Russian Sledges

Netflix has won over consumers and Hollywood with its mix of TV reruns, old movies and original shows, all for $7.99-a-month with liberal policies that let family and friends share one account. But those days appear to be coming to an end.

Philip Elmer-Dewitt:

In the space of a few hours, more than a thousand votes were cast on the DISQUS feedback system, voting down any comment remotely anti-Samsung and voting up anything -- no matter how inane, in-artful or wrong -- that disparaged Apple, the thesis, or me.

I guess all is fair in capitalism, but this certainly sounds fishy. I'm also betting it's a pretty cheap and ineffective strategy. Normal people do not read comments. People that read comments probably also see through this kind of stuff. It does highlight the danger of comment voting systems like Disqus. They can be gamed with minor effort.

Reddit General Manager Erik Martin has apologized for the Reddit community's reaction to the Boston Marathon bombings, which frustrated the public and law enforcement last week with a flood of misinformation about the perpetrators of the attacks.

"Though started with noble intentions," Martin writes, "some of the activity on Reddit fueled online witch hunts and dangerous speculation which spiraled into very negative consequences for innocent parties." In particular, Martin calls out Sunil Triphathi, who was pegged as a suspect by amateur online detectives on 4chan and Reddit — information that spread quickly online. "We have apologized privately to the family of missing college student Sunil Triphathi, as have various users and moderators," Martin writes. "We want to take this opportunity to apologize publicly for the pain they have had to endure."

"We want to take this opportunity to apologize publicly for the pain they have had to endure."

Reddit users quickly attempted to backtrack and avoid scrutiny after identifying the wrong suspects, pleading for the media to stop using information from the social sharing network. Several efforts to repair the damage done and to show goodwill were created in the wake of vigilantism, including donations to relief funds, pizza deliveries to local law enforcement and medical personnel, and boarding for those stranded in the city. But despite generous acts and contrition, Martin hopes the community will prevent serious investigatory missteps in the future.

"We hope that Boston will be where Reddit learns to be sensitive of its own power."

"This crisis has reminded us of the fragility of people's lives and the importance of our communities, online as well as offline," Martin writes. "After this week, which showed the best and worst of Reddit's potential, we hope that Boston will also be where Reddit learns to be sensitive of its own power." Much of that power is wielded by the site's volunteer moderators, who control individual "subreddits." One of those subreddits, /r/findbostonbombers, was focused solely on uncovering those responsible for the attacks.

In a phone conversation regarding the blog post, Martin told The Verge that similar subreddits will not be restricted in the future, but that the site's administrators will pay more attention to enforcing the site's small set of core rules — namely, the one which prohibits users from posting personal information about others. "We will certainly be more proactive in our enforcement of that no personal information policy in these situations," Martin said. But, as usual, Reddit's leaders hope that change will come from the bottom-up. "The conversation has been and is already taking place on Reddit," Martin said. "We want that to continue and for people to realize what's at stake."

• Source Reddit
• Related Items reddit erik martin crowdsource boston marathon bombing

Tonight's "haunted house" episode of Doctor Who has a lot going for it, including some genuinely creepy moments and a companion rescuing the Doctor in a way we've never seen before. But it also exposes how the show's over-reliance on romance as a storytelling engine is running into the law of diminishing returns. Spoilers!

Read more...

Love Will Tear Us Apart Map

The singer and Kickstarter villain posted a poem for Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on her website yesterday, and it turns out a vast majority of the Internet does not want to read Amanda Palmer's attempt to insert herself into the tragedy — even if it involves Vietnamese soft rolls. Read the ... More »

From Drinks

VIEW SLIDESHOW: Where to Drink Sour Beer in Chicago

[Photographs: Roger Kamholz]

Lambic. Gueuze. Wild Ale. Oud Bruin. Flanders Red. Berliner Weisse. Lately, when I belly up to new and familiar bars alike and begin dissecting the beer offerings, I hunt for these terms like X's on a treasure map. They're among the handful of markers in the world of beers that signify sour. And, I confess, I've become obsessed with the whole lot of them.

Sour beers are exactly what they sound like: they belong to a style of suds deliberately made to present with acidity—often boldly so. Sours have, in my mind, always stood alone among the numerous classes of beer for that reason, even while occasionally sharing some traits with, say, their dry and hoppy or malty and cereal cousins. To my palate, the acidity of a sour beer is generally more acetic than citric; in other words, you might detect flavors akin to cider or balsamic vinegar over any hints of lemon or grapefruit. Sours can be sharply tart, fragrantly fruity, caramel sweet, wine-like, even herbal and vegetal. Indeed, sours are an unruly pack, resistant to hard-and-fast characterization. The more sours I try, the more impressed I become at the breadth of their range of flavors. And it's easy to understand how they developed these freewheeling personalities when you examine the history of their making.

Take Lambic. In Belgium, long a hotbed for sour-beer-making, brewers found that exposing nascent wort to the open air could foster "spontaneous" fermentation. Basically, the airborne yeasts and other bacteria present in the region (most notably Lactobacillus, Brettanomyces, and Pediococcus, which you can read more about here) were allowed to float into and take up residence within these breweries and thus get into the wort. All of these wily agents have a hand in shaping a Lambic's flavor—hence the term "Wild Ale."

This approach to fermentation can take a long time. On top of that, many sour beers are also barrel-aged for up to several years. These factors in part can make sours more precious (read: expensive) than their counterparts at the bar; large-format bottles of Lambic and Gueuze, for instance, can cost as much as decent wine. But if you ask me, the payoff is well worth it.

The bar at SmallBar on Division Street.

It could be their sometimes-elevated price, it could be their rarity, it could be their unusual taste, or a combination of all the above, but sours are simply not as easy to come by as an obsessive like me would hope. Thankfully, there's a cohort of ambitious, beer-focused bars in Chicago that not only stock their cellars with obscure and intriguing large-format sours, but also reliably devote one or two tap lines to the tart stuff—which provides an inexpensive entrée into this rich and dynamic style of beer. Check out the slideshow for eight great bars in Chicago that traffic in sour beer of all sorts »

View Best bars for sour beer in Chicago in a larger map.

Where to Get Your Sour On
The Map Room
Local Option
Hopleaf
The Small Bar
The Publican
Fountainhead
Bangers & Lace
The Bad Apple

About the Author: Roger Kamholz writes about a plethora of topics, including ramen, vegetarian dishes, and—most importantly—cocktails. If you see him at a party, demand that he make your next drink.

Authorities have quickly made an arrest after an anonymous threat posted to 4chan this weekend warned of an imminent school shooting. "Tomorrow, I will shoot my Dutch teacher, and as many students as I can," read the message — posted days after a terrorist attack rattled the US. Even more troubling, an attached photo seemingly shows off the gun and ammunition meant to be used in the mass show of violence. The post even goes so far as to reveal a target. "It's a school in a Dutch city called Leiden." That specificity led local authorities to keep thousands of students home Monday, according to Agence France-Presse. The individual behind the 4chan message said he would be carrying a note explaining his actions, and said a friend would publish the letter if authorities opted not to share it publicly.

Thankfully despite the perpetrator's insistence that the "police is not gonna find me before tomorrow," it didn't take long for authorities to nab their man — a former pupil reportedly expelled in 2011 over bad behavior. Sadly, previous threats posted to the popular website have turned out to be more than words. Earlier this month, minutes before opening fire in a crowded Virginia mall, a gunman outlined his plans on 4chan.

• Via The Atlantic Wire
• Source Agence France-PresseThe Daily Mail
• Related Items shooting 4chan threat

SternisheFan writes "ArsTechnica reports: 'While the whole country is relieved that this past week's Boston Marathon bombing ordeal and subsequent lockdown of the city is finally over, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis told the Washington Post that the department's facial recognition system "did not identify" the two bombing suspects. "The technology came up empty even though both Tsarnaevs' images exist in official databases: Dzhokhar had a Massachusetts driver's license; the brothers had legally immigrated; and Tamerlan had been the subject of some FBI investigation," the Post reported on Saturday. Facial recognition systems can have limited utility when a grainy, low-resolution image captured at a distance from a cellphone camera or surveillance video is compared with a known, high-quality image. Meanwhile, the FBI is expected to release a large-scale facial recognition apparatus "next year for members of the Western Identification Network, a consortium of police agencies in California and eight other Western states," according to the San Jose Mercury News. Still, video surveillance did prove extremely useful in pinpointing the suspects"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I was wandering through the Retronaut archives when this lovely lady caught my eye. 

Her name is Aida Overton Walker, a vaudeville actress who performed alongside her husband George Walker and was considered one of the best black female dancers of her time. I recommend you read the external links on her wikipedia page: the wikipedia article itself is rather short, but the external articles mentions a lot about her performances and her charity work, one of which include her producing 2 shows for black female acting groups. 

1 1/2 oz Dry Amontillado Sherry
1/2 oz Rothman & Winter Apricot Liqueur
3/4 oz oz Pineapple Syrup
1/2 oz Lemon Juice

Shake with ice and strain into a rocks glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with a mint sprig and 1-2 dash Angostura Bitters, and add a straw.

For my next drink, I asked Ryan Connelly for the Daley Fix for I am a big fan of Fixes in general. I was amused when I heard the recipe as it is the same basic proportions that we used next door with the Kitty Leroy when Katie Emmerson and I bartended at Belly's sister establishment, the Blue Room. I guess that recipe was such a success that the Kitty Leroy made it on to the Blue Room's regular menu! This Fix was not named after a Woman of the Wild West, but for Stacey Daley, the chef at Central Bottle Wine + Provision.
The garnishes contributed greatly to the Daley Fix's aroma by providing mint and Angostura spice notes. A lemon and grape sip segued into a pineapple swallow that offered a great combination from the nutty sherry and the apricot liqueur. Towards the end of the drink, the Angostura Bitters entered into the flavor profile and added allspice notes and a degree of dryness to the mix.

In hindsight, selling Upcoming to Yahoo was a horrible mistake. Selling your company always means sacrificing control and risking its fate, and as we now know, online communities almost always fail after acquisition.

Over half of all detainees at the US-run Guantanamo Bay military prison are now taking part in a hunger strike, with many being force-fed.

Today, if anyone remembers, is Earth Day, and in its honor Google has made an animated Google Doodle. Be sure to click on the Sun.

Here’s a screenshot:

h/t: John

“How To Be a Man: A Guide To Style and Behavior For The Modern Gentleman,” by Glenn O'Brien
Borrow I Read

Jeffrey L. Seglin: “Dot [Dorchester] Art project honoring Martin Richard with sign hanging on Savin Hill bridge over 93 heading North into Boston. — with Nancy Seglin, Angela Kelly, Boston City Councilor Frank Baker, Dot Art, Liz Carney and Jesse Huang in Savin Hill.”

Original Source

It appears that the boston bombing suspects lost their hostage rather than just letting him go.

The intense hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers illustrates another way that the National Rifle Association helps mass murderers — by delaying how quickly they can be identified.

"Since its debut in 1951, the Eames Molded Plastic Side Chair- - a body-embracing wonder designed by Charles and Ray Eames- - has come a long way. The first unupholstered chair to be mass-produced in plastic, it has metamorphosed into a wiry creature, learned to rock, gone to school, entered the workforce as quintessential office furniture and found its way back into the canon of high design."

While I have made many simple flat sewing projects, from napkins to burp cloths, I realized recently that I’ve never made a classic bandana!  What an oversight, since bandanas are the most versatile of all squares: a scarf! a headband! a hankie! It’s one of the most useful things you can sew!

Once I got it in my head that I was going to sew a bandana, I knew there was only one fabric that would satisfy my vision: Liberty of London Tana Lawn. I wear a bandana all the time to hold back my hair while I’m sewing, so I kind of couldn’t believe I didn’t have a Liberty Bandana already!

We picked out three stunning Tana Lawn Seasonal prints, each one prettier than the next. After hand sewing them with an easy rolled hem, the bandanas look so sunny and breezy, perfect for spring! And since they’re sized for kids too, little ones don’t have to miss out on the utilitarian beauty  of these Liberty Bandanas!

It came to my attention that Jane Richard, the little girl whose brother was killed on Monday and who was severely injured herself, sings with Boston City Singers, one of the groups we were planning on featuring tomorrow. After a quick conversation with leaders from A Far Cry and Juventas, we all collectively agreed that the money we raise from the Punch Bowl Fund this month will go to Boston City Singers, to help bring music to children so closely connected to last week's tragedy. We will still welcome all three groups tomorrow—Boston City Singers, Juventas, and A Far Cry—but we've already decided where the money will go.

fat-birds:

Lean on me :) by jessi.bryan on Flickr.

Glenn Beck claims that he has evidence that the Boston Marathon attack was an inside job and is kindly giving President Obama until Monday morning to admit as such before he shares said evidence.

explore-blog:

For Charlotte Brontë’s birthday, a comic celebration.

This video has drawn the ire of conspiracy lunatics from all over the country. One thing for sure is they are predominantly white, male, and fucking retarded.

The Human Printer is an ongoing art project by a collective of students at the University of Derby who take photographs and manually create a CMYK halftone printing effect by hand. CMYK refers to the four inks used in some color printing: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black)—the application of which is usually determined by computers, not people. The process of applying each dot by hand as you can imagine is a painfully tedious process that requires not only a knowledge of printing but also plenty of forethought before beginning each piece. You can see a rough idea of the process in the video above.

The Human Printer was setup in 2009 by Louise Naunton Morgan and having setup a design studio with Stina Gromark, the project is now run by Stinsensqueeze (STSQ). According to their website they are currently taking orders, all you have to do is upload an image that meets their requirements, select a color process, and they’ll get back to you with a quote. (via jeannie jeannie)

madlori:

lbmisscharlie:

mydwynter:

hamburgerjack:

blackpaint20:

This is lovely!

The moaning of miserable medieval monks who transcribed books.

Source

Lol

My people.

Now I’ve written the whole thing: for Christ’s sake give me a drink.

BUGGRE ALL THIS FOR A LARK.

:)

“I would not be willing to do a funeral for him. This is a person who deliberately killed people. There is no room for him as a Muslim. He already left the fold of Islam by doing that.”

– Imam Talal Eid of the Islamic Institute of Boston, speaking to the Huffington Post about why he wouldn’t conduct a Muslim funeral for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev

The post Quote of the Day: Imam Talal Eid of the Islamic Institute of Boston appeared first on Religion News Service.