Here’s a cute and super clever new way to pop the question. Etsy seller The Flippist aka Ben Zurawski will create a flipbook with cartoon art of your choosing and even a built-in spot for an engagement ring. It doesn’t have to be for an engagement either as he can create a book for a birthday, anniversary, graduation or any event you want to commemorate.
See the video after the break.
Product Page ($395 via BoredPanda)
Ever try to get your phone unlocked through your carrier, only to be met with a litany of questions and rules? If so, we’ve got some exciting news for you.
AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon are now compliant with an FCC agreement that they signed in late 2013 that requires them to unlock your phone so long as you’ve paid it off or are no longer under contract. The deal also requires the carriers to post their unlocking policies on their websites, alert customers when they can get their phones unlocked, and unlock the devices of deployed military personnel.
Once you meet the criteria and request that your device be unlocked, your carrier will need to respond to you within two business days. They’ll then need to either unlock your phone, send your request to your device’s OEM, or tell you why you can’t unlock your phone if you’re not eligible.
In the past, unlocking cellphones through your carrier could be a difficult process, and often you were outright rejected. These new rules do have requirements, but at least now you know exactly what you need to do to get your phone unlocked, and all of the carriers are being upfront about their policies.
Via: Ars Technica
Sources: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon
Salt Lake City | Tuesday, 10 February 2015 00:00:00 -0700 |
Holding a disciplinary council for a member of the Church is not something that any local leader takes lightly. Such councils are always held in private, and the member is always invited to be a part of that discussion.
Dan JonesI didn't realize DC had announced so many upcoming movies. I'm very excited for all of this.
You took the idea of the human genome project and applied it to music, right? Songs have a certain genetic code that allows you to group them together in various ways based on their attributes. If I put in “Manic Monday” by The Bangles, your algorithm searches the DNA of all the songs ever recorded, finds others that are annoying enough to fuel a genocidal dictator, and then creates a “station” comprised of just those songs. Then, if I’m playing that station, and you play “Everybody Wang Chung Tonight” by Wang Chung, and I click the thumbs down icon, you’ll adjust your math so it doesn’t play any more songs by bands with fans who drive Fieros and carry nunchucks.
The post Dear Pandora, appeared first on .
Dan JonesDinos tripping on shrooms is an amusing image.
Like all dinosaur enthusiasts, I have spent a lot of time trying to picture the colorations, vocalizations, and temperaments of these spectacular animals. But as it turns out, I overlooked one of the most essential questions of all: Did dinosaurs ever trip on hallucinogens?
According to a new paper in the journal Palaeodiversity, it is entirely possible that they did. The key evidence for this magical scenario is embedded inside a chunk of fossilized amber discovered in Myanmar. The specimen dates back about 97 to 110 million years ago, and contains the earliest evidence of grass in the fossil record.
But here’s the kicker: Perched on top of the exquisitely preserved grass spikelet is a fungal parasite that greatly resembles the modern fungus ergot.
Close-up of the ergot-like fungus on the end of the spikelet. Image: Oregon State University
Ergot has played an incredibly influential role in human history as a medicine, a poison, and a hallucinogen. In fact, ergot poisoning has become a kind of historical catch-all—it has been implicated in everything from the inspiration of Beowulf to the manic paranoia of the Salem Witch Trials. It is the species that gave the world LSD, among many other drugs. As the authors note in the paper, “few fungi have had a greater historical impact on society than ergot.”
Incidentally, humans aren’t the only species susceptible to ergot. It provokes a wide range of reactions in other animals, and is a perennial problem for livestock farmers. If the fungus has had such an enormous effect on extant life, perhaps its fossilized predecessor also held sway over Cretaceous grazers like sauropods.
Cretaceous sauropods fed on grass. Image: DiBgd
“The specimen is very similar to modern ergot regarding its color, position at the top of the grass spikelet and its production of spores,” lead author George Poinar told me over email. “The lobes set it apart from extant forms.”
Poinar is a prominent author and paleo-entomologist based at Oregon State University, and his expertise in extracting DNA from amber fossils provided partial inspiration for the Jurassic Park franchise. Perhaps this paper will also end up as the kernel of an entirely new blockbuster series, about dinosaurs in the throes of psychotropic madness.
But scientifically speaking, Poinar and his colleagues aren’t jumping to any conclusions. “Whether dinosaurs would have gotten dizzy, nauseous, or were otherwise affected is difficult to say,” he told me.
He did, however, note that the closest living relatives of dinosaurs are deeply affected by ergot ingestion. “Reptiles that ingest ergot can have severe vascular spasms leading to the necrosis of their extremities,” he said. “In chickens, ergot can atrophy and disfigure the comb, wattles, face, legs, toes, and eyelids.”
Whether or not the giant sauropods of the Cretaceous shared these unenviable symptoms with their modern kin may never be known. For now, it’s enough to marvel at this rare glimpse of a lost world provided by an exquisite, amber time capsule.
BAT TO THE FUTURE
From corny and cute to a macho brute, here's how The Caped Crusader has kept up with the times.
PUNCH IT, CHEWIE
DON'T ASK IT TO ROLL OVER
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This article was originally published by Jason F. Wright for the Deseret News. Dr. Kim Roberts of Salt Lake City and
Dan JonesExcellent.
To help do its part for Safer Internet Day, Google is offering 2GB of additional Drive storage to anyone that completes a Security Checkup between now and February 17th. If you complete the checkup, your bonus storage will show up on February 28th.
They claim the survey checkup will take about two minutes, and having just completed it myself, I can tell you that if you have set up your security options before it takes more like 30 seconds. They just inquire about your recovery info, have you look over recent sign-ins and confirm the apps and devices that have access to your account.
Considering this is something that you should be reviewing on a semi-regular basis anyway, getting a little free storage to get it done should be enough to push you over the top and take the time to check it out.
One note is that the free storage isn’t available to Apps for Work or Apps for Education accounts, so if that’s you then you’ll just be doing the checkup for your own security, which again doesn’t seem like the worst thing you could do with a minute.
You can either click through the source link below for additional details or take the survey checkup immediately by clicking here.
Dan JonesA little surprised Hulu isn't on there. I guess I'll wait until it's on Netflix.
Here's Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Meet_The_Mormons?id=IIecf3Y7Y78
Dan JonesVery excellent
The long Tetris block. Brilliant.
Dan JonesThis is very cool. Will definitely use in future projects.
Using CSS Shapes we can create experiences that we have never been able to create on the web before.
Meet devout Sikh Avtar Singh Mauni - the proud owner of the world’s largest turban. He wears the traditional Punjabi turban called a ‘pagdi’ in the Indian town of Patiala in Punjab, India. The devout Sikh’s enormous headgear consists of no less than 645 meters of fabric, weighing 100 pounds. It took him a staggering 16 years to assemble, and he needs to spend six hours just to put it on.
Photo credit: Ajay Verma / Barcroft IndiaWow
But look at all the silver! It’s beautiful.
He looks like an RPG character.
How does this man keep his head up? He must have the strongest neck in the world.
Though they haven’t always been called “Millennials,” young-adult riffraff has always been fond of loitering near 7-11s and corner stores, grazing on their highly caloric offerings and then littering the ensuing garbage into nearby bushes. Though this habit primarily takes place while under the influence, it’s also a preferred after-school activity of older teenagers who can’t yet go to bars but need to meet up somewhere. But what about the 18–34 crowd? Are they, like their younger siblings, directing spigots of liquified nacho cheese and sugary snow directly into their mouths, too?
Yes. With great enthusiasm.
Research firm NPD Group has released the 2014 edition of its annual Eating Patterns in America report, which notes changes in American food-buying patterns year over year. And the newest findings show that Millennials are (so shockingly) forgoing Michelin-starred restaurants in favor of spending ever-more-significant amounts of chow time at convenience stores.
In fact, the demographic-that-hates-being-identified-as-”Millennials” is making more than one out of every ten of its “food and beverage stops” at convenience stores—11.1 percent, to be exact, compared to just 7.7 percent in 2006. And while that might not sound like a super-high number right off the bat, consider that it’s twice the number of food stops made at fast-casual restaurants, such as Chipotle, Panera Bread, and Baja Fresh, which are insanely and increasingly popular in their own right (and accounted for 6.1 percent of Millennials’ food stops this past year).
Harry Balzer, chief food industry analyst at NPD Group, tells USA Today, “Millennials are cheap—they’re no different from anyone else … What we mostly do in our lives is get food as fuel.”
Balzer also says that Millennials’ boundless affinity for chocolate-covered pretzels and chili cheese dogs is putting fast-food chains in the hot seat, as they struggle to reckon with being undercut by convenience store prices and facing growing competition from slightly-more-trustworthy fast-casual fare. The convenience store industry is valued at more than $200 billion, and the National Association of Convenience Stores counts more than 152,000 stores as members.
And if you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, “Well, everyone makes the occasional pit stop for a dirty magazine and an ice cream bar—why are we being singled out? Why is everyone always picking on Millennials just because we love sexting and getting liberal arts degrees?” Well, actually, this barely-yet-decidedly-legal demographic has somehow become the single most likely of any age group to stop and buy food items at convenience stores. Jeff Lenard, spokesman for the National Association of Convenience Stores, explains that Millennials are “impulse buyers,” making them susceptible to all of the easy deals and novelty items (remember Doritos Loaded?) that these chains can drum up. All of that Snapchat is going straight to your brain, kids!
I asked a couple of (fellow) Millennials what their convenience store poisons of choice are to get a better idea of what kinds of highly nutritious foods this cultural group is seeking out of glorified gas stations.
Emerson Rosenthal, 23, says, “We used to call it ‘swamp water,’ but basically you get every soda—and a bunch of Slurpee too, if you’re feeling fancy—and then you drink it with sour straws.”
Reed Dunlea, 27, prefers “a banana and Sour Patch watermelons.”
Convenience, particularly in this case, is still king.
Henry Damon, a 37-year-old from Caracas, Venezuela, has gone to extremes to look like his favorite comic book character Red Skull. Like, EXTREMES.
He had the tip of his nose cut off by former medical student Emilio Gonzalez (who dropped out to focus on tattooing and extreme body modification). Prior to altering his nose, Damon had implants put into his forehead. Gonzalez told Mirror:
“I asked for a tomography of the nose and sinuses to assure me that it was OK for surgery. Henry aka Red Skull is a physically and intellectually healthy person. He’s an excellent son, husband and father, who has an extreme taste for body modification.”
Damon now only answers to Red Skull rather than his given name and is working on the final phase of his transformation by getting black and red tattoos on his face.
(via Paste)
Dan JonesI frequently work from home (sometimes once every week or two, occasionally more often), and I can definitely say that this is true.
If I go into the office, I work from 9 - 5, and then I'm done for the day (unless there's a website emergency). But when I work from home, it's more like 8 - 5:30.
It's nice to be able to work from home once in a while, but workers wind up compensating with longer, more intense hours.
Brian Snyder/Reuters
It's freezing and snowy. It's a million degrees and humid. Your kids are sick. The repairman is coming. You have a doctor's appointment.
Whatever the reason, many workers are lucky enough to be able to take advantage of workplaces that offer a bit of flexibility as to when and where they work.
But such affordances come with strings attached: Employees with this perk often wind up working extra hours at nights or on weekends. Why? Not to make up for lost productivity (studies show that workers are just as diligent if not more so when working from home) but in an effort to demonstrate their commitment to and passion for their jobs.
Researchers call the phenomenon "the flexibility stigma."
"In high-level, professional jobs, [the stigma] stems from what one sociologist called 'the norm of work devotion,' where you have to prove yourself worthy of your job by making it the central focus of your life—the uncontested central focus of your life," says Joan C. Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. For employees who occasionally would like to work from home, that means working ever harder and ever crazier hours, lest anyone think their jobs were anything but their top priority.
Women with children may be the most likely to take advantage of an employer's flexibility, and thus may experience the stigma most often, but Williams says that it hurts everybody—"everybody who is not a breadwinner married to a homemaker," because those lucky few are the only people who can realistically comply with "the norm of work devotion." Men, women, those with kids, those without—everyone who deviates from the "ideal-worker norm" will need to demonstrate their devotion in other ways. "It's equal-opportunity misery," says Williams.
Over the past two decades, increasingly sophisticated technology has meant that fewer and fewer people need to be in the office to get their work done. Between 1997 and 2010, the number of Americans who work from home at least one day per week rose by 4.2 million. As a percent of the total workforce, this is a jump of a bit more than two percentage points, from 7 to 9.4 percent.
Number of Americans Who Worked From Home at Least One Day per Week (in Millions)
Data: Survey of Income and Program Participation
Most of those workers—9.4 million—are people who work from home entirely. But a good chunk—4 million people—are what the Census Bureau terms "mixed": They have an office job, but they also work from home on occasion. These mixed workers are a special bunch. They are highly educated: Of "flexible workers," 63.3 percent have a bachelor's degree or higher, compared with 50.5 percent of those who work solely at home and 29.7 percent of those who work solely on site. They are better compensated, bringing home an average earnings of $52,800 a year, compared with $25,500 for those who work at home and $30,000 for those who work on site. And they work harder, putting in more than the 40 hours that's standard for other workers.
Why does this high bar persist? It's not because it makes business sense: Overworked workers are less productive. It's because, Williams says, those who have succeeded in this system don't want to see it any other way.
"One of the reasons that this [culture] has proved so unbelievably difficult to change is that the winners of the system are the breadwinners who saw very little of their children," she explains. "It's an identity-threat situation; they have an incredible amount invested in proving that's the only way to be a professional. Because, if it isn't, why did they do it? How come they don't know their children?"
It wasn't always this way. Once upon a time, the limitations of technology set a firmer boundary between work and home: If you weren't at the office, you often couldn't do your job. But that's no longer the case.
"Technology now sets no work boundaries," Williams says. "So we have to set these work boundaries through social norms."
The only problem, she says, is that we aren't doing that.
"I've been working on this problem for 25 years, and I actually have come to the conclusion that these organizations just aren't going to change."
Little Sophia Sandoval had to endure chemotherapy as a result of a cancerous brain tumor. At the end of her treatment, she donned a Wonder Woman costume to celebrate her victory. Lynda Carter took notice and called Sophie, “A real life WW!” I think everyone would agree.
(Huffington Post via Neatorama)
Dan JonesExcellent
In an alternate reality of Star Trek: TNG, Starfleet personnel might have worn hoodies like this when going on covert tactical missions. In an alternate reality of Star Trek: TNG, Starfleet personnel might have worn hoodies like this when going on covert tactical missions. $59.99
