silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
[personal profile] silveradept
Hello again. Let's begin with a lion cub playing in the leaves.

Continuing onward, the Air Force Academy has member of the now-defunct "ex-gay therapy": organization Exodus International as the overseer of cadet counseling. Which is mandatory for cadets. The Air Force academy seems to have this type of problem more than others...

...but that could be peanuts compared to the difficulty of getting divorced in a state that refuses to recognize your legal marriage.

How about women being awesome, from a sixteen year-old monster truck driver who will be able to go Ivy League schools, thanks to crushing her SATs, First Lady, Michelle Obama, feminist icon (even if her feminism doesn't jibe with white expectations), Jordanian women participating in poetry slams, and Ms. Lawrence, when told that she did not look properly thin enough for Hollywood, channeled her inner Samuel L. Jackson (or Hugh Jackman) and told them to go fuck themselves.

The President may be feeling that attitude toward noisemakers claiming he's a godless atheist because he read a version of the Gettysburg Address that does not contain the words "under god" and the faction of the government responsible for the lowest number of bills passed by a Congress in history, a faction that runs perilous;y close to not even being able to pass bills that make sure the food market functions correctly ...but instead, he gets to let action do the talking, having a deal with Iran to roll back their nuclear program that has hardliners in The United States, Israel, and Iran unhappy about the deal, matters moving forward toward the complete destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile, as well as a conference set for January 2014 to begin the process of ending Syria's civil war, prisoners at Guantanamo Bay able to plead their case to be able to leave the facility, a Treasury that intends to crack down on spending by anonymous donors and organizations that explicitly endorse and support political candidates while masquerading as ":social welfare organizations", and a Senate majority that said "Fuck this filibuster nonsense" with regard to presidential nominees and Appeals court and lower court appointments.

There's still a lot to go, though, including the giant need for excellent science and science-based education, right from the beginning of schooling.

A primer on the positive value of "negative" methods of coping with trauma and violence.

You, too, can create your own Giant Squid Pillow. Or, for the more DIY types, weapons and explosives that can be manufactured only with items bought past TSA screening points in airports.

Women in Open Source projects, who have happily had a lot less sexism to deal with, it seems, than other women getting involved in open source projects. Speaking of Open Source, Glitch, a 2D browser-based adventure game, has had all of its code and assets released into the public domain. Which means a large amount of creative possibilities for anyone so inclined and able to use or unpack the Flash assets.

The Supreme Court of the United States will decide whether for-profit corporations are permitted to impose the religious beliefs of their executives on their employees, with regard to things like contraception being covered by health insurance, something the Affordable Care Act requires. Oklahoma's Appeals court found they can, another said no. The Court does not generally rule predictably on anything, so we have to hope they'll decide to trust women. Especially if oral emergency contraceptives have a higher failure rate on women who aren't rail-thin.

The stories of the still-nonexistent War on Christmas are beginning again, with a town's Christian celebration changing from having official government support to being an affair put on by private citizens, school-based Christian toy drives becoming Christian toy drives happening on public streets without the appearance of school endorsement (also a healthy dose of "humanists are bullies who want children to starve", despite the complaint having nothing to do with the program and everything to do with whose resources were being used to promote it), and outrage that the Postal Service isn't promoting their explicitly Christian stamps alongside ones that mention other VEWPRFs. If you would like to see the real war of Christmas, examine not the privileged, but the disprivileged and how they are treated if they wish to celebrate their VEWPRF.

Walmart is very invested in having you believe all of their retail staff are super-psyched about working on Thanksgiving and the day afterward, with one of their top executives promoting a message for the "Proud Associates" to use on their Twitter accounts. This is the same Walmart that continues to have labor disputes and retaliates against workers that take part in protests and that wants its own low-wage workers to donate supplies so that other low-wage workers can have enough to eat at their harvest feast celebrations, instead of, say, paying them a wage they can live and purchase groceries on.

The Sears Holdings CEO applied all of his Wall Street and Ayn Rand economic knowledge to running Sears and KMart, and got stupidly rich individually while destroying the company. Take heed from his lesson, oh corporate giants, and stop screwing your workers and venerating Rand.

Penny Arcade wants one person to do the job of four, with no work-life balance at all, and for low pay compared to the job requirements. And will happily keep making trainloads of cash for themselves while their new hire exhausts themselves.

Stanford University offers an interactive map of the Roman Empire, including the varied ways to get from point A to point B, how long it takes by those routes, and what that trip would cost. Lots of very detailed data.

Last for tonight, three tales of an inn, its town, and a girl in grey who knows her stories, what the Epic of Gilgamesh might have sounded like in its native tongue, and poems read by Tom Hiddleston, who is enjoying quite a bit of fame for playing Marvel's Loki.

And a study that says cats know when you're talking to them, they just don't care.
Depth: 1

Date: 2013-12-07 07:30 pm (UTC)
lliira: Fang from FF13 (Default)
From: [personal profile] lliira
I think that cat study is deeply flawed. Not that cats can recognize their humans' voices, because obviously they do. But that they don't care...? Huh? That's completely the opposite from all the cats I have ever lived with. Or that anyone I know who has talked about their cats has ever lived with. Cats are not dogs; they don't "obey". That doesn't mean they don't care.

None of the cats came when they were called? WTF? Seriously flawed study. Perhaps the cats were more worried about this strange environment and the weird people around them, so they chose not to come. It does not mean they did not care, or that they would not normally come when called.

Personally, I perceive cats as far more affectionate than dogs. My cats sleep on me all night. They demand petting. They hang out in whatever room we're in with us. They do their best to comfort us when we are sad. They choose whether or not to give affection, and therefore their affection is very valuable. Dogs just need and need and need. Obviously dogs have positive points too, but I am very tired of people acting like because cats are not dogs, and do not show affection and obey in exactly the same way dogs do, cats therefore don't give a damn about us. I think it's time for a bit of pushback to this completely incorrect idea.
Depth: 1

Date: 2013-12-07 09:03 pm (UTC)
majoline: picture of Majoline, mother of Bon Mucho in Loco Roco 2 (Default)
From: [personal profile] majoline
I thought the whole point to the Randian nonsense, in re Sears et al, was to flush the company whilst raking in dough? I mean, the company's not you. Why should there be money left in the company?

...I'm a little surprised at Salon for their naïveté.
Edited (grammar edit) Date: 2013-12-07 11:37 pm (UTC)
Depth: 3

Date: 2013-12-08 01:28 am (UTC)
majoline: picture of Majoline, mother of Bon Mucho in Loco Roco 2 (Default)
From: [personal profile] majoline
...Well, that's because Wall Street raiders have gotten slightly better about their pillaging being so blatant lately. (They just normally trash retirement funds and not stores, so we're less aghast).

I just... they spend half that article detailing how he's a normal corporate pirate and then are surprised at he did that same exact thing to Sears?
Depth: 5

Date: 2013-12-08 02:37 am (UTC)
majoline: picture of Majoline, mother of Bon Mucho in Loco Roco 2 (Default)
From: [personal profile] majoline
Ah! But you have to remember that people on the board are not an amalgamous "company"!

Trash the company and you get to wipe your hands of all wrong-doing (thanks corporate law!) and vacation in the Bahamas with your spoils. Win-win! ^u^

Maybe it's just because I grew up with this nonsense, but it seems pretty obvious that he was hired for just that purpose.
Depth: 1

Date: 2013-12-07 09:58 pm (UTC)
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)
From: [personal profile] momijizukamori
SCREAM public domain Glitch assets. And I can verify that the giant squid pattern turns out very cute - I made a slightly scaled down version (because I was using up some fabric I already had) for a Christmas present and it's all noodly arms hiding in my closet right now.
Depth: 3

Date: 2013-12-08 01:13 am (UTC)
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)
From: [personal profile] momijizukamori

I was - not as dedicated as some of my friends, but I enjoyed it a lot (and kind of want to cosplay my Glitch avatar). I'm going to go nosing around to see if anyone's started up some good OSS projects based on it.

Depth: 1

Date: 2013-12-07 03:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nancylebov.livejournal.com
Michelle Obama is very bad in re fat-- she frames what she's doing in terms of fighting obesity rather than improving health for both thin and fat people, she's put her children at age 8 and 11 on a weight loss diet, and she's going to appear for the second time on The Biggest Loser.

It's a shame people didn't read Atlas Shrugged more carefully-- I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's a sustained attack on crony capitalism. It's in favor of people who love their businesses as a means to do useful work-- they love supplying value to their customers *and* making money.

I'm not in entire agreement with the negativity article, but it's at least a large partial truth.

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silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
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