Pop Culture

This is what you get when a linguist's children reach middle school. Linguist James Harbeck gives us the phonetic analysis of the things teenagers say WAY too much, mainly to annoy parents, teachers, and even their best friends. A sample:1. Breathy-voiced long low back unrounded vowel with advanced tongue rootThis is usually spelled something like auuggghhh. It's the classic teenage sound of utter exasperation. The eyes are usually angled upwards, sometimes in contrast with a downward movement of the shoulders. "Breathy-voice" means that the vocal folds are wide apart, giving a very "chesty" sound. "Advanced tongue root" means that the back of the tongue is moved forward to make a larger resonating cavity behind it. "Low back" means the tongue doesn't rise anywhere in the mouth (compare this with "eee," which is high front). "Unrounded" means the lips aren't rounded.If that makes no sense to you, it will when you hear him reproduce this and all the analyzed sounds in the accompanying video at The Week. Link -via Metafilter

Here's literary critic Edmund Wilson's form-letter for turning down requests from strangers. As Tim Ferriss notes, Wilson wasn't a hermit or antisocial, but he maximized the time he spent socializing with the people he liked by not letting strangers gobble up his time: Edmund Wilson regrets that it is impossible for him without compensation to: read manuscripts do editorial work judge literary contests deliver lectures address meetings make after-dinner speeches broadcast; Under any circumstances to: contribute to or take part in symposiums take part in chain-poems or other collective compositions contribute manuscripts for sales donate copies of his books to libraries autograph books for strangers supply personal information about himself supply photographs of himself allow his name to be used on letter-heads receive unknown persons who have no apparent business with him. The Best Decline Letter of All-Time: Edmund Wilson (via Making Light)

This is the cover of Action Comics #1, the first comic book to feature Superman. Jalopnik author Jason Torchinsky asks a question I've never considered before: what kind of car is Superman lifting? Torchinsky and various Jalopnik commenters think that it's either a 1937 DeSoto, Plymouth or Ford. You can read their analyses at the link.Link

A good read in The Daily Dot about a "major piece of the puzzle" in Tumblr's origin myth that’s often overlooked: "[Founder David] Karp wasn’t the first person to create a tumblelog, the term used to describe the stripped-down blogging and content curation he has become known for. He wasn’t even the second. The true origin of Tumblr involves a German and an American, hundreds of lines of code, and their common desire to change the way we think about blogging."

Caffeine isn't just in coffees, teas, and sodas anymore - it's in energy drinks, food, and even chewing gums. But what's the cumulative impact of all that stimulant? Caffeine is, according to New Scientist, the planet's most popular "psychoactive drug." In the United States alone, more than 90% of adults are estimated to use it every day.But now even the US - home of Coca-Cola, Starbucks and the 5-Hour Energy shot - is questioning the wisdom of adding it to everyday foodstuffs like waffles, sunflower seeds, trail mix and jelly beans.In a statement, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) highlighted the "unfortunate example" of Wrigley chewing gum producing packs of eight sticks which each contained as much caffeine as half a cup of coffee. Subsequently, Wrigley said it would "pause" production of the product.The agency is also looking at highly-caffeinated energy drinks, and said it was concerned about the "cumulative impact" of adding stimulants to products.According to the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the number of people seeking emergency treatment after ingesting energy drinks doubled to more than 20,000 in 2011.Jon Kelly of BBC News Magazine has the post that'll go perfect with that cup of coffee: LinkImage: Powered by Caffeine from the NeatoShop

Here's a video from last week's Maker Faire showcasing technologies for printing out 3D-ish objects using 2D printers: ModelBox turns a 3D model into a series of 2D images you print on acetate and set into a frame to cheaply and quickly prototype/simulate the 3D object; Zebra Images turns 3D models into holograms; and Lynx Laboratories demos its all-in-one 3D scanner. 3D Printing on a 2D printer?! - Maker Faire 2013 (Thanks, Francis!)

By ChiLab and shown in the "Chicagoland" exhibition at Wanted Design. [via the New York Times]

Google Translate says that the caption on this image is Japanese for "Bill of surprised frontispiece monster world." I can't really hazard any guesses beyond that, but hey, monster money! ??????? ???????? (via Crazy Abalone)

(YouTube link)Some quotes are attributed to the wrong person. Some get their words garbled a little. And others were just made up and we don't know where they really came from. However, many of these misquotes are versions that I've never heard. Does anyone really think it's "Bubble, Bubble, toil and trouble"? After all, the next line uses "bubble" as the rhyme. Who are all these people getting quotes so very wrong? John Green sets the record straight for mental_floss.

Among the most recent video posts you will find on our video archive page: •Nikola Tesla pitches VCs • Conversations with my 2 year old: a web video series. • 3D printing saved a baby's life. • Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" music video. • New Boards of Canada video! • 3D printed shotgun slugs (suck). • Law Enforcement's Guide to Satanism, 1994. • Open source hardware 3D printer for pizza-on-demand. • Nikola Tesla pitches VCs. Boing Boing: Video archives