firehose

retrogasm:

It’s Peanut Butter Jelly TIme…

In an article so staggeringly dumb I can barely handle it, economic blogger James Pethokoukis has some very interesting thoughts about cosplayers. Mainly that "Dressing up like Wolverine or Cersei Lannister is probably more fun than scouring the classifieds for menial jobs."

Read more...

The all-seeing-eye of Nielsen Holdings has been reporting erroneous figures since March.

The company has admitted that a software glitch may have skewed ratings from March 2nd until four days ago on October 6th; “as a result, small amounts of viewing for some national broadcast networks and syndicators were misattributed [...] Cable networks and local TV ratings were not affected by this error.” Nielsen’s statement also promises that

[...] As part of our investigation, we have also determined that there are no issues with the National People Meter, our data collection process, our panel, our TV audience measurement methodology or the total TV viewership data produced during this affected period.

According to Deadline,”as much as 98% of programs won’t be affected by more than .05 of a ratings point,” although it’s possible that correcting the figures could prove beneficial for ABC. Nielsen Global President Steve Hasker assured Deadline that the errors were minor but the company moved to address it in the interests of “absolute transparency.”

As you were, TV nerds.

Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

In Latvia, a group of bicycle enthusiasts decided to show the city of Riga what it would be like if every bicycle turned into a car. So they built these amazing contraptions, and reminded everyone that cars are what cause traffic jams.

Read more...

These horrible, repugnant people represent a tiny subsection of Cardinals fans, but look at these horrible, repugnant shirts.

Via The Guardian, we have a link to a Facebook page selling these:

That's it. I'm rooting for the Giants now.

If you want something to make you feel good about humanity, note that this is the most popular comment on the post announcing these artisan-crafted, professionally stenciled, not-shitty shirts:

I'm a Cards fan through and through but this just looks awful to everyone else in the country guys...let politics and baseball be separate, as they should always be.

/clicks like

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber's fiancee admitted Thursday that she violated the law when she married an immigrant seeking to retain residency in the United States. Cylvia Hayes said in a tearful news conference that she believes she was paid around $5,000 for the 1997 marriage. She said she was "associating with the wrong people" while struggling to put herself through college. Marriage fraud is a federal felony, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, although there's a five-year statute of limitations. Those charged with marriage fraud may also be charged with other offenses such as visa fraud or making false statements.

BATMAN! BATMAN! BATMAN! BATMAN! BATMAN! BATMAN!

The Hollywood Reporter is saying Will Arnett, The Lego Movie’s LEGO Batman, is getting his own feature film.

“Chris McKay, the animation supervisor on Lego Movie, was initially set to direct that project’s sequel. However, the movie is being pushed back and McKay is now helming the Lego Batman movie, which is being written by author-screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith,” writes THR. “Warners is eyeing a 2017 release for the spinoff, possibly even the original date for Lego Movie 2. The next Lego movie is Ninjago, which is due to open Sept. 23, 2016. The Lego Movie sequel would presumably come after 2017.”

I’ll be there.

(via Comic Book Resource)

Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

annefrankzappa:

Pugsley and Wednesday go trick-or-treating in their spooky disguises.

EDIT: Bloomfield says she found the screenshot on Facebook. Details below.

Janet Bloomfield – A Voice for Men’s compulsively lying “social media director” – is at it again.

A couple of months back, Bloomfield – who goes by JudgyBitch1 on Twitter – decided for some reason that she could best serve AVFM’s social media directing needs by straight-up libeling feminist writer Jessica Valenti – by making up inflammatory quotes and attributing them to Valenti in a series of Tweets. She later boasted in on her blog that the quotes – which she admitted she’d conjured out of thin air – had inflamed hatred of Valenti and caused her to catch “a bit of hell.”

Now Bloomfield is pulling the exact same stunt again. This time, her target is feminist cultural critic and #GamerGate bete noire Anita Sarkeesian.

On Saturday, Bloomfield tweeted an obviously doctored “screenshot” of a tweet that Sarkeesian never made.

Screenshot here in case she takes it down or gets tossed off Twitter again; here’s another screenshot including replies from JB’s fans.

How do we know this is fake? Well, whoever made this fake screenshot made one glaringly obvious mistake: this Tweet is way too long to be a real tweet. Twitter, as you probably know, has a strict limit on the number of characters you can use in a Tweet. 140. This fake tweet has 218.

Here’s what happened when I typed the same text into Twitter myself: as you can see, I went over the limit by 78 characters. That’s, uh, a lot.

 

As you can see, the “Tweet” button is disabled; it’s simply impossible to post Tweets that are too long.

Looking back through Sarkeesian’s Twitter timeline, I found the real Tweet that she posted at 2:32 PM on the 29^th of September.

As you can see, not only does the time match, but the numbers of favorites and retweets is roughly the same as well; there have only been a handful more added since the fake screenshot was made. Whoever made the fake tweet obviously just screenshotted this real tweet and then pasted in new text using the same font used by Twitter.

The sheer incompetence is astounding.

Did Bloomfield make this Tweet herself, or did she simply pass along a fake screenshot she found somewhere else? Well, Google Images couldn’t find any other instances of this fake screenshot on the internet; Bloomfield appears to be the first person to post it. Which suggests that either she or someone she knows made it – or someone else made it and sent it to her, and she posted it on the internet without checking to see if it was real.

Given her proclivity for making up quotes and attributing them to her enemies, I’m going to take a wild guess and say that I think she had something to do with creating the fake screenshot.

EDIT: Bloomfield says she found the screenshot on Facebook, on a page called Feminist Crazy Quotes, where it seems to have first appeared. Here’s her Facebook repost of it. It’s not clear where Feminist Crazy Quotes got it, as I can’t find any other instances of the tweet on the internet using Google Image search. It’s still not clear why the supposed “social media director” of AVFM, a woman who seems to spend half her life on Twitter, would not immediately realize that the Tweet was way too long to be a real Tweet.

If you scroll down through the responses to Bloomfield’s tweet, you’ll notice that Bloomfield’s fans ate this blatant deception right up; inclined to believe the worst about Sarkeesian, they easily convinced themselves that this preposterous, overlong, literally impossible tweet was real. And Bloomfield was in the thick of it, egging on their hate.

 

When one #GamerGater noted that the quote seemed a bit much, even for the hated Sarkeesian, another commenter pulled out the “radfem” card.

It goes without saying that Sarkeesian is not, in fact, a radical feminist.

When a few other tweeters pointed out the obvious – that Sarkeesian’s alleged tweet was in fact way too long to be a real tweet – Bloonfield fell back on the same “logic” she used when she was called out for making up quotes about Valenti: well, she may not have said this, but doesn’t it sound like something Sarkeesian would say?

No she wouldn’t. She didn’t. If she had, you wouldn’t need to use a fake screenshot to demonize her.

Amazingly, even after the tweet had been revealed to be fake, even after JB was reduced to claiming it was a “Poe” – just as she did with the fake Valenti quotes – the hatefest continued on, with dozens more tweets from JB’s peanut gallery denouncing Sarkeesian for her imaginary racism.

Here are just a few of them:

One more prudent Tweeter suggested that Bloomfield might want to take down the blatantly fake screenshot, if only to protect herself.

Ironically, while going back through Sarkeesian’s timeline to see if I could find the Tweet that was used in the screenshot, I ran across this:

And while most the overwhelming majority of this defamation comes from angry men, some of it comes from angry women – like Janet Bloomfield — who are every bit as dishonest and abusive as their male counterparts.

Original Source

djempirical

aaaaaaand scene.

no more Disney princesses art projects need to happen now.

Disney Princesses as piles of rocks illustrated by  Kevin Bolk. Without words, but beautiful;)

All Images © Kevin Bolk

Original Source

https://twitter.com/TheCheapSeatsTV/status/520271527259172864/photo/1

Original Source

St. Louis Protesters Burn American Flags After Black Teen Shot By Police

Throw a baby in the air and give a big ol’ F.U. to adulthood: Labyrinth II is really and truly happening.

Considering the pivotal impact Labyrinth had on me as a wee ’90s pup, the announcement of The Bulge’s Return actually feels a little anti-climactic. Hidden in a Variety article about Billy Crystal joining the production of Which Witch (totally rad news, by the way) is this gem of a sentence:

It [the Jim Henson company] is also working on a quartet of legacy titles in the Henson library — a Fraggle Rock movie that’s been in development at New Regency; a sequel to 1982’s The Dark Crystal; a sequel to 1986’s Labyrinth; and a movie based on the Emmet Otter character.

TALK ABOUT BURYING THE LEAD, VARIETY! Forget Billy “The Dark Crystal” Crystal (sorry, Billy, but you just don’t have the same androgynous appeal), is David Bowie attached? What about Hoggle? Or Ludo? HAS ANYONE TALKED TO SIR DIDYMUS’ AGENT?

Jim Henson Company, if you happen to need any ideas for Labyrinth: The Second One, get at me. My friend Emily and I made a pretty compelling sequel in my backyard in the mid ’90s. It’s edgy stuff.

Sequel-haters to the left, y’all. You won’t take this one away.

(via io9)

Previously in dance, magic, etc.

• 7 important life lessons learned from Labyrinth
• Toby is all grown up and directing a live-action puppet movie
• Jareth belongs on the Iron Throne

Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

The Pakistani teenager and education activist Malala Yousafzai was famous for her ideas even before she came to international attention, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. Indeed her intelligent advocacy when her school in the Swat Valley was shut down by the Taliban is what the gunmen who shot Yousafzai in the head in 2012 were attempting to thwart.

Now the 17-year-old is the Nobel Peace Prize’s youngest recipient, and the whole world is listening to those ideas. Here’s a glimpse of how they have developed over the years:

This 2009 documentary on Yousafzai, three years before she was shot

“They cannot stop me. I will get my education, if it is in home, school or any place. This is request to the all world that save our school, save our world, save our Pakistan, save our Swat.”

An interview after the 2012 shooting

“Today you can see that I’m alive. I can speak, I can see you, I can see everyone. And today I can speak, and I’m getting better day by day.”

Her July 2013 speech to the UN

From the speech: “Dear sisters and brothers, I am not against anyone. Neither am I here to speak in terms of personal revenge against the Taliban or any other terrorist group. I am here to speak for the right of education for every child. I want education for the sons and daughters of the Taliban and all the terrorists and extremists.”

Last year’s October interview with Jon Stewart

“Going to school is not only learning about different subjects. It teaches you communication. It teaches you how to live a life. It teaches you about history. It teaches you about how science is working. And other than that, you learn about equality, because students are provided the same benches. They sit equally—it shows us equality. It teaches students how to—how to live with others together, how to accept each other’s language, how to accept each other’s tradition and each other’s religion. It also teaches us justice. It also teaches us respect. It teaches us how to live together.”

New Hampshire Man Has Patriots Helmet Tattooed on Head; Moves to Florida, Is Soon Arrested | http://t.co/Gpo785Uqpu pic.twitter.com/3evB29sV2t

— Florida Man (@_FloridaMan) October 10, 2014

Those eyes though!

Victor Thompson learned the hard way that he wasn't in New Hampshire anymore. The 46-year-old tattooed Patriots fan was busted for possession of Spice, synthetic marijuana. It's legal in his home state, but not in Florida where he was arrested.

At least he never counts out Touchdown Tom.

Missing Hiker Paula Reuter Rescued After Three Days in Washington Mountains NBCNews.com A stranded hiker survived on mushrooms and bark for three days until smoke signals led to her rescue in a Washington state mountain range late Thursday. Paula Reuter had set out for an 11-mile hike near Snoqualmie Pass with her two dogs Monday ... and more »

jones_supa writes Since 1960s, we have been seeing the oil company Shell logo being featured in some Lego sets, and Legos being distributed at petrol stations in 26 countries. This marketing partnership is coming to an end, after coming under sustained pressure from Greenpeace. The environmental campaign, protesting about the oil giant's plans to drill in the Arctic, came with a YouTube video that depicted pristine Arctic, built from 120 kg of Lego, being covered in oil. CEO of Lego, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, wants to leave the dispute between Greenpeace and Shell, and the toy company is getting out of the way.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ethan is a simple messaging app by developer Ethan Gliechtenstein that allows users to ask him for his opinion on things. The messaging app includes a few simple guidelines, one of which is that Ethan can’t respond while asleep. According to Gliechtenstein, the app started as a way for friends to get in contact with him but spiraled out from there.

But then random people started downloading and I became sort of a virtual assistant at one point, finding music for romantic dinner or animes with dragons for them. Sometimes it’s hard because they keep asking me questions while i’m sleeping. That’s why I added the rules on the home page.

Ethan is currently available on iOS.

images via Ethan

See that small "hot spot" in the U.S. Southwest near the Four Corners region? It shows an extraordinarily dense concentration of the greenhouse gas methane. At triple the standard ground-based estimate, it's the largest concentration ever seen over the United States. So what's causing it?

Read more...

Twenty years after breaking up, the few surviving members of Pink Floyd who will still associate with the band (so, not Roger Waters), announced a new album, The Endless River, to be released later this year. It wasn’t quite a new beginning for the band, as the album’s tracks were culled from the sessions that produced 1994’s The Division Bell, and is intended as a tribute to Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright, who died in 2008.

In those 20 years, the band has only performed a handful of times—mostly at charity events—and hasn’t written or recorded any new songs since The Division Bell. Effectively, Pink Floyd has not really existed since Pulp Fiction was in theaters. As such, longtime guitarist David Gilmour figures the time is right to say “this is the end” for the venerable group. Meanwhile, for the public good, Gilmour is holding ...