Binaryjesus

So the Boy Scouts will now let you be a scout if you’re gay, but if you’re a gay person who wants to be a troop leader, that CANNOT be allowed. For some reason. That they won’t say. I wonder what sort of message that sends to gay children who want to be scouts?

 

Hot Wheels

The Sometimes, Always, Never 3-Button Rule

What's your favorite part of science?

The Oatmeal’s post is here. Pretty darn good too. You have to watch this NOVA program on Cuttlefish, if just to see the the ‘Broadclub’ Cuttlefish hypnosis strobe effect.

For beer aficionados, word that a new growler store was opening in Peachtree Corners has been spreading - and that day has arrived.

The Peachtree Growler Co. store officially opened Saturday, May 25, complete with the mayor assisting with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The new shop is located at 5450 Peachtree Parkway just a few doors down from the Goodwill store in the Peachtree Parkway Plaza.

The new business is owned by Peachtree Corners resident Steve Hamlet, who decided to settle down to a somewhat regular schedule after traveling the world while serving in the Army National Guard for a number of years.

"I started looking into buying a franchise and my brother-in-law suggested I buy a growler store," said Hamlet. "I said, 'what's a growler,' I had never heard of it."

But the idea grew on him, he said he looked into buying a growler franchise but wasn't going to be able to locate in Peachtree Corners. "We parted ways and a day later I had a business plan," said Hamlet.

The business plan included going before the City Council to request a change to the city ordinance to allow growlers, a business which has been gaining in popularity over the past decade. "We're the pioneers here," said Hamlet.

At Hamlet's new store customers choose from 34 varieties of beer on tap - and he's also offering four different wines. "We're the first growler store in Georgia to offer wines," he said. Also on tap, hard cider and a locally made non-alcoholoc root beer.

If you're not familiar with the term growler - it refers to the container. A growler container comes in two sizes, 64 ounce and 32 ounce. Customers purchase the container one time, then just return it for a refill. The assortment of beers range from heavy darker beers and lagers to something you'll not likely find at too many places - a creme brulee beer.

But watch out, the boutique beer can deliver a wallop to any unspecting drinker - it's rated at a 9.4 percent alcohol level.

Making a selection may seem a bit daunting but you'll be able to sample the beers before buying. "We allow samples, but just a mouth-full," said Hamlet.

Hamlet and long-time friend Kevin Mahan, have been busy for the past month or so renovating the 1,400 square foot space. The two men pulled down old ceiling tiles, painted and built shelving where gourmet snacks and other items will be for sale also.

"Over 50 percent is dedicated to grocery space," said Hamlet. "We have all sorts of gourmet snacks, such as garlic and parmasian flat bread, imported cheeses, fruit paste, spices for cooking and meat rubs."

In the future Hamlet said he may add Italian, gourmet and aged meats to the assortment.

Check out the Peachtree Growler Co. Facebook page for a list of what's on tap.

Store address and phone:

5450 Peachtree Parkway, Suite 2D
Peachtree Corners, GA 30092
Telephone: 770-713-0593
website: www.peachtreegrowlerco.com

Store hours:

Mon-Thurs: 11 - 8 p.m.
Fri-Sat: 11 - 9 p.m.
Sun: 1 - 6 p.m.

History of the growler:

Before bottled beer became economical and common (especially after the widespread use of pasteurization in the mid-1800s) in the United States, if one wanted beer outside of the saloon, it was usually draught beer filled and carried out in a growler, aka a "can" or "bucket" of beer. Many different containers (including pitchers, other pottery or glass jars and jugs, etc) were used to carry beer home or to work - the most common "growler" was a 2 quart galvanized or enameled pail

A first music video from the long-awaited new album 'Tomorrow's Harvest' by Boards of Canada. New album due Monday June 10 worldwide except for North America, where it will be released one day later on June 11. Pre-order on Amazon here. Video directed by Neil Krug.

"I feel like I have been force fed tranquillisers and cake," says one YouTube commenter. "This is fucking beautiful."

And that about sums it up.

Ben Kokes wanted to give a ring to his sweetheart, and to make it interesting, he decided to create a ring with an inductive loop that would cause the stones to light up when they were close to a power-source. He documented the tricky technical problems that cropped up during the build, and it sounds like the romance part came out well, too:

The final idea was to embed a LED and copper coil assembly inside the titanium ring, illuminating it from under the stones when it was in close proximity to an induced alternating magnetic field (henceforth called 'the transmitter'). Autodesk Inventor helped me develop all of the dimensions and constraints for the design. Having some help, I was able to obtain her ring size and the rest of the measurements were based from there (15.72mm if anyone was wondering)...

... Of all the challenges presented in making the ring, affixing the stone is the most difficult. Traditionally, stones are affixed by mechanical means -- prongs, groves or snaps. Epoxies will delaminate from the attachment surfaces due to microstresses, thermal cycling, and other unmentioned movements. The stone may be attached now, but eventually it will fall out. It's just a matter of time.

With that in mind, I had 4 initial ideas for affixing the stone: thermally expanding the hole, hole deformation, point expansion deformation, and epoxy. Ultimately, I went with the epoxy method for attaching the stones.

The first test was to try and heat the ring, expand the hold and drop in the stone. When the hole cooled and contracted, it would hold the stone in place. Not only does the hole not expand enough, if I was lucky enough for it to happen (it did once), the stone would fracture along pre-existing crack lines.

Project Longhaul (via Hacker News)

Data requests without a warrant. Government refusing to notify journalists they’re being spied on. Equating journalists and reporting to spies and espionage. Potential “conspiracy to commit espionage” charges. "Virtually every move made by the Justice Department against WikiLeaks has now also been deployed on mainstream US journalists," writes Trevor Timm at Freedom of the Press Foundation.

typethatilike:

Calligraphy on girls

nfgraphics.com - (NSFW)

The Chesapeake blue crab is a symbol of Maryland, so in 1984, Baltimore artist Jackie Leatherbury Douglass made this enormous sculpture of that creature. A Baltimore Sun article from 2000 describes it:

The county, wanting an eye-catching tourism display, commissioned the crab's creation more than 15 years ago, from Shadyside artist Jackie Leatherbury Douglass and her husband, John.

Originally, Jackie Douglass recalls, "they wanted a 30-foot crab, which was just impossible." The three-dimensional, 10-by-7-by-5 1/2 - foot blue crab they settled on took the Douglasses more than 5,500 hours to assemble, with John welding the steel frame and Jackie performing the stained-glass work.

The result was more than just a fitting icon for Anne Arundel County, with 550 miles of heavily crabbed waterfront, and a capital city known as Crabtowne, and a newspaper nicknamed the Crab- wrapper.

Link -via Twisted Sifter

(Photos: Elvert Barnes)

Alex sez, "My colleague Chris Neary and filmmaker Nathan Fitch made this great short film about 11-year-old inventor Andrew Man-Hudspith, who was so intent on getting a 3D printer he made a PowerPoint presentation to convince his parents to help him get one."

An 11-year-old and his 3D printer (Thanks, Alex!)

Mine hasn't. At least, he hasn't taken money from any of the 15 companies that have been forced to disclose information about gifts and cash they give to doctors. Pro Publica has put that information into an easily searchable database. It's not total transparency — the drug companies whose payouts are included here only represent 47% of the total market — but it's a good place to start if you want to know whether your doctor has any conflicts of interest that could affect your health.

Caleb sez, "The Department of Defense ordered that 3d printed gun removed from the Internet. That didn't work out. You can still download it and print it. I did, and found that the files are a mess and not really functional. I also took a cool timelapse video of the printing."

1. the scale on the individual files was way off.

I suspect this has something to do with the printer it was designed for. It seemed very close to being 1 inch = 1 mm. Not a completely uncommon problem. Manually resizing got some files to look right, but I found many simply wouldn’t resize.

2. Almost every single item had errors.

If you’ve done 3d printing, you’ve found that a model can have all kinds of issues that will stop it from printing correctly. I found every single item for the gun had errors. I actually learned a lot about how to repair non-manifold items from this exercise, so it was good in the end.

Some items, like the hammer and the hammer springs simply would not print. I ran them through systems to repair them and fix errors. It would say that everything was fixed, but when I tried to “slice” them for printing, the software would crash. This means that my gun is incomplete. It has no hammer. Not really that big of a deal to me.

Timelapse of the 3d printed gun being printed. (Thanks, Caleb)

The time has come. Hive is ready (mostly) for you, the awesome people, to use it. All the core features are in: subscribing to sites, reading those sites, sharing stories, commenting, liking, staring and xml import from google reader. The UI/UX is awesome and getting better. There are still some features I am adding/fixing and I will be doing that forever. Really excited to put this in your hands right away and get feedback.

Announcing the closed beta of HiveReader

**
web 3.0 viral rss social synergy network website.***

**not a real logo

*** not a real tagline

Wait a minute. I’m new here. What’s Hive?
Hive is the best place on the internet to read the internet. At it’s core it’s a reader app. You subscribe to your favorite sites and read them all in one simple interface. It’s also so much more.

What happened to Hivemined? Why the name switch?
This was a much discussed topic. After explaining to the 100th person. “no, HiveminEd, with an e. Like miners” Something had to change. We’ve all been calling it Hive anyway. So why not call a horse a horse and a reader a reader? And horse.com is taken. Hivemined has become the default user we all follow (ala tom) also the blog title is still hivemined.


How do the keys work?
When you get a key it has N number of uses. So you can bring your friends in and get down to business or just post it wherever you want. I suggest you hire a plane to skywrite it.


What does it look like on the inside?
Like this:


(yeah, I liked my own post)

Other Common Questions:

I need a key right now. I am dying with google reader shutting down.
Sign up on Hivereader.com. Bug me on twitter. Send me an email Francis[at]hivereader.com I will be slowly sending keys out for others to send to their friends. Starting with people who are alright with using something that might be a little messy or missing something.

Still working on the experience for people new to readers who don’t have an import file to start with. I hope to have a better ‘getting started’ flow setup soon.

OMGZ!!1! THIS IS THE WORST. ____ IS MISSING AND ____ IS BROKEN!!1 YOU SUCK!! I’M OUT, PEACE!
Pushing code and fixes nearly all day everyday. Keeping my eye on twitter, email, and bug reports. #hivebug

PS: You are amazing. Thanks for sticking around and helping build the best thing on the internet.

Again. Huge thanks to Tivix (especially Andy, Adam, Rex, Bret, Sumit and the rest of the Tivix team) for creating the opportunity to make the reader we all want and need (I hope it becomes everything you’ve ever dreamed of).

jonnytodd:

Jean Rousseau, Skull watch, 17th century

Writing in The Atlantic, Amy Schiller documents how Mattel has spent the past 15 years transforming the expensive, highly detailed American Girl dolls from a source of radical inspiration that signposted moments in the history of the struggles for justice and equality in the US, into posh upper-middle-class girls who raise money for bake sales. As Lenore Skenazy points out, the original American Girls were children who had wild adventures without adult oversight; the new crop are helicopter-parented and sheltered, and their idea of high adventure is a closely supervised day in the snow.

Saige is white and upper-middle-class, just like McKenna the gymnast and Lanie the amateur gardener and butterfly enthusiast, both previous Girls of the Year. Even in their attempt to encourage spunky and active girlhoods, their approaches to problem solving are highly local—one has a bake sale to help save the arts program in a local school, another scores a victory for the organic food movement when she persuades a neighbor to stop using pesticides.

By contrast, the original dolls confronted some of the most heated issues of their respective times. In the book A Lesson for Samantha, she wins an essay contest at her elite academy with a pro-manufacturing message, but after conversations with Nellie, her best friend from a destitute background who has younger siblings working in brutal factory jobs, Samantha reverses course and ends us giving a speech against child labor in factories at the award ceremony. Given the class divide, Samantha's speech presumably takes place in front of the very industrial barons responsible for those factory conditions. The book is a bravura effort at teaching young girls about class privilege, speaking truth to power, and engaging with controversial social policy, all based on empathetic encounters with people whose life experiences differ from her own.

American Girls Aren't Radical Anymore (via Free Range Kids)

It only took me a few meals in Thailand to realize that anyone who’d ever served me Thai food in Atlanta had lied to me. No harm was meant, I’m sure, but how can you take a cuisine with such a sophisticated layering of flavors and intentionally cloud it into a vague shadow of itself? Worse yet, how can you ignore such a wide swath of said cuisine, adorn the menu with “crab rangoons” (whatever the hell that is) and greasy egg rolls and call yourself an “authentic” Thai restaurant?

Kai Yang

Before we move on, let’s revisit that first paragraph for the sake of some of my newer readers. First, replace all the occurences of “Thai” or “Thailand” with virtually any other ethnicity and you’ve pretty much got my take on the “Americanized” version of that cuisine. Second… Yes, I’ve used the word “authentic”. Prior rants on this word still hold. Just understand, there is something to be said for being “authentic”. Authentic in this sense isn’t nescessarily about holding strictly to techniques or rejecting interpretation, it’s about being true to the intent of the food.

Mieng Kum

I’m known for being notoriously bitchy about Thai food in Atlanta and pretty much everyone I know thinks twice about suggesting “Thai” food for dinner. If you read through this blog, there’s only 4 or 5 references to Thai food, and more than half of them are my own cooking. I’m not an expert or anything, but once you’ve had the real thing – not much else can satisfy that craving.

Panang Curry

For various reasons I finally got off my butt and made my way to Tuk Tuk Thai Food Loft (in Buckhead). Tuk Tuk has been around for about 3 years, and even though I’ve been curious (their web site promises “street food”), I’ve been skittish. Now I feel a little stupid (I actually went back twice in the same week).

Kai yang (grilled chicken), hoy tod (omelette with baby mussels), moo yang (grilled pork belly), neau sawan (beef jerky), mieng kum, satay kai (chicken satay), curries, noodles – the menu goes on, but it’s not so large that it’s unmanageable. The best part is that the flavors and textures are there. If you’ve been to Thailand and like the food, you’ll find memories here.

Hint: They have yaa dong (Thai herbal “whiskey”) at the bar.

Tuk Tuk Thai Food Loft
1745 Peachtree Street
Atlanta, GA 30309

No, the Star Trek actor is not clowning around with cotton candy. He's enhancing it by letting it be photographed with him.

Link

Bonus photo: Patrick Stewart sculpting his own likeness into a mound of cotton candy.

I remember being endlessly entertained by the adventures of my toys. Some days they died repeated, violent deaths, other days they traveled to space or discussed my swim lessons and how I absolutely should be allowed in the deep end of the pool, especially since I was such a talented doggy-paddler.


I didn't understand why it was fun for me, it just was.


But as I grew older, it became harder and harder to access that expansive imaginary space that made my toys fun. I remember looking at them and feeling sort of frustrated and confused that things weren't the same.


I played out all the same story lines that had been fun before, but the meaning had disappeared. Horse's Big Space Adventure transformed into holding a plastic horse in the air, hoping it would somehow be enjoyable for me. Prehistoric Crazy-Bus Death Ride was just smashing a toy bus full of dinosaurs into the wall while feeling sort of bored and unfulfilled.  I could no longer connect to my toys in a way that allowed me to participate in the experience.


Depression feels almost exactly like that, except about everything.

At first, though, the invulnerability that accompanied the detachment was exhilarating. At least as exhilarating as something can be without involving real emotions.


The beginning of my depression had been nothing but feelings, so the emotional deadening that followed was a welcome relief.  I had always wanted to not give a fuck about anything. I viewed feelings as a weakness — annoying obstacles on my quest for total power over myself. And I finally didn't have to feel them anymore.

But my experiences slowly flattened and blended together until it became obvious that there's a huge difference between not giving a fuck and not being able to give a fuck. Cognitively, you might know that different things are happening to you, but they don't feel very different.


Which leads to horrible, soul-decaying boredom.

I tried to get out more, but most fun activities just left me existentially confused or frustrated with my inability to enjoy them.


Months oozed by, and I gradually came to accept that maybe enjoyment was not a thing I got to feel anymore. I didn't want anyone to know, though. I was still sort of uncomfortable about how bored and detached I felt around other people, and I was still holding out hope that the whole thing would spontaneously work itself out. As long as I could manage to not alienate anyone, everything might be okay!

However, I could no longer rely on genuine emotion to generate facial expressions, and when you have to spend every social interaction consciously manipulating your face into shapes that are only approximately the right ones, alienating people is inevitable.


Everyone noticed.


It's weird for people who still have feelings to be around depressed people. They try to help you have feelings again so things can go back to normal, and it's frustrating for them when that doesn't happen. From their perspective, it seems like there has got to be some untapped source of happiness within you that you've simply lost track of, and if you could just see how beautiful things are...


At first, I'd try to explain that it's not really negativity or sadness anymore, it's more just this detached, meaningless fog where you can't feel anything about anything — even the things you love, even fun things — and you're horribly bored and lonely, but since you've lost your ability to connect with any of the things that would normally make you feel less bored and lonely, you're stuck in the boring, lonely, meaningless void without anything to distract you from how boring, lonely, and meaningless it is.


But people want to help. So they try harder to make you feel hopeful and positive about the situation. You explain it again, hoping they'll try a less hope-centric approach, but re-explaining your total inability to experience joy inevitably sounds kind of negative; like maybe you WANT to be depressed. The positivity starts coming out in a spray — a giant, desperate happiness sprinkler pointed directly at your face. And it keeps going like that until you're having this weird argument where you're trying to convince the person that you are far too hopeless for hope just so they'll give up on their optimism crusade and let you go back to feeling bored and lonely by yourself.


And that's the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn't always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn't even something — it's nothing. And you can't combat nothing. You can't fill it up. You can't cover it. It's just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem.

It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.


The problem might not even have a solution. But you aren't necessarily looking for solutions. You're maybe just looking for someone to say "sorry about how dead your fish are" or "wow, those are super dead. I still like you, though."


I started spending more time alone.


Perhaps it was because I lacked the emotional depth necessary to panic, or maybe my predicament didn't feel dramatic enough to make me suspicious, but I somehow managed to convince myself that everything was still under my control right up until I noticed myself wishing that nothing loved me so I wouldn't feel obligated to keep existing.


It's a strange moment when you realize that you don't want to be alive anymore. If I had feelings, I'm sure I would have felt surprised. I have spent the vast majority of my life actively attempting to survive. Ever since my most distant single-celled ancestor squiggled into existence, there has been an unbroken chain of things that wanted to stick around.


Yet there I was, casually wishing that I could stop existing in the same way you'd want to leave an empty room or mute an unbearably repetitive noise.


That wasn't the worst part, though. The worst part was deciding to keep going.


When I say that deciding to not kill myself was the worst part, I should clarify that I don't mean it in a retrospective sense. From where I am now, it seems like a solid enough decision. But at the time, it felt like I had been dragging myself through the most miserable, endless wasteland, and — far in the distance — I had seen the promising glimmer of a slightly less miserable wasteland. And for just a moment, I thought maybe I'd be able to stop and rest. But as soon as I arrived at the border of the less miserable wasteland, I found out that I'd have to turn around and walk back the other way.


Soon afterward, I discovered that there's no tactful or comfortable way to inform other people that you might be suicidal. And there's definitely no way to ask for help casually.


I didn't want it to be a big deal. However, it's an alarming subject. Trying to be nonchalant about it just makes it weird for everyone.


I was also extremely ill-prepared for the position of comforting people. The things that seemed reassuring at the time weren't necessarily comforting for others.

I had so very few feelings, and everyone else had so many, and it felt like they were having all of them in front of me at once. I didn't really know what to do, so I agreed to see a doctor so that everyone would stop having all of their feelings at me.


The next few weeks were a haze of talking to relentlessly hopeful people about my feelings that didn't exist so I could be prescribed medication that might help me have them again.


And every direction was bullshit for a really long time, especially up. The absurdity of working so hard to continue doing something you don't like can be overwhelming. And the longer it takes to feel different, the more it starts to seem like everything might actually be hopeless bullshit.


My feelings did start to return eventually. But not all of them came back, and they didn't arrive symmetrically.

I had not been able to care for a very long time, and when I finally started being able to care about things again, I HATED them. But hatred is technically a feeling, and my brain latched onto it like a child learning a new word.


Hating everything made all the positivity and hope feel even more unpalatable. The syrupy, over-simplified optimism started to feel almost offensive.


Thankfully, I rediscovered crying just before I got sick of hating things.  I call this emotion "crying" and not "sadness" because that's all it really was. Just crying for the sake of crying. My brain had partially learned how to be sad again, but it took the feeling out for a joy ride before it had learned how to use the brakes or steer.


At some point during this phase, I was crying on the kitchen floor for no reason. As was common practice during bouts of floor-crying, I was staring straight ahead at nothing in particular and feeling sort of weird about myself. Then, through the film of tears and nothingness, I spotted a tiny, shriveled piece of corn under the refrigerator.


I don't claim to know why this happened, but when I saw the piece of corn, something snapped. And then that thing twisted through a few permutations of logic that I don't understand, and produced the most confusing bout of uncontrollable, debilitating laughter that I have ever experienced.


I had absolutely no idea what was going on.


My brain had apparently been storing every unfelt scrap of happiness from the last nineteen months, and it had impulsively decided to unleash all of it at once in what would appear to be an act of vengeance.


That piece of corn is the funniest thing I have ever seen, and I cannot explain to anyone why it's funny. I don't even know why. If someone ever asks me "what was the exact moment where things started to feel slightly less shitty?" instead of telling a nice, heartwarming story about the support of the people who loved and believed in me, I'm going to have to tell them about the piece of corn. And then I'm going to have to try to explain that no, really, it was funny. Because, see, the way the corn was sitting on the floor... it was so alone... and it was just sitting there! And no matter how I explain it, I'll get the same, confused look. So maybe I'll try to show them the piece of corn - to see if they get it. They won't. Things will get even weirder.


Anyway, I wanted to end this on a hopeful, positive note, but, seeing as how my sense of hope and positivity is still shrouded in a thick layer of feeling like hope and positivity are bullshit, I'll just say this: Nobody can guarantee that it's going to be okay, but — and I don't know if this will be comforting to anyone else — the possibility exists that there's a piece of corn on a floor somewhere that will make you just as confused about why you are laughing as you have ever been about why you are depressed. And even if everything still seems like hopeless bullshit, maybe it's just pointless bullshit or weird bullshit or possibly not even bullshit.

Yesterday, I wrote about Defense Distributed's 3D printed handgun, and asked whether it would fire, and how many rounds it could fire before experiencing stress fractures, melting, etc. Now, Forbes's Andy Greenberg follows up with a report of the successful firing of the gun -- though not its longevity -- and says that Defense Distributed will publish the CAD files for printing your own gun on its site today, along with videos of the gun in action.

Unlike the original, steel Liberator, though, Wilson’s weapon is almost entirely plastic: Fifteen of its 16 pieces have been created inside an $8,000 second-hand Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer, a machine that lays down threads of melted polymer that add up to precisely-shaped solid objects just as easily as a traditional printer lays ink on a page. The only non-printed piece is a common hardware store nail used as its firing pin...

Even Wilson himself says he’s not sure exactly how that’s possible. But one important trick may be the group’s added step of treating the gun’s barrel in a jar of acetone vaporized with a pan of water and a camp stove, a process that chemically melts its surface slightly and smooths the bore to avoid friction. The Dimension printer Defense Distributed used also keeps its print chamber heated to 167 degrees Fahrenheit, a method patented by Stratasys that improves the parts’ resiliency.

Meet The 'Liberator': Test-Firing The World's First Fully 3D-Printed Gun [Andy Greenberg/Forbes]

(Thanks, Andy!)