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Iran has started mass-producing its locally designed Kowsar fighter plane, state television reported.
“Soon the needed number of this plane will be produced and put at the service of the Air Force,” Defence Minister Amir Hatami said on Saturday at a ceremony launching the plane’s production, which was shown on television.
Iran unveiled the Kowsar domestic fighter jet in August with President Hassan Rouhani saying Tehran’s military strength was only designed to deter enemies and aimed at creating “lasting peace”.
State media said the new jet had “advanced avionics” and multi-purpose radar, and it was “100-percent indigenously made” for the first time.
Footage of the Kowsar’s test flights was circulated by various official media. But live footage of the plane taxiing along a runway at the defence show was cut before it took off.
Iran unveiled the jet at a defence show in the capital Tehran in August [Iranian Presidency/AFP]
At its inauguration in August, Hatami said the aircraft programme was motivated by memories of air strikes Iran suffered during its eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s, and by repeated threats from Israel and the United States that “all options are on the table” in dealing with Iran.
“We have learned in the [Iran-Iraq] war that we cannot rely on anyone but ourselves. Our resources are limited and we are committed to establishing security at a minimum cost,” he said in a televised interview.
The US has sold hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons to Iran’s regional rivals, but has demanded that Tehran curb its defence programmes, and is in the process of reimposing crippling sanctions in a bid to force its capitulation.
Rouhani said Iran must show restraint as well as deterrence, in an apparent swipe at his hardline opponents who seek to provoke the US with aggressive slogans.
“With a couple of sentences one can start a fight. With a couple of military moves one can enter confrontation. But then it will be costly,” he said. “The skill is to protect the country with minimum cost.”
Following the withdrawal of the United States from the 2015 nuclear deal in May, Iran has avoided an aggressive response and sought to maintain its good will with other international partners who oppose Washington’s move.
Rouhani said US pressure was also a spur to action.
“Why does America impose economic sanctions on us? … Why does it drag China into an economic war? Because it feels each one of them has a weak point. We must fix our weak points.”
The Kowsar domestic fighter jet is a fourth-generation fighter, featuring “advanced avionics” and multi-purpose radar [Iranian Defence Ministry/AFP]
Welcome to, an ongoing series at Mashable that looks at how to take care of – and deal with – the kids in your life. Because Dr. Spock is nice and all, but it’s 2018 and we have the entire internet to contend with.
Parents everywhere are trying to find the right balance for screen time with small children, but if you absolutely have to make it through Aunt Edna’s three-course birthday lunch or take part in a grown-up conversation during dinner, sometimes to only thing to do is to hand your phone over.
When you’re giving your child a game to play, you want to be confident that it’s child-safe, age-appropriate content — which is where this list comes in. We’ve hand-picked a selection of iPhone and Android apps that are especially designed to engage and educate younger children.
Game on
1. PBS KIDS Games PBS KIDS offers over 90 free games featuring favourite shows like Sesame Street, Dinosaur Train, Odd Squad, Arthur and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. The games are all designed to encourage creativity and promote learning science and maths. Ad-free, with no in-app purchases, this amazing app even works when your Wi-Fi is patchy.
Free, Ages 2-8, ,
2. Little Stars – Toddler Games This popular app offers mini-games that all have an educational element. The games include things like counting fingers, learning numbers, identifying shapes and colors and farm animal flashcards. It’s very customizable, so you can introduce topics on an ongoing basis. The option to record your own voiceover is especially fun for little ones and they will love earning stickers and seeing their achievement rocket flying into space.
Free, Ages 2 and up,
Edutainment
3. ABC Kids – Tracing & Phonics This ad-free option is a colorful early education app made by parents that helps children learn the English alphabet. It’s designed so that a toddler can use it alone without pressing confusing menu options that take them out of the game. The basic premise is an ABC-tracing game with both lowercase and uppercase letters, but there’s also elements of phonics paring and letter matching. Your child will earn stickers and toys as they complete games.
Free, Ages 2 and up, ,
4. Starfall Available on both iPhone and Android, this is the companion app for the popular pre-K and kindergarten curriculum providers. There is free content available to all, but Starfall members can access a full suite of educational activities. With the aim of helping kids learn reading, math and more, there are also art-related topics, poetry, music, books, songs, geometry and more. If your child is hungry for knowledge as well as dinner, this app will keep them engaged.
Free, Ages 8 and under, ,
Watching video
5. PBS KIDS Video Sometimes for a tired, bored child the only way to go is video. This multi award-winning app is specially designed for a safe, child-friendly viewing experience for kids of all ages. Anywhere you have a cellular or Wi-Fi connection, your child can watch their favorite shows and look forward to new full episodes available every Friday.
Free, Ages 8 and under, ,
6. Hopster This app gives you a free taste of the Hopster TV service. Claiming to “make screen time smart” Hopster delivers ad-free, child-friendly shows, books and games with an easy-to-use interface. The hand-picked TV shows include the likes of “Sesame Street,” “Moshi Monsters,” and “Fireman Sam” and can be downloaded for offline access. When your child is done with video, the apps’ “Games Balloon” gives them fun ways to learn numbers, literacy and improve their fine motor skills and memory.
Free, Ages 5 and under, ,
Make-believe play
7. LEGO DUPLO Train There’s a great selection of other LEGO apps available, but we’re highlighting this option as we’ve yet to meet a child who isn’t fascinated by trains. Use that to your advantage with this role-playing option that will magically transform your kid into a train driver. Based on the DUPLO My First Train set, this app will see your tiny driver build a train, load it up with cargo, help passengers and drive around the train tracks dealing with obstacles and crossings.
Free, Ages 18 months and up, ,
8. Tiny Tiger and Friends Delightful illustrations from a children’s book artist give this charming app gorgeous looks that will engage children and inspire their imagination. Three cute characters — a tiger, a hippo and a monkey — need help getting dressed up. Once your child creates them a colorful outfit, they can take snapshots and play sweet mini-games with the animals. A super-simple, ad-free, no in-app purchases interface makes for a hassle-free experience for everyone.
Free, Ages 2-5,
For calming down
9. Breathe, Think, Do With Sesame Part of Sesame Street‘s “Little Children, Big Challenges” initiative, which tries to help kids manage stressful situations and challenges by building resilience, this app will see your little one helping a monster to calm down. They can tap, pop bubbles and breathe with the monster as they face interactive everyday challenges together.
Free, Ages 5 and under, ,
10. Toddler Animal Pop This fun game also uses bubbles as a way to de-stress, but with a twist — they are animal-shaped. As well as a possible 30 different animals (with a $1.99 in-app purchase) there are other shapes to pop like stars and fruit. Designed for children ages 18 months and up, it’s ad-free with such simple gameplay that you can hand your phone over to your little munchkin and they can keep themselves entertained whilst improving their hand-eye coordination.
Free, Ages 18 months plus, ,
For more mindfulness apps for kids, check our full list.
Storytime
11. FarFaria Stories FarFaria is a subscription service, but the kind folk behind the app do offer access to one free book a day from their library of 900+ specially curated children’s books. From fairy tale classics to exciting new titles, if you have a budding bookworm, put this app on your phone. The design is well thought-out and the app includes read-along word highlighting in every story to help young readers improve.
Free, Ages 1-9, ,
12. Speakaboos – Kids Reading App Speakaboos is another free-trial option that offers over 200 interactive stories and songs designed to be so entertaining that children will choose reading over gaming. Created to be used independently by children from age two and up, they can discover nursery rhymes, songs, classic fairy tales as well as content that’s exclusive to Speakaboos.
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In this episode of Games to Play Before You Die, panel members Jordan Minor, Alexis Nedd, and Bob Al-Greene analyze the powerful impact of Assassin’s Creed II on the gaming world. From taking players to beautifully rendered historical locations to adding revolutionary combat and puzzle features, Assassin’s Creed II solidified itself as a can’t-miss and a game you must play before you die.
Games to Play Before You Die is also a podcast! Check it out .
If brought to market, this scooter could be the future. Stator, which looks pretty next level, is currently in testing and plans to be manufactured in the United States. The 250-lb scooter can be folded for easy storage and transport.
With a top speed of 25 mph, the scooter is designed to glide over rough surfaces making transportation enjoyable and statement-worthy.
Want live TV over the internet? Today you have several options, including Hulu, YouTube TV, PlayStation Vue, and more. It’s hard to remember, though, but there was a time when there were virtually no options for consumers who wanted to cut the cord. Sure, services like Netflix and Vudu provided plenty of titles on demand, but current content was scattered across myriad websites and services, and it didn’t do a good job of replicating the TV experience.
Then came along. Launched by satellite powerhouse Dish Network in , Sling TV wasn’t the first over-the-top (OTT) video service, but it was the first to get it right, both in terms of user experience and offerings. It made deals to package several popular TV channels live over the internet, including — crucially — ESPN. Since then it’s expanded in terms of both content and features, now offering dozens of channels, a cloud DVR, and even its own streaming box, the .
Jimshade Chaudhari, Sling TV’s vice president, product marketing and management
One of the key people behind the service is Jimshade Chaudhari, Sling TV’s vice president of product marketing and management. Chaudhari dropped by Mashable’s MashTalk podcast for a to dive deep into the state of internet TV, discussing how Sling differentiates from the now-crowded playing field, whether we’ll ever get rid of program guides, and why everything isn’t just on demand already?
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
—
Pete Pachal: How long have you been with Dish?
Jimshade Chaudhari: About eight years. I started on the Dish side of the business, and then moved over to Sling back in 2015 when we launched.
PP: Were you involved with the launch?
JC: I was involved with the launch. At that point, I was on the Dish side, I was working on our TV Everywhere services, which was how you were able to view your content online and mobile devices. That was one of the precursors [to Sling TV] along with another service we had called DishWorld which was actually a live streaming service that focused on international content. That’s what morphed into what people know today as Sling TV.
I didn’t know that. OK, so DishWorld, that was more targeted at people who wanted to see international content here in the States?
Correct. So you probably weren’t the target demographic.
I wasn’t looking for Russian soccer games or whatever they’re doing. Obviously [Sling TV and DishWorld] very different products. What translated?
A lot of it was the technology. This was a product that was available on Samsung TVs and on Roku devices. It was an app, like Sling TV is an app. We learned a little bit about consumer behavior there, but a lot of it was really kicking the tires on the technology. The internet was never designed for streaming live video content.
I think most people assume, because of the name “Sling,” that “Oh this grew out of the Slingbox.
As people in the industry, we’re all familiar with Slingbox. The masses really weren’t familiar with Slingbox. Sling was a new name for them. We’ve actually turned it into a verb, right? If you’ve seen our latest commercials we have a concept called “slinging” where how people are cutting the cord and adopting the slinging lifestyle right, getting the freedom and choice that comes with watching video on Sling TV versus their traditional paid TV provider.
Slingbox allowed you to have some freedom and control of your viewing experience even when you’re outside your home, which is a lot of what Sling TV allows people to do. Even though the technology is very different — there’s no hardware [with Sling TV] — but the concept of being able to take your content with you on the go was similar between Slingbox and Sling TV.
It was a revolutionary idea at the time. Everyone thought of it as the dream, but no one quite knew how to do it, ’cause it seemed dangerous. Basically nobody wanted to get sued, but [Slingbox] seemed to figure out how to thread that needle in a way and get at least people talking about this, influencers talking about this. Like, “Hey, why can’t we figure this out?” and they helped chart this path.
They were ahead of their time in terms of seeing where consumer engagement with video is going. Consumer needs and wants were evolving, people wanted to access content outside of their home, and even outside of their local territory. One of the big use cases back then for Slingbox was watching your local sports team when you weren’t in the same state or the same city
But that was a completely different hardware-based solution. Unless you were really a geeky early adopter, you didn’t know what Slingbox was. At a consumer electronics show, we would have a couple hardcore Slingbox fans come to us and say, “Oh is this the next evolution.” We’re like, “No, this is much better.”
How big is Sling TV now?
We were the first ones out the gate back in 2015. We basically defined a live OTT streaming space, and we’re still the leader. We have 2.344 million customers as of last quarter.
Do you measure that as active users, or subscribers?
Paying subscribers. A couple services are close to a million; a lot of services are much lower than a million. We have people using our app across all the popular platforms that are out there from Roku to Amazon to Xbox, etc. Obviously we were at zero back in 2015 — to get to over two million is pretty substantial growth for us.
This space is still really nascent. A lot of people, they’ve heard the term “cord cutting,” but don’t really know what that means or how to do it. A lot of our time has been educating people on, what is cord cutting? What is Sling TV? What are the options out there that aren’t traditional? And the competition actually helps from that standpoint.
What would you say are Sling TV’s main points of differentiation from major players like PlayStation Vue, Hulu, YouTube TV, and others?
What we’ve seen is a lot of [competitors] have replicated the model of traditional paid TV. There’s a big, bigger, biggest bundle, and you have to pay for a lot of channels that you’re not watching.
We’ve actually completely changed that paradigm. What we do is we offer people the opportunity to come in and buy a base pack. We have two base packs called Orange and Blue that are $25, but then if you’re a sports fan, you can add on a sports pack. If you’re a news junkie, you can add on the news pack. You don’t have to pay for channels that you’re not watching. It’s not the big, bigger, biggest bundle, which a lot of the other players in the space have taken.
We offer our cloud DVR to our customers, but we don’t include it with everyone because we don’t want to charge everyone and raise the price. For the people who really want that, they can pay for it. If you don’t want it, you don’t have to pay for it, and you can still pay that $25 price.
So you can customize the service so you’re not wasting money on something that you never use.
A lot of people, you hear, “Hey I’m paying for 100 channels, but I’m watching seven of them.” And people’s needs change based on seasonality. Football season right now is a huge season for us — you see a ton of people adding the sports pack. Once football goes away and maybe Game of Thrones comes on or Walking Dead is back, we see people shifting packages and different extras and add-ons based on the time of year. It’s that control: Don’t be locked into things that you don’t care about.
Is that how the slogan came about? I see it on the app it’s “À la carte TV.”
Letting you pick and choose what’s most important to you, and give you that control back — you don’t see that with other services. The tagline something we’ve used for a couple years, but it’s really based on the control and that choice.
Do you get nitpickers going, “Well it’s not really ‘à la carte’ because I can’t actually go down to the channel level and pick this and that?
There’s a minority of people who say, “True à la carte would be I would pay for every single channel I wanted.” From a consumer perspective, people fail to realize sometimes that by going on a channel-by-channel basis, your aggregate amount that you would pay might be more than what you get as a discount with a bundle. Honestly, where we are from an industry perspective, we are the closest thing to à la carte TV.
Do you think we’ll ever get to true à la carte as a thing at least as an option?
I wouldn’t say never, but I don’t see it in the near future.
When you do an over-the-top live service, how do you think [about apps] differently? What are some fundamental first principles that you come in with?
One thing I want to clarify: Sling is definitely a live OTT streaming service, but we also have 80,000 on-demand assets. There’s a paradigm for on-demand streaming services like Netflix, but we are the first one that was combining live and on-demand into the same application, and so one of the trickiest parts was how do you do that?
There’s, if you think about Netflix or on-demand applications, you just see carousels of content and you browse through thumbnails. So when we first launched, we were focused on cord-nevers — people who had never paid for traditional paid TV — and we thought they would skew younger were used to the browsing experience of on-demand content. So, we created a home screen called MyTV and we made everything kind of thumbnail based.
Then what we realized was those people found value in our service but we were getting a lot of people that were cord-cutters. They were used to traditional paid TV, and what we kept hearing was, “I just want a guide.” Even though the grid guide has been around for a really long time, that habit is so strong in people that that’s where they gravitated towards.
So about a year later we launched a grid guide. And honestly, I was shocked at the fanfare we got on social media. But that’s how traditional paid TV customers find content.
Is there like a killer feature that you hold up for reluctant cord-cutters?
Well, it’s usually not a feature that begins that conversation. It’s cost. When they realize the amount of money that they’ll save and that they’ll have the same content that they had before, but they have the flexibility of choosing what device they want to watch it on and not having to pay a device fee every month, that’s usually the thing that gets them really interested.
What are the average cost savings for someone cutting the cord? Because the thing is with all this cord-cutting, you’re still paying for your broadband internet.
It’s a tricky number to throw out there because it really depends on the situation. The way I would think about broadband is you’re going to have broadband regardless if you had an OTT streaming service or not.
True, but you also got to factor in the triple-play packages. If you do traditional cable, it’s only whatever, $50, $60 more to get everything.
You’re right — the triple play, the quadruple play for a lot of people, they discount video very heavily because they make all their money on broadband. But at the end of the day for a consumer, the video component of it like with Sling, we make it easy to drop in and out based on seasonality. So you’re probably not paying the same fixed cost.
If you think of how people are cobbling together like their OTT solution, they’ll take a service like Sling and then they’ll complement it with a service like Netflix, or they might sign up for a service that’s more seasonal. When Game of Thrones comes around, they might just sign up for HBO and then they might drop it. So their bill isn’t fixed.
So in terms of a savings, like I said, coming up with a accurate number is tough because it depends on what your needs are, or if you have a household that has different interests. But from a typical cable and satellite bill that’s north of $100, $120 to coming down to $25, that’s a pretty big savings. But like you said, the internet has to be factored into that.
One of the big selling points of Sling TV is it’s cross-platform. It’s on everything. I’ve got to think like to make sure the user experience is good on all those platforms is a nightmare.
It’s not an easy problem to solve. To your point, there’s a lot of fragmentation. We’re on 15 different platforms. We try to reuse common code wherever possible and try to put more of the logic into the back-end of the systems so that clients are a little bit lighter on the different devices, but it’s definitely a challenge.
From a customer experience standpoint, what we’ve seen is a lot of our customers that watch on a Roku device, they’ll also watch on mobile, but they’re not going to watch on a Roku and another 10-foot device like an Amazon. So consistency for the sake of the consistency is not that important to us. It’s really more important that people should always know that they’re in a Sling experience.
So, the content is the same across devices. The way you access your Cloud DVR is the same. The tabs that we have or the sections of the app are the same. So if customers, there’s no learning curve from going from one device to another.
How do you think about voice?
Voice is going to be important, but it hasn’t been optimized for a video experience. We’ve seen some experiences launch and if you’re watching video you can say “Pause” or “Fast Forward.” Or if you’re thinking about a carousel of content, picking up your remote and hitting the D-pad two or three times to get to the right versus saying “Next Item, next item, next item.” So, we think, look, voice is catching on, but it still needs to be optimized for that video experience.
I think Search is probably the best use case for it. Typing with the remote in a virtual keyboard is painful. Voice is a much easier input. Voice is going to be important for us; we just don’t think it’s at a point right now where it’s one of our top priorities.
I want to get your perspective on cloud DVRs. They’re great, but if you think about it for a couple of minutes, you think, “Why isn’t everything just on the DVR?” Why is it, once something’s broadcast, it’s not just on a cloud DVR as an on-demand asset to everybody?
The way a cloud DVR legally has to work isn’t the most efficient because we have to keep a single copy for every user that’s recorded it. And that’s not a technological issue, that’s just a legal copyright issue.There’s definitely more efficient ways to do it. On-demand rights are very different than getting live rights and so. In an ideal world, everything’s on demand, and you wouldn’t have to record things.
The fact that if you watch something on demand you can’t fast forward through commercials and on a DVR you can. It’s less about the technology limitations and it’s more about the content rights and legal implications around a cloud DVR. So, do I think it’s gonna change? Maybe, but a cloud DVR’s still a relatively new concept, and people have implemented it in different ways. So, we’ll have to see how it kinda shakes out.
Have there been any other surprising insights you’ve gotten from your customers?
One of the things that was, I think, a little bit shocking to us was there’s so much talk in the industry about “mobile first.” Everything’s mobile first, everybody wants to be mobile first.
We realized, is people still watch a lot of their TV at home. They gravitate towards the biggest screen that’s available to them. So, if they’re on the go and they have their mobile device, they wanna watch on mobile because they don’t have another option, but when they get home, they gravitate towards the largest device.
So even though we see a ton of “snacking” on mobile — watching snippets of the end of the news or the end of the game — a majority of our viewership is still on a big 10-foot device. And that was a little bit contrary to what we thought originally.
When you’re on a phone, I think the whole idea of what you’re competing with completely changes. You’re not just competing with Hulu and YouTube anymore; you’re competing with Candy Crush and your email app and all of the attention you’re giving this device and whatever notifications are popping down from your top bar. How do you think about the mobile platform today?
For us, it’s table stakes. You can’t be a service right now and not have a mobile application, we see a lot of our acquisition come from the mobile device. Completely agree with you that there’s a 100 different things you could be doing on your phone and you’re competing for someone’s free time at that point, but to us, the mobile’s just another screen. We wanna be wherever people are watching video.
So what happens when Apple gets into this space?
We’re on Amazon devices and Amazon’s dabbling in video. Roku has a free, ad-supported thing. Almost every device partner that’s a partner of ours is also trying something out in video. Obviously Apple has huge scale, they’re making deals, they’re doing original content, they’ve brought a lot of key personnel over there.
We still have a very unique service because the set of content rights that we got in order to create the smaller packages and those add-on packages; it’s something no one’s been able to replicate. Whether that’s YouTube TV or Hulu or DirecTV, the differentiator is how we’ve been able to creatively package the content. So it’d be really interesting to see how Apple comes out. They obviously have a huge install base, and they make great products. I don’t see them as a direct competitor of what Sling TV’s doing.
What does the future hold for Sling TV?
We’re seeing more and more people wanna watch video in spaces that we didn’t naturally think of, a lot of talk around AR and VR right now, right, with the Magic Leaps and Oculus and things of that sort. It’ll be really interesting to see how that kind of plays out and if that becomes a primary consumption habit, you can expect Sling to have a great experience there.
Or as cars get smarter and more autonomous, I mean what are the drivers gonna do, right? They’re either gonna be doing something productive or they’re gonna entertain themselves and just what’s that video experience look like in a smart car or autonomous car?
So really for us, it’s chasing the evolving customer trends around video consumption. As connectivity gets better, as screens get more pervasive and things, you can expect we will follow the consumer needs and wants to create a great experience for those verticals.
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When Diablo Immortal was revealed at BlizzCon on Friday, I thought it looked cool.
A lot of people disagreed, and immediately began complaining both online and in-person about this apparent slight, this bastardization of “their” franchise, this complete abandonment of rational thought by a company that routinely creates some of the best and most successful games to ever exist.
Well guess what, you entitled crybabies. I played Diablo Immortal at BlizzCon shortly after it was revealed, and it’s a lot of fun.
Take a look at the gameplay trailer, which shows off some classic bloody Diablo action set against the gothic world of Sanctuary that fans have hacked and slashed through countless times.
The boss fights look interesting, the levels look more dynamic than ever before, and, to be frank, I like the Diablo Immortal aesthetic more than I like Diablo 3‘s aesthetic.
I got my hands on the demo of it and blasted through the levels with a Barbarian, and then I did it again with a Wizard. It was a blast — the controls are simple and laid out very well, the action feels like classic Diablo, and the level design had a great foreboding feel to it. And this is coming from someone who is generally not a fan of touch controls.
Some of the beauty of the Diablo franchise is that it’s pretty easy to navigate, and that simple movement system translates very well to mobile with Diablo Immortal.
You move around by using a digital analog “stick” on the left side of the screen, while all your abilities are arranged on the right side of the screen. It’s pretty similar to how the game works with a console controller. And it feels just as intuitive and easy.
The Wizard fighting against a big ol’ demon.
Image: blizzard entertainment
And yet, without even giving the game a shot, tons of people are pissed at Blizzard for daring to make a new Diablo game. Just look at the replies to any recent tweets from the Diablo Twitter account.
I am a hugeDiablo fan. A lot of people who are Mad Online about Diablo Immortal claim to be fans of the franchise too.
Grow up.
So why are they mad that there’s a new Diablo game?
Because it’s on mobile.
People immediately lashed out, calling the announcement a joke because they think the game is inherently bad and will surely be full of micro-transactions that chip away at the integrity of the series.
People are also mad that Blizzard didn’t announce new content for Diablo 3 and didn’t announce Diablo 4, the latter of which the company expressly said it wasn’t going to reveal.
So I just have one thing to say to people who are mad that Blizzard, employing a team that wasn’t even working on the main Diablo franchise, made a new Diablo game: Grow up.
You are entitled to nothing. Game companies owe you nothing. You don’t just get to have whatever you want and then throw a tantrum when your own personal dreams don’t come true. Blizzard hasn’t abandoned the core Diablo franchise just because it created a mobile game.
Do you get mad when Blizzard announces a World of Warcraft update when you were hoping for a Warcraft 4? No, because you understand that those two things would be made by two different teams and Blizzard isn’t obligated to make you a new real-time strategy Warcraft game.
From what I saw and played, Diablo Immortal is a fun, quality Diablo game that retains that special something that makes the franchise so special. You don’t have to play it, but whining online makes you sound like a literal infant.
I regret to inform you that a living, breathing human being really went out and paid money to get Gritty tattooed on his ass.
25-year-old James Kirn has been a Flyers fan his whole life, but he took his dedication to the demonic NHL mascot to a whole new level by getting the bright orange horror permanently inked onto his left cheek. Gritty’s terrifying grin, fiery fur, and unfocused eyeballs will grace Kirn’s body forever — or until he gets it lasered off.
Here’s a slightly NSFW/not safe for life itself picture of the tattoo that will probably make you reconsider where we are in human history.
Kirn told Vice Sports that he was originally supposed to get Gritty tattoos with a friend after “quite a few” beers — weird display of friendship, but OK — but the friend backed out.
“And the next thing I know I’m face down getting my ass tattooed,” he said in the interview.
Apparently his brother and sister loved the idea so much, it inspired them to get the Phillie Phanatic and Sixers mascot tatted on their respective butts. His 13-year-old brother wants to get the Eagles mascot inked on his behind when he’s of age, and the siblings have plans to take a twisted group photo.
It sets the standard for family Christmas cards.
The impulse ink cost him a whopping $300. Kirn could have had 30 Chipotle burrito bowls, before taxes, and instead he spent it getting Gritty immortalized on his flesh.
When asked if he thinks he’ll regret it, Kirn insisted he would be fine with the tattoo.
“No, no. I’ve already committed to the fact that it’s on there forever,” he said. “So no, I don’t care.”
Amal Hussain, a seven-year-old girl whose image in the New York Times last week brought new attention to the thousands upon thousands of children suffering the dire consequences of Yemen’s devastating war, has died, according to the newspaper.
The child died of malnutrition in a refugee camp in northern Yemen, her family told the Times on Thursday.
“My heart is broken,” Mariam Ali, the girl’s mother, was quoted as saying.
“Amal was always smiling. Now I’m worried for my other children.”
The Times also quoted Mekkia Mahdi, a Yemeni doctor who had treated the girl shortly before her death, as saying: “We have many more cases like her.”
A starving Yemini child captured in photos by @NYTimes last week has died.
The photograph by Pulitzer Prize-winner Tyler Hicks, which showed the emaciated girl lying on a bed inside a mobile UNICEF clinic in Aslam, touched a nerve with people across the world and sparked outcry over a crisis that has been called by the United Nations the worst in the word.
Speaking to The Takeaway radio programme earlier this week, described how photographing Amal was “difficult” and “heartbreaking” but also “important.”
“She really sums up how tragic and how bad the malnutrition and the starvation have really become in Yemen,” the photographer said.
‘At risk of death’
Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, has been embroiled in a devastating war, since September 2014, when Houthi fighters swept into the capital, Sanaa, and overthrew President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s internationally recognised government.
Worried by the rise of the Houthis, believed to be backed by regional rival Iran, a Saudi-UAE-led military coalition launched an intervention in 2015 in the form of a massive air campaign aimed at reinstalling Hadi’s government.
Civilians, including children, have borne the brunt of the conflict which has killed at least 10,000 people since the coalition intervened in Yemen, according to the UN. The death toll has not been updated in years and is likely to be far higher. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), an independent watchdog, recently said around 56,000 Yemenis had been killed in violence.
The UN has repeatedly criticised the alliance’s bombing campaign and last year placed it on a blacklist of child rights violators.
Last week, UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told the UN Security Council that Yemen is in danger of being engulfed by an “imminent and great big famine” that could affect 14 million people, or around half of the population.
Lowcock said that the looming famine could be “bigger than anything any professional in this field has encountered during their working lives”.
The cost of food has increased by 35 percent in the last 12 months and if trends continue the riyal will reach an exchange rate of 1,000 to the US dollar, UN officials have also warned.
“Lack of food, displacement, poor nutrition, disease outbreaks and eroding healthcare” have also affected 1.1 miilion malnourished and lactating women, and if the situation continues to deteriorate, up to two million mothers may be increasingly at risk of death,” the UN Population Fund reported on Thursday.
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