kate

Star Wars by artists from Trigger Studio (Kill la Kill) :
- Sushio
- Yoh Yoshinari
- Hiroyuki Imaishi
- Shigeto Koyama

Yoshimi Itazu (the guy who was supposed to finish last Satoshi Kon movie) just made his directorial debut with a 28min short film at Production IG called Pigtails.

He was also character designer and animation director on “Miss Hokusai”.

Once again, the good people of France remind us that there's no problem a little cheese can't fix. Take, for instance, our overreliance on fossil fuels: A new power plant in Albertville, a town in the Alps, is using the leftovers from Beaufort, the region's famous, gruyère-like cheese, to produce electricity. As bizarre as this sounds, the Canadian renewable-energy company that designed it, Valbio, actually built the first cheese-to-energy prototype 10 years ago. But this latest version, the Telegraph reports, is a full-fledged, 2.8 million-kilowatt-hours-per-year operation.

This puts Valbio in the class of other ecoconscious geniuses that have found ways to convert beer into car fuel and run airplanes off food waste. Valbio's specific process also sounds neat, if a little gross: Whey, a byproduct from making Beaufort, becomes the plant's fuel. The liquid, which remains after straining out cheese, is put in a tank with bacteria to create fermentation, and the fermentation produces methane that's then used to heat water to a near-boil in an engine, generating hydroelectricity. Once things get humming, the plant will crank out enough electricity annually to power a community of 1,500 people, as well as, one imagines a few cows, too.

[Telegraph]

Read more posts by Clint Rainey

Filed Under: food waste, beaufort, biofuels, cheese, france, valbio

The term “Mary Sue,” originally meaning a kind of overly perfect self-insert character in fanfiction who would be dropped into a story to solve all of its problems, has been a battlefield of sorts in popular culture. Characters are called Mary Sues if they show even the slightest bit of wish fulfillment, and in response there is a feminist movement to reclaim the term, fueled by the idea that idealized male characters are the norm and similar female characters are unfairly maligned. This is what is fueling discussion concerning the character Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. However, I feel that, as the discussion over which characters are and aren’t Mary Sues due to their perfect (or perfectly dramatic) natures, the fact that the term derives specifically from fanfiction gets lost in the shuffle, and that it is crucial to remember that its origin comes not from big blockbuster movies but from fans of popular culture navigating their chosen works and worlds.

Before I go into greater detail, I want to make a few points clear. First, I do not think wish fulfillment characters are inherently bad, whether they’re male, female, or something else entirely. Second, I believe fanfiction does have merit as a space for active participation, as a source for good and/or interesting stories, and everything else in between. Third, I understand that the meanings of words can change over time. Basically, this isn’t a criticism of fanfiction, or lack of originality, or a stubborn refusal to acknowledge the natural evolution of language.

The earliest known use of the term “Mary Sue” comes from Star Trek fandom, specifically from Paula Smith’s parody of a common trend in Star Trek fanfics at the time. Essentially, many stories would involve a young girl (most Star Trek fanfiction was written by women in the 1970s) who would become the center of attention, would have some unique visual identifier that instantly screamed “unique,” and would have just enough tragedy to emphasize how special they are. While you can think of many characters in fiction who fulfill these categories (Uzumaki Naruto, Bella in Twilight), I think the real key to the “Mary Sue,” and why its fanfic origins are so important to remember, is that by being the center of attention they were viewed as 1) drawing focus away from the world and characters that form the basis for that fandom 2) their idealized natures, rather than feeling universal, felt overly specific to the point of making it difficult to empathize.

To expand on both points, when we look at anime and see the generic shounen hero with a unique and special power, or the generic shoujo heroine who all the boys fall in love with, they can be seen as attempts to have a broader, more general appeal. Even if they end up being cliches, and even if they’re considered by more hardcore fans as being “boring”—though I think this comes from a time when fandoms were more niche and the deepest fans tended to prefer the subversive/evil/morally gray characters—there is a desire for broader appeal. When a character’s quirks or backstory or overall qualities make them wish fulfillment for people at large, that is different from when those same traits make them inaccessible to a reader due to being overly specific. In other words, when a character feels as if they are designed solely to appeal to only the author and no one else, then the term “Mary Sue” comes to light.

Of course, even that criteria is subjective, as different people will connect to different characters, whether they come from fanfiction or not. Also, if the “Mary Sue” was such a problem that Paula Smith had to address it, perhaps it could be argued that there were enough people with that same fantasy that it could be considered a broad enough desire to not be thought of as “overly specific.” It also needs to be pointed out that the Mary Sue derives from an amateur space, where writers do not have editors or marketers or even the need for a coherent narrative. These sorts of stories tend to happen naturally from those who do not consider common “good story rules” such as conflict, character depth, etc., and in a way we all have our Mary Sue stories inside of us where everything just goes right.

However, the idea of the Mary Sue did not originally come from an explicit connection to women, narratives, and society, but rather an implicit one. Because Star Trek fanfiction was the domain of women, it is possible to argue that its values developed in a feminine space, which when expanded to also include men to a large degree made Mary Sues a target for criticism and conflict in ways that trivialized the wish fulfillment of women more than men. Perhaps the biggest issue with the “Mary Sue” is in her name: chosen to be generic, and to reflect a recurring type of character in fanfiction, the doubly feminine nature of the moniker infuses it with gender values. Even though alternatives have been created for males (Gary Stu, Marty Stu), they simply never caught on as much. It’s also interesting to note that criticism of the Mary Sue originally took place between women.

I have one last question to ask: does the term Mary Sue even need to be reclaimed? Have men really seized it as their own, or has it never really left the grasp of women at all?

—

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Despite their sketchy pink goop origins , those consistently-shaped McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets are too addictive to ever give up. And you can lie to yourself all you want, but deep down you know you want this Lego McNuggets vending machine sitting in the corner of your office.

Read more...

On July 14, anti-abortion activist David Daleiden and his nonprofit Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released a series of secretly recorded and deceptively edited videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of fetal tissue—a practice that is illegal. The videos have since been widely discredited, but they set off a nationwide offensive against Planned Parenthood that made 2015 one of the worst years ever for the nearly 100-year-old reproductive and women's health care organization.

Responding to the videos, Planned Parenthood emphasized that the discussion that had been covertly filmed concerned the costs of storing and transporting fetal tissue, which can be recouped according to federal law. The group also hired a research firm to examine the editing of the videos. When the firm concluded that the videos had been extensively and deceptively edited, the CMP dismissed these findings as "a complete failure" and an attempt at distraction.

The doctored videos monopolized the abortion debate for the rest of 2015. They inspired efforts to defund Planned Parenthood in six states, investigations of the women's health provider in seven states (all have so far found no evidence of fetal tissue sales), and the creation of a special investigative committee in Congress. In October, Planned Parenthood announced it would stop taking any reimbursements for fetal tissue donations and would pay for their storage and transport instead. Fetal tissue donation is legal in the United States, and it's critical for medical research.

The next month, a shooting attack at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood killed three people and injured nine. The alleged gunman, Robert Lewis Dear, said "no more baby parts" during his arrest. When he appeared in court, he shouted, "I am a warrior for the babies," but authorities still hesitate to confirm the widespread suspicion that Dear's actions were connected to the controversial videos.

"One of the lessons of this awful tragedy is that words matter, and hateful rhetoric fuels violence," Dawn Laguens, the executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement after the shooting. "It's not enough to denounce the tragedy without also denouncing the poisonous rhetoric that fueled it."

Here's a look back at some of the significant events from the past year in the relentless war against Planned Parenthood:

Congressional Budget Fights and Investigations

A total of three congressional committees launched investigations into the activities of Planned Parenthood following the release of the videos. Several lawmakers also spearheaded efforts to strip Planned Parenthood of its approximately $500 million in federal funding. Federal money for most abortions is already illegal, but about $400 million of Planned Parenthood's federal funds come from Medicaid reimbursements, when low-income women choose to use their Medicaid coverage for health care services at a local Planned Parenthood facilities. On July 21, Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) introduced the Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015, saying on the House floor that "Planned Parenthood's culture of depravity runs much deeper than a couple of videos." The bill would have placed an immediate moratorium on federal funding to Planned Parenthood pending the results of a congressional investigation into the group.

In September, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing to investigate the claims about the sale of fetal tissue but found no evidence of wrongdoing. Following the Judiciary Committee hearing, the House passed Black's bill on September 18, voting to strip Planned Parenthood of its federal funding. A similar defunding measure passed the Senate in early December.

On September 29, Planned Parenthood's president, Cecile Richards, was called to testify before a House government oversight committee. Led by Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), House Republicans grilled Richards for more than four hours about how her organization spends its federal funding. Chaffetz frequently cut Richards off when she was replying to his questions, and he suggested throughout the hearing that Planned Parenthood should be stripped of its federal funding. A number of the committee Democrats accused the Republicans of misogyny and discrimination against women. "My colleagues say there is no war on women," said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.). "Look at how you've been treated, Ms. Richards."

Chaffetz also presented a chart at the hearing suggesting that in 2013 Planned Parenthood performed more abortions than life-saving procedures such as cancer screenings. Many media outlets point out that this implied conclusion was completely wrong. Below is Chaffetz's chart alongside a properly scaled version from Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum:

And if the chart were to include the testing for sexually transmitted diseases and the contraceptive services provided by Planned Parenthood, it would look like this:

After three congressional investigations into Planned Parenthood turned up no evidence of wrongdoing, then-House Speaker John Boehner announced on October 23 that Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) would chair a new investigative committee (with $300,000 in funds just to start) to scrutinize the women's health organization. She was joined by seven anti-abortion Republicans, all of whom co-sponsored a bill in July proposing to defund Planned Parenthood. Democrats charge that this committee is as politically motivated and biased as the one investigating Hillary Clinton and the attacks on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. 

On December 3, the Senate passed a bill to defund Planned Parenthood and to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Though President Barack Obama planned to veto the legislation, Senate Republicans viewed it as an important symbolic gesture. "The president can't be shielded by the weighty decision he'll finally have to make when this measure lands right on his desk," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Nonetheless, later in December, the final spending bill left the funding for Planned Parenthood intact.

Presidential Politics

The GOP's many presidential hopefuls used the Planned Parenthood video controversy to prop up their anti-abortion bona fides as the campaign season ramped up. In February, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, just a few months before announcing his presidential bid, told a talk show host at the Conservative Political Action Conference that his decision to veto Planned Parenthood funding for five years in a row in his state was a product of his pro-life beliefs. In August, at a town hall in Colorado, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said he believed Planned Parenthood should be defunded because "they're not actually doing women's health issues."

During the second GOP primary debate in September, presidential candidate Carly Fiorina described a grisly scene from the doctored Planned Parenthood videos released by the Center for Medical Progress. "I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain." Fox News went on to call this "the moment of the night," and Fiorina surged in the polls. The only problem? As noted by many news outlets, the video she described doesn't exist. Fiorina's super-PAC then created their own version of the previously nonexistent video.

When anti-abortion rhetoric turned to violence at the clinic in Colorado Springs and gunman Robert Dear opened fire on the facility, leaving three people dead, Democratic candidates responded swiftly to the tragedy with their condolences.

Today and every day, we #StandWithPP. https://t.co/oifqTQLx1X

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 27, 2015

We proudly #StandWithPP of Colorado Springs and the brave law enforcement personnel who fought to protect it.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 28, 2015

The Republican candidates took nearly a full day to weigh in, and even then, only a few offered public statements. Two days after the shooting, Mike Huckabee equated the murders in Colorado Springs with the medical procedures at Planned Parenthood, "where many millions of babies die."

Statehouse Actions

Attacks on Planned Parenthood in statehouses across the country preceded the videos but gained new intensity after they were released. In 2013, the Texas legislature passed HB2, a controversial law that imposes several onerous restrictions on abortion providers, including the requirement that abortions be performed in facilities known as ambulatory surgical centers. In January 2015, Planned Parenthood completed a new surgical facility in Dallas to comply with the implementation of HB2. The new clinic—a refurbished ambulatory surgical center—cost the organization more than $6 million. Ambulatory surgical centers have strict structural requirements, including wider hallways, sterile ventilation, and larger operating rooms. Planned Parenthood purchased one and then had to spend additional funds readying it for patients. Many medical professionals, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have repeatedly noted that typical doctor's offices are appropriate settings to perform medically safe abortions.

In February, the Arkansas legislature proposed a bill that would prohibit government funds (other than Medicaid) from going to any group that provides abortions or gives referrals for the procedure. The move cut off funding that the state's Planned Parenthood chapter had been using to pay for sex ed. The bill was enacted in April and Planned Parenthood's state-funded sex ed program—focused on teaching public school students about the prevention of HIV and sexually transmitted infections—shut down.

After the videos were released, several states attempted to pull state funding from Planned Parenthood. Louisiana was the first: Gov. Bobby Jindal announced in August that the state would cut off Medicaid funds for Planned Parenthood. In October, a federal judge temporarily blocked this measure from going into effect, but not before the state's lawyers filed with the court a list of health care providers that could replace Planned Parenthood. The list included dentists, cosmetic surgeons, ophthalmologists, nursing home caregivers, and other doctors outside the field of women's health. "It strikes me as extremely odd that you have a dermatologist, an audiologist, a dentist who are billing for family planning services," said the judge.

Just a few days after Louisiana's announcement, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley announced that his state would cut off funds to Planned Parenthood. In October, a federal judge in Alabama ruled that the state had to restore Planned Parenthood's funding, saying that the state's reason for cutting off Planned Parenthood—for allegedly selling fetal tissue—wasn't applicable to patients in Alabama, where fetal donation is outlawed.

Following these announcements in Louisiana and Alabama, the Obama administration wrote a letter to officials in both states explaining that pulling Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood was likely a violation of a 2011 federal rule saying states can't discriminate against health care providers that provide abortions in their Medicaid allocations. Despite this official warning, over the next several months, Arkansas, New Hampshire, Utah, and Texas all announced that their states would pull state funding from Planned Parenthood. In October, federal judges in Arkansas and Utah ruled that Planned Parenthood's funding had to be restored, but in December, a federal judge in Utah reversed the lower court's ruling, saying the state could defund Planned Parenthood. In Texas, an appeal from Planned Parenthood requesting that the court prevent the defunding process from moving forward is awaiting judgment.

Courts

In November, the Supreme Court announced it would review its first abortion case in nine years, Whole Woman's Health v. Cole. The outcome of the case will have major repercussions for all abortion providers in Texas, including Planned Parenthood. At issue in the case is HB2, the omnibus Texas abortion bill that imposes onerous restrictions on abortion providers. As portions of the law have gone into effect, more than half of the abortion clinics in Texas have closed. Before the law there were 41 clinics; now there are 18. If the Supreme Court upholds two of the most burdensome requirements of the law—that abortion clinics be performed in ambulatory surgical centers, and that all abortion clinic doctors have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital—the number of clinics in Texas could fall to 10. More broadly, the high court's decision will likely clarify its 1992 ruling in another seminal abortion case, Casey v. Planned Parenthood, further defining how far lawmakers nationwide can go when passing abortion restrictions.

Planned Parenthood also mounted several legal challenges on the state level in 2015. In December, Planned Parenthood sued Ohio in federal court. The state's attorney general, Mike DeWine, made statements that the state's investigation of Planned Parenthood had turned up evidence that the contractors tasked with disposing of fetal remains on Planned Parenthood's behalf were doing so in landfills. The women's health provider filed a lawsuit saying that DeWine's inflammatory statements singled out Planned Parenthood and were simply a political move aimed at hurting abortion access in the state. "Planned Parenthood handles medical tissue just like other health care providers do," Jerry Lawson, CEO of Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio, said in a statement. "We work with licensed medical removal companies to handle fetal tissue respectfully and safely."

Clinic Protests and Violence

On August 21, anti-abortion activists protested in front of about 320 clinics around the country, calling on Congress to defund Planned Parenthood. Organizers of the nationwide protests said this was the largest-ever rally against Planned Parenthood. Violence against abortion clinic facilities and staff continued to surge throughout 2015, with an increase in instances of arson and vandalism, culminating in the deadly rampage at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.

Ever since Colorado Springs, pro-choice advocates have warned that the culture of hate against Planned Parenthood will continue to breed violence against women's health providers.

"Even when the gunman was still inside of our health center, politicians who have long opposed safe and legal abortion were on television pushing their campaign to defund Planned Parenthood and invoking the discredited video smear campaign that reportedly fed this shooter's rage," said Laguens, the executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in the aftermath of the shooting. "Instead of looking for lessons to prevent this from happening in the future, they're doubling down on their effort to block women from getting preventive health care at Planned Parenthood…It is offensive and outrageous that some politicians are now claiming this tragedy has nothing to do with the toxic environment they helped create."

The hunter climbs high into the mountains in search of his new bird, looking to sharp clefts in the splintered rock faces where golden eagles usually make their roost. He snatches a four-month-old eaglet—old enough to hunt and survive without her mother, but not too old to adjust to a new life among people—and takes her back to his home, where he feeds her yak, sheep, and horse meat by hand. The meal is the start of a lasting bond. For the next decade or more they will be inseparable partners, returning to the mountains to hunt each winter, when their prey—foxes and, at times, wolves—betray themselves with fresh tracks in the ice and snow.

Golden eagles are the hunters of choice for the burkitshi of western Mongolia. Palani Mohan

The eagle hunters, known as burkitshi, are members of Mongolia's Kazakh minority, living in the remote valleys of the Altai Mountains in the country's far west. Australian photographer Palani Mohan spent five years traveling there, documenting the nomadic lives of the 50 or 60 men who still hunt as their ancestors did 1,000 years ago. They will likely be the last generation of eagle hunters, says Orazkhan Shinshui in the introduction to Mohan's book, Hunting with Eagles. Shinshui, who is in his mid-90s, is considered the oldest and wisest of the burkitshi.

A herder and his bird watch over sheep and yaks in the mountain pass below.

Mohan's gorgeous photographs capture the howling isolation of the land—flat, treeless valleys dominated by swirling clouds and jutting, windswept peaks. And yet the fierce-eyed eagles seem to preside over the vast emptiness, enveloping the landscape with their enormous wingspan. The hunters, proud and rugged on the hunt, peer out from thick fox-fur coats, bearing the scars of the landscape upon their faces.

But other photographs examine the deep bond between hunter and eagle as it is fostered both on the frigid hunt and in the comparative warmth of the ger, or yurt—the bird calmly cradled in a hunter's arm, or lying immobilized on the frozen ground, hooded and swaddled against the cold. "When you've lived with someone, like I've done many, many times with these hunters, you really see the bond," Mohan says. The hunters gushed with stories of loving their eagles more than their wives, talking about them as though they were children.

Though hunters have partnered with eagles for thousands of years in Central Asia, the young men who would have carried on their fathers' way of life are choosing a more modern existence. They're moving east to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia's capital, or working along the new roads connecting Russia with China. "They want all the things that any teenager in the world wants. They want money. They want to meet girls. They want to listen to music," Mohan says. "The old guys like Orazkhan find this very problematic."

The tradition of keeping eagles in the home has continued, but now it's mostly for the tourists, Mohan says. "There are golden eagle festivals popping up left, right, and center every year. They're quite hideous, really; it's completely traumatizing for the eagles." He's heard about eagles that have died of heart attacks, startled by the noise as busloads of iPad-bearing tourists descend upon isolated communities.

Any self-respecting hunter, Mohan says, would never bring his eagle to a festival. "You need to love the bird to be a true eagle hunter, and the bird needs to love you. That does not exist until you live with them out in the sticks."

This eagle is swaddled in leather and carpet to keep it warm and relaxed, despite frigid temperatures.

Mohan, who was born in Madras, India, and is a vegetarian, says the isolation and brutally cold temperatures, which can plummet to  negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit, made the hunting trips the most physically difficult excursions he's undertaken for his work. The conditions took a toll on his equipment as well—he took to strapping batteries under his armpits and against his thighs to keep them warm and retain their power. "I felt that I was missing the majority of my pictures because I just couldn't quite work the buttons and I was wearing too many warm clothes," he says, although he got better at it over the years.

But Orazkhan, who has spent his life here, fears the winters have grown less harsh in recent years, causing many eagles to migrate elsewhere. "He talks about how the winters used to be much longer; the clouds used to be much darker and more fierce," Mohan says. "The salt lakes that surround him used to stay frozen for many more months than they do now…It really is quite sobering when you're sitting there in the middle of nowhere, talking to a 94-year-old man who has never heard of the term global warming, and he's talking about something drastic happening there."

After 10 to 15 years of partnership, the eagles are taken far from home, given a feast of meat, and left to rejoin the wild—although it can be challenging to keep the bird from circling straight back to its hunter. "Golden eagles are like no other bird," Orazkhan says in the book. "They want to be with you. They love you. And they love to kill for you. When the time comes to let them go, it's the hardest thing a man can ever do."

Hunting with Eagles: In the Realm of the Mongolian Kazakhs is available through Merrell Publishers. In the meantime, enjoy a few more of Mohan's photos below.

A previous version of this article misidentified the age at which the eagle is taken from its nest.

This story originally appeared in the Huffington Post and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The weather's been positively toasty across much of the East Coast over the past several days, especially for a December. In New York, Sunday temperatures shattered a 30-year-old record, hitting 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And the month has been chock-full of 60-plus days.

So what's going on? Is this a climate change thing, or a welcome boon from the ongoing El Niño tropical weather event? The answer actually lies with a buzzword from 2014's equally extreme temperatures: the polar vortex.

Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center at the National Weather Service, said last week the band of cold air surrounding the arctic—called the "Arctic Oscillation"—is particularly tight right now. During the polar vortex, pressure changes in that band of air caused it to slow and slip down towards America, bringing with it a wave of Arctic air that led to well below zero temperatures.

This time around, all of that frigidity is being kept north, causing the far more pleasant temperatures experienced around the east coast.

Meanwhile on the West Coast, a series of storm systems is expected to bring more rain and cover the Northwest and Rockies with snow this week.

In terms of El Niño, weather patterns could certainly shift as the phenomenon is expected to continue through early 2016. But the weather event isn't to blame, despite forecasts it would lead to a particularly warm winter for some parts of the United States.

Some meteorologists have warned the Arctic Oscillation could slip as winter carries on, leading to a sudden downturn in temperatures. But if you're holding on to hope for a white Christmas and some skiing over the holiday break, you'll have to tough it out. The weather will be as fickle as always.

Last week brought some rare good news in the autism research world: For the first time, scientists have found a direct link between autistic behavior and a neurotransmitter, a kind of brain chemical that communicates information from one nerve cell to another. In a study published in the journal Current Biology, scientists at Harvard and MIT found that some symptoms of autism appear to stem from problems processing gamma-Aminobutyric acid, or GABA. An inhibitory neurotransmitter, GABA stops brain cells from acting in response to information they receive from the senses.

"Autism is often described as a disorder in which all the sensory input comes flooding in at once, so the idea that an inhibitory neurotransmitter was important fit with the clinical observations," said Caroline Robertson, the lead researcher, in a statement. While many of us can simply tune out everyday sights or sounds—say, the sight of a grate on the sidewalk or the noise of a car driving by—those with autism are inundated with a deluge of sensory information that can turn everyday environments into distressing experiences.

In addition, Robertson added, about 25 percent of autistic people also have epilepsy—a result of "runaway excitation in the brain."

In the study, participants started with a visual test: Looking through binoculars, they would see two different images in both eyes—say, a house on the left side and a car on the right side. Most people can focus on one image while diminishing focus on the other, and then switch, oscillating back and forth between the car and the house. In essence, inhibitory neurotransmitters enable the brain to process digestible pieces of information rather than try to take in everything at once.

But people with autism have a difficult time with this visual task—the oscillation between images is slower, and the focus on one image is less directed. Within both groups, though, there's variation in how well people can perform the task. When the participants took part in a neuroimaging test that measured the amount of GABA, an unsurprising trend appeared for people without autism: The better people are at visual processing, the more GABA they have. For people with autism, though, there was no such trend: Those who were better at visual processing had no higher or lower levels of GABA than those who weren't, suggesting a problem with the way that GABA is used or processed.

"It's not that there's no GABA in the brain," said Robertson, "It's that there's some step along that pathway that's broken."

The finding is especially notable because GABA inhibits all kinds of sensory stimulation—not just visual. In theory, a drug that targets bettering the GABA pathway could reduce sensory symptoms of autism.

Still, Robertson warns that this isn't a silver bullet—especially since scientists still know so little about autism and what causes it. "There are many other molecules in the brain, and many of them may be associated with autism in some form," she said. "We were looking at the GABA story, but we're not done screening the autistic brain for other possible pathways that may play a role."

From new visions to revivals of lost wonders, next year's incoming animated features reach far and wide.

The post Preview: 47 Animated Feature Films to Look for in 2016 appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Taking place entirely inside an airport terminal, New Chitose Airport International Animation Festival is a particularly refreshing festival that is not to be missed.

The post Festival Review: New Chitose, The World’s Only Airport Animation Festival appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Jim Rittenhouse shared this delectable agent of evil! Forged in the fires of an unknown Krispy Kreme, the doughnut’s will was always to be found by the appropriate bearer. It wanted to be found, glistening on that conveyor belt… Understand, we would use this doughnut from a desire to do good… But through us, it would wield a power too delicious and terrible to imagine. Oh, if only its baker had the mental fortitude to cast it back into the deep fryer! But men’s hearts are weak and…wait, it’s already been eaten?

Oh, never mind, someone ate it, thus destroying its nefarious power. We’re cool.

The facility will be the first step in the creamery's new expansion.

Red Hook will be home to the third and largest brick and mortar location of Ample Hills. The ice cream purveyor will open its newest location with the help of a recent $4 million investment fund made possible by a few Brooklyn neighbors. The brand-new ice cream factory is set to open by summer 2016 at 421 Van Brunt Street, an industrial space just across from Hometown BBQ and Fairway. Plans for the 15,000 square foot space include a production facility, bakery, retail store, party rooms, and an "interactive feature" including self-guided tours.

While Ample Hills has an outpost in Manhattan's Gotham West Market, husband and wife partners Brian Smith and Jackie Cuscuna make it clear that Brooklyn is their home. "We really wanted to keep it in Brooklyn," Cuscuna tells DNAinfo. "That's where we live and that's were we started." The owners of Ample Hills — named after a Walt Whitman line dedicated to the borough — also have plans to bring pints of ice cream to stores nationwide with the help of the brand-new production facility.

Ample Hills opened its first shop in 2011 at 623 Vanderbilt Ave in Prospect Heights to lines around the block. The Red Hook location however will be more similar to Ample Hills' newer Gowanus location. While renovations at 421 Van Brunt Street don't start until January, talk of a special Red Hook flavor has already begun, DNAinfo reports.

• Ample Hills To Open Red Hook Ice Cream Factory [DNAinfo]
• All Coverage of Ample Hills Creamery [ENY]

Elena Liao launched Té Company in 2012 while still holding down a full-time corporate job: She wanted to make the Taiwanese oolong teas she loved drinking more accessible Stateside. She ended up carving out a niche: While matcha has recently gone mass, American tea drinkers are perhaps less familiar with oolong teas, which are semi-oxidized, and fall halfway between green and black teas, in terms of fermentation. So, after finding wholesale success with restaurants like Per Se, Eleven Madison Park, and Atera, Liao decided to open her own brick-and-mortar space with the help of her partner, Frederico Ribeiro, formerly a sous-chef at Per Se.

The tea room quietly opened last month in a space that food lovers will recognize: the tiny room on West 10th Street that formerly housed Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks. It's a serene, intimate setting — perfect for sitting down for a whole pot ($6 to $10.50), talking to Liao about 30 different varieties, and tasting one of Ribeiro's excellent snacks — but it's casual enough that you can also order a cup ($3.50 to $5) of tea to go. Liao, who insists she's new to the tea world herself, doesn't want Té to be serious or stuffy, which makes her a wonderful ambassador for spreading awareness about oolong. Grub talked to her about her unlikely path into the tea business, what's so special about oolong, and her heartwarming relationship with Slotnick.

How did you become interested in tea?
I moved here from Taiwan, but tea was not a thing in my family. None of them grow or sell tea. Somehow, it just happened. I think it was during 2008, when the economy was bad. I was working at Ann Taylor at the time, and it led me to rethink what I wanted to do. When I'm out of tea, I have to ask my mom to mail it because I can't find the teas I want easily or accessibly. I started going to seminars and reading books, and then I would just go to Taiwan and ask my mom, "Who do we know who has tea gardens?" Slowly, little by little, we started doing tastings for restaurants, and they liked the teas.

A typical spread.Photo: Melissa Hom

Why oolong?
I wanted to focus on just oolongs because, one, it's the least-focused-upon by the tea companies. Two, I'm from Taiwan, and that's what we're known for. We make beautiful oolongs.

The space.Photo: Melissa Hom

How would you describe oolong tea to someone who isn't familiar?
The most technical way to explain it is if you know green and you know blacks, oolong is in between. So you can make all of the teas from the same plant, and once the tea is harvested, if you don't oxidize it and you process it immediately, it's green. And then if you let it oxidize, like an apple or an avocado, browning all the way through, it's black. Anything between is oolong. Because it has such a wide range, you can have 15 percent oxidized oolong, you can have 75 percent oolong, and anything in between. The flavor profiles and aromas are extremely wide in the varieties. And many of the oolong styles call for roasting. That, by itself, is a very particular craft, and you have to apprentice — at least that's how they do it in Taiwan.

Oolong leaves.Photo: Melissa Hom

How caffeinated is it?
About a third of a cup of coffee. But it really depends. If it has more bud in it, generally that has more caffeine. It also has more antioxidants. Everything is more concentrated when there is a tea-bud leaf.

Per Se was your first big client. How did you get connected with a restaurant of that caliber?
There's actually not that many tea companies that do very highly specialized teas, especially not oolongs. I would say that in New York there are probably two or three companies that good restaurants will get teas from. Obviously, Fred was working there at the time, so he introduced me to the sommelier at Per Se. I was so nervous. In the end, really, you're just putting some water in some tea leaves, but I don't have a hospitality background. I have barely any tea background; I just learn as I go.

So it was a discovery process for them, just as much as I'm discovering what people like and what the palate is here. Oriental Beauty was the most obvious style of tea that resonated with all of the restaurants. We took it to Per Se, then Eleven Madison Park, and then Atera. I think it's easily understandable. It's a full-bodied tea. It's a good tea to introduce oolong to the American palate.

Why did you decide to open a brick-and-mortar?
Online is also not the right way to sell this — it's very much a touch, feel, smell tea. And drinking it is a very communal kind of activity. That's how it was consumed traditionally. It's actually different here, because I feel like tea is a personal experience instead of a communal experience. You take a cup to go. I'm not going to make you sit and do a five-step ritual. You can if you choose to.

The sitting area.Photo: Melissa Hom

How many teas are on your menu?
We have about 25 to 30. We try to feature five every month or so, because if we just lay out everything, it's way too overwhelming. But there's a tea bible that flies around the room, and there's a little page on every single tea.

Food lovers know this space quite well, since it used to house Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks.
I didn't even realize that. I never had been in her bookstore. I walked by it a few times, but never went in. We were looking at spaces around the neighborhood, and we saw the sign that it was available, and it looked small enough. We thought it would be a relatively lower-budget way for us to see what resonated with New Yorkers.

A Spanish tortilla.Photo: Melissa Hom

Have you been in touch with Bonnie?
Yes. She was sweet. She was being very helpful — like, "You should look out for this. You should do this. I know this." And we visited her at her new location. We invited her back for almost, like, a Bonnie homecoming: a potluck with the neighbors. She was here for so many years, and they all know her and love her. We thought it would be a good forum for everyone to get together now that we're fully open and comfortable. We had 15 neighbors in. Everyone made a little dish. And I don't know if this is typical because I never really lived in the West Village, but there are people who have lived here for 35 years who are friends with Bonnie, and one used to cook, and whatever he didn't finish, he would bring Bonnie dinner. Now we get the dinner. Just really cute. It's a true small building community.

Fred, you worked as the sous-chef at Per Se. What's your outlook on the snack menu here?
Ribeiro: The food is really simple. It has to be all market-driven because we have 0 percent storage space for anything else ... It's like if you would go to Spain or Portugal for snacks. There's a tortilla that I learned how to do in Spain. There's a few cured meats from New Jersey, some cheeses. And then there are two sweets. One is the pineapple linzer cookie, which is a riff on a traditional Taiwanese pineapple cake but made with Yuzukoshō, a Japanese-pepper seasoning. The focus should be on the tea!

Read more posts by Sierra Tishgart

Filed Under: interviews, elena liao, new york, new york city, oolong, te company, tea, west village

1st long trailer for “Dofus” french animated feature film by Ankama. I saw it, it’s a great entertainment, with cool 2D animation. French sakuga rulez.

Laika's fourth film, "Kubo and the Two Strings," is an honest-to-goodness action-adventure film set in a mythic Japan.

The post Teaser: Laika’s ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ Is A Stop Motion Action-Adventure Film appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

The new episodes will air on Adult Swim next year.

The post Cartoon Network Nabs Genndy Tartakovsky, New Season of ‘Samurai Jack’ Announced appeared first on Cartoon Brew.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is in theaters only one week before Christmas, and judging from this series of photos featuring Stormtroopers assembling a Christmas tree, Kyle Shearrer and Philip Joe Shearrer, Jr. are really really into the spirit.

You can look at the photo-story starting here, or watch a video slideshow of them below. Pay attention! There’s more than one story occurring in these hilarious pictures. (Silly Stormtrooper…that fork doesn’t go there!)

[via Nerd Society X]

Recent commissions


More info & process on my blog: http://davidpetersen.blogspot.com/2015/11/recent-commissions.html

It's finally happening: British noodle chain Wagamama will open its first New York location. at 210 Fifth Avenue, sometime next summer or fall. The 7,000-square-foot, three-level space will serve as the United States flagship for the British company, which already has 140 locations worldwide and serves a wide-ranging menu of inauthentic pan-Asian donburi, ramen, teppanyaki, katsu curries, and more. New Yorkers, who know no shortage of quality ramen, have been practically begging the chain to come to the city for what they feel like is forever, but really they're just, let's be honest, displeased that Boston — the nerve — got not one but four locations first.

By the sound of it, though, the New York Wagamama will not be the only new location to open in the States, as chief executive David Campbell says sales are up, and the company is looking to more aggressively expand, with plans to open 45 more restaurants through 2018.

[NYP]

Read more posts by Chris Crowley

Filed Under: it's about time, coming soon, new york, new york city, ramen, wagamama

Nendoroid Saitama (coming in December) wont be enjoying his alone time much longer. The One-Punch Man anime twitter account pointed out that at the November Kahotan live broadcast Tuesday announced Genos will soon be moving in with his master to watch his every move in hopes of gleaming the secrets to his strength. No real details have been offered on the figure but I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot of it at Wonder Festival 2016 Winter this coming February!

[via Anime News Network]

You can always count on Cards Against Humanity to come through during the holidays with some good cheer (or great trolling). But this year, in addition to unveiling special Hanukkah cards (last year it was Kwanzaa), CAH is also bringing real trolls, through its first-ever Fantasy Pack! And because the guys behind CAH don’t do anything half-assed, this year they called in the big guns: a crew of fantasy authors including Patrick Rothfuss, Neil Gaiman, Jacqueline Carey, and more to help write the cards.

I’ll admit that after years of playing this as the icebreaker at parties, I’ve started to feel some CAH fatigue. There are only so many ways you can win certain cards, and the expansions don’t really refresh the game so much as prolong it. But I’m impressed with the company for doing what seems to be a bit of retooling: They’re rolling out a number of specially themed expansions, and (as mentioned) bringing in outsider experts. For the Food Expansion, they got the dudes at Lucky Peach (David Chang’s food magazine) to weigh in; the World Wide Web Pack was crowdsourced during a Reddit AMA.

So, back to the Fantasy Pack! Rothfuss wrote about the undertaking on his blog, as the proceeds will go to his charity, Worldbuilders. This is not the first collaboration between Rothfuss and CAH founder Max Temkin. Last year, the company trolled its customers with its Holiday Bullshit campaign, in which they said point-blank that they would send anyone who bought the Holiday Bullshit box actual cow feces. And people still went for it! But some good came out of it, as CAH donated the proceeds to Heifer International, via Worldbuilders. CAH has also used its powers for even more good, releasing a science-themed expansion that ultimately funded scholarships for women in STEM.

The Fantasy Pack includes 6 black question/fill-in-the-blank cards and 26 answer cards; you can check out a few of them in the top image. And here’s everyone who contributed to the cards!

• Patrick Rothfuss
• Neil Gaiman
• Wesley Chu
• Jacqueline Carey
• Myke Cole
• Elizabeth Bear
• Sherwood Smith
• Martha Wells
• Sam Sykes
• Kevin Hearne
• Laura Anne Gilman
• Delilah S. Dawson
• “and a few others who would prefer not to be named,” according to Rothfuss

I would’ve loved to be in the room for that brainstorming session.

The Fantasy Pack is yours for only $10. Check out the Fantasy Pack and others (there’s a Nostalgia one!) in the CAH store. And if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to work at CAH, you can check out their recent Reddit AMA.

OVERREACT is on holiday hiatus, so in lieu of comics, I’ve been posting HOLIDAY ABOMINATIONS. Enjoy… AND BEWARE!!!

Warpo is bringing the seasons greetings with a Kickstarter for a Krampus plush! It even includes a 80s/90s-themed toy commercial!

The Krampus is a formerly obscure mythological counterpart to Saint Nicholas (ie, Santa Claus) who would flog naughty children with a switch before stuffing them into his sack and dragging them off never to be seen again! (He probably ate them.)

Warpo's Krampus plush is in the same vein as the once-popular My Pet Monster series and other 80s toylines. It's actually an incredibly cute design... albeit on the pricier side since the cheapest Early Bird-level pledge (ie, gets you the plush) will run you US$65.

However, keep in mind that it's an 11-inch tall plush and the US$65 tier also includes 3 "naughty kid" fabric designs. Apparently it's already pretty popular, since the campaign has been running about a day and is already roughly halfway to its US$70,000 goal.

If you're looking for a different kind of holiday cheer, I'd definitely recommend checking out the Kickstarter campaign.

[ Support at Kickstarter ]