Significant Objects is a site dedicated to people buying thrift store items and writing a fictional history for them then selling them on Ebay. Yes, the descriptions are marked as fake. At first I was a little skeeved about this concept but then realized that what's really being marketed is the author's talent as a writer. Fictional history is fun.
Here is an interesting story of a roleplaying game revolving mostly around story and not around
winning.
"To call Slobbovia a Diplomacy variant is, however, misleading; the game purposefully had no victory conditions, and the formal game itself served as little more than a framework for structuring a written roleplaying game. The postal Diplomacy hobby has a tradition of "press," whereby a player may, each turn, include a written statement that is published with the turn's results (e.g., "The Office of the Kaiser today announced..."). In Slobbovia, press was the focus of the game, rather than a minor adjunct."
And here is a game which reminds of what Risk is trying to be.
Will someone browse the freeware on that site?
I really want to enter reburbia but feel as though I am automatically outmatched by architect students and don't have the time to engage in such a project. Also, I think I'm going to enjoy the magazine that's sponsoring the competition, Inhabitant, very much. Here is the newest entry:
"Designer Chiyu Chen has conceived of an ingenious transit system that encourages the use of sustainable transportation by crediting people for renting and riding bicycles. His Hybrid2 system consists of a fleet of rentable bicycles that are capable of generating and storing kinetic energy, which is then used to power the city’s hybrid electric buses. Simply rent a bike, charge it up with kinetic energy from pedal power, and then return it to a kiosk - the station feeds energy into the city’s smart grid, and you receive a credit towards your next bus pass!"
The problem with capitalism is that people speak so glibly of the market punishing and rewarding businesses. What if the business is so large that a lot of other businesses rely on it? What about all of the jobs lost when that company goes out of business?
USAspending.gov makes United States spending open-source for viewing. On one hand, this makes me happy. On the other, don't look, countries with grudges against us!
Apparently visa overcharged some unlucky people to the tune of $23 quadrillion dollars. Nope, not a joke, just a glitch. The author of Freaknomics pointed out that this is a good point against those who favor an all-digital currency. A quote of a comment from the blog:
"It’s a technical glitch. The interesting part of this is not that it happened, but rather, how those involved dealt with it.
People calling their banks to ask about this, got a lot of runaround from folks at those banks who either did not realize there was anything wrong with massive transactions, or who realized they were erroneous but otherwise did not address all the attendant issues (e.g. NSF fees, etc.).
Also, although the problem has been figured out, it’s not because anyone working for a bank or Visa actually disclosed what it had been. It was, instead, “reverse engineered” by geeks who uncovered the cause on their own. Official response has been evasive at best, e.g. in this story:
Bank of America tells WMUR-TV only the card issuer, Visa, could answer questions. Visa, in turn, referred questions to the bank.
As I said, the assorted dodging, swerving, evasiveness, and foot-dragging are interesting. What makes people so unwilling to deal with what is, in the end, a simple technical glitch?
Very revealing about human nature.
— PsiCop"I think we've found out what Palin is up to: turning into the black goo of death. Am I mean? Maybe a little.
Also, apparently closing down a few roads is actually beneficial to traffic congestion as a whole, since people cannot selfishly optimize their routes.
Comic courtesy of xkcd
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