firehose

deviatesinc:

1909

The same day Shellie Zimmerman went on national TV to say her husband snubbed her after he was acquitted of murdering 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, Lake Mary police returned to the house the couple once shared to investigate a reported theft. Officer Zach Hudson late Thursday said Shellie Zimmerman's mother, Machelle Dean, who with her husband owns the home on Sprucewood Road, reported a theft. There were no reported signs of a break-in. In a press release distributed Friday, police said the items reported stolen included pieces of furniture and a television.

A series of indiscreet emails by a Florida police chief has revealed his belief that Trayvon Martin's killer George Zimmerman is a volatile character who is "a Sandy Hook waiting to happen". Steve Bracknell is the chief of the Lake Mary police department, which is investigating Zimmerman, 29, for allegedly threatening his estranged wife, Shellie, and his father-in-law with a gun on Monday. In an email exchange with a Lake Mary resident critical of the department's initial decision not to arrest or charge Zimmerman, Bracknell appears to agree with the writer's description of Zimmerman, acquitted in July of murdering Martin, an unarmed black teenager, as "a ticking time bomb".

No, I think that the number is actually just really small. It bothers me so much. I’ve looked and looked but I’ve only found a handful of African American women cartoonists. I haven’t even been able to wager a solid guess as to why we see so few black women doing comics.

It is obviously a cultural problem of some kind. In our kind of comics, there isn’t anybody to overtly prevent anyone from participating. There are no cultural gatekeepers to exclude or dissuade black women from participating in indie comics. So the question of why black women are not nearly as represented in indie comics seems to be a question of access or exposure.

This ties into my yelling about public comics such as newspaper strips, poster-comics and the like. If comics as an art form are contained to a cyclical ecosystem, we need to intentionally break comics out of that ecosystem. Explore new venues to put this work into the grasp of all people, everywhere. If some groups of people don’t frequent places where comics are found, then find those people and bring comics TO them.

That’s how I feel about what should be done to cultivate a more widespread interest. But I’m still terribly hazy on the initial question of how it came to be this way in the first place.

@darrylayo

The comics and pop culture site MTV Geek came to an abrupt end this afternoon with a short post titled simply “So Long and Thanks for All the Fish.” As a contributor to the site, as well as a reader (I frequently linked them in Comics A.M.), I’m not at all impartial about this: I’m [...]

Wood for Sheep: The Unauthorized Settlers Cookbook by Chris-Rachael Oseland of Kitchen Overlord is a cookbook full of recipes based on the board game Settlers of Catan. The book contains recipes for a biscuit bar, a waffle bar, and a breakfast taco bar designed after the game’s hexagonal board, as well as recipes — like Lamb, Rice, and Fig Pilaf, Settlement Pasta, and Grilled Rosemary and Cherry Tomato Road — based on in-game mechanics and resources. The book is available to purchase online at Amazon.

image via Chris-Rachael Oseland

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

I'm sports-illiterate, so forgive me if I mess this up: WNBA players Diana Taurasi and Seimone Augustus have known each other for a long time. They have an affectionate rivalry, since they play on opposing teams. In the below clip, you can see Augustus and Taurasi preparing to, uh, I don't know, block each other? Is that what basketball players do? When they get close, after a few pushes, Taurasi gives Augustus a kiss on the cheek. As men often do when women kiss in public places, the referee immediately injects himself into the equation. He calls them for fouls—double technicals, they're apparently called.

USA Today's Mike Foss notes that sports players touch each other all the time—on the ass, on the shoulders, on the hands, on the heads—and so the foul seems unnecessary to him, and to me. But what do I know? Sports!

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

TUCSON, AZ—Building on his recent winning streak of two almost correctly transcribed interviews and three basically right lede paragraphs, Arizona Daily Wildcat reporter Josh DeLuca completely knocked it out the park Friday with a story that ...

Five of the six papers published in support of yesterday's Mars water announcement required a paid subscription to Science to read. Citing Title 17 of the U.S. Code, which states federal works are not subject to copyright protection, Berkeley biologist Michael Eisen decided to make them freely available on his blog. Viva la revolución.

Read more...

pacopico writes "About 30 years ago, a young Marine and math savant named Ramona Pierson was out for a run when she got hit by a drunk driver and had her body shattered. As Businessweek reports, Pierson ended up in coma for 18 months, came out blind and emaciated and was sent to live in an old folks home. Her remarkable story takes off from there to include bike racing through Russia, a PhD in neuroscience, a stint fixing Seattle's public schools, and now Declara, a social network run by Pierson and funded by billioniare Peter Thiel, who put the original money into Facebook. One of the more original start-up tales to have ever come out of Silicon Valley or really anywhere."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For the weekend: a skull sits idly in the shallows of a briny lake, long since caked in the salt that saturates the waters.

Read more...

Historical Map: TriMet Bus System Map, Portland, Oregon, 1978

Not much use for route planning: this map was really made just to show how the routes that ran into the city centre were grouped into geographic regions and denoted by a colour and an icon. While stops along the transit mall are now marked with boring old letters, back then these cheery and oh-so-1970s symbols guided you to the bus stop you needed. Also very 1970s: the tightly-kerned Avant Garde typeface.

(Source: TriMet’s “How We Roll” blog)

Clothing retailer Forever 21 has introduced Bats & Cats, a limited-edition collection men’s and women’s apparel and accessories inspired by Batman and Catwoman. Created in partnership with Warner Bros. Consumer Products, the line’s pieces range from sweaters and a faux-leather backpack to T-shirts and a phone case. “We have been enthralled with the animal emergence [...]

Then the dream again!

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "CNN reports that Jared James Abrahams, a 19-year-old computer science student, has been arrested for allegedly hijacking the webcams of young women — among them reigning Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf — taking nude images, then blackmailing his victims to send him more explicit material or else be exposed. Abrahams admitted he had 30 to 40 'slave computers' — or other people's electronic devices he controlled — and has had as many as 150 total. His arrest came six months after a teenager identified in court documents as C.W. alerted authorities. She has since publicly identified herself as Cassidy Wolf, the recently crowned Miss Teen USA. Wolf received messages featuring pictures of her at her Riverside County address and others apparently taken months earlier when she lived in Orange County, says the criminal complaint (PDF). The message explained 'what's going to happen' if Wolf didn't send pictures or videos or 'do what I tell you to do' in a five-minute Skype videoconference, according to the criminal complaint. 'Either you do one of the things listed below or I upload these pics and a lot more (I have a LOT more and those are better quality) on all your accounts for everybody to see and your dream of being a model will be transformed into a pornstar (sic),' wrote Abrahams. FBI agents raided Abrahams' Temecula home in June and seized computers and hardware, cellphones and hacking software, court records show. Outside the court, Abrahams' lawyer, Alan Eisner, said that his client's family feels 'profound regret and remorse' over what happened. Eisner told CNN affiliate KTLA that Abrahams is autistic. 'The family wants to apologize for the consequences of his behavior to the families who were affected.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Work is being prepared to merge support into the XBMC multimedia software so that support for various emulated/retro gaming platforms can be played and presented directly within the XBMC software...

Japanese Twitter user Miya, m0m0_mysk, recently tweeted this photo of a classmate with a unique hairdo that looks like a woven net. Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku has dubbed the “hardly mainstream” hairstyle “Net Head.” Previously, we wrote about Japan’s cutting-edge “Ripe Tomato” hairstyle.

images via m0m0_mysk

via Kotaku

Christian Science Monitor

New Jersey judge orders state to allow gay marriage. Christie vows appeal. (+ ... Christian Science Monitor New Jersey's system of civil unions for same-sex couples is unconstitutional, a state judge ruled on Friday. Skip to next paragraph. Related stories. Gay marriage battlegrounds: 12 states to watch · Same-sex marriage: Pa. judge orders clerk to stop issuing ... Garden State Equality celebrates court's decisionNorthJersey.com Judge: Same-sex couples can marry in N.J.Philly.com Judge: New Jersey must allow same-sex weddingsColumbus Dispatch New York Times -Bend Bulletin -ABC News all 288 news articles »

We love stories here at SU&SD, and if there's one thing we like better than telling stories to our parents or the police, it's storytelling games! Enter Winter Tales, stage right. A game where players control familiar fairytale characters viewed through a dark, oil-streaked lens.

In this video we also find the time for a quick peek at gaming institution Once Upon a Time, which just recently received a gorgeous 3rd edition!

Which will win? The classic, or the newcomer? Or NEITHER? Or both! Such terrible tension! We'd click play and find out as soon as possible, if we were you.

Read More

Each week, Big Issues focuses on a newly released comic-book issue of significance. This week, it’s FF #11. Written by Lee Allred (Solo) and drawn by Michael Allred (X-Statix, Madman), this issue brings two brothers (and a sister-in-law) together to continue the wildly fun adventures of Marvel’s most unconventional family.

After relaunching companion titles Fantastic Four and FF for Marvel Now!, writer Matt Fraction announced last month that he would be leaving both books because the time commitment for his new Inhuman series proved to be greater than anticipated. (It probably doesn’t help that he’s also working on two new creator-owned series for Image, Sex Criminals and Ody-C.) Working from Fraction’s plot outlines, new writers would handle the scripts, with Fantastic Four veteran Karl Kesel returning to that title to continue Fraction’s enjoyable but standard story. FF is a far more distinctive and stylish ...

Read more

"I can go through $100 in a few days. In a week," Leo said. "But he told me I could have a laptop and learn how to do something and I figured it could turn into something more." He gestured to the city surrounding us. "It's not like I don't have the time to learn to do it."

As every network rushes to claim its own Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. competitor about the ordinary, and therefore easier-to-put-on-TV people in a comic book world, NBC has set its sights on Constantine as a potential drama series. Building a comics-based supernatural procedural around John Constantine—a cynical con artist and magician who’s reluctantly drawn into playing the role of a demon-slaying detective (possibly because he keeps wearing that trenchcoat)—seems an obvious, if a bit redundant choice for NBC, given that it already has a supernatural procedural about a demon-slaying detective in Grimm. Still, Constantine comes preloaded with a built-in fanbase and a deep comic-book mythology that can be easily ignored by David S. Goyer, who’s partnering to write and executive produce alongside The Mentalist’s David Cerone.

Of course, it also comes saddled with the droopy baggage of Keanu Reeves, whose portrayal (even ...

Read more

Pearl Jam will release a new album, Lightning Bolt, on October 15, and the attendant promotional blitz began a few weeks ago with the release of the rollicking "Mind Your Manners." But what does the sorta anti-video band do for visuals in a post-video age? Apparently they ask noted photographer Danny Clinch to film slightly awkward interviews with famous PJ fans and then intersperse those with new music and off-the-cuff conversations. The resulting short film features brief interactions with director Judd Apatow, rocker/actor Carrie Brownstein, former New Orleans Saint Steve Gleason, and, naturally, a surfing champ guy. It's not terribly revealing (when is Pearl Jam ever terribly revealing?), but it does feature live snippets of a bunch of Lightning Bolt songs. If you've got nine minutes or any portion thereof, the video is below.

Read more

Linguist John McWhorter explains how constructed languages (conlangs) like Elvish in The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones‘ Dothraki, Na’vi from Avatar, and Klingon in Star Trek are complete languages and explores what they have in common with real languages in this educational animation by Enjoyanimation.

video via TEDEd

via Boing Boing

The Software Engineer at Orchestra is responsible for designing, coding, documenting, and testing .Net/SQL Server based applications for our craft brewery and petroleum industry software. In this role, you will be working on projects that range from our beer production scheduler to systems integration of third party APIs, as well as on the core Orchestra applications.

hic - Biomotor Unitron (Yumekobo - Neo Geo Pocket Color - 1999)

#when steve harvey gets mortified at contestants and they turn out to be dead on and then his mortification redirects to america it is literally THE GREATEST THING TO EVER EXIST ON TELEVISION

Interview: Selena Deckelmann, Co-Founder of Flux Female Hacker Collective:

Selena Deckelmann has spent her career working in tech—usually as the only one in the room with two X chromosomes. As an open-source code writer, she’s experienced condescension from men and s,News Stories

Selena Deckelmann has spent her career working in tech—usually as the only one in the room with two X chromosomes.

As an open-source code writer, she’s experienced condescension from men and seen other women suffer worse. As a blogger, she’s been outspoken about the importance of her work—“people who understand and create software have power,” she wrote last year—and how women are too often excluded from this world.

Her experiences have led Deckelmann, a 36-year-old raised in Montana, to help create Flux, Portland’s first feminist hackerspace—a place where women can be creative in a testosterone-free environment.

Deckelmann spoke with WW about carving out a new subculture in Portland and why her creative space isn’t just a “no boys allowed” zone.

WW: What is a “hackerspace”? 

Selena Deckelmann: Like a shop class for adults. There is an electronics setup with a soldering iron and a light box. We have members who are artists, and others who write code. Other folks who would like to have a set of larger tools, like a mill and a lathe. 

Why do we need a feminist hackerspace? 

If you look at who runs the hacker- and makerspaces, it is mostly men. If you look at who dominates startups, it’s mostly men. If you look at who writes open-source software, it’s about 98 percent men. The creation of these spaces is a reaction to some terrible experiences that women have had in our industry: either threats, or they’re attacked.

Are men allowed to join Flux? 

The goal is to create a community that is very welcoming to non-men. But men are not excluded. About half the organizers are men. 

Why did technology become your passion? 

I had an uncle who taught me Morse code. I didn’t really use computers in high school. In college, I met some folks who taught me how to put together my first computer. They were very determined, and they helped me buy a CPU and a motherboard and all the parts. They were like, “Here, now put it together.”

I installed Linux on it. Within six months I had a job in the law school at the University of Oregon as a sysadmin. My boss quit, and I was a sophomore in charge of the law school’s computers.

What are the stereotypes you’ve experienced about women in tech?

I don’t feel there are very many stereotypes about the women in the tech field, because there are so few women. So hardly any stereotypes have developed. People often assume women are not capable or that they are not interested.

What has your experience been working in such a male-dominated industry? 

I’ve been fired. I think being fired is the worst thing. I had no woman colleagues that I have worked with in open-source. That’s part of the reason why I run the PyLadies meetups.

What is that?

Women in my PyLadies group come in trying to write their first Python [an open-source programming language] program. Having someone who can be helpful and encouraging while they’re trying something for the first time is a very different experience than being alone, or being taught by someone who is condescending or discouraging. It takes a concerted effort to be helpful.

Is it less intimidating for women to have a woman teaching? 

As a woman who is sort of aggressive, and intimidating, and scares the crap out of my co-workers and colleagues, I’ve had to learn the very hard way. A lot of women are conditioned to be more nurturing. For better or worse, I am not one of them. I have learned how to be better at that.

Women involved in technology have a different experience. They have to make that happen for themselves. It’s not like someone is going to do it for you.

There is some empathy there from a shared difference. You’re not part of the predominant culture. So you have to make your own culture.