These guys know what's up:
Did you know that beloved children's author Roald Dahl also wrote stories for adults? Very different from his kid-friendly stuff, especially My Uncle Oswald, which originally appeared in Playboy! (NSFW)Think your writing habits are bizarre? You're not alone. Here are some of the stranger habits from a few of the world's most famous writers.Because no one (and nothing) can escape the powerful allure of Pokémon Go, IBM's supercomputer Watson has taken a real shine to the game. (And of course it's amazing at the game...Watson is always showing off!)Would you upload your consciousness to the virtual afterlife? Michael Graziano explores the implications of such technology in this imaginative essay on the future of death and consciousness.This interactive Game of Thrones map is going to blow your mind! So...much...detail... *heart-eyes emoji*Whoa! Listen to JRR Tolkien read songs and poems from The Lord of the Rings:[embed]https://soundcloud.com/brainpicker/jrr-tolkien-sings-sams-rhyme-of-the-troll[/embed]Check out this great Broadly interview with new media artist and composer Erin Gee, whose work discussed in this interview, Swarming Emotional Pianos, premiered in Montreal in 2014. Described as a "cybernetic musical performance work that bridges robotics and emotion to create a biologically harmonic chamber music," Swarming Emotional Pianos features an array of mobile robots that each contain and perform according to specific instrumental and lighting components.Here's a video of one performance:[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3wQXnsoSFg[/embed]A glimpse into the year 2000, as imagined by 1950's Czechoslovakia:[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42aUCl_YPso[/embed]Now to compare, take a look at this awesome colorized footage of early-1900's Berlin:[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-m9A8mY-U0[/embed]Speaking of image colorization-- have you ever wanted to colorize black and white pictures but maybe don't know where to start? Worry not...there's an app for that! Sort of. This website uses deep learning, the Algorithmia API, to automatically colorize black and white photos. We tried it out using a picture of silent film actor Lillian Gish - so cool!
