firehose

Opening shot: the Blue Settler (Russell Crowe) is standing at the edge of a wheat field, looking out over a barren plain. He crouches down to inspect the crop, and he’s pounced upon by a robber (Bobcat Goldthwait). They tussle, and eventually the robber escapes with a sheaf of grain. The Blue Settler balls his fists and screams at the sky in rage. The title appears: SETTLERS OF CATAN: THE MOVIE.

The Blue Settler returns to his settlement, where his advisors are in council. “We must build cities!” cries one advisor (Jeremy Irons). “Without cities, we shall be overcome!”

“No,” says the Blue Settler. “The prophecy tells that the Island of Catan shall be won by he who possesses the longest road. Our brick and lumber are plentiful, and we shall build west towards a port where we can make advantageous trades.”

As the meeting continues, the advisor slips quietly out of the tent and steals away with a sheaf of grain.

Cut to the compound of the Red Settler (Clive Owen), high on a mountain to the east. “Come,” he says when a knock is heard upon his door. The door creaks open, and in walks the Blue Settler’s advisor.

“I bring grain,” hisses the advisor.

“Very good,” replies the Red Settler. “For this grain, I shall trade you two ore.”

“Nay,” says the Blue Settler’s advisor. “I want no ore. Instead, I want your daughter’s hand!”

The Red Settler’s daughter (Emma Stone) recoils. “But,” she protests, “I will not bring you victory!”

“It’s not whether you win or lose,” cackles the advisor. “It’s how you play the game.”

“Never!” cries the Red Settler’s daughter. “I love another!”

Both the Red Settler and the Blue Settler’s advisor look on in shock as the Red Settler’s daughter leaps out of the window…only to land on the horse of a knight who gallops away into the darkness.

The next morning, the knight and maiden arrive at the compound of the Green Settler (Jon Hamm), who welcomes the Red Settler’s daughter into his arms. “I fear our bliss may not last long,” he warns. “I still have the largest…[pause for humor]…army, but my knights are exhausted, and the robber now stalks our fields, getting off with my sheep.”

[quick cut to shadowy scene involving panting robber and bleating sheep]

“We must make peace with the Blue Settler!” says the Red Settler’s daughter. “We must tell him that he has been betrayed by his trusted advisor!”

“So we shall,” affirms the Green Settler. “He is a good man, though he doesn’t have such vast…tracts of land.” [romantic music on soundtrack]

“Mmm,” murmurs the Red Settler’s daughter, looking significantly downward. “It looks like this is going to be my Year of Plenty.”

Cut to the next day, when two exhausted knights carry the Green Settler and the Red Settler’s daughter to the hut of the Blue Settler. “Greetings!” calls the Green Settler. “We bring news of your betrayal, and sheaves of grain.”

“I know of the betrayal,” says the Blue Settler wearily, “and I have no need of grain. What I have need of is brick.”

“But,” says the Red Settler’s daughter, “I was given to understand that you have brick in plenty.”

“Things,” intones the Blue Settler, “have changed.”

[quick cut to shot of robber cursing in field, flattened into ground by a load of brick on his back]

“I have brick for you, fool!” booms the Red Settler, suddenly appearing with a heavily-laden donkey. “But from you, I shall accept only grain.”

“I…” The Blue Settler pauses dramatically. “…have no choice. I must accept your offer.” He waves his arm towards his last sheaf of grain, and stumbles sadly over towards the donkey. “Come, boy.”

“And from you,” cries the Red Settler, pointing at the Green Settler, “I shall take my daughter! As well as all of your other resources, since with this grain I shall build a city that will make me the ruler of…what’s so funny?”

The Blue Settler’s advisor walks up, laughing wickedly. “I laugh,” he says, “because you mistook me for a traitor. In fact, I was only distracting you. We may have no cities or knights, but we have eight settlements, and with that brick my lord has gone off to complete our ninth segment of road. That gives us…”

A look of recognition, then a slow smile, appear on the face of the Green Settler. The Red Settler gasps in horror. “No!”

The Blue Settler’s advisor continues. “That’s right. We just built the longest road, bitch.”

Cut to the shore of Catan, where the Blue Settler, alone, lays the last brick connecting his kingdom to the sea. He grunts in satisfaction, then stands up smiling broadly. The music begins to soar, and it would seem the movie is over…but what’s this?

“Ahoy!”

The Blue Settler lifts his eyeglass to look out to sea. Cut to the view through his eyeglass, where a sea captain (Johnny Depp) waves, then turns and drops his trousers.

“I knew it!” The Blue Settler lowers his eyeglass and spits on the brick he’s just laid. “Seafarers!”

- Jay Gabler

The post Pitch for “Settlers of Catan: The Movie” appeared first on The Tangential.

YouTuber westh2o was diving underwater with friends in Moorea, French Polynesia when they began to hear the whale song of a humpback whale. Westh2o writes:

The recording does not do justice to the actual sound. Seriously some of those sounds vibrated my chest. I didn’t realize whales had such a wide frequency of sound. Some were mid to hi frequency and some were very low.

As they swam into the depths, straining their eyes to find the sound’s source in the cloudiness of the water, the vocalizations became louder, and then something huge began to emerge. Here’s a glimpse: 

Watch the video to get a reeeally good look. And then watch more whale encounters here, here, and here. 

via PetaPixel.

I watch about zero television. I type at a decent speed. I answer questions while C1 or LR is doing its thing or from my iPhone while doing the King’s business. I break the stereotypical artist’s life by getting to work in the morning. I have an AMAZING wife who manages our crazy house and family. I have an amazing office manager that handles the business. I have about zero social life. I have a household of six to clothe, feed, and keep a roof over so I don’t have the luxury of being a slacker. Working half days means 12 hours. I mess things up. I get things wrong. I can’t find balance. I do the best I can. My family loves and supports me through the mess. I come through at the last minute. I stay dedicated until my clients are happy.

#somethinglikethat

Cheers,
Zack

This wonderful porthole-made-of-books is part of the design for the John W. Doull Bookseller store in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and warrants a side-trip all on its own.

John W. Doull Bookseller (via That Book Smell)

(Photo: Celia Moase Photography)

(via Donald Trump Gets Demolished On Twitter By Modern Family Writer)

Longtime Washington Post restaurant critic Phyllis Richman originally wanted to be an urban planner, although she never got much farther than sending off an initial grad-school application to the Department of City and Regional Planning at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

An assistant professor in the department, William A. Doebele, Jr., sent her back this letter, which was reprinted 52 years later in Sunday's Washington Post:

Although we have not yet received your official transcript from Brandeis, on the basis of your letters of recommendation there would seem to be a possibility of your admission to the Department of City and Regional Planning even at this date.

However -- to speak directly -- our experience, even with brilliant students, has been that married women find it difficult to carry out worthwhile careers in planning, and hence tend to have some feeling of waste about the time and effort spent in professional education. (This is, of course, true of almost all graduate professional studies.)

Therefore, for your own benefit, and to aid us in coming to a final decision, could you kindly write us a page or two at your earliest convenience indicating specifically how you might plan to combine a professional life in city planning with your responsibilities to your husband and a possible future family?

Richman never replied – at least, not until after recently stumbling across Doebele's letter among boxes of old paperwork. Her belated and wonderful response ran in yesterday's Post, alongside a tremendously unsatisfying mea culpa from Doebele ("This is not a letter that I would write today"). Richman explains that she was so discouraged by Doebele's assignment that she never completed the application, and she wound up instead following a career in writing that seemed to offer less resistance.

"While I ended up with a rewarding and varied professional life," she writes, "your letter shows just how much Harvard — not to mention my husband, our families and even myself — didn’t give my career the respect it deserved when I was just starting out."

Doebele's original letter, now worn along the folds, is particularly jarring for the date. It was sent in June of 1961, the same year that Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities came out. Gail Collins' fantastic book chronicling the last 50 years of women's history in America is full of jaw-dropping stories just like this one from would-be professional women who were told they couldn't do serious work and make their husbands dinner every night at the same time. But the timeline still astounds: All of this was so... recent.

So recent, in fact, that Doebele still doesn't seem to get it. As he assessed the situation today, half a century later, "I thought it fair that you be aware of employment conditions as I then perceived them." Of course, his letter had nothing to do with warning her of her rough employment prospects. It was perpetuating them.

A younger woman just wants Richman to rip into the guy. But her reply is patient and measured, slipping in a perfect last word for anyone in the design field today still steaming over gender bias. Be sure to read it.

Above image courtesy of the Prelinger Archives.

rachel shared this story from Universal Hub - All Boston, all the time.

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The Belichick Hoodie Database is just what it sounds like, except that it's a spreadsheet: A listing of which Hoodie the Hoodie wore at which game.

From this analysis of the Belichick Hoodie Database - including a discussion of the infamous red hoodie.

rachel shared this story from Shakesville.

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[Content Note: Misogyny.]

90%: The percentage of showings of films today in a 10-mile radius in the DC metro area that "are stories about men or groups of men, where women play supporting roles or fill out ensembles primarily focused on men." Linda Holmes:

I live in the D.C. metro area. which is very good place to find films. If you don't live in New York or Los Angeles, it's about the best you can do. I'm within 10 miles of a multiplicity of multiplexes, not to mention four theaters I would consider "art house" theaters or at least mixes of wider-appeal fare and smaller stuff.

According to Fandango and some back-of-the-envelope math, excluding documentaries and animation, there are 617 movie showings today — that's just today, Friday — within 10 miles of my house.

Of those 617 showings, 561 of them — 90 percent — are stories about men or groups of men, where women play supporting roles or fill out ensembles primarily focused on men. The movies making up those 561 showings: Man Of Steel (143), This Is The End (77), The Internship (52), The Purge (49), After Earth (29), Now You See Me (56), Fast & Furious 6 (44), The Hangover Part III (16), Star Trek Into Darkness (34), The Great Gatsby (16), Iron Man 3 (18), Mud (9), The Company You Keep (4), Kings Of Summer (9), and 42 (5).

Thirty-one are showings of movies about balanced pairings or ensembles of men and women: Before Midnight (26), Shadow Dancer (4), and Wish You Were Here (1).

Twenty-five are showings of movies about women or girls: The East (8), Fill The Void (4), Frances Ha (9), and What Maisie Knew (4).

Of the seven movies about women or balanced groups, only one — the Israeli film Fill The Void — is directed by a woman, Rama Burshtein. That's also the only one that isn't about a well-off white American. (Well, Celine in Before Midnight is well-off, white and French, but she's been living in the U.S.)

There are nearly six times as many showings of Man Of Steel alone as there are of all the films about women put together.

If I were limited to multiplexes, as people are in many parts of the country, the numbers would be worse. In many places, the number would be zero. Frances Ha is by far the most widely available of the four women-centered movies, and it's on 213 screens this weekend in the entire country. The East is on 115. What Maisie Knew is on 51. Fill The Void looks like it's in about 20 locations, judging by its site.

The Internship is on 3,399.

I want to stress this again: In many, many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn't a documentary or a cartoon — you can't. You cannot. There are not any. You cannot take yourself to one, take your friend to one, take your daughter to one.

There are not any.

Literally just last weekend, Iain was reading out the local movie listings to me, and, at the end, I said, "You realize not a single one of those movies features a primary female protagonist?" And he was all, "Fuuuuuuuuck."

And naturally, the vast majority of the films that featured male protagonists featured straight, white, male protagonists.

Is it any wonder that people who aren't straight, white men have "White Dude Saves the World" fatigue?

[H/T to Jess.]

Newsblur 99 votes / 1% Feedly 802 votes / 10% Net News Wire 27 votes / 0% Taptu 19 votes / 0% Google Currents 206 votes / 2% Flipboard 207 votes / 2% None of these; I don't use Reader 5686 votes / 72% None of these; I favor a different alternative 817 votes / 10%

One person was killed and several others were injured Friday in an explosion at a south Louisiana chemical plant, only miles from where another blast the previous day led to the deaths of two plant workers, authorities said.

From Sao Paolo, where the the cops are violently attacking protesters, a video of a cop smashing his own police-car window, presumably to blame it on the protesters later.

Policial Quebra Vidro da Própria Viatura - São Paulo 13/6/2013

And here's a glimpse of the Sao Paolo police's advanced media strategy.

Not long ago, we began rendering 3D models on GitHub. Today we're excited to announce the latest addition to the visualization family - geographic data. Any .geojson file in a GitHub repository will now be automatically rendered as an interactive, browsable map, annotated with your geodata.

People are already using GitHub to store everything from Chicago zipcodes to community radio stations to historic hurricane paths, and we can't wait to see what the community will begin to collaborate on next.

Under the hood we use Leaflet.js to render the geoJSON data, and overlay it on a custom version of MapBox's street view baselayer — simplified so that your data can really shine. Best of all, the base map uses OpenStreetMap data, so if you find an area to improve, edit away.

Maps on GitHub support rendering GIS data as points, lines, and polygons. You can even customize the way your data is displayed, such as coloring and sizing individual markers, specifying a more descriptive icon, or providing additional human-readable information to help identify the feature on click.

Looking to get started? Simply commit a .geojson file to a new or existing repository, or dive into the docs to learn how to customize the map's styling.

count-crackula:

avatar-zer0:

alliartist:

cevansydg:

As a Xbox fan from day one this is my thoughts on what they said about the Xbox One….

snicker

Its so true, ive found it hilarious how xbox one fans are saying that everyone hating on xbox one are “sony fanboys” when in fact a lot of the people hating on it are just gamers, not fanboys

I was a die-hard Microsoft fan until this bullshit.

Animal Crossing’s Villager receives his Smash Bros. invite

From what I hear, y’all went nuts with your Villager memes this week, which I’m sad I missed (hardly checked Tumblr during E3). I love that people have turned this unassuming guy into a stone-cold killer. And I love this strip by KakuJomics/Bryan Lacie.

Oh, here is an eight-minute video all about the 3DS and Wii U versions of Super Smash Bros., with portions devoted to Mega Man, Villager, and Wii Fit’s trainer:

BUY Animal Crossing: New Leaf, AC:NL guide, upcoming games

Sony was undoubtedly the belle of the ball at this year's E3. The PlayStation 4 manufacturer captured the conversation after its press conference and could have easily concluded it with President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America Jack Tretton dropping a mic on stage.

The hoots and hollers you heard during the live stream were genuine - instead of the seat fillers you usually hear during press conferences. It's going to be interesting to see what happens this fall when consumers make their next-gen console decision between PlayStation 4 and... what was the name of the other one again?

What's everyone playing this weekend?

Continue reading WRUP: E3 2013 - The year Sony dropped the mic

WRUP: E3 2013 - The year Sony dropped the mic originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 14 Jun 2013 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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newkidsonmycock11:

wake the fuck up

Master calligrapher Samir Sayegh is renowned as the leading contemporary practitioner of one of the Arab world’s oldest art forms. A lifetime of creating modern art out of historic Arabic scripts and enlivening a cultural tradition that he believes had calcified by the 20th century has earned him the reverent moniker of “moallem,” or teacher, in the Middle Eastern art community. He is less well known, but equally revered, for literally adopting this role in 1992, when he agreed to teach calligraphy to students at the American University of Beirut’s newly created school of graphic design. Sayegh’s class spawned a new generation of typographers who were ashamed, inspired and mildly outraged by the aesthetic decline of Arabic script over the past two centuries, especially when juxtaposed with Latin fonts.

(via Today I Learned - Cap’n Crunch is a Liar and a Fraud | FoodbeastFoodbeast)

They’re creepy and they’re kooky

Hollywood Reporter

Obama picks top fundraisers for ambassadorships USA TODAY WASHINGTON — President Obama nominated his former campaign-finance director and two leading political fundraisers to ambassadorships, the White House announced Friday. Obama also picked the former head of the major Catholic charity to serve as ... HBO Exec Costos To Be Nominated As Ambassador to Spain By ObamaWall Street Journal (blog) Obama Nominates Donors for European Ambassadorships in 2nd TermBloomberg Obama taps finance director as envoy to DenmarkMilton Daily Standard Hollywood Reporter all 50 news articles »

The Witcher series of action role-playing games is reaching further than ever before, with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launching simultaneously on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in 2014. The new consoles have been mired in discussion over DRM (digital rights management) recently, with Microsoft instituting connectivity requirements to play games, and PlayStation leaving publishers to decide how to control the sale and resale of their content. The Polish developer behind The Witcher, CD Projekt RED, now tries to find an ideal incarnation for its publicly asserted values, which are staunchly opposed to DRM of any kind.

"I can only talk about our intentions; we don't have any agreement finalized yet," CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwiński tells me, carefully choosing his words. "It's all quite early and we're finding out about it this week, at the conference. But our intention, obviously, is to choose the most gamer-friendly solution." In CD Projekt's perfect world, those solutions would be aligned with their PC- and Mac-based digital distribution platform, GOG.com, where games are 100 percent DRM-free. "Whatever the solutions will be for our partners, we choose something ideally as close to what we have on GOG as possible."

Continue reading The Witcher 3 DRM-free on PC; 'gamer-friendly' solution sought on consoles

The Witcher 3 DRM-free on PC; 'gamer-friendly' solution sought on consoles originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 14 Jun 2013 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week’s weird band was suggested by an excellently named reader called Adam Whybray. He describes a.P.A.t.T. as sounding “a bit like a glitchy Mr. Bungle cult that formed down the pub.” And while that’s probably as good a description as any of these cheeky Liverpudlians (although it doesn’t contain the word “Liverpudlian,” which is one of those words you should use every chance you get), it really only scratches the surface of what this avant-pop art-school project has achieved in its 15-odd years of existence.

a.P.A.t.T. (what does it stand for? how do you pronounce it? who knows? who cares?) formed in Liverpool in 1997 or 1998. Their early goal, according to their Wikipedia page (which the band links to from their official site, so let’s assume it’s semi-accurate), was to “make, find, imagine, and create ‘secret music,’” by which they seemed to mean music that abandoned traditional song structures and instrumentation. You can hear some of the band’s early stuff on Welcome to a​.​P​.​A​.​t​.​T. Island – A collection of earlies, which veers sharply between abstract, ambient noise and bursts of spastic, genre-hopping art-pop that reveals some of those Mr. Bungle influences that Adam picked up, as well as an even more direct early influence (and another favorite of ours around here), Cardiacs.

By 2005 or so, the band’s music had become even harder to categorize. On the Fre(e.P), they started doing Girl Talk-like mashups, mixing recognizable pop and classic rock samples with trip-hop beats and trashy club rap, but doing it in a style meant more to be unsettling than party-starting. Check the amazing “Megamix Part 1″ for a taste of what happens when you cram the Jackson 5, Coolio, Portishead and “What a Day for a Daydream” into the same track.

Meanwhile, they were also developing a live soundtrack for the silent-film-era vampire classic, Nosferatu, complete with strings. Because hey, why not?

In 2008, they reinvented themselves yet again, transforming into a Zappa-like prog/jazz/metal/psych-rock orchestra on the epic, 27-track Black & White Mass. Most recently, they released Paul the Record, a split album with a band called Peepholes, then decided to embrace the “playlist on shuffle” mentality of our modern age with Ogadimma, a 14-track set on which no two songs are done in the same style. They’ve also shot videos for all 14 songs; taken collectively, they’re pretty amazing. Here they are, for example, in full-on Prince-meets-Of-Montreal mode:

Now try to remember, as you watch this next video, that this is the same band:

They also cite Ween as one of their influences, which honestly didn’t make sense to me until I heard the casual, tongue-in-cheek virtuosity of the Ogadimma stuff: “Oh, you want to hear us do some ’80s synth-pop? Sure, here you go. No big whoop.” (Among their other listed influences: The Residents, Duran Duran, Captain Beefheart, John Zorn, Slayer, Claude Debussy, ABBA, and The Beatles. Much like a.P.A.t.T.’s actual music, this list simultaneously makes no sense and all the sense in the world.)

You’ll notice up until now that I haven’t mentioned any of a.P.A.t.T.’s members by name. That’s because, quite frankly, I have no idea what they are. a.P.A.t.T don’t perform wearing masks or anything, but they do (mostly) stick to an all-white costume palette that seems to help them maintain a semi-anonymous quality. That plus, let’s be honest here, a.P.A.t.T. is not the world’s most Google-friendly band name. According to their Wikipedia page, their core members go by the names General MIDI, Field Marshall Stack, Dorothy Wave, Master Fader and The Researcher, but that’s all I know.

Oh, did I mention that they sometimes perform site-specific works as a full fucking orchestra? Well, they do. If you want to hear them performing John Zorn and Steve Reich compositions, buy this.

We’ll wrap this post up with a clip of a.P.A.t.T’s live show (non-orchestra version), which looks like jolly good fun. That lady keyboard player (Dorothy Wave, we presume) has sure got some sick dance moves.

Links:

• a.P.A.t.T. official site
• a.P.A.t.T.B.l.o.G.
• The a.P.A.t.T. Orchestra official site
• a.P.A.t.T. on Facebook
• Paul the Record on Amazon.com

New submitter RoccamOccam writes "Shortly after the news broke that the Department of Justice had been secretly monitoring the phones and email accounts of Associated Press and Fox News reporters (and the parents of Fox News Correspondent James Rosen), CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson said her computer seemed like it had been compromised. Turns out, it was. 'A cyber security firm hired by CBS News has determined through forensic analysis that Sharyl Attkisson's computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions late in 2012. Evidence suggests this party performed all access remotely using Attkisson's accounts. While no malicious code was found, forensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.