Luke.stirling

Blackmarket Bakery sends us, "a gingerbread recreation of the Starship Enterprise from 'Star Trek,' created by us and on display at our store in Costa Mesa, CA."

That democracy can be a vehicle for tyranny was well understood by earlier generations of liberal thinkers. From Benjamin Constant, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Stuart Mill through to Isaiah Berlin, it was recognized that democracy does not necessarily protect individual freedoms. The greatest danger for these liberals was not that the historical movement toward democracy would be reversed, but rather the potential ascendancy of an illiberal type of democracy — a development they saw prefigured in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s theory of the general will. Legal and constitutional protections have little force when majorities are indifferent or hostile to liberal values. Because democratic regimes can claim a source of legitimacy that other forms of government lack, liberty might be more threatened in the future than in the past. Most human beings, most of the time, care about other things more than they care about being free. Many will vote readily for an illiberal government if it promises security against violence or hardship, protects a way of life to which they are attached, and denies freedom to people they hate.

Today these ideas belong in the category of forbidden thoughts. When democracy proves to be oppressive, liberals insist it is because democracy is not working properly — if there were genuine popular participation, majorities would not oppress minorities. Arguing with this view is pointless, since it rests on an article of faith: the conviction that freedom is the natural human condition, which tyranny suppresses. But the mere absence of tyranny may allow no more than anarchy; freedom requires a functioning state, with a competent bureaucracy and a legal system that is not excessively corrupt, together with a political culture that allows these institutions to work independently of lawmakers.

In the absence of these conditions, human rights — which are, fundamentally, legal fictions that are created and enforced by well-organized states — are meaningless. Such conditions do not exist in most of the world today and will not exist in many countries for the foreseeable future, if ever. Where they do exist, they are easily compromised. Far from being the natural condition of humankind, freedom is inherently fragile and will always be exceptional.

Liberals in all countries find this prospect intolerable...

An excerpt from the thought-provoking essay Under Western Eyes, by John Gray.

Grad writes, "While cruising Amazon looking for some new Christmas tree magic for my family, I ran across what must be the world's most expensive Christmas tree." Read the rest

xenophonspeaks:

weirdbitterdays:

Point blank.

Ok, so story time. I have never experienced a point in time where this was as powerful and as obvious as my freshman opening week back in college. They group everyone off and make you talk, people introduce themselves right and left, everyone talks about hobbies, and to me there was just this really cool vibe of, “Yeah, it’s easy to make friends, everyone is cool, yay!”

This quickly went away when I began to notice a disturbing pattern. I’d spend a while talking to someone only to mention something about my boyfriend (who by the way is now my husband) who also was starting at the same university with me. Usually along the lines of, “Yeah, me and my boyfriend both do this medieval fighting reenactment thing, it’s super fun. We’re hoping to start a club here,” because that’s pretty much all I could talk about at that point in my life. Almost immediately the face of the guy I was talking to would go from smiling and friendly to openly hostile, and he’d be like, “You have a boyfriend?” And after I gave any sort of affirmation, the person would instantly walk away and never speak to me again.

I was on a campus where the guy to girl ratio was 5 to 1, so as you might imagine, this happened to me way too fucking much in the span of a week. I was so fucking upset over it I remember sitting in my dorm alone in the evenings trying not to cry, feeling like an idiot and wondering why I wasn’t good enough for people to want to be friends with. A majority of my friends in high school had been guys, so the fact that these guys were solely interested in getting laid rather than making friendships really hurt (not to mention made me question a lot of the friendships with guys I already had). I had never made friends with girls easily (still don’t), and I was originally pretty pumped with the guy to girl ratio just because I much prefer to hang around men, so realizing that none of them would want anything to do with me unless it was for sexual reasons made me incredibly pessimistic about what my friendships would look like for the next four years.

However, there was ONE GUY the whole week who stuck around and stayed my friend. He ended up being good friends with both me and my boyfriend. We hung out all the time, joined the same clubs, went to parties together, etc. At the end of sophomore year, he actually came to visit our hometown (my boyfriend and I grew up in the same town but had attended different schools) and even stayed at my family’s house in the guest room. I was super pumped, because I saw him as a really good friend to both me AND my boyfriend. We were going to have like five whole days to hang out and show him the town, right? Come to find out, the only reason he’d been friends with me the entire time was because he was waiting for me to break up with my boyfriend so he could date me, and when that hadn’t happened after two years he actually got mad at me while I was letting him stay in my fucking house. He spent the rest of his stay telling me what a horrible person I was, how terrible my boyfriend was for me, and making me feel physically uncomfortable in my own home— literally telling me I owed him something for the two years he “put up with me.” To make a long story short, we haven’t spoken now in five years, and I don’t regret that at all.

Like I get it, the friendzone sucks, no one likes rejection. But holy fuck, I would much rather be rejected sexually than be rejected as an entire human being.

Мосты, изображенные на европейских купюрах – вымышлены. Европейский банк не хотел выделять ни одну из стран и сделал «усредненный» вариант.
При строительстве нового жилого района под Роттердамом архитектор принял решение построить все эти мосты




















via

ablacknation:

This is so powerful.

BEHOLD

A series of Nintendo-themed pulp fiction covers by Ástor Alexander, an artist based in San Diego, CA. Read the rest

via http://www.tumblr.com/dashboard

thatsfackedahp:

I love this

John asked me to pick my top 10 literal LOLs of all time, and I just couldn't do it, guys. There are too many! So instead, here are my top 20... in two parts. ENJOY.

Sorry, you can't have any.

 

But they never did. So sad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And they say technology makes our lives easier:

 

"What flash drive?"

 

"Oh, must be this one:"

 

Thanks to Jessica P., Amanda M., JR, Ross E., Kimberly L., Caylin C., Eugene K., Gauhar, Johanna O. & Elisabeth R., with extra sprinkles on top.

*****

Thank you for using our Amazon links to shop! USA, UK, Canada.

The federal spending measure passed this weekend, and one of the provisions in it "effectively ends the federal government's prohibition on medical marijuana and signals a major shift in drug policy," reports the LA Times.

Read the rest

Nice work, major theatrical chains!

Owl always love you.

Jordan Hoffman of Playboy has ranked all 695 episodes of every Star Trek series, with comments on each episode. It's a monumental effort that could be a book.

huffingtonpost:

These baby bats swaddled like little burritos are way cuter in the full video here.

Москва сейчас необычайно хороша. Все пешеходные зоны превратились в рождественские базары, люди гуляют, настроение праздничное. Красота. Первый новый год, когда так круто украсили все. Единственное, на бульварах как-то перестарались с подсветкой, про это будет отдельный пост. Очень радует, что в городе начали появляться живые елки. Раньше в основном ставили пластиковое говно. В общем, идите гулять по Москве и смотрите сами!



01. На Манежной площади большой светящийся шар.


02. Новое место, где все фотографируются


03.


04. Площадок для хороших фотографий много.


05. Большой новогодний базар на Манежной.


06.


07. Продают в основном продукты, сувениры и елочные игрушки.


08. Здесь же можно перекусить.


09.


10. Селфи с пони


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12.


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14.


15. Живые елки, красота


16. Можно прокатиться на пони


17.


18. Большой театр в шаре


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22.


23.


24. На всех пешеходных зонах тоже стоят домики


25.


26.


27. очень красиво подсветили Большую Дмитровку!


28. На фотографии не очень понятно - подвесной светящий полоток переливается всеми цветами.


29. Там же зеркальные деревья.


30.


31.


32. Напротив мэрии ледяные скульптуры.


33.


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39. Ужасная подсветка деревьев на бульваре (


40.


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43.


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45.


46.


47. Красивая подсветка


Фото: Антон Белицкий



Посты по теме:
Новогодняя Москва


Новый год в Доминикане


Новый год в Сан-Сальвадор, Эль-Сальвадор!


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Блог обновляется очень часто, поэтому пропустить что-нибудь интересное не так уж и сложно. Специально для таких случаев у меня есть email-рассылка. Это красиво оформленная подборка самых важных постов за прошедшую неделю для тех, кто заходит сюда нечасто. Одно письмо каждые семь дней - обещаю, что никакого спама вы от меня не получите. Если надоест, вы от нее легко отпишитесь. А если вдруг закроют ЖЖ и запретят соцсети, у нас с вами будет рассылка, это как тайный клуб:



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OH GOD IT'S MOVING DAY AAAHAHAAAAA

These are a refreshing antidote to the Metropolitan London Police's poster campaign trumpeting their 2014 achievements. Read the rest

"Hello, park-goer. Would you like to buy this decently-priced bench person? I will throw in the hat for no additional charge. Good price."

Any digital text can be read aloud through text-to-speech, granting people with visual impairments the basic human right to read -- unless there's DRM in the way. Read the rest

The pay is pretty good, and I guess we now know what a soul is worth: at least a few million dollars.

The man called “CIA Officer 1″ in the Senate report on torture has been identified as Matthew Zirbel. Zirbel was a fuck-up from the get-go, but he still got appointed to be in charge of the Salt Pit, the torture dungeon in Afghanistan.

Zirbel was on his first foreign tour for the CIA and colleagues, according to the Senate report, had recommended that he not be allowed access to classified material due to his “lack of honesty, judgment, and maturity,” according to the Senate report. A Senate aide who briefed reporters about Zirbel said the CIA officer had “issues” in his background, the Daily Beast reported, and should never have been hired by the CIA.

He still killed people, anally raped them, and tortured the innocent as well as the guilty. I guess you don’t need to be competent if your job is simply to ruin lives — even a fuck-up can do that well.

You might be wondering what happened to a professional murderer-torturer in modern America. It seems that Zirbel’s case was one of constantly falling upwards.

In 2005, it was recommended that Zirbel be punished by…being suspended without pay for 10 days. Even that didn’t happen, since the corrupt director of the CIA (literally, he was thrown in prison for fraud) gave him amnesty.

Since then, Zirbel has been working as a State Department foreign service officer in various agencies in Saudi Arabia. Apparently, he’s been raking it in.

It’s not clear if Zirbel currently works for the CIA, or government, but wherever he is, he certainly doesn’t appear to he hurting for money. Public records show he owns several properties, including the house in Great Falls, which he bought in 2006 for $1.3 million and still owns. The house sits on five wooded acres and is apparently being rented for $4,500 per month, so Zirbel lives elsewhere.

Of course, Zirbel is one of the small fry. Dick Cheney still stalks the earth, appearing on Sunday morning talk shows as if he was a respectable human being instead of a soulless revenant sowing malignant evil beneath his feet as he marches uncaring amongst the populace.

I have to say this for Germany: after the war, they openly faced the horrors of the Nazi regime and cleaned house, and to this day have a strong aversion to any proponents of that vileness. In the US, we let our war criminals walk free and profit mightily.

The Augie preorder will close out on the 15th of December.

Like all of us, I've had to spend the past several days listening to a procession of stony-faced men—some of them defiant, others obviously nervous—grimly trying to defend the indefensible, and I'm not sure how much more I can take. How hard is this, after all? Following 9/11, we created an extensive and cold-blooded program designed to inflict severe pain on prisoners in order to break them and get them to talk. That's torture. It always has been, and even a ten-year-old recognizes that legalistic rationalizations about enemy combatants, "serious" physical injury, and organ failure are transparent sophistry. Of course we inflicted severe pain. Moderate pain would hardly induce anyone to talk, would it? And taking care not to leave permanent marks doesn't mean it's not torture, it just means you're trying to make sure you don't get caught.

Christ almighty. Either you think that state-sanctioned torture of prisoners is beyond the pale for a civilized country or you don't. No cavils. No resorts to textual parsing. And no exceptions for "we were scared." This isn't a gray area. You can choose to stand with history's torturers or you can choose to stand with human decency. Pick a side.