firehose

undr:

Fred Stein

Fountain, Paris, 1935

~~ ** ☆  ☯ never wake me from this dream  ☯ ☆ ** ~~

How the beer company pulled itself out of a sales slump by tricking new drinkers into liking its same old beer.

Its emphases are swiftness and thoroughness, its tentacles reaching into states even without an NFL team, its code mostly one of silence. And while its agents can help keep bad actors from ever getting to the league by vetting them beforehand, they are equally if not more valuable in funnelling information back to the league office once problems occur to help make sure NFL leaders are not caught off guard.

By now you've probably heard that Kanye West asked a concert-goer in a wheelchair to stand up before West resumed his song. Now there's video showing exactly what happened.

This is an effective way to make a statement.

Equal rights group UltraViolet has been outspoken about their call for NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to step down.

The group's official statement, from their website:

The commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, has been caught in a despicable and disgusting lie and he must resign. He insisted that the NFL had asked for the hotel surveillance video of the horrific and brutal assault of Janay Rice, but had never seen it. However, news just broke that the law enforcement officials sent the NFL the video in April--and the NFL even acknowledged receiving it--a NFL employee was even quoted saying, "It's terrible." And shockingly, after watching Ray Rice beat his wife and knock her out cold, NFL executives still only suspended Rice for two games.

It's horrendous--and completely undermines the NFL's credibility. Calls for Goodell's resignation are mounting--it's time for him to go. Will you sign the petition?

Tell NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell:

"Resign immediately. Your failure to take domestic violence seriously is outrageous."

submitted by canausernamebetoolon [link] [28 comments]

Philadelphia police are being sued after seizing almost 500 homes in the last two years. Photo by Elvert Barnes

Last week, the Washington Post released the results of an excellent—albeit alarming—investigation into the use of asset forfeiture in the United States. What is “asset forfeiture,” in plain English? Essentially: cops stealing your shit with little to no proof of its connection to a crime. With the backing of the Department of Justice, and the excuse of the war on drugs (and now the war on terror), property connected even vaguely to a crime—whether one is ever convicted of said crime or not—can be seized and auctioned off by local police, earning them a tidy profit without the hassle of a trial.

Carrying too much cash in the eyes of law enforcement is reason enough for that cash to be seized. As the Post uncovered, since 2001, $4.2 billion has been taken from members of the public under the Justice Department’s “equitable sharing program.” Not only was there no trial in these cases, there wasn't no search warrant. Only one out of six people whose property was taken bothered to fight, presumably due to the enormous legal fees involved. The state agreed to give back property in 41 percent of the cases where people did challenge the theft. However, it often took months, sometimes years, to get the property back.

The Philadelphia Police Department, in particular, seems to be engaging in asset forfeiture with great relish, so much so that it’s provoked the filing of a class action lawsuit from the libertarian Institute for Justice (IJ) against District Attorney R. Seth Williams and Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey.

One case of asset forfeiture run amuck in Philly was recently highlighted by CNN: that involving the Sourvelis family. In March, the Philly PD arrested 22-year-old Yianni Sourvelis on charges of selling $40 worth of heroin. He was accused of dealing drugs out of the family home, which served as a great excuse to then take that family home a few weeks later. The city told Chris Sourvelis and his wife Markela to pack their stuff and get out. After a week, the compromise was that Yianni would not be allowed to stay in the house at all, but Chris and Markela could return if they stopped trying to defend the property’s innocence. (Civil asset forfeiture is bizarre: technically the property itself is guilty.) DA Williams is still trying to take the house, though Chris and Markela are allowed to live there while they fight the lawsuit.

Though the nastiness of civil asset forfeiture varies from state to state, the Philly PD is particularly aggressive. They have taken almost 500 homes and almost $6 million in cash in the last two years, while initiating civil asset forfeiture proceedings on 7,000 occasions. According to the IJ complaint, in the past 11 years Philadelphia has seized “over 1,000 residences, 3,200 vehicles, and $44 million in cash.” This has brought the city a total revenue of $64 million, which goes to the police department and the District Attorney. The lawsuit, which alleges violations of due process rights under the 14th Amendment, notes that neither the conflict of interest nor the violation of rights here is subtle. People can lose their home without being provided legal counsel and without their—or their property’s—guilt being established “beyond a reasonable doubt.” All that is required is a preponderance of the evidence and the house or the car or the cash is gone.

Not all states are as bad as Pennsylvania. And not all police departments and DAs are as ruthless as the ones in Philly. But like so many other problems with cops, the local cruelties are federally enabled and subsidized.

Now, onto the rest of this week’s bad cops:

• On the occasion of the NYPD’s body cam pilot program, VICE’s Matt Taylor has written a piece on cops and cameras, so go read that and then feel as pessimistic as he sounds. They’re not panaceas, that’s for sure.
• Over at theWashington Post, police reporter Radley Balko has a piece on how the poor all over Missouri are sucked dry by legal bureaucracy and fines. It’s essential reading.
• Photography is Not a Crime’s Carlos Miller highlights the arrest of an unnamed YouTuber for filming a 4 AM SWAT operation in Gresham, Oregon. The YouTuber is across the street from the house being raided and seems to be standing on his own property as the would-be paramilitary fellas tell him to get back inside. When he disputes them and says “it’s not past curfew” (great dystopian detail, that) they come over, order him inside, and then arrest him, all the while robotically saying he should stop resisting.
• Finger-printing little kids is based in overwrought fears of child abduction, but it’s not, ostensibly, supposed to prepare them for a life of acquiescing to authority figures. And yet, Cory Doctorow was on the nose when he dubbed Ferguson, Missouri, police’s recent attempts to do this in a community beset by police violence as “a new tone-deaf low.”
• On September 2, Ixel Perez, a Houston tenth-grader was tackled by three school resource officers, detained, and then finally suspended from Sam Houston High School. A few seconds of unclear footage of Perez screaming—she says because an officer pressed his knee on her head, and it does look that way—has made the rounds on social media and some of her classmates have protested her suspension. What did the 4’10” young woman do? She says she refused to turn over her cellphone to her teacher, and then later to the assistant principal. The reaction she apparently provoked for that teenage crime would be bad enough without the rest of the story: Perez’s father had texted her, concerned that her mother who is on dialysis had not gotten back to him. Perez says she simply wanted to make sure her mother was OK before she turned the phone over. Perez’s mother is reportedly planning to find her a new school.
• Speaking of Texas schools: On September 5, Houston television station KHOU reported that ten different school police departments received some military-grade weapons, armor, and ammunition thanks to the generous Pentagon and their 1033 program. This is all supposed to prepare them for some kind of active shooting situation, most of which are long over before a tactical team can enter a school. Spring Branch Police Chief C.A. Brawnerbacked out of an on-camera interview to speak about the weapons (after originally promising to answer questions).
• Last week, 42-year-old Timothy Sturgis fatally shot himself during a standoff that came after a narcotics raid on his home in Ashville, Ohio. Sturgis had $25,000 worth of marijuana plants. Said Dave Posten, the special agent in charge: ”No one likes the violence. We wish it didn’t have to be that way. But when people say, ‘Was this little bit of marijuana worth this man’s life?’ it frustrates me. This isn’t ever about marijuana. It’s about someone’s choices.” It’s about your choices, too, Dave. You didn’t cause the guy to commit suicide, your job just forced him to choose between suicide and prison.
• A Baton Rouge, Louisiana, police officer resigned from his job on Thursday after a friend turned over to the police department racist text messages the cop had sent. Officer Michael Elsbury had expressed a desire to see other cops “pull a Ferguson” and referred to black people as “monkeys” and “niggers.” Some of the context is confusing, but the racism is clear and totally unacceptable. Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie offered none of the usual excuses, saying only he was “sick to my stomach” over the texts and that this was “an isolated incident.”
• Instead of, say, trying to steal his parents’ house over heroin like the Philly PD, two officers in New Jersey saved the life of an overdosing 25-year-old on Thursday, making them our Good Cops of the Week. Wayne Police Officers Rick Hess and Thomas Antonucci got a report of an unconscious man and upon arrival figured out he was ODing, administered the drug Narcan, and took him to the hospital.

Original Source

greedycaitlin:

Vegan Grilled Cheese with Smoky Tomato Soup and a Side Order of Cat

kequila:

when someone you hate asks for your help

An anonymous reader writes: Kai Kloepfer is a 17-year-old high school student from Colorado who just won the Smart Tech for Firearms Challenge. Kloepfer designed and built a smart gun that will only unlock and fire for users who supply the proper fingerprints. "The gun works by creating a user ID and locking in the fingerprint of each user allowed to use the gun. The gun will only unlock with the unique fingerprint of those who have already permission to access the gun. ... According to him, all user data is kept right on the gun and nothing is uploaded anywhere else so it would be pretty hard to hack." The gun can have up to 999 authorized users, and its accuracy at detecting fingerprints is 99.99%. For winning the challenge, he won $50,000 in funding to continue developing the smart gun. Some of the fund have already gone toward 3-D printing portions of the prototype.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

First time accepted submitter rinka writes India's Mars Orbiter Mission, known as Mangalyaan, has made some progress since we last discussed it. The mission is on target and has completed 95% of it's journey. It will reach its destination before the end of the month. Scientists will undertake a "challenging task" on September 24 when they will restart the onboard liquid engine, which has been in sleep mode for nearly ten months, for a critical maneuver of the spacecraft.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Smash Bros. ruining Circle Pads ⊟

Ack, these look awful. Either these people were going too hard on their Circle Pads, or the controls just aren’t built to take the punishment Smash Bros. demands (especially after that rubber slider endured years of use).

These photos were posted on the day Smash Bros. released in Japan, ending their owners’ fun real quick. Perfect excuse to get a New 3DS, I guess! Or take advantage of Nintendo’s usually generous customer service/warranty coverage.

Also, I haven’t seen any other reports of this, but at least one of our readers reported having his 3DS bricked after downloading the Smash Bros. demo. Hope that was just a freak accident!

Credit to @dragonwaterfall, @eichi3902, @syu0717x, @m_mmliy, @cochioka, and Kotaku.

PREORDER Super Smash Bros for Wii U/3DS, upcoming releases

bennyslegs:

when your friends are talking about stuff you don’t understand but you still want to be part of the conversation

The New York Times Book Review is getting a partial makeover, with an expanded collection of Best Seller lists covering nonfiction niches from animals to humor to travel. The Times announced the new categories on Thursday, and will introduce them over the next few months.

Here are the brand new lists:

• Travel
• Humor
• Family
• Relationships
• Animals
• Religion, spirituality and faith
• Celebrities

The Review also is pulling from other sections in the paper—sports, science, business—to include lists that appear or used to appear on those pages. Other lists that until now have been online only—manga; food and fitness; and politics—also will be cycled into print.

The print edition will rotate the new lists, featuring only a few niche categories weekly. So even as the number of lists grows, the section actually will carry one less page of lists in print. A sample of the revamped section shows how the humor list gets cycled in:

The Sunday Book Review, which usually runs about 32 pages, used to have six devoted to lists. This is the second time in the past two years that a page of lists has been cut, bringing the number of list pages to four.

The changes come as authors increasingly are using the web to build greater followings and establish themselves as experts in their field. All of the Times Best Seller lists will be available online, which could add to the digital brand-building efforts of authors. The print section, meanwhile, will have more room for essays, reviews, or features.

Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul tells Quartz that the growing ability of authors to locate target audiences online didn’t factor into the paper’s decision to develop the new lists, though she does believe that the internet is changing the way readers discover books or writers. “I think that authors and readers are able to have closer and more frequent forms of contact depending on interests on both ends,” Paul says.

For Paul, increasing the number of best seller lists was, she says, a way to address the diversity of reader interests, and to introduce people to topics they might not have considered before.

While the changes might better target readers’ personalized needs, they perhaps also still provide that serendipitous experience of old-school bookstore browsing. The website, featuring all the lists, might be just the place for readers who either know what they want or enjoy choosing from as wide a selection as possible. And maybe the rotating Sunday Book Review lists in print can do what smaller, independent book stores often are so good at, helping people arrive at the perfect choice, after guiding them to books they didn’t even know they were looking for.

"Blade first!" - Guardian Heroes (Treasure - Saturn - 1996)

The 2012 Heisman Trophy winner is expected to make his NFL debut on Sunday.

Johnny Manziel is expected to make his NFL debut on Sunday in the second game of the season for the Cleveland Browns, as Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports reports that the rookie will see time against the New Orleans Saints.

Manziel, 21, battled for playing time during preseason, completing 30-of-59 passes for 296 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions; however, the starting job was given to veteran Brian Hoyer. In a 30-27 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, Hoyer tallied 230 yards passing and a touchdown, finishing the game with a 94.8 passer rating.

Still, with Josh Gordon, Jordan Cameron and Ben Tate all out of the team's Week 2 game against the Saints, the Browns have a talent deficiency and will reportedly look to the 2012 Heisman Trophy winner to provide a spark.

Via La Canfora:

The Browns feel the need to be creative and throw different looks at the Saints given the limitations of their offensive personnel, and have been working on read-option plays for Manziel all offseason. Expect to see those plays in a regular season game for the first time today, at least for a few snaps.

Manziel showed his abilities as a runner in the preseason as well, rushing 12 times for 88 yards, including a seven-yard touchdown run against the St. Louis Rams in Week 3 of the preseason. In two years at Texas A&M, Manziel accumulated 2,169 yards rushing with 30 touchdowns on the ground.

Kickoff for the Browns on Sunday is scheduled for 1 p.m. ET and will be televised on FOX.

Did you know that you can exchange money for goods and services? I did, but for some reason it still never occurred to me that I might be able to pay an artist to paint something just for me.

That is, until my former co-worker Mischa McLachlan told me he was commissioning a piece from noted artist Chet Zar, whose dark, surreal paintings you may recognize.

"What?" I asked Mischa, "You mean you can just pay an artist money and they will do a custom painting for you?"

"I mean, you can always ask," he said.

You can imagine my jealousy when I later went over to Mischa's apartment and saw these gorgeous paintings hanging on the wall.

(You may notice a resemblance.)

I had no immediate need for a painting, but the seed had been planted.

Fast-forward a few years, to a couple months before Tilde's one year anniversary. I had been wanting to get a gift for my other co-founders, but, as a bootstrapped startup, the traditional gift of a gold Rolex was slightly out of the budget.

While sitting at home and enjoying a glass of wine by myself ("Never spend more than $6 on a bottle of wine"—best advice my mom ever gave me), I decided to check what was new on Hacker News.

Amid the seventeen new minimal JavaScript frameworks launched that day, something caught my eye: Old School Color Cycling with HTML5.

The static screenshot doesn't do this justice. Click the link!

I love artwork like this, and I loved that this clever, old-school hack for adding animation to games had been ported to the web for a new generation to enjoy.

Inhibitions lowered by the wine, I decided to fire off an email to the artist, Mark Ferrari, and ask him if he'd be up for something a little… different.

Mark was gracious enough to reply the next day, but I was disappointed to find out that he had retired from the art world and was focusing his efforts on writing novels.

Not to be deterred, we discovered that I'd soon be traveling through Seattle, where he lived, and we agreed to meet and at least discuss the project.

Turns out, we hit it off. I told him about how we started Tilde to fight back against the tide of insane venture capital money flowing through San Francisco, about open source, and how we wanted to control our own destinies, free of investor interference.

Mark regaled me with stories of the early videogame world, and how the golden era of fun and experimentation was driven out by the influx of big money.

Somehow, Mark agreed to come out of "retirement" to make my plan a reality: a company portrait, set in a lush fantasy universe.

Mark needed reference photos of everyone, but I wasn't sure how to get them without ruining the surprise. A couple weeks later, I had everyone come into the office on a weekend, but I didn't let on what was about to happen.

I wish you could see the look of skepticism on the faces of everyone when they walked into a room filled with armor, robes, swords, bows and the other accoutrements of life in the fantasy realm.

"If you're trying to trick us into LARPing with you, I'm leaving," someone threatened.

Mark (who I referred to as "Mr. X" so no one could Google him and find out his occupation) dressed, positioned, and photographed everyone, then bid us adieu.

Several weeks later, the final product arrived in my inbox. It was gorgeous, and everyone was completely surprised. We had a physical print made from the digital copy that now hangs proudly in the event space in our office.

I won't keep you waiting any longer. Here's the final product:

click for hi-res

My favorite thing about the piece is the story it tells, which was all Mark's idea. The monster, in the background, represents the voracious appetite of venture capital, leaving so many destroyed companies and burnt-out founders in its wake.

In the foreground is the intrepid band of explorers, going out into the dark on their own. Importantly, you can't see the forest; it's as unknown to you as it is to the protagonists. It's up to your imagination what dangers lurk.

Mark did an amazing job with the details, as well. If you have the time, take a second to appreciate the fine detail, which was all drawn by hand in Photoshop.

I particularly love the binary glow of the insects, and the circuit board of Carl's staff.

Before I got started with this crazy plan, the world of art seemed totally foreign to me. I don't have any skills to speak of, and I thought it was something I would never be a part of.

Now I know that there are tons of talented artists out there, and they rely on commissions to help put food on the table.

If you're looking for a truly unique gift, or a way to spruce up your home or offices, just try emailing the artist next time you see something you love. Odds are, they'll be happy to help you bring your idea to life.

And if you happen to like this drawing, well, I'm sure Mark would be happy to help you create something of your own.

Please help me pay for more cool paintings like this by signing up for a free, 30-day trial of Skylight.

Glad to see that Michigan's unusually human-like Twitter account enjoys butts as much as we (and Jake Butt himself) do:

Buttdown, Michigan.

— Michigan Football (@umichfootball) September 13, 2014

And here's the buttdown, with the appropriate musical accompaniment:

Felix Kjellberg, otherwise known as PewDiePie, the most popular YouTube personality on the service with 30 million subscribers, has decided to shut off comments completely. The decision, he stated, is final. "I go to the comments and it’s mostly spam, and people self-advertising, it’s people who are trying to provoke, and people replying to all these, just all this stuff to me, it doesn’t mean anything," he said in a recent video. "I don’t care about it. I don’t want to see it. I just don’t care. It’s been bothering me for so long now, I’ve been trying to find solutions to it, I’ve been hoping it would get better, I was hoping YouTube would try to figure a way out, but it doesn’t seem like it, and I’m just sick of it," he said. "So I’m going to turn the comments off forever, they’re not coming back this time around." Twitter and Reddit may be a better way for that communication to take place.