firehose

An independent report from the Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general’s office substantiates recent allegations that VA health clinics used inappropriate scheduling practices that concealed treatment delays — many lasting as long as 115 days — and boosted their performance marks.

nerdjpg:

duh-heo:

manga*

Edward Snowden, John Kerry Exchange Taunts Wall Street Journal Edward Snowden and top Obama administration officials continued lobbing intercontinental taunts at one another Wednesday, showing little sign of an end to the hostilities between Washington and the former contractor who leaked some of the National ... and more »

sbosma:

Polypheme and Odyssea, my combatants for Jenn Woodall’s FIGHTZINE, featuring an all-female cast of fighting game characters. These ended up being closer to Dark Souls enemies (maybe my Ornstein and Smough), but hey. 

I picture these two as invulnerable from the front and weak to the rear, with Polypheme’s shield and spear, and Odyssea’s gun keeping the player at bay. I imagine you’d get a few seconds to wail on their weaker side before being skewered on Polypheme’s flaming trident and hurled across the screen.

I knew I wanted to do a pair from the beginning, but I couldn’t really figure things out. I tried out some stuff with a tandem bow, one holding and aiming, the other drawing back the arrow, but visually it didn’t work. Things didn’t really develop until I drew Polypheme’s giant shield, and even then, it wasn’t until the shield became a face with a mouth that the pair clicks. The shield became a cyclops later, after looking at some Indian puppet masks, I think. She became Polypheme, and the other became Odyssea. The trident was a sword originally, but, Polyphemus, being the son of Poseidon, already has a link to the trident. The flaming part of the trident is a small nod to the flaming wooden stake Odysseus uses to blind the cyclops. 

I have a big reference folder full of matchlock guns from different time periods, culled from a few trips down the ol’ Google images rabbit hole, so that popped up. It seems mindlessly scanning Google images or Tumblr or whatever would just be a timesink and nothing else, but you never know. It pays off to keep track of the things you find visually stimulating, just in case.

These are two disparate examples of how I design characters — sometimes a lot of narrative choices go into the character, like in Polypheme, and sometimes it’s just a collection of interesting shapes, patterns, etc, like with Odyssea. The first is active, where I’m trying to fulfill some mental picture, the second is reactive, where I’m building the narrative after the shapes come together. They both have their merits.

I’m happy to add this piece of tonal dissonance to what is otherwise shaping up to be a very fun zine.

kellyblevins:

"Shaggy Crow" by: Kelly Blevins

17” x 24” , charcoal on paper , 2014

www.kblevins.com

Charles Bridge and the Holy Crucifix, Prague, ca. 1935

The TrueCrypt open-source disk encryption software has been potentially compromised and users are now told to avoid the software...

secretbagel:

Heavy Room

Who waits in line for ice cream?  While it tasted good, I will stick with a quart of breyers for the same cost as a cone without the wait!

mollaythesassay:

You’re not hardcore unless you live hardcore

The following is excerpted from Portland Monthly’s July issue. We’re excited about new ideas and directions in Portland’s food scene. Langbaan is just the beginning.  Check out the full story, coming soon. 

The cozy, cramped kitchen looks like a foodie’s vision of a Bangkok night market, with herbs everywhere, soup vapors billowing, and moody shadows creeping from table lamps. It only hints at what’s to come: a two-hour tasting menu of traditional snacks, coconut-chunked soups, raw dishes, chile relishes, grilled pig parts, and some shockingly delightful desserts buried in salty coconut cream or infused with Thai candle smoke. No choices. No substitutions. Plunk down $40, settle in, and let the kitchen do the work. At least so far, this is the food of the year.

At Langbaan, opened in February, PaaDee owner and Bangkok native Akkapong “Earl” Ninsom reconsiders Thai food for a new generation of Portland diners. For these savvy thrill-seekers, the aggressive, straight-from-Chiang Mai flavors of Andy Ricker’s nationally celebrated Pok Pok are now the norm. At Langbaan, choreographed evenings thrash with herbs, refinement, and a new sense of excitement: “seriously old-school Thai cooking,” as Ninsom calls it, replete with tastes rarely seen stateside. A night in this back room moves from dried baby snakehead fish, crushed with fried shallots over coconut rice, to an epiphanic treat born in Bangkok’s Chinatown: black sesame dumplings in a sweet-hot ginger broth that zings straight to the brain. Inevitably, an unexpected soup arrives, one deep in   crispy-skinned fish and sorrel-like ng oom leaves, another a smoky broth with chunks of coconut, lotus root, and tender duck meat bobbing over  on the surface. One night’s lobster salad, part of the upgraded $60 menu option, was worth every pennywort, as brightly bitter herbs pinged beautifully off  coconut-poached lobster and tart, fresh rambutan fruit. Binding it all: delicate dressing infused with kaffir lime skin and with whiffs of fish sauce, garlic, and lemongrass. It shows where Langbaan might go. 

With the diminutive Rassamee Ruaysuntia at the 34-year-old Nimson's side, sharing secrets from her two years as a line cook at Bangkok’s famed Nahm, Langbaan shows how a new generation of cooks are creating a new class of Portland restaurant that feel ambitious yet spontaneous, formal but casual, curious but delicious.

Marc Johns

Me: This older generation pisses me off so much
Therapist: Why?
Me: Because when I was growing up, we were forcefed the idea that if we didn't want to be 'flipping burgers at McDonalds,' then we'd better go to college.
Therapist: And?
Me: And now we've all gone to college, have degrees, can't get a damn job, and the same people that told us to go to college call us entitled assholes because we refuse to flip burgers
Therapist: Touche

jaysimons | deviantart


jaysimons | deviantart

Map of the Stereotypes (larger)

The Largest Immigrant Population in Each State

sophygurl:

insigins:

theatregreek:

The fact that he was never actually outright “rejected” and simply expected girls to just come to him wanting to fuck him makes this even more pathetic.

even more scary too, knowing sickos like these might silently build up anger towards you without you ever doing anything to them or even noticing them

And this is directly caused by societal cues telling us that men are entitled to women’s attention and attraction and desire. His reaction was extreme, but the basis of the thoughts caused his reaction is the norm.

cameratas:

yevkun:

snazzypotassium:

adolinkholin:

twiningschai:

nue-ziel:

derxwnakapsyla:

sirnucleose:

jovian12:

faysethecat:

bropakpro:

you abduct a bunch of little girls from thier shithole home and raise them into adulthood before dying

you escape from an exploding space station and return an alien to his home planet, 14 weeks later you’re pregnant with that aliens baby

you don’t actually exist

you die

You defeat the Soviet Union. Again.

You defeat the final boss and fly away in your spaceship from the shitty decaying planet. 

you die and come back to life because a dragon is a shitlord

you meet up with all of your friends, except the one that tried to kill you and everything you love. this friend was also god, probably.

youre old and your son is still missing even though you found his body

you talk to a spectral robot ghost child for a while before making a choice and probably dying

there are thirteen of them and some of them you beat the big bad evil guy and some f them you don’t and also you get cats in some of them

you realize that all the terrible things that have happened are ultimately your fault and take your own life

pugflavoredsub:

panamsat3:

No new Game of Thrones episode tonight because it’s a holiday weekend in the US, so here’s the continuing voyage of discovery of Arya & the Hound…

These two.

amazing

Google has released a report on the gender and ethnic makeup of its employee population, and the data shows that the company overwhelmingly hires white males, surprising approximately nobody.

Read the rest

NEW PRODUCT – USB Charger Doctor – In-line Voltage and Current Meter

Help! This patient is heating up! Is the voltage too low? Is the current draw too high? Is there a doctor in the house? Oh, thank goodness, the Charger Doctor is here! Right on time…Doctor, can you tell us what the current draw is? What about the voltage? Thanks to the Doctor, you will now be able to watch and care for your USB-powered projects.

Use the USB Charger Doctor to measure the working voltage and current output for any USB port and project. This blue plastic dongle plugs between a USB device, and passes the data lines through. There’s a 0.05 ohm resistor in line with the power pin that is used to measure current draw. The Doctor’s digital display instantly reads the numbers out for testing devices such as chargers, cables, and cell phones.

You can use this device from 3.5-7VDC input voltage (although most USB devices tend to hover around 4.75 to 5.25) and up to 3A of current. It flips between voltage and current readouts every 3 seconds or so. It’s a very handy tool for testing USB devices, checking load levels and debugging battery chargers and boost converters. It’s a little chunkier, but more numerical than our USB Power Gauge Mini-Kit. It’s also not open source so check out the USB Power Gauge mini kit if you want to hack together your own power gauge indicator.



In stock and shipping now!

[Editor's Note: Geekosystem's Glen Tickle is visiting us today. Everyone be nice!] When Alex Trebek appeared on The Nerdist Podcast recently he mentioned he would be open to having a woman replace him as the next host of Jeopardy! when he retires. Here are a few women we think could take the job.