firehose

PBS Game/Show host Jamin Warren explores cultural representation and appropriation in video games in a recent episode. While Warren notes that a few games, like Never Alone, do a good job at representing a culture other than their creators’, he also points out that video games still have a long way to go.

Cultural Appropriation came to the forefront of our collective consciousness last year under the auspices of Taylor Swift and Iggy Azalea, but games have suffered from this same insensitivity for a long long time. From Custer’s Revenge to Grand Theft Auto 5, Far Cry 2 to Resident Evil — games don’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to nuanced displays of cultures.

Does this guy ever sleep? Greg Berlanti, producer of offerings like The Flash, Arrow, and the upcoming Legends of Tomorrow, and Supergirl is mining another comics universe entirely for his next project. His Berlanti Productions, in association with Warner Bros. TV, will adapting the world of Archie Comics into a one-hour, live action drama called Riverdale, which was originally going to be on FOX, but will now be on The CW. Which makes total sense.

Archie Comics’ chief creative officer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is still writing the pilot. As reported by Deadline Hollywood, Aguirre-Sacassa has this to say about the move:

When Greg and I started talking about bringing these characters to life, our first thought was that the best home for them would be the CW. It took a little longer for us to get there, but now that we’re here, it’s feeling terrific.

Are you excited to see the Archie gang in their own, live-action CW show? Tell us in the comments below!

 

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Remember Vampironica? That unholy fusion of Vampirella and Veronica from Archie Comics? We haven’t seen her since 2012—but Archie Comics just announced she’s coming back, with an announcement that asked “Who is Vampironica”? And looks like Jughead is in trouble...

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And I mean “bloody” both in the British sense of “extremely” and the more traditional definition, “covered in blood.” Ash Vs. Evil Dead looks fantastic— funny, gory, and delightfully messed-up—and clearly Bruce Campbell hasn’t missed a beat since he last strapped on Ash’s chainsaw hand. Can’t wait til Halloween!

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In 2008, San Francisco police were called to transport a woman with mental illness to a hospital. Instead, they shot her seven times. This is the story of how police became our nation’s mental health care workers, and how Teresa Sheehan’s family fought for her before the shooting — and since.

"The vice president is the natural heir to, and most ardent defender of, President Barack Obama's legacy. In a time of polarization and Republican control of Congress, he's the Democrat with the best record of working with Republicans on Capitol Hill. And he may be the only Democrat who could be a viable alternative — and viable threat — to frontrunner Hillary Clinton."

Scott Walker is running for president, he announced in what appeared to be an unintentional tweet on Friday.

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A leech won't kill you, but it's still a leech.

When fans found out that Major League Soccer and two of their teams, New York City FC and New York Red Bulls, would have a presence at the United States women's national team's World Cup celebration parade, they got really mad.

Soccer Twitter was a garbage fire of takes on Thursday, and as usual, there were lots of Outrage Firefighters attempting to put it out. Instead, by going "come on, it's not that bad, no need to get worked up about this," they were actually throwing lighter fluid on the fire. Women's soccer fans got even more pissed off.

Now that the parade was an obvious, roaring success and the MLS floats just had kids on them, not their active players, the I Told You So Brigade is joking that Thursday's meltdown was unwarranted, because the MLS presence didn't ruin the parade or detract from the USWNT's celebration. And they're missing the point entirely.

Women's soccer in the United States is analogous to a celebrity who becomes wildly successful despite a difficult upbringing and an absentee parent.

Imagine you've just become rich and famous due to nothing but your hard work and dedication. You grew up without one of your parents around, and they'd brush you off if you ever tried to grow your relationship with them. You'd call, you'd ask to hang out, but they'd come up with excuses and blow you off.

Fast forward to your big debut on national television. You're as successful as you'd always dreamed you'd be, and it was all because of your hard work. You had plenty of obstacles put in front of you and no support from the people who were supposed to be your support system, but you made it anyway.

Then that absentee parent you tried so hard to get to pay attention to you and help you calls. "Hey, how's it going," they ask, "I heard you're doing really well! I'm so proud of you! You know I've always loved you, right?"

But it's not true. They don't actually care about you. They care that you've become successful, and they want to know how that can benefit them. They are a leech.

Somehow, they convince you that you can be good for each other. You let them show up to your major events. Does their presence detract from your accomplishments or make people enjoy your work less? No, not at all, but they're also doing nothing for you, have never done anything for you, and really need to go the hell away.

This is Major League Soccer's relationship to women's soccer in America. They care about it when it's convenient for them and when it can benefit them. When women's soccer is struggling and it needs them, MLS is absolutely nowhere to be found.

That's why they were unwelcome at the ticker tape parade, and why supporters of women's soccer wanted them to go away. If NYCFC and the Red Bulls had put energy behind promoting Sky Blue FC matches all the time, the New Jersey NWSL outfit wouldn't have any financial problems, but the MLS teams don't do that. They don't care about women's soccer until it can do something for them.

Just because someone isn't "ruining" an event doesn't mean they shouldn't go away.

Trail Blazers guard Damian Lillard recently signed a max contract for $120 million. And yet here he is cosplaying as a regular person in coach on a flight to NBA Summer League in Las Vegas

See, it's him with NBA pal C.J. McCollum!

Exit Row > First Class #Humble #Emerging pic.twitter.com/aADVU3BO6C

— Trail Blazers (@trailblazers) July 10, 2015

And he's so humble, he didn't even want you to see these tweets.

Blowing my cover bro https://t.co/UuLQi5F4cs

— Damian Lillard (@Dame_Lillard) July 10, 2015

It's entirely possible Damian Lillard set this up to look #humble and #classy but you know what, so what? He still has to sit on the flight.

The *real* question is if he'll try this in our dystopian airline hell future.

Evil plane seat design would ruin whatever good remains of air travel http://t.co/rc18DMdmmZ pic.twitter.com/JmAUKaJ2JX

— The Verge (@verge) July 9, 2015

Arbitrator Harold Henderson has upheld the NFL's suspension of Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy for domestic violence, but has reduced it to four games. I know a lot of people will compare this to Tom Brady's four-game suspension for DeflateGate, or Le'Veon Bell's three-game suspension for a marijuana arrest. The differences do highlight the absurd inconsistency in when the NFL dcides to hand down suspensions, and how long they are. But also remember that the legal process with each suspension and appeal is different.

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Dalvin Cook, a star sophomore, is accused of punching a woman in the face in June.

The day before Florida State's since-dismissed third-string quarterback De'Andre Johnson was filmed punching a woman in a bar, starting running back Dalvin Cook allegedly punched a 21-year-old woman at a different bar.

State attorney Willie Meggs plans to issue an arrest warrant on charges of misdemeanor battery, according to ESPN.

ESPN's Mark Schlabach quotes the alleged victim:

'I told [a man who wasn't Cook] I had a boyfriend and wasn't interested,' said the woman, who spoke to ESPN.com on the condition she not be identified. The woman said the argument became heated, and then Cook punched her in the face several times. Her friend ran to a nearby Tallahassee police car, which wasn't occupied, so the woman called 911.

'They kept telling me they were football players,' the woman said. 'They kept telling me to Google them. They told me they were football players and they could buy me in two years.'

The police report describes the alleged victim as being intoxicated and having suffered "minor abrasion/bruises." The report lists two witnesses with redacted names, one of them a man. Schlabach quotes a man as saying he "tried to stand between the two women and a group of five to seven men" during the altercation.

Cook, the former five-star recruit who ran for 1,008 yards last season as a freshman, has been expected to be one of the leaders of a young offense.

He was named by police as an associate in a 2014 aggravated assault case, though there's no known indication that he was a suspect.

Despite the growing popularity of American football in their country, fans in the UK don't want any NFL team permanently relocating there.

London's Evening Standard reported Friday that Jaguars owner Shahid Khan was considering selling his current EPL franchise, Fulham, to buy Tottenham in part to move the Jaguars, the NFL team he owns, to London on a full-time basis. That followed news earlier this week that the new Tottenham Hotspurs stadium in North London will host two NFL games a year. Jacksonville already plays one home game a year in London, and has anchored the league's marketing efforts in the UK.

The Jacksonville Jaguars are not moving to London. Even if they were thinking about it, they definitely shouldn't.

Last November, I traveled to the NFL's International Series at London's Wembley Stadium to watch the Jags "host" Dallas. At first glance the addition of Tottenham's North London location to the mix seems ideal to expand the International Series without relocating a franchise. Multiple locations in London's sprawling geography allow for better accessibility. Tottenham isn't next to Big Ben, but it's much more centrally located than Wembley, which is far, far flung from the city's center. It's like Levi's Stadium or Gillette Stadium.

Based solely on my interviews with English and European fans who have turned the Wembley games into lucrative sellout events, here's what I can explain with some confidence to American, and European, NFL fans:

1 - Yes, England and Europe fans are excited for the NFL. The interest in Europe is very, very real. Did the machinations of Roger Goodell's Godless globalization conspiracy generate that? Probably? Maybe? But it worked. My advice to any American still incredulous about the NFL's legitimacy abroad is to examine the stateside growth of soccer and American interest in the World Cup, Premiership and MLS. Just as the current and previous generation of Americans embraced soccer as participants and fans (and consumers), so too have English fans with American football. In both cases international TV rights have spurred demand.

2 - No, London doesn't want the Jaguars. London wants the NFL. I met multiple UK Jags fans -- as in, European persons electing to wear Jacksonville Jaguars apparel of their own free will -- and none of them want the Jags in London full time. What all UK and European NFL fans want is more NFL and more quality. Literally every single ticket holder I spoke with said they were excited about the option of having between three and five games a year, but the prospect of season tickets, potential bad seasons and a fixed home team did not appeal to them.

3 - Most European NFL fans already have a team. Remember that stupid guy from college who saw a Guy Ritchie film and woke up the next day as a lifelong Manchester United or Arsenal fan? The same thing has been happening in England for the last 30-odd years: There are scores of young British fans who jumped on the Patriots and Seahawks bandwagons, much to the dismay of parents whose first memory of the NFL was Dan Marino's Dolphins or the Washington teams of the Joe Gibbs era. (Consequently, the NFL didn't receive TV coverage in the UK during the 1970s, which means Her Majesty's Kingdom is virtually free of bandwagon Steelers fans. THAT'S a foreign social policy worth striving towards).

4 - And UK NFL fans aren't stupid. The next watershed moment in the NFL's British expansion will come on Oct. 25, 2015, when Jacksonville plays Buffalo in Wembley. Stateside that's just an old-fashioned crappy hangover game normally relegated to a 9:30 a.m. ET regional broadcast. In England, where fans of all 32 teams will spend lots of money to travel to Wembley for their once- or maybe twice-annual NFL fix, that's a terrible draw. And the Brits know that: they follow free agency, the draft and play fantasy football. In terms of NFL IQ, they're really well spoken.

5 - None of this really matters, because it's the NFL. One saving grace for fans in Jacksonville (and London) is that UK merchandise sales of all 32 teams is white hot, to the point where multiple third-party merchandise vendors at Wembley told me they can't order enough of any item of any NFL team fast enough. But as American NFL fans already know, corporatism never loses in pro football. If both the Jags and Bills limp into that October game and manage to keep the Wembley sellout streak alive the likelihood of a London franchise seems that much more imminent.

Holy crap

If you've ever wondered what it was like to watch someone go BEAST MODE in kickball, well, now you know. Marshawn Lynch absolutely destroyed that thing, even on the attempt that went foul! Watching people trying to prevent him from reaching home plate is pretty good, too. They never stood a chance.

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Believe it or not, it’s actually not that expensive to play games this way. Although you could potentially save moneys by streaming all your games, cost savings isn’t really the primary purpose. Craziness is, of course. :)

$0.11/hr Spot instance of a g2.2xlarge
$0.41/hr Streaming 10mbit at $0.09/GB
$0.01/hr EBS storage for 35GB OS drive ($3.50/mo)

You’re looking at $0.53/hr to play games this way. Not too bad. That’s around 1850 hours of gaming for the cost of a $1000 gaming PC. Note that prices vary for different datacenters.
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Kate Beaton Teaches You How to Draw the Fat Pony:

Get your MFA’s out for this one folks

THIS IS A REAL PLACE IN ORLEANS, ONTARIO. YOU CAN STAND AT TH CORNER OF MULDER AND SCULLY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. pic.twitter.com/5yShCwtFm5

Previously, I've talked about testing the Othermill--an out-of-the-box work horse--and the Shapeoko 2--a CNC kit ripe for re-invention. Today, I'm going to talk about a big boy, examining a CNC mill that's bigger, pricier, and commands a steeper learning curve. That's because we're adding another axis!

This is the MDX-540 with a rotary axis made by the Roland DGA Corporation. A 4-axis mill can do everything an X, Y, Z machine can do, but it can also rotate the cutting material around an 'A' axis. Essentially, this mill combines the functionality of a typical CNC and a lathe. With that additional axis, you're able to create complex double-sided objects and components with undercuts.

I'm fortunate enough to work at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program , where we have a bunch of incredible tools and machines. The MDX-540 is our latest addition to the shop and we're just beginning to experiment with it.

For all of my testing I mounted material in the rotary axis exclusively.

Material

The Roland has an extensive list of material pre-sets to choose from, for my testing I stuck to primarily walnut, Delrin, and aluminum (my favorites). But what was new for me is how the material is secured to the mill.

When using the rotary axis, material is mounted in a way that is very similar to a lathe. One side is clamped down at the motorized end, the other is secured by a live center--a free spinning support. The material can be rotated while a spinning end mill cuts from above.

The other novel thing for me, you can use either flat or round (dowel) stock.

Double sided parts--any object that has a detailed top and bottom or an in and outside--can be milled from flat stock. All of the roughing and finishing is done to one surface, the stock is rotated 180 degrees, and then the other side is roughed and finished. Oh the possibilities, I forsee a lot of custom project enclosures in my future.

Tabs remain to secure the part to the remaining material and there is a faint seam line left after machining, but the surface finish is phenomenal. Post milling work will be necessary to remove any trace of the tabs, but no sanding needed for the rest of it.

Round stock mounts in a similar fashion, but the material is rotated for each pass and the part is milled all the way around. Want to make lightsabers, anyone?

Precision and Finish

As I mentioned, the surface finish of wooden pieces is incredible--it's incredibly precise to a point that there's no sanding needed for some materials. Delrin parts looked like they were cast or even injection molded. I didn't have as much luck with the finish on aluminum. There was a little chatter during milling and I don't think I was using the most ideal tool paths. I think with a little more CAM finagling I can get the results I want.

Setting Origin

There is no other way to say it: the process of setting origin on this machine is nuts. The Roland comes with a calibration bar that you secure in the rotary axis and an electrode is plugged in. A calibration pin is chucked into the cutting spindle, and then the calibration cycle is run. At a very fast pace, the pin moves towards the bar (I think it's going to destroy itself everytime), right before a collision it slows to just barely make contact, and an electrical connection is made. The pin then moves to a number of other key locations along the bar, repeating the process. And all of this is just to set the origin of the Y axis!

This process is very well documented in the Roland manuals, it's just an involved process and nerve racking every time. Luckily, the mill "remembers" origin (even after powering down) and this makes running a job a little less terrifying.

CAD

This is the first mill I've covered that uses 3D models exclusively. Any CAD software that outputs to an .igs or .stl file can be used. I've had a lot of luck with Vectorworks.

CAM

The Roland comes with its own CAM software, the SRP Player, a wizard that takes you step by step through the process. Asking simple questions like material size and type, round vs flat stock, tabs/no tabs, bit selection, etc. This software makes what would typically be very difficult toolpaths easy to understand and execute.

Time to Mill

These jobs take a long time, hours, lots and lots of hours. We have a policy in our shop of never leaving a running CNC unattended. For one or two hour jobs, this isbearable, but I've seen some jobs estimated at 20-plus hours. Maybe I'll start reading Game of Thrones.

Noise and Mess

The noise the mill makes isn't bad at all, when cutting aluminum I didn't even need ear protection. Technically, the MDX-540 could sit on a desktop (overall dimensions 29.3" x 37.6" x 33.8"), but due to the uncontained mess, this is a shop only tool. I don't think anyone would be happy running this in an office.

So who's this for?

Someone with deep pockets to start. With a starting price of $20,000, I can't imagine the typical maker buying one of these for their home shop. This would most likely be in a school, a design company's prototyping shop, or a well-equipped makerspace.

That said, the Roland 4-axis CNC mill works incredibly well and is fairly easy to use. Now that I have the 4th axis, I'm creating parts I never dreamed I could produce. It's the kind of machine you definitely want to try at your local makerspace or tech shop.

Photos by Ben Light. Find more of Ben's projectson his website.

I met Rachel Jayson at a party a few years ago and was immediately drawn to her steam punk/apocalyptic outfit. A musician, Rachel is an orchestra director for Lexington public schools, and a violist in two Boston-based art-rock bands (Jaggery, Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys.) The rest of the time, she's throwing together incredible garments in under 24 hours for her own collection.

She doesn't use any patterns or forms, and has never had any training. "It's 50% planning, 25% winging it, and 25% fixing catastrophes from winging it."

Rachel has one rule: never buy any fabric unless she knows exactly what she's using it for. "This keeps me from becoming a textile hoarder in my tiny, tiny Cambridge apartment," she explains.

"I'm a power-crafter. A maker by way of sheer force. I only make one thing at a time, and it's always immediately after I procure the supplies. My process consists of wandering around a fabric store (often Gather Here in Cambridge) until I find a fabric I love. The bigger/louder/brighter a print is, the more likely I am to need it. Then I sit in the store and stare at the fabric until I can envision exactly what it will be. Because I'm making it up as I go along, I often use unorthodox materials (I've made skirts out of umbrellas and patio-furniture-upholstery-fabric.) Once I've got the stuff... it's an all out sprint to completion. Usually within 24 hours of buying supplies, the garment is done."

This animal print dress took our artist just six hours to make. It is made of 6 yards of fabric, a big yellow jacket zipper, and 16 yards of yellow bias tape. The hem around the bottom is about 40'.

This skirt has a city skape made out of cotton fabric and sewn on outdoor upholstery fabric, which she notes is super stiff and waterproof:

This skirt is made out of an umbrella:

In all photos she's wearing John Fluevog Shoes, a queer friendly brand with a store in Boston.

Follow Rachel @musykchyk on twitter and instagram

Pao has been at the center of a controversy following the still-unexplained dismissal of a popular figure in the site's r/IAmA section. She is being replaced by Steve Huffman, the site's original CEO.

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New Yorkers know: A good bathroom is hard to find. In the decade since the Bloomberg administration promised a whopping 20 new public toilets, just three have hit the streets—not nearly enough for a city with a population of 8.4 million. Residents have learned to study the crowdsourced potty map, download SitOrSquat, Charmin’s restroom-finding app, or make do with Starbucks, New York’s de facto public restroom. But the conditions of these high-traffic stalls can be appalling. (Who could blame the chain’s long-suffering baristas for staging the Great Starbucks Bathroom Lockout of 2011?) On the other hand, if you duck into any other restaurant in the city, you’ll have to purchase at least a coffee to gain access to the porcelain throne.

How much would you pay to eliminate the uncertainty, the waiting, and the inevitable disgust that comes with finding a bathroom on the go? Yezin Al-Qaysi, creator of a new subscription service called Looie, is betting that peace of mind is worth $25 a month. Looie charges users a flat rate to provide reliable access to a network of scrupulously clean bathrooms throughout the city.

Would you pay to eliminate the uncertainty and the disgust that comes with finding a bathroom on the go?

Here’s how it works: You receive a key that unlocks any Looie restroom in the city. Use the app to find the nearest one, enter the establishment, and head straight for the restroom. No purchase (or nervous stealthiness) required. Each bathroom is cleaned seven to ten times daily, so you never have to worry about stumbling into a disaster area.

Currently Looie is available in just one location, a cafe called Mulberry & Vine. But Al-Qaysi hopes to expand to five outposts in Tribeca by the end of July 2015, and then operate 40 locations in lower Manhattan by year’s end. (He also thinks the model would work well in other dense, walkable cities such as San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto, and Vancouver.)

He’s partnering with restaurants, gyms, and other businesses to operate their existing bathrooms through Looie. They provide the facilities, and Looie provides the foot traffic and maintenance. According to Al-Qaysi, businesses—and especially employees—have been enthusiastically supportive. “I’m taking restroom management off of their hands,” he says.

But for the huddled, toilet-deprived masses of New York, that $25 fee may be difficult to stomach. In the face of a widening income gap—and such vulgarities as the infamous “poor door”—the concept of a standalone bathroom network, just for those with disposable incomes, reads like the newest chapter in an increasingly macabre tale of two cities.

It takes a huge initial investment to build and maintain a public restroom infrastructure—just one of New York’s state-of-the-art self-cleaning toilets cost more than $100,000—and that’s why, until the 1970s, many toilets in the U.S. were pay-per-use. They still are in many countries around the world.

“I don’t like creating a large paywall to be restrictive,” Al-Qaysi says. “I don’t want this to be an elitist thing. I just think that, on this aspect, New York is not designed for humans.”

He hopes that Looie will appeal to the taxi drivers, freelancers, municipal workers, and other New Yorkers pounding the pavement all day. About 500 people have signed up for the pilot phase, including families, “corporate types,” people with medical conditions—and, to Al-Qaysi’s surprise, he’s seen as much interest from men as from women. “I thought guys wouldn’t really care that much about bathrooms, but that totally is not the case,” he says.

Looies aren’t public bathrooms. But for a small subset of New Yorkers, they are answering the call of nature.