Luke.stirling

withregardto:

The most frustrating thing about all of the measles coverage is that the articles I’ve read say something to the effect of “the paper linking vaccines to autism was later disproven.”

No, Andrew Wakefield’s paper was retracted because he falsified data on all 12 participants and did not disclose his financial interest in creating a scare concerning this vaccine and this behavior was so egregious that he has had  additional papers retracted for ethics violations and is barred from practicing medicine.  

liberaleffects:

http://www.vpc.org/press/1110gundeath.htm

http://www.vpc.org/press/1501gundeath.htm

Email: “Hey, Chuck, what do you think about meninists?”

Chuck: “They seem nice enough.”

Email: “What?!”

Chuck: “They’re always polite. Never say a nasty word to anybody. They’re not as hardcore as the Amish? Like, I think they can drive cars and use technology. But like the Amish, they build great sheds –“

Email: “Do you mean Mennonites?”

Chuck “…”

Email: “You mean Mennonites.”

Chuck: *clears throat* “I probably mean Mennonites. Yes. Yeah. Wait. So What are you talking about?”

Email: “Well, there’s this group out there of men –“

Chuck: “Oh, that’s never good.”

Email: “– and mostly it seems like a grab-bag of your MRA types who want to make fun of feminism and just generally be dicks to women –“

Chuck: “Somebody out there is already going to bring up that ‘dick’ is a gendered insult and it is hurtful to men.”

Email: “Probably.”

Chuck: “Then again, maybe men should just toughen the fuck up about it and if they didn’t want dick to be an insult, maybe they should stop trying to thrust themselves — literally and figuratively — into subjects and situations that have nothing to do with them and want no part of them. Anyway. Continue.”

Email: “That’s pretty much it. They kinda did exactly that — the ‘thrusting themselves into’ thing — with this #LikeAGirl meme campaign based on an Always ad that ran during the Super Bowl. The goal of the ad being to change the connotation around that phrase — Like a girl — and spin it into something positive.”

Chuck: “That sounds nice. I’m assuming these meninists shit-shellacked it all up. Like a pair of toddler underoos spackled with mess.”

Email: “Yeah, no, pretty much. They had their own hashtag — #LikeABoy — and also a lot of jerky lackwits trolled the #LikeAGirl hashtag and, as they are wont to do, were poopy butts about it to women.”

Chuck: “So, you want to know my thoughts.”

Email: “I guess? Like, there’s a subset of meninists who claim to be feminist, and that’s just ‘their word’ for being a male feminist, but for the most part, it seems to have been co-opted by a loud and noisy group that hates feminism or thinks it has somehow been victimized by feminism.”

Chuck: “Men who think they’ve been victimized by feminism are like burglars who sue the homeowners they were burgling because they stubbed their toe on a fucking coffee table. Listen, you probably already know my thoughts on this. Meninism is not a thing. It’s just some shitty meme by troll dudes who feel somehow spurned, or who smell the shift in power coming and like fish dying on a beach after the water has receded, are flopping about and gasping for air. As I’ve noted before, any disparities or issues that primarily affect men are real and need to be dealt with, but these aren’t the groups dealing with them. These are the groups responsible for their own misery. A lot of men’s rights are actually also women’s rights, and the toxic dudebro testosterone culture harms itself more than any woman or group of women ever could. Men who are feminists are just feminists. They’re not ‘equalists‘ or ‘egalitarians.’ They’re certainly not meninists, which is, again, not a thing. It’s just gulls squawking. Mammals shrieking because they don’t have thumbs and can’t pick up that stick to scratch their itchy backs. It’s all very silly. If you’re going to do anything with meninists: ignore them, or openly mock them. Do not give them the podium, though, because anybody who identifies as that is not interested in having a proper goddamn discussion. Taser them and keep walking.”

Email: “Fair enough.”

Chuck: “If anybody’s going to be upset about any commercials from the Super Bowl, try being mad at Nationwide for that dead kid commercial. HEY, YOU SURE GOT A NICE KID THERE, Nationwide said. I SURE HOPE NOTHING HAPPENS TO IT. As they slide an insurance policy across the table.

Doghouse Diaries

You can follow Scott on Twitter at @Disalmanacarian and his book at @Disalmanac. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

sixpenceee:

Each September the Alaskan wood frogs freeze. Two-thirds of their body water turns to ice. If you picked them up, they would not move. If you bent one of their legs, it would break. Their hearts stop beating, their blood no longer flows and their glucose levels sky rocket. BUt then during the spring, they thaw out and return to normal. (Source)

katsuyukimoray:

Katsuyuki Moray met many different types of owls at the owl cafe.

Eel or Evil?

[Link]

To many of you, this may look like just another building created in the popular “Café Corner” style. But to those of us that were creatures of the Eighties, it’s immediately recognizable as Flynn’s, the videogame arcade featured in the 1982 pre-cyberspace pre-Matrix movie TRON.

Using fluorescent bricks and black light, Joel Baker has managed to impart his creation with the neon look and feel of the original. It has a complete interior featuring all manner of vintage arcade machines, and even the secret doorway that appeared in the 2010 follow-up TRON Legacy.

Anita Sarkeesian has been designated Harvard Humanist of the Year 2014. Congratulations to her, and good on the Harvard Humanists!

Like this.

The laughably prestigious University of Qassim in Saudi Arabia held one of the biggest women’s rights conferences in the Arab world last year. Ironically, the institution managed to hold the event without the advice or attendance of a single woman.

Depuis 2012, la photographe américaine Camille Seaman est ce qu’on appelle « une chasseuse de tornades ». Elle parcourt beaucoup de régions des Etats-Unis telles que le Nebraska, Texas, Minnesota, Kansas ou encore l’Oklahoma, à la recherche de la tornade la plus élégante. Elle se retrouve à chaque fois confrontée à un ballet de nuages qui semblent aspirer l’horizon.

Camille Seaman/Caters News.

Google is on the verge of getting into the ride-sharing business, creating a rift with the market leader Uber, Bloomberg reports. Uber and Google have been allies since Google invested $258 million in Uber in 2013 and got a seat on its board of directors. But Bloomberg says David Drummond, the Google executive who holds that Uber board seat, has recently informed Uber of its plans to get into the market itself.

Bloomberg suggests the move is part of Google's larger plan to build a business around self-driving car technology. That would make a lot of sense.

A lot of people assume that a self-driving car is a product that customers will buy the way people buy conventional cars today. But Google has never been very good at selling physical products; its strength has always been in the provision of services. And that makes the taxi business the perfect place for Google to introduce its self-driving car technology.

Another advantage of renting self-driving cars instead of selling them is reliability. Manufacturers will face lawsuits every time a self-driving car injures or kills someone, so they'll want to do everything they can to prevent errors. And this will be easier to do if manufacturers, not customers, own the vehicles. The last thing Google wants is for a car to crash because its owner forgot to bring it in to replace a key sensor. If Google owns all of the cars running its software, it can ensure that software is upgraded promptly and defective hardware is swapped out immediately.

Another reason to start in the taxi business is that, for all the talk about Uber and Lyft being disruptive business, they are themselves ripe for disruption. When you take an Uber ride, the majority of the fare goes to pay your driver. With no driver, Google should be able to charge dramatically less than Uber and still make a profit. That big price advantage won't exist if Google tries to sell cars to consumers directly.

To capture the taxi market, Google needs an Uber-style ride-sharing service to pair with its self-driving technology. It could try to acquire Uber or Lyft, but these companies are now worth billions of dollars.

So, according to Bloomberg, Google is going to build its own service. This would be an uphill struggle if Google were just trying to create another conventional ride-sharing business, since Uber and Lyft have a huge head start. Ride-sharing services are hugely dependent on what economists call network effects: the more drivers you have, the more attractive the service will be to passengers, and vice versa. Google will be starting with zero drivers and zero passengers, putting it at a big disadvantage.

Luckily, Google has a lot of money. It can afford to heavily subsidize the service while it develops the software and expertise it needs to connect customers with rides. Then, once the self-driving technology is ready to go, it can beat Uber and Lyft with much lower prices.

Disclosure: My brother is an executive at Google.

lazynbored:

oncesomething:

innercityforestfire:

pr1nceshawn:

7 Signs You’re Becoming an Adult…

I’m getting there…

Scarily accurate

Hella accurate!

I’m not afraid of The Youths but the rest, absolutely.

fuck-yeah-feminist:

A look into the experiences of bisexual women who happened to fall in love with men. 

Graphics by Chris Ritter

Good read for those who struggle to understand bisexuality.

@rosalindofarden

Am pirate. Bird proves it.

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