The first female motorbike messengers for the aircraft industry are these silken-clad misses who speed inter-organization communications from Los Angeles headquarters to the three Timm plants. All professional riders, left to right—Chief Messenger Phyllis Domich, Dora “Babe” Duncan, and Janet Spangenberg. They are posed outside the W. M. Garland Building.
Historical Map: New York IRT Sytem Baseball Season Opening Map, 1923
A simple little map from “The Elevated Express” gazette showing the convenience of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company’s services to “all three parks” — Ebbets Field (Brooklyn Dodgers), Polo Grounds (New York Giants) and Yankee Stadium (New York Yankees).
The last stadium is of particular interest as this is the year that it opened — the first game at Yankee Stadium was held April 18th, 1923 against the Boston Red Sox. According to the New York Evening Telegram, “everything smelled of … fresh paint, fresh plaster and fresh grass.”
(Source: Quickdriver27/Flickr)
Incredible Cosplay
In his ongoing series of portraits titled Just the Two of Us, photographer Klaus Pitchler gained access to the homes of Austrian costume play (cosplay) enthusiasts where he photographed the elaborately costumed individuals against the backdrops of their everyday life. Artist statement:
Who hasn’t had the desire just to be someone else for awhile? Dressing up is a way of creating an alter ego and a second skin which one’s behaviour can be adjusted to. Regardless of the motivating factors which cause somebody to acquire a costume, the main principle remains the same: the civilian steps behind the mask and turns into somebody else. ’Just the Two of Us’ deals with both: the costumes and the people behind them.
While the costumes are incredible, terrifying, and laughable, it’s the strange juxtaposition of ordinary home life and the unknown identities of each individual that create such great images. See much more here. All images courtesy Klaus Pichler.
Let us first hope that the (wo)man who plays Rocky, the Denver Nuggets' mountain lion mascot, is in good health. Let us then hope that no children at the Pepsi Center for the Nuggets' home opener on Friday were permanently scarred by watching Rocky get lowered from the rafters via a harness while completely lifeless, only to collapse on the floor and be taken off the court.
From Denver's ABC affiliate:
The plan was for Rocky to be lowered in a harness, with a spotlight on him, just before the home opener.
Fans were horrified when a lifeless Rocky was lowered to the center court where he immediately collapsed. The spotlight was quickly turned off.
The team says the actor who plays Rocky had the wind knocked out of him/her. What an awfully scary situation. You can see a quick glimpse of what Nuggets fans saw in this capture from Altitude Sports' coverage of the game (via Point Forward).
This tweet from the arena says it all.
Nuggets mascot was just lowered from the ceiling limp and then just laid down on the floor. Wat pic.twitter.com/3RgWLV4i4c
— Dane Carbaugh (@danecarbaugh) November 2, 2013
Between this episode and Pierre the Pelican's terrifying debut, it's been a dark week for mascots.
Based on news like this, the drone economy of the future can seem like it’s just around the corner, but don’t get carried away: Bloomberg reports that venture capitalist Tim Draper, backer of startups like Skype and Baidu, recently backed software startup DroneDeploy, a land mapping software technology firm for unmanned commercial drones. In just the first nine months of 2013, investors poured $40.9 million into startups working on commercial drone applications.
Draper told reporters in an email that, “Everything from pizza delivery to personal shopping can be handled by drones.”
The idea isn’t inconceivable. Last year, Domino’s Pizza UK and marketing firm T+biscuits attracted attention with their Domicopter video, which features an eight-rotored remote-control helicopter, taking a 10-minute flight over picturesque Guildford, UK to deliver two pizzas.
While the stunt showed that it’s possible to deliver pizza by drones, here are five reasons why mainstreaming the practice still isn’t feasible:
A remote controlled “octocopter” similar to the Domicopter (the Cinestar 8) costs between $8,000 and $11,000. Add another $500-$1,200 for a remote control. And that’s not counting the salary of the remote control pilot and her training. Drones like the Domicopter, although technically “unmanned,” aren’t autonomous. Autonomy would require the additional expense of GPS and autopilot technologies. What’s more, the cost of insuring/replacing a drone damaged by, say, weather, vandalizing Luddites or teenage delinquents could be considerable.
Various configurations of the helicopters, from Quadrocopter and Aerobot, have maximum operating ranges from the operator of 250 to 500 meters (800-1,600 feet). Boosting that range to 1,000 meters costs another $2,200. Current battery technologies only support reported flight times of 8 to 15 minutes. And don’t forget about the return trip!
Most of these machines were designed to carry cameras, not pizzas. Mid-range payload capacities hover around four pounds—not nearly enough for two pizzas—even in perfectly calm skies. Two large pizzas weigh closer to six pounds.
One of the enormous business advantages of running a pizza franchise in the US is hiring cheap contract labor to do deliveries. Domino’s Pizza is not liable for the health insurance or incidental murder of a delivery person on the job. In practice, although franchise owners can be found liable for automotive damages caused by their drivers, insurance costs are most often punted to the drivers. If pizza companies used drones, they could be liable for damages caused by malfunctioning drones should they fall from the sky.
While commercial drones are currently legal in Europe in specialized cases (for instance, for use in film production), a rationale will have to be developed to regulate their use if they proliferate. In the US, concerns about airspace security and privacy will keep the technology illegal until 2015, the deadline set by the US Federal Aviation Administration to outline legal parameters for their use.
arena - Biomotor Unitron (Yumekobo - Neo Geo Pocket Color - 1999)
firehosevia multitasksuicide
firehosevia saucie
Here’s something you may not know: You can make vinegar from just about any sugary liquid. Sweet tea, fruit juice, even soda—with time and a little bit of effort, they’ll all transform. And before supermarkets brought Heinz and other big brands to the masses, people across the country brewed vinegar at home.
At Comfort, in Richmond, Virginia, chef de cuisine Travis Milton is bringing back a delicious tradition with vinegars made from locally grown ingredients such as turnip greens, tomatoes, and honeydew melon. He isn’t just drawing from the garden, either. Milton glazes wings with a barbecue sauce made from Mountain Dew vinegar, and bakes homemade Cheerwine vinegar into a pie that harks back to the days when Appalachian cooks, lacking citrus, substituted a more common ingredient with a similar bite.
(Photographs by Margaret Houston)
Milton’s vinegar pie, which he tops with a dollop of corncob jelly cream, is a popular dessert at Comfort. His recipe for Cheerwine vinegar makes enough for a season’s worth of pies—with plenty left over for other projects. And if you’re not a fan of Cheerwine, there’s no reason why you can’t use a different soda. Mountain Dew vinaigrette, anyone?
Cheerwine Vinegar Pie
From Travis Milton, Comfort, Richmond, Virginia
Pie Crust
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/8 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. sugar
½ cup cornmeal*
2 tbsp. lard
½ cup butter, cut into small pieces
½ cup chilled buttermilk
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
Combine flour, salt, sugar, and cornmeal together, and sift into a large mixing bowl. Add lard and work it into the dry ingredients with your fingers until it is well incorporated. Repeat with butter, and then transfer the contents of the bowl to a food processor.
Pulse the ingredients 3-4 times, or until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Return the mixture to the bowl, add buttermilk and cider vinegar, and stir until it begins to form a dough. Then knead the dough into a coherent shape, folding it over itself in order to give the crust a layered, flaky texture.
Transfer the dough to a floured surface, and roll it into a circle 12-13 inches in diameter and about 1/8-inch thick. Lightly flour the top of the crust and carefully roll it onto the rolling pin. Unroll it over a 9-inch pie pan, crimp the edges, and dot the base with a knife 8-10 times. Refrigerate until ready to use.
Pie Filling
3 tbsp. cornmeal*
1/8 tsp. salt
1¾ cup sugar
3 whole eggs and 2 yolks, beaten together
¼ cup buttermilk
¼ cup Cheerwine vinegar
1/3 cup melted unsalted butter
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Sift cornmeal, salt, and sugar together into a large mixing bowl. Then gently whisk in eggs. Once the eggs are thoroughly incorporated, add buttermilk, vinegar, and butter.
Pour custard mixture into an unbaked pie crust and bake for 40-45 minutes, or until a medium-brown crust has formed on top and the pie has slightly less jiggle than Jello. Let cool and enjoy.
*Milton uses coarse sorghum flour instead of cornmeal. If you can find it, it adds extra flavor to both the crust and the filling.
firehosehey saucie
Like so many diamonds and angry Creepers, the people behind the Xbox 360 iteration of Minecraft have once again unearthed something unexpected: an upcoming DLC pack full of content drawn from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.Continue reading Minecraft Xbox 360 digs up Skyrim-themed DLC
Minecraft Xbox 360 digs up Skyrim-themed DLC originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 01 Nov 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
firehosemost unnecessary map ever
firehose'The Birches have said they aim to make the Battery a place "where inspiration is embraced, diverse communities come together and egos are checked at the door.” '
By Adi Robertson and Russell Brandom
As with Hurricane Sandy, the Boston Marathon bombings, and countless other major stories, news of today's shooting at the Los Angeles International Airport was sometimes muddled with misinformation. A hoax tweet led The Globe and Mail to report that outspoken ex-NSA head Michael Hayden had been shot and killed by a "radical Christian group," and an errant LA Times story spread news that the shooter had been a TSA employee, and that he had been shot dead — both claims that were later refuted. But while it's a truism that the world of fast-paced Twitter sound bites have created a powerful but dangerous broadcasting tool, today's games of telephone raise a fairly simple question: how do you organize a coherent story from small, nebulous, or outright incorrect bursts of information?
NBC put out a six-word breaking story, and an audience spread it
Unlike many other cases, the issue here wasn't Twitter's anarchic feed of citizen journalism. If anyone was posting from police scanners or speculating about the identity of the shooter online, it wasn't being repeated by major news outlets. The most egregious blunder, that of The Globe and Mail, was the result of a hoax — and, in retrospect, an extraordinarily obvious one. The outlet picked up a tweet from @HeadlineNews, an account that aped the logo, color scheme, and name of Breaking News. But the account had only one tweet and, at the time of this screenshot, somewhat under 3,000 followers. The identity and purported death of the shooter, meanwhile, was spread by traditional reporting operating on fast-forward. The LA Times reported erroneous information from a source, and other outlets picked it up. NBC put out a six-word breaking story, and an audience spread it.
There's a lot of noise when there should be signal
Short of waiting for an official account hours after the fact, there's no way to absolutely weed out misinformation in breaking news. The problem is that there still seems to be no foolproof, widely accepted best practice for correcting it. Hours after initial reports were refuted, they're still percolating through Twitter. As of this writing, The LA Times' @LANow hasn't deleted the tweet reporting the shooter worked for the TSA and was killed, although it's since retracted both claims. The same goes for CNBC, Vanity Fair, and countless other, smaller outlets. NBC's announcement that the shooter had been killed has 429 retweets; the correction has a little over 100. It would be easy enough to delete the false information, pulling it out of those 429 different user streams, but for whatever reason, it hasn't happened. The result is a chaotic view of what is by now a relatively established set of facts. Even from professional news organizations, there's a lot of noise where there should be signal.
Though it's most obvious on Twitter, this is a thorny issue to navigate with any realtime online news reporting, whatever the medium or the location (here included). Breaking stories are written as they happen, then often rewritten as official accounts, and the process isn't seamless. Reading early online coverage is like watching five hours of breaking TV news in ten minutes; preliminary reports stick around even as they're superseded, and after enough time, it becomes hard to tell when you've tuned in to any one outlet. That doesn't mean the system is inherently broken. The most foolproof online solution right now may be the liveblog, which leaves a chronologically accurate paper trail but privileges up-to-date information. But ultimately, the problem isn't that things can go wrong: It's that we still don't know how to manage when they do.
firehosenever go
While most libraries around the country are doing their best to remain relevant, one Texas town has decided to speed up its library's demise by threatening to arrest residents who don't return books on time.
A recently passed ordinance in Copperas Cove allows courts to issue arrest warrants for library patrons who have had a book checked out for over 90 days and have not responded to requests — by phone, email, or otherwise — to return the book.
Jory Enck was arrested last week after he was found to be in possession of a GED study guide that was checked out in 2010.
Municipal judge Bill Price told KWTX the law was passed because Copperas Cove was "spending a tremendous amount of money replacing these materials that people just didn't return."
Price acknowledged that there was "universal hatred" for the law among locals because "nobody wants to get arrested over a library book."
Which is apparently something that is happening "quite frequently," according to Sgt. Julie Lehmann of the Copperas Cove Police Department.
She told Yahoo News that her fellow officers are not "actively out there going after these felony book thieves," but often a run of someone's driver's license during a traffic stop will bring up a "library warrant."
As for Enck, KWTX reports that he returned his overdue book the day after he was released from jail on a $200 bond.
firehoseWE ON THE INNERNET
firehose'Eggers's answer -- he told the New York Times recently that he'd basically done zero research for the book -- isn't necessarily satisfying, and it only served as fuel for the review fire: Eggers, it seemed, had gotten mostly everything just so... wrong. Wired's review of the book even carries the headline, "what the internet looks like if you don't understand it." '
Posted by Laura June on November 1, 2013 07:58 pm
Dave Eggers's is a critically acclaimed novelist and founder of the incredibly popular and influential McSweeney's brand, which includes a literary journal, a magazine, and a publishing arm. He's won many awards, including those for his last novel, 2012's A Hologram for the King, was a finalist for the National Book Award.
But he's not known for writing about... technology. He's probably never written a gadget review, he doesn't rage against the machine the way his peer Jonathan Franzen has been known to, and he doesn't even have a Twitter account, as far as I can tell.
Which is why The Circle seems to have caught many in the technology community off guard. 'How,' we seemed to be asking amongst ourselves, 'could this outsider know anything about how the internet works? About how a company like Facebook or Google operates on the inside, without even asking any of us?'
It's a valid question, but Eggers's answer -- he told the New York Times recently that he'd basically done zero research for the book -- isn't necessarily satisfying, and it only served as fuel for the review fire: Eggers, it seemed, had gotten mostly everything just so... wrong. Wired's review of the book even carries the headline, "what the internet looks like if you don't understand it."
So, that's what we're here to talk about: is Eggers wrong? Can you be wrong in a novel about a fantasy company in an imaginary world, especially if you're not a genre writer? Eggers writes literary fiction, so, does it matter that his imagining of a behemoth company isn't "like reality?" Isn't that the point -- that he made it up? And if we don't like what he made up, why not?
Does it bother us that his fantasy company -- The Circle -- Envisions a somewhat nefarious corporation that knows everything about you and owns all of your data? Why does it bother us? Over-simplified? A dated paradigm?
Is The Circle a good read, or a bad one? Is it boring or fun?
What is up with this book?
***
The Circle was featured on our Fall Reading List.
Join the Verge Book Club forum here.
We're finishing up Stephen King's Doctor Sleep right now.
You can join our Goodreads group here.
firehose#soundstudies
I love this review by discovergames of Arranger for iOS. Note: It’s not a new game, but it’s worth playing.-LT
A breath of fresh air in gameplay, aesthetics and concept
As you may have noticed, I have a bit of a thing for games that make music a central and interesting part of the experience. So when I heard about a quirky adventure game/RPG-lite, made by a musician and first-time developer, where you “battle” by arranging songs and using instruments to literally hit the pleasure centers of giant brains and bring joy to the world, I was immediately intrigued. When I realized it was only $0.99 and I could carry it around in my pocket, I was sold.
Arranger was built by a single person, and it’s packed with the kind of weirdness and singular charm that once accompanied early Nintendo games, but now is found exclusively in mobile and indie PC games. It’s colorful, silly, unique and - most of all - absolutely joyful. It’s a game that never, throughout its handful of hours, stops being charming and fun.
firehose#twopeopleinvermont
firehose'The YeDashians say Hurley "tagged along" with a friend who was invited, he was only permitted to stay after both signing a confidentiality agreement and posing with the signed copy—a humiliating photo of which is attached.
Echoing a Valleywag post from May, team Kanye points out that Hurley's post-YouTube ventures have all been duds, and that uploading a prized celeb engagement was a surefire means of promoting MixBit.'
