firehose

brooklynmutt:

GOP leader thinks Will McAvoy is a real news anchor

JIMROMENESKO: He deleted his tweet after someone pointed out that McAvoy is a fictitious anchor.

theriverunderground:

Pretty awesome.

ruineshumaines:

America Revealed

1. Visualization of internet distribution;
2. The pinpointed distribution of the unemployed;
3. Domino’s Pizza’s raw ingredients’ delivery routes in the Northeast;
4. U.S. electricity network routes;
5. Traced paths of deceased bodies being transported to their hometowns;
6. U.S. imports and exports of beef;
7. All the people in America’s towns and cities.

Full episodes of the series can currently be viewed online for U.S. residents only.

The individual raw black and white Hubble images are opened and scaled.


Images are aligned in a graphics editing program.


The camera that took this image is made of two light detectorsm separated by a gap. The gaps are filled with data from another camera.


Each image is assigned a color. Combined, they create a full color image.


Cosmetic defects, including bad pixels, cosmic rays and the detector gap, are cleaned.


The color composite is rotated and cropped.

ikenbot:

thespacegoat:

Hubble Images are Produced, Not Taken

Images must be woven together from the incoming data from the cameras, cleaned up and given colors that bring out features that eyes would otherwise miss. In this video from HubbleSite, a Hubble-imaged galaxy comes together on the screen.

They’re not just ‘pretty space pics’ there is a lot of work going on before the end result. And this is an idea of how it happens.

Mar 18th 2013 By: Joseph Hughes

The cast rollout for upcoming Marvel films continues. Last week, news broke that Dave Bautista was brought on to play Drax The Destroyer in next year's Guardians of the Galaxy film. On the heels of that announcement, X-Men: Days Of Future Past director Bryan Singer revealed via Twitter that two more additions have been made to the cast of his 2014 sequel, as Fan Bingbing will be playing Blink, and Daniel Cudmore returns to the X-Men film franchise as Colossus, a role he previously played in X2: X-Men United and X-Men: The Last Stand.

Fans of the original X-Men trilogy will remember Cudmore's brief but memorable appearances as Colossus in two previous films. In X2, he had barely a few minutes of screen time, and that only grew slightly in the next film when -- in a scene of sheer and unapologetic fan service -- Colossus performed a Fastball Special with Hugh Jackman/Wolverine. Fans will have to wait and see whether or not he plays a bigger role in this film. With the source material being Chris Claremont and John Byrne's Days of Future Past story, in which Colossus played a somewhat significant role, it's certainly a possibility.

As for Bingbing, she'll be playing Blink, a teleporting mutant created by Scott Lobdell and Joe Madureira. Originally somewhat of a throwaway character, Blink developed into a more fully realized part of the X-Men universe in the pages of 1995's Age of Apocalypse story, which ultimately led to her being the leader of the Exiles in their monthly title. Bingbing, a tremendous star in her native China, most recently starred in Double Xposure and Lost in Thailand.

Singer broke the latest casting news by releasing a picture on Twitter of an updated wall with cast headshots:

[Click image to enlarge]

X-Men: Days of Future Past is due in theaters July 2014.

[Via Deadline]

this all started one weekend i was staying over at slut’s house – that’s how long ago this was, we weren’t living together yet. we were lying in bed together, reading a choose your own adventure book out loud to each other. specifically, it was “YOU ARE A MONSTER.” this particular volume begins with a long description of how you’re kidnapped by a mad scientist, imprisoned, experimented on, turned into a hideous creature, and ultimately manage to escape. that’s when the first choice finally happens – when you manage to escape, ten or so pages in. the book keeps directing you: turn to page 54, turn to page 23, but this whole prolonged opening scene is completely linear.

it got us talking about playing with the structure of choose your own adventure books – “art choose your own adventure books,” that was it. what if the entire book is linear up to the very last page, where you’re faced with your one choice in the entire story: a choice between an obvious winning condition and an obvious losing condition, but a losing condition you might take just to assert your control over your own destiny. “or,” slut said, “what about a book where you make your only choice at the beginning, and there are a hundred different endings.”

soon after starting on that book, i realized how perfectly a non-linear story where you “lose” on every page fit my identity, my sexuality, my sadism, my interest in chance in storytelling. i fell in love with the book a little while after. it was my background project: i’d go without looking at it for weeks, then i’d write five more endings. i’d work on lesbian spider-queens, or rise of the videogame zinesters, or dys4ia, then i’d go back to star wench, throw out three pages and write two more. three years later, the book’s finally in print, my debut book of fiction.

buy star wench on amazon!

STAR WENCH always needed to be a physical book. it’s an experiment in letting the reader structure the story: each page of the book represents a fragment of a larger story, the whole of which we’re never shown, but there are recurring characters, recurring places, events that play out in different ways. the reader opens to a page at random and discovers something new, or something connected to a page she read earlier. maybe she reads forward a couple of pages, or backwards. maybe she thinks, i’ve read a lot of the first half of the book, let’s poke around the second. maybe she just skims looking for the pictures.

the book needed illustrations, so i approached j christian, who had previously illustrated my slut’s children’s story, brunhilda. j designed what the characters looked like – star wench, interstellar adventurer and rogue, and the queen of space, her antagonist and obsession – and completed three illustrations, but wasn’t able to illustrate the entire book. so then i talked to rebecca clements, who agreed to do the cover and two more illustrations. then i talked to basically every other artist i know – i ended up with twelve illustrators who each contributed at least one page. i paid them out of my own pockets with lesbian spider-queens money – or in some cases i still owe them.

i got rejected by a bunch of publishers and literary agents trying to make this book real. a borderline-pornographic pulp sci-fi choose your own adventure book about explicitly queer women and eroticized deathtraps is a hard sell. but reba connected me to their friend mary borsellino, who had had some success with a little publishing house called omnium gatherum. kate jonez emailed me back during indiecade – it must have been about the same time jonathan blow was telling my slut “this isn’t an intelligent conversation” and turning his back on her. i was sitting by myself, watching them set up live-action frogger. kate wanted to publish the book.

so thanks, first, to kate, for not only printing my book but acceding to my millions of demands. and, second, to every beautiful queer person whose presence in my life inspired the scenarios on these hundred pages. i’m not kidding when i say this book is the most exciting project i’ve ever had – it stands at the intersection of all the things i care about: play, chance, kink, sadism, pulp, games and queerness.

you can buy it on amazon or check out previews on the star wench blog.

Cyberweapons and synthetic biological weapons (GMOs) can self provision.  

They have the ability to live off the land (hosts, like human bodies and PCs) once they are unleashed.  

NOTE:  In many cases, they can also make perfect copies of themselves (copies in the trillions).  

But what about drones?  

Aren't they limited by quantity of energy in their batteries?

Yes, drones do have the capacity to self provision too.  One of the more elegent ways is for a drone to use power lines to "induct" the energy it needs.

A drone that can recharge itself from a power line has the potential to operate for years -- monitoring, relaying, etc. -- without returning to base.  

If the decision making software is good enough it could source its energy and target data for years without referencing any command system.

In fact, with wireless access to the Internet (including RSS feeds), GPS, and other easily accessible data sources... it decision making can be very dynamic.  

Here's a video showing some US DoD contractors working on making that a reality, right now:

I quite enjoyed this short piece explaining the sacrifice that Gilraen, the mother of Aragorn, makes for her people. There’s also a bit of linguistic geekery for the word nerds. Enjoy.

ONE of the many half-told tales behind Tolkien’s masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, is the haunting story of Gilraen, Aragorn’s mother. We get the bare bones outline in the appendices, but most fans don’t get that far.

If you were wondering about that sad scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where Elrond and Aragorn are talking before Gilraen’s tomb (here’s a screencap to jog your memory), here’s the story. As usual, it’s rather different than in the films.
The Parents of Aragorn

To understand Gilraen’s tragic history, we have to go back in time during the Third Age, right back to the beginning, 3019 years before The Lord of the Rings.

At that time there were two kingdoms of the Dúnedain, the Men of the West: Arnor in the northwest, Isildur’s realm, and Gondor to the south, ruled by Isildur’s nephew after his brother died alongside their father Elendil. Both kingdoms fell into decay over thousands of years, weakened by wars, feuds, invasions, Sauron’s minions and plague. Gondor lost its royal line, while Arnor was eventually sacked (Third Age 1975).

[Read More]

Have you ever wondered why you rarely see beautiful serif fonts on the internet? Well wonder no more. The website UrbanFonts.com has created this handy infographic that explains the differences between serif and sans serif fonts and why you should choose one over the other.



Via.

““Let’s start that conversation by acknowledging we aren’t going to deport” the millions already here, the potential 2016 presidential candidate told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “Prudence, compassion and thrift all point us toward the same goal: bringing these workers out of the shadows and into becoming and being taxpaying members of society.””

- Rand Paul endorses immigrant path to citizenship - Yahoo! News

Teen Girls Charged for Allegedly Threatening Steubenville, Ohio, Rape Victim | ABC News - Yahoo!:

Two teenage girls were charged with menacing today for allegedly threatening the victim in the Steubenville, Ohio, rape case via Twitter and Facebook, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced.

RSS2GIF RSS2JPG RSS2PNG Transform your RSS-Feed into an autoupdated image:

via Amy

Mar 18th 2013 By: Joseph Hughes

We're big fans of Ulises Farinas' art at ComicsAlliance. We've commissioned work from him in the past, and highlighted his art several times, so we'd be remiss if we didn't take this opportunity to let readers and fans know that he's selling a great selection of his work over on his site right now, to raise money for his medical expenses.

The sale is certainly good news for fans, but Farinas was motivated to start it due to an unfortunate accident. From his site:

I have a lot of art. Like hundreds of pages of comics, illustrations, and random things I've drawn over the years. And I recently sliced my thumb open, and with no health insurance, it's a pretty big bill. So i decided to finally get off my butt, and scan my original inks, and put them up for sale.

So if you love fun art and helping out a talented member of the comics community, this is definitely a solid opportunity. You can check out a few samples of his work below.

[Click images to enlarge]

Thief just got its second unveiling last week, now retooled to be more traditional and in-line with the original games in the franchise versus the grammar grotesqueness of the announced-in-2009 Thi4f. Eidos Montreal offered further insight into Thief in a blog post, confirming that protagonist Garrett will be able to get through the entire sticky-finger adventure without taking lives.

Eidos Montreal's previous offering, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, also allowed players to make it through the game as a pacifist - save for bosses - a good example considering it too was a modern entry in a franchise that had been dormant for quite some time. Thief is currently slated to launch on PC, PS4 and "other next-gen platforms" in 2014.

[Art from the official Thief Facebook page]

Yes, you can play through Thief without killing anyone originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 18 Mar 2013 22:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.”

- Ursula Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (via alltheladiesyouhate)

Commander, you'll find a wave of new recruits joining you soon. Thanks to a special XCOM initiative promotion, we're opening our doors like never before in an attempt to bolster our ranks against the enemy threat in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, offering enlistment via Amazon for $16.50.

Look, we don't want to say you're doing a bad job, it's just - well have you looked out your window lately, Commander? Oh, right, you're underground, sorry. Just know that there are aliens everywhere now, we could really use the extra muscle and the council thinks this is a solid move for a positive monthly report in March.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown PC download on sale at Amazon originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 18 Mar 2013 23:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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DLC Quest is now available on Steam for PC and Mac, cashing in on its Greenlight success with a 20 percent-off sale, making the entire game just $2.40. DLC Quest on Steam includes the original platformer and new Live Freemium or Die campaign, and of course more than 30 DLC packs, all providing commentary concerning microtransactions and the pared-out state of gaming.

But don't fret: All DLC, no matter how essential to the actual gameplay, is purchased with in-game coins. The DLC Quest launch sale runs through March 25 at 10 a.m. PDT, when the game is bumped back up to its regular, super-inflated price of $3.

DLC Quest takes satirical platforming to Steam with a launch sale originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 19 Mar 2013 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After being the target of simultaneous cyber attacks and a visit to his house from armed police, security blogger Brian Krebs has uncovered new information that may link his attack with the high-profile hack of Wired editor Mat Honan.

Already believing that he was the target of a disgruntled person or persons belonging to a black market website that trades social security numbers, Krebs was able to independently verify that the attacks were launched by a hacker going by the alias Phobia. According to Krebs, Phobia is part of a four-person Xbox Live gamer team called Team Hype which hijacks Xbox Live Gamertags (specifically targeting Microsoft employees) and selling the accounts to other gamers.

Phobia also had his personal information leaked

Tracing a Twitter account linked to his attacker, Krebs learned that Phobia's personal information (including real name, address and phone number) had also been leaked. In the space of a short phone call, Krebs was able to confirm that Phobia (who is 20 years of age) was linked with the attack of Wired's Mat Honan, which saw Honan's Twitter, Google, and iCloud accounts breached and some personal data deleted. Ars Technica has since said Phobia may be behind the recent DOS attack on its servers last week.

• Via Ars Technica
• Source Krebs on Security
• Related Items krebs hack attack dos wired mat honan team hype phobia

Yonhap News reports that the Korean cousins Samsung and LG are in a row over the eye-tracking technology in their respective flagship phones, the Galaxy S4 and Optimus G Pro. The feature at the center of the controversy is called Smart Pause by Samsung and Smart Video by LG, and lets users pause a playing video by looking away from the screen. LG says it applied for the relevant patent in 2009 (as well as other eye-tracking inventions as far back as 2005) and plans to check if Samsung's phone infringes when it launches next month. Samsung, of course, denies infringing LG’s patent, saying it has its own technology and used different methods for its own implementation. The two companies' phones are both scheduled for release in April.

Over the past year, the rivalry and mimicry between Korea’s top two electronics companies has reached insane new heights. The pair both announced 55-inch OLED TVs at CES in 2012, and while both were severely behind schedule, LG eventually shipped its panel, beating its longtime rival to market. When Samsung announced a curved OLED TV at CES 2013, LG was quick to respond, trotting out its own "world’s first" curved panel within a couple of hours.

---

The armistice doesn't seem to be lasting very long

The friction was being mirrored behind the scenes, too, where the pair had been at loggerheads over the underlying technology, suing each other for various OLED patent violations. To top it off, Samsung had filed another suit in its home country in December, claiming that LG infringed its LCD patents, and asking the court to ban the offending products. While those cases have since been settled out of court, the armistice doesn’t seem to be lasting very long. Whether it's antagonistic billboards or lawsuits about refrigerator capacity in advertising, it looks like the two chaebols just can't get along.

• Source Yonhap News Agency
• Related Items law legal patent eye tracking smart pause smart video Optimus G Pro Galaxy S4 Samsung LG Cellphones

The Guardian

Police: India tourist, fearing hotel owner, makes balcony-to-balcony escape CNN International (CNN) -- A British woman touring India dropped from her hotel room's balcony to the one below to escape the hotel's owner, who had been trying to enter her room, police said Tuesday. The owner was arrested on a harassment complaint, police said. A police ... British woman injured after leaping from hotel window in IndiaThe Guardian Police: India tourist jumped from balcony to avoid rapeCNN British woman jumps off hotel room to escape rape bid; hotel owner heldTimes of India Wall Street Journal (blog) -The Hindu -Mirror.co.uk all 136 news articles »

Hey geeks! Our friends at GaymerConnect are raising funds for a documentary. Please give it a look and consider donating. You can get VIDEO GAMES for it!

A history of American comic books in six panels

Adventures in Androgyny: Sophia Loren

theartofanimation:

Johnny Dombrowski

A new law that took effect Monday in British Columbia turned thousands of unmarried couples into married couples -- at least from a property perspective.

The following article includes discussion of rape and sexual assault, and details from the Steubenville rape trial.

On Sunday, feminists, online hacker group Anonymous, sexual assault and rape victims and survivors, and the entire town of Steubenville, Ohio, collectively held their breath as a judge read the final verdict of a court case that could forever change how we perceive rape culture.

Two boys, aged 16 and 17, were found guilty of raping a 16-year-old female classmate at a party last August, and could serve sentences in juvenile detention facilities up to their 21^st birthdays, and will register as sex offenders. A grand jury will convene this spring to potentially file additional charges. We finally have justice and someone – or someones – to blame for perpetuating sexual assault in the absence of the word “no.”

Or do we?

The more than a month long trial has fluctuated between something straight out of Law and Order: Special Victim’s Unit, and the worst nightmare of any woman, regardless of age. Briefly (the least apt word to describe the trail and events that led to it): An unnamed 16-year-old Steubenville High School student attended a party where she consumed enough alcohol that the following day she was unable to recollect the evening. For contextual purposes, the party was thrown as an end-of-summer blowout before another school year cheering on Big Red, the Steubenville High football team and its championship-winning athletes, which the town, where futures aren’t particularly bright, worships. Also worth noting, in a 2011 study, the Center for Disease Control found that in the past 30 days, 22% of high school students binge drank, calling underage drinking “a major public health problem.”

The fact that a student at a high school party got blackout drunk is not a rare occurrence. In all likelihood, neither is what happened next:

Fellow party attendees photographed, Tweeted, and recorded videos of the 16-year-old girl “in various states of undress,” being carried while seemingly unconscious, vomiting, and discussed her “sloppy” and “slutty” behavior with terms such as “so raped.” Retellings from those at the party included details such as two particular partygoers, who were also footballer players for Big Red, penetrating the girl vaginally with their fingers.

In non-courtroom/news jargon: A young woman was raped. She was not in a condition to give consent for sexual activity. Other people saw her being raped, and no one attempted to stop the perpetrators, perhaps because what they saw didn’t register in their minds as rape.

If you don’t feel sick to your stomach reading this, you should.

I’ll tell you why I do: I believe there is absolutely no reason for a person to force any nonconsensual sexual activity on another person. But I am not so naïve to recognize this isn’t the world we live in. Sadly, we live in a world where consent has to be constantly defined, and where 76% of high school boys and 56% of high school girls think forced sex is acceptable under some circumstances. Which, even more sadly, means that the world Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond live in hasn’t taught them that when presented with the opportunity to have any kind of sex with an unconscious girl, it will never be acceptable under any circumstance to do so.

Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond are the 17 and 16-year-old boys, respectively, who “had such promising futures, star football players, very good students [who] literally watched as they believed their life fell apart,” as CNN’s Poppy Harlow said during Sunday’s newscast.

Hold on a second: Two boys raped a classmate, of whom pictures and videos of her blacked-out drunk, partially naked body were posted on almost every social networking platform, and all three had to participate in a trial where those damaging images and violations were recounted in detail, then reported on for the entire world to follow. Would you like to rephrase whose life was ruined?

Even Judge Thomas Lipps, who handed down the verdict, focused his final comments on alcohol overconsumption “as a particular danger to our teenage youth,” and “how you record things on social media that are so prevalent today.”

It is so easy to place blame on the tangible elements that surround the Steubenville rape trial: The two football players who felt invincible in a town that lauds their athletic talents and shuts down threats to their beloved sport; the easily obtained and easily consumed alcohol that illegally finds its way into the red Solo cups of children who don’t understand their limits or the ramifications of overconsumption; the smartphones and social networks that document our lives, even the moments we’d rather forget, and remain forever on the Internet.

It is so easy to feel vindicated through visible evidence of “solving” these problems: Mays and Richmond could be in jail until the reach the legal age to consume the same alcohol that was abundant at that disgusting party. Hacker group Anonymous spread the photos and videos of the 16-year-old girl to draw media attention to the rape report that could have very well been swept under the rug.

Who we don’t see is 16-year-old Jane Doe, whose attorney Bob Fitzsimmons says, ”just wants to get back with her normal life.” The problem is, Jane Doe doesn’t get to return to any kind of normal life. No one who is raped or sexually assaulted does.

What we can’t see is the mindset that because a girl with vomit stains on her shirt and called “dead” by those who saw her in that state didn’t say “no” when two boys shoved their fingers into her vagina, those boys were in the right. Though we can see the threats being made to Jane Doe’s life via social media from Big Red fans, or the blame being placed on Jane Doe for being an “alcoholic whore,” and worse.

The abundance of media coverage and editorial responses the Steubenville rape trial has amassed proves that there are people who understand that the rape culture that permeates our society is a very real threat to the safety of women and men. These people want to do something to change the way we view sex and consent. But that motivation can’t end with the football careers of two high school boys. Passing the blame between the rapists, the news anchors, the alcohol, the Instagrammed and Tweeted photos, and everything but the invisible war we’re fighting against ideas, not individual people or events, doesn’t change how rape culture is leading to the horror of rape of unconscious 16-year-olds.

The verdict is in, but we’re not even close to closing the case. Now’s the time to focus our anger on dismantling rape culture altogether. Use the case as a conversation starter for explaining what rape culture is to your friends and family. Be brave enough to call bullshit on excuses for enabling rape culture (“It’s just a joke!” “It’s not that big a deal.” “Oh, everyone says that!”) Add your voice to the public dialog through writing to your local government representatives encouraging them to create and support legislation that protects victims and survivors of sexual assault.

Don’t stand by and watch like the high school students at that party, or the Steubenville residents who stood by their football team instead of the victims of rape culture. I won’t consent to rape culture, and neither should you.

Written by Lauren Slavin

School’s In Session

Chambray Shirt: Ralph Lauren Denim & Supply (Levi’s Vintage from Unionmade alternative) |  Herringbone Blazer: Vintage (J.Crew alternative)  |  Camel Hair Tie: Club Monaco  |  Hankerchief: Levi’s Vintage

not shown:  Wing Tip Bluchers: Alden (Need Supply Co.)  |  Jeans: Acne (Mr. Porter)  |  Belt: Tanner Goods  |  Briefcase: Filson (Need Supply Co.)  |  Glasses: Warby Parker

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The Minnesota woman who took on the recording industry over a $222,000 verdict for sharing copyrighted songs has to pay up.

"Grimm" creators/showrunners Jim Kouf and David Greenwalt entertained an enthusiastic crowd at the Omaha Film Festival, just two days after the fantasy police procedural returned to NBC to respectable ratings.