kate

Me: Hmm…I can’t reproduce the issue here.  What browser and operating system are you using?

Client: The latest.

This is the first time, I think, I would ever admit that the evolutions are more epic than the originals. Hands down, Venusaur, Charizard, and Blastoise are the best of these animated GIFs. Unfortunately, I cannot decide whether I like the morbidly obese Venusaur or the carefree Blastoise best of all.



See more: Pokémon Starters

To toast the release of "How to Train Your Dragon 2" at a private studio party, DreamWorks commissioned boutique cake maker Fernanda Abarca, who is also an artist at the company, to create this four-foot tall, seventy-pound statute of Toothless the Dragon.

Move over, polar bears: It's time for Emperor penguins to become the new poster children of climate change.

Recently, polar biologists at the University of Minnesota used satellite images of poop stains (scientists are nothing if not resourceful) to show that some colonies of Emperor penguins in Antarctica are uprooting historic nesting sites, possibly to escape warming temperatures.

Today, a new study in Nature makes an even more grim prognostication about the future of the species: Thanks to declining concentrations of sea ice, two-thirds of Antarctica's Emperor penguin colonies could lose more than half their population by 2100. Across the entire species, that translates to a 19 percent drop. Some colonies are larger than others, so a 50 percent decline in one group might be only a few individuals, while the same change in a larger group could be hundreds.

Less sea ice makes it more difficult to access krill, the tiny shrimp-like crustaceans that are the penguins' primary food source, said study coauthor Julienne Stroeve, a researcher at the National Snow & Ice Data Center. "Then, there are these large mortality rates for the penguins."

So just how many penguins are we talking about here? A satellite survey in 2012 pegged the total head count at 595,000 across 45 colonies. A 19 percent decline would reduce the population to 481,950, or a loss of 113,050 adorable birds.

Scientists have long known that animals at the poles are especially vulnerable to global warming, which is happening in the Arctic and Antarctica faster than the rest of the world. In the Arctic, disappearing ice and rising temperatures are pushing species of whales, seals, and bears to hybridize, jeopardizing their genetic health. In Antarctica, earlier research has found that ocean warming could reduce the habitat available for krill by 20 percent, compounding the sea ice problem.

Today's study is just the latest reminder of the vital role ice plays in the Antarctic ecosystem. And there's little doubt that Antarctica's ice is in serious trouble: Earlier this year a trove of research emerged indicating that one of the continent's major ice sheets is already in irreversible decline.

The map below, from the study, shows which penguin populations are most at risk. The purple-to-white color gradient shows changes in mean sea ice concentration between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (it's a bit counter-intuitive; purple is the least decline and white is the most). Each colored dot is a penguin colony, with the color indicating the colonies' projected conservation status (see key below) by 2100. You can see that the most-threatened populations (red dots) are those nearest to the white space where sea ice has declined the most.

Series revolves around a young man who participates in a falconry competition

Colors and inks for the Spider-Verse one-shot I’m doing with Gerard Way. You can read what we have to say about it HERE.

This’ll be my last Marvel project for a while, and it’s shaping up to be a lot of fun.

A little watercolour of Satsuki from Kill la Kill. I LOVE HER. If you like this drawing, you can buy it from me at TCAF!

ca-tsuka:

Games drawn by Fabien Mense and published in french magazine Tcho!.
Tribute to Manga (Tezuka, Lum, Dr Slump, Akira, Kitaro, Naruto, One Piece, Keroro, Dragon Ball …).

Good old games !

Robin Hood, mischief in Sherwood-Visual development-part 5

part 1 / part 2

part 3 / part4

Versus/Hearts by Dan Matutina.

Full storyboard by Masaaki Yuasa (Mind Game) for Adventure Time “Food Chain” episode available here.

ca-tsuka:

New teaser poster for Zombillenium upcoming french animated feature film directed by Arthur de Pins. Now in production.

isaia:

rockuzan:

His name is Liui Aquino, a filipino cosplayer. And I think, by far, he’s the greatest Hiccup cosplayer I’ve seen.

That little girl is all of us.
We are her
She is us.
We are one.

Thanks Liui Aquino! Rockin’ the Filipino cosplay scene!

fuckyeahffboys:

Locke + Mog (FFVI) | カトウ

oh my god i forgot the caption on this one oh my GOD

iguanamouth:

so the first four hoards were so popular that theyve become kind of on ongoing series ! some of the ones here feature the commissioners ocs and personal items, but ALL of them involve things very dear to me: weird lizards on piles of junk

thingsamylikes:

pleatedjeans:

wandering blue wanderlust

Some of us are late bloomers.

Dear Abby, 11 June 2014:

DEAR ABBY: I’m a twice-divorced woman who found my present husband late in life. I’m in my early 60s, and my husband is in his 70s. We married quickly because I didn’t want to be alone in life and I thought I loved him. My husband works while I stay at home because of a medical condition. Because I get bored, I spend some of my time communicating with and texting male friends from the past and one of my ex-husbands. We have fun texting and sometimes it goes a little beyond that. I realize I am married and my ex is engaged, but how harmful can this be? I don’t think I’m hurting anyone, and it helps the day go by. Is this considered cheating? I don’t think it is because my ex and I live in different states and the chances of us ever getting together again are slim to none. — PASSING TIME

Dear Passing Time,

A lot of people are going to try and tell you that constantly texting and sexting your ex-husband and dude friends constitutes the forming of an extramarital emotional bond that could seriously damage the trust on which many monogamous relationships are built and result either in seriously damaging, or ending, your marriage.

Fuck those people. It’s not like you can choose whether to approach your husband and have an honest conversation about spending time with each other and making sure each other’s needs are met. 

You’re the one who’s been married twice already, so you’re the expert on relationships here.

After years of wanting to go but never finding the opportunity to do so, I decided to finally visit the Stripmuseum in Groningen. “Stripmuseum” means “Comics Museum, so don’t get any funny ideas. Then again, I feel like there’s a greater acknowledgement of nudity in Dutch comics compared to especially American comics, and so maybe the joke isn’t too out of place.

The museum is fairly small but it’s easy to spend a few hours there. The first exhibit that greets visitors is the work of Don Lawrence, a British artist who drew the fantasy comic Storm before passing away. Apparently it has always targeted a primarily Dutch audience, to the extent that the later artists who continued the work have all been Dutch. Another early introduction is artist Don Kriek, creator of Gutsman, not to be confused with a certain Robot Master.

There are a lot of comics samples to look at, going from the earlier days of Dutch comics, such as Tom Poes to ones that have been around for ages such as Suske en Wiske, Agent 327, and Franka, as well as more recent works like Dirkjan and Sigmund. It also touched on properties that may not be “Dutch” or even “Dutch-language” necessarily but have left a mark such as Tintin and Donald Duck. As I can’t really read Dutch, I’m sure that my experience was somewhat limited (though remedied to an extent by an English-language pamphlet), and I can only imagine that people who are literate in the language could spend an even longer time there.

One thing I found interesting was that there was a small section dedicated to “Dutch manga.” Given some of the arguments and disagreements that people get into in terms of what “is” or “isn’t” manga, it’s kind of fascinating to see the Stripmuseum just outright state that, yes, there can be such a thing as Dutch manga, and that it operates under a somewhat different visual grammar. Though my experience with Dutch comics history is pretty shallow at this point (most of the museum information was new to me), I wonder if this ability to accept native-produced material as “manga” is but the newest step in a long line of appropriation, and I mean that in the best way possible. Not only is there the example of Donald Duck (where the magazine named after him is the longest-running Dutch comics magazine ever), but Dutch artists even took the American comics character Perry Winkle, renamed him “Sjors,” and paired him with a kid from Africa, essentially turning it into an entirely different work.

I also thought it was notable that Sjors & Sjimmie has been drawn by a number of artists over the years, especially because Sjimmie’s design started off as quite racist but was changed significantly over time. Another interesting fact I learned is that Mark Retera, the artist of Dirkjan, was inspired by Gary Larson of The Far Side. Seeing as The Far Side is one of my favorite comics ever, I feel like I should give Dirkjan a shot.

If you’re ever in the Netherlands, give it a shot, though I must warn that the train ride can be pretty long if you’re traveling from one end of the country to the other. It was also my first time in Groningen and that city is beautiful. Maybe I should stop by there again just to take a look. It reminds me a bit of Los Angeles mixed with Amsterdam.

 

A few years ago I went to an event at Japan Society in NYC where Satou Dai of Cowboy Bebop and Eureka Seven fame was a guest. In the lobby, they had design materials from shows he’s written for, and among the works on display was something unfamiliar which caught my eye. This anime was Battle Spirits: Shounen Toppa Bashin, a show whose character designs by Shimogasa Miho (probably best known for Demashitaa! Powerpuff Girls Z) stayed with me for years. Having finally decided to take a look, and it turns out that Shounen Toppa Bashin is actually a show that’s surprisingly strong in the categories you wouldn’t expect a trading card game-themed anime to even take into consideration, such as personal psychology and portrayals of parent-child bonds. It’s one thing to be an anime like Selector Infected Wixoss, which tries to mess with the conventions of this genre, but this very first Battle Spirits doesn’t subvert so much as challenge and uplift.

The basic premise of Battle Spirits: Shounen Toppa Bashin is about as standard as it gets: kids (and adults) love a trading card game, and they somehow are able to access another dimension and battle with 3DCG monsters. They challenge each other, enter tournaments, form friendships. It basically sounds like a Yu-Gi-Oh! clone. What is notable, however, is that  the character relationships in Shounen Toppa Bashin really stand out in a way that I would expect more from a Satou Jun’ichi magical girl show (Ojamajo Doremi, Fushigiboshi no Futagohime) than a TCG merchandising engine. I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised that the man responsible for the series composition of Eureka Seven would also give an impressive showing here.

For example, when you see the extremely straightforward, shounen fighting spirit main character Bashin Toppa talk to his mom Hayami (both pictured above), you get a real sense that his energy and attitude come directly from how she’s raised him. Rather than ignore or deny that familial connection as is often the case with anime, the show uses it to give a real sense of personality to Toppa, to show that his simple-mindedness is also surprisingly deep. After all, what does it really mean to always look ahead, to always want to “Break through the front,” as Toppa often says? It sort of reminds me of Sei and his mother in Gundam Build Fighters, though it also doesn’t hurt that Hayami is not only a classy lady just like Rinko but a taxi driver famous for her Initial D-level driving.

There are a lot of other examples too, but I’ll only mention one more. Another source of delightful interaction comes from the fact that the devious ace player Suiren is actually the popular idol My Sunshine, and Toppa’s inability to see through her disguise in spite of how much time they spend together is pretty hilarious. At the same time, however, it’s also the impetus for Suiren to open up to others and to form friendships with the rest of the main cast. The character designs by Shimogasa really shine here, which reminds me somewhat of Chousoku Henkei Gyrozetter and its own strong character designs and personalities. Speaking of character designs, they’re probably at their best when looking at the show’s ending videos.

Seeing all of these characters with really simple yet vibrant personalities interact with each other in clever and entertaining ways while sporting those strong character designs just makes the show a joy to watch to the extent that it pretty much overshadows the card battling aspect of the series, which almost feels intentional given how much the show rushes through the matches. Usually, when it comes to TCG anime like Yu-Gi-Oh!, the drama is mostly focused on the card game, seeing step by step how the hero overcomes his opponents, but Shounen Toppa Bashin is different. In fact, in most episodes it generally skips a lot of turns to get straight to the climax of a match. The result is that, like Yes! Precure 5, the “fights” seem supplemental to the characters. Maybe not the best for selling the “Battle Spirits” card game, but purely as an anime I would rate it higher than most other shows in its genre.

There is one TCG-relevant aspect, however, that I do find unique to Shounen Toppa Bashin, which is that the anime makes an effort to show how the characters gradually gain experience with the card game they’re playing in a way which is easy to follow. Toppa is head-strong and prefers a straightforward approach of busting through his opponent, for example, but then loses a match early on because he doesn’t take into account strategies which more directly counter his deck type. By the next battle, you see this weakness made up for it to an extent, and then strengthened further in a following match. It’s a nice touch to show that the characters are learning, instead of just seeing them bust out a new deck with “all-new secret strategies!!!” (though that happens sometimes too). What also helps is that a lot that both male and female characters are considered strong players, and everyone will take games off of each other fairly regularly so there are no real “weak links” in the core group, and even those who start off that way improve over time.

I’ve only watched 26 episodes so far, but I definitely look forward to seeing how the show continues to unfold. It’s the kind of show I wish more morning boys’ anime would be.

by Choire Sicha

The worries are exaggerated: Only 7% of young adults with student debt have $50,000 or more. http://t.co/Aavawc8KpC

— David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) June 24, 2014

Doesn't that sound like a fact? Well, it's something that might be a fact.

The Brookings Institute Institution (!!!) is here to tell you that the whole fable of debt-panicked young people in America is a lie! And their study comes complete with a huge announcement in the New York Times, which puts a rather snide slant on the whole thing. It's all in your head, millennials! "Only 7 percent of young-adult households with education debt have $50,000 or more of it," summarizes the Times up top. (There's a quiet and enormous caveat in that sentence, which we'll get to shortly!)

But then they must backtrack from this tale a bit:

The first thing to acknowledge is that student debt has risen over the last two decades. In 2010, 36 percent of households with people between the ages of 20 and 40 had education debt, up from 14 percent in 1989. The median amount of debt—among those with debt—more than doubled, to $8,500 from $3,517, after adjusting for inflation.

So let's see: people with college debt saw their debt double, and also the number of those households with debt more than doubled. That is not exactly undermining this supposedly fake narrative of the increase of student debt! What's more, the Times notes, tuition and fees at public colleges are up 50% in the last ten years.

Then they must come to this graph.

Do you see where that says "based on households with people between 20 to 40 years old with at least some education debt"? That's actually quite a bit of a fudge!

What's the deal with these numbers? GLAD YOU ASKED. It's not what it sounds like!

• Those aren't households with people between 20 and 40; those are households headed by people between 20 and 40. Which is to say, this data excludes all people living in households headed by, say, their parents, or other adults. The way Brookings put this is: "households led by adults between the ages of 20 and 40." Just another way to say it excludes all households led by anyone over 40! (Those households might be identical in student debt to "young" households! Or they might not? WHO KNOWS!)

• One effect of this age spread sample is that it includes college graduates from up to almost 20 years ago. This is literally not at all a study of college graduates of the last five years, or even ten years. We're talking about people up to the age of 40, well into Gen X.

• Also, in this survey, when there are multiple people in the household, the Brookings Institution simply divided the amount of college debt by number of people in the household. So one person's $20,000 college debt becomes two people's $10,000 college debt. This works out mathematically, of course, but not structurally.

• And finally: The number of the people making up this data is quite small.

Where does it come from? GLAD YOU ASKED.

All this data comes from the Survey of Consumer Finances, which is conducted by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Department of Treasury. It takes place every three years, since 1983. It samples about 4500 households in the U.S., usually, but recently expanded to 6500 households. And this isn't new data; this is the data from their 2010 survey. (The 2013 survey will be published in 2015.)

Of all the households in that study, only about 1711 have "household heads" that are younger than 40. That's what they're extrapolating from. (And, intriguingly, a small number of those have a head of household younger than 18.) This is not a big sample!

What, obviously, does this data completely omit? Well, one obvious thing is… households who are headed by someone who is not under 40. One thing we know is that, in 2012, 36% of Americans aged 18 to 31 were not their head of household, because they were living with their families.

This survey also clearly combines family and non-family households. (Also, there's some unknown amount of statistical imbalance from same-sex households; 31% of same-sex households are likely to have two college-degreed people, compared to 24% of opposite-sex married households and just 12% of opposite-sex cohabitating households.)

And finally… this survey is, essentially, of rich people. No, literally!

We apply survey weights throughout the analysis so that the results are representative of the U.S.
population of households. The use of survey weights is particularly important in the SCF because
the sample design oversamples high-income households to properly measure the full distribution of
wealth and assets in the United States. This high-income sample makes up approximately 25 percent of
households in the SCF.

Literally what they are saying there is that the information on which they are basing a sweeping assessment of American student loan debt is based on a sample in which 25% of those surveyed were "high-income households." This is insane. (Update: I wanted to clarify that I get it that they are weighting this over-representation down to represent the population at large; that's not my beef, entirely. Mostly I think it shows a further weakness in their non-rich sample at large.)

Here's a fun footnote in the actual Brookings Institution report:

These statistics are based on households that had education debt, annual wage income of at least $1,000,
and that were making positive monthly payments on student loans. Between 24 and 36 percent of
borrowers with wage income of at least $1,000 were not making positive monthly payments, likely due
to use of deferment and forbearance….

So… they… set aside as much as 1/3rd of people in the survey sample because they weren't paying off their student debt. That's an intriguing class of debtors, don't you think? They claim that dismissing these people from the sample did not "qualitatively alter the pattern of results reported above"; so why dismiss them at all?

It's shocking that the Times presents this survey in this way. This study does actually tell us things! It's not actually a pack of lies. It just doesn't tell us necessarily what people are saying it's telling us. And no one of course will actually read the whole survey, so its repackaging will now enter the narrative, thanks to bloggers….

Great @dleonhardt piece on research by @chingos and @bethakersed suggesting the sky isn't falling on student debt http://t.co/R7eOuCQJPY

— Dylan Matthews (@dylanmatt) June 24, 2014

The new DC parlor game: Find some random economic or social shift. Blame it on student loan debt. Ignore data. Repeat yourself. Meme started

— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) June 24, 2014

… and professional policy wonks alike. And that's a huge disservice.

UPDATE

I wanted to specifically call attention to this criticism at Quartz, which actually… doesn't really disagree with anything either here or in the report. It's full of good points, but what it's not is any kind of defense of either the Brookings Institution study or of the marketing of that study. Saying that it's a small-ish percentage of debt-havers that are carrying massive amounts of debt isn't controversial or unreasonable. It's actually probable! But presenting a definitive landscape of America's student debt based on heavily sampled data most recently updated in 2010 and heavily weighted to "reflect" America as a whole is lot less useful. (Have we not been through this on a daily basis with the Huffington Post Science section, after all?)

46 Comments

The post That Big Study About How the Student Debt Nightmare Is in Your Head? It's Garbage appeared first on The Awl.

Nami yo Kiite Kure follows love "of tears & laughter" between 2 adults in Sapporo

Barrage's Horikoshi starts My Hero Academia; Hunter x Hunter goes on 1-week break

WOAH DUDE. WOAH.

Also on Tapastic…

elasmosaurus:

Sherlock, John, Moriarty, Irene and Molly.

Inspired by SDCClocked.

Edit: Now with Lestrade and Mycroft

bsabo:

ghostdeer:

'The Bone Bestiary'

A collaborative screen print with B.Sabo, based on a mutual appreciation of skulls and mythical creatures.

⇢ CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE ⇠

A thing I made with britt c.h. !

reblog

Polypheme and Odyssea, my combatants for Jenn Woodall’s FIGHTZINE, featuring an all-female cast of fighting game characters. These ended up being closer to Dark Souls enemies (maybe my Ornstein and Smough), but hey. 

I picture these two as invulnerable from the front and weak to the rear, with Polypheme’s shield and spear, and Odyssea’s gun keeping the player at bay. I imagine you’d get a few seconds to wail on their weaker side before being skewered on Polypheme’s flaming trident and hurled across the screen.

I knew I wanted to do a pair from the beginning, but I couldn’t really figure things out. I tried out some stuff with a tandem bow, one holding and aiming, the other drawing back the arrow, but visually it didn’t work. Things didn’t really develop until I drew Polypheme’s giant shield, and even then, it wasn’t until the shield became a face with a mouth that the pair clicks. The shield became a cyclops later, after looking at some Indian puppet masks, I think. She became Polypheme, and the other became Odyssea. The trident was a sword originally, but, Polyphemus, being the son of Poseidon, already has a link to the trident. The flaming part of the trident is a small nod to the flaming wooden stake Odysseus uses to blind the cyclops. 

I have a big reference folder full of matchlock guns from different time periods, culled from a few trips down the ol’ Google images rabbit hole, so that popped up. It seems mindlessly scanning Google images or Tumblr or whatever would just be a timesink and nothing else, but you never know. It pays off to keep track of the things you find visually stimulating, just in case.

These are two disparate examples of how I design characters — sometimes a lot of narrative choices go into the character, like in Polypheme, and sometimes it’s just a collection of interesting shapes, patterns, etc, like with Odyssea. The first is active, where I’m trying to fulfill some mental picture, the second is reactive, where I’m building the narrative after the shapes come together. They both have their merits.

I’m happy to add this piece of tonal dissonance to what is otherwise shaping up to be a very fun zine.

fifthelementbook:

HELLO MEATPOPSICLES!

A new artists has joined us! The very talented KALI CIESEMIER.

We cannot tell you how excited we are haha.

We are a little bit less than 5k away to our goal!

The 79 participating artists:

Angi Pauly - Angela Rizza - Amelia Dolezal - Ashley Floréal - Ashley Mackenzie - Babs Tarr - Bethan Mure - Calvin Boetto - Camila Fortuna - Casey Parris - Chelsea Kenna - Christopher Cunetto - Daniel Shaffer - David Saracino - DeAnna Yarbrough - ElephantWendigo - Elliot Boyette - Emanoel Melo - Eric Haddad - Erica Henderson - Erika Wagner - Evon Freeman - Fleur Sciortino - Helen Mask - Ian Moore - Jabari Weathers - James Fenner - Jen Mundy (soon Bartel) - Jenn Woodall - Jérôme Mireault  jjacsso - Joule Hahn - Jovo Ve - J.C Arenas - Julianna Michek - Kadi Fedoruk - Kai Schuettler - Kali Ciesemier -  Karina Rehrbehn- Kat Michaelides - Katarina Kühl - Kathryn Layno - K.R.Mayer - Leonard Peng  Lin Visel - Linda Tran - Magenta King - Manuel Kilger - Martina Cecilia - Matt Rockefeller - Matteo Berton - Mel Skopt - Mike Bear - Molly Mendoza - moon - Mulele Jarvis - Murat Turan - Nadia Enis - Natalie Hall - Pana Stamos - Paul Reinwand - Péah - - Rachel Suggs - Rebecca Lugo - Ricardo Bessa - Richie Pope - Rocky Bergen - Sabdiasep Mercado-Adorno - Sasha Pes - Shannon May - Stephen Morrow - Tera Benoit - Tina Solstrand - Tomos ‘eyeliketype’ James - Toni Infante - Torrion Dear - Yasmin Khudari - Ziqian Xu

KICKSTARTER is almost over ONLY 11 DAYS LEFT!

Extraterrestrial greetings,
Karina and Joule

I hope y’all show some love to the 5th Element Artbook Kickstarter—I would REALLY REALLY like to draw some fanart for my favorite movie and see what all the other great artists come up with! There’s 11 days to go and it could use more backers!

contagiouscostuming:

Our Prince Robot IV costume premiered at Heroescon on Sunday.  I’m pretty proud of it!

Huge thanks to Blake at Distractotron for the shots!

I made a quiz which determines which character you'd be on Game of Thrones.

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