firehose

Someone has created an entirely silent 38 minute fan storyboard for an X-Men movie. To put it simply, this is art. And now we want you guys to help bring it across the finish line.

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Ibrahim Mubarak, co-founder of Right 2 Dream Too and Dignity Village, was told during his arraignment hearing today to keep out of the University of Oregon parking lot beneath the Burnside Bridge—the scene of his arrest last night while confronting a police officer and several security guards.

But Mubarak—after pleading not guilty to charges of interfering with a peace officer and criminal trespass—promptly told reporters outside court that he had other plans: "Of course," he told reporters when asked if he'd ignore the order by Judge John Wittmayer. Mubarak says he and other homelessness advocates aren't done helping some of the people who've been sleeping under the bridge in recent weeks.

"That's my job," he says. "They're trying to stop me."

Mubarak also made a disquieting accusation about what happened after he was taken into custody. When told he wouldn't sign papers under his birth name, Keith Jackson, because he changed his name to Ibrahim Mubarak upon converting to Islam several years ago, he said officers mocked him and put him in a small, cold holding cell until he changed his mind.

"When I told them that's not my name, they told me they're not going to call me what Ali Baba named me," Mubarak says, "that they'd call me what my mama called me. I stayed in there for four hours."

In court, he was called under his birth name, but referred to throughout as Mr. Mubarak. His case came up after several other misdemeanors, mostly for charges like driving under the influence and shoplifting.

Mubarak says conditions for the people sleeping beneath the bridge have been rougher and rougher over the past few weeks. Guards and police officers have been moving people off the parking lot and onto sidewalks, and then warning people about trespassing arrests, or worse, if they get up in the night to use the bathroom and set foot on the U of O lot again. He says people who cops and guards don't see as homeless have been allowed to walk through at the same time, however.

"I was irritating her by standing my ground" last night, Mubarak says of the officer who ordered him arrested. "I'm going to fight this case."

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Photo by Matthew Short.

Composite Roll. Lt. Col. Brent Reinhardt completes a 360-degree roll in F-35A AF-1 with a full weapon load during a test flight from Edwards AFB, California, on 10 January 2014. The photo is a composite of seventeen images taken during the 360-degree roll.

askfallencas:

watching yourself being replaced by people better than you

sickhypnotik:

you know how you say words so many times and they lose their meaning? that’s how I feel about the words “trauma” and “trigger” right now.

gotta look pretty.

The Simpsons

We’re happy to announce that InDesign Magazine Issue 59 (March, 2014) is now available! This month’s theme is “getting a grip on GREP” and whether you’re a GREP beginner or maven, you’re going to want to check this out: Peter Kahrel explains GREP from the ground up, with important lessons and essential tips David Blatner […]

Having recently explored the violent, vapid deeds of dead-eyed Hollywood hangers-on in The Canyons, Bret Easton Ellis will now do that again—but in the ’60s—with a Fox limited series about the Manson Family. The longtime chronicler of socialites and sociopaths has teamed with Rob Zombie for a Manson miniseries told from several shifting perspectives, taking place before, during, and after the cult’s infamous murder spree in 1969—though Ellis took pains in a recent Vice interview to clarify, “I wouldn’t say it’s about the Manson murders.” He also took pains to call just about everyone part of “Generation Wuss,” so that’s probably a hint, along with the hiring of Rob Zombie, of what you can expect from Ellis’ approach to the grisly deaths of multiple real-life people. For Rob Zombie, Variety notes that he “has long been fascinated by the Manson Family slayings,” an ...

djempirical

#ftg

A Georgia Court of Appeals judge is being criticized for ordering a new trial for a man convicted of raping a woman with Down syndrome.

According to his ruling, Judge Christopher McFadden claimed that a new trial was necessary because the unnamed victim waited a day before reporting the rape, and because she did not behave like a rape victim.

Nor, in his opinion, did William Jeffrey Dumas, who was convicted of repeatedly raping the victim in 2010, “behave like someone who had recently perpetrated a series of violent crimes.”

Judge McFadden also stated that discrepancies in some witness testimony made him feel uncomfortable. The convictions, he ruled, “do not have the approval of the court’s mind and conscience.”

On Wednesday, District Attorney Scott Ballard told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he “had to go visit the Down syndrome woman who was the victim of the rape and tell her that even though a jury had convicted her assailant of the crime, the judge was giving the guy a new trial.”

“Her parents were, as you can imagine, outraged,” he said. “I just hope we can get some justice.”

Ballard has filed a motion demanding Judge McFadden recuse himself from the case. In it, the District Attorney’s Office noted that trial testimony demonstrated that police found Dumas’s semen on the bed the woman slept in the night she was raped, and that doctors who treated her found injuries consistent with multiple, forcible rapes.

If Judge McFadden refuses to recuse himself, he will sit on the appeals court that will hear Ballard’s motion.

“How awkward is that?” Ballard asked.

Original Source

djempirical

click through for embeds, if you like.

Piers Morgan should not be making headlines. It simply isn’t news to discover that his catastrophically low-rated show is being canceled. But that’s not to say the story shouldn’t have been covered. It should have been covered every day. Every day Piers Morgan was allowed to have a one-hour show on CNN was a miracle, a reminder that justice is a philosophical construct, that we do not live in a moral universe. The Associated Press should have issued a story every single day since January 17^th, 2011: Piers Morgan Is Still On Television.

His Wikipedia entry isn’t even a biography. It’s a rap sheet: the criminal history of a belligerent, narcissistic tabloid huckster who spied on celebrities and made women cry and picked fights everywhere he went. Then, satisfied he burned every bridge there is to burn in Merry Olde England, he failed all the way upward to a one hour slot in prime-time American television. And somewhere in between, he stoked the fires of the class war by crashing a Segway. He broke three ribs attempting to demonstrate that rich people can afford better toys and better leisure pursuits than the underclass. But not even criminal spying and levels of incompetence typically reserved for cartoon characters could keep him off television.

Here is a 48 year old man who has managed to write four volumes of memoirs. That is deranged. His entire life is that of a villain from an Adam Sandler or a Rodney Dangerfield movie. Criminal spying, crashing Segways, writing memoir after memoir – that’s what the antagonist does in the background of the first act before he gets the small town orphanage condemned so he can drill for oil.

Yet none of that was enough to stop CNN from hiring him. Red flag after red flag and he still got hired. Then, for three whole years, nobody watched him. FOX could have run clips of Lee Atwater’s band against Piers Morgan and received better ratings.

But that leaves CNN in a historically unique position: since they were willing to throw away the 9 p.m. slot for a show that never aspired to be proper journalism, a show no one saw, they can literally replace Piers Morgan with whatever the hell they want. Test patterns would outperform him with sufficiently competitive advertising.

So everything is permissible. No suggestion is too off-the-wall for what should fill Morgan’s timeslot. He never aspired to be a journalist, neither did he once aspire to be watchable, so why should his replacement be held to higher standards? Here’s a few replacement hosts who would easily pull Morgan’s numbers, and for much more acceptable salaries.

Joe Rogan and Lydia Lunch

A nightly hour of comedian Joe Rogan and no-wave pioneer Lydia Lunch seems like the obvious replacement for Piers Morgan. The chemistry is immediate and unmistakable: they hate each other, and that’s all you can ask for in the cable news business. The ads write themselves: it’s the post-punk version of “Crossfire.” All you need for the ads is a couple headshots and a bit of a Teenage Jesus & The Jerks song. People will be too viscerally terrified and upset not to watch.

And the beauty of the show itself is how simple it would be. You wouldn’t even need researchers for a Joe Rogan and Lydia Lunch debate show. You could run it on a skeleton staff. Three cameras, two chairs, a couple of bodyguards, and maybe a house band. All they have to do is sit down and try to get through whatever’s on the front page of Drudge that day. Maybe throw in a segment about conspiracy theories and signs of the Biblical apocalypse and the show can run forever. You wouldn’t even need guests. It would change the cable news landscape forever.

Chevy Chase

There are many parallels between Piers Morgan and Chevy Chase. They are both diametrically opposed to the idea of being charismatic television personalities. Their talk shows were both profound failures. One key difference: Chevy Chase’s failure happened while monoculture still existed. The failure of his talk show is still being talked about decades after the fact. If Piers Morgan’s next book gets rejected by the publisher, his Wikipedia entry will probably be up for deletion.

Chevy Chase has a happier problem: he’s famous for failing. so he’s a sympathetic underdog. He’s got a hook built right in. You give Chevy Chase a talk show again, and you can sell it as a comeback. Even if it’s a train wreck, which it would be, it’s a train wreck with narrative. More people have seen that clip of him spilling that cake than have ever even heard of Piers Morgan. In all likelihood, Chevy Chase bombing would pull triple the numbers of Piers Morgan interviewing a sitting president.

John Kilduff

Let’s promote somebody out of public access! How about John Kilduff? For years and years he’s been operating “Let’s Paint TV” on a shoestring budget, only sporadically getting viral attention when his show is sabotaged by prank callers. Ever since Los Angeles shut down its public access studio, he’s been stuck doing this show online. It deserves better. John Kilduff deserves better. Primetime cable news needs creativity like this. Primetime cable news needs somebody with a can-do attitude who’s willing to be dangerous and take chances on a new format, like painting while running on a treadmill. He’s been doing this for over a decade.

It’s high time for CNN to use low expectations to its advantage and make news exciting again. We, the American people, deserve it.

Original Source

As we reported earlier this month, once-and-future Smashing Pumpkins honcho Billy Corgan has decided to perform an eight-hour “ambient/musical interpretation of” Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha at the tea shop he owns in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago. Well, that musical homage is happening right this minute, and you can watch it live via YouTube (it’s embedded below). Though we’re not yet to the two-hour mark, controversy has already erupted (okay, that’s a strong word), with Chicago Tribune editor Rex Huppke claiming that his reporter has been kicked out of the event—presumably in retribution for a piece that Huppke wrote, pre-dissing the event. In the meantime, musician Daniel Lopatin—a.k.a. Oneohtrix Point Never—is live-tweeting while watching Corgan stand around his old gear (which could be just as unenjoyable to watch as the actual event). In any case, we can all agree that ...

firehose shared this story from Polygon - All.

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se-ren-d-ipi-ty:

lacigreen:

snarkenstone:

On the left we have the lyrics from Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines. On the right we rape survivors participating in Project Unbreakable, showing the various things that were said to them by their rapist.

From the Mouths of Rapist: The Lyrics to Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines

i think this is the most powerful photoset i’ve ever seen on tumblr.

Reblogging until you understand why this song is so vile

psdiff:

psdiff is a small tool that you install as a git hook — then, any time anyone makes a change to a psd file, psdiff automagically generates an accompanying png export of the modified file.

hodad

five stars

The suspect spray-painted "Do the right thing" on their home and smashed a window on their front door. Lee directed a movie with the same name back in 1989. (2:42 PM)

FORT GREENE - Director Spike Lee's parents’ Fort Greene brownstone has been vandalized, less than a week after Lee took a stance against gentrification.

A neighbor told News 12 that the vandalism happened overnight on Thursday at their home on Washington Park.

The suspect spray-painted "Do the right thing" on their home and smashed a window on their front door. Lee directed a movie with the same name back in 1989.

READ MORE: Brooklyn Crime Stories

Lee's brother, Arnold Lee, says he believes they were targeted because of his brother’s statement on gentrification. "Spike needs to stop with whatever situation he talked about over here, because he doesn't live here and he is not involved in it. It's freedom of speech. Say what you want about whatever topic, but don't make it personal," Arnold said.

The suspects also vandalized the neighboring home. Police are still in the process of investigating the crime.

Original Source

Movie poster of the week

REX USA/Bob Carlos Clarke A group of women associated with the Hells Angels, 1973.


Keystone/Hulton Archive / Getty Images Beryl Swain training for the annual TT race, 1962.


Fox Photos / Getty Images Workers measuring the positions of footrests and controls on partially finished motorcycles, 1933.


R. Wesley/Fox Photos / Getty Images A woman rider in the Six Days Motorcycle Trial, in which competitors have to cover 200 miles a day over rough terrain, 1933.


H. F. Davis/Topical Press Agency / Getty Images Nancy and Betty Debenham, well-known motorcyclists, riding BSA bikes with their dog, 1925.

She likes to ride

Scott Listfield

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Apple TV generated more than $1 billion in hardware and content sales last fiscal year, CEO Tim Cook just revealed. That makes Apple TV the company’s fastest-growing product, according to estimates by analyst Horace Dediu.

Apple has long referred to its set-top box for television sets as a “hobby,” since it still pales in comparison to phones and computers. But as sales grew, Apple TV was more recently upgraded to a “beloved hobby.” And at Apple’s shareholder meeting today, Cook said, “It’s a little more difficult to call it a hobby these days.”

All told, Dediu estimates that Apple has sold 28 million Apple TVs since the product debuted in 2007. That compares to 8 million set-top boxes sold by its nearest competitor, Roku, since 2008.

These devices, which plug into television sets for watching internet video, have long been viewed as an interim solution in the evolution towards fully internet-connected TV sets. But set-top boxes have proven surprisingly popular as streaming video services like Netflix have improved and cable television hasn’t. That’s in part because the software on internet-connected TV sets, which should preclude the need for a set-top box, is generally hard to use.

It’s instructive to watch this advertisement for the first version of Apple TV from 2007. Not much has changed in the intervening years:

Apple is said to be working on an update to Apple TV this year, with better hardware, and offering integration with some cable television services in the United States. (It stoked those rumors today by offering a discount on the current version of the device.) That would still be a far cry from Apple’s real ambition of releasing a full-fledged television set of its own.

Former Lex Luthors Kevin Spacey and Michael Rosenbaum have both commented on Jesse Eisenberg playing the role in the "Man of Steel" sequel.

I spend probably too much time complaining about how I'm not sure I like Portland any more now that the city is becoming, in the immortal words of Mercury News Editor Denis Theriault, a "playground for finnicky rich people." And hey look, these guys wrote a song about it!

I know it's dangerous to romanticize Portland's scuzzier, less bourgie past, but... I do it anyway. And I'm grateful that my rent only went up $50 this year.

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WXIA-TV

Gunman killed at Florida courthouse WXIA-TV A man with a gun was arguing with police at the Brevard County courthouse in Viera on Friday morning. (Photo: TIM WALTERS/FLORIDA TODAY). Tweet; Share. Facebook · Twitter · Google buzz · Del.icio.us · Digg · Reddit; Newsvine; Buzz up! Fark it. Print ... and more »