By “Cornelius Stuyvesant”

[This opinion piece was submitted to us; the author would rather not use his name, but we thought it was sufficiently indicative of some opinions on the new Comixology App that it was worth running. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of The Beat -- Editor]

Comixology has always had great PR when it came to interaction with the overall comic book community. A lot of talk regarding how important local stores are, the role of digital comics in expanding the marketplace, customer focused products, and so on have been a stable of any interview or con appearance the company has done.

All this was reinforced with the role Comixology played in having a popular iOS application that made digital comics an impulse purchase for the non-comic reading public. This can not be overstated enough as for a long time now the only people that have bought comics are those that have set out to buy comics. Getting comics into the hands of people whose goal was never to make that purchase is the only way the industry could grow. The Comixology app fill that role in a high visibility way when the iPad was new any and everyone was desperate to put these new devices to some unique use.

With the removal of in app purchases from the Comixology app this function of facilitating casual purchases is now gone. Customers have to once again make the decision to buy a comic, and go to a place designated for that purpose and that purpose only. Comixology has gone from a virtual spinner rack in high traffic areas to a virtual comic book store.

Many have been defending this move as a way to make publishers and creators more money by no longer giving Apple 30% of all purchases. At the same time no apparent consultation with publishers and creators was part of this decision making process, and its quite likely one of the largest values creators received from listing comics through Comixology was the increased visibility. A benefit that is now removed.

Additionally, if an increased % of all purchases is important why does anyone buy Image Comics from Comixology and not always direct from the Image Comics store front where the publisher receives 100% of all money without paying a “Comixology Tax”?

In the long run, hopefully this will open everyones eyes as to what the Amazon purchase of Comixology means. If we give Comixology the benefit of the doubt and assume they really did mean 100% of everything they have said in regards to their desire to be a positive contributor to the comics community we have to understand that none of that applies any longer.

From here on out, Comixology is nothing more then technology for Amazon to exploit and maximize money from. Its no longer the company you may have enjoyed doing business with, now its something else. This is proven by the fact that this last update is all about changes that are good for Amazon with nothing that is positive for the end customers.

If you look ahead its pretty easy to see where Amazon will be with this in a few years time. The Kindle app has a horrible reading experience for comics and even magazines. Integrating Comixology technology into the Kindle app is a no brainer. At that point, does there really need a stand alone comics reading app? The death of the Comixology app with all functionality integrated into the Kindle app is very likely.

From a digital comics perspective, we were already on a trend of publishers taking a more assertive role in their digital comics offerings. Marvel has made massive improvements on their Digital Comics Unlimited app, and there has even been rumors that Marvel may make this the one and only place for all Digital Marvel comics. Dark Horse has maintained an independent digital comics offering for years and it keeps getting better to the point where in many respects it surpasses the Comixology iOS application.

Image Comics and Rebellion have even gone a stop further by offering DRM free digital comic purchases. In this case there is no Apple tax, no Google tax, or even a Comixology tax. All the money goes strait to the publisher and the customer is left with a product they actually own and not one they simply rent from Comixology. Heck, even Humanoids has followed this model with great success, minus the DRM free component.

DC Comics is the only major publisher that appears to have no independent plans for how to manage digital comics in the future. Their approach seems to be content with making DC books be listed in as many other stores as possible. This is a far more open approach with the publisher not taking a strong hand to things but also leaves an appearance of the publisher just drifting along with the flow.

This balkanization of digital comics will hurt the industry in the long run as casual customers will no longer have a easy location to be exposed to the wide array of titles. Each publisher will need to take direct responsibility for outreach with other publishers not receiving a halo effect like has occurred in the past. This is not so bad for large publishers but independent titles will start to suffer.

I would not be surprised if a “independent digital comics” store came online spearheaded from publishers such as Thrillbent or Monkey Brain. Independent books in particular have a greater importance on exposure compared to profit and that might be their only chance to stay relevant.

As of right now, the only “safe” place to buy digital comics remains those that have DRM free offerings. As the marketplace matures and other companies jump into mix we will see how things change. Perhaps Amazon will surprise us all and treat comics the same way they treat music and allow for DRM free downloads that customers can actually own. But really don’t hold your breath, as there has been no indication that they will do that with e-books so it would be quite odd for them to switch to that approach with comics.

Harper Lee, author of one of the classics, To Kill a Mockingbird is celebrating her 88th birthday today and decided to make a rather big announcement. Digital Spy writes, “In a rare public statement released through her publisher, HarperCollins, Lee said: ‘I’m still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries. I am amazed and humbled that Mockingbird has survived this long. This is Mockingbird for a new generation.’ ” Just last year, the author was in a legal battle over the rights to the novel, which she said had been stolen from her by her literary agent through trickery. That suit was settled to Lee’s satisfaction and you’ll be able to purchase the novel digitally (both e-book and audio book versions) starting July 8.

(via Geekosystem)

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buzzfeedfood:

Toasts with the most: 21 awesome energy-boosting breakfast ideas. 

I’m no stranger to group storytelling. In high school, I wrote fanfic with a friend, swapping a spiral-bound notebook back and forth. During that same time I was working at a renaissance faire and my inbox overflowed with email threads of in-character letters. When I was in college, I was an active participant in a Star Trek sim. My World of Warcraft guild forums had a section dedicated to roleplaying. And in recent years, after I moved countries, my previously-local friends and I went through a short period of playing Parsely and Dungeons & Dragons via Google Hangouts.

So believe me when I say — if you like to roleplay, if you like collaborative storytelling, if you have gaming friends you can’t meet in person, Storium is what you’ve been looking for. 

I went into this one blind. April has been a hectic month for me, and though I had given the game a cursory look before I agreed to dig deeper, I didn’t have a solid understanding of what Storium actually was. “It’s a…simming game, kind of,” I said to my partner over dinner, after she asked what I was going to play that night. “With action cards, I think.” I shrugged, and took another bite of pasta. “It looks promising.”

It’s very promising. It’s also one of those games that’s difficult to condense into a pithy description (”online storytelling game” doesn’t do it justice). After I’d logged into Storium (it’s browser-based), watched the video, and skimmed through the instructions, I still didn’t have a good feel for it. That’s more on me than the developers — I learn by doing. I needed to dive in.

As I quickly figured out, Storium is essentially an elegant framework for simming, with the added kick of card game-ish mechanics. For the uninitiated, a play-by-post game (also called a sim) traditionally takes place on a message board or through an email list. There’s a basic premise, and a host who wrangles the players. Depending on the game, players either create whatever characters they fancy, or are given clearly defined roles (such as in the Star Trek sim I played — I was cast as the first officer, but was allowed to build my own character within that role). The players then take turns writing chapters or scenes, typically tagging other characters to pick up where they left off.

Storium operates similarly, but it’s got a structure more like a pen-and-paper RPG. Each story is a world, and every world has a narrator (read as: game master). Now, I imagine Storium is most fun when writing your own story from scratch, but it’s also got a set of pre-built templates you can use right away (which was perfect for me, as I lacked an abundance of time). The templates can serve as a customizable jumping-off point, or you can use them as-is. There’s a whole bunch of template worlds available — Urban Fantasy, Steampunk, Occult Horror, and so on. Me being me, I went with Space Adventure.

The narrator’s first task is to set the stage. Write your premise. Find a pretty picture to go with it. Specify whether this game will be public (which anyone can read and/or request a spot in) or private (just for you and your buddies). Specify how much of a time commitment your game will require (for example, 2-3 scenes per week). Line it up, and let it go.

If you don’t have specific players in mind, this is the point where you sit back and wait for folks to sign up. Otherwise, you can send email invites to friends. The narrator has complete control over who joins their game. If someone submits a character who doesn’t fit, you can send the request back, asking for revisions. You have this kind of control over invitees as well. As someone who has watched many an RP session crash and burn due to nonsensical characters, trust me, this is an awesome feature.

I enlisted my partner as my guinea pig. Side by side on the couch, we oooh-ed over how smooth the whole process was. I sent an invite. She got a tidy little character creation form, which she filled out and submitted. A minute or so later, I got an email notification letting me know someone wanted to join my game. Easy peasy.

Once I had a player on board, I was free to post a scene. The narrator can sow a scene with cards — challenge cards which will affect the narrative, item cards which can be required for later challenges, goal cards which behave like side quests. My partner had cards of her own, which she selected during character creation. Strengths and weaknesses (I was somewhat reminded of GURPS in this respect), assets, and a subplot (!), which gave her extra flavor. Each of my challenges required her to play a set amount of cards to overcome them, but she also had to describe the action taking place.

I could give her a setup, and I could try to guide her actions, but the decisions she made were ultimately her own, and they affected the way I wrote subsequent scenes. It’s a dynamic that’s instantly recognizable to anyone who’s ever roleplayed around a table. We were both delighted by it.

“This is exactly what we’ve needed,” she said. “We need to get our stateside friends in on this.”

Because, see, the reason the G+ Parsely and D&D sessions were short-lived is that my friends and I are busy. We all have various combinations of jobs and spouses and families, and as much as these things interfere with in-person gaming sessions, it’s exponentially worse when you factor in four different time zones. Storytelling games wither without the momentum generated by regular sessions, and preventing that wasn’t practical for us.

But an online game people can play on their own time, which automatically sends email updates when there’s something new to read, which requires you to check in just a couple times a week — that’s ideal for me. I bet it’s ideal for a lot of people. Not to mention this game’s presentation is slick. A friendly, easy-on-the-eyes user interface. An unobtrusive sidebar for out-of-character conversation. The means to nudge players that need to get moving (players can nudge the narrator, too). Storium streamlines everything that is messy about group roleplay. It’s like the Ikea closet organizer of online storytelling — simple, effective, uncomplicated.

Storium’s currently in open beta, though it requires a Kickstarter backing to play (they hit their funding goal in twenty-four hours, so yes, this is happening). To sweeten the deal, they’ve got an impressive roster of authors and game designers slated to create worlds (Mur Lafferty, Elizabeth Bear, and Nancy Holder, to name a few). I highly recommend that you check this one out.

Becky Chambers writes essays, science fiction, and stuff about video games. Like most internet people, she has a website. She can also be found on Twitter.

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It’s Monday morning and if you are feeling cranky I guarantee that browsing the We Are Comics tumblr will make you feel better. As reported by Steve Morris over the weekend, this is a Tumblr run by Rachel Edidin, Arturo Garcia, Elle Collins, and Sigrid Ellis, with social media help by Jen Vaughn, where people simply tell their stories about reading comics. All kinds of people, all ages, colors, genders…because comics ARE for everybody. I loved scrolling through and reading readers origin stories…they are so varied and enthusiastic and feel of love for imagination and creativity. It’s inspiring!

The above photo is from the entry by Christina “Steenz” Stewart, who is assistant Manager at Star Clipper, a comics shop in St Louis. She’s not a special case; she’s TYPICAL of the kinds of people who have come to the medium. And I think most people in the business get that now.

So, it turned out okay after all! Go out and be awesome.

Last month, Medrobotics, a corporation associated with Carnegie Mellon University, announced that it will start marketing robotic snakes to surgeons in Europe. These "snakes," when fed down a patient's throat, can help doctors access hard-to-reach locations within the human body during head and neck surgery, leading to faster recovery times.

But this is hardly the only use for robotic snakes, which swim, slither, crawl, and climb much like the real thing. For the past few years, researchers at labs around the world have been coming up with innovative new ways to put these cool (and terrifying!) robots to use. Here's what you need to know:

Who made the first robotic snakes?
Howie Choset, a robotics professor at Carnegie Mellon, is widely credited with fathering the robotic snake. He cofounded the company that's making the surgical robot snake, and he told the Huffington Post last year that, in fact, he's "afraid of snakes," but he notes that his snake robots are "nice and friendly."

How do robotic snakes move?
According to the Biorobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon, there are at least 10 main "gaits" robotic snakes perform, including sidewinding, corkscrewing, rolling, swimming, pole climbing, and cornering. The researchers say that they have been able to mimic all "biological gaits" found in snakes, and in some cases, develop those that "go beyond biological capability." Researchers also develop gaits for specific tasks, such as "stairclimbing, gap crossing, reaching into a hole in a wall [and] railroad track crossing." Here is a video of a robotic snake moving up a pole:

Wait, robotic snakes swim?! How?
Robotic snakes are buoyant, so as long as they're covered in waterproof skin, they can skim the top of the water, utilizing wireless control. Other designs can swim entirely underwater—up to 200 feet deep—which is cool if you care about things like getting rid of water pollution, and totally terrifying if you like to go swimming. Here's an example of an underwater robot snake, designed by the Tokyo-based HiBot.

Do any of the snakes have names?
Some of the snakes do have names: Uncle Sam, Frostbite, Molly, Pepperoni, and Spooky Snake.

What can robotic snakes be used for?
Robotic snakes have lots of cool uses. For example:

1. Search and rescue

Search and rescue dogs are vital to sniffing out survivors after an urban disaster, like a building collapse or earthquake. But there are places rescue dogs can't reach. That's where the search-and-rescue snake robot—developed by Carnegie Mellon's Biorobotics Lab and Ryerson University's Network-Centric Applied Research Team—comes in. The researchers came up with a method called "Canine Assisted Robot Deployment," whereby once a dog nears a victim, its bark triggers the snake robot to leap from its pack and start wiggling around, providing live video feed for rescuers.

2. Removing pollution from oceans and lakes
Designers at the Fortune Institute of Technology in Taiwan have proposed a way to use robotic snakes to rid bodies of water of harmful metals. The snakes are packed with bacteria that makes these toxins disintegrate. As the snakes "swallow" water, the bacteria break down the pollutants, ultimately draining out clean water. The bacteria also generate electricity that keep the snakes swimming. The idea is still in the early stages of development, but researchers say these robotic snakes could be used to clean up lakes, rivers, and oceans as early as 2020. Whether they will be still sadly swimming the oceans, long after humanity's demise, remains to be seen.

Yanko Design

3. Warfare
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) first developed a robotic snake back in 2009. The robot could be used to survey buildings, sewage systems, and other structures during urban and subterranean warfare, Defense Update reported. According to the news outlet, IDF aimed to use robot snakes to to deposit sensors in buildings to monitor activity and deploy explosives. The US Army has also worked on developing robotic snakes to investigate improvised explosive devices.

4. Inspecting nuclear power plants
Last year, Carnegie Mellon tested one of its robotic snakes at Austria's Zwentendorf nuclear power plant, which is inactive. Researchers hope that robots will be able to investigate the radioactive parts of nuclear plants and storage areas that might be unsafe for humans. According to the lab, their robotic snakes will be able to inspect and capture high-quality footage of "dry storage casks, waste storage tanks [and] piping within nuclear power plants." Hitachi Ltd. and Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy Ltd. also developed snake robots this year to probe one of the Fukushima nuclear plants.

5. Heart surgery

6. Exploring Mars
Researchers in Norway are developing a robotic snake to slither around the surface of Mars and work with a rover to collect samples. Researchers Pål Liljebäck and Aksel Transeth told Discovery News last year that while "the Spirit rover was lost after it became stuck in the sand on Mars," robotic snakes would be able to avoid these kinds of pitfalls. Carnegie Mellon's Choset told ABC News, "The snake robot could travel to cliffs and look underneath overhangs…It could find a crevasse, crawl down it, and extract a sample, which itself could tell us how Mars evolved as a planet."

James Steidl/Shutterstock.com

6. Scaring your friends

Illustration: Shout
 

My airplane home from Boston is delayed for takeoff, so the woman next to me pulls out her phones to get some work done. Like many of us, she has two—an iPhone for her personal life and a BlackBerry paid for by her employer. "It's a dog leash," she jokes. "They yank on it and I respond. If somebody from work emails me on Friday at 10 p.m., they're pissed if I don't write back in five minutes." When I ask whether she ever just turns it off, she shakes her head in annoyance, as though I'd uttered something profane. "My team leader would kill me," she says.

Cultural pundits these days often bemoan how people are "addicted" to their smartphones. We're narcissistic drones, we're told, unable to look away from the glowing screen, desperate to remain in touch. And it's certainly true that many of us should probably cool it with social media; nobody needs to check Twitter that often. But it's also becoming clear that workplace demands propel a lot of that nervous phone-glancing. In fact, you could view off-hours email as one of the growing labor issues of our time.

Consider some recent data: A 2012 survey by the Center for Creative Leadership found that 60 percent of smartphone-using professionals kept in touch with work for a full 13.5 hours per day, and then spent another 5 hours juggling work email each weekend. That's 72 hours a week of job-related contact. Another survey of 1,000 workers by Good Technology, a mobile-software firm, found that 68 percent checked work email before 8 a.m., 50 percent checked it while in bed, and 38 percent "routinely" did so at the dinner table. Fully 44 percent of working adults surveyed by the American Psychological Association reported that they check work email daily while on vacation—about 1 in 10 checked it hourly. It only gets worse as you move up the ladder. According to the Pew Research Center, people who make more than $75,000 per year are more likely to fret that their phone makes it impossible for them to stop thinking about work.

Over time, the creep of off-hours messages from our bosses and colleagues has led us to tolerate these intrusions as an inevitable part of the job, which is why it's so startling when an employer is actually straightforward with his lunatic demands, as with the notorious email a Quinn Emanuel law partner sent to his underlings back in 2009: "Unless you have very good reason not to (for example when you are asleep, in court or in a tunnel), you should be checking your emails every hour."

Constant access may work out great for employers, since it continues to ratchet up the pressure for turning off-the-clock, away-from-the-desk hours into just another part of the workday. But any corresponding economic gains likely aren't being passed on to workers: During the great internet-age boom in productivity, which is up 23 percent since 2000, the inflation-adjusted wages and benefits for college graduates climbed just 4 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

The smartphonification of work isn't all bad, of course. Now, we tell ourselves, we can dart off to a dental appointment or a child's soccer game during office hours without wrecking the day's work. Yet this freedom may be just an illusion; the Center for Creative Leadership found that just as many employees without a smartphone attended to "personal tasks" during workday hours as those who did possess one. Even if you grant the convenience argument, the digital tether takes a psychic and emotional toll. There's a Heisenbergian uncertainty to one's putative off-hours, a nagging sense that you can never quite be present in the here and now, because hey, work might intrude at any moment. You're not officially working, yet you remain entangled—never quite able to relax and detach.
 

If you think you're distracted now, just wait. By 2015, according to the Radicati Group, a market research firm, we'll be receiving 22 percent more business email (excluding spam) than we did three years ago, and sending 24 percent more. The messaging habit appears to be deeply woven into corporate behavior. This late in the game, would it even be possible to sever our electronic leash—and if so, would it help?

The answers, research suggests, appear to be "yes" and "yes." Indeed, in the handful of experiments where employers and employees have imposed strict limits on messaging, nearly every measure of employee life has improved—without hurting productivity at all.

Consider the study run by Harvard professor Leslie Perlow. A few years ago, she had been examining the workload of a team at the Boston Consulting Group. High-paid consultants are the crystal-meth tweakers of the always-on world: "My father told me that it took a wedding to actually have a conversation with me," one of them told Perlow.

"You're constantly checking your BlackBerry to see if somebody needs you. You're home but you're not home," Deborah Lovich, the former BCG partner who led the team, told me. And they weren't happy about it: 51 percent of the consultants in Perlow's study were checking their email "continuously" while on vacation.

Perlow suggested they carve out periods of "predictable time off"—evening and weekend periods where team members would be out of bounds. Nobody was allowed to ping them. The rule would be strictly enforced, to ensure they could actually be free of that floating "What if someone's contacting me?" feeling.

The results were immediate and powerful. The employees exhibited significantly lower stress levels. Time off actually rejuvenated them: More than half said they were excited to get to work in the morning, nearly double the number who said so before the policy change. And the proportion of consultants who said they were satisfied with their jobs leaped from 49 percent to 72 percent. Most remarkably, their weekly work hours actually shrank by 11 percent—without any loss in productivity. "What happens when you constrain time?" Lovich asks. "The low-value stuff goes away," but the crucial work still gets done.

The group's clients either didn't notice any change or reported that the consultants' work had improved (perhaps because they weren't dealing with twitchy freaks anymore). The "predictable time off" program worked so well that BCG has expanded it to the entire firm. "People in Brussels would go to work with a team in London that was working this way, and they came back saying, 'We've got to do this,'" Lovich says.

For even starker proof of the value of cutting back on email, consider an experiment run in 2012 by Gloria Mark, a pioneering expert on workplace focus. Mark, a professor at the University of California-Irvine, had long studied the disruptive nature of messaging, and found that office workers are multitasked to death: They can only focus on a given task for three minutes before being interrupted. Granted, there isn't any hard data on how often people were pulled away 20 or 30 years ago, but this level of distraction, she told me, simply goes too far: "You're switching like mad."

Mark decided to find out what would happen if a workplace not only decreased its email, but went entirely cold turkey. She found a group of 13 office workers and convinced their superiors to let them try it for a whole week. No digital messaging, full stop—not only during evenings and weekends, but even at their desks during the 9-to-5 hours. If they wanted to contact workmates, they'd have to use the phone or talk face to face.

The dramatic result? An enormously calmer, happier group of subjects. Mark put heart rate monitors on the employees while they worked, and discovered that their physical metrics of stress decreased significantly. They also reported feeling less plagued by self-interruptions—that nagging fear of missing out that makes you neurotically check your inbox every few minutes. "I was able to plan more what I was doing for a chunk of time," one worker told her.

When the message flow decreased, so did the hectic multitasking efforts. Mark found that workers were flipping between windows on their screens half as often and spent twice as much time focusing on each task. Again, there was no decline in productivity. They were still getting their jobs done.

Mark's and Perlow's studies were small. But they each highlight the dirty little secret of corporate email: The majority of it may be pretty useless. Genuinely important emails can propel productive work, no doubt, but a lot of messages aren't like that—they're incessant check-ins asking noncrucial questions, or bulk-CCing of everybody on a team. They amount to a sort of Kabuki performance of work—one that stresses everyone out while accomplishing little. Or, as the Center for Creative Leadership grimly concludes: "The 'always on' expectations of professionals enable organizations to mask poor processes, indecision, dysfunctional cultures, and subpar infrastructure because they know that everyone will pick up the slack."
 

Now, you could see these experiments as amazingly good news: It's possible to rein in some of our counterproductive digital behavior!

But here's the catch: Because it's a labor issue, it can only be tackled at the organizational level. An individual employee can't arbitrarily decide to reduce endless messaging; everyone has to do so together. "People are so interconnected at work, if someone tries to cut themselves off, they're punishing themselves," Mark notes.

Only a handful of enlightened firms have tackled this problem companywide. At Bandwidth, a tech company with 300-plus employees, CEO David Morken grew tired of feeling only half-present when he was at home with his six children, so he started encouraging his staff to unplug during their leisure time and actually prohibited his vacationing employees from checking email at all—anything vital had to be referred to colleagues. Morken has had to sternly warn people who break the vacation rule; he asks his employees to narc on anyone who sends work messages to someone who's off—as well as those who sneak a peek at their email when they are supposed to be kicking back on a beach. "You have to make it a firm, strict policy," he says. "I had to impose it because the methlike addiction of connection is so strong."

Once his people got a taste of totally disconnected off-time, however, they loved it. Morken is convinced that his policy works in the company's self-interest: Burned-out, neurotic employees who never step away from work are neither productive nor creative. It appears everyone wins when the boss offers workers ample time to unplug—tunnel or no tunnel.

For years, advocates of stricter gun laws have rallied at the barricades of the National Rifle Association's annual meeting. But this year, as the gun lobby convenes in Indianapolis, there's a new posse in town. They're mothers, they're survivors of gun violence, and some of them are both. And they're dead set on disarming the NRA of its outsize political power.

They operate as Everytown for Gun Safety, a new organization combining the grassroots group Moms Demand Action, launched after the Sandy Hook massacre, and Michael Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns. At a press conference in a packed downtown hotel conference room on Friday, the group unveiled a forceful new report and political ad.  

"We are in Indianapolis to send the NRA leadership a message," said Shannon Watts, the 43-year-old mother of five who founded Moms Demand Action. Americans can no longer abide by "a Washington lobby run by extremists," she said.

"Not Your Grandparents' NRA," a heavily annotated 21-page report, makes the case that there's a schism within the nation's biggest firearms group. "Today's NRA has remained true to its roots in some important ways," it begins. "The organization's gun safety and marksmanship programs remain useful contributions to the shooting sports and to public safety. And it is largely because of these nationwide programs that the organization is well known, and relatively well liked, in much of the country. This is the NRA most American gun owners know and trust."

"It was painful for me, but it's been even more difficult for my family," said shooting survivor Antonius Wriadjaja Everytown for Gun Safety

Then the report presents a stockpile of evidence showing how the NRA's leadership "puts Americans at risk" by fighting for the interests of gun manufacturing companies under the guise of defending citizens' constitutional freedoms. The Everytown report documents how the NRA has made it easier for felons to get guns, has fought local gun laws, and even backed an Indiana measure that would have expanded Stand Your Ground to include using lethal force against uniformed police officers. Everytown also calls out the NRA for blocking doctors from discussing safe gun ownership with their patients, as well as trying to keep military commanders from asking soldiers at risk of suicide about their personal firearms.

The new political ad, which airs in Indianapolis and Washington, DC, through the weekend, uses the pro-gun advocates' own words to make the case against them. "The presence of a firearm makes us all safer," intones 30-year-old Antonius Wiriadjaja, reciting the words of NRA figurehead Wayne LaPierre as he pulls up his T-shirt to reveal multiple scars. Wiriadjaja, whom I interviewed in Indianapolis, was shot in the chest in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, on July 5, 2013. The intended target was a young pregnant woman who was being hunted by her domestic partner; Wiriadjaja was a bystander caught in crossfire. The woman was shot in the leg and miscarried.* Others easily could have been hit, Wiriadjaja said: The shooting occurred in the middle of the afternoon, with children nearby. "There were two little girls and their mother and an elderly man very close to me when it happened." (The suspected shooter is in custody.)

Wiriadjaja maintains a blog where he details his recovery process with photos. "It was painful for me, but it's been even more difficult for my family and friends to watch me go through it," he told me. "They're hurting too. I wanted them to understand how I'm healing."

Getting survivors to tell their stories may be one of Everytown's most formidable weapons. "I'm a supporter of the Second Amendment, I'm a gun owner, and I'm paralyzed as the result of random gun violence," Jennifer Longdon said. Her then-fiancé, who was armed at the time, was also gravely injured when someone in another car riddled their car with bullets in 2004. "He was a good guy with a gun," she said, but it was no help.

Indiana state Rep. Ed Delaney spoke of the legions of responsible gun owners in his state. And he denounced the NRA leadership for using the premise that gun rights are under attack to get legislators to ease restrictions on guns. Just last month, lawmakers here passed a controversial bill allowing guns in school parking lots. "There is no threat to gun ownership in Indiana," Delaney said, anger rising in his voice.

A few blocks from the Everytown press conference, the NRA was raising the curtain on "spectacular displays" of weaponry from "every major firearm company in the country," banquets for its million-dollar corporate donors, and red-meat speeches from the likes of Sarah Palin, Oliver North, and Franklin Graham (who blamed Sandy Hook on godlessness).

There are plenty of responsible gun owners among the estimated 70,000 people enjoying the entertainment and firearms on display in Indianapolis. Polls show that the majority of gun owners also believe in universal background checks for buyers—a policy the NRA leadership continues to vigorously oppose.

Indeed, some striking data from the Pew Research Center makes clear that the NRA leadership is glaringly at odds with the views of most of its members. (The NRA, of course, has its own data suggesting the exact opposite.) According to Pew's polling from last year, no less than three-quarters of Americans who live in a household where they or someone else is an NRA member favor regulating private gun sales and sales at gun shows with background checks. A third of people from NRA households support a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. And 28 percent of gun owners believe that the NRA exerts too much influence over the debate about gun laws—as do 44 percent of all women.

If the well-financed and growing Everytown succeeds, those numbers may well rise and become even more conspicuous by the next time the NRA convenes for its annual bash.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said that the woman was not injured. We regret the error.

Three more previews of comics coming up for Free Comic Book Day on Saturday May the third… smaller, indie, action!

Scam Crosswords #0

Publisher: COMIXTRIBE

(W) Jason Ciaramella (A/CA) Joe Mulvey

Spinning out of the pages of the super-powered con-man series, SCAM, Eisner-nominated writer Jason Ciaramella (The Cape) and “the most dangerous man in comics” Joe Mulvey bring you an explosive one-shot featuring SCAM’s ultimate villain: Crosswords!  After being exiled from “Sin City”, Crosswords makes a power grab in Europe, using extreme means to take what he wants. His focus, however, never strays far from his ultimate goal of revenge on his old crew back in Vegas.

Epic #0

Publisher: COMIXTRIBE

(W) Tyler James (A) Matt Zolman, Fico Ossio (CA) Fico Ossio

After a freak experiment gives teenager Eric Ardor incredible powers, he does what you would do…he puts on a costume and becomes EPIC! Super strength, speed, flight, optic blasts…it’s a fanboy’s dream come true. Unfortunately, he’s just discovered he has one weakness…pretty girls! While most boys his age lose their cool around the hotties, EPIC loses his powers! Living in Miami, home to the zaniest super-villains AND the most bikinis per capita in America, it’s gonna be a problem…Not a dinky preview or a unfulfilling teaser, this is a super-sized, action packed, 32-page pilot issue of your new favorite super hero book…for FREE! Get it on May 3, and then grab the first issue of the new EPIC ongoing series the following Wednesday at your local comic shop!

Entropy

Publisher: EPICENTER COMICS

(W) Davor Radoja (A/CA) Well-Bee

A society divided into two classes: the Haves and the Have Nots. Controlled by a government that has banned and destroyed any form of media that it feels will corrupt the human mind. Yet there are those who hold secrets, who hold meetings, and who are prepared to fight for a better future… Get the special sneak-peak of the breathtaking and thrilling SF graphic novel, Entropy, in Previews this May! Also including, two short complete comics: Crosses and Vegetable.

Free Comic Book Day Preview: The Entropy Of Epic Scam Crosswords

Video games retailer GameStop will close between 120 to 130 of its 6,457 retail locations worldwide, the company announced. The move is part of a plan to focus more on mobile called "GameStop 3.0," according to what CEO Paul Raines said at GameStop's 2014 Investor Day yesterday. As part of that initiative GameStop will focus on Mobile and Apple-based devices by launching stand-alone chains like the AT&T-branded chain "Spring Mobile" and the Apple retailer "Simply Mac."

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Three previews of comics coming up for Free Comic Book Day on Saturday May the third. For kids with a little more sophistication…

The Tick

Publisher: NEW ENGLAND COMICS

(W) Jeff McClelland (A) Pietro, Duane Redhead (CA) Duane Redhead

This FCBD, NEC Press offers fans—both old and new!—a FULL-COLOR 32-page comic book with an ALL-NEW FULL-LENGTH Tick story! Plus exciting all-new backup features as well. “A Day at the Beach” starts out innocently enough for The Tick, Arthur, Bumbling Bee & their friends—until The Tick encounters an invasion force from under the sea! A story sure to be enjoyed by existing Tick fans as well as suitable to introduce new readers to the world of The Tick and his cohorts!

Courtney Crumnin

Publisher: ONI PRESS INC.

(W/A/CA) Ted Naifeh

A full-color Courtney Crumrin adventure for all ages! Holly is new to the creature-filled and magic-made town of Hillsborough and her classmates all agree on one thing – Courtney Crumrin is bad news! Will Holly heed their warnings or will Courtney finally find a friend?

Skyward

Publisher: ONI PRESS INC.

(W/A/CA) Ted Naifeh

A full-color Courtney Crumrin adventure for all ages! Holly is new to the creature-filled and magic-made town of Hillsborough and her classmates all agree on one thing – Courtney Crumrin is bad news! Will Holly heed their warnings or will Courtney finally find a friend?

Free Comic Book Day Preview: Courtney Crumnin Takes A Skyward Tick

Some new downloadable content is available for the Wii U Taiko Drum Master game, which was released in Japan last year. The update adds some free tracks, including Attack on Titan's "Guren no Yumiya" theme song, which sounds like the perfect accompaniment to some mad drumming.

Also available as free DLC are a handful of NES tunes released as an NES Remix tie-in. Tracks include the theme from Balloon Trip, "Fever" from Dr. Mario, The Legend of Zelda theme, and an NES Remix compilation. The game also has the Pokémon X/Y Trainer Battle Medley and a Monster Hunter 4 costume, which you can see in the header image to the right.

Via Siliconera

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Joseph Luster is the Games and Web editor at Otaku USA Magazine. His blog can be found at subhumanzoids. Follow him on Twitter at @Moldilox.

Oh my goodness. I usually don’t put “sexy” and “late ’80s cartoon” in the same sentence unless I’m describing unfortunate Google image search results, but this is downright smokin’. Let’s hear it for Saturday Morning Slow Jams. Take it away, POW!GRL.

Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

It’s happening, hurrah! Marvel have today announced the news that Greg Pak and Victor Ibanez will be the creative team for a Storm ongoing series. Starting this July, the series will see the character take off around the world on a one-woman peacekeeping mission. She’ll be toppling corrupt governments, stopping natural disasters – it sounds like she’ll be literally the greatest hero on the planet.

The series is set around the idea that the character – who has never had an ongoing series before, can you believe it – will be going proactive. Whereas for Cyclops and Wolverine this meant forming murder-teams and messing everything up, Storm’s mission is to help the planet in every way she can. By reaching her fullest potential and helping mankind, she’ll provide herself as a sort of mutant icon for everybody to look up to. And, when your idol is a mutant, it becomes a lot harder to be, y’know, anti-mutant.

We’re almost in spring! The weather is definitely getting better, even if the occasional cold winds come around. So to prepare, we’re doing a little pre-spring cleaning here at Tomopop.

We’re giving away one set of Persona 4 Half-Age Characters from Bandai. These are the same ones seen in our review by Martin. This contest will be simple, just leave a comment below saying what you’re looking forward to in spring.

You’ll have until April 30th to enter. This contest is open to fans worldwide, but if you live outside the United Kingdom we’ll kindly ask you to pay for the shipping. 

Gundam Build Fighters is a fun series about people using Gundam model kits to fight each other, and it’s absolutely oozing with references to both popular and obscure parts of the Gundam franchise. In the last episode, the anime pulls out what I think is the best reference of all, especially given the concept of the show.

In the final battle against the (scale-model) space fortress A Baoa Qu, the characters work together to take down a common threat. Among these characters is the father of the protagonist Iori Sei. Having won the silver medal at a previous tournament using a model of the original Gundam, in this scene Sei’s father Takeshi brings out the Perfect Gundam.

Though it did get a Master Grade model kit a number of years ago, the Perfect Gundam is not the most well-known Mobile Suit in the franchise. Its relative lack of popularity, however, is less important than its actual origin. The Perfect Gundam is featured as the hero’s Gundam in the 1982 manga Plamo Kyoushirou, which is premised around kids using Gundam models to fight each other in virtual reality environments. In other words, the appearance of the Perfect Gundam is actually an homage to the spiritual predecessor of the Gundam Build Fighters concept, reinforced by the fact that it’s the father of the hero who is using it.

Amazing.

In addition to its upcoming anime from Trigger, Ninja Slayer, "Bradley Bond and Philip Ninj@ Morzez'"s Japanese take on the American take on Japanese sci-fi and martial arts light novel series, is now inspiring a figma poseable figure from Phat! and Max Factory. Available for pre-order now, Good Smile Company will be shipping the item in September.  

figma Ninja Slayer

"Domo. I am figma Ninja Slayer. Fully articulated. Expect no mercy."

From the mysterious cyberpunk ninja novel with an anime series on the way, 'Ninja Slayer' comes a figma of Ninja Slayer himself!

• Using the smooth yet posable joints of figma, you can act out a variety of different scenes.
• A flexible plastic is used for important areas, allowing proportions to be kept without compromising posability.
• He comes with a number of hand parts allowing poses such as his 'aisatsu' and 'karate' poses! An alternate scarf part for more dynamic action poses is also included!
• Three expressions are included: His standard face, a half-Naraku face with effect parts and a Naraku Ninja face.
• Optional parts include his shuriken, shuriken throwing effect parts, a grappling hook, two types of sushi, dark red flame effect parts and an enemy ninja head part.
• A selection of speech bubbles are also included on a plastic sheet to display with him.
• An articulated figma stand is included, which allows various poses to be taken.

Product Details

Product Name

     figma Ninja Slayer (ふぃぐま にんじゃすれいやー)

Series

     Ninja Slayer

Manufacturer

     Phat

Category

     figma

Price

     ¥4,000 (Before Tax)

Release Date

     2014/09

Specifications

     ABS&PVC non-scale articulated figure with stand included. Approximately 130mm in height

Sculptor

    SCRATCH MODELIST

Cooperation

     Max Factory

Released by

     Phat!

Distributed by

     Good Smile Company

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Scott Green is editor and reporter for anime and manga at geek entertainment site Ain't It Cool News. Follow him on Twitter at @aicnanime.

Now, before we get started, allow me to be clear: grimdark is great! It has its place in the fantasy spectrum, and many works that fall under the grimdark or gritty heading are classics. Obviously, we here at Tor.com love our Abercrombie and Martin—which, really, they need to also be a vaudeville team—but sometimes we want a fantasy that’s more optimistic. Just a little, guys! C’mon, we’re not asking for much...

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The Goblin Emperor—Katherine Addison

Katherine Addison’s delightful novel is about many things, but at its (lovable) heart it’s a story about realizing that sometimes your quirks are your greatest strengths. Maia, half-elven, half-goblin, becomes Emperor when his father and three elder brothers are assassinated. He has to learn how to rule a distrustful kingdom while he investigates the murder, navigates the byzantine politics of his (primarily Elven) court, and, hardest of all, stays true to himself. The story doesn’t shy away from the horrors of executions or the ugliness of prejudice, but it also focuses on the power of compassion to bridge social differences and effect change.

The Face in the Frost—John Bellairs

A wizard named Prospero (not that one) teams up with his old friend, the adventurer Roger Bacon (OK, maybe that one), to confront an evil power attacking their kingdom. They know going into the fight that they’re outmatched, but what else can they do? Bellairs’ story, like all of his work, juggles truly effective horror with quirky humor. The book gives weight to both elements, owning up to the terror that would come with a fight against evil, but also never wallowing in that terror to the point of overwhelming the humanity of the book.

The Copper Promise—Jen Williams

Williams’ novel combines some of the tropes of grimdark, e.g. mercenaries, torture, and tragic backstories, with some of the higher ideals of sword and sorcery. Best of all, it treats what could have been a slog through brutal battles as a lighthearted adventure. This bright tone, combined with a biting sense of humor, make the book fun as well as epic. The fallen knight is more complicated than we think, the swordswoman-for-hire is as handy with snark as she is with a sword, and... what’s this? The main character’s arc is one of rediscovering his humanity after a horrible trauma, rather than a slow degradation into despair? Is it possible?

Riftwar Series—Raymond E. Feist

Several denizens of Twitter suggested Feist’s work as an antidote to grit! The central conceit of the Riftwar books are the rifts themselves—they can join worlds, but those who travel through them can seek communication and exploration, or war and conquest, and the series explores many permutations of these choices. Sure, it has has war right there in the name, but it also has characters who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, who take chances on trusting each other (and have that trust rewarded), rulers who choose mercy over murder, and candidates for the throne who abdicate so that better people can lead. We’re a long way from Westeros when we’re reading Feist.

Shannara Series—Terry Brooks

These are more high fantasy style, involving hero quests in addition to mundane acts of heroism. As he says in his 2003 book Sometimes the Magic Works, his “protagonists are cut from the same bolt of cloth as Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. It was Tolkien’s genius to reinvent the traditional epic fantasy by making the central character neither God nor hero, but a simple man in search of a way to do the right thing....I was impressed enough by how it had changed the face of epic fantasy that I never gave a second thought to not using it as the cornerstone of my own writing.“

Chrestomanci Series—Diana Wynne Jones.

All of Diana Wynne Jones’ books could be on this list, but we’ll stick with the Chrestomanci Series, and particularly, The Lives of Christopher Chant. People die, parents split up, and villainous uncles trick nephews into nefarious schemes, but Wynne Jones still gives us characters to root for and dashes of hope. Christopher Chant himself is good-hearted (occasionally bitchy, but good-hearted), going out of his way to help a young goddess, and forging a friendship with the awesomely-named Throgmorten the Cat.

The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars—Steven Brust

Brust’s novel is about a painter creating oil paintings and putting an art show together. It’s also a retelling of the Hungarian tale of Taltos, who uses expert-level trickster skills to con the sun, moon, and stars away from the monsters who own them. The stories parallel each other in fascinating ways, but much of the weight is given to the modern story of a person who is part of both an artistic community and a supportive relationship. This allows the book to work as an inspiring tale of the value of art, rather than just another quirky fairytale mashup.

Range of Ghosts—Elizabeth Bear

Range of Ghosts, the first book in Bear’s Eternal Sky trilogy, gives us an epic fantasy world influenced by Central Asian culture. Temur, a grandson of the Great Khagan, and Samarkar, the former princess of the Rasa dynasty who abdicated her royalty to become a wizard, must stand together against the hidden cult that has caused civil war throughout the empires of the Celadon Highway. While this is a complex book, with layers of religious tradition and political intrigue, Bear also focuses on the characters at the story’s center, and, as Liz Bourke said in her review, “the significance of a single life, united with other single lives,” and “moments of kindness and stillness amidst the horror of war,” creating an epic with a beating, human heart.

The Dragon’s Path—Daniel Abraham

The Dragon’s Path is epic fantasy that picks up after the dragons have gone, leaving behind thirteen races who were bred to serve them. Now those races squabble and war with each other as they try to map an economy and political destiny. While there is a lot of page-time spent on pseudo-Renaissance banking systems, Abraham also takes the time to give us several point-of-view characters that enrich the story with humanity. He chooses to focus on a higher-class couple who would probably be the villains in most books, but here are made worthy of empathy.

Little Big—John Crowley

Little, Big unfolds over nearly a century, as the Drinkwater clan builds an intricate relationship with the world of faerie. We meet the human family, hear rumors of magical beings, visit a dystopian City, and spend some time with a Grandfather Trout who might be a cursed prince. Crowley isn’t afraid to slow down and ponder heady subjects like free will and fate, or to tell his story through intricate detail and gorgeous language, which led to a novel that Ursula le Guin said, “…all by itself calls for a redefinition of fantasy,” and Thomas Disch called “the best fantasy novel ever. Period.”

Lyonesse Trilogy—Jack Vance

This trilogy melds Arthurian stories, chivalric tropes, and Celtic mythology into a story of a despotic king, his daughter, and her lover. Since Vance took elements from several different medieval periods and used those elements to bring life to his own magical lands, he can play around with references to stories and echoes of themes, such as the fall of Atlantis, without being tied to an expected narrative. While the story itself is not exactly lighthearted, it does feature plenty of humor, fun, and romance. He also uses the Atlantean references to tinge the whole story with melancholy—how long can Lyonesse last? Does the possibility of the Kingdom’s end overshadow the joy that can be had in the moment?

The Innkeeper’s Song—Peter S. Beagle.

We talk about The Last Unicorn a lot on this site, because The Last Unicorn is fucking awesome. But! Peter S. Beagle did so much more! So when a Twitterer mentioned Beagle’s work, I decided to highlight The Innkeeper’s Song. Beagle jumps across multiple points of view to weave several different quests together. Tikat pursues his childhood love, whom he saw resurrected by magicians. Lal and Nyateneri, the magicians, are racing to save their old mentor from his powerful but evil student. Lukassa, the resurrected girl, has her own path to pursue. And the Innkeeper himself must take them all in, even though he knows they bring trouble with them. Through nested quests and elegant language, Beagle tries to get to the heart of death, love, and duty.

The Curse of Chalion Series—Lois McMaster Bujold

This series is a melding of fantasy and theology informed by elements of medieval Spanish history and mysticism, especially the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella in the late 15^th Century. The Curse of Chalion follows Lupe dy Cazaril, who returns home after war and enslavement to try to live a quiet life, but instead finds himself working to lift the curse that lays on the royal family that has acted as his patron. A little bit epic, a little bit slice of (imaginary, alternate universe) life, the series takes questions of morality and duty seriously, without succumbing to endless bouts of violence or despair.

So, this is our list, but we’re sure there are more upbeat fantasies out there—give us your suggestions! Do you want some light to cut through the grimdarkness, or are do you prefer your fantasy as gritty as possible?

Leah Schnelbach believes that the grimdarkness of her own personal far future will be averted if she gets to read a sequel to The Goblin Emperor.

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

There are many sides to whistleblowing. The one that most people don't know about is the very personal cost, prison aside, including the high cost of lawyers and the strain on family relations, that follows the decision to risk it all in an act of conscience. Here's a part of my own story I've not talked about much before.

At age 53, everything changed. Following my whistleblowing first book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, I was run out of the good job I had held for more than 20 years with the US Department of State. As one of its threats, State also took aim at the pension and benefits I'd earned, even as it forced me into retirement. Would my family and I lose everything I'd worked for as part of the retaliation campaign State was waging? I was worried. That pension was the thing I'd counted on to provide for us and it remained in jeopardy for many months. I was scared.

My skill set was pretty specific to my old job. The market was tough in the Washington, DC area for someone with a suspended security clearance. Nobody with a salaried job to offer seemed interested in an old guy, and I needed some money. All the signs pointed one way—toward the retail economy and a minimum-wage job.

And soon enough, I did indeed find myself working in exactly that economy and, worse yet, trying to live on the money I made. But it wasn't just the money. There's this American thing in which jobs define us, and those definitions tell us what our individual futures and the future of our society is likely to be. And believe me, rock bottom is a miserable base for any future.

Continue Reading »

Apparently net neutrality is officially dead. The Wall Street Journal reports today that the FCC has given up on finding a legal avenue to enforce equal access and will instead propose rules that explicitly allow broadband suppliers to favor companies that pay them for faster pipes:

The Federal Communications Commission plans to propose new open Internet rules on Thursday that would allow content companies to pay Internet service providers for special access to consumers, according to a person familiar with the proposal.

The proposed rules would prevent the service providers from blocking or discriminating against specific websites, but would allow broadband providers to give some traffic preferential treatment, so long as such arrangements are available on "commercially reasonable" terms for all interested content companies. Whether the terms are commercially reasonable would be decided by the FCC on a case-by-case basis.

…The FCC's proposal would allow some forms of discrimination while preventing companies from slowing down or blocking specific websites, which likely won't satisfy all proponents of net neutrality, the concept that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. The Commission has also decided for now against reclassifying broadband as a public utility, which would subject ISPs to much greater regulation. However, the Commission has left the reclassification option on the table at present.

So Google and Microsoft and Netflix and other large, well-capitalized incumbents will pay for speedy service. Smaller companies that can't—or that ISPs just aren't interested in dealing with—will get whatever plodding service is left for everyone else. ISPs won't be allowed to deliberately slow down traffic from specific sites, but that's about all that's left of net neutrality. Once you've approved the notion of two-tier service, it hardly matters whether you're speeding up some of the sites or slowing down others.

This might have been inevitable, for both legal and commercial reasons. But that doesn't mean we have to like it.

bonjour700:

ガンダム特急「ラピート」公開！２６日からの運行準備完了

Monica Rambeau is on her fourth superhero codename. In the pages of Mighty Avengers she's Spectrum, having previously gone by Captain Marvel, Photon and Pulsar. The Captain Marvel identity now belongs to Carol Danvers, also on her fourth codename after Ms. Marvel, Binary and Warbird. Her first codename now belongs to Kamala Khan, the fourth Ms. Marvel after Danvers, Sharon Ventura and Karla Sofen.

But Carol is actually the third woman (and seventh character) to call herself Captain Marvel in the Marvel Universe. The second woman was Phyla-Vell, who was the fourth Captain Marvel after she was the second Quasar, before she was the first Martyr, before she saved herself the trouble of another codename by dying. Oh, those women! They never know who they are!

Continue reading…

OMOCAT isn't just a rad art person. She's also making a game, one that you should check out if you like some other game called Earthbound.

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emilenox:

My Ghibli poster for the NW Film Center! Whisper of the Heart.