A remarkable paper gathers data on the weight at mid-life from 12 animal populations covering 8 different species all living in human environments. Dividing the sample into male and female they find that in all 24 cases animal weight has increased over the past several decades.

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Apple's Win of Import Ban on Samsung Said Not a Knock Out Bloomberg Spencer Platt/Getty Images. The Apple retail store in Grand Central Terminal on Dec. 10, 2012 in New York City. Apple Inc. (AAPL) won an order against Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) that prevents U.S. imports of devices that infringe two Apple patents, ... Apple patent wins could mean US import ban for SamsungReuters US Panel Orders Import Ban on Some Samsung DevicesWall Street Journal Apple wins patent ruling against SamsungLos Angeles Times Washington Post -Mind Of The Geek -New York Times (blog) all 237 news articles »

“Breathing Flower” is a 24-foot-diameter kinetic sculpture of a lotus flower by Korean artist Choi Jeong Hwa. The inflatable petals on the sculpture slowly move as if the flower is breathing. “Breathing Flower” was installed outside the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in 2012.

photo via Choi Jeong Hwa, video by Matthew Felix Sun

via My Modern Metropolis

Ouya has launched its Free the Games Fund initiative, which seeks to match contributions for burgeoning Kickstarter campaigns that meet a $50,000 threshold, up to a ceiling of $250,000, from a pool of $1 million.

Those seeking fund-matching through Ouya must meet submission guidelines by contacting the console manufacturer prior to initiating the Kickstarter drive, which can run anywhere after August 9, 2013 until August 10, 2014, and agree to six-month exclusivity.

Eligible games will get a quarter of their cash once the Kickstarter campaign has ended, then half of the promised total once the game launches on Ouya. The remaining quarter of owed payment will be granted after that six-month exclusivity has expired. The qualifying game that raises the most cash through Kickstarter will receive an additional $100,000 on top of what Ouya has agreed to match.

Ouya giving $1 million to Kickstarters through Free the Games Fund originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 09 Aug 2013 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New housemate Neil decided to spend first night in the fireplace. Ok, Neil, ok. Regrammed from @laurakirsop

lotr cast commentary

justfurbythings:

Waiting for the midnight train going anywhere

(starting to sing now)

nickborelli:

"I am become death, destroyer of worlds"

- J. Robert Oppenheimer

Never, ever fall into the fatal error of thinking a writer is safe.

They’re not tame writers, after all.

(see also: “It’s My World And I’ll Destroy It/(You) If I Want To”

Crispian Jago represents the Doctor's multi-threaded history as a Tube map, with one transit line for each of the eleven doctors, and the various characters and aliens the Doctor encounters as stops. Daleks are pretty much the ultimate cosmic transfer station.

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Where did 14-year-old Shaaliver Douse get the 9mm pistol he was holding when the NYPD shot him to death? The story begins in Kentucky—in the year of his birth.

waywren:

zenigata:

2chan.net [ExRare]

Paint me like one of your French tigers.

You might know Bret McKenzie as one half of the Kiwi musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, or as the guy who wrote the Oscar-winning soundtrack for The Muppets, or even as Figwit from The Lord of the Rings. But you probably don't know him like this: McKenzie is writing what he describes as a "fairy-tale comedy musical" that pulls inspiration from The Muppets, The Princess Bride, and Labyrinth. It sounds awesome. So what's the sitch with the musical's development? Head under the cut to find out!

In case you've forgotten, Dark Horse Comics is producing a series based on George Lucas' original Star Wars screenplay. The Star Wars, as it's called, will be an eight-issue comic on sale September 4 by writer J.W. Rinzler and artist Mike Mayhew. We've seen a few preview images so far but they've just released a trailer to give us a look at what to expect. The video autoplays after the jump.

So. Boobs. I have a pair. I’m ambivalent about them. I like them just fine, but they’re more bother than my other body parts. They hurt when I lie on my stomach. They hurt when I ride horses. They hurt when I’m on my period. I used to work at a Renaissance faire, where my boobs were regularly pressed into a steel-boned corset. I can still remember the way my rib cage would unfold with relief at the end of the day. If somebody knocks at my door while I’m in my pajamas, my first instinct is to find a bra, because even if my torso is covered, it’s not decent. And don’t get me started on bra shopping, that Sisyphean hell rivaled only by the eternal quest to find a flattering pair of jeans. This is not how we talk about boobs in video game culture (or really, anywhere). We talk about three things: size, the amount of cover, and whether or not said size and cover are justified by the character. Boobs have but one purpose, and all we do is argue the pros and cons therein. It’s frustrating, and tedious, and oh so very boring. That’s where the Boob Jam comes in.

Sadly, Facebook has not backtracked on their decision to introduce autoplay, television-style ads into the social networking site, but, at the very least, the company is delaying the process and taking care to accommodate concerns. Founder Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly taking precautions to ensure that the new type of advertising disrupts Facebook users as little as possible, while still making the company $2.5 million per day per advertising spot.

Ok, I stole that title from Nostalgia Chick (Lindsay Ellis) but only because it worked so well. I recently put together a quick list on my tumblr of male-led vs. female-led superhero film adaptations but Ellis takes a deeper look at the actual quality of those superheroine (or antiheroine as the case may be) films. I will defend 1984's Supergirl to my dying day but give a watch and see what she has to say about the some of the few female comic book films in existence. Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

But I just want to express sadness that my work, once a really cutting edge, nationally known, internationally even, institution, has completely gone into the fucking shitter because of dumb ass stupid fucking managers and directors and other upper management scum. It is a sad and sorry thing to see. We are losing employees left and right because this place, once their dream job, sucks so completely now. Fuck it. I'm happy to take the paycheck, but when I leave, I hope the whole fucking building sinks into the Carrie pit of hell taking all those pencil dicks with them. Thank you!

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hypnosec writes "The Pirate Bay, on its 10th anniversary, has released 'Pirate Browser,' which it claims would allow people to access The Pirate Bay and other such blocked sites. The 'Pirate Browser' is a fully functional browser that currently works with Windows. ... According to the Pirate Browser website, the browser is basically a bundled package consisting of the Tor client and Firefox Portable browser. The package also includes some tools meant for evading censorship in countries like UK, Finland, Denmark, and Iran among others."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

People have more empathy for abused puppies and dogs than they do for adult humans who have been abused, a new study suggests.

The Original Manuscripts by Grant Snider on Incidental Comics

This is what books look like before they are sent to the publisher.

“You Rang, Mr. Addams?” is a short documentary about Charles Addams, the cartoonist who created the ghoulish characters of the Addams Family. The documentary was originally released in 2006 as a featurette on a DVD for The Addams Family TV series.

via Gurney Journey, Boing Boing

Thanks for having trigeminal neuralgia you motherfucking bitch. No, it's fine - I totally love having to experience what can only be described as "a hot electric knife going into my face" several times a day 10 months out of the year. Not like I like to eat, or breathe, or talk. If you don't get your shit together, I'm kicking your ass.

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Like the tomb robbers of old, Quinns has cracked the seal on our copy of Kemet, heedless of all those snakes, scorpions and ancient Egyptian curses to bring you our definitive review.

But there's a problem! This game is the spiritual sequel to Cyclades, yet another svelete, gorgeous game of warring gods from the same publisher. Who will come out on top, in this divine duel? Should you buy this is you already have the other? And why is the SU&SD supercomputer so rubbish?

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Only recently became aware of Radio Disney-styled covers of metal songs…..

Bloodbath-Eaten(Radio Disney Version) (by Andy Rehfeldt)

We still have two years before 2015, the year Back to the Future II revealed to us — including how stars Michael J. Fox, Lea Thompson and Thomas Wilson might age. How did the movie do in portraying their older selves? Turns out not too bad! Certainly more accurate than the public fax machines the movie imagined.

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Rapid changes are taking place in the way people buy things, and companies are reacting accordingly. Increasingly, the US is moving toward a subscription-based economy in which firms will focus less on selling things, and more on gaining recurring customers—a trend seen in companies like Netflix, Zipcar and Spotify. That’s according to Tien Tzuo, an evangelist for the subscription-based economy who built his startup, Zuora, around that philosophy.

Tzuo is CEO of Zuora, a cloud-based billing and finance software company that caters to companies with recurring revenue streams. Tzuo got his training from Salesforce.com, the cloud-based customer management software company, as its 11th employee and was with the firm through its IPO in 2004. Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff is an investor in Zuora. The name Zuora, by the way, came out of a bag of Scrabble letters used to spell the founders’ last names. The founders pulled from the bag and fiddled with the letters until settling on a URL they liked. The name seemed exotic, says Tzuo, until Quora, the crowdsourced Q&A site, popped up in 2009.

Tzuo says his theories about the subscription model bear out in services like Iris, the wireless home control and automation system, which will be more important to the growth of home improvement store Lowes than selling power tools. Lowes charges customers a monthly fee for Iris. Overall, a customer who is willing to pay $500 for a one-time purchase isn’t as valuable as someone handing over $100 a month for the next five years for a recurring service, according to Tzuo. And companies will focus on fighting for that regular customer.

“There’s a massive secular shift going on,” Tzuo said. “It’s not about supplying widgets anymore.”

Tzuo argues that Wall Street misunderstands companies like his that are known as SaaS, or Software as a Service. One reason is that it’s not about how much you sold in the last quarter or the last year, but about how much you will grow in the next year or five years. That means valuing a company by the traditional metric of price to earnings ratio (P/E), which takes a company’s current share price divided by its earnings per share, doesn’t apply. Tzuo said it’s about the future, not the past. That’s important as more private companies based on the subscription model look to go public or do debt deals, and Wall Street has to assess them.

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Magazine publisher Athlon Sports ranks the 20 Best and 5 Worst college athletics logos as they go into the Fall season.