Cooper Griggs

MmmmmHmmmm
Finally posted my photos from Ireland!
https://flickr.com/photos/7239270@N04/sets/72157649773240230
#ireland #bacon #fun #travels #trip #Europe #silly #flickr

Somewhere in the middle
Finally posted my photos from Ireland!
https://flickr.com/photos/7239270@N04/sets/72157649773240230
#ireland #usa #flying #tour #fun #travels #trip #Europe #river #flickr

\o/

via http://northxvi.tumblr.com/post/16658004889

dinner date

he asked me out this morning, then made reservations at ‘social’ this afternoon. a proper married date.

had heard about this place from a friend and wasn’t sure what to expect. the decor is hipster, the menu was typical of modern fare, and the tattooed bartenders had appropriately elaborate facial hair.

but that’s where the hipster crap ended. this place delivered on food and beverage.

• starter drink: “social sour” (scotch, lemon, hazelnut, bitters)
• starter food: jidori chicken liver toast
• entree drink: “cynarra” (gin, cynar, lemon, ginger, honey, cucumber)
• entree #1: chicken & waffles (featuring jidori chicken oysters)
• entree #2: spanish octopus
• dessert: pb&j (bread pudding, peanut butter mousse, strawberry sorbet)

i’m not much of a dessert person, but good lord was that some amazing stuff. we were so quiet with nomming during dessert that i could hear someone nearby say “… that lady with woody allen in ‘manhattan’…” and i called out "diane keaton!" to much appreciation before my next mouthful.

lovely date was lovely.

President Barack Obama is previewing parts of his State of the Union address in a bid to drum up support ahead of the big speech, and his latest effort is breaking some ground -- both in the policy and how he's presenting it. The head of state took t...

via http://imnotwordy.com/

Aggressive anti-piracy efforts often have their share of unintended victims, but the porn industry's crackdowns are leading to some decidedly unusual collateral damage: open source software. TorrentFreak notes that copyright takedown requests from st...

(via brotneyspores)

#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-881708{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-881708, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-881708{width:629px;display:block;} What's holding most everyone back from being ...

photo by Laura A. Oda/Bay Area News Group

On Monday, January 5, 2015, Oakland, California’s new mayor Libby Schaff arrived for her inauguration at the Paramount Theater in a most striking vehicle. The mayor was driven to the theater aboard The Golden Mean (previously), a fire-breathing snail car created by Oakland artists (and couple) Jon Sarriugarte and Kyrsten Mate. Sarriugarte acted as driver while a chase car and a parade of additional vehicles filled out the motorcade.

photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle

photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle

photo by Carlos Avila Gonzalez/The Chronicle

Phylicia Rashad doesn't believe Bill Cosby raped all those women.

Here's part of what Rashad, the actress who played Clair Huxtable to Cosby's Cliff on The Cosby Show, told Showbiz 411's Roger Friedman about the growing list of sexual assault allegations against the 77-year-old comedian, all of which he and his attorneys have denied: "What you're seeing is the destruction of a legacy. And I think it's orchestrated. I don't know why or who's doing it, but it's the legacy. And it's a legacy that is so important to the culture."

In a way, sexual assault victims owe Rashad a strange kind of thanks.

Her dismissive stance illustrates, in a way no public service announcement or myth-busting list could match, why so many women who are raped don't report their assaults. It's a perfect encapsulation of the exact reaction that many victims — especially those raped by powerful men — fear.

Imagine you've been raped and are deciding whether to report the assault to the authorities. Just thinking about the possibility that someone — a police officer, friends or a family member, the public, or a court — would brush off your story the way Rashad brushed off of the stories of Cosby's accusers could be enough to make you stay quiet.

But it gets worse.

Rashad, who was initially quoted as saying "forget these women," insisted Wednesday that she was misquoted. But in explaining herself, she revealed even more of the type of attitude that silences victims, telling ABC News, "What I said was this is not about the women. This is about something else. This is about the obliteration of legacy."

Read those sentences closely. Rape accusations are "not about" the women who make them. The women who make them need to consider whether they are damaging their rapist's legacy, or perhaps the legacy of his art, or his accomplishments. That is to say, a woman who says she has been raped by Cosby is being told, by the woman who played Clair Huxtable, to think long and hard about whether she wants to be culpable for destroying the glittering cultural influence of The Cosby Show.

Her remarks hit all the notes that a woman raped by a powerful, famous, widely adored man like Cosby would fret about before publicly accusing him. It's easy to see how beliefs like the three main ones revealed by her curt statement could silence anyone:

1. Power earns people the benefit of the doubt and a loud defense: Rashad seems to suggest that Cosby's high profile and the fact that he has a show business "legacy," mean he is somehow either incapable of having committed the assaults of which he's accused, or shouldn't be held responsible for them. And Rashad's choice to use her platform to defend him is a reminder that powerful people like Cosby have the loyalty of other powerful people, who have the tools to amplify their defenses of their friends.
2. Women have all sorts of shady incentives to make claims about high-profile men: Rashad's "I don't know why or who's doing it" comments, and her reference to an "orchestrated" effort to ruin Cosby's legacy, are telling. It's not clear whether she's saying that the accusers have all decided to get together to frame Cosby, or that they're puppets of someone else. Either way, the sentiment goes hand in hand with the equally popular idea that the accusers might just be seeking publicity. This makes very little sense, based on what we know — but what woman would want to risk the pain of having her motives scrutinized in these ways after confessing a major trauma?
3. Some people are just too important to criticize: Rashad's hand-wringing over the destruction of Cosby's contribution to "the culture" — ostensibly through his creation of a sitcom depicting an African-American family that defied racist stereotypes — seems to suggest that she would want potential accusers to embrace a line of thinking that goes something like this: if you come forward against the alleged crimes of Cosby the man, you're destroying the legacy of Cosby the public figure, and that legacy is important, and other people who believe it's important will attack you if you ruin it, and even if you succeed in persuading people to believe your story, you will have done something terrible.

The good news is that the disturbing example provided by this "it's not about the women" thinking means none of us will ever again have an excuse to wonder, "If she was really raped, why didn't she say something right away?" The answer is: because of people like Phylicia Rashad.

Guitar Hero (image via bzdug)

Cicadae Parasite Beetle (Rhipiceridae)

One of my favorite Flickr accounts to follow is Singapore-based photographer Nicky Bay (previously) who ventures into some of the most ecologically diverse (ie. creepiest and crawliest) places in the world to shoot macro photos of insects, arachnids, and fungi. Bay went on 46 different shooting excursions in 2014 and discovered creatures that seem more at home in an Avatar movie than here on Earth. He’s also begun working more with ultraviolet light that he uses to reveal the natural fluorescence of many organisms he encounters. My favorite discovery while scrolling through Bay’s 2014 photos is this species of moth that builds a cage out of its own caterpillar spines to protect itself while in a pupal stage. You can follow his day-to-day adventures on Facebook.

Archduke larva (Lexias pardalis dirteana)

Caterpillar

Freshly moulted Jumping Spider

Harvestman illuminated with 365nm wavelength ultraviolet light; Millipede fluorescence.

Treehopper (Membracidae)

Cuckoo Bee

Caged pupa. The spines of the caterpillar were used to construct this magnificent cage for protection during pupation.

Bioluminescent fungi

Longhorn beetle

Huntsman Spider consuming prey exposed under ultraviolet light for 20 seconds.

Twig Spider

Selfie sticks, whether you love them or hate them, are now officially a thing. Their numbers appear to have exploded over the Christmas period, allowing new owners to begin working on their very best self portraits. The increase of these telescopic r...

Samsung has started manufacturing a PCIe (M.2) SSD that pulls off a rare trick -- it'll be the fastest drive your laptop has ever seen, while consuming almost no power in standby mode. The new SM951 SSD succeeds the Korean company's XP941, a drive th...

New Comic: Codex Parentes

At long last, California's promised high-speed train system is becoming more than just a pipe dream. The state will break ground on the first section of track in Fresno on January 6th, creating the foundation for a 220MPH rail network that will event...

(via catasters:Imgur)

Since stepping down as Microsoft CEO, Bill Gates has been hard at work trying to tackle the world's biggest health problems. One promising project that's caught his eye is the Omniprocessor, a huge machine that converts sewer sludge (yes, that means ...

(via peterfromtexas)

CES 2015 does not lack for connected devices. Lightbulbs, beds, socks... seriously, everything is a connected device at CES. But, let's be honest with ourselves: These are luxury goods for people with disposable income. BabyBe is using Intel's connec...

The FCC may be about to redefine American internet access in a big, big way. Chairman Tom Wheeler has narrowed down the Commission's vote on new net neutrality rules to its next meeting, on February 26th. It's still not apparent exactly what those pr...

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batsvsupes:

Bullseye

There were quite a few skeptics when the FBI blamed North Korea for the Sony Pictures hack, and you can't entirely blame them -- where was the evidence? Well, the bureau is finally willing to provide some explanation of how it reached its conclusion....