Russian Sledges

Pin Ups

A British tourist with a Buddha tattoo on his arm says he is "shocked and upset" after being deported from Sri Lanka for "disrespect".

“What is a library? Until fairly recently, the answer to that question was simple: It’s a storehouse for books and manuscripts. The fact that books are increasingly “printed” on something other than paper doesn’t change the fundamental purpose of libraries. They are our collective memory. Fortunately for posterity, a well-made book isn’t hard to preserve. But in 1877, Thomas Edison invented a new way to preserve the past. He called it the phonograph, and it took a long time for librarians to figure out that the echoes of speech and music that Edison and his successors etched on discs were as important a part of our collective memory as the words that Johannes Gutenberg and his successors printed on paper.”

via WSJ.com

A discussion began on Twitter about Google Reader between myself and Max Levchin, and at my request moved over to email. This is the discussion so far.

Max wrote:

• RSS has a decentralized pub/sub model; the format has been open and stable for a long time; the addressing scheme has no reliance on a specific client. How does the death of one, particularly good even, client, carry with it a threat to the whole ecosystem?

I responded:

• They weren't just "one client" -- they dominated, in the way that MSIE dominated the browser space. And they did what MSIE did, once they gained dominance they froze development (that might have happened through competition) and stopped moving. Everything that was broken in GR became a feature of RSS. And all the things that should have happened, to mature the market, couldn't happen.
• Now maybe that's about to change for the better. I hope so. But I'm not encouraged. This is a market where, in order for it to flourish, there HAS to be cooperation among vendors. That's what Twitter proved. Because they control the whole user experience they were able to solve problems that the RSS market couldn't. First, because the vendors wouldn't cooperate, and then because Google took the whole market. So we are now locked into a single vendor -- Twitter.
• So the way it looks to me is that there are three possible outcomes:
• 1. GR's demise is also the end of RSS (which seems to me is Google's desired outcome, based on other things they did).
• 2. A market develops, but we're unable to get the new features into it that simplify the subscription process, so it has a chance re Twitter.
• 3. A new dominant reader comes about, and if they're good then maybe something good happens.
• I don't think there's the slightest possibility of #3. People in tech are just too insular, they don't study prior art, or even study their competition enough to know where the problems are, much less what the potential solutions are.
• I think more likely is a mix between #1 and #2. A continued decline for RSS as an activity and more and more reliance on big companies that don't give a fuck.

∫Morrissey @ Radio City Music Hall, Oct 2012 (more by Chris La Putt)

Morrissey has cancelled the remainder of his tour dates as he's still not recovered from a series of ailments. Official PR:

The remaining dates of the Morrissey U.S. North American tour have officially been pulled down due to medical reasons. The singer has suffered a series of medical mishaps over the past few months including a bleeding ulcer, Barrett's esophagus and double pneumonia.

Despite his best efforts to try to continue touring, Morrissey has to take a hiatus and will not be able to continue on the rest of the tour. Morrissey thanks all of his fans for their well wishes and thoughts. Refunds for the remaining shows are available at point of purchase.

Rest up, dude. Feel better and see you on the road soon. Cancelled tour dates are below.

Continue reading "Morrissey still ill, cancels remainder of North American tour" at brooklynvegan

If you look up Atlas Shrugged Part 1 on Netflix and take a glance at the “related movies,” you risk tumbling down a hole of deep, dark madness.

Here’s the description for the center movie: ready?

This film chronicles Barack Obama’s life journey in socialism starting with evidence that Obama’s real father was Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party USA propagandist who indoctrinated Obama into a Marxist ideology during his formative years.

You were not ready.

I hereby assert that the “conservative internet” is a stranger, sadder place by far than any other corner thereof, including whatever zone exists for people who fuck and fall in love with stuffed animals.

Google's controversial decision to shut down Google Reader on July 1st has left its users searching for a new news-collecting homeland, and we now have an idea of the scale of the RSS diaspora. Feedly has announced that more than half a million Google Reader users have signed up for its RSS service following Google's service termination announcement on Wednesday. Feedly also says it's working to keep up with its growth, increasing bandwidth by 10 times and adding new servers. Moving forward, the developers say its main priorities over the next 30 days are to keep the service running, to solicit suggestions from new users, and to add new features on a weekly basis.

The Google Reader shutdown will force users and developers of third-party RSS clients using Reader's services to find a new solution keep their news aggregators running. On Wednesday, Feedly promised that it would clone the Google Reader API to give users a "seamless transition" when Reader shuts down, and other RSS app makers, including the creators of Press and Reeder, have also indicated they are committed to finding a solution.

• Via Y Combinator (Twitter)
• Source Feedly Blog
• Related Items rss reader google reader feedly Google

The Vatican has been going high-tech lately, and its next step is digitizing the entire Apostolic Library — all 40 million pages of it. The project will take nine years and be made possible by a 2.8 petabyte storage donation from EMC, a company that specializes in information security and data storage. The library holds nearly 90,000 documents, including rare pieces like the Gutenberg Bible, one of the first Western books printed on moveable type.

EMC hasn't announced what formats it will use to store the data, or how it will handle the different types of media within the library. The company has assisted in similar digitization efforts in the past, including the creation of a 3D digital reconstruction of a Leonardo da Vinci work,...

Continue reading…

When Avis Budget Group announced it would be acquiring car-sharing service Zipcar earlier this year, the company said it expected key members of the Zipcar team to stay on to run the service — but Zipcar's CEO Scott Griffith won't be one of them. Fortune reports that the Griffith has stepped down from the company, just a day after Avis formally completed its acquisition. Taking his place will be Zipcar's chief operating officer Mark Norman.

In a letter to Zipcar employees today, Griffith writes that "Zipcar will require a fully-committed leader to unlock the power of the merger," and that "it's best if I step back and give someone else the opportunity to put the pedal down and take Zipcar to the next level." The Boston Globe's Scott...

Continue reading…

fapoleon-bonerparte:

Detail of the gold embroidery on one of Napoleon’s uniforms.

Not really a Picture of a Crush but can we please appreciate Napoleon’s fashion sense

cumberbatchrus:

Sir Tom Stoppard and Benedict Cumberbatch by Matthew Lloyd

Source

Working with the Iran Media Program, Deroy Peraza, Eric Fensterheim, and Ambika Roos of Hyperakt created Internet Censorship in Iran, a detailed infographic explaining the bodies of government involved in the country’s strict internet censorship.

It visualizes the relationships between different policy-making and enforcement bodies that block and filter content for Iranian internet users. The piece also spotlights four governing structures: the Supreme Cyber Space Council, the Committee Charged with Determining Offensive Content, the Cyber Army, and the Cyber Police. These have emerged since 2009 as key institutions responsible for controlling the flow of online communications, both within Iran, and between Iranians and the worldwide cyber sphere. Yet the infographic also highlights the ability of Iran’s young, tech-savvy population to circumvent these myriad blocks and filters to access the global Internet

via PopSci, Digg

Sick of working in a bank, Henrique Fogaça quit his job and got a burger trailer. After that, he opened a cafe within the courtyard of an art gallery near Paulista Avenue, which is one of the most important thoroughfares of the city of São Paulo. It quickly became a charming and exclusive restaurant called Sal Gastronomia, with haute cuisine from appetizers like the octopus bruschetta to the seared tuna teriyaki with black rice and pupunha palmetto and the skull cake with sauce of berries. In 2012, he created the Mercado, a gastronomic event which happens once a month, bringing together chefs to cook food at affordable prices.

The post Sal Gastronomica in São Paulo appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

These breathtaking photos were taken by Martin Rietze, a self-proclaimed “volcano-chaser” and the creative force behind the Alien Landscapes on Planet Earth website. Rietze took these photographs of a particularly angry Sakurajima Volcano while on trip to Japan between February 21 and 26, 2013, risking his wellbeing to capture the raging lava and lightening – something that very rarely gets seen like this, for very obvious reasons.

The post Stunning photos of lightening strikes over Japanese volcano eruption appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

These portrait shots by Dutch photographer Morten Koldby capture our furry and feathered friends in much the same way you’d snap a particularly photogenic human. With the animals all staring straight into the lens, you get a sense of the wisdom and insight the lurks just beneath the eyes. Beautiful? Yes. But hauntingly so.

The post Hauntingly beautiful animal portraits reveal their inner souls appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

BEIJING (AP) — A U.S.-backed broadcaster says a Tibetan Buddhist monk set himself on fire inside a western Chinese monastery criticized by authorities.

A nice way to show the variations in the Univers family. Adrian Frutiger, 1957

ReplaceReader:

list of GReader replacements sorted by Twitter mentions (barf); sinking S.S. Reader ship is well done

Taking the name of a saint who slept on dirt floors and dined with lepers is the most radical first move by a pontiff in some time.

Photo via Alterations Needed.

I've been noticing (but only barely) that women's blazers are being increasingly designed with functional breast pockets. This is good news because one of the biggest head-scratchers when it comes to women's suiting is that they never have a breast pocket (or interior pockets, but that's another post for another day). No breast pocket means no pocket squares, and that just feels like giant missed opportunity. Why exclude the option for an added color pop—especially since we don't wear ties? Plus, the flamboyance and frill of a pocket square, to me, seems much more suited to a women's ensemble. On the higher end, Hermes, Ralph Lauren, Paul Smith and Paul Stuart have all been known to add working breast pockets on jackets for ladies, but I'd love to know if you guys know of any other designers, it'd be great to compile a list. Would you wear a pocket square?

In the mean time, here are some springy men's pocket squares I'm really liking: Clockwise from top left: Ikat pocket square ($19); Polka Dot Penny Bun square ($32); Floral pocket qquare ($50); Two-tone Linen pocket square ($35); Sid Mashburn pocket square ($55); Buzzy square ($12). 

Saw-whet Owl Chilling by Fan.

Google's Turn to the Dark Side:

The subtext of the furor over Google Reader’s shutdown is that Google no longer considers publishers its primary customers. Google folk (particularly Marissa Mayer) used to talk quite eloquently about how best way to ensure someone would return to the site was to send them away quickly. Google Plus doesn’t even have an open API (yet), there is nothing you will get from Google Plus without driving into the horrendous cul-de-sac that is plus.google.com. Just last week, I was reminiscing about the fury when Google launched a toolbar update that allowed Google to offer user’s features on top of the pages they were browsing. This was also the guiding philosophy of Google’s unfairly-maligned OpenSocial product. These products represent a philosophy turned 180 degrees relative to Google Plus; to use google’s software you never even had to navigate to Google.com.

Google’s shuttering of Reader, as well as their doubling down on the dual debacles of Google Plus and Glass, represent the complete rejection of the “send them away so they will return philosophy” which was the primary reason that nerds (like me) fell in love with Google in the first place. Google is replacing a strategy that was easily understood and straightforward with one that is nearly Orwellian in scope. They’re already quite far down this road, but the shuttering of Google Reader makes it clear for all to see. Google is a different company than it used to be, but the dramatic turn feels like a turn to ‘evil,’ and that’s quite sad for me.

We told you it was coming – and here it is! Sit back and enjoy a brand new trailer for Doctor Who Series 7b, featuring Matt Smith, Jenna-Louise Coleman and a host of stars and monsters!

We’ll be back a little later with a trailer gallery…

…but don’t miss the BBC America trailer:

Just in case the BBC America trailer doesn’t work, it is also available on the Entertainment Weekly website!

(Many thanks to @meegat and Joe)

Creating a bevy of how-to projects for the ladies, this week I thought it might be nice to dedicate something to the fellas. While paging through the Marimekko Surrur Book I came across the Dickie Bow Tie. Designed by Marimekko alum Sami Ruotsalainen, a bow tie represents dapper style yet it has a playful spirit. The trendiest thing to happen to a neckline since the popped collar, rocking a custom Marimekko bow tie will attract adoring attention. (the above bow-tie’s feature Bottna, Unikko lime/pink, Jurmo and Unikko Indigo Marimekko fabric)

Quick and easy, in a mere 6 steps I’ll show you how to create the perfect bow-tie.

What you’ll need:

• Marimekko’s Surrur Book
• Marimekko cotton fabric  (the smaller the fabric’s print the better, I suggest mini-Unikko, Muija, Siirtolapuutarha or Tilkkutäkki)
• Tissue paper
• Scissors
• Thread (I recommend a bold contrasting color)
• Sewing machine
• Iron

How it’s Done:

Step 1: Trace

Trace the Dickie Bow Tie Pattern from Marimekko’s Surrur Book using a piece of tissue paper. Once traced, cut-out the tie while leaving ½” extra around the entire perimeter to allow for seam allowance.

(pattern measures approx. 16-1/2″ L x 2-1/4″ W, feel free to hand-draw the pattern from the below picture)

Step 2: Pin

Pin the newly cut pattern onto your fabric. The fabric should be folded in half with the skinny end of the pattern aligned with the folded edge. (the fold is on the right side of the below image)

Step 3: Cut

Cut the pattern out, you’ll need to cut 2.

Step 4: Sew

Pin the right sides together. Before you start sewing, note that the center of one side will be left open. This will allow you to flip the tie right-side out. Therefore you’ll need to start sewing at the base of the tie’s curve, around the entire tie edge and end at the base of the tie’s curve on the opposite end. I realize this is a bit confusing so refer to the below picture and you’ll get the idea of which part to sew.

 

Step 5: Flip

Before you flip the tie, trim the seams and clip the edges. This helps to reduce bulkiness and give the tie a polished look. Once trimmed, flip the tie right-side out. You may need help to flip the far corners…I used a kebab skewer.

 

Step 5: Press

After flipping, create a seam on the open side by pressing-in the edges ½”. To do this, work on the right-side of the fabric and simply press the edges of both sides under.

Step 6: Final Sew

Last step, we’re almost done. We just have to sew the open edge closed. Working on the right-side up, stitch the opening closed and try to sew as close to the edge as possible. Now that everything’s sewn, simply give the tie one final press. I recommend using a bit of spray starch when ironing to give the tie a crisp look.

Voila, you’re done.

I know what you’re thinking..now that you’ve made it, how do you tie it? I’ve got you covered, here’s a link to view the step-by-step instruction.

Although I dedicated this bow-tie project to the men, it doesn’t mean that the ladies can’t get in on this darling trend. After making several bow-ties for this project, I’ve become a huge fan and have started wearing them weekly to add a dash of dapper to my attire.

As always, feel free to make edits and changes to this DIY project to suit your needs. I’d love to see how your bow tie’s turn out so send a pic to the AlwaysMod blog.

Happy Sewing!

At CPAC, Trump explains the importance of getting more white immigrants to come to America.

Here’s a post that is both “book-related” and wacky! There’s a new movie in Japan, titled LIBRARY WARS, that is based on the Manga Graphic Novel stories by Toshokan Sensou. Now, this series of books have already been made into an animated TV Show, the graphic up above is an example of that. But wait! Now it’s a LIVE-ACTION MOVIE!

The film tells the story of Kasahara Iku, the first woman to join the Library Task Force. In the near future in Japan, the Media Enhancement Law has been forced upon the population censoring all books and media. To counter this, the Library Defense Force was created. To protect themselves against the Media Enhancement Law Commission, all major libraries are fully equipped with a military Task Force, who take it upon themselves to protect the books and freedom of media of the people. This anime follows Iku and her fellow soldiers as they protect various special books and artifacts from the oppression of the Media Enhancement Law Commission. A love story, war story, and comedy all rolled into one.

Check out the new Movie Trailer down below:

maraid posted a photo:

Yesterday, a CPAC breakout session on reaching out to black voters broke down in shouting and acrimony as a handful of 'disenfranchised whites' attacked the premise of the session (along with black complaints about slaveholders), got into a verbal fight with a black female attendee and with all that managed to unite the crowd against the black woman as the one who somehow spoiled all the fun.

TPM's Benjy Sarlin was there right as it was all happening and wrote this eye-popping account in more or less real time. (If you've already read Benjy's piece definitely also check out fellow TPM scribe Pema Levy's companion piece just filed this morning on her effort to find out from CPACers why they think Romney lost.)

Already this morning, I've watched on twitter the birth of a mini-conspiracy theory that the slavery defenders were liberal agents provocateurs, presumably sent by whoever sent Todd Akin and the rest of the plants who now are ruining the conservative brand.

But the bigger thing coming out of this raucous event isn't what the one or two people said -- though that was probably enough to be the takeaway for many for the entire conference -- as the fact that the whole imbroglio ended with denunciations of the black woman who was the one person to go into freak out mode -- pretty understandably -- on hearing the merits of chattel slavery being argued in the 21st century at a panel on racial tolerance and outreach. (And I'm using 'freak out mode' here in the most positive sense.) And that, I think, goes to the heart of the enterprise, this panel, itself.

In the physical world there are some chemical processes so inherently unstable that, absent great care and certainly with any other unstable compound added, you're certain to have an explosion. Similarly, there are some political processes so inherently ridiculous that even the slightest trigger and things are sure to explode, which is clearly what happened here.

Think: The panel ("Trump The Race Card: Are You Sick And Tired Of Being Called A Racist When You Know You're Not One?") was run by an African-American man named K. Carl Smith (founder of something called "Frederick Douglass Republicans") whose schtick is to rant against Democrats as the party of the Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan.

"I don't care how much the KKK improved," he said defiantly at the event before things got out of hand. "I'm not going to join the KKK. The Democratic Party founded the KKK."

In other words, you're preaching/ranting to a crowd of Republicans (an almost entirely lilly white party) against the racism, softness on paramilitary violence and Confederacy-love of the Democratic party (roughly half of which is made up of non-whites). There's just too much denial, bad faith and comedy there under high pressure for the center to hold. And you can't tempt the gods of farce on such an epic scale and not have a blow up.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The number of deaths in Maine is on pace to exceed the number of births for the second straight year, and that does not bode well for the state's economy.

“Simple point: just because Google couldn’t make a business out of a free RSS reader, it does not mean that business models that have a free component do not work, since, obviously, much of the rest of Google’s business is based on offering stuff for free, and monetizing elsewhere. And, similarly, just because you have a paid app, it does not mean that enough people will pay to make a viable business out of it. In both cases, the situations are basically the same: whatever you do, you need to be able to bring in enough revenue, and that usually needs to involve offering a good product with plenty of benefits. The business model discussion that goes on top of that is interesting, but not defining in the way some people seem to want it to be.”

- No, The Death Of Google Reader Doesn’t Mean ‘Free’ Doesn’t Work | Techdirt