The Wall Street Journal, really sticking its neck out and suggesting that Donald Trump, who wants to be president, should make the supreme sacrifice of spending thirty fucking minutes a day learning the shit he should already know.
Keep fucking that chicken, Republicans! You’re doing a great job.
Maarten W is proving himself the master of the LEGO street scene. We’ve previously featured his Edinburgh’s Royal Mile and desert market creations, but this WWII-inspired diorama is his best yet. It’s a recreation of the moments when Allied forces liberated the Dutch town of Venlo on 1st March 1945.
The damaged buildings are beautifully done, giving a sense of what the townsfolk must have endured as the battle raged around them. Maarten has included numerous small vignettes throughout his diorama, such as the American GIs interacting with the survivors.
The details of the left-hand house are particularly poignant — the remnants of the upper-floor telling a tale of shattered domesticity. And whilst I’m not a “dog person” myself, even I can appreciate the message of hope for the future as one of the townspeople finds his pet amidst the ruins.
Getting to the moon is tricky; getting around on the moon is not. The last three missions all got to ride the Lunar Rover, built here by Dorian Glacet.
This gorgeous little scene features the lunar lander in exquisite detail, plenty of texture to the moon’s surface, and the little Rover that could. I love the attention to detail with the equipment and the rover’s tracks.
Jokes about socially unacceptable things aren’t just “jokes.” They serve a function of normalizing that unacceptable thing, of telling the people who agree with you that, yes, this is an okay thing to talk about.
This, Steed explains, is why “it’s a joke” isn’t a good defense of racist jokes. By telling the joke, the person is signaling that they think racism is an appropriate thing to express. “Just joking” is just what someone says to the people who don’t appreciate hearing racist stuff — it shouldn’t matter any more than saying “no offense” after saying something offensive.
Likewise, Trump is signaling that assassinating Hillary Clinton and/or her Supreme Court nominees is an okay thing to talk about. He’s normalizing the unacceptable.
Jason Lewis was a conservative talk radio host in Minneapolis, and a couple of years ago he quit, on air (most likely this was totally staged — his colleagues weren’t particularly convincing actors, and for people shocked about his abrupt departure, they sure spend a lot of time plugging his new website). This is his very Libertarian on-air announcement.
In 2009, Lewis complained that “real Americans” believe Hurricane Katrina victims were “a bunch of whiners.” Last year he claimed, “the median income for blacks in America would make them rich in most African nations, not most – all.” He went on to argue that the United States government lacks the authority to outlaw slavery.”
“In fact, if you really want to be quite frank about it, how does somebody else owning a slave affect me?” Lewis said in an audio commentary added to his book Power Divided is Power Checked: The Argument for States’ Rights. “It doesn’t. If I don’t think it is right, I won’t own one, and people always say, ‘Well, if you don’t want to marry somebody of the same sex, you don’t have to, but why tell somebody else they can’t?’ Uh, you know if you don’t want to own a slave, don’t. But don’t tell other people they can’t.”
It’s rare to see a Libertarian quite so open about the fact that his philosophy is entirely “ME ME ME” and not at all about individual human liberty, since he doesn’t even consider the rights of the slaves. It’s very nice that if he disagrees with slavery, he just won’t own one…but what if he agrees with slavery, but his slave doesn’t?
Well, he’s come back from Galt’s Gulch to run for congress, and has actually won the Republican primary in Minnesota’s 6th district. We know you all miss Michele Bachman, so there’s a chance he’ll be there in congress to make Minnesota look just as ridiculous.
He’ll be running against Democrat Angie Craig in November. A woman. This could be interesting, considering what Jason Lewis thinks of women.
I never thought in my lifetime where’d you have so many single, or I should say, yeah single women who would vote on the issue of somebody else buying their diaphragm. This is a country in crisis. Those women are ignorant in, I mean, the most generic way. I don’t mean that to be a pejorative. They are simply ignorant of the important issues in life. Somebody’s got to educate them.
There’s something about young, single women where they’re behaving like Stepford wives. They walk in lock step – is that really the most important thing to a 25-year old unmarried woman – uh getting me to pay for her pills? Seriously?! Is that what we’ve been reduced to? You can be bought off for that?
You’ve got a vast majority of young single women who couldn’t explain to you what GDP means. You know what they care about? They care about abortion. They care about abortion and gay marriage. They care about ‘The View.’ They are non-thinking.
Sadly, it looks like it’ll be a close race, when it shouldn’t be.
Nigerian novelist and short story writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is sharing her thoughts on the striking difference between how Black people are seen in Nigeria and America and the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement on Channel 4 News.
Nazia and Faisal Ali were flying home from a vacation in Paris, when…I think from their names you can guess what happened. They didn’t make it home that day.
A flight crew member had complained to the pilot that she was uncomfortable with the Muslim couple in the second row of economy class. The woman was wearing a head scarf and using a phone, and the man was sweating, she allegedly told the pilot.
The pilot contacted the ground crew. He would not take off until couple was removed.
The flight attendant also heard her use the word “Allah”. Very suspicious. Of course they were kicked off the flight…they were prolly terrissssts. Because they were brown.
Or maybe this is who they are.
Faisal and Nazia Ali, both of whom emigrated to the United States with their respective families from Pakistan, became U.S. citizens 16 years ago. They are parents of three sons, ages 5, 4 and 2. He is 36 and works as director of operations for Healing Touch, a home health care company that he owns with his father and brother. He has a degree from the University of Cincinnati. She attended Wright State University. They worship at the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati in West Chester Township.
Delta Airlines has their own spin.
The Delta statement reads: “Delta condemns discrimination toward our customers in regards to age, race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation or gender. As a global airline that brings hundreds of thousands of people together every day, Delta is deeply committed to treating all of our customers with respect. Delta continues its investigation into this matter and will issue a full refund of these customers’ airfare.”
No. This was bigotry, plain and simple, and the flight crew, the ground crew, and the French police colluded happily to discriminate against someone on the basis of nothing but bias and air.
Imagine if, in the spirit of “If you see something, say something”, I were on a plane, and I waved over a flight attendant, and whispered, “That 20-something white guy in 9C makes me uncomfortable. I heard him say ‘Jesus’ on his cell phone, and he looks nervous and sweaty.” Would they kick him off the plane?
I don’t think so. White people in America are assumed innocent, while brown ones are always suspect.
I hope, at least, the cost of an overnight hotel stay and a flight from Paris to Cincinnati were deducted from the pay of the falsely suspicious flight crew member.
It's been a while since Apple upgraded its MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro models. Four years, one month, and twenty-four days, to be exact, in case of the MacBook Pro. Apple is inexplicably still selling the exact same models for its Mac line that it introduced in 2012. Pretty much every Windows OEM has had an Intel Skylake-powered processor in its laptops for more than a year now, but Apple's computing lineup is still shipping with the three-to-four years old processor, and graphics card. Things have gotten so bad, that MacRumors' Buying Guide, which is considered to be an "online institution" among Apple nerds, has flagged all of Apple laptops as "Don't Buy" In a column, The Verge's Sam Byford says that Apple should stop selling the old laptops. He writes: Apple iterates quickly and consistently in mobile because the rate of technological progress is so much more dramatic in that arena. The company does amazing work to keep its iPhones and iPads ahead of competitors, performance-wise. Simple Intel processor upgrades are less important to laptops these days, however, and I'm finding this 2012 MacBook Pro fine to work from right now -- faster than my 2015 MacBook, at least, which is enough for my needs. But that doesn't mean it isn't unconscionable for Apple to continue to sell outdated products to people who may not know any better. Is the company really saving that much money by using 2012 processors and 4GB of RAM as standard? Even an update to Intel's Haswell chips from 2013 would have brought huge battery life improvements. Apple is bound by the whims of its suppliers to a certain extent, and it may not always make sense for the company to upgrade its products with every single new chip or GPU that comes out. But there's a certain point at which it just starts to look like absent-mindedness, and many Mac computers are well past that point now. [...] If Apple doesn't want to keep its products reasonably current, that's its prerogative. But if that truly is the case, maybe it shouldn't sell them at all.It's also ironic, coming from a company whose executive not long ago made fun of people who had five years old computer. Folks at Accidental Tech Podcast also discussed the same recently.
Determined to find a destination where he could photograph a completely dark sky, Russian photographer Daniel Kordan traveled to the Altiplano region of west-central South America, an area known for its absolute darkness, and which rises 12,300 feet above sea level. While here, Kordan captured the Uyuni salt flat with a special astrophotography camera. This type of camera unlocks the colors found in the sky, opening up the barriers between earth and space and casting the Milky Way onto the reflective flats.
Kordan’s next voyage is to the Faroe Islands and Greenland to lead several photography workshops and explorations. You can see more of his photography on Instagram and Facebook. (via My Modern Met)
Modern cities are ruled by cars. Streets are designed for them; bikers, pedestrians, vendors, hangers-out, and all other forms of human life are pushed to the perimeter in narrow lanes or sidewalks. Truly shared spaces are confined to parks and the occasional plaza. This is such a fundamental reality of cities that we barely notice it any more.
Some folks, however, still cling to the old idea that cities are for people, that more common space should be devoted to living in the city rather than getting through it or around it.
But once you’ve got a city that’s mostly composed of street grids, devoted to moving cars around, how do you take it back? How can cities be reclaimed for people?
The city of Barcelona has come up with one incredibly clever solution to that problem.
It’s a bird ... it’s a plane ... it’s SUPERBLOCK
As anyone who has visited knows, Barcelona is absolutely dreamy — one of the most pleasant, walkable cities on Earth, filled with markets, sidewalk cafes, and bustling street life.
(Shutterstock)
Plaça Reial (Royal Plaza), in Barcelona, Spain.
But it too has become clogged by cars and choked by air pollution over the past few decades. So in 2014 it developed an Urban Mobility Plan, designed to give the city back to people (and reduce pollution).
In America, we can’t even agree on the idea that cities are for people. We still decry bike lanes as a "war on cars," even in our allegedly progressive West Coast cities. So from where I’m sitting, the Barcelona plan is pretty fantastic: 186 miles of new bike lanes, a revamped bus system with better access and more frequency, more green space, and on and on.
But the coolest idea in it is "superblocks" (superilles in Catalan), a concept developed by Salvador Rueda, director of the Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona. (Cities of the Future has a great interview with Rueda and a history of the superblocks concept — highly recommended. The Guardian also has nice piece.)
The idea is pretty simple. Take nine square blocks of city. (It doesn’t have to be nine, but that’s the ideal.) Rather than all traffic being permitted on all the streets between and among those blocks, cordon off a perimeter and keep through traffic, freight, and city buses on that.
In the interior, allow only local vehicles, traveling at very low speeds, under 10 mph. And make all the interior streets one-way loops (see the arrows on the green streets below), so none of them serve through streets.
In the first phase of the plan, which is now being implemented in a few areas, the maximum speed on the roads within the Superblock is limited to 20 km/h (12.5 miles per hour). Phase one of the Superblocks can be implemented easily, at low cost, mainly through the changing traffic signals. Rueda estimates that Barcelona can implement phase one across the city for less than € 20 million ($22 million).
Phase two is more ambitious. It will transform city life and the way people use public space. Curbside parking within the Superblocks will disappear (by building off-street garages), and the maximum speed will be 10 km/h (6 m/h), allowing people to use the streets for games, sport, and cultural activities, such as outdoor cinema.
So you know all those pedestrian avenues and open plazas you love so much in old, built-pre-automobile cities? This would amount to giving every citizen direct access to something similar.
If superblocks were fully implemented across the city, Rueda estimates that 60 percent of road space now devoted solely to cars would be shifted to mixed use or car-free. Amazing.
Promotion of urban social fabric and social cohesion
Promoting self-sufficiency in the use of resources
Integration of governance processes
The idea is that these superblocks would become distinct communities, neighborhoods within neighborhoods, with shared governance and common resources — the urban equivalent of a microgrid, if you will.
Superblocks are being implemented in several neighborhoods in Barcelona now, and there’s potential for many more:
They’ve caught on in a few other Spanish cities as well, but Rueda emphasizes that the model can be used in any city, in any country, and that it’s far cheaper than building new infrastructure.
Superblocks are easier to implement when you start with a neat street grid, as in Barcelona’s Eixample district (where some of the first ones are located), but there’s no reason the basic idea couldn’t be adapted to other configurations.
Now imagine the city where you live, or your neighborhood. Imagine confining motorized vehicle traffic to a perimeter around several interior blocks, where space would be opened up to festivals, farmers markets, bikes, families strolling, kids playing in the streets, and you, there, in your favorite chair at the sidewalk cafe, watching it all go down as you sip an espresso.
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(Shutterstock)
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(BNC Ecologica, via Cities of the Future)
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(BNC Ecologia, via Cities of the Future)
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(Ajuntament de Barcelona)