kate

spacetwinks:

$5 off at suncoast!!!

Man, I wonder who won the MD Geist Sweepstakes

I bought four Kill la Kill books from japanese Comiket festival.

- The Art ok KLK vol 1 (150 pages) : artworks and concept designs

- Kill la Kill Genga Shuu (200 pages) : key animations drawings, layouts, storyboards, key arts …

- Sushio 4.5 (34 pages) : key animations drawings

- Talking About Composite 2  (46 pages) : about compositing + interviews

All these books are dojins, self published by animators and studios, and not available in stores.

Between 1935 and 1944, the Farm Security Agency-Office of War Information dispatched photographers to all ends of the United States to document life during hard times and wartime. Many of their photos, taken by now-legendary photographers like Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, have become iconic representations of America during the Depression and World War II. But most of the hundreds of thousands of negatives, collected in what became known as "The File," were never seen by the public.

No longer. Yale University's Photogrammar has just made more than 170,000 of the FSA-OWI photos easily accessible online. You can browse and search by photographer, location, date, or subject. Even a quick visit to the site turns up surprising, searing photos that feel like they should be in history books, on the cover of old LIFE magazines, or hanging in art galleries. Here are 10 that caught my eye as I looked through the massive collection—including one taken less than a block from the Mother Jones office in downtown San Francisco.

Riveter at a military aircraft factory. Fort Worth, Texas, 1942 Howard R. Hollem/FSA-OWI Collection

 

"Wife of Negro sharecropper." Lee County, Mississippi, 1935 Arthur Rothstein/FSA-OWI Collection
 

"Backyard slum scene" with the US Capitol in the background. Washington, D.C., 1935  Carl Mydans/FSA-OWI Collection

 

Deserted mining town. Zinc, Arkansas, 1935 Ben Shahn/FSA-OWI Collection

 

"Longshoremen's lunch hour." San Francisco, California, 1937 Dorothea Lange/FSA-OWI Collection

 

Japanese-American women interned at the Tule Lake Relocation Center. Newell, California, 1942 Unknown photographer/FSA-OWI Collection

 

"A shore patrol man and military policeman at the Greyhound bus terminal." Indianapolis, Indiana, 1943. Esther Bubley/FSA-OWI Collection

 

A third-grader plays Adolf Hitler in a school production. New York, New York, 1942. Marjory Collins/FSA-OWI Collection

 

Army tank driver. Ft. Knox, Kentucky, 1942. Alfred T. Palmer/FSA-OWI Collection

 

"Monday morning, December 8, 1941, after Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor." San Francisco, California, 1941 John Collier/FSA-OWI Collection

 

The same intersection today Dave Gilson/Mother Jones

As if I didn't need any more temptation to get more Team Fortress 2 merchandise sitting on my shelves, WeLoveFine has just begun taking pre-orders for their Pocket Mercs blind-boxed figure series. The 3-inch-tall vinyl figures feature five of the TF2 mercs -- Scout, Soldier, Spy, Engineer and Pyro -- plus the Level 1 Sentry Gun in BLU and RED colored variants. There's also three chases in the set of Pyro, Spy and Engineer, leaving 15 figures in all in the series.

Each one comes with an appropriate accessory and WeLoveFine has them priced at US$10 each. Their estimated ship date is next Friday, Sept. 12, so if you're looking to have them in the next two weeks or so, you can pre-order them from WeLoveFine right now. I'm not sure if I like the blocky body designs quite yet, though; what say you?

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, especially with all the festivities at Walt Disney World Resort. I recently had the chance to check out some of the spooky sweets that the team at Magic Kingdom Park have conjured up for this year’s Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. Don’t worry–there are no tricks, just plenty of delectable treats in store for our guests.

If you’re planning to attend Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, be sure to check out the spook-tacular offerings specially created for the season. Stop by the Plaza Ice Cream Parlor for a creepy Ice Cream Cookie Sandwich. Ghouls of all ages will love choosing their favorite flavor of ice cream and sandwiching it between two freshly baked sugar cookies. Next door at Main Street Bakery, you’ll find the simply yummy Mummy and Candy Corn Cupcakes. If you’re looking for a more ghoulish delight, stop by Gaston’s Tavern for a Ghost Cupcake.

For the serious sweet tooth, I suggest checking out the Candy Corn Cotton Candy found on carts throughout the park. In addition, Storybook Treats in Fantasyland will be serving up Candy Corn Soft Serve. Take one bite into the cone and you’ll know this isn’t a trick—the cone is filled with candy corn. Yum!

I’ve always believed that breakfast food is meant to be enjoyed at any time of day. The Spiced Pumpkin Waffle Sundae from Sleepy Hollow is a festive way to indulge during the party. The hot waffle is topped with soft serve, cinnamon sugar and spooky sprinkles. It tastes so wickedly wonderful, you might just lose your head over it.

Ghoulish gulps will also be materializing for the party. Kick back with some Pumpkin Spice Bubble Tea at The Lunching Pad in Tomorrowland or prepare to pucker with Buggy Brew from Friar’s Nook. My favorite? The Wormy Apple Slush from Gaston’s Tavern, complete with real (gummy) worms.

These treats are only available at Mickey’s Not-So Scary Halloween Party, taking place on select nights from September through October.

What tricks and treats are you looking forward to enjoying at Disney Parks this fall?

No Tricks, Just Treats at Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party at Walt Disney World Resort by Rachel Brent: Originally posted on the Disney Parks Blog

Wee Queen Bess

Wee Frederick Douglass

Wee Shakespeare

Wee Winston Churchill 

Wee Genghis Khan 

Wee Teddy Roosevelt 

In a speech at the National Book Festival at the Library of Congress last weekend, The Shadow Hero writer Gene Luen Yang threw down the gauntlet.

Yang challenged comics creators to overcome their fears of bring criticized for inaccurately portraying characters who are different from them -- in terms of race, gender, or other identifying factors. In brief, he told writers to do some research and get it right, but first and foremost to step outside themselves.

Continue reading…

[All photos by Robert Sietsema]

Some say the Louisiana po' boy — what we'd call a hero — originated during a 1929 streetcar strike in New Orleans. Its precursor was a demi-baguette with the innards pulled out and replaced with fried oysters, known as the oyster loaf. When the strike began, picketing workers were handed baguette sandwiches made with roast beef and gravy, but as the strike fund ran low, the roast beef was replaced with much cheaper french fries, to which the term "po' boy" ("poor boy") was applied for the first time. Eventually, po' boy was used to describe any NOLA-type hero, of which fried oysters and roast beef with gravy remain the most popular. Nevertheless, there are dozens of po' boy variations in the Crescent City.

Though over 100 places in town offer it, New York has had trouble getting the po' boy right. Often the bread is too dry or the wrong length or simply not very good. You can't use kumamotos in the oyster po' boy, though some have tried. They must be big fatties, and fried with plenty of cornmeal coating for a perfectly aligned crunch and squish. And the tartar sauce or gravy in a po' boy can't be of the canned or bottled variety.

That's why it's a thrill to find that Bushwick newcomer Orleans Po Boys has absolutely nailed the original, french-fry bearing version of the sandwich. The place is located under the M tracks at the acute corner of Myrtle and Hart, really just a food truck with a corrugated fence around it. There's plenty of counter and picnic table seating, making one wonder what's going to happen in the winter. No matter, for now the place is nearly perfect.

Eater stopped by on a recent sweltering afternoon and ordered three sandwiches. As is doctrinaire in the Big Easy, they are available in two sizes, what might be designated a shorty and a half po' boy, the latter about eight inches long, the former around five. At $7 to $10 each, the shorties are something of a bargain.

The french fry version was piled high with fried potatoes, standard diner french fries and not ones so good you'd be forced to pull them out of the sandwich and eat them separately. The french fries are ennobled by the high-quality bread, but what really makes the sandwich killer is the gravy. This is beef gravy like someone who went to cooking school might make, generously flecked with coarse-ground black pepper. A little mayo and some greenery serve to run a little interference, but also to make the sandwich unspeakably lush.

The oyster po' boy was great, too, with homemade tartar sauce and some nice dill pickles of the German jarred sort like they use in Texas's great barbecues. No sweet, homemade, Brooklyn rippled pickle chips for these folks.

A companion and I were prepared to dislike the BBQ version of the sandwich — sticky pulled beef, but it was redeemed by the coleslaw wadded on top of the meat. Even though good barbecue and sauce are anathema to each other, we're talking po' boy sandwich filling here and not doctrinaire Texas barbecue. The BBQ po' boy was trashy and we loved it.

The truck is partly the work of Oliver Vonderahe, a former Roberta's employee who has spent lots of time in New Orleans, dwells in Bushwick, and plays in a band called the Moondudes. ("We're just spaced dudes from the moon," as their slogan goes.) Well, now it's spaced out dudes making amazing sandwiches.
· All Coverage of Orleans [~ENY~]
· All Posts by Robert Sietsema [~ENY~]

Update 9/11/14: Missouri lawmakers did pass the 72-hour waiting period bill late Wednesday night. The House voted 117 to 44 and the Senate voted 23 to 7 to override Gov. Jay Nixon's veto.

Missouri's Republican-controlled Legislature is poised to pass one of the harshest abortion laws in the county next week when lawmakers return to the state capitol for a last-minute special session.

GOP lawmakers called the session to try to override several of Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon's vetoes. At the top of the list: A bill that would force women seeking an abortion—including victims of rape and incest—to wait 72 hours between their first visit to a clinic and the procedure itself. Nixon vetoed the bill in June.

A vote could come as early as September 10. If the bill receives the two-thirds majorities in the House and the Senate required to override Nixon's veto, Missouri would become the third state, after South Dakota and Utah, to impose a three-day waiting period, the longest in the country. A veto override is nearly certain: In May, when the bill first passed, it received a veto-proof majority in the House and was one vote shy of this benchmark in the Senate; a Republican senator who was absent that day intends to support the bill.

Missouri already requires a woman who wants an abortion to wait 24 hours from her first visit before obtaining the procedure. "Taking it from one day to three days? I don't think it's creating an extra obstacle for the mothers," says Republican Rep. Kevin Elmer, the bill's sponsor in the House.

Democrats and reproductive rights advocates who oppose the bill say that a three-day waiting period is burdensome to women who don't live near St. Louis, the location of the state's only abortion clinic; those women would have to make two trips out of town in order to have an abortion or stay in St. Louis for several nights. The law, opponents say, would pose an extra hardship for women who can't afford to miss several days of work.

"A 72-hour waiting period is completely absurd," argues Democratic Sen. Jolie Justus, the Senate minority leader. "The reality is, they simply want to outlaw abortion in the state of Missouri."

Missouri lawmakers proposed more than two dozen abortion restrictions this year, all of them targeted at the St. Louis clinic. Missouri already has more abortion-related restrictions on the book than almost any other state in the country. Abortion providers must offer women the opportunity to view an ultrasound of the fetus, and abortion clinics in Missouri must meet the requirements of an ambulatory surgical center; these requirements are expensive to meet and they are not medically necessary for most abortions. These laws have resulted in the closure of all but one of the state's clinics.

"The reason this [bill] is so bad is that it's layered on top of decades of some of the most horrible legislation relating to women's health I've seen anywhere in the country," Justus says. She notes that even some Democrats who have favorable ratings from the advocacy group Right to Life opposed the bill in May. "It's that restrictive," she says.

Unlike Utah's law, the Missouri bill does not include an exception for women who become pregnant as a result of rape or incest—one reason why Nixon vetoed it. But Elmer tells Mother Jones he never considered adding such an exception.

"I believe that life begins at conception," he says. "And I'm not to discriminate against any life because of how it was conceived. I don't disregard the significance of the tragic events that those women suffer from. But we're still weighing that against the right of the unborn child to live…We're asking all mothers just to give it another 48 hours to think about what is it they're doing when they kill their unborn child."

Nixon's office did not reply to a request for comment.

Democratic opponents of the bill warn that a three-day waiting period could be tossed out in court. A federal judge blocked South Dakota's waiting-period law in June 2012, saying that the law was unconstitutional because it placed an "undue burden" on women seeking to exercise their right to an abortion. (Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union dropped that lawsuit in December 2012 in order to focus on other litigation.)

Elmer says he is optimistic that the law would survive a similar court challenge. For now, he is focused on making sure the bill wins the required supermajority in the House. "This is legislation," says Elmer. "So you can never be confident. But I like our chances."

Tweet

Mobile Device Sizes Changing Rapidly

by Bruce Lidl

While the landscape for digital comics continues to develop in the post-Amazon takeover of comiXology era, the devices upon which those comics will be consumed are evolving as well. New announcements and new devices appear almost daily, with a number of eagerly-awaited devices rumored to hit in the next few weeks, most notably new, larger iPhones. Trends seem to be shifting towards ever bigger mobile phone devices, while tablets begin to cool. Taken together both indications may actually point to a brighter future for digital comics.

The iPad, of course, popularized the tablet category and has remained the segment leader since its launch in April 2010, with almost unheard of sales figures, even while maintaining relatively high price points. Competing devices have flooded the market in the iPad’s wake, but the generally cheaper Android powered devices have mostly filled market niches, while providing a large diversity in size, performance, appearance and media tie-in. Newer models with improved screens continue to appear from Amazon (Fire HDX), Samsung, Sony, Lenovo, Asus, Toshiba and many more in the $175-299 price range, while sales and refurbished older models can bring the prices of modest but name-brand Android tablets down under $100. This wave of tablets, especially those from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, have also had the effect of weakening interest in traditional black and white eReaders, a category that limps along at this point.

In a surprise to many, however, the tablet boom is beginning to slow down considerably in recent months. In Apple’s last financial releases, iPad sales numbers have declined both quarterly and in year-to-year figures. Tablet sales from other manufacturers also seem to be declining, raising the question of where tablets fit into the mobile device ecosystem and why tablet owners are not replacing them as fast as smartphones. Is it a lack of innovation in new tablets? A lack of new use-cases or new applications, that might spur sales? Are older models still capable of doing everything that users want from their tablets (primarily media consumption, web browsing and light email)?

On the other end of the mobile device spectrum, sales continue to climb for smart phones, and will likely only jump further with the release of new iPhones, possibly as early as next week. Tellingly, the major innovation that is expected from the iPhone 6 is screen size: according to the most reliable of Apple watchers, the new phones will continue to increase screen real estate. The original iPhone had a 3.5 inch screen with a 480×320 resolution, while the latest 5S has a 4 inch 1136×640 pixel resolution. The expectations for the iPhone 6 is 4.7 inches with a 1334 × 750 resolution, and an even larger iPhone 6L at 5.5 inches and 2208 × 1242, pushing the latter device firmly into the hybrid category sometimes called “phablet.” Samsung has been the leader in the bigger is better smartphone segment with it’s Android Galaxy Note devices, which have had screens as big as 5.3 inches since 2011, and the latest model, the Note 4 just announced yesterday, is 5.7 inches at 2560 x 1440 resolution. Other highly anticipated upcoming devices include rumored Motorola Nexus devices (“Shamu”) at 5.2 and possibly 5.9 inches. And just to show how expectations of smartphone size has changed, a recently announced device from Chinese manufacturer ZTE, the Nubia 5S, with a screen of 4.7 inches, 1280×720 pixels, is called the “Mini.”

Is there a link between the slowing in tablet sales and the ever increasing phone screen size phenomenon? Does owning a device like the Samsung Galaxy Note make also carrying a tablet superfluous? Could larger iPhones cannibalize iPad sales, at least of the iPad Mini (7.9 inches, 1024×768 or 2048×1536)? Evidence at this point is very sketchy, and it’s also quite possible that larger phones will just drive tablet manufacturers to increase screen size as well, and in fact there are rumors of a new, larger iPad in the works with a 12.9 inch screen. The next few months, leading into the holiday buying season will clearly indicate the direction the mobile device trends are going in, and whether or not we will have to start looking for pants with larger pockets to hold our monster sized phones.

From a digital comics perspective, the evolution of mobile screens could have a very large impact, particularly as they remain the primary consumption device for such comics. The rise of comiXology matches in many ways the growth of the iPad, and it’s not a coincidence that Amazon wanted to purchase a key digital content distributor to integrate with its hardware offerings. While a weakening tablet market may be somewhat worrisome to digital comics sellers, the explosion of interest in larger sized phones may be a far more beneficial development. Reading comics on smaller phones, even with Guided View type applications, can be very frustrating, but as those screens get bigger and better, smart phones may indeed become more suitable for comics consumption. Reading comics on a 5.7 inch Samsung Note 4 phablet is actually a pretty decent experience and not that far off of 7 inch Kindle Fire in any case. And even more so, if Apple does, indeed, embrace this size trend wholeheartedly with a 5.5 inch iPhone, a device with the prospect of true mass acceptance, the landscape of digital comics friendly devices could grow explosively in the near future.

In a blunt ruling handed down on Thursday, a federal judge in New Orleans found that the biggest oil spill in US history, the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster, was caused by BP's "willful misconduct" and "gross negligence."

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing 11 people and spilling millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf over the next several months. According to Bloomberg, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit include "the federal government, five Gulf of Mexico states, banks, restaurants, fishermen and a host of others."

The case also includes two other companies that were involved in aspects of the design and function of the Deepwater Horizon—Transocean and Halliburton—though the bulk of the blame was reserved for BP.

"BP's conduct was reckless," wrote District Judge Carl Barbier, in a 153-page ruling. "Transocean's conduct was negligent. Halliburton's conduct was negligent."

The judge ruled that BP was responsible for 67 percent of the blowout, explosion and subsequent oil spill, while Transocean was at fault for 30 percent, and Halliburton for the remaining 3 percent.

According to Bloomberg, BP could face fines of as much as $18 billion.

Here's the full ruling.

Me: Does everything look good for you?

Client: Everything is great, but who is this girl in front of the background?

Me: Um, that’s the character you wanted me to design.

Client: What? I didn’t ask for that. I said to give the chair more character!

I forward the client the original email, wherein she requests a female character to be designed.

Client: Don’t you try ‘photoshopping’ my words!

Tweet

What a tiring week it has been even though I’m technically on vacation. You are probably sick and tired of reading about the irrational, emotion-based attacks on women who write about pop culture on the internet, specifically video games. Andrew Todd’s Video Games, Misogyny, And Terrorism: A Guide To Assholes pretty much summed it up, a week in which video game reported Anita Sarkeesian was forced to leave her home over threats, all because she dared to suggest that video games are….sexist. Big shocker there. In addition, a female game creator was harassed over doing in her private life what men consider their right. Devin Faraci also posted a piece called Why I Feel Bad For – And Understand – The Angry #GamerGate Gamers that got a bit more to what fascinated me about all of this: why are women the enemy? Why must they be controlled (at best) and brutalized (at worst) by the majority of human societies? Faraci writes:

Sarkeesian was, in a lot of ways, the lighting of the fuse that finally exploded with Zoe Quinn. Together these women represent everything that threatens these boys – women entering their space, being sexual but not sexual with them, forcing them to examine the seedy and anti-woman power fantasies that are playing out in too many games. The clubhouse has been invaded and it’s getting redecorated and nobody asked them first.  Understanding all of this doesn’t mean excusing it, and God knows I don’t. But understanding all of this does leave me at a loss – I don’t know how to get through to these kids. Devils like Owens and Aurini and anonymous hatemonger Internet Aristocrat have the ears of these kids because they offer soothing reassurances that the angry gamers are right and the entirety of the world is wrong. They’re recruiting young people for hate. They’re turning the sense of marginalization these kids feel into hate for other marginalized people, a standard tactic of Neo-Nazi groups, for instance. I, for whatever reason, was always a liberal-leaning person, and while I might have grown up using 1980s street language that would get me boycotted today, I never would have bought into the line of woman-hating hogwash these guys are peddling. This is the only place where I find myself unable to understand these kids – if you feel so put-upon, why are you putting upon others?

Faraci is getting at the same kind of emotion (on a far lesser scale) that I wrote about in Comics have hit puberty…and it’s not pretty. Men cordon off various aspects of human society as “boys only” and react badly when women want to join in what defines human society, so they can be human too.

I had my own internet kerfuffle last week when this site came under a DDOS attack, getting shut down for an afternoon and slogging along for a few more. I launched as thorough an investigation as I could, and while I don’t know that it was a personally based attack…I don’t know that it wasn’t either. I’ll never know. I do know that I had to take some security steps I should have taken a while ago and that’s just common sense for anyone running a moderately trafficked website. But it’s still kind of shitty that I even have to think about something like this.

I’m reminded of a statement Joss Whedon made SEVEN YEARS AGO after a 17-year-old Iraqi Kurdish girl was stoned to death in an honor killing while men watched and made videos on their cel phones. Whedon wrote:

What is wrong with women?

I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.

How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence — is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

Ironically, or maybe not, most of the links for “Joss Whedon” and feminism you find now are about how he “gets it wrong” or made a joke or failed a perfect standard. It’s a tough crowd, as I’ve mentioned before. And I regret to say that the behavior of bigoted assholes has made victims even more defensive about all of these complicated issues.

It’s historically part of the “heroic ideal” to stand up against bullies and to stand for the downtrodden. Somehow, when the downtrodden has no Y chromosome, it becomes less cool, and that’s where all this gets really confusing. The male rationalization, bigotry, and downright insanity on display in these weeks is what is the most disturbing, and you guys who aren’t crazy better start stepping up.

As I think I mentioned on twitter, online isn’t about life, it IS life now, for everyone. It’s commerce, it socializing, it’s education, it’s work. It behooves any society that pretends to be free to keep this vital means of communication equally available to ALL. Respect has to be earned but it isn’t gender based.

Some drawings of Yasuhiro Nakura, director of Space Dandy episode 21.
He was character-designer and animation director on Metropolis and Memol.
He also worked a lot on Tenshi No Tamago, Moomins, and was animator on Laputa. (note : his artbook is gorgeous)

comicsalliance:

CARTOONISTS OF COLOR DATABASE AIMS TO GIVE ARTISTS GREATER VISIBILITY

The Cartoonists of Color Database is a new project by cartoonist MariNaomi that aims to collect information on people of color working in comics. The FAQ succinctly outlines the need for such a database with four statements: “For visibility. For academia. For inspiration. For community building.”

The database formally launched this week with over 700 creator listings, and MariNaomi has made a public call for people to add more information, refine the information that’s currently there, and correct any mistakes.

Artists who want to submit their names to the database can do so via this Google Doc form. That form can also be used to update erroneous information, or anything that’s listed as N/A. In addition to the master list of cartoonists of color, the site has separate lists specifically breaking out LGBTQ, non-male, and non-mainstream cartoonists of color.

READ MORE

climate.gov

This story originally appeared in CityLab and is republished as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

This year is shaping up to be one of the weirder ones in America's weather history. That's because we now seem to be living in two geographically separate nations: one scalded by unbearable heat, the other bitten by waves of unusual cold.

In a typical year, the US has either mostly warm or mostly cool temperature extremes (meaning values at the top or bottom of a historical range of temperatures). For instance, years in the late '70s were marked by extreme cold throughout the country, while the 2000s featured increasingly frequent baths of abnormally hot weather, as pictured in this NOAA graph of January-to-July daytime highs:

But as seen at the graph's far right, 2014 is ushering in a prominent and record-setting split between competing regions of hot and cool temperatures—the former in the drought-plagued West and Alaska, the latter in the Midwest and Missouri Valley. Climate.gov writes:

In most years in the record, extremes are significantly lopsided: A given year's bar is mostly red or mostly blue, sometimes capped with a small segment of the opposite color. In other words, either some part of the country is experiencing warm extremes or cold extremes, but not both. Only a handful of years have a pattern similar to 2014—in which more than 10 percent of the country was experiencing extreme warmth while a similarly large or larger area experienced extreme coolness…

Even among these years, 2014 is unprecedented: Never before has the country experienced such large areas of simultaneous, opposing temperature extremes in the same January-July period. At a combined 40 percent of the country, the area affected by extremes so far this year is nearly double the size you'd expect due to chance.

If random weather patterns aren't behind the great hot/cold split, what might be? The government folks behind this latest analysis promise to post possible answers soon, but one theory comes from international scientists who published a study this spring on the history of the jet stream. They believe that the stream is locked in a "positive" phase, meaning it's hauling warmth up to the West and then blasting the East with polar chill. As the climate continues to warm, these stream-derived temperature differences could become entrenched, the scientists say, with the West experiencing more "mild, relatively warm winters" and the East increasingly winding up underneath a "freight car of arctic air."

BOWERY — Black Seed is adding some prime drunk-time hours. Thursday through Saturday the bagel shop will be open from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. Pizza bagels with or without pepperoni will, for the first time, be on offer (and only during those late-night hours), as will bagels and pints of shmear to go. [Eaterwire]

FORT GREENE — Greenlight Bookstore will pair up with Peck's Specialty Foods for a dinner series with authors, starting with Harlem-based poet Harlem-based poet Saeed Jones on September 18. For each meal, Peck's chef will serve a family-style meal inspired by the book, and each is $50 for the meal, a drink, and a copy of the book. Greenlight's book groups will also start meeting over at the new Greene Grape Annex. [Eaterwire]

EAST VILLAGE — Neighborhood standby Perbacco reopens tomorrow night with a new focus on Italian wines. Forty wines will be available by the glass and Roman-born chef Clelia Bendandi has reworked the menu into a large selection of shareable plates. [Eaterwire]

APPS — Groupon is getting in on the reservation game. The site has launched reservation-based deals where restaurants can sell coupons that can only redeemed at specific times. [~EN~]
[Robert Sietsema]

Ask Amy, 2 September 2014:

DEAR AMY: I’m very accepting of same-sex marriage, and my wife’s sister is married to another woman. But this woman is very masculine in appearance, and intentionally so—as she seems not at all bothered when waiters at restaurants address her as “sir.” She has short, straight hair, uses no makeup, walks and dresses like a man, and doesn’t even own a skirt. She is so “butch” that I’m uncomfortable being seen with her. Is it asking too much for a woman —any woman— to at least display some feminine traits when with friends or relatives in public? — Right … or Judgmental?

Dear Right … or Judgmental?,

Look, I know you—a super-accommodating champion of LGBTQ rights who doesn’t actively oppose gay marriage and so is therefore the pinnacle of human tolerance and an authority on the subject of being the most accepting dude of all time—don’t want to play the gender police, but if you don’t ensure that whatever you imagine people’s genitalia looks like directly correlates to whatever you imagine their gender identity to be, who will?

All you’re asking is for the ability to dictate to another adult human being that they wear clothes they don’t want to wear, and affect mannerisms they don’t want to affect, in order to ensure you don’t feel weird in front of the server at Olive Garden.

With that in mind, I want to get straight to the crux of the question in your signature: are you right to demand that other people adhere to socially mandated outward signifiers of gender identity in your presence?

ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY! Man God created delicate lady helpers to complement and serve Man People like you, the extremely important boss of everyone. The whole entire population of planet earth anxiously awaits your ruling on how they should act and dress in your presence, lest a pair of slacks singularly usher in the end of everything you have ever known or held dear. After all, what if someone thinks your sister-in-law is a man, and then they saw you hanging out with your sister-in-law, thinking she was a man that you were hanging out with????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

When people defy gender norms in public, as if they have any right to a self-determined gender presentation or the wardrobe of their choosing, those who suffer most are the dudes they’re related to by marriage, because logically, flowers rainbows ballet unicorns dresses TOOLS BRICKS TRUCKS PANTS, clearly.

Oh sure, butch-presenting women, femme-presenting men, trans, queer and other gender non-conforming folks are frequently sexually harassed, assaulted and/or shamed both by other members of the public and by the police, politicians and elected officials who have ostensibly been tasked with advocating for and protecting them, but the real victim here is yoooOoooOoooOOOoooUUUuuUUUUuuu, a man-man whose manly manitude is wholly predicated on the sartorial subjugation of other adult humans according to culturally, geographically and temporally variable gender norms that have shifted, and continue to shift, significantly over tens of thousands of years of human history.

Have your wife craft a bedazzled menu of approved “feminine” traits from which your sister-in-law can choose (you wouldn’t do this, naturally, because DIRTBIKES BUD LIGHT FOOTBALL BUKOWSKI), and inform her that you won’t be seen in public with her unless she starts playing pretty princess for you. The situation should quickly resolve itself.

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Whatever your politics, you're not likely to feel great about America right now. After all, there's Ferguson (the whole world was watching!), an increasingly unpopular president, a Congress whose approval ratings make the president look like a rock star, rising poverty, weakening wages, and a growing inequality gap just to start what could be a long list. Abroad, from Libya and Ukraine to Iraq and the South China Sea, nothing has been coming up roses for the US Polls reflect a general American gloom, with 71% of the public claiming the country is "on the wrong track." We have the look of a superpower down on our luck.

What Americans have needed is a little pick-me-up to make us feel better, to make us, in fact, feel distinctly good. Certainly, what official Washington has needed in tough times is a bona fide enemy so darn evil, so brutal, so barbaric, so inhuman that, by contrast, we might know just how exceptional, how truly necessary to this planet we really are.

In the nick of time, riding to the rescue comes something new under the sun: the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), recently renamed Islamic State (IS). It's a group so extreme that even al-Qaeda rejected it, so brutal that it's brought back crucifixion, beheading, waterboarding, and amputation, so fanatical that it's ready to persecute any religious group within range of its weapons, so grimly beyond morality that it's made the beheading of an innocent American a global propaganda phenomenon. If you've got a label that's really, really bad like genocide or ethnic cleansing, you can probably apply it to ISIS's actions.

It has also proven so effective that its relatively modest band of warrior jihadis has routed the Syrian and Iraqi armies, as well as the Kurdish pesh merga militia, taking control of a territory larger than Great Britain in the heart of the Middle East. Today, it rules over at least four million people, controls its own functioning oil fields and refineries (and so their revenues as well as infusions of money from looted banks, kidnapping ransoms, and Gulf state patrons). Despite opposition, it still seems to be expanding and claims it has established a caliphate.  

Continue Reading »

FROM: Client

TO: Me

SUBJECT: Screenplay - only if you have time

If you have a minute, but ONLY if you have a minute, I’d be honored if you could look it over. Some people HATE reading and if that’s you, don’t worry. But you do have a lead part. (Don’t worry, you are disguised.) 

FROM: Me

TO: Client

SUBJECT: Re: Screenplay - only if you have time

This is really outside my area of expertise. I gave it a quick read and everything is basically correct.

I am a software engineer, hired by the client to build a simple site. The 17-page screenplay featured me as an antagonist named “The Boss,” telling a child in a candy shop she wasn’t allowed to have more than 5 pieces of candy.

I don’t even know.