Over fifty years ago, a group of pranksters founded a satiric religion devoted to creating conspiracy theories so insane that nobody would ever believe uncritically in conspiracies again. They called themselves the Discordians. And their weird ideas are still influencing us today.

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siddharthasmama:

gallifreyglo:

dichotomized:

U.S. Martin Luther King Jr being attacked as he marched nonviolently for the Chicago Freedom Movement, 1966, which was the most ambitious civil rights campaign in the North of the United States, and lasted from mid-1965 to early 1967.

If only he’d been well-spoken, pulled his pants up and didn’t wear a hoodie… oop… wait…

Please really look at this. Look at how many men are on him. Look at how you can see he is not attacking anyone. Look at how he is dressed. Imagine the fear he has that this moment may have been his last. Remember that he was assassinated by forces within the U.S. gov’t because of his mission. Before you pull that string on that MLK Jr. watered-down quote teddy, look at this, look at what’s happening today, and really fucking think.

In 1974, photographer Daniel Sorine encountered two mimes in New York City’s Central Park who were more than willing to pose for his camera. It wasn’t until many years later that Daniel realized that one of the mimes was a then-unknown Robin Williams and the other was author Todd Oppenheimer.

“What attracted me to Robin Williams and his fellow mime, Todd Oppenheimer, was an unusual amount of intensity, personality and physical fluidity,” Sorine tells us. “When I approached them with my Pentax Spotmatic they allowed me to invite them into my camera instead of me having to chase after them.” – PetaPixel

photos by Daniel Sorine

via PetaPixel

whitecolonialism:

Memphis 1968, Ferguson 2014.

We’ve never witnessed an American dream, we’ve only lived an American nightmare. - Malcolm X

Recent events in Ferguson have prompted a national debate about "over-militarized" police forces that have acquired sophisticated, high-tech Pentagon equipment — including drones — through Homeland Security funding. But, how do actual military personnel who served in Iraq and Afghanistan assess the situation?

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This weekend, Lois Lowry’s old-school YA novel The Giver arrives in the form of a big-deal movie complete with Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges, the latter of whom is definitely not playing the Dude, but rather the title character. He’s the Giver, who, in this future dystopia, hangs onto all the relevant information that makes life interesting while everyone else has a boring, colorless, almost emotionless life.

In hit-you-over-the-head allegorical dystopian sci-fi, the repression of emotions and basic regulation of thoughts comes up a lot. But do these styles of dystopias actually make narrative and logistical sense, or are they only allegorical? Further, does their own self-importance make them ironically oppressive?

[Read more]

Read the full article

littlelimpstiff14u2:

SHINTARO OHATA

Born in Hiroshima, 1975.
Shintaro Ohata is an artist who depicts little things in everyday life like scenes of a movie and captures all sorts of light in his work with a unique touch: convenience stores at night, city roads on rainy day and fast-food shops at dawn etc. His paintings show us ordinary sceneries as dramas. He is also known for his characteristic style; placing sculptures in front of paintings, and shows them as one work, a combination of 2-D and 3-D world.

Japanese artist Shintaro Ohata (previously) currently has two new sculptural paintings on view at Mizuma Gallery in Singapore. Ohata places vibrantly painted figurative sculptures in the foreground of similarly styled paintings that when viewed directly appear to be a single artwork. In some sense it appears as though the figures have broken free from the canvas. These artworks, along with several of his other paintings, join works by Yoddogawa Technique, Enpei Ito, Osamu Watanabe, and Akira Yoshida, for the Sweet Paradox show that runs through August 10th

Txt Via Colossal

tfsiosociety:

Know that Mike Brown was murdered without reason.
Know they left his body out, like they left out lynched Black folk to scare people
Know his community was grieving
Know they wanted solidarity and justice
Know they protested peacefully
Know they gathered
Know the police responded
Know the police are occupying Ferguson
Know that 20 departments have come into the community
Know they are throwing tear gas at people
Know that they have cut off road ways
Know the police are armed
Know the civilians are still peacefully protesting
Know that White community members have come armed in support of the police
Know that Black community members are only armed by the cameras on their smart phones
Know that the Black conduit for justice will only be Social Media
Know what is happening in Ferguson
Know that there is injustice
Pay attention before the media lies to you and tells you that any deaths from here on out were warranted

This has been a hard week.  Another young, unarmed black man was killed by police. The Root added Michael Brown’s face to a slideshow of such incidents, started after a black man named Eric Garner died after being put in a chokehold by officers less than one month ago.  This week’s guilty verdict in the trial of the man who shot Renisha McBride left me feeling numb.  Nothing good could come of it, but at least I didn’t feel worse.

The shooting of Michael Brown, however, is still undergoing trial by media and the verdict is swayed by the choices made by producers and directors as to how to portray him. When Marc Duggan was killed by police earlier this year, they often featured pictures in which he looked menacing, including ones that had been cropped in ways that enhanced that impression.

Left: Photo of Duggan frequently used by media; right: uncropped photo in which he holds a plaque commemorating his deceased daughter.

As the media coverage of Brown’s death heated up, the image that first circulated of Brown was this:

Reports state that this was his current Facebook profile picture, with the implication that media actors just picked the first or most prominent picture they saw.  Or, even, that somehow it’s Brown’s fault that this is the image they used.

Using the image above, though, is not neutrality.  At best, it’s laziness; they simply decided not to make a conscious, careful choice.  It’s their job to pick a photograph and I don’t know exactly what the guidelines are but “pick the first one you see” or “whatever his Facebook profile pic was on the day he died” is probably not among them.

There are consequential choices to be made.  As an example, here are two photos that have circulated since criticism of his portrayal began — the top more obviously sympathetic and the bottom more neutral:

Commenting on this phenomenon, Twitter user @CJ_musick_lawya released two photos of himself, hashtagged with #iftheygunnedmedown, and asked readers which photo they thought media actors would choose.

Top: Wearing a cap and gown with former President Clinton; bottom: in sunglasses posing with a bottle and a microphone.

The juxtaposition brilliantly revealed how easy it is to demonize a person, especially if they are a member of a social group stereotyped as violence-prone, and how important representation is.  It caught on and the imagery was repeated to powerful effect. A summary at The Root featured examples like these:

The New York Times reports that the hashtag has been used more than 168,000 times as of  August 12th.  I want to believe that conversations like these will educate and put pressure on those with the power to represent black men and all marginalized peoples to make more responsible and thoughtful decisions.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

[piecomic]

logic-and-art:

christel-thoughts:

quickhits:

Unrest in Ferguson about a lot more than police shooting unarmed teen.

the big point

look at the search rates then look at the contraband hit rates.

the police are terrorizing Black people for no good reason… even though they’re getting more evidence of crime off whites.

crunched a couple of numbers and even taking into account that the black population is about double the white population in the “local” area (i’d like some definition on that but i’ll assume in the meantime that it’s the boundaries of jurisdiction), black people as a group are being stopped 6.75 times more than white people as a group, and even when put in perspective with the population ratios, are being stopped 3.61 times more than white people (and make up 90% of the people searched).

The disparity numbers listed indicate that the black population is overrepresented in stop rates by 137%, and this number reads as way too low to me (compare to the number I calculated of 361%).

christel-thoughts pointed out the contraband rate specifically, which is notable because searches of white people produced contraband 12.33% more times than searches of black people, but the arrest rate for black individuals is virtually twice that of white people.

micdotcom:

Days after Michael Brown’s death, Ferguson looks like a war zone

A vigil held for Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager gunned down by Ferguson, Mo., police on Saturday in disputed circumstances, turned into what the media described as a riot on Monday evening.

But while national coverage has focused on the indisputably counterproductive violence and destruction committed by Ferguson residents during a moment of anguish, videos and photos taken from the scene show local police aggravating the situation as well.

Years of tension have reached a boiling point

French artist Junior Fritz Jacquet has created a series of wonderfully expressive face sculptures out of toilet paper tubes. He crafts the sculptures by hand, colors them with pigment, and seals them with shellac. He has more paper and cardboard art on his website.

photos via Junior Fritz Jacquet

via DesignFaves, Lost At E Minor, Colossal

danagould:

Two years ago, I was performing at The Punchline in San Francisco, and Robin came to the show with our mutual friend, Dan Spencer.

This particular batch of material was the first time I had touched upon my then still-fresh divorce wounds, and big chunks of it were pretty dark. The next day, I got a text from a number I didn’t recognize. Whoever it was had obviously been to the show and knew my number, so I figured they would reveal themselves at some point and save me the embarrassment of asking who they were.

The Mystery Texter asked how I was REALLY doing. “You can’t fool me. Some of those ‘jokes’ aren’t ‘jokes.” By now I knew that whoever this was had been through what I was enduring, as no one else would know to ask, “What time of day is the hardest?”

He wanted to know how my kids were handling it, all the while assuring me that the storm, as bleak as it was, would one day pass and that I was not, as I was then convinced, a terrible father for visiting a broken home upon my children.

I am not rewriting this story in retrospect to make it dramatic. I did not know who I was texting with. Finally, my phone blipped, and I saw, in a little green square, “Okay, pal. You got my number. Call me. I’ve been there. You’re going to be okay. - Robin.”

That is what you call a human being.

Paintings by Christopher Conn Askew.

Enticing paintings by Christopher Conn Askew who also uses the moniker “SekretCity” as these images are from the city that exists inside of him.  See more of his work below:

Christopher Conn Askew: Website

the moth pit

[video]

gradientlair:

While Black experiences with racism and anti-Blackness are used as analogies/metaphors and narratives to shape the experiences of non-Black people while erasing Black people’s experiences and humanity (as I discussed in White People Using Blackness and Anti-Black Racism Analogies For Their Experiences Is NOT Intersectionality), these experiences past and present are indicative of our lives, our history, our deaths. A reality. Not an anecdote to lead into something else. 

Michael Brown's execution and all of these extrajudicial executions are indicative of violence that never was truly “past” as it is always present. And it is a REALITY—not a metaphor—with a human cost in Black mental and physical health, in Black safety, in Black bodies. 

Below are the links mentioned in the tweets that I sent above: Black Women Were Lynched Too, Consuming Black Death, Family of Michael Brown, Teenager Shot to Death By Ferguson Police, Talks About His Life.

And look, I am disinterested in White supremacist sociopaths, anti-Black non-Black people of colour or unfortunately some Black people who have internalized racism and believe that the politics of respectability can protect us to now throw out the violent lie, derailment and misnomer (“Black on Black crime” is a misnomer and epistemic violence) that Black people “don’t care about intraracial crime.” This is a VIOLENT type of derailment and is dehumanization. When every race has intraracial crime yet only Black people are deemed to “not care” despite evidence to contrary and then civilian crime is juxtaposed to extrajudicial executions as modern lynchings and State violence? The false equalization is not solely epistemic violence; it is a direct attack on the mental health and well-being of Black people. Save it. (And notably, this derailment only addresses violence between cishet Black men; never a mention about any other Black people cared about or not.)

Black life is valuable in it of itself. Not solely as a trope for consumption with erasure and a demand that we feel gleeful about the erasure to prove “solidarity.” Anti-Blackness and misogynoir are not “progressive.” Michael Brown’s life MATTERED…FULL STOP.

Peace to every Black victim and family of this violence. (My own family is one of them, by the way.)

Peace to Michael Brown’s mother and his family. 

seanbonner:

Photo: Ferguson, MO. The Now.

"There’s a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."

– Bill Adama, Battlestar Galactica

And vice versa, apparently.

Upon hearing the unexpected and tragic news of Robin William’s death, comedian Sky Williams used his YouTube channel to reach out with a a heartfelt message that took note of the fact that it doesn’t matter who you are or what you have, depression can take all of it away.

Depression doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t matter how much or how little you have in your life, it can find you. Now supposedly we lost Robin Williams. I don’t know if it’s accurate that he took his own life or that the cause was depression. But if it was, this just proves that one of the funniest men the entire world could not defeat the monster that is depression.

Sky also recalled a time when he wasn’t there for a friend and what he would say now if he had to do it all over again.

The only reason I know is I’ve been there. I lost a best friend to it and back then I was ignorant to the feeling. I tried to ask him what he needed from me but he didn’t know. Yeah, I got frustrated because I couldn’t help the person that I cared about. And then when I figured it out it was too late. But if I could go back and have one more conversation with him before he did it, this is what I would say. ‘I’m not a miracle worker and I can’t promise you much. I can’t make the words go away, I can’t make you love yourself, I can’t give you an appetite mean I can’t just magically make you sleep.I can’t turn back time at explain what happened between now and then. I know there’s a lot of light outside and and I can’t dim the lights, but I got a room inside we can hide in…

http://t.co/j2p5Ufckvl A message to all those who may be depressed or who knows somebody who is depressed. Hope ya enjoy. RT if it helps ya

— Sky Williams (@GregSkyWilliams) August 12, 2014

via Digg

itchycats:

Please pay attention to what is happening in Ferguson right now.

The people of Ferguson are staging a peaceful protest regarding the unlawful, tragic murder of Mike Brown, and the police are responding with rubber bullets (one man has been injured so far) and tear gas, calling the protesters “fucking animals.”

The police are wearing full military gear. They are responding with absolute violence.

The police are trying to cover up their vicious, unconstitutional actions, telling the news crews/journalists to leave the scene of the protests so they can “clean up.” They’ve completely sealed off Ferguson. THEY’VE TRAPPED THE PROTESTERS (and regular people who would like to go home) INSIDE AND ARE TRYING TO FORCE THE MEDIA OUT. They are harming and threatening to arrest journalists who do not comply.

The Ferguson PD have created an illegal police state. This is, by all means, unconstitutional. BUT IT IS NOT A NEW OCCURRENCE. If you are shocked by this display of police brutality, then you must have missed the last 50 years of anti-black history. And the saddest part? This is not the worst case of it by any means. I beg you, please, pay attention to what is happening and commit it to memory.

Here is a petition to change the current laws and stop the police from abusing their power. I urge you to sign it. And I urge to you share your outrage over what is happening. Tell your legislators, your communities, your social media cohorts. SHARE IT BEFORE THE POLICE AND MEDIA COVER IT UP.

The officer who murdered Mike Brown, the disgusting pig who shot this boy 9 times, is on PAID LEAVE right now. THAT SHOULDN’T EVEN BE AN OPTION. 

The peaceful protesters of Ferguson are being gassed and shot at for seeking justice. PLEASE DON’T IGNORE THEIR STRUGGLE. 

PAY ATTENTION.

(Most links are tweets, as twitter was the fastest and most up-to-date source for information re: Ferguson.)

EDIT: 
Here’s a link to an LA Times article, summarizing the events of the evening protest.

riseofthecommonwoodpile:

funny how a bunch of white people can violently harass people going into an abortion clinic and the cops never show up even when they’re physically touching the patients against their will but if black people organize a totally non-violent and non-confrontational protest after a member of their community has been murdered they bring out the police dogs and shotguns and claim it’s going to be a riot lol

ikantenggelem:

Disney / Marvel Mashup [via]

Funny or Die has created a new amusing video featuring an underpaid Mary Poppins, played by Kristen Bell, who sings about being dissatisfied with making minimum wage. After the magical nanny gets her point across to the children, she decides that it is all “bullsh*t” and then quits.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips

(The phone rings.)

Cashier: “Hello, [Name] Pizza… Oh, f***, not again.”

(She hangs up. A few customers come and go, and the phone rings again.)

Cashier: “Hello, [Name] Piz— f*** this!”

Customer: “Hey, lady, problem with the phone?”

Cashier: “Some sicko keeps calling from a blocked number and making creepy comments.”

Customer: “Hang on. I gotta go find my friend.”

(He pays and leaves… and comes back with a 6’8″ NYPD cop.)

Cop: *with a minor Russian accent* “I hear you’re having a problem with a caller?”

Customer: “No, no. Do the accent! Make it f***in’ scary!”

Cop: *in a deeper voice with a thick accent* “Excuse me. I hear you have problem with caller?”

(The cashier explains. The cop orders a slice of pizza and he and his friend sit and chat for a few minutes. Then the phone rings.)

Cashier: “It’s a blocked number!”

Cop: *on the phone, with the accent* “Hello…. You are thinking my body is what? I am thinking your body probably very fragile. Very easy to— Oh, he hung up.”

(They stare at the phone a few minutes.)

Customer: “Problem solved?”

Cashier: *to customer* “So… is your buddy there single?”

Cop: *in accent* “Boris have many women. All are love him!”

Customer: “You’re married and your name isn’t Boris!”

Cop: “Boris is name of accent. Has life of its own.”

Funny or Die has created an amusing video featuring Christina Hendricks taking on the modern office as her character, Joan Harris, from AMC’s Mad Men television series. It’s all fun and games until the ending gets serious.

Christina Hendricks gets a job at a modern office, and it’s unclear which is more dated: her technical skills, or her boss’s idea of wage equality.

submitted via Laughing Squid Tips