These are glorious. Sound on!
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Flip-digit fluids
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Tags: art, computers, glitch, mad science, retrocomputing, xscreensaver
Vampire bats 'French kiss with blood' to form lasting bonds
Vampire bats establish friendships by sharing regurgitated blood with their neighbours in a "kind of horrifying French kiss", a new study says.
It found that when the vampire bats became isolated in a roost, pairs unfamiliar with one another - but in close proximity - would begin grooming, then "mouth-licking" before swapping food.
"We go from bats starting as strangers from different colonies to groupmates that act to save each other's life," said Prof Gerald Carter, author of the study and behavioural ecologist at Ohio State University.
"They have this 'boom and bust' foraging experience, so they either hit it big and get a large blood meal or they're starved for that night.
"Food sharing in vampire bats is like how a lot of birds regurgitate food for their offspring. But what's special with vampire bats is they do this for other adults," Prof Carter said.
Tags: mutants, parts, perversions, vampires
Nacho Vidal
Spanish porn star Nacho Vidal, who likes to advertise his aromatic candles shaped like male genitalia on Twitter, has been arrested on manslaughter charges following a man's death during a mystic ritual in which he inhaled psychedelic toad venom.The toad, a rare species which is native to the Sonoran Desert, stretching from northern Mexico into California and Arizona, secretes venom containing a very powerful natural psychedelic substance known as 5-MeO-DMT.
Local press said the ceremony took place in the country residence of Vidal, a media-savvy porn star in his mid-40s whose Twitter feed is full of ads for his 25-centimetre aromatic candles of the male genitalia, available in black, white or cerise.
This important news was overshadowed by current events for more than a year, but better late than never.
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Tags: gonzo, parts, perversions, religion
GPIO noise
The payphone regularly gets GPIO events that are not real. I have four switches attached to GPIO pins, as well as a MAX7219 LED 128x32 display, and I get ghost open/closed events on the switches several times a day. There is no chance that the switches themselves are triggering. And these aren't intermittent bounces: it will register a switch closing, and then it opens again ~20 seconds later. The wires to the various switches are under a foot long.Also, there's a USB keyboard attached (the keypad) and I regularly read impossible characters from it when it's not even being touched: NULLs and low-numbered control characters. Note, this is not a serial port, these are making it all the way up the USB stack.
So I'm guessing there's some systemic grounding shit going wrong, or something. Any suggestions?
In other payphone news, it only took a month for one of the savages we call customers to completely destroy the rebuilt payphone handset. So that's great. I guess I have to re-build that from scratch now, since it's impossible to get the end caps off once you've screwed them on. Or, just toss the whole phone in the dumpster, because you people don't deserve to have nice things.
Tags: computers, dnalounge, firstperson, lazyweb, linux, phones, retrocomputing, toys
Surveil yourself at home!
I just found out that my condo building is about to replace our (terrible) vintage-1990 front door voice-only intercom system with this app-based video chat thing, ButterflyMX. Anyone have any hilarious security stories about this, or about how their "partners" will be monetizing surveillance of my comings and goings?
Tags: big brother, computers, corporations, doomed, firstperson, phones, security
DNA Lounge: Wherein we bring you the brown note
Thanks to another generous donor, we were able to upgrade our subwoofers for full compliance with the Dubstep Accords of 2015. This took a little longer than we had hoped -- we thought we might be able to get these in before reopening -- but they're in now! We replaced two of our four EAW DCS2 subwoofers with a pair of EAW SB2001 subs. They each have two independently powered 21 inch drivers, run by a pair of Crown Macrotech 5000i amps.
The new ones are half the size of the old ones (and about twice the power) so we're going to pack that gap above them with insulation and wall it off. No camping in the bass bin.
The old subs cover an effective range of about 45hz to 80hz, whereas the new ones go down to 20hz! But they are best below 50hz, which is why we're using both models. At 20hz you are feeling it more than hearing it, but modern production has been favoring frequencies that low, particularly in the dubstep world, and it really provides that extra oomph! It will rattle the drink out of your cup, as demonstrated in this video:
The two old subs are going to go up in the Lounge, giving that room quite an upgrade. We use all parts of the buffalo.
Also! Today is the 20th anniversary of DNA Lounge's re-opening, back in 2001 when I bought the place. The club has been DNA Lounge since 1985, but my tenure here has now hit two decades, which is kind of hard for me to comprehend.
Here's an ad for our re-opening weekend in the Bay Guardian (thanks, Internet Archive!) from the before-before times when newspapers were how one advertised.
jwz mixtape 229
Please enjoy jwz mixtape 229.
Translation Mask
CHA2trico:
For when people say your face is hard to read.
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Tags: art, computers, dazzle, fashion, mad science, mpegs, plague, the future, toys
Versions
That I can't find an origin or attribution of this image is strangely appropriate.
