firehose

“Superman is a dick to footballs.”

For their ongoing series, CinemaSins has released a new video that reveals “Everything Wrong With Superman: The Movie In 5 Minutes Or Less.” This was created in honor of the upcoming June 14th release of Man of Steel in theaters.

After listing the sins of ‘Superman Returns’ last week, we thought it only fair to go back in time several decades and point the sin counter at one of the most beloved of all superhero movies: Superman The Movie. The year, 1978. The star, Christopher Reeve. The sins… not as plentiful.

Magic 2014 launches June 26, according to Steam originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 11 Jun 2013 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

By Andrea Plaid

Whole Foods, the grocery-store signifier of the “personal is political” and social responsibility, has been busted for some sketchy business practices antithetical to its progressive hype, like union-busting as well as maintaining low wages and failing to support farmworkers.

Let’s add language surveillance to that list. From NBC Latino:

Two employees at a Whole Foods Market store in Albuquerque say they were suspended last month after complaining about being told they couldn’t speak Spanish to each other while on the job.

Bryan Baldizan told The Associated Press he and a female employee were suspended for a day after they wrote a letter following a meeting with a manager who told them Spanish was not allowed during work hours.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Baldizan, who works in the store’s food preparation department. “All we did was say we didn’t believe the policy was fair. We only talk Spanish to each other about personal stuff, not work.”

He said Whole Foods officials told them about company policy and issued the suspensions.

Ben Friedland, Whole Foods Market Rocky Mountain Region Executive Marketing Coordinator, said the Austin, Texas-based company believes in “having a uniform form of communication” for a safe working environment.

“Therefore, our policy states that all English speaking Team Members must speak English to customers and other Team Members while on the clock,” Friedland said in a statement. “Team Members are free to speak any language they would like during their breaks, meal periods and before and after work.”

Friedland said the policy doesn’t prevent employees from speaking Spanish to customers who don’t speak English nor does it prevent them from speaking Spanish if all “parties present agree that a different language is their preferred form of communication.”

Whole Foods Market spokeswoman Libba Letton told the AP that in addition to safety reasons, the policy is in place so employees who don’t speak Spanish don’t feel uncomfortable.

New 'Yoshi's Island' game called 'Yoshi's New Island' originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

by martinnavarro

Look, no one should be making 'didn't ask for this' jokes anymore. But, if anything calls for it, it's the TV-commercial-style narration in this clip for the remastered and tweaked Wii U version of Eidos Montreal's stealth/action cyberpunk hit.

witneyhouston:

i actually cant breathe

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

tastefullyoffensive:

Facebook’s new privacy options.

amandapalmer:

neil-gaiman:

fefeferi:

fighting-for-fitness-with-tea:

healthisnotafad:

sexyfitduh:

awesometriathlon:

anewstartabetterme:

fullyactivated:

This is pretty cool and eye-opening. I wish someone would do this sort of thing with male 6-pack ab models.

They even Photoshopped the woman behind Selena’s arm, because apparently not only do celebrities have to be thin, but they must also only associate with other thin people…

Enrico Francis has been caught

This pisses me off so incredibly much!

This is ridiculous. And disgusting. beautiful people being photoshopped to fit impossible standards AND most of the non-caucasian women are being white washed so they look more “appealing”

this.

makes.

me.

SO ANGRY. I can’t find the words to say just exactly what I feel about this…gahhhhhh just no.

AND THEY FUCKING PHOTOSHOPPED OUT “ELTON JOHN AIDS FOUNDATION” FOR THIS ENRICO FRANCIS DUDE HOLY FUCK

It is always good to remember that you can be lied to in pictures…

I remember the first time I saw a “before & after airbrushing a model” play-by-play in sassy magazine, with the two pictures side by side. I was probably 13, and it changed my life. thanks, sassy, and thanks whoever did this. if nothing - it’s good to remember how manipulative the media can be. if you can’t fight it - you can at least see it. as a minor celebrity, I cringe everytime allow myself to be photoshopped. but I still allow it. magazines and press work that way. I’ve photoshopped myself for press photos (that pimple? easy to fix. that annoying hair? gonzo. no wrinkles though…I draw the line there.) the most disturbing one for me was the random back-ground woman’s, behind Selena Gomez. the photoshopped the BACKGROUND people? wow. do we love perfect? or do we love human? why isn’t human perfect? what’s happened to us?

shortformblog:

So you’re about to fly, but your plane is stuck on the tarmac. It’s really hot—because the airport in question is in Vegas. Minutes turn to hours. People are starting to go crazy, and a couple of people have passed out. What do you do? If you’re like the people on this flight, you break out into a singalong of “I Believe I Can Fly.”  Which, incredibly, makes the whole wait kind of worth it. (ht Gawker)

I flew out of Vegas a few days ago and it was exactly like this, but with turbulence.

eccentricgeekery:

Tardis Cat Tree.

Apple’s 30-year bonds have lost nearly a tenth of their value in the six weeks since they were issued.

It’s been six weeks to the day since Apple set records with the biggest corporate bond issue ever. The $17 billion worth of bonds of varying maturities were oversubscribed by a factor of three. Investors loved the mix of security and, at the time, decent rates.

It’s pretty obvious why companies—not just Apple—were rushing to issue bonds: Rates were around historic lows, allowing them to borrow incredibly cheaply. Apple’s 30-year bonds were issued at just 3.85% per year on a day when Treasury notes were going at 2.88%.

The problem with historically low interest rates, of course, is that they can’t stay that low forever. In the past few weeks there have been several encouraging signals for the American economy. Employment figures beat expectations in April and May. Ben Bernanke suggested the Fed might take it easy on quantitative easing “in the next few meetings.” Even S&P seems to believe the US is improving. All this is reflected in expectations that the Fed will soon let interest rates rise, which has led to higher yields and lower prices (yields and prices move in opposite directions) on US Treasurys, and, correspondingly, on corporate bonds.

None of which is a big deal for anybody who plans to hold the 30-year bonds for 30 years. But for everybody else, that means they can’t get rid of the stuff fast enough: The price of Apple’s 30-year bonds—long term bonds are most sensitive to rising rates—has fallen to 90.33% of their face value, or par in bondspeak. We don’t think the bond rout will last, but for the time being, those other two-thirds of wannabe Apple bond-buyers must be pretty pleased with themselves.

At least he didn’t fall asleep on the “9″ key.

A German labor court ruled on Monday that a bank supervisor was unfairly dismissed for failing to notice that one of her employees had made a multi-million euro mistake on a transaction. The employee had fallen asleep with his finger on his keyboard while pressing the number two, so instead of transferring €62.40 from a retiree’s bank account, he withdrew €222,222,222.22 ($2.95 million) instead.

Fortunately for the anonymous retiree, the transaction was spotted by another colleague and reversed. A court in Hesse, Germany, ruled that the supervisor should have been reprimanded, not fired, as her mistake was genuine and she had also checked 811 other documents that day.

PlayStation versions of Assassin's Creed 4 include playable Adeline originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 10 Jun 2013 22:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In its efforts to show off features of its new mobile operating system software known as iOS 7, Apple has imagined a user to populate a virtual device with typical content. Apple calls that user Mieko Haire, and in marketing tutorials describes her as a young woman who has recently moved to Los Angeles, has a pet, and goes to the beach a lot.

Through its promotional materials, Apple offers some indication of who it is targeting with its products. For the release of iOS 6, it depicting a mother emailing and posting pictures of her children to Facebook using the new system.  The iOS 5 release used the story of a business executive on a camping trip. Its original marketing for the iPad Mini focused on women.

However, it turns out that Mieko Haire is a real person—and so are other people listed in Apple’s marketing materials for iOS 7. She and the others all have worked at Apple. Real Mieko has not responded to requests for comment, but here is what the materials tell us about the marketing character that shares her name:

Mieko Haire’s emails

From Fake Mieko’s emails we learn that she just had a great weekend, has been invited to a surprise birthday party, and has been borrowing a bean bag chair.

Here are  the LinkedIn profiles of some of the Apple employees that share names with the senders of the listed emails: Michelle Humphrey, Eddy Bedock, Paul Brennan, Blair Lockhart

On June 10, Mieko received five emails in 23 minutes, a pace of 313 emails a day.

Mieko Haire’s texts

Mieko texts with Paul Zemanek about Mieko’s move to Los Angeles and a mutual friend Tasha. According to the narative, Mieko, Paul and Tasha lived in the same dorm.

Real Paul Zemanek is an editor at Apple.

Mieko’s music, calculator, reminders, and calendar

Mieko’s multitasking view, shows a cross section of her life.

She’s listening to Daft Punk’s latest album Random Access Memories and is 66 seconds into “Get Lucky,” a moment at the beginning of a chorus in the new track featuring Pharrell Williams.

She did some math, and it equaled 356, or perhaps she mis-typed how many days there are in the year.

Mieko has lists for “Surprise Party” (10 items), “Payments Due” (6 items), “Groceries” (7 items), “Alumni Week” (17 items), and “Beach Trip” (6 items).

Her friend Tiffany appears to live a five hour drive away from Los Angeles in San Francisco. There is no “5th and Mission” in Los Angeles, though in San Francisco that is the location of the Moscone Center—the site for Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference being held this week.

Yesterday, Mieko had to take a pet–named Marty–to the veterinarian, have lunch with Claire, and review a script with Sebastian Bauer.

Real Sebastian’s LinkedIn profile lists him as a senior manager in worldwide marketing communications at Apple.

Mieko’s Game Center

Dave Becker and Olivier Bonnet accepted Mieko’s Game Center friend requests.

Real Dave Becker is a former editor at Apple, and real Olivier Bonnet is a software engineering manager at Apple, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

Someone’s photos, shared with Mieko

The narrative suggests that Mieko was in Santa Monica and Venice, California on April 11-15th, and in Malibu and Santa Monica, California on May 20-22. The photos could be from another friend’s trips and shared with Mieko as Mieko received a notification that photos from “Beach Trip” were shared with her. It is unknown if any of those depicted are supposed to be Mieko.

Tasha, from the text message photo, and  Ken from Fritz’s email appear in some of these photographs. Mieko was notified that Robyn Glennon liked two photos, including one that is in the Beach Trip album.

Robyn Glennon is listed as Apple’s worldwide geo-operations manager on LinkedIn.

Mieko’s web browser

Mieko’s web surfing habits were revealed in the videos as well. She recently visited or has bookmarks for the websites for eBay, Etsy, Flickr, The Museum of Science and Industry, and Lonely Planet on her iPhone.

She’s also reads a lot in her mobile browser, including content from the Washington Post (but the headlines are from November), Azure, Conde Nast Traveler, Cool Hunting, It’s Nice That, National Geographic, The Guardian, and The Globe and Mail.