firehose

There are few things that make as much of a day-to-day difference in our lives as the length of our commutes. Which is why this map, which lets you see which Americans are better or worse off in terms of commute times, is so interesting. Input your counties, America! And then begin your gloating/seething.

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snow - Kendo Rage (Affect - SNES - 1993)

Baking units demystified

NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who apologized on the air Wednesday night for lying about an experience covering the Iraq War, is now facing scrutiny over his gripping accounts of Hurricane Katrina, the disaster that burnished his nightly news bona fides almost a decade ago.

"Sandwich" in Chinese is sānmíngzhì 三明治.  That's a transcription, of course, but it also can be rendered literally as "three enlightened rule(rs)" (in our private language, my wife and I would always refer to a sandwich as a "Yáo Shùn Yǔ 尧舜禹" [the names of three mythical emperors]).

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ROCHESTER, MN—In an effort to help working individuals improve their fitness and well-being, experts at the Mayo Clinic issued a new set of health guidelines Thursday recommending that Americans stand up at their desk, leave their office, and never ...

An orphaned lamb named Pet who was raised in Ullapool, Scotland alongside four collies, and is under the impression that she is also a dog, leaps around in the snow and barks, just like her canine buddies who readily accept her as one of their own. According to her human, Jemma Mackenzie, the orphaned lamb follows the dogs everywhere.

Here’s “Pet” our orphaned pet lamb who has been brought up with our 4 collies Dice, Fly, Jess and Megan! She thinks the oldest dog Dice is her mother! Sleeping in the same basket and following her everywhere from a very young age!

It seems word of the barking lamb has gotten some attention and Pet is doing her best to remain anonymous.

image via Ullapool News

When Ann Bosche found that she couldn’t keep the tabby with a white-tipped tail whom she nursed back to health, she resigned herself to the fact that he would be safest at the local shelter, where he could find a new home. A few weeks later, however, Ann was surprised to learn that Fancy broke out of the shelter only 20 minutes after she left and had been making his way back to her and her husband ever since.

I looked at the clock and wondered who was at my house at 5:30 am. …I got up to see and what I found was nothing short of a miracle. I saw a cat, sitting at my husband’s feet, talking to him. I kept trying to focus on the cat and when he flipped his tail around, I saw proof. There was the white tip. I started crying and quietly said ‘Oh my baby, Hi Fancy.’ He turned, saw me and ran to me, talking and squealing the whole way. I truly think he was saying ‘I found you! I’m home now. …I think he had a guardian angel looking out for him, directing him back to my house. I love him so much and feel we were meant to be together. He belongs here. Mr. Fancy will never want for a home, food or love again.

via Mel Weinstein

rosehip-baby:

Why is this accurate

yo treesofarden

The Avengers' roster has been home to many badass female characters over the years, but never before have a team of all-female heroes been assembled under the Avengers banner. That's changing in the near future though: Meet the A-Force.

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This actually sounds great. Which begs the question, were the members of Slayer all babies?

On the gentrification of racial humor.

Other locations include Bowen Island, BC,^[6] Edmonton, AB,^{[citation needed]} Calgary, AB,^{[citation needed]} Ottawa, ON,^{[citation needed]} Oakville, ON,^[7] Toronto, ON,^[8] Perth, ON,^[9] Clarington, ON,^[10] Sarnia, ON,^[11] Montreal, QC,^{[citation needed]} North Hatley, QC,^{[citation needed]} Halifax, NS,^{[citation needed]} Prince Edward Island,^{[citation needed]} and St. John’s, NL.^{[citation needed]} In Yellowknife, NWT, the “Freezin for a Reason” plunge is held in March after the spring thaw.^{[citation needed]}

^Link

From Blue Nation Review:

The month before the 2012 elections, Congressman Schock sold his house to a major Republican donor who was also one of his campaign supporters for a price that appears to far exceed the market value at the time. Ali Bahaj – then a Vice President at Caterpillar – and his wife Gloria have donated more than $45,000 over the last decade to the Caterpillar PAC and various Republican officeholders – including Congressman Schock. In fact, Federal Election Commission records show that Mr. and Mrs. Bahaj each made the maximum allowable donation to Aaron Schock’s campaign in 2008. Congressman Schock on October 16, 2012 sold his home to the Bahajs for $925,000. That’s more than three times the tax assessed value of the property. Zillow estimates that the house was worth approximately $695,000 that month. It’s possible Congressman Schock just got incredibly lucky finding the right buyer to throw him a life raft as homeowners around him were drowning. But it begs the question: Was this transaction more than just luck?

Hit the link for comparisons to other recent home sales on that street. (Tipped by JMG reader TJ)

ANIMAL’s feature Game Plan asks game developers to share a bit about their process and some working images from the creation of a recent game. This week, we spoke with Colton Spross and AJ Kolenc of Atlanta studio The Stork Burnt Down about Höme Improvisåtion, a very short game that’s way better than it sounds.

There are some things in life you want to do as infrequently as possible: going to the dentist, looking for a new job, putting your dog to sleep, to name a few. Building Ikea furniture is one of them, but it turns out it makes a pretty great video game.

The fact that something that sucks in real life can be fun in a game isn’t surprising. I do lots of things in virtual space that I wouldn’t want to actually do, like killing people and jumping out of planes and fucking dudes. But unlike sex, skydiving and murder, cobbling together poorly made Swedish furniture is not exciting. And yet here I am, jamming virtual legs into a digital tabletop and loving it. The developers at The Stork Burnt Down have somehow taken a task that’s both arduous and boring and made it into something enjoyable and hilarious. Höme Improvisåtion is, against all odds, fun.

“There have been a few articles that have been saying things like, ‘Ikea should hire these guys!'” the game’s lead programmer, AJ Kolenc, told ANIMAL. “I am in support of that, in case Ikea ever decides to contact us. But so far nothing.”

Höme Improvisåtion was created mainly by three people over just 48 hours during the 2015 Global Game Jam in January. Its developers describe it officially as “The world’s most fun & accurate cooperative furniture assembly experience!” (exclamation theirs, of course).

The game features only three pieces of furniture, which just like in real life fall out of the box in chunks. But in Höme Improvisåtion Ikea’s signature illustrated instruction manuals are missing, and you have to build from memory based on the images that were visible on the front of the boxes before you opened them. The first, a simple table, is very easy to create—just slot the legs into the holes. The second, a standing lamp, is harder, especially if you didn’t look too hard at the picture. This is when most players will realize how wrong things can go. The third, a more complex table, is essentially impossible to get right, the developers confessed.

“I can’t imagine anyone could figure it out,” Kolenc said.

But that’s OK. In fact, it’s amazing. Once all the furniture is assembled, right or wrong — and more likely wrong — you can arrange it around the room while more boxes drop in. That’s when you can start combining different pieces into glorious works of modern art, or horrible Franken-lamp abominations, or something in between. After a while I was dying of laughter, even playing by myself.

It gets chaotic when multiple people join in simultaneously. When I described Höme Improvisåtion to a friend recently, he responded, “Oh, so you help each other build the furniture?” But it’s hard enough to get these right by yourself; you run into all the same problems you would in real life, from believing sincerely that there are parts missing to knowing for certain that some of them don’t actually match up. “No, you definitely don’t help one another,” I replied.

This strange type of obstructive cooperation—where you’re technically working together but really more screwing with one another—is rare in games, and it’s not the only way in which Höme Improvisåtion is unique.

“I built a bed recently from Ikea, and it had pneumatic components, and we accidentally put them on backward, so it was basically a catapult,” said Colton Spross, another of the game’s creators. “We felt pretty good about the concept [of the game]. It was something that we were pretty enthusiastic about making. We hadn’t tried anything like that before, and the scope was achievable…It was a room with furniture in it, and we felt like we could do a really good job of making a polished and fun version of that.”

It’s kind of obvious, but bears confirming: Höme Improvisåtion is not actually associated with Ikea. It’s been framed in media coverage as a game in which you build Ikea furniture, but the developers tried to avoid actually using the word “Ikea” wherever possible so as to avoid potential legal troubles. The pieces are based on real stuff from the Swedish company’s catalogs, but slightly different and with made-up names.

The developers do plan to keep moving forward with the concept, though, because the feedback from anyone who’s played it has been so positive. They’re not sure exactly what form it will ultimately take, but for now they’re adding more content to the free web version, and asking for help naming a new chair on Twitter.

The theme of the game development event during which Höme Improvisåtion was created was “What do we do now?” Spross said that’s what he winds up saying to himself every time he tries to build Ikea furniture in real life, and it was that realization that sparked the idea. They ran with it from there.

“We found in past game jams that it’s best to just do the craziest idea you come up with, because when else are you going to do it?” Spross said. “I’m not opposed to mainstream games. I enjoy them. But they’ve already done it—you know what I mean? Like, how many different combat systems have been designed? If I’m making a game about Ikea furniture, my main competition is myself, you know? Just make something that’s different enough that there’s somewhere to be explored, instead of just trying to make another Zelda.”

Höme Improvisåtion is available for free.

The post Making Höme Improvisåtion, A Game About Building Furniture Without Instructions appeared first on ANIMAL.

Technically, the Bhut Jolokia is old news. Back in 2007, this fiery chilli pepper from the northeast of India had annihilated lesser peppers when it was declared the world’s hottest (it clocks over one million Scoville Heat Units; by comparison Tabasco’s original red sauce is 2,500-5,000 SHUs).

Over time, other peppers such as the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion and the Carolina Reaper—the current record holder—out-burned the Indian chilli.

It’s all in the name

But the Bhut Jolokia has what the Reaper and Scorpion can’t hope to match—a badass name. Known as the ghost pepper in the West, the chilli is showing up in bizarre food items in the US, from watermelon candy and mayo to bourbon and kimchi.

“It’s got a cool name, much cooler than scorpion pepper,” says Kheedim Oh, who makes artisanal kimchi under the name Mama O’s out of Brooklyn. “At this point its reputation precedes itself, it’s doing its own great PR.”

In addition to making the popular Korean dish of fermented cabbage and spices for the average palate, Oh makes a super spicy kimchi using the ghost pepper. For him, the name was one of the pepper’s biggest draws. Oh says when it comes to sales, the regular and super-spicy variants are neck and neck.

The name called out to another Brooklyn resident, Jay Sheldon, who was so blown away by the pepper’s “taboo, mysterious, scary” image, that he started selling the pepper and assorted products made from it. He sells dried ghost chillies, chilli powder and seeds for planting, but the bestseller for his online business bhut-pepper.com is a watermelon-flavoured ghost pepper candy. He quit his art handler job a year after getting into the pepper business, and though he’s the only employee, he still makes enough to support his life as an artist living in New York City.

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Casting a wider spell

But apart from hipster food entrepreneurs, big F&B names that cast a wider net are also walking into the fire. For their offerings, it’s more typical to temper the heat of the chilli.

The American fast-food chain Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen offered ghost pepper wings—batter-fried chicken wings marinated with a dash of the pepper—as a limited-time menu item. They packed a very mild punch, with just the amount of heat to appeal to a fast-food chain’s broad audience.

When the Campari-owned Wild Turkey—pioneers in the flavoured bourbon category—wanted a suitably seasoned spirit to capitalise on an ongoing sweet-and-spicy food trend, the distillery’s R&D department experimented with a full spectrum of different heat sources and peppers. The ghost pepper beat other contenders and a small amount of it was blended with the brand’s signature honey-flavoured bourbon, resulting in American Honey Sting. “It was to be a limited edition release but the reaction it received has been incredibly positive, so we will be bringing it back in more of a semi-permanent (way) based on its popularity,” says Andrew Floor, senior marketing director of dark spirits for Campari America. Floor says they shipped 17,000 cases in the first six weeks—new brands typically deliver between 10,000 and 20,000 cases in a full year.

Sweet-and-spicy

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In 2013, a report of the American consumer’s flavour preferences by Technomic, a market research firm for the food industry, found that for the first time in four years, a majority of consumers—54%—said they preferred hot or spicy foods. And when the spice is blended with sweet flavours, it’s almost a sure hit. “For a long time the American palate has skewed towards sweet, whether they admit it or not. (However) exploration of flavours is one of the key drivers in millennial consumption behaviour,” says Floor. He says they weren’t looking for a me-too product to compete with Fireball, the popular cinnamon-powered whiskey but a more sophisticated experience, experimenting with heat to give flavour. When you sip Sting, expect a mild, back-of-the-palate heat, not an inferno.

Not so hot at home

In urban India, on the other hand, Bhut Jolokia’s popularity still remains limited. It’s not on popular supermarket shelves like it is in the US at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods where it is sold on and off either in the form of powders or products.

Most urban Indians first heard of it when it set the Guinness record in 2007, but it’s not widely available outside the northeastern states where it is grown. “Our exports have gone up exponentially, but it’s not yet extensively used for commercial [food] production in India,” says Harjiv Swani, a director at the 150-year-old Mumbai-based Swani Spice, a company that exports Indian spices. One reason may be that the Indian Army is buying up the chilli to bolster its arsenal.

According to Mumbai-based food writer Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi who is a fan of the pepper, spicy food is so easily available in India that there’s not much need for the blind heat that comes from this chilli. “Also, most people don’t know how to use it (outside of northeast India). All traditional recipes already have specific varieties of chillies built into them, and we tend to stick to them,” she says. She predicts that will change soon, as “there is a lot more interest in hyper-local, obscure ingredients among young food-obsessed folk.”

Americans, though, can’t get enough. Swani says the ghost pepper might be more widely used in US-manufactured pre-packaged foods and spice mixes than we think. The extreme spice factor of the chilli means manufactures have to use much less than another more moderately spiced pepper to get a similar result, reducing production costs.

For instance, in Oh’s kitchen, one ton of napa cabbage is doused with 40 pounds of Korean chilli pepper for his regular kimchi; for the super spicy, he uses just four cups of ghost pepper, though it results in a way hotter mix. “Some people aren’t happy unless they’re crying,” he says.

We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.

This article is a part of Quartz India. For more, follow this link.

The Japanese government is considering making it mandatory for workers to take at least five days of vacation time a year. Currently some 52% of paid leave granted to Japanese workers goes unused, according to a 2013 labor ministry survey; prime minister Shinzo Abe’s administration hopes to bring that number down to 30% by 2020, under legislation it is preparing to submit to the legislature.

Japan has long had a reputation for being one of the most overworked countries in the world. The term karoshi, or death by overwork, emerged in the 1990s when an increasing number of Japanese professionals were dying from heart attacks and strokes. Recent years have seen an epidemic of suicide, in part because of work-related stress: of 30,000 suicides in 2011, 10,000 were believed to be related to overwork, according to the police.

Moreover, a culture of long, punishing hours at the office deters many women from staying in the the workforce, a trend that officials want to reverse to bolster Japan’s shrinking work force. “We must also reform the work style that places importance on the amount of time spent working, an orientation created by men,” Abe said in a speech in May. He vowed to give more consideration to “work-life balance [and] creating a society in which women shine.”

Japan ranks among the worst of developed countries for mandatory vacation time (though still ahead of the United States, which guarantees none at all). Japanese law requires companies give workers at least 10 days of paid leave and one day for every additional year of work. But companies are not required to pay their workers for public holidays.

The Japanese government has tried other things to help. The ministry of issued a guidance last year suggesting workers take an half-hour nap during the afternoon. Most recently, the government approved a new national holiday, “Mountain Day,” giving citizens “an opportunity to become closer to mountains and give thanks to their blessings.”

Massachusetts police officer shot; suspect in custody seattlepi.com BOURNE, Mass. (AP) — Massachusetts state police say two people, including a Bourne police officer, have been shot. The officer was shot at about 2:15 a.m. Thursday at a condominium complex. A medical helicopter took off from the area headed for a ... and more »

seattlepi.com

2 students hurt in shooting outside Maryland high school seattlepi.com FREDERICK, Md. (AP) — Police in Maryland were searching for suspects early Thursday after two students were shot outside a high school basketball game. The Wednesday night shooting at Frederick High School sent game watchers running for cover as ... and more »

Tail docking, the practice of removing part of a puppy's tail early in life, has been banned or restricted in many parts of the world, but in the US and parts of Canada, you can still dock your dog's tail for cosmetic reasons. Here's why it doesn't make sense to subject your non-working dog to this traumatic procedure.

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The Week Magazine

Rep. Aaron 'Downton Abbey' Schock's aide resigns over racist Facebook posts The Week Magazine Benjamin Cole, now ex-communications director for Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.), resigned on Thursday mere hours after his controversial social media musings surfaced. Earlier in the day, ThinkProgress uncovered Facebook posts in which Cole likened ... Aide to Rep. Aaron Schock Resigns in Wake of 'Offensive' Facebook PostsNBCNews.com Senior Aide to Rep. Aaron Schock Resigns After Racist Facebook Posts Come to ...ABC News Schock aide resigns following racially charged messagesMSNBC New York Times -New York Magazine -Washington Post (blog) all 20 news articles »

Along with the news that fourth-quarter revenue increased by 50% year-over-year while profits have quadrupled, GrubHub announced today that it has acquired Boston-based delivery service DiningIn and California-based Restaurants on the Run.

The acquisitions confirm that GrubHub, heretofore known primarily as an online food-ordering company, also wants to focus on being an online food delivery company.

Soon, instead of simply connecting customers with restaurants on its online platform and letting the restaurants handle the delivery process after orders are placed, GrubHub will be dispatching its own couriers to deliver meals. It’s already been experimenting with this system in Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, according to Fortune, which reports that GrubHub plans to take a smaller share of each transaction from restaurants than other delivery service companies do.

GrubHub’s average commission on the $508 million in orders placed via its platform last quarter was about 14.5%,  a percentage point higher than in 2013. The service charges slightly higher commissions to restaurants that want to appear higher in its online listings.

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According to Fortune, that margin also sets a baseline for the company’s delivery aspirations:

Not only is this significantly lower than the 20-30% that many restaurants are charged by current delivery groups (including DiningIn and Restaurants on the Run), but GrubHub only plans to charge customers whatever nominal fee is needed to make the delivery break-even (or nothing at all, depending on if it can offset that difference with increased deliveries).

And that could go a long way toward keeping this trend line on track:

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A Multnomah County judge ruled this morning Portland's camping ban is perfectly legal, stymieing the latest attempt to rein in a controversial strategy for dealing with homelessness via the courts.

In a 19-page opinion, Multnomah Circuit Judge Stephen Bushong found that the law passes constitutional muster. It doesn't, as public defenders had argued, amount to cruel and unusual punishment or restrict a person's right to travel in the city. And it's not vague or overbroad, Bushong found.

Most broadly, the judge slapped down the central contention attorneys challenging the ban had tried to bring: That it penalizes homeless people simply for being homeless, since they have no choice but to stay outside in many cases.

"The Ordinance, on its face, does not impermissibly punish someone for their homeless status," Bushong wrote. "The Ordinance punishes conduct—camping on public property—not the status of being homeless."

And while the judge said figuring out whether the camping ban criminalizes the consequences of homelessness "is a more difficult question," he ruled that it did not.

Portland's camping law makes it illegal "for any person to camp in or upon any public property or public right of way," and offers fuzzy guidelines about what "to camp" and "campsite" mean.

For all its import—not leastly because of the chilling effect it could have on other, future challenges to the camping ban—Bushong's ruling came in a run-of-the-mill proceeding in a criminal court case. Public defenders for a homeless woman named Alexandra Barrett filed a motion late last year asking the judge to dismiss scads of camping-related charges against her, arguing the ban violated key portions of the Oregon and US constitutions.

The motion led to a flurry of court filings, and a notable hearing late last month where attorneys on both sides made their arguments before the judge. With Bushong's ruling today, the criminal cases against Barrett on roughly 20 charges will move forward. A trial is set for early March.

"We are of course disappointed in the judge’s decision, but we are ready to proceed to trial on these charges, which we think raise important constitutional issues," said Sara Mulroy, an attorney with Metropolitan Public Defenders, who represents Barrett.

A call to the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office, which fended off the challenge, hasn't been returned.

Bushong's opinion leans heavily on prior opinions from courts throughout the country. He notes that similar camping bans have been upheld elsewhere, and he says a local federal judge—presiding over another recent challenge to the ban—said there were "legitimate governmental interests of safety and sanitation" involved in the Portland law. And a past ruling in the Oregon Court of Appeals preempted him from finding that the ordinance was vague he said.

Beyond the legalese, though, the judge had a more straight-forward message: It might not be illegal, but the camping policy is ill-advised.

"The City’s anti-camping ordinance is not the solution to this complex problem," Bushong wrote. "Arresting people who are struggling to survive in the streets just because they have no place else to go is not the answer. We must do better than that. But determining the best ways to address this difficult problem is the job of public policymakers, not the courts."

The decision comes a day after public defenders filed their final brief before the court, attempting to use a recent e-mail sent by Commissioner Dan Saltzman to help prove the ban is flawed.

As first reported by the Mercury, Saltzman sent an email February 20 to around 15 local agencies that might enforce the camping ban or otherwise clear out homeless encampments. They should hold off on all that stuff from January 21 to February 3, said Saltzman, the city's housing commissioner, so the county's every-other-year homeless count could proceed without undue disruption.

"To ensure that the count is as accurate as possible, we are requesting that all entities in Multnomah County that enforce the anti-camping ordinance or conduct homeless camp clean-ups suspend enforcement," Saltzman wrote. According to the housing bureau, every recipient of the e-mail announced it would comply except for Union Pacific Railroad.

The request wasn't anything new. Similar pleas have gone out in past years during the count. But for Mulroy and her colleague Francis Gieringer, the request was proof of how "arbitrary and unequally applied" the law is.

They argued the e-mail "demonstrates not only how the city camping ordinance, although facially neutral, is directly targeted at the homeless population, but also illustrates the arbitrary and capricious nature of, the ordinance where its enforcement is suspended at the city's whim. This is exactly the kind of haphazard, standardless administration of the law that is forbidden" under the Oregon Constitution.

Bushong, today, disagreed.

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