• How “The Power” Literally Rocked the House
  

  On July 5, 2011, the 39-story “Techno-Mart” mall in Seoul, South Korea shook for ten minutes, causing a two-day evacuation and an investigation. The cause of the tremors? Seismic experts concluded that “The Power,” a dance hit by the band Snap!, simply rocked too hard.

• Mitt Romney to Announce VP Pick Via Smartphone App
• Sad: Pianos are increasingly more likely to end up at the dump
• NY Times profiles the life of a drone pilot, the guy that waits for a kill shot 7,000 miles away
• A black momma with a white baby’s open letter to Louis C.K.
• How Being Wired to the ‘Net Poses an Existential Threat
• An Editorial on: Being too ‘plugged-in’ and tools to help get your life back.
• Advice from 1821 on How Imagination Can Save Us From Information Overload
• Nielsen Sued For Billions For Allegedly Manipulating TV Ratings Data (also, fuck Nielsen)
• On: What Does a Killer Think? and the latest research on mass murderers
• Haha, oh you (America): Man Charged With Illegally Feeding Alligator (That Bit Off His Hand)
• 13 People Who Don’t Know What ‘Literally’ Means
• Twitter account: @JamesHolmesDies

• 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.

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.

Boy watching solar eclipse… taken from 1.5 miles away

• If you “Like” something on Facebook, you just gave it permission to post in your Timeline
• Having Access to the Internet is Good for Your Love Life (But Only if you are Under 30)
• White LEDs Lighting Directly On Paper
• Q: Why Do We Wear Pants? A: Horses
• UK government slammed for ignoring key security issues
• Lucas Foglia: the photographer in search of off-the-grid Americans
• The trouble with wind turbines
• No Matter the Drilling Method, Natural Gas Is a Much-Needed Tool to Battle Global Warming
• Mysterious radiation hit the earth just over 1200 years ago
• What divorced readers did with their wedding rings
• How Neuroscience Is Challenging Our Conception of Justice
• The Ghost in the Machine: Unraveling the Mystery of Consciousness
• Scientists Predict Synthetic Life Within a Year
• Crime Waves Will Follow the Heat Waves of Climate Change
• Letters of Note: A government complaint about a ‘debris’ dam and the landowner’s response on behalf of its builders
• Want: I’ve Never Meta-Pizza I Didn’t Like
• Build a bonkers hi-fi system
• Super-Resolution From a Single Image
• A rare interview: with Christopher Tolkien
• If the Wizard of Oz were set in China, it might look something like this

The Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition winners

• Great fun/dumb science video: How powerful is an MRI magnet?
• Scientists develop a spray on battery
• Has the Speediest Pulsar Been Found?
• Upcoming Science Fiction and Fantasy Movies That Aren’t Remakes, Sequels or Prequels
• Awesome personal account: Intolerable intolerance
• Crazy: Ex-Wall Street banker, may have swallowed poison pill during courtroom conviction for arson

Finally, along with this Phil Plait write up (bookmark him!) is this really cool video from NASA detailing the recent observations of a giant planet 63 light years from Earth orbiting only 4 million kilometers from its sun. So close is this, that its atmosphere is being boiled and blasted away, streaming a tail of gas ‘behind’ it.

Fuck do I love the crazy/cool things out there for us to keep discovering. Keep it up Universe.

Big Picture: National Geographic Traveler Magazine: 2012 Photo Contest

• The Science of Illusion
• MIT creates glucose fuel cell to power implanted brain-computer interfaces
• Neuroscience + Supercomputing + Nanotechnology = Human Brain
• Here’s the translation of what David asked the Prometheus Engineer
• Ai Weiwei: to live your life in fear is worse than losing your freedom
• Suprise! Slow media months turn nothing news into scandals

And because you can never have too much Community related things on the internet:

This is just straight up awesome new technology.

The Jet Propulsion Lab have developed a 250mm diametre omni-directional anchor that utilises an array of claws to help grip onto the rocky surface of asteroids, comets and cliff faces of Mars. This unique arrangement of these multiple microspines allows a unit to work under a lot of force in almost any angle (even hanging upside down). Be sure to check it out.

So while this technology is totally fucking awesome and obviously designed for the purpose of space exploration, I can’t help but imagine what practical applications this can have in society once the technology is refined. Hell, I just love the idea it’s one step closer to making those Tachikoma tanks from Ghost in the Shell a reality… or any kind of spider-bot in that regard.

Pretty much scrambled to get to the pre-order section straight after seeing this demonstration promo for the Leap, a motion control user interface device currently in development that maps hand gestures with ridiculously fast accuracy.

While I’m still waiting on edge for what Windows 8 and Kinect are gonna bring to the table later in this year, the prospect of this device (and it’s cheap as tits US$70 price tag) seems too good to give up. And while the estimated shipping date is around the end of the year, I’d say that’s still faster than the Minority Report technology 40 years from now. Hells yeah.

From the last company I’d have pegged to develop an awesome new technological advancement (though it kinda makes sense), Disney Research have released this video of their Touché interactive system that is both simple in it’s approach and incredibly versatile; by being applicable to almost any surface, be it water, wood or tasty, tasty human, the practical possibilities of this is huge.

Hell, the five examples they give at the end of this five minute video are amazing enough, but the more I think about it afterwards, the potential applications really do seem limitless. Check it.

Another great TED keynote. This time on the use of complex technology as a tool to creating dynamic artworks. Really great stuff in this, look forward to seeing where this thinking will take them.