If the sound tank isn’t the best weapon ever invented, I’m not sure we can still be friends.
The Art of Moreing by Leo Addison.
Hiromi’s Sonicbloom: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a musician having so much fun on stage. Via @garretvoorhees.
— You’ll obviously be remembered as the person who put the @ symbol in email. Anything else you’d like to be remembered for?
— Oh, I don’t know. I thought the three-way handshake for TCP was pretty cool. [laughs]
Play Lego Bitch! – Hyriet music video, a good way to start your week. Via Tobias Rechsteiner.
Powerful. Via Simon Carr.
At police headquarters, he admitted that he was Frédéric Bourdin, and that in the past decade and a half he had invented scores of identities, in more than fifteen countries and five languages. His aliases included Benjamin Kent, Jimmy Morins, Alex Dole, Sladjan Raskovic, Arnaud Orions, Giovanni Petrullo, and Michelangelo Martini. News reports claimed that he had even impersonated a tiger tamer and a priest, but, in truth, he had nearly always played a similar character: an abused or abandoned child. He was unusually adept at transforming his appearance—his facial hair, his weight, his walk, his mannerisms. “I can become whatever I want,” he liked to say.
—This story of Frédéric Bourdin leaves me incredulous. He seems to be able to be everything but himself.
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.
But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
—Barack Obama
I want a pony that can jump rope. Right now.
The Atlantic’s gallery depicting scenes of the Afghanistan war from March is moving, and at times harrowing.
Ever wondered how Pile of Poo and Noodles became a accepted characters in Unicode, your computer’s and mobile phone’s system handling what characters to display on your screen? Matt Mayer has the answer.
Sam Abbott playing Heavy Metal band Mastodon’s Leviathan album in full length on his piano. Gotta love the internet.
When guards pulled away the box, she jerked about desperately. As he watched his mother struggle, Shin thought she deserved to die.
Shin’s brother looked gaunt as guards tied him to the wooden post. Three guards fired their rifles three times. He thought his brother, too, deserved it.
—
The Guardian’s extract of a book about one man’s escape from the horrible living conditions in a North Korean prison camp is a somber read. It goes to show how far we as humans are ready to go to get that little bit of extra food under such harsh circumstances – and how far guards and a totalitarian system are ready to go to keep the status quo alive.
I always thought the North Korean regime as a kind of joke. Yes, many people died of starvation and it’s a horrible lot to get born into that country. But the tales of its leaders are so absurd that you can’t take it seriously. Well, we should. A fat dictator looking at things is still a funny blog project, but it shouldn’t make us forget about the horrible plight North Koreans live under every day.
Via @iLoveTypography
Watt is love?
What happened when one of the world’s most unusual, and beloved, computer programmers disappeared.
—Annie Lowrey’s Slate article about the fabled programmer-artist _why is worth a read, even just for a good look at the quirky world that is the Ruby community – and for those who don’t know, what programming languages actually are. Via @waxpancake.
