firehose

Taran Mathuru: how being called poo-skin turned me to writing about fantasy races:

Throughout my younger years, I felt immense loneliness, which I think is something that many people experience when they are singled out for being different, whatever the reason. Other times, I simply felt extremely angry, exacerbated by the lack of consequences for the bullies’ actions. Ultimately, three things got me through it.

The first was simply making other friends. In the end, you’ll never win over the people who dislike you for what you are, but there are plenty of people who won’t care at all and will welcome you with open arms. The insults mattered a lot less when I knew that I had friends who liked me for who I was, and when they came to my defence I knew I did not have to face it alone.

The second was reading, especially in the early days – you are never alone with a good book, and the fantastical worlds I read gave me a great buffer from the anger I felt. The way the book’s protagonists overcame their problems taught me to not feel so sorry for myself and face things head on.             

I became especially attached to young male characters that I could empathise with, especially those who overcame things on their own. One was the protagonist from the Saga of Darren Shan, who was the only young boy in a world full of older vampires. Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet was another favourite, where a boy crash-lands in the wilderness and learns to survive on his own.

Even with these brilliant, self-sufficient characters to read about, it was not enough – I wanted to create my own, even be the hero myself. So, writing became the third thing that got me through my childhood…

Money well spent!

Welp.

Never change, Jets fans. Never change. pic.twitter.com/3lp950JwMQ

— Bart Hubbuch (@BartHubbuch) May 12, 2015

According to the New York Daily News, Jets fans have paid for 12 of these billboards all over New Jersey. TWELVE. To make a #DadJoke. About Tom Brady.

SOMEONE TELL THOSE PEOPLE ABOUT TWITTER BEFORE THEY GO BANKRUPT.

lama-armonica:

4 Fiorini - Landschneckt by Celia Peachum on Flickr.

Me as landsknecht pike(wo)man :D
Photo by Celia Peachum

Verizon’s $4.4 billion bid for A OL isn’t just another whimsical moment in web investment weirdness. It’s serious. The deal creates a huge media-communications giant, just like huge evil media conglomerates before it — and, if you consider the facts, it’s possibly worse.

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https://instagram.com/fflowerporn/




https://instagram.com/fflowerporn/


https://instagram.com/fflowerporn/

Tattoo You, Olga Nekrasova

Don’t you want a safe, friendly, nurturing environment where you can feel safe, friendly, and nurtured?

• Tom Hardy has a cryptic tease for some unknown, DC-related movie project after he had to sit out from Suicide Squad. (via Blastr)
• The new Muppets show has a time slot and everything! Tuesdays at 8PM! Oh, and so does the rest of ABC’s lineup or whatever. (via THR)

Now your backpack is impenetrable! (Throwing not advisable yet highly recommended.) (via Fashionably Geek)

• Sit back, relax, and enjoy Ayn Rand’s The Babysitter’s Club. Oh, and if you weren’t already going to read it in the voice of BioShock‘s Andrew Ryan, well… now you are. You’re welcome. (via The Toast)
• Public service announcement: Snoop Dogg thinks Game of Thrones is based on real history and watches it to study. (via New York Post)

For inclusion in “2015′s Most Notable Burns,” a collection by @jazzedloon. pic.twitter.com/TEul6f3lGx

— choire (@Choire) May 12, 2015

Presented without further comment.

—Please make note of The Mary Sue’s general comment policy.—

Do you follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

The trailer for the Jem and the Holograms movie is out and... no. Just no. We get a Jerrica who goes from shy girl to diva, no Misfits, no artificial intelligence, and NO ACTUAL HOLOGRAMS? It’s like the people who made this thing never actually watched the show.

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The video game "Eve Online" is one of Iceland’s biggest exports and has become the world’s largest living work of science fiction. While rival games have come and gone, it has survived — thanks to a unique experiment in democracy.

This puts the study in league, amount-of-author-wise, with the Higgs boson discovery paper (about 6,000 authors) and the report on the first completed human genome sequence (more than 2,800 authors).

mpicpp sends news that Verizon has agreed to pay $90 million (PDF), and Sprint another $68 million (PDF), to settle claims that they placed unauthorized charges on their customers's bills. The process, known as "cramming," has already cost T-Mobile and AT&T settlements in the tens of millions as well. Most of the settlement money will go towards setting up refund programs, but Verizon and Sprint will be able to keep 30% and 35% of the fees they collected, respectively. In response to the news, both companies issued vague statements about "putting customers first." They are now banned from charging for premium text message services and must set up systems to ensure informed consent for third-party charges.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As soon as the clouds come out, these two curl up together. Best way to ward off seasonal affected disorder in PNW?
#OHSpets #adoptdontshop #dogsofinstagram #catsofinstagram #interspecieslove #pdx

The Texas state Senate has voted to allow clergy members to refuse performing marriages that violate their beliefs.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris was granted an extension to the deadline her office faced next week for processing a proposed ballot initiative that advocates killing anyone who engages in gay sex.

http://thefabulousweirdtrotters.tumblr.com/


http://thefabulousweirdtrotters.tumblr.com/


http://thefabulousweirdtrotters.tumblr.com/

thefabulousweirdtrotters:

John Breed - "God’s Intention"

Mirrored Polished Stainless Steel, Silverplated Animal

Skeletons, Wooden Construction

260 cm x 240 cm x 90cm

brucesterling:

*China seen by Chinese social media

This is super interesting.

After years and years of intensive researching and studying we came to the conclusion that wolves themselves seem to not really know either

This video contains strong language.

By now you’ve no doubt heard the famed “Leeroy Jenkins!” battle cry, and possibly even seen the viral video of a World of Warcraft sequence gone horribly wrong, even if you have no idea what the heck is going on. That video turns ten years old this week.

Back on May 11, 2015, according to Business Insider, the famed Leeroy Jenkins video first showed up on an obscure video gaming forum. The video shows a handful of World of Warcraft (WoW) players discussing – in exacting detail – their plans for an upcoming sequence in one of the game’s dungeons. One player even “calculates” their odds of success (“32.33, repeating of course, percentage”).

And then the unthinkable happens: one player, “Leroy Jenkins,” apparently bored with all the talk, rushes headlong into the dungeon, shouting his name as his battle cry.

“Let’s do this! Leeroy Jenkins!”

Within seconds, everyone is dead, and Leroy’s fellow players are cursing him for not sticking to the plan.

The video was a gag, of course; there was no player named “Leroy Jenkins” who ignored his friends and cost them their battle. “Leroy” was actually a college student named Ben Schulz (who is now an electrical engineer), and his friends in the sequence are also acting. Here’s a hint: listen to the guy at (1:36) trying desperately not to crack up while delivering his lines (“Stick to the plan!”). And here’s another hint: there’s no actual way to calculate your odds of success (“32.33, repeating”) in a World of Warcraft dungeon.

But none of that mattered to the phenomenon that “Leeroy Jenkins” would become.

In those days, YouTube and Facebook were just getting started, and World of Warcraft was just a fraction of the cultural mainstay that it is today. No one had ever heard of a “viral video,” and a “meme” was something written about in academic journals.

Whether “Leeroy Jenkins!” changed all that is something for internet historians to debate, but one thing is clear: Leeroy has since become one of the internet’s most well-known, and well-parodies, memes. He’s become synonymous with rushing headlong into danger without giving a second thought to overwhelming odds.

He’s also become a beloved part of the game that made him famous, according to Shack News. Blizzard, the company that produces World of Warcraft, has hired “Leroy Jenkins” – er, Ben Schulz – to appear at World of Warcraft conventions, and have even worked the Leroy character (voiced by Schulz) into subsequent game expansions.

Like “Charlie Bit Me” or “Leave Britney Alone!,” “Leeroy Jenkins!” is one of those internet gags that you either “get” or you don’t. There’s no explaining the joke. But whether or not “Leeroy” is your cup of tea, there’s no denying that he’s become part of our collective consciousness.

Here’s to ten more years, Leeroy Jenkins!

[Image courtesy of: YouTube]

Leeroy Jenkins! World of Warcraft’s Favorite Viral Video, Meme Turns Ten Years Old Today is an article from: The Inquisitr News

The X-Files, a summary

In Evgeny Morozov's recent New Yorker essay on the new makers, he quotes historian Jackson Lears' critique of the Arts & Crafts movement as "a revivifying hobby for the affluent." I'd say middle-class: (mostly) women who aren't seeing what they want, at a price they can afford, in the marketplace.

There’s an appetite for the "refashion," recycling an old dress or an adult T-shirt, and turning it into something new. Once upon a time, the use of flour sacks as fabric prompted grain-sellers to start offering their wares in flowered cotton bags. If some boutique grain company began doing that again, there would be a run on their product. Under the technology radar, there's a community of people sharing free patterns, knowledge and results, without the interpolation of brands, constantly obsolescent machinery, or the self-serving and myth-making rhetoric Morozov finds in Chris Anderson's Makers. There are the answers to the questions "Why bother?" and "How creative?" Rather than sewing being a cautionary tale, 3D printing can't become a consumer good until it learns a few lessons from why we sew now.

Number one: what's not available on the market. If you have a girl child in America, it is often difficult to find reasonably-priced, 100 per cent cotton clothing for her without ruffles, pink or purple, butterflies and hearts. If you go to the boy section, you run into an equally limiting set of colors, navy and army green, and an abundance of sports insignia. A full-skirted dress, a petite skirt, prints for the plus-sized – there are plenty of styles that are not novelties but, when not in fashion, disappear from stores. Online you can find patterns to make any of the above for less than $10, and fabric at the same price per yard. Online you can find step-by-step explanations, with photos, of how to make that pattern. That world of patterns is vast, constantly updated, and historically rich. Yes, sewing your own garment will take some time, but then you will have exactly what you want. That's why women bother.

The consumer-facing side of 3D printing is Thingiverse, where you can download a digital file (like a pattern) to tell your 3D printer what to print. This is a little different than sewing because, while you can choose your filament (at $43 per roll), you don't have much input. You are not cutting, pinning. You are not customising. And a skim of the offerings suggests not so much items not on the market, or even items desperately needed, but items to show off that you 3D printed something. Vases, figurines, intricate and unwearable wearables. Why spend the time or money? Even at the Makerbot showroom in Boston, they showed nothing that was useful (a jet-pack bunny) and few things that were beautiful (honeycombed Easter eggs). All objects, no problem-solving.

The only 3D printed object I have ever desired is the Free Universal Construction Kit, designed to allow one to attach Lego to Bristle Blocks to Zoob. It definitely solves a problem not addressed by the market. It's not on the market because the rival toy manufacturers have no interest in getting everything to connect. I still wouldn't want to print it at home: I would rather send the job to the Makerbot showroom, and let someone else mind the machine, because my input would be minimal.

Who should save the sight of an uninsured South Carolina man who can’t afford eye surgery? That’s the question the Charlotte Observer asks in a story about a 49-year-old Republican who declined to sign up for Obamacare because he “prided himself on paying his own medical bills,” and is now upset that the Affordable Care Act won’t bail him out.

Luis Lang, a self-employed handyman from Fort Mill whose clients include the federal government, told the Observer he “knew the act required him to get coverage but he chose not to do so. But he thought help would be available in an emergency,” like the mini-strokes and deteriorating vision he suffered in February.

It’s not available though, because that’s not how insurance works.

merbs sends an update on MakerBot, one of the most well known names in the 3D-printing industry. After its acquisition by Stratasys in 2013, defective parts plagued the company's printers in 2014. MakerBot co-founder and CEO Bre Pettis stepped down, and the company laid off 20% of its employees. The new CEO, Jonathan Jaglom, is now talking about how they're rebuilding MakerBot, and where we can expect it to go in the future. "The 39-year-old, Swiss-born Jaglom says that his priorities since taking over have been to dedicate more attention to customer support, to address the remaining fallout from the extruder problem, and to reorient the company to target its Replicators to the professional and educational markets." Jaglom also envisions a sort of "iTunes for 3D printing," where people can easily buy designs online and print them out at home. He says, "I'll be sitting at home. Maybe something broke; maybe my glasses. Maybe I want to reprint it and I'll go to Oakley, Ray Ban, whatever, Philippe Starck in this case, download the file, pay $3.49 for it, and print it at home. And then you will have to go to your Kinko's or your Fab Labs, your local 3D printing, if you want it in metal or plastics you can't have at home."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ulanji:

tsukum:

i hate when i go up north and go to restaurants and the waiter comes to take my order and im like “do yall have sweet tea??” and theyre like “no sweetheart but we have unsweetened iced tea and we can give you some sugar packets!!!” llike no you fucking yankee because now the tea is already cold so the sugar wont dissolve in it and itll all just sink the bottom and be nasty learn basic fucking solubility this is 9th grade chemistry thats why sweet tea exists in the first place you fucking heat the tea up to make it and then while its still hot you add the sugar and then you chill it and its sweet fucking tea i bet you pronounce pecan like peecan too you four seasons-having piece of shit

i hate when i go down south and go to restaurants and the waiter says “we dont serve gays”

MIT Study suggests current solar power tech is good enough. by Terrence O’Brien via engadget

The standard line about solar power is that while good in theory, the technology just isn’t there to keep our lights on and our Netflix streaming. But a new study from MIT (PDF) suggests that’s not the case. According to the massive report (an epic 356 pages) current crystalline silicon photovoltaic technology is capable of delivering terawatt-scale power by 2050. That would be many times larger than Topaz facility California that generates 550 megawatts. While there is certainly room for improvement in efficiency, the MIT study says that the biggest hurdle isn’t tech, it’s investment. The authors called out the lack of funding for research and development, but focused more on poor governmental policies. Subsidies generally go to other energy sources, like oil and natural gas, and trade policies set by the federal government have driven up prices by restricting imports of cheaper solar parts in order to boost domestic production.

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ariannenymeria:

Abbi raving about Orange is the New Black; Laura raving about Orphan Black; Tatiana raving about Broad City.

DrugAbuse.com analyzed over 3.5 million Instagram posts to find out which drugs were most frequently alluded to at 15 different music festivals.

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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