Japan, the country with some of the most fucked up pornography and the penis festival
Where the vagina is basically illegal to talk about
So she did a bunch of art featuring 3D sculptures of her vagina, including this kayak, and was put in jail for it
She was indicted again in December on obscenity charges for selling vagina art to crowdfund for the kayak and could spend two years in prison
In Japan, women’s vaginas are treated as though they are men’s property. The trains here usually display pornographic advertisements. As a woman, I find that blatant objectification to be humiliating. I’m disgusted by it. My body belongs to me. So, with this project I wanted to release the vagina from the standard Japanese paradigm. Japan is lenient towards expressions of male sexuality and arousal, but not so for women. When a woman uses her body in artistic expression, her work gets ignored, and people treat her as if she’s some sex-crazed idiot. It all comes back to misogyny. And the vagina is at the heart of it. The vagina is ridiculed. It’s lusted after. Men don’t see women as equals—to them, women are just vaginas. Then they call my vagina-themed work “obscene,” and judge me according to laws written by and for men. [x]
She plans to turn her trial in to a manga comic. She seems pretty sure she’s not going to do any jail time but if you’d like to help her pay for her inevitable fine and court fees, you can check out her online store. There are little glow in the dark vagina characters.
Entrepreneur sets $70,000 year minimum wage for all his employees Dan Price, the owner of a credit card processing company, came across an article showing that making much less than $75,000/yr. greatly diminished the emotional well-being of earners, and decided to do something about it. He's embarked on a three year plan to increase the salaries of all employees making under $70,000, which for some of them will be double their current wages.
Some of you might have noticed I dropped off the face of the earth for a while. That’s because I was ploughing full steam ahead on this!
TRANSMAJICKA is the story of Henrigne, a mage who was born a Warlock, but identifies as a Witch. Owing to the rigid gender roles of their magical community, Henrigne must overcome many an obstacle and prejudice as they embark on a journey to find themself, accept themself and ultimately transition into the mage they are meant to be.
This is a story (and character!) which is very dear to me for so many reasons. It’s a very personal project as well, and I hope the self-exploration involved can help others like it did for me :)
The comic is 36 pages from cover to cover in luscious colour (I love my markers! ;_;). Also included is some jaw-dropping gorgeous guest art by rainygay and cryptovolans!
The comic is now available as a digital download in my store! Check it out by clicking any of the images or HERE!
Enjoy :)
gosh I can’t recommend this comic highly enough, I’m such a fan of Fala’s work and everything comes together so beautifully in this volume. Definitely check it out if you can!
A Louisiana trans man says he was fired from his job at a New Orleans financial firm because he refused to obey his employers’ edict that he wear dresses and identify as female. According to ABC News, a number of rights organizations are banding together to support Tristan Brussard in his laws...
UrbanDictionary is packed full of words for today’s slang, but it also has a ton of hidden gems like these. Some of these are so perfect they need to be more commonly used
EXT. NIGHT. The PROFESSOR'S hut. It is raining. GINGER stands outside the entrance, mascara running down her face. She has a machine gun for a leg or something. The PROFESSOR opens the door.
GINGER: I need another abortion.
THE PROFESSOR: Christ. Christ. Christ motherfucker.
This is a fascinating article about a guy who's looking into the chemistry of aged spirits - rum, whiskey, cognac, and so on - and trying to find ways, as he puts it, to hack the process. I'm not a drinker myself, but I've watched with interest as the craft spirits movement has become popular. How, I wondered, could anyone start up a business in this area, when you need years in wooden barrels to make the stuff high-quality? Did someone have the idea back when Bill Clinton was running for office that there would be a market for small-volume distilled spirits, and plan accordingly?
Not at all. What happens is that the many of these tiny-label outfits buy their stuff from large-volume distilleries, sometimes doing the minimum possible to get their own brand on it. That might involve running some neutral spirits through another layer of charcoal to make your own "proprietary" vodka, or in the case of the aged liquors, it might just involve slapping a label on whatever showed up on the truck from Lawrenceburg, Indiana, which is where a lot of this stuff really comes from.
But that's not the business model that this new piece is talking about. It's been known for a long time that many of the flavor notes that come into aged spirits are products of extraction from the wood and often subsequent esterification. So do you have to wait twenty years for this to happen, or not?
The trick then is to encourage esterification in a short time period, and that’s the core science behind Davis’s Model 1 reactor. The reactor accomplishes this in three stages, taking white distillate and chunks of oak as inputs. The first stage forces the esterification of short-chained fatty acids in the white spirit, turning them into fruity, short-chained esters. Phase two literally splits apart big polymer molecules in the oak, extracting the compounds needed to complete the esterification process. This pulls out the aldehydes needed for the final step, but also some unpleasant medium-chained acids. In the final stage, those acids and phenolic compounds are forced to esterify, with simple esters being made to bind and combine into longer-chained esters that would normally be associated with a very mature spirit.
What comes out the other side is not necessarily an aged spirit, but rather one that bears the same chemical signature of an aged spirit. Davis uses mass spectrometry to compare old spirits with products put through his process. Spikes on the chromatogram correspond to compounds that appear in the highest concentrations in the spirits.
He's planning to be completely up front about the process, not trying to sell the products as if they've been sitting around for decades, but just tasting as if they do. And it sounds like it could be a successful business, at the right price point. It also sounds like the sort of thing that could bring on a lot of irritated commentary from fans of the traditional methods, naturally. I would doubt that the two techniques produce identical results (and they're not claimed to), but what if they produce equally desirable ones? Blind-taste-test style results? The traditional distillers will always have a market, because some customers will surely always want to pay for the time and effort that goes into making that product (or be seen paying for it, which amounts to the same thing, economically). But if this new technique catches on, they may well not have as large a market as they do now.
It'll be interesting to watch this play out. The same points that get debated around industrially produced foods will surely be argued in this area, too, but the line between nasty, lowbrow "processed food" and high-end "molecular gastronomy" can get pretty blurry, especially if you need an LC/MS to distinguish them from each other, or from a classic preparation. And we're going to see that debate played out in many other food and drink areas in the coming years, too. . .
I generally have buddies who are cool with talking about dead rats and poop and who'd excuse my need to spit out food in order to speak, but every now and then one finds themselves among the company of near strangers or people who may not share their interests or life experiences and then you have to be on your Best Behavior so they don't think you were raised in a barn, and still live there, and are in fact not even a human, you are just a farm animal that convinced itself it was.
I should really get that rat out of the yard pretty soon tho
Have you ever wondered how fast your fingernails grow? And whether they all grow at the same rate? Or perhaps you've noticed that your fingernails grow more slowly than they used to? If so, you and William B. Bean have something in common! Professor Bean painstakingly measured the growth of his fingernails for decades, and he published the minutia of these measurements after 20, 25, 30 and 35 years. The full texts of these papers are a delight to read. And the findings? Well, we'll let Professor
An image related to the protests via @isabelgalvin
Thousands took part in a virtual march in the streets of Madrid last Friday night to protest the new Citizens’ Securities Law’s Reform law that will have a chilling effect on public protests. Hailed as a “Hologram” protest, even though the technology used seems more akin to a projection, the event is part of a larger campaign called Hologramas por la libertad (Holograms for Freedom) that hopes to overturn the law before it goes into effect on July 1, 2015.
Under the new Citizen Safety Law, which human rights advocates have renamed Ley Mordaza (Gag Law), Spanish citizens cannot protest against the Congress or hold meetings in public spaces and they would have to ask permission from the authorities whenever they wish to protest publicly. Organizers of unauthorized demonstrations could be fined up to €600,000 (~$636,000) for their protests, with possible fines of €600 (~$636) for disrespecting police officers, and €30,000 (~$32,000) for filming or photographing the events.
The “hologram” protest, which was organized by an umbrella organization of 100 groups named No Somos Delito (We are not crime), invites people to submit video messages that would be transformed into digital projections on the streets of Spanish cities. Over 2,000 people took part in the nearly hourlong demonstrations, according to El Pais newspaper. The idea was partly inspired by the Kate Moss hologram at Alexander McQueen’s 2006 “Widows of Culloden” show in Paris.
One of the organizers’ spokespeople, Carlos Escano, explained the concept for the protest to the El Mundo newspaper:
Our protest with holograms is ironic. With the restrictions we’re suffering on our freedoms of association and peaceful assembly, the last options that will be left to use in the end will be to protest through our holograms.
In the last two years, there have been more than 87,000 demonstrations in Spain and, according to data provided by the Spanish Ministry of the Interior to El Pais, there have been incidents in fewer than 1% of them.
Hologram protest in Madrid against the Gag Law. “As we can’t protest as free citizens, we protest as free holograms.” pic.twitter.com/mjE9j4SBNe
Humans like to think that we're different from other animals, even down to our sexual behaviors. But as we've previously shown on this blog, we still have a lot in common with our furry (and sometimes non-furry) pals, from fellatio to ménage à trois. Well, here's something else you can add to the list: mating seasons. Previous work has shown that signs of human sex and mating behaviors--for example, births, STDs, and condom sales--follow a seasonal pattern that peaks every six months. Here,
After years of stop-starting various endeavors related to this website I have decided to go all in on the New Republican Bible project. I am re-writing the Gospels and other highlights of the New Testament with Jesus as a modern Republican in the vein of Scott Walker or Sam Brownback, hopefully to be completed by Christmas 2015. It will make the perfect gift. God willing, it will be available in print and electronic formats. The foreword will be written by Jesus himself.
Though I am on record as anti-crowdfunding and though it would be entirely within reason to call me a hypocrite, I've set up such a page. My goal isn't to solicit donations but rather to get pre-sale/pre-order numbers high enough, potentially, to interest a publisher. I certainly don't consider self-publishing beneath me but ideally I can get someone interested in this who isn't me. If you think you are a person who would buy such a thing, why not go ahead and do it now?
With any luck – which, of course, is not something that seems to apply to my endeavors in most cases – this will work. It's just ridiculous enough to.
Not sure if that would be an introvert's paradise or an introvert's nightmare...
“Welcome to the remotest island,” a sign at Edinburgh of the Seven Seas on Tristan da Cunha (photograph by Brian Gratwicke/Flickr)
Despite an active volcano, intense winds, and a location 10 days by boat from its nearest neighbor, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas — the most remote human settlement in the world — has endured for nearly two centuries. The community, located on the islands of Tristan da Cunha, is looking to the future in anticipation of its bicentennial in 2016, and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is hosting a Design Ideas Competition.
The open call is “seeking ideas to help the community become self-sustainable and ensure that Edinburgh of the Seven Seas is viable for future generations.” Now before you start drawing up plans for shipping container homes or solar arrays for this far-flung British territory, please take note of the almost absurd extremes that characterize the everyday lives of its roughly 280 inhabitants.
View of Tristan da Cunha, with Edinburgh of the Seven Seas at right (photograph by Brian Gratwicke/Flickr) (click to enlarge)
“Many would-be visitors have sailed to Tristan, but failed to land,” Tristan da Cunha’s official site ominously warns. The archipelago includes four islands, although Edinburgh of the Seven Seas — or “the Settlement,” as the Tristanians call it — is the only permanently inhabited site. Alongside Tristan are the islands of Nightingale, Gough, and the aptly named Inaccessible. Most of Tristan is taken up by the towering slope of a volcano, with the metal-roofed structures of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas clustered in its shadow. Back in 1961, the eruption of that volcano forced the entire population to evacuate; remarkably the majority returned in 1963. Alas, their essential crayfish factory was destroyed. Aside from the community and the volcano, the spare geographic features of Tristan include the Ridge-Where-the-Goat-Jump-Off.
Aerial view of Tristan da Cunha (via NASA) (click to enlarge)
The UK annexed Tristan da Cunha back in 1816, and a military presence was set up whose primary purpose was to keep the French from freeing Napoleon from the relatively nearby Saint Helena (1,500 miles away). Shipwrecks are not uncommon in the area, as even the harbor at Edinburgh of the Seven Seas is so shallow that most ocean vessels can’t fit. At times, shipwreck survivors have made up a large chunk of the community’s population. Houses in the 19th century were mostly built from driftwood, some of it washed up remnants of shipwrecks. In some ways the island’s inhabitants have entered the 21st century, and they buy their goods from the few establishments on Tristan da Cunha with the British Pound, but internet access remains limited and low-bandwidth. The inhabitants of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas have only seven different surnames, so everyone knows everyone and family relations run deep. And for would-be tourists, the island is only accessible by boat (there is no airstrip) for about 60 days of the year, and once you’re there, there’s only one road, and rare are the cars that drive it.
This is all to say that designing for Edinburgh of the Seven Seas presents some incredibly unique challenges, but it’s also an exceptional place. Considering how connected and accessible much of the world is today, it remains a place where people obstinately survive. The RIBA competition calls for an examination of the built environment to consider energy efficiency and a way for the Settlement to be self-sustaining. Currently diesel engines and bottled gas are the town’s main sources of energy. According to the competition brief, “[t]he Island trialled a small wind turbine in the mid-1980s, but this was destroyed after a few days by the high winds, and since then, there has been a general reluctance to re-visit renewable energy technology.” To meet the island’s goal of 30–40% renewable energy by 2020, it will take some sturdier technology.
The main source of food for inhabitants of the island is livestock that graze freely and crops — mainly potatoes grown in an area called “the Patches” — and both need better systems to keep them going year-round. There’s also the issue of the architecture, with the 120 homes (all owned by Tristanians as local law forbids sale to non-residents) facing the end of their structural life cycles, and with a major limitation of available building resources. Above all, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas wants to remain self-sufficient, and bring in experts to advise on how to keep this improbable pocket of life going for another 200 years.
Signs to distant locales in Edinburgh of the Seven Seas (photograph by Brian Gratwicke/Flickr)
Read more about the Tristan da Cunha Design Ideas Competition online at the Royal Institute of British Architects. The deadline to enter the first phase is June 2.
Under the new Citizen Safety Law, which human rights advocates have renamed Ley Mordaza (Gag Law), Spanish citizens cannot protest against the Congress or hold meetings in public spaces and they would have to ask permission from the authorities whenever they wish to protest publicly. Organizers of unauthorized demonstrations could be fined up to €600,000 (~$636,000) for their protests, with possible fines of €600 (~$636) for disrespecting police officers, and €30,000 (~$32,000) for filming or photographing the events.
