firehose

sushiesque posted a photo:

An amazing post on Livejournal from Ilya "Zyalt" Varlamov gives a glimpse of life behind the barricades at the #Euromaidan uprising in Kiev, Ukraine. Zyalt's photos and text convey the diversity of the rebel lines -- "from students to pensioners" -- and the ingenuity they display in everything from homebrewed catapaults to morale-boosting drumming ("When casual stone- and grenade-throwing takes place, the knock is monotonous, in order to set rhythm and keep the morale. When Berkut attacks, drumming becomes louder and everyone hears that – for some it is a signal to run away, for some, on the opposite – defend the barricades.") At the end, we see the moment when the smoke clears and the truce begins. This is nailbiting, engrossing, terrifying stuff.

Here's hoping that all our readers in Ukraine are safe, especially Daniel, who wrote our first post on #Euromaidan.

I would like to dispel the most common myths about Maidan.

1."They destroyed the whole city" Not true. All of the action you see in the pictures are happening on a small square near the entrance to a Dinamo stadium. This is a government sector, there is no intereference in peaceful life outside of this area. If you make an analogy with Moscow, imagine that the barricades are someone in the area of Ilinka or Varvarka, near the president's administration. Sure, it's the center, but regular Moscovites wouldn't notice. There is dark smoke and fire on all pictures: those are mostly burning tires. There is not tangible damage to the buildings. Unfortunately one store burned down last night near the barricades, resulted from a poorly thrown molotov cocktail. Even the statue of Lobanovsky, located in the epicenter of fighting has been covered with cloth to prevent damage. Overall, the protesters are very careful regarding property. They've take apart fences and benches, but no windows are broken, noone is vandalizing, and all looters are caught and beaten. So the picture is pretty apocalyptic, but things are not so bad.

2. "This is not a revolution, nothing horrible is happeneing"

Also not true. This is a real revolution. Decide for yourselves: it's been two months since the center of Kiev has been in the hands of the opposition. Several government buildings are seized. The work of many government offices is paralyzed. The opposition has created barricades, which the authorities have not be able to take. Despite the freezing temps, tens of thousands of people are on the streets for the last two months. The system of defense and supply chain are established. There is perfect order at the protestor HQ, people are fed, dressed, people are pooling money to gather supplies. The most important thing: the people in power are unable to restore order. The police has failed several times at try to storm the barricades. I'll make a separate post about this, but trust me, the only way to dismantle this is with heavy artillery, or drop in commandos. Every day the opposition is securing more territories. What is this if not a revolution?

3. "The entire Kiev is paralyzed, there is no peaceful life for the regular people."

Kiev is living its own life. All stores and cafes are working, people are going to work, study in universities, get married, divorce and even die their own death. Most of the Kiev populace are not inconvenienced. Imagine if Navalny took over the Red Square and set up his camp there. What would change for you, Moscovites? Nothing. So the only people who are inconvenienced are toruists. A few stores and cafes had to close down in the very center. Also, those living in the center have troubles with logistics. But the entire Kiev is not paralyzed.

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Revolution in Kiev, Ukraine (via Hacker News)

Seanbaby named it the 17th worst game of all time, criticizing its controls, the character’s personality, and the graphics, which he calls “ass”.

Link (Thanks, the-excel)

If anyone wanted to be the Iowa GOP's social media manager, our guess is that there will be a job opening approximately now.

jackb_guppy writes with word that "Legislation that would let students use computer programming courses to satisfy foreign-language requirements in public schools moved forward in the Kentucky Senate on Thursday." From the article: "Kentucky students must earn 22 credits to graduate high school, but 15 of those credits represent requirements for math, science, social studies and English — and college prerequisites call on students to have two credits of foreign language, [state senator David] Givens said. Meanwhile, Givens pointed to national statistics showing that less than 2.4 percent of college students graduate with a degree in computer science despite a high demand in the market and jobs that start with $60,000 salaries."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When it comes to the NFL, the show must go on... unless of course, there's a major snowstorm.

It would not be exaggeration to say that the films (and possibly TV shows) based on Stephen King's The Dark Tower series have been on an extreme, ridiculous, and frankly exhausting rollercoaster ride for years now.  Fans of the sprawling epic have waited with baited breath as rumor after rumor hit the internet.  The story, after all, was told in seven mostly very lengthy novels over the course of King's entire career and also involved a great deal of his other books.  To full encapsulate the story on film or on TV will be an extremely intense project that could honestly take decades.  Especially if things continue to move the way they have for the past few years.

An anonymous reader writes "Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, recently claimed that Apple is the only computer company left from the early days of the Mac. Unfortunately for him, HP still exists. "Every company that made computers when we started the Mac, they're all gone," Schiller told Macworld in an interview on Apple's Cupertino campus. 'We're the only one left.' I'm sorry Apple, but when exactly did HP declare bankruptcy? We contacted an HP spokesperson for a statement on Apple's ridiculous claim and were pointed to its timeline history page."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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"Google and its ilk have always known that they could break the law right up until the day they were invited to make new laws."

During yesterday's hearing, Michael Watson, the shuttle company representative, defended his company's operations, saying, "We've used Muni stops for 10 years cooperatively." It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to recast a behavior that is, in point of fact, illegal as a virtuous act of private-public collaboration. San Francisco's Curb Priority Law prohibits non-Muni vehicles from blocking bus stops, a law that carries a $271 fine. Bus blockaders say that the various tech companies owe San Francisco $1 billion in fines for their illegal use of the stops over the past decade. [...] Google, Facebook and Apple aren't facing millions in unpaid parking fines, however, because the MTA hasn't been writing the tickets. Since the shuttles began using public bus stops, they've simply flouted the law without consequences.

Not only has San Francisco allowed tech companies to violate the law with impunity, but now that public outcry has made some kind of action politically expedient, the MTA seems to have allowed the industry to write the very regulations that are supposed to rein them in. [...] Under the guise of regulating the shuttles, the program regularizes the status quo -- allowing the private buses to continue using the approximately 200 bus stops it already uses for a nominal fee. (Large employers like Google are expected to pay about $100,000 per year; were Google to be charged the $271 fine, its bill would balloon to $27.1 million each year.) [...] If Muni simply enforced its current laws instead of creating this new program, the monetary benefit to the city would be significantly higher.

This might not anger San Franciscans so much were it not for the fact that the MTA does enforce its laws, harshly, against individuals. Several speakers at the hearing had received tickets for the same behavior Google buses get away with daily -- pulling into a bus stop to drop someone off. And while the $271 fine may be insignificant to a company like Google, it's a potentially devastating sum for people struggling to get by in a city where the cost of living seems to rise by the day. [...]

This is the contradiction of the Google Bus, and it's one that should resonate across the country. The Google Bus is the embodiment of a system that indemnifies the actions of corporations while increasingly criminalizing and punishing individuals. Google and its ilk have always known that they could break the law right up until the day they were invited to make new laws. That is the power of corporate wealth, and in San Francisco as in the rest of the country, it rules supreme.

The Chicago Bears could lose a vital part of their defense due to questions over his contract.

The Chicago Bears have flourished on defense thanks to an aggressive style gifted at forcing turnovers, but the team could be poised to lose a crucial part of this unit.

Veteran cornerback Charles Tillman plans to test free agency, according to a report from Mike Coppinger of NFL.com. Reports indicate there is a chance he'll return, but the team is unlikely to give him a similarly large contract to the six-year extension he signed in 2007. The 32-year-old defensive back isn't concerned with the lack of a deal.

"I'm not really worried about it," said Tillman, via the Chicago Tribune. "I have some decisions I have to make in the next couple of weeks, couple of months. I am just going to see what happens. I have some options, I have some thoughts."

There is some speculation from the Chicago Tribune that Tillman could re-unite with former head coach Lovie Smith, now with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It would be an appealing opporunity to help fuel a rebound in Tampa Bay and a chance to play with All Pro cornerback Darrelle Revis for the first time.

It's unclear how the Bears would mitigate the potential loss of Tillman. While he struggled in an injury-ridden 2013 season, he is responsible for generating 36 interceptions and 42 forced fumbles since 2003.

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djempirical

Scoping things out.

Original Source

OXFORD, ENGLAND—So unable to contain his excitement he was nearly squealing aloud with glee, giddy Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke reportedly went to bed as early as he could Saturday night in an effort to make the morning of the Grammy Awards get her...

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

Invisible at a glance, artists have long hidden fore-edge artwork in plain sight, resulting in works that are sometimes first spotted decades or even centuries after their creation. What looks like a plain gold-gilt surface on the shelf can unfold to reveal a rich and colorful surprise.

Via Colossal, the above examples come from Colleen Theisen and the Special Collections & University Archives  at the University of Iowa. They are from a series of four books titled after the seasons (Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer shown sequentially above) published in the 1800s by Robert Mudie.

The art of disappearing fore-edge painting dates back hundreds of years, but (visible) edge painting on closed books goes back over a thousand years. Sometimes the scenes are made to match content, contexts and characters from within the book. In other cases, they are more broadly relevant, meant to set the stage or tone for the reader.

The fore-edge (found on the opposite side of a book’s spine) can be painted directly on the closed book to create a drawing that is immediately visible. Alternatively, the pages can be splayed out and painted on the front or back  of the edge. In some cases, both sides are painted to create a double fore-edge works that are entirely different depending on which way you splay the sheets. Triple fore-edge variants are also possible, with two patterns or scenes that disappear and a third that is visible when the book is closed.

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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]

When Saint Honoré announced their newest location would be landing on SE Division, we had good reason to be worried. A few doors down from Roman Candle’s pizzeria and bakery, across an intersection from Lauretta Jean’s pies and biscuits, and mere blocks away from Little T American Baker, Saint Honoré’s Dominique Geulin was taking a major risk. Did the neighborhood need another place to break bread?

Luckily, Normandy-born Geulin found a way for his third location to stand out from the flour-dusted crowd. The solution? Cider, and lots of it—the largest selection of draught cider in Portland, to be precise—along with authentic Alsatian happy hour plates primed for pairing. Check out our slide show below for highlights from the offerings available every day after 4 pm.

(via Saint Honoré’s Cider-Powered Happy Hour)

submitted by ajl5991 [link] [6 comments]

Nautilus

Caracol

Double Conic Spiral, process

Double Conic Spiral. Ink, acrylic/canvas.

Morpho

Calculation (Sequence) #2. Acrylic, china ink/canvas.

In the midst of our daily binge of emailing, Tweeting, Facebooking, app downloading and photoshopping it’s almost hard to imagine how anything was done without the help of a computer. For Venezuelan artist Rafael Araujo, it’s a time he relishes. At a technology-free drafting table he deftly renders the motion and subtle mathematical brilliance of nature with a pencil, ruler and protractor. Araujo creates complex fields of three dimensional space where butterflies take flight and the logarithmic spirals of shells swirl into existence. He calls the series of work Calculation, and many of his drawings seem to channel the look and feel of illustrations found in Da Vinci’s sketchbooks. In an age when 3D programs can render a digital version of something like this in just minutes, it makes you appreciate Araujo’s remarkable skill. You can see much more here. (via ArchitectureAtlas)

Valentina Zelayeva in The Cashmere Tie

“The majority of internet traffic to Central and South America flows through a single building in Miami, known as the Network Access Point of the Americas. Bypassing that route with a new cable would require years of work and billions of dollars, and likely would have little effect on NSA surveillance, Soghoian says. The US already has a nuclear submarine explicitly dedicated to tapping undersea internet cables, and has proven its ability to hack into the computer networks of foreign governments.”

- Cutting the cord: Brazil’s bold plan to combat the NSA | The Verge