Steve Dyer

by Megh Wright

Despite NBC explicitly telling him not to make public jokes about it, last night Chris Pratt told Seth Meyers a great story about the time he flashed Amy Poehler while filming a scene during the second season of Parks and Recreation instead of putting on the skin-colored briefs he was supposed to wear. Meyers even plays the clip of Poehler's reaction for good measure.

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by Ester Bloom

Perhaps you are one of those people who, when they hear “Kardashian,” thinks of the characters from “Star Trek.” You wouldn’t be too far off. Those otherworldly beings are described as “Tall, long-necked, humanoid in appearance, marked by several bony protrusions and ridges …” Though Kim’s protrusions aren’t exactly bony, that’s a good intro. NB: I am not the first person to make this joke.

The tall, long-necked humanoid TV star has gotten as rich as Kroesus, and almost as rich as Gene Roddenberry himself, by marketing her image in several media. Her latest successful money-making venture is a game that allows you, or your cute, busty avatar, to Keep Up with Kim in Hollywood. The Atlantic’s write up / review of the experience is amazing enough; I can only imagine how it feels to play:

Kim Kardashian: Hollywood [is] an app that is also a game that is also, now, a phenomenon. (“It might be our biggest game of the year,” Niccolo de Masi, CEO of the app-maker Glu Mobile Inc., told Bloomberg.) The game is free to download and play; but it allows—and encourages—in-app purchases. You use real-world money to win at Kim World. Which has meant, among other things, that Kim Kardashian is becoming even more explicitly what a reality star always will be, underneath it all: an entrepreneur.

While she has long ranked among the highest-paid of the reality (“reality”) stars—her estimated net worth, as of this June, was $45 million—the game is on track to earn $200 million, with Kim’s 45-percent cut coming in at $90 million. … Kim Kardashian: Hollywood is the game that Ayn Rand might have written, had Ayn Rand lived in the age of the smartphone and been a fan of bodycon skirts. It is what happens when objectification gives way to objectivism. “This game is so freakin stupid,” iTunes customer Dmon555 complained, before giving it a 5-star rating.

Have you played this game? Please tell me you’ve played it and that it’s as much ridiculous fun as it sounds. Have you spent any money on it? Was the experience worth it? Also, ha! The COMMENTS. God bless prestigious publications and the censorious noodleheads who read them to be offended.

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First up, a call to locate arms:

I’m addicted to your weekly window contest. It is challenging, fun, and a great distraction. But there might be more practical uses for the skills involved in solving the contest. Recently, several bloggers have been using a photo posted on Twitter to figure out where the BUK missile system that Ukraine’s Russian separatist rebels had misplaced has been traveling. KoreaDefense.com has this post explaining how it and other bloggers found the location.

Another reader turns to the difficulty of this week’s missile-less contest:

Earth has two hemispheres, and this view is clearly on one of them. Seriously, the EU license plates (and I should know better than to get fixated on license plates) and French vehicles had me checking every remaining Western Hemisphere colonial enclave, before finally deciding that those white buildings = Portugal. So Lisbon, and it’s wrong. When it turns out to be Morocco I’mma throw something.

Another aims south of the border:

Hoping proximity counts on this one. I cannot pinpoint the city, but it is very reminiscent of Playa del Carmen in Quintana Roo, Mexico.

Or farther south?

Quito, Ecuador. It looks like the old city, perhaps on or near Guayaquil.

Another must live in New York:

No idea, but it looks like you could eat off that street; it’s so clean!

Another:

Had to be in the south of France somewhere. I looked up the last few stages of the Tour de France and decided this must be Maubourguet, starting point for stage 19. But it could easily have been somewhere else in the south: Nice, or Cap d’Antibes, or something like that. Beautiful light.

Getting there. Another reader:

This is my very first entry for the VFYW contest. I saw English words, European traffic signs, and Mediterranean style roofing slate. I googled “English speaking Mediterranean countries” and came up with Gozo, Malta. Then I got lost in all the gorgeous photos of the land and art and couldn’t be bothered to track down where the photo was taken. I randomly chose Victoria because it’s in the center of the island and “Victoria Gozo Malta” sounds goofy when you say it out loud. I don’t know if I’m even close, but it was worth it for the photo tour alone.

The Mediterranean it is. Another reader nails the right country with this exhaustive entry:

Spain.

A more detailed response:

All I know for sure is, it’s one of the White Towns of Andalusia, Spain. Ronda seems as good a guess as any:

(1) Googled “Tourneo” (back of the white car/van): said it’s a Ford model used mainly in Europe.

(2) Looked up the formats of European license plates by country; the only match was Spain.

(3) Googled “Spain red tiled roofs” and found lots of stuff about the White Towns of Andalusia.

From there I was stuck. The sign in the foreground appears to be for a restaurant. It’s hard to tell what the second row of the sign says: begins with a C or G, and the third letter is probably Ñ. I went through an enormous list of restaurants in Andalusia on TripAdvisor, found some possibilities, but came up empty.

Andalusia was this week’s most popular incorrect guess:

EU license plates, looks to be on or near the Mediterranean, most likely in a country where the word for “restaurant” starts with “R-E-S-T”, which is basically all of them except Italy and Malta. The two readable license plates are in the four digit, three numeral format which is apparently unique to Spain.

I recently spent two lovely weeks in Barcelona, and only really ventured briefly out of the city to Girona and Figueres. This isn’t Barcelona (the sidewalks are too narrow, the streets too wide) but it could be one of the other two, or any of dozens of other small cities in Spain. But I’m actually inclined to say that this isn’t likely anywhere in Catalonia, because there are no Catalan flags to be seen, and I saw them EVERYWHERE when I was there.

Is this one of the famed “White Towns” of Andalusia? It sure looks like it. But which one? The fact that we have a fairly modern street (asphalt, not cobblestones, wide enough to park cars on both sides, and in a fairly grid-like configuration) may narrow it down a bit to the larger towns. And the convergence of opposing one-ways onto another street seems a pretty unusual configuration. That should be easy to spot … but it isn’t.

I’m liking Ubrique, for its size and layout, and the surrounding landscape looks right. But I can’t quite seem to nail this one down. Algodonales looks exactly right for the surrounding landscape, but again, I can’t seem to find the exact spot. Ditto Grazalema. And Prado del Rey. So, I’m going to go with my gut and stick with Ubrique.

No matter: browsing the White Towns on Street View was a great deal more enjoyable than looking at Sports Authorities in the Northeast! And I really need to get back to Spain.

Another is thinking the Spanish UK:

Spanish roofs + English stop sign + rocky escarpment = Gibraltar

Several readers were on the same track:

This one is driving me crazy! The truck in the foreground has Spanish plates but all the signs are in English. This makes me think the most obvious place would be Gibraltar. After rooting around in Google maps I found similar looking road signs, and the architecture seems like a fit, but I can’t for the life of me find a road that matches the one pictured. So I’m just going to have to say Gibraltar somewhere off of Main street. Although I’m sure I’m off by miles and that this is some obvious yet obscure region that several Dishheads will have vacationed. Tuesday can’t come fast enough!

The best incorrect entry we received this week:

Since today is national dance day in the US and I just this afternoon read that Father “Pepe” Jose Planas Moreno dances the sevillanas with his parishioners at his church in Campanilla in the Malaga district of Spain (seen below) – I’m going with that town. I wish I had time to delve more deeply into the search but will be seriously happy with myself if I’m this close to correct!

But this reader correctly identifies the type of Spanish land mass we’re looking for:

This week’s contest is massively frustrating, I’m haunted that I am missing some clear clue as to the location. For a while I was stuck on the French Riviera, based on the white houses, red roofs, and appearance of the stop sign. But I eventually started investigating the licenses plates and found that 4 digit/3 letter combination is unique to Spain. But I couldn’t find anything else in the image to focus my search.

After looking at Pamplona (given the recent running of the bulls) and not finding any likely hits, I went further afield. It appears that the Canary Islands are rife with one-way streets, occasionally have the word stop printed along crosswalks, has a predilection for green shutters, and has a terrain that may match the background. But zooming around the islands in maps and street view hasn’t helped in isolating the location. For some reason, I still feel strongly that the Canary Islands are it, so I’m guessing Santa Cruz de Tenerife, prepared to find out that I missed some obvious hint and that the location is actually on the mainland in Spain.

Yes, an island, but the Canaries are much too southwest. Another reader starts paddling us in the right direction:

I’m sure that there are contributors with hi-res screens who can read a phone number on what looks like a restaurant menu posted on the left, but all I have to go on is a Citroen sedan with a Euro-style plate. Having Googled the number/letter sequence I’ve narrowed it down to Spain. And with the Mediterranean look of the buildings I will make the wildly general guess of Ibiza, Spain.

Another gets closer still:

Last week’s Sherlock Holmes here. I’m going to play the game like I play GeoGuessr. In GeoGuessr you can, if you want, travel in the scene until you get to a place where there are clues to where the picture was taken. Instead, I usually try to go solely on gut, and whatever clues are in that frame and only in that frame.

With this VFYWC, I could spend hours googling “red tile roof” or try to find out what countries the Ford Tourneo is sold in. (If that’s even the right model of the mini-van in lower right of this week’s view.) I could invest the rest of this lovely Saturday searching for that white “R” on a red background to see if I can figure out if it is associated with a specific location.

Instead, I will once again go with my gut and say Mallorca, Spain. The cars look European – where else do they still sell Citroens, after all? The license plates are from the EU, I think. Plus, the scene has sort of an island feel to me. The red tile roofs feel Spanish. So, Mallorca.

I realize I’ll never win the book this way. But life is filled with disappointments.

A former winner almost got the right island but veered away at the last moment:

The house is a cheap-looking Spanish colonial with a Mediterranean color scheme. It appears to be an old farm (olives or wine ?) with several buildings that has been converted to apartments. I deduce that from the exterior wall connected them and the lack of a balcony on the building on the right. Also, there is an old stone horse trough that’s being used as a planter, but possible it was previously used for actual horses or as a water reservoir to clean the olives or grapes. So based on the horse trough I am narrowing my search to Spain, Portugal, or nearby islands, where horses were common. It looks like water in the background, so I am guessing that’s the ocean. I can’t imagine unpaved rundown apartments being that close to the ocean – at least not in mainland Spain or Portugal.

So how about Mallorca, or Minorca or one of the Balearic Islands? Possibly, but the color scheme doesn’t fit, and the those islands have mostly hipped roofs or higher pitched roofs and brighter colors.

However, Madeira does have some dull colored unpaved properties close to the water with hilly populated areas visible from a window – specifically Funchal, Madeira, Portugal. Wish I could make out the three numbers above the exterior doorway, but I only participate by iPhone with no access to photo enhancement. So my guess is Funchal.

In case there was ever any doubt, this week’s contest definitely proves why Chini is the VFYWC Grand Champion; he was the only player to get the correct town, let alone the exact location and window:

Aw man. Last week, when I had free time, the view was dead simple. Then this week we get a good one and I’m swamped getting ready for a two-day trip. So I had to be selective with my time, but what to focus on? The license plates were Spanish, clearly, but what next? The hills in the distance? The street markings, the architecture? It was almost too much to pick from, until I remembered a similar view from last summer. And then the path became clear …

This week’s view comes from the town of Es Mercadal on the island of Minorca, Spain. More precisely, the picture was taken from the front dining-room windows of the Restaurante Ca N’Aguadete and looks east northeast along a heading of 71.92 degrees towards El Toro, Minorca’s highest point.

Respect. This week’s winner was the only other reader to correctly identify the island:

Well, looks like for the second time in around a month living in Spain is having its advantages for this contest. The plates are Spanish. An eagle-eyed reader might be able to get the “E” as the country code on the plate, but the 1234 BCD format is how things have been done here since around 2000. This leads to the key clue to be found on the red Seat Ibiza. Prior to the current format there was a province code followed by 4 numbers and one or two letters. The Ibiza, quite aptly, has the code IB for “Islas Baleares” meaning we are looking at Menorca, Mallorca, Ibiza, or Formentera.

I have been driving myself crazy trying to figure out what town it could be, though. There is terrain, but not big enough mountains to be Western Mallorca. A particular style and abutting one way streets. Perhaps not even Balearic islands at all and the number plate is a red herring.

Either way, I just don’t have it this week, but I will go with my gut of the towns I looked at and say it’s Ferries, Menorca. Wish I could get an exact window, but not this time.

Close enough for a win. From the submitter:

I’m thrilled you chose the photo, my first submission. It’s from the second floor (European “1st”) of Restaurant Ca N’Aguedet, Carrer Lepanto 30, Es Mercadal. We shot the image from just to the right of the perpendicular “restaurant” sign that’s just visible in the picture.

We were in Menorca to celebrate a significant birthday of mine and because my husband had lived in the capital, Mahon, as a child. The restaurant, where we ate on a friend’s recommendation, is outstanding; its chef is dedicated to reviving and preserving traditional dishes of the island.

Thanks so much to the more than 70 readers who challenged themselves with this week’s contest, including many stumped veteran players. Here are everyone’s guesses on the OpenHeatMap, a cool app created by Dishhead Pete Warden:

And for our newer players, don’t worry – the views are rarely this hard. Until Saturday!

But one last thing: the WaPo’s indispensable Christopher Ingraham wrote to the Dish over the weekend:

Inspired in part by the VFYW Contest, Wonkblog started running a contest of sorts whereby we present a map or other visual sans labels and ask readers to identify the data behind it. This week’s installment is here; here is last week‘s and the answer post. Thought you might enjoy.

Their latest contest closed yesterday and a new one will be up this Friday at noon. Check it out, VFYW nerds.

Previous VFYWC inspiration felt by the NYT and CNN.

(Archive: Text|Gallery)

I read about all of the Jezebel readership’s most awkward sexual experiences in a leisurely fashion and, you know what? Yeah. There is some serious awkward in there.

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If I ever start a religion, you can bet it’s going to allow for extraterrestrial life. That’s just called covering your bases, guys.

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While re-reading On the Farm, which is about horrible Canadian serial killer Robert “Willie” Pickton, I was getting really rage-y about the UTTER and CRIMINAL DISINTEREST in the well-being and survival of sex workers displayed by the Vancouver Police Department, and then I found THIS.

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LOL

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I’m getting tired of being shown up by the blind:

The 45-year-old pro adventurer is best known as the only blind person to climb Mount Everest, in 2001, a feat that landed him on the cover of Time at age 32 and made him an international symbol of courage. Weihenmayer also solo skydives and paraglides. He skis double-black slopes and backcountry. He and a small team raced a dozen others across the deserts of Morocco. He has climbed each of mountaineering’s vaunted Seven Summits and scaled the 3,000-foot rock face of Yosemite’s El Capitan, along with the 2,000-foot, technically tougher frozen Himalayan waterfall Losar.

Read more: http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/blind-ambition-20140725#ixzz38p0o8VQo
Follow us: @mensjournal on Twitter | MensJournal on Facebook

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On the only game that matters:

I am a pop culture writer in America and a renowned Kardashiologist and the lucky beneficiary of an economic system that does not require me to do hard physical work to feed and clothe my family, so on a Tuesday afternoon I began playing Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.

I held off on doing this for weeks, even as the game became a $200 million runaway hit and the inescapable subject of a thousand whimsical think pieces like the one I am now writing. My tolerance for Kardashian-related bullshit is pretty much limitless. David Foster Wallace said he subscribed to Cosmopolitan because reading the same sex quiz every month was soothing to his nervous system; I feel the same way about watching the Ks wander in and out of each other’s houses, having fake conversations and eating salads.

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wat:

Q. Marriage News: My brother-in-law recently remarried. He has yet to tell his 12-year-old daughter. My mother-in-law knows as do a few other family members. We’re all about to attend a family wedding and my mother-in-law told the mother of the bride and others. My husband has spoken to his brother and pressed him to tell his daughter, but still no. The reasons for withholding this information from her are unclear. I’m afraid she’ll find out on Facebook. Should I do anything further in this situation?

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The New Face of Richard Norris

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Back in the heady days I spent working for a quantitative hedge fund, we once had Jimmy Carter come talk to us, with the idea being that if he agreed to do so they would then put him in a little room with the guys who made the most money at the hedge fund so he could shake them down for money for his campaign to eradicate guinea worm. But he also talked to the rest of us about guinea worm for about forty minutes in great detail, and it was unbelievably disgusting (I will never forget his pleasant Georgian voice saying “and then the wooorm bursts when they soak they-a feet in the waater” and also something about eyeballs) and very persuasive (I am pretty sure we all hastily gave him all the money currently on our persons), so I was pleased to read that, well, THEY’VE BASICALLY ERADICATED GUINEA WORM. Solid work to all involved!

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We lost our sitter to a full-time nursing job, which we knew would happen, and Utah is stuffed to the gills with charming young women who fear the Lord and have eighteen younger siblings, and it’ll be okay, but she was GREAT and I can never love again.

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We were obviously going to link to the New Yorker piece about radfems, we’re not made of STONE, we like giving you big messy things to discuss like any other site.

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Read more Link Roundup! at The Toast.

I’m the first to admit it: we might be popular, we might create a lot of great relationships, we might blah blah blah. But OkCupid doesn’t really know what it’s doing. Neither does any other website. It’s not like people have been building these things for very long, or you can go look up a […]

overblood:

long-distance friendships are terrible because you can’t meet up with them whenever you want and hang out on any given day which is why when i’m president i’m relocating the entire human population into a 10,000,000 story skyscraper that also acts as a bridge from earth to the moon which comes with the added benefit of swinging the moon around like a fucking mace, god damn it’s gonna look so cool. what was i talking about

Previously on Femslash Friday: The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Mean Girls is the film equivalent of the hyper-closeted girl who let you make out with her in between boyfriends but snubbed you in the hallways in high school. She’s not gay, you’re gay, and sometimes you happen to be gay inside of her mouth, which isn’t really her fault, if that happens. You’ve got a big old lesbian crush on her, and if you tell anyone about what you two really do when you’re supposed to be tutoring her in pre-calc she’ll deny it. And who would believe you?

You’re familiar with Mean Girls, of course; you’ve been on the Internet. Its status as a camp classic among gay men is already assured, yet its queasy, fascinated relationship with girl-on-girl relationships keeps lesbian and bi viewers at arms’ length — close enough to make out with but far enough to push away if someone else walks in the room.

The specter of lesbianism is one that gets raised periodically throughout the film — supposedly for the purpose of shooting it down. Janis Ian is named after the famous lesbian singer-songwriter; Regina confesses to having been her former friend before explaining she disinvited her from a birthday celebration because “you can’t have a lesbian at a pool party.”

Did you have that best friend in high school? Readers, I did. Her name was Jessica and we spent every day together and I had never met anyone more beautiful and we ate lunch by ourselves on a bench and we made each other laugh. The week she stopped talking to me, she told the boy who had asked me to prom not to do it, “because she’s actually a man in woman’s clothing.” It broke my heart. I had a fever for days. I hadn’t even thought I was in love with her, until I found out she hated me for it. But you can’t have a lesbian at a pool party. You can’t like someone else too much.

It’s hard not to watch Mean Girls now without extratextual information coloring each scene — Lindsay Lohan went on, famously, to date Samantha Ronson, while the actors who played Aaron Samuels and Damien both came out several years after Mean Girls was released. There’s a frisson of gayness wherever you look. Cady’s first interactions with Janis and Regina — the girls who war for her heart and soul — read more like romantic meet-cutes than anything else. Regina rescues her from the unwanted sexual attentions of Jason “Do You Want Your Muffin Buttered,” swiftly putting him in his place, and gallantly pulls Cady under her wing.

And Janis — well. Janis is very excited to meet Cady.

That is the slouching, casually disinterested, smirking, hair-twirling pose of someone who’s just met her new girlfriend. Nothing about this says “Hey, nice to meet you; I look forward to our heterosexually-based friendship” and everything about it rumbles “Hello, Red.”

Janis proceeds to use her shiny new relationship Cady to keep tabs on her ex (and who among us cannot say we have done the same) and pushes her into dressing and acting just like her last, lost girlfriend. Regina, meanwhile, trots out a series of psychosexual power plays that would make the Marquis de Sade’s head spin in order to keep Cady close to her and desperate for her approval. It’s like a Beebo Brinker novel, with all the high-femme head games swirling around. Cady might like Regina’s ex? Then Regina’s taking him back. And Regina wants to see the look on Cady’s face while she does it.

Cady’s transformation into Regina is supposedly complete when she accuses Janis of being “like, in love with me or something,” which causes Damien to bring his car to a screeching halt:

I don’t love you, Janis tells her. No one loves you. Everybody hates you. Which, in the world of Mean Girls, is kind of the same thing.

(Must I accept the fact that Lizzy Caplan is probably heterosexual? I don’t want to. I don’t want to.)

What to do with Janis! The filmmakers don’t seem to know. Is she a cool girl lost in a parade of power femmes? A butch heterosexual? A misunderstood dyke? Regina is clearly wrong for using her purported sexuality for excluding her from that long-ago pool party, but the filmmakers don’t seem to want a lesbian on their hands any more than she did. They bring Janis right up to the Lesbian Line and then at the last minute snatch her back with the help of Kevin G.

Consider: one of the last scenes in the movie, Janis is in menswear and a gel-sculpted Dolly Wilde hairdo with a gay man as her date. They’re wearing purple tuxedos, a color so indelibly associated with visible gayness that it nearly got the Teletubbies cancelled fifteen years ago.

A truly daring ending would have had Kevin asking Damien to dance. Damien, I am so sorry you never got to make out with anyone in this movie because you were too busy being the Neutered Gay Best Friend. I hope your first college boyfriend was adorable and the two of you had sex all the time.

Tell me that this is the face of a woman who’s excited to dance with a heterosexual man. Go ahead. Tell me that. I will be here, waiting for you to look me in the eyes and tell me the greatest lie since “Jo and Blair were just really good friends.”

Cady gets Aaron Samuels and his bangs in the end, I think. He continues to exist, which I find mostly unobjectionable.

But here are Regina and Janis at their happiest, respectively, in the entirety of Mean Girls:

“It’s her dream come true,” Regina said snarkily of Janis during the trust fall sequence, “diving into a sea of girls.”

Regina knows because her dream has always been the same.

Read more Femslash Friday: Mean Girls’ Layers Upon Lesbian Layers at The Toast.

Everyone loved watching them on TV and reading about them in the books, but which one of the…it’s right on the tip of my tongue…uhh, it’s time to find out which one of those shape guys you are, with the hats.

yoenisthemenace:

He was almost President.

God: you have to die so their sins can be forgiven
Jesus:
Jesus:
Jesus:
Jesus: i just came here to have a good time and i'm honestly feeling so attacked right now

unclefather:

gf: Come over

me: i can’t i’m skiing

gf: I have dog treats

me: 

sealfie:

sealfie:

What do you call a sick eagle?

illegal

“Basically, I realized I was living in that awful stage of life between twenty-six to and thirty-seven known as stupidity. It’s when you don’t know anything, not even as much as you did when you were younger, and you don’t even have a philosophy about all the things you don’t know, the way you did when you were twenty or would again when you were thirty-eight.”
― Lorrie Moore, Anagrams

menthuthuyoupi:

YO YOU NOT GON HELP???

Straight guys often try to charm the ladies with a form of baby talk:

In an article soon to be published in the journal Evolution & Human Behavior, [psychologist Juan David] Leongómez and his colleagues discovered that when (heterosexual) men, for instance, are asked to flirt with a beautiful woman, two noticeable things begin to happen to their voices. First, their voices get deeper … or rather their voices achieve a deeper minimal octave than under comparison conditions. And second, men’s voices become more sing-songy or pitch-variable when speaking to a pretty woman, sort of like, well, how you’d speak to a baby.

It isn’t quite as pronounced as such prosodic “infant-directed speech” (and it’s probably unwise, I hasten to add, for a man to speak to any woman as if she were a puppy), but nonetheless, the investigators found these male voice adjustments during verbal courtship to be an empirically demonstrable effect. What this means is that not only do men’s voices get deeper when they’re chatting up some lovely woman, but they also get higher compared to when their speech is directed at another male or to an unattractive female listener. This effect appeared in both of the language samples tested – native male English and Czech speakers – and even after controlling for the unscripted content of the men’s speech.

What the researchers found about how straight women talk to men:

Interestingly, this so-called paralinguistic courtship modulation effect didn’t occur in women’s voices when they believed that they were speaking to a good-looking man, but it did occur when they were speaking to an attractive woman. That’s to say, when (heterosexual) women thought that they were communicating with an especially pretty member of the same sex, they began to stress their pitch modulation. The reason for this isn’t entirely clear, but it could be, as the authors suggest, that these female speakers’ intended audience is in fact desirable male mates, such that women are attempting to enhance their vocal appeal relative to these highly desirable female competitors. “Pfft. She’s not all that,” in other words. “Check out my natural speaking range.”

Update from a female reader:

I skimmed the post and got to the end and read the ridiculous conclusion of why heterosexual women’s modulation changes while speaking to other attractive heterosexual women, and I scrolled back-up and knew that the study was written by a man. So a heterosexual woman when speaking with an attractive man doesn’t find it necessary to change her voice modulation to attract him but she’s so competitive with other attractive women for a male’s attention that she changes her voice modulation for her? That makes no sense. When I go out with my friends, especially if I haven’t seen them in awhile, I always up the make-up. I wear eye-shadow for my girlfriends. I am not alone. I saw a dear friend this weekend, and after we hugged she said, “I curled my hair for you.” So maybe these women are more focused on what the women think of them, and not focused on knocking them off as competitors.

Also, your post on the plague and after is why I read you religiously, and why even when you piss me off I will continue to read you.

… she says in a baby voice.

A reader writes:

You need wrong entries to start things off, right? So here’s one. But it does remind me of San Antonio de Escazu, Costa Rica, which probably means it’s time to go back.

Another thinks we’re timing the view again:

Totally stumped! But it’s GOTTA be either Rio or Buenos Aires because it’s the World Cup Finals weekend … no way it’s Germany! I gave up when I saw that Rio is too lush for the pic and Buenos Aries is too flat!

Another goes birding:

Seems to me those are Griffon vultures. And the topography looks like Spain, which is where most of the Griffon vultures live. After that, it’s time for darts and/or educated guesses. As this is the week that the St. Fermin Festival ends, I am going to say that the person who sent it in was in Pamplona and is now up in the Aragon hills (or could be farther up in the Pyrenees). So, let’s say a hill town outside of Huesca.

Here, by the way, is an Algerian bank note with Griffon vultures (some Spaniards getting eaten alive in the post-bubble housing market might think putting vultures on the money itself is overkill):

Another pings Africa:

Cape Town, South Africa. Between Atlantic and Table Mountain. I’m guessing the Clifton/Camps Bay Area.

Another:

Milwaukee … because that is clearly a keg on the roof of that house in the foreground.

Back to that “keg” in a little bit. Another gets the right country:

This is a wild guess and probably not even close, but it seems like Greece to me. No way to prove that, however.

Another helps out with proof by nailing the correct town:

Based on the rooftops, vegetation and topography, this looks like Greece, and that looks like the Panthessaliko arena way off in the distance. That would imply that this picture was taken from somewhere near Portaria, Greece, although the limited time I had for a rooftop search to match the details of the picture came up blank. So close, alas …

Another correct guesser:

Looking across to Makrinitsa, and the distant plains of Thessaly. Land of the centaurs, by the way …

Chini notes:

The hardest part of these Mediterranean views is distinguishing between the architecture of the countries. This week, for example, I’m guessing the heat map is gonna have quite a few entries from Spain as well as Greece. And if you were one of the unfortunate readers who did get bogged down in Spain, well, it was probably a pretty long weekend.

Yep, readers definitely put Spain (and Italy and California) on the map this week:

And here’s a delicious pie chart:

Another reader nails the hotel and highlights what was, for most contestants, the essential clue to solving this week’s view:

This sure seemed like a Mediterranean hill town, and the birds meant it probably wasn’t too far from the sea. The rooftop solar installation has a “Sigma” logo on the side, and a little googling showed that belongs to a company that operates out of Volos, Greece. The last clue that cinched it was the grey slate that makes up many of the roof tiles and the chimneys in the photo. I had a hard time finding anything quite like it, but finally found some close matches in the area of Mt. Pelion, unsurprisingly very near Volos.

A little more sleuthing showed that this week’s view was taken from the Hotel Karavos, Hajakou 15, Portaria 37011, Greece. I’m pretty sure it was taken from the center window on the 1st floor of the West side of the hotel. And now I *really* want to go to Greece. The views of the sea from Portaria are just stunning.

Our favorite GIF-making player nails the correct window:

There’s a Sigma solar hot water heater on the building’s roof across the road. Sigma is headquartered in Volos. I then matched up the visible soccer stadium, rock quarry (?), and forest on the mountainside in Google satellite images, then pinpointed Portaria. The window was harder. (Fun fact: the room is named after a flower. Which one, however, I do not know … )

Check out how methodically this reader zeroed in:

An image search on Sigma Solar eventually got me too a rendering of a Sigma labeled cylinder above a solar panel, crucially with a red “a” in the name. This Sigma was located out of Greece, which seemed to fit the geography of the picture better, so there I went. This Sigma was headquartered out of Volos, but that area seemed to close to the coast, so I moved on, looking again at soccer stadiums. I was looking for a decent-sized stadium, perhaps ringed by arches. When I got to Panthessalakio Stadium, I didn’t find arches, but it was ringed by a concrete frame with many openings, and it was located in Volos, so I began to think maybe this was it. Zooming in on Google Maps, I saw mountainous terrain, and a stadium on the edge of town with a major road turning to the left just past the stadium, and a view that wouldn’t include the surrounding coast. I knew I had the background, but how to isolate to a specific building?

The view seemed almost exactly perpendicular to the long facade of the stadium, so I headed due east. Surprisingly, many of the neighborhoods were predominated by either red or white roofs, but very few had a good mix of the two colors. Once I got to what I now know is Portaria, I began to see the right mix. I couple swoops into street view made me think this was generally the right area, so I went back to the satellite view, looking for a white building with chimneys near a red roof with a solar panel. I was pleasantly surprised to find not just a solar panel, but one with a highly reflective object and thick white cabling running to the side, next to a white roof that looked the part.

Street view quickly confirmed the white house was the foreground of my picture (Streetview voyeurism tells me that the solar panel was installed on the red roofed building sometime after July 2011).

Continuing in street view, the building on the opposite side of the street had four rooms with balconies with brown railings, one of which clearly had to be the source of the shot. Based on angles, the street lamp, wires, and other signs in street view, I felt pretty confident that it was one of the lower two balconies on the third floor, but which one? Given the excellence of other contest-goers, I clearly needed to step up my game to get the correct window. Going further down the street, I could see a sign on the building for Hotel Karavos. I started to look at pictures on various hotel review sites, and eventually came across a picture that I think almost definitely came from the same balcony, albeit from farther back and on a slightly different angle:

The extra view of the balcony itself showed that balcony itself went slightly further to the left (looking out) than the railing itself. Street view shows that one balcony ended flush with a divider, so it had to be the balcony on the right (facing the hotel).

This was a really fun one, thanks.

Bravo. Meanwhile, a previous winner gets her collage on:

I began by trying to identify the soaring flock of birds, but they appear to be a common and widespread European swift. Next I focused on the stadium that is vaguely visible on the flats at the base of hills (soccer weekend). That was not productive. I then searched for worked-stone roof tiles like those in the view and quit quickly found similar examples in villages clustered on the steep ridges above Volos, Greece. The Volos Olympic Stadium on the flats helped confirm I was in the right place. Searches of hotels eventually located views similar to that of the contest and Hotel Karavos.

The photograph was taken from one of the four balconies on the west face of the hotel. My uncertain guess is the lower and southern-most one. The steep slopes made judging window heights even more difficult than usual. This balcony seemed the most likely to include a number of clues. The balcony view had to include the top of a utility post visible in the lower right of the contest view, the tip of a neighboring roof corner on the right of the photograph midway, and the center post of the balcony railing that is left of center in the view. The most convincing clue was comparing a similar view taken from the only upper window on the western face with shutters which is located south of the balconies. The view from the shutter window appears close to that of the contest view but slightly higher. This would be consistent with the shutter window’s location in relation to the lower balcony (or more so than an upper balcony).

Now I want to know how the stone roof tiles are made and perhaps reused.

Here’s the Dish own collage of your best entries:

One of those readers adds:

Of interest to me is that Volos is the home of the mythical hero Jason (of Argonauts and Golden Fleece fame) but also of real-life composer musician Vangelis whose work on film scores such as Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner is well known.

This week’s winner is an 11-contest veteran from our vaunted list of previous guessers of difficult contests:

The most obvious landmark, the stadium way off in the background, wasn’t familiar, so searching for that right away wasn’t too helpful. Googling around for “sigma solar water heater” and doing some quick logo vetting narrowed it down to Greece rather than California or Spain. “Stadium Greece” was a fairly unhelpful Google Image search for the first few pages due to the prevalence of pictures of the Panathenaic Stadium, until I just happened upon the right one — in Volos, which is also the home of Sigma.

The mountains looked right, so I figured out roughly where it was on the map and zoomed in on anything looking like a square or large intersection (visible on the right edge of the image, 1/3 of the way up). On the second try, I found the building with the teapot sign (a tea shop), and from there it was a simple matter of turning around in Street View and looking up.

It’s Hotel Karavos, in Portaria, about 12km from Volos (39.389338,23.00066, for the picky). Due to the pole in the bottom right corner of the image, I’m guessing it’s… I don’t even know how you’d number the floors. Window is circled:

From the view’s submitter:

The picture was taken from the window of Room 202 of Hotel Karavos, in the mountain village of Portaria, Greece. This is one of the little towns on the western side of Mt. Pelion, looking down to the city of Volos, part of which can be seen in the distance on the left of the contest picture.

The whole region is very beautiful, with quaint villages on the mountain slopes and beautiful beaches just a short drive away on either side of the peninsula. My wife and I spent there three days exploring the area together with two friends of ours, a couple who got married this Saturday - the same day the photo appeared in the contest!

I’ve also attached another picture with a wider panorama of Volos, taken from the town of Makrinitsa, very close to Portaria:

(Archive: Text|Gallery)

by Megh Wright

Here's a Conan web exclusive in which O'Brien makes an exciting announcement: On Saturday, August 2nd at 9pm, Syfy will be premiering a dramatic film starring Conan and produced by Roger Corman called Sharktopus Vs. Pteracuda that will no doubt alter O'Brien's career path for years to come. Check out the announcement, along with the unveiling of the Sharktopus Vs. Pteracuda billboard, in the video above.

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You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts. Be sure to email entries to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book or two free gift subscriptions to the Dish. Have at it.

Hedgehog thinks pine cones are his friends - Video

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