scudmissile

alexanderpf: John Hendrix for the nytimes via stoweboyd

Sun, 19 May 2013 09:30:08 -0700

alexanderpf:

John Hendrix for the nytimes via stoweboyd

travelingcolors: Lindens anywhere in Saxony | Germany (by...

Sun, 19 May 2013 07:44:14 -0700

travelingcolors:

Lindens anywhere in Saxony | Germany (by Thomas Uhlig)

"The genius of America’s endless war machine is that, learning from the unplesantness of the Vietnam..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 11:58:14 -0700

“The genius of America’s endless war machine is that, learning from the unplesantness of the Vietnam war protests, it has rendered the costs of war largely invisible. That is accomplished by heaping all of the fighting burden on a tiny and mostly economically marginalized faction of the population, by using sterile, mechanized instruments to deliver the violence, and by suppressing any real discussion in establishment media circles of America’s innocent victims and the worldwide anti-American rage that generates. Though rarely visible, the costs are nonetheless gargantuan. Just in financial terms, as Americans are told they must sacrifice Social Security and Medicare benefits and place their children in a crumbling educational system, the Pentagon remains the world’s largest employer and continues to militarily outspend the rest of the world by a significant margin. The mythology of the Reagan presidency is that he induced the collapse of the Soviet Union by luring it into unsustainable military spending and wars: should there come a point when we think about applying that lesson to ourselves?”

- Glenn Greenwald (via azspot)

gnumblr: wave.gif

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:20:51 -0700

gnumblr:

wave.gif

"Nobody much these days is really a progressive, believing that our future will be all about bigger..."

Sun, 12 May 2013 19:24:45 -0700

“Nobody much these days is really a progressive, believing that our future will be all about bigger and better government. The Democrats have become, in a way, the conservatives, defending the government benefits we now have and warning of imminent “voucherization.” And they have become so conservative that our president was viciously attacked from the Democratic left when he proposed a minor reduction in the rate of growth in Social Security. But it’s not like that left is seriously proposing an increase in Social Security. When the president proposes a tax increase, it’s pretty much to pay for what we now have. And we really sort of know that his strategy is to delay the inevitable.”

- Capitalism Has Won! And Conservatives Are Confused (via azspot)

ginzilla: Metatron

Sun, 05 May 2013 15:10:24 -0700

ginzilla:

Metatron

nedroidcomics: Inspired by Candy Crush and so many other mobile...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:30:27 -0700

nedroidcomics:

Inspired by Candy Crush and so many other mobile games

"Mental rotation is a skill that men typically perform better than women (for a review, see Valian,..."

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 22:01:15 -0700

“Mental rotation is a skill that men typically perform better than women (for a review, see Valian, 1999). However, when researchers described a mental rotation task as predictive of success in interior design, women actually performed better than men. Men outscored women only when the task ostensibly predicted success in aviation engineering….Because men typically outscore women on mental rotation, the reversed effect in the feminine condition testifies to the power of gender conformity to release the motivational brakes (for women) and to apply them (for men). It also signals the extent to which people inhibit themselves to avoid crossing gender bounds.”

- Laurie A. Rudman and Peter Glick, The Social Psychology of Gender (via brute-reason)

yankfiction: ridingwithstrangers: Architectural Density in...

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 18:19:05 -0700

yankfiction:

ridingwithstrangers:

Architectural Density in Hong Kong

With seven million people, Hong Kong is the 4th most densely populated places in the world. However, plain numbers never tell the full story. In his ‘Architecture of Density’ photo series, German photographer Michael Wolf explores the jaw-dropping urban landscapes of Hong Kong. He rids his photographs of any context, removing any sky or horizon line from the frame and flattening the space until it becomes a relentless abstraction of urban expansion, with no escape for the viewer’s eye. Infinite and haunting.

guh.

"I have had conversations with very well-educated people who, with a straight face, have told me that..."

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:30:00 -0700

“

I have had conversations with very well-educated people who, with a straight face, have told me that there are Black Confederates. If you ask a very well educated person how the GI Bill exacerbated the wealth gap, or how New Deal housing policy helped create the ghetto they very likely will not know. And they do not know, not because they are ignorant, stupid, or immoral, they do not know because they are part of country that has decided that “not knowing” is in its interest. There’s no room for any sort of serious conversation when the basic facts of history are not accessible. It would be like me demanding a conversation on Vichy France—en Français.

So we retreat to mushy, moist talk about who “feelings,” “intentions,” “good people” and “loving fathers.” The great Jay Smooth once said that we need to move from a “what you are” conversation (“you are a racist”) to a “what you are doing” conversation. Unfortunately this presumes a groundwork of honesty and good faith. No such good faith exists because we are ignorant, and deep down inside, we know it and are ashamed of it.

”

- Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Against the ‘Conversation on Race’”

"People think the idea of a big company owning your digital identity is better than the government,..."

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:30:06 -0700

“People think the idea of a big company owning your digital identity is better than the government, but actually it’s just the opposite: it’s much more market friendly to have the government cover those basics, because it creates continuity and lessens the dependency. There has to be a government function for some of the basics in digital identity. I don’t see any way around that.”

- Jaron Lanier (via azspot)

azspot: Pat Bagley

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 09:30:12 -0700

azspot:

Pat Bagley

womanhouse: Ad Reinhardt, How to Look at Art, Arts &...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:30:05 -0700

womanhouse:

Ad Reinhardt, How to Look at Art, Arts & Architecture, January 1947

myjetpack: A book of my cartoons will be out in a few...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 07:25:56 -0700

myjetpack:

A book of my cartoons will be out in a few weeks!

Income inequality is very rigid | Matt Bruenig

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 09:20:59 -0700

Income inequality is very rigid | Matt Bruenig:

… [T]his study smashes through one of the more sophisticated argument from the right-wing about the issue of income inequality. The dumber sorts on the right tend to just pretend inequality does not exist or they tell some sort of totally irrelevant story about how their great-grandfather was poor before he wasn’t. But some of the smarter sorts have been saying that the inequality statistics do not mean anything because there is a great deal of mobility from year to year. So while it is the case that, in any given year, the income distribution is pretty unequal, folks move up and down that distribution throughout their lifetimes, meaning that inequality in lifetime earnings is much less dispersed.

But we now know with very reliable data that this simply is not true: folks generally live their adult lives at the same spot on that distribution. So our income distribution is simultaneously very unequal and very rigid. With that established, the sophisticated right-wing will have a hard time mounting much of a case about inequality anymore. There is no way to deny that it exists, that it is rigid, and that it generally transmits itself across generations (i.e. very low intergenerational social mobility). So what else is there? All the right seems to have remaining in its arsenal is the argument that such rigid inequality is not relevant to justice anyways. They wont say that of course, even though many believe it.

nevver: Strong but weak

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 12:11:58 -0700

nevver:

Strong but weak

“Scratch boards” by Jane Masters (via Art today is a new kind of...

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:54:10 -0800

“Scratch boards” by Jane Masters (via Art today is a new kind of instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility - but does it float)

mohandasgandhi: talldarkarab: Oscar Nominated Film ”5 Broken...

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 07:15:42 -0800

mohandasgandhi:

talldarkarab:

Oscar Nominated Film ”5 Broken Camera’s is screened to Israeli Youth”

Watch this.

"We’ve been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent..."

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 17:00:27 -0800

“We’ve been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It’s been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes. Let us not be deceived — Nixon, Bush, Obama, they’re war criminals. They have killed innocent people in the name of the struggle for freedom, but they’re suspending the law, very much like Wall Street criminals. The law is suspended for them, but the law applies for the rest of us.”

- Cornel West (via azspot)

nevver: Nietzsche Family Circus

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 12:00:27 -0800

nevver:

Nietzsche Family Circus