Russian Sledges

My beloved nephew on right, djohar tsarnaev on left, happy cambridge Rindge and Latin grads.heartbreaking pic.twitter.com/wCuNo8aApQ

gale the simple writes "Mike Rodgers made a minor splash Tuesday when he decided to liken CISPA opponents to 14-year-old basement dwellers. The EFF, naturally, picked up on this generalization and asked everyone to let the representative know that it is not just the 14-year-olds that care about privacy."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

All service to/from Boston South Station is currently suspended. Currently, service is running to Worcester and Framingham (please note that MBTA service is not operating).  Please understand cancellations to/from Worcester and Framingham may occur last minute due to situations beyond our control.  All service to/from Boston South Station is currently suspended.

Originally from Chechnya, but living in the United States since five years, Tamerlan says: "I don't have a single American friend, I don't understand them."

Internet sleuths (a.k.a. people with Google and no ability to leave their homes this morning) have followed up to find that someone by that name attended the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and won a $2,500 scholarship from the city of Cambridge in 2011. Several other Googlers discovered that he was once a wrestler and student athlete of the month at CRLS in February 2011.

• Don’t go to work.
• The MBTA system is shut down, so if you’re not at home, find friends nearby and stay with them.
•  Don’t answer the door unless it’s police or a loved one.
• Stay home, stay safe, stay strong. We’re with you.

Residents west of Boston have been told to 'stay home' amid a manhunt for a second Boston Marathon bombing suspect early Friday.

All service is running as scheduled to/from Boston South Station and Boston Logan Airport.

Update 4/19 5:52am: Harvard University is closed due to public safety concerns. Please continue to watch this page for updates.

A massive explosion occurred Wednesday night at a fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas, about 20 miles north of Waco. YouTube users zidyboby and Meteorito Russia 2013 caught the powerful blast on camera. More coverage on the explosion is available from Reuters, The New York Times, and Dallas News.

Speaking in favor of legislation that would repeal Oklahoma's 70-year-old law that prohibits retailers from selling goods for less than 6 percent above cost, state Rep. Dennis Johnson (R), the co-majority leader of the state House of Representatives and a small business owner, said that some customers "might try to Jew me down on a price." Shortly after invoking the derogatory phrase, Johnson appeared to be notified by someone off camera that what he said was offensive.  "I apologize to the Jews," Johnson said, drawing laughter from the chamber. "They're good small businessmen as well."

Just a quick reminder to all service workers: When you make a terrible name for one of your customers in the system, print out a receipt with said name, and hand the receipt to a customer, the customer WILL notice. You're not being sneaky. You won't punch out at the end of the day with a smirk on your face and tell your friends about the fun little prank you pulled at work over a beer later. Or maybe you will, but eventually, you will get caught. Because there's proof of your asshole-y-ness on the receipt, dipshit. In this case, the dipshit in question was a CVS employee who printed out a receipt for Hyun Lee, a New Jersey resident of Korean descent. She was picking up her photos from a local CVS and noticed that her name on the receipt, instead of appearing as "LEE, HYUN," read, "LEE, CHING CHONG."

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Baby Turtles Vs. Strawberries by Jamie Hanson

[h/t: animalkingd0m]

Courtesy of the Deeper Understanding Collection!

As much as I enjoy classic brogues, I only own two pairs of wingtips: Edward Green’s Inverness, made from a lightly antiqued chestnut calf, and Ralph Lauren’s Marlows, made from a dark brown shell cordovan. The first is only wearable with lightweight clothes in the spring and summer months, while the second is better with heavier, country clothes in the fall and winter. I own none in dark brown calf, which, being a more versatile color and material, would allow me to have at least two wingtip options throughout the year.

So I’ve been wanting to get a new pair, but feel a bit ambivalent about most models. My eyes are more drawn towards the elegant, curved “v-shape” designs from Saint Crispin’s, Edward Green, and Vass.

Like with all of Saint Crispin’s shoes, their modified longwing brogue doesn’t have a name, but a number. Here, it’s simply called the 105. Along with the 315, the 105 was one of the company’s first models. It came out in 1996, four years after the company’s founding, and was designed by Saint Crispin’s original proprietor, Michael Rollig. Michael has gone on to do Zonkey Boot, but the shoe he designed for Saint Crispin’s seventeen years ago continues to be one of the company’s best sellers.

Edward Green’s version is called the Brummell (after the famous Regency dandy, of course). It came out in 2010 as a way to mark the company’s 120^th anniversary. The diamond shaped medallion you see is drawn from Edward Green’s 1930s archive. A uniquely shaped punch for a uniquely designed shoe. I don’t see the model listed in Edward Green’s latest catalog, but I imagine it should be available for special orders. The biggest upside to Edward Green is that I think they have one of the best looking dark brown calfs on the market. 

Finally, there’s Vass’ Old English II. Theirs perhaps looks less sleek, but this could be an advantage depending on what else one plans to wear. It also comes in at half the price of the other options, which is attractive.

I’m undecided at the moment on which model I like best, but will have to choose soon. I’d like to have a pair of dark brown, calf leather, v-shaped brogues.

(Photos via Ethan Newton, Leffot, and StyleForum)

WASHINGTON—Calling the last four days of American life just...I mean, talk about a goddamned punch in the gut, citizens across the nation confirmed today that, Jesus, this week. This fucking week, sources added. Christ. “Seriously, can we wrap...

BOSTON—Saying that we have a clear shot and we are ready to fire if given the go-ahead, The Onion has confirmed it will take out the Boston Marathon bomber if Twitter users give us enough “yes” votes to do so.

The Delta Gamma sisters at the University of Maryland showed so little enthusiasm at parties with a fraternity that it apparently sent a DG executive board member at the school spiraling into social anxiety and paranoia, which she expressed in a profane and occasionally ALL-CAPS email to the sorority's listserv. "Julia," as Gawker's Caity Weaver refers to the author, has been alerted via text message that "we have been FUCKING UP in terms of night time events and general social interactions with Sigma Nu." Someone on the listserv leaked the email Gawker. It is a compelling (and funny) portrait of a woman driven into madness by her club's middling social success, no matter which way success has been measured at UM and beyond since the letter went public.

The sisters had not been charming conversation partners — whether drunk or sober. As Julia explained, "Newsflash you stupid cocks: FRATS DON'T LIKE BORING SORORITIES… DOUBLE FUCKING NEWSFLASH: SIGMA NU IS NOT GOING TO WANT TO HANG OUT WITH US IF WE FUCKING SUCK." Here we can see that Julia fears her sisters' alleged violation of social norms will not only pull her own approval ratings down, but will compound over time to alienate not just Sigma Nu, but other frats as well. Julia fears not losing a date, but total social isolation.

Worse, some DGs had even signaled there were other available men they were more interested in right in front of the Sigma Nu boys, an offense so shocking Julia requested a status report on the ladies' mental health:

This also applies to you little shits that have talked openly about post gaming at a different frat IN FRONT OF SIGMA NU BROTHERS. Are you people fucking retarded? That's not a rhetorical question, I LITERALLY want you to email me back telling me if you're mentally slow so I can make sure you don't go to anymore night time events.

Indeed, Julia indicated that DGs had acted so appallingly that unnamed outside observers had been forced to report their behavior — she'd "gotten texts about people being fucking WEIRD at sports." Some had even cheered for the other team. The threat of social contamination is so great that Julia is considering amputation: "I would rather have 40 girls that are fun, talk to boys, and not fucking awkward than 80 that are fucking faggots." 

While these measures sound harsh, we must put them into context. We have long heard of the horrors that sorority girls inflict on one another. The "circle the fat" rumor — that women are forced to sit on running washing machines in bikinis while their sisters circle their unappealingly jiggly parts — will never die. But the email offers a window into the monumental social pressures of collegiate Greek life. The pressures facing Maryland's Delta Gamma are particularly harsh, as you can see if you skim GreekRank.com, a site that ranks sororities and fraternities by the anonymous catty comments of interested parties. Just after Gawker's post went up, the chapter was getting a mere 3.18 for popularity and 4.02 for social life. (Since then, ratings have plummeted to 2.84 on looks and 3.42 on social life.) Greek Lady commented, "Mixed bag of girls that get along well. some hot some not, some cool some not, but they all get along. pretty solid middle tier." Many commenters had the same analysis. "nice girls, some hott some not. average middle tier sorority"; "They're on the same level as ZTA or DPhiE, honestly. Some attractive and some unattractive. It's a mixed bag." "Underrated. actually a fair amount of good looking ones if you look."

The Atlantic Wire spoke with a Maryland student who knew some members of DG. "They're really sweet and nice, so I don't know why they were verbally attacked," she said. But she offered some context: DG isn't one of the big sororities on campus. It's Greek Week right now, and so "I guess it gets pretty competitive," the student told us. We reached out via email to three officers at Maryland's Sigma Nu chapter to see whether they could confirm or deny Julia's social fears; they have not responded. But a GreekRank poster named jj, perhaps confirming Julia's worst fears, wrote last May, "DG girls are very average in most ways but are kind of trying to be better? maybe on the rise, but still weird girls."

(Above photo via Delta Gamma.)

msnNOW

Arizona lawmakers demand bought-back guns be resold msnNOW Calling the melting-down of guns bought at buyback events a waste of money, the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate has passed a bill that would require cities to resell those firearms back to the public. The law would actually close a loophole in a 2012 ... and more »

#R2K

Original Source

Original Source

“

In 2005, the Pew Internet foundation found that 5% of the online population was using RSS.
In 2010, a Reader product manager is quoted as saying Google Reader had “tens of millions of monthly active users.”3
CNN had 25,120,973 subscribers on April 15th, 2013.4
Engadget had 6,840,662 subscribers on April 15th, 2013.5

To be conservative, If we give CNN a very high market penetration, like 50%, then we can estimate that the entire Google Reader ecosystem is roughly 50 million users. This is backed up by the claim that in 2010 Google reader had, “tens of millions of monthly active users.” Second, I estimate that Reader is 80% of the total market for this type of RSS reader, which would put the total market at roughly 65 million users.

That’s not a small market by any means, and if treated right, it will probably grow, but that’s not the end of the story. What we all really want to know is what is the size of the paid market. For this, I would point at conversion rates for existing freemium services. If Evernote gets 6%6 Dropbox gets 4%7, and Flickr gets 7%8, it looks reasonable based on these other data that the RSS service of the future would get 4%. So, that means we are looking at 2.6 million paying feed-reading customers.

”

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How Large Will the Paid Feed Reader Market Be? - Rumproarious

written by App.net’s Alex Kessinger

Keep calm &c.

Yes, that is a Boston parking ticket on the windshield of one of the trucks that has turned the Charles Street side of the Common into a National Guard encampment. Richard Lynds couldn't believe it, either.

Original Source

I've been forcing myself to get better around the edges. I'm forcing myself to pay more attention to the little things that I use, but use very inefficiently. One of those things is Git. Here are a couple tutorials that are really helpfull.

Learn Git Branching is a highly visual introduction to Git. The visual nature of the tutorial is unique. A nice balance of words and cartoons.¹

Ryan Irelan's Git Tutorial is a basic introduction to Git. Ryan does a really well paced walkthrough of the fundamental use of Git and some of the nicer Mac apps for Git. It's $15 for an hour of training. Not cheap, but not expensive either. I thought it was worth it.

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1. Thanks to Dr. Bunsen for the tip. ↩

When informed of the accession of Peter III of Russia in 1762, George III said, “Well, there are now nine of us in Europe the third of our respective names”:

• George III, King of England
• Charles III, King of Spain
• Augustus III, King of Poland
• Frederick III, King of Prussia
• Charles Emanuel III, King of Sardinia
• Mustapha III, Emperor of the Turks
• Peter III, Emperor of Russia
• Francis III, Duke of Modena
• Frederick III, Duke of Saxe-Gotha

Such a coincidence was unprecedented in European history.

Soma of the Brooklyn Brainery created TODOCAT, a to-do list manager based on the elegant cat meme. I fucking hate cat memes, but I love to-do lists. I love this cat meme to-do list manager.

TODOCAT (via Waxy)

synecdoche:

“How are you?”
“I’ve been crying a lot about Onion articles.”
“Me too.”

“Made from fresh roasted maize.”

While shopping at Kvosin (a small market) in Rekjavik, Iceland recently, I spotted a flavor of Doritos I had never heard of before: Cool American. Despite the name, they’re actually a Dutch product (available in the Netherlands, Belgium, and other points in Europe) and are really just Cool Ranch flavored, as they are better known in the States. Of course, that didn’t stop me from buying a bunch of bags to bring home for my cool American loved ones.

photo by Rusty Blazenhoff