the visual language of crackpot websites (quick thought)

After visiting weatherishappening.com (boston’s most trust source 4 weather)

https://www.facebook.com/weatherishappening
source: https://www.facebook.com/weatherishappening

and calling the hexagonal awareness hotline at 617.600.0606 “for immediate hexagonal assistance”,

elect-hexagonbot
source: http://hexnet.org/gallery

i developed this conspiracy theory that all crackpot websites shared the same visual language.

In general, a twisted visual style to match the twisted intellectual content. —timeblimp.com

Sadly my conspiracy theory has been dis-proven, which just goes to show how poor a crackpot I make 🙁

Thought: what do crackpot websites in other languages look like? Surely there must be crackpot Chinese physicists. do they make classical ugly websites along the lines of timecube.com? or is the more recent widespread internet usage in China than in US contribute to visual differences in crackpot websites there? What about Arabic or any other language?

Thought2: I should make a crackpot-CSS-styled website that actually gives very useful technical information, for instance serves up digikey datasheets.

Thought3: The complement to that is the take the trending-startup-webdesign or facebook design or hip bootstrap styles and make a slick looking website utterly filled with crackpottery. may encounter difficulty distinguishing it from your generic Industry Changing Startup website though. hmm.

anyway, you tell me which of the below websites are crackpot websites:

Screenshot from 2015-02-21 01:26:00 Screenshot from 2015-02-21 01:24:32 Screenshot from 2015-02-21 01:19:04 Screenshot from 2015-02-21 01:18:33 Screenshot from 2015-02-21 01:18:16 Screenshot from 2015-02-21 01:17:10

answer: all crackpots, probably, except weatherishappening (for sure) and hexnet (probably, he seems like a pretty chill dude. he showed up at hexacon2013.mit.edu, and really, if we don’t judge people who collect stamps (they even have a name, philatelics), why should we judge people who collect hexagons?)

And to close, here’s a gem of a crackpot:

http://dpedtech.com/dirac.pdf

NB: You can read this essay as science fiction or science fact. It’s up to you.

First Some Theory

One of the most elegant forms of ZPE devices is the Dirac Current Positron Generator. Once you can finesse the low energy generation of positrons from the quantum vacuum, letting nature supply the bulk of the energy requirement for the task, you then can release large amounts of usable “free energy” by simply letting the positrons annihilate with electrons under controlled conditions. …

What is nifty about our process, though, is that we can “freeze” the sc condensate into a permanent steady state much like the frozen positrons that are stuck inside the protons or like concubines sequestered in a harem. The sexless quark eunuchs insulate the sexy positrons so the poor horny bachelor electrons nearby just can’t get in close enough to mate with them and go out in the orgasmic glory they desire. So the charged up electrons do the next best thing and go into “mental” fantasies and complex ritual patterns. That generates EM fluxes and molecular structures that weave a complex web around the protons. A kind of “civilization” emerges with a wonderful variety of long-lasting sublimation rites.

wat. what did i just read.

watttttt.

yours truly in wasting time on crackpot websites,
~ orangenarwhals

~~~~END~~~~

thanks to the original reviewer / theorist of just how crackpotty these crackpot websites are, http://timeblimp.com/?page_id=286

The TimeBlimp Universal Theory of Crackpot Websites:

1. Horrendous grammar, spelling, and general use of language

2. Declaration that some pillar of science is completely wrong

3. Unprofessional, irritated, emotional tone to the explanations.

4. They usually have websites (what better way to publish to the masses), and their websites are almost always one gigantic continuous long stream of text and figures in one page. The site design is awful, with clashing colors, abuse of blinking text, terrible font sizes and colors. Oh, and they often use ALL CAPS TO EMPHASIZE POINTS, and embellish important sentences with lots of exclamation points!!!! In general, a twisted visual style to match the twisted intellectual content.

5. Invention of their own definitions

Head over to timeblimp.com to read in-depth reviews of each crackpot website, as well as the reveal of the winning crackpottiest crackpot website!

National Weather Service fun facts

if I have been blogging a lot, it is because I redirected facebook to localhost on my computer via /etc/hosts, so here we go

1) THEY TYPE IN ALL CAPS…EVEN THOUGHT IT IS 2014… Their forecasts are often broadcast on radio for seafolks or airfolks using voice synthesizers. The ellipses are equivalent to a comma, but in the super early days they only had periods and ALL CAPS. The NWS keeps it this way to comply with global standards which include countries with old equipment. Their are proposals to adopt crazy new features like mixed caps and more punctuation signs.

2) There are three voices since 2002, two male and one female voices (and a male Spanish voice). You can listen to the here: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/info/newvoice.html

3) Metereologists have a sense of humor, and that’s sometimes sprinkled into the official forecasts, like below:

http://xkcd.com/1126/
http://xkcd.com/1126/
(from: http://xkcd.com/1126/)

(I have two examples from this year’s Boston snow craziness here: http://www.orangenarwhals.com/?p=1593)

conveying complex technical information (quick thought)

there’s something that interests me, but only because I encounter it done poorly everywhere and it REALLY IRKS ME.

I’d much rather it be someone else’s problem, but in lieu of that I often find myself ranting about it or fixing it myself as best as I can.

It’s something like “conveying complex technical information”. In fact there are professional “technical communicators”, but their conferences are just case studies of things done right and wrong (and the way the people describe themselves :/ seems not exciting to me).

I would define my interest in this way:

Conveying complex technical information

Transmit success rate:
100% = telepaths
0% = speak/feel different languages and are blind

Specific applications:

  • Education: university STEM students, high school students. Blank-slate brains to fill with information!
  • Academia: why is this paper so hard to read? why does it take new PhD students 12 months to understand the state of the field?
  • Data sciences: i need to find insights in terabytes of data. help.
  • Engineering projects: why does it take so long to figure out whether to use this tool or that framework?

It touches on

  • document design / website design
  • visualizations
  • how to write well
  • interface design (make good GUIs)

Tools

  • Goal: increase success rate & decrease transmission time
  • docs (sphynx, liquify, doxygen, readthedocs, jenkyll)
  • screenshots or video (shutter, gtk-recordmydesktop, gfycat)
  • visualization tools (d3.js, ipython, R)
  • software replacements for editors (checks to see if your paragraphs are structured well, flow coherently, etc.)
  • tools to map your mental models

Transmission fails if:

  • person loses interest
  • person receives all information but models information incorrectly, or
  • loses information because it falls outside their model

Ideally, the transmission

  • Delights and inspires
  • Encourages thinking
  • Encourages new ideas / connections to be formed

Okay, if I think anymore about this topic my brain will explode. Time to go to sleep.