rønin

"The PlayStation 4 can stream any of its games live. Streaming a video game is like having someone watch over your shoulder as you play: both streamer and viewer are absorbed by the same rendered, imagined, computerized world. But streaming The Playroom is showing the internet your real world. It's not an invented universe you're displaying in 720p for others to watch: that's your couch and coffee table, and those are your family members. These stars have played with The Playroom's white robots, but they've also done stranger, darker things. They've put shoes on their head at the exhortation of others watching their broadcast live. They've had sex in front of their TV screen. They've stripped their wife naked as she lay seemingly unconscious on a couch. They've had to explain to a local police department that they didn't have a child locked up in their basement after viewers called to tip the cops off to the suspected crime." - rønin

I've seen some strange shit on there. - Rodfather

Huh, wasn't expecting this. "A Montana homeowner was sentenced Thursday to 70 years in prison, with no parole for at least 20 years, in the shotgun killing of a German exchange student who was trespassing in his garage." - rønin

"Summer Bellesa is a 34-year-old mom (slash actress, slash fashion blogger, slash art director) who decided that, after three years of dressing her oldest boy Rockwell (Sam or Norman?), she would give him the opportunity to dress her for a week. "I thought it would be fun to turn the tables and let him pick my outfits out for a few days." she wrote on Babble.com. "How crazy could it be?" Turns out, not too crazy. She ended up looking like every other adult in a state of arrested development who dresses like a child." - rønin

Send it my way, I'm operating on a constant sleep deficit. - Big Joe Silenced

Same, yesterday was an anomaly for me. I usually pull in 5-6 hours a night. Could explain why I feel amazingly awake today. =p - rønin

"Cecilia Westbrook, a scientist, has always wondered whether yogurt could be produced from the natural flora that populates the vagina. So she decided to try to make some. I'm going to leave the "how" to your imagination, but when I spoke to Westbrook on the phone today, she told me it involved a spoon and agreed that the whole ordeal was "uncomfortable." She tasted the yogurt and then told her friend Janet Jay about it, who then wrote a very visceral piece about the concoction for Motherboard." - rønin

"For what it's worth, Westbrook said her second batch tasted even more tart, like slightly-spoiled milk—proof that sadly, eating yogurt made from vaginal secretions isn't quite the same as eating actual pussy." - Big Joe Silenced

"There's no proof that the book caused the surge, but we probably can thank Fifty Shades of Grey, which featured bondage and other sex practices, for at least some of this phenomenon. The book, which has been read by tens of millions of people, and upcoming movie have been a boon to the sex toy industry. At Target, you can buy any number of 50 Shades-themed movie tie-ins. Market research firm IBIS World estimates that adult toys were a $608 million business in 2013, and credits the erotic novels with driving much of the industry's 7.5 percent year-over-year growth." - rønin

"These fascinating pictures show how engineers in 1960s California secretly developed the SR-71 Blackbird for the US Air Force – a plane which still holds the record for being the fastest ever aircraft." - rønin

Skunk Works! *REDACTED ANECDOTE* - Big Joe Silenced

More amazing is where much of the titanium for the SR-71 was sourced: the Soviet Union. - Jonathan Disher

"Chairman Mao Zedong, who hailed from spice-loving Hunan province, once said, "You can't be a revolutionary if you don't eat chilies." The Hunanese food writer Liu Guochu says Mao loved spice so much he sprinkled ground chilies on slices of watermelon." - rønin

In my neighborhood, at the streets carts for $1 - 2, you can get a cup of mango, watermelon, jicama and papaya topped with lemon juice and pico (chile, lime, salt) mix. - Anika

"This Japanese house designed by the brilliant architects at Mizuishi Architects Atelier fits a family of three in a 594-square-foot home on an abnormally shaped property. According to a study reported by the Guardian, quirky homes like these are more common in Japan because homeowners and architects can afford to build homes that may fade out of style. Homes are built more for style than longevity because of the frequency of earthquakes. Building codes get updated nearly every ten years and, as it stands right now, it is actually cheaper for many families to rebuild than to restructure. Most homes in Japan depreciate in value rapidly, and to make their home investments worth it, Japanese homeowners will destroy their house and build a brand new one to gain profit. This calls for a huge demand for more modern and innovative homes." - rønin

LMAO. "Described as “A young woman’s erotic awakening at the proportionally tiny hands of a megalomaniacal supervillain, as told to @kitblonde,” the new blog is pretty much as advertised, with Anastasia Steele encountering not Christian Grey, the young business magnate with a taste for BDSM, but instead MODOK, the classic Marvel villain with an enormous head and matching ego, and apparent volume-control issues." - rønin

Not in my book. - Starmama

We once kept our Christmas tree up until July so you're just fine. :-) - That's So CAJ!

"To give your lover the thrill of a lifetime, head over to DQ's website, where they're selling the spoon for $4.99 (plus shipping!) To really underline the thoughtfulness of this gift, each spoon comes "lovingly encased in beautiful red velvet fabric...resting on a white, satiny pillow" inside a "keepsake jewelry box." They won't know it's not an expensive necklace until the very last second! Score!" - rønin

so much unexpected reconstructive dental work coming post-Valentine's day this year. and bills for brass knuckles. - Big Joe Silenced

It should at least come with a coupon for something to eat with that spoon. - April Russo (FForever!)

Canon's getting out of hand w/their new lens prices. But this is a pretty chunky lens even w/out being f/2.8. - rønin

Yeah - for the price difference between Canon's 200-400 and Nikon's 200-400 you can get a free Nikon 810! Maybe even a 4-whatever. - Brian Johns

https://twitter.com/stevenf... - rønin

how far you think he got down the road before he noticed? - Steve C, Team Marina

Probably noticed the nightclub flyer under the windshield wiper first. - Corinne L

Based on the Twitter website, apparently I RT'd that a while ago.That said, the interface seems to have let me un-RT it then re-RT it. Who knew? - COMPLICATED MR. NOODLE

"The brilliant green sea slug Elysia chloroctica doesn't just look like the leaf of a plant: It functions like one, too. When it's supper time, the slug uses chloroplasts taken from local algae to photosynthesize for itself. That's not news: Scientists have known about the chloroplast theft since the 1970s. But it turns out that the slug takes more than just the sunlight-processing chloroplasts. It also steals the algae genes it needs to maintain those food-factories long after the crime is committed." - rønin

"Brennen McKenzie, a veterinarian blogger and past president of the Evidence-Based Veterinary Medicine Association, says that he has seen an uptick in pet owners seeking to skip vaccinations for their pets against distemper and other ailments, such as parvovirus, a potentially lethal disease in dogs that can cause symptoms such as vomiting and lethargy. McKenzie says that he is also aware of cat owners who have become wary of vaccines. “I would say, from a subjective personal point of view, that often issues in veterinary medicine spill over from human medicine, and over the last 10 or 15 years there has been an increase in mostly unfounded concerns about vaccine safety for people — and that, I think, has raised people’s awareness and level of concern about vaccinations for their pets,” he explains." - rønin

"At least 15 million feral felines wander the continent, chomping down on up to 75 million native Aussie animals every day. The cats have been called the biggest threat facing Australia’s wildlife and have already been linked to as many as 30 extinctions. Previous attempts to trap and kill cats haven’t been very effective, but now a new solution is on the horizon. It’s called Eradicat—a combination of kangaroo mince, chicken fat, and a deadly poison called 1080, which has proven successful in other attempts to remove invasive species such as rats and mice. The Western Australian Department of Parks and Wildlife spent the past decade developing Eradicat to make it appeal to finicky feline palates. Under trial conditions, it managed to kill between 70 percent and 80 percent of the cats that consumed it. Representatives for the parks department did not return requests for comment. The 1080 poison, also known as sodium fluoroacetate, is being hailed as a good solution for the state of Western Australia because it is made from plants that grow in the region." - rønin

Fascinating. "The thing about the blood that everyone notices first: It's blue, baby blue. The marvelous thing about horseshoe crab blood, though, isn't the color. It's a chemical found only in the amoebocytes of its blood cells that can detect mere traces of bacterial presence and trap them in inescapable clots." - rønin

"Footage of the plane apparently filmed from inside passing cars showed it banking sharply, hitting a taxi and clipping the bridge before crashing into the river." - rønin

:( - Jenny H.

It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the "can't reuse previous 5 passwords" restriction. - rønin

Lastpass.. best tool.. $12 for the year... seriously! Especially for GoDaddy. - CW

Yeah I have 1Password which works well. I just wish unlocking your acct wasn't tied to changing your pwd. - rønin

"The United States government has taken a new, though preliminary, step to encourage commercial development of the moon. According to documents obtained by Reuters, U.S. companies can stake claims to lunar territory through an existing licensing process for space launches. The Federal Aviation Administration, in a previously undisclosed late-December letter to Bigelow Aerospace, said the agency intends to “leverage the FAA’s existing launch licensing authority to encourage private sector investments in space systems by ensuring that commercial activities can be conducted on a non-interference basis.”" - rønin

The Warthog remains my fav military plane to date. "This has been a classic week in the defense procurement industry. The armed services are trying to boost their worst aircraft, the totally worthless F-35, by trashing their best, the simple, effective, proven A-10 Warthog." - rønin

"How many American consumers are looking to purchase a new long-range stealth super-bomber? None. So why would Northrop Grumman spend big bucks on producing such a glitzy ad and pay to have it run in Washington DC and Dayton, Ohio during the Super Bowl? Defense contractors have learned a thing or two from Steve Jobs." - rønin

That's cool. I want my own hovercraft. =) - rønin

I'm sure there's a lot of Naturalist Nancys in Santa Cruz - Rodfather

"Polaroid goes for cute and comes up cubed with its unique new action camera, now in stock at B&H. The Cube Mini Lifestyle Action Camera is a magnetized 35mm cube (that's 1.4" to we imperial folk) that features a wide 124-degree FOV lens, records Full HD 1080p video, and is built into a splash- and shock-resistant body. In these respects, it’s a pretty standard action camera. What sets it apart is its novel mounting concept. Being magnetic—and cube-shaped—you can attach it directly to flat surfaces that are made of ferrous metals, for example, on top of a putter (A driver? Not so much). Thanks to perfect symmetry, you can even lock multiple cameras together, forming an aggregated block of cameras. Why? Perhaps you’d like to stitch together a single, high-resolution image, or to have different cameras covering different angles." - rønin

Better be some powerful as heck magnets cause I can see people losing these left and right if not. - rønin