“Tie Chi” is a comic on Incidental Comics by Grant Snider that demonstrates how to tie a tie using martial arts (Tai Chi).

“A Man’s Game Of Thrones World” by DJ Rozroz is a musical mashup of the Game of Thrones theme song and “This is a Man’s World” by James Brown. The song is available to download online.

via BuzzFeed, UPROXX

theodp writes "In search of the best corporate cafeteria in the world, Gourmet Live's Tanya Steel visited the Googleplex, where she found Petaluma chicken cacciatore, porcini-encrusted grass-fed beef, whole-wheat spaghetti pomodoro, and Parmesan-creamed onions on the menu in one of the search giant's 25 cafes. So, must all good things come to an end? The WSJ's Mark Maremont reports that it's debatable whether Silicon Valley's daily fringe-benefit meals are taxable, and the issue is now on the IRS's radar. 'What would a food tax on Google's meals look like for the average employee?' Maremont asks. 'Assuming a fair-market value of between $8 and $10 per meal, a Googler chowing down two squares a day could get dinged for taxes on an extra $4,000 to $5,000 a year.' That'd be just fine with UF tax-law Prof. Martin J. McMahon. 'I buy my lunch with after-tax dollars,' said McMahon. 'And I have to pay taxes to support free meals for those Google employees.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown won't go down the common iOS route of charging for upgrades, items and the like, mainly because the game's lead designer can't stand the idea. Firaxis' Jake Solomon made the blunt disclosure to IGN, reaffirming the upcoming mobile version of the 2012 strategy game is a straight port.

"Oh God, please...," Solomon responded to IGN when asked about in-app purchases like power-ups, "No. I'm not sure I would be able to sleep at night. My food would taste like ashes in my mouth."

Solomon told us last month the iOS version, due this summer, is "the exact same game [as on PC or consoles], it's just now fully playable on an iPhone or an iPad." Given that it's the full game, it'll be "appropriately" priced at a premium point, although we're still waiting to see what that is. The iOS version will include the Elite Soldier DLC but not the Slingshot pack, while the Second Wave update remains a possibility.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown iOS won't have in-app purchasable upgrades originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 09 Apr 2013 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A number is said to be perfect if it equals the sum of its divisors: 6 is divisible by 1, 2, and 3, and 1 + 2 + 3 = 6.

St. Augustine wrote, “Six is a number perfect in itself, and not because God created all things in six days; rather the converse is true; God created all things in six days because this number is perfect, and it would have been perfect even if the work of the six days did not exist.”

Perfect numbers are rare. No one knows whether an infinite quantity exist, and no one knows whether any of them are odd. The early Greeks knew the first four, and in the ensuing two millennia we’ve uncovered only 44 more. But they have one thing in common — they reveal a curious harmony when expressed in base 2:

Etsy shop SyppahsCuteCreations has created a set of colorful crocheted baby cuttlefish, and is also working on a pattern for a baby squid. The tiny cuttlefish are already available for sale, and the baby squid will be available “soon.”

images via SyppahsCuteCreations

DES MOINES, IA—After nearly two years of employment at Ludnick Publishing, Doug Glickman literally does not know the name of a single one of his 11 coworkers, the 35-year-old department manager admitted to reporters Monday.

National Post

4-year-old grabs loaded gun at family BBQ and accidentally kills wife of ... National Post NASHVILLE — Authorities say a 4-year-old boy grabbed a loaded gun at a family cookout and accidentally shot and killed the wife of a Tennessee sheriff's deputy. Investigators say Wilson County Deputy Daniel Fanning on Saturday was showing his ... and more »

Companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook are known for offering free food as a perk — employees don't have to pay for lunch and dinner, and the company gets them in the building and around colleagues for longer each day. But The Wall Street Journal has examined whether these free meals should be taxed as fringe benefits. According to lawyers who spoke to the Journal, the IRS has been considering the question of whether Google's cafeterias are more like a necessary amenity or a company car, and the legal ground for either case is still shaky.

The question of meal taxes is complicated: opponents of taxing meals say they could fall under an exception that allows companies to provide meals for the "convenience of the employer." That exception is largely in place for jobs where leaving to get lunch isn't feasible, or for workers in remote locations. Others, though, say the IRS is already wary of untaxed free meals. "If they're in there auditing, and you're not taxing the meals, they're going to challenge you on it," says tax attorney Thomas M. Cryan, Jr.

Technically, employees are responsible for paying any back taxes, but employers can also be taken to task for not automatically withholding money. While it's not clear whether some of the best-known free food providers include meals in tax forms, ex-Googlers have reported that their old employer doesn't. Startups often bristle at what they see as outdated laws, and taxing cafeterias may soon become the newest point of contention.

• Via Ars Technica
• Source The Wall Street Journal
• Image Credit Google
• Related Items facebook free food cafeteria taxes tax law Google

According to Florida Today, Melbourne, Florida resident Patti Burke was eating Goldfish Crackers during Holy Week when she discovered a unique one emblazoned with a “cross” in a circle. Burke believes it to be a sign from God stating, “When I picked this one up, I knew he was special. He had a cross on him, and he had a crown circle up by his head. Something I’ve never seen before out of all the Goldfish I’ve eaten.” A Click Orlando article states that she consumes “two or three pounds of Goldfish crackers in a week, one by one, looking for the saltiest of the snacks” and that she is now keeping her find in an “earring box padded by gauze.”

Florida Today posted that she contacted the company that makes Goldfish Crackers, Pepperidge Farm:

“I called Pepperidge Farm and said, ‘Hey, do you have some special promotion going on, I think I’ve got the lucky fish,’” she said. “They called me back and said there’s no way this could have been printed like that in the factory. … They said it sounds like something miraculous happened and we don’t know how it happened.”

Burke even tried to send the company pictures of the cracker, but said when she got the photos developed at Walgreen’s, none of the pictures turned out.

photos by Malcolm Denmark for Florida Today

via ClickOrlando

credit: pineappleglazedham

CT Scan Reveals Dozens Of Hockey Pucks Inside Sidney Crosby's Skull

CHICAGO—Not long after he happened to pass through a bustling office Friday morning, stock-photo model scout Andrew Sheeran revealed to colleagues that he had seen something very special in a man he had spotted wearing business attire and crossing h...

CHICAGO—Emitting a wondrous spectrum of glowing, electric hues, local administrative assistant Jerry Offman dazzled coworkers with a futuristic light show Monday morning as he walked past their desks arrayed in a fluorescent bike-safety vest.

'Flaunt Magazine' tends to be pretty great when it comes to thinking creatively, but its recent invite to a Guantanamo-themed party (yes, seriously) quickly shifted from fun to completely absurd.

derekmead writes "Because its become so easy to start a new publication in this new pixel-driven information economy, a new genre of predatory journals is emerging at an alarming rate. The New York Times just published an exposée of sorts on the topic. Its only an exposée of sorts because the scientific community knows about the problem. There are blogs set up to shame the fake journals into halting publishing. There are tutorials online for spotting a fake journal. There's even a list created and maintained by academic librarian Jeffrey Beall that keeps an eye on all the new fake journals coming out. When Beall started the list in 2010, it had only 20 entries. Now it has over 4,000. The journal Nature even published an entire issue on the problem a couple of weeks ago. So again, scientists know this is a problem. They just don't know how to stop it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

By Megan Farokhmanesh on Apr 08, 2013 at 9:30p

The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog had to push for female gamers to be included in focus group testing, creative director Neil Druckmann told The Escapist during a recent interview.

According to Druckmann, focus-testing is part of what influences how a game is promoted. Various players view game materials and are asked quantitative and qualitative questions about the subject. Druckmann said that the firm in charge of the focus group research had no intentions of including females in its research.

"My big surprise during this process is that the research group wasn't planning on focus-testing female gamers — it's something we had to specifically request. I hope this is a relic of the past that will soon go away."

Polygon reported previously on Naughty Dog's "flat-out" refusal to shuffle central character Ellie to the back of the game's cover. According to Druckmann, it was part of a "misconception that if you put a girl or a woman on the cover, the game will sell less."

The Last of Us was pushed back from its PlayStation 3-exclusive May 7 release date to June 14 in February. A demo will be available May 31.

womenwhokickass:

Aya Kamikawa: Why she kicks ass

• She is the only openly transgender official in Japan at this point, and the first to seek or win elected office in Japan.
• She won a four-year term as an independent under huge media attention, placing sixth of 72 candidates running for 52 seats in the Setagaya ward assembly, the most populous district in Tokyo.  In April 2007, she was re-elected to her second term, placing second of 71 candidates running for 52 in the same ward assembly. 
• While the government announced that they would continue to consider her male officially, she stated that she would work as a woman. 
• She is devoted to work for various groups, the disabled, single-parent families, homeless people to evening junior high school students, LGBT people and to improve rights for women, children, the elderly.  She strives to give support for these people and bring positive changes which would help them in society. 
• She was also a committee member for Trans-net Japan (a self-support group for transgender people) and organised meetings and social events to give support and symposiums to raise the public awareness.

kellysue:

tumbleaboutit:

fuckyeahhistorycrushes:

This is Sybil Ludington. 

Sybil is not very well known and it’s a crying shame. The 16-year old was personally thanked by George Washington for her heroic feat, riding twice the distance of Paul Revere and warning the militia and rebellion sympathizers of the sacking of Danbury, CT. But thanks to Longfellow’s severely historically inaccurate poem, more people remember Revere’s ride than hers. *sighs* 

By the way? Revere got captured by the British after his stint and had a ton of other riders out on the roads with him or to switch off with. Sybil Ludington was by herself, in the rain, and she beat highwaymen trying to stop her doing her duty WITH A STICK, still managing to get the job done and home safe.

Thanks, Syb. You should make everyone happy inside with your pure badassery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_Ludington

A group of companies including Microsoft, Nokia, and Oracle has filed a new antitrust complaint in the EU, alleging that Google’s Android mobile OS gives an unfair advantage to the company’s mobile applications. The group, called Fairsearch Europe, states in a press release that while the core Android OS is free, OEMs that want to license Google's mobile apps like Maps, YouTube, or the Play store, need to take the whole Google Apps suite and give it "prominent default placement on the phone." The group adds that Google’s "predatory" practice of offering Android "below-cost" also makes it difficult for competing software makers to enter the industry. The New York Times points out that regulators will need to respond to the formal complaint.

A "Trojan Horse"

The group’s lead counsel, Thomas Vinje, referred to the Android OS as a "Trojan Horse" aimed at deceiving partners, monopolizing the mobile market, and controlling consumer data. Fairsearch points to Google’s 96 percent share of the mobile search market and overall 70 percent share of phone shipments as evidence of the complaint’s gravity.

Almunía called Fairsearch’s complaint "a new step in the investigation"

This isn’t the first time that Fairsearch has gone after Google — it is also (unsurprisingly) a vocal critic of the company’s search practices, which it say give its shopping and travel businesses unfair advantages in the market. Google is currently still under investigation in the EU for these reasons, among others, and a negotiated settlement, expected as early as January, has yet to materialize. The company made it out of a similar investigation in the US with a settlement that many criticized as toothless, but EU competition policy chief Joaquín Almunia has been adamant that the FTC’s decision will have no bearing on the EU case, and that Google will be forced to change how it presents search results or face antitrust charges for "diverting traffic." According to The New York Times, Almunía called Fairsearch’s complaint "a new step in the investigation."

It may very well be the case that regulators will require Google's to change how it bundles its apps, but the irony of a group lead by Microsoft being so critical of the practice is particularly rich given that company’s long history on the receiving end of EU antitrust investigations. Microsoft was fined €497 million in 2004 (about $600 million at the time) for abusing its "near monopoly" by bundling its Windows Media Player with the operating system, which ballooned to €899 million (later reduced to €860 million) after Microsoft failed to pay the first fine. That’s not to mention the extra €561 million (around $732 million) that Microsoft is on the hook for after failing to bundle competing web browsers with Windows 7 Service Pack 1. Google could not comment on the specifics of the case, but a spokesperson tells The Verge that it "continues to work cooperatively with the European Comission."

• Source Fairsearch Europe (PDF)New York Times
• Related Items android google apps law legal antitrust joaquin almunia bundling Microsoft Google Nokia

I think we’ll know well before the end of this year how Facebook Home affects handset sales. If buyers start asking “does it have Facebook Home?” — and I think many will — that will be bad news for both Google and Apple. However, the Google – Facebook war is sure to be more vicious than the Google – Apple war because Google and Facebook have the same customers: advertisers. Users are their currency, and Facebook is about to rob the bank.

“

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — When Louisville’s Shoni Schimmel whipped a no-look, behind-the-back bounce pass to younger sister Jude for a fast-break layup in the women’s Final Four, former WNBA player Ryneldi Becenti was on a Native American reservation watching on TV - and grinning at the sight of a free-wheeling style of basketball she knows quite well.

”It’s funny,” said Becenti, a former Arizona State star in the 1990s who played a season for the Phoenix Mercury and then professionally in Europe. ”You can see the ‘rez ball’ in them. … She threw it behind the back, already knew where her sister was, and they don’t hesitate to do it.”

Louisville’s string of upsets in the NCAA tournament - they’ve knocked off Baylor, Tennessee and California in succession - has been followed closely by Native Americans nationwide because of the captivating play of the Schimmel sisters, who grew up on a reservation in Oregon.

”

- Louisville lets Schimmels showcase ‘rez ball’ - Yahoo! Sports

“Legions of Twitter users were fooled into thinking the pop singer had passed after people began posting about late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher under the hashtag #nowthatcherisdead.”

- Stay calm, everybody! Cher’s not dead, it was Margaret Thatcher - NY Daily News

“A local consortium that hopes to establish Oregon as a testing center for unmanned aerial vehicles is combining its efforts with groups from Alaska and Hawaii.”

- Oregon Hoping To Be Picked As Drone-Testing Site » News » OPB

Study: Any Description Of A Woman's Appearance Hurts With Voters

by Eyder Peralta

April 08, 2013 8:16 PM Enlarge image i

President Obama's comments about California Attorney General Kamala Harris' looks made headlines last week.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Any mention — positive or negative — of a woman's looks, hurts her chances with voters. That's according to two new surveys commissioned by Women's Media Center "Name It, Change It" project.

"In the survey on media coverage of women candidates' appearance, conducted by Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners and Robert Carpenter of Chesapeake Beach Consulting, the research used actual quotes about women candidates from media coverage of the 2012 elections and demonstrates that when the media focuses on a woman candidate's appearance, she pays a price in the polls," the center said in a press release. "This finding held true whether the coverage of a woman candidate's appearance was framed positively, negatively or in neutral terms."

Another study presented participants with profiles of "candidates" Jane Smith and Dan Jones. If participants only read the profiles, the woman emerged with an edge. But that edge was eclipsed immediately, as soon as physical descriptors — like "Smith dressed in a brown blouse, black skirt, and modest pumps with a short heel..." — were added to a "news story."

The survey also found that when the women themselves or a surrogate called out the sexist language, they earned back some support. That was the case even when the respondents did not read any of the sexist language.

Celinda Lake, one of the researchers, told Poynter that the bottom line is that "women candidate pay a real price" when the media takes notice of their appearence.

"Even what we thought was benign coverage about how a woman dresses has a negative impact on her vote and whether voters perceive her as in touch, likeable, confident, effective, and qualified. And, in close races, sexist coverage on top of the attacks that every candidate faces can make the difference between winning and losing."

Of course, this study gives some context to the uproar over Obama's comments about California Attorney General Kamala Harris, last week.

The study was conducted online last month. It has a margin of error of 2.5 percent.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Convention season is fast approaching, and with the advent of convention season comes the return of the furor over the problem of convention harassment and how to deal with that. And because I read several blogs in other areas of geekdom besides gaming, this is a theme that I’m seeing repeat over… and over… and over.

Most recently, the internet shitstorms have been circling around the case of Adria Richards, a woman who tweeted about bad behavior at Pycon and was ultimately fired when the internet exploded with rape and death threats.

Now, yes, Pycon is a tech conference, not a gaming convention. However, tech and gaming are both male-dominated nerd subcultures that have a history of tolerating rape culture and punishing women who dare to speak out against those who perpetuate it. And the same kind of wrong-headedness seems to pervade discussions of convention harassment no matter which sphere of geekdom the conversation happens to be taking place in, so I thought I’d address some of the most common points that I’ve seen circulating in my feed the last week or so.

Trying to enforce anti-harassment policies puts you in a he said/she said situation, because one person’s “assault” can be another person’s “hi, how are you?”.

This argument is wrong-headed for two reasons. FIRST:

The spectre that is always raised in these discussions is the issue of false reporting and the fear that those nasty evil sneaky women are going to go around accusing men they don’t like of harassment to get them booted from the event. Because I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do than risk damaging my professional reputation, my personal safety, and having to face ostracism from my community so that I can falsely accuse a man I don’t like of sexually harassing me for some lulz. …yeah.

 

Here’s the thing. The number of people who falsely report harassment, assault, and rape is vanishingly small. We live in a rape culture that trivializes the victimization of women and stigmatizes those who experience sexual violence. Is it entirely impossible that someone would falsely report? No. But the social, professional, and emotional consequences of reporting are so great that it is not something that is going to be done on a lark.

SECOND, this sort of thinking assumes that sexual harassment is something that you can accidentally fall into. Like you go to start talking to somebody and you trip on something and then you’re sexually harassing them. And, man. All I have to say is that if you’re worried that you don’t know how to talk to someone without sexually harassing them, let me just propose that that says more about you than it does about them. If you’re really not sure where that line is, then maybe it’s best for you not to attend such events until you figure that out.

Enforcing rules is scary because lawyers!

Businesses make rules all the time that must be followed if you want to be served by that business. Despite the fact that toplessness is perfectly legal in New York, I’m sure I would have trouble finding a restaurant willing to seat me were I to walk in topless and ask to be seated. How hard is it to say that if you violate the rules of the convention, you will be asked to leave? No one’s asking anyone to chase purported harassers down, tackle them dramatically, and turn them over to police at the head of a ticker-tape parade.

If you feel you need to add a blanket disclaimer to the effect that attendees can be ejected from the convention at any time at the discretion of the convention organizers, cool! Do that. But if you’re going to make a rule to the effect that harassment of your fellow convention attendees will not be allowed, you need to be prepared to enforce that rule. Failing to enforce it is just going to send the message that harassment is tacitly condoned by your organization.

We can’t expect everyone to be safe at a convention. Come now, that’s just being silly.

You know what? I’m so done with hearing this one. SO. DONE. Especially because this argument inevitably gets used by people who have sufficient privilege that they don’t have to be concerned for their safety at such events. You try going to a convention and having to be aware of who you get into an elevator with, or having to ask people to walk you to your car or your hotel, or having to be aware of where exits and potential allies are in case a situation arises and then tell me that I’m being unreasonable for wanting a universal expectation of safety.

If you are willing to accept the proposition that some classes of attendees should not have the reasonable expectation of safety, then fuck you. I will never attend one of your events, and I will preach it from the rooftops that other women should stay away as well. Bad enough that I have to worry about being victimized by members of my own community. I don’t need convention policies to tell me that I’m “asking for it” simply by attending.

This kind of thing is just part of gaming culture. If you can’t handle that, then don’t go to conventions.

Putting the onus on people who experience harassment to put up or shut up is BUUUULLLLLSHIIIIIIT. Sexual harassment is illegal. If I was to say “well doing lines of coke at the game table is just part of gaming culture, if you don’t like it then you just shouldn’t come” or “stabbing people is just part of game culture, you just need to learn to deal with it”, you would (correctly) look at me as if I were from the moon. But because we’re talking about sexual harassment, criminal behavior is suddenly okay? Yeah, no. You’ve just branded yourself a willing enabler of rape culture, and this is the end of our conversation.

(Convention harassment is bad. This isn’t rocket science. originally posted on Gaming As Women.)

I’d only just begun to recover from those haunting images of Comic-Con International attendees wearing those giveaway Court of Owls masks when I opened DC Comics’ July solicitations to find the publisher is offering the nightmare-inducing featureless disguises packaged with the trade paperback of Batman: The Court of Owls, by Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo and Jonathan Glapion.

Arriving Oct. 2, the $24.99 Batman: The Court of Owls Book and Mask Set offers you the chance to introduce a friend or loved one to the first arc of the relaunched Batman — and then scare the bejeezus out of them by wearing the mask. That is, if you’re willing diminish its potential value by opening the box. Oh, go ahead, it’ll be worth it …

BATMAN: THE COURT OF OWLS BOOK AND MASK SET
Written by SCOTT SNYDER
Art by GREG CAPULLO and JONATHAN GLAPION
Cover by GREG CAPULLO
ADVANCE SOLICIT • On sale OCTOBER 2 • 160 pg, FC, 8.5” x 11.75” x 5.5”, $24.99 US
The best-selling epic that introduced Gotham City’s dread Court of Owls is back in this amazing book and mask set! Along with a trade paperback copy of THE COURT OF OWLS, collecting BATMAN #1-7, this set includes the PVC Owl mask with white elastic band that created a sensation at comics conventions in 2012!

Digital Music News made this gif to show the yearly changes in music purchasing shares throughout the past 40 years.

“Hold on,” I said, waving the rest of the group back. “I’m getting a reading on my $60 K-II EMF Reader For Ghost Hunting.” The lights on the plastic wand flickered red, yellow, and green. “Is there someone here who lost a relative… Their name starts with… S?”

“ME!” cried an old lady. “My mother. Sally. It’s my mother, isn’t it?! Oh, please, say, it’s my mother!”

I laughed. “Ghost hunting is fake, and when you die, you are gone forever,” I told her. “I owned you, you thought this thing was real, and you got owned.” As she sobbed quietly, I pointed to the others on the ghost hunting tour. “Owned,” I said to each one, as I pointed. “Owned, owned, owned.”