Pop Culture

And pretty soon they're gonna rise up and let you know just how P.O'd they are. Caitlin Dewey's Washington Post story has the details; excerpts below. •••••••••••••••••••••••• LEGOs haven't just become astronomically expensive in the past 35 years. According to a new study from researchers in New Zealand, the popular kids' toys have also developed a bit of an attitude problem. LEGO characters released since the early '90s are proportionately more angry, the study found. They hypothesized the spike in negativity could be related to the release of more thematic Lego sets such as pirates or "Harry Potter," which include weapons and minifigures representing "good guys" and "bad guys." "It is our impression that the themes have been increasingly based on con?icts," wrote the researchers. They arrived at this conclusion through a meticulous scientific process, which reads as almost comical given their subject matter. After cataloging and photographing the 3,655 LEGO characters released between 1975 and 2010, they asked 264 American adults to characterize the figures’ expressions as angry, happy, sad, disgusted, surprised or fearful. They then processed those numbers and plotted them on graphs like the one above, which illustrates the proportional growth of angry faces since the early '90s. Variables (like skin color or whether the figure's head is attached to a body) don't substantially throw off their conclusions. That's pretty alarming in a world where chewing a Pop-Tart into a gun shape is grounds for school suspension and the psychological impact of violent video games remains a hot debate. One would predict that conflict-oriented figurines are the last thing parents want in their kids' toy chests. But before you confiscate your kids' LEGOs, consider the good that even angry LEGOs can do. The study's authors acknowledge that a range of emotional expressions "connect[s] to the complex interaction scenarios of today’s users" — in other words, the variation mirrors real life, where anger, fear and "smileys" all magically coexist.

Anguistralobe Steampunk Pendant NecklaceAre you having trouble navigating the world of fashionably geek accessories? Harness the power of the Anguistralobe Steampunk Pendant Necklace from the NeatoShop. This fantastic piece of jewelry features internal discs you can rotate and is made from English pewter and brass. Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Jewelry. Link

Forget speeding cars! Pedestrians in London have a new danger to look out for: exploding sidewalk.The Health and Safety Executive in the UK announced that sidewalks in London have been exploding at an alarming rate. There were 8 blasts in 2010 and 29 last year. So far, they've seen 12 blasts this year.UK Power Networks, the firm responsible for many of the under-pavement electricity boxes at the heart of the problem say that the explosions should be placed in context. There are over 100,000 of the boxes under London's streets and with just a handful of explosions reported these represent 'relatively few cases when our equipment has faltered' say UPN.The Youtube clip above, taken in April 2013, shows a gas explosion on Pimlico Road: Link

The "other shoe" in the Edward Snowden NSA leaks has been the potential effect of all these disclosures on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's efforts to force the government to account for itself in court. Since 2005 -- when Mark Klein, a former AT&T worker came into EFF's offices with documentary evidence of a secret room at AT&T's Folsom Street switching center, where the NSA was effectively making a copy of all the traffic on AT&T's network without a warrant -- the EFF has been trying to get the government to explain to a judge why they think this kind of bulk surveillance is legal. But at every turn, the Bush and Obama DoJs have convinced judges that these questions can't be asked in court, let alone answered. The invocation of state secrecy has stymied all attempts to date at getting the government to square the circle on the Fourth Amendment and bulk, warrantless surveillance of every American's Internet traffic. As Wired's David Kravets notes, judges may be a lot more skeptical about state secrecy now that this stuff just isn't much of a secret anymore: First it was the President George W. Bush administration and then the President Barack Obama administration, which for years have been arguing in court that the state-secrets privilege shields the government from lawsuits accusing it of siphoning Americans’ electronic communications to the National Security Agency without warrants. But with the recent Spygate leaks, including one that all calling metadata of Verizon customers is being forwarded to the NSA, the government is hard-pressed to maintain that line with a straight face. “By contrast, the recent disclosures have greatly undermined the factual and legal basis for the government defendants’ separate and distinct state secrets motion,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in a recent court filing. The EFF’s lawsuit, which has had a tortured history through the courts, is based in part on allegations of internal AT&T documents, first published by Wired, that outline a secret room in an AT&T San Francisco office and others which allegedly route internet traffic to the NSA. Spygate Leaks Imperil State-Secrets Defense [David Kravets/Wired]

Photo: Rajanish Kakade/AP144 years after the invention of electric telegraphy, the last telegram service in the world will shut down. This technology is still used in India, where about 5,000 telegrams are sent down the wires daily. But on July 14, it will...stop.The BSNL board, after dilly-dallying for two years, decided to shut down the service as it was no longer commercially viable. "We were incurring losses of over $23 million a year because SMS and smartphones have rendered this service redundant," Shamim Akhtar, general manager of BSNL's telegraph services, told the Monitor. What do you think the last telegram should say?Link -via Marginal Revolution

Nelly is back and preparing a new album titled, Mo. The St. Louis rapper, who just finished taping an episode of The Voice, has linked with Pharrell and Nicki Minaj for his brand new single, “Get Like Me.” The beat is pretty catchy and I quite enjoyed Miss Minaj’s playful nods to Necole Bitchie and Lil Scrappy’s weird ass vocabulary. Listen to Nelly’s comeback below.

Theo, a part-Siamese cat in Ipswich, England, is a kleptomaniac, although he would probably describe himself as a "collector." Paul Edwards and girlfriend Rachael Drouet began noticing things around the house that they did not recognize. First it was cat toys.Mr Edwards said things "escalated" after that."We've had things like muslin cloths, fluffy pens, a USB phone charger cable, a child's piece of art which they'd obviously spent most of the morning making - a glorious thing with lots of different colour feathers and leaves stuck to it, lots of things."We've got some other neighbours who have young children and quite like the cat so [they] had encouraged him into the house."He started stealing things from them and it kind of went downhill from there."Edwards says his neighbors are mostly understanding, and has set up a Facebook page to post the stolen items and reunite them with their owners. Link -via Arbroath

Read the other Real Stuff stories and listen to Mark's interview with Dennis Eichhorn here.

The best thing about this happy Harry Potter family is that the adults told the kids they would be going as Professor McGonagall and Dumbledore only to shock the kids by showing up as two of the most evil characters in the series.Link

No surprise here, really.