Luke.stirling

Let's hope these bakers are never on your Pictionary team.

 

A Barbie Princess Tiara:

All I see is a giant cat's paw. Does Barbie have a cat? Is this somehow related? Am I over-thinking this? Where are you all going?

 

A Bucket of Popcorn:

The "Movie Night" really sells it.

 

A Wine Glass:

If only we could all age like wine older, am I right?

 

A Mustache:

Looks like "Dad" has a hairy situation on his hands.

Kinda love the belligerent octopus cupcakes, though. They're all, "Put 'em up, put 'em uuup!"

 

A Fighter Jet:

I swear I'm not making this up.

 

And finally, a pair of lips:

NOT THOSE LIPS YOU SICKO.

Yeesh. You show a person a penis cake or fifty, and suddenly their mind is, like, ALWAYS in the gutter.

 

Thanks to Sharon E., Jessica R., Tiffany H., Jenna P., Wendi L., & Michelle R. for sealing this post with a miss.

*****

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

A plagiarized sex-ed textbook presented to Singapore junior college students by Focus on the Family volunteers left student Agatha Tan aghast, so she penned an open letter to her principal including photos of some of the more grossly offensive pages. Read the rest

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed by the Republicans in the Michigan House of Reps, follows the same contours as the Arizona pro-bigotry law that Obama vetoed: it allows shopkeepers to discriminate against people they don't like if they claim their religion demands it. Read the rest

Not just finely chop, but seriously super finely, and the chef also explains why you'd want to bother. Read the rest

An instant holiday classic, by James Covenant. [video link]

Back in 2012, a trio of interaction design students from HAWK University unveiled a concept for StreetPong, an interactive game of pong installed at a street crossing that allows you to play opponents waiting on the other side. The concept video (above) was viewed a bajillion times around the web, compelling designers Amelie Künzler, Sandro Angel, and Holger Michel to work with design firms and traffic experts to build a fully-functional device. After two years of waiting, the game units have been designed and approved for use by the city of Hildesheim, Germany where they were installed two weeks ago. Rebranded as the ActiWait, the devices aren’t just a clever way to pass the time while waiting for cars, hopefully they disuade impatient pedestrians from darting through traffic. (via Pop-Up City, @Staublfuse, Stellar)

Update: ActiWait currently has an Indiegogo campaign to help raise funds for further development.

Recently, in New York City, a man named Eric Garner was strangled to death on the street by police. It was all caught on video. It was a nightmare sequence that made me think of George Orwell’s description of the future in 1984: a boot stamping on a human face, forever.

Eric Garner was black. The policeman who choked him to death was white.

Some people want to make this horror about race. I find myself wishing they were right – that just once, the racial grievance peddlers weren’t basically making up inflammatory crap that canonizes thug trash like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Because as bad as violent racism is, I’m afraid that what actually killed Eric Garner was something far worse.

The truly terrifying thing about Eric Garner’s death is that I don’t think the cops in that video hated anybody. They were just doing their job. And their job included strangling a man to death for having sold “loosies” – untaxed cigarettes. Something he wasn’t doing when he was killed; he had just broken up a fight that the police came to investigate.

Garner had just broken up a fight. The police hassled him, based on his record as a (gasp!) vendor of untaxed cigarettes, and when he protested the force of law came down on him and snuffed him.

In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a book called Democracy In America that has been justly celebrated for its perception about the young American republic ever since. In it, he warned of the dangers of what he called “soft despotism” – that “covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules”, all justified in soothing ways to achieve worthy objectives. Such as discouraging people from smoking by heavily taxing cigarettes.

Eric Garner died in a New York minute because “soft despotism” turned hard enough to kill him in cold blood. There was no anger there, no hate; the police simply failed to grasp the moral disproportion between the “crimes” he wasn’t even committing at the time and their use of force. And an investigating grand jury did no better.

Violent racists, as evil as they are, generally understand on some level that they’re doing wrong. That understanding is written all over the excuses they make. These cops didn’t need an excuse. They were doing their job. They were enforcing the law. The casual, dispassionate, machinelike brutality with which Garner was strangled reveals a moral vacuum more frightening than mere racism could ever be.

Every one of the soft despots who passed that law should be arraigned for the murder of Eric Garner. They directed the power of the state to frivolous ends, forgetting – or worse, probably not caring – that the enforcement of those “small complicated rules” depends on the gun, the truncheon, and the chokehold. In a truly just universe they would be strangled and their bodies buried under Garner’s, pour encourager les autres.

But we are all accessories before the fact. Because we elected them. We ceded them the power to pass oh, so many well-intentioned laws, criminalizing so much behavior that one prominent legal analyst has concluded the average American commits three inadvertent felonies a day.

That could be you on that New York sidewalk. De Tocqueville thought that what prevented soft despotism in America was “habits of the heart” – the dignified refusal of Americans to submit to petty tyrannies, and their vigilance against the habits of mind that lead to oppression.

Eric Garner’s death calls us to renew that vigilence. To demand that the force of law only be deployed against crimes that are actual crimes – that is, identifiable wrongs committed against identifiable victims, in which the moral costs and risks of enforcement are not greater than the harm.

“[I]t is actually more expensive to be poor than not poor. If you can’t afford the first month’s rent and security deposit you need in order to rent an apartment, you may get stuck in an overpriced residential motel. If you don’t have a kitchen or even a refrigerator and microwave, you will find yourself falling back on convenience store food, which—in addition to its nutritional deficits—is also alarmingly overpriced. If you need a loan, as most poor people eventually do, you will end up paying an interest rate many times more than what a more affluent borrower would be charged. To be poor—especially with children to support and care for—is a perpetual high-wire act.”

-

It Is Expensive to Be Poor | The Atlantic  (via america-wakiewakie)

Reblog this forever. I’ll never forget how many of my students in the school I worked in with a 100% free and reduced lunch rate lived in residential motels and how many of them relied on the school to get breakfast and lunch and how often those were their only meals for the day.

Or how my friends who have older cars have to spend so much money repairing them but an older car was all they could afford in the first place.

And how you literally have no safety net because if you already fixed one thing on your car and something else goes a week later, you’ve already spent the little bit of buffer you saved up.

(via raindropprincess)

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

(via moniquill)

Sweet, I guess Fox News had it right all along. I'm going to save a ton of space by truncating my vertical axes from now on. I just might go back and retrofit all of my old charts too. [via Reddit]

Tags: axes, humor

JoeyRox writes: The publicized goal of Tesla's "gigafactory" is to make electric cars more affordable. However, that benefit may soon be eclipsed by the gigafactory's impact on roof-top solar power storage costs, putting the business model of utilities in peril. "The mortal threat that ever cheaper on-site renewables pose" comes from systems that include storage, said physicist Amory Lovins. "That is an unregulated product you can buy at Home Depot that leaves the old business model with no place to hide."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's true that people with substance abuse problems can "detox" when they get clean, but the kind of "detoxing" offered by stuff in the grocery store or pharmacy has no basis in science and is just a scammy way to scare you into opening your wallet (the companies that sell "detox" can't even say what "toxins" they're getting rid of). Read the rest

It's almost a perpetual motion machine, and is absolutely a source of infinite amusement! (via JWZ)

Most Minnesota high schools have settled something well: there will be no further discrimination against transgender students in athletics.

Capping months of emotional debate that brought tens of thousands of e-mails, the board overseeing high school athletics in Minnesota overwhelmingly said yes Thursday to opening up girls’ sports to transgender student-athletes.

The decision by the Minnesota State High School League will take effect in the 2015-16 school year, making the state the 33rd to adopt a formal transgender student policy.

The board set out criteria for determining whether transgender students who were born male but identify as female can be eligible for girls’ teams at the nearly 500 schools in the league’s membership. State law already permits girls to compete in boys’ sports.

Except (there’s always an “except”)…

Religious-affiliated private schools will be exempt from complying with the league’s new language.

Of course. Because religion is not a proper source of ethics and morality. Can we stop arguing that it is?

There’s even worse, though. The Star Tribune also ran this ad.

Let’s ask different question. A male wants to shower beside your 14-year-old son. Are YOU ok with that?

It’s all in the innuendo. Make it sound like a threat — “A male” — and obscure reality as much as you can. The most likely fact of the matter is that a shy person with possible gender dysphoria who has been terrifed for most of her time at school is being forced by school policy to take her clothes off in public and shower with a whole bunch of other people. If my past experience as a 14 year old boy is any measure, she’s going to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes and is going to want to get the experience over as quickly as possible.

Also from my past experience, the only people who see the after-gym shower as a predation opportunity were aggressively cis-gendered jocks who would mock all the smaller, younger kids. I don’t see how a transgender girl in the shower is going to be as dangerous as the bullying football player with a wet towel.

And of course the people behind this disgraceful ad, the Minnesota Child Protection League, are a religious bigots and tea party loons.

I just pray that God will be merciful. I do not understand. God is NOT homosexual and he talks about how dangerous this life style is for our eternal souls. (1 Corithians 6:9-11) God created us Man and Women. Does this not express his “good” creation. No civilization has been able to survive this decision. It will be a rapid decline. We turn away from Him even though we know we do not make our own hearts beat, nor our own lungs breathe.

God also seems to have created us gay and straight, cis and trans. If he’s so all-powerful and intrusive that he’s making our hearts beat and our lungs breathe (although as a biologist I’d argue against that), then every time a trans woman takes a breath, she’s being given a gift from your god. Her pulse rebukes you. Who are you to deny her respect?

What is this?

blackgirlsparadise:

Clock em.

This is the single most amazing Christmas tree idea I have even seen. It had to be done and Wolfen Moondaughter was the one to do it. See more on her Flickr page. Happy Holidays to all!

A New York Times interactive feature profiles notable deaths since 1990 involving NYPD officers. “Most did not lead to criminal charges; even fewer resulted in convictions.”

“If Eric Garner’s killer can’t be indicted, what cop possibly could?” Read the rest

Killed for allegedly selling loose cigarettes. [via]

beyoursledgehammer:

hellotailor:

blackcrowcalling:

ursulavernon:

favabean05:

nickfnry:

unexplained-events:

Some people take taxidermy to an entirely new level of creepy…

WHAT THE HELL ARE THOSE

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCKKKK

Oh god, it’s Assquatch.

Um. That’s the technical name. That’s a taxidermied white-tailed deer butt, flipped over so the tail makes the beard. There are people who work very hard to shave and shape the hair to make a nose.

The mouth is…well, it’s exactly what you think it probably is. Putting teeth in them and making it look like lips is the true test of the assquatch artist.

I wish like hell I was making this up, but I’m not.

WHAT THE FUCK

well i know what i’m getting everyone for christmas this year

I NEED ONE

POW

via http://thisisnthappiness.com/page/2

going for an afternoon swim…and don’t worry, the owl was okay.   [video]

Michael Kuroda (madoruk) just built these lovely, iconic blocks from the Mario line of video games. Each of the blocks are perfect and look like they fell right out of the games. And, to top it off, that background perfectly highlights the blocks. They would be still be fine without a backdrop but it really is the icing on the cake. If I had to choose, I think the ‘POW’ block is my favorite but it’s a close call. They are all really well done. Michael really hit one out of the park with these beauties!

[jimbenton]

“When I was a freshman, my sister was in eighth grade. There was a boy in two of her periods who would ask her out every single day. (Third and seventh period, if I remember correctly.) All day during third and seventh she would repeatedly tell him no. She didn’t beat around the bush, she didn’t lie and say she was taken—she just said no.
One day, in third period, after being rejected several times, he said; “I have a gun in my locker. If you don’t say yes, I am going to shoot you in seventh.”
[[MORE]]
She refused again, but right after class she went to the principal’s office and told them what happened. They searched his locker and there was a gun in his backpack.
When he was arrested, some of my sister’s friends (some female, even) told her that she was selfish for saying no so many times. That because of her, the entire school was in jeopardy. That it wouldn’t have killed her to say yes and give it a try, but because she was so mean to him, he lost his temper. Many of her male friends said it was “girls like her” that made all women seem like cockteases.
Wouldn’t have killed her to say yes? If a man is willing to shoot someone for saying no, what happens to the poor soul who says yes? What happens the first time they disagree? What happens the first time she says she doesn’t want to have sex? That she isn’t in the mood? When they break up?
Years later, when I was a senior, I was the only girl in my Criminal Justice class. The teacher, who used to be a sergeant in the police force, told us a story of something that had happened to a girl he knew when she was in high school. There was a guy who obviously had a crush on her and he made her uncomfortable. One day he finally gathered up the courage to ask her out, and she said no.
The next day, during an assembly, he pulled a gun on her in front of everyone and threatened to kill her if she didn’t date him.
He was tackled to the ground and the gun was taken from him. When my teacher asked the class who was at fault for the crime, I was the only person who said the boy was. All the other kids in the class (who were all boys) said that the girl was, that if she had said yes he would’ve never lost it and brought a gun and tried to kill her. When my teacher said that they were wrong and that this is what is wrong with society, that whenever a white boy commits a crime it’s someone else’s fault (music, television, video games, the victim) one boy raised his hand and literally said; “But if someone were to punch me and I punched him back, who is at fault for the fight? He is, not me. It’s self-defence. She started it, so anything that happens to her is in reaction to her actions .It’s simple cause and effect.”
Even though he spent the rest of the calss period ripping into the boys and saying that you are always responsible for your own actions, and that women are allowed to say no and do not have to date them, they left class laughing about how idiotic he was and that he clearly had no idea how much it hurt to be rejected.
So now we have a new school shooting, based solely on the fact some guy couldn’t get laid, and I see men, boys, applaudin him, or if they’re not applauding him, they’re laying blame on women as a whole. Just like my sister’s friends did. Just like the boys in my Criminal Justice class did.
This isn’t something that’s rare. This isn’t something that never happens, or that a select group of men feel as if they are so entitled to women that saying no is not only the worst possible thing a woman can do, but is considered a form of “defence” when they commit a crime upon them (whether it be rape or murder-as-a-reaction-towards-rejection).
Girls are being killed for saying no to prom invites. Girls are being killed for saying no to men. They are creating an atmosphere where women are too scared to say no, and the worst part is? They are doing it intentionally. They want society to be that way, they want women to say yes entirely out of fear. Even the boys and men who aren’t showing up to schools with guns are saying; “Well, you know, I wouldn’t do that, but you have to admit that if she had just said yes …”
If you are a man and you defend this guys’ actions or try to find an excuse for it, or you denounce what really happened, or in any way lay blame on women, every girl you know, every woman you love, has just now thought to themselves that you might lose your shit and kill them someday for saying no. You have just lost their trust. And you know what? You deserve to lose it.”

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cry laugh feel love peace panic:  

"Wouldn’t have killed her to say yes? If a man is willing to shoot someone for saying no, what happens to the poor soul who says yes? What happens the first time they disagree? What happens the first time she says she doesn’t want to have sex? That she isn’t in the mood? When they break up?" -vampmissedith.tumblr.com

THIS IS MANDATORY READING!

(via feminist-space)

EVERYONE STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND READ THIS.

(via stfueverything)

by Pero