Cakenweenie: Celebrating Tim Burton with cakes by 100 artists

Cakenweenie: 100 artists were asked to create cakes in honor of Tim Burton's 55th birthday.  Above are cakes by Sideserf Cake Studio, Nancy's Cakes, Cakes by Doreen, and Highland Cakes.

Link roundup

1. Gawker:

Did Cory Booker Make Up a Newark Drug Dealer?

2. Gothamist:

Anthony Weiner Reportedly Paid Actors To Pose As Supporters

3. Deadspin:

How An ESPNer Found Out The "Battle Of The Sexes" Was Probably Fixed

Doom miniatures

Bethesda announced earlier this week that they were reissuing Doom miniatures.  Coincidentally, Jay Adan just posted these miniatures that he painted on commission.

Link roundup

1.  Guardian:

Police 'super recognisers' to keep watch over Notting Hill carnival
Specialist officers have been selected for their ability to remember hundreds of offenders' faces

2.  Kotaku reviews the Bioshock Infinite board game, in which "you split into teams controlling either Comstock's founders or the Vox Populi rebellion as both sides wrestle for control of the board's districts":

Which is horrible/awesome, but nothing compared to the horror of Booker and Elizabeth. 

You know what? Scratch what I said earlier. The Siege of Columbia's crowning achievement is that it makes you hate these terrifying vandals just as much as every NPC in the video game. Not controlled by any player, this pair traverse the board instead according to the steps of a randomly selected timeline sheet. More importantly, Booker will randomly aggro and do his best to flatline everything where he stands, and as you might expect, you do not fuck with Booker. Exactly like the Sky-Line, these fights are hilarious when they happen to your friends, but are, of course, absolute bullshit when they happen to you.

3. "The piece captures antlion hunting strategy perfectly. The sand pit by itself is only a partial trap; most insects can climb out on their own. But not with the predator churning sand and hurling debris."

BT & Fractal - Letting Go

BT and Fractal - Letting Go.

Pinnacle Baseball Christie Brinkley Collection

A few gems from the 16-card 1996 Pinnacle Baseball Christie Brinkley Collection, available at Amazon.

Scandalous button hole

Book cover by gray318.

Link roundup

1.  "Flyers goalie Steve Mason will have a historical-themed zombie invasion of Philadelphia set during the time of the Declaration of Independence on his new goalie mask."

2.  Underwater nightmare.

3. "A guide to the ravenous hellbeast that is the carnivorous caterpillar"

Jake the Dog ring; Batman tie; Custom TMNT figure

Jake the Dog engagement ring designed by Josh Adams and made by Paul Michael Bierker.





Batman tie at Threadless.





Custom TMNT action figure based on Mike Dialynas's design.

Au5 - Metronic (Fractal Remix)

Au5 - Metronic (Fractal Remix).

Vintage-style Peanuts figurines

Vintage-style Peanuts figures by Medicom.

Link roundup

1. Former web heavyweight Worth1000 is on the verge of closing.

2. Gawker:

Pei-Shen Qian, a Chinese artist whose acclaim in China faded once he immigrated to New York City, is at the center of a scandal that allegedly had him fabricate hundreds of paintings by prominent modernist painters, including Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell.

The 73-year-old Qian, who lived in Woodhaven, Queens, kept his windows covered at all times while federal investigators believed he created around $80 million worth of forgeries.

3. Wired:

Florida prison officials say a computer “glitch” may be to blame for opening all of the doors at a maximum security wing simultaneously, setting prisoners free and allowing gang members to pursue a rival with weapons. 

But a surveillance video released this week (see above) suggests that the doors may have been opened intentionally — either by a staff member or remotely by someone else inside or outside the prison who triggered a “group release” button in the computerized system. The video raises the possibility that some prisoners knew in advance that the doors were going to open. 

It’s the second time in two months that all of the doors in the wing opened at once, officials say, raising questions about whether the first incident was a trial-run to see how long it would take guards to respond.

Dune

Dune art by John Schoenherr.

Link roundup

1.  60 Minutes:

"60 Minutes" has learned that members of New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez's inner circle in February obtained and leaked documents that implicated Milwaukee Brewers slugger Ryan Braun as well as his own Yankees teammate, catcher Francisco Cervelli, in the doping scandal that has enveloped Major League Baseball.

2. WSJ:

Top chefs Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken have a talent for collaboration. They have a business partnership that has endured more than 30 years, built on the success of their Border Grill group of high-end Mexican restaurants and their frequent television appearances.

Also, their homes were designed by the same architect...who they've both been married to.

3.  Forbes:

At 40 [Isabel] Dos Santos is Africa’s only female billionaire, and also the continent’s youngest...

For President Dos Santos it’s a foolproof way to extract money from his country, while keeping a putative arm’s-length distance away. If the 71-year-old president gets overthrown, he can reclaim the assets from his daughter. If he dies in power, she keeps the loot in the family. Isabel may decide, if she is generous, to share some of it with her seven known half-siblings. Or not. The siblings are known around Angola for despising one another.

LIPS - Everything To Me (Faustix & Imanos Remix)

LIPS - Everything To Me (Faustix and Imanos Remix).  Via.

Yahoo's logo reimagined

Artists reimagine Yahoo's logo.

Watch episodes 1-3 of DC Nation's Wonder Woman

Enjoy the first three episodes of DC Nation's Wonder Woman shorts, featuring Wonder Woman in short shorts and an invisible muscle car.

*Buy Invisible Jets at ebay.

Rudimental - Feel The Love (Kill Paris Remix)

Rudimental - Feel The Love (Kill Paris Remix)

Gerbil spies

"It was recently revealed that back in the 1970s - at the height of the obsession with traitors - MI5 trained a specially bred group of Gerbils to detect spies."

Link roundup

1.  TIL:

the most powerful commercial radio station ever was WLW (700KHz AM), which during certain times in the 1930s broadcast 500kW radiated power. At night, it covered half the globe. Neighbors within the vicinity of the transmitter heard the audio in their pots, pans, and mattresses.

2.  Carrots are good for healthy eyes, but they won't improve your vision. If you think otherwise, it's because of a successful British propaganda campaign during WW2. Britain didn't want the Germans to know that RAF pilots were using a newly developed onboard radar to shoot down fighters, so the Ministry spread the word that the best pilots were eating lots of carrots to improve their vision.

3.  Chicago:

Chicago Public Schools officials today released maps of routes where security will be provided for the thousands of children going to new schools this year. 

The so-called "safe passage" routes are designed to smoothly shift students from 47 schools being closed this year to nearby schools. 

Parents have voiced concern about children crossing rival gang territories and passing empty buildings and vacant lots.

4.  Hugh Jackman says he ate 6,000 calories a day to get in shape for Wolverine.

5.  Otters are monstrous.

Power fists

Strength Figma Figure TV Animation Version available for preorder.

Disclosure - You & Me ft. Eliza Doolittle (Baauer Remix)

Disclosure - You & Me ft. Eliza Doolittle (Baauer Remix). 69 cents at Amazon.

Sam Kieth-style Venom custom action figure

Sam Kieth-style Venom custom action figure by loosecollector.

*Buy Venom toys at Amazon.

Custom action figures based on the Alien vs. Predator arcade game

Aliens vs. Predators video game custom action figures by John Mallamas, who has custom action figures on sale at ebay.

Foxsky - The Whip

Foxsky - The Whip:

This is music from a Zelda game of tomorrow, A Link to the Future 2099. You'll find yourself air pianoing this song after the first listen. It's 8 bit cinematic floor filler at moombahton tempo that ends with victorious, "we're heading home, we won the mission" vibes.

A Space Love Adventure

80's soundtrack-style synth pop by A Space Love Adventure.

Best Vines 2013

Best Vines 2013.

Lego Hydra

Lego Hydra by Monster Brick.

Link roundup

1.  Undercover cop discovered because she was popular on Twitter.

2.  I saw this mentioned a few days ago and thought it had to be false, but nope, it's true;

Xerox will disable a scanner setting in some of its WorkCentre products that can sometimes result in figures being altered in scanned documents. 

The problem was uncovered last week by a computer science student in Germany. He used a Xerox WorkCentre scanner to create a PDF of a building floor plan, and noticed some of the fine print in the document had been reproduced incorrectly in the PDF. The text that gave the area size of each room had been duplicated in some cases, so that all the rooms were given the same area.

3. Vice:

If you have the right kind of knowledge, enough free time and a penchant for misanthropy, the internet can provide the means to make someone's life really fucking miserable. A perfect example is last week's case of internet security journalist Brian Krebs being sent a package of heroin in an attempt to frame him for a drugs charge.
...
But, like something out of a 2.0 Douglas Adams novel, Krebs had already infiltrated Fly's private carding community forum and found the post detailing his plan.

It's like a Spy vs. Spy comic strip in real life.

4. Nightmare fuel: infected insects and other horrors.

Link roundup

1.  Grantland looks at how so many scouts missed on Mike Trout:

OK, but did you think he'd be this good, this fast? 

"We didn't think the power would come this quickly, for sure. We thought it would be over time, rather than doing the kind of stuff he'd do immediately. But then you consider his physique. You look back at reports, and you'd always see something like 'Looks like a safety in the SEC.' That grabs you, that and the intensity.

2.  Recycling smartphones:

One cell phone can yield up to 20 milligrams of gold; that may seem minuscule, but consider this: A ton of phones can provide 20 times more gold than a ton of gold ore.

3.  "China's Replica of Paris Is Now an Eerily Depressing Ghost Town."

Puma and Adidas were created by estranged brothers

Puma and Adidas were created by estranged brothers. Their rivalry is detailed in Sneaker Wars: The Enemy Brothers Who Founded Adidas and Puma and the Family Feud That Forever Changed the Business of Sports:

It's a long road between the Nazi spectacle of Adolf Hitler's 1936 Olympic Games in Munich and the media frenzy of David Beckham's 2007 move to Los Angeles, but there has been one constant during the intervening years of athletic history-sports shoes. This book traces the evolution of Gebrüder Dassler, a Bavarian shoe company founded by two brothers whose vicious feud led to the creation of two rival, iconic businesses: Adidas and Puma. Smit, an international business journalist, delivers a fascinating story of the complicated intrigues in the lives of both companies, as well as the founders and their descendants. The tale encompasses almost ever major sports figure in modern times, from Jesse Owens, (who wore Dassler shoes during the 1936 Games, unaware that the two brothers were members of the Nazi Party), to basketball legend Walt Frazier, whose signature Puma "Clydes" sold "well over one million pairs throughout the Seventies," kick starting the sports shoe-as-fashion statement trend. Overall, Smit provides a necessary account of how the growth in sports-related businesses has moved athletics "from jolly amateurism to unapologetic greed."

X-Wing pilot jacket by Ecko

Available at Amazon.

Link roundup

1.  Barry Bonds's success convinced baseball players to use bats made from maple, instead of ash.

Trouble is, while all bats may break, some maple bats did not so much break as explode. Bits of them have ended up in Colvin’s chest, and in the faces of fans in ballparks in New York and Kansas City. For five years, Major League Baseball has been trying to end the era of the shattered bat.

MLB teamed up with the US Forest Service to improve the bats.

2. "Lo Hsing Han, heroin king and business tycoon."

3. David Quammen looks at the short, violent lives of lions for NatGeo:

They were handsome devils, a quartet of eight-year-old males, resting in a companionable cluster. They looked forbidding and smug. They’re probably two sets of brothers, Rosengren told me, born within months of each other in 2004. They had been dubbed “the Killers” back in 2008 by another field assistant, based on his inference that they’d killed three collared females, one by one, rather systematically, in a drainage just west of the Seronera River.

Link roundup

1. State legislators in Colorado are given special license plates that are essentially invisible to red light cameras.

2. William Gibson's commentary on the evergreen story that many elevator and crosswalk buttons are nonfunctional placebos:

Elections as placebo buttons...

3.  The Oklahoma Thunder "makes about $15 million from its local television deal; the Lakers make $250 million per year from theirs."

Colorful chimera

Chimera by Hey. Webstore.

Link roundup

1.  "Cal Ripken Jr. announced a $100,000 reward Thursday for information that helps lead to the capture and conviction of the person who abducted his mother a year ago."

2. The All–NFL Bad Contracts Team.

3. Politico:

Pot legalization activists are running into an unexpected and ironic opponent in their efforts to make cannabis legal: Big Marijuana. 

Medical marijuana is a billion-dollar industry — legal in 18 states, including California, Nevada, Oregon and Maine — and like any entrenched business, it’s fighting to keep what it has and shut out competitors.

4. Part of an argument that gold is largely a foolish investment:

First of all, gold has always had a lot of limitations as a medium of exchange. Most notably, it is relatively easy to steal. To realize this, all you have to do is look at games like World of Warcraft, Diablo, Dungeons and Dragons, or the original Final Fantasy. In those games, gold is the money, and you often get gold not by doing an honest day's work, but by running around and beating people up and taking their gold. In other words, the entire world of modern fantasy role-playing is a subtle joke on gold's unsuitability as a medium of exchange.

5.  Usain Bolt is now a 99 cent unlockable character in Temple Run 2.

Link roundup

1.  From the start of an article at The Economist:

EVERY day for up to ten minutes near the London Stock Exchange, someone blocks signals from the global positioning system (GPS) network of satellites. Navigation systems in cars stop working and timestamps on trades made in financial institutions can be affected. The incidents are not a cyber-attack by a foreign power, though. The most likely culprit, according to Charles Curry, whose firm Chronos Technology covertly monitors such events, is a delivery driver dodging his bosses’ attempts to track him.

2.  "Want to be richer? To live longer? Easy. In Japan, the latest craze is to change your fortune with palm surgery that extends your lines."

3.  Nightmare fuel.