firehose

Insert frowning emoji here.

@MarkMaddenX My 8 yr old was crushed when he got letter from #Pirates asking for $ for @NeilWalker18 to sign BB card. pic.twitter.com/9t9GGyN3xL

— Scott Brady (@scottwbrady) September 5, 2014

Seriously Pirates? The kid is eight years old. Look, we know it's to raise money for charity but think about this for a second. Young Colin was born in 2006, your team was 67-95, when he was five you went 62-99. At this point you owe it to him.

angelophile:

skalja:

lumos5001:

most underrated Doctor

His face.

Always reblog.

Love, love, love Nine.

For a guy whose medium of choice relies on brevity, Mr. Munroe really has no idea how to summarize.

Post by: Grant Rodiek

I snapped the above picture yesterday during the lunch portion of a marathon meeting to interact with our community to discuss issues, explain features, and generally be there to support our game. I’ve worked for Maxis for about 9 years now and we just launched The Sims 4. I don’t snap a ton of photos at work for fear of sharing something that’s going to leak and get me a stern talking to, but this one somewhat accomplishes what I need.

You’ll see two women in this photo and the shoes of another. The empty chair on the right belongs to another woman, and behind the back wall sits our executive producer, who is also a woman. We’ll get back to why this is important.

There’s a kerfuffle going on right now in the video game demographic that I believe is called “Gamer’s Gate” at this point, which is a hilariously hyperbolic comparison (as all “Gates”) to Water Gate. Under the pretenses of protecting the hobby from corruption and casual influence, an internet mob of men have begun harassing women in a blanket manor. It’s ignorant, disrespectful, and ridiculous.

I don’t have much to contribute to this topic that hasn’t already been said, except a brief mention of my personal experiences. I’ve worked at Maxis for about 9 years now and that means I’ve made a lot of games with women. I don’t have comparative stats, but I would wager we have one of the highest percentages of women on a development team in the industry. Obviously, an indie team of 6 with 3 women will beat our 20-30%, but as an organization with hundreds of people, I’m proud of that statistic, and proud of where it will continue to go.

We have women in all roles: Engineering, production, design, all art disciplines, UX, Audio. I have been excited and taken aback by the 50/50 split along gender lines in many meetings. I’ll be a dad one day and there’s a good chance I’ll have a girl. These sights are promising, especially if she wants to enter tech.

Our production team, and therefore our leadership team, has a very large female contingent. The producers who led our efforts in Build Mode and Create a Sim for The Sims 4 are both women. My boss, my dotted-line boss, my bosses’ boss, and my bosses’ bosses’ boss are all women. In fact, Lucy Bradshaw is the highest female in our corporate organization on our CEO’s advisory staff and she runs our studio. Pretty cool.

So, we’re still mostly a dude fest, which takes time and cultural shifts to correct, but we have a lot of women and we have them in positions of authority. As you might expect, working with women instead of men has its differences, so I thought I’d outline them.

• For starters, I’ve seen my female co-workers take maternity leave. Oh…wait. I actually have 2 male co-workers on multi-month long paternity leaves right now. Okay. Scratch that difference.
• Well, I definitely work with some women who aren’t very good at their job. Hmmm. Never mind. I work with some duds who share the opposite chromosome.
• Oh! I know for a FACT that the women’s bathroom is far cleaner than ours. Boom! Difference.

Jesting aside, there really aren’t any differences. I have just as many female co-workers who wear Dr. Who graphic tees as the guys. Both groups are annoying and have terrible taste in television. I have female co-workers from whom I learn daily and try to emulate. I have male co-workers with whom I do the same. Women, like men, offer a unique perspective on various aspects of life. The views of a mothers differ from those of a father at times. The perspective of a woman in a romantic relationship might vary. The things a girl raised in the 80s versus a boy raised in the 80s bring to a design discussion are also different shades at times.

All of these perspectives are good, especially for a game like The Sims. Traditionally, our audience is split very close along the gender line of 50/50. Yes, that’s right. It’s not a game for girls, but a game for people. I, for one, know nothing about pregnancy. My tuning suggestions are based on stereotypes and pop culture. My boss, however, has had a child. I’m going to trust her instincts on such a feature, much like I would trust the foodie’s input on our cooking system. I know by referencing pregnancy I’m perhaps lending my argument to that of girls only know girl stuff. So, if it helps, my boss and I argue about UI, gardening, Emotions, the tutorial, videos, and more.

I’m most definitely preaching to the choir, but that’s generally how these discussions go. I’m thankful to work with so many women as I’m confident otherwise I would be a different, less interesting, and less whole man otherwise. There are numerous cases of dude focused offices acting horribly to their different co-workers, be they women or people of color, and I’m blessed to be surrounded by a culture that doesn’t do that.

The key thing to take away is this: we all make or play games because it’s what we like to do. And for the former, it beats a real job. Remember that one person’s involvement in a thing does not preclude or affect your involvement in any way. Be fair, be kind, be accepting.

Game on, regardless of your private parts.

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

New FDA restrictions on the levels of harmless bacteria found in imported cheese have effectively banned a number of artisan French cheeses, including Roquefort, Morbier, and Tomme de Savoie. The restricted bacteria already exist in the human stomach, and the banned cheeses have not changed their recipes for years.

hodad

#dartmouth

HANOVER, NH—According to students enrolled in professor Michael Rosenthal's Philosophy 101 course at Dartmouth College, that guy, Darrin Floen, the one who sits at the back of the class and acts like he's Aristotle, seriously needs to shut the fuck up.

Floen (inset) is known to make his insufferable comments during class at Thornton Hall.

His fellow students describe Floen's frequent comments as eager, interested, and incredibly annoying.

"He thinks he knows about philosophy," freshman Duane Herring said. "But I hate his voice, and I hate the way he only half raises his hand, like he's so laid back. We're discussing ethics in a couple weeks, but I don't know if I can wait that long before deciding if it's morally wrong to pound his face in."

"Today he was going on and on about how Plato's cave shadows themselves represent the ideal foundation of Western philosophical thought," said freshman Julia Wald moments after class let out Monday. "I have no idea what Plato's ideal reality is, but I bet it doesn't include know-it-all little shits."

Wald added: "If he uses the word 'dialectical' one more time, I'm going to shove my copy of The Republic down his throat."

Although he demonstrated a familiarity with Peter Singer's view on famine relief during a discussion of John Locke's theory of property, Floen is reportedly unfamiliar with the theory of cramming it for a change and giving someone else a chance to speak.

"Just last week Professor Rosenthal was talking about Russell's Paradox, and that jackass starts going off: 'But what about Heraclitus' aphorism: Everything flows, nothing stands still?'" classmate James Luers said. "At first I was like, 'That's totally irrelevant,' but then I was like, 'Well, actually, it does apply to the nonstop flapping of your trap.'"

Among the 40 students who regularly attend Philosophy 101, the one who has endured the most suffering is freshman William Deekes.

"Some people know Darrin as just 'that guy in philosophy class who needs to shut the hell up,'" Deekes said. "I, however, also know him as 'the douche in African history who seriously needs to chill' and 'the a-hole in environmental sciences who could really use a girlfriend.'"

"I enrolled in this course because I was fascinated by the question of God," said sophomore Miriam Blank. "After spending six hours a week in the same room as that unbearable windbag, I think I have my answer. Life is as long as it is cruel."

The outspoken student has not gone unremarked by the course's professor.

"Mr. Floen is a valuable contributor to our in-class discussions," Rosenthal said. "His tendency to question and challenge everything before him captures the very essence of philosophy itself."

Rosenthal added: "Having said that, I do wish he would occasionally do me the valued service of shutting his damn cake hole."

Original Source

Fifty years ago, Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, was hit by a huge earthquake that flattened the city. Two years later, Japanese architect Kenzo Tange won a competition to design the new city center. And his influence on the city's retrofuturistic look is still apparent decades later.http://io9.com/brutalist-buil...

Read more...

The CDC's latest rape and sexual violence statistics are just as disturbing as ever.

Monitor: Biohackers of the world, unite | The Economist.

IT LOOKS like an experimental cooking class as participants taste a green powder, pull faces and then mix it into a concoction of fruit and milk. But the event organised by Open Wetlab in Amsterdam has a more serious goal than to come up with new recipes for smoothies: finding ways to make spirulina—an algae which is full of proteins and vitamins, but tastes disgusting—more palatable.

Welcome to the world of biohacking. In its original sense, hacking involves taking things apart and putting them back together again in new ways. Such tinkerers helped to create the “maker movement”, which has grown into a worldwide community of people constructing things ranging from 3D-printed jewellery to robots. Biohackers have also started to organise themselves, under the umbrella of a movement called DIYbio.

Read more.

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We’ve been ready for this! Here’s our Biohacking badge and sticker!

submitted by edward_j_awesome [link] [112 comments]

COMING SOON – PiTFT – Assembled 480×320 3.5″ TFT+Touchscreen for Raspberry Pi

---

Is this not the cutest, little display for the Raspberry Pi? It features a 3.5″ display with 480×320 16-bit color pixels and a resistive touch overlay so is slightly larger than our popular original. The plate uses the high speed SPI interface on the Pi and can use the mini display as a console, X window port, displaying images or video etc. Best of all it plugs right in on top!

It’s designed to fit nicely onto the Pi Model A or B but also works perfectly fine with the Model B+ as long as you don’t mind the PCB overhangs the USB ports by 5mm.

Uses the hardware SPI pins (SCK, MOSI, MISO, CE0, CE1) as well as GPIO #25 and #24. GPIO #18 can be used to PWM dim the backlight if you like. All other GPIO are unused. There’s a 2×13 header on the bottom, you can connect a standard Pi GPIO cable to it to use any of the other pins ask you like.

Best of all, it comes fully assembled and ready to plug into your Pi! You can use this as a display for running the X interface, or pygame. You can also have an HDMI display seperately connected.

We’ve created a custom kernel package based of off Notro’s awesome framebuffer work, so you can install it over your existing Raspbian (or derivative) images in just a few commands. Our tutorial shows you how to install the software, as well as calibrate the touchscreen, show videos, display images such as from your PiCam and more! [[tutorial coming soon!]]

Coming soon, sign up now!

kim-kanye-baby:

unexplained-events:

Tyson the Swan

Tyson will attack you if you come within a two-mile stretch of the Grand Union Canal in Bugbrooke, Northamptonshire. Joe Davies learned this the hard way and capsized.

SOURCE

U kno he dead

the-kellephant:

david-tennants-little-fangirl:

I still laugh at this every single time I see it.

HAHAHAHAHA

yungterra:

question: how do i make my photograph more tumblr relatable?

Simple:

• filter
• lowercase helvetica

• for extra points: add japanese text

nickjbarlow:

source

Wee Frida Kahlo

Let me open with an apology to John Gruber for my previous blog post.

We've been working on the Standard Markdown project for about two years now. We invited John Gruber, the original creator of Markdown, to join the project via email in November 2012, but never heard back. As we got closer to being ready for public feedback, we emailed John on August 19th with a link to the Standard Markdown spec, asking him for his feedback. Since John MacFarlane was the primary author of most of the work, we suggested that he be the one to reach out.

We then waited two weeks for a response.

There was no response, so we assumed that John Gruber was either OK with the project (and its name), or didn't care. So we proceeded.

There was lots of internal discussion about what to name our project. Strict Markdown? XMarkdown? Markdown Pro? Markdown Super Hyper Turbo Pro Alpha Diamond Edition?

As we were finalizing the name, we noticed on this podcast, at 1:15 …

… that John seemed OK with the name "GitHub Flavored Markdown". So I originally wrote the blog post and the homepage using that terminology – "Standard Flavored Markdown" – and even kept that as the title of the blog post to signify our intent. We were building Yet Another Flavor of Markdown, one designed to remove ambiguity by specifying a standard, while preserving as much as possible the spirit of Markdown and compatibility with existing documents.

Before we went live, I asked for feedback internally, and one of the bits of feedback I got was that it was inconsistent to say Standard Flavored Markdown on the homepage and blog when the spec says Standard Markdown throughout. So I changed them to match Standard Markdown, and that's what we launched with.

It was a bit of a surprise to get an email last night, addressed to both me and John MacFarlane, from John Gruber indicating that the name Standard Markdown was "infuriating".

I'm sorry the name is so infuriating. I assure you that we did not choose the name to make you, or anyone else, angry. We were simply trying to pick a name that correctly and accurately reflected our goal – to build an unambiguous flavor of Markdown. If the name we chose made inappropriate overtures about Standard Markdown being anything more than a highly specified flavor of Markdown, I apologize. Standard does have certain particular computer science meanings, as in IETF Standard, ECMA Standard. That was not our intent, it was more of an aspirational element of "what if, together, we could eventually..". What can I say? We're programmers. We name things literally. And naming is hard.

John Gruber was also very upset, and I think rightfully so, that the word Markdown was not capitalized throughout the spec. This was an oversight on our part – and also my fault because I did notice Markdown wasn't capitalized as I copied snippets of the spec to the homepage and blog post, and I definitely thought it was odd, too. You'll note that I took care to manually capitalize Markdown in the parts of the spec I copied to the blog post and home page – but I neglected to mention this to John MacFarlane as I should have. We corrected this immediately when it was brought to our attention.

John then made three requests:

1. Rename the project.

2. Shut down the standardmarkdown.com domain, and don't redirect it.

3. Apologize.

All fair. Happy to do all of those things.

Starting with the name. In his email John graciously indicated that he would "probably" approve a name like "Strict Markdown" or "Pedantic Markdown". Given the very public earlier miscommunication about naming, that consideration is appreciated.

We replied with the following suggestions:

• Compatible Markdown
• Regular Markdown
• Community Markdown
• Common Markdown
• Uniform Markdown
• Vanilla Markdown

We haven't heard back after replying last night, and I'm not sure we ever will, so in the interest of moving ahead and avoiding conflict, we're immediately renaming the project to Common Markdown.

We hope that is an acceptable name; it was independently suggested to us several times in several different feedback areas. The intention is to avoid any unwanted overtones of ownership; we have only ever wanted to be Yet Another Flavor of Markdown.

1. The project name change is already in progress.

2. This is our public apology.

3. I'll shut down the standardmarkdown.com domain as soon as I can, probably by tomorrow.

John, we deeply apologize for the miscommunication. It's our fault, and we want to fix it. But even though we made mistakes, I hope it is clear that everything we've done, we did solely out of a shared love of Markdown (and its simple, unencumbered old-school ASCII origins), and the desire to ensure the success of Markdown as a stable format for future generations.

Edit: after a long and thoughtful email from John Gruber – which is greatly appreciated – he indicated that no form of the word "Markdown" is acceptable to him in this case. We are now using the name CommonMark.

[advertisement] Stack Overflow Careers matches the best developers (you!) with the best employers. You can search our job listings or create a profile and even let employers find you.

“Garrett Guillotte is a freelance editor, paginator, and designer in Portland, Oregon, who was selected to the 2012 RPG Superstar Top 32 (before playing a proper game of Pathfinder). He’s since worked on Paizo Fans United’s ENnie-winning Wayfinder fanzine and the Redemption system and setting for Silent Spirits Game Studio. He prefers his worlds weird, his elves on spaceships, and his forges bearded.”

- VERANTHEA — The Veranthea Codex Team! Stretch Goals

Around 2005, a Seattle neighborhood called Ballard started to see unprecedented growth. Condominiums and apartment buildings were sprouting up all over the community which had once been mostly single family homes and small businesses. Around this time, developers offered a woman named Edith Macefield $750,000 dollars for her small house, which was appraised at around $120,000. They wanted to build a shopping mall on the block where Macefield had lived for the last 50 years.

Watson Discovery Advisor is a service that enables companies and research organizations to tap into the supercomputer's tremendous processing power. IBM celebrated the program's launch in New York City with a series of demos—from a pathway to personalized cancer cures to safer, more effective law enforcement—that highlighted the many amazing things Watson will now do. Among them, of course, is an intriguing capability that IBM is calling Cognitive Cooking. That means that Watson can invent recipes out of a quintillion possible combinations of ingredients. That's a lot of combinations. After the presentations, IBM toasted Watson's big day with a luncheon featuring several Watson-generated recipes and one Watson-concocted cocktail called the Blue Caribbean Hurricane. But let's be real. It should really be called the Big Blue Hurricane, because it is blue, invented by an IBM computer, and totally tropical.

"This is the spot where the ley lines converge, Mr. President. If Biden has been subdued, we can begin the ritual." http://instagram.com/p/skxVmCtNCd/?ut

submitted by LucidWindspark
[link] [38 comments]