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In 2012, a National Fair Housing Alliance survey of bank-owned properties in nine metro areas found that those buildings in predominantly white neighborhoods were more likely to be properly maintained by the bank while those homes in non-white parts of town were often being allowed to fall into disrepair, driving property values down for neighbors and causing public health and safety concerns. Since then, the NFHA has filed a federal discrimination complaint against the bank for what it alleges are violations of the Fair Housing Act.

The NFHA recently amended its complaint [PDF] to the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, by adding additional cities, along with photographic and diagrammatic evidence to bolster its case.

The complaint now claims bad behavior on the bank’s part in 20 different cities — Oakland; Grand Rapids, MI; Atlanta; Dayton, OH; Miami; Dallas; Phoenix; Washington, DC; Orlando; Charleston, SC; Chicago; Milwaukee; Indianapolis; Denver; Memphis; Las Vegas; Tucson; Philadelphia; Toledo, OH; and Baltimore.

In evaluating whether or not a bank-owned property is being properly maintained, the NFHA looked at seven things:
1. Curb Appeal — Is there mail piling up, overgrown or dead grass/shrubbery, trash?
2. Structure — Are the doors and locks broken or removed? Is there damage or rot to the roof, walls, steps, or floors?
3. Signage & Occupancy — Is the “for sale” sign intact? Are there warnings against trespassers? Are people living in the property without authorization?
4. Painting & Siding — Is it damaged, chipped, covered in graffiti?
5. Gutters — Are they intact, damaged, hanging, clogged?
6. Water Damage — Has this resulted in any mold build-up?
7. Utilities — Have these connections been tampered with?

“In each of the metropolitan areas where Complainants evaluated a number of Bank of America REOs [real-estate owned properties] in communities of color and White communities, the properties in White communities were far more likely to have a small number of maintenance deficiencies or problems than REO properties in communities of color, while REO properties in communities of color were far more likely to have large numbers of such deficiencies or problems than those in
White communities,” reads the complaint.

For example, here’s a map supplied by the NFHA of the Indianapolis area that it claims shows that foreclosed properties in predominantly white neighborhoods are being maintained with more care:

And here is a photographic comparison of two houses in the Indianapolis area. First, there is this BofA-owned home in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. According to the NFHA survey, it had 13 deficiencies:

Then there is the home that NFHA claims is in a predominantly white neighborhood, which only had five deficiencies:

“Bank of America has known about these problems for more than four years, yet, sadly, they have chosen a path that continues to harm the health of people living in these communities,” said Shanna L. Smith, President and CEO of the NFHA in a statement. “Bank of America’s conduct sends a message that it does not care about the viability of the neighborhoods or the health of the residents in communities of color.”

A rep for BofA tells MLive.com that this is all just a matter of these properties being caught in a transitional phase between the former owner and the bank.

“It’s not that we’re perfect, but when somebody brings a property to our attention that fell through the cracks for one reason or another, we’re doing everything we can to take immediate action,” says the bank rep.

Earlier this year, Wells Fargo reached a $38.5 million settlement in a similar discrimination case brought by the NFHA.

Let this be the bookend on the Olbermann v. WFAN dispute from last week. A YouTube user Will Schleichert made a supercut of Olbermann talking about Francesa and the rest of the gang to Tupac's "Hit 'Em Up." Bonus: It's less than a minute long.

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A general store owner hires a young female clerk who likes to wear very short skirts and thong panties. One day a young man enters the store, glances at the clerk and glances at the loaves of bread behind the counter. Noticing the length of her skirt [or general lack thereof] and the location of the raisin bread, he has a brilliant idea.

"Id like some raisin bread please", the man says politely. The female clerk nods and climbs up a ladder to reach the raisin bread, which is located on the very top shelf. The young man standing almost directly beneath her is provided with an excellent view, just as he surmised he would be.

Once she descends the ladder he muses that he really should get two loaves as he's having company for dinner. As the clerk retrieves the second loaf of bread, one of the other male customers notices whats going on. Thinking quickly, he requests his own loaf of raisin bread so he can continue to enjoy the view. With each trip up the ladder the young lady seems to catch the eye of another male customer. Pretty soon each male patron is asking for raisin bread, just to see the clerk climb up and down.

After many trips shes tired, irritated and thinking that she is really going to have to try this bread for herself!

Finally, once again atop the ladder, she stops and fumes, glaring at the men standing below. She notices an elderly man standing amongst the crowd staring up at her. Thinking to save herself a trip, she yells at the elderly man, "Is yours raisin too?"

"No," croaks the old man "... But its startin to twitch."

This is the ultimate headset for the gamer who likes military games. The helmet has three different camouflage covers as well as a detachable boom mic, 3.5mm jack to RCA audio cable connector, Xbox 360 Talkback cable, Mini USB Cable and wireless audio receiver. It’s compatible with Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U, Wii, PC, and Mac and will having you looking cool (or maybe like an idiot) no matter how badly you get fragged.

See more pictures after the break…

Product Page ($59.99)

Most americans have only enjoyed sesame seeds on the top of their cheeseburger buns, but they have a delightfully rich, peanuty taste when eaten alone. That's why this new black sesame McFlurry from McDonald's sounds so darn delicious. Unfortunately, it's only available in Korea (my bad) Singapore, so we won't be able to do any Neatorama taste tests any time soon.

If you're looking for a new McFlurry flavor that's available stateside though, try the limited edition Pralines & Cream. I had it and it was utterly fantastic, which was really great, since I can't even eat most things at McDonald's.

Via Food Beast

Thanks Joe C

 

Behind a long, Last Supper-ish table, topped with ketchup, mustard and Solo cups of water, stand the thirteen competitors in this year’s Vegan Hot Dog Eating Contest. Among those ready to snarf on this cool Austin, Texas, afternoon: A baby-faced, shaggy-locked, stoner-eyed teenager, wearing a neon yellow astronaut’s helmet, and a plush stuffed parrot on his shoulder; a young woman with electric blue hair, who tells one of the two emcees for the afternoon that her name is Anita Bonghit; and, towering above his foes, the returning champion, an enigmatic middle-aged film technician with a Cosmo Kramer haircut who competes under his nom de food “The Dog Hammer,” and who, when asked to identify the grossest thing he’s ever eaten, answers that he once ingested half a cheeseburger he found in the front seat of his friend’s car.

A DJ plays the Michael Buffer “Let’s get ready to rumble” track from the first Jock Jams album, and they’re off: The contestants begin to stuff their faces with as many vegan wiener dogs, in between egg-free, whey-free, all-vegan wiener buns, as they can, in the ten allotted minutes.

This is the ninth annual Vegan Hot Dog Eating Contest, and the fourth in a row to be held at the Fun Fun Fun Festival, a three day music-and-arts event in Austin’s Auditorium Shores park that this year featured performances by artists as diverse as Slayer, MGMT, Tenacious D, and Jurassic 5. Though the rules for the Vegan Hot Dog Contest are similar to the ones you probably know – entrants must eat as many dogs, and buns, as they can hold down, in ten minutes, and dunking the hot dogs in water is encouraged—this Austonian contest is not associated with the official Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, which takes place on New York’s Coney Island each Independence Day, and which has turned competitive eat-letes like Kobeyashi and Joey Chestnut into minor American celebrities for their wiener-gorging abilities.

No, the Vegan version of the contest is a local concoction – both in the sense that it was founded in Austin, and that it feels so representative of the city itself. There is something so Austin, referee and organizer Chris Ledesma told me, about a Vegan Hot Dog Eating Contest, and that rings true, at least for the “Keep Austin Weird” section of town. The driving concept cleverly turns on its head a piece of new Americana and modifies it for one of Austin’s progressive subcultures. The competitors themselves, haphazardly poached from hotdog lines at the festival, seemed to somehow epitomize the general Austin population, too: Stoners, burnouts, clean-cut college students, fun-loving European emigrants, hippies, and the bearded, bicycling, bandana-wearing uncleaned fringe were all represented.

And then, too, there were the oh-so-Austin condiments of the afternoon itself: a trio of fresh-faced cheerleaders (or “cheer-wieners”), galloping through the crowd with pompoms, leading a chant of “WIE-NERS! WIE-NERS! WIE-NERS!”; the ironic appropriation of the campy Jock Jams soundtrack; and the heartfelt dedication, by Ledesma, of the competition to his ailing mother, with a final request for the crowd to think of their own mothers at the festival, whether they’re “ listening to music, drinking beers, rolling on X, whatever: Make her proud.”

Microcosm or not, it turns out that Austin’s Vegan Hot Dog eating contest is part of a larger constellation of clever public theater. Ledesma is behind an Austin-based culture and arts organization called I Love Mike Litt, named for co-founding artist Michael Litt (Ledesma promised me that “Michael Litt” is, indeed, the man’s birthname). The organization throws a series of cultural events aimed at spreading awareness of liberal political and social causes, including a veggie speed-dating night, a John Keynes-themed “mixed economy bar crawl,” and a Vegetarian vs. Meat-Eaters arm wrestling competition.

The point of these events, Ledesma says, is not to exclude meat-eaters and create a quinoa social bubble for vegans; rather, the events are meant to be inclusive, and to open up non-vegans and non-vegetarians to alternative dietary habits, if even for a meal. The Vegan Hot Dog Contest, for example, does not require that a participant be vegan, or even vegetarian; contestants were poached at random from food truck lines around the festival in the days leading up to the competition, and simply asked if they would consider the event. Vegan, vegetarian, or carnivore, all you need to be in order to participate in the Vegan Hot Dog Contest is hungry.

This year’s competition ended in something of a controversy, as the 96 hot dogs that Ledesma ordered were devoured at around the 8-minute mark, with two minutes remaining. The winners were declared to be those who had finished the most wieners at that point; and so it was that last year’s champion, “The Dog Hammer,” was victorious again, having eaten 9 vegan hot dogs in 8 minutes.

“It was disappointing,” the Dog Hammer (the nom de food of Dan Cofer, the technical director at Austin’s landmark Alamo Drafthouse movie theater) told me later in an email. “I knew I could have eaten at least two more. Mostly, I was still hungry.”

And yet, in the true Austin spirit, the Dog Hammer abides. When I asked him if he would return to Fun Fun Fun next year, to defend his vegan hot dog eating crown and attempt an unprecedented vegan hot dog eating three-peat, Cofer answered with two succinct words that could, perhaps, in some futuristic setting, work as an Austin city motto.

Would the Dog Hammer defend his title?

“Fuck yes,” the Dog Hammer said.

(Topmost photo by Jason Gilbert. All other photos by Dave Mead.)

oolongs:

check out my new joy division shirt shirt

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It looks like Zojoi's upcoming Shadowgate reimagining is shaping up to be something real special. It's not every day you see a true point-and-click adventure, and certainly not one that looks as pretty as this. At the helm of this new adventurer you've got Dave Marsh and Karl Roelofs, the very same duo that made the classic Shadowgate MacVenture title in 1987.

As it's nearing completion, the game has been put up on Steam Greenlight to rally up the troops in hopes that it will see a broader release.When asked about potential console ports seeing as the game runs on Unity, Dave tells us: "I saw the announcement about Unity and the Xbox One. I would like to take advantage of both Wii U and Xbox One!"

If you're up for another trip into Castle Shadowgate, go vote on Steam Greenlight!

MIT has demonstrated a "Dynamic Shape Display" that can physically change shape to render 3D content. As Fast Company reports, the display is called inFORM, and it's a large surface that sits atop a series of pins, actuators, and linkages. By moving each actuator, inFORM can move the pin it's attached to up or down, allowing for a wide range of interactions.

A projector mounted above the surface provides context to the shapeshifting pins, giving them color and highlighting depth. In a video released by MIT, the table is shown moving a ball, mirroring a book, displaying 3D charts, and giving an extremely visible smartphone notification.

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When used in conjunction with a Kinect sensor, inFORM gets a lot more interesting. The sensor is able to accurately map and interpret the position of 3D objects, and MIT's system uses that data to allow you to move the table's pins with just your hands. This can even work remotely, as demonstrated by the video, which shows an MIT staffer interacting with items via a video conference.

MIT says it's exploring "a number of application domains" for inFORM. Key areas of interest include 3D visualizations of CT scans and other medical uses, device interaction, and the manipulation of physical objects. It's also very interested in mapping and terrain models, which could be used by urban planners and architects to better visualize and share 3D designs. The MIT Tangible Media Group, which is responsible for inFORM's creation, says it's currently collaborating with MIT's Changing Places group to explore the possibilities for urban planners.

It's extremely impressive stuff, but it's just one step on a long path to what MIT calls Radical Atoms. First conceptualized over a decade ago, Radical Atoms are what MIT believes will be the future of interactivity. The idea is that we presently interact with computers through graphical user interfaces (GUI), while inFORM and other projects like it offer up a tactile user interface (TUI).

MIT likens TUIs to a digital iceberg: just the tip of the digital content emerges "above water" into the physical realm. Moving past TUIs, the end game is Radical Atoms, a future in which "all digital information has physical manifestation ... as if the iceberg had risen from the depths to reveal its sunken mass."

Previously: Exploding Pumpkins with C4

[ratedrr]

via

 

The ferocious teeth of the Earth dragon—the sand seas of the Namibia desert as captured by South Korea's Kompsat-2 satellite. The complete photo at high definition and its description from the European Space Agency follows:

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