Burroughs of Charm

mensfashionworld: Jon Kortajarena by Marcelo Krasilcic for...

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:15:05 -0700

mensfashionworld:

Jon Kortajarena by Marcelo Krasilcic for Esquire Spain

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:11:31 -0700

Photo

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:44:46 -0700

theparisreview: “The impulse may ‘fall’ into the same family as...

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:31:37 -0700

theparisreview:

“The impulse may ‘fall’ into the same family as the one that drives us, as toddlers, to touch a hot stove. Driven by a basic instinct for discovery and, ironically, survival—a need to methodically taste-test the environment in which we are to go on living.”

Evan James on the impulse to fall.

Photography Credit Benjamin Schmuck.

glennhuyben: sunday document

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:32:59 -0700

glennhuyben:

sunday document

code.org

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:38:05 -0700

code.org

amajor7: confusedtree: Grown Woman - Beyoncé THIS IS SO...

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:16:00 -0700

amajor7:

confusedtree:

Grown Woman - Beyoncé

THIS IS SO IMPORTANT

paleoillustration: Titanis walleri, The American terrorbird...

Sun, 19 May 2013 23:16:41 -0700

paleoillustration:

Titanis walleri, The American terrorbird by Tuomas Koivurinne

i need a break

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:57:29 -0700

i need a break

theparisreview: Stills from Erró’s Mecamorphosis.

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:01:38 -0700

theparisreview:

Stills from Erró’s Mecamorphosis.

Cheetah Robot is a fast-running quadruped developed by Boston...

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:18:01 -0700

Cheetah Robot is a fast-running quadruped developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from DARPA. It just blazed past its previous speed record, getting up to 28.3 mph, about 0.5 mph faster than Usain Bolt’s fastest 20 meter split.

alexob: For a book on AI (Artificial Intelligence) ‘A working...

Wed, 15 May 2013 11:00:52 -0700

alexob:

For a book on AI (Artificial Intelligence) ‘A working theory of love’ sure has a lot of sex in it. The story is about Neil Bassett, a troubled soul, who is trying to reincarnate his dead father (Dr. Bassett) in a talking computer. Neil is in his late thirties, a divorcé, geeky, slightly depressed and just a bit confused at times. He has also three women yearning for his attention (one of them is his ex-wife), which is why he ends up with a garbled love life that leads him right into the inner circles of a bizarre sex cult.

AWTOL is the successful combination of real science and fictional narrative. Beautifully written with passages that are like poetry, this is an intelligent and compelling read. I highly recommend it.

You can read the first few pages here.

Below is my interview with the author, Scott Hutchins.

alexob: What inspired the idea for this story?

Hutchins: It began very observationally—me creating a repository for the daily bits of life in San Francisco. Then to do San Francisco, I had to bring in Silicon Valley. Pretty soon I had a story of a man living a dismissible life in San Francisco while trying to create the world’s first intelligent computer using his dead father’s diaries. The very philosophical questions—What is a human? What does it mean to think?—were enormously interesting to me. They allowed me access to a deeper level of inquiry in a book that has a fair amount of comedy of manners.

alexob: Without giving it away: what was the most challenging part of the book to write?

Hutchins: The conversations between the computer—aka Dr. Bassett—and the narrator, Neill Bassett Jr. I kept telling myself, “This is ludicrous. No one is going to accept this.” So I worked and I worked. I researched, I read. I experimented. Ultimately, those conversations are what many people love the most.

alexob: If you had a time machine what would you do with it?

Hutchins: I would probably travel into the immediate past. I’d love to know my parents as contemporaries, for instance. And I might range further in the past—meet Pascal. But as for the future, I’d rather speculate from my privileged place of ignorance. I don’t want to travel to a world where everyone I know is dead. Of course, I could go far ahead and come back, but I’ve read my H. G. Wells. I know things don’t turn out so well.

agi-open-london: Yusaku Kamekura — Design Vol. 2, magazine...

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:25:37 -0700

agi-open-london:

Yusaku Kamekura — Design Vol. 2, magazine cover (1960)

theparisreview: A look at the chained library of Zutphen, one...

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:24:27 -0700

theparisreview:

A look at the chained library of Zutphen, one of three such libraries still in existence in Europe.

clockworklychee: Saskia de Brauw in Yohji YamamotoPaolo...

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:24:00 -0700

clockworklychee:

Saskia de Brauw in Yohji Yamamoto
Paolo Roversi for Interview May 2013

burroughsofcharm: that really great feeling you get when you’re looking at childhood photos and...

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:43:31 -0700

burroughsofcharm:

that really great feeling you get when you’re looking at childhood photos and you’re always about to cry and your foremost thought is, “What happened?”

more than anything i just feel like i’ve let my (younger)self down

when i was younger and alone at home i would open all the windows, turn up the radios, cd players,...

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:51:00 -0700

when i was younger and alone at home i would open all the windows, turn up the radios, cd players, tv and computers until they were all blasting at full volume then lay in bed perfectly still until i fell asleep

mpdrolet: From The North Country Henrik Knudsen

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:17:24 -0700

mpdrolet:

From The North Country

Henrik Knudsen

that really great feeling you get when you’re looking at childhood photos and you’re...

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:18:00 -0700

that really great feeling you get when you’re looking at childhood photos and you’re always about to cry and your foremost thought is, “What happened?”

jtotheizzoe: Oh, and one more treat to celebrate the end of the...

Sun, 12 May 2013 19:28:52 -0700

jtotheizzoe:

Oh, and one more treat to celebrate the end of the Cmdr. Hadfield era on the ISS as he readies for his return tomorrow.

Here he is singing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, in space.

Your head now has permission to explode.