The Weird, Random, and Interesting things that Fit Nowhere Else Thread

[Raithe]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-TuyOhN5mU

[Raithe]

[Raithe]

Okay, technically, this might fit better in the games thread, or skeeter's junkyard, but I think it really suits the oddities of random stuff...

 

Kotaku - How video game breasts are made and why they can go so wrong

 

It's both oddly interesting and weirdly amusing the depths of programming and focus testing that goes on.

[Oerwinde]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-nuclear-reactor/

 

TIL of a uranium deposit so condensed it began a fission reaction by itself and produced nuclear energy for hundreds of thousands of years.

[Raithe]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9hMNddj4bM

[Raithe]

Tor - On Michael Garibaldi ; Humor and Trauma

 

 

Michael Garibaldi was one of my constellation of pop cultural big brothers. Northern Exposure‘s Chris Stevens taught me that finding joy in knowledge wasn’t just allowed, it was essential. Midnight Caller‘s Jack Killian taught me that emotional honesty was a vital survival tool, and he and Chris both taught me talking about stuff on the radio was a very cool job I might one day want. Henry Rollins taught me the acknowledgement of weakness is a strength in and of itself and that almost no trauma is unsurvivable. Egon Spengler taught me it’s ALWAYS the quiet ones. And Michael Garibaldi? The Chief taught me how to be me.

 

My 17th year was not a good one. I was on the verge of the most important exams of my life, I was about to move off the tiny island I’d been born on, I was about to leave everything I knew behind and the universe had seen fit to punish my decision to voluntarily grow a mullet (In my defense, I was 17) with early male pattern baldness. This was all the icing on the cake of horror that year was because we’d lost one of my closest friends to a third bout of leukaemia earlier in the year. There are few definitions of genetic cruelty more fitting than a 17-year-old losing his life to his third bout of leukaemia, and that loss defined everyone who knew him for a very long time.

 

For my part, I was walking wounded. I was angry and couldn’t see it, overwhelmed by grief and anger and horror and the sheer bone-numbing fatigue and resentment that comes from, somehow, still standing after going through something you feel should break you.

I was still moving. I was still functional. I was disgusted at myself for that.

 

So I did what I always did. I dived headlong into escapism and looked for the tools in fiction that would help take back control of my reality. This was how I passed the time on the Isle of Man anyway; I’d completely watched out the local video store and was a regular at the movies to the extent that the ushers and I used to chat about what was good. Other kids drank, or took drugs, or did the stuff most teenagers do. Me? I went full geek.

 

That’s where I found Chris, Jack, Henry, Egon and Michael. I taught myself popular culture the way you learn a language, mapping my likes and dislikes as I stepped out into the infinite unknown territory of modern fiction. I was already a fan of Babylon 5, but that year, going through what I went through, it had a special resonance for me. I—along with my entire class that year at school, in fact—were embattled. We’d been pushed to limits no kid should ever have to go through and were out in this weird no man’s land between adolescence and adulthood, experience and discovery. No one really knew how to deal with us, no one knew what to say because in that situation there is nothing TO say. You just have to keep going until the part of you that’s hollow is filled back up with something else.

 

Enter, stage left, Security Chief Michael Alfredo Garibaldi. Probably swearing at something.

The first reason I locked onto Garibaldi was that he was a smartarse, the sort who could, on occasion, get that laugh out of people that’s so surprising even they don’t see it coming. I was a stage magician at the time (I mentioned my adolescence was ODD, right?) and that laugh became my questing beast. I got it a few times, too and to this day that kind of laconic, good-natured humour hits me right where I live. Daffy’s furthest flung disciple may have been long-suffering but he always gave the impression of secretly rather enjoying that role. It was a good lesson; humour as coping mechanism, frustration vented through comedy. Still helps, even today.

 

Then there was the fact he was a big guy. I was 6’0 by the time I was 13. I’d been drafted into my school’s rugby team (despite having vision that stops pretty much when my face does) and had, hilariously, briefly played at a national level in my age group. People looked at me and saw BIG. No one looked at me and saw CLEVER. The fact that I was, and am, was something I took fierce pride in. Garibaldi taught me that.

 

His hair or rather…lack thereof helped, too. The widow’s peak is a mountain no teenager wants to climb but there I was, halfway up it with one piton left and a voice in the back of my newly shaved head going “God does not play dice. But she really hates mullets.” Seeing someone else with my build, my sense of humour, and my hairline was like throwing a drowning man a life preserver. And then maybe suggesting he keep his hair short from now on.

 

And then there was the trauma. Garibaldi basically stumbles into Babylon 5 sideways and on fire and never quite gets over that. He was a mostly recovering alcoholic, a man whose serial inability to not trust people who weren’t even a little trustworthy almost got him killed, and whose PTSD was quieter but no less raging than Commander Sinclair’s. He’d taken, and inflicted, a lot of damage. He was trying to do better.

He didn’t always manage it.

That didn’t stop him.

That helped save me.

 

It also, for a while, caused some problems. Garibaldi’s cheerfully fatalistic belief that other people mattered more than he did resonated with the nascent survivor’s guilt I’d picked up that year and wrapped itself around self-esteem and confidence issues I still struggle with today. When they’re under control, on the good days, I’m able to be helpful and positive to those around me and keep doing what I need to do for me. On the bad days I spend my working life looking for grenades to throw myself on, whether it’s warranted or not.

There are far, far more good days than bad days now. I survived. After a while, I lived. And not long after that I realised that I was allowed to. The Chief taught me that too. That there are things beyond the trauma. That you don’t just come out the other side and carry on, but that you’re allowed to. You have to. If nothing else, sometimes, just to see the look on their faces when you do.

 

Michael Garibaldi, Jerry Doyle, and the writers who created the character helped me save my own life. They showed a frightened, wounded, enraged teenager that he wouldn’t be any of those things forever and while what was coming was bad, what was following it would be so much better than he dared hope. I will forever be indebted to them for that, and offer my deepest condolences to Mr Doyle’s family and friends.

Michael Garibaldi is one of my constellation of big brothers, some fictional, none related to me, all instrumental in helping me shape and save my life. Thanks, Chief. May your new position as the right hand of the Egyptian God of Frustration be just annoying enough to be interesting…

[Raithe]

Ah China...

 

China will prosecute foreigners in South China Sea

 

 

Hong Kong (CNN)China has sent a clear warning to foreigners who enter contested areas of the South China Sea -- stay away or you'll be prosecuted.

 

The warning came in a detailed explanation of last month's Hague ruling, which found that China's territorial claims in region have "no legal basis" under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.

 

China claims almost all of the South China Sea, including islands more than 800 miles (1,200 kilometers) from the Chinese mainland, despite objections from neighbors including the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam.

On Tuesday, the Chinese Supreme People's Court issued a regulation on judicial interpretation saying there was a "clear legal basis for China to safeguard maritime order, marine safety and interests, and to exercise integrated management over the country's jurisdictional seas."

Michael C. Davis, a law professor at Hong Kong University, told CNN the supreme court's statement was "worrisome."

 

"This is kind of an ominous suggestion that they will be prosecuting people who enter the waters that China claims," he said.

The Hague ruling found that China had no historic title to the waters and had breached the sovereign rights of the Philippines, which brought the case.

The court also ruled that many purported islands controlled by China are not in fact, islands, but instead reefs or rocks, which do not generate territorial rights.

China's top court did not directly reference the Hague ruling, but said that "judicial power is an important component of national sovereignty."

 

China fiercely guards what it regards as its territorial waters, attacking and arresting foreign fishermen who work near islands controlled by Beijing.

The supreme court said Chinese citizens or foreigners who engage in illegal hunting or fishing in the waters will be criminally prosecuted. It classified several situations as "illegally entering Chinese waters," including remaining or reentering waters "after being warned and driven away," that could result up to a year in prison.

In May, Vietnamese fishermen told CNN how Chinese-flagged vessels raided their boats and stole equipment in the waters near the Paracel Islands.

 

Davis warned that the direction could mean Filipino fishermen operating in waters the UN tribunal ruled belong to the Philippines could be apprehended by Chinese vessels and be "prosecuted in direct contradiction of the (Hague) ruling."

 

The supreme court also said that Chinese fishermen who violate environmental protection laws in the South China Sea could be prosecuted.

Davis said that this could be "a signal they will require their fishermen to adhere to environmental standards, which they haven't in the past."

The Hague tribunal found that Chinese fishermen and reclamation projects had caused "irreparable harm" to the region's marine environment.

 

In recent months, Beijing has reacted angrily to U.S. and Australian freedom of navigation operations in the region, scrambling fighter jets and boats and denouncing the nations' navies as "threatening Chinese sovereignty."

 

Last week, state-run Chinese newspaper Global Times accused Australia of making itself "a pioneer of hurting China's interest with a fiercer attitude than countries directly involved in the South China Sea dispute."

Canberra was one of the first governments to voice support for the Hague ruling and encourage others to abide by it.

However, while the ruling is considered legally binding, there is no mechanism to enforce it.

 

[Gfted1]

Obamacare plans seek premium hikes of up to 45 percent.

 

Thank goodness we are spending 1 TRILLION dollars to keep health care and insurance costs down.

[Raithe]

So the guy jumps from 25,000 feet without a parachute, aiming to land in a big net...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOBavry0K2E

Edited August 23, 2016 by Raithe

[Raithe]

Washington Post - Why a satanic temple member wants to perform rituals before a city council in the bible belt

 

 

Gerald Wingate didn’t think a man in a cheap-looking Halloween costume would rattle him.

 

After four years as a Pensacola, Fla., city council member and another 25 as an Army officer, Wingate has seen his fair share of battles.

But as David Suhor, 48, the co-founder of the West Florida Chapter of the Satanic Temple, stood before lawmakers on Thursday and began his invocation — his pale face hooded and arms raised high like Darth Sidious in Star Wars — Wingate decided he had enough. As Suhor called on lawmakers to "embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the tree of knowledge," Wingate quietly exited the chamber, passing by anxious citizens holding crosses and reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

 

"You’ve got somebody who is worshiping Satan and who is coming in when the majority of us in this area serve God," Wingate, who is Christian, told The Washington Post. "It wasn’t good for me to stand there and I got a little bit emotional. I was offended."

As far as Suhor is concerned, that was largely the point.

 

For the past few years, he has made his presence felt at city and county government meetings around Pensacola by giving non-Christian invocations. His goal is to have religious services removed from local government meetings entirely, but he’d settle for "an inclusive moment of silence." To highlight the injustice of sitting through a government-sanctioned religious message, Suhor gives invocations that draw from paganism, Satanism, Judaism, Islam and other religious traditions. In Pensacola, a deeply religious community located 15 minutes from the Alabama border and home to one of the country’s largest Christian colleges, many people find his actions intolerable.

 

"The ones who have trouble with this are those that think their way is the only way," Suhor told The Post. "When one group wants their message to be the only one and they try to enlist the agenda of the government, people get angry. True religious diversity means I don’t have to respect what you believe, but I’ll defend your right to believe it."

Suhor has been sprinkled with holy water, surrounded by people speaking in tongues or trying to drown him out with fervent prayer. During a school board meeting in October, the invocation turned into a chaotic, 20-minute-long religious revival in which people screamed in tongues and tried to cast demons out of Suhor after he calmly recited a polytheistic message.

 

"The spirit of Beelzebub has got to go, the spirit of witchcraft has got to go," one man yelled in Suhor’s face. "We cast you out in Jesus’ name!"

For the past six months, Suhor — who started a local chapter of the Satanic Temple earlier this year — has been attempting to perform the invocation before the Pensacola’s City Council in hopes that it will lead to a ban on prayer.

 

The tactic has worked before. In February, the Phoenix City Council banned public prayer instead of letting the Satanic Temple conduct a public invocation that would offend many.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and four members of the council voted for the change and argued that an effort to silence particular groups could land the city in an expensive legal battle.

"The First Amendment to the Constitution is not ambiguous on this issue," Stanton said, according to the Republic newspaper. "Discriminating against faiths would violate the oath that all of us on this dais took. I personally take that very, very seriously."

 

Gregory Lipper, a senior attorney at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told The Post in February the mayor’s prediction is sound.

Lipper, who has represented the Satanic Temple in several legal battles, said that two years ago the Supreme Court held in Town of Greece v. Galloway that a community’s practice of beginning legislative sessions with prayers does not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

 

However, Lipper said, although local governments can open meetings with prayers, those governments cannot control the content of those prayers unless they denigrate other faiths or include proselytizing. Much of the resistance to the Satanic Temple, he said, comes from people who think that the group is made up of devil worshipers, and they tend to unleash fierce opposition that wouldn’t hold up in a court of law.

 

"This is an issue that will come up in homogeneous communities when a member of a minority religion takes advantage of the invocation and it tends to generate a backlash," Lipper told The Post. "Most local governments are used to a steady drumbeat of Christian clergy delivering Christian prayers. We’ve seen this same issue with Muslim prayer-givers and Wiccan prayer-givers around the country.

 

Contrary to the name, Satanic Temple members are non-theists who do not believe in the existence of the devil and promote the idea that religion can be divorced from superstition. On its website, the Satanic Temple describes its mission as encouraging "benevolence and empathy among all people." Among the group’s seven tenets: "The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend."

"Our tenets are rational and we emphasize compassion," Satanic Temple founder Lucien Greaves told The Post at the time. "Satan to us is metaphorical and represents a universal fight against tyranny and autocracy."

The group has set off numerous headline-making free-speech debates in recent years by using provocative imagery. In 2014, it unveiled a proposal to place a Seven-foot Satanic statue in front of the Oklahoma state capitol, next to a statue of the Ten Commandments.

 

Later that year, after threatening a lawsuit, the Satanic Temple — in conjunction with Americans United — convinced Florida officials to allow the temple to move forward with a holiday display in the state capitol in Tallahassee that showed an angel dropping from the sky into a pit of flames. The week-long display, which Florida officials had labeled "grossly offensive," was placed in an area designated as an open forum for private speech.

In Pensacola, Suhor said, the City Council’s invocation is usually reserved for local ministers or members of the city staff. Last week, after six months of trying to get scheduled, Suhor finally got his chance. He dug up an old costume and practiced a routine that he documented on YouTube.

 

"I chose to wear it because this is a religious ritual and I thought it was appropriate garb — nothing fancy about it," he told The Post.

Members of the local Methodist church filled the council chambers with prayer as Suhor approached the podium. After calling order, Council President Charles Bare instructed the crowd to quiet down and said he would be forced to empty the room if they didn’t comply.

"I would rather be in a room than let darkness sit here by itself," one man yelled back.

When the crowd refused to stop audibly praying, Pensacola Police began escorting people from the chamber.

Suhor began singing a few moments later, prompting Wingate to leave the room in protest.

 

Afterward, several people in the crowd took to the podium to chastise the council for offering Suhor a chance to give the invocation.

"When you invoke a name, any other name under heaven that is not the Lord Jesus Christ, you almost invite cursing or disaster to fall on you," Vickie Truett said, according to ABC affiliate WEAR-TV.

 

Suhor told The Post that he disagrees with Truett or anyone else who would "allow discrimination." He called religious rituals outdated and "divisive" and a custom that people are "forced to grin and bear" if they want council members to take their concerns seriously.
"The purpose of it is to pander for votes and the net effect is that it creates religious privilege for one group," he said. "Prayer is fine on your own time, but you don’t need to take government time to do it."

 

He added: "I wonder how many of these people would tolerate week after week hearing calls to some supernatural being that they believe is bunk or — in my mind — pathological. I want people to understand how that feels."

[Amentep]

There was a local school that has a "Good News" club that the Satanic Temple is aiming to get an "After School Satan" club in, according to the local news.

[Volourn]

“Our tenets are rational and we emphasize compassion,”

 

Empty words. The article suggests otherwise.

[Hurlshort]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2DN2jCefYk

[Raithe]

Sometimes, you just have to make time for the supercuts...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QwRbjgk9HM

[Raithe]

Oh yes, here's one for Bruce..

 

The Totalitarian doctrine of social justice warriors

 

 

 

 

The modern social justice movement, or the new "political correctness," vaulted into the spotlight last year. Student protests swept across campuses with demands often focused on purging thoughtcrime—leading to heated debates on whether this movement is a dangerous pseudo-progressive authoritarianism or a long-overdue effort to achieve justice for all. A year-in-review piece in The Daily Dot in late December proclaimed 2015 "the year of the social justice warrior."

 

The Daily Dot author, graduate student and political columnist Michael Rosa, hailed this trend and urged liberals to "embrace the term." Yet the accomplishments he invoked are, as the social justice crowd likes to say, problematic. His Exhibit A, the legalization of same-sex marriage, actually had very little to do with the current social justice movement; it was the result of two decades of very different, pragmatic activism that focused on a clear goal—the legal right to marry—and stressed equality, not gay identity. And #BlackLivesMatter, also a movement with a specific focus—police violence toward African-Americans—has been arguably hurt, not helped, by PC dogma that suppresses discussion of thorny issues such as black-on-black crime and attacks "insensitive" dissenting speech (Amherst protesters demanded disciplinary action against students who had put up "All Lives Matter" posters).

 

Unfortunately, Mr. Rosa’s other examples of "social justice" in action—the feminist revival, the new visibility of transgender issues and opposition to "Islamophobia"—are squarely in train-wreck territory. Not that there’s anything wrong with the principles: Most Americans support gender equality, believe transgender people should be able to live as they wish and reject anti-Muslim hate. But social justice warriors have turned these causes into malignant self-parody. Their feminism frets over men sitting with their legs apart on public transit, seeks dissent-free "safe spaces" and cries oppression at concern about obesity’s health risks. Their transgender advocacy demands respect for customized gender identities with personal pronouns that may change on a whim and crucifies a devoutly progressive filmmaker for a "transphobic" joke that presumes that female characters are anatomically female. Their anti-Islamophobia trashes feminist critics of conservative Islamism and victim-blames journalists murdered for publishing Mohammed cartoons.

 

Have the social justice warriors of 2015 supported some worthy causes? Sure. But much of their passion goes into speech and culture policing directed at victimless crimes that violate their moral taboos.

 

Consider last year’s protest against a Boston Museum of Fine Arts exhibit that allowed visitors to try on a kimono: Activists assailed this as "cultural appropriation" and racist imperialism, much to the bafflement of local Japanese-Americans and Japanese consulate staffers. Or consider the outcry over a T-shirt worn in promotional photos by stars of the film Suffragette, using a slogan from suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst, "I’d rather be a rebel than a slave." This was blasted for "co-opting" the black experience of slavery and racism and ignoring the Civil War connotations of "rebel"—even though the quote had nothing to do with American slavery or Confederate rebellion and used both words in the universal sense.

 

Behind these outbreaks of self-righteous wrath is a distinct if somewhat amorphous ideology we could dub "SocJus." (The callback to "IngSoc" from George Orwell’s 1984 is not quite coincidental.) At the center of this worldview is the evil of oppression, the virtue of "marginalized" identities—based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion or disability—and the perfectionist quest to eliminate anything the marginalized may perceive as oppressive or "invalidating." Such perceptions are given a near-absolute presumption of validity, even if shared by a fraction of the "oppressed group." Meanwhile, the viewpoints of the "privileged"—a category that includes economically disadvantaged whites, especially men—are radically devalued.

 

Because SocJus is so focused on changing bad attitudes and ferreting out subtle biases and insensitivities, its hostility to free speech and thought is not an unfortunate byproduct of the movement but its very essence. You can be welcoming and respectful toward transgender people yet still be branded a bigot if you don’t quite believe that transwomen who identify as female but have an intact male anatomy are "real women"—and even if you keep that opinion to yourself, you can be challenged to prove your loyalty to the party line.

 

Obviously, retaliation for unpopular opinions isn’t limited to SocJus, but it’s hard to think of another present-day political group so unforgiving to even inadvertent verbal offenses. At California’s Claremont McKenna College last fall, Dean of Students Mary Spellman had to resign after protests. Her crime: In an email replying to a student who had written to her about racial issues on campus, Ms. Spellman had mentioned her wish to "better serve students, especially those who don’t fit our CMC mold," supposedly implying students of color don’t belong at the school.

 

Nor is any other group so preoccupied with linguistic cleansing. A discussion on a social justice forum advocates expunging from one’s vocabulary such "ableist" terms as "crazy," "dumb" and even "depressing"; at Smith College last year, the student newspaper’s report on a panel (ironically, one dedicated to free speech) rendered "wild and crazy" as "wild and [ableist slur]." Calling somebody one’s "spirit animal" is frowned upon because it’s an "appropriation" of a concept specific to some oppressed cultures. An academic list of "microaggressions" includes asking, "Where are you from?" or complimenting a foreign-born person’s English.

 

SocJus speech- and thought-policing includes self-policing. "I rigorously manage my own thinking and purge myself of dangerous ‘unthinkable’ thoughts—‘mindkill’ myself—on a regular basis," wrote columnist and former Jeopardy champion Arthur Chu in a 2014 Facebook discussion. "This is what you have to do to be a feminist anti-racist progressive, i.e. a social justice stormtrooper."

 

Some conservatives describe SocJus as "cultural Marxism"; it has also been compared to Maoism, and particularly to the Cultural Revolution, with its focus on re-education and public confessions of ideological errors. But, as atheist blogger Rebecca Bradley has argued, the movement also has many elements of an apocalyptic religious cult that sees the world as mired in sin and evil except for a handful of the elect. A popular post on Tumblr, a major SocJus hive, laments, "being on Tumblr all the time gives me such a deluded view of the world. I start believing that everyone is pro-choice, open-minded, have moral compass…care about sexism, racism, body shaming, etc, but then I walk out my front door and realize that everyone is still just as moronic as they were two years ago." This is a classic cult mindset.

 

There is a word for ideologies, religious or secular, that seek to politicize and control every aspect of human life: totalitarian. Unlike most such ideologies, SocJus has no fixed doctrine or clear utopian vision. But in a way, its amorphousness makes it more tyrannical. While all revolutions are prone to devouring their children, the SocJus movement may be especially vulnerable to self-immolation: Its creed of "intersectionality"—multiple overlapping oppressions—means that the oppressed are always one misstep away from becoming the oppressor. Your cool feminist T-shirt can become a racist atrocity in a mouse click. And since new "marginalized" identities can always emerge, no one can tell what currently acceptable words or ideas may be excommunicated tomorrow.

 

Intersectionality also makes SocJus uniquely vulnerable to internal conflicts and tensions. How do you reconcile progressive beliefs about gender with an "anti-Islamophobia" that treats defenders of misogynist and homophobic Islamist fundamentalism as sympathetic "marginalized people?" Very awkwardly: At Goldsmiths College, University of London last December, campus feminist and LGBT groups joined in solidarity with the Islamic Society, which complained that a campus talk by Iranian-born feminist and ex-Muslim Maryam Namazie was a violation of "safe space."

 

The social justice movement has many well-meaning followers who want to make the world a better place. But most of its "activism" is little more than a self-centered quest for moral purity. Dropping "crazy" from one’s vocabulary won’t improve health services or job opportunities for the mentally ill. Protesting a white singer’s "appropriation" of cornrows or rap music will have zero effect on the actual problems facing African-Americans.

 

The influence of SocJus has spread beyond academia and activist circles. It is a strong presence in the tech world (a popular code of conduct for digital communities explicitly "prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort") and in geek subcultures, such as the sci-fi and comic-book fandoms. It also sets the tone for much of the online media. But its unchecked ascendancy may be over.

 

Conservatives have long railed against "political correctness"; but now, even some progressives are saying that activism based on identity politics, self-righteousness and intolerance toward dissent and error is a dead end. What’s more, as Conor Friedersdorf has argued in The Atlantic, the left’s embrace of racial identity politics has spurred an alarming rise of white identity politics on the far right. It doesn’t help that the stigma against racism loses potency when "racism" can mean wearing a sombrero on Halloween.

Fortunately, a more individualist, culturally libertarian backlash has been brewing as well—exemplified by the acclaimed 19th season of South Park, which made PC its central theme. Who knows? If 2015 was the year of the Social Justice Warrior, 2016 could be the year of the anti-authoritarian rebellion.

 

 

[Raithe]

For the cat lovers out there...

 

Majestic Maine Coon Cats

 

 

Photographer Robert Sijka loves cats and he’s particularly drawn to Main Coons, the largest domesticated cat breed in the world. “My passions are cats and photography, I do my best to combine these two things as good as possible,” the photographer writes on his website.

When he saw a photo of two majestic black Maine Coons named Dolce Vita and De La Loo, he was inspired to make similar portraits of cats with a simple black background

[Gromnir]

 

Oh yes, here's one for Bruce..

 

The Totalitarian doctrine of social justice warriors

 

 

 

 

stuff

 

 

hbo is making a Fahrenheit 451. http://www.vulture.com/2016/04/ramin-bahrani-to-adapt-fahrenheit-451-for-hbo.html

 

the reason we bring it up in this place is that we hope hbo does it right, and we hope bruce sees the film... and perhaps then reads bradbury's novel, 'cause the book ain't about what most believe it is 'bout.  

 

novel were written in 1953 and it were a a dystopian and prophetic look at the sjw movement.  you don't recall it that way?  is 'cause you only know 'bout the book from wiki or some other source. perhaps more tragic is that in this day and age, so few o' the gg folks and others who howl 'bout the excesses o' the sjw movement know that bradbury wrote a book championing their cause 60 years ago, and it sits largely unread by the folks who would see it as a revelation.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Raithe]

So the Airlander 10 had its first real test flight a week ago...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-0aYicv26M

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vuX56R7hs8

[ShadySands]

Justice Department Says Poor Can't Be Held When They Can't Afford Bail

 

Holding defendants in jail because they can't afford to make bail is unconstitutional, the Justice Department said in a court filing late Thursday — the first time the government has taken such a position before a federal appeals court.

 

It's the latest step by the Obama administration in encouraging state courts to move away from imposing fixed cash bail amounts and jailing those who can't pay.

 

"Bail practices that incarcerate indigent individuals before trial solely because of their inability to pay for their release violate the Fourteenth Amendment," the Justice Department said in a friend of court brief, citing the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection.

 

Edited August 22, 2016 by ShadySands

[Gfted1]

Somewhere, Dog is flipping a table.

[Hurlshort]

So this was nice to watch...

 

 

I had a charter school close the day before school started in our area last week.  The flood of parents to the district office was insane.  Hey look, you suddenly have 5 new students in each class while we try to get a grip on the situation.   

[Raithe]

Not quite walking in their shoes but...

 

Bros Understanding Bras

 

 

Bra Company CEO Wants His Male Employees To Know What It’s Like To Have Large Breasts

 

Let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to be a man than a woman. Although men die four years earlier than women, they get to live without the extra burdens of menstrual cramps, lower pay, the pain of childbirth, or the feeling of having a bra strap digging into their backs. But now, the CEO of a bra company is letting men experience what it’s like to have large breasts so they can understand what women go through every day.

　

One day a year, PrimaDonna CEO Ignace Van Doorselaere makes his male employees wear simulated E-cup-sized breasts for an entire work day. "There is only one way for a man to realize what an E-cup feels like, and that is having an E-cup," Van Doorselaere says. In order to simulate the feeling of carrying around E-cup-sized breasts, the men wear weights hung around their necks. "Let’s be honest, an E-Cup can weigh up to 1 or 1.5 kilograms (2.2 to 3.5 lbs) per breast," Van Doorselaere says. "This is a lot. It hurts your neck. It hurts your back. Imagine you are that woman. Carry those breasts for an entire day. That’s why you need good support. Good support is important. Everybody at PrimaDonna knows that now."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nBVD3UFIXQ&feature=youtu.be

Edited August 23, 2016 by Raithe

[Gfted1]

This Tree Started Growing During the Viking Age.

[Volourn]

"Let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to be a man than a woman"

 

Idiot.

 

Tell that to the men who die earlier, commit suicide cause live sucks, lose their children because they have a ****, get screwed over in divorce more, get punished more severely for the same crimes, get sent off to the front of war more to die, get raped, because homeless more,  gets crewed over in education more.

 

Yeha. 'Men have it eaiser'.

 

 

LMAO

[Hurlshort]

This Tree Started Growing During the Viking Age.

 

That stumpy thing?  It's just a baby, out in California we have really old trees.