firehose

Would we call this a Cumberblunder?

One PBS’s Tavis Smiley, the actor discussed issues of diversity in Hollywood. It’s, thankfully, something which has been talked about a lot recently due to the representation we’re seeing at awards shows, what the award shows themselves think of it, and other actors being very vocal on the topic.

The topic began when Cumberbatch and Smiley were joking about British actors, and then specifically black British actors like David Oyelowo and Chiwetel Ejiofor “taking jobs,” meaning acting jobs, in the United States. But when the discussion turned more serious, Cumberbatch used an outdated term to refer to people of color.

“I think as far as colored actors go, it gets really difficult in the UK, and I think a lot of my friends have had more opportunities here [in the U.S.] than in the UK, and that’s something that needs to change.” He went on to say, “Something’s gone wrong, we’re not being representative enough in our culture of different races and that really does need to step up a pace.”

The actor using the term angered many, though Smiley himself tweeted in defense of Cumberbatch after the fact:

 

Those who saw Benedict Cumberbatch on @PBS, know he feels persons of color are underrepresented in #Hollywood. http://t.co/EcmciKpvgF

— Tavis Smiley (@tavissmiley) January 27, 2015

Cumberbatch also released this statement of apology by way of People Magazine:

I’m devastated to have caused offense by using this outmoded terminology. I offer my sincere apologies. I make no excuse for my being an idiot and know the damage is done. I can only hope this incident will highlight the need for correct usage of terminology that is accurate and inoffensive. The most shaming aspect of this for me is that I was talking about racial inequality in the performing arts in the U.K. and the need for rapid improvements in our industry when I used the term.

I feel the complete fool I am and while I am sorry to have offended people and to learn from my mistakes in such a public manner please be assured I have. I apologize again to anyone who I offended for this thoughtless use of inappropriate language about an issue which affects friends of mine and which I care about deeply.

I was certainly shocked to hear the actor use the term in the first place and it seems he was as well. As far as apologies go, this is a pretty great example of how to write one. What do you think?

(via The Hollywood Reporter)

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Well, disguising yourself as a cat is the perfect camouflage for the Internet.

Wickr, a messaging app from cyber security activist and DEF CON hacking conference organizer Nico Sell, has made a name for itself with strict security and privacy features; the company doesn’t even store users’ phone numbers or email addresses. But when sharing content across other social media platforms, those outside companies can get ownership rights to things like photos. Sell doesn’t like that one bit.

She told Wired that most sites’s privacy policies are more like “ownership policies.” She added, “The whole point of this is really control. I have a problem with Facebook owning my daughter’s pictures and conversations for eternity.”

That’s where the cats come in.

Wickr has unveiled a new image sharing tool appropriately called WTF (Wickr Timed Feed) that allows for timed, self-destruct photo sharing within the Wickr app. However, if you share your feed to Facebook, all Facebook gets is an image of adorable kitty, and only the specific users you select can actually click through to see your WTF.

So not only does Facebook not get the rights to the images you share for the entire remainder of time itself, but since an estimated 15% of Internet traffic is cat-based anyway, your covert operations will likely go unnoticed entirely. Well, except by ceiling kitty.

Ceiling kitty sees all.

(via Wired, image via Wickr)

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Mike Evans, the dad behind “The Secret Dad Society” has created the wonderful Scuttlecam, a papier-mâché seagull mounted to the chassis of a remote-controlled car with a small camera attached to allow both his kinds and him to get get a closer look at the seafaring birds “without the threat of being pooped on or pecked at.”

We aptly named our goofy creation the Scuttlecam, after the famously wacky seagull from The Little Mermaid. The seagulls definitely took an interest in the Scuttlecam. They were weary at first, but after a few minutes they seemed to warm up. As more and more seagulls arrive this fall, it should be even easier for the Scuttlecam to blend right into the crowd and get some great undercover video!

While the birds were receptive to the Scuttlecam on its first expedition, the second one did not prove to be as fruitful.

I’ve been keeping the Scuttlecam in the trunk, because you just never know when you’ll come across parking lot seagulls eager to make new friends. It worked out the other day, as we happened upon a rather large flock on the way out of a grocery center parking lot. Unfortunately, the seagulls weren’t interested in the least, although we did get the attention of a white SUV that drove over to take a closer look.

via Boing Boing

"Gosh darnit, hoo diddly I'm conservative" is a real quote from this meeting of the minds.

RogueyWon writes: For the last several days, some users of Ubisoft's uPlay system have been complaining that copies of games they purchased have been removed from their libraries. According to a statement issued to a number of gaming websites, Ubisoft believes that the digital keys revoked have been "fraudulently obtained." What this means in practice is unclear; while some of the keys may have been obtained using stolen credit card details, others appear to have been purchased from unofficial third-party resellers, who often undercut official stores by purchasing cheaper boxed retail copies of games and selling their key-codes online, or by exploiting regional price differences, buying codes in regions where games are cheaper to sell them elsewhere in the world. The latest round of revocations appears to have triggered an overdue debate into the fragility of customer rights in respect of digital games stores.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes: Internet connections remain illegal for Cuban households, but many of the country's citizens still want to tap into the power of networked information exchange. A group of tech-savvy young Cubans has set up a network comprising thousands of computers to serve as their own miniature version of the internet. They use chat rooms, play games, and connect to organize real-life activities. Cuban law enforcement seems willing to tolerate it (so far), but the network polices itself so as not to draw undue attention. One of the engineers who helped build the network said, "We aren't anonymous because the country has to know that this type of network exists. They have to protect the country and they know that 9,000 users can be put to any purpose. We don't mess with anybody. All we want to do is play games, share healthy ideas. We don't try to influence the government or what's happening in Cuba ... We do the right thing and they let us keep at it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Top leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints called Tuesday for passage of laws granting statewide protections against housing and employment discrimination for gay and lesbian Utahns — as long as those measures safeguard religious freedom.

{{A reporter stands outside in a blizzard. In the immediate background a snowplow does donuts on loop in a parking lot. The chyron on the screen changes to read "THIS IS A SERIOUS SITUATION." The reporter turns to see the snow plow.}}

Reporter: "Everybody's having a great time out here."

(via Everyone)

Valentino Fall 2015 Menswear Collection

 

 

 

[Photo Credit: IMAXTree]

fuckyourgenderid:

dannydecato:

cyberdesert:

shoot me

Compare these maps to determine whether or not your boss is invited to your gay wedding

^^^ this is v important

menstrualcramps:

magnius159:

Police Killing of Unarmed Native American Continues To Receive Little Media Attention

The tragic case of Corey Kanosh, 35, has received very little media attention, in spite of the growing outrage over police shootings of unarmed, innocent citizens. In Corey’s case, we are not dealing with an African American man shot by white cops, but an unarmed Native American man who was suspected of crimes that he was later proven innocent of, who was given only seconds before police opened fire on him.

Corey was a member of the Paiute Tribe of Utah. In spite of the historical injustices committed by the State against Native Americans, his story has received virtually no national attention. Now, his friends and family have been pushing to move the legal process forward, but so far they have only raised a tiny amount of money.

“The hold up on progressing has been due to lack of money to fund the oh so dreaded legal process,” they explain. “We need your help. Please help us on our way to get this case back up and ready. It’s time to take on the unwilling non-cooperative Millard County Sheriffs Department.”

Corey was shot by a Millard County sheriff’s deputy after he was wrongly suspected of car theft.

Sheriff’s spokeswoman Lindsay Mitchell explained that a 911 call was made about the theft of a car from the Kanosh Paiute Indian Reservation. But Corey had nothing to do with that.

Unarmed Paiute indigenous man innocent of all crimes killed by white cop in 10 seconds

Justice For Corey Kanosh Fundraiser

Pay attention to this

wolf-peaches:

deutschemark:

regencyduchess:

Whilst in Sydney in 1994, a man apparently tries to assassinate Prince Charles. And not a single fuck was given by His Royal Highness.

(x)

I’m dead at his face in the last one like “Did you even try?”

Demons catching the souls of sinners, Warning vor der falschen lieb dieser werlft, Nuremberg, 1495

What Value-Creating Winners Do All Day™

In “BusinessTown“, illustrator Lunch Breath has brilliantly reimagined the lovable anamorphic Richard Scarry characters of “Busytown” as the stereotypical technology employees and personalities that can most be often found in places like Silicon Valley.

An ongoing project attempting to explain our highly intangible, deeply disruptive, data-driven, venture-backed, gluten-free economic meritocracy to the uninitiated. With apologies to Richard Scarry.

In 2014, cartoonist Ruben Bolling had also reimagined technology roles playing a large part in a modernized Busytown.

images via Lunch Breath

via Lunch Breath

Soso Jamabo is your new favorite soon-to-be college player. Texas seems like the front runner for the 5-star recruit, but he gave us two dark horses when asked where he'll be attending: University of Phoenix and ITT Tech.

Neither online university has a football program, but both promise an education from home that's just as good as a real university. Want to talk about recruiting? Both schools have endless national commercials boasting their exploits. That's a powerful motivator for a young athlete.

I just wanna thank God.. pic.twitter.com/cdnMiGzNQ4

— SOMI JaMITCHELL (@Soso_Jamabo1) January 26, 2015

Caption: Des Moines, Iowa, US - Marco Malagon, from the Dream Action Coalition, is taken into custody by police after disrupting a speech by former Texas governor Rick Perry at the Iowa freedom summit.

Credit: Jim Young/Reuters, found at The Guardian.

Doctor Who has given rise to tons of incredible artwork, from Chris Achilleos' book covers to Dave Gibbons' comics to Bill Mudron's art nouveau painting . But for my money, the best Who art of all time is probably the Dalek comic strip that was published in the mid-1960s in Century 21 magazine. And it's all on Flickr.

Read more...

v3rgEz writes with this story of a top secret Cold War plan which would have brought the U.S. under martial law. Starting on April 19, 1956, the federal government practiced and planned for a near-doomsday scenario known as Plan C. When activated, Plan C would have brought the United States under martial law, rounded up over ten thousand individuals connected to 'subversive' organizations, implemented a censorship board, and prepared the country for life after nuclear attack. There was no Plan A or B....Details of this program were distributed to each FBI field office. Over the following months and years, Plan C would be adjusted as drills and meetings found holes in the defensive strategy: Communications were more closely held, authority was apparently more dispersed, and certain segments of the government, such as the U.S. Attorneys, had trouble actually delineating who was responsible for what. Bureau employees were encouraged to prepare their families for the worst, but had to keep secret the more in-depth plans for what the government would do if war did break out. Families were given a phone number and city for where the relocated agency locations would be, but not the exact location.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MojoKid writes: In Microsoft's latest Windows 10 preview build released last week, Cortana made an entrance, but the much-anticipated Spartan browser did not. However, little did we realize that some of Spartan made the cut, in the form of an experimental rendering engine hidden under IE's hood. Microsoft has separated its Trident rendering engine into two separate versions: one is for Spartan, called EdgeHTML, while the other remains under its legacy naming with Internet Explorer. The reason Microsoft doesn't simply forego the older version is due to compatibility concerns. If you're running the Windows 10 9926 build, chances are good that you're automatically taking advantage of the new EdgeHTML engine in IE. To check, you can type 'about:flags' into the address bar. "Automatic" means that the non-Spartan Trident engine will be called-upon only if needed. In all other cases, you'll be taking advantage of the future Spartan web rendering engine. Performance-wise, the results with IE are like night and day in certain spots. Some of the improvements are significant. IE's Sunspider result already outperforms the competition, but it has been further improved. And with Kraken, the latency with the Spartan-powered Trident engine dropped 40%. Similar results are seen with a boost in the Octane web browser test as well.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Evolution of a river

These artworks were made by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), one of the last great Japanese masters of the ukiyo-e style were really a novelty of its age. Kuniyoshi started to use cats instead of humans in satirical kabuki prints in the early 1840s.

Read more...

Remember back in October, when Adam Sandler announced that he’d signed a four-movie deal (one for each of the apocalypse’s horsemen) with Netflix because the streaming service’s name ““rhymes with wet chicks?” Well, the rough beast’s hour has come round at last.

According to The Daily Dot, Sandler’s first Netflix movie will be Ridiculous 6, an homage (lolololol) to Westerns like The Magnificent 7, starring “Adam Sandler as a man who grew up in a Native American tribe, with Taylor Lautner, Rob Schneider, and Luke Wilson playing his half-brothers.” BURN IT WITH FIRE.

Additional cast members are rumored to include Nick Nolte, Danny Trejo, Steve Buscemi, Dan Aykroyd, Blake Shelton.

If you live on the East Coast of the United States, chances are your grasp on reality is tenuous at best right now, so sure, yeah, turdburglar extraordinaire Adam Sandler might as well make a movie about Native Americans starring MULTIPLE ACTORS FROM THE GROWN UPS FRANCHISE and zero women. This makes Hulu look good, and that’s saying something.

To be clear, I have zero problems with Vanilla Ice playing Mark Twain–that guy has charisma for days. It’s literally every other part of this synopsis that makes my head hurt. Please heed the wise words of Samuel Clemens, Netflix: “In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice.”

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"I know I get a lot of grief for that," Abrams admitted. "But I'll tell you, there are times when I'm working on a shot, I think, 'Oh this would be really cool… with a lens flare.' But I know it's too much, and I apologize. I'm so aware of it now." The director tells Crave that he showed his wife an early cut of Star Trek Into Darkness, "and there was this one scene where she was literally like, 'I just can't see what's going on. I don't understand what that is.' I was like, 'Yeah, I went too nuts on this.'" "This is how stupid it was," Abrams said. "But I think admitting you're an addict is the first step towards recovery." While it's nice to hear the filmmaker own up to his faults, there are still plenty of major pitfalls he should avoid in the next Star Wars film. But at least the next lightsaber duel to hit the big screen will have a better chance of actually being watchable.

"I just live my life, man," Cohen said. "Taking care of my little dog, Beyoncé."