by Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan on Gizmodo, shared by Ria Misra to io9
Commuting affects your mental health, your physical health, and even the way you think about other people. And these changes are more profound than you might think.
Det har snurrat runt lite recept på mozzarellafyllda köttbullar och brorsan pratar väl om dem så idag tänkte jag testa min variant.
Jag använde
250 g fläskfärs
50 g riven parmesanost
1 ägg
Pizzakryddor (dvs oregano och lite andra örtkryddor)
Salt och peppar
Mini-Mozzarella
Jag blandade färs, parmesan, ägg och kryddor till en smidig smet som jag sedan fyllde med små minimozzarellabollar. Det gick bättre än väntat och tack vare ägg och ost höll smeten ihop riktigt bra när jag stekte köttbullarna i lite smör.
Samtidigt gjorde jag en kraftig rödvinsmörsås på
25 g hackad gul lök
2,5 dl rödvin
lite egen buljong
svartpeppar
75 g smör
Jag fräste löken i lite smör och slog i vinet och buljongen samt svartpeppar. Allt fick reducera ner på ganska hög värme till bara ca 1/3 var kvar.
Jag ”monterade” ner smöret med stekpannan borta från värmen…
…och slog såsen över köttbullarna.
Köttbullarna höll som sagt ihop riktigt bra och så här såg de ut när jag skar upp dem.
Intagen blev rätt bra tack vare fläskfärsen och allt smör.
Jag kan inte låta bli att lägga upp en gammal geekbild till…
I’m getting yelled at by people on Twitter because I support my union (SAG-AFTRA)’s efforts to negotiate a better contract for voice performers like myself who perform in video games.
The most frequent complaint goes something like this: “actors work for maybe a few days at most on a game, and they want residual payments?! Programmers and others who work on those same games spend literally years of their lives on them, and they don’t get residuals! Actors are greedy jerks!”
I can’t speak to the fairness or unfairness of residuals or lack of residuals for programmers, artists, composers, and others who game developers and publishers, because that’s not my job, and I don’t know what, precisely, their contracts are. I certainly don’t believe that there is some sort of feud or lack of shared interest between us (the actors) and them, and I fully support all the people who work on games — especially the huge blockbuster games that pull in profits that are in line with the biggest blockbuster movies — getting the very best contract, with the best compensation and best working conditions that they possibly can.
But I did not give my union authorization to call a strike on my behalf because of this issue. I voted to authorize a strike because our employers in the games industry refuse to negotiate with us at all about some very, very important issues surrounding our working conditions.
Let me share some excerpts from an email I got from SAG-AFTRA recently (emphasis mine):
You may have heard that billion-dollar companies like Activision, Warner Bros., Disney and Rockstar Games are against sharing any of their record-setting profits with the performers who help make their games awesome. But…
DID YOU KNOW… Our employers have rejected every proposal that we’ve put on the table? That includes the community’s proposals to reduce vocally stressful sessions to two hours, […]
This, right here, is reason enough to strike, as far as I am concerned. I fully realize that for anyone who doesn’t work as a voice actor it sounds insane to care about vocally stressful sessions. I realize that when you hear that actors want to reduce those sessions to two hours or less, it can easily create an impression that actors are lazy and entitled, and don’t want to work as hard as other people do.
(Edit to clarify: Some folks seem to think I’m arguing that voice actors should never have to work more than two hours a day. That’s not what I’m arguing for, at all. I’m arguing that sessions which are vocally stressful should be limited to two hours. Other sessions, with regular dialog and scenes, are typically six to eight hours, and I’m not arguing to change that.)
Listen, if you truly feel that way, I hope you’ll do something to give you some perspective on what this actually means. I really want to help everyone understand what we do when we use our voices to bring video game characters to life, and why the expectations (I believe they are demands) from our employers are unreasonable.
Okay? Let’s get started. Since you probably don’t have a video game script at hand, we’re going to simulate it. I want you to grab your favorite book, and I want you to read, out loud, twenty pages from it. Really put your heart and soul into the dialog, and bring it to life. I need to feel emotion, and I need to be invested in the characters. Now, go do it again, but just slightly different this time, because we’re going to need options. Okay, you’re doing great. You’ve been at it for about two hours now (if you average around six minutes a page, like I do), so take a ten minute break. Drink some hot tea with lemon and honey in it, and then go read it one last time.
So you’re about three hours into it — that’s it! Just three hours! Five hours less than an average (union-negotiated) workday! Your sinuses are feeling a little raw, because you’ve pushed a lot of sound and moisture out of your body. You probably feel some emotional fatigue, because you’ve been putting a lot of emotion into your work. But you’re a professional, so you don’t complain. In fact, you’re grateful for the job, because if you’re lucky you’ll get to do this maybe twice a month. And, honestly, this is still better than coal mining, right? Right.
Okay. Still with me? Good. You can eat lunch now, if you want. You probably go for something with a lot of salt in it, because it soothes your vocal chords. I’m a big fan of the chicken soup, though sometimes I’ll have a burrito, because #burritowatch.
Lunch is over. You’ve been at work for about 4 and a half or five hours at this point. You’re going to go read another ten pages from your book, but I’m only going to ask you to do it once, because you’re probably in the zone by now and you are nailing most things on the first take.
It’s time for the call outs, and then you’re done for the day. Maybe you’re done for the whole job! Awesome. Here’s what you’re going to do: you’re going to make a spreadsheet, with 40 rows on it. In each row, you’re going to put a line of dialog that you’re going to do three times in a row before you move on to the next line. This spreadsheet will have a few columns, with the dialog in the first column, and some direction in the second column. There’s a third column, usually, but that’s got information in it that’s not relevant to our job as actors, so ignore it.
I’ve made you a sample of a few lines from a military game I made up, to help you get started:
You’re going to do each of those three times, sometimes four times. You’re also going to do this for three more hours. Don’t worry, you can take a couple of short breaks — and you’ll need them — to drink some more of that tea you’re getting sick of.
If you’ve done this as I asked, it’s now six or seven hours after you started. Don’t talk at all for the rest of the day, and don’t make any plans to go audition for any other voice work for the rest of the week, because your voice is wrecked. Don’t go to any kind of day job that requires you to talk with anyone, either, because you’re not going to be able to do that. Oh, and over years and years of this, it’s going to build up into serious and permanent damage … and then you’re not going to be able to work with your voice anymore.
The fact that our employers won’t even talk with us about this growing problem, that affects the ability of all voice performers to take care of themselves, is reason enough to go on strike until they will.
But there’s more. Our employers also refuse:
[…] to hire stunt safety coordinators to protect actors’ well-being in the PCap volume, to share with us and/or our representatives the actual name of the games we work on, and to outline the nature of the work we’ll be doing?
Working in Motion Capture is amazing, and that technology has allowed some of the most incredible works of videogame art in history to be created. The Last of Us, Grand Theft Auto V, Heavy Rain, Uncharted 4, are just a few of the titles that have been brought to life by talented performers using their voices and their movements to create a realism that was unheard of fifteen years ago. It can be dangerous work, especially when there are fights involved, so when we work in live action film or television, there is always a trained, qualified, professional stunt coordinator on set to ensure that nothing goes wrong and nobody gets hurt. The performers who work in those scenes should be afforded the same protection we get when we’re on a traditional film or television set.
And I totally get the desire for studios to protect their upcoming releases by using codenames for various projects when we audition, but asking — in this case expecting — us to go into something with absolutely zero knowledge about the project, or what we’ll be expected to do if we are cast, is completely unreasonable. Maybe someone has a moral objection to the content of a game, and they’d like to know what it is before they commit to it. Maybe they get to see three pages of the script (usually just single lines with no context) and they wouldn’t take the job if they found out the part was just one scene, followed by sixty pages of call outs, being delivered by several different characters. Or maybe they just aren’t into the project when they find out what it is. The point is, expecting actors — or anyone — to commit to a job without knowing exactly what it entails just defies common sense. We have got to be able to figure out a compromise that fairly and equitably addresses everyone’s concerns. You know, a negotiation.
But it gets worse, because these people, who have refused to address a single proposal from SAG-AFTRA, have some ideas of their own that they apparently expect us to just accept without question:
Our employers want to be able to fine you $2,500 if you show up late or are not “attentive to the services for which [you] have been engaged.” This means you could be fined for almost anything: checking an incoming text, posting to your Twitter feed, even zoning out for a second. If a producer feels you are being “inattentive,” they want the option to fine you $2,500. Our employers want to be able to fine the union $50,000-$100,000 if your franchised agent doesn’t send you out on certain auditions (like Atmospheric Voices or One Hour One Voice sessions)?
I’m sorry. What? The studios want to fine SAG-AFTRA up to $100,000 if our agents don’t send us out on an audition? Because these same people who refuse to discuss any of our proposals for this upcoming contract believe … what, exactly? That they own us all and they can force our agents to do whatever they want them to do? This makes literally no sense at all.
If your agent chooses not to submit you for certain auditions, our employers want to put into our contract language forcing SAG-AFTRA to revoke your agent’s union franchise. This would mean that your agency would not be able to send you out on any union jobs, including those in animation, TV/film, commercials, etc.
So this is ludicrous. I can not think of a single instance in the history of the entertainment industry where a studio of any sort has asked for and gotten something like this. If my agent doesn’t submit me for something, for whatever reason, that’s between my agent and me. Maybe I don’t want to work for a certain studio, so my agent doesn’t submit me for their projects. Maybe I don’t want to work with a certain director, or another performer or whatever I feel like because I’m a sentient human being who makes his own decisions. These employers (at video game companies and video game studios) want to have the option of preventing our agents from submitting us for any work at all, and that’s outrageous. Our relationship with our agents is, frankly, none of any studio’s business. (Edit 9/24/15 5:54pm): I just remembered that SAG doesn’t have a franchise agreement with agents at the moment, and hasn’t for some time. So there is no franchise to revoke (as I understand it, now).
IT’S NOT JUST SECONDARY PAYMENTS WE’RE FIGHTING FOR. IT’S THE FUTURE OF THE WORK WE DO.
We are at a crossroads, and we have a choice to make.
This is the crux of it, really. It really, really, really and honestly and truly isn’t about money. Sure, payment and compensation is certainly part of it, but it’s not all of it, and it isn’t even the biggest part of it. We really are fighting for the future of our ability to work in this business.
If we stand united, we have a chance to make real gains in this contract and to avoid these onerous rules and fines. SAG-AFTRA is one union now. We have power we’ve never had before, and it needs to be deployed now.
If we don’t stand together, we won’t even be able to maintain the status quo.
That’s why your Negotiating Committee, Executive Committee and National Board have all voted unanimously to support this action. Now, it’s in your hands. We hope you’ll join us and vote YES for a strike authorization.
Voting YES for a strike authorization does NOT mean we are on strike, it does NOT mean that we have to strike or that we will strike. It simply means that you authorize your Negotiating Committee and elected representatives to call for a strike against video game companies as a last resort, in order to make sure that your safety and well-being are protected, and that your future is free from any unnecessary fines and penalties. A strike authorization gives your Negotiating Committee real power at the bargaining table.
I love the work that I do. I’m grateful for the work that I have, and I’ve been lucky to work with some incredibly talented people on both sides of the recording studio glass. This isn’t about making enemies of the other creative people in the business, be they directors, studio engineers, artists, programmers, sound designers, writers, etc. This is about a handful of extremely wealthy, extremely powerful people trying to take away our ability to make a living, to take care of our voices, and to be safe on the set.
We in the voice acting community — along with the programmers and engineers, of course — have helped video games grow into a multi-billion dollar industry. Video games rival movies not because we push buttons and get loot, but because video games tell amazing stories that touch our lives in ways that movies can not.
I sincerely hope that a strike won’t be necessary. I sincerely hope that our employers will come to the negotiating table and talk with us in good faith, to reach an agreement that’s fair.
But if they won’t, I’ll go on strike unless and until they will, because I believe that #PerformanceMatters.
I finally finished (and delivered) my version of the infamous Evil Clown Sweater. That’s wilwheaton SUPER THRILLED to be wearing it again, at Rose City Comic Con this past weekend. I had a chance to hand deliver it to him, and I took it, because he’s super awesome in person, and so gracious. It was an absolute dream come true.
(That’s Wil saying ‘SHUT UP FOREVER THIS IS AMAZING’ :D)
I’ve been working on this project for months now…which is a little
ridiculous, but remaking something from grainy internet photos is kinda
harder than it looks.
In the end, I’m pretty happy with how it
turned out. Turns out the sleeves are way long, but I had to guess at proper length since I wasn’t working from measurements. And, meh, the original is ill-fitting too, so what the heck. I took some creative liberties that I think make it my own,
rather than just a straight copy of the original (notably the red
clown-hair on the arms, I thought the loop stitch looked neat).
When I
first got the idea to make this, I ignored it for two full years. I
wasn’t good enough to make this, nor was I qualified to tackle this.
That’s the stupid anxiety talking, of course. I’m glad I stuck with it,
though. It was truly meant to just give something back to Wil, and put a
smile on his face. He’s like an internet big-brother, and I owe him a
lot.
Get Excited and Make Things!
This is the best thing ever. I took it home with me, and now I will wait for an appropriate time to wear it.
Throughout my life, I’ve been fairly consistent in listing the three things I don’t eat. They are, in no particular order: popcorn, candied fruit, and Shepherd’s Pie.
In the case of Shepherd’s Pie, it’s a bit bewildering as I do enjoy its ingredients separately – ground beef, mashed potatoes, corn – but there’s something about the sum of its parts that trigger my gag reflex whenever. Popcorn is just bland – annoyingly so – with those little bits that always get stuck in your teeth. And then there’s candied fruit. Do I even need to explain why that’s on the list?
Anyway, these three have made my culinary don’t-go-to list for as long as I’ve been compiling lists and then, last week, the very foundation of my reality was rocked by this –
“I know you don’t eat popcorn,”said Robert Cooper, “but this stuff is great. I can’t stop eating it.”
I was, of course, dubious. Chicago Mix? A caramel corn and cheddar cheese combination? Urgh. It sounded terrible but, just for a lark, I decided to try a couple, popping one of each kernel into my mouth. My initial reaction: “Weird, but not bad.” And then: “Actually, kind of interesting.” And then: “Help me! I can’t stop!” Five minutes later, I was shoving fistfuls into my mouth while pleading with Ivon Bartok to hide the bag.
Chicago Mix popcorn is the Devil’s snack!
Joining this list of Foods-I’ll-Just-Keep-Eating-Until-They’re-Finished-Or-Taken-Away:
An avowed chocolate snob, I love my Amedei Chuaos and Porclenas, Pralus Papouasies, and Patrick Roger’s pralinés – but nutella always takes me back to my youth. I can eat it straight out of the jar or, preferably, on a bowl of Haagen-Dazs french vanilla.
I discovered Hattendo Cream Buns in the Akihabara subway station in Tokyo a couple of years back. The ultra-soft buns are served chilled and stuffed with a variety of creams – from matcha to chocolate. I can’t eat just one! Any doubt to the relative guilt-inducing prospects of this delicious dessert should be dispelled by the following photo of me eating one:
I bet you couldn’t envision a more guilty-looking eater.
The last time my sister visited Vancouver, she brought me a tin of kouign-amman from Patisserie au Kouign Amann on Mont Royal East. I could barely pronounce the name but one bite of the butter and sugar-infused layered puff pastry with its crunchy caramelized crust and top, and I was hooked. I’ve had other versions but none come close to these. Thank goodness they’re located on the other side of the country.
If you’re ever out to dinner with me and see a chocolate chip skillet cookie a la mode on the menu, you can be damn sure I’ll be ordering it – with an extra scoop of vanilla ice cream because the ice cream to cookie ratio is always off. There was a burger place in Toronto that used to serve them and I used to love the place, suffering through the mediocre burgers just to get to the dessert.
And you? What’s your culinary Kryptonite? Your Devil’s snack?
De som lyckats få tag på en OnePlus 2 bör snart få en OTA-uppdatering som ger telefonen version 2.1.0 av tillverkarens egna gränssnitt Oxygen OS. Utöver den obligatoriska samlingen buggfixar och optimeringar ger uppdateringen ett manuellt fotografiläge för kameran.
Det innebär även att RAW-stöd finns i alla tredjepartsappar som kan hantera formatet. OnePlus har vidare lagt till ett reglage som justerar skärmens färgtoner från varmt till kallt. Uppdateringen bjuder avslutningsvis på Exchange-stöd.
Mjukvaran skickas ut stegvis så det kan ta lite tid innan den når fram till alla.
An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photograph of small island cays in the Bahamas and the prominent tidal channels cutting between them. For astronauts, this is one of the most recognizable points on the planet.
This is Martin Shkreli. He’s a despicable piece of shit.
Why? You ask?
Well:
Specialists in infectious disease are protesting a gigantic overnight increase in the price of a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection.
The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager. Turing
immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the
annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of
dollars.
[…]
“This
isn’t the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients, it is us trying
to stay in business,” Mr. Shkreli said. He said that many patients use
the drug for far less than a year and that the price was now more in
line with those of other drugs for rare diseases.
“This
is still one of the smallest pharmaceutical products in the world,” he
said. “It really doesn’t make sense to get any criticism for this.”
[…]
Yeah, nobody really uses this drug, so he’s totally doing a great thing! Oh, except for:
Turing’s price increase could bring sales to tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year if use remains constant. Medicaid
and certain hospitals will be able to get the drug inexpensively under
federal rules for discounts and rebates. But private insurers, Medicare and hospitalized patients would have to pay an amount closer to the list price.
Well, this is probably just a one time thing. I mean, he’s only 32 and … oh.
In 2011, Mr. Shkreli started Retrophin, which also acquired old
neglected drugs and sharply raised their prices. Retrophin’s board fired
Mr. Shkreli a year ago. Last month, it filed a complaint in
Federal District Court in Manhattan, accusing him of using Retrophin as
a personal piggy bank to pay back angry investors in his hedge fund.
This is what happens when a country like America allows something as fundamental as the health of the human beings who live in this country to be a thing that shitbags like Martin Shkreli can use to get rich. This is disgusting, and wrong, and nothing will be done to stop this because PROFITS.
Chrome/Firefox: Hotspot Shield, a VPN we’ve highlighted before , just unveiled a pair of proxy browser extensions, complete with the option to set your own virtual location. That makes it perfect for bypassing pesky location restrictions on streaming movies, music, and web pages.
Why, hello! We’re so glad to see you made it past the velociraptornadoes, sinkhole maze, and fire ants made of literal fire to join us here in our Survival Week bunker. Please help yourself to a single (one, please!) rationed water bottle as we discuss our now increasingly urgent question: Does tinned food go bad?
Since 1988, the population along China’s Pearl River Delta has grown by a whopping 32 million people. Now boasting a total population of 42 million, it’s the largest urban area on the planet. To put it into perspective, 42 million people is more than the population of Canada, Australia, or Argentina.
Studio Ghibli’s Totoro is one of the cutest character of the anime world and these 6 adorable cakes are just the pefect way to pay a perfect homage to the forest spirit.
