Zackc43

Marvel comic book artist Paolo Rivera channels Tintin creator Hergé for his geeky wedding invitation, which packs the aisles with his and his wife's favorite fictional characters. See if you can identify them all.

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A nursing student named Janelle asked Adventure Time character designer Matt Forsythe to interpret the "Wong-Baker Facial Grimace Scale" -- used to help kids describe how much pain they feel -- using Finn. The result is just great.

Finn Pain Scale (via Super Punch)

Tis The Season. 

(via scrotumcoat)

If two planes are going to collide mid-air, it's probably best that they're full of people who have some experience jumping out of them. Every single person involved in this collision in the sky above Wisconsin on Saturday survived because they were skydivers in the process of executing a jump. It's still scary as shit.

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I suppose it would be in poor form to say this young feminist– and her funny, inspiring open letter to trolls– is adorable. So I won’t. But I’m gonna have to sit on my hands to resist the temptation, which makes it hard to type. Dammit.

Please watch. I bet it’ll put a smile on your face. If it doesn’t, you’re probably an asshole. So…Rorschach test?

 

Would this cosmic message fly today?

by David Atkins

When America sent a reconnaissance spacecraft called Voyager out into great beyond in 1977, knowing that it would one day leave our solar system never to return, our scientists gave thought to the possibility that an alien civilization might discover it. We feared then, even more so than today, that our fledgling civilization might destroy itself utterly, and wanted any potential alien beings who might happen upon our craft to know who we were, what we were like, and we aspired to be. To that end we passed along diagrams of our language and numerical system, our location in the universe and the galaxy so far as we could describe it, details of our physiology, and pictures of our lives and civilization.

We also included a message signed by President Jimmy Carter, recorded in electrical impulses that any beings of advanced intelligence would be able to translate into words. That message, still hurtling out into space from our civilization to parts unknown, reads as follows:

This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.

We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some--perhaps many--may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe.

The tone and message of the message should strike the modern reader as oddly optimistic and daringly progressive. It clearly assumes that the modern nation-state is a temporary and anachronistic step on the way to a global civilization. It assumes that "our problems" such as poverty, illness and the like can, should and will be solved. It assumes that, much as the nation-state will be subsumed into a global civilization, so too will the denizens of Earth hopefully take our place in a greater galactic community.

It's a profoundly hopeful and inspiring message. It's also one that would sadly likely never be written today by a sitting President.

Imagine for a moment what modern Congressional Republicans might say if President Obama had included this statement. First, Republicans would demand to know why we were spending tax money on space exploration instead of cutting taxes on the rich. Then they would accuse the President of wanting to destroy America in service of a United Nations Agenda 21 conspiracy. They would accuse the President of arrogance in attempting to "solve the world's problems" rather than adhere to an ideology of private property protection and low taxation.

When the Left talks about how far the national conversation has shifted to the Right, this is what we mean. In spite of huge advances in civil rights, we live in a political society where sentiments such as those we placed on Voyager seem anachronistic and almost shockingly liberal.

That's a problem. It means that we as a society, as a culture and as a civilization, are making a headlong retreat from what makes us human, from what binds us to one another, and from what will ultimately drive us forward toward a successful future if we are to share one at all.

And for what? So that billionaires can steal more money while stoking jingoistic sentiments so that no one notices the optimism we have lost? That's shameful and inhuman.


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A whiny Assistant District Attorney General of Tennessee asked the judge in the case of Tennessee v Powell to order Mr Powell and his lawyer to stop calling him "the Government." The prosecutor complained that being called "the Government" made him look bad. The reply brief is nothing short of genius: as Lowering the Bar has it: You don't get many chances to do this kind of thing, so it is nice to see someone hit it out of the park."

Should this Court disagree, and feel inclined to let the parties basically pick their own designations and ban words, then the defense has a few additional suggestions.... First, the Defendant no longer wants to be called "the Defendant." This rather archaic term of art obviously has a fairly negative connotation.... At trial, Mr. P. hereby demands to be addressed only by his full name, preceded by the title "Mister."

Alternatively, he may be called simply "the Citizen Accused." This latter title sounds more respectable than the criminal "Defendant." The designation "That innocent man" would also be acceptable.

Moreover, defense counsel does not wish to be referred to as a "lawyer," or a "defense attorney." Those terms are substantially more prejudicial than probative. See Tenn. R. Evid. 403. Rather, counsel for the Citizen Accused should be referred to primarily as the "Defender of the Innocent." This title seems particularly appropriate, because every Citizen Accused is presumed innocent.

Alternatively, counsel would also accept the designation "Guardian of the Realm."

Further, the Citizen Accused humbly requests an appropriate military title for his own representative, to match that of the opposing counsel. Whenever addressed by name, the name "Captain Justice" will be appropriate. While less impressive than "General," still, the more humble term seems suitable. After all, the Captain represents only a Citizen Accused, whereas the General represents an entire State.

Along these same lines, even the term "defense" does not sound very likeable. The whole idea of being defensive comes across to most people as suspicious. So to prevent the jury from being unfairly misled by this ancient English terminology, the opposition to the Plaintiff hereby names itself "the Resistance."

* * *

WHEREFORE, Captain Justice, Guardian of the Realm and Leader of the Resistance, primarily asks that the Court deny the State’s motion, as lacking legal basis. Alternatively, the Citizen Accused moves for an order in limine modifying the speech code as aforementioned, and requiring any other euphemisms and feel-good terms as the Court finds appropriate.

Captain Justice Responds to Government's Motion to Ban the Word "Government"

The Broadway Bomb brings together more than 2,500 longboarders each year in New York City to push eight miles through Manhattan, from West 116th Street to the Charging Bull in the Financial District. Since its inception in 2000, the NYPD has tried to hamper the event by hassling skaters, blocking roads, and even handing out tickets. This year the NYPD busted out the orange netting to try and corral the skaters. They failed miserably. It was so bad that someone set the folly to the music from Benny Hill and it couldn’t be more appropriate.

via

The "Destruct Room" in Jack Kirby's comic book OMAC (1974) was a place where stressed-out people could act on urges to smash things. Forty years later, there's a real Destruct Room.

Break Club is a club in Buenos Aires, Argentina where members (predominately women) go to break shit with a stick, shatter bottles against the wall, kick stuff, and all around have the best fifteen minutes of their day. It's like a one-sided Fight Club.

A Club For People To Go Smash Things, Vent Anger

This is the first in what we hope to be an on-going collaboration between UK-based comic artist, Dan Berry and myself bringing stories from my historical podcast, The Memory Palace to a new media. Basically, we just want to make some cool comics that folks'll enjoy. We'd love to get them on paper and in your local shop someday but we're psyched to share it with you now.

This story is episode from Episode 21 of the Memory Palace. You can listen to it in its original form here.

Hi, ThinkProgress readers! It’s Halloween, and I’d like to celebrate by singing (and snapping) the praises of those fine Americans, the Addams Family.

These days, mention of the Addams Family summons up images of Raul Julia, and while I love the 90s Addams movies (and Julia) as much as the next ghoul, I’d like to push the clock back — all the way back to the New Yorker in 1938, which published a Charles Addams cartoon of a terrified vacuum-cleaner salesman pitching his wares to a pale forbidding woman and her werewolf-like husband.

More cartoons followed, refining character designs: Morticia remained, while her husband evolved into a squat, debonair figure with an elegant mustache; two children coalesced, a brutish mad scientist boy and a girl Christina Ricci was born to play (and later would). The humor remained macabre, dark, beautiful, and often subtle: the effectiveness of an Addams cartoon often lay in the hunt for the joke. Much horror and humor came from the family’s skewed domesticity: Morticia knitting a three-legged jumper for a baby, Gomez cheerfully filing his fence to blade-sharp points, Pugsley transforming himself into Mister Hyde and back again with the contents of his chemistry set.

This trend manifested fully in the 1964 television series.

The television show brought the cartoons to life, and into conflict. The Addams Family themselves remained ghoulish, their house a collection of torture devices, but in their repeated encounters with the outside world it became apparent that we — the audience, the confused onlookers wondering why on earth someone would eat alligator steak, or keep an octopus for a pet, or nap on a bed of nails — were the joke. We were no less deranged than the Addamses.

Gomez and Morticia were good parents, sensitive to their children’s needs and willing to defend them against a world that didn’t understand. And — remember this is mid-60s primetime TV here — Gomez and Morticia were obviously, physically, in love with one another. In a first season episode, after a hard conversation about parenthood, Morticia invites Gomez up to their bedroom where she “wants to try on her new nightgown”—and then CUT TO: INT MASTER BEDROOM – NIGHT, with Morticia in her nightgown and Gomez passionate.

Episode after episode showed the Family remaining itself in spite of frequent collisions with a confused WASPy world. Difference, says The Addams Family, even severe and terrifying difference, doesn’t need to divide, and it does cut both ways. The Addamses are just as perplexed (or even horrified) by the Boy Scouts, makeup saleswomen, psychiatrists, and school board officials who visit them as the forces of WASP America are by the Family.

Fifty years on, the message here, expressed with consistent arched eyebrow and demonic grin, remains fresh. In a time when non-majority dress, language, prayer practices, and even headgear have become targets of institutionalized fear, the Addams Family provides a model for breaking open that fear — and suggests a social role for Halloween. One night a year, we remind ourselves that there’s a child behind every werewolf’s mask, and that no matter how ‘normal’ we think we are, we may look like a grotesque fish-thing to someone else.

The post The All-American Addams Family appeared first on ThinkProgress.

There is already a fantastic sense of movement in Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes comics. But animator Adam Brown wanted to see what the pair looked like in motion, and his video of them dancing is pure delight.

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For the first-ever time, the Navajo dub of Star Wars will be given a public, off-nation screening. The event is at the National Museum of the American Indian in DC on November 1 (and it's a costume event!).

This Washington DC premiere will be one of 11 venues across the country for this much-awaited film, “Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope,” dubbed in the Navajo language and with English subtitles. This version of the movie has only been shown on or near the Navajo Nation. The excitement over the initial release this past summer has carried across the country. The Navajo Nation Museum took the lead on this venture and then Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox, and Deluxe joined the effort to help audiences experience the film in the Navajo language. Dress as your favorite character and win prizes! Cuisine from the Mitsitam Cafe available for purchase from 5 to 6:30 pm.

Navajo-dubbed "Star Wars" Kicks Off National Museum of the American Indian in November (Thanks, themac!)

I love California, but according to the personality test I took, I belong in Montana!

Which US state matches your personality?

Arcade Fire just released their entire album on YouTube, as the score to clips from Black Orpheus. You’re either going to like it or hate it, so here’s the whole hour and 25 minutes for you to love/disdain. Open thread.

This space reserved for your ad.

As a companion to "Six Decades of the Most Popular Names for Girls," the map above shows the most popular names for boys, by state, from 1960 to 2012. Once again, names that are the most popular nationwide for that year are colored, and all data come from the Social Security Administration. One note: For space reasons I shortened "Christopher" to "Chris," all other names are as they appear in the SSA rolls.

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The Redskins tweeted out this photo yesterday, of owner Dan Snyder modeling his new Kevin Durant sneakers. Dan loves 'em. We love it too.

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FINISH HER!

Over at Slate, Ben Blatt has put together something amazing and useless and entirely engrossing. Plug in any two athletes from the history of professional baseball, football, and basketball, and it will connect them via teammates in as few steps as possible.

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It's been a terrible day so far. So God bless LSUFreek for creating this gif, which will bring us all back from the precipice of despair. This is truly humanity at its best.

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As someone who gets off on material culture (but struggles with space constraints, financial reality and environmental concerns), I was struck by Bruce Sterling's Venn diagram depicting "anticonventional objects" -- a phrase that pretty much sums up my wunderkammer urge.

*A prettier version of an earlier sketch of mine.

Statistic 'o the day

by digby

Via:

Two-thirds of regular Republicans believe the federal budget deficit has grown this year and 93 percent of Tea Party Republicans agree.

Both are wrong; the budget deficit is projected to fall this year from $1.1 trillion to $642 billion.

So why are we still obsessing about deficits?

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There will always be people out there picking weird names for their kids, but when you look at the choices that make their way to the top you'll see that Americans tend to play it safe. The maps above, based on data from the Social Security Administration, show the most popular baby names for girls by state, for babies born from 1960 through 2012, with the colors representing the most popular single name for that year.

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The collapse of the GOP-engineered shutdown has the Tea Party in a fury, and they're showing their wrath with a series of vicious posts to John Boehner's Facebook. The Tea Party Insult Generator teases these insults apart and recombines them to make them stronger, faster, better than before.

Lefty fascist RINO.

Cowardly Breitbart-betraying socialist.

Double-crossing establishment socialist.

Cowardly Muslim-loving devil.

Und so weiter...

Tea Party Insult Generator

"Theme park manager Eddie Stark has one week to whip his lackluster group of employees into shape before the park's grand opening." The folks at Bad Lip Reading have outdone themselves.

San Diego 19, Indianapolis 9: This is the only GIF necessary from this game. Nick Novak hit a 50-yard field goal just inside the two-minute warning to give the Chargers a two-possession lead. This was Philip Rivers's reaction. He's like a sad movie character who pumps himself up in front of a mirror.

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Joke from an 1850s quasi-pornographic newspaper:

“Why is Ex-President Pierce like the privates of a man?

Because he went in Hard and came out Soft.”

I’m not actually sure what the joke means. Perhaps monetary policy. But any Franklin Pierce sex joke must be shared.

From Donna Dennis’ Licentious Gotham: Erotic Publishing and Prosecution in Nineteenth-Century New York.

If there isn't a Gary Wright song running through Yadier Molina's head at this moment, then he is truly dead inside.

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