callan \ blog

 |  content roundup #2

march 27, 2016

• IBM Chef Watson
  
The famed natural language-talking, Jeopardy-winning computer has been generating tacos and cocktails at South by Southwest for the past few years. At this site, you can toss a handful of ingredients at "him" and see what combinatory recipes come out - handy and sometimes amusing, though it's kind of just an advanced search for Bon Apetit.

• Michelle Obama 360




The Verge presents a spherical interview with the First Lady about social media, virality, and her team's spot-on grasp of authenticity for its digital communications. She also sports some ridiculously sick pants.

• Plenty of Unanswered Questions Remain in the San Bernardino iPhone Case
  
Nobody really knows what's going on with the whole FBI vs. Apple business. An Israeli tech firm might be involved, or might not be, along with any number of other players in the exploit market. Most confusing of all is the FBI's decision to disavow the need for Apple's help at the last minute before last week's scheduled court hearing.

• Fun stuff right here.

(Source: NOAA, which is suddenly sporting a really beautiful new design. February's temperatures were literally off the charts; they had to rescale the graph to be able to accommodate the anomaly.)

• Reacting to Reactions
  
Facebook's set of "reaction emojis" is a brand new way of pressuring humans to behave like algorithmically-compliant machinery.

• What happens when you write about the absurdity of startup culture from the inside
  
Hacking, email extortion, and other unethical (and ultimately unsuccessful) attempts at keeping the lid on the laughable, cringe-worthy world of HubSpot, a Boston-based "inbound marketing" company. See also "My Year in Startup Hell," an excerpt from Dan Lyons's forthcoming book on this very subject. (Side note: I've been in the basement of this place more than once and it's exactly as described, though I can vouch for the floor being vomit-free most of the time.)

• The Cuddly, Fluffy, Surreal World of Angora Show Bunnies
  
Appropriately enough for today, here's a 2014 New York Times piece about show bunnies that's stuffed with crazy Easter eggs (e.g., yep, that photographer is the guy who did "Immersion (Piss Christ)").



(Source: Andres Serrano for the New York Times)

Also, be sure to take the related quiz to determine bunny you are, as each "[embodies] distinct but equally valid paradigms for ethical reasoning in 21st-century life."

• Apple TV’s first original series to be unscripted show about apps
  
Presented without comment.

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Hey Cal, why is there no comments section? Comments sections have a tendency to devolve into nasty little spaces, teeming with spam & ad hominem attacks. I also have a fondness for the 1.0 Web (props to Neocities, powerer of this site). If you'd like to share your thoughts, find me on Twitter or fire off an email. Thanks!