firehose

Tug of War (Zain Soft - PC88 - 1990)

crashcarnival:

This went in a strange direction

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I read the news today, oh boy.

retrogasm:

IT’S FRIDAY

Tech giant Apple is joining the Dow Jones Industrial Average, replacing AT&T. The change is expected to take place after the market close on March 18.

There is no script. There are general guidelines: Polonius will be murdered, Ophelia will kill herself, and toward the end Fortinbras will make his grand entrance. But nearly everything else will be conceived by the participant-actors, explored and acted out as they go along.

Why would anyone want to kill Brianna Wu? At Arisia, of all places. It's a fantasy and science-fiction convention, a festival of make-believe. The crowd is costumed, countercultural, and wildly diverse — androgynous couples in matching outfits, playful warriors packing "safe-bonded" heat, animals with plastic axes, humans with tails — with Wu in the middle of it all, a commanding presence even in this menagerie.

moriar-t-e-a:

#THIS ISTHE MOST ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF THE HOBBITTHAT I HAVE EVER SEEN

After the rocky, injury-plagued, snow-light conditions of last year's Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race , this year's even warmer season means the starting line of the race will move 225 miles north. It will still end in Nome, Alaska, but it'll begin in Fairbanks rather than Anchorage.

Read more...

I’m not famous. But judging by my expansive Wikipedia entry, I’m a star!

Shaun Harrison, a former dean in Boston’s Public School system, is accused of shooting a 17-year-old student execution style after an argument over drug-running. That’s just the start of it.

itsokayeverythingsalright:

The worst kind of rejection comes from babies and animals, hence they are the the best source of acceptance. 

It knows all the songs, promise.

Leeds took 5,000,000 fans to Wigan and a dog pic.twitter.com/sSiKaJ6XUM

— Rich C (@Rich_Miz) March 7, 2015

We're not sure if this is a service dog or just someone's best friend snuck into the DW Stadium, but this is awesome either way. It's cheering! This dog is cheering!

Leeds beat Wigan 1-0, all because of this dog.

The team has discussed free-agent quarterback Tarvaris Jackson, according to another source familiar with some of the Eagles’ free-agency plan. Jackson, 31, has backed up Russell Wilson in Seattle for the past two seasons, throwing just 14 passes. Kelly is eyeing his next reclamation project in Jake Locker, the 26-year-old who was picked eighth overall by the Titans in 2011.

A 19-year-old black man died Friday night after being shot by an officer in Madison, authorities said. The man was shot after an altercation with the officer and died at a hospital, Police Chief Mike Koval said. He did not know whether the man was armed, but said "initial findings at the scene did not reflect a gun or anything of that nature that would have been used by the subject." Authorities have not released the 19-year-old's name, but family members identified him to local media as Tony Robinson. The officer's name and race has not been released.

popular shared this story from Marginal REVOLUTION.

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In Ferguson and the Modern Debtor’s Prison I wrote:

You don’t get $321 in fines and fees and 3 warrants per household from an about-average crime rate. You get numbers like this from bullshit arrests for jaywalking and constant “low level harassment involving traffic stops, court appearances, high fines, and the threat of jail for failure to pay.”

The DOJ report on the Ferguson Police Departmentverifies this in stunning detail:

Ferguson has allowed its focus on revenue generation to fundamentally compromise the role of Ferguson’s municipal court. The municipal court does not act as a neutral arbiter of the law or a check on unlawful police conduct.

… Our investigation has found overwhelming evidence of minor municipal code violations resulting in multiple arrests, jail time, and payments that exceed the cost of the original ticket many times over. One woman, discussed above, received two parking tickets for a single violation in 2007 that then totaled $151 plus fees. Over seven years later, she still owed Ferguson $541—after already paying $550 in fines and fees, having multiple arrest warrants issued against her, and being arrested and jailed on several occasions.

Predatory fining was incentivized:

FPD has communicated to officers not only that they must focus on bringing in revenue, but that the department has little concern with how officers do this. FPD’s weak systems of supervision, review, and accountability…have sent a potent message to officers that their violations of law and policy will be tolerated, provided that officers continue to be “productive” in making arrests and writing citations. Where officers fail to meet productivity goals, supervisors have been instructed to alter officer assignments or impose discipline.

Excessive, illegal and sometimes criminal force was used routinely:

This culture within FPD influences officer activities in all areas of policing, beyond just ticketing. Officers expect and demand compliance even when they lack legal authority. They are inclined to interpret the exercise of free-speech rights as unlawful disobedience, innocent movements as physical threats, indications of mental or physical illness as belligerence. Police supervisors and leadership do too little to ensure that officers act in accordance with law and policy, and rarely respond meaningfully to civilian complaints of officer misconduct. The result is a pattern of stops without reasonable suspicion and arrests without probable cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment; infringement on free expression, as well as retaliation for protected expression, in violation of the First Amendment; and excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Here is one example:

In January 2013, a patrol sergeant stopped an African-American man after he saw the man talk to an individual in a truck and then walk away. The sergeant detained the man, although he did not articulate any reasonable suspicion that criminal activity was afoot. When the man declined to answer questions or submit to a frisk—which the sergeant sought to execute despite articulating no reason to believe the man was armed—the sergeant grabbed the man by the belt, drew his ECW [i.e.taser, AT], and ordered the man to comply. The man crossed his arms and objected that he had not done anything wrong. Video captured by the ECW’s built-in camera shows that the man made no aggressive movement toward the officer. The sergeant fired the ECW, applying a five-second cycle of electricity and causing the man to fall to the ground. The sergeant almost immediately applied the ECW again, which he later justified in his report by claiming that the man tried to stand up. The video makes clear, however, that the man never tried to stand—he only writhed in pain on the ground. The video also shows that the sergeant applied the ECW nearly continuously for 20 seconds, longer than represented in his report. The man was charged with Failure to Comply and Resisting Arrest, but no independent criminal violation.

Here is another, especially interesting, example:

While the record demonstrates a pattern of stops that are improper from the beginning, it also exposes encounters that start as constitutionally defensible but quickly cross the line. For example, in the summer of 2012, an officer detained a 32-year-old African-American man who was sitting in his car cooling off after playing basketball. The officer arguably had grounds to stop and question the man, since his windows appeared more deeply tinted than permitted under Ferguson’s code. Without cause, the officer went on to accuse the man of being a pedophile, prohibit the man from using his cell phone, order the man out of his car for a pat-down despite having no reason to believe he was armed, and ask to search his car. When the man refused, citing his constitutional rights, the officer reportedly pointed a gun at his head, and arrested him. The officer charged the man with eight different counts, including making a false declaration for initially providing the short form of his first name (e.g., “Mike” instead of “Michael”) and an address that, although legitimate, differed from the one on his license. The officer also charged the man both with having an expired operator’s license, and with having no operator’s license in possession. The man told us he lost his job as a contractor with the federal government as a result of the charges.

Although the report says the initial stop was constitutionally defensible, the initial stop was also clearly bullshit. “The officer arguably had grounds to stop and question the man, since his windows appeared more deeply tinted than permitted under Ferguson’s code.” Deep tinting!!!

Missouri, like most states, has a window tint lawwhich essentially requires that tinting not be so dark as to impede the ability of the driver to see out of the car. Ok. But why does Ferguson have a window tint law! What this means is that you can be fined for driving through Ferguson for window tinting which is legal in the rest of Missouri. Absurd.  Correction: the code appears to be the same as the state code but passed as a municipal ordinance so fines were collected locally. The purpose of the law was simply to extract more blood:

NYTimes: Last year Ferguson drivers paid $12,400 in fines for driving cars with tinted windows. They paid another $4,905 for loud music coming out of their cars.

The abuse in Ferguson shouldn’t really surprise us–this is how most governments behave most of the time. Democracy constrains what governments do but it’s a thin constraint easily capable of being pierced when stressed.

The worst abuses of government happen when an invading gang conquer people of a different race, religion and culture. What happened in Ferguson was similar only the rulers stayed the same and the population of the ruled changed. In 1990 Ferguson was 74% white and 25% black. Just 20 years later the percentages had nearly inverted, 29% white and 67% black. The population of rulers, however, changed more slowly so white rulers found themselves overlording a population that was foreign to them. As a result, democracy broke down and government as usual, banditry and abuse, broke out.

The Ferguson judge accused by this week's DOJ report of ticket fixing and punishing majority black residents with exorbitant fines and arrest for nonpayment reportedly owes more than $170,000 in back taxes. Ronald J. Brockmeyer, 70, according to The Guardian, is in his 12th year as Ferguson's municipal judge. According to his private practice bio, he is also a judge in another neighboring city and prosecutor in three others. Brockmeyer's and other's dual roles have raised conflict of interest issues before and is considered symptomatic of the area's Balkanization. St. Louis County's 90 municipalities, according to a 2014 Better Together report, account for 11 percent of Missouri's population but bring in 34 percent of all muni court fines and fees statewide. From The Guardian:

While Brockmeyer owes the US government $172,646 in taxes, his court in Ferguson is at the centre of a class-action federal lawsuit that alleges Ferguson repeatedly "imprisoned a human being solely because the person could not afford to make a monetary payment".

"Judge Brockmeyer not being incarcerated is a perfect illustration of how we should go about collecting debt from people who owe it," said Thomas Harvey, the director of Arch City Defenders, one of the legal non-profits representing plaintiffs who were jailed in Ferguson.

Also, today, more fallout from Wednesday's DOJ report. According to the Post-Dispatch, Capt. Rick Henke and Sgt. William Mudd, two veteran police officers, have resigned over racist e-mails. The city's top court clerk, Mary Ann Twitty, was terminated for the same reason.

submitted by pdx-mark [link] [4 comments]

we all need more Grace Jones in our lives

getfussy:

STYLIST SPOTLIGHT: Jai killed this pixelated cut!! We’re seriously living this new trend | styled by@jaithestylist
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blackpaint20:

Auguste Rodin, The Gates of Hell

thefrogman:

[facebook]

It’s like an upscale version of the George Foreman grill, but one involving an iPad or a mobile phone; you can start cooking remotely, or get texts to know that your burger’s ready. And starting this Thursday, it’s available for pre-order for $499. (It will ship starting in early 2016.)

A fifth Wesleyan University student was arrested Friday in the investigation into a rash of on-campus drug overdoses that sent a dozen people to the hospital. The defendant, Abhimanyu Janamanchi, 21, of Rockville, Maryland, was among those who received treatment at Hartford Hospital. Following his recovery, he surrendered at Middletown police headquarters Friday morning on a warrant for drug charges.

The comic, whose legal name is Louis Szekely, must now make contributions to a trio of funds as if he works 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year as a film editor, even though he testified that he spends only a fraction of his time editing and can go months without performing the work. The union pension funds involved in the suit are the Motion Picture Industry Pension Plan, Health Plan and Individual Account Plan. Those plans require those who can set their own hours, like Louis C.K., must pay into the funds as if they work full-time as film editors.

Marshawn Lynch's status for the 2015 season is no longer in doubt. The running back and the Seattle Seahawks agreed to a new contract that ensures Lynch will return next season, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter. Lynch will play next season on a one-year deal worth $11 million, according to ESPN's John Clayton.

The Bike Kitchen started WhiteBikes in Bratislava after a failed attempt by the city to finance a similar program. At first users shared donated bikes with the same lock code. They needed a system that would work somewhat automatically without the need for manual rentals (e.g. somebody giving out bicycles). From there, smsBikeShare was born. Users registered with a mobile phone number and could send basic SMS commands (RENT, RETURN, FREE, WHERE, etc.). The system used an inexpensive SMS gateway API and a local message-back number to receive and respond to messages. Shared bicycles have a coded U-lock with a four-digit number, and upon renting a bike, users receive a code to unlock the bicycle and another to reset it to once they are done. Send a message, receive the answer, unlock the bike, reset the lock, and you're off pedaling.