Welcome to the Weirdest New Internet Pastime: Chat Roulette
Fast Company’s Cliff Kuang reports:
Welcome to Chat Roulette. It’s simple: The site pairs you with a random videochat partner. You can click “next” any time, or stay with your current pairing.
Then things start tripping into psychedelic performance-art territory. As a friend says, “It’s the Internet. UNFILTERED.” The big lure is basically seeing something strange–or doing something so strange that you blow your partner’s mind.
You might see people in horrifying masks dancing around. Chinese users seem to love virtual high fives. One person’s shtick is a puppet who makes like a caring psychotherapist and will sit with you for hours. A friend reports a man holding up a sign that said, “Assroll?”–and promptly rolling over backwards, naked. (Nudity is hard to avoid.)
Also, challenges are big–successively crazier things. You might start by eating a page of your favorite book. You might end by calling your mother and screaming that you’re being murdered. Think of YouTube, with even more exhibitionism because everything is live and nothing is being recorded.
This appears to be the place where all the freaks trawling 4chan–a bulletin board better known for inventing LOL Cats and Rick Rolling–have migrated their insanity. And it’s insanely addictive–basically like a slot machine where instead of cherries, you’re hoping for the strangest that humanity has to offer…
Supreme Court Justice Alito Mouths ‘Not True’ To President Obama
This political media are all over this story. Here’s the Huffington Post’s take on it:
With the Supreme Court Justices sitting right in front of him, President Barack Obama unloaded in his State of the Union address on this past week’s ruling qualifying corporations as having the rights of citizens and opening the “floodgates” to their political donations.
“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections,” Obama said. “Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.”
There was some strong applause from members of Congress — with both sides of the chamber rising to their feet with applause. The Justices — all there except Scalia and Thomas — sat in silence (as is their custom), but at the beginning of the exchange, Justice Alito [on the far left] can be seen shaking his head and mouthing words that seem to resemble “not true.”
Revealed: See Who Was Paid Off In The AIG Bailout
Ryan Grim and Shahien Nasiripour write on the Huffington Post:
A key question at the heart of the controversial bailout of AIG is just how much money the government lost. The Federal Reserve and Treasury Department have worked to keep that number secret and to conceal who was on the winning end.
An unredacted document obtained by the Huffington Post list the damage in detail. Goldman Sachs alone, for instance, got $14 billion in government money for assets worth $6 billion at the time — a de facto $8 billion subsidy, courtesy of taxpayers.
The list was produced as part of a congressional investigation led by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee into the federal bailout of AIG…
The War on Drugs: What a Joke!
From American Drug War’s YouTube, a collection of clips about prescription pharmaceuticals, marijuana, and the hypocrisy of the War on Drugs:
Wal-Mart Uses Fake Community Group to Manufacture Support
From the Chicagoist:
The controversy over Wal-Mart’s attempts to break into the Chicago retail market has flared up again recently. Opponents argue that Wal-Mart drives down wages, destroys local businesses and leads to no net increase in jobs or tax revenue for the city.
Wal-Mart and its allies contend that neighborhood residents deserve to have a say in what happens in their neighborhood, and people that don’t live there should stay out of the matter. The lack of good options available to people that live on the South and West sides of Chicago has been well-documented, and it’s very plausible that there is a substantial and passionate movement in those neighborhoods to bring Wal-Mart to their communities as a solution. Wal-Mart would have us believe that such a sentiment exists, but it turns out…
Why ‘Avatar’ is Actually the 26th Biggest Movie of All Time
I’m not saying it’s rank won’t increase, but here’s an interesting point from The Live Feed:
Boxoffice is arguably more straightforward to report than TV ratings. You have this weekly Top 10 list of returns, you compare each movie to the other movies. TV ratings are a murky swamp where one network’s hit is another network’s flop and context is not just a factor, but often the entire story.
Han fucking soloYet one respect in which boxoffice reporting is pretty odd — emphasizing ticket grosses yet rarely mentioning ticket sales. That would be like always reporting how many ad dollars sold off Lost and not mentioning the number of viewers that actually watched the show. With everybody reporting how Avatar is The Biggest Movie of All Time based on grosses ($1.859 billion and counting), it’s important to remember how rising ticket prices skew the returns.
Here’s the Top 10 movies of all time … by number of tickets sold:
1. “Gone With the Wind” (1939) 202,044,600
2. “Star Wars” (1977) 178,119,600
3. “The Sound of Music” (1965) 142,415,400
4. “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) 141,854,300
5. “The Ten Commandments” (1956) 131,000,000
6. “Titanic” (1997) 128,345,900
7. “Jaws” (1975) 128,078,800
8. “Doctor Zhivago” (1965) 124,135,500
9. “The Exorcist” (1973) 110,568,700
10. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937) 109,000,000
U.S. Military Prepares for Cyber War
Surfdaddy Orca writes in h+ magazine:
Ever wonder how exactly the U.S. military would fight a cyber war? In August 2009, the U.S. Air Force activated its new cyberspace combat unit, the 24th Air Force, to “provide combat-ready forces trained and equipped to conduct sustained cyber operations.”
It’s commanded by former Minuteman missile and satellite-jamming specialist Major General Richard Webber. (And under his command are two wings, the 688th Information Operations Wing and the 67th Network Warfare Wing, plus a combat communications units.)
Meanwhile, to counter the threat of cyber warfare, DARPA is still deploying the National Cyber Range, a test bed of networked computers to test countermeasures against “cyberwar”. (According to one report, it provides “a virtual network world . to be populated by mirror computers and inhabited by myriad software sim-people ‘replicants,’ and used as a firing range in which to develop the art of cyber warfare.”)
And the Obama administration has even added a military cybersecurity coordinator to the National Security team.
Radiohead Raises More Than $500,000 for Haiti
I’ve noticed that Radiohead always ends up in the news for what I like to call “non-Metallica-like” reasons. They have a great relationship with their fans, and a terrible one with the record industry. If those aren’t enough reasons to like Radiohead, here’s one more:
From MSNBC:
Attendees bid online for tickets to show, some paying as much as $4,000.
Radiohead raised more than $500,000 for Haiti earthquake relief at a special weekend concert that attracted celebrities and die-hard fans.The band performed for more than two hours Sunday at the Henry Fonda Theatre. The star-studded crowd included Justin Timberlake, Jessica Biel, Charlize Theron, Anna Paquin and Daniel Craig.
Attendees bid online for tickets, with proceeds going to Oxfam International, a group that works with developing countries. Prices went as high as $4,000 for a…
Howard Zinn: Historian, Activist, Author, Teacher, Dies at 87
What an incredible lifetime of work. Reports the AP via the NY Times:
Howard Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose book A People’s History of the United States became a million-selling leftist alternative to mainstream texts, died Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 87 and lived in Auburndale, Mass. The cause was a heart attack, his daughter Myla Kabat-Zinn said.
Published in 1980 with little promotion and a first printing of 5,000, A People’s History was, fittingly, a people’s best-seller, attracting a wide audience through word of mouth and reaching 1 million sales in 2003. Although Professor Zinn was writing for a general readership, his book was taught in high schools and colleges throughout the country, and numerous companion editions were published, including Voices of a People’s History, a volume for young people and a graphic novel.
A People’s History told an openly left-wing story. Professor Zinn accused Christopher Columbus and other explorers of committing genocide, picked apart presidents from Andrew Jackson to Franklin D. Roosevelt and celebrated workers, feminists and war resisters.
How Trackable is Your Web Browser?
Enter the Panopticlick (courtesy of the Electronic Frontier Foundation):
What fingerprints does your browser leave behind as you surf the web? Traditionally, people assume they can prevent a website from identifying them by disabling cookies on their web browser.
Unfortunately, this is not the whole story.
When you visit a website, you are allowing that site to access a lot of information about your computer’s configuration. Combined, this information can create a kind of fingerprint — a signature that could be used to identify you and your computer. Some companies are already using technology to try to identify individual computers. But how effective would this kind of online tracking be?
EFF is running an experiment to find out. Panopticlick will anonymously log the configuration and version information from your operating system, your browser, and your plug-ins, and…
Live Stream Of Obama’s State of the Union Address + ‘The Cost of War’ With Robert Greenwald
President Obama will deliver his State of the Union address this evening and you can watch it here on disinformation®, courtesy of Hulu:
Right before the nation prepares to watch the President’s State of the Union Address, however, Brave New Foundation, CREDO Mobile, and True Majority will be launching its first online live stream action. Brave New Foundation will live stream “The Cost of War,” a segment of the critically acclaimed documentary Rethink Afghanistan, giving concerned citizens a chance to measure the President’s proposals against military spending in Afghanistan. Brave New Foundation Director Robert Greenwald and Political Associate Derrick Crowe will accompany the stream by live blogging the event.
Want To Get Into A Recession-Busting Business? Join The Mafia
From Reuters:
Italy’s mafia crime syndicates bucked the recession in 2009 to raise ‘profits’ by almost 8 percent with the financial crisis making companies and even the stock market even more vulnerable to cash-flush mobsters.
“Mafia Inc. is reinforcing its position as the number one Italian company,” said a report published on Wednesday by a body whose members bear the brunt of mafia extortion and crimes, the small business and shopkeepers’ association Confesercenti.
It estimated that the impact on business equaled about 7 percent of Italy’s economic output, enjoying healthy growth in a year when the Italian economy shrank by almost 5 percent.
Experts had predicted when the crisis began that Calabria’s ‘Ndrangheta, with its huge slice of the global drugs trade, Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, Naples’ violent Camorra and Puglia’s Sacra Corona Unita would…
The Day That Robots Drew First Blood
Humankind will never forget! David Kravets writes in Wired (there’s a uncanny coincidence in the article):
January 25, 1979: A 25-year-old Ford Motor assembly line worker is killed on the job in a Flat Rock, Michigan, casting plant. It’s the first recorded human death by robot.
Robert Williams’ death came on the 58th anniversary of the premiere of Karel Capek’s play about Rossum’s Universal Robots. R.U.R. gave the world the first use of the word robot to describe an artificial person. Capek invented the term, basing it on the Czech word for “forced labor.” (Robot entered the English language in 1923.)
Williams died instantly in 1979 when the robot’s arm slammed him as he was gathering parts in a storage facility, where the robot also retrieved parts. Williams’ family was later awarded $10 million in damages. The…
Wisconsin Court Forbids Prison Inmates from Playing Dungeons & Dragons
Nerds behind bars.The Volokh Conspiracy illuminates this tragic first-world problem.
In a decision issued today, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a Wisconsin prison’s rule forbidding inmates to play Dungeons & Dragons or possess D&D publications and materials [HT: Josh Blackman].
The prison’s rationale for the ban is that playing D&D might stimulate “gang activity” by inmates. But the government conceded that there is no evidence that Dungeons and Dragons actually had stimulated gang activity in the past, either in this prison or elsewhere. The only evidence for the supposedly harmful effects of Dungeons and Dragons were a few cases from other states where playing the game supposedly led inmates to indulge in “escapism” and become divorced from reality, one case where two non-inmates committed a crime in which they “acted out” a D&D story-line, and one where a longtime D&D player (not an inmate) committed suicide. Obviously, almost any hobby or reading material might lead people to become divorced from reality, or in rare cases commit suicide. And disturbed individuals could potentially “act out” a crime based on a scenario in almost any film or literary work. Should prisons ban The Count of Monte Cristo on the grounds that it might encourage escape attempts? Moreover, the “escapism” rationale conflicts with the gang argument. People who become engrossed in escapism and retreat from society are presumably less likely to become active gang members.
Grad Student Uses Alien-Seeking Math to Explain Why He Can’t Find A Girlfriend
Frank Carnevale writes on news.au.com:
A student used the Drake Equation, used to calculate chances of alien life, to prove why he was single. Peter Backus, a native of Seattle and PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick, near London, took on his own dating woes in “Why I don’t have a girlfriend: An application of the Drake Equation to love in the UK.”
In describing the paper online, he wrote “the results are not encouraging”, MyFox reports. “The probability of finding love in the UK is only about 100 times better than the probability of finding intelligent life in our galaxy.”
Mr Backus, 30, found that of the 30 million women in the UK, only 26 would be suitable girlfriends for him, according to Click Liverpool.
Why The Post-9/11 Anthrax Attacks Are Still Unsolved
Microphotograph of a Gram stain the bacterium Bacillus anthracis which causes anthrax
Edward Jay Epstein reviews some questions that remain worryingly unsolved concerning the anthrax attacks that followed 9/11, for the Wall Street Journal:
The investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks ended as far as the public knew on July 29, 2008, with the death of Bruce Ivins, a senior biodefense researcher at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Md. The cause of death was an overdose of the painkiller Tylenol. No autopsy was performed, and there was no suicide note.
Less than a week after his apparent suicide, the FBI declared Ivins to have been the sole perpetrator of the 2001 Anthrax attacks, and the person who mailed deadly anthrax spores to NBC, the New…
Hello iPad!
From The Apple Blog:
Looking dapper in jeans and a black mock turtle-neck, Steve Jobs took the stage today and officially introduced his iPad to the world. As we’ve been seeing and hearing from so many rumors as of late, it appears as if the iPhone got the super-size treatment, complete with a home button.At only half an inch thin, and sporting a 9.7″ screen, the iPad weighs in at only one and a half pounds. It’s powered by Apple’s very own chip – the A4 – ans “screams” at 1GHz. Available with 16, 32, or 64GB flash storage, and has 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Oh, and you can run it for 10 hours (a month in standby!) while watching videos. Wow! So far, no mention of any…
Obama’s Subliminal Satanic Message
Subliminal Satanic messages in Obama’s speeches? Judge for yourself. He sounds creepy in reverse regardless. Found on YouTube:
Bob Herbert: Who is Barack Obama?
BOB HERBERT writes in the NY Times:
Who is Barack Obama?
Americans are still looking for the answer, and if they don’t get it soon — or if they don’t like the answer — the president’s current political problems will look like a walk in the park.
Mr. Obama may be personally very appealing, but he has positioned himself all over the political map: the anti-Iraq war candidate who escalated the war in Afghanistan; the opponent of health insurance mandates who made a mandate to buy insurance the centerpiece of his plan; the president who stocked his administration with Wall Street insiders and went to the mat for the banks and big corporations, but who is now trying to present himself as a born-again populist.
Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as…
