firehose

“TJ Lane took a gun to a school, killed 3 people and was arrested near his car. Not shot. He was armed. He was white. Amy Bishop Anderson shot and killed three people, her colleagues, at the University of Alabama. She was arrested outside of the building. Not shot. She was white. Scott Evans Dekraai shoots and kills 8 people in Seal Beach, California. He is armed with 3 different guns. He is arrested. Not shot. He was white. Christopher Speight shoots and kills 8 people in Virginia. He surrenders and he is arrested. Not shot. He was white. The list of white murderers who were arrested and not killed goes on, and on, and on. Michael Brown (aged 18) harmed nobody. He did not commit a crime. He was not armed. He was shot 6 times and killed. Michael Brown was black. Trayvon Martin (aged 17) harmed nobody. He did not commit a crime. He was shot once and killed. He was not armed. Trayvon Martin was black. Tamir Rice (aged 12) harmed nobody. He was “armed” with a fake, toy gun. He was shot twice and killed. Tamir Rice was black. Oscar Grant (aged 22) harmed nobody. He did not commit a crime. He was shot once and killed. He was not armed. Oscar Grant was black. Ervin Jefferson (aged 18) harmed nobody. He did not commit a crime. He was shot once and killed. He was not armed. Ervin Jefferson was black. Timothy Stansbury Jr. (aged 19) harmed nobody. He did not commit a crime. He was shot once and killed. He was not armed. Timothy Stansbury Jr. was black. Sean Bell (aged 23) harmed nobody. He did not commit a crime. Sean and his friends were shot at a total of 50 times. Sean Bell was shot and killed. He was not armed. Sean Bell was black. Amadou Diallo (aged 23) harmed nobody. He did not commit a crime. He was shot 19 times and killed. He was not armed. Amadou Diallo was black. Aaron Campbell (aged 25) harmed nobody. He did not commit a crime. Aaron Campbell was shot and killed. He was not armed. Aaron Campbell was black. Victor Steen (aged 17) harmed nobody. He did not commit a crime. He was tazed and purposely run over by a police officer in a car. He was killed. He was not armed. Victor Steen was black. Eugene Steven Washington (aged 27) harmed nobody. He did not commit a crime. He was shot once and killed. He was not armed. Steven Washington was black. Wendell Allen (aged 20) harmed nobody. He was shot and killed. He was not armed. Wendell Allen was black. Travares McGill (aged 16) harmed nobody. He did not commit a crime. He was shot 3 times and killed. He was not armed. Travares McGill was black. Kendrec McDade (aged 19) harmed nobody. He did not commit a crime. He was shot and killed. He was not armed. Kendrec McDade was black. Eric Garner (aged 43) harmed nobody. He was choked to death by police officers. He was unarmed. Eric Garner was black.”

- (via lovemenendawit)

ladyknightthebrave:

thedarklingprincess:

hipsterlibertarian:

If you would feel ok taking a dog away from a young girl who is confined to a wheel chair, fining her family if they objected, and then killing the dog, there may be a place for you in city government in Moreauville, Louisiana!

On October 13, the village voted to ban pit bulls and Rottweilers.

A letter was sent out to owners saying that if they didn’t get rid of them by December 1, then they would be taken for “further disposition.”

The dog pictured above is a pit bull named Zeus. He is owned by a girl named O’Hara Owens, whose neck problems require her to wear a brace and use a wheel chair. Zeus has never been accused of any aggressive behavior, and he’s a huge comfort to O’Hara:

"If anything ever happened to him, I would just shut down," she said. […] She says Zeus acts as a sort of "therapy dog," providing love and support for her and her other brothers and sisters.

"I can sit here if I’m in pain, he comes and he notices it before I even make any noise," she said.

O’Hara’s family says they will not surrender Zeus, to which Moreauville Alderman Penn Lemoine replies that the village government will take the dog by force, fine the family, and kill Zeus:

We asked Lemoine about dog attacks…

"There have been, but I don’t think they’re documented," he said.

And, if they plan to kill the dogs they collect on December 1…

"I’d rather not elaborate on that," he said.

"Is that what it is? Are you going to kill the dogs?" asked reporter, Brooke Buford.

"If that’s what the ordinance says, then that’s what it says," Lemoine responded.

However, Lemoine did admit that the town might reconsider in the face of enough uproar, so O’Hara’s family created a petition for exactly that purpose. If you wouldn’t feel ok taking a dog away from a young girl who is confined to a wheel chair, fining her family if they objected, and then killing the dog, you can sign that petition here.

Hopefully, the ordinance will be overturned. I hope and think it will, thanks to the media attention and public outcry over this patently ridiculous law. But breed-specific legislation like this is not an isolated incident, and it is not ok. Learn more about this cruel abuse of animals—and liberty—here.

OKAY GUYS THIS PETITION NEEDS AT LEAST 20000 MORE SIGNATURES
THE BAN IS IMPLEMENTED TODAY/TOMORROW.

DON’T

JUST

SCROLL

PAST

IT LITERALLY TAKES 5 SECONDS TO SIGN.

needs about 12,000 signatures GO SIGN IT

An anonymous reader writes: Scientific journal publishers have been under pressure recently by both scientists and the public to relax their restrictive rules on the sharing of information. Now, Macmillan has announced that its Nature Publishing Group will make all research papers free to read. This will require the use of proprietary viewing software, but it's a step in the right direction. "Initial reactions to the policy have been mixed. Some note that it is far from allowing full open access to papers. "To me, this smacks of public relations, not open access," says John Wilbanks, a strong advocate of open-access publishing in science and a senior fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri. 'With access mandates on the march around the world, this appears to be more about getting ahead of the coming reality in scientific publishing. Now that the funders call the tune and the funders want the articles on the web at no charge, these articles are going to be open anyway,' he says. But Peter Suber, director of the Office for Scholarly Communication at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says that the program is a step forward in that it eliminates the six-month embargo that NPG demands for free archiving of manuscripts."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

dunflower:

satanswaitinbitch:

dunflower:

december starts tomorrow, u know what that means

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN

merry christmas fuckboys

Representative Patricia Todd, the only out lesbian in the Alabama State Legislature, had a plan to get attention for a bill that would ban discrimination against LGBT state employees: Name it the “Tim Cook Economic Development Act.” Apple didn't like the name as much as she did.

In February 2014, a teenager who goes by the name Charmeleon, channeled her love for her cat Tamaki by building a fort in the beloved feline’s image. “I made him a little kitty snow fort and I think he likes it as much as I do.”, even though she complained a little bit about the effort she had to put into it “I spent like an hour on this and I’m so tired now”. Very meta.

photos by Charmeleon

via Tastefully Offensive

Stephen Hawking’s brain may be lightyears ahead of ours, but the computer system that helped the theoretical physicist communicate his brilliant thoughts to the world had long been stuck in the past at over 20 years old. Now he’s gotten an upgrade complete with modern text-prediction capability so that he can communicate more effectively and discover what it’s like to try to teach text prediction that you never, ever mean to say “ducking.”

Intel Labs has been working with Hawking for three years to develop the new Assistive Context Aware Toolkit system, which allows him to type twice as fast as before with SwiftKey text prediction and offers a tenfold improvement in performing other tasks like web browsing and email. Hawking has needed the assistive speech system for much of his life due to motor neuron disease, and The Next Web reports that he hopes the new ACAT will help others like him around the world:

Medicine has not been able to cure me, so I rely on technology to help me communicate and live. Intel has been supporting me for almost 20 years, allowing me to do what I love every day. The development of this system has the potential to improve the lives of disabled people around the world and is leading the way in terms of human interaction and the ability to overcome communication boundaries that once stood in the way.

To that end, Intel is making the software free and open-source. So, it’s accessible to any of the 3 million people who suffer from similar diseases or quadriplegia and can be tailored to specific needs with different gestures like blinking or eyebrow movements. No matter Hawking changes the world with science using his new, faster capabilities, he’s already changing it plenty for others who need systems like ACAT.

(via The Next Web, image via NASA HQ)

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The case is officially closed on what's being called the oldest forensic investigation in history. A new genetic analysis is providing incontrovertible evidence that the skeleton found under a parking lot in Leicester belonged to the king, while uncovering new truths about his appearance and lineage.

Read more...

Imagine this: you are a child from California who loves the crap out of some bugs—so much so that, at the tender age of six, you know what the word “entomologist” means. One day you find the coolest book ever about insects, and it’s only after you finish reading it that you turn it over and find it’s part of a series of books “for boys.” You are a girl. This makes you unhappy.

That’s what happened to Parker Dains of Milpitas, California, when she read Biggest, Baddest Book of Bugs, published by an imprint of ABDO Publishing as part of a series called Biggest, Baddest Books for Boys. Other books in the series include Beasts, Monsters, Dinosaurs, Pirates, and Warriors. Yup, because there have never been girl dinosaurs in history. Not even clever ones.

Dains, however, is absolutely a clever girl, because rather than internalize something terrible about how her interests are not conducive to her gender or vice versa, she instead decided to enlist the help of her parents in writing a letter to ABDO Publishing. It read as follows:

Dear Publishers: I am a 6-year-old girl and I just read the ‘Biggest, Baddest Book of Bugs.’ I really enjoyed the section on Glow in the Dark bugs and the quizzes at the end. When I saw the back cover title, it said ‘Biggest Baddest Books for Boys’ and it made me very unhappy. It made me very sad because there’s no such thing as a boy book. You should change from ‘Biggest, Baddest Books for Boys’ into ‘Biggest, Baddest Books for Boys and Girls’ because some girls would like to be entomologists too.

ABDO Publishing took Dains’ words to heart and quickly responded to her letter, telling her that the next books in their series would no longer contain the words “For Boys” in the title and would instead simply be known as the Biggest Baddest Books.

“You brought up a very good point: there should certainly be a ‘Biggest, Baddest Books for Boys’ for everyone. After all, girls can like ‘boy’ things too!” their response letter read. Last month the publishing house also sent Dains and her family special advance copies of the new series, which contain books about ghosts, storms, caves, flight, and space. These new titles will be available for purchase in January 2015.

It’s worth pointing out that women read fiction at a much higher rate than men do, and both publishers and educators often have a much harder time attracting young boys to reading, which can affect their academic success—so it might concern some people to see a book which was once being marketed towards boys change its colors so easily. However, the UK-based Let Books Be Books campaign believes gendered marketing causes more problems than it solves by restricting children at a very early age, and asks publishers not to label books as either for boys or for girls.

“Do we really want to tell children that certain stories are off-limits? That robots, trucks and adventure are strictly for the boys, and butterflies, cakes and friendship are girls-only themes?” their FAQ reads. “Separating stories and activities in this way sends harmful messages to children that only certain interests are acceptable, and also creates an unrealistic division between boys and girls. There is far more variety of personality and interests among boys or girls than there is between them.”

“What of the reluctant reading boy, who is reluctant because he would prefer family or pony stories to snot and football, but daren’t pick up a ‘pink book’?” the FAQ also notes.

In the meantime, Parker Dains has certainly been inspired by her success in lobbying against gender labels, and plans to be an “advice-giver” or an artist when she grows up. “I think it was so awesome and I even got a letter,” she told the Milpitas Post, while apparently bouncing on a trampoline. “They took my advice. I am going to be the best advice giver.”

(via The Guardian)

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The wait is almost over! Studio Khara — new owners of the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime franchise — have announced that they will finally be remastering the classic '90s TV series in HD for the show's first-ever Blu-ray release.

Read more...

Twitter has announced an overhaul to its reporting and blocking systems, both in-app and behind-the-scenes.

Starting today we’re rolling out an improved way to flag abusive Tweets. See how it works. https://t.co/Yf6cStz0z1

— Twitter Support (@Support) December 2, 2014

According to Twitter Support, the new process is “much more mobile-friendly, require[s] less initial information, and, overall, make[s] it simpler to flag Tweets and accounts for review,” particularly for those who just observe abusive behavior but aren’t the direct recipients (finally). The social media giant also promises that improvements on the back-end will improve their reported Tweet review system.

With this new reporting process, once you click “This user is abusive,” you’re given the following options:

• Impersonation
• Private information
• Harassment
• Self-harm or suicide

Then, you choose whether the abuse is aimed at yourself or someone else. The app then asks about the nature of the abuse:

• Being disrespectful or offensive
• Harassing me
• Threatening violence or physical harm

You’re then given the option to include further information, and the report is sent.

This is far superior to Twitter’s current abuse reporting system, which will only let you report abuse perpetrated at you personally—often meaning you have to spend extra time and energy reading and re-reading horrible tweets. The current reporting system also asks for your full name, e-mail, and location, which is obviously incredibly worrisome for anyone already subject to massive online harassment.

Twitter will also now allow you to see the list of users whom you’ve already blocked, and those users will be unable to access your profile. IP banning would still be more effective in this instance (since any user can simply log out of their Twitter account and view a public Twitter profile), but one step at a time; and they do say they’ll be “adding more controls and features to this page in the coming months.”

Currently, the changes are only available to a select few (we’re assuming Anita Sarkeesian is on that list), but should be rolled out to the general Twitter public in the next few weeks.

Twitter also says they’ll be adding “additional user controls, further improvements to reporting and new enforcement procedures for abusive accounts” in the coming months. What further changes would you like to see on Twitter?

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Hatanaka, a Japanese manufacturer specializing in highly realistic plastic food replicas for restaurants, recently entered the fashion business with their line of food replica jewelry and accessories. Among the company’s offerings: a delicious soba noodle necklace, a bacon belt, and a spaghetti and sauce hairband. Hatanaka has English language ordering instructions on their website.

photos via Hatanaka

via Spoon & Tamago

mvgl:

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air 2x09 - “Cased Up” (November 11, 1991)

The NFL will not discipline the St. Louis Rams players who held up their hands as a gesture of solidarity with protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, prior to Sunday's win over the Oakland Raiders.

pants: PARKER GET ME PICTURES OF SPIDER-MAN DOIN' IT WITH SOME KIND OF LIZARD GUY OR MAYBE A GUY WITH CRAZY METAL ARMS
pants: AND DON'T COME BACK INTO THIS BUILDING UNTIL YOU'VE GOT PICTURES OF MAYBE SPIDER-MAN 69-ING WITH ANOTHER GUY WEARING AN ANIMAL OR INSECT THEMED COSTUME
pants: DON'T YOU TALK BACK TO ME PARKER I KNOW SPIDERS AREN'T INSECTS NOW GO OUT THERE AND GET ME PICTURES OF SPIDER-MAN BLOWING MAYBE A CLONE OF HIMSELF

rubyknits:

postracialcomments:

Denver Police seize tablet, delete video of brutal arrest. But it had backed up to “the cloud”

Late in August, Levi Frasier saw a violent scene unfolding on the street before him. So he decided to use his tablet to record it.

As plain-clothed men repeatedly punch a Latino man in the face, they can be heard shouting: “Spit the drugs out! Spit the drugs out!”

In the background, a woman is screaming “stop” in Spanish. Two uniformed officers rush up and help restrain the man — and knock the feet out from beneath the visibly pregnant 25-year-old. She lands on her stomach and face.

Some 55 seconds later, someone shouted “camera”.

A police officer stormed up to the witness, who was white, snatching his device from his hands and threatens him with arrest.

“When he took it, I said, ‘Hey! You can’t do that. You need a warrant for that!’ and he said, ‘What program did you take the video with? Where is that?’” Frasier later told Fox 31 News.

The police officer proceeded to search through his files.

“The first officer that comes up to ask me about my witness statement brings me to the police car and says we could do this the easy way or we could do this the hard way,” Fraser said.

“It was survival mode. It was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to make it out of here. Not going to go to jail today for something I didn’t have anything to do with,’” Frasier said.

When police eventually returned his tablet, the video evidence was gone.

“I couldn’t believe it. My heart dropped,” Frasier said. “I know I just shot that video, like it’s not on there now?”

Frasier had forgot he’d set his tablet to automatically upload files to the “cloud”, external storage services fed by mobile communications devices such as 4G phone and Wi-Fi links.

source

The FBI has now started an investigation into the case. x

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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While you probably know Terry Crews from Brooklyn 99, Everybody Hates Chris or his time playing in the NFL, you might be less familiar with his work as one of the most progressive and thoughtful voices in gender criticism.

Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.

For hanging a wreath on a steel door, we like the WPH-SM or WPH-LG magnets best.  These hooks are made with neodymium magnets inside a water resistant, plastic housing.  They are specifically designed for holding a weight on a vertical surface like a steel door.  Their rubbery contact surface provides enough friction to help prevent sliding down the door. We show both of these in the short video clip below.  We found that the smaller WPH-SM magnet was just barely enough to hold a good-sized, 4 lb wreath.  In a protected space behind a storm door, this might be enough. The extra strength of the larger WPH-LG felt more secure.  If it’s windy, consider this size.

In Q3 2014, IDC notes that Google shipped 715,500 Chromebooks to U.S. schools while Apple shipped 702,000 iPads. Thus, Apple's iPad has lost its lead over Google's line of Chromebook laptops in the U.S. education market as Google shipped more devices to schools last quarter. While analysts say [registration required] that this advantage for Google's Chromebooks can be attributed to their low cost, the presence of a physical keyboard has also been seen as an important factor.