Cheetah Men II — the top of my list of NES Sequels with Bad Plots.
Where to begin — The graphics? “expirement” instead of “experiment”? The meta-statement of calling the Cheetah Men a failed experiment? HIS FACE?
And unless I’m greatly mistaken, we see the world’s first use of the Oxford Comma’s mythical cousin, the “Oxford Exclamation Point”!
(Active Enterprises - NES - 1996)
Numerous stores are continuing the corporate trend of bringing their problematic Black Friday consumerism into a day meant for community. Now known as “Black Thursday,” numerous large retailers are opening around 6pm on Thanksgiving Day.
Kmart takes the cake this year by announcing it will open at 6am and remain open for 42 hours. ThinkProgressreported that when one Kmart employee requested to work a split-shift on Thanksgiving, she was denied and told if she didn’t come to work, she would be fired.
News from the store: new products, 15% Off Thanksgiving Sale and more!
Hi everyone! Lots of news regarding my shop to share, so let’s get down to it.
First off, I received my test print for the restored 1926 U.S. Highways map this week, and it looks absolutely fantastic. So I’m very pleased to announce that I’m offering 36” x 24” prints (34” x 22” image area with 1” white borders all around) for sale in my store for $34 plus shipping.
Store Link: 1926 U.S. Highways Map
I’m also offering a combo pack, with the 1926 poster complemented by my own U.S. Highways as Subway system map. The combo pack saves you $10 over buying each map separately, so it’s a great deal.
Store Link: 1926 Map/U.S. Highways as Subway Map Combo Pack
The other big news with the store is that I’ve streamlined it to make finding the map that you’re after much, much simpler. Instead of individual product pages for each and every individual Highways of the USA state or region print, they can now all be found on a single product page, where each map and size is easily selectable via two drop down menus. Give it a look: I think you’ll like it!
Store Link: New Highways of the USA Product Page
To celebrate these great new additions to the store, and because it’s coming up on Thanksgiving/Black Friday, you can also use coupon code “turkey” to get a massive 15% off any order from the store, including shipping. Offer valid until end of day, December 1st, 2014 (Pacific Time).
firehosegoing on a sharecation
Emotional Rainbow has released photorealistic pizza and hamburger bedding–perfect for fast food lovers who can’t bear to be away from their favorite foods for even a second. The bedding sets include pillow covers so food fans can rest their weary heads on hot pizzas and juicy hamburgers.
photos via Emotional Rainbow
submitted via Laughing Squid Tips
firehoseneeded badly
firehoseneeded badly
firehoseTW: fuck fuck fUCKFUCKFUCK
At the behest of Tamir Rice's family, Cleveland police released audio and video of the shooting that claimed the 12-year-old's life at a local playground four days ago.
In it, Rice is shown walking around a park with a BB gun in his hand, looking fairly bored and talking on his cell phone before a police cruiser pulls up. The two responding officers appear to shoot the boy immediately after leaving their moving police car. Those officers were identified as Frank Garmack, 46, a six-year veteran of the force, and Timothy Lowman, 26, who had only been with the department since March. Both officers are on administrative leave, which is standard after fatal shootings.
"We are honoring the wishes of the family and releasing this and also in the spirit of being open and fair with our community," Deputy Chief Edward Tomba said at a press conference this afternoon. Tomba called the shooting an "obvious tragic event."
firehose:(
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submitted by sawalrath [link] [89 comments] |
pbh3:
The planets, aligned.
the sickest thing ive ever seen
Hiroshima-based Twitter user Akiran makes anime bento boxes for her two sons, complete with highly detailed illustrations of anime characters. Akiran uses food coloring to paint the characters on oblaat, an edible transparent film made of starch. She places the oblaat directly on rice for the final presentation. Akiran has more bento photos on her blog.
photos by Akiran
firehose'Despite the looting and fires, federal officials in Missouri told Mr. Holder that violence and mischief Monday night were limited and reported no widespread criticism of the local police response to lawful protesters. Mr. Holder was upset, however, at the way the St. Louis County prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch, made his announcement, aides said.
Justice Department officials had hoped that Mr. McCulloch — a controversial figure among many protesters — would simply issue a statement explaining the grand jury’s decision, rather than hold a televised news conference that would put the focus squarely on him. In calls with federal officials Tuesday, Mr. Holder was bewildered, aides said, that Mr. McCulloch had announced his decision late at night, a time when clashes between demonstrators and police have been at their worst.
Several federal officials said they also were frustrated by Mr. McCulloch, who criticized journalists and recounted the evidence without ever mentioning that Mr. Brown had been unarmed.
Mr. Holder was particularly angry, Justice Department officials said, that Mr. McCulloch invoked his name when announcing the local investigation’s findings. “As promised by me and Attorney General Holder, there was a full investigation and presentation of all evidence,” Mr. McCulloch said.
Mr. Holder had worked for months to establish the Justice Department as a credible, independent investigator. He refused repeated entreaties to join local officials in Ferguson. They had hoped that if Mr. Holder simultaneously announced his findings, it would reassure the African-American community and help prevent unrest.
“Though we have shared information with local prosecutors during the course of our investigation, the federal inquiry has been independent of the local one from the start, and remains so now,” the Justice Department said on Monday. “Even at this mature stage of the investigation, we have avoided prejudging any of the evidence.”'
firehosevia Toaster Strudel
firehose'If, as in the U.S., white supremacy is the prevailing power structure, and anti-blackness the flip side of that coin, "then the reasonable fear standard will always work against those who are deemed sub-persons," argues Falguni Sheth, a professor philosophy and political theory at Hampshire College.
If we wanted to be honest with ourselves, Sheth says, "we have to pull it apart and say: Look, this is the world that is the result of all these horrible histories. The history of slavery, the history of Black Codes, the history of Jim Crow. So the reasonableness standard has to be accompanied by the question: reasonable for whom?"
It could be more aptly described as "a reasonable standard for those who have a fear of blacks and who have arms," Sheth says.
The 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman--not an officer himself, but a neighborhood watchman who'd deputized himself as a citizen cop--is a prime example of this, says Macfarlane. "The jury in the Zimmerman case could understand his illogical, subjective fear of a young black man and think of it as reasonable. It seeps into the police force, and every aspect of our culture." '
Did the legal system fail to deliver justice for Michael Brown when a St. Louis grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed him? Or, was it working exactly as it's designed? These are the questions many are asking in the wake of yet another defeated attempt to punish yet another cop for the killing of yet another unarmed black man.
Accountability for police violence is so rarely found in the courts that many are urging for a more expansive definition of that elusive justice. What's more, individual prosecutions of police officers are ill-suited, activists say, to deal with the root of the real problem: racism, and an irrational fear of black people.
"We work to hold individual police [officers] accountable," says Monifa Bandele, a member of the New York City chapter of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), "But if we don't really dissect the cancer that is racism in the U.S. it's just going pop up in other parts of the body."
There's an undeniable emotional allure, and even a public mandate, to turn to the courts for accountability for the black boys and girls and men and women whom police kill. "It is the only outlet that's available right now. It is the only venue we have as a community," says Sheila Bedi, a professor at Northwestern University's School of Law, describing the bind that black people and their allies are in. "Where else are communities supposed to look for justice?"
Yet Bedi, herself a practicing civil rights attorney, minces no words about the legal system. "In terms of a social good, the criminal justice system was an accomplice to Michael Brown's murder."
She, like many, predicted that the grand jury would decline to indict Darren Wilson. In fact, that Wilson would escape indictment was accepted knowledge among those well-acquainted with the workings of the U.S. criminal justice system long before Monday's announcement came down. "The system is not about justice for black and brown men, as it's been proven over and over again," Bedi says.
A 'Reasonable Fear' of Black Boys
The matter of whether Wilson's killing of Michael Brown constituted a crime was never an open question to his family or to protestors who took to the streets in Ferguson. But the legal standard to determine what makes a killing a crime, particularly if a police officer is involved, all but ensured that Wilson would not be indicted. While the Department of Justice has an open investigation into Wilson's shooting of Brown, media reports have predicted little chance at a federal lawsuit. Should the Brown family choose to file a civil lawsuit against Wilson, the legal bar there will be tough to reach as well, say legal experts.
"The law recognizes that police officers are going to make mistakes, allows for them to do so, and acknowledges that life [may be] the cost," says Katherine Macfarlane, a professor at Louisiana State University's Paul M. Hebert Law Center who, prior to her appointment, defended New York City and police officers against civil suits, including excessive force claims. Those protections for cops are enshrined in legal doctrines that first allow a police officer to use force--including deadly force--against an apparently unarmed suspect if the officer has probable cause to believe the suspect "poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others," Supreme Court Justice Byron White wrote in his opinion for the 1985 case Tennessee v. Garner. That case concerned the killing of 15-year-old Edward Garner, a black boy who was unarmed and holding a purse and $10 when a police officer shot and killed him while responding to a report of a nearby home robbery. As it was, the Supreme Court found the police officer's actions unconstitutional--Tennessee law at the time allowed for an officer to fatally shoot a fleeing suspect in order to secure an arrest. The Supreme Court raised the bar for when force could be an option, but also may have inadvertently supplied every subsequent accused officer the defense they needed to utter in order to be set free: "I feared for my life, or the lives of others."
Indeed, Wilson said a version of this when he sat before the St. Louis grand jury. "[Michael Brown was] obviously bigger than I was and stronger [and] I've already taken two to the face I didn't think I would. The third one could be fatal if he hit me right," Wilson said of his decision to reach for his gun during his interaction with Brown, according to transcripts of the grand jury proceedings published by the New York Times.
Separately, police officers sued for excessive force are to be judged based on a standard of "objective reasonableness," which was set forth by the Supreme Court in its 1989 ruling in Graham v. Connor. Determining whether an act of alleged excessive force violated the law means asking whether another reasonable officer would have acted similarly. If an officer "reasonably" believes they are in danger, they are legally allowed to use deadly force.
"In most police cases there's deference given to police officers," Macfarlane says. "In excessive force claims in particular the jury doesn't get to judge the police officer's actions with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. A juror will be asked to consider whether an officer acted reasonably under the circumstances, which might include stress and very short timeframes in which to act."
The objective reasonableness doctrine "is protective of officers and their need to make split-second decisions," says Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law. "Excessive force and other legal doctrines make it very hard for those who have been injured to recover."
In a culture where fear of black people, and in particular a fear of black men and boys, is a socially acceptable more, the colorblind legal doctrines nonetheless authorize police officers to shoot and kill black people. Even when those black males are teen boys. Even when they are unarmed. Even when what spooks the police officer is the flash of their partner's muzzle.
If, as in the U.S., white supremacy is the prevailing power structure, and anti-blackness the flip side of that coin, "then the reasonable fear standard will always work against those who are deemed sub-persons," argues Falguni Sheth, a professor of philosophy and political theory at Hampshire College.
If we wanted to be honest with ourselves, Sheth says, "we have to pull it apart and say: Look, this is the world that is the result of all these horrible histories. The history of slavery, the history of Black Codes, the history of Jim Crow. So the reasonableness standard has to be accompanied by the question: reasonable for whom?"
It could be more aptly described as "a reasonable standard for those who have a fear of blacks and who have arms," Sheth says.
The 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman--not an officer himself, but a neighborhood watchman who'd deputized himself as a citizen cop--is a prime example of this, says Macfarlane. "The jury in the Zimmerman case could understand his illogical, subjective fear of a young black man and think of it as reasonable. It seeps into the police force, and every aspect of our culture."
The Real Work
The ability to be wholly unsurprised in and yet simultaneously outraged by the criminal justice system is a recurrent paradox in an era where the arc of the universe is taking its sweet time bending towards justice.
"Disgusted, full of rage," said activist Patrisse Cullors, describing her state of mind Monday night after a Ferguson grand jury declined to indict Wilson for killing Brown as she expected."[My] heart is broken," added Cullors, the director of the Los Angeles-based police accountability and prison reform group Dignity and Power Now and a co-founder of Black Lives Matter.
Cullors has organized on police accountability and prison reform issues for years and knows that Brown's police shooting death will hardly be the last she'll protest. After all, in the three and a half months between Brown's August 9 killing and Monday evening's grand jury announcement, police around the country have killed 25-year-old Ezell Ford, 18-year-old Vonderrit Myers Jr., 12-year-old Tamir Rice and 28-year-old Akai Gurley, all of them black.
Given the track record--in the last year, grand juries and district attorneys have declined to indict officers who killed 16-year-old Kimani Gray, 22-year-old John Crawford III and 18-year-old Ramarley Graham, all of them also black--Darren Wilson will not be the last police officer to escape criminal charges for killing an unarmed black boy or man. The criminal justice system has proven itself to be disinterested in defending black people's humanity.
"We cannot indict our way out of white supremacy," Cullors says. And in the coming days, as public pressure likely shifts to calls for a civil rights lawsuit or pressure on the Department of Justice, neither can people "solely call on the DOJ to take action against law enforcement," Cullors says. Change, she says, will come from people who take to the streets to shut cities down. "We must demand for all government officials to sit at the table with us to move towards greater accountability. Every law enforcement agency must be under constant scrutiny by the people they serve and the bosses [who] govern them."
Bandele of MXGM agrees. She says the group will continue to train people in other cities to conduct their long-running police observation program, and to fight for legislation like the anti-racial profiling policy community groups won last year in New York City. "When things happen like Amadou Diallo, like Sean Bell, you would think people would give up," Bandele says, letting out a short laugh at the absurdity of the political reality. "But we know you can't give up. There's no option. We can't live like this. We can't live and have people shot in our community."
She isn't ready to give up on a political strategy that includes going after cops in court either. "No one is saying [the courts] are the only field you can play in to get justice," Bandele says. "We are at such a crisis level that we have to double down on whatever we have available to us. We've got to play them all."
firehosein Ohio
“There are going to be nights that I’m here until midnight, making turducken and jamming to Adele,” he says.
firehoseWOKKA WOKKA
firehoseJesse Schell
firehose'It was true ofThe Real World, and it’s even more true with Top Chef, but when your reality show hits Boston, you’ve officially run out of settings.'
A guide to what we’re barely putting up with this week.
The return of Investigation Discovery’s least tawdry program, A Crime To Remember. It’s like Mad Men, if Mad Men was made by the same network that brought you Swamp Murders and Wives With Knives.
Top Chef Goes To Boston. It was true ofThe Real World, and it’s even more true with Top Chef, but when your reality show hits Boston, you’ve officially run out of settings.
ABC’s CMA Country Christmas. You know what they say: Keep the Brad Paisley in Christmas.
KFC’s edible pile of mush, the Loaded Potato Bowl. It’s mashed potatoes, chicken tenders, corn, bacon sauce, and cheese all mushed together in a convenient plastic bowl. It’s also a rare opportunity to eat a food looks like it came pre-digested.
Jaden and Willow Smith, musicians, quantum physicists ...
Logan Miller of MillerWoodshop has created an impressive and fully functioning NES game controller coffee table designed after the classic Nintendo Entertainment System controller from the 1980s. The table, which is available to purchase online from Miller’s Etsy store, comes equipped with a built-in retractable cable for plugging into any original NES console.
This table was built to scale with the original NES controller. This fully functional controller’s buttons have been tuned up for easy play. A heavy coat of clear polyurethane has been added to protect the table from scratches or rings from a glass. It’s a great item for children and adults. The NES coffee table has a modern style and a retro feel. It also comes with 6 spacers that have matching gray paint and gray felt on top and bottom of the cylinder shaped spacers.
photos via MillerWoodshop
firehoseSeth Meyers is out of ideas
On a recent episode of Late Night With Seth Meyers, host Seth Meyers presented another installment of “Second Chance Theatre,” a recurring piece on the show where former Saturday Night Live cast members are given the chance to revive a sketch they could never get on air.
In this installment, Jason Sudeikis presents the sketch “Juggling Flyer” about a juggling instructor having no luck getting interest in his flyer offering juggling lessons. The sketch stars Sudeikis as the juggling instructor as well as former SNL cast members Fred Armisen and Mike O’Brien.
For the first installment of “Second Chance Theatre,” Meyers let Will Forte present his sketch “Jennjamin Franklin” about a female Benjamin Franklin on a date.
European Union regulators want Google to extend the controversial "right to be forgotten" to searches worldwide, including those made on Google.com, according to The Wall Street Journal. The right to be forgotten was put into place following a court ruling earlier this year and requires Google to remove search results about people in Europe should a person deem those results to be irrelevant, outdated, or inaccurate. Google has begun removing links across European domains, but the EU now wants to see those removals extend to all of its domains so that the block can't be circumvented.
It's unclear if Google will have to comply with the regulator's latest request, but it certainly won't want to. Google has been opposed to the ruling, which hides information and makes its search less useful. According to Bloomberg, Google.com receives fewer than 5 percent of the searches throughout Europe, so it isn't as though Google has left open a large loophole. In fact, Google.com forwards to the local Google website when visited throughout Europe, so visitors have to do some amount of work to actually perform an unfiltered Google.com search. Google will certainly want to avoid removing links as widely as it can, so this is likely to be the latest piece in the ongoing dispute around how the right to be forgotten should be implemented.
Ronald WAYNE (b. 1934). Proof sheets for the Apple-1 Operation Manual. Palo Alto: Apple Computer Company, [1976]. Eleven sheets, printed on rectos only. Comprising front cover, text and warranty. A COMPLETE SET OF PROOFS collected by Ronald Wayne, with the exception of the folding schematic that would have been printed by a different process.
[With:] Ronald WAYNE. Personal archive of preparatory drawings and blueprints for the casing of the Apple II Computer. [Palo Alto, ca 1976-77]. Comprising: 8 original pencil sketches on paper, 11 x 16 in. (6) and 17 x 22 in. (2); and 17 blueprints, 22 x 34 in. (5), 16 1/2 x 22 in. (2) and 8 1/2 x 11 in. (10). Wayne’s drawings and blueprints show the enclosure, panels, door, hinges, pivots etc. The final version of the Apple II was introduced on 16 April 1977 at the West Coast Computer Faire. Although the final version contained certain recognizable elements of Wayne’s early renderings, such as the gently sloping front panel holding the keyboard, the result was quite different. This series of renderings illustrates the rigorous industrial design process employed in Apple’s formative years: a process that can certainly still be seen in the company’s adventurous, innovative leap forwards in its combination of applied science and design.
[With:] Apple-II. Advance Order Information. Palo Alto, 1977. Bifolium (275 x 428 mm; 10 3/4 x 16 3/4 in.). THE EXCEEDINGLY SCARCE ORDER FORM FOR THE APPLE II. As most examples would have been filled out and returned to the company, an original example, unmarked, is a very rare ephemeral piece of Apple history.
Bidding expected to reach: $30,000 – $50,000
firehosethe man's attorney: "It shows how aggressive they are, and how they seek to destroy your reputation in the press even when the charges are complete, fricking garbage."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
firehose"Parts of the site have since moved over to Amazon Web Services servers, allowing for more stability across much of the site."
Healthcare.gov has come along way since its disastrous rollout last year. The first week of open enrollment for 2015 healthcare plans began on November 15, and Healthcare.gov seems to have handled the rush without breaking. The Obama Administration is reporting that 462,125 people signed up for plans through the site in the first week of open enrollment, and nearly half of them had not purchased plans through the site before. The numbers are a marked improvement over last year's famously buggy launch, which signed up just over 100,000 customers in the first month.
The White House has made huge changes to the site since the disastrous launch, pulling together experts from across the country for a two-month marathon rebuilding effort. Parts of the site have since moved over to Amazon Web Services servers, allowing for more stability across much of the site. Even straightforward analytics have proved difficult, as numbers reported earlier this month mistakenly included dental plans with overall healthcare enrollees. But while the politics continue to be complex, the basic technology of Healthcare.gov seems to have finally settled down.
