Sophianotloren

Rogue: “Is it dead?”

DM: “it’s a writhing mass of twisted, malformed flesh, 3/4 aboleth and 1/4 humanoid”

Necromancer: “….can i summon it?

CollegeHumor has posted a helpful chart that visualizes notable video game character mustaches on the basis of size and evilness.

image via CollegeHumor

Neon signs in Hong Kong are transformed into abstract linear forms in the clever photo series Eye Carry the Night by Spanish photographer Rainer Torrado. Torrado achieved the effect by photographing the signs from directly below.

photos by Rainer Torrado

via The Gasoline Station, Junk Culture

Poetweet is a silly new promotional service from Brazilian cultural center b_arco that crawls a user’s Twitter feed in order to construct a sort of nonsensical cut-up poem from bits of tweets. Users enter a handle, choose from the sonnet, rondel, or indriso style and the web app goes to work. Once created, users can check out the source tweets by hovering over a line or share them via social networks.

images via Poetweet

via Product Hunt, Ryan Hoover

Artist Sarah DeRemer has used a bit of digital manipulation to create freakish bird creatures with gaping mouths instead of beaks. She calls them, rather fittingly, “big mouth birds.” We previously posted about DeRemer’s wonderfully bizarre animal hybrids.

photos by Sarah DeRemer

via Bored Panda

If there were a video and accompanying story that could be used as a textbook example of every problem with our criminal justice system, this is it. First, watch the cruiser cam video (you only need watch from 1:40 to 7:40):

What the video shows is Wingate standing motionless at the crosswalk and Officer Whitlatch pulling over and immediately asking him to drop his weapon and then claiming that he swung it at her.

She then cautions him that the entire encounter is being recorded. Wingate stands there dumbfounded, like someone who never had any negative interactions with anybody:

Wingate is a 70-year-old Air Force veteran and retired King County Metro bus driver had a daily habit of walking and using a golf club like a cane, according to his attorney, Susan Mindenbergs.

But Whtilatch’s version is quite different. This is from the police report:

In the police report filed by Officer Coles about the incident, Whitlatch said “she observed him look at her and aggressively swing his golf club in the direction of her patrol car.” “Because Wingate was still in possession of the golf club,” Coles wrote in the report, “and she was fearful of being assaulted by him, she said that she kept her distance from him upon exiting her patrol car.”

There are four disconcerting things about this:

1. It seems that Whitlatch is a long-time racist:

Facebook user Cynthia Whitlatch accuses Davis of being a “black racist” and writes, “If you believe that blacks are NOT accusing white America for their problems then you are missing the point of the riots in Ferguson and the chronic black racism that far exceeds any white racism in this country. I am tired of black peoples paranoia that white people are out to get them. I am tired of hearing a black racist tell me the only reason they are being contacted is because they are black solely because I am NOT black.”

in a police department that has had several concerns about systemic racism:

Officer Whitlatch is one of 123 police officers who sued the government last year, at both the federal and city level, to block the Department of Justice–ordered use of force policies. The SPD is under a federal consent decree and is being forced to address the DOJ’s concerns over racial bias and its finding that Seattle police routinely use excessive force.

And obviously a liar, as evidenced by the disconnect between her version and reality.

1. The police don’t seem to think that it has anything to do with race:

“They know that had this been a white man,” said [former Democratic Washington State representative Dawn Mason], “we wouldn’t be here.” But, in fact, it appears they don’t know that. The Seattle Police Department insists racial bias played no role in the incident.

“If this person had been white,” said SPD spokesman Sean Whitcomb, speaking by phone on Tuesday, “I would imagine it would have been the same outcome. We don’t believe this was a biased policing incident. We don’t believe the officer acted out of malice or targeted this man because of his race.”

At the East Precinct, Mason said, they watched the video with Assistant Chief Nick Metz and East Precinct captain Pierre Davis.

But the police commanders, including Metz and Davis, didn’t see it that way. Mason said they “tried to convince me nothing was wrong.” Metz, in particular, “kept trying to convince us nothing was wrong here. He defended the officer.”

1. That Whitlatch’s “punishment” was a talking to:

Whitlatch has not been disciplined. “This did not go through the OPA process,” said SPD’s Whitcomb. “Basically, she was talked to by her supervisor.”

She has however, been removed from duty that involves interacting with others:

Seattle police chief Kathleen O’Toole said in a statement this afternoon that she feels “shocked and disappointed” at the way SPD officer Cynthia Whitlatch behaved on Facebook—tacitly confirming that a post-Ferguson Facebook screed about “chronic black racism” and “black people saying poor poor me” was, in fact, written by the same Officer Cynthia Whitlatch who arrested an elderly military vet last summer for “walking in Seattle while black.”  Officer Whitlatch, O’Toole said, is now on administrative assignment, “where she will have no interaction with the public” while a “comprehensive review” of her behavior in this and other cases is completed (along with an independent investigation by the Office of Professional Accountability).

1. The system condones this behavior. Notice how, in the video, Whitlatch can be heard telling Wingate that it’s all recorded on audio and video. She’s not lying; it is. But she also has to know that the video tells a completely different version than hers. So why is she making that bold claim about the video? Because she knows that no one’s ever going to bother to see it. She knows that it’s a minor charge and the nuisance factor of it is enough to get someone to accept some sort of slap-on-the-wrist rather than spend months contesting what is essentially a minor infraction. She knows that she can get away with it because she’s a cop and what’s in the report will almost always be exclusively relied upon.

And she almost did get away with it:

The next day, prosecutors at the city attorney’s office decided to file a misdemeanor charge of unlawful use of a weapon against him, “based on the SPD incident report,” according to spokesperson Kimberly Mills.

“On that day,” she writes, “Mr. Wingate, who was represented by an attorney, agreed to enter into an agreement under which the case would be dismissed after two years if he complied with all conditions ordered by the Seattle Municipal Court judge.”

What the city attorney’s account of events leaves out, according to Mindenbergs, Wingate’s current attorney, is that the elderly man was told, “If you sign this stipulated order of continuance, it will all be over, basically.” She said her client followed a public defender’s instructions.

As a public defender, I think it’s entirely ineffective and completely defensible. Wingate must’ve been one of hundreds of clients that day. An elderly man accused of threatening a cop with a golf club; a man with no record who probably was just having a bad day. “Your word against the cop’s, Mr. Wingate. And they’re only offering you a deferred adjudication. Who knows if the dashcam even exists?”

And so Wingate pleads guilty. I call it guilt by convenience and that’s what happens when the nuisance value is high enough that people will pled to infractions and small offenses rather than spend the days, weeks, months litigating and fighting minor cases. Most people, believe it or not, don’t like to come to court. Wingate got lucky:

Weeks later, city prosecutors, after conferring with [Deputy Police Chief Carmen Best, who, like Wingate, is black] recommended dismissing both the case against him and the two-year stipulation.

But just imagine how many others there were on that same day, who were harassed, wrongfully accused, arrested and convicted just because an officer like Watlatch decided to flex her muscles.

Well, at least Wingate got his club back and an apology to boot.

H/T: PD Gumshoe

pyro

antiocial:

homur pls

edwardspoonhands:

Why is the Alphabet in Alphabetical Order and 8 Other Totally Arbitrary Things.

young-anarchist:

ineedtothinkofatitle:

totallyamelia:

imightgetcynical:

totallyamelia:

Yeaaaahhh…

Marriage equality is cool and all, but uh…

Trickle down equality, yo!

every state but california, and that’s only as of september (x)

Is this fucking real!?

this is indeed real.

ladycashasatiger:

The Elders would like a word with you.

The Ritual is about to begin.

Something that has not happened in a thousand years is happening.

You are going to the City. There is only one City. It is only said with a capital C. No one needs to bother saying the name of the City. It is the City.

Certain members of the Council are displeased with your family’s recent actions.

A bard is providing occasional comic relief; no one hired or invited him and his method of earning a living is unclear.

The High Priest is not to be trusted.

Someone is eating an apple mockingly.

There is one body of water. It is called the Sea. The Great Sea, if you are feeling fancy.

You live in a region with no major exports, no centralized government, no banking system, a mysteriously maintained network of roads, and little to no job training for anyone who is not a farmer.

You have red hair. You wear it in a braid. Your father was a simple man, and you don’t remember much about him – he died when you were so young – but you remember his strong hands, as he fished or carpentered or whatever it was that he used to do with them.

You’re going to have to hurry, or you’re going to miss the Fair – and you never miss the Fair.

There is trouble at the Citadel.

Your full name has at least one apostrophe in it.

It is the first page, and you are already late for something. Your mother affectionately chides you as you gulp down a few spoonfuls of porridge; she will be dead by page forty-two.

There are two religions in your entire universe. One is a thinly veiled version of Islam. It is only practiced by villains. The other is “being a Viking.” You are a Viking.

There are new ways in the land that threaten the Old Way. Your grandmother secretly practices the Old Way, as do all of the people of the hills.

The real trouble began the day you arrived at court. Every last nobleman hides a viper in his smile. How you long for the purity of life in your village, which is currently on fire or something.

http://the-toast.net/2015/01/23/tell-high-fantasy-novel/#kL0izGptgvhfqbeq.99

Oh hay it’s a Wheel made of Time

revolutionary-mindset:

A 65-year-old white Missouri man was arrested and charged with a hate crime after he reportedly used racial slurs toward a black waitress whom he also allegedly told, “I have a place I would like to take you where I hung your grandpa.”

Tommy Dean Gaa, of Maryville, reportedly told the waitress, after she asked if he wanted wheat or white toast, that he was prejudiced and therefore would take white toast, according to a probable cause statement viewed by the Maryville Daily Forum.

Gaa also allegedly grabbed the waitress’s arm so hard that it left a bruise and asked if she “liked to party.”

Gaa then allegedly said, “I have a place I would like to take you where I hung your grandpa.”

The waitress reportedly left the dining area and waited in the kitchen until the police arrived. According to police reports, Gaa initially denied making the remarks but dropped a few racial slurs in trying to explain his innocence. The newspaper notes that Gaa was released from the Nodaway County Jail on $4,900 bond.

Yes. Unequivocally yes.

solace-itor:

unrepentantwarriorpriest:

Nothing is more beautiful than a Warrior Woman in action.

the last girl is getting tazered if anyone else was also cofused

foxmulders:

the realest part of the x files was mulder crying to carl sagan on tv

Weather photographer Mike Hollingshead, whose impressive storm photography we first featured around this time last year, has taken his editing a bit further by importing his supercell thunderstorm photos into Photoshop and setting them in motion. Hollingshead says these animations aren’t created like more traditional cinemagraphs, where moving elements from a video are isolated and the rest of the image is masked out. Instead, he uses only a static image and creates the animation from thin air. Most of the photos you see here were shot in Nebraska between 2004-2013. You can see many more examples on his website.

nuttersincorporated:

geekartgallery:

“The Problem With Actually Having Superpowers" by JHALL Comics

Source: Dorkly

If you ever get a superpower, what are the chances that a second power develops at the same time to counteract the negative effects of the first power?

That last one though

Phase one of the ‘Infinite Jest Project’ by Corrie Baldauf (all photos by PD Rearick)

DETROIT — When a tweet from @CorrieBaldauf breaks into your Twitterstream, it is captivating and disorienting for a number of reasons. More often than not, she is live-tweeting her progress through her latest iteration of the Infinite Jest Project, an exercise in literature, obsession, and social media that Baldauf has been working on since 2013.

Baldauf initially began the process of flagging all the references to color in the text — more than 2,600 of them — as a sort of mechanism to help her concentrate on reading David Foster Wallace’s infamous masterwork, a notoriously difficult literary achievement that has divided readers on one side or the other, or in many cases, lost somewhere in the middle. Stymied by her early attempts to tackle the book, Baldauf “realized that the part I cared the most about was the color references, and that was going to be my impetus — it was going to be the familiar, intriguing thing that was going to help me focus, to commit,” she told Hyperallergic. Color figures strongly in much of Baldauf’s work, including her Optimism Filters — plexiglass filters that she uses to literally tint the perspective of Detroit, captured through a camera — and exquisitely meticulous visualized recordings of overheard conversations.

Page 800: David Foster Wallace averages four color references per page of ‘Infinite Jest,’ bringing life to a text that might otherwise be too dark (or heavy) to hold up.

Over the course of the next three or four months, Baldauf was able to make her way through Infinite Jest, the color-flagging helping her to stay committed even as it slowed her down, requiring an average of four breaks a page. But the next dynamic of the project emerged around page 200, when, though fully committed to the reading at this point, Baldauf continued to flag colors. “It started as a tool, which is how someone would start drinking coffee or doing cocaine,” Baldauf says. “But once the tool resolved the problem of not reading it, that was when it became an obsession.”

Ironic, or maybe exactly fitting, that a novel whose major theme is obsession in all its forms, and which features an “entertainment” so powerful in its ability to take viewers out of themselves that it turns them basically into vegetables, has brought an obsessive quality to Baldauf’s project. So, after completing her first edition of Infinite Jest, she moved on to a second copy.

The color tabs that began as the mechanism to draw Baldauf away from herself (in her desire not to read the book) and into the world of Infinite Jest have now produced a unique art object that has its own aura of appeal. In the months since Baldauf has gone public with her project, it’s generated conversations with hundreds of people. “It’s the first project I’ve done where the conversation is as creational as the making,” she says.

In her second iteration, Baldauf has also added the dimension of what she calls “digital intimacy.” This is the live-tweeting of her reading of Infinite Jest, using a medium — social media — that has an addictive quality all its own. “Seeing a book in your Twitter feed is nostalgic. It’s a surrogate from a literary time,” she says. This quixotic collision marries Twitter, one of the shortest of short literary forms, with a titan of the long-form.

Baldauf refers to her habit of duplication as “Only Only,” which is drawn from a typo found in Harry Zorn’s translation of “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by Walter Benjamin, an occurrence that Baldauf feels adequately sums up the entire essay.

Now, as she has begun her third edition of Infinite Jest, with ever-increasing specifications to her process that require greater cost and care — like buying a new firsthand copy of the book and exercising greater stringency of color flags — Baldauf is forced to consider some tough questions about the ongoing nature of her project (much like other addictions).

“I’ve pictured in my mind a really tall stack,” she says, “but it’s up in the air. Usually I don’t think there needs to be more than two. Two is already many; why would you ever need more than two of something? It’s redundant.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m going to stop after this one,” Baldauf says. She pauses to reflect, then bursts into laughter. “But that’s just what an addict would say, isn’t it?”

rebecca-dearest:

iwatchforsasha:

(x)

It’s amazing how many times girls get told this. 

cosmicaudino:

liamdryden:

coffee-iv:

[you know thing that impossible well now IT HAPPEN]

Spunky Assistant: BUT DOCTOR NO THAT IMPOSSIBLE

Doctor: YES SPUNKY ASSISTANT IT IMPOSSIBLE

[duramtic pause]

Doctor: …BUT HAPPEN

[title card doo wee ooo HAPPEN OF THE DOCTOR by STEVEN MOFFAT]

I don’t even like Dr. Who and this is hilarious

Anyway this shit went down.

So yet another example of what some might call the creep of Fascism or fascistic tendencies has slithered over the transom, but before we move along let us take a gander of some of what might constitute a fascist situation .

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism – Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

Check

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights – Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

Check

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause – The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

Check

4. Supremacy of the Military – Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

Triple Check.

5. Rampant Sexism – The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

Push

6. Controlled Mass Media – Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

Check

7. Obsession with National Security – Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

Klaxon’s yelling Check

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined – Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

Push

9. Corporate Power is Protected – The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

Check. And check for the ones that follow as well.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed – Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts – Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment – Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption – Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections – Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

From Liberty Forum

http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_constitution&Number=642

109&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1&t=-1

So we got at the very fucking least 12 of the criteria checked off. Nice. So back to the current example of the creeping menace…

San Francisco’s public defender has released a video showing police arresting a deputy public defender outside a courtroom for intervening in an interaction between police and her client.

The video shows Deputy Public Defender Jami Tillotson refusing to step aside as a man identified as San Francisco Police Inspector Brian Stansbury tries to take a cellphone picture of Tillotson’s client in a hallway at the Hall of Justice on Tuesday.

White defense attorney (not sure why I used the qualifier) arrested in the hall of a courthouse for defending her African American client (oh wait, maybe that’s it)for defending her client. All of it caught on tape. Is it possible that the decision in the Garner case might have given somebody some ideas?

The video shows Deputy Public Defender Jami Tillotson refusing to step aside as a man identified as San Francisco Police Inspector Brian Stansbury tries to take a cellphone picture of Tillotson’s client in a hallway at the Hall of Justice on Tuesday.

“I just want to take some pictures, ok? Then he will be free to go,” says Stansbury on the video. Tillotson refuses and Stansbury then tells her she can either step aside or be arrested for resisting arrest, according to the subtitles on the YouTube video.

Tillotson, an 18-year veteran of the public defender’s office, is calm throughout the video and does not resist officers. She continues to assert she is representing her client as she is led away.

“I just want to take some pictures”?!?!? What the fuck? Why? Presuming the client of the public defender has been arrested and awaits or is already involved in the Judicial process there should already be at the very least a “picture”.

It would seem that “resisting arrest” has a heretofore unknown scope which seems to include “breathing while not being an authoritarian”.

Unless of course you are an African American Police Officer.

A San Francisco police officer has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city, saying he was racially profiled, choked and wrongfully arrested during a traffic stop by several colleagues who ignored him when he said he was an officer.

Lorenzo Adamson, 43, said he was stopped in his Honda Accord by a field training officer on Lane Street in the Bayview neighborhood about 8:15 p.m. May 30 for not having a license plate.

Officer Brian Stansbury immediately asked Adamson if he was on probation or parole, a question that made Adamson believe he was being racially profiled, according to the suit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Oakland. Adamson is African American and Stansbury is white.

Adamson, a 15-year veteran who is on disability leave for a back injury he suffered while on the job, objected to Stansbury’s question and told the officer, “What does not having a plate on my car have to do with being on parole or probation? Shouldn’t you be asking for my license, registration and insurance?” the suit said. Stansbury replied, “That’s what we do out here,” according to the suit, filed by civil rights attorney John Burris.

One thing I noticed is that between these two events Stansbury, who in the former case was an officer only a little over a year ago is in the current case referred to as a Police Inspector, which I presume, indicates that he has had been promoted in the interim. He must be doing something right, or more importantly, satisfying an agenda.

{Update}

Could this possibly be related to my point?

h/t Adam_Hominem