Mike discusses the Juno Space Mission, Apple removing the headphone jack from the iPhone, Tony Hawk’s 900, Spotify bitching about Apple, and letting go of a balloon, among other things.
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The Subreddit ‘LifeProTips’ has a great thread on ways to remove “um,” and words like it from your conversational vocabulary:
Replace your “ums” with spaces. You begin your thought with something as simple as “I’m…” space space space… then just finish your thought as it comes to you: “not really in the mood for spaghetti tonight.”
Eventually, the spaces will get shorter. “Um” and “uh” and “er” are crutches. Keep using them, and you’ll always need them.
I like mrwizard420’s response to this:
This is… absolutely correct. If you were to look at… certain famous people like… President Obama, you… would see this technique… used quite often.
(Bonus points if you read this in… the Obamavoice.)
Adding spacings and pauses in your speech is the most common piece of advice in this threaad.
As someone who’s continually trying to get better at talking on his podcast, this thread handy.
Uber data reveals drivers earn less than $13.25 an hour:
Uber is always droning on about how drivers are able to make money by driving their own vehicle, while having the freedom to choose their own schedules. A few years ago, Uber told The Wall Street Journal that a typical driver earns more than $100,000 a year in gross fares. However, new data and calculations based off a million trips reveals a different picture. In three major US markets – Denver, CO, Detroit, MI, and Houston, TX – Uber drivers earned less than $13.25 an hour.
It’s important to note Uber drivers are paid per ride, not by the hour, but $13.25 hourly average is still not much income for a company “valued” at over $60 billion (as of December 2015) and one that classifies its drivers as contractors, not employees.
It would paint a more complete picture if we also knew how many hours a week Uber drivers work.
This is a good follow up to my post from earlier today on the movie reboots.
Ars Technica: New study could explain why we remake certain movies over and over again:
It’s the question that every movie fan asks in summer: why are there so many remakes and sequels and reboots? It turns out that science may have an answer. Unfortunately, if you’re hoping for more original stories, the prognosis is not good.
Two network theorists in the Netherlands, Folgert Karsdorp and Antal van den Bosch, just published a study on story networks in Royal Society Open Science. Story networks, they write, are “streams of retellings in which retellers modify and adapt retellings in a gradual and accumulative way.” There is also a basic structure that seems to underly how these networks function. To explore retellings, the researchers looked at more than 200 versions of the Little Red Riding Hood story, which had been retold over the past two centuries. They measured the stories’ similarity to one another with the amusingly named “bag-of-words” technique, which reveals how many words two texts have in common. Then they created a network diagram showing relatedness between stories over time. Earlier stories became what the researchers called “pre-texts” that inspired later retellings.
Once again, everything is a remix.
‘Ghostbusters’ backlash is about more than sexism, says producer Ivan Reitman:
The Ghostbusters reboot has received criticism questioning the need for a reboot, as well as the decision to cast four women as the ghostbusting stars. For his part, Reitman thinks the backlash has more to do with nostalgia than anger over a perception that political correctness influenced creative choices.
“I think there’s way too much talk about gender [when it comes to this film],” he said. “I think that many of the people who were complaining were actually lovers of the [original] movie, not haters of women.”
I’m one of the people who is not a fan of the reboot.
It really comes down to the fact that this is a money grab, not a move by an up-and-coming director who wants to honor the legacy of a classic film. Bullshit. This is Columbia Pictures wanting a cash cow for the summer.
It’s no secret Hollywood is out of ideas.
I also don’t believe in changing the ethnicity and sexual orientation of existing superheroes to make them more relevant in today’s world. I’d rather see people get creative and come up with new backstories and new superpowers younger generations can relate to.
The hero has a thousand faces, so give her/him a new one. I’d pay money to see it.
Over at The Washington Post, Max Ehrenfreund on the four cryptic words Donald Trump can’t stop saying:
“There’s something going on,” Trump said. “It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on.”
That phrase, according to political scientists who study conspiracy theories, is characteristic of politicians who seek to exploit the psychology of suspicion and cynicism to win votes.
The idea that people in positions of power or influence are conspiring to conceal sinister truths from the public can be inherently appealing, because it helps make sense of tragedy and satisfies the human need for certainty and order. Yet politicians hoping to take advantage of these tendencies must rely on vague and suggestive statements, since any specific accusation could be easily disproved.
Donald Trump is a master manipulator of language and it’s one of the main reasons he’s made it this far in his presidential campaign (there’s other tools of demagoguery he uses I won’t get into in this post). It clearly has a strong effect on the less educated, but if you have half a brain, you can see right through his bullshit and rhetoric.
I love this detail:
Earlier in the interview, when asked why he called for Obama’s resignation, Trump said, “He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands. It’s one or the other.”
Trump excels at never committing to a side, but also never appears to be equivocal on a topic. How, you ask, does he pull this off? By starting with the premise that there’s a conspiracy happening. This means he’s free to make as many assumptions as possible, because shit, how am I supposed to know what’s really happening? There’s something going on and they’re not telling us.
If this man gets in office, he’ll continue his habit of never accepting responsibility for his actions because any mistakes he makes will be the result of someone or some group hiding something from him. It’s a sign of poor character and not a quality you want in someone running for president.
The Blackbird is, “the first fully adjustable car rig that creates photoreal CG cars.”
From what I can decipher from the video, not only does the Blackbird adjust it’s size to match the car it’s mimicking, but it also captures the environment around it with the 360-degree cameras mounted on top, so when it comes time to render the vehicle on screen, it’s indistinguishable from the real thing.
They’re positioning this as a breakthrough for the ad industry, but I see this being used in many more industries—gaming to name the most obvious. I wonder how the Blackbird compares to the technology Sony Interactive uses for game franchises like Gran Turismo?
Nerdy detail: When you click on the link above, note the ® register mark at the end of the URL. The Mill clearly sweats the details.
Pebble’s third Kickstarter ends with $12.8M raised, $7.5M less than last year:
Smartwatch maker Pebble wrapped its third Kickstarter campaign today with $12,779,754 in preorders for the company’s upcoming products: the Pebble 2, the Time 2, a little Spotify streaming box, and a refresh to the Time Round line.
Pledges this year fell short of last year’s milestone of more than $20 million, but surpassed the company’s 2012 campaign, when it collected about $10 million.
Let’s start with the obvious: Enthusiasm for new Pebble watches appears to have slipped. Pebble has a history of breaking its own records — as well as Kickstarter’s — and that didn’t happen this year. It took the company a mere 48 hours to surpass $10 million in preorders in February 2015. This time around, it took Pebble more than twice as long.
I wish I had problems like raising 12.8 million dollars.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens to Pebble in the long term with Apple likely debuting a new Watch this fall and Google updating their Android Wear. I wonder if Pebble can hold on to and grow their loyal customer base or if they’ll get squeezed out.
The Bell 47. One of the most iconic helicopters in history.
Some of you are thinking to yourselves how fucked up that is to do to an innocent, little girl, but let me tell you something. That girl is going to grow up tougher than all the other kids she goes to school with.
Either that or she’s going to have serious issues with cars when it comes time for her DMV test.
This morning on my Twitter feed, I discovered Chris Evans has stepped down from Top Gear.
I have no idea why. I mean, he’s so natural on camera:
What’s the problem?
