Congress Takes Group Of Schoolchildren Hostage
BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building.
A lot of people are saying that The Onion’s series of tweets about a hostage situation in the Capitol building ‘backfired’ or that they were ‘in bad taste’. Capitol police are launching an investigation.
Personally, I thought the whole thing was amazing. I love that they had the balls to say “We’re the fucking Onion, let’s fuck with peoples’ heads.” The whole thing reminded me of the stuff Chris Morris used to do on The Day Today. Like the time John Major punched the Queen. And sure, it took my mother two full episodes of The Day Today before she realised it was satire, but then she loved it.
I guess the internet is just slower to spot satire than my sixty-something-year old mother. Want proof? Check out Literally Unbelievable, which documents people posting Onion stories to their Facebook as if they were true.
Then again, you’ve got sites like Onion-like headlines in real life, which shows that the line between reality and satire is sometimes very hard to make out. Still, there’s a real simple test here, internet: if you see “The Onion” credited anywhere on a news story – either in the URL or the twitter name – chances are, it’s not real.
# Sep 29, 2011The internet is not your savior
I just think that the internet has been sold to us as our savior. As a means to create a new economy, as our spiritual salvation, whatever. Everything is supposed to be bigger and better online. But what I think people have lost sight of — and I don’t think the internet has done a good job of self-evaluation in this respect — is the massive shift between the brave new internet world of the late ’90s and now. Its early philosophy seemed to be one where everyone was an individual whose opinions were respected. A decade later, everything is corporate-owned, advertising is incessant, and the diverse opinions of internet commentary are often shouted down. Now there’s much more online groupthink.
DJ Shadow: The Internet Is Not Your Savior - Wired.com
# Sep 29, 2011Edgar Wright’s Top Ten - The Criterion Collection »
Great selection of movies. And great explanations for why he chose these particular movies.
# Sep 28, 2011Safe House »
Panic rooms are so passe. What you want is a panic house. When the zombie apocalypse finally comes, I’m making a beeline for this place.
# Sep 28, 2011russell davies - the internet with things »
Fascinating post about the approach of the ‘internet of things’ - the idea that, with a little bit of hacking, you can shape the internet to do what you want it to and make it more personal and magic. (Incidentally, I think if this then that is pretty close to magic already). He gave this as a talk on the BBC’s Four Thought radio series.
# Sep 27, 201121 forgotten TV subplots - The A.V. Club »
You could almost do an entire article about the many forgotten subplots in Lost alone. I particularly like their write-up of the Tori Scott episodes of Saved by the Bell
# Sep 27, 2011When NBC ordered more episodes of the show’s already-wrapped senior year, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen and Elizabeth Berkley were already committed to other projects. So, employing its signature logic, Saved By The Bell allowed the characters to disappear completely, bringing in Leanna Creel’s motorcycle-riding tomboy Tori to replace them—and thus creating the “Tori Reality,” a parallel universe centered on Zack and Tori’s awkward courtship, a place where Kelly and Jessie simply did not exist.
Infographic: The Rise of E-Readers »
Pretty interesting stuff - overall, people who own e-readers read more books each year than those without. Although I’m curious about the 1% of e-reader owners who read 0 books a year. What are they using it for?!
# Sep 26, 2011Transom » Radiolab: An Appreciation by Ira Glass »
A fantastic article by Ira Glass discussing all the things that make Radiolab so great.
# Sep 24, 2011No Content Found
There are plenty of examples of movies with similar plots or themes coming out around the same time as each other. Dante’s Peak and Volcano, Deep Impact and Armageddon, Coco Chanel and Coco Before Chanel. A lot of these can be dismissed as just coincidence. Deep Impact and Armageddon both have giant asteroids coming to wipe out life on earth, but that’s where the similarities end.
As the trailer mash-up shows, there’s no way you can write off Friends with Benefits and No Strings Attached as just coincidence. They’re just so similar, there has to be something more to it. So, having now seen both these movies, here’s what I think.
I think what happened is that after Natalie Portman won the Oscar for Black Swan, and Mila Kunis got nattin, the two of them got into a scrap and decided to see who was actually the better actress. And what’s the best way to do this? With both of them making the exact same movie.
Because there’s no other explanation.
Also, the Natalie Portman movie is better, by virtue of the fact that it’s vaguely coherent.
The Gauntlet
I remember being fascinated by the cover for this video, with this poster, when I’d see it over in Xtravision (or, more specifically, Dano’s Video Shop - Edenmore represent!). Then I was slightly disappointed by the film afterwards. Not that The Gauntlet is a bad film. It’s just not the film I imagined from the poster.
# Sep 22, 2011