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The Mary Sue: “The Otter GIF That Helped Ensure President Obama’s Victory”
There are two ways to ensure that workplace mistakes are kept to a minimum. The first is breathing down the necks of your employees and berating them for every little flub they make, which in the long run can become counterproductive and [incite] office mutiny. The second, and the least damaging to their fragile self-esteem, is the use of a dancing otter GIF set to Kenny Loggins[’s] “This Is It” to let them know they done goofed. The security engineer for the tech operation of Barack Obama’s recent campaign, Ben Hagen, pioneered this method, and obviously helped ensure the President’s victory.
The Mary Sue: “Navy Dolphins to Be Replaced by Robots in 5 Years, Human Jobs Probably Safe A Little Longer”
Looks like the robots’ insidious plot to displace all of mankind from their jobs even extends to our friends in the animal kingdom. The Navy is planning to reduce its reliance on mine-detecting dolphins—and seals—in favor of more sophisticated unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). While the Navy isn’t planning to begin this initiative until 2017 at the earliest, this certainly doesn’t bode well for dolphins who have mouths to feed in this tenuous economy. So long and thanks for all the pink slips.
The Mary Sue: “Speak2Tweet Relaunched in Light of Syrian Internet Blackout”
Yesterday we reported that due to an ongoing civil war in Syria, the country’s Internet access — in addition to downed phone lines and suspended air travel — had been cut off, leaving the public with virtually no access to the outside world. Theories are still being posited regarding this particular blackout and how it happened, but, in the interim, Google and Twitter are working together to offer Syrians a means of communication via the Speak2Tweet service. Thanks to the aforementioned downed phone services in the country, this gesture may prove difficult.
The Mary Sue: “Press Start: Museum of Modern Art to Showcase Video Game Collection”
To all those people who scoff at video games and see them as nothing but wastes of time and a way to lose brain cells, here’s some well-deserved egg on your face: By March 2013, The Museum of Modern Art is planning to present a gallery showcasing select video games that have left an indelible mark on popular culture in addition to other qualities that make them artistic pieces in their own right. At last, someone out there has discerning taste!
The Mary Sue: “So Bad: Timothy Leary’s Power Glove Discovered in NYPL Archives”
What do avid drug advocate Timothy Leary and The Wizard’s video game prodigy badass Lucas Barton have in common? Virtually nothing except for the fact that the two both had an odd affinity for Mattel’s gaming peripheral debacle otherwise known as the Power Glove. Discovered deep within the archives of the New York Public Library, it turns out that Leary probably enjoyed video games almost as much as psychedelic drugs.
The Mary Sue: “New Research Suggests Prehistoric 150-Pound Wombat Somehow Lived in Trees”
Even in its ancient days, the continent of Australia was renowned for its bizarre menagerie of marsupial mammals that beggar description. The one major difference between now and then is that nearly all marsupials at the time were considerably larger and forced to reside on the ground. That said, fossil researchers from the University of New South Wales and the University of Adelaide recently declared that the wombat-like marsupial Nimbadon lavarackorum lived among the treetops in spite of its massive weight and size.