firehose

Space shuttle strapped to airplane, photographed by camera strapped to car. Image uploaded to comprehensive atlas of the world strapped to the Internet. Humans are awesome.

How the gin and tonic became the British Empire’s secret weapon.

Satire or campaigning? The Onion has been one of the most consistent voices on Syria for months.

Nintendo 2DS is for the children ⊟

I thought Nintendo’s messaging and the 2DS’s design was pretty clear — it’s a system targeting kids, or parents buying a handheld for their kids. It solves three of the 3DS’s problems for that audience, right as Pokemon X/Y hits shelves: pricing, worries of 3D damaging eyes, and durability. For the rest of us who don’t care about those problems, we can keep playing our 3DSes and XLs, and wait for the next hardware iteration aimed toward teens and adults.

Here are a few relevant quotes from people who’ve had their hands on the portable, the first coming from Eurogamer:

"There’s no feeling of luxury while holding the machine, but that, I suppose, is the point. It is sturdy rather than sleek, meant for backpacks or a large back pocket, school bus rides or long journeys in the back of a car."

Kotaku doesn’t consider this a mainline hardware release either: 

"It’s probably best to consider the 2DS in the same league as other experimental off-shoots of Nintendo’s handheld line. This isn’t the obvious improvement that the DS Lite was over the DSi or the 3DS XL over the 3DS. This is more akin to the oddities like the Game Boy Micro or the DSi XL… hardware that’ll work just fine and is targeted at a different group of gamers that may prove to be a small niche or an underserved crowd waiting for a system they’d otherwise have missed."

But that doesn’t mean there’s no reason why you might want to buy this. USgamer has this great point:

"Despite 2DS’s target market being kids, I do think the device has potential to appeal to more hardcore fans as well. It’s much more comfortable to hold, for starters. Also, it’s a much less expensive means to acquire a foreign system for access to software blocked off by region-locking, and I don’t doubt that whenever the system finally shows up in Japan we’ll see plenty of U.S. and European gamers importing one for themselves."

Also, LOL at this kid being so awful at Mario Kart that he ended up with the Lucky Seven item. Put the 2DS down before someone picks to race on Rainbow Road and ruins your whole life. Go home and be a family man.

BUY Nintendo 3DS and 3DS XL consoles, upcoming games

Rolling Stone has published an extensive look at the soundtrack for Grand Theft Auto 5, with streaming samples of a few Los Santos stations available right now. Ivan Pavlovich, soundtrack supervisor, says it's the biggest soundtrack Rockstar has ever done, around "20 movies worth of score."

"We approached the radio stations as the musical soundscape [you experience] as you fly into L.A. One of the things we've never done in a GTA game before is a pop station; exploring that made so much sense in the context of L.A." Some stations have big-name talent attached too: DJ Pooh hosts a rap station; Wavves' Stephen Pope and Nate Williams host a rock station; Pam Grier hosts a soul station.

Grand Theft Auto 5's soundtrack is also unique in that it's the first game in the series to have its own score created by Rockstar. Many composers have created music specifically for Grand Theft Auto 5, including electronic band Tangerine Dream, Aussie metal band Alchemist and rapper Oh No. Woody Jackson, who worked on Red Dead Redemption and LA Noire, is the final piece of this composer ensemble.

Grand Theft Auto 5 soundtrack packs '20 movies worth of score' originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sometimes you grow to love a character — or at least get used to him or her having a particular personality. And then... all of a sudden, this once-familiar character has a completely different personality, in between movies or seasons of a TV show. What's the most baffling personality shift of all time?

Read more...

As the Mercury first reported today on Twitter—alerting some of our news partners—the nascent food cart pod Mayor Charlie Hales really wanted for City Hall's plaza has been put on hiatus as of this afternoon.

Fuego, the burrito handcart that set up last Monday in the plaza, was back in its familiar place outside the Portland Building at SW 4th and Madison. And the three metal tables and 12 metal chairs meant to entice Fuego and other carts to the plaza, at a cost of nearly $4,000, have been shunted away into storage.

Kelly Ball, a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Finance, which runs the city's facilities department, confirmed the move this afternoon. Later today, Hales' spokesman, Dana Haynes, confirmed the same.

One issue is a drop in business. The other, though, is the fact that Fuego appeared in the plaza soon after Hales' had staffers clear out two religious vigils aimed at ending the city's camping ban. Haynes told me yesterday that Fuego's workers had been harassed in recent days by activists bitter about the switch—harassment, if true, is completely unfair for the cart's workers. Haynes was hoping that wouldn't lead to a move, he explained today.

But it did. Fuego's owner had put the city on notice yesterday. Tomas Karwowski emailed Wendy Gibson in facilities. Gibson has been running point on the city's food cart attraction efforts.

Wendy, we will be moving our cart back to our previous spot as soon as tomorrow.

Our sales are much lower, but what is more bothersome is a social and political dispute we find ourselves to be in the middle of.

During last week we have been approached by activist daily, yesterday Occupy Portland were giving away free burritos very next to our cart.

I am sorry that this did not work out, for it seemed, if only for a moment, the opportunity could have benefited us both.

As Karkowski mentioned, the move comes two days after activists led by Cameron Whitten, housing justice advocate (read his and the Reverend Chuck Currie's post on Blue Oregon) and former hunger striker, passed out free burritos in the plaza during lunchtime to call attention to Hales' plans. That event didn't draw any customers away from Fuego—and Whitten tells me today he made sure to hand over a $50 tip before his rally.

Ball told me the city still hopes to attract carts. But Haynes says, until it does, the new tables and chairs are going away. They were mostly there, he says, as an enticement for cart operators who needed a nudge to move. They could come back without a cart, he says, under certain conditions.

"If there's not carts, we'll put the tables and chairs away," Haynes says. "Unless we get a lot of city employees who say they want to take their sack lunches down there or want to hold their staff meetings outside and get some vitamin D."

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The Bloggess just rounded out her collection of animals taxidermied in the image of Harry Potter characters with a toad immortalized as Mad-Eye Moody. If you look closely, you can see that it even comes with a transmogrified Draco Malfoy! Previously in Harry Potter

Even though the Port of London Authority only requires artists to register if they plan to be filming, not merely taking photos, the organizers of a celebrity look-a-like photoshoot are saying that, in hindsight, they probably should have. Turns out people jump to conclusions when they see a bunch of black-clad people waving guns around on a speedboat.

This post originally appeared on our sister site, Geekosystem.com. For a competitive game, League of Legends has a surprisingly decent ratio of female champions to male — at 39 out of 104 it’s not completely even, but it’s better than the standard “token broad” you get in most fighting games. So it’s a pretty huge bummer that an unofficial LoL tournament in Iran felt it necessary to ban most of the female champions from the tourney. According to a translation of the 2013 World Cyber Games’s Facebook page, the following characters have been banned outright from all League of Legends tourney games:

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv7v_rNpM8I&feature=youtu.be

Original Source

Bumper car-mounted knights battle one another in this video shot earlier in August at Bloodstock, a heavy metal music festival in the UK. The fighters were at the festival for a full contact medieval combat tournament.

video by Mark Annable

via b3ta.com, Have You Seen This?!

Silent Disco is coming! Wait—how can a dance party be silent?

It isn't silent, really. On Friday, September 13, the Mercury and the good folks at Hotel deLuxe are hosting Portland's first Silent Disco on the roof of the Hotel deLuxe parking garage—the same spot where the Top Down screenings are held. Here's the buzz:

In a “silent disco” you'll dance to DJs via wireless radio signals transmitted to headphones you receive upon arrival. The idea was born from European clubs, where dense population and noise pollution complaints made headphones a permanent feature of some party venues—but guess what? They also found out it was super fun!

Headphones allow you to adjust your own volume or you can remove them to easily speak with other partiers. Each headset also has two channels so you can switch between them and shake it down to either of the DJs spinning that night including DJ Beyondadoubt, DJ TJ, plus two special guests. But perhaps the best part of all, when a popular song comes on the entire crowd starts singing the words together and that's when you realize that Silent Disco is a fun and sweaty one-of-a-kind experience.

In other words, it's the dance party where you can talk to your friends or get those digits from that special someone without getting blown away by the DJ. Tickets just went on sale, and they'll go fast; go over here to get 'em. It's a Friday the 13th dance party under the stars, and since all the music is inside your headphones, it'll go straight into the wee hours!

Check out the Facebook event page, and get your tickets here!

Silent Disco, Hotel deLuxe Parking Structure Rooftop, SW 15th & Yamhill, Fri Sept 13, 10 pm-3 am, $20-25

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Commissioner Amanda Fritz's push to relocate Right 2 Dream Too beneath the Broadway Bridge's Lovejoy Street off-ramp remains technically alive this afternoon—her office, when asked, had no updates saying the plug had been pulled—but it's causing a kerfuffle among Pearl District neighbors.

The Oregonian's Sara Hottman reported this morning that the neighborhood association is asking residents to sign a letter that argues Fritz's plan would break city law. The Mercury has since obtained Fritz's reply to some of the neighbors who've written her.

The sentiment: Stop freaking out. They've been good neighbors in Old Town. Also, don't take it out on me, because I'm not up for re-election. And this is the right thing to do.

Thank you for your message.

The negotiations for relocation of the Right to Dream Too rest area are related to settlement of a lawsuit, so I can’t comment on specifics. I urge you to visit their current location and NW 4th/Burnside. There have been zero calls for police service to that site in 2013. Nearby property owners report decrease in crime, and fewer people sleeping in doorways because there is a safe place for people to sleep. Right to Dream Too has a drug-free, alcohol-free policy that is enforced by the residents. Their residents need access to basic services, including showers and laundry facilities at nearby Bud Clark Commons.

While I appreciate many Pearl District neighbors may be concerned about the new folks who may be moving in, if the move happens I hope you will give them a chance to be the good neighbors they’ve proven themselves to be in Old Town.

I’m not running for anything ever again, just so you know. I act to do what I believe is right and in the long term public good, which is not always what is popular with voters.

Sincerely,
Amanda

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Amid much talk of Chelsea Manning's transitional status, this interesting factoid shared by Boing Boing pal Andrea James: a Williams Institute study says trans people serve in the US military at rates double that of the general population. Despite the math, "they nonetheless face discrimination during and after service."

The Williams Institute, at UCLA's School of Law, focuses on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy. The full report is here (PDF). It explains the scientific methodology, and offers this conclusion:

Many transgender people desire to serve their country in the armed forces, yet are not allowed entry or allowed to remain in the service if they wish to live their lives true to their gender identities. Transgender service members and veterans have reported wide-ranging experiences of discrimination, harassment, and physical and sexual assault while serving in the military. Outside of the military, transgender veterans in the NTDS experienced higher rates of homelessness, incarceration, and family rejection than those who did not serve. Transgender veterans described unique challenges and barriers to obtaining necessary health care and accurate identification documents. The repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” does not provide a public policy solution for these problems transgender service members and veterans experience. Though the VHA has begun to address transgender veterans’ health care concerns, it will be necessary to make additional changes to military policies in order to allow transgender people to serve openly and with honor.

As Maggie blogged yesterday, the Kinsey Institute just got funding to do research on the lives of trans people in the military. It's good to see more attention paid.

Picture the scene: a quiet moment between Russian president Vladimir Putin and his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev. A momentary intersection between two lives made busy–so busy–by the hard work of government. Medvedev has just put his bra back on. He is disheveled. Putin grabs a comb and runs it lazily through his deputy's hair. Medvedev's eyes firmly engage the viewer, but Putin looks oddly to one side. What is he looking at? Perhaps his eye falls upon the Romanov Tercentenary Egg on his desk, adorned with portrait miniatures of the dynasty.

For the first time, they seem to gaze back at him, no longer lost within Fabergé's gilded relic. Putin no longer sees their deaths in his mind's eye, that invigorating minute in Yekaterinburg. Now he hears only their voices, the whispers that wake him. Though both men creep toward the threshold of the golden afternoon, the evening is yet young.

Alas, this delightful set-piece is no more: police raided the gallery and took it away without a word of explanation. [BBC]

Man, seems like there's just azz everywhere these days. At "This Is Africa," contributor Cosmic Yoruba has a roundup of videos that show the African roots of the booty-popping dance white folk now call "twerking."

Twerk gyrated further into pop culture focus this week when noted white pop star Miley Cyrus attempted, poorly, to perform it on a televised awards show.

Those who've followed New Orleans Bounce and its "sissy variants" know Miley didn't invent the move--far from it. In Latin America, perreo and dembow have inspired politicians to launch morality crusades. The roots of booty-popping can be traced through the African diaspora. Above, a compilation of music videos that show Mapouka, a contemporary form popular in Cote D'Ivoire that was deemed so provocative, it was banned.

From Cosmic Yoruba's excellent roundup:

Moving beyond the States to other parts of the African diaspora, in Haiti there is gouye/gouyad, in Colombia the El Mapale, in Cuba the vacunao, and most people are familiar with Jamaican winin’. On to Africa itself: in Senegal we have the ventilateur, in Somalia the niiko, kwassa kwassa in DR Congo (which goes by the same name in Zimbabwe), and the Cameroonian zingué. Not to mention malaya of the Afro-Arab communities in Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

TWERK: Booty-dancing, gender politics & white privilege [thisisafrica.me]

As is so often the case with watches from bespoke watchmaker GRIEB & BENZINGER, these new creations are the direct result of customers’ wishes.  Recently, G&B was kind enough to share with me a few looks at these spectacular bespoke creations.  These are truly spectacular, hand-made watches.  Read more of my past discussion and reviews of Grieb & Benzinger, here>>>

 Grieb & Benzinger Grey Tulip

43mm 18-karat palladium-white gold case, fully skeletonized floral pattern, movement fully skeletonized, guilloché and engraved by hand; on grey alligator-skin strap with matching palladium-white gold buckle

Grieb & Benzinger Grey Polaris

43mm palladium-white gold case; guilloché and semi-skeletonized sterling silver dial with black rhodium and an applied skeletonized dial, movement including in-house modifications (hour and minute modifications) fully skeletonized, guilloché and engraved by hand; on grey alligator-skin strap with 750/000 18-karat palladium-white gold buckle

Diamond-accented variations of the Grey Tulip were also produced

---

© Perpetuelle, 2013. | Serving Up New Luxury and Avant-Garde Timepieces Daily.
More Grieb & Benzinger

A weird thing is happening with solar power. For years derided as a sideshow energy source that was only for environmentalists, solar is now being seen as an imminent threat to both the mainline energy industry and at least one national economy. As a result, those harmless people with the shiny panels on their rooftops are suddenly being seen as dangerous freeloaders and, in some potential bellwether cases, are being threatened with punitive taxes to dissuade them from their pursuit of self-generated power from a renewable resource: the Sun.

But the strongest responses to tightening the screws on solar aren’t only coming from the traditional green community: a populist pro-solar resistance may be taking root, seeing independent power generation as a right. As a result, the shape of the future pro-solar, even pro-innovation coalitions, could be anyone’s guess.

¡Viva el Sol!—or not?

The story begins in Spain in 2007, when, despite its many other economic woes, it was seen as a shining story of solar energy success. And why not? Parts of southern Spain see nearly 3,000 hours of sunshine per year, even more than US hot-spots like Dallas and Atlanta. The stuff literally falls from the sky. While industries like tourism or agriculture fluctuate with economies, most of the time the Sun just shines. With an infinite resource and plenty of open space, solar seemed like a great bet for Spain.

In the late 2000s, hoping to get a jump on the potential growth industry, the Spanish government saw Chinese production come online and the price of solar panels falling, and began looking for ways to encourage people to install panels on homes and businesses. To create a strong incentive to make the investments, the government increased the price it paid solar power users for selling excess power back to the grid. The price paid for solar was jacked up to €444 ($592) per megawatt hour, compared to around €39 ($52) per megawatt hour paid to utilities for conventional electricity generation via coal or natural gas.

Bottomless subsidies

As massive subsidies are hoping to do, the plan worked exceptionally well, attracting a 500% increase in solar photovoltaic (PV) installations in just the first year of the policy. Now, six years on, Spain has a glut of PV capacity, thought to be 60% more than needed. But far worse than that, it has an enormous hole in its finances created by the uncontrolled subsidies it paid out as costs of PV plummeted and installation and solar generation rocketed upward. Along with subsidies it paid out to other renewables alongside PV, the Spanish government is now left holding around €26 billion ($34.7 billion) in deficits created by its policies, or a little over €5 billion ($6.6 billion) accumulated per year since 2007.

The government’s response has been about as damaging as its initial policies turned out to be. Upon taking office at the beginning of 2012, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s conservative government halted the subsidies and also began cutting assistance to renewables projects overall, jolting not only consumers who had expected a different set of rules around their solar investments, but leaving Spanish utilities—and the banks that backed their foray into renewables—with their balance sheets in disarray. NPDSolarBuzz estimates the fallout from Rajoy’s moves could leave the industry with a €20 billion ($26.7 billion) hole in its pocket as the government has attempted to stop renewables’ runaway growth—at a time when Spain’s economy could not be in a more delicate position.

Tax the Sun

But Rajoy’s most recent round of new proposals to further stem the bleeding takes Spain’s changing solar posture from the irresponsible well into the Kafkaesque. As part of additional taxes and restrictions designed to throttle further deficits from solar, not only must consumers generating solar power from their own installations pay dramatically higher rates—27% higher—to sell excess power to the utility grid than non-renewables cost, the government wants to levy a fine of between €6 million ($8 million) and €30 million ($40 million) against any individual caught generating their own solar power on panels not connected to the grid. In other words, any autoconsumo, or home solar generation, that isn’t hooked up to the power networks and doesn’t pay the higher rates will receive the draconian fine. Unmetered backyard solar generation is now effectively considered bootlegging under the new laws.

In a moment of heightened outrage and brewing anti-government sentiment, the responses have been quintessentially Spanish. Some citizens are ripping panels off their rooftops rather than complying, some are ignoring the law, and some have turned to theatrical protest. At the end of July, a group organized by pro-renewables activists showed up at a prison outside Barcelona to turn themselves in as “criminals,” dressing in prison garb and wearing solar panels on their backs. As Reuters reported recently, some have even moved their panels into the countryside far enough away from main power lines as to be exempt from the tax. A large and strange group of bedfellows, including unions, utilities, political parties and industry groups filed a complaint against the government to the European Parliament in summer as well, citing the retroactive nature of some of the cuts and penalties as a violation of EU rules. In short, Rajoy managed to alienate everyone from rank and file voters to banks to utilities to greens. As such a central part of future economic growth in Spain—an estimated 50,000 jobs in renewables have already been lost—traditional right-left alignments have gone out the window when it comes to these policies.

While the government has made noise about pursuing offenders, opinion is divided as to whether the massive fines proscribed in the most recent law will be enforced, since they were created with industrial-scale producers in mind, not individuals. Spaniards currently have two months to comply with the new regulations. Solar advocates also see the Rajoy government’s crackdown as contrary to European Union Directive 2012/27/EU, passed last October, which compels member states to deploy innovative technologies in order to reduce energy consumption by 20% by 2020. By slamming the solar industry into reverse, not only will panels be taken off grid, but also, critics contend the aforementioned hit to utilities’ and banks’ finances will scare off new renewables investments, both in Spain and across the EU.

Meanwhile, in America

While Spain’s solar rebels are organizing against Rajoy, a solar rebellion of sorts is brewing in parts of the US as well. As Quartz recently reported, some US utilities are starting to feel the pressure on their long-term finances from once-fringe home solar, and are pushing to raise tariffs on home generators tied to their power grids.

A white paper from the Edison Electric Institute (pdf) released in January got attention from US utilities by positing that solar and other renewables’ success among consumers could soon create financial problems for both the utilities themselves and their non-renewables customers. For one, solar and other renewables could become so successful that some customers would be self-sufficient enough to leave the grid. Current cross-subsidization by customers who don’t use solar but pay for solar users’ access to, and ability to sell excess power to, the grid could then become a smaller pool paying for infrastructure built with a larger user base in mind. From EEI’s perspective, solar is the biggest renewables threat as the PV cost curve bends lower, and economics continue to move the consumer’s way.

In EEI’s analysis, if utilities don’t act soon to slow the bleed of solar customers from their services, capital markets will take an increasingly critical view of the old-line utilities’ finances long-term. “Increased uncertainty and risk will not be welcomed by investors, who will seek a higher return on investment and force defensive-minded investors to reduce exposure to the sector,” the report stated.  “These competitive and financial risks would likely erode credit quality. The decline in credit quality will lead to a higher cost of capital, putting further pressure on customer rates. Ultimately, capital availability will be reduced, and this will affect future investment plans. The cycle of decline has been previously witnessed in technology disrupted sectors (such as telecommunications) and other deregulated industries (airlines).”

Not in your back yard

Big Power has listened to the EEI analysis and several major Western utilities, in Arizona and California in particular, have gone to regulators to ask for new rate structures. The fight between Arizona’s utilities and solar users has been particularly acrimonious. Arizona Public Service generally proposed what EEI called for—adding a hefty grid use surcharge to solar users’ bills and lowering buyback rates for excess power purchased from solar homes. Astroturf groups have rolled TV ads favoring the utilities’ position—that the economics are unfairly skewed toward solar owners. Pro-solar groups have fired back—the largest fronted by the son of former Arizona Republican firebrand Barry Goldwater—using the state’s solar jobs and impact on senior citizens on fixed incomes as their weapons of choice.

The alliances get stranger in Georgia, where an all-Republican Public Service Commission recently voted to mandate local utility behemoth Georgia Power to raise its solar output 525 megawatts by 2016. One of the Republican commissioners justified the vote thusly: “When the President finishes his war on coal, he’ll come after fracking, and gas prices will surely go up. We have to be ready.”

Cue attacks from utility-friendly groups such as Americans for Prosperity (AFP), who say alternative power will “kill jobs,” raise the cost of food and clothing, and leave customers with less reliable power when the sun goes down. While being careful not to go after solar itself, AFP explicitly aligns Republican commissioners with President Obama, calling the decision a government intrusion into power markets. And, despite longtime alignment between APF and the Tea Party, the latter group split with them on this issue, defending what they see as the right of the individual to determine their own power source of choice and not have it forced by a monopoly utility.  One outcome of this feud has been the formation of a “Green Tea Coalition,” uniting Georgia Tea Party members with the Sierra Club and other pro-environmental groups in a strange brew that may signal the shape of similar coalitions to come.

What’s next?

It’s unlikely this is just a summer fling between free marketeers, progressives and other pro-solar groups. In Spain, the odd political alignments weren’t the same as the US, but the populist sparring match could just as easily be in Colorado as it is in Catalonia. These libertarian-progressive alignments have been pro-innovation and anti-corporate, and in some ways echo sentiments that are emerging in Silicon Valley. They also may presage an emerging political dynamic among Millennials, who, while having grown up with their elders’ traditional liberal-conservative constructs, are starting to show signs of a strange brew of progressive libertarianism that reconciles both protection of the environment and resistance to top-down intrusion into business—in this case renewable energy—one of this generation’s most favored issues.

It doesn’t stop there, however. In the EEI paper on the disruption renewables present to utilities, one of the biggest threats identified was a growing percentage of customers simply walking away from big power generators and running their own home generation off the grid. “While we would expect customers to remain on the grid until a fully viable and economic distributed non-variable resource is available, one can imagine a day when battery storage technology or micro turbines could allow customers to be electric grid independent.” While economical home storage isn’t here yet, it’s near enough to hear its hoofbeats. Seeing the connection between their own choices and impacts on the bigger world, and, given the option to generate clean, efficient, and possibly shared community energy close to home, younger consumers will be more, not less likely to opt for self-generation. The dirty fuels industries can already see that coming.

Alignments between anti-government and pro-local production interests are not new. Probably as many moonshine bootleggers were Republican as Democrat during American Prohibition. While the technology innovation community may have been cast as pro-Democrat or leftish progressive in the past 20 years, the new political alliances are getting muddled in a way that we don’t quite recognize yet. New layers are emerging as next-wave technologies such as renewable energy, are thrown together with the pro-corporatist course of the recent past, which has left a bad taste in the mouths of younger voters. What we’re seeing today as traditional energy production gradually declines and new, independent energy creation emerges, may cause some significant political reshaping in the next few decades that might leave the old guard wondering which way the sun shines.

You can follow Scott Smith on Twitter at @changeist. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.