firehose

John Pistole described a second, highly dangerous al Qaeda underwear bomb in unusual detail at a Colorado security conference.

Here's how Apple trains and runs its network of at-home Apple advisors.

A swarm of about 30,000 bees attacked a North Texas couple as they exercised their miniature horses, stinging the animals so many times they died.

Larry Summers now seems to be the front-runner to become the next head of the US Federal Reserve.

If he gets the job, he’ll be both the guardian of monetary policy and one of the most important financial regulators in the country. As such, we figured it was worth digging through some of Summers’ recent statements to try to get a sense of what kind of regulator he would be.

Summers is sometimes queried on his role in the Clinton-era deregulatory push, which peaked with the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999. As the cognoscenti cog-know, that law removed protections that had previously separated commercial banks from Wall Street trading houses. And many, such as Elizabeth Warren, now a senator from Massachusetts, argue that the repeal of those protections “mattered enormously” to how the crisis played out.

Summers begs to differ. He tends to deflect criticism with a couple of arguments. He points out that some of the highest-profile financial failures of the crisis—Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers—were individual Wall Street investment banks. In other words, they would have been allowed to exist even before Gramm-Leach-Bliley was enacted. ”If you look at the big failures, Lehman and Bear Stearns were both standalone investment banks,” he told a British interviewer back in early 2012. ”Perhaps if they had been combined with banks they would have been in a more healthy situation.”

Strictly speaking, that may be true, but it’s a limited way of looking at the financial crisis. The collapse of Bear and Lehman really only mark well-known peaks of the financial crisis. Major “Main Street” financial institutions also either collapsed or provoked panicked, last-minute rescues, including what was once the largest US mortgage originator, Countrywide Financial, and the country’s largest-ever bank failure, Washington Mutual.

And it’s not as if Bear and Lehman failed and that was the end of the problem. The collapse of Lehman set off a panic that threatened to take down US megabanks such as Citigroup and Bank of America. Those deposit-taking institutions were vulnerable because they had large trading divisions that had grown in size and importance after the Depression-era restrictions were removed. And it ultimately took a system-wide bailout funded by the US taxpayer to quell the panic.

But another way Summers tends to parry questions about his record as a deregulator is more interesting. He brings up Canada (at 11:20 in the video) and its heavily concentrated banking system:

What country has been the best probably at weathering this financial storm, of the major countries? It’s probably Canada, which has only five major banks in the whole country, which are very broad in the set of activities in which they engage. So no, I was not favor of the regulation that separated entirely banking and investment banking activities because I recognized the importance of diversification.

Doesn’t it sound like Summers is arguing that the US financial crisis was a result of having banks that were too small, rather than too large? Summers seems to make a similar argument in this July 2012 interview with NPR (at 11:00):

I also think it’s a mistake to assume that somehow breaking up the banks would be a panacea. The lesson that was drawn from the S&L crisis was that the financial system was excessively fragmented. That was the lesson that was also drawn from the Depression. The other lesson that most experts have drawn from recent experience is that Canada, which has a much more robust system of regulation than other countries, has been a model. But it has a financial system that is heavily consolidated.

Now, Summers has a point. The Canadian system does suggest that a banking system isn’t necessarily doomed to instability if it is dominated by large, complex institutions. Canada’s largest are both commercial and Wall Street-style investment banks. But Canadian is stricter on its banks than the Americans.

In the run up to the financial crisis, Canada’s single banking regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, “proved tougher than in the United States, mandating higher capital requirements, lower leverage, less securitization, the curtailment of off balance sheet vehicles, and restricting the assets that banks could purchase,” according to economists (pdf) who have studied the difference between the US and Canadian systems.

The idea of simply allowing the US banking system to become as concentrated as Canada’s is nuts. The US has proven time and again that it doesn’t have the regulatory chops to keep American banks from periodically blowing themselves up—along with large chunks of the real economy.

If Summers is tapped to run the Fed, confirmation hearings will likely zero in on his seemingly favorable views on the concentration of the banking system. It would be useful to understand what exactly he is suggesting. Given Summers’s love of debate, that could make for a lively back-and-forth, as a bi-partisan break-up-the-banks bill has been on the move lately.

Put down the vodka, step away from the gin and grab some whiskey.

Reza Aslan, a religious scholar with a Ph.D. in the sociology of religions from the University of California and author of the new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,” went on FoxNews.com’s online show Spirited Debate to promote his book only to be prodded about why a Muslim would write a historical book about Jesus.

Farhad Manjoo’s review:

In my tests, it did successfully render some items immune to liquids, but not everything, and not nearly to the degree that you see in the company’s demonstrations. The coating didn’t seem to last long, either. … The coating leaves a frost-colored haze on every surface, and it turns textures rough and faintly gummy. That explains why the shirts and shoes shown in the company’s demos are white; on any other color, NeverWet would look terrible.

Damn.

∞ Permalink

David Ortiz probably isn’t the most composed guy on the Boston Red Sox roster.

Going back to school to meet the 4-year-olds who are learning to program computers thanks to a new graphics-based coding language.

A new note-taking app for Ubuntu has been released.

Springseed, by developers Jono Cooper and Michael Harker, is a simple, lightweight note-taking tool written in Javascript. Its developers have badged the open-source organiser with the slogan: ‘Simply awesome note taking’. 

Features of Springseed

For its initial release Springseed is focusing on the basics.

Notes can be created/edited, assigned to a ‘notebook’ and searched through using the global search field.

Dropbox account sync allows you to back-up and sync your notes & notebooks across installations.

Markdown Support lets you write & format notes in plain text:

Finally, Notebook Creation allows you to organise & group your notes by topic or theme.

Small Issue

A known webkit node js bug means that, for now, you can’t adjust the size of the Springseed window on Linux.

The good news is that the application does automatically adjust to fit the size of your screen, and maximising still works as you’d expect.

Download Springseed for Ubuntu

The next release of Springseed, version 1.1,  will bring Mac & Windows builds to the table along with, albeit tentatively, Ubuntu One sync support.

Springseed is a free download and requires Ubuntu 12.04 LTS or higher.

Springseed Website

The post New Note-taking App ‘Springseed’ Debuts on Ubuntu first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

winged:

ohwhatatragiccost:

cake-crumbs:

Jupiter Structural Layer Cake

I’m not even that into cake, but this is fucking JUPITER in cake form…

Whoa.

Nike Releases New Greg Odens

gingerbreadme submitted:

And, because I noticed that there are plenty of entries for female knightly armour, but little for more oriental-looking ones, here are some Samurai women.

The (picture three) is from Pathfinder, designed by Anna Christenson, (FreShPAiNt on DeviantArt) and a series of similar armour designs can be found on her DeviantArt Gallery, alongside plenty of great examples of armour design, female and male alike.

These are amazing! And yay for some variation!

edit: ozziescribbler said: The last one circulated Tumblr for some time now and it’s confirmed to be a male kabuki actor in drag. You should probably add a note on that and that female samurai was called “onna-bugeisha”.

Critics have said that the song and video — in which Thicke sings, "I know you want it" — are degrading and that they shore up offensive notions about women who say "no" but supposedly mean "yes." Thicke said the criticism struck him as an attempt by certain writers to "get people to come onto their blogs." But he also seemed genuinely troubled by the idea that his song could be interpreted that way. "I'm making her a full-blown equal," he said of the lyrics to "Blurred Lines": "'You're an animal, I'm an animal.'" And in an interview with "Access Hollywood" after the YouTube shoot, he was quick to point out that Patton loves the video and that it was directed by a woman, Diane Martel.

Fox was bullish Thursday evening when The Wolverine got off to a hot start with $4 million during late night and midnight showings. Though tracking had slipped throughout the week, the early turnout painted a positive picture headed into the weekend. Unfortunately, Friday's estimates are pointing toward $21 million, which would put The Wolverine's opening weekend at $60 million or less - a far cry from the $85 million tallied by X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Proposed Detroit subway system to be built along the median of new highways. 1945.

themaidjanecrocker:

tf2-fandomstuck:

devious-vixxen:

thegirlsukino:

dlgr:

kameromez:

Brownie in a mug

eating it now. so good,

Marcie this is positively sinful! So good and cheap and fast! thank you for reblogging it!

Never not reflagging

ITS IN THE MICROWAVE AS WE SPEAK 

GLORIOUS WITCHCRAFT

Reblogging because this is one of my favorite desserts. (Officially it’s a steamed pudding in the British sense of the word, but there’s no point in getting too hung up in nomenclature.)

Phil Fish is the creator of a very popular and much loved video game called Fez. He's also the target of a lot of internet hatred. The latest hate burst has been so intense that he's calling it quits, canceling the second part of his original masterwork.

The Official Grumpy Cat Facebook page has announced that the popular internet feline Grumpy Cat will soon have a bottled coffee drink branded with her likeness. The new beverage (which will come in three flavors) is called Grumpy Cat Grumppuccino and its bottle bears a stylized illustration of Grumpy Cat. There’s no information yet on when or where the product will be available, they simply state: “Coming soon. Seriously. It’s delicious!”

#grumppuccino will come in three flavors! #GrumpyCat pic.twitter.com/XupC46vdqV

— Grumpy Cat (@RealGrumpyCat) July 28, 2013

Unsealed birth records give adoptees peek at past Lebanon Daily News SPRINGFIELD, Ill.—Nearly 9,000 adoptees have claimed their birth certificates since Illinois fully re-opened birth records for adopted residents less than two years ago. And thousands more nationwide have come forward to claim their papers, prompting ... and more »

A 5-oz beef patty assembled from thousands of teeny-tiny meat strips, cultured from the stem cells of a single cow, is to be served next week week in London. The price: £250,000, or about $385,000.

Read more...

A battle of interstellar proportions is breaking out in the MMORPG Eve Online, a spacefaring simulation with its own politics, economies, and wars — all controlled exclusively by players.

America is now dotted with “temp towns”—places where it’s difficult to find blue-collar work except through a temp agency and where workers often suffer lost wages, no benefits, and high injury rates.

by Jia Tolentino

At 6 p.m. on a Sunday night I’m driving an hour outside of Ann Arbor to attend the Clarkston, Mich., stop of the Under the Sun tour, which celebrates “the golden age of nineties pop rock ‘n’ roll with Smash Mouth, Sugar Ray, Gin Blossoms, Vertical Horizon and Fastball.”

I am alone and wearing jorts and a baseball T-shirt, onto which I have Sharpied “MRS. RAY.” I am only slightly depressed that none of my friends in town seem to see the Under the Sun tour as the can’t-miss cultural event that it is; mostly I’m glad, because now it'll be much easier for me to really get in there and be a Sugar Ray superfan for the night.

On the way to the venue, I play the same two Disclosure songs for 30 miles straight and get into character. “No one’s done anything like ‘Every Morning’ since 1999,” I say sincerely into the rearview mirror. “Such a chill song. Perfect for summer. We’ll never get another Mark McGrath.”

I believe all these things to be true.

When I get to the parking lot, I pause in my car for a second and smoke some weed, feeling like a loser. Fastball is already on—I can hear “The Way” from the parking lot—but people are tailgating, and near me, someone’s blaring Sugar Ray.

Suddenly self-conscious and also suspecting that I have overestimated the percent of attendees whose appreciation would be colored with irony, I walk into the DTE Energy Musical Theatre, which is a 15,000-cap venue, and get a beer from a guy standing over a cooler at the base of the stairs leading to the general-admission lawn. He asks for my ID. When he hands my license back, he says, “You’re a lot better-looking in person.”

“Cool,” I say. “Cool to know. Do you like Sugar Ray?”

“Sure,” he says. “Whatever.”

I climb the stairs in a hyper-aware state, entering a sea of earnest, clean-cut white Midwesterners jamming out with incredible enthusiasm to Vertical Horizon, who have taken Fastball’s place. I make my way around the arc of the lawn surrounding the covered pavilion and sit down at the very left edge of the grass.

Surrounded by groups, I start texting. You’re never alone when you have technology, I tell myself, and then look around, wondering how I’m going to get my journalistic in with the Sugar Ray crowd.

Then a guy taps me on the shoulder: “What’s a pretty girl like you doing here by yourself?”

•••

For the minute it takes us to walk up the lawn to this guy’s group of friends, I think about the advantages conferred by my physical self, which is such—small, smiley—that I’ve enjoyed years of valuable impunity in two of my most fond pastimes: consuming substances in public and soliciting personal information from strangers.

We sit down in a loose knot of people, and this guy—Scott—introduces me to his friend Jake, who’s wearing a polo shirt and a goatee. “You’re gonna love this, actually,” Scott says. “We’re here with like the only black guy in this whole place.”

“Why would I, in particular, love that more than anyone else?” I ask sweetly.

“Seriously, he’s the only black guy here,” Scott says, motioning to another friend.

“You should be proud of yourself,” I say, and watch him nod as I introduce myself to Jake.

“Gear?” Jake queries.

“Jia,” I repeat.

“Jeeyar?” he asks, perplexed. The music is not very loud on the lawn, and it’s still daylight, but we are conversing at a volume and confusion level that I associate with last call.

“Ji-a,” I shout.

“What—like, what sort of—what is that origin—”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Hey, who are you here to see?”

“Sugar Ray,” says Scott. “Mark McGrath is the dude.”

“Totally,” I say. “A few weeks ago I was listening to Sugar Ray in a pool and wishing that a plane would skywrite 'MARK MCGRATH' in big loops across the sky, and then he’d parachute into the backyard and shotgun a beer.”

They look at me, jarred.

“Sorry, I’m pretty stoned,” I say.

“Damn!” Jake says. He holds his fist out for me to bump. “I’ve never met anyone like you. Damn, that’s so badass. You’re just here by yourself and you’re stoned? Damn, I’ve never met another girl who would do anything like that.”

My hackles go up at the extremely basic level of his game. But I am curious about Jake, so I ask him what sort of music he listens to—normal stuff, he says, motioning to the stage; stuff like this, good stuff—and then I essentially interview him until the seventh time he tries to hit me with a combo fist-bump/appearance-based compliment after I voice an very pedestrian opinion (“Summer’s the best,” is what I’d said, blandly).

I decide to stop talking for awhile. After a few minutes of watching the people on the hill, I say spontaneously that everyone looks pretty in this light—it was truly lovely; golden, limpid and warm, fireflies starting to light up everywhere in that Midwest summer way—and Jake looks at me as if I were a tiny dog that just did a trick and pronounces, “You’re a goddess. I’ve never met anyone like you, a girl who just thinks these things.”

“That comment is rooted in severe sexism,” I say.

“That’s a really mean thing to say,” he says.

“I’m sorry,” I say, the sativa strain in my brain cells making my thoughts feel like Tetris pieces as they come out of my mouth. “I’m not trying to slight you. I’m just getting a read on you as the type of person who either has a much lower standard of ‘interesting’ when it comes to women, or thinks that flirting with someone renders actual conversation irrelevant. Either way, I think you consider girls to be objects first.”

He looks at me sadly. “That’s not true at all.”

“Okay,” I say. “I’m sorry if it’s not. But anyway, like I said, I have a boyfriend.”

“But he’s not here.”

I repeat myself: he's home teaching a class.

“You love this music so much that you came here all by yourself?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I just… really love Sugar Ray.”

“Some of the best music ever made,” he says, initiating our eighth fist-bump.

Under the pavilion and close to the stage, a huge group of people wave their arms back and forth to a Vertical Horizon song in a slow way that makes them look like air traffic controllers. Then the song’s done, and the band bids us goodbye. “This was our tenth time at this venue,” says the lead singer. “The first time was 1992!”

They are immediately replaced by Gin Blossoms, who come out on stage yelling what’s up Detroit! The lawn erupts with cheering as the lead singer’s voice echoes: “This is real Detroit, the real deal right here!” The guys around me are yelling "DE-TROIT! DE-TROIT!"

We are 40 minutes away from downtown Detroit. It’s time to go.

“Great to meet you,” I say, and walk down the lawn. I go to the bathroom, where two girls are crammed into the stall next to me. I think they’re rolling a joint. “Which end do I lick, bro,” one of them stage-whispers, and they start giggling.

Here are my people, I think, feeling warmth in my heart. I wonder if they’ve grown up here and, if so, if they're accustomed to guys acting amazed at their personhood.

•••

With a new beer, I walk to the bottom-middle of the lawn section, leaning against a railing and resting my cup on the ledge. After a minute, a guy in plaid cargo shorts comes up to me, introduces himself as Brian and asks me what sort of music I’m into.

“I really love Sugar Ray,” I say, motioning to my shirt. When he holds out his fist, my reaction comes out as a stifled yelp. Did Jake put you up to this?

“What about you?” I ask.

“Lot of hip hop,” he says.

“Me too!” I say happily. “What’s been your favorite release this year?”

“You probably wouldn’t know it,” he says. “But, a guy called J Cole.”

“Uh, sure,” I say. “Yeah, I’ve listened to that album a bunch. I wish the Miguel song weren't 1,000 percent better than anything else on it.”

“You actually know your shit,” he says, impressed. “You actually really like music. Hey, you’re not like most girls, are you.”

At this, I jump to the immediate conclusion this man is an inferior rube whose favorite things are Macklemore and chicken nuggets. Then I try to remember I’m wearing tiny jorts and a T-shirt that says "MRS. RAY." Don’t be such an asshole, I tell myself. Don’t be such a snob.

“So, why are you here by herself?” he asks.

“I like doing things by myself,” I say.

“You should have someone here to take care of you.”

“What specifically do you mean by that?” I ask. “You know, I’m going to be honest—I don’t like this music at all. I’m here mostly because I’m a writer and I thought this would be interesting. Which it is, and not because of the music.”

Brian looks sad. “You don’t actually like this music?”

“I don’t,” I say. “I mean, I can appreciate it, for sure. We are currently living the American Dream.”

He holds out his fist again as Gin Blossoms breaks into “Hey Jealousy.”

“But even in a technical sense,” I add, one hand resolutely on my beer and the other on my water, “these bands are not good. I don’t know if they’re rusty, or if the original arrangements were super uninspired and they’re afraid to deviate, or—”

“Deviate,” he says. “Big word. You know your shit. I’m a musician.”

I ask what he plays.

“Everything.”

I ask what he’s best at.

“Vocals,” Brian says. “Definitely vocals. I kill at vocals.”

I ask if he’s in a band.

“No,” he says. “It’s hard to be in a band. But I know I’d kill it if I was.”

“It’s hard to be in a great band,” I say. “But it’s not actually hard to be in a band. And real talent gets out somehow. The music industry is tough for sure, and it's changing as dramatically as any other creative field is right now, but music is like the current writer's market in that it's possible for good people to get noticed very quickly, and both are more meritocratic than, say, the movie system.”

“You’re too smart for your own good,” he says.

I cough on a mouthful of beer. “That’s incredibly sexist,” I say. “Would you ever say that to a guy? Why would it ever be better for me to be dumber than I am?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbles.

“You probably think I’m a big hater,” I say, and he nods. “I’m not actually a hater at heart. Just in my head sometimes.”

“Well, right now you’re definitely using your head too much,” he says ruefully.

I realize I am only still talking to Brian because I’ve been too lazy to stand up. Then Sugar Ray takes the stage.

“Booty call!” shouts Mark McGrath, looking well-preserved in a black short-sleeve button down and white pants. “Detroit, I’m coming tonight!”

I say goodbye and walk away as the band wrenches itself pitchily into the raucous yell of “Every Morning.”

•••

During Sugar Ray’s set, this great expanse of white people in colorful summer clothing gets frisky and wild. Girls are dancing barefoot, couples are holding each other prom-picture style, bouncing back and forth with their hands clasped together in the air. Hundreds of mini-universes are contained around me; lots of teenagers are bidding for affection and sneaking beer. I finish mine and jump into a circle of dancing twentysomethings, bumping hips with a girl in red shorts. But when the song ends, I feel awkward and walk away quickly, taking a seat at the opposite end of the lawn, close to where I came in.

Mark McGrath is shouting out the troops. “I know it sounds a little strange to go on like this,” he shouts, his hair gelled perfectly vertical. “But these 19-year-olds, out there, protecting us so we can do this—” His voice cracks with sincere emotion, and the crowd goes wild again, and suddenly he breaks into “Fly.” It's an extended version; when I think it's ending, McGrath drops into an interlude where he chants “fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly” over a (pretty badass) vamping bass, and then embarks on what feels like a seven-minute coda.

I've got some space. I'm into this. This song is a good-times classic.

As "Fly" ends, a man in his late forties comes up to me and without introduction tells me that I need to get with his son. “He’s really hot,” he says.

“That’s a weird thing to say,” I say.

“Well,” says the man, “I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, but you’re beautiful. And you should be with someone beautiful.”

“Like Mark McGrath,” I say, pointing to my shirt.

“Where are you from? Like, what ethni—”

“Yuck,” I say. “Hey, can you take a picture of me really quick?” I want to prove to myself that I didn't imagine all of this.

He does, and then pulls out his own phone. “Let me—”

I don’t hear the rest because I’m walking away, up the soft green grass. Sugar Ray is covering “Blister in the Sun” and the arena has achieved Peak Midwest Summer Joy. The sun is dropping behind the lawn. Smash Mouth hasn’t gone on yet, but I am suddenly very aware that I need to leave. Nothing has actually transpired here, but this has not been the chill night I had hoped for; these guys have not been chill bros. The Under the Sun tour has unexpectedly turned into a reminder of what often happens when you are a girl and you go someplace alone: you are (at the very least) objectified, which leads to being (at the very least) underestimated, and the times that that has served me well as a writer are far outweighed by the times I have been harassed, roofied, groped in public, followed or forced to hide in foreign grocery stores as the person who's been stalking me lopes ominously by.

At the same time, the overt aggression of those events made them easier to quantify—less, or at least differently insidious than this tomfoolery tonight. These guys at Sugar Ray Fest, if they read this, might flat-out call me a bitch for bridling at what was just them trying to be nice, trying to see what a nice girl was doing there alone. But I wasn't actually alone, because you are never alone when you're with Sugar Ray, and anyway I couldn't actually be alone because of all my new sexist pals. All night I've been wondering if every woman in these dudes' lives gets treated like talking mannequins or if it's just a few of them, or what.

As I drive home through the dark hush of Michigan farmland, I pull the thread of my discomfort and catch out the night that I was 13 and snuck into a hotel pool in Galveston and a paunchy man in his fifties gave me my first drink of alcohol ever—a Jack and water in a clear plastic cup, delivered with a gender-specific grin and a pronouncement conferred to be as much of a senses-dulling gift as my tasty cocktail. “You’re pretty,” he said, and I was young and I still thought that was the most important thing, and for a second I was desperately, sincerely grateful. 

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COOKIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!