ThePrettiestOne

theologyofcoincidence:

firerainbow:

hello-missmayhem:

cptprocrastination:

doomhamster:

belcanta:

nikkidubs:

attentiondeficitaptitude:

belcanta:

Guaranteed basic income to every citizen, whether or not they are employed to ensure their survival and that they live in a dignified, humane way, preventing poverty, illness, homelessness, reducing crime, encouraging higher education and learning vocations as well as helping society become more prosperous as a whole. 

Wow. Forget raising the minimum wage. This is much much better idea.

The minimum wage could actually drop if we had basic income.

But Americans would never go for it. Miserably slogging through 12 hour days and having businesses open 24/7 is too engrained in our culture.

"BUT WHERE WILL THE GOVERNMENT GET THE MONEY?" screamed Joe Schmoe, slamming a meaty fist onto the table and getting mouth-froth all over the front of his greying tank top. "You libt*rds all think money grows on TREES!! HAHA!"

"But where will people get the incentive to work?!" Mindy Bindy cried, flapping her hands in front of her face. She’d had a fear of the unemployed lollygagging about ever since she was a child and her mother told her to be afraid of the unemployed lollygagging about. "You think people should get paid for nothing? I work hard for my money!”

"But who will serve me?" grumbled Marty McMoneybags. "Who will make me feel important? Who will do my laundry and cook my food and stand in front of me wearing a plastic smile while I take out all my stress—because I do have a lot of stress, you know, being this rich is stressful—on them?” He paused and straightened out the piles of hundred dollar bills on the desk in front of him, then raised his two watery, outraged eyes up to the Heavens. “Lord, if there are no poor people, how will I know that I’m rich??”

I laughed. This is perfect! Well said!

The thing is, while I’m sure you could scrape up a few people who’d be willing to just float by on a guaranteed minimum income? For most people the choice to work would be a no-brainer. “Hmmm. I can get by on 33k a year, or I can take that part time job and make 48k… enough to move to a better apartment, maybe take the family on vacation. Sold.” Hell, most people would want to work simply because it gives one a sense of dignity and something to do with one’s time. (Speaking as someone who’s been unemployed, on extended sick leave, etc. in her time, the boredom and sense of isolation that comes with not having a job is almost as bad as the humiliation of having to depend on other people for one’s survival.)

And with this system, part-time jobs and “non-skilled” jobs would be much more readily available because nobody would need to work two or three jobs just to stay afloat!

Which would ALSO mean that employers and customers couldn’t shamelessly exploit employees the way they can today, because if losing a job weren’t necessarily a financial disaster, more people would be willing to walk out on jobs where they weren’t being treated with dignity.

And if this also applies to students (and it should) then student loans would become much less of a problem, and fewer people would flunk out of school because of having to juggle studies and work.

Far fewer people would be forced to stay with abusive partners, parents or roommates because they couldn’t afford to move out.

And the thing is, all those people who suddenly had money? They’d be spending it. They’d be getting all the stuff they can’t afford now - new clothes, books, toys, locally-produced food, car repairs - and with each purchase money would flow BACK to the government, because VAT, also income tax.

The unemployed and/or disabled wouldn’t need special support any more - which would also mean the government could fire however many admins who are currently engaged in humiliating - *cough* making sure those people aren’t getting money they don’t deserve. Same for medical benefits and pensions. And I’m no legal scholar, but I somehow imagine less financial desperation would lead to less petty crime, and hence less need for police and security everywhere?

TL;DR Doomie thinks this is a good idea, laughs at those who protest.

reblogging for more top commentary

They tried something like this out in Canada as a sort of social experiment, called Mincome. What they found was that, on the whole, people continued to work about as much as they did before. Only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less hours. 

But wait, there’s more. Because parents were spending just a little more time at home and involved with their families, test scores increased. Because teens didn’t have to work to support their families, drop-out rates decreased. Crime rates, hospital visits, psychiatric hospitalizations and domestic abuse rates all dropped, as well. More adults pursued higher education. Those who continued to work reported more job flexibility and more opportunity to choose employment they preferred.

Basically, now you can go prove to your asshole family members that society won’t collapse without poor people for you to feel better than.

Why did they stop in canada?

Mincome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

Fascinating! I’m from the Canadian prairies and I’ve never heard of this.

MINCOME FOR EVERYONE NOW 2014!

edictalis:

steinpratt:

split-the-coast:

When you discuss the wage gap, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Only white women make $0.77 to a man’s dollar.
• Black women make about $0.68 to a man’s dollar.
• Latina women make about $0.58 to a man’s dollar.

Intersectionality matters.

I’m not 100% sure but I’m pretty sure that white women actually make more than that, somewhere in the low 80’s. The $0.77 figure is achieved by averaging the pay gap across women - which means white feminists who use that figure aren’t just ignoring black and latina women, they’re using their oppression to boost the numbers.

It’s pretty gross. Don’t be a part of it. Break the wage gap down by race.

Unsurprisingly, it is even worse than that. According to the National Women’s Law Center, in 2012, white women did make $0.78 on the dollar to white, non-Hispanic men. The reason it’s so close to the national average is that— surprise— black and Latino men also make appallingly less on the dollar than white men, though still more than then black and Latino women. Compared to every dollar made by a white, non-Hispanic man:

• $0.78 to white women
• $0.73 to black men
• $0.64 to black women
• $0.61 to Latino men
• $0.54 to Latina women

osolage:

thebicker:

introspectivemeltdown:

anomaly1:

whoa…

This is my favorite post of all time. Once you see this there’s no going back. Our government isn’t a government. Its a corporation. Our congressmen aren’t elected officials they are CEOs who buy their way into office.

Remember that time a conservative columnist said it was un-American to let the poors vote because it was like giving house keys to a burglar? HAHAHAHAHAHHAHHA laugh to keep from crying

I reblog this once a year

“And anyway, when did sexual attraction become the sole metric for physical beauty? Is a sunset “ugly” just because you don’t want to fuck it? What about a waterfall? A horse? Ireland? A song?”

- Why We Need More ‘Ugly’ People On TV (via jumbleofnotes)

RELATED COMICS: Sophie Scholl The Fire Within. Marc Maron The Social Media Generation. Bill Hicks It’s Just a Ride. Henry Rollins Who’s the Crazier Man?

Banksy is an anoynomous English street artist and activist who has become a cult hero for his anti-establishment and rebellious artwork.

Unlike someone I know, who stays in his house all day drawing comics and watching Simpsons reruns, Banksy is a REAL artist who challenges the status quo, forces people to think and puts himself in danger, all while remaining a complete mystery to the world. I mean think about it, he’s one of the most famous artists on the planet, his work has been popping up in major cities for the past 10 years and sell for millions of dollars and no one knows who the hell this guy is! I take my hat off to the dude.

If you haven’t seen it, I recommend the documentary Banksy directed, Exit Through the Gift Shop. What was meant to be a film about Banksy instead turned into a movie about the man who was obsessed in trying to meet him. Although many have claimed that it’s a ‘mockumentary’ and the plot a set-up, it’s still a brilliant film. It not only documents the street art movement, it also deals with the meaning of art, and whether or not an artist actually needs any talent or can just survive on hype alone. Two thumbs up!

This quote was taken from Banksy’s 2004 book Cut It Out. Some of the passage was inspired/appropriated from an essay by artist Sean Tejaratchi. I rearranged the last couple of sentences for this comic.

- Banksy’s official website.
- Speaking of The Simpsons, check out Banksy’s opening couch gag.
- I posted a video about my upcoming trip to America. I’ll be having meet-ups in Portland, San Francisco and a signing at San Diego Comic Con.

The BBC Trust published an update on an years-old report questioning the "over-rigid application of editorial guidelines on impartiality" in science reporting. Or, as the Telegraph put it, they were told to "stop inviting cranks onto science programmes." Which seems slightly harsh.

Read more...

buttononyourlips:

reverseracism:

lifandiveira:

riverclans:

lifandiveira:

asieybarbie:

ignore anyone who tells you otherwise.

No white girls?

no

Why? You do t think white girls should be told they’re beautiful?

The amount of white whine in the notes…it’s ridiculous.

Every time we ask for the inclusion of young girls and women of color in pieces similar to this, where everyone is white, we’re told

"If you want representation then make it yourself and shut up about this!"

“Let the artist make whatever they want and include whoever they want! Freedom of expression!”

"If you need to see someone who looks like you in order to feel included then you are the real racist."

Yet all I see in the notes are:

"If you want equality you have to include EVERYONE including white girls and guys!"

“it’s pathetic that the only way you can feel good about yourself is by excluding others.”

No doubt they feel some type of way with their own bodies but what is dedicating a piece such as this to women who fall no where near the Eurocentric standards of beauty taking away from white women when they have so much representations and campaigns centered around them.

~Eon

In case people like lifandiveira would like a simple explanation as to why white girls are not needed, go to images.google.com and type the word “beauty” and tell me what you get.

Seriously.

If you’re not blown away by the insanely disproportionate amount of white women depicted with a dash of women of color scattered about, then I don’t know what to tell you.

I knew before I even got to the comments some white people would be embarrassing themselves by demanding “inclusion” in something that is explicitly helping to dismantle the toxic institutional whiteness of beauty standards.

Y’all: it’s okay to have a celebration of beauty that doesn’t include white skin. It’s more than okay. It’s necessary and overdue. FFS. Once all the skin bleaching creams on the the market, blindingly pale magazine covers, all-white leads in every sort of media, etc, have gone away for a few decades, check back in and wonder about if there are enough white “pretty” faces around you, but until then…you’re getting p l e n t y of messages that white=beautiful.

As explained in “Where’s the Cuttlefish” by Science Friday, scientists have discovered that, aside from its amazing ability to camouflage into its surroundings, the cuttlefish also has the capacity to perceive incomplete shapes as complete, much in the way humans do.

Cuttlefish change the patterns on their body for courtship rituals, when they eat a snack, and most famously when they want to blend in. How they change their skin patterns may tell us something about how they see the world, says Duke biologist Sarah Zylinski. Her work suggests that when cuttlefish see incomplete shapes, they fill in the visual blanks — much like humans do.

I’d hope that someone who has written a book about “What Shapes Our Fortunes” would have had Sociology 101 where he would have learned the fundamentally different ways that income and wealth work in our economy.  But apparently not.

In Rags to Riches to Rags Again,  Mark Rank writes that because of a great deal of turbulence in household earning over a lifetime “we have much more in common with one another than we dare to realize.”

One of the reasons for such fluidity at the top is that, over sufficiently long periods of time, most American households go through a wide range of economic experiences, both positive and negative. Individuals we interviewed spoke about hitting a particularly prosperous period where they received a bonus, or a spouse entered the labor market, or there was a change of jobs. These are the types of events that can throw households above particular income thresholds.

Ultimately, this information casts serious doubt on the notion of a rigid class structure in the United States based upon income. It suggests that the United States is indeed a land of opportunity, that the American dream is still possible — but that it is also a land of widespread poverty. And rather than being a place of static, income-based social tiers, America is a place where a large majority of people will experience either wealth or poverty — or both — during their lifetimes.

All together now:  Income, that comes in *household* paychecks, regardless of how many earners are contributing to that household income, is not wealth.  Wealth is how much money a household has in the bank and in investments and the assets they own, like real estate, businesses, land, cars, boats, and planes.

Wealth inequality is much greater than income inequality. It looks like this:

And breaking it down by race:

It is no small thing for any household to attain an annual income of a million dollars for even one year.

But it is an entirely different experience to have enough wealth that one can no longer worry about income at all, can work the tax system to mask enormous amounts of income,  can essentially withdraw from everyday contact with everyday Americans, can use one’s wealth to leverage political and economic power, and can know that the children in one’s household will never, ever want for a thing.

The “1%” was never about income alone.

Jane Van Galen, PhD, is a professor of education at the University of Washington, Bothell.  Her research focus is on socioeconomic class, education, and digital media. She writes for Education and Class, where this post originally appeared.

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

And now, some thoughts on subjects pertaining to publishing. I’ll use myself as an example for much of this.

1. I am in business with Amazon, though its Audible.com subsidiary. As you might be able to tell by my post yesterday, I am deeply happy with my experience working with Audible (and thus, by extension, Amazon). They’ve been a very good business partner to me.

2. I am also in business with Hachette, via its Gollancz imprint in the UK. I think what Amazon’s doing to US Hachette authors at the moment well and truly sucks. I heartily remind people that just because Amazon has been screwing these authors by making it impossible to buy their books there, doesn’t mean you can’t get those books — pretty much immediately — from all sorts of other retailers, including local bookstores. This might also be a fine time to install a Kobo or Nook or iBook app on your tablet or smartphone and diversify your eBook retailers.

3. I am in business with Random House, through its Heyne imprint in Germany. I have had an excellent business relationship with Heyne and think very highly of the people who work there. You may also recall that last year, when Random House attempted egregious bullshit with the contracts for their digital imprints Hydra and Alibi, I was happy to punch them in the throat for it, because they were trying to screw authors, no two ways about it.

4. I am in business with Macmillan, through Tor Books. As most of you know, I have been very happy with Tor, who treats me very well and who is very supportive of my career; I have the career I have because Tor has done well by me. What most of you may not know is that one major reason there was a three-year gap between Zoe’s Tale and Fuzzy Nation was because Tor and I had a substantial business disagreement, and I chose not to write new work for Tor for a while. The details of that disagreement are not important now — water under the bridge — but it was significant enough that I walked away from the company and worked on other things. Then it was done, we came to an understanding, and now we are working together again, quite happily.

What’s the point to all of the above?

Publishing is a business. As a writer, you are enaging in business with others, sometimes including large corporations. It’s not a team sport. It’s not an arena where there are “sides.” There’s no “either/or” choice one has to make, either with the businesses one works with or how one publishes one’s work. Anyone who simplifies it down to that sort of construct either doesn’t understand the business or is actively disingenuous, and isn’t doing you any favors regardless. The “side” you should be on is your own (and, if you choose, that of other authors).

These businesses and corporations are not your friends. They will seek to extract the maximum benefit from you that they can, and from others with whom they engage in business, consistent with their current set of business goals. This does not make them evil — it makes them business entities (they might also be evil, or might not be, but that’s a different thing). If you’re treating these businesses as friends, you’re likely to get screwed.

(And for God’s sake, don’t confuse being friends with people at those businesses with being friends with the business. I have very good friends at Tor. It didn’t stop me from having a substantial business disagreement with the company. Businesses aren’t your friends, even when they employ friends.)

Sometimes the goals of these businesses will align with yours. Sometimes they will not. And often a company that you’ve found yourself in alignment with previously will tack off on a different course, leaving you behind. Maybe you’ll realign at some later point. Maybe you won’t. If you’re under the impression that any business will always align with your own set of business goals, you are likely missing something. Expecting businesses that are not your own to act in a manner other than their own self-interest is likely to end in disappointment for you.

You’re allowed to think more than one thing about a company at the same time. I like what Amazon’s doing in the audiobook space, especially as it involves me. I think what it’s doing to Hachette authors sucks, in no small part because it happened to me, a few years back, when Amazon had a similar fight with Macmillan. Amazon has helped my career; it’s also made it clear to me that it doesn’t give a shit about my career when its interests are elsewhere. Amazon isn’t the only business partner I have that I can say that about. It’s clarifying, I will say.

Your business relationships are allowed to be complex, entangled and even contradictory. How do I feel about being in business with Hachette and Amazon? I feel fine about it, obviously. Likewise, I feel fine about being in business with, for example, Macmillan and Subterranean Press, both of whom have published the same work of mine, in different formats. I’m in business with a lot of businesses. I’m going to keep doing that, because I like to eat and I know where my ethical lines are. You can do this too. The person to decide what limits you choose to place on your business should be you.

Publishing is a business. I said that already. Guess what? I’m saying it again. If you’re not approaching it as a business, with the same eye toward your own business goals as those you’re in business with undoubtedly have on theirs, then when you find yourself completely at a loss and utterly dependent on the business choices of a company that fundamentally doesn’t care about you outside of a ledger entry, the amount of sympathy you’ll get — from me, anyway, and I suspect from other authors who tend to the business of their writing — will be smaller than you might hope.

Photo via Günter Pilger

Photos via Günter Pilger and Caroline Wengeler

Photo by Alte Gurke

Back in 2010, a trio of art students from Klasse Löbbert in Germany took it upon themselves to transform a boring electrical tower into a translucent, stained glass installation. Titled Leuchtturm (Lighthouse) the urban artwork in Hattingen, Germany was conceived by Ail Hwang, Hae-Ryan Jeong and Chung-Ki Park, who used cut triangles of Acrylglas to mimic the function of traditional stained glass pieces. If you liked this, also check out William Lamson’s sugar solarium or Tom Fruin’s Watertower in Brooklyn.

emilyvgordon:

shepherdsongs:

I was driving past a business here in the Houston Heights, when I glimpsed this painted on the side of the building. I recognized that iconic WWII poster before I realized it was not just any woman, but 14 year old Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who was attacked for wanting an education. The words next to her are her quote, ( “I don’t mind if I have to sit on the floor at school.) All I want is education. And I’m afraid of no one.”

This is gorgeous.

sinidentidades:

Massachusetts SWAT teams claim they’re private companies and don’t have to tell you anything

After the ACLU sent open records requests as part of its investigative report on police militarization, SWAT teams in Massachusetts claimed they were exempt because they were private corporations.

Some SWAT teams in the state operate as law enforcement councils (LECs) which are funded by several police departments and overseen by an executive board largely made up of local police chiefs.

Member police departments pay annual membership dues to the LECs which share technology and oversee crime scene investigators or other specialists.

Some of these LECs have also incorporated 501(c)(3) organizations, which they say exempts them from open records requests.

“Let’s be clear,” wrote Radley Balko for The Washington Post. “These agencies oversee police activities. They employ cops who carry guns, wear badges, collect paychecks provided by taxpayers and have the power to detain, arrest, injure, and kill. They operate SWAT teams, which conduct raids on private residences. And yet they say that because they’ve incorporated, they’re immune to Massachusetts open records laws. The state’s residents aren’t permitted to know how often the SWAT teams are used, what they’re used for, what sort of training they get or who they’re primarily used against.”

The ACLU reported earlier this week that about 240 of the 351 police departments in Massachusetts belong to an LEC, which are set up as corporations but are funded by local and federal taxpayer funds.

“Police departments and regional SWAT teams are public institutions, working with public money, meant to protect and serve the public’s interest,” the ACLU said in its report. “If these institutions do not maintain and make public comprehensive and comprehensible documents pertaining to their operations and tactics, the people cannot judge whether officials are acting appropriately or make needed policy changes when problems arise.”

The ACLU sued the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, which has about 50 member agencies, saying the LEC used government grants and taxpayer funds to purchase its equipment.

“NEMLEC can’t have it both ways,” said ACLU attorney Jessie Rossman. “Either it is a public entity subject to public records laws, or what it is doing is illegal.”

The ACLU survey found that only 7% of SWAT missions involved incidents they were originally designed to handle – such as hostage situations or shootings – while 62% of their mission involved drug searches.

Dog Eat Doug by Brian Anderson for July 03, 2014

sleepydumpling:

craftastrophies:

therainitraineth:

ask-gallows-callibrator:

ecnamor-lacimehc-ym:

gallifrey-feels:

sociopathic-italian-grandmas:

millshouse:

meganiun:

happyvegetable:

kennilworthy-thisp:

derinthemadscientist:

lumoslouis:

soloontherocks:

amour-vengeance:

later-homenuggets:

my friend left her window open in her bedroom and came back to find this

look at his self-satisfied little face, the cheeky shit

motherfucking australia

if there was a post to describe australia, this is it

wait. 

you mean to tell me this isn’t even a pet bird?

that in australia, you have wild birds that just fly from house to house with the express purpose of fucking shit up?

fucking HELL australia, what is wrong with you?

wake up australia 

That’s what birds do

They fly around and fuck shit up

Do you have some kind of mysterious nice birds in your weird foreign country

Do birds in America and England fly into your house and make the bed and tidy up the living room a little bit

It’s cold here, so they just bounce off the windows and lie there and twitch spasmodically while you look for the shovel.

Basically hurling themselves at windows is the worst thing birds do

yeah man a kookaburra literally flew into a classroom at my high school and just sat his smug ass down on top of the desk for a good 20 minutes

why has nobody mentioned the fact that in australia there are 3-4 months a year where everybody just accepts that they’re going to get attacked by magpies. It is literally called “swooping season” and these birds will fly down to peck your fucking face, and people get their eyes ripped out and shit, it’s fucking brutal.

My teacher had to go to hospital and have surgery because of swooping season. It was in the parking lot of school and all the kids would do a mad dash towards the car as the magpies tried to kill us.

no but when you’re 12 years old and riding your bike like mad on the way home from school with an icecream bucket on your head with like branches and shit sticking out if it to scare them off and none of this is considered strange

what the actual fuck australia 

austrailia is the most frightening place on earth 

What is an ice cream bucket?

It’s one of these

but you eat the icecream first and then you put it upside down on your head.

Some people draw eyes on them for extra deterrence

We used to have a magpie that helped himself to a slice of toast every morning.  He’d sit on the window sill until the toaster popped, take a slice and fly away to eat it.

Oh, and cyclists do this to their bike helmets (you use cable ties) to keep magpies from swooping them:

seriously, I’m terrified of you, Australia

thestarlingscalling:

Benedict Cumberbatch’s name

rivernymph:

samwinchesterhatesfire:

quads-for-the-gods:

bellecs:

winningthebattleloosingthewar:

On the morning of September 4, 1957, fifteen-year-old Dorothy Counts set out on a harrowing path toward Harding High, where-as the first African American to attend the all-white school – she was greeted by a jeering swarm of boys who spat, threw trash, and yelled epithets at her as she entered the building.

Charlotte Observer photographer Don Sturkey captured the ugly incident on film, and in the days that followed, the searing image appeared not just in the local paper but in newspapers around the world.

People everywhere were transfixed by the girl in the photograph who stood tall, her five-foot-ten-inch frame towering nobly above the mob that trailed her. There, in black and white, was evidence of the brutality of racism, a sinister force that had led children to torment another child while adults stood by. While the images display a lot of evils: prejudice, ignorance, racism, sexism, inequality, it also captures true strength, determination, courage and inspiration.

Here she is, age 70, still absolutely elegant and poised.

she deserves to be re-blogged. 

she’s so goddamned inspirational

this makes me want to cry

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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“Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.”

- David Augsburger  (via psych-facts)