After saying less than a month ago that its deal to pay Comcast for direct access to its customers had little to do with net neutrality rules, entertainment streaming service Netflix has changed its tune and has come out swinging against America's top service providers.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in a blog post on Thursday that once it agreed to pay Comcast its subscribers no longer had any problems with service speeds.
Client: In the first proof you sent me, the blue is too dark. Now it’s too light.
Me: Do you have a sample of the blue you would like?
Client: The blue needs to be the colour of the sky on a beach in Turkey.
[Update: More images added!]
We've known about her even since she emerged at WonFes, and she popped up for a very quick cameo in Kahotan's preview of Ryuko. Now though we've got our first full-on look at the painted version of Nendoroid Mako, courtesy of Good Smile Company's newest NicoNico broadcast.
Though it's no surprise to see Mako done up in her finest, this shot does confirm a few things. We've got her trademark index finger gesture, and also the inclusion of the Mankanshoku family dog Guts, complete with hoody and plate of food. That's a cool bonus for a character who might have been a little light on them otherwise. More Mako as soon as further details emerge.
[via figsoku]
![[UPDATED] Nendoroid Mako turns up, shows off her Guts screenshot](http://www.tomopop.com/ul/33958-1395332098036.jpg)
kateOkay, I'm mostly sharing this for Veronica Mars. Look at that chart, it actually makes no sense why it was canceled! Also, I can't believe people liked S3 that much, it kinda hurts me.
Enable JavaScript to check out our fancy slideshow.
You can hover over the dots at the links to see what the individual episodes are. Surprising no one, that bit 'o green all the way at the bottom of BSG's second season is Black Market.
All over the place. Fitting.
So few. *sniffles*
Yeah, looks about right.
I assume the stats were thrown off by an increased sample size post-season one, because there is no way season three is better than the previous two.
Lowest-rated is "Where the Wild Things Are," aka The One Where Buffy and Riley Had a Lot of Sex.
Wow, season two's Shades of Gray apparently really sucked
OK, this is hilarious.
Or not, in some cases. To get more mathy with it, software engineer Kevin Wu‘s Graph TV compiles the IMDB user ratings for the episodes of any given TV show and converts them into handy-dandy graphs. It’s an interesting starting point for discussion, if not the definitive determination of a show’s increasing or decreasing level of suck. For example, the ratings for season seven of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are way too high. What the hell, IMDB users?!
(via: A.V. Club
Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?
Journal is a game with problems. I was on board with so many things about it — wandering through the pages in a notebook, the shadow puppet interludes, the mystery of a young girl whose beloved diary has gone blank. It’s a simple game, one that revolves around talking to other characters and piecing the story together. I’m normally all for adventure games of this sort, but I had trouble getting into this one. The wandering was too open-ended, leaving me sometimes at a loss for what I should do next. There were incongruous moments where a character would reference a past event, and my character had full knowledge of what they were talking about. Weren’t we supposed to be filling in the blanks together? Apparently not. The effect left me feeling distanced from the story.
It wasn’t until the day after, when I started reflecting on the game, that it started to bother me. Really bother me. The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want to write about it. I wanted to let this one lie. The nameless protagonist of Journal is a young girl, who I placed somewhere between eleven and fourteen. That’s an age range I do not like thinking about. And even though Journal’s girl was wrestling with things that I largely did not, the way she reacted to them left me feeling bruised.
Early adolescence was not an easy time for me (is it for anyone?). I was the weird kid, the nerdy kid, the kid with glasses and braces and acne. My clothes weren’t right. My hair wasn’t right. The fact that I usually got top scores on tests and projects did not do me any favors. The other kids reminded me of this on a daily basis, during the long walk between classrooms. There was a stretch in the seventh grade where I would eat my lunch as fast as humanly possible, then spend the remainder of recess acting as if I was on my way to do things. I would visit the bathroom several times, even though I didn’t have to use it. I would go to the locker bay and pretend to be searching for something in my belongings. I walked purposefully, zig-zagging my way around campus, trying to give the impression that I had somewhere to be. If I stopped, if I chose to read a book or doodle instead, someone might notice that I was spending lunchtime alone. That was the kiss of death.
I stopped doing my homework. I stopped wearing my glasses, even though it meant that I couldn’t read the whiteboard. My grades, naturally, plummeted. My parents were frustrated and disappointed, as were my teachers. I sat through endless parent-teacher meetings where I’d just shrug and mumble when questioned. I never told any adults what was going on. I never told anyone that I was being bullied, that some kids had gotten into the habit of following me home, so they could continue yelling things at me from across the street. I never explained why my behavior was changing, because I didn’t understand it myself.
So when Journal’s protagonist gives her shy, awkward friend Elena a half-hearted apology for leaving her waiting alone on the playground for an hour, or when she ‘fesses up to playing a prank on nerdy know-it-all Anne, I got angry. I got angrier still as I was given dialogue options to lie to them about what I’d done. I knew that girl. The not-quite-popular kid who joins in on the bullying, not out of actual meanness, but out of desire for approval. The collaborator. I did not feel sorry for her.
But it was the little girl in me who was getting angry. Adult me was concerned. It was a similar feeling to one I’ve developed in recent years, as some of my friends have started having kids of their own. What had been going on with the kids who picked on me? What kinds of hurt had they been dealing with that made them want to hurt someone else? I have wondered this with particular regard toward the worst of my bullies, a spiteful boy who even the popular kids shied away from. What the hell had happened in that child’s life to make him lash out at everyone he met? Did he get help? Did he get better? (I went to high school with him as well. The prognosis was not good.)
As the game progressed, I found myself not only empathizing with the kids who had been mean to me, but recognizing myself as well. I did not have the same family issues that the girl in Journal did, but that didn’t matter. What I saw was a little girl in a lot of pain, doing stupid, unhelpful things in response to feelings she didn’t know how to process. That, I understood. I understood why she froze up when adults confronted her, their words streaming into gibberish. She was trying to disappear. She was trying to withdraw from the things she’d done wrong, because she didn’t know why she’d done them.
And I understood, too, why she was mean to people who had done nothing to deserve it. It is tempting to focus only on the people who’ve wronged you, to write yourself into a narrative where you have never ever done the same to someone else. But I did, just as the girl in Journal did. There are two girls from my childhood who I wish I could turn the clock back for. One from fourth grade, who I willingly and purposefully made cry, after realizing that she was even lower on the totem pole than I was. I felt ugly after the fact, and I knew what I’d done was wrong, but I never apologized. Like in Journal, it was easier to hide from my guilt than admit that I’d done something bad. The other girl was from middle school, that same time when I was feigning busyness in the locker bay. She was nice to me. She reached out. I brushed her off. Why? Why would I ignore someone nice, when I was so lonely? Was I protecting myself? Was I holding out for approval from someone cool? Was I afraid of aligning myself with another misfit? Was I trying to tap into that power of rejection that my bullies wielded?
As Journal suggests, probably all of the above. There is perhaps nothing more human than to react to pain by causing pain. That’s why we so admire those who respond to injustice with kindness and forgiveness, because the ability to do that freely is rare. Acting with anger is so much easier. My own memories of that make me squirm. To those girls I mentioned above, I was the collaborator. Would it matter if I could find them today and tell them that I was sorry, that I didn’t mean it, that I was a dumb kid dealing with her own nonsense? They might appreciate the apology, but it wouldn’t erase the hurt I caused. You can tear out pages, but you can’t change the fact that they were written.
As I thought about the missteps I made, I found myself calling up a well-worn fantasy. Having mastered the art of time travel, I step confidently through a temporal portal into the locker bay of my old middle school. My younger self has watched a lot of Star Trek, so once she gets over the initial surprise, she is cool with this. She notices that my teeth are straight, my skin’s cleared up, and though I still don’t know what to do with my hair, I’ve settled into an accord with it. I look pretty good in glasses, too. I give my younger self a big hug, and tell her that her life is going to be awesome one day. I tell her that her parents love her very much, and that even though it’s hard to talk about what the other kids say to her, the things they say aren’t true, and telling someone will help. I point toward that nice, quiet girl from social studies class. “She seems like she could be a good friend,” I say. “Don’t ignore her. She’s being genuine.” Then I march into the principal’s office with a printed list of names. All the kids who bullied me. One of them is underlined. “These kids are hurting,” I say. “You should find out whether everything’s okay at home.”
I realized, as I tried to wrap myself in that imaginary blanket, that urge — the urge to rewrite your own story — is Journal in a nutshell. The girl in that game couldn’t fix the things she’d done, even though she feigned ignorance, or placed the blame elsewhere. The more she tried to hide from the past, the more it came back to bite her. All she could do at the end was learn to recognize which things weren’t her fault and which things were — and then learn to accept them all.
Despite my issues with the gameplay, I admire Journal for driving that message home.
Journal is available for Windows and Mac. It can be purchased on Steam or straight from the developer.
Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?
I’m pretty sure I’ve gone through the Forest of Frustrations in every single campaign I’ve ever played. (via io9)
A truly excellent variant cover for The Powerpuff Girls #8. (via Dan Hipp)
The Diction-Fairy. (via Boing Boing)
Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?
The katana, or samurai sword, is famed throughout the world for being the perfection of sword design. It has become the symbol of the samurai class, and Japan as a whole, to the outside world. To the Japanese the katana is also a symbol of their culture and national pride. During the Meiji restoration at the end of the 19th century (that sought to bring Japan into the modern world) many samurai rose in rebellion when the government sought to deprive them of the right to wear the katana as the symbol of their class. Even after the loss of the right to wear their swords in public the disbanded samurai families kept and revered their ancestral swords. However, at the end of the Second World War the American occupiers demanded that all Japanese households gave up all forms of weaponry, including the ancestral swords. Although this policy was later reversed to exempt the family katanas much of the damage had already been done and thousands of the weapons had been melted down or given out as trophies to American officers. Among these lost swords was the Honjo Masamune, known as the exemplar of Japanese sword-making perfection.
The name of the sword derives from the man who made it: Gorō Masamune (1264–1343 AD). Masamune is recognized as the greatest ever swordsmith in Japanese history. His swords are known for their unparalleled beauty and quality. Their quality is remarkable as the swords were made at a time when steel still contained many imperfections. So famous was his craftsmanship that all of the swords he made bear his name, such as the Honjo Masamume.
One legend about Masamune relates to a competition he had with his rival, Sengo Muramasa. Both men crafted swords and suspended them over a stream to test their quality. Muramasa’s blade cut everything that touched it, notably fish and leaves; by contrast Masamune’s sword cut only the leaves and repelled the fish. Muramasa took this as a sign that his sword was better and began to gloat. However, a wandering monk had been watching them and explained that Masamune’s sword was superior as it did not cut unnecessarily (i.e. living things). In cutting everything that touched it Muramasa’s sword showed its blood-thirsty and evil nature. As such this led to a tradition that a Muramasa blade must taste blood before being sheathed, even to the point of its owner having to harm himself to do so, in order to slake its evil thirst.
The other element of Honjo Masamune’s name comes from one of the men who owned it. Honjo Shigenaga (1540-1614 AD) was a general for the Uesugi clan in northern Japan. Honjo came to possess the Honjo Masamune at the fourth battle of Kawanakajima (1561), one of the greatest battles of the era. Honjo was attacked by an enemy officer who wielded the Honjo Masamune. During this duel the sword cleaved Honjo’s helmet in half, yet the great samurai survived to win the duel and claimed the sword which now bears his name. However, Honjo was not as good with money and he was with swordsmanship and by 1595 he was bankrupt. In order to raise more funds Honjo sold the sword to the Toyotomi family which, at that time, ruled Japan. 5 years later and the the Toyotomi family had fallen to a new Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Ieyasu made the sword a symbol of his dynasty, passing down from Shogun to Shogun for the next two and a half centuries. Even after the fall of the Shogunate in 1868 the sword remained in the private collection of the Tokugawa family. By the end of World War II the sword was in the possession of Tokugawa Iemasu who was, at the time, President of the House of Peers (Japan’s pre-war House of Lords). When the Allied Occupation Authority demanded that all the family swords be handed over many families reacted with fury at the request. Iemasu decided to act as the voice of reason and was one of the first to hand over the Tokugawa family’s entire sword collection, among them were the Honjo Masamune. These he delivered to the Mejiro police station in December 1945. The swords were picked up by a Sergeant of the US 7th Cavalry who is recorded as being called “Coldy Bimore”. Records of the US 7th cavalry do not show any man by that name serving in the regiment and it is likely that the name was a garbled phonetic spelling of the man’s name. However, this is the last record of the Honjo Masamune. It is possible that it was melted down like many others, however, I believe it is more likely that it was given as a trophy to an American officer as the quality of the Tokugawa sword collection was legendary and would have been obvious to the Occupation officials. Nevertheless the loss of this perfect sword is a tragedy, not just for Japan, but for any who respect the samurai tradition and the sacred nature of the katana.
In a side note: Masamune’s 24th generation descendent, Tsunahiro Yamamura, has a company that still makes katanas (as well as knives and scissors) in Kamakura.
This post is about a week late to the “Kill la Kill episode 22 was awesome” meeting, but Kill la Kill episode 22 was awesome. As far as I’ve seen, this has been the general consensus among fans of the show, and it’s no surprise given the fact that many of the show’s narrative threads reached their turning points in this episode. While 22 was packed with a ton of impressive moments (like the Evangelion reference with Ryuuko hunched over and covered in blood like EVA-01), I’d like to talk about ones that I enjoyed in particular.
1) The Glory of Mako and More
The return of Fight Club Mako will forever be one of the glorious highlights of Kill la Kill, but in that triumphant return there is also a serious Ira x Mako moment. I’ve been a fan of that particular pairing and of course as the show has progressed it’s turned very real and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. While people will talk about the fact that Gamagoori eats Mako-shaped croquettes in the episode as the Ira x Mako moment of the episode, I actually turn to Fight Club Mako’s appearance instead.
At the end of the episode, the heroes are attacked by a giant COVERS monster when out of a sky drops a dresser. As we know now, Mako in her banchou outfit is in there, but how does she introduce herself? Mako’s over-sized fist comes flying out of the dresser door and socks the giant monster, a feat of comedic spatial distortion the show normally associates with Gamagoori.
You can keep your croquettes.
2) Satsuki’s Radiance
In episode 22, Satsuki finally comes clean with her entire plan, and how she intended to use Ryuko as an x-factor in her rebellion against her mother’s global domination scheme, but realizes that manipulating others to serve her needs was the wrong way to go about it. Satsuki then apologies and takes a deep bow (the lower you go, the more humble and respectful you’re being, see Barack Obama), and then begins to emit a blinding light.
One of the visual icons of Satsuki throughout the series has been her literal radiance. When Satsuki appears, a blinding light shines forth from her, as if to say that she is simply that much more amazing than everyone else around her. It is as much a part of her character as her indomitable will and her giant eyebrows, but when you think about it, it hasn’t been around for quite a few episodes. To have the moment where Satsuki sets aside her pride also be the point at which she is at her most brilliant encapsulates the character so wonderfully that in an episode of great things it’s an absolute high-point.
In other words, to see the visual style of Kill la Kill match up so well with its narrative is just a rewarding experience.
kateNow I want to give even more money to Shake Shack.
A Shake Shack order
CREDIT: Flickr
Shake Shack, a burger chain with locations in Florida, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C. as well as international locations in the Middle East, Russia, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, pays starting workers $9.50 an hour outside of New York City and $10 an hour for New Yorkers, CEO Randy Garutti told ThinkProgress. It also offers full-time employees health, dental, vision, retirement, and disability benefits plus paid time off.
But on average, workers get $10.70 an hour thanks to a program it calls Shack Bucks. Every month, it gives employees a percentage of the company’s top-line sales. “It’s sort of immediate revenue sharing, not a long-term program,” he noted.
The company pays about 70 percent of employees’ health care premiums and also matches contributions to their 401(k)s. He added that he is “more excited” than all of these perks about how many employees move up into manager roles. “There are a lot of people who started making $9 an hour and are now general managers in our restaurants making very good money,” he said. The owners started in fine dining and brought the compensation practices from those restaurants into its original burger and hot dog stand.
When asked if these practices have come with concrete benefits for the company itself, he responded, “Absolutely,” adding, “Our turnover is lower, we can hire the best, they stay longer, and we can grow them into management.” And it pays off for customers. “If the team feels taken care of, then they’ll go out and take care of the guests.”
And he thinks other business owners in the fast food industry can take this approach and see similar results. “I know they can,” he said. “Because I just know that it works.”
And Shake Shack isn’t the only eatery taking this approach to its workforce. Michigan’s Moo Cluck Moo pays entry-level workers $15 an hour, a move its owners say leads to less turnover, better customer service, and more skilled employees. In-N-Out, a West Coast burger chain, pays $10.50 an hour for entry-level employees. Outside of the burger world, Boston-based burrito chain Boloco pays starting workers anywhere from $9 to $11 an hour, which the owner says increases loyalty and productivity and, in turn, profitability.
In light of the conversation to raise the minimum wage, others have decided to join in. Two pizza companies in St. Louis will soon pay at least $10.10 an hour. It has also spread outside of the food industry: clothing retailer The Gap recently announced it will also raise its lowest wage to $10.
But the fast food industry is notorious for low pay, where workers make so little that they consume $243 billion in public benefits each year just to get by. And while some executives argue that these jobs are just a starting place for teens earning extra cash, the reality is that the majority of workers are well out of their teenage years. Meanwhile, the average low-wage worker brings in half his or her family’s income, while more than a third of fast food workers are supporting children.
The post The Burger Chain That Pays $10 An Hour With Benefits appeared first on ThinkProgress.
Magical girl Creamy Mami drawn in the style of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures Hirohiko Araki. (via @yuukaakooo)
From manga artist Yukako / via Twitter, and this collection of amazing/hilarious/weird manga mash-ups of manga characters drawn in the style of another artist.
BTW, you can watch Creamy Mami on Anime Sols.
You can also check out Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures, published by VIZ Media, and Rohan at the Louvre, published by NBM, by Hirohiko Araki.
Tyrannosaurus rexis awesome. What’s not to love about a 40-foot-long, nine-ton predator with jaws that could crash down with over 12,800 pounds of force? And with “tyrant lizard king” as a title to boot, it’s no wonder that the Cretaceous carnivore has dominated our imaginations as the ultimate dinosaur.
But ol’ Tyrannosaurus was just the last and largest of a greater family of tyrants. In the 100 million year history of tyrannosaurs, there were crested hunters, giant fuzzballs, and dwarfed species that strode through Arctic snow. Bone by bone, these strange species are filling out the history of dinosaurian royalty.
[Read More]
1. Dryptosaurus
New Jersey seems an odd place for a tyrannosaur, but that’s where the first-described member of the famous family was found. In 1866, on the basis of a partial skeleton found in a Garden State marl pit, paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope described a predatory dinosaur he called Laelaps aquilunguis. A huge, wickedly-curved claw left no doubt in Cope’s mind that this dinosaur was the “devourer and destroyer” of all it could catch. Unfortunately for Cope, rival paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh later pointed out that Laelaps was already the name of a mite and so took the liberty of renaming the dinosaur Dryptosaurus.
The identity of Dryptosaurus was unclear for decades. Isolated bone and fossil tidbits aside, no other skeleton has ever been found. But eventually paleontologists concluded that this 68 million year old, roughly 25 foot-long dinosaur was a sleek tyrannosaur that could have grappled prey with long arms tipped in oversized claws.
2. Proceratosaurus
Dryptosaurus may have been named first, but it was actually among the last of the tyrannosaurs. The root of the tyrannosaurs goes back to animals such as Proceratosaurus. Discovered in 1910, this roughly 166 million year old dinosaur is principally known from a small, elongated skull with a little nasal horn on the end. The whole dinosaur was probably not much more than ten feet long.
Along with the dinosaur’s Jurassic age, the ornament led paleontologists to initially classify the theropod as a possible precursor to the impressively-adorned Ceratosaurus—hence the name—but, through more recent studies, paleontologists have concluded that Proceratosaurus was an early tyrannosaur. In the dinosaur’s heyday, 98 million years before T. rex, tyrannosaurs were slim pipsqueaks that stayed out of the paths of larger carnivores.
3. Dilong
Named in 2004, the 125 million year old Dilong added a significant detail to how paleontologists envisioned early tyrannosaurs. At least one specimen was preserved with remnants of simple protofeathers. Paleontologists had suspected that tyrannosaurs were covered in more than just scales, and here was the evidence that some tyrants were indeed fluffy. So while a fuzzy, six foot long Dilong would look quite different next to the later, bigger, deep-jawed tyrannosaurs, this small dinosaur nevertheless raised the question of just how many of its family shared a coat of archaic plumage.
4. Guanlong
Guanlong had more style than most other early tyrannosaurs. Another one of the svelte, long-armed forms that looked more “raptor” and less T. rex, this 160 million year old dinosaur had a flattened, oval shaped crest jutting up from its skull. Even better, paleontologists have uncovered multiple Guanlong of different life stages since the dinosaur’s description in 2006, with younger individuals having less of a crest than the adults. That’s a clue that showing off was important to mature Guanlong, but the meaning of those dinosaur displays is lost to the Jurassic.
5. Eotyrannus
China has been a hotbed for early tyrannosaur fossils—Dilong and Guanlong included—but the UK has turned out a significant store of these dinosaurs. In addition to Proceratosaurus, England can claim the 132 million year old Eotyrannus as their own. While still on the puny side, this 13 foot long carnivore was large enough to snatch young Iguanodon and other small prey with its long, three-clawed arms.
6. Yutyrannus
Another surprise from China, Yutyrannus showed that size was not a barrier to fluffiness. While the discovery of Dilong showed that at least some small tyrannosaurs were covered in protofeathers, paleontologists debated whether the same would be true of larger species. If dinosaurs had hot-running metabolisms, some argued, insulating fluff could cause them to overheat. But the 2012 announcement of Yutyrannus refuted that argument. Together the three specimens of the 125 million year old dinosaur not only preserved protofeathers, but showed that Yutyrannus reached at least 30 feet long and was therefore one of the first truly giant tyrannosaurs. And if a 30 foot long tyrannosaur could sport a coat of fluff, why not Tyrannosaurus itself?
7. Appalachiosaurus
Most of the big, famous tyrannosaurs come from the Late Cretaceous of North America, when a shallow seaway divided the continent in two. But there were tyrannosaurs on the eastern side of the divide, too. Dryptosaurus was one of these eastern tyrants, and it was given some company in 2005 with the description of Appalachiosaurus from Alabama. Known from parts of the skull, limbs, and some vertebrae, Appalachiosaurus was a large, lean tyrannosaur with large arms and a shallow snout. That’s a different arrangement than the deep-skulled, tiny-arms forms that dominated the west at the same time, a hint of how eastern and western tyrannosaurs evolved in different ways after being separated by the sea.
8. Alioramus
The early tyrannosaurus weren’t the only flashy ones. One of their later kin—the 70 million year old Alioramus—was a highly-decorated dinosaur. Like other Late Cretaceous tyrannosaurs, Alioramus had snout bumps and eye horns, but developed to a much more prominent degree than other species. This gave the dinosaur a slender, distinctive snout that would immediately set it apart from its bigger contemporary Tarbosaurus if you ever found yourself wandering through Cretaceous Mongolia.
9. Lythronax
Announced late last year, this 80 million year old tyrannosaur has yet to become a household name. But Lythronax may yet become one thanks to its relationship to the most celebrated of tyrants. While not quite as enormous—the only specimen so far known would have been about 26 feet long—Lythronax had more than a passing resemblance to Tyrannosaurus. Among the characters the two tyrants shared was a skull that had become greatly expanded at the back, adding more room for jaw muscle attachments and swiveling the eyes forward to give the dinosaur binocular vision. Whether Lythronax was an ancestor of Tyrannosaurus may never be known, but the rapacious dinosaur evolved a very similar archetype.
10. Nanuqsaurus
The latest member to be welcomed to the tyrannosaur family, Nanuqsaurus was previously confused for some of its close relatives. Scrappy finds in the 70 million year old strata of Alaska’s North Slope showed that tyrannosaurs once plodded through the cool forests, and those bits and pieces seemed to resemble Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus—two tyrannosaurs that lived at the same time but further to the south. Just last week, however, paleontologists Anthony Fiorillo and Ronald Tykoski proposed that the scattered skull pieces actually represent a new, pygmy species of tyrannosaur they named Nanuqsaurus hoglundi. The prehistoric Arctic was home to a tiny tyrant that stalked beneath the northern lights.
Brian Switek is the author of My Beloved Brontosaurus (newly out in paperback from Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Written in Stone. He also writes the National Geographic blog Laelaps
On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court will hear arguments in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Inc., the most closely watched case of the year. The stakes are high. Thanks to novel legal arguments and bad science, a ruling in favor of the company threatens any number of significant and revolutionary outcomes, from upending a century's worth of settled corporate law to opening the floodgates to religious challenges to every possible federal statute to gutting the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act.
Hobby Lobby is a privately held, for-profit corporation with 13,000 employees. It's owned by a trust managed by the Green family, devout Christians who run the company based on biblical principles. They close their stores on Sundays, start staff meetings with Bible readings, pay above minimum wage, and use a Christian-based mediation practice to resolve employee disputes. The Greens are even attempting to build a Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC.
Bigs plans for more Psycho-Pass have been announced during a noitamina 10th Anniversary event. This starts with new edit 11 episode recap of the first Psycho-Pass anime will run this summer starting in July. A second TV anime kicks off this fall in October. Then, an anime movie is slated for winter.
Print plans include a PSYCHO-PASS GENESIS series of character and sci-fi setting/tech backgrounds, set to be plushed in SF Magazine. A komikaraizu adaptation will be running in Comic Blade.
The series' cast will be the subject of noitamina's life sized statues, with a series of reproductions set to be introduced in spring and summer.
The official site at http://psycho-pass.com/ has also been updated.
-------
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.
Funko has Adventure Time Mystery Minis on the way and, for the first time in Mystery Mini history, the 2.5-inch tall figurines will be sold in an embossed collectible tin. The tins themselves have no bearing on the contents, as the figurines will be randomly distributed throughout them as with previous blind-boxed Mystery Minis series. However, how cool would it be to pull an Ice King Mystery Mini from an Ice King tin? So cool it'd be cold, right?
The series consists of twelve figurines (see the line-up in the gallery) of equal rarity and eight different tins. No word as of yet whether the collectible tins might make the set pricier than Funko's other Mystery Minis sets (such as the Game of Thrones or upcoming How to Train Your Dragon 2 series), but these are apparently due out in May.
In Animal Crossing you can collect lots of different items like fossils and furniture. One of their more unique items are called Gyroids. They make noises, shimmy, and shake.
They can also pull together a room if you decorate it just right. Now thanks to TheBitBlock, you can make your very own Gyroid. Their Youtube tutorial shows that all you need is clay, toothpicks, and acrylic paint to have some creative fun.
The project doesn’t look too difficult for beginners, and it’d probably be fun to play around with molding clay. For more Animal Crossing tutorials, check out our Tomopop tutorial on how to crochet your personal characters.
I know that there are more than a few fans of Kill la Kill, many of which, I believe, will be thrilled to hear that Movic is developing a plush of Guts the Pug. Intended to be about life-size, the toy measures 31 and a half-centimeters tall and 32-centimeters long. Sounds like he should sit nicely in your lap. He would also be perfect for a Mako cosplay!
Guts is available to pre-order now for the price of ¥3,800. He is scheduled to ship late May.
[ Pre-order at HobbyLink Japan | Hobby Search | AmiAmi | Big in Japan ]
kateEEEEEEE!
Whether that’s excited screaming and throwing things or angry screaming and throwing things I’ll leave up to you. But I have some info behind the jump that might help you make up your mind.
To start things out on a less-than-positive note: The live-action, modern-day reboot will be directed by Jon M. Chu, who helmed that other classic-’80s-cartoon-turned-live-action-movie (well, one of the others), G.I. Joe: Retaliation. He’s also behind the greatest cinematic achievement of our age, the Justin Bieber doc Never Say Never.
I’m so sorry, Jem fans. Haven’t thrown your hands up in despair yet? Let’s continue.
One Ryan Lendels, who has no previous credits on IMDB, is writing the script, which according to The Hollywood Reporter:
“centers on an orphaned teenage girl who becomes an online recording sensation. She and her sisters embark on a music-driven scavenger hunt — one that sends them on an adventure across Los Angeles in an attempt to unlock a final message left by her father.”
The producers also note that their Jem is being reinvented “for a whole new generation with themes of being true to who you are in a multitasking, hyperlinked social-media age.”
They followed that up with “Buzzword! Hashtag! YOLO!”
Chu and producers Jason Blum and Scooter Braun are encouraging Jem fans to provide their input on things like costumes, casting, and just overall feel on JemtheMovie.com. I don’t doubt that said fans will in droves, unless I’ve overestimated the power of nostalgia. If so moved by the gods, you can even send in an audition tape. I’ll just let them describe it:
How ’bout it? Are you excited? Cautiously optimistic? Running for the hills? Foaming at the mouth?
(via: The Hollywood Reporter)
You know what, nevermind. Just do whatever. (WinterisComing.net)
Black Widow gets the Mucha treatment, on a t-shirt, no less. (Fashionably Geek)
Another day, another beautiful limited Mondo print that you will probably never own. (/Film)
Andrew Breiner contributed the ThinkProgress graphics for this piece.
After countless marches, arrests, Congressional votes, and editorials, the five-and-a-half year battle over the controversial Keystone XL pipeline is nearing its end. If a recent ruling in Nebraska doesn’t delay the decision further, America could find out as soon as this spring whether or not the pipeline, which has become a focal point in America’s environmental movement, will be built.
But while critics and proponents of Keystone XL have sparred over the last few years, numerous pipelines — many of them slated to carry the same Canadian tar sands crude as Keystone — have been proposed, permitted, and even seen construction begin in the U.S. and Canada. Some rival Keystone XL in size and capacity; others, when linked up with existing and planned pipelines, would carry more oil than the 1,179-mile pipeline.
With the public eye turned on Keystone, some of these pipelines have faced little opposition. But it’s not just new pipelines that worry Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust. Weimer said companies are beginning to revamp old pipelines by expanding their capacity or reversing their flow, changes that can be troubling if proper safety measures aren’t put in place.
Some of these pipelines have been in the ground for 40, 50, 60 years … before pipelines had the latest and greatest coatings or before the welding was up to snuff“Some of these pipelines have been in the ground for 40, 50, 60 years, so they were put in the ground before pipelines had the latest and greatest coatings or before the welding was up to snuff,” he said. “So there’s lots of issues about how you verify that the pipe that’s been in the ground that long is really up to additional pressures.”
Weimer said that while Keystone has served as a distraction from these other pipelines, it’s also increased the public’s awareness of the dangers of transporting tar sands crude. But post-Keystone decision, he said, he’s not sure whether that interest will wane, or whether activists will pick right back up where they left off on Keystone and tackle other pipeline proposals.
“It could go either way,” he said. “It could be that people put so much energy into Keystone that if it gets approved it might take the wind out of everybody’s sails, and they’ll figure ‘what’s the point,’ or it might be that there’s a lot more people that are interested and will continue on with all these other ones.”
America will have to wait for the White House’s decision on Keystone XL to find out. Meanwhile, here are ten other pipelines — projects that haven’t been waylayed by international approval processes or political skirmishes — you should know about.
CREDIT: TransCanada
If Energy East is approved, the pipeline would carry about 1.1 million barrels of tar sands crude each day — a huge capacity compared to Keystone XL’s 830,000 barrels per day (bpd) — from Saskatchewan and Alberta’s Athabasca region to Canada’s East Coast. About two-thirds of the pipeline already exists, meaning a major part of the project will be converting that existing line, which carries natural gas, into a crude oil pipeline.
The pipeline has gotten some push-back in Canada, however. A February report from the Pembina Institute found Energy East would have an even greater impact on the climate than Keystone XL, with the potential to generate 30 to 32 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year — the equivalent of adding more than seven million cars to the roads, and more than the 22 million metric tons that the think tank predicts Keystone XL will produce. And a March report from multiple Canadian environmental organizations argued that the benefits of Energy East to Canadian oil refineries had been overblown.
Enbridge filed its project description for the pipeline with the National Energy Board in early March, marking the first step in the pipeline’s approval process.
CREDIT: National Energy Board
On March 6, Canada’s National Energy Board approved Enbridge’s Line 9 expansion and reversal plan, which will allow the currently westward-flowing Line 9 pipeline to flow east, enabling it to carry 300,000 barrels of tar sands from Alberta to refineries in Quebec each day. The NEB’s approval of the plan will hold only if Enbridge meets 30 conditions laid out by the NEB relating to emergency response, public consultation and other safety issues. Enbridge has one year to meet these conditions and cannot begin the reversal operations until the conditions are met and the pipeline is inspected.
Environmentalists have decried the NEB’s decision to approve the project. “Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline project is a recipe for disaster,” Adam Scott of Canada’s Environmental Defense said. “The 39-year-old pipeline runs directly through the most densely populated parts of Canada, threatening the health, safety and environment of Canadians.”
But it’s not just Canadians who are concerned about the pipeline. The reversal means tar sands will be travelling dangerously close to communities in New England, and the pipeline will connect at the end of its route to another pipeline that could carry the crude to Portland, Maine. Enbridge has denied that this is their plan, saying they won’t ship Line 9′s tar sands past the Canadian border, but New England residents are still worried.
“Today’s decision should energize residents of New England to stand up and say unequivocally: We do not want tar sands in our communities and we do not want to play any role in encouraging the tar sands industry to continue with its irresponsible and dangerous development,” NRDC’s Canada Project Director Danielle Droitsch wrote in a blog post on March 7.
CREDIT: Enbridge
Enbridge is already in the process of increasing the capacity of the existing Alberta Clipper pipeline from 450,000 to 570,000 barrels per day by installing new pumps and metering terminals along the route. Ultimately, the company seeks to increase the pipeline’s capacity to 880,000 bpd — more than the capacity of Keystone XL — but approval for that is still in the works. The existing pipeline carries tar sands crude from Hardisty, Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin, and was shut down last month after a leak at a Saskatchewan pump station spilled about 125 barrels of oil.
The expansion project has faced some opposition. In January, the Sierra Club called on the State Department to consider the cumulative effects of the Alberta Clipper expansion in its review of the Keystone XL pipeline — but overall, Alberta Clipper hasn’t gotten the attention Keystone XL has.
“We’re very concerned this has flown under the public’s radar,” Peter LaFontaine, an energy policy advocate for the National Wildlife Federation told Bloomberg News in May. “The public doesn’t seem to have the same sort of attention for pipeline expansions as they do for pipeline construction. But we’re talking about a lot of crude.”
The State Department announced on February 14 that the permitting process for the Alberta Clipper expansion would be delayed beyond the anticipated mid-2014 decision.
CREDIT: Andrew Breiner
On March 17, commissioners in Adams County, Colorado approved the construction of the White Cliffs Twin Pipeline, which will carry crude oil 527 miles from Platteville, Colorado to Cushing, Oklahoma. The pipeline will run along an existing pipeline, a twinning effort that will give the two pipelines a total capacity of about 150,000 bpd.
According to the Denver Post, most of the Adams County residents who showed up to the pipeline’s public hearing supported the project — all except one, who said the approval of the pipeline meant the county’s residents were “selling ourselves down the wrong road.”
If the $7.9-billion Northern Gateway pipeline project is approved, two pipelines will be built stretching about 730 miles from Bruderheim, Alberta to Kitimat, British Columbia. One pipeline will transport approximately 525,000 barrels of tar sands bitumen each day from Alberta to B.C. for export to Asian markets, while the other would carry around 193,000 barrels per day of condensate, the mix of liquid hydrocarbons that’s used to dilute heavy tar sands so it can be transported, back to Alberta.
CREDIT: Enbridge, www.gatewayfacts.ca
In December, a Canadian review panel recommended that the Northern Gateway pipeline project be given the go-ahead by the federal government as long as 209 conditions are met (none of which address climate change or carbon pollution). The project has run into serious opposition, however, with the country’s First Nations tribes growing particularly vocal. One spokesman recently vowed that the groups will maintain a “wall of opposition” against the project. About 130 First Nations have signed on to the Save the Fraser declaration, which aims to ban all tar sands pipelines from First Nations territory and from the ocean migration routes of the Fraser River salmon. The Canadian federal cabinet is expected to make its final decision on Northern Gateway by July.
CREDIT: Canada National Energy Board
Kinder Morgan filed a proposal for an expansion of its Trans Mountain Pipeline system in December 2013, seeking to build another pipeline to carry Canadian tar sands from Edmonton, Alberta to the West Coast of Canada, near Vancouver. If approved, the pipeline would increase the capacity of the Trans Mountain pipeline system from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels per day.
Like the Northern Gateway, the pipeline has sparked substantial opposition in Canada, especially on the West Coast. The city of Vancouver has filed for intervenor status against the pipeline, which would allow it to make submissions to Canada’s National Energy Board and take an active role in the hearings on the pipeline. Native tribes in Washington and British Columbia have also announced their intent to oppose the Trans Mountain project as intervenors, citing their worries about the major environmental impacts the pipeline would have, especially the uptick of oil tankers in their tribal waters.
CREDIT: Andrew Breiner
If approved, the Eastern Gulf Crude Access pipeline would carry oil from the Bakken region and Alberta’s tar sands from Patoka, Illinois about 770 miles to Boyce, Louisiana. Like many other pipeline projects, the Eastern Gulf Crude Access is part construction, part restructuring — the proposal would re-purpose 574 miles of existing natural gas pipeline to carry oil, and construct 40 miles of new pipeline at the beginning of the line’s route, from Patoka to Johnsonville, Illinois.
The companies in charge of the project — Enbridge and Energy Transfer Partners of Dallas, Texas — originally wanted it to go to St. James, Louisiana, but didn’t gain enough customer support to build that leg of the pipeline.
Enbridge’s Sandpiper pipeline would carry Bakken crude oil about 610 miles from Tioga, North Dakota to Superior, Wisconsin. North Dakota officials have heralded the pipeline, which is the largest in development in the state.
CREDIT: Enbridge
“This is going to add that additional pipeline capacity that we need going forward,” Justin Kringstad of North Dakota Pipeline Authority told KUMV-TV. “As we continue to rise our production levels we need that adequate means of transportation to move that crude to markets around the U.S.”
But Sandpiper still needs state and federal approval, and the pipeline has drawn opposition from some students and native tribes. Farmers and property owners along the pipeline route have also voiced their concerns with the pipeline.
“We limed and put manure on that this spring, and then we find out in July that’s exactly where they want to put a pipeline,” organic farmer Janaki Fisher-Merritt told MPR News in October. “If they go through there it just increases our risk too much, we won’t grow vegetables on it.”
If approved, construction on the pipeline is slated to start in December 2014, and officials hope the pipeline is in service by 2016.
CREDIT: Enbridge
Flanagan South, an Enbridge project, is already in the works, and once constructed will carry tar sands and Bakken crude 589 miles from Flanagan, Illinois to Cushing, Oklahoma. The pipeline, which workers began constructing last fall, will run alongside the existing Spearhead Pipeline, which carries about 173,000 barrels of Canadian oil each day. Flanagan’s initial capacity will be 600,000 barrels of oil from Canada, North Dakota and Montana per day — by comparison, Keystone XL will be 1,179 miles in its entirety and have a capacity of 830,000 barrels per day.
The pipeline was approved by the Army Corps of Engineers using a permit called NWP 12, a tactic that has resulted in lawsuits from the Sierra Club, who say it allows the Corps to “piecemeal” the pipeline project into separate water crossings, making it easier to approve. Doug Hayes, staff attorney for the Sierra Club, said he thinks the NWP 12 process doesn’t provide citizens along the pipeline route adequate opportunity to voice their opinions on the pipeline, resulting in a dearth of public knowledge about Flanagan South.
“When we were talking to people along the pipeline route, many of them were surprised and shocked to learn that there was this major tar sands pipeline being approved without any public involvement whatsoever in their backyards,” Hayes said. “So no, there was not adequate public awareness of this. There still isn’t.”
CREDIT: Enbridge
Enbridge plans to replace a major pipeline running from Edmonton, Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin, an update that would nearly double the size of the existing pipeline. The existing pipeline has ruptured multiple times over its 46-year lifespan, and the update would replace the aging pipes with new steel and coating. Enbridge says it can complete the update without getting a State Department permit, even though the project crosses a national boundary, but environmentalists have taken issue with that claim.
“Like with their proposed Alberta Clipper pipeline expansion, Enbridge will need a new presidential permit for the project,” Sierra Club staff attorney Doug Hayes said in a statement. “And the same climate test that the president set for the Keystone XL pipeline will apply.”
The project is the largest in Enbridge’s history and replacing the 1,031 miles of pipeline is projected to cost the company $7 billion.
The post While America Spars Over Keystone XL, A Vast Network Of Pipelines Is Quietly Being Approved appeared first on ThinkProgress.
Though FX’s attempts to realise Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming‘s Powers as a TV show faltered not once but twice, there turns out to have been a happy ending. Well, the promise of one, at least.
Sony have announced that they’ll be making a 10-part Powers series as the first exclusive product for the Play Station Network. This means, I believe, that you’ll need a Playstation to watch the show, and you’ll then be able to purchase episodes separately or, potentially, subscribe and get the lot.
There’s going to be an all new cast and fresh crew for this run at the project and Bendis himself will be one of the showrunners.
Netflix and, to some extent, Amazon have proven that direct-to-streaming TV can yield good content. They’ve also shown that this content will most likely be later released to DVD and Blu-ray, which is good. These “exclusives” have turned out to be “timed exclusives.”
It’s not yet known when Sony’s hires will get to work on Powers, or when the show will drop, but there’s certainly no need for them to do this in the old, broadcast TV way or to old broadcast TV schedules.
More as we hear it.
Now… did any of you actually see the iced FX pilot? I’d love to know more about it.
TV Version Of Powers Is Back On And It’s Going To Be A Playstation Network Exclusive
Lately the LEGO creations I’ve been seeing have really been amazing me. My favorite this week comes from Adly Syairi Ramly who has been taking LEGO figures and turning them into iconic musical groups. His recreations are really good at capturing each band.
So here we have LEGO figures of No Doubt, Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters, The Smiths, Muse, Backstreet Boys, Michael Jackson and Daft Punk. Don’t worry, these are just some of my personal favorites, but Ramly made many more. On his Twitter you can find more of his work, and as a self proclaimed LEGO junkie, I’m sure he’ll be making more.
[via Highsnobiety]
Although there's been a colossal flood of Attack On Titan merchandise hitting the market, few figures have looked better or been more eagerly anticipated than Kotobukiya's ARTFX J version of protagonist Eren Jaeger. Well today the first part of the wait is over, as he's gone up for pre-order.
I said back when we saw him at Wonder Festival that I loved the grace and motion of the figure, and that's only more true now we see him in full colour. The pant job also brings out the wonderful intricacies in his clothing as well as that gorgeous base. Put simply, he's the best Attack On Titan figure yet and fans owe it to themselves to have him. Given the craft on display, ¥11,000 seems practically reasonable, and he'll come swinging into homes this August. Hit the links below before Titans (that is, other collectors) eat this one up.
[ Pre-order at HobbyLink Japan | Hobby Search | AmiAmi | AmiAmi (with bonus Survey Corps hand towel) | CD Japan | Big in Japan ]
kateReally weird.
