Poor Mojo's Newswire: (K)uriosities Archives

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September 01, 2010

Apple launching new social network, "Ping"

Questions abound. Will it be a Facebook killer? Will it suffer under the same Puritanical no-sex rules that the app store has? Apple - iTunes - Ping: Social Network for Music

Posted in (K)uriosities. Posted by Mojo at 04:20 PM | Permalink

August 30, 2010

Markov Chaining Kickstarter Blurbs

Kickstarter is a website where people pitch ideas to the internet-at-large and try to drum up donations. If an idea gets enough donations, it goes forward. It's popular and seems to work well for some things, but of course has its share of crazy. This is the internet, after all. Markov Chaining is a technique where by analyzing the text of a given thing (here: Kickstarter) you can generate probable samples based on word frequency. Mash Kickstarter and a Markov Chaining engine together and you get comedy gold. Fred Benenson’s Blog -- Markov Chaining Kickstarter Blurbs

I pulled down a document with a majority of the text that Kickstarter has used to blurb projects on the homepage. Below is a subset of an almost infinite list of hilarious and sometimes disturbing auto-generated project blurbs: * It features monstrous puppets, mystic sex rituals, yellowface assassins, wildly stylized violence, and a songwriter who created that all-important childhood fave Schoolhouse Rock. * To promote NAIN, an all-new miniature setting for his REIGN roleplaying game, Greg Stolze has put together a group of thespians shouting thank you at their laptops to a great $3 price. * Karl Cronin wants to document and collect relics of the concoctions of Atlanta’s Good Food Truck. * Emilia Brock types out every word of her adorable and inventive zine, “Muster,” on a manual typewriter, has each copy illustrated by the Simpsons as a mobile CSA.` * First Law of Mad Science channels cyber-punk and sci-fi to bring a Yakuza noir production to the emerging subculture of asexuality. . . .

Many more at the link.

Posted in (K)uriosities. Posted by Mojo at 02:54 PM | Permalink

August 28, 2010

Lost language found jotted on back of 400-year-old letter

"Lost" Language Found on Back of 400-Year-Old Letter

Notes on the back of a 400-year-old letter have revealed a previously unknown language once spoken by indigenous peoples of northern Peru, an archaeologist says. Penned by an unknown Spanish author and lost for four centuries, the battered piece of paper was pulled from the ruins of an ancient Spanish colonial church in 2008. But a team of scientists and linguists has only recently revealed the importance of the words written on the flip side of the letter. The early 17th-century author had translated Spanish numbers—uno, dos, tres—and Arabic numerals into a mysterious language never seen by modern scholars.

Posted in (K)uriosities. Posted by Mojo at 05:53 PM | Permalink

August 27, 2010

A Survey of Apocalypses

Scientific American posts some hard-core linkbait in this list of common causes of apocalypses (with a thoroughly cited list of examples). It's fun. Click through for the list. Death to Humans! Visions of the Apocalypse in Movies and Literature: Scientific American

All things must come to an end, but we humans have an endless fascination with the inevitable. Our September 2010 special issue and our web exclusives explore some of those endings. Writers and filmmakers, of course, have been tackling apocalyptic themes for decades, at times using them to highlight emotional aspects of sacrifice, heroism and dedication, to varying degrees of success. The staff at Scientific American came up with a list of movies and books that show what human civilization would be like if it got short circuited by some sort of catastrophe. . . .

Posted in (K)uriosities. Posted by Mojo at 11:28 AM | Permalink

August 25, 2010

You just realized that all ducks are actually wearing little dog masks

Do you want to see what's under their masks?

Posted in (K)uriosities. Posted by Mojo at 11:37 AM | Permalink

August 21, 2010

Amazing Teabagger t-shirts

Joe. My. God.: Teabagger T-Shirts

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September 01, 2010

Apple launching new social network, "Ping"

August 30, 2010

Markov Chaining Kickstarter Blurbs

August 28, 2010

Lost language found jotted on back of 400-year-old letter

August 27, 2010

A Survey of Apocalypses

August 25, 2010

You just realized that all ducks are actually wearing little dog masks

August 21, 2010

Amazing Teabagger t-shirts

August 17, 2010

Was Lou Gehrig killed by baseball and not by Lou Gehrig's disease?

August 15, 2010

OUR DAUGHTER ISN'T A SELFISH BRAT; YOUR SON JUST HASN'T READ Atlas Shrugged

Treasury of "lost" Ansel Adams slides is probably fake

A glass-bottomed hot-air balloon

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