Sophianotloren

otfilms:

"When I was young, I invented an invisible friend called Mr Ravioli. My psychiatrist says I don’t need him anymore, so he just sits in the corner and reads."

Mary and Max (2009)

dirtywrat:

The floor is the largest shelf in your house

Is the novel finished? NO

Today’s question: Salted caramel. Thoughts?

My answer: I mean, I like it well enough when I have it. But I think the craze got a little carried away. Not everything has to be salted.

You?

(Extra credit: Do you pronounce “caramel” as “Care-a-mel” or “car-mel”? I usually tend toward the latter.)

republicofswift:

well today in physics class I proved Taylor’s shoe at the Grammys works

unicornfairylove:

micdotcom:

Stunning Australian street art shows the world the true face of LGBT people

Australian street artist Astrotwitch launched “Queer the Streets" last year based on the idea that, as they wrote on Tumblr, all the “queer community needs is simply for more people to know that they exist.” Their works are incredible — and every one has the potential to create a change.

Holy crap! I’m so glad the artists information is with this art, because it’s incredible. We need more people making art like this. It’s inspiring and thought provoking. Well done!

^^ I agree.
-Elliott Alexzander

At the 2015 IndieCade East hosted last month by the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, Seth Alter of Subaltern Games said in a talk that he sets out to examine the problem of a genre and then tries “to subvert it and make something new with its existing systems.” Neocolonialism: Ruin Everything is his warping of a world domination strategy game, where instead of the usual political or military leader battling to conquer as much territory as you can, you’re a banker buying votes and manipulating competitors to sap as much wealth from the planet as possible. The player with the most funds in his or her Swiss bank account is the winner.

The strategy game was made available on Steam in November for Windows and Mac OS X, following an initial version released in 2013. It takes the fundamental mechanics of a 4X game — “explore, expand, exploit, exterminate” — like Civilization, Age of Empires, or even the classic board game Risk, wherein you are the protagonist in developing the world and ruling its terrain. However, you are very clearly the villain in Alter’s inverted version, which is played over a world map whose poles have been inverted — the Gall-Peters projection map, to be exact, whose landmasses are more proportionately accurate. In 12 turns, with up to six players, you parse through the world like it’s only there for your benefit, buying government votes, building mines and factories, and using your power to control regional parliaments. It always ends with the same message: “The world has been ruined. Game over.”

I played Neocolonialism against AI opponents not-so-subtly named Romney and Strauss-Kahn. The game is unabashedly leftist in its politics and reflects a Marxist critique of neocolonialism, where monetary control wrecks the lower classes for the betterment of the one percent. I’ll admit I don’t play many 4X games, and it’s even been a few years since I took at turn at Risk, so please forgive the pitifully poor scores of “Nosilla” in these screenshots. However, as I got the hang of the game through the helpful tutorials it became irresistible to maneuver the board with carefully plotted political pressure, even as coups, mine failures, and rotating prime ministers signaled a coming economic collapse.

Alter noted in the talk that one game he never got around to making was Bloomberg!, where you could only do two things: fire all the teachers or sell public buildings. The next Subaltern Games project is No Pineapple Left Behind, which uses the mechanics of management simulator games (think Railroad Tycoon or even the 1970s’ Lemonade Stand) to critique the public school system in the United States. A wizard has transformed all the students at a middle school into pineapples, and as the principal you choose between keeping them in pineapple form — docile, but with lower grades — or letting them turn back into unmanageable, but sharper, humans. And just like a real principal, your school’s funding depends on test grades. Like Neocolonialism, it promises to take a familiar gaming genre and make players think about its inherent mechanics, and how distorting them can shed new light on real-world problems.

Neocolonialism: Ruin Everything is available on Steam. You can download a free demo tutorial from Subaltern Games.

voidbat:

raecupcake:

Here’s your morbid literary fact of the day.

jesus christ, i will never be this goth.

NONE MORE GOTH.

cleolinda:

magratpudifoot:

tinytruant:

jadelyn:

numba1fangirl:

monicalewinskyed:

if you’re 20+ years old why are you still on tumblr 

breaking news: adults enjoy entertainment and down time

Look kiddo, some of us have been hanging out on the internet with our friends since before you were born. Get off our lawn you little shit.

We had to live through emo-lyric-away messages on AIM and we had to wait to get a college email address before we got Facebook, you little shit. Respect your elders.

#oh god people who had to wait to be on facebook are calling themselves elders?#where are all my late 20s and up crowd y’all#those of us who were in college when facebook was just getting started#or my friends who graduated college before facebook even existed#WHERE ARE MY DIARYLAND XANGA MYSPACE LIVEJOURNAL PEOPLE#where are the people who got in on the ground floor of LINKEDIN#WHERE ARE THEY#everyone in this thread needs to get off my lawn via sleeplessidream

I am so amused by everything happening here.

These “omg olds using tumblr!!1! eww! grownups!” posts make me laugh and laugh and laugh. 

Also, HELLO I STILL HAVE A LIVEJOURNAL AND POST TO IT REGULARLY. I want people to come back to LiveJournal. The ability to filter posts! So useful!

littlelolaloves:

allofthefeelings:

bluelightseven:

zwischendenstuehlen:

Well then, let me show you, because that’s what I do for a living.

Right now, it’s this time of the year, and the little ones have just freshly hatched:

You’ll notice they’re still blind and naked when they hatch. So I make them little coats to keep them warm during their first winter:

See how they happily line up to put them on:

See? Better. Now they’re ready to go and explore the world.

And if they make it through the winter and we take good care of them, they will grow up to be strong and wise like their older fellows:

So, in case you were ever wondering, now you know.

As a Publishing Professional I can say that this is 10000% accurate, and I am a little concerned you’re just giving away all of our industry secrets on Tumblr.

This has got to be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

Australian artist Tanya Schultz creates immersive wonderlands using the sweetest materials: colorful sugar and candy. But along with the hundreds of pounds of sugar, the miniature worlds, which are reminiscent of mythological lands made from food, often incorporate as many ingredients as there are colors. Working under the pseudonym Pip & Pop, Schultz uses everything from glitter and pipe cleaners to beads and figurines to create her psychedelic installations, which have been exhibited all around the world.

Pip and Pop began as a duo in 2007 but since 2011 Schultz has been working alone, or sometimes collaborating with other artist or creative companies, to create her elaborate installations. Check out what she’s been up to recently and allow yourself to be transported to imaginary worlds where sugar rains from the sky and streets are paved with candies. (via Cross Connect)

pinkmanjesse:

*wakes up from a nap angry and not knowing what day it is*

If you've ever wondered why Google decided to build its own car, well, you have at least part of your answer now. During a talk at SXSW, Astro Teller, the head of Google X, told the crowd that they decided to remove the steering wheel and brakes enti...

taikonaut:

humanoidhistory:

Fifty years ago today, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov made history when he stepped outside the Voshkod 2 spacecraft and became the first person ever to walk in space. As a small step, as a great leap, Leonov’s 12-minute spacewalk was an adventure for the ages — and it almost killed him.

The BBC has the story of how his spacesuit started inflating into a death trap:

At this point the cosmonaut realised something was wrong. The lack of atmospheric pressure in space had slowly caused his spacesuit to inflate like a balloon. He recalls:

"My suit was becoming deformed, my hands had slipped out of the gloves, my feet came out of the boots. The suit felt loose around my body. I had to do something.”

"I couldn’t pull myself back using the cord. And what’s more with this misshapen suit it would be impossible to fit through the airlock."

In five minutes he would be in the Earth’s shadow, and plunged into total darkness. Without telling ground control, the cosmonaut decided to bleed half of the air out of his spacesuit through a valve in its lining. This risked starving his body of oxygen, but if he couldn’t get back inside the capsule, he’d be dead anyway.

Leonov let out a little oxygen at a time to reduce the pressure. But as he did so, he started to feel the first hints of decompression sickness.

“I began to get pins and needles in my legs and hands. I was entering the danger zone, I knew this could be fatal.”

He started coiling the cord in order to haul himself back. When he finally reached the airlock, he pushed the camera in, grabbed the sides and lurched through head first.

The extreme physical exertion had caused his temperature to soar; he was now at risk of heatstroke and sweating uncontrollably. The globules filled his helmet, obscuring his vision.

Leonov was supposed to re-enter the airlock feet first. Getting in the wrong way meant he had to turn himself around in the cramped space to make sure the umbilical cord was inside and the hatch was locked.

He says: “It was the most difficult thing: I’m in this suit and I had to turn around in the airlock. But with the perspiration, I couldn’t see anything.”

"I don’t normally sweat much, but on that day I lost 6kg in weight.”

After curling around in his bulky suit, in such a narrow space, Leonov finally made it back inside the craft.

(BBC)

Jesus Christ that’s most of my phobia list right there.

What started as an unsanctioned urban intervention is getting increased official support for bringing grassroots wayfinding to the streets. Walk [Your City], launched in 2012 by designer Matt Tomasulo, is a platform for locals to create directional signs to walkable or bikeable destinations.

Reporting for CityLab, Sarah Goodyear writes that since the project’s “inception two years ago, more than 100 communities have ordered signs through the site — places like Mount Hope, West Virginia, a town of 1,500 that created 70 guideposts for tourists who would be coming to town for a big summer event.” Walk [Your City] also recently received a $182,000 grant from the Knight Foundation for its online walkability toolkit, and in less monetary but equally buzzy success, CNN included it on a list of “5 startups that are reimagining the world.” Raleigh, North Carolina — the city where Tomasulo first installed his signs, without permission — officially authorized the initiative last fall.

Walk [Your City] is far from the only player in the guerrilla wayfinding field, although the accessibility of the online platform certainly has the potential to make it popular on a large scale. An ongoing New York City project by artist Bundith Phunsombatlert, in collaboration with the Department of Transportation, creates signs for public art in the city, noting the walking distance from where you stand. On the more illicit side of things, it was recently revealed that artist Richard Ankrom had installed a helpful interstate symbol on a Los Angeles freeway in 2001 that remained for almost a decade, only coming down with maintenance. As 99% Invisible pointed out in a report on that subterfuge, there’s also the anonymous Efficient Passenger Project in New York, which covertly installs signs to help MTA passengers board subways at the best spots for transfers. Now, with the increased attention and official support, Walk [Your City] could help make a grassroots movement flourish. It’s a simple idea: make a sign for the distance to a public park or coffee shop or whatever you want to highlight; through good design and an accessible online platform, you might just inspire more foot traffic.

Design a wayfinding sign online at Walk [Your City].

Most museums across the US and Europe have had a difficult time handling the selfie onslaught. Like early 20th century art critics snubbing Pablo Picasso, they’ve been banning selfie sticks right and left, while begrudgingly allowing or actively encouraging the taking of selfies.

But thankfully, a few visionaries in the Filipino capital of Manila are being much more open-minded. They’ve launched the world’s first selfie museum, Art in Island, where the point isn’t to look at art — how boring is that? — but to pose for photos with it.

“Whenever you visit an art museum, you are always expected to just look around quietly,” the museum’s founders complain on its Facebook page. “You don’t even have a single proof of you being there. That’s why, for those who think that ‘art museum is not for me,’ we bring you ART IN ISLAND.”

Their interactive venue helps jaded museum-goers regain a healthy perspective on art by allowing them to touch, sit on, and climb 3D approximations of paintings like Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” and Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” With portions of each work slightly altered or left out entirely, the art isn’t even finished until you complete the picture.

Best of all, it takes only two hours to get through the entire museum — a refreshingly short trip compared to the literal days you can spend lost inside the Met without a selfie stick. Art in Island is the perfect museum for the world’s selfie capital.

Art in Island (175 15th Avenue, Quezon City, Manila) is open Tuesday–Sunday, 9:30am–9:30pm.

via http://imnotwordy.com/

I’m not at all sure what the designer was thinking of here, but apparently this was the cover of a religious magazine.

What is that supposed to be? I was thinking an appropriate subtitle would be Faith: the poop-nugget in the butt-crack of life, but I really doubt that that was the message they were going for.

La Mise en Abîme (2013, used oil, metal) / All photos courtesy We Find Wildness

Created by Swiss artist Romain Crelier, La Mise en Abîme (an idiom that communicates the same thing as “a curveball,” but means, roughly, “to have put into an abyss”) was a visually arresting artwork installed on the floor of the Bellelay Abbey in Switzerland back in 2013. The piece is comprised of two shallow pools of used motor oil that function as mirrors, reflecting the architectural details of the surrounding interior. The crude juxtaposition of recycled oil and the impeccably preserved aesthetic of a 12th century church wasn’t lost on the artist who referred to the piece as “monochrome paintings using a despised substance.” You can see more photos on We Find Wildness. (via We Find Wildness, This Isn’t Happiness, thnx Kathy!)

Black-Headed Gull

Following a series of blocking orders issued by the High Court, several UK ISPs are required to restrict access to many of the world’s largest torrent sites and streaming portals.

The most prominent target of these blocks is without doubt The Pirate Bay. As one of the most visited sites on the Internet it has been a thorn in the side of the entertainment industries for years.

The Pirate Bay was one of the first sites on the UK blocklist and access has been barred since 2012. Or rather should have been barred.

For a few weeks most UK Internet subscribers have been able to access TPB just fine. Ever since the site switched to CloudFlare and made the secure https://thepiratebay.se version default, it has become widely accessible again.

TorrentFreak did a quick round among subscribers of various ISPs and found that The Pirate Bay is no longer blocked by Virgin Media, TalkTalk, BT and EE. At the time of writing only Sky appears to block the site consistently.

As a result, The Pirate Bay’s direct UK traffic is steadily increasing.

The Pirate Bay is not the only site that’s widely accessible again. The same applies to the https versions of Torrentz.eu, Rarbg.com, Isohunt.to and various other ‘blocked’ sites. For some sites, including Kickass.to and Extratorrent, the results vary per ISP.

The operator of the Pirate Bay proxy ilikerainbows.co, which had its own domain name added to the blocklist last week, believes that the unblocking relates to the use of https strict.

“I believe it’s because of how CloudFlare works, Simply put when you enable HTTPS Strict on CloudFlare they remove the HTTP Header from the request during HTTPS Connections, thus when they try to inspect the header to a list of ‘banned’ websites it won’t register,” Rainbows’ operator tells TF.

“So any site that uses CloudFlare, has a properly configured and signed SSL Certificate and enables HTTPS-Strict under CloudFlare should be able to evade the ban that’s imposed by Virgin and perhaps other providers,” he adds.

What further complicates the matter is the fact that it’s harder to block The Pirate Bay by its IP-address, as the true location is hidden by CloudFlare’s network of addresses now.

While it may be harder to block sites, it’s not impossible. Sky appears to have no trouble keeping sites blocked, although that probably requires some rather advanced and invasive monitoring tools.

TF asked several ISPs for a comment on the issue and Virgin Media informed us that they still comply with the court order.

“Virgin Media is required to block certain sites by the UK High Court. As a responsible ISP, we comply with court orders addressed to us,” a spokesperson informed TF this morning.

Virgin’s comment suggests that the https version of TPB is not covered by the order at all, and that it was previously blocked by IP-address. However, Virgin couldn’t comment on this suggestion.

We’ll update this article as more information comes in.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and anonymous VPN services.

I'm cautious. I've been watching #altgames from a distance. Quite a few years ago, Jim Rossignol said I was supposed to be part of an "alt mod" scene, but by then I was tapering off most of my work as a modder so I'm not sure if such a community ever really materialized anyway. I generally don't like labels with "alt" in them since the alt-ernative can be said to be anything, but I do like what TJ Thomas said at Indiecade East, and I like a lot of games that are "altgames", and I think much of my work shares whatever those altgames sensibilities are... so there's probably some kind of consensus, we just have to keep articulating it?

In my GDC 2015 diary, I confessed I felt disconnected from fellow indies who were concerned with running small businesses and contract negotiations. No one wants a civil war over what "indie" really means, or a witch hunt over who is authentically "indie" or whatever. We all have different relationships with games and that's okay as long as you're not promoting hate speech or something. At the same time, it's ridiculous to pretend that I'm not bored out of my mind during countless GDC conversation(s) lingering on advertising revenues and Indie Fund deals and sales figures, and then people get visibly annoyed with me when I don't say anything and check my phone instead. Where is the way out?

This morning, Zoe Quinn's altgames manifesto at Offworld really crystallized this for me:

#altgames can be the no-fault divorce that we need where we don't blame each other, where we even stay friends with contemporary indie games. We can still have dinner parties and share custody of the kids! However, we also have very different goals and concerns, so let's try not being married anymore, and maybe we'll all be happier for it.

FAQ:

"Isn't this just notgames with a different name?" I think notgames paved the way for a lot of this thinking, as did the Scratchware Manifesto, as has the past few thousand years of art. It's turtles all the way down. Altgames is about an "alternative" from contemporary mainstream indie game design practice and markets, and little of that history or infrastructure was there back in 2010. At the very least, we can ground altgames historically.

"This all happened 5 years ago already!" Do you have any idea how long 5 years is? At GDC 2010, Sony announced PS3 Move, Microsoft announced XNA 4.0, Valve decided to support OSX on Steam, and Indie Fund was just formed. That is like A MILLION INDIE YEARS ago. So much has changed since then. Now who's being ahistorical?

"Actually, I said this like __ years ago." Thank you for your service. Now these are different people saying it differently, in a different situation, for a different purpose.

"So uh what exactly are the details / goals of this alternative?" In her essay, Quinn suggests some, but here's some that I particularly care about: (a) de-commercializing your general attitude toward games, (b) seeking alternate ways of paying your rent other than selling games on major platforms, (c) experimenting outside of traditional approaches to game mechanics loops and strategy, (d) championing of the short form and the political and the conceptual, (e) supporting new voices.

"I still like playing / making big games about shooting things, sold on Steam." Then do that! But try to keep your mind open to other games in other places too.

"What if I really like making long games or less political games, etc?" I think that's okay, I think the official Altgames Licensing Council* will still accept your membership application. It's not about meeting a quota. Or, feel free NOT to use the altgames label if you don't feel comfortable about it. No one is demanding that everyone identify under #altgames, right now it's mostly a place to help some people gather and see each other.

"Won't the altgames label just get co-opted and/or become meaningless?" Yeah, probably. That happened to "indie games" and it happened to "alternative music." When that time comes for altgames, we'll all be different people in different places, and the label will have served its purpose. Some people will stay with it, others will leave. Maybe it will come to mean something else? Hopefully it won't be a big deal.

"Labels are divisive. Why can't games just be games?" Because the project of celebrating diversity requires celebrating differences. Also, if games are art, then you should probably read what people have been saying about art for the past few thousand years. Turns out, people often don't agree about stuff!


* does not exist

\o/

[via]

Author: Osias Jota Source: Twitter Web Client

RT @HistoricalPics: These two books contain the sum total of all human knowledge http://t.co/QYJESP5IPT

Kevin Kruse excerpts his new book on how corporations created the public symbols of modern Christianity as part of their mobilization against the New Deal. It’s a must read, as is no doubt his book:

Back in the 1930s, business leaders found themselves on the defensive. Their public prestige had plummeted with the Great Crash; their private businesses were under attack by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal from above and labor from below. To regain the upper hand, corporate leaders fought back on all fronts. They waged a figurative war in statehouses and, occasionally, a literal one in the streets; their campaigns extended from courts of law to the court of public opinion. But nothing worked particularly well until they began an inspired public relations offensive that cast capitalism as the handmaiden of Christianity.

The two had been described as soul mates before, but in this campaign they were wedded in pointed opposition to the “creeping socialism” of the New Deal. The federal government had never really factored into Americans’ thinking about the relationship between faith and free enterprise, mostly because it had never loomed that large over business interests. But now it cast a long and ominous shadow.

Accordingly, throughout the 1930s and ’40s, corporate leaders marketed a new ideology that combined elements of Christianity with an anti-federal libertarianism. Powerful business lobbies like the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers led the way, promoting this ideology’s appeal in conferences and P.R. campaigns. Generous funding came from prominent businessmen, from household names like Harvey Firestone, Conrad Hilton, E. F. Hutton, Fred Maytag and Henry R. Luce to lesser-known leaders at U.S. Steel, General Motors and DuPont.

In a shrewd decision, these executives made clergymen their spokesmen. As Sun Oil’s J. Howard Pew noted, polls proved that ministers could mold public opinion more than any other profession. And so these businessmen worked to recruit clergy through private meetings and public appeals. Many answered the call, but three deserve special attention.

From this alliance between preachers and capitalists comes most of the ideas that right-wing Christians today cite about why this is an overtly Christian nation and why socialism is a sin. It’s toxic and it’s powerful. Kruse pushing the timeline of this alliance back from the 50s into the 30s is really important in understanding its deep roots.

Scientists had a pigeon, hawk, and owl fly over super-sensitive microphones to measure how much sound was created by their flapping. Owls are known for their silent flying abilities and this is demonstrated by the barn owl in the GIF above. Watch the video

I feel, as an atheist, about people like Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher the way that Christians must feel about Fred Phelps. Look, being an atheist means you don’t give a fuck about what anyone believes in. I don’t think any of it’s real, but you can go ahead and do it. I’m not trying to destroy religion. I just don’t care about it.

-- Patton Oswalt, humorist

Amen to that.

I think it would be fair to say that, as America's foremost Brooksian observer and critic, I take second chair to no one when it comes to my belief that David Brooks = Everything that is bent and depraved about American political and cultural media.

And I am usually more than happy for the company when some fellow traveler shows up to help me walk the usually-pretty-lonely David Brooks beat.

That being said, having cataloged and written the book on all 103 different ways a writer can break down a David Brooks column, until today I was unaware that a 104th method existed.  And the reason I was unaware of its existence is that it never occurred to me that anyone would invent a way to lump me and my wife and my ex-wife and my Mom and most of the people I have ever worked with and David Brooks all together in the same category...and then go completely out of their way to try to alienate and insult everyone in that group, which presumably contains a substantial number of the people who the writer is trying to reach.

David Brooks, religious clown: Debunking phony Godsplaining from the New York Times’ laziest columnist 

...

But what to make of Friedman and Kristof’s seemingly milquetoast colleague, David Brooks?  No shame attaches to him, though by publishing his pro-faith columns, he validates a stupendously (if surreptitiously) baleful Weltanschauung that should long ago have disappeared from our world.  ... That those who have shrugged off – or laughed away – the comically outlandish claims advanced by the Abrahamic creeds about our world and origins as a species are the ones with the explaining to do.  Should he not be called to account?

...

Moreover, Brooks’ recent Op-Ed, “Building Better Secularists,” leaves me no choice, or, better said, offers me an opportunity I cannot pass up for commentary.  “Building Better Secularists” is nothing less than an anti-religion writer’s dream come true, an essay remarkable for its utter and complete susceptibility to refutation and repudiation.  The title hints that Brooks intends to teach us godless folks a thing or two.  The result?  He succeeds only in beclowning himself by authoring a sanctimoniously gaseous tract that befits not America’s august Paper of Record, but a highbrow version of Watchtower, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ End-is-Nigh rag...

...

The point is not than one or another religion is better or more correct, or more guilty or less guilty of producing “bad outcomes” such as the aforementioned, but that all are equally man-made, equally false, equally irrational, and equally capable of being used just as they have been used: as merciless ideologies of control and repression.  All this immediately renders null and void the credentials of any journalist who would preach faith-tainted advice about how to live to rationalists.

Brooks proceeds to list the challenges he demands be met if atheists are to prosper.  Each of these challenges he presents in contradistinction to its religious equivalent.

...

Let’s take them one by one...

msflamingo:

Here is your St Patrick’s Day activity, courtesy of the Catholic Church.