firehose

Courtney shared this story from Super Opinionated.

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schwit1 (797399) writes "The text of a 19-page, international trade agreement being drafted in secret was published by WikiLeaks as the transparency group's editor commemorated his two-year anniversary confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Fifty countries around the globe have already signed on to the Trade in Service Agreement, or TISA, including the United States, Australia and the European Union. Despite vast international ties, however, details about the deal have been negotiated behind closed-doors and largely ignored by the press. In a statement published by the group alongside the leaked draft this week, WikiLeaks said "proponents of TISA aim to further deregulate global financial services markets," and have participated in "a significant anti-transparency maneuver" by working secretly on a deal that covers more than 68 percent of world trade in services, according to the Swiss National Center for Competence in Research.

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An anonymous reader writes For better or worse, surveillance technology is becoming more common in the workplace. These tools are being used to measure and monitor employees, with the promise changing how people work. "Through these new means, companies have found, for example, that workers are more productive if they have more social interaction. So a bank's call center introduced a shared 15-minute coffee break, and a pharmaceutical company replaced coffee makers used by a few marketing workers with a larger cafe area. The result? Increased sales and less turnover." Of course, this kind of monitoring raises privacy concerns. "Whether this kind of monitoring is effective or not, it's a concern," said Lee Tien, a senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.

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invocator:

Fennec fox by floridapfe on Flickr.

tulipnight:

 Fennecs! by Tambako the Jaguar on Flickr.

lisaquestions:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

why-i-love-comics:

Catwoman #77 - “Waking Up On the Wrong Side of the Universe III”

written by Will Pfeifer

art by David Lopez & Alvaro Lopez 

That time that Catwoman kicked the crap out of half the Justice League :D

For some reason this does not bother me nearly as much as that time during Identity Crisis when Slade Wilson took out the Justice League.

Probably because this fight actually makes sense.

“Hey idiot, hurry up and get married!” Japan is up in arms about insensitive and sexist remarks made by male members of The Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly (the equivalent of a U.S. State Government Assembly) toward a female representative during her presentation earlier this week. She was speaking on issues of raising children in Japan.

Global warming and drastic effects in climate change are bad news for many aquatic life creatures. Emperor penguins were believed to be posed with the one the highest threat levels considering their nesting ground habits. They were considered philopatric, believed to return to their exact same nesting grounds to breed, but research from the University of Minnesota will soon have us rest assure that they are more willing to relocate then we previously thought.

Cover Oregon’s now-infamous, “violently adorable” TV ad with musician Laura Gibson is popping up all sorts of place, from HBO comedian John Oliver’s buzzy new show to … advertisements for a gay pride festival in Tacoma?

“My third grade teacher called my mother and said, ‘Ms. Cox, your son is going to end up in New Orleans in a dress if we don’t get him into therapy.’ And wouldn’t you know, just last week I spoke at Tulane University, and I wore a LOVELY green and black dress.”

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Laverne Cox, speaking at the University of Kentucky (via so-nyeo-shi-daze)

Anyone who doesn’t think that Laverne Cox is one of the most flawless women on the planet is simply wrong

(via thefingerfuckingfemalefury)

Saenz had been arrested for for acting strangely at a local grocery store and got into a scuffle with police during the arrest. Several hours later he was shot and killed by Officer Jose Flores. Flores claimed he used the Glock to subdue Saenz, because the tazer was used several times before with no effect. According to CLEAT (Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas) Flores was not found guilty of a crime because Saenz still posed a significant threat, despite the cuffs.

heroscafe:

Her name is Ella Thompson, and Mycroft Holmes calls her an idiot.

Bonus Gif:

imabeast78:

Dealing with the haters every year like

biomorphosis:

Wombats are second largest marsupials in Australia. Despite their size, they are fast runners and can run 40 miles per hour, but only for short distances. Their diet mainly consist of grasses and roots.

A so-called Christian heavy metal band whose frontman was convicted of attempting to hire a hitman to murder his estranged wife has admitted that it duped fans into believing that they were Christian in order to sell their music.

Benefit: It hurts when it hits you.

hodad

#soundstudies #onpoortaste

Before the performance, Mr Morris invited the audience to bring their drinks into the standing area in front of the stage and instructed them: “Clap or whoop when you like, and no shushing other people.”

But Dr Glowacki, a Royal Society Research Fellow, was so overcome during the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ he began lurching from side to side with his hands raised and whooping before attempting to crowd-surf, witnesses claimed.

Irritated by the distraction, audience members proceeded to physically eject the Bristol University academic from the area, in what Mr Morris claims is the first such incident at a classical concert since the 18th century.

Original Source

nprplays:

One of my favorite demos at E3

Drone films yacht fire (video).

ami-angelwings:

tupacbakaveli:

ami-angelwings:

summer-of-supervillainy:

Once upon a time, Stan Lee, a rabid misogynist, invented the Fantastic Four. I’m gonna be honest, the writing was pretty shitty, but the premise was awesome - a team full of superheroes with different powers and opinions about superheroism. A variety of relationships - siblings, friends, lovers. A pretty damn good rogues’ gallery and some decent adventures.

Overall, the team was pretty good, and defeated a ton of baddies in their early issues. Except for Sue Storm. Sue was undeniably the weakest link of the team. She spent her time crying, saying her powers were useless, and getting kidnapped by villain after villain.

This is not an exaggeration in any way.

Stan Lee wouldn’t give her any chance to shine. He kept writing her as an insecure, self-hating, ineffectual crybaby, and wouldn’t let her take credit for even her few victories. He couldn’t even think of any good uses for invisibility, for crying out loud.

Pictured: Sue not even getting any credit for beating up Doctor Doom.

She was a really lousy superhero, and a drag to read about. She didn’t get any good lines or get to do anything cool. So naturally, fans hated her guts. And they wrote in and told Stan Lee so.

What did he do in response?

Did he decide to take Sue off the team and stick to writing male characters because he couldn’t write women who weren’t offensive stereotypes? Nope.

Did he decide to put some effort into writing Sue as something besides an offensive stereotype? Hahaha no.

He did this:

That’s right, a fourth-wall-breaking mailbag issue where the readers learned that their mean, mean letters made Sue Storm cry, and they should just learn to appreciate her the way Stan Lee’s sockpuppets the rest of her team does!

So, why exactly should we continue to read the adventures of Sue Sadsack Storm?

You wanna see women kicking ass? Go watch women wrestling! Superhero comics aren’t about that sort of shit! I hope you picked up this action-packed superhero comic for something besides people doing cool shit with their superpowers, because Sue won’t be doing any of that! The guys will, though. 

Why is she even on the team if she’s not going to participate at all?

That’s right. We should read the adventures of Sue Storm because even though she doesn’t get to do any of the adventuring, her teammates value their relationships with her and she totally adds a lot to the team offscreen!

And also this one time she got to go invisible and toggle a switch in the middle of an exciting action sequence!

This reminds me of the arguments I’ve seen that fans just have to try harder to appreciate female characters as much as they appreciate male characters. It’s bullshit. Sue Storm was a shitty, shitty character throughout Stan Lee’s run. Because he wrote her that way. He gave her all of those character traits, he put her in situations where her powers were useless, he gave her that dialogue, he made her lose fights, he kept her from any chance of heroism and being an enjoyable character fans could identify with. 

The writer was the one who needed to change. Not the fandom.

The writing was sexist. It was bullshit to create an unlikeable character and then blame fans for not liking her. We’re not obliged to happily accept any slop thrown our way, even if female characters are rare.

I really do like subsequent incarnations of Sue, but it really, really depends on the writer, and how much they’re willing to develop her character, give her good lines, and let her shine. 

Sue Storm isn’t inherently a bad character. She isn’t inherently an interesting character either. It all depends on how she’s written. Characters aren’t real people. They aren’t naturally who they are. They are written deliberately. That writing can be critiqued. And making your characters cry into their mail is just cheap emotional manipulation to avoid engaging actual critiques.

I bolded part of this for emphasis.  This isn’t specifically about Sue Storm but an example of what Summer’s been saying about how people treat characters like they’re real people in order to dismiss criticism of how they’re written/portrayed and put the blame on the reader for not trying hard enough to like them.

Also, I’m amused that Stan Lee’s response wasn’t even to really address his critics as much as be like “you’re being MEAN to her, don’t you feel bad now?”  And look the character I’m writing is crying!  And the characters I’m writing like her!  It’s almost like this weird fictional peer pressure thing. -_o  Plus, I’m not even sure how that’s an argument.  All the villagers in Beauty and the Beast liked Gaston.  Did we have to like him too?  And he’s not even supposed to be a hero we’re supposed to associate with and enjoy reading about.

His “behind every great man is a great woman” argument is hilarious too.  Not just because that argument is often used to dismiss arguments about lack of representation of women in the workplace or in power (“oh but my wife, she’s the REAL boss of the house!”) but also, they’re not real, so Sue isn’t actually doing anything for them behind the scenes.  Nor is Stan Lee interested in writing the amazingly useful things she apparently is doing for them, he’s just using it as a handwave and attempting to put the onus on the readers for his own writing limitations and sexism.

(It’s also not a particularly great response to make her helpless in the comic that’s about how she’s not useless and helpless.  She’s just crying and saying she should quit and it’s the guys making the arguments to defend her.)

Just out of curiosity why are you guys making a big deal over a comic from 50 years ago written by a guy who is almost dead when there’s plenty of modern instances of sexism in writing and art within comics?

yeah, you’re right

one of us should really start a blog all about the sexism in art of modern comics and pop media

your insightful critique was so cutting it traveled back through time

amazing

Prepare to be amazed.

(hat tip to Rollin Bishop)

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poc-creators:

A poetic and artful umbrella, Komorebi is based on a Japanese expression that approximately translates to “sunshine filtering through foliage.”

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