Suko

Skip ahead in this interview about The Rock’s new show, Ballers, to 1:50, when TV Guide asks him, “Who is your TV crush?” His gives the correct answer.

“I’m going on record right now: Hayley Atwell. On record, right now. Beauty, brains, bad-assery. Rock and Hayley, we’re going to do something together one day. Making a big declaration now.”

Has… has anyone seen the entire staff of The Mary Sue? Oh, they’re all on the floor? Right.

(via Tumblr)

—Please make note of The Mary Sue’s general comment policy.—

Do you follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

Earlier this year, five people went to Iceland with a mission: take some of the best, most unique cosplay photos on the planet. What they came home with does not disappoint.

Read more...

This post incorporates material from an earlier post, The BART System That Never Was, while focusing on a revision to the map I made more recently, and was featured in Wired Science’s Map Lab (click here). My thanks to Adam Mann for including my map in such an interesting gallery. It appears fantasy transit maps have truly arrived as a curious and (I like to think) thought-provoking sub-genre.

Here’s the latest version:

Edits and revisions include the adoption of stop symbols like those found on the London Underground diagram, which allowed me to place the stop labels more clearly. Also, this version integrates the Transbay Terminal as an important transfer station. Some stops have been renamed and typographical errors corrected. Perhaps most obviously, I’ve removed the BART logo and any mention of BART or its website, replacing it with a more explicit reference to the planning document that inspired the map, Regional Rapid Transit, published in 1956.

The dream of a Bay Area-wide integrated rapid transit system is somehow so compelling that I’ve returned to it repeatedly over the years. The version above is actually the third version. By scrolling down this page, you’ll travel back in time, and witness both how my concept for the fantastic system changed over time, but also how my cartographic design skills have evolved over time.

Clearly, the latest version borrows heavily from the second version above, which is the version most viewers are familiar with. Lines strictly followed angles in 45 degree increments. To tie labels to their stops, I had to angle many of the labels. This was the element I thought needed most improvement, hence my later adoption of the London Underground stop symbols.

Below is the first version, which few have seen. I developed the base map in Quantum GIS and provided a more or less “geographically true” depiction of the lines, somewhat like the New York MTA’s official map. This was made when I was still fairly new to digital cartography. It’s interesting as evidence of the progression of an idea–and perhaps makes the case for continuously refining a design until it begins to fulfill its purpose. I also like that I use BART’s original (and later scrapped) logo. Both the map and the logo showed room for improvement…

womenrockscience:

Women in STEM of WWII - The real “Rosie Riveters”

In most countries women were not permitted to fight on the front lines of the war. Instead, they supported the war effort by learning, training and taking up jobs usually held by men.

These women did a lot more than rivet, they designed, built and tested thousands of aircraft in factories across Canada and the US.  Prior to the war, women would have been mostly banned from taking up such jobs.

Sources: Library of Congress

bottledminx:

the-vortexx:

Thoughts that will change the way you think about the universe and your existence

these did not change my mind, they made me proud. fuck you sun I WIN

1. Steve, our giant dorito of goodness, who was not the person the Hulk caught and saved from death in the first avengers, but who was the first person Hulk ever took an order from. 

Steve respects soldiers; and he respects people who hates bullies, and he was one of the first people to speak to the Hulk and not plead with him. When he tells Hulk, “Thank you,” he means it and even Hulk can tell. When he says, “You’re done, we’ve got it from here,” Hulk believes it. He’s safe. 

2. Tony, who was the falling body Hulk caught, who was one of the few acts of friendship and not destruction Hulk was given in Avengers, who has spent long nights and early mornings with Bruce in the lab now, sharing in something they both love. Tony either:

a. talks science in a soothing tone– “supernovas? the emissions on those things. and mechatronics! omg, let’s talk about nyquist plots, don’t you think they look like butts? they totally look like butts” – until Hulk makes a giant green enraged sigh, puts his hands over his face, and just lets Puny Bruce out to deal with Won’t-Shut-Up-Man.

OR

b. Tony touches down in the Ironman suit and circles Hulk like a particularly irritating gnat. “Hey hey hey Hulk, man, go to sleep. go to sleep okay? go to sleep. go to sleep go to sleep gotosleepgotosleepGOTOSLEEPokaycmonhulkgotosleep” until Hulk finally swats him and does.

(because Tony’s affection always filters through annoyance)

3. Thor, who blasts down and with jovial seriousness begins a brotherly brawl of joint camaraderie. Thor’s one of the few Hulk can’t hurt too easy, and Hulk’s one of the few Thor can’t hurt. 

There are so many frustrations in their lives, these two boys who belong best to simpler worlds and keep getting pulled into machinations and schemes of others–but this, here, is simple. This is just bodies in an empty war zone, all the danger gone. They fight like kittens, like flop-eared puppy dogs, until they roll over panting in the rubble and gasp and laugh themselves to sleep. 

(Steve and Tony, who have finished all the requisite paperwork during this cooldown/beatdown period, come out and carry their snoring allies to the Quinjet– Steve with Bruce wrapped in a blanket, and the Ironman armor lugging Thor.)

4. Probably not Hawkeye, honestly. I love you, Clint, but no. 

5. But not Natasha, who is brave and slippery and terrifying, who is afraid more than almost anything of losing control, whose role on the team is the spy, the killer, the repenter, the manipulator, the blade in the dark, the smile that cuts, the dry wit, Hawkeye’s best friend and Cap’s dose of loyal reality– Natasha, whose role is not to be the girl, the mother, or other people’s peace. 

“Since her death in 1979, the woman who discovered what the universe is made of has not so much as received a memorial plaque. Her newspaper obituaries do not mention her greatest discovery. […] Every high school student knows that Isaac Newton discovered gravity, that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, and that Albert Einstein discovered the relativity of time. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know.”

-

Jeremy Knowles, discussing the complete lack of recognition Cecilia Payne gets, even today, for her revolutionary discovery. (via alliterate)

OH WAIT LEMME TELL YOU ABOUT CECILIA PAYNE.

Cecilia Payne’s mother refused to spend money on her college education, so she won a scholarship to Cambridge.

Cecilia Payne completed her studies, but Cambridge wouldn’t give her a degree because she was a woman, so she said fuck that and moved to the United States to work at Harvard.

Cecilia Payne was the first person ever to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College, with what Otto Strauve called “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.”

Not only did Cecilia Payne discover what the universe is made of, she also discovered what the sun is made of (Henry Norris Russell, a fellow astronomer, is usually given credit for discovering that the sun’s composition is different from the Earth’s, but he came to his conclusions four years later than Payne—after telling her not to publish).

Cecilia Payne is the reason we know basically anything about variable stars (stars whose brightness as seen from earth fluctuates). Literally every other study on variable stars is based on her work.

Cecilia Payne was the first woman to be promoted to full professor from within Harvard, and is often credited with breaking the glass ceiling for women in the Harvard science department and in astronomy, as well as inspiring entire generations of women to take up science.

Cecilia Payne is awesome and everyone should know her.

(via bansheewhale)

CECILIA PAYNE

(via beinghelpfuliskindofanewthing)

hey girl: how’s about I’ll take on the henchman, and you fight the big boss? So, like: we win. 

justira:

#DiversifyAgentCarter in pictures | my twitter

The “Women Guerrillas” corps trains in Manila, Philippines in 1941. #DiversifyAgentCarter pic.twitter.com/7zia1Rr2vW

— Jennifer de Guzman (@Jennifer_deG)

May 9, 2015

My grandfather was an Air Force instructor to Tuskeegee Airmen before & during WWII. #DiversifyAgentCarter pic.twitter.com/3QoURyx2pf

— Starfishncoffee (@starfishncoffee)

May 9, 2015

#DiversifyAgentCarter MT @womenshistory: Maggie Gee, 1 of only 2 Chinese-Am women to serve in the WASP during WWII. pic.twitter.com/1kMwd0SQKG

— Helen Shin (@H_X_S)

May 9, 2015

1928 pilot license photo of Ms. Pancho Barnes, who broke Amelia Earhart’s air speed record. http://t.co/ov1rzvi9b3 pic.twitter.com/WYUewz0fuo

— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed)

May 9, 2015

1940s superspy Senorita Rio, the first Latina lead character in US comics. #DiversifyAgentCarter pic.twitter.com/xsQQX5lb1G

— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed)

May 9, 2015

#DiversifyAgentCarter because Katherine Sui Fun Cheung was the first Asian Am woman to get a pilots license in 1932! pic.twitter.com/PnMRJCwe3I

— UbeEmpress (@ubeempress)

May 8, 2015

My Arab great-grandma, a detective & civil defense director in 1950s NYC. These women existed. #DiversifyAgentCarter pic.twitter.com/YGVcadaadT

— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed)

May 9, 2015

#DiversifyAgentCarter because of this book on my Amazon wish list about the history of gay men and women during WWII. http://t.co/UFD1DIdvsd

— Jennifer Matarese (@trollprincess)

May 9, 2015