all the world's a stage...

chronicillnesscat:

[Image: 6-piece blue colored background with a Siamese cat with blue eyes. Text reads: “Top text:Socialize with friends for a few hours Bottom text: In bed in agonizing pain for three days”]

urgh… gpoy

wilwheaton:

It only takes 20 minutes for the NYT to shift the blame. 

After allowing them onto the bridge, police cut off and arrested dozens of Occupy Wall Street protesters.

became

In a tense showdown over the East River, police arrested hundreds of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators after they marched onto the bridge’s Brooklyn=bound roadway.

Don’t let this simply vanish, people. Don’t let them get away with this. Force the NYT to own this, and accept responsibility for lying to their readers, to protect the 1%.

They’re terrified of us.

They know that we’re coming for them.

This is only the beginning.

(image via Reddit. Quote via Daily Kos)

I get the impression that the police have been too heavy handed. That perception persists. In my opinion the police shouldn’t be arresting the protesters. They should be joining them.

futurejournalismproject:

Bjork’s upcoming Biophilia is being touted as an “album app” that will contain periodically released, dedicated apps for each song. 

In an interview with Evolver.fm, apps creator Scott Snibbe explains that the forward thinking innovation is actually a throwback to the days of vinyl. 

[I]n some reviews of [the first two tracks released in] Biophilia, people said, “Wow, I haven’t had this experience in 20 years. Before CDs came out, I’d buy an album and hold the 12-inch cover in my hand, sitting cross-legged on the floor while I listened to the music, read the liner notes, and looked at the pictures.” People used to have this very tactile, multimedia experience when they bought an album.

But with the digitization of music, we’ve lost that special moment. You can think of the app as, finally, that chance to unwrap the box and have a personal, intimate experience again with music. It might be the case that people spend a lot of time with the app when it first comes out [as they did with album covers] and then perhaps they’ll move on to purely enjoying the music after that. But we’ll really have to wait and see.

Publishers take note: replace music and vinyl with news and print, and the music industry Bjork might be teaching us something.

Image: art from the “Virus” song app.

Innovation is not dead. Hurrah!

(via fastcompany)

And tonight Sunday 18th July is Penn & Teller’s last show at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, UK. I’m reading over what I’ve written about them and reminiscing. If the opening night was anything to go by, it’s been an brilliant run. I hope they’ll be back soon because they are amazing to watch. Follow Penn (@PennJillette) and his partner Teller (@MrTeller) on Twitter for updates. Their stage personas do seem to carry over to Twitter and Penn does seem to be the more extrovert and vocal of the two - so follow @PennJillette if nothing else :)

fromthepit:

A reminder of Penn & Teller’s [ @PennJillette & @MrTeller ] amazing show that I saw on Wednesday 14th July at the Hammersmith Apollo. Penn & Teller are a perfect fusion of amazing magic and comedy double act: they are perfect in their roles with Penn as the funny-man and Teller as the straight-man.

The night begins with Teller standing with a box over his head. Penn speaks to a volunteer invited onto the stage about her glasses. He asks for them and puts them into the breast pocket of his jacket. They discuss how important glasses are to those of us who need them. Penn goes over to Teller and introduces him. Going back to where they were, Penn proceeds strike repeatedly the pocket in which he’d previously put the woman’s glasses… but they’re not there anymore. Going over to Teller and breaking the box apart reveals Teller wearing her glasses. They are returned to her and she confirms that they are indeed hers.

That opening trick was looked a simple one but it was still more than enough evidence that the show was very much worth the cost of admission. 

Some other memorable parts were Penn’s nail-gun “memory” trick and the fire swallowing at the end. Teller appears to be right in his idea that people pay better attention if he stays silent because I seem to remember his tricks better. For me, some particularly memorable Teller tricks were the needle swallowing, the shadow-flower cutting and one where he turns water into coins that are then turned into goldfish.

My only disappointment was that they didn’t do their famous Magic Bullet trick! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T581uwoOYho : Has that trick been banned or something?

Penn & Teller was the first magic show that I’ve ever been to see - and I still need to see Derren Brown - but the first magician anywhere that I became aware of was Paul Daniels who used to appear on BBC 1 quite regularly when I was little. I’ve always found magic interesting- at first because it was so interesting to watch but then as I got older also because I loved trying to work out how the tricks were done.

Meeting Penn Jillette and Teller after the show confirms that they are both really nice friendly guys. They went outside after the show to meet the audience, sign things and have photos taken- staying even when a light shower started. I found a laminated pass on the ground and went to Penn (the remaining hoard of people from our audience was moving onto Teller now!) to attempt to return it in case it was important and belonged to either them or their crew.

Mr. Jillette kindly let me keep it. I even got an indirect mention on Twitter :P

• http://twitter.com/pennjillette/status/18558658942
• http://twitter.com/pennjillette/status/18559815935

Yay, another souvenir- in addition to the t-shirt and programme that I’d bought. :)

(via clientsfromhell)