Police shoot a man at a Walmart in Dayton, Ohio, apparently after he'd picked up a toy gun on a store display, while he was talking to his girlfriend on the phone ...

“We was just talking. He said he was at the video games playing videos and he went over there by the toy section where the toy guns were. And the next thing I know, he said ‘It’s not real,’ and the police start shooting and they said ‘Get on the ground,’ but he was already on the ground because they had shot him,” she said, adding: “And I could hear him just crying and screaming. I feel like they shot him down like he was not even human.”

best ship only ship???

under the cut for spoilers and probably unpopular opinions

1. hi I’m Jim Kirk from Star Trek 2009 Peter Quill and you know what is awesome? Space womanizers!!!!!!

2. It’s 2014 and we can still only have 2 women in space tops at any given time

3. Srsly they couldn’t even throw a few random Nova Corps ladies in there

4. It’s been a long time since Star Wars y’all

5. It’s been a long time since frickin’ Alien how are we back here

6. Gamora is the coolest COME ON COME ON she has the most interesting backstory and could’ve had the best arc but no the only thing her arc ended up being was “how she feels about Peter Quill”

7. seriously how did they screw up Gamora that bad with the writing. she is so great. SO GREAT. guys she’s a brainwashed child soldier who got out and is on the path to redemption and we got ZERO. OF THAT.

8. How did Peter Quill get the main arc in this srsly he didn’t change at all from start to finish cuz HEY HE’S ALREADY AWESOME SO COOL LIKE HAN SOLO but he held his mom’s hand no wait that was Gamora who is not his mom not even at all not even metaphorically

9. like everyone else in the world I am utterly charmed by Chris Pratt but that only goes so far

10. FRICKIN NEBULA Y’ALL you dangle sister-assassins in front of me and then waste that???? what is wrong with you was there too much of a chance that women would talk about something other than Peter Quill

11. A character who’s been established as speaking ONLY literally (THIS IS ONE OF HIS TWO DEFINING CHARACTER TRAITS) calls Gamora a whore and this is played like the funniest joke lololololololol i get it

12. It pushed the envelope in certain ways (yay talking raccoon and tree friend) but was completely uninterested in leaving other cliches behind (y’all seriously did we mention Peter Quill has SO MUCH SEX he doesn’t even remember their names!!!)

13. like hey you know what’s new and different! a team with only one lady and she rolls her eyes at all the boys’ jokes because they are dumb!!!

14. just give me tragic Sister Assassins that is all I want why did you waste it we could’ve had it allllllllllllll

15. anyway in all seriousness I’ve sat through a bunch of pretty sexist movies and I can still find stuff to like because I’m good at compartmentalizing. I know how to have fun at movies with hecked up gender stuff, like yes I count both GI Joe movies among my favorites and those movies are way hecked up. But the difference was this is A MOVIE FRANCHISE I HAVE COME TO TRUST. like Avengers was way fun and even though it had problems too I was like “wow this isn’t perfect yet but it sure is a huge improvement for the superhero genre! I feel welcome and included in this movie even if there is only one woman on the team! Because this movie is for everyone not just comic bros! And surely this is only the first step it will get so much better from here!!!!” and then this. And I was expecting so much and my hopes were so high. I love the concept, I love all the characters, I just want them to try again, make the same movie but get it RIGHT this time. This was a movie for Comic Bros Who Love Han Solo and There’s No Girls in Space DUH. BUT IT DIDN’T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY. And for me, that took me out of the story and I couldn’t get back in.

16. it’s cool if you liked it, it WAS a lot of fun, but remember you can still like things and acknowledge that they hecked up and this movie did. 

“He had no friends, and for the first time in his life he became aware of loneliness. Sometimes, in his attic room at night, he would look up from a book he was reading and gaze in the dark corners of his room, where the lamplight flickered against the shadows. If he stared long and intently, the darkness gathered into a light, which took the insubstantial shape of what he had been reading. And he would feel that he was out of time, as he had felt that day in class when Archer Sloane had spoke to him. The past gathered out of the darkness where it stayed, and the dead raised themselves to live before him; and the past and the dead flowed into the present among the alive, so that he had for an intense instant a vision of denseness into which he was compacted and from which he could not escape, and had no wish to escape. Tristan, Iseult the fair, walked before him; Paolo and Francesca whirled in the glowing dark; Helen and bright Paris, their faces bitter with consequence, rose from the gloom. And he was with them in way that he could never be with his fellows who went from class to class, who found a local habitation in a large university in Columbia, Missouri, and who walked unheeding in a midwestern air,” – John Williams, Stoner.

5000letters:

i find it so incredibly attractive when someone is really good at something, like you can play the violin? damn son. you’re a really talented dj? good for you! i don’t care if you talk to me about quantum physics for an hour straight if i can see the passion in you at some point in that hour i’ll think “whoa, this is really hot.” 

Do you remember the mortgage crisis? In case you didn’t hear about it — or don’t remember the details — it worked something like this:

1. Banks figured out a new way to profit from mortgage loans, even if the loans never got paid back…
2. …which led them to loan money to people who’d never be able to pay the loans back, because they got paid either way.
3. High demand (thanks to easy money) drove home prices up, up, up.
4. The economy boomed.

Years passed.

Then results of this disruptive innovation became clear:

1. People defaulted on loans they could not afford;
2. Demand dried up;
3. Home values plummeted, causing more and more people to default;
4. Homeowners stopped buying things related to homes — due to the exuberant valuations drying up…
5. And, as things worsened, their total spending on other things contracted too, as they found themselves in an untenable financial position;
6. Industries founded on home-related spending faltered;
7. People employed in those industries lost their jobs;
8. Those people lost their spending power, and other industries fell victim, too.

Bam. Financial crisis.

This is a simplification — there was more to it — but there was not less to it. These things are true. This is what happened.

The mortgage industry disrupted home ownership. It innovated on its business model. It created explosive growth engines.

Then it went kaboom! and took large parts of the economy with it.

People who took out loans they did not “earn” suffered. People who relied on those people’s participation in the economy suffered. Eventually, just about everyone who participates in the economy suffered.

Everything tightened up and constricted and sucked.

It’s going to happen again, soon — but on a smaller scale. And it’s going to happen to us.

A few simple economic truths

Truth #1: Easy money is toxic to economic systems.

Truth #2: Systems which decouple rewards from performance are toxic, because they create easy money.

Truth #3: When rewards are decoupled from performance, and the bill only comes due after 5-10 years, economic systems will appear inevitable… right up to the point where they implode, and everyone is cut to pieces by the shrapnel.

That brings us to startups.

How venture capital works

Venture funds are made up mostly of money from large institutions.

Those institutions could invest in many different investment vehicles. One of them is venture capital — due to an expectation of outsized rewards.

Funds are administered by venture capitalists. They decide who gets investment in their company.

(And venture capitalists are largely paid from management fees, regardless of performance.)

Venture capital investments in startups take 5-10 years to mature, which is to say to realize a return… or to confirm that they will give no return at all.

Oh, and when returns do happen? Most of it it comes from successfully gaming an expectations market — not, in other words, based on normal economic trade, e.g. “Will this startup be able to sell $1,000,000 of widgets in 2014?” but rather how institutional investors and acquirers rate other investors’ and other acquirers’ expectation of the startups’ potential. “Will the stock market really like their stock?” or “Will Google just have to have them, because their user base is so large otherwise someone else will buy them?”

In other words, easy money rewarding easy money.

That’s why startup winter is coming.

The venture capital industry at this point seems inevitable. All the ingredients are there: easy money, inflated values (both for startups and the things they spend that money on), entire industries built up to serve the apparent economic boom.

But we’re coming up fast to the end of the beginning of the most recent investment wave — the investments made in 2004 to 2009 are supposed to be maturing right about now.

And realizing a return — or not.

Results are in… venture capital returns aren’t great. The first reports were dismissed by many. More reports are coming in.

And hey, the venture capitalists get paid, either way.

But as the (lack of) returns becomes clear, the institutional investors will seek other, better places to put their money.

Brace yourselves.

Everyone who has lived off the easy money is going to suffer.

Startups seeking venture capital will see the first wave of pain. These are equivalent to the folks who went into default, or the folks who tried to get a loan just a little too late.

Then the people employed by these startups will be hit next, salaries dropping like home prices as buyers dry up.

Then the services that these startups — and their employees — rely on.

And their employees.

Save yourselves.

If you rely on venture capital to do what you do, time to get serious. Seek profit. Seek sustainability. When the available funding dries up, your options will be decreased. More startups will find themselves on the brink of destruction… and acquirers will get some great deals.

If you rely on a salary inflated by easy money — by imaginary, unrealized value —then my advice is two-fold: First, sock away as much of that money as you can. Second, take the time & invest the effort into learning how your skills can produce economic results for your employer (now, or in the future).

Easy money overspends. Easy money doesn’t ask itself, “Is this worth what I’m paying for it? Will I get back more than I spend?”. Everything seems more important than profit. But when easy money dries up, ROI becomes the only question.

If you can show you can produce serious economic impact for your employer — for any employer — you’ll be in a position to survive and thrive when the easy money’s gone.

Finally, if your business sells (directly or indirectly) to startups, it’s time to diversify your customer base. Or else, what will you do when economic reality cuts through them in huge swathes? Now is the time to serve & deliver value to industries that are less prone to boom and bust, who fund their purchases with income and not investment.

If you don’t heed the signs, you might still survive. But then it becomes a question of luck: Where will you be when the air goes out of the room?

If you pay attention, and prepare now, you can be ready.

This is why I do what I do.

I could make more doing things differently, engaging in the system as I’ve described it… but I remember the first bubble, and I’ve seen the corrupting power of easy money on the places I’ve worked.

When value — aka real returns — is taken out of the equation, the entire economic system is weakened. The problems start on the small scale, inside individual companies. But they extend everywhere.

High returns disappear when you average them with what comes afterwards.

No doubt, easy money is tempting. That’s why it’s so dangerous.

Earning your money through value may be “the hard way,” but it’s also the way that will endure.

Bootstrapping is the logical approach.

Bootstrapping, the way we teach it, requires that you deliver measurable value to customers who care about value — and pay for it. You help them create value in their businesses, and they pay you your share of it.

Yes, you certainly could bootstrap a company totally reliant on easy money — like starting an overpriced home remodeling company in the housing boom. But that’s a choice, not fate.

When you create (or work for) a startup that can’t survive without infusions of venture capital, you give away all your choices. Your fate is sealed.

Bootstrapping creates choices. And the freedom to learn how to make better ones.

To learn more about how to insulate yourself from startup winter by generating ROI for customers who will value it, take our free email course:

Yeah, fucking disgusting, you Tennessee assholes.

http://tcgficreblogs.tumblr.com/post/94265731543/hunterhusbands-s0raiseyourglassifyouarewrong:

hunterhusbands:

s0raiseyourglassifyouarewrong:

carrionofmywaywardson:

imagineyourotp:

Imagine Person A of your OTP asking out Person B in a foreign language.

I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in my life

#HELLO DEAN I AM YOUR ANGEL HOW IS BREATHING

OK but seriously, the reason Cas tries talking to Dean like this in the first place is, he thinks Dean is one of the special people who’ll be able to perceive his true form and hear his true voice, but why would Cas think that? I mean, it’s clearly not a common ability, and at this point, all he’s done is rescue Dean from Hell, right? So why would he not only make that assumption about a stranger, but then look physically disappointed when it turns out not to be true?

Unless, of course, Cas has known Dean for longer than that; unless he thinks they already have a connection. What if he’s been watching over Dean for years, a literal guardian angel? What if that’s why Cas was chosen to raise him from perdition? What if Cas already feels so strongly about Dean without knowing why that, in order to justify his feelings, he’s told himself Dean is special? Because clearly, if Dean can see angels, then it makes perfect sense that Cas would feel bound to him, be protective of him - a natural response to his gifts. But then he meets Dean, and he’s just a man, and he doesn’t understand what Cas sees in him, and Cas just looks at him like:

'you don't think you deserve to be saved?'

'but I saw you. I've seen everything. of course you do.

can’t you see me, too?’

High Tech Wages May "Start Triggering Inflation" In San Francisco:

"A recent report by San Francisco’s Human Services Agency indicates that the city’s level of income inequality has grown to be ‘about on par with Rwanda.’"

“Biology’s cruel joke goes something like this: As a teenage body goes through puberty, its circadian rhythm essentially shifts three hours backward. Suddenly, going to bed at nine or ten o’clock at night isn’t just a drag, but close to a biological impossibility. Studies of teenagers around the globe have found that adolescent brains do not start releasing melatonin until around eleven o’clock at night and keep pumping out the hormone well past sunrise. Adults, meanwhile, have little-to-no melatonin in their bodies when they wake up. With all that melatonin surging through their bloodstream, teenagers who are forced to be awake before eight in the morning are often barely alert and want nothing more than to give in to their body’s demands and fall back asleep. Because of the shift in their circadian rhythm, asking a teenager to perform well in a classroom during the early morning is like asking him or her to fly across the country and instantly adjust to the new time zone — and then do the same thing every night, for four years.”

-

Sleep and the teenage brain (via explore-blog)

This is why you have every right to be tired.  

(via lookrainbows)

And, in defiance of every medical study on the subject that’s been run, they keep pushing the start time of high school earlier and earlier.

#child abuse #systematic child abuse

(via transquesting)

I used to sleep through my first period class every morning. I’m really lucky that the year I had the most trouble staying awake, I was taking creative writing with a teacher I’d made friends with: she knew it was no reflection on her and I did extra projects to make up for it.

Still, shit ain’t right.

(via huggablekaiju)

My last year of school, because I was doing weekend sport, taking morning classes and had a train commute, I was getting up at 5:30 and 6:30 am six days a week. If I was lucky, I managed four or five hours of sleep a night. I have vivid memories - hell, I have diary entries - of getting into bed before 10pm, so tired I could barely function, and then just lying awake until 1, 2, 3am, crying as I counted down the sleep I’d lost and knowing I had to go to school anyway, even if I was exhausted to the point of feeling physically sick, because “I didn’t sleep well” wasn’t considered a valid reason to take a day off.

I was depressed and stressed for other reasons, but the insomnia nearly killed me. I slept on the train, I slept in class, I slept under library desks at lunch - the only day I could ever sleep in was Sunday, and if I spent it at home, then invariably, one or both of my parents would be in my room by 10am, telling me to wake up and use the day. Getting stupidly drunk at weekend parties became something I did on purpose, because blacking out meant deep, restful sleep, and I was so. fucking. tired. Like, I would reach a point in the evening where I knew I was drunk, and think to myself, But if I keep going, I’ll pass out. And so I’d keep going. And not only was that normal, it was a twisted form of self-care, and the only one available to me. 

Because when I told adults how tired I was, how little sleep I was getting, almost universally, their response was that it was my fault for staying up late in the first place. I was lazy for sleeping in; I had bad sleep habits; I just needed to go to bed earlier; I shouldn’t read in bed; I had to stop procrastinating, get my homework done earlier in the evening so I could get to sleep by nine, and it didn’t matter if I said, I’ve tried that, I go to bed early and I just lie awake for hours - it was still my fault for managing my time badly, because if I was really doing it properly, whatever ‘it’ was, then I wouldn’t have had a problem in the first place.

And I just. There is a fucking reason why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture. You want to know why so many teenagers are depressed and killing themselves, or contemplating suicide? On top of everything else they’re maybe dealing with - hormones, romance, bullying, school, uncertainty, family problems - ask them how much sleep they’re getting, and compare it with how much they should be getting. Because I guarantee, those numbers do not fucking match.        

When my little sister was around thirteen, she decided she wanted to go by a slight variant on her name.  Not even a different name.  Just (not actually, but along the same lines) “Abby” instead of “Abigail.”

Our family freaked out.  You would’ve thought she said “I’m dropping out of school to deal drugs and ritually sacrifice puppies” instead of “I like Abby better.”  Our parents had chosen Abigail for her, they had given her this name and she was disrespecting it and disrespecting them and basically tearing this family apart by using a slightly different name.  They would call her Abby over their dead bodies because how dare she disgrace their legacy and everything they had done for her this way.

It’s ten years later and they still only call her Abigail.  (She’s okay with it now, or maybe she’s just given up.)

People who haven’t lived in this kind of family don’t get it, I think.  There’s always someone who says “but can’t you just have a reasonable discussion with your parents about these things? surely they’ll be understanding!  you’re their child!”  And… no.  Because this is what it was like for my sister to tell them she was a popular, athletic, academically successful straight girl with a slightly different name.

Happy Summer to you - Comics with Problems returns with a terrific set of mail-order religious comics from 1945 on how to deal with your misbehaving child.

Israel launches air strikes across Gaza in response to Palestinian rockets: reut.rs/1uvlWky http://t.co/DdMPqMtYWq—
Reuters Top News (@Reuters) August 08, 2014

The ceasefire is over and fighting started again this morning:

Gaza militants resumed rocket attacks on Israel on Friday, refusing to extend a three-day truce after Egyptian-brokered talks between Israel and Hamas on a new border deal for blockaded Gaza hit a deadlock. Israel responded with a series of airstrikes, including one that killed a 10-year-old boy and wounded five children near a Gaza City mosque, Palestinian officials said. Two Israelis were wounded by rocket fire, police said. The renewed violence threw the Cairo talks on a broader deal into doubt. Hamas officials said they are ready to continue talks, but Israel’s government spokesman said Israel will not negotiate under fire.

Walter Russell Mead wonders why Hamas is still pretending it can eke out some semblance of victory from a war it has clearly lost:

War is a tricky business, in which fortunes can switch overnight, but Hamas today seems in an extremely difficult position, demanding concessions its enemies have no reason to make. Under the circumstances, both Israel and Egypt appear to have solid reasons for sticking to tough negotiating positions and awaiting events. They have inflicted a major and perhaps crushing military defeat on Hamas. They are now trying to turn this into a decisive political victory that will force Hamas to accept substantially more Egyptian power over Gaza as the price of Hamas’ survival.

Hamas is now about one-third as strong as it was at the start of the war, and it faces enemies who smell its weakness and who loathe and mistrust it. Yet it is insisting on an agreement that would amount to a victory even as its political wing reaches out to Iran. One can admire the chutzpah but doubt the wisdom of a strategy rooted in desperation and fear.

“Hamas has accomplished none of its aims,” Hussein Ibish asserts. “Not one”:

For example, Hamas sought recognition as the primary diplomatic representative of Palestinians in Gaza. But the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) have kept that role, including on matters regarding Gaza, despite the fact that Hamas has held the territory since 2007. Indeed, the recent “unity deal” between Hamas and Fatah, which led to the formation of a new government with no Hamas ministers that adopted the PLO’s policy of seeking peace with Israel, did nothing to enhance Hamas’s international standing either.

Hamas also failed to conduct any kind of dramatic attack on an Israeli target, notwithstanding repeated efforts. It failed in several infiltration attempts by land and sea, and none of its rockets hit any major target, whether civilian or military. Hamas was not even able to capture a single Israeli soldier whom it could exchange for prisoners. It did execute a few successful ambushes in Gaza in which it killed Israeli soldiers. But dead Israeli troops don’t translate into a direct benefit for either Hamas or any group of Palestinians.

But Jason Burke characterizes the group as “far from disabled”:

It does appear that dozens of sophisticated tunnels leading from Gaza into Israel, which could enable cross-border raids to kill or kidnap civilians and soldiers, have been destroyed. More than 3,000 rockets have been fired on Israel from Gaza – killing three people – which Israeli officials insist is at least half of Hamas’s total stocks of the weapons. However, few senior Hamas military commanders appear to have died. …

Khaleel Habeel, an Islamic Jihad official in Gaza, admitted casualties, saying that “if you take on the fourth most powerful army in the world then of course you lose people”. Ziad Abu Oda of the Mujahideen Faction splinter group told the Guardian that his organisation had lost 50 men, including fighters and political officials. But even top-end estimates of casualties would be a fraction of the strength of Hamas’s military brigades and other groups, which are believed to have 10,000 fighters permanently under arms, with another 10,000 in reserve.

For Israel’s part, Avi Issacharoff argues, neither war nor negotiations with Hamas will achieve its security goals:

It seems that the only way to change something in this equation (apart from conquering the Strip) would be for Israel to initiate a political process with the Palestinian Authority. There is not much that Israel can do with Hamas, except undermining it in the diplomatic sphere, by offering it everything — a seaport, an airport, a lifting of the blockade, a weekly pass to the amusement park in Tel Aviv… in exchange for the disarmament of Gaza and the destruction of the rest of the tunnels. In other words, to let Hamas’s leaders choose between the Gaza Underground they’ve built and the Gaza on the surface. Hamas would say no, and Israel would gain a few points. But if it really wants to harm Hamas, to weaken it internally and in public opinion, the government of Israel would have to renew the peace talks, even at the expense of a settlement freeze.

Meanwhile, The Economist runs the numbers on the war up to yesterday. Here’s a fun fact:

33. Proportion of respondents to online poll, by Israel’s most popular TV channel on August 3rd, who say the best birthday gift for Barack Obama would be peace in the Middle East: 20% [Israeli Channel 2 TV]

34. Proportion of respondents to Israeli poll who say the best birthday gift for Barack Obama would be the Ebola virus: 48% [Israeli Channel 2 TV]

You can see impeachment emerging as a wedge issue among Republicans. Or maybe more precisely as a litmus test, a basic measure of conservative bona fides. Right alongside opposing abortion or repealing Obamacare. No room for debate. You either are or you aren't. Here's Alaska's Joe Miller challenging one of his opponents for the GOP Senate nomination on whether he supports impeachment.

Twitch.tv, a service where gamers can broadcast and share live video of their adventures online, will detect and mute streams containing copyrighted audio--which is, of course, many games.

Read the rest

onnastik:

cythesomething:

pervocracy:

There’s a fascinating historical evolution from stories where vampires’ threat to the social status quo is seen as pure evil, versus where it’s seductive and complex but ultimately wrong, versus where it’s 100% awesome and mortals are squares.

The Dracula-Buffy-Twilight axis of revolutionary vampirism, I guess.

#although if being alive is the social status quo#I’m actually pretty okay with that

After all the Ana Mardoll decons I’ve been reading, I’m of the opinion that Twilight vamps have actually kind of become the social status quo. They certainly don’t threaten it in any way!

Okay, so this actually leads me into an interesting expansion on the theory.

Vampires usually represent sexual menace, right? They’re all about seducing women into lustful wanton sexuality instead of proper chastity.  (With levels of metaphor-coding ranging from “heavily implied” to “Buffy and Spike somehow demolish a house by fucking.”)

So I wonder if the progression of vampires from disgusting to desirable tracks with the progression of female sexual expression from taboo to mandatory.  In all cases they’re the boyfriend who won’t take no for an answer, and what’s changed with the times is whether that provokes “how awful, only your husband should do that” or “how wonderful, this is what sexy romance is supposed to look like.”

This is considerably more depressing than my original theory.

There’s a fascinating historical evolution from stories where vampires’ threat to the social status quo is seen as pure evil, versus where it’s seductive and complex but ultimately wrong, versus where it’s 100% awesome and mortals are squares.

The Dracula-Buffy-Twilight axis of revolutionary vampirism, I guess.

So I’m reading this post on The Guardians of the Galaxy (which I shouldn’t be doing, since I haven’t seen it, but I’ll bet the raccoon lives.)

And I misread this sentence:

In fact, these space misfits offer something rarely seen in superhero films: the Guardians show emotional, neurological, developmental and communication deficits that 1) are not expected to be resolved or cured at the end of the film and 2) do not make them ineffective as heroes.

Because surely we need to lose that last ‘not’. DO make then ineffective as heroes. That better be it, otherwise obviously this film is just like all the other stories about heroes who are kind of damaged but awesomely effective.

Obviously (I can tell this without seeing it), Guardians IS like all the rest, not different as this author so wrongly suggests. (But I’m sure it’s going to be awesome.)

Let’s back up so I can explain. A couple weeks ago I was reading horror-stories in the New York Times (can’t find the link) about malfeasance in forensic labs stretching back decades. Not important to find that article. Anything about prosecutors refusing to cooperate with the Innocence Project will do as well. Same tune. I thought: someone should really make a gritty, thrilling cop show about cops who probably think about themselves as being good cops but are basically, unknowingly, incompetent and corrupt. They don’t always get the wrong guy. But they often frame the wrong guy, just because they need to goose their numbers. But they always tell themselves a story about how they are good cops. CSI! The ‘I’ stands for ‘incompetent’! But the characters really think it stands for ‘investigation’.

I’m not talking about comedy. This isn’t Parks and Recreation. I’m talking about The Wire, minus the competence. Instead of the characters being high-functioning alcoholics, or guys with hair-trigger tempers that really only result in them beating up assholes, have a low-functioning alcoholic, partnered with a guy who just has anger-management problems that, as you might expect, keep him from getting the job done. Another example, True Detective. Rust is a hallucinating, trauma-repressing alcoholic. Marty is an immature womanizer. But they are both supremely functional when they are actually on the case. I just think it would be interesting to play it differently, just for once. Have the detectives/forensic lab boys be psychological damaged goods, and have that cause them to be regularly incompetent. Tell exciting stories about absent-mindedly framing some poor black kid, because the interesting detective characters screw up, and don’t even really realize it themselves. And sometimes they get it right. And we get to know them, so we get that they aren’t positively evil. This isn’t Bad Lieutenant, just the banality of semi-competence careerists. The whole system is just a giant moral hazard waiting to happen in every average officer’s life. It would be a great way to tell a story, if you could get it right, so the viewers wouldn’t just find it frustrating to watch a procedural about people who can’t follow procedure, or work out good procedures to follow.

Meanwhile, I look forward to watching The Guardians of the Galaxy be absurdly competent, despite all their psychological damage. Hilariously, all their crazinesses will be complementary! I’m sure it’s great.

To commemorate Rep. Mo Brooks' (R-AL) inauguration of the official "War on Whites" - which might be better termed the "War on Christmas" finally coming out of the closet and just letting it all hang out - definitely check out the #waronwhites hashtag on Twitter. It would be entertaining enough for the snark that goes back for the last few hours, presumably kicked off by Brooks' comments. But once you get a day or so back it's racist morons lamenting the impending white genocide. Sort of like two very, very different groups of people having parties within ear shot of each other. For now at least the progressive snarks have totally taken over the feed.

honeybooboophilosophy:

Shit just got real up in here.

I turned on my Macbook this morning to be greeted with this popup:

What the heck, Skype? That’s not how upgrades work. How unutterably rude you’ve become since Microsoft bought you.

Coincidence?

And what is soooo important in the new version — a sub-point release 6.3.0.602 — that you’re desperate for me to download it? I can only assume it’s spyware. At least, something that’s for your benefit, not mine.

By the way, this is an application-modal dialogue with no cancel button. There is no way to do anything else with Skype now — it’s totally crippled until I bend to their will. Even the Quit option is greyed out and the Meta-Q shortcut disabled. That’s beyond rude.

It’s looking more and more like it’s time to jump ship from Skype, which used to be an excellent, reliable, helpful service, and and increasingly none of these. What do people recommend as an alternative?

Update (12:11pm)

A response, of sorts, from Skype support:

Biologist Culum Brown suggests so:

Every major commercial agricultural system has some ethical laws, except for fish. Nobody’s ever asked the questions: “What does a fish want? What does a fish need?” Part of the problem comes back to the question of whether fish feel pain. But for the last 30 years, the neurophysiologists have known that they do, and haven’t even argued about it. …

I think, ultimately, the revolution will come. But it’ll be slow, because the implications are huge. For example, I can’t think of a way to possibly catch fish from the open ocean in a massive commercial way to meet demand that would be anyway near our standards for ethics if we think of them like other animals. Currently, you go out, you catch a bunch of fish, you crush most of them to death in a net, you trawl them up from the bottom of the sea – which causes barotrauma for most of them – you dump them on a deck, half suffocate to death, the ones you don’t want get thrown overboard and die anyway, and the ones you keep go on ice, just to preserve the flesh for market reasons.

How do you do that in a way that has the fish’s interests involved to any degree? You can’t. So it’s not surprising that there is some fierce opposition to this idea. It would mean a massive change in the way we do things.

(Photo of Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market by Flickr user Cranrob)

When I first saw this headline "Cucchinelli Lists GOP Senators Who Funded 'Race-Baiting Tactics'" I thought, damn, maybe he's gone full GOP 2012 post-mortem, getting a little distance from the institutional right. But, well, no. This is the new "race-baiting" which now means the rough equivalent of "saying people shouldn't be racist." You might say it's the civil rights movement of our time.

I mentioned yesterday the question of why these two American doctors happened to have gotten what may have been a life saving treatment for Ebola when hundreds of people in Africa have already died in the current outbreak. The cynical explanation is that American lives just count for more than Africans from impoverished countries - and I don't rule out some element of that. But when I first heard this story the big thing that jumped out to me was the issue of informed consent. Because this treatment was so new as to almost not amount to a treatment - more like a promising research lead. And the history of using humans as essentially human guinea pigs is, to put it mildly, a very dark history. Here's an email from TPM Reader HB which throws some more light on the question ...

You ask: "So how are we only hearing about this treatment when two American aid workers came down with the disease after going on 800 people have died in the current outbreak in three countries in Africa?"

Read More →

Over the weekend, Douthat claimed that “the president is contemplating — indeed, all but promising — an extraordinary abuse of office: the granting of temporary legal status, by executive fiat, to up to half the country’s population of illegal immigrants.” Posner pushes back:

The executive branch spends a lot of time not enforcing laws. Congress has illegalized an enormous amount of activity without giving the president the resources to enforce the laws, so the executive has no choice but to make a list of priorities and devote its attention to law violations that, in its opinion, are the most serious. Thus, the IRS doesn’t audit paupers very often. The Justice Department ignores a lot of anticompetitive behavior that might raise prices a bit but not much. The DEA focuses on criminal syndicates rather than ordinary drug users, although both violate federal law. And so on.

Nearly all of this non-enforcement takes place with implicit congressional acquiescence; once in a while, Congress complains because the president’s priorities are not the same as its own. But the president has no obligation to listen to these complaints.

The Constitution gave him executive power while preventing Congress from compelling the president to act except by issuing the extreme and usually non-credible threat of impeachment. This is the separation of powers. People like Douthat wrongly think that separation of powers means that the president must do what Congress decides. That’s not the principle of separation of powers; that’s the principle of legislative supremacy, embodied in parliamentary systems like Britain’s, which America’s founders rejected.

Beutler finds Douthat’s crowing recklessly premature given that “we don’t know what Obama’s going to do”:

This tendency to assume the legal high ground follows naturally from a political strategy of playing up unilateral executive actions as evidence of presidential lawlessness. It’s tempting and convenient for conservatives to treat these as open and shut cases. But outside the right, it’s best to view their efforts as sophisticated attempts to work the refs rather than as judicious and conclusive interpretations of fact.

Drum weighs in:

As it happens, I think the current Republican obsession with presidential overreach is fairly pointless because their examples are so trivial. Extending the employer mandate might very well go beyond Obama’s powers, but who cares? It’s a tiny thing. Alternatively, the mini-DREAM executive action is fairly substantial but also very unlikely to represent any kind of overreach. Ditto for recent EPA actions.

Presidents do things all the time that push the envelope of statutory authority. To be worth any serious outrage, they need to be (a) significant and (b) fairly clearly beyond the scope of the president’s powers. I don’t think Obama has done anything like this yet, but if Republicans want to test that proposition in court, they should go right ahead. That’s what courts are for.

i read watership down and now i’m a furry. that is how it works. i turned into a big rabbit, i can’t stop crying

hey gang! check out a new chainsawsuit podcast for your monday while you’re at it! it’s a fun one!!

MIT researchers have reconstructed the sound of speech by analyzing a high speed video of the minute vibrations of a nearby chip bag. They reconstructed “Mary Had A Little Lamb” from the vibrations of the leaves of houseplant. They reconstructed Queen’s “Under Pressure” from a video of earbuds. That’s a cool trick (with some interesting surveillance and forensic implications).

"This is totally out of some Hollywood thriller," says Alexei Efros, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California at Berkeley. “You know that the killer has admitted his guilt because there’s surveillance footage of his potato chip bag vibrating.”

If you want to really see sound waves check out our video.

I’ve wondered for quite a while what Barack Obama thinks about torture. We now know a little more:

Even before I came into office I was very clear that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 we did some things that were wrong. We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values.

I understand why it happened. I think it’s important when we look back to recall how afraid people were after the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon had been hit and the plane in Pennsylvania had fallen, and people did not know whether more attacks were imminent, and there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this. And it’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.

But having said all that, we did some things that were wrong. And that’s what that report reflects. And that’s the reason why, after I took office, one of the first things I did was to ban some of the extraordinary interrogation techniques that are the subject of that report.

And my hope is, is that this report reminds us once again that the character of our country has to be measured in part not by what we do when things are easy, but what we do when things are hard. And when we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture, we crossed a line. And that needs to be — that needs to be understood and accepted. And we have to, as a country, take responsibility for that so that, hopefully, we don’t do it again in the future.

What to make of this?

I don’t think it’s that big a deal that he used the English language to describe what was done, in any fair-minded person’s judgment. He’s said that before now. And his general position hasn’t changed. Let me paraphrase: We tortured. It was wrong. Never mind. So he tells the most basic version of the truth – that the US government authorized and conducted war crimes – and hedges it with an important caveat: We must understand the terribly fearful circumstances in which this evil was authorized. But equally, he argues that the caveat does not excuse the crime: “the character of our country has to be measured in part not by what we do when things are easy, but what we do when things are hard.”

This latter point is integral to the laws against torture – but completely guts his first point. As I noted with the UN Convention, the prohibition is absolute:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

Cheney, Bush, Tenet, and Rumsfeld all knew this from the get-go. That’s why they got their supine OLC to provide specious justifications for the legally prohibited. That’s why they won’t use the word “torture,” instead inventing an Orwellian euphemism. And, of course, the president’s excuse for them – that “in the immediate aftermath of 9/11,” we did wrong things – is deeply misleading. This went on for years across every theater of combat. What about what Abu Ghraib revealed about the scope of torture in the battlefield much later on? What about 2005 when they secretly re-booted the torture program? This was a carefully orchestrated criminal conspiracy at the heart of the government by people who knew full well they were breaking the law. It cannot be legally or morally excused by any contingency. It cannot be treated as if all we require is an apology they will never provide.

Yet that’s what the president’s acts – as opposed to his words – imply. And that’s what unsettles me. It is not as if the entire country has come to the conclusion that these war crimes must never happen again. The GOP ran a pro-torture candidate in 2012; they may well run a pro-torture candidate in 2016. This evil – which destroys the truth as surely as it destroys the human soul – is still with us. And all Obama recommends for trying to prevent it happening again is a wistful aspiration: “hopefully, we don’t do it again in the future.” Hopefully?

Then there’s the not-so-small matter of the rule of law.

Call me crazy but I do not believe that the executive branch can simply allow heinous crimes to go unpunished just because they were committed … by the executive branch. It seems to me, to paraphrase the president on Friday, that the rule of law “has to be measured in part not by what we do when things are easy, but what we do when things are hard.” How many times does the United States government preach about international law and Western values? On what conceivable grounds can we do so when our own government can commit torture on a grand and brutal scale for years on end – and get away with it completely?

Either the rule of law applies to the CIA or it doesn’t. And it’s now absolutely clear that it doesn’t. The agency can lie to the public; it can spy on the Senate; it can destroy the evidence of its war crimes; it can lie to its superiors about its torture techniques; it can lie about the results of those techniques. No one will ever be held to account. It is inconceivable that the United States would take this permissive position on torture with any other country or regime. Inconceivable. And so the giant and massive hypocrisy of this country on core human rights is now exposed for good and all. The Bush administration set the precedent for the authorization of torture. The Obama administration has set the precedent for its complete impunity.

America has killed the Geneva Conventions just as surely as America made them.

(Photo: a page on enhanced interrogation techniques via a FOIA request.)

The King County (Washington) Coalition Against Domestic Violence offers this advice about warning signs:

Is someone you know being controlled in their relationship?

• Does their partner put them down, tell them what to do or embarrass them in front of others?
• Does their partner keep tabs on them by calling, texting or showing up where they are?
• Are you seeing less and less of them? Does their partner make it hard for them to see you or other friends or family?
• Does your friend make excuses or take the blame for their partner’s behavior?
• Are they being physically hurt?

The group also offers these tips on how to help:

If any of these are happening, here are some things to keep in mind…

• Believe your friend.
• Let them know that it’s not their fault.
• Listen and be supportive. Be there when you are needed.
• Offer suggestions and ideas, not opinions. Don’t try to make decisions for them.
• Let them know that their feelings are OK.
• Remember that change takes time and your friend is facing hard choices. If they decide to leave, it may be a long process.
• Trust that their choices are the right ones for them. You haven’t been in the relationship so it’s not your place to judge.

What can you do or say to help?

Here are some things you can do …

• If someone is in immediate danger, call 911. Be a witness if your friend wants you to be.
• Help them to make a plan for themselves and/or their kids to stay safe.
• Give them a hotline number. Encourage them to call to get more information and support.
• Make sure that you don’t talk to them about the abuse in front of their partner.
• Offer to help with things like transportation, groceries or childcare.
• If your friend is the abusive one, there is help for them too.

Here are some things you can say…

• “I care about you/your family. I’m concerned that you might be hurt emotionally or physically. I’m worried about your safety.”
• “In a relationship where there is abuse or violence, it often gets worse over time.”
• “You are not alone, this happens to a lot of people. It’s not your fault.”

The Eastside Domestic Violence Program in Bellevue, Washington, has a thorough, detailed Personal Safety Plan available for free online. It can be adapted and personalized as needed. The plan begins with this statement:

The following steps represent my plan for increasing my safety and preparing in advance for the possibility of further domestic violence. Although I do not have control over my partner’s violence, I do have a choice about how to respond to them and how to best get myself and my children to safety.

Eastside also operates a 24-hour crisis hotline: 1-425-726-1940 or 1-800-827-8840.

DAWN, the Domestic Abuse Women’s Network in King County, also has a 24-hour hotline: 425-656-7867.

The Salvation Army in Seattle has a 24-hour hotline: 206-324-4943.

The Washington State Domestic Violence Hotline number is 1-800-562-6025.

If you live in the Seattle area, there is help available. If you worship at a church in Seattle, there is help available. If you’re married to someone who works at a church in Seattle, there is help available.

You are not alone, this happens to a lot of people. It’s not your fault.

I care about you and your family. I’m concerned that you might be hurt emotionally or physically. I’m worried about your safety.

There is help available.