Saturday, April 30, 2016

"Orientalism in Big Trouble in Little China"

WWAC:
Before you read this: did you watch the Dr. Strange trailer? You should, because I’m going to compare it to Big Trouble in Little China, a movie thirty years its senior. “Why?” you ask. Because John Carpenter made BTLC with the understanding that Chinese-ness is context and not just culture, and that the mixture of cultures in America can be a strange and wonderful thing. On top of that, BTLC features Asian actors who have accents and no accents, mixed race Asians, a Muay Thai world champion, and the first Asian-American woman featured on the cover of Penthouse magazine. BTLC, made at the tail end of the exploitation film era, does a better job of exploring (specifically) Asian-American culture than any blockbusters made recently.

"Happy Hour" collection at Gallery 1988



Kristin Tercek's new show is available online now.

Link roundup

1. "Japan doesn't want the U.S. to apologize for bombing Hiroshima."
“Overemphasizing the inhuman nature of the nuclear weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki goes against what the current government of Japan has been working on so hard for decades — removing ‘allergic’ reaction against nuclear weapons and nuclear power."
2. "The U.S. ships hundreds of thousands of tons of scrap to China each year, much of it comprising the aluminum remains of broken-down vehicles that have been fed through industrial shredders. The scrap is so laden with coins, many of them battered beyond recognition, that a new industry has emerged to reclaim and repatriate them."
The program has paid out more than $100 million since 2009, the year customs officials in Los Angeles noted a sharp increase in large coin shipments from China. The uptick was so sharp that federal law-enforcement officials have come to believe some of the dimes, quarters and half dollars arriving from the Far East are fakes.
3. "The Doug Mirabelli Trade: An Oral History"
Our guys that year were big poker players on the plane. Mirabelli lost his meal money every single road trip. The guys were crushed Mirabelli was leaving, because he helped supplement their meal money on the road. We were no longer going to have him on the plane. They used to call it “Mirabelli Bucks.”

Link roundup

1. "A Los Angeles County judge on Friday strongly criticized the Long Beach Police Department's practice of conducting sting operations against gay men cruising for companionship, saying the department’s tactics were tantamount to discrimination."
Dhanidina also rejected prosecutors' arguments that Long Beach based its policing tactics on citizen complaints about lewd conduct, saying the agency provided little to no evidence of such complaints at men's public restrooms where the bulk of the stings took place.
2. "Cloud seeding returns to LA, but no one is sure if it works"

3. "Imitation is said to be the highest form of flattery. Well, in that case Under Armour has just received its biggest compliment yet."
Recently, Chinese brand Uncle Martian launched their sportswear line with a logo and font almost identical to that of the Baltimore brand.

Friday, April 29, 2016

Thursday, April 28, 2016

"Finally, a Bible just for boys!"



Amazon:
Finally, a Bible just for boys! As part of the 2:52 series for boys, the 2:52 Boys' Bible, NIV, is the 'ultimate manual' for boys ages 8 to 12. Based on Luke 2:52: 'And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men,' this Bible helps boys become more like Jesus mentally, physically, spiritually, and socially-smarter, stronger, deeper, and cooler. The 2:52 Track takes boys through the Bible. Each reading highlights people, stories, and Scriptures that help boys grow toward maturity and manhood. Additional features include the following: Make It Stick: Special entry spaces for everything from fun doodles and sketches to quick responses to the text; Get a Load of This: Interesting and sometimes humorous info about Bible facts, Bible times, and Bible characters; and Gross!: Gross and gory facts in the Bible.

Link roundup

1. "How did 'Space Raptor Butt Invasion' by Chuck Tingle become a Hugo finalist?"
Pseudonymous erotica author Tingle, who is also responsible for titles such as "Taken by the Gay Unicorn Biker," responded quickly to the Hugo news with a new e-book, "Slammed in the Butt by My Hugo Award Nomination."

It seems clear that Day expected Tingle's nomination to outrage his critics, but it doesn't appear to have worked
2. How to stop harassing tweets and comments:
That seems to be a foundation for a legal argument, that when the employer makes social media — establishing a presence on Twitter, etc. — part of the job, there's a disparate impact on female employees and the employer should be held responsible for the sex discrimination.
3. New zine by Jim Rugg.

Captain America: Civil War posters



Via.

The state-owned China Basketball Association rejected Yao Ming's attempt to "take the league private and remodel it in the image of the profitable NBA"

"Financial woes have produced a woeful product. Players, working for a relative pittance, often play comically badly. The league suffers from notoriously poor officiating, while corruption is rampant. Games are oftentimes played in an atmosphere more akin to pro wrestling than pro basketball (as evidenced by a melee between fans and players outside of a hotel last month). I’ve personally sat in unheated CBA arenas during cold winter months, as players donned parkas on the bench."

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Scream poster



By Gary Pullin for Mondo.

"Bamboo Bombers and Stone Tanks—Japanese Decoys Used in World War II"

Including, "A dummy tank carved into the soft volcanic rock in Iwo Jima"

Link roundup

1. How close can you get to calling your game Star Wars?

2. Behind the scenes of Ultraman.

3. On the difficulty of being a professional reviewer and reviewing a small arthouse movie:
I am the only regular employee of the site situated in a place to really get to indie screenings. It takes 45 mins/1 hour each way for me to
...
the screening rooms where these generally happen. 2 hours for the movie, that’s 4 hours. Now I gotta write the review. Say 2 more hours.
...
I’m at 6 hours now. I publish a review of a small indie film that will not play most markets, it does not get any hits.

Link roundup

1. The Mountain that Rides posted his daily diet.

2. How to Counter Spawner Decks in Clash Royale.

3. Custom action figure based on the lead character from the Brian K. Vaughn/Marcos Martin issue of The Walking Dead.

George RR Martin on the latest politicized Hugo nominations

"Novel has some very fine and worthy choices (though my own favorite novels from last year are missing). Some talented young writers are up for the Campbell. On the other hand, Best Pro Artist is a joke, Short Story is if anything weaker than last year, and Best Related Work is a toxic swamp."

John Scalzi has an overview at the LA Times.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Link roundup

1. Marvel says it "has a very strong record of diversity in its casting of films and regularly departs from stereotypes" (except when it comes to Asians).

2. "Vocativ calculated that George RR Martin has written 56,829 words about the NFL on his LiveJournal."

3. "Widows of two Marine Corps pilots have won a 16-year fight to lift blame from their husbands’ shoulders for a 2000 Osprey crash that killed 19 people, including 15 Marines from San Diego County."
U.S. Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.), who championed the widows’ cause, said the Marine Corps pushed blame on the pilot and co-pilot in 2000 because it needed the troubled program to continue and succeed.

Link roundup

1. Aliens comic by Jim Woodring and Kilian Plunkett. Relatedly, the Reebok Aliens sneakers are being scalped at ebay.

2. "The leader of the Church of Scientology, David Miscavige, is looking to stop the publication of a new tell-all memoir written by his father Ron Miscavige."

3. "Recipe: Spicy Glazed Tofu From Num Pang Sandwich Shop."

Link roundup

1. "Up to $800m (£550m) in cash held by so-called Islamic State (IS) has been destroyed in air strikes, a US military official says."
In one case, he said, an estimated $150m was destroyed at a house in Mosul, Iraq.
2. "The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000."
The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death.
3. "The sweet spot for building drug tunnels [is] in San Diego's Otay Mesa neighborhood"
Go too far west and the ground will be sandy and potentially soggy from the water of the Pacific Ocean. That could lead to flooding, which wouldn’t be good for the drug business. Too far east and you’ll hit a dead end of hard mountain rock.

But, in a strip of land that runs between roughly the Tijuana airport and the Otay Mesa neighborhood in San Diego, there’s a sweet spot of sandstone and volcanic ash that isn’t as damp as the oceanic earth and not as unyielding as stone.
4. "Before the Stonewall Uprising, There Was the ‘Sip-In’"
According to Mr. Wicker and Mr. Leitsch, their battle to be served was a subset of a larger issue: the ritualized police entrapment of gay men for intent to have sex. “With this action, we were entrapping them into obeying the law,”

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Flooded city diorama



Making of pics.

"Match-Fixing Report Shows How Gambling Has Ruined Korean StarCraft"

"Life made seven times as much money throwing two games than he would have for winning the entire tournament."

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Deadpool editor cosplays as Gwenpool

Alien poster by Jay Shaw



"Alien by Jay Shaw. Edition of 70. 18"x24" Solvent Print on 9mil Front Print Backlit Polyester Film. Printed by CBS Graphics. $60

Available at mondotees.com at 11AM CST on 4/26."

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Black Panther Hot Wheels Car



"The new hero on the block gets this souped-up SUV, with headlights reminiscent of his mask along with cat’s ears on the doors surrounded by his trademark Wakandan toothed necklace. According to the packaging, T’Challa’s 'heart-shaped herb is hidden in the rear cargo,' powering the vehicle’s super performance."

"Amazon Unintentionally Paying Scammers To Hand You 1000 Pages Of Crap You Don’t Read"

Consumerist:
Scammers are basically uploading “books” that are nothing but files full of nonsense with some link on page 1 that puts readers on page 300 or 3000 (the maximum page length for which Amazon will pay out) almost instantly. In between there’s nothing but nonsense, but the scammer can use click farms to drive up the ranking of their book and so people download it anyway.

The user hasn’t paid for this book directly, because they have an unlimited subscription, so they just close the file, forget about it, and move on to the next. But if dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of readers get tricked into the same maneuver, that “author” has just made a decent amount of money for something like 15 minutes’ worth of total work.

Wayward Pines season 2 poster

Link roundup

1. "A legal journey that was set off more than a decade ago with the shooting of unarmed citizens by police officers in the desperate days after Hurricane Katrina wound toward a close on Wednesday when five former officers pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy, obstruction of justice and civil rights charges."
the case would be undergo years of troubles and reversals, eventually becoming drawn into a scandal in the federal prosecutors’ office here that took down the local United States attorney.
2. Lemur demands a good scratch.

3. "The Entire World is Getting a New Polio Vaccine This Month"
After almost 30 years of trying, the move has the potential to finally stop any new cases of polio from occurring. But planners acknowledge that the move carries some risk: It could accidentally ignite an outbreak of the type of polio caused by the vaccine.

Link roundup

1. "People are turning to professional photographers for prom portraits guaranteed to rack up the likes.​"

2. "the Trump family is auctioning off a 10-week internship at their real estate empire."

3. Planned dishes for Shanghai Disneyland.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

July 2016 Marvel Comics


Poe Dameron #4 cover by Phil Noto





International Iron Man #5 cover by Alex Maleev




The Punisher #3 cover by Declan Shalvey

New startup is just a bus between San Francisco and Los Angeles

"When you consider the geographies SleepBus serves, the startup could be competitive as more than a bus. An overnight ride at $48 is cheaper than most bargain-rate hotel rooms and certainly less expensive than your standard Airbnb in a major city. The bus has no shower, so it's not really fair to compare it to a living space, but would anyone familiar with rent prices in San Francisco and Los Angeles be shocked to learn of someone buying a month's worth of tickets to live on the vehicle and bathing at the nearest YMCA?"

Link roundup

1. "S. Korea covered up mass abuse, killings of 'vagrants'" to prepare for the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

2. "VR porn to be offered as room service in Las Vegas"
In each film, VR Bangers says you'll be able to "see your hotel room replicated in the VR headset."
3. "Virtual reality has a huge sexual harassment problem"
Harassment has long been a problem in first-gen virtual environments such as Second Life, but thanks to the lifelike nature and first-person perspective of VR systems, those advances can be genuinely scary.

Secret Cinema screening of 28 Days Later



Photo gallery.

Link roundup

1. Minimal tube disaster survival kit.

2. Metroid-inspired comic.

3. "A USC study that tracked Southern California children over a 20-year period has found they now have significantly fewer respiratory symptoms as a result of improved air quality."

Monday, April 18, 2016

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Escape the Room, Mystery at the Stargazer's Manor



Cover art by Erwin Madrid for Escape the Room, available at Amazon ($22).

Link roundup

1. Kate Beaton on "tit windows."

2. "Chris Beard was hired as the new head [basketball] coach at Texas Tech on Friday, less than three weeks after he accepted the same position at UNLV."
"This unprecedented move is extremely disappointing to the president and I, for our program and to our fans."
3. Painted pool noodles make convincing spiked wooden barricades for LARP games.

"Anger is to the internet what fear was to television."

AK:
it’s been obvious for a long time that anger’s a state that the internet wants you to be in so it can manipulate you to do what it wants.

...

this wasn’t the internet we all imagined back at the beginning. We were all supposed to have this amazing range of opinions, and it’d be a flourishing of individuality. And what has it become? “Oh no some director has tweeted something out of line with our social norms.”

...

Like, if you read about movie folks, great comedy writers, the folks what draw comics– that’s the fun part, hearing little stories how they’re not like regular folks.

Link roundup

1. "Game of Thrones Comes to Life With #ArttheThrone"
five diverse artists will reinterpret scenes from the series, debuting their pieces on April 20 at a private exhibition in New York City . . . in the meantime, get to know the artists and their work below
2. These Clash Royale videos are great to explain strategy.

3.  Obama vs. Steph Curry in Connect Four.

Friday, April 15, 2016

Link roundup

1. "This odd series of events eventually touched off an extraordinary feat of forensic detective work by a group of athletes who were convinced that Miller had committed what they consider the triathlon’s worst possible transgression. They believed she had deliberately cut the course and then lied about it."
Dissatisfied with the response of race officials, they methodically gathered evidence from the minutiae of her record: official race photographs, timing data, photographs from spectators along the routes, the accounts of other competitors and volunteers who saw, or did not see, Miller at various points.

...

Emotions here are still so raw on the subject of Miller that many people interviewed — other athletes, race volunteers and spectators, social acquaintances — declined to allow their names to be used in this article. Some said they were afraid of running into Miller in town; others said that Miller had responded to criticism so aggressively that they were leery of being bad-mouthed or even sued if they raised questions about her conduct. Even people who feel sympathetic toward her said they did not want to be seen speaking publicly about a subject so fraught.
2. "West Hollywood agreed to pay $500,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit against the city and Councilman John Duran":
The suit was brought on behalf of Ian Owens, whom Duran hired as his deputy after meeting him on Grindr

...

[Duran] conceded in an interview that had the lawsuit against him and the city gone to trial, West Hollywood's "unique culture" might not have translated well with many members of a jury outside of the city.
3. "How do those [baseball] uniforms get so clean?"
“You can find some type of powder, like an Oxyclean that comes in powder. Put it in the washer overnight, let it sit in hot water, start it up the next morning and rewash them”
4. NYT:
Kuei, 48, a stay-at-home mother from San Jose, Calif., hunkered down at her computer and began poring over highlight videos featuring Charlotte Hornets guard Jeremy Lin, her favorite N.B.A. player. She fumbled around on Final Cut Pro, a video-editing program, splicing together the specific clips she had sought. She did this for six straight nights, three hours each night.

...

To Kuei’s surprise, the video soon attracted close to a million views, capturing the attention of basketball fans around the world and the eye of the league.

"Stalker Sarah...The full-time celebrity chaser"

Motherboard:
Stalker Sarah is well-known as a “super-fan” and doesn’t mind being called by her “stalker” title. She adopted it years ago in response to some angry Jonas Brothers fans, and uses it in place of her real name, which she keeps secret. Sarah gets told to stay away from famous people on a daily basis, but getting close to them is her job. In her world, proximity to fame is a currency, one she has turned into a career which spans thousands of celebrity selfies.

Stalker Sarah apparently never sleeps. The full-time celebrity chaser updates her 157k Instagram followers and 126k followers on Twitter daily. In 2013, she was even profiled in the New York Times Magazine. She appears outside hotels, at airports, and in underground carparks late at night as frequently as official tours and signings. Her updates record the tedium as well as the excitement of active fandom—camping out, waiting in the cold, and dodging bodyguards in the quest for the perfect picture.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Link roundup

1. "UC Davis contracted with consultants for at least $175,000 to scrub the Internet of negative online postings following the November 2011 pepper-spraying of students and to improve the reputations of both the university and Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, newly released documents show."

2. A theory on who built the Wall in Game of Thrones.

3. Her son is obsessed with garage doors.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

"This horrifying and newly trendy online-harassment tactic is ruining careers"

WaPo:
The latest high-profile victim is . . . formerly a spokesperson for Nintendo of America.

...

Unrelenting, the mob kept looking for more dirt . . . . On Sunday, they found and republished what they claim is her listing on an escort service.

“The amount of obsession it must take to dig up old tweets, find addresses, link me to anon things not related to games is … not normal for a professional industry,” [she] tweeted on March 30.

There is, to be clear, no indication that the listing is real: It doesn’t show the escort’s face or real name, and [the former Nintendo employee] hasn’t publicly confirmed or denied it. But regardless of whether or not the woman in the listing is actually [her], the fact that someone dug it up says a lot about their tactics. Either [her] critics trawled the Web looking for dirt on her, without even the help of public records or reverse-image search … or they combed through escort listings until they found an ad that could arguably pass as hers.

Link roundup

1. "Students at Purdue University soon will be able to apply for education funding in exchange for a percentage of their future earnings"
Students would repay the debt during the years immediately following college based on a fixed rate linked to their expected income, a gamble that could save them thousands of dollars as compared to traditional loans but also could cost them far more if they land high-paying jobs.
2. "For several years, Eddie Tipton, the former security director of the US Multi-State Lottery Association, installed software code that allowed him to predict winning numbers on specific days of the year, investigators allege."

3. "Wherever predators are kept away by expanses of water, birds become flightless—quickly and repeatedly."

4. Very good dog.

Figma Metal Gear Solid Soldier

Monday, April 11, 2016

"It takes at least 50 hours to blur an entire episode" of Naked and Afraid

NYT:
The risks are high, too. After the first wave of success for “Naked and Afraid” in 2013, other naked-themed reality shows like TLC’s “Buying Naked” and VH1’s “Dating Naked” followed. Two years ago, a woman sued VH1 and the production team of the show “Dating Naked” after she contended that a blur did not fully cover her crotch. (The suit was thrown out.)

“It’s something we live in constant fear of,” said Steve Rankin, an executive producer, referring to prospective lawsuits. He added: “The Discovery Channel is not an R-rated network. It’s seen by families. We don’t want to upset people.”

Enter the Blur Man Group.

Just a few years ago, these designers were having a difficult time finding regular work.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Friday, April 8, 2016

Clash of the Titans figurine set



Josh Izzo:
Pre-Order!! Show of hands - who out there would want one of these sets? I'm thinking about turning on the machine again. $65 shipped. Perseus is non articulated. Hand painted. Fits perfectly with the rest of the vintage line!

"Halfway between lamp and dog"



A photo posted by Cities Dubai (@citiesdubai) on


A photo posted by Cities Dubai (@citiesdubai) on


WAaf Table lamp.

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Link roundup

1. "CIF Commissioners are beginning process to implement pitch count in baseball"
For almost 30 years, there has been a rule in high school baseball in California allowing pitchers to throw no more than 10 innings in a week.

Now the CIF Commissioners have begun consideration and research on putting together a new rule that would emphasize pitch count over innings pitched.
2. "Flight Attendant Deploys Emergency Slide For No Reason, Leaves Plane"

3. "Panama Papers show how the very rich use art to get richer"

4. "Is the NYT’s Lede About That Red Cap Agent Who Met Gay Talese A Little Too Talese-ian?"

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Link roundup

1. "An Oklahoma man who has gained national exposure for his 'video vigilante' campaign to expose street prostitution in his hometown was arrested yesterday for allegedly paying hookers to ensure that they serviced customers in an area where he could easily film the illicit trysts."

2. "Looking to cash in on a booming real estate market, Los Angeles property owners are demolishing an increasing number of rent-controlled buildings to build pricey McMansions, condos and new rentals, leading to hundreds of evictions across the city."
More than 1,000 rent-controlled apartments were taken off the market last year — a nearly threefold increase since 2013
3. "Five years after an earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, Japanese authorities say a long-planned 'ice wall' around the leaking facility can be turned on."
The underground refrigeration system that should create the frozen barrier was completed last month — more than a year behind schedule
4. "Climate Change Opens Up the First Luxury Cruise Route in the Arctic"
coast guard officials from the US and Canada will train for a cruise ship catastrophe: a mass rescue from a luxury liner on its maiden voyage through the remote and deathly cold waters between the Northwest Passage and the Bering Strait.

The prospect of just such a disaster occurring amid the uncharted waters and capricious weather of the Arctic is becoming all too real.