firehose

Shonda Rhimes spoke at The Hollywood Reporter Women in Hollywood Breakfast on Wednesday about being black and female in Hollywood. Her comments were later published on Medium and, in her speech, she declared that she hasn't broken through any glass ceilings to get to where she is:

If I'd broken the glass ceiling, that would mean I would have made it through to the other side. Where the air is rare. I would feel the wind on my face. The view from here -- way up here where the glass ceiling is broken -- would be incredible. Right? So how come I don't remember the moment? When me with my woman-ness and my brown skin went running full speed, gravity be damned, into that thick layer of glass and smashed right through it? How come I don't remember that happening?

[snip]

How many women had to hit that glass before the first crack appeared? How many cuts did they get, how many bruises? How hard did they have to hit the ceiling? How many women had to hit that glass to ripple it, to send out a thousand hairline fractures? How many women had to hit that glass before the pressure of their effort caused it to evolve from a thick pane of glass into just a thin sheet of splintered ice?

So that when it was my turn to run, it didn't even look like a ceiling anymore. I mean, the wind was already whistling through -- I could always feel it on my face. And there were all these holes giving me a perfect view to other side. I didn't even notice the gravity, I think it had worn itself away. So I didn't have to fight as hard, I had time to study the cracks. I had time to decide where the air felt the rarest, where the wind was the coolest, where the view was the most soaring. I picked my spot in the glass and called it my target. And I ran. And when I hit finally that ceiling, it just exploded into dust.

Read more. 

 

monstercoach:

my senior year of high school was so wild; the visual and performing arts kids had to all put on a play and i got to do most of the graphic design and marketing stuff so i had to make all the posters, etc.

i made this background texture entirely out of ewoks

then i used it on posters like this (old work dont judge)

and they got put up all over the school and nobody except the art kids knew that there were 1000000 ewoks providing texture to the background

Sportacam, a Finnish company bent on “changing the way you watch sports – forever,” posted an ad for a developer, and managed to make themselves look like misogynist, homophobic brogamming bros in the process. Bro fist!

Here is the job ad in question, which has since been removed:

Sportacam—who currently boast seven followers and the apparent inability to change their default egg avatar—have taken to Twitter to defend their incredibly ill-advised job posting. It’s just satire, guys! It’s not hurting anybody! Learn how to take a joke!

It is a paraphrase from the HBO series Silicon Valley where a team member accuses another for being gay for his Java.

— Sportacam (@Sportacam) December 10, 2014

@kristajessica We dont believe in censorship. We wanted to try a more satirical approach. It is unfortunate if it offends people. — Sportacam (@Sportacam) December 10, 2014

@kristajessica We tried generic job ads w no result. Tried this extreme satire and got applicants. Responses extremely positive and negative

— Sportacam (@Sportacam) December 10, 2014

@kristajessica Its a Fat Joe song reference and meant as satire. We thought it was very clear the ad is cliche and hyperbolic — Sportacam (@Sportacam) December 10, 2014

@goodwillbits Nothing is offensive. Being offended only makes you feel bad. But nothing happens.

— Sportacam (@Sportacam) December 10, 2014

@goodwillbits We don’t believe in censorship. People should be able to joke about EVERYTHING. We are total joke liberals. — Sportacam (@Sportacam) December 10, 2014

@goodwillbits Everything. Considering the reaction on this obvious satire ad we best not.

— Sportacam (@Sportacam) December 10, 2014

@tommorris The ad is satire. Gay for code is from Silicon Valley, Jolt coke is cliche coder drink. It really was that unclear? — Sportacam (@Sportacam) December 10, 2014

@iamdanw @arcticstartup Well we are marketing guys and this went viral in Finland today. A lot of applications. Mission accomplished :)

— Sportacam (@Sportacam) December 9, 2014

See? It’s all okay because it went viral and their first hire was a woman!

I’m obviously being sarcastic here, but I’m sure we can all see the major problems with this job posting. In a work culture that already feels overwhelmingly exclusionary to women, ads like this don’t help. In computing-related occupations, women hold only 26% of jobs. 17% of Google’s tech workers are female. 14% of computer science degrees at major universities go to women. 0.4% of female college freshmen say they want to major in computer science. And if you’re searching for women who aren’t white and aren’t straight, you’re going to have to look even harder. To fix this, Microsoft VP Cindy Bates suggests we expose more women to computer-related jobs.

This ad is exactly how not to do that. The fact that this company thinks it’s acceptable to create a job ad that clearly alienates half (if not more) of the population brings the problem with tech culture into startling focus. These moments of casual misogyny, these micro-aggressions, are the kinds of things women in tech have to deal with every day.

If they’re not able to laugh it off or internalize it, they’re “too sensitive.” To fit in, you have to be just “one of the bros.” Asking tech start-ups to refrain from making misogynist advertisements isn’t censorship any more than it is to expect they also not make blatantly racist statements in an advertisement. “It’s satire” isn’t a Get Out Of Jail Free card for being an asshole. It just makes you a tone-deaf asshole.

Anyways, we’ll genuinely worry about this company becoming a blight on the tech industry when they manage to figure out how to change their cover photo on Twitter.

(via usvsthe3m)

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An anonymous reader writes "A scientific study by Maggie Simpson, Edna Krabappel, and Kim Jong Fun has been accepted by two journals. Of course, none of these fictional characters actually wrote the paper, titled "Fuzzy, Homogeneous Configurations." Rather, it's a nonsensical text, submitted by engineer Alex Smolyanitsky in an effort to expose scientific journals — the Journal of Computational Intelligence and Electronic Systems and the Aperito Journal of NanoScience Technology."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The NFLPA issued a strong statement in response to the owners' approval of the new personal conduct policy.

Less than an hour after the owners approved a new personal conduct policy, the NFLPA responded with its own statement, criticizing the league for the lack of a fair collective bargaining process as the NFL was preparing the revised policy. The players' union said that it did not have input into the new policy and has publicly stated that it disagrees with several of the league's proposed changes. The full statement from the NFLPA:

"Our union has not been offered the professional courtesy of seeing the NFL's new personal conduct policy before it hit the presses. Their unilateral decision and conduct today is the only thing that has been consistent over the past few months."

The NFL's General Cousel, Jeff Pash, immediately denied the union's claim that they didn't see the policy before it was approved Wednesday, according to a report from NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport. "We sent them the policy. Numerous meetings with them. The union knows every element we're talking about."

Troy Vincent, the Executive Vice President of NFL Football Operations and a former player, also ripped the union's behavior during this process, calling its participation in the negotiations "a farce," per Rapoport. He claims that the players tried to turn the meetings into a "negotiation," whereas the league apparently was not interested in strict collaboration with the union as it was preparing the new conduct policy.

The NFLPA has long been opposed to any unilateral changes to the policy throughout this entire process, so it is not surprising that the union responded with such a strong statement once the new policy was approved. The continued back-and-forth on this topic between the player reps and the league will definitely something to watch as the season winds down and the offseason begins.

How much do your favorite team's assistant coaches make?

Bud Foster is a rich man. The longtime Virginia Tech defensive coordinator is the highest paid assistant coach in the country, according to the recently released salary database from USA Today. Foster earned $1,369,500 in total pay this year, edging out Alabama defensive coordinator Kirby Smart for the top spot.

Foster, who has been the defensive coordinator in Blacksburg since 1995, guided the Virginia Tech defense to a great year in 2014, coming in inside the top 20 in both scoring and total defense despite having an offense that left the defense on the field for long stretches. Perhaps most impressively, the Hokie defense ended the year at 18.1% in defensive F/+, good for 4th in the nation. Foster made a lot of money, but he certainly did his part to earn it.

Here's a couple other interesting pieces of information from the salary database:

1. A whole bunch of recently-unemployed SEC coordinators made a big mess of money. Once the regular season ended, Auburn and Texas A&M almost immediately bid adieu to their respective defensive coordinators in Ellis Johnson and Mark Snyder. Those two, along with the still-employed-but-tenuously-so Lorenzo Ward at South Carolina made a combined salary of $2,313,450. That's a lot of money for teams that finished 61st (Auburn), 92nd (South Carolina) and 103rd (Texas A&M) in total defense.

2. The highest paid non-coordinator is... Tom O'Brien! The former Boston College and NC State head man is serving as the associate head coach and tight ends coach at Virginia, and he pulled in $757,970 this season. It certainly makes some sense that a coach with as much head coach experience as O'Brien would pull in a larger salary, but let's check in on the Cavaliers' offensive statistics this year:

Total Offense: 374.2 yards/game (88th)
Scoring Offense: 25.8 points/game (86th)
Offensive F/+: -1.4% (66th)

All told, O'Brien's wages account for just over 26% of the total assistant salary pool at Virginia. Factor in the $450,000 paid to offensive coordinator Steve Fairchild, and that's some mighty impressive bang for your buck there, Virginia.

3. The Power 5 school with the smallest assistant salary pool is... North Carolina! The Tar Heels have the smallest payroll for assistant coaches among all Power 5 conference teams at $2,051,667. That's only 37% of what LSU -- the top assistant pool -- pays its assistant coaches. Assistant coach salaries are becoming an increasingly big factor in major college football, so this is not a spot that any program would like to find itself.

Two non-power conference programs in Boise State and Army both have higher salary pools than North Carolina, although the difference is fairly small.

The weather service says it appears Thursday's potent storm could result in a significant wind storm for the central Oregon coast. Its high winds could reach into the Willamette Valley and Portland metropolitan area, where wind gusts could hit 45 to 50 mph.

Oscar Pistorius could have his conviction upgraded from culpable homicide to murder and face a possible 15-year prison sentence, after an appeal application made by state prosecutors was granted.

A struggling student overdosed on slimming pills after taking out a payday loan which saw a £100 debt soar to £800 in just three months, an inquest has heard. Courtney Mitchell Lewis made “a cry for help”, said the coroner, but the Swansea University physics undergraduate died after taking the tablets at his flat in Swansea. The 21-year-old posted a message to friends on Facebook, alerting them by saying: “I don’t want to die, I think it is too late.” Colin Phillips, acting senior Swansea coroner, said: “Mitch was a loving and caring individual who was facing a number of personal problems.”

A woman who has for years accused Bill Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting her filed a defamation lawsuit Wednesday claiming the disgraced comedian called her a liar over the claims, depriving her “of her good name and reputation.” Filed in Massachusetts federal court, the suit claims that Cosby, through lawyers and publicists, has “continued his pattern of branding” Tamara Green a liar since she first publicly denounced the scandal-ridden actor in 2005.

A bankrupt British real estate tycoon fell off his out of his luxury London apartment and plummeted to his death Monday, police said. Scot Young — who lived in the $4.7 million flat with his girlfriend, Bravo reality TV star Noelle Reno — fell four stories and was impaled on railing below, The Guardian reported. His death is not considered suspicious.

"We are really good at some things, like brewing cool beer and having fun," Chris Cox said. "Other things, businesswise, we are not so great at. So it's going to be a great partnership."

A mass “face-sitting” demonstration is being planned in London to protest a new set of porn laws in the UK. Hundreds are expected to gather on Friday outside Parliament, where demonstrators will simulate sex acts with each other and sing along to Monty Python’s “Sit On My Face.”

Millennials tend to gravitate to certain cities. They're more likely to live in San Diego than Newark, in Austin than Cleveland, in Washington than Tampa. But these geographic patterns bode poorly for their homeownership prospects: Millennials make up a larger share of the population in many metropolitan areas where they're least likely to afford the housing.

Jed Kolko, the chief economist at Trulia, illustrates this mismatch in the below graph:

Millennials are defined here as 20-34 year-olds to match available Census categories. The Y-axis captures the share of homes for sale on the market in each metro that are affordable on the local median income for households headed by Millennials. Homes are considered affordable when the total monthly payments (including taxes and insurance) add up to less than 31 percent of that median income.

In the above graph, Baton Rouge and Oklahoma City are outliers, metros with many Millennials and plentiful affordable housing. Cleveland, on the other hand, captures one extreme: Millennials there make up 18.4 percent of the population but can afford 71 percent of the homes for sale.

In metro San Diego, they make up nearly a quarter of the population. But just 18 percent of the housing is within their reach. The above calculations also assume a 20 percent down payment, so the affordable housing stock is probably a generous estimation.

As Kolko summarizes their quandary: "Millennials can afford markets where they don’t live, but they can’t afford many of the markets where they do live."

That means that if they do want to buy a home eventually — as survey results suggest that most of them do — many Millennials will probably have to sacrifice the cities that attracted them when they were young.

It happened. Everything we’ve been predicting all season happened. And just because we knew it was going to happen didn’t make it any less awesome when it finally did happen. Agents of SHIELD, keep making things happen!

The following contains spoilers for the mid-season finale of SHIELD so read at your own peril, mutant rip-offs.

After a season of mercifully Skye-light episodes, her season-and-a-half origin story finally came to a head in “What They Become.” Some kind folks on Twitter and in the comments section of last week’s recap pointed out “Daisy Bell” in the background of Skye’s dream sequence; and sure enough, this week SHIELD gave us confirmation that she really is Daisy Johnson (better known as the Inhuman Quake), and that SpyDaddy is Calvin Zabo (or Marvel villain Mister Hyde). Though it’s been in the works for a year and a half, it’s clear the writers are playing with the comics a bit here; it’s unclear whether or not Cal has actual powers or if he’s just wacky, and Skye clearly gets her powers from her mother, not her pops. But either way, we’ve got the beginnings of the first super-family in the Marvel universe, paving the way for their Inhumans film in, uh, 2018.

So we’re playing the long game, here.

Skye’s exposure to the mist that exploded from the Terrigen Crystals encased within the Diviner (that might be the nerdiest sentence I’ve ever written, and that’s saying something) led to her transformation into Quake, which is definitely epic—but will also always be tragically tied to Trip’s death. Despite the fact that last week I decried Mack’s apparent Sentinel transformation and cried for Trip’s departure instead, I’m so sorry I take it all back I didn’t mean it Trip we miss you already ughhh.

I know Trip was chronically underdeveloped this season —with valuable air-time going instead to the development of characters like Hunter, Mack, and Bobb—but what little time the Howling Commando’s grandson did have this season was always inexorably tied to Skye. In the same way that Mack and Fitz bonded this season, we saw a similar kind of friendship form between Skye and Trip; with his sacrifice on her behalf being the first thing Skye sees after emerging from her Inhuman cocoon, I’m pretty sure that’s going to mess her up.

At least the scripts will probably tell us that Trip’s death is going to mess Skye up. The only disappointing thing for me about this whole arc is that Chloe Bennet—though she’s improved significantly from last season—just doesn’t bring a whole lot of range to the table when playing Skye. We get a lot of sad eyes, and lately we’ve gotten some excellent butt-kicking, but that’s about the extent of it. If Quake is really going to number among the Avengers like she does in the comics, we’re going to need Bennet to up her game. I just can’t see her going toe-to-toe with Robert Downey Jr. or Scarlett Johansson quite yet. That being said, the scene where she blew Ward away without even hesitating was maybe my favorite moment for her of the entire series. I might have cheered out loud from my couch.

On the other end of the spectrum, Kyle MacLachlan has been an absolute delight this season, and I’m so excited we’re going to get to see more of him. He might be getting even better lines than Coulson these days, and that’s saying something. And the Coulson/Cal fight scene was pretty wild for two middle-aged dudes—did you see the way Coulson swung his legs around Cal’s neck and brought him down to the floor? It’s clear that Coulson is the better SpyDaddy by far (and he was ultimately the right man to take Whitehall down), but I’m still glad Skye let Cal go. For future excellent line purposes only, of course.

We’re left with more than a few mysteries at the end of this cliffhanger episode. For example:

1. What the hell was going on between Mack and Bobbi, and what is she hiding from Hunter in that thumb drive? Is this some weird Shadow Council business? Is she a Skrull? Is Nick Fury involved? Nick Fury is probably involved.

2. What in the hell happened

To Raina?

After she’d already been divested of her Flower Dress for several episodes (suggesting her transformation had already begun long before she was hit with the mist), we’re now seeing an even wilder physical transformation. I can’t think of anyone from the comics who she might be. Help me out, friends?

3. Who in the hell is this dude?

Is he another Inhuman? Is he calling the rest of the Inhumans? Is he Videmus, this guy who can grow long tendril-like eyeballs out of his head, and has a connection to the Terrigen Crystals and to Ultron’s Quiksilver and Scarlet Witch? Or is he the Reader, a dude from the newest run of Inhumans who had the ability to turn anything he read into reality, so the other Inhumans blinded him? So much possibilities oh gosh.

“What They Become” had far-reaching consequences for both SHIELD and the MCU as a whole—though not as much as I’d originally anticipated. The Terrigen Mist didn’t disperse on a global scale, meaning there are likely still tons of dormant Inhumans out there, waiting to be activated [Editor's note: KAMALAAAAAAAA]. But we’ve also seen that other Diviners and active Inhumans already exist. It will be interesting to see how SHIELD handles this expansion—though the show has undoubtedly gotten better the less insular it’s become.

What did you think of the mid-season finale? What are your theories? Let me know in the comments!

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Following releases of holiday metal albums in 2012 and 2013, actor, metal vocalist, and nonagenarian Christopher Lee has released his newest holiday metal song, “Darkest Carols, Faithful Sing.” Lee’s trademark strong, deep voice rings true in the song set to the tune of the classic Christmas carol “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” The legendary actor, best known for his roles in Hammer Horror films and The Lord of the Rings films, celebrated his 92nd birthday earlier this year.

Congratulations to Smart Girl Malala, who accepted her @NobelPrize today!! cc: @MalalaFund #nobelprize2014 pic.twitter.com/4BcQ7z8MKp

— AmyPoehlerSmartGirls (@smrtgrls) December 10, 2014

At a ceremony in Oslo earlier today, 17-year-old education activist Malala Yousafzai became the 16th woman to ever receive the Nobel Peace Prize when she accepted her joint award alongside Indian child rights campaigner Kailash Satyarthi. According to The BBC, “Nobel organisers say there have never been such standing ovations.”

Malala—the youngest Nobel laureate ever, and only the second Pakistani to receive the honor—accepted the award on behalf of children everywhere, urging the world to respect the voices of young people:

It [the award] is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change.

I am here to stand up for their rights, raise their voice. It is not time to pity them. It is time to take action so it becomes the last time that we see a child deprived of education.

Malala’s half of the $1.4m in award money will go towards the Malala Fund, her organization for childhood education

to help give girls everywhere a quality education and call on leaders to help girls like me.

[...] I will continue this fight until I see every child in school [...] I feel much stronger after the attack that I endured, because I know, no-one can stop me, or stop us, because now we are millions, standing up together.

Sixty-year-old Satyarthi, whose organization Bachpan Bachao Andolan has rescued tens of thousands of children from forced labor, declared the award “a great opportunity” to aid the fight against child trafficking. Despite the 43-year age difference between the two recipients, their messages of urgency and unity were the same, with Malala calling on the crowd to take action immediately: “Let us begin today!”

If you’d like to learn more about how you can help the Malala fund or follow the activist’s time in Oslo, you can stay up to date here.

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giants0rbiting:

I LITERALLY THINK THIS EVERY TIME THE SONG COMES ON

memewhore:

via Lauren Weinstein...

"Microsoft collects information about you, your devices, applications and networks, and your use of those devices, applications and networks. Examples of data we collect include your name, email address, preferences and interests; browsing, search and file history; phone call and SMS data; device configuration and sensor data; and application usage."

"If you open a file, we may collect information about the file, the application used to open the file, and how long it takes any use [of]it for purposes such as improving performance, or [if you]enter text, we may collect typed characters, we may collect typed characters and use them for purposes such as improving autocomplete and spell check features." (more)

"Such as" implies more than just two examples. 

In the era of status updates and instant feedback, so-called “pulse surveys” are now catching on at work. Employers say short monthly, weekly or daily polls—sometimes a single question at a time—provide data on how their teams actually feel and catch problems before they fester. Frequent surveys are even replacing annual employee surveys at some companies, bosses say, although other companies, such as Google Inc., use both.

In 2006, Britain’s Ministry of Defense officially pardoned 306 soldiers it had executed for cowardice or desertion during World War I. Many of them were underage, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and hadn’t been given a fair trial. Among them, 16-year-old Herbert Burden had lied about his age so he could join the army; after he fled a massacre 10 months later, he was shot by firing squad. Burden later came to represent these ill-fated young men: his likeness was used in a monument commemorating them, titled “Shot at Dawn.” Photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews borrowed that name when she embarked on her own photographic tribute, commissioned by the Ruskin School of Art as part of 14–18 NOW and currently on view at Stills center for photography in Scotland.

For the series, the photographer visited 23 execution sites around the same time and season as when the soldiers died there. These landscapes may now be quiet and even bucolic, but Mathews’s photographs ensure that their past horrors are not forgotten. As Geoff Dyer, who introduced the accompanying monograph by Ivorypress, wrote in Harper’s, “When no grave or memorial is in view, one still understands — one feels — that this is more than just a conventionally pleasing landscape, even if the particulars of what has happened remain unknown. History has taken root here.”

Shot at Dawn, Chloe Dewe Mathews is on view at Stills (23 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh, Scotland) through January 25, 2015.