In keeping with the theme of punk shows, here’s the cover for Astonishing X-Men #66. Thanks to Marjorie Liu for the initial music themed idea and Jeanine Schaefer for letting me run with it.
OK, final photo from last Saturday. This young lady’s kit was also stonkingly good. Again, really, really bad with names - so cannot recall who she was - but VERY impressive.
Holy jeez, that’s me! Thank you VERY much! The doublet and hat are based off of the Unicorn Tapestries and the boots from the 1516 TriumphzugKaiser Maximilians I woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair. Can’t wait to get kit like Marc someday though. Just incredible…
And thanks for the lovely shot too! Do you mind if I use a copy for Facebook? Unfortunately I had to ditch Artie (the horse) early in the first show since he was a bit hot and there wasn’t room for him at the far end of the list.
The private mass transit system has become the most visible symbol of the digital gold rush sweeping this city, and of the sharpening division between those who are riding the high-tech industry's good fortunes and those who are not.
"Some days I think of them as the spaceships on which our alien overlords have landed to rule over us," Rebecca Solnit, a longtime San Francisco resident, recently wrote in the London Review of Books.
Ground zero for this growing array of grievances is the Mission District, a historically working-class Latino neighborhood where Victorian flats and newer lofts have been overrun by techies.
Heated bidding wars — especially in a half-mile radius of shuttle bus stops — have broken out, causing rents to soar, even double in some cases. Along shuttle routes, trendy new restaurants that serve high-end food and spirits have taken the place of corner stores and mom-and-pop businesses.
itwbennett writes "The German Federal Intelligence Service said in a news release that the U.S. has verbally committed to enter into a no-spying agreement with Germany. The no-spying agreement talks were announced as part of a progress report on an eight-point program proposed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in July with measures to better protect the privacy of German citizens. In the progress report, the German government found that U.S. intelligence services comply with German law. Also, the operators of large German Internet exchanges and the federal government did not find any evidence that the U.S. spies on Germans, the government said."
Would you like to see a bit of Studio Ghibli's newest film The Wind Rises and know what the hell is going on? Well, today is your lucky day, because the first English-subtitled trailer has finally arrived.
Former Valve Director of Business Development Jason Holtman has joined Microsoft, and will focus on the company's PC gaming efforts.
"Yes, I have joined Microsoft where I will be focusing on making Windows a great platform for gaming and interactive entertainment," Holtman confirmed to Games Industry International. "I think there is a lot of opportunity for Microsoft to deliver the games and entertainment customers want and to work with developers to make that happen, so I'm excited to be here."
Holtman left Valve in February during a round of layoffs at the company. He managed Valve's Steam platform, working with the company for eight years.
The mini documentary “Porcelainia” takes a look at the beautiful porcelain art of Bobby Jaber, a retired chemistry and physics teacher who makes spherical sculptures inspired by science and math. The documentary was create by Dave Altizer (Jaber is Altizer’s great uncle). Altizer talks about his great uncle and the film project in this interview with No Fiction.
The news came after Cisco reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings and revenue that edged past analysts' expectations, helped by continued strength in its enterprise business.
On Monday, federal judge Schira Scheindlin ruled that New York City’s controversial stop and frisk policing policing policy was unconstitutional and amounts to "indirect racial profiling" because officers regularly stop "blacks and Hispanics who would not have been stopped if they were white."
A lot has been said about how this ruling will impact the city's crime rate. Mayor Michael Bloomberg vowed to continue the tactics for as long as the judicial process would allow. "I wouldn’t want to be responsible for a lot of people dying," he said.
Less has been written about the human toll these stops take. The vast majority of those questioned are innocent of any wrongdoing, and opponents of the policy have argued that it alienates the police from the communities where it's needed most.
Communities United for Police Reform wants to shift the focus. The coalition of groups from across the city, funded by $2.2. million in grants from George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, used the data that the police department was required to make public in order to craft a case against the stop and frisk policy.
They also emphasized the very real effect that stop-and-frisk has on people’s live. This week, the group is releasing a series of short films about people from the communities where being stopped and frisked is a part of life, especially for young men and boys.
In one of the films, the Rev. Samuel Cruz of Sunset Park, Brooklyn, talks about the effect he sees on the lives of his parishioners. "When you’re stopped on the street and you’re thrown against the wall for no other reason than you know you’re black or Hispanic, it creates a sense of hopelessness," he said. "No matter what I do, I am being constantly treated as if I’m not worthy of this society. And I know as a pastor that that destroys the spirit."
In another short, Kasiem Walters, a high school student in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, talks about how he has been stopped and frisked seven times. It has made him fear the police rather than look to them for help. When he was robbed himself, he says, he didn’t call the cops because he was afraid of getting them involved.
"I think the police’s job is to get to know us," Walters said. "To make us feel like we can go to them. To make us feel like when we see them, we don’t have to walk across the street. … When you look around you should feel safer when you’re a cop, you shouldn’t feel like you’re a target. And I think that’s the main goal, that we should feel like citizens of New York and not criminals.”
Cruz puts it this way: "Poor people and people of color want safety as much as anyone else in this society."
Top image: Demonstrators hold signs protesting stop and frisk outside of Manhattan Federal Court in New York, March. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
The 12th Annual San Francisco Zine Fest, a celebration of zines and the indie artists and writers who create them, takes place August 31 to September 1, 2013 at the San Francisco County Fair Building in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Admission to the event is free.
SF Zine Fest seeks to advance the do-it-yourself ethos by fostering community throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. In a weekend long event we celebrate and support independent writers, artists, and creators allowing them to share their work with an ever-growing audience in workshops, exhibitions and public events.
one of many negative comments aka, why I hate cyclist culture
similar leaps of logic: "If we think we need to speak Spanish because that's what Spaniards understand, we should fix the Spaniards instead. Over-thinking in the grand tradition of linguistic design." "If we think we need to be nice to your parents because we got married, we should fix your parents instead. Over-compensation in the grand tradition of social design." "If we think we need to have gloves and surgical tools because surgery is dangerous, we should fix the patient instead. Over-sanitation in the grand tradition of bacterial science."
If we think we need to have turn signals and brake lights on our bikes because our streets are dangerous, we should fix our streets instead. Over-engineering in the grand tradition of car design.
Online drug bazaar Silk Road was made possible by Tor's anonymity software, but the site's head — known as the Dread Pirate Roberts — says it was Bitcoin that let it grow. "We've won the State's War on Drugs because of Bitcoin," he tells Forbes for an interview and profile. But even as new competitor Atlantis promises "dank buds" in a blunt, now-deleted YouTube ad, Roberts describes his site as an ideological blow against regulation and surveillance. And the anonymity he values extends far beyond obscuring his real name: like his namesake in The Princess Bride, he says he's not the first Dread Pirate Roberts, and it's possible he won't be the last.
This week, Brian Cronin flashes back to the '80s to examine how Bill Cosby had initially intended Phylicia Rashād's character on "The Cosby Show" to be a hot-tempered female version of Ricky Ricardo.
"Kick-Ass 2 becomes about two outsiders trying to fit in, and their two fathers trying to keep up. It's a surprising, earnest, entertaining story—or at least it is until McLovin shows up to make some rape jokes."
Kick-Ass 2: Too little, too late.
by Erik Henriksen
THERE ARE TWO MOVIES in Kick-Ass 2. That probably sounds awesome: two movies for the price of one! But it isn't, because one of those movies is really short and the other is really bad.
2010's Kick-Ass seems like it came out forever ago, which is probably why its sequel spends its whole first act playing catch-up: High-schooler Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is also Kick-Ass, a part-time superhero; every once in a while, he teams up with Hit-Girl, AKA Mindy Macready (Chloë Grace Moretz), whose chipper grin and purple wig belie the fact she can brutally beat down jerks twice her size. Meanwhile, angry nerd Chris D'Amico (played by McLovin! remember McLovin?) has decided to become New York's first supervillain, which he does by dressing up in his mother's bondage gear, renaming himself "The Motherfucker," and hiring a squad of mercenaries. He calls his cohorts the Toxic Mega Cunts; your grandmother probably wouldn't like this movie very much.
In his one-star review, Roger Ebert called the first Kick-Ass "morally reprehensible," and while that was a bit of an overreaction, it's hard to deny that much of that movie's appeal came from its then-novel outrageousness. Based on a comic by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr., Kick-Ass was also, at times, really fun, thanks to a great turn from Moretz, solid action, and Nicholas Cage channeling Adam West. (Cage is absent this time; Jim Carrey, as the leader of a team of superheroes, does his best to dispense a comparable sort of weirdness. He cannot compete with Cage in this regard; no one can.)
Alas, Kick-Ass 2 is not fun, which brings us back to the two-movies-in-one thing: whenever Kick-Ass 2 tries to revel in the same gleeful amorality as Kick-Ass, it feels like a tedious rehash. What writer/director Jeff Wadlow is better at, though, is the other half of the movie, which is a weirdly charming story about... parenting?
As Mindy and Dave's beleaguered guardians, Morris Chestnut and Garrett M. Brown have thankless roles: as dictated by the rules of every movie about rebellious teenagers ever, it's their job to look square and lecture. Chestnut and Brown do those things, but they're good at them: Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl really are idiots, a fact that both of their fathers try to impart to them while still, you know, loving them. When Dave's dad finds his son's stupid superhero costume, or Mindy, at Chestnut's urging, tries to fit in with the popular girls at school, Wadlow and his cast find genuine conflict and humor. It's then that Kick-Ass 2 becomes about two outsiders trying to fit in, and their two fathers trying to keep up. It's a surprising, earnest, entertaining story—or at least it is until McLovin shows up to make some rape jokes.
Comics writer Mark Millar has never been accused of sensitivity or subtlety, but in his best work, he underscores his boorishness with a subversive wink. There's no wink here, and Kick-Ass 2 is mostly clunky, unfunny, and lame. But every once in a while, it turns into a pretty fun coming-of-age movie about teens acting out and parents trying, and failing, to be cool with it. Hopefully next time, Wadlow will just makes a high-school movie, not a superhero sequel nobody asked for.
"Some depict pigs, dogs and pyramids, others feature round and bullet shapes." agricola beat
A series of small stones uncovered in a Turkish burial ground almost 5,000 years old may be the world oldest board game pieces, according to a report in Discovery News.
The black, blue, green, red and white stones were unearthed in a burial ground in southeastern Turkey.
"Some depict pigs, dogs and pyramids, others feature round and bullet shapes," said Haluk Sağlamtimur of Ege University in İzmir, Turkey. "We also found dice as well as three circular tokens made of white shell and topped with a black round stone."
Similar stones have been uncovered in Iraq and Syria but were believed to be counting stones because they were scattered individually.
"On the contrary, our gaming pieces were found all together in the same cluster," he said. "It's a unique finding, a rather complete set of a chess-like game. We are puzzling over its strategy."
The researchers don't yet know what the ancient game was, but Sağlamtimur said that, "According to the distribution, shape and numbers of the stone pieces, it appears that the game is based on the number four."
Those blue prints were used on Columbia. The SILTS pod on the tail is the tell all. After obtaining thermal images they removed the tires from the payload bay, top of wings, some of the OMS pods, and vertical stabilizer.They replaced them with FIB Blankets and FRSI (nomex felt).
Whenever you send a text message, upload a photo, or check your news feed, your phone or computer directs a small amount of power to its radio, and uses that power to beam out a signal. Finding power usually isn't a huge issue, but if no power were necessary, it would be possible to develop simple, battery-free devices that could talk to each other for purposes such as making payments, sending messages, and even monitoring the structure of buildings. Researchers from the University of Washington have put forth just such a possibility: they've proposed a new technology called "ambient backscatter" that would require no battery and could wirelessly transmit simple messages.
RFID taken to the next level
The idea may not be entirely new, but it's different in a big way. Technologies like RFID, which is often used as a simple electronic information tag, also work wirelessly and without a battery — the big difference here is that RFID requires that a nearby base station be connected to a power source, whereas ambient backscatter devices would require no extra pieces at all.
That doesn't mean that the devices aren't powered though, just that they don't need a battery. But powering them up isn't something that a user would ever have to worry about: because radio waves are ubiquitously moving through the air, ambient backscatter devices would simply grab some of those radio waves and convert them into the small amount of power that they need in order to work. It can't do much with that limited power source, but it would be enough to send a signal, store information, and light up an LED.
Ambient backscatter devices would be able to require such little power because of the nontraditional method that they use for sending out radio waves. Rather than making their own signal, such devices would repurpose existing waves that are already moving through the air. By deflecting those other waves, ambient backscatter devices can alter them into their own specific communications that other devices would be able to pick up.
The limitations still aren't known
In the researchers' study, which was published at a SIGCOMM conference running this week, they note that these devices were able to work up to up to 6.5 miles away from the nearest tower broadcasting a strong wireless signal. That distance isn't necessarily the devices' upper limit, but the team didn't test them any farther away. The devices' simple structure could also limit how useful they are — but with some creative workarounds, there may be plenty of possibilities.
One example that the researchers suggest is having the devices measure how long it takes for them to receive signals from nearby transmitters. If the timing ever slowed down, it would indicate that the one of the devices was moved — had they been monitoring a building, it could mean that its structure had faltered. But while the technology's most exciting application may be sending emails and text messages power-free, researchers will still need to find a battery-free way for those emails to be composed.
“Rape is violence. But that’s not all it is. It’s also defilement — having your body violated and desecrated. And it’s an interruption over your agency, your control over your body and your life. On top of all that, rape victims often end up feeling that they were complicit in their own attack (‘I should’ve told him no again,’ or ‘I should’ve tried to fight him off harder,’ or ‘I hate myself because I just froze up while it was happening.’). It’s awful, it’s scarring, and for a lot of people it sticks with them very vividly, for a very long time. And for a lot of people, those memories are very easily triggered… by, for instance, seeing a rape scene on TV or reading one in a comic.
Rape is also ridiculously, sickeningly common. One in six women in America reports having someone at least try to rape her. But honestly, in my experience? I feel like it’s more like one in four women. Or one in three. There have been times in my life when it seemed like every women in my life had been roofied at a bar, or followed into a bathroom by a guy at a party, or got forced to do things she didn’t want to do by a boyfriend, or was date raped, or was molested by a family friend, or… Or… Or…
And the very least I can do? As a friend, and as a responsible adult? Is not to write comics that cause people I care about to relive some of the most horrific events of their lives.”
– Brandon Seifert, co-creator of Witch Doctor and Spirit of the Law, explaining why he doesn’t use rape as a plot device.
“Rape is violence. But that’s not all it is. It’s also defilement — having your body violated and desecrated. And it’s an interruption over your agency, your control over your body and your life. On top of all that, rape victims often end up feeling that they were complicit in their own attack (‘I should’ve [...]
This morning, citizens trying to reach US government websites got a bit of a surprise—the entirety of the .gov top level domain appeared to be offline. The reason: a hiccup in the Domain Name Service Security Extension (DNSSEC) information being distributed by .gov's registry.
According to a source at the General Services Administration, which operates the .gov registry, the registry team discovered that the DNSSEC information being distributed by its root domain name server had somehow become corrupted. The corruption affected the root domain's digital signature, making it appear not to be the authoritative server for the government's Internet names. As DNS data aged and expired, government sites disappeared from the Internet's directory and became unreachable by their host names (though the servers remained up).
The team reset the DNS server to correct the error. By around 10:20am Eastern Time today, government sites magically reappeared on the Internet. Resolution of the sites within the government's own networks was never interrupted.
but seriously who wants to talk about how this game promoted canine protagonists (and their direct integration into the story) earlier and more fervently than women protagonists (who have not yet been mentioned as being in the story campaign, just as inconsequential multiplayer skins)
Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer.
New multiplayer features for Call of Duty: Ghosts were revealed today by Infinity Ward at an event for the game. The first reaction highlights include a “squad” mode and customizable soldiers, but the trailer above also reveals that—for the first time ever—females will be allowed in multiplayer. Female character skins, that is.
The “squad mode” will send players into multiplayer maps alongside up to 10 AI-controlled soldiers (the “squad”). The squad can be customized, and each starts with one level of prestige. Once on the map, the squad fights either with or against the human player. Players can earn experience and rank up by playing with the squads, which Infinity Ward asserts will “play like real players.”
In addition to leading or fighting their own squads, players will be able to team up and play against the squads of other offline players. Players can also take their squad to play against an AI squad. That’s right: multiplayer without multiple players.
what, like a Bell Labs or a NSF ($6 billion, 92% to basic research) or NIH ($35 billion, 53% to basic research, 47% to applied research) or DoE ($10 billion, 41% to basic research, 32% to applied research) or NASA ($6 billion, 29% to basic and applied research) (http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-sources-and-uses-of-us-science-funding) or a National Geographic or a Royal Society
We're dangerously low on new ideas.
Some of the young people coming out of college these days must be interested in meaty technical stuff. Not just variants on Foursquare, Blogger, Twitter, GMail, Spotify and Groupon.
There are new ideas out there, but there's no funding model for them.
Things that would, today, make a VC's eyes glaze over.
It's where the startups of 2016 will come from. ;-)
I write today to suggest that those of you who are young and have a interest in making practical future decisions about tailored clothing might keep your eyes on what appears to be a developing new Tumblr series by #Menswear eCelebrity Graeme W., the man behind the bicycling, dining out, and monogamous dating blog (okay, bRog) Most ExeRent.
If you have been around for a while, you will remember Graeme as one of the first two men (the other being Matt F., the dude behind the Rip Van Winkle-ly-active blog Tweed in the City) who instantiated the third wave of “classic” menswear clothing forum selfies.
That third wave had two attributes—good cameras and basic photographic techniques—and after its emergence, there was really no going back to the old days, for good or ill.
So, what’s the scoop?
In the cultures for which the coat and tie look was once the pervasive marker of masculine purpose, belonging, and mutual respect, there is no doubt that we continue to slide down the hole opened up by the Hippie Revolution.
The generational warfare in the 1960s against The Man and all the stuffy “straights” in their strangling neckties and constricting suits has served as the framework on which other forces have found common support in creating the current generation of male slobs. These forces range from developments as varied as rise of climate-controled work cubicles, cars, and shopping malls, to the corporate plutocracy’s exploitation of the potential of making ever cheaper clothes in developing countries, to the overall upending or erosion of some social conventions.
The result? The necktie is no longer the tyrant. The hippies have won. Every man is dressed in a cheap knit shirt, cheap jeans and khakis, and cheap shoes, smoothly integrated into the production, marketing and consumption cycles on which the fortunes of a few tend to get built.
Yippie! (Which, some of you will know is another form of hippie.) Californication.
Of course, The Man never really disappeared. In some cities, in some professions and workplaces, he or she, and his or her, colleagues, friends, and family might assume the coat and tie look fearlessly as an everyday habit. Nevertheless, no longer is it ubiquitous.
Fans of tyranny, fear not, The Man is more subtle than that. You see, the hippies did not win. They lost, and their philosophy of dress has been approprieted.
I guess this is what happened to Graeme. His guerilla insurgency against slob wear, which he ended up calling Grown Man Style (GMS) came to an abrupt end as he moved out from underneath one corporate thumb and then under another, one that apparently outright bans the coat and tie look for its executives.
The tyranny of the necktie has been replaced by the tyranny of casual Friday, or its variants.
You know what I am talking about. Maybe your workplace does not restrict your dress by policy, maybe your friends and family are okay with the coat and tie look, but probably all the professional and social pressures are there to compel you to be a fellow member of the male slob generation. “Join us,” they say, “or else.”
The worst part? The hippie attitude of not caring about your dress has been hybridized today with what should be contrary, and that is, the impulses of materialism and consumerism. The dreadful result? Male slobs who think they are peacocks.
I admit that by age, background, and personal history, I skipped over this part of the story…and remain skipped. Nevertheless, I harbor no illusions that it would be fitting for many of you to stroll to the Monday meeting in your three piece, 16oz bespoke tweed weekend suit. Just don’t do that, okay? Leave that to the old and the untouchable, like me.
So, what should many of you do? This brings me back to Graeme.
Now, his recent look has often seemed pretty loopy, neither here nor there.
Granted, he’s in Australia.
It could be that his new professional stint is sartorially liberating, so it’s YOLO every day. I suspect, however, that his Grown Man Style (GMS) longing never was obliterated by The Man (albeit, The Man in the roll neck shirt and dad jeans.)
Could I be right? I think so, because out it pops:
Click the photograph to see Graeme’s recent post and his promise of documenting to where he is going.
I am not certain, but I do not believe that Graeme needs to wear any tailored clothing for professional reasons. That he is now drawn back to the world of coat and tie (true, some days without the tie, and other days without the coat, and maybe seldom the two ever together) fills me with good cheer.
OMS and I still need to buy a new bed and the local place we were gonna order from had a fire in their shop a few months ago and STILL hasn’t reopened. Anyone have any experience with Gothic Cabinet Craft? Apparently it’s all made in New York, so probably not terrible from a tiny-children-losing-fingers-in-factories perspective (which pleases OMS) and the stuff looks like it’s made of real wood and not particleboard (also pleasing to OMS).
How did it start? With the American Dream and a lot of hard work. Gothic Cabinet Craft (1-877-446-8442) was started in 1969 in NYC by a Greek immigrant Theodore Zaharopoulos, who was determined to make it. With a focus on quality and affordability, our founder’s designs evolved into practical storage solutions for urban areas. The Original™ Storage, Original™ Platform, and Original™ Captains beds were all developed by him and are now a common staple in all furniture stores. A family operated business, Gothic continues to offer high quality affordable furniture for every home. To back this up, Gothic is one of the only furniture companies anywhere in the world to provide a lifetime warranty. Now serving the entire US, Gothic is the largest manufacturer of unfinished furniture on the East Coast.
Gothic Cabinet Craft is a family operated business that manufacturers affordable real wood furniture for every room in your home. Stop into our stores today and experience the Gothic difference.
Retail
Since we opened our first store in 1969, we have produced quality wood furniture from solid hardwoods and select veneers for our retail customers in the New York metropolitan area. But Gothic Cabinet Craft is not just for the home!
Commercial
We can also help you furnish your office, business or institution. We have a wide variety of satisfied commercial clients such as interior designers, hotels, hospitals, libraries, contractors, restaurants and retail stores all over the country. From a single stock item to large quantities of made to order pieces, Gothic can suit your needs and budget.
Custom
If you don't find what you need in our stock selection we can also manufacture to your specification. Bring us a design, or just explain what you need. We can work with you to design a solution.
Shop Gothic Cabinet Craft for:
Better Quality. Craftsmanship is our philosophy, not just our profession.
Incredible Prices. Save up to 70% on factory direct merchandise
Enormous Selection. Over 2,000 items in stock and counting, in a variety of wood unfinished, or with your choice from our large selection of finishes.
Design & Storage Solutions. We have been researching your needs and continuously improving our designs, resulting in innovative, home-friendly functional pieces. We also build to order!
Customer Service. We take pride in our reputation for excellence in customer support for over thirty years.
Fast Delivery. At least 90% of our merchandise is in stock, assembled and ready to be
shipped.
Gothic Cabinet Craft's wide selection and attention to detail make us the perfect partner to help you create your ideal home or work environment. For whole rooms or just accent pieces, let Gothic Cabinet Craft's quality and experience work for you.
Former Valve Director of Business Development Jason Holtman has joined Microsoft, and will focus on the company's PC gaming efforts.
Former Steam boss Jason Holtman now at Microsoft originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 14 Aug 2013 18:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Kick-Ass 2: Too little, too late.
by Erik Henriksen
OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy