neatcas submitted:

agrias oaks was my second female character crush. she’s a huge badass and her armor is super rad. i drew countless pictures of her in 7-9 grade and i still love her immensely.

I know very little about Final Fantasy, and even less about this character, but she looks absolutely fantastic. 

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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The superstar writer has been tapped to bring his rather unique sensibilities to long-running fantasy/sci-fi comics magazine "Heavy Metal."

Harper Lee's alleged lost companion novel to To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman, drops July 14, but if you're looking for a review of it, you'll need to look beyond this fiefdom: The Mercury's arts section will not be covering Lee's "new" book. And though To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite books ever, I will not be reading Watchman. This is why:

1. In case you don't read the internet, this book is mired in all manner of sketchy circumstances. The story that Lee's lawyer, Tonja Carter, has provided is as follows: Last summer, Carter found Lee's second manuscript in a hidden place where the original manuscript of Mockingbird was kept. Carter told Lee about the new mystery book. Lee, long a reclusive person uncomfortable with fame, was evidently stoked to publish it. Here are a mere handful of some of the holes this story is riddled with:

—According to the NY Times, the manuscript may actually have been discovered in 2011, when rare books expert for Sotheby's Justin Caldwell met with Carter and Lee's agent at the time, to "appraise a Mockingbird manuscript for insurance and other purposes" and discovered a manuscript of a book fitting Watchman's Description in a safe-deposit box with a proof of Mockingbird. "The discrepancy between the two accounts raises questions about whether the book was lost and accidentally recovered, and about why Ms. Lee would not have sought to publish it earlier," continues the Times piece. Carter confirmed being at this meeting, but stated that she went out to run an errand, so didn't see the book.

—When the news broke that Harper Lee was publishing a "new" book, her editor, Hugh van Dusen, purported not knowing until the day after the announcement. In an interview at Vulture, he punted a question about Lee's participation in the project by parroting his company's own press release.

—In Michelle Dean's coverage of Marja Mills' The Mockingbird Next Door, this detail comes up, in a quote from Lee's sister, her longtime advocate Alice Lee. It comes in response to Harper Lee signing a statement drafted by Tonja Carter decrying Mills' project, which the Lees had previously supported:

Imagine my shock when I began to read and get clear about the statement sent from BBL & Carter's office. I had made no statement and could not [see] how that would get started. When I questioned Tonja I learned that without my knowledge she had typed out the statement, carried it to The Meadows and had Nelle Harper sign it. She brought it back to the office and emailed it to Mary Murphy and Hugh Van Dusen. Poor Nelle Harper can't see and can't hear and will sign anything put before her by any one in whom she has confidence. Now she has no memory of the incident.

—Finally, the state of Alabama opened an elder abuse investigation w/r/t Harper Lee's actual participation in publishing this "new" book. Investigators found no documented abuse, which is literally the only good news I've been able to find on this case.

So. Is it possible that Carter just happened to step out of that meeting when Caldwell discovered the book? Could it be that Harper Lee really is completely on-board with the publication of an early draft of her masterpiece? Certainly. Those things could be true. But it could also be that they aren't, and if that's the case, Tonja Carter's steez is just a little too Sam Lutfi-adjacent to make drawing any more attention towards this book seem worthwhile. It looks—to me—like it may very well be a project in bad faith.

2. Setting aside this book's awfully sketchy provenance, there's this: It's not actually a sequel to Mockingbird, but a first draft of that same book. From the NY Times:

The differences in the accounts of when and how the manuscript was discovered could add a wrinkle to the highly anticipated release of “Watchman.” News of the publication delighted fans eager to read another novel by Ms. Lee. But it also represented an abrupt turnaround for an author who had said she did not intend to publish another work and then, late in life, agreed to venture out with a book that had initially been dismissed as an ambitious but disjointed first draft.

Have you ever read a first draft of a novel by one of your favorite authors? There's a reason for that! I'm generally in favor of bringing lost cultural relics to light, but first drafts? They go into a drawer not because they're forgotten treasures but because THAT IS TYPICALLY WHERE THEY BELONG. I learned this the hard way, by reading the "restored" edition of Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast (don't do this). The special edition was loaded with Hemingway's first and second drafts of the stories in Feast. Reading them was like reading someone's diary they didn't want published. As I read, I felt like I was violating old Papa's privacy. If you wanted to know how depressed Hemingway was, then I suppose they served some kind of purpose. But they didn't add anything to the narrative they were tacked onto. There was no fresh insight there. To crib a phrase from Hemingway's buddy Gertrude Stein, there was no there there.

If I were a betting lady, I'd bet that we find much the same absent center here.

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While no show is perfect, and Transparent certainly has its fair share of detractors, the show is also doing some wonderful things right. Like, for example, the fact that the episodes of Season 2 have majority-female directors!

Transparent proves that it is indeed possible to find talented female directors to work on your project. What’s more, it’s possible to find so many that they make up a majority of your directing team! The 10 episodes of Transparent‘s Season 2 only have one cis male director in Jim Frohna, and one trans male director in Silas Howard. The rest of the epsodes will be helmed by series creator Jill Soloway, Andrea Arnold (she’s doing two episodes), indie filmmakers Marielle Heller and Stacie Passon. That’s pretty amazing, considering that most shows have a token female director, or two.

The next step, of course? More trans directors and writers. Hell, genderqueer and agender participants would be great, too. Right now, the writing room has one trans woman in Our Lady J, though four others were groomed by Soloway in a workshop that allowed them to create a spec pilot with which to pursue careers in television if they choose, and there are now four trans female writers whom Soloway would happily recommend to other producers. Perhaps any of those women might return for Season 3! There is one trans director this season, and we hope that the search continues for other talented trans directors.

As reported by Women and Hollywood, Jill Soloway, has spoken about what women should be doing to have more power in Hollywood:

That white cis male gaze is like a lifeguard chair, it’s a watchtower — I’m way up here naming things. And they are NOT GIVING UP THOSE LOOKOUT SPOTS EASILY.

In fact, they won’t even cop to the fact that they have that privilege. Instead of waiting for these guys to change, STORM the gates, grab hands with each other, RUN like red rovers at the lifeguard chairs, snarl at the bases like wild, starving beast dogs, boost each other up those watchtowers and pull those motherfuckers down.

In other words, don’t wait for chances to be given. Take them. I like that.

Living in L.A. and seeing all the jobs created for trans cast and crew, as well as cis women, through this show, it’s hard not to be optimistic about Transparent being an ever-evolving source of support and love for the trans community, for cis women, and for anyone who feels othered because of their gender.

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The NBAPA is putting the league's new TV money to good use.

The NBA is flush with new television revenue, and the players association has come up with one uplifting way to spend it. The NBAPA is hoping to use the new TV money to get health insurance coverage for former players, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. The plan would cost between $10-15 million per year.

The league is aiming to offer three separate health care options to former players, according to Wojnarowski. Michele Roberts, the new head of the NBAPA, was reportedly moved by stories of former players being unable to afford basic health care needs after years of sacrificing their bodies for the good of the league. The union is reportedly ready to pass the plan and start covering former players soon.

The league's new TV money will come into effect in 2016, and will give the NBA $2.6 billion. The salary cap is set to explode starting next season, which means an increase in both team revenue and player salaries. Now some of this money will be set aside for former players who helped make the NBA what it is before so much new cash entered the league.

ttystudio:

A terminal-to-gif recorder

ttystudio differs from other terminal recorders in that:

1. It has its own built-in gif and apng writer, no imagemagick required.
2. It has a font parser to render the font during image writing so no terminal playback is required when writing the image (this also means no GUI is required at all - you can record on a remote machine via ssh).
3. No concatenation of hundreds of gif files required. ttystudio automatically writes out to one gif or apng.
4. No glitchy frames due to imperfect GUI recording of the playback or gif concatenation.
5. ttystudio will record frames even if nothing is being updated on the screen.

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the 114th birthday of Japanese special effects director Eiji Tsubaraya, who was one of the co-creators of Godzilla and the main force behind Ultraman. In his honor, Google has ten minigames you can play aping all steps required to make the practical effects Tsubaraya was a master of.

Read more...

The comedian testified in 2005 he got the sedative with the intent of giving it to women with whom he wanted to have sex.

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The New Horizons spacecraft has been sending home a steady stream of photos as it has closed in on Pluto. Now, the mission team has stitched a series of those images together to create the spectacular time-lapse animation above. Pluto is in the center, spinning on its axis. Charon, the planet's largest moon, is orbiting around it.  As they loom ever larger in the frame, details on their surfaces become clearer. As described by NASA: The images show Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, gro

1 dog, 8 birds, and a hamster. [bob_goldentretriever on IG]

This is SO FUCKING META hotdudesreading

Shavitz, born in Great Neck, New York, began his career in the ‘60s as a news photographer in New York City covering the civil rights movement, artists, and the early stages of environmental consciousness. He later became a beekeeper, and his life took a turn in 1984 when he met Maine artist Roxanne Quimby. She started making candles out of the unused wax from his beehives, and a partnership — and celebrated brand — was born. By 1991, the indie brand launched its Beeswax Lip Balm, which remains its best-seller to this day. In 1994, the duo relocated to North Carolina to expand their beauty offerings and timeless products like its Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream continued to win over customers.

Shavitz was pushed out of the company in 1999 (Quimby bought him out for $130,000), but the brand went global that year and was eventually sold to Clorox in 2007 for over $900 million. Quimby claims that she gave him $4 million and Clorox paid him to serve as brand ambassador.  While Shavitz didn’t end up with a fortune, he took his small share and bought a house in Maine. “In the long run, I got the land, and land is everything,” he told a filmmaker for the 2013 documentary “Burt’s Buzz.” “Money is nothing really worth squabbling about. This is what puts people six feet under. You know, I don’t need it.”
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" DM me"
"Okay. You are in a corridor of rough-hewn stone. Something skitters at the edge of your torchlight. There's a door to your right."
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The South Carolina Senate voted Monday to remove the Confederate flag from a pole on the Statehouse grounds, though the proposal still needs approval from the state House and the governor.

The bill requires a two-thirds vote in each chamber; the Senate approved it 37-3. Gov. Nikki Haley has said she wants the flag to come down and will sign the bill.

Monday's vote comes less than a week after the 15th anniversary of South Carolina taking the flag off the Capitol dome where it flew since the early 1960s and moving it to beside a monument honoring Confederate soldiers.
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Here are seven interesting things we learned about “The Blob” from Phil Mote, Director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute when he joined Dave Miller on Think Out Loud.

1.) The Blob is about the same size as Alaska, and 100 meters deep.

2.) The water in The Blob is about five degrees Fahrenheit warmer than historical averages.

3.) Scientists theorize that part of what is causing The Blob is a ridge of high pressure in the atmosphere. That pressure is suppressing cloud formation and slowing winds, which causes the water in The Blob to absorb more heat from the sun.

4.) The Blob appears to have some effect on marine life. Warm-water creatures — like skipjack tuna and thresher sharks — have been appearing in typically-colder zones near British Columbia and Alaska.

5.) The Blob may also be affecting the climate on land in the Northwest, making things warmer and drier than usual. This is one of the questions that Mote is trying to answer.

6.) Scientists typically rely on controls to run experiments, but there are no spare Earths to use as a control. Instead, Mote’s team will be using computers to create “alternative Earths” to simulate different climate environments.

7.) Researchers cannot afford a super-computer to run the simulation thousands of times, so they are relying on volunteers to donate their computers’ processing power. They will use software that is able to crunch the data on volunteers’ computers while they’re not in use. You can donate your computer’s power, or just follow along, at their website.
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In January 1999, Yahoo purchased GeoCities for $3.57 billion in stock. Whereas GeoCities purchased webring.org with a clear vision of how to integrate the service into its product, for Yahoo, webrings were an extra bonus that came along with their recent purchase. The question was then not how to keep the service running for the existing community but rather how to incorporate it into Yahoo’s revenue-generating business model.

Several Bad Changes

What followed were a series of events that were intended to improve the service but instead left both existing and new webrings users frustrated.

First, managing a webring now required a Yahoo account to manage. This would have been alright, provided that attention had been given towards migrating a webring’s Ringmaster into the new system. Instead, the system did not keep track of who a webring’s owner was, meaning that the first person to log in and associate themselves with a ring became its new Ringmaster. This left many rings stuck, with their original owners unable to reclaim ownership because they had been grabbed by individuals who then did nothing with them.

The next change was in direct competition with the very nature of webrings. A webring was prided on offering a free and decentralized experience. A visitor entered a webring at a random point in the list of sites and could then travel to the next site in the list, which was determined by an individual Ringmaster. Yahoo’s new navigation bar listed Yahoo Webring home page as the ring’s hub, encouraging visitors to come to that central location. When visitors came here, they would then see Yahoo’s directory of webrings accompanied by ads — not the Ringmaster’s homepage which had previously been the norm. This took much of the emphasis away from that particular webring and the role of a Ringmaster, instead placing the attention on Yahoo’s ecosystem of services.

Too Little Too Late

In 2001, Yahoo gave up on webrings altogether. Most of the webrings staff was laid off in 2001, and in October they sold it to Tim Killeen, one of the early engineers who worked on the system.  Though Killeen intended on returning the system to its former glory, by the time he took it over it was too late. By this point search engines had become faster and capable of delivering more accurate results.

Webring.org is still up and running today, but it is more of a relic from the early Internet than a thriving community. You can still explore different rings and hop from site to site, but most of the sites and rings are stuck in time from the 90s/early 2000s and have not been updated since. If you feel like taking a stroll down memory lane, head over to webring.org.

You’ve got a lot of pressure on you, Chéri.

Recently announced director Rupert Wyatt will be setting up the film for an October 7, 2016 release but on the Magic Mike XXL press tour, Digital Spy asked Tatum about the progress on the film, including his accent.

“It’s all being worked on at the moment. I’m from the south, so I know who to go to to find the accent. But I haven’t found ‘the guy’ yet, because generally that’s how I do accents,” he said, “Like, I’ll find the person that I want to sound like and not just do a generic Cajun accent. So I haven’t found ‘the guy’ yet but the cards are always… they’re right there, actually.”

Yeah, he literally had the cards along for the press tour. So, that’s cool that he’s already practicing.

They also spoke with Gambit producer Reid Carolin about integrating the film with Fox’s larger X-Men universe.

“I think it’s sort of an evolving conversation and we’re kind of figuring that out as we go but this is a standalone movie and it’s the story of Gambit and we’ll probably gradually integrate that character into the X-Men universe as we go,” he said, “And as far as what characters from the X-Men universe make it into the movie, we’re not exactly sure yet, so we’re figuring it out. It’s still at the script stage.

We previously heard Tatum was pretty happy with said script, calling it “killer.” Carolin said, “It’s really just his story in New Orleans and I think the fans of that character will be really happy with some of the creative choices Josh Zetumer, our script writer made.”

Speaking of the fans, Digital Spy also asked if we’d be seeing Gambit’s traditional costume from Marvel Comics.

Tatum said, “That’s kind of the fun part, to massage it, you can’t just, like, do it how people think. You want to give it some base of reality. If you do do it, you got to make it sort of relative to the reality.”

(via Comic Book Resources)

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Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Superfit Hero is a line of high performance active leggings that are made for women who wear up to a size 3XL. Founder Micki Krimmel used her own experience playing for Angel City Girls, a competitive roller derby team, to determine what was needed and what was missing in the activewear market for women.

We believe in the power of fitness to help women build strength and confidence to succeed in all aspects of their lives. We are committed to helping women feel confident and supported in their efforts with high fashion, high performance clothing designed to make them feel like superheroes. But do we really need ANOTHER brand of activewear? YES! Most major active brands only make high performance women’s clothing up through size 12. The average American women wears size 14. Superfit Hero is a size-inclusive brand of high performance activewear for women size XS-3XL. Join us on our mission to make fitness more inclusive, body-positive, and empowering for women.

Micki and her team are currently raising funds through Kickstarter to develop and bring Superfit Hero to market.

images via Superfit Hero

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

The icy surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, home to the famous Philae lander, may also host alien life, according to astrobiologists.

Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, director of the U.K.’s Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology, and Max Wallis of the University of Cardiff say that the comet could be home to living microbes. The scientists presented their research at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, Wales on Monday.

“The case we're building includes what's being discovered about comet CG's [Churyumov-Gerasimenko’s] surface layers -- mineral and carbonaceous dust forming a protective crust over a mix of complex carbon compounds and H2O,” explained Wallis, in an email to FoxNews.com. “[This] makes a positive habitat for micro-biology as the comet warms on nearing the sun.”

Wallis also cites the emission of gases from the comet last September before its “subcrust” had warmed as evidence of stored bio-gases being released.
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Most people are content with burying pre-installed apps into a folder somewhere, but a Chinese agency has opted to sue smartphone makers for unwanted bloatware. The Shanghai Consumer Rights Protection Commission has taken Samsung and Oppo to task for just how much software comes preloaded on a brand new device, claiming to have been deluged by customer complaints that they're not getting as much storage space as expected, and that background data use has been more voracious than expected.
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Favorite Looks from Ulyana Sergeenko’s Couture S/S 2013 Lookbook

salon:

See the same-sex couples who were first in line to get their newly-legal marriage licenses

Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Kevin Kiermaier delivered a clutch RBI single against the Yankees, only to be lying on the field at first base in terror seconds later. That's because a killer pigeon came out of no where and flew directly at Kiermaier's face.

.@KKiermaier39 drives in a run – and the bird ruins EVERYTHING: http://t.co/9UJ8BoDhWs pic.twitter.com/i7DAXT08yX

— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) July 4, 2015

Pigeons aren't quite geese on the scale of terrifying flying, attacking things, but they aren't anything to mess with. Fortunately Kiermaier escaped unharmed. This time.