firehose

Ann Nocenti explores the magical side of Gotham City when she and artist Trevor McCarthy launch a new series starring Klarion the Witch Boy.

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Thick, glossy copies of LA Yoga, Yoga Journal, and Yoga Magazine cover the rickety folding table in the lobby of Green Tree Yoga and Meditation. The magazines share tales from Malibu, Santa Monica, and Pasadena. Nearly every spread features a thin woman, usually in slim yoga pants and a tight tank, stretching her arms toward the sky or closing her eyes in meditation. Nearly all of these women are white.

But in South Los Angeles, where Green Tree opened last year, fewer than one percent of residents look like the people in those pictures.

“You can look at all those journals and you'll not see one woman of color,” said Raja Michelle, herself a white woman, who founded the studio. “We associate yoga with being skinny, white, and even upper class.”

“You go to classes and you’re the only black person, or there are very few,” said Robin Rollan, who practices yoga in New York and D.C. and runs the popular blog Black Yogis. “People who find my blog say, ‘I thought I was the only one.’”

The magazine images may seem like stereotypes, but they’re grounded in reality: About one in every 15 Americans practices yoga, according to a 2012 Yoga Journal study, and more than four-fifths of them are white.

“You have to have an education about yoga. Otherwise people think it's some kind of devil-worship.”

“Racism is so implicit that you never even notice that it’s a white girl on the cover every single time,” added Amy Champ, a PhD from the University of California, Davis, who wrote her dissertation on American yoga. “But when you begin to ask yourself, ‘What does yoga have to do with my community?’, then you begin to question all these inequities.”

L.A. yoga studios are heavily concentrated in wealthy white neighborhoods. In a corner storefront beside a tattoo parlor and across from a used car dealership, Green Tree recognizes that religious, economic and social divisions underlie yoga’s racial divide. Its neighborhood is about 80 percent black and 20 percent Latino. Household incomes hover around L.A’s average, but crime rates are high and college diplomas are rare.

When students arrive for Green Tree’s ten weekly classes, they borrow mats and drop donations (the studio recommends $5) into a basket in the back. There are no mirrors, no candles, and there is strictly no preaching, because there are 12 churches less than a mile away. Yoga’s cultural divide begins with its fluid status as both sport and spiritual exercise.

For Americans unaffiliated with a faith tradition, Champ said, yoga often becomes a spiritual activity. But in religious communities, it’s a little more awkward.

“This community is kind of steeped in Christian fundamentalism,” said J. Cole Thomas, one of Green Tree’s volunteer teachers. “You have to have an education about yoga. Otherwise people think it's some kind of devil-worship.”

A 2009 study in the Journal of Religion and Health found that 63 percent of African Americans and 50 percent of Hispanic Americans pray to improve their health. Only 17 and 12 percent, respectively, reported relying on an alternative spiritual practice like meditation or yoga to stay healthy, and almost everyone in that group also prays. In contrast, twice as many white Americans identify with alternative spiritual practices and don’t pray at all.

“It’s easier for someone who’s not committed to anything to do yoga,” Champ said. “Ethnicity is connected to spiritual practice. Culturally, African-Americans and other ethnic Americans have their own [spiritual culture]. To get buy-in from those communities is pretty heavy lifting.”

Michelle said many local church leaders are friendly to their studio. Pastors have taken classes and asked to learn more about yoga, most regular students are members of local congregations, and Green Tree closes on Sundays. Some churches nationwide offer yoga in-house.

“I go to church, of course,” said Kris Williams, who practiced yoga in Santa Monica for three years before switching to Green Tree in 2013. “But yoga is my medication. I feel good—soul, mind, and spirit in clarity.”

An average one-hour class in Los Angeles costs $17. A mat costs around $20; lululemon yoga pants, $82. 

Like Williams, more and more people have begun practicing yoga for physical health. The studio franchise Bikram has capitalized on the fad, to the point of patenting poses that “maintain optimum health and maximum function,” the company claims. In this part of L.A., though, access to any form of exercise is critical. 35 percent of adults and 30 percent of children are obese, compared to 22 and 23 percent, respectively, in L.A. County.

But often, yoga is a privilege of the upper class. An average one-hour yoga class in Los Angeles costs $17. Most require students to bring their own equipment. A mat costs around $20; lululemon yoga pants, $82.

Links between race and poverty are well documented, but according to Rollan, the blogger, the problem isn’t that people of color can’t afford yoga. They just don’t value it very much.

“When people talk about money as a deterrent, I’m like, yes and no,” Rollan said. “People find money to buy thousand-dollar bags and shoes, and weaves, those cost hundreds of dollars to upkeep. But African Americans don’t have a great track record when it comes to preventative health. Wellness is not really valued.”

And all those white women on billboards and in advertisements don’t encourage that attitude to change. “That upscale white woman is the image of yoga,” Rollan said. “I think a lot of us see yoga as something that’s not for us, because of the lack of imagery [of people of color in yoga]. It is changing, but the image of a white, affluent, thin person is still very entrenched.”

“We're bridging a gap of people of color being certified teachers,” said Michelle. She hopes to offer the program annually, in part because the fees from 20 students would cover Green Tree’s rent for the year, but also to provide a fresh supply of teachers for L.A. studios. Rollan believes more teachers of color will help change that. Green Tree has six active teachers—two white, three black, and one Hispanic. The studio is offering its first teacher-training program this fall. Ordinarily, the 200-hour program required for certification costs about $3,000—much more prohibitive than the price of classes. Relying on volunteer leaders, Michelle will offer the program to Green Tree students for $500 and to outside students for $1,500.

“The black community has worked really hard to create empowerment and support each other, and the game is ultimately integration, not separation,” Michelle said. “There’s something really cool about seeing all these beautiful women, different sizes, different ages—what is it except for unifying?”

Original Source

hodad

#whoops

Original Source

Ben Krasnow demonstrates how to do mathematical integration without calculus:

I show how to convert an area measurement problem into a mass measurement problem that is easier to solve. In general, this idea of converting measurement problems into different spaces is very powerful, and may prove useful in the future.

Read more.

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Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!

Google Street View Camera’s take accidental selfies during a google art project and ended up with accidental selfies that collected by Spanish Artist Mario Santamaria. by Michael Silverberg via Quartz

Google’s Art Project was launched three years ago as a sort of Street View for museums and art galleries. Using panoramic cameras mounted on trolleys, Google captures the artwork and gilded halls of 250 institutions around the world—all the while trying to stay out of sight.
1
The curtain slips a bit in the Camera in the Mirror, a new Tumblr project by the Spanish artist Mario Santamaría that collects accidental self-portraits of Google’s hulking cameras while they go about their work. It turns out that museums have a lot of mirrors, and the cameras often photograph themselves in front of them.
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Sometimes swaddled in silvery capes or attended to by ghostly minders, the android-like devices call to mind the Victorian mothers who would hide underneath blankets to keep their toddlers from squirming during portraits. Collected together, the Google-camera selfies are at turns unsettling, revealing, and absurd—unintentionally upstaging the art they’re meant to quietly document.

Read more

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Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!

Spark.io Raises $4.9 Million to Help Engineers Make Their Devices Smart – Venture Capital Dispatch – WSJ.

Lion Wells Capital and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures led the Series A investment in Spark.io, joined by Collaborative Fund and SOSventures.

According to Spark.io founder and Chief Executive Zach Supalla, the startup earlier raised $700,000 in seed funding from HAXLR8R, SOS Ventures and a group of individual angel investors. The new funding brings its total capital raised to $4.9 million.

We believe this now makes Spark.io the latest venture backed open-source hardware company.

“If It Prints, It Ships: 3D Printing and the Postal Service” via 3Dprint.com

The Postal Service could benefit tremendously by the rise of 3D printing. This is primarily due to two factors: the Postal Service’s ubiquitous first- and last-mile delivery network and its strength in handling lightweight goods. The Office of Inspector General asked Christensen Associates — a renowned economic consulting firm with extensive knowledge of Postal Service operations — to assess how 3D printing could affect the Postal Service. By analyzing commercial package data, Christensen Associates estimated that 3D printing could raise the Postal Service’s annual package revenue by $485 million as businesses ship increasing numbers of 3D printed goods to consumers.

Read more (PDF).

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How Makers, Hackers, and Entrepreneurs Can Save the U.S. Postal Service (2012)… includes 3D printing.

thesavedspirit:

Goats! Weed abatement goats! we saw them!

starkexpos:

buzzfeed:

itriedthatonceitwasabadmove:

austinabridged:

itriedthatonceitwasabadmove:

As a professional internet, it’s my job to search the web for quality, intellectually stimulating content. Like this.

The heavens parted, and delivered unto us a scion of hope, a glimmer of immortality. This song.

Its been a few hours since I posted this and I’m pretty sure I’ve gone back to listen to it about twelve times now and each time it still makes me almost develop a hernia from laughing so much.

i’ve never loved something the way i love this post

officialpuppy:

hey there fellow students can I copy your homework i ate mine

When the world’s biggest smartphone maker posts ugly financial results, you can be sure that the whole industry is feeling some pain. Samsung Electronics said today that its second-quarter earnings would fall $1.4 billion short of analysts’ expectations, citing low demand for its devices in an increasingly saturated global market, and increasing cannibalization of tablet sales by ever-larger “phablet” phones.

Samsung expects to post Q2 profits of $7.1 billion, down 24.5% from the same period last year. The company is in the unenviable position of suffering from cutthroat competition—Apple at the high end, Xiaomi and Huawei at the low end—and from an industry-wide slowdown that is hurting its wholesale display unit. Quarterly profits at the display unit, which supplies Apple and many other major manufacturers, are expected to fall 76%.

In a break from the norm, Samsung tried to explain its disappointing forecast. Looking closely at its statement, there is bad news for just about every smartphone and tablet maker:

Weak smartphone demand in China…

The world’s biggest smartphone market is increasingly crowded, which is pushing down prices. Meanswhile, consumers are waiting for an expected 4G rollout to buy new phones. That spells trouble for Xiaomi, Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE, Coolpad, and the other Chinese manufacturers, along with Apple, which just signed a major distribution deal with telecom carrier China Mobile.

…And also in Europe

As in China, the European smartphone market is slowing down, even as more competitors enter into the market. Samsung, which has a 40% market share in Europe, said weaker demand there led to increased inventory.

Phablet are eating into tablet sales

As a manufacturer of device screens, Samsung has an unusually good vantage point to observe industry trends related to phone and tablet sizes. The verdict: slower replacement cycles and consumers shifting to 5-to-6 inch “phablet” devices are sluggish tablet tablets.That has important implications for Apple, which is reportedly set to launch a larger version of the iPhone that could cannibalize sales of the iPad, which still make up 16.7% of the company’s total revenue.

Spending money to flog commoditized products

Samsung is one of the world’s biggest advertisers—but that was not necessarily a good thing, at least in the second quarter. The company was forced to boost marketing expenditure to reduce “existing inventories in sales channels.” Translation: The company had a glut of devices that weren’t selling, and it had to take a bath on promotions to unload them—like Verizon Wireless’ “Buy one Galaxy S5 and get one free” deal. The lesson for companies like Huawei and Lenovo, which have aspirations to become global brands beyond China, is that a big ad budget doesn’t automatically translate into success if your products don’t stand out from the crowd.

But on the bright side…

At least in some quarters, demand for Samsung smartphones is still high. A band of about 20 thieves held hundreds of employees hostage at a Samsung factory in Campinas, Brazil yesterday as they stole about 40,000 tablets, mobile phones, and laptops worth an estimated $36 million. No one was hurt in the robbery.

Fox News

California sheriff's deputy who fatally shot teen won't face charges Fox News File - This Nov. 4, 2013 file photo shows Rodrigo Lopez, left, and Sujay Cruz, parents of Andy Lopez, as they walk to a news conference in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, file). SANTA ROSA, Calif. – The parents of a 13-year-old boy say they felt they had ... Lopez shooting report includes images just after deputy firedSanta Rosa Press Democrat California cop spared charges in mistaken killing of boy with toy gunChicago Tribune Protestors march following DA's decision on Andy Lopez caseKTVU San Francisco KENS 5 TV -Newsbug.info all 240 news articles »

themarchrabbit:

onsheka:

thepioden:

gessorly:

tyrror:

ruingaraf:

themarchrabbit:

Seriously, it kills me when I see people hold scientists up as pinnacles of logic and reason.

Because one time the professor I was interning for got punched in the face by another professor, because mine got the funding, and told the other professor his theory was stupid.

This same professor told me to throw rocks to scare the “stupid fucking crabs” into moving so we could count them properly.

SCIENCE

thank you

this is one of the best comments this post has recieved

I have witnessed:

Two professors hiding around a corner and snickering, “Shhh, here she comes!” While a female professor approached and, when she finally found them, she proceeded to scream while pointing from one to the other, “You! I called your office but you weren’t there! So I tried to call YOUR office to figure out where HE was but YOU weren’t there!”

Two grad students standing outside a closed and locked door yelling, “Come out of the damn office. You haven’t left for days. If you didn’t have a couch in there I’d be concerned as to where you were sleeping!”

A religious studies professor apologizing for being late to class because, “security stopped me because I’m dressed like a hobbit”

Watched a professor snort the results of my experiment to determine if I had the right final compound.

Two archeology professors toss priceless fossilized teeth back and forth in an attempt to figure out who is smarter by “guessing the type of tooth and species of animal before it lands”

Multiple fully degreed individuals throw dry ice at one another in an attempt to be first to use the lab/get that piece of equipment/or change the iPod song.

A genetics professor build furniture out of stacks of paper and planks of wood because she is that far behind in grading papers/responding. One of the impromptu furniture pieces housed a fish tank.

I could go on but I think that covers the larger portion of the insanity…

Every time it comes around on my dash, it gets better.

- I have had a professor buy a huge fuckoff bottle of rum during fieldwork in Costa Rica and let the undergrads get wasted because “you’re not underage in Costa Rica and we’ll be up all night with the bats anyway!”

- Same professor hung a bat from her headlamp and wore it as a decoration for an entire night. 

- A whole swarm of older women - and these are women with PhDs and world-renown bat experts, the bigwigs - all, to a woman, go to the formal charity dinner at an international research symposium in Toronto in late October dressed in skimpy Batgirl costumes. Because Halloween was that weekend, you see.

- At a different conference, a professor get blackout drunk and pass out on the side of the road. 

- “Yeah, we have to say we did it properly for the grant but to be really honest, Miracle-gro works better.”

- Teaching lab: we had liquid nitrogen for a demo, and after class the professor, the other TA, and I spent a good two hours freezing and breaking things in it. 

a chemistry class begins with 30 students nine months later just six of us left sitting on tables dipping paper into contaminated chemicals to see what happens when we burn it teacher making idle suggestions while he marks our work

"go to the fume hood thing, yeah now put some potassium in chlorine" can i burn the results sir? "fuck it sure whatever its tainted anyway"

The prof I’m working for just asked me if I knew how to pick a lock, and when I responded “yes” she replied, “see, this is why I hire the former delinquents instead of the suck-ups. You’re actually useful.”

I then let her into her office.

Here is Manchester United modeling their new kit.

New era, new shirt. This is how Louis van Gaal's #mufc will look in 2014/15. #MUFCkit pic.twitter.com/bNRchqw8Vt

— Manchester United (@ManUtd) July 7, 2014

Mmmm. American automobile manufacturing!

Welcome to the Republik. The new @ManUtd home kit. pic.twitter.com/teIxjt9jAI

— Nike UK (@NikeUK) July 7, 2014

USA! USA! USA!

Let's not forget the goalkeepers. Here's one of the kits they'll be wearing in 2014/15. What do you think, @D_DeGea? pic.twitter.com/SXanJ94du0

— Manchester United (@ManUtd) July 7, 2014

And most importantly: #MUFCkit

UNFORTUNATE HASHTAG MT @ManUtd You've seen the new shirt let us know what you think of it Tag your posts w/ #MUFCkit pic.twitter.com/a38yXaKaoU

— Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel) July 7, 2014

Before Spelunky became a household name on XBLA in July 2012, it arrived on PC in late 2008 in its original low-res state. Source code for the original game was made available one year later, and just now received a new mod called Spelunky SD...

SFGate

The Daily Docket: Crumbs Bake Shop Closes Wall Street Journal Crumbs Bake Shop Inc. notified employees Monday that it would be closing all of its stores at the end of the business day, a spokeswoman for the New York-based cupcake maker said. The Daily Bankruptcy Review article is available via The Wall Street ... Buyout FIrms Could Scoop Up Cupcake CrumbsTheStreet.com Crumbs closes as cupcake craze cools offWCTI12.com Crumbs Bake Shop Tanks, Signaling End of Cupcake EraEater NY Businessweek -New York Daily News -NBC Chicago (blog) all 163 news articles »

tamorapierce:

aliasofwestgate:

justira:

Reblogging not just because special effects are cool but because body doubles, stunt doubles, acting doubles, talent doubles — all the people whose faces we’re not supposed to see but whose bodies make movies and tv shows possible — these people need and deserve more recognition. We see their bodies onscreen, delight in the shape and motion of those bodies, but even as we pick apart everything else that goes on both on and behind the screen, I just don’t see the people who are those bodies getting the love and recognition they deserve.

We’re coming to love and recognize actors who work in full-body makeup/costumes, such as Andy Serkis, or actors whose entire performances, or large chunks thereof, are motion captured or digitized (lately sometimes also Andy Serkis!). But people like Leander Deeny play an enormous part in making characters such as Steve Rogers come to life, too. Body language is a huge part of a performance and of characterization. For characters/series with a lot of action, a stunt person can have a huge influence on how we read and interpret a character, such as the influence Heidi Moneymaker has had on the style and choreography of Black Widow’s signature fighting style. Talent doubles breathe believability and discipline-specific nuance into demanding storylines.

Actors are creative people themselves, and incredibly important in building the characters we see onscreen. But if we agree that they’re more than dancing monkeys who just do whatever the directors/writers say, then we have to agree that doubles are more than that, too. Doubles make creative decisions too, and often form strong, mutually supportive relationship with actors.

 

Image 1: “I would like to thank Kathryn Alexandre, the most generous actor I’ve ever worked opposite.”

Image 2: “Kathryn who’s playing my double who’s incredible.”

[ Orphan Black's Tatiana Maslany on her acting double, Kathryn Alexandre, two images from a set on themarysue, via lifeofkj ]

 

 

I’ve got a relationship that goes back many, many years with Dave. And I would hate for people to just see that image of me and Dave and go, “oh, there’s Dan Radcliffe with a person in a wheelchair.” Because I would never even for a moment want them to assume that Dave was anything except for an incredibly important person in my life.

[ Daniel Radcliffe talking about David Holmes, his stunt double for 2001-2009, who was paralysed while working on the Harry Potter films. David Holmes relates his story here. Gifset via smeagoled ]

With modern tv- and film-making techniques, many characters are composite creations. The characters we see onscreen or onstage have always been team efforts, with writers, directors, makeup artists, costume designers, special effects artists, production designers, and many other people all contributing to how a character is ultimately realized in front of us. Many different techniques go into something like the creation of Skinny Steve — he’s no more all Leander Deeny than he is all Chris Evans.

But as fandom dissects the anatomy of scenes in ever-increasing detail to get at microexpressions and the minutiae of body language, let’s recognize the anatomy in the scenes, too. I don’t mean to take away from the work Chris Evans or any other actors do (he is an amazing Steve Rogers and I love him tons), but fandom needs to do better in recognizing the bodies, the other people, who make up the characters we love and some of our very favourite shots of them. Chris Evans has an amazing body, but so does Leander Deeny — that body is beautiful; that body mimicked Chris Evans’s motions with amazing, skilled precision; that body moved Steve Rogers with emotion and grace and character.

Fandom should do better than productions and creators who fail to be transparent about the doubles in their productions. On the screen, suspension of disbelief is key and the goal is to make all the effort that went into the production vanish and leave only the product itself behind. But when the film is over and the episode ends, let’s remember everyone who helped make that happen.

[ Sam Hargrave (stunt double for Chris Evans) and James Young (stunt double for Sebastian Stan, and fight choreographer), seen from behind, exchange a fistbump while in costume on the set of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Image via lifeofkj ]

I applaud these guys as much as the suit actors in my japanese tokusatsu shows. They do just as much work. 

Hat’s off to them, and my thanks for all they do.

Beyond being horrifying, these would take up a lot of room in your purse. Forget putting them in your pocket.

Read more...

cateringisalie:

acid-anarchism:

siphersaysstuff:

hardmiracle:

john cage’s 4’33” is fucking silence

someone put a copyright on the absence of sound

and then disabled the audio of a video

of the absence of sound

what a time to be alive

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA VERY CAPITALISM

#somehow this makes the art even artier#amazing#the statement of silence would be amplified#by silencing it further?

vastderp:

A C C U R A T E

postcardsfromspace:

bigredrobot:

I’m making posters to sell at cons and now I’m wondering what I’m gonna do with all this money I’m gonna be making.

I really hope you’re serious, because I will buy the hell outta some of those.