Lots of actors regret taking on one role or another — but few go as far as George Clooney, who actually hangs a picture of himself as Batman prominently in his office to remind himself what happens when you make a movie for purely commercial reasons.
    
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I'm sitting in the far left corner of Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in New York, in a dark spot under the balcony, watching a man who is not a man.
On the brightly lit stage, the man sits comfortably in an Aeron desk chair, hair falling into his eyes as he gazes idly about the room through glasses, hands in lap. The emcee of the Global Future 2045 conference, Phil VanNedervelde, introduces him as Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro, director of the Intelligence Robotics Laboratory in Osaka, Japan. He's a leading expert in the creation of lifelike robots. As VanNedervelde steps off stage, the man looks around at the crowd and begins to speak.
"In order to investigate humans, we need to have a test bed. I am the test bed," he says. "The professor is using myself to study the Hiroshi likeness. I am the most important research he has out... Now, let's welcome professor Ishiguro." With that, the professor himself strides onto the stage and the "man" in the chair is revealed as Ishiguro's hyperrealistic robotic doppelgänger.
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firehose"Doyon has simply had his will to hack trolled out of him"
Last year, I traveled to Canada to write a long profile of "homeless hacker" Christopher Doyon, who goes by the name "Commander X" and who is on the run from the US government. (Doyon brought down a California county's website for 30 minutes, with the help of Anonymous, as part of his protest over an "anti-sleeping" law targeting homeless people; he is under indictment in the Northern District of California and is the only known Anon who has jumped bail to live "in exile.") Doyon's life has been by turns bizarre and dramatic, but last week the online drama surrounding Anonymous proved too much even for him—and he quit.
Now, that's saying something, because Doyon—as I mentioned—has his own flair for the dramatic. Here, for instance, is how he sums up his work with both Anonymous and his own group, the People's Liberation Front (PLF):
I have been an activist for 30 years... For 28 of those years I have been what some call a "hactivist," and in the past 5 years I have been a part of the amazing idea called Anonymous. In fact, during these past 5 years I have dedicated an average of 10 hours a day to cyber-activism within the context of the PLF and Anonymous. In the course of these events, the persona of "Commander X" has developed and expanded to almost mythic proportions. In a sense the "Commander X" persona has become a bit like Batman, a sort of cyber-super hero. But like Batman, the impossible persona of "Commander X" rests upon the shoulders of a simple man. And like all men, I have frailties, weaknesses—and limits.
In the past few years, in order to support this "Commmander X" persona I have sacrificed my family, my freedom, my home—and even my country. I will never regain these, I will die as a man without a family or country. I will die alone in a foreign land, my ashes spread across a foreign forest. I have no regrets in this regard, "Commander X" made a difference—he saved lives and inspired thousands to join this critical fight for the very soul of humanity.
The soul of humanity will have to do without his help, though; Doyon has simply had his will to hack trolled out of him. On two of his Twitter accounts, Doyon detailed the final indignity, some sort of attack on his websites:
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In July, Windows 8 passed Windows Vista in market share. In August, it passed every single version of Apple's OS X, combined. Internet Explorer 10 grew sharply, too, with almost one in five Internet users now on the latest version of Microsoft's browser.
Windows 8 made substantial gains in August, picking up 2.01 points of share. This is 37 percent growth on July's figure. Windows XP also fell substantially, losing 3.53 points. With luck, this might mean that Windows XP is finally on the way out. It has less than a year until it stops receiving free security patches from Microsoft; once this happens, it will essentially be in a state of permanent zero day exploits. Even this level of decline isn't enough to see the operating system eradicated in time for its end of life. That's good news for spammers, who'll have plenty of zombie machines to recruit into botnets, but bad news for everyone else.
Among desktop browsers, Internet Explorer was up 0.99 points, Firefox was up 0.59 points, and Safari was up 0.17 points. Chrome, however, was down significantly, losing 1.76 points. This means that yet again Chrome has closed in on Firefox, almost passing it, only to fall back.
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firehose"The support and the ferocious fandom that got angry about it, that’s lovely. But ultimately, the awards have no bearing on it. They’re great, they open a door for actors, but putting too much of your worth on those things — it’s so weird. Doctors don’t get awarded [for] things the entire world knows about. It’s just so warped. We put so much value on it and it’s so not what it’s about."
firehose'Five of Johnnie Walker's top seven global markets are in the emerging world: Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, China, and a region the company calls "Global Travel Asia and Middle East." '
firehose'The concept of an "Indian gift" or an "Indian giver" traces its roots back to at least the 1700s. In his 1765 History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, "Thomas Hutchinson defined an Indian gift as a present "for which an equivalent return is expected."
During their legendary journey West in 1804, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark often encountered Indians over the course of their travels. The picture the pair paints of Indians and their culture was not pretty. Lewis and Clark frequently suspected Indians of either stealing their belongings or plotting to do so. Gifts in particular, as Thomas P. Slaughter points out in his book Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness, frequently created problems for the explorers.
Slaughter writes that in one instance, a group of Indians offered Lewis and Clark some roots, which the explorers rejected because they felt that "[the Indians'] expectation for those presents of a few roots is three or four times their real worth." Turning down the gift, however, insulted their hosts and led Lewis and Clark to label the Indians "forward and impertinent, and thievish," in their journals.'
firehoseit has been a busy summer in the Ville
Boston Herald |
Somerville teen never in trouble before, lawyer says Boston Globe “He emphatically maintains his innocence, but he's nervous to be 17 and charged with a slew of felonies,” said William Korman, the attorney for Galileo Mondol. The lawyer for 17-year-old Galileo Mondol, one of three Somerville teens arrested for allegedly ... Prosecutor: Mass. teens raped with broomstickBeaumont Enterprise Prosecutor: Broomstick used in Somerville soccer rapeBoston Herald Somerville Teen Held For Alleged Camp Sexual AssaultsWBUR cw56.com all 25 news articles » |
firehoseschools have shitty layouts
after looking at Brayden's gsaauctions site, fucking buy some post offices dudes
tons of loading docks
massive sorting facilities
counters and storage box spaces
parking lots
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firehosenot quite there yet as a goodreads alternative, but the rating system is interesting
firehoseit's true, I stopped using it
current emotion: leonardo dicaprio hiding from paparazzi in giant parka
firehose'BetaDwarf was founded at Aalborg University in Denmark. During the summer, classrooms at the university went unused, so Gronning and his friends took over one abandoned room to use as their studio.
"We moved in and we didn't really want to go home, so we moved in beds and microwaves and refrigerators and things like that and until there are like, eight guys living there our whole vacation," Gronning said. That "vacation" turned into an extended stay, as the group "managed to be there for five more months" since the university "didn't really want to use that classroom," he explained.'
Continue reading Indie developer BetaDwarf lived in a classroom for seven months
Indie developer BetaDwarf lived in a classroom for seven months originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 03 Sep 2013 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
firehoseDoctor Who plotline generator
photo via AFP/Getty Images
The top-heavy shape of 20 Fenchurch Street, a skyscraper currently under construction in London, has earned the building the nickname, “The Walkie Talkie.” Unfortunately, the building’s shape also acts as a giant concave mirror, blasting a nearby street with intense reflected sunlight that recently melted a parked Jaguar (photos). Developers are working to resolve the problem (and repair the Jaguar). The building’s architect Rafael Viñoly has made the mistake before—his curved design for the Vdara Hotel & Spa in Las Vegas acts as a parabolic reflector, searing a nearby pool deck with what employees call the “Vdara Death Ray.”
photo by Laura Lean/City A.M.
photo via AFP/Getty Images
Thanks Lori Dorn!
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In the late 70s and early 80s, scifi author Judith Merril did a series of educational spots for Canadian TV, which aired right after Doctor Who. Dubbed the UnDoctor, Merril dissected the science in each episode, offering loopy humor along the way.
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First you have to identify the problem:
“The Post is famous for its investigative journalism,” [Bezos] said. “It pours energy and investment and sweat and dollars into uncovering important stories. And then a bunch of Web sites summarize that [work] in about four minutes and readers can access that news for free. One question is, how do you make a living in that kind of environment? If you can’t, it’s difficult to put the right resources behind it. . . . Even behind a paywall [digital subscription], Web sites can summarize your work and make it available for free. From a reader point of view, the reader has to ask, ‘Why should I pay you for all that journalistic effort when I can get it for free’ from another site?”
To summarize the article (haw-haw), Bezos says at the end that he thinks he experience has to be about readers and not advertisers. That sounds about right to me; it seems that when newspapers start flailing, all of their decisions are made based on a spreadsheet and not a reader's perspective. So let's see what Bezos does. I don't think this is a problem with a single easy solution, but I do think that it's a problem that can be solved with a number of new approaches, and Bezos seems to understand that.
firehoseno new music
Nathan Z (aka “The Third Pew“) edited together clips from tons of well-known YouTube stars (PewDiePie, Toby Turner and more) to create a fantastic cover of the song “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk.
100+ hours + 1 idiot + lotsa ramen noodles + 7 grey hairs = THIS.
firehose"If this is how its public face behaves, think of what they’re like when they feel free to be honest. I find my outrage challenging to contain. This is video games?"
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| Dude cannot let go of that one single time his business partners did something decent. |
I don’t judge indies and friends who feel it’s necessary to go to PAX in order to make headway in an incredibly biased industry, or friends who want to present in a brave, admirable attempt to be a positive force in a toxic space. Lots of people are doing everything they can to participate and make change in the community and I respect their choices.
But Elizabeth Sampat basically sums up how I feel in her piece here. Do you want to be part of a community where we listen and learn when we upset people by accident? Or one where we’re encouraged to become ever more militantly self-righteous and make jokes at the expense of people we alienate?
It’s not a crime to misspeak, or to be ignorant. You are not a bad person simply because you’ve never learned to think about the needs of people less fortunate or less-heard than yourself. But your goodness — and more importantly, your potential to do good in the world as a major organization like Penny Arcade — is determined by what you do after the mistake, when the harm you’ve done is pointed out to you.
When you have the opportunity to make a huge difference as respected figures in a community, do you use it to broadcast your own self-righteousness, or to teach people to be better to one another? Do you learn from the mistake, or do you keep making more, with such stubbornness and consistency that people begin to suspect you’re probably either deeply troubled or at worst, a terrible ass?
It shouldn’t be a tough choice. One in six women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. Your friends, moms, sisters, daughters, partners (and let’s remember rape is not uniquely a women’s problem — far from it). How would you feel as a parent (and the PA founders are dads), or a colleague, or friend of a survivor, as part of an organization that probably still has boxes of Dickwolves shirts lying around?
These shirts were printed to make fun of the outrage of survivors and the people who care about them. They are literally an emblem of a refusal to care, and Mike Krahulik has just said he “regrets” pulling them from the merchandise table. And people cheered. PAX is still a place where people cheer for this.
This is also fresh off the heels of Krahulik’s transphobic remarks and his non-apology for them, and now the organization says it refuses to “engage” the discussion anymore. If this is how its public face behaves, think of what they’re like when they feel free to be honest. I find my outrage challenging to contain. This is video games?
I personally don’t understand how the founders of the PA organization can sleep at night without having admitted to a massive wrong turn in its relationship to its community and without having expressed a commitment to change, learn and re-earn trust. Probably all the money they make from the convention helps. I would rather it wasn’t our money.
Also, when I tweeted about never going to PAX, someone called me a “slanderous wench.” I want to be affronted, but feeling like I’ve just been damned by a pirate is kind of exciting.
The British TV personality and interviewer David Frost died this past weekend, after suffering a heart attack aboard a cruise ship, the MS Queen Elizabeth, where Frost had been booked for a speaking engagement. He was 74.
Frost, who became noted for his ambition when he was still a student at Cambridge—where, among his other extracurricular activities, he served as editor of the campus literary magazine Granta, 15 years before it was turned into an international publication—originally had one foot in the British “satire” boom of the early 1960s. After being spotted performing in a London cabaret club, Frost was hired as host of the satirical TV revue That Was The Week That Was. The show included written contributions from the likes of John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Peter Cook, Roald Dahl, Dennis Potter, Kenneth Tynan, Keith Waterhouse, and the poet John Betjeman, running in the U. K. for ...
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World War II-era aircraft get a bizarre canine makeover in the digital illustration series “Dogfighters” by INK, a production studio based in London.
via Faith is Torment
Shredders offers delightful intarsia sweaters with ironic, crass, and fun designs. You might think I'd be all about the Sasquatch Knit Bigfoot sweater but I prefer the Satanic Knit Baphomet design!
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firehosesorry
firehosevia multitasksuicide
Master classical improvisor Richard Grayson satisfies an audience request to perform "The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme) in the style of Beethoven.
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