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The 2,128 Native American Mascots People Aren’t Talking About
CDC Statistics Show What Happens When You Don't Vaccinate
The latest figures: Between January 1 and August 29 of this year, nearly 600 confirmed measles cases were reported to the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. The resurgence is the greatest the U.S. has seen since the disease was eliminated from the country in 2000.
Former 'X-Factor' Finalist and G.R.L. Singer Simone Battle Died at Age 25 - KDramaStars
KDramaStars |
Former 'X-Factor' Finalist and G.R.L. Singer Simone Battle Died at Age 25 KDramaStars The 2011 "X-Factor" finalist Simone Battle has found dead on Friday morning at her house in Los Angeles, county coroner's department said. Her father Anthony Battle told MailOnline that the 25-year-old singer was found lifeless at 8 a.m. and expressed his ... Death of singer Simone Battle is ruled suicideSFGate all 656 news articles » |
The latest target of China’s anti-corruption drive is the humble mooncake
China’s anti-corruption drive has already cramped the style of government officials, who have had to get by with fewer lavish banquets and perks. The latest target: mooncakes, the sweet treat given in southern China as a gift during the Mid-Autumn festival, which starts Monday.
According to the main association of Wuchuan, the major center in Guangdong province, mooncake production is down 50% from last year, China Daily reports. The reason is a ban on using public funds to buy mooncakes. The edict was issued by the Communist Party of China’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
The government has a website where people can report mooncake-related corruption; egregious examples from the recent past include the gifting of mooncakes containing precious stones or stuffed with cash.
But even when just filled with the traditional red bean paste and egg yolks, the gift can be deemed excessive. In 2009, the director of a Hong Kong construction company that had applied for permits for road works was sentenced to two months in prison. His crime? He offered 15 boxes of the cakes to a team of undercover police officers.
Bill Murray On His Personal Philosophy
Bill Murray showed up after a screening of Ghostbusters in Toronto yesterday, where he spent the better part of an hour answering questions from fans. His best answer was in response to a question about his penchant for weird, unannounced hangouts (crashing the above couple's engagement photoshoot , for instance).
Newcomer sets all-time high score in Donkey Kong
Arcade gaming's most famous all-time record has a new owner: Robbie Lakeman, who on Thursday eclipsed the world high score for Donkey Kong by 3,200 points.
Robbie Lakeman (pictured) took down Hank Chien, who burst on the scene four years ago to wrest Donkey Kong's all-time high score away from rivals Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell, made famous in a 2008 documentary. Lakeman needed about four hours to reach 1,141,800; then he called and personally informed Chien he'd been knocked off.
Chien had taken the world record in February 2010, later surrendered it to Mitchell, who was then surpassed by Wiebe. Chien retook first place in February 2011 and better his score two more times, leading some to believe his scores were so high they could never be beaten.
But they were. You can watch his three hour, 50 minute assault on Chien's record here. Donkey Kong Blog has even more detail on what is now a four-way rivalry in a 33-year-old game.
Arkansas State player jerseys combine to form CLARK GRISWOLD
IT'S BEAUTIFUL
We didn't even know it, but we were waiting forever for Arkansas State's Jemar Clark and Darion Griswold to stand side-by-side. At last:
"Roll 'em up!" pic.twitter.com/OAG04w32F1
— Justin Ferguson (@JFergusonAU) September 6, 2014
(Great find, Justin Ferguson)
PopCap co-founder Vechey leaves, PopCap working on 'all-new' Peggle
PopCap co-founder John Vechey is leaving his role as CEO at the Plants vs. Zombies 2 developer. In a departing message shared by EA, Vechey notes that his leave follows a sabbatical, which allowed him to "step back and appreciate what I have in life,...
The Detroit Fire Department Has An Alert System Made Of Soda Cans And Doorbells
My sign is shiny
firehosecrop on the shirt on the left reminds me of how we used to joke in college that it's disappointing University of North Texas wasn't City University of North Texas
The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson | History | Smithsonian
The nailery “particularly suited me,” he wrote, “because it would employ a parcel of boys who would otherwise be idle.” Equally important, it served as a training and testing ground. All the nail boys got extra food; those who did well received a new suit of clothes, and they could also expect to graduate, as it were, to training as artisans rather than going “in the ground” as common field slaves.
The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson | History | Smithsonian
Tobacco required child labor (the small stature of children made them ideal workers for the distasteful task of plucking and killing tobacco worms); wheat did not, so Jefferson transferred his surplus of young workers to his nail factory (boys) and spinning and weaving operations (girls).
The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson | History | Smithsonian
hodadSafer than index funds!
The critical turning point in Jefferson’s thinking may well have come in 1792. As Jefferson was counting up the agricultural profits and losses of his plantation in a letter to President Washington that year, it occurred to him that there was a phenomenon he had perceived at Monticello but never actually measured. He proceeded to calculate it in a barely legible, scribbled note in the middle of a page, enclosed in brackets. What Jefferson set out clearly for the first time was that he was making a 4 percent profit every year on the birth of black children. The enslaved were yielding him a bonanza, a perpetual human dividend at compound interest. Jefferson wrote, “I allow nothing for losses by death, but, on the contrary, shall presently take credit four per cent. per annum, for their increase over and above keeping up their own numbers.” His plantation was producing inexhaustible human assets. The percentage was predictable.
Attention All Hands: The Humble Star Trek Bundle Offers A Full Complement Of Comics, For Charity - Resistance is futile.
The first comic book I ever read was a Star Trek comic. It was given to nine-year-old me by a gentleman down the street who was handing out kid-friendly monthlies for Halloween instead of candy. That, my friends, is an upstanding citizen.
Speaking of do-gooders, let’s talk about the Hero Initiative, a non-profit that provides financial support for comic creators in times of need. They’re the charity of choice for the Humble Star Trek Bundle, a pay-what-you-want digital collection of the Federation’s finest. Presented by Humble Bundle and IDW, the bundle offers sixty-six issues of phaser-firing adventures.
I’m always happy to spread the word for a good cause, but this is a mighty fine offer to boot. The basic collection includes Star Trek Classics Vol. 1, Star Trek Classics Vol. 2, Star Trek: Best of Klingons and Star Trek: Gold Key Archives Vol. 1. If you pay more than the average price (currently $10.71), you’ll also get Star Trek: The Next Generation – Hive, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Burden of Knowledge and Star Trek: Mirror Images. Pay $15 or more, and they’ll sweeten the deal with Star Trek: Countdown, Star Trek: Movie Adaptation, Star Trek Nero, Star Trek: Spock Reflections, Star Trek: Countdown to Darkness and Star Trek Vol. 1. That should cover your weekend reading pretty nicely.
The bundle disappears forever on Wednesday, September 17, so…y’know. Make it so.
(via Bleeding Cool)
Previously in Star Trek
White People's Obsession With Reverse Racism
firehose'Cabrera (who describes himself as a light-skinned Chicano who can “pass” for white) interviewed students from two big, public universities—places he calls “Southwest University” and “Western University.” SWU is 65 percent white, practices affirmative action, and isn’t particularly difficult to get into, admitting about 80 percent of applicants. WU, meanwhile, is just 35 percent white (though it had traditionally been a white school), does not practice affirmative action, and is far more exclusive, taking just 20 percent of applicants.
Cabrera spoke to 43 white male students, then analyzed the reactions of those he defined as “normalizing whiteness.” He found that many students at WU, who were part of a diverse campus, were angry about race. WU does not practice affirmative action, yet many white students still felt that their skin colour had somehow made them victims of race-based policies at the competitive university. “Because of ‘White privilege’ [air quotes], Whites are expected to have accomplished more. And that makes it harder for Whites,” one student told Cabrera. “I mean if you want to succeed in life, you can’t just bank on the fact that oh, I’m Black which means people should take pity on me maybe ‘cause it’s been so hard for me,’” said another. “That’s bullshit!” The students saw race-conscious policies (policies which, again, did not exist) as lowering standards at their university.
The interviewees from SWU were far less aggressive when talking about race. Living in a predominantly white environment, they weren’t confronted with it. Thinking about race was a nuisance more than anything. “[It’s] just that I wish it didn’t even have to be a subject at all,” one student sighed. There was also a tendency to equate race-consciousness with racism itself. “I [grew up] in a very [racially] neutral household in that sense,” explained one student. “We didn’t really discuss race a lot, which I don’t think it necessarily should be discussed a great deal. It shouldn’t be over-emphasized because that’s what leads to racism.”
As Cabrera himself notes, the study is too small to make any broad generalizations about The State of White People Today. But studies like these are attempts to understand some of the emotions that underpin today’s systemic racism—the feeling of victimization beneath white supremacy, the way that a self-professed “colour-blindness” acts as a denial of discrimination. Because the attitude at SWU, while less outwardly angry, is in some ways more insidious. Downplaying the significance of racism—acting like the enlightened, rational one in the room while those who dwell on race are a little whiny and perhaps even racist themselves—is a remarkable slight of hand. It goes a little way towards explaining why so many white Americans could possibly believe that “reverse racism” is a dangerous scourge.'
Stanford's palm tree mascot is its most horrifying yet
Stanford's trees are normally off-beat and funny. This one is going to cause us years and years of therapy.
The Stanford tree is one of college football's most unique mascots: It's crazy and ugly and the person in charge of mascotting redesigns it each time. It's wonderful.
Except the current edition of the Stanford tree. The current edition of the Stanford tree -- a palm tree, as opposed to the more traditional evergreen -- gives us nightmares.
Kirby Lee, USA Today Sports
That tongue! That tongue! Mascots shouldn't have tongues! Mascots shouldn't have enormous tonguey tongues that are coming to lick our faces off!
Let's compare to past trees to hone in on what makes this terrifying:
The new mascot has:
1. Exposed legs and arms
2. An open mouth with a huge wobbly tongue
3. Eyes that don't look like eyes.
We still love you and your tree Stanford, but tone down the nightmare fuel!
UPDATE: Groot!
@SBNation @SBNationCFB pic.twitter.com/3uMtR7V2X2
— nick pants (@nick_pants) September 6, 2014
"The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks."
booksnbuildings: Heinrich Seeling (German, 1852-1932), Proposal...
Heinrich Seeling (German, 1852-1932), Proposal for a new opera house in Stockholm (1887)
NYC Teachers Wear Shirts to Support Cops After Cop Murders Black Man
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So hot right now: white people showing support for white cops who kill unarmed black people. The latest group to hop on this bandwagon is New York City public school teachers who, after expressly being told to refrain from wearing pro-cop shirts to the first days of school, are going to go ahead ahead and keep wearing NYPD shirts, anyway.
The teachers' "protest," according to DNAInfo, comes on the heels of an anti-police brutality rally presided over by Al Sharpton. Sharpton, like most people who agree that death is an inappropriate punishment for suspicion of selling loosie cigarettes, thought that the death of Eric Garner in the hands of New York City police officers was kind of fucking terrible, and that maybe cops should be less murdery toward unarmed black people. Some teachers disagreed with the union's support, swarming to pro-cop Facebook groups like Thank You NYPD.
Eager to #NOTALLCOPS a terrible tragedy, the educators in Staten Island and Queens "showed their support" for the NYPD by wearing NYPD shirts to work this week and posting images of them to the aforementioned Facebook group.
Critics of the teachers' protest pointed out that a teacher wearing a pro-police shirt to a classroom full of public school children might send kids who had been victimized or seen victimization by police the message that what teachers really mean by the shirts is fuck you. And so, on Wednesday night, teachers at schools where the protest had gotten legs were told by a union rep via email that teachers should aim to wear neutral clothing that doesn't support one political side or another, and that continuing to wear the NYPD shirts to work could result in punishment for the teachers.
Whether or not you believe that teachers protesting on behalf of another group of people seems an odd hill to die on for a group of people who have plenty to protest on behalf of themselves, or that this whole protest is in incredibly poor taste, one thing is clear: every teacher who wore those ugly shirts to work is definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt guilty of a fashion crime. We need Joan Rivers now more than ever.
Overall, 550 shirts reading "New York's Brightest Support New York's Finest" were ordered in the runup to the first week of school, and humanity continues to be puzzling and terrible.
Images via Facebook
Zoe Quinn Rolls Deep: Exposing The Raid Chats Via Screengrabs
firehoseha ha WOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
this is the journalism that everyone in games media should've been doing on gamergate
and the fucking TARGET is the one who actually did it
It essentially proves many of her claims and shows that there were definitely people using/shaping #Gamergate for their purposes.
Far too long for me to post it all.
https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate
This Facebook map shows you which NFL team your state actually likes
firehoselol the Texans
"Not a single county in the USA identifies as being dominated by Jets fans"
The Broncos could supplant the Cowboys as "America's Team," according to this map.
Facebook knows what you like. Yes, you. The social media service broke up by team likes in each county, and this is by far the most in-depth look at NFL tribalism you'll see in one graphic.
Here are five things we learned from the Facebook fan map:
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The Denver Broncos are spreading like a virus.
It wasn't long ago that it was easy to say the Cowboys were "America's Team," but maybe Peyton Manning has changed that conversation. Dominating the better part of five states, Bronco nation is spreading at an alarming rate.
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Alaska and Hawaii: Mortal enemies.
It's about time we saw these two outliers face off in a deathmatch. Hey, we didn't make the rules. They chose to be Seahawks and 49ers fans respectively.
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Poor Jets.
Not a single county in the USA identifies as being dominated by Jets fans. Time to move them to London.
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There are pockets of Steelers fans EVERYWHERE.
SoCal is Steelers country, so is a good chunk of South Carolina, North Florida and Northwest Ohio. These pockets of resistance should be stomped out immediately.
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Houston should secede from Texas.
It's obvious. This is the only decent solution.
Novelist Karen Traviss Flips the Script in IDW's "G.I. Joe" #1
firehosenot only that, she's "worked as both a journalist and defence correspondent before turning her attention to writing fiction. She also served in both the Territorial Army and the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service."
A Brit woman with actual military experience, in and out of service? How unamercian
Run Your Own Newspaper: The Westport Independent
By Alice O'Connor on September 5th, 2014 at 9:00 am.
I’ve been ██████ ██ writing this post about The Westport Independent ███ ███████ ████ ███ ███, with everything █████ ██, thinking about it ███ ████ ████████. It looks quite splendid ███ █ █████ ███ ███ ████████ █████ ███ ███. See, The Westport Independent is about running an independent newspaper that’s soon to ██ ████ ████ ██ a government bill. Picking and editing stories line-by-line you can print safe news or, as a last hurrah, take █ █████ █████████ ███ rebels undermining the government. You can imagine ███ ████ █████ ███████ ██ a shower of ████████. Come watch the trailer!
The news you report can █████ ███████ ██ the world, which of course changes the news you ███ report on. ████ staff are all people with their own █████ ███ concerns, though, so some mightn’t ████ ███████ ██ risk their lives by covering ███████ stories.
“Whose truth will you print?” ask developers Double Zero One Zero.
They started making The Westport Independent in a game jam earlier this year, and you can still play that old version online. No release date yet ███ ███ ████ ████ ██ ██████ ██ Windows, ███, and Linux.
“█████ ██████ and instantly brought Republia Times to mind, which I always forget about until something like this reminds me,” said Adam Smith of ███ █████. This ███████ week.
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wherearchitectureisfun: WAÏF: Extreme Stages Bregenzer...
firehoseautoreshare
WAÏF: Extreme Stages
Bregenzer Festspiele (Bregenz Festival) is a performing arts festival which is held every July and August in Bregenz, Austria.
Founded in 1946, the festival presents a wide variety of musical and theatrical events in several venues.
Seebühne (or floating stage), with 7,000 seats, is the location for large-scale opera or musical performances on a stage over water on the shores of Lake Constance. Opera or musical productions on the floating stage generally tend to come from the popular operatic repertoire, but often are extravagantly original and innovative productions/ stagings, frequently using the waters of the lake as an extension of the stage
Hatoful Boyfriend review: The beak shall inherit the earth
firehosehatoful beat
Most pigeons reach sexual maturity in their first year of life.
This is something I know now, and it's one of the many revelations I had while playing Hatoful Boyfriend, the pigeon dating simulator. I also discovered what a rock dove is, I settled...
Hatoful Boyfriend Spreads Its Wings
firehosehatoful beat
By Ben Barrett on September 5th, 2014 at 8:00 am.
“So the joke is it’s a dating simulator, but all the romance options are pigeons?” they’ll ask, bewildered. ”Yes. Only it’s not really a joke. In fact, it got remade for a western audience because of how popular it was.” you can now reply, smiling a little too wide.
The world’s most popular pigeon dating simulator Hatoful Boyfriend is now out in a form that doesn’t require fan translation patches, if that’s your sort of thing. If you’re somehow uninitiated, it’s the tale of the only human student (you!) going to “St. PigeoNation’s Institute, a school for talented birds.” You’ll chat with and, presumably, up the other fine feathered students in search of true love.
Rock, Pigeon, Shotgun’s previous coverage of the game has mostly come from Mr. Meer, who was introduced to the original release in 2011. Of that time he now says “it depressed me even though it was about pigeons kissing.” I can empathise. You can grab a demo of that version here, from creator Hato Moa.
Porters Mediatonic and publishers Devolver Digital have put in more effort than needed for what could have been a simple publicity stunt. It’s got a new ending, another scenario and “updated visuals” – whatever that means for a game that is mostly drawn classrooms with superimposed pictures of birds. You can watch a dreadfully unfunny launch trailer or you go grab it on Steam or GOG. Why don’t you just stop pretending you’re here for any reason other than the inevitable pun thread and get to it?
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