firehose

However, if you're planning to put the game on sale next week, you can't announce it, because you will cannibalize this week's full-price revenues. Even worse, people who would decide to wait upon news of a forthcoming sale may forget to come back and buy the game later. They're at your website now, and you can't afford to scare them away now. So, you have to keep the forthcoming sale secret. You have to surprise people. And burn people. The worst case here is pretty awful: the sorry person who buys the game one minute before the surprise sale price kicks in. You're going to get an email from that person. So, the rising price model is really just an inversion of the sales model. You get revenue spikes later in the life of the game, right before announced price hikes, which are very similar to the spikes induced by putting a game on sale. But there are no surprises, so no one feels screwed by the process.

“It’s a McDonald’s,” said Martha Anderson, the general manager, “not a senior center.” She said she called the police after the group refused to budge and other customers asked for refunds because there was nowhere to sit. ... The Flushing McDonald’s looks like any other. Few among the crowd there on a recent Saturday said they even liked the food. “We prefer our own Korean food,” said Hoick Choi, 76, a pastor at New Power Presbyterian Church, who comes about once a week. Many come after filling up on a free lunch at a nearby senior center.

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Is it Frida yet?

“Maybe I’ll just sit here and bleed at you.”

Oh, whoops, forgot my rifle.

This Reddit thread popped up a few days ago. A friend of a Redditor rented a car in Fort Lauderdale and was surprised to find this just chillin' in the trunk:

My immediate thought would be UHHHH MR. LAMBERT, but the Reddit friends immediately got to work trying to explain why an AR-15 had been left in the back of a rented Nissan.

MEANWHILE...

When Lauren Tannehill, the wife of Miami Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill, returned a rental car this month in South Florida, she accidentally left a big surprise in the back seat: an AR-15 rifle, a Broward sheriff's report says.

The rifle, valued at $2,000 and still in its case, remained in the Nissan Rogue when it was rented to another person hours later Jan. 4, the report said.

The Tannehills view this as a "personal matter," according to a Dolphins spokesman Wednesday. The gun is legally owned by Ryan Tannehill, and the couple immediately called the rental car company to report a missing item and was given "the run around," but the couple didn't specify what was lost in the bag, a source said.

"Okay, I think I'm all set with this rental car. Do I have everything? I feel like I forgot something. Let's see. Phone, check. Bag, check. House key, check. Chargers? I always forget my chargers. Check and check. Toothbrush is here. Wallet is here. Got the gift for Nana. Got the rest of my sandwich ... I just can't shake this feeling that I've forgotten something ...

[hours later]

"OH RIGHT, MY BIG-ASS MURDER STICK. DAMMIT."

No one's in trouble or anything. It's a legally owned gun and its misplacement was handled appropriately. Just a very weird thing that happened.

We still have no idea if this new RoboCop reboot will be able to live up to the original classic, but we do have the first clip from the movie. So take a look and get to judging — innocent, or guilty?

Read more...

Are antibullying activists the saviors of the Internet — or just a different kind of curse?

Patch, the AOL-owned network of 900 local news sites, isn't AOL CEO Tim Armstrong's problem anymore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwLCOqIUvsU

Original Source

In response to criticism from two major shareholders about the lack of diversity in its board of directors, Apple Inc. recently added language to its governance charter committing to seek women and minorities for consideration. The board currently consists of seven white males under the age of 50 and one Asian American woman. In an industry known to be built on the need for innovation, the singular homogeneity of Apple’s board is surprising, although far from unusual.

Original Source

An anonymous reader writes "Statistician and author Nassim Taleb has a suggestion for scientific researchers: stop trying to use standard deviations in your work. He says it's misunderstood more often than not, and also not the best tool for its purpose. Taleb thinks researchers should use mean deviation instead. 'It is all due to a historical accident: in 1893, the great Karl Pearson introduced the term "standard deviation" for what had been known as "root mean square error." The confusion started then: people thought it meant mean deviation. The idea stuck: every time a newspaper has attempted to clarify the concept of market "volatility", it defined it verbally as mean deviation yet produced the numerical measure of the (higher) standard deviation. But it is not just journalists who fall for the mistake: I recall seeing official documents from the department of commerce and the Federal Reserve partaking of the conflation, even regulators in statements on market volatility. What is worse, Goldstein and I found that a high number of data scientists (many with PhDs) also get confused in real life.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

	Courtney shared this story from Popehat:
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One of the most consistent messages I offer here is about interactions with law enforcement, and can be expressed in two words — shut up — although "oh you dumb son of a bitch will you for the love of God shut up" might capture the flavor better.

In brief, the reasons to shut up are these: cops are not looking out for your best interests. Cops are looking to make, or close, a case, which they seek to do according to their cultural preconceptions. If you answer their questions, cops' evaluation of your words will be colored by their habitual assumption that you are lying. That assumption may be premised on their culture, their simmering mood disorders, their pathological tendency to associate you (whoever you are) with the very worst people they encounter on the job, and their evaluation of evidence they may or may not have understood. If you talk to them, it is somewhere between possible and likely that you will incriminate yourself, whether or not you have done anything. If you talk to them, it is possible that some types of cops will turn around and have you charged with a crime based on the talking itself, upon a thoroughly transparent theory that you "obstructed" them. Your instinct is to talk your way out of the situation, but that is an instinct born of prior interactions with reasonable people of good faith, and inapplicable to this interaction with people (1) who have mostly unchecked power over your and (2) who are, at the most optimistic, indifferent to how the interaction will turn out for you, and (3) who are perfectly capable of lying about what you said (or getting it wrong because they didn't understand it) and having their word presumed true by the criminal justice system.

So, I say, don't talk to the cops. Ask to speak with an attorney, and get competent advice before you answer the cops' questions. Are there mundane situations in which you might rationally decide to talk to the cops — say, if a neighbor's house is burglarized, and they come to ask if you saw anything? Sure. But you should view each interaction with the cops with an extreme caution bordering on paranoia, as you would handle a dangerous wild animal. When you talk to a cop, you are talking to someone who is often privileged to kill you with complete impunity, someone whose claims about what you said during your interaction — however fantastical — will likely be accepted uncritically by the system even if the particular cop is a proven serial liar. Even the most mundane interaction carries the potential for life-altering disaster.

People ask commonly ask if this advice might lead police to suspect them of wrongdoing, or if it might even lead to their detention or arrest. Yes, it might. Life carries difficult choices and risk assessments. One of those risk assessments is whether, in an interaction with police, it is more dangerous to talk, or more dangerous to shut up. My point, in advocating shutting up, is to suggest that people's risk assessment is often misguided: distorted by the cultural message that cops are the thin blue line of heroes we should trust, colored by our misplaced faith in our ability to talk our way out of situations, and incorrectly premised on the belief that cops asking questions will react fairly or in good faith to the answers. People substantially underestimate the negative risks of interactions with law enforcement, and substantially overestimate the upside of such interactions. Moreover, people underestimate not only the amount of risk of bad consequences, but the extremity of those consequences if they occur. That's why I suggest that the risks of shutting up and asking to talk to a lawyer (which might include increased law enforcement suspicion of you, temporary detention, arrest, or even violence) are often outweighed by the downside risk of incriminating yourself or making a statement that cops will lie about or otherwise use against you.

Today I wanted to note that I recognize that my weighing of risks is colored by privilege.

"Privilege" is a term that's overused and misused in modern political discourse. Too often it's used like a crass "shut up, I win" button in an argument. But "privilege" is sometimes an apt descriptive term of a human phenomenon: a person's evaluation of a situation (like interaction with law enforcement) is colored by his or her own experiences, and those experiences are usually circumscribed by that person's cultural identity and wealth. Any criminal defense attorney who has served affluent clients is familiar with this: such clients often conclude that they are a victim of a conspiracy, or of a "rogue cop" or "loose cannon prosecutor," because their life experiences lead them to assume that the system can't possibly treat all people the way they are being treated. By contrast, clients who have lived in poverty (or clients who are African-American or Latino) tend to recognize outrageous conduct in their case as the system working the way the system typically works — business as usual. In my post about the prosecution and death of Aaron Swartz, I argued that Swartz' community showed such privilege in its reaction to his prosecution, seeing some sort of singular conspiracy where others saw the banal grinding of the system's unfeeling wheels.

My advice to shut up is colored, in part, by privilege. I was reminded of this yesterday when Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputies searched Justin Bieber's house. I praised Bieber for shutting up and declining to talk to the cops, and joked that criminal defense attorneys could shame clients into better practices by asking why they aren't smarter than Justin Bieber.

But Justin Bieber and I — and many of my clients — share a crucial quality: we're affluent and fortunate. This privilege makes us better able to endure the potential downside risks of shutting up. If we get arrested on a petty or bogus charge by a pissed-off cop, we can make bail. We won't spend weeks or months in custody on that bogus charge because we can't scrape together a few thousand dollars. Maybe we'll spend the weekend in jail, because cops love to arrest you Friday afternoon, but we'll get out in a few days at most, and in the meantime we won't lose our jobs. Because we have families and support systems, if we do get thrown in jail on a bogus job by an angry cop, the Department of Child and Family Services won't take away our children, plunging us into another broken system we have neither the money nor the knowledge to navigate. If the cops tow or impound our car, we can afford to pay the few hundred to few thousand dollars to get it out, and we won't lose our jobs for lack of transportation. Even if we do lose our jobs because of a bogus and retaliatory arrest, we have savings, and families with savings, and we won't swiftly lose our homes. If the police choose to retaliate against our silence with petty tickets and infractions and fines rather than arrest, we can fight them or absorb them.

That's a privilege. Poor people don't have it. Poor people live on the razor's edge, and a bogus retaliatory arrest can destroy them. Retaliatory and capricious enforcement of petty crimes and infractions can destroy them financially. Police wield disproportionate power over them, and the criminal justice system and its agendas (like the War on Drugs) disproportionately impacts them. Police are more likely to use force against poor people and for the most part can do so without any significant risk of discipline.

When you and I weigh the downside risks of shutting up against the downside risks of talking, our downside risks are milder, and can be endured. People without our resources face a must starker choice: talk, and incriminate themselves, or shut up, and face an array of consequences they may not be equipped to survive.

I maintain my advice to shut up. But I acknowledge it's easier and safer for me — and for most of the people reading this blog — than it is for the people who most frequently encounter the police.

The Privilege To Shut Up © 2007-2013 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

	Courtney shared this story from The ToastThe Toast:
	"Regret and the smell of ginger"

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Last night, while ensconced in my car, I caught the last twenty minutes of an NPR interview with Amy Tan from this last December. Friends, I thought I knew Amy Tan. I knew Amy Tan, beloved and bestselling novelist. I knew Amy Tan, prominent sufferer of Lyme disease. But I did not know Amy Tan like I know Amy Tan now: as a misandrist hero.

It came up casually — how easily I might have missed it. The interviewer asked Amy about what it was like, building a new home and writing a novel at the same time, and they chatted about the details amiably, when Amy mentioned that her husband brings her three meals a day — breakfast, lunch, and dinner — into her office while she works. Every day. All three meals. At her request.

Amy Tan is a misandrist hero.

Perhaps a particularly strong-willed woman could get two tray-brought meals out of her spouse every day. I do not know; I live in glorious solitude, like a witch, and I eat when I please. But it seems to me that the average husband would at least desire his wife’s company at dinner. Not so in the house of Amy Tan. Her husband brings her dinner at her writing desk and then melts into the woodwork, like the ghost of Jeeves.

Every morning she tries to outwit him, to request a meal that he cannot bring, but he has never failed her in their many years of marriage. The neck of a white wolf. Three plums floating in a decanter of aged brandy. Limited edition Cinnamon Toast Crunch-flavored Eggo mini waffles. Regret and the smell of ginger. He finds them all, and he brings them to her, and she eats them.

[Image via Achievement.org]

Read more What Amy Tan, Misandrist Hero, Has For Breakfast at The Toast.

FASA launched a Kickstarter campaign in order to fund a 4th edition of Earthdawn. They’ve made their goal and then some, so it’s stretch goals for the next 28 days. Source From the campaign: It is the Age of Legend. For hundreds of years, the Horrors ravaged the world, a time of suffering and destruction [...]

The LA Times reported yesterday that under a new food safety law in California, bartenders are required to wear gloves when handling garnishes. "Changes to the California Retail Food Code that went into effect at the beginning of 2014 require disposable gloves or utensils such as tongs, paper or scoops to be used when handling "ready-to-eat" foods, which include sushi, bread, deli meats and fresh fruit and vegetables. Basically, nothing that won't be cooked or reheated before it goes out to diners can be touched with bare hands." So I decided it was up to me to design some new hands-free devices that will help bartenders handle garnishes without having to wear gloves. Here are four to get us started: Proposed Hands-Free Garnish Dispensers for California Bartenders 1. Lime Chop, For Lime Slices 2. Cherry Clothesline, for Serving Cocktail Cherries 3. Self-Serve Olive Dispenser 4. Mint-Slapper, for Slapping Mint Best of luck to bartenders dealing with the new law.

[Visit Alcademics.com for the full post.]

You know that striking new light rail/pedestrian/cyclist bridge slowly coming to completion near South Waterfront? TriMet's just announced the four finalists for its name, and they're some very... namey names.

•Abigail Scott Duniway Transit Bridge (named after the noted Northwest suffragist and Oregon Trail conquerer)

•Cascadia Crossing Transit Bridge (self-explanatory)

•Tillicum Crossing Transit Bridge, Bridge of the People ("tillicum" is a Chinook word meaning "people," among other things)

•Wy’east Transit Bridge (named after Mount Hood)

Not super inspiring, right? I don't know that I was expecting better, per se. Just different. Especially since campaigns had been mounted to name the bridge after a much-loved Portland street musician and Lisa Simpson. None of these have the hefty, industrial matter-of-factness of a Steel, or even the decrepit, slightly terrifying subtext of a Sellwood. I'm not sure I even know how to pronounce "Wy'east" correctly. But there you have it.

As it happens, today's Mercury contains 26 suggestions for what might have been, including entries like:

•Karen

•The How About Fixing the Morrison Bridge Bridge

•Some Dumb Kid's Science Fair Project Bridge

and probably best of all

•The Jaden and Willow Smith Legacy Bridge

You can read the rest when the Mercury finally makes its way out to you in physical form or gets its act together and puts the new issue up online. Until then, poll!

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Retired NFL defensive end Stephen White looks back at Seattle's win over New Orleans for some insight into the upcoming NFC title game against San Francisco.

And then there were four ...

I could ramble on and on with some eloquent preamble, but the truth is I'm all about this film breakdown and pretty sure you are too, so let's get to it, shall we?

Michael Bennett was the story of the Seahawks' win over the Saints at home. He has been a utility player of sorts on Seattle's defensive line all season. He plays all over the place up front and usually is more than able to hold his own. Whenever Bennett rushed Saints right guard Jahri Evans, magic seemed to happen. He went Super Saiyan on Evans' ass several times.

Bennett started at three tech and made an impact almost immediately on third down when he tripped Saints running back Mark Ingram just enough to throw off the timing of a screen that was set up for pretty big yardage.

The yellow shows Bennett on the ground after trying to trip Ingram, who is also in the circle.

This is a "what if" picture. Imagine if Ingram had caught the ball cleanly, then this is what he would have been looking at. Maybe not a touchdown, but a helluva long run. Thanks to Bennett's extra effort, that didn't happen.

Bennett went on to cause a fumble (well two, actually) which he recovered, get a sack of Brees and provide constant pressure throughout the game. It was pressure from Bennett on fourth-and-4 that forced Brees to throw the ball early and fail to convert.

That blue circle? That's Bennett.

That yellow circle? That's Darren Sproles going to the flat with nobody covering him.

Yeah ...

Bennett doesn't get the sack, but he does just enough to affect Brees' vision.

The quarterback can't see two open receivers (yellow) and instead tries to go to Marques Colston in the middle, late. That's a no-no and Brees was lucky to not have this pass intercepted.

This is how Bennett's pressure looked from behind.

Here are some pictures of Bennett on the sack where he blows by Evans before Brees can even get set to throw.

The yellow circles are the Saints' eligible receivers. Most of them haven't even made it to the top of their routes. That's how fast Bennett was on Brees.

Yes, Bennett got there first. I'm not sure what's up with this new trend, but the rule always used to be that the guy who got there first received credit for a full sack. Guys would both get credited with a half sack only if it was simultaneous. Elias needs to give Bennett that other half, he earned it.

It was critical for the Seahawks to get pressure from the middle of their defense because Brees loves to climb the pocket to avoid pressure. Bennett accomplished that task almost all by himself and was a huge reason for the win.

As for Brees' performance overall, I think he definitely left some plays on the field. Mostly I question the offensive game plan. It's bad enough we hear during the broadcast that Sean Payton decided to start Khiry Robinson (13 carries, 57 yards) over Mark Ingram because his mentor Bill Parcells told him to, and then to see Robinson average less per carry than Ingram (10 carries, 49 yards) was the icing on the cake.

The difference wasn't that much, but Ingram was coming off perhaps his best day running the ball as a pro. To think a Super Bowl-winning head coach had so little confidence in himself and his own decision-making that he allowed his mentor (no matter how decorated) to convince him of who to start at running back is just stunning to me. I have to wonder how the locker room took it as well.

On another note, it also seemed Payton had no plan to involve all-world tight end Jimmy Graham. The Seahawks weren't doing anything special to take him away, either. I can tell you that the Seahawks seemed to really focus in on stopping the Saints' screen game, something Payton could have used against them to get Graham open.

Check out this screen to Sproles:

Sproles (red) is heading out for a screen while the tight end (yellow) is running a crossing route in the opposite direction.

It appears the Seahawks keyed on Brees' footwork on screens, and when they saw it they didn't hesitate. There is nobody paying any attention to the tight end at this point. I kept waiting to see Brees fake a screen then go to Graham over the middle, but it never happened.

Russell Wilson didn't have a good game either, which kept the Saints in it right up until the end.

The one thing that has driven me crazy in recent weeks is Wilson's aversion to taking off with the ball and trying to get the first down or score a touchdown. We all know he can do it, since he's done it before as a pro. Wilson does take off, but he just doesn't do it enough.

I've said before, Seattle lacks a dynamic receiver who can get open one-on-one. That looked to change on Sunday with Percy Harvin's return. When he sustained a concussion (because Wilson got him killed twice), the quarterback's outlook should have changed. For the Seahawks to get touchdowns, Wilson needs to use his legs more often, whether it's to move the sticks or to stick it in the end zone on third-and-goal. Just look at the chance he had here.

As usual, all the Seahawks' eligible receivers (yellow) are covered. If Wilson had taken off right now I would put all my money on him beating Cameron Jordan (blue) to the corner of the goal line for a touchdown.

Instead Wilson drifted toward the end zone and kept waiting for someone to get open. That gave Jordan, a fantastic athlete for his size, enough time to walk him down.

Anybody out there willing to bet that if Wilson takes off right at this moment, Jordan would have a legitimate shot to keep him from turning the corner?

Instead the pass falls incomplete, and yet again the Seahawks had to settle for a field goal. Those 23 points were good enough to win on Sunday, but I'm not sure it will be enough the rest of this postseason. To win, the Seahawks need Wilson to run more, it's as simple as that.

I'm not necessarily talking about read option either. I'm talking more about scrambles when guys are covered. Look at the opportunity Wilson had if he had pulled the ball on this read-option play.

The defensive end (blue) goes inside of the tight end, which means the linebacker is probably going to take a dive also. Besides that, Wilson has a slot receiver (white) to block for him. So why not pull it?

Here is what that could have looked like. I'm just saying.

I am starting to think Wilson predetermines his read before the ball is snapped, which isn't good. That's the only explanation I can come up with for why he didn't throw this bubble screen.

This was one of those read-option plays that has a passing option built into it as well.

The cornerback (blue) who lined up on the innermost receiver (yellow) ended up blitzing at the snap. That's the perfect time to throw the bubble screen. Just imagine if Wilson throws this and the other two wide receivers make any decent kind of block. Might well be a touchdown.

So why wouldn't he throw it? Well, if that cornerback didn't blitz, then it would have been a perfect time for Wilson to pull it and run between Marshawn Lynch and the bubble screen fake. I'm leaning toward believing he makes up his mind before the ball is ever snapped.

Let me say this: the read option can and should be a weapon this postseason for any team with a running quarterback, but if he isn't comfortable making decisions in a split second, he might not ever maximize the benefits.

I'll have more to say about this in my breakdown of the 49ers' win over the Panthers, but for now let me break down how the read option helped Lynch score on this run.

Pretty self-explanatory here: defensive end (blue) has dive while cornerback (yellow) has quarterback.

Again Jordan (blue) goes inside the tight end. The corner can't be sure if Wilson handed off the ball so he starts toward the line of scrimmage.

Lynch (red) takes the handoff, notices Jordan way inside and decides to cut right behind the tight end's block. The cornerback is still cautious about losing containment by going for Lynch when Wilson might still have the ball.

Between Jordan going inside and the corner staying outside, it gives Lynch a huge lane to run straight ahead and build up some steam.

You had one job No. 25 ... ONE JOB!

Fail.

Lynch was huge as usual for the Seahawks. I thought he might get to 30 carries, but all he had was 28 for 140 yards and two touchdowns. The crazy thing is for segments of the game the Saints were doing a good job of playing the run. Unfortunately, at times they got caught trying to shift their line and things did not generally end well.

At the moment the defensive tackle with the yellow circle is in the A gap, the defensive tackle on the opposite side is in the B gap so you have balance.

When the Seahawks start to motion, the Saints linebacker (yellow) starts to yell at the defensive tackle to shift over to the B gap. That would be all fine and good had the other defensive tackle then also shifted over to his A gap so they could again have balance.

Instead you get two A gaps open and as I always say kids, that is never a good thing.

Would you want to try to tackle Lynch running through a lane this wide?

No sir, not me.

The second Lynch touchdown, the one that shut the door on the Saints, was a thing of beauty. They used the wide receiver to the left to crack on the safety. That left Saints cornerback Keenan Lewis one-on-one with Lynch up the sideline.

What Lewis should have done was get upfield once he saw the receiver try to crack block. That could have helped Lewis turn Lynch back into his inside help.

Instead he followed too far inside and 31 yards and a touchdown later ...

Welp.

After that, the Saints scored right at the end to make it a one-score game. Here is the diagram of that touchdown to Marques Colston.

The Seahawks are sending pressure from both edges (yellow), while both safeties are supposed to have the slot receivers.

Looking good so far.

The safety in the blue circle did a damn good job, while the safety in the red circle must have missed the memo.

Lastly, I know the result of the Colston play at the end of the game is funny, but watching film I can see what the Saints were going for here. Sproles is over on the other side hanging out. He was running a little too fast, which is why I think Colston threw it forward. He just got confused about where he was on the field. However, had Colston made a good throw and Sproles could have caught it on the run, well ... you decide.

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When the Oscar nominations come out on Thursday morning, only five of the 10 films shortlisted for the award will actually be left in the running for the Visual Effects Oscar. You can expect further coverage of the work that … more »

Once more doing some curated comicking over at The Nib.