They may be crazy whippersnappers, but they sure do read a lot—more than their elders:
More millennials read books than their elders, a new Pew Research report finds. According to the report, 88% of Americans 16 to 29 years old have read at least one book in the past year, compared with 79% of people 30 and older.
100 years ago, WWI gave birth to trench warfare:
The First World War was an unprecedented catastrophe that shaped our modern world. Erik Sass is covering the events of the war exactly 100 years after they happened. This is the 143rd installment in the series.
The very popular game Doom has some new and interesting applications to designing buildings:
Remember that early ‘90s horror-themed video game, Doom, where you roamed around a Martian landscape, killing everything in sight? Well, now the game isn’t just for shooting demons and zombie Marines anymore. A construction company called DIRTT (which stands for Doing It Right This Time) is using software based on the old Doom engine to blueprint hospital walls and office spaces. They’re hoping the technology will eradicate the two most expensive words in the construction industry.
The ending fade out of every song may be fading itself:
The once-ubiquitous, but tragically underappreciated fade-out in music appears to be near its end. And like a classic example of itself, the decline has been long, gradual, and barely noticed.
“There’s always money in the banana stand.” Some of the best quotes from Arrested Development:
Arrested Development is undoubtedly one of most quotable television programs in history. People like to say that if you blink while watching you’ve likely missed a joke, which is true because it’s so densely joke-ridden that no matter how many times you’ve seen an episode, you can still discover new lines, or visual gags that have breezed right by you before. Here we take a look at 25 well-known Arrested Development quotes that you should still be using in everyday conversation.
Feel guilty about watching the NFL? This article may help:
Did you watch the NFL yesterday? I did. I watched every minute that I could. This is not a factoid that’s particularly consistent with my output of the last week, and I suspect it’s not consistent with yours. I, like everyone else, spent most of last week lambasting the NFL, whether it was the league’s continued laughable insistence it had never seen the Ray Rice elevator tape, the absurdity of Chris Berman and company trying to pretend everything was still hunky-dory or NFL commissioner Roger Goodell being hoisted on his own holier-than-thou petard. Last week was the worst week the NFL has had in 30 years, and that was before a Hall of Fame running back was arrested for beating his four-year-old son with a tree branch.
Zoolander 2 and Mugatu? Awesome:
While rumors of Zoolander 2 have been swirling for years, it appears that we might actually see Derek and the gang back on the runway sometime soon.”We are actually supposed to do a read-through of a sequel script soon, and Mugatu is a part of it,” Ferrell confirmed to JoBlo Sunday. Presuming Ferrell hasn’t just taken too many crazy pills, this seems like a good sign.
“Formula E” electric racing:
Plenty of expert passing, some extremely close calls, and one spectacular crash in the final turn. Perhaps the most impressive thing about the very first Formula E race is how much it looked like the new sport belongs in the world of auto racing. The evenly-matched electric cars put on a mostly dazzling show around a very tight course on the streets of Beijing, and Formula 1 test driver Lucas Di Grassi became the first ever winner in the series.
Alan Moore—author of Watchmen and V for Vendetta—just finished a million-word book:
Comics legend Alan Moore has finished the first draft of his second novel, Jerusalem – and it runs to more than 1m words. His daughter, Leah Moore, made the announcement on Facebook on Tuesday, adding with a wink that “now there’s just the small matter of copy editing” a book of that length, “and it’s all done”. To put that “more-than-a-million-word document” into context: Samuel Richardson’s doorstopper, Clarissa, runs to around 970,000 words, 200,000 more than the Bible . War and Peace is around 560,000 words long.
Honorable Mention
- On Death and iPods: A Requiem @ Wired
- Wittgenstein Jr by Lars Iyer – Logical Brooding Meets the Broad Humour of Student Life @ The Guardian
- Rosetta Lander to Touch Down on Comet’s Small Lobe @ Discovery News
- The Other Side of a Batter Getting Hit in the Face @ Just a Bit Outside
- How to Ruin Batman with One Photo @ The Verge