"He says he will never again permit himself to the buried alive."

“He says he will never again permit himself to the buried alive.”

A hypnotist is accused of dereliction of duty and cuckoldry in an article in the February 8, 1903 New York Times. The story:

Passaic, N.J.–Prof. Lawson Herman, a hypnotist, put Samuel Powell to sleep in a coffin at the Empire Theatre on Thursday night at midnight. A big crowd was on hand to witness the reawakening of Powell, but the professor failed to put in an appearance.

It turned out that Manager Sohl of the Passaic Opera House, with ire in his eye and a revolver in his pocket, was looking for Hermann with the avowed intention of shooting him on sight. The professor, earlier in the night, had heard of Manager Sohl’s quest, and incontinently had slipped out of the theatre and the town without apprising anyone of the departure.

At the witching hour when the yawning coffin was to give up Powell. Hermann could not be found. The big audience became impatient, and Manager Stein of the Empire became alarmed. The manager hustled around, and after some trouble secured Prof. Tony Frylinck. Prof. Frylinck worked all night before he could awaken the sleeper, and by that time the few weary spectators who had waited to see the upshot were so sleepy themselves that they lost all interest in Powell, and some of those who had dozed off rather resented his return to consciousness of his surroundings, for Powell when he learned that Hermann had abandoned him was at first greatly alarmed and then waxed exceeding wroth, and expressed his opinion of the professor in language that was as loud as it was emphatic. He says he will never again permit himself to the buried alive.

Manager Sohl’s lust for Hemrnan’s gore, it appears, was aroused by the fact that for the second time his wife had disappeared, and he accuses the hypnotist of hypnotizing her and taking her away. She disappeared on Thursday, and he says he raced her and Hermann to Newark. The first time she ran away she was found in Herman’s apartments in New York, and Sohl had the professor arrested.”

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Duing the ’80s and ’90s, dire predictions said that violent crime in America was going to grow far worse, even as the rate was beginning to plummet. Could the same be true of traffic, which we seem to accept will only become more severe? Ownership of cars and motorcycles declined even before the Great Recession, as personal technology became more important to young Americans. They “drive” in their smartphones now. But for people who’ve always known congestion and jams, it’s difficult to imagine this brave new world. I think some points in “What Happened to Traffic?” David Levinson’s retrofuturist post at the Transportationist blog are too hopeful, but it’s a piece very worth reading. An excerpt:

“Workers no longer ‘go’ to work 6 days a week. Workers got Saturday off in the mid-20th Century. Getting every-other Friday off (the 5/4 schedule) became standard by 2015, establishing the 3-day weekend every other week as the norm. By 2020, this was every weekend, as people moved to a 9 hour day, 4 days per week at the office, and the other 4 hours were ‘at home’ work – checking email on the long weekend, erasing once strict separation of home and work. By 2025 taking every-other Monday off (the 4/3 schedule) was established in most large employers. Today we are seeing half-days on Wednesdays for many office workers, with only Tuesdays, Wednesday, and Thursdays as interactive collaboration days. The ‘flipped’ office, where people were expected to do “work” at home on their own computers, and only show up for meetings is now standard.

The empty office buildings across the landscape led to the famous Skyscraper Crash, the Real Estate Office – fueled recession of 2021. Many of those empty buildings were converted to apartments, as we had about twice as much office space as we needed with the new work arrangements. Some cities were virtually abandoned by business in this process. This helped undercut new residential construction in the suburbs, and suburban land prices fell, attracting lower income immigrants, who subdivided large tract mansions into housing for large extended families, and leading to a measurable ‘white-flight’ back to the center city. So while the suburbs were now less expensive, some actually gained population. Lower income residents still own cars, but not as many, and many a 2 and 3-car garage is being transformed into a workshop or small store.”

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When I suggested recently that Google and Amazon should own their own solar farms so that they could control costs and hopefully sell carbon-neutral energy they way they do cloud space, I wasn’t aware that the Page-Brin company was already in the business and about to invest in solar in an even bigger way. From Shan Li at Los Angeles Times:

“Google Inc. plans to invest $80 million in six utility-scale solar facilities in California and Arizona as the tech behemoth continues to put money toward alternative energy projects.

The Mountain View, Calif., company will partner with solar developer Recurrent Energy and private equity firm KKR & Co. on the projects, which are estimated to generate enough combined electricity to power more than 17,000 homes, Google said in a blog post.

‘You’d think the thrill might wear off this whole renewable energy investing thing after a while,’ Google wrote on its official blog. ‘Nope — we’re still as into it as ever, which is why we’re so pleased to announce our 14th investment.’

In 2011, Google hooked up with KKR and Recurrent on four solar facilities south of Sacramento that have since started generating power. The tech giant said it has committed more than $1 billion in total on green energy projects around the globe.”

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10 search-engine keyphrases bringing traffic to Afflictor this week:

  1. how is bob & carol & ted & alice relevant in 2013?
  2. what is gene shalit like off-screen?
  3. what is a fumble party?
  4. why are jamaican runners so fast?
  5. why are there so many vampire movies and tv shows?
  6. rachel maddow with a rifle
  7. jack dempsey boxing harry houdini
  8. klaus kinski as jesus christ
  9. william f buckley interviewing william shockley
  10. are mannequins spying on me?
Afflicto: Thinking the running of the bulls in Pamplona has competition as a tourist attraction.

Afflictor: Thinking the running of the bulls in Pamplona has competition as a tourist attraction.

It's the running of the Baldwin.

It’s the running of the Baldwin.

Holy shit, that means I'm the sanest Baldwin now.

Holy shit, that means I’m the sanest Baldwin now.

  • An Urbee will try to drive cross country on 10 gallons of gasoline.
  • Game theory can be very helpful to a Price Is Right contestant.
  • President Obama tries to ensure digital privacy with a security tent.

Robert Evans, the kid who really stayed in the picture his whole life, was featured on the CBS morning show. He has so many amazing stories, and some of them are even true.

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In his Slate piece, “Winning on The Price Is Right,” Ben Blatt explains how game theory can make a contestant a winner on the popular TV show even if that person has never been shopping in his or her life:

“In one instance, when Margie was the last contestant to bid, she guessed the retail price of an oven was $1,150. There had already been one bid for $1,200 and another for $1,050. She therefore could only win if the actual price was between $1,150 and $1,200. Since she was the last to bid, she could have guessed $1051, expanding her range by almost $100 (any price from $1051 to $1199 would have made her a winner), with no downside. What she really should have done, however, is bid $1,201. Game theory says that when you are last to bid, you should bid one dollar more than the highest bidder. You obviously won’t win every time, but in the last 1,500 Contestants’ Rows to have aired, had final bidders committed to this strategy, they would have won 54 percent of the time. Instead, last bidders too often rely on their intuition, or on suggestions called out by delirious audience members. As a result, they have won only 35 percent of the time. Contestants in this sample of 1,500 who guessed a value between the highest and second-highest current guesses, as Margie did, win only 20 percent of the time. In this instance, the oven cost $1,999. Margie lost again.”

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One thing I missed in the fallout of Charlie Hunnam dropping out of Fifty Shades of Grey was the salary he was purported to have been getting for the lead role. I know he’s more of a writer-actor than a movie star, but does this number sound outrageously low for someone headlining what’s planned to be a huge franchise that will be released in every market on the planet? After taxes, fees to agents and managers and other expenses, he was essentially being asked to do a global blockbuster for free. If these are the salaries for the first installment of a series, what exactly is the budget being spent on? From the Hollywood Reporter:

“According to another source, Hunnam, who was to be paid about $125,000 for the film, began butting heads with the creative team, including Taylor-Johnson.”

 

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There are reasons to dislike Lance Armstrong. For instance, he’s a bully and a liar. That’s enough. But while he broke the rules of his sport with PEDs, labeling him a cheat is problematic. It’s even hypocritical. From students to classical musicians to truck drivers, people are using drugs to aid them in their endeavors. But for some reason, athletes are held to a higher standard. In fact, in sometimes they’re denied legitimate medical treatments because the rules of their games are so arbitrary. We’ll all be relying on enhanced performance more and more in the future, so perhaps we should have an honest discussion about what “cheating” means. I think we avoid that conversation in the name of maintaining some sense of “purity” that never existed. Athletes have always cheated and so have the rest of us. For some reason, some of it is considered permissible and some isn’t. We need to sort that out.

From an excellent interview that Grantland’s Bill Simmons conducted with Alex Gibney, The Armstrong Lie director:

Bill Simmons:

What about the part when people talk about what is cheating and what isn’t cheating and what is performance enhancement and what isn’t? So, I’m a pitcher, I blow out my arm, they pull a ligament out of some dead guy, they sew it into my arm and I can pitch again. That’s legal. I can’t write anything in the morning unless I have 20 ounces of coffee. Caffeine. That’s legal. That’s fine. We like coffee, all of us like coffee. Let’s say Lance takes HGH which is given from patients aged 60 and older to help them recover faster from surgeries or just feel better, whatever.

Alex Gibney:

Well, they use to give EPO to cancer patients to regenerate blood cells.

Bill Simmons:

Right, these are things given to people to make them feel better, but with athletes we draw the line. No, they can’t do that. That’s bad, they can’t do that. If Lance blew out his knee, he could put a dead guy’s ligament in his knee and that’s fine. Think about it. We’ve never really made sense of what makes sense and we doesn’t make sense.

Alex Gibney:

That’s what led somebody like [Armstrong’s coach Michele] Ferrari to be totally cynical. They keep making up these rules. You can sleep in an altitude tent, but you can’t take EPO. What’s sense does that make? But on the other hand, I think we can say that cheating is breaking the rules.”

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"There seem to be no limitation upon his ability to do wonders in arithmetic."

“There seem to be no limitation upon his ability to do wonders in arithmetic.”

So-called “Lightning Calculators” were sideshow performers more than a century ago who could solve complicated mathematical problems in their heads in front of live audiences. Few had the facility for numbers displayed by Jacques Inaudi (1867-1950), an Italian who toured extensively with vaudeville shows demonstrating his prodigious abilities. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle profiled the math man on October 15, 1901 (and misidentified his nationality). An excerpt:

“To make a real hit, mathematics in vaudeville have to be of a sensational character. The old time lightning calculator, with his demonstrations and short processes, would depreciate to the vanishing point if compared with Jacques Inaudi, ‘the man with the double brain,’ at the Orpheum this week. Inaudi is a Frenchman and his English is limited but there seem to be no limitation upon his ability to do wonders in arithmetic.

One blackboard isn’t enough for him; so his assistant operates five in a row. Ordinary examples apparently bore him; so, if given an option, he chooses something in the trillions. His assistant, who wears a big black mustache and a dress suit, has to work much harder, physically, than Inaudi. The latter, who faces the audience from a little projecting platform, never looks at the blackboard, but repeats the numbers given him from various parts of the house for his manager, and stage assistant, to write with Parisian flourishes. Then, when the sum in addition, subtraction, cube root or what not, is complete, the manager works it out in sight of the audience but, quick as he is, Monsieur Inaudi finished before him and gives the correct answer to the people in the front.

"One blackboard isn't enough for him; so his assistant operates five in a row."

“One blackboard isn’t enough for him; so his assistant operates five in a row.”

Last night Inaudi asked first for material for a sum in subtraction. Various three figure combinations were shouted here and there, with the result that when the top of the five boards had been filled to overflowing Inaudi had a proposition like  this–not before–but behind him: Subtract 297, 122, 999, 492, 322, 260 from 495, 876, 711, 411, 460, 594. It was not the sort of a sum that the ordinary school sharp would care to tackle mentally, but Monsieur Inaudi did it, with his back turned to the board; and he did something else beside. This is where the double brain theory gained its notoriety. All the while that Inaudi was calculating in amounts rather more than the average man’s spending money, he was answering questions, as to the week days of certain dates, from anybody in the audience. Many men fired the date of their birth at him and received back instantly the day of the week. A glance at the questioner’s face was enough to indicate that Inaudi’s answer had been the right one.

In the meantime the hard working manager at the blackboard had been taking violent exercise in subtraction.

‘Haf you finished?’ asked Inaudi, from his place out by the footlights.

‘Non, non,’ was the answer, ‘It ees not quite.’

‘I haf finished,’ said Inaudi, calmly.

There, still looking straight ahead, the Frenchman gave the answer, the same as that which had been worked out on the blackboard: 98, 753, 711, 919, 138, 334. After that came multiplication, square root and finally Monsieur Inaudi repeated without a falter, from beginning to end, every figure that appeared on the blackboard up stage.

Inaudi and his manager were the very pink of politeness when an Eagle man saw them later in their dressing room. More tests in mathematics followed and with them every suspicion of possible treachery vanished.

‘What were you before making use of your ability at figures?’ the reporter asked.

‘Monsieur Inaudi was a shepherd,’ his manager replied for him, ‘a shepherd, with hees sheep, in France. One day, years, ago, he came to Marseilles. A strangaire there learned what he could do in mathematiques. He heard him and took him to Paree. Since then he has been before scienteests, doctairs and all–and all say, ‘Monsieur Inaudi ees a man with two brains.’

‘Have you got a memory for other matters like your memory for figures?’

‘It ees for feegures only,’ said Inaudi, answering for himself.” 

Even if I wasn’t born months premature, purple and being choked by an umbilical cord, I would still be awed by a new and unlikely invention from an Argentine car mechanic that eases difficult births. It looks dangerous, but it’s a lifesaver. From Donald G. McNeil Jr. at the New York Times

“With the Odón Device, an attendant slips a plastic bag inside a lubricated plastic sleeve around the head, inflates it to grip the head and pulls the bag until the baby emerges.

Doctors say it has enormous potential to save babies in poor countries, and perhaps to reduce cesarean section births in rich ones.

‘This is very exciting,’ said Dr. Mario Merialdi, the W.H.O.’s chief coordinator for improving maternal and perinatal health and an early champion of the Odón Device. ‘This critical moment of life is one in which there’s been very little advancement for years.’

About 10 percent of the 137 million births worldwide each year have potentially serious complications, Dr. Merialdi said. About 5.6 million babies are stillborn or die quickly, and about 260,000 women die in childbirth. Obstructed labor, which can occur when a baby’s head is too large or an exhausted mother’s contractions stop, is a major factor.”

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Just to annoy George Clooney, Elon Musk believes he can build an electric supersonic jet. From Damon Lavrinc at Wired:

“At the New York Times DealBook conference, Musk said there’s an ‘interesting opportunity to make a supersonic vertical takeoff landing jet,’ something he began to envision after the Concorde service ended nearly a decade ago.

The physics of getting enough power on board an electric aircraft to not only carry passengers, but maintain a supersonic speed, is still decades away. Not that it matters to Musk. Like the Hyperloop, it’s something he doesn’t have time to commit to developing. At least, not yet.”

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In 1968, Braniff predicts the future of air travel:

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The Robots Are Here” is an excellent, thought-provoking article by Tyler Cowen at Politico Magazine which considers what our progress with data and automation has wrought. If you’re not familiar with the George Mason economist’s work, this piece is a wonderful entry point. He begins by looking at the prescience of an Isaac Asimov story which predicted the intersection of deep data and the democratic process. An excerpt:

“Nearly 60 years after Asimov anticipated a decidedly dramatic intrusion of machines into our politics, we may not (yet) be offloading our democratic responsibilities to computers, but we are empowering them to reshape our economy and society in ways that could be just as profound. The rise of smart machines—technologies that encompass everything from artificial intelligence to industrial robots to the smartphones in our pockets—is changing how we live, work and play. Less acknowledged, perhaps, is what all this technological change portends: nothing short of a new political order. The productivity gains, the medical advances, the workplace reorganizations and the myriad other upheavals that will define the coming automation age will create new economic winners and losers; it will reorient our demographics; and undoubtedly, it will transform what we demand from our government.

The rise of the machines builds on deeper economic trends that are already roiling American society, including stagnant growth since 2001 and a greater openness to trade and foreign outsourcing. But it’s the rapid increase in machines’ ability to substitute for intelligent human labor that presages the greater disruption. We’re on the verge of having computer systems that understand the entirety of human ‘natural language,’ a problem that was considered a very tough one only a few years ago. We’re close to the point when we can fit the (articulable) knowledge of the entire world into the palm of our hands. Self-driving cars are making their way onto streets in California and Nevada. Whether you are a factory worker or an accountant, a waitress or a doctor, this is the wave that will lift you or dump you.”

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Matt Novak’s Paleofuture blog, housed now at Gizmodo, is one of the very best things birthed on the Internet. In a recent post, Novak examines an unrealized “centralized street-vacuum system” that was proposed in 1922 to help New York City curb its pollution problem. The opening:

“New York City at the turn of the 20th century was a pretty pungent place. Piles of garbage, millions of people cooking food, and about 2.5 million pounds of horse manure emptied into the streets per day will do that to a city. And don’t forget the 420,000 gallons of horse urine flowing through the streets each week. But some forward-thinking New Yorkers had an idea to clean up the city: establish a citywide central vacuum system.

The August 1922 issue of Science and Invention magazine proposed this innovative vacuum system for the Big Apple and claimed that it would save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars. The magazine claimed that the new system — which could be run privately, or preferably managed by the city — would also eliminate many diseases and drastically cut the mortality rate.

Science and Invention explained that the vacuum pipes needed for such a system wouldn’t be so different from the water and gas pipes that were already running through the streets.”

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From his Ask Me Anything at Reddit, Jerry Saltz, New York‘s smart art critic, reveals the book he most recommends for those who want to learn more about the field:

Question:

I know next to nothing about art but I read you in New York mag all the time. My question is: What’s one book you’d recommend to someone interested in art and learning more but with next-to-no-knowledge of art history/the art world?

Jerry Saltz:

Off the Wall by Calvin Tompkins. It’s about how artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham made the train of American art history jump off the tracks, and land on a new track – the one we’re still huffing along on. And, it’s an easy read. He writes in English, for God’s sake.”

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Things are cyclical in the media business as they are in every other business. But when print was king you would never have seen the type of mass exodus of high-profile talent from the New York Times that it’s experienced in recent weeks. Because the Times isn’t part of a gigantic multi-platform corporation or flush with new-media cash, it’s at a decided disadvantage in fending off challengers for its best writers, reporters and thinkers. Just compare the financials of the Sulzberger-run company to, say, ESPN, which poached Nate Silver because it could offer him any amount of money it felt like and all the outlets he desires for his numbers. That’s not to say the Times isn’t still excellent and can’t attract more talent, but it will be difficult to maintain morale and quality if the bleeding continues.

Reading news stories about the departures yesterday, I thought that the Times itself will likely have to eventually “leave” the Times. I mean that the company will ultimately have to abandon the independence it’s always enjoyed and become another piece in a multimedia behemoth. I don’t see any other answer, though I’d like to be wrong.•

The Urbee is space-age car that is manufactured via 3D printer. It’s so highly fuel efficient that the makers are about to see if the second iteration of the auto can drive cross country on just ten gallons of gasoline. I would guess someday most cars will be manufactured this way, though they’ll be a market for “hand-crafted” cars the way there are for shoes and such. From Michael Kwan at Mobilemag:

“Even though we’ll keep getting talk about hydrogen fuel cells and fully electric vehicles, there is still a lot more to be said about just getting more fuel efficient vehicles at all. And this could be one of the craziest extensions of that philosophy to date.

For starters, the Urbee 2 is a car that was built using 3D printing, rather than more conventional manufacturing methods. They aim to drive the car clear across the United States on just ten gallons of fuel. To put this in perspective, the first Urbee was already able to achieve over 200mpg on the highway.”

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Economist Tyler Cowen suggests that video games are the low-hanging fruit of education, and that’s probably true. There are financial hurdles to overcome, but it would be great if textbooks were interactive and engaging. Game isn’t bad because they’re games, and we should probably stop resisting their allure on an institutional level and make them work for us. Of course the limitation of history books applies to gaming as well: The education is only good as the veracity and objectivity of the story being told.

A small step into the educational camp is being attempted by Navid Khonsari, a Grand Theft Auto veteran who’s trying to raise money to create a video game about the Iranian Revolution of 1979. He acknowledges it’s still mostly about entertainment, but it is ambitious and aims to show people what Iran wasactually like in the 1970s before the veil was lowered.

Brief aside: I can’t help but think that Iran is worse for the Revolution, for all the smart people who fled, for the assault on cultural modernity, for the repression of women, for the way it’s become isolated from many corners of the world. Of course, the U.S. should never have been sabotaging any foreign government and installing leaders friendly to us, but it feels like Iran lost decades of progress to its uprising. Of course, my version of the video game might differ from yours.

From Amanda Holpuch’s Guardian article about Khonsari’s project:

“One of the people behind some of the most popular – and violent – video games has left the world of Grand Theft Auto and developed a game prototype based on the Iranian revolution.

Since Navid Khonsari began work on the game, called 1979 Revolution, it has been labeled Western propaganda by an Iran government-run newspaper and some members of his team still use aliases to protect themselves from the repercussions of creating a video game based on a controversial event that has persistent reverberations today. Khonsari launched a Kickstarter on Wednesday, hoping to take the game from a prototype to tablet-ready, episodic series.

‘I wanted people to feel the passion and the elation of being in the revolution – of feeling that you could possibly make a change,’ said Khonsari, who moved from Iran to Canada at age 10, just after the revolution. He remembers his grandfather walking him through the early protests in Tehran.”•

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Life in Tehran just before the revolution:

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From the December 26, 1898 New York Times:

San Francisco–Frank Burton, an Oregon farmer, traded wives with Frank Hall, a neighbor, a year ago, in order to get a big, strong companion to assist him in a trip to the Klondike. Now his new spouse has left him, taking with her the proceeds of the Alaska trip. Hall and Burton lived near Sylvan, Oregon.

Mrs. Hall was a tall, athletic woman capable of digging a well or baling hay. Mrs. Burton was a tall, athletic woman, capable of digging a well or baling hay. Mrs. Burton was a comely little woman, an ideal housewife, but not very strong. Burton caught the Kiondike fever in 1897. One day when he and his wife were visiting the Halls, Burton suggested that they trade wives. The women made no objection, and after some dickering Hall agreed to trade, Burton giving his wife and ‘four acres of prime onions’ for Mrs. Hall.

Soon afterward Burton and his new wife went to Alaska. Mrs. Burton No. 2 proved an efficient packhorse and carried most of the goods. The couple reached Dawson and prospered.

A few months ago Mrs. Hall told Burton that she had become weary of th slave business and had decided to leave him. She gave him $500 in gold and decamped with with the rest, about $4,500.

Burton is now back on the farm alone, while Hall and the former Mr. Burton are apparently happy. No one knows where Mrs. Hall is.”

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New technologies take time to perfect, but it’s tough to be patient when you’re an A-Lister. In an Esquire profile by Tom Junod, George Clooney complains that his Tesla Roadster was overrated junk that took him nowhere. Coincidentally, that’s how I felt about Syriana. From the article:

“’Hey, where’s the Tesla?’ I said when I was leaving his house. I was just giving him shit; I didn’t know if he had a Tesla or not, and was trying to see if even George Clooney was susceptible to Hollywood cliché.

‘I had a Tesla. I was one of the first cats with a Tesla. I think I was, like, number five on the list. But I’m telling you, I’ve been on the side of the road a while in that thing. And I said to them, ‘Look, guys, why am I always stuck on the side of the fucking road? Make it work, one way or another.’ ”

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Language is a funny thing, and there’s no way that Walter H. Stern could have guessed that a phrase he came up with 56 years ago would be the lead of his obituary in 2013. From Margalit Fox in the New York Times:

“In fact, the first known print citation, the O.E.D. goes on to say, appeared more than half a century ago, on Oct. 20, 1957, on the front page of The Times.

‘To the prospective home owner wondering whether the purchase of a given house will push him over the fiscal cliff,’ the article begins, ‘probably the most difficult item to estimate is his future property tax.’

The man who wrote that article — and in so doing gave life to a phrase that has lately poured from the lips of pundits, politicians and the public worldwide — was Walter H. Stern, a former real estate writer for The Times who died last Saturday at 88.

Mr. Stern was associated with The Times from 1942 until 1961, when he left to pursue a career in public relations. What he could scarcely have known that day in 1957 was that in the course of writing an analytical article about taxation, he built a small but powerful lexicographic time bomb.

‘Fiscal cliff’ lay largely dormant for decades, cropping up in The Times on only seven more occasions through the end of 2011.

Then it exploded.”

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I can make anyone NUDE with Photoshop!

Ever wanted to see how your friends or a particular person look under their clothes?

With Nudify you have a chance to see them in their birthday suit!

I don’t judge, much, I just “undress.”

I don’t know and don’t really care what are your intentions, maybe you want to fap or maybe you just want to make a silly prank.

If things are still unclear, let me brighten them up.

I take requests! You send me pictures of a certain person (they can be wearing almost anything, though swimsuits, bikinis are a bit easier to edit), and I photoshop them nude.

You mention what type of editing needs to be done, from this list:

  • Full nude
  • Topless
  • Bottomless
  • Hairy
  • Bubbles or mosaic censorship(pixelated)
  • Facials
  • Face swap
  • Shemale
  • Dudes
  • Bizzare

Payment can be completely anonymous! Prices are fair, they usually start from just 10$

Eventually you’ll have the implant,” promised Google’s Larry Page when asked about brain augmentation. And, sure, we could stand to be smarter, but Gogogle doesn’t just provide information–it also collects it. In that vein is this CNN story by Doug Gross about a strange, new Google patent:

“It looks like Google Glass was just the beginning. Google now appears to be aiming a few inches lower, working on a temporary electronic tattoo that would stick to the user’s throat.

Google-owned Motorola Mobility, published last week, for a system ‘that comprises an electronic skin tattoo capable of being applied to a throat region of a body.’

The patent says the tattoo would communicate with smartphones, gaming devices, tablets and wearable tech like Google Glass via a Bluetooth-style connection and would include a microphone and power source. The idea is that wearers could communicate with their devices via voice commands without having to wear an earpiece or the the Glass headset.

And how’s this for future tech? It could even be used as a lie detector.”

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In 1979, Steve Martin, nearing the pinnacle of his fame, visits Merv Griffin. The comic was already winding down his stand-up career.

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Is zombie culture currently so popular in America because it’s actually a mirror rather than a fantasy?

People seem so strange now, and not in the same ways we’ve always been strange. It’s somewhat a reflection of the era we live in. Every generation thinks it’s going through extreme times–and they’re all right, of course–but I think we’re particularly doing so. It’s the disaster of the economy, the disquiet of the technological revolution and the way our new tools enable us to opt out mentally and emotionally into the white noise of personalization, even as we’re more connected than ever. Sometimes the streets in Manhattan seem like a necropolis, a sea of dead stares, heads pointed down at screens. You see a bright face for a moment, a flicker of recognition, and then it disappears. 

But it’s more than just a fractured form of capitalism and what our new tools have wrought: There’s quietly an epidemic of painkillers in the U.S. that’s made junkies of so many people you see across the space of a day. I’ve heard anecdotal evidence from people I’ve met who work in pharmaceuticals and hospitals, but the numbers back it up. We have a lot of people in our midst who are high and low–an army of zombies.

What and whom conspired to make OxyContin and the like so available, so prescribable? From Celine Gounder’s New Yorker blog post about the pain-pill epidemic:

“When I started working as a medical resident, in 2004, I heard from a patient I had inherited from a graduating resident. The patient had an appointment scheduled in a couple weeks. ‘But I need your help now,’ he said.

He was a former construction worker who had hurt himself on the job a couple of years earlier. He told me, ‘I also need some more OxyContin to tide me over until I can see you.’ The hospital computer system told me that he had been taking twenty milligrams of OxyContin, three times a day, for at least the last couple of years. I had rarely seen such high doses of narcotics prescribed for such long periods of time. I’d seen narcotics prescribed in the hospital to patients who had been injured, or to those with pain from an operation or from cancer. But I didn’t have much experience with narcotics for outpatients. I figured that if the previous resident—now a fully licensed doctor—was doing this, then it must be O.K.

What I didn’t know was that my time in medical school had coincided with a boom in the prescribing of narcotics by outpatient doctors, driven partly by the pharmaceutical companies that sold those drugs. Between 1999 and 2010, sales of these ‘opioid analgesics’—medications like Vicodin, Percocet, and OxyContin—quadrupled.”

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