bunnyfood:

It’s called fashion, look it up.

yellowfur:

Those Photoshop brushsets are created and shared by professionals and are free to use :

(©)m@ (Mathias Verhasselt)

BRUSHES #1   BRUSHES #2

(©)Goro (Goro Fujita) 

BRUSHES

(©)Barontieri (Thierry Doizon)

BRUSHES

(©)Bumskee (Min Yum)

BRUSHES

(©)CptObvious (Maciej Kuciara)BRUSHES #1   BRUSHES #2

(©)Tuomas Korpi 

BRUSHES

(©)Kekai Kotaki

BRUSHES

(©)Shaddy Safadi

BRUSHES

credit goes to creators and pandemonium art

(there are even more brushsets on the list)

Please see our post – Is Adafruit going to continue to sell Stratasys/MakerBot products and use their services? We do not know yet. We’re going to get as much information as soon as possible and make a decision if were going to continue sell products / use services from Stratasys. Please review what is posted in the MAKE article by Michael Weinberg. We will post our comments, thoughts and decisions as we get more information.

Please check out the fully open source LulzBot TAZ 4 – Open source 3D Printer & PrintrBots.

Should have been a full release, more sim-like, like X-Wing or TIE Fighter was, and not an arcadey browser game.

doncoyote:

mechanicusdeus:

purebaldfury:

faidame:

wat rings u got bitch?

Thus the myth of the knight lumbering around like Frankenstein is busted

This myth bugs me to no end, so let me clear it up here and now:

A made-to-measure suit of full plate armour is (and ergo was) less cumbersome to wear than, say, an ill-fitting all-weather coat. It was expensive as heck, but the movement it afforded was surprisingly non-restrictive. Also remember that the men who wore these suits were usually quite physically fit (medieval knights - who were among the few who could afford the armour - were trained to fight from around 6 years-old), and were accustomed to training while wearing them.

Plate armour was moderately heavy, granted, but the weight was optimally distributed over the body, meaning the mostly costly aspect of wearing it was increased fatigue. It’s not heavy in the same way a hiking backpack is heavy. Any accounts of a knight being unable to rise after being knocked down were most likely because he was injured, dehydrated, or just plain exhausted - all of which being common in battle anyway. Regardless, it’s unlikely that it’s because his armour prevented him from moving… and the fallacy of knights requiring cranes to get onto their horses is just stupid.

The idea that full plate was sooo impractical is ludicrous; if it were, people wouldn’t have bothered with it.

One of the reasons I really dislike the armor check penalty and max AC bonus from dexterity concepts in 3.x and Pathfinder, even though I know it to be done to prevent everyone from wearing heavy armor.

But on the other hand, knowing that a good way to defeat plate armor is with grappling has led me to just start grappling or tripping or disarming high AC combatants.

all that GIF makes me want is a party/encounter with breakdancing knights

like how would you even figure the AC for a knight taking 20 every round on acrobatics

n-a-s-a:

She lied.

ghettocarnival:

PETER

Didn't I just say we're going to have Firefly games everywhere? Witness the Serenity dice cup in Yahtzee Firefly. pic.twitter.com/zTFuBvZqaW

Director Edgar Wright, who has been attached to "Ant-Man" since 2006, has left the 2015 film due to "differences in vision" with Marvel Studios.

I’m pretty sure I’m the only person named “Dan Fleshler” in the United States.  That’s good news.  If my last name were Jones–or Smith, or Harris, or another common moniker—I might have suffered the Kafkaesque fate of Kevin A. Jones.

In 2012, he was offered a job as a doorman and porter in New York City by Halstead Management. Then a report from a large criminal background check company called Sterling Infosystems mixed him up with a man named Kevin M. Jones, who had at least three criminal convictions. Kevin A. Jones had no criminal record, but the job offer was revoked.

Halstead didn’t give him a chance to clear up the confusion before he was told he’d lost the job, according to class-action lawsuits filed last week in federal court against Sterling, Halstead and its sister company, Brown-Harris-Stevens.  According to Jones’ lawyers, Sally Friedman and Monica Welby of the Legal Action Center, criminal background screening is rife with error and shoddy treatment of applicants. (Disclosure: I have been an occasional consultant to Legal Action Center on criminal justice issues, including records).

This issue matters not only because innocent people and employers who hire screening companies are getting ensnared by a digital dragnet; it also matters because 65 million Americans have criminal records, and those who want to turn their lives around are hurt by background check mistakes. Maybe you don’t care that employers end up screening out deserving applicants. Maybe you scoff at liberals like me who worry that background screening has a discriminatory impact on people of color.  At least you should care that the mistakes cut both ways: employers can end up hiring applicants whose full criminal records are not showing up on background screens.

You can find a litany of common screw-ups in this report by the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC). It’s impossible to quantify the extent of the errors, partly because the industry has no registration requirements and any fly-by-night operation with web access can set up shop. But the NCLC says “tens of millions of workers may pay for these third-party errors with their jobs.” One screening company studied federal corrections databases and found a “41% error rate.”

If you got arrested 30 years ago for selling a little weed but were never charged, or if you went to trial but were never convicted, you still might be tagged with a criminal record. That’s because too many screeners don’t bother to check original court records to verify the status of cases, according to Welby. These screening companies often rely only on bulk databases that aren’t properly updated.

Of course, if job applicants have criminal records, employers need and deserve the right to weigh that history in their hiring decisions. It would be irresponsible for a bus company to ignore someone’s history of convictions for drunken driving. But in the US, common screening practices make it much more difficult for ex-offenders to be evaluated based on their suitability for specific jobs.

This is not just unfair; it leads to bad public policy. Studies have shown  unemployment rates of 50% and higher for ex-prisoners nine months to a year after their release, way more than the rest of the country.   There are already more than enough obstacles in their path to re-entry; flawed search programs and shoddy, sloppy screening procedures should not add even more barriers.

The rest of the world doesn’t seem to have this problem. “The background screening industry in the United States is a relatively unregulated multibillion-dollar sector that has no comparable foreign counterpart,” according to this report in Workplace Management. “Particularly in the European Union and increasingly across the developing world, a job applicant’s right to privacy trumps an employer’s right to collect information about a potential employee.”

Something must be done to police this Wild West of a system in the US, with, for example,  certification requirements for background check companies, as well as reasonable guidelines for screeners and those who hire them. Those steps are endorsed by the industry trade association, the National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS), which does seem interested in getting things right and has established an accreditation program. But, according to the National Consumer Law Center, “out of the 2,137 members in its online directory,  the NAPBS lists only 21 accredited companies…Thus less than one percent undergo voluntary audits by their own trade association and commit themselves to comply with standards that contain many legally mandated elements.”

Like it or not, US businesses need to do more. They need to demand that screening companies look up court records and they need to give people in Kevin A. Jones’ situation advance notice. Friedman puts it well: “Employers and landlords cannot simply hand off to third parties the task of background screening. They can’t turn a blind eye to whether the reports are accurate and the process is fair and legal.”

Kevin A. Jones did find a job, eventually. As reported in the New York Daily News, he filed his lawsuit to “to make sure what happened to him doesn’t happen to anyone else.” But most people in his situation who lost jobs don’t have the lawyers or the time to fight back in court.  Unless background screening practices are overhauled around the country, untold numbers of job applicants and businesses will continue to be victimized.

We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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UPI.com

Parents say Avon, Conn., teachers lured their daughters into a cult UPI.com Parents say their daughters became "flat and distant" after being recruited into a cult by teachers at Avon High School in Connecticut suburb. By Frances Burns | May 23, 2014 at 12:55 PM | Comments. 0. 1. 0. 0. Avon High School, main entrance. and more »

An anonymous reader writes "OpenBeam USA is a Kickstarted company that builds open source aluminum construction systems (think high-quality erector sets). One of the main uses for the systems is building 3D printers, and creator Terence Tam is heavily involved in the 3D-printing community. He's now put up a blog post about some disturbing patents filed by MakerBot. In particular, he notes a patent for auto-leveling on a 3D printer. Not only is this an important upcoming technology for 3D printers, the restriction of which would be a huge blow to progress, it seems the patent was filed just a few short weeks after Steve Graber posted a video demonstrating such auto-leveling. There had also been a Kickstarter campaign for similar tech a few months earlier. Tam gives this warning: 'Considering the Stratasys — Afinia lawsuit, and the fact that Makerbot is now a subsidiary of Stratasys, it's not a stretch to imagine Makerbot coming after other open source 3D manufacturers that threaten their sales. After all, nobody acquires a patent warchest just to invite their competitors to sit around the campfire to sing Kumbaya. It is therefore vitally important that community developed improvements do not fall under Makerbot's (or any other company's) patent portfolio to be used at a later date to clobber the little guys.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YXpfcZy2Sk

Original Source

Ray Rice apologized for a February assault on his wife. His wife said she was sorry too, and the Ravens lent a helping hand to their star running back. It was a terrible moment.

Ray Rice is sorry. He wants you to know how sorry he is for knocking out his fiancee Janay, who is now his wife. He would like to sincerely apologize for dragging her out of an Atlantic City hotel elevator. We know this because Rice told us so. He told the world in a televised public apology broadcast Friday afternoon from Baltimore.

"I apologize for the situation my wife and I were in," the Baltimore Ravens running back said.

Heartfelt apologies from our celebrity betters go way back. And they're usually complete bullshit, as they were when Richard Nixon told the world he wasn't a crook, and as during Paula Deen's mascara-melting mea semi-culpa for making black people dress up like syrup mascots. They were sorry, too. Sort of. It was a qualified sort of sorry.

Public apologies have, at this point, become their own genre, one that by now deserves its own taxonomy. I really hope there are some graduate students out there deconstructing them for a dissertation. If there are, they'd do well to save a chapter for what Rice and his wife did in front of the cameras.

This would be a good time to read Rice's apology again, and give some thought to whether it actually is an apology.

"I apologize for the situation my wife and I were in."

Unfortunately your browser does not support IFrames.

Rice's apology is special because he really believes it; a shocking portion of Rice's press conference was devoted to Successories-style affirmations about how he will recover from and get past this ... situation that ... occurred. Stranger still, Rice somehow managed to get his wife Janay -- whom he married right before he was supposed to go to trial for a more serious version of domestic assault -- to accept an equal share of blame for the incident. She apologized, too.

A quick refresher on what all this apologizing is about: surveillance footage from the Revel Casino in Atlantic City shows Rice knocking his wife unconscious. Authorities did not release that tape to the public. However, footage of Rice dragging his unconscious fiancee out of an elevator did make its way onto the internet.

Initially, both were charged with assault, but the charges against Janay Palmer were dropped, leaving Rice facing more serious allegations. Rice plead not guilty, and prosecutors agreed to a deal that would send Rice to an intervention program. Janay Rice wrote a letter to the court in support of her husband.

She really went to bat for him during the first and only stop on the Ray Rice apology tour. I'd write out her full quote, but there's no need, because the helpful folks running the Ravens official Twitter account, who were live-tweeting the conference, insta-reported the most jarring moment of the whole spectacle.

Janay Rice says she deeply regrets the role that she played the night of the incident.

— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) May 23, 2014

And there she is, the woman who Rice knocked out and dragged out of the elevator, accepting culpability for her role in the whole thing. The situation that occurred. All this passive-voice talk, all this misplaced responsibility.

I wasn't at the Revel Casino to know exactly what happened in February, of course, so I don't know if maybe there was an argument that led up to the moment where Rice knocked his wife out in front of security cameras. That's beside the point, of course: what Rice did is impossible to justify, which makes an explanation unnecessary. Still, Rice's wife accepting equal blame for being knocked unconscious and dragged, by Ray Rice, is a pretty terrible attempt at an explanation.

Rice's own obliviousness to the perversity of all this further sells his sincerity. He even threw in one of those stupid motivational tropes pro players use to jam up your timeline. Not just any trope either, a thematically appropriate one.

Ray Rice: "I won't call myself a failure. Failure is not getting knocked down. It's not getting up."

— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) May 23, 2014

Rise and grind, for sure.

At least take a moment away from being tone deaf to tell us you're thinking of the children.

Ray Rice: "First off, I would like to apologize." Apologizes to the organization, his fans, kids, and "everyone who was affected."

— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) May 23, 2014

Whew. But not just any kids, does your own daughter understand what you're saying? Also: "was affected." By the situation that occurred.

Ray Rice's family and daughter are seated in the front row of the press conference.

— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) May 23, 2014

Rice had his wife, the mother of his daughter, accept equal blame for her own domestic abuse in front of their child.

The Ravens rallied to Rice's defense throughout this saga, as teams do. It wasn't just limited to some incredible social media support. Next, the case goes to Roger Goodell, who will decide on a possible suspension from the league.

Too many women get trapped in abusive relationships. For various reasons, practical and economical and emotional and otherwise obvious and easily understood reasons, they're unable to walk away from the asshole who insists on treating them like a draught animal. I try to avoid hot takes, but I hope the commissioner throws the book at Rice. Give him one game for every person forced to suffer as Janay Rice has suffered. Help Ray Rice understand how sorry he should be.

kenobi-wan-obi:

autistpsyche:

you should check out #AcademicAbleism on twitter, if you haven’t already. 

that dyslexia 1 hit me hard.

Neko Case is so cool.

Brett Brownell and Benjy Hansen-Bundy at Mother Jones have a fascinating article and video about the Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive in general, and its founder Brewster Kahle.

Walking through the Internet Archive’s physical headquarters, which has occupied this former church since 2009, is a surreal experience. Built in 1923, the grand worship hall on the second floor remains intact, with wooden pews lining the floor and a podium sitting atop a stage. But stacks of humming blinking server racks now rest against the walls. And then there are the figurines—dozens of half-size human models that populate the outside rows of pews and immortalize Archive employees and volunteers throughout the years.

Lady Luck, drawn by Chuck Mazoujian (in Will Eisner’s shop). Scanned from the Baltimore Sun comic book insert of Sunday December 8, 1940.

The cart pod on SE 12th and Hawthorne is going to become something else. Pretty much everybody on Facebook and Twitter is pissed (to my surprise, Google+ seems to have largely missed this story).

Are we throwing away everything that made this city great? Are we gentrifying ourselves to death? Are we becoming (welp) Seattle?

I find it hard to get upset about a parking lot getting turned into apartments, because the rental market is INSANE and large parking lots are awful. But I'm especially unmoved by a parking lot full of food trucks changing because they're food TRUCKS. They're movable. If we had a culture of food obelisks, that would be different. But these are mobile, they can find a new parking lot.

It's not the only parking lot ON THAT CORNER. If the owners of the empty lot across the street wanted to become instant city heroes, they could offer to move the carts as soon as development starts.

Or the new developers could announce that the apartment complex will have stalls that food trucks can plug into and pledge to keep the leases affordable for current tenants.

Or the trucks could announce they're moving together to a new cool location without all that pesky housing around. Or all getting brick and mortar locations in a micro-restaurant space. Or starting a ska band. It doesn't matter. The point is, the culture of a city doesn't die when eight carts and a tent have to move. The culture is made up of people who want to do cool things and find ways to do them. It's about taking worthless parking lots and turning them into outdoor restaurant/party spaces. Can't that same ingenuity be applied to new buildings?

Of course it can. Portland is an awesome city, but it's also a city that is constantly patting itself on the back for the awesome things it's already done (not to mention the mediocre things it's done). Instead, let's talk about ways to get more awesome.

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Portland's water bureau has begun urging its customers all across Portland, and beyond, not to drink tap water unless its been boiled—after state officials, doing routine tests, discovered E. Coli in water samples taken from two reservoirs on Mount Tabor and elsewhere in the system over the past few days.

The city's got a website set up with info, www.portlandoregon.gov/water/boilwaternotice, but it was down when I was typing this.

It's not been announced why there's poop bacteria in the water, but a press conference is scheduled and maybe we'll learn more there. And don't worry if you're reading this right after guzzling a cold, refreshing glass of Bull Run's bounty.

This is from the city's news release. You might get a case of the trots, but that's about it.

"The chance of any health problems related to this water test result is low. If any problems occur, we would expect diarrhea," said Dr. Paul Lewis, Interim Tri-County Health Officer. "We monitor cases of bacterial diarrhea and will be aware of any increase following this event."

Hit the jump to read the rest of the release.

The Portland Water Bureau issued a city-wide boil notice on Friday morning after state health officials detected E. coli in three separate tests during the past three days.

Routine inspections at two of the city's Mt. Tabor reservoirs tested positive for the bacteria.

City officials are hosting an emergency press conference at 11 a.m.

The Oregonian will be there and this story will continue to be updated.

Here's a full release:

The State of Oregon Health Authority's Drinking Water Program has required the City of Portland to issue a Boil Water Notice for all Portland Water Bureau customers and some regional water providers.

Until further notice, all Portland Water Bureau customers and those in the affected areas should boil all tap water used for drinking, food preparation, tooth brushing and ice for at least one minute. Ice or any beverages prepared with un-boiled tap water on or after May 20 should be discarded. Detailed maps, fact sheets and additional information can be found on the Water Bureau's website at www.portlandoregon.gov/water/boilwaternotice or by calling Customer Service at 503-823-7770.

In three separate incidents from May 20 to May 23, repeat water samples confirmed the presence of total coliform and E. coli in routine drinking water samples. The water samples that tested positive for bacteria were collected at the outlets of Mt. Tabor Reservoirs 1 and 5, and at the SE 2nd Avenue and Salmon Street water sampling station. Both reservoirs have been taken offline.

A press conference will be held at 11 a.m. today at the City of Portland Emergency Coordination Center, 9911 SE Bush Street in Portland.

All Portland Water Bureau customers are affected. Also affected are customers of the following water providers:

Burlington Water District
City of Gresham (North of I-84)
Lake Grove Water District
Lorna Portland Water
Palatine Hill Water District
Rockwood Water District
Tigard Water Service Area (including Durham, King City and Bull Mountain)
Valley View Water District
West Slope Water District
"While we believe at this time that the potential health risk is relatively small, we take any contamination seriously and are taking every precaution to protect public health," said Portland Water Bureau Administrator David Shaff.

Consuming boiled and bottled water will ensure public health protection until the Water Bureau can determine that the water system is clean of contamination through surveillance sampling. Customers will be notified when they no longer have to boil their water. The Portland Water Bureau is working with the Multnomah County Health Department to provide health-related information to the public.

"The chance of any health problems related to this water test result is low. If any problems occur, we would expect diarrhea," said Dr. Paul Lewis, Interim Tri-County Health Officer. "We monitor cases of bacterial diarrhea and will be aware of any increase following this event."

The Portland Water Bureau collects approximately 240 routine bacterial samples per month throughout the system. The test to determine the presence of bacteria takes about 18 hours. It is not unusual for one of these samples to test positive for bacteria. Samples to confirm possible contamination are collected immediately after an initial detection of the presence of bacteria in drinking water. Once the detection has been confirmed, public health officials recommend that the public boil all tap water before consuming.

Contamination can occur when there is a loss of water pressure, a pipe breaks, or conditions that expose drinking water to outside elements. The Portland Water Bureau is performing a full investigation to identify the cause of the contamination. However, it is not always possible to make an exact determination.

Customers can visit www.portlandoregon.gov/water/boilwaternoticeto determine if their home or business is in the Boil Water Notice area. The Boil Water Notice, fact sheets and contact information are provided on this same website. For more information, affected customers should contact the Portland Water Bureau Customer Service at 503-823-7770.

Do not call 9-1-1 unless you have an emergency. Follow updates on Twitter at #PDXBOIL.

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The Onion – America's Finest News Source

Two remarkable stock photos by Evgeny Atamanenko for Shutterstock. Above, "diet concept. frightened girl in the stress and flying around the burgers on a red background." Read the rest