firehose

sexincomics:

"Several people have commented on the letter about Kate going to bed with Marvel Boy. A tricky one to respond to. I did several drafts before eventually getting down to something that could be printed, and even that was taken down a gear, because there’s limits to what you can say in a Marvel Letters page, y’know?

But if going to bed with a guy you’ve hit it off with on the first night makes you dislikeable, that’s you insulting the vast majority of women who I’ve ever known.

That makes me angry in a distinctly unprintable way.” - Kieron Gillen

Cinelerra, one of the popular open-source video editors and compositors for Linux, hadn't seen an official update since July of 2012 but pushed this week was a source package for their next major release...

gone flat - Pepsiman (KID - PSX - 1999)

requested by chris-quinn

How an aircraft carrier is resupplied in transit. Video by plokiju, from Live Leak.

maptitude1:

This map shows the locations of notable events and journeys on Tatooine, a fictional planet from Star Wars.

Oh, the Jacksonville JAGUARS? That makes a lot more sense. We were over here celebrating the stabbing of of a Sumerian goddess:

At this point, the flag folks should just keep jumbling themselves and pretend it was intentional. We should see "SARA JUG" and "A RUGS JA" at some point.

This movie is not much worse than Gravity. And it was released five months after the Challenger disaster!

Original Source

Drag Race contestants walk LA fashion week for Marco Marco [x]

danielleguizioactually:

Real life Mummy Unwrapping Parties held in the 1850’s

Uh-oh: airlines ordering new Dreamliner 787s and Airbus A330s are asking to have them fitted with 16.7"-wide coach seats, a new low for long-haul travel. These are planes intended for intercontinental flights -- six to 14 hours! -- and they're shaving the armrests, squeezing the seats, and otherwise cramming in ways that beggar the imagination. The airlines say it'll all be OK -- they'll just distract you from your terrible circumstances with big meals and TV.

Of the airlines that have bought Boeing Co.'s new 787 Dreamliner—a model touted as improving passenger comfort—90% have selected nine-abreast seating in coach over roomy eight-abreast. And 10 airlines around the world now fly narrower Airbus A330 jetliners with nine 16.7-inch seats in each row—among the tightest flying—rather than the eight it was designed for, according to the unit of European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. EADSY +2.04%

The new trend in economy seating reverses a half century of seat growth in economy class. Early jet planes like Boeing's 707 had 17-inch seats, a dimension based on the width of a U.S. Air Force pilot's hips, says Airbus marketing chief Chris Emerson.

That standard for long-haul flying increased to 18-inches in the 1970s and 1980s with the 747 jumbo and the first Airbus jets. It widened to 18.5 inches with the Boeing 777 in the 1990s and A380 superjumbo in the 2000s. Now, cost-conscious airlines are moving to lighter 17-inch-wide seats on their Boeing 777 and 787 Dreamliners and 18-inch seats for A350s.

The Incredible Shrinking Plane Seat [Jon Ostrower and Daniel Michaels/WSJ]

(via Naked Capitalism)

funny-gifs-videos:

(via Worldwide Woofs and Other Animal Sounds Illustrated in Different Languages)

While we've seen lots of remixes of Disney princesses—princesses dressed as the Doctors, as Sith Lords, as their princes, and more—but David J Prokopetz is flipping that artistic script, collecting drawings of Wolverine in gowns worthy of a singing princess.

Read more...

The internet, with its capacity to connect people from afar, has just met its touch-based analog. It’s called Bond, and though it’s still at the crowd-funding stage, it’s so simple it just might work. Bond is a small, white rectangle, and when you touch it, it causes its companion Bond to vibrate, wherever it is in the world.

Most wearable devices fail because, like Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smart watch, they try to do too much. The most successful, by volume at least, are activity trackers, which require only that a person wear them.

Bond is in the same mold. It works by connecting wirelessly to an iPhone or Android smartphone, and its makers claim that despite its tiny size, it will have a 7 day battery life. Bond has two modes: In one, touching it causes its companion Bond to vibrate, letting the wearer of the companion Bond feel a small vibration—the touch equivalent of a text.

But Bond has a second capability that may ultimately prove even more interesting: It’s possible to switch off Bond’s ability to send vibrations to someone else, and simply use Bond as a way to log exactly what you are feeling at any point in time or space. Touching Bond for one second logs a positive emotion, while touching it for five seconds logs a negative emotion, and it’s possible to log any emotion between those two states simply by touching it for between one and five seconds.

The result is an “emotional heat map” of the world, one you can keep private or share with everyone and anyone. Perhaps a corner restaurant has exceptionally good or bad service—the way patrons feel at that spot could be logged by Bond as surely as it’s rated on Yelp. Bond is made by four affiliated engineers and designers who are part of KwameCorp, which is also contributing to a device called FairPhone, which claims to be the world’s first environmentally and socially responsible smartphone. Currently, KwameCorp is shaking the cup for Bond on Indiegogo.

After nearly five years of planning, a large-scale attempt to turn a big chunk of Detroit into an urban forest is now underway. The purchase of more than 1,500 vacant city-owned lots on the city's lower east side – a total of more than 140 acres – got final approval from Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder last week.

The buyer is Hantz Farms, and it's a venture of financier John Hantz, who lives in the nearby Indian Village neighborhood. Indian Village is an affluent enclave of manor-scale historic homes, but much of the surrounding area is blighted. Hantz Farms will pay more than $500,000 for the land, which consists of non-contiguous parcels in an area where occupied homes are increasingly surrounding by abandoned properties.

The company has committed to clearing 50 derelict structures, cleaning up the garbage dumped across the neighborhood, planting 15,000 trees, and mowing regularly. Planting of the hardwoods will begin in earnest next fall, and the urban forest will be called Hantz Woodlands.

The area that will become the Hantz Woodlands. Photo by Joseph Murphy/Bassett & Bassett

The huge deal drew criticism last year, when the city council – which was then still in control of Detroit – voted 5-4 to approve the sale. A coalition of grassroots urban farmers and community activists opposed it, charging that it was a play to increase land values in Indian Village by buying a huge swath of acreage and taking it off the market. "I think it opens the gateway for other rich folks to come here to buy up land and essentially make themselves rich compounds," urban gardener Kate Devlin told The Huffington Post at the time.

John Hantz agrees. But he thinks that's a good thing. As he told The Atlantic back in 2010:

[T]here’s no reason to buy real estate in Detroit—every year, it just gets cheaper. We’ve gone from 2 million people to 800,000. There are over 200,000 abandoned parcels of land and—by debatable estimates—30,000 acres of abandoned property. We need to create scarcity, because until we get a stabilized market, there’s no reason for entrepreneurs or other people to start buying. I thought, What could do that in a positive way? What’s a development that people would want to be associated with? And that’s when I came up with a farm.

And officials from Hantz Farms argue the city will benefit in other ways as well. As soon as the sale is final, probably some time in the next week or two, Hantz Farms will begin paying property taxes on land that has been off the revenue rolls for years, says Hantz Farms President Mike Score. He also points out that most of the lots have been up for auction at least twice without attracting interest, and that residents of the area were offered the right of first refusal to buy plots adjacent to their homes.

Conditions in the neighborhood, Score says, have been dire, with overgrown sidewalks, piles of refuse, feral dogs, and no streetlights. "Most of the sidewalks aren’t fit to walk on," he says. "I've actually physically cried before, going to work in the dark, seeing mothers walking their kids to school through unmanaged brush and shoulder-high weeds. To go in there and take away most of the danger from the landscape is so satisfying."

"The purpose of the investment is to make the neighborhood more livable and then recover our investment over time."

Score adds that Hantz Farms has already begun mowing about half the property and cleaning up years of trash. And the response his team has gotten from local residents, he says, has been positive. "We’re out every day, and we have yet to meet the first angry neighbor," he says.

He tells a story about a group of residents who asked his mowers to clear a sidewalk so kids could walk safely. After the grass was mowed, Score says, people came out to rake and sweep the clippings aside. Not long after, he noticed a family putting a new roof on a nearby home that he had thought might be destined for abandonment. "That’s the kind of effect we want to see," he says.

Score says that the first phase of planting will be hardwood trees such as maple and oak, planted in straight rows. The Hantz properties will not be fenced, and streets will remain open for passage. After the property is fully cleared, at a cost he estimates at more than $600,000, Score says the company will explore commercial options that might provide jobs for local residents such as orchards, maple syrup, and the cultivation of ornamental plants and shrubbery. For now, he says, his team is working on building trust with neighbors so that when it comes time to discuss subjects such as pesticide use, there's already a relationship.

Score isn’t shy about emphasizing that this is not merely a philanthropic project. "This is designed to be a for-profit enterprise," he says. "I can assure you we have a business plan and we don’t have any anxiety about achieving our goals. We’re entrepreneurs, and that’s really our problem to wrestle with. The purpose of the investment is to make the neighborhood more livable and then recover our investment over time, and we’re very confident we can do that."

In the short term, Score says he thinks the Hantz project will quickly prove its value to Detroit residents.

“We’re going to do this in four years,” he says.  "After that we’re going to grow by demand. People I think are going to be saying, we don’t have to live like this anymore. I think we’re going to be growing for a long time."

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greencrook:

greencrook:

My uni students asked me if they had homework for the holidays and I felt so bad for them and their tired, dead eyes that I told them to just mail me pics of their favorite pokemons.  

Three students sent me digimons I can’t fucking trust them with anything I give up

Although she'd had a long, busy career before she started working on The Simpsons in 1990—including, most notably, a high-profile role as the secretary on The Bob Newhart Show in the '70s—Marcia Wallace will likely be forever known as Edna Krabappel, the weary, cynical, but good-hearted teacher and foil of Bart Simpson.

The Emmy-winning actor, comedian, and writer died last night of complications from breast cancer, according to Deadline, a week shy of her 71st birthday. It was a disease she had fought for nearly 30 years, having first been diagnosed with it in 1985. 

As she detailed in her frank 2004 memoir, Don't Look Back, We're Not Going That Way!, Wallace faced numerous struggles before finding success in show business: Growing up in Iowa, she endured physical abuse, with alcoholic father and a mother that "really didn't like me all that much," she ...

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Banksy in NY

Former Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Freddie Mitchell is the latest player to come out and talk about the effect concussions have had on his life since his career ended.

Mitchell was convicted of a tax fraud scheme that could carry a 10-year prison sentence, according to Philly.com. But in court this week, Mitchell said that the memory loss he suffered as a result of multiple concussions during his NFL career may have led to his behavior.

Mitchell took full responsibility for his actions but noted that he often has to use notepads to remember things and doesn't sleep a lot due to painful headaches. His girlfriend testified that he often loses track of his thoughts during a conversation.

According to Philly.com, the court records indicate that Mitchell could serve 37 to 46 months in prison. His lawyers are requesting that Mitchell receive probation and community service due to his condition.

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haven’t used gelatin in a long long time and trying to remember how to work with it in combination with latex