about 50s sci fi, kind of boring.
DOMO
OMG. Help, somebody please help me understand this.
And it’s not that it’s just dancing and moving it’s mouth, which is crazy to begin with. It sings. “Vocaloid is a singing synthesizer application developed by the Yamaha Corporation that enables users to synthesize singing by typing in lyrics and melody. It utilizes Yamaha’s Vocaloid synthesizing technology with specially recorded vocals of voice actors or singers. To create a song, the user must input the melody and lyrics. A piano roll type interface is used to input the melody and the lyrics can be entered on each note. The software can change the stress of the pronunciations, add effects such as vibrato, or change the dynamics and tone of the voice.”
“The uncanny valley is a hypothesis regarding the field of robotics. The theory holds that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.”
Sciborg
50 Posts About Cyborgs is the coolest blog ever. The word cyborg was coined half a century ago, and this celebrates it. Apparently the posts all have a narrative arc to them, being “loosely based off of Katherine Hayles’ 3 phases of cybernetics as outlined in How We Became Post Human: She gives 1: homeostasis 2: reflexivity 3: virtuality. I added 4: re-embodiment to the end and then stuck in week 0: origins and definitions”. blah blah blah. i just look at random ones because they are cool as shit.
FREAK OUT IN A MOONAGE DAYDREAM OOOOOOOOOYEA
Sci Fi is born
Arthur C. Clarke Pretends He Knows What the Fuck Hes Talking About
fractal geometry is pretty fucking cool, and its based on simple mathematics being done on a HUGE scale, but the documentary drags sometimes. Not really full screen worthy until it starts playing the WMV visualizer for 5 minutes (which happens multiple times in the movie).
Lowlifehightech 