adamcz

​what is the best part of bread……

bread

@thesimpsonstattoo

@saranna_tattoo "HEYBARTWANNASEEMYNEWCHAINSAWANDHOCKEYMASK" ------------------------------------------ #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

4460  216

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #thesimpsons, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #mattgroening, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #cartoontats, #maggie, #lisa,

»WEBSTA

@thesimpsonstattoo

@seanfromtexas rocked this Nelson Muntz with a guitar string and a battery at #tattoomania25 ------------------------------------------ #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

3244  121

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #cartoontats, #maggie, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #tattoomania25, #inked, #tattyslip, #mattgroening, #lisa, #thesimpsons,

»WEBSTA

@thesimpsonstattoo

@camera_pinealis "Stop! Stop! He's already dead" #teammcgregor -------------------------------------------- #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

4590  424

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #teammcgregor, #maggie, #cartoontats, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #mattgroening, #lisa, #thesimpsons,

»WEBSTA

HELLO, all! Gwynnie here! Welcome to another issue of Goop, my newsletter for people who enjoy the finer things in life. I’m proud to present our annual gift guide. Just because I’m Gwyneth Paltrow, it doesn’t mean I can’t kick back and enjoy the holidays. I put my winter-capris on one cashmere leg at a time, just like you!

Here, I’ve compiled my favorite buys for every type of person. Whether you want to spend $7,900,000 or $8,000,000, we’ve got the right gift for you!

FOR THE CENTERED SOUL

Trinket vessel ($339)

If you’re like me, your trinkets end up all over the place: hidden inside your artisanal peony terrarium, strewn on your wicker birthing chairs, veiled behind a piping hot cup of acai-and-clamshell tea. Keep your trinkets neat and tidy with this minimalist, torus-shaped vessel. So stunning.

Candle masseuse ($197 per hour)

This moderately priced candle masseuse will massage your candles (votive or taper!) for a clearer, more intense burn. Why not treat your candles to a little holiday cheer?

Free-range dream catcher ($418-$523)

Did you know that the human body is 70 percent dreams? Most dream catchers sequester a dream until it’s cramped and broken, like a calf for veal. This dream catcher, made from organic, non-G.M.O. wheats and berries, allows the dream to roam free until the moment of humane confinement. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Dreams (PETD) gave it three “Zzz’s” up!

Very tiny tarot cards ($196)

This adorable gold-leafed tarot set is perfect for a tiny bird, or even a small mouse!

FOR THE FEELER

Geranium eye mist ($515)

If you happen to have lost the ability to cry through a combination of Botox and cocktail of personality disorders, this floral-scented eye irritant will produce extremely realistic tears immediately upon contact! Perfect for funerals, Oscar speeches and haggling with your local fishmonger.

Porcelain-and-crystal bisque ($3,400)

This soup looks better than the real thing! A sculpture of a bowl of soup made entirely of solid porcelain and healing crystals. Can be used as decoration or a meal replacement. I lost 64 pounds by replacing three meals a day with thinking about crystals!

Leather divorce papers ($279 for pack of four)

He can’t not sign these! Made from the tanned hides of Wagyu show-steers, these gorgeous, legally binding divorce papers will make consciously uncoupling a pleasure. After the divorce is finalized, treat yourself to thinking about a crystal bowl of ice cream. Your body will love you for it.

FOR THE WANDERER

‘We Are the 1 Percent’ Globe ($2,914)

Ever think to yourself, “there are just too many countries”? Well, then, this beautifully enameled, reclaimed, no-kill ivory globe is just for you. We removed any countries with a G.D.P. of less than $2 trillion, according to the World Bank, leaving the United States, China, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Brazil, Italy and India. These countries have been arranged according to celebrity child consultant North West in a cute, minimalist neo-Pangaea land mass.

Human picture frame ($670-$1,890 plus annual food and water stipend)

A picture frame for people who don’t do picture frames. Hire this human adult man to hold your photos silently in front of his face. Comes in three practical sizes: tween, medium and Swedish.

PETD membership ($530,700 for one year)

Give the gift of a one-year membership to this up-and-coming association created to protect and advance the art of dreams. It’s very exclusive. There are very few members. There is only one member. I am the only member.

FOR THE FUN-LOVER

Real-Life Monopoly set (about $42,420,595)

Why still play old-fashioned board games with rinky-dink pieces and flimsy dollars? It’s 2015, for my-close-friend-Pete-Sampras’s sake! We’ve found an incredible option for the serious gamer: a real-life Monopoly set using real U.S. currency, houses and hotels. Each kit comes with thirty-two (32) actual, livable houses strewn across the Eastern Seaboard, each worth $200,000, and twelve (12) fully-functional hotels each worth $3,000,000. Price includes a beautiful locally sourced burlap sack with actual bills worth $20,580.

Floor-length jean shorts ($4,415)

As if jorts couldn’t get more stylish! A bit pricey, but you’re paying for the detail: The seamstresses who make these fashion essentials have painstakingly pulled out the seams of jorts to create an entirely new kind of pant, one that stretches down to the floor.

Twister With Gwyneth ($4,600)

I’ve put my own spin (pun intended!) on the classic contortion-based child’s game. Instead of a bunch of colored dots on a mat, my Twister is just one ecru dot in the middle of the tarp. It’s sleeker and has a gorgeous minimalist aesthetic. To play, you just stand in the middle of the mat and have your human picture frame read you a Basho haiku. So fun.

FOR THE SPLURGER

D.I.Y. novel set ($13,000)

These inspirational books will have you writing in no time. We’ve found a whole set of first-edition Jane Austen novels, ripped out all the pages, and replaced them with blank pages. You’ll feel her spirit in every line that you write.

One hundred dollar bill ($1,000)

What says “holidays” more than cold hard cash? Plus, Ben Franklin looks adorable here. Hang it on the wall as cute art for a nursery or fringe the edges and use as garnish for a summer salad.

Yoga mat (market price, around $106,500,500)

This yoga mat is made out of a Picasso.

(Originally published in The New York Times.)

​Why do fish have hands?

because they don’t have hands

if mr brown lived in the brown house and mr purple lived in the purple house who lives in the white house

the mayor

From the minute the multiplex curtains pulled back on his first feature, director Quentin Tarantino has ignited the interest, and occasional ire, of critics for his films’ strong language and frequent violence. The New York Times called his first film, “Reservoir Dogs,” “aggressively brutal.” About his next film, “Pulp Fiction,” the Los Angeles Times wrote that there was “something wearing and repetitive about the film’s reliance on shock value and bad-boy posturing to maintain our attention.”

Tarantino’s eighth feature film, “The Hateful Eight,” comes out on Christmas, and it’s the story of bounty hunters seeking refuge from a Wyoming blizzard after the Civil War — so basically “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” meets “Frozen.” To get ready, I spent a week on the couch with Tarantino’s oeuvre, watching people die and swear a blue streak. When someone was killed by a gun or a sword or a venomous snake, or someone was called a “motherfucker” or a “cocksucker,” I made a note of the event and the time. Then I did it all over again a few seconds later. What resulted was hard-won data that showed me the essential tempos of Tarantino’s films, and how they’ve changed over time.³⁰ The guy’s getting bloodier in his old age.

Some mild assumptions were necessary for this project. For one, I’m not a medical doctor, but I assumed that if, say, someone had numerous limbs cut off or took a direct blade to the torso in a samurai sword battle, that person would indeed bleed out and die.³¹ And for profanity in foreign languages — mainly in Chinese and Japanese in the “Kill Bill” films and French in “Inglourious Basterds” — I relied on the theatrical subtitles.³²

Also, it’s occasionally difficult to make out the profane language precisely. If you recently had your one remaining eyeball plucked out, for example, I may not have understood every word you screamed in horror. But I did my best to count all the curses, from the mild hells and damns and asses to the more potent shits, fucks and n-words. (You can find the full data set on GitHub.)

FILM	CURSES	DEATHS	CURSE/DEATH RATIO
Jackie Brown	368	4	92.0
Pulp Fiction	469	7	67.0
Reservoir Dogs	421	10	42.1
Kill Bill: Vol. 2	69	11	6.3
Django Unchained	262	47	5.6
Inglourious Basterds	58	48	1.2
Kill Bill: Vol. 1	57	63	0.9
Total	1704	190	9.0

Every Tarantino film features plenty of R-rated language³³ and at least a few deaths, but they’re not all created equal. Tarantino has been trading fucks for deaths as he “matures.” “Reservoir Dogs” features “just” 10 on-screen deaths, but 421 profanities. “Django Unchained,” on the other hand, has “just” 262 profanities but 47 deaths.³⁴

Part of this is probably his films’ growing budgets — it’s much cheaper to drop a dozen f-bombs on celluloid than to drop a dozen samurais. If you want to jolt audiences on the cheap, you do it through swearing. If you want to do it with a budget, you slice some people in half. “Reservoir Dogs” was made for about $2 million in today’s dollars, per IMDb. The “Django Unchained” budget was just more than $100 million. “The Hateful Eight” cost $44 million.

WORD	COUNT	% OF ALL CURSES
fucking	407	23.9%
shit	221	13.0
fuck(s)	216	12.7
n—–(s)	179	10.5
goddamn(ed)	114	6.7
motherfucker(s)	85	5.0
bitch(es)	73	4.3
hell	45	2.6
damn(ed)	40	2.3
motherfucking	27	1.6

It does appear that, by some measures, Tarantino has chilled out since the salad days of “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction.” In 2004’s “Kill Bill: Vol. 2” there’s a remarkable 16-plus-minute stretch with no death or profanity at all. Just regular talking and driving and stuff. Some of it does take place with a pimp in a brothel and a facially scarred prostitute, but still. And when it comes to curses, we’re in the quietest era of his filmography.

Although Tarantino is an eclectic profaner, using healthy doses of words from the carnal to the scatological, he’s especially fond of expletives of the “F” variety. Tarantino doesn’t give a fuck — he gives hundreds.

“Fuck” is a fantastic word. It might be the very best word. It might be the single most useful word in the English language. It’s a transitive verb and an intransitive verb. It’s a noun and an interjection. “Fucking” can be an adjective and an intensifier and a gerund.³⁵ “Fucked” can also be an adjective, with an altogether different meaning. And “fuck,” with all of its deliciously vulgar varietals, is Tarantino’s favorite.

TYPE OF FUCK	COUNT	% OF ALL FUCKS
fucking	407	52.7%
fuck	213	27.6
motherfucker	70	9.1
motherfucking	27	3.5
fucked	25	3.2
motherfuckers	15	1.9
fucker	8	1.0
fucks	3	0.4
fuckup	1	0.1
fuckhead	1	0.1
fuckface	1	0.1
fuckers	1	0.1
Total fucks	772	100.0

The table next to this paragraph breaks down all the inflections of fuck uttered in Tarantino’s films, from the earliest utterance in “Reservoir Dogs” — “She’s been fucked over a few times” — to the last in “Django Unchained” — “You done fucked up.” “Fucking,” with its evergreen, yogic flexibility, earns the top spot. A typical Tarantino deployment of the word, courtesy of Vincent Vega in the back seat of a brain-and-skull-spattered car in “Pulp Fiction”: “Right now I’m a fucking race car, and you got me in the red, and I’m just saying that it’s fucking dangerous to have a race car in the fucking red, that’s all.”

“The Hateful Eight” may not continue this proud tradition. A leaked script for the movie reportedly had, as Esquire magazine put it, “a paltry 18 fucks.” (My search of the script revealed 23 versions of the word.) If the theatrical release is consistent with the leaked script, and there’s no guarantee that it will be, “Hateful Eight” will nearly be the most fuckless Tarantino film. 2003’s “Kill Bill: Vol. 1” had 17 versions of the f-bomb, according to my tally. By my count, the leaked “Hateful Eight” script also contains 11 versions of “shit,” 14 of “bitch,” 16 of “hell,” 21 of “ass,” 44 of “damn” and 49 n-words. On the profanity gauge, this would be a significant downtick from his last film, and a far cry from the early days of “Reservoir Dogs,” “Pulp Fiction” and “Jackie Brown.”

Given how Tarantino has eased back on his obscenities, one could be forgiven for feeling nostalgic for Tarantino’s early, hyper-potty-mouthed days. “Dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick,” the character Mr. Brown, played by Tarantino himself, explains over coffee in the very first scene of Tarantino’s very first feature, “Reservoir Dogs.” “How many dicks is that?” Mr. Blue deadpans. “A lot,” says Mr. White. Or, to be exact, nine out of the 20 dicks in Tarantino’s full catalog.

​WHAT DO U CALL A FREAK HORSE

JESSICA 

bookavore:

mcnallykids:

Ursula K. Le Guin refuses to blurb a story collection with no female writers. 

“Gentlemen, I just don’t belong here.” This is what a badass sounds like. 

100% perfect letter.

@thesimpsonstattoo

@wes.pratt "No, Money Down....." ---------------------------------------- #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

4683  396

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #thesimpsons, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #mattgroening, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #cartoontats, #maggie, #lisa,

»WEBSTA

@thesimpsonstattoo

Submitted to @thesimpsonsbestmoments by Richard A Stagg "I was strolling through the gas one day......" Tag the artist if you know. ------------------------------------------ #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

2574  86

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #thesimpsons, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #mattgroening, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #cartoontats, #maggie, #lisa,

»WEBSTA

​why did you poo

because the toilet said you ugly butt cheek wonder

@thesimpsonstattoo

@adztattoo "......and you happen to fill that air it's your owwwwwn fault" ---------------------------------------- #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

4952  365

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #thesimpsons, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #mattgroening, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #cartoontats, #maggie, #lisa,

»WEBSTA

now available to stand around at your dinner party. “you can drink it with meats of the land”

@thesimpsonstattoo

@garreteglestattoo "It's a little slimy; it's still good, it's still good......" ------------------------------------------ #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

4265  230

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #thesimpsons, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #mattgroening, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #cartoontats, #maggie, #lisa,

»WEBSTA

For years, Jon has argued that today is the day Marty McFly travels to the future. And after years of doubts, everyone has finally realized that Jon was right all along.

It is difficult for me to know how to feel. I cannot decide whether the happiness of others is more important than my own. I don't know where pride ends and pettiness begins. Where the sands of ownership creep beneath the ocean of community.

These are questions I ought to answer on my own time before I claim any more of yours. Today is the day Marty McFly traveled to in the film Back to the Future Part II.

Today is the exact day in 2015 that Marty McFly travels to in #BackToTheFuture, Part II https://t.co/o6rAZlZihw pic.twitter.com/YBdsisd4Si

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 21, 2015

There's your source. I suppose I wasn't important enough to listen to. I guess there's nothing you could learn from this old sack of bones.

But I tried to tell you. I really did. I have been telling you, for years, that Marty McFly traveled in time to today's date.

And now, all of you who doubted me must be held to account.

October 2, 2013

in Back to the Future, Marty McFly traveled through time to today's date #TeamMarty

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) October 2, 2013

Correct.

Wrong.

October 14, 2013

hmm, just found out that in Back to the Future, Marty McFly traveled in time to Columbus Day (today). might be symbolism ...

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) October 14, 2013

Correct.

Wrong.

October 17, 2013

in Back to the Future 2, Marty McFly traveled in time to today's date. but sorry Marty, no Cubs in this World Series D:

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) October 17, 2013

Correct.

Wrong.

And?

And?

And?

October 18, 2013

in Back to the Future, Marty McFly traveled in time to today's date. bet he'd turn around once he saw what these#bozo politicians are up to

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) October 1, 2013

Correct.

Wrong.

Wrong.

Wrong.

October 28, 2013

ah, cool … looks like Google put up a Back to the Future theme. (Marty McFly traveled in time to today's date.) #TeamMarty

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) October 28, 2013

Correct.

Uh, that's what I'm saying?

Wrong.

November 13, 2013

you may have heard that Marty McFly traveled in time to today's date. what you might NOT know: he did so in Back to the Future II, not I

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) November 12, 2013

Correct.

No, YOU'RE wrong.

December 8, 2013

marty mcfly traveled in time to today's date … but i bet he would've hightailed it back to 1985 after seeing all this snow in the n.f.l.!

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) December 8, 2013

Correct.

Um, yes?

I uh

1. I'm not false, I'm right.
2. It's not November. That's false.
3. You're seriously the same person who corrected me on my Back to the Future tweet from like a month ago

December 10, 2013

just saw on facebook that marty mcfly traveled in time to today's date? does anyone know whether this is true?

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) December 11, 2013

Yep! It is true!

Uh, that's what I'm saying?

Wrong.

June 13, 2014

google wins the internet with today’s marty mcfly google doodle. marty mcfly traveled in time to today’s date. #TeamMarty

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) June 13, 2014

Haha! Correct! #TeamMarty

No, gotchA. Or gotCHA. Whatever I type to tell you that you were the one that ... like, I got you. You didn't get me.

Wrong. Like, all the way totally wrong.

June 16, 2014

marty mcfly traveled in time to today’s date, and i bet i know why … to cheer on #USMNT! #TeamUSA #TeamMarty

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) June 26, 2014

Correct.

Wrong. But my reply to you was correct, though.

September 28, 2015

marty mcfly traveled in time to today’s date. guess he wants to see the supermoon! keep your eyes peeled tonight pal — you’re in for a treat

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) September 28, 2015

Correct.

Uh, that's what I'm saying?

October 12, 2015

back to the future fans, help! i saw on facebook that marty traveled in time to today’s date … is this accurate, or just another hoax

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) October 12, 2015

That's correct! It's good to check for hoaxes, though. There are hoaxes all over the Web.

Wrong. And what is that Snopes site everyone keeps sending me? I'm trying to click on that right now but you're just a screencap so it doesn't do anything. Well, whatever.

Wrong. You shouldn't be so dismissive of others if you're the one who's wrong.

October 18, 2015

marty mcfly traveled in time for today’s date (source: facebook), and who can blame him? you’re just in time for texans-jaguars, marty

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) October 18, 2015

Correct! Sourcing is important.

I'm having trouble keeping track of which level of wrong you are. But you're wrong.

Way to put me on blast. Now you're the one who's wrong in front of everybody. Wrong.

October 19, 2015

just saw on facebook that marty mcfly traveled in time to today’s date. thought you back to the future fans would get a kick out of that

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) October 19, 2015

Correct! Bet they do!

Uh, that's what I'm saying?

October 20, 2015

marty mcfly traveled in time to today’s date! there are a lot of hoaxes out there, so here’s proof pic.twitter.com/vCX9PvtZnK

— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) October 20, 2015

Correct!

Ah yeah, thank you, man. Thanks for the better proof.

I am careful to celebrate my vindication without celebrating the wrongness of others. That isn't a thing to celebrate. We're allowed to be wrong. I cannot, however, help but resent you. I spoke the truth and you beat me down at every turn.

Marty McFly traveled in time to today's date.

* * *

The Verge presents: What 'Back to the Future Part II' got right about 2015

​You want to see a joke?

Look in the mirror! 

*CAUTION, DON’T TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!*

First up, Superman #32. Superman is being hit by multiple lightning bolts--


--while Batman is screaming multiple obscenities. Winner, Superman.

Next, Action Comics #357, featuring kids with kryptonite. Looks like Superman is in loads of trouble--


--Batman, not so much. Punk kids. Winner, Batman.

Let's look at a fairly famous cover, Batman #497, where Bane broke Batman's back--


I always thought this Batman cover should have had a sound effect on it. Otherwise, it merely looks like a visit to the chiropractor. Regardless-- Winner, Superman.

Next, Detective Comics #583. Batman is cooler when he's surrounded by bats!


Superman is not cooler when surrounded by supers. Winner, Batman.

Two wins for Superman. Two wins for Batman. It's a close race! Let's take a look at a cover that has both heroes on it, World's Finest #54--


It appears they are both equally as awesome! Suck it, Robin. Tie!

Lastly, Detective Comics Vol. 2 #37, the deciding image! Batman lives in a mansion and has a butler--

Winner, Batman!

Still life, Edwin Giesbers, The Netherlands. Amphibians and Reptiles, WINNER.

The winners of the 2015 Wildlife Photographer of the Year have just been announced, and the top images depict an extreme gamut of beauty and ferocity found in the natural world. The grand title winner was ‘A Tale of Two Foxes' taken by photographer Don Gutoski in Wapusk National Park in Manitoba, Canada that captures an unusual deadly clash between between red and Arctic foxes. The two species aren’t known to prey on each other as they generally hunt and live in different climates, but as their habitats have gradually merged over the last few years, the two animals are now on an unexpected collision course.

Kathy Moran, senior editor for natural history projects at National Geographic and jury member, referred to the photo as “one of the strongest single storytelling photographs I have ever seen.” She continued, “the immediate impact of this photograph is that it appears as if the red fox is slipping out of its winter coat. What might simply be a straightforward interaction between predator and prey struck the jury as a stark example of climate change, with red foxes encroaching on Arctic fox territory.”

The winning photos seen here were selected from 42,000 entries from 96 countries, and will be exhibited at the Natural History Museum in London from October 16th, 2015, through April 10th, 2016. You can read the story behind each winning image in this gallery. (via PetaPixel)

A whale of a mouthful, Michael AW, Australia. Underwater, WINNER.

A tale of two foxes, Don Gutoski, Canada. Wildlife Photographer of the Year, WINNER.

The company of three, Amir Ben-Dov, Israel. Birds, WINNER.

Flight of the scarlet ibis, Jonathan Jagot, France. Young Wildlife Photographers:
 15–17 years old, WINNER.

Life comes to art, Juan Tapia, Spain. Impressions, WINNER. Story.

Ruffs on display, Ondrej Pelánek, Czech Republic. Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year, 11–14 years old, WINNER.

The art of algae, Peter Soler, Spain. From the Sky, WINNER.

Shadow walker, Richard Peters, UK. Urban, WINNER.

You were excited for the date: dinner and a movie. Your date picked a restaurant — “It got five stars on Yelp!” — but the movie was up to you. So you checked out what was playing and bought the tickets on Fandango’s website. You decided to check out “Fantastic Four,” and even though you hadn’t heard great things, Fandango users thought it was good! Over 7,000 people had reviewed it, and it had an average of 3 out of 5 stars. This is going to be a decent movie.

It is not a decent movie.

Online movie ratings have become serious business. Hollywood generates something on the order of $10 billion annually at the U.S. box office, and online ratings aggregators may hold increasing sway over where that money goes. Sites like Rotten Tomatoes that aggregate movie reviews into one overall rating are being blamed for poor opening weekends. A single movie critic can’t make or break a film anymore, but maybe thousands of critics, professional and amateur together, can.

Several sites have built popular rating systems: Rotten Tomatoes,³⁹ Metacritic⁴⁰ and IMDb⁴¹ each have their own way of aggregating film reviews. And while the sites have different criteria for picking and combining reviews, they have all built systems with similar values: They use the full continuum of their ratings scale,⁴² try to maintain consistency,⁴³ and attempt to limit deliberate interference in their ratings.⁴⁴

These rating systems aren’t perfect, but they’re sound enough to be useful.

All that cannot be said of Fandango, a NBCUniversal subsidiary that uses a five-star rating system in which almost no movie gets fewer than three stars, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis. What’s more, as I’m writing this, scores on Fandango.com are skewed even higher because of the weird way Fandango aggregates its users’ reviews. And while other sites that gather user reviews are often tangentially connected to the media industry, Fandango has an immediate interest in your desire to see a movie: The company sells tickets directly to consumers.

What started all this? A couple of months ago, a colleague noticed that a bad film had received a decent rating on Fandango and asked me to look into it. When I pulled the data for 510 films on Fandango.com that had tickets on sale this year (you can check out all the data yourself on GitHub),⁴⁵ something looked off right away: Of the 437 films with at least one review, 98 percent had a 3-star rating or higher and 75 percent had a 4-star rating or higher.

It seemed nearly impossible for a movie to fail by Fandango’s standards.

When I focused on movies that had 30⁴⁶ or more user reviews,⁴⁷ none of the 209 films had below a 3-star rating. Seventy-eight percent had a rating of 4 stars or higher.

But perhaps the movies were just that good? Maybe we really do live in a society that rates “Mortdecai” as a 3.5-star film?

We don’t. The other review sites weren’t nearly as charitable. For the 209 films, I pulled IMDb’s user rating, Metacritic’s aggregate critic rating, Metacritic’s user score, the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (critic) score and the Rotten Tomatoes user score. I then normalized these to the five-star rating scale that Fandango uses and rounded it to the nearest half-star.⁴⁸

The ratings from IMDb, Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes were typically in the same ballpark, which makes this finding unsurprising: Fandango’s star rating was higher than the IMDb rating 79 percent of the time, the Metacritic aggregate critic score 77 percent of the time, the Metacritic user score 86 percent of the time, the Rotten Tomatoes critic score 62 percent of the time, and the Rotten Tomatoes user score 74 percent of the time.

There are all sorts of reasons that scores might be higher on a site like Fandango compared with competitors; after all, if you ask people about a movie after they’ve paid $15 for it and devoted a couple of hours of their life to it, maybe they’ll have a more favorable opinion of the work. Maybe the profoundly rightward shift in Fandango’s bell curve is just a moviegoer’s version of Stockholm syndrome.

Still, this is a deeply flawed rating system. It’s not clear why so few movies earn less than 3 stars, and Fandango didn’t offer any explanation. “As we have not analyzed other sites’ user ratings systems and we do not have access to their customers’ profile and engagement behavior, it is unfair for us to speculate how our ratings may or may not differ from theirs,” Fandango said in an emailed statement.

So for all intents and purposes, Fandango is using a 3 to 5 star scale. And that’s not the only thing wrong with its ratings. I found an issue with the methodology Fandango uses to average user ratings on its website: Fandango never rounds the average down.

On a given film’s page on Fandango’s website, its aggregate user rating is displayed in one spot: the stars next to the film’s poster, above the area that provides showtimes. The stars are expressed on a five-point scale at half-star increments. Beneath the star ratings, Fandango lists the number of reviews the film has received.

But when you pull the HTML source of a page on Fandango’s website, there’s more information. Take “Ted 2.” When I pulled data for it on Monday, the film had 4.5 stars from 6,568 reviews.

You can see that information on the HTML backend of the page; the “AggregateRating” schema says “Ted 2” had 6,568 ratings, a maximum score of five stars and a minimum score of 0 stars. That all makes sense.

Here’s the thing, though: According to the code for the page, “Ted 2” had a “ratingValue” of only 4.1 stars.

In a normal rounding system, a site would round to the nearest half-star — up or down. In the case of “Ted 2,” then, we’d expect the rating to be rounded down to 4 stars. But Fandango rounded the “ratingValue” up. I pulled the number of stars listed on the page of each film in our sample of 437 (with at least one user review), as well as the ratingValue listed on the page’s source. And I found that Fandango doesn’t round a rating down when we’d mathematically expect that (it appears Fandango does round correctly on its mobile app — more on this in a moment).

There are even more extreme cases than that of “Ted 2.” Take “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” When I pulled data for that on Monday, the film had 5 stars from 15,116 reviews.

But according to the code for the page, “Avengers: Age of Ultron” had a “ratingValue” of only 4.5 stars, meaning that it gained a full half-star from rounding.

So what kind of effect did this have across the board?

Here’s a breakdown of how Fandango.com’s system handled the rounding for each of the 437 films in our sample:

• On 109 occasions, about a quarter of the time, the ratingValue was the same as the number of stars presented. This means that a movie’s average rating was already at a half-star and no rounding occurred.
• On 148 occasions, about 34 percent of the time, Fandango rounded as you would expect — rounding up 0.1 or 0.2 stars,⁴⁹ like one would round a 3.9 or 3.8 to a 4.
• On 142 occasions (including for “Ted 2”), 32 percent of the time, Fandango added 0.3 or 0.4 stars to the rating,⁵⁰ when one would normally round down, juicing up the score by a half-star. Think of it this way: That’s the equivalent of saying your SAT score⁵¹ was about 100 to 120 points higher than it actually was.
• On 37 occasions, about 8 percent of the time, Fandango’s rounding system added a half-star to the film’s rating. It’s not clear why this happened — why “Avengers: Age of Ultron” would have its 4.5 ratingValue rounded up to 5 stars — but it happened about 1 in 12 times. It may be that Fandango is rounding at the second decimal place — e.g., 4.51 to 5. But again, it’s not clear; the “ratingValue” in the HTML code is only shown to the first decimal place.
• On one occasion, a film was rounded up by an entire star, from a 4 to a 5.

The cases above include movies with very few reviews; the average rating for these movies is more likely to fall on a whole or half star, which doesn’t require rounding. Returning to the 209 films that had 30 or more user reviews on Fandango.com, the average movie gained 0.25 stars from this rounding. Using a normal system, that average should be close to 0.

When I initially asked Fandango about its rounding practice, public relations coordinator Alison Ver Meulen said this in an email: “We always display stars rounded up to the nearest half star. So for example 3.6 stars would show up as 4 on our site.”

However, after further back and forth, the company described the rounding disparity — by which, for example, 4.1 is rounded to 4.5 — as a bug in the system rather than a general practice. “There appears to be a software glitch on our site with the rounding logic of our five star rating system, as it rounds up to the next highest half star instead of the nearest half star,” the company said in an emailed statement.

Fandango told us that it plans to fix the rounding algorithm on its website “as soon as possible.”

Fandango also said that “the rounding logic is accurately displayed on our mobile apps.” And that appears to be true; I checked several films that had raised red flags on the company’s website and found that their scores were accurately represented on Fandango’s iOS app. Still, the star-based scores on the app skew just as high as on the website.

Fandango.com’s rounding methodology, even if it was just an innocent bug, is a good example of why you should be skeptical of online movie ratings, especially from companies selling you tickets. If this kind of bug can survive unnoticed on the website of a major American ticket seller for who knows how long, there’s no reason a similar bug — or another issue we’re missing — couldn’t be on any other site we’re using to figure out if something is good or not.

And the Federal Trade Commission, which protects consumers from deceptive and anti-competitive business practices, pays attention to the use of ratings and endorsements to promote products. “User ratings would be material to consumers, so they have to be truthful and non-misleading,” said Mary Engle, who directs the FTC’s division related to advertising practices. Engle couldn’t comment on any specific company not already under investigation, but said there is an expectation that companies that present user ratings do so accurately. “We know that nowadays user reviews are very important, whether it’s a movie, a vacation purchase, electronics, whatever,” she said. “You go online to see what other consumers are saying. And so we’re looking at issues where those reviews aren’t what they purport to be.”

What’s The Point: Walt Hickey on the world of online reviews and the wisdom of the crowd.

Subscribe to all the FiveThirtyEight podcasts here.

All of this matters more to movie studios now than it did in the past.

“If you look over the last 20 years, the release strategy used to be much more based around a movie playing for a long time, perhaps releasing regionally and building word-of-mouth around the country,” said box office analyst Bruce Nash, who operates The-Numbers.com, which tracks box office data. “Today, it’s much more focused on getting into theaters opening weekend and hitting as hard as you can with the opening. For that, I think the reviews can have more of an effect.”

Looking at it this way, the idea of a studio inventing a critic to promote its films, as one was accused of in the early 2000s, starts to seem reasonable.

Fandango might be an extreme case, but its problems are indicative of the limitations of online movie ratings generally. Freelance film critic Ben Kenigsberg said, “They’re a useful shorthand or heuristic for readers, but I think they’re kind of a tongue-in-cheek way of looking at movies, and I think they should be taken as such.”

When it comes to critical aggregators like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, the act of boiling down a nation’s worth of critics to a number does have an inaccurate air of finality to it. “I like both sites,” said Todd VanDerWerff, culture editor at Vox.com. “But I feel like they have created a sense that there’s an answer to whether a movie is good or bad when really that’s a very personal question.”

He added: “Because it looks like math, we have it in our head that it’s somehow objectively true, but in reality, it’s all based on subjective experience.”

@thesimpsonstattoo

@tattoosbyjamesm "They called me Kid Gorgeous. Later on, it was Kid Presentable. Then Kid Gruesome. And finally, Kid Moe" ---------------------------------------------- #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

4229  239

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #thesimpsons, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #mattgroening, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #cartoontats, #maggie, #lisa,

»WEBSTA

what’s green and hangs off trees

GIRAFFE

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio took aim at Uber this summer, trying (and failing) to set a cap on the number of its for-hire cars operating in the city. The ride-share service has drawn criticism on a number of issues — including its labor practices — but the mayor said his main concern was traffic congestion. The number of yellow and green taxis on New York’s streets is carefully controlled by the city. Would additional pickups from an uncapped Uber fleet lead to urban gridlock?

Based on year-over-year counts, these fears appear to be unfounded. Uber has not caused a net increase in pickups, at least not in Manhattan, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis of pickup data. Instead, the ride-share service is replacing cabs in the center of the city and supplementing them in the outer boroughs.

In response to a Freedom of Information Law request we made in July, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission last month sent us Uber pickup data from January to June of this year. The TLC had previously sent us Uber pickup data for April 2014 to September 2014 in response to the same request. With the new data, we can now compare the April-to-June period in each year. Uber pickups in New York City rose sharply over this time span — no surprise, as the company was aggressively entering the market. Green cabs (which pick up passengers in the outer boroughs and in northern Manhattan) saw an uptick, while yellow cab pickups declined, according to ride data the TLC publishes online. All in all, total pickups for these three services (we don’t have data on location of pickups for other black-car companies for the 2015 period) increased from 48 million to 51 million.⁵²

Three million additional pickups sounds like a substantial increase, but the big question — as The Economist pointed out in August — is where those trips are coming from. It would be a problem if those new trips were originating in central and lower Manhattan, the region’s congested core. That’s where de Blasio focused his concerns about new traffic, and it’s the area that Uber was most aggressively targeting with driver incentives. On the other hand, new pickups would be less of a problem in the other boroughs and in northern Manhattan, where the city has tried to increase cab availability through the green Boro taxi program. It would be harder for de Blasio to push back against Uber if it were primarily adding pickups in these areas.

The maps below show the net change in total, taxi, and Uber pickups from April-June 2014 to April-June 2015. Zones marked in blue experienced a net decrease in pickups, while red zones saw a net increase.

Both taxis and Ubers increased their pickups in Brooklyn and Queens, particularly in gentrifying areas; the services are supplementing each other in these neighborhoods. Uber also gained in Staten Island and the Bronx, while taxi pickups were flat in those boroughs. In Manhattan’s core — the area outlined on the maps above, where green cabs aren’t allowed to make pickups⁵³ — Uber added 3.82 million trips in April through June of this year, compared with the same period a year earlier. Taxis, in the same area, lost 3.83 million pickups. The total number of pickups was virtually unchanged: 39.37 million in 2014 versus 39.36 million in 2015.

	CHANGE IN APRIL-JUNE PICKUPS, 2014 TO 2015
BOROUGH	UBER	TAXI	NET
Brooklyn	+1,123,969	+299,388	+1,423,357
Queens	+655,525	+191,974	+847,499
Manhattan	+4,045,735	-3,685,504	+360,231
Bronx	+126,283	-265	+126,018
Staten Island	+3,920	+192	+4,112
Manhattan (core)	+3,818,179	-3,830,621	-12,442

This shift was consistent throughout the core. There are 51 taxi zones⁵⁴ in this part of the city, and Uber added pickups in every one — as we’d expect given its aggressive rollout. Taxis lost pickups in every zone, and these gains and losses were almost perfectly one-to-one:

One notable exception was the West Chelsea/Hudson Yards zone, home to the country’s largest private real estate development. Uber added 112,000 pickups in this zone, while taxi cabs lost “only” 63,000. In Tribeca, too, Uber pickups rose by far more than taxi rides fell, resulting in an additional 51,000 total pickups. Every other part of the core saw a decrease or a much smaller increase in net pickups — including the neighborhoods that collectively make up the Manhattan central business district, which is all of the island south of 60th Street. There, Uber gained 3.10 million pickups, while taxis lost 3.09 million.⁵⁵

Throughout Manhattan, riders have shifted from taxis to Ubers millions of times, perhaps attracted to features Uber promotes as advantages: newer cars, no need to hail, driver ratings and no tipping. These features, though, don’t appear to have pulled Manhattanites from their private cars, subways, buses or bikes: The total number of taxi and Uber rides didn’t grow.

It’s worth noting that net pickups and “congestion” don’t precisely correspond to each other, as we don’t have data on dropoffs, on ride length, or on location of pickups by other services like Lyft, an Uber competitor, and established black-car companies. It’s also possible that many more empty cabs are cruising Manhattan streets than last year, although it would not be financially viable for drivers — who primarily rent their cabs — to keep this up for very long.⁵⁶

“Pickups aren’t the whole picture, and they don’t shed light on most of the actual contributors to congestion,” Wiley Norvell, a de Blasio spokesman, said in an emailed statement. Those contributors, he said, include how many for-hire cars are on the road, how long their trips are, and how much they cruise between fares. He added that the city is conducting a “thorough analysis” of which factors are affecting congestion.

Josh Mohrer, Uber’s general manager for New York City, dismissed concerns that Uber is adding to congestion in the busiest parts of Manhattan. The average number of Uber cars in Manhattan’s central business district between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on weekdays is 2,000, Mohrer said in a telephone interview. “The congestion piece, I write off entirely,” he said.

Manhattan sees an enormous volume of pickups, so Uber’s 4 million additional trips only increased its share of rides in the borough from 4 percent to 13 percent. Uber’s market share, which last year was bigger outside Manhattan than in it, has continued to grow more in outer boroughs, as Uber has been happy to point out:

		UBER’S SHARE OF PICKUPS (APRIL-JUNE)
BOROUGH	DISTRIBUTION OF UBER + TAXI PICKUPS (2015)	2014	2015	CHANGE
Staten Island	<1%	26%	78%	+53
Brooklyn	8	8	33	+25
Bronx	1	3	26	+24
Queens	9	3	18	+14
New York City	–	4	15	+12
Manhattan (core)	77	4	13	+10
Manhattan (all)	82	4	13	+10

These changes are dramatic — Brooklyn now has one Uber pickup for every two taxi pickups — but they obscure where the real battle is taking place. Over 70 percent of Uber pickups and 80 percent of taxi pickups still originate in Manhattan, the city’s busiest, wealthiest borough.⁵⁷ It appears that Ubers and taxis can coexist outside of Manhattan, at least for now. Within Manhattan, taxis might be in trouble.

CLARIFICATION (Oct. 13, 7:15 p.m.): A previous version of this article referred imprecisely to the degree of regulation of the Uber fleet in New York City. Although the number of Uber cars is not regulated, Uber’s drivers and cars are licensed and regulated by the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission.

Dhrumil Mehta and Nate Silver contributed reporting.

The Uber data received through our Freedom of Information Law request is available on Github.

Read more:

New York’s Green Cabs Stay Close To The City Center

Public Transit Should Be Uber’s New Best Friend

Uber Is Serving New York’s Outer Boroughs More Than Taxis Are

@thesimpsonstattoo

"You'd better run, egg" done by @artandglory from Fort Worth, Texas on @compofwool at the Ft Worth ink expo ---------------------------------------- #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat #simpsonstattoos

3815  204

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #simpsonstattoos, #maggie, #cartoontats, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #mattgroening, #lisa, #thesimpsons,

»WEBSTA

@thesimpsonstattoo

@gooneytoons_str @strtattooandartstudio "That's the worst name I ever heard...." Submitted to our friends over @thesimpsonsbestmoments by Joe Williams. --------------------------------------- #thesimpsonstattoo #thesimpsons #simpsonstattoo #simpsons #tattoo #moe #inked #tat #tattyslip #simpsonsfan #homer #bart #lisa #maggie #marge #mattgroening #futurama #cartoontattoo #cartoontats #epictattoo #simpsonstat

2614  312

#tat, #simpsonstat, #bart, #thesimpsons, #thesimpsonstattoo, #simpsons, #simpsonstattoo, #futurama, #cartoontattoo, #marge, #mattgroening, #moe, #homer, #tattoo, #simpsonsfan, #epictattoo, #inked, #tattyslip, #cartoontats, #maggie, #lisa,

»WEBSTA