Hey, look! Pictures of self-driving Ubers are starting to emerge from Pittsburgh. Uber announced the launch earlier this month. While the cars do indeed drive themselves, there’s still going to be a human at the wheel. Which is probably a good idea!
While attempting to do a commercial for the chicken pot pie at Dysart’s Restaurant in Maine, this gentleman has a little problem with saying his lines. This just gets funnier and funnier as it goes on, and it is imperative that you watch until the very end. This is the hardest I’ve laughed all week.
P.S. If you live in New England, you can get a Dysart’s pie shipped right to your house. Fruit pies only, but they presumably still have that buttery crispy crun- … dammit! (via @heyadamroberts)
Because defining infringement on another piece of media by "feel" is a very bad and dangerous precedent.
The good news for Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke is that their 2013 track, “Blurred Lines,” is still being talked about all these years and pop songs later. The bad news is that most of the chatter has been about the copyright lawsuit brought by Marvin Gaye’s family, who claimed that Williams had infringed on the late singer’s “Got To Give It Up.” Last year, a jury found in favor of the plaintiffs, who were originally awarded $7.3 million before a judge reduced that amount while still giving Gaye’s family a 50 percent ongoing royalty rate. Williams maintained he didn’t actually steal a bass line or lyric, which the jury seemed inclined to agree with at the time, finding that the 2013 song had really only ripped off the ”feel” of the Gaye track.
The verdict remains a bitter pill to swallow (for Williams, anyway ...
Barcelona’s ‘Infantil B’ side (essentially their Under-13 team) beat Omya 1-0 in the final of the World Challenge Cup in Tokyo over the weekend, a result that left many of the Japanese youngsters in floods of inconsolable tears.
However, proving that slick passing and obsessive possession retention aren’t the only thing they’re teaching the kids at La Masia, the Barcelona lads took the time to console their vanquished opponents after the final whistle.
It was all rather sweet really, as the youngsters shared hugs and comforting head pats in the middle of the pitch…
When he was asked to design a new outpost of iconic NYC hot dog joint Papaya King in the East Village, Andrew Bernheimer went around to several other establishments in the city built to serve food quickly -- Chipotle, Russ & Daughters, Katz's, Shake Shack, Gray's Papaya -- and looked at their floor plans and flow of customers through their spaces. Mark Lamster talked to Bernheimer about the survey.
ML: I think at fast food joints we're conscious that we're in a very controlled environment, but perhaps don't realize (because we are in a rush), just how manipulative that space can be. How did you see this playing out in the places you looked at?
AB: It ranged. Artisanal places (like Russ & Daughters) don't feel manipulative in an insidious way at all (other than showing off some great food and triggering all sorts of synaptic response), while others do (Five Guys and their peanuts, a pretty nasty and obvious trigger to go order soda or spend money on WATER). We didn't just look at fast food joints, but also icons of New York (R&D, Katz's) that do try to serve people quickly but I don't think qualify as "fast food joints." In these cases the manipulation is either entirely subliminal and beyond recognition, or it has been rendered unnecessary because a place has become iconic, the domain of the "regular."
Speaking as a customer, places like Katz's and Russ & Daughters always felt like a total mess to me. Katz's in particular is the worst: the whole thing with the tickets, paying on the way out, the complete lack of a single line, separate ordering locations for different types of food, etc.
That Gray's Papaya that used to be on the corner of 8th St and 6th Ave, however, was fantastic. It had the huge benefit of being situated on the corner, but when you walked in, there was the food being cooked right in front of you. It was obvious where the line was and what direction it was moving. And after getting your food, you could exit immediately out the "back" door or circle back against the line to find a counter spot to quickly eat your meal.
Cristiano Ronaldo, the greatest soccer-playing cyborg
ever made/animated, had a year to remember. First, he dragged Real Madrid to Champions League glory (pulling them through the least daunting field maybe ever, but hey, winning’s winning) in May. For his next feat, he stood on the sidelines with wet eyes and a hoarse throat as he watched his teammates win the Euro 2016 final. For this most unforgettable of seasons, he was rightfully presented the “Trophy they give the guy who won the Champions League and/or Euros,” more commonly known as the UEFA Best Player in Europe award.
It’s here, the greatest working day of the year. That’s right, the calendar has once more come around to National Duck Out Of Work For A Drink Day at last! Be sure to take some time today to leave your job and slip away into the sweet embrace of liquor.
If you are somehow unfamiliar with this American celebration of skipping out of your office to sneak some alcohol during labor hours, it is a venerable tradition dating back many years. To observe, all you need to do is grab a friend from work and slip off to a nearby bar for a shot or two. Or a couple of mixed drinks. Or a shot and a beer and then maybe one more beer. Two shots and two beers. A few spritzers, even. Whatever you can get away with. And do not feel ashamed if you need to go by yourself. The point of National Duck Out Of Work For A Drink Day is the ducking out and the drinking.
Those of you who are new to the holiday may be expressing some doubts right now, so I will just reprint the proclamation from last year here to reassure you that it’s nice and legal.
WHEREAS work is long, boring and especially difficult to take during the summer months when you could be outside, particularly when you consider how awful winter has been lately and will be for the rest of our lives and you’re starting to realize summer is almost over, and
WHEREAS contemporary human existence is a mostly unrelenting series of trials and tribulations of varying degrees of unpleasantness, none of which means anything in the end, the only reasonable temporary solution that has yet been discovered for being alcohol, and
WHEREAS life is largely designed and directed by forces beyond your control and your lack of real agency may be the most frustrating thing about work, and
WHEREAS a national day of celebration in which colleagues sneak away from the office to nearby bar to have a few quick drinks to both alleviate their pain and briefly exercise some sort of power over their own time has been shown over the years to be one of the few bright spots in a calendar otherwise filled with soul-crushing ennui,
NOW, THEREFORE, I, Alex Balk, creator of a holiday designed to allow everyone to blow off just a few minutes of goddamned steam with a couple of shots or beers or maybe even a craft cocktail if that’s the kind of thing you’re into and you don’t mind dropping $17 on something that a $5 slug will have the same effect as, do hereby proclaim Tuesday, August 25th, as National Duck Out For A Drink Day throughout the United States of America,
URGING AND DIRECTING all within its borders to take a few moments at some point during the day to run out alone or with colleagues and enjoy the temporary relief alcohol has to offer, remembering especially that if you go to the bar during work, it’s like they’re paying you to drink.
DECLARED AND AFFIXED BY ME HERE ON THE INTERNET, LIKE AND SHARE ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM AND TWITTER OR WHATEVER IF YOU FEEL LIKE IT (SOCIAL IS PRETTY IMPORTANT THESE DAYS), IF YOU’RE SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T OR CAN’T DRINK I GUESS JUST SNEAK OUT AND HAVE A SODA TO STAY WITH THE SPIRIT OF THINGS, REMEMBER TO BRING MINTS SO YOU DON’T GET FIRED WHEN YOU GET BACK, THANKS FOR ENJOYING THIS HOLIDAY EVERYONE, IF YOU DO DRINK DON’T DRIVE, ETC.
See? Totally official. National Duck Out For A Drink Day comes but once a year. Be sure to make the most of it.
The Little League World Series is good for three things: Feeling good for the happy children who win, feeling bad for the sad children who lose, and the occasional dose of good dadding.
The hunt for exoplanets has been heating up in recent years. Since it began its mission in 2009, over four thousand exoplanet candidates have been discovered by the Kepler mission, several hundred of which have been confirmed to be "Earth-like" (i.e. terrestrial). And of these, some 216 planets have been shown to be both terrestrial and located within their parent star's habitable zone (aka. "Goldilocks zone").
But in what may prove to be the most exciting find to date, the German weekly Der Spiegel announced recently that astronomers have discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, just 4.25 light-years away. Yes, in what is an apparent trifecta, this newly-discovered exoplanet is Earth-like, orbits within its sun's habitable zone, and is within our reach. But is this too good to be true?
If you read the article, there's cause for skepticism but an official announcement is coming next week so we'll know for sure one way or the other.
In the last decade and a half, rapid technological advances have opened up the possibility of light-powered space travel at a significant fraction of light speed. This involves a ground-based light beamer pushing ultra-light nanocrafts - miniature space probes attached to lightsails - to speeds of up to 100 million miles an hour. Such a system would allow a flyby mission to reach Alpha Centauri in just over 20 years from launch, and beam home images of possible planets, as well as other scientific data such as analysis of magnetic fields.
The planet, called Proxima Centauri b or just Proxima b (exoplanets are given their star's name plus a lower case letter in order of discovery, starting with "b"), orbits Proxima every 11.2 days. It has a mass of no less than 1.3 times the Earth's, so if it's rock and metal like Earth it's only a bit bigger. It's a mere 7.3 million kilometers from the star-a lot closer than Earth's distance from the Sun of 150 million kilometers!-but Proxima is so faint and cool it receives about two-thirds the amount of light and heat the Earth does. That means that it's in Proxima's habitable zone: It's possible (more or less) that liquid water could exist on its surface.
What the hell? In case you've never seen it: A corporate up-and-comer who doesn't drink goes off the rails with a quickness when his boss introduces him to the seductive world of girl drinks.
How'd you find this...whatever this is? Googled it.
Who cares? I hadn't seen it in ages despite referring to it on a near-weekly basis; what better time to revisit it than Booze Week? And I'm delighted to report that, crazy shoulderpads on the day players aside, it really holds up. I didn't remember the jazzy noir/Jaws music that accompanied it, along with the very '40s/Naked City "our hero runs through calendar pages and other detritus against a black screen" interlude; it all adds up to a funny, but still kind of sad, homage to The Lost Weekend, and the sound of the blender coming from the supply closet made me LLOL.
What this picture presupposes is, maybe it should be?
Welcome to what could be called the "first installment" of our 2016 Draft Strategy. This journey will help prepare you for Draft day, and will likely also be filled with an assortment of snacks ranging from TWIX® candy bars and FUNYUNS®, basically what I like to call: breakfast. And don't tell me why they're written all in caps, that's their official "name", so I can only assume that we are meant to shout it out every time, which, now that I think of it, seems totally natural. Q: "What are you hungry for?" A: "TWIX MOTHER F*CKER!" See what I mean? Regardless, this opening salvo of strategic knowledge (everything sounds better when weaponized) is focused for those of you who have no idea what fantasy football is or what it does. And yes, to all the Razzball regulars, you've read this before, but I know there are some of you out there that are new to the site or new to the game. If so, thisBeginners Guide to Fantasy Football is for you. And listen, don't be afraid of being the "noob", that's not a derogatory title for me. It can be derogatory, but for those who do use it as a negative descriptor, just remember, they were noobs once too. We all have to start somewhere... Which is probably your mom's basement. And if that's the case, you've completed half the journey, some would say. (Me!)
So, you want to play Fantasy Football? Well, what are you waiting for? Let's go!
Police evacuated John F. Kennedy Airport’s Terminal 8 Sunday night after they received reports that shots had been fired. After a preliminary investigation, cops now say there was no shooting—with one official saying “clapping and banging” by people watching the Olympics may have been misinterpreted as gunfire.
The Yankees held a storm-shortened ceremony last night before pushing A-Rod out the door
, and as the heavens opened up they thrust a base into his arms that had been signed by Rodriguez’s teammates. A-Rod’s retirement being a major international sports story, it earned coverage from the likes of the BBC—which mistook the base for cake.
The Buccaneers traded up to take kicker Roberto Aguayo in the second round, because they suck
. Eight minutes into Tampa Bay’s first preseason game tonight against the Eagles, they scored a touchdown—setting up Aguayo’s first professional extra point. Which he missed.
Slug back a couple shots of whiskey and pour out a Lone Star, because it looks like True Detective season three is DOA. That news comes courtesy of Vulture, which quotes an interview with new HBO programming head Casey Bloys saying that another season of the show is highly unlikely. And let The A.V. Club be the first to say, “thank God.” Even without the sky-high expectations set by the first season, season two would have been a struggle to finish, and we can only imagine how much of a slog season three would have been. (The mystical underpinnings of a Texas vice squad? The prehistoric origins of an underground boxing ring? Two guys sitting in a bar discussing Aleister Crowley and harassing the waitress?) Series creator Nic Pizzolatto is still under contract with HBO, though, so don’t expect the crime-novelist-turned-screenwriter’s signature style of pseduo-occult macho pulp ...
According to theoretical biologist Suzanne Sadedin, the biggest war in animal history (humans included) is happening right now.
Once upon a time there was a tiny brown ant who lived by a swamp at the end of the Paraná River in Argentina. Her name, Linepithema humile, literally means "humble" or "weak". Some time during the late 1800s, an adventurous L. humile crept away from the swamp where giant river otter played and capybaras cavorted.
She stowed away on a boat that sailed to New Orleans. And she went to war.
Here, we perform inter-continental behavioral analyses among supercolonies in North America, Europe, Asia, Hawaii, New Zealand and Australia and show that these far-flung supercolonies also recognize and accept each other as if members of a single, globally distributed supercolony. Furthermore, populations also possess similar genetic and chemical profiles. However, these ants do show aggression toward ants from South Africa and the smaller secondary colonies that occur in Hawaii and California. Thus, the largest and most dominant introduced populations are likely descended from the same ancestral colony and, despite having been established more than 100 years ago, have diverged very little. This apparent evolutionary stasis is surprising because, in other species, some of the most rapid rates of evolutionary change have occurred in introduced populations. Given the spatial extent of the Argentine ant society we report here, there can be little doubt that this intercontinental supercolony represents the most populous known animal society.
The "25 years and beyond" section of the Facebook product roadmap contains a single word, unlined twice in red ink: ants. Can ants be trained to look at ads though?
Update: Wow, the Argentine ant is having a bit of a moment...I didn't expect this to be my most updated post of the week. Annalee Newitz just dropped a long article about their world domination: Meet the worst ants in the world.
UC Berkeley environmental scientist Neil Tsutsui helmed an effort to sequence the genome of L. humile, in part to find out where the invading group had originated. He and an international team of colleagues published the results of their analysis in 2011. They compared the genomes of Argentine ants in California to those of native populations, and Tsutsui told Ars that they were initially surprised by the results. "I was expecting Buenos Aires to be the source, but it was actually a city upstream called Rosario," he said. "It turns out that in the late 19th century, when the ants were moving around, Rosario was actually a bigger shipping port than Buenos Aires. So it made more sense as a source for introduced populations."
Genetic evidence supports the idea that the ants made their way from Port Rosario all across the globe. Subsequent sightings of the ants in the United States show that they also hitched rides on trains from New Orleans, ultimately arriving in California in 1904. Trucks probably transported them throughout the state. But how could such fragile creatures survive these journeys in giant machines and go on to found insectile empires? With their countless queens and nomadic lifestyle, they turned out to be the ultimate adapters.
Che Guevara and Lionel Messi are also from Rosario and have taken over the world in their own way. (via @tcarmody)
For those that didn't click through, he's looks like a historically racist blackface image in his bobblehead. Hard to tell from this pic, easier so on the clickthrough examples.
So, yeah, good move Red Sox.
The Boston Red Sox were set to hand out David Ortiz bobbleheads for tonight’s game, but the finished product wasn’t up to par. The team announced today that the bobbleheads were “not appropriate for distribution,” and the giveaway was canceled.
by Timothy Burke on Screengrabber, shared by Timothy Burke to Deadspin
The water at the Olympics diving pool in Rio looked lovely and clear for yesterday’s men’s synchronized event. It looks less lovely for the women today, owing to what we believe is an algae takeover.
by Alanis King on Black Flag, shared by Patrick Redford to Deadspin
After a random NASCAR explosion that looked like something you’d see during an NHRA drag race, the driver himself said he’d “never experienced anything like that” in 35 years of racing. It seems as if the sanctioning body itself doesn’t know what happened, either.
The Internet Archive has collected the first dozen years' worth of Nintendo Power magazines. I was a subscriber to Nintendo Power for the first couple years, having previously received the Nintendo Fun Club Newsletter. The first issue contained an extensive guide to Super Mario Bros 2, teased a game called Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf, and the Legend of Zelda was ranked the #1 game, ahead of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, Metroid, Super Mario Bros, and Kid Icarus.
The July 1991 issue shows how good Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was at Game Boy Tetris:
"Evets Kainzow" is "Steve Wozniak" spelled backwards.
Update: Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley made his way into the high score list in the magazine twice in 1990; once for Strider and again for Ninja Gaiden II (alongside Steve Wozniak's massive GB Tetris score).
Yesterday, the San Francisco Giants traded third baseman Matt Duffy to the Tampa Bay Rays in exchange for starting pitcher Matt Moore. Unfortunately, Duffy’s extremely large cat, Skeeter, is not cut out for the sweltering Florida climate.
Netflix will release new Black Mirror just in time to unnerve you before Halloween, announcing today at the Television Critics Association summer press tour that the third season of Charlie Brooker’s anthology will arrive on October 21 at 12:01 a.m. PT. That date also anticipates the presidential election, which is shaping up to have some very Black Mirror-y elements.
The streaming service also unveiled the titles, stars, and directors of the six episodes. The lineup includes some heavy-hitters—most notably Atonement’s Joe Wright and 10 Cloverfield Lane’s Dan Trachtenberg, whose feature implies he’s as well-suited to direct a Black Mirror installment as anyone out there. We knew both of those directors were on board already, but the full list is as follows: “San Junipero” with Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Mackenzie Davis directed by Owen Harris, “Shut Up And Dance”with Jerome Flynn and Alex ...
| Barca’s Infantil B beat Omya in the final of World Challenge Cup in Tokyo. But what happened next #MesQueUnClub pic.twitter.com/r0akJJxEz0
