firehose

mediumaevum:

Tawdry means “cheap and gaudy in appearance.” Its story begins with a 7th-century queen Æthelthryth who renounced her royal life and became a saintly abbess.

Suffering from a fatal condition that included a swelling in her throat, the dying abbess attributed that symptom to God’s punishment for her onetime fondness for necklaces.

After her death, the abbess became Saint Audrey, and her shrine became a popular site for English pilgrims. At an annual fair in her honor, all sorts of cheap knickknacks and jewelry were sold, including a type of necklace called Saint Audrey’s lace.

By the 17th century, St. Audrey’s lace had become tawdry lace. Tawdry came to be applied to other cheap goods sold at these fairs – and from there to other tastelessly showy things.

image: Saint Etheldreda’s statue in Ely Cathedral

Tap to expand image

The only surprise is that it took this long. This week, the French entrepreneurs behind Reputation VIP, an online-reputation management service for “brands and VIPs,” launched Forget.me. It’s an online tool to help Europeans submit “right to be forgotten” requests to Google, in the wake of a European Court of Justice ruling (pdf) that people should be able to edit their search results to remove out-of-date or needlessly embarrassing links. The service is free for now and will remain so until the end of summer, says Bertrand Girin, a co-founder of both websites.

Girin, who is based in Lyon, says he and his co-founders had wanted to extend their services to ordinary folk for years, since “the problem of search engines is a problem for everybody. So when the European Court of Justice made its ruling, we saw that as an opportunity.” The ruling came on May 13. Google set up an online form for requesting removals on May 30. Less than a month later, Girin’s site, which uses Google’s form, is online. He says he has already had 50 forms submitted in the one day that it has been up.

Why not just submit the request directly to Google? Girin says Google’s form has shortcomings—it’s couched in legal and technical language that some people may have trouble understanding, and doesn’t always accept web addresses with non-standard characters such as Greek script or diacritics (accent marks). But these are things that Google could easily fix.

However, Forget.me also aims to make the process simpler overall. For instance, the company lists 30 case studies that offer its users canned responses to why they want a URL removed. “If someone can find a case study similar to his problem, then we can suggest a template or wording for this case and submit it to Google. And the text is written by lawyers,” says Girin. Moreover, Forget.me keeps a record of the submission in case it is needed to challenge a rejection from Google. If Google agrees, the service will also periodically check every European Google search to ensure that the link has been removed.

The service is free for the moment. Girin foresees it moving to a freemium model, where people can pay for selected extra features, by the end of the summer. He will decide which features to charge for after people have been using it for a bit. “We are certain there is a market for the right to be forgotten,” he says.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Etsy user aliciawatkins has these adorable cross stitch sets in her store- super nerdy and cute!

Instant collection of 5 microbe cross stitches, completed in 3″ natural wood embroidery hoops

Choose your 5 by noting which ones you’d like in the purchase order notes at checkout. Use the drop-down list to select the first one and to look through the list to decide on your other 4.

(Note: the drop-down list sometimes includes the same microbe twice, listed under its common name and its scientific name.)

Nab a set here! These remind us of our adorable Ohm Sweet Ohm Cross-Stitch Kits. If you want to try making your own cross stitch pick up one of ours here.

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

Lorrie Cranor designed some fabric with the most common passwords, out of which she also made this dress! You can read more about it and her password quilt on her site. via @JuliaAngwin

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

Gotta love the blog post about the making this Konami code necklace… spacer beads FTW!

Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!

Planetary Panoramas – 360 Degree Night-Sky Time-Lapse (video).

Here’s something rather special, which should resonate with those of you over a certain age.

Star Fox was a Nintendo game for the SNES, released back in 1993 with fast, 3D gameplay – the player travels at high speed along a bounded path, avoiding and shooting obstacles and enemies, while picking up power-ups. Those obstacles were filled 3D polygons, which was very unusual at the time (and hard to render).

At the start of the week, I was sent this video. It’s from a group of first-year undergraduates (first-year undergraduates!) at Imperial College in London, who wrote a version of Star Fox from scratch for the Pi, in 5900 lines of ARM assembly language. This is so good that when Lance saw it, his immediate reaction was that it must be a port. It’s not.

They’ve got everything you need in under 6000 lines: a rasteriser in software, 2d elements and 3d objects, DMA sound, a utility and maths library, and input from a NES controller.

You’ll find all the source code on GitHub – along with useful stuff like a pinout for the NES controller.

If Team PiFox are interested in taking things a little further (or if someone else fancies forking their repo), we’d encourage them in the direction of using the Pi’s GPU as a hardware rasteriser, which would allow for an HD remix. If you need pointers, it’s still early days for Eric Anholt’s full Mesa/Gallium graphics stack on the Pi, but he’s adding to it all the time and there’s already a lot of meat in there. The VideoCore IV graphics documentation that Broadcom released back in February makes it possible to use the GPU as a “dumb” 2d polygon rasteriser as in Scott Mansell’s example.

If you make the attempt, please let us know; we’d love to see what you come up with.

mistresssam:

I really like this. The idea of cute traditional femeninity juxtaposed with violence nad the willingness to defend. I feel some ways about this

Arizona-based World View has conducted a successful test of a scale model of its high-altitude balloon system. It ascended to a height of 120,000 feet (36 km) — a vantage point from where the darkness of space and the curvature of Earth can be seen.

Read more...

Map of Illinois Central Railroad (1892)

Rand McNally's map of the Illinois Central Railroad. From 1892. Map of Illinois Central R.R. Date: 1892 Author: Rand McNally Dwnld: Full Size (16.9mb) Print Availability: See our Prints Page for more details pff This map isn't part of any series, but we have other railroad maps that you might want to check out. Here's a map of the Illinois Central Railroad. I'm afraid that I'm not all that knowledgeable,...

the BIG Map Blog - Interesting maps, historical maps, BIG maps.

[teeroy]

Community fans ought to be used to this sort of thing by now. Hulu, one of the last remaining hopes for the canceled show, has reportedly ended its informal talks with Sony Pictures Television about a possible season six. The cult favorite has sidled its way out of tight spots before, somehow overcoming an indefinite mid-season hiatus, a previous cancellation, and the canning of creator and soul of the show, Dan Harmon. And although these precedents give fans some reason to continue hoping and tweeting their support, a doomsday clock is ticking down the days until June 30, when Community’s actors’ contracts come to an end. In these final hours, Hulu passing may be the death knell of all death knells—one that no amount of hopeful #sixseasonsandamovie tweets can overcome.

But is it free range? [x]

Things you're doing wrong every day: everything.

The Internet is really good at making you feel like a dumbass. Just hop on a forum, play a game or ask anyone anything and people will be lining up to tell you what a moron you are, with me usually at the front of that line.Lately there has been a flood of stupid "life hack" videos and "how-to" articles tailored for weak-minded losers. These condescending "hacks" aim to enlighten us about a "new" way of doing a common thing, like eating an apple or drying our hands. The problem is that these tips often don't work, don't save time and are wholely unnecessary. People are obsessed with these bullshit tips.Here are some of the worst:

One of the most obnoxious recent life hacks is the "scientific" way of cutting a birthday cake. The method was established by a 19th century mathematician named Francis Galton. Nevermind the fact that there's nothing "scientific" about this method, or any method of cutting a cake for that matter. You're not testing a theory, you're cutting a cake with a utensil. Galton's method involves cutting a cake's diameter so you can push the two sides together, then using a rubber band to keep it from drying out:

Putting your hands and rubber bands on the side of the cake is a great way to introduce bacteria onto your cake. Also, this only works with a certain type of cake with fondant icing or marzipan, which sucks dick full-time. Most cake these days come with whipped cream or buttercream frosting, which will get all over the place and make you look like an asshole when you grab it with your chubby knuckles. This method has been covered on NPR, Slate, Life Hacker, Daily Mail, Business Insider, The Independent, Good Housekeeping and the LA Times. How big of a problem is this that so much time and energy has been spilled on this issue? Is this a problem that really needs to be solved? You'd think people everywhere were working around the clock in labs to solve the problem of cake drying out with the amount of attention this stupid "life hack" has received. Here's an idea: get some friends so you don't have so much leftover cake, losers. Or just use saran wrap. Or a cake cover. Or get bent, nobody cares if you have a bite of cake that isn't perfectly moist.

© weibo.com

Francis Galton died in 1911, about 38 years before saran wrap became commercially available. Why are we looking to the "wisdom" of a man who died before the existence of an invention that rendered his stupid technique obsolete? Some of these tips aren't just useless, they're dangerous. The tip in the video above about cooling your stupid soda in the freezer can cause it to explode. The picture to the right is of a boy in China who grabbed a soda can from the freezer just as it was about to rupture. The added pressure of his hand caused the can to burst, sending shrapnel across his face, requiring him to get 38 stitches. Nice life hack, dipshits. You know what? I've changed my mind. Go ahead, do all these stupid life hacks. I hope every clever cake-cutting dipshit gets botulism. Enjoy telling people that you got a scar from shitty frozen soda exploding in your face for the rest of your lives. Facehack. Tweet

459,492 people hacked their way into an emergency room.

Back to how much I rule... • Store • Email • • Tweet

© 1997-2015 by Maddox

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humanoidhistory:

Astronomical illustrations from Anwār al-nujūm (The Lights of the Stars) by Jamist al-Rumi (Jamist the Byzantinian), 17th century. (World Digital Library)

next time I need an  AND I at least know where it is.

tentacletherapissed:

sagihairius:

tinychatter:

i love when people call me precious thats such a cute thing to call somebody

yeah it does have a nice

ring to it

hodad

@OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy @RussianSledges etc.

The Friends of the Somerville Public Library welcome you to a celebration of libraries and librarianship. June 25th, 7-pm. Please join us for a review of our past year and meet guest speaker Jessamyn West; blogger, rural library champion, freedom of information advocate (as we should all be), and author of librarian.net.

Expect Oxford commas. And cake...

Original Source

4gifs:

Unedited

knitmeapony:

ladylionhearted:

WHAT A COOL MYSTIQUE THOUGH!!!

#This is a hardcore copsplay because it would imply Mystique killed you and took your con pass

OnlyMrGodKnowsWhy

@NewdleSewp

Original Source