firehose

Norwegian talk-show duo Ylvis — brothers Bård and Vegard Ylvisåker — ask what sound a fox makes and imitate its rarely heard cry in this bizarre and hilarious music video called “The Fox.”

video via TVNorge

via Digg Videos

Brooklyn independent record label Sacred Bones is generally regarded as one of the best in the country, known for releasing music by Zola Jesus, Woods, and The Men, among others. But in addition to fostering young talent, the label also found time to reissue the original soundtrack for David Lynch’s debut feature film Eraserhead on vinyl last year. Now it's made another acquisition—this time a stash of long-forgotten CD editions of the rare Twin Peaks season two original score, as well as the Eraserhead soundtrack containing an “industrial dance mix” that presages Lynch’s more recent forays into electronic music. Both discs are available now through Sacred Bones’ online store, though once the copies are gone, they're gone. At least until they're (probably) reissued on vinyl next year. [via Fact]

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BBC News

Indian diarist Sushmita Banerjee shot dead in Afghanistan BBC News An Indian woman, who wrote a popular memoir about her escape from the Taliban, has been shot dead in Afghanistan by suspected militants, police say. Sushmita Banerjee, who was married to an Afghan businessman, was killed outside her home in Paktika ... Indian author Sushmita Banerjee executed in Afghanistan by TalibanTimes of India Afghan militants shoot dead Indian woman Sushmita Banerjee, who wrote about ...ABC Online Afghan militants target, kill female author, police sayCNN Oneindia -The Australian -NDTV all 72 news articles »

OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy

#cardiganweather

Around 1,700 years ago, a reindeer hunter lost a well-worn, patched up tunic. It turned up recently in Norway, after sections of the quickly melting Lendbreen glacier retreated. As glaciers around that country melt, more and more scraps of ancient clothing are being revealed. This one, however, is in especially fine condition. Discovery News reports:

Examinations with a scanning electron microscope and light microscopy revealed that two different fabrics, made of lamb’s wool or wool from adult sheep, are present in the tunic.

“There is no doubt that the wool was carefully chosen for both fabrics, and that both quality and natural pigmentation were taken into consideration,” the researchers said.

The tunic was once a greenish brown. Its owner would have worn it like a pull-over or sweater, Discovery writes, given its lack of buttons. The weave—a diamond twill—has turned up in other fragment scraps recovered in the region.

Indeed, the fabric was deliberately and evenly mottled, the effect obtained using two light and two dark brown alternating wool threads.

Two carefully added patches, the researchers say, show that the hunter probably took good care of his things, and they also suspect that the sweater may have originally been sleeveless, with those warmth-providing additions added at a later date.

As for why the hunter left such a lovely garment behind, the researchers can only speculate. Perhaps he was overtaken by a sudden storm, they told Discovery, forcing him to quickly retreat without retrieving his tunic. Given the amount of care put into it, he would probably be glad to know that the sweater, at last, has found a good home.

Original Source

Better hurry, although Paul MacMaster says he'll wait until they're 125% off.

Original Source

In which a TV writer for the NY Daily News says that "Dancing With The Stars" contestant Valerie Harper has an "unfair advantage"... because she has terminal cancer.:

I believe we’ve found our Dickhead Of The Year.

(eyeroll) It’s someone who writes for the Daily News. What do you expect…

The Jacksonville Jaguars' tenuous quarterback situation is about to enter its second miserable year. Let's fire up Madden 25 and replace Blaine Gabbert with 400 pounds of lightning-quick, tackle-breaking muscle, and see whether he can lead the Jags to victory. 

The Marijuana Policy Project purchased a billboard not far from Sports Authority Field at Mile High (your best "Mile High" joke goes here) to relay the message that marijuana is a safer choice than drinking, and publicly lobbied the NFL to change its policies on marijuana. Last year Colorado passed Amendment 64, allowing for the personal use of marijuana for adults. Washington passed a similar measure.

Syria's embattled leader may have used chemical weapons against his people during a civil war to fight off a popular uprising. But his Instagram account tells another story.

Americans really dislike advertisers. A survey report (pdf) out today from Pew that looks at anonymity, privacy, and security online finds that “considerably more people take steps to avoid advertisers and unpleasant social observations than take steps to avoid detection by their employers or by government or law enforcement.”

According to the report, 28% of American internet users had taken steps to hide specifically from advertisers. Only “hackers and criminals” scared more people, with a third of respondents having done something to safeguard themselves from attack. Despite the past few months’ revelation about snooping by the state, the government and law enforcement agencies concerned people the least.

Tactics employed by internet browsers to reduce their online footprint generally include things like clearing cookies and browser history, simply disallowing cookies, or using fake names and email addresses. Just under a fifth of people say they have tried to mask their identity, and one in seven encrypted their communications.  Pew did not ask how many use ad blocking software. But a separate report (pdf) provided an estimate of more than one-fifth of global internet users.

Worryingly for advertisers, their main audience is also the one that most actively seeks out ways to avoid being tracked online. Over a third of people aged between 18 and 29 (whom Pew refers to as “young adults”) try to avoid advertisers, compared to 23% or less for those over age 50. That may well be because younger people also reported having the greatest amount of information about themselves available online.

The data from Pew add to a growing backlash against online advertising. Facebook is embroiled in yet another fracas (paywall) over the latest changes to its privacy policy, which allows the social network to deploy users’ names and pictures for the purposes of advertising. The rise of ad blockers has been a growing trend. And people seem willing to donate money to the cause of telling others that they too can avoid ads. The backlash against advertising has only just begun.

I had a really good time at Penny Arcade Expo this year. I met up with friends and colleagues I rarely see in person. I rolled a lot of dice and pushed a lot of buttons, saw some really good live music, and sat through some brilliant panels. I drank too much and slept too little, and in a lot of ways it was all the things I wanted a convention to be.

I also decided, finally and for sure, that I’m not going back to PAX again. Not as an attendee. Not as a professional. Not as press. On Monday, in the last hours of the four-day show, Mike Krahulik, the artist of the webcomic Penny Arcade and co-founder of PAX, decided to dredge up the dickwolves — and something that had been building up for a long time finally snapped.

Here’s some quick context: In 2010, Penny Arcade posted a comic strip that involved a character describing being “raped to sleep by dickwolves.” The rape joke wasn’t the point of the strip — it was an illustration of the screwed-up ethics implied by the quests in videogames like World of Warcraft, where after a player has rescued, say, five hostages or slaves, there’s no real impetus (and sometimes no mechanic) to save any of the others.

Whether or not the strip was offensive isn’t really relevant at this point: More than the comic itself, what made the most impact was how Penny Arcade responded to the readers — including rape survivors — who said it upset them. First, they mocked their critics with a series of posts and a flippant non-apology. In a subsequent “make a strip” demonstration at PAX Prime, Krahulik further needled the issue by drawing a dickwolf, and Penny Arcade even monetized the discomfort over the rape joke by making and selling “Team Dickwolves” shirts and pennants.

More people protested, and some companies and speakers began making noise about pulling out of PAX Prime. Finally, the dickwolves merchandise was was removed from the Penny Arcade store. Krahulik made it clear that he objected to the decision to stop selling the merchandise, and would be wearing his dickwolves shirt at PAX to illustrate that point, even though he knew the dickwolves — and the sentiment they expressed — made many potential attendees feel uncomfortable and unsafe.

Eventually, the argument died down to a dull roar. Penny Arcade made it clear that they still disagreed with both the criticism of the initial strip and the subsequent concerns from critics, but pulling the t-shirts and pennants out of the store was a significant gesture, one that — perhaps — signaled a willingness to acknowledge that this was a situation where inclusion mattered more than proving that they had the power to do whatever they wanted.

And then on Monday at PAX, in front of an audience of thousands, Krahulik told business manager Robert Khoo that he regretted pulling the Dickwolves merchandise from the Penny Arcade store — merchandise he had created as a “screw you” to rape survivors who had had the temerity to complain about a comic strip. While the audience burst into applause, Khoo nodded sagely and said that now they knew better; now they would just leave it and not engage.

Let’s be clear: Making the dickwolves t-shirts in the first place was engaging. So was Krahulik’s decision to draw dickwolves at PA’s make-a-strip demo at PAX and then put on a dickwolves t-shirt and wear it to a Penny Arcade event. These were not neutral choices. Nor, at this point, is the decision to attend, exhibit at, or cover PAX. There is no longer a clear line between uncomfortable silence and complicity — and more members of the gaming and comics communities are beginning to speak out.

Cartoonist Rich Stevens of Diesel Sweeties reached out to WIRED when he heard we planned to report on the PAX incident. “It’s just so disappointing to see people I’ve known since we were all new and broke turn out to be such tone-deaf, old man bullies. He’s Rush Limbaugh with tattoos. I could get over the original comic if they’d just moved on or apologized, but they had to make merchandise out of rape just to poke back at people and then encourage fans to wear it to a convention that supposedly has pro-woman policies,” said Stevens.

“It’s like he never got the point of growing up having been bullied as a kid. You’re supposed to get older and not repeat it … I wish more people in our field would be open about this, but I think there is a lot of social and economic pressure not to be… I really want to let them know that not everyone in webcomics is scared to stand up to them.”

But rejecting Penny Arcade can be difficult, given the industry force it has become — in webcomics, in gaming, and in geek culture as a whole. In an open letter to Penny Arcade co-creator Jerry Holkins about the recent incident, game designer Christine Love wrote that, despite not feeling safe or comfortable at PAX, she was afraid to pull out of the show because it was a rare opportunity to showcase her independent work.

“I don’t feel comfortable attending PAX,” Love wrote. “If I felt like I had a choice in the matter, if I could reach the awesome people I did while I was there without supporting the other figurehead behind the show, I would absolutely not be there. But I don’t. You’ve made it so in order to make a decent living for myself in videogames, I’m obligated to show up. That’s why I was there. It wasn’t because I felt comfortable, nor was it because I felt okay supporting your organization.”

Game designer Elizabeth Sampat told WIRED that for indie developers who haven’t hit the mainstream, “PAX can be one of the only ways to really get your game in front of a broader audience — a friend told me some retailers will order less copies of your game if you don’t show it at least one PAX.”

Sampat also has firsthand experience with the dangers of criticizing Penny Arcade. This week, she posted an impassioned condemnation of Penny Arcade and PAX, outlining the company’s history of inappropriate public comments and behavior, as well as its failure to address the harassment and alleged assault of a volunteer by another volunteer at PAX East. Since then, she has received thousands of angry comments, including rape threats and death threats directed not only at her but at her children. (In 2010 and 2011, critics who wrote about the original dickwolves incidents were similarly flooded with harassment and rape threats.)

Still, Sampat told WIRED, “A lot of positive stuff” has come out of her post: colleagues expressing solidarity, assault survivors thanking her for speaking up. For some readers, her post was a wake-up call, a series of incidents easy to ignore on their own thrown into sudden and stark context; for others, it launched an extended conversation about how to make PAX less critical to the success of independent games.

For Emma Story, a Penny Arcade fan who also designed and maintained the comic’s website from 2000 to 2004, this incident also proved to be the final straw. Story remained friends with Krahulik and Holkins after she stopped working for them, but this week, she publicly cut ties with Penny Arcade.

“Mike’s reaction when he’s criticized for this kind of behavior is always to comment on how he hates bullying, and how he sees himself as fighting back against a bunch of internet bullies,” Story told WIRED. For her, the primary conflict is about Penny Arcade’s continual abuse of power. “The unexamined privilege in [Mike's] viewpoint is sort of breathtaking — the fact that a straight white male, a celebrity with countless followers who will agree with anything he says, doesn’t see that he is in a position of power over other significantly marginalized groups is almost beyond believing. What he is doing is bullying, no question, and it’s not excused by the fact that kids were mean to him when he was in school.”

In Krahulik’s mind, he’s still the underdog rebelling against an unfair world bent on keeping him down. Despite decades of success and influence, he’s never learned to distinguish between criticism and censorship or understood the relationship between power and personal responsibility. He’s an angry teenager with the clout of an industry baron, and he’s cultivated a horde of followers who respond to criticism with death and rape threats. This are the sorts of people Penny Arcade courts when it digs in its heels and goes to the mat in defense of its right to punch down.

In the midst of the 2011 dickwolves controversy, a vocal Penny Arcade fan who went by the Twitter handle @Teamrape wrote, “And remember, since @cwgabriel [Krahulik] will wear his dickwolves shirt, it’s okay to wear yours. We will show those that want to crush free speech.”

Mike Krahulik is not a brave upstart defending freedom of speech, even if that’s a defense Penny Arcade has hidden behind time and again. Freedom of speech is not and never has been in danger here: Krahulik has every legal right to be shitty to rape survivors and trans*people and react like a child told he can no longer break the other kids’ toys. There is no law preventing him from flaunting the fact that he has a lot more financial and social power than the people criticizing him for abusing it; nor is anyone arguing that there ought to be.

To paraphrase the immortal words of the Dude: Krahulik isn’t wrong. He’s just an asshole.

Unfortunately, he’s also half of the face of the world’s largest end-user gaming expo. And that’s why I’m not going back to PAX. This year, I could justify a lingering thread of optimism: Maybe it’s changing. Maybe this time, something got through. Krahulik’s comments on Monday cut that off cold. 

Being an adult is about recognizing that the right to say something doesn’t make it okay to say. It’s about recognizing that you are not the only person with feelings and opinions. It’s about understanding power differentials and the difference between criticism and bullying, and learning to examine and be accountable for your own actions and their consequences. It’s about caring more about not harming other people than about whether their subsequent upset inconveniences you. It’s about being decent as well as being right.

This year, I was willing to believe that maybe, just maybe, the Penny Arcade axiom that PAX is for everyone meant more to them than getting the last word in. I was wrong. Penny Arcade isn’t going to grow up. If that wasn’t obvious a week ago, it certainly is now.

And that means that if the gaming community’s going to keep moving forward, the time has come time to leave PAX behind.

Original Source

FutureNYCSubway (pdf)

scratchingpad:

Meet Arthur & August

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Too. Damn. CUTE.

How your inbox is becoming an app. The final conversion of the old internet’s last holdout.

J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman have announced they'll be leaving as the editorial team on Batwoman, citing DC's editorial interference and in particular, the publisher's refusal to allow characters Kate Kane/Batwoman and her partner Gotham City police officer Maggie Sawyer marry each other.

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Why? Because. Really, is an explanation needed for bringing these two cultural phenomenons together?

@binaryghost @onethingwell I mean this is just crazy bonkers: I have a life to live. Why did I have to see this?

Welcome to a post about a bunch of little Doctor Who tidbits, from Matt Smith beginning work on his final episode to a hint of how long we'll have to wait to get our first season with Peter Capaldi.

by Gravybeard

Here’s what’s up in the world of TV for Thursday, September 5. All times are Eastern.

TOP PICK

Ragin Cajun Redneck Gators (Syfy, 9 p.m.): In the quest to find the next Sharknado, aquatic-life-based weather events simply would not do. (Though your What’s On Tonight? correspondent is still shopping a screenplay for Prawnsoon over here.) And so the bold researchers of Syfy Laboratories toiled away deep into the night, scouring other cable-TV phenomena for inspiration. Everyone said they were mad, but they’d show you who was truly mad—and after nodding off to a Duck Dynasty marathon, the men and women of uncompromising vision and limited budget had their (mad) eureka moment. Part redneck. Part gator. All schlock—and right up Scott Von Doviak’s alley. BEHOLD! Ragin Cajun Redneck Gators.

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REGULAR COVERAGE

Wilfred (FX, 10 p.m.): Then again, Elijah Wood’s been working ...

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In a statement co-posted on their personal websites, J.H. Williams III and W. Hayden Blackman have announced their departure from DC Comics' "Batwoman" title, citing editorial interference.

What is it about Ikea that inspires customers to behave badly?

A black cat scoots around upside down in circles underneath six dining room chairs in this video by Trish Pentecost. According to the video’s description, someone had a little too much catnip.

via pon_ikee, Daily Picks and Flicks