Consolidation is once again in the air for the beer industry. ABInbev is rumored to be exploring an acquisition of SABMiller according to the Wall Street Journal (paywall). For its part, SABMiller was rebuffed trying to acquire Heineken.
Either deal would create a company responsible for brewing nearly one fifth of the worlds beer or more, and would have continued the concentration of the global beer market—which, as you can see in the graphic above, has substantially conglomerated in recent years.
The result has been fewer companies responsible for more of your beer. Over the past decade, the 10 largest brewers (which include companies not illustrated above, like China Resources Enterprise Ltd and Tsingtao Brewery Co Ltd, which have little to no M&A history) have grown from producing 48% of the word’s beer in 2004 to 65% in 2013, according to Euromonitor.
Attorney General Eric Holder, the US top law enforcement official, said it is "worrisome" that tech companies are providing default encryption on consumer electronics. Locking the authorities out of being able to physically access the contents of devices puts children at risk, he said.
"It is fully possible to permit law enforcement to do its job while still adequately protecting personal privacy,” Holder said during a Tuesday speech before the Global Alliance Against Child Sexual Abuse Online conference. “When a child is in danger, law enforcement needs to be able to take every legally available step to quickly find and protect the child and to stop those that abuse children. It is worrisome to see companies thwarting our ability to do so."
Holder's remarks, while he did not mention any particular company by name, come two weeks after Apple announced its new iPhone 6 models would be equipped with data encryption that prevents authorities from accessing the contents of the phone. At the same time, Google said its upcoming Android operating system will also have default encryption.
I'd cleaved apart 200 or so bad guys before I had the grim epiphany that a video game had turned me into an expert in insurgency.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, the new video game that serves as connective tissue between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, isn't shy about violence or the purpose it serves. A button is assigned to "Brutalize," a lethal and grotesque flurry of cuts and stabs meant to kill one enemy but more importantly horrify nearby survivors, dispersing them like a herd of spooked deer.
I'm embarrassed how little the violence affected me at first. I've played hundreds of graphically violent video games, and Shadow of Mordor felt initially like another member in a line that will continue into infinity. I was just killing Uruks, defeating bad guys, making my way through the games story. The usual.
But as I watched my character revenge the death of his wife and son by furiously lunging a blade in and out and into a lifeless Uruk corpse, scaring away the few Uruks that survived his wrath, it hit me: I'm pretending to be a murderer and a torturer, a man who dabbles in terrorism and slavery to somehow right a personal wrongdoing. I'm the Jack Bauer of Mordor.
And like watching Jack Bauer wreak havoc on the threats against America at all cost, I perversely enjoyed almost every moment of it — until a graphic beheading broke whatever mental barrier I have that says, "What the hell is happening here?"
I'm the Jack Bauer of Mordor
I think that's because there's something dangerous and appealing about fear — a weapon of politicians, terrorists, and guerrilla soldiers alike. Fear is the heart of the Shadow of Mordor, the crux of the feature most praised in the game's many glowing reviews. The publisher calls the feature "the Nemesis System." Essentially, from the earliest moments of the game, the player has the option to defer the game's scripted story, and instead hunt and kill Uruk leaders.
First, you must dwindle a small tribe of low-ranking Uruks to a sole survivor. With the soldier vulnerable, you torture him for information to the point of death (read: enter his mind with deadly elf powers) and learn the identity and general location of a higher ranking Uruk leader.
This process is repeated on increasingly high-ranking Uruks: you learn their locations but also their strengths, weaknesses, and fears. Before you take on a war chief, you'll torture dozens of soldiers and even captains to learn how to best assassinate him. And you'll do the same for his guards.
Stalking, torturing, terrorizing, and assassinating Uruks is cruel and malicious, and the game sometimes acknowledges as much, calling your actions into question with bits of dialogue. But all internal criticism feels superficial alongside literally dozens of hours of instilling fear into the hearts of my enemies with my bow and sword.
And to be clear, you torture in this game: You have the option to beat an enemy within an inch of his life, and only at that point will he reveal information or switch loyalties out of fear. That is torture.
And to be clear, you torture in this game
Later in the game, your character unlocks the ability to send beaten Uruks as threats to their superiors, and also the option to enslave Uruks, to have them fight alongside you — until you tap a button that kills them all. It's an odd twist, considering scattered throughout the game up to this point are optional missions to save human slaves from Uruk masters.
To its credit, the game moves away from the language of enslavement and refers to your power as "ruling over the Orcs with fear." The end result is the same, though, and it left me feeling a little uncomfortable.
Fear is the keyword.
The concept of this game is shocking when you think about what's actually happening. As an ultra-powerful white dude, you use fear and extreme acts of violence to manipulate an enemy's behavior, destroy its militaristic structure, and ultimately gain control of it in the form of living bondage despite being outnumbered by the thousands. Really, chew on this: This is a video game about a spurned man terrorizing an entire foreign culture, literally killing, branding, torturing and enslaving hundreds of living beings. And really they're only tangentially connected to the man's real enemy: another ultra-powerful white dude.
The concept of this game is shocking
I'm a casual Lord of the Rings fan, so this game is introducing me to an abundance of writing on the complexities of race and the exploitation of cultures within Tolkien's best-known works. That your hero's path to revenge is through an entirely different culture is loaded, something I'd love to see unpacked further by critics. And I'd like to see the developers address what your actions mean, and not in the trendy self-aware way, in which games about killing hundreds of people patronize your for enjoying video games killing hundreds of people. No, if this is the sort of game a developer wants to make, I want them to justify it, to say why, and not have it be in the form of half-hearted finger-wagging about a gore-soaked genre that makes billions of dollars a year.
Shadow of Mordor is horrific and gross, but so well executed — I'm so sorry — that I can't walk away from it. I like the power it gives me, which I recognize is a part of why I love so many big-budget, violent video games. What's uncomfortable, frankly, is how Mordor makes me keenly aware of where the power comes from and at what expense. It's as if the creators stumbled upon a relevant commentary about the use of violence and terrorism to force change, but didn't quite know how to wield it.
I want video games to tackle tough issues about torture, terrorism, and guerrilla warfare. What's more, I want to play those games. But I don't want to celebrate those things, and I definitely don't want to make giving up my ethics as easy as hitting the "Y" button to Brutalize.
AmiMoJo writes Japan's Shinkansen bullet-train has marked its 50th anniversary. The first Shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka debuted on October 1st, 1964, ahead of the Tokyo Summer Olympics. Since then, the Shinkansen has run about 2 billion kilometers, or the equivalent of 50,000 times around the earth. It has carried about 5.6 billion passengers. The latest series to enter operation, the E5, operates at 320km/h.
InHear This,A.V. Clubwriters sing the praises of songs they know well. This week, in honor of Prince’s pair of new albums, we’re picking our favorite songs from the Purple One.
Prince is my favorite type of pop musician: The kind who’s managed to cultivate a tremendous amount of popularity and commercial success without compromising his artistic vision—especially when conventional wisdom argues they should have dialed back. (Others in this category: Kanye West, David Bowie, Janelle Monáe.) His hits are hits for a reason, but what makes me truly love a Prince song is when something about it would’ve been second-guessed to death by anybody else. He’s a notoriously fussy control freak, but none of that comes across in his ’80s output, which has the distinct mark of a guy who couldn’t be told “No.”
You and I know that Mulder ain’t shit without Scully, but sadly Gillian Anderson says that wasn’t reflected in her X-Files pay grade. In a recent interview for Red magazine, the actress revealed that she received far less money and respect than her male co-star—but that’s par for the course in her line of work.
Says Anderson:
At the beginning of The X-Files, the pay disparity was massive [...] But that happens all the time in Hollywood. It’s ‘Do this for me, I’ll get you a job.’ It’s easy to miss and it’s easy to get used to it.
There are things that are intolerable in today’s world, in terms of the perception of women. The expectation that, if a woman is wearing a short skirt, she’s ‘asking for it.’
When the news broke earlier this month that Queen Anderson would be a series regular on the upcoming season of Hannibal, many fans wondered what would happen with her crime drama The Fall. But according to Red, the actress is still relishing her role as Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson:
There are aspects of Stella that I’m familiar with in my own personality [...] I feel I’ve been able to make peace with myself more because she’s so unapologetic about the island that she is. My partners have consistently said, ‘You live this life I have no idea about.’ The idea of saying [to them], ‘I’m thinking about doing this film, let’s talk about what it means for our life’ …It’s challenging for me.
It’s not my first instinct. My first instinct is to decide, ‘Can I do this? Yes I can.’
Sadly, Anderson says she’s been temporarily overshadowed a little by her Fall co-star Jamie Dornon, aka The Future Mr. Christian Grey: “Now people don’t ever want to talk to me about The X-Files. They only want to ask about Jamie Dornan.”
Gillian, those “people” are aliens. That’s literally the only logical explanation.
Sun Kil Moon’s Mark Kozelek is currently in an indie-rock war of words with The War On Drugs. It all began earlier this fall, when Kozelek told audiences at the Ottawa Folk Festival—where sound from the Drugs’ set had spilled over onto his stage—that the group was “beer commercial lead-guitar shit” and that it could “suck his fucking dick.” The War On Drugs responded, saying that, “as a fan,” it was disappointed Kozelek would say that. Kozelek fired back a somewhat conciliatory response, blaming the “Ottawa ‘Bleed’ Fest” for his ire, and claiming that “it could have been any band’s music blaring from over the hill, and I still would have made jokes.” Yet weeks later, he again referred to the group as having “beer commercial lead guitar” in an interview with Smile Politely.
Now, Kozelek has called out sites like Pitchfork and Stereogum for reporting ...
No matter how you look at it, the numbers are pretty stacked against young women who want to direct feature films. But rather than sit around and complain about it (as cathartic as that may be), a far more productive approach is for women (and men) who have made it in Hollywood to mentor promising female filmmakers and teach them what they have learned— a “young girls’ club,” if you will.
The Horizon Award, a new initiative led by three big-name Hollywood producers, aims to do that by sending female film students and recent graduates to Sundance for an immersive crash course in the business of filmmaking. Each year, a winner will receive an all expenses paid trip to the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, where they will receive mentorship advice from producers Christine Vachon (Boys Don’t Cry) and Lynette Howell (Blue Valentine), as well as producer/former William Morris ...
Our newest Doctor is a guest on The Graham Norton Show this weekend and perhaps got a bit more than he bargained for (which is usually the case on that show). Peter Capaldi has previously admitted he’s a huge Doctor Who fan (we’ve also seen his Tom Baker fanart), but watch as he’s confronted with his fan club antics from back in the day. Just think! One day that could be you!
For Sports Fans™ seeking a Digital Platform™ to get unfettered access to Honest Opinions™ and Unfiltered Content™ from World-Class Athletes™, Derek Jeter™ has an Internet website for the Sports™ you Love™ to consume.
Talking to the press isn't cool. You know what's cool? BEING the press.
I realize I’ve been guarded. I learned early on in New York, the toughest media environment in sports, that just because a reporter asks you a question doesn’t mean you have to answer. I attribute much of my success in New York to my ability to understand and avoid unnecessary distractions.
I do think fans deserve more than "no comments" or "I don’t knows." I do think fans deserve more than "no comments" or "I don’t knows."
Here, for example, is Derek Jeter giving fans a much-deserved scoop in his introductory article.
Yes, Derek Jeter, DEFINITE HUMAN, left baseball to become a blogger. It's 2014 and blogging is back!
"gender discrimination in Canadian human rights court, citing fact that no senior men's World Cup has been played on anything other than grass"
Lawyers claiming gender discrimination in Canadian human rights court, citing fact that no senior men's World Cup has been played on anything other than grass.
After months of threats and public wrangling, a group of international soccer players have followed through and filed a lawsuit in Canadian human rights court with the hope of forcing FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Assocation to install grass for the 2015 Women's World Cup. The players are claiming they are being discriminated against on the grounds that men have never been forced to play on anything other than grass, although youth World Cups for both genders have been played on artificial turf.
"Through public statements and private communications the players and their lawyers have clearly signaled to CSA and FIFA that we want to resolve the ‘turf war' through good faith negotiations rather than litigation," the players' lawyers wrote in a statement. "CSA and FIFA have ignored these overtures. As a result, the players have no choice but to initiate the legal action filed today. Whatever happens in court, CSA and FIFA have lost any claim to being good stewards of the women's game -- until they correct their mistake."
Neither the CSA nor FIFA have given any indications that they've seriously considered installing grass on the six pitches slated to host games and FIFA Deputy Director for Women's Competitions Tatjana Haenni recently said "there's no Plan B" (NBC Sports) for the artificial turf.
NBC Sports obtained a full copy of the letter sent to courts and it can be read here.
The list of players who have signed onto the lawsuit includes many of the game's biggest names, among them Alex Morgan, Abby Wambach, Marta and Nadine Angerer.
While this represents a seemingly significant step for the players, they have also said they don't have any plans to boycott the tournament if they don't get their way.
This is the pitch of the Emirates Stadium on fire. Galatasaray fans are notoriously rowdy, really like flares, and probably are pretty annoyed that their team is down 2-0. They probably also know that English stadiums are pretty anti-flare, which almost certainly gives extra incentive to sneak them in and throw them on the pitch.
Your regular reminder that Galatasaray fans are among the world's craziest.
"(My boyfriend) basically said if we won the division or made it past the wild card game, and if I paid attention to the games when we watched and could name at least 10 players on the team by the end of the year, he'd get me a puppy. I think it was his way of keeping me watching the games ... but I just really wanted that puppy!"
There's almost nothing better than baseball. Puppies are on that short list.
Corgis, man.
On the other hand, I have a family friend who was so sick of his kids asking him to buy a dog that he finally told them that he'd do it if the Red Sox won the World Series. This was in 2003. The difficulty points on that one were much, much higher.
stupid fucking new yorker goes to a stupid fucking restaurant and writes a stupid fucking piece
The bird of Birds & Bubbles comes in a bucket—$16 for a half-chicken listed under the phrase “Fowl Play.” The menu is blighted by terrible puns. If you’d like to take the place literally, for $55 there’s something called a “Splitty-Split,” a half-chicken and a split of champagne. ... At other places, even other places with ampersands, the case can convincingly be made for its continued popularity. But at Birds & Bubbles, though it’s gone through the 12 stations of bourgeois bird—from a farm in Pennsylvania to death and an afterlife of dry-brining buttermilk-dipping, pan-frying and cooling and combi-ovening—it feels and tastes as tired as the trend is. Greasy’s fine. But the bird, when I had it, was greasy to no higher purpose. There was no subtlety of flavor or spice, or even variegated texture. The deep fried coat was as dark, heavy and out of season as a mink stole on an August day. Over-fried, it tasted only of fry oil. The bird was edible but barely and scarcely enjoyable. Of all the things to get wrong, muffing what is one half of the name—and the only part made, not curated—is a pretty big fail. ... The premise, however, that either champagne or fried chicken are ennobled by their pairing was untested. All I know is the champagne sure tasted good washing away the fried stuff. ... overall, there’s too much shoved into Mason jars, too much that seems crafted to adhere to the whims of the culinary fervor of the moment, but not enough care given to execution of dishes or the deeper implications of ideas. ... What it means to open a place that traffics so aggressively in binaries such as high and low, rich and poor, bubbles and birds, North and South. White and black? No, the issue isn’t black and white. All the more reason it shouldn’t be waded into for the expediency of alliteration and ampersands and whatever current trend holds the food world in its thrall.
The first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States told relatives that he notified health care workers the first time he went to the hospital that he was visiting the U.S. from Liberia, the man's sister said Wednesday. Mai Wureh told The Associated Press that her brother, Thomas Eric Duncan, went to a Dallas emergency room on Friday and was sent home with antibiotics. He returned two days later after his condition worsened and was admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
Dr. Mark Lester confirmed Wednesday that a nurse asked Duncan on his first visit whether he had been in an area affected by the Ebola outbreak that has killed thousands in West Africa, but that "information was not fully communicated throughout the whole team."
A handful of schoolchildren who had contact with him are also being monitored at their homes, Texas Gov. Rick Perry told reporters.
endorsed, having worked at a place running this scam
"unlimited vacation" simply means "no vacation"; it just means you're paid an annual salary regardless of how many days you work. This just identifies the people who don't work as much to managers while relieving HR and accounting from dealing with how much to compensate you when you quit because you don't actually enjoy working 70-80 hours a week to have a fighting chance at a promotion (spoilers: they don't compensate you, doofus)
"Endless summers" do little but incentivize workaholics to work more, while everyone else suffers negative consequences for time off.
A California woman who slipped a serial killer's grasp 20 years ago is now suing the Lifetime network for allegedly depicting her in a made-for-TV move as a prostitute who had sex with the madman in front of her child. "Lifetime took somebody who was an innocent involvement with a serial killer, and turned her — for whatever creative license or entertainment value — into a prostitute, into someone trying to extort money, into an unfit mother, which is completely deplorable and egregious," her lawyer, Tre Lovell, told KTLA-TV.
Slagle, who works as a nurse and is a grandmother, said she reached out to Lifetime to act as a source for the flick, but never heard back, Courthouse News reported.
time for this. catching up on the one reputable source's assessment of 2013's best, throughout. otherwise discovering a bunch of classics for the first time. other otherwise indulging my very specific love for mountain violence and disaster. if you climb a mountain wrong you'll get bad and never get better. mountains pierce the human heart. just watch cliffhanger and you will see.
also i have cut back a little on podcasts and am trying to read more.
rewatches asterisked.
AUGUST MOVIES Hitokiri The People vs. George Lucas The Captains Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (90s)* You’re Next Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai Dana Gould - I Know It’s Wrong* The Grandmaster Eddie Pepitone: In Ruins True Lies The Act of Killing
SEPTEMBER MOVIES The Expendables 2* Undisputed 3: Redemption* Devil’s Pass Captain Phillips Shield of Straw The Lords of Salem Terminator 2: Judgment Day* A Hijacking 30 for 30: The Real Rocky All Is Lost 12 Years A Slave Bloodsport The Guns of Navarone Grudge Match Beverly Hills Cop Beverly Hills Ninja* Predator* 48 Hrs. Everest* Death Race 2000 Touching the Void
BOJACK Horseman
AUGUST (COMIC) BOOKS The Furry Trap (josh simmons) House (josh simmons) Jessica Farm (josh simmons)
SEPTEMBER BOOKS The Long Goodbye (raymond chandler) Matter (iain m banks) Dead Mountain (donnie eichar) Player of Games (iain m banks)
SEPTEMBER BOOKS NOT YET FINISHED WITH: The Abominable (dan simmons) Wolf In White Van (john darnielle)
Launched this past September at an event in the United Nations (UN) headquarters, HeForShe is the "UN Women's Solidarity Movement for Gender Equality bringing together one half of humanity in support of the other half of humanity, for the benefit of all." The movement and campaign hinge on the premise that gender equality is not just a women's issue but a human rights issue that requires participation from both women and men. The HeForShe campaign was brought to the forefront thanks to a heartfelt speech from Emma Watson that clearly emphasized the need for both genders to work together. The logo and identity for the movement has been designed by New York, NY-based DIA.
The HeForShe logo mark represents this solidarity movement by joining together aspects of both the female and male symbols. This union symbolizes women and men working together to make gender equality a reality. This mark does not favor the male or female symbol, but blends them together creating a new symbol for humanity and gender equality.
The icon picks up pieces from the male and female gender symbols to form a new icon making it identifiable with the cause but without being overly prescriptive or literal about it. The implied cross formed by the two shapes also gives it a sense of urgency and of something that needs to be fixed. At times I want to read the black shape as an "L" and I wish there was a better integration between the two contrasting shapes, as opposed to just one on top of the other, in order to convey the need for unity a little better. It's hard to predict yet whether this icon will rise to the prominence of other cause icons — whether it's the AIDS ribbon or even the peace symbol originally meant to represent a weapons disarmament movement — but it clearly has the potential in its simplicity.
The wordmark is fantastically ambiguous and it really manages to capture a neutrality that makes it neither masculine nor feminine, yet it's really both. And the color palette is both stark and vibrant… I could see both me or my wife wearing the exact same HeForShe t-shirt in this color palette with equal comfort and conviction.
Overall, the identity communicates with shared masculine and feminine sensibilities. The typography is bold, but thoughtful while the colors are powerful, warm and energetic.
Stationery.Business card.Brochure cover.Sample editorial spreads.Scarf.Posters.United Nations special event ticket.Emma Watson delivering her speech on September 20, 2014. Watch the video here.Other guests at the event.Pins.
In application, the two colors — three with white — work so well together and provide an infinite range of combinations where each color can become dominant or complementary and still stay on brand, while the icon can become the center of attention, literally, or serve as a signature, or take over as a pattern. It's enjoyably flexible — and gender equal! Overall, this is a solid and thoughtful launch that really serves the message.
Super Opinionated.
