a restaurant in my hometown got a review that said the servers should “show some skin” so the owner added a potato skin special to the menu and all the proceeds from the special go to the west virginia foundation for rape information services (x)
Created shortly after the death of Beastie Boy Adam “MCA” Yauch in 2012, Canadian illustrator Derek Langille turned the hip-hop trio’s much-loved “Sabotage” video into vintage Marvel Comics-style comic book pages. The seven-page tribute includes a ripped front cover and back page ad featuring a photo of the late-rapper.
“I don’t need to. I don’t need to see that. I can see [Taylor Swift] being beautiful and lovely.”
- Tori Amos in an interview with The Huffington Post. The inept interviewer tried very hard to get her to talk about her legacy, and she was having none of it. Here, he asked her whether she saw herself in a Taylor Swift performance. (via nadyne)
An anonymous reader writes "Ladar Levison, founder of the encrypted email service Lavabit that shut down last year because of friction with U.S. government data requests, has an article at The Guardian where he explains the whole story. He writes, 'My legal saga started last summer with a knock at the door, behind which stood two federal agents ready to to serve me with a court order requiring the installation of surveillance equipment on my company's network. ... I had no choice but to consent to the installation of their device, which would hand the U.S. government access to all of the messages – to and from all of my customers – as they traveled between their email accounts other providers on the Internet. But that wasn't enough. The federal agents then claimed that their court order required me to surrender my company's private encryption keys, and I balked. What they said they needed were customer passwords – which were sent securely – so that they could access the plain-text versions of messages from customers using my company's encrypted storage feature. (The government would later claim they only made this demand because of my "noncompliance".) ... What ensued was a flurry of legal proceedings that would last 38 days, ending not only my startup but also destroying, bit by bit, the very principle upon which I founded it – that we all have a right to personal privacy.'"
Every day,Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: The release of yet another superhero movie, X-Men: Days Of Future Past, has us thinking back on stellar adaptations of non-superhero comics.
The Extraordinary Adventures Of Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010)
Though Luc Besson has become known for producing and writing Euro-American action-junk hybrids (and occasionally directing one himself, as with 2013’s The Family), he indulges his lighter side with The Extraordinary Adventures Of Adèle Blanc-Sec. His 2010 adventure movie was never released theatrically in the United States—possibly, because it adapts a French comic book series, or possibly, because the movie eschews the traditional firepower associated with Besson’s usual exports.
Instead, the film favors a winking sense of innocence as it brings heroine Adèle Blanc-Sec (Louise Bourgoin) to life. An independent woman in early 20th century Paris, Adèle has the ...
Tolles, cleveres Konzept für ‘ne Uhr, der Mechanismus nach dem Klick weil 1,4MB-GIF. „It is not clear how such a construction make the numbers“. Indeed. Aber egal: Kann das jemand bauen, bitte? (via JWZ)
After too many long years of watching old episodes of Sailor Moon taped from Toonami on VHS—or, more likely, going through thousands of clips on YouTube—Hulu is solving our national Sailor Moon supply crisis. The streaming service is adding 10 seasons of the anime (including a bunch of episodes never seen in America before) to both Hulu and Hulu Plus. It already has four episodes up to kick things off, with the plan to add new episodes two at a time every Monday. There are over 200 episodes altogether, so maybe clear up the next 100 Mondays of your whole life? And break out your Sailor Mercury action figures that you ordered special from Canada.
"Machine Games isn’t content to offer a more civilian-rooted view of a Nazi occupation — The New Order also takes a stab at western racism that goes beyond “the Nazis were evil,” drawing a direct line between the Third Reich and the United States’ ugly history of slavery, Jim Crow and segregation.
It succeeds at this in part because of the diversity in representation that Machine Games establishes. There are strong women at the heart of the resistance, and people of color are present with clear voices, their own stories to tell and their own anger and criticisms to level at Blazkowicz and the country he once fought for.
There’s a wide spectrum of human life and suffering on display, beyond the often — and often overly — excessive violence. From doctors weeping at their own complicity as they’re forced to sign away “subhuman” patients, to German missionaries horrified at the eradication of indigenous peoples around the world; the Polish grandmother who sobs as she tears at the uniform of a Nazi captain, and the African resistance fighter trapped in a Croatian work camp. Machine Games seems invested in shoving human collateral damage right in front of the now almost quaint Nazi-shoot-em-up that Wolfenstein began as."
What a weird franchise to try to reform in this way. Remember that, in-canon, the lead character gatling-gunned robot Hitler and zombies.
Game Info
Platform Win, PS3, 360, PS4, Xbox One
Publisher Bethesda Softworks
Developer Machinegames
Release Date 2014-05-20
Wolfenstein: The New Order is the product of an unexpected marriage.
On one side, there’s Wolfenstein, Id Software’s oldest franchise, which came before Doom to define an era of first-person shooters. On the other side is new developer Machine Games. Composed of veterans of the studio Starbreeze, responsible for 2004’s sleeper hit The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and 2007’s The Darkness, their games are known for strong narratives and effective characterization.
The result is a game at the mercies of both old-school blast-em-up first-person shooters and the storytelling ambitions of its new stewards. It shouldn’t work. Numerous other shooters have tried and failed.
But Wolfenstein: The New Order doesn’t fail. Its bizarre love triangle of traditional shooter elements, sci-fi pulp and believable human angle becomes something much more than its origins would suggest.
Wolfenstein: The New Order is a direct sequel to 2009’s Wolfenstein, which followed 2002’s Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The series has established a fully alternate timeline of World War II: Using ancient technology powered by occult energy, the Nazi war machine has gained a seemingly insurmountable edge and set the Allies to heel.
The New Order opens in the sky over a German castle in 1946, as series mainstay BJ Blazkowicz leads a last-ditch mission to take down Willhelm “Deathshead” Strasse. Last seen crawling from the wreckage of a zeppelin in Wolfenstein, Deathshead is the Reich’s lead scientist and strategist of its dark plans for the world. The Allies believe that with Deathshead gone, Germany’s war machine will falter.
The mission fails.
During an attempted escape, Blazkowicz is rendered a comatose John Doe for more than a decade. He finally regains consciousness in a Polish asylum to a waking nightmare: the war is over. The Nazis have won. The world — and more — is theirs. With some unlikely allies, Blazkowicz sets out to find the resistance and save what’s left.
The “what’s left” in question is one of Wolfenstein: The New Order’s strongest elements. Machine Games has created a wonderfully-realized retro sci-fi world. It’s full of monochromatic CRTs and space-race era speculative futurism — aspirational rocket art mixed with Nazi propaganda. This is, appropriately, at turns both humorously absurd and horrifying at any given moment, making for a surreal fiction that Machine Games pulled me right inside. It’s strong, consistent with its own logic, and clever in the way that it plays with historical events and expectations.
Everything is nudged or yanked in a different direction by the Reich’s world domination. Occasionally it’s mined for laughs, like western pop music of the 60s gone in a fascist direction. But more often it paints a darker picture, depicting a world in which the final solution is a matter of course, its machinery grinding to its inevitable conclusion across the world, not just Europe. And in this, once again, Machine Games surprises — The New Order focuses more on the civilian cost of war, of Nazism, than any game I’ve ever played.
Inconvenient truths
Machine Games isn’t content to offer a more civilian-rooted view of a Nazi occupation — The New Order also takes a stab at western racism that goes beyond “the Nazis were evil,” drawing a direct line between the Third Reich and the United States’ ugly history of slavery, Jim Crow and segregation.
It succeeds at this in part because of the diversity in representation that Machine Games establishes. There are strong women at the heart of the resistance, and people of color are present with clear voices, their own stories to tell and their own anger and criticisms to level at Blazkowicz and the country he once fought for.
There’s a wide spectrum of human life and suffering on display, beyond the often — and often overly — excessive violence. From doctors weeping at their own complicity as they’re forced to sign away “subhuman” patients, to German missionaries horrified at the eradication of indigenous peoples around the world; the Polish grandmother who sobs as she tears at the uniform of a Nazi captain, and the African resistance fighter trapped in a Croatian work camp. Machine Games seems invested in shoving human collateral damage right in front of the now almost quaint Nazi-shoot-em-up that Wolfenstein began as.
That dramatic depiction of the cost of violence seems at first to sit awkwardly with the decidedly old-school shooting The New Order is built on. The two-weapon, health recharging dynamic that’s dominated shooters for more than a decade is absent. Instead, Machine Games takes Wolfenstein back to its roots, slowly giving you an arsenal, with nearly every weapon available for dual wielding and with alternate fire modes. Figuring out which weapon to use at any given moment in the various combat situations The New Order presents is a big part of the puzzle. Health is restored via health kits, armor pickups are vital — absent the fact that health will recharge to the nearest multiple of 20, it can feel like 1992 all over again.
Of course, there are some considerations given to modern audiences. First, stealth is a valid option for extended portions of the game, with silent melee takedowns and a brutally effective suppressed pistol. There’s also a form of progression in Wolfenstein: The New Order’s perk system. Performing certain actions in combat unlock new abilities and upgrades over time, which can make a significant difference in the way you can tackle firefights. You can also find weapon upgrades which further escalate the raw, over-the-top violence on display.
Secrets
It wouldn't be a Wolfenstein game without secrets, and in that respect, The New Order continues tradition. There are hidden chambers throughout the game, some activated by a simple switch, like, say, pulling a knight's sword, and others require a more complicated set of entry requirements. These hide several kinds of collectibles, from useless treasures to pieces of codes that can eventually be solved to unlock new game modes.
These secrets also tie into The New Order's dual timeline mechanic, which is determined by an early life-and-death choice. Your decision determines some major character-related moments, but it also assigns you either the ability to pick locks or hotwire electronics. Either way, you won't be able to find every secret on your first playthrough of an already 12-15 hour game.
The New Order finds a great balance of combat flexibility — except for the boss fights
This combination of old ideas and new hooks seems mismatched, but I was taken aback by how well it all worked together. As a stealth-inclined player, I was happy to learn that I had the space and equipment to focus on that more often than not. And when I was forced to engage in direct combat, I still had everything I needed to get the job done. The New Order finds a reasonable balance between presenting enemies that don’t feel like fodder without getting in the way of its own narrative momentum and world-building.
Except for the boss fights.
Where I enjoyed the combat flexibility The New Order presented me elsewhere, its larger “event” battles were often retrograde to its momentum. I enjoyed a couple of them, and in one, I even felt smart. But these are mostly trial and error collections of death followed by another try, and were easily the primary source of frustration in the game.
Despite that issue, Machine Games roots its often arcade-like missions within its world thanks to the strength of its fiction and, even more so, its characters. The body count is comically high, but it’s all punctuated by desperation — when the Nazis rule the world, what does a few dozen dead troops mean? The fight for hope, to maintain it amidst a nightmare, is everywhere.
There are multiple, complicated relationships at play. These aren’t standard hoo-rah cheerleaders either — there’s a real sense of pain and loss, confusion and struggle depicted by the resistance Blazkowicz becomes involved in. And despite some corny ideas here and there and some laugh-out-loud moments, I found myself emotionally invested The New Order’s cast. They make the almost Bond-ian plot that skips across Europe and beyond feel urgent and necessary.
Wrap Up:
The New Order's humanity makes it something truly memorable
The New Order’s got all the workings of a classic shooter. But in their trip back to the well, Machine Games has brought all of its talents to bear. The New Order is held together, even rocketed beyond the basic sum of its smart levels and effective mechanics by its characters. That humanity takes what would be a good shooter and makes it something truly memorable.
Wolfentstein: The New Order was reviewed using retail PS4 and Xbox One copies provided by Bethesda. You can find additional information about Polygon's ethics policy here.
Google today announced Google+ Stories and Movies, two services that can automatically weave photos and videos backed up to Google+ into more intricate slideshows and videos. Stories is scheduled to be available on Android and the web sometime this week with iOS following shortly after, and Movies is available starting today for Android, iOS, and the web. Both services are extensions of backing up photos and videos to Google+, and require no further effort on the part of the user.
A suitcase full of dirty clothes. A sad-looking house plant. And 437 photos and videos on your phone, tablet and camera. This is the typically messy scene after a vacation. And although we can’t do your laundry (thanks but no thanks), or run your errands (well, maybe a few), we’d still like to help. Enter Google+ Stories, which can automatically weave your photos, videos and the places you visited into a beautiful travelogue.
The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset has infiltrated Chuck E. Cheese's locations in three markets this month, according to a press release from parent company CEC Entertainment.
"Chuck E. Cheese's Virtual Ticket Blaster Experience" puts users inside of a virtual Ticket Blaster booth, where kids grab flying tickets to exchange for prizes. It will be available during a six-week test in Dallas, Orlando and San Diego beginning this month.
"Kids today have unprecedented access to game consoles and tablets," said Roger Cardinale, president of CEC Entertainment. "Our challenge is to deliver an experience not available at home, and there is no doubt virtual reality does just that. Oculus Rift technology is the next frontier in the gaming industry, and we're thrilled to be able to say it's part of the Chuck E. Cheese's lineup."
The child-focused VR experience comes from a collaboration with Reel FX, the Dallas-based studio that also redesigned the famous mouse mascot.
"We believe that virtual reality eventually will be as popular as our handheld devices," said Reel FX founder and Executive Creative Director Dale Carman. "It's a game-changer, and we're investing incredible time and talent into developing content for the Oculus Rift."
For more on recent developments in the virtual reality ecosystem, be sure to read our coverage of VR at GDC 2014. Press play below to see us go hands on with Sony's Project Morpheus VR headset.
The Templarios are not only a drug-trafficking cartel, or at least not a conventional one. They have attempted to become a cartel in the larger sense of the term by controlling the regional lime market.
The man responsible for the greatest scifi album of all time is Ziggy Stardust. And the man responsible for that man is of course David Bowie, who explains his creation of his iconic 1970s glam rock character in this 1998 interview with Joe Smith, now animated by PBS's Blank on Blank.
fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuck the falcons
Officials broke ground on a new $1.2 billion stadium in Atlanta that will serve as the home of the Falcons.
Construction of a new stadium for the Atlanta Falcons is officially underway after a groundbreaking ceremony was held on Monday night. The stadium, currently using the working title, New Atlanta Stadium, is expected to open in time for the 2017 NFL season and cost roughly $1.2 billion.
The ceremony featured many important attendees, including NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed and Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber. The use of the new stadium will include MLS games, college football and possibly even a bid for the World Cup, according to Reed.
Still, the main tenants of the new stadium will be the Falcons and the team's owner, Arthur Blank, said that the city will continue to push for a Super Bowl bid in the future, telling guests in attendance to lobby Goodell for the cause.
If the Falcons are to host a Super Bowl in the future, they'll have to wait in line for a little bit, as the hosts have already been decided for 2015, '16 and '17. NFL owners will decide between three finalists, Indianapolis, Minneapolis and New Orleans, on Tuesday for Super Bowl LII in 2018.
Fans can be added to a waitlist for season tickets at the new stadium in 2017, although current Falcons season ticket holders will have priority when the team makes the move. Renderings of the stadium have been released on the team's website.
PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE PRINCE
The NFL has selected Minneapolis to host the 2018 Super Bowl.
Minneapolis will serve as host of Super Bowl LII in 2018 after owners selected the city's bid in a vote at the annual spring owners meeting Tuesday. Decided by the third vote at the meeting held in Atlanta, Minnesota will now host its second Super Bowl.
Of the three cities competing for Super Bowl LII, only Minneapolis could offer a brand new stadium. The $1 billion indoor facility, tentatively called Vikings Stadium, is scheduled to open in 2016, which means it will host the NFL's marquee event after just two seasons.
The game will be the second ever Super Bowl in Minnesota, and the first since the Metrodome hosted Super Bowl XXVI in 1992. In its bid, the city promised to "celebrate winter" during its time as host, although the game will be protected from the elements in the indoor stadium.
The selection of the Super Bowl site is just another in a long line of big media announcements the NFL makes throughout the offseason. We're at the point where we're getting pictures of ballots on Twitter:
We didn't get the announcement quite as early as expected, however, as the first vote from all 32 owners did not return a majority. A team has to earn a three-fourths majority to be selected on the first vote. So after the first round of voting, the lowest vote-getter was cut, and that was Indianapolis. The second vote, between Minneapolis and New Orleans, also did not return a super majority (three-fourths vote). The third vote only required a simple majority (50 percent or greater) and that went in favor of Minneapolis.
The hosts of the 2015, 2016 and 2017 Super Bowls have already been decided, beginning with Super Bowl XLIX in 2015 at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. The brand new Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., will host Super Bowl L in 2016, and NRG Stadium in Houston will serve as the stage for Super Bowl LI in 2017.
Finalists to host Super Bowl LIII in 2019 will likely be announced in the fall.
1927 Sun (Baltimore) 3 Apr. ii. i. 12/2 When it comes to ‘hot dog’, there's no more to be said, unless it is, perhaps, to add a frill and make it ‘hot diggety dog’.
[Image: Natalie Dormer as Carol Danvers; she’s wearing her Captain Marvel uniform and doing a bicep curl, a la Captain Marvel # 2. She has a side shave and her hair is long on the other side of her face.]
From Ellis Island to the Everglades, and from sea to rising sea, many of America's most iconic landmarks and historic sites face the risk of severe damage or even eventual loss.
If anyone can save this High School Musical-looking Jem movie, it's actual rock star Juliette Lewis. Thank goodness she's joined the cast. This movie needs some actual badassery in it. Also, 80s icon Molly Ringwald.
wow, some surprises, namely that really assy wordmark and WotC shipping adventure creation out to a third-party company that made their bread on Pathfinder
Here's the really fun part, though: PHB comes out in August, DMG doesn't come out until November. So, uh, good luck everybody
UPDATED FRI 23 MAY! I'm updating this page rather than posting information as new articles so as to keep it in one simple-to-find place. To make it easier, look for the hideous but hopefully visible flashing icon
I'm putting together an aquarium, need some nice big rocks as main features. Where's a good place to find an abundance of rocks (where I won't get in trouble for taking them?)
Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing. ~Thomas Jefferson
1891 – History of cinema: The first public display of Thomas Edison’s prototype kinetoscope.
The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. The Kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole viewer window at the top of the device. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector but introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video, by creating the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter. First described in conceptual terms by U.S. inventor Thomas Edison in 1888, it was largely developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892. Dickson and his team at the Edison lab also devised the Kinetograph, an innovative motion picture camera with rapid intermittent, or stop-and-go, film movement, to photograph movies for in-house experiments and, eventually, commercial Kinetoscope presentations.
Today would be the 99th birthday of American electrical engineer and Hewlett-Packard co-founder William (Bill) Hewlett (right, with Dave Packard left, above).
In 1939, Hewlett completed his EE masters thesis at Stanford. His thesis project was a variation of the Wien bridge oscillator, in which he used the negative resistance of an incandescent lamp to act as a parasitic impedance in the feedback loop. This ensured that the oscillator operated just at unity gain, and thus produced steady, low-distortion output.
This was a really clever and elegant hack — many oscillators of the time did not produce steady oscillations, but instead fed a pulse stream (sometimes just a rectified mains signal) to an RLC tank circuit with a large Q — so the output was a series of decaying oscillation patterns with modulation at this pulse frequency. Oscillators which did produce steady output were large and expensive. Hewlett replaced the complex control systems of these with a simple light bulb.
HP’s first product, the HP200A bench oscillator (on the left, above), was based on Hewlett’s thesis design, optimized for manufacturing in the now famous garage in Silicon Valley.
1932 – Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland to begin the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day.
At the age of 34, on the morning of May 20, 1932, Earhart set off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland with the latest copy of a local newspaper (the dated copy was intended to confirm the date of the flight). She intended to fly to Paris in her single engine Lockheed Vega 5B to emulate Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight. Her technical advisor for the flight was famed Norwegian American aviator Bernt Balchen who helped prepare her aircraft. He also played the role of “decoy” for the press as he was ostensibly preparing Earhart’s Vega for his own Arctic flight. After a flight lasting 14 hours, 56 minutes during which she contended with strong northerly winds, icy conditions and mechanical problems, Earhart landed in a pasture at Culmore, north of Derry, Northern Ireland. The landing was witnessed by Cecil King and T. Sawyer. When a farm hand asked, “Have you flown far?” Earhart replied, “From America.” The site now is the home of a small museum, the Amelia Earhart Centre.
What is a Force Sensitive Resistor? FSR’s (Force Sensitive Resistors) are basically a resistor that changes its resistive value (in ohms Ω) depending on how much its pressed. These sensors are fairly low cost, and easy to use but they’re rarely accurate. They also vary some from sensor to sensor perhaps 10%. So basically when you use FSR’s you should only expect to get ranges of response. While FSRs can detect weight, they’re a bad choice for detecting exactly how many pounds of weight are on them…
Thailand's army declared martial law today, in a move that looks a lot like a coup but that the army says is not a coup.
Following months of protests, the country's prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra and some members of her cabinet were ordered to step down on May 7. Niwatthamrong Boonsongphaisan is currently the country's acting prime minister, but protestors aren't happy with him. He's refusing to resign, and the Senate -- the only legislative body remaining in the country after Yingluck dissolved the Parliament in December -- will only appoint a new interim prime minister if the current one steps down. Stalemate.
Thai soldiers patiently wait in the lobby of the National Broadcasting Services of Thailand. Army officials took to Thailand's airwaves to announce that the army was declaring martial law. (AP)
Army officials made the martial law announcement on several television stations, saying the move was to "keep peace and order," and that "the public do not need to panic but can still live their lives as normal." According to the AP, "armed troops entered multiple private television stations in Bangkok to broadcast their message nationwide."
The army will now be in charge of the nation's security, but, it insists, that's it. Though Thailand's army has staged 11 successful coups since 1932, this is not one of them (yet). An unnamed official told the AP that "this is definitely not a coup. This is only to provide safety to the people and the people can still carry on their lives as normal."
An aide to the interim prime minister, however, said the government was not told about this before the fact, and called it "half a coup d'etat."
Thailand's last coup was in 2006, when Yingluck's brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, was removed from his post as prime minister after being accused of corruption and abuse of power. Yingluck has also been accused of abuse of power. Thaksin is still popular in parts of Thailand, and his supporters have clashed with anti-government protestors.
On May 13, U.S. Defense Department official Amy Searight said the country was "reasonable confident" that the Thai military wouldn't stage another coup and commended it for its restraint.
Super Opinionated.
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