Rest In Peace

[Estiveo]

[Notaperson]

He was in some movies I loved a lot back in my college days. Body Heat, Altered States, and The Big Chill. He played such interesting characters, and did it well. RIP, Mr. Hurt.

[AndyinPA]

I just saw Altered States again not too long ago. I always liked him. RIP

[Chilidog]

My favorite part of that movie, Altered States is when he farts in the isolotion tank...

[SuzieC]

Damn. 71 is not old. I loved him in The Big Chill and especially in Body Heat.

[AndyinPA]

Madeleine Albright, 84. RIP.

[raison de arizona]

Lots of nice tributes to Albright yesterday.

In other news…

Stephen Wilhite, GIF creator, dies at 74

Computer scientist and creator of the GIF, Stephen Wilhite, has died at the age of 74 due to complications from COVID-19.

According to the Verge, who spoke to Wilhite's wife Kathaleen, he was surrounded by family when he died. An obituary page created for Wilhite is filled with messages, even from those who say they didn't know him personally.

The page says of Wilhite, “even with all his accomplishments, he remained a very humble, kind, and good man.”

As Now This News reported, Wilhite was a key part of the creation of the Graphics Interchange Format, an animated image format that is now ubiquitous in its use and familiarity in everyday life on social media and the internet as a whole. He created the format while working for the internet service provider CompuServe in the 1980s.

Wilhite earned a lifetime achievement award from the Webby Awards in 2013 for his contribution to online culture.

https://www.abc15.com/news/national/ste ... dies-at-74

[Slim Cognito]

Although most people I know pronounce it gif, I think I saw an interview with him where he pronounced it jif. Am I wrong?

Either way, go safely into the night, good sir.

[Estiveo]

Wikipedia:

The creators of the format pronounced the acronym GIF as /dʒɪf/, with a soft g as in 'gin'. Wilhite stated that the intended pronunciation deliberately echoes the American peanut butter brand Jif, and CompuServe employees would often quip "choosy developers choose GIF", a spoof of Jif's television commercials.[11] The word is now also widely pronounced /ɡɪf/, with a hard g as in 'gift'.[12] In 2017, an informal poll on the programming website Stack Overflow showed some numerical preference for the hard-g pronunciation,[13] especially among respondents in eastern Europe, though both the soft g and pronouncing each letter individually were found to be popular in Asia and parts of Africa.[14]

Dictionary.com[15] cites both, indicating /dʒɪf/ as the primary pronunciation, while Cambridge Dictionary of American English[16] offers only the hard-g pronunciation. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary[17] and Oxford Dictionaries cite both pronunciations, but place the hard g first: /ɡɪf, dʒɪf/.[18][19][20][21] The New Oxford American Dictionary gave only /dʒɪf/ in its second edition[22] but updated it to /dʒɪf, ɡɪf/ in the third edition.[23]

The disagreement over the pronunciation has led to heated Internet debate. On the occasion of receiving a lifetime achievement award at the 2013 Webby Awards ceremony, Wilhite publicly rejected the hard-g pronunciation;[12][24][25] his speech led to more than 17,000 posts on Twitter and dozens of news articles.[26] The White House[12] and the TV program Jeopardy! also entered the debate in 2013.[25]

In February 2020, The J.M. Smucker Company, the owners of the Jif brand, partnered with the animated image database and search engine Giphy to release a limited-edition "Jif vs. GIF" (hashtagged as #JIFvsGIF) jar of peanut butter that had a label humorously declaring the soft-g pronunciation to refer exclusively to the peanut butter, and GIF to be exclusively pronounced with the hard-g pronunciation.[27]

[Estiveo]

Taylor Hawkins, 50, drummer for the Foo Fighters.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/musi ... y-1327112/

[Phoenix520]

Well, foo.
Do they know how he died?

[Slim Cognito]

Oh man!

[Kriselda Gray]

Well, foo.
Do they know how he died?

There's speculation that it's drug related, but that's pretty much always the speculation when it's a rock star, so...

[Gregg]

FFS When do I get to see Ted Cruz, MTG and even His Cheeto Majesty?

[jez]

FFS When do I get to see Ted Cruz, MTG and even His Cheeto Majesty?

Because we don't have a burn in hell topic?

[p0rtia]

FFS When do I get to see Ted Cruz, MTG and even His Cheeto Majesty?

Because we don't have a burn in hell topic?

[Phoenix520]

Well, foo.
Do they know how he died?

There's speculation that it's drug related, but that's pretty much always the speculation when it's a rock star, so...

My sister told me he was in a month-long coma from an OD a while back. Sad.

[Slim Cognito]

FFS When do I get to see Ted Cruz, MTG and even His Cheeto Majesty?

Because we don't have a burn in hell topic?

[Estiveo]

Well, foo.
Do they know how he died?

There's speculation that it's drug related, but that's pretty much always the speculation when it's a rock star, so...

My sister told me he was in a month-long coma from an OD a while back. Sad.

Heroin OD, 2 week coma, 21 years ago.

[pipistrelle]

Daily Beast reports 10 drugs in his system. Paywalled so that’s all I saw.

[Phoenix520]

Oh. That is a while back.

[sad-cafe]

FFS When do I get to see Ted Cruz, MTG and even His Cheeto Majesty?

That’s what I’m asking

[Gregg]

Sorry, I just got frustrated at see all kinds of people I am going to miss a little or a lot, and wanna know when the people who I am gonna find someone to high five are gonna assume room temperature.

He was on tour, and they found him in his room when they went to leave for the show, so it wasn't a long term coma he had been in.

[mojosapien]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._W._McCall

[raison de arizona]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._W._McCall

How appropriate. The Convoy is dead. RIP.