SportsNation quizzed Nick Young on the most important question of our time: which lyrics are from Iggy Azalea and which are from Kobe Bryant's short-lived, awful rap career? Poor Nick was under incredible pressure. If he got any wrong, he risked the wrath of both his fiancée and his most influential teammate.
And ... Young cracked. He correctly guessed that the first lyric was from Kobe, but incorrectly guessed the next two before being fooled on a trick question.
You see these faces?
Those are the faces of someone dreading that glare from his fiancée once he returns home.
NEW YORK—Noting that the rampant problem has devastated rosters across the league, representatives from the National Basketball Players Association demanded an increased referee presence in high-foul areas, sources confirmed Friday. “Something has to be done to crack down on all the foul-ridden sections of the court, and the only solution is having more referees out there to combat this issue head-on,” said NBPA executive director Michele Roberts, adding that the league must immediately position additional officials in the low post area, which has become a hotspot for personal, technical, and flagrant fouls. “We can’t let this situation get any worse than it already is. We’ve seen too many instances of power forwards and shooting guards getting hacked out there, and there are certain parts of the paint where players are too scared to even drive. It’s absolutely unacceptable.” Roberts added that the NBA needs to implement ...
Rep. Schweikert compares unions to Nazis ... really azcentral.com Among the many things that Arizona Republican Rep. David Schweikert should know is that an American politician (or anyone else) should never, ever,. Loading… Post to Facebook. Rep. Schweikert compares unions to Nazis ... really Among the many things ...
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, the BBC’s 7-part adaptation of Susannah Clarke’s novel about the rediscovery of magic in 19th century London is finally making its way to the US tomorrow — and so far it’s been pretty damn magical. This is why you should give it a watch, even if you weren’t a fan of the book.
New York City joins the ranks of 100+ cities and 17 states that prohibit companies from asking applicants about their criminal record before making a job offer.
Jurassic World has arrived and with it fresh new toys to assuage viewers’ dino-fever. These toys join the ever popular and ever-growing number of dinosaur toys on the shelves that kids play with every day, imagining themselves in control of these terrible thunder lizards. And while many of them can be found in science stores and museum gift shops, just how accurate are the plastic mock ups of the most famous dinosaurs? Turns out, not very.
Mashable took it upon itself to be the buzzkill that rates and deflates the educational value of these toys by having a dinosaur expert weigh in on their accuracy. Dr. Paul E. Olsen, of Columbia University, is given a bunch of the little monsters and describes how most lack feathers, have the wrong claws, make the wrong noise, and are generally crap when it comes to being scientifically accurate. However, Dr. Olsen doesn’t ...
Of course, the chart in question—Billboard’s Top 10 Classical Digital—isn’t necessarily the world’s hottest rubric of pop success. Williams’ big competition in the category is prima donna Sir Edward Elgar, whose “Pomp and Circumstance” has been sitting pretty at the top of the May and June charts ever since he made a deal with Big High School Graduation. (Elgar’s most famous rival in the classical world, Josh Groban, is currently resting at No. 2.) The Jurassic Park theme, meanwhile, has climbed seven places in the last two weeks, from a non-charting 13 up to No. 6, probably on the strength of ...
jmulvey writes: Think your SCADA systems are outdated? Environmental monitoring at 19 Grand Rapids Public Schools are still controlled by a Commodore Amiga. Programmed by a High School student in the 1980s, the system has been running 24/7 for decades. A replacement has been budgeted by the school system, estimated cost: Between $1.5 and 2 million. How much is your old Commodore Amiga worth?
This sculpture is inspired by Wing Wo Wave City an industrial estate in Zhuijang Province, China which manufactures every kind of conceivable pearl adornment in colossal quantities. It is about pearls and the discrepancy between their perceived status of being timeless status symbols of refined taste and wealth (with exotic overtones) and the often very unromantic reality. Wing Wo Wave is a Chinese sailing Junk believing the dream, cruising on a tangled never ending sea of wedding tiaras, chokers and earrings.
A bunch of pictures of a smartwatch were briefly posted to a (now-deleted) Tumblr account said to belong to Pei-Chi Hsieh, a designer who worked for Nokia and then moved to Microsoft when the software firm bought Nokia's device division. The pictures were spotted by prolific leaker and gadget writer Evan Blass.
Codenamed Moonraker and bearing product number LS-50, the boldly colored devices had an interface using similar Metro design cues to those found in Windows Phone. More specifically, the interface looks more than a little similar to that used in the Microsoft Band: the watch's apps are presented as a series of strips (scrolling vertically, as opposed to the horizontal scrolling on the Band) reminiscent of the Band's primary strip/tile system, and apps like e-mail have a similar kind of styling and design to the SMS app on Band.
Many of the watch's home screens also look similar to the Band's home screen, with their use of white text on a detailed, often monochromatic, background.
Marvel recently announced that they would be “relaunching” 60 titles after Secret Wars to revamp and diversify their characters and teams. They even released the above promotional art to showcase their new takes on characters. It’s understandable that fans would examine any and all glimpses of their favorite heroes and talk about what their appearances may or may not mean. Speculating over promotional information is how geeks roll. So, I don’t know why Marvel’s Tom Brevoort is suddenly so surprised.
I get that some fans can be a little more rude than others, but recently, a fan asked about the addition of Red Wolf to the upcoming titles based on recent promotional art:
The anonymous fan asked Brevoort a perfectly legitimate, politely-worded question about Red Wolf via Tumblr:
Hey Tom. I think bringing Red Wolf into prominence is a great idea, and will fit Marvel’s sense of diversity in the future. I do have a question about this though: was there ever a concern that the character might be viewed as a stereotype, or met with a similar controversy to say, the Washington Redskins? Well, thanks for your time and keep up the good work!
Nicely-worded, and clearly coming from someone who’s a genuine fan of Marvel Comics. You’d think that Brevoort would take the opportunity to engage intelligently with a fan, and explain Marvel’s initiative more thoroughly. Instead, Brevoort said:
No concern, in that we thought that when people read the story, as opposed to judging wildly from a piece of promotional art, they would understand the character.
Whoa. Relax, dude. No one is even judging. They’re asking a legitimate question from a legitimate place of concern, and complimenting Marvel’s work to boot. Maybe instead of getting defensive, he should just answer the question.
I realize that it must be exhausting to have to constantly defend your properties. But the answer to the constant questioning isn’t misplaced frustration with concerned fans. It’s directing that frustration where it belongs – a society where underrepresented and disenfranchised minorities are treated unfairly. It’s hard work to be on the side of right, but it’s worth it.
schwit1 writes: President Obama suffered a major defeat to his Pacific Rim free trade initiative Friday as House Democrats helped derail a key presidential priority despite his last-minute, personal plea on Capitol Hill. "In a remarkable rejection of a president they have resolutely backed, House Democrats voted to kill assistance to workers displaced by global trade, a program their party created and has stood by for four decades. By doing so, they brought down legislation granting the president trade promotion authority — the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress — before it could even come to a final vote." This was after Silicon Valley heavyweights made a last minute push to pass the bill and the White House got personal with many Democratic lawmakers.
if one more soggy toilet paper roll tries to convince me im being oppressed i will personally send you a frozen turkey so that your mom can cook it and you can eat it and then you can watch it go through your entire digestive tract since your head is conveniently shoved so far up your ass that you have a great view of your colon
The match was already played behind closed doors due to previous racist actions from Croatian supporters.
Italy and Croatia played to a 1-1 draw in their Euro 2016 qualifying match on Friday. The match was played behind closed doors due to previous racist chants from Croatian supporters in a match against Norway. It turns out keeping the fans out of the stadium wasn't enough to prevent more racist actions.
How Uefa will react to the nazi sign designed on the pitch of Croatia-Italy that was played behind closed doors? pic.twitter.com/SsTP5I2OFw
Yeah, that would appear to be a swastika deliberately mowed into the pitch at the Stadion Poljud in Split. Italy took notice and made an official complaint to UEFA, according to The Guardian. UEFA officials were alerted of the swastika during the match and the grounds crew worked on covering it during halftime. Croatian Football Association president Davor Sucker admitted there is an issue.
"We have this problem, which is the fans do not respect the rules," Sucker said, via The Guardian. "We will talk about it tomorrow. Am I angry? Yes."
Marnie, a beautiful blue Indian ringneck parrot, flies onto his human’s shoulder when his name is called and proceeds to conduct an adorable conversation that mostly consists of “Whee!”, “You’re so silly” and “Give me a kiss”.
Yesterday, we pointed readers toward the story of Florida woman Kathleen Cox, whose Comcast e-mail address was given away to a new subscriber with the same name. After more than a month of trying to get Comcast customer service to restore her lost e-mail address, she finally went to the local news station. Only after that did Comcast actually fix the problem.
She wasn't alone. Shortly after our article published, we heard from a man suffering the exact same problem. Michael Taylor of Tennessee spent three weeks of complaining to Comcast customer service without any progress. But once Ars sent an e-mail to our contacts in Comcast's media relations department, his problem was fixed within two hours.
Though losing a Comcast e-mail address to a new customer of the same name is something we hadn't heard of until yesterday, there have been numerous cases over the past year in which customers were unable to get problems fixed until they contacted journalists. Notorious examples involved a customer whose billing account name was changed to "Asshole" and another whose billing account name was changed to "Super Bitch."
On Wednesday, reddit said that it would actively ban subreddits that users reported as being harassing in nature. At the same time, reddit administrators Jessica Moreno, head of community and support; Ellen Pao, interim CEO; and Alexis Ohanian, one of the founders of reddit, said that they had shut down five subreddits that had been egregiously flouting the site's new rules against harassment.
This new decision has some reddit users seething. A small number have created offensive subreddits targeting Pao, with highly upvoted posts that seem to fall definitively into reddit's previously stated rules against harassment. But Pao is a high-profile and controversial figure, especially in the aftermath of her unsuccessful jury trial against former employer Kleiner Perkins for gender discrimination. Removing these subreddits could be seen as removing purposely offensive protest, the Washington Post notes.
The company has not moved to ban any of the subreddits targeting Pao, the two most prominent of which have over 5,000 subscribers. (While 5,000 subscribers isn't a lot, reddit administrators said on Wednesday that four of the five subreddits they banned had fewer than 5,000 subscribers.) The first, r/PaoYongYang, says it exists to “only post things that compare Ellen Pao to North Korea, or other fascist dictatorships.” The other, r/PaoMustResign, lists a link to a petition to oust Pao as interim CEO. Dozens of less-populated subreddits exist directing similar vitriol at the CEO.
Shortly after the news of Rachel Dolezal pretending to be black broke, Twitter stayed true to form and erupted in a frenzy of debate. The term “transracial” quickly emerged, with some arguing that if Caitlyn Jenner can claim she is a woman, people can make an equally legitimate claim about their race. As you can see, the suggestion was not well received — and revealed some uncomfortable truths about race in America.
Jurassic World (our review here) may have great action, but its characters leave something to be desired. Up for specific discussion: why the hell did director Colin Trevorrow have his leading lady running for her life through the jungle in high heels?
io9: And a lot of people remarked on the fact that Bryce Dallas Howard is running in heels. Why doesn’t she change into flats? She could put on boots!
Trevorrow: I know. I mean, look, I had that conversation with her so many times, and she insisted on wearing those heels. They meant something to her personally. She felt like, this is her talking, that those heels were her shield in a certain way as a woman. That’s just how she felt. She felt like surrendering the heels felt like surrendering the femininity of the character, even though women are — I don’t want to say forced to wear heels — but you’re expected to wear heels in certain environments.
And she felt that, even though the image of her running away in heels is… honestly, maybe I feel that I’m revealing my own ignorance in not having anticipated how that was going to become a subject of discussion, the way that it has. I was thinking about it solely for her comfort, and for logic reasons — the same thing that we’re talking about: ‘Can’t we find some other way? And she’s like, ‘No, no, I’m going to go for it.’
Because that’s something special. I mean, we are talking about it. And these movies, having something that’s iconic to themselves — for better or worse, that’s an image that people are going to remember. [Laughs] And I just hope that it’s recognized that I did bring it up on many occasions. [Laughs] But I support my actors! I want her to feel comfortable. And I want her to create a [character] that is truthful and true to her and how she feels in that character’s shoes, for lack of a better [word]. And that’s what made her feel like Claire.
io9: And these movies aren’t strict realism.
Trevorrow: No, but knowing that character, I can buy that character would never take her heels off. She walks around in those heels every day. She’s already in that jungle wearing a white dress. I mean, I think to her it was just true to Claire, even if it’s not true to anybody else.
Jungle heels aside, there are some other gender issues with the film, and io9 asked Trevorrow to respond to that as well.
io9: So what do you think about the criticisms of the gender roles in the movie? At times, Chris Pratt seems condescending towards Bryce Dallas Howard, and that’s mixed in with the romance subplot.
Trevorrow: I mean, he is condescending, at points. And that, to me, was designed to focus on our lead character, who is Bryce Dallas Howard. I mean, she’s the hero of the movie, and she’s the one who changes. She goes through a pretty massive arc, from being the head woman in charge and very corporatized, and very much governed by the needs of that corporation, to somebody who has kind of stripped herself of all the trappings, and become very at one with her inner animal — and the natural world. And [she’s] recognized that she saw these animals as assets, and as numbers, and that they are in fact living, breathing creatures. And I found it to be a movie about her finding her humanity. And that’s always how I saw it.
And honestly, I guess it’s a testament to my own ignorance of how things can be perceived — I never really saw it any other way. I definitely didn’t see it as a character who was learning to want to have children. That didn’t even occur to me. Because I don’t see her as going off and having children at the end of the movie — that doesn’t seem like that’s what she’s going to do. But I’ve heard that argument.
And look, it’s hard for me to debate any of those things, because it’s all about perception. It’s all about something lands with somebody. And I feel like everybody is right. However it lands with you, and however you perceive what we’re doing, you’re right. Because that’s how you saw it. So all I can say is, I hope that whatever people see in it, they know I very sincerely was looking to make a real badass action heroine who doesn’t surrender her femininity in the process of being a badass action heroine.
While I’m not enthralled with Trevorrow’s answers, at least he admitted 1.) the heels thing was a concern, just one that was brushed aside by Howard, and 2.) none of these other gender issues occurred to him, which is sadly the case for most Hollywood productions, but at least he admits his own ignorance.
It’s also nice to hear him say everyone may view the film differently. A lot of times when creators are criticized, they don’t understand how anyone could possibly see their work in any way but the way in which they intended, and that’s just not how the world works.
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3785856/Screen_Shot_2015-06-12_at_2.40.57_PM.0.png)
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3785858/Screen_Shot_2015-06-12_at_2.42.34_PM.0.png)
Super Opinionated.
Jurassic World (our review here) may have great action, but its characters leave something to be desired. Up for specific discussion: why the hell did director Colin Trevorrow have his leading lady running for her life through the jungle in high heels?