Luke.stirling

silverback420:

thelesbianguide:

unicornempire:

the-real-goddamazon:

This post is so important.

This is the best post made in the history of ever. I’m so serious.

I just feel really strongly like this belongs on this blog

Lmfaoo!

Walmart critics embrace two moral standards: in the first, morality requires payment of high wages to 1.2 million people. In the second, morality can be achieved without employing anyone at all–that is, by paying zero wages. Most of us have chosen to live by the second standard, and from our lofty moral position we can criticize Walmart for not meeting the first standard. How convenient!

Leaving the cozy confines of Earth's atmosphere for life aboard the ISS is an exceedingly rare experience reserved for just a handful of astronauts. But thanks to NASA and GoPro, now you can share in the breathtaking views/sheer terror that astronaut...

charliesometimescharlotte:

silensy:

ted:

Meet the most successful tech entrepreneur you’ve never heard of. 

In 1962, Dame Stephanie Shirley decided she was sick of hitting the glass ceiling for women in the tech industry. So she founded an all-female software startup called Freelance Programmers, and she hired women who had left the workplace after getting married or having children. To get business, she often signed her name “Steve” instead of “Stephanie” in letters. “In those days, I couldn’t open a bank account without my husband’s permission,” Dame Stephanie says. “My generation of women fought the battles for the right to work and the right for equal pay.”

Freelance Programmers was ultimately valued at $3 billion, making Dame Stephanie and 70 of her employees millionaires. 

Watch her incredible TED Talk on her pioneering career»

That looks like a lady I want to hang out with.

yes ma

“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

- Anne Lamott, writer (b. 10 Apr 1954)

Hovertext: Keep your hands above my waist, human.

New comic!
Today's News:

 Only three days left to get your monocle!

A patent troll that claims that its failed 1990 cassettes-by-mail business is the same thing as podcasting got cut off at the knees today when the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) invalided its bogus claims.

Read the rest

Recent moves in places like Missouri, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Florida have sought to strictly control those receiving welfare benefits through things like drug-testing, food stamp restrictions for “luxury items,” and legislation that bans welfare recipients from spending government money at strip clubs—even though there’s no virtually no evidence the poor actually spend their money this way.

Read the rest

Motor vehicle deaths continue to drop in the US this century. Firearm deaths continue to rise. If the CDC's WISQARS data holds its path since 2013, guns will soon be America's top killing machine. The 17 states (and one district) in order are: Read the rest

The Sad Puppies are what the gomers who undermined the Hugo nominations are calling themselves. I’m interested in seeing how they defend themselves…or was, until I read their arguments. And all I can conclude is that these are really pathetic, brainless people.

For example, this guy Brad R. Torgersen. He tries to explain their cause by first setting up an analogy.

Imagine for a moment that you go to the local grocery to buy a box of cereal. You are an avid enthusiast for Nutty Nuggets. You will happily eat Nutty Nuggets until you die. Nutty Nuggets have always come in the same kind of box with the same logo and the same lettering. You could find the Nutty Nuggets even in the dark, with a blindfold over your eyes. That’s how much you love them.

Then, one day, you get home from the store, pour a big bowl of Nutty Nuggets . . . and discover that these aren’t really Nutty Nuggets. They came in the same box with the same lettering and the same logo, but they are something else. Still cereal, sure. But not Nutty Nuggets. Not wanting to waste money, you eat the different cereal anyway. You find the experience is not what you remembered it should be, when you ate actual Nutty Nuggets. You walk away from the experience somewhat disappointed. What the hell happened to Nutty Nuggets? Did the factory change the formula or the manufacturing process? Maybe you just got a bad box.

OK…I can understand that. Sometimes you just want your comfort food, and you want it to be prepared the same way, every time. This is the force that drove McDonald’s to world domination — the same food available everywhere, all the time, nice and greasy. I understand, but I don’t think that way; I want something different, I like exploring new flavors. I go to our local Mexican restaurant and pick a completely different meal each time. But wanting the same thing? Fine. My wife discovered her favorite thing on the menu early on, and she gets it always. No problem!

Except the analogy he’s setting up is to justify books. He wants them predictable. He wants to look at the cover and know exactly what he’s going to get when he reads it.

And he’s an author.

Well, at least I know I’d only have to read one of his books, if I felt like it (I do not), and then I could skip the rest.

But you’re reading this and saying, no, that can’t be. Books are supposed to be different from each other. Just imagine if every time you picked one up it would just be a retelling of Harry Potter, over and over again. No author could seriously propose such a justification.

Really, he did.

That’s what’s happened to Science Fiction & Fantasy literature. A few decades ago, if you saw a lovely spaceship on a book cover, with a gorgeous planet in the background, you could be pretty sure you were going to get a rousing space adventure featuring starships and distant, amazing worlds. If you saw a barbarian swinging an axe? You were going to get a rousing fantasy epic with broad-chested heroes who slay monsters, and run off with beautiful women. Battle-armored interstellar jump troops shooting up alien invaders? Yup. A gritty military SF war story, where the humans defeat the odds and save the Earth. And so on, and so forth.

These days, you can’t be sure.

The book has a spaceship on the cover, but is it really going to be a story about space exploration and pioneering derring-do? Or is the story merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings?

There’s a sword-swinger on the cover, but is it really about knights battling dragons? Or are the dragons suddenly the good guys, and the sword-swingers are the oppressive colonizers of Dragon Land?

A planet, framed by a galactic backdrop. Could it be an actual bona fide space opera? Heroes and princesses and laser blasters? No, wait. It’s about sexism and the oppression of women.

Finally, a book with a painting of a person wearing a mechanized suit of armor! Holding a rifle! War story ahoy! Nope, wait. It’s actually about gay and transgender issues.

Or it could be about the evils of capitalism and the despotism of the wealthy.

AN AUTHOR WROTE THAT. Unbelievable. He wants purity of the genre: books with rockets on the cover must be entirely about machines and traveling. Books with a guy and an axe on the cover must be about barbarians killing monsters. Don’t you dare change the formula. These books are not allowed to be about race, or colonialism, or sexism, or oppressive social structures. He thinks those are bad things to bring up in a science fiction book.

Our once reliable packaging has too often defrauded our readership. It’s as true with the Hugos as it is with the larger genre as a whole. Our readers wanted Nutty Nuggets because (for decades) Nutty Nuggets is what we gave them. Maybe some differences here and there, but nothing so outrageously different as to make our readers look at the cover and say, “What the hell is this crap??”

Apparently, he stopped reading the genre with Hugo Gernsback.

Maybe he opened The Left Hand of Darkness, published in 1969, expecting a shoot-em-up with aliens, and got a story about culture and gender.

The Martian Chronicles, published in 1950…surely, that one is about brave Americans conquering a planet? There’s a story or two in there that turns that trope on its ear. Brad Torgerson’s response was probably “What the hell is this crap??”

Let’s try Dhalgren, from 1975 — nope, that sends poor Brad screaming off to find some fantasy. Swords, half-naked slave girls, bloody battles.

Hey, The Book of the New Sun has a guy with a big sword on the cover, and it’s new — it came out 35 years ago. But then it’s a massive allegorical series of books on this far future world, using words from a language Wolfe invented.

Lord of Light? An amazing melding of Hindu gods and high technology. Stanislaw Lem? He’s old school, certainly his books must be straightforward space opera. I know, Phillip K. Dick! Nothing twisty and weird there, no sir!

I guess his only recourse is Robert Heinlein. Conservative politics, a bit of militarism, hyper-competent engineers solving mechanical problems all over the place. Like in Stranger in a Strange Land. There wouldn’t be any of that freaky social consciousness crapola in a book from 1961, would there?

I first started reading fantasy when I was six or seven years old, and my father gave me a copy of Tarzan of the Apes. I was eight or nine years old when my father again infected me: I was sick and stuck in bed for a few days, and he brought me a copy of Childhood’s End from the library and totally blew my mind. I didn’t want Nutty Nuggets again and again…I wanted that experience of surprise and insight and strangeness again. That’s why I read science fiction ferociously for years afterward.

And science fiction has always been this way. It’s always been a genre of new ideas and experimentation. It’s not like all of a sudden in the 2000s a few social radicals have hijacked the field and sent it off into wild new directions, discombobulating all of their readers. They’ve always done that. It’s got a readership that loves being discombobulated and twisting their brains around strangeness.

I see someone accusing authors of “defrauding” their readership because they are creative and explore novel ideas and think about more than just the gobbledygook pseudomechanics they’ll use to make their spaceships fly, and I see the real fraud: that is a person who does not understand science fiction and fantasy in the slightest.

Maybe the sad puppies should just pick up a copy of one of their own books and read it over and over again everyday. No surprises. They’d get exactly what they expect every time. And they’ve probably already got a rocket on the cover.

---

George RR Martin has spoken, at length and in great detail (Hey! Like his books!). He goes through the history of the Hugos and shows, with the evidence, that there is no pattern of discrimination against Conservative White Dudes.

You may have already seen the headlines, most of which were a variant on the following: MAN KILLS HIMSELF INSIDE VEGAS CASINO AFTER LIFETIME BUFFET PASS WAS REVOKED. 

On Reddit’s charming FatPeopleHate subreddit, where a link to a story on the suicide garnered more than 450 upvotes, this became Fat fuck kills himself, blames it on the loss of free buffet for life.

“And nothing of value was lost,” quipped one Redditor. “Another proof that they live only for food,” added another. “Do these sound like the actions of a man who had ALL he could eat?” joked a third.  You can find similarly sensitive remarks in the comments of sites ranging from Breitbart (” Please tell me this was Michael Moore!”) to the Las Vegas Sun (“Man that buffet must be to die for”).

But John Noble, who shot himself in the head at the M Resort buffet on Easter Sunday in front of a roomful of witnesses, wasn’t upset that the M Resort had taken away the free food he’d won in a raffle in 2010. He was upset that the casino, two years ago, had taken away his access to the female staffers he had been stalking.

We know this because, before he took his own life, Noble sent a box full of documents to the Las Vegas Review-Journal detailing his case against “the M Resort Spa Casino and [the] employees” he said had wronged him. As the newspaper reported:

Noble’s hand-bound stack of notes and documents stretches on for more than 270 pages and includes a table of contents, photographs and a two-hour DVD of him talking about his troubles.

The second-to-last page, titled “The Curse,” spells out all the harm he wishes on those he believed wronged him.

Included on the list are several women who worked at the buffet and who were showered with gifts and unwanted attention by Noble after he won meals for life there in September 2010.

Noble, who described himself in one Facebook posting as “just a lonely nice guy,” was a deeply troubled man reportedly suffering from depression; in 2013, when he lost his buffet privileges, he spent several days in the state psychiatric hospital after attempting suicide.

But it’s clear he was driven not only by despair but by anger — an anger obvious to everyone, it seems, but him. This anger seems to have played a large part in his choice of where and when to end his life: in front of hundreds of diners and staff on Easter Sunday. His actions, as he no doubt intended, horrified and terrified not only those who witnessed it directly — including a number of children — but those elsewhere in the casino who heard the gunshot.

Adding to the confusion and chaos: before shooting himself, Noble set his car on fire, closing down the parking garage for several hours and forcing many casino patrons to remain at the scene of his crime for hours.

I suppose we should be thankful that he didn’t decide to take anyone else with him.

Noble’s very public suicide shows once again the destructive power of aggrieved male entitlement.

Some people are puzzled, or profess to be puzzled, when someone like Noble — a sad and lonely man who saw himself as a victim — is described as “entitled.” But a deep sense of entitlement seems to have been at the heart of his anger and despair. It wasn’t just that he felt entitled to free food; he felt entitled to the attention of the women working at the buffet that he had become obsessed with.

It’s easy enough to see what worried the Casino staffers about him. In the alternately angry and self-pitying note he posted on Facebook after his 2013 suicide attempt, he recounted the numerous notes and gifts he’d given to various female staffers, and blamed them for “encouraging” him with hugs and smiles. Never mind that these were women whose jobs more or less required them to act friendly to customers, and that his acts of “generosity” towards them were impositions rather than gifts.

He claims to have been blindsided when security finally showed him the door, though it’s clear even from his self-serving account that he was given plenty of warnings first; if he was blindsided it was because he was willfully blind.

Another self-described “nice guy” who literally could not take no as an answer. Another “nice guy” who was anything but nice. In that 2013 rant, a lengthy list of grievances, he lashed out at everyone he feels has wronged him, posting an assortment of accusations, some petty, some serious, against an assortment of casino staff by name, raging from the hostess he was most obsessed with to the company CEO. His sense of victimhood was such that he turned his favorite hostess’ butterfly tattoo into yet another Exhibit in his case against her.

So she has a small Butterfly Tattoo on her leg in honor of her Mother, Which now everytime I see something with a Butterfly on it I think of [name redacted]. And if you ever been to Vegas there’s a lot of stuff with Butterfly’s the décor at Encore Casino, the Butterfly exhibit they had in the conservatory at Belagio, The Butterfly bench at Nathan Adelson Hospice (Which I think she would like) among plenty of others scattered thru the city.

Aggrieved entitlement doesn’t feel like entitlement; it feels like rejection, failure, emptiness, and even, as in Noble’s case, like betrayal. That’s what makes it so insidious — and so dangerous.

H/T — r/againstmensrights

European Kingfisher

sandandglass:

TDS, April 6, 2015

“Two-thirds of the women interviewed, and two-thirds of the women surveyed, reported having to prove themselves over and over again – their successes discounted, their expertise questioned. “People just assume you’re not going to be able to cut it,” a statistician told us, in a typical comment. Black women were considerably more likely than other women to report having to deal with this type of bias; three-fourths of black women did. (And few Asian-American women felt that the stereotype of Asian-Americans as good at science helped them; that stereotype may well chiefly benefit Asian-American men.)”

-

The 5 Biases Pushing Women Out of STEM - HBR

(via

brutereason

)

And this is why focusing on ‘getting more girls interested in STEM’ is a wrongheaded approach. Girls ARE interested in STEM, but the douchebags who make up the majority of STEM fields are not interested in acknowledging our humanity, intelligence, and capability. Funny how they assume that’s somehow our fault too, and we must just not be interested or dedicated enough.

(via australopithecusrex)

Baked Shrimp Parmesan over Zucchini Noodles – an easy, light and delicious shrimp dish made in under 30 minutes!

I love shrimp parmesan and make it often at home because it's so much healthier to make it yourself. Rather than frying the shrimp like you'd get from a restaurant, I bake them in the oven until golden.


I've had the idea of making shrimp parm over zucchini noodles for quite some time, so when I was approached by Tuttorosso to be a part of their Inspiralize the Spring campaign, I knew this was what I was going to make. Every day this week, five bloggers are participating in a Spiralized Virtual Dinner Party – how fun! Here's the invite so you can follow along.



I've been using Tuttorosso tomatoes for years – if you've been following me from the beginning, you probably already know that they're my crushed tomato of choice.


This recipe is simple, you'll want to have everything prepped and ready before you start making this, because it comes together fast.  Have your zucchini cut and ready before you start, I prefer a thicker zucchini noodle so I used the thicker noodle blade of my Paderno Spiralizer to cut my zoodles. Enjoy!




Click Here To See The Full Recipe...

“My wife and I are divided about whether it was inevitable, or if something caused it, but we do have video of Jackson at 18 months, coming up to the camera and talking. But soon afterward his language stopped developing, and eventually he lost the language skills he already had. He stopped responding to his name. You could even bang pots and pans behind him, and he wouldn’t respond. But when we tested his hearing, it was fine. People would say: ‘Boys develop later.’ Or ‘Don’t worry, my daughter didn’t begin talking until she was three.” But we knew it was something more. This was twenty years ago, so the doctors didn’t even know what to tell us. The head of pediatrics at Columbia met with us, and said: ‘Let me do some research on autism and I’ll get back to you.’ We started to worry that Jackson might never progress. Around this time, I overheard some acquaintances worrying that their four-year-old son might be gay. It made me so mad. I thought: ‘Give me a fucking break. You know that your child can grow to be happy, independent, and fall in love. I’d trade anything for that knowledge, and you’re freaking out that your son might be gay.’”

kim-kanye-baby:

wtfgadgets:

wtfgadgets:

Feeling creative! Check out the doodle by stitch duvet set. Draw shit all over your bed, then when your bored wash it out. Great for mischievous kids who like to draw where they aren’t supposed to. Comes with free pack of pens!

Buy it for $59.95 from :

HERE

What is the first thing you would all draw on this if you had it? 

A dick

London-based artist Zack Mclaughlin constructs uncannily realistic birds made from wood and cut paper leaves. A lifelong fascination with the natural world lead Mclaughlin to explore different kinds of 3d model making, first starting with wire and then moving into the more realistic sculptures you see here. You can see more of his recent work on DeviantArt and in his shop. (via Lustik)

Let's the comments begin! Some will dig it, some will not, if the last posts I did about this are any indication.

Read more...

Rand Paul entered and exited the stage today to the tune of an anti-Wall Street country song owned by Warner Brothers. So of course YouTube's magic genie recognized the track as copyrighted material and blocked the clip from further viewing. Snicker.

Your toys aren’t being taken away, your mom just told you that you have to share them and now you don’t want them anymore because they have cooties on them. 

I dunno man, you might actually have to try relating to a character that doesn’t look like you at some point. And you happen to be part of the one group that has really not in recent memory been called upon to do that. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t feel all that bad for you? 

randomhatthief:

spookyscaryfrog:

I have headcanons about what vampires should be.

and they are perfect

by Pie Comic

(photo via brewtalizer)

New comic!

This comic was originally posted on Everyday Feminism on March 18, 2015. Closets are kind of a thing for me because anytime someone asks me when i ‘came out of the closet’ i want to be like CLOSETS ARE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS BASED ON OPPRESSIVE NORMS AROUND ACCEPTABLE IDENTITIES but that isn’t the answer people generally want.

 

Mindblowing work by Johannes Stötter. Read the rest

I always look forward to hearing Jay Smooth’s take on things.

Hey, “copify”? Did he just give away a million dollar idea?

So you’re trying to avoid being killed by a bear policeman? Here’s what to do.

You might be tempted to argue that bears policemen should not be killing people in the first place, but don’t bother; you’re asking for something contrary to their nature.