Sophianotloren

I sure am glad to be done with Star Trek comics and to move on to something less controversial, like religion. Phew!

Would you guys do me a favor and buy a few things from the SFAM store? I bet you can!

revolutionarykoolaid:

No Justice, No Peace (3/4/15): The full report of the Department of Justice’s investigation into the Ferguson Police Department has been released and it is nothing short of horrifying. Please take the time to read each screencap above, and if you can stomach more afterwords, read the full report. The above barely scrapes the surface of the indignities Ferguson PD inflicted on the people they were supposed to protect and serve. Ferguson PD is not unique. This is everyday terrorism faced by Black folks from the police, around the country. #staywoke #farfromover

Last night The Daily Show's "Senior Ferguson Correspondent" Jessica Williams took on the recent Justice Department report about Ferguson's racially biased policing, and pulled zero punches:

After starting with a heartfelt "fuck these people," Williams gets covered in a thick coat of tickets for spurious offenses like "Jaystanding."

Of course, Jason Jones has a slightly different experience: after he drunkenly wanders on camera drinking a beer and carrying a huge gun, a police officer pulls over to question him — about whether Williams was "bothering" him.

It's almost as if there is some difference between Jones and Williams that might lead the Ferguson police to treat them differently. What could it possibly be?

The owner of the San Francisco Chinese restaurant So doesn't tolerate picky eaters. (more…)

[via]

by Pie Comic

And now you can read it!

One should understand that the Justice Department did not simply find indirect evidence of unintentionally racist practices which harm black people, but "discriminatory intent”—that is to say willful racism aimed to generate cash. Justice in Ferguson is not a matter of "racism without racists," but racism with racists so secure, so proud, so brazen that they used their government emails to flaunt it.

And…

The residents of Ferguson do not have a police problem. They have a gang problem. That the gang operates under legal sanction makes no difference. It is a gang nonetheless, and there is no other word to describe an armed band of collection agents.

eldiabloszone:

Sorry I’m crying. As someone in my position; Bisexual, disabled (hearing impaired), not confident in my appearance, and struggling. I tend to avoid posting pictures for a movement. Even if it is one meant to motivate, inspire, and more.

However after seeing some pictures of other African-Americans in similar positions as myself…after some thought I built up the courage. Thanks you all so much for #blackout

The great documentarian has died.

That goateed, grinning dipshit is State Senator Mike Bell of Tennessee, a place that's working really fuckin' hard to dick over the women who live there. Bell and an assortment of GOP pricks, cunts, and assholes voted to end the funding for the Women's Economic Council, which had been in operation for 17 years.

At a hearing on continuing the Council, Bell, the chair of the General Operations Committee, asked a question that only sexist fuckwads with no idea about history or present reality could ask: "With women making up 51 percent of the population of the state, why don’t we have a men’s economic council?" Really, man? Really? Yeah, really: "Why don’t we have a Hispanic council, why don’t we have an African-American economic council, why don’t we have this group and that group, why do we have a women’s economic council and why is it needed?"

To her credit, Phyllis Qualls-Brooks, the executive director of the council, didn't leap over the table to beat Bell to a pulp with a copy of The Second Sex. Instead, she said, "Because men basically are running everything anyway." And that'd be hilarious if the Tennessee legislature was more than 20% women, which means that, basically, men are running everything. Unfortunately, that 20% includes the Republican women, who are more than glad to do the bidding of the men, like completely nutzoid Senator Mae Beavers (giggle, if you need to), who spoke against funding the Council.

Bell responded to Qualls-Brooks in the classiest way possible. He said, "I need to tell my wife that men are running everything." The Rude Pundit knows what you're thinking: "Wait, some woman married that guy?" 

The audio from oral arguments in King v. Burwell that should have been streamed in real time are now up. As Irin Carmon said on Twitter, among other things it’s worth hearing to hear Carvin repeatedly address Justice Sotoma – YEER.

Ezra Klein’s piece on why Carvin’s Moops-invaded-Spain theory is such lunacy is very good. At one point, I think he actually understates the case:

The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Michael Carvin, tries to deny this fact. “There’s not a scintilla of legislative history suggesting that without subsidies, there will be a death spiral,” he told the Court.

But Michael Cannon, one of the architects of the King v. Burwell case, knows better. The reason he was so interested in the lawsuit, he told Vox, was that removing the subsidies would kick out “one of the three legs of Obamacare’s three-legged stool.”

The “three-legged stool” refers to the idea that for an exchange to work, it needs three things: regulations that force insurers to sell to everyone, a mandate that forces even young and healthy people to buy insurance, and subsidies to make that insurance affordable. No subsidies, no affordability. No affordability, no critical mass of young and healthy people. No critical mass of young and healthy people, no way to avoid a death spiral.

That’s what happens when you remove a leg of a three-legged stool: the stool falls over.

And it’s even worse than that — if you eliminate the subsidies, you essentially eliminate the mandate. (There might be a few uninsured people who can get health insurance plans that cost less than 8% of household outcome, but a “mandate” that applies only to a vanishingly small number of people is no better than having no mandate at all. A mandate that covers a tiny number of people, to put it mildly, does not solve the free rider problem.) And even Carvin concedes that without the mandates you’d get a death spiral.

And yet the case is essentially a coin flip at the Supreme Court, which should tell you all you need to know about the nation’s highest tribunal.

Sheriffs from Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas are suffering from a "crisis of conscience" because Colorado law forbids them from busting dope-smoking hippies. Read the rest

There’s a new first person in town.

We should probably all go to the new Bedlam art museum.

A lot of the time synesthesia just goes back to fridge magnets.

The Soviet avant-garde Columbus monuments that could have been.

Will nuclear radiation create new supermen asks 1953.

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factualfeminist:

Black tumblr is planning a blackout on March 6th where they will be posting selfies.

Stay out of it. This isn’t for us. Let them have this. Reblog and give them notes and visibility and show support, but keep your pieholes shut. Try to refrain from posting selfies, but if you do for the love of God do not tag it blackout.

This has been a PSA.

(photo via AlexanderBlum)

jor-bot:

my coworker and i discovered something…

camkix:

#natureza #nature #wildlife #ant #formigas #nikon #nikontop #insta_international #macro #ants #bugs #nuriss_tag #ig_brazil_ #ig_worldclub #igersbrasil by emersonslhm http://ift.tt/1Ax9Ka5

HONKHONK out me way ! sick off all this goshdran heckin’ TRAFiic

turbulent-tempest:

I made a little friend at work last night.

Im am a. Fluffly pupy not moth I LoV hu gs but plz be gentle for am a VREY fraggile puppy

23 year old George Harrison’s selfie at the Taj Mahal - India - 1966

This aggressive falcon in South Bay, Los Angeles, didn’t enjoy model plane enthusiasts getting too close to her nest - taking down their gliders in mid-air. The peregrine attacked at least two planes which fell to the ground.
Picture: JOHN QIU/ CATERS NEWS

bird too fat. can’t keep flying.

In celebration of World Book Day (today!) 7UP commissioned Argentinian artist Raul Lemesoff to construct one of his famous book tanks. In this case he began with a stripped down 1979 Ford Falcon which he used to build a new roving library on wheels with an exterior framework capable of carrying 900 free books. Lemesoff refers to his militaristic bibliothecas as Weapons of Mass Instruction, and he drives them around the streets of Argentina giving free books to anyone who wants one, as long as they promise to read it. Watch the video above to see it all come together. (via Designboom)

Dear Citizens of the Internet: 

From time to time, in your ordinary exercise of the delights of the online world, you may find yourself accosted by clods. These oafish louts crave your time and attention, but in point of fact, life is short and you have better things to do.

For you, I have created this helpful numbered list of standard responses to online stupidity. When accosted, send the twit here to read the specific numbered response(s) relevant to them. Saves you time; alerts them they’re a jerk, and this is all the response they rate.

Use and enjoy.

1. I don’t care what you think.
2. I didn’t ask you.
3. No doubt you thought that was terribly clever.
4. You’ve attempted logic. Not all attempts succeed.
5. One should not have that many errors in that few characters.
6. Either your educators have failed you, or you have failed them.
7. I see you’ve invited me to an argument. I decline.
8. It appears an asshole has hacked your account and is posting in your name.
9. Funny, most people go out of their way not to be a public bigot.
10. Cosplaying as a tantrum-throwing child is no way to go through life.
11. I’m sorry that you are so obviously scared of the world.
12. My attention is a privilege, not a right. This is all you get.

Transactions in the art world tend towards the material: historically, collectors have exchanged their cash or patronage for physical artworks. But a new project from Sarah Meyohas and the Brooklyn-based Where gallery explores the future of art in a world where both art and the market are increasingly immaterial.

Fascinated by BitCoin, Meyohas decided to explore the implications of what she called “totally dematerialized value” by creating her own crypto-currency, Wired reported. “The idea began out of a conversation about speculation,” Meyohas told Hyperallergic. She says that she was intrigued by Bitcoin, which she saw as “a system of value that comes close to being dematerialized and purely ideal. Yet, the terminology surrounding the currency is surprisingly material. An analogy to gold allows the currency to be a ‘coin’ that is ‘mined.’ I was interested in how the language was being used to retrieve a sense of dimension.”

The result is BitchCoin, a currency that can be used solely to buy a share in Meyohas’s existent or future artworks. One BitchCoin is worth $100, and it purchases 25 square inches of one of Meyohas’s prints. An entire print is worth 25 BitchCoins. The project gives collectors a chance to invest not only in artworks Meyohas has already created but in her artistic development. This is a new kind of speculation — one that implications for the way that we think about artistic investments. “By giving the artist an increased stake in the supply, demand, and price of the work, BitchCoin challenges the status quo. The artist as maker of meaning reclaims agency in self-evaluation,” Meyohas said.

Her project underscores the degree to which monetary exchange is abstracted from material reality. As the value of currency becomes an increasingly digital affair, divorced from commodities on the ground, it becomes easier for us to construct or imagine alternate economic realities: in the Where gallery exhibition, there’s a space for “mining” BitchCoins — an ironic nod to the conceptual nature of Meyohas’s fictional currency, and currency more generally.

BitchCoin also calls traditional notions of ownership into question. If it’s possible to “own” a share of Meyohas’s not-yet-existent works — to “own” something as intangible as her progress — it may be possible to own other immaterial artworks, like installations or pieces of netart. “I would like to see an art market that allows collectors to invest in an artist as a value producer, rather than investing in a single piece. Artists and collectors are linked in a more symbiotic way,” Meyohas explained. Perhaps her project will help pave the way.

In a long awaited decision, the CT Supreme Court last Friday ruled that Miller v. Alabama applies to all youth sentenced to the functional equivalent of life without parole, even though such a sentence was not required to be imposed by the trial judge.

In State v. Riley [PDF], Ackeem Riley – 17 at the time of the offense – was sentenced to 100 years in jail, without the possibility of parole¹. He argued that Miller prohibits the imposition of such a sentence without a hearing on the particularized vagaries of youth and his attendant circumstances. He also argued that any functional life without parole sentence violates Graham v. Florida and he must be permitted to show that he has been rehabilitated and earn a chance at release. The Court, in typical Land-Of-Whoa-Whoa-Lets-Slow-This-Down fashion, ruled on the first claim and not on the second:

We agree with the defendant’s Miller claim. Therefore, he is entitled to a new sentencing proceeding at which the court must consider as mitigation the defendant’s age at the time he committed the offenses and the hallmarks of adolescence that Miller deemed constitutionally significant when a juvenile offender is subject to a potential life sentence.

We decline, however, to address the defendant’s Graham claim. As we explain later in this opinion, the legislature has received a sentencing commission’s recommendations for reforms to our juvenile sentencing scheme to respond to the dictates of Graham and Miller.

Therefore, in deference to the legislature’s authority over such matters and in light of the uncertainty of the defendant’s sentence upon due consideration of the Miller factors, we conclude that it is premature to determine whether it would violate the eighth amendment to preclude any possibility of release when a juvenile offender receives a life sentence.

We’ve been down this legislative road before: twice in two years has the legislature considered Miller/Graham bills and twice the legislature has failed to vote on it. This year, however, will be different. We promise. Two bills are on the public hearing agenda, scheduled to be heard on Wednesday. They’re good bills, as the last two were. They’ve got support, as the last two had. But this is a legislature and soft on crime still is a phrase that no one wants to hear. Will it pass this time? Will the CT Supreme Court have to take this up again in 2 or 3 years because the legislature doesn’t have the will to do the right thing? I hope not, but this is CT. We don’t like to be on the forefront of social justice.