firehose

Musk isn’t the first entrepreneur to take on transportation in America. In fact, another wealthy businessman and inventor named Alfred Ely Beach attempted to do the same thing in New York, in 1869. Except instead of Hyperloops, he had pneumatic tubes.

Moderate alcohol drinkers gain less weight over time than people who abstain, some studies show.

Black Lodge 2600 fits Twin Peaks’ creepy imagery into an Atari game.

BOSTON—As the federal jury in the racketeering trial against James “Whitey” Bulger handed down its verdict Monday, famed actor and filmmaker Ben Affleck interrupted the proceedings by shouting out commands from a director’s chair i...

Snowden: "Any unencrypted message sent over the Internet is being delivered to every intelligence service in the world."

somebody’s getting crabs tonight -

Dynamite Cop (Sega - Dreamcast - 1999)

The White House is pretty pop culture savvy today. First came news that Michelle Obama is curating a hip-hop record, and now comes a tweet from the official White House Twitter account that both features a picture of Bo, the First Dog, and quotes Mean Girls. A screencap is below, but suffice it to say that this is the most important news of the day.

Bonus snaps go to Entertainment Weekly for its Tumblr response: “Oh my God, Karen, you can’t just ask dogs why they’re black and white.”

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• Andrew Jackson, 9
• Thomas Young, 12
• Deborah Sampson, 15
• James Armistead, 15
• Joseph Plumb Martin, 15
• Peter Salem, 16*
• Peggy Shippen, 16
• Marquis de Lafayette, 18
• James Monroe, 18
• Henry Lee III, 20
• Gilbert Stuart, 20
• John Trumbull, 20
• Aaron Burr, 20
• John Marshall, 20
• Nathan Hale, 21
• Banastre Tarleton, 21
• Alexander Hamilton, 21*
• Benjamin Tallmadge, 22
• Robert Townsend, 22
• George Rodgers Clark, 23
• David Humphreys, 23
• Gouveneur Morris, 24
• Betsy Ross, 24
• William Washington, 24
• James Madison, 25
• Henry Knox, 25
• John Andre, 26
• Edward Rutledge, 26
• Abraham Woodhull, 26
• Isaiah Thomas, 27
• John Paul Jones, 28
• Bernardo de Galvez, 29
• Robert R. Livingston, 29
• Benjamin Rush, 30
• Tadeusz Kosciuszko, 30
• John Jay, 30
• Abigail Adams, 31
• John Barry, 31
• Casimir Pulaski, 31
• Anthony Wayne, 31
• Nathanael Greene, 33
• Thomas Jefferson, 33
• Joseph Brant, 33
• Benedict Arnold, 35
• Thomas Knowlton, 35
• Hercules Mulligan, 36
• Andrew Pickens, 36
• Haym Solomon, 36
• John Sullivan, 36
• Charles Cornwallis, 37
• King George III, 38
• Ethan Allen, 38
• Thomas Paine, 39
• John Hancock, 39
• Daniel Morgan, 39
• Patrick Henry, 40
• Enoch Poor, 40
• John Adams, 40
• Daniel Boone, 41
• John Lamb, 41*
• Paul Revere, 41
• Thomas Sumter, 41
• Robert Morris, 42
• Thomas McKean, 42
• John Dickinson, 43
• John Glover, 43
• Benjamin Edes, 43
• Francis Marion, 44
• Charles Lee, 44
• Lord North, 44
• George Washington, 44
• Friedrich von Steuben, 45
• Martha Washington, 45
• Joseph Galloway, 45
• William Howe, 46
• Henry Clinton, 46
• John Stark, 47
• Mercy Otis Warren, 47
• Horatio Gates, 48
• Artemas Ward, 48
• Lord Stirling, 50
• Guy Carleton, 51
• Comte de Rochambeau, 51
• James Rivington, 52*
• Samuel Adams, 53
• Comte de Grasse, 53
• John Burgoyne, 54
• Johann de Kalb, 55
• Thomas Gage, 56
• Israel Putnam, 58
• Comte de Vergennes, 58
• Lewis Nicola, 59*
• George Germain, 60
• Stephen Hopkins, 69
• Benjamin Franklin, 70
• Samuel Whittemore, 81

Original Source

Original Source

urbanination:

Le Corbusier’s plan 1925 for Paris, France.

time-for-maps:

From the 1954 book Engineers’ Dreams.

Africa’s Central Lake planned by german architect Herman Sörgel in 1935. Basically the plan was to totally reconfigure the interior of Africa by creating a series of huge inland seas. His plan was to dam the Congo River where it passes through a string of deep, narrow gorges after it merges with one of its tributaries, the Kwa River. It would create a lake 350,000 square miles in area - larger than the areas of California, Nevada and Oregon combined.

Once the lake filled, it would be forced to overflow from another one of its tributaries, the Ubangi, into the Shari River which is one of the feeders for the present day Lake Chad. Lake Chad would swell to the dimensions it was thought to have had over 10,000 years ago, spreading across the Ahaggar plateau. A river would then be created that would lead through Algeria, turn east into Tunisia and then eventually empty into the Mediterranean Sea at the Gulf of Gabes. This river could made navigable allowing ships to directly access the interior of Africa. (source 1 2) 

The U.S.'s crackdown on global tax evaders is prompting some Americans in Asia to rethink their citizenship, attorneys there say, in part amid an increasing burden of paperwork required by U.S. tax law.

Hey, you know how it is. One minute you're walking down a London street, minding your own business, when you accidentally step into a police call box and all of a sudden you're inside the TARDIS and the Doctor has enlisted your help fighting aliens. I hate when that happens.

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Oh, and South America, too! Because apparently both places now have the "pacu" fish—a relative of the piranha who delights in feasting on men's testicles. From the hilariously hyperbolic Telegraph:

The freshwater fish, which can grow up to 90 centimetres and weigh up to 25 kilogrammes, has been nicknamed the "ball cutter" for its attacks on the male genitalia.

In areas where pacus proliferate, fishermen have reportedly bled to death after losing their testicles to the fish's crushing jaws.

So why exactly do pacus go for the male testicles? Danish museum fish expert Henrik Carl explains:

"They bite because they're hungry, and testicles sit nicely in their mouth."

HAHAHAHAHAAAA!! OH YES THEY DO. Waitasecond... there's more and... WHAT?!? You're just NOW mentioning this?!?

Found in most rivers in the Amazon and Orinoco basins in South America, they have also been spotted in Papua New Guinea, where it is believed they have been introduced to boost fish stocks. Discoveries have also been reported in several US states; in 2006, officials at one Texas lake reportedly put a $100 bounty on the pacu caught there.

Way to bury the lede, Telegraph! And this is EXACTLY why I wear THIS every time I go swimming. Bon appétit, a-hole fish!

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Happy Birthday Ringo Hitch

Paul Stamatiou’s “Android Is Better” is generating a lot of discussion and inflammatory headlines, and many readers have sent it to me (partly because I get name-checked in it — I’ll get to that in a bit).

Paul’s headline is his thesis, conclusion, and call to action: Android is better, and everyone should try it and will likely convert like he did. But after reading the article, I’m more convinced than ever that the best mobile platform for me is currently iOS.

That sentence contains two huge qualifiers: the best mobile platform for me is currently iOS. I’ve learned to write and think with a broader view, since it’s less insular and more accurately reflects reality. (The world is a big place.)

While reading Paul’s article, I was often struck by how differently he and I use the same technology.

His article exudes a narrow tech-world view by having no such qualifiers. I don’t know Paul, but if his audience is similarly narrow, this might be a safe assumption in the context of writing on his personal site. I don’t qualify my posts here with “…well, if you have a computer,” because I can assume that most people reading my site are included in that group. But I bet Paul’s audience isn’t as narrow as he thinks.

Despite using a Mac and formerly using an iPhone and iPad, Paul says he doesn’t use any major iCloud services and doesn’t use iTunes (or maintain a music library at all), then concludes:

The list of Apple products I use daily largely amounts to OS X and Apple hardware. People identify themselves as Mac users and Windows users… zoom out a bit and you’ll find another Venn diagram where Google almost entirely encompasses all of these users.

Rather than using Apple’s services, he uses a wide variety of Google’s: (emphasis his)

Google+ Auto Backup … I use Chrome … My calendars are hosted by Google … I made do by exporting from the OS X Contacts app and importing to GMail Contacts. … Most services I rely on daily are owned by Google. My world revolves around GMail and Google search. …

One key component to this experience is that my identity follows me around. Given that the majority of the services I rely on are Google products, I’m already logged in or just need to select an account. This is a significant convenience that also extends to apps using Google for sign-in. …

However, Google Now is what genuinely makes this experience magical. … So how do you use Google Now? Well, you don’t. You just go about your life and when it’s appropriate, Google Now will send you a notification to something relevant.

To me, that sounds like a nightmare.

I object to a huge, creepy advertising company having that much access to me and my data, I think it’s unwise to use many proprietary, hard-to-replace services in such important roles, and I think it’s downright foolish to tie that much of your data and functionality into proprietary services run by one company in one account that sometimes gets disabled permanently with no warning, no recourse, and no support.

But people love Google’s services, especially geeks and power users. I get it — there’s a lot to love. They’re just not for me. I use search and maps, but little else.

If you give Google an inch, they take a foot. I stay logged out of my Google account most of the time, despite their incessant badgering. I try to keep some distance from them, which means I’m always defending my technology use from further Google intrusion.¹

If Apple somehow irrevocably locks out my Apple ID, which I’ve never heard of happening, it would be inconvenient. My contacts and calendar would temporarily stop syncing during the 20 minutes it would take to create a new account and point my devices to it. The biggest problem would be losing my app and media purchases, although I wouldn’t lose any local copies of anything, and there’s a phone number I can call to convince a human to give me a transfer or credit. But that’s it. My standard IMAP email, and almost everything else I do on my computers and phone, will be fine.

It’s important to maintain diversity of services.

No tech giant wants you to maintain any diversity, though. Apple pushes you to choose Apple hardware for every profitable device category, then buy software and media from Apple storefronts (and a lot of that media still has DRM). Google tries as hard as it can to railroad you into using Google’s services for everything you do online. Facebook’s even worse, more shameless, and more proprietary by trying to replace staples like email and calendars with completely proprietary implementations and zero interoperability (which Google can’t wait to copy). Twitter is trying very hard to achieve Facebook levels of creepiness, intrusion, and lock-in as quickly as possible, and Microsoft wishes they could still do it like they did in the ’90s.

If you buy into Apple’s ecosystem too much, Android will be limited, annoying, and incomplete to you — especially if you try to keep Google away from most of your data. Alternately, if you buy mostly into Google’s ecosystem and avoid most of Apple’s services, like Paul says he does, iOS’ downsides and limits may feel unjustified and Android will feel more integrated.

It’s foolish for people on either side to ignore the other or the middle, because despite what it sometimes looks like to geeks like us, we’re not everyone. Not even close. Even within our world, we can’t agree on much.

What Paul’s article really says is that Android “is better”… for him, his usage, and his priorities. That’s fine, but it really doesn’t generalize well.²

As for my name-check:

The Android community lacks a champion. An evangelist that doesn’t obsess over hardware specs and has a broader appeal. Someone that vividly illustrates how Android can fit into the ebb and flow of your daily life as it has mine. And sure, even someone to encourage budding developers to take their next idea to Android. Where is the Marco Arment or John Gruber of Android? We’ll get there.

I’m honored by the suggestion that I’m somehow helping iOS, but in reality, I’m not that important. iOS helps itself, especially in developers’ eyes, by delighting its customers so they keep coming back, being a pleasure to develop for (compared to most platforms), and attracting a healthy ecosystem of better users to develop most apps for.

Developers aren’t fools. We aren’t swayed by charismatic figureheads who try to convince us to develop for their platforms. The formula is quite simple. We’ll develop for a platform if:

1. We use it.
2. A lot of other people use it.
3. We can make a living developing for it.

If your platform nails all three, we’ll develop for it. Nobody will even need to ask us. We’ll break the door down.

A weakness in any of those three can only be made up for by both others being very strong. Even then, you often don’t get great apps. iOS nails all three, so that’s where most developers focus their attention. While Android has closed a lot of the gap since I wrote that in 2010, it still significantly lags behind iOS in criteria 1 and 3, despite kicking ass at 2.

As for “an evangelist that doesn’t obsess over hardware specs and has a broader appeal”: John Grubers don’t just fall from the sky and get allocated to random hardware platforms. (John also doesn’t really “belong” to iOS or Apple the way many Windows and Android fans suggest.) Android isn’t just sitting around waiting for its turn to get one. Time won’t fix this.

The better question the Android community should be asking itself is why it hasn’t attracted or developed great writers and evangelists as well as Apple has. They’re probably there, but in smaller numbers and far less visible. What is it about Android and its community that’s preventing such people from shining through?

Goodbye, Rose Garden. Hello, Moda Center.

Wait. What the heck's a Moda Center?

Moda Center is named after Moda Health, which signed a 10-year naming rights agreement with the Portland Trail Blazers. And they are wasting no time: The Rose Quarter website has already been updated with the new venue name.

The Columbian reports:

Physical transformation of the renamed arena and Rose Quarter will begin immediately, with new signage and other visual elements being added gradually. New graphics for the home court surface of the Trail Blazers will debut in time for the team’s 2013-14 regular season home opener on November 2 versus the defending Western Conference Champion San Antonio Spurs.

While the Moda name might take a little getting used to, there are some good things about the name change. Moda Health (formerly known as ODS) is a locally based company with 1,400 employees. It's a health company, not a fast-food slinger or a big box store. And it rhymes with "Yoda," which can only be a good thing.

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“Straight Male Gamer” told to ‘get over it’ by BioWare:

"…The person who says that the only way to please them is to restrict options for others is, if you ask me, the one who deserves it least."

Haring

corgis-everywhere:

corgiaddict:

gatsbyadventures:

I made a corgi shirt yesterday.

Czarina is flaunting her corgi addiction. Matching bandannas to t-shirts. Brava! 

i love this fabric!! :-)

via http://t.co/73YRQNogFA

In spite of carmakers’ efforts to lure younger buyers by advertising in video games and conducting social media campaigns, data show that 18- to 34-year-olds are buying cars at a much lower rate than previous generations.

MythBusters is often a fun show, and it always gains a little something when it ties itself in with popular culture. Science is awesome and all, and it’s good to know that there are people out there using it to improve cancer medications and address the dangers of climate change. Meanwhile, the rest of us have been wondering for five years now, what the hell did Walt throw on the floor when he was in Tuco’s hideout that blew out all the windows and allowed him to walk out unscathed? And is it legally obtainable? And does it work at high school reunions? Thanks to Jamie and Adam, the world is now better enlightened on this pressing issue. Checking in on from time to time are Aaron Paul and a man with a deep, Southern twang to his voice who I first thought was Marc Maron after a ...

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borgheron writes "A maintainer of GNUstep has launched a Kickstarter campaign to get the resources needed to make GNUstep more complete and bring the implementation to API compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6's Cocoa. This will allow applications for Mac OS X to run on GNU/Linux with a simple recompile using new tools developed by the GNUstep team to directly build from xcodeproj project files. If the Kickstarter project is funded beyond it's $50,000 goal, it's possible that WebKit and Darling might also be completed allowing applications built on Mac OS X to run without the need for a recompile... think WINE-like functionality for Mac OS X applications on other platforms... including Windows, Linux, BSD, etc." GNUStep is pretty useful now, but increased coverage of newer Cocoa APIs would be nice, and Darling in particular is interesting by providing a portable Mach-O binary loader.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It’s great having a huge user base to show off. Less great is not having much to show for it. We have been writing for months about how Android’s large market share hasn’t translated into actual phone usage or, more importantly, app-store sales. Android users consume less data than owners of Apple’s iOS devices, prefer to use Wi-Fi rather than 3G for data connections, and spend less on apps.

That appears to be changing. A report out this week from Distimo, an app analytics firm, estimates that revenue generated by the Google Play Store, from which many Android users get their apps, has grown 67% over the past half-year. By contrast, Apple’s App Store revenue grew 15%, according to Distimo estimates, which cover the top 18 countries. That sounds less impressive if you consider that the App Store brought in twice as much revenue in absolute terms. But the numbers are shifting fast. In February, the App Store was generating three times as much revenue, and last November it out-earned Google Play by a factor of four. Google is gaining.

Much of this growth comes from three countries: the US, Japan and Korea. The US is the world’s second largest smartphone market after China. Japan has enthusiastically embraced Android. And Korea is the home of Samsung, the leader in Android handsets. That these three countries should be the first Android user bases to mature ought not be surprising.

It seems clear too that this is just the beginning. Where the top five free apps on the Apple App Store in July were all games, number one on Google Play was Facebook, followed by WhatsApp. Facebook Messenger comes in at number five. These are apps people download when they first get their phones, not ones they come back for.

What does this all mean? Android has long been considered the poor man’s smartphone with users who are reluctant to spend money. That is true, to a degree. But Distimo’s numbers show it can, over time, be a profitable platform. Indeed, an earlier report (pdf) from Distimo found that WhatsApp—which is free for the first year on Android—made more money from Google Play than the App Store in three western European countries in April. The long-term game may pay off in the rest of the world too.

U.S. News & World Report

A Limit on Consumer Costs Is Delayed in Health Care Law New York Times WASHINGTON — In another setback for President Obama's health care initiative, the administration has delayed until 2015 a significant consumer protection in the law that limits how much people may have to spend on their own health care. National Twitter ... Another Obamacare delay shows the benefit of friends in high placesDaily Caller Another Key Provision of 'Obamacare' Suffers DelayU.S. News & World Report Obamacare Critical Consumer Protection Rule Delayed Until 2015Connecticut Watchdog AllGov -Specialty Fabrics Review magazine -Atlanta Journal Constitution (blog) all 214 news articles »

Dash Board was a popular interface enhancement for Newton OS 2.1 in the late 1990s.

An absolutely essential one, if you ask me—Dash Board is, roughly speaking, the Newton equivalent of Alfred or Quicksilver—and it’s now free and open source.

(Even if you don’t have a Newton click through for the README, an epic tale of developer Mason Mark’s efforts to resurrect the project.)

The girl can’t help it