Author: Joey deVilla

A fedora, while jaunty when worn right, comes with so much negative cultural baggage at this point in time that you’re best off leaving it alone, along with flare pants and wide lapels.

If you need a little more background on what happened to this poor hat, Vice’s History of the Fedora should help you get up to speed. An excerpt:

While the fedora was enjoying its brief re-entry into the realm of the fashionable, a writer named Neil Strauss was hard at work on what would become the foundational text for the fedora’s terminal phase. In his book The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, Strauss described the “seduction community,” a loose group formed online and IRL by nerdy, socially awkward–and often white, middle class, and entitled–heterosexual men who gave money to self-styled “pickup artists,” or “PUAs,” in hopes of learning how to manipulate women into sleeping with them. Among more nefarious tactics like “negging” and “cat-string theory” was “peacocking“: “a technique developed to get attention in busy, distraction-filled environments such as night clubs…by wearing something showy like a cowboy hat or a glowing necklace.” Many men took this as a cue to wear a hat. Many of these hats were fedoras. In a paper titled “Fedora Shaming as Discursive Activism,” Ben Abraham pinpoints a widely reblogged tip from a popular PUA forum:

“If you wear a hat, make it memorable, easy to spot, and something to work with your style. This is usually easier than it sounds. Try the fedora…it portrays you’re a stylish man that knows what he’s doing, and it’s a great lock-in prop.”

This was both a reflection of pre-existing fedoras and a catalyst for fedoras to come. An infinite feedback loop; a douchebag ouroboros.

Click the graph to see the source of this misleading graph, the Fraser Institute report Ontario: No Longer a Place to Prosper.

In their latest white paper, the conservative/libertarian/pro-Voldemort think tank known as the Fraser Institute is playing dirty statistics pool. Take a look at the graph above (taken from page 15 of the report), which at a casual, innumerate glance, paints a picture of Ontario as a Soviet-style bureaucracy where there are more public sector jobs than private sector ones.

Then take a closer look at the Y-axes for each of the job categories:

Each line has its own y-axis, with the private sector axis starting at a higher number and on a much larger scale than the private sector axis. This trick allows them to make it appear as if public sector jobs are taking over, a bit of graphing jiggery-pokery that’s about as intellectually honest as the canoe vs. battleship comparison shown below:

The one bit of honesty in the Fraser Institute’s graph is that they provided a citation showing where they got the data from: Statistics Canada’s CANSIM table 282-0089, the Labour Force Survey estimates. I went there, used the “add/remove data” feature to narrow the report down to Ontario for the years 1993 through 2015, plugged the January numbers for each of those years into Excel and generated this graph:

Click the graph to see it at full size.

The funny number games don’t appear to end there, however:

Again, if you want to look at the numbers, go to Statistics Canada’s CANSIM table 282-0089, the Labour Force Survey estimates, use the “Add/remove data” feature to limit the numbers to Ontario, and set the span of time to January 1993 – January 2015. I took those numbers and plugged them into this spreadsheet.

When someone presents you with a graph like the Fraser Institute’s, they’re counting on you to be lazy and ignorant. Don’t let them be right.

Believe me, I know.

Thanks to Randeep Katari for the find!

There’s a giant mechanical cat in Tokyo’s Shinjuku station that’s dispensing presents to people who press on its nose. It’s a promo for the Yamato Transport delivery service, whose logo is a kuroneko — a black cat.

Here’s the giant cat in action:

The “wacky news from Japan” site RocketNews24 has all the details.

Found via @gidget. Click the photo to see the source.

“Oh yeah, SF? You can AET ME!”

The Missus and I had already scheduled a trip to to catch the EPCOT Food and Wine Festival (a.k.a. “Drinking Around the World”) and the three-hour Wild Africa Trek at Animal Kingdom when we heard that the opening of the very first bricks-and-mortar ThinkGeek store would be opening in nearby Orlando that same weekend. We couldn’t pass up the opportunity, so we made a little detour on the way home to check it out.

Click the image to get the Google Maps directions from the Magic Kingdom to the ThinkGeek Store.

The ThinkGeek Store is in Orlando’s Florida Mall, right next door to the JCPenny anchor store. After she got my picture in front of the Promised Land, I took this one of Anitra:

The store had its grand opening on Thursday night, and we showed up Sunday evening, expecting the place to have been picked clean…

Opening night at the ThinkGeek Store (photo from Orlando’s MyNews 13).

…but there was geeky stuff aplenty when we showed up.

We also had to get shots of ourselves with Rocket Raccoon (his official name in the comics; he’s just “Rocket” in the movies)…

Visitors to the store will be greeted by a lot of metal. First, by the Terminator:

…and then by the Iron Man Mark 43 armor from The Avengers: Age of Ultron.

This little decorative piece can be yours for the low, low price of $10,000!

Here’s what the store looks like once you get past the displays at the front:

…and here’s the view from the back, looking towards the entrance.

The cashier is located in the center of the store:

Here’s Anitra checking out all the geeky goodness:

There’s a wall of stuff just for the Star Wars fans:

…with a fair bit of stuff in a closed display case:

…and a whole lotta cheaper stuff that you can get your nerdy little mitts on immediately:

I’m told that they’re not lunchboxes, they’re collectors’ cases:

I love the mugs featuring characters and themes from the upcoming movie. I’d have gotten the BB-8 one if I didn’t already have too many mugs:

No bar is complete without one of these:

I love this self-stirring mug. Why stir your mug with a spoon like a chump when you can use THE FORCE?

There’s all manner of decorative Star Wars goodies from the immediately recognizable:

…to those that might be obscure to the casual movie-watcher (that’s not just a Wampa head, but an entire rug):

And of course, there are plenty of posters:

They have a pile of the new BB-8 droids by Sphero. It sells for $150:

Or, if you’d rather spend that $150 on something else, how about new bad guy Kylo Ren’s lightsaber?

I used to work at Microsoft, so I know what it feels like to have the Dark Side flow through me:

The back right wall is dedicated to videogame trinkets and memorabilia:

I’ve played many of the Call of Duty games, but had no idea that there were toys — er, action figures — for the franchise:

My nephews would be all over the Minecraft section of the store:

The back wall is dedicated to t-shirts and hats:

The hat’s cute, but I get the feeling that if I wore this while passing too close to a school zone, I’d find myself in the back of a police car in very short order:

Cosplay meets roleplay meets mental images you’ll never cleanse in the lingerie section:

Who knew there was this much geek underwear?

For the man who likes both lounging and Mortal Kombat, I give you the Scorpion bathrobe:

Ironic Hallowee’n costume, or cry for help?It’s your call with these adult-size Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles footy pajamas:

You can pamper your feet at home with these adorable unicorn slippers…

…or if you’re more of a Walking Dead fan, these zombie slippers:

For all you sexy bronies (a contradiction in terms, I think), here are the DJ Pone-3 glow-in-the-dark boxers:

There’s lots of stuff for the TV show fans as well…

…including a whole shelf devoted to Adventure Time:

The middle left wall is devoted to posters and paintings:

…and the back left wall is taken up by a lot — and I mean a lot — of Pop! Vinyl figures:

The front right wall is for the comics fans:

No fan shop is complete without figurines:

Lots and lots and lots of figurines:

And don’t worry, card games and traders, you haven’t been left out:

There’s a shelf for belts, suspenders, lanyards, and even guitar straps. Where was the Captain America guitar strap when I was an active keytar player?

Geeks carry lots of stuff, and stuff calls for bags. Luckily, the ThinkGeek store has plenty of them!

ThinkGeek’s own Bag of Holding looks like it’ll hold most laptops and tablets, or gaming accessories.The fuzzy front is designed to accommodate all sorts of velcro badges:

Marvel fans will appreciate the Captain America and Rocket Raccoon knapsacks:

Are you old school? How about this Nintendo Game Boy-themed pack?

Are you really old school? Then this Star Trek-themed one’s for you:

Are you new school? Then you want a Minecraft creeper bag:

And for you styling ladies, this 8-bit purse might be just what you’re looking for:

There’s a shelf for your bronies:

The Missus informs me that becoming a brony is grounds for divorce:

Sci-fi and Asian food practically go hand-in-hand, hence these Darth Vader lightsaber chopsticks:

If Star Trek is more your thing, how about this U.S.S. enterprise sushi set, with the saucer section acting as the soy sauce dish?

Of course there are replica props! Here’s a great phaser from Star Trek: The Original Series:

…and for the Whovians, a sonic screwdriver, with integrated sound generator and lights:

I want this bad boy: a “Han Solo frozen in carbonite” fridge!

Again, for the Trek fans, a Borg cube fridge:

For the Assassin’s Creed fans, the “stabby gauntlet” !

Here’s Anitra and store guy Kenneth demonstrating why the “stabby gauntlet” should be used only for killing and not for giving out high-fives:

There’s lots of quick-gifty stuff on the shelves near the front:

This one’s one of my favorite impulse buy items:

Saturday was Batman day, and the ThinkGeek Store has Batman paraphernalia aplenty, from the batarang…

…to the Batman tie…

…to the leather utility belt. Whether you’re a Batman fan or wanted to live in Rob Liefield’s World of Pouches, if you have three hundred bucks burning a hole in your pocket, this one’s for you!

Here’s another one of my favorite impulse buy items:

And of course, there are stickers:

Let’s hope the ThinkGeek Store does exactly this:

For me, the ThinkGeek store is perfectly situated: close enough that I can get there by driving, but not so close that I’d be there all the time:

Click the image to get the Google Maps directions from my neck of the woods to the ThinkGeek Store.

If the photos above aren’t enough, here’s a video that the people at Attractions Magazine shot of the store last week: