Pub Choir is an Australia-based organization that gets large crowds singing popular tunes, in three-part harmony no less.
Everybody can sing. Like, not well, but literally. Why should being average at something stop you from doing it!? It hasn’t yet… Singing is good for you, it’s EASY, and Pub Choir is here to show you how.
With a show that is equal parts music, comedy, and beer, Pub Choir is a euphoric sensation that transforms a crowd of tipsy strangers into a legendary choir.
By the end of the show the YOU will be belting out a popular song in three-part harmony.
In the video above, they get a crowd of 1600 people signing Creep by Radiohead. Beautiful.
You can find more of their performances on their YouTube channel, including Tina Turner’s The Best, Africa by Toto, and Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty.
Hey kids! What sound does a woolly horse-sheep make?
The image above is what you get when you ask dalle-3 (via chatgpt) for some basic educational material: "Please generate an illustrated poster to help children learn which sounds common animals make. Each animal should be pictured with a speech bubble spelling out the animal's sound."
Here's another, generated with the same prompt:
There is so much not to like about how people are using image generators to rip off artists and replace their work with shoddy imitations. But I am enjoying these pockets of weirdness where I find them.
I enjoy asking DALLE-3 to label things. I learn so much!
Here I asked it to generate a labeled grid of flightless birds.
I think it's trying to do ostrich (a female apparently! unusual for a bird poster but I approve), an emu (definitely not an emu's head), a casowary (pretty good except for the TWO HEADS), penguin (with hilariously long legs), rhea (...what), and ...maybe a weka or a penguin?
Or this attempt:
As far as I can tell, it's the same group of attempted birds, with the possible addition of the dodo. In this set we have some birds with excellent head tufts, another two-headed cassowary, and one bird with creepy hands.
I also like this set. Some of them remind me of cats.
I asked ChatGPT (which was passing my requests to DALL-E3) what the unlabeled bird in the center was, and it replied that it was a penguin. I don't think it had any ability to label images it had generated, I think it just picked a likely answer based on what it knew the prompt had been.
DALL-E3's flightless birds aren't fit for purpose as scientific illustrations (or as much else, really), but I'd be lying if I said I didn't like them. I like the ones with big chunky fluffy legs, the shaggy ones, and the ones with head tufts especially. I wonder if this is what the Mesozoic was like.
Meet Karen Jacobsen, a voiceover artist from Queensland Australia, who has one of the most recognisable voices in the world. As the original voice of GPS, she’s helped billions of us to reach our destination. Back in 2002, she recorded more than 50 hours of audio for the first ever GPS voice system, including 168 versions of the word “approximately”. Has she told you where to go? Recalculating.
Jacobsen articulately and succinctly explains how the sound engineers created the GPS voice and why they chose an Australian speaker for its basis: "because the Australian accent was considered the most pleasant English speaking accent to listen to." Don't react negatively to that until you hear how the engineers proceeded to work with the raw material they accumulated.
The fascinating account of another super famous voice that billions of people have interacted with during the last dozen plus years is entertainingly told here:
With a strong personality and a sense of humor, Siri and the voice behind her, give the story of voice acting and how Susan Bennett became the original voice of Siri. Susan and her voice talent were suddenly a persona on devices worldwide, thrusting her into accidental fame. Susan tells of how Siri was created and how she dealt with the fear of living up to the expectations of Siri.
I know many people who rely on Siri for countless decisions they make and information they seek. They treat her as a real person and are truly grateful for her assistance. I can hear it in their voices and see it from their demeanor.
I do not know how to use Siri or GPS, but I marvel when other interact meaningfully and usefully with them.
New Secret Knots comic, called “In the House of You”. It’s been a while! This comic is made possible thanks to the kind support of Patreon subscribers.
Today is the 9th of February. Time is flying and yet it feels like I’ve been here for a very long time. In spite of the fact that we are surviving it doesn’t mean we are strong, it doesn’t mean we are ok, it doesn’t mean we are coping well. It just means that in order to remain alive we have to make do with what we have. We could never have survived this far without clinging on to the hope that things will end one day and that we are going to return back to our homes and that this time will pass and will become a memory like the many hard times the Palestinians have been through.
A lot of things have been happening with me, especially as I’ve been trying to leave for a while - it’s no secret anymore. In spite of all the love I carry for my home and my city I’m finding it very hard to stay. People are really suffering and we are hearing their stories every day. I just heard a friend of ours in Rafah was taken out of the rubble alive, so that was good news. I still have to cope with a very difficult living situation which is very hard for humans and animals and everyone.
One of the things that happened recently was the creation of family WhatsApp groups. Families from Gaza are spread out all over the world - like my own family; part of it is in Spain, part of it is in Saudi Arabia, part of it is in Libya, another part is in Norway, another part is in Sweden, another part in Canada - and the list goes on and on. We could have lost contact with each other by the time the next generation grows up but now due to this war we are all connected with each other and we ask about each other and they call us whenever they can. The support I’m receiving from friends is also incredible and has a strong impact on my own mental health and wellbeing and therefore it impacts everyone around me in a positive manner. I don’t want anyone to underestimate how powerful it is to provide a good word or whatever kind of support they can because people here need it.
I have recently realized that the children here miss going to school. One of the members of the host family is 15 years old and although the house is so busy, crowded and loud, she takes the time to read from her school books and she keeps trying to remember what the situation was like before and what school was like. She told me that she misses school, she likes to have some private time alone and this is her way of spending her private time.
These days I can see the impact of the deteriorating health situation showing up in the form of insects, diarrhea and fever. Although relatively we are in a better situation than others. People are still hoping for a truce or a ceasefire - they are looking forward to that. However in Rafah I have noticed that military operations increased before they said they would publicly. This happened in Gaza City too - the Israelis had already started the ground military operations about a week before announcing it publicly. The same thing happened in Khan Younis and from my observation the same thing is happening here. Everyone is saying they are coming to Rafah soon and people have already started to flee to the middle area of the Gaza Strip. I don’t know if we should flee there because I have a responsibility - I have my father, my pets and the luggage and my car is not working. The first time it was relatively easy because the car was working but now that it’s so hard to find fuel I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it.
I don’t have a lot more to say - I feel like I can’t add anymore, partly because I don’t have the energy and partly because I have some ongoing personal issues. Maybe I’ll share them once they’re over. But I’m alive and I’m ok. I just hope that this ends soon, like everyone here does. Let’s see where things will take us and I’ll keep you informed for the next few days.
“In a world that often glorifies punctuality and values every minute of our day, it may seem counterintuitive to emphasize the importance of being late. However, there are moments when tardiness can carry its own significance and lessons, reminding us that life’s pace isn’t always a sprint, but sometimes a leisurely stroll.” That is the thinking behind Brutto’s adorable new wall clock, aptly titled BE LATE. It features a mid-century inspired “face” that gives you one time, Twelve, and nothing else, embracing the vibes of being late. I really enjoy the color palette they’ve used here, it feels both fresh and timeless. I imagine I’m going to be seeing a lot of this clock pop up on TikTok.
The week before last, Katie shared with me that article from last month, Who killed Google Reader? I’d read it before so I didn’t bother clicking through again, but we did end up chatting about RSS a bit1.
Katie “abandoned feeds a few years ago” because they were “regularly ending up with 200+ unread items that felt overwhelming”.
Conversely: I think that dropping your feed reader because there’s too much to read is… solving the wrong problem.
I think that he, like Katie, might be looking at his reader in a different way than I do mine.
RSS is not email!
I’ve been in the position that Katie and David describe: of feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of unread items. And I know others have, too. So let me share something I’ve learned sooner:
There’s nothing special about reaching Inbox Zero in your feed reader.
It’s not noble nor enlightened to get to the bottom of your “unread” list.
Your 👏 feed 👏 reader 👏 is 👏 not 👏 an 👏 email 👏 client. 👏
The idea of Inbox Zero as applied to your email inbox is about productivity. Any message in your email might be something that requires urgent action, and you won’t know until you filter through and categorise .
But your RSS reader doesn’t (shouldn’t?) be there to add to your to-do list. Your RSS reader is a list of things you might like to read. In an ideal world, reaching “RSS Zero” would mean that you’ve seen everything on the Internet that you might enjoy. That’s not enlightened; that’s sad!
Use RSS for joy
My RSS reader is a place of joy, never of stress. I’ve tried to boil down the principles that makes it so, and here they are:
Zero is not the target. The numbers are to inspire about how much there is “out there” for you, not to enumerate how much work need have to do.
Group your feeds by importance. Your feed reader probably lets you group (folder, tag…) your feeds, so you can easily check-in on what you care about and leave other feeds for a rainy day.2 This is good.
Don’t read every article. Your feed reader gives you the convenience of keeping content in one place, but you’re not obligated to read every single one. If something doesn’t interest you, mark it as read and move on. No judgement.
Keep things for later. Something you want to read, but not now? Find a way to “save for later” to get it out of your main feed so you. Don’t have to scroll past it every day! Star it or tag it3 or push it to your link-saving or note-taking app. I use a link shortener which then feeds back into my feed reader into a “for later” group!
Let topical content expire. Have topical/time-dependent feeds (general news media, some social media etc.)? Have reader “purge” unread articles after a time. I have my subscription to BBC News headlines expire after 5 days: if I’ve taken that long to read a headline, it might as well disappear.4
Use your feed reader deliberately. You don’t need popup notifications (a new article’s probably already up to an hour stale by the time it hits your reader). We’re all already slaves to notifications! Visit your reader when it suits you. I start and end every day in mine; most days I hit it again a couple of other times. I don’t need a notification: there’s always new content. The reader keeps track of what I’ve not looked at.
It’s not just about text. Don’t limit your feed reader to just text. Podcasts are nothing more than RSS feeds with attached audio files; you can keep track in your reader if you like. Most video platforms let you subscribe to a feed of new videos on a channel or playlist basis, so you can e.g. get notified about YouTube channel updates without having to fight with The Algorithm. Features like XPath Scraping in FreshRSS let you subscribe to services that don’t even have feeds: to watch the listings of dogs on local shelter websites when you’re looking to adopt, for example.
Do your reading in your reader. Your reader respects your preferences: colour scheme, font size, article ordering, etc. It doesn’t nag you with newsletter signup popups, cookie notices, or ads. Make the most of that. Some RSS feeds try to disincentivise this by providing only summary content, but a good feed reader can work around this for you, fetching actual content in the background.5
Use offline time to catch up on your reading. Some of the best readers support offline mode. I find this fantastic when I’m on an aeroplane, because I can catch up on all of the interesting articles I’d not had time to yet while grounded, and my reading will get synchronised when I touch down and disable flight mode.
Make your reader work foryou. A feed reader is a tool that works for you. If it’s causing you pain, switch to a different tool6, or reconfigure the one you’ve got. And if the way you find joy from RSS is different from me, that’s fine: this is a personal tool, and we don’t have to have the same answer.
2 If your feed reader doesn’t support any kind of grouping, get a better reader.
3 If your feed reader doesn’t support any kind of marking/favouriting/tagging of articles, get a better reader.
4 If your feed reader doesn’t support customisable expiry times… well that’s not too unusual, but you might want to consider getting a better reader.
5 FreshRSS calls the feature that fetches actual post content from the resulting page “Article CSS selector on original website”, which is a bit of a mouthful, but you can see what it’s doing. If your feed reader doesn’t support fetching full content… well, it’s probably not that big a deal, but it’s a good nice-to-have if you’re shopping around for a reader, in my opinion.
6 There’s so much choice in feed readers, and migrating between them is (usually) very easy, so everybody can find the best choice for them. Feedly, Inoreader, and The Old Reader are popular, free, and easy-to-use if you’re looking to get started. I prefer a selfhosted tool so I use the amazing FreshRSS (having migrated from Tiny Tiny RSS). Here’s some more tips on getting started. You might prefer a desktop or mobile tool, or even something exotic: part of the beauty of RSS feeds is they’re open and interoperable, so if for example you love using Slack, you can use Slack to push feed updates to you and get almost all the features you need to do everything in my list, including grouping (using channels) and saving for later (using Slackbot/”remind me about this”). Slack’s a perfectly acceptable feed reader for some people!
In Paper Mario: The Origami King, it is possible for Mario to accidentally lock himself in a fridge forever.
If, during the investigation portion of Overlook Tower, Mario opens the doors of the fridge in the restaurant kitchen and jumps inside before the doors close, there will be no way for him to get back out as the door interaction prompt does not appear while Mario is inside.
Note Mario’s silhouette inside the fridge, attempting fruitlessly to escape. The only way to continue playing is to reset the game.
January 1st, 2024: The first comic of the new year! But it's not just a new comic, it's some NEW SITE UPDATES, including an on-site search engine! If you click "search" at the top you can try it out. Also, on January 1st there's going to be a new transcript button on the comic pages beneath the comic, so you've got that as an option too! This is all thanks to Jan Szejko who created a super cool transcript generator for Dinosaur Comics over the past while - and in so doing found a TON of little mistakes that had been lurking in the comics, sometimes for years. (Did you know I misspelled "Dromiceiomimus" a few times several years ago?? Well NOT ANYMORE!) So I want to sincerely (and publicly!) thank Jan for all their hard work here, and for the super slick code they produced. And the site is better because of them - thank you Janek! And have fun with the new search engine specifically for my talking dinosaur comic. :)
Sources: Time Magazine, Washington Post, New York Times, The Guardian, Esquire, NPR, The New Yorker, Harpers, Kirkus, GoodReads, Booker Prize, Book Riot, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Publisher’s Weekly, Oprah’s Book List, Chicago Public Library, New York Public Library, Vogue.
December 8th, 2023: This comic follows up from this one from last week - and thanks to Lee for letting me know about Parrotland! You can read more about the story here.
The New York Times put together an image of what life is like in Gaza right now: bombing, death, food and water shortage, and limited medical supplies. A 3-D basemap of the Gaza Strip sets the foundation of the story and layers of individual stories and overall destruction display on top.
Can everyone who reads this PLEASE reblog it?!?!? Libraries literally saved my life as a child!
Being abused at home, bullied at school and lost in the world, the library and all the books I could escape to the most amazing worlds, kept me alive!
I would walk to the library, and spend all day, from 10 am to 9 pm reading there!! I got special awards for how many books I read, I wrote little blurbs on why i loved the books (probably why I love to BETA and do ARCs)
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE Just hit the green arrows and the reblog!!!
As a 50 year old woman, the library offers me so much. Digital art pads to borrow, 3D printing, book clubs that are face to face (yeah, the introvert likes face to face because a moderator will stomp on anyone getting snarky)
New books in LARGE PRINT! I’m visually challenged and as much as I love my kindle, The feel of a real book in my hands will always be a beloved feeling!
Our library also has quarterly books sales of almost free books!! For 5$USD we get in a day early and can buy as many as we want. Anyone else has to wait and there is a limit for the first 2 days.
Also many, many libraries have inter library loan(it may be called something different). This means if they don’t have the item you want, they can get it for you. This may include photocopy/pdf of articles. This can also include along with books and DVDs, microfilm/fiche which is also a huge resource. Check around for libraries that are listed as depositories if you want to look at government documents.
Remember that many colleges and universities have open stacks for the public. You will likely have to pay a membership fee but you will get to stuff.
I love the library ☺
The library was one of my favorite places to go as a kid and I still live to go and just. Sit and read. Or do homework. The university I’m at has a massive 8-story one I love to just wonder around in~ Great places
Libraries are amazing places, we need to protect them to ensure their continued existence.
I used to wander about the fiction section in my local library, and choose books with the most interesting titles - I discovered two amazing authors that way
If you feel disconnected from your local community & want to find ways to get involved, seriously consider spending some time at the library. Go to some events! Organize a reading group!
Support your libraries!
Read banned books!
People who don’t learn can be more easily controlled and told what to think!
Echoing @mathcat345, if your school has banned a book, your library will likely have it. Read it. Fuck censorship.
Algorithms increasingly help make high-stakes decisions in healthcare, criminal justice, hiring, and other important areas. This makes it essential that these algorithms be fair, but recent years have shown the many ways algorithms can have biases by age, gender, nationality, race, and other attributes. This course will teach you ten practical principles for designing fair algorithms. It will emphasize real-world relevance via concrete takeaways from case studies of modern algorithms, including those in criminal justice, healthcare, and large language models like ChatGPT. You will come away with an understanding of the basic rules to follow when trying to design fair algorithms, and assess algorithms for fairness.
It’s geared for beginners and no coding is required.
Introducing NASA's new streaming service, NASA+ — https://nasa.gov/plus — launching November 8, 2023.
More space.
More rockets.
More science.
More missions.
More NASA.
All in one place.
No subscription needed.
NASA+ is ad-free, no cost, and family friendly.
It will feature NASA's Emmy award-winning live coverage and new original video series.
NASA+ will be available on most major platforms via the NASA App on iOS and Android mobile and tablet devices; streaming media players such as, Roku, Apple TV, and Fire TV; and on the web across desktop and mobile devices.