A.N

Cartoonist Chuck Jones’s rules for Wile E. Coyote vs the Road Runner.

Dr. Ben Carson wants to be your next president America, and he’s off to a spectacular start.

In an recent interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, Carson said that he “absolutely” thinks homosexuality is a choice, and he used jail as an example.

“A lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight, and when they come out, they’re gay,” he said. “So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question.”

It’s sort of like how Carson went into CNN’s studio as a possible presidential candidate and came out a laughingstock.

Carson later apologized on Facebook:

“I realized that my choice of language does not reflect fully my heart on gay issues,” he said. “I do not pretend to know how every individual came to their sexual orientation. I regret that my words to express that concept were hurtful and divisive. For that I apologize unreservedly to all that were offended.”

Carson announced that he had launched an exploratory committee this week on Twitter and in a YouTube video.

I am pleased to announce that I have established a Presidential #ExploratoryCommittee http://t.co/4GlsreV4Vh #BenCarson

— Dr. Ben Carson (@RealBenCarson) March 3, 2015

The post Apology of the Day: Ben Carson Sorry for Saying Prisons Turn People Gay appeared first on The Daily What.

An octopus recently tried and failed to make a break for it at the Seattle Aquarium.

The 8-legged beast climbed up his tank and nearly made it over the edge before a member of the staff thwarted his plans.

He was probably just hungry and headed for the crab tank. Or he was jealous of some his cellmates who were recently granted their freedom.

A few weeks ago, the aquarium successfully mated Franklin and Hazel who met on an octopus “blind date” before releasing them back into the wild.

Here’s video footage of the two being set free below a pier.

The post Animal of the Day: Octopus Tries to Escape Seattle Aquarium appeared first on The Daily What.

You’re going to need to include these in your TPS reports.

The new movie “Unfinished Business” has teamed up with iStock by Getty Images to release a free set of hilarious office stock photos featuring the cast.

Because when he’s not plunging into a freezing Lake Michigan, Vince Vaughn is taking care of business.

The movie also stars Dave Franco, Tom Wilkinson and Sienna Miller.

A summary of the plot via IMDB:

A hard-working small business owner and his two associates travel to Europe to close the most important deal of their lives. But what began as a routine business trip goes off the rails in every way imaginable – and unimaginable – way, including unplanned stops at a massive sex fetish event and a global economic summit.

If only they had made a music video like this as well.

The site is releasing 4 limited edition images at a time with the next batches set to come out on the 9th and 16th. You can check out some more of the photos below via AdWeek:

The post Teaser of the Day: ‘Unfinished Business’ Cast Promotes Film With Stock Photos appeared first on The Daily What.

by Laura June

The news
Just came in
From the County of Keck
That a very small bug
By the name of Van Vleck
Is yawning so wide
You can look down his neck.

This may not seem
Very important, I know.
But it IS. So I’m bothering
Telling you so.

I never noticed, until Zelda was born, my very odd need for repetition and order. Only now, where chaos is born and reborn in the space of a child’s room each day anew do I see it: I do the same things over and over. I write in my journal each day, no matter how mundane the activities I log. I note the temperature and the time. I sometimes count in my head while doing other things for no reason other than I feel like it. I silently stand at the kitchen drawer sorting the silverware after opening the drawer just to get a spoon. It feels satisfying in a way I can’t make sense of. It’s not that I’m overly neat or fastidious; don’t open my clothing drawers, because they are worse than a teen’s.

And so, because I am insane, I take the “make your baby’s bedtime routine the same every single night” thing to heart. Like, seriously: I do the exact same thing down to almost the minute, night in, night out, in the hopes that my daughter, like her mother, will one day grow up to list “sleeping” in her top five life activities. I read Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book to Zelda every single night.

Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book is one thousand, seven hundred and seventy-six words long and has fifty-six pages. It used to take me approximately twelve minutes to read, but now I can mow through it in about eight. By my count, (I counted), I have read the book to her two hundred and ninety-eight times (once I subtract the first horror-ridden weeks where bedtime didn’t exist and the very few nights when someone else has put her to bed). I know the book inside out and backwards. By August—when Zelda was six months old—I was already bragging to friends that I had it memorized (cool brag). My memory was tested a month or two later when I turned down the lights as Zelda finished off her milk, laid her down in her crib, cranked up the white noise, and began, as always, while still cleaning up: “The news just came in from the County of Keck,” I said, reaching for the book which wasn’t there. “Shit,” I realized, “I took it downstairs to tape one of its pages back together earlier today. I can’t leave the room; I’m going to have to wing it.”

I did. I could. I didn’t fuck up, not once. I remembered Van Vleck and the Biffer-Baum birds, the Herk-Heimer Sisters and the old drawbridge draw-er. I remembered the stilt-walker walkers, the Hinkle-Horn Honkers, the Collapsible Frink and Jo and Mo Redd-Zoff. I didn’t forget the Hoop-Soup-Snoop Group or the Curious Crandalls or the Chippendale Mupp or Mr. & Mrs. J. Carmichael Krox. Of course the sleepers at the Zwieback Motel were recalled, as were Snorter McPhail and his Snore-a-Snort band, plus the two Foona-Lagoona Baboona and of course, my favorite, Jedd. The Offt I remembered and the fucking Moose and the goddamned Goose too. Who could forget the Bumble-Tub Club? Or the five foot-weary salesmen taking a load off from a long day of trying to peddle Zizzer-Zoof seeds? And the worm and the fish and the whale and “good night.”

The Sleep Book, and parenting in general, has given me a wide range of ways to explore and recognize my more insane, compulsive desires. I test myself every evening: I count in my head the number of pages left as I “read.” These days, sometimes I literally phone it in: Zelda half asleep, barely listening, passing out in the crib, me writing sick burns on Twitter, my iPhone hidden in the book whose pages I don’t bother turning anymore. I snap photos of her curled into a ball and drop them into GroupMe or Slack. I email editors. I browse baby clothes on the Gap.com. All while reciting this poem, all two hundred and forty-seven lines of it. And I do this, not because I’m fully bored (though man I am bored some evenings), but because I like the challenge of multitasking. I like to see what all I can do while not fucking up my beautiful recitation of The Sleep Book.

Another way my compulsions reveal themselves is in Zelda’s toy collection. One afternoon a few months ago, my friend Lisa and I had hauled our daughters in the cold to Play, a sort of indoor playground for babies and toddlers in Greenpoint. It’s just a large open space with padded floors and a ton of toys in bins. Sitting there on the floor in the chaos as our babies did baby stuff, I watched the girl working there periodically and methodically putting away the toys. She wasn’t just chucking them into the bins however: she was slowly and gently organizing them: the play food into one bin, the toy cups and plates in the next. The bristle blocks together, the sorting blocks together. She did it almost as a reflex, a soothing and gentle ritual, it seemed to me. It seemed that way to me because I recognized it, and I longed to join her.

I remarked to my friend that I too, did this at the end of every night. Not because I wanted the things out of sight exactly, but because I felt a keen sense of fulfillment from seeing like with like. For instance, Zelda has a little bucket shape sorter: there are two square blocks, two star blocks, two circles, and so on. For months now, at the end of each day, I count them out as she lays in bed to make sure all ten are there in the bucket where they belong. I put all of the musical instruments together in a bin. I sort the books by type or size and shape and sometimes, as I said, alphabetically. Even when I am just dead tired, I go through some form of this ritual. I just hadn’t thought about it until I saw someone else—who was being paid to do it—doing it.

And the book, that’s it. It’s a ritual. I can’t NOT finish the book. Even if Zelda is totally zonked out, I almost always see it through to the end. I feel something tickling inside me: I want the book to be over—dear God why did I choose a bedtime story that is so fucking long—but I can’t not finish I MUST FINISH, I must get to the worm on the fish hook. Zelda doesn’t give a shit but I’ll be damned if I walk out that door before every light between “here and Far Foodle is out.”

Being this way has helped me in this past year, because babies are nothing if not creatures of some habit. They seem to flourish on the repetition and the mimicry. Just now, Zelda wiped her hands together as if washing them as I stood at the sink, washing my own grimy mitts. And nothing, I mean nothing makes me happier than to see her newest skill, repeated and repeated: Picking up her shape sorting blocks and returning them to their bucket, one by one. When she immediately dumps them out again, I feel safe in the knowledge that she knows where they go now.

Sometimes I randomly blurt out, in the middle of the day, just to see what happens: “The news just came in from the County of Keck.” Invariably, Zelda looks at me, smiling but bewildered, as if to say, “not now: it isn’t the right time.” She is already learning that there is a time, and a place, for everything. If she is still awake, at night, when I get to the end of The Sleep Book, she always smiles and lays her cheek onto the mattress, as if giving up on the day finally, when I get to the same point:

Ninety-nine zillion,
Nine trillion and two
Creatures are sleeping!
So…
How about you?

When you put out your light,
Then the number will be
Ninety-nine zillion
Nine trillion and three.

Good night.

The Parent Rap is an endearing column about the fucked up and cruel world of parenting.

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In a 1998 episode of “The Simpsons” called “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace,” Homer knew about the Higgs boson (aka “God Particle”) many years before it was even discovered.

He is shown writing an equation on a chalkboard, which actually turns out to be a lot more than just a bunch of gibberish.

“That equation predicts the mass of the Higgs boson,” Simon Singh, author of The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets, told “The Independent”. “If you work it out, you get the mass of a Higgs boson that’s only a bit larger than the nano-mass of a Higgs boson actually is. It’s kind of amazing as Homer makes this prediction 14 years before it was discovered.”

Peter Higgs theorized about the particle in the ’60s, and it was finally discovered in 2012.

The writers on the show are all a bunch of math geeks, who have hidden easter eggs throughout the series since it premiered. Another of the equations Homer is working on in the same scene references Fermat’s Last Theorem, which Singh also has written about.

You can read more about the chalkboard scene and the math involved in this chapter from Singh’s book published at Boing Boing.

Here’s a more detailed explanation about the Higgs portion:

The first equation on the board is largely Schiminovich’s work, and it predicts the mass of the Higgs boson, M(H0), an elementary particle that that was first proposed in 1964. The equation is a playful combination of various fundamental parameters, namely the Planck constant, the gravitational constant, and the speed of light. If you look up these numbers and plug them into the equation,1 it predicts a mass of 775 giga-electron-volts (GeV), which is substantially higher than the 125 GeV estimate that emerged when the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012. Nevertheless, 775 GeV was not a bad guess, particularly bearing in mind that Homer is an amateur inventor and he performed this calculation fourteen years before the physicists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, tracked down the elusive particle.

The Simpsons have also made headlines for “predicting” a number of other future events, including the Syrian civil war, the ebola outbreak, the Siegfried & Roy tiger attack, smartwatches and malfunctioning voting booths.

But you would think as longest-running animated series in U.S. TV history that they would eventually get a few things right.

The post Genius of the Day: Homer Simpson Predicted Higgs Boson Before Scientists appeared first on The Daily What.

“White dudes hold the record for creepy crimes, but females are strong as hell!” sings an Auto-Tuned, Antoine Dodson-type character in a viral video at the beginning of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. With this wry bit of catchphrase-feminism, Tina Fey's new television series sets itself up as a feel-good, lady-centric comedy, complete with some of the unabashed topicality of her defining show, 30 Rock. The premise is simple enough: Ellie Kemper plays a 28-year-old doomsday cult survivor starting life over again in the big city after spending 15 years underground in a bunker. The first trailer for the show is all saccharine smiles, complete with un-ironic “raising the roof” gestures and an achingly bright-eyed Kemper staring in awe at New York skyscrapers, a version of the fresh-faced stereotype 30 Rock loved to mock.

Initially, the cult backstory seems like a comic device to show Kimmy experiencing the messiness of modern life for the first time, and to wrest some easy laughs from her regressive, childish ways. (Among her first purchases as a free woman: Light-up sneakers and candy for dinner.) But it quickly becomes clear that Kimmy's past has a bleaker and more specific narrative purpose: Her memories are the PTSD-inducing kind that fuel flashbacks, nightmares, random fits of anger, and distrust. While much of the show finds glee in Kimmy’s propensity for gaffes and ineptitude for slang, it’s equally interested in how her cheeriness is a necessary façade for her inner pain. In other words, her past is much more than an excuse to have Kemper play the cute, out-of-touch oddball in the mean city, which sets Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt up as an unusually earnest and upbeat member of the dark comedy genre.

The show’s warmth and mostly PG-nature distinguishes it from its black-comedy TV peers, like Comedy Central's Review or FX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Archer, which aim more for absurdity, amorality, and, often and to great effect, mean-spiritedness. Kimmy’s upbeat outlook isn't naiveté or stupidity so much as a survival technique she developed after being kidnapped in middle school by an old, white cult leader. This underlying bleakness in turn sets Kimmy Schmidt apart from the inherent optimism of other TV comedies like Parks and Recreation, New Girl, and Modern Family. It's a tricky premise, and the first half of the season gets off to an unwieldy start typical of a new comedy, but it certainly improves the more you watch (it helps that the entire season is dropping on Netflix March 6).

Kimmy’s not the only character trying to come to terms with her past. Her roommate, Titus, is a gay, black, former Times Square robot performer/aspiring star from Mississippi (Titus Burgess, a.k.a. D’Fwan from 30 Rock). Her new boss, Jacqueline Voorhees (played by Jane Krakowski, a.k.a. Jenna Maroney), also has a history that undercuts her current life as a rich, neglected Manhattanite housewife. A few episodes into the first season, Titus becomes convinced that he’s past his prime and no longer desirable. He walks down the street in a Huxtable-esque sweater and loudly laments, “Gay, black, and old? I won’t even know which box to check on the hate-crime form!”

Each is arguably a victim in ways that become more clear a few episodes into the show. And Kimmy Schmidt seems very interested in confronting this notion of victimhood—how does enduring something bad, change who you are? And how does it affect how the rest of the world sees you and treats you?

The show's fascination with trauma, and how optimism and laughter can arise from it, perhaps has roots in Fey’s own life. In an incident she almost never discusses, Fey was attacked by a stranger with a knife while she was in kindergarten. While it feels invasive to draw a connection like this—from the most private moments of a person’s life to their most public art—it might be particularly pertinent with Kimmy Schmidt. Fey has some understandable reasons for not wanting to draw attention to the incident: “It’s impossible to talk about it without somehow seemingly exploiting it and glorifying it,” she told Vanity Fair. Her husband, Jeff Richmond, a producer and composer for 30 Rock, also said, “I think it really informs the way she thinks about her life. When you have that kind of thing happen to you, that makes you scared of certain things, that makes you frightened of different things, your comedy comes out in a different kind of way, and it also makes you feel for people.”

Hardship—whether in the form of sickness, mental illness, a traumatic event, addiction, or bigotry—has a strong history of fueling great comedy. (Just look at Maria Bamford, Mitch Hedburg, Margaret Cho, Bill Hicks, and Robin Williams, to name a few). Strife can engender divisions between people that might not otherwise exist; humor, meanwhile, facilitates human connection. At one point, Kimmy becomes convinced someone’s misinterpreting a faux pas on her part as evidence of her insanity; despite her best efforts, she's internalized this image of herself as a nutjob forever tainted by her time in a cult. If there’s anything Kimmy wants more than to have candy for dinner, it’s to be treated like a normal person. Or to at least have a say in her own narrative.

Kimmy Schmidt is virtually impossible to watch without considering it through the lens of Fey’s defining work. Some characters are clear 30 Rock derivatives, or at least delightful permutations. But for all its overlaps, Kimmy Schmidt stakes out its own territory; it’s no ripoff. There are almost no “white dudes” à la Alec Baldwin’s alpha-male, network executive Jack Donaghy. Kimmy is less snarky Liz Lemon and more Kenneth Parcell, the goofy, sweet-spirited, perennially grinning NBC page. Still, so much of the show’s best humor has unmistakable origins in Liz Lemon's world, so it's perhaps no surprise that 30 Rock presaged some of Kimmy Schmidt’s darkly funny themes.

In the episode “Operation Righteous Lightning Cowboy,” 30 Rock makes fun of the way media coverage exploits tragedy: Jack Donaghy plots to capture huge ratings by preparing an all-purpose disaster special, complete with a Mad Libs-style song urging viewers to “help the people the thing that happened, happened to.” (The plan backfires when the “tragedy” turns out to be a storm that only affects a private island owned by the thoroughly unpopular Mel Gibson). In “The Chain Reaction of Mental Anguish,” 30 Rock touched on the way human beings need each other when experiencing sadness: Jack, Liz, and Kenneth turn to each other as therapists upon which to unload their troubles, but then the situation escalates as each in turn needs someone else to pour their newly unearthed memories of suffering onto.

These examples are admittedly subtler than Kimmy declaring in the pilot episode, “Life beats you up. You can either curl up in a ball and die, or you can stand up and say ‘We’re different, and you can’t break us!’” Her total lack of irony can feel a tad galling, but there’s also value to little manifestos like these: eyeroll-worthy bromides about resilience. "You can stand anything for 10 seconds" is one of Kimmy’s mantras—any time something feels impossible, you just count slowly to 10, and if needed, you start back at one again and keep counting until it (whatever it is) is over.

“In the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance,” David Foster Wallace said in his famous 2005 Kenyon College commencement address, delivered just three years before the writer took his own life. Whether via banal platitudes or an unbreakable can-do attitude, people often resort to less sophisticated means of coping with life for a reason: because they often work when nothing else does. “You yell in your sleep,” Titus tells Kimmy in the trailer. “You bite my nails, and we still don’t know why you’re afraid of Velcro!” For some people like her, cynicism and fatalism aren't signs of cachet or maturity so much as luxuries.

So, yes, Kimmy Schmidt is about a young woman who refuses to curl up in a ball and die. It's possible this gung-ho spirit will elicit some groans. But with any luck, she and Fey's new show will learn to thrive on their own terms, banana-yellow cardigan, light-up sneakers, and all.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/03/unbreakable-kimmy-schmidt-enlightened-not-naive/385626/

Once again, Australia has proven itself to be the land of real-life monsters.

The most recent discovery: a rare Goblin Shark (aka Mitsukurina owstoni) with an “alien-like” mouth that will haunt your nightmares.

The fish was located in January off the coast of Eden, Australia by fisherman who gave it to the Australian Museum for research.

It has a pink, flabby body and a large flat snout with pores which it uses to detect prey. Once it has spotted some food, its jaw full of sharp, pointed teeth juts out of its face and swallows the creature whole.

“It’s pretty impressive, it’s not hideous it’s beautiful,” said fish collection manager at the museum Mark McGrouther.

The goblin shark dates back 125 million years and lives at depths more than 300-feet below the surface of the ocean.

Young Goblin #Shark – our latest very strange addition to the collection. More: http://t.co/YbATDX6tDy pic.twitter.com/Ond8xWTvGZ

— Australian Museum (@austmus) March 3, 2015

Via: The Australian Museum

The post Discovery of the Day: Alien-Like Goblin Shark Found in Australia appeared first on The Daily What.

Baked poutine spring rolls, filled with sweet potato fries, grilled chicken and cheddar cheese, with mushroom gravy dipping sauce. Comfort food done light.

Regular readers know I'm a huge fan of poutine, that Quebecois comfort-food favorite of crispy french fries smothered with rich beef gravy and melty cheese curds. Talk about comfort!

But, in the same breath, I have talk about how not-so-healthy poutine can be -- which is why we don't eat it very often.

Leave it to The Ninj to figure out a way to get all the comfort-food flavor of poutine in a lighter, fresher package: poutine spring rolls, filled with sweet potato fries, grilled chicken and sharp cheddar cheese and served with a mushroom gravy dipping sauce.

While these poutine spring rolls may look complicated and decadent, I swear they're neither. For one, they're baked, not fried, which makes them that much healthier -- as well as easy to make. Plus, I've swapped the heavy cheese curds for just a sprinkle of sharp cheddar cheese and the thick gravy for a much lighter mushroom dipping sauce. They're comfort food done light.
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In his novel Flex, author Ferrett Steinmetz comes up with a rather ingeniuous way of controlling the ultimate cosmic power that magic-wielders could have against the rest of the world — and suggests why maybe magic isn’t always what’s it’s cracked up to be.

FERRETT STEINMETZ:

We all have obsessions. I have a friend who’s played through Dragon Age eighteen times so she can hear every one of the 80,000 potential lines of dialogue. I have a friend who scrutinizes the Internet code that determines where text is placed in your browser, in the hopes of discovering that the webkit-transform property actually rotates an image 7.3 degrees, not 7.0 as promised.

What if those obsessions started to wear holes in the universe?

What if, merely by pouring so much attention into some random hobby, the laws of physics would soften to fit your outlook on life?

And what if the universe hated you for bending its rules?

Personally, I’ve always hated those stories where magicians a) had no limitations on their power, and b) weren’t ruling the world. If magic came with zero drawbacks, then wizards would clobber the paranormally-illiterate with magic missiles in less time than it takes to say Neanderthals went extinct.

So when I wrote Flex, I wanted a really good reason why magicians hadn’t kicked Obama off the White House and installed themselves as the Eternal Emperor-Kings of Washington.

The key was obsession. I liked the idea that every ‘mancer would have their own set of powers keyed to whatever snared their attention – illustromancers, videogamemancers, origamimancers, deathmetalmancers – but that tight focus would be as much a hindrance as a help. By the time that Crazy Cat Lady has crossed the event horizon to become a felimancer, her priorities had warped. Does a crazy cat lady want to rule the land with an iron fist? No! She wants a house with infinite corridors so her kitties can roam safely under her benevolent cat-centered pocket empire.

Yet when my sister-in-law almost died, what I needed was a bureaucromancer.

See, I fantasized about having a magical power over paperwork when I was fighting the insurance companies to get life-saving surgery for my sister-in-law. She had a rare disease (at the time, her malady didn’t even have a Wikipedia entry). The insurance company kept returning our paperwork because we filled out the wrong form, even though that was the form they’d sent us. They claimed her treatment was experimental (and hence uncovered), when in fact so few cases of this disease had surfaced that every treatment counted as experimental. They refused claims for ridiculously trivial reasons, hoping my sister-in-law would quietly kick the bucket before they’d have to shell out $200,000 for her kidney surgery.

You can get wrapped around the axle, seeing that kind of injustice. My sister-in-law’s okay now… but even the slightest discussion of medical paperwork can send me into a frothing tirade.

So when I envisioned a magic system based on obsession, the first thing that came to mind was the living hell of a compassionate man working at a cut-rate insurance company like the kind that almost killed my sister-in-law.

That man would hate his employer. Except instead of quitting, and letting the insurance company win, a truly compulsive man would sabotage the system from within. He’d spend years mastering the insurance company’s paperwork, staying at the office after dark, filling out the right forms for customers so the insurance company would have to pay for their surgeries.

And so I created Paul Tsabo, employed him at crappy ol’ Samaritan Mutual, and drove him magically insane.

To Paul, paperwork is power. Fill out the right requests for information, and governments will fall. Now Paul can send SWAT teams crashing through your door by magically dropping warrants onto the right people’s desks.

He is righteous. He is pure.

He is hopelessly, hopelessly naïve.

Now, I don’t plot my books extensively; I just find a person I like well enough that I’d be willing to follow them through four hundred pages’ worth of book. Paul was the kind of stand-up dude I personally would root for.

But sadly, the grand tradition of fiction is this: choose your hero. Yank him out of his comfort zone, plop him into a new battleground where all of his strengths no longer matter, where in fact all those grand ideals may be liabilities. Make sure he’s going to have to either grow new talents to survive, or die horribly as he clings to the wreckage.

I needed to make Paul’s life a nightmare. And having watched my sister-in-law’s health dwindle, I can tell you that there’s no greater hell than watching someone you love hurt and being unable to help.

So when Paul’s daughter gets burned in a terrorist incident, he doesn’t have the skills to magically summon up the money he needs to get her the reconstructive surgery. Because, he’s new to this whole “bureaucromancy” schtick, a complete novice at his powers – and as mentioned, the universe hates ‘mancy. Do enough magic, and the universe rains horrific coincidences down upon your head, sabotaging you with bad luck until the scales are balanced out.

(We’re not even going to talk about the Bad Thing Paul accidentally did to his kid the first time he tried to save her.)

He’d do anything to save his kid, of course. So what profession, I asked, was a paperwork-loving, government-adoring bureaucromancer least suited for?

Brewing magical drugs, of course.

And who’s the only person who can help him to master his magical backlash so he can get his daughter the treatment she needs?

That’s right; the videogame-playing, magical terrorist who burned his daughter. Who happens to need some help brewing magical drugs.

Ladies and gentlemen, explosions are about to begin. Big magical battles. The quiet implosion of ideals meeting a raw and ruined reality on the ground. Obsessions compromised.

Let’s hope the kid doesn’t get hurt.

—-

Flex: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s

Read an excerpt. Visit the author’s site. Follow him on Twitter.

Oh, what a cute kitten. A cute (enormous-oh-my-god-we’re-all-going-to-dieeee!) kitten.

 

Physical things get a digital identity. A huge digital identity, I guess.

Found here. Thanks for sending it in, Charlie.

The post Pixie: The Giant Kitten Will Eat You Now appeared first on PSD : Photoshop Disasters .

On January 25, 2015, Luchang Wang swiped into her residential college at Yale for the last time. It was a Sunday—a day that many Yale students spend in the library, stressed as they prepare for the week ahead. At some point in the next two days, Wang, a sophomore math major, left New Haven and boarded a plane for San Francisco, using a one-way ticket she had ordered online. She would not be coming back. At 1:26 p.m. on Tuesday, January 27, Wang posted a worrying status on Facebook that sent students and administrators frantically searching for her whereabouts. It read, in part:

Dear Yale: I loved being here. I only wish I could’ve had some time. I needed time to work things out and to wait for new medication to kick in, but I couldn’t do it in school, and I couldn’t bear the thought of having to leave for a full year, or of leaving and never being readmitted. Love, Luchang.

About five hours later, Jonathan Holloway, the dean of Yale College, informed the school via email that Wang had died in "an apparent suicide." A subsequent report by the Yale Daily News stated that a "despondent female" had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco Bay. Although a backpack left on the bridge appeared to belong to Wang, the California Coast Guard couldn’t recover a body and thus couldn’t confirm that she had jumped. Remembered for her compassion, she was 20 years old.

In the weeks following Wang’s death, Yale students have expressed grief and frustration—the latter because of the school’s withdrawal and readmission policies. These policies, some say, make it especially difficult for students with mental-health issues to feel comfortable leaving campus, even when taking time off from school may improve their wellbeing. According to several Yale undergraduates, some of whom asked for anonymity, there is a significant fear on campus that the administration will force mentally ill students to leave; there’s also a related fear that sick students will not be allowed to return. As a result, students suffering from anxiety, depression, and other disorders may not be getting the treatment they need. And for many of those who are, the question soon becomes: "How much should I open up?"

"The fact that [Wang’s] suicide note specifically mentioned the role of withdrawal and readmission policies was pretty inflammatory among undergraduates," said Caroline Posner, a sophomore at Yale who has advocated for mental-health reform on campus. "There are a number of people who are not seeking out help because of the threat that they will be withdrawn or hospitalized for their conditions. There’s no clear standard established that says exactly what students will get involuntarily hospitalized or withdrawn for. So people will lie to their therapists." (Wang had already withdrawn from and been readmitted to Yale once; the school’s policies state that a second readmission will only be considered "under unusual circumstances, ordinarily of a medical nature.")

To be sure, the complexities of college mental-health policies are not unique to Yale, which serves roughly 5,500 undergraduates. Ivy League schools like Brown, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as other elite schools like Duke and the University of California, have, at times, come under fire for how their bylaws affect mentally ill students. (UPenn, for example, has seen a spate of student suicides in the past two years.) Indeed, the mental health of college students is a perennial concern—and one that only seems to be getting worse.

But for various reasons, including Wang’s death and the media attention it received, the shortcomings of such policies are becoming increasingly visible at Yale. Last week, dozens of students at the Ivy League university confronted school officials at a town hall on mental health, framing their complaints in terms of fundamental fairness and transparency. Ultimately, what’s brewing at Yale illustrates that while individual experiences differ, school policies risk exacerbating students’ existing mental-health battles. At best, that can mean deepened uncertainty; at worst, it can mean being cut off from one’s college community.

Yale’s current policies state that undergraduates in good academic standing have until the 10th day of the semester to petition for a one- or two-term leave of absence. For students who wish to spend that time traveling or completing an internship, this provides an easy option to transition on and off campus: There’s no need to apply for readmission. But if a student has to leave Yale after that deadline, they must formally withdraw. (It doesn’t make a difference if they’re leaving for medical or personal reasons; it can be a diagnosis of cancer, a family emergency, or an onset of major depression.) Furthermore, if a student eventually wants to come back to Yale—a decision he or she may not be ready to make at the time—that person must satisfy several requirements after withdrawal.

For at least a decade, these requirements have caused a good deal of consternation among many Yale students. The bylaws use vague language demanding that students be "constructively occupied" and maintain "a satisfactory standard of conduct" while away from campus—but fail to explicitly define what that means. Typically, though, this translates to undertaking a job or completing college courses. On top of that, students who withdraw for mental-health reasons may be required to seek counseling. Any undergraduate who applies for readmission must return to campus for interviews, which "are normally conducted just prior to the beginning of the term" that the student has reapplied for. Although these students are evaluated by a separate readmissions committee, their chances of getting back in may be affected by the general-applicant pool: Yale’s regulations state that the school can cap the number of students it readmits to control total undergraduate enrollment. (The readmissions-committee chairwoman, Pamela George, couldn’t be reached for comment.)

A Yale spokesman, Tom Conroy, declined to specify the percentage of withdrawn students who are readmitted each year. But the school is more than happy to share how few students are accepted in the first place. Last year, Yale’s admissions rate for the class of 2018 was 6.26 percent—fewer than 2,000 high-schoolers were admitted from a pool of more than 30,000 applicants. This rate was in line with those at other elite schools: Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford accepted an average of 6.1 percent of applicants. Conroy indicated that the acceptance rate for readmission is much higher than that of regular applicants: "The way the policies play out is that the vast majority of students who withdraw are readmitted," he wrote in an email. "The purpose of the readmission process is to determine that the issue or issues that led to a withdrawal have been resolved and that the student will return and be successful and have a rewarding experience."

Still, students who have gone through Yale’s readmission process claim that it is mired in financial and logistical uncertainties. Outside courses cost money, and many schools will offer little or no financial aid to withdrawn students because they are typically only enrolled part-time. Moreover, students with mental illnesses may be required to seek specialized treatment, which can cost thousands of dollars, to prove they are healthy enough to return. As Alexa Little, a junior at Yale who left in 2013 and came back this past fall, recently told Bloomberg, "Students who get sick later in the term, or whose chronic health issues flare up unexpectedly, are treated as if they chose to fall ill and punished severely with financial burdens and this complicated process."

On paper, Yale’s readmission requirements seem reasonable, if a little vague. And the bylaws may be vague for a reason: They allow for individual circumstances to be taken into account. Meanwhile, studies show that students who leave school for mental-health reasons should generally seek treatment to get better. And the school has a valid interest in admitting people who can handle their coursework and graduate in a timely manner: Many high-schoolers compete in and outside of the classroom to get in.

Yet, a more cynical interpretation voiced by some students is that Yale effectively treats those with serious mental-health conditions as liabilities rather than as members of the community. A junior studying psychology at Yale who asked to remain anonymous said that the way Yale deals with mental health "creates a culture of shame and silencing and self-silencing," which makes it hard to "feel that you can speak openly and be heard as a student about mental-health issues." She added that Yale’s withdrawal and readmission policies make undergraduates unwilling to be open, above all in regards to suicidal thoughts, self-destructive behavior, and debilitating depression. Discussing these conditions, the student said, may lead officials to question whether a student should be at—or is fit for—Yale.

"It is almost taken as a given that no matter how distressing the thoughts [of self-harm] are, or how productive it might be to talk about them in a therapeutic session, bringing them up will most often result in hospitalization, unless you’re very delicate with your words," she said. "I know students who have been hospitalized involuntarily, or asked to take medical leave. When it happens involuntarily, the assumption is that you’re not capable of protecting yourself, or handling yourself, or even evaluating the state of affairs [you find yourself in] reasonably."

Yale’s policies state that the school can force students to withdraw for medical reasons when they pose "a danger to self or others," or refuse to cooperate with the administration’s efforts to make such a determination. This is standard across colleges and universities around the country. Yale refuses to comment on specific cases for confidentiality reasons, but student accounts of compulsory withdrawals in op-eds and online forums describe harrowing nights spent at Yale-New Haven Hospital, where undergraduates are taken in emergencies, as well as the various administrative and psychological challenges they faced when trying to return to campus. Last year, Rachel Williams—then a readmitted freshman at Yale—published an essay in the student newspaper recounting her experience of being hospitalized under school’s orders after cutting herself. She was eventually told she would have to withdraw from Yale and go home, with no guarantee of readmission. "Upon release from the hospital … my Yale ID was confiscated, as was my room key," Williams wrote. "I was given one evening to pack up my entire life." She returned to school in January 2014.

Although Williams's case may be extreme, such an outcome is what many students likely fear when meeting to discuss mental-health issues with school officials, such as a Yale clinician or academic dean. Tammy Pham, a senior who was friends with Luchang Wang, said many students at elite schools are so driven to succeed that taking a leave of absence does not feel like an option, even if doing so could be beneficial. As at similar schools, there is pressure at Yale to always appear happy or "okay." Pham added that she hopes Yale will remove obstacles to withdrawal and readmission for students, such as the requirement to take courses while away from Yale and the need to declare a leave of absence within the first 10 days of any given semester.

"Basically, the only difference between a leave of absence and withdrawal is foresight, and yet it has massive repercussions," she said. "Ten days seems arbitrary and restrictive."

For its part, Yale in December formed a six-person committee to start reviewing its withdrawal and readmission policies. And in late January, just days after Wang’s death, the university sent a letter to recently readmitted students asking for their "feedback and advice" about the entire withdrawal and readmission process. (It’s unclear whether the letter was sent in direct response to Wang’s death; it was leaked by a readmitted student on Facebook in early February, and the committee’s chairman deferred comment to Conroy, Yale’s spokesman.) Among the questions included in the letter: "Was your decision to withdraw from Yale College affected by your concern for readmission?" and "Did you understand the conditions, if any, of readmission, such as the holding of a job, enrollment in college courses, or therapeutic or medical treatment?" Conroy could not say how long the review will take.

Students have called for changes to Yale’s mental-health policies, resources, and environment for some time now. But undergraduates like senior Geoffrey Smith have recently amplified those calls, supporting a boycott of the annual senior-class fundraising campaign until Yale makes its procedures for withdrawal and readmission less stringent; the campaign has seen an 18.6 percent drop in fundraiser participation this year as compared to 2014. In an email, Smith pointed to recommendations made by student leaders last March as "a precise set of serious and reasonable reforms" for how Yale could ease the burden of taking time off. These include allowing students to take a voluntary leave of absence at least until midterm; for comparison, Harvard College allows students to do so until the seventh Monday of the term. Other reforms include determining requirements for return "tailored to the students’ needs," considering students’ financial means on a case-by-case basis, and informing students of whether they’ve been readmitted to Yale at least one month before their return. If students who withdraw could return to campus more easily, Smith wrote, the fear of involuntary withdrawal would be less "existential," and would not "throw students into [a] terrifying mess."

The debate at Yale comes at a time when mental-health issues are on the rise at schools nationwide. A recent UCLA survey of more than 150,000 college freshmen nationwide found that nearly 10 percent of respondents had "frequently" felt depressed in the past year, up from 6.1 percent in 2010; additionally, respondents rated their emotional health at an average of 50 percent, the lowest level in the survey’s five-decade-old history. Likewise, in 2012, the Association for University and College Counseling Directors revealed that 70 percent of officials who completed its annual member survey said that the number of students on their campus with "severe psychological problems" had increased since the year before. It’s worth noting that at Yale, nearly 40 percent of undergraduates use the school’s mental-health resources before graduating—a demand that, some students claim, has caused long wait-times for appointments and is believed to take a toll on the quality of care.

Victor Schwartz is a psychiatrist who has been studying the mental health of young adults for years. As medical director of the Jed Foundation—a nonprofit devoted to preventing suicide among students enrolled in higher-ed institutions—Schwartz knows of many schools that provide excellent mental-health resources but aren’t doing enough to market and promote them. The popular perception of withdrawal and readmission policies, he added, is as important as the policies themselves: If students believe that they’re punitive or rigid, fewer people will come forward with their problems. "The school has an obligation to offset that negative information," Schwartz said. "Schools are at a disadvantage here for confidentiality reasons; they can’t go out there and say that a particular student’s situation is completely inaccurate in what’s been reported in the school newspaper. But if you’ve accepted a student, you’ve made a certain type of commitment to make sure the student gets to the finish line."

Pham, the Yale senior who knew Wang, says students shouldn’t focus on assigning blame to the school; instead, they should work toward fostering a more positive environment on campus for their peers’ emotional wellbeing. This solution would certainly require updating Yale’s withdrawal and readmission policies, she said. But she believes that students’ concerns can be addressed—at least in part—by improving peer-support systems and promoting education about mental health: a mental-health fellows program, increased communication from the school’s health officials, and workshops during freshmen orientation, for example.

"Yale has the opportunity to lead the way universities treat mental health," Pham said. "It has a lot of power, a lot of visibility. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a death for people to come together and realize there’s a problem. But now, we need to focus on those who are still living."

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/03/when-mentally-ill-students-feel-alone/386504/

Sometimes I want to write something innocuous on Facebook like “Puppy kisses are awesome!” so hundreds of people will click the “like” button, but then go back in and edit that post to say something like “I just made a blanket out of skinned kittens”.  And then I’d go into the comments and be like “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?  WHY WOULD YOU LIKE THIS?  This was a test and you failed.  Stop skinning kittens.”

And then I’d write a new Facebook status saying that to clear my head I’d just made a bacon-wrapped mac & cheese burrito, and after getting a bunch of comments like “Sounds delish!  Share the recipe!” and “Now I’m starving.  I want one!” I’d go back and change that status to “Nothing smells better than a newborn baby”.

Then I’d probably have to stop using Facebook.  That might be for the best anyway.

 ******************

And now, the weekly wrap-up of awesomeness:

Shit I made in my shop (Named “EIGHT POUNDS OF UNCUT COCAINE” so that your credit card bill will be more interesting.):

• The perfect gift for friends and drunkards.
• As requested, a clipboard for the office.  The first side will be hidden under your papers but you’ll know it’s there.  The back can be flashed at people who are assholes and need to back off.
• For water.  Or whatever.

I’m a sucker for crunchy homemade granola, but I always wish there was a way to make it without loading in the oil and sugar. Well, when I made a batch of Pumpkin Spice Granola last fall, I accidentally discovered that fruit purée can act as a binder in a similar way to the oil and sugar in traditional granolas. Sooooo, it was time for me to experiment with that theory some more.

For this Banana Nut Granola, I combined mashed up bananas and unsweetened apple sauce to act as the binder. When the granola bakes, the fruit purées dehydrate and bind the oats together into beautifully crunchy clumps. Perfect! And instead of adding a big slosh of oil, I just went with some natural peanut butter. The oil in the peanut butter helps makes things crispy and adds a wonderfully nutty flavor (banana+peanut=YUM). I also added a handful of unsweetened shredded coconut for more texture and flavor, and tossed in a few crushed up banana chips at the end.

The result is a rich, nutty granola with a faint whisper of natural sweetness, but it’s not a sweet granola like something you’d buy off the shelf. If someone in your house does like sweet granola, simply customize their bowl with a quick drizzle of honey (honey+PB=YUM). And I can’t lie, a few chocolate chips thrown in at the end wouldn’t be a terrible idea, either. Not terrible at all.

Step by Step Photos

Start by preheating the oven to 300 degrees. Mash up two bananas. Measure the mashed bananas (should be around one cup) and then add enough unsweetened apple sauce to make two cups (about 1 cup of apple sauce). 

Add the banana and apple sauce to a small sauce pot with 1/2 cup natural peanut butter, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp vanilla extract, and 1/4 tsp salt.

Heat and stir these ingredients together over low heat until it is smooth and warmed through. This just helps make it a little more fluid and easier to mix with the oats.

Add six cups of old fashioned rolled oats and 1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut to a very large bowl.

Pour the banana/apple sauce/peanut butter mixture over the oats and coconut, then stir and stir and stir until everything is very evenly mixed. You should not have any dry oats or dry clumps left in the bowl.

Cover a large baking sheet with parchment paper, then spread the wet granola over the sheet in an even layer. If there’s too much granola for one baking sheet (it shouldn’t be layered more than one inch thick), divide it between two baking sheets. I prefer parchment for this as opposed to foil because foil reflects the heat and can cause faster browning.  Bake the granola for one to one and a half hours, stirring once after 3o minutes, then every 15 minutes after that. Cooking it low and slow like this helps the fruit purée to dehydrate rather than “cook”. The time it takes your granola to bake will depend on how thick it is piled on that baking sheet, so if you use two it will bake faster. You’ll know it’s done when it’s all dry and slightly golden brown.

Break one cup of banana chips into smaller pieces so that you get more pieces in every bowl and bite.

After the granola is finished baking, stir in the crushed banana chips.

Make sure to let the granola cool completely before storing it in an air-tight container. This recipe makes about 8 cups, or 12 servings of 2/3 cup. 

Oooh yeah, pour some ice cold milk over THAT. 

The post No Sugar Added Banana Nut Granola appeared first on Budget Bytes.

He passed away today at 83. Here’s the New York Times obituary. Doubt there are many people in the world who were so plainly and simply admired as he was, and is.

And rather than to be entirely sad about the end of a life lived well and prosperously, here’s a couple of music videos for you.

Rest in peace, Leonard Nimoy. We are, will always be, your friends.

The only thing cuter than a bat wrapped up in a blanket is a bat eating a banana while wrapped in a blanket.

Watch as this little guy tries to enjoy his breakfast while the camera gets all up in his face.

He’s like “nothing to see here, just getting some potassium in me before my big nap.”

He could at least be polite and close his mouth while he eats.

The post Animal of the Day: Swaddled Bat Munches on a Banana appeared first on The Daily What.

Thirty-seven percent of white Americans believe that the police treat black people less fairly; 70 percent of black Americans feel the same way. Similar chasms exist when it comes to perceived discrimination in stores, the courts, and schools, which means that much of the nation's dialogue about racial inequality is defined by the clashing of intractable subjectivities.

Data alone can’t solve deep-seated social ills or mediate heated arguments, but it does have a habit of pulling conversations away from foggy abstraction and ad hominem accusations. That’s why studies showing that employers prefer to hire candidates with caucasian-sounding names over those with black-sounding ones and that the racial composition of juries affects trial outcomes are so powerful. And it’s why “Still Not Allowed on the Bus,” a working paper published late last year by two researchers based in Australia, is a meaningful contribution to a body of evidence indicating that racial discrimination is real, concrete, and pervasive.

Those two researchers are Redzo Mujcic and Paul Frijters, and their paper describes the results of an experiment they arranged in the state of Queensland, Australia. Mujcic and Frijters liken the racial overtones of Queensland's history to those of the American South; it took until 1963 for black Aboriginals to gain the right to vote in Australia. In their experiment, Mujcic and Frijters enlisted 29 volunteers from different racial and ethnic backgrounds to board public buses, tell the drivers that they lacked the roughly $3.50 needed to ride, and say that they needed to get to a stop about a mile away. They were then asked to record whether the driver let them stay onboard. (They were also told to note the time of day and the weather conditions, which the researchers figured could engender compassion among the bus drivers.)

In all, the experiment yielded data on more than 1,500 encounters between volunteers and drivers. Nearly two-thirds of the volunteers’ pleas were successful, but the rate at which they were granted differed greatly across ethnicities. White participants were given a lot more leeway than black ones: 72 percent of white subjects were allowed to stay onboard, while only 36 percent of black ones were. The rate for South Asian subjects was around 50 percent, and for East Asians it was 73 percent.

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Percentage of Passengers Who Were Allowed to Ride for Free, by Ethnicity

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The researchers also put two twists on their experiment. First, they had subjects dress in businesswear in order to look wealthier, and see if that might change the chances that a rider wouldn’t be kicked off. They then had some subjects put on military getup to make them appear more patriotic. When black people wore a suit or an army uniform, they saw their chances of staying onboard increase roughly twofold. This put them in the same statistical neighborhood as white participants who were dressed casually—though when white people were instructed to wear this clothing, the percentage of them who stayed onboard jumped into the mid-90s.

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Percentage of Passengers Who Were Allowed to Ride for Free, by Ethnicity and Attire

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Erika Hall, a professor of organization and management at Emory University, has also conducted research that puts numbers on racial discrimination. “When we quantify implicit biases, people are given a tangible representation of the cost of prejudice,” she says. “Many people conceptualize prejudice as being subjective, emotional, and open to the interpretation of the victim. However, thinking of prejudice in this way can lead to ‘victim blaming’ because people assume that the victim’s depiction of the events is self-serving. By quantifying these biases, researchers make the bias more objective.”

Thinking of discrimination numerically is not without its pitfalls, though Hall believes they’re more than nullified by the usefulness of empirical data. “The potential downside is that when people have a quantitative statistic…they [can] fail to realize that these studies took place in a specific context and with a specific population,” she says. “Thus, the research context may not be generalizable to the one that they are referencing.” This is not an argument for completely dismissing the findings of the Queensland study, but rather for replicating it in other countries.

Once biases have been catalogued objectively, there remains the problem of what to do about them. A side experiment that Mujcic and Frijters describe in their paper hints at one possible solution. They approached several bus drivers on break, showing them a picture of a subject from the original experiment and asking the driver if that rider would be allowed to stay on. In that survey, 86 percent of drivers said they’d let a black passenger stay onboard—a rate far higher than what happened out on the streets. Perhaps drivers know that they shouldn’t discriminate, but only act on that knowledge when they think their actions are being recorded. Putting policies in place that force people to step outside of their everyday rhythms and evaluate their own fairness might be a useful strategy. Or maybe it comes down to devising something that makes them feel the pressure of that ultimate motivator, social pressure.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/02/white-privilege-quantified/386102/

Anna Pulley’s previous work for The Toast can be found here. 

Fifty Shades of Spay

Our heroine finds

herself enslaved by the CUTEST

tripod tabby.

*

Fifty Shades of Stay

Surprise! That “contract”

you signed was for a time-share

in Provincetown!

*

Fifty Shades of Gay

A bisexual

is born and no one questions

her identity.

*

Read more If Fifty Shades of Grey Had Been Written by a Queer Lady, in Haiku at The Toast.

Don’t be deceived by their colorful manes and cheery disposition. Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle just want to spy on you.

The Intercept has obtained a top secret document from Edward Snowden that reveals a massive cybersecurity operation in Canada which monitors and saves millions of emails sent to the government.

The Communications Security Establishment (CSE) is the organization behind the program which is codenamed “Pony Express.” It also features a “My Little Pony” logo.

So yes, a bunch of bronies in Canada are reading all of your emails and holding onto them for months or even years.

The CSE, as The Intercept notes, is the Canadian equivalent of the NSA in the U.S., and the goal of Pony Express is to combat malware and cyber attacks.

This is the first time the scale of the operation has been made public, and they are also taking advantage of a loophole in Canadian law.

Under Canada’s criminal code, CSE is not allowed to eavesdrop on Canadians’ communications. But the agency can be granted special ministerial exemptions if its efforts are linked to protecting government infrastructure.

Pony Express collects about 400,000 emails every day, according to the CBC, and despite the good intentions behind it, some people are none too pleased.

“You should be able to communicate with your government without the fear that what you say could come back to haunt you in unexpected ways,” said security expert Chris Parsons.

So be careful what you email, because Big Brother Brony is watching.

Via: CBC/The Intercept

The post Surveillance of the Day: Canadian Bronies are Secretly Reading All of Your Emails appeared first on The Daily What.

On E’s “Fashion Police” Monday co-host Giuliana Rancic made a comment about Zendaya Coleman’s hair at the Oscars that lit up the Internet.

“I feel that she smells like patchouli oil or weed,” she said.

On Tuesday, Rancic issued an apology to the singer/actress, regretting her poor choice of words.

“I just want everyone to know that I didn’t intend to hurt anybody,” she said. “But I have learned it is not my intent that matters. It’s the result.”

Co-host Kelly Osbourne, who says she is friends with Zendaya, Tweeted that she is thinking about quitting because of the incident.

I DID NOT MAKE THE WEED COMENT. I DO NOT CONDONE RACISM SO AS A RSULT OF THIS IM SEREIOULSY QUESTIONONIG STAYING ON THE SHOW!

— Kelly Osbourne (@KellyOsbourne) February 24, 2015

Zendaya is not happy abotu the remarks, and and she made that clear in a lengthy statement after the show aired.

“There is a fine line between what is funny and disrespectful,” she wrote. “Someone said something about my hair at the Oscars that left me in awe. Not because I was relishing in rave outfit reviews, but because I was hit with ignorant slurs and pure disrespect.”

You can check her full response below as well as the original clip from the show.

pic.twitter.com/q0fOYrv3gc

— Zendaya (@Zendaya) February 24, 2015

The post Apology of the Day: Giuliana Rancic Sorry She Said Disney Star’s Hair Smells Like Weed appeared first on The Daily What.

by Jazmine Hughes

"But don't let it get you down. After all, no matter how you feel, you have to live with people. You have to live with yourself, too!"

That was advice on dealing with cramps, but also can be applied to life, you know?

[Mental Floss]

1 Comments

If you hear any of the following words or phrases used to describe a female character in a movie made before 1970, odds are good that they're trying to tell you about a lesbian, a real shadows girl, someone who prefers the hour just after dusk, a gal with her own library card.

Improbable

Unlikely

Curious

Irregular

Well-read

Oho

Fond of her health

Peculiar

Glasses

Read more Code Words For Lesbianism In Classic Films at The Toast.

Captain and Crew,

I’ve been married to a wonderful man for almost 5 years now. He and I have worked hard to have a marriage based on openness and honesty.

We decided fairly early on we weren’t in a hurry to have kids, if ever. We wanted to have time to be just us. Then I had some medical issues which required a snip of the tubes, so it hasn’t even been an issue for many years.

The second question my MIL ever asked me was if I was going to give her grandchildren. To the point she stopped talking to us for a year after the marriage when we told her it wasn’t happening.

My husband has always, always handled her and stood up to her on our (and my) behalf. He’s never tried to make me do what she wants even superficially for “family harmony”.

Adding to the tension is the fact that for ten years her ex husband brutally abused my husband. When my husband finally talked to her about it and asked why she didn’t allow him to live elsewhere, her reply was “I didn’t want to admit I was wrong. I would rather you be abused and hurt than hear ‘I told you so’ from my mother”. She has also Whitewashed the abuse and makes it like they had a Rockwell childhood.

There has been therapy for all of this, don’t worry. And continues to be.

Husband and I are now talking about having kids in the next couple years, especially now that we have found out My body has reversed that surgery all on it’s own (super mutant Fallopian tubes for the win).

We will need to set boundaries, probably All over again. Going into it this is what We would want:

1. She would never be left alone with any of our kids. Ever. She has a history of poor decision making and drug use.

2. We would need to restrict how much time she is visiting for our own sanity, and to be honest, mainly mine.

3. That she will not argue every aspect of our parenting choices.

So when is the best time to establish these? What’s a good script that doesn’t involve my overprotective tendencies an easy out? Can I just hide being pregnant until the kid is like 13?

We are not telling anyone I am fertile again, but we are discussing all of this potential madness.

Thanks for your advice

Not yet a momma but already dreading grandmomma drama

Dear Not Yet A Momma,

All of your planned boundaries for your mother-in-law sound reasonable to me based on the history. She will fight them all, especially #3, to which the answer is a robot-like “Well, thanks for telling us but we’re going to do it our way since the baby is fine.”

The time to set boundaries like these is in the moment. She won’t understand the general principles of what you’re doing and why and she won’t understand them or agree to them ahead of time. She won’t accept the logical case for why things have to be the way they are, especially if it means acknowledging past bad behavior on her part. So you could buy yourself tons of conflict when there isn’t even an actual baby yet, or you could hang out, completely ignore her for a while, and then set boundaries on a case by case basis where you don’t have to convince her of anything, you just have to exercise your power as parents. For example:

Her: “Can I come visit you and the baby?” 

Your husband: “It’s not a good time, Ma.”

Her: “Now that I’m coming to see you all, good news, I’m going to stay for three weeks!”

Your husband: “We were thinking more like three days/three hours.”

Her: “I’m going to come anyway! You can’t keep me away from my grandchild!”

Your husband: :shrug: “That’s not our intention, but three weeks is too long for us, so why not come for a short visit and enjoy yourself?” See also: Husband takes grandchild to visit Grandmomma for a day or two, you get house to yourself.

Her: “Why don’t I watch grandchild while you take some time for yourselves?”

Your husband: “No thanks!”

Her: “Jeez, it’s like you don’t want to leave me alone with grandchild or something. Don’t you trust me?”

Your husband: “Well, since you bring it up, no, we’re not comfortable leaving you alone with them.”/”Thanks for the offer, but we’ll get a sitter.”

Her: Why are you doing (parenting thing) like that? You should do it like this!”

Your husband: “Huh, thanks for telling us.” :keeps doing whatever he was doing before:

She may start planning and butting into things as soon as she knows you are expecting, with tons of advice and speculation about how things will be. I suggest that for your own sanity, you let your husband be the one who communicates with her, and that he develops a lot of scripts that go “Hey thanks for telling us” or “Huh, that’s one thought” or “Let’s wait and see!” She can have all the unsolicited advice and wishful thinking she wants. Y’all “win” by being noncommittal and brief so as to not get drawn into lengthy discussions with her. If she pushes to the point where a big discussion needs to happen, he has the option to say “Since you let Ex-husband abuse me, you’ll understand if my trust in you about parenting matters is very low. I’m not the one who needs to earn your regard here.” 

It’s good for you to be vigilant about safety issues, like drug use and leaving children alone with someone who is so cavalier about abuse (I 100% understand your sense of YIKES where she is concerned). As you go forward, remember three things:

• If your child grows up knowing Grandmomma in some fashion, there are times they will be delighted by her, and times when they realize what a fucking pain in the ass she is (and possibly love her anyway). Their relationship most likely won’t mimic your husband’s relationship with her, either because she will genuinely try to do better or because she’s mellowed with time, and because your child won’t ever be in a situation where she has power over them. It’s one of those maddening and beautiful truths that tremendously difficult parents can sometimes be okay grandparents.
• That said, you don’t have to do anything you think is unsafe just to let her have her redemption narrative. “Nope!” is always a possible answer to anything she suggests.
• You and your husband are the bosses of what happens to your child. You will get tons of practice in saying no between now and Actual Baby (from what I hear, life as a pregnant person really lets you practice saying “Kind Sir or Madam, Kindly Fuck Off” to people who want to shove their opinions into your life). Your husband has already survived growing up with this lady. He can handle anything she throws at him, and so can you.

As you plan your family, please don’t let the specter of this lady ruin this time for you. She has no rights or power here except what you grant her.

 

Yes Neil Patrick Harris got naked (sort of), Oprah was handed Legos and Benedict Cumberbatch found comfort in a flask, but one of the buzziest moments from the Academy Awards on Sunday night was a speech about women’s rights and wage equality.

Patricia Arquette won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in “Boyhood,” a movie that took 12 years to film.

Towards the end of her speech, she spoke up about a topic that had everyone in the room cheering her on in support.

“To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation: we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights,” she said. “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America,” she said.

Meryl and JLo loved it, resulting in the GIF of the night.

The post Speech of the Day: Patricia Arquette Speaks Up About Women’s Rights, Meryl Streep Approves appeared first on The Daily What.

In this commercial for a language school, a man asks a young Japanese boy how his English classes are going.

What happens next is straight out of a horror movie.

The actor who plays the mouth demon featured here commented on his role and teased the follow-up to this ad on Reddit.

“The main focus is a girl for the next one,” he wrote. “Yes, I appear inside a little girl’s mouth. There is no good way to say that.”

The post Ad of the Day: English Speaking Man Hides in Japanese Boy’s Mouth appeared first on The Daily What.

There are emoji for pears, koalas, and jack-o’-lanterns; for a pine tree, a pizza slice, and a dragon’s head on a plate.

But there are no emoji for black people. That seems likely to change soon: Diverse emoji are coming.

The next system update for Apple Mac and iOS devices will let users type emoji with a variety of skin tones, a beta software release revealed Monday. Each human-like emoji, from the smiley face to the thumbs-up, will be available in one of five skin tones. And emoji that do not have a racial modifier will no longer appear as white—they’ll instead appear a Simpsons-esque yellow.

This new update will let Apple smartphone users send each other diverse emoji. But as the emoji standard is jointly implemented by Apple and Google, it signals that the Unicode Consortium has chosen a method of typing emoji with different skin tones. (It's unlikely Apple would implement these changes if they weren't going to be the standard.)

All this has been a long time coming. Emoji are part of Unicode, the vast and important standard used across nearly all modern computing systems. Unicode is what ensures that an “a” on my screen looks like an “a” on yours, and that ★ stays a star everywhere. Emoji—small pictographs that can be typed among paragraphs of text, somewhat like this ☺—actually predate modern smartphones, as they emerged first from Japan’s chaotic phone ecosystem. But it was not until 2010, with support from Apple and Google, the two most-prominent American smartphone manufacturers, that Unicode standardized emoji.

The standard has periodically been expanded to address gaps. In 2012, the Unicode Consortium added emoji of same-sex couples to the standard (or, at least, emoji of two men and two women holding hands). A further expansion was planned for this year, too, which would include representations of a sword, a satellite, and a hand flipping the bird.

But with new edition, emoji commentators (myself included) asked: Where are the emoji for people of color? For while there were hundreds of emoji, and more than 100 different representations of human bodies or faces, nearly all were white or a “neutral” yellow. Only two—an apparent East Asian boy, and an apparent South Asian man—seemed to be people of color. There were no non-white women whatsoever, and no black people.

Then, in November of last year, the Unicode Consortium made a quiet announcement in its draft of the new Unicode standard. Different skin tones would be introduced to the emoji standard through a toggle board: A user could click and hold on an emoji while typing it and a menu would coming up, letting them type it in one of five skin tones. (The tones correspond to the Fitzpatrick scale, a numerical method of categorizing human skin pigmentation.)

“People all over the world want to have emoji that reflect more human diversity, especially for skin tone,” said the draft.

Still, the draft was just that: a draft. The document itself warned that “these sets may change before this document is final.” It was unclear how long it would take for diverse emoji to become a real option for users.

It now appears that Apple has now adopted a similar implementation in the next version of its iOS and Mac operating systems. MacRumors first reported that developer betas of both systems, distributed to developers today, allowed for the new emoji. What’s more, the feature will be in the next periodic upgrade for both systems, meaning it could debut in a matter of weeks or months. Users likely won’t have to wait for the next major operating systems—iOS 9 or Mac OS 10.11—neither of which yet have an official release date.

@ispazio nuove emoji iOS 8.3 b2 pic.twitter.com/dgNhJrwwov

— Andrea Luppichini (@AndLup) February 23, 2015

It is unclear when Android users will receive a similar update. As of publication, The Atlantic has asked Google for more information.

MacRumors also reports that the update “brings 32 new country flags, including flags for Canada, Australia, and India.” As I’ve previously detailed, emoji flags are implemented in a more peculiar way, because the Unicode standard is designed to outlive any individual nation-state.

Emoji have long been one of the most accessible parts of the Unicode standard, a piece of technological infrastructure which makes the Internet possible. They’re also just fun. (I mean, a taco pictogram! Who doesn’t want that?) Today’s update makes them even more so, and fixes one of their most glaring—and embarrassing—errors.

Now all we need is an avocado emoji.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/02/finally-emoji-people-of-color/385843/

“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” It was fitting that J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the physicists who helped design the atomic bomb, chose to quote from the Bhagavad Gita in response to the first successful detonation of a nuclear weapon in the remote sands of New Mexico.

The Gita, one of the most venerated Hindu religious texts, chronicles the conversations between Prince Arjuna and the God Krishna—and only the words of a God could appropriately convey the incomprehensible scale on which the United States government had acted. On July 16, 1945, the first nuclear blast in Earth’s history erupted with the force of 20 kilotons of TNT. The desert sand within the blast radius was superheated into a radioactive green glass, named trinitite, and a mushroom cloud blossomed over seven miles into the sky.

As impressive as the explosion itself was, the most powerful aspect of the bomb was the invisible force of radiation. On a very limited scale, radiation is something that occurs naturally on Earth. Particles decay, atoms lose energy, and that energy is emitted in the form of radioactive waves. Every time you take a cross-country flight for instance, you expose yourself to a bath of low-level radiation simply by being closer to space. It isn’t anything to worry about. But the radiation emitted by a nuclear explosion is of another magnitude altogether. After the Trinity test, that first successful detonation in New Mexico, contamination at the blast site was measured at 15 roentgen. Exposure to normal levels of background radiation for most humans is measured at around 200 milliroentgens a year, the equivalent of 0.2 roentgen, as a point of comparison.

Even now, 60 years after the test, levels of radiation at Trinity are about 10 times higher than normal background radiation. The site is open to the public only one weekend a year in April, and visitors are prohibited from touching the still radioactive trinitite. The most stunning feature of the Trinity test turned out not to be the massiveness of the original blast, but the lingering effects that have survived generations into the future, warping the energy of a specific place and challenging our conceptions of how time is experienced.

Harnessing the power of the atom has forced us to think in new ways about time and energy, specifically when it comes to the safekeeping of nuclear waste. Radioactivity works on a literally inhuman scale. The waste that’s created when building nuclear weapons or running nuclear power plants has a half-life of tens of thousands of years. And we’ve come up with a surprisingly inelegant way of dealing with it: burying it in the ground. Of course there are sophisticated safety measures in these storage facilities, but there the toxic sludge sits, and should remain there far, far into the distant future. So far into the future, in fact, that the generations of people it will continue to affect stretch so deep into projected time we struggle to imagine what things we might share in common with them. And so a problem arises: How do we tell our distant descendants where nuclear waste is buried and that it’s dangerous for humans to be around?

* * *

Radioactive waste could remain dangerous to humans for tens of thousands of years. In the age of the Internet, it’s hard to conceive of the difficulties inherent in trying to communicate over such vast amounts of time. We tend to live in a sort of temporal bubble, an eternal present, with communication being made intentionally disposable. We don’t tweet for next week, much less for generations yet to be born. And that counter-intuitively makes it easy to lose perspective on what the French Annales School of historians termed longue durée, literally the “long term,” the deep and almost imperceptible changes over vast stretches of time. It’s in these broad historical terms that we should consider communicating messages over something like 300 generations.

For starters, written language is out. In the longue durée it’s a relatively new technology anyway, and not necessarily efficient at communicating through deep time. Sumerian, one of the first coherent written languages, was only developed as recently as 3000 BCE. Old, to be sure, but only last week in terms of deep time. Humans have been on Earth for something like a couple hundred thousand years, after all.

Our ability to understand ancient written languages is problematic as well. As Rachel Kaufman wrote for Mental Floss, “Only a few of today’s scholars can understand the original Beowulf without a translation, and that text is only 1,000 years old.” There are at least a handful of ancient languages, such as Isthmian and Olmec, which we still don’t quite understand. And there have been instances of civilizations losing the ability to understand written systems as well. According to the 18th-century Scottish historian Alexander Fraser Tytler, the average lifespan of a civilization is about 250 years. Sometimes civilizations decline slowly, like the Western Roman Empire. Or they can collapse almost instantaneously, as in the case of the Mayan. The knowledge accumulated by those societies can be lost over long stretches of time. So any warning to the future about nuclear waste will have to outlast these certainly inevitable collapses, and written language just won’t do the trick. We’re going to have to be more creative than just posting a sign outside of nuclear waste storage sites.

Fortunately for our distant progeny, people are working on it. And they’re coming up with some fascinating propositions. The Constructing Memory Conference (or Construire la mémoire) is really a hybrid between a conference and a debate. The most recent took place in Verdun, France, last September and featured contributions from artists, semioticians, philosophers, writers, and archaeologists, offering diverse suggestions of how to communicate warnings through deep time. The artist Cécil Massart, who works with nuclear agencies in France, presented ideas on how each generation can work with and update the ways it explains nuclear dangers to itself, in the hopes of avoiding the sclerotic decay of communication over generations. The British curator Ele Carpenter presented work in creating a “Temporary Index,” which would consist of countdown clocks being placed at specific nuclear waste facilities, presented in galleries, and featured online.

It makes sense that visual artists would be at the forefront of exploring ways to articulate messages without using written text, and the most ambitious idea featured at the conference was the creation of an Atomic Priesthood. The work of the artists Bryan McGovern Wilson and Robert Williams explores the relationship between the Cumbrian region of England’s nuclear industry and it’s landscape and folklore, specifically using megalithic monuments to move information in the future. The idea is rather complex, but in a nutshell, it would mean using what they call “atomic folk objects” to create an oral tradition of myths associated with nuclear sites. Imagine stories, objects, costumes, and rituals, all being used to convey the danger and power of nuclear sites and the taboo of digging up the radioactive material buried there. David Barrowclough describes their work as, “[m]eticulous illustrations of a fantastical world juxtaposing industrial mine shafts, nuclear power stations with a prone mummified body and dangerous wolf, all illuminated by an eerie yellow glow; a series of photographs featuring a smartly dressed, yet masked, man in unexpected situations next to a prehistoric standing stone, within a Neolithic stone circle and seated in an armchair in an underground cavern…” It’s wonderfully ironic that in order to imagine the far future we have to drudge up the images and implementations of the past. This is exactly what the Atomic Priesthood idea is all about—using our collective human memory to speculate on our shared future.

The phrase “Atomic Priesthood” was coined by the linguist Thomas Sebok in 1981 while Sebok served on an eclectic team of thinkers assembled by the U.S. Department of Energy and Bechtel Corporation. The team’s task was the same as the Construction of Memory Conference—to consider novel ways to communicate the dangers of nuclear waste at least 10,000 years into the future. It was the first of its kind and ushered in what’s now known as “nuclear semiotics,” human communication along nuclear time.

Sebok’s solution of the creation of an Atomic Priesthood has a few obvious benefits: It doesn’t rely solely on written communication, oral traditions and ceremonies can last huge spans of time, and it’s modeled on the leadership structure of the Roman Catholic Church, an institution which has already survived two millennia. The Priesthood could dictate which areas are off limits and help set norms of behavior for dealing with nuclear waste sites. It’s a novel idea, but it’s not without its flaws. Susan Garfield points out how it might be problematic to artificially create an elite caste (which is what a Priestly caste is by definition) and endow it with so much power. There’s also the issue of the priestly caste abdicating its duties in some way. It’s a lot of responsibility to put on a very small number of people. What if, instead of limiting themselves to spiritual and nuclear leadership, they got greedy and starting amassing worldly influence like land ownership and political power?

Sebok wasn’t the only original thinker to offer up creative ideas to the Department of Energy in 1981. The Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem proposed the creation of artificial satellites that would beam warnings back to Earth. He also proposed the creation of "information plants," vegetation that would somehow convey the danger of nuclear areas to future humans. But these suggestions bring us back to the original problem—who’s to say that generations to come would understand the messages that satellites and “information plants” are conveying? The less observer-dependent the messages, the better.

My favorite idea to come out of the 1981 conference was put forth by two French authors, Françoise Bastide and Paolo Fabbri. They suggested the creation of “radiation cats” or “ray cats” whose fur color would change when exposed to high levels of radiation. Cats and humans have cohabitated for thousands of years already and there’s no reason why our tight relationship with felines might end anytime soon. All we would need to do would be to genetically engineer the cats and then create a series of myths or songs about cats’ colors changing when they’re in dangerous places.

These proposals are playful, but there’s also a sense of seriousness, of necessity. The most down to Earth suggestion came from the Swiss physicist Emil Kowalski, who suggested sealing up the nuclear waste so that it’s impossible to reach without a level of technology commensurate with what we currently have. It’s safe to assume that if people in the future are able to create tools sophisticated enough to reach the waste they would also have tools that could measure the high levels of radiation and would understand the inherent dangers.

In New Mexico, not too far from where the original Trinity test was held, is the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Almost 2 million cubic feet of radioactive waste is buried half a mile deep in the 250-million year old salt deposit. The plant will continue to receive nuclear sludge from around the country until 2070, when it will be sealed up for good. The government half-heartedly anticipated the dangers to future humans and settled on surrounding the plant with obelisks containing messages in Spanish, Navajo, Chinese, Latin, Hebrew, and English. Literal warning signs aren’t as inventive as “ray cats,” and the drawbacks of using text to communicate through deep time should be obvious by now. But the only thing we should have confidence in when making predictions on this scale is our uncertainty. Maybe, hopefully, the warning signs will be enough.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/02/how-to-send-a-message-1000-years-to-the-future/385720/

Porsche Indrisie was watching a little crab just chill out on the rocks in Yallingup, Australia when terror struck.

An octopus shot out of the water and quickly dragged the creature beneath the surface.

Indrisie captured the entire moment on video, and you can hear her screams of horror as she witnessed the attack.

Who knew these 8-legged beasts could move so fast? Even sharks are no match for them.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

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