firehose

carmem:

cartoonpolitics:

"Homophobia: The fear that another man will treat you like you treat women." ~ (unattributed)

típico 

pulpcovers:

Gang Girl (Terror Detective) http://ift.tt/1gseCzp

Awesome.

Location: Montreal
URL: http://www.bandzoogle.com

• Create visually striking band themes, that look great on desktop and mobile.
• Convert the designs into clean, responsive, cross-browser HTML/CSS.

• Strong visual design/typography skills.
• Expert level HTML/CSS skills.
• A portfolio that includes responsive designs, and themes for a major CMS.
• Productive in a distributed team environment. Our 16-member team is spread across Canada, UK and USA; we work where we love to be.

• A competitive salary plus generous performance bonuses.
• A fast paced startup atmosphere, with the stability of an established, profitable company.
• A family-friendly schedule — no overtime or weekends.
• Health insurance for US and Canadian employees.
• Reimbursement of home office expenses, computer, and co-working spaces.
• $1k/year "learning budget".  Expense whatever you want to learn about.
• Yearly meet-ups in fun locations, family included!

To apply: Send an email to jobs@bandzoogle.com with the subject "Designer". This is important, we filter the rest. Please include a link to your portfolio (no attachments!), and an example of what you think is a great artist website.

Does that commercial DNA test you just bought violate somebody else’s privacy?

Hijacked traffic went all the way to Iceland, where it may have been copied before being released to its intended destination.

What was it like to fly in the 1950s? Dangerous, smoky, boozy, boring, expensive, and racist. Still think you've got it bad today?

gunrunnerhell:

Pumped

Cause you never piss off a woman with a shotgun.

World leaders have been sending a flood of tributes and tweets about their love and respect for Nelson Mandela. But what did the great statesman think of them? A little-noticed 2002 video of Mandela captures how he really felt. Margaret Thatcher was “warm and motherly,” he said, but George W. Bush was very arrogant.

The almost one-hour long clip shows Mandela at his home in Johannesburg, signing a series of his artworks to be sold for charity by London’s Belgravia Gallery.

He wears a neck brace throughout for comfort and is flanked by his staff and gallery personnel. It’s a candid talk that airs his opinions about everything from politicians to current affairs and shows off his characteristic sense of humor. A recap:

Nelson Mandela had a deep respect for Princess Diana for the work she was doing to change attitudes when it came to HIV/AIDS. Says Mandela in the video: “People said if a British princess can actually shake hands with AIDS sufferers and sit down, then there is nothing in this superstition.”

The two world figures also showed the same compassion to AIDS sufferers. Early in the video, Mandela recounts a story of the stigma shown by a group of villagers in South Africa, who fed three Aids orphans whose parents had died of HIV/AIDS by throwing food into their hut: “So I then decided to demonstrate to them that you can actually go in and touch the children and sit there. So I sat there for about 25 minutes and I came out holding the poor/two children.”

Many have called Prince Charles a cad, but Nelson Mandela thought the royal was a “fine chap.” In the video, he talks about his appreciation of Charles’ taste in architecture and recounts an episode in Brixton when they were mobbed by a crowd of admirers.

Of his mother, Mandela called her “remarkable” and was impressed by the fact that the Queen of England served tea herself. “In public she’s very stiff, but when I stayed in Buckingham palace, she was a totally different person.”

Margaret Thatcher once regarded Nelson Mandela as a common terrorist, but she gets no unkind word from the former president. Instead, Mandela calls her “warm and motherly” and cleverly recounts an exchange he had with a prominent English politician to make a point about why she was called the Iron Lady: “When I saw Margaret Thatcher for the first time, we were supposed to have a meeting for one hour. Our meeting lasted for three hours and I had to offer an excuse. I then went to Neil Kinnock in parliament, and he was very excited. He says, ‘How is the Iron Lady?” I said, ‘She was warm and motherly.’ He says, ‘Warm and motherly? You must have met another lady.’”

Nelson Mandela had a fond place in his heart for politicians who supported the ANC’s fight during the apartheid years. Former French president Francois Mitterrand was one of them. “That one (Mitterrand) was good because we (ANC underground movement) used France as the gateway to Europe, because we were deliberate, because Mitterrand was a man who has fought the Germans, went underground and remained in his country and fought. And we reckoned that he understood our position (as the ANC) very well and we went there.”

He holds Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif in equally high regard for not bending to political pressure when the Brits questioned his decision to host Mandela when he was released from prison: “…The (British) High Commissioner went to Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister and gave a strong protest. They ignored him and said, ‘This is Pakistan, we are going to give him the treatment that he deserves,’ so he (the British High Commissioner) left in protest.”

Mandela was among the many international leaders who protested the war on Iraq. He publicly condemned the unilateral decision and is especially scathing about the two leaders at the forefront of the invasion: “The Security Council is free to go out and take unilateral action. They are undermining what Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed upon in 1941 because the idea of the United Nations comes from those two… (Tony Blair) really is humiliating Britain because Bush is really an arrogant chap.”

We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

Fans of HBO series like Game of Thrones have often expressed their disdain for not being able to legally watch the show on anything but the paid cable network. That's changing as HBO has made a deal for their series to be available on Google Play for the first time. 

The man who fell to Earth

I have a to-read backlog of more than 40 cocktails and spirits books in my house, and that's just the print ones. So while I haven't read the majority of these books released in 2013 yet, I want to list them all together in case you want to buy something for yourself or a liquor fan by the end of the year. Notable Cocktail and Spirits Books Published in 2013: The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks [link] [Alcademics review] The Art of the Shim: Low-Alcohol Cocktails to Keep You Level [link] American Whiskey, Bourbon & Rye: A Guide to the Nation’s Favorite Spirit [link] Under the Table: A Dorothy Parker Cocktail Guide [link] Shake: A New Perspective On Cocktails [link] Reasons Mommy Drinks [link] diffordsguide Cocktails: The Bartender's Bible, 11th Edition [link] Architecture of the Cocktail: Building the Perfect Cocktail from the Bottom Up [link] Handcrafted Cocktails: The Mixologist's Guide to Classic Drinks for Morning, Noon & Night [link] Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist [link] Cocktails for a Crowd: More than 40 Recipes for Making Popular Drinks in Party-Pleasing Batches [link] Cocktail Culture: Recipes & Techniques from Behind the Bar [link] The Cocktail...

[Visit Alcademics.com for the full post.]

Will we be fucking after we leave our bodies behind for cyber-heaven? Over at Steal this Singularity, futurist gadfly R.U. Sirius has a hilarious and smart essay about people who imagine we will transcend sex and random goofiness after the AIs take over.

Read more...

When the City Club of Portland released a report on bicycling in late May, much of the coverage—ours included— centered around some of the more sensational findings. For instance, the report's suggestion than an excise tax be levied on new bike purchases.

I actually found most of the report sort of predictable at the time. Bikes are good? They should be accepted and provided for in the urban landscape? Thanks, City Club.

Now I'm thinking I was wrong. There are some really interesting details in the report I glossed over the first time around. Mainly, an idea I'd not heard: Bike lanes are no longer going to help Portland attract new cyclists.

The change of heart was spurred by an e-mail sent out recently by Portland economist Robert McCullough. McCullough did a lot of the heavy data lifting for the City Club report, and he's about to present his findings further in a lunchtime talk tomorrow.

Relying heavily on numbers from the Hawthorne Bridge bike counter (as well as census data and Metro infrastructure tallies) McCullough's essentially concluded [pdf] Portland's gotten as much use of the handy paint stripes as its likely to get—at least where attracting new users is concerned.

Sure, the city's seen a bike boom in recent decades, McCullough says, but the strategies that got us here are no longer enough. We've reached a point of flattening growth on the "logistic curve" and things will be harder from here on out. Simply slapping paint on the side of a road, his data suggests, isn't going to push the city past the stubborn stagnation in cycling growth we've seen recently.

So what are we supposed to do, especially when the stated goal [pdf] is to have a quarter of all trips in Portland made by bicycle by 2030? (We're nowhere close.)

While it's interesting regular old bike lanes might not help, McCullough's solution isn't particularly jaw-dropping. He—along with about every bicycle advocate in the world, basically—thinks more "protected bike lanes" are the answer. These are stretches like NE Multnomah through the Lloyd District and SW Moody near the South Waterfront, where cycling paths are physically separated from car traffic.

Bike boulevards, the sleepy, velocipede-designated routes often adjacent to major thoroughfares, are good, too.

"Frankly, I'd put away the paintbrush," McCullough told me earlier today. "It’s better than nothing, but if we really wanted change behavior, we have to cater to the customer."

The line of thinking—and it seems obvious—is that people who are currently hesitant to use a normal bike lane may be willing to ride when they feel more protected. (McCullough suggested those demographics could include older folks and women, but I was thinking of Erik Henriksen, who is simply terrified of making the easy and short bike ride into work. He won't do it.)

It's a notion that jibes with the "four types of cyclists" you'll often hear mentioned. Nearly 70 percent of people could be convinced to ride a bike, that idea goes, but the overwhelming majority still see it as unsafe.

"You already have an entire group of 25-year-old white males (who'll ride anywhere)," McCullough said. "What we do know is there are other groups."

But as bikeportland.com pointed out only yesterday (and we've explored before), Portland's simply not pursuing many of these projects, at present.

That's a shame. They're money savers.

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Around the world, there are buildings that are decorated and built almost entirely with human bones. They form eerily symmetrical patterns, and turn death into an architectural flourish. These are some of the most remarkable.

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According to an investigation by The Washington Post, the National Security Agency is currently tracking the locations of hundreds of millions of cell phones worldwide belonging to both Americans and foreigners, with the agency collecting nearly 5 ...

JOHANNESBURG—Following the death of former South African president and civil rights leader Nelson Mandela today at the age of 95, sources confirmed that the revered humanitarian has become the first politician in recorded history to actually be miss...

While shooting in Portland, Ore., I got the pleasure of discovering Powell’s Books, an enormous old bookstore (which I hope still exists) and stayed there the entire day. I just curled up in a comfy chair and read. They had a cafe in the store that I frequented. What joy. I suppose it helped that it was a rainy day. Rain creates a Pavlovian response in me to relax with a good book. I find that peace at our beach house, and created a cozy nook just for that purpose. I admit that I am driven to work and have to remind myself that reading is not an indulgence or a luxury. I have to improve that aspect of my life.

Montreal Gazette

Canadian Press NewsAlert: Police heard allegations of Ford drug use on wiretaps Montreal Gazette TORONTO - Newly released documents say police overheard alleged gang members on wiretaps talking about delivering drugs to Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and having pictures of him using drugs, suggesting the images could be used for blackmail. and more »

An anonymous reader writes "I have been trying to make the move to the Seattle, WA area. I liked the weather, the nature, the scenery and the tech environment. However, for whatever reason it seems like interviews are hard to come by. As a MS Stack software developer in LA, I barely had to do anything and recruiters always come knocking, either via LinkedIn or from past connections. Not to mention in general I got phone interviews for easily .8 of the positions I applied for. I wanted to finally make the move and fulfill a live long dream to live in Seattle. So I have been applying for positions in the greater Seattle, WA (King County) area. So far the ratio of positions applied to phone interviews is a dismal .1. Which is terrible considering the economy was much worse when I was actively looking for job in LA. Something isn't right because I am still getting offers for interviews here in SoCal, but not much from where I really wanted to be. What could I be doing wrong? Why such a contrast? Is the IT market in Seattle in poor shape? Or may be I just lack the proper connections in a new area? Am I just being screened out immediately for not being local? Or is it the prevalence of bigger corporations vs. smaller startups? And frankly as nice as the city is I can't move unless there's a healthy IT market to thrive by. I hope someone can point me in the right direction."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Politico

Democratic Sen. Warren vows not to run for president in 2016 Fox News FILE: Tuesday Nov. 12, 2013: Senate Banking Committee member Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D- Mass. listens to testimony on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C.AP. ADVERTISEMENT. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren pledged Wednesday that she will not ... Democratic infighting erupts with squabble over entitlementsWashington Times Massachusetts: Warren Rules Out a Run for PresidentNew York Times Warren: 'I am not running for president'NECN Boston Globe -MSNBC -Politico all 113 news articles »

The term "techie," often used as shorthand for boomtown tech industry immigrants, is starting to carry negative connotations.