In this 2012 video, veterinarian Ernie Ward sits in a parked car in a summer day to find out how hot it gets and to prove how dangerous it is to leave pets and children unattended. With all four windows cracked a couple inches, the car reaches 117 degrees in just 30 minutes.

via Viral Viral Videos

My sister brought back the Stranger from a trip to Seattle. Why is it 10x fucking better than the Mercury? Why don't you just rip off their shit and print that? FUCKING BORING, LIKE FUCKING BORING WILLY WANKER WEEK. This town is boring and sucky and pretentious and boring. That's all. Yeah yeah yeah, go at it trolls. I can read it now. Move, fuck off, shit yourself, it's all so fucking predictable.

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djempirical

vid included, won’t embed.

Graham Johnston is a Des Moines bicycle shop mechanic whose voice is a dead ringer for actor Nicolas Cage.

It’s no impersonation. Johnston’s real voice is so uncannily Cage-ian it got around town. People ask him to recite lines all the time.

I handed him a line from Cage’s cult comedy classic “Raising Arizona,” when the actor played hapless panty-hose-headed grocery store burglar H.I.

“I’ll be taking these Huggies,” Johnston recited, “and whatever cash you got.”

It held Cage’s pronunciation, his slight drawl, his tone. Check out the movie clip at 1:20 to compare.

What emerged as more interesting than this vocal coincidence is Johnston’s own life.

The bicycle mechanic at Boulevard Sports off 42nd Street is 38 and has never had a driver’s license or owned a car. He rides his bicycle everywhere, in case you are proud of yourself for riding yours across Iowa for seven days on RAGBRAI and need humbling.

That’s decades of nothing but transport by leg power.

“I don’t spend money on car payments, car insurance or gas and it saves me $5,000 a year, which allows me to work for smaller amounts of money,” Johnston said. “I don’t feed the gas tank, I just feed myself.”

He’s a confirmed bachelor who prefers to call himself “unencumbered” because he uses words like that.

In fact, he talks a bit like a professor, as if he was the blue-collar Cage penning an erudite letter to his wife in “Raising Arizona:”

“Tonight, as you and Nathan slumber, my heart is filled with anguish … But the events of the last day have showed amply that I don’t have the strength of character to raise up a family in a manner befitting a responsible adult. I say all this to my shame.”

Johnston explains his sophisticated articulations.

“I grew up the son of an editor and I studied Russian language and literature,” the former Roosevelt High School and University of Iowa student said. “I took too many literature classes. I didn’t think you could take too many, but it turns out you can. Who knew?

“So I’m a student of Russian with no degree, with no car and no girlfriend. If that’s not a selling point, I don’t know what is.”

Johnston landed at the bike shop in May after years in food service. Decades of in-home service on his bicycles made him an adept mechanic. He also has numerous warnings and tales of bicycling.

There was the time in 1995 he decided to bicycle down a steep stairway on the UI campus and came crumpling down to the bottom face first, blood all over, with his eye socket shattered and the optic nerve in his right eye shot. He’s been blind in that eye since, but was happy he survived, which doctors said he shouldn’t have.

He’s been toppled in parking lots and in 2004 was hit by a car, breaking his nose and jaw.

“It has caused me to modify my behavior,” he said.

He can lecture on proper chain maintenance but doesn’t come across as a scold, this founder of the popular Des Moines poker run race Cyclo De Mayo and good-time Charlie with a handlebar mustache.

“Originally, I grew it to stick it to the man in my old job where I was required to trim my facial hair,” he said. “And I ended up with this great ‘stache. Someday the fun will wear off, I guess.”

The fun wore off the Nick Cage thing. For a while he kept a supply of lines ready to recite when folks noticed his voice but, “It made me look like an idiot.”

“I don’t think much of it. It’s not very creative. It’s like people calling me Graham Cracker, like I’d never heard that before,” he said.

His mechanic partner teases Johnston that he began sounding like Cage after his various biking-related head injuries. Johnston denies it.

More interesting to him is the vast volume of bicyclists with improperly inflated tires, clocking out right at 6 to pedal wherever he wants, unencumbered and free, without having to steal Huggies.

Original Source

Quinns is live on the mighty Eurogamer once again, reviewing Pandemic! A game so popular that for a while there, we were taking this monument on the board gaming landscape for granted. But you know what? It's actually amazing, and the perfect game for this sweaty, lethargic, feverish summer.

"Pandemic's cheap, at just £25. The manual's flimsy few pages are crystal clear. It's a co-op game, so no-one's going to get too competitive, and it has you working at the Centre for Disease Control, flying around the world trying to cure four doomsday plagues before they skim humankind from the surface of the earth, so it's not even nerdy.

"It's captivating, pacey and dramatic. In fact, it's the perfect game to start your board game collection."

So some good did come from Quarantine, after all! We finally got this sucker reviewed. No messin'. Go read!

What other classics would you like to see us review, readers?

Read More

The New Yorker

This year Disneyland is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room in the park’s Adventureland. In this Disney Parks video, retired Imagineer Rolly Crump talks about how the attraction came about after the initial plan to make it a restaurant with Tahitian decor. Disney Parks blog reports that it was the “birth of the new Audio-Animatronic technology.”

At Disneyland in Anaheim, California, there is currently an art show titled “Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Realms, Celebrating 50 years of Enchantment” that is showing “conceptual and definitive works of art” relating to the Enchanted Tiki Room.

Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

New York Times (blog)

Egypt's New Government Doesn't Include Muslim Brotherhood New York Times (blog) CAIRO — Egypt's interim president swore in a new cabinet on Tuesday that was dominated by liberal and leftist politicians, sweeping away the brief era of Islamist political rule built by the country's deposed president, Mohamed Morsi. Egypt appoints new Cabinet; Morsi backers clash with policeLos Angeles Times No Islamists in new Egyptian cabinetGlobe and Mail Egypt's interim government gets to work amid protests, deadlockReuters Fox News -The Australian -Houston Chronicle all 614 news articles »

It is a common myth that earwigs crawl into the human ear and lay eggs in the brain.

Original Source

AFP

Microsoft Petitions US Attorney General For Permission To Disclose Information ... Hot Hardware Microsoft is smarting in the wake of the Guardian's discussion of how chummy it's gotten with the NSA over the past few years, and the company wants permission to clarify its relationship with the federal government. To that end, the company has sent a ... Microsoft General Counsel Assures the World They Act Responsibly with ...Windows IT Pro Kill the gag order on NSA's spying, Microsoft asks Attorney GeneralFox News Microsoft Says It Doesn't Give NSA Secret Encryption KeysBloomberg Business Standard -Wall Street Journal -AFP all 65 news articles »

LAS LUNAS, N.M. — An openly gay New Mexico high school student who spoke out against bullying died Tuesday after his family removed him from life support following a suicide attempt over the weekend.

Carlos Vigil, 17, posted a suicide note online on Saturday where he described being the target of bullying, and wrote, “The kids in school are right, I am a loser, a freak and a fag and in no way is that acceptable for people to deal with.”

His father rushed home when he heard about it, but it was too late.

Family members said Monday that Carlos had been suffering from the effects of bullying since elementary school and that they had transferred him from one local high school to another due to the constant strain of being targeted, reported KRQE-TV.

Carlos’ mother, Jacqueline Vigil, said her son was involved in Youth and Government and tried to push for stronger anti-bullying laws, but his own experience with bullying became too much.

She said Carlos had been bullied since he was 8 years-old, and was picked on for everything from his weight and acne to his glasses.

In the suicide note posted on Twitter, Carlos wrote:

I’m sorry to those who I offended over the years. I’m blind to see that I, as a human being, suck. I’m an individual who is doing an injustice to the world and it’s time for me to leave. Please don’t ever feel sorry for me, or cry – because I had an opportunity at life and that opportunity is over. I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to love someone or have someone love me. I guess it’s best though, because now I leave no pain onto anyone. The kids in school are right, I am a loser, a freak, and a fag and in no way is that acceptable for people to deal with. I’m sorry for not being a person that would make someone proud.

I’m free now. Xoxo.
Carlos

“My son, he didn’t deserve this …” said Jacqueline Vigil. “He is not here because of bullying. It drove him over the edge.”

On Monday, dozens of classmates showed up at the hospital where Carlos was on life support.

“Even though now Carlos is gone, we need to focus on what he left trying to say, that bullying is a problem,” said Alyssa Cisneros, a former classmate at Valley High School.

Posting on his Twitter account early Tuesday morning, Carlos’ family wrote: “Carlos is finally at peace! Thank you everyone for your support and prayers. Please don’t forget what he wanted STOP THE BULLYING’

Carlos died at 1:47 a.m. after being removed from life support and having his organs donated.

Update: On Tuesday afternoon, his family reported that Carlos’ kidneys had been successfully accepted by a recipient. “He now lives thru others,” they tweeted.

Original Source

SABMiller is angling to attract more Chinese beer drinkers, so long as they’re willing to pay higher prices.

The London-based beer maker and its Chinese partner are waiting for the approval of Chinese regulators and shareholders for their recent $851 million deal to acquire the beer operations of Kingway Brewery, a Chinese drinks producer in Guangdong province. SABMiller, which co-owns China’s largest brewery by volume, China Resources Snow Breweries, says the deal will help it expand its 22% share of the Chinese beer market.

But that won’t be easy. In China’s beer industry, the world’s largest by volume (and double the size of the US beer industry), foreign companies like SABMiller, Carlsberg and Anheuser-Busch InBev have to contend with local brands that sell beer for as cheap as $0.32 a bottle. Competition to keep prices low has eaten into profit margins: The company sells more beer in the Asia Pacific region than anywhere else, according to sales volume data as of March 31. The region accounts for 22% of total sales, driven mostly by sales of Snow, a brand of light, pale beer whose prices range between 3 renminbi to 15 renminbi, or $0.49 to $2.44, depending on the variation. But because SABMiller has to sell at rock bottom prices to match local competitors in China, its Asia Pacific sales only account for about 13% of the company’s earnings, behind that of Latin America and South Africa.

To boost profits, SABMiller is hoping to woo more affluent Chinese beer drinkers with premium brands. Ari Mervis, managing director for SABMiller Asia Pacific talked with Quartz and analysts about the company’s China strategy at a presentation on July 16.

Quartz: You named six Chinese provinces where Snow has built a large presence but didn’t name Greater Beijing and Guangdong province, two of the country’s wealthiest regions. Will the Kingway deal allow you to compete against Chinese brewers like Tsingtao and Zhujiang Beer who currently dominate those markets?

Ari Mervis: We’ve got a position [in Guangdong] but it’s very small. We’re bigger in second-tier cities. Generally, we’ve got a less of a presence in the far west and far north. We’ll certainly consolidate the position [in Guangdong]. Kingway itself as a brand has quite a lot of resonance, so we’ll retain Kingway.

Q: Profit margins for SABMiller’s China business have been relatively flat for about three years. Why hasn’t that margin increased and how do you expect that to change?

AM: There have been two drivers. One, pricing has been relatively flat on a per hectoliter basis in China over the last few years. [There have been] quite a lot of inflationary pressures, particularly wages. Although…the cost to compete [in the premium sector] is high, we see that very much as a longterm brand building opportunity. Going forward, the more we can “premiumize,” the more we can secure route to market, entrench the brand franchise, and secure 70% plus market share in the bases.

Q: You recently launched two premium brands, Opera and Miller Genuine Draft in China. But some say that there isn’t a market for premium beer in China, since beer there is meant to be a cheap, light accompaniment to dinner. Is that true?

AM: Everyone’s pushing prices up and will continue to. The quality of the cheaper beers is inferior. As people start becoming more discerning, they start trading up. There’s been a lot of focus in increasing Snow as a proper brand.

Q: You said that Chinese consumers are starting to make more choices, rather than just choosing the cheapest beer—and that SABMiller is focusing on a “brand pull” strategy instead of a “push brand” one. What does that mean?

AM: With “push brand” you try to pressure on supply side. Pull brand is your advertising. Historically, we’ve focused on the supply side… now we’re focusing on giving people a reason to buy. It’s getting the quality of the beer right, the presentation, getting it brand positioning. [Snow Beer's slogan is "globe trekker," which connotes brave exploration.]

Q: In 2001, the top four brewers in China held a market share of 28%. In 2012, that figure was closer to 61%. Is there opportunity for more consolidation in the industry?

AM: There’s not that much opportunity for [major acquisitions], that type of consolidation. Kingway gives us a couple percentage points more [of market share]. I think it is going to be either the smaller guys stop brewing because they become less profitable or we acquire and consolidate or [continue our] organic growth strategy.

Q: You said that the crackdown on lavish spending by government officials has hurt high-end liquor retailers in China, but not the beer industry. Has there been any kind of boost for high-end beer sellers?

AM: It hasn’t made a big impact on beer and I don’t expect it to.

Q: Is high-end beer part of the gifting culture in China?

AM: In Vietnam, yes. In China, no. People prefer to give cigarettes or tea.

Rejected John Rink Plan for Central Park (Click for Super Big) at the New York Historical Society.

image by Fabian

Telegraph.co.uk

Europe Wants More Concessions From Google New York Times (blog) BRUSSELS — Google must offer more concessions to European Union regulators to escape huge fines linked to the way it runs its online search business, the bloc's top antitrust official warned Wednesday. Enlarge This Image ... EU Tells Google to Offer More in Search ProbeWall Street Journal UPDATE 1-EU demands more concessions from Google to settle caseReuters European Commission asks Google for more concessions in antitrust casePCWorld Bloomberg -Businessweek -CNET all 25 news articles »

Given Russian president Vladimir Putin’s regular tirades against the US, you would think he’d be thrilled to be hosting Edward Snowden, the fugitive US intelligence contractor who on July 16 officially requested Russian asylum. But at least publicly, Putin is not restraining himself in this opportunity to goad Washington. Instead, he says he prefers that the American leave Moscow as soon as possible.

Why the cold shoulder? It’s partly about optics. In September, Putin is hosting US president Barack Obama for a state summit that could be seriously undermined if Washington perceived the Russian leader as aiding an accused US traitor.

But on a deeper level, Putin’s own sensibilities run contrary to Snowden’s. Himself a former spy, Putin prizes loyalty and regards intelligence work as inherently patriotic. As head of Russian intelligence in the late 1990s, Putin rejected internal whistleblowers—most famously KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko, who in 2006 was murdered in London with a nuclear isotope whose trail led back to Russia.

So while he is probably enjoying Obama’s discomfort, Putin is more likely to sympathize with US spy agencies than with Snowden, who has been disclosing secrets stolen from the US National Security Agency.

“Snowden is not a natural soulmate for Putin,” says Mark Galeotti, head of NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, who specializes in Russian intelligence and crime and blogs at In Moscow’s Shadow. “For Putin, Snowden at best would fall into the category of what Lenin called ‘a useful idiot.’ It’s great to have him around saying that Russia is wonderful, but it doesn’t mean that you respect him in any way.”

Snowden talked, and Washington threw a fit

Putin has surprised even himself by his reaction to Snowden’s June 23 arrival from Hong Kong. When asked a week later whether the 30-year-old American was welcome to stay in Russia, Putin responded, “There is one condition if he wants to remain here: He must stop his work aimed at damaging our American partners. As odd as it may sound from me.”

But do not misunderstand Putin. He admonished Snowden to tone down, but that does not exclude he himself having some fun at the Americans’ expense. On the afternoon of July 12, for example, Obama was scheduled to hold a phone call with the Russian leader. But a few hours prior, Snowden held an hour-long meeting at Sheremetyevo Airport with international and local human rights activists—an event organized and manned by Russian authorities. Holed up in the airport since his arrival, Snowden requested help obtaining temporary asylum in Russia while plotting a secure route to permanent refuge in Latin America, where three countries have offered him sanctuary.

In separate news conferences, senior spokespeople from the White House and the US State Department lashed out at Moscow. “We would urge the Russian government to afford human rights organizations the ability to do their work in Russia throughout Russia. Not just at the Moscow transit lounge,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

Carney’s language—a reference to an ongoing political crackdown by Putin—was risky given the Russian leader’s notorious prickliness. But Putin had no publicly perceptible reaction. He proceeded with the call with Obama, and then reverted to his circumspect posture.

Yet the Russian hilarity continued. On July 14, Snowden’s confidante-defender, Glenn Greenwald, said he had just been told by the fugitive–who is presumably under tight Russian surveillance–that he possesses the equivalent of a manual for the NSA’s structure and operations that would allow anyone to foil its work.

“Snowden has enough information to cause more damage to the US government in a minute alone than anyone else has ever had in the history of the United States,” the florid Greenwald told a reporter. Greenwald said,

“The US government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare.”

This time, the White House did not rise to the teasing.  

Snowden still poses a potential threat to the US

It is possible that, even if Greenwald or Snowden is exaggerating about what he has, such secrets have already been copied from Snowden’s laptops by either or both China and Russia, with or without his knowledge. Boris Volodarsky, a former Russian military intelligence officer and author of The KGB’s Poison Factory, told Quartz that Russian security services have likely been talking with Snowden.

“In exchange for help and protection, they would squeeze everything from him,” Volodarsky said.

Others doubt that Putin has ordered such direct action. But given these risks, the NSA has all-but certainly already launched an intensive effort to remake these systems.

For the US, that leaves the task of containing Snowden. Toward that aim, the best outcome for Washington would be that Snowden simply remains where he is: in a transit hotel at Sheremetyevo Airport. That is, he does not receive political asylum in Russia; slip out of the airport to refuge, say, in the Ecuadoran or Venezuelan embassy; or gain permission to fly to Latin America, where Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela have offered him sanctuary. The second-best outcome would be that he obtains Russian asylum, but is kept more or less quiet by the country’s security services.

For now at least, Putin seems inclined to play along. ”If you’ve been running a large state apparatus for a dozen years, and fending off popular protests for the last two, your sympathies–whatever your background–aren’t going to be with those who challenge authority,” said Stephen Sestanovich, former ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union.

Perhaps an international arms trafficker would do the trick?

Putin has steadfastly asserted that he will not give up Snowden to the US–and notwithstanding his current self-control, there is no reason to disbelieve him. For one thing, he benefits before his domestic audience by keeping the US on tenterhooks.

Yet is there nothing that would entice Putin to push out Snowden into American hands? Nothing that Putin truly wants?

The answer is yes—Viktor Bout, a legendary global arms trafficker. Moscow bitterly complained last year when Bout, a former Soviet military translator, was sentenced to 25 years in US prison for conspiring to arm the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the rebel group better known as FARC. Last year, Moscow officially requested Bout’s extradition.

“Bout is the coin that the US could use to buy Snowden,” Galeotti told Quartz.

William Courtney, a former US ambassador, told Quartz that a handover of Bout, while satisfying Putin, “would rightly cause a furor in the US, especially in law enforcement and judicial circles.”

Courtney is right—a Snowden-Bout exchange, reminiscent of the spy-for-spy exchanges of the Cold War, seems highly unlikely. Still, the entire affair has been marked by improbabilities. For now, Putin will mull cooly over the opportunity in his hands. “Snowden is a chip on the board,” Galeotti said. “A playing piece.”

barefootmarley:

pom pom banner
cortny

madeleineishere:

🐝Post-It-Love-Note covered in bees edition🐝

fer1972:

Paul Octavious 

corgis-everywhere:

we hold these stumps to be self-evident, that all dogs are created equal, that they are endowed by their owners with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, kibble, and the pursuit of sniffing strangers’ butts.

This is part of the speech Erica Goldson, the 2010 Valedictorian of Coxsackie-Athens High School, gave at her graduation ceremony.
The speech was uploaded on YouTube, went viral and Erica became known as the ‘Valedictorian who spoke out against schooling’. You can watch the entire speech and read the transcript here.

Erica’s speech really struck a nerve with me because I was totally like her when I was in school. I always did what I was told, didn’t ask too many questions, mindlessly memorised then regurgitated facts and figures. I remember I would write out an entire essay for homework, memorise the whole thing, then write it down verbatim on test day … and then promptly forget it and move on to the next assignment. I graduated near the top of my class, but on hindsight, I’m not sure I learnt much. The pattern continued as I went on to university, even though I never really wanted to be a graphic designer. But the piece of paper I received at the end did help me land a job, so it was all worth it in the end right? Maybe if I had heard this speech back in high school, I would have realised I was stuck in the system and gone down a different path.

One positive thing I do remember about school is that I doodled on EVERYTHING – my textbooks, files, folders, desk, arms, legs,
pencil case and all of my friend’s stuff as well (mainly pictures of Batman, sometimes Wolverine, the occasional Ninja Turtle). If only I spent MORE time doodling and less time being a robot.

Related comics: 11 Ways to be Average. The Road Not Taken.

- Thanks to Jesse for submitting this.
- Check out this in-depth article about myself and the growth of Zen Pencils by viral media expert Jonathan Goodman. It’s especially relevant if you’re interested in starting your own website, blog or webcomic.

One of the world’s biggest wine companies can’t seem to get US demand right, and its costing them millions of dollars and thousands of gallons of wine.

Australian vintner Treasury Wine Estates (TWE), which produces over 80 brands that range from cheap wines carried by Walmart to top shelf fare like Penfolds Grange, announced earlier today (paywall) that it will be writing off $145 million for the year ending June 30, because it grossly overestimated how much wine it would sell in the US last year.

But that’s not all. The miscalculation also means the company will have to spend $36 million to fund a fire sale of excess stock and pay its US distributors to dump some $32 million in spoiled wine.

The bulk of TWEs exports to the US, its largest market, are of the mass-market variety—or, roughly, the $2.50 to $5.00 per bottle range. This sort of wine, however, doesn’t carry anywhere near the shelf life that other, pricier wines do. In fact, while other wines improve with age, these turn sour. Oversupplying a market with perishable wines means either having to risk selling a past-due product or wind up dumping the excess. The company simply isn’t willing to risk its brand by selling rotten wine, CEO Dean Dearie told the newspaper The Australian. “Only the freshest and highest-quality wines are available for brand-conscious US customers,” he said.

TWE, which relies heavily on the sales of its cheaper labels, isn’t new to market troubles. It has struggled mightily since it was spun off beverage mammoth Foster’s Group Ltd. in 2011, suffering grape gluts in Australia and disappointing sales in the US. The company already had to write off $1 billion before the spinoff in 2011, and its sales to the US and Canada have dipped nearly 13% since 2010. Citing the company’s knack for underperformance in the region, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch analyst David Errington even said the company should give up on its US business. “I can’t remember ever getting the US right … you’ve cleaned the business out now, why not just sell it?” he said in a conference call with TWE.

Despite the wine dumping, multi-million dollar write off and cloudy outlook, Dearie still believes the company’s agressive US strategy is sound. “It’s a fantastic growth opportunity, at the right price points,” he assured investors. The company has already announced that it expects to ship less wine to the US this year, so it’s unclear where Dearie’s enthusiasm comes from. Unless, of course, TWE is quietly trying to lure bidders into buying the struggling business.

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KFC is testing a new concept restaurant in Louisville that will sell "Flatbreads, sandwiches, salads and rice bowls." (Image source).