firehose

Stocking contents are a bit untraditional in my house.

Best Christmas ever!

hobbular:

Such Christmas. So sweater. Very beer.

Wow.

Technical info here. Merry Christmas, everyone :)

fawun:

Go Shorty, it’s Your Birthday

polterghast:

YO ANIME JESUS HAPPY BIRTHDAY

this comic is too real, we keep cracking up

MOM

le Bat

Ryan "Icculus" Gordon has spent some of his Christmas coming up with a basic, open-source Linux version of 1Password. The 1Password program is a popular desktop and mobile app for generating strong, random passwords and serving as a secure wallet for storing the passwords...

	Courtney shared this story from The ToastThe Toast:
	OH STEELY DAN AGAIN

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(photo credit via)

Read more Merry Christmas From Dad Magazine at The Toast.

thefrogman:

I’m not saying I’m the greatest gift wrapper of all time, but I am certainly one of the best. 

mother-superior-jumped-the-gun:

the 3 last remaining beatles

tastefullyoffensive:

Nailed it. [x]

rebbylau:

good morning! 5,80 Meter by Nicolas Deveaux

Adorable Baby Cuddles Up with French Bulldog Puppies via Cindy Clark

Raif Badawi, a blogger in Saudi Arabia who has been imprisoned for violating the nation's anti-cybercrime law, was given the death penalty for apostasy by a higher court Wednesday.

How we heard it

Consumerist Holiday display

Image Comics has partnered with Dropbox to allow customers to download DRM-free titles purchased on the publisher’s website to the cloud-storage service. That means readers with Dropbox accounts will be able to easily view their Image libraries across computers and mobile devices. “Now, when viewing your comics collection on the Image Website, you’ll see a [...]

WHEN FIONN MULHOLLAND prepared to surprise his family by coming home from Perth, he probably didn’t bank on being called every name under the sun.
As Fionn surprises the individual members of his family, he is called various names, including a “little shit”.

It all makes for a very sweet video that is thoroughly, unmistakably Irish.

The video contains some bad language.

fierce-imaginings:

So last week me and my friend were trying out a faceswap app

And for some reason it wouldn’t recognise that there were 2 faces in the picture

So we tried it from a different angle and

I was really confused and kind of offended at what it’d done to my face

BUT THEN

ecnamor-lacimehc-ym:

gallifrey-feels:

sociopathic-italian-grandmas:

millshouse:

meganiun:

happyvegetable:

kennilworthy-thisp:

derinthemadscientist:

lumoslouis:

soloontherocks:

amour-vengeance:

later-homenuggets:

my friend left her window open in her bedroom and came back to find this

look at his self-satisfied little face, the cheeky shit

motherfucking australia

if there was a post to describe australia, this is it

wait. 

you mean to tell me this isn’t even a pet bird?

that in australia, you have wild birds that just fly from house to house with the express purpose of fucking shit up?

fucking HELL australia, what is wrong with you?

wake up australia 

That’s what birds do

They fly around and fuck shit up

Do you have some kind of mysterious nice birds in your weird foreign country

Do birds in America and England fly into your house and make the bed and tidy up the living room a little bit

It’s cold here, so they just bounce off the windows and lie there and twitch spasmodically while you look for the shovel.

Basically hurling themselves at windows is the worst thing birds do

yeah man a kookaburra literally flew into a classroom at my high school and just sat his smug ass down on top of the desk for a good 20 minutes

why has nobody mentioned the fact that in australia there are 3-4 months a year where everybody just accepts that they’re going to get attacked by magpies. It is literally called “swooping season” and these birds will fly down to peck your fucking face, and people get their eyes ripped out and shit, it’s fucking brutal.

My teacher had to go to hospital and have surgery because of swooping season. It was in the parking lot of school and all the kids would do a mad dash towards the car as the magpies tried to kill us.

no but when you’re 12 years old and riding your bike like mad on the way home from school with an icecream bucket on your head with like branches and shit sticking out if it to scare them off and none of this is considered strange

what the actual fuck australia 

Last week, the city of Phoenix made a startling announcement. The Arizona capital had previously identified 222 chronically homeless veterans living in the city, more than half of them veterans of the Vietnam War. These were men and women who'd been living on the streets for more than a year, or who'd been repeatedly homeless across even longer stretches of time. On average, they'd been without housing for a total of eight years. And many of them were living with multiple, compounding problems: unemployment, substance abuse, mental and physical illness.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said last week that every last one of them now had a roof overhead. The city has effectively ended chronic veteran homelessness, according to the mayor, a lofty-sounding policy goal that no other U.S. city has achieved.

Phoenix did this – prioritizing housing first, then wrapping other services around it – with $1.8 million in local general funds, and another $6.5 million in federal grants. As of Veteran's Day last month, there were still 56 veterans on Phoenix streets. But the city council unanimously approved an additional $100,000 to place each one in housing by Christmas, meeting a year-end goal that had attracted the attention of other cities and President Barack Obama.

On the eve of Christmas, even the White House was touting the accomplishment as evidence that the same can be done nationwide by 2015. And several other cities, including Salt Lake City and Philadelphia, have already been chasing the same goal.

Veterans as a group make up about 10 percent of the total homeless population in the U.S. (or about 58,000 out of 610,000 according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development's census this year). But they often benefit from greater financial resources and political urgency than exists to address homelessness more broadly (for instance, in the form of support from the Department of Veterans Affairs).

Stanton, however, is arguing that the resolve and model Phoenix has demonstrated – combining local and federal funds, non-profit, government and business groups – should now be thrown at the challenge of homelessness more generally. As he put it earlier this week on The Rachel Maddow Show:

The strategies that we're using to end chronic homelessness among veterans are the exact same strategies that we’re going to use to end chronic homelessness among the broader population. This model – doing right by our veterans – is exactly how we’re going to do right by the larger population.

Top image of a homeless woman in New York: Carlo Allegri/Reuters

Los Angeles cops have aggressively targeted jaywalkers in recent weeks — a crackdown that many LA residents see as an affront to pedestrian culture, The New York Times reports.

Cops say they're trying to maintain order amid an influx of pedestrians in downtown LA, but city residents who like to walk say the policy is unbelievably strict.

One such resident, Adam Bialik, says he stepped off a curb soon after the crossing signal started its "Don't Walk" countdown. A cop greeted him on the other side with a $197 ticket. Tickets can reportedly soar to $250, though. More from The Times:

It is not quite “Dragnet,” but the Police Department in recent weeks has issued dozens of tickets to workers, shoppers and tourists for illegally crossing the street in downtown Los Angeles. And the crackdown is raising questions about whether the authorities are taking sides with the long-dominant automobile here at the very time when a pedestrian culture is taking off, fueled by the burst of new offices, condominiums, hotels and restaurants rising in downtown Los Angeles.

Visitors from East Coast cities like New York might find the LAPD's crackdown to be a particularly rude awakening.

Jaywalking is a way of life in the Big Apple. Even outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg has admitted that the city's cops aren't likely to hand out tickets for jaywalking and "the public won’t stand for it” anyway, Politicker reported.

SEE ALSO: The 13 Most Commonly Broken Laws

Join the conversation about this story »

sophygurl:

10 Things Food Banks Need But Won’t Ask For

Some items are in high demand at the food bank and you may not realize it. Because they aren’t essentials, the staff doesn’t publicly ask for them. A survey asked volunteers what items people would be most appreciative of and we’ve listed the top 10 below. If you’re looking for an easy way to help out, pick some of these up while shopping and drop them off at one of our area food banks.

1. Spices.

Think about it. People who rely on the food bank eat a lot of canned food, rice, oatmeal, white bread, etc. They love spices. Seasoned salt, cayenne pepper, chili powder, cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, oregano, basil and so on.

2. Feminine Products.

Can you imagine being worried about affording these? Pads, tampons, panty liners, etc. Recommended: Buy in bulk at Costco for donating.

3. Chocolate.

People don’t need it, but think about being in their shoes and how nice it would be to be given a chocolate bar or brownie mix along with your essentials.

4. Toiletries.

Grocery stores are great about donating surplus or unsold food, but they have no reason to donate toilet paper, tooth paste, soap, deodorant, shampoo, etc. Food stamps often don’t cover these.

5. Canned meats and jerky.

This isn’t true of all food banks, but some struggle to give users enough protein.

6. Crackers and tortillas.

They don’t spoil and everybody likes them.

7. Baby toiletries.

Diapers, baby wipes, baby formula, baby shampoo, baby soap, baby food, bottles, etc.

8. Soup packets.

Sometimes you look at rice, beans, instant potatoes, and cans of vegetable and think, “What do I make with this?” Hearty soup is a complete meal.

9. Socks.

From a former homeless person: “Socks mean the world to you. They keep you warm, make you feel like you have something new, and just comfort you.”

10. Canned fruit other than pineapple.

Food banks get a lot of pineapple donated. Their clients love it when other kinds of fruit are available.

[SOURCE]

And remember! Food banks love cash donations because it allows them to buy whatever they need!

As a sometimes food pantry user myself and with friends who rely on them to varying degrees - I want to specifically stress some of these:

 - non-food items like tp and feminine products and baby needs are SO incredibly important because 1) they are rarely donated, 2) people who have food stamps can often afford their food staples but might still need help with toiletries and cleaning items, and 3) folks who are homeless especially need that kinda stuff!

 - treats! Like, yes of course, if I am in need I am appreciative of canned goods and rice and pasta and stuff. That’s great for putting together healthy meals. But everyone needs a treat once in awhile - so when there is candy or chips or a nice expensive brand of organic something or other available at the pantry - it is just so incredibly exciting.

It can be a humiliating experience to visit a pantry, and it can make you feel very much less than. So to get a treat of some sort just really really makes a difference. And believe me - there are enough loaves of bread, cans of fruit, and dried beans to go around at these places. You won’t be starving someone by donating some microwave popcorn or chocolate chips now and again. I promise!