firehose

Dedication. Duval.

If there's one thing I've learned from Jacksonville Jaguars fans on the internet, it's that Jacksonville Jaguars fans on the internet get dumped on a lot, but they keep on fighting. Mainly by tweeting DUUUUUUUVAAAAAAAALLLLLL and #DTWD.

That spirit -- fighting on, even in the face of countless reasons to stop doing whatever unnecessary task you're doing -- is perfectly embodied by LaRoy Reynolds, whose helmet came off on a punt return, but still tracked down Griff Whelan to assist on a tackle:

In a meaningless game in which the 4-11 Jaguars are getting pasted, dude risked life and limb to make a hit. I think this is actually a penalty in college -- you just gotta take yourself out of the play.But in the NFL it's legal, and we're lucky we did not see this hit his head on something because concussions are so very very very very very scary.

Keyshawn Johnson is a good friend.

This was nice of Keyshawn Johnson.

A worse teammate would have let Mike Ditka snooze away while trying to engage in conversation.

KEYSHAWN: "So, big game for the Bears today, huh?"

DITKA: [is asleep]

KEYSHAWN: "Really? I disagree."

DITKA: [is asleep]

By the way, Mike, we all get sleepy at inopportune times. It happens. Here's a suggestion.

What was he dreaming about?

(via Deadspin)

climateadaptation:

Research vessel trapped in Antarctic ice rescued by Chinese icebreaker. Numbers: trapped 4 days; 6-9 feet of ice; 74 scientists, researchers, tourists, and crew; 1,700 miles south of Australia; 2 failed rescue attempts (Australia, Russia); 1 blizzard; dozens of penguins. 

Via NBC and AFP.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lara Jo Regan, the Los Angeles based photographer behind early internet sensation “Mr. Winkle“, has now turned to capturing the infectious delight and excitement of dogs looking out car of windows, some with with their fur (and tongues) blowing in the wind. This adorable photo series is simply titled “Dogs in Cars“.

I usually try to come up with ideas that are somewhat odd and complex to insure no one else is doing the same thing. But as an owner of three dogs living in the Los Angeles car culture, the idea was just staring me in the face. Most dogs become downright delirious over a car ride, and I wanted to capture this amazing primal energy in photographs beyond what I’d seen before”

Thirteen of the photos are featured in their Official Dogs in Cars Calendar 2014, with more photos being released as part of an upcoming book series.

photos by Lara Jo Regan

via Telegraph UK, My Modern Met

The holidays are a quiet time for food politics so I thought I catch up on some pending items, starting with GMOs.

• The Grocery Manufacturer’s Association (GMA) wants the FDA to approve a “natural’ label for GMOs.  No, the GMA is not kidding.
• Senator Dianne Feinstein (Dem-CA) wants President Obama to mandate GMO labeling.  She says he can use his administrative authority to do this.
• A bunch of Senators signed on to a bill to label GMOs.
• The Center for Food Safety says half of all states are working on GMO labeling initiatives.
• The GMA must be worried.  It is leading a coalition to do voluntary GMO labeling.
• More than a decade ago, the FDA issued draft guidance for voluntary GMO labeling, but never did anything with it.  Rumors are that the agency will be issuing (reissuing?) such guidance soon.
• In the meantime, the Union of Concerned Scientists just released a report on the alarming rise of herbicide-resistant “superweeds” used to douse GMO crops.  Oops.

No, tired as you may be of them, GMO issues are not going to disappear in 2014.

My prediction: labeling will come, maybe sooner rather than later, although it’s hard to say in what form.

New Zealand's Antarctic Heritage Trust has announced an exciting find: 22 never-before-seen cellulose nitrate negatives discovered inside Captain Robert Falcon Scott's last expedition base at Cape Evans on Ross Island in Antarctica.

Read more...

Saru Get You: Million Monkeys aka Ape Escape: Million Monkeys

(Sony - PS2 - 2006)

Unfortunately we never got this final PS2 Ape Escape game in the West; probably because it came out too soon after Ape Escape 3.

This one differs a little from the main games in that you’re completing assigned missions instead of just wandering through big worlds catching monkeys.

title - Gunple: Gunman’s Proof (Lenar - Super Famicom - 1997)

ancientart:

The Ladby ship, Viking Age.

Dates from the 9th century, and is the only ship burial discovered in Denmark. The ship owner was buried with 11 horses and at least 4 dogs -some of their remaining bones are visible in the second photo.

Courtesy & currently located at the Viking Museum at Ladby, Denmark. Photos taken by mandias.

​

Analyst Horace Dediu can always be relied on for incisive charts. He tweeted one earlier today of the percentage of people who use the internet in various countries—our own version is above—and commented, “Understanding the future is only a question of timing.”

We write frequently about the huge number of people coming online for the first time, almost entirely on mobile phones. It’s the subject of our “Mobile Web” obsession and “Next Billion” events. But sometimes all it takes is a simple chart to put things in perspective. To understand the future of the internet, it’s important to know where—and when—to look.

Here’s the worldwide perspective:

​

Data: International Telecommunication Union

mashsux:

don’t mess with the dutch

strugglingtobeheard:

thehappysorceress:

haniemohd:

Some pretty artses I did for a recent comic convention! You may have seen this (in form of prints) from a couple of my Tumblr posts, so here are ALLLL of them. 

I had initially wanted to draw several of the X-Men in different seasons (I have Kitty Pryde slotted for Spring, and Jean Grey for Summer), and got stumped for a season that would best represent Ororo. When in doubt - ask the Internet - I posed the question to my Facebook fanpage followers. The answers were? Draw her in ALL the seasons XD

So here she is, Storm for all Seasons. I wanted to draw her for ages in an appropriately awesome setting because she is one awesome character - and I ended up splurging on four illustrations of her at once lol

I tried to insert some references of the weather in each seasons (rain for Spring, a summer thunderstorm in the Summer piece, wind for autumn etc).. nothing very out there but hopefully it’ll add something to the overall piece!

Thanks for viewing :) And should anyone want to own a piece (or four) - the prints are available at the following links:

http://etsy.me/1hAqq3i (A6 prints, full set)

http://etsy.me/1jCHavb (A4 prints, full set)

http://etsy.me/1cjDJUI (A4 prints, singles)

My goodness, Hanie - they are even more beautiful than the smaller pictures led me to believe!!

omg i thought they were tarot cards but there is no writing on them. these are gorgeous!

harkaway:

AAAARG!!!!

I love the sentiment and the poetry of this. I do. I get that it’s important.

But (with apologies to Theremina, who is awesome) it drives me CRAZY. Why?

Because NO, NO, NO, you are not a ghost driving a machine. You are not a tiny green homunculus sitting at the controls of a steampunk automaton. You are not Spock trapped in a body that wants to be Kirk. You are not dual, you are not refined intellect riding gross matter like an unruly mustang. You are not Ariel carried by Caliban.

You are you. Your body is you. Your cognition exists in the flesh. It is not separate, not spun glass in the hands of a chimp. Your body creates your mind. Your gut, the ropy intestinal tract that digests your food, has 100,000,000 neurons in it. There are quite a lot of animals with fewer than that. Your whole physical shape, your food and drink, exercise, amount of sunshine, of sex, of affection, sitting position and amount of sleep, affects not only your mood but your supposedly pure cognitive choices. Look down and to the left and name a string of random number between zero and ten million. Now do the same looking up and to the right. The second batch will be higher. And your body’s genes play a role in your thinking, too - identical twins separated at birth and raised separately are often seen to develop, if not similar politics, similar moods of political opinion.

The need to separate the body from the mind comes from an old slander that physical matter is dross, simply too crude to support the fineness that is thought. Physical matter, forever dancing around energy, shifting from one configuration to another, even now withholding secrets from our most sophisticated inquisitors, is not crude. It is brilliant, and yes, you are made of stardust and stars are made of you, so why - oh, why - would you try to distance yourself from the beauty of it and reach for comfort in the form of some old Cartesian slur derived from a tacit heteropatriarchal fear of physical desire?

Consider what you are: the most recent iteration of your genetic code, itself the product of strange chemistry in bubbling primordial pools, in turn resting upon vast releases of energy into stunning cold according to a template almost bizarrely suited to the emergence of conscious life - which may, in turn, be a vital component of its function. Caught midway between the appalling vastness of the Newton-Einstein universe and the implausible mechanics of the tiny, you exist in both; composed largely of water, whose relationship with the quantum world is only just beginning to reveal itself, you are gorgeously liminal, fragile, biological and complex.

And, that, that is why you’re incredible.

‘This carved court jester’s head probably acted as an apothecary sign. The gold coloured ball is supposed to represent a pill or a tablet that can be placed in the jester’s open mouth (and which will come out at the base of the neck). The head is 560 mm in height and would have been eye catching for potential customers walking past, including those who could not read, who would have recognised it as a sign of an apothecary’s shop.’

Joel Evans submitted:

An Angela armor redraw. I wanted to make a redraw when I saw the weird Angela design by Joe Quesada when they introduced Angela to the Marvel Universe.

I started by giving her a decent breastplate, in place of the boobplate bikini top. I removed the openings in the armor on the upper body, and reinforced the area near her neck. 

The segmented armor on the legs seemed to be not only uncomfortable, but inflexible in the wrong places, ironically. When you have segmented armor, like on a segmentata armor, the segments are there for comfortable movement, but the large segments on the knees and especially the feet don’t seem like they would be flexible enough, the segments too large and chunky for comfortable movement, while the segments on the shins seem like they shouldn’t even be there. Having the greaves segmented there just takes away strength where there would be no logical reason to segment them in the first place. What if she needs to kick someone and those segments dig into her shin?

I added my own little touch of extra leg armor on her strong-side leg. Or what I assumed to be her strong side, judging from how the asymmetrical design was on the armor initially, the orientation of her sword on her belt, and the hand she predominantly uses to hold swords in most art I’ve seen so far. It adds a little uniqueness to the design, and the flexible nature of the golden scales shouldn’t impede movement too much.

Let me know what you think, I want to make some more redraws, but after looking at this site and similar sites, I think I have my work cut out for me.

I think you should definitely keep at it! This is really great, and you clearly know a lot about armor. That’s a good combination if I’ve ever heard of one.

…Oh, hey. Another throwback. I swear it was just submitted here as well as Escher Girls… I’m not doing this on purpose.

-Staci

1890s Victorian Sea Turtle Pendant with Compass (in the online shop)

Since sea turtles are famed for their navigational abilities, it was particularly clever to hide a compass under the shell.

anarcho-queer:

NYC Anarchist Imprisoned Without Charge Makes Freedom Bid

An anarchist jailed since May on civil contempt for refusing to answer grand jury questions has asked a federal judge to free him, arguing that he has proved he will not cooperate.

Lawyers for Gerald Koch asked U.S. District Judge John F. Keenan in a motion filed Friday to release the 24-year-old college philosophy student from New York. Koch’s silence shows he has no intention of testifying in the future, the motion said. Koch’s lawyers said they believe the grand jury is investigating a 2008 bombing in Times Square, which targeted an armed forces recruiting center and caused no injuries. Koch is not a target of the investigation.

“Jerry’s spending Christmas in jail," said one of his lawyers, Moira Meltzer-Cohen. "He just has no value" to the bombing investigation. … "Hopefully the judge will acknowledge that. I see no reason he would doubt it. It seems abundantly clear, but the judge has virtually unreviewable discretion.”

Koch can be held on civil contempt for 18 months. But confinement is supposed to coerce testimony, not serve as punishment. His supporters have pointed to a similar case in Seattle, where two activists were freed after five months when a judge determined that they would never speak to a grand jury that was believed to be investigating property damage during a May Day demonstration.

Earlier this month, a federal appeals court upheld a civil contempt finding against Koch, ruling that the government “has made a convincing showing of its need to ask the questions at issue.” Meltzer-Cohen said Friday’s motion was the next step in lifting the contempt finding.

Koch has denied having “meaningful knowledge” of the crime. But he has refused to testify, claiming that grand juries such as the one in Manhattan are used to silence and surveil activist communities.

Many activists have rallied around Koch, with hundreds demonstrating outside the court during his contempt hearing.

In a declaration accompanying Friday’s motion, Koch wrote, “I can assert without any hesitation that there is nothing that will convince me to testify before this or any grand jury.”

“With each passing day, my sorrow at confinement deepens, but so does my conviction that I am doing the right thing.”

—————-

Although the Bill of Rights grant every American citizen the right to a fair trial and the right to remain silent, a Grand Jury Trial is specifically designed to erode a targets (in this case; Anarchists) civil rights in order to coerce them to comply.

A Grand Jury Trail differs from a normal trial because not only is it immensely secretive (sometimes victims don’t know why they are being prosecuted and aren’t given a charge), but it can legally suspend certain rights guaranteed by the Constitution. For example, if a Grand Jury grants a person immunity, their 5th amendment right to remain silent is non-existent. Meaning, if you refuse to speak, you will be imprisoned against your will.

In other words, a victim of the Grand Jury MUST speak at trial or face imprisonment. If the person granted immunity genuinely does not have any knowledge of the crime committed, their options are to either lie to avoid imprisonment, or stay silent and face jail time.

In a similar case in the Pacific NorthWest, Anarchists were targeted by the state for causing property damage during a May Day protests. But a Freedom of Information request confirmed that the secret Grand Jury trail begun on March 2nd.

That’s right, the trial begun two months before the crime was committed. If you’re not following, that is because the time of events doesn’t make any sense. How can a trial begin before the crime is committed? This obviously proves that the entire trial is just a political witch hunt.

But that didn’t stop the court from imprisoning three anarchists for refusing to speak. Fortunately, all the victims were eventually released.

Let’s hope the same happens for Gerald, to insure this, please spread the news by reblogging!