firehose

affinitiesrnl:

The films of Rian Johnson

A Night at the Opera

From William Morris: Ornamentation and Illustrations from The Kelmscott Chaucer: with an introduction by Fridolf Johnson, Dover Publications, 1973

realized writes: "A man with almost no hair on his body has grown a full head of it after a novel treatment by doctors at Yale University. The patient had previously been diagnosed with both alopecia universalis, a disease that results in loss of all body hair, and plaque psoriasis, a condition characterized by scaly red areas of skin. The only hair on his body was within the psoriasis plaques on his head. He was referred to Yale Dermatology for treatment of the psoriasis. The alopecia universalis had never been treated. After two months on tofacitinib [an FDA-approved arthritis drug] at 10 mg daily, the patient's psoriasis showed some improvement, and the man had grown scalp and facial hair — the first hair he'd grown there in seven years. After three more months of therapy at 15 mg daily, the patient had completely regrown scalp hair and also had clearly visible eyebrows, eyelashes, and facial hair, as well as armpit and other hair, the doctors said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Beautiful type ornaments from A Showing of Cleland Ornaments & Borders from the American Type Founders Company. T.M. Cleland began working with the company in 1917 and designed all of their ornaments and borders, resulting in the popularization of French Renaissance graphics in the first half of the 20th century.

Newberry call number: Wing folio Z250.3 .A64 1920

By Tom Bramwell Published Thursday, 19 June 2014

Are you sexist? I am.

This is a realisation that has slowly dawned on me over the last few years. Without really meaning to do so, I have been going around saying and doing things that demean women and casually downplay the importance of issues of gender discrimination all my life. It's a horrible thing to recognise about yourself, gradually or not. I try to be a generous and caring person and I am pretty sensitive, so the idea that I have been ignorantly treating half of the people I know and love in this way makes me feel awful.

Given the subject at hand, the irony of pointing out how this makes me feel is something I am aware of, so I won't dwell on it too much, except to say that understanding you are sexist is actually really quite difficult just on a practical level. When I look around, I see the same things I've been doing and saying without thinking about them reflected back at me from every angle, and the fact casual sexism is so prevalent is an amazingly effective masking agent for the concept itself, especially among men. (I'm talking to men, of course. I know that our female readers - by virtue of being women - do not need me to point out that the average male is sexist.)

I don't know exactly when I realised I was sexist, but I can show you how I notice historical examples of it. Yesterday, for example, I saw some friends talking about the "Dastardly" achievement in Red Dead Redemption. Do you remember this one? XboxAchievements.com, which I assume scrapes data from Xbox Live and is therefore probably reporting the developer's original wording, describes it thus: "Place a hogtied woman on the train tracks, and witness her death by train." So the objective is to locate a woman who cannot defend herself against you, tie her up and then kill her by placing her in the path of a train. You cannot gain the achievement by performing this act on a man. I am not a student of Westerns so I cannot comment on its original context (and I bet a proportion of the game's player base that it would be statistically acceptable to round up to 100% are in the same situation), so it's just a contextless act of violence against women that gamifies something that we dimly remember as being associated with a film genre.

I remember that achievement. I remember doing it in the game. This would have been in 2010. The only reaction I remember having to it is thinking it was clever and inventive, drawing on a famous Western trope. I don't remember having any conscious thought that it was troubling. If I did, I obviously suppressed it.

The things I probably find most haunting about my sexism though are the sexist things I've written and published. Unlike a lot of my friends and peers, I didn't start in print, where copy can vanish forever quite easily, and I have only worked for Eurogamer, which maintains a pretty complete live archive of content. I'm 30 now and I've worked here since I was 16. So if you go through stuff I've written in that period, you can uncover some things I find shameful and embarrassing, and occasionally they float into my field of vision again. Here's a line from my Grand Theft Auto 4 review, published in 2008, in a paragraph about attention to detail: "Women you date will notice if you dress poorly. They also nag."

Can someone please submit that to @everydaysexism?

The fact that things like the Red Dead achievement passed unacknowledged as recently as 2010 (apologies if you were shouting about it at the time and I didn't listen - I am sexist, as previously discussed) is a bit disturbing, but it and that snippet of my writing are examples of things that just aren't on a sexist's radar. These days, now I am conscious of my sexist instincts, I see them all the time and I want to discuss them.

And this leads me on to the crux of the issue: it's really hard to talk about sexism (in games or otherwise) when a large proportion of your audience hasn't realised it is sexist, whether subtly or profoundly. The discussion my friends were having yesterday was unique in that it was being conducted between people who all generally recognise and act against sexism when they encounter it, so while it was recognisably conducted from behind the thousand-yard stares of sadness I see quite a lot during these conversations, it wasn't heated or intense. Someone pointed out Dastardly was based on a film trope but felt a bit off. Someone suggested thinking about how you'd feel if a game asked you to re-enact something from Schindler's List. Someone wondered aloud whether developers should gamify history. I wondered (though did not jump in - I wrote this piece instead) about the wider issue of creative responsibility, often mentioned around things like the infamous "No Russian" level in Modern Warfare 2.

But if I had written something on Eurogamer about realising that the Dastardly achievement was troubling, and then tried to explore that, a silent majority might have found some merit in what I was saying, but I know what the comments would have looked like. 1) This isn't as important as something else. 2) Bloody white knight - you're just trying to impress women. 3) It's historically accurate. 4) Stop attacking the developer's creative vision. 5) Stop trying to censor people. 6) This is political correctness gone mad - what's next? Forcing X to do Y? 7) Bloody social justice warrior.

The thing about those comments - this isn't a straw man argument, by the way; go read the comments on my article about gender representation in Assassin's Creed Unity - is that I don't think they come from a place of actual misogyny. I think they are just a byproduct of the kind of casual ignorance I have personally embodied for pretty much all of my sexist life. And when you have an entrenched attitude that you may not fully recognise and you are confronted by arguments that go to the core of that attitude, it's easy to get upset, because it feels like a personal attack. Your natural response is to try to change the subject, attack the speaker or frame the argument differently, rather than engaging with the thing you can't comprehend at the heart of the original point.

By the way, one reason I think I have a handle on the mindset behind these comments is that I'm pretty sure I used to write these comments as well. After all, I am sexist.

It's also worth remembering that the gaming community is an emotionally charged one - we're defensive because we're used to being vilified by mainstream media, we're loyal to games, characters and developers who have brought us so much pleasure and we, like all humans, fear what we do not immediately understand. I feel as though these aspects of the person who self-identifies as a gamer, as I do, probably act as an accelerant for the deep-seated, unresolved negative attitudes to women that are part of our social heritage, and to say this all plays a part in the tone and intensity of the negative reaction to people who write the sorts of things I'm writing today is an understatement.

Speaking of which, why am I writing any of this? I don't just mean because it is only tangentially to do with gaming. We are a gaming community, and the concept of community is built on a foundation of social interaction, so the discussion of social issues should be indivisible from gaming community, even though it doesn't always feel as though it is.

Well, I'm writing this for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it's because among the many comments that didn't make me feel so good when I wrote about this subject last week, there were a few that did. I also received a few emails from readers who agreed and wanted to tell me so, and a few people tweeted their support. So I am writing this because I hope that if I stand up and admit that I am sexist, have always been sexist and will probably always have to rebel against this bit of programming in my head whenever it is triggered, one or two people will realise that they can relate to what I'm saying, and that will give them a bit of courage to try to do something about it as well.

Secondly, I'm writing because I think attitudes are gradually changing and I want to acknowledge that and offer it as encouragement to anyone who wants or needs some encouragement. Clearly my own attitude has changed. That line in the GTA 4 review would be unthinkable to me now. I wouldn't let the Dastardly achievement pass without comment now if I was aware of it. And as Elisa Melendez wrote on Polygon during E3, there are signs that issues of representation are being slowly addressed in games more broadly, which is good.

Something I always try to keep in mind - usually when I read tweets like this one from Rust developer Garry Newman or negative comments on good work by GamesIndustry.biz or come across a response to one of Anita Sarkeesian's superb videos - is a thing Martin Amis writes about racism in his book Experience. He says that he is a little bit racist, but he realises he is slightly less racist than his father, who was slightly less racist than his father, and he observes that this is progress. It is gradual, as it is with issues of gender representation in games and the growing acknowledgement of sexism in society at large, but we can be encouraged by it even though there is more to do.

Martin Amis's book is also the reason I keep saying I am sexist and not that I was sexist. I will have to keep fighting this thing about myself. I will make mistakes along the way - my id will take over and I'll say the wrong thing from time to time. This is an article about acceptance, not a self-awarded pardon. But while I feel sad about that, and embarrassed or ashamed when I recall examples of it in things I have said or done in the past, I don't want those emotions to prevent me doing the right thing now, which is something I think has probably been the case in recent years as I've come to terms with my own sexism. So I am writing to make that clear.

I want people who share these views, whether they actively promote them or not, to know that as Editor-in-Chief of Eurogamer, I will now try to get this right in everything we do. I want this to be a good place, a safe place. And I want to ask for your patience and support while I work towards that. Thank you.

Original Source

So Mars is under attack from Reiner Knizia, right, and Team SU&SD are the only ones who can stop him. We also welcome back Susie Pumfsk, and Brendan is an alien!

Look, don't ask questions. Basically we had too much sugar and when we regained our senses we'd filmed this extra-special episode, featuring reviews of Infamy, Time'n'Space AND Rex: Final Days of an Empire, with time to spare for a re-review of Netrunner (original review here).

Huge thanks to Rachel Leipacher for her vocal stylings and to Team Covenant for their sexy Netrunner footage. And everybody, beware of Knizia. Even if some of his games are suspiciously good, he's still out there. Watching. Waiting. Mathsing.

Thanks so much, everybody!

(Donor note! This is the second of our super-videos, promised in the stretch goals of our first donation season. Did you miss the first, our Megagame Special? Definitely don't miss that! That would be awful. Speaking of which, you'll find our first Sci-Fi Special here. -- Team SU&SD)

Read More

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Love the dress, girl. “Orphan Black” actress Tatiana Maslany attends the 2014 Critics’ Choice TV Awards held at The Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California in a Cushnie et Ochs sleeveless wool crepe dress paired with a L. K. Bennett clutch and red pumps. Cushnie et Ochs Pre-Fall 2014 Collection It’s chic and simple …

Robert McCullough is president of the Eastmoreland Neighborhood Association. He purchased a 2.6-pound flying camera (and christened it “Flying Monkey 1”) several weeks ago, with the intent of capturing video of activity at the Brooklyn rail yard and neighborhood development projects.

He has no intention to spy on residents, he said.

(via SE Portland drone debate: Everything you need to know about spying on your neighbors (Q&A) | OregonLive.com)

After finding an owl in his house, Colton Wright spent 40 minutes freaking out about it as much as the owl as they both tried to resolve the situation. Finally, Colton got the owl to perch on a Swiffer, culminating in this hilarious but stressful showdown…

(NSFW language)

(via Tastefully Offensive)

Redditor Groke used Google Earth to show that sailing north from Norway, it’s possible to sail all the way around the world to Antarctica without ever touching land…

The feat is just barely possible, as the oceanic route brushes past several islands along the way. There’s also the pesky polar ice cap to deal with, so we’ll have to wait for global warming to take its toll before actually attempting to sail this stretch.

The route begins near the westernmost point of Norway…

It proceeds through the Greenland Sea between Greenland to the west and Norway’s Svalbard Islands to the east…

After crossing the polar ice cap, the course then passes through the Bering Strait, just missing Alaska’s Seward Peninsula to the east and then skirting west of Alaska’s St. Lawrence Island…

As the course passes through Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, it runs barely east of Kagamil Island and then Chuginadak Island…

The closest call on this course’s entire route is in Samoa, where it passes between two tiny Samoan islands, east of the island of Apolima and west of the island of Manono…

From Samoa, it’s smooth sailing to Antarctica. Here’s the full route once again for reference…

It’s a big day for chess nerds! World Champion Magnus Carlsen just took the Chess Triple Crown by holding the World Blitz, Rapid, and Classic titles consecutively. I’ve seen some reports that Carlsen is the first player in history to ever pull this off, but he’s not. Susan Polgar did it back in 1996.

The photo above was taken from Carlsen’s Facebook page along with the caption:

After many tough games and hard work, I am honoured to hold the classic, rapid and blitz World Championship titles. Thank you for another memorable time in Dubai and congratulations to all the other players. #WRB2014

It appears to have been taken and posted shortly after Carlsen won the Blitz title earlier today. He won the Rapid title earlier this month, and of course took the World Championship from Viswanathan Anand last year. Carlsen did previously hold the Blitz title back in 2009, but this is the first time he’s held all three together.

There are some distinctions to be made here between Carlsen’s newly minted Triple Crown and Polgar’s. First, Polgar won FIDE’s Women’s World Blitz, Rapid, and Classic titles while Carlsen won the Men’s. Also, Carlsen won all three titles in one 12-month period, while Polgar held her titles concurrently, but won them in different years.

According to ESPN Radio’s Matt Markus the term “Triple Crown” originated in England in the mid-19th century, and not only would a horse have to win all three races in the Triple Crown series, they have to be won in the same year. That’s because to run the races at all the horses have to be three years old for some kind of horse reason.

Polgar’s not winning the three titles in the same year is no reflection of her talent as a player. FIDE simply didn’t host annual Women’s Blitz, Rapid, and Classical tournaments at the time, meaning the opportunity to win all three titles in the same year just didn’t exist. Polgar won the Blitz and Rapid titles in 1992 and did not have to defend them until after she won the Classic title in her second attempt in 1996. That’s when she became the first chess player in the world to hold all three world titles consecutively, fairly making her the first player to hold a chess Triple Crown.

Although it certainly seems that Polgar is happy for Carlsen and his victory. In an email she told me, “Magnus got all 3 within 12 months. That’s impressive! It was not easy but he was clutch and deserved it.”

She also publicly congratulated him on Twitter:

Congratulations to Chess King @magnuscarlsen for winning chess triple crown! Impressive! A historic day for chess @DubaiWRB2014 @chessdom

— Susan Polgar (@SusanPolgar) June 20, 2014

Of course it’s a major accomplishment for Carlsen, and it’s 100% worth celebrating — let’s just not ignore that his isn’t the only Chess Triple Crown out there.

(via Susan Polgar, Magnus Carlsen, Wikipedia, image via Magnus Carlsen)

Previously in

• Carlsen will defend his world title and Triple Crown in Sochi against Anand this year
• In 1859 people thought chess would rot your child’s brain
• I lost to seven-year-old Carlsen

Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, & Google +?

extramadness:

More quotes HERE

memeguy-com:

Wait for it

When Sailor Moon Crystal debuts in Japan next month, it will bring the preeminent magical girl (also known as mahou-shojo in Japanese) anime back to TV for the first time since 1997. But Sailor Moon isn't the only anime superheroine deserving of a comeback — here are seven more magical girls we'd like to see back on the air.

Read more...

College is incredibly expensive, but the quality of undergraduate classroom experiences has gone downhill. That's because universities aren't spending any money to hire professors. Now, a group of Canadian professors have become overnight legends for pulling a prank that called attention to this sorry situation.

Read more...

image via Wikipedia

According to Deadline Hollywood, Lucasfilm is in the process of making a deal with Rian Johnson to write and direct Star Wars Episode VIII and IX. Johnson is best known for directing the 2012 sci-fi action thriller film Looper, the 2005 noir film Brick, and three episodes of the AMC’s hit television series Breaking Bad (“Fly“, “Fifty-One“, and “Ozymandias“).

Johnson will take over the core film franchise, and he’ll get started quickly and this will be his preoccupation for quite awhile. Technically, he’ll write that second treatment but the intention on both sides is that he direct the two installments. Joining him as producer will be Ram Bergman. (read more)

photo by Gage Skidmore

@garywhitta You sneaky mofo.

— Rian Johnson (@rianjohnson) May 22, 2014

@Aaron_Morgan @garywhitta pic.twitter.com/d9iWbNZXqo

— Rian Johnson (@rianjohnson) May 23, 2014

via Deadline Hollywood

Videogrep is a python script that searches through dialog in videos and then cuts together a new video based on what it finds. Basically, it’s a command-line “supercut” generator. The code is here on github.

submitted by baconbananapancakes [link] [10 comments]

Kevin at Techzei posted this useful tutorial for building Raspberry Pi radio transmitter.

Learn how to build a FM Radio Transmitter using a Raspberry Pi. This little hack doesn’t need anything much other than the Raspberry Pi and a Jumper cable. It allows you to transmit any audio content through the Raspberry Pi. Building this Raspberry Pi Radio Transmitter wouldn’t take more than 15-20 minutes to set up and start transmitting.

Hardware Required

• Raspberry Pi.
• SD Card.
• Jumper Cable
• Mobile Phone or FM Radio

Wiring

Connect a jumper cable to header 7 of the Raspberry Pi, the jumper cable acts as the transmitter for Radio.

See the full tutorial here.

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

twolittlebluebirdsx:

meladoodle:

nothing pisses me off more than the fact that 90% of women’s jeans have non-functioning pockets but baby clothes have proper pockets? what are babies carrying around that i’m not? baby wallets? fuck off

I did an experiment 7 months ago and compared my then 6 month old’s jean pockets to mine. This was the result:

If this doesn’t prove how fucked up women’s fashion is I don’t know what will.

Julian Sarokin posted about his solar powered Raspberry Pi build on his blog. Very cool!

While messing around with a bunch of parts I purchased from Adafruit, I ended up building a solar powered Raspberry Pi.

The build is pretty simple once you get everything soldered on correctly.

I’ll be following up this tutorial with another post detailing the ‘why’ behind this project, the final product design, as well as some really cool software I’m building to demo what this device is capable of.

To get started building your own solar powered Pi, check out the materials list below. Once you’ve got that down, watch the video for a step-by-step tutorial on how to put it all together.

*Note: this is not a full tutorial – there are several installation steps involved that I do not cover, but you can find existing tutorials on how to acomplish this on learn.adafruit.com.

Build List (Hardware):

Raspberry Pi: https://www.adafruit.com/products/998

Pi TFT 2.5’ Touchscreen: https://www.adafruit.com/products/1601

PiBow PiTFT Acrylic Case: https://www.adafruit.com/products/1723

8 GB SD Card w/ Noobs: https://www.adafruit.com/products/1583

Mini Wifi USB (802.11b/g/n): https://www.adafruit.com/products/814

Mini Wireless Keyboard w/ Touchpad: https://www.adafruit.com/products/922

Solar Panel (6w, 2V): https://www.adafruit.com/products/200

DC / LiPoly Charger: https://www.adafruit.com/products/390

LiPoly Battery (3.7V, 2500mAH): https://www.adafruit.com/products/328

DC Power Adapter (2.1mm): https://www.adafruit.com/products/369

Powerboost 500 (5v USB @ 500mA): https://www.adafruit.com/products/1903

Read more.

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Featured Adafruit Products!

Medium 6V 2W Solar panel: These panels come to us from Voltaic Systems, makers of fine solar-powered bags and packs. These are waterproof, scratch resistant, and UV resistant. They use a high efficiency monocrystalline cell. They output 6V at 330 mA via 3.5mm x 1.3mm DC jack connector. The substrate is an aluminum / plastic composite, specifically designed to be strong and lightweight. They can easily stand up to typical outdoor use including being dropped and leaned on. They’re very high quality and suggested for projects that will be exposed to the outdoors. Read more.

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PowerBoost 500 Basic – 5V USB Boost @ 500mA from 1.8V+: PowerBoost is the perfect power supply for your portable project! This little DC/DC boost converter module can run from 1.8V batteries or higher, and convert that voltage to 5.2V DC for running your 5V projects. Like our popular 5V 1A USB wall adapter, we tweaked the output to be 5.2V instead of a straight-up 5.0V so that there’s a little bit of ‘headroom’ long cables, high draw, the addition of a diode on the output if you wish, etc. The 5.2V is safe for all 5V-powered electronics like Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or Beagle Bone while preventing icky brown-outs during high current draw because of USB cable resistance. Read more.

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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!

deducecanoe:

adulthoodisokay:

Don’t blink. Or you’ll die. 

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments