Shared posts
04 Apr 16:24
Last night the Mormon Church issued a press release in which they threaten to end their relationship with the Boy Scouts over the end of the ban on openly gay leaders.
Mormons Threaten To Leave Boy Scouts
by Joe Jervis
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is deeply troubled by today’s vote by the Boy Scouts of America National Executive Board. In spite of a request to delay the vote, it was scheduled at a time in July when members of the Church’s governing councils are out of their offices and do not meet. When the leadership of the Church resumes its regular schedule of meetings in August, the century-long association with Scouting will need to be examined. The Church has always welcomed all boys to its Scouting units regardless of sexual orientation. However, the admission of openly gay leaders is inconsistent with the doctrines of the Church and what have traditionally been the values of the Boy Scouts of America. As a global organization with members in 170 countries, the Church has long been evaluating the limitations that fully one-half of its youth face where Scouting is not available. Those worldwide needs combined with this vote by the BSA National Executive Board will be carefully reviewed by the leaders of the Church in the weeks ahead.The Mormon Church is the nation's largest sponsor of the Boy Scouts with over 30,000 LDS chapters comprising about 15% of total membership.
24 Aug 22:11
gifak-net: Video: Blind Chihuahua Tests Out His New Bumper...
Greg McCabe, Adam Victor Brandizzi and 7 others like this
27 Jul 13:01
Coffee and Tonic Water Just May Be Your New Favorite Summer Drink — Smart Coffee for Regular Joes
by Anna Brones
There's only one thing better than iced coffee: iced coffee with bubbles. When it's hot out, who doesn't want a caffeinated, fizzy drink?
What kind of bubbles are we talking about? Tonic water, of course. While tonic and coffee might seem odd together, it's a combination that has risen to popularity in the specialty coffee world, providing a refreshing, caffeinated kick to drinkers in search for something different than just a regular cup of coffee or espresso.
24 Jul 19:39
killedtheinnocentpeople: mishasminions: sizvideos: Video THIS...
THIS. THIS IS EVERYTHING I STAND FOR
I know it’s not b&w but I couldn’t not to reblog
Bunker.jordan, Markku.lempinen and 8 others like this
22 Jul 02:17
sorayachemaly: Women scientists made up 25% of the Pluto fly-by...
Women scientists made up 25% of the Pluto fly-by New Horizon team. Make sure you share this, because erasing women’s achievements in science and history is a tradition. Happens every day.
. http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150712
more of this.
mkvande, Adam Victor Brandizzi and 11 others like this
18 Jul 20:46
Video: Nick Offerman Shows Off His Pizza Farm
Rosalind, Sophianotloren and 8 others like this
18 Jul 20:40
Performance-enhancing drugs are nothing new to sports. When your physical abilities are the difference between victory and defeat, many athletes turn to banned substances to gain a crucial advantage. Now, it seems, the same practice is bleeding into ...
Top 'Counter-Strike' player admits eSports has a doping problem
by Nick Summers
Performance-enhancing drugs are nothing new to sports. When your physical abilities are the difference between victory and defeat, many athletes turn to banned substances to gain a crucial advantage. Now, it seems, the same practice is bleeding into ...
4alexander likes this
16 Jul 15:04
Block users from following or commenting
This has now been released. If you go to your settings, you can choose to protect your shared items. If selected, you must approve all new follow requests, and your shared items will not be available to anyone except your followers.
If you “like” a post, your name may still appear on the post for all users.
Additionally, any existing followers can be removed by going to your followers page.
Sophianotloren, firehose likes this
15 Jul 16:26
Blue Angel Jet Does a Low Flyby and Sends Beach Umbrellas Flying
Fatbobloved these guys growing up
14 Jul 21:41
kramergate: micspam: ghostsnif: sciencevevo: agoodcartoon: G...
Guys who complain about the friendzone often don’t care about their female friends’ personal boundaries, forcing their female friends build more walls up. A good cartoon.
- submitted by Genewhy is he tearing down a wall with an axe
i hate it when your put in the friendzone and made to tear down a wall
Mr. Gorbachev…tear down this friendzone
how you gonna draw some shit that makes you look like Jack Nicholson in The Shining and still feel like you’re the victim
firehose, Tertiarymatt likes this
14 Jul 21:38
Anxious to see the best images of Pluto ever? NASA is set to release high res photos soon, but in the meantime, the space agency has posted a "love note back to Earth" with a low-res Instagram image. That marks the first time the agency has every giv...
The Big Picture: NASA previews best Pluto image yet
by Steve Dent
Anxious to see the best images of Pluto ever? NASA is set to release high res photos soon, but in the meantime, the space agency has posted a "love note back to Earth" with a low-res Instagram image. That marks the first time the agency has every giv...
Tertiarymatt, Cooper Griggs likes this
14 Jul 21:36
Ancient Atari 2600 Arcade Port Pops Up, And It's So Bad
by Mike Fahey
Santa Clara’s Digital Game Museum came across a near-complete version of the cancelled Atari 2600 version of arcade classic Xevious. Behold the primitive glory of what passed for a console port in the early ‘80s.
For those of you that haven’t been alive and gaming for as long as I have, Xevious was a scrolling arcade shooter released in 1982 by Namco. With sharp graphics and relatively frenetic action, it was one of my go-to games whenever I’d steal quarters from my grandmother’s purse and hit up the local arcade.
Here’s a look at the arcade version, courtesy of Old Classic Retro Gaming.
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As it did with many popular arcade titles, Atari had planned ports of Xevious for both the Atari 2600 and 5200. Both were cancelled in 1984. In progress versions of the 2600 version have been floating around since, but have lacked a title screen, final sprites, enemy waves, and music.
Then this showed up at the Digital Game Museum as part of a donation of Atari memorabilia.
It’s got everything earlier prototypes were missing. Titles, sound—everything. It’s an incredibly impressive find, even if the game itself looks pretty ridiculous by today’s standards.
“This version of Xevious is one of the most faithful arcade ports I’ve ever played on the Atari 2600,” said Dave Beaudoin, Digital Game Museum board member via official press release. ”The speed and responsiveness combined with the graphics and audio are jaw dropping. It’s amazing they were able to get this kind of performance out of the 2600.”
Sure it’s silly now, but back in the day I would have killed for a chance to play this. Digital Game Museum has teamed up with video game and pinball convention California Extreme to insure visitors to the show this weekend won’t have to kill a single person. Visitors will be able to play the newly-discovered classic on an Atari 2600 system, with a full arcade version standing by for comparison’s sake.
Oh yeah, that’s the stuff right there.
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14 Jul 20:32
Mondays
by Kristian
Ahem, this comic comes with huge apologies to Jim Davis…
Sophianotloren, bernot and 3 others like this
13 Jul 14:54
New comic!
Today's News:
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - The Village and the Tower
by admin@smbc-comics.com
Hovertext: This comic is an allegory for, of course, the 1896 presidential elections.
New comic!
Today's News:
13 Jul 14:35
Nintendo President Satoru Iwata Dies At 55
by Luke Plunkett
Nintendo has just issued a short statement announcing that president Satoru Iwata has passed away at the age of 55.
The statement reads:
Nintendo Co., Ltd. deeply regrets to announce that President Satoru Iwata passed away on July 11, 2015 due to a bile duct growth.
Iwata was forced to skip last year’s E3 due to his poor health, and shortly afterwards underwent surgery to remove the bile duct growth. A few months later, in the wake of concerns over his health, he said via Twitter “I’m progressing well”.
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A talented programmer, Iwata first joined Nintendo’s HAL Laboratory in the 1980s, where he worked on games like Balloon Fight and EarthBound. He became a Director of the company in 2000, and in 2002 was appointed as only the fourth President of Nintendo when he succeeded Hiroshi Yamauchi.
In his time as President, Iwata oversaw some of the strongest (Wii, DS) and weakest (GameCube, Wii U) periods in Nintendo’s history as a video game company. In recent times, he developed almost cult status as the host of the Nintendo Direct programs.
An immensely popular figure both within the industry and with Nintendo fans, he will be sorely missed. Rest in Peace, Mr. Iwata.
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11 Jul 05:11
Solution to synthetic marijuana killing people might be to legalize actual pot which does not
by Xeni Jardin
Philip Montgomery for The New York Times
Just a thought: if synthetic, lab-brewed subsitutes for marijuana turning victims into vegetables and sending emergency responders into a panic, as this horrifying New York Times feature on ‘Spike’ indicates, guys, maybe we could think about just legalizing actual marijuana, which does not kill people or turn them into zombies.
You pretty much *cannot overdose* (not to the point where it kills you or causes you to go bonkers forever) with Cannabis sativa.
You can definitely OD on fake cannabis sativa.
People sometimes die after taking synthetic pot. But not on real pot.
Steve Featherstone in the NYT:
Syracuse, where I’ve lived almost my entire life, has struggled with synthetic drugs before. William Harper, a local businessman and two-time Republican candidate for City Council, moonlighted as the kingpin of bath salts in New York for two years before the Drug Enforcement Administration took him down in 2011. Was there a spike kingpin out there now, flooding the street with a bad batch? Perhaps, but similar outbreaks occurred in several states along the Gulf of Mexico in April, and the American Association of Poison Control Centers reports that between January and June, the nationwide number of synthetic marijuana ‘‘exposures’’ — that is, reported contact with the substance, which usually means an adverse reaction — had already surpassed totals for 2013 and 2014, and that 15 people died from such exposure. Maybe there was a larger cause.
Every state has banned synthetic cannabinoids, the chemicals in spike that impart the high. Although the active ingredients primarily come from China, where commercial labs manufacture them to order like any other chemical, spike itself is produced domestically. Traffickers spray the chemicals on dried plant material and seal the results in foil pouches; these are then sold on the Internet or distributed to stores across the country, which sell them sometimes under the counter, as in Syracuse, or sometimes right by the cash register, depending on local laws. Unlike marijuana, cocaine and other naturally occurring drugs, synthetic cannabinoids can be tweaked on a molecular level to create novel, and arguably legal, drugs.
Since 2008, when authorities first noted the presence of synthetic cannabinoids in ‘‘legal marijuana’’ products, periodic surges in overdoses have often coincided with new releases, and emergency doctors have had to learn on the fly how to treat them. This latest surge is notable for the severity of symptoms: seizures, extreme swings in heart rate and blood pressure, kidney and respiratory failure, hallucinations. Many patients require such enormous doses of sedatives that they stop breathing and require intubation, and yet they still continue to struggle violently. Eric Kehoe, a shift commander at the Rural Metro ambulance company that employs Darbee and Drake, said bath-salts overdoses are easier to deal with. ‘‘You might find them running naked down the middle of the street,’’ he said, but ‘‘you could talk them down. These people here — there’s no point. You can’t even reason with them. They’re just mute. They have this look about them that’s just like a zombie.’’
Spike Nation [Steve Featherstone/NYT]
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