Link Archive 7/20/13 – 8/20/13
It's that time again
20 Historic Black and White Photos Colorized
Note to everyone: crack all the books you bought legally before you travel. Or disable wi-fi on your reader. In a world where reading is outlawed, only pirates will have reading material. :/
You'd rather go out of business then help spy on the populace? That's a paddlin'.
Founding Father Pin-ups. You can click the pics for centered full-screen.
Proud to be a Coloradan today! :D Colorado Becoming a Stoned, Gay, 'Worst Possible Hellhole on Planet Earth “It’s interesting how the most evil people in the world who bring about the Marxist, Communist, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual agendas typically revert back to the worship of Satan,”
Holy crap this blog is awesome. In the first four posts not only is there a feminist critique of HPMoR, there's also a comparison of Madoka Magica with Those Who Walk Away From Omelas, and a conversation on the visual intelligence of Pacific Rim.
Pacific Rim - "Mako's character development is actually almost entirely visual in nature--no one talks through her memories or explains her motivations aloud. What's more, her personality and character arc is defined strongly by color symbolism. So, while she doesn't have a huge number of lines, that doesn't make her shallow."
Madoka/Omelas - "To me, it's pretty clear that the show is more than a revisionist reimagining of the Magical Girl genre. The show tears down the trappings of the Magical Girl only to tear down the trappings of the revisionist narrative as well. Remember that Le Guin is interested in pointing out the treason of artists--the willingness of creators to accept evil as something that must exist for there to be beauty. This show asserts, in its own way, the same basic idea." HPMoR - Some points I agree with strongly, others I disagree with strongly, but a good read regardless.
I love petard-hoists! "Senate Bill 1425, would require food supplement companies to label their supplements in much the same way similar legislation would mandate GMO labeling.
Supplement companies and their interest groups fear that the legislation would impose severe restrictions on their industry and gradually drive the price of supplements higher than most would be able to afford"
An awesome fan-theory about Labyrinth
The world is becoming a better place :) Dear Daughter: I Hope You Have Awesome Sex
Why are all the mammals getting fat? It's because the aliens that grow us are getting ready to return for the harvest!
Following God's inspiration, a family sailed off into the Pacific. God led them to needing to be rescued by the secular country they were fed up with. One of these forces is greater than the other.
Oprah couldn't buy a handbag, possible due to racism. I'm unable to feel bad for a $3B media mogul, but the #MyOprahMoment tweets at the bottom are rage-inducing.
HA! I find it interesting that in red states there are many voters who seem to be both hard-core capitalists and christians. Have they paused to consider why god would go through the effort of saving all the christians without any incentive? Where's his profit motive? Solution presented: God is VERY good at marketing! And your soul is delicious.
Time Travel in Movies. How could they forget to put Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure in?? It should be by 12 Monkeys and Prisoner of Azkaban under "Novikov self-consistency" and "Interaction with self"!
Great application of Radical Transparency - cops being recorded as they harass minority kids, and good cops coming forward to reveal how this has become official policy. We need more of this. When all of the good cops leave the service because they can't stand the bigotry and corruption, who will be left policing us? Oh...
GM crops don’t kill kids. Opposing them does "Ingo Potrykus [and] Peter Beyer had added three genes to the 30,000 in rice to help to prevent vitamin A deficiency, one of the most preventable causes of morbidity and mortality in poor countries with rice-dominated diets. They had done it for nothing, persuading companies to waive their patents, so that they could give the rice seeds away free. [...] 10 years later this rice would still not be available to the poor, that a systematic campaign of denigration against it by the behemoths of the environmental movement, especially Greenpeace, would be consuming lawyers’ fees while perhaps 20 million children had died in the meantime."
WarGames. This is pretty amusing. What would happen if Apple and Google went to actual no-holds-barred war? They couldn't have spent the 15 minutes and $0 it would've taken to clean this up in Audacity though? A bit distracting to leave those flubs in.
The world's tallest slum. Modern ruins fascinate me.
An actual worthwhile use of a Walmart!
Casualties of War. "the War on Drugs provides an excellent pretext for violent action by the U.S. and its client states in the Western hemisphere [...] The War on Terror works exactly the same way in the Middle East"
Fantastic Commercial :) "It's like Santa for your vagina"
I hear many of the big companies are dropping their "lateral thinking" puzzle questions, since they haven't been a good indicator of... anything, really. Here's a cool perspective: what would you do if you were actually trying to solve the problem, rather than simply showing off your cleverness?
Hilarious lip sync to an old song. I don't even understand why this is as great as it. But it is. :D
An interesting test in India of giving a minimal basic income to everyone unconditionally
A poem. Trigger warnings - what you'd expect. "Rape Joke" by Patricia Lockwood
Japanese Commuters Tilt Train To Free Trapped Woman. Whoever designed the train's suspension system deserves a medal of extra-awesomeness.
Stills from the cartoons we watched growing up that look very sexually lewd out of context. Funny, but so wrong. :)
Abandoned Parts of Detroit. I love ruins like this. Very Fallout-esque. Have people shot any post-apocalyptic movies in Detroit yet?