Stodgy central banks aren’t generally known for making sudden, mind-blowing moves—especially ones that are directly controlled by their country’s government.

But starting tomorrow, China will do something fairly shocking: It will lift the lending rate floor for banks, the central bank just announced (link in Chinese). At present, the government permits banks to lend at as low as 70% of the official benchmark rate.

It’s the first major step in China’s quest to liberalize interest rates—a reform that’s more important than any of the many China needs to implement to open up its capital markets and encourage demand-based growth. To do so, it must deflate asset bubbles that have developed from decades of distorted capital allocations and depoliticize its banking sector. And those two reforms require liberalizing interest rates.

Here’s a look at how the interest rate spread has worked in the past, via Also Spracht Analyst:

In theory, allowing interest rates to be set by the market should shift funds away from massive government-led corporations toward small- and medium-sized enterprises, which have been starved of funding. The government sets interest rates keep deposits artificially low—usually lower than inflation—while setting an interest rate floor on lending to businesses. That cushy setup for banks has made it easier to lend cheaply to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and goosed many industrial sectors, most notably steel and shipping. It has also inflated speculation in property and stock markets and created a debt crisis, exacerbated by a liquidity crunch.

The People’s Bank of China, the central bank, has been talking about liberalizing that system for decades, to no avail. Today’s announcement suggests that the pro-market reform factions of the Communist Party—particularly PBOC governor Zhou Xiaochuan—have enough clout to change policies that will upset many powerful interests, including those of SOEs and local governments. It also hints that premier Li Keqiang, who has been talking a big game when it comes to reform, can follow through on structural reform. That’s important, since China’s bureaucracy tends to favor talk over action.

In addition to the interest rate reform, the central bank also eliminated the lending rate cap for rural credit cooperative and controls on the discount rate for bills. It liberalized housing credit policies, temporarily lifting controls on floating interest rates.

But hold the fireworks, because it also left bank deposit rates caps in place, which limits the wealth of households that have few other places to put their savings. Banks’ low deposit rates encourage saving, not spending. And the meager returns for households are eroded by inflation, as you can see in this chart:

Meanwhile, investment-starved households have poured their savings into the property market, driving up housing prices. Knocking out the deposit rate floor is the first major step in reversing the tide to encourage more consumption.

sluicing shared this story from WIL WHEATON dot TUMBLR.

Original Source

sluicing shared this story from adafruit industries blog.

The only thing I must add about this project, is … has no one had the courage to print it yet? I cannot wait to see something like this hanging in someone’s back garden, like one of those swinging plastic owls, scaring away wildlife and maybe even a prowler or two. “By the Power of Grayskull….!”

Castle Grayskull Birdhouse (Thing:117808) by DiMarzio:

I wasn’t planning on doing this but since a lot of people asked for it, here it is Just don’t be mad when there’s a hulky bird roaming your garden with a sword in it’s claw

Took me quite some figuring out to get it in pieces. Zbrush isn’t that when it comes to exact flat surfaces so I hope this will be ok, it looks to me at least. It’s meant to stand on a surface, as I made a little ground plate for it. Check the instructions for me info.

I’m not a designer, more of an artist so that will be my excuse

As always, pictures are welcome and comments ofcourse too Enjoy!

Read more.

Original Source

	Courtney shared this story from fuck yeah, hard femme!:
	one of the only good parts of this movie.

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r-colored:

Mako Mori - Pacific Rim (2013)

When you say normally, “and there is a young Japanese girl pilot,” you imagine a sexy, skimpily clad girl that has her T-shirt wet every five minutes… I wanted very much to have a character that ended the movie on equal terms with Raleigh and that they didn’t have to have a love story, they could have a colleague love story with respect for each other. And have the capacity to have a moving backstory. Rinko is an extraordinary actor and she’s incredibly intuitive and very brave… I didn’t want her to be the girl that turns into a sex object or a guy. Which is the normal thing in an action movie.

- Guillermo del Toro (x)

	Courtney shared this story from fuck yeah, hard femme!:
	SOMEONE IS BUYING ME THIS COFFEE MUG YES? YES.

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lunarynth:

The best hangover cure. Your anguish sustains me. 

djempirical

#grimes

Original Source

If you  haven’t read Janet Reitman’s excellent piece in the Rolling Stone where she pieces together the story of how Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who seemed to be a totally normal teenager with normal teenage concerns, got entranced by the arguments of violent Islamic radicals and decided to bomb the Boston marathon, I highly recommend it. Reitman wrote a marvelous book about the history of Scientology and so she’s really in her wheelhouse here on the subject of religious fanaticism, power, and violence. Good stuff.

The accompanying cover illustrates the themes of the story perfectly:

The image is of a young, handsome man who has his generation’s aesthetics down cold with his pitch-perfect Instagram-filtered selfie. He looks so normal, so much like any kid his age. And yet, as the caption says, he’s a monster. Sometimes the monster is the guy next door, the charming and handsome kid from your class that everyone likes. The point couldn’t be more crystal clear, which is that you can’t tell just by looking at someone—or even knowing them—what’s going on in their heads. They might seem perfectly normal, but inside, their ability to feel basic human compassion is being warped by a radical, nationalistic, right wing, fundamentalist ideology.

On a related note, my Twitter feed this morning was swarmed by another, usually less violent, breed of people whose ability to perceive the common humanity of all has been slowly destroyed by radical, nationalistic propaganda: The all-American right wing nut.

Apparently, a lot of people reject Reitman’s thesis that the monster sometimes comes with an attractive face. They prefer a more Disney-fied version of the world, where the bad guys always have warts on their noses and wear black hats, and the good guys are always handsome and wear white hats. Anyone who dares point out that the world doesn’t actually work that way—and that you can’t tell by looking at someone what kind of rot is going on inside—will be summarily accused of being the worst person alive, a non-person really, a supporter of terrorism, etc.

I get that some more well-meaning people are upset by the Rolling Stone cover, though they are equally wrong and their arguments are surprisingly weak. Like I said on Sulia, they are engaging in old-fashioned rationalization. The cover is upsetting; it’s meant to be upsetting to realize that we can’t just tell who the bad guys are by looking at them. Instead of letting that percolate for a moment and cause some self-reflection about how we unfairly judge on appearances, a lot of people just get angry instead and start casting around for excuses why it’s the fault of Rolling Stone, and not their own hostility towards self-reflection, that is the problem here. If you want to know more about the psychological process of rationalization, which is something we all do (though frankly, not to the level of people looking for any reason but themselves that this image unsettles them), I recommend the book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson.

Rationalization happens, but what I’m seeing above is a different thing entirely: Conservatives disingenuously pretending that I said I support terrorism, the bombing, or that I’m just a generally evil person. They’re doing it for no other reason than to score points. I mean, I suppose some of them may have convinced themselves that I, Reitman, or the Rolling Stone is actually pro-terrorism. After all, conservatives are in the habit of supporting people who commit senseless violence for ideological reasons all the time, from the Iraq War to George Zimmerman. So maybe, since they do it, they imagine that other, less warped people do it, too. But I promise, we don’t! I’m against senseless violence in all its forms. And unlike anyone who supported the Iraq War, I can say that without being a liar.

I don’t think that’s what’s going on. They’re doing this to score points. It’s a big game of “gotcha”, where they pretend that they “caught” a liberal supposedly supporting terrorism—which of course, absolutely did not happen—and they feel that even though they are definitely cheating at their imaginary game by lying, they still get the “points”. Who awards the points and what they’re good for is hard to determine. Do they get to turn in the points for fabulous prizes? Collect 50 false accusations of supporting terrorism, and get an oversized teddy bear for your lovely date? Who the fuck knows?

I do know this, however: The day you seize on an pretense, no matter how transparently awful, to falsely accuse someone of being somehow in favor of terrorism when you know goddamn well they are not, you are giving away any claim to having a basic sense of decency. I never stop being amazed at the depths to which right wingers in this country will sink, honestly, though it sure does get my “block” button on Twitter a workout.

Update: By the way, here’s the May 5th cover of the New York Times, courtesy of the Washington Post.

However, that cover came out when there wasn’t a lull in the news cycle that conservatives could exploit to insinuate that the “liberal media” secretly supports Islamic terrorism. So it wasn’t turned into a manufactured controversy that some well-meaning but extremely dim people have been swept up into. Something to think about.

Of course, since the people freaking out over this are deep in a rationalization spiral, they are swiftly trying to come up with Reasons that this isn’t the same. Because the possibility that their knee-jerk response to be mad at Rolling Stone for making them sad about the sad thing was inappropriate cannot be entertained. Reasons, reasons, reasons will be generated endlessly for why their knee-jerk reaction is the correct one.

Original Source

	Courtney shared this story from My Life In Neon:
	/

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“Here is how the internship scam works. It’s not about a “skills” gap. It’s about a morality gap.

1) Make higher education worthless by redefining “skill” as a specific corporate contribution. Tell young people they have no skills.

2) With “skill” irrelevant, require experience. Make internship sole path to experience. Make internships unpaid, locking out all but rich.

3) End on the job training for entry level jobs. Educated told skills are irrelevant. Uneducated told they have no way to obtain skills.

4) As wealthy progress on professional career path, middle and lower class youth take service jobs to pay off massive educational debt.

5) Make these part-time jobs not “count” on resume. Hire on prestige, not skill or education. Punish those who need to work to survive.

6) Punish young people who never found any kind of work the hardest. Make them untouchables — unhireable.

7) Tell wealthy people they are “privileged” to be working 40 hrs/week for free. Don’t tell them what kind of “privileged” it is.

8) Make status quo commentary written by unpaid interns or people hiring unpaid interns. They will tell you it’s your fault.

9) Young people, it is not your fault. Speak out. Fight back. Bankrupt the prestige economy.”

-

The moral bankruptcy of the internship economy | Sarah Kendzior (via brute-reason)

unpaid internships are illegal and every company with an unpaid internship program should be sued into bankruptcy

(via jhermann)

I thought they were only illegal if the job gave you no ~skills~ and only used you for free labor (as in, the internship didn’t deliver the training it advertised).

(via gameboygirl)

Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman couldn't attend the Sherlock panel at Comic-Con, but they were able to send a video message in their place. Freeman just gives a pleasant hello, but Cumberbatch decides to reveal the secret of how Sherlock survived his seemingly deadly fall in the season 2 finale... kind of.

Read more...

Yesterday a report came out saying that MIT had asked the court to block a FOIA release of the Secret Service file on Aaron Swartz. TechDirt has a story about it. Please read it before continuing with this piece.

Key: "The judge has consented to putting a stay on the initial order until MIT can file its motion."

It seems fair to assume that the MIT plea had some merit or the judge wouldn't have consented to the stay. Even so, TechDirt, normally a reputable pub, says the reason MIT wants it blocked is that it will "make MIT look bad." How do they know that's the reason?

Typical of the editorial coverage of Aaron Swartz, post-suicide, there is only black and white. Aaron, good. MIT and the govt, bad. Aaron, innocent victim. MIT and the govt, persecutors of Aaron. To keep this up there has had to be some egregiously bad reporting.

Personal opinion: I don't think MIT would try to block the release of the data if it was just a matter of them looking bad. My guess is that there are names of MIT people in the report, and yes I know the names are redacted, but we also know that it's possible to leave the names out without obscuring the identity of the people involved.

Net-net: If MIT deserves condemnation, let's at least know what we're condemning them for.

A hater is a person who expresses hatred in public forums, especially those found on the Internet such as YouTube.^[1]

Haters are distinguished from trolls who seek to attract attention by making provocative comments.^[2]

Haters may become organised into groups and the seven stage model of hate crime developed by Sc)hafer and Navarro for the FBI may explain their behaviour:^[3][4]

1. The hater finds other with similar views to form a group
2. The group develops symbols and rituals to identify itself
3. The group shares its views to bond itself
4. The target is taunted
5. The target is attacked
6. The target is attacked with weapons
7. The target is destroyed

Link (Thanks, Katherine)

Versions

A longer version (4:23) was released on Donovan’s Greatest Hits (1969).

An even longer version (4:34) was released on Donovan’s Greatest Hits and More (1989).

The longest version of all (4:41) was released on The Essential Donovan (2004).

Link (Thanks, SamECircle)

Reptilian DC villain Copperhead was unveiled for Batman: Arkham Origins at San Diego Comic Con, but not as you may remember him ... because he's a she now. Origins features the character's new womanly guise, as per DC Comics' New 52 revamp.

As Newsarama reports, DC Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns told panel attendees the lady Copperhead is coming to "mainstream" New 52 books shortly after Origins hits shelves.

What you're seeing in the trailer, according to Warner Bros. Montreal Creative Director Eric Holmes, is the culmination of a stunt woman, a Cirque du Soleil performer, and a martial artist, combining efforts to capture Copperheads's slithering, venomous motions.

Copperhead joins a host of other baddies out to get the young caped crusader in Arkham Origins, which is set to swoop onto PS3, Xbox 360, PC, and Wii U on October 25.

Copperhead is in Batman: Arkham Origins and this time she's a lady originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 19 Jul 2013 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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	Courtney shared this story from drinking miller high life on the ferris wheel:
	This is 100% true, and we are 100% still interested in hanging out with this guy.

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I was reminded today that it’s ComicCon & thus the “anniversary" of the epically great SDCC vacation my friend Courtney & I took in 2004*. So I pulled out the trip journal to share the flyer we made and almost hung in our hotel to try to find the amazing guy we saw on our way to the bus one day. Probably the fourth best^ part of our trip

It still stands, man- if you were at SDCC in 2004 wearing a cowboy hat & talking about the Wu & you see this, get at us. You were great and I’d love to see if you can still name the entire Clan.

*aka, arguably the last year it was mostly about comics.

^best thing: every encounter with Greg Rucka including the imaginary conversations, 2nd best thing: hearing a dude describe his activity as “just watchin’ Coreys" as we observed Haim & Feldmen give an interview, 3rd best thing: all 4 times Courtney almost accidentally injured Sala Baker from LotR

schwit1 writes "Laurie Iacuzza walked to her waiting car at the Greater Rochester International Airport after returning from a trip and that's when she found it — a notice saying her car was inspected after she left for her flight. She said, 'I was furious. They never mentioned it to me when I booked the valet or when I picked up the car or when I dropped it off.' Iacuzza's car was inspected by valet attendants on orders from the TSA."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

	Courtney shared this story from PORPENTINE:
	New Porpentine gaaaaame

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Last year I stopped working on something I cared about because I was so sad but I feel better now.

I’ve finally finished porting and cracking an old edutainment game from the 90′s. Please enjoy.

ULTRA BUSINESS TYCOON III

(content warning for suicide, violence)

NFO is included if you need to get past any shareware shit

You’ve heard the joke: What’s the one problem with Paris? Parisians. In attempt to counter that stereotype, the city’s tourism board and the Paris Chamber of Commerce have issued a helpful guide to cabbies and other locals on how to welcome foreign guests. (One tip, for example: the British like to be called by their first name.)

The guide’s section for dealing with Chinese tourists is particularly important, given that they are now among the world’s most important groups for tourism industries around the world. By 2015, 100 million Chinese (pdf) will travel abroad annually, according to the UN. Last year, they overtook Americans and Germans as the world’s biggest travel spenders.

The guide bluntly advises that Chinese traveling abroad are obsessed with shopping: ”Foremost, luxury shopping…they love shopping and luxury,” it says. Chinese tourists are said to divide their spending this way: 40% toward shopping, 16% on eating, 8% on museums and shows, and 6% on transportation.

Chinese tourists have “an idealized and romantic view of Paris,” according to the guide, but that might not last for long. Violence and robberies have started to dent enthusiasm for France, and the City of Lights in particular, long a top tourism destination for the Chinese. In March, after a group of 23 Chinese tourists were robbed at Charles De Gaulle airport, China issued a travel advisory warning its citizens not to “carry wads of cash around or show off their wealth” when visiting the city. The Chinese embassy in Paris says they’ve been getting more complaints about robberies.

For now, Paris can hope that little extra effort in cultural exchange will help. It encourages locals to speak to their guests in their native tongue—”A smile and hello in their language goes a long way”—and offers these pronunciation tips for French speakers:

Bonjour : Ni hao (ni rao)
Bienvenue : Huan ying guang lin (rouanne ing gouang linne)
Merci : Xie xie (sié sié)
Au revoir : Zai jian (dzaï djienne)

People have been waiting for this for a long time. And now it’s happening.

Money has started pouring out of the bond market. And more importantly, it’s pouring back into the US stock market, reversing the bond-loving proclivities that investors developed when the financial crisis hit.

Data provider EPFR says that $19.7 billion inundated US equity markets this week. That’s the biggest weekly inflow seen since 2008. And other data services seem to confirm the trend. Here’s a chart of estimated weekly flows into US mutual funds over the last year, from the Investment Company Institute. You can see that until the start of the year, investors were pulling money out of stock funds and socking it into bonds. Then early in 2013, they began adding to stocks as well as bonds. Now they’re pulling money out of bonds and pumping it into stocks.

Of course, stock market sophisticates always point out that when smaller investors start buying, that signals a rally is approaching its final run. (The rationale is that the market depends on pulling in new buyers to continue moving up, and retail investors are usual the last buyers available.) With the stock market consistently hitting record highs recently, that could be something to keep in mind.

	Courtney shared this story from Yo, Is This Racist?:
	" go hump a piece of construction paper if “color" is what gets you off, you fucking shithead." Perfect.

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sunshinestatic asked: Is it racist if someone doesn’t find a certain skin color very physically attractive? I mean, it’s not like they hate the actual race. They are just more physically attracted a certain color more than another. So does that really seem racist?

First of all, do you know how fucking stupid you have to be to be “attracted to a certain color"? You ever notice that people who say stupid shit like that are always using it to justify their racist beliefs about what certain races look like, and to reinforce the racist-ass standards of beauty set forth by our shitty culture? You’re not fooling anyone, go hump a piece of construction paper if “color" is what gets you off, you fucking shithead.

Scientists at Trinity College Dublin have caught a drop of tar pitch on camera for the very first time since the experiment began 69 years ago in 1944. It takes between seven and thirteen years for a single drop to form, but less than a second for it to fall. A similar experiment has been running since 1927 at the University of Queensland in Brisbane — the longest-running laboratory experiment according to Guinness World Records — but their camera was offline when the last drop fell in 2000. The Queensland experiment is expecting its ninth drop to fall sometime in 2013, and a live webcam is set to catch the drop’s inevitable fall when it happens.

video via Nature

via Nature

	Courtney shared this story from The ToastThe Toast:
	I wish more news about the royal baby focused on this issue.

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Soon, perhaps within a matter of hours, the Duchess of Cambridge will give birth to the newest heir to the British throne. News of Kate Middleton’s pregnancy has captured the public’s attention ever since she was hospitalized with acute morning sickness back in December. The royal baby buzz has been building steadily throughout the week outside of Kate’s maternity wing at St. Mary’s Hospital.

Every single one of Kate’s actions during her pregnancy have been heavily analyzed and scrutinized, and the birth of her son or daughter–the future King or Queen of Great Britain–will only focus the attention of the media all the more sharply on the Royal Family.

With the Duchess of Cambridge due at any moment, palace security is out in full force, while the Royal Family has drafted extensive preparations in the eventuality of almost any emergency. The Toast has received a copy of what we can confirm is an official palace document detailing the steps to be taken in one of these situations.

If the royal baby is found to be a changeling (a false child, usually the offspring of an elf, brownie, or troll, left in place of the original human child, who has been spirited away to work as a servant to the Little Folk), the entire House of Windsor will meet at Tintagel, the historical seat of British power, where Queen Elizabeth will confer with the full-blooded members of her family and determine the terms of their counteroffer to Queen Mab.

A source in Buckingham Palace, speaking on condition of anonymity, says that the child will likely be tested with the touch of iron, the sound of harps, and the rays of the sun in order to determine whether it is the genuine offspring of William and Kate or the hideous, grey-skinned progeny of a mischievous lilith, sent to torment the Windsors for neglecting their yearly tithe to Hell.

A royal press conference held earlier this afternoon involved a rare public speech by the normally-reserved Prince Philip, who held the stage for over forty-five minutes.

Nobody talks about this. Nobody likes to talk about this. But most of the children in the family are changelings. I was a changeling, and Father never minded. Don’t look at me like that. How you’re looking at me. I can see you from here, you know, Charrrrlie. Everyone knows it. We all know it. They’re not so different. We’re not so different, you know, even if we are different. Is there more Pimms? Have we got Pimms here? (Pause). For my Pimms Cup. My cup of Pimms, damn you. If I had enough Pimms for a Pimms Cup, I wouldn’t be asking you for Pimms, would I, you stupid woman? (Pause). It’s not so different. All you have to remember to do is on their…their…thirteenth! S’thirteenth. Birthday, you must find a black cockerel and…something its heart. You do that to its heart, and you’re home free; they can’t come for the poor devil. Very important to remember to do it. Can’t remember what. Father did it, I know that. Very important to remember to do it. Anyhow. More Pimms? Where’s the damned butler. Must be off. Harry was a changeling.

Buckingham Palace has released an official statement to the press categorically denying that Prince Harry is now, nor has ever been, a changeling. “He is not capable of flight under the power of the waxing moon,” the statement reads in part, “nor does he use devilish speech in his midnight Sabbats, nor has he a carriage pulled by grey cats that rises from the sea on Whitsuntide. He cannot conjure spilled blood into horrible, twitching mannikins capable of doing his bidding. He has never eaten the liver of a swan, nor enchanted a tree. He is a human man, with normal human abilities, and has never been bound with iron to keep him from turning the Thames into a swollen torrent of bees and pitch.”

Bookkeepers familiar with these situations estimate that the Queen is likely to offer the elf-mother holding their true Christian-blooded child her prized lavender fields, the sunny half of the Orkney islands, seven of her best Corgis, and forty male virgins for its safe return.

Should this fail to pacify Morgana le Fay and her Trembling Army, the task shall fall to either William or Kate to find the entrance to the Land of Shadow under the Topless Hills and do battle with the Unseelie Court.

If William or Kate fails to return, the Royal Family is prepared to execute British Prime Minister David Cameron upon the Stone of Unknowing.

Should the Prime Minister’s blood  prove insufficient, the entire House of Windsor (excluding Fergie) shall retreat to Sherwood Forest and disguise themselves as peasants, in the hopes that this will confuse their fey enemies and save them from detection. According to the Queen:

We shall consult our oldest wives. We shall fell our oldest trees, and with them raise walls as high as the chalk cliffs of the southern seas. We shall work our strongest magicks, we shall gird ourselves with iron and with stone, we shall invoke the power of the Holy Rood and the spirits of noon, we will slay any bird that makes a sound within the confines of our holy forest. We shall raise the bones of the old and mouldering saints from the consecrated soil for protection. We will hide, we will draw strength from the earth, and we shall return on a wave of power the likes of which this land of England has not seen in ten hundred hundred years, nor ten thousand thousand neither. No changeling will sit on the throne of England while any of us draw breath. Harry is not a changeling.

Prince Harry could not be immediately reached for comment, although sources close to him say he’s “very excited” to be an uncle. “Deeply excited. Not demonstrably excited, but in a dark and a slow and a quiet way. He smiles a lot. All the time, really. He grins even in his sleep.”

The post In The Eventuality: Royal Baby Watch appeared first on The Toast.

Designer Chris Cavill recently moved to Vancouver, Canada and started working on a concept project to bring unique playing cards to the masses....

Click to read more... »

Where in the world is Edward Snowden?

Indications point to his physical vessel cooling its heels in a Moscow airport, where it's waited for weeks for a friendly country to grant it asylum. But in spirit, the beleaguered NSA whistleblower is also on walls in London and France, lurking in the subway in New York City, flirting with stewardesses in Rochester, and present elsewhere around the world thanks to sympathetic graffiti artists and street hackers.

As R.J. Rushmore at Vandalog points out, the former NSA employee hasn't acquired the loads of artistic tributes enjoyed by other prominent leakers, like Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. The paucity of sprayed Snowdens might be because his act of sticking it to the U.S. government is still relatively new. It might also be due to the lack of photographic base material for artists to build upon: The media are stuck with that one clip from the Guardian that is getting recycled everywhere, unless they want to be silly and reference his anime-loving teen days.

But as his case drags on, you can expect to encounter more alleys and walls bearing his leaking likeness, and maybe even a few Halloween costumes come fall. Ready for a parade of Snowdens? Let's start with this one coolly gazing upon visitors to the Abode of Chaos, the home and graffiti-exposition garden of art-auction magnate Thierry Ehrmann in Avignon, France:

(Thierry Ehrmann / Flickr)

In Queens, New York:

(BAMN / Flickr)

One artist in Berlin created the "world's first Snowden Street" (which is not altogether true):

(Anna Vallgårda / Flickr)

In the MTA tunnels of New York:

(Poster Boy / Flickr)

(Poster Boy / Flickr)

Location unknown:

(BAMN / Flickr)

The following pieces don't count as street art, but show other directions creative types have taken with Snowden. This is the backdrop for an "emergency forum" at New York City's Cooper Union college in June:

(Debra Sweet / Flickr)

The whistleblower has inspired quite an array of shirts, hats and bumper stickers on Cafe Press:

(Roger Murmann / Flickr)

No idea what this means, but it's awesome:

(Roberto Rizzato / Flickr)

Enjoy your lawsuit from the Associated Press, "catigated_fish":

Top image: Thierry Ehrmann / Flickr. H/t Vandalog

comicallyvintage:

Now that’s what I call progress.

Why don’t you want to see this?

It’s annoying or not interesting.

nurdsite:

"I’m not impressed." 

Stawp, human, I’m not amused.

When Sarah Sharp was a 20-year-old university student in Portland, she took on an extra-credit project writing USB driver code for the Linux kernel. She was too young to stay past 10 p.m. in some of the brew pubs where the local Linux-heads met, but she hung in as long as she could, learned a lot about Linux, and embraced the community.

When commenting on a recent rape case, a Tsinghua University law professor, Yi Yanyou argued in Weibo that “It does more harm to rape a good woman than to rape a bargirl, a dancing girl, an escort or a prostitute.” Such argument echoes with the lawyer of gang rape suspect, Li Tianyi, the 17-year-old son of Chinese general Li Shuangjiang, who presented in the court that the gang rape is a case in which people “take turn to have sex” because the victim was a bargirl. Off Beat China has collected and translated Chinese netizens’ reactions.

Written by Oiwan Lam · comments (0)
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Entrance to the abandoned House-Monument of the Bulgarian Communist Party, Republic of Bulgaria.