Monday Links from the Bench vol. CCXXXIV

Email: "Thanks, I've passed your CV to HR, I'm sure they'll be in touch if..." *settles back on bench for a bit longer*

Rainbow-Cake Recipe Inspires Comment Apocalypse - "Under almost any other set of circumstances, the most noteworthy thing about this internet post would be the "Amazing Rainbow Tie-Dye Number Surprise Cake" itself. Look at that goddamn thing! It's a brick-shaped cake, sheathed in rainbow-colored fondant, with a kaleidoscopic number baked into the middle of it." But this is the Web, and comments are enabled
(HT to cojak for this one, which presumably reminded her of a busy day with the banhammer )
Shel Silverstein's Unlikely Rise to Kid Lit Superstardom - Profile of the songwriter, cartoonist, and children’s author: ”Spoon-feeding kids sugar-sweet stories just wasn't his style. Fortunately for generations of young readers, someone convinced him to do something about it—namely, break the mold himself. Using edgy humor, clever rhymes, and tripped-out drawings, Silverstein achieved the impossible. He bridged the worlds of adult and children's art, while becoming wildly popular in the process.”
The politics of preservation: Shukhov radio tower in Moscow, 1920-1922 - "Moscow’s Shukhov radio tower, an iconic work of early Soviet constructivism, has lately become a subject of intense debate within Russia, involving several government ministries and independent civil society organizations. Erected between 1920 and 1922, the structure today faces either disassembly or potential collapse, resulting from lack of proper upkeep and decades of neglect."
On Taxis and Rainbows - "Recently, thanks to a Freedom of Information request, Chris Whong received and made public a complete dump of historical trip and fare logs from NYC taxis. It’s pretty incredible: there are over 20GB of uncompressed data comprising more than 173 million individual trips. Each trip record includes the pickup and dropoff location and time, anonymized hack licence number and medallion number (i.e. the taxi’s unique id number, 3F38, in my photo above), and other metadata." And of course they didn’t anonymise it properly, so Vijay Pandurangan explains how he deanonymised it
9 Videos That Will Transform How You Think About Music - "Sound producer Mario Weinerroither makes “musicless music videos”…” HT to Alias for these This one of Jagger and Bowie’s Dancing in the Street had me roaring with laughter last week:
freshmeat.net, 1997-2014 - "A former coworker pointed me to the news today that freshmeat has suddenly ceased operations. I spent the rest of the day flooded with memories and the urge to jot a few of them down before they’re lost. Perhaps they’ll have some nostalgia value if you were part of that scene in those days." There’s an interesting comment from Eric S. Raymond with further details about Freshmeat’s history, which if nothing else proves that sometimes comments are a good thing.
Baptism by Fire: A New York Firefighter Confronts His First Test - Excellent long read, including photos and videos: ”There had been a few other runs for Ladder Company 105 — a gas leak, a stuck elevator — but for Jordan Sullivan, another 15-hour shift was unspooling without what he so eagerly awaited… Sometimes a probie goes on the maiden run of his career and, bam, a fire. Usually, in New York, it happens during the first few tours. Maybe it takes a week or even a month. But 96 days — nearly triple digits! That was ridiculous.”
What Happened? - "First, nobody thought comedian Jón Gnarr’s joke party would actually make it to the ballot for the 2010 Reykjavík municipal elections. Then, nobody thought comedian Jón Gnarr’s joke party would attract a significant number of voters. Then, nobody thought comedian Jón Gnarr would step up to the role of mayor. Then, nobody thought Mayor Jón Gnarr would last a full term in office. Then, nobody thought Mayor Jón Gnarr wouldn’t run for a second term. Clearly, nobody has been wrong about a lot of things pertaining to comedian Mayor Jón Gnarr." Interview with the unlikely Mayor of Reykjavik as he steps down, having radically changed Icelandic politics. Bonus: a good account of how it all came about from Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger: More punk, less hell!
A new report shows nuclear weapons almost detonated in North Carolina in 1961 - "On January 24, 1961, a B-52 carrying two nuclear bombs broke apart in mid-air, dropping the bombs over Goldsboro, North Carolina in the process. For years, the federal government denied there was any possibility the bombs could have detonated. But that story has been undermined significantly in recent years. Last week, George Washington University's National Security Archive released a declassified report by Sandia National Laboratories, a research center responsible for the design and testing of the non-nuclear parts of nuclear weapons, demonstrating that the bombs came alarmingly close to detonation." Interview with Eric Schlosser, who has investigated the history of nuclear weapons accidents, about this new information and some of the things we already knew about.
Undead Teds - "Created by Phillip Blackman, UndeadTeds are repurposed soft toys transformed into fluffy, bloody horrors to keep you awake at night.” Oh, they’re not that…