Amazing gaming things this week, along with all manner of other nerd things. Our Christmas vacation starts on Thursday, but we’ll be back in the new year with even more great content and strange links. Emphasis on strange.
OPERAcraft
This is, quite simply, a Minecraft opera. Not a music video per se, but an opera set in Minecraft, with a real orchestra. It’s like a reverse machinima, only no–Just watch it.
Live like a gamer
We’re both gamers, and we can attest to all the awesome things that being a gamer can teach you. Wizards f the Coast writer Mark Rosewater talks about some of the things he’s learned in his years as a gamer in his final article of 2013.
Revealed preferences
Philosophy professor Patricia Marino has a knack for making you sadder and smarter at the same time, and her latest blog post is a great example of this. Learn about revealed preferences and ego depletion, and wonder which shoulder creature you’re listening to (I say, browsing Youtube as I work on this post).
Math that moves!
Math is beautiful and wonderful and occasionally super confusing. Learn a bit more about mathematical sequences with these beautiful and hypnotic diagrams featured at the American Mathematical Society. Seriously cool stuff.
Precious bodily fluids
We found water, well, evidence of water, on Mars. According to Dvice, “…Curiosity also discovered water on the planet, something that is believed necessary for life to form. After carefully studying a large crater on the planet’s surface, scientists believe a freshwater lake existed there that could potentially have contained microbial life.”
The universe is weird
For all kinds of reasons, but for right now, this. From Wired News, “Physicists reported this week the discovery of a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality.”
