The Interactive Fiction Competition
The games of the 2014 Interactive Fiction Competition are ready for judging! Anyone can be a judge: just play and rate at least five games before November 15.

A history of the They Might Be Giants song Birdhouse in Your Soul.
For many of us, the world is a bit scarier than it was in 1990: There are a lot of reasons, now, why the ocean levels are rising up. But nearly a quarter-century on, Flood and, of course, its most iconic song is still a source of comfort in a world that too often tells us to stop drawing in margins, to stop playing the class clown, to speak up, run faster, act cooler, stop daydreaming, stop sulking, stop singing, stop underachieving, stop overachieving, stop flooding. If we were to give in to sentimentality—and why would we hold back while talking about Flood—we might even, not to put too fine a point on it, call the song our nightlight.

Former Top Official Says Kim Jong-un Is No Longer in Control of North Korea | VICE News
An elite group of exiles from North Korea gathered in September in the Netherlands to discuss the state of the regime they used to serve. The conference included top diplomats, an ex-senior official of the Ministry of Security, and a high-ranking military officer, but the keynote address was given by Jang Jin-sung, formerly a key member of Kim Jong-il's propaganda machine. Included in Jang's speech was a surprising assertion: North Korea is in the midst of a civil war.

ColorChecker: How to get PERFECT skin colors with every camera – Hans van Eijsden Photography
One of the best kept secrets within the fashion and beauty photography is the way to obtain absolutely perfect and flawless skin colors, brightness and texture. That’s an art, absolutely, and often a quite technical challenge. In this article I will explain how to obtain perfect skin colors, with the help of a ColorChecker.

Spot the man behind the man! | radical wind
Men are experts at inventing personas. Their entire careers as life-destructors are always accompanied by hardly disguised attempts at hiding the fact that all they want and can do is to rape and kill, or torture women. But as it’s not possible for them to be something else than what they are, or let alone imagine what it’s  like not to be a man (= to be a woman), it always betrays who they are, anyway.