firehose

The hip-hop/reggae artist Kuf Notz opens up Breaking, our new series on under-the-radar musicians, filmmakers, designers, writers, dancers, developers, illustrators and other artists you should be checking out. Right now.

Mark Wilson writes: Today the FCC voted in favor of updating its Lifeline program to include broadband. This would mean that households surviving on low incomes would be able to receive help paying for a broadband connection. It might not be as important as electricity or water, but having a broadband connection is seen as being all but essential these days. From helping with education and job hunting, to allowing for home working, the ability to get online is seen as so vital by some that there have been calls for it to be classed as a utility. The Lifeline program has been running since the 80s, and originally provided financial help to those struggling to pay for a phone line. It was expanded in 2008 to include wireless providers, and it is hoped that this third expansion will help more people to get online.

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A white man targets a historic African American church with ties to the struggles against slavery and Jim Crow and to the Civil Rights Movement. He makes clearly racist statements as he guns down the church's pastor and other members of the congregation. He runs around wearing the flags of rabidly racist—and blessedly extinct—white-ruled/black-majority African nations. What could it possibly mean?

Take it away, Fox News:

"[This] was an attack on faith," says the white lady. "We aren't safe in our own churches!" Then they bring on a black pastor who says the shooting is evidence not of racist hatred but of "a rising tide of hostility against Christians in this country." He then urges "pastors and men in these churches [to] arm themselves."

Christians are under attack. Nothing has anything to do with race. Guns don't cause problems that more guns can't solve.

I'm going back to bed.

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Filming has begun for Paul Feig’s upcoming Ghostbusters movie, with Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones as the new proton pack-wielding foursome. And the first photos offer a few clues to what kinds of characters these ladies will be playing.

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Thursday was not a good day for the LSU football program.

LSU quarterback Anthony Jennings is one of three LSU players that was arrested and booked on Thursday evening, according to The Baton Rouge Advocate. Jennings, defensive lineman Maquedius Bain, and defensive back Dwayne Thomas were all booked at a Baton Rouge jail together. Thomas has been charged with unauthorized entry of a dwelling and simple burglary, and Jennings and Bain were charged with unauthorized entry of a dwelling.

It's unclear whether these arrests are related to that of defensive tackle Trey Lealaimatafao, who was also arrested on Thursday and charged with simple battery and simple robbery in connection with a bar fight.

LSU has yet to commented on the arrests so there's no update on these players' standing with the team. There is a good chance this could end the quarterback competition, however, giving the job to Brandon Harris by default.

Jennings started for the Tigers in 2014 but struggled, completing only 48.9% of his passes and throwing for only 1,611 yards, 11 touchdowns, and seven interceptions. Harris appeared in eight games, going 25-45 for 452 yards, six touchdowns, and two interceptions.

Pope Francis on Thursday called for a radical transformation of politics, economics and individual lifestyles to confront environmental degradation and climate change, as his much-awaited papal encyclical blended a biting critique of consumerism and irresponsible development with a plea for swift and unified global action.

Donald Trump is the most recent candidate to get yelled at by an artist. On Tuesday, after Trump used Neil Young’s song “Rockin’ in the Free World” at his presidential campaign announcement, Young — a Canadian citizen — said he was actually a supporter of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders and said Trump had no permission to use the song.

Strawberry breeders are racing to bring glory back to the strawberry, amping up classical breeding techniques with modern genetics.

A collective sigh of relief could be heard from Emerson English majors around campus as news of the upcoming Comedic Arts major was released, and a new department took the throne of least useful discipline.

What counts as an act of terrorism? It's a question that is both easy and impossible to answer, and one that many Americans are now debating with regards to the mass murder in Charleston, South Carolina.

The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Texas did not violate the First Amendment when it refused to allow specialty license plates bearing the Confederate battle flag.

Author: Pai Osias Source: Buffer

RT @sethdmichaels: extremely optimistic NYT illustration has a guy in a driverless car reading a print-edition newspaper http://t.co/H4qxSA…

seedo-amjad:

I used to come home with the lunch menu for the month. It was always bright orange or green or blue. My mother would take it from my hands and circle the days that the school was serving something with pork in it. She’d tell me, “Amjad, I’ll make you sandwiches to take to school these days.” And I’d get really excited because bringing lunch from
Home was considered cool in the 2nd grade.

On days they served pork or a meat my mother wasn’t too sure about, she’s wake up early and rush to the kitchen. She’d smear a generous helping of hummus in khubiz. Fry up some falafel. Cut up some veggies and throw in some olives into a plastic container. She’d put all these in my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunch box with some juice. I’d carry it with pride knowing I’d be eating my favorite foods and everyone else would be eating the gross lunch.

Lunch would come and I’d sit down with my friends and open my lunch box, all the kids eyeing me with jealously and admiration. I’d lay out all my food in front of me and start to dig in, smilingly, because everyone’s food looked like it was already digested.

Then someone would lean over and yell “ew what’s that?? Are you eating a poops sandwich.” All the kids would laugh and snicker and point. “What are those balls? Ew that looks gross!” More laughter. More giggles. More pointing.

I would eat anything. I’d stuff everything back into the box, humiliated.

I’d come home, crying. Telling my mother how could she embarrass me like that. “Why can’t I have regular American food?”

She’d be confused. She didn’t understand. At home, I’d devour her food like it was my last meal. But now, standing in front of her, my 7-8 year old self knew what humiliation felt like.

The next time pork was served at school, she put Bologna and cheese on white bread. Packed chips into my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunch box. No one laughed at me when I pulled out my American lunch. No one pointed at my American sandwich.

But I lost the taste of my mother’s lunches.

-akh

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clepse:

One of me favourite books, a Gray’s Anatomy for mythological creatures.

The Resurrectionist // Eb Hudspeth

rosalarian:

eastwoodwong:

Ain’t nobody fresher than my crew. 

Print available here. 

Yes!

prostheticknowledge:

Inceptionism

Google Research release images related to their work in Neural Networks - just as they are used for image recognition and learning, when they are used for image creation, the results are incredibly surreal:

Artificial Neural Networks have spurred remarkable recent progress in image classification and speech recognition. But even though these are very useful tools based on well-known mathematical methods, we actually understand surprisingly little of why certain models work and others don’t … We train an artificial neural network by showing it millions of training examples and gradually adjusting the network parameters until it gives the classifications we want.

… So here’s one surprise: neural networks that were trained to discriminate between different kinds of images have quite a bit of the information needed to generate images too … The results are intriguing—even a relatively simple neural network can be used to over-interpret an image, just like as children we enjoyed watching clouds and interpreting the random shapes. This network was trained mostly on images of animals, so naturally it tends to interpret shapes as animals. But because the data is stored at such a high abstraction, the results are an interesting remix of these learned features.

More at the Google Research blog here

4gifs:

Soon. [video]

Tasmania-based furniture and lighting designer Duncan Meerding highlights the naturally occuring cracks in sustainably sourced logs by inserting warm yellow LEDs that illuminate each piece of wood from within. Meerding, who is legally blind, is fascinated by unusual light applications which he refers to as his “alternative sensory world.” Each cracked log lamp can be used as a stool, table, or simply a light accessory, and the pieces are available through a number of shops throughout Australia. Photos by Jan Dallas. (via My Modern Met, Inhabitat)

tastefullyoffensive:

This is getting out of control. (photos via ZookeeperRachel)

THE LAST ONE LOL

maarnayeri:

These attacks in Charleston is exactly why I don’t like and will never accept Nu Atheist critiques of religion that are devoid of contextualization. 

Besides the fact that killing people in a place and time of worship is about the most reprehensible thing you can do, Emanuel AME church is the oldest Black church in the South and its history is entrenched in the struggle against Jim Crow terrorism. There’s absolutely no convenience or coincidence in the attacker’s choice of location.

In case it hasn’t been made resoundingly clear already, a vast majority of political organizing and radical coalition building was/is done in the context of Christianity with black resistance in the US. Everything from the Montgomery Boycotts to the Million Man March. Yes without question, black people have been colonized in warped white supremacist renditions of Christianity, but the fact that it was malleable enough to be reclaimed in Black politics proves how theology, like most things, is essentially a blank slate and its impact is wholly up to individual intention.

You think religion is useless and a primitive aspect of the human condition that has no place in your life? Cool, good for you. I respect your right to that believe that (or disbelieve that). But for many people around the world, it is a respite, pillar of hope, cultural focal point and an integral facet of day-to-day life. To suggest ripping that away for a faux intellectual talking point is profoundly cruel and absurdly unfeasible. 

#CharlestonShooting

princelesscomic:

Violence against black people is not a mental illness.

It is a learned and modeled behavior that has been reinforced by our society.