firehose

by @itsomp

Exploring post-Soviet architectural oddities by Frank Herfort via CNN

One day after presenting a six-point, low-cost plan to address homelessness in front of Portland City Council, and two days after he was the victim in a brawl outside city hall, one of the leaders of what's been a nearly two-year-old homelessness protest at the city's front door has announced that he and other advocates are pulling their support.

The statement came from Mike Withey, who'd been in contact with Mayor Charlie Hales' office in recent days to discuss his plan for addressing homelessness. It says the protest has become too unsafe—something closer to a chaotic, unmanaged camp—and that bad headlines associated with it are hurting the protest's overall cause.

The "vigil to end the camping ban" that has lasted nearly 2 years, has been unsuccessful. At this time, the organizers of the protest are not able to gather support from those in attendance, to participate in the protest in any fashion. In fact, those at Terry Schrunk Plaza and Chapman Square have perpetrated violence and intimidation on camping ban protestors, driving them away. The few organizers left, have decided that this "protest" is no longer a safe or peaceful place to protest homelessness. We feel that our message of safe sleep has been diminished to such a degree that it is having the opposite effect on public support for our cause. Therefore, I am sorry to say that I (and others) am withdrawing my support for the "vigil to end the camping ban" and will no longer participate in that action. However, we will continue to vigorously fight for the homeless cause and utilize all legal means to bring safety, comfort and hope to those terribly effected by the loss of their homes, no matter the cause.

It's unclear what the real effect of Withey and others leaving might be. The protest, since displaced to Chapman Square, and now Terry D. Schrunk Plaza, has amassed its own gravity in recent months. Others will likely keep flying the protest flag.

But having senior organizers declare an end to the protest—organizers who have built relationships with guards and cops and rangers and city officials and also provided some stability—could provide the police and city hall with more leverage when it comes to attempts to clear campers away once and for all.

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“I’d give real money if he’d shut up.”

- Leonard McCoy, on grandiose villains (Star Trek VI)

crueluncle:

Townes van Zandt making a whiskey coke in his mouth.

RoboCop (1987) // Paul Verhoeven

coondoggie writes "What might have started out a whimsical protest against government surveillance tactics has morphed into more as a small town in Colorado has found itself overwhelmed with requests and cash for a unmanned aircraft hunting license that doesn't exist."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Or, more accurately, you want to buy several, along with the pain elemental, and then attach them to a mobile over a baby's crib, thus making that child impervious to any fear once the colonization of Mars begins within its lifetime.

Other option: Dangle it from the ceiling over the bed of anybody who played Doom growing up and enjoy the cacophonous variety of screaming they provide.

So many options. Purchase either or both at the Bethesda store.

Of course you want this Cacodemon plushy originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 05 Sep 2013 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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life:

The story behind John Dominis’ hair-raising portrait of a leopard and a baboon, made moments before the huge cat kills its terrified prey.

(Photo: John Dominis—TIme & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

It doesn't take much to annoy Batman. It's kind of his default state. But to annoy Batman into doing what you want? I flunked out of that class three times in journalism school (I didn't go to journalism school). Previously in DC Nation Shorts

Flash Modin writes "The observatory where Pluto was discovered is pushing to name an asteroid after a black teenager killed in a controversial confrontation in Florida last year. William Lowell Putnam III says his family has identified with the cause of African American rights, and thus an asteroid named after Trayvon Martin is perfectly appropriate. Putnam is the sole trustee of the observatory, which was founded by Percival Lowell during his search for canals on Mars. Astronomers at the observatory discovered the asteroid in 2000, but it has not been formally named. Putnam has already asked the Minor Planet Center once to designate the asteroid 'Trayvon,' but they told him the designation was 'premature.' Now that there's been a verdict, the observatory is reapplying in hopes the naming body will see things different."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Great Mouse Detective


Star Trek set


Lenfilm set


BBC Sherlock set


Sherlock Holmes museum


Russell Stutler


2009 film set


legos


Lenfilm set


Granada set

bakerstreetbabes:

formerlyanonymous:

Have a look at some 221B Baker Streets!

(1) The Great Mouse Detective (2) Star Trek TNG set,  (3) Lenfilm/Russian set (4) BBC Sherlock set, (5) the Sherlock Holmes museum, (6) Russell Stutler’s awesome illustration (7) 2009 film set, (8) Legos (lol why not?), (9) Lenfilm/Russian set, (10) Granada set

Don’t mind if we do!

djempirical

There’s something weird abt this selection. #relatedtonerds #netflix

Original Source

breelandwalker:

fangirling-daily:

fat-pikachu-mas:

denise-puchol:

Comic Book Readers

orkin 1947

what’s this?

Little girls read comics from the very beginning of their incarnation??

“Girl reading comic book in newsstand” by Teenie Harris (c. 1940-1945) © 2006 Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

That sound you hear is thousands of wangsting sexist fanboys shrieking in horror.

Suck it.

ndib:

paxxes:

[x]

I love albinwonderland so much 

Whattup? Truth.

spatscolombo:

Apprently today I’m in the mood to contradict widely believed myths about Kirk’s personality.

So this conversation establishes that a) Kirk was a book-smart nerd at the Academy (?!) and b) he was not a womanizer, but actually shied away from relationships—and then committed too fast and too far in his first serious one. Which, at the very beginning of the series, he finds out was a manipulated set-up. Hey, I don’t know, maybe that’s gonna give him some intimacy hangups and affect his behavior with women going forward?

Basically I am out to prove that Kirk is a giant sweet nerd and all his flaws are due to being emotionally damaged by douchebags with tin-foil eyes and their lab-assistant floozie pawns.

(Also, as a grad student who teaches undergrads, I am here to tell you that undergrad Mitchell going to apparently great lengths to set his grad student teacher up with a woman is So Fucking Weird.)

wabrandsma writes "Quoting Bruce Schneier in the Guardian: 'The NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. We engineers built the internet – and now we have to fix it. Government and industry have betrayed the internet, and us. This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back. And by we, I mean the engineering community. Yes, this is primarily a political problem, a policy matter that requires political intervention. But this is also an engineering problem, and there are several things engineers can – and should – do."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

popular shared this story from 99% Invisible.

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There’s a term that epitomizes what we radio producers aspire to create: the “driveway moment.” It’s when a story is so good that you literally can’t get out of your car. Inside of a driveway moment, time becomes elastic–you could be staring straight at a clock for the entire duration of the story, but for that length of time, the clock has no power over you.

But ironically, inside the machinery of public radio–the industry that creates driveway moments–the clock rules all.

At NPR’s studios in Washington, DC, there are clocks everywhere. Big red digital clocks, huge round analog clocks. There’s even special software and time calculators, where 60 + 60 = 2’00.

(All Things Considered director Monika Evstatieva Evstitieva during a live broadcast in NPR’s Studio 2A. Credit: Julia Barton)

Each show has a ‘clock’, a set template, from which the show almost never varies. Every show that broadcasts—or aspires to broadcast—in the public radio system has a clock. This is the All Things Consideredbroadcast clock, which NPR and stations across the country refer to on a daily basis:

It’s actually a pretty cool piece of visual design, but one which functions best when it is never seen. This template is used twice every weekday: ATC Hour 1, from 4:00:00pm through 4:59:59pm ET; and then for ATC Hour 2, from 5:00:00 through 5:59:59pm ET.

Here’s how it works: at the ‘top’ of the hour, there is a 59 second “billboard,” which announces what’s going up in the program. Then there’s five minutes for the newscast, which is itself divided into two segments (“Newscast I” and “Newscast II”). Then there are the “blocks”–A, B, C, and D–which is where the stories and interviews (or “two-ways”) live.

Segments can’t run long by even a second, because most of the local stations are automated to cut off the national program where the clock says they can. These times–the dividers between the sections on the clock–are called posts. You have to hit the post. Nothing can go wrong.

Though, of course, things go wrong every day.

(When Julia visitedATC,a live interview segment accidentally got wrapped up 35 seconds early. Then it was on Monika, the director, to figure out what to do. Credit: Julia Barton)

Taking care of the clock is so ingrained in the director’s psyche that a common side effect of the job is waking up in the middle of the night fearing that you’ve blown the post–these are called “director’s dreams.” To cope with the anxiety, ATCdirectors make their own cheat sheets to help them memorize every queue of every hour of broadcast.Visit any studio that does a regular live feed with a broadcast clock and you’ll likely find a cheat sheet one somewhere in the studio.

The director’s cheat sheets atATChave been used so much that they’re in tatters. They have since been laminated.

(Note the correction in the “Top Cast” Credit” in the upper right. It’s not “1:00″, it’s “:59″)

When NPR began in the early 1970s, show clocks were much less regimented–or they didn’t have clocks at all.

One of the early champions against the fixed clock wasBill Siemering, a founder of NPR who helped design the network’s overall sound. He came up with the name All Things

Considered (original title: A Daily Identifiable Product). Siemering wrote the mission statement of NPR, which is enshrined in the halls of NPR (note the text on the walls).

(Credit: Interior Design)

Siemering liked a clock that was more free-form, because it allowed for spontaneity and unpredictability. But spontaneous and unpredictable does not always make for compelling radio. Done wrong, and you wind up with laughably bad “Schweddy Balls”-grade public radio.

When Siemering left NPR in the early 1970s, NPR chose to have more subdivided clocks. The constraints forced the shows to get tighter, which some say makes NPR stronger. One person is Neal Conan, former host of Talk of the Nation, who maintains that the earlier, freer days of NPR were not as halcyon as some may remember them.

These days, podcasting allows for shows such as this one to be free of a post, and go on for as long or short as is fitting for any given story.

Reporter-producer-editor (triple threat!) Julia Barton visited NPR’s old headquarters at Washington, DC, where she spoke with ATC directors Monika Evstatieva Estativia and Greg Dixon, and former Talk of the Nation host Neal Conan. Julia also spoke with public radio’s patron saint, Bill Siemering.

Many thanks to All Things Considered Executive Producer Chris Turpin and the other powers-that-be at NPR who gave us unfettered access to the shop during Julia’s visit.

(Note: Julia visited NPR while they were still at 635 Massachusetts Ave, NW. They have since moved to 1111 N. Capitol St.)

More network clocks!And more! And more!

Music: ”Io, Apollo, And The Veil”- Metavari, ”The Wind Up Bird”- Tunng, ”Standard Error”- Orcas, ”Paintchart”- ISAN, ”Snow Tip Cap Mountain”- The Octopus Project, ”Black Blizzard/Red Umbrella”- The Octopus Project

Starting in January, the Internal Revenue Service will begin classifying those automatic gratuities as service charges—which it treats as regular wages, subject to payroll tax withholding—instead of tips, which restaurants leave up to the employees to report as income. The change would mean more paperwork and added costs for the restaurants—and a potential financial hit for waiters and waitresses who live on their tips but don't always report them fully.

olio-ataxia:

Set of Fifty-Two Playing Cards

Date: ca. 1470–80

Culture: South Netherlandish

Medium: Pasteboard with pen and ink, tempera, applied gold and silver

Dimensions: Each approx.: 13.7 x 7 cm

Classification: Miscellaneous

Credit Line: The Cloisters Collection, 1983

'The Cloisters set of fifty-two cards constitutes the only known complete deck of illuminated ordinary playing cards (as opposed to tarot cards) from the fifteenth century. The are four suits, each consisting of a king, a queen, a knave, and ten pip cards. The suit symbols, based on equipment associated with the hunt, are hunting horns, dog collars, hound tethers, and game nooses. The value of the pip cards is indicated by appropriate repetitions of the suit symbol. The figures, which appear to be based on Franco-Flemish models, were drawn with a bold, free, and engaging, if somewhat unrefined, hand. Their exaggerated and sometimes anachronistic costumes suggest a lampoon of extravagant Burgundian court fashions. Although some period card games are named, it is not known how they were played. Almost all card games did, however, involve some form of gambling. The condition of the set indicates that the cards were hardly used, if at all. It is possible that they were conceived as a collector's curiosity rather than as a deck for play.
The playing cards are exhibited on a rotating basis.’

The Met Collection

davidesky2:

by SceithAilm.

tea-at-221b:

Sherlock Holmes Playing Cards

Produced in 1989 by The Gemaco Playing Card Company.

Illustrations by: F. Vacante

(Click for larger images)

Images used with permission from: Albinas Borisevicius (please do not copy)

exoergic:

Friendship is the BEST idea!

The first-ever trailer for the brand new, rebooted RoboCop explains why they changed the classic cyborg's look from silver to black. It's all Michael Keaton's fault.

Read more...

Are you tired of having to comb through dozens of articles trying to figure out if DC Comics has done something cringeworthy today? Would you like to be the first person to know how long it's been since DC's alienated fans, minorities or people with discerning taste? Do you like regularly experiencing schaudenfreude at the expense of a major corporate entity? Well, The Outhouse has the solution for you! Has DC Done Something Stupid Today? is your one stop source to see how long its been since DC fucked up.