Protesting Apples Tax-Lobbying with living QR-Codes
(Youtube Direktapple, via Rebelart)
Schöne Aktion von US Uncut, die auf Apples Worldwide Developers Conference mit lebenden QR-Codes gegen deren Lobbying für Steuerermäßigungen protestiert haben.
As more than 5,000 attendees streamed into San Francisco’s Moscone Center to hear new Apple product lines announced, they were greeted by what appeared to be an Apple publicity stunt — men and women were sheathed head to toe in a rainbow of Apple-colored spandex body suits emblazoned with a giant QR code (like a barcode for an internet address).
However, when attendees used iPhone apps to follow the code on the Internet, instead of an Apple product announcement, a new music video appeared, “Apple: Tax Cheating Doesn’t Sync with My Values,” which is spreading virally on the Internet. Apple was not happy to have their party crashed by creative protest.
Dog sentenced to Death for being a dead Lawyer [update: Or… maybe not.]
Ein jüdisches Gericht hat einen Hund zum Tode durch Steinigung verurteilt, weil sie befürcheten, er sei eine Reinkarnation eines toten Anwalts, der vor 20 Jahren das Gericht beleidigte. What?
Several weeks ago, a large dog entered the Monetary Affairs Court near the ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood of Mea Shearim.
The dog scared the court’s visitors and, to their surprise, refused to leave even after they attempted to drive him away. One of the judges suddenly recalled that about 20 years ago, a famous secular lawyer who insulted the court was cursed by the panel of judges, who wished that his spirit would move on to the body of a dog (considered an impure animal by Halacha). The lawyer passed away several years ago.
Still offended, one of the judges sentenced the poor animal to death by stoning, recruiting the neighbourhood’s children to carry out the order. Luckily, the dog managed to escape.
Dog sentenced to death by stoning (via Arbroath), Telegraph: Jewish court sentences dog to death by stoning
[update] Von Judeopundit:
I should make it clear that there are no stoning sentences in our times in Jewish law. In ancient times an animal could be sentenced to stoning for killing a person and in certain other cases, but there is currently no such thing. Also, the BBC article states “Dogs are often considered impure animals in traditional Judaism” and some of the other articles say something similar. What does it mean? If you refer to a dog as a “beheima tameiah”–an “impure animal”–you are basically stating that dog meat is not kosher. So the claim of an actual stoning “sentence” was highly suspect to begin with and it is being spread by journalists who are, at best, only vaguely aware talking about.
Bulgarian Prankster deface Red Army Statue with Superman and Cap America
Bulgarische Prankster haben eine Statue der russischen Roten Armee in Sofia aufgehübscht und ihnen Kostüme westlicher Popkultur-Ikonen verpasst.
An anonymous artist transformed Russian Red Army soldiers from a monument in the city of Sofia, in Bulgaria, into popular superheroes and cartoon characters. Taking centre stage is Superman with his distinctive red cape and blue suit. To the left is Santa Claus and to the right Ronald McDonald, the mascot of the fast-food giant McDonalds, and the Joker also makes an appearance.
Below the graffiti artist has sprayed “Moving with the times” in Bulgarian black paint. The “artistic vandalism” appeared [friday] morning – but it is still not clear who is behind the colourful display.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Superman and friends… painted on Soviet war statue by the Banksy of Bulgaria (via Ronny)
Playable Receipt-Printer
undef.ch und Joshua Noble haben auf dem OFFF Festival in Barcelone (hier hatte ich den Kurzfilm zum Opening des Festivals gebloggt) einen einen gewöhnlichen Einkaufszettel Kassenbondrucker aufgebohrt, auf dem man ein Racinggame spielen kann. Das Pixelauto kommt per Beamer auf die in Echtzeit ausgedruckte Einkaufszettel Kassenbonumgebung. Schick!
The receipt racer combines different in and output devices into a complete game. It was made during the “Let’s feed the future workshop”, organized by creativeapplications.net as a part of the OFFF Festival in Barcelona on June 8th 2011. The game is played on a receipt printer, a common device you can see at every convenient store. It prints those papers you usually find crumbled up in your pockets, just to throw them away. It is a thermal printer using heat to darken the paper. This eliminates any slowdowns in printing lots of black. A roll can be ordered online and costs around 80 cents.
50 meters is the maximum distance you are theoretically able to race in one run, before running out of paper. So ecologically it’s pretty much a disaster, just like any real car.
Print is a static medium. that’s why it was an intriguing challenge to create an interactive game with it. First we tried to do it only with the printer as the visual representation but that seemed rather impossible. But then Joshua Noble came up with this tiny beamer, perfect to project a car onto a preprinted road.
joshua noble + undef: receipt racer, hier die Website zum Projekt: Receipt Racer
The 10.000-Years Clock
Die Long Now Foundation baut grade in einem Berg auf Jeff Bezos (Amazon) Grundstück eine Uhr, die 10.000 Jahre ticken soll und von Zeit zu Zeit eine kleine Melodie spielen wird, jede einzelne davon einmalig in ihrem 10 Millenia-Zyklus. Hier die Website von Bezoz zur Superclock, hier die Website der Long Now Foundation, Bild oben ist der erste Prototyp, der derzeit im Science Museum in London steht und am 31. Dezember 1999 anfing, zu ticken.
Von Kevin Kelly:
There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the bells of this buried Clock play a melody. Each time the chimes ring, it’s a melody the Clock has never played before. The Clock’s chimes have been programmed to not repeat themselves for 10,000 years. Most times the Clock rings when a visitor has wound it, but the Clock hoards energy from a different source and occasionally it will ring itself when no one is around to hear it. It’s anyone’s guess how many beautiful songs will never be heard over the Clock’s 10 millennial lifespan.
The Clock is real. It is now being built inside a mountain in western Texas. This Clock is the first of many millennial Clocks the designers hope will be built around the world and throughout time. There is a second site for another Clock already purchased at the top of a mountain in eastern Nevada, a site surrounded by a very large grove of 5,000-year-old bristlecone pines. Appropriately, bristlecone pines are among the longest-lived organisms on the planet. The designers of the Clock in Texas expect its chimes will keep ringing twice as long as the oldest 5 millennia-old bristlecone pine. Ten thousand years is about the age of civilization, so a 10K-year Clock would measure out a future of civilization equal to its past. That assumes we are in the middle of whatever journey we are on – an implicit statement of optimism.
Podcast über Hacktivism
Ich höre grade den c’t Online Talk vom DRadio Wissen mit Anne Roth, Jan-Keno Janssen und André Meister (Netzpolitik) zum Thema Hacktivism. Die Standards (4Chan, Anonymous, DDoS) sind dankenswerterweise nach wenigen Minuten abgefrühstückt, danach widmen sich die Damen und Herren den wirklich interessanten Themen wie zukünftigen Plänen von Anonymous oder LulzSec.
Die Gruppierungen, die keine Vertreter und Chefs haben, aber in der Öffentlichkeit immer wieder mit wortstarken Statements zur Verkündung und Beschreibung ihrer Aktionen auftreten, scheinen so etwas wie Keimzellen oder erste Ausprägungen ganz neuer Aktionsformen zu sein, die nicht nur politisch gezielt sind, sondern immer wieder auch Anliegen und Bedürfnisse einzelner Communities ausdrücken.
Im Unterschied zum “Digitalen Aktivismus”, also der Nutzung des Internets für politische Aktionen, die oft auch klassische Formen digital widerspiegeln oder zur Mobilisierung dienen, erscheint solcher Hacktivismus als neues Phänomen der digitalen Welt. Alexandra Whitney Samuel definiert ihn in “Hacktivism and the Future of Political Participation” als “gewaltfreie, rechtswidrige oder rechtlich uneindeutige Nutzung digitaler Werkzeuge für die Verfolgung politischer Ziele” (zitiert nach André Meister, Digitaler Aktivismus und Hacktivism).
Hier das MP3, hier der Artikel dazu: Hacktivismus – Zukunft der politischen Aktion? (via Netzpolitik)
James Joyce Pub-Riddle solved
In James Joyce „Ulysses“ fragt sich sich Joseph Bloom, ob man Dublin durchqueren könne, ohne an einem Pub vorbeizukommen: „Good puzzle would be, cross Dublin without passing a pub“. Jetzt hat Software-Entwickler Rory McCann herausgefunden: Man kann. Ob man das wirklich will ist natürlich eine ganz andere Frage.
Rory McCann, 27, claims he has settled decades of debate about the puzzle in Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses with a simple equation proving it can, indeed, be done. Using online maps, the Dubliner worked out an algorithm – a computer equation – which found how to criss-cross the capital, from north to south and east to west, away from the temptation of any pub.
The Legacy Music Dance Party
(Funny or Die Direkt8Bit, via Waxy)
„The hottest new video game music dance party show“… Oh my.
The Remains of the Peanutweeter
Vor anderthalb Monaten bloggte ich über den Peanutweeter, ein Tumblelog, das Tweets mit den Peanuts mashte und damit neue, tolle, absurde Webcomics schuf. Natürlich wurde das Ding gestern von der Copyright-Mafia (in Form der Iconix Brand Group, die die Rechte an den Peanuts-Comics besitzen) offline genommen, weil die keine Ahnung hat, wie man mit solchen Dingen umgeht.
Wired: Good Grief! Peanutweeter Gets Taken Down Following DMCA Claim: „Peanutweeter, the hilarious marriage of random funny tweets with Peanuts cartoons, was removed from Tumblr Friday, following an infringement claim made under Digital Millennium Copyright Act. A tweet from the @Peanutweeter account, sent just after noon PDT, claimed that the site had been taken offline following a DMCA claim by Iconix Brand Group, which owns copyrights on the Peanuts characters and comic strip. The site’s creator, T. Jason Agnello, said he doesn’t plan to fight the takedown.“ (Mehr: IN DEFENSE: Why @Peanutweeter Should Be Considered Fair Use)
Ich habe die Reste der Peanut-Tweet-Remixe auf Google Images zusammengekratzt, 45 von insgesamt 377 Panels. Immerhin. Hier das Flickr-Set. Wer weitere findet oder gar eine komplette Sammlung: Ab in die Comments damit.
Wie es anders geht bewies vor ein paar Jahren Jim Davis im Umgang mit Garfield minus Garfield von Dan Walsh, ebenfalls ein zunächst unauthorisierter Comic-Remix, ebenfalls auf Tumblr. Jim Davis bekannte sich gegenüber der New York Times als regelmäßiger Leser des Webcomics: „Jim Davis, the cartoonist who created “Garfield,” calls himself an occasional reader of the site, which he calls “fascinating.” He says he is flattered rather than peeved by the imitation. “Some of them really work, and some of them work better,” Mr. Davis said in a telephone interview.“
Und schließlich gab man ein offizielles Garfield minus Garfield-Buch heraus (Amazon-Partnerlink: Garfield Minus Garfield) , das Webcomic gibt es bis heute. Ganz pragmatisch frage ich mich da einfach nur: Wer hat hier die bessere Business-Entscheidung getroffen? Verfickte Rechteverwalter und ihre Copyright-Anwälte, die ob ihrer Natur Kreativität nicht von benutztem Klopapier unterscheiden können, oder ein Comic-Autor, der sieht, wie ein einziger, kleiner Twist einem Comic eine ganz neue Richtung geben kann, das offiziell absegnet und damit unter Umständen eine ganz neue Leserschaft gewinnt?
Copyright is for losers, still.
Musicvideos: Urban Cone, Manchester Orchestra, Breakbot
(Youtube Direktphoto, via Electru)
Oben erstmal Urban Cone mit „Photograph“, weitere Clips nach dem Klick.
Game of Thrones-Foodblog
Sariann und Chelsea schreiben das Blog Inn at the Crossroads und posten dort Rezepte zu Speisen aus George R. R. Martins „A Song of Ice and Fire“-Büchern, die grade als „Game of Thrones“ als Serie verfilmt werden. Die Bücher kenne ich nicht (habe zwar das erste hier rumfliegen, aber man kommt ja zu nix), dafür bin ich ziemlicher Fan der Serie und das Ende der letzten Folge war… überraschend, um’s mal so zu formulieren (und wer die letzte Folge gesehen hat, wird dieses Video hier lieben: Tyrion Slaps Joffrey For 10 Minutes To LedZeps Achilles Last Stand, hier noch Videogame of Thrones Theme 8-Bit-Style Remix).
Jedenfalls posten die beiden Damen dort leckere Rezepte aus den Büchern/der Serie, alles schick im Mittelalter-Style abgelichtet. Medieval-Food-Porn, sozusagen. Hier ihr Breakfast at Winterfell:
The continental elegance of the soft boiled egg was a wonderful counterpart to the salty heartiness of the bacon. Likewise, the sweetness of the preserves and honey paired well with the other elements of the meal. It was an interesting textural experience, too. The almost creaminess of the perfectly done soft-boiled egg, the crispiness of the bacon, and the pop of berry seeds all added something to the meal. While it is a fairly hefty meal, the mint tea lightens it more than one would expect, and is the perfect finish to what might be the perfect breakfast.
Bottom line? It’s cold in The North, but this is a great breakfast for any time of year, anywhere.
Cooks Notes: Splurge on the bacon. If you truly wish your breakfast to have the feel of Winterfell, don’t skimp on the ingredients. We used a nice cut of Black Forest bacon, and eggs from happy chickens. This list of ingredients will make a big breakfast for about two people.
Ingredients:
2 eggs
6 strips of bacon
4 small slices rustic bread
butter, honey, and berry preserves
sharp white cheese, such as cheddar
2 mint tea bags
Stuxnet animated: Anatomy of a Computer Virus
(Vimeo Direktstux, via Ronny)
Schicke Animation von Patrick Clair: „An infographic dissecting the nature and ramifications of Stuxnet, the first weapon made entirely out of code. This was produced for Australian TV program HungryBeast on Australia’s ABC1“.
Paranoid Android-Cover made from Paranoid Android-Covers on Youtube
(Youtube Direktandroid, via MeFi)
Youtube-User OHADI22 hat einen Kutiman gepullt und Radioheads „Paranoid Android“ aus Youtube-Coverversionen nachgebaut.
