BarSol Pisco Perfecto Amor BarSol Pisco introduces BarSol Perfecto Amor. Named after the marriage of pisco and grape juice obtained from the crush, BarSol Perfecto Amor is a Peruvian aperitif crafted in the Ica Valley and produced in one of the oldest distilleries of Peru, Bodega San Isidro, dating back to the 1800s. BarSol Perfecto Amor is a blend of fortified grape juice from the Quebranta, Italia, and Torontel varietals. Each grape varietal is juiced separately and fortified by pisco distilled of that same grape before blending the varietals together to become BarSol Perfecto Amor. “It was a long-standing tradition...
'Unlike the practitioners of outsized randomness like Tim & Eric, Armisen and Brownstein don’t need you to be aware that they just threw you a curveball. Instead, they stand up there and calmly keep pitching, mixing up their looks enough that it becomes pointless to predict what they’re going to throw next.
Portlandia still mocks the empty passions that dominate its world, but with time, its admiration for all its little standard-bearers has grown—an admiration for their heartfelt desire to live the right way. It’s not that Portlandia has lost its sharp comic edge; rather, it has added a complementary sweetness that is somehow just as funny.'
In 2011, Portlandia debuted with a song—“Dream Of The ’90s”—that celebrated and mocked Portland’s supposed air of aimless, bohemian self-involvement. “Dream” was more than a caricature of an eccentric city: With its clown-school graduates, goth babes, and fixie-riding weirdos, the song established Portlandia as a place for subcultures without a cause. Unlike, say, the hippie counterculture of the ’60s or the cool anarchism of late-’70s and ’80s punk rock, the dreamers of the ’90s didn’t require their righteous passion to come with any deep social purpose attached. Instead, they’ve perpetuated a world where good intentions carry the day—like in another quintessential Portlandia sketch, “Put A Bird On It,” which features two twee crafters swooning over their vapid artistry.
When you make four seasons of a show about people who disappear up their own assholes, you run the risk of disappearing yourself. Indeed, if ...
"So just imagine the exponential increase in evilosity that occurs when you combine Nazis with Lovecraftian Horror!"
finally, a mashup of two cultures equally underpinned by rampant nauseating racism
Its hard to deny that Nazis deservedly get the Evilest-Guys-on-the Planet-Black-Hat Award. And whether appearing in an old black-and-white classic film or chasing Indiana Jones through two movies, their demises are always applauded by audiences happy to see a reckoning to the perpetrators of the pinnacle of heinous war crimes during World War II.
So just imagine the exponential increase in evilosity that occurs when you combine Nazis with Lovecraftian Horror!
In a 2010 talk, TED curator Chris Anderson describes the concept of “crowd-accelerated innovation”—a self-fueling cycle of learning which has accelerated through the ubiquity of web-based video. In Anderson’s view, this mechanism of iteration and immediate feedback has made the Ted Talk and many other iterative processes evolve in dramatic ways. Anderson explains that part of the reason TED evolved so quickly is that you had some of the best and most creative individuals in the world prepare extensively for their talk by watching their predecessors. Through this iterative process, the presentations consistently improve—if only out of fear of disappointing their audience. This phenomenon can also be felt in many areas of society from dance to politics but also underpins the innovation going on in the rapidly evolving landscape for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
With thousands of students enrolling in each MOOC, the amount of student feedback is exponentially greater than what a faculty member would receive in a traditional academic setting. Consider that a traditional higher education class size is 10 to 200 students, while MOOC s can range from 3,000-250,000 per class. Moreover, MOOC course instructors can also see for essentially the first time the latest methods and styles their peers at other institutions are employing to determine which course components work and which don’t.
In 2013, our Paris-based company First Finance launched our first MOOC, one of the first-ever taught in French. After studying dozens of MOOCs, it became clear that many of the existing courses had incredible instructors with great content but few embraced a hands-on, practical approach (particularly in finance and business) while even fewer had fully integrated a live forum to facilitate the interactivity students crave. For our first MOOC, we partnered with Pascal Quiry, an investment banker and corporate finance educator, one of the most respected finance thought leaders in the French-speaking world.
To enhance interactivity, we integrated the web-based video platform Spreecast into our course. Spreecast (founded by former StubHub founder and CEO Jeff Fluhr) provides collaborative web-based video functionality. Used by the likes of Anderson Cooper, ESPN, and the Wall Street Journal, it allows the video leader to present material while viewers can ask questions in real-time via chat functionality.
The hands-on nature of our course combined with the added functionality of Spreecast greatly enhanced the student experience and helped drive our course completion rates to 20% versus the industry average of 5%. A post-training survey showed that 98% of the participants were satisfied with the MOOC and 90% said they are willing to participate in another.
Notably, 40% of our enrollees in the first MOOC came from French-speaking Africa. This speaks to the demand in those countries for world-class instruction taught in their native language. And it is free; all they need is a log-in to participate, further lowering the barrier to learn.
I believe our success with practical yet hands-on interaction can be applied universally to potential students anywhere and in any language. And it is as evidenced by the live “office hours” functionality through Spreecast, the amazing production quality of Robert Ghrist’s calculus course, “The Day of Compassion” offered by Wesleyan University, or dozens of other innovations, MOOCs are evolving at a rapid rate.
At a recent conference, Daphne Koller, the CEO of Coursera (the largest MOOC provider), compared the evolution of MOOCs to the experience of the film industry, which in its early days just filmed theater plays and has now evolved in a way that no one would have thought possible. Similarly, just two years ago the standard for online courses was filming a classroom lecture from the back of the hall, which today already seems antiquated.
With the avalanche of direct feedback that is now available, does anyone really think we are anywhere but at the beginning of this trend? With the ever-growing number of MOOCs learning from one another, crowd-sourcing the best practices, and from one another, we can only imagine what a MOOC course will look like in a few years.
AirBnB for desks. Not offices, just a desk. Four desks pushed together if you're spendy.
Individual Desk at "HUH. Studios", Stoke Newington, N16. Starting at £220 month. Notes include the facts that coworkers play music and drink during business hours
Sartre said, “Hell is other people,” and he hadn’t even heard of Deskcamping, the new freelance office-share arrangement for creative latte-drinkers.
"Seeing a Comic Sans logo replaced is as monumental as a Saul Bass or Paul Rand logo getting the axe — it's almost as if that naiveness needs to be safeguarded and preserved for all future generations of graphic designers to study and realize that, indeed, companies and products used Comic Sans as the basis for identifying their product or service."
Socks to be You
Established in 1921 by three brothers selling wholesale hosiery to merchants in New York, Trimfit first grew in the 1930s when it sourced and sold Shirley Temple socks and when it acquired a textile factory to manufacture its own socks. In the time since the company has expanded its product range to tights, as well as socks for men, women and children with products being sold under the Trimfit brand name and some licensed names, like Perry Ellis and DKNY while also establishing a bigger presence in Canada. Now, Trimfit is focusing on children's socks and has introduced a new identity designed by Montreal-based Booth and Studio Scope.
Sample of previous look.
Trimfit is a legacy brand, marking its hundredth year in the garment industry. The company desperately needed a brand refresh that would place them at the forefront of the children's apparel business in North America. The challenge here was creating a brand that was accessible enough for the big box stores (in which Trimfit can be found at the entry level price-point) as well as boutique children's clothing stores (in which they are positioned at a higher-end price point). With a distinct focus on brand recognition, we produced a streamlined visual platform and graphic language flexible enough for a variety of applications; a brand identity system that uses a fresh, contemporary palette of colours to distinguish itself against key competitors in the marketplace. Paper props were introduced to mirror the magic & whimsy of childhood and a pattern was developed and applied across all collateral as a graphic device that not only serves as a unique identifier, but also adds a touch of playfulness to in-store displays. In doing so, we created a system that not only speaks to the child, but also the consumer.
Seeing a Comic Sans logo replaced is as monumental as a Saul Bass or Paul Rand logo getting the axe — it's almost as if that naiveness needs to be safeguarded and preserved for all future generations of graphic designers to study and realize that, indeed, companies and products used Comic Sans as the basis for identifying their product or service. Obviously, though, good riddance: the old logo and packaging looked as cheap as it gets. The new logo is a lovely slab serif that looks both rugged and friendly, able to take the punishment of children's feet while also looking adorable around those tiny toes. My main complaint about it would be that the "fi" is not a ligature, creating weird counterspaces at the end of the wordmark by having that tittle really tight to the "f" and leaving that last "t" hanging in the wind.
Photography. By Marie-Reine Mattera.Various materials.Shopping bags. Notebooks Website.Outdoor ads.Pins.
In application, the identity works perfectly with its warm yet colorful palette while the concentric-line pattern, reminiscent of clouds or mountains, adds some nice texture to the materials and the photography charms its way to your heart and wallet. Overall, it's an impressive transformation that places Trimfit as a competitor with other more well-known children brands.
buried lede: Oregonian reveals that, even though the driver thought he was blocking a bike lane, he actually wasn't. The cyclist was just 100% pure shithead
There is this guy, Eric Holscher, who has been doing FOSS development for quite a while. He's been on GitHub since 2008, and got involved in Gittip not long after it started in 2012. Not long after that, Eric started thinking about how open source software developers have all kinds of conferences and have many communities they can join and learn from each other, while those who write documentation, especially for FOSS, typically work all alone in a vacuum. So why not have a conference for documentation writers (and developers who want to hook up with writers who can help them make high-quality docs)? Don't limit it to FOSS, but make sure that's the emphasis. Call the conference 'Write the Docs' and have the first conference in Portland, Oregon, in 2013. Which is exactly what Eric did. A year later, a second 'Write the Docs' conference is scheduled in Budapest (Hungary) at the end of March, and the next Portland conference is set for May 5.
hilarious how Facebook destroys features and nobody cares. people are even happy
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook today began prompting Facebook Messenger for Windows users as well as Facebook Messenger for Firefox users with a message saying the apps are shutting down next week. Without much of an explanation, the company plans to kill off both on March 3. It appears that Facebook is no longer interested in developing desktop apps. The Android and iOS versions are still alive and well." You can always connect to their IM service using a generic XMPP client like Pidgin (too bad Facebook doesn't federate).
“Over the past 30 years, we’ve developed a much better understanding of how blocks fit together,” said Dr. Florence Edelman, the designer of a well-known Tetris experiment in 1993 in which a perfect slot for an L or zigzag block was created under carefully controlled conditions, only to be closed off when a series of ill-fitting square pieces appeared instead. “But without a working predictive model, our entire field of study is at an impasse. Indeed, reaching unpassable standstills is well chronicled in trial after trial.”
“Some of the world’s most brilliant scientific minds have dedicated their lives to unlocking this mystery, yet for all their knowledge and expertise, it’s still anyone’s guess what will happen five or 10 seconds into the future,” Edelman continued. “Once that last bit of uncertainty has been eliminated, we believe our interactions within the Tetris matrix will be far more successful.”
CAMBRIDGE, MA—During a press conference Thursday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, leading members of the scientific community confirmed that despite decades of research, the best available theoretical models still cannot predict more ...
The pieces are coming together for an official Shaq Fu comeback announcement. A tipster sent Joystiq images of t-shirts that are likely being printed for the marketing campaign.
This latest Shaquille O'Neal-sized breadcrumb of the game's reemergence...
'Was this done on purpose? I have no idea. But if I wanted to do something like this on purpose, this is exactly how I would do it.
If the Apple auditing system is any good, they would be able to trace this errant goto line not just to the source-code check-in details, but to the specific login that made the change. And they would quickly know whether this was just an error, or a deliberate change by a bad actor. Does anyone know what's going on inside Apple?'
Last October, I speculated on the best ways to go about designing and implementing a software backdoor. I suggested three characteristics of a good backdoor: low chance of discovery, high deniability if discovered, and minimal conspiracy to implement.
The flaw is subtle, and hard to spot while scanning the code. It's easy to imagine how this could have happened by error. And it would have been trivially easy for one person to add the vulnerability.
Was this done on purpose? I have no idea. But if I wanted to do something like this on purpose, this is exactly how I would do it.
EDITED TO ADD (2/27): If the Apple auditing system is any good, they would be able to trace this errant goto line not just to the source-code check-in details, but to the specific login that made the change. And they would quickly know whether this was just an error, or a deliberate change by a bad actor. Does anyone know what's going on inside Apple?
EDITED TO ADD (2/27): Steve Bellovin has a pairof posts where he concludes that if this bug is enemy action, it's fairly clumsy and unlikely to be the work of professionals.
A CROW TRIED TO GO IN OUR CLASSROOM AND HE HAD A PEN
yes hello i am here to learn geometries
That crow is more prepared than some of my students.
You’ve all just like, completely skipped over the possibility that this crow has seen people using pens in this room, found one, and is trying to return it. There’s been videos of crows picking up sweet wrappers and stuff and placing them in bins after seeing humans put their litter in bins. I really do believe that this crow is trying to return the pen and that is ADORABLE AS HELL.
THEY ARE SO SMART I LOVE THEM
Crows are thought to be self aware by some scientists. Its perfectly possible the crow wants to return the pen to humans. Knowing it belongs to humans.
We don’t have much time, hurry, this way, take my hand and come with me before it’s too late!
Well, okay, maybe it isn’t as dramatic as all that, but Dangers Untold is a LARP designed to take one young heroine on an amazing adventure…
…and it’s running out of time!
Currently, Dangers Untold is up on Kickstarter. Author Shoshana Kessock (whose graduate thesis is a LARP convention!) is trying to hook up with game designer and photographer JR Blackwell to give this book the visual appeal it could greatly benefit from, and of course, bring this delightful LARP to tons of people.
Dangers Untold is based on Josh Jordan’s marvelous Heroine game, a game where multiple GMs take one young lady on the adventure of her life. It emulated stories like the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland.
Dangers Untold shares a similar heart. Instead, one player takes on the role of the young lady, and the other players can play her magical companions, or antagonists with one player acting as Narrator to help heighten the tension or guide the story as it plays out.
What’s especially wonderful is that Dangers Untold is written clearly with an easy to grasp resolution system that kids as young as 12 could actually run themselves. The book suggests it’s targeted at kids around 12. I think younger kids could play with adult guidance, but what’s cool is, I think Shoshana is right on, a group of kids about 12 could totally run this LARP entirely on their own! I love the idea of a game I can introduce to a group of kids, and then sit back and watch them work! This is really playing pretend 2.0 and I could easily see even my seven year old grasping it with a little help.
Meanwhile the sweetest part, as mentioned above, is the resolution system. Using shades of Improv theater, (natch) it’s all about making and accepting offers. In this, the players hold out their hands out to each other, and taking or not taking those outstretched hands is the core of the system. I can picture in my head, holding my hand out to the heroine, and the two of us jogging off to the next scene! I cannot wait to play this game.
Bottom line for me? I already want to hack this LARP. Which is how I know I love a game. Deeply. I’m counting down the days my middle daughter is old enough to run this for them!
It is KILLING me that this game isn’t funded yet and is so close to the wire. I’ve read the game, it’s fantastic and fun and worth your time if you’re a big LARP fan, new to LARP, curious about other kinds of LARP, or just have some kids who have been begging to get in on the gaming action.
Take my hand, adventure awaits. You take the looking class, I’ll take the wardrobe, we’ll save the day together.
'The improvement on the parent game in this regard is subtle at first but far more dramatic in the long term. You’re still being railroaded by the plot, but the ability to control the pace makes this a very different animal. The Seattle campaign too often felt like a lightweight point and click adventure interspersed with sporadic, overtly scripted turn-based combat scenes and too much backtracking, whereas this feels much more like a roleplaying game. This extends to in-mission too – most challenges (which invariably means a locked door by any other name, to be honest) have a least of couple of possible solutions that you and your current team may or may not have the right abilities to pull off – e.g. getting your Decker to hack a terminal, getting your bruiser to shoulder open a secret door, using the right, Charisma-derived Etiquette to sweet-talk a corporate drone into letting you by. And if all else fails, there’s always the Kill Everyone approach too. ... The biggest problem for me was a certain inconsistency in how you can use your party members. Levelling up and equipping new items is limited to just the main character, even to the point that you can’t tell someone else in the party to equip a found health kit if you’re out of inventory space. Exciting weapon drops wind up deflatingly pointless because you can’t give them to seemingly-suited characters. The game’s stuck in an odd, frustrating half-way housed between team-based and single character, and while I really enjoyed chatting to my squad mates, I’d almost prefer it had gone fully one way or the other. ... Oh yeah, and the new save system just works.'
Now that’s more like it. Choice! Side-missions! A hub! A strong supporting cast who are up for a bit of a chat! Little-to-no mandatory decking sequences! A mother-lovin’ save (almost) anywhere system! Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall being ‘just’ DLC for last year’s cyberpunk/fantasy mash-up RPG is bittersweet, because it may well be that only existing Shadowrun Returns owners give it a spin. Really, though, this is the point where new players are best off getting involved – a new, superior campaign with no ties to the last one, and quite a few of the major problems dealt with. Now’s the time to play Shadowrun Returns, basically, but please, start with this.
The elevator pitch is the same as last time around: elves, dwarves, trolls and orcs living (slightly uncomfortably) alongside humanity on a near-future Earth, where the lines between technology and magic are blurred, and crime – street, organised and corporate – is rife. Techno-D&D basically. In Dragonfall, the setting switches from Seattle to the Free City of Berlin, which turns out to look a lot like Bladerunner’s Chinatown. But then, that’s basically what we expect of cyberpunk worlds, isn’t it?
You play a character of your own creation (I went for a fight-fighting magic dwarf, a sort of half-height Iron Fist), newly recruited to a team of Shadowrunners led by an old friend. (Shadowrunners are basically the A-Team, only they’ll work for bastards too). Bad Shit promptly goes down, and you find yourself in charge of this small gang of underground ne’er do wells as they attempt to Uncover Secrets! / Defeat Conspiracies! / Protect The Innocent! / Save The World! / Find And Stop A Bloody Great Dragon! / That Sort Of Thing!
Reams of hard-bitten, colourful-but-not-too-colourful dialogue frames all of this, and I found it agreeably, enjoyably pulpy in its take on noir meets fantasy quest. It creates tone rather than distracts from it, and bar a few instances of getting too carried away with itself, the writing seems to understand that it’s essentially working with genre stereotypes. It enjoys them and entertainingly embellishes them rather than tries to hide or overcomplicate them. At least, I hope so.
The rest of your team are a great case in point, and evoke Bioware companions at their best, even if they are realised in far more limited and ultimately brief way. Your tattooed, skinhead, fiercely anti-specist shaman used to be the lead singer in a British punk band. (“So you can sing?” “Of course not – I was in a punk band.”) The team medic is fitted with so much ‘chrome’ (tech augments) that she’s in danger of losing her soul – but perhaps you can reach her? The hulking troll weapons specialist is ex-military and aggressively reluctant to give you her respect or trust – and thus achieving this becomes an even more powerful motivator than stopping the big nasty dragon, or whatever it is.
They’re fun. They’re not there to be taken seriously (again, at least I hope so), they’re there to be enjoyed – genre staples done well, and with affection. Dialogue offers choice aplenty on how to interact with them between missions, and while concrete consequences may be few, knowing that you’ve got through to someone, heard more of their inevitably dark history or royally pissed them off builds a great sense of team dynamic, and who these people are outside their combat abilities. Dragonfall also has a neat line in punishing you for being overly obsequious in the hope of reward – team mates and NPCs often called me out for being mawkish or superficial when I defaulted to the ‘nice’ option, and that only made me respect them more.
A similar philosophy extends to the missions and quests. While the storyline is really only headed in one direction, I was pleased to find that there’s a great deal more meandering and branching than in the original Shadowrun Returns, but it’s there to build tone and character rather than truly drag the plot off to alternative places. Sure, you’ll get a few bonus Karma points (spent on new or improved stats and abilities, basically) if you find and choose the option to save the semi-friendly ghouls in the sewers rather than kill or evict them, but whatever you do that’s the end of it and it’s on to the next thing. What matters is that you’ll either feel you’re a sensitive hero-to-all, or a ruthless utilitarian who doesn’t mind sacrificing a few lives in the pursuit of a job well done and/or filthy lucre.
It’s about swaddling yourself in this surprisingly colourful world of crime and grime in the way that you see fit, rather than trying to pretend you’re able to affect sweeping changes to it. To a limited degree, you’re also able to pick and choose missions – most are mandatory, but there were just enough that were optional that I felt I was playing on my terms rather than the game’s.
The improvement on the parent game in this regard is subtle at first but far more dramatic in the long term. You’re still being railroaded by the plot, but the ability to control the pace makes this a very different animal. The Seattle campaign too often felt like a lightweight point and click adventure interspersed with sporadic, overtly scripted turn-based combat scenes and too much backtracking, whereas this feels much more like a roleplaying game. This extends to in-mission too – most challenges (which invariably means a locked door by any other name, to be honest) have a least of couple of possible solutions that you and your current team may or may not have the right abilities to pull off – e.g. getting your Decker to hack a terminal, getting your bruiser to shoulder open a secret door, using the right, Charisma-derived Etiquette to sweet-talk a corporate drone into letting you by. And if all else fails, there’s always the Kill Everyone approach too.
Again, you are going to get past that door and onto the next plot nugget no matter what, but Dragonfall seems well aware that feeling like it was done in a way particular to your character makes all the difference. Those who found the mandatory ‘Decking’ sequences (VR-world combat) in the parent game galling will be glad to hear that they are now optional, usually available as one possible means of overcoming an obstacle if you have the appropriate character in your party.
Combat is as combat was, a solid if unexceptional take on the turn-based fare of original Fallout and X-COM, with added magic and perhaps not quite enough sense of risk. More choice of who to take with you (filling your three team slots with either favourites from your Shadowrunner chums or hired mercs for variety’s sake) and the between-mission getting to know you stuff means it doesn’t feel like you’re out there with a bunch of disposable ciphers. It’s perhaps a little bit throwaway, but that is in keeping with the pulpy, good times vibe of the whole thing.
For all the improvements, there is a strong sense that Dragonfall is straining against Shadowfall Returns’ inherent limitations. All these choices I’ve mentioned involve simply picking one line of text over some others, usually with no animation pay-off – usually the result is simply described. Outside of combat, the lavish, detailed backdrops are really just that – scenery for a colourfully-written text adventure. You’ve got to allow yourself to live in the text, otherwise I fear you may well bounce off Dragonfall, for all its improvements. At its heart it’s a game about click-click-clicking through a lot of dialogue, but the big difference here is that there’s a much stronger sense you’re affecting that dialogue rather than merely being subjected to it.
The biggest problem for me was a certain inconsistency in how you can use your party members. Levelling up and equipping new items is limited to just the main character, even to the point that you can’t tell someone else in the party to equip a found health kit if you’re out of inventory space. Exciting weapon drops wind up deflatingly pointless because you can’t give them to seemingly-suited characters. The game’s stuck in an odd, frustrating half-way housed between team-based and single character, and while I really enjoyed chatting to my squad mates, I’d almost prefer it had gone fully one way or the other.
Meanwhile, one computer terminal might give you the option to send your Decker team mate in to hack it, but the next might grey out the hacking option because you’re not a Decker yourself. Dragonfall too often feels arbitrary, as though it’s trying hard to always present options then worrying that it’s given the player too much power to resolve anything. Clearer lines are needed.
There’s also a little too much schlepping around the main hub area, which has gone to great lengths to be pretty and relatively rich with world-building optional conversation, but is at the same time a very large plaza to tediously trot back and forth across when you’re trying to visit all the relevant shopkeepers and quest-givers. And it has the same issue that so much of the game’s art does – it’s essentially static, using superficial prettiness as cover for being nothing more than a background. I am OK with that, as I’ve got enough out of the character work and fiction to shrug it off, but whenever I look at Shadowrun Returns (in either campaign) too closely I become naggingly aware of how much it seems like a game assembled from a kit.
The trick, then, is to just go with it. Enjoy the setting, enjoy the characters, enjoy the X-COMy combat, enjoy being a hero or a thug in a world of magic and technology. Dragonfall’s a big improvement on Shadowrun Returns even if it is inescapably the same game, and it pulls off the smart trick of being both a superior starting point and a more satisfying follow-up.
Oh yeah, and the new save system just works. Sure, there’s an element of feeling like a cheat when you can quicksave ahead of a dilemma or challenge, but I’ll take that over replaying long segments in the event of a failure any day.
Jack Thorne, an experienced British television writer; 'Skins, Scouting Book, Cast Offs, and This is England all concern counter cultures, or at the very least, the sort of adolescent adventures that are borne out of feeling alienated from those around you.'
I'm actually pretty optimistic about this, I just really like using this image for Sandman stories.
"If someone tells you to back up your files, it’s a trap. Don’t fall for it. They’re just after your files."
Even the most experienced user can run into error messages, software crashes, hardware malfunctions, and other issues with their computer. Here are some tips for keeping your machine running smoothly
Way up in Maine, where everyone is probably literally dead from cold and snow, an intrepid rabble-rousing blogger dug up a bunch of awful that had spewed from the mouth of newbie Republican state legislator Lawrence Lockman. Apparently Lockman has been a perennial culture scold, losing candidate, and general nutbar up in Maine for years, but only recently got himself elected. Too bad he came with a ridiculous amount of word baggage.
Lockman falsely suggested HIV and AIDS could be spread by bed sheets and mosquitos, and he also said the progressive movement helped spread the virus by claiming “the practice of sodomy is a legitimate alternative lifestyle, rather than a perverted and depraved crime against humanity.”
The post also quoted a 1995 press statement by Lockman, then part of the Pro Life Education Association, comparing abortion to rape.
“If a woman has (the right to an abortion), why shouldn’t a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman?” Lockman said. “At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t (in most cases) result in anyone’s death.”
Hey hey hey hey now, he said in MOST cases. Cut the guy some slack!
Lockman, of course, didn’t just limit himself to obsessing over how the gays have buttsecks or how rape is totally cool if you’re the stronger one. He also went full stupid about the IRS.
In 1981, Lockman founded a group called Maine Patriots (almost 30 years before Amy Hale would form a tea party group by the same name) and began espousing an extreme-right conspiracy theory that federal and state income taxes were voluntary and tax enforcement by the IRS was unconstitutional. He had stopped paying his own taxes in 1975 and gave speeches and held meetings urging others to follow his lead.
Even a hearing in federal tax court in Boston in 1983 during which his arguments were found to be “frivolous” and he was found to owe more than $17,000 didn’t seem to slow him down. In a 1984 interview with the Lewiston Daily Sun he declared that “according to the Constitution of the United States, the federal government has no authority to force people to pay income taxes” and expressed his admiration for tax resister Gordon Kahl, a Posse Comitatus leader who had recently died in a shootout with law enforcement after he and his men killed two U.S. Marshalls.
He sounds great. But does it get stupider?
In 1986, Lockman dressed up like Dracula and stood outside the Federal Building in Bangor in order to protest the “vampire-nature” of the IRS and its “tyranny and police-state methods of tax collection.”
Who among us has not dressed up like Dracula to protest the IRS? But now that the liberal gay abortioneer activists have his back against the wall, Lockman has been forced to repudiate his beliefs just like a Communist show trial.
“I have always been passionate about my beliefs, and years ago I said things that I regret. I hold no animosity toward anyone by virtue of their gender or sexual orientation, and today I am focused on ensuring freedom and economic prosperity for all Mainers.”
So basically he’s a friendly animosity-less gay-basher and rape advocate, but please forgive him because he really really hates taxes and will help everyone in Maine pay no taxes, for freedom, and then the state will run itself on magic fairy dust, but not gay fairy dust because ewwww. Neat!
(UPDATE: So I had a feeling that the idea below was a non-starter, but I never let that shut my mouth before so I figured why not post it anyway. But after several tests, sadly, it's not really all that fun, for reasons noted at the bottom of this post. Fortunately, Isaac James has a pretty neat little Barbarians variant he posted in response to this, check it out here.)
Here's a variant for Carcassonne that doesn't require any meeples, just your tiles from the basic set. The theme is that you're building Carcassonne and then thousands of years later exploring the ruins of the city, hoping to be the discover to expose the ancient cities, roads, cloisters, and farms.
Phase 1: Rise On your turn, draw a tile from the bag and place it on the play area according to normal rules. This is all you do on your turn. This phase ends when all the tiles have been placed according to normal rules.
Between Phases Once all the tiles have been placed, note how many completed cities, completed roads, and completed cloisters are on the map. Also note the number of completely surrounded farms on the map. Any open-ended farms along the outer edge do not count. These numbers are bonuses associated with each feature at the end of the game.
Phase 2: Ruins On your turn, collect a tile from the outer edge of the board. If in doing so you break a completed city, road, cloister, or completely surrounded farm, score that city, road, cloister, or farm according to normal scoring rules. Continue until it would be impossible for every player to have an equal number of tiles in their collection.
Whoever has the most road segments earns the road bonus.
Whoever has the most city segments earns the city bonus.
Whoever has the most cloisters earns the cloister bonus.
Whoever has the most field segments earns the farm bonus.
Notes: Given the mutual threat and reward for completed features, I wonder if players will actively avoid making any. It's certainly safer to make a completed feature early in phase 1 so it would take longer to reach in phase 2. Very curious.
So just imagine the exponential increase in evilosity that occurs when you combine Nazis with Lovecraftian Horror!
The pieces are coming together for an official Shaq Fu comeback announcement. A tipster sent Joystiq images of t-shirts that are likely being printed for the marketing campaign.
This latest Shaquille O'Neal-sized breadcrumb of the game's reemergence...
