firehose

In a way, you were the dream: someone who delivered high-quality work — or even perfection — without staying at the company long enough to get paid.

In 1978, Lee travelled to Alexander City, Alabama, to research a murder trial that she planned to turn into a book. The family of a lawyer involved in the case still hopes that a manuscript might materialize.

Pride And Prejudice And Dragons? Naomi Novik won't ever have Jane Austen show up as a character in the Temeraire books — but she is working on a story about "the adventures of Captain Elizabeth Bennet and her dragon Wollstonecraft." HECK YEAH.

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la-rinascente:

smoothiesandbooks:

MY LIFE WAS SO INCOMPLETE BEFORE THIS EPISODE

A scene with three women of color including one massively influential and accomplished transwoman in a TV show about a woman of color who is well-educated, intelligent, and successful. Love it.

The burdens of the working poor are increasingly borne by a growing class of people of color. That's the latest finding from a new report (PDF) from the Working Poor Families Project. 

This is the way it shakes out: in 2013, people of color made up 58 percent of the 10 million low-income working families in the U.S., even though people of color are just 40 percent of all working families across the country. The dynamic has only worsened since the start of the recession in 2007 and during a time when the nation's workforce has become more racially diverse. 

People of color are well on their way to constituting the majority of people in the U.S. As such, their share of the U.S. workforce is growing, even as white people's growth in the U.S. has stagnated. Between 2012 and 2022, the number of people of color in the U.S. workforce is expected to grow by 21 percent while the number of white people working in that same period is set to decline by 2 percent. The dropoff is due largely to white people's stagnating growth in the U.S. The year 2013 marked the first that white deaths in the country outnumbered white births, according to the Washington Post.

Given that people of color are the nation's fastest-growing groups, their economic well-being is of pressing concern to the nation's, the report argues. But while the country is celebrating signs of economic revival, low-income workers and people of color are being left behind. Between 2009 and 2013, the numbers of low-income families grew from 10.1 million to 10.6 million, with people of color making up a disproportionate amount of that growth. Today, the racial wealth gap between whites and blacks is at its highest level since 1989, and white households have a median net worth that's 13 times that of black families' net worth, and 10 times that of Latinos'. 

Different racial groups are also more likely to work in different kinds of low-wage jobs, report authors point out. Asians in the bottom rungs of the income scale are more likely to work in salons, or as retail workers. African-Americans are most likely to be concentrated among the ranks of health aides, cashiers, and as caregivers. Latinos, meanwhile, are more likely to work in cleaning and in restaurants.

"Racial/ethnic minorities are not disproportionately low-income because of a lack of work effort," according to the report, "but because they are more likely to be working in low-paying jobs." 

(h/t Los Angeles Times)

Dropping his second studio album a week early has proven to be a brilliant move for Kendrick Lamar.

Today Billboard announced that "To Pimp a Butterfly" is set to become No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart next week. "Industry sources are forecasting the set to move over 325,000 equivalent album units in the week ending March 22," the publication reports. 

"To Pimp a Butterfly" broke the Spotify record for the album most streamed on on Monday, the day of its release. The spot was previously held by Drake's equally surprising premiere of "If You're Reading This It's Too Late" with 6.8 million streams. Lamar's album far surpassed the precedent collecting 9.6 million streams in its first 24 hours, according to the company's statement.

According to a tweet from TDE President Punch, the album racked up an additional, record breaking 9.8 million streams on Tuesday. 

  

It actually makes a lot of sense. It’s also genius marketing. But really, how did the world’s most talented chefs and esteemed restaurants and come to be so concerned with the approval (and stars) of a company that sold rubber tires?

A legendary design firm, a corporate executive, and a Buddhist-hospice director take on the end of life.

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jfruh writes "A group of California taxi operators are suing Uber, claiming the ridehailing service is guilty of false advertising when it comes to rider safety. The taxi companies claim that Uber doesn't use a Live Scan fingerprint ID for drivers like they do, and that the $1 "safe rides" fee on every fare doesn't specifically go towards boosting safety. From the article: "The suit comes in the wake of problems Uber is facing in some countries. On Wednesday, the Frankfurt Regional Court issued a nationwide ban against the company’s UberPop service after declaring its business model illegal. Using a smartphone app to connect passengers with private drivers that use their own cars and don’t have the required licenses is illegal, the court observed."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sixpenceee:

Geometric Pond Ice in South Oregon. This occurs because of undisturbed slow freezing. The lake was kept just at or slightly below the freezing point for a significant amount of time. The center of each triangle is a nucleation site. The slower it cools the larger each one can grow before more nucleation sites form. 

For more interesting posts visit sixpenceee

“Gay community, I am your daughter. My mom raised me with her same-sex partner back in the ’80s and ’90s,” writes Heather Barwick, a 31-year-old mother of four, in The Federalist. “I’m writing to you because I’m letting myself out of the closet: I don’t support gay marriage. But it might not be for the reasons that you think. It’s not because you’re gay. I love you, so much. It’s because of the nature of the same-sex relationship itself.” ... “Same-sex marriage and parenting withholds either a mother or father from a child while telling him or her that it doesn’t matter. That it’s all the same. But it’s not,” she writes. “A lot of us, a lot of your kids, are hurting. My father’s absence created a huge hole in me, and I ached every day for a dad. I loved my mom’s partner, but another mom could never have replaced the father I lost.”

The vice principal of a California middle school has been placed on administrative leave after he was caught on a student’s phone camera saying, “I just don’t like the black kids.” Joe DiFilippo, an 18-year vet of the Fresno Unified School District, is under investigation for the incident — and on Tuesday he was the target of a protest that had former students chanting, “I love black people,” and “Black power.”

itwbennett writes Twitter is ramping up its efforts to combat harassment with a tool to help users report abusive content to law enforcement. The reports would include the flagged tweet and its URL, the time at which it was sent, the user name and account URL of the person who posted it, as well as a link to Twitter's guidelines on how authorities can request non-public user account information from Twitter. It is left up to the user to forward the report to law enforcement and left up to law enforcement to request the user information from Twitter.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's how I generally, theoretically, approach lighting in my games and game worlds. Part 2 is about light and function, mostly for level design.

In part 1, I talked about how different light sources have different connotations to the viewer, and these meanings are culturally constructed. In New York City today, an antique Edison bulb connotes trendy bourgeois expense, but 50 years ago it might've been merely eccentric, and 150 years ago it would've been a thrilling phenomenological novelty.

But people rarely intellectualize lighting this way, in, like, your own bedroom. In your daily middle class Western life you don't usually agonize over the existential quandaries of electricity, you just flip the light switch without looking. When in familiar places, we experience light as a resource or tool and take it for granted. So much of our everyday relationship with light concerns its functionality and what it enables us to do.


Lighting intended for a specific purpose is called task lighting, as opposed to merely cosmetic or decorative lighting. My thinking is that it's NOT about establishing a rigid binary of which lights are what, but rather it's to get you to imagine what particular tasks a particular light lets you do. Many lights can be both functional and decorative -- for instance, a candle flickering on a restaurant table is moodily dim and romantic, but it also helps you discern different tables and see your food.

In games, we are concerned with making the world readable (or selectively unreadable) for the player, to help them navigate and wayfind through a space, as well as discern different game objects. We also want to reassure the player that the world was competently constructed with some sort of intent, and that they aren't wasting their time and/or money.

For now, let's try thinking about light more formally. How does light let us read a game more easily, and what are some common patterns?

from Magnar Jenssen's excellent "Functional Lighting"

In 3D games, light gives us crucial depth cues and allows us to read the surface of an object. Without lighting, every square inch of an object will appear to have the same "value", which flattens the entire shape and emphasizes its silhouette instead of its surface.

Sometimes this flatness is a good thing that can simplify our scenes and make them easier to read, or sometimes we'll want to trick the player, but much of the time this is a distraction that prevents a player from understanding what they are seeing and interacting with your game -- and because we are trying to depict a 3D object on a flat 2D screen, we often need all the depth cues we can get.

Look at the round shapes below, and look at how relying only on silhouettes means they will LIE TO YOU:


(Again, lying to the player or viewer is great if you have a purpose in doing so... but purposeless lying is just some trolling bullshit.)

At "fullbright", or when a game engine renders models unlit at default 100% brightness, it is difficult to tell the difference between the cylinder and the sphere. To help read 3D depth into a 2D image, we need to use texture, fog, similar objects near us and far from us -- we need spatial context.

Light is the main tool for creating this context. With light, we can read the contour and a mesh's surface normals -- the direction(s) that a given 3D surface is pointing, whether it is concave / convex, round or flat, etc.

Reading this surface topology is often very important for playing 3D games. Is this hill too steep to climb, am I supposed to go here? If I throw a grenade, which way will it roll down, and how quickly? How far is it to the top or bottom of the room, can I jump up or fall down safely? A lot of this type of lighting is about signposting for the player to help them understand their surroundings.


The image above is a scene from Residue Processing in Half-Life 1. Note the hanging ceiling spotlights focus on the floor, leaving the wall relatively dim -- this helps emphasize the neon green splashes from the toxic sludge, which is an important hazard throughout this chapter. It also establishes visual hierarchy; the bottom of the room is much more important than the top of the room. (One criticism: the hidden light strips along the ceiling edges are lazy and thoughtless, and don't feel industrial to me. If they wanted to isolate the metal ceiling from the concrete shell, they should've used geometry to do that. And there's already a trim! As it stands, it's just a mostly flat plane separated for no reason.)

On the left, the exit out of this room is lit prominently, so we know where we're going and don't linger for too long. (The NPC also shoots the headcrab monsters and runs out that exit. Valve really wanted you to follow.) The simplest way to light a space is to light every crucial game object / affordance, and make sure the player can see where they want to go. If something isn't important, then don't bother lighting it.

The point of the Residue Processing chapter is low-combat platforming and weapon inventory build-up in an industrial setting that re-uses the silo art assets from Blast Pit -- the point is not to fumble in shadows or to stage elaborate story events where you're locked in a room as NPCs talk. Fittingly, the lighting is very functional and utilitarian, and you don't really stay still for too long.


In this scene from Half-Life 2 (d3_c17_03.bsp), most of the courtyard is in shadow except for a neon teal Combine spotlight, an orange fire giving off lots of smoke, and a friendly NPC shooting at nearby enemies. Gee, Batman, I wonder where we're supposed to go?

Traditional thinking about game lighting is that it is garnish on top of a strong floorplan, but I think lighting is so powerful that it can help compensate for an unclear floorplan too. This is technically just a long room that ends in a blind corner; this is the textbook wayfinding problem that Brendon Chung refers to in his wayfinding talk at GDC 2015. In cases of equal value and flat lighting, as in the fullbright frame above, you won't see anything. But if you put a light around the corner, then we can easily discern the corner. Valve's consistent use of Combine spotlights even lets players estimate how far the blind light source is, based on its intensity and falloff.

The keyword here is "contrast", between shadow and not-shadow, between static lighting and flickering lighting -- between complementary colors blue and orange which are opposite each other on a color wheel and help emphasize each other.

A master class in how NOT to light a game? Note the blorange, note lazy glowy bits everywhere, etc.

Note that these kinds of rules and guidelines can easily be abused, and so they often are. Blue-orange, or "blorange", is a mark of laziness in CG and video games. (Video games tend to avoid red-green contrast for weird Christmas connotations in the West / players with red-green color blindness.)

Similarly, "follow the flickering light" or "follow the perpetually burning trash fires" or "follow the red glowing thing" is barely a step up from "follow this giant glowing arrow" or "follow the word FOLLOW." These are not novel nor compelling ways to explore a world.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a big fan of tackiness and tastelessness.

... Except when I've seen that same kind of tastelessness over and over.

the evolution of video games; from Jack Monahan's "Visual Clarity in Character Design"

These same ideas about lighting spaces also apply to lighting characters and their gameplay affordances. Which way is the NPC looking? Where is its head, so I can headshot it? How can I headshoot it even when we're in the dark? The laziest solution is to make things glow and add lots of color contrast.

Sure, now we'll notice this thing, but at what cost?

When we focus too strongly on the functional aspects of lighting. and apply guidelines blindly, the result is often overly instrumental, emotionally hollow, and basically artless. This is the danger of any rule-making in art -- to assume what worked in what situation will work flawlessly in another situation and produce similar results.


For instance, players don't always flock toward light.

Thief 1, a first person stealth game about hiding in shadows, makes you afraid of light. Here, light makes you vulnerable to being spotted by hostile NPCs -- it doesn't just signify a hazard, it is also a hazard in itself. Every step toward a light source is a risk. Much of the gameplay in Thief consists of huddling in darkness, anxiously watching the well-lit doorway from a safe distance, wondering if there's a way for you to go around and avoid that lit area entirely. In this game, we gravitate toward shadows instead.

It makes sense that lighting in stealth games, or more broadly, games about avoiding direct conflict and confrontation, would operate very differently from games about fighting and gun battles. If you want to design light for function, you should be aware of what that function actually is.

from "Thief 1's Assassins and environmental storytelling."

Also, bad readability isn't always bad.

In the level "Assassins" from Thief 1, Looking Glass Studios used a raised blind corner on purpose to force you to hang back and rely more on the sound of NPC footsteps. The point of this setpiece was to be visually unreadable, and so make you panic about lingering too far behind the NPCs you're supposed to follow. Instead of following a breadcrumb trail of random trash fires, or red cage lights, or (ugh) bl-orange spotlights, we are instead following an invisible mental abstraction and all this fucking light is really unhelpful.

This is one of the most beautiful moments of that level, and it relies on purposeful, nearly transcendent confusion and uncertainty. If games like challenge so much, why not elevate perceptual challenges?

from "Dark Past, part 4: a valence theory of level design"

Before designer Donald Norman co-opted it, the concept of an "affordance" came from ecological psychology, where James Gibson defined it as "what [an environment] offers an animal, either for good or ill." Here, an affordance is a relationship that depends heavily on context, it is not a matter of internalizing supposed universal laws of good design, as several well-meaning but flawed design bibles might have you believe. For more on this ecological psychology approach to design and affordance, especially as it pertains to games, see Jonas Linderoth's 2011 DIGRA paper, "Beyond the digital divide: An ecological approach to gameplay"

Formal approaches to light help us think about the way we use light, but remember that form does NOT follow function. Rather, form follows worldview; much of the orthodoxy around game aesthetics presumes a certain function, certain player, and a certain type of game. That's why part 1 of this series started conceptually -- if you lose sight of what your thing is to different people, then even all the blorange exit spotlights in the world won't save you.

NEXT TIME: part 3, on three-point lighting and why it kind of sucks for 3D games.

Charles Foster, Offering to Moloch, Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us, 1897

Charles Foster, Moloch, 1897

Athanasius Kircher, Moloch, Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 1652-54

Athanasius Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 1652

Television icon Mr. T (The A-Team, Be Somebody… or Be Somebody’s Fool!) is returning with a new DIY Network show called I Pity the Tool, a play on his famous catchphrase “I pity the fool.” In the show, T will return to his home city of Chicago to help families rebuild and renovate their homes. The show will premiere sometime in 2015.

NEW show coming soon! #IPityTheTool with @MrT! https://t.co/Mx9SBqTWJr

— DIY Network (@DIYNetwork) March 19, 2015

Thank You to All My Fans! I Plan to Do Some Good in the neighborhood! One House at A Time! @DIYNetwork — Mr. T (@MrT) March 19, 2015

image via Business Wire

via The Hollywood Reporter

He was effusive in his praise for Walker, calling him “a man of integrity and character.” “He was one that faced a recall, fought for his agenda; it was supported by the people of Wisconsin. I think a guy like that really has stood the test of a very close inspection,” Romney said. “I think he makes a very compelling case to become a nominee.”

ThinkGeek has released a Star Trek U.S.S. Enterprise Sushi Set that looks just like the iconic starship U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 from Star Trek: The Original Series. It comes with a wooden base to use as a plate, the saucer of the ship opens up into a soy sauce dish, and the blue warp trails pull off to be used as chopsticks. It is available to purchase online.

Uhura has a secret. It’s nothing bad, but it’s just nothing she’s shared with her crewmembers. Uhura loves Argoan sushi. Now, the food synthesizers can make an almost acceptable version, but nothing beats the real thing. And when Uhura can get 100% real Argoan sushi, she has a whole ritual involving how to eat it. And she always, ALWAYS, uses the Star Trek U.S.S. Enterprise Sushi Set she was given for her first anniversary onboard.

And now you can have a Star Trek U.S.S. Enterprise Sushi Set of your very own. Set it on your table, and it looks like a mid-warp U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 on a wooden base. The Star Trek U.S.S. Enterprise Sushi Set is just the thing to elevate sushi… into the final frontier!

photos via ThinkGeek

College campuses are full of mysteries, and there’s a major one developing right now at the University of Wisconsin. Somebody has allegedly been using one of the campus libraries to photocopy a cat. But so far, nobody knows who is doing this.

A staffer at the university’s Badger Herald newspaper stumbled upon the following photo while studying at the Steenbock Library Tuesday:

Apparently, these photos have been spotted several times at Steenbock, which is the library for agriculture and life sciences, human ecology and, wait for it, veterinary medicine. So maybe this mysterious photocopier is actually doing this for some kind of research purpose.

So far, it looks like only one person has been committing this strange act — but there could be some copycat crimes soon.

yungchub:

This is more dramatic than the endof lost in translation

sopranish:

blackbarmitzvahs:

Can you imagine the conversation though?

Queen: I’m going

Chief of Staff: But, Your Majesty, the security risks…

Queen: I’m going I want cake 

Chief of Staff:

Queen: 

Chief of Staff: 

Queen: I want cake

Bride: Eh, it’s fine, it’s not like the Queen is coming

Groom: Totally

Queen: Heyoooo

Scully in 2x16 - ‘Colony’