firehose

 
   
Super Mario Bros.

   
   
   
   
Super Mario Bros. 2

areyouoverityet:

What is interesting, is that the Frida Kahlo venerated by American feminists is a very different Frida Kahlo to the one people learn about in Mexico, in the Chicano community. In her country, she is recognized as an important artist and a key figure in revolutionary politics of early 20th century Mexico. Her communist affiliations are made very clear. Her relationship with Trotsky is underscored. All her political activities with Diego Rivera are constantly emphasized. The connection between her art and her politics is always made. When Chicana artists became interested in Frida Kahlo in the ‘70s and started organizing homages, they made the connection between her artistic project and theirs because they too were searching for an aesthetic compliment to a political view that was radical and emancipatory. But when the Euro-American feminists latch onto Frida Kahlo in the early ‘80s and when the American mainstream caught on to her, she was transformed into a figure of suffering. I am very critical of that form of appropriation.

Coco Fusco on her Amerindians piece from 1992 with Guillermo Gómez-Peña

Twerk your way to freedom. 

After her 14-year-old son was shot, a mom goes to WebMD and searches "gunshot wounds" to try to solve the problem, police say. It is seven hours before she takes him to hospital.

Originally posted at Technically Incorrect

Honeybees are in trouble across the U.S., but one association in Massachusetts is hoping to boost the population in its own area. The bees it currently uses have a hard time surviving the winter and battling other foes that have been killing bees nationwide. So beekeepers in Plympton decided to breed their own.

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Here’s an awesome sight that’s as likely to be someone’s dream come true as someone else’s worst nightmare. You’re looking at just over 4 continuous miles of sausage. Three French butchers located in in Ganges, France recently beat the European record for making the longest sausage. It measures 6km and 772m or 4.2 miles. Yep, that’s a whole lot of sausage.

And now, the next time someone asks you to name Europe’s longest sausage, you’ll have the answer.

Photo by Alain Robert

[via Telegraph.co.uk]

Starbucks-brunch-remnants shot. Thanks to Boss Player Sim for the submission.

After spending $250,000 worth of anonymously donated money, Mark Post from Maastricht University is ready to go public with his first vat-grown hamburger, which will be cooked and eaten at an event in London this week. Though they claim that it's healthier than regular meat, one question not answered in the article is the Omega 3/6 balance -- crappy, corn-fed, factory-farmed meet is full of Omega 6s and avoided by many eaters; the grass-fed, free-range stuff is higher in Omega 3s.

Yet growing meat in the laboratory has proved difficult and devilishly expensive. Dr. Post, who knows as much about the subject as anybody, has repeatedly postponed the hamburger cook-off, which was originally expected to take place in November. His burger consists of about 20,000 thin strips of cultured muscle tissue. Dr. Post, who has conducted some informal taste tests, said that even without any fat, the tissue “tastes reasonably good.” For the London event he plans to add only salt and pepper.

But the meat is produced with materials — including fetal calf serum, used as a medium in which to grow the cells — that eventually would have to be replaced by similar materials of non-animal origin. And the burger was created at phenomenal cost — 250,000 euros, or about $325,000, provided by a donor who so far has remained anonymous. Large-scale manufacturing of cultured meat that could sit side-by-side with conventional meat in a supermarket and compete with it in price is at the very least a long way off.“This is still an early-stage technology,” said Neil Stephens, a social scientist at Cardiff University in Wales who has long studied the development of what is also sometimes referred to as “shmeat.” “There’s still a huge number of things they need to learn.”

There are also questions of safety — though Dr. Post and others say cultured meat should be as safe as, or safer than, conventional meat, and might even be made to be healthier — and of the consumer appeal of a product that may bear little resemblance to a thick, juicy steak.

Engineering the $325,000 Burger [Henry Fountain/New York Times]

(via /.)

bemusedlybespectacled:

pacobaggins:

This is the bathroom at work.

When you play the game of thrones, you flush or you die.

by @juan_domenech

submitted by atomic1fire
[link] [19 comments]

fantagraphics: The Complete Crumb Comics Vol. 5, freshly reprinted: http://www.fantagraphics.com/completecrumb5

stonyslov:

Screen shot 2013-05-10 at 10.27.31 by Madkobra on Flickr.

Medical student Jarratt Pytell was dancing with the crowd at the Mother’s Day parade when he heard a sound like fireworks. He describes seeing the young gunman—and responding to some of the 19 wounded.

BOSTON — New U.S. Census data show non-white voters made up a record share of the Massachusetts electorate last fall.

But over the last 12 years, a WBUR analysis reveals, the white vote has held up stronger in the Bay State than it has nationwide.

The racial cross-currents could play a key role in the U.S. Senate contest pitting U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, a Democrat, against Republican venture capitalist Gabriel Gomez.

A WBUR poll released last week gives Markey a six-point edge on his GOP opponent. And virtually his entire lead is attributable to his sizable advantage with non-white voters — 61 to 9 percent.

“In a close race,” says Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University, “Markey needs to turn out minority voters.”

Last fall’s record minority turnout is no doubt encouraging for the Markey camp; the Census data show that minorities made up 16 percent of the Massachusetts electorate in November.

But that election featured a presidential race and a high-profile clash between U.S. Sen. Scott Brown and his Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren.

In the November 2010 election — a lower turnout affair more akin to the Markey-Gomez election set for June 25 — the minority share of the electorate was only half as large: 8 percent.

That figure, Census data show, is more in line with the totals in recent elections. And it speaks to the unusual staying power of the white vote in Massachusetts.

Nationwide, the decline of the white vote in recent years has been two-fold. First, whites have shrunk as a share of the voting-age population.

And second, the white voter turnout rate – the percentage of voting-age whites casting ballots – has declined since the 2004 presidential race.

In the Bay State, the white share of the voter-age population has dropped, as it has nationally. But the decline has been partially offset by steady growth in the rate of white voter turnout over the course of the last 12 years.

Berry, the political science professor, attributes the persistently high white voter turnout to the state’s relative affluence. A better-off population is more likely to vote.

“It’s not a matter of Massachusetts virtue,” he says, “it’s a matter of Massachusetts demographics.”

Whatever the explanation, the trend gives Massachusetts Republicans a glimmer of hope – especially in non-presidential year elections where whites make up a particularly large share of the electorate.

That may explain why the Democratic Party and allies like the Service Employees International Union have made a concerted effort over the last couple of election cycles to organize minority voters.

It’s hard to measure the impact of canvassing and phone banking. But between the 2008 and 2012 elections, voter turnout gains in majority-minority cities like Lawrence, Lynn and Springfield outpaced statewide voter turnout growth.

All three municipalities have sizable Latino populations. But the sample sizes in the new Census survey for Latinos, blacks and Asians are too small — at the state level — to draw any definitive conclusions about which group or groups drove the 2012 spike in the non-white share of the electorate.

Whoever was behind the spike, though, it was advantageous for Democrats. And whether Markey can produce anything approaching the demography of the 2012 electorate could prove decisive in his own race.

The Massachusetts data is part of a broader, nationwide survey of 60,000 households. At the national level, the sample sizes for minority groups were large enough to make meaningful findings. And the Census found — among other things — that the black voter turnout rate exceeded the white voter turnout rate for the first time in 2012.

meme4u:

http://memeblock.com/

For a brief few seconds while playing through a 30-minute slice of 2K Games' upcoming XCOM game, I thought I was in 2010. Now, you might say, 'waitaminnit, The Bureau's set in 1962, isn't it?' You'd be right. But, there's an unmistakable whiff of Mass Effect—specifically ME2, when the series became much more combat-centric—around The Bureau: XCOM Declassified.

Main character William Carter isn't Commander Shepard. At no point during the half-hour session did I feel that I was shaping his personality in any given way. But I did take Carter and two other characters into battle against an invading alien army, alternating between engaging the enemies directly and stacking tactical commands for my mates to execute. I knelt down and healed them when they were downed. And both the branching dialogue choices and squad controls were handled via a segmented wheel UI.

Right now, those similarities don't necessarily feel like a good or a bad thing; they just exist. But it's the ways that The Bureau is dissimilar to BioWare's sci-fi franchise that hold the most hope. My first hands-on taste of the prequel to last year's Enemy Unknown felt more tactical than any installment of the Commander Shepard trilogy. I played the Mass Effect games as shooters primarily, content to let my AI partners fight however their algorithms told them to. I'd heal 'em when they needed it, of course, and would aim biotics or special weapons attacks at particularly nasty foes. But, mostly, I let Garrus, EDI, Legion or whomever do what their behavior code dictated.

The Bureau isn't going to let you get away with any such laid-back squad management. When I tried the laissez-faire approach, Carter and his boys got cut up fast. The mission I played was called The Signal and it had the fedora-wearing agent taking Engineer and Commando-class operatives to Pima, New Mexico to hunt down missing explosives expert DaSilva. The pre-mission briefing said that DaSilva might have intel crucial to helping repel the threat of The Outsiders, which is what The Bureau calls its extraterrestrials.

I got to put some of Carter and the AI characters' skills through their paces as we picked our way through the semi-intact remains of the southwestern suburban town. Carter's melee punch was fed energy from the backpack on his arm, showing how some of the tech harvested from Outsiders gets repurposed. Players can use alien weaponry like a scatter laser or laser rifle along with human grenades and firearms. I could command my Engineer to hunker down behind cover in one spot and tell him to place the turret in another nearby location. Then, I triggered Carter's Pulse Wave ability, knocking enemies out of position from behind cover so the turret could blast them. After that, I could have DaSilva remotely set off charges he'd planted while hiding from the Outsiders. Once those orders were executed, I could switch things up as needed until all waves were dealt with. Enemy classes have varying levels of armor, intelligence and firepower, with the predictable mix of heavies, grunts and snipers all on display.

Cover-based shooting, real-time tactical commands, deployment of squadmates' special abilities… the mechanics I experienced were all familiar from what I could do in other games. Things felt tense in each firefight, though. In the last combat sequence of the preview, a big hulking Outsider stomped towards Carter and crew and I had to scramble to space out my squad so they weren't easy pickings. There was the sensation of having to flick a mental switch between two mindsets through the demo, too.

As satisfying as it is to mow down Outsiders yourself, the combat chatter of your allies constantly drove home the idea that they need to be told what to do. And while I was in slo-mo Battle Focus figuring out commands, enemies were still bearing down on me. Squadmates' dialogue let me know where enemy advancement was happening so lines like 'they're coming in on the right' helped my brain go from shoot mode to strategy mode. There was a bit of fussiness to the cover implementation. At times, I wasn't actually sure when cover-chaining would trigger and Carter would unexpectedly pop up to catch a laser right in the fedora. It's the kind of thing that I chalked up to playing a build that was still a work-in-progress. But that twitchiness is also the kind of thing that will ruin The Bureau if it's still present in the final game.

Still, for me, the main draw for The Bureau is going to be how well it executes as a period piece. When the game first came out of the development shadows, much was made of its proximity to popular entertainments like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Mad Men. The voice acting reminded me of the tight, clipped cadences of old-school tough guys like Lee Marvin and my eyes feasted on the mid-century architecture and graphic design language. Seriously, the art direction kicks ass. Carter's vest-and-slacks ensemble, the fins on the cars used for cover and the grainy film-stock effects used in some of the cutscenes all felt appealingly retro. You'll be laser-sploding your way through a catalog of classic American cool looks.

And I saw a few signs that The Bureau would be poking beneath the shiny, happy mirage of America's golden age. Audiologs, collectible notes and visual puns each exposed some sort of turmoil beneath the perfectionism of the 1962 setting. When you catch up with him, DaSilva's bleeding from his eyes and nose, trying to fight off some kind of biological subjugation that threatens to rob him of free will. Along the way, Carter and crew encountered other residents of Pima who fell to the plague—which was reminiscent of The X-Files' black oil—and those poor townsfolk could only soullessly repeat the words and actions of their former lives.

Overly familiar though it might be, I can't deny the game's sparked a desire to control a character dressed like Eliot Ness and guys in original G.I. Joe fatigues and vintage mechanic's coveralls. I didn't have either of them die on me, but the game's supposedly going to make you ache when that happens. Based on what I've seen so far, The Bureau might not be a whole new revelation on its own. However, there might just be enough to make it a retro-slick variant of already extant experiences. My half-hour session with the game has me imagining an episode of Dragnet where strategically complex shootouts happen with aliens instead of mobsters and where you find out that the guy you smoke Lucky Strikes with has a none-too-kosher secret, like being gay. That's a game I would play. That's the game that 2K Marin has to deliver.

adriofthedead:

snoozlebee:

allisonkilkenny:

Chris Person fixed TIME’s new magazine cover. Now it’s accurate. (TIME version #1, Person edit #2)

Update: And here’s another stellar contribution from @direlog

EXCELLENT

From @EARNEST_CYBORG9

I hadn’t really given much thought to how DJs in Boston coped with the the lockdown during the search for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect until I read a fascinating story about a college radio DJ at M.I.T. radio station WMBR in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Jon Bernhardt, the long-time host of the Friday morning edition of “Breakfast of Champions,” ended up pulling an 8-hour shift at the station on April 19 after the DJs following him called in to say that they couldn’t make it to the station due to the lockdown in Boston.

Bernhardt was originally scheduled to do his regular 2-hour show from 8 to 10am and had planned to do a tribute to the recently deceased musician Scott Miller (Game Theory, Loud Family). As the lockdown dragged on, he decided to stay at the station as both a safety measure and as a way to provide music to WMBR listeners who might want an escape from the scary news outside their doors. Not only did he fill in for programs similar to his, but he also had to quickly select music for shows (including a jazz program) that were outside of his area of expertise. I interviewed him over email in order to get more insight into how he handled his unplanned 8-hour shift.

Jennifer Waits: How long have you been a DJ at WMBR?

Jon Bernhardt: I joined WMBR at the start of my sophomore year at M.I.T., in September 1983, hosting a call-in show called “Flame Session” as well as a late-night freeform experimental music program cleverly titled “Late Night.” I settled into my current morning rock show, “Breakfast of Champions” [BoC], in June of 1984. It airs weekdays from 8 to 10 am, with a different DJ each day. I host the Friday edition.

Waits: Tell me about the Scott Miller special. Did that go as planned?

Bernhardt: Scott Miller passed away on April 15. As my show on the 19th approached, I noticed that no one on WMBR had acknowledged it and thought it would be a good idea to rectify that situation. I selected about 35 minutes worth of his music — some “hits,” some rarities — that I intended to play during the last 40 minutes of my 2 hour program. I almost postponed the tribute, although not for the reason you might think. Each week, a different BoC DJ picks a “Band of the Week” that all the other DJs have to play at 8:30am (typically 1 to 3 songs with no repeats during the week). Late Thursday, the DJ whose turn it was, announced that his pick for the next week would be Scott Miller! I didn’t want the other DJs to think I was bogarting all the good songs a few days early, but none of them cared so I went ahead with it.

As Friday morning’s events unfolded, I *was* briefly concerned that honoring a dead California musician might be awkward given the larger local tragedy. But, in the end, I decided to just acknowledge the thorniness on the air and go forward. Postscript: by the following Friday, there were still plenty of rarities that hadn’t been played during the week, so I programmed another half hour of Miller’s music from 8:30 to 9am!

Waits: What normally happens when DJs can’t make their shifts?

Bernhardt: Typically DJs have some advance notice that they can’t make their show. In those situations, we have a listserv where substitute station members can be solicited. On the day in question, I sent an email to the list, but no one (probably wisely) wanted to leave their homes. The station’s General Manager, Elliot, who was staying at the dorm next door to the radio station and who is also another BoC host, stopped by before 8am to check in, but he told me he’d been up all night and needed to get some sleep. My choices were to continue on or turn off the transmitter.

Waits: What prompted you to stay and how long would you have stayed?

Bernhardt: I chose to stay because it seemed like the safest thing to do! Plus, my wife was insistent that I not leave the building. There’s a show change every 2 hours. I never knew for certain that the DJ for the next show wasn’t going to show up until maybe an hour before its start, but I had a strong suspicion that I’d be there for a long time. I stayed as long as I was physically able — until 4pm. At around 2:30, I gave Elliot a call and he promised to show up for the 4pm program. By then, the authorities were saying that, if you were at work, it was OK to leave and go home. So I did, although I biked home using a circuitous route. My normal path would have taken me right past the bombers’ Cambridge apartment where there was talk of “controlled detonations!”

Waits: I’m trying to remember how the lockdown worked. Could the DJs not come because of the lockdown? Were people being ordered to stay indoors?

Bernhardt: The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency was strongly recommending that people in Watertown and all its adjacent cities and towns (which includes Cambridge) “shelter in place.” You could go out — no one would stop you — but it was strongly discouraged. In fact, around lunch time, a friend who lives nearby (Mark Robinson of famed indie band Unrest, and founder of Teen Beat Records) did venture over to bring me some much needed snacks.

Waits: Is this the longest shift you’ve ever done?

Bernhardt: Back when I was an undergrad (over 27 years ago!) I remember doing a lot of air over the Christmas break, but it wasn’t consecutive — more like a few hours every day for four or five days. Since then I’ve done the occasional four hour shift, but even then, I had some warning. I’d never had to do anything close to six extra hours on the fly.

Waits: How much information did you provide over the air?

Bernhardt: From the beginning, I made a judgement call. I figured that if people wanted non-stop news, or updates every time a dog barked, they wouldn’t be listening to WMBR. If they were listening to me, it was because they wanted an escape from the 24 hour news cycle and wanted to be entertained. So I did my normal show but gave people the essential information (“Stay indoors!”) and promised to update them if there were any critical developments (there never were).

The responses I received, via phone calls, tweets, emails, IMs, etc., indicate that my instincts were correct. Not one listener response was a complaint. Instead, people cheered me on, thanked me, and called me a legend or a hero. Those last two are just a tad hyperbolic (and insulting to the real heroes!), but the support immeasurably helped me get through the day. Funnily enough, the only criticism came early on from a couple of fellow WMBR DJs who thought we should either sign off or preempt our regular programming for more news. But even they came around to my way of thinking later in the day and admitted I’d done a good thing.

Thanks to Jon Bernhardt for sharing with me all of the details of his 8-hour shift. If you want to see his playlists or listen to the show, you can do so from the WMBR website.

Oh God. FreeCiv, the open source "tribute" to the classic strategy series, now runs on HTML5. Meaning it can run in browsers. And on your phone. Play here. Thanks PC Gamer.

The Wormhole Map poster design by Californian writer J. Ryan Stradal and artist Wilfred Castillo is a handy guide for time travelers returning from the Cretaceous Period. It is available to purchase from the Echo Park Time Travel Mart, a time travel themed store in Los Angeles that benefits the nonprofit children’s tutoring center 826LA.

Now you’ll be able to time travel the galaxy in style (without missing the Universe’s Largest Cheeseburger)!

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

No more same-sex relationships in Tomodachi Collection

Nintendo is patching the bug in its Japan-only 3DS game Tomodachi Collection: New Life that allowed two male characters to date, marry and even procreate. The company’s Google Translated announcement describes the bug as “Human relationship is funny.”

The update also fixes problems users might have booting up the game, saving the game, and other issues. It’s unclear if those problems are related to the same-sex glitch, but that likely won’t appease those who hoped Nintendo would overlook the bug — or would allow female characters to have the same rights.

As NetBuff insightfully pointed out, “By fixing this bug, they are actively calling attention to the fact that Nintendo released a ‘life simulator’ game in 2013 that doesn’t take homosexuality into account.”

Shout outs to NintenDaan for making most of these images for us!

BUY Nintendo 3DS and 3DS XL consoles, upcoming releases

rachel shared this story from The Daily Otter.

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Via Monterey Bay Aquarium/©Jim Capwell/www.divecentral.com

The lovely moment where you shatter your iPhone and there’s two touching penises on the back.

#iphone #penis #sword fight