Burly.Thurr

It’s become common practice (not to mention another effective revenue stream) for an NFL team with a new stadium to give fans the opportunity to purchase a brick for a couple hundred bucks and have it included in a fan walk or an outdoor plaza. The new Vikings stadium, which has been remarkably easy to break into btw, is no different. Thankfully, some folks at r/NFL seized this trolling opportunity and condemned the Vikings to an association with Brett Favre forever. The sad thing is there are probably some Vikings fans who would not actually be bothered by this.

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(photo via cleverlyclearly)

samsketchbook:

Witches, wizards and warlocks have a historical need for a strange companion, be it flora or fauna- but why does it always have to a guessing game what freak of nature you get? Use my handy MBTI guide to figure out what ungodly mongrel will best help YOU in your arcane pursuits! 

outofmyelement-naclh2o:

I am so torn between my love of classic military aircraft and the jaw dropping awe of how amazing it would be to own a flying yacht…

Link 1 

Link 2

Link 3 (Sad demise)

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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jmulvey writes: Think your SCADA systems are outdated? Environmental monitoring at 19 Grand Rapids Public Schools are still controlled by a Commodore Amiga. Programmed by a High School student in the 1980s, the system has been running 24/7 for decades. A replacement has been budgeted by the school system, estimated cost: Between $1.5 and 2 million. How much is your old Commodore Amiga worth?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brad Merrill recounts the stories of three people who hunted down and confronted internet tormenters. The resulting conversations vary, but all are as pathetic as you might expect.

What can we conclude from all this? A few things:

• Generally, trolling comments are nothing personal. Trolls project their insecurities onto others as a coping mechanism of sorts. They’re hurting, and they deal with it by making others hurt too.

• In the heat of the moment, as trolls are blowing off steam in comment sections around the Web, they forget that a real human being is on the other side reading what they’ve written. The Internet creates a feeling of distance — if you’re not standing in front of someone, it doesn’t feel like what you’re saying will actually hurt them.

• Sometimes, ignoring trolls and cyberbullies isn’t the best policy. A well-written response might just open the troll’s eyes and change their ways.

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you-want-this-url-huh:

nickxdee:

THIS IS NEVER NOT FUNNY

i really thought they were talking about colons at first

micdotcom:

The McKinney man who called the police has inspired a brilliant satirical hashtag 

Sean Toon was one of the white McKinney residents who called the police on the group of teens at the pool last week. In honor of Toon dialing 911 when seeing black people engaging in “suspicious activity,” Twitter created a hashtag in his honor. Here’s how racists see the world.

The G7 leaders concluded their annual summit yesterday with a declaration that put climate change front and center. As with all G7 communiqués, most of the content reaffirms steps that the leaders have already promised to take and, in many cases, are already taking. But, as usual, there are some interesting wrinkles. I’m struck in particular the parts that seem to be the most important are different from those that have generated the most headlines. Here are a couple highlights in each category.

Interesting and Overlooked

“[A Paris] agreement should enhance transparency and accountability including through binding rules at its core to track progress towards achieving targets…. This should enable all countries to follow a low-carbon and resilient development pathway….”

The United States has long pressed for a shift away from binding emissions reduction commitments and toward a mix of nationally grounded emission-cutting efforts and binding international commitments to transparency and verification. European countries have often taken the other side, emphasizing the importance of binding targets (or at least policies) for cutting emissions. Now it looks like the big developed countries are on the same page as the United States. The language above is all about binding countries to transparency – and there isn’t anything elsewhere in the communiqué about binding them to actual emissions goals. This doesn’t guarantee a smooth landing in Paris – China, India, and others will resist some of the binding transparency and accountability measures that the G7 leaders want – but at least the big developed countries appear to be forming a fairly united front.

“We will intensify our support particularly for vulnerable countries own efforts to manage climate change related disaster risk and to build resilience. We will aim to increase by up to 400 million the number of people in the most vulnerable developing countries who have access to direct or indirect insurance coverage against the negative impact of climate change related hazards by 2020 and support the development of early warning systems in the most vulnerable countries.”

This is the most substantive portion of the climate part of the communiqué. It reflects an increasing focus on adaptation in general and on insurance in particular. Existing institutions – notably the World Bank – are decently positioned to deliver on these goals (though meeting them by 2020 will be challenging). Indeed this part of the communiqué is unusually straightforward, and therefore well suited to clear follow-through. The mushiest bit is the undefined “climate change related hazards”. Ideally G7 countries would help vulnerable populations get access to insurance against extreme weather hazards of all origins – whether or not those are generated by climate change – and, in practice, that’s presumably what insurance would do.

Headline Grabbing But Less Than Meets the Eye

“We emphasize the deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions are required with a decarbonization of the global economy over the source of this century…. As a common vision for a global goal of greenhouse gas emissions reductions we support sharing with all parties to the UNFCCC the upper end of the latest IPCC recommendation of 40 to 70% reductions by 2050 compared to 2010 recognizing that this challenge can only be met by a global response.”

This statement generated the biggest headlines (“G7 leaders agree to phase out fossil fuels”), but it’s also the least consequential. Most reactions ignore the fact that the G8 leaders already agreed to “the goal of achieving at least a 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050” in advance of the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009. (You judge the results.) And the idea that an 85-year goal will have much impact on present policy or investment is a bit ridiculous. (Had you told a physicist in 1905 that a fifth of U.S. electricity would be generated by nuclear fission within 85 years, they would have said, “What’s a nucleus or fission?”)

News reports have experts debating whether Paris can assure the world of cuts this deep. The answer should be obvious: it can’t. No decisions made today will assure any particular outcome in 2050 or 2100. For all practical purposes, the two-degree target that diplomats have talked about for the last five or so years has always been understood by policymakers to correspond to roughly a halving of global emissions by midcentury. If the-two degree target didn’t motivate deep enough emissions cuts to actually meet it, recasting it in terms of global emissions won’t change that. Having a basic guide is useful, but beyond that, the details are pretty unimportant. Bottom line: Fiddling with distant targets is a great way to generate headlines, but doesn’t do much to affect policy and emissions themselves; at best it’s marginally irrelevant, at worst it lets people feel good without doing anything.

“We reaffirm our strong commitment to the Copenhagen Accord to mobilizing jointly USD 100 billion a year from a wide variety of sources, both public and private in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation.”

This superficially sounds big: the United States and others pledged in 2009 to mobilize massive amounts of money for developing countries; observers have been skeptical that they would deliver; but now G7 leaders are emphasizing their “strong commitment” to follow through. In practice, this is mostly an exercise in redefining the original pledge so that more private financial flows get counted toward the $100 billion. This isn’t necessarily bad as a matter of policy, but the political reality is that leaders from many developing countries want (and, at Copenhagen, thought they were getting) something else. It will be up to them in Paris to decide whether they’re ok with this redefinition of the goalposts. If they are, the conference is far more likely to be successful. But what will ultimately matter politically is not whether G7 leaders claim that they’re meeting their financial pledges; it’s whether developing country leaders are willing to go along.

BP just dropped its latest annual look at global energy markets, and though the plunge in oil prices might seem temporary, the company thinks there are larger effects at play.

“Rather, they may well come to be viewed as symptomatic of a broader shifting in some of the tectonic plates that make up the energy landscape, with significant developments in both the supply of energy and its demand,” said CEO Bob Dudley in an introductory statement.

Changes on the supply side should be pretty obvious. Thanks to controversial fracking techniques and massive investments in shale, the US has raised its oil output dramatically. It now produces more of the stuff than Saudi Arabia for the first time since 1991—a fact that gives an extra edge to the two countries’ battle for energy supremacy.

And that’s not the only country the US eclipsing: It’s also extending its lead in oil and gas over Russia. The shifts are “a prospect unthinkable a decade ago,” Dudley said.

On the demand side, last year was the second in a row that emerging-market economies, or those outside the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, made up the majority of global oil consumption.

Though weak growth in richer economies like Europe and the US has been one of the factors weighing on energy prices—in addition (paywall) to heightened production—it’s noteworthy that their influence is fading.

A Tumblog of Greatness: may-contain-peanuts.tumblr.com.

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̕o͜͝h̢ ̸ş͢͟o ͠͝p̨͢rę͢t̶t̵͡y͟͠
̵̀͞I̸ ̵͠f͡é̛e̕͠l̸̛ ̵͞p̴̶ŕ͜e̶tt̕ý̸ ͠a͘͜n̷d̷̀ ͏w̸i̧t̕t̢ý̨̧ ͘͠a҉ǹ̸͢d̡̕҉ ̢͠A͘A҉̸A̕͡Ą͠͠A̵U͡A͘͡͏AA̵A̧U̶͟͠U҉Ù̧͞ỨU̶̷U̴͟I̢̧͜IĮ́I͞I̴I҉I͞͡I͞EEE̛G̢͘HH҉HH̴

All the white puppy wanted to do was share his French toast. Cinnamon, a cute character created by the same Japanese company responsible for Hello Kitty, posted tweets like this every day. Normally, these morning messages would be met by followers gushing about how cute the attached picture was, or fans wishing him a “good morning.”

Cinnamon’s online life in recent times, however, had become tense. “You look like a piece of soap, get diarrhea,” one user wrote in response. Another Tweet -- since deleted, but preserved by other users -- said “Please kill yourself with that knife.” For the last few weeks, the dog character had faced abuse like this daily, every innocuously cute post met with a sea of “shut ups” and “die.”

Many imagine Japan as a land stuffed with adorable characters. Hello Kitty has become a global ambassador of all things “kawaii,” while recently John Oliver featured a segment on his show devoted to the country’s use of mascots for -- nearly everything. Yet the situation isn’t always so cuddly. Cinnamon’s recent Twitter interactions marked the first significant time a huggable character has been the victim of cyberbullying in Japan. And it hasn’t just been a few isolated comments, but a steady stream of nastiness from hundreds of Twitter users. It has inspired reactions from well-known pop singers and warranted coverage in multiple national newspapers and on TV. The Cinnamon saga struck a nerve with people in a country where bullying -- both digital and physical -- is an issue on the rise.

The critter at the center of it all, though, is neither new or obscure. Sanrio, Japan’s premier producers of cute characters (think Hello Kitty and My Melody) created Cinnamon in 2001 as the flagship character of their “Cinnamoroll” series. He’s featured in cartoons and comics, and became one of the company’s most popular entities. Walk by any branch of Tokyo Tomin Bank, and chances are you’ll see a stuffed Cinnamon in the window. In this year’s annual Sanrio character ranking, early polls (these are very serious affairs) projected Cinnamon to finish third overall, ahead of Hello Kitty.

Yet glancing at the replies to Cinnamon’s daily tweets reveals a lot of people wishing ill on the character and his various friends. There’s no definitive starting point for the bullying -- various mean-spirited comments have long slipped into Cinnamon’s stream, but were the sort of isolated trolling every high-level Twitter account expects -- but sites such as Naver Matome report it really got going over the last three months, escalating drastically near the end of April. A drawing of Cinnamon standing in front of some colorful flowers, for instance, prompted digital shouts of “shut the hell up, I just ate lunch!” and “you look like you smell bad.” A tweet featuring the character holding a pile of the dessert he’s named after had commenters wondering why he was holding a plate of pink poop (a theme riffed on in similar Tweets). The insults keep going, and even an act as simple as showing off a new umbrella resulted in someone telling him to “suck my dick.”

Nearly every Sanrio creation has a Twitter account, where new drawings get uploaded daily, but only Cinnamon has attracted cyberbullying. Users even noticed this discrepancy -- while relatively new characters such as Gudetama (a lazy anthropomorphic egg) and Kirimi-chan (a hunk of fish meat) received warm messages, a Cinnamon tweet from the same day drew comparisons to the movie The Human Centipede. Users have tried to spam other Sanrio character’s feeds in the past with mean-spirited messages, but nothing came out of it. Yet by early May, every new tweet by Cinnamon was met by a mix of people trying to be clever with their insults, generally nonsensical threats and those relying on sub-playground approaches (“die,” “shut up,” “you’re ugly,” “go away”).

Why Cinnamon? Many Japanese Twitter users have been speculating about it (Naver Matome gathered many of their thoughts online), and the consensus seems to be that it’s all for the likes. Early jokes at the expense of Cinnamon -- such as an image of Cinnamon being targeted by a fighter jet -- raked in favorites and retweets. Tweets poking fun at the dog-like creature, along with parody accounts posing as official, did well, inspiring more users to try to replicate that success. These early examples, though, were far more good-spirited than what came after. The tweets, in an effort to stand out, got meaner and meaner, eventually dissolving into what would constitute bullying against a human.

Whatever the reason, the abuse hurled Cinnamon’s way got worse as May dragged on. Fans of the character first offered words of encouragement to Cinnamon (“don’t take all this too seriously, Cinnamon!”) and eventually started pushing back against the bullies, talking to them directly. Sanrio addressed the issue head on, by posting a cartoon where Cinnamon’s friend Chiffon addressed Twitter in place of Cinnamon. “I’m here to protect Cinnamon, and you should protect your friends too!,” is how Anime News Network translated it.

The same day, Sanrio blocked over 200 accounts that had been harassing the character. This only enraged the anti-Cinnamon crowd, and resulted in one popular user claiming to receive a message from Sanrio telling him to come out to their offices, which he documented on Twitter. He faked it -- Sanrio never contacted him -- for the likes. The abuse kept coming.

But it also resulted in the story getting more widespread media attention. Dozens of Japanese web sites wrote about it, followed by newspapers such as the Chunichi Shimbun and the Tokyo Shimbun covering it as well. Government-backed channel NHK did a report on it, and soon celebrities were coming out to support Cinnamon. TV personality Arie Mizusawa expressed her happiness at Sanrio taking action, while former members of the pop group BiS took to Twitter to back the character. An online news video summed it all up neatly.

Cinnamon might be a fictional character, but what the floppy-eared puppy endured is a very real issue in Japan today. Bullying has long been a problem in Japanese schools and workplaces, attracting plenty of attention from the media. Earlier this year, The Japan Times reported that the number of cyberbullying cases in the country was on the rise (as was all bullying). It’s an issue that has affected thousands in Japan, and which has been a topic of discussion for quite some time. There have even been songs written about it -- pop-gone-death-metal outfit Babymetal wrote a song with a title that translates to “No More Bullying.” Cinnamon isn’t a real person, but he’s famous enough (and the situation strange enough) to act as a microscope on cyberbullying. It revealed how many people are ready to pile on somebody for praise, and how many others hate seeing someone being picked on.

Cinnamon’s online life hasn’t completely returned to normal. Mean comments still appear, and larger flare ups still happen, such as when he drew a picture that some simply described as “bad,” others “garbage” and still more “like sperm.” Fans, though, have also come out in higher numbers to counteract the negativity with simple messages of “good morning Cinnamon!” and “so cute!” while also shouting down the mean users. Cinnamon might never fully be able to draw or enjoy his breakfast in peace ever again, but at least he’ll have plenty of people on his side.

There are already multiple official versions of Ridley Scott’s classic film Blade Runner, but YouTuber Uchuu Daisakusen managed to make a completely different cut using just the B-roll from the film and takes that ended up on the cutting room floor. Check out their 45-minute version of Rick Deckard’s journey.

Read more...

micdotcom:

Watch: ‘The Daily Show’ brilliantly points out the tragic silver lining about the McKinney pool party 

Tesla’s slick new storage batteries won’t put your local utility out of business anytime soon. That was the take away from Elon Musk’s keynote address yesterday at Edison Electric Institute’s annual convention in New Orleans.

Industrial-scale batteries designed for peak shaving are projected to account for upwards of 90% of all Tesla’s battery sales, according to Musk. Rather than hurting utilities, this should help them, according to Musk. Batteries can be used to shift load, reducing peak demand.

Of course, I never worried about Tesla’s batteries putting electric utilities out of business. On the other hand, I have worried quite a bit about electric utilities putting Tesla and its partners in the distributed solar space out of business.

It would not be the first time distributed generation has tried and failed to escape from the margins into the mainstream of our energy economy. More than a decade ago, the first wave of distributed energy technologies emerged. Almost all of those technologies ran on natural gas rather than solar. The economics were frequently more compelling than solar. In 2002, people thought that fuel cells and microturbines would be installed in every McDonald’s by 2004. Of course, that never happened. Utilities were undoubtedly a major part of the reason why – albeit not the only reason. In any event, if utilities are able to persuade regulators to impose special fees and surcharges on distributed energy technologies, distributed energy companies are in trouble.

Oddly enough, U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz seemed keenly aware of this very problem when he spoke on Monday at the EEI conference. Speaking just before Elon Musk, Secretary Moniz emphasized that developing more more effective methods for valuing energy assets and grid services is vital for facilitating the transformation of the grid.

“We need more transparent and broadly accepted methods for characterizing the value of services provided to the grid by existing and new technologies,” Moniz said.

Until we have such methods, utilities are able to significantly influence the prices charged by their “competitors.”

In Arizona, investor-owned utilities are moving into an advanced stage of a full-blown siege on the distributed solar industry, including SolarCity, where Musk serves as the chairman of the board. SolarCity and Tesla are offering a solar-plus-storage package to customers in many states.

In 2013, utility regulators in Arizona imposed a fixed charge of 70 cents per kilowatt (kW) system per month on residential rooftop solar customers. In April, Arizona Public Service (APS) asked state utility regulators to increase the monthly surcharge on customers with rooftop solar from 70 cents per kW to $3 per kW. Per Moody’s:

While the surcharge does not have a material financial impact on APS’ financial metrics since the fixed charge imposed on future rooftop solar customers does not increase the utilities’ revenues, but it does reduce the impact of the revenue cost-shift on non-rooftop solar customers. An increase in the surcharge would support our view that the [utility regulator] is proactive in monitoring the cost-shift issue that arises with rooftop solar distributed generation.

Moody’s upgraded the credit rating for APS.

If Musk doesn’t understand the implications, he is in big trouble. Credit rating agencies predict the likelihood that utilities will default on their debt. And utilities have loads of debt – about $730 billion in long-term debt, according to Moody’s. The ratings credit agencies assign a given utility affects its cost of capital. Better ratings mean cheaper money. As a result, lower credit ratings tend to result in higher utility rates. Higher credit ratings tend to result in lower utility rates.

By upgrading APS’ credit ratings because it asked regulators to raise exit fees on rooftop solar, Moody’s has set an alarming precedent. Utilities that push regulators to impose new or larger fixed charges on customers with rooftop solar are considered to be safer investments – all else equal. This puts rooftop solar and ratepayers on a collision course.

In May, Don Brandt, the president of APS, accused “California-based rooftop solar leasing companies” of making political attacks against the incumbent utilities in Arizona to protect net metering.

ughgodwhatever:

airyairyquitecontrary:

weirdvintage:

A surefire way for mothers to get their sons to tuck in their shirts, 1940s style (via Kitsch-Slapped)

The illustrated boy looks pretty darn pleased with his cute new lace edging.

I can see him now meeting his friends at the soda fountain. 

‘Fellows, check out Mom’s latest effort at mind control.’ (spins)

(chorus of whistles and applause)

‘Why, Jimmy, I do believe you’ve started a fashion!’

‘Let’s go to the Woolworth and get lace edging for all our shirts!’

‘Doug can sew them on, he got his Handicraft merit badge last summer!’

‘Never regretted it.’

‘Jimmy, your mom has some internalised misogyny to figure out.’

‘Don’t I know it.’

Stealing this for soft butch looks.

Two World Trade Center

Seven Leading Architects Defend the World’s Most Hated Buildings

• ANNABELLE SELLDORF ON THE EMPIRE STATE PLAZA, ALBANY “I know that others find it too brutal or forbidding, but I think it’s beautiful in its monumentality and starkness.“
  
• ZAHA HADID ON THE ORANGE COUNTY GOVERNMENT CENTER, GOSHEN, N.Y. “There is an integrity within the design that displays a commitment to engagement and connectivity.”
• DANIEL LIBESKIND ON THE TOUR MONTPARNASSE, PARIS  “Maybe Tour Montparnasse is not a work of genius, but it signified a notion of what the city of the future will have to be.“ 
• ADA TOLLA ON VELE DI SCAMPIA, NAPLES, ITALY “But the complex was cursed. It wasn’t built as specified; value-engineering changed the structure and reduced the interior courtyards, therefore limiting the amount of light. None of the planned public spaces, amenities, schools or offices were ever constructed.”
  
• NORMAN FOSTER ON TEMPELHOF AIRPORT, BERLIN “Monuments, if you trace their ancestry, can reveal disturbing things about the past. Nonetheless, they have enduring qualities which, viewed on their own merits, are perhaps an example to us.”
  
• AMANDA LEVETE ON THE BT TOWER, LONDON “What fascinates me is that in its time the BT Tower was a building that was entirely about its function as a telecommunications tower: Its purpose was its height.”
  
• VINCENT VAN DUYSEN ON CENTRE POMPIDOU, PARIS  “It reversed the typical model of a museum into something that was engaging and inviting to the public. Architecture at that time needed to do things differently, like a shock. The shock liberates a lot of emotions and perceptions.”
  

Via NYT