language – Page 3 – TwistedSifter

This Machine Prints Free Short Stories for You to Read While You Wait

This cool little machine was recently spotted at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France

Photograph by MisallocatedRacism on reddit

This awesome little kiosk/machine was recently spotted at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France. The idea is simple, first select your desired reading time (one, three or five minutes) and voila! A random short story will be printed for your enjoyment.

The photo above was recently posted to reddit where it was quickly identified as a Short Story Dispenser© by Short Édition, which has a library of stories from over 6,800 authors.

The short story machines also appear in other airports and stations as well as University campuses, malls and retail chains. For more information visit the official website.

[via reddit]

Photograph by Short Édition

The Most Misspelled Words in the United States According to Google

The Google Trends team made a map of the top searched ‘how to spell _____’ queries in 2017 by US state

The research team at Google Trends recently put together this map that shows the most misspelled words in the US by state.

The data is based on the top searched query for “how to spell _________” from January 1st – April 30th, 2017. I love that ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ was the most searched word in two states. Words such as ‘tomorrow’, ‘maintenance’, ‘pneumonia’, ‘beautiful’ and ‘chihuahua’ made multiple appearances while short words like ‘sense’, ‘liar’ and ‘nanny’ may surprise some.

[via Google Trends on Twitter]

In 1977 Jimmy Carter Put This Note on the Voyager Spacecraft

It remains the only letter in history to reach extrasolar space

On September 5, 1977 the Voyager 1 space probe launched from Earth. Nearly 40 years and some 20.5 billion km travelled later (and counting!), the Voyager 1 remains the farthest ever spacecraft from Earth as well as the farthest ever man-made object.

In the event the probe is ever found by intelligent life forms from other planetary systems, a Golden Record containing sounds and images (selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth) can be found on board. You can learn all about the Golden Record here.

In addition, then US President Jimmy Carter penned the following note and placed it in the Voyager 1 space probe to accompany the Golden Record. It remains the only letter in history to reach extrasolar space.

Here’s to galactic civilizations far and wide 🙂

Jimmy Carter’s Voyager 1 Letter

This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.

We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some–perhaps many–may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.

The Golden Record

Photograph by NASA

Artist Makes Graffiti Legible By Rewriting It In Plain Text

“Tag Clouds” by artist Mathieu Tremblin is ruffling some feathers

Mathieu Tremblin is an artist currently living and working in Strasbourg, France. Born in Le Mans in 1980, Tremblin graduated with a degree in fine arts and is a founding member of the duo Les Frères Ripoulain (2006) and BIP (Bureau d’investigation photographique) collective (2005-2015).

In an ongoing series entitled, Tag Clouds, Tremblin makes graffiti tags legible by rewriting them in plain text, in a style similar to popular tag clouds found on the Internet (even the Sifter has one in the sidebar).

In a 2013 interview with The Atlantic’s CityLab, Tremblin states:

I consider “Tag Clouds” as a traditional graffiti fresco work. I come from a local graffiti scene and painting over a wall covered by tags to make something more complex, letters or characters whatever, is what graffiti writers do. But what’s interesting is that the final mural deals with the writer’s ego- their name. Having that direct communication, being known by anybody, is what writers are searching for. “Tag Clouds” removes all alterity or identity and makes it properly decorative and appreciable to any passerby, which is also the purpose of a graffiti fresco, showing technical skills for decoration.

This work sounds like a kind of oxymoron, you could understand it as a way to make a dirty signature proper as institutionalized visual communication, sterilizing wild graffiti writing by removing all traces of alterity and at the same time giving the opportunity to anybody to be able to read graffiti script and get in touch with it.

So agreeing with or being against the piece as a graffiti writer is a complex thing to decide because I’m half paying tribute to and half normalizing the local graffiti scene. I just translate writers names at the same scale and they usually continue to play with the blank spaces, adding their signature between regular typography I painted with stencil. In fact, the project is giving focus to some walls that writers weren’t paying attention to anymore because they were filled with tags. Mostly though, it generates new graffiti challenges instead of killing the energy behind it. [source]

[via Design You Trust]

Before He Left Office Bush Sr Left This Letter for Bill Clinton

A cool piece of American history

Here’s a pretty cool piece of American history. Before leaving office, George H.W. Bush left the letter below in the Oval Office for incoming President, Bill Clinton. The letter was posted on Twitter by user James Cameron.

According to The Telegraph, when a President steps down from office, it’s tradition to leave behind a note for their successor. Both Bush and Clinton acknowledged the letter below in their autobiographies.

[James Cameron on Twitter via The Telegraph]

Dear Bill,

When I walked into this office just now I felt the same sense of wonder and respect that I felt four years ago. I know you will feel that, too.

I wish you great happiness here. I never felt the loneliness some Presidents have described.

There will be very tough times, made even more difficult by criticism you may not think is fair. I’m not a very good one to give advice; but just don’t let the critics discourage you or push you off course.

You will be our President when you read this note. I wish you well. I wish your family well.

Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you.

Good luck – George

Another fun tidbit courtesy of The Telegraph talks about the letter Reagan left for Bush Sr:

When Ronald Reagan left office he left George HW Bush some stationery bearing the legend: “Don’t let the turkeys get you down.” The accompanying note read:

“You’ll have moments when you want to use this particular stationery. Well, go to it. George, I treasure the memories we share and wish you all the very best. You’ll be in my prayers. God bless you and Barbara. I’ll miss our Thursday lunches. Ron.”

Between the Words: Exploring Punctuation in Literary Classics

Nicholas Rougeux removes all of the letters, numbers, spaces and line breaks from the famous texts, displaying just the punctuation in a continuous line of symbols starting at the top center and spiralling inwards.

Artist Nicholas Rougeux’s Between the Words is “an exploration of the visual rhythm of punctuation in well-known literary works”. Rougeux removes all of the letters, numbers, spaces and line breaks from famous texts, displaying just the punctuation in a continuous line of symbols starting at the top center and spiralling inwards.

All literature used is in the public domain and most are retrieved from Project Gutenberg, an incredible online archive offering over 50,000 free ebooks.

If you’re interested in prints of the awesome posters below, Rougeux has made them available through his Zazzle.com storefront. I’ve placed direct links to the prints beneath each poster in the gallery below.

To see all of the posters in the series and in larger resolution, visit C82.net

1.

Artwork by NICHOLAS ROUGEUX
Website | Behance | Twitter | Buy Poster

2.

Artwork by NICHOLAS ROUGEUX
Website | Behance | Twitter | Buy Poster

3.

Artwork by NICHOLAS ROUGEUX
Website | Behance | Twitter | Buy Poster

4.

Artwork by NICHOLAS ROUGEUX
Website | Behance | Twitter | Buy Poster

5.

Artwork by NICHOLAS ROUGEUX
Website | Behance | Twitter | Buy Poster

6.

Artwork by NICHOLAS ROUGEUX
Website | Behance | Twitter | Buy Poster

7.

Artwork by NICHOLAS ROUGEUX
Website | Behance | Twitter | Buy Poster

8.

Artwork by NICHOLAS ROUGEUX
Website | Behance | Twitter | Buy Poster

How the Same Emoji Varies Across Platforms

That ‘grinning face with smiling eyes’ emoji does not look how you think it looks

Graphic via GroupLens

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have recently published a study investigating the potential for miscommunication using emoji across various platforms, networks and devices.

In the conversation below between a Google Nexus user and an iPhone user, we can see how the same emoji is rendered differently on each device, leading to confusion and misinterpretation.

Graphic via GroupLens

To investigate whether “emoji font” diversity can cause miscommunication, my colleagues and I conducted a survey to compare how people interpret emoji. We did this for 5 platform renderings (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, LG) of 22 of the most popular anthropomorphic (i.e., human-looking) emoji. For each emoji rendering, we asked the participants to describe the emoji rendering in words. We also asked them to assess the emotional meaning or sentiment of each rendering on a scale from -5 (strongly negative) to 5 (strongly positive).

– Hannah Miller, GroupLens

Graphic via GroupLens

Like it or not, emojis have become an integral component in human communication, especially amongst the youth. Understanding how the same emoji, rendered differently, can impact emotion, sentiment and connectedness is important.

Below you can see how 22 common emojis are displayed differently across devices.

Graphic via GroupLens

The study was conducted by GroupLens, a research lab in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota specializing in recommender systems, online communities, mobile and ubiquitous technologies, digital libraries, and local geographic information systems.

The full research paper, “Blissfully happy” or “ready to fight”: Varying Interpretations of Emoji, can be viewed as a pdf here.

The paper will be officially published at AAAI ICWSM in May. For more information, visit GroupLens.

17 Words the English Language Needs to Add to its Lexicon

From cellfish friends to straight up askholes, here are 17 words the English language needs to add to its lexicon

BuzzFeed editor Daniel Dalton recently created a series of entertaining image macros, taking popular words/definitions from Urban Dictionary and overlaying them onto photographs from the royalty free image site, Unsplash.

From cellfish friends to straight up askholes, here are 17 words the English language needs to add to its lexicon.

[via BuzzFeed]

Daniel Dalton / BuzzFeed / unsplash.com / via urbandictionary.com

These Puns are Terrible and I Love Them (18 Photos)

Commence eye rolling in 3… 2…

Monika aka arseniic on deviantART is an artist and illustrator based in the United States. In an ongoing series, Monika draws cute illustrations to accompany terrible puns that will make your eyes roll.

You can find all of her punny illustrations on deviantART as well as her tumblr themed page, ‘Pundemonium‘. If you’re interested in prints, a few of them are available through Red Bubble.

Now without further adieu…

Artwork by Arseniic on deviantART

Picture of the Day: Lest We Forget

In Flanders fields the poppies blow; Between the crosses, row on row

Photograph by Lx 121 on Wikimedia Commons

Seen here is Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae’s famous poem, “In Flanders Field“, inscribed in a bronze book at the John McCrae memorial in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, where he was born.

According to Wikipedia:

“In Flanders Fields” is a war poem in the form of a rondeau, written during the First World War by Canadian physician Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae. He was inspired to write it on May 3, 1915, after presiding over the funeral of friend and fellow soldier Alexis Helmer, who died in the Second Battle of Ypres.

The poem and poppy are prominent Remembrance Day symbols throughout the Commonwealth of Nations, particularly in Canada, where “In Flanders Fields” is one of the nation’s best-known literary works. The poem also has wide exposure in the United States, where it is associated with Memorial Day. [source]

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

via Lx 121 on Wikimedia Commons

Jimmy Carter’s Voyager 1 Letter

The Golden Record

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.