firehose

Two trained mice, Grimaldi and Brösel, decorate a tiny Christmas tree with ornaments and beads in this absolutely adorable video posted by Mouse Agility.

via Tastefully Offensive

Courtney shared this story from William Caxton Fan Club.

---

“

Let me tell you a little story about innovation and creativity. Years ago, I worked on a wiki-based project to find the first instance of ideas/techniques in video games (like the first game to use cameras as weapons, or the first game to have stealth as a play element). It excited me to dig to give credit to those who laid the foundations of ideas that we now take for granted. I couldn’t wait to show the world how creative and innovative these unknown game designers/developers were.

I went into it with much passion and excitement, but unexpectedly, it turned out that there were almost no “firsts”. Every time someone put up a game that was the first to do/contain something, there was another earlier game put up to replace it with a SLIGHTLY less sophisticated, or SLIGHTLY different version of the same thing. The gradient was so smooth and constant that eventually, the element we were focusing on lost meaning. It became an unremarkable point to address at all. We ended up constantly overwriting people’s work with smaller, less passionate articles, containing a bunch of crappy games that only technically were the first to do something in the crudest manner. Sometimes only aesthetically.

After a lot of time sunk into this project, I came to the conclusion that I was mistaken about innovation/creativity. It would have been a better project to track the path of ideas/techniques than to try to find the first instance of an idea/technique. I held innovation so highly for years before that, but after this project, I saw just how small it was. How it was but a tiny extension of the thoughts of millions before it. A tiny mutation of a microscopic speck that laid on top of a mountain. It was a valuable experience that helped me very much creatively.

”

- Dave Freeman, a game designer, friend, and former coworker (via adiscourseongaming)

absolutely beautiful and valuable observation here

How An Obscure Federal Court Decision Just Gave The Shaft To American Workers: By Nicole Flatow, writing at ThinkProgress. From the article:

A 2012 National Labor Relations Board decision had invalidated construction firm D.R. Horton’s employment contract clause that required workers to sign away their right to arbitrate claims as a class, and held that workers have a right to arbitrate their claims together under federal labor law.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned that ruling this week, holding that individuals workers have no right to arbitrate collectively, even when individual proceedings would be so costly that it is not economical for any one person to pursue arbitration alone. In its ruling, the 2-1 majority cited one of the most incendiary in the string of anti-class Supreme Court rulings,

AT&T v. Concepcion.

Standing up during the exciting football game? That's a paddlin'.

Via Field Gulls, here is a card that a Seahawks fan was handed by 49ers stadium personnel during Sunday's game:

There are a lot of ways this can be interpreted. Beyond "LOL," I mean. It can be construed as snooty and passive-aggressive. Particularly if you happen to be a Seahawks fan! But as an avid fan of sitting down and believing one can have just as much fun seated as you can standing in most instances, I think this is a fine and respectful tactic.

Still though, lol 49ers.

Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Read on Ars Technica | Comments

risingtensions:

if I print this will people buy it?????? 

Yes

Harmonix has laid off a handful of employees today, a spokesperson tells Joystiq: "We can confirm that a small number of Harmonix employees were let go today. This decision was made due to shifting staffing priorities for Harmonix's multiple future projects."

One of those let go was Dan Crislip, a sound designer on Rock Band. Harmonix saw a similar round of purging in April, complete with the same spokesperson quote. The studio is currently working on Fantasia: Music Evolved.

Harmonix lets go a 'small number' of employees originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 09 Dec 2013 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Los Angeles Times

Treasury sells rest of GM stock, ends bailout with $10.5-billion loss Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON -- The federal government on Monday sold its remaining shares of General Motors Co. stock, ending the controversial $49.5-billion bailout of the automaker with an approximately $10.5-billion loss for taxpayers. "This marks one of the final ... US Sells Remaining Stake in General MotorsNew York Times Government sells last of its GM sharesUSA TODAY US exits GM stake, taxpayers lose $10.5 billionNBCNews.com TIME -Wall Street Journal -Bloomberg all 114 news articles »

Due to their poverty, the Bruce Brothers were the brunt of many jokes in school. However, the brothers were not ashamed of their living standards, and instead embraced it.^[11] Joe even made a name for themselves, Floobs.^[11] According to Joe, a Floob was essentially a scrub, but not just an ordinary scrub.

Link

shortformblog:

In which Fox News tries absurdism on for size. Sample line: "Francis not only panders to enemies and professional grievance mongers, but also attacks his allies. Just as Obama snubs Britain and Israel, Pope Francis swipes at practicing Catholics."

Wince.

EDIT: Here’s a Jesuit priest calling this article the worst of 2013. Don’t get a much better source than that.

This guest post comes to us courtesy of our good friend Marc Specter. This is a reflection on his time at the Essen Game Fair 2013.

Where do I even begin? Yesterday was an amazing day in my world of gaming.

We are actually staying with our friends’ father and he was kind enough to wake up early for me so we could be on the road by 7am. Essen is a fairly big city, and while I’m there to have fun, the rest of the German world is going about their normal routine. And on a weekday that means work and rush hour. So even though I was not scheduled to be at the fair until 10am, I wanted/needed to make sure I was there on time, as I was working.

Now I know you’ll ask what I mean by working, and what kind of schmuck works on his vacation, but I’ll get to that later.

After dropping Ange at our friends’ house, we were on the road around 7:20am. What is more or less a 20 minute drive sans traffic took us about an hour. So I arrived at Essen just shy of 8:30am which was perfect since I had to get my bearings and figure out where I needed to be.

As I walked the empty halls, the grandeur was apparent. Essen is HUGE! It was humbling to see that Origins and Gen Con (and GrandCon!) are not the tabletop gaming HQ that we as Americans believe them to be. Essen, both in terms of square footage (for sure) and head count (I suspect) is easily 2x the size of both conventions put together.

Being so early and allowed access to the convention halls, I got the chance to wander. Even without the crowds and with someplace to shortly be, it was too much to take in. Booths were everywhere and the stalls so high–none of this pipe and draping, this was serious scaffolding–that your view was obscured from what was around every corner. Just amazing that a gaming culture could support this level of effort.

After poking around, I made my way to the Stronghold booth–that’s where I’d be working–and took some time to verse myself in the games I’d be teaching: Space Cadets: Dice Duel, Space Sheep, and Voluspa + the new expansion. Before long some of the other crew showed up, as well as Stephen Buonocore (President of Stronghold), and Geoff Engelstein, co-designer of SC: DD. He offered to teach the game to us, and on the outside I said, “Sure, that’d be great.” On the inside, “Hell yeah!!!”

Station break: Before actually learning SC: DD from the man himself, I had to break away and take advantage of my early access. I went to a few different spots to acquire games that I was fairly certain were not destined to be available for long. And I’m glad I did, as pretty much every game I got that morning was sold out by the end of my day on Saturday. Now back to your regularly scheduled missive.

Now to be fair, not all, in fact not most, designers are good at teaching their games. However, Geoff is not only an older (not old) guy, but he is a professional in his real life, and a very good communicator. Just listen to his Ludology podcast with Ryan Sturm. He not only taught his game well, but had an established way of doing so. He essentially taught us AND taught us how to teach it. It was a great experience in every way.

Over the course of my 2-day stint with Stronghold, I taught games to people from all over Europe: British, Spanish, French, Danish, Swedish, Irish, Latvian, Norwegian, and of course many, many Germans. I even ran into 2 Americans. It was a lot of fun. Anyone who knows me knows I love to teach. I get great joy out of seeing the light go on for people where they can plug in and just enjoy.

It’s pretty common knowledge, but one of the coolest things about Essen: women everywhere! And I don’t mean that in the lecherous sense. I mean that European gaming culture is so fully representative of both genders. If I had to break it down, I’d say the Essen audience is about 60/40 men/women.

You know the saying: when you do what you love you don’t work a day in your life? Well, this was truly an affirmation of that adage. My first day at Essen, 10 hours of “work,” felt like 3. The second day was a bit more intense–I figure I taught Space Sheep and Going, Going Gone about 30 times–more people, bigger traffic jams, and there were times I felt more space in our packed booth than I did in the walkways. But it was fantastic, and had I not also been in Germany visiting friends, I would surely have hung out with the Stronghold team, as they were a great group of enthusiastic demo’ers.

Another funny thing about Essen: every vendor is more than willing to talk, despite the crowds. I was able to make some great GrandCon business contacts, and secure some things we can use for charitable ends. As much as I know there were business meetings a-plenty in the works, if you got someone at their booth they were very gracious about talking.

I pretty much accomplished almost every goal. My only failure lie in my limited budget and luggage space. While not out of control, I certainly dove in head first in terms of game purchases, bringing home over 20 new games. I know that’s a drop in some people’s gaming bucket, but that’s approximately a 20% increase in the size of my library. I tried to get things that won’t ever make it to the US, but in this ever-shrinking world I’m not so sure that is possible.

I did get 3 first-time games from 3 brand new publishers, met the creators of 2 of them, and offered them both congratulations and thanks for their contributions to the hobby. Hopefully their games are good, but if not, no worries. It’s exciting to me to be able to support a young publisher.

There’s much more story to tell, but I’m afraid that’s it for now. Suffice to say that my experience was Essen-lent, and I’d do it every year if possible. Only time will tell if and when I can make it back.

Best,

Marc

Marc Specter is co-founder of GrandCon Gaming & Comic Convention and Team Leader of the Grand Gaming Academy.  Please check out GrandCon at grand-con.com and Like it on Facebook facebook.com/grandcongca.  Please Like the Grand Gaming Academy atfacebook.com/GrandGamingAcademy.  

The post Essen Game Fair 2013 appeared first on Happy Mitten Games.

This is exactly parenting.

Exactly.

Early reviews are... mixed for The Hobbit: Episode XIV—The Desolation of Smaug. I've heard some people saying it's a lot better than the crummy first film; I've heard others say it's even worse; everyone seems to agree that for better or worse, that one wizard whose beard is slathered in birdshit is most definitely back, joyously riding his sled pulled by CG rabbits all around a CG Middle-earth.

As an embarrassingly big Lord of the Rings nerd, I'd like nothing more than for this Hobbit to not suck; as someone with a functional brain who sat through the first film—twice, in fact, which now makes me question my use of "functional" earlier in this sentence—it's fair to say my expectations are... tempered.

That's not the case with the latest dweeb breed, though: They're the rabidly defensive fans of Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies, and now that reviews are coming out for The Desolation of Smaug, they are on the warpath, streaming into comments sections like the mighty Uruk-hai from Isengard to defend not just the first Hobbit movie, but also the second one (which they haven't even seen yet). Via FilmDrunk comes a rundown of the incensed comments in response to Rodrigo Perez's review at the Playlist. The complaints range from the pedantic ("You called the dwarves 'hobbits' in this review", "The ‘gemstone’ you mention is the Arkenstone, the symbol of Erebor’s kings, therefore a logical item of Thorin’s desire") to what might be the best... man. I love this comment.

This is one of the most unprofessionally written movie reviews I have ever seen. Are you even aware of the socio-political undertones of this film, between Thranduil, the elvin king, the Master of Laketown, and the miniature rebellions of Bard and Tauriel? Any and all aspects of broader commentaries brought by Peter Jackson to this film are completely lost on you. You claim there is no weight to the film but that is only because you have not the eyes to see it. Readers should not take any of your words seriously and move on.

You have proved yourself a fool.

The Hobbit: Another One comes out on Friday; we'll have our review up later this week. Now seems as good of a time as any to remind you of the world's greatest Chrome extension, Shut Up.

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While no one was looking, two years after her apparent conversion to Judaism, Tila Tequila has reached perhaps what was the only possible conclusion to her trajectory: as an incoherent, Hitler-sympathizing, Illuminati-evangelizing, anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist.

How have you been sharpening your pencils? Regardless of your answer, rest assured that you’re doing it wrong.

Lest there be any doubt that I’m geographically situated smack dab in the middle of former cartoonist’s David Rees’ target demographic, I almost didn’t click on the link to the pitch perfect send up above because I believed it was real.

Here in non-Caribbean, non-Southeast-Asian, non-Russian, non-Mexican Brooklyn—think Girls, the Jonathans Ames and Letham, brownstone-dwelling movie stars and the very latest in n’est plus ultra strollers—it’s entirely plausible that a humorless young artisan might take to the Internet to teach us regular schlubs How to Sharpen Pencils.

Just wait ’til he brings out his leather strop. (Misplaced yours? Look in your basement, or your grandfather’s tomb.)

Please note that though the video may be satirical, Rees makes actual money sharpening—and authenticating—customers’ Number Two pencils, using the same techniques demonstrated in the video. (Sorry, holiday shoppers, as per his website, he won’t be taking orders for his live pencil sharpening services until the New Year, but he does have a book out.)

Like you need any more excuse to whip out your knife, place it in your dominant hand, and start carving.

To quote a certain classic Broadway musical, you gotta have a gimmick.

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David Rees Presents a Primer on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening is a post from: Open Culture. You can follow Open Culture on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and by Email.

Every year, the Portland Cello Project host a holiday concert like no other. Yes, music and family and Christmas and other stuff is celebrated, but the main focus is always on that favorite of all holiday traditions: the holiday sweater. This year, PCP's Holiday Sweater Spectacular takes place on Friday, December 20 at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, and the cellists have sweetened the pot with a very cool, hilarious contest.

From Portland Cello Project's site:

In honor of our December 20 Concert at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall we've arranged a little contest. This is how it works:

• You put on your best or worst Holiday Sweater (bonus points if a cello is somehow involved).
• Or you could even put the sweater on your cello (as above).
• Or you could even put it on your cat. (I hear the Internet likes cats.)
• Then: You take a picture of your Holiday Sweater. Bonus points for creative design. Bonus points for effective composition. Bonus points for creative setting.

You'll want to go over there for full details on how to win, and a breakdown of the many great prizes available. But here's the doozy:

And we haven’t touched on the best part of this. If you are among the top three sweater winners, wear your sweater to the show, and we will give you absolutely supreme VIP seats. And you will be invited on stage, and the audience will vote on the number one grand prize winner.

And then...

For the absolute extremely superlative best grand prize winner: We will compose a song with Adam Shearer on the spot dedicated to your sweater.

Yes. Your sweater will be immortalized in a musical composition.

Forever.

(Probably on YouTube via video from your friend’s cell phone.)

Head over there for the full details on how to enter, PLUS the added, inestimable bonus of the video of Dave Depper in a full elf costume joining PCP for Outkast's "Hey Ya" from the Holiday Sweater Spectacular from three years ago.

Portland Cello Project also have a new EP called Winter (The Best Nine Months of the Year) coming out in time for the Spectacular; we premiered a song from it in last week's Music Monday.

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Well, if you're going to be awful, at least be awfully honest. Or something. Or, maybe think twice before hopping off the Google Bus as it's surrounded by protestors and saying "Why don't you go to a city where you can afford it? This is a city for the right people." You, reading this, are the wrong people.

submitted by barf_cat [link] [31 comments]

By now, you'd think that McDonald's would have learned the perils of offering its workers financial advice. First there was the PR flap when it handed out a budgeting guide that suggested employees would need two jobs to survive. Then there was the help-line where franchise staffers could learn how to apply for food stamps.

 

But, apparently the lesson hasn't sunk in. Yesterday, as fast-food workers around the country went on strike yet again to demand a living wage, CNBC reported that McDonald's had published an etiquette guide on a company website full of advice from Emily Post on how families should tip their help during the holidays. If you were a McDonald's worker with a pool cleaner, a personal trainer, or massage therapist, corporate had you covered. 

After the story ran, the guide was removed, but here's a screenshot courtesy of Time.

Let's acknowledge the obvious: Someone in the vast universe of McDonald's employees has a landscaper they need to tip. What's bizarre is the tone-deafness. McDonald's says the content was provided by a third party, but presumably someone inside the company vetted it (if not, why not?). And the same way telling employees to apply for federal welfare benefits, while thoughtful in its own way, looks terrible when your entire business model is identified with low wages, telling a cashier how to properly tip their dog walker comes off as callous.  It sounds like human resources telling is telling the company's entire low-wage workforce to go eat cake (bought, presumably, with food stamps).

Top image: A McDonald's patron reads a newspaper while a demonstrator dressed as Ronald McDonald protests for higher wages in Oakland, California. (Noah Berger/Reuters)

This post originally appeared on The Atlantic.