In Boston, a woman paid more than half a million dollars to buy the two expensive parking spaces on the right side of this photo. The spots, which she paid $560,000 for, cost more than the $313,000 median price for a home in the state. And surprisingly, someone once paid $300,000 for a single spot. Pretty sure that if you were to steal one of her spots, she’d be upset. (AP photo)
12 is the median age at which lesbian, gay and bisexual adults first felt they might be something other than heterosexual or straight. Among those who have “come out” to a family member or close friend, 20 is the median age at which they first did so.
“I really have not had to tell anyone. I am usually asked. My parents still do not understand, and it is something that is never discussed with my family.”
— 52 year old gay man
Our interactive data explorer lets you sort through a variety of personal coming-out experiences.
Recommend checking out the data explorer, which lets you filter by age. One of the respondents was 86.
True love wasn’t built to last: Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng are divorcing, though it’s not clear why yet. Anyone want to take any guesses?
whistlesays asks: Ernie! I have so much to say! First - LOVE what you do on Short Form Blog. I get a lot of news from your blog alone sometimes. Second - I had no idea you're MSU alum and TBG alum! I just finished up as Editor in Chief this past year. Thanks for making that website in 2004! Third - love your piece on Medium. Finding paid work is such a huge issue that I'm right in the middle of. Just graduated, moving w/out a job, terrified. But I still have hope! Thanks for bringing up this subject - so needed.
Hey there! Great to hear from you. You know, here’s the thing that was great about The Big Green. When it launched, it was built essentially as a way to give folks who couldn’t get on at the SNews a chance to build bylines. And it worked! We built a pretty good foundation for it—Beth Desy had the foresight to launch it, but Sarah Hunko really laid the foundation to make it thrive and I helped on the design front.
The reason I wrote what I did is that I know it was a scary time for me as a student to not be sure if I’d be able to turn what I did into a career. But fortunately I was able. The best advice I can give is creativity, tenacity, and a willingness to stick your neck out there. SFB started as an effort to push my creative efforts out there, and it worked! For folks looking for a job, something like SFB is what I’d recommend. Not necessarily as a replacement for a job, but as a way to show that you’re a self-starter and can build (and more importantly, finish) things.
Thanks for the kind words about SFB and the Medium piece. It was nice to look back on those days even if they weren’t easy. Please let me know how things are going, and thanks for letting me know TBG was left in good hands!
Take it easy! :) —Ernie @ SFB
EDIT: I meant this to be a private response, but screw it, the advice is good. :)
LEN - IT’S MY NEIGHBOURHOOD - OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO (by LENOFFICIALTV)
weird
LEN made a new song and its pretty good
a one-hit wonder from the 90s (“steal my sunshine”) returns with a sesame-street-esque ode to toronto.
and i have to love it because TORONTO!!! even though it is maybe the tackiest song i have heard in a long long while.
Which Toronto will I get to see this summer? Rob Ford’s or Len’s?
Two side notes inspired by this discovery. One: Len has a channel full of music videos of theirs that you’ve never seen (they seem to play off the whole brother/sister thing a lot), and two, Len is totally a band of hipsters. Why do I say this? Well, check out this screenshot from the “Steal My Sunshine” video, which i admit to watching after playing this ode to Toronto:
See that sticker on his bike? That’s a Vice Magazine logo. In 1999. Before most of the hipsters even knew what Vice was.
See? They’re trendsetters. I rest my case.
EDIT: I just found evidence to the contrary about that whole trendsetter thing:
That’s right, the guy from Len discovered Sum 41.
The Superman logo has changed a lot over the years. In “Man of Steel,” the S is a Kryptonian symbol for hope.
Kryptonite isn’t Superman’s only weakness, it seems. Design trends seem to be on the list, too.
![What you should know about the Black Swan unpaid intern case
The ballerinas weren’t the only tortured souls on the set of Black Swan. Some of the unpaid interns on the set found themselves doing the kind of menial labor (i.e. grabbing coffee) that they didn’t go to school for. And on Wednesday, a court agreed, ruling that 1) the interns should have been paid for their time and 2) opened up the company behind the film, Fox Entertainment Group, up for a class-action lawsuit. “Judge [William H.] Pauley’s ruling might still symbolize the tipping point in the battle over unpaid internships. Unless a higher court steps in, some judges might choose to follow his lead in the future,” The Atlantic’s Jordan Weissmann writes, noting that the case could scare some companies off from using unpaid interns for liability reasons. (Side note: We’ve been following the unpaid internship issue lately, and I wrote a Medium post about the topic you should read.)
(thanks Sara Schwartz)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/3742d8d55a6be18fa582499b3a5bf366/tumblr_mod1qpf2Cq1qas8z9o1_500.jpg)
The ballerinas weren’t the only tortured souls on the set of Black Swan. Some of the unpaid interns on the set found themselves doing the kind of menial labor (i.e. grabbing coffee) that they didn’t go to school for. And on Wednesday, a court agreed, ruling that 1) the interns should have been paid for their time and 2) opened up the company behind the film, Fox Entertainment Group, up for a class-action lawsuit. “Judge [William H.] Pauley’s ruling might still symbolize the tipping point in the battle over unpaid internships. Unless a higher court steps in, some judges might choose to follow his lead in the future,” The Atlantic’s Jordan Weissmann writes, noting that the case could scare some companies off from using unpaid interns for liability reasons. (Side note: We’ve been following the unpaid internship issue lately, and I wrote a Medium post about the topic you should read.)
(thanks Sara Schwartz)
We have a real double standard. A few weeks ago we were all complaining that we didn’t have enough information about those kids in Boston and we needed broader intelligence sharing. Now we say we want to clamp down on how the information moves.Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) • Speaking after an off-record briefing, attended by roughly half of the Senate’s members, about the NSA’s surveillance programs. Despite McCain’s skeptical take on the matter, momentum seems to be growing in favor of more limitations on information-sharing, with one key defender of the NSA programs, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), claiming that legislation was on its way. “We will certainly have legislation which will limit or prevent contractors from handling highly classified and technical data, and we will do some other things,” she said.
From a NY Times story on the matter:
According to an internal memorandum circulating inside the government on Thursday, the “intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.” President Obama said in April that the United States had physiological evidence that the nerve gas sarin had been used in Syria, but lacked proof of who used it and under what circumstances. He now believes that the proof is definitive, according to American officials.
This represents a quote-unquote “red line” situation for the U.S. (as in, Syria’s crossed a line), which means that we could see military action as a result.
In her last days, my mother occasionally became confused....
”The reporter...
I can’t add much to what’s already been (and will be) ...
One of the perks of being an early employee...
Over the last 90 days, the Digg...
#FMMDI (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza)
GOP Rep. Steve King calls out “illegal aliens” who just “invaded” his D.C. office.
Quite the invasion.
That’s what we call misrepresenting the situation.
In its first shot against the bow against the Business Insider audience, BuzzFeed literally writes an article that’s so fetch. Move over Financial Times, BF is gunning for your readership.
I join the judgment of the Court, and all of its opinion except Part I–A and some portions of the rest of the opinion going into fine details of molecular biology. I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. It suffices for me to affirm, having studied the opinions below and the expert briefs presented here, that the portion of DNA isolated from its natural state sought to be patented is identical to that portion of the DNA in its natural state; and that complementary DNA (cDNA) is a synthetic creation not normally present in nature.A big-deal case passed the Supreme Court this morning, with the court finding that genes can’t be patented. But the fun part of this decision is Justice Antonin Scalia’s reasoning for joining with the majority, which disregards a part of the opinion which notes that “Genes form the basis for hereditary traits in living organisms.” Apparently Scalia slept through biology class in high school, because that’s all way over his head.
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