firehose

Just look at this picture. Look at this little boy and his little home-made library and the great big potential for learning and imagination it contains. Unfortunately, the world’s most adorable book collection has been shut down by the city of Leawood, Kansas for violating “illegal accessory building” laws. Pssst, bureucrats…SHHHHHH! YOU ARE IN A LIBRARY!

9 year old Spencer Collins set up the “Little Free Library” in his front yard so the community could share in his passion for reading. Spencer told KMBC that he was inspired to start the project because books make him feel like “I’m in a whole other world, and I like that. I like adventure stories because I’m in the adventure and it’s fun.” Get a load of some of the great titles he had available to the community in his collection:

Sadly, Spencer’s mom says that when the family returned from vacation recently “there was a letter from the city of Leawood saying that it [the little library that could] was in code violation and it needed to be down by the 19th or we would receive a citation.” The bookshelf, which operates on the awesome “Take A Book, Leave A Book” philosophy, was deemed an “accessory structure” by the city. Accessory structures are banned in Leawood unless they’re attached to a home (so forget about tree houses, I guess?).

Richard Coleman of The City of Leawood explained the Library’s shutdown to KMBC:

We empathize with them, but we still have to follow the rules [...] We need to treat everybody the same. So we can’t say if somebody files a complaint but we like the little libraries — we think they’re cute — so we ignore it. We can’t do that.

“Ignoring it” is, in fact, what surrounding communities have done in similar situations. Nearby Prairie Village reportedly does not enforce codes that would impact free libraries.

Thankfully, Spencer has some innovative ways to challenge the city: “I thought, why not get a rope and attach it to our house and the library?”

The 9-year-old also hopes to appeal to the better natures of the folks at City Hall: “I would tell them why it’s good for the community and why they should drop the law [...] I just want to talk to them about how good it is.”

A Facebook page has also been set up to “Help Spencer work with Leawood, Kansas to amend its city code to allow Little Free Libraries!”

Does anyone know LeVar Burton? Surely he could pull some strings.

(via Boing Boing, pictures via Facebook)

Previously in having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card

• Are you following Fake Library Stats on Twitter yet?
• Library invites teens to deface romance novels
• Whoever wrote this  job listing really knows their Hogwarts staff

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

Mark Williams shows you how to install and run Xstroke, a gesture recognition tool, on your Raspberry Pi! (via pipod).

If you are using a touchscreen with your Raspberry Pi, then this guide is for you.

Xstroke (Gesture recognition) is the perfect tool to help you get more out of your touhscreen. I am using a PiScreen

Gesture recognition allows you to draw “strokes” on your touchscreen, which get interpreted as commands or text. Xstroke allows these to be entered anywhere on the screen. In some cases, Xstroke can be used instead of a keyboard.

Read more.

seekingwillow:

fredisstairs:

roachpatrol:

archiemcphee:

Forget Google Glass, Android Wear, Smartwatches or contact lenses that give you night vision. Instead let’s talk about the awesomeness that is this 17th century Chinese abacus ring. It’s wearable tech from the Qing Dynasty, perhaps the world’s oldest smart ring.

Measuring a mere 1.2 centimeter-long by 0.7 centimeter-wide, the miniature abacus is a fully functional counting tool, but it’s so tiny that using it requires an equally dainty tool, such as a pin, to manipulate the beads, which are each less than one millimeter long.

"However, this is no problem for this abacus’s primary user—the ancient Chinese lady, for she only needs to pick one from her many hairpins."

[via Fashionably Geek and Gizmodo]

oh my god ancient chinese ladies knew where it was at

Ladies. Always and forever the leaders in technology.

___

As someone pointed out to me when I reblogged this a while back - it’s not ANCIENT Chinese ladies. This ain’t BCE/BC. This is OLD SCHOOL chinese ladies. We don’t call ‘The Three Musketeers’ ANCIENT. We don’t call Shakespeare ANCIENT. Henry IV, Anne Boylnn, Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth the First aren’t considered ANCIENT HISTORY.

Why is the 17th Century only ever ‘Ancient History’ when it involves slavery and non-white peoples?

Stephanie Kwolek, Kevlar Inventor, Dies at 90.

Stephanie Kwolek, a pioneering female chemist at DuPont who invented the exceedingly tough fibers widely used in Kevlar body armor, has died, colleagues said Friday.

Read more & Wikipedia article.

Matthew Hajda created this awesome tutorial for a Raspberry Pi controlled aquaponics shed. via instructables

Aquaponics /ˈækwəˈpɒnɨks /, is a food production system that combines conventional aquaculture (raising aquatic animals such as snails, fish, crayfish or prawns in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment. In normal aquaculture, excretions from the animals being raised can accumulate in the water, increasing toxicity. In an aquaponic system, water from an aquaculture system is fed to a hydroponic system where the by-products are broken down by nitrogen-fixing bacteria into nitrates and nitrites, which are utilized by the plants as nutrients. The water is then recirculated back to the aquaculture system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaponics

This build uses the IBC method of Aquaponics, with modifications to include a Raspberry Pi for controlling a pump, solenoid drain, and temperature probes for water and air temperatures. The relays and timing is controlled with python scripting. Temperature and control data is collected every minute and sent to plot.ly for graphing, and future expansion will include sensors for water level and PH values for additional control.

All of my scripts are available at github.com, feel free to use them for your aquaponics setup. Thanks to Chris @ plot.ly for the help with streaming data to their service, and to the amazingly detailed build instructions provided at IBCofAquaponics.com.

Full Tutorial

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!

they have a general record of being terrible to the trans community

not allies to the undocumented queer community

they’re supporters of the military-industrial complex and some of their top donors are drone manufacturers

they considered backing a plan to privatize social security if gay couples could get benefits

they hire hedge fund managers who donate to republicans and make their money by preying on developing countries, and they’re perfectly cool with 

and like. more broadly speaking, they’re a gay rights group that only cares about marriage, which is SO FAR from being the most important issue to the queer community!! they don’t want to talk about homelessness, about suicide, about unemployment, about assault, about mental illness, about how our queerness intersects with race or income or ability level - the things that are literally killing us. gay marriage is an issue that only concerns folks who are privileged enough to be in a place where they’re able to get married. gay marriage doesn’t help the queer kids on the street, doesn’t help trans folks, doesn’t help people like me. 

i’m not here for any group that only caters to rich white gays, and i’m not here for assimilationists, i’m not here for activists who don’t challenge oppressive power structures, and i’m sure as hell not here for anyone who says they’re fighting for my human rights and leaves out the most vulnerable people in my community

Wil’s on a roll today.

Dungeons & Dragons News

• Magic Items and Rewards in the D&D Adventurers League -- This week WotC takes a closer look at treasure and other rewards in the D&D Adventurers League.
• Neverwinter Celebrates

Funksaw writes: Steve Wozniak, co-found of Apple Computer, has come out to endorse Lawrence Lessig's MAYDAY PAC in an animated audio recording. Mayday.US, (formerly MayOne.US) is Lessig's crowd-funded (citizen-funded!), kick-started Super PAC to end all Super PACs. In the video, Wozniak points out that we're never going to get anywhere on issues important to the Internet community and technology advocates if we don't fix the root cause of corruption. The video can be found at the Mayday PAC's new landing page, "theInternetHasASuperPAC.com."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The comical Goat Simulator game is finally in beta for Linux and OS X gamers...

After the first installment made a world-beating $4.6 million and the second an even better $3 million, the producers of the Atlas Shrugged trilogy knew they needed to pull out all the stops to make the third installment, Atlas Shrugged: Who Is John Galt?, a stone-cold guarantee to once again make only 65 percent of the prior installment’s take at the box office. To do that, they’ve lured all-American superhero Ron Paul out of the acting retirement he probably would have been in had he pursued the box office superstardom we all know he had in him instead of pursuing politics. The Congressman, frequent presidential candidate, and passionate love of random drive-by Internet commenters will be joined in the film by Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Kris Polaha, who is probably wishing Life UneXpected had just run for seven seasons already, because he wanted an acting career ...

Both Temkin and Jonah started getting anonymous messages from users that generally fell into two categories: 1) People who appreciated Jonah's post and Temkin's apology, and 2) People who were outraged that a game that's supposed to be rude and offensive would change something just because people were offended. But Temkin says he and the other creators know there's a big difference between cards that make fun of public figures and ones that victimize people in marginalized groups. "We talk about the idea of 'punching up, not punching down' all the time," Temkin said. "It's something that we stand behind: making fun of those power structures, because they're already powerful. Making jokes about rapes, making jokes about trans people, they don't have the same cultural power." To that end, some of the newer cards have a decidedly social-justice-friendly edge: You can now play "heteronormativity," "the patriarchy" and "white privilege." Frankly, all of those would be good answers to "What is Batman’s guilty pleasure?"

Jim Dingilian has an amazing technique for creating art out of old bottles. He fills them with smoke…

…and then scrapes away the coating left inside the glass by the smoke. The resulting images look good simply as pictures, but then when you consider the process, they become genuinely remarkable.

Dingilian’s work is featured in Chicago’s Packer Schopf Gallery and New York’s McKenzie Fine Art. Here are some examples…

(via Twisted Sifter)

Reality can be so complex that equally valid observations from differing perspectives can appear to be contradictory.

Philani is a homeless man in his mid-twenties in Johannesburg, South Africa. Many people in his situation simply stand at corners begging. And that can sometimes meet basic needs…but it certainly doesn’t set a person apart or motivate people walking or driving by to donate.

But Philani does it differently. Every day he takes his ever-changing library to a different corner and sets up a sort of impromptu literary discussion group and bookshop.

For anyone interested, he will review his books…which he has read all of…and then you can buy one from him. In this way, he raises money for himself and his homeless friends as well as spreading happiness. He says…

Reading is not harmful. There’s no such thing as harmful knowledge. This thing is only going to make you a better person.

(via Reddit, SA People)

And if he has a kids book you’re interested in, it’s free, so that you can give it to a child. Because…

They can still take this reading thing and turn it into their habit, their life-long habit.

Phil Edwards of Trivia Happy has compiled screenshots of every website, chat room and video game featured in the 1995 Sandra Bullock cyber-thriller, The Net. The walk down fake website memory lane includes orders from “Pizza.net,” early online plane booking, various law enforcement sites and a game of pioneering first-person shooter, Wolfenstein 3D. Edwards also offers up some additional insight into Angela’s (Bullock) cyber-surfing life.

Though Angela uses the net extensively, she and her employer correspond through FedExed floppy disks.

images via Trivia Happy

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

Birdseye view of Boston Harbor (1920)

Federal Eng. and Pub.'s birdseye view of Boston Harbor in 1920. Birdseye view of Boston Harbor Date: 1920 Author: Federal Eng. and Pub. Dwnld: Full Size (10.7mb) Print Availability: See our Prints Page for more details pff This map isn't part of any series, but we have other maps of Boston Harbor that you might want to check out. A lively and fun map of Boston Harbor [gmap] done by the...

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

Obama moves to ensure sick leave for gay couples STLtoday.com WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration will work to ensure that gay and lesbian Americans are eligible to take leave from their jobs to care for a same-sex spouse, regardless of whether they live in a state that recognizes gay marriage, the White ... and more »

Lucas123 writes: Katherine, a 14-foot, 2,300lb. Great White Shark, has become so popular with visitors to a research site tracking her daily movements that the site's servers have crashed and remained down for hours. The shark, one of dozens tagged for research by the non-profit global shark tracking project OCEARCH, typically cruises very close to shore up and down the Eastern Seaboard. That has attracted a lot interest from the swimming public. Currently, however, she's heading from Florida's west coast toward Texas. OCEARCH tags sharks with four different technologies to create a three-dimensional image of a shark's activities. "On average, we're collecting 100 data points every second — 8.5 million data points per day."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Just as soon as these social gatherings were becoming the next big thing, game consoles adopted an innovation that would all but kill them: Internet play. Suddenly we were playing together alone.

Roast Beef has written a number of poems, both in the strip and on his blog. A recurrent theme involves concealed weapons disguised as foodstuffs, and these normally conclude with ‘OHHH SHIIIT!’. Poems not utilizing the theme of weapons concealed in food do not correlate with the above exclamation, indicating that Roast Beef has a distinct fear of food weaponry.

Link

It's a look and nothing more, but this banner from the Las Vegas Licensing Expo sure looks like the first promo for a brand-new cartoon titled Batman Unlimited. Since Cartoon Network unceremoniously dumped Beware the Batman , the Dark Knight has needed a new series — but is this it?

Read more...

23 extremely talented New York City low brass musicians recently teamed up and performed a powerful cover of the Game of Thrones theme song. The song, which was recorded by BoveAudio, is available to purchase from the CD Baby Music Store.

Two weeks ago, with the current Game of Thrones season coming to a close and the deadline approaching to release this track, they realized there was actually a 90 min time slot on a random Tuesday afternoon when 6 contrabass trombone players were all going to be free at once. It was time to do it. Once you get six Contra players in one place, you either run away fast — or join in. Seventeen other top orchestral and commercial NYC low brass players joined them, bringing the ensemble to 23 players (11 Bass Trombones, 6 Contrabass Trombones, 6 Tenor Trombones, 6 Tubas, and 3 Cimbassos), and this is the result.

via io9

Crescent Venus and crescent Moon… (Image: NASA, Iván Éder) pic.twitter.com/1htBFFn5an

— The QI Elves (@qikipedia) June 19, 2014

http://store.steampowered.com/app/7760/
what great timing!

why not pick up Terror From the Deep while you’re at it?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/7650/

or heck, you can grab the entire series for under 10 bucks, because we all now how much you loved enforcer.
http://store.steampowered.com/sub/964/

if you were on the fence before, there’s no excuse now, go get it!

Once upon a time, there was a magical world called New York City in the ’90s. To supplement their income, or just to boost their careers, many actors took bit roles on a glorious long-running television show called "Law and Order." And now all those actors are on "Orange Is The New Black."

YouTube has threatened to block music videos from independent labels that have not yet signed on to its upcoming subscription service, YouTube Music Pass, meaning that many indie musicians could be blacklisted from the streaming service.

The quarter that ended May 24 was the worst one in decades for the UK’s top food retailer, Tesco.

The company, which is the third-largest supermarket chain in the world behind France’s Carrefour and Wal-Mart, saw comparable store sales fall 3.7%—excluding gasoline. Analysts didn’t like the look of it. “Everything is kind of negative and suggests that there’s no underlying upgrade there,” HSBC’s David McCarthy told Tesco executives during its post-earnings conference call.

He’s right. The British grocery-store business is going through a brutal revamp at the moment, and Tesco is bearing the brunt of it. But it’s not uniformly bad for everyone. In fact, Aldi—Germany’s famed discount grocer—is eating away at Tesco’s market share with abandon. Here’s a chart from JPMorgan Cazenove analysts that shows sales-per-square foot metrics at the UK’s top grocery stores.

In fact, Aldi executives sound downright buoyant. “All the signs are there that we are going to have a nice happy end to the second quarter and the third quarter and the fourth,” they recently told the British trade magazine, the Grocer.

The plain fact is that Germany’s discount grocery players—Aldi, and also its chief competitor Lidl—are shaking up the the UK grocery business. Consumer price index data for May, released earlier this week, showed outright declines in prices for food.

And the decline in prices dragged down overall sales in the food sector in May.

The German discounters are largely responsible, as their business models were forged by decades of dealing with Germany’s famously price-conscious consumers. In a chat with analysts back in May, the head of fast-food giant McDonald’s European division voiced his thoughts on Germany’s food consumption habits.

“The German consumer tends to be very frugal,” McDonald’s Doug Goare told analysts. “And I would say they don’t have the same appetite for great-tasting food—I’ll get in trouble saying this—that the French have, okay? Food is a staple. And so there is a tremendous attention to value for the money.”

But why have Britons embraced the Teutonic model of no-frills, rock-bottom discounting? The reason is simple. Brits are increasingly pressed to make ends meet. Growth in wages—after inflation—has been negative for years now.

And the decline has transformed the UK’s standard of living, compared to its continental neighbors. Now, that’s not to say that things aren’t improving, for instance unemployment is coming down quickly. But wages haven’t budged, meaning British consumers are on a tight budget until further notice. And that means the companies that serve them have  to adjust too.