It’s Full Of Corgis!!
(via corgiaddict)
Spring, Allergies, and Baby Monsters
Some jasmine that has miraculously survived more than a couple of winters under my “care”.
Well, it…
A Zombie Horde
Zombies. I get asked all the time why I love zombie stories. What’s not to love about zombies? They are a lot like us actually. They are the quintessential mindless horde. Not unlike ourselves on any given day of the week, plodding along to a job to pay the bills. They are just trying to stay “alive”, once again, not unlike ourselves. They need brains and entrails; we need cheap fast food and caffeine. So why do we hate them so much? What really is so terrifying about zombies? Perhaps that is the problem. They are too much like us. Is that what scares us? When we look at a zombie, is it really ourselves that looks back at us? All of the time that we’ve wasted in mindless pursuits? All of the gluttony? I’m sure you’re familiar with the “I want it all, and I want it now” mentality, with no regard for the future. We are all guilty of it. Not a single one of us can honestly say we put tomorrow’s well-being over the “right now” every day of the week. Is this the niggling little worry in the back of our brains that makes us afraid? The realization that we are really the most terrifying zombie of all. We are the mindless horde with an insatiable hunger. We are the monster that will devour us whole. No silver, garlic, or holy water will stop us. Just one little thing will do the trick. Destroy the brain, destroy the monster. Destroy the ego, destroy the monster. Perhaps that is the warning our inner self is trying to give us: Wake up now, or this may be your future.
Let’s be bad guys!
::stares transfixed at this::
::starts the song up in iTunes::
This is BRILLIANT.
Tweenbots by Kacie Kinzer:
Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination. Because I built them with minimal technology, I had no way of tracking the Tweenbot’s progress, and so I set out on the first test with a video camera hidden in my purse. I placed the Tweenbot down on the sidewalk, and walked far enough away that I would not be observed as the Tweenbot––a smiling 10-inch tall cardboard missionary––bumped along towards his inevitable fate.
The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the “right” direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, “You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”
The Tweenbot’s unexpected presence in the city created an unfolding narrative that spoke not simply to the vastness of city space and to the journey of a human-assisted robot, but also to the power of a simple technological object to create a complex network powered by human intelligence and asynchronous interactions. But of more interest to me, was the fact that this ad-hoc crowdsourcing was driven primarily by human empathy for an anthropomorphized object. The journey the Tweenbots take each time they are released in the city becomes a story of people’s willingness to engage with a creature that mirrors human characteristics of vulnerability, of being lost, and of having intention without the means of achieving its goal alone. As each encounter with a helpful pedestrian takes the robot one step closer to attaining it’s destination, the significance of our random discoveries and individual actions accumulates into a story about a vast space made small by an even smaller robot.
(via geekyjessica)
Ah. Bears.
(via tedr)
Felix Baumgartner’s attempt to break the sound barrier with his body. Highest and fastest freefall ever. Highest-ever manned balloon flight.
That was incredible. Human beings are fucking awesome.
(via joswiwindu)
