firehose

AMOK, the new album from Thom Yorke’s Atoms For Peace isn’t out until next week, but it’s streaming now on the band’s website or below. For those who stream via the band's site, the music comes complete with a cool and/or seizure-inducing visualizer that has screencaps of stories about the band flicking back and forth in time with the tracks. Listen now and pass early judgment.

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Online retail giant Amazon has been inching toward having a physical retail presence in the US and UK through the installation of lockers at grocery stores, drug stores and other retail locations, like 7-Eleven, Staples, Walgreens and RadioShack. Amazon users can place orders online that are delivered to the lockers, avoiding hassles such as missed deliveries.

But instead of setting up lockers at various random locations, Amazon could establish a broad physical presence for dirt cheap with one bold move: It could buy RadioShack.

The US electronics retailer has lost more than 80% of its value in three years and is now worth just $325 million on the market. RadioShack has more than 4,400 stores in the US alone and 90% of them are within a two mile-radius of city and town centers.

The scenario of Amazon acquiring an ailing brick-and-mortar retailer like RadioShack, Sears or Best Buy (the latter two of which have market caps in the $5 billion range), has been talked about in the tech and dealmaker community. Such a move could give Amazon regional warehouses, a place for customers to pick up deliveries, and a storefront for popular items.

These locations could help Amazon as it expands into areas such as groceries that could benefit from same-day delivery or pickup. They might even become virtual showrooms where shoppers can place orders.

Assuming it went down this path, Amazon might want bigger locations than RadioShack stores could provide. Failed department stores, for example, could serve as warehouses and distribution centers too.

One reason for Amazon to not do this is that by retailing online, it has avoided having to collect state sales tax for many consumers, giving it an edge over retailers with physical stores. But that is changing. Amazon recently said it would support a bill before the Senate that would allow states to charge sales tax for online purchases. And it already collects sales tax in about half of all states now anyway.

(Update: Former Associated Content (now known as Yahoo! Voices) CEO Patrick Keane suggested on Twitter that Amazon could stock stores with different items based on what customers in that zip code are ordering. Each store could be tailored to the buying habits of that geographic area.)

A RadioShack acquisition could also make sense for Google. The 9to5 blog network reported that Google is planning to open retail stores in time for the holidays this year. The search giant in November announced that it was buying Canada’s BufferBox, which offers a similar locker system to Amazon’s. Google could use RadioShack stores not just as e-commerce delivery locations but also as sales centers for the growing number of devices it either produces or provides software for—think Apple stores, but for Android smartphones and tablets or ChromeBook laptops.

RadioShack was the focus of deal talks in 2010, but private equity firms decided against a buyout because they saw little hope in the retailer’s future. Back then, RadioShack had a market value of about $2.7 billion, more than eight times its current level. In October, the company reported a net loss of $47 million and is scheduled to release its next earnings results on Feb. 26.

The company just got a new CEO, Joseph Magnacca of drugstore chain Walgreens. It may resist a sale to give him time to try to turn RadioShack around. Magnacca is known for revamping the drugstores of Duane Reade, a Walgreens subsidiary.

But customers go to drugstores all the time for miscellaneous household items. The same can’t be said of RadioShack, which has struggled to get consumers to think of it as a go-to place for consumer electronics. If Magnacca cannot turn RadioShack around, Amazon could be its savior instead.

(We contacted both companies, but RadioShack declined to comment, and Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.)

See an Asteroid, Capture a Meteor!

It’s been said by many that “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”. Australian photographer Colin Legg has proven that true. He set out to capture last Friday’s fly-by from asteroid 2012 DA14 and accidentally caught with a burning meteor entry.

Think about it! You set up your camera to capture something well-planned and expected, and out of nowhere you see a burning fireball rush through your field of view, complete with its wispy vapor trail. Too cool.

In the full high-definition video (which you should really check out), you can also see a number of other man-made satellites moving through the frame. Altogether, one of the coolest space sequences I’ve seen in a long time.

(via EarthSky)

Not today, thieves. (via)

deguzzi:

Another Century's Episode: R

digg:

COFFEE-LOVERS be warned. Whether you are a three-double-espressos-a-day addict or just indulge in the occasional cappuccino, enjoy it while you can: a coffee drought may be on its way. Changing climate threatens to reduce the flow of coffee that fills 1.6 billion cups a day to a trickle. It may not be long before that after-dinner espresso costs more than the wine and some caffeine addicts will be forced to go cold turkey.

The actual end of the world.

This isn’t the usual post about some nincompoop making yet another foolish security mistake. It’s about a guy who does (almost) everything right and almost loses it all. Over at the White Hat Security Blog, Jeremiah Grossman tells a chilling tale about the day he forgot a password.

Grossman works in security and deals with a lot of sensitive material, much of which he keeps on his MacBook Pro. As a result, he’s extremely paranoid about his data protection protocols. His protocol involves two layers. First, his entire hard drive is encrypted with FileVault, the OS X full disk encryption utility that provides 128 bit AES encryption. This is already more security than most users have but he has a second layer that creates encrypted disk images (another OS X feature) each of which is encrypted with 256 bit AES. Thus, even if an attacker is able to breach the full disk encryption, there are still encrypted disk images that contain especially sensitive information. The images are mounted while needed and then unmounted so that their data is rarely available in plane text. Grossman also changes all his passwords on a regular basis. All those passwords are kept in one of the disk images and are protected by a master password.

This is doing security right. The data is always secure because of the full disk encryption and especially sensitive data is hidden away in virtual disks images that look like normal files and are easy for an attacker (or government agent, for that matter) to overlook. There’s only one thing missing: a backup for the master password. Some people will tell you to never write your password down. Grossman’s story is about what happens when you take that advice and then forget your password.

Follow the link for how he recovered and how hard it was. He only succeeded because he remembered most of the password. His story is interesting and enlightening but the post is valuable for another reason: it lays out a way to secure your data against most attackers (those that don’t come with 3 letter initials or a $5 wrench). If you’ve wondered how to secure your laptop against loss or other breach, this is a post you need to read. If you have a Mac and want to know how to set up encrypted virtual disks, Scott Jordan has a post that gives you the full explanation. If you’re working on another platform (or want another option on the OS X) take a look at TrueCrypt. It’s portable and can do everything described here.

Finally, I should mention that Jordan’s post on setting up virtual disk images shows you how to use it with Dropbox in a transparent and flexible way. If you use Dropbox and store sensitive information you need this because, as I’ve written many many times, if you store sensitive information in the cloud you better be encrypting it.

Are you getting in the mood for spring?  I certainly am — the itch is really needing to be scratched so I am not only starting to get my seed and plant orders finalized but also I am making some DIY plans.   This porch makeover  is just the sort of thing that I can’t wait to get messy with — once the snow is gone.  It is kind of extraordinary….

These were done using Modello Concrete Carpet patterns (stencils).  Gracie Reed (the artist behind this) used a polymer-based concrete overlay product called RSCrete from Faux Effects, International. Apparently it is not a piant but rather a substance that gets thinly troweled over an existing concrete slab -like a Venetian Plaster, but for  floors.

images from designamour

Numbers-cruncher John Jackson Miller estimates print sales of comic books and graphic novels in North America reached $715 million in 2012, a high not seen since 1993 or 1994. ROBOT 6 has details.

By Jim Rossignol on February 18th, 2013 at 9:00 am.

Space Combat is all very simple isn’t it? Grab a game pad, pull the trigger, remember there’s no up and down, except when there is, and chocks away, eh? But it’s not necessarily like that. Rogue System developers DCI explain: “Rogue System also gives a nod to both classic and modern hardcore combat flight-sims by introducing fully integrated ship systems and the click-able cockpit to control them. Not only will you have to fly and fight, but you will also have to manage your ship and its functions to get the most out of it at all times.” Yep, that means keeping an eye on more subsystems than a game of FTL, as you can see in the video below. Sounds fancy, and it looks like DCI have made some serious progress with this project, but they’re also aiming for Kickstarter, so that’ll be interesting to watch.

Nate Silver: Contemplating Obama’s Place in History, Statistically 

Yesterday's blog post about a particular game may have been perceived wrongly. It was not my intention to slag on Pathfinder, but to use it as an example of a more fundamental problem in the table-top games industry. I could have taken TSR to task for inventing the whole "splatbook" phenomenon (The Complete Guide to Syphilitic Halflings? Really TSR?). I could have gone after White Wolf for perfecting this model, because who doesn't need Topeka By Night? Right now, the game of finding paths is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the one with which people are the most familiar. It's not the sole, or greatest, purveyor of a more basic problem -- bloat.

I think some fundamental assumptions have taken root in the hobby games industry. Certainly, some of this is understandable. Game companies exist to make money (believe it or not), and they do this by putting out product. At a certain point, a game line reaches critical mass of information; I generally peg this at around seven products. But I'm not talking about the economic aspect. I'm referring to a philosophy that seems to dominate game design these days.

1) Bad GM Proofing
We've all had this experience. You join a group, or drop in on someone's game, and the Gamemaster is horrible. He doesn't know the rules, or he seems to have read them in a different language from everyone else at the table, or he has his own "homebrew" rules that he wants to use. Worse are the ones who think it's their job to murderate all the characters in the game; even the tavern-keepers whip out Shotguns of Lighting Bolts at the slightest provocation. You get the mumbling ya-yas who present everything in a monotone, or the theater major who wants to act (Acting!) every little scene and forgets about rolling dice.

You are, largely, at the whims of whomever is narrating your game. That's a basic weakness of the shared, interactive experience. You can write the greatest game ever in the history of humanity, and it turns to dreck in the hands of some moron with anger management issues. Game companies know this, because we've all been a victim of it; we played RPGs in basements, too. We hear about your terrible experiences at conventions and in e-mail. I've gotten emotional e-mails from fans telling me about how their GM is running a game I've written and begging me to fire off an "official" letter telling the guy how the rule actually works. (I kid you not.) And my advice was always the same: Find a new GM.

To combat this, we've tried to make our games "Bad GM Proof." More and more rules to handle every situation that could possibly come up. Example after example of game play to illustrate how a particular rule should be applied. New rules to modify old rules when an unforeseen problem crops up. Here's the thing though: You cannot "Bad GM Proof" a game. Can't be done. You can never regulate bad behavior in this way; a bad GM is always going to be a bad GM unless you actually go to his house and run the game for him.

2) There's a Right Way to Play
This is the converse impulse of trying to make a game unbreakable, I believe. There is a right way to play a game and a wrong way to play a game, and by God you're going to play it the way the designer intended. If you're playing Call of Cthulhu as a group of super-agents armed to the teeth with machine guns, you're not playing it right. If you want to use the rules for All Flesh Must Be Eaten to tell your touching story about love and redemption, then you're not playing it right. Admittedly, I hear this more from game players than game creators. I think most of us are just happy you're buying our products. We don't care how you use them, as long as you're using them.

I think this crops up in design thinking as a way to support established play. We have an idea of how the game should work, and we write more and more stuff to support that vision. This is the origin of the "splatbook." Dungeons & Dragons was a game about killing monsters and taking their stuff. TSR put out books to support that trope -- The Complete Book of How Dwarves Kill Things and Take Their Stuff, The Complete Book of How Elves Kill Things and Take their Stuff, and so on. We continue to find ways to refine and expand on the original game play experience.

The idea, particularly with AD&D 3E, was that everyone should have a shared experience. A group in Belfast and a group in Topeka should be able to play through a module and have similar experiences. They tried to emulate what had happened in the early 80s; take any of us from those days and ask us about Tomb of Horrors, and we've all played it. We wax nostalgic about that trap that vaporized the dwarf, or the one that killed the halfling. That shared experience, however, didn't come from playing the game the "right" way or even "the same way." In fact, I submit this shared experience was easier to achieve because the rules were less comprehensive. Simpler is better.

(And really, Pathfinder does this (cultivating a shared experience) really well with their adventure path series. In fact, I think you could play a great game with just their boxed set and the adventure path material; you don't need that 600-page behemoth of a rulesbook. Which makes me wonder why they even bother with it... )

At a point, you reach a point of diminishing returns; there literally becomes no way to continue to expand on the original game experience. Once TSR put out the Complete Book of Gnomes, they should have turned out the lights and moved on to something else. The game becomes too bloated, which makes it hard for newcomers to get into.

3) More is More
I blame Harn. Harn was the first real "expansive" game setting. That thing was breathtaking in its scope. It was like reading a travel guide for a place that didn't exist. I know it opened my eyes to the possibilities of world building and redefined what a setting looks like. The next setting I remember capturing my imagination was Talislanta; that setting had a book for each region, and each was a joy to read. I could go on -- Arduin, Jorune, Forgotten Realms... I haven't even gotten into the big daddy of them all: Empire of the Petal Throne. At a certain point, for me as a designer, if it wasn't as detailed as Harn, it just wasn't a setting.

You all learned that lesson, too. That's why you demand the kind of detail I railed against yesterday. The more detail a setting has, the better is must be. I get the impulse, because I have it, too. The question becomes, then, how much detail is enough, and is the information actually useful in game play? I think that point is different for different kinds of game players. Some people want tons of information about the setting, while others really don't need that much at all.

As I get older, as a game designer, I've come to appreciate the converse: Less is more. It's a Zen thing. What makes the cup useful? The empty space in the middle. What makes the Zen painting profound? The white space surrounding the subject. By not covering every little detail, you give the reader permission to fill in the blanks. You let him or her make their own connections. In short, you encourage them to use their imaginations.

When I look back on those early, awesome settings, there was actually a lot of stuff they left out. I had no idea why the Yittek delved into tombs in Talislanta, I just knew they did, so I created all these connections in my head to answer the question. If you look at Empire of the Petal Throne, there was a lot of "white space" between the elements MAR Barker included. I'd much rather a game setting that leaves things unspoken and unconnected over one that tells me all about the sociological effects of cotton exports to the elves.

As I begin to design games again, I find myself coming back to this question: How much detail is enough, is it useful to the game, and am I leaving enough room for the end user to create?

After becoming the world’s leading manufacturer of goods and largest emitter of carbon dioxide, China can add world’s leading consumer of mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) to its trophy case.

“By the end of February 2013, China will have 246 million devices compared to 230 million in the U.S.,” says mobile analytics company Flurry, which estimates that its survey covers more than 90% of the world’s “smart devices.”

In January, the US and China were within one million devices of one another. Flurry is measuring what it calls “active” devices, which means phones and tablets that are actually connecting to the internet, and not simply devices sold.

Despite the enormous size of the Chinese market, it is still the sixth-fastest growing market for tablets and smartphones, by Flurry’s estimate.

Even as this growth slows, its dizzying pace, and the relatively maturity of the US market for smartphones means that China will almost certainly remain a larger market for mobile devices than the US.

A nicely designed example of anthropomorphic fashion, 汇(HUI) is an interactive garment that takes its visual and behavioral cues from the hedgehog (It's name as well).

Created by artist Yougsil Lee, the garment, in its normal, relaxed state, gently pulses with white light. When threatened, such as someone approaching the garment quickly, the spikes located on the front bodice animate and LEDs turn cautionary red. 

 Similar to Wipprecht's Spider Dress, Lee's garment protects the body. 

In collaboration with engineer Daniel Schatzmayr, Anouk Wipprecht's latest techno-couture creation is a sinister robotic spider dress. 

 

Perched on the wearer's shoulders are animated robotic limbs that eerily crawl around the body. The robotic dress both incites the curiosity of passersby by coyly dancing around the wearer's body while at the same time protecting the wearer if somebody approaches too fast or comes to close. 

The performative garment deals with themes of "personal space" and raises questions concerning control and privacy. 

 

As with with much of Wipprecht's past work, the space of the body is once again transformed into a stage where the garment becomes the leading actor. 

Read this wonderful interview to learn more about Wipprecht's past work.

Photography by Anna Cervinkova

Some might say all art is a reflection of the times we live in.

If back in the day comics and movies were pretty naive and faced only as pure escapism, today’s fiction has to evoke reality to create something truly meaningful… and frightening.

This series is an experiment where a dictator, a psycho, a murderer (sometimes they are the whole package) or even a suspicious figure from real life is mashed with a comics bad guy - strangely related some way or the other with his counterpart.

The depressing thing? Realising that if the comic book supervillains were actually the ones threatening real life, the world wouldn’t be such a bad place.

by Butcher Billy on Behance

On its surface, the case is about whether farmers can use seeds derived from patented crops. But the bigger question is, how much control does a company have over its patented products once they're in the hands of consumers?

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via laughingstation

Twitter alters its terms of access to its information, thereby harming the services that built themselves on that information. Which was stupid, because Twitter gets fewer and fewer material benefits from allowing people to use its water. And why would you build a service that relies on a private company’s assets anyway? Facebook changes its terms of access regularly. It’s broken its own Pages system and steadily grows more invasive and desperate. Instagram, now owned by Facebook, just went through its first major change in terms of service. Which went as badly as anyone who’s interacted with Facebook would expect. As Twitter disconnected itself from sharing services like IFTTT, so Instagram disconnected itself from Twitter. Flickr’s experiencing what will probably be a brief renaissance due to having finally built a decent iOS app, but its owners, Yahoo!, are expert in stealing defeat from the jaws of victory. Tumblr seems to me to be spiking in popularity, which coincides neatly with their hiring an advertising sales director away from Groupon, a company described by Techcrunch last year as basically loansharking by any other name.

This may be the end of the cycle that began with Friendster and Livejournal. Not the end of social media, by any means, obviously. But it feels like this is the point at where the current systems seize up for a bit. Perhaps not even in ways that most people will notice. But social media seems now to be clearly calcifying into Big Media, with Big Media problems like cable-style carriage disputes. Frame the Twitter-Instagram spat in terms of Virginmedia not being able to carry Sky Atlantic in the UK, say (I know there are many more US examples).

Google+, of course, is not, strictly speaking, a social network. Most people can’t see what other people are doing there. Google, of course, sees it all. But everyone knows that going in.

It feels like the social web is going to get somewhat less interesting for a while. Less connected, less engaged.

Twitter’s going to be used for tv ratings in the States now. The clever thing about that it that it serves the same purpose as Facebook Likes: it documents media preferences. These are the things that keep a free service free, of course. But, god, there have to be less banal and creepy ways to do it.

I wonder if anyone’s been thinking twice about giving up their personal websites.

[Instagram: I said on that service earlier that I'll wait and see. Some hours later, they released an update to their TOS that I haven't had a good look at yet. But all my Instagram photos were backed up when Facebook bought them, and that backup auto-updates every time I post.]

hadeniikuze:

fairy-wren:

Red Kite misjudges dive on a scrap of fallen meat only to be ambushed by a Canada Goose. 

(photos by Craig Sluman)

Oh my gods.

Just.

That FACE. XD

170K views

hurlscout:

referencesforartists:

brenanf999:

dontwantyourmoneysir:

anndruyan:

This is a summary of college only using two pictures; expensive as hell.

That’s my Sociology “book”. In fact what it is is a piece of paper with codes written on it to allow me to access an electronic version of a book. I was told by my professor that I could not buy any other paperback version, or use another code, so I was left with no option other than buying a piece of paper for over $200. Best part about all this is my professor wrote the books; there’s something hilariously sadistic about that. So I pretty much doled out $200 for a current edition of an online textbook that is no different than an older, paperback edition of the same book for $5; yeah, I checked. My mistake for listening to my professor.

This is why we download. 

 Alternatives to buying overpriced textbooks

Textbooknova 

Reddit

Bookboon 

Textbookrevolution 

GaTech Math Textbooks

Ebookee 

Freebookspot 

Free-ebooks

Getfreeebooks 

BookFinder

Oerconsortium 

Project Gutenberg

Spreading this shit like nutella because goddamn textbooks are so expensive. 

not necessarily art related but as someone who couldn’t afford their textbooks this semester this is a godsend

A lot of my professors are using online books/tests like CourseCompass where you have to buy the code to access everything. You have the option of buying the book too or the online book. I wish I had a code gen for this place. I use it every year and the codes are only good for a semester.

I was the assistant manager of a small college bookstore for 8 years (1996-2004) and I’m so glad to be out of it. Textbook companies are shady as fuck, professors are either clueless academics with no idea how the world works or cut-throat assholes like this dude up here. There me and my boss were, employees of a financially troubled institution trying to make sure we showed a profit so the university didn’t outsource the whole shebang caught in the middle and always catching the student’s ire. 

I did a fucking dance when I did my last textbook buyback.

Reminder: we let teenagers vote in the U.S.

These tweets were discovered and retweeted this morning by @80want (formerly @spergers), king of finding bad teen tweets.

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This can’t be good news for the Burger Kind social media team. About an hour ago, a tweet appeared in its Twitter stream saying, “We just got sold to McDonalds! Look for McDonalds in a hood near you,” and the avatar was changed to the McDonald’s logo.

Since then, the timeline has turned into complete mayhem, filling up with outrageous claims about Burger King food and staff, shoutouts to Chicago rapper Chief Keef, and RTs of folks freaking out over the hack.

So far, hacker group Anonymous seems to be claiming responsibility, dubbing the hack “#OPMadCow.”

The fact that it’s a national holiday may be one reason that Burger King hasn’t been able to regain control of the account yet.

Click through the gallery above to see the tweets from the hacked account.

UPDATE: Here’s an official statement about the incident from Burger King, via BuzzFeed:

It has come to our attention that the Twitter account of the BURGER KING® brand has been hacked. We have worked directly with administrators to suspend the account until we are able to re-establish our legitimate site and authentic postings. We apologize to our fans and followers who have been receiving erroneous tweets about other members of our industry and additional inappropriate topics.

[via @BurgerKing]

Bulleit is a growing brand owned by the largest beverage alcohol company in the world, Diageo. Bulleit has certainly made a name for itself in the last 14 or so years. A lot of Bulleit’s growth has to do with being embraced by the ‘craft’ cocktail movement that has taken place in the last decade. I don’t have a plethora of facts to back that up admittedly but if you have been paying attention at your local upscale watering holes I think you’ll agree.

The first product produced under the Bulleit brand was Bulleit Bourbon, a high rye grain bill made for Diageo by Four Roses distillery in Lawrenceburg, KY. Seagrams owned Four Roses since the early 1940′s, and purchased the Bulleit brand name in the late 90′s. Upon hitting hard times due to a diluted portfolio, Seagrams was purchased by Vivendi, who then sold it’s whiskey brands to Diageo. Whew (almost done)! Diageo then sold Four Roses to Kirin out of Japan, but kept the Bulleit brand name, which was distilled at Four Roses under contract. That contract continues to this day for Bulleit brand bourbons.

In the last year and a half, Bulleit expanding portfolio saw the introduction of a rye whiskey produced by Midwest Grain Products (MGP, formerly LDI). In the last month they’ve released a 10 year old version of namesake Bourbon. The subject of this review is the company’s orange labeled flagship as well as the new 10 year old. Let’s get to tasting shall we…….

Bulleit Bourbon Frontier Whiskey, 45% abv (90 Proof), $25/bottle
Color: Medium Amber/Deep Orange
Nose: Caramel, fragrant and sweet orange rind, clove, vanilla, spiced honey, hints of banana, and wet stone. The nose is crisp, mildly floral, and razor sharp.
Palate Caramel and vanilla up front but overcome quickly by cinnamon red hots, orange rind, and clove. Healthy spices here but with an attitude that is not overly aggressive nor too “hot”.
Finish Cinnamon, vanilla, lingering earth/minerality and barrel.
Overall: One sip and you’ll see why Bulleit is loved by cocktail enthusiasts. It’s clean and sharp leaning towards the drier side of things on the palate. As a neat sipper it works very well and offers versatility in a shaker to boot. Much like Four Roses Small Batch, when used to make an Old Fashioned or Mint Julep, the fruit and spice notes really come through. This one is not very frontier like at all, and that’s probably a good thing.
Sour Mash Manifesto Rating: 8.4 (Very Good)

Bulleit 10 Year Old Bourbon Frontier Whiskey, 45.6% abv (91.2 Proof), $45/bottle
Color: Medium Amber/ Deep Orange/ Copper
Nose: Stickier, richer and fuller on the nose than little brother. Caramel candy, maple sugars, vanilla, citrus rind, black tea, clove, and a healthy backbone of wood.
Palate Caramel and vanilla wrapped around a fruity core of orange and red apple. The wood notes ramp up quickly at mid palate. Barrel spices abound (cinnamon, clove, and a bit of licorice bite) without being overly dry.
Finish Big barrel spice and wood notes. Subtle caramel sweetness. Moderate length.
Overall: Certainly the oak influence is ramped up considerably as you would expect, but not overly so. It’s a bit sweeter, richer, and bolder than the younger Bulleit. It’s also a great sipper neat, with a splash, or with a cube. I found the fruitier and sweet spice notes more pleasing to my palate on the whole, but keep in mind the $20 price difference. Is it worth it? If you are a Bulleit fan or a fan of drier bourbons I’d recommend this one.
Sour Mash Manifesto Rating: 8.7 (Excellent)

She tried to get help in an unusual way, joining the cast of “Celebrity Rehab 3” with Dr. Drew Pinsky. McCready came off as a sympathetic figure during the show’s run. Pinsky called her an “angel” and in an interview in 2010 said it appeared McCready was doing “rather well.”

Pinsky helped treat McCready for love addiction on the show and said he’d referred her to professionals who could continue to help her afterward.

“A love addict basically is somebody that really didn’t have a good model for intimacy in their childhood, often times traumatized in one way or another, thereby intimacy becomes a risk place, becomes an intolerable place,” Pinsky said.

McCready suffered a seizure in one of the show’s scarier moments. Tests showed she had suffered brain damage, something she attributed to her abusive relationship with McKnight.

McCready is the fifth celebrity to pass away since appearing on Pinsky’s show and the third from Season 3. Alice in Chains bassist Mike Starr and “Real World” participant Joey Kovar both died of overdoses.