firehose

“The problem with political correctness is it teaches you to not say racist shit rather than not be racist. You can still have racism in your heart (and you probably do) but you “know” to keep it to yourself out of fear of repercussions rather than fear of being a bad person.”

- Jocelyn (theuppitynegras.tumblr.com)

This: just this.

So far the specialized skill for recognizing facial features holistically has been assumed to be a quality that only humans and possibly primates possess.

Pouty Holidays, everyone.

AFP

Pussy Riot pair criticise Putin after release Irish Times Maria Alyokhina, a member of Russian punk band Pussy Riot, speaks to the media yesterday after her release from a penal colony in Nizhny Novgorod. Photographs: Reuters. Topics: News · World · Asia-Pacific · Alexei Navalny · Maria Alyokhina; More Topics. Two Pussy Riot Members Are Freed From PrisonWall Street Journal Still defiant, members of Russia's Pussy Riot band go freeLos Angeles Times Pussy Riot: symbol of the new anti-Putin oppositionAFP BBC News -Boston.com -Irish Examiner all 777 news articles »

The penultimate episode of Treme’ is a real circle-of-life special, beginning with Davis, at the mike in the studios of WWOZ, confusing some visiting musicians by ruminating on the finality of death and the futility of existence, and ending with Big Chief Albert on his death bed. In the opening scene, Albert zones out while a priest is blessing the house; he spends most of the rest of the episode flat on his back and strung out on morphine, though he does snap to attention long enough to announce, with suitable gravity and authority, that he will not be able to make the walk this year, and to tell his son Rob to assume the crown and lead his people uptown. It’s like FDR declaring that he will not live to see the end of World War II, and asking Harry Truman to please try not to fuck up the ...

chipsprites:

If Pokémon were real I’d probably be too lazy to catch or battle them I’d just sit at home all day using Charmander to make toast

sultana-bran:

sometimes i hate the internet. this is not one of those times.

National Post

Like it or not, the Tories will have to deal with prostitution laws over the next year National Post OTTAWA — Call it the world's oldest legislative headache. A Conservative government that hoped to restore its fortunes in 2014 by talking about pipelines, international trade and victims of crime now will have to deal with the world's oldest profession. Canada's Supreme Court strikes down curbs on prostitutionZee News all 689 news articles »

submitted by pdxsean [link] [5 comments]

Portland made it to the top of “America’s 10 Best Cities for 2013” list – a “meta-ranking” of real estate blog Movoto, based on other rankings such as America’s nerdiest cities, best cities for movie lovers and best cities for meat lovers. The City of Roses leads a list that also includes, in order, Atlanta, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Raleigh, San Diego, Denver, Miami and Las Vegas.

On Sunday night, the Philadelphia Eagles will honor one of their own, a former cheerleader who has served two tours in Afghanistan as an Army intelligence officer. Among her more notable achievements, Washburn helped deliver a baby in a snowstorm. She indicated that her awards included the Bronze Star Medal, an Army Commendation Medal, a Combat Action Badge, an Airborne Badge and an Air Assault Badge. Washburn has approximately one year left on her obligation to the Army, but indicated she may extend her service to address other issues such as gender equality.

spunkellie:

IT’S A MINI HOBBIT HOLE
WITH A BONSAI TREE

Taking an anti-inflammatory drug such as aspirin may cure uncontrollable bouts of anger after scientists discovered that fits of extreme temper may be the result of an inflammation in the body.

Jah-Wren Ryel writes "Looks like the copyright cartel have raided the public domain yet again — the US DoD has signed an exclusive contract with T3 Media to digitize their media archive in exchange for T3 having complete licensing control for 10 years. Considering that all output from the US government is, by law, ineligible for copyright, this deal seems borderline illegal at best. To make matters worse, it appears that there is no provision to make the digitized content freely accessible after the 10 years are up — which means we risk having all that content disappear into T3."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We are excited to see what kind of interstellar weirdness comes out of Space Dandy, the new animated series directed by Cowboy Bebop director Shinichirō Watanabe that is coming to Adult Swim. But in the new English-dubbed trailer, we finally get to hear Dandy speak—and it's largely about his love for boobs.

Read more...

Erotica featuring Sasquatch, minotaurs, aliens, and boar gods may not fit everyone's tastes, but some authors have made a killing selling monster sex ebooks. But some ebook retailers, notably Amazon, have been cracking down on cryptozoological smut, making it harder for writers to sell their books to readers who are hot for Bigfoot.

Read more...

PICK A FAVORITE SUPERHERO, CAM.

Cam Newton's all about Superman. We know this -- we've seen the celebration and the cleats and stuff. So it came as a surprise a couple weeks ago when Newton took the field in Batman cleats, shattering our understanding of his favorite superhero and our entire worlds, really. Well, now SuperCam is back to replace BatCam, and he's got socks, too:

#SuperCam pic.twitter.com/F7MOchOxqT

— Carolina Panthers (@Panthers) December 22, 2013

We're glad to have the familiar Cam back, but don't think we forgot about your flip-flopping, Cam. But hey, if you do feel like shoe-honoring another superhero sometime, may we suggest Hulk feet?

Poor Touchdown Tom.

Tom Brady has a really great life. He's won three Super Bowls. He's unmistakably one of the best quarterbacks of all time. He has a wife, which means he has found love, and that is nice regardless of whether said wife is incredibly famous for being very attractive. And today, his Patriots dominated the Ravens in a 41-7 win.

So how come he can't find anybody to give him a high-five?

Previously on Tom Brady Fails To Get People To Give Him High-Fives: this and this (although he eventually gets one in the second).

Poor guy. All the Super Bowl rings in the world couldn't buy him the one thing he truly wanted: friendship.

let’s rock

december 2013

There are better ways to express your frustration with a loss than saying something stupid on Twitter.

The weekend in social media started with a public relations hack saying something awful and racist ahead of her trip to Africa. It's ending on a similar note of poorly advised tweeting, courtesy of Washington State Representative Joe Fitzgibbon, an unabashed Seahawks fan who won't be welcome in Arizona anytime soon.

The Seahawks were upset Sunday afternoon by the surprisingly tough Arizona Cardinals. And it happened in Seattle, where the notorious 12th man has made an unwelcoming venue for visiting teams.

Seattle's loss didn't sit well with Fitzgibbon, who represents the 34th district which includes West Seattle. He took to Twitter after the game:

That tweet was deleted shortly after posting it, for obvious reasons. It was up long enough for two people to favorite it though.

There are better ways to pander than writing off an entire climatological region as racist.

Remember kids, PR flacks and public officials, don't tweet angry.

(h/t Chris Daniels from KING TV)

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Ron Wyden: NSA review panel offers 'substantial, meaningful reforms':

The biggest congressional critic of the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of US data hailed a White House review panel’s recommendations as a major victory for the privacy movement on Wednesday.

From the article by Spencer Ackerman, at The Guardian.

m1k3y:

In reality, once helmet, gloves and an oxygen-supplying backpack were added, it was a wearable spacecraft. Cocooned within 21 layers of synthetics, neoprene rubber and metalized polyester films, Armstrong was protected from the airless Moon’s extremes of heat and cold (plus 240 Fahrenheit degrees in sunlight to minus 280 in shadow), deadly solar ultraviolet radiation and even the potential hazard of micrometeorites hurtling through the void at 10 miles per second.

The Apollo suits were blends of cutting-edge technology and Old World craftsmanship. Each suit was hand-built by seamstresses who had to be extraordinarily precise; a stitching error as small as 1/32 inch could mean the difference between a space-worthy suit and a reject. While most of the suit’s materials existed long before the Moon program, one was invented specifically for the job. After a spacecraft fire killed three Apollo astronauts during a ground test in 1967, NASA dictated the suits had to withstand temperatures of over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The solution was a state-of-the-art fabric called Beta cloth, made of Teflon-coated glass microfibers, used for the suit’s outermost layer.

The Sagas of Icelanders are enduring stories from Viking-Age Iceland filled with love and romance, battles and feuds, tragedy and comedy. Yet these tales are little read today, even by lovers of literature. The culture and history of the people depicted in the Sagas are often unfamiliar to the modern reader, though the audience for whom the tales were intended would have had an intimate understanding of the material. This text introduces the modern reader to the daily lives and material culture of the Vikings. Topics covered include religion, housing, social customs, the settlement of disputes, and the early history of Iceland. Issues of dispute among scholars, such as the nature of settlement and the division of land, are addressed in the text.

For those that may have extra time this holiday season to devote to open-source tasks, the GIMP graphics program still has many features they're after and aren't yet up to their v2.10 release...

It’s great for the environment. It’s salubrious. And it’s good, clean fun.

However, how safe it is varies considerably from country to country, according to a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the club of the world’s more developed nations. And of the OECD’s 34 members, Americans are not only among the world’s least avid cyclists; they are also among the most likely to get killed. Here are a few interesting—if morbid—takeaways. Pedal safely!

• Roughly “17% of all cycling fatalities were involved in a hit-and-run crash in which one (or several) of their crash opponents fled the scene (2005-2011, FARS) – presumably the motorist(s). This is nearly four times the rate of hit-and-run involvement for all recorded traffic fatalities over the same period in the United States (4%).”
• “Investigating officers on the scene of fatal bicycle crashes in the United States found no contributory factor on the part of the motorist in 46% of cases.”
• “An overwhelming majority of fatal bicycle crashes occur in dry or clear atmospheric conditions – 94% in the USA and 87% in Europe.”
• “One quarter of (deceased) cyclists for which an alcohol test was performed returned blood alcohol values above 0.08 mg/ltr which constitutes a drink-driving offense in all 50 US states.”
• “In the United States, most fatal bicycle-vehicle collisions involved a passenger car or light truck  (Sports Utility Vehicle) though 10% of fatal bicycle collisions involved a large truck.”

• “In the United States, 36% of all fatal bicycle crashes for the period 2005-2011 occurred in junctions with another 4% in driveways (commercial and private) most likely caused by entering or exiting motor vehicles.”
• “In the United States, the share of fatal bicycle crashes occurring in low-speed zones was lower than in Europe – possibly because low-speed traffic calmed zones are relatively less common in the United States.”
• “In the United States, 27% of deceased cyclists for which helmet use was recorded wore helmets in 2010 and 2011.”
• “Red light running by cyclists … is an often-cited contributory factor in fatal and serious injury bicycle crashes (at least in the United States).”
• “Motorists were charged with traffic violations in nearly one third of all fatal bicycle crashes and investigating officers identified a crash-contributing factor on the part of the motorist in over half of all fatal bicycle crashes.”
• “Data from the United States indicate that cyclists were imputed with an improper action in 68% of fatal bicycle crashes (though, as noted earlier, this may be biased as the cyclist was not able to give their version of events).”

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