firehose

Many New Yorkers don't know it, but some of the world's largest public works projects are under construction right under their feet. Work is underway on extending a massive new water tunnel to keep up with demand, and workers are boring under the most dense sections of Midtown to make a new rail link into Grand Central Terminal. But perhaps the most exciting projects for city residents are two new extensions to the vast New York City Subway — one to the far West Side, and another down Second Avenue.

The Subway is New York's lifeline; it's a transportation system so vital, that the city itself wouldn't exist as we know it if the Subway were never built. And these two extensions are severely needed. City planners first started work on the Second Avenue Subway in 1929, and while the project has legendarily been stuck in a quagmire for a quarter of a century, today residents need it more than ever. And it's coming to life.

The scale of these projects is truly incredible, and what's even more amazing is that it's all happening in one of the most crowded spots on earth. And, unfortunately, as The New York Times shows in a new video in its "Living City" series, some neighborhoods have been brutally impacted by the years of construction. Foot traffic is down, dust is in the air, and construction sites mar one of Manhattan's key residential areas. The video also offers a look at how work on the new Subway line is coming along — including a shot of a massive underground explosion. Give it a watch.

aminatou:

too real

newfoundgrace:

I T   I S   T I M E

my overwhelming hatred of winter is generating some spill-over affection for fall.

nonnegative:

bloodpactgirlscout:

icantspellbuterfly:

bloodpactgirlscout:

so the saddest shortest story is attributed to hemingway:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

and this came to me at breakfast and i thought it was hilarious. 

pls don’t ruin hemingway for me.

no i will continue to do that

every time i see the hemingway thing i think about how my first child wore no shoes until he was a year old and how my second child is eight months old and has never worn shoes a day in his life. we have baby shoes, they’re all never worn. baby shoes: useless. THEY CAN’T WALK.

Intel has pulled an advertising campaign from video gaming website Gamasutra after it reportedly received a number of complaints from self-identified gamers upset that the site was championing fair gender representation in video games. The decision by the world's largest chipmaker to remove its advertising from the site comes as a result of a coordinated campaign called Operation Disrespectful Nod, apparently orchestrated by supporters of the #GamerGate hashtag, who rail against so-called "social justice warrior" writers, journalists, and developers.

Organizers of the campaign exhorted people to contact companies that advertise on video game-focused websites such as Gamasutra and Kotaku in order to complain about five specific articles that suggested the the concept of the "gamer" as an identity was fading away. In this case, their efforts were successful. "Intel has pulled its advertising from website Gamasutra," an Intel spokesperson said to Recode. "We take feedback from our customers very seriously especially as it relates to contextually relevant content and placements."

In an email attributed to Intel, the company said it had placed the order for the advertising "much earlier this year before Gamasutra's recent controversial articles were published." The major "controversial" article in question was written by Gamasutra editor-at-large Leigh Alexander. Her piece argued that the games industry has now ballooned so large that it had outgrown its niche origins, making the concept of the "gamer" a thing of the past. Alexander admitted that change would be difficult for those who still self-identified as a gamer, whose "identity depends on the ageing cultural signposts of a rapidly-evolving, increasingly broad and complex medium," but her message was triumphant. "We're creating culture now. We are refusing to let anyone feel prohibited from participating."

Supporters of the #GamerGate hashtag pressured Intel

But the piece quickly drew flak from those who saw the acknowledgement of video gaming's depth and breadth in 2014 as a personal attack on their very own identity. Rallied under a dedicated hashtag — #GamerGate — self-identified gamers missed the point, accusing Alexander and her games writer peers of trying to bring about the end of gaming, and raging against this imagined dying of the light with melodramatic pronouncements.

Operation Disrespectful Nod was born from the #GamerGate hashtag. Sincere users of the hashtag, as Vox explains, are ostensibly concerned with two main topics — the treatment of women in gaming, and the ethics of games journalism — but its supporters have been linked to campaigns of harassment against prominent women in the industry.

The hashtag was first used by actor Adam Baldwin

The hashtag was reportedly first used by actor Adam Baldwin when he made reference on Twitter to independent game developer Zoe Quinn. Quinn, the subject of a lengthy diatribe written by an ex-boyfriend, was the target of a harassment campaign after being accused of using sexual relationships with the press to secure coverage for her video games. #GamerGate supporters also attacked feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, whose Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series attempts to call out and question sexist stereotypes in games. Sarkeesian and her family became the targets of a volley of personal attacks that resulted in her being driven from her home after receiving threats of sexual violence from a Twitter user who knew her actual address.

While many #GamerGate supporters have attempted to distance themselves from such harassment, the movement's methods, leaders, and ethics are still questionable. Weeks after she was pilloried for her private relationships, Quinn revealed she had been idling in IRC chatrooms run by the orchestrators of the campaign against her. In a series of Twitter posts, she showed how a small group of 4chan users boasted about engineered the #GamerGate hashtag in order to target and attack those it saw as "social justice warriors."

The movement has maintained in part because it's grown wider than gaming. Adam Baldwin continues to tweet on the topic not because he's a gamer, but because he's an outspoken conservative figure, vociferously opposed to the left-wing ideals the imagined cadre of "social justice warriors" uphold. Even Washington think tanks have weighed in on the side of #GamerGate supporters. The American Enterprise Institute, a high-profile right-wing group, issued a video in which host "the Factual Feminist" questioned whether games were sexist at all. Such interjections have extended the lifespan of the discussion, and the #GamerGate movement, even further.

Intel says it was flooded with complaints about its Gamasutra ads, but it's difficult to work out how pervasive support for #GamerGate is in the wider gamesplaying community — its supporters are amplified in the Twitter echo chamber and uncountable thanks to a prevalence of fake "sockpuppet" accounts that retweet messages of support. It's also tough to see how its supporters actions will benefit the games they claim to love. Gamasutra, which will presumably lose income as a result of Intel's decision, is an outlet that caters to video game developers, hosting diaries from industry professionals and maintaining job listings for those who make games for a living.

Fake Twitter accounts retweet support for #GamerGate

The movement's decision to highlight Quinn and Sarkeesian is similarly confusing. Both speak to comparatively small audiences compared to the reach of video game behemoths such as Call of Duty, Madden, or FIFA. Quinn's most famous game, Depression Quest, is a piece of interactive fiction that chronicles the life of someone with depression. Sarkeesian's videos are pieces of approachable academic criticism that come off like an introductory college course in video game feminist thought. Both works are intelligent and illuminating, but neither has anything approaching the potential to bring down the multi-billion dollar edifice that is the video game industry. Crucially, neither of the works set out to.

What's more clear is that Intel's decision was a kneejerk reaction by company so desperate to avoid bad press that it didn't look at the human cost of the operation. Certainly the #GamerGate movement has secured support from genuinely concerned people who define themselves by their hobby and see it under fire from those with political motives, but it's increasingly difficult to defend a movement that decries what it argues is censorship, and then organizes co-ordinated strikes to silence those calling loudest for fairness and equality in our video games.

Supporters have targeted those calling for equality in video gaming

The #GamerGate hashtag is inextricably linked to campaigns of harassment and its proponents have been demonstrably manipulated by a small number of people who want to hurt others for fun. Until now it has had no major successes, but by giving in to its demands and pulling its advertising from Gamasutra, Intel has legitimized a movement that has shown itself to be anti-feminist, violently protectionist, and totally unwilling to share what it sees as its divine right to video games.

Foodstuffs have version numbers now. That's the world we live in.

Or at least one consumable has a version number: Soylent, which has just been revved to 1.1. The latest formulation of the crowdfunding-born meal replacement promises less sweetness — they've taken out some of the sucralose, so users can more easily "customize" the flavor to their liking. Perhaps more importantly, it adds an "enzyme blend" that promises to reduce "digestive issues" experienced by some users of the original (myself included).

The company behind Soylent still hasn't caught up to demand; many buyers still have orders that have been outstanding for months, but it would appear that some of that delay is chalked up to work on the new formulation. There's also a new, smaller shipping box (the old one was enormous), redesigned oil bottles to reduce leakage, and a new package for daily servings that's designed to reduce the amount of loose powder that flies everywhere.

Regardless, you're still drinking a beige nutrition paste.

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam.

Verizon

Verizon seemingly won a huge victory in January when a federal appeals court struck down network neutrality restrictions on blocking and discriminating against Internet content over fixed broadband connections.

But Verizon's lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission could backfire, with the commission now considering even stronger rules on both fixed and wireless networks. That's why fellow Internet service providers are "secretly furious" with Verizon, tech policy reporter Brendan Sasso of National Journal wrote today:

Other Internet service providers won't publicly criticize Verizon. But privately, lobbyists grumble that they wouldn't be in this mess if Verizon had just accepted the old rules.

Four broadband-industry officials said there's widespread frustration with Verizon for making what they view as a bad strategic error. Some companies had even tried to talk Verizon out of filing its lawsuit, officials said.

"They were like a dog chasing a bus," one broadband source said. "What are you going to do when you catch the bus?"

The 2010 FCC rules that Verizon successfully overturned prevented fixed broadband providers from blocking Internet content and strongly discouraged paid prioritization agreements in which online services pay ISPs for priority access to consumers. The rules for cellular carriers were weaker, though; wireless carriers were allowed to block applications that didn't compete against their telephony services and did not have to follow the anti-discrimination rule.

The Federal Communications Commission is extending the time you'll have to file a comment on whether you think that Comcast and Time Warner Cable should be allowed to merge. The reason behind the extension is that Comcast recently filed an enormous document containing new information with the commission. The commission actually refers to the thing as "voluminous," noting that it's nearly 850 pages long.

You can read the document when the FCC's site starts working again

The commission says that this new document contains information that is "critical to the review of the proposed transactions," and as such, more time is needed for the public to evaluate it. Unfortunately, you probably won't even be able to read the document right now because the FCC's filing system isn't really working.

Rather than closing on October 8th, the period for reply comments on the Comcast-TWC merger will now close on October 29th. Additionally, the FCC is pausing its 180-day "transaction clock," which is a self-imposed timeline that it uses to let the public know when to expect its decision. The clock, which is currently on day 85, will resume on October 29th, once all of the comments are in. New comments can be filed here. In a statement, Comcast says that this pause is not necessarily a sign of trouble and that it tends to occur in large transactions.

“It is routine for the FCC to pause the review of significant transactions as it works to create a full record (this happened in our prior transactions as well)," Sena Fitzmaurice, a Comcast government communications exec, says in a statement. "We will work with the staff to determine the additional information the FCC is seeking (including the document production that the FCC had asked us to delay filing) and will submit supplemental answers and documents quickly thereafter so that the FCC can complete its review early in 2015."

As a reminder, a successful merger would create a combined cable giant with 30 million subscribers who would have few legitimate alternatives for high-speed internet.