George Lucas probably wakes up in a cold sweat when he remembers he created Reagan.
1. Star Wars starts out in the Wild West, the rough-hewn old frontier, and then it races upwards, soaring and expanding its scope, until at last it becomes World War II. It’s the story of drifters and dreamers, who find their purpose out in the absolute dead middle of nowhere, and end up leading the Revolution against an Empire. You can’t even imagine a more quintessentially American story than the original Star Wars.
Muslims of all factions merged with a Shiite religious gathering on Sunday to rally for peace. Shiite Muslims gathered in the vicinity of the White House to mourn the 680 AD martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson, and the reason for Islam’s splintering into Sunni and Shiite sects. But before long, the gathering became about so much more.
y’know i think earth is excluded from the galactic community because we’re not a single biome planet with one unified government and a singular monolithic culture easily definable by one or two traits that hasn’t changed in a couple thousand years
I love how they respond to him, as if he is actually a captain, even more.
Nasa confirmed for huge fucking nerds
This is awesome and priceless and people that work on space stuff are the best people of all time.
Honestly this just about brings me to tears.
Roddenberry, Shatner, Nimoy, Nichols and all the rest of the original Star Trek cast and crew had no small role in making the moon landing as important as it was. A few years before they set that lunar module down, this little TV show came along and fanned the dream into wildfire with an image of what humanity in space could actually look like—not only peaceful on our own world, endlessly curious, and prosperous enough to pursue it, but an active force for good in the greater universe. Carrying not what’s most toxic about us, but what’s best about us out to the stars.
Everybody who has worked at NASA or any other space agency for the past 50 years is waiting for the day when that unmanned probe doing a flyby on a comet can be controlled from the bridge of a space-faring vessel. When we’re not just looking at that comet through a color-coded sonar map, but we can look out a porthole and see it tumbling by with our own eyes. When as a species we can finally outgrow hate and fear and violence, and turn our faces with joy toward all the beauties and wonders that lie waiting to be discovered.
And every time he does this, Shatner is reminding them of what that hope feels like.
Publix, the fastest-growing grocery chain in America, isn’t a
corporate giant that exploits workers, but an employee-owned company
that’s more profitable than any of its competitors.
Unlike Walmart’s hourly workers, who just got a raise to $9 and $10 an hour,
Publix workers get a piece of the company after putting in 1,000 hours
and working for the company for over a year. Each employee-owner takes
home an additional 8.5 percent of their take-home pay every year in
stock options. According to Forbes,
58,000 of the company’s 159,000 workers are on track to become owners,
and the company makes sure each potential owner gets a broad sense of
the business by rotating them through its grocery sector, distribution
network, and real estate division.
This year, Publix was ranked as one of FORTUNE’s top 100 companies to work
based on an anonymous employee survey, which asks questions based on
pay and benefits, working conditions, communication with management, and
diversity. Publix is only one of 12 companies to be consistently listed
by employees as a top place to work every year since the list’s
inception in 1998. But Publix isn’t dominant in just the grocery
industry — its pharmacies are also consistently outperforming top
pharmacies. A 2013 Marketforce survey of customers at CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, and Publix rated Publix as providing the most satisfying customer experience.
That high rating by customers is the driving force behind Publix’s
success. CEO Todd Jones — who was a Publix bagger in the late 1960s —
told Forbes the company’s success depends on keeping customers happy. In
2007, Publix ranked first in the same American Consumer Satisfaction Index that ranked Walmart last.
“We believe that there are three ways to differentiate: service,
quality and price,” Jones said. “You’ve got to be good at two of them,
and the best at one. We make service our number one, then quality and
then price.”
To take supply-side economists at their word, a company that puts so
much time and money into customer service, and shares profits so
recklessly with so many workers, would mean they’re going broke, right?
In comparison to the biggest grocery store chains, Publix is the most profitable, posting $27.5 billion in 2012 revenue,
and profit margins of 5.6 percent that same year. When compared to
Walmart’s 3.8 percent margins, along with Kroger, which only made
margins of 1.6 percent, Publix is eating its competition for lunch. Even
though Walmart pulls 16 times more in annual revenue, the
employee-owned chain still has over $100 million more in cash and investments on its balance sheet ($6.8 billion) than Walmart ($6.7 billion).
And despite the company’s altruistic actions toward workers and
customers, it still manages to provide lower prices than Walmart. This
2012 chart shows prices of essential items at Publix and Walmart, and
shows how much Publix shoppers save by not spending their money at
Walmart:
Whether or not Publix will become the premiere grocery chain in America
remains to be seen. But what the company has proven beyond all doubt is
that conventional wisdom degrading employee ownership of a company as
bad for business is just a myth.
The Wal-Mart near us has lower prices than publix by a small margin, but it’s almost negligible even for us (we are very poor) and publix DEFINITELY has better quality and selection.
I’m glad to hear they’re apparently such a good company as well!
Friends, family members and loved ones of learning disabled and mentally ill people need to have a working knowledge of what Executive Dysfunction is, and respect the fact that it is a prominent feature of that person’s psychology and life.
Executive Dysfunction is best known as a symptom of autism and ADHD, but it also features in depression, anxiety disorders schizophrenia, OCD (which by the way is also an anxiety disorder), personality disorders; etc, a whole myriad of mental illnesses and disabilities can result in executive dysfunction.
Years ago when I was like 14 and had recently learned of my autism diagnosis, I watched a youtube interview between autistic people, and an autistic woman said something along these lines:
“Sometimes, a lightbulb will burn out, but I cannot change it. I have the physical capability to change the lightbulb, and I want to change the lightbulb, and I know I need to do it, but because of my autism I just don’t do it. So the lightbulb remains unchanged for weeks. Sometimes people have to change the lightbulb for me.”
When she said that I related so much, because constantly throughout my whole life I have wanted and needed to do things with my wanting and needing being akin to my spurring an extremely stubborn horse who refuses to move. For the first time I learned that I wasn’t just “lazy”, I had a condition that prevented me from doing things as easily as other people can, but unfortunately it took me years since then to understand that.
Imagine that you are a horserider, but your horse is entirely unwilling to move even if you want to move. You dig in your heels, you raise the reins, but the horse refuses to respond. Your wants and needs are the rider, and your executive functions (the parts of your mind responsible for getting things done) are the horse.
I think it’s incredibly dangerous for neurotypical loved ones to not understand, or be aware of, or respect executive dysfunction. Neurotypical can assume that we are just being lazy, careless, selfish or difficult, when in reality we want to do the thing but our brains prevent us from consistently and reliably doing the thing.
That misinterpretation can lead to toxic behavior and resentment on the part of the loved one, which will harm us emotionally and do us a lot of damage gradually over time.
That damage can take the form of internal self-criticism, complicating executive dysfunction even further and making it worse.
The adoption specialist met them at the front desk. “He’s ready to go, but I think you guys should see something before we finalize everything. He’s aggressive … ” “Around food?” Mandy asked. “No … well, just come back to the observation room.” She led them down a hallway and had them sit. A tiny kitten was brought in (both Mandy and Eric said, “Awwwww” without thinking) and placed under one cardboard box among twenty or more in the room. It peeped and meowed a little, confused. “She’ll be okay; she won’t even be in there for five minutes,” the specialist whispered. A volunteer brought Marty in, a giant of a dog with Rottweiler coloring. “Now, watch,” the specialist said quietly. Hearing the cry of the kitten, Marty began to systematically tear the room of boxes apart, eventually freeing the little fuzzball and carrying it gently over to the corner where he licked it and put himself on point to guard it. “Holy …,” said Mandy. “Uh … wow,” said Eric, looking at the destruction; the boxes were demolished – all but the one. “So … maybe … rethink this? Look at somebody else?” the adoption specialist prompted. “HELL, NO,” Eric said responded, a smile lighting up his face. “This is totally our dog,” Mandy said, a little teary. They completed the paperwork, shaking their heads and laughing; a few moments later, Marty was brought to the front. “No more ‘Marty’,” Mandy said, scratching his head and taking the leash. “Let’s get in the truck Hero,” Eric called out, happy and proud.
You know, JJ Abrams is taking heat this week because of the way he phrased his desire to make Star Wars more accessible to women. I won't argue that he stated it badly, but I don't think that he necessarily meant that women don't like Star Wars as it exists. The way I read his statement was that he wanted to make Star Wars more welcoming to women. Look at these pictures. 5 men, 4 women. To me, that speaks a lot louder than a couple of flubbed sentences. Dear god, I am SO close to ALMOST giving this movie a chance to break my heart...
The cast of The Force Awakens (Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Lupita Nyong’o, Oscar Isaac, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Gwendoline Christie, Adam Driver, BB-8, and Mark Hamill) photographed by Marco Grob for Time Magazine
so my brother was telling me about this human resources certification he attended a while ago. in a panel, the panelist asked a bunch of people in attendance, “who here knows if an applicant for a job is right for it in under 60 seconds?”
hands shot up around the room, people smug about their ability to “weed out the riff-raff” when it came to hiring for their fortune 500.
“you should all be fired and probably in jail,” they said, waiting for the whole room to get uncomfortable, then continued, “because the only things you can really learn about a human being in under 60 seconds are all things that are fueled by prejudices and biases covered by american law. so now, i will teach you how to stop being racist, sexist, judgmental assholes and hire people that will better your company of employ.”
when i was 12 i babysat this girl for a few years and she would come to me and show me her art, drag me by my wrists and point at the pieces she’d made during the week. and she’d be like “do the voice” and i’d put on a sports-announcer olympics-style voice and be like “such form! this level of coloring! why i haven’t seen such perfection in crayola in a long time. and what is this? why jeff, now this is a true risk… it seems she’s made … a monochrome pink canvas…. i haven’t seen this attempted since winter 1932… and i gotta say, jeff, it’s absolutely splendid” and she’d fall back giggling. at the end of every night she’d check with me: “did you really like it?” and i’d say yes and talk about something i noticed and tucked her in.
she was just accepted into 3 major art schools. she wrote me a letter. inside was a picture from when she was younger. monochrome pink.
“thank you,” it said, “to somebody who saw the best in me.”
Bordertown: a city on
the border between our human world and the elfin realm. Runaway teens
come from both sides of the border to find adventure, to find
themselves. Elves play in rock bands and race down the street on
spell-powered motorbikes. Human kids recreate themselves in the squats
and clubs and artists’ studios of Soho.
Terri Windling’s original
Bordertown series was the forerunner of today’s urban fantasy,
introducing authors that included Charles de Lint, Will Shetterly, Emma
Bull, and Ellen Kushner. In this volume of all-new work (including a
15-page graphic story), the original writers are now joined by the
generation that grew up dreaming of Bordertown, including acclaimed
authors Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman,
Catherynne M. Valente, and many more. They all meet here on the streets
of Bordertown in more than twenty new interconnected songs, poems, and
stories.
Recommended by @pleasecalmdownalice
The Underrated Book Project is a series of posts that aims to
promote books that are under-appreciated, overshadowed, scarcely read
or unknown. Click here to find out more
