Luke.stirling

Do you have your guns locked up? Do you only bring them out when you have a very specific purpose, like target shooting at a range or hunting? Do you own fewer than a handful? Then you might be OK. I might look at you suspiciously, but I won’t actively despise you, like I do the obsessed gun-fondlers.

What brings on this peevishness is another dead kid. Nathan Clark, 13 years old, was attending a soccer tournament, and he went to bed in a hotel room. Next thing, his parents are desperately trying to resuscitate him and staunch the bleeding from a head wound.

Police quickly determined that Clark had been shot, and located Randall Louis Vater, who was in a nearby room and in possession of firearms. They said that Vater accidentally discharged his weapon, and that the round traveled through the wall and into Clark’s room, where it fatally struck him.

I also fucking hate that phrase, “accidentally discharged his weapon”. There was nothing accidental about it. He was intentionally carrying around a device with the purpose of killing, and it operated exactly as it was designed to do, throwing a metal slug at high velocity to punch holes in people.

I can’t even imagine how Nathan’s parents feel. And I have no sympathy at all for the Vater’s of the world.

Brianna Wu — game developer, #GamerGate target #3 — got a Tweet sent to her yesterday announcing that “respects is earn not shrilly demanded.”

Mangled grammar aside, this is an “argument” we hear a lot from misogynistic men as a way of explaining away their lack of respect for women as a gender. Wu thought this inadvertantly lollcatty version of this cliche was too good to let vanish in the internet ether, and suggested that the phrase “respects is earn” be immortalized in a meme.

And so it was. The cat above is @RobIsAWriter’s interpretation; here (after the bump) are a few more.

.@Spacekatgal I did it. http://t.co/3QHU9jV2d6—
DIEcube (@chaicube) November 17, 2014

Obviously, Aretha Franklin needed to be a part of this:

Even if we set aside the misogyny for a moment, it seems to me that “respect is earned” is a rather backward way of looking at it. Shouldn’t the default be respect instead of not respect? That is, shouldn’t we treat everyone with a basic level of respect to begin with, downgrading this only if the person in question says or does something that makes them less worthy of respect? And even then give them at least a minimal amount of respect for simply being human?

Oh, and before any #GGers get indignant about it, the @GGer who Tweeted “respects is earn” is clearly a native speaker of English; go through his timeline to see.(In some of his Tweets since this meme got going he’s deliberately using lolspeak.)

H/T — r/GamerGhazi

There are no Jack Kerouacs or Holden Caulfields for girls. Literary girls don’t take road-trips to find themselves; they take trips to find men.

"Great" books, as defined by the Western canon, didn’t contain female protagonists I could admire. In fact, they barely contained female protagonists at all.

thebobblehat:

hello-missmayhem:

cptprocrastination:

doomhamster:

belcanta:

nikkidubs:

attentiondeficitaptitude:

belcanta:

Guaranteed basic income to every citizen, whether or not they are employed to ensure their survival and that they live in a dignified, humane way, preventing poverty, illness, homelessness, reducing crime, encouraging higher education and learning vocations as well as helping society become more prosperous as a whole. 

Wow. Forget raising the minimum wage. This is much much better idea.

The minimum wage could actually drop if we had basic income.

But Americans would never go for it. Miserably slogging through 12 hour days and having businesses open 24/7 is too engrained in our culture.

"BUT WHERE WILL THE GOVERNMENT GET THE MONEY?" screamed Joe Schmoe, slamming a meaty fist onto the table and getting mouth-froth all over the front of his greying tank top. "You libt*rds all think money grows on TREES!! HAHA!"

"But where will people get the incentive to work?!" Mindy Bindy cried, flapping her hands in front of her face. She’d had a fear of the unemployed lollygagging about ever since she was a child and her mother told her to be afraid of the unemployed lollygagging about. "You think people should get paid for nothing? I work hard for my money!”

"But who will serve me?" grumbled Marty McMoneybags. "Who will make me feel important? Who will do my laundry and cook my food and stand in front of me wearing a plastic smile while I take out all my stress—because I do have a lot of stress, you know, being this rich is stressful—on them?” He paused and straightened out the piles of hundred dollar bills on the desk in front of him, then raised his two watery, outraged eyes up to the Heavens. “Lord, if there are no poor people, how will I know that I’m rich??”

I laughed. This is perfect! Well said!

The thing is, while I’m sure you could scrape up a few people who’d be willing to just float by on a guaranteed minimum income? For most people the choice to work would be a no-brainer. “Hmmm. I can get by on 33k a year, or I can take that part time job and make 48k… enough to move to a better apartment, maybe take the family on vacation. Sold.” Hell, most people would want to work simply because it gives one a sense of dignity and something to do with one’s time. (Speaking as someone who’s been unemployed, on extended sick leave, etc. in her time, the boredom and sense of isolation that comes with not having a job is almost as bad as the humiliation of having to depend on other people for one’s survival.)

And with this system, part-time jobs and “non-skilled” jobs would be much more readily available because nobody would need to work two or three jobs just to stay afloat!

Which would ALSO mean that employers and customers couldn’t shamelessly exploit employees the way they can today, because if losing a job weren’t necessarily a financial disaster, more people would be willing to walk out on jobs where they weren’t being treated with dignity.

And if this also applies to students (and it should) then student loans would become much less of a problem, and fewer people would flunk out of school because of having to juggle studies and work.

Far fewer people would be forced to stay with abusive partners, parents or roommates because they couldn’t afford to move out.

And the thing is, all those people who suddenly had money? They’d be spending it. They’d be getting all the stuff they can’t afford now - new clothes, books, toys, locally-produced food, car repairs - and with each purchase money would flow BACK to the government, because VAT, also income tax.

The unemployed and/or disabled wouldn’t need special support any more - which would also mean the government could fire however many admins who are currently engaged in humiliating - *cough* making sure those people aren’t getting money they don’t deserve. Same for medical benefits and pensions. And I’m no legal scholar, but I somehow imagine less financial desperation would lead to less petty crime, and hence less need for police and security everywhere?

TL;DR Doomie thinks this is a good idea, laughs at those who protest.

reblogging for more top commentary

They tried something like this out in Canada as a sort of social experiment, called Mincome. What they found was that, on the whole, people continued to work about as much as they did before. Only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less hours. 

But wait, there’s more. Because parents were spending just a little more time at home and involved with their families, test scores increased. Because teens didn’t have to work to support their families, drop-out rates decreased. Crime rates, hospital visits, psychiatric hospitalizations and domestic abuse rates all dropped, as well. More adults pursued higher education. Those who continued to work reported more job flexibility and more opportunity to choose employment they preferred.

Basically, now you can go prove to your asshole family members that society won’t collapse without poor people for you to feel better than.

PLEASE, AMERICA

But he can be a useful hack. In his recent column in which he sneered at feminists, he distilled down the entirety of his complaint to a single paragraph. This is the part where he described ALL THE TERRIBLE THINGS feminists had done to Matt Taylor. ALL OF THEM.

The Atlantic’s Rose Eveleth tweeted, "No no women are toooootally welcome in our community, just ask the dude in this shirt." Astrophysicist Katie Mack commented: "I don’t care what scientists wear. But a shirt featuring women in lingerie isn’t appropriate for a broadcast if you care about women in STEM." And from there, the online feminist lynch mob took off until Taylor was forced to deliver a tearful apology on camera.

Oh My Gourd, the feminists lynched him? Dragged him out to a nearby tree and hanged him until he was dead?

No, actually, they didn’t. All that happened is that a woman said the shirt made people feel unwelcome in the scientific community, using that tool of satan, sarcasm, and another said the shirt was inappropriate. They tweeted short sentences expressing their opinion! To a pissy-pants fearful conservative like Reynolds, stating a criticism is exactly like lynching a man. It’s remarkable. The “Guys, don’t do that” phenomenon wasn’t a one-off event, was it? Men freaking out over women making mild rebukes is beginning to look a little more universal, sad to say.

Reynolds gets the moral of the story completely backwards, though.

It seems to me that if you care about women in STEM, maybe you shouldn’t want to communicate the notion that they’re so delicate that they can’t handle pictures of comic-book women. Will we stock our Mars spacecraft with fainting couches?

Wait. In Reynolds’ version of the story, he has the feminists standing strong and making the burly bearded engineer cry (I actually prefer a more charitable interpretation, that he felt genuine remorse at his thoughtless choice of attire). Since a Mars mission would require a cooperative team effort, I think the clear message is that we better not send any men at all, because they’ll buckle and fold and have temper tantrums if a teammate should criticize anything they do.

“Hey, Hank, you over-rotated that antenna. Could you back it off about 5°?”

“You bitch, Sharon. Don’t you judge me. You fucking feminists are all out to bust my balls.” <smashes antenna with a wrench> <breaks down in tears, sobbing>

“This is Mission Control. Glenn Reynolds wants to know why you are murdering Hank, Sharon.”

I have to conclude that if the first manned Mars mission is staffed with the very best, most stable people, it’s going to have to be an all-woman crew.

The White Palace in Ankara has 1.6m square feet of floorspace, and features thousands of trees imported from Italy at a cost of up to $10,000 each; the taxpayer-footed electricity bill from the palace will run $313K/month. Read the rest

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With the release of the Alan Turing biopic "The Imitation Game," interest in the Enigma cipher used by the Axis powers and broken by Turing and the exiled Polish mathematicians at Bletchley Park has been revived. Read the rest

“Supercell tornado at West Point Nebraska.” via Reddit.

Ana Kasparian of the Young Turks weighed in on That Evil Shirt, and she got everything wrong: she ranted about feminist extremists, and how you’d have to be really weak to give up on science because of one shirt — it was an embarrassing exhibition of non sequiturs. I was disgusted, and would have let it go, but a youtube commenter (!) named florzinnha3 did an excellent job answering it, so I thought I’d just steal her comment and post it here.

Oh Ana, sometimes you are so disappointing.

If a woman says it doesn’t offend her people say “see? It’s not sexist!”.

If a woman says it offends her then she’s admitting she’s “weak”.

No-win.

It’s a ridiculous simplification to think a woman would say “a shirt kept me from my life’s dream of being an engineer!!” .

Literally no woman would say this. No woman.

That is a ridiculous strawman.

That shirt is a representation of the “boys club” environment of the STEM fields.
A “boys club” systematically and by definition keeps women out. This is done by both large and overt attacks, as well as subtle even unintentional actions. This is simple sociology.

The STEM fields are dominated by men, with few women. Which is why that sexist shirt resonated with a lot of women because it is a clear example of the little things that tell women, each day, in STEM and other male-dominated fields, “this is a boys’ club, you’re not welcome”.

It’s not rocket science, Ana. 

I do have to add one more thing: these idiots raving about “feminist extremists — they’ve gone too far!” Let me ask you: what did people do in response to Taylor’s shirt?

Did they riot in the streets?

Did they demand that he be fired?

Did someone shoot him?

Did swarms of people send him messages telling him he should die, he should be raped?

No, they did none of those things. They complained. They spoke out and said the shirt was tasteless and disrespectful to the women on the team and in the audience. That’s all. They just spoke up, nothing more.

But apparently that’s just too much radicalism. The only thing less anyone could do is sit silent…but I guess that’s what’s wanted of women.

It really reminds me of all those complaints about “radical” and “militant” atheists whose most terrible act was writing a book or giving a speech.

The only appropriate reaction to a marriage proposal from a Return of Kings fan

So Return of Kings, which seems to be working hard at becoming the most abhorrent publication known to man, has a post up by regular contributor “strongsloth” titled 5 Lines That Potential Wives Cannot Cross — that is , five rules that Mr. Sloth thinks men should enforce with any woman they want to make their wife.

These rules are, naturally, horrific. So horrific, in fact, that they essentially provide us with Five Reasons You Should Not Marry, or Date, or Rent Apartments to, or Probably Even Live in the Same City With Anyone Who’s a Fan of Return of Kings.

So let’s go through them one by one. Do not date or marry a ROK fan because:

1) He will insist on being the supreme dictator.

[A]ll decisions about things outside the house are in your sphere. If she wants some responsibility, it’s ok if she chooses how to cook the eggs.

2) He will isolate you from your family and friends. You know, like abusers do.

Just make it clear that her family and friends from before are not important to you. Their opinions do not matter. Don’t spend a lot of time with them. … They will turn on you the moment there are problems between you and your wife. When that happens, the less influence they have the better.

3) He will get you pregnant in order to make you more dependent on him.

Contraceptives and abortion are murder

Why? Immediate children, more children, short gaps between children. These all increase her dependence on you and the loyalty that comes with it. …

If she is marriageable don’t be afraid to make her pregnant before marriage. There is nothing like a baby on the way to increase your bargaining power. … You are helping her by overcoming her female propensity to waste her fertile years on a career, bad boys, and antidepressants.

4) He will insist that you devote all of your time and attention to raising the children that result from his no-contraception or abortion decree.

He will do this in part because he doesn’t want to bother with the hassles of childrearing, and in part because forcing you to be a stay-at-home mother will allow him to restrict your life and control you more effectively:

Being a mother is a full-time job and her first priority. Any work, sport, church, or whatever that she can’t handle just has to go.

He’ll even insist on controlling how long you breastfeed the children:

Breast feeding is good for children and increases her bond with your children, so make her do it for one year. Then make her stop. Otherwise it might delay the next child and make her search for alternatives to being a wife and mother.

5) And last but certainly not least: Because he will rape you.

Under no circumstance can you accept the idea that she gets to choose if or when to satisfy you or choose to sabotage your joint fertility. …

You control the time and frequency of sex, not her. … [A] woman who will deny you sex early on will only use it to gain greater power over you in the long run. …

The obvious exception to this is the first time you have sex. Typically she will control the timing of that for obvious reasons. From the second time onward, any poorly-reasoned denial is a red flag.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s not the real red flag here.

As strongsloth sees it, enforcing these rules will make it impossible for your future wife to ever “stray.”

Just imagine the situation. Wedding. Pregnant. Child born. Full time mother. No career. Breast feeding. Stop breast-feeding. Constant sex. Pregnant again. Repeat. There is little opportunity for her to get away from the children and her commitment to you, let alone consider alternatives to marriage. By the time the youngest child is in school her SMV [Sexual Market Value] relative to yours will have dropped, and you are safer.

You see what I was saying about how hard ROK is trying to become the worst publication in the world?

I couldn’t bring myself to look at the comments.

jessehimself:

thinksquad:

In Gretna, Florida, Juanita Donald called the police to come assist her and get her 24 year old son to take his medication, as she had done in the past.

On Tuesday morning, around 9:30 am, she called the police to help her with her son Kaldrick Donald and one officer showed up, Sergeant Charles Brown.

Charles Brown ended up tasing Kaldrick Donald repeatedly, and then took him into the isolated bathroom in the family’s house and shot him multiple times, killing him.

Brown murdered Donald in the presence his pregnant sister and mother, and no one can even say why. He was completely unarmed, and somehow not completely sane.

His mother said “I heard my baby say, I want my mama after he shot him, and then I didn’t hear anything else.”

His mother said she was “expecting them to take him to the Apalachee Center like before”, but instead a single officer came and escalated the situation, murdering him in front of his family.

Juanita continued to say “It wasn’t but one officer. Instead of him calling for backup, he took things in his own hands and he goes in the house and he rush him and shoot him.”

She continued to say he “didn’t want to be bothered”, and that he simply walked away from the officer.

She says Sergeant Charles Brown “Just grabbed him and he tased him. Then when he grabbed him and tased him, he rushed my son off in the bathroom and I heard three shots. I was like, you shot my son and he was like, I had to. I said, no, you didn’t have to.”

Charles Brown is now on ‘administrative leave’, or paid vacation, and if this story doesn’t blow up then this officer surely will see no charges.

http://organichealth.co/mother-calls-police-to-help-her-son-take-his-medicine-cop-shows-up-and-shoots-him/

postcumming:

where is the lie

This stunning illuminated bike path in Nuenen, Netherlands was just unveiled tonight by Studio Roosegaarde, an innovative social design lab that has risen to prominence for their explorations at the intersection of people, art, public space, and technology; most notably their research with Smart Highways that could potentially charge moving cars or intelligently alert drivers to hazards. The swirling patterns used on the kilometer-long Van Gogh-Roosegaarde Bicycle Path were inspired by painter Vincent van Gogh (who lived in Nuenen from 1883 to 1885), and is lit at night by both special paint that charges in daylight and embedded LEDs that are powered by a nearby solar array. You can read more about the project over on Dezeen.

medievalpoc:

[censored racial slur]

friendlylunk:

dontjudgemeimscared:

medievalpoc:

babaloo55555:

infinitemachine:

thebrayton:

medievalpoc:

via Saladin Ahmed

So tokenism is fine?

If that’s as high as your imagination will allow you to set the bar, I suppose it’ll have to do.

It’s fantasy, folks. The genre practically begs you to think bigger.

thebrayton why not just say “I’m not capable of creating/can’t imagine a complex and realistic character of color.” Because that’s the only line of thought I can think of that would result in your response to these tweets.

"So tokenism is fine" like, are you for real?

Even if you take the “fantasy” out of it and just go with biopics and historical fiction…

These stories are worth telling.

So why should our historical and/or medieval-inspired fantasy worlds be more limited and less diverse than history?

Even the elder scrolls can pull it off, and they have elves and orcs to include.

No one wants to read a story about medieval magic and n****rs. Instead of bitching about other people not including your favorite color, write your own story.

I censored the racial slur myself on this post, but I’m going to go ahead and reblog it because I think some people are still pretending this is about anything but overt, vile, specifically anti-Black racism.

At Serious Eats, Kenji López-Alt sets the record straight about some misconceptions people have about cast iron pans.

The Theory: Seasoning is a thin layer of oil that coats the inside of your skillet. Soap is designed to remove oil, therefore soap will damage your seasoning.

The Reality: Seasoning is actually not a thin layer of oil, it's a thin layer of polymerized oil, a key distinction. In a properly seasoned cast iron pan, one that has been rubbed with oil and heated repeatedly, the oil has already broken down into a plastic-like substance that has bonded to the surface of the metal. This is what gives well-seasoned cast iron its non-stick properties, and as the material is no longer actually an oil, the surfactants in dish soap should not affect it. Go ahead and soap it up and scrub it out.

I have two cast iron pans, including this skillet I use almost exclusively for making the world's best pancakes. Although, after hearing from Kenji that vintage cast iron pans can be slight better than modern pans, I might seek a replacement on Etsy. See also how to season a cast iron pan.

Yesterday, we ran a post on IKEA beds that cats can use. THAT post has now been rendered irrelevant by THIS post. Cats can and will sleep anywhere they choose.

Whether you like it or not.

“I was surfing the internet when I hit the jackpot (Catpot?) of adorabul kittehs: just thought you should know.” -Melodie.

This might be fake, but I don’t really care, it’s still hilarious.

[Via TechEblog]

mikedawwwson:

The Underdog Myth

beautyofkerala:

Peralassery Sri Subrahmanya Temple Kannur, Kerala

[sarahseeandersen]

thalia-and-lestat:

((Bird snugs to make you feel a lil better)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

((Oh my goodness- Thank you Preshie ^-^))

It’ll be okay…