El Mamerro

This is an awesome article on the company that makes these animations in Taiwan. They built a crazy pipeline where they can crank these out in less than a day, from storyboard to rendered product. And they try to make shit as outrageous and silly as possible: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/mf_appledaily/

This track is incredible, and has a stunner of a video to boot:

This has been, to date, the only movie that has actually scared me to the core. I am pretty embarrassed about this fact and don't wanna see it again cause I know it's just gonna be silly and terrible and not an ounce scary at all. But when I saw this in theaters, I couldn't look at a mirror for weeks afterwards. Pretty much every other horror movie I've seen has induced jumps, cringes, and laughs, but not real fear.

Snopes says: MIXTURE OF TRUE AND FALSE INFORMATION I suspected so.

Bunch of old members putting me to sleep here, chiming in with their "style" and "maturity", as if it was relevant. Let a young kid be ridiculous.

That shit is completely ridiculous. I approve of completely ridiculous shit.

Ummm...

Homeboy on aintitcool.com is doing the same thing, and he usually picks out cool weird shit: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/46854

Re: mechanically seperated (processed) chicken... Is ammonia-treated meat proven to be bad for you, or does it just sound nasty?

It doesn't leave us 100% vulnerable. It's not like humanity has discarded all previous options. If all of a sudden you find yourself without means to access the answer to any question at the palm of your hand, you undertake an alternate process, guided by logic, that eventually yields what you're looking for, even if it takes a lot more effort and time. It will just seem crazy and you'll feel vulnerable because the situation is unfamiliar, and you can't solve it with the immediacy you've come to expect, but it's not critical and alternate solutions are nearly always available. What I'm saying is, situations with literally NO solution without technology are incredibly rare, there's no need to freak out and feel overly afraid of handing off specific knowledge to our devices, because doing so is beneficial 99% of the time. We've built a pretty massive set of redundancies as we layer new technologies over each other. One fails, there's dozens of back ups.

I get you Croc, but I feel as though for a good amount of time now, we've been creating and applying systems that, in the case of failure, would appear to create havoc in society. And these scenarios have been present and thought of for decades, yet none has come to pass. It's fine to have them in mind, but it shouldn't influence too much your decision to accept and rely current technology as an incredibly useful tool. It's a nice thought experiment to wonder how people would fare if cast into the jungle, but it's moot cause that will just never happen. Also, there's really no information that's held inside a phone instead of your head that would be of use in the middle of the jungle. Knowing phone numbers, internet access, and GPS are pointless when surrounded by a hostile environment... your phone will never double as a knife or drinking water. Like someone said, you figured your way out of the situation, and I think most people would eventually, even if they initially felt helpless and confused. I don't believe in total societal collapse if a small leg of the system fails.

This is a news website article about a scientific paper In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding? by Martin Robbins In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of "scare quotes" to ensure that it's clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever. In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research "challenges". If the research is about a potential cure, or a solution to a problem, this paragraph will describe how it will raise hopes for a group of sufferers or victims. This paragraph elaborates on the claim, adding weasel-words like "the scientists say" to shift responsibility for establishing the likely truth or accuracy of the research findings on to absolutely anybody else but me, the journalist. In this paragraph I will state in which journal the research will be published. I won't provide a link because either a) the concept of adding links to web pages is alien to the editors, b) I can't be bothered, or c) the journal inexplicably set the embargo on the press release to expire before the paper was actually published. "Basically, this is a brief soundbite," the scientist will say, from a department and university that I will give brief credit to. "The existing science is a bit dodgy, whereas my conclusion seems bang on," she or he will continue. I will then briefly state how many years the scientist spent leading the study, to reinforce the fact that this is a serious study and worthy of being published by the website. This is a sub-heading that gives the impression I am about to add useful context. Here I will state that whatever was being researched was first discovered in some year, presenting a vague timeline in a token gesture toward establishing context for the reader. To pad out this section I will include a variety of inane facts about the subject of the research that I gathered by Googling the topic and reading the Wikipedia article that appeared as the first link. I will preface them with "it is believed" or "scientists think" to avoid giving the impression of passing any sort of personal judgement on even the most inane facts. This fragment will be put on its own line for no obvious reason. In this paragraph I will reference or quote some minor celebrity, historical figure, eccentric, or a group of sufferers; because my editors are ideologically committed to the idea that all news stories need a "human interest", and I'm not convinced that the scientists are interesting enough. At this point I will include a picture, because our search engine optimisation experts have determined that humans are incapable of reading more than 400 words without one. This picture has been optimised by SEO experts to appeal to our key target demographics. This subheading hints at controversy with a curt phrase and a question mark? This paragraph will explain that while some scientists believe one thing to be true, other people believe another, different thing to be true. In this paragraph I will provide balance with a quote from another scientist in the field. Since I picked their name at random from a Google search, and since the research probably hasn't even been published yet for them to see it, their response to my e-mail will be bland and non-committal. "The research is useful", they will say, "and gives us new information. However, we need more research before we can say if the conclusions are correct, so I would advise caution for now." If the subject is politically sensitive this paragraph will contain quotes from some fringe special interest group of people who, though having no apparent understanding of the subject, help to give the impression that genuine public "controversy" exists. This paragraph will provide more comments from the author restating their beliefs about the research by basically repeating the same stuff they said in the earlier quotes but with slightly different words. They won't address any of the criticisms above because I only had time to send out one round of e-mails. This paragraph contained useful information or context, but was removed by the sub-editor to keep the article within an arbitrary word limit in case the internet runs out of space. The final paragraph will state that some part of the result is still ambiguous, and that research will continue. Related links: The Journal (not the actual paper, we don't link to papers). The University Home Page (finding the researcher's page would be too much effort). Unrelated story from 2007 matched by keyword analysis. Special interest group linked to for balance. Original article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/24/1

Atheists, agnostics most knowledgeable about religion, survey says.

Well then, take extra precautionary measures to not be without it. I really don't understand why so many people complain about this. Occasions where you are "helpless" without technology are unbelievably seldom compared to the times where you are empowered by it.

This. You know that part of the brain were you used to store all the phone numbers you had to memorize? That is now your phone. Now you can use the extra brain space for something more worthwhile.

Re: Android iPad... the aPad... half the price of iPad... better? That looks 17 different kinds of not legit.

You're confusing religiousness with spirituality, which are related but not the same thing. I know plenty of atheists who understand and follow spiritual behavior because of its beneficial qualities for the self and relationships with others, but they are more keen to believe that spirituality is a product of neurological processes in our brain and physical conditions in our environment, and not some ethereal undefinable force. Promoting an end to religion does not constitute promoting an end to spirituality.

^Incorrect.

This. Burning Man remains the awesomest thing you've never been to. I've seen a lot of haters and skeptics eat major crow when they finally check it out for themselves. Also, if you're going for 3 days you're wasting your time, and everyone else's. Go there for the week, put in the work, experience the full spectrum of physical and mental expansion, AND have time to savor the huge amount of things to see and do. Everyone, EVERYONE I know that has only gone for a few days regrets the experience somewhat. Everyone who stays the week has their mind blown.

I need my ridiculous action fix every once in a while.

Halo is fucking awesome, I always find it funny how many people hate on it. I basically just got around to playing ODST and I've had my Halo fill for a while, so I'll pick up Reach a few months down the line when someone's selling it for $20 on eBay. Currently going through Arkham Asylum, which is way better than any Batman game deserves to be. The big one currently on my radar is Vanquish, which looks completely bananas: Fuck. That needs to be out NOW.

For fuck's sake, are you guys seriously wasting time and space arguing with DAO? Am I gonna have to start banning people who speak to him?

This dude needs to step up his camouflage game.

Fun fact: The alkali dust that makes up the playa surface is extremely basic (as opposed to acidic) and has many properties of soap, so in essence it keeps you clean and germ free. I usually take 2 showers over the course of the week, and it's not because I feel a need to clean myself, more like it just feels refreshing as fuck to dump water all over yourself in the middle of a hot day. Second, it's so goddamn dry out there that sweat evaporates before you even feel it, so bacteria never grow under your armpit and keeps the smell low. That's not to say people don't smell at all there, but the average construction site downtown has worse BO overall than Burning Man.