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It’s such a shame that ten seconds of valuable information requires watching awful online ads and rambling, ill-produced amateur video. [Doghouse Diaries]
U2’s new song Invisible—which featured in a Super Bowl ad—is free on iTunes until 23:59 EST today to support HIV and AIDS charity. For every download, Bank of America will donate $1 to Red.
Over the weekend, AT&T announced that it’s cutting the prices of its Mobile Share Value plans that are aimed at families—and it could save you between $50 and $100 a month. The Mobile Share plans will continue working in the same way: you purchase a bucket of data (unlimited talk and text included) to share…
The New York Times reports that Apple is researching new technologies to charge its products—and it could see its smartwatch come equipped with solar charging capabilities. Some day. In a feature about the future of power portable electronics, the Times mentions that “two people who work at the company” have told them that Apple is…
Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in his apartment today in New York City, a 46-year-old actor with a staggering range who could slip nearly undetected into the most difficult of roles. Hoffman was Oscar-nominated for dark, complex films like The Master, Doubt, and Capote, but he was also a regular in cult-hit crowdpleasers: The…
This would be roughly the week of January 27 through February 2. 5 Years Ago (2009): Downstream (free download) entries included Wavespan’s music made from fields recordings of the Santa Cruz area, a “mega mix” of the Downstream entries from 2008 stiched into one single piece by Loopy C, some proof-of-concept experimentation with the Nintendo…
I am going to do this track-by-track countdown to the release, on February 13, 2014, the day prior to Valentine’s Day, of my book in the estimable 33 1/3 series. It is a love letter to Aphex Twin’s album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which will mark its 20th anniversary this year, less than a…
Think about it this way: If Justin Timberlake hadn’t partially exposed one of Janet Jackson’s nipples during that fateful Super Bowl halftime show, you wouldn’t be able to watch all the nipples you’d like on your computer today. Ten years ago, Timberlake’s promise to “have you naked by the end of this song” as he…
What time is the Super Bowl? It’s not just a question being typed into search engines by millions of Americans right this moment, it’s also one of the “most legendary acts of SEO trolling ever.” [The Atlantic]
The prevalence of head injuries is the dark side of football. Now a University of Michigan engineering lab is installing sensors inside helmets which can help measure impact and spot potential brain injuries that might go undetected. Dropping a helmet-wearing crash test dummy onto another dummy from a height higher than ceiling height (the frightening…
30 years ago. The Los Angeles Raiders are slaughtering the Washington Redskins at halftime. You decide it’s time for a refill on your Crystal Light. You’re headed to the kitchen when something stops you in your tracks—a chick with a Brigitte Nielsen haircut and a hammer, running towards you. Yes, indeed: The “1984” commercial that…
This image by the Advanced Land Imager on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 shows the current state of the MetLife Stadium, in the Meadowlands, the site for the Super Bowl XLVIII: “A crust of snow, ice, and salt make the surrounding parking lots appear gray.” In its first 47 years, the Super Bowl has always been played…
This is a Public Service Announcement: If you have warm beer (or may be receiving warm beer during the game today), you should read this post we originally ran two years ago. Method number one is simple and it’s the absolute best practical solution. Method number two works pretty well, too, but not as well.…
The internet has all but replaced traditional print media as most people’s primary news source, with newspapers and magazines across the country either scrambling to adapt or slowly being crushed by the wheels of technological advancement. But many people still prefer flipping through a physical magazine rather than Flipboard screens, and faithfully maintain their subscriptions.…
Time is a slippery continuum. Watching the hands on a clock tick will feel way, way different depending on the situation; trying to frantically write something on deadline with five minutes to spare ain’t the same as desperately willing a conference call to finish more quickly. It turns out that music can have an equally…
Americans have already spent an estimated $1 billion stockpiling beer for today’s game. But who’s drinking the most? This series of interactive maps by Esri tabulates crucial data for your Super Bowl Sunday, including which cities have hosted the most Super Bowls and where people are most likely to be spending their hard-earned cash on…
With only a 10 percent chance of snow and mid-40s temperatures expected at kickoff, Super Bowl Sunday is shaping up to be rather mild, weather-wise at least, compared to the deep freeze that’s engulfed the Northeast this winter. And even though NFL commissioner Roger Goodell had to waive a longstanding Super Bowl rule that temperatures…
David Lynch is a creative dude like no other. The brains behind Twin Peaks and Eraserhead is a proven master at moving pictures, but it turns out he’s also into moody still shots. The Factory Photographs is a new exhibition and forthcoming book featuring 80 black-and-white images of derelict industrial sites; these pics are are…
I was blown away when I first heard about a project that tried to tap into the electromagnetic communication potential of mushrooms. Using wires, radio waves, and circuits—not psychedelics—the project’s off-kilter quest to find (and listen to) “electromagnetic fungi” was nonetheless more art than science. But who says mushrooms have the right to remain silent?…
