firehose

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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City leaders in Ferguson, Missouri, faced heightened tensions on Tuesday after an early morning fire destroyed a makeshift memorial honoring the black teenager killed last month by a white police officer.

tastefullyoffensive:

[iamnoman] (video)

Rising out of California's Mojave Desert are the Bristol Mountains, nearly 4,000 feet of rock blocking easy passage through the scorching desert. For decades, Route 66 and the Santa Fe Railway have had to bend south, acquiescing to the mountains' height. But in the 1960s, at the peak of atomic age, we had a plan to blast through the mountains once and for all — with nuclear bombs, of course.

Keith Olbermann turned his EVISCERATIN' blade on Derek Jeter on Tuesday and made some incisive points: This prolonged farewell tour, which has been as much about selling crap as it has about honoring Jeter, is extremely gross. And the collective insistence on keeping Jeter in the lineup has surely hurt the Yankees this season.

This overarching narrative that Jeter ISN'T THE BEST EVER YEAH I SAID IT is a bit silly, though. Who's Olbermann arguing with? Jorge Posada? Modern-day Yankees fans who, like any generation of diehards, overvalue the great they grew up with? Olbermann goes to great lengths to shoot down a Greatest Ever argument that, as far as I can tell, very few people are making. A noisy minority exaggerate Jeter's legacy, and of course they do. It's his last hurrah and he plays in New York, where everything gets magnified to the point of insufferableness. This is like arguing with people who compliment a guy at his funeral (although, as Olbermann fairly points out, Jeter is not dead, despite what his treatment might suggest.)

That said, Olbermann ends the whole thing with "YEAH JEETS," so we're good.

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One of the most startling things about last Saturday's episode of Doctor Who was the brief glimpse of a certain Dalek-fighting badass with a chainsaw sword, in a montage of galactic criminals. But just who is Abslom Daak? And why is his appearance on the television show such a big deal?

Read more...

The ballast on NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory entry-descent-landing (MEDLI) system is very important for science in that, without it, the spacecraft wouldn’t be able to put robots and other heavy objects safely on the surface of another planet. However, it’s not actually very useful to science in that it’s a bunch of extra weight on a spacecraft that could be better used for scientific equipment. That’s where you and your brilliant idea come in.

The MEDLI ejects about 330 pounds of mass before entering Mars’ atmosphere and another 330 pounds during its in-atmosphere descent to shift the craft’s center of balance and make a safe landing as it did with the Curiosity rover. In the future, NASA wants to make sure that mass is pulling its own weight in the science department, so they’re offering $20,000 to the person who comes up with the best idea for science experiments that could be carried out with the ejected mass.

The best part is you don’t even have to be able to carry out your plan. All they’re asking for is a written proposal of your idea with diagrams where applicable, and tons of people have already answered the call. Here’s what they’re looking for as written on the contest page on InnoCentive:

NASA is looking for creative yet practical ideas to find a dual purpose for Balance mass (“dead weight”) that is jettisoned from Mars landers like the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) to balance the spacecraft during entry and landing. Payloads replacing Balance mass should perform some type of scientific or technological function adding to our knowledge base while closely matching the volume and weight characteristics of the original Balance mass. Ideas are welcomed from all disciplines.

You’ve got until November 21 to submit your plan, so go ahead and check out the details on NASA’s new “Solve” website for crowdsourcing solutions to problems in space travel, and then get cracking.

(via Geek.com, image via NASA)

Previously in life on Mars

• MAVEN is now in orbit around Mars and studying its climate change
• NASA’s new Boeing and SpaceX contracts should help us get to Mars
• The Mars Opportunity rover had to have its memory wiped

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Yesterday, the YouTube community was rightfully disgusted by ex-Big Brother housemate Sam Pepper’s latest video, “Fake Hand Ass Pinch Prank,” where he sexually harasses women in the street and attempts to pass it off as a prank. Today, Pepper has issued something that is, I think, supposed to be an apology; but is actually just self-congratulatory back-pedalling.

We gave you all the details about Pepper’s “Fake Hand Ass Pinch Prank” video and backlash over in this article, but the Cole’s Notes are these: Pepper approached women on the street and sexually assaulted them by pinching them without consent. The YouTube community, most of the internet, and any human being with decency were understandably appalled by the video and the way in which it perpetuated rape culture.

After a #ReportSamPepper hashtag, a viral open letter, and huge media attention, YouTube did eventually remove Pepper’s original ass-pinching video for violating their policy on sexual content. YouTube has not, it’s worth noting, removed any of Pepper’s similar videos, in which he also sexually assaults women. You know, like “How To Sexually Harass Make Out with Strangers,” where he coerces women to make out with him; and “How to Sexually Harass Pick Up Girls with a Lasso,” in which he physically restrains women on the street.

Despite its unavailability on YouTube, Pepper has uploaded the original video to Facebook, so people can still watch it. In addition to the original video, Pepper has now uploaded two more videos as follow-ups to the original; and here’s where things become even more the worst than they already are.

In Pepper’s first follow-up, he gets a female friend of his to carry out the same ass pinching prank on unsuspecting men in the street. This video, and the repost of his original video, end with a disclaimer, stating that they are “staged and scripted” as “part of a bigger picture.”

In his third video, which I refuse to embed because I don’t want to give this guy any more money or views than he’s already received, Pepper speaks for six straight minutes about “why” (retroactively, of course) he made the first video. To save you having to watch it, here’s the breakdown of his explanation.

First, Pepper clarifies that “all the videos were staged and scripted. It goes without saying you can’t go ’round touching people’s bums without asking.” Unfortunately, it does not go without saying. You absolutely have to say that it’s not okay to touch people without asking, especially in a video during which it definitely appears that you are touching people without asking just to earn laughs and video views.

After speaking about sexual abuse statistics for both men and women, Pepper then tells a story about how a male friend of his was assaulted in a relationship, and goes on to talk about how men are also frequent victims of sexual abuse. In all other cases, I would be glad that someone is calling attention to the fact that patriarchal views on gender roles harm all genders; but sadly, in this case, it reads like an MRA crying “But bad things happen to men, too!” Because Pepper has never heard of irony, he goes on to complain about how uncomfortable he’s felt at conventions when female fans have grabbed his ass without permission. Hmm, then perhaps you should refrain from posting videos normalizing the violation of personal space?

Pepper says that we “should be offended by” sexual harassment, and that he feels like it’s “nice to see how society is finally catching up on how this can affect women.” He says that his first two videos are the result of “want[ing] to do something that could highlight the difference between abuse towards a woman, and abuse towards a man, by doing a social experiment with you as the unwitting participants at the heart of the experiment.” Pepper says that he used sexual harassment in the experiment so that he could “pass it off as a prank, pretend it’s harmless, and watch all you guys go crazy in the comments. And I’m so glad you did. I’m happy that I live in a society where the honor of a woman is protected at all costs.”

I would much rather live in a society where a woman’s “honor” didn’t have to be protected, and instead people just didn’t sexually harass other people, but hey. That’s me.

The real crux of his experiment, according to Pepper, was to show that “in many cases, people will be outraged at an act aimed towards a woman, but then just laugh it off when it’s a man. I don’t want to turn off a light on a very real and scary issue that women face; I just wanted to shine a light towards an otherwise dark corner: abuse on men.” Pepper continues by talking about how harmful society’s expectations of masculinity can be to men; how it stops them from asking for help, or from expressing themselves fully. For a minute, his video actually echoes Emma Watson’s HeForShe speech at the UN, and it’s the only part of the video I can truly appreciate. Even if I think he’s lying about the original intent of his first video, there’s no doubt that this point is both salient and important.

But the fact remains that Pepper has many, many other videos in which he harasses women, and these “male version” and “apology” videos only popped up after all of this media backlash. SEX+ YouTuber Laci Green, who wrote the initial open letter to Pepper (which has over 100,000 cosigners, including Wil Wheaton, Hank Green, Tyler Oakley, Vi Hart, ALB, Meg Turney, Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart, and more) spoke out on Twitter about Pepper’s “reveal” videos in her usual eloquent way.

Call it a “prank” or an “experiment”, if you touch someone w/o consent, and promote that as comedy, you are part of the problem. @SamPepper

— Laci Green (@gogreen18) September 23, 2014

I have a hard time believing, that had there not been such incredible backlash, that a “big reveal” would have been made at all. @SamPepper — Laci Green (@gogreen18) September 23, 2014

I’m grateful for the acknowledgement that sexual harassment is serious! Here’s to no more videos violating people in the future. @SamPepper

— Laci Green (@gogreen18) September 23, 2014

(PS: @SamPepper has made MANY videos violating women over the years, so this video isn’t the only point of concern. Kthxluvyabye.) — Laci Green (@gogreen18) September 23, 2014

(PPS: Since writing my open letter, I’ve received multiple scared emails from women @SamPepper has harassed & assaulted at conferences.)

— Laci Green (@gogreen18) September 23, 2014

.@sampepper Assault is upsetting Sam, and we really want you to stop treating people like this. It’s that simple. This isn’t the first time. — Laci Green (@gogreen18) September 23, 2014

.@sampepper You’re capable of treating people better. Aside of your “big reveal”, I really hope you get that, and that you believe it too!

— Laci Green (@gogreen18) September 23, 2014

On point.

Here’s the fact of the matter: Pepper has made numerous videos in which he harasses women on the street. This “explanation” of his original video as a social experiment smacks of damage control; a band-aid video he made in response to the sudden retaliation against his “non-prank.” Pepper hasn’t posted similar “explanations” for any of his other videos in which he harasses women; I don’t believe we would be seeing this “explanation” were it not for the massive media backlash against Pepper over the course of the last twenty-four hours.

Even if I’m wrong, and Pepper is being completely genuine here (something I highly doubt given his track record and Green’s tweets), that first video – when viewed alone – still props up rape culture. That first video, and all of Pepper’s other harassing videos, normalizes street harassment and sexual violence. It is part of a larger problem in which people think that violating someone’s personal space is funny; that if women don’t want to be approached on the street, maybe they shouldn’t have dressed that way; that if you can’t laugh off abuse, then you don’t have a sense of humor.

There’s no doubt that people of all genders are the victims of sexual abuse, and that gender bias and the way in which we perceive both “masculinity” and “femininity” creates a binary that is harmful to everyone. If that had truly been the point of Pepper’s first video (stated right off the bat), and if he’d never posted anything else ever that featured him sexually harassing women, I might have been able to support him. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and I still think Pepper is a harasser who doesn’t deserve your views. And that’s that.

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heliolisk:

listening to your favorite song as it gets closer to the chorus

senseis:

badgoku14:

???????????

aubreylstallard:

via SSK

stoleyogirl:

I don’t care if this isn’t your blog type, if you don’t reblog this I’m judg-

disordinary:

my scary pumpkin.

thugpvssion:

"Forget this stick. Square up Mickey."

Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens, 1617

"I'll get all conspiratorial on you," she told the publication. "I'm just going to throw this out: The mainstream media is funded by pharmaceutical companies."

General Motors' 112-year-old luxury car division, founded in Detroit and named for the city's founder, is moving its headquarters to New York. Cadillac, which has been steadily losing sales to its German rivals, wants to get closer to its ideal buyers. Executives and marketing staffers will set up shop in a loft office in Manhattan's trendy SoHo neighborhood starting next year.

prguitarman:

I want to believe

grrspit:

ipomoeaj:

jean-luc-gohard:

the-goddamazon:

We know why.

Don’t forget Charlie Sheen. He’s been arrested for domestic violence at least six times and shot a woman. With a gun. And he’s still got a career.

Sean Penn tied Madonna to a chair and beat her. Fuck him. Fuck all of them.

Michael Fassbender

Matthew Fox

John Lennon

Paul McCartney

Ringo too I’m pretty sure

Phil Spector, although he’s now in jail for killing a lady he beat on Ronnie Spector for years and still got into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Axl Rose

Vince Neil

Sean Penn

Charlie Sheen

Jim Morrison tried to set fire to his girlfriend

Stephen Segal

Tommy Lee

Ozzy Osbourne

Mickey Rourke

Bill Murray

Gary Busey

Tom Sizemore

Christian Slater

James Caan

Josh Brolin

Edward Furlong

I could go on.

The point isn’t that the men on the left don’t deserve everything bad they have coming to them.  The point is where the fuck is all the outrage when the men on the right do it.  So many of our pop culture heroes are abusers and nobody seems to care.

Like, even if we’re gonna stick to the NFL, Ben Roethlisberger patiently sat out his six game suspension for rape and continued on with his career with little outrage. 

If we’re really going to care now about ostracizing perpetrators of domestic violence, we got a lotta slack to pick up.