In a Twitter inspired story, CNN asks, “is it cruel to kick a robot dog?” In what has become a become a regular demo by Boston Dynamics, engineers kicked the Spot the Robot Dog in order to push it off-balance and watch it stabilize itself. This time (and probably every time as well) number of […]
On June 30, 1963, comedic actor Don Knotts shot himself in the head with a .38 caliber revolver during the live airing of The Ed Sullivan Show. Ironically, at the conclusion of the opening monologue, Sullivan remarked, “I’m really excited about tonight’s show. I think everyone is going to be talking about it around the […]
Scene: An airplane, with its engines engulfed in flames, is plummeting towards a hospital. New Hero: Shit. What do I do? There’re so many people are going to die. What do I do? What do I do? Calm down. “Just think about saving one person,†that’s what he said right? Okay, I can do this. […]
Via Slate: According to Lance Gharavi, an associate professor of theater at Arizona State University, the question of free will rapidly resolves into a problem of desire. Steering the conversation into philosophical terrain, he observed that we can’t even say definitely whether humans have free will. But, he continued, if a robot has desires, even […]
Quartz recently reported that “Millions of Facebook users have no idea they’re using the [I]nternet”. Specifically, in southeast Asia and Africa, there are more self-identified “Facebook users” than there are “Internet users.” Most of the Internet basically just said “Ha! Ha! Look at those stupid people!”, but that misses what’s really going — and explained […]
The Gaurdian: With growing inequality and the civil unrest from Ferguson and the Occupy protests fresh in people’s mind, the world’s super rich are already preparing for the consequences. At a packed session in Davos, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. “I know hedge […]
Back in 1978, a box of newsreels were found in the Yukon. Only recently though, was a newsreel of the infamous Black Sox 1919 World Series discovered in the collection. It’s a great find, and as Deadspin points out, it shows the infamous 5 run inning that made it obvious everyone that the White Sox […]
Premier Health Plans, a a health insurance broker, employs a rather elaborate chat bot to collect a customer’s basic information and interests before sending the potential customer to a real person to close the deal. It’s really a clever chat bot, but the odd thing about it is that it insists that it’s a real […]
Fuck. That. Shit. The Senate violated their own rules on renaming structures after living people, so they could name it after a politician that did nothing for the bridge, instead of naming it after the man who first proposed he bridge.
I present to you, the 1991 Clio Awards. Attendees who had paid the $125 admission price did not have tickets waiting at the door, as promised. Also missing were any Clio officials and Clio President Bill Evans. The event did not start on time; in fact, people stood around drinking, schmoozing, and trading rumors about […]