Today, I found out my Nan passed away. My boyfriend came over to comfort me, things got intimate and we ended up having sex. After he came, he chuckled to himself and said, "That one's for you, Nan". FML
FTA: "As part of an anti-bullying week, he asked his class if they'd heard "gay" being used as pejorative term, and "almost every one of my class put their hands up"."
I have a feeling they were putting their hands up to ask what the hell "pejorative" meant. They're nine!
Also, cute story.
“You don’t have to feel scared because I know that everyone in the class feels the same way as I do.” Via Pink News.
Even though you're gay, I will alway's treat you the same way as I do now. I still think about you the same way as I used to. You're a great teacher and these are just some of the word's that I would describe you as: great, amazing, fantastic, brilliant, awesome and brave.
The reason why I say brave, is because you shared a personal secret, which was very brave.
You don't have to feel scared because I know that everyone in the class feels the same way as I do.
From A—
x <3 x
P.S. Mr R—, we are all proud of you.
He told the website that as a primary school teacher, "I'd always worried about mentioning my sexuality, despite the fact that my colleagues talked about their husbands, wives and significant others all the time."
As part of an anti-bullying week, he asked his class if they'd heard "gay" being used as pejorative term, and "almost every one of my class put their hands up". His headmaster supported his decision to tell the class he was gay, "so they at least knew one gay person and hopefully explain that when people use that word they're talking about me".
The reaction was fantastic – there were a lot of gasps and shocked looks and some basic questions – do you have a boyfriend, etc – but after a couple of minutes they were over it and we moved on to the rest of the lesson.
The letter came a couple of days later. The little girl who wrote it gave it to me at the start of the day with all the other slips about dinner money, school trips and doctors appointments.
Reading it brought tears to my eyes and it took me a little while to compose myself. When I thanked her she just shrugged and repeated something one of the boys in the class had said during the lesson, "It's just your life". Then she went back to her maths.
In the wake of the hostage situation that took place over the course of 18 hours in Sydney, Australia a hashtag rose up on Twitter, #illridewithyou. What does riding have to do with the locked down hostages at the Lindt Chocolate Café?
Early on in the crisis, hostages held up a generic Islamic flag in the window of the Cafe, leading many to the conclusion that this act was one of religious terrorism. As tensions increased and the situation dragged on, fear of an Islamophobic backlash grew. A woman named Rachael Jacobs updated her Facebook status to express pain about and support for a stranger she had seen on public transport. Jacobs had been sitting next to a “(presumably) Muslim” woman on the bus when the woman nervously removed her hijab, apparently out of fear of misplaced retaliation. When the unnamed woman exited the bus, Jacobs chased after her. Jacobs writes:
“I said ‘put it back on. I’ll walk with you.’”
The Muslim woman hugged Jacobs and wept, but walked off alone. Still, this exchange inspired others on social media, starting with Twitter user @SirTessa who wrote:
Anyway. #373 bus between Coogee & Martin Place. #illridewithyou @ me if you just want to wear your headdress & not be bothered.
@SirTessa’s tweet set off the #illridewithyou movement in earnest, and since 11:30 EST last night the hashtag has been used thousands of times. Many seized on the real world utility of the hashtag, which offered not just lip service solidarity but practical support and even friendship.
Let's not be clicktivists only but #illridewithyou activists....this may well be our finest communitarian hour.
To make it easier for Australian Muslims to identify people who wanted to offer a safe space, supporters posted selfies on social media and affixed the hashtag to themselves in real life.
And it actually worked, at least one documented time. Lawyer and writer Mariam Veiszadeh tweeted that she took two women up on their goodwill, sharing a cab and then receiving a ride home.
To the ladies who I shared a cab with this afternoon - Mica and Dixie, thank you from the bottom of my heart. x #illridewithyou
In a moment of anxiety and tragedy, Australians have banded together to push back at the reactionary paranoia that typically follows a terrorist act. #illridewithyou attempts to offer an actual service to traditional Muslims who may be or feel targeted following the hostages crisis, and simultaneously exists as a loving and important reminder of the difference between a religion’s adherents and the extremists who pervert it. The tag created a sense of solidarity, presumably the opposite of what the man now identified as Man Haron Monis wanted to achieved when he stormed the downtown Sydney café with a gun.
A gutless prick with a gun is trying to provoke the worst in us. Instead, he's inspired the best in us. I love you, Sydney. #illridewithyou
Hahah nice: "Andrea Giametti, the executive vice president for product at Columbia, said, "We survived opus day and Jesus freaks on davinci. Al queda on zero dark thirty. And we will on this too."
“Do you think there will be a possibility that Kim Jun Eun may launch missles to our office if we release it?” said a Sony executive based in South Korea.
Sony Pictures
In making a comedy about killing North Korean president Kim Jong Un, Sony Pictures anticipated the film would have its critics. But as the initial release date of The Interview neared, studio executives debated a more specific concern: Was releasing the film on a North Korean national holiday devoted to the founding of the country's ruling party taking things a step too far?
Leaked emails from Sony executives show the company questioning the launch date, as well as broader concerns about a buddy comedy that depicts the killing of a real-life foreign head of state. Members of the company's legal and international units were particularly concerned about the film's inflammatory content; people closer to the creative teams held a more relaxed view.
On May 20, Keith Weaver, the executive vice president for worldwide government affairs at Sony, said the planned release date of Oct. 10 was awkward, as it was the same day as the North Korean holiday that commemorates the founding of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea.
"The holiday itself is a big deal and involves many ceremonies and marches and weapons displays around the Worker's Party monument, which is depicted in the opening scene (what the missile launches out of/from)," he said. "Should I do anything?"
Sony Pictures Entertainment general counsel Leah Weil said the planned date "seems perhaps unintentionally (unnecessarily) offensive." In response Weaver said that Jeff Blake, then the vice chairman of Sony Pictures, was "unaware and really appreciated the call" and said that "the right people are discussing" moving the date.
When, in August, Sony decided to move The Interview's release date to Christmas, several outlets portrayed the move as a confident one, and Entertainment Weekly called it a "Christmas gift" to Kim Jong Un. James Weaver, the president of Seth Rogen's production company, said in an email that "the coverage has been really great and this Christmas present to Kim Jun-un idea is awesome and keeps coming up."
But concerns about the film's potential to offend audiences, especially in East Asia, were voiced earlier by overseas executives.
On May 20, head of international distribution Steven O'Dell said he would send a print of the movie to Sun Yong Hwang, a Sony executive in South Korea, but said that he expected them not to release it, and he "will not even suggest we try to censor the film." In response, Hwang wrote O'Dell, "Do you think there will be a possibility that Kim Jun Eun may launch missles to our office if we release it?"
O'Dell responded, "The film itself will be a bomb there all by itself."
He also said releasing the film on a North Korean national holiday "seems unnecessarily antagonistic especially if we doubt the film can be commercial."
In June, Hwang made it very clear that the movie would be unacceptable in South Korea. "Above all, it make a North Korean head too much caricature and strange North Korean accent is not acceptable to our audience," she said. "Also there would be a big potential to produce the political issue about North Korea as well."
Also in June, Robert Crockett, a Disney executive for Southeast Asia, recommended that The Interview not be released in Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia, citing "very stringent rules & regulations on discriminatory and racial inflammatory content" in Singapore and Malaysia, and that it would not be commercially viable in Indonesia.
Sony ultimately decided not to release the movie in Asia, and Kazuo Hirai, CEO of the Sony parent corporation, made a rare intervention in the creative process, requesting that "a scene in which Mr. Kim's head explodes when hit by a tank shell be toned down to remove images of flaming hair and chunks of skull," the New York Times reported.
Many suspect that North Korea is behind the devastating hack of Sony Pictures, although neither Sony nor any law enforcement agency has accused the North Korean government in public. Last week North Korea denied that it was behind the hack, but described it as "righteous." In a message that some Sony employees received from a group purporting to be the hackers, threats were made to employees and their family if they planned to release "the movie of terrorism which can break the regional peace and cause the War!"
In a damning email on May 30, first uncovered by Gawker, Peter Taylor, a Sony Pictures executive in the United Kingdom, said the film was a "misfire" and was "desperately unfunny and repetitive," until the last 20 minutes, when it "stopped being a comedy altogether with a level of realistic violence that would be shocking in a horror movie." Taylor did say, "on the plus side," that the film had one of Rogen's best performances, and that "the concept itself despite being poorly executed is sellable."
After a trailer was released in June, the North Korean government criticized the movie, prompting Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton to say in an email to Amy Pascal, "better if seth does not do any tweeting for a while until we sort it out."
However, while Lynton was hoping the controversy would blow over, Pascal decided that the company should distance itself from the film. In one email, she told Blake that "we need sonys name off this asap everywhere." Sony's legal staff also discussed taking Sony's name off of promotional materials. Lynton then received a series of emails detailing how Sony's name was being removed from from the trailer and credits.
A few days later, a group of Sony executives were emailed a BBC story with the headline "North Korea threatens war on US over North Korea movie," Pascal responded "Is this a joke."
Hwang, the Korean executive, responded "Let me find out but it will be fine." Hannah Minghella, the president of Columbia Pictures, said "I think it's very real and very scary." Andrea Giametti, the executive vice president for product at Columbia, said, "We survived opus day and Jesus freaks on davinci. Al queda on zero dark thirty. And we will on this too."
Today, my 5-year-old daughter was asked by her teacher to write a letter to each member of her family to read during the holidays. Her letter to me said, "Dear mommy, come on. You could have done better than dad." FML
A cloud inversion occurred Thursday at the national park, a weather event that only happens there about once every several years.
In this photo provided by the National Park Service, visitors look out from Mather Point on the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona on Dec. 11, 2014.
AP Photo/National Park Service, Michael Quinn
Since the Grand Canyon is so massive, it could take days for the clouds to clear of its deep ravines, officials said. To put things in perspective, the canyon, which has been slowly cut by the Colorado River, averages 4,000 feet deep for its entire 277 miles. At its deepest point, the canyon is 6,000 feet deep and is 18 miles at its widest, according to the National Park Service.
That creates a huge holding tank for trapped moisture.
The National Park Service released this time lapse video of the canyon filling up.
Last week, over 90,000 readers visited our poll on money habits, spilling the beans about what they're making, how they're spending it, and what they're spending it on.
Given this poll's completely unscientific nature — about 75,700 people responded to the first question, but that number dropped to 45,100 by the last, for one thing — we can't really extend these results to make any meaningful conclusions about a population beyond the BuzzFeed readers who decided to click. But still, those readers revealed some interesting things! Here's what we learned:
Almost half of the respondents bring in less than $20,000 a year, which is lower than both the national U.S. median wage ($28,031 as of 2013) and, by a much greater margin, the national U.S. average wage ($43,041 as of 2013).
It's a near tie between those with budgets and those without, though less than a quarter of those who do budget actually stick with it. Likely, the 38% who disregard the budgets they've put together are all-too-familiar with the "time to stare at my Mint graphs and think about how next month will be better" feeling.
Hahah! You got: Tina the Llama You’re a total badass that doesn’t take shit from anybody. If something is going to be done it’s always on your terms. Now go on with your bad self.
Relationships have ended, friendships have suffered, and verbal wars have been waged for far too long over one question: Which way is the correct way to mount your toilet paper??!?
I fear I may not make my (recently updated) goal anymore! 5 books left in Dec. I'm only 57% through my current book, and don't have as much reading time at work lately since my coworkers left and now I'm busy all day training the new guy. Sigh.
These are the novels and short story collections that we absolutely loved in 2014. Ranked in no particular order.
Finally, hard evidence to back up what we’ve always suspected.
A new study published in the Christmas edition of the prestigious British Medical Journal suggests that men are idiots who do stupid things.
A man, yesterday.
lolostock / Getty Images/iStockphoto
The researchers, from the North-East of England, studied verified winners of the Darwin Awards – which is given to people who managed to die in particularly stupid ways – to see if there was a difference in the number of men and women who got themselves killed by being idiots.
It's already been scientifically established that men are more likely to take part in risky activities, and to be admitted to hospital as a result of accidents, but this study is the first to examine the specific category of "idiotic risk taking behavour".
The researchers found that of 318 verified individual Darwin Award winners since 1995, 282 were men, and just 36 were women.
The researchers write that this highly statistically significant finding "is entirely consistent with male idiot theory (MIT) and supports the hypothesis that men are idiots and idiots do stupid things."
However, they acknowledge that the study has some flaws. It may be that men are more likely to be nominated or chosen for a Darwin Award for other reasons, or that stories of idiotic men are simply considered more newsworthy by the media. Misandry.
The authors say that further research into male idiocy is needed, and suggest that Christmas parties may be a useful research venue for examing the effects of alcohol consumption on idiotic behaviour across the sexes.
This video, which is called "Walking on beautiful clean ice in Slovakian Mountains" on YouTube, looks like it's something straight out of a fairy tale.
Now where am I gonna get my por...ahem... pirated movies?!
Despite The Pirate Bay's efforts to escape an increasingly hostile environment in Sweden, the torrent site has been taken offline today. TorrentFreak and Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter report this is the result of a police raid as confirmed by Fredrick...
Nice: "The device is also earning praise from the Navy's accountants, since while each surface-to-air missile costs around $400,000, each shot from the laser is a paltry 59 cents."
We've all seen how good the Navy's experimental laser is at shooting down drones, but it turns out that the hardware's got more than one party trick. A report by the Wall Street Journal has revealed that military types are also praising the surveilla...
December 9th, 2014: It's LITERALLY IRRESPONSIBLE to mention being an adult without mentioning Adulting, Kelly Williams Brown's list of super-great steps towards MAXIMUM AWESOMENESS and/or MATURITY.
OSAKA, JAPAN—Reflecting on a long life that began at the end of the 19th century, the world’s oldest woman told reporters Monday that she could not be happier that every other human on earth the day she was born is now deceased.
Like Creeper randomly likes one of your friend’s old Instagrams. *vomits nervously*
Like Creeper randomly "likes" a friend's old Instagram pic for you.
Is there anything worse than when you're scanning through someone's old Instagrams and accidentally "like" one of them? It's the social media equivalent of knocking on your new neighbor's door to announce you're on the sex offenders registry.
Though it's unclear why any human would ever want to do this, Like Creeper will log into your Instagram account and heart one of your friend's old photos. You don't know who it will be or what the pic will be. Could be your best friend's dog, your ex with his new fefo, or your boss's dinner. Who knows what awkward encounter you could be in! What an adventure of humiliation!
I asked Chris Baker, one of the creators of Like Creeper (and a former BuzzFeed employee on the advertising team) why anyone would want to use this instrument of torture. "It's the thrill," he explained. "Why go to some insane horror movie when you know it's going to raise your blood pressure?"
I hate horror movies, but I also hate myself and want to be treated like the human toilet I am, so I tried Like Creeper out. The photo it chose turned out to be from a friend's boyfriend I haven't seen in maybe 2 years, so it felt pretty creepy to like his old pic. However, the pic happened to be a creepshot of an old man on the subway, so who's the creep now?
Go forth and be the creeper you know you are....... IF YOU DARE.
Here's the year-old photo it made me "like".
Disclosure: the team that made Like Creeper includes a current BuzzFeed employee, Tiger Wang, who is a designer on the advertising team (not editorial). But don't worry, I don't actually like him enough to write about this just because he works here.
Federal health officials at the CDC have warned that the current strain of influenza circulating around the country, H3N2, has mutated, so this year’s flu vaccine might not work.
A common problem that affect most script fonts, is that each letter must be draw in a way that connect with the next and previous letters. And that's quite difficult.
By having 26 lowercase character, that gives you more than 600 possible combinations for each letter (and arround 15600 for the whole alphabet). It's next to impossible to make it always connect seamesly whitout compromising the shape that each letter was originally intended to be.
That's why trying to make script fonts works it's like magic.
Font designers use all kind of tricks to make it work. But, in the end, the results always compromises the shape of the original letters to make the whole alphabet work together.
We will took a different approach.
The new Open Type fonts give us the possibility to have multiple versions of each letter, and that's exactly what we are going to do: Instead of compromising the design of our letters to force connections, we will do what lettering artist do.
We will draw a lot of different versions of each letter and a hell lot of different letter-pairs (aka "ligatures") so we can always use the best possible variation of each letter depending of the context of the letter inside each word.
The beauty of real hand-draw lettering is that the lettering artist sublty modify the shape of letters so they connect with the next ones. This linked letters-pairs are called "ligatures".
In the following hand-made lettering work by Laura Meseguer, you can spot a few:
The first ligature is the 'th' in the 'the' word.
To make something like that to happend in a computer font, you will have to draw the 'th' as a separate letter, apart from the normal 't' and appart from the normal 'h'. And when you type 'th' in your design program, the open type programming inside the font automatically replaces the regular 't' and the regular 'h' for the specially draw 'th' ligature character.
Also, look closely at the "es" in the middle; and compare to the "ers" at the end of the "Homestagers" word. The first and second 'e' and the first and second 's' are different from each other, but they connect with they neighbours like a charm.
That kind of things -that incredibles subtle ligatures- is what we are trying to acomplish.
So far, we have added 79 subtle ligatures to The Lobster Font, and we plan to keep
adding more!
Here you have just a few samples of the Lobster ligatures:
In the first row you see the fonts whitout ligatures.
In the bottom you see how the overall feeling subtly changes to a most pleasant, hand-lettered one (Making use of the ligatures). They are tinny little details, but the sum of the details is what makes Lobster beautiful.
In case you haven't spotted the differences, here they are:
In "venezuela" the ligature is in the 'ez'.
The 'e' discarted the long bottom tail. The 'z' gets shorter at the top and a little more slanted.
In "fixture" we have a 3 letters ligature, in the 'fix' part
The 'f' joins with the 'i' dot and the 'i' blends more naturally with the 'x'.
The 'x' bar is just a decimal of an angle more slanted.
In "exitoso" there are 2 ligatures playing together at the same time.
The first one is on the 'ex' and the second one is in the 'os'.
In all the 3 cases, we are also changing the last letter of each word. Those shorter letters at the end are called 'Terminal Forms'... keep reading to find more about it.
Here is another example of hand-draw lettering by the great Mark Simonson:
Have a detailed look at the 4 letters 'e'. The two first 'e' that are in the middle of the word 'Reversing' have a longer tail that connects perfectly with their following 'v' and 'r'.
Now look at the other two 'e' that are at the end of the words 'the' and 'Curse'. You will notice that the tails is shorter, because there is no need to connect to any other letter. (They are bolder at the bottom also, because their lost their tails).
That's called "terminal forms". It means that at the end of each word, where we don't ever need to make connections, we will use the shorter tail versions of each letter. The result is that our words will look much better.
So far, we have included 37 terminal forms for you to choose from.
Here you can compare the conecting normal 'h' and 'g', with the shorter tail terminal alternates.
In the first 'h' (the standard one) the tail is only needed when there is another letter next to it and they need to connect. But when the 'h' falls at the end of a word, there is no need for that long tail, so we replaced it for the shorter more natural one. The same goes for the 'g', and all the other letters of the alphabet.
All this happens automatically as you type!
In any program that support Ligatures (Like Photoshop or Illustrator, for example)
2010/07/02:Lobster 1.4.
Completely redraw, including lots of improvements based on your feedback.
Extended charset to cover even more languages.
2011/03/06: Lobster Cyrillics now Available!
Designed by Alexei Vanyashin and Gayaneh Bagdasaryan, adding support for Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Macedonian, Moldovan, and Serbian languages.
Download from the Lobster Cyrillics page at the Google Webfont Directory.
Gisele Jaquenod a great designer & illustrator from La Plata, Argentina.
Netdiver Magazine (A design + digital culture magazine that uncovers, reviews and publishes outstanding work by the international creative community since 1998) from Canada.
Today, at work, due to a mix up, I had to call an answering service. I am also from an answering service. We got the problem fixed but I couldn't hang up due to company policy. She couldn't hang up either. We both had to get our supervisors for permission to hang up. FML
Despite The Pirate Bay's efforts to escape an increasingly hostile environment in Sweden, the torrent site has been taken offline today. TorrentFreak and Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter report this is the result of a police raid as confirmed by Fredrick...
We've all seen how good the Navy's experimental laser is at shooting down drones, but it turns out that the hardware's got more than one party trick. A report by the Wall Street Journal has revealed that military types are also praising the surveilla...
