Vvicked

George Washington: “So much is expected, so many untoward circumstances may intervene, that I feel an insuperable diffidence in my own abilities.”

John Adams: “If I were to go over my life again, I would be a shoemaker rather than an American statesman.”

Thomas Jefferson called the presidency “a splended misery.” He said, “To myself, personally, it brings nothing but unceasing drudgery and daily loss of friends.”

John Quincy Adams called his term “the four most miserable years of my life.”

Andrew Jackson: “I can say with truth that mine is a situation of dignified slavery.”

Buchanan to Lincoln: “If you are as happy, my dear sir, on entering this house as I am at leaving it and returning home, you are the happiest man in the entire nation.”

Lincoln: “I am like the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. When they asked him how he felt about it, he said that if it were not for the honor of the thing, he would rather have walked.”

Ulysses Grant: “I have been the subject of abuse and slander scarcely ever equaled in political history.”

Rutherford B. Hayes, on leaving office: “The escape from bondage into freedom is grateful indeed to my feelings. Even with my constitutional cheerfulness, the burden of office has not been light. Now I am glad to be a freedman.”

James Garfield: “My God! What is there in this place that a man should ever want to get in it?”

Grover Cleveland: “I believe I shall buy or rent a house near here, where I can go and be away from this cursed constant grind.”

Teddy Roosevelt, to the incoming Taft: “Ha ha! You are making up your Cabinet. I in a lighthearted way have spent the morning testing the rifles for my African trip. Life has compensations.”

Taft: “I’ll be damned if I am not getting tired of this. It seems to be the profession of a president simply to hear other people talk.”

Taft to Wilson: “I’m glad to be going — this is the lonesomest place in the world.”

Woodrow Wilson: “I never dreamed such loneliness and desolation of heart possible.”

Warren G. Harding: “This White House is a prison. I can’t get away from the men who dog my footsteps. I am in jail.”

Herbert Hoover: “A few hair shirts are part of the wardrobe of every man. The President differs from other men in that he has a much more extensive wardrobe.”

Harry Truman: “Being president of the United States is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding, or be swallowed.”

Bill Clinton: “Being a president is a lot like running a cemetery: There are a lot of people under you, but nobody’s listening.”

bebinn:

youngmarxist:

So if we have to show women what the baby looks like in their womb and tell them how the process works before allowing them to get an abortion, does that mean we should teach our soldiers about the culture of the lands we’re invading, and explain to them that the people we want them to kill have families and feel pain, just like Americans?

Sometimes staying in an abusive relationship means enduring more than beatings. Alex Campbell reports on the horrifying case of Arlena Lindley, a domestic violence victim who was sentenced to 45 years in prison after her child, Titches, was killed by her abusive boyfriend, Alonzo Turner, for failing to prevent the child’s death:

Lindley’s case exposes what many battered women’s advocates say is a grotesque injustice. As is common in families terrorized by a violent man, there were two victims in the Lindley-Turner home: mother and child. Both Lindley and Titches had suffered beatings for months. But in all but a handful of states, laws allow for one of the victims — the battered mother — to be treated as a perpetrator, guilty not of committing abuse herself but of failing to protect her children from her violent partner. Said Stephanie Avalon, resource specialist for the federally funded Battered Women’s Justice Project, “It’s the ultimate blaming of the victim.”

Lindley’s not the only woman to suffer this injustice, either:

No one knows how many women have suffered a fate like Lindley’s, but looking back over the past decade, BuzzFeed News identified 28 mothers in 11 states sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for failing to prevent their partners from harming their children. In every one of these cases, there was evidence the mother herself had been battered by the man.

Almost half, 13 mothers, were given 20 years or more. In one case, the mother was given a life sentence for failing to protect her son, just like the man who murdered the infant boy. In another, the sentences were effectively the same: The killer got life, and the mother got 75 years, of which she must serve at least 63 years and nine months. In yet another, the mother got a longer sentence than the man who raped her son. In one more, a father fractured an infant girl’s toe, femur, and seven ribs and was sentenced to two years; for failing to intervene, the mother got 30.

Amanda Hess comments:

Campbell’s story demonstrates how the criminal justice system is scapegoating domestic violence victims in order to cover for its failures to properly investigate and prosecute instances of child and intimate partner abuse. Shortly before he began dating Lindley, Turner was charged on two separate occasions, first with burglary and later “unlawful restraint,” after he broke into an ex-girlfriend’s home, pushed her, and stole her belongings, then returned three weeks later, grabbed her by the neck, covered her mouth, and forced her outside. The woman escaped after a neighbor stabbed Turner in the leg; months later, Turner was out on probation from the burglary charge and was still awaiting trial on the restraint charge when he murdered the boy. On the day of Titches’ murder, another neighbor called police after she witnessed Turner kicking Titches on the floor, but when police arrived and couldn’t locate Turner or the toddler, they failed to pursue the report. It is outrageous that the justice system in this case only took a hard line against domestic violence after a child was killed.

Go home all other masks, this mask is the best mask.

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The graph below represents the share of the income growth that went to the richest 10% of Americans in ten different economic recoveries.  The chart comes from economist Pavlina Tcherneva.

It’s quite clear from the far right blue and red columns that the top 10% have captured 100% of the income gains in the most recent economic “recovery,” while the bottom 90% have seen a decline in incomes even post-recession.

It’s also quite clear that the economic benefits of recoveries haven’t always gone to the rich, but that they have done so increasingly so over time. None of this is inevitable; change our economic policies, change the numbers.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College and the co-author of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

Just in case you are looking at this in RSS, or in the future (insert spooky futuristic music here), I made the fall animals some halloween costumes!

They're made by Argentinian artists Marianela Perelli and Pool Paolini, who've made 33 dolls representing figures from Islam, Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism that they're exhibiting next month in a Buenos Aires gallery show called "Barbie, The Plastic Religion." Read the rest

Lindsey Loree proposed to her boyfriend by challenging him to a game of Magic: The Gathering into which she inserted a homemade "Proposal" card (she had to sneak a card into her lap to make it work); once he said yes, she gave him a ringpop to seal the deal! Read the rest

It's International Coffee Day, a high-caf holiday made far more entertaining by its celebration in low-Earth orbit by our astronauts on the International Space Station. Warning: this contains the most adorable real-life astronaut-buddy-movie clip yet.

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I’ve been wanting to draw little manatee shark-face mermaid comics for YEARS now, I seriously told all my Australiabros about it when I was out there and that was like back in 2011.

Kratos is a noted smoocher-and-break-in-halfer of mermaids, do not trust Kratos with mermaids.

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I was brainstorming some robots, and this popped up. Ohm.

George is recovering after the "high-risk" $200 operation, and may now live another 20 years. Surgeon Dr. Tristan Rich described the procedure as "fiddly."

Washington University philosopher Roy Sorensen dedicated his 2003 book A Brief History of the Paradox “to those who never have a book dedicated to them.”

Once again, we find a cake that I love too much to eat. On the other hand, does eating cake versions of books make you smarter? Because that sounds like a learning avenue that we should be exploring.

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I defy you to watch Guardians of the Galaxy's Dave Batista (Drax the Destroyer) and Michael Rooker (Yondu) perform the movie's beloved post-credits scene — with Michael Rooker in a metal tub as Baby Groot — at Wizard World Chicago last weekend and not smile. It's simply not possible.

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In theory, you may know that it's important to treat your friends with understanding and respect, but this comic by Nate Swinehart reveals the "real" reason why you should play nice with others—and it's pretty darn funny.

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Electricity pylons, or transmission towers, usually aren't the most interesting structures, just basic towers that keep electrical wires aloft. But some architects have designed innovative towers that are more than mere eyesores.

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Mel Brooks put his eleven fingers in cement yesterday at Hollywood's famed Chinese Theater. (Today)

A design project by Taylor Kinser of Chattanooga, TN. Read the rest

Burger King has launched a black burger in Japan made from black peppered-beef, buns and cheese darkened with bamboo charcoal, and a topping of garlic sauce blackened with squid ink. Read the rest

slaughterlord:

The Ayam Cemani Chicken is notable for a couple of things. First of all, partially due to its rarity, especially outside of its native Indonesia, one Ayam Cemani will run you about $2,500. Second, it is clearly the chicken of Our Dark Lord and Savior Satan! The birds exhibit the genetic condition “fibromelanosis,” which renders them totally black—we’re talking feathers, skin, organs, bones, the works. Only their blood is red, albeit a very dark shade.

SourcE

This Neil Cicierega design-fiction from 2013 proposes a brilliant idea for a Google autocomplete easter-egg, where typing "Google autocomplete is not working correctly" would autocomplete to a long, wonderful list of Borges-ian non-sequiturs, each more wondrous than the last. (via JWZ) Read the rest

Translated from the Japanese intro: "To eat and lie it always, since had to eat the bait to stand on a chair well behaved unusually, I took the video (^ ^), but I started to eat it lying down ride on the table as usual after all was I have, ha-ha σ ( ^ _ ^);" Video Link.

“All religions promise a reward beyond life, in eternity, for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding.” — Schopenhauer

“So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.” — Bertrand Russell

“The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.” — Alfred North Whitehead

buy this print!

Ida! If she's not your hero, she should be. She's mine.

I gave an interview for the Appendix Journal, and cited her as a figure I'd like to make a comic about, but found it a hard thing, so that it never happened. The reason is easy - if you read about the things Ida Wells fought against, you won't laugh. You'll cry, I guarantee. And I thought, well I can't touch that woman with my dumb internet jokes, she's serious business. And she is.

But then, people use my comics as a launching device to learn history, and I would hope that part of what I do is to celebrate history, not just poke fun at the easy targets.

Anyway, I first saw a picture of Ida B. Wells at the Chicago History Museum. She was protesting the lack of African American representation at the Chicago World's Fair. And I am not sure what it was, but the image stuck with me. You could feel a power in the presence of the lady with the pamphlets. I found out later that she was also handing out information on the terrible truths of lynching in America, a crusade that she is best known for, and rightly so. Her writing on the topic is readily available on the internet, and if you read it, well you'll spend a good deal of time wondering at the terribleness of humanity, but you'll also note that she knew how to handle a volatile topic like that with an audience who didn't want to hear it. But, Ida fought against injustice wherever she saw it. You'll be happy to know, that at the 1913 Suffragist Parade in Washington, she was told to go to the back, but joined in the middle anyway.

I'll leave you with this, a review of Paula J. Giddings' Ida: A Sword Among Lions, from the Washington Post. Go forth, marvel at this woman, who was the best. Did I mention she was one of the first women in the country to keep her name when she married? A founding member of the NAACP? Ida! Just pioneer everything.