After its lack of black female cast members became a subject of much Internet debate, Saturday Night Live responded the best way it knows how: holding a struggling Kenan Thompson down and trying to force a wig on him. But after that failed—and after lampshading the controversy with a Kerry Washington sketch only seemed to exacerbate the outrage—the show has moved on to holding auditions specifically intended to find a black female cast member. Blogger Jasmine Brand broke the story with her interview with Bresha Webb, who posted a photo of herself and 10 other black females who’d been called to a “secret” audition at L.A.’s Groundlings theater, which “an inside source from SNL” had reportedly set up. With only a couple days’ notice to prepare, these black females then staged a showcase in an attempt to prove they were “ready” to ...
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Newswire: Saturday Night Live held an audition just for black females
No Old Maps Actually Say 'Here Be Dragons'
firehosevia saucie
Here be dragons. The words supposedly contain every difference between ancient maps and our own. Where old maps were illustrated and incomplete, ours are accurate and photographed from the sky. Old maps were pricey and precious; ours are nearly free and ubiquitous.
Most importantly: Old maps—early modern European maps—contain uncharted territory, across which beasts rumble and serpents writhe. They have dragons.
Our technology might be indistinguishable from magic, but it does not contain magical creatures. Google Maps does not have dragons.
Or that’s the story, anyway. But I’d always wondered: Do any old, original maps actually say those words, "Here be dragons?"
The answer, it seems, is … No.
Not a single old paper map presents those exact words—"Here be dragons"— in the margins or otherwise. Nor does any paper map include "Hic sunt dracones," the words' Latin equivalent.
But a globe does.
That’s right: One globe—just one—contains the words Hic sunt dracones. Called the Hunt-Lenox Globe, it was built in 1510, making it one of the first European globes ever made. It’s tiny and made of copper—you can see it pictured above. Now in the possession of the New York Public Library, the Hunt-Lenox Globe contains the famous warning on the southeast coast of Asia:
The Hunt-Lenox Globe, as transcribed by B.F. da Costa
No dragons are near the words themselves, but the globe hides various sea beasts throughout.
The Lenox globe wasn’t the only old European map, though, to feature beasties. The Ebstorf map, for instance, created in the 13th century, has all manner of animals in the south of Africa, including a dragon (it’s near the top):
Other maps included real animals, accounts of which had perhaps only reached the makers secondhand. The Carta marina navigatoria, for instance, has this elephantine thing with massive teeth hanging out around Norway:
Library of Congress, via FYeahMaps
(That beast, by the way? Almost certainly a walrus as described by sailors. The German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller made the Carta marina—he also first dubbed the continents across the Atlantic “the Americas.”)
Of course, Europe doesn’t have a monopoly on monstrous maps. A massive dragon rings a 19th century Japanese map, the Jishin no ben.
But if Here be dragons is only on one map, why do we think of it as “typical?” Erin C. Blake, now a curator of special collections at the Folger Shakespeare Library, muses:
It must at least pre-date the publication of Dorothy L. Sayers' short story "The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head" in Lord Peter Views the Body (London: Gollancz, 1928), in which a character refers to having seen "hic dracones" on an old map [spotted by both Andrew S. Cook and Benjamin Darius Weiss]. Does it pre-date the publication of the text of the LenoxGlobe in 1879? Why dragons, and not one of the other terrifying creatures depicted on old maps?
The final answer, Blake writes, may be just this: "We don't know."
Maybe it’s this: Those famous words served as a warning to the map’s original users and a kind of flourish from the map’s artisan makers. To us, they seem to comment both on the travails of the terrain ("We don’t know what’s here!") and about the dangers of ignorance ("There might as well be dragons in this unknown spot!").
Now, we use here be dragons to name our novels full of knights and kings, our treatises on fantastic maps, and even our investigations into extraterrestrial life. The words remind us how different our modern-day map-making is: Shot from cameras in the sky, and available on every smart phone, maps are ubiquitous and photographic, and, the creatures they catalog are too small to see.
This post originally appeared on The Atlantic.
    
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Google Fixes Credit Card Security Hole, But Snubs Discoverer
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
crookedindifference: I spent the afternoon at the Hunterian...
firehosevia Snorkmaiden
Аэростат - 446, Бог Знает Что!
firehosevia Test: "Notes and enclosure"
WHOA WAIT WHAT
SEND TO? WHAT
"...Если присмотреться, то мир, в котором мы живем, полон всего странного, удивительного, а то и вправду невероятного; впрочем Жильбер Сесброн замечает:
"Верить можно только в невероятное. Остальное само собой разумеется".
И действительно – с этим не поспоришь..."
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Welcome to the new, green Arctic
firehosegreat...?
This image is based on satellite observations of the Arctic region over a 30 year period, starting in 1982. What it reveals, according to NOAA, is that the icy area around the north pole is getting greener. In the future, plants will thrive in former ice fields.
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Fake Video Games, A Tumblr Blog of Funny Imaginary Games
Fake Video Games is a Tumblr blog that collects images of funny video games that don’t actually exist. To explore the archive of previous posts, head over to Fake Video Games.
images via Low Interest, Fake Video Games
via Rob Sheridan
Mark Jackson Encourages Golden State Warriors To Play Like Suspension Bridge
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Worldwide Jewish Conspiracy Worried It Came Down Too Hard On Jeff Yesterday
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Birthers Seize on Death of Hawaii Official as Fuel for Birtherism
OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy#hawaiibeat @talex
People who've insisted for five years that the White House is covering up the truth of President Obama's birthplace have a theory about news of the death of a Hawaii official in a plane crash: It is part of the conspiracy. It is almost as though birthers will accept any evidence that can be twisted in their favor and ignore the preponderence of evidence rejecting it.
On Thursday morning, USA Today reports that Loretta Fuddy was the sole fatality in the crash of a Makani Kai Air plane off the coast of one of the Hawaiian islands. Fuddy was the acting health director in the state of Hawaii in 2011, when she oversaw the release of the detailed version of Obama's birth certificate to the White House. Obama hoped that the document's release would curtail the long-standing rumor that he wasn't born in the United States. But, since you can't trump irrationality with reason, it didn't.
The release of the birth certificate only served to further fuel the conspiracy. Faulty interpretations of the digital file released by the administration led to an idea that the document was forged. (The weird crusade from notorious, attention-hungry Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio didn't help.) Snopes.com thoroughly debunked the idea, but the idea was set: it was forged. And Fuddy often bore the blame. See, for example, this BirtherReport.com article, which painstakingly cites various unnamed experts and unseen evidence to demonstrate that Fuddy had a hand in deceiving the American public.
Within minutes of the USA Today story, World Net Daily — epicenter of anti-Obama conspiracy theories —ran the headline above on its main page. The linked article mostly rehashes the site's existing "evidence." The unsubtle conspiracy suggestion was made explicit by the commenters. "PEOPLE THAT HAVE THE GOODS ON THE EVIL CABAL, GET KILLED ....PERIOD ....," writes one. Another: "Isn't it strange that anyone with any connection to Obama or his background has a tendency to have a 'shortened' life span." (The other examples of this are not immediately obvious to a layperson.)
At the Free Republic, proud focal point of anti-Obama outrage, commenters were quick to compare the death of Fuddy to the death of Ron Brown, Clinton's Commerce Secretary who was killed in a plane crash in Europe in 1996 — an event theorists tied very loosely to the Whitewater scandal. "Nine people aboard a plane that crashes and only one fatality?," one wrote. "Check her head for a small hole, about .45 inches in diameter, a la Ron Brown." (In case it doesn't go without saying, there is no credible evidence that Brown was shot to death.) A less generous person simply wrote, "Karma is a Bi^ch."
The theory around Fuddy, then, goes like this. She was about to blow the whistle on having helped forge Obama's detailed birth certificate, so Obama had her killed. Every step of that is stupid. There's no evidence that she was planning on talking to anyone about anything. Any conspiracy involving the birth certificate would clearly involve far more people than just Fuddy, none of whom, it seems, have been touched. And, of course, killing someone by crashing a plane without hurting anyone else on board is a pretty remarkable feat — one that would be much harder than, say, crashing a car or shooting someone in a "mugging." None of it makes any sense, but then neither does the existence at this late date of people insisting that Obama was born outside of the United States.
The moral of the story here is this: you can only wait until conspiracy theories slowly evaporate, you can't boil them off. Someone, somewhere (probably named Jerome Corsi) is already working on a book proposal related to Fuddy's death. The beauty of the First Amendment is that they can do so, and that we can sit here and watch and wonder. The tragedy is that a woman's death becomes a catalyst for insanity.
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Newswire: Showtime backs away from its Catholic Church drama The Vatican
Besieged by controversy in a way that was not at all befitting the Catholic Church, Showtime’s The Vatican is officially not moving forward, the network confirmed today. Deadline reports that the pilot “didn’t come in as strong as everyone expected given its pedigree”—a criticism that its director, Ridley Scott, must be getting used to hearing a lot lately. But of course, there will be obvious speculation that the series—which would have starred Kyle Chandler as a progressive, New York-based cardinal who challenges the church, and particularly the pope as played by a guy who played Hitler—simply proved to be too great of a risk, given that the show was already getting condemned by the conservative Culture And Media Institute based entirely on its logline, as well as the need to condemn something that day. It’s also possible that the thriller’s plotline about ...
Great Job, Internet!: Unsurprisingly, R. Kelly's Twitter Q&A went terribly awry
Earlier this week, R. Kelly’s new record, Black Panties, came out. To promote the record, Kelly took to Twitter—as celebrities are wont to do—to answer questions about his life, the record, and—though he probably didn’t expect this one—his alleged pedophilia. Kelly and his team had asked Twitter users to tweet questions with the hashtag “#AskRKelly,” and, as one might expect given Kelly’s less than savory reputation, things just went downhill from there.
Salon has a recap of some of the funniest responses to Kelly’s query, from questions like “is there such a thing as too young?” to “what are 7-year-olds into nowadays?” The Village Voice pointed out others, like “On a scale of Blue Ivy to Willow Smith, what’s the oldest female you would date,” and the potentially semi-serious “Have you ever shittttdd on a bitch???” The whole rundown of the ...
Santacon Founder Santa Rob Tells Santas: “Go Do Something Else”
Today Dan Glass wrote an excellent Gothamist article on the history and controversy surrounding Santacon, the anarchic Santa event that has grown from a bit of San Francisco Cacophony Society street theater in 1994 to the booze-fueled international street party it is today. Gothamist was able to track down Santacon’s shadowy founder, Santa Rob, who offered this advice to Santa: “Go do something else.”
“I like it when you do an event and there are problems. People learn how to deal with issues by getting in trouble. New York got in trouble. They had a lot of fun. Now, go do something else.” –Santa Rob
Back in March 2013, John Law (who is mentioned in the Gothamist article) gave his two cents on Santacon.
photo by Dan Glass
communitynbc: Greendale, a new dawn is upon us. Watch the...
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Greendale, a new dawn is upon us. Watch the Season 5 epic trailer NOW! http://bit.ly/CommunityEpicTrailer
Here's Your First Look At Matt Smith In The "American Psycho" Musical
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NYC testing lasers that detect when people fall onto subway tracks
Imagine you're in the New York City subway late at night, probably drunk, likely in a great mood. You trip over one of the mysterious random objects that litter the city's underground — say, a lost high heel — and suddenly find you've fallen into the filthy, deep well of the train tracks, amid the rats and the rainwater. Just as you catch your bearings, you look up to see the bright lights of an oncoming N train.
This scenario isn't far-fetched. About a year ago, the New York Post ran a grisly photo of a man with his arms over the side of the platform with an oncoming Q train train 20 feet away, the photographer's flash catching the whites of the terrified conductor's eyes. "Pushed on the subway track, this man is about to die," read the headline. And he did.
"Pushed on the subway track, this man is about to die."
This year was a bad one for subway deaths. On average, 134 people have been hit by subways and 49 killed every year since 2001, according to the MTA. This year, 144 people were hit and 52 died, and we still have two more weeks to get through.
Now the city is hoping to bring those numbers down using new technology. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is testing motion sensor lasers, thermal imaging, intelligent video software, and radio frequencies to determine the best method of detecting when a person falls onto the subway tracks.
The lasers would beam across the tracks, Mission Impossible-style. When the beams are interrupted by a body, it triggers an alarm that will stop oncoming trains. The radio frequencies would work similarly. Thermal imaging would detect body heat on the tracks, and the smart video software installed in the closed-circuit cameras would recognize when a large object moves from the platform to the tracks.
The testing will take place at an undisclosed station sometime in the next few weeks, but as Mashable notes, the MTA can't exactly afford to implement such a high-tech program widely. And considering 1.6 billion people ride the subway every year, the death rate is really quite low. Of course, that doesn't mean much if you're one of the unlucky victims. In other words: be careful out there.
- Via Mashable
- Source The New York Daily News
- Image Credit Larry Nicosia (Flickr)
- Related Items death lasers
US carriers agree to make cellphone unlocking easier for regular people
firehose"Unlocking a device may enable some functionality of the device but not all (e.g., an unlocked device may support voice services but not data services when activated on a different network). This robust and differentiated technological ecosystem has brought unparalleled and world-leading benefits to consumers, in the form of high-end and affordable devices, post- and pre-paid options, and with the world's most advanced devices being launched first in the United States."
all carriers suck forever
Five major US wireless carriers reached an agreement today on standardizing unlocking of cell phones and tablets. The group includes AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, and Verizon Wireless, which have all agreed on six policy decisions that cover both prepaid and postpaid unlocking. Those standards lay out specific times, practices, and eligibility requirements for device owners to get free unlocks. All are being wrapped into the CTIA's consumer code of conduct, which means other companies will have to adopt them within the next 12 months, if approved.
Plan standardizes unlock policies between carriers
The new rules require carriers to provide clear disclosure on unlocking policies for phone and tablet owners who sign up for multi-year plans, as well as with prepaid devices, which can be unlocked after a year. Carriers also need to provide notice to customers who are eligible for an unlocking, and proceed to unlock the device within two days from the time of any request. Lastly, the agreement also calls for a blanket policy on unlocking phones to any deployed military personnel, as long as they show papers.
The agreement, which has been presented to the Federal Communications Commission, is a direct response to a petition on the Library of Congress's decision not to renew language within the DMCA that legalized unlocking, as well as last month's ultimatum from new FCC chairman Tom Wheeler to strike such a deal. The new plan does not spell out what happens to those who attempt to unlock a device before a contract period is up, though it makes it more clear and consistent for what the unlocking processes are, and the timelines for each type of customer. News that a set of guidelines was imminent was reported earlier today by Reuters.
Drone strike on wedding party in Yemen kills at least 13 civilians
A drone strike killed at least 13 civilians today when a wedding convoy in Yemen was mistaken for an al Qaeda gathering, according to a Reuters report based on local sources. Local leaders said the strike came from an unmanned drone, a tactic frequently used by US forces in contested areas. Five others were injured in the strike, which took place in the central al-Bayda region.
It's unclear whether the operation was directed by the CIA or the Pentagon, but the latest strike stands as a particularly stark example of a campaign that's become commonplace for Yemenis. On Tuesday, an unrelated strike killed between three and eight people in the Hadramout province. At the same time, political pressure in the US and abroad has been building against the military actions. In October, a Pakistani family testified before congress about the brutal effect that drone killing campaigns have had among local populations.
- Source Reuters
- Related Items drones yemen drone strikes military
A special offer from the Redskins
Spencer Hall responds to a very special offer from the Redskins, and ponders whether to buy a suite at FedEx Field or burn hundred dollar bills in an oil barrel.
A very special offer came into the inbox of our parent company this morning!
I hope this email finds you well.
It does. Most of us did not watch the Redskins play football this weekend, so we're already doing great.
The Redskins Suite Owners Network is looking to bring on companies that are ambitious about growth. Clearly, Vox Media, with your recent purchases of Eater and Curbed, would fit right in.
This is correct: we are interested in growth. This is why we bought fine websites with our money, and not a lease on a giant expensive concrete box overlooking 120 yards of pure sorrow in the barrens of suburban Maryland.
Think about how much easier, and effective, it would be to reach decision makers in the D.C. market if you entertained them at a Redskins game.
"Yes, future investor and/or client. Please drive through zombie-apocalypse traffic, pay 40 dollars for parking, and then sit with us as we survey the ruins of a once-proud franchise. It's said the closest bonds are forged by mutual exposure to horror, and the survival of that horror. Ooh, look, Rex Grossman's coming in! Let's hold each other, cry, and see if the tears turn to money. There is stale popcorn and scotch in the back if it gets too much for you to bear."
You’d enjoy personal face time and extend the depth of that relationship to a new level.
When neither party wants to see what is on the field, face time does take on a whole other meaning. Just four quarters of loving, longing staring into the client's eyes, and oh -- you want me to tell you that you have the luminous, inspiring eyes of a Kirk Cousins? I will tell you anything you want to hear, client. We must pay for this luxury box, and now need your money more than ever, especially because Mr. Snyder is doubling the price next year to pay for Tom Brady's contract. Do you enjoy seeing handsome, elderly men broken in half? You will. Um, something something business something.
Put simply, leveraging an affiliation with the Washington Redskins helps grow your company’s profile, cultivate relationships, and get business done.
"Leveraging an affiliation" is not putting anything simply. It's management/finance speak at its most inhuman. What you want to say is this: "By showing you can afford a Redskins suite, you display wealth and the confidence that others would think being at FedEx Field was a good decision, and that you were a person to make good decisions with in business." And what part of watching the Redskins over the past decade was a good idea, and displayed good judgment? This is a serious question asked in the face of a proposition that is flat barking insanity.
If you heard that a company had invested money in a Redskins suite after the 2013 season, would you take that as a.) a sound financial investment or b.) the work of account-bilking scam artists just seconds away from bailing on the stock options and dumping the whole mess on scattering shareholders? Would you rather burn hundreds in an oil drum waiting for the Nats season to start? We would, and baseball doesn't start for another four months. (At least burning money in an oil drum makes you warm, unlike the cold terror of watching Mike Shanahan dare his owner to fire him publicly.)
Towards that end, I would like to begin a dialogue about what type of an association works best for you and your organization. In addition to learning more about your specific objectives, I would be glad to share with you a variety of examples from current Redskins partners to assist you in choosing an optimal solution.
Our problem would be watching the Redskins play football. This is our optimal solution to the problem: not buying a suite, and thus avoiding the problem altogether. Thank you for this invigorating and completely unsolicited conversation, Redskins sales person. It's been a great dialogue after all. As for us, we'll be investing in the only luxury sports seats that matter: the front row at the Potomac Nationals, baby. P-NATS FOREVER.
More from SB Nation NFL
• Expert picks for Week 15 | NFL Power Rankings: Broncos back on top
• Breaking Madden: Tony Gonzalez, cranky old man of destruction
• Russell Wilson can't stop getting drafted by pro sports teams
• Ex-NFL defensive end Stephen White on Vereen, Volunteers and more
Human and Animal Skulls Made from Colorful Athletic Shoes
UK artist Phil Robson, also known as “Filfury,” has created an awesome collection of human and animal skulls using colorful athletic shoes. Prints are available to purchase online at Mrs Fury.
images via Filfury
Gmail blows up e-mail marketing by caching all images on Google servers
firehoserofl
Ever wonder why most e-mail clients hide images by default? The reason for the "display images" button is because images in an e-mail must be loaded from a third-party server. For promotional e-mails and spam, usually this server is operated by the entity that sent the e-mail. So when you load these images, you aren't just receiving an image—you're also sending a ton of data about yourself to the e-mail marketer.
Loading images from these promotional e-mails reveals a lot about you. Marketers get a rough idea of your location via your IP address. They can see the HTTP referrer, meaning the URL of the page that requested the image. With the referral data, marketers can see not only what client you are using (desktop app, Web, mobile, etc.) but also what folder you were viewing the e-mail in. For instance, if you had a Gmail folder named "Ars Technica" and loaded e-mail images, the referral URL would be "https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#label/Ars+Technica"—the folder is right there in the URL. The same goes for the inbox, spam, and any other location. It's even possible to uniquely identify each e-mail, so marketers can tell which e-mail address requested the images—they know that you've read the e-mail. And if it was spam, this will often earn you more spam since the spammers can tell you've read their last e-mail.
Update: email marketers claim they can get Gmail folder information, but several readers correctly pointed out that common browsers like Chrome and Firefox do not, in fact, send that information themselves as part of the referrer.
Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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NBC fails to disclose Olympic commentator Weir works for Russian govt.
If I get arrested? Is Johnny Weir planning on having anal sex in front of a Russian library? Because, per Johnny Weir, that’s all this law bans.
Really, Fox News? - Fox News headlines v. real headlines, part...
Fox News headlines v. real headlines, part 2425183.
The brunette part is really important.
The Wheels On The Bus: OMSI 2 Released
firehose"OMSI 2 now replicates the exciting years following the German reunification and all the innovations and route expansions (line 137 to Falkensee) that came along with it."
By Adam Smith on December 12th, 2013 at 4:00 pm.
OMSI 2 has just been released and the Steam page contains my favourite feature description of all time:
Relive the change taking place in Spandau between 1986 and 1994! OMSI 2 now replicates the exciting years following the German reunification and all the innovations and route expansions (line 137 to Falkensee) that came along with it.
The exciement and dramatic changes of German reunification recreated via transport developments, timetable changes and route expansions. I’ve been waiting for this transport simulation period piece to come out ever since I first read Tim Stone’s words about the first in the series. His diary is still one of my favourite pieces of writing on the internet.
It seems like only yesterday that Euro Truck Simulator 2 surprised the world by parking itself in our Advent Calendar, and while I was reading the comments I found a link to a wonderful thread on our forums about the appeal of ‘sublime driving games’.
We might be talking about OMSI 2 for some time and it’ll begin tomorrow. Look out for The Flare Path and Tim Stone’s return to the streets.
__________________
Sherlock meets The Doctor in the beyond impressive mash-up Wholock
firehoseimpressive editing, even when the fake lips come out in force
Do you like Doctor Who? Sherlock? Things that are awesome? Then you simple must watch Wholock, a fan-made mash-up so amazing that you will swear that someone must actually have filmed Benedict Cumberbatch standing in the TARDIS, acting opposite Matt Smith.
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Preview of Marvel’s Black Widow #2 - coming in January....
firehosePhil Noto beat
Preview of Marvel’s Black Widow #2 - coming in January. Written by Nathan Edmondson with art by me.
Newswire: Jason Segel will play David Foster Wallace in a biopic opposite Jesse Eisenberg
firehosewhuh
When John Krasinski adapted David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, it was clearly a personal labor of love, connecting with a book that resonated with him in college. Several other Wallace works have been adapted into stage plays—and The Simpsons even took Wallace’s iconic essay on cruise ship vacations as the inspiration for “A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never Do Again.” But now is the point in the narrative of mythologizing late authors where a biopic goes into production.
Jason Segel is now set to play Wallace—though he’ll definitely need longer hair and a beard—in The End Of The Tour, an adaptation of Rolling Stone writer David Lipsky’s book Although Of Course You End Up Being Yourself, which recounts a five-day trip he took accompanying Wallace toward the end of his Infinite Jest book tour. Jesse Eisenberg will co-star as Lipsky. James Ponsoldt, director ...
Breaking Madden: Tony Gonzalez, cranky old man of destruction
firehose'As the Internet would put it, "what is this I don't even"? I wish the Internet would stop saying that about, like, two slices of bacon laid neatly on a cronut, and reserve it for spectacles like this one.'
Tony Gonzalez has not fumbled since 2006. The Redskins' special-teams unit is abjectly miserable. Let's smash the two into each other in Madden, see what happens, and accept that we will create nothing but disaster.
Tony Gonzalez is still out there blocking and catching. If he were an offensive lineman, he'd be the oldest offensive lineman in the NFL. And if he were a wideout, he would be the oldest wideout in the NFL. The only players older than him at this point are London Fletcher and a handful of kickers. Gonzalez has stated that he's done, for real, after this season, but literally every team would have him next year without a second thought. He's the greatest tight end in the history of tight ends, and he got to be that way once he figured out how never to fumble.
Almost never, anyway. In the 21st century, he has made 1,139 receptions for 13,108 yards, and he has fumbled one time.
Gonzalez arrives on this chart with six career fumbles. It's kind of a pity about those first five, which came within a two-year span as a young player. His last fumble came in 2006. Since then he's advanced the ball nearly 600 times for over 6,000 yards without fumbling a single time. It's astounding.
In last week's BREAKING MADDEN, we saw 30 fumbles in a single half of football. BREAKING MADDEN needs Tony Gonzalez, and desperately. With the Falcons up against the at-least-as-cruddy Redskins this Sunday, I think I've found a terrific solution.
Music: "Return of the G" from OutKast's 1998 album, "Aquemini"
Here's what we're going to do:
I. INSTALL TONY GONZALEZ AS KICK/PUNT RETURNER.
We don't need to change his player ratings. We don't need to create SuperTony, because he is already SuperTony, and because he gets to run over the Redskins special-teams unit.
II. MAKE THE REDSKINS' SPECIAL-TEAMS UNIT EVEN WORSE, SOMEHOW.
Our Redskins blog, Hogs Haven, tweeted this minutes before last Sunday's game against the Chiefs:
Who else is looking forward to seeing the #Redskins special teams unit in bad field conditions?
— HogsHaven.com (@HogsHaven) December 8, 2013
In the opening half, Washington allowed touchdowns on a kick return and a punt return en route to a 45-10 blowout loss on their own field. This is one of the worst special-teams units I've ever seen in the NFL. They know they are terrible. Tight end and special-teamer Niles Paul:
"Eleven people out there have to want to make a tackle, have to want to make a play, have to want to make a block. And that’s not happening right now and that’s why we are terrible on special teams."
If you've read BREAKING MADDEN for very long, you know that when we identify something bad, we spare no expense to make it a hundred billion times worse. In this spirit, I edited the skill ratings of every Washington player who could conceivably play special teams.
Madden 25 allows the player to change out offensive and defensive personnel all day long, but its flexibility on special teams is much more limited -- the game just sort of grabs guys out of the bottom of your depth chart and chucks them on the kick coverage team, for example. So just to be safe, I made the following changes to every single player on the Washington roster:
0/99 ratings in: Strength, Agility, Speed, Hit power, Toughness, Awareness, and Tackling.
I also set the global CPU tackling ability to a flat zero. I want Washington's special-teams players to possess the stopping ability of the rubber curtain at the mouth of the baggage claim in the airport. Having spent plenty of time waiting for my bag and doing absolutely nothing, I've had some time to think about that curtain. My best hypothesis is that it helps control temperature in the terminal, but it's a flappy curtain with slits all over it. There's no way that dang thing keeps the cold air out.
If you have any idea at all, please let us all know in the comments. Anyway. With any luck, this will be the most useless special teams unit in NFL history.
I. GIVE MR. GONZALEZ AN ELITE SPECIAL-TEAMS UNIT.
Since the game doesn't offer total control over who does and doesn't play special teams, I used a tedious trial-and-error method of roster-swapping to get as many of you on the field as I could. In the end, three real-life Falcons (including Gonzalez) remained on the field for punt and kick returns. The rest of them are six feet tall (I wanted to keep the 6'5" Gonzalez the tallest dude on the field), and possess perfect skill ratings in categories such as Strength, Toughness, Hit power, Blocking, and Awareness.
As I always do, I found y'all on Twitter.
if you would like to be in the next BREAKING MADDEN, please tell me what your game plan would be if you were a special teams coach
— Jon Bois (@jon_bois) December 9, 2013
About 900 of you had very, very good ideas and should probably find employ in football programs across the country. In the end, I settled upon the following eight folks:
Ascher Robbins (@AscherRobbins)
If you had to coach any element of the game of football while completely sloppy, I think special teams would be the place for you. We've developed countless kick- and punt-return strategies, nearly all of which are complete bullshit. None of us knows what we're doing.
That extends to those of us who tirelessly attempt to identify the perfect return strategy in Madden. After playing the series off and on for over two decades, I've found no better strategy than, "make Jamaal Charles your return man," which you can certainly do while drunk.
Tyler Allan (@Ty_asakite)
Before Riley Cooper outed himself as the sort of person who's totally fine with broadcasting racial slurs in public, I knew him best for the time he tried to hide during a kick return. He found a spot of end zone paint, lied down, and tried to hide. That's a trick you're really only going to be able to bust out once in your career. You couldn't save it for a week when you were wearing a dark uniform? How are different colors so difficult for you?
Arik Parnass (@ArikParnass)
Sigh. Yep, let's roll back the tape. In one of the more remarkable moments in BREAKING MADDEN history, one Mr. Charlie Gebow slyly left the field and made his way to the Gatorade. WHILE THE PLAY WAS STILL GOING ON.
God, that was a fun one. It's here, if you missed it.
Andrew Jones (@Jonesyful)
That's so dang cute. Suit up.
Matt D (@PSUMatt2005)
This reminds me of one of the strangest-ever Seinfeld episodes. While working in the Yankees' front office, George Costanza realizes that the space underneath his desk is a perfect place for a nap, so he hires a carpenter to retrofit it with a shelf for an alarm clock and a drawer for blanket storage. This backfires, because he is George Costanza, when George Steinbrenner sits down in his apparently-empty office for hours and waits for him to show up. Eventually, Steinbrenner invites some of his grandchildren into the office. George Costanza freaks out, calls Jerry, and breathlessly exhorts him to call in a bomb threat.
The strange thing is that Jerry actually does it. I wasn't shocked that Jerry, the relatively unremarkable "straight man" of the show, would call in a bomb threat. The show is predicated upon the idea of living selfishly. I was shocked that he actually went out of his way to help somebody.
Noah Becker (@Noah_Becker)
This is fantastic and should be watched by everyone:
2010 proved to be Jorrick Calvin's only year in the NFL. For many players, fame lingers about as long as a The Price is Right appearance. You want to be remembered? You gotta get up there and dance, pal.
Michael Thompson (@MJT127)
Mr. Thompson finds himself on the field because I'm a sucker for brevity, and because somehow, capes on football players make sense to me. I don't know why, but I can't shake it.
Mike McIntire (@MikeyMc18)
According to an EXCLUSIVE SOURCE, I have learned that although Jimmy John's establishments do have ovens, employees are strictly forbidden from using them to heat a sandwich during business hours. They can never do so for a customer, and then can never do so for themselves on a lunch break. If they do, according to this source, they are fired on the spot.
This might be the first time I've ever cited an exclusive source, and it's a second-hand source from a person who works at Jimmy John's. If you've ever thought of me as a journalist, please stop that immediately.
THE GAME SANDBOX.
If you really want to see how these Falcons do against these Redskins in a game, here is a concise summary.
This is a very special edition of BREAKING MADDEN. Since we already know for certain that Tony Gonzalez can run practically every kick or punt for a touchdown, the end result isn't particularly interesting. This is a sandbox-style endeavor. Some moments occurred in the Georgia Dome, and others happened in a practice dome in parts unknown. Occasionally I'd quit the game, tweak a few settings, and fire it back up.
This is what happened when I asked Mr. Gonzalez to try to jump over a defender.
NGUUHNNNNGH. Mr. Gonzalez, sir, stop. Stop playing football. The worst thing about the concept of a torso behaving like an accordion is the knowledge that it would probably kind of sound like one.
If I had to sum this week's experiment in a single phrase, I'd go with, "Tony Gonzalez, cranky old-man death machine." Terming football defenders as "defenders" never seemed quite right to me. The offensive players are just trying to mind their own business and get on their way, you know? The defenders are the ones who are getting all up in their business and attacking them.
In this space, Mr. Gonzalez kind of snapped that vocabulary back into a truer place. He was the offense. He was the attacker, and he went out of his way to lay waste to all he saw.
Check out that nameless Washington player sliding across the grass, arms to his sides, face-down, like a log floating into a dam. At any given moment, one might see half the Redskins on the ground at the same time. I am responsible for that. While running with Gonzalez, I grew dissatisfied with simply breaking two tackles and sprinting to the end zone. I'd turn around and make sure to truck as many fools as I could.
That's Richard Crawford, marooned all by himself as Gonzalez trucks him over three times in eight seconds. After a time, I decided to make one Washington player as fast as possible. Crawford, who I harbor absolutely no ill will against, was chosen at random. I'd leave him unblocked on punt returns and allow him to sprint downfield into abject ruination.
Eventually, some of the Redskins started playing prevent defense on punt returns. For real. I did not do this. The CPU did this all by itself.
No. 39, David Amerson, is the furthest Washington player down the field. He's supposed to run right at Gonzalez, especially if Gonzalez is just sort of creeping around. He knows better. The game is afraid. The game is afraid.
I didn't want to leave out the Redskins' special-teams efforts on the other side of the line, so I was kind enough to kick them a few footballs, too. Hey, you know how when you're stranded in an alien world where nothing makes sense, you start trying weird things? Like, you start banging two space-rocks together and hope they turn into a sandwich?
No? Well, the Redskins do.
Fred Davis just stood still as the ball bounced off his head. And then -- again, I want to stress that the CPU did this, not me -- he just starts shimmying sideways up the field. Even if I did take control of him, I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to make a ball carrier strafe in Madden. Strafing is for defensive players. How does this animation even exist for a ball carrier?
As the Internet would put it, "what is this I don't even"? I wish the Internet would stop saying that about, like, two slices of bacon laid neatly on a cronut, and reserve it for spectacles like this one.
Punt's bouncing off your face, killer. Punt's on the ground, champ. The governing body that processes your fair catches is limited in jurisdiction. It can't just pull you out of this reality into another one that makes sense. You are an oak in the forest, rooted, never to leave: forever old, never wise.
God dang, you dummies.
I've never seen a scrum composed entirely of a single team.
Finally, back to Tony Gonzalez, Mean Old Man. For a few kick returns, I decided to let Mr. Gonzalez stand still and defend himself whenever a player approached. Let's see what happens when Crawford decides to play on his lawn.
SMACK
If you watched the video above, you already saw this, but I love it so much that I had to GIF it.
This week is the week I discovered the lateral in Madden. Press L1 while you're carrying the ball. It is the Chaos Button. Maybe your player will modestly toss it to a guy behind him, or maybe he'll just hurl it over his head like a wedding bouquet. Or maybe, right after Kai Forbath has had his shit completely ruined, the ball will hit him right in the dome.
This is the final BREAKING MADDEN of the regular season, and I was so glad to dwell upon two terrifically cruddy teams while I had the chance. See y'all in the playoffs.
We began with OutKast. We will conclude with OutKast:
Music: "You May Die - Intro" from OutKast's 1996 album, "ATLiens"
For more football video game miracles and catastrophies, check out our other episodes of Breaking Madden.
Who actually uses Google+? Exactly who you’d expect
firehosesick burn
A new survey of Google+ users reveals that the earnest social media also-ran is inhabited by people who work in IT, people who are self-employed, and people who like to describe themselves as “decision makers.” In other words, If Facebook is for moms and Twitter is for journalists, Google+ is where the engineers hang out.
This might help answer the fundamental question of who is using Google+. But given that the site remains little different from Facebook, it doesn’t quite answer why people are using it. Some have said that Google+ is less noisy than Facebook, and that the level of discourse is “higher” than on Facebook. But that could just be engineer-speak for “fewer baby and cat pictures.”
The list of who isn’t using Google+ lends some credence to this theory. Full-time parents and the divorced are among the least well represented on Google+, and at least one of those groups is going to be mostly moms.
