• Whoa, now the KKK are also fighting against Westboro Baptist
• “We still look at ourselves as survivors”: over 80 years later, remembering the deadliest school massacre in American history
• The rather interesting origin story of ‘Miranda Rights’
• Warren Ellis on The Social Web: end of the first cycle (stoked it’s close to what I’ve been mediating on throughout the year)
• UCL research paper on Why the Internet only just works (.pdf)
• What the world will look like in 2030 — as predicted by the Government
• Will we ever… have cyborg brains?
• A few Tolkien-rific facts about the book version of The Hobbit
• Try this interactive/zoomable four BILLION pixel image of Mt Everest
• Earthmoving: Ways of moving the Earth’s orbital path

Lastly, the latest TEDEd on ‘What is colour’ gives a very concise and simple explanation on the how with some very nice animation too.

The Best Astronomy Images of 2012

• Should society be able to tell you how to augment your reality?
• The mind-uploading solution for interstellar missions
• Does Twitter kill TV comedy? Writers from “Daily Show,” “SNL,” “Fallon” and others sound off
• Game of Thrones gets a mind-blowing Minecraft makeover
• Mark Cuban, Minecraft creator donates big to help EFF “fix” software patents
• World’s biggest patent troll saves Kodak from bankruptcy
• Scapegoating at its finest: Proposed US Senate bill to further study violent game effects
• Reformed hitman who inspired ‘The Wire’s’ Omar dies at 58

Also, the chemistry of how snowflakes form their unique shapes.

• Cinematic Faith: an interview with Christopher Nolan on the Batman trilogy
• James Bond: 50 years of main title design
• Nielsen will supplement its TV ratings system with Twitter
• Facebook to debut auto-play video ads in 2013
• How to end an argument on the internet
• Best Practices for Raising Kids? Look to Hunter-Gatherers
• Santa Math: How long would it him to deliver presents to every kid on Earth?

• Guns and the limits of shame
• Anonymous continues its hack offensive against Westboro Baptist Church
• I am Facebook friends with Ryan Lanza
• The Un-Wikileaks: new website spots And spreads info already censored
• Canadian company claims to have perfect an invisibility cloak
• Chasing the Cicada: Exploring the darkest corridors of the Internet
• Here’s what happens when a piano is abandoned on the streets of Manhattan
• New photo craze? People being pretend attacked by statues
• A guide to disagreeing and coping with all these bloody end-of-year lists

• Even Rupert Murdoch wants tighter gun control
• Building a Better Truth Machine: Could algorithms help debunk online rumors before they spread?
• Secretaries of Safe: will Obama’s new cabinet be ‘too safe’?
• 9 signs the War on Drugs is almost over
• Monotremes (Platypus/Echidnas) are still fucking weird
• Bioethics, should we live to 1000?
• Hrm… Basketballer Yao Ming came from a special genetic breeding program to produce super-atheletes
• Why afternoon may be the best time to exercise
• Website: Google60 (punch card interface)
• Website: Moodstream (streams depending on set mood)
• Website: Mathrun (brain-juicing)

More amazing splash photography by Markus Reugels via This is Colossal

• Hrmm… 2012 was the best year yet?
• How the internet is accelerating the evolution of language
• 12 Letters that didn’t make it into the alphabet
• Recreating the Mona Lisa using polygon rendering genetic algorithms
• Testing audiophile claims and myths
• An eBay for Professors to sell college courses directly to students
• Why are (almost all) economists unaware of Milton Friedman’s thermostat?
• Unexpected behind-the-scenes horror film photos 
• Authors’ responses to the film adaptations of their work (Ellroy’s praise for The Black Dahlia is somewhat inaccurate)
• The oldest living species of the modern house cat: Palla’s Cat

40,000 LEDs and a perfect tree

• 10 favourite tweets the Modern Seinfeld account (Comedy gold Jerry! Gold!)
• Six scientists tell us about the most accurate science fiction in their fields
• The hum that helps to fight crime
• Finally! A project to curb down ocean noise pollution.
• Shake It, Baby: GOG.com giving Duke 3D away for free
• Oh wow, only now is it the end of 386 processors
• Why are dead people ‘liking’ stuff On Facebook?
• Raymond Briggs: The Snowman is not really about Christmas, it’s about death 
• Paul McCartney to replace Kurt Cobain in Nirvana reunion
• Website: every animated wikipedia gif
• Video: A student who has fallen asleep in a physics lecture

Replacing guns in movie stills with Nintendo Zappers

• The Flores Hobbit’s face revealed according to a forensic facial approximation
• Op-ed: “Cyborg is a state of psychology” and the line between cure and enhancement
• Googling the Apocalypse: the Web as Epistemological Vortex
• Twitter Tombstones: Why I’m Kind of Obsessed With Tragic Final Tweets
• The end of pasta (and of the climate change debate. Seriously, who the fuck wants to lose pasta?)
• Louis CK answers a magazine questionnaire
• The unidentified man who fell out of the London sky
• A proposal for The Nine Muses of the Internet
• The Thermosaurus radiator (I so fucking want one)

• Bryan Stevenson’s crusade with the US justice system and why mass incarceration defines us as a society
• While Europe debates it, decriminalising prostitution has been great for New Zealand
• Craig Thornton and the obsessive world of underground cuisine
• “It’s so pervasive. It’s a virus.” Tom Waits’ 2002 letter on the commercialisation of songs
• The 25-GPU cluster that’ll crack a password in under 6 hours
• A letter to the TEDx community on TEDx and bad science
• Statistician Howard Wainer on the most dangerous equation (pdf)
• Study shows Fox News viewers have a 20 point lower IQ than the national average
• A man wrestled a shark to get back his nephew’s severed arm
• Wickr – now you can send ‘self-destructing’ messages
• A new trailer released for that South Park video game. Still looks good.

• Texas pastor asks whats keeping Christians out of church? Other ‘Christians’
• Google grants $1.2M to help analyze female roles in TV, film
• So apparently, we’re teaching dogs to drive here in New Zealand
• Surgeons implant the first ‘brain pacemaker’ for Alzheimer’s disease
• New evidence on how red wine can prevent cancer
• The latest eye research on emotional states and pupil dilation
• Scientists historical uncover evidence of Hawaiian megatsunamis
• Earliest known dinosaur discovered
• Mystery $35K donor to The Oatmeal’s Tesla museum fund revealed
• Bigthink op-ed: Kim Jong-Un isn’t sexy, but he’s not crazy either
• What James Cameron found at the deepest known point in the ocean
• Rolling Stones’ 50 greatest hip-hop songs