Category Archives: Blog

The headline says it all, folks. 

Twitter user @Apex_sH posted a video of his niece’s stunning powers on Tuesday. The girl has the absolutely incredible ability to sic her pet bird on whoever she screams at. 

In the video, she stands on a bed while her bird perches on the bed frame. Then, she turns to face the camera and lets out an unholy shriek. Without any hesitation, her bird launches itself at the poor soul recording the video. 

Here’s a screenshot of that unbridled rage.

More about Twitter, Viral Videos, Birds, Culture, and Web Culture

Anticipating her family’s inevitable questions, Mary Beth Barone prepared an informational pamphlet before going on a date.

“They are a CURIOUS bunch,” she told Mashable through Twitter DM.

Barone, who’s a comedian based in New York, attended a wedding in North Carolina last year and hit it off with another guest, who was from Miami. Barone happened to have a family vacation planned about an hour from Miami a few weeks later, and wanted to sneak away from her family for the date. But there was a flaw in her plan — as the youngest of five siblings traveling with 20 to 30 extended family members, it would be difficult for her to leave without a decent excuse. Barone said she had three options in order to successfully sneak away with the family’s rental car: lie, try to hide it, or over communicate.  Read more…

More about Twitter, Dating, Culture, and Web Culture

In 2000, at the back of my high school physics classroom, there was a computer with access to the internet, and for me, a whole new network of friends.

I was one of the very few people who had access to the password and knew how to navigate a little program we called “America Online.” Sure, plenty of my fellow students knew how to set up a personal AIM account. But I was the only one who actually knew how to use a search engine (thank you, Yahoo! and WebCrawler) to explore a kewl new phenomenon: viral videos.

It was these profoundly useless, morbidly stupid videos — of babies getting attacked by cats, of people getting hit (gently) by motorbikes — that brought me out of isolation and helped me discover community. Read more…

More about Culture, Bullying, Viral Videos, High School, and Culture

Waymo One now lets you stream music through screens in its self-driving cars. 

Those tunes are provided by Google Play Music, the Spotify competitor that offers millions of songs for $9.99 a month. It’s perfect corporate synergy: Waymo and Google have the same parent company, Alphabet. 

Currently, the self-driving taxi service is only offered in the Phoenix area. One of those users posted about their experience on Reddit, saying they had eight different playlist options and a Google-esque “I’m feeling lucky” button to play a random assortment of songs. They did feel lucky, and ended up with 25 minutes of Lorde, Vampire Weekend, The Black Keys, and other artists.  Read more…

More about Streaming Music, Self Driving Cars, Google Play Music, Waymo, and Tech

When the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why debuted in 2017, suicide prevention experts worried that the show’s graphic depiction of suicide might make some vulnerable viewers more prone to increased suicidal thinking and behavior. 

A new study of the suicide rate following the show’s debut suggests those concerns were more than justified. Researchers found that, among adolescents and teens, 195 additional suicides occurred in the nine months after Netflix released the first season of 13 Reasons Why. 

While the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, couldn’t establish a causal link between the show and the increase, the researchers used approaches that helped them account for various factors that could affect the suicide rate. That included forecasting models to estimate suicide trends, controlling for seasonal variations in the suicide rate, and comparing the suicide and homicide rates, the latter of which is also influenced by social and environmental events.  Read more…

More about Science, Netflix, Suicide, Suicide Prevention, and 13 Reasons Why

You’ve never seen a rom-com like this.

Sure, Top End Wedding treats you to the stereotypical elements of the genre: going home, family drama, car trouble, a right-at-the-gate airport scene, and one hell of a bridesmaids troupe.  

But it’s not set in Love Actually’s London, You’ve Got Mail‘s New York, or My Best Friend’s Wedding‘s Chicago. It’s set in Australia’s Northern Territory.

Co-written by Larrakia actor Miranda Tapsell and Joshua Tyler, and directed by The Sapphires‘ maestro Wayne Blair, Top End Wedding follows assiduous Sydney lawyer Lauren (Tapsell) whose engagement to Ned (Gwilym Lee) takes them all the way home to the Territory to see her parents.  Read more…

More about Australia, Interviews, Romantic Comedy, Rom Com, and Top End Wedding

Instagram is fighting back against online bullying, one comment at a time.

At its annual F8 developer conference on Tuesday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri discussed how the company plans to tackle safety and well-being in the  future. Mosseri outlined a wide array of new features currently being tested on the app — emphasizing that Instagram is putting a strong focus on anti-bullying measures.

One of the more interesting anti-bullying measures that Instagram is experimenting with aims to stop harassment before it even starts.

In some test cases, if the platform notices a user is about to leave a negative comment, the app will “nudge” that user, giving them a warning before they’re able to post.  Read more…

More about Facebook, Instagram, Bullying, Facebook F8, and Facebook F8 2019

Game of Thrones‘ “The Longest Night” is still buzzing days after its premiere — not only due to its questionable battle strategies and one shocking death, but because many fans were barely able to see the episode.

Season 8, episode 3 was one of the show’s literal darkest episodes, one which had us squinting into the darkness, much like the soldiers at Winterfell and with a similar success rate (R.I.P. Dothraki screamers). Cinematographer Fabian Wagner has a simple, non-technical explanation.

“A lot of the problem is that a lot of people don’t know how to tune their TVs properly,” he told Wired. “A lot of people also unfortunately watch it on small iPads, which in no way can do justice to a show like that anyway.” Read more…

More about Entertainment, Television, Hbo, Game Of Thrones, and Entertainment

A cloud server operated by Microsoft has been leaking the personal data of 80 million U.S. households including people’s full names, physical addresses, and dates of birth.

A pair of Israeli security researchers say they discovered the unprotected database while working on a web mapping project with VPN review site vpnMentor. In addition to names and addresses, the 24GB database also stored coded information on people’s gender, marital status, income levels, and whether they’ve been a homeowner.

Who owns the data on the server isn’t known. However, the mysterious party decided to itemize all the information by household, instead of individuals. Each record was also accompanied by a “member_code” and “score” entry. Read more…

More about Servers, Server Problems, Tech, and Cybersecurity

Most awkward Zuck moments revolve around the CEO’s inability to exhibit human emotion. This one comes with a serving of insult, added to injury.

Mark Zuckerberg opened Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference on Tuesday with a manifesto-ish address about how the future of Facebook is focused on privacy. 

Through encrypting messaging, focusing on ephemerality, and other measures, the company that invented putting your life online says it is fundamentally changing the company to ensure that its users’ private lives, opinions, and interactions stay private. Read more…

More about Facebook, Privacy, Facebook F8 2019, Tech, and Cybersecurity