Link Archive 2/4/15 – 3/31/15

The Angelarium. Awesome art of angels.

What the Web Said Yesterday "The average life of a Web page is about a hundred days."

"50% of the URLs within United States Supreme Court opinions do not link to the originally cited information" "Last year, a tool called Perma.cc was launched, developed by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab. It promises to create citation links that will never break & has already been adopted by law reviews and state courts"

This press release by the US House Judiciary Committee is the Republican argument against current immigration policy in "Animated gifs list" format. This is actually real. Why are Republicans so bad at pop humor, and why do they keep trying?

And while I realize that Congress's primary purpose is to provide entertainment for those of us who enjoy political sport... couldn't they use *some* of that campaigning money to hire people to read these bills? Missed Abortion Language Tangles Senate's Trafficking Bill

“Blurred Lines” team was found liable for copyright infringement and ordered to pay nearly $7.4 million in damages. Copyright law is getting close to the point of needing a complete burn-it-down-and-overhaul-it treatment. Art is being suppressed to feed the corporate dragons, again. "The reason we have copyright...at bottom, is about ensuring the flow and growth of culture. [This verdict] takes what should be familiar elements of a genre, available to all, and privatizes them."

American Drone Operators Are Quitting in Record Numbers. There isn't much glory in being a drone jockey. Obviously they're recruiting the wrong type of person, and this is a problem the private sector could help with. There isn't much glory in being an accountant either but we have plenty of them.

Just in case you haven't seen this yet - this is crazy good! And the syncing is *spot on*.

Scientists Create Music For Cats. The music has to be in the frequency range that the species uses to communicate and with tempos that they would normally use.

I was part of the social experiment that was HPMoR. I can only echo DaystarEld's words, posted moments before Chapter 114 went up (warning: spoilers up to Ch 114)

Also, HPMoR got an article at Vice.com. And it linked to my podcast! Yaaaaay!

Seth Dickinson vivisects a single sentence. Great demonstration of how actions build characters at every level. "People are specialists at thinking about people. It’s what we do. When we tap that power, we tell better stories."

Crows are totally smart. "crows exhibit strong behavioral signs of analogical reasoning — the ability to solve puzzles like "bird is to air as fish is to what?" Analogical reasoning is considered to be the pinnacle of cognition and it only develops in humans between the ages of three and four."

What ISIS really wants. Long, but fascinating. This particular religious offshoot has to hold territory to be considered legitimate by its own followers, and continually expand its borders.

The Firefly crew were villains. I love good villain stories!

From SSC- the Brain Preservation Foundation looks like a great place for charity dollars. Adding to my list. "Long story short, they are funding and influencing some pretty important research on a fairly small (<$100k) budget. This research will likely have a significant effect on the quality of brain preservation technologies that will be available by the end of our lifetimes."

Huzzah. Video game SWATter faces five years in prison, additional charges.

You can always count on the Russians to find out what happens when you "accidentally" stick someone in front of a particle accelerator.

One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake. Henderson has now made over 47,000 edits to the site since 2007, currently 70-80 per week. The entire process takes an hour, at most. He changes the despicable "is comprised of" to the more proper "is composed of" or "consists of".

I was just alerted to the "Every Frame a Painting" channel. This shit is baller.