Mattalyst

more Giffany animations from Soos and the Real Girl

scarechomp:

I spent longer on this than I should’ve.

The news: This week, PBS and documentary filmmaker Whitney Dow launched the first installment of the "Whiteness Project," a thorough and well-intentioned interview series that aims to make white Americans open up about their racial identities. 

Dow started his goal to interview 1,000 white Americans across the country to obtain their unfiltered views on race. The first 24 of those one-minute interviews from Buffalo, New York, are now available on the PBS website.

And so far, Dow has delivered. The interviews are sharp, engaging and relevant, precisely because they don't aspire to show a saccharine view of racial problems in America. Instead, they're revealing just how tense racial relations in the U.S. are right now and how many white people simply don't know how to talk about it. Read More

accordingtodevin:

Scientifically accurate love story.

gameraboy:

Where Is Your Mouth by (ben chen) on Flickr.

Facehugger problems

gentlemanbones:

arrenkae:

failed skill checks are the best

Well, you may have failed your Unarmed check, but it sure looks like you passed your Sass check, mister.

haus-of-ill-repute:

Where is the pumpkin stem 

randomfactor:

interpretivescreaming:

usbdongle:

It’s like looking in a mirror

I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT THIS

Vocativ analyzed over 600 presidential speeches in US history, measuring syllables and keeping track of word and sentence count to determine the Flesch-Kincaid reading level of each speech. In the beginning, presidential speeches were at the level of a PhD, now it's at the reading comprehension of a 7th grader.

Read more...

captain-hank-murphy:

gifsboom:

new spider x

Video

Cristo sereno eu quero um!

Bryan Cranston reads a fan letter he received.

The waiting is the hardest part

In what's being called one of the most important advances to date in the field, researchers at Harvard have used stem cells to create insulin-producing beta cells in large quantities. Human transplantation trials could only be a few years away.

Read more...

The rap group announced their split earlier this summer

Whether the alleged hack of third-party Snapchat-saving databases and imminent leak of thousands of private photos is real or not, news of "the Snappening" begs the question: Where is the "save locally" feature, Snapchat?

To start, let's note that I don't know whether the alleged hack of 100,000 nude Snapchats, many of them presumably from underage teens given Snapchat demographics, is real or not. Either way, the point stands: Snapchat's lack of an easy way to save files—forever—is a major security risk by proxy.

By creating an app that instantly "deletes" photos, with no option of saving them, Snapchat made a second market for products such as Snapsaved.com, which save those photos on a (probably very illegal, considering the likely content) database somewhere, ready to be hacked. 

Snapchat was supposed to make sending nude photos safer—it's only made it more dangerous. Think about it: What's a more enticing target? The personal, local files of a random 16-year-old in Kansas, or an unencrypted database where her photos have been stored, along with hundreds of thousands of others?

Snapsaved, the alleged target of the hack. Screengrab: InternetArchive

By creating the market for third-party saving services, Snapchat has inherently become a more dangerous method of nude photo trading than plain old texting: At least in the latter, you can bank on the hope that your significant other doesn't turn out to be a dick after you break up. 

until it lets users save the photos on their own, Snapchat is just as much to blame for fostering an environment where hacks like this can occur

And yes, you can point at Apple, whose iCloud service was likely hacked to access the recent trove of celebrity nude photos. But here it's even worse: Snapchat's lack of local storage has left users relying on third-party startups that have literally no track record—and perhaps no interest—in encrypting and protecting its users photos.

Snapchat, for its part, has washed its hands of the whole thing:

"Snapchatters were allegedly victimized by their use of third-party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice that we expressly prohibit in our Terms of Use precisely because they compromise our users security," Snapchat told me in a statement. "We vigilantly monitor the App Store and Google Play for illegal third-party apps and have succeeded in getting many of these removed."

That's all well and good, but many of these third-party apps have flourished nonetheless, and for good reason: Its users want the ability to save photos. The spokesperson could not say if the company has ever considered a "save locally" feature. And while Snapchat can say that it doesn't control the actions of third-party companies, the fact that they've been allowed to flourish is concerning.

We've known now, for a long time, that the photos don't really go anywhere, and that they can be called back up through a variety of ways. That, in and of itself, is a concerning fact for a company now valued at $10 billion.

One of the more popular Android Snapchat-saving apps. The app says it doesn't store images on a database. Screengrab: SaveMySnaps

From the outset, the appeal of Snapchat has been the ephemeral nature of the photos—the fact that they "disappear." But, well, it long ago stopped being about just that, and the demand for an ability to save Snapchats has been evident for quite some time now.

A save locally feature wouldn't assuage all the fears of a mass hack—I have no idea if copies of snaps are saved on Snapchat's servers somewhere, but I'd rather entrust my photos with a company (dubious as its record on privacy is) that's well established and, in theory, has the resources to lock them down in a responsible way, rather than a third party that's out to make a quick buck.

Snapchat can say all it wants about the legality of third-party apps that save snaps. It can even shut them down. But, until it lets users save the photos on their own, the company is just as much to blame for fostering an environment where hacks like this can occur.

The sea is calling, Victor Grasso

Mallory Ortberg:

movies and books are bullshit bc whenever a character is offered the chance to become Consort of a Dark King/Queen they always turn it down

and the DREAD LORD or NIGHTMARE EMPRESS always makes it look so tempting it's like why do you want your terrible mortal life over this

DARK QUEEN: do you want to come to my empire of night and rule over death and have bonkers murder sex together
MAIN GUY: no, for some reason

they turn it down on Buffy, they turn it down in Queen of the Damned, they turn it down in the Forbidden Game and it's BULLSHIT

@ladysisyphus: Labyrinth! Don't forget how wrong Labyrinth is.

@daveexmachina: "no i want to go to work tomorrow and write some database code, also pay some bills"

it's all the fun of being a SCREAMING PRINCE OF PAIN with non of the administrative headaches!! TAKE THE CONSORT POSITION NUMSKULL

The house was nice. The kids were fine. But something was missing.
"Maybe I SHOULD have vanished to Darkalfheim with Julian," he thought.

anyhow if some evil hottie wrapped in capes and leather has been stalking you from Hell for your whole life and they ask you out, say yes

it's a good deal and you should take it

"Mom, Dad," she said. "I'm not going to college. I'm going to become the Queen of Hell."
her terrible boring football boyfriend wept

"What kind of a job is that?" her father said. "'Queen of Hell?' Your mother and I have saved for your education for years."

"I already bought a Penn Mom bumper sticker for the Escape," her mother said tearily.

Clarice flung an ebony statue of a raven with shimmering ruby eyes at their feet. "That should cover it."

"Oh, wow," her dad said. "Yes, you should definitely be the Queen of Hell."
"You'd never make this much as a pharmacist," her mother agreed.

Previously, previously, previously.

Strindberg and Helium in Absinthe and Women

I know this is old, but so good!

gameraboy:

Futuristic operating room (the year depicted was assumed to be 2000) by v.valenti on Flickr.

Shonen Magazine, Japan, 1969

Some people are calling the cats on my blog “stupid” or saying they “hate” them. I can’t support this. These cats did not ask to be this way. They want to be loved just like other cats, they want to play and cuddle. I personally think other cats are better and nicer. But I do not hate these cats. It is not their fault.

Animal Rights activists may frequently be patently absurd, but some of them make for truly great entertainment. If you can make it through the above video without breaking up into hysterical wracked sobs of laughter, you are a far more stoic person than I.

Read more...

durarara

Ohhh, Archie Comics. I love what you’ve done with yourself lately. When they’re not being refreshingly progressive, featuring awesome cameos, or publishing variant covers guaranteed to make comics nerds’ hearts sing, they’re slapping their famously wholesome characters in the middle of a zombie apocalypse or making Sabrina the Teenage Witch genuinely chilling. In that context, their announcement with Dark Horse Comics that they’re doing a four-issue Archie Meets Predator series seems completely normal.

Via USA Today, Archie Meets Predator:

“puts Archie and the gang in the alien hunter’s sights while they’re on spring break in Costa Rica.

The beach vacation comes unexpectedly after Jughead wins a prize from a lucky bag of chips, and Betty and Veronica make the most of the sunny weather by competing in a ‘best-dressed’ contest.”

Only then Betty and Veronica have a fight, the former runs off into the woods, and BAM! Predator.

Writer Alex de Campi says she was drawn to the Archie/Predator combo “because it’s just completely insane. Let’s take this gentle, beloved, classic teen cast and hunt them down and slaughter them one by one. Seriously, if you wouldn’t jump at the chance to write something like this, you need your head examined.”

The entire interview is worth reading and should really make you excited about the new comic. But I’m gonna pull this bit out:

‘I’ll be putting in little easter eggs from the film throughout the story—still working out a situation in which it would be feasible for an Archie character to say, ‘I’m a goddamn sexual tyrannosaur,’ though. Sounds like possibly a Reggie line.”

Did I ever think I’d type the phrase “I’m a goddamn sexual sexual tyrannosaur” in a post about Archie? No, I did not. Archie Comics, you are a goddamn treasure.

(via The Hollywood Reporter, top pic courtesy of Dark Horse/Archie)

Previously in Archie

• Review: The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, #1
• New York Comic Con 2014 Archie #660 Exclusive Cosplay Variant Cover
• Lena Dunham To Write Archie Comic With An Emphasis On Feminism

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