A leaky rocketship.
Why write a blog post somewhere nobody has published in five years, in a new WordPress interface where you recognize yeah, nothing? Where somehow you can t even upload a JPG or PNG file you downloaded from another site for security reasons without converting it first? Or get paragraph tags or linebreaks working inside blockquotes? (Really? [ ]
A big part of my history of Flint River pollution, just published today, is about this 1999 accident where 22 million gallons of raw sewage was dumped into the river, killing fish and making the river unsafe for contact for about a year and a half. It revealed all sorts of structural problems in the [ ]
Matt coined (or at least first wrote about) the Speakularity in 2010: the moment when automatic speech transcription becomes fast, free and decent. Five years and change later, we re still not exactly there! But we are closer. Like the horizon, the Singularity, or the coming of the Messiah, the Speakularity is always ever-so-slightly in the distance. I [ ]
In the Iowa statehouse, there’s this doll cabinet. Amid the political regalia surrounding it, the cabinet stands out, filled as it is with dozens of dolls, each with its hair immaculately styled, each dressed in a gorgeous gown, all bearing the exact same porcelain face. The figurines reflect a tradition begun by former Iowa first lady [ ]
One of my running jokes on Twitter is that I hate the rapper/actor Common. No; hate is the wrong word. The joke is that I consider Common my personal archenemy. I like Mos Def's verse and chorus on that song so much that I usually forget Common is on it too (Common is not very good) [ ]
I ll admit it, I didn t want 2015 to pass without at least saying hi to you, Snarkmarket. The proximate nudge for this particular greeting is Hossein Derakhshan s Guardian essay about how the internet had changed for him when he was freed from prison in Iran, an edited, updated version of his post from earlier this [ ]
I watched Peter Diamandis give a presentation yesterday (at the Michigan CEO Summit) – among other things, he showed a video of Watson absolutely dominating in Jeopardy and mentioned, offhand, that Watson has an API now. My ears perked up, and one Google search and a few clicks later, I confirmed what I’ve long suspected: AI [ ]
Every album by The Wrens so far has turned out to be a time capsule prophecy of my life in the decade to follow — just open it up ten years later, listen to it again, and it turns out there was your whole life, written for you by a band s songwriters who d already gone [ ]
Happy birthday, @tcarmody! I got this for you. http://t.co/MKcKcUvZQg Amy Worley (@worleygirl) November 4, 2014 I ve been trying to write this post all day. It s hard for me to write these days because I fractured my shoulder a few weeks ago, so writing for me really entails talking to a computer, which translates my speech [ ]
Imagine, if you will, the following as narrated in a British accent. Or don t. It s really up to you. It was a late spring afternoon when the reader discovered a new post at a beloved but recently quiet site. The reader s initial enthusiasm was somewhat dampened when it was discovered that the post took a video [ ]