firehose

A visualisation of an “asteroid’s” path of orbit which nearly collided with the Earth and Moon in 2003. (Credit: NASA) pic.twitter.com/EuFPzO7G3e

— SciencePorn (@SciencePorn)

August 13, 2015

ETA: Not an asteroid after all, as it turns out, but the third stage of Apollo 12. …Whew.

Magnus Enckell, Boy with Skull, 1893

submitted by bnblazer [link] [21 comments]

submitted by Trivirti [link] [31 comments]

Meet Okilly Dokilly – the world’s first (and presumably last) Ned Flanders themed metal band.

Formed last month, the Phoenix-based group were unearthed by Adelaide street press Rip It Up and pretty much embody everything you could possibly want from a band dedicated to all things Flanderino. They dress like Ned. They talk like Ned. And they are all called – you guessed it – Ned.

image: http://ic.f.tsatic-cdn.net/1337/635_190/54a41_1337073.jpg



Speaking to Rip It Up, the band revealed just what metal – or “Nedal” music as they have coined it – sounds like: “Not as fast as Bartcore, and a little cleaner than Krusty Punk,” Head Ned said. “Not as heavy as Homer J.ent – Nedal is a happy medium in the Simpscene.”
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As part of our promise to offer you rich personalization, we are giving you the option of promoting feeds you think are important to Must Reads. Promoting a feed to Must Read has three benefits:

• It will create a separate Must Reads section where you can make sure you do not miss a single story from your Must Reads sites.
• It will increase the chances for the stories from that feed to be recommended in your feedly home.
• It will increase the chances for stories from that feed to be surfaced in your Google Now.

The Must Read feature is a great way for you to tell feedly which feeds are most important to you and to keep on top of those feeds.

01. Promoting feeds to Must Read on desktop

Some publications and blogs that you follow may fill your feedly with posts that are “just for fun,” while others may post content that is crucial to your job. For these important sites, you can set them as Must Read, so you can make sure you see every single story that comes out.

1. Decide which publication or blog you want to promote to Must Read. We suggest feeds that are relevant, boost productivity and publish a manageable amount of content.
2. If haven’t already added that site to your feedly, you’ll have the option of promoting it to Must Read on the left pop-up tab when you add it to your feedly.
3. If you’ve already added the publication to your feedly, click on it in the left-hand navigation panel and click on  at the top of their page.
4. Towards the bottom of the drop down menu, click on Edit Subscription. This will open up the same screen that comes up when you first add a publication or blog to your feedly. Here, you can change the title of the feed that appears in your feedly and the Collection in which you put it.
5. Right under the Title space is an option to select Must Read. Check marking it puts the site in the Must Read section so you’ll never miss a story.
6. To remove a publication or blog from Must Read, click on at the top of that site’s page in feedly, and click on Edit Subscription in the dropdown menu. In the same place where you marked it as Must Read, deselect that box to take the publication or blog out of your Must Reads.

02. Promoting to Must Read on mobile

   

A little feedly fun fact: Promoting a site to Must Read was something that was originally specific to mobile. Here’s how to use this feature on mobile:

1. Go to the site’s page on feedly mobile.
2. Click on  at the top of the screen, then select Promote to Must Read. This will put that site under your Must Reads in feedly, so you can always stay up to date with that particular publication.
3. To demote a site from Must Read, just click the same setting icon on the same page and select Undo Must Read.

03. Accessing all your Must Reads

Congratulations on promoting the most important sites you read to Must Read. Now you’ll want to find your Must Reads section so you can read every single story and not fall behind. Here’s how you can access it:

1. On desktop and mobile, setting just one site as Must Read automatically creates a section in the main navigation called   Must Reads. You can access your Must Reads by clicking on Must Reads towards the top of your navigation bar.
2. You don’t have to read all the publications you’ve marked as Must Read together. You can also use your Must Read section to read from any one publication in that section. This makes the publications that are important to you even easier to find. You can do that on feedly Mobile by clicking the  next to Must Reads in the left-hand navigation menu. A list of the sites you’ve marked as Must Read will drop down and you can select the most relevant site from there.
3. To open Must Reads automatically when you login to feedly, got to Preferences at the bottom of the navigation bar. The first section asks you what page you would like to load when you start feedly. Select Must Reads.

04. The impact of Must Read feeds on Google Now recommendations

Promoting a site to Must Read will impact the likelihood of its articles coming up in your Google Now recommendations. With Must Read, you can personalize your Google Now to deliver the content that is most important to you

First, let’s understand how Google Now works. Throughout the day, we select stories from your feedly to show up as a card in Google Now. We make this selection based on whether the story comes from a feed promoted as Must Read and whether the story’s more popular than other stories the site has published.

Thus, promoting a site to Must Read will increase the chance that their articles will appear as a cards in Google Now.

Here’s an example of how the engine could work: If there are two stories that are contenders for the Google Now card, we’ll select the one that’s in your Must Reads. If two stories are in your Must Reads, we’ll select the most popular one to come up in your Google Now.

So you can help tell the feedly engine which sites are most important to you by promoting them as Must Reads to increase the likelihood that we show you a feedly card from that publication or blog.

Questions? We want to hear your feedback. Email us at tutorials@feedly.com.

The topic of racial segregation in America’s residential communities is one that’s increasingly come into the spotlight. Whites, it seems, are increasingly seeking out predominantly white suburban communities. But what, exactly, do they expect to find?

For his 2006 book, Searching for Whitopia, Rich Benjamin traveled 27,000 miles across the U.S. to find the whitest communities in the country. He rented homes there and temporarily became a resident of those so-called “whitopias,” where, as a black man, he’s experienced the good, the bad, and the awkward.

Benjamin recently gave an audience a taste of his experience at this year’s TED Woman conference in California. His talk was darkly humorous at times as he recalled trying to blend in with his new neighbors—including attending a white supremacist retreat: “Among the many memorable episodes of that retreat is when Abe, an Aryan, sidled up next to me,” Benjamin told his audience. “He said, ‘Hey, Rich, I just want you to know one thing. We are not white supremacists. We are white separatists. We don't think we're better than you, we just want to be away from you.’"

But Benjamin’s talk challenged the audience to think about the state of residential segregation in an increasingly diverse country. As CityLab previously reported, studies have shown that among all races, whites most prefer to live among themselves. Having African Americans make up just 20 percent of the neighborhood they live in is enough to make some white people uncomfortable.

The 13-minute talk is worth watching in its entirety, but we’ve pulled out some portions particularly worth noting.

“Golf is the perfect seductive symbol of whitopia.” A white woman in the audience laughs and covers her face, as if to say, “I know.” Whether he was in St. George, Utah, or Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Benjamin always found himself golfing. In fact, he was golfing at least three times a week, he said. That was when he got the best interviews.

Indeed, even with the likes of Tiger Woods and Michelle Wie, golf is a predominantly white sport. As a recreational activity, it tends to attract elites who can fork over at least $700 to pay for course fees, equipment, and apparel.

There’s a community of retired LAPD cops living in North Idaho. One of the places Benjamin visited during his two-year trip was Coeur d’Alene, a city that is 95 percent white and ranks fourth for the fastest-growing white population. “In 1993, around 11,000 families and cops fled Los Angeles after the L.A. racial unrest for North Idaho, and they've built an expatriated community,” he said.

It’s no wonder, he added, that there’s a huge gun culture there; in fact, there are more gun dealers than gas stations. With that comes a sense of paranoia, as he observed when he tried to rent a gun at a shooting club. The man behind the counter had been courteous—up until he saw Benjamin’s New York City driver’s license. “That was when he got nervous,” Benjamin said.

“A country can have racism without racists.” Writing in an opinion piece for The Washington Post in 2009, Benjamin noted that racial discrimination isn’t necessarily as deliberate and intentional as it used to be. In Idaho and Georgia, for example, Benjamin found that many white people emigrate to these predominantly white communities not necessarily because they’re racist, but for “friendliness, comfort, security, safety—reasons that they implicitly associate to whiteness in itself.” But these qualities are subconsciously inseparable from race and class—thereby letting discrimination and segregation thrive “even in the absence of any person's prejudice or ill will.”

Racial segregation in housing has remained fairly constant throughout U.S. history. But by 2042, Benjamin predicted in his talk, whites will become the minority in America. What, then, will become of these predominantly white communities? The more gated enclaves there are, the harder it will be to tackle the conscious and subconscious biases that lead to self-segregation—as well as the matrix of factors that continue to enforce it otherwise.

Top image: Shutterstock.com/Lynne Furrer.

At two big hacking conferences in Las Vegas over the past week, security pros revealed new vulnerabilities in daily items we never considered security risks. These events serve as annual displays of the latest hacking tricks.

Rifles 
The Austin, Texas-based company TrackingPoint makes auto-aiming rifles that increase a shooter’s accuracy and have Wi-Fi connectivity. Within the 100- to 150-feet range of the Wi-Fi and using a mobile phone, a hacker can compromise the weapon and change the target of the shooter, says Runa Sandvik, one of the researchers who presented at the annual hacker gathering Def Con last week.

In a demonstration for Wired, Sandvik and a research partner finagled with a rifle’s software to shift aim 2.5 feet to the left, hitting a different target...

Electronic skateboards 
Electric skateboards can make your ride smoother — until the board no longer listens to your controls and throws you off. Two researchers developed a hack they dubbed “FacePlant,” which gave them total control over digital skateboards by manipulating the Bluetooth connection.

An attacker could force the skateboard to connect to a laptop and then stop the board, alter its direction or disable its brakes.

Death records 
It’s pretty simple to kill someone off — at least on paper — Chris Rock, chief executive officer and founder of the security company Kustodian, showed in a presentation at Def Con. Using information found online, anyone can complete state electronic death records, Rock found, and then register to become a funeral director online to complete a certificate of death.

Why kill someone off officially, but not physically? For revenge against an ex-partner or a jerk boss, according to Rock’s presentation, or to enjoy the insurance benefits or access elderly parents’ estates.

Teslas
We already know that the modern car is like a smartphone on wheels in that it’s susceptible to hack attacks like any other connected device... What they found: Teslas are, in fact, built with more security in mind than the average vehicle. But they also found several vulnerabilities, and were able to remotely open and close trunks, lock and unlock doors and stop a Tesla, depending on what speed it was being driven at.

The researchers worked with Tesla, and Tesla automatically pushed an update to all the cars so drivers could patch the vulnerabilities within one to two weeks — unlike other car companies, which have had to issue recalls on vehicles with security flaws.  more

Featuring Janelle Monáe, Deep Cotton, St. Beauty, Jidenna, Roman GianArthur, and George 2.0.

This is the song/chant that Janelle Monáe and her cohorts performed at yesterday’s Philadelphia march against police brutality.

#BLACKLIVESMATTER

This infamous straight-to-TV special was aired in 1978, and never again, nor has it ever been officially released in any format. Although it stars the original cast it's a total mess from start to finish, especially the long stretches of Chewbacca and his newly-introduced family speaking in Wookie without any subtitles.

Next up in our video series of Boston Comic Con interviews with comics creators, we have Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb, the co-illustrators of the Adventure Time comic, as well as The Midas Flesh. We talked to them about their working process as a duo, their future plans, and their dream to someday get asked to illustrate a Star Wars comic.

Read the video transcript below.

***

Shelli Paroline: We recently finished The Midas Flesh with BOOM! Box, and that’s an 8-issue series written by Ryan North. It’s a sci-fi adventure; it’s great.

Braden Lamb: It’s about dinosaurs, spaceships, Greek myths, science, and pals.

So, a typical day. We usually — we like to take kind of a leisurely morning breakfast.

Paroline: [laughs]

Lamb: Before we settle in to really work.

Paroline: This is all honest, here!

Lamb: But once we start working, then we’re just going strong through — past dinner.

Paroline: Yup.

Lamb: We both work pretty much all digitally. We have pretty much worked digitally exclusively, but more recently, we’ve been doing a little bit more — Shelli’s been doing more traditional inking for a graphic novel that we’re working on.

Paroline: Yeah, we’re working on a graphic novel for a second right now. We’re changing it up from monthly issues.

We usually work together, on our lay-outs and whatnot. One of us will pencil; we divide up the rest of the process, and we also ink and color our own work, too. So, it depends on what we’re doing day-to-day, but that’s the typical day.

Already we’ve worked on two real dream projects so far, so we’re crossing ’em off the list! I mean, I really enjoy doing licensed stuff. It’s kind of amazing to do things that inspired you originally. I think I’d like to do a Star Wars story, at one point.

Lamb: Yeah. For sure. Star Wars. Me, too. And, if we don’t get to do a Star Wars comic, then I think Midas Flesh will do close enough. It hits a lot of those buttons for me.

I feel like the worst comments that I’ve discovered are people who just aren’t really into the thing that we’re doing. And that’s fine.

Paroline: Yeah.

Lamb: Because, if it was for everyone, then it wouldn’t be so special.

Paroline: I mean, yeah. I think everyone has their own opinions, and you can always tell in a comment if someone just said it to be mean, or if they honestly have a disagreement, like it just didn’t match their vision. You can always just blow it off as that.

***

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

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'This spring, an LA teenager’s school project ignited the internet. A charm offensive titled “Don’t Cash Crop My Cornrows”, the five-minute video deftly unpacked the thorny issue of cultural appropriation with a nuance that few would be able to nail. Raising an eyebrow at culprits like Iggy Azalea and Katy Perry treating black culture as a pick’n’mix stand at the multiplex, the clip, uploaded by 16-year-old Amandla Stenberg, announced a whip-smart new voice that was not to be fucked with.

Three years after she shot to global prominence as Rue in The Hunger Games (2012), the actress is leading a wave of young, hyper-informed trendsetters with a fresh and fearless take on today’s defining issues. Last month, she echoed the sentiments of her school project in a comment on Kylie Jenner’s Instagram. In response to the pouty reality princess’s latest look – cornrows – Stenberg wrote, “when u appropriate black features and culture but fail to use ur position of power to help black Americans by directing attention towards ur wigs instead of police brutality or racism”. Jenner retorted, “go and hang out w Jaden.” (Stenberg attended prom with Jenner’s ex, Jaden Smith.)

Yet Stenberg cuts through the noise. Using social platforms like Tumblr and Twitter, she’s always set her own agenda in terms of what’s important and newsworthy, regardless of what mainstream media is championing. She uses Instagram, but not just for thirst trap selfies or to promote her personal brand. More than anything else, she’s someone who refuses to stay quiet. “I think people discredit teenagers and how wise they can be,” says Stenberg. “Sometimes I meet teenagers who are much wiser than many adults I’ve met, because they haven’t let any insecurities or doubts about themselves get in the way of their thoughts.”'
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buzzfeedceleb:

Felicia Day’s totally awesome guide to getting famous on the internet. 

I love this.

The wonderful Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) plays the extremely talented, oft-beleaguered and very blacklisted novelist and writer Dalton Trumbo whose successful career came to an end after being declared a Communist in 1947 in the upcoming biopic Trumbo. The film also features Dame Helen Mirren, Diane Lane, Louis C.K. and John Goodman.

The successful career of 1940s screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) comes to a crushing end when he and other Hollywood figures are blacklisted for their political beliefs. TRUMBO (directed by Jay Roach) tells the story of his fight against the U.S. government and studio bosses in a war over words and freedom, which entangled everyone in Hollywood from Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) and John Wayne to Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger.

images via Bleeker Street

On Tuesday, renowned genre writer Anne Rice took to her Facebook page to address what she calls “the new era of censorship,” joining the well-established ranks of public figures who legitimately feel that political correctness—AKA being sensitive to how your actions affect marginalized groups—is a societal ill.

Rice specifically addressed the controversy surrounding For Such a Time, Kate Breslin’s romance novel about a relationship between a Nazi concentration camp commander and a Jewish prisoner. For Such a Time was published in 2014 (and nominated that year by the Romance Writers of America for Best First Book and Best Inspirational Romance), but has gained attention online recently after a reviewer wrote an open letter condemning the book’s nominations.

According to Rice, the book’s recent attention has led Internet users to abuse Amazon’s review system:

Rice, (who has a bit of a history with “internet mobs,” herself) went on to explain that she personally has yet to read the book, but that its subject matter should be irrelevant:

I’m certainly not going to deny that the Internet can create a scary group mentality (sometimes on both sides of debates), but it’s exhausting to see influential figures continuing to get on the nonsense podium to conflate political correctness with censorship.

I understand why Rice thinks readers should at least engage with a piece of media before condemning it (although I sympathize with people who elect not to, especially with For Such a Time), but giving an ill-informed opinion about a book is not censorship; and to characterize it as such, particularly while using the phrase “lynch mob,” is ridiculous and irresponsible.

Say it with me: criticism is not censorship, even if it feels that way. And, although this obviously doesn’t need to be said, “people demonstrating understandable concern about power dynamics in a questionable romance novel” is not a lynch mob.

(via Mediaite)

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The enigmatic rapper and pop culture icon spoke to CNN's Brooke Baldwin about why he now supports Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton.

The hacker ethos is wild and anarchic, indifferent to the trappings of success. Or it was, until the gentrifiers moved in.

Make an Old Fashioned the right way, every time, with these premade herbaceous concoctions on MikMak.

BOSTON—Thinking quickly to devise a list of reasons why the area was not an ideal choice, local billing clerk Tim Connors, 33, managed to skillfully downplay the desirability of his neighborhood to a coworker who expressed an interest in potentially moving there, sources confirmed Wednesday. “You know, it was pretty nice when I moved in a few years ago, but it’s actually kind of gone downhill a bit,” said Connor, who mentioned the neighborhood’s lack of easy access to a grocery store as well as the long commute to work each morning as serious things to consider before his colleague started looking at apartments in the area. “Honestly, it’s okay, if you don’t mind limited restaurant choices and all the noisy construction. It’s fine for me right now, but if I could afford to I would probably move somewhere else.” Connors added that if ...

Can Cards Against Humanity welcome the world to its island without making a small town into a joke?

Jack, Luke and Saul are The AutistiX, the UK’s premier autistic rock group. Follow the group on it's first tour, which reaches its climax at Autism's Got Talent, the groups biggest show ever.

Sarah Graley’s webcomic Pizza Witch is as silly and fun as the title suggests. It’s all about Roxy, a witch who brews magical pizzas that make people fall in love with her. When she finds herself lusting after a woman who doesn’t eat cheese, she ends up on an offbeat quest for the perfect pizza ingredient.

Read more...

Sure, lots of people are looking forward to seeing Ben Affleck and Jared Leto playing the new Batman and Joker, but there’s another pair of actors who’ll soon portray the characters on the big screen. They’ll be in The Lego Batman Movie, which will be out on February 10, 2017.

Read more...

"Recent liver surgery revealed that I have cancer that now is in other parts of my body," Carter said in a statement.

"One guy lays down and the other one (hopefully a female) spams sit/stand up (key x) and it looks awesome."

ryannorth:

flavorcountry:

curtvilescomic:

The meaning of context and style in comics. The one and only Peanuts by Charles M Schulz and then Batman with knowing homage by Len Wein and Walter Simonson.

This is the best thing I have ever seen.

Agreed