Biotic

ayjay:

The next 2.5 minutes of your life will be spent watching Bruce Lee play table tennis. With nunchuks.

(P.S. My follow-up tweet to this post.)

datagraphics:

“Of Poverty and the Unequal Distribution of Wealth” (Washington D.C.).

A cleareyed Malcolm Gladwell discusses the American penchant for reducing all activity to a moral lesson that can be imparted through the powerful cocktail of stage presence and rear-screen projection. Drawing a line from Benjamin Franklin to the homilies printed on Celestial Seasonings tea boxes, Mr. Gladwell says that even knotty concepts from fields like quantum physics and philology can be made attractive to large groups of people if the concepts are rendered as anecdotes involving a cabdriver, a small child or an obscure Flemish botanist. “Start with a personal anecdote,” Mr. Gladwell suggests, “and then extrapolate to the 18th-century cocoa trade in Malta.

— Future TED Talks - NYTimes.com

sfmoma:

Do you live in the Bay Area? If so, you’re going to want to check out Gerhard Richter Painting at the Roxie, playing tonight through Thursday. Want a pair of free tickets? We have a few to give away. Be one of the first people to send us a message w/ your name + email address to win a pair of ‘em!

Pictured: Richter’s Untitled, 1973

NPR reported this morning on a traffic jam in California caused by an algorithmic glitch “accidentally summon[ing] 1,200 people to jury duty on the same morning”. An excellent reminder of the tendency of algorithmic dysfunction to manifest as physical dysfunction, and (at a relatively small scale) of the potentially disproportionate impact of glitches when they are translated from dataspace into an infrastructural system. The glitch may be as simple as having accidentally swapped the 0 indicating “do not come in” for the 1 indicating “come in”, but the resulting jam is rendered in aluminum autobodies and on asphalt corridors where it is much more difficult to clear than it was to create.

— glitch jam – mammoth // building nothing out of something

literallyhyperbole:

Karte von Europe im Jahare 1914

Map of Europe in the year 1914

England hides his fleet under the native skirt, the bulldog Ireland in the back. King Oskar of Sweden looks “strained” at Russia. France courageously retreats while Spain devotes itself to sweet idleness. Belgium— it’s already had! Germany and Austria-Hungary share good German blows on all sides. In Switzerland there is good “will” [redacted]. In Sicily volcanic ground, but otherwise calm. Montenegro— a bunch of lice, Serbia— a gang of pigs! The King of Durazzo— Albania— abandons his people. Greece and Turkey have enough to eat. Ferdinand of Bulgaria also wants something. [redacted] Russia wants to swallow the whole thing, however it will not succeed!

My German is a bit rough but this should be the general idea.

ayjay:

The gods descend over Chicagoland last night. Via @yayitsrob on Twitter.

sfmoma:

SUBMISSION:

tchmo:

tchmo, Untitled (Landscape) 20120315e

sfmoma:

alexanderuhrich:

this guy rules

Wow, how did we miss this guy’s amazing dance moves at The  Modern Ball?

Some men.

sfmoma:

SUBMISSION:

emilyloughlin:

Some Men. 2012