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A new generation of fans and creators is finally aiming to instate a healthy cultural vocabulary, a language of community that was missing in the days of “gamer pride” and special interest groups led by a product-guide approach to conversation with a single presumed demographic. These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers -- they are not my audience. They don’t have to be yours. There is no ‘side’ to be on, there is no ‘debate’ to be had. There is what’s past and there is what’s now. There is the role you choose to play in what’s ahead.

I’d always hoped we were more virtuous than the mainstream, but it turns out we just didn’t have enough power to cause much harm. Our ingrained sense of victimization has become a perverse justification for bullying. That’s why I’m calling time on nerd culture. It’s done wonderful things, but these days it’s like a crawling horror of a legacy codebase so riddled with problems the only rational decision is to deprecate it and build something better.

The internet and the digital world are not pathologies, the cultures that develop there are not symptoms to be gazed at, to titillate us and make us feel both in the know, bravely in touch with the challenging truth, and superior to the freaks.

For blacks, the “war on terror” hasn’t come home. It’s always been here.

I recently stumbled upon the face hidden in the spectrogram of the Aphex Twin track called "Equation". Intrigued, I decided to try my hand at recreating the effect here on the web.

It is imperative, when we see men exhibiting this manipulative behavior, for us to identify it and name it as abuse. This can be scary: some incidents, such as this one, are so public and obvious that it's easy to start an open dialog about why it's terrible. But when I sit with my friends and hear their stories about times they've been manipulated, intimidated, coerced or outright abused by older men in the music industry, I wonder how anyone ever feels brave enough to come forward.

It's not too late to ditch the ad-based business model and build a better web.

We took a hacker to a café and, in 20 minutes, he knew where everyone else was born, what schools they attended, and the last five things they googled.

Listen to music that you like. In the end, your taste is your taste. But you should probably avoid saying that something is bad if you haven’t done the work to understand it. I think it’s okay to say, “I guess I haven’t found that song compelling enough to listen more closely.”

Not currently ethical concerns: Women’s sex lives, independent game developers’ Patreons, the personal perspectives of game critics…

Today we're unveiling a new theme option for MetaFilter. Yes, it's a new design option for MetaFilter for the first time in over a decade, which we are dubbing the "Modern" theme. … Early this summer, matthewmcvickar coded up some prototypes to test out and started building the rest of the templates in earnest.

Skulls Unlimited is the world's leading supplier of osteological specimens. Complete selection of legally-obtained animal skulls and replicas. Everything on this site makes me laugh.

The ultimate CSS map font with hundreds of scalable vector map icons of the world, continents, globes, countries and states.

Wizarding Britain is so fucked up that the rest of the wizarding world has just given up on it.

Typically appearing in works that employ a score with non-original elements, these are brief segments of recognizable songs—like classical music that doesn't involve paying royalties—as themes for various types of scenes or activities. Some of these occur often enough to seem standardized, and in some cases they are the only reason people know the songs these days at all. Many of these have become verbal shorthand for particular nationalities or ethnicities, and thus may border on stereotypes.

The nine-note tune made famous in Carl Douglas' 1974 song has served as a stereotype of Asian music since the 19th century.

More about being continually creative than general productivity/getting work done, but still good tips. When trying to build a rock-solid routine, it is a question of when and not if you will face an unexpected obstacle.

so far, it has raised over 10 million dollars… and counting. my mom has spent every single day of her life for the past three decades trying to get this kind of attention and funds for this disease. i don’t care if it’s a stupid gimmick. i don’t care if people are just doing this because it’s trendy or because they want pats on the back. i don’t care if it’s the new harlem shake. i don’t care if for the rest of my life, when i talk about ALS, i have to say “you know, the ice bucket disease.”

For nearly thirty years, a phantom haunted the woods of Central Maine. Unseen and unknown, he lived in secret, creeping into homes in the dead of night and surviving on what he could steal. To the spooked locals, he became a legend—or maybe a myth. They wondered how he could possibly be real. Until one day last year, the hermit came out of the forest.

There’s no helpline for pedophiles who want treatment before they act. So a teen with a terrible secret had to find his own way to save himself and others like him.

Statistics on every score paint a portrait of the lives of African-Americans, and particularly, African-American women, as people systemically crippled and murdered by a hostile and homicidal infrastructure.

Following the 10th anniversary of Madlib and DOOM's telepathic mind meld of an album, Jeff Weiss traces the history of Madvillain and details how these two perpetually mystifying artists came together for an uncanny hip-hop classic.

The United States of America is not for black people. We know this, and then we put it out of our minds, and then something happens to remind us. Saturday, in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo., something like that happened: An unarmed 18-year-old black man was executed by police in broad daylight.

It’s clear that senior artists have had their chart stats boosted by a music business where fewer acts sell albums, period. And it’s also true that older stars are more likely to have fans who still buy music. But guys like Tom Petty, Tony Bennett or Neil Diamond aren’t topping the album chart just because their buyers are loyal or because “the classics” will never die. They’re pulling it off because they’re not afraid to work a little for a hit. What’s true for millennial artists is true for the old guys: Can’t knock the hustle.

People silently struggle from all kinds of terrible things. They suffer from depression, ambition, substance abuse, and pretension. They suffer from family tragedy, Ivy-League educations, and self-loathing. They suffer from failing marriages, physical pain, and publishing. The good thing about politeness is that you can treat these people exactly the same. And then wait to see what happens. You don’t have to have an opinion. You don’t need to make a judgment. I know that doesn’t sound like liberation, because we live and work in an opinion-based economy. But it is. Not having an opinion means not having an obligation. And not being obligated is one of the sweetest of life’s riches.

We help and hurt each other all the time. Occasionally, music is playing.

It’s hard to shake the feeling that, for most of the people posting ice bucket videos of themselves on Facebook, Vine, and Instagram, the charity part remains a postscript. Remember, the way the challenge is set up, the ice-drenching is the alternative to contributing actual money. Some of the people issuing the challenges have tweaked the rules by asking people to contribute $10 even if they do soak themselves. Even so, a lot of the participants are probably spending more money on bagged ice than on ALS research. As for “raising awareness,” few of the videos I’ve seen contain any substantive information about the disease, why the money is needed, or how it will be used. More than anything else, the ice bucket videos feel like an exercise in raising awareness of one’s own zaniness, altruism, and/or attractiveness in a wet T-shirt.

The same goes for depression. Depression is not about something. Drop the preposition. This’ll help you understand and empathize with the folks struck with this illness.