firehose

Last year, a scriptreader read 300 scripts for 5 studios, all the while taking notes on the problems and trends he saw. The number 1 problem? The story started too late in the script.

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z1c:

being 20+ on tumblr

DATELINE: 9:32 PM, Education Startup Weekend, New York City

I insisted my staff trade their Super Bowl for a Startup Weekend. I’m pretty sure the only reason they agreed to go is because I’m the boss.

I’ll find out later if they want to kill me, but for now I can report from the thick of things that:

Melissa is working on a project called Vid Code, which is designed to ignite girls’ interest in coding through the artistic expression of video processing. By harnessing young girls’ avid involvement in mobile applications, Vid Code gives them an opportunity to write code.

Al and Orlando are working on Bloop!—a website that aggregates news sources targeted to children. As kids select what stories to read, Bloop! makes intelligent choices on what to feed them next so as to level-up their knowledge and skills.

Steve is working with a team to build Simplifaid, a product to help current and prospective college students manage their college expenses and financial aid packages. Look for their campaign soon on IndieGoGo.

David and I are working on StaffUp Weekend—a mash-up of Startup Weekend and my approach to hiring that I described in a recent column for Quartz, How to hire good people instead of nice people. It makes sense that we do this because, before I settled on David as my assistant, I took him and my three other best candidates to a SU Weekend to see how they worked together under pressure.

My advice is to go beyond thinking of Startup Weekend as a place to launch a project but also a great place to troll for employees and jobs.

And, come to think of it, this is like the ultimate corporate off-site. I’m not renting $600 rooms at a fancy resort and I haven’t paid $20,000 to have a motivational speaker tell us we should be more entrepreneurial.

Instead, we are being more entrepreneurial for only $100 a head (and that price includes seven meals).

Beat that, Tony Robbins.

Visit Brooke’s website, brookeallen.com, for more on how finding work and doing it might be more fun. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com. 

Watch this video of Steve Gleason ahead of the Super Bowl. It's sure to get you feeling emotional on Super Bowl Sunday.

There are two pieces to Steve Gleason's part in a Super Bowl commercial for Microsoft. One is the obvious advertisement for Microsoft Surface: He uses the technology to communicate now that ALS has taken his ability to speak. The other, more important part of the message, is something Gleason has worked tirelessly for: Continuing to raise awareness for ALS.

The result is a heartwarming commercial that'll bring a tear to your eye. Here is an extended preview of Gleason's Super Bowl commercial:

The Gleason piece is part of a larger advertisement in which Microsoft plans to show people whose use of Microsoft technology is "inspiring." The ad will be Microsoft's first during a Super Bowl. There isn't a much more inspiring person than Gleason, so it sure seems that fits.

The best part of the commercial, by the way, is Gleason's son Rivers diving into a bean bag chair, followed by Steve pushing him across the floor using his wheelchair and using the computer to talk to his son. It's a fun, adorable human moment.

You can learn more about Gleason's fight with ALS at his website.

The Puppy Bowl is the biggest sporting event of the year. We have you covered.

We've been waiting all year, and now it is time for The Big Game.

Not the Super Bowl, of course. The Puppy Bowl, which will be on Animal Planet at 3 p.m. ET. Here at SB Nation, we consider the Puppy Bowl to be considerably more important than actual football, and will be covering it as such, because sports.

Here is everything you need to know about Puppy Bowl X:

So what exactly is the Puppy Bowl?

The Puppy Bowl is Animal Planet's brilliant Super Bowl counter-programming. It features a bunch of puppies running around on a miniature football field.

Are they playing football?

No, not really. They're puppies. They just sorta run around and do puppy things. There is a guy in a referee costume who signals "touchdown" if a puppy brings a toy into the end zone, assesses penalties if a dog poops, and calls timeouts at various intervals to do stuff like refill the water bowl, but there is no "game," per se. Because they're puppies. It's announced as if it's an actual sport, though. But there are no teams and no running score.

Can I look at these puppies?

Yes. The 39-dog "starting lineup" is here. Our favorite is Mark, the lab/husky mix:

Can I play fantasy football?

Yes, of course you can: Animal Planet has a game that allows you to pick three puppies.

This is the scorecard:

HOW DO I WATCH

Turn on Animal Planet at 3 p.m. Prepare to awwww.

More from SB Nation NFL

• SB Nation's complete coverage of Super Bowl XLVIII

• Peyton Manning wins his fifth NFL MVP award

• Michael Strahan, Walter Jones headline 2014 Hall of Fame Class

• Danny Kelly: Is Russell Wilson really a ‘game manager’?

• PFT Commenter's ultimate Super Bowl party | Spilly's Rocky Mountain tacos

• Behind the Boom: The secrets of the Seahawks' secondary

dyzzyah:

luxuryofconviction:

bramblepatch:

ktempest:

feministbatwoman:

realsocialskills:

Content warning: This post is my reply to someone who reblogged calling some of my low-spoons food strategies lazy and unhealthy. Some of y’all might be better off skipping this one.

watsonly:

realsocialskills:

Anonymous asked realsocialskills:

Related to the remembering food exists thing, do you have any advice for what to do when your depression is making preparing food seem so hard that you’d nearly prefer to just go hungry?

A couple of suggestions:

Order a pizza, or some other form of food that gets delivered to you

• Hunger feeds on itself and makes everything harder
• If you’re in a state of mind where preparing food seems too difficult to be bearable, ordering food can often break that cycle
• So can getting takeout or going to McDonalds
• This is not a frivolous expense
• And it’s not necessarily more expensive than preparing your own food. McDonalds has a dollar menu.
• When you’re starving from not eating, it is not the time to worry about health food. Making sure that you eat comes first. Eating anything (that you’re not allergic to) is healthier than regularly going hungry because you can’t bring yourself to eat.

Keep stuff around that’s easy to eat and doesn’t require any preparation or only need to be microwaved, for instance:

• A box of cereal
• Chocolate
• Granola bars
• Ice cream
• Popsickles
• Protein shakes
• Rice cakes
• Peanut butter
• TV dinners
• Frozen chicken nuggets
• It can also help to keep around disposable plates and utensils so the thought of having to wash dishes doesn’t deter you from eating

Get someone else to tell you that you need to eat:

• Sometimes it’s easier to remember that eating is important if someone else tells you
• For instance, if you text a friend saying “remind me that I need to eat” and they do, that can sometimes make it more possible

Get someone else to talk you through the steps of making food:

• If there’s someone you can ask how to find/make food, that can be helpful
• Sometimes what’s really exhausting is not so much doing the steps, as it is anticipating them, or figuring out what they are
• If someone can help you through that, it can make it much more possible

watsonly said:

okay, this is a really good post but i do think someone should mention that defaulting to eating chocolate, ice cream, and tv dinners is really unhealthy and will probably only make you feel worse in the long run. i don’t know about you guys but eating a bag of chips feelings great in the moment but then 30 minutes later i just feel worse than before

so i give you a list of super fast and easy snacks that are inexpensive, yummy, and best of all will make you feel great (◕‿◕✿)

• cucumbers. seriously, just cucumbers. maybe some salt on top
• rice crackers oh my god they are so cheap and mmmmmm
• apples, peaches, pears, grapes, any fruit really :)
• plain yogurt with some warm honey drizzled on top
• flavoured yogurt + granola
• SMOOTHIES MAN LIKE RLY JUST BLEND UP SOME BANANA’S, YOGURT, COCOA POWDER AND JUICE AND YOU’VE OPENED A FUCKING BOOSTER JUICE
• toast. everyone likes toast.
• chickpeas! yeah, those weird things you always pass in the supermarket. mix ‘em up with whatever diced veggies you have in the fridge and put a splash of olive oil on top ;)
• NACHOS. IT IS SO DARN EASY TO MAKE NACHOS. SERIOUSLY. DO IT. (tortilla chips + salsa + cheese + oven + 3 minutes)
• some lovely campbells soup with soda crackers ^.^
• eggs! fry ‘em, boil ‘em, mix em with some cheese and omelette them!
• really just eat whatever makes you feel happy and healthy yo <33

oh, also, let’s not engage in any of this paper plate crap - WASH THOSE DISHES! seriously. rinse out your plate/bowl/cutlery when you’re done eating and do it later if you like. bUT DONT MAKE BEING LAZY AND ACCESSIBLE OPTION. PUT ON SOME MUSIC IF YOU LIKE. DANCE AROUND. USE WAY TOO MUCH SOAP SO THE WHOLE KITCHEN SMELLS LIKE SUNLIGHT. PRETEND YOU’RE ON A COOKING SHOW. DO WHATEVER YOU NEED TO DO, JUST HAVE FUN WITH IT!

FOOD IS DELICIOUS AND AMAZING AND SOMEONE EVERYONE SHOULD WANT TO ENJOY, AND SITTING AROUND EATING JUNK FOOD ALL DAY IS NOT THE WAY TO GO ABOUT DOING THAT! 

realsocialskills said:

There are some major problems with your advice. My post was for people who have trouble eating because the food logistics are very difficult for them. The problem here isn’t how to do what’s nutritionally ideal. The problem is how to make sure you eat and don’t starve, even when you’re so low on spoons that the thought of eating makes you want to cry.

Enjoying food is great. But avoiding starvation is more important. So is eating regularly enough to avoid cognitive side effects of hunger.

Most things that you have suggested are not viable for people who are having this degree of trouble eating. Here are some reasons:

Low calorie snacks are not a good solution for people who are having trouble eating enough food:

• Defaulting to low-calorie foods is a great strategy for people who compulsively overeat and consume too many calories
• But people who have trouble eating have the opposite problem.
• What’s a healthy food choice depends on what your needs are
• People who find it so difficult to eat that they’d often rather go hungry need strategies for making sure they get enough calories
• For people who have that problem, defaulting to low calorie foods can actually be dangerous
• Ice cream contains a lot more nutritionally essential things than cucumbers and rice cakes do

In a similar way, many of your suggestions are too difficult/exhausting/complicated for people who have this problem:

• A lot of your suggestions call for fresh perishable ingredients. In order to eat that way, people have to be either capable of keeping ingredients around, or capable of going out and getting the ingredients whenever they need to eat. That’s often not possible.
• Using a blender to blend something takes a lot of steps. And then you have to clean the blender, or it will make your kitchen disgusting. That can be a major deterrent to eating.
• This is also true of making omelets and other things that require cooking. You have to have the energy and executive functioning to cook safely, and then you have to wash the pans.
• Drizzling warm honey on top of yogurt is only viable for people who can heat honey and put it on something without making an exhausting mess.
• Putting something in the oven and keeping track of it for three minutes *and successfully cleaning it up afterwards* isn’t easy or possible for everyone.

Some of your suggestions don’t actually make nutritional sense for anyone:

• TV dinners are expensive, but they’re not necessarily unhealthy.
• A lot of them are way more nutritionally balanced than a plate of nachos
• And just about any TV dinner is better for most people than eating nothing but fruit and cucumbers

Paper plates and other disposables are necessary and important for some people:

• Disability is a real thing
• Not everyone can handle washing dishes
• Trying to wash dishes can seriously damage some people’s health
• Because it can deter them from eating to the point that they become malnourished
• And it can also make it impossible for some people to maintain a sanitary living environment
• Calling people who have this problem lazy doesn’t make the problem go away
• But using disposable dishes does, for some people
• People with disabilities have the right to eat and living in sanitary conditions

Fun and a light hearted positive attitude do not actually generate spoons or solve sensory problems:

• If people are too exhausted to move and can barely handle getting up to make a sandwich, no amount of music is going to make it possible for them to wash dishes or make nachos
• If the texture of water and dish soap makes someone want to scream, no amount of pretending to be on a cooking show is going to stop having to wash dishes from deterring them from eating
• If someone finds almost all food unbearably repulsive, having an attitude that food is meant to be enjoyed is not going give them the ability to eat. Having access to the things they *do* find reliably edible will.
• Sometimes people have good reasons for needing certain things to be really, really easy. That doesn’t mean they’re bad people. It just means they need to find easy ways to do things.

If you don’t have this level of difficulty with food, and you can handle eating more complicated and difficult things regularly, that’s great. But I wrote this post for people who need food to be as easy as possible so that they are actually able to eat it.

*mic drop* 

I’m so happy to see this. That concern trolling person in the middle just DOES NOT GET IT and, honestly, they represent a lot of people who don’t get it.

There was a while last year where literally the only reason I ever had anything besides cold cereal and TV dinners in my apartment was that I kept guinea pigs and while I could survive on cheerios and frozen dinners, they needed fresh fruits and veggies. I could motivate myself to make carrot sticks or apple wedges if I was planning on giving them some, but I couldn’t psych myself up to prepare fruits and vegetables for my own sake.

I wish I’d thought of the disposable dishes thing, though, my kitchen got really unsanitary from all the dishes in the sink and that *really* didn’t help with my willingness to go make food.

luxuryofconviction said:

 This. So much this.

Like, hey, look, okay—I know how to cook. I enjoy cooking, actually—when I’m not depressed. Same thing with cleaning.

When I’m so goddamn depressed that the only thing getting me out of bed is a moral and emotional imperative to feed my cats, turning on music and dancing around is not going to suddenly make me feel better about cooking when the only thing I feel like doing is going back to sleep for another 12 hours.

There are days where I will recognize that I am hungry and haven’t eaten in two days and will go look in my pantry, and will just end up standing there for a few minutes before turning the light back off and going back upstairs because nothing is appealing. The only time I really eat on days like that is if someone else cooks for me, because they went to that effort I feel guilty otherwise—and even then, I don’t enjoy the food; objectively I can register that I’m detecting flavours that I normally find extremely enjoyable, but my brain isn’t picking up on it and I might as well just be eating sand or mud or sticks and bark.

When food itself is absolutely unappealing and you have zero appetite or concern for yourself to actually motivate you to prepare something, it’s hard enough to will yourself to pick up that box of crackers and nibble on a handful, okay. Sometimes the best thing I could do for myself in terms of depression self care was tell myself that I deserved to eat out, even if I technically couldn’t afford it, because sometimes that was the only way I was going to get something substantially nutritious into my system. 

Making people feel shitty about that kind of thing only adds to the problem, so fuck right off with your absolute lack of comprehension and excess of outdated emoticons.

dyzzyah said:

Speaking as a medical professional, I’d rather see my patients eat McDonalds and chips and ice cream sandwiches than not at all. In fact, it has come up in my practice. Someone who suffers depression cannot fight it on an empty stomach, and sometimes a person needs to have something, anything in their belly before they can make any strides towards greater wellness.

Yes, it would be swell if we could all have fresh cucumbers and nourishing meals. It would also be great if we were all well enough to fix our own meals, rich enough to afford fresh produce daily, energetic enough to not need assistance in cooking or cleaning, and happy enough to dance while we do, but that is not the reality that all of us live in.

So while mcnuggets and chips are not the ideal diet, I would still rather any of my patients eat something more substantial than their own misery than go without.

just making sure

The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet. The Puppy Bowl is at 3 p.m. on the Animal Planet.

When it comes to fantasy Puppy Bowl, you can't spend enough time researching the players. Don't worry: we've put in the work necessary to help you win your league.

As we told you earlier, there is such a thing as fantasy Puppy Bowl, debuting this year for Puppy Bowl X. Here is the official scorecard from Animal Planet:

You've hopefully come to respect SB Nation as your home for fantasy football coverage, so we won't be letting you down here.

What you want here is to look at each category and think: what's the safest bet?

Touchdowns: You want a fast dog, but most importantly, a dog that won't be stopped

Takeaways: Strength is needed to wrest puppy items from other puppies

Tackles: Strength is needed to tackle puppies

Penalties: Wild card here -- all dogs are going to poop on the field, so don't think about penalties when drafting a fantasy puppy team. Sorta like how you shouldn't draft a kicker until the 13th round.

Therefore, I think it's obvious: when drafting a fantasy puppy bowl team, the most important aspect is SIZE.

Mandy, the dachsund-hound mix?

Not gonna get the job done.

Poppy, the Shih Tzu/Brussels Griffon mix?

Not even worth a 12th-rounder. And there aren't 12 rounds. You only get to pick three dogs.

Sparky, the Yorkshire Terrier?

If you draft a Yorkie, you are openly admitting you do not want to make your fantasy Puppy Bowl playoffs.

Our picks

Bach, the Bermese Mountain Dog mix:

The other half is poodle, so Bach is an interesting combo of size and speed.

Shyla, the Great Pyrenees puppy:

Great Pyrenees dogs are huge, but bred to be agile. This dog is going to rack up points in multiple categories.

And Ginger, the Old English Sheepdog:

AWWWWWWW IT'S SO CUTE

This has been our Fantasy Puppy Bowl analysis. But even if you don't win your league, we're all winners when it comes to Puppy Bowl.

Share this fun fact at your Super Bowl party to impress your friends!

FWIW: Seahawks are the only NFL team this season that did not have one player on its 53-man roster who has played in a Super Bowl.

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) February 2, 2014

Here are some service-y reminders for the Seahawks

* Don't bother Googling "What time is the Super Bowl?" It's at 6:30 p.m. ET!
* Bring your pads!
* You're probably bummed about missing the ads. It's OK, most of them will be available to watch online tomorrow!
* You don't get to watch the halftime show either, sorry. It too will be archived on the Internet.
* The NFL might turn the lights out again. They shouldn't, but they might. Bring a flashlight.
* Simpsons did it. You lost. So you can just be happy to be there.
* Above all else, have fun!

 “No hanky-panky in the TARDIS.” That phrase is the most famous articulation of the notion that the Doctor should not engage in human follies like love, romance, or sex, particularly with respect to his companions. Concerns about the appearance of such impropriety go right back to the very beginning of Doctor Who, when “An Unearthly Child” writer Anthony Coburn insisted that the Doctor’s teenage traveling companion Susan be rewritten as his granddaughter, lest viewers think William Hartnell’s Doctor was some dirty old man. Ironically, that very effort to downplay the possibility that the Doctor might ever form relationships with his young companions became a rather awkward bit of continuity in subsequent seasons, as later production teams reinterpreted the Doctor as completely asexual. After all, if that were the case, how did the Doctor ever become a grandfather in the first place? According to Susan actress Carole Anne Ford ...

This is the internet.

It's 2014, guys. Of course we have our entire editorial team working on Puppy Bowl X, ensuring that the best GIFs make their way onto the internet.

This is Ginger, the Old English Sheepdog and puppy we advised you to pick for your fantasy puppy bowl team, acting like picking up a 15-yard penalty.

Classless. RT @TomLorenzo: Ginger is a thug.

— SB Nation (@sbnation) February 2, 2014

Puppy action.

This is Mandy, getting angry:

TRY ME WITH A SORRY PUPPY LIKE DELACHAISE, THAT'S THE RESULT YOU'RE GONNA GET. DON'T YOU EVER TALK ABOUT ME. http://t.co/qfMdVyKKm7

— SB Nation (@sbnation) February 2, 2014

There are penguin cheerleaders:

Quite frankly we think the puppy bowl penguin cheerleading ruins the integrity of puppy bowl, but whatever.

SIZE MISMATCH

Karl Pilkington

Original Source

Oops.

This image of CBS This Morning shot up to the top of Reddit on Sunday afternoon before the Super Bowl. It appears to show the login information at Super Bowl security HQ, which, yeah, not great.

The reality of Super Bowl security is serious and the NFL goes all out for the event. SB Nation's Steven Godfrey talked to a security expert and FBI agents about protecting the big game:

Officially, joint security task forces as notable and wide-reaching as the multi-agency Super Bowl group don't like to show their whole hand, but the layers of multiple agencies provide a "show of force like something in the military," according to the agents we spoke to.

"People would probably be surprised to know how much could be done in a matter of minutes. You're talking hundreds of law enforcement and armored vehicles on the field in around three minutes. And you're in live contact with every local and regional agency as well as the military. It's a full command post."

Read the Rest: Is the NFL Ready for Everything?

Megan Geuss

In 2012, more than six million Americans reported that they work from home. And with the rise of cheap(er) and (relatively more) plentiful bandwidth, getting necessary tasks done from the comfort of your bed (or office, fine) is becoming more viable to employers and more attractive to talented employees. In fact, Ars employees all work from home so that we can be surrounded by our high-quality pets and use our comfortable, if completely ergonomically unsound desks and chairs.

Still, we sometimes long for a familiar human face. And when former Ars staffer Kurt Mackey invited me to his office to talk about the telepresence robots that his company, Mongo HQ, bought for the work-from-home crew, I jumped at the chance to take them for a spin. You can see the results for yourself in the video below. Kurt also penned a nice reflection on the advantages and disadvantages of working with a mostly telepresent staff, which you can read here.

Skip the drudgery of commuting like the common folk: from the comfort of your home office, you can be present at work by controlling the Double through the Chrome Web browser or an iOS app.

Megan Geuss

Mongo HQ decided to invest in robots from a company called Double Robotics, but there are many more on the market that you can choose from. Some are bigger, some are smaller, some are specialized for certain types of work (like patient monitoring for doctors). Double Robotics' “Doubles” cost $2500 and don't include the second, third, or fourth generation iPad that you need to mount on the robot as the primary vehicle for communication. But in our brief testing, the machinery seems worthy of its price tag. The Double can last eight-hour days and doesn't require all that much assistance from the people physically present in the office. It can telescope from about six feet tall to about four feet for faster driving, and it handles uneven floors well.

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A seven-year-old girl named Charlotte has taken LEGO to task for not only making more "boy people" than "lego girls," but sending the former on adventures while the latter "sit at home."

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misanthrobot:

have just been informed that “seahawks will win but the broncos will catch the snitch” is not a valid bet for the superbowl because apparently football “doesn’t work like that”. whatever.

The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Times and other outlets are reporting that Philip Seymour Hoffman is dead, reportedly from a drug overdose. He was 46.

He was a terrific actor and has an Oscar for his efforts, but what I liked most about him was the fact that both in look and demeanor, he was anything but the usual movie star. He was a shaggy, lumbering presence by default, and awfully mumbly. The quality of his craft snuck up on you, or at least, on me.

My own personal favorite performance of his is a bit of a black horse: It’s a David Mamet film called State and Main, where he plays a screenwriter on the set of a film; the character is slightly out of his depth and knows it, but is nevertheless bemused by the situation he’s gotten himself into. It’s a casual performance in a good but not great film and for some reason it just clicked with me and made Hoffman an actor I knew I liked to watch.

I’m sad that there won’t be more to watch him in. Thoughts to his family and friends. 46 is awfully young to go.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

That escalated quickly!