Jason0x21

“The website should essentially be about the negative effects of drugs, the dark side, you know, the horrible truth of addiction and desperation. And, also; I want a picture of Gandalf on there somewhere.”

Security researchers tonight are poring over a piece of malicious software that takes advantage of a Firefox security vulnerability to identify some users of the privacy-protecting Tor anonymity network. Guess why they won't be calling in the FBI.

Abandoned Walmart is Now America’s Largest Library via BB.

The library even has an acoustically separated lounge for teens as well as 6 teen computer labs, 16 public meeting spaces, 14 public study rooms, 64 computer labs, 10 children’s computer labs and 2 genealogy computer labs. Other new features include self check-out units, an auditorium, an art gallery, a used bookstore and a cafe.

While you can still see hints of what the library once was in its sprawling shape and industrial ceilings, it seems like an entirely new space. According to PSFK, the library saw new user registration rise by 23% within the first month following the new library’s opening.

Read more.

(908): i'm face down in a ditch right now please help this is not a metaphor for my life this is real.

(251): Apparently I yelled "Spring Break 1984" at a drunk couple fighting on the side of the road.

Google has a fun and wonderful tradition: On special days, it creates a nice little graphic (the Google Doodle) and puts it at the top of the search page. Since that page is famously unadorned, it really grabs the user’s attention.

Today’s Doodle is in honor of Maria Mitchell, a 19^th-century astronomer; it’s her 195^th birthday. I’m not much of an astronomy historian, but it’s hard not to know something about her. She was an avid observer, and in October 1847 she discovered a comet. This was a rare feat in those days, and she won a gold medal from the King of Denmark—at the time, countries were proud of their scientific achievements, and prizes for new work were common.

She went on to become a professor at Vassar—the first—and taught astronomy for many years. She’s received many posthumous honors: There’s an observatory in Nantucket, Mass., named after her and a crater on the Moon.

When she was coming up in the world, in the early to mid-1800s, women were not in positions of prominence in the scientific community. This means her achievements are commonly tagged with the word first, as in first woman. But reading the short bio of her on Wikipedia was most eye-opening, because there were many things about her I didn’t know. She found out her salary at Vassar was lower than her male colleagues, and she demanded a raise. At first the college tried to evade the issue, and she continued to fight back. Eventually, she won the day.

Thank goodness things have progressed so far since then!

She was quite open—and vocal—about her opinions. She refused to wear cotton in protest against slavery. She supported women’s suffrage. She did a lot for women’s rights, and she strikes me as the kind of person I’d like to have known.

I’ll note that she was raised by a family and community that were strong supporters of education in general and of equality for women in particular. She got a solid education, and it’s clear her parents encouraged her to seek out her own answers and find her own path. That kind of environment breeds curiosity, strength, and, for those who can take advantage of it, the ability to hone their skills and break new ground. That is a very difficult path and one that is not short.

Nearly two centuries after her birth, many of the same battles Mitchell fought are still being waged today. But we have an advantage she did not: We have her legacy.

May her deeds and memory encourage generations of people to explore the Universe and to stand up for what is right no matter what obstacles, real or imagined, are in their way.

The Maria Mitchell Foundation in Nantucket promotes her legacy, and encourages all people to pursue a passion in science. They are a nonprofit organization, and they accept donations.

Great article in the New Yorker about Google Glass:

My first encounter with Google Glass came on a Saturday in June, when I showed up at the Glass Explorers’ “Basecamp,” a sunny spread atop the Chelsea Market. My tech sherpa, a bright-eyed young woman, set me up with a mimosa as we perused the various shades of Glass frames, each named for a color that occurs in nature: cotton, shale, charcoal, sky, and tangerine. I went for shale, which happens to be the preference of Glass Explorers in San Francisco. (New Yorkers, naturally, go for bleak charcoal.) I was told that I was one of the first few hundred Explorers in the city, which made me feel like some third-rate Shackleton embarked on my own Nimrod Expedition into the neon ice. The lightweight titanium frames were fitted over my nose, a button was pressed near my right ear, and the small screen, or Optical Head Mounted Display, flickered to pink-ish life. I was told how to talk to my new friend, each command initiated with the somewhat resigned “O.K., Glass.” In deference to Eunice and Lenny, I started off with two simple instructions, picked up by a microphone that sits just above my right eye, at the tip of my eyebrow.

“O.K., Glass. Google translate ‘hamburger’ into Korean.”

“Haembeogeo,” a gentle, vowel-rich voice announced after a few seconds of searching, as both English and Hangul script appeared on the display above my right eye. Since there are no earbuds to plug into Glass, audio is conveyed through a “bone conduction transducer.” In effect, this means that a tiny speaker vibrates against the bone behind my right ear, replicating sound. The result is eerie, as if someone is whispering directly into a hole bored into your cranium, but also deeply futuristic. You can imagine a time when different parts of our bodies are adapted for different needs. If a bone can hear sound, why can’t my fingertips smell the bacon strips they’re about to grab?

anonymous asked: Yo, my coworker walked up to me and said “How long does it take a black woman to give birth?" and I said “Let me stop you right there. Shut the fuck up, there is no way what you’re about to say is not A) super fucking racist or B) even remotely funny", and he said “You’re not even black!" and then “I’m not racist!!" and i said “That doesn’t matter. Yes you are. Go away." Bam.

Racists: maybe consider keeping your poisonous and terrible ideas about comedy to yourself?

(903): I'm not taking advice from anyone I've seen passed out naked at noon on the hood of a strangers car. Meaning you.

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(416): 7:26 bus just came. I am sweatier than Louie Anderson eating chili in a sauna.

What do you say to people who say, “we’ll just have to agree to disagree?”

Response #1 (The High Road): “‘We’ll just have to agree to disagree’ is a thought terminating cliché that implies your argument is on equal footing as mine. It’s not, and if you aren’t willing to defend your position any further, then we’ll just have to agree you’ve conceded the point.”

Response #2 (The Middle Road): “We’ll just have to agree you’re wrong, so go sit in the corner and be wrong in your wrongness.”

Response #3 (The Low Road): “Agree to go fuck yourself.”

anonymous asked: If white people hate living in a mixed heritage America so much, why don’t they fuck off back to Europe already?

BOOM

(479): I just recorded myself pooping, then uploaded to google drive, then connected to my pc through teamviewer then downloaded it, then played it to the living room while still pooping. God I love the internet.

Verlyn Klinkenborg has written an op ed called The Decline and Fall of the English Major in which he starts with his students' inability to write and winds up discerning a "literal-mindedness in the recent shift away from the humanities". The apparent goal of the article is to defend the value of the humanities. However, the editorial has two weaknesses that undermine that goal.

The first weakness arises in the attempt to define that value. The author reduces what the humanities offer to mere writing– to clear composition. "They don’t call that skill the humanities. They don’t call it literature. They call it writing," explains Klinkenborg, who also asserts that undergrads do not know "how valuable the most fundamental gift of the humanities will turn out to be. That gift is clear thinking, clear writing and a lifelong engagement with literature."

So the value proposition of the humanities is reducible to clear thinking, clear writing, and a literary hobby. If that's all the humanities can offer, then why not eliminate every humanistic discipline other than composition and informal logic?

The humanities must be defended, if at all, on a much broader and deeper basis than this. To defend them merely because they build communication skills is to provide a tacit argument for superseding them with more efficient means toward that goal.

This fault in the editorial is joined to another. Klinkenborg writes: "…a certain literal-mindedness in the recent shift away from the humanities… suggests a number of things. One, the rush to make education pay off presupposes that only the most immediately applicable skills are worth acquiring…. Two, the humanities often do a bad job of explaining why the humanities matter. And three, the humanities often do a bad job of teaching the humanities. You don’t have to choose only one of these explanations. All three apply."

Whether these are genuine faults or merely perceived ones hardly matters in view of one overriding concern: if the humanities are so excellent at developing clear thought and clear verbal expression, then why do "the humanities… do a bad job of explaining" their value, and why do "the humanities… do a bad job of teaching the humanities"?

It seems reasonable that if the value proposition of the humanities consists of "clear thought and expression", then explaining the value of, and teaching, the humanities should be a slam dunk (and should be perceived as such). But if "the humanities" do a poor job of explaining their value and communicating their methods, then why believe in the first place that effective communication is a likely outcome of humanistic education?

Note– I'm all in favor of the humanities. Because of my humanistic education, I look askance on weak arguments and outright contradictions. For this reason, I don't like to see the humanities defended by a reduction to "clear thinking and writing" on the one hand and, on the other, by a contradiction of their efficacy at precisely that juncture.

In the New York Times, Verlyn Klinkenborg Gets It Wrong © 2007-2013 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.

lunchbreath posted a photo:

Now that "craft" is merely a marketing term, the march towards true meaningless seems inevitable.

my brother’s friend who stayed over for the night was having breakfast with us ( i cooked and mom and dad were at work already ) and said it was disgusting how much i ate because girls should be ‘thin’ and small. I had a bowl of cereal and some toast. i proceeded to eat in the most disgusting fashion i could, slurping the milk and stuffing my face with my toast until he left the table. my dieting habits are none of his business.

(submitted by anonymous)

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Heathkit® FAQ.

Q. Is Heathkit back?
A. Yes. We’re back.

Q. So are you really going to make Heathkit® kits?
A. Yes.

Q. Wow! That simple? “Yes?”
A. Yes.

Q. Will Heathkit products include entirely new designs?
A. Yes.

They do not say who they are, only “More on this later. Notwithstanding this FAQ, we’re presently in stealth.“. We’re looking forward to seeing who and what is released!

anonymous asked: I want to point out to all the racist defending George Zimmerman that his best case scenario is still that he picked a fight with a teenager. Began to lose the fight than shot him. A FUCKING TRUE AMERICAN HERO ps Fuck Rent-A-Cops

Seriously.

(919): Nothing says summer like lemonaid, but nothing says fuck yeah summer like lemonaid and vodkavodka.

Thanks again for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

anonymous asked: Is it racist if a dark skinned african american tells a light skinned afican american that they somehow have it easier because their skin is lighter? I’ve always wondered. It seems fucked up, but it also might be kind of true?

Yo, “fucked up" and “true" are not mutually exclusive. Not even close.

via earlboykins [Excellent on Instagram]