I’ve worked for both
Wayne enterprises. No way would I want to work for stark.
(Source: who5tyx, via elhombre)
Just in case you needed proof that McDonald fries are NOT vegan/vegetarian
oh wow. Finally! Good to know! I will spread it
wait, vegans actually go to mcdonalds?
(via azelie)
Scopolamine
Scary stuff.
A Chart that Reveals How Science Fiction Futures Changed Over Time
The future may seem to be closer or farther off, depending on the era you’re living in. That’s one of the possible conclusions you can draw from this chart, created by Stephanie Fox for io9, based on research we’ve done over the past month. We wanted to know whether there are historical trends in how far in the future we set our science fiction — and there definitely are. Here we present our data, as well as some preliminary conclusions about why the future changed so much from decade to decade over the past 130 years.
The Dataset
To get our data, we worked with intrepid researchers Ben Vrignon and Gordon Jackson, who helped track down when “the future” was in a random sampling of over 250 works of science fiction (books, movies, TV, and some comics) created between 1880 and 2010. Purely for sanity purposes, we narrowed our search to pieces of science fiction widely available in English, in America, though the works sampled include several pieces of European and Japanese SF.The Methods
Once we had our data, we divided it up into works set in the Near Future (0-50 years from the time the work came out), Middle Future (51-500 years from the time the work came out) and Far Future (501+ years from the time the work came out).Why did we pick these boundaries? In part they were just necessary (and slightly arbitrary) cutoffs for categories that are arguably much softer than such rigid demarkations can capture. Still, they are justified for a few reasons. First of all, I wanted to reflect an idea of “near future” SF that encompasses works that are set just barely into the future, works that are generally intended to be about how the present day is already science fictional. George Orwell’s 1984 was probably the first work of SF to popularize this notion of the near future, while William Gibson and Ken MacLeod’s recent works also take it up.
I picked 51-500 as the “mid future” because, frankly, it includes the Star Trek universe, which I consider to be a kind of model of mid-future SF because it includes radically new technologies and social structures, but the world is still recognizably our own. There is a ton of science fiction set in this mid-future which functions similarly - we’re still the same old humans, just in space. And finally, works set 500+ years in the future are often of a markedly different character than mid-future ones. We see a humanity that’s radically altered, like the one in The Time Machine or Alasdair Reynolds’ series. The Earth is unrecognizable or long gone. This is Deep Time territory, when anything goes.
Some caveats: I thought about making Near Future 0-100 years in the future, but decided that generally once you get beyond 50 years you start seeing SF that includes really radical changes and isn’t intended to be “five minutes into the future” like recent William Gibson novels or George Orwell’s 1984. I also thought about adding another “mid future” category between 51-200 years, since that’s such a popular time period. If we had more data, I think that would have been reasonable.
The Analysis and Conclusions
I would like to say at the outset that these conclusions are preliminary, as we’ll need a lot more data before we’re on solid ground — and I would also like to see some cross-cultural comparisons, too. There are, however, a few things we observe right off the bat.There are a few moments in history when all futures are almost equally represented, notably in the 1920s and the 1960s. Those are both periods of liberalization in the United States, when social roles were changing rapidly and the economy was booming. Perhaps these eras of rapid change turned people’s eyes to both the near and far future. Interestingly, both eras were followed by periods of economic downturn that led to opposite effects: In the 1930s, we saw a spike in far future stories (indeed, the most of any era in our data); and in the 1970s we saw a spike in near future stories.
At other times, the future seems right around the corner. In the 1900s and the 1980s, there were huge spikes in near-future science fiction. What do these eras have in common? Both were times of rapid technological change. In the 1900s you begin to see the widespread use of telephones, cameras, automobiles (the Model T came out in 1908), motion pictures, and home electricity. In the 1980s, the personal computer transformed people’s lives.
In general, the future got closer at the end of the twentieth century. You can see a gradual trend in this chart where after the 1940s, near-future SF grows in popularity. Again, this might reflect rapid technological change and the fact that SF entered mainstream popular culture.
The future is getting farther away from us right now. One of the only far-future narratives of the 1990s was Futurama. Then suddenly, in the 2000s, we saw a spike in far-future stories, many of them about posthuman, postsingular futures. It’s possible that during periods of extreme uncertainty about the future, as the 00s were in the wake of massive economic upheavals and 9/11, creators and audiences turn their eyes to the far future as a balm.
Again, these are all speculative comments. More data and analysis are needed.
(via azelie)
Bohemian Arthouse: Sign Language BAN imposed on 12 years old deaf girl -
I love how the school threatened to suspend the girl while refusing to address the audist bullies who bullied her and other girls for using American Sign Language.
Go fuck yourself, Stonybrook School.
Via ABC News:
School officials have threatened a hearing-impaired…
“When someone works for less pay than she can live on - when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently - then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The “working poor,” as there are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.” —
Barbara Ehrenreich, “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America”
I recently read this book, and while several observations and statistics stuck out to me, this quote, on the last page, I believe really sums things up quite well.
(via lostgrrrls)
Forget the billionaire “job creators” — our working poor are really the ones supporting our economy.
Wow. Nail on the head.
(via devilsplayground3188)
“Living on pills, phone calls unmade, people unseen, pages unwritten, money unmade, pressure piling up all around to make some kind of breakthrough and get moving again. Get the gum off the rails, finish something, croak this awful habit of not ever getting to the end - of anything.” — Hunter S. Thompson, Songs of the Doomed
(Source: kamslow, via terrestrial)
“What’s going on here is basically a con game to suggest otherwise. What do con men do? They normally try to change their name. The FDA has thankfully stopped that.” — Sugar Association lawyer Dan Callister • Praising the Food and Drug Administration’s rejection of an attempt by the Corn Refiners Association to rename the recently-controversial “high fructose corn syrup” to something a tad less innocuous — “corn sugar” to be specific. Let’s face it — when giant agricultural industry groups fight in public, everyone wins. (via shortformblog)
(via devilsplayground3188)
Solar power generation world record set in Germany | guardian.co.uk -
If this is what “European-style Socialism” can accomplish, perhaps it’s time to stop shitting on the idea?
German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity – equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity – through the midday hours of Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank has said.
Germany’s government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022. They will be replaced by renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and bio-mass.
Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50% of the nation’s midday electricity needs.
“Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity,” Allnoch told Reuters. “Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over.”
(Source: the-altar, via elhombre)
Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will | NYT -
Why I always add quote marks to the word “militant” in any article relaying anonymous official statements on casualties from our wars overseas (honestly, I’ve been doing this for quite some time. I also do this with the word “terrorist”):
Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs,” said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.
This counting method may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths. In a speech last year Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s trusted adviser, said that not a single noncombatant had been killed in a year of strikes. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the “single digits” — and that independent counts of scores or hundreds of civilian deaths unwittingly draw on false propaganda claims by militants.
But in interviews, three former senior intelligence officials expressed disbelief that the number could be so low. The C.I.A. accounting has so troubled some administration officials outside the agency that they have brought their concerns to the White House. One called it “guilt by association” that has led to “deceptive” estimates of civilian casualties.
“It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants,” the official said. “They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.”
Read on →
6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America. -
#5. Native Culture Wasn’t Primitive.
The Myth:
American Indians lived in balance with mother earth, father moon, brother coyote and sister… bear? Does that just sound right because of the Berenstain Bears? Whichever animal they thought was their sister, the point is, the Indians were leaving behind a small carbon footprint before elements were wearing shoes. If the government was taken over by hippies tomorrow, the directionless, ecologically friendly society they’d institute is about what we picture the Native Americans as having lived like.
The Truth:
The Indians were so good at killing trees that a team of Stanford environmental scientists think they caused a mini ice age in Europe. When all of the tree-clearing Indians died in the plague, so many trees grew back that it had a reverse global warming effect. More carbon dioxide was sucked from the air, the Earth’s atmosphere held on to less heat, and Al Gore cried a single tear of joy.
One of the best examples of how we got Native Americans all wrong is Cahokia, a massive Native American city located in modern day East St. Louis. In 1250, it was bigger than London, and featured a sophisticated society with an urban center, satellite villages and thatched-roof houses lining the central plazas. While the city was abandoned by the time white people got to it, the evidence they left behind suggests a complex economy with trade routes from the Great Lakes all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico.
And that’s not even mentioning America’s version of the Great Pyramid: Monk’s Mound. You know how people treat the very existence of the Great Pyramid in Egypt as one of history’s most confounding mysteries? Well, Cahokia’s pyramid dwarfs that one, both in size and in degree of difficulty. The mound contains more than 2.16 billion pounds of soil, some of which had to be carried from hundreds of miles away, to make sure the city’s giant monument was vividly colored. To put that in perspective, all 13 million people who live in the state of Illinois today would have to carry three 50-pound baskets of soil from as far away as Indiana to construct another one.
So why does Egypt get millions of dollars of tourism and Time Life documentaries dedicated to their boring old sand pyramids, while you didn’t even know about the giant blue, red, white, black, gray, brown and orange testament to engineering and human willpower just outside of St. Louis? Well, because the Egyptians know how to treat one of the Eight Wonders of the World. America, on the other hand, appears to be trying to figure out how to turn it into a parking lot.
In the realm of personal hygiene, the Europeans out-hippied the Indians by a foul smelling mile. Europeans at the time thought baths attracted the black humors, or some such bullshit, because they never washed and were amazed by the Indians’ interest in personal cleanliness. The natives, for their part, viewed Europeans as “just plain smelly” according to first hand records.
The Native Americans didn’t hate Europeans just for the clouds of shit-smelling awfulness they dragged around behind them. Missionaries met Indians who thought Europeans were “physically weak, sexually untrustworthy, atrociously ugly” and “possessed little intelligence in comparison to themselves.” The Europeans didn’t do much to debunk the comparison in the physical beauty department. Verrazzano, the sailor who witnessed the densely populated East Coast, called a native who boarded his ship “as beautiful in stature and build as I can possibly describe,” before presumably adding, “you know, for a dude.” This man-crush wasn’t an isolated incident. British fisherman William Wood described the Indians in New England as “more amiable to behold, though dressed only in Adam’s finery, than … an English dandy in the newest fashion.” Or, with the bullshit removed, “Better looking than any of us, and they’re not even fucking trying.”
(via laduderina)
So I finally Saw it. I was worried going in. for movies like this I normally try to see them as soon as Possible, before everyone else can tell me how awesome it is and set my expectations to high many a movie has been ruin for me by this(by the Time I saw Spider-man 2 It would have had to cure the blind to live up to the second hand hype). And For the beginning of the Avengers I thought it had happened again. Here’s my train of thought through the movie.
ok, so the first act is just awful. i was getting pissed. I kept try to remind my self that I wanted to like this movie. Other people keep telling me Mark Rafullo is the best Hulk yet, but I can’t see it. Nothing he says sounds natural and it was driving me berserk. and just when I start to lose hope Thor showed up and it became awesome.
Ok, So the movie is low on things like Depth and Subtext. But if you View the Iron Man Vs. Thor Fight using the the Subtext of the Thor movie and Iron man movies this scene it suddenly becomes A fight between Jesus and Ayn Rand . Obviously This subtext is an accident. I’m not Going to go through My thoughts on Act 2 accept 3 things.
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Honestly the second act is great. If this movie had ended with the fight scene on the Helicarrier it would have been awesome. but there’s act 3 (technically it has 5 acts but for the review I’m condensing it). and it’s dumb. Fun but dumb. It’s a Ditz with big tits, and a pea for a brain. it’s a fun ride but deep as a puddle. for starts it steal it’s major plot point from Transformers 3. but the really big let down is what the movie does with the Chituari is just lame the movie takes them and makes generic as hell (look like a cross between predators and the covenant from halo.) for Crying out loud they’re Skrulls! the Chitauri are ultimate-verse Skrulls. and you did nothing with them. They could have used Captain America to pick up this slack if they had used the Chitauri/Nazi stuff. Oh, but if Hulk had eaten a Chitauri I would bumped this movies grade up a whole letter. The last weird thing is that the Film (which is clearly loosely based on Mark Millar’s Ultimates) ends on the opposite message as the comic books which is interesting.
So, My final verdict is this. It a fun movie if you turn off your brain it’s a fun ride. Uneven and not very challenging but fun. I was a little disappointed by certain things (so, Joss are you going to blame the Shitty dialogue on your co-writer?), I can’t even say it’s the best Team movie (X-men: First Class) or even the Best movie in the Avengers Series (Thor). But, it is a lot better version Transformers 3: Dark of the moon.
Grade: B.
(Source: insania66, via devilsplayground3188)
Source: Zimrig, Carl A. 2005. Cash for Your Trash. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.