• Water buffalo on the loose in Newtown:

  Sydney University student Rachel Murdolo said she was walking to class when she saw two of the beasts charging down King Street.

  “I was walking down King Street towards the city and these two big bulls were running along the inner side lane towards the city,” Ms Murdolo said.

  “It was kind of bizarre but it was Newtown so I didn't think it was that unusual,” she said.

  Ahh, Newtown.

• Motion picture industry continues to stagger under piracy with mere record-breaking income - Boing Boing: Once again, the "piracy-stricken" motion picture association has had a banner year, with box office revenue breaking all records (as they've done in most recent years). The biggest gains this year come from China -- a market condemned by the studios as a hive of piracy.
• George Brandis' Racial Discrimination Act changes create the whitest piece of proposed legislation I've encountered: This is what happens when protection from racism becomes a gift from the majority rather than a central part of the social pact. It’s what happens when racial minorities are required to be supplicants, whose claims to social equality are subordinate to those of powerful media outlets outraged they might occasionally have to publish an apology.
• Japan's whaling program not for scientific purposes, rules International Court of Justice - ABC News. It seems pretty likely they'll just withdraw from the relevant treaties, but at the very least they will be obliged to stop insulting the world's intelligence claiming it was 'scientific research'.
• Wil Wheaton on bullying, compassion, and being a nerd. | WIL WHEATON dot NET
• Revealed: Red Bull's $1.2 billion Bet On Formula One:

  The financial statements for Red Bull Racing’s immediate parent Red Bull Technology reveal that the drinks company has poured $1.2 billion into the team since it took it over. In 2005 its bill came to $100 million but by 2012 this had risen 60% to $159.4 million.

  ...

  Red Bull’s Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE), the price it would have to pay to buy a similar amount of on-screen exposure, came to an estimated $283.2 million last year. This was the highest of any brand in F1 and was equivalent to 11.9% of the total gained by all the teams.

  ...

  Nevertheless, if F1 doesn’t continue to meet Red Bull’s needs then it would not make sense for it to remain in the series. The catalyst for this could be the end of its winning streak.

View from Anvil Coffee, Kirribilli Wharf, Sydney. A wonderful moment to enjoy living in a harbour city.

• Will you miss us when we’re gone?

  When protesters do emerge in significant numbers, however, it is the job of the news media to report them. It is indeed one of our most basic functions and one which we abjectly failed to perform on the weekend, first ignoring the twenty-thousand citizens who rallied across rural and regional Australia, before ignoring or underreporting the much larger numbers who rallied in the state capitals on Sunday.

  ...

  Stepping away from the all of the issues captured by a thousand different placards on Saturday and Sunday, the systemic failure to recognise the significance of the story speaks to a deeper fear I have about the news media, which is not that we might die out as Google gorges itself on the last scraps of our advertising based business model… but that it won’t matter.

  That you won’t care, and that there will be no reason to care.

• Streetlamps Go Green | I Fucking Love Science: A group of researchers at FermentAlg, led by Pierre Calleja, have invented a street lamp that is powered by algae.
• Cost of Abbott government's orange lifeboats to tow back asylum seeker trebles to $7.5 million
• Using graffiti, Turks share tips for getting around Twitter ban | The FRANCE 24 Observers
• Popular Brand Packaging Redesigned to Eliminate Waste - Design Milk (and unrelated but cool... A Renovated Attic Apartment in Prague - Design Milk)
• Pre-Raphaelite Princess of Star Wars | Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood
• George Brandis defends 'right to be a bigot' amid Government plan to amend Racial Discrimination Act - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation):

  "People do have a right to be bigots you know," [Brandis] told the Senate.

  ...

  Barely 20 minutes after his statements in the Senate, Labor's deputy leader Tanya Plibersek asked the Prime Minister if he agreed with the Attorney-General that people had a "right to be bigots".

  Tony Abbott did not repeat the phrase but said Australia's democracy and freedom depended on free speech.

  "Of course this Government is determined to try to ensure that Australia remains a free and fair and tolerant society, where bigotry and racism has no place," Mr Abbott said.

  So according to the Liberals, being a bigot is both a right and something which has no place in Australia. Funny how the right trots out free speech when they attack people, then screams bias and political-correctness-gone-mad when they are attacked.

• It's already pretty impressive, then the helicopter gets involved...

• #Rorschcam NYC | booktwo.org and Rorschcam NYC - a set on Flickr
• The History of Invisibility and the Future of Camouflage
• The Setup / John McAfee. Yep, really... and it's pretty unusual fare for The Setup!
• Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Runways in Range | WNYC: On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from civilian radar. Amid unusual (some say unlikely) theories that the flight may have landed, can we figure out how many runways might be available? Data from X-Plane provides coordinates for runways around the world. A Boeing 777 pilot is quoted in Slate as estimating a runway length requirement of 5,000 feet. A recent Wall Street Journal article quoted sources stating the flight could have continued for 2,200 nautical miles from its last known position. The WNYC Data News team found 634 runways that meet these criteria, spread across 26 different countries
• Researcher reveals how “Computer Geeks” replaced “Computer Girls” | The Clayman Institute for Gender Research: Asked to picture a computer programmer, most of us describe the archetypal computer geek, a brilliant but socially-awkward male. We imagine him as a largely noctural creature, passing sleepless nights writing computer code. According to workplace researchers, this stereotype of the lone male computer whiz is self-perpetuating, and it keeps the computer field overwhelming male. Not only do hiring managers tend to favor male applicants, but women are less likely to pursue careers a field where feel they won’t fit in. It may be surprising, then, to learn that the earliest computer programmers were women and that the programming field was once stereotyped as female.
• The Stress Of Being A Computer Programmer Is Literally Driving Many Of Them Crazy | Business Insider: Stanford students studied how much time a person can really spend programming productively. In what shouldn’t be a surprise, they found that working too much reduces productivity. Overworked coders tended to produce less high-quality code when working 60 hour/weeks than refreshed people did when working 40-hour weeks. That hasn’t stopped the imposter/Real Programmer syndrome from taking hold.
• Jharal: 'I Gave It My All' - Broncos. Pretty heartbreaking that such a superstar had his career ended so early due to injury. You can't doubt his heart though, I don't doubt he have it his all to get back. I like the fact the Broncos supported him as well.
• Guinness cancels sponsorship of NYC St. Patrick’s Day parade over gay ban – LGBTQ Nation

• Ageing punks with grey mohawks rule at Jean Paul Gaultier Paris Fashion Week show | Mail Online
• Drone Helicopters Can Now Turn You Into A Terrible Superman. A whole bunch of people just looked at their drone copters and said to their friends "hold my beer..."
• This Subaru R/C Car Vs. Stick Bomb Race Is The Ultimate Toy Car Fantasy: Right now I hope there is an advertising executive at Hotbox Matchwheels or something screaming into the phone, J. Jonah Jameson-style, "I DON'T CARE HOW YOU DO IT, JUST MAKE THIS AND MAKE IT IN LIFE SIZE."
• Slap It: Cheeky Interactive Lights by Joseph Begley - Design Milk. Bum lights. Slap them to turn them on and off. Oo-er.
• Vandals trash ANZ GAYTMs on Oxford St | News.com.au. Presumably because they are extremely boring and/or intolerant people.
• A 12-Year-Old Designs A Low-Cost Braille Printer That Is Made With LEGO Bricks - DesignTAXI.com

• New Years 2013 - a set on Flickr (cmiller)
• Amazing Graffiti Discovered in an Abandoned Nursing Home
• Omaggio a Caspar David Friedrich | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
• Twitter / hkingsnorth: G'day . .. http://t.co/vHnChjFnFz
• 2014 Abandoned Seaview Hospital - a set on Flickr
• Skate Arena | Facebook - abandoned building photos of the burned-out skating rink in Red Hill, Queensland. I only went there once to a curious sort of skate/nightclub thing, maybe just a few months before the fire.
• A Colossal Yellow Cave Taking Shape Beneath Manhattan - Flickr: MTAPhotos' Photostream. Mostly for this one: East Side Access: January 13, 2014 | Flickr and this one East Side Access: January 13, 2014 | Flickr.
• Twitter / GoGetTony: Approaching O'Hare International, ...

Masters of the web John Allsopp and Ethan Marcotte. Taken in front of the Agency Rainford/Web Directions HQ blackboard during a SydCSS meetup - I was just lucky the light from the window created an interesting shot; and also very lucky that people forgave the many technical flaws of the shot.

Few of my photos have had as big a response as this one :) Mostly, I love that both John and Ethan liked it.

• Paid parental leave: NSW Senator John Williams says Abbott's scheme is too costly - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): The Australian Financial Review is reporting the Commission of Audit's first report, which the Government received nearly a fortnight ago, says the scheme is too costly and cannot be afforded with the budget in deficit. The ABC has been unable to verify the report and a spokeswoman for Treasurer Joe Hockey says the Commission of Audit's "recommendations are confidential".
• Artist adds tattoos to transform popular celebrity images - TODAY.com
• How To Read A 223-Page Novel In Just 77 Minutes | Business Insider
• Green Army to be paid less than minimum wage, Environment Minister Greg Hunt confirms - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation); also they won't be covered by normal OH&S laws. Untrained labour building boardwalks and handling brush hooks, no way that could go wrong.
• Adam Mansbach: My year on the bestseller list - Salon.com. Worth it even just for the bit about Noni Hazelhurst: Noni is a beloved children’s television presenter who’s also managed to have a serious film career. She’s like an Australian mixture of Maria from “Sesame Street” and Meryl Streep. She represents the childhood of every Aussie and Kiwi under the age of 40. You’d be crazy to mess with her...
• Fiat’s Roof Top Test Track
• This Is The Gas Pipeline Map That Shows Why The Crisis In Ukraine Affects All Of Europe | Business Insider
• TALL POPPIES: Telstra Boss David Thodey Says Australia's Start-Up Problem Is More To Do With Culture Than Cash | Business Insider. There are a couple of seeds of truth in Thodey's comments, but they're drowning in bullshit. VC: even big Aussie venture capital successes like Atlassian and Bigcommerce are not successes of Australian Venture Capital - they got their money from the US. Tax: startups thrive on stock options, but Australian tax utterly cripples options. You get taxed for buying options as though they were actual assets, even though an option is nothing more than the right to buy something during a possible future exit event which will then become an asset (which is also taxed to hell and back). Culture: yes there's some truth that we don't really celebrate failure OR successes (tall poppy syndrom) the same way as Silicon Valley. There's definitely truth that Australia does not support or value innovation as a nation. For decades we've let our amazing talent and ideas go overseas - there is no shortage of Australian ingenuity, but getting support from business and government is like getting blood from stone. The anti-intellectual PM Abbott in particular is hell bent on reducing the nation to road builders - car manufacturing is out, QANTAS to be flogged off, innovation powerhouses like NICTA de-funded, NBN is shitcannned (it's sleepwalking through its death throes). It's true that it's hard to replicate Silicon Valley startup culture here - San Francisco fetishise failure and insane work practices, which we aren't quite so keen on. We like to have a life and we do expect businesses to have a business plan. If Australia wants to build a startup culture it should probably model itself on the more-conservative New York startup culture, where people expect a revenue model to back up the great idea. Australia could also show the world you don't have to work yourself into an early grave in order to innovate. Successful startups AND work/life balance - reckon we'd sort out the IT skills shortage pretty quickly.

• "Eye of the tiger" on dot matrix printer from MIDIDesaster on Vimeo.

• These 6 sketches show why you are not crazy enough to compete at the Sochi Winter Olympics - Sochi 2014 - ABC Grandstand Sport (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
• Lean In Collection – Getty Images: We are proud to present the Lean In Collection, a library of images devoted to the powerful depiction of women, girls and the people who support them. Jointly curated by Getty Images and LeanIn.Org – the women’s empowerment nonprofit founded by Sheryl Sandberg – the collection features over 2,500 images of female leadership in contemporary work and life.
• Vintage Soviet Propaganda Gets An Incredible LGBT Makeover
• How a car engine works - Imgur
• Spot the sniper – in pictures | Art and design | theguardian.com. Tip: you will not be able to spot the sniper. Similarly in these pics it's incredibly hard to find the snow leopard: 10,000 Birds | Snow Leopard hunt by Adam Riley (INDRI Ultimate Wildlife Tours).
• How to Build a Perfect Refugee Camp - NYTimes.com
• This is What Army Food Rations Look Like Around the World |Foodbeast

• Empire State Building: WhosGonnaWin Edition from Monzeeki on Vimeo.

• Seminary similarity « The Australian Independent Media Network. An insight into Abbott's mind: he felt 1980s Catholicism was too concerned with "empathy". He went into the church to "recall her to her duty" and when absolutely everything was not changed to his precise satisfaction he quit in disgust. The reverse is also telling: the church seems fairly blunt in their various summaries that Abbott lacked even basic empathy and was only there to gain power.
• Beautiful Joshua Tree Supervillain Lair For Sale For First Time - Deserting - Curbed LA
• m a rk s us s m an (Why I Hate Sportsball): And that right there, the pride, is the thing that bugs the shit out of me about “sportsball.” No one needs to know anything about sports, sure. Lord knows I don’t know much. And there is undue importance placed on sports in the culture (the world?) at large. But instead of criticism, “sportsball,” for all its smartness, is an essentially infantile reaction to all of that. It seems to really offend some people that I am both a geek and an nrl fan.
• Photos: 50+ years of Japanese concept cars ~ Pink Tentacle
• This is the bead-chain experiment. It's about to melt your brain.