• Military Strategy: What are the optimal siege tactics for taking Magic Kingdom’s Cinderella Castle?
• John McCain Comes to Huma Abedin’s Defense
• The real reason Marissa Mayer left Google: She had to
• Also: Marissa Mayer on the day she ‘broke’ the Internet
• Green streets can cut pollution, says study
• Study: Users more satisfied with Google+ over Facebook
• Texting overtakes talking in UK, says Ofcom study
• What Central Europe thinks of Britain and why
• Broken down: How an executable file works
• 90’s Nostalgia: A Windows 3.1 interface with a working command prompt too!
• The intensity of auditioning for the Boston Symphony Orchestra
• Twitter account: Bane Capital
• 10 Famous Roles Almost Played by Bill Murray
• 10 Bizarre Crimes in Walmart Parking Lots

Also, using a high speed camera, the good folks at MIT have recorded the properties of a drop of water at 10,000 frames/second, revealing a ‘behaviour’ that’s normally invisible to the human eye.

Here’s a simple and fascinating short video by NPR that visually explains how the human population has exponentially reached 7 billion people by using a collection of glassware and coloured water. The visual execution of this is really well done and to see the growth of the different continents over time makes for good brain juice.

This also reminds me of another video I’d meant to post ages ago, but could never figure out when/how to post it (that or I was just being a lazy sonnofabitch); but following on one of the last points in the above video: why is the world population expected peak at 10 billion? Given that we’ve gone from 1 billion to 7 billion in only two centuries, how can they come to this conclusion?

At TEDxSummit 2012, science polymath Hans Rosling gave a talk on the subject of this 10 billion threshold, framing it in the context of ‘Religion and Babies’ and trying to find the correlation between the two, which he concludes: it is non-existent. Instead, his research reasons that it’s actually the economic climate of a country that effects birthrates and via his fun humor and totally awesome data software, provides a very entertaining and informative talk on just where we’re heading.

Recommended.

I really do love the College Humor videos of all the Batman parody videos…

Treat me right baby, I’ve been burned in the past… well, the selection in this video essay by flavourwire is a great range and certainly makes me all the more antsy to get back into some film stuff after all this play who-ha is over. I’m also starting to wonder how much more mileage can be sapped out of Clint Mansell’s score for Moon; a bit more I’d say, only because that score is that awesome.

Anyhow, see how many you can pick out (and extra points for naming the cinematographers). Full list can be found here.

3D reproduction of Brazil’s shantytowns via iheartmyart

• Batman fans acting like dickheads on Rotten Tomatoes, site suspends comments
• Black Mirror gets second series
• Hungary Arrests Alleged Nazi, 97
• The livetweeting of a couples’ breakup on a train
• 9 of the World’s Most Ridiculously Secure Safes and Vaults
• Four Technologies That Could Revolutionize The Way We Live
• The Singularity: Will Transcending Human Intelligence Also Transcend Human Empathy?
• Major Universities Begin Offering Free Online Education
• Why Is It Hard to Make Friends Over 30?
• Infographic: Recipe for a Summer Blockbuster

And then there’s this awesome footage of a Whale Shark that’s learned to feed from a commercial fishing net.

Classic Movies in Miniature Style

• Internet Justice: 4chan Busts Lettuce-Stomping Burger King Employee
• What Google Is
• Shell’s social media campaign goes haywire
• Frisked By California Airport TSA: Man With World’s Largest Penis
• How Emma Sky went from anti-war academic to governor of Kirkuk, one of Iraq’s most volatile regions
• Where are you on the global fat scale?
• The Guinea Worm: A Dreaded Disease Nears Eradication
• Fears over plan to release GM mosquitoes in Key West
• Free access to British scientific research within two years
• A Vision of Crimes in the Future
• Profiling: Mayor Stubbs, the cat
• Alexander the not so Great: History through Persian eyes
• The Scientific Method: The righteous left-brained storytelling of Breaking Bad
• The Wu-Tang Marketing Plan
• Fifty Shades of Babe: Duke Nukem Reads E. L. James
• What Happened to Bob Ross’ Paintings?
• 28 Sexy Pictures Of Older Actors When They Were Young
• Tumblr site: Am I Beyonce Yet?

Also, this video made using the Source Filmmaker takes one a completely different tone to the usual Team Fortress 2 videos, skipping the humor and instead opting for a more emotional approach that works really well.

This 25 minute film lays out and explores just what we’ve learned about the Saturn and its various moons; probably the most fascinating planetary system in our solar system. Most of the data is from the Cassini spacecraft’s 7 year findings, with a little from Voyager and Galileo.

For fans of The Punisher that starred Thomas Jane: he’s gone and made a true to the word ‘fan film’ and it’s fucking awesome. Recommended.

Souced from one of the original movie gif tumblrs if we don’t, remember me, comes a collection of 30 Stanley Kubrick gifs that do a wonderful job of showcasing how arresting the legendary filmmaker’s visual style was.

Also, apparently these kind of gifs are now called cinemagraphs. All these new words the internet is inventing, and I’ve only just started properly considering tumblr sites as blog sites (of sorts).

Damn kids and lawns and stuff.

More at filmmakeriq.com