I'd like to visit Japan. I had thought about going next summer, until I realized the Olympics are taking place in Tokyo around that time, all the extra people and increased prices makes me hesitate. Were there any particularly helpful resources you used to plan your trip?

His videos are so quiet and peaceful, in direct contrast to the rest of Youtube. I find them incredibly refreshing and fascinating.

It is an economic and cultural rearguard action by young people launched into life from the old middle class, but not quite equipped to stay there, and trying to engineer a face-saving soft landing…somewhere.

This also felt like an uncomfortably accurate description to me.

Meddle is great, it was the first of Pink Floyd that I discovered beyond Dark Side of the Moon and the hits played endlessly on classic rock stations. When I was in college and felt like I needed to take a nap, I would instead lay down in the dark and put on "Echoes". That song takes you on a journey like few can.

I've seen these pictures before and I remember trekking into the basement stacks of a remote library at my university to find this book by O'Neill.

One thing that strikes me about the artistic depictions is how verdant the landscapes are. These colonies aren't depicted as futuristic technological marvels but as natural or agricultural oases in the heavens, surrounding "idyllic" suburbia. In one picture there are even kids playing in a stream, surrounded by lush vegetation. It's an interesting choice.

I have been thinking lately that the push towards "usability" within applications has only increased abstraction and made it more difficult to know what is actually going on in the computer.

I was trying to help my mother transfer some photos from the computer to a flash drive the other day and walking her through the steps over the phone was impossible so I had her share her computer screen with me. I had never used the Windows 10 Photos application before and the way it organizes and collects all of the images on the computer makes it very confusing to just grab a file a move it. The steps to actually find the location of the file on the drive and navigate to it was too high. Then she ended up transferring some of them multiple times and it became a huge mess.

It reminds me of iTunes and how I can't stand the way all of the music on my old iPod existed as on big library blob and it wouldn't let me manipulate the individual files. Why not? How it it easier to abandon a paradigm that is shared across all operating systems and applications on the computer and forces me to do it through your slow, buggy program? Give me a file hierarchy and show me what is on the device.

Oh man, that takes me back to highschool. That album whole is really fantastic, one of my favorites. If you like prog rock check out the Mars Volta, formed by Omar and Cedric. It's a very different sound but their first album is really great too.

I enjoyed reading through this. The thing that stuck out to me most was the contrast between how insightful and thoughtful President Obama is compared to Donald Trump, who is, from everything I have ever read about him, neither of those things.

I imagine that when a President enters the Oval Office for the first time after inauguration and sits behind that desk they feel a sense of gravity and honor for the position that they are assuming in leading the country. I wonder what will go through Trump's head.

Often I can sense that something is bad, but am unable to articulate precisely why. Since I know nothing about architecture this was really interesting!

Actually, this is the first time I've encountered Current Affairs. Anything else particularly worth looking at?

What I have seen seemed more like a spoken word performance than hip hop.

I posted this article more for the discussion it might start than the actual quality of the article itself, but I think the thesis is slightly different than that. The author approaches it a bit differently than you suggest, arguing that only those with "elite status" have actually even seen it. I don't know, it does seem like the author is saying that the musical is bad, so people who like it are bad while also trying to use that as representation of a more specific idea:

The conservative-liberal D.C. consensus on Hamilton makes perfect sense. The musical flatters both right and left sensibilities. Conservatives get to see their beloved Founding Fathers exonerated for their horrendous crimes, and liberals get to have nationalism packaged in a feel-good multicultural form. The more troubling questions about the country’s origins are instantly vanished, as an era built on racist forced labor is transformed into a colorful, culturally progressive, and politically unobjectionable extravaganza.

What I guess is surprising is that there is near universal praise for it when there seems to be much to critique. It's not challenging or truthful and seems like it has the complexity and depth of an after-school program special. The title of the article is stupid and hyperbolic though.

It's likely, I see that's the book by O'Neill linked in the wikipedia page. It's 40 years old now, I'd love to read something on the topic that is more recent if you come across anything.

Centrifuges are the only way I can think of to provide an artificial gravity type environment.

You might be interested in the Stanford Torus and the details in the design study or the O'Neill cylinder. Both of these designs are popular in science fiction and are fun to think about. I haven't read or thought about them in a while so I'm unfamiliar with the current perceptions of their practicality. I remember reading an extremely in depth post on a forum years ago by a guy who introduced me to the concept and was arguing that they could be built with current technology. He referenced a book that I can no longer remember the name of.

Disgusting and shameful.

I'm not able to watch the video right now, I'll have to check it out when I get off work.

In college I took an animation class and wrote a paper about how the Fleischer brothers' Superman influenced Batman: The Animated Series. It's funny, but if I have my facts straight, it was Max Fleischer who gave Superman the ability to fly instead of just "leap a building in a single bound".

Additional fun Batman TAS fact: many of the backgrounds were drawn on black paper which gives the series it's very distinctive dark look.

Thank you for fixing the case sensitivity! I thought I was losing my mind since I've gone through the cycle of forgetting and remembering this a couple times now.

I enjoy Red Letter Media as well. Their Plinkett reviews are of course great, but I also enjoy them trying to describe why they like something which I find to sometimes be more difficult.

Every Frame a Painting is one I just found recently that discusses the technical craft that goes into making a movie.

Game Maker's Toolkit discusses the intention behind game mechanics, structure, and design and how they teach. One of my favorites is how Nintendo's level design draws from Chinese poetry.

Matthewmatosis Some of the best and most in depth game critiques I've found. Well known for his Dark Souls 2 critique.

Many others as well, but I get excited whenever these guys put out a new video.

Ratatat is good when I need to get into a groove and focus.

Oh man, this album is perfect for weightlifting. Deadlifting to this song is a treat.

I remember reading an article about having magnets in your fingertips to feel magnetic fields, that's what I thought this article was going to be about. That is FAR more interesting to me that having a glowing LED ring on your hand. Implants that broaden our senses to experience the universe in new ways would be very interesting, I would like to read more about that.

I find cochlear implants and brain-computer interfaces fascinating too. Being able to help deaf or paralyzed people would be a truly great advancement.

I agree, calling him "crazy" is too simplistic and reductive and calling his campaign crazy, like it's a fluke or a joke, isn't appropriate because clearly it isn't either of those things.

Oh! I was very excited for Banished before it came out but only put a short amount of time into it. I see that Colonial Charter add a massive amount of content to the game. I think I'd like to put some more time into the vanilla version of the game first though. Has it been streamlined and bugfixed at all? I remember the villagers having very strange and erratic behavior at times, especially related to fire.

I'm taking a break from the shocking amount of hours I've put into the Witcher 3 (haven't been sucked into a game like this in a very long time) to play The Witness.

The Witness is a wonderful experience. Every time I complete a puzzle I feel very clever and every time come to a new area I'm delighted in the concepts it presents and the challenges it provides. The way the puzzles interact with or are informed by the environment is really great too. I'm glad I've resisted all temptation to look up hints or solutions. There have been many times now that I've stopped playing for the night completely stuck on a puzzle only to complete it on the first try the next play session without even actively thinking about it.

I think that's one of the more interesting aspects of the the game, is enjoying the peculiarities of how our brains would and how we process the environment around us. I've stumbled upon some of the major themes and idea within the game and what it is trying to say as a work and I can appreciate what Jonathan Blow is trying to say.

I'm also looking forward to Firewatch, which comes out today!

This is how I felt too! I agree with all your points. Pacing was a bit too quivk and thete were too many winks to the old movies (and ine very big one) The new characters were my favorite part, even if Po seemed to speak almost exclusively in cliches: "we've got company!", "Hit them with all you've got!" Etc.

I look forward to the next installment and I hope it can be a bit more confident and try something a bit fresher that doesn't need to be a bridge between the old star wars and the new.

I can never get over how disgustingly rude all of the "lol silly stupid liberals" memes and replies are on social media. The "no, stay focused, you are distracted, stop countering my insulting statement" is so insulting because they don't what an actual dialogue, they just want to mock and belittle the person they are talking to. Twitter seems to be overflowing with these kinds of gross interactions. Seeing such childish bullying with the face of a grown adult next to it is discomforting.

I'm approaching 30 and beginning to think about marriage and I'm starting to find myself in a similar position. After graduating I moved across the country. I still consider my college friends some of the people closest to me despite, for a few years now, not being a part of their daily lives or having regular conversation .

We would have group video chats which was great, but they have become less and less frequent. Contact is quickly approaching yearly calls for each others birthdays. It's especially hard when you feel like the only person reaching out.

We have very similar tastes! I'd like to add Peep Show, a comedy about two roommates and what goes on in their heads, and Mad Men, a drama with well developed characters that is set around an advertising firm in the 1960s.

I do the same. My default search is DDG and that's usually enough and I don't even realize that I'm using a different search engine. Sometimes I have to tag a !g at the end of my search if I'm having trouble finding what I need and that's totally fine with me.

Though, considering I use GMail and google owns everything about my phone and searches there, I'm not sure if using DDG has any effect on my personal privacy beyond giving them traffic and legitimizing them.