Michael Akerman

Border collie/corgi , Winnie.

Kerstin Mielke | big eyes

Making a new head

awwww-cute:

Latte foam cats (Source: http://ift.tt/1P2cscJ)

You'll never guess what Taryn T. asked her baker:

As perfect as that is, I feel kinda bad that Taryn didn't get her unicorn.

So Taryn, JUST FOR YOU:

Humpy Dumpy

 

Elvis McSquiggle Eye

 

"Nothing To See Here" Brutus the Smoothest [WINK WINK]

 

And I can't decide which of these last two is my favorite:

Squintsy the Aardvark

 

Or

Stumpy Wallbanger.

 

You guys feel free to vote in the comments.

 

Thanks to Ginny V., Cassandra F., Brandi F., Heather C., & Joshanna R. for proving that, no matter what, the answer was still "no."

*****

Thank you for using our Amazon links to shop! USA, UK, Canada.

howto-joelheyman:

highgreenviahilsborough:

cassandrashipsit:

awkwardprincessally:

impbones:

briedoof:

spectrograph:

a good thing to do for your friends with anxiety disorders: if you have a question you need to ask them or something you need to tell them, explain the subject of the question/the statement in the same message as your opening one!

so basically: instead of saying “can i ask you a question?” and sending just that (which, as a person with an anxiety disorder, makes my anxiety go into hyperdrive) go “can i ask you a question about ___?”

it’s a little thing but honestly few things make me anxious like “i have a question for you” or “there’s something i need to tell you” without immediate explanation. thanks!

“call me, nothing is wrong, just wanna talk on the phone” would be so much better than “Call me.”

Actually please to all of this please.

YES PLEASE.

YES THIS OK????? Like I have trained my husband to say “nothing bad, I just need to call you because it’s too much to type.” It helps SO MUCH. Just let me prepare myself, because I guarantee my imagination will take me to much much darker places.

Might I add, if someone with anxiety has just said something to you that’s a lot to process, and you need some time to think about what to say in response, please consider a quick “I’m not ignoring you, I need to think about what to say and I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

Because that definitely saves your friend with anxiety a lot of strife and assuming they’ve ruined your friendship forever. Nothing is crueler than a “Seen 2:25pm” when it’s 10am the next day and you’re waiting on a reply to a huge confession.

Normally I don’t acknowledge my anxiety very much but to any of my friends this would genuinely be helpful. Thanks 

That’s not a horse—that’s a seahorse.

No, President Obama has not started confiscating guns by force in California (or any other state).

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This video for Fever Scout, one of several new temperature trackers, is right: When your kid is sick, you do feel bad. But the idea that “dragging things across their forehead” — i.e., using a non-invasive, swipe the forehead thermometer — is insanely cruel, and that doing this at night can feel like “torture,” well, there’s your definition of a First World Problem.

But beyond my personal gripe with exaggerating inconvenience is a deeper issue: The notion that we should continually monitor our peaked children’s temperatures is just another sign that at some point in the near future, we will be exhorted to monitor our kids for everything, all the time: Their whereabouts (via GPS), their in-class behavior (via EdLine and such), their texts and downloads (via a panoply of computer software), what they ate for lunch (an online service offered at some schools) and, now, their vital statistics.

The implications are twofold: First, that parents will be expected to devote themselves to tracking their kids the way Seal Team Six tracked Osama.

And Second, that children will come to understand that everything they do carries such a threat of calamity — illness, abduction, a B-minus — that their parents simply MUST supervise their every outing, ice cream, pop quiz, cold symptom and key stroke.

Free-Range Kids fights for the rights of kids to some unsupervised time, and the rights of parents to give it to them. One way to fight is to resist the offer of absolute knowledge being proffered by the tech world, not unlike the serpent offering the same thing to Eve. – L

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With Google Cardboard, you can take amazing trips to faraway places and feel like you’re actually there. But what if you could also use Cardboard to go back in time—to step inside personal moments like your favorite vacation or a holiday dinner with family? Now you can with the new Cardboard Camera app for Android.

Cardboard Camera turns the smartphone in your pocket into a virtual reality (VR) camera. It’s simple to take a photo: just hold out your phone and move it around you in a circle. Later, when you place your phone inside a Google Cardboard viewer, you'll get to experience something new: a VR photo.
VR photos are three-dimensional panoramas, with slightly different views for each eye, so near things look near and far things look far. You can look around to explore the image in all directions, and even record sound with your photo to hear the moment exactly as it happened.
Taken with Cardboard Camera at Jackson Lake, Wyoming. This simulates the 3D effect when seen in a Cardboard viewer.

With Cardboard Camera, anyone can create their own VR experience. So revisit the mountaintop that took hours to hike, or the zoo where you saw (and heard) the monkeys, or your birthday party with the cake out and candles still lit. Capture the moments that matter to you and relive them anytime, from anywhere.

Cardboard Camera is available today on Google Play in 17 languages.

Posted by Carlos Hernandez, Software Engineer, Cardboard Camera http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cXaR6CyEPw8/VmBpIVPkEkI/AAAAAAAARhg/hAv4GJWbWMA/s1600/Simulates_3D_Effect_in_Viewer.gif Carlos Hernandez Software Engineer Cardboard Camera

Our new Introvert Ornament would rather be in the back of the tree in a comfortable secluded spot where it can see the other ornaments if it wants to, but can also have some private time. The perfect ornament to make sure everyone in your family is represented on the tree. 

Shop here!

A definitive answer to an age-old debate.

Roughly 60 percent of the world is without Internet today, and even where online access is available, it can still be spotty. That means that quick and easy access to information is still not possible for a majority of the population. This is a huge problem, especially as people attempt to navigate and explore the world around them, so Google Maps is taking steps to help people across the globe find directions and get where they’re going, even when they don’t have an Internet connection.

Now you can download an area of the world to your phone, and the next time you find there’s no connectivity—whether it’s a country road or an underground parking garage—Google Maps will continue to work seamlessly. Whereas before you could simply view an area of the map offline, now you can get turn-by-turn driving directions, search for specific destinations, and find useful information about places, like hours of operation, contact information or ratings.
You can download an area by searching for a city, county or country, for instance, and tapping "Download" on the resulting place sheet, or by going to "Offline Areas" in the Google Maps menu and tapping on the “+” button. Once downloaded, Google Maps will move into offline mode automatically when it recognizes you’re in a location with spotty service or no connectivity at all. When a connection is found, it will switch back online so you can easily access the full version of Maps, including live traffic conditions for your current route. By default, we’ll only download areas to your device when you are on a Wi-Fi connection to prevent large data fees.
We first previewed these new capabilities during Google I/O in May, and today we’re gradually rolling out the first set of these improvements with the latest version of Google Maps on Android (coming soon to iOS). Over time, we’ll be introducing even more offline features to help you find your way—even when you can’t find a connection.

Posted by Amanda Bishop, Product Manager

Whether you actually celebrate Dia De Los Muertos or just love the bright beauty of this Mexican holiday, today's Sweets are for you!

(By Sweet Pea Tailored Confections)

Sugar skulls are almost synonymous with Day of the Dead, and with colors this cheerful, it's easy to see why!

 

Here's a little sweetie with sugar skull face paint:

(By Mary Way)

The little skulls around her feet are just the cutest things ever.

 

Here's an incredible sculpt of Frida Kahlo celebrating:

(By Zorica's Cake Art for Sugar Skulls Bakers)

 

And a bold minimalistic style with PERFECT piping:

(By Torta Couture Cakes)

 

Here's something different: a hand painted, Day of the Dead mermaid:

(By KO's Cakes)

...AND I LIKE IT.

 

Another incredible - albeit kinda creepy - sculpt:

(By Imaginarium Cakes)

Look at all the detail on the skull and the face mask - and the individual curls of her hair!
Ahhh-mazing.

 

A classic red-and-black beauty:

(By The CakeLdy)

 

And a not-so-classic but oh-so-fun Rockabilly style:

(By Man Bakes Cake)

That hair swoop! Hee!

 

Marigolds are popular during Dia celebrations, and these sugar versions have the most amazing texture:

(By Sugar Song Cakes)

 

And while we're talking texture, check out the incredible 3D "embroidery" on this bottom tier:

(By Dolca Llepolia)

It really looks hand stitched, and those colors practically glow. LOVE.

 

And one last dark beauty:

(By Little Cherry Cake Company)

So many great details! I spy a guitar, candles, marigolds, some tamales - and I *think* the fruit on top is a dragon fruit. Also, today I learned what a dragon fruit looks like. :D

 

Happy Day of the Dead, everyone! Here's to loved ones gone-but-never-forgotten.

*****

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We're still wondering where that fish has gone.

The company plans to stop using fish bladders in the beer's filtration process by 2016.

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UPDATE! As phenomenal as the advice “Prudence” gives to the neighbor who might report two teens having sex is the final story on the Dear Prudence page, which I originally missed. Here it is. Prudence — Emily Yoffe — wrote it after advising a grown reader that playing doctor as a kid is not something to look back on in adulthood and re-cast as shameful or even a “sexual assault.”

Q. Re: Playing Doctor: I would add this word of caution. Today these sorts of things are taken EXTREMELY seriously. Last year my family went through hell when my daughter mentioned playing doctor with her older brother to a friend. My children would have been approximately ages 6 and 4 (we never were able to determine this exactly; they may have been slightly older or younger) when it happened—there was some showing of parts to each other. This friend, appropriately so I guess, told her mother. The mother then mentioned it to the school principal, a mandated reporter. The department of child and family services was called. An investigation ensued that involved two home visits and interviews with my children. In addition my daughter had to undergo a forensic interview with a child psychologist; my son had to give an audio recorded statement to the police. After the investigation, the entire case was dropped, but the entire process was one of the most stressful experiences of my entire life, made more so by that fact that you cannot talk to anyone about it. So I would caution parents who speak to children, as they should, about abuse that they mention that there are some developmentally normal situations during that these things can occur. I had been speaking to my daughter frequently about sexual assault when she mentioned the incident with her brother to her friend, because a friend’s daughter had been raped by a coach. The impression I got from many people I dealt with in this process was that to many of these professionals there is no such thing as acceptable or normal “playing doctor,” except the counselor whom my daughter ended up seeing and who helped our family move through all of this.

Lenore here: The lesson here is the same as the lesson below: Do NOT  destroy anyone’s life by summoning the authorities!

WE NOW RESUME MY EARLIER POST!

As if it wasn’t enough that Emily Yoffe wrote one of my favorite journalistic investigations of all time — The College Rape Overcorrection (in which she writes, “Sexual assault on campus is a serious problem. But efforts to protect women from a putative epidemic of violence have led to misguided policies that infringe on the civil rights of men”), she’s also Dear Prudence! “Prudie” is a modern, brilliant advice-giver, daily injecting sanity into a world bent on overreaction, fear and interference. Here is a letter that ran yesterday, as always, on Slate (boldface mine):

Q: Neighbor’s Teenage Daughter Has Boyfriend Over: I live in a condo next door to a widow with a 16-year-old daughter. This family and I have been friends for a long time, and we get along well and have never had any problems. I’ve been home due to recovering from surgery, and one afternoon after school, I saw the daughter and her boyfriend go into the condo when the mother wasn’t there. I also heard what sounded like loud sex going on in the room on the other side of my home office wall. I brought this to the mother’s attention, and she said she knew about it but would tell them to be quiet. When I asked her why she allowed this, she said she’d rather they be in a safe, comfortable place and have protection than to be sneaking around in parked cars and such. I was absolutely appalled by this and wonder if I can still be friends with these people or if I should call the police, since both of these kids are underage (both 16). Should I turn them in or just turn a blind eye to it?

 

A: Please give me your address, so I can head over to your house to take away your phone. You need to make a quick recovery and stop snooping on this family. What you heard was loud, mutually desired sex. This was confirmed to you by the mother of the girl. Now that you know that you are next door to two horny teenagers, you have to get out of the business of trying to ruin young people’s lives. If you called the police, I would sincerely hope they would back away once they figured out what was going on. But who knows? We do not need more innocent young people put through the criminal justice system and ending up on the sex offender registry. It’s fine if you no longer wish to be friends with this widow and her daughter, but please just decide to mind your own business and not destroy anyone’s life.

By the way, those are great words to repeat when someone picks up the phone to report the parents of a child walking home from the park, a child waiting in the car during a brief errand, or a child competently caring for him or herself as a latchkey kid: Do not destroy anyone’s life by summoning the authorities! – L

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Over the last few days, there’s been some confusion about the future of Chrome OS and Chromebooks based on speculation that Chrome OS will be folded into Android. While we’ve been working on ways to bring together the best of both operating systems, there's no plan to phase out Chrome OS.

With the launch of Chrome OS six years ago, we set out to make computers better—faster, simpler and more secure—for everyone. We’ve since seen that vision come to life in classrooms, offices and homes around the world. In fact, every school day, 30,000 new Chromebooks are activated in U.S. classrooms—that’s more than all other education devices combined. And more than 2 million teachers and students in more than 150 countries have the Share to Classroom Chrome extension, which launched in September and gets students onto the same webpage, instantly. Meanwhile, companies such as Netflix, Sanmina, Starbucks and of course Google, are using Chromebooks given the ease of deployment, the ability to easily integrate with existing technologies, and a security model that protects users at all levels, from hardware to user data. (Chromebooks are so secure you don’t need antivirus software!) IT administrators can manage tens of thousands of Chromebooks through a single web console, making them ideal for both classrooms and the workplace.

For everyday use, we’re proud that Chromebooks are continually listed as a best-selling laptop computer on Amazon.com. In an effort to make computing even more accessible, earlier this year we introduced the first $149 Chromebook—a fast, affordable laptop. And in the next couple weeks the Asus Chromebit will be available—an $85 device that turns any display into a computer so you can replace your old desktop with an affordable computer the size of a candy bar, or let businesses transform a billboard into a smart digital sign.
This year we've also worked to redefine the different forms Chrome OS can take, introduced the first designated Chromebook for Work, and brought more of your favorite Android apps to your Chromebook via Apps Runtime on Chrome (a.k.a. ARC). But there’s more to do. We have plans to release even more features for Chrome OS, such as a new media player, a visual refresh based on Material Design, improved performance, and of course, a continued focus on security. With our regular six-week software cycle and guaranteed auto-updates for five years, Chromebooks keep getting better over time. Finally, stay on the lookout for dozens of new Chromebooks in 2016.

Posted by Hiroshi Lockheimer, SVP Android, Chrome OS and Chromecast

Nearly 50 years after its original television premiere, this classic sci-fi series knows how to live long and prosper.

Helps keep you the same size

Turns out there's some adorable psychology behind this behavior.

Can you understand the meaning of this passage?

Interlingua se ha distachate ab le movimento pro le disveloppamento e le introduction de un lingua universal pro tote le humanitate. Si o non on crede que un lingua pro tote le humanitate es possibile, si o non on crede que interlingua va devenir un tal lingua es totalmente indifferente ab le puncto de vista de interlingua mesme. Le sol facto que importa (ab le puncto de vista de interlingua mesme) es que interlingua, gratias a su ambition de reflecter le homogeneitate cultural e ergo linguistic del occidente, es capace de render servicios tangibile a iste precise momento del historia del mundo. Il es per su contributiones actual e non per le promissas de su adherentes que interlingua vole esser judicate.

Remarkably, if you’re familiar with a Romance language or are an educated speaker of English, you probably can. It’s Interlingua, a language that combines a minimal grammar with a widely familiar vocabulary, making it unusually easy to learn and comprehend. Here’s a translation of the passage above:

Interlingua has detached itself from the movement for the development and introduction of a universal language for all humanity. Whether or not one believes that a language for all humanity is possible, whether or not one believes that Interlingua will become such a language is totally irrelevant from the point of view of Interlingua itself. The only fact that matters (from the point of view of Interlingua itself) is that Interlingua, thanks to its ambition of reflecting the cultural and thus linguistic homogeneity of the West, is capable of rendering tangible services at this precise moment in the history of the world. It is by its present contributions and not by the promises of its adherents that Interlingua wishes to be judged.

Devised in the early 20th century, the language is now taught in high schools and universities; among international auxiliary languages, it’s the easiest to understand without prior study.

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My friend, colleague and hero Peter Gray, a psychology professor and author of “Free to Learn” (one of my favorite books!), makes the compelling case we often make here: Kids need a chance to play, explore, have fun, mess up, get mad, recover, and simply live some part of their childhood UNSUPERVISED for them to develop the emotional resilience they will need. You can’t become an adult if you get zero practice being one, thanks to constant oversight and intervention by “real” adults.

I kept trying to figure out which parts of Gray’s essay, which appears on Psychology Today, to excerpt. But it was so good, I only edited out a little bit, and added the boldface. The whole essay is here.

DECLINING STUDENT RESILIENCE: A SERIOUS PROBLEM FOR COLLEGES 

A year ago I received an invitation from the head of Counseling Services to join other faculty and administrators, at the university I’m associated with, for discussions about how to deal with the decline in resilience among students. At the first meeting, we learned that emergency calls to Counseling had more than doubled over the past five years. Students are increasingly seeking help for, and apparently having emotional crises over, problems of everyday life. Recent examples mentioned included a student who felt traumatized because her roommate had called her a “bitch” and two students who had sought counseling because they had seen a mouse in their off-campus apartment. The latter two also called the police, who kindly arrived and set a mousetrap for them.

Faculty at the meetings noted that students’ emotional fragility has become a serious problem when in comes to grading. Some said they had grown afraid to give low grades for poor performance, because of the subsequent emotional crises they would have to deal with in their offices….Much of the discussions had to do with the amount of handholding faculty should do versus the degree to which the response should be something like, “Buck up, this is college.” Does the first response simply play into and perpetuate students’ neediness and unwillingness to take responsibility? Does the second response create the possibility of serious emotional breakdown, or, who knows, maybe even suicide?

Gray goes on to quote the issues the head of counseling sees looming over the college:

•  Less resilient and needy students have shaped the landscape for faculty in that they are expected to do more handholding, lower their academic standards, and not challenge students too much….

• Students are afraid to fail; they do not take risks; they need to be certain about things. For many of them, failure is seen as catastrophic and unacceptable. External measures of success are more important than learning and autonomous development.

• Faculty, particularly young faculty members, feel pressured to accede to student wishes lest they get low teacher ratings from their students. Students email about trivial things and expect prompt replies.

• Failure and struggle need to be normalized. Students are very uncomfortable in not being right…We have to normalize being wrong and learning from one’s errors….

• Growth is achieved by striking the right balance between support and challenge. We need to reset the balance point. We have become a “helicopter institution.”

Gray’s college is hardly the only institution worried about this. He quotes the author of a recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education,  Robin Wilson, who wrote, “Increasingly, students and their parents are asking the personnel at such institutions to be substitute parents. There is also the ever-present threat and reality of lawsuits.  When a suicide occurs, or a serious mental breakdown occurs, the institution is often held responsible.”

And so, Gray concludes:

In previous posts (for example, here and here), I have described the dramatic decline, over the past few decades, in children’s opportunities to play, explore, and pursue their own interests away from adults. Among the consequences, I have argued, are well-documented increases in anxiety and depression and decreases in the sense of control of their own lives. 

We have raised a generation of young people who have not been given the opportunity to learn how to solve their own problems. They have not been given the opportunity to get into trouble and find their own way out, to experience failure and realize they can survive it, to be called bad names by others and learn how to respond without adult intervention. So now, here’s what we have. Young people,18 years and older, going to college still unable or unwilling to take responsibility for themselves, still feeling that if a problem arises they need an adult to solve it.

…But I don’t blame parents, or certainly not just parents. 

Parents are in some ways victims of larger forces in the society—victims of the continuous exhortations from “experts” about the dangers of letting kids be, victims of the increased power of the school system and the schooling mentality that says kids develop best when carefully guided and supervised by adults, and victims of increased legal and social sanctions for allowing kids into public spaces without adult accompaniment. We have become, unfortunately, a “helicopter society.”

If we want to prepare our kids for college—or for anything else in life!—we have to counter all these social forces. We have to give our children the freedom, which children have always enjoyed in the past, to get away from adults so they can practice being adults, that is, practice taking responsibility for themselves.

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So now, when people ask you, “Why risk going Free-Range when you can keep your kids safe?” whip out this essay by Gray. Do we want to make our kids too safe to succeed?

If so, we’re right on target. – L.

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