Snob

This sweet-and-sour cabbage slaw adds a pleasant, fresh vinegary tang to rich, spicy dishes. [Photograph: Lauren Rothman]

What sauerkraut is to a hotdog and kimchi is to a Korean pancake, curtido is to a variety of Latin American dishes. This funky, vinegary cabbage, onion, and carrot slaw brings crunch and a hit of acid to a host of rich, long-cooked dishes that call out for brightness and texture. Traditional curtido is prepared days in advance, allowing it to develop a fermented tang, but this shortcut version—ready in only an hour—is a nice fallback when you don't have time to think ahead. Try it spooned atop braises such as beef barbocoa or sandwiched into Mexican gorditas.

Why this recipe works:

• A hot vinegar brine lends acidity to cabbage, onions, and carrots, but quickly cooling it in the refrigerator with the vegetables retains their crisp texture and bright, fresh color.
• Lightning-quick to prepare, the curtido will only get better with age in the fridge

Note: Curtido is ready within one hour, but improves with time. It can be stored in airtight containers in the refrigerator for up to one month.

Ingredients

serves Makes about 5 cups, active time 10 minutes, total time 1 hour 10 minutes

• 1/2 small (2-pound) green cabbage, cored and very thinly sliced (about 4 cups)
• 1/2 medium white onion, peeled and very thinly sliced (about 1/2 cup)
• 2 carrots, peeled and shredded (about 1/2 cup)
• 1 small jalapeño, ribs and seeds removed, minced (optional)
• 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

Procedures

1. In a large bowl, toss together cabbage, onion, carrot, and jalapeño, if using. In a small saucepan, combine vinegar, salt, and sugar a cook over medium heat, stirring, until salt and sugar are just dissolved. Pour brine over vegetables and toss to combine. Cover and refrigerate for one hour before serving.

The most common language in every U.S. state is English, and the second-most common language in all but seven states is Spanish. But what comes next? The results tell us something about each state’s history of immigration. Ben Blatt put together quite a few maps exploring the languages spoken in the different states.

One of the most interesting data sets for aspiring mapmakers is the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Among other things, that survey includes a detailed look at the languages spoken in American homes. All the maps below are based on the responses to this survey. For instance, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Chinese are separated as different responses in the data, so were treated as different languages when constructing these maps. If those languages had been grouped together, the marking of many states would change.

Besides the most common languages, the maps are broken down into the most common Native American languages, most common Scandinavian languages, and more.  

A woman who had an all-nighter with a dude and drugs in a hotel room gave the streets of southern China a pretty rad show this week. The unknown woman (above) was spotted by passersby as she climbed out her 11th floor window and began dancing on top of an air conditioning unit.

Authorities rushed to the scene with concern that they had a suicide jumper on their hands, and a crowd gathered because why the hell not. She became a huge pain in the ass for the cops. ”She showed absolutely no interest in speaking to the negotiators,” one police spokesperson said. “She also didn’t seem particularly suicidal although she was very excitable … but it wasn’t exactly clear what about.”

As seen in photos below, an officer who gained access to the hotel room had attempted to hand her a towel to cover her up. A housekeeper also tried to persuade the woman back inside. ”We asked the cleaner to speak to the woman,” the spokesperson continued, “which seemed to work quite well.”

When the housekeeper succeeded in luring the naked woman back to the window, a fireman grabbed hold of her. She was “kicking and screaming to safety,” according to a report in the Daily Star.

Drugs were found in the hotel room–we don’t know which kind–and the man who she was partying with blew the scene before authorities arrived.

Daily Star

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is one of those beloved films that fans like just the way it is, and with the popularity of the film as a whole it’s probably best that one major scene was deleted from the final script of the movie- Marvin Acme's toon-filled funeral.

Despite the damper this morbid scene would have put on the movie as a whole, it would have made for a pretty entertaining scene to watch play out, according to these original storyboards from the film which were recently put up for auction on Ebay.

The funeral scene starred Foghorn Leghorn as a preacher, cast Goofy, Bluto, Felix the Cat and others as pallbearers, and contained a shot where Yosemite Sam angrily tosses Acme’s coffin into his grave, making it the most hilarious fake funeral ever proposed!

-Via io9

So you know how a couple years ago, all of a sudden, everyone and their mother came down with a “gluten sensitivity” seemingly out of nowhere? I believe it was somewhere around the time salted caramel-flavored-everything started happening also for some reason. Well, the craze started when scientist Peter Gibson published a study finding that gluten could cause gastrointestinal distress even in some people who didn’t have Celiac’s Disease.

However, Gibson had some misgivings about his own research, feeling there were more variables to control, and more things to test for. So, he decided to repeat the test, albeit more rigorously. What he found was that, for pretty much all “gluten-sensitive” subjects, the intolerance was all in their heads.

Via Real Clear Science:

37 subjects took part, all with self-reported gluten sensitivity who were confirmed to not have celiac’s disease. They were first fed a diet low in FODMAPs for two weeks, then were given one of three diets for a week with either 16 grams per day of added gluten (high-gluten), 2 grams of gluten and 14 grams of whey protein isolate (low-gluten), or 16 grams of whey protein isolate (placebo). Each subject shuffled through every single diet so that they could serve as their own controls, and none ever knew what specific diet he or she was eating. After the main experiment, a second was conducted to ensure that the whey protein placebo was suitable. In this one, 22 of the original subjects shuffled through three different diets — 16 grams of added gluten, 16 grams of added whey protein isolate, or the baseline diet — for three days each.

Analyzing the data, Gibson found that each treatment diet, whether it included gluten or not, prompted subjects to report a worsening of gastrointestinal symptoms to similar degrees. Reported pain, bloating, nausea, and gas all increased over the baseline low-FODMAP diet. Even in the second experiment, when the placebo diet was identical to the baseline diet, subjects reported a worsening of symptoms! The data clearly indicated that a nocebo effect, the same reaction that prompts some people to get sick from wind turbines and wireless internet, was at work here. Patients reported gastrointestinal distress without any apparent physical cause. Gluten wasn’t the culprit; the cause was likely psychological. Participants expected the diets to make them sick, and so they did. The finding led Gibson to the opposite conclusion of his 2011 research:

“In contrast to our first study… we could find absolutely no specific response to gluten.”

I hate to say this, but I called it a long time ago. I’m really careful to keep my mouth shut about these things until all the evidence is in, because for years I thought people claiming to have “sensitive ears” were completely full of shit, and now even nickel-free earrings set my ears on fire. Knowing my luck, were “gluten-sensitivity” a real thing, the very second I opened my mouth to mock it, I would come down with it and never be able to have pizza again.

The problem with so many people vaguely claiming to be ‘sensitive’ to gluten, however–according to a friend of mine with Celiac’s–is that it causes many places to not take Celiac’s seriously, thinking of it as just a new food fad. She actually can’t have food that has been anywhere near other food with gluten. On the bright side, however, I guess there are more options now in the grocery store.

However, there are just always going to be the people who get a rush out of saying to their server “Ohhhhh….Is there gluten in this?” in their Paltrow-iest tones. They love it. They cherish being that person, despite the fact that everyone around them knows they’re full of shit.

True story, back in the day, people thought consumption, also known as tuberculosis, was a fabulously glamorous disease. It was something poets and artists died of, as well as the tragic heroines in “La Boheme” and “La Traviata.” In fact, the consumption-craze was really the first time it became fashionable to be especially thin. People who probably did not like the idea of spitting up blood still liked the idea of seeming very deep but very fragile. Lord Byron once said that he wanted to die of consumption “because the ladies would all say, ‘Look at that poor Byron, how interesting he looks in dying.’ Dylan Thomas lied about having consumption, though mostly to cover up the fact that he was a raging alcoholic.

This happens, I think, more often with mental disorders and “sensitivities,” as those are not as easily provable. For instance, for years after “Sybil” came out in the 1970s and 80s, there was a massive uptick in the amount of people diagnosed with multiple personality disorder (now called “dissociative identity disorder” and also not considered a real thing by the DSM anymore).

Via The Fashionable Diseases Project:

In the eighteenth century, as well as our own, certain diseases could be construed as endowing a sick person with some social or cultural cachet popularly associated with the illness. Melancholy could lend an air of creativity, gout could indicate class and wealth, and nerves could suggest a fashionable sensibility. A slight illness and enough wealth to travel could lead one to the spas and seaside resorts that, outside of London, formed the centres of fashionable society, or perhaps even lead abroad for warmer climes. As such, fashionable diseases also became the object of stigma, satire and allegations of fakery. They could be linked to the putative artificiality of ‘manners,’ modishness and the posturing of the beau monde. As Alexander Pope’s poetic satire says of women in the ‘Cave of Spleen,’ ‘The fair ones feel such maladies as these, When each new night-dress gives a new disease.’

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have people who believe they have been cured by faith healers or helped by homeopathy, when we know that to be impossible. However, I think it’s fascinating that our brains can actually make us think we have a disease we don’t have, or to feel better upon the power of suggestion, and this, I think, is more worthy of study than whether or not people have gluten sensitivities.

Illustration by Nick Gazin

H. R. Giger passed away on May 12 at the age of 74, and the internet responded with a sea of frowny-faced emoticons and people clicking "like" on links to announcements of his passing. Turning our emotions into mechanical clicks and little typed-out sideways faces seems gross after most people's deaths, but it feels somehow appropriate in Giger's case.

Giger is best known for designing the Xenomorph, with its crazy scary body and a head that looks like a dick and a mouth that looks like both a dick and a vag at the same time, in Ridley Scott's Alien movie. His work was scary, sexy, and widely appreciated by art smarties and fraternity dum-dums alike. It dealt with gender stuff and also the mechanical nature of humans, and human sexuality in particular. It seemed to acknowledge that life was nothing more than a combination of sex and death. 

We posted an archival interview with Giger yesterday, but I wanted to mourn some more, so I asked some illustrators I know to draw tributes to a guy whose work affected us all so much. Some of them wrote a few words too.

Clayton Rodery

I was ten when I first saw Alien, and obviously it scared the hell out of me. I was formally introduced to Giger not long after that through an episode of Discovery Channel's Movie Magic, which went into great detail on the origins of the monster and the mind of its creator. It was one of the earliest instances when I realized I could make a real living making whatever bizarre thing I wanted. He was sought after because he was so out there. I just thought, I can do that!

Simon Hanselmann

Jim Mahfood

Man, when I first discovered Giger's work I was a kid, it kind of freaked me out and disturbed me—much like when I first discovered Ralph Steadman. Giger's stuff was a bit too dark and creepy for me as a youth. But later, in art school, I sort of rediscovered him. I saw his designs and concepts for movies like Alien and realized what a fantastically insane genius he was. His mind was like no other's. And his style is unmistakeably his own. That's the type of artist that I am most attracted to—someone who has his own unique style and creates his own universe within that style. That's the type of artist I aspire to be. Thank you for the inspiration and madness, Mr. Giger.

Alex Schubert

When I was 13 I took drawing classes at some nu-metal guy's house. He was super into H. R. Giger, and he introduced me to his work.

RIP to a guy who drew robot dicks his whole life.

Devin Finch

When I was a little kid I would go through my uncle's stuff—mostly issues of Heavy Metal and Spawn comics—and he had one art book I was in love with: Necronomicon, by H. R. Giger. I would flip through it like forest smut. I loved it. The combination of teeth, baby faces, and titties all cast in marble made Spawn look like dog shit.

Also, I thought it really was the Necronomicon from Evil Dead II because I was stupid. I couldn't believe my uncle was so cool.

Cando estudaba Xornalismo en Santiago e compartía moitas horas cos meus compañeiros de clase: Tomás Lixó, Carlos Meixide, Carlos Méndez, Félix Aragunde, Xes Chapela, Belén Regueira, Helena Domínguez… buscabamos centos de formas de entreter as horas que mediaban entre o final das clases, o xantar na facultade de Medicina e a volta ás aulas. Recordo as chanzas sobre neofalantes en galego, daquela moi habituais en Compostela. En realidade, todos os que procediamos de cidades eramos neofalantes pero había determinadas frases que lles escoitabamos a algúns estudantes que nos facían especial graza, sobre todo “de puta nai” e “bo rolo”.

Daquel tempo pasaron case 20 anos e sospeito que xa pouca xente di iso de bo rolo; máis ben dirán bo rollo en frases en galego sen sequera repararen en que é unha forma castelá.

A palabra rollo é desas comodín en castelán. Á parte de definir un obxecto de forma cilíndrica, ten varios significados. Para cada un deles, o galego ten unha forma propia.

O rollo como obxecto en galego é rolo. “Pásame o rolo do fío, por favor”. “No Museu do Cinema de Melgaço gardan rolos de películas antigas”.

Para o significado de rollo como persoa ou cousa aborrecida: “Tu primo es un rollo, no saldría con él ni muerta”, utilizaremos adxectivos do tipo pesado, aborrecido, trosma ou prosma e prosmeiro. “O teu curmán é un prosma, non sairía con el nin morta”.

Cando falemos de rollo no sentido de relación amorosa ou sexual, pasaxeira e superficial: “Lo que tuvimos Miguel y yo no se puede considerar ni rollo”, utilizaremos os substantivos flirt, aventura ou namorisco. “O que tivemos Miguel e mais eu non se pode considerar nin flirt”.

Rollo tamén pode aludir a un texto que se vai escribir ou ler en público: “¿Preparados para el rollo, chicos? Esta noche el catedrático viene inspirado”, dúas palabras poden servirnos en galego, aínda que ningunha aparece no dicionario da RAG: papiro e parzamique. “Prontos para o papiro, rapaces? Esta noite o catedrático vén inspirado”. A orixe de parzamique vén da oración das Leccións de Xob que se lía o Día de Defuntos e que empeza por ‘Parce mihi, domine’. Como tampouco vén no dicionario DRAG, teño que dicirvos que amais de discurso enfiado tamén pode significar leria: “Quedaron de parzamique até as tantas”.

Finalmente, cando falemos de rollo como sensación ou impresión, “Esa casa me da mal rollo”, en galego temos que ter moi en conta a graduación do sentimento. Por exemplo, a frase que utilizamos como exemplo pódese traducir: “Esa casa dáme mal corpo”. A forma corpo pode utilizarse tamén en positivo. “O partido que lles gañamos aos madridistas xa me daba bo corpo desde o primeiro minuto”. Mais se utilizásemos “Esa casa dáme respecto”, non fai falta gradualo porque nese contexto respecto equivale a unha sensación parecida ao temor.

O bo rollo co que empezamos este artigo tamén ten outro significado, aínda non sancionado polas autoridades lingüísticas castelás: equivale a algo feito con simpatía ou sen ánimo de ofender. “Te entré de buen rollo y tú empezaste a gritar”. Neste caso, o importante é fuxir da frase feita en castelán. “Funche de bo xorne (ou sen maldade, sen malicia, ou polas boas ou de boa fe ou ás dereitas…) e ti empezaches a berrar”.

Seguro que na vosa casa ou comarca hai expresións propias para definir ese xeito de ver a vida e as relacións cos demais. Practicádeas para que non se perdan.

• «Si no fuera pinchadiscos me habría gustado ser militar, conductor de tanques»

Que los juegos de mazos de cartas están de moda no es ningún secreto, podemos ver muchos ejemplos desde el mítico Magic: The Gathering, hasta los nuevos desarrollos de estos tipos como serían los Living Card Games de Edge Entertainment con ejemplos tan claros como Netrunner, Star Wars, La Llamada de Cthulhu o Juego de Tronos entre otros; pero no es sólo aquí donde podemos ver estos tipos de juegos, ya que por ejemplo en series de televisión hemos podido ver como aparecen estos juegos, sobretodo en la gran seríe The Big Bang Theory con su juego «Los Guerreros Místicos de Ka Ha» que por la gran popularidad de esta serie se realizó una versión para poder jugarla en la red social Facebook.

Aunque podemos encontrar otros títulos de este estilo dentro de dicha red social, el ejemplo más claro de como conseguir ganarse al público lo ha conseguido la compañía Blizzard Entertainment (seguramente os sonaran grandes juegos como Starcraft, Diablo o World of Warcraft), donde han cogido el mundo creado para uno de sus títulos emblema (WoW) y han desarrollado un juego al más puro estilo Magic que han podido, y aquí es donde ha surgido Hearthstone, y viene dispuesto para quedarse, ya que trae todo lo necesario para que enganche a nuevos jugadores desde el primer momento.

Hearthstone es un juego gratuito (primera ventaja) donde poco a poco y partida a partida podrás ir desbloqueando nuevos héroes y mejorándolos para conseguir nuevas cartas y sobres de cartas más poderosas; pero si no quieres perder tiempo y quieres conseguir las cartas mejores más rápido siempre podrás pasar por caja para comprar más sobres. Por otro lado, otro de los puntos del juego es la facilidad que tienes a la hora de crear tus mazos y dejar un gran número de ellos listos para probar contra la máquina. También podrás jugar partidas contra otros jugadores y embarcarte en partidas para conseguir más rango dentro del juego, todo dispuesto para que los más competitivos pasen horas y horas jugando para conseguir ser los mejores de sus amigos.

Por otro lado, cuando desbloqueas a uno de los héroes nuevos conseguir cartas nuevas es más fácil, pero cada vez la cosa irá más compleja y tendrás que pasar más tiempo y más partidas para desbloquear esas cartas básicas que te faltan de ese personaje.

El escenario de juego como se ve en la ilustración de arriba es muy simple, un cuadrado partido en dos, la parte de abajo es la tuya y la de arriba la de tu rival, cada jugador irá invocando esbirros o lanzando conjuros con el correspondiente coste de maná y gana quien consiga hacer 30 puntos de daño a su rival. Todas las criaturas tienen dos valores, fuerza y resistencia para representar el daño que hacen y el que resisten y luego cuando nos metemos más en el juego vemos que las criaturas pueden tener algunas habilidades especiales; vamos, que cualquiera que haya jugado a Magic alguna vez sabrá perfectamente de lo que estoy hablando y verá que no hay nada nuevo.

Si alguien quiere probarlo simplemente que entre a la página de Hearthstone de Blizzard Entertainment y lo podrá descargar, eso si, para jugar necesitará conectarse a Battle.net, la plataforma de juego de esta empresa y ya una vez ahí podrá jugar contra sus amigos o contra cualquier usuario que haya en la plataforma (que siempre hay muchos contra quien jugar).

Y recordar, podéis convertiros en los mejores de este juego sin llegar a gastar ni un sólo euro, con lo que en ese aspecto es muy interesante. Si alguien quiere alguna vez jugar que me pregunte el usuario.

The post Hearthstone. CCG para el ordenador first appeared on Ultimo Turno.

PicoBrew, a Seattle startup company run by a former Microsoft executive, is set to begin shipping their new home beer brewing machine, the Zymatic. In October 2013, the PicoBrew principals launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund their venture. The idea was to create the equivalent of a high-end espresso maker for the home brewer. Their $150,000 goal was met in a single day, and they have gone on to amass over $660,000. Nothing like a bit of prospective customer support!

Earlier versions of home brewing devices have been on the market prior to this, but they were more expensive and limited as to the kind of beer they could produce. At $1699, Zymatic is still cost prohibitive for many households, although professional craft beer brewers have been eyeing the machine for possible use on testing small batches, as the machine isn't limited to the type of beer it produces.

Zymatic does have an interesting feature: the machine connects to the Internet and is capable of sharing recipe and batch information with other home brewers. Ingredients are mixed automatically and the user can walk away and return to a batch of unfermented beer in 3.5 hours. After a week of fermentation and added carbonation, the recipe is ready to meet a frosty mug.

Visit the PicoBrew website to learn more. Story via Forbes.

(Photo: Limite Zero)

The Spanish town of Sanlúcar de Guadiana and the Portuguese town of Alcoutim are separated by the Guadiana River. You can take a boat across the border. But if you want to move really quickly, then zip line is the way to go.

David Jarman’s Limite Zero is the private company responsible for this fun project. For 15 euros, you can travel at 45 miles per hour down the 0.44-mile long zip line at a 12.47% slope. You can then take a ferry back, which is helpful, because you’d surely want to do it again and again.

The ride lasts about a minute. But since you travel across a time zone boundary, you could also say that it takes one hour and one minute.

(Video Link)

These anatomical diagrams of animals circulating the internet are helpful, but I do wish that they went into a bit more detail. A rabbit's poof loof, like a human's, has four distinct swoophs.

Ideally, give your pet rabbits a rough surface to walk on, like a carpet. Slick floors don't give traction for their thumping puffers and fuzz scrubbers.

C-3PO y R2-D2 son probablemente los robots más populares de la historia de la ciencia ficción. Estos personajes han aparecido en las seis películas ya existentes de Star Wars, y también estarán en Star Wars: Episodio VII, que se está comenzando a rodar bajo las órdenes de J.J. Abrams. Estos dos robots son unos compañeros inseparables en el cine, pero los actores que los interpretan tienen una relación que dista mucho de ser cordial.

El conflicto entre Kenny Baker (R2-D2) y Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) viene de hace mucho tiempo atrás. Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) siempre trató con desdén a su compañero. Daniels se consideraba un actor de verdad y Baker era simplemente un tipo metido dentro de una caja que ni se molestaba en leer el guión.

Kenny Baker habla así de Anthony Daniels:

“La última vez que hablé con él fue en una convención en Boston. Él estaba delante de mi y yo le pregunté: ¿Has tenido un bien fin de semana, Tony? Él me dijo: Estoy teniendo una conversación, y se marchó. Pero él no estaba hablando con nadie. Debería haberle pegado”.

La pareja se lleva tan mal que no quieren hacer apariciones públicas juntos. Por eso suele haber problemas cuando les invitan a convenciones de fans. En una entrevista para el Channel 4, Baker respondió lo siguiente cuando se le preguntó por su disponibilidad para asistir a una reunión de los intérpretes de la saga Star Wars:

“Depende. Si invitan a ese señor, al de las pelotas doradas, yo no estaré allí si él se presenta”.

Kenny todavía tiene más:

“Creí que sólo me odiaba a mi, pero me he dado cuenta recientemente de que no se lleva bien con nadie. Es muy antipático con todo el mundo, incluidos los fans. Daniels no tiene tiempo para nadie, y nadie te puede decir ni una buena palabra sobre él. Pero quiero aclarar que yo no odio a Anthony, no está en mi naturaleza odiar a nadie”.

Anthony Daniels y Kenny Baker han sido convocados para el rodaje de Star Wars: Episodio VII. Son los únicos actores que han trabajado en todas las películas de Star Wars. Kenny Baker tiene ya 74 años y graves problemas de espalda, por lo que podría ser que su inclusión en el reparto de la película se haya hecho en plan honorífico y para hacer de R2-D2 se utilice infografía y un robot de verdad.

The post C-3PO y R2-D2 se odian en la vida real appeared first on Teenage Thunder.

Vista da rúa entremuros, que como di o nome ía á beira da antiga muralla da cidade (a beira esquerda nesta perspectiva), un pouco máis abaixo (ainda que non sae na foto) hai unha casa que ainda conserva unha parte importante da estrutura da muralla.

To celebrate both the first truly hot day of the season (83 degrees!) and the extraordinary amount of attention our little group has received over the past fortnight (starting with the Huffington Post and then exploding when the Guardian in the UK picked up the story), we headed out to one of our favorite spots in the park, the hill where Bob Dylan supposedly once painted us. (He didn’t really, but what a juicy story that was…)

Thanks to all that attention, we were joined by a number of first-timers, enjoying not just their first time meeting us, but their first time ever going topless in a public place. We were honored they chose us to introduce them to one of the finest pleasures New York has to offer: lying bare-breasted in the grass, bathed in sunlight, surrounded by good conversation and good books and good things to eat (thank you, Crumbs, for knocking off the Cronut). It’s a sensory overload of the very best sort.

And these happy newbies were only the ones who could make it on a Monday afternoon! Two dozen more have asked if they can come too, and as we schedule more events, we hope we’ll get to meet them all.

Would you like to join us? We welcome women of every description: the curious, the confirmed, and everyone in between. Just send us an email at toplesspulpfiction[AT]gmail[DOT]com and we’ll add you to our list.

In the meantime, we share with you this glimpse of an idyllic afternoon in New York’s own garden of earthly delights.