This week, the world grew emotional about our most serious problems.
Syrians have been killed by chemical weapons.
Other children don’t have access to food and medicine like I do.
Holy fuck, the icebergs are melting!
We have behaved poorly, but we will change.
- Old Print Articles: Dirigible pioneers take cats with them on flights (1910) + British inventor G.R. Gooch created an unpopular “walking machine” (1896).
- Featured Videos: Buster Keaton rides a pedal-less dandy horse (1923) + Charlton Heston discusses his velour jockstrap (1977) + Two brief beautiful films by Jean Painlevé (1934/1955).
- Recently Posted on NYC’s Craigslist: At least I’m saving money on kitty litter + I guess you could call me a recreational user + Sonny boy also shits like a volcano + You have a small problem. Very, very small.
- Donald Trump likes Hamburger Helper and authoritarian regimes.
- Moshe Feldenkrais and Werner Erhard led very different types of seminars.
- Dubai boasts great commercial aviation and awful treatment of workers.
- Sir Freddie Laker led an aviation boom until he went bust.
- Buzz Aldrin thinks we should make a permanent move to Mars.
- The Google X lab only needs a couple of moonshots to pay off.
- The sharing economy is bad for middle-class laborers, but inevitable.
- The World Cup is beautiful and statistically meaningless.
- Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss did an Ask Me Anything.
- Spying in Germany may be driven by economic espionage.
- Hillary Clinton discusses Snowden and spying in general.
- Roboticist Illah Nourbakhsh explains the form our overlords will take.
- Psychic Kenny Kingston was full of life and other stuff.
- Washington Post staffers are excited and confused.
- Physicist Louis Del Monte thinks the Singularity will occur by 2045.
- Del Monte asks whether AI should simulate human intelligence.
- Some reasons why Texas is batshit crazy politically.
- Houston hopes to apply Moneyball to the business end of baseball.
- Modern tech campuses can tell us something about wider society.
- The much-discussed 1973 toilet-paper shortage never occurred.
- The bee population is stressed, so enter the robotic bees.
- Almost nobody in baseball throws a screwball anymore. Why?
- The search for clean water may be have created modern man.
- Compact Discs are worthless, unless you happen to like them.
- The Electric Shopper vehicle of 1960 cost a penny a day to operate.
- Rooftop solar in Australia counteracts the call for coal.
- Pacific-Standard has stats about pig sex and gambling’s social costs.
- A note from 1909 about an anatomy lessons.
- A brief note from 1910 about a young hunchback.
- A brief note from 1911 about a simple farmer.
- This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches.