Here’s a clip from today’s episode of Sarah Silverman’s Hulu series I Love You, America, where “certified America expert” Kate Berlant heads to Washington DC to spend a day as a guide showing tourists landmarks like the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the Reflecting Pool, the Washington Monument, and other places that remind her of […]
A new study published in the journal Sleep Health has found that gay people are more likely to experience issues with sleeping.
The study is based on an analysis of data from 46,909 men and 56,080 women who took part in the National Health Interview Survey between 2013 and 2015.
Participants were asked how many hours of sleep they get on average in a 24-hour period. This was then compared to the National Sleep Foundation‘s recommendations for the required hours of sleep per age group.
The study found that gay men are significantly more likely to have trouble falling asleep and require medication to overcome insomnia. Gay men were also found to be more likely to wake feeling unrested when compared with heterosexual or bisexual men.
Additionally, gay women were found to be “more at risk of struggling to fall or stay asleep, needing anti-insomnia drugs to help them nod off and feeling they need more shut eye in the morning,” reports the Daily Mail.
The study also suggested that the increased likelihood of smoking and mental health issues among LGBT people helps to facilitate poor sleep habits.
For his work Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same Time, William Forsythe sets in motion hundreds of pendulums in a room and invites people to walk among them, attempting to avoid collisions.
Suspended from automated grids, more than 400 pendulums are activated to initiate a sweeping 15 part counterpoint of tempi, spacial juxtaposition and gradients of centrifugal force which offers the spectator a constantly morphing labyrinth of significant complexity. The spectators are free to attempt a navigation this statistically unpredictable environment, but are requested to avoid coming in contact with any of the swinging pendulums. This task, which automatically initiates and alerts the spectators innate predictive faculties, produces a lively choreography of manifold and intricate avoidance strategies.
When I read the preview for the video at The Kid Should See This, I was expecting heavy brass pendulums cutting large swaths through the room, not unlike the first challenge in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where “only the penitent man will pass”. That would have been fun but perhaps too dangerous and not art.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stand a Texas ruling that said the right to a marriage license did not entitle same-sex couples to spousal benefits under employee insurance plans. The city of Houston had asked the high court to overturn last June’s Texas Supreme Court decision, which determined that all marriage-related matters were not decided when the U.S. Supreme Court established a right to same-sex unions in 2015, leaving room for state courts to explore the limits of gay marriage. The federal court’s decision, issued without comment, allowed the Texas ruling to stand.
Conservatives have argued that Obergefell, the 2015 SCOTUS decision that found same-sex couples had a constitutional right to wed, entitled same-sex couples to a marriage license — a piece of paper — and nothing more. It did not entitle same-sex couples to "equal access to the constellation of benefits that the state has linked to marriage,” as the city of Houston argued in its appeal of the ruling.
This wouldn't have happened if Merrick Garland was on the court and/or Hillary Clinton was in the White House.
This twitter thread is great, sorry for infecting this hallowed ground with tweets
by Dan Savage
Jonathan Chait at New York Magazineargues that the GOP's tax cuts for the super rich — deductions for Americans who own private planes! tax hikes for everyone else! — are a disaster for the country. But unlike the damage Trump, et al, is doing to the courts and our democratic norms and the Doomsday Clock, the tax cuts are reversible and highly likely to be reversed:
Indeed, the passage of the Trump tax cuts will help lay the groundwork for their undoing by increasing the chances Democrats regain control of Congress. The moment Trump won his election last November, he immediately forfeited his most potent advantages: He no longer had the deeply unpopular Hillary Clinton as his opponent, and he lost the advantage of Democratic complacency (which tends to build up over time when their party holds the White House.) An anti-Republican wave of some size was always inevitable. But Trump compounded the problem by surrendering another potent advantage: his brand as an economic populist loathed by the financial elite and planning to raise taxes on rich people like himself.... Democrats have nothing to fear from making repeal of the Trump tax cuts for the rich a defining party plank. On the contrary, they have a great deal to gain. The bill is a cash grab by the wealthy, driven by the demands of the Republican donor base, and stuffed with targeted favors for insiders with lobbyists. Many more are sure to surface. The more they talk about it, the more Democrats can drive home the message that Trump’s economic populism was a fraud.
But David Roberts at Vox complicated that triumphant picture with a deeply disturbing tweet storm this weekend. It's too long to embed in its entirety... but here's the depressing gist:
1. A note on the politics of this tax bill, which is so absurd & horrendous it can scarcely be believed — like, really. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
2. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, GW Bush & GOP put together an "economic stimulus" bill in response. It was (brace yourself) ... — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
3. ... a huge tax giveaway to the rich. So grotesque a giveaway to the rich that even the WSJ acknowledged as much! Paul Krugman wrote: — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
4. "It was so extreme that when political consultants tried to get reactions from voter focus groups, the voters refused to believe that they were describing the bill accurately." https://t.co/vNMlrT6CD4 — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
5. "Voters refused to believe." Remember that. Now fast forward to 2012 and the Romney/Ryan tax plan, which would have (brace yourself) ... — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
6. ... slashed social spending to pay for giant tax cuts for the rich. Priorities USA, a Dem super PAC, ran focus groups on it. Here's what happened: — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
7. "When Priorities informed a focus group that Romney supported the Ryan budget plan — & thus championed 'ending Medicare as we know it' ..." — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
8. "... while also advocating tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing." — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
9. Again, when GOP economic policy is accurately explained to voters, they simply cannot believe it's true. https://t.co/AXRqCiAFVF — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
10. Lots of people have used this as a kind of punchline, but I think it's worth taking some time to think about it seriously. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
11. Most ppl have other priorities & are woefully ignorant about politics. Research has confirmed this again & again. *Boundless* ignorance. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
12. Average people absorb politics piecemeal, through osmosis. What they generally see is a haze of pettiness, squabbles, & conflict. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
13. Viewed from this distance, most people conclude that "politics" is hopeless, all politicians are venal, & the whole game is corrupt. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
14. Unless you're willing to put in serious time & work to suss out the details, "pox on both houses" is kind of the default destination. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
15. So when voters are confronted by the idea that one party wants to take from the poor & sick & to fund tax cuts for the rich ... — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
16. ... and the other party doesn't, it simply doesn't fit the hazy "both sides suck" model. It *sounds* like an unfair partisan attack. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
17. The truth about the GOP sounds like an attack on the GOP, so people dismiss it as such. It is a perverse form of immunity. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
18. And here we come to the true, twisted genius of the decades long RW strategy. They have fractured trust in mainstream institutions ... — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
19. ... so there is no widely trusted person or institution who can tell the truth about the GOP in a way that will be broadly accepted. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
20. There are no more trusted referees or arbiters, so the media atmosphere is filled with "both sides" yelling, w/ no way to resolve. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
21. In that atmosphere, everyone can just comfortably believe whoever is saying good things about "their side." Epistemological bubbles. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
22. Which brings us to this current tax bill, which is even more comically malign & grasping than past GOP budget plans. Any attempt ... — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
23. ... to accurately describe it sounds like a f'ing comic book villain revealing their evil plot toward the end of the movie. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
24. But it is surrounded, in the media atmosphere, by the *exact same* haze of both-sides charge-and-countercharge as ever. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
25. So your average citizen, just going on instinctual heuristics, isn't going to believe an accurate description. It sounds too ludicrous. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
26. An accurate (horrific) description sounds like what "one side" says, and we all know the truth is in the middle somewhere, right? — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
27. In this way, the GOP, whether through design or accident, has stumbled on a brilliant political strategy for advancing kleptocracy. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
28. They exploit public & media heuristics that make us highly averse to asymmetry. They exploit the folk wisdom of "both sides do it." — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
29. They do their deeds right out in the open, trusting (accurately!) that a good chunk of the public won't believe it is what it is. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
30. Journalists understand the model of "finding & exposing hidden information" — the pre-internet-age core of journalism — but ... — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
31. ... they have not yet solved the dilemma of how to help the public focus on & understand *already public information* that is surrounded... — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
32. ... by a fog of misinformation, bullshit, and distraction. This ludicrous tax bill is a real-time test case. Can the media convey ... — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
33. ... that it really is as cruel & plutocratic as Dem critics are saying it is? Can they convey that the GOP has become something ... — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
34. ... more unhinged & venal than even its worst critics charge? I doubt it. I'm not sure there's *any* econ policy that could break through. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
35. Remember: "respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing." And that's how they get away with it. — David Roberts (@drvox) December 1, 2017
Whoops. I embedded the whole thing. I hope David Roberts doesn't mind. This has to be the most depressing thing I've ever read... and I read the news every damn day.
We obviously can't defeat the GOP if we aren't able to convince voters — average, ordinary voters, voters who are only half paying attention, voters who distrust all politicians and have been by trained to discount whatever the "liberal media" has to say — that the GOP quite literally has it in for them. That the GOP would rather see your kid die than a see a billionaire go without a tax break for his private jet. It is such cartoonish evil, as Roberts says, that it beggars belief. And Dems are lousy at communicating with voters because Dems go in for nuance and complexity while the GOP is always doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on big lies, racist dog whistlesbullhorns, and attacking scapegoats.
Using a combination of satellite data and mathematical weather models, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center made this simulation that shows how aerosols like dust, smoke, and salt were circulated in the atmosphere during the 2017 hurricane season. It’s amazing to see how far some of these things spread.
During the 2017 hurricane season, the storms are visible because of the sea salt that is captured by the storms. Strong winds at the surface lift the sea salt into the atmosphere and the particles are incorporated into the storm. Hurricane Irma is the first big storm that spawns off the coast of Africa. As the storm spins up, the Saharan dust is absorbed in cloud droplets and washed out of the storm as rain. This process happens with most of the storms, except for Hurricane Ophelia. Forming more northward than most storms, Ophelia traveled to the east picking up dust from the Sahara and smoke from large fires in Portugal. Retaining its tropical storm state farther northward than any system in the Atlantic, Ophelia carried the smoke and dust into Ireland and the UK.
I watched this several times to pick up on different things…the hurricanes of course, but also how smoke from the forest fires in the Pacific Northwest makes it all the way to Scotland (!!!) and dust from the Sahara desert makes it to the Caribbean (also !!!). (via phil plait)
Update: All that dust from the Sahara blowing across the ocean? Some of the dust, 27 million tons per year on average, is deposited in the Amazon basin in South America, providing the ecosystem there vital phosphorus:
This trans-continental journey of dust is important because of what is in the dust, Yu said. Specifically the dust picked up from the Bodélé Depression in Chad, an ancient lake bed where rock minerals composed of dead microorganisms are loaded with phosphorus. Phosphorus is an essential nutrient for plant proteins and growth, which the Amazon rain forest depends on in order to flourish.
Meet Dana Nessel, a Democratic candidate for Michigan Attorney General. She’s a Detroit attorney who became Michigan-famous for leading the legal fight for marriage equality in the Great Lakes State (and in the Wolverine State, too). And as her pretty-damn-good online ad suggests, she has a good idea for reducing the amount of sexual harassment by icky men in high office: Get more women in office.
If the last few weeks has taught us anything, it’s that we need more women in positions of power, not less. So when you’re choosing Michigan’s next attorney general, ask yourself this: Who can you trust most not to show you their penis in a professional setting? Is it the candidate who doesn’t have a penis? I’d say so.
Nessel’s look of mock superiority and self-satisfaction after delivering that line is probably worth electing her, all in itself:
Nessel also addresses the shouldn’t-be-an-issue of whether there might just be too many women on the Michigan ballot next year, since Debbie Stabenow will be up for re-election and there’s a strong chance Michigan Dems will field women candidates for senator, governor, attorney general and secretary of state. Pfft. What of it? asks Nessel: “I’m a woman. That’s not a liability, that’s an asset.”
And then there’s the mandatory tuff-on-crime message, only with a decidedly timely spin, and a pledge:
I want to tell you what you can expect me not to do. I will not sexually harass my staff, and I won’t tolerate it in your workplace either. I won’t walk around in a half-open bathrobe, and I’ll continue to take all sex crimes seriously, just like I did as a prosecutor.
A Detroit teevee station is calling the ad “controversial,” because state Republicans insist it must be:
“Sexual harassment is not a laughing matter,” said Sarah Anderson, communications director for the Michigan Republican Party. “In a crisis, a leader fights for what is right, they don’t exploit a crisis for personal gain.”
That’s pretty impressive talk for somebody from a party whose Alabama cousins, and whose President, think it’s their highest possible priority to get an accused child molester into the Senate.
If you’d like to throw some money Ms. Nessel’s way, her campaign site is right here. We’re looking forward to her kicking some asses, and not grabbing a single one.
It’s your Open Thread — no, no, not your open bathrobe, you.
Yesterday Eli asked us all to marvel at Seattle's matriarchy. Well, Seattle, Michigan may get its own matriarchy this November, with an all-woman/all-Dem slate for statewide office, and Michigan's matriarchs aren't playing. Meet Dana Nessel, one of the Dem women running there this fall. Nessel wants to be Michigan's next attorney general and her latest campaign ad is... well, just watch:
I've watched this ad for a Democratic candidate for Michigan Attorney General a dozen times.
You can't argue with her logic—elected officials can't pull out dicks they don't have. I'm putting a Nessel yard sign in front of my house just in case someone visiting from Michigan walks by. Nessel for MI AG!
I would like to take a moment to appreciate a new word in our collective vocabulary: scaramucci. It seems likely that eventually this word will be as oft-used as the word fuck simply because the word is so versatile.
A scaramucci is a unit of time, in between a week and a fortnight.
A scaramucci is a sad little man trying desperately to cling to the wispy shreds of dignity left to him after a spectacular self-inflicted public failure.
A scaramucci is a failed writer who can’t get a publishing contract.
Your coworker who constantly undermines you could be called a scaramucci.
It’s a useful word for road incidents: “I thought maybe his wife was giving birth and that’s why he was driving like a scaramucci.”
A scaramucci is a person who lacks the range but is blithely unaware of that fact.
You know that guy at the lunch counter who thinks if he holds up the whole line to flirt a bit he’ll get free guacamole and then gets mad at the cashier if he has to pay for his food in full, holding up the whole place further? That guy is a scaramucci. (This works equally well in other situations; the little black dress girl holding everything up because she thinks she’s way hotter than she needs to be to hop the line for the club is a scaramucci. The old lady who’s arguing with the cashier over expired coupons even after the cashier says fuck it and just puts in the fifty fucking cents themselves to make this woman leave is a scaramucci.)
A scaramucci is a Black Knight sort, the kind of person who might still challenge you to a duel when you’ve taken off both his arms already.
That guy at the bar who gets super-entertaining on his third lager and starts yelling insults at the Queen or the President or whoever is on the news behind the bar is also a scaramucci.
A person who has become unhinged by ambition is a scaramucci.
A person who is trying to suck their own cock is not a scaramucci.
Someone who chaotically fails upward might be a scaramucci.
Mostly, someone who’s got thinner skin than any other public figure in the nation, someone who can dish it out but can’t take it, someone with such a thin veneer of self-esteem that they practically exude mercurial instability: that person would be a scaramucci.
It’s a hell of a good word.
Many thanks to Anthony Scaramucci for being the bloke he is and threatening to sue his alma mater’s student newspaper for calling him “an unethical opportunist and who exuded the highest degree of disreputability.” I had been searching for a decent word that was as flexible as the word fuck and here one is, fully formed.
Oh, and also? you might call an unethical opportunist who exudes the highest degree of disreputability a scaramucci.
Via JoeMyGod: the moment the crowd in Sydney learned the results of the marriage equality "survey." Australian leading politicians, cowards one and all, refused to move on marriage equality despite polls showing overwhelming support for allowing same-sex couples to marry. So instead of doing something, Australian decided to hold a plebiscite—a non-binding, mail-in vote, i.e. another public opinion poll. But this one would cost the government upwards of $120 million. And guess what? It turns out that all those previous public opinion polls, the one the government could've looked to for free, were correct: Australians overwhelmingly support marriage equality. NYT:
A solid majority of Australians voted in favor of same-sex marriage in a historic survey that, while not binding, paves the way for Parliament to legally recognize the unions of gay and lesbian couples. Of 12.7 million Australians who took part in the survey, 61.6 percent voted yes and 38.4 percent voted no, officials announced on Wednesday morning. Participation was high, with 79.5 percent of voting-age Australians taking part. “The Australian people have spoken, and they have voted overwhelmingly ‘yes’ for marriage equality,” said Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who had called the national survey as a way to put pressure on conservative lawmakers, many from his own party. “They voted ‘yes’ for fairness, they voted ‘yes’ for commitment, they voted ‘yes’ for love.”
Turnbull is promising full marriage equality by Christmas but the handwringing/concern-trolling/sincere-religious-belief-bullshitting about bakers and florists has already begun.
There truly is no justice in the world, because Julie Klausner’s Hulu series Difficult People will not be returning for another season. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the streaming network has decided to cancel the Klausner and Billy Eichner-starring series not long after season 3 wrapped up its 10-episode run. The show was originally developed as […]
Remember in 1993 when Jurassic Park was like…the end all, be all of special effects?
not gonna lie that still looks intimately real
I’m still somewhat convinced that someone sold their soul to create the special effects in Jurassic Park because that shit is over 20 years old and it still really, really holds up, better than the stuff in a lot of current movies, even.
Fucking witchcraft, man.
fucking look at this shit though
Literally see this post flying around with a few different responses added to the bottom each time so I’ll say it for this one myself:
THEY ACTUALLY BUILT A GIANT MASSIVELY DETAILED FUCKING ANIMATRONIC T-REX FOR ALL OF THIS THAT’S WHY THE EFFECTS ARE SO GOOD. CAUSE IT AIN’T CGI. AND IT AIN’T GUY IN A COSTUME. IT’S A BIG FUCKING ROBOT DINOSAUR. AND EVERY PART IS DESIGNED TO MOVE. IT COST LIKE HALF THE BUDGET OF THE FILM.
amazing
And they had the film it in small increments, especially in the outdoor scenes, because the rain fall kept soaking into the ‘skin’ of the rex and would slow down and mess up its movements. So they would stop filming and have a crew out there drying off this massive, fake dinosaur, and then they’d start filming again until it was too wet. Repeat until the end of the scene.
They used animatronics and detailed costumes for most if not all of the dinosaurs in the first movie.
The triceratops for instance, was also animatronic.
One of my favorite anecdotes I’ve read on tumblr is how the t-rex robot from Jurassic park would malfunction while it was drying out. How did it malfunction, you might wonder?
Motherfucker randomly started moving.
So apparently if you were on the jp set you would sometimes hear people screaming bloody murder even though they were all well aware that it was a giant animatronic puppet and wouldn’t actually, you know, eat them.
Did not know this, had to reblog for awesome movie history insights.
So, I knew about the animatronics bit but I did not know the raptors were guys in suits and the malfunctioning t-rex sounds terrifying.
And i just googled malfunctioning t-rexand was not disappointed. Apparently in order to put the skin on over the steel frame a guy had to crawl inside thet-rex while it was turned on and glue the skin down. And if somebody turned the t-rex off or the power went out the guy in the t-rex stood a very real chance of getting mangled and killed by the hydraulics.
So of course, the power goes out.
And this guy is still in there gluing the skin down.
Apparently the way to survive getting sheered to death by huge sheets of metal while you’re inside a giant t-rex robot is to curl into a ball and hope for the best.
And this guy hoped for the best and got it.
Some other people on stage pried open the t-rex jaws and glue guy crawled out of its mouth and was totally okay.
This is getting better and better.
I think they only had like 6 minutes of CGI
I’m just waiting for the T-Rex to come to life and leave its stand.
The thing about this that gets my special effects nerd going is the fact that EVERY single dinosaur was sculpted by artists based on the current existent archeological evidence of the time.
Even better than that, this movie ADVANCED our best understanding of dinosaurs at the time. They were blowing out a budget bigger than anything Hollywood had ever seen, and along with employing almost the last hurrah of incredible physical FX, they had a bank of those newfangled digital SFX computers. Nobody’d ever really created convincing dinosaurs in a movie before. It’d all been stop-motion animation, and even when the models were exquisitely crafted, you could just tell there was something OFF about them. Spielberg wanted THE BEST DINOSAURS EVER, and he figured on using the cutting edge of digital modeling and animation technology to build them for him.
So they got hold of some of the best paleontologists they could find and said, “We want you guys to take this tech that your labs could pretty much never afford and use it to build us the most realistic, accurate dinosaur models the world has ever seen.”
The paleontologists knew an opportunity when it bit them in the ass. They plugged in everything they knew about dinosaurs, all the skeletons and their best guesses about soft tissue and all that. And when they’d created those dinosaur models, they had the computer start moving them as they realistically would with anatomy like that. One guy took a look at those walking t-rexes and velociraptors (really utahraptors, but whatevs, fam), and he said, “Wait a minute, I’ve seen movement like that before.”
He called up film of a chicken walking. Everyone in the room said, “Holy shit.”
Prior to 1989, the idea that birds were descended from dinosaurs existed–we knew about archaeopteryx, we knew there was some minor connection there–but the idea that DINOSAURS LIVE IN THE MODERN WORLD AND THEY ARE CALLED BIRDS was not pre-eminent. Jurassic Park changed our scientific understanding of dinosaurs.
That paleontologists’d be Kevin Padian. Who is awesome.
