WASHINGTON—Reportedly racking their brains in an attempt to figure out how they knew that name, a puzzled American populace admitted Monday that while they definitely remembered hearing the word Ferguson, they could not quite put their finger on whe...
Hey Boston, there’s no need to be jealous of Seattle, Nashville, and Denver. The A.V. Club is coming to visit, and we’re once again bringing Basil Hayden’s Bourbon with us. On September 17, we’ll be at Bee’s Knees Supply Company, where we’ll host an evening of mingling, cocktails, and food. Luminaries from the East Coast food scene, including Tina Hartell from Bobo’s Mountain Sugar and Milisa from Salt Cellar Shop, will be hanging out, as will The A.V. Club’s own Sean O’Neal.
We’ll be serving three courses inspired by the Boston area, and featuring a Boston-inspired Basil Hayden’s Bourbon cocktail to go with each course. It’s all part of The A.V. Club’s and Basil Hayden’s This Is My… event series celebrating the best of local craftmakers and their art. Learn more about and ...
It’s easy to blame harassment campaigns on the literal harassers, to take a firm stance against harassment—a stance no one could ever argue against, by the way. Institutions have failed, as well. Twitter has failed, by continuing to not give a crap about how many burner accounts 4chan sends down its pipeline. Local police forces have failed, by not yet knowing how to deal with online harassment and threats. Games journalism failed, too, as it has continued to fail, by responding to accusations of “corruption” and “bias” by promising to be even more objective, as objective as possible, in the future.
Maddy Myers is dope.
Behold: journalism actually being done in re: games. Occasionally it does happen. Godspeed, Maddy.
There is a cultural narrative about how electronic devices are pulling children away from books. When I meet with other university professors they often tell me that the students don’t read anymore because their eyeballs are glued to their phones. Technophobes think we are raising a generation that doesn’t understand […]
2.Science Fiction. A weapon producing destructive laser or similar beams (of variable phase); spec. a (usually hand-held) device whose output can be varied to produce different effects on a target (as stunning, annihilation, etc.). Also in extended use and in figurative context.First used in the U.S. television series Star Trek.
1966 G. Roddenberry Memo 26 Apr. in S. E. Whitfield & G. Roddenberry Making of ‘Star Trek’ iii. i. 272 Reference the mating of various components of the phaser weapons..when the hand phaser is mated to the pistol, they should appear as one weapon.
1967 Pop. Sci. Dec. 73/2 The main weaponry of the Enterprise is its banks of ‘ship’s phasers’,—artillery-size versions of the hand phasers and phaser pistols carried by the crew. These weapons are, of course, refinements of today’s familiar lasers.
1978 D. Bloodworth Crosstalk xxxiii. 256 The USAAF had brought down the first unmanned plane with a laser, and..had..been thinking in terms of light, chemically-operated versions that could be phased together… ‘Phasers?’ ‘Phasers. Right.’
1984 D. Duane My Enemy, my Ally vi. 85 Mr. Chekov, arm photon torpedoes, prepare to lock phasers on for firing.
1995 THIS Mag. July 21/2 His oddly reserved nature stands out… Whyte sets his phaser on stun, not kill. In print and in person, he usually gives a nod to his opponents before letting fly.
2000 Personal Computer World Dec. 481/2 The phaser rifle..easily vaporises most opponents in a spectacular orange echoey screaming fashion with a single shot.
I get quoted often enough. (Normally in connection with potato chips.) But to be cited in the single reference that I use more than any other?*
Yeah. :)
*And to find out about it on International Literacy Day? There’s a certain pleasure in that too.
Thursday night, the Seahawks won a game 36-16, which no NFL team had ever done. Inventing brand-new final scores is a lost art, but it isn't dead yet.
Scoragami is a word I just invented, and it refers to the act, and art, of producing a final score in a football game that has never happened before. A final score of, say, 108-0 would certainly count as NFL scoragami, but I think it's far more interesting to look numbers that are more reasonable in quantity while remaining eminently weird in shape.
A perfect example of this is Thursday night's Seahawks-Packers game, which Seattle won 36-16. It was the first 36-16 game in NFL history, including the regular season and playoffs. This game so easily could have been a 34-17 game, which of course has happened dozens of times. All it takes, really, is one little weird-ass thing.
Scoragami only really works in the sport of football, and it works because there are relatively few scoring events, and those events could result in two or three or six or seven or eight points, and those events completely change a team's decision-making with regard to future scoring events. Scoring in football is like having a conversation in a few different languages at the same time. It's like counting by switching from decimal to hexidecimal to binary to decimal again, depending on what you feel like.
The safety threw the Seahawks' score, which was previously a perfectly reasonable 20 points, completely off its train tracks. Then the Packers went off the rail in pursuit. They scored a touchdown to cut the deficit to 13. An extra point would have made the eventual final score 36-17, which has happened several times in the last decade. But since they want to get within 11 points -- a touchdown, 2-point conversion, and field goal away -- they try for two, and they fail. One aberration inspired another, and together they created a sporting mutation the NFL had never seen.
That is scoragami. There is a finite amount of it to be created.
Some of these results completely make sense. Finishing with four points is vastly unlikely in American football, and that whole row lines up green, indicating that no NFL team has ever finished with four points on the scoreboard.
Others are stranger. There's never been a 32-22 NFL game? Like, ever? Using Pro-Football-Reference's Play Index, I sifted through an archive of over 26,000 NFL games. 32-22 does seem a little exotic, but it was wild to find out that not a single game has ended that way.
Scoragami isn't a dead art, but it's certainly dying. Just about all the scores that could plausibly be scored were scored decades ago. Thanks to the advent of the two-point conversion in the 1990s, teams have claimed most of the weird variations.
Practicing scoragami in the modern NFL requires a master of the art. That master is Seahawks coach Pete Carroll.
This is Carroll's fifth year in Seattle. Exactly once per season, he's produced a work of scoragami.
2010: Seahawks 36, Cardinals 18
2011: Seahawks 36, Giants 25
2012: Seahawks 58, Cardinals 0
2013: Seahawks 43, Broncos 8 (Super Bowl XLVIII)
2014: Seahawks 36, Packers 16
None of those final scores had ever happened before. To produce even one work of scoragami in one's career would be quite an achievement. To do it five times in as many years is sorcery. What's important to remember about scoragami is that you also have to incentivize your opponent to start scoring all silly, and Carroll does it better than anyone.
This week, the Seahawks play the Chargers in San Diego. They will score H points.
Good for the trombone player for continuing to play through the shove.
Carolina Panthers kicker Graham Gano was stuck in a strange situation during his second half warmup, finding himself in the middle of a entire marching band.
'Somehow, chest to chest with a duck, you feel like the interloper in the scene, the one who makes no sense whatsoever.
Then, at the moment you feel like backing away, he does some light twerking against the wall of an adjacent port-o-let.'
One giant duck oversees everything that happens at the University of Oregon. He was in full form before, during, and after his team's win against Michigan State on Saturday.
The Duck is awake, forever.
It is 5:55 a.m. Pacific time. He sits on the back of a motorcycle in the dark, pointed down the middle of a long tunnel made of Oregon band members. TV people push sleep-zonked students and randos away to clear room for the camera crew. An empty Rolling Rock can is on the ground.
The Duck should be awake. He has no eyelids and no need to sleep. His energy is inhuman, literally and figuratively. He showed up at a band meeting at 5:15 with the same expression he wears forever: pupils flared almost to the limits of his eyes, a thin margin of white outlining them, and the broad permagrin of his bill leading the way at eye level. The Duck could be about six feet tall, but I would be lying if I said he didn't feel a whole foot taller because of the mouth staring you right in the face.
He will make no fewer than four major appearances today, rolling out on the motorcycle twice, leading the football team through a walk-through, wandering the tailgates pre-game, and finally working the entire game in 93-degree heat without a break. The Duck will jump out of a bus and onto a platform. He will shadow-box with the Michigan State mascot. He will not fight today, but he could. In 2007, The Duck and Shasta, the Houston Cougars mascot, engaged in a very real brawl on the field during a 48-27 Oregon win.
After each Oregon score, he will do as many pushups as his team has points at that moment. Oregon will score 46 points today. He will do 179 pushups.
The lights go on. The crowd is cued to cheer. The Duck grabs its rider, and the bike lunges at a disturbing speed toward the set. The second college football Saturday of 2014 begins with that image: a giant duck riding a motorcycle through the woods in the dark, its eyes bolt-open and looking like madness on the wing.
The Duck is only The Duck.
There is this kind of effect with any mascot: 50 feet away it is funny, at 10 it is mildly off-putting, and at six inches from your nose a mascot is the very Platonic ideal of soul-estranged terror. The Duck up close can be this kind of terrifying, because there is a real question of what to do when, after he notices you, he walks up and begins mean-mugging you and ... wants to fight? Or something?
Somehow, chest to chest with a duck, you feel like the interloper in the scene, the one who makes no sense whatsoever.
Then, at the moment you feel like backing away, he does some light twerking against the wall of an adjacent port-o-let.
The Duck knows all this, and how each move fits into the scene. Oregon's mascot might have originally been taken wholesale from Donald Duck, and secured in rights for life via a handshake deal between Walt Disney, a cartoonist, and the Oregon athletic director. Yet this is not Donald in a suit, or even a thing your brain recognizes as "clearly a person wearing a suit." It is a self-actualized character, a thing that knows exactly when to appear without warning in a group selfie.
If there are people inside the suit, they don't choose The Duck. The Duck chooses them, and they are merely along for the ride. The Duck is The Duck. If he's firing Voodoo Doughnuts into the "College GameDay" crowd with a slingshot, he's not waiting for anyone to turn around. He sure as hell isn't giving any warning about incoming pastry.
There are no people inside the suit, though. There is a real, giant duck sleeplessly roaming Eugene at all times. He does exactly what he wants. He asks no permissions.
The Duck is a listener.
Despite having no visible ears. One older Oregon fan shakes his hand like he's meeting an alderman and congratulates The Duck on doing a great job today. The Duck cannot respond. He does not talk, and can't, despite whatever rumors you heard about him whispering to Lee Corso on the ESPN set on Saturday.
People tell stories to The Duck. Like, long stories, both about Oregon football and just about life. They ask for selfies, an endless stream of selfies. They hug, manhandle, and duckhandle him in crowd situations. He's game. The Duck, because he is a giant, man-sized waterfowl walking the earth pantsless, has no fear of crowds. He barges through them with an insistence bordering on the comedically antisocial.
For example, post-"GameDay," The Duck is posing for pictures on one side of a crowd by the stage. He needs to get back up to the stage for more photographs. What you or I would do would be a long chain of pardon me's, excuse me's, and gentle partings of the seas with a hand. You would nudge, cajole, and murmur politely. You would people the hell out of the situation.
What The Duck does: he puts his hands to his side and shuffles forward silently. It is important to note here that West Coast people usually have a very specific and exagerrated notion of personal space. Bump into a New Yorker, and he or she will assume you are just as terrible a human being as he or she is, maybe mumbling a profanity or two before sprinting away. Bump into a Best Coaster, and you have A SITUATION, BRO. Hands will be thrown apart in wide disbelief; apologies must be made.
The Duck does neither. He butts his way through without raising a hand, slowly inching his way through the crowd with only his manic, fixed facial expression as apology. It works, too. You are being pushed aside in tiny, stuttering increments by a giant waterfowl. Asking for any explanation makes you the asshole, not him.
The Duck is a head of state.
"We're going this way," says one of The Duck's handlers. He travels with two or three of them at all times, since while The Duck does not get lost, he doesn't exactly stay on task, either. He stops to jump into a crowd to live-heckle a Michigan State fan. He falls back 50 feet to take yet another selfie.
He has his own Secret Service, and he periodically enjoys almost losing it in crowds.
"We're going? Okay, we're going."
The handlers don't guide The Duck so much as follow him at a half-jog through a pair of double doors into the Moshofsky Center, Oregon's gigantic indoor practice facility. This is Oregon's version of the stadium walk: a tunnel of human hands extended out, the team and the band walking through exchanging high-fives, and bounding ahead of them all, The Duck, slapping hands and boinging along like a linebacker fresh off a violent sack.
And this is all pure illusion, but running along behind The Duck's executive staff and trying to take pictures and not get caught up in the moment, this feels like something entirely different. This feels like the anchor leg of a political campaign, with the leading candidate running through a photo-op with the wind of a 10-point lead at his back. The Duck has been confessional, public heckler, totem, and cuddler-for-hire today. For these two minutes, the rest of the football team, strangely humanoid and vulnerable-looking without pads, is some kind of unattached afterthought to a few minutes of open animal worship.
The Duck in full.
The bus door opens and The Duck, wearing the kind of paper crown a kid gets at Burger King, tries to jump out majestically onto a waiting golden platform held by cheerleaders.
He catches the edge of a webbed foot on the edge of the platform and bellyflops onto it with a heinous, loud *THWACK*. The cheerleaders lurch, but The Duck recovers, stands up, and fights his way through some tree limbs before surfing onto the set of "GameDay" as the week's guest picker.
The Duck has to make every pick without speaking, yet somehow manages to derail the segment completely on several occasions. He nudges Kirk Herbstreit with a horse mask on a stick. He pokes Desmond Howard with a giant green foam hand. There is no less than five pounds of sugar The Duck has shoveled everywhere: into his face, all over the desk, at and over Chris Fowler, and into a giant bowl he stops to eat from while the other four cast members struggle to stay on track.
(From the wings I hear someone yell out: "That's how you get ants!")
That's appropriate. This is, from a television perspective, pure "Archer," a series of interactions devolving into accelerated chaos centering on one character who cannot be put on script.
The Duck starts a "U-S-A" chant on-air. His props fail, then work, with delayed comic effect, like when he bashes at a toy rocket until it finally pops off the launch pad and into the ceiling. When Herbstreit picks Michigan State, The Duck opens fire with a toy gun and begins heaving cereal across the desk. When he is asked to make his pick, The Duck pulls out a cubic, "Minecraft"-looking version of his own head.
Corso gets a gift-wrapped Duck head of his own, and the two embrace as Fowler pulls a glass of red wine from thin air, toasting the event as the Oregon Cheer team rushes the stage. The Duck is fist-pumping and hugging a 79-year-old man wearing a duck head.
The show ends. The crew dashes off set to the airport. Herbstreit and Fowler have to call the USC-Stanford game, and the others have to scramble to Bristol and parts unknown. The set is empty except for The Duck. He sits at a chair in the confetti and the sugar and the littered toys and props he's thrown all over the set. He has no reason to leave. It's his now.
I gotta say, this episode was worth the extra week of waiting—not only was it one of the best looking of the series so far, but it also brought us the fourth member of the team, Sailor Jupiter! I had a lot of feelings about it. Let’s discuss them meticulously.
As always, this recap is going to throw down some spoilers for the original anime and manga, so if you’re a newbie who wants to experience the series for the first time, check out Susana Polo’s Newbie recaps!
Usagi and Luna are talking about the ~mission~ on their way to school (and by the way, how come Luna is just hanging out at school all the time?), and Luna tells her she “lacks awareness.” C’mon, Luna, that is like asking for your protagonist to unknowingly step into oncoming traffic. Luckily Makoto is there to save the day in glorious slow motion, as both their thematically appropriate umbrellas go flying.
How come none of the drivers ever STOP when this happens in anime?
While true to the original manga, this is substantially different than Makoto’s first anime appearance, where she takes down a bunch of jerks who antagonize Usagi. I honestly do think the anime does a better job of setting up Makoto’s distaste for bullies in that opening scene, as well as her reputation for fighting, but let’s be honest—who can say no to a good “saving someone from a getting hit by a car” trope? Even the ’90s show did that a couple of times.
Anyway, Usagi is immediately smitten, as evidenced by the usual rose-covered frame and her frazzled declaration that this new girl smells really nice. What do you think Makoto smells like? Rosewater and cookies and maybe just a little bit of bully-stomping sweat, I bet. Just sayin’ I’d wear that cologne, Premium Bandai.
After our bi-weekly dose of Moon Pride we return to the Dark Kingdom, where Beryl is pretty goddamned pissed at those Sailor Guardians. Nephrite promises he has a surefire way to make up for last time’s failure by preying on humans’ ability to love, as it’s their biggest weakness. If only Crystal Nephrite could see his OG anime counterpart, man. He’d be so embarrassed.
Speaking of which, they then immediately cut to this:
Anybody else craving a chocolate parfait right now?
Naru explains to the exposition gang that she tried on the $3000 ham napkin dress for both her cousin and her fiancé, neither of whom could make it to the fitting. Uhhhh, then who was having this fitting? Umino pops in with his regular shtick of “knowing more about the supernatural goings on of the town then the actual characters with supernatural powers” and adds that a lot of men who’ve visited that particular bridal shop have gone missing. Surprisingly, no one makes a single cold feet joke.
While gushing about her dream of becoming a bride, Usagi bumps into Makoto in the hallway. Once again we get a sparkly close-up of her earrings, because OH HEY THE STRONG GIRL IS SUPER FEMININE DID WE MENTION YOU GUYS? And she’s so strong, in fact, she can get away with wearing a completely different school uniform because she’s hella tall and nothing else will fit her. (a bit of trivia: Naoko Takeuchi loosely based Mako’s outfit on a cultural stereotype called the Sukeban, meaning a girl gang leader who usually wore a longer skirt and rolled-up sleeves.)
Later Makoto goes in search of someone to eat lunch with, but everyone is afraid of her because they are big dumb jerks. Usagi comes across her outside alone on a bench Ben Wyatt-style, only instead of eating sad nerd soup, she’s got the cutest bento box filled with the most delicious looking food Usagi has ever seen (and that’s saying a lot, because to Usagi everything is the most delicious). She stealthily makes her approach:
Like a chameleon, that one.
And then pops up and demands food from Makoto, who also has to save her from getting hit in the face with a baseball by catching it with her bare hand oh my god girl WHAT. Which is cool and all, but Usagi is singularly focused on that food, to the point where she starts whimpering like a puppy when Makoto goes to take a bite.
Once she gets her rice ball, she comes down on Mako like a brick of solid gold friendship. “This is so delicious YOU MADE IT THAT’S SO COOL I love your lunchbox you’re so impressive your earrings are pretty LET’S BE BEST FRIENDS!” Makoto, trying to be practical, asks Usagi to give her a tour of the town because no one else wants to talk to her, and Usagi laughs it off in disbelief that anywould could possibly be scared of her.
Then Makoto makes this face an oh my gosh my feelings
They’re just like big dumb puppies who want to love each other and I’M SO HAPPY ABOUT IT
They end up at the arcade, where both Ami and Luna notice Makoto’s preternatural ability to play their favorite Sailor V game. Motoki notices too, causing Makoto to develop a big ol’ crush on him. Somehow this leads to Usagi decreeing that from now on Makoto should be called Mako-chan, and Ami remarking on Usagi’s uncanny ability to make friends; honestly, it’s an odd moment of telling instead of showing, and one of the weaker parts of the episode. Fortunately, it quickly ends when Motoki starts in on those bridal shop rumors, and the gang heads over to investigate. And also look at pretty dresses. The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive, you know.
Armed with the newfound knowledge that a ghost mannequin might be seducing men at night, they head over to resident ghost expert Rei to bring her up to speed. Makoto gets the distinct impression they’re talking about something she isn’t involved in and leaves, while Rei and Luna get the distinct impression Makoto is probably magic. And Rei’s instincts are always right.
ALWAYS. RIGHT.
But unfortunately the Dark Kingdom can sense her magic too, because that night one of the evil mannequins comes to love (in one of the series’ creepier moments so far), ensnares Motoki, and then uses him to get to Makoto. But Mamoru sees them, figures something’s up, and leaps into action…
…to go find Usagi so she can fix it. HAH. I’ll admit that Post-Twilight, the whole him-standing-over-her-when-she-wakes-up thing is just a bit strange, but considering it’s less “Oh hello there significantly younger girl I enjoy watching you sleep” and more “Wake up because YOU HAVE TO SAVE THE DAY WITH YOUR SUPERPOWERS,” I’m 100% willing to buy into it.
Of course, Luna isn’t, and calls Rei and Ami on her comunnicator to warn them that Usagi’s run off. The three converge on the spot (and I love that while Usagi and Ami are wearing pajamas, Rei is still wearing her miko outfit—quite literally burning the midnight oil there, hun?) where Mako’s being attacked and transform together. It’s a pretty rad set-up for a fight, as long as you don’t question the timeline too thoroughly.
Now, here they leave out one thing from the manga that part of me sort of wishes they’d kept—namely, Usagi transforming into a “groom” for three seconds to…infiltrate the bridal shop, or something? (let’s face it, most of Usagi’s disguises were excuses for Naoko to draw her in different outfits) But the fact that they left it out isn’t too weird, considering it doesn’t contribute much to the story and isn’t a nostalgic part of the anime for viewers like the doctor and flight attendant disguises. Still, Usagi in a tux, though.
The team is doing pretty well against the youma (like, really well) until she grabs Makoto to use as a shield, and Nephrite reveals himself as the puppetmaster behind the mannequin, gloating that humans are so easily fooled by appearances. Given that her appearance is so intimidating, Makoto feels this on a deep personal level, and plunges headfirst into a flashback where we learn the senpai she was crushing on back at her old school more or less ditches her (presumably after stringing her along, given that he opens with “Oh, didn’t I tell you?”) for a new girlfriend.
Makoto does not take this flashback well.
./’ Hello darkness, my old friend ./’
So, this deviates pretty drastically from most other adaptations of Makoto’s introduction. Usually what happens is she overcomes her insecurities herself with some very gentle nudging. But this time, she needs Usagi to reach out to her and explicitly tell her “loving someone is not a foolish thing to do.” I’ve seen some people in the fandom who I admire very strongly argue this weakens Makoto’s character in favor of bolstering Usagi’s, and I absolutely respect that, but I interpreted it much differently on first watch.
When you’re the kind of person who cares very strongly and immediately for others, rejection of any kind can often make you feel naive and foolish for not guarding your heart more closely. And I’ll admit, I feel like one of those naive people a lot of the time, so Makoto’s desire to give up and stop feeling anything in this moment really hit home for me in a powerful, visceral way. Having Usagi declare her nihilistic assessment of the world to be false isn’t exactly subtle, and she does hit the romantic love aspect a little too hard when she’s telling Mako to “believe in love,” but I still love the fact that the show so bluntly encourage its characters—and by extension, its audience—not to treat their own emotions as something holding them back. Regardless of how hamfisted it might have been, the exchange was really important to me in the moment.
And it was important to Makoto, too, because she decides to start fighting back and throws the bride youma over her shoulder like it ain’t no thang. Seeing the Jupiter mark on her forehead, Luna throws her a pen, and she knows just what to do with it without even being prompted.
YOU TELL ‘EM GIRL
Unlike the rest of the senshi, Jupiter has two attacks: Flower Hurricane, which sends razor sharp petals at Nephrite (somewhere anime Zoisite is laughing his face off), and Jupiter Thunderbolt, which explodes the bride and zaps Nephrite a bit before he disappears, presumably to hang out in failure-land with unburninated Jadeite.
All the disappeared dudes find themselves back in the bridal shop, and Jupiter explains to the senshi that she transferred schools because she couldn’t face going to school with the boy who broke her heart. But, she adds, she also believes fate guided her to Juuban Middle School not for romance, but for their friendship and her new mission. “Damn straight, who has time for men anyway,” Mars says. No, really. There’s the Rei Hino I know and love.
So SPEAKING OF MISSIONS, Luna jumps in to lay some knowledge on the girls: now that there’s four of them, they have to combine their efforts to find their princess, with the help of a brand new fancy Moon Stick. Oh, and Sailor Moon has to lead them. The episode ends here, but I want to believe there was a moment in this conversation where Ami went, “Hey if we’re going in order of the solar system shouldn’t there also be a Sailor Ven—” and Luna interrupted with a “SHHHH HUSH.”
Like many longtime Sailor Moon fans, I often have a hard time pining down just who is my favorite senshi of the bunch. To be honest, usually it ends up being whichever one of the girls I’m looking at in any particular moment (though as a moody twelve year old I did have a particular fondness for Hotaru). But out of all the introductory episodes, Makoto’s is always my favorite regardless of which adaptation I’m reading or watching. There’s just something about her complete and utter willingness to give into her feelings for people I find so endearing and relatable, as I mentioned above—and while I don’t know that Crystal’s version is my favorite of all time (original anime and PGSM are tied neck and neck, if only because PGSM Mako gets this moment), this has definitely been my favorite episode of Crystal so far. Though, they’ve been doing a manga act per episode, so I’m still curious to see when and if they’ll deviate to do their own thing—hopefully right after Venus shows up so we can get as much girltime as possible!
Alex Slusky was under pressure to put the money in his private-equity fund to work.
The San Francisco technology financier had raised $1.2 billion in 2007 to buy and turn around struggling software companies. By 2012, investors including Harvard University were upset that about half the money hadn’t been used, according to three people with direct knowledge of the situation.
Three Americans on the Caribbean island of St. Croix presented a solution. They had built a network of payday-lending websites, using corporations set up in Belize and the Virgin Islands that obscured their involvement and circumvented U.S. usury laws, according to four former employees of their company, Cane Bay Partners VI LLLP. The sites Cane Bay runs make millions of dollars a month in small loans to desperate people, charging more than 600 percent interest a year, said the ex-employees, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.
Slusky’s fund, Vector Capital IV LP, bought into Cane Bay a year and a half ago, according to three people who used to work at Vector and the former Cane Bay employees. One ex-Vector employee said the private-equity firm didn’t tell investors the company is in the payday-lending business, where borrowers repay loans out of their next paychecks.
Photographer: Quiana L. Adams/Bloomberg
From offices in a red-shuttered building across from an old Danish fort in St. Croix, Cane Bay’s programmers, marketers and data analysts run payday-loan websites, former employees said. Close
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Photographer: Quiana L. Adams/Bloomberg
From offices in a red-shuttered building across from an old Danish fort in St. Croix, Cane Bay’s programmers, marketers and data analysts run payday-loan websites, former employees said.
‘Regulatory Risk’
Vector’s investment in Cane Bay shows the continuing allure of the payday-loan business, even after most states from California to New York restricted or banned it to protect consumers. The crackdown has driven borrowers online. Internet payday lending in the U.S. has doubled since 2008 to $16 billion a year, with half made by lenders based offshore or affiliated with American Indian tribes who say state laws don’t apply to them, according to John Hecht, an analyst at Jefferies Group LLC in San Francisco.
“A lot of these businesses, they run it just knowing that there’s regulatory risk and they may have to terminate the business,” Hecht said.
Ronn Torossian, a spokesman in New York for Cane Bay, said the company provides services to financial firms and doesn’t make payday loans.
“Cane Bay Partners is a management-consulting and analytics company,” Torossian wrote in an e-mail. “In the past, the owners held minority positions in some licensed short-term lending businesses, which are no longer in operation.”
Vector Response
Slusky, who founded Vector and is its chief investment officer, didn’t respond to e-mailed questions and hung up when reached on his mobile phone. David Baylor, Vector’s chief operating officer, denied that the firm had misled investors.
Source: Georgia Department of Insurance via Bloomberg
Richard Clay, one of Cane Bay's founders, had run a chain of payday-loan stores in Atlanta called USA Payday Cash Advance Centers. Close
Richard Clay, one of Cane Bay's founders, had run a chain of payday-loan stores in... Read More
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Source: Georgia Department of Insurance via Bloomberg
Richard Clay, one of Cane Bay's founders, had run a chain of payday-loan stores in Atlanta called USA Payday Cash Advance Centers.
“Any implication that we have not provided complete and accurate information to our investors about one or more of our investments is false,” Baylor wrote in an e-mail.
Harvard, which was cited in a 2007 Vector press release as a “significant new investor” in the fund, declined to comment, as did other investors including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and pension funds in California, Oregon and Maryland.
Regulators who have gone after payday lenders said in interviews they hadn’t heard of Cane Bay. Jim DePriest, deputy attorney general of Arkansas, said most of the payday-loan stores in his state closed in 2010, when voters passed a ballot initiative capping interest rates at 17 percent. That’s when he started getting more complaints about Internet lending.
One of the websites that he said he discovered making illegal loans was CashYes.com. A borrower had told his department that CashYes was calling her to collect more money after she had already paid $3,193.75 on a $775 loan.
Belize Address
The websites run by Cane Bay offer quick money and charge more than 600 percent a year, according to ex-employees. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
DePriest sent a cease-and-desist letter in 2012 to the company, which lists a Belize City address on its website. CashYes replied that it would stop lending in Arkansas, though it maintained state laws didn’t apply. At least three other states sent similar letters. DePriest said he wasn’t able to identify the principals or trace CashYes beyond its Belizean parent, Hong Kong Partners Ltd.
“We haven’t been able to really track down CashYes yet,” DePriest said. “If we can pin down who they are, the individuals, we’ll go after them. If we can find them, we can serve them and we can sue them. And that’s what we do.”
Two thousand miles from Arkansas, on an island east of Puerto Rico, David Johnson, Kirk Chewning and Richard Clay set up Cane Bay in 2009, Virgin Islands corporate records show. The company, named for a palm-tree-lined beach near its offices, took advantage of incentives that offer as much as 90 percent off corporate and personal income taxes.
Cane Bay
Cane Bay Partners was named for this palm-tree-lined beach near the offices. Photographer: Quiana L. Adams
From a red-shuttered building across from an old Danish fort, Cane Bay’s programmers, marketers and data analysts run CashYes.com, CashJar.com and at least four other payday-loan websites, the former employees said. Cane Bay registers the domains, designs the sites, approves the loans and analyzes the returns to adjust algorithms, according to the ex-employees.
The loans were made by companies incorporated in Belize, a Central American country that lets foreigners set up entities that don’t pay local taxes or disclose ownership. When a state barred one site, Cane Bay would direct customers to another, according to the former employees.
The ex-employees said Cane Bay had no business other than running the payday-loan websites and that Johnson and Chewning directed operations for all of them.
Johnson and Chewning referred questions to Torossian, who said the men wouldn’t agree to an interview. Neither the Belize companies nor the websites returned calls seeking comment.
Montel Williams
Late-night television ads featuring former talk-show host Montel Williams supplied customers, according to former Cane Bay employees. Source: YouTube.com via Bloomberg
Late-night television ads featuring former talk-show host Montel Williams supplied customers, the ex-employees said. The company that runs the ads, MoneyMutual, doesn’t make loans. Instead, when people fill out applications, their names and data are fed into an electronic auction system called a ping tree. Lenders have seconds to decide whether to buy their information. The best leads sell for more than $100.
Johnson signed contracts with a MoneyMutual affiliate on behalf of CashYes and CashJar, according to Jeffrey Wilens, a Yorba Linda, California-based lawyer who discovered the documents when he sued MoneyMutual and Williams in 2013 for conspiring to make illegal loans. He expanded the lawsuit to include Cane Bay.
Flip-Flops
MoneyMutual and Williams denied the allegations in court. Jonathan Franks, a public relations representative for Williams, said Williams is just a spokesman for MoneyMutual and never had any business dealings with Cane Bay. Johnson said in a filing that he was acting as a consultant when he signed the contracts.
“That does not mean this ‘consulting’ is all that Cane Bay did and does with respect to the payday loans,” Wilens replied in another filing. Johnson “set up various companies for the purpose of arranging illegal payday loans,” added Wilens, whose case is pending.
Johnson wears flip-flops and khaki shorts in the office, while Chewning, who handles day-to-day operations, likes to watch Fox News in the kitchen, often complaining about President Barack Obama, according to the ex-employees. The two, both 41, are still active in the Kappa Sigma fraternity, which Johnson joined when he was at the University of West Georgia and Chewning at Michigan State University.
Island life has been good to Johnson. Photos on his Facebook page show him fishing in tournaments, partying on his boats and chugging Fireball whisky from the bottle. Johnson won the island’s Christmas boat parade with a 65-foot yacht named “Living the Dream,” according to the event’s website. Chewning also is listed as a winner with a 49-footer called “Renewed Interest.”
Rolled Over
The loans are usually a last resort for working people who struggle to make ends meet, according to information from more than 250 bankruptcy filings, 300 complaints to the Federal Trade Commission and interviews with 10 CashYes and CashJar borrowers. One said she took a loan to avoid eviction when she missed work because her son was sick, while another said he needed money to feed his starving pets.
The cost for a $500 loan is between $100 and $150 in interest every two weeks, according to four contracts obtained by Bloomberg News. One contract, for a $700 loan, would result in the borrower paying back $3,675 over eight months unless a quicker payment plan was requested.
Borrowers are asked to provide bank-account information, which enables the lenders to deduct payments directly, the contracts show. About a third of the complaints obtained from the FTC were by borrowers in New York, New Jersey and North Carolina, where payday loans are illegal.
CashJar Loan
Gina Smith, 42, a legal secretary in Mount Vernon, New York, a state where charging more than 25 percent is a crime, said she borrowed about $500 three years ago from CashJar. She said she needed money to pay rent and other bills because she was getting just $170 a week in disability payments while she was out of work for medical reasons. When she fell behind, the collection calls started.
“They started threatening to come to my home,” Smith said. “They said investigators were coming to serve me court papers.”
The calls stopped when she filed for bankruptcy, she said.
Organized Crime
More than 150 other customers said in FTC complaints that debt collectors calling for CashJar and CashYes harassed them. One borrower said in an interview that CashJar called her boss, posing as a police officer. Another said in a complaint that the company called her sister and said she was a slut.
“My clients call me in tears because of these payday lenders,” said Charles Juntikka, the bankruptcy lawyer in New York who represented Smith. “I have to tell them you don’t go to jail over debts in America.”
Payday loans have been around since the 1880s. Within three years of the first newspaper advertisements for them, states started banning the loans, according to a 1935 investigation funded by the Russell Sage Foundation. By the 1960s, with usury laws widespread, the business had been taken over by organized crime, a New York State commission found in 1965.
The thousands of dockworkers who then plied New York’s piers were among the biggest customers. The loan sharks on the waterfront charged 15 percent a week -- about the same as CashYes and CashJar. Lacking electronic access to borrowers’ bank accounts, they would station themselves outside banks that catered to longshoremen and collect when the workers cashed their paychecks.
Ferrari, Plane
Cane Bay’s founders have tangled with state regulators for more than a decade. Clay, 51, had run a chain of payday-loan stores called USA Payday Cash Advance Centers. His green-and-yellow signs, with a dollar sign in place of the S in USA, were ubiquitous in poor neighborhoods in Atlanta about a decade ago, according to Margaret Witten, general counsel for the Georgia Department of Insurance.
After Witten’s agency ordered Clay to shut the stores for making illegal loans in 2002, he sued. The cases and related actions dragged on until 2008, when Clay agreed not to make payday loans in Georgia and to pay a $250,000 fine.
During the legal battle, he got into online loans with Johnson and Chewning, who had worked together at a company that makes software for payday lenders. The three set up a network of websites based in Delaware and Nevada in 2005, according to a lawsuit filed by a fourth partner after he was ousted in 2008. Clay had made enough money at that point to have a Ferrari and his own plane, the ex-partner claimed.
Baker Scholar
The former Cane Bay employees said they hadn’t seen Clay at the office in the past year. Clay didn’t respond to e-mailed questions, and Torossian, the Cane Bay spokesman, said he didn’t represent the co-founder. Witten said she didn’t know Clay had moved online.
“As a regulator, I spend my whole life trying to put the bad guys out of business, and they figure out new ways to get around it,” Witten said. “They can buy expensive lawyers and tie us up and continue to do their business.”
Cane Bay was an unusual investment for Vector, which Slusky started in 1997 as a spinoff from the billionaire Ziff brothers’ money-management firm, where he oversaw technology deals. He founded the firm just five years after graduating from Harvard Business School as a Baker Scholar, the school’s highest honor.
Technicolor Investment
An early win was Corel Corp., the struggling maker of WordPerfect software. After Slusky invested in 2003, the company fired more than half of its 1,000 workers, boosting profit margins above 30 percent, according to an article from the Deal posted on Vector’s website. By 2006, Vector had made six times its $58 million investment, the article said.
The Vector Capital IV fund that eventually bought into Cane Bay was raised in 2007 to invest in established technology companies, according to a press release. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest U.S. pension plan, committed $25 million to the fund, its website shows. It joined Harvard’s endowment, MIT’s pension and other foundations, according to tax returns and Vector’s press release.
Vector, which makes only a few investments a year, struggled to find enough companies to buy for the new fund, according to the three ex-employees. It bought an English fleet-management software maker in 2010 and invested in Technicolor SA (TCH), a French digital-video company.
By 2012, Harvard was trying to pull out its money because of the investment delays, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said.
The former Vector employees said when they discussed Cane Bay internally they were clear it was in the payday-lending business. Unlike other deals, the investment wasn’t announced in a press release or listed on Vector’s website.
Choke Point
Regulators intensified their scrutiny of Internet lenders soon after Vector invested in Cane Bay. The Justice Department and other agencies started pressuring banks in 2013 to stop processing payments for payday lenders as part of an anti-fraud campaign called Operation Choke Point. Three weeks ago, prosecutors in New York filed criminal usury charges against a man in Tennessee they accused of running a network of payday sites based in the West Indies.
Cane Bay wasn’t involved in the New York case and had already arranged backup payment processors when Operation Choke Point started, according to three of the former employees.
Johnson and Chewning also were working on a deal with an American Indian tribe as a longer-term solution, the former employees said. They set up a new website, MaxLend.com, and a few months ago started redirecting borrowers there, two of the ex-employees said. Other than that, little changed, they said.
MaxLend lists the Mandan, Hidatsa & Arikara Nation of North Dakota as its owner. Richard Mayer, who runs the tribes’ lending company, declined to comment.
“There’s a lot of money out there looking for a place to go where they can earn a lot of money,” said Mark Pinsky, president of the Opportunity Finance Network, which works with lenders that help the poor. “We have laws because there need to be limits on what people do.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Zeke Faux in New York at zfaux@bloomberg.net
http://www.acer.com/aspirer7/en_US/ the display tilts forward, covering the trackpad. the forward keyboard means you can easily touch the screen and type without leaning or stretching. the touch screen makes the trackpad largely vestigial
Zebra finches are a monogamous species: they form life-long relationships and do not tend to stray from their mates. They are also known to form same-sex partnerships (like many birds, in fact), even in situations where males are present. In this study, the researchers observed pairing preferences in finches under different conditions. They found that in aviaries with equal sex ratios, about 6% of pairs were same-sex, primarily female-female. In a second experiment, they took same-sex pairs that had been formed in same-sex aviaries (i.e., all females or all males) and tested whether the pairs were maintained when the opposite sex was available. They found that while female pairs switched to partner with males, some of the male pairs stayed together. From these results, the authors conclude that same-sex relationships are “more flexible” in female finches than in males.
“This study examined flexibility and choice in same-sex pair-bonding behavior in adult zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). Zebra finches form life-long monogamous relationships and extra pair behavior is very low, making them an ideal species in which to study same-sex pairing. We examined same-sex behaviors using both semi-naturalistic choice paradigms and skewed sex ratios. In the first experiment, we allowed zebra finches to pair in aviaries with equal sex ratios as part of multiple experiments. On average, 6.4 % (N = 78) of unmanipulated pairs were same-sex: all but one was female-female. In a second experiment, we identified pairs from same-sex cages and selected 20 total same-sex pairs (10 of each sex). We then gave pairs a chance to court and pair with members of the opposite sex and observed their behavior for three days. Females did not retain their partner, but most paired with males. In contrast, some males did retain their partner. Similarly, females were more likely to engage in pairing behaviors with males than with their partners or other females whereas males were equally likely to engage in same-sex and opposite-sex pairing behaviors. These findings suggest that same-sex partnerships in zebra finches can be facultative, based on the sex ratio of the group in which they live, but can also be a choice, when opportunities to pair with opposite-sex individuals are possible. Furthermore, it is possible that females are more flexible in this choice of same-sex partnerships than are males.”
'Some #Gamergate devotees claim that this new hashtag is a tactic devised to “divide and conquer” the original movement, but considering that this isn’t actually a war despite the militaristic rhetoric, and that the major part of the movement being “divided” is the one full of harassers and 4chan users looking to upset people, I’m more than okay with that.'
I guess it’s a good time to mention that I’ve been lurking in & recording 4chan’s raid IRC channels for a few weeks pic.twitter.com/30Deh5glJn
There’s been another big development in the ongoingGamergate discussion on Twitter, and it’s a doozy. On Saturday night, Zoe Quinn tweeted a long string of images collected while sitting in a “raid” forum where 4chan users discussed tactics against her and her supporters. All of the images depict members of the forum saying things that suggest the movement specifically sought to discredit “SJWs” under the guise of caring about journalistic integrity; a few even depict Quinn’s ex-boyfriend, who appears to be coaching chatroom members on how best not to “lose” against Quinn.
Members of 4Chan, of course, have denied that this new information proves anything one way or the other. “Most of it is taken out of context to make us look bad and half the images, what she is describing isn’t even taking place,” a 4chan member told The Escapist yesterday. “Seriously, just read the logs she posted and the conclusions she comes to. Some very strange connections.” Other members of the chatroom have published the chatlogs in their entirety as an attempt to discredit her, which might have backfired on them as far as public opinion goes:
One of the biggest allegations against 4Chan is that members of the forum deliberately manufactured the #NotyourShield hashtag, which consisted of self-identified women and people of color in support of Gamergate, as a way to combat the notion that they are against diversity in gaming.
If proven true, this would not be the first time 4Chan has engaged in such behavior. Back in June they created a fake campaign to “End Father’s Day” as a way of painting feminists in an extremely negative light, and specifically targeted black feminists on Twitter for harassment in the process. Previous anti-feminist hoaxes also include “Operation Bikini Bridge,” in which 4chan members invented and proliferated a new thigh gap-style body classification for women to feel self conscious about, and “Operation Freebleeding,” which attempted to convince women that feminine hygiene products like pads and tampons were oppressive tools of the patriarchy. So for many people, it’s entirely too believable that 4chan engaged in similar astroturfing (a term for fraudulent grassroots organizing) here, despite claims to the contrary.
Some members of Gamergate have not given up yet, however: over the weekend members of the movement also circulated a list of demands, which, among other things, call for opinion pieces to be marked as such and that comment sections more or less remain un-moderated. I don’t think we need to tell anyone who reads The Mary Sue regularly why that last one might not be a good idea.
Meanwhile, those who want to discuss legitimate causes for concern in the industry without getting mired in the harassment and trolling that many now expect from #GamerGate have migrated to the hashtag #GameEthics instead. While not as popular as #GamerGate, the tag contains a lot of very interesting information about working conditions for developers and journalists, some of which explores the larger business of mainstream gaming as a whole.
#gameethics working conditions for AAA: bust yr chops to make christmas, which kills quality, then award bonuses based on metacritic — Zach A (@IcePotato) September 6, 2014
Seen reviews time and again where it’s clearly rushed to meet embargo, playing what seems as little as an hour before writing. #gameethics — Conrad Zimmerman (@ConradZimmerman) September 6, 2014
Sexism is a problem in every medium and should be documented and held accountable. The games industry is no different. #gameethics — Asher Vollmer (@AsherVo) September 7, 2014
Things like graphics can’t be graded on a rubric because not every game *needs* to have good graphics, or graphics at all. #gameethics — Carli Velocci (@revierypone) September 7, 2014
I’d love to see a publication financed by it’s viewers instead of ads about the games they cover, but who would pay for that? #gameethics — Dr. Hackenstein (@jhackenstein) September 7, 2014
Some #Gamergate devotees claim that this new hashtag is a tactic devised to “divide and conquer” the original movement, but considering that this isn’t actually a war despite the militaristic rhetoric, and that the major part of the movement being “divided” is the one full of harassers and 4chan users looking to upset people, I’m more than okay with that. No one within the hashtag is claiming that the games industry is perfect or that it’s even devoid of corruption, after all; and for those of us who aren’t insiders, it’s a fascinating look into how the industry operates.
But while many want to believe that the worst of Gamergate is over with this new development, it’s important to note that the deeper prejudices and injustices — specifically the online harassment of women involved in the gaming industry — are not going to go away overnight because some 4Chan users got caught with their pants down. In order to make any kind of lasting change, we need to continue to advocate for inclusivity and acceptance in gaming. Hopefully #GameEthics will serve as a small step in the right direction.
' It sounds great to me. It sounds as good an idea as any other! There are a lot of women that could scare off any kind of vapor! No, it’s a grand idea, I don’t know who they’re talking about, but it’s a good idea, I would watch it! I mean, I love Robert Palmer’s videos, so why wouldn’t I love the female Ghostbusters?
Echoing those sentiments and dad jokes, Murray also told the Toronto Star, “I’m fine with it. I would go to that movie, and they’d probably have better outfits, too.” He even had some casting suggestions, saying his St. Vincent co-star Melissa McCarthy would be a “spectacular Ghostbuster.” And just in case Bridesmaids director Paul Feig needs any more suggestions, he should maybe also check out Bridesmaids: “And Kristen Wiig is so funny—God, she’s funny!” Murray said, adding, “I like this girl Linda Cardellini a lot. And Emma Stone is funny. There are some funny girls out there.” Most importantly, almost none of them are Bill Murray, meaning they earn Murray’s highest endorsement for Ghostbusters 3.'
Always up for a new Ghostbusters movie that he doesn’t have to take part in, Bill Murray has thrown his full support behind the notion of an all-female Ghostbusters—knowing full well that no amount of cajoling from Dan Aykroyd can ever get Bill Murray to be female. Murray was in Toronto for “Bill Murray Day,” so named for the national day when Canadians take sticks in hand to flush Bill Murray out, when he was asked by Access Hollywood how he felt about rumors that director Paul Feig may put his female comedy spin on the franchise. His answer (via Schmoes Know) was a little sarcastic, but as always, it surrounded the kernel of truth that he really, really doesn’t want to do it:
It sounds great to me. It sounds as good an idea as any other! There are a lot of women that could scare ...
he also clarifies that “a particle accelerator that reaches 100bn GeV would be larger than Earth, and is unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate.”
In the foreword for the upcoming book Starmus: 50 Years of Man in Space, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking warns that the recently discovered Higgs boson, sometimes called the “God particle,” has the potential to destroy the Universe. Hawking writes,
The Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become metastable at energies above 100bn gigaelectronvolts (GeV). This could mean that the universe could undergo catastrophic vacuum decay, with a bubble of the true vacuum expanding at the speed of light. This could happen at any time and we wouldn’t see it coming.
Although Hawking says the Higgs boson has the theoretical potential to cause this “catastrophic vacuum decay,” he also clarifies that “a particle accelerator that reaches 100bn GeV would be larger than Earth, and is unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate.”
"It may be no surprise that Reddit finds itself here again — it's the kind of government that gets 99.9% of the vote and never learns from its mistakes. Last time the company found itself here it was dealing with negative press over a couple of seedy communities that were distributing "creepshots:" sexualized photos taken of women, often in awkward or compromising positions, without their knowledge. Reddit allowed this to go on for some time, but only brought out the big guns when Gawker revealed the creepshot ring leader was a 49-year-old man named Michael Brutsch, because Reddit believes in free speech as long as it protects the unsavory men who keep exploitative content flowing. Even charities won't accept money from these men, but Reddit will."
As Reddit trips over itself trying to contain its stolen nude photo problem, CEO Yishan Wong finally addressed the controversy on Saturday by releasing a remarkably clueless manifesto. Reddit, he wrote, is "not just a company running a website where one can post links and discuss them, but the government of a new type of community." So, then, what type of government is Reddit? It's the kind any reasonable person would want to overthrow.
Imagine you live in a nice little community. You have barbecues with the folks next door and discuss your mutual interests. You feel safe walking the streets at night. You trust the local police, who are selected from your neighbors. Everything is going well. Then, one day, someone breaks into your house and steals private photos from your safe. They're naked photos you took with your partner in a safe environment. The burglar crosses the tracks into the bad part of town and sells your photos to the highest bidder. There, a gang of men wearing masks print your photos out and post them all over town. You find out the identity of one of the men peddling your stolen photos, and tell your neighbors about him as a warning. He walks free, but because you unmasked him, you are sent to jail. The government does nothing to protect you, because the men sharing your photos are simply exercising their right to "free speech." When your neighbors appeal to the government to get you out of jail, making light of this injustice, they're rounded up in black vans and disappeared, with no explanation, never to be seen again.
Reddit's government is more interested in protecting "John" than the women he harassed
Reddit wants to be a techno-libertarian's wet dream, but in practice its a weak feudal system that's actually run by a small group of angry warlords who use "free speech" as a weapon. Reddit is mostly a nice place filled with nice people who run nice little communities, but there's virtually nothing keeping them safe from bullies like "John," a 33-year-old man who brazenly dispersed stolen private photos and then cried foul when The Washington Post published information about him. Reddit's government is more interested in protecting John than the women he harassed.
Wong wrote that "the role and responsibility of a government differs from that of a private corporation, in that it exercises restraint in the usage of its powers." Forgiving for a moment the fact that this statement is completely wrong, Reddit's justification for this special type of behavior is incoherent since it does exercise its powers to censor content and protect people, unless they are victims.
Try to reconcile the following statements from its CEO:
We deplore the theft of these images and do not condone their widespread distribution
We understand the harm that misusing our site does to the victims of this theft, and we deeply sympathize
But...
We are unlikely to make changes to our existing site content policies
We believe that you, the user, has the right to choose between right and wrong
Virtuous behavior is only virtuous if not arrived at by compulsion
So it's not Reddit's problem if you're being harassed on the internet because it's not the government's job to enforce morality. Only copyright:
In accordance with our legal obligations, we expeditiously removed content hosted on our servers as soon as we received DMCA requests from the lawful owners of that content
In other words, Reddit feels really bad that your stolen nude photos are being shared all over its website, but won't do anything about it unless you're privileged enough to understand the copyright system or able to afford a lawyer who does. And unlike (many) governments, Reddit has profit motives — it makes money when people share nude photos because men are pervs and there's a huge audience out there for naked women, perhaps especially for naked women who haven't given us consent to share their bodies. In a bizarre follow up post, Wong explained his use of gendered language, pointing out that "the perpetrators were almost certainly men, the people spreading and viewing the images were overwhelmingly men, and the people being victimized were exclusively women."
Reddit is the kind of government that gets 99.9% of the vote
It may be no surprise that Reddit finds itself here again — it's the kind of government that gets 99.9% of the vote and never learns from its mistakes. Last time the company found itself here it was dealing with negative press over a couple of seedy communities that were distributing "creepshots:" sexualized photos taken of women, often in awkward or compromising positions, without their knowledge. Reddit allowed this to go on for some time, but only brought out the big guns when Gawker revealed the creepshot ring leader was a 49-year-old man named Michael Brutsch, because Reddit believes in free speech as long as it protects the unsavory men who keep exploitative content flowing. Even charities won't accept money from these men, but Reddit will.
According to a report from Recode, Reddit's free speech zone, where men run wild over women's privacy and dignity, may be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 million.
If Reddit wants to be thought of as a government, we'll call it what it is: a failed state, unable to control what happens within its borders. At minimum, Reddit is a kleptocracy that speaks to lofty virtues while profiting from vice. It might be forgivable if we were talking about taxing cigarettes and booze, but we're not talking about that. What we're talking about is more like sexual assault, condoned by a state that earns revenue from it. "Reddit doesn't have much of an interest in banning questionable content," Wong wrote last year. "'Family-friendly' is out, 'edgy' is in." Are those the words of a president, or a pimp?
A friend of mine is visiting family here in Portland and lost her year old shiba Inu named koji. According to my husband, Koji's kind of skittish so he's probably very frightened. If anyone spots him or sees him, please comment or pm me with details. Fingers crossed, I'm not sure if this will be very helpful but you never know. Thanks! EDIT: Here's the craigslist link with photos of Koji. http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/laf/4656823327.html
Electrical engineers Shengli Fu and Yan Wan from the University of North Texas developed drone prototypes that will fly in pairs and provide wifi during disaster relief efforts. via techly:
Typical wireless connections have a range of about a hundred meters. Fu, Wan, and their colleagues have developed technology that allowed the drones to provide wireless connection access within a range of up to five kilometers or just a little over three miles.
What the researchers did was to equip each of the drones with a directional antenna that can rotate and adjust automatically to create and maintain a strong signal. The drones fly out in pairs because one is made to land in the danger zone or disaster area while the other drone is situated in line of sight of the first drone and within three kilometers or almost two miles. The two drones communicate with each other to provide network access to victims, stranded people, and rescue workers – facilitating faster and more efficient rescue efforts.
Welcome to drone day on the Adafruit blog. Every Monday we deliver the latest news, products and more from the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), quadcopter and drone communities. Drones can be used for video & photography (dronies), civil applications, policing, farming, firefighting, military and non-military security work, such as surveillance of pipelines. Previous posts can be found via the #drone tag and our drone / UAV categories.
Victory! OMG touch sensors are so cool. And they saved my life or at least helped me keep my biggest client. I built the electronics and programmed the quiz for this interactive kiosk for Kaiser Permanente. It is a combination of a touch screen quiz and then if the user gets a quiz question wrong they have to take a ‘physical challenge’ that consists of LED rings that light up indicating a button that needs to be pressed. If the user hits the buttons as they light up fast enough they can move on to the next question. My problem was that the buttons I fabricated were just to hard to press. And it was live in a major Portland Oregon Mall!
Adafruit’s momentary capacitive touch sensors saved the day and they work great! Thank you, Thank you! This has been so stressful but now it works better than ever. Capacitive touch is going to change the way I do everything from this point on. I recommend that every hacker out there give these things a try. Adafruit rocks! (read more)
And we especially loved reading this message from his site:
I think a key takeaway from all of this is that in this day in age someone with zero electronic knowledge can use the web to learn how to design, source, and fabricate fully functional electronics in just a matter of years. (read more)
Super Opinionated.
Our Oregon site 
