firehose

Dating Tip #233: Tell her you are from a race of power hungry maniacs currently devastating the Universe, on the first date.

Credit to: c-d-e

There are a few Feedbin features that are only available in the web application but are still very compelling. They are also easy to miss with an initial overview.

Mark Above or Below

When viewing a group, you can easily mark all articles above or below a specific point as read. Just click the little gear icon to access the options.

Saved Search Sorting

Saved searches in Feedbin are nice, but by default, they are not sorted. Add sort:desc to all of your searches to have results ordered by publishing date.

View Published Edits

This is a recent feature that mimics the NewsBlur functionality. An article that has been edited will show a time stamp at the bottom and allow you to view the edits.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966) // Chuck Jones, Ben Washam

Tokyo International Forum | Rafael Viñoly | Manuela Martin

An anonymous reader writes "About 2 years ago, Jonas Pfeil, created a Throwable Panorama Ball: A rugged, grapefruit-sized ball with 36 fixed-focus, 2-megapixel digital camera sensors that capture simultaneously when thrown in the air, creating a full spherical panorama of the surrounding scene. Now, an Indiegogo campaign aims to produce the the camera (Now known as Panono) available for about $500. The quality of the sample images is impressive: the resolution is quite good and most importantly, the stitching artifacts are hardly visible."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Even for the NCAA, this one is a little hard to believe.

We're not responsible for what happens next.

 

Hopefully no kiddos were around to see their favorite pig slaughtered

Skullgirls Encore, the re-release of Skullgirls to address the parting of ways between Lab Zero Games and Konami, will include a new mode called "The Typing of the Skullgirls Encore." While demonstrating it on EightySix's Twitch account, Skullgirls ...

Philly.com

Mike Huckabee says 50-50 whether he'll run for President Creative Loafing Tampa Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee danced around the idea that he may run for president in 2016 on Fox News Sunday, saying he's got plenty of time to decide. Asked by host Chris Wallace whether he was open to the possibility of running, he said, ... Huckabee puts chances of a 2016 run at 50-50, wades into 'Duck Dynasty ...CNN (blog) He might be back: Huckabee eyeing White House runMilton Daily Standard all 58 news articles »

How DC Police Use Citizens As Spies:

From Getty Images.

Of the dozens of private intelligence corporations that have emerged in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, one firm has been singled out for particular scrutiny: TrapWire.

The Virginia-based spy outfit founded by several former CIA employees a decade ago developed, it says, surveillance software that can root out terrorist attacks while they are in the planning stage.

The company, formerly known as Abraxas Corp., markets its technology to local law enforcement, federal agencies and private corporations. TrapWire has been installed in 65 locations around the United States, according to the company’s website, including Washington, D.C., where it is being used by the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).

Yes, new content has been released since the game launched, giving us more objects to place and play with. What we have not gotten is more room. Cities size limits are reached far too quickly, and there isn't much room to be creative with our layouts. I want to build sprawling city-scapes that stretch for as far as the eye can see. I want to merge with my fellow players' creations, forming a majestic, co-op megalopolis, instead of simply occupying the same map, like some amped-up Facebook social game.

As part of a week-long exploration of income inequality in the midst of an economic boom, NPR has matched some faces with abstract dots on a map, demonstrating that you can work for Google and still go hungry.

The gold bugs have taken a beating this year.

Spot prices for the yellow metal itself are down roughly 29% this year. And related assets have been brutalized as badly or worse. Widely-held gold ETF “GLD” is down roughly 29%, too. Colorado gold miner Newmont Mining will likely be the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500 in 2013, tumbling 51%. Here’s a look at how gold has done versus various asset classes over the year, from J.P. Morgan analysts.

What gives? Well, in the US the prevailing rationale for owning the shiny rock is to protect against the risk of inflation. And, frankly, there’s hardly any inflation. There hasn’t been for a while. If anything, risks seem skewed toward falling, not rising, prices.

Meanwhile, the demand for gold from India—a crucial market as one of the world’s top consumers of gold—has weakened considerably. India imposed restrictions on gold-buying as part of its effort to keep dollars from flowing out of the country and stabilize the tumbling rupee earlier this year. (China has picked up some of the slack, but not enough to keep prices from percolating higher.)

As for the prospects of a recovery in gold prices, they don’t look great. Smart money investors such as hedge funders George Soros and Dan Loeb sold out of their gold ETF positions back in the second quarter. Gold slipped into a bear market—traditionally defined as a 20% decline from a recent price peak—back in April.

Goldman Sachs analysts expect prices for the metal to continue to fall in 2014.

Is there any bright spot for gold? Well, at least it had a better year than its low-rent metallic cousin, silver. Silver prices slumped an even steeper 36% this year.

New Orleans Cops Can Bust You For Prostitution If They Think You Have Too Many Condoms: Human Rights Watch (HRW) is demanding that the New Orleans Police Department stop harassing sex workers in a manner that undermines the city’s efforts to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS.

Despite the fact that Louisiana’s death rate from AIDS is double the national average, the New Orleans Police Department is enforcing a “loitering for prostitution” statute that encourages unsafe sexual practices.

If police suspect a person of being a prostitute, they can arrest them if they discover that they’re carrying condoms. The HRW report claims that this has led to a situation in which “[s]ex workers, transgender women and others at high risk of HIV infection [are] afraid to carry condoms and that they sometimes had to engage in sex without protection out of fear of police harassment.”

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

One of the most contentious climate change debates is whether wildlife will adapt or die when threatened by global warming, and what humans should do to save them. Now a new study suggests that one of the critters most at risk from climate change could indeed survive by adapting a rather unappetizing diet.

An impossibly cute member of the rabbit family, the furry pika lives on rocky slopes of the mountains of the North American west. It survives frigid winters by maintaining a high body temperature. But since it cannot control its internal thermometer, the pika is extremely vulnerable to rising temperatures as climate change accelerates. In the summer, the pika can die if its body temperature increases by as little as 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees F).

As some populations have disappeared from lower elevations and others have migrated toward mountain tops, environmentalists have fought (so far unsuccessfully) to have the pika listed by US state and federal governments as endangered. That in turn could obligate governments to stop carbon-spewing industrial development harmful to the pika.

When California authorities on May 22 rejected for the second time a petition to protect the pika, they cited the possibility that the pika could adapt to a warmer world. A study from the University of Utah published this past week (paywall) supports that argument. Researchers studied the dining habits of a colony of pikas that for a century have lived at near sea level in the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon and Washington State. That’s a far lower and warmer elevation than where most pikas are found and researchers wanted to know how they survive.

The answer: moss.

The pikas observed between 2011 and 2012 depend on moss for about 60% of their diet. Thick carpets of the vegetation cover rock piles, called talus, which pikas nest in. Talus provides both cover from predators as pikas move about and a ready source of pika chow.  That means the pikas don’t have to venture out from the cool talus into the potentially deadly sun as much in the summer to forage for food to store for the coming winter. (The moss also helps the pika beat the heat by keeping their rock piles cooler.)

There’s just one problem. Moss is extremely low in nutrients, which is why mountain pikas don’t each much of it. The Columbia River Gorge pikas, though, have a solution. Microbes in their guts ferment the fiber in moss to create more nitrogen and thus nutrients. When pikas defecate, they eat the resulting “caecal pellets” (a behavior common in the rabbit family).  “Caecal pellets were by far the most nutritious food item tested,” the study states.

“It’s not clear whether this will have any bearing on other populations of pikas in response to climate change, but it certainly suggests that they are a little more adaptable than we originally gave them credit for, particularly in terms of what they can eat,” Johanna Varner, a PhD student and a lead author of the study, told Quartz in an email.

gunsandposes-history:

A lovely view of the Space Shuttle Discovery, taken in July 2006 by the crew of the International Space Station, during the Shuttle’s “rendezvous pitch maneuver" performed prior to docking to allow for inspection of the shuttle’s underbelly. (European Space Agency/Flickr)

gunsandposes-history:

December 17, 1972. During Apollo 17’s “transearth coast” back home after landing on the Moon, astronaut Ron Evans went on a spacewalk to recover some equipment from external devices on the spacecraft, including film “cassettes” from the Lunar Sounder, Mapping Camera, and Panoramic Camera. The total time for Evan’s extravehicular activity was one hour seven minutes 18 seconds. (NASA)

beatonna:

hangin with dad

I love Kate’s family almost as much as I love Kate.

Buffy to Batgirl: Women and Gender in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Comics, May 2-3, 2014 :

wolvensnothere:

Full name / name of organization:

Zara Wilkinson, Rutgers University-Camden

contact email:

buffytobatgirl@gmail.com

Rutgers University-Camden
Camden, NJ
May 2-3, 2014

Buffy to Batgirl is an interdisciplinary conference with a focus on women and gender in science…

matineemoustache:

Peter O’Toole & Audrey Hepburn by Terry O’Neill

On the set of How To Steal A Million 1966

steampunktendencies:

Wang Chunayng

Sailing the Steampunk seas.

defendeinproelio:

lovealwaysangelairene:

mountingwaveofsound:

UPDATE: This petition must get 100,000 signatures by December 24th of this year! Boost this as much as you possibly can and make sure to sign!

In 31 states, rapists are allowed to sue victims they’ve impregnated for custody rights.

There’s a case in Boston, MA right now in which a rapist is taking advantage of this. He pleaded guilty of rape in 2011 and was sentenced to 16 years probation; however, this sentence includes 16 years of family court as well, which the victim must also attend. He’s using this to sue for joint custody of her child and will only withdraw his law suit if he is free from paying any form of child support. This entire sentence seems like much more of a punishment for the victim than it is for the rapist, and for the state to allow such a thing, the victim is suing.

As stated in the court complaint, “Even if the family court ruled in the [victim]’s favor on issues currently in dispute, such as whether the criminal defendant should be granted visitation rights to [her] child, [she] will suffer harm from the constant threat of new issues arising in family court until her child reaches adulthood, including, for example, efforts by the criminal defendant to seek to modify child support orders and enforce his parental rights at the trial court level and on appeal.”

If this woman is forced to attend 16 years of family court with her rapist, she is not only forced to confront a traumatic event that she should never have to deal with again, but she is subjected to the possibility of losing pieces of her child to him over and over again for all of those years. In addition to this constant state of fear and anguish she would face, just by being sent to something considered ‘family’ court—for her and her rapist—she’s being disrespected and her rape undermined by even the suggestion that this is a family situation. By doing this, the law is making felony into family.

In 31 states, rapists are actually given rights instead of having much of anything taken away. In being given these rights, they are being given the chance to further torment the woman and possibly abuse the child. It is not okay to reward rapists and further punish victims, and the ignorance of rape and how our justice system is handling it needs to turn around.

Please sign this petition to ban rapists from being able to sue for custody rights. This issue is so little known, yet so important, and I don’t know any better way of trying to make this change.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/ban-rapists-being-able-sue-their-impregnated-victims-custody-rights/C23pKYgM

HOW ARE THERE LESS THAN A HUNDRED SIGNATURES!?!!

iowa whyyyyy

ABC News

Why the Target breach won't be the last of its kind USA TODAY SEATTLE – The criminals behind the theft and underground brokering of some 40 million Target credit and debit card account numbers can lay claim to one of the largest, most sophisticated hacks in modern times. Yet as pervasive and costly as the Target ... Banks may take their pound of flesh from Target over breachNBCNews.com Keep Your Credit Cards Safe During Last-Minute Shopping RushKCEN-TV Target hack could become class action suitSan Jose Mercury News KETK -Bloomberg -Kansas.com all 985 news articles »