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danharmon: From the room in which Remedial Chaos Theory was...

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 03:06:26 -0400

From the room in which Remedial Chaos Theory was broken by Chris McKenna and writers. I’m sorry, that’s not accurate. The room in which Chris McKenna and writers were broken by Remedial Chaos Theory. Thank you so much for your patience and sacrifices, guys.

aatombomb: We were discussing homosexuality because of an allusion to it in the...

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 03:05:59 -0400

aatombomb: We were discussing homosexuality because of an allusion to it in the...:

We were discussing homosexuality because of an allusion to it in the book we were reading, and several boys made comments such as, “That’s disgusting.” We got into the debate and eventually a boy admitted that he was terrified/disgusted when he was once sharing a taxi and the other male…

Photo

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 03:05:34 -0400

Photo

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 03:05:09 -0400

dvdp: 111109

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 02:49:34 -0400

dvdp:

111109

dvdp: backstage at Google Earth? (I HATE when there is no...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 02:49:17 -0400

dvdp:

backstage at Google Earth? (I HATE when there is no source/credit for a post)

UPDATE: This scale-model is part of Futurama - an exhibit/ride at the 1939 New York World’s Fair designed by Norman Bel Geddes. It tried to show the world 20 years into the future. Thanks to Euphues for the info!

dvdp: Hundreds of pictures of Earth, each taken at about 6AM ,...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 02:49:01 -0400

dvdp:

Hundreds of pictures of Earth, each taken at about 6AM , showing the terminator - the day/night line - over the course of one year (2010sep-2011sep).
Taken by METEOSAT-9 Earth-observing satellite.

Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

Save Newsweek.com: A Defense of Newsweek.com

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 02:48:44 -0400

Save Newsweek.com: A Defense of Newsweek.com:

savenewsweekdotcom:

It’s always nice to wake up and find out in the Times that your job is doomed. As they put it on Saturday morning, quoting the new CEO of the so-called Newsweek Daily Beast Company, Stephen Colvin: “Newsweek.com will cease to exist after the merger, and anyone who types the URL into their…

wilwheaton: So. Freaking. True.

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 01:37:01 -0400

wilwheaton:

So. Freaking. True.

Your Anon News: As some of you know we got banned from Google+ due to some of our...

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 01:36:40 -0400

Your Anon News: As some of you know we got banned from Google+ due to some of our...:

youranonnews:

As some of you know we got banned from Google+ due to some of our content. What we didn’t know at the time is that we were just one of a handfull of Anonymous accounts that was silenced. This is the sad fact of what happens across the internet when you walk to a different beat of the drum….

youranonnews: ACTA in a Nutshell – What is ACTA? ACTA is the...

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 01:36:18 -0400

youranonnews:

ACTA in a Nutshell –

What is ACTA? ACTA is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. A new intellectual property enforcement treaty being negotiated by the United States, the European Community, Switzerland, and Japan, with Australia, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Mexico, Jordan, Morocco, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and Canada recently announcing that they will join in as well.

Why should you care about ACTA? Initial reports indicate that the treaty will have a very broad scope and will involve new tools targeting “Internet distribution and information technology.”

What is the goal of ACTA? Reportedly the goal is to create new legal standards of intellectual property enforcement, as well as increased international cooperation, an example of which would be an increase in information sharing between signatory countries’ law enforcement agencies.

Negotiating Parties -

Australia

Canada

European Union

Japan

Mexico

Morocco

New Zealand

The Republic of Korea

Singapore

Switzerland

United States

Essential ACTA Resources -

HOW TO ACT AGAINST ACTA: Make a difference

Read more about ACTA here: ACTA Fact Sheet

Read the authentic version of the ACTA text as of 15 April 2011, as finalized by participating countries here: ACTA Finalized Text

Follow the history of the treaty’s formation here: ACTA history

Read letters from U.S. Senator Ron Wyden wherein he challenges the constitutionality of ACTA: Letter 1 | Letter 2 | Read the Administration’s Response to Wyden’s First Letter here: Response

Watch a short informative video on ACTA: ACTA Video

Watch a lulzy video on ACTA: Lulzy Video

Reuters: ACTA signed in Tokyo: Article

United States ACTA: Read

European Union Trade Commission ACTA: Read

Australian Gov’t ACTA: Read

Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic: Read

ACTA Undermines Access to Medicines: Article

Say NO to ACTA. It is essential to spread awareness and get the word out on ACTA. #ActAgainstACTA

thedailywhat: On Kony 2012: I honestly wanted to stay as far...

Sun, 08 Jul 2012 01:35:58 -0400

thedailywhat:

On Kony 2012: I honestly wanted to stay as far away as possible from KONY 2012, the latest fauxtivist fad sweeping the web (remember “change your Facebook profile pic to stop child abuse”?), but you clearly won’t stop sending me that damn video until I say something about it, so here goes:

Stop sending me that video.

The organization behind Kony 2012 — Invisible Children Inc. — is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called ”misleading,” “naive,” and “dangerous” by a Yale political science professor, and has been accused by Foreign Affairs of “manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes.” They have also been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureau’s standards.

Additionally, IC has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they won’t let their financials be independently audited. That’s not a good thing. In fact, it’s a very bad thing, and should make you immediately pause and reflect on where the money you’re sending them is going.

By IC’s own admission, only 31% of all the funds they receive go toward actually helping anyone [pdf]. The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization, to pay for their travel expenses (over $1 million in the last year alone) and to fund their filmmaking business (also over a million) — which is quite an effective way to make more money, as clearly illustrated by the fact that so many can’t seem to stop forwarding their well-engineered emotional blackmail to everyone they’ve ever known.

And as far as what they do with that money:

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. These books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.

Let’s not get our lines crossed: The Lord’s Resistance Army is bad news. And Joseph Kony is a very bad man, and needs to be stopped. But propping up Uganda’s decades-old dictatorship and its military arm, which has been accused by the UN of committing unspeakable atrocities and itself facilitated the recruitment of child soldiers, is not the way to go about it.

The United States is already plenty involved in helping rout Kony and his band of psycho sycophants. Kony is on the run, having been pushed out of Uganda, and it’s likely he will soon be caught, if he isn’t already dead. But killing Kony won’t fix anything, just as killing Osama bin Laden didn’t end terrorism. The LRA might collapse, but, as Foreign Affairs points out, it is “a relatively small player in all of this — as much a symptom as a cause of the endemic violence.”

Myopically placing the blame for all of central Africa’s woes on Kony — even as a starting point — will only imperil many more people than are already in danger.

Sending money to a nonprofit that wants to muck things up by dousing the flames with fuel is not helping. Want to help? Really want to help? Send your money to nonprofits that are putting more than 31% toward rebuilding the region’s medical and educational infrastructure, so that former child soldiers have something worth coming home to.

Here are just a few of those charities. They all have a sparkling four-star rating from Charity Navigator, and, more importantly, no interest in airdropping American troops armed to the teeth into the middle of a multi-nation tribal war to help one madman catch another.

The bottom line is, research your causes thoroughly. Don’t just forward a random video to a stranger because a mass murderer makes a five-year-old “sad.” Learn a little bit about the complexities of the region’s ongoing strife before advocating for direct military intervention.

There is no black and white in the world. And going about solving important problems like there is just serves to make all those equally troubling shades of gray invisible.

[kony2012.]