Stoli Responds to LGBT Boycott Advocate.com The SPI Group, which owns Stolichnaya Vodka, responds to a recent boycott promoted by Dan Savage and other LGBT activists. BY Daniel Reynolds. July 25 2013 3:40 PM ET. Members of the LGBT community are urging a boycott of products manufactured ...
All this talk about Jay Z's age has us wondering about one very minor thing: At what point, exactly, of these never-ending career latter days did Jay stop calling himself Young Hova? And while we’re at it, when did he start?
While the majority of Harebrained Schemes is still knee deep in developing content for its Kickstarted strategy-RPG Shadowrun Returns, which just launched today, a small team has already begun work on the developer's next project: Golem Arcana, a smartphone/tablet-assisted tabletop game.
As explained by founder Jordan Weisman, Golem Arcana is set in a world where powerful Golems do the bidding of their creators, who infuse organic materials with magic in order to create obedient, deadly homunculi. A Kickstarter campaign will be launched sometime next month in order to fuel development, though Weisman did not say how much money the team is looking to raise.
Golem Arcana's gameplay takes place on a physical battle map with figurines representing the golems, but the gameplay mechanics are calculated and implemented by a smartphone or tablet running an associated app. Using a proprietary stylus, players tap on the battle map or the figures to summon relevant information in the app. During battle, taping an ability and targeting a figure initiates combat inside of the app, which then spits out results and information about the turn.
Hipster Appliances is an aggregator of obnoxiously over-designed, ultra-specialized products that arouse a confusing combination of desire and disdain in the discerning consumer. The site is updated every two weeks with new seasonally-appropriate products. Hipster Appliances was created by New York City design firm Studio Akko.
The photo series “Behind a Little House” consists of many identically framed photos of the same small house, but variations in time, weather, and light make the images remarkably diverse. The series is by Italian photographer Manuel Cosentino. Cosentino’s work is on display at Klompching Gallery in New York City through August 10, 2013. For more photos from the series, check out this Colossal post.
To remedy the “age-old problem of having to eat your vegetables before getting your dessert,” Archie McPhee has made Vegetable Candy, hard individually-wrapped candies that are flavored like green beans, carrots, and corn. These dichotomous treats are packaged in a cool tin featuring a musical trio of anthropomorphic veggies and are available to purchase online.
…If you’re a vegetarian, this is a perfect way to answer to someone who insists on eating Bacon Candy in front of you. It is especially fun to see the look on kid’s faces when they taste these – a mixture of horror and delight!
America spends a bigger share of its national paycheck on social services than its health care-providing neighbor to the north.
New numbers published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show that public “social expenditures” in the US have overtaken those of Canada. The report defines “social expenditures” as essentially spending by public institutions aimed at households or people to support their welfare, such as jobless aid, healthcare and pension benefits. US social spending as a share of GDP hit 19.7% in 2012, compared to Canada’s 18.3%. In 2013, the US is expected to spend about 20%, compared to 18.3% for Canada.
This shouldn’t be a big surprise to anyone who follows the US budget travails. US budgetary woes are driven by health care and old age pensions. Pension spending has long taken a bigger chunk of US national income than that of Canada, though it has picked up markedly in recent years, driven in part by the shrinking economy. Here’s a look at the most recent data, which goes up to 2009.
But what’s interesting is that US health care spending as a share of GDP has overtaken Canada’s in recent years. Here’s a look at that OECD data up until 2009.
Granted, neither the US nor Canada are big social spenders when compared to countries in Europe. The largest spender is France where the social-spending-to-GDP ratio is a hefty 33%. Welfare states in Belgium, Denmark and Finland have a social-spending-to-GDP ration of 30%. The OECD average is estimated to be about 22% in 2013.
I don't know that this needs a spoiler warning, because, to be honest, I think Hiddleston may be leaving certain bits out of his toy-based performance of Thor: The Dark World. If not, though, I have some severe doubts about how well this sequel will hold up to the original. I mean, it's only like a minute long!
Diogo Mónica, a security engineer at Square, knows this pain as well as anyone. He was a fan from the start, calling SBP "nothing short of spectacular." But as the restaurant's profile grew, its online reservations portal kept returning the same message: "No reservations are currently available. Reservations are taken online up to 60 days in advance. As tables become available, they will be shown here."
Rather than getting discouraged, Mónica went to his developer tool kit. He SSHed into his remote server and wrote some code to get notified (via e-mail) every time the SBP reservations page changed. (See the code in full on his blog.) He learned that new reservations open around 4am everyday, saw that most were gone by 5am, and received heads-ups about newly available times from cancellations. But curiously, his setup revealed that most of the primetime reservations were scooped up by 4:01am.
The gun maker, who goes by the online handle CanadianGunNut, is an active user on DEFCAD, the primary online forum for 3D-printed firearms. He is also known online as “Maker Matthew,” or “Koa Soprano.” Previously, CanadianGunNut successfully printed a ukelele, and he currently appears to run a private message board for printing related musical instruments. Ars’ attempt to contact CanadianGunNut through his YouTube channel was not immediately successful.
In his video, CanadianGunNut—whose actual name is unknown to Ars—noted that the gun fired a single shot, but the barrel split.
Do not use Grove on porches Do not run court under any rocks Avoid wall sitting in bed
“Hello, This is Jackie was that he from the city of summer bell with an important reminder to all residents, with high temperature and forecast to continue over at least the next week the Somerville fire department reminds residence to take important pro active steps to protect your home from fires. That may be sparks by these weather conditions, residents are advised to take the following steps to help prevent fires in your home in neighborhood, check batteries in operations in smoke detectors. Do not use Grove on porches on any. 4. If you’re home. If you use air conditioners be sure there plugged into updated and Secure Sockets or surge protectors only plug extension chords into an outlet and do not run court under any rocks. Avoid smoking on porches, or wall sitting in bed. Oren couches, remove over stuffs furniture from porches, never clean with gasoline, or storage and warm places. In the event of a fire. Be sure your family or your roommate are prepared by discussing evacuation routes and planning a meeting area outside the home Thank you for considering these important steps to help us ensure the safety of our community.”
The new Xbox Onemight not be eavesdropping on your private conversations, but it will be automatically recording your play. To be precise, the XboxOne will record the last five minutes of any game you're playing, to let you show off your feats of virtual skill after the fact. We'd previously heard that the console would automatically create video clips when you unlock achievements and allow you to share them with friends, but we hadn't heard just how far back the so-called "Game DVR" might be recording your moves.
Now, Ken Lobb of Microsoft Game Studios has clarified the feature. "The idea is you're always recording," he told GameSpot at San Diego Comic-Con. "The last five minutes of any game you're playing is always being stored locally on your hard drive." That allows for two different sharing options, according to Lobb: you can either say "Xbox, record that," to instantly save the last 30 seconds of gameplay, or optionally scrub through the full five minutes of footage, edit it down, add extras like Kinect pictures of you playing, and turn it all into a video.
However, Sony'sPlayStation 4has similar features and an even longer recording buffer to boot. In a statement earlier today, Sony told CVG that the PlayStation 4 will continually record the last 15 minutes of gameplay. We're still curious how OnLive might react: since it launched, the cloud gaming service has offered one-touch "Brag Clips" which would retroactively record and share the last ten seconds of your game.
Family Rescued by George Zimmerman Fears 'Blow Back' - ABC News The lawyer said that when he spoke to the Gerstles "their voices were trembling" and that they feared saying anything positive about Zimmerman "would be toxic."
‘Fruitvale Station’ Duo Ryan Coogler And Michael B. Jordan Team With Sly Stallone On MGM ‘Rocky’ Spinoff ‘Creed’ - Yahoo! Movies MGM is setting Ryan Coogler to direct Creed, and the studio is in early talks with Coogler’s Fruitvale Station star Michael B. Jordan to play the grandson of Apollo Creed in a continuation of the Rocky saga that Coogler is going to write with Aaron Covington. Sylvester Stallone will reprise Rocky Balboa as a retired fighter-turned-trainer. This comes in the wake of a strong summer platform opening for Fruitvale Station, the film that won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Awards at Sundance, and captured Prize Of The Future at the Cannes Film Festival, where Coogler and Jordan were the toast of the Croisette. Coogler intends for this to be his directorial follow-up to Fruitvale Station so the intention is to make it happen quickly.
Google Announces Android 4.3, Netflix, New Nexus 7, and Q Successor Chromecast - Slashdot The Chromecast SDK is out, but with an awfully restrictive license that requires written permission from Google to distribute any cast enabled applications, which appears to make it completely incompatible with Free/Open Source software.
San Diego County clerk challenges gay marriage edict - SFGate
Kim Jong-un’s desire for a Bavarian biergarten reflects a dynastic hankering for quality beer – Quartz
Diane Duane, The Arrival of the Royal Baby, as Told by a String of Tweets from Maureen Johnson
Impressions of a Magic tournament | Gaming As Women
Orphan Black Filming | The Mary Sue Behind the scenes clips on how Tatiana Maslany got robbed of an Emmy
Ceremony of Innocence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The CD-ROM featured voice acting from Paul McGann, Isabella Rossellini and Ben Kingsley. It used animation to tell the story of Griffin, a young English artist, and Sabine, his South Sea Island muse. The game takes the form of a series of postcards sent between the two, which the player has to explore to continue. The work was produced by Peter Gabriel's Real World label by a team led by producer Gerrie Villon and creative director/chief designer Alex Mayhew.
Women At SDCC and Woman Moderated Hall H Movie Panel | The Mary Sue First all-woman, woman-moderated marquee Comic Con panel
The royal birth cost $15,000. The average American birth is billed at $30,000.
Syfy's New Post-Apocalyptic 'Wizard Of Oz' Miniseries Sounds Amazing Syfy is teaming up with the Russian director of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter to create a new Wizard of Oz miniseries. A few quick notes about their interpretation of the classic film: Dorothy is a man now.
Senator: Weak oversight of NSA may lead to massive location tracking | Ars Technica RONNIE RON WYDEN FUCKING RULES
Everyone In Whitey Bulger Trial Found Dead In Woods Outside Dorchester | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
The regenerative power of America’s newest locomotive fleet - Quartz
Wooden flatbed truck conversion Attn: GN
Dating app Tinder briefly exposed the physical location of its users - Quartz “It happens as you’re developing products,” Rad said. “I don’t even know if it merits a story.” #startupculture
Shut Up & Sit Down | Games News! 22/07/13 Effortlessly winning the award for best title ever, Wiener Melange was announced this week. BGG News were too polite to make fun of this, but not me. I'm sincerely hoping it becomes the accepted term for a multicultural sausage party. It's ACTUALLY the German name for a kind of Viennese coffee drink, and the game will have you running the year 1910's most erudite coffeshop. Using "logic and deduction", players will have to carefully seat guests next to prominent figures at the time including Trotzky, Freud and (prominent painter) Klimt. No other info as yet, but I'm very curious indeed. Mostly because in that prototype shot there are three pairs of people each sharing one chair, and no coffee whatsoever. Worst cafe EVER.
Why Is Austenland Marketing Only to Women? | The Mary Sue The cherry on top of the whole scenario is that the film’s marketing is acting as though they are beacons of empowerment, and that by excluding men from their audience they are drawing the cause forward into a glorious girl-power future. The entire venture echoes hollow, a superficial effort that falls apart at the seams as soon as you go farther than skin-deep into the mentality behind the strategy.
Nate Silver Warns Against Overestimating His Value To ESPN | The Onion - America's Finest News Source “According to recent web-traffic figures, my popularity peaked from 2010 to 2012 as a function of the presidential election, but given the tendency of such linear regression models to heavily fluctuate, it serves as a poor signifier of any actual, real-dollar value to ESPN,” said Silver, adding that according to data projections, his FiveThirtyEight blog has only a 7.4 percent chance of generating considerable interest on the ESPN home page.
The Hood Internet mashed together "Blurred Lines" and the Growing Pains theme song, and it's fantastic | TV | Great Job, Internet! | The A.V. Club
Review: Red Sonja #1 - Comic Book Resources Gail Simone writes a story that has historical significance to the character, but doesn't mire itself wallowing around in origins and motivations. Quite simply, a character that paid a kindness to Sonja in times past has need of a favor. The warrior agrees and the first issue sets up the adventure to follow and fulfill the first arc. As Simone often does, new characters are grafted onto the fate of another, with Red Sonja inheriting groupies in this issue. That opens the door for Simone to add some humor to the otherwise grim and gritty sword-swinging tale. Her Sonja is confident and determined, quick with her blade and ferocious in battle, but steadfast in her morals. Readers aren't treated to a full-on psychological profile, but of my exposure to Red Sonja, I find this interpretation to be the most intriguing.
Google Reader Died Because No One Would Run It No one wanted to devote the time and energy necessary to keep the project alive because it wasn’t going to get them anywhere with Larry Page.
Chuck Palahniuk To Write ‘Fight Club’ Graphic Novel Sequel [SDCC 2013] Nowadays, Tyler is telling the story, lurking inside Jack, and ready to launch a come-back. Jack is oblivious. Marla is bored. Their marriage has run aground on the rocky coastline of middle-aged suburban boredom. It’s only when their little boy disappears, kidnapped by Tyler, that Jack is dragged back into the world of Mayhem.
What is a fanboy? - Dave Winer's Scripting News the other day I saw a tweet by Marco Arment that struck me as a prototype. Apple had just experienced some kind of security breach. A fluid situation. Marco found the silver lining. No matter how bad it looks, there's some good news in there. I remarked that a fanboy always finds a silver lining. I felt this observation was worth a tweet. To me a tweet is like a Kleenex. Not something that requires a lot of forethought. I hoped, if it offended, it would be lightly brushed aside with a smile perhaps. He seemed to take offense. I was slightly surprised. Because inside me I think of Marco as a master of the art. Of all the fans of Apple, he and John Gruber stand head and shoulders above the rest. They're so good at it. It's their business model, in fact.
Buddhist monks are buying into Thailand’s new religion: consumerism - Quartz
Verdict: Cara And John Play Selena Hair Care Cara: This is a fucking great story. Better than Crysis 3. ///// Cara: I have FAILED at the task of performing my gender.
Ron Wyden: 'Opt-in' should be the standard for online privacy | OregonLive.com RRWFR
Young Red Sox fan scams baseball from Yankees coach by switching caps at Fenway | Big League Stew - Yahoo! Sports Hiroki Kuroda delivered a pitch in the bottom of the third inning, and Boston's Jose Iglesias pulled it foul into New York's dugout. Finding a Yankees cap somewhere, the boy placed it on his head — over his Red Sox cap, so it wouldn't touch his growing scalp and possibly transmit A-Rod cooties — and obscured his true allegiance. Thomson turned, nodded fraternally at the "Yankees fan" and rolled the ball to the boy over the top of the dugout. All based on a lie. After making off with the loot, the kid pulled the Yankees cap off his head — ick — and whipped it against the dugout. An odor?
Tony Romo's mysterious mountain run clouds QB's total control of Dallas Cowboys' offense - Yahoo! Sports yo are the Cowboys Buddhist
'Breaking Bad' at Comic-Con: That Guy Dressed Up as Walter White Might Actually Be Bryan Cranston | Yahoo! TV - Yahoo! TV In real life, Cranston looks more like "Malcolm in the Middle's" Hal than his "Breaking Bad" character Walter White (aka Heisenberg); he's clean-shaven, with a full head of hair. But just to mess with fans at Comic-Con this weekend, he put on a Walter White mask, complete with bald head and goatee, and roamed the halls unrecognized. (That's Cranston there, on the left.) He even used a higher voice to conceal his identity from fans.
If all an aspiring developer needs is a $500 Xbox One and a free copy of Unity 3D game engine (support for the next-gen console was announced as free of charge in June), Dent said, then Microsoft has obliterated the existing barriers that required investment in expensive development kits and publisher sponsorship to appear on the console.
The House’s right and left wings appeared to find a unifying cause. Representative Raúl R. Labrador, Republican of Idaho, called it “the wing nut coalition” and Mr. Amash “the chief wing nut.” Mr. Amash framed his push as a defense of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure, and he found a surprising ally, Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin and one of the principal authors of the Patriot Act. Mr. Sensenbrenner said his handiwork was never meant to create a program that allows the government to demand the phone records of every American. Opposing them were not only Mr. Obama and the House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, but also the leaders of the nation’s defense and intelligence establishment.
This marks the first Marvel-based Fox film to shoot in Louisiana, after many of the studio's superhero movies -- such as "X-Men" and the upcoming "X-Men: Days of Future Past" -- were shot in Canada.
"The Fantastic Four" isn't alone among tentpoles headed to Louisiana now that the specter of cuts has dissipated. "Pirates of the Caribbean 5" will also shoot in the state, Jerry Bruckheimer told The Playlist last month. The producers cited the tax incentives as the reason for the decision.
Louisiana offers a 30 percent transferrable tax credit for in-state expenditures related to a film's production -- and an additional 5 percent labor incentive for hiring the state's residents.
While Japan struggles to generate enough electricity to keep air conditioners humming through its steamy summer, brewer Kirin is offering relief - a pint of ice cold draft beer topped with frozen froth.
A machine similar to the ones used to make frozen yogurt freezes the head of the beer into something that looks like a serving of soft vanilla ice cream, helping to keep pints frosty cold even as the mercury tops 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
Made of pure beer - no ice or water is added - the frozen froth keeps the beer chilled for at least 30 minutes, well over the average of 22 minutes to finish a pint, as a Kirin survey found.
your busy kids suck - or - of course the game of real estate development doesn't have consequences any more
"Hasbro's new Monopoly Empire, in which players compete to amass the most big-name brands, such as Coca-Cola Xbox and McDonald's, can be completed in as little as 30 minutes, compared with the hours that traditional Monopoly could take," reports The Wall Street Journal's Ann Zimmerman. Part of that is due to Hasbro removing the jail, which speeds up the pace and also removes a crucial safe zone in the latter stages of the game.
After being gone overseas for six months, Lt. Gary Daugherty was reunited with his dog Bugaboo who couldn’t be more happy to see him again. At the 1:35 mark, Bugaboo seems to say “I love you.”
Shadowrun Returns developer to Kickstart 'Golem Arcana' tabletop game in August originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 25 Jul 2013 17:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
