firehose

FORT WAYNE, IN—Employees at Sapphire Business Solutions expressed their collective outrage Friday at the brazen conduct of sales associate Isaac Schuler, a largely unimportant staffer who’s only been with the company for maybe a month and who ...

vimeo:

Mirror City Timelapse by Michael Shainblum

Let this kaleidoscopic timelapse entrance you.

RoccamOccam sends this news from the Associated Press: "A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site. After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What do you get when you cross the hilarious Archer with the unintentionally hilarious Star Trek animated series from the '70s? Something that should exist every day of our lives.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Benchmarks published this week on Phoronix showed that Ubuntu 13.10 can outperform Apple OS X 10.9 "Mavericks" with regard to OpenGL performance. However, when compared to Microsoft Windows, the open-source Intel Linux driver continues to come up short.

Andrew Hussie, creator of the 5,000 or so page webcomic Homestuck, has recently made a deal with Namco Bandai to take his already video game centric creativity to an actual video game, the dating sim Namco High. Namco High will presumably allow Hussie to take his ability to make fans ship any and every character pairing to a whole new level, as he creates a game that will center around dating various video game characters. For Homestuck fans, this may be a disappointment, as the unbelievable number of characters in the massive webcomic would certainly make for their own exciting, if not completely perplexing and alternate universe ridden, dating sim.  However, Namco High will not feature Hussie's original characters, but characters from across Namco Bandai 's video games.

I couldn't even walk in these Swarovski- and glitter-encrusted shoes by Etsy seller WickedAddiction, never mind fight supervillains. And now I'm imagining Batman, wearing these, yelling to Alfred to to bring him his dinner because he can't walk to the kitchen without falling down a flight of stairs and breaking his back. Again. Happy Friday, everyone. Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

Last week on Kotaku, there was an excerpt from an interview with game creator Gavin Moore, who spoke strongly against the idea of an optional female protagonist in his upcoming game Puppeteer. I’m not going to directly pick apart what was said, because there’s already been plenty of digital ink spilled on that front, and besides, that’s not quite my style. But the full interview did kick me into thinking about the all-encompassing conversation concerning inclusion and representation. It’s not just happening in games. It’s happening in comics. It’s happening in movies. It’s happening in SF/F (and how). This conversation has engulfed all of popular culture — particularly geek culture — and it’s gotten messy. The thing that stuck with me about that interview was not that I disagreed — in a number of cases, I didn’t — but that it missed the point of what the conversation is about. And so, I offer the most navel-gazing question ever: what is it actually about?

Proving once again that women can in fact be nerds, Networked Insights has analyzed the social media discussion of Comic-Con, and has determined that women are in the majority when it comes to discussing the event. Based on 3.5 million social media conversations, it appears that 54% of the people talking about SDCC related T.V. shows, actors, movies, comics, and other relevant topics were women, while 46% of those talking about SDCC were male. The study was weighed most heavily on information from Twitter, and clearly shows that women can be, and are, interested and engaged in comics, science fiction, and fantasy communities just as much as men. Obviously, this is something that we have known for quite some time, but it's always nice to have the numbers on your side.

Marco D’Alfonso

If you haven’t heard of DJ Earworm, you’ve probably heard his mixes: His “United State of Pop,”a series of massive mash-ups that turn 12 months worth of top-40 hits into a single song, take over the internet once a year like clockwork. But even with over 100 million views on Youtube and a commission to make mashups for the London Olympics, DJ Earworm has never been able to sell his music legally. Now he’s the latest artist to join Legitmix, a website that uses unique software and a loophole in copyright law to pay remixers. But what makes Legitmix legal also makes Earworm’s songs cost more than most albums.

“To put out a remix or mashup,” Legitmix founder Omid McDonald told Quartz, “you need to get licenses for both the sound recording and composition of the sampled songs. This expensive, complicated, and time consuming process makes it impossible for most remixers to legally distribute their work.”

Legitmix uses an algorithm—one that McDonald says took a year and $1 million to develop—to create a file of “digital instructions” for recreating mixes. The file is essentially what remains of the song when tracks owned by other artists are subtracted. Legitmix sells this file to its users for a dollar (taking a 30% cut and giving the rest to the remixer). If users already own the copyrighted track, they just download the Legitmix file, which then creates the mix for them on their own computer. What makes Legitmix legal is that it isn’t technically selling copyrighted material, but rather the means to recreate it (without any DJing expertise). If users don’t own the tracks used in a mix, the site lets them purchase through iTunes, making sure that the original artists make their fair cut.

Most tracks on Legitmix cost $2.29, consisting of one Legitmix file and one track from iTunes. But in addition to being its most famous remixer so far, DJ Earworm is also the most prolific sampler: His United State of Pop mix for 2012 has a whopping 25 songs by other artists in it (which adds up to $32.25 to buy it legally) and his popular SummerMash ’13 has 10, costs about $14. With no advertising except for a link to Ligitmix under its YouTube video, SummerMash has sold 700 copies, with 100 of those buyers paying for the complete $14 package. Only a small fraction of the 4500 viewers click through to the “buy” page, but that’s not bad considering that the mix is readily available for free download elsewhere.

“The existing copyright laws were not designed for the realities of today’s remix culture,” McDonald said.  “While they provide a simple way to sell cover songs without needing to negotiate with the copyright holders, no such statutory framework exists for remixing.  So most remixes are released for free online, creating a situation where neither remixer nor sampled artist benefit, with the value captured instead by ISPs, pirate sites, music blogs and streaming sites.  We hope our technology will serve as a technological bridge until the copyright laws are changed to accommodate remix.”

Sales of SummerMash over the past couple weeks are far from staggering. But the fact that there are people willing to shell out $14 for a single song bodes well for artists like Earworm—and for the future of fair, profitable remixes.

Dwight Howard Ready To Put Disappointing Season In Front Of Him

Much as Jesus was crucified at the hands of non-believers, Kirk Cameron has found himself in the 21st-century version of martyrdom: having his content blocked on Facebook and YouTube, after those sites ostensibly blocked the trailer for his latest movie, Unstoppable. Not to be confused with the Denzel Washington/Chris Pine film—here Cameron is the plucky, younger sidekick to his often-crotchety partner God; and instead of a runaway train, it’s wildly out-of-control faithlessness they’re trying to stop—Kirk Cameron’s Unstoppable is due to screen for one night only, on September 24. Unfortunately, like the word of Jesus that didn’t reach the people, because the Romans reported it as “spam,” it’s entirely possible thousands won’t show up on Sept. 24, because Facebook and YouTube wouldn’t allow Cameron to get his message out and for no other reason.

Cameron’s latest spiritual road trip ...

Read more

Wall Street Journal

Elderly men held for years in 'dungeon' at Houston home USA TODAY Four men, apparently invalids, were being held for years while residents of the house stole their Social Security or veterans checks. SHARE 2546 CONNECT 176 TWEET 204 COMMENTEMAILMORE ... Charges filed in Houston garage-turned-prison caseFortune Grandson arrested after elderly men found in squalid Texas homeChicago Tribune Houston police: 4 lured into captivity with promise of cigarettes, foodCNN BBC News -Houston Chronicle -Globe and Mail all 142 news articles »

WASHINGTON—Following Thursday’s announcement that the city had declared bankruptcy, reports are confirming that Detroit may suddenly descend into a horrifying, depopulated hellscape, one with numerous dilapidated buildings, rampant urban decay...

We're here live from Downtown Internet where the ninth round of the Steam Summer Getaway Sale World Series Championship Cup Tournament Series Finals are just about to get started. Stepping into the ring now are reigning discount heavyweight champion Valve Corporation and plucky underdog Our Wallet, who up until now has suffered eight consecutive crushing defeats at the hands of Valve.

And there's the bell! Valve opens with a powerful right hook of Skyrim: Legendary Edition for $35.99, but Our Wallet narrowly avoids, having learned its lesson after the Skyrim Flash Sale earlier this week. Valve recovers with a quick succession of rapid-fire blows to the belly: Grid 2 for $29.99, EVE Online for $4.98 and Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition for $4.99. Our Wallet powers through the barrage but its starting to look a little worn out, now is when Valve should-

Civilization 5 at $7.49 straight to the jaw! Followed by a one-two combo of Trials Evolution: Gold Edition for $9.99 and $3.39 Awesomenauts to the ribs! Our Wallet is barely on its feet now, one more clean blow from Valve and oh my God a left hook Monaco at $7.44 and Metro: Last Light at $29.99 straight under the chin! Our Wallet is out cold, this fight is over!

... Did Valve just spit a $10.99 Train Simulator 2013 bundle onto Our Wallet, after the bell? How can this be considered a legitimate sport?

Steam Summer Getaway Sale, day 9: Skyrim: Legendary Edition, Monaco, Civ 5 and more originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 19 Jul 2013 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

For the arts section this week, I profiled cartoonist Erika Moen about her new sex ed/sex toy review site Oh Joy Sex Toy, which is both totally delightful and very NSFW. We talked for about an hour, and I ended up with a ton of great material that I didn't have room to put in the print article. Here's Erika explaining how and why she came up with the idea for Oh Joy Sex Toy.

Mercury: Can you explain how the website Oh Joy Sex Toy came about?

ERIKA MOEN: We’re gonna go back in time 9 years. I’m a sophomore in college. I’m taking a life drawing class where you get to do a project of your choosing that involves bodies. So I drew this comic called Girl Fuck. It’s an introduction to how and why two cisgender [women] would have sex with each other. Because I was totally out, I had a girlfriend, and people would always come up and ask me really inappropriate questions about us.

When strangers ask you questions like that, you’re totally within your rights to say fuck off—but nobody learns anything when they ask a question and are told to fuck off. Girl Fuck was my way of giving a friendly explanation. Those questions are coming from ignorance—they really don’t know. So I explained "This is why lesbians may want to incorporate dildos, and it doesn't necessarily mean they want a flesh and blood penis." "This is how people can be sexually fulfilled without penis-in-vagina intercourse." Super basic.

Now we’re gonna go forward a year. I meet my future husband, Matthew. He loves Girl Fuck. He says, "You need to do more comics like that. You have an ability to talk about sex and issues around sex in a really friendly way. You should do more comics about sex and sex toys."

I try to incorporate it into DAR, my autobio comic, but this whole time, Matt has literally, for eight years, been telling me, "you need to do sex ed."

So I finish up DAR, and I wanted to take a break from everything I’ve done before, so I do a fictional book with Jeff Parker called Bucko. Then last year, 2012, I’m like, this is it, I’m ready to get down and do a story that’s really important to me. And by a "story," I mean, I want to tell teens how to be sexually active safely. I want to tell them about sex, I want to tell them how not to get pregnant , I want to tell them what consent is. I think a lot of them don’t even know how to ask for consent. As a man, you’re supposed to pursue, as a woman, you’re not supposed to [hurt people's] feelings. It is a recipe for disaster. So I spent all of 2012 cranking away on my manuscript for teaching teens how to be sexually active safely. I did this for about 9 months, and then I completely burned out. I have three chapters left. I needed a break.

It was perfect timing though, because I was on a reality show! The reason I went on Strip Search was because I wanted to meet Robert Khoo, the [business manager] behind Penny Arcade. And I just looked at him and was like, "How do I make money? How do I not let the internet forget I exist while I work on this book?"

I wish I had recorded what he told me, but the essence of it was, "Give your audience what they want." My audience, we had determined, was the dick and vagina audience. That is my brand. And that was the sprouting of Oh Joy Sex Toy. I’m gonna give my audience what they want, which is me talking about sex.

When I say "sex," I don’t mean genitals slamming against each other. I mean the world of erotica—sex clubs, strip clubs, anything that has to do with sensuality, and sexuality, and boners.

So how did you become someone who is comfortable talking about butt plugs on the internet?

Let’s go back to childhood. I grew up in an extremely sex-negative household. I didn’t know it at the time, but a lot of the family members who raised me were sexually assaulted. And it’s the whole gamut—spouses, strangers, gang rape, date rape. That had a huge impact on [how I was taught] to look at sex, and look at men. I was taught that, first of all, your virginity is a gift that you give to your husband on your wedding night. Sex is this chore you have to do to keep your husband from leaving you. You have to go in for a pap smear, you have to fuck your husband, it’s just something you do. On top of that, I was pretty explicitly taught that men cannot help themselves, and that all men have these bestial natures, that if they have the chance, they will assault. So I grew up thinking sex was horrible and men are monsters, just a lot of fear around all that.

I know a lot of people have memories of touching themselves when they were little kids. I did start to feel horny, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I knew you were supposed to shove something down there, right? Do something? Shove some hot dry fingers in there? That didn’t feel good.

So I around the time I was a sophomore, maybe a junior, 16-17, I started talking to my friends, asking them how this sort of thing worked. My very best friend and I—she was kind of secretly my girlfriend, but I didn’t really know it at the time—would go into a sex store a few blocks from my high school, and it was well lit, bright and inviting, staffed with queer-looking women, and they would answer our questions, and they were so friendly, and so helpful. That was really the genesis for [learning that sex could be] friendly and playful, and talking about pleasure. Because pleasure had never been mentioned when I was younger.

[That's where] I got my first vibrator. It was the Silver Bullet, it cost $9.95, and I took it home in a brown paper bag and just put it in the bottom drawer of my bureau. And so one night I took it out and touched it to my labia, it wasn’t even the full clit, it was just the outer labes. And I had my first orgasm. And that was the first time where I was just flooded with love. I’m not one of those girls that had a bad body image, I wasn’t worried about my weight or anything—I just never thought about my body, it was just something that took me from place to place, like a car. And that was the first time I really loved my body. And that was amazing, it was transforming.

So, from then on, I started talking with my friends more and more about sex, and learning about it, because suddenly sex was pleasure, sex was about you feeling good and positive and your body doing amazing things, and just magical. And then, going into college, I started doing a lot more comics talking about sex, and my relationship to sex and sexuality and love and having relationships with people. Everything I do today is very much in reaction against the way I was raised. The way I was raised may have been very extreme, many people have a healthier knowledge of sex from a younger age, but there are plenty of fucking people who didn’t. People are so ignorant about consent, about their bodies.

My comics are a reaction against rape culture, if you get down to it. there are a lot of people out there who need to hear that sex is friendly, and you get to do it in a way that makes you feel good. I think it’s important that they hear that it’s friendly and it’s funny. Hilarious things happen during sex, it’s not all just super serious "fuck me as hard as you can." It’s friendly and its fun. Sex can be whatever you want it to be, I just want people to know that.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

ABC News

SFO crash: Coroner says Asiana crash victim died after firetruck ran over her San Jose Mercury News SAN MATEO -- In another heartbreaking turn of events since Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash-landed at San Francisco International Airport two weeks ago, a coroner revealed Friday that a teenage girl jettisoned from the disintegrating aircraft initially survived ... SF plane crash victim was alive when she was hit, sources saySan Francisco Chronicle One of 3 victims in Asiana Airlines crash was hit, killed by fire vehicleWashington Post 16-year-old victim in Asiana Airlines plane crash died after being run over by fire ...New York Daily News Los Angeles Times -Bloomberg -Houston Chronicle all 295 news articles »

I realize that given the sheer number of two and three-layered, springform-bound and buttercream-shellacked celebration cakes I keep in the archives, you’d imagine that I had some pretty spectacular birthday cakes growing up. You’d be correct, but they were almost never homemade, not because I was suffering from cake-neglect, but because the only one I requested every year for my birthday was an ice cream cake, preferably from Carvel. Okay, insistently from Carvel, you know, the one in the strip mall at the end of the main road. The Carvel ice cream cake was, to me, as perfect as a June birthday cake could be — a layer each of chocolate and vanilla ice creams, separated by a smattering of Oreo-ish cookie rubble, coated with a suspiciously unbuttery buttercream and scattered with colored sprinkles. It was perfect. I loved it. I saw no reason anything should ever change.

And it might not have, except nowadays I have this problem, which is that when I vocalize the daydreamy ideas that pass through my head, such as, “I wonder what it would be like to make an ice cream cake from scratch… no, a sundae cake … no! A hot fudge sundae cake, with hot fudge and whipped cream and those awful-but-I-love-them jarred cherries…” instead of my so-called loved ones saying, “That’s ridiculous. Why would you make that if we could buy it at a store?” they encourage me. No, they goad me. Then they applaud my efforts and say “Again!” (True story: We think “Again!” exclaimed with glee, was the kid’s first word.) And then things like this happen.

... Read the rest of hot fudge sundae cake on smittenkitchen.com

---

© smitten kitchen 2006-2012. | permalink to hot fudge sundae cake | 275 comments to date | see more: Celebration Cakes, Ice Cream/Sorbet, Photo, Summer

Earlier this month in New Zealand, the minister of education Hekia Parata shared a piece of knowledge that has become common the world over. In the Southland Times, “Experts have found that four consecutive years of quality teaching eliminated any trace of socio-economic disadvantage.”

The source of this is an American economist by the name of Eric Hanushek, a professor at Stanford University, who has been spreading this for the past several years. According to Hanushek, “Good teachers are ones who get large gains in student achievement for their classes; bad teachers are just the opposite.”

He looks at the distribution of student test scores, and imagines that if we could fire the teachers who are associated with the lowest 10% or so, then we would make huge gains. This is the theory behind a great deal of the push for 21st century K-12 education reform in the US.  In order to identify and efficiently dispatch these slackers, we need national standards, and rigorous tests aligned to them.

This has led reformers to advocate that we:

• Test students more often, so we can measure learning incrementally. Test students in every subject, and at every grade level—even kindergarten, so that all teachers can be properly judged.
• Eliminate barriers to firing the “bad teachers” who get low scores, so due process and seniority protections have to go.
• Create new evaluation plans that give significant weight to “value added” measures drawn from test scores, for both teachers and administrators.

Hanushek has also argued, by the way, that more money won’t help schools succeed, nor will small class size. The teacher is the only variable worth targeting. Unions are a problem to the extent to which they make it difficult to quickly fire teachers identified as ineffective.

But the real world is proving to be a difficult place for Hanushek’s theories to be verified. No school has ever replicated the results predicted by his “four great teachers in a row” theory. In fact, there is no real research to support the idea that we can improve student achievement this way—it is all based on extrapolations.

And in fact, new data shows that in the three large urban school districts where these reforms have been given full rein, the results are actually worse (pdf) than in comparable districts that have not gone this route.

Some of the key findings from the Economic Policy Institute’s April report:

• Test scores increased less, and achievement gaps grew more, in “reform” cities than in other urban districts.
• Test-based accountability prompted churn that thinned the ranks of experienced teachers, but not necessarily bad teachers.
• School closures did not send students to better schools or save school districts money.

Most importantly:

• The reforms missed a critical factor driving achievement gaps: the influence of poverty on academic performance.

This last point is crucial. This attention to the supposedly pivotal role teachers play in student success comes at a time when the number of children in poverty has been on the rise. According to a study in 2011 (pdf), one school in five was considered high poverty, up from one in eight in the year 2000. Another study showed that “many high-poverty schools receive less than their fair share of state and local funding… leav(ing) students in high-poverty schools with fewer resources than schools attended by their wealthier peers.”

While conservative economists such as Hanushek wish to focus our attention on “bad teachers,” in actuality by far the largest factor affecting school performance is family income. In fact, the achievement gap between rich and poor has grown to be twice as large as the black/white performance gap in America.

Teachers are important, and of course we want to recruit the most expert and brightest possible, and give them lots of support. But the expansion of tests, and efforts to make teacher jobs depend on ever-rising scores, are turning our schools into test preparation factories.

Hanushek’s ideas have been driving a vast school reform project, which has been underwritten by the largest philanthropies on earth—starting with the Gates and Walton foundations. Now that this project is a decade old, and showing little signs of success, the time has come for a major reappraisal.

Rather than vesting our trust in tests to identify and weed out the worst teachers, why not invest some confidence in these teachers themselves, and empower them to engage in peer observation and growth through proven programs like Peer Assistance and Review? These programs feature experienced teacher coaches working with peers who have been identified as struggling. This has been found to be an effective way to strengthen teachers—and remove those who are unable to improve.

And how about some direct action to reduce the extreme income gap between wealthy and poor? An increase in the minimum wage would provide increased stability to millions of families, which would help children focus on their studies instead of where their next meal will come from. Most schools have cut nurses, librarians and counselors, at the same time we are expanding our investment in measurement systems.

So I offer this warning to the people down under and beyond. This misguided emphasis is no more likely to work there than it has in the US—unless of course, New Zealand truly is “opposite land,” where hot snow falls up.

You can visit Anthony’s blog at Living in Dialogue and follow him on Twitter at @AnthonyCody. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com. 

So this happened.

popular shared this story from Anil Dash.

---

In my years working in technology, I have learned a few things. These lessons have become oft-repeated refrains when speaking to people, so I thought I'd collect them so I have a link to send folks when needed.

1. Given enough time, any object which can generate musical notes will be used to play the Super Mario Brothers theme on YouTube.
2. Judging by their response, the meanest thing you can do to people on the Internet is to give them really good software for free.
3. Three things never work: Voice chat, printers and projectors.
4. Once a web community has decided to dislike a person, topic, or idea, the conversation will shift from criticizing the idea to become a competition about who can be most scathing in their condemnation. (See The Law of Fail.)
5. Any new form of electronic communication will first be dismissed as trivial and worthless until it produces a profound result, after which it will be described as obvious and boring.
6. If your website's full of assholes, it's your fault. (See the post on this topic.)
7. Most websites treat "I like it" and "This is good" as the same thing, leading to most people on the Internet refusing to distinguish between "I don't like it" and "It's not good".
8. When a company or industry is facing changes to its business due to technology, it will argue against the need for change based on the moral importance of its work, rather than trying to understand the social underpinnings.
9. People will move mountains to earn a gold star by their name on the Internet.
10. The only way to get useful feedback from people on the Internet is to ask questions that are actually answerable, instead of open-ended.

Bonus rules which apply equally on the Internet and off:

• Never argue against logic with emotion, or against emotion using logic.
• We hate most in others that which we fail to see in ourselves. (That's pretty much where this blog started, 14 years ago.)

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The bankruptcy of Detroit, America's greatest urban caricature, can be laid at the feet of the million-plus people who spent the past six decades fleeing the former fourth-largest city instead of fighting for it. (Also, Detroit has a $19 billion debt that its 700,000 taxpayers have no hope of paying back.)

Very conveniently, after demonstrations erupted all over the country, Russian authorities have dialed back on silencing a Vladimir Putin political foe facing corruption charges (corruption, also very conveniently, being the thing he most railed against Putin for).

A Massachusetts state cop peeved over Rolling Stone's cover of that fab-looking Tsarnaev boy decided to break the rules and release photos showing the moment Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured by police, with a sniper's dot painted on his forehead.

Inmates on hunger strike in California's prisons, battling a prison policy that isolates suspected gang members, say guards and officials are trying to shut the protest down by pumping cold air into cells, stealing legal documents, and banning lawyers.

That Texas-size abortion bill? It was signed by Governor Rick Perry.

Three aides working for Italy's ex-premier, Silvio Berlusconi, have been found guilty of finding him prostitutes for his now-infamous "bunga bunga" parties.

Good news! Art masterworks stolen from a Dutch museum might have been found. Bad news! Some might have been found in a Romanian woman's oven, in the form of ashes and nails.

Banks are as profitable as ever, and as unpopular in Congress as ever, and so maybe they won't be able to fight off a new round of regulations. I just reread that sentence and laughed.

Portland cops showed off their spiffy new license plate readers yesterday, and the ACLU of Oregon kindly pointed out why we should demand stricter rules about how all that collected data is used and stored.

PANIC! THIS MARTIAN VIRUS IS 10 TIMES LARGER THAN ANY ON EARTH! AND 94 PERCENT OF ITS GENES HAVE NEVER BEEN SEEN ON EARTH! CALL A BADASS DOCTOR NOW! TO KILL IT! KILL IT DEAD!

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]