In a crowded session at this year's Game Developers Conference, Brian Moriarty, author of the 1990 adventure game Loom, delivered a post mortem on the game to a packed audience in San Francisco. At the end, he said that he is eager to make a sequel and named the three studios he would be willing to collaborate with on the game.
Throughout the presentation, Moriarty became emotional many times about the time he spent on the Skywalker Ranch working with the Lucasfilm Games SCUMM engine, and with the audio engineers at Skywalker Ranch to create the unique and musical experience that became Loom. He went on to talk about the fan mail he still receives, to this day, from people in the industry or who hope to one day make games that were inspired to create by their experience with Loom.
From his talk today, it's clear he wants to do it again.
"It’s a very humbling experience to have touched so many people, and to have been given the absolute freedom to experiment with George Lucas’ money," Moriarty said, which was met with a chorus of laughter.
"It was a privilege I can never repay, and probably never repeat. However there are now three studios who I would entrust with the sequels: Telltale, Double Fine and Wadjet Eye. Talk to me. I’m on the make."
Moriarty's post mortem on Loom revealed many secrets behind the game, but none of them was more touching than hearing about his own experience of his creation just weeks before he delivered his talk, which, oddly enough, fell on the very day when, more than twenty years ago, the game went gold.
"While preparing for this speech, I played Loom from start to finish for the first time in over a quarter of a century. I had forgotten nearly half of it," Moriarty said. "I remember the general scheme and plot, but many little details, many lines were gone. So I had the extraordinary experience of playing my own game as if it were sort of someone else's. And through the pain of making it I have really not been able to see what I had done. You know, it really doesn't suck. Yeah, it’s shorter than normal and easier than normal, but that's what Telltale does every day now."
There’s an important point to be synthesized from these recent posts from Erik and Paul. One of the most effective rhetorical strategies of the disruptors is to make use of the (genuine) crisis of student debt. If a lot of those pesky high-priced faculty members can be cut out of the process by mass online-only degrees and other credentials, then surely students will save a lot of money. The obvious problem with the argument is that faculty compensation has already been steadily declining, as tenure-track faculty salaries have remained stagnant while far more teaching has been outsourced to adjuncts being paid starvation wages. And yet, not only have these savings not been captured by students, tuition has gone up massively during the same time period. If Carey and the other disruptors want to argue that the next round of cuts to faculty compensation will result in savings being passed on to students as opposed to profits passed on to executives and Associate Vice Dean Provosts of Proactive Paradigms of Strategic Disruption, the burden of proof is squarely on them.
“Everyone knows the bridge is famous for the march and Bloody Sunday, so the idea that the name of the place where all of this happened represents something so contrary to all of that really bothers us,” said Students Unite’s executive director, 25-year-old John Gainey.
The discrepancy is striking, but the life of the bridge’s namesake has never been a secret. The Washington Post reported that when the bridge was constructed 75 years ago, Pettus’ legacy was well known, and the span of the highway was named “for a man revered locally as a tenacious Southern leader.”
It’s also right there on the Federal Highway Administration’s website in its description of the structure, which was built in 1940 and carries traffic across the Alabama River: “It had been named after a Civil War General and Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan who served in the United States Senate from 1897 until his death in 1907. He was the last Confederate General to serve in the Senate.”
Obviously, this should be renamed the John Lewis Bridge. That’s not going to be easy to accomplish for many reasons, including because it will become a conservative cause not to change it.
I can’t even put into words how upset I am about this. Rogers Wildlife Rehabilitation has been open for almost twenty years, and is the only place in North Texas that takes in literally any type of bird if it’s been injured, orphaned, or otherwise incapacitated. They’re finally out of funds, and if they can’t come up with anything by April 2nd, they’re going to be forced to close their doors.
They’ve never turned away birds. Not when it’s a surprise 200 baby cattle egrets that’ve been orphaned because city planners thought they could cut down their homes and no one would notice. Not when it’s raptors with one good eye and in need of seven different antibiotics. Not even when it’s ducks that irresponsible parents won’t let their kids keep after easter. This is where anyone let me first get up close to birds. I mean, I’ve known I wanted to work with birds and wildlife since I was seven- I’m twenty four now, and halfway through an environmental science master’s and it’s a big reason I kept going.
I’ve been going to this place on and off for ten years, I was THIRTEEN when I started volunteering and seeing all the terrible things that happen to the birds that come in. Not just…hit by trucks, or caught in a hailstorm but parrots that have been left in foreclosed houses for weeks, and roosters that have come out of cock fighting rings and would otherwise be put down because the SPCA and humane societies don’t think they’re salvageable. There’s an emu that was raised there as a baby because no one wanted her. Her name’s Riley and I can’t even begin to comprehend what shutting the doors to the center would mean?
They don’t get government aid. They’ve been funded by the public donating and Kathy, the lady who owns the place, going through her retirement funds and savings and her social security to keep it running. She’s finally run out of money. Please, just reblog? Even if you can’t donate anything- and I know it’s a lot to ask for poor teenage/college kids to donate money that they don’t have, or struggling artists I know but maybe someone who can spare something will see it eventually? They need $200,000 to keep open for a year to continue to help 4000 birds a year.
Here at zoominonthatbug, we love our buggies, but we love birbs very much as well, and it would break our many tiny heart to hear that a place as wonderful as this had to shut down because of low funding. Please please help our feathered friends as much as you can.
A recent picture meme going around Facebook showed an image of Ronnie Raygun with the block letters
"If I was President ISIS would be called WASWAS"
And thus we have another hilarious incident of conservative ignorance.
Of course, this is active stupidity on the part of Conservatives because when faced with Muslim Terror Attacks in Lebanon, Ronald Reagan disarmed the Marine Corps Gate Guards and let hundreds of US Service Members and Diplomatic Employees get blown apart in two seperate Truck Bomb Attacks which used the same tactics.
After Ronald Reagan cut-and-run in the face of danger, he gave birth to Al Qaeda. Today's ISIS is the current incarnation of Reagan's explicit creation of Al Qaeda grown, nutured and trained by the George W. Bush and his Iraqi Adventure.
But, you can't expect Conservatives to know this history. Sarah Palin and other right-wing luminaries are paid to tell Conservatives that these Muslim Extremists were created ex nihlo. But, the rise of 20th Century Muslim Terrorism lays directly at the feet of the United States and the two worst Presidents to ever besmirch the White House; Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.
Post World War 2, the House of Saud was given a 40 year free reign to spread Wahabism throughout the Muslim World, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan many young Saudis Wahabist fanatics deployed to Afghanistan to kill godless Soviet Soldiers.
Of course, the Soviet Union was already on it's last legs, but the guerilla warfare of the Mujaheddin, armed with U.S. made Stinger missles and trained by the CIA and U. S. Special Forces helped hasten their demise. But, after their victory, Reagan's Muslim Extremists would not quietly slip back into their Madrassas. Thus, once the USSR sulked out of Afghanistan they went back to their texts but, kept their Kalishnakovs oiled and ready.
At the same time, Reagan's Muslim Fanatics were killing commies, Donald Rumsefled had been dispatched to provide aid to Saddam Hussein and his very secular Iraqi Regime to combat the Ayatollah and his Iranian Extremists. Of course, the Ayatollah and the Fanatics in Iran had come into existence in 1979 because the United States had overthrown the Iranian Government and placed the Shah into Power in 1953. The Shah was a brutal dictator but, much like Saddam Hussein in the 1980's he was our Dictator.
So, a million people died during the Iran-Iraq War but, Saddam Hussein felt he paid his dues to the United States, was now our newest Middle East Dictator,and was free to reclaim the Iraqi Province of Kuwait, which the British had created in 1919 as a port for British Petroleum.
The Saudis didn't like having Secular Saddam Hussein running around with his big military so they invited the United States into Saudi Arabia for protection and the lapdog of the House of Saud George H.W. Bush happily obliged. The House of Bush is a vassal client to the House of Saud and accepted the U.S. would be a Suzerain of Saudi Arabia long ago.
Unfortunately, the presence of American Armed Forces in the Islamic Holy Land angered Osama Bin Laden and his CIA -backed, Reagan-created Muslim Extremists. So, they focused their new Jihad on the United States.
Meanwhile, GHW Bush launched Desert Storm, which routed Saddam's Army because it was a Paper Tiger despite all the US Propaganda about it being the World's 4th Largest Military. But, Saddam remained in power as Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld encouraged the Shite Marsh Arabs to rise up and do the work of overthrowing Saddam.
The Marsh Arabs rise and are crushed by Saddam's Forces who realise U.S. A-10's aren't demolishing their tank columns. Saddam Hussein spends the next 10 years slowly erasing the Marshes and eliminating the Shite Arabs.
Meanwhile, Osama Bin Laden strikes at US interests across the Globe while Muslim Fanatics continue to train in Saudi created and Saudi petro-dollar funded religious schools. These later Muslim Extremists move into Afghanistan and create an Islamic State.
George W. Bush lost the 2000 Presidential Election but, was made President anyway. W, will be a Calvin Coolidge like figure dutifully helping Business gain power at the expense of the working class in the United States while pretending to be a Compassion Conservative.
Now, George W. Bush isn't interested in doing Presidential things but in the regalia of being President, so he ignores the August 6th memo warnings about the Reagan-created Muslim Fanatics and their Plan to Strike in America.
And thus the United States is attacked on 9/11 (15 of the 19 hijackers are Saudi) while blithering idiots Rudy Giuliani and W(orst President in History) do nothing.
So, despite vowing to bring the evil-doers to Justice (a vow he never fulfilled), George W. Bush allows Osama Bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora in 2001 when Dick Cheney orders the SEAL mission canceled, and spends the next 2 years lying about Saddam Hussein, because W's liege lord the King of Saudi Arabia demands the United States attack Iraq.
So, based on "smoking gun, mushroom cloud" sized lies and a fabricated connection between Saddam and Osama Bin Laden , W(orst President Ever) begins Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL).
The Iraqi War is declared won by Republicans and Conservatives many times over during Bush's Presidency from Mission Accomplished on May 1, 2003 to Victory in Iraq Day Nov. 22, 2008 this despite a constant flow of U.S. casaulities.
And throughout the Massive Failure, Bush smirks and jokes about missing WMDs, while US Troops are killed and hundreds of thousands are wounded; physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually and morally.
But, what does the Iraqi War succeed at spectacularly? The creation of a new generation of battle -hardened Muslim Extremists. Because, while Saddam was in power in Iraq the fanatics did not have a base of Operations but now thanks to the complete destabilizing of the region ISIS fanatics have training, experience, weaponry and recruits aplenty.
So, that's ISIS, the unholy love child of Ronald Reagan and W(orst President Ever) and if conservatives want to the United States to re-invade and fight them? Well, there are local recruiting offices throughout the country.
Lois Dodd, “Ice Sheet, Blair Pond” (2015), oil on masonite, 12 x 16 inches (all images courtesy Alexandre Gallery)
In recent weeks, I have written about what I have defined as a grown-up painter, as opposed to what I called “the latest manifestation of a male adolescent painter, a clichéd archetype that gained traction in the Neo-Expressionist ‘80s, with the rise of Julian Schnabel, and has not been thrown over because lots of people still find this sort of chest thumping entertaining.”
It takes confidence and courage to go your way in a situation where there is a lot of pressure to work a certain way, and on a certain scale. Lois Dodd is a painter who seems to have possessed these strengths since she first began exhibiting in her mid-20s, and has never wavered. Despite all the changes that have swooped through the art world over the past sixty years, she has remained committed to painting the ordinary world around her, in the Lower East Side, where she has been a longtime resident, in Blairstown, New Jersey, and in rural Maine, where she lives in modest circumstances.
Lois Dodd, “Snow, Tree, Window” (2014), oil on masonite, 15 5/8 x 11 inches
I am reminded of a statement made by the wonderful Italian artist Faustus Melotti: “Once he has found his language, the artist finds himself free of the drudgery of the avant-garde.” Although Dodd was a student at Cooper Union (1945-1948) and, in 1952, one of five founders of the Tanager Gallery, an artist-run cooperative, where she exhibited until 1962, she seems to never have gotten caught up in all the hoopla surrounding the avant-garde and notions of historical determinism. There is a stubbornness to Dodd that does not announce itself in the work, a determination to see the commonplace anew, and to quietly celebrate it. Although she has worked largely unheralded in the New York art world, she has influenced numerous generations of painters, including Catherine Murphy, Sylvia Plimack-Mangold and Josephine Halvorson. Now in her late 80s, she continues to paint at a high level. Born in Montclair, New Jersey in 1927, Dodd shares the commitment to the gritty ordinariness of the everyday with another native of that much misaligned state, the poet William Carlos Williams, who was interested in “a new art form […] rooted in locality which should give it fruit.” As he wrote in his epic poem, Paterson: nothing but the blank faces of the houses /and cylindrical trees […]
Lois Dodd, “Sunlight on Wall” (2014), oil on masonite, 15 x 8 inches
There are thirty-four painting in her current exhibition, Lois Dodd: Rent Panel Paintingsat Alexandre Gallery (February 26–April 4, 2015), all of which are done in oil on aluminum flashing measuring 5 by 7 inches or on large panels of Masonite averaging around 16 by 12 inches. Done in all the seasons, the paintings depict views through a window; a pond partially covered with ice; flowers; and two trees in a yard. Dodd’s subjects are so nondescript one cannot imagine an amateur photographer stopping to chronicle these views, and that is their magic. Dodd doesn’t elevate the nondescript, doesn’t try to make it more than it is, because what it is happens to be is good enough for her. One senses that this is also her philosophy of life.
As with all her recent shows, a number of the paintings are standouts. In these works, the merging of paint and image is both taut and improvisational, with an unexpected delicacy embodied by the connotative dabs and lines of thinly applied, viscous paint. In “Snow, Tree, Window” (2014), the droplets of condensation on the windowpane are every bit as important as the bare tree and a corner of a roof outside. What comes through this and other scenes glimpsed through a window is an atmosphere of solitariness, a sense of isolation gracefully accepted.
In “Sunlight on Wall” (2014) and “Reflected Light on Brick Wall” (2014), two of the highlights of this terrific show, Dodd records the light cast by a window onto an outside wall. In both paintings, the artist has pared down the composition as far as you can imagine each of them could go without becoming an abstraction. In “Sunlight on Wall,” it is as if the reality of the situation is beginning to dissolve, but the artist tenaciously hangs on to what palpable shred of evidence remains to be documented in paint; an elongated patch of reflected yellow light.
Lois Dodd, “Reflected Light on Brick Wall – December” (2014), oil on masonite, 18 x 15 3/4 inches
In “Reflected Light on Brick Wall,” a milky light is cast through a window onto a brick wall, with the edges of its myriad bricks recorded in shifts from pale gray to dusty pink. Austere, almost insubstantial caresses of paint evoke the wall and the reflection, imbuing the moment with seemingly incommensurable states of fragility and sturdiness. In this and other paradoxes, Dodd is able to tease out the lyrical from the unremarkable and even dull, quietly reminding us that every moment is precious.
Lois Dodd: Rent Panel Paintings continues at the Alexandre Gallery (41 East 57th Street, Midtown, Manhattan) through April 4.
Somewhat OT, I have been perplexed by the establishment of DIY bikeshops and anarcho-leftist organizations over the last ten years. If learning how to fix your own bike is a step on the way to revolution, I may not be prepared for that new society. I know this is a different kind of bike shop and thus the need for a union.
Also, the IWW continuing to avoid contracts as it did a century ago means that even if tens or hundreds of thousands of workers joined it, it would still run into the same problems it faced at Lawrence and other places where it had initial victories, i.e, the inability to consolidate and institutionalize any gains for workers in a situation where the employer really knows how to consolidate and institutionalize its gains.
Oslo-based blacksmith and photographer Tobbe Malm manages to create unusually emotional sculptures using old bolts. The series began when Malm stumbled onto the rusting bolts at a barn in Bergsladen, Sweden. He immediately recognized the wide caps and slender stems as having humanistic qualities so he gathered them up and proceeded to heat, forge, twist and bend them into shape in his studio. The resulting collection of sculptures titled Bolt Poetry, evokes humanistic moments of affection, sadness, and pain. You can see more of his work on Behance. (via Lustik)
One of the lessons we can draw from the best work on nuclear weapon handling accidents, a lesson available from both the theoretical and the anecdotal accounts, is that the accidents happen due to an accumulation of unexpected errors that interact in unpredictable ways. A falling wrench tears open a pipe; changes in personnel rotations lead experienced people to ignore weapons loaded onto a plane; and so forth.
The Ministry of Defence admitted for the first time last night that British ships carried nuclear weapons in the Falklands war.
The disclosure came as the government was forced to concede – after a long-running campaign by the Guardian – that seven nuclear weapons containers were damaged during a series of wartime accidents.
But many of the details of these accidents are still being kept secret by the MoD.
The ministry also refused to say whether any nuclear depth charges were on board HMS Sheffield, which was sunk during the war.
In what can only be described as “best part usage of the month”, Paddy Bricksplitter used the oversized minifig head from his LEGO Art Carousel to create this perfectly staged vignette entited “Attack Of The 50 foot mini figure“. Although I think “50 inch” would have done pretty well too!
I’m digging the trendy furnishings of this downtown apartment, which appear to include a Mondrian, and the forced perspective skyscrapers in the background, and OH MY GOD THERE’S A GIANT HEAD OUTSIDE THE WINDOW (ノ゚ο゚)ノ
The closer we look at the situation in Ferguson, the more vile it gets. The courts were stacking minor fines on people — especially black people — and then putting them on a merry-go-round of constantly accumulating fines. And when the poor were unable to pay the fines, they were thrown in jail. One woman had to pay over $500 on a $150 parking fine, and even that didn’t clear the debt.
The judge in Ferguson, Missouri, who is accused of fixing traffic tickets for himself and colleagues while inflicting a punishing regime of fines and fees on the city’s residents, also owes more than $170,000 in unpaid taxes.
Ronald J Brockmeyer, whose court allegedly jailed impoverished defendants unable to pay fines of a few hundred dollars, has a string of outstanding debts to the US government dating back to 2007, according to tax filings obtained by the Guardian from authorities in Missouri.
This judge bragged about his ability to gouging money out of his constituents, worked simultaneously as judge, prosecutor, and private attorney, and then didn’t pay personal taxes or employer taxes for his legal business.
I guess Missouri (and other states) are re-enacting a collection of medieval fiefdoms. Except that’s slandering the Middle Ages.
One should understand that the Justice Department did not simply find indirect evidence of unintentionally racist practices which harm black people, but "discriminatory intent”—that is to say willful racism aimed to generate cash. Justice in Ferguson is not a matter of "racism without racists," but racism with racists so secure, so proud, so brazen that they used their government emails to flaunt it.
And…
The residents of Ferguson do not have a police problem. They have a gang problem. That the gang operates under legal sanction makes no difference. It is a gang nonetheless, and there is no other word to describe an armed band of collection agents.
Sorry I’m crying. As someone in my position; Bisexual, disabled (hearing impaired), not confident in my appearance, and struggling. I tend to avoid posting pictures for a movement. Even if it is one meant to motivate, inspire, and more.
However after seeing some pictures of other African-Americans in similar positions as myself…after some thought I built up the courage. Thanks you all so much for #blackout
William Gibson is the only science fiction writer I know of with his name on a line of exclusive couture repro military clothes from a
Japanese company.
In a fascinating interview on style, durability, atemporality,
bohemianism and literature, Gibson picks apart the symbolism of
“authenticity” and ruggedness.
That goateed, grinning dipshit is State Senator Mike Bell of Tennessee, a place that's working really fuckin' hard to dick over the women who live there. Bell and an assortment of GOP pricks, cunts, and assholes voted to end the funding for the Women's Economic Council, which had been in operation for 17 years.
At a hearing on continuing the Council, Bell, the chair of the General Operations Committee, asked a question that only sexist fuckwads with no idea about history or present reality could ask: "With women making up 51 percent of the population of the state, why don’t we have a men’s economic council?" Really, man? Really? Yeah, really: "Why don’t we have a Hispanic council, why don’t we have an African-American economic council, why don’t we have this group and that group, why do we have a women’s economic council and why is it needed?"
To her credit, Phyllis Qualls-Brooks, the executive director of the council, didn't leap over the table to beat Bell to a pulp with a copy of The Second Sex. Instead, she said, "Because men basically are running everything anyway." And that'd be hilarious if the Tennessee legislature was more than 20% women, which means that, basically, men are running everything. Unfortunately, that 20% includes the Republican women, who are more than glad to do the bidding of the men, like completely nutzoid Senator Mae Beavers (giggle, if you need to), who spoke against funding the Council.
Bell responded to Qualls-Brooks in the classiest way possible. He said, "I need to tell my wife that men are running everything." The Rude Pundit knows what you're thinking: "Wait, some woman married that guy?"
The audio from oral arguments in King v. Burwell that should have been streamed in real time are now up. As Irin Carmon said on Twitter, among other things it’s worth hearing to hear Carvin repeatedly address Justice Sotoma – YEER.
Ezra Klein’s piece on why Carvin’s Moops-invaded-Spain theory is such lunacy is very good. At one point, I think he actually understates the case:
The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Michael Carvin, tries to deny this fact. “There’s not a scintilla of legislative history suggesting that without subsidies, there will be a death spiral,” he told the Court.
But Michael Cannon, one of the architects of the King v. Burwell case, knows better. The reason he was so interested in the lawsuit, he told Vox, was that removing the subsidies would kick out “one of the three legs of Obamacare’s three-legged stool.”
The “three-legged stool” refers to the idea that for an exchange to work, it needs three things: regulations that force insurers to sell to everyone, a mandate that forces even young and healthy people to buy insurance, and subsidies to make that insurance affordable. No subsidies, no affordability. No affordability, no critical mass of young and healthy people. No critical mass of young and healthy people, no way to avoid a death spiral.
That’s what happens when you remove a leg of a three-legged stool: the stool falls over.
And it’s even worse than that — if you eliminate the subsidies, you essentially eliminate the mandate. (There might be a few uninsured people who can get health insurance plans that cost less than 8% of household outcome, but a “mandate” that applies only to a vanishingly small number of people is no better than having no mandate at all. A mandate that covers a tiny number of people, to put it mildly, does not solve the free rider problem.) And even Carvin concedes that without the mandates you’d get a death spiral.
And yet the case is essentially a coin flip at the Supreme Court, which should tell you all you need to know about the nation’s highest tribunal.
Sheriffs from Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas are suffering from a "crisis of conscience" because Colorado law forbids them from busting dope-smoking hippies. Read the rest
Early Bird Foods is not the first company to think it would be amusing to name an oats-based product "Haulin' Oats," so it should have known that doing this would be problematic.
One of their
less-well-known marks
As Rolling Stone reported yesterday (via the New York Post), Whole Oats Enterprises—the business entity of Daryl Hall and John Oates—has sued Early Bird in the Eastern District of New York alleging trademark infringement. "The name and mark Haulin’ Oats is an obvious play upon Plaintiff’s well-known Hall & Oates mark," a spokesman said, "and was selected by defendant in an effort to trade off of the fame and notoriety associated with the artist's [sic] and plaintiff's well-known marks."
Those marks include, according to the complaint, DARYL HALL AND JOHN OATES as well as the more commonly used HALL & OATES. They have been used since the 1970s, when the duo started on the path to becoming "one of the most successful musical groups of the last 40 years" (again according to the complaint). Hall & Oates were in fact very successful, cranking out six No. 1 singles between 1976 and 1984. Since then, not so much, although as the complaint also notes, they were inducted into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame in 2014.
Turns out they also sell oatmeal.
Well, not directly, but they have a licensee who does. "In 2014," the complaint continues, "Plaintiff became aware that an entity named Haulin' Oats, a partnership organized under the laws of California and based in Nashville, Tennessee, was also utilizing the mark HAULIN' OATS in connection with the sale of oatmeal and the provision of food delivery services. Thereafter, Plaintiff and Haulin' Oats entered into a business relationship" whereby the latter assigned any rights in that mark to the former, and the former licensed the latter to use the mark. Translation: Haulin' Oats agreed to pay royalties to avoid getting sued.
Herein lies a major problem for Early Bird, therefore. While it might have an argument that no one is likely to confuse an oats-based product with a Hall-&-Oates-based product such as, for example, 1984's Big Bam Boom, it turns out that Hall & Oates do in fact own a trademark that is already being used in commerce to sell oats-based products:
Because "Haulin Oats" is already a trademark "covering breakfast foods that is used in connection with 'Haulin Oats' branded oatmeal by Whole Oats Enterprises' licensee," therefore, I think Early Bird may have a problem. It may depend on the geographical reach of the competing brands, but I foresee a new "business relationship" in Early Bird's future.
The owner of Early Bird Foods seemed unconcerned, though. Her only comment to Rolling Stone was to point out that the company is currently offering a 25-percent discount on Haulin' Oats, which you can get by using the coupon code "SAYITISNTSO" at the company's website. I'd do that soon, if you're interested, because it is likely to be a limited-time offer.