10 Zen Monkeys

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Oakland’s Last Home Game Ever – Scenes from the Coliseum
Sep 27, 2024 · original
46,800 people attended today's game. It's the last game the Oakland A's will ever play at the Coliseum — before the team moves to Sacramento for three years, and then on to Las Vegas. On the train to the stadium, everyone was wearing an A's shirt. And soon the guy sitting next to me was telling old-timer stories... He remembered 1973, when he was seven years old, and his dad took him to Game 7 of the World Series . His father had told him and his brother not to run onto the field if the A's won — but they'd disobeyed, and didn't come back for two hours. His brother stole a handful of grass from the field — he was going to plant it in the family's backyard... "It was Willie Mays' last game," he says — Mays was playing for the New York Mets. And the Oakland A's won, 5-2... In line for today's game, I talked to a younger fan with a yellow plastic horn. He still remembered the infamous Cespe
When a Newspaper Publishes an Unsolvable Puzzle
Dec 8, 2021 · original
Sudoku puzzles have only one solution. And then directly above an easy-level Sudoku puzzle my local newspaper also published another grid-like math puzzle. "Try to beat today's challenge time..." the instructions begin. "The Challenger," they call it..... But I'm here to tell you this puzzle has no unique solution. (And how I wasted two hours of my life figuring that out...) Here's what happened: They left out a line of the instructions! While the challenge is relatively simple — which numbers will add up to the given totals? — when the puzzle is syndicated newspapers are supposed to warn readers that there's multiple solutions, and that unlike Sudoku, there's not only one unique solution, but multiple ones. If you're thinking "This could be a 9 or an 8...." — you're right! Everyone's a winner today! Just start scribbling in numbers! And you'd be a fool to try to keep narrowing them down
Kamala Harris on Juneteenth
Jun 18, 2021 · original
Today as president Joe Biden signed the law making Juneteenth a federal holiday, vice president Kamala Harris delivered her own introductory remarks . Visibly choked with emotion, she succinctly summed up the moment's significance. Throughout history, Juneteenth has been known by many names: Jubilee Day, Freedom Day, Liberation Day, Emancipation Day — and today, a national holiday. [Loud applause] And looking out across this room, I see the advocates, the activists, the leaders who have been calling for this day for so long, including the one and only, Ms. Opal Lee. [Applause. The 94-year-old woman is surprised when Joe Biden walks over and bends down on one knee to shake her hand.] Who just received a very special recognition from the president of the United States! And I see members of Congress, members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Members of the United States Senate who passed t
What’s Behind The Coronavirus Lab Origin Hoax?
Apr 10, 2020 · original
"One way we still win this election is by turning it into a referendum on China," one Trump campaign advisor bluntly admitted this week to the Los Angeles Times . That's why Trump keeps calling it "the China virus." (He actually crossed out "coronavirus" in one speech and wrote in "China virus" in its place.) It's why he's created a 60-second montage of clips about China which CNN says "takes Biden remarks grossly out of context to twist their meaning." Latest Trump ad features a montage of Biden meeting with Chinese officials. Amid that montage at the :39 mark: a clip of him with Gary Locke, the former governor of Washington/Commerce secretary/ambassador to China, who is Asian-American, but... American https://t.co/za1pd3VYCo pic.twitter.com/iG4lTu5xap — Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) April 9, 2020 But it's also why hard-right Republicans keep pushing a discredited conspiracy theory
The Great ‘Captain Marvel’ Soundtrack Scam
Feb 26, 2019 · original
A funny thing happened when I searched Amazon for the soundtrack to Marvel's upcoming superhero blockbuster, Captain Marvel . The first match is, of course, " Captain Marvel Soundtrack " -- but it's by someone named Roguey, selling a 28-second song with the title "Captain Marvel Soundtrack." And that 28-second song is also the only song on a one-song album -- which Roguey has also named "Captain Marvel Soundtrack." It has 0 reviews, but Roguey's received three disparaging reviews for his other offerings in Amazon's digital music store. ("Too short, only 30 seconds. WTF...") In fact, his entire "recording" career seems to span 10 weeks in the summer of 2018, releasing 53 songs -- all of which are 28 seconds long . Most of them have titles that look like popular songs from popular movies -- for example, " Waterloo (From Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again Soundtrack) " -- but the songs themselves
Amazon’s Secret Bad Erotic Video Auteur
Jul 11, 2017 · original
It all started in a desert. In a vast landscape with weird buttes and ancient Indian petroglyphs, a friend described a strange film-maker (and local legend) with his own weird story about selling videos on Amazon.com. Will Chase is a deejay, an artist, a Burning Man devotee and a former schoolteacher with a DUI. And yet somehow he found himself filming a surreal series of intentionally meaningless videos called "Bikini Hot Tub Girls." It's not what you think... The madness first began on a long night in 2012, when two "no-budget" Boise filmmakers discussed the difficulties of getting their films distributed. "Jokingly we said that we should just do pornography and make lots of cash!" Chase told me sadly. "But we should do really bad porn. The world's worst porn..." Remembering that night, years later, Chase said simply "A seed had been planted in my head..." But the final push came that
Mark Zuckerberg Is A Hypocrite
Nov 22, 2016 · original
"We take misinformation seriously," Facebook's CEO posted Saturday . Right next to two very obvious pieces of misinformation... Note the lying advertisers to the right of his status update? (No, Hugh Hefner isn't dead, and no, Tiger Woods hasn't left the PGA forever.) Those ads don't even lead to news stories. The first one leads to a site selling cures for erectile dysfunction, and the second leads to a site selling testosterone booster. But there's something even worse about these two advertisers. Both of their web sites are designed to look like actual news sites. Clicking on the "HUGE HEFF ENDS HIS LIFE" link, for example, leads to this. That story also isn't true. (It doesn't even match the headline on the ad...) But more importantly, that web site isn't Fox News . It's a quick knock-off that's intentionally designed to con people who don't notice that it's got an entirely different
Dell Computers Has Been Hacked
Jan 4, 2016 · original
Image inspired by the Cyrus Borg_A minifig Scammers pretending to be from Dell computers phoned me in November — but these scammers knew things about me. They identified the model number for both my Dell computers, and knew every problem that I'd ever called Dell about. None of this information was ever posted online, so it's not available anywhere except Dell's own customer service records. (Even my e-mail account is secured with "two-step verification"...) I called the (real) Dell, and spoke to a customer support representative named Mark, who tried to explain how the scammers knew my account history. "Dell has detected hackers," he said. "They're hacking our web site." I'm not sure I believe him. (Another theory is that scammers are simply getting hired by Dell, and then supplementing their hourly wage by trying to con Dell's customers out of hundreds of dollars more...) But one thing
The Night Larry Wall Unveiled Perl 6
Oct 6, 2015 · original
They'd been waiting for more than a decade. And then Monday night in San Francisco, where the Embarcadero meets the Bay, Craigslist took over the Exploratorium for a long-awaited event. They handed out bottle openers with built-in flash drives, as well as t-shirts and Craigslist stickers with the new Perl 6 logo. "Help yourself to food and Larry and drinks," one greeter told me. Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, was circulating through the room in a red and white Hawaiian shirt, chatting and posing for pictures... It felt like a great moment in geek history. More than a decade after O'Reilly Media released their book about the "upcoming" Perl 6 language , the celebratory launch of this first development release had finally arrived. Craigslist hosted the event, so there were classy little appetizer plates with banh mi sandwiches, dolma rolls with olives, and even little bowls of sobe salad
How We Almost Lost Wine Forever
Mar 24, 2014 · original
We're big fans of good old-fashioned hedonism — and throughout centuries, pleasure-lovers have sung the praises of wine, women, song. But here's an interesting historical diagram which tells the remarkable story of how wine itself was almost lost to all of humanity! Via: Presented by: Mocavo - Genealogy Search
Are Girl Scout Cookies Healthy?
Feb 18, 2014 · original
No. But this is going to be a really short article without some additional context... Those cute little girls selling cookies around your neighbor are delivering junk-food snacks that are astonishingly unhealthy. ( Just four Samoas have 50% of your recommended saturated fat intake for the day... ) To be fair, the Girl Scouts do offer a healthier choice -- the Cranberry Citrus Crisp , which is their one cookie with absolutely no saturated fat whatsoever. Unfortunately, it's not being sold by most of the troops (with many offering just the six most popular cookies). And apparently half the troops in America get their cookies from a bakery which isn't even offering it. Wait, you're still thinking about buying some delicious cookies, aren't you? Okay, then here's some neat trivia. In 2012, that Samoa -- also called a " Caramel deLite " -- was their second most-popular cookie (representing 19
ObamaCare: Day One
Oct 2, 2013 · original
A funny thing happened when I went to sign up for ObamaCare this morning. I couldn't! The official site at HealthCare.gov just referred me over to California's web site for their own Health Exchange. And it was so overloaded with traffic that it was impossible to sign up! Apparently it didn't take a government shutdown to end Obamacare, because ObamaCare imploded all by itself — at least for today — just because so many different people wanted it. (I guess the lesson is that to overwhelm a government-funded health insurance exchange — it takes a village.) I'm actually relieved that I'm not the only one who's having a problem. Today it was my state's web site that's sick! In fact, Google News is already showing stories about web sites being overloaded on the first day of ObamaCare in Maryland , Texas, Illinois , and Indiana . "The opening of state- and federal-run insurance marketplaces T
Five Strange Facts about the Life of Annette Funicello
Apr 9, 2013 · original
1. Sleeping with Zorro? As a 15-year-old girl in 1957, Annette Funicello had a crush on the TV character Zorro, and "every night I drifted off to sleep hugging his eight-by-ten framed photo to my chest," she remembered in her biography . So the next year, Walt Disney had a special treat for the Mickey Mouse Club star — a guest appearance on Zorro (which was also produced by Walt Disney Studios). The delighted teenager got to celebrate her 16th birthday on the set, where Zorro himself carved a 'Z' into the frosting of her cake. And in that episode Annette also got to wield Zorro's infamous sword — "thrusting it into the chest of my no-good fianc and sending him plunging off the side of a ship." That episode was titled "The Postponed Wedding," but Annette's real life romances were more complicated, as she struggled with growing popularity. (Her biography also reveals that she discovered th
My Favorite Roger Ebert Stories
Apr 5, 2013 · original
1. "Your Movie Sucks" Roger Ebert could wield a poison pen as well as anybody. And the story of one confrontation has a permanent place of honor in Ebert's page on Wikipedia . In January 2005, Rob Schneider took out full-page ads in Hollywood newspapers to attack movie critic Patrick Goldstein, who had panned Schneider's recent movie Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo . Schneider suggested mockingly that Goldstein wasn't qualified to critique the movie, since his movie reviews had never won a Pulitzer Prize. "As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize," Ebert wrote in his own review in the Chicago Sun-Times , "and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks." Ebert later even titled his next collection of negative movie reviews, "Your Movie Sucks" — although the rest of his review was equally scathing. ("Schneide
The Eight Geekiest Halloween Costumes
Oct 26, 2012 · original
I think every geek secretly wants to dress up as a zombie, and then go on a rampage to destroy mindless middle-managers. But that's probably just me — and it turns out there's some even better ideas for Halloween costumes. 1. Gollum from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy In a way, this latex Gollum mask resembles the very soul of trick-or-treaters. When it comes to sugar-y candies, "We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious..." No wonder America is fighting an epidemic of obesity! 2. Yoda from the Star Wars movies You don't have to fly from Tatooine if you're seeking the great Jedi master Yoda. Apparently he's co-hosting The Today Show with Kathie Lee Gifford. In 2009, news co-anchor Hoda Kotb turned up this fantastic Yoda costume, while Gifford dressed as C-3PO, and Al Roker become Han Solo. But they must really hate co-host Ann Curry, because they made her wear a Darth Vader costume
Public Radio’s Enormous Typo
Jul 1, 2012 · original
This weekend I visited the web site for Marketplace Morning Report . It's a business news program often broadcast on public radio stations during NPR's Morning Edition and other shows. But Saturday, I noticed one enormous typo in this transcript of last Monday's interview with their Washington bureau chief, John Dimsdale. Hobson: All right, what about the federal highway funding bill — this is the transportation bill. It's been debated back and forth but still no agreement on it, and I guess the fucking could come to a halt at the end of the month if they don't come up with a solution? Dimsdale: That's right. Gee, I hope not! Click here for a screenshot. It apparently stayed up on their site for seven days before someone finally noticed the mistake Sunday afternoon and took it down. (I was always pretty sure that it was the funding that could come to a halt at the end of the month...) An
Seven Forgotten Classics by Davy Jones
Mar 1, 2012 · original
1. The Greatest Story Ever Told I'm a fan — and there's one song Davy Jones should be remembered by. In 1986, the 41-year-old former teen idol recorded his own secret anthem. I think of it as his personal "My Way" — an original song about a life spent in show business, where (more than most performers) he'd spent years trapped by his own fame. "We had them eating Corn Flakes out of the palm of our hand," he sings wryly at one point, and there's an ironic nod to the title of one of the first Monkees songs ever recorded, "I Want to Be Free." The song has real grace, showing that Davy Jones ultimately made peace with his strange fate. (He titled his 1987 autobiography "They Made a Monkee Out of Me". ) And on a forgotten corner of YouTube, in a home-grown video that's been viewed less than 100 times, a hardcore Monkees fan has lovingly annotated the song with a poignant collection of clips.
The Secrets of Stieg Larsson
Dec 21, 2011 · original
One of Amazon's best-selling Kindle bloggers shares the startling real-life backstory behind The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Last spring, Random House made a startling announcement. One of their authors had made e-book history, becoming the first author ever to sell one million digital copies of a single book. But of course, their announcement was haunted by a dark irony. It was six years after that author's death — and a life of mysterious secrets. The book is "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," by Stieg Larsson (who died of a heart attack in 2004 at the age of 50). And there's an even darker secret behind the origins of the book. Larsson was haunted by an assault on a young woman that he'd witnessed in his own teenaged years. That's according to a new biography about his life which was just released in September. "For Larsson geeks such as myself, the unearthed details of his past and t
Why Thomas S. Roche Dreams of a Zombie Apocalypse
Oct 31, 2011 · original
The gonzo author (inset) meets the cover of his newly-published novel The Panama Laugh Zombies! Brains! Zombies! It's the first novel ever published by author Thomas S. Roche. The Panama Laugh opens with a punch — literally — before launching into an unrelenting onslaught of dangerous crimelords, soldiers of fortune, radical fringe groups, and yes, zombies!!! There's a global throwdown with moments of weapons porn — like hijacked nuclear-powered warships and deadly remote surveillance drones — while radical fringe survivors may be holed up in "the Armory" in San Francisco (a real-life building owned by Kink.com). It's Roche's very first novel — or at least, the first novel published under his own name. (There's also hundreds of horror, crime, fantasy, and, yes, erotic short stories and books that he's written under pseudonyms). Maybe the real question is what makes a man write an "after
Resurrecting Reznor’s ’90s Discovery – Mondo Vanilli (an Interview)
May 31, 2011 · original
Let's see if I've got this straight... Once upon a time, there were some bizarre mid-80s songs riffing on the Beatles — something about the 20th anniversary of the summer of love. They fell into the glow surrounding Mondo 2000 magazine, and in a deconstructive burst of creativity, became a flexible vinyl record inside the printed magazine. Almost. But then the same creative team decided to do "something disrespectful and different " to the industrial and acid house music of the mid-90s's — and then somehow, Trent Reznor gets involved. (At the mansion where Charles Manson murdered Sharon Tate — but that's another story. ) Reznor's label ultimately signed "Mondo Vanilli", but then refused to release their first (and only) album, I.O.U. Babe. Nearly 20 years later that lost album suddenly re-surfaced on the web, crashed all the servers, and then continued falling through time. The whole alb

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