Category Archives: Links
The Lion City II – Majulah
I’m completely taken by this song. It is not often I listen to the same song twice, nevermind on repeat on my car, phone, and home system.
The video? Oh, it’s pretty. Mindblowing too, if you try to figure out how you get a perfectly smooth time lapse over a period of months (years in some cases) where the source camera is clearly moving.
These artists are masters of their crafts.
Pharrell’s reaction
Starting at 18:22 and going through to 26m. Love their expressions, hers for the pride and approval, his for the continual surprise for reasons he then enumerates.
Fascinating – “denying death its sting”
I helped eight people end their lives. By the time you read this, I’ll have ended mine
I realize this is a controversial topic but it’s hard to argue with this kind of sentiment: “The poet Susan Musgrave, who knew Al well, wrote of his final months: ‘Al looked at death the same way he has always looked at life—right between the eyes.'”
I’ve saved this for about half a year to share, I think it’s too good of a story not to.
Tabs March 2016
Well the time has come to clean up tabs. If I bookmark them I’ll never see them again, so I might as well share them.
http://flowingdata.com/2015/12/15/a-day-in-the-life-of-americans/
So again I looked at microdata from the American Time Use Survey from 2014, which asked thousands of people what they did during a 24-hour period. I used the data to simulate a single day for 1,000 Americans representative of the population — to the minute.More specifically, I tabulated transition probabilities for one activity to the other, such as from work to traveling, for every minute of the day. That provided 1,440 transition matrices, which let me model a day as a time-varying Markov chain. The simulations below come from this model, and it’s kind of mesmerizing.
Take a second look at these. Amazing.
Sure, skip around especially the intro, but if you’re into speed these boats are something else. Never seen it from this perspective before!
Full of interesting tidbits:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/406d65/what_is_something_someone_said_that_changed_your/
Love this story, especially details like the black gloves.
Milky Way tracking.
Duuuuude.
Does this…. work?
I dunno about best in the world, but this kitchen does have some pretty killer features that aren’t obvious at first:
http://www.contemporist.com/2015/12/01/7-reasons-why-this-kitchen-was-named-best-in-the-world/
Reddit title was “Smearing time like butter.” Not even going to try to improve that. Takes a little while to get really into it.
Having a child… graphed?
I just love this guy and his data collection. He plots all kinds of things ranging from travels from home, wake & sleep times, email volumes, to photo volumes and dates. It is glorious. Have a look!
http://flowingdata.com/2014/04/23/the-difference-a-data-point-makes/
Porsche 918 Geeky Stats
I love it when magazines put together content like this. For example: “There is very little wheelspin during the 918 launch. But assuming for a moment that there is no at-launch wheelspin whatsoever, the 918 jumps to 16 mph after just one wheel rotation, or in about seven feet.”
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/the-2015-porsche-918-spyder-is-the-quickest-road-car-in-the-world-feature
First Person View quadcopter flight
FPV Massif du Mont Blanc on Vimeo.
NSA surveillance
Found this story fascinating and scary at the same time:
https://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jun/21/nsa-surveillance-metadata-content-obama
Among other things, it links to this page on a German politician who sued to have his records released to him. He handed it over to a newspaper who put together a reconstruction of his life using this “harmless” metadata.
https://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-spitz-data-retention
Pretty scary, huh?
Mosquitoes
This article has the best headline I’ve seen in days:
“Rocket Scientists Shoot Down Mosquitoes With Lasers”
I mean come on, how ya gonna beat that?