Who knew?

Also bonus hexapod dance competition.

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency is amusing. Most recently I have enjoyed Nihilist Dad Jokes by Alex Baia.

The Legend of Neil is over 10 years old (2008) and the creator, Sandeep Parikh bought back the rights to the show and is re-running it on his youtube channel. It remains awesome and harkens back to a time not so long ago when web content was in its infancy. Also it is interesting to see how quickly the memory of different experiences degrades. I remember almost nothing from Legend of Neil, so rewatching it 10 years later has been very fun, and I look forward to doing it again in 10 years.

A small bonus set of other early web content pioneers: The Guild, Collegehumor (still around – enjoyed this recent skit), RocketJump, Dr Horrible, Save the Supers.

The Presidential Candidates Ranked By Their Usefulness In A Bar Fight by Ali Davis was amusing.

“Ethics” is advertising – the article leisurely goes through some good ideas. Here are some summed up thoughts: 1) Signaling; important for the survival of organisms is communication about the qualities of an individual organism to others; all of the characteristics and behaviors of organisms transmit this information through various symbols; humans are no exception and our idiosyncratic behaviors both knowingly and unknowingly share information about who we are. 2) Taking a view of common behaviors through the lens of signalling we can understand that religion is an efficient symbol of ethics, philosophy, and virtues. We can also see that the point of advertising is not to persuade you to buy an object, but convince you that an object is a symbol of a certain wealth, philosophy, and personality. 3) The symbolism of various objects, ideas, and behaviors as signals changes over time, with occasionally dramatic societal consequences. 4) What something means is more important than what it is.
Computer Show – computing from the 1980s, today
Look at Me – we all have stories
Katrina Refrigerators – a cool wiki article
esa california
Apollo Missions – engenders a feeling of propinquity
Big 5 personality test – if you want another
George Boole Google logo – hopefully google will continue to become more abstract