djempirical

Scully is not having any of your shit. #xfiles #paperclip

Original Source

I can barely stand how awesome this series of pictures by Andy McDonald is. Honestly, Note: I want an actual cartoon special devoted to an all-supervillain '80s b-ball team asap. Note 2: I may never stop staring at the picture of Cobra Commander. Honestly, I may need to get a tattoo.

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matthewvett:

So in a forum thread, someone commented that Samus’s canonical height and weight of 6’3” and 198 pounds were impossible for a woman.  This is Connie Price-Smith, a shot putter.  She’s 6’3”, 210 pounds, and appears to be in tremendous shape and physically fit.  She’s also a fou-time Olympian.  So if someone says that Samus’s body type isn’t realistic, just show them Connie Price-Smith.

The white police officer who killed Michael Brown has resigned from the Ferguson Police Department, his attorney said Saturday, nearly four months after the fatal confrontation with the black 18-year-old that fueled protests in the St. Louis suburb and across the nation. Wilson said he has a clean conscience because "I know I did my job right." Brown's shooting was the first time he fired his gun on the job, he said.

A woman's body was found Wednesday in thick brush near Julian, about a half-mile from a campground where a 75-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease went missing nearly two months ago, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department said. The clothing the deceased woman was wearing resembles what Sally Estabrook was wearing when she was reported missing from the Pinezanita RV Park & Campgrounds, sheriff's homicide Lt. John Maryon said.

coffeeandniall:

R.I.P. DeAndre Joshua

y’all are we just not going to talk about this? this 20 year old was found murdered inside a car at the same apartment complex Mike Brown was killed in front of. he had been shot in the head & set on fire. he was the best friend of Dorian Johnson—the guy who was with Mike Brown when he was killed & key eyewitness. y’all think this is a coincidence? mainstream media has barely covered it; there’s almost no information; it’s unclear whether an investigation is actually even happening and if it is, what the fuck it’s revealing. y’all seen the reports going around of how many KKK members there probably are in the ferguson police department. this doesn’t sound outside their ballpark. we need to boost this, to draw attention to the strategic murder of this young man, and, god, demand some kind of safety measures be taken for not only the leading figures of the movement in ferguson but their loved ones as well—because apparently it’s fucking open season on black people here.

[x] [x]

BUTT BUTT BUTT BUTT

It's a rivalry, so I don't understand why there's no giant, bronze butt trophy.

The best part of watching the BUTT Bowl is spotting BUTTs in the wild. It's pretty difficult! The BUTTs move fast, and sometimes what you think is a BUTT is actually a TTBU, a BUBU, or a TTTT.

Here's one wild BUTT. Feel free to send us your own.

Sports proposals are pretty played out, but every once in a while, someone finds a new angle and it's actually impressive. Check out what former Southern player Calvin Mills pulled off at the Bayou Classic:

So a dude just proposed using the Southern band. pic.twitter.com/4ImRrnb07Q

— Bill Connelly (@SBN_BillC) November 29, 2014

That's pretty cool. And there was even a family member waiting in a giant box to hand off the ring:

And, thankfully, the subject of the proposal didn't have her own "N O" band at the ready. She said yes:

So this dude really did just use Southern university band to propose. Well at least he got a yes because that was live TV

— Kaylynn (@KayTW_Sykes) November 29, 2014

Not bad.

Fuschia Game Boy Pocket ⊟

This attractive modded handheld comes from Katie (modded by JoeBleeps). Love the custom backlight and buttons! I wonder if it’s distracting at all to play something on a Game Boy with one of these colored backlights?

Oh, and remember that hdmyboy device we posted about, which lets you run Game Boy games through HDMI to your HDTV? It’s on Kickstarter now!

BUY Pokemon Omega Ruby / Alpha Sapphire, upcoming games

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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Please adjust your dress

Stores everywhere were chaos as usual this Friday, but space has got us beat for epicness. NASA took Black Friday and used it as the jumping-off point for their second annual #BlackHoleFriday. Fun facts and awesome-in-the-truest-sense-of-the-word photos abounded.

It’s #BlackFriday, but for us, it’s the 2nd annual #BlackHoleFriday. Today, we’ll post pics & info about black holes pic.twitter.com/6npxklEw2N

— NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

Fun facts:

A black hole’s pull of gravity is so strong, no light escapes: http://t.co/j7YejD8yaK #BlackHoleFriday #BlackFriday pic.twitter.com/0HHvCovGZ2 — NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

Learn about the smallest known galaxy containing a supermassive black hole: http://t.co/MrLMS5l3sF #BlackHoleFriday pic.twitter.com/jv67LFARKu

— NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

Black holes aren’t empty holes at all! They’re a massive amount of matter packed in a tiny area #BlackHoleFriday pic.twitter.com/2tDuxhCgNM — NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

Black holes come in medium? @NASANuSTAR searches for right size http://t.co/T9cdeHTDpr #BlackHoleFriday #BlackFriday pic.twitter.com/oEbFcyTwh7

— NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

Have black hole questions? The Ask an Astrophysicist archive has answers! http://t.co/SJnYG02RNr #BlackHoleFriday pic.twitter.com/xmE5RC4P8E — AstrophysEdu@Goddard (@NASAUniverseEdu) November 28, 2014

Over #BlackFriday ads? See this @ChandraXray black hole infographic instead: http://t.co/bp11TjcNZ9 #BlackHoleFriday pic.twitter.com/goZrmgWp1b

— NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

#BlackHoleFriday mystery? Here’s some black hole mysteries @NASAWebbTelescp hopes to answer: http://t.co/kc5T2VTNrX pic.twitter.com/yQPf3OOeOZ — NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

#BlackHoleFriday mystery for #JWST: black hole and host galaxy relationships. http://t.co/NKSIcvOgNy #BlackFriday pic.twitter.com/SnQOb4z2p3

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebbTelescp) November 28, 2014

#BlackHoleFriday mystery for #JWST: what happens to nuclei in galaxy collisions? http://t.co/FYm5VAzefR #BlackFriday pic.twitter.com/VUKKiRIB9y — NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebbTelescp) November 28, 2014

#BlackHoleFriday mystery for #JWST: how do black holes form in galactic centers? http://t.co/kM5oG6nDAf #BlackFriday pic.twitter.com/NFpLRoiBqC

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebbTelescp) November 28, 2014

Funner photos:

Home from #BlackFriday? Black hole Sagittarius A* calls the Milky Way home: http://t.co/x3vD9Agmy0 #BlackHoleFriday pic.twitter.com/GBOhoMLK0F — NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

2 for 1 #BlackFriday deal! Actually, it’s 2 black holes merging into 1: http://t.co/ymZxzddNcv #BlackHoleFriday pic.twitter.com/AAHGgGShiG

— NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

Looking for a size large on #BlackFriday? Here’s a supermassive black hole: http://t.co/gGSwz1ZCVH #BlackHoleFriday pic.twitter.com/cEMoScMH1W — NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

#BlackFriday tiring? Maybe it’s snack time. Here’s a black hole eating a star http://t.co/73N2tUCjrp #BlackHoleFriday pic.twitter.com/tsRMRksfV1

— NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

This black hole naps amid chaos, like a post-sale #BlackFriday shopper: http://t.co/QutRlMlJtY #BlackHoleFriday pic.twitter.com/eVNhnjCnWy — NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

Bad #BlackFriday weather? Here’s turbulent winds of gas around a black hole: http://t.co/sttuSXbPKj #BlackHoleFriday pic.twitter.com/9Ep8zBsgOS

— NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

This black hole naps amid chaos, like a post-sale #BlackFriday shopper: http://t.co/QutRlMlJtY #BlackHoleFriday pic.twitter.com/eVNhnjCnWy — NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

And games!

Looking for a board game this #BlackFriday? Here’s a free black hole game: http://t.co/UNeAAeztws #BlackHoleFriday pic.twitter.com/5RcGp9GYBG

— NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

Need rescuing from #BlackFriday? Play ‘Black Hole Rescue’ now: [flash req'd] http://t.co/gvUbBA0qlC #BlackHoleFriday pic.twitter.com/NpNnGaxQgV — NASA (@NASA) November 28, 2014

Thanks for joining us for #BlackHoleFriday. We’ll keep hunting for black holes & studying them http://t.co/OfHaqEd5es pic.twitter.com/qILo4phe2a

— NASA (@NASA) November 29, 2014

(via Mashable)

Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

A 13-year-old boy reported missing four years ago was found behind a "false wall" in the suburban Atlanta home of his father and stepmother on Friday, according to police.

hiphopfightsplaque:

White officer kills black cop after mistaking him for criminal

An off-duty rookie cop chasing a suspected car thief in East Harlem with his gun drawn was shot and killed Thursday night (November 27, 2014) when an officer mistook him for a criminal.

"Police! Stop! Drop it!" cops from the 25th Precinct shouted at Omar Edwards, 25.

As he started to turn toward him - the gun still in his hand - an officer opened fire, sources said.

The officer involved in the shooting is white, Edwards is black and had no visible NYPD identification on him, sources said. It was unclear if Edwards identified himself.

"This is always a black cop’s fear, that he’d be mistaken for a [suspect]," a source said.

A Black Man is killed in the U.S. every 28 hours by police

*a Black PERSON
http://www.operationghettostorm.org

thepeoplesrecord:

The Malala you won’t hear about
October 16, 2014

Malala Yousafzai, the 17-year-old Pakistani activist, has won a well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize, putting her and her amazing, tragic story back in the spotlight. Per usual, nevertheless, the corporate media has taken this positive development and exploited it in the service of U.S. imperialism.

The corporate media loves talking about Malala’s remarkable bravery and strength in standing up for girls’ rights to education, and the brutality of the Taliban forces that tried to assassinate her on her school bus. Such coverage fuels its orientalist, neocolonialist narrative about “backward,” misogynist Muslims and their need for “white saviors,” thereby legitimizing Western imperialist interests in South and West Asia.

Malala’s Nobel victory can be appropriated by the U.S. political establishment to “prove” that its invasion, occupation and destruction of Afghanistan has “helped” its people. (As for the hundreds of thousands killed and injured in the process, well, those inconvenient exceptions aren’t part of this narrative.)

As Michael Parenti points out, while most people who win the Nobel “Peace” Prize do so for war-mongering and crimes against humanity (Henry Kissinger boasts one, for example, along with Barack Obomba himself), Malala actually deserves hers. This makes the exploitation even more grotesque.

Malala has devoted her life to fighting for education for children—a most noble and important cause. When she implored at the United Nations, “Let us pick up our books and our pens, they are the most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen, can change the world. Education is the only solution,” the Western intelligentsia ate it up like a voracious canine gobbling up its kibbles (on second thought, perhaps a vulture would have been a more apt choice for this simile).

Everyone can agree that education for children is a positive goal. By emphasizing that education is the only solution, the West can draw attention away from the very realmaterial concerns facing the vast majority of the world.

This oversight is by no means the fault of Malala. In that same speech, just before the above excerpt, she spoke of “a glorious struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism.” Two of these three things are endlessly emphasized throughout the corporate press. You can guess which one is excluded.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Malala Who Opposes Global Poverty

Roughly half of the world still lives on less than $2.50 per day. Around one-quarter of people live in extreme poverty, less than $1.25 a day. UNICEF estimates that 24,000 children under the age of five die each and every day because of poverty, meaning that “every 3.6 seconds one person dies of starvation. Usually, it is a child under the age of 5.” And, in many countries, poverty is getting worse.

Education certainly has a role in the fight against poverty, and it’s important that one learns, say, basic chemistry. (Malala was sitting in chemistry class when she was informed she had won the Nobel Prize.) But learning basic chemistry does not provide billions of impoverished people with food, clean water, and health care. That takes material, collective action.

Malala understands how poverty creates and perpetuates the very social and political ills against which she is fighting. She continuously stresses the importance of not just spreading education, but of directly combating poverty. Yet these calls fall on the selectively deaf ears of the Western media.

The press picks and chooses which of Malala’s messages are amplified—and which are silenced. It can hardly get enough of her insistence on the importance of “the philosophy of nonviolence I have learned from Gandhi, Bacha Khan and Mother Teresa.” The Western intelligentsia positively salivates upon hearing such messages, despite the fact (or because of it?) that Gandhi was a virulent racist and Mother Teresa had ties to Central and South American dictators.

Interestingly, many of the same people lauding the Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her advocacy of nonviolence also happily cheered on the violence of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The utter hypocrisy does not strike them. After all, it has always been much more useful to advocate a philosophy of nonviolence for individuals and oppressed groups than hegemons and states.

As much as it highlights Malala’s words on education and nonviolence, the U.S. corporate media never mentions the side of Malala that it doesn’t like, the side of Malala that doesn’t serve but rather challenges Western imperialist interests, the side of Malala that overtly opposes not just U.S. drone strikes but capitalism itself.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Malala Who Opposes Drones

On October 11, 2013, Malala met with Barack Obama in the Oval Office. The press could hardly have lauded the president more for taking the time out of his busy schedule to meet the 16-year-old activist, and for bringing his family with him.

What went much less reported was that at this meeting, Malala warned that U.S. “drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people.”

The White House, which, given its supposed investment in fighting terrorism, would presumably not be interested in spreading it further, left these comments out of its official statement.

Just a few weeks after this meeting, another Pakistani girl visited Washington to testify before Congress, and received much less media attention. Nabila Rehman was 8 years old when she was out in a field picking okra and her grandmother was eviscerated before her eyes by a U.S. drone strike. Seven children were also wounded, including family members.

Nabila’s brother Zubair, a 13-year-old who was injured in the US drone attack, told the five congress-people decent enough to show up, “I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer grey skies. Drones don’t fly when sky is grey.” The Rehman family’s story was so dreadful that the translator burst into tears while telling it to Congress.

Given such a horrific report, you’d think the U.S. government would express interest in learning from it to make sure random civilians are not again slaughtered by bombs falling from microscopic dots in the sky. Yet only five (out of 435) House members attended the hearing.

Al Jazeera writer Murtaza Hussein noted that, in a symbol of the “utter contempt in which the government holds the people it claims to be liberating, while the Rehmans recounted their plight, Barack Obama was spending the same time meeting with the CEO of weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.”

Clearly, stoking the military-industrial complex that creates the Predator drones that havemurdered and injured thousands of innocent civilians is a higher priority for the president of the United States than meeting the actual victims of what can only correctly be referred to as state terrorism.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Malala Who Opposes Capitalism

Last year, I wrote a brief article titled Malala Yousafzai, Spivak, Abu-Lughod and the White Savior Complex. I noted that Gayatri Spivak, in her classic article "Can The Subaltern Speak?" explained that colonialist powers justify their draconian, parasitic rule with the belief that they are “white men are saving brown women from brown men.”

In her well-known essay, "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?" Lila Abu-Lughod situated Spivak’s thesis in a contemporary setting, explaining how the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was justified with the exact same argument—the Bush administration was a group of overwhelmingly white leaders who consistently workedagainst women’s rights in their own country but now acted desperate to “save” Afghan women from Afghan men.

In his article Malala Yousafzai and the White Saviour Complex, journalist Assed Baig explored how this racist “white man’s burden” phenomenon is still alive and well, detailing the repugnant ways in which the West has exploited Malala Yousafzai’s amazing strength and bravery to support its interests.

Absent from many of these discussions, however, is that Malala herself is well aware of this manipulation. In a statement released on October 13, 2013, she defiantly declared that she is "not a Western puppet."

When discussing the way in which the neocolonialist West exploits and manipulates those working against oppression, one should be careful to establish that this is not done to them unwittingly. We are dealing with agents, individuals who understand the implications of their actions and change them accordingly. To forget this fact is, in a less overt way, to uphold the very paternalist, neocolonialist strictures we seek to destroy.

As Spivak reminds us, the subaltern indeed speaks—and not only speaks but resists oppressors. Articulated a bit differently, Arundhati Roy insisted, “There’s really no such thing as ‘the voiceless.’ There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.”

The attempt to deliberately silence Malala is not only evident in the way the U.S. corporate media ignores her criticism of U.S. drones; even more insidious is its complete disregard for the Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s politics. In March 2013, Malala sent this message to the congress of Pakistani Marxists:

First of all, I’d like to thank The Struggle and the IMT [International Marxist Tendency] for giving me a chance to speak last year at their Summer Marxist School in Swat and also for introducing me to Marxism and Socialism. I just want to say that in terms of education, as well as other problems in Pakistan, it is high time that we did something to tackle them ourselves. It’s important to take the initiative. We cannot wait around for any one else to come and do it. Why are we waiting for someone else to come and fix things? Why aren’t we doing it ourselves?

I would like to send my heartfelt greetings to the congress. I am convinced Socialism is the only answer and I urge all comrades to take this struggle to a victorious conclusion. Only this will free us from the chains of bigotry and exploitation.

This is the Malala the Western corporate media doesn’t like to quote. This is the Malala whose politics do not fit neatly into the neocolonialist, cookie-cutter frame of presentation. This is the Malala who recognizes that true liberation will take more than just education, that it will take the establishment of not just bourgeois political “democracy,” but ofeconomic democracy, of socialism.

When the courageous activist speaks of the importance of education and nonviolence, the West shouts her words loudly from the media mountaintops. When that same activist criticizes predator drones and, that most sacrosanct entity of all, capitalism, the silence is deafening.

Only the distinctive buzzing of U.S. killer drones can be heard, watching and bombing overhead, protecting empire and “freedom.”

Source

popular shared this story from FiveThirtyEight » DataLab | FiveThirtyEight.

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Dear Mona,

I watch no sports year-round. None. Zero. I know I am not alone. A few of my friends also watch no sports. So, what percentage of men in the USA watch no sports?

Fred, 45, Chester Springs, Pennsylvania

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Dear Fred,

You’re right that you’re not alone. For me, watching sports is like watching live-action role play, only with less imaginative costumes — I know there’s talent and culture involved, but it all seems bewilderingly irrelevant nonetheless. But there are a few differences between us, Fred: I work for ESPN (must remember to go back and delete that previous sentence); you presumably don’t. I’m a woman; you presumably are not.

So, I’m going to take your question and add one of my own — what percentage of men don’t watch sports and is that percentage different for women?

The answer to your question is that about 1 in every 14 adult men in the United States don’t watch nationally televised sports. Those are numbers from Stephanie DiVito, who conducts audience research for ESPN’s research and analytics group. Using data from Nielsen, DiVito found that 8 percent of men who own a TV didn’t watch any sports on national broadcast or cable networks in the third quarter of 2014. The average over the past four quarters was 7 percent.

Those men aren’t occasional viewers. They’re men who, like you, don’t watch a minute of any sports telecast (be it a sports event, commentary or sports news) either live or from a DVR within seven days of the original broadcast.

The figure is the same for women: On average over the past four quarters, 7 percent of adult women in the U.S. said they hadn’t watched any sports on TV. I’m every bit as odd as you are Fred, although that gender parity may come as a surprise to some editors of men’s magazines and stock photos.

I took a closer look to see which of us is more out of place in the U.S. — the 45-year-old man who doesn’t care to watch sports or the 27-year-old woman feels the same?

Even with an age breakdown, men and women are almost equally likely to not watch sports. Overall, younger U.S. TV owners are less likely to tune into sports than older viewers.

As always, though, the reality is not as simple as the chart would suggest. Ideally, I’d want to take into account how likely each of these groups are to watch any TV, let alone sports. But on the face of it, it does look like you’re slightly stranger than me. On average, 13 percent of U.S. women my age didn’t watch any sports over the past four quarters, compared to just 5 percent of men in your age group.

All of us sport-abstainers should get together and hang out — I’ve got a horrible feeling that once this article is published, my colleagues won’t want to spend as much time with me.

Hope the numbers help,

Mona

Have a question you would like answered here? Send it to dearmona@fivethirtyeight.com or @DataLab538.

You’ve unleashed the kraken, my friend.

I am excited for JP4, as I am excited for any movie that has dinosaurs in it, and that theme music gets me every time because I remember how beautiful it was to see that first film. The first film showed us dinosaurs as they’d never been seen, dinosaurs based on thorough research (though not without their faults— those raptors and dilophosaurus for instance) and it changed the way dinos were portrayed in media forever.

And this is why I am so, so upset with JP4. It’s showing us the same old green-skinned scaly monsters and totally ignoring DECADES of new developments. It’s ignoring the reason why the first film worked so well— it was something new, based on actual scientific research. People love innovation, and many love learning really neat science facts, and JP4 is in no way going to do either of those.

Now I have heard the arguments FOR the scaly green-skinned boring designs:

1. "But Abby, there’s an in-universe explanation, they have frog DNA! They’re just trying to stay consistent." Never, never never say “but there’s a canonical reason” for something that’s problematic, whether it’s naked, boring dinosaurs or offensive stereotypes or racism/sexism. Someone at some point made a conscious decision to make it so, it’s not some unchangeable law that must be adhered to. It’s been at least 20 years in-universe since the first movie, are we really supposed to believe they didn’t keep making developments in their cloning process? Remember how frog DNA fricked everything up by making the dinos able to reproduce? What if they changed it to bird DNA once it became apparent that birds and dinos were so closely related, and to stop them from changing sex? And beyond all that the important thing to remember here is that it doesn’t MATTER if they aren’t exactly supposed to be dinosaurs in-universe, people who watch this movie are going to see them as dinosaurs. They are going to come away from this film thinking the “feathers theory” is still some weird fringe science and REAL dinosaurs are still green and scaly and naked. Also calling “consistency” when the dinosaurs’ appearances were changed between films is hardly a steady argument.

2. "There’s no way we could know what they look like so why even bother, we can make them look however we want!!1!" This is you choosing to ignore the vast wealth of knowledge we DO have. Paleontologists aren’t just making wild guesses, sitting around thinking “whooa duuude what if they had feathers, wouldn’t that just be wild” we KNOW. We have FOSSIL EVIDENCE. Technology has progressed to a point that we can look at the same fossil we had 30 years ago and find countless more details we didn’t know were there, didn’t think to look for. We even know what COLOR some feathers were, we know there were feather mites that preyed on those feathers. Trackways tell us how they walked, how many walked, where they walked. Fossilized nesting sites give us clues on how they cared for their young. We know so much, there is no reason to ignore the incredible amount of research people have done just because we haven’t seen living, breathing non-avian dinosaurs with our own eyes, especially considering the fact that so many people don’t know about all the stuff we know, because public outreach movies like JP4 keep blatantly ignoring it.

3. "But feathered dinosaurs look stupid, like big chickens. They could never sell that to an audience!" Okay look. People are going to see JP4. If you make it look good, and you have Chris Pratt, and you have Chris Pratt on a motorcycle riding with some velociraptors, people will see this movie. And is a chicken the only bird anyone knows? Have you never heard of the bearded vulture? Or eagles, and the fact that they attack BEARS? Even small birds are a formidable opponent to a person. And their feathers make them look magnificent, not stupid. In order to design crowd-pleasing dinosaurs, we don’t need to strip them of their feathers, we need designers who know what they’re doing. The blog paleoillustration reblogs excellent paleo art from capable artists, a game called Saurian is being developed that is using incredible artists such as grimchild to create the most accurate and beautiful dinosaurs possible, Emily Willoughby is excellent at using bird influences to make realistic feathered dinosaurs (including one of my favorite depictions of Microraptor!)— feathered dinosaurs do not look stupid. Even if they look stupid to you, that doesn’t stop them from existing, and perhaps you should immerse yourself in the world of feathered dinosaurs some more and get used to it, because they are here to stay. You aren’t getting Pluto back, and you aren’t getting your naked monsters back, either. When good scientists are presented with theories that disprove old theories, they don’t wallow in nostalgia, they accept it and move forward.

4. "Why do you even care so much, geez, it’s just a movie" Nothing is ever “just a movie”. Even if you think you aren’t, you are affected by what you see in movies. We tend to believe what we see in movies, even some of the ridiculous stuff. Movies can be an excellent way to present science to people in an easy to digest format, as we saw with JP1. Sure, the science was ridiculous, but it got people interested in actual dinosaurs. JP4 will be the only exposure most people have to dinosaurs— and it is decades behind. People will keep chuckling to themselves when I draw them a dinosaur with feathers, asking “haha so you buy into the feather theory?” as if it’s something a scientist posited in a fit of insanity, totally unsupported by evidence. When people keep seeing naked dinosaurs in pop culture, they assume that must be the accepted idea of what they looked like, or else it would be changed. So I have to make a stink, so I can get the word out that Paleontologists and even Junior Paleontologists absolutely do not support the current portrayal of dinosaurs in the media. This way, we can get more movies such as Dinosaur Island which I very much look forward to seeing, and Saurian which I very much look forward to playing.

And why does learning about accurate dinosaurs matter? Why should we want to learn about these weird bird/reptiles that died millions of years ago? Because learning about the world we live in is important. Just as we want to figure out how we fit into the universe, we want to figure out how we fit on our own planet, where we came from, our life history. This isn’t just a bunch of sheltered nerds sitting around saying “Well actually…” in a nasally voice, it’s an entire branch of science whose accomplishments are being ignored because a bunch of nostalgic 20-somethings are afraid of change and think “feathers look stupid, like a chicken”

All this being said, I am still going to see it the day it comes out, in the best seats in the house. 

cccnnnfff:

rafi-dangelo:

Lisa Bloom, (Gloria Allred’s daughter) is an attorney, author, CNN legal analyst, and founder of general-practice law firm The Bloom Firm.  Let me just tell you it’s nice to see an actual lawyer reading McCulloch and his team for filth.  These words aren’t more valuable because she’s a white woman, but it’s certainly heartening to see white allies publicly denouncing that miscarriage of justice.

Y’all should follow her on twitter.

Really respect this series of tweets by Lisa Bloom. Got me asking a number of questions that I had not yet considered. 

heiferinternational:

Happy Friday, Tumblr! Please enjoy this pile of goats. :)

erdsthenerds:

femmewitchqueen:

queertodaygonetomorrow:

atane:

wristxrocket:

dear-drifter:

lilightfoot:

Remember.

his life was totally in danger.

^^^^

True story; this officer (John Pike) got a settlement of $38,000 because he said he got depressed after pepper spraying these kids. Oh, the depression wasn’t for feeling remorseful for pepper spraying a bunch of college kids peacefully protesting. He got depressed because he said since the media kept playing the video of him pepper spraying peaceful kids without cause, he got threats and didn’t feel safe. He didn’t feel safe. I’m not making that up. This motherfucker collected nearly 40 grand on worker’s comp after assaulting a bunch of college kids.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/23/pepper-spray-cop-settlement_n_4152147.html

This is beyond a fucking joke. Destroy the police.

Change the police. Make the police accountable. Hold the “balance of power” in check. Change policies. Educate civilians. Expose the truth. Make change. 

Over 100,000 Detroiters are at risk of losing their homes as the city sells off its stock of tax foreclosures. Young gentrifiers are buying the properties -- but some are queasy about it

“Having to kick people out takes all the fun out of owning a house.”

Oren Goldenberg, a 31-year-old filmmaker based in Detroit, could have bought a $500 house at the Wayne County tax auction this fall-- but having to evict a homeowner turned him off.

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galacticgas:

so this post had been taken down from ppl’s blogs and i felt like it was important

also this is the link gadravio used

Fox News

Pricey, possibly bomb-laden property no easy sell in New Hampshire Fox News FILE 2007: After an auction to empty chairs in August, marshals in New Hampshire are attempting to regroup and hire a professional auctioneer and the officials in the two towns owed substantial back taxes on the properties are more frustrated than ever. (AP). For sale: hilltop New Hampshire home, fine views, possibly booby-trappedThe Guardian Pricey, possibly bomb-laden property no easy sellNews & Observer all 40 news articles »