You know what the Green Heron is basically the best heron because it is like 90% neck so when it is all folded down it looks like a giant head with wings and legs
but then suddenly ZOOP
fucking green herons
What the fuck
Oh hey, I wrote an article about the green heron’s neck and its implications for paleoart a few years ago.
If you like card games and board games even a little bit, chances are you know Cards Against Humanity—it's the most popular 'thing' of its kind, having earned like $12 million bucks. Which sucks, because it's awful. Read the rest
If you want a card for a friend or family member who has cancer, Emily McDowell -- who survived Stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 24 -- has created the best I've seen: Witty, warm, and acerbic.
what would you think of a woman who addressed a club meeting of men by telling them how charming, how well gowned, how pretty, they were?
This is why I really like books that are set in oldey times with people who have views like this, and why it annoys me when people say but that’s not historically accurate
tbh, half the time ‘not historically accurate’ is code for ‘i wish things were still like my imaginary version of 19th century England only minus the cholera’
This just makes me absurdly happy, especially because it’s written by a man calling out other men for this shit.
Even something as iconic as the London double-decker bus must evolve. And since the privatization of its bus system, the British capital’s trademark buses have come to be represented predominantly by the Enviro 400, recreated skillfully here in LEGO by Hong Kong builder Andy Hung (complete with accurate interior):
What next, Beefeaters in baseball caps?! It’s a far cry from the LEGO’s official London bus set, which was released exactly forty years ago this year. (…omg, I actually remember owning this set)
I know exactly what you're thinking—one god isn't enough gods for a class action. That makes no sense at all! And even if there were more than one, how likely is it that they would be similarly situated so that one could act as a class representative? Not very.
Well, you're forgetting that there is such a thing as a defendant class action. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a) (providing that "[o]ne or more members of a class may sue or be sued as representative parties on behalf of all members"; emphasis added). Most class actions of course are brought by plaintiffs seeking justice for some wrong done to the public at large, such as the diabolical marketing tactics employed to make consumers think Crunchberries cereal is made with real fruit. But defendant class actions do exist—here's an opinion, for example, certifying a class of over 9,000 people who benefitted (knowingly or not) from a Ponzi scheme. So, the fact that there is only one plaintiff (actually, two) and many defendants in God v. Homosexualsis not necessarily a problem.
There are a few problems with this case, though.
Let's start with the plaintiffs. Most reports of this case, filed on April 30 in the federal District of Nebraska, refer to it as "Driskell v. Homosexuals," but Ms. Driskell makes clear in the very first paragraph that she is bringing the case on behalf of the actual plaintiffs, God and Jesus Christ. Can they sue in federal court? Well, if a corporation can do that, I don't see why these entities couldn't. Let's call them a "partnership" or "unincorporated association," and I think under Rule 17 and Nebraska law they are good to go.
The problem is, they need a lawyer. "An individual can represent himself in legal proceedings in his own behalf, but one who is not an attorney cannot represent others." Steinhausen v. Homeservices of Nebraska, Inc., 289 Neb. 927 (2015). That includes entities, as the court held in Steinhausen with regard to limited liability corporations. Here the plaintiffs aren't representing Themselves, and Driskell isn't a lawyer. (She claims to be their "ambassador," but that won't cut it.) Case dismissed.
There is of course reason to believe that Driskell didn't clear this lawsuit with the plaintiffs to begin with. When Ernie Chambers sued God in Nebraska back in 2007, his case was dismissed because he was never able to serve God (with a summons, I mean). Chambers argued that service was unnecessary because God is omniscient and so He already had notice of the lawsuit, but the judge said Chambers still had to follow the rules. When Chambers appealed, arguing that Nebraska courts should take judicial notice of God for this purpose, at least three people offered to represent the Lord on appeal but He did not get involved. My point is, we can assume that God is present in Nebraska but there is no evidence He is interested in litigating there.
Even if He's changed his mind, and setting aside Driskell's lack of a license, it's not clear what the petition is asking the court to do. It appears to be seeking a declaratory judgment that homosexuality is a sin, but the Establishment Clause prevents a court from declaring that kind of thing. Plus, assuming the court had diversity jurisdiction (Driskell doesn't identify a basis for federal-question jurisdiction), it would have to apply the law of the state where it's located. Driskell cites a number of Bible verses that do seem to support her position that homosexuality "is ambomination," but no Nebraska laws at all.
If Driskell is asking the court to take some kind of action against the defendant class, she has the additional problem that she hasn't identified who they are. She has sued "Homosexuals, Their Given Name Homosexuals [and] Their Ali[a]s Gay," which is really not very specific. There are almost certainly homosexuals in Nebraska, but Driskell hasn't identified even one who could be a potential class representative. Until and unless she finds one, names him or her as a defendant and serves that person, there's nothing for the court to do.
Finally, this also seems like one of those cases where the plaintiff may have pleaded herself out of court by alleging facts that show she can't or shouldn't win. The two that jump out at me are paragraphs 24 and 25 (agreeing with the defendants that God loves them), and the last paragraph, citing Lamentations 3:22: "It is [because] of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not." The court has to assume the allegations are true at this stage. If His compassion is unfailing, then I think His lawsuit has to be dismissed.
Excerpts from an myth-busting report in The Telegraph:
According to popular myth, thousands of New Yorkers fled their homes in panic, with swarms of terrified citizens crowding the streets in different American cities to catch a glimpse of a “real space battle”... The true extent of the panic seems to have been that a small band of Grover's Mill locals, believing the town's water tower on Grover's Mill Road had been turned into a “giant Martian war machine”, fired guns filled with buckshot in an attack on the water tower...
The radio ratings survey firm CE Hopper Company were, coincidentally, conducting a telephone poll that night of approximately five thousand households. They asked: "To what programme are you listening?” Only two per cent of people said they were listening to The War of the Worlds...
Research published six weeks after the broadcast by the American Institute of Public Opinion was skewed. They later admitted that figures of one million people listening to the programme were wildly inaccurate...
The newspapers had a clear agenda. An editorial in The New York Times, headlined In the Terror by Radio, was used to censure the relatively new medium of radio, which was becoming a serious competitor in providing news and advertising...
In Getting it Wrong, Professor Campbell said that Welles was happy in later decades to encourage the myth of the panic because it was a "tale just too delectable not to be true".
These awesome little European Bee Eaters, huddled together for warmth on a chilly morning in Ávila, Spain, so closely resemble a fuzzy caterpillar that photographer José Luis Rodríguez decided to title the image Oruga de Plumas or “caterpillar of feathers.”
Designed by artist and cabinetmaker Benjamin Nordsmark, the Labyrinth Table is a minimalist rectangular coffee table that contains a maze underneath a glass top. The piece contains a set of six metal figurines that can be moved with the help of magnetic knobs. For his work on the project Nordsmark won a Silver A’Design Award earlier this year. (via Laughing Squid, My Modern Met)
Security researcher Jeremy Richards has called the Hospira Lifecare PCA 3 drug-pump "the least secure IP enabled device" he's examined.
Read the rest
