Bewarethewumpus

Author : Bob Newbell

It’s been a subjective month since we changed history. It feels like ten years. In reality, an infinitesimal fraction of a second has passed for us in the Stopwatch. That’s the unofficial and pathetically unoriginal name some smart aleck gave to the Temporal Exclusion Facility shortly before we started our experiment.

“Another report,” says a tired-looking undergrad to me as another anomaly dispatch pops up on the holodisplay.

Martin Luther tweets Ninety-Five Theses

Getting closer, I silently say to myself. I think back to how it all began. We were warned by both our fellow students and the faculty not to try this experiment. It would never work, they admonished us, but it might damage university equipment. They were wrong.

It had started as a late night, alcohol-fueled brainstorming session: What if the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts had admitted Adolph Hitler? He had no artistic talent, of course. He had been rightly rejected by the Academy. But what if someone had persuaded the powers that be to admit him anyway? Perhaps through the inducement of a large donation to the Academy? Or maybe just a large donation to the ones who determine who got admitted? Could the nightmare of World War II and the cold and hot wars that resonated on from it be avoided? There was a way to find out.

“Report!” says the undergrad.

American and Confederate Presidents meet at the Mason-Dixon Wall

“So we’re back to just the USA and the CSA? The Pacific States of America is gone?” I ask. “What about Canada?”

“Canada is back,” says the undergrad. “It’s no longer part of the USA and its borders are more or less like they’re were originally.”

More progress. Maybe we’ll pull this off yet. I think back to the first night. World War II had been averted. Millions of lives had been saved. But then we’d discovered it had only been delayed, not eliminated. A Second World War had begun in 1951. And this one quickly escalated into a nuclear conflict. We went back and tried to undo our original intervention. The original World War II was restored, but this time the Third Reich didn’t try to invade Russia. Able to concentrate all its military effort on the western front, Nazi Germany survived the war intact.

July 20, 1969: Buzz Aldrin becomes first man to walk on the Moon

“Okay,” I say. “So Aldrin stepped out before Armstrong. That’s fine. Don’t try to correct that.”

“We’ve got a problem,” says another student from across the control room. “The Soviet Union didn’t fall in the late 20th Century. Looks like the USA and USSR have a limited nuclear exchange in 2003. But it doesn’t escalate into a full-scale global war.”

“We can’t let that stand,” I say. “We need an intervention that will weaken the Soviets so the USSR collapses in 1991 like it’s supposed to.”

For thirty days and nights we’ve been endlessly intervening in history, a nudge here, a great shove there, trying to restore the timeline.

SOVIET UNION DISSOLVES INTO COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES

“Have we succeeded?” I ask.

“Checking,” says one of my fellow students.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said you can never step twice into the same river. A complete restoration will never be possible. But maybe this time we’re close enough. Maybe this time…

A chorus of moans erupts among the others.

“What?!” I yell.

A new report pops up on my holodisplay:

COMMUNIST COLLAPSE ENDS COLD WAR BETWEEN SOVIETS AND IROQUOIS EMPIRE

I punch the display. The ephemeral words scintillate around my fist.

 

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You probably remember the story of Seth, the Washington state homeowner who was on the brink of having to sell his new house because — in spite of what their websites said — neither Comcast nor CenturyLink were willing to sell him the broadband service he needs for his home office. Even though this made national headlines, with CenturyLink looking particularly inept, the company still hasn’t figured out that Seth’s house is not connected to its network.

Just a quick catch-up for those coming late to the story. Before Seth moved in, he’d twice checked with Comcast to make sure the house could get service. After multiple install techs confirmed there was no service and the nearest connection point was thousands of feet away, Seth looked into other options.

Among those was CenturyLink, which does sell adequate broadband service in his general area. The CenturyLink website even confirmed for Seth that his address could be connected. But after making the appointment for installing the service, CenturyLink cancelled, telling him their website was mistaken and that there was no intention of expanding Internet service to his neighborhood in the foreseeable future.

And yet, his address continued to remain on the site, even after Consumerist spent weeks chasing some sort of explanation from CenturyLink.

We were repeatedly promised a comment and that the company was looking into the situation, only to be told after several weeks that the person we’d been dealing with had been promoted and that we had to start all over again with a new media contact — who was on vacation for another week.

Even by the time we published Seth’s story, about a month after we’d brought the error to the company’s attention, the CenturyLink site was still showing his address as being part of their broadband network.

At no small expense of time and money, Seth ultimately made a complicated deal with his county — which operates a fiberoptic network, but which is prohibited by state law from selling directly to consumers — and a broadband reseller to connect his property to the Internet, saving him from having to sell.

But then he goes to check his mailbox and gets the above mailer from CenturyLink, telling him to sign up for the company’s high-speed Internet service, even though it’s still definitely not available in his area.

How do we know? A) Because no CenturyLink teams have been out and about, digging or running cable in Seth’s neck of the woods; and B) because the CenturyLink site now accurately reflects the connection possibilities at his address:

Imagine that Bob and Mary are the only two kids in town allowed to sell lemonade. They could try to compete against each other, potentially resulting in lower prices, improved juice, or better service… or Mary could say to Bob, “How’s about you pay me some money so I don’t exercise my option to sell lemonade?” That means the price for lemonade is whatever Bob says it is, and he’s encouraged to keep it high because he’s paying some of that money out to Mary. Now imagine this isn’t about lemonade, but about prescription drugs.

The Federal Trade Commission recently filed a complaint [PDF] against two drug companies — Concordia Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Par Pharmaceutical, Inc. As recently as May 2015, they were the only two companies allowed to market a generic form of the ADHD drug Kapvay (clonidine hydrochloride) in the U.S.

Before the original patent for Kapvay expired in 2013, the name-brand version of the drug had been bringing in $72 million a year in the U.S. alone.

When that patent did expire, Par Pharmaceutical became the first company approved to market a generic version. That same year, Concordia acquired the rights to Kapvay, meaning it could sell both the name-brand version and a generic.

But rather than go into business against each other, the FTC says that Concordia and Par signed a “License Agreement” in Sept. 2013. This deal granted Par the rights to the original patent and any future intellectual property relating to Kapvay. Concordia also agreed to delay its marketing of Kapvay for five years and to not permit any third party to market an authorized generic version of the drug.

Thus, Par became the sole seller of Kapvay in the U.S., and Concordia received somewhere from 35% to 50% percent of the profits from the sale of the drug.

This arrangement lasted for around 14 months. After Concordia learned of an FTC investigation into the deal, it began marketing an authorized generic version of Kapvay.

“By agreeing not to compete,” reads the complaint, “Concordia and Par… reduced the number of competing generic Kapvay products available to consumers. The agreement, therefore, deprived consumers of the lower prices that occur with generic competition.”

Drug companies can argue that such payment agreements are justified if there is an overlap between the release of a generic and the expiration of a patent. But in the case of Kapvay, the FTC pointed out that Par’s generic version only came out seven days before the Kapvay patent expired, which would not justify such a substantial licensing fee. Additionally, these payments were slated to continue for five years after the expiration.

“In substance, the payments, though purportedly for intellectual property, are the mechanism for Par to share with Concordia the supra-competitive profits preserved by their agreement not to compete,” argued the FTC, which accused the companies of making a deal that “unreasonably restrained trade,” in violation of the FTC Act’s prohibition against unfair competition.

Rather than face a drawn-out challenge, both companies have reached settlement deals with the FTC.

The Concordia order [PDF] bars the Barbados-based company from enforcing the anticompetitive provisions of its agreement — including the sharing of profits — with Par.

Meanwhile, Par’s settlement agreement [PDF] prohibits the company, based in Chestnut Ridge, NY, from enforcing the provisions that bar Concordia from agreeing not to sell an authorized generic version of Kapvay.

Both companies are prohibited from agreeing with other entities to bar or delay entry of an authorized generic after the patents for the name-brand drugs have expired. They must also notify the FTC of any deals they make the restrict the entry of any authorized generic.

“By signing this agreement not to compete shortly before Concordia’s patent covering branded Kapvay ended, Concordia and Par reduced the number of competing generic Kapvay products available to consumers, depriving consumers of the lower prices that typically occur with generic competition,” said Debbie Feinstein, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition.

Nintendo has gone too far. They must be stopped. This cannot stand.

Those of you who have been following developments around Mario Maker probably already know all about the “Luigi Mushroom,” a special power-up that that gives Mario all of the trademark abilities that normally define Luigi. With it, Mario can jump higher—something to which I have no objection. What freaks me out, though, is the following:

This is not right. Yes, we’ve known about Mario’s slim new appearance for a while; we even reported on it last year. But I got a chance to actually experience a Mario Maker session where you play as Skinny Mario throughout the entire level last night, and it has rocked me to my very core. I feel it is my duty as a human being to express my extreme displeasure with Skinny Mario (who, to be clear, is not called Skinny Mario by the game—but that is still his name.)

Mario must be chubby. That is who he has always been; the chubbiness is a part of his charm, a key part of his excellence. It’s part of why his movement repertoire is so awesome. Mario would not have become the icon that he is today without the extra pixels on Jumpman that gave shape to his belly. Presumably, this is why Mario has retained this particular aspect of his design across the years, even while other aspects of his model morphed and changed.

It says everything that the Luigi mushroom—and Skinny Mario’s subsequent appearance—was the result of a bug. An irregularity. Something which should not exist under normal circumstances. He was supposed to turn into a bigger Mario when he ate the mushroom, like he always does. Instead, that diabolical glitch mushroom turned him into the monster that is Skinny Mario. He looks like a Mario that’s been resized poorly in Photoshop, for crying out loud.

I understand that Mario Maker must provide new experiences for players, and that it remixes existing Mario elements to achieve that. Nintendo has nailed this, I think—Luigi mushroom aside, this early level is a nice surprise!

But Nintendo, can’t you see how much the Luigi mushroom rips apart the very fabric of the Mario universe? If Skinny Mario is a thing, then we must contemplate the possibility that Luigi is not who we think he is, either. We must acknowledge the possibility that the Luigi that we know and love very well might be perpetually eating Luigi mushrooms, perhaps to acquiesce to harmful beauty standards set by the Mushroom Kingdom.

I don’t think I am alone in my aversion to Skinny Mario. Here are a collection of reactions I’ve seen to Skinny Mario from friends and family:

“oh my god”

“skinny mario is fucked up”

“terrifying”

“what the fuck”

“I HATE THIS”

“I’m scared”

Please, dear reader, if you feel the same way about Skinny Mario, contact your local congressman.* This might be futile—we live in a world where Cookie Monster must say that cookies are a “sometimes” food—but we must do what we can to rectify this, for our fellow gamers around the world.

*Do not actually do this.

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Hovertext: No I will NOT use a handcrank.

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Windows 10 won’t run games that employ SafeDisc or certain versions of Securom DRM, rendering hundreds of old disc-based games potentially unplayable without complex workarounds. Games which used these forms of DRM range from Crimson Skies to Grand Theft Auto 3, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 to the original The Sims. Yet despite this change coming in Windows 10, blame can’t likely be placed at Microsoft’s feet. For one, SafeDisc is notoriously insecure and Microsoft’s decision to block it from their new operating system will likely protect more users than it hurts.

More details below.

… [visit site to read more]

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I knew that my sister was smarter than her husband; I also knew that she knew this. But I also knew that her husband thought little of women, and nothing of their intelligence. Yet, here he was losing a shouting match on his home court. He was embarrassed. After seeing how the French language had betrayed him, a bittersweet subtlety slipped from his lips like licorice. In plain-vanilla English he said, "This is exactly why I shouldn't have married a black girl."

--Coming to America

In 1995, Pixar released Toy Story, and it couldn’t have dropped at a better time.

The Disney Renaissance had peaked the year prior with the Lion King, and although no one knew it yet, the Eisner era had already begun its slow decay and collapse. Toy Story had a hellish developmental cycle — the script went through several rewrites, Disney shut down the production at one point, and even late into its production cycle, there were several key Disney executives who were not on board. But it emerged, finally, as a groundbreaking, acclaimed film — it ushered in a new era of CGI animation and was proof that something other than a princess musical could be a crossover hit.

With the following Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3, the trilogy has become a beloved touchstone for a generation’s childhood — the same moviegoers who saw 1 as kids were the same moviegoers who cried as adults during 3. Those moviegoers saw their innocence thrive, and then die onscreen, in the most heart wrenching manner possible.

Here are six times that Pixar went too far with the Toy Story trilogy. And let’s pray that the upcoming Toy Story 4 won’t constitute number seven.

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6. Sid Isn’t Really Evil

At least for younger Toy Story fans, Sid is the de facto villain of the first film — a destroyer and torture expert of innocent toys. He even has a cliched, ‘moustache twirling’ scene at the beginning, when he blows up a toy and does a little happy dance. But as we grow older and stop taking what we see at face value, we begin to view Sid in a different light. The viewer receives evidence, both implicit and explicit, that Sid is really just an unhappy kid — his house is unkempt and messy, and his parents seem neglectful and hands-off in their childrearing.

But Pixar buried Sid’s complexity too deeply. All of the other Toy Story villains’ traumas were made explicit beyond background context clues, and Lotso was even given a shot at redemption (though he didn’t take it). Instead, Sid runs away from Woody traumatized, and we’re supposed to cheer.

Most importantly, Sid didn’t know his toys were alive. Had he known, then yes, Sid would be a monstrous sociopath. But let’s be real: what child hasn’t played rough with his or her toys? One might even consider it creative to do what Sid did, which was to combine his toys into something of his own imagining. Sid is only cruel because of what the audience knows; plastic is a far cry from flesh, and it’s not like the kid was blowing up small animals in his spare time.

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5. The Climactic RC Car Chase Defies Logic

RC is an underrated, key character in the first film. He actually sets the entire “Lost Toy” plot in motion, when Woody inadvertently uses him to knock Buzz out the window.

At the close, RC also resolves the film’s conflict, in a way that’s thrilling, but illogical. RC manages to not only outrun a healthy, angry dog, but also manages to keep pace with a massive, moving truck. It made for a great chase scene, but it was definitely a bit much, even for an animated film.

A common counterargument to this is that the RC Car, as an autonomous thing, simply pushed itself harder — that the top speed that accessed by the remote control isn’t its actual top speed. Fine. But if that’s the case, then why is it so dependent on batteries? All the other toys, after all, are able to run and flip without the benefit of a power source.

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4. Every Compelling Character In The Entire Trilogy Is Male

There is no three-dimensional, well-realized female character (with the possible exception of Jessie, and even she’s sort of a stereotype). Bo Peep is essentially a trophy to be fought over, and Barbie is a one note joke. If Pixar must make a Toy Story 4, they should consider incorporating a well-realized female toy to give the cast some needed balance and perspective.

They could also characterize Jessie a bit better. She began Toy Story with some real promise, as a character who struggled with abandonment issues and allowing herself to be loved. She even got her own song in the form of Sarah Mclachlan’s “When She Loved Me.”

But in Toy Story 3, she has become just another sidekick to Woody and Buzz’s shenanigans. Pixar missed a key chance to make the dynamic duo into a trio.

Lots of times, Jessie is just moping around or going with the flow, rather than taking definitive actions to pursue her goals. She doesn’t even get her own action scene in the final film, even though she’s Buzz’s physical equal at the end of Toy Story 2.

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3. Buzz Becomes A Plot Device

It’s getting to be routine and cliched; Buzz isn’t himself, and the gang has to flip his switch, or spot his decoy, or snap him out of it to reach their goals. It’s the problem of multiple sequels — eventually, entire plotlines get recycled, and the protagonist learns the same lesson, all over again.

It’s reminiscent of bad Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes; whenever the writers got lazy, they just had Data malfunction and nearly kill everyone. Or how about the Shrek franchise, where Shrek learns at the end of every movie that he’s more than just an ogre? Ogres may not be vicious, mean creatures, but they’re certainly forgetful.

Surely, Buzz isn’t the only toy that could malfunction in humorous ways.

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2. Lotso’s Punishment Was Excessively Cruel

In the past, the Toy Story creators let the antagonists off pretty easily. Sid will probably need therapy, but at least he’s alive (and later becomes a gainfully employed sanitation worker). Prospector Pete might not like makeup and lipstick, but he’ll be loved by his new owner, for better or for worse. This is, after all, a kids’ franchise.

But Lotso? He gets tied to the front of a truck to be dragged through bugs and the elements, along whatever journeys the truck is scheduled to make. Eventually, if he doesn’t get tossed into the trash at a truck stop, he’ll probably just break apart and scatter across the highway.

As evil as he was (and he was definitely evil; he left the gang to burn in the incinerator), Lotso was also a damaged soul. And it’s hard not to feel sorry for a bear who smells like strawberries — especially when he’s about to smell like truck exhaust and mold instead.

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1. Buzz Shouldn’t Be Able To Actually Fly

When Buzz detaches from the firework at the end of the movie, he flies. No, he doesn’t ‘fall with style.’ He actually freaking flies, and does a parabola right under the telephone wires. It completely undoes a prior scene’s poignancy. It’s that scene when Buzz attempts to fly out Sid’s window and breaks his arm, because wishing for something doesn’t make it come true; a person has to be satisfied with what he or she is.

But by having Buzz actually fly in the end, Pixar took that very adult, poignant lesson, and threw it in the garbage. The audience is thus left to assume that he didn’t fly the first time not because he had limitations he had to accept, but because he didn’t want it badly enough. Or because of some sort of ‘miracle,’ which is even lamer.

It might seem silly to demand logic in a movie where toys are secretly coming to life, but that’s sort of missing the point; a movie should adhere to its own internal logic and rules, and this particular scene did not.

Kevin is an AP English Language teacher and freelance writer from Queens, NY. His focus is on video games, American pop culture, and Asian American issues. Kevin has also been published in VIBE, Complex, Joystiq, Salon, PopMatters, WhatCulture, and Racialicious. You can email him at kevinjameswong@gmail.com, and follow him on Twitter @kevinjameswong.

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Hovertext: There's a lot of networking to be done on the Dark Side.

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Maybe you’ve seen that Jeb Bush has refused to rule out more torture if he’s elected president. But what’s gone unnoticed — perhaps because Bush is so dreary it’s hard to listen to him without losing consciousness — is he actually said he’s “proud” of his brother’s torture policies.

BUSH: I do think, in general, that torture is not appropriate. It’s not as effective, uh, and the change of policy that my brother did and was then put into executive order form by the president was the proper thing to do. I also would say that right after 9/11, I mean, we were attacked, and, uh, my presid — my brother — and I’m not saying this because I’m a Bush, I’m saying this because I love this country just like everybody in this room — I’m proud of what he did to create a secure environment for our country.

Here are just a few of the things that Jeb Bush is “proud” of:

• The torture of people who were victims of mistaken identity. This included Khalid el-Masri, a German citizen, who was picked up in Macedonia while on vacation and then flown to Afghanistan’s “Salt Pit” black site, where the CIA proudly tortured him. When the CIA realized they had the wrong person, they flew him to Albania and proudly dumped him on the side of the road. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on torture made a “conservative calculation” that 22 percent of the CIA detainees were cases of proud, mistaken identity.

• Around 100 U.S. prisoners died during interrogations. A CIA interrogator proudly told a detainee he would never go on trial because “we can never let the world know what I have done to you.”

• The proud tradition of waterboarding, proudly embraced by his brother, was also a favorite torture method of Imperial Japan during World War II, Latin American dictatorships, and Cambodia’s genocidal Khmer Rouge. The U.S. convicted a Japanese officer of war crimes for using it. Many of the torture techniques used by the CIA and the military were proudly modeled on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain false confessions from American prisoners.

• The CIA proudly subjected at least five prisoners to “rectal rehydration” or “rectal feeding.” According to the Senate report, one prisoner’s lunch of “hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins was ‘pureed’ and rectally infused,” thus creating a secure environment for our country.

• An FBI interrogator explained in 2008 that U.S. torture policies had proudly “helped to recruit a new generation of jihadist martyrs” and predicted that “a day of reckoning will come.” Cherif Kouachi, one of the two brothers who killed the staff of Charlie Hebdo, was motivated to become a jihadist by the U.S. torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Despite all this, it should not go unnoticed that during Bush’s pro-torture remarks he was wearing a very nice, understated tie.

The post Bland Monster Jeb Bush “Proud” of His Brother’s Torturing People appeared first on The Intercept.

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This bizarre wild Canadian goose follows a pickup truck all the way to the Shinning Bank Lake in Alberta, Canada, where it seems to have finally found peace.

The retro gaming industry continues to explode.

CNN reported on the secondary market for vintage games, and the dusty, old cartridges sitting in your mom’s attic are increasing in value — sometimes by twice of what they were valued at years ago. Even The Legend of Zelda, a ‘common game’ that sold for a respectable $12 a few years ago, can now fetch a dealer $25. Rarer games and systems can sell for thousands. One such dealer, Giulio Graziani, discussed the changing times.

Graziani, 50, has been in business since 2003, but says the market only recently began to spike. “Five years ago, I could drive through Texas and stop in little towns and buy everything,” he says. “Now they’re selling games out there for more than I do!”

One might think that online stores, such as the Virtual Console, would drive prices down for these games, due to supply-and-demand. But so far, it doesn’t seem to have had an effect upon demand. Perhaps there’s something to be said for permanent, tactile ownership. And when even the most popular classic games aren’t available through the official outlets, the alternatives must feel tempting.

Image Credit: VentureBeat

Kevin is an AP English Language teacher and freelance writer from Queens, NY. His focus is on video games, American pop culture, and Asian American issues. Kevin has also been published in VIBE, Complex, Joystiq, Salon, PopMatters, WhatCulture, and Racialicious. You can email him at kevinjameswong@gmail.com, and follow him on Twitter @kevinjameswong.

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That seemingly indestructible Nokia 3310 mobile phone finally gets what it deserves: a good old-fashioned red hot nickel ball application.

The Web We Have to Save. SLhoder: "The rich, diverse, free web that I loved — and spent years in an Iranian jail for — is dying. Why is nobody stopping it?" (h/t mkb, via ...uh... facebook.)

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