Tag Archives: Friday Links

Like fractals? Here’s a five-day sale starting on Pi Day, your chance to pick up Fractals: A Programmer’s Approach by none other than Blog Friend Benjamin Trube.

Have a great weekend!

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Just one link this week – Pig Beach! A whole island of happy, swimming feral pigs in the Bahamas. Just knowing this place exists makes me feel better about life, the universe, and everything.

Have an outstanding weekend!

“If you flip a photo of bats hanging upside down, they look like they’re having a wicked dance-off.” Indeed they do. Just another reason I read Grey DeLisle’s blog (she’s the voice of Azula in Avatar). She also brought us this, which may be my favorite picture of the week.

Brian Williams the rapper. Must be seen to be believed.

Bill Nye dispels some of the most pernicious lies of our time, such as “Things aren’t getting any better in Africa.” And he does it while rocking a world-class tie. Bill, man, don’t ever stop being you.

That’s all, folks. See you Monday!

Joss Whedon’s 10 rules for writers. Rule #1: Finish it!

Courtesy of Nathan Bransford: the publishing process, in GIF form.

I think maybe twelve people in the world will get this joke, which lies at the intersection of Avatar and Adventure Time. For those who do: excelsior!

A good friend of mine sent me 56 Quick Slang Phrases From Victorian England That We Should Start Using Again. My personal favorite: “schlemozzle,” which means a riot or a ruckus. I just like saying that word. Schlemozzle. “We put a nozzle on his schnozzle, which caused a schlemozzle.” Yeah.

That’s all for this week, friends and neighbors. See you Monday!

This TED Talk debunks the pernicious idea that charities should maintain a low overhead ratio. He shows how “overhead” can actually help charities do more good for more people in the long run.

Jean-Luc belts out the best music video you will see all week.

So it turns out you can spy on a computer monitor by listening to it. It’s called Van Eck phreaking, and it’s cray cray.

Want to lose a friend who’s a writer? Ask her, a month in, how it’s going. Better still, ask her to describe what she’s working on. She’ll try, because she has to (“Well, it’s about this friendship between these two, um, friends . . . ”) all the while listening to the magic leaking out of the balloon, and she’ll hate you for it.

-Mark Slouka, New York Times

Have an intrepid weekend, hypothetical reader!

My good friend and fellow author Ben Trube was kind enough to interview me about my book The Witching Hour. “If you were an N64 game, which game would you be?” A question we should all ask ourselves.

A federal judge rules the NSA mass phone record collection program to be unconstitutional. Not the end of the story by any means, but a win we desperately needed.

If you’re offended by religious irreverence or the F-bomb, don’t click this link. Personally, I laughed my ass off.

That’s a wrap, friends and neighbors. Have a great Christmas. See you when I see you!

Don’t know why, but this one just made me giggle.

Have a sterling weekend, old chap!

Simply put, this is the best flash mob I’ve ever seen.

Do you have what it takes to solve the biggest mystery on the Internet?

Christmas will never be the same.

Want a way to turn bitmaps into vector images? Of course you do! Note: I haven’t actually tried this software yet, so caveat emptor. I just think it looks sweet.

lolz

Peace out!

In the battle against NSA hypersurveillance, we’ve found a new weapon.

Despite its insipid name, the “USA Freedom Act” appears to be the best chance so far of stopping our intelligence system’s massive overreach. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an excellent analysis of the bill, which would stop the call records program and vastly increase transparency, among other things.

It’s supported by a broad coalition of supporters, including the EFF itself, the ACLU, Mozilla, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo!, and many others.

But it still needs your voice.

Please call your representatives today, as I plan to, and ask them to support this bill.

Meanwhile, PVP has their own suggestions on how to handle the NSA.

And of course, the Onion has its own take on the issue.

Finally, I’m happy to announce that Mr. Benjamin Trube has accepted my challenge. I’ve added a word count meter on the right side of the blog, the same as his, so you can track our competition. Let the best man win! *cough* It’s me *cough*

“Horrific FLESH-EATING PLATYPUS once terrorised Australia! Aboriginal tale says chimaera was result of non-consensual rat/duck tryst.”

Sometimes, the headline says it all.