Recommended Reading highlights the best long-form writing on technology and more in print and on the web. Some weeks, you’ll also find short reviews of books that we think are worth your time. We hope you enjoy the read.
How Madden Ratings are Ma…
It’s not often that a new world number one speedrun record is set for a game almost 20 years old, but it’s just happened. For those who don’t know, a speedrun is completing a game from start to finish in fastest possible time, often still collecting all items or meeting all objectives. The previous world record for Super Mario 64, … Continue reading
Thingiverse member CloudJ helps make the last days of winter more fun with his DIY snowman mold. Available in two- and three-ball variants, the mold lets you make lots of tiny snowmen in minutes.
As Nerd Approved pointed out, CloudJ’s snowmen look just like the ones that Bill Watterson’s Calvin loves to build (and destroy).
Wake your homicidal psycho jungle cat and sled to CloudJ’s Thingiverse page to download the molds’ 3D files.
[via Daily of the Day]
You may not own your own private planetarium — or if you do, can we come over to your house? But you can still experience a journey through the wonders of space, thanks to four new “fulldome” planetarium clips, released by the Hubble Space Telescope. They’re available in 4K and 8K resolution.
Sword swallowers will be sharpening their resolve and their blades today because it’s World Sword Swallowers Day.
Now in its eighth year, World Sword Swallowers Day is when blade gobblers gather at 13 Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Odditoriums to gobble blades at exactly 2:28 p.m. local time.
Dan Meyer, the president of Sword Swallowers Association International, expects at least 55 sword swallowers will be participating this year.
“Last year, we had 44 sword swallowers swallowing 89 swords,” Meyer told The Huffington Post. “This year, we’re blowing that out of the water. We’re going to swallow 70 swords just in Orlando.”
Meyer started World Sword Swallowers Day to focus attention on the activity, which has been around for more than 4,000 years, and to raise money for esophageal cancer research.
Some of the more cutting-edge sword swallowers participating today include Brett Loudermilk, who will swallow a curved sword at the Times Square Odditiorium and 7-foot-3 inch tall George “The Gentle Giant” McArthur, who will swallow an extra-long blade at Ripley’s Hollywood location.
The most extreme sword swallow may be the one taking place in Atlantic City.
David Peyre-Ferry will attempt to swallow a sword while sandwiched between two beds of nails — then have someone smash a cinder block with a sledgehammer right on top of him.
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Getting ready for Hillary 5.0. Really.
ATLANTA (AP) — Prosecutors say a suburban Atlanta man who forced a boy to hold paint buckets outdoors for hours as punishment on a hot June day has been sentenced to life imprisonment plus 50 years.
The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office says 32-year-old Omar Pitts of College Park pleaded guilty Friday to murder and other charges in the death of his girlfriend’s 12-year-old brother, Jay’tavious Mahone. District Attorney Paul Howard Jr. said paramedics tried to revive Mahone outside a College Park home on June 17, 2010, but he later died. Howard’s statement says investigators determined the boy also was forced to wear a dress and makeup, punished for taking his shoes off after being told not to. Authorities say Pitts also kicked Mahone after the boy collapsed after hours in the sun.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — One Louisiana teen has been charged with assault and another with saving the day: The first knocked a school bus driver unconscious and the second prevented the bus from crashing.
The 26-year-old female driver had stopped the bus Thursday afternoon to exchange words with a student who was unruly, said Baton Rouge Police Department spokesman Cpl. L’Jean McKneely. The driver told authorities the 15-year-old boy then walked up behind her and punched her several times in the head, knocking her unconscious, McKneely said.
The bus started to move after the unconscious driver’s hands and feet slipped off the wheel and brakes, said Keith Bromery, a spokesman for East Baton Rouge Parish schools. He said after the 15-year-old fled, the 14-year-old male student ran forward and stepped on the brake, put the bus in park and called 911.
The 15-year-old boy’s mother later turned him in to police. He is charged with battery of a bus driver, second-degree battery and aggravated obstruction of a roadway. Authorities said they did not know if the teenager had an attorney. The Associated Press does not generally identify juveniles accused of crimes.
Local news media reported that school officials have suspended the 15-year-old pending an expulsion hearing, and that the 14-year-old was congratulated by transportation officials for trying to protect his fellow students and get medical help for the bus driver.
The bus driver was recovering at home after being treated at a hospital for moderate injuries, local news media reported.
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Information from: WBRZ-TV, http://www.wbrz.com
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Imprisoned Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan has called on his fighters to lay down arms as part of a peace process to end a 30-year insurgency, Turkey’s main Kurdish party said Saturday.
Pro-Kurdish legislator Sirri Sureyya Onder said Ocalan is asking his Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, to hold an extraordinary congress in the spring to take the “historic decision” to end its armed struggle. There was no immediate response from PKK commanders who are based in northern Iraq, but the group generally heeds Ocalan’s calls.
Ocalan has been serving a life term in prison on an island south of Istanbul since 1999 but retains influence over his fighters.
Turkey began talking to Ocalan in 2012 with the aim of ending the conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people since 1984.
Ocalan declared a cease-fire in 2013 and ordered the PKK to withdraw fighters to bases in neighboring northern Iraq as part of the peace efforts. The cease-fire is still in place but the PKK halted its withdrawal a few months later, saying Turkey had not taken any steps to reciprocate.
“The dialogue which, from time to time hits disruptions and breakages, has reached … a serious stage,” said Onder, who is among a group of Kurdish politicians allowed to visit Ocalan on his prison island off Istanbul to discuss the peace efforts.
He quoted Ocalan as saying: “This call (for a congress) is a declaration of intent for democratic politics to replace the armed struggle.”
Onder spoke after a meeting with Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan who also described Ocalan’s call as a major step. “We regard the statement toward the acceleration of efforts to lay down arms as important,” he said.
Residents in a remote area of southern Missouri are trying to come to grips with what could cause a man to kill seven people, including four of his own relatives, in a nighttime shooting spree that spanned four homes.
The shooter, identified by authorities as 36-year-old Joseph Jesse Aldridge, used a .45-caliber handgun to kill two people each at three homes, one person at another, and then himself, in a reign of violence that began late Thursday night. All of the victims lived in or near the tiny, unincorporated town of Tyrone in the rolling hills of Missouri’s Ozarks region, about 40 miles from the Arkansas border. All of the victims were adults.
Texas County Sheriff James Sigman said people generally have felt safe in small towns like Tyrone.
“Start locking your doors,” the sheriff said. “The world’s changing.
The motive for the shooting was still under investigation Friday. The few people in town willing to talk about it knew little about Aldridge, described as somewhat reclusive in an otherwise tight-knit area. Some said they’d seen him around and talked to him, but not enough to form an opinion.
Bud Goodman, 71, of nearby Houston, grew up in Tyrone. He knew all of the victims but little about Aldridge.
“I just don’t know what he was doing,” Goodman said.
Police are still trying to figure that out, too. Around 10:15 p.m. Thursday, a 15-year-old girl, wearing only a nightgown and no shoes in near-zero temperatures and with cuts on her legs from running through thickets and hardened snow, pounded on a neighbor’s door.
“She was crying so hard,” the neighbor, who declined to be identified out of concern for his safety, said. “I finally got out of her, ‘My mom and dad have been shot.'”
The girl called 911 from the neighbor’s home. Sigman said that as officers responded to that call, they received word of another shooting.
The victims at both addresses were related to each other, and to Aldridge. Authorities identified them as two couples, Garold Dee Aldridge, 52, and his wife, Julie Ann, 47; and Harold Wayne Aldridge, 50, and his wife, Janell Arlisa, 48. Both men were cousins of Joseph Aldridge, according to Missouri State Highway Patrol Sgt. Jeff Kinder.
At some point over the next few hours, Joseph Aldridge killed two more men and another woman at two different locations, Sigman said, and injured another woman. Names of those victims, and details about the woman’s injuries, were not released.
The case took another strange twist when authorities went to the home that Joseph Aldridge shared with his 74-year-old mother, Alice. She was found dead at the home, but apparently of natural causes, authorities said. An autopsy was planned to determine if her death was related to the shooting spree.
She had been under a doctor’s care and appeared to have been dead at least 24 hours, Texas County Coroner Tom Whittaker told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Whittaker speculated that the son “came home and found her deceased and then for whatever reason went on a rampage and started killing people.”
Sigman said many of the residents of Tyrone are Aldridges. Police, worried that other relatives might be targeted, reached out to all of them, along with family members in other towns, while they searched for Joseph Aldridge in the early hours of Friday. Sigman said he was confident there were no more victims.
Authorities also alerted everyone else in town about the gunman. Jerry Logsdon, who lives near two of the shooting scenes, was awakened by state troopers at 3:30 a.m. “I thought they were going to tell me my cattle escaped,” he said. “They said, ‘There’s been a shooting.'”
Around 5:30 a.m. Friday, in neighboring Shannon County, some 25 miles from Tyrone, Joseph Aldridge was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted wound inside a GMC pickup. Sigman said the truck was running and in the middle of a two-lane highway.
Around town, Aldridge was described as a recluse, and it was unclear what, if anything, he did for a living.
Vernetta Lucille Swartz, 76, Joseph Aldridge’s aunt, lives in Hesperia, Calif., but said the family is grief-stricken.
“Two of my nephews and wives were shot, and I guess another nephew was the shooter,” she said.
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