Sophianotloren

Shape Of The World

Procedurally generative gaming experience where world around you materializes as you wonder through it has just launched a Kickstarter campaign. The video below is simply a walkthrough, no voiceover or case from the developer why to invest in it, and it looks beautiful:

Shape of the World is an exploration game where a rich and colorful world grows around you. Your presence is the driving force behind the procedurally populated environment as you establish permanent monuments to mark your journey.

Shape of the World builds on the ideas of experiential games like Journey, Flower and Proteus where health hearts and kill points don’t enter the equation. It’s an evolving world that grows with each step and hints at distant landmarks, encouraging you to delve deeper into the woods. Shape of the World offers a unique unfolding experience for those seeking an alternative to quest-driven adventure games.

You can find out more at the Kickstarter page here, or the shapeoftheworld Tumblr blog here

Tomorrow, Gawker staffers vote on whether to form a union. This has been really interesting to watch play out because the company has allowed its writers to debate the issue on the site. Most of the writers who have contributed have favored the union. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but a victory here would be important for two reasons. First, it would be an expansion of unionism into new media. Entering any new industry and especially a growth area is always important for unions. Second, ten years ago, I really don’t think Gawker’s audience would be interested in hearing about labor unions and reading multiple articles about writers joining them. But times have changed and maybe this suggests a shift among the sort of educated, somewhat left-leaning readers of the site on unionism. Ultimately, a revival of American unionism is not going to happen before everyday people think they have value. Largely positive public discussions of unions are important. Union victories are even more important. I don’t want to overstate the importance of this, but it would be a nice victory.

via http://rezime.tumblr.com/

I'd like to take credit for this, but these people don't listen to me.

Ever.

From my email in-box:

Charles Chamberlain, Democracy for America  

Drift --

Today, after six amazing months of powerful grassroots organizing, Democracy for America and MoveOn are announcing the suspension of our Run Warren Run campaign, effective this Monday, June 8, following the delivery of our petition urging Sen. Elizabeth Warren to run for president.

While we did not achieve our primary goal before suspending Run Warren Run, the good news is that -- as one headline put it -- "Elizabeth Warren may not be running, but she’s in the 2016 race anyway."

This was not an easy decision to make...

From my email in-box 20 minutes later:

Ilya Sheyman, MoveOn.org Political Action 

Dear MoveOn member,

Last December, MoveOn members set out to do two things when we launched our Run Warren Run campaign: illuminate and broaden the path for Senator Elizabeth Warren to run for president in 2016, should she decide to do so; and build a grassroots movement to fight alongside her.

Six months after starting this journey, we've helped demonstrate the tremendous base of grassroots support and energy—not just for Elizabeth Warren, but for her vision of a democracy restored and an economy that works for everyone.

Now, we're shifting our focus to support that vision...

Hey!  Maybe it's not too late to repurpose their hustlebuck machinery slightly and start demanding that Elizabeth Warren give up her vital seat in the Senate in a futile run for the president of FIFA!

Also send us $3!

These people raised a shit-ton of money by stalking Elizabeth Warren long after she made it 100% clear that she wanted them to leave her the fuck alone.

I wonder where all that money went?  I know for sure that not a nickel of it ever found it's way into one of my tin-cup fundraisers.

Ah well, another political mystery to which I will never be privy.

Meanwhile...

While SoundHound hasn't seen the tune-searching success as Shazam, the company behind it is taking a similar stance as the competition. Like Shazam's recent addition of product queries, SoundHound is looking to tackle more than songs too, and it'll d...

Via Politico:

Almost no one is reading Fusion

By DYLAN BYERS

Gawker's Sam Biddle got his hands on screenshots of Fusion's internal traffic metrics, as measured by Chartbeat, and they aren't pretty:

The number of “concurrents” (people reading the same thing simultaneously) is unbelievably low for a website that’s been around for two years and employs some of the most widely known digital journalists around. ... At the moment the above screenshot was taken [about 1 p.m. on Tuesday]... only 32 people were reading ... the most popular story on the entirety of Fusion.net...

This from a website that’s been handing out six-figure salaries to staff writers for the past year, and reportedly just locked down $30 million in further funding from its co-owners, Disney and Univision. Our most recent Fusion traffic screenshot shows 706 concurrent visitors—that’s over $42,000 per reader...

I'd take half that in cash and write circles around the best you've got.

There was a hushed silence as the Priest shouted "should anyone have an objection to the marriage of ThinkGeek and Hot Topic, speak now or forever hold their peace." Suddenly, a side-door slammed open as GameStop rushed in, demanding that the ceremon...

Don’t show these to your kids unless you want them to be completely underwhelmed by every balloon animal they see for the rest of their lives. Japanese balloon twister Masayoshi Matsumoto makes some of the most intricate balloon sculptures I’ve ever encountered. From prickly iguanas to glowing sea creatures it seems no life form is too difficult for Matsumoto to faithfully interpret using nothing but balloons. You can follow more of his work on Tumblr and on FB. (via Neatorama)

Leadership at Twin Peaks K-12 charter school outside Boulder, Co is under fire for banning its graduating valedictorian from giving a speech in which he would have come out as gay. Even worse, the school’s principal called the student’s home in the days before the ceremony and outed him.

Evan Young earned his spot behind the podium at his school’s commencement. The 18-year-old graduated with  a 4.5 GPA and a scholarship awaiting him at Rutgers University. He planned on giving a speech themed around openness, honesty and acceptance, an irony given the fact that school Principal BJ Buchmann responded with the opposite.

“One of my themes is that I was going to tell everyone my secrets,” Young explained to the Daily Camera. “Most of the things were stupid stuff — books I never read that I was supposed to, or homework I didn’t like. But then I gradually worked up to serious secrets.

“My main theme is that you’re supposed to be respectful of people, even if you don’t agree with them. I figured my gayness would be a very good way to address that.”

Buchmann felt it was inappropriate for Young to come out at the ceremony, and requested that portion be taken out. Young stood his ground, and a few minutes before Young was to take the stage, he was informed the entire speech was canceled “to protect the solemnity of the evening and to preserve and protect the mission of the school.”

And here’s the real kicker — prior to the ceremony, Buchmann called Evan’s father, Don, who has previously served on the charter school’s board of directors, and outed the teen.

“Mr. Buchmann called me and said, ‘I’ve got Evan’s speech here. There’s two things in it that I don’t think are appropriate,'” Don Young recalled. “One was he had mentioned another student’s name. And then there was his coming out that he was gay.”

LGBT advocacy group Out Boulder’s board President Ann Noonan called the incident a “total violation of his educational privacy rights,” and the group is planning to host a private event to give Evan the opportunity to present his speech and be recognized as the accomplished and promising student that he is.

“I think what it mainly showed is that he didn’t have a lot of sympathy for me, or someone in my position. He didn’t understand how personal a thing it was, and that I wasn’t just going to share it with people randomly, for no reason,” Evan added.

Google's big developer conference is done for another year, which means that the company is ready to dish out some hot statistics regarding the state of Android's union. Thankfully, the search engine can boast that Gingerbread no longer runs on a sub...

I’m in the process of reading an excellent non-fiction book at the moment, “Harmful to Minors: The Perils of protecting children from sex” by Judith Levine. Only made it about halfway through so far, but it’s a brilliant read already.

Published in 2001, it’s at least as relevant today as then — and refreshing to see one more voice among the very few willing to speak truth and cite sources instead of simply parroting the politically palatable lies and hysteria that (sadly) seem to dominate discourse on the subject today.

From the inside cover blurb of the dust jacket: “Through interviews with young people and their parents, stories drawn from today’s headlines, visits to classrooms and clinics, and a look back at the ways sex among children and teenagers has been viewed throughout history, Judith Levine debunks some of the dominant myths of our society. She examines and challenges widespread anxieties (pedophilia, stranger kidnapping, Internet pornography) and sacred cows (abstinence-based sex education, statutory rape laws). Levine investigates the policies and practices that affect kids’ sex lives– censorship, psychology, sex and AIDS education, family, criminal, and reproductive law, and the journalism that begs for ‘solutions’ while inciting more fear.”

The book starts with a foreword by Dr. Jocelyn Elders — y’know, the former U.S. Surgeon General who was fired from that job for daring to say that masturbation is a natural and healthy thing to do (gasp! The horror! Quick, clutch your pearls with me! Let’s all scream in unison, “THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” Whew! That’s better… almost let in a bit of sense there, didn’t we?) and continues through several themed chapters, each addressing an area of common misconception, or bad public policy, or backwards social standards. She makes simple, easily understandable arguments for her positions and references primary sources, shows parallels between the current moralistic panics and similar ones throughout history, and brings into sharp relief much of the absurdity surrounding the contemporary received wisdom — making a solid case for why the measures taken to “protect” children from anything and everything to do with sex are the things which are truly (as the title states) harmful to minors.

Looking forward to finishing the rest of the book soon, and perhaps I’ll write a bit more when I’ve done so! If you have the opportunity, pick up a copy. Try your local public library if nothing else — you might just find that a shot of truth, neat, no chaser, will open your mind… and maybe even give you a glimpse of something other than irrational fear to motivate you!

Filed under: General Tagged: children, harmful to minors, Joycelyn Elders, Judith Levine, protecting children, sex education

The next laptop you buy with a USB-C port could be even more useful than you thought. Intel today unveiled Thunderbolt 3, which uses an identical port design as its USB brethren. So if Apple sticks with its new MacBook design, for instance, it's poss...

Housed in the former home of the 10-story International Shoe Company, the sprawling 600,000 square-foot City Museum in St. Louis is quite possibly the ultimate urban playground ever constructed. The museum is the brainchild of artist and sculptor Bob Cassilly who opened the space in 1997 after years of renovation and construction. Although Cassilly passed away in 2011, the museum is perpetually under construction as new features are added or improved thanks to a ragtag group of 20 artists known affectionately as the Cassilly Crew.

So what can you find at the City Museum? How about a sky-high jungle gym making use of two repurposed airplanes, two towering 10-story slides and numerous multi-floor slides, a rooftop Ferris wheel and a cantilevered school bus that juts out from the roof, subterranean caves, a pipe organ, hundreds of feet of tunnels that traverse from floor to floor, an aquarium, ball pits, a shoe lace factory, a circus arts facility, restaurants, and even a bar… because why not? All the materials used to build the museum including salvaged bridges, old chimneys, construction cranes, and miles of tile are sourced locally, making the entire endeavor a massive recycling project.

If you have kids (or are a kid at heart) and live in the midwestern United States or have any other means to get to St. Louis, if you aren’t immediately planning a trip to City Museum, you’re missing out on life. On my first visit last year our family hardly left the museum for two days. It is the complete antithesis to commercialized theme parks like Disneyland. You can see more photos at Gallery Hip.

Crimes of the Art is a weekly survey of artless criminals’ cultural misdeeds. Crimes are rated on a highly subjective scale from one “Scream” emoji — the equivalent of a vandal tagging the exterior of a local history museum in a remote part of the US — to five “Scream” emojis — the equivalent of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist.

Colorado Cops Come Down Hard on Stone Stacker

Boulder-based artist Michael Grab (aka Gravity Glue), who has spent the last seven years making site-specific public art installations by carefully stacking and balancing rocks, was recently informed that in order to prevent him from practicing his art, Boulder police will treat his future stone stacks as crimes for which he can be fined or even jailed. The Boulder City Attorney subsequently stepped in to reassure Grab and other stone-stacking enthusiasts that their art is not illegal.

Verdict: Sounds like Boulder police need some zen rock stacking sensitivity training.

Gallerist and Part-Time Rabbi a Full-Time Molester

Steve Karro, a Miami Beach art dealer and part-time rabbi, was arrested for fondling an 11-year-old girl at his gallery.

Verdict: That’s just despicable.

Bookworms Boost Ceramic Busts

Seven ceramic bust sculptures worth between $750 and $1,100 each by Jean Cherie were stolen in a smash-and-grab art heist at the John F. Kennedy Library in Vallejo, California. “I must have a kooky fan out there,” Cherie said.

Verdict: To break a window and steal armfuls of ceramic sculptures without arousing the suspicions of shushing librarians must have required Thomas Crown-caliber stealth.

Forbidden Nude Photo Shoot in Forbidden City

In an official statement Beijing’s Palace Museum at the Forbidden City denounced a recent nude photo shoot at the former imperial palace as “improper” and said that photographer Wang Dong’s actions had “profaned the dignity of the cultural relics.”

Verdict: It’s hard to believe there isn’t a full-scale replica of the Forbidden City somewhere in China built specifically for nude photo shoots.

Florida Art Thieves Arrested

Husband-and-wife art thieves Raluxi Raul Erbiti and Dania Rojas were arrested for allegedly taking paintings worth a total of between $200,000 to $350,000 from the Miami home of Edouardo Goudie last month. The couple were apprehended in a sting operation as they tried to offload the paintings for $150,000.

Verdict: Rookie mistake — always wait for the heat to die down before flipping valuable art.

Prison Museum Director Going to Jail

Julia Kaye Brewer, the longtime director of operations at the Old Prison Museums in Deer Lodge, Montana, will serve 106 days in jail and have to pay $136,000 back to the museum from which she embezzled funds. Brewer was originally given concurrent 10- and 20-year jail sentences for embezzling the funds and forging her boss’s signature to obtain a company credit card that she used for personal purchases.

Verdict: Apparently Brewer learned nothing from her visits to the Old Prison Museums.

Weapon in Murder Case Turns Up at Museum

A weapon that was used in seven unsolved murders in Northern Ireland was found on display at the Imperial War Museum in London. In the 1990s, families of those who had been killed in attacks in which the VZ58 rifle was used were told that it had been “disposed of.” It has been sent back to Northern Ireland for testing.

Verdict: We expect this sort of sensational display from the Newseum, but never from the Imperial War Museum.

German Vandals Attack Memorial Sculpture

Artist Nezaket Ekici‘s public sculpture “Post It” (2015) was vandalized with anti-Islmamic graffiti and targeted by thieves in Dresden. The large outdoor work, which consists of 34 carpets hanging from a scaffolding outside the State Courthouse, was intended as an homage to an Egyptian woman who was murdered there in 2009.

Verdict: Dresden sounds like a charming town.

Ahoy There, Museum!

A South California seaman was a little overexcited when sailing up to the USS Midway Museum in San Diego Bay and got his mast caught in the aircraft carrier-turned-floating museum’s netting. Museum president Mac McLaughlin said they wouldn’t press charges against the frisky captain so long as he makes a donation and buys a membership to the institution.

Verdict: We thought it would take several more decades of global warming before the world’s first boat-on-museum collision.

LOS ANGELES — The list of ways the US has negatively influenced the rest of the world is long and shameful: unnecessary, interminable wars, nutritionally inane fast-food chains, a habit of wasteful consumption based on instant obsolescence. The list goes on, and one can see why at least some of our exports caught on. The notion of urban sprawl is not one of them. Surely, you’d think, a glance through snapshots of any one of our thousands of forbiddingly bland suburban communities would make a country accustomed to walkable cities, villages, and farms, architectural diversity, and efficient public transportation, politely decline. But the US has successfully exported not only the idea of sprawl, but the look of it as well, and there are communities (for a more appropriate word does not exist to describe something so decidedly anti-community) in South Korea, Greece, Spain, the UAE, France, and Germany, that no longer resemble their native cultures and could easily be mistaken for Walnut Creek.

When photographer Robert Harding Pittman was studying at the California Institute of the Arts, these developments were metastasizing all over Los Angeles; when he moved on to study in Spain, identical developments were creeping into view there. After years of photographing the preparation of the land, the erection of prefab boxes, the laying down of miles of asphalt, and the half-formed structures and detritus left when building was halted in the wake of the economic collapse, Pittman published Anonymization (Kehrer Verlag 2012). A showing of the series is up at Spot Photo Works in Los Angeles through June 16.

Pittman wisely chose to group the photographs by stages of development rather than by location, preventing the reader from picking up on the distinctive features of each place and instead paying attention to the processes that render those locations indistinguishable from each other: Sacred Ground (first stages of ground preparation), Conversion, Prefabricated, and Aftermath. Fouled soil and gravel piles look the same in Dubai and Seoul; this or that tract housing complex could be in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, or Murcia, Spain. Abandoned structures look sad and effete in the Peloponnese Peninsula or in Alamogordo. In deliberately confusing the locales and effacing their individual characteristics, the work communicates the ruthless ideology behind developmental sprawl. The peculiarities of place — the natural environment and topography, the architectural styles, anthropological elements such as how the people of a given place have historically lived and socialized, even the local availability and sustainability of necessary resources — none of that matters. If developers seek to make their constructions attractive to an affluent clientele, one that might require access to clichéd Western one percenter hobbies like golf, they’ll make that golf course, dammit, and pump in the water for the buzz cut grass lawn whether it’s in Benidorm, Spain, or the middle of the Arabian Desert. When the money dries up or the global economy implodes, developers all abandon the projects at whatever stages they have reached with equal disregard for the desecrated landscapes. These ruins do not turn into Ostia Antica. Spilled nails stain Spanish pavements with rust, skeletons of single-family homes perch atop Grecian hillsides, palm trees planted ready-grown into Emirati yards dry out and die in the absence of the high-maintenance irrigation systems necessary to sustain them where nothing was ever meant to live.

Yet what no doubt appears as a shameful blight on the natural world makes for elegant, even beautiful photographs, and probably more so for those whose tastes lean towards the stark and geometric. Minimalists who want to prove they have a sense of humor should buy these prints. It’s hard to believe that anything aesthetically pleasing could be found in the parking lot of Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates. But Pittman found a pristine patch in the lot where the lilac pavement is still unmarred by tread marks, where the angles of the painted white stripes and the concrete stoppers create an immaculate, yet dynamic composition — the stoppers somehow conveying speed despite their stillness, like lined-up torpedoes. A line of spookily identical houses looks like one house, seeing its own reflection in a pair of infinity mirrors. A lone, intrepid weed has sprouted against all odds in the front, or back, “lawn” or driveway (it is unclear which, as it is just sand) of one of the houses. In a vista of beiges that even bleed into the blue of the sky, this spot of green is like a rebellion; the starburst pattern of its stems and leaves look as if the plant burst out of the ground in glee, unaware of the crushing, unnatural hostility of its new surroundings.

And that is perhaps the ugliest element of sprawl, captured in these handsome photographs: it looks designed so that its ideal state is before the keys are handed over. The effects of human inhabitance, or, really, any life form’s inhabitance — the wonky lawn chairs, tire marks, unplanned plant life sprouting up willy nilly — are each a blemish on a fussy suburban model that would prefer never to leave the architect’s office. What assimilates seamlessly into the evolving, flexible aesthetic of a place that developed organically like a village or a city predating urban planning, or even one which, like New York, was “planned” around human life and movement rather than the car, looks like unfortunate intrusions upon the bleak perfection of these planned, even “master-planned,” communities. Where else would a lone tree look so out of place? Pittman includes a photograph of one slated for removal, encircled by a red fence like a crime site.

Some of this comes across in a walk through the gallery. But it’s in sitting with the book, pouring over the images, reading the explanatory notes at the back as well as essays describing the history of the suburb, the outsized influence of the fossil fuel interests, and the role Cold War paranoia played in the fashioning of the mall, that one can really get a good fury boiling. The book and its revelation — that we not only have allowed an ideology of cynical disregard for both environmental and humane values to dominate our own planning, but have aggressively spread this model around the world wherever we could — should anger us and them. In the list of achievements of which we cannot be proud, “anonymization” is near the top.

Robert Harding Pittman: Anonymization continues at Spot Photo Works (6679 West Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles) through June 16. 

LOS ANGELES — This week, there’s a survey of video art from Latin America, a retrospective of work by assemblage artist Noah Purifoy, the opening of a fetish figurine shop, and more.

 Ana Prvački

When: Opens Wednesday, June 3, 6—8pm
Where: 1301PE (6150 Wilshire Boulevard, Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles)

Serbian-born artist Ana Prvački creates humorous works that “attempt to reconcile etiquette and erotics” as she says on her website. For her first solo show at 1301PE, Prvački presents two bodies of work: Porn Scores, in which disembodied genitals playfully dance over sheet music, and “Tent, Quartet, Bows, and Elbows,” a performance for a string quartet inside a tent. As the music swells, the musicians’ movements grow more animated, frantically poking the tent’s walls and rendering the aural physical.

 Recent Video From Latin America

When: Wednesday, June 3, 7pm
Where: The Getty Center (1200 Getty Center Drive, Brentwood, Los Angeles)

The Getty’s upcoming Latin American Video Art screening packs the work of seventeen artists into just 90 minutes. Ranging from the comical to the political, the program includes emerging as well as established artists. Featuring work from Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Central America, the museum will showcase video art from underrepresented parts of the region, much of it never seen before in the US.

 Tongues Untied

When: Opens Saturday, June 6, 11am—6pm
Where: MOCA Pacific Design Center (8687 Melrose Avenue, West Hollywood, California)

Marlon Riggs’s 1989 film Tongues Untied is a poetic and personal exploration of black gay identity that combines documentary footage with scripted performance. Made at the height of the AIDS crisis, it features gay men of color telling their own stories of desire, repression, and mourning, without filtering them through a white, heterosexual lens. This film provides the centerpiece for an exhibition of the same name, which also includes work by John Boskovich, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and other artists who were active during these “plague years.”

 Richard Ankrom: The Curio Shop

When: Opens Saturday, June 6, 6—9pm
Where: Charlie James Gallery (969 Chung King Road, Chinatown, Los Angeles)

LA-based artist Richard Ankrom is perhaps best known for his Guerrilla Public Service projects such as altering freeway signs to make them more accurate. For his first show at Charlie James Gallery, Ankrom operates on a more intimate scale, recreating a figurine-filled Curio Shop. Instead of simply displaying these symbols of Koonsian kitsch, Ankrom outfits each one with a rubber fetish mask, imbuing formerly saccharine keepsakes with a touch of deviance.

 Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada

When: Opens Sunday, June 7, 10am—7pm
Where: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) (5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles)

Alongside George Herms and Ed Kienholz, Noah Purifoy was one of the pioneers of postwar assemblage art in Los Angeles. Drawing inspiration — and raw materials — from the the streets of LA, some of his earliest sculptures were made from burned wreckage from the 1965 Watts Rebellion. In the late ’80s, he traded the city for the desert, moving to Joshua Tree where his Foundation and outdoor museum still stand. LACMA’s retrospective of his work, Junk Dada, is a long overdue chance to see the work of this underappreciated artist.

 BCBG: Portraits

When: Closing Reception Sunday, June 7, 8pm
Where: LAST Projects (6546 Hollywood Blvd, Ste 215, Hollywood, Los Angeles)

Barbara Grossman’s Breakfast Club is composed of ten female artists who explore what it means to be just that through a range of media, including painting, video, sculpture, and animation. The closing reception for artists’ current show Portraits promises to bring all their projects together with a performance that throws karaoke into the mix. Featured artists include Sarah Bernat, Melinda Braathen, Tara Foley, Johanna Hauser, Chisa Hughes, Miriam Katz, Amy MacKay, Molly Purnell, Estelle Srivijittakar, and Meg Whiteford.

I’ll admit that what I know about the French economy can be put in a thimble. So I won’t comment on the details. But the French economist Michel Husson and Stephanie Treillet have a provocative Jacobin essay on the connection between reducing the work week and achieving full employment:

There is a close link between working-time reduction and distribution of income. There are many ways to do it, each with obviously different effects on the distribution of wealth. The thirty-five-hour week has left wages unchanged, contrary to employers’ complaints, which accuse it of increasing the costs of labor. This result was achieved in two ways: by reducing social security contributions and by raising work intensity, which has reduced the policy’s potential for creating new jobs.

In other words, employers never stopped skimming productivity gains, thereby maintaining or even increasing their profit margins. These profits were not used to invest more, but to pay out more dividends. In 2012, an employee worked an average of twenty-six days per year for shareholders, instead of nine days in 1980.

What is not paid out to employees in the form of wage increases or job creation through working-time reduction is directly seized by the shareholders. This is why the rise and solidification of mass unemployment and this form of shareholder takeover (a good indicator of financialization) are two sides of the same “medal.”

This is also why any proposal to reduce unemployment without touching income distribution is an illusion. Here the crisis reveals the violence of social relations: while employees are laid off and 90% of new hires have fixed-term contracts of less than a month, dividend growth, interrupted in 2010 at the height of the crisis, is resuming with a vengeance.

Certainly very thought-provoking. Of course we are far from adopting a 35-hour workweek in the United States, but these are the goals the American left need to prioritize.

I have a piece on what it means to claim that Dennis Hastert was being subjected to an extortion attempt:

Suppose Individual A calls a lawyer, and tells the lawyer his story. The lawyer calls Hastert, and tells him he wants to talk to Hastert’s lawyer. The two lawyers then negotiate a settlement, in which, in exchange for a payment, Individual A agrees to sign a release, waiving any legal claims he has against Hastert. Such an agreement would certainly include a non-disclosure provision, making the payment contingent upon Individual A’s promise not to disclose the existence of the agreement. All this is perfectly legal, which means the agreement would be enforced by court orders if necessary. But of course the whole point of the agreement is to make it unnecessary for any legal action to ever be filed. In effect, Hastert and Individual A are entering into a contract to bury evidence of Hastert’s crime, in exchange for money.

Now suppose Individual A calls Hastert up and tells him, “if you don’t pay me $3.5 million, I’ll call a press conference and announce that you molested me when I was your student. But if you pay me, I promise to keep quiet.” This is extortion, which is a serious crime. (By the way, if Hastert agrees to this arrangement and then reneges, Individual A can’t go to court to enforce the agreement, because criminal contracts aren’t legally enforceable.)

On one level, the distinction between these two situations is perfectly clear, as Richard Nixon used to say. On another, it’s troubling that we allow people to buy silence regarding their crimes, as long as the appropriate paperwork is drawn up first.

This story about how the Bricklayers union offered a real compromise on their pensions only to have it completely rejected by management is incredibly depressing. Basically, there was a moment in American history where it was possible for working people to retire with dignity. Repealing that is an explicit goal of employers. And workers just don’t have the power to do anything about it.

Así hasta yo!

thenightlymirror

thenightlymirror

srmxy:

Ellen Page’s early filmography looks like it was Photoshopped for an Arrested Development gag.

erikalynae:

Let’s talk about Brenda Howard for a sec because I feel like all of the people shouting that “het”-partnered bisexuals don’t belong at Pride are missing a good chunk of their Pride history.

Brenda was:

• A bisexual, polyamorous woman and activist
  
• In a “het” relationship with partner Larry Nelson
  
• Known as the Mother of Pride for her work in organizing the first LGBT Pride events
• A participant in the Stonewall Riots
• An active member of the Gay Liberation Front, Gay Activists Alliance, Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights, BiPAC, and BiNET USA,  among others
• Co-founder of the New York Area Bisexual Network
• Founder of the first Alcoholics Anonymous chapter for bisexuals
• An incredibly important figure in the LGBT community, who paved the way for Pride and LGBT activism as we know it today

“Het”-partnered bisexuals don’t just belong at Pride, they were integral to its creation.

(Bonus facts: Brenda was also Jewish, a sex worker, and an outspoken feminist. I highly recommend learning about her because she was seriously an amazing woman.)

gameblogpunktch:

motherfuckinoedipus:

saxypone:

fuchsiamae:

dextronoms:

bitches-im-balin:

bigbigtruck:

krudman:

I love this

“you come here often?”
“DWARVEN CRAAAFTS”

“hey baby did it hurt when you fell from heaven-”

“FAVOR THE BOW, EH? I’M A SWORD MAN MYSELF”

“hey let me buy you a drin-”

“LET ME GUESS: SOMEONE STOLE YOUR SWEET ROLL?”

“hey gorgeous-”

“I LIKE SHORTS! THEY’RE COMFY AND EASY TO WEAR!”

“hey beauti-”

“SOMETIMES, I DREAM ABOUT CHEESE”

”are you an angel becau-”

”Talos the Mighty! Talos the unerring! Talos the unassailable! To you we give Praise! We are but maggots writhing in the filth of our own corruption! While you have ascended from the dung of mortality, and now walk among the stars! But you were once man! Aye! And as man you said, “Let me show you the power of Talos Stormcrown, born of the North, where my breath is long winter. I breathe now in royalty and reshape this land which is mine. I do this for you, Red Legions, for I love you.”  Aye, love! Love! Even as man, great Talos cherished us. For he saw in us, in each of us, the future of Skyrim! The future of Tamriel! And there it is, friends! The ugly truth! We are the children of man! Talos is the true god of man! Ascended from flesh, to rule the realm of spirit! The very idea is inconceivable to our Elven overlords! Sharing the heavens with us? With man? Ha! They can barely tolerate our presence on earth! Today, they take away your faith. But what of tomorrow? What then? Do the elves take your homes? Your businesses? Your children? Your very lives? And what does the Empire do? Nothing! Nay, worse than nothing! The Imperial machine enforces the will of the Thalmor! Against its own people! So rise up! Rise up, children of the Empire! Rise up, Stormcloaks! Embrace the word of mighty Talos, he who is both man and Divine! For we are the children of man! And we shall inherit the heavens and earth! And we, not the Elves or their toadies, will rule Skyrim! Forever!”

it got better.