Rethink Again

nypl: Mark Twain on his way around the world in 1897. Happy...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 19:37:04 -0400

Mark Twain on his way around the world in 1897. Happy Mustache Monday.

Photo from NYPL Digital Gallery.

“Be Good and you will be lonesome.”

- Mark Twain

A catchy protest song played on pots and pans by street...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:17:09 -0400

A catchy protest song played on pots and pans by street musicians in Istanbul. The translation is a bit rough but you get the idea. They seem to have a sense of humor with the penguins, too…

“Come slowly, slowly — the ground is wet.”

ladisputing: Reykjavík, Iceland A piece of my heart rests...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:28:05 -0400

ladisputing:

Reykjavík, Iceland

A piece of my heart rests here.

nevver: Turkey

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:39:31 -0400

nevver:

Turkey

inothernews: top5funniest: Neil Patrick Harris Opens The 2013...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 08:46:18 -0400

inothernews:

top5funniest:

Neil Patrick Harris Opens The 2013 Tony Awards

I missed the Tonys!!! I MISSED THE TONYS.

NPH forever.

inothernews: Charles Emir Richards, an American living in...

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 14:56:51 -0400

inothernews:

Charles Emir Richards, an American living in Turkey, has documented the anti-government protests taking place in that country on his Facebook page. (via NBC News)

Istanbul is burning.

"this is what happens when a society tacitly agrees that, while (theoretically, at least) its..."

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 19:08:22 -0400

“this is what happens when a society tacitly agrees that, while (theoretically, at least) its citizens have rights the government may not abridge, the government is free to subcontract that job to every other important institution that affects the lives of its people. Employers, for example, may drug-test employees without cause, and they may monitor the political and social media activities of those employees even when those employees are off the job. Your children lose their Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights — and most of their First Amendment rights — as soon as they walk through the schoolhouse doors. There have been, of course, no effective counterweights to any of this. Union protection in the workplace is gone. Schoolchildren have no effective lobby for their rights. Of course, Verizon cooperated with the government. Even if they hadn’t been ordered to do so, do you think there would have been 15 minutes of serious debate in the boardroom over the privacy rights of their millions of customers? How’s that no-call list thing working for you?
This is the surveillance state writ large, with large corporations and the government in close cooperation, and hallowed by a warrant from a secret court that was supposed to be the last line of defense against this sort of thing. (Even though the FISA court has been a rubber stamp for years, which was an argument back during the previous administration for why that administration should have gotten a warrant. Ah, thim was the days.) And because we are supposed to be a self-governing political commonwealth, we are complicit, too. All of the powers under which the NSA operated were approved, over and over again, by the Congress, the members of which we freely elect, and none of whom will ever win an election on issues like this because, all tricornered hats and the outrage of the Paul family aside, there is no electoral constituency for the Bill of Rights any more. All of the powers under which Verizon operated were approved, over and over again, by its customers, who now know what the company was doing, and who, I predict, will keep handing over the data. Given the dark, midnight nature of government secrecy, a lot of the infrastructure behind this current outrage was put in place in the daylight. The fault, dear Brutus…”

- Charles Pierce, Verizon Phone Record Scandal - Why Verizon’s Phone Record Scandal Is No Real Surprise

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

William Shakespear, Julius Caesar

(via stoweboyd)

we get the government we deserve… (via haseman)

motherjones: Cool maps, but where’s the one showing the GIF/JIF...

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:19:55 -0400

motherjones:

Cool maps, but where’s the one showing the GIF/JIF split?

cheatsheet:

npr:

(via 22 Maps That Show The Deepest Linguistic Conflicts In America)

Joshua Katz, a Ph. D student in statistics at North Carolina State University, just published a group of awesome visualizations of a linguistic survey that looked at how Americans pronounce words.

Among the words he maps are crawfish, syrup, caramel, lawyer, mayonnaise and pecan. He also maps regions by how they refer to a carbonated beverage (the age-old soda or pop question) and how people address groups of two or more people — though as someone who spent time in Pittsburgh, yinz seems to be conspicuously absent. — heidi

Check it out, Y’ALL.

dendroica: Mayflower Oil Spill: Exxon Doesn’t Want You to Know...

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 16:46:52 -0400

dendroica:

Mayflower Oil Spill: Exxon Doesn’t Want You to Know People Are Getting Very, Very Sick

The oil spill in Mayflower, Arkansas has left residents outside the evacuation zone complaining of illness. Exxon says the air is safe, but new documentation shows they lied and attempted to cover up the extent of the oil spill. We should trust residents who are suffering from spill-induced illness, not Exxon.

“I could smell that horrible smell. I got really scared,”says Sherry Appleman, who awoke to a nightmare on March 29. As the Exxon Tar Sands oil flowed through their town, residents of Mayflower reported strong odors that lead to headaches and vomiting in areas that Exxon deemed safe and not in need of evacuation. Some of residents, like Scott Crowe, were deemed safe to remain in their homes where a mere 300 yards from the rupture site. They say they haven’t heard from city officials or Exxon, but have experienced headaches, stomach pains, nausea, fainting, and have been prescribed inhalers for the first time.

Ann Jarrell reports that she stayed at home with her daughter and a 3 month old grandchild despite the smells because they were told they didn’t need to evacuate and were safe. Ann Jarrell is a beekeeper and found dead, oil-soaked bees on her porch. The state plant board agreed to evacuate her bees to a safe location, but deemed the situation safe enough for Jarell’s family. They later learned it was likely they’d been exposed to toxic chemical fumes, and are now suffering from breathing problems and have been placed on inhalers.

A local elementary school outside the evacuation zone had to send home eight students who became ill after breathing petrochemical fumes. Although Exxon had determined the air around the school safe, residents, including school officials, reported strong odors of oil in and around the building. These are just a handful of disturbing examples of illness in Mayflower after the oil spill. One Mayflower resident, despite being able to see the leak from her home, was told by Exxon that residents were merely suffering allergies. Some of the residents affected by the spill have filed a class action lawsuit.

Big oil.

nevver: Tiananmen Square, or The June Fourth Incident (in...

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 09:50:42 -0400

nevver:

Tiananmen Square, or The June Fourth Incident (in Chinese)

This photo is often reduced to the close-up but I think it’s even more stunning from afar. One tiny person halted, if only for a little while, an entire line of tanks.

neil-gaiman: In case you missed it… The deaths listed are...

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 09:34:32 -0400

neil-gaiman:

In case you missed it…

The deaths listed are unverifiable for now but the situation is serious in Istanbul.

carlboygenius: TODAY IN TURKEY National Protest: Istanbul:...

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 08:12:34 -0400

carlboygenius:

TODAY IN TURKEY

National Protest: Istanbul: 01-02JUNE2013

good: Badass ‘Speed Sisters’: The First Palestinian Women’s...

Tue, 28 May 2013 18:04:48 -0400

good:

Badass ‘Speed Sisters’: The First Palestinian Women’s Auto Racing Team
- Amber Fares wrote in Living, Women and Creativity

“Nummber two! Marrrrrrrah, from Jenin!” The crowd erupts. “Huh? A girl?” one guy asks. Marah, the 20-year-old racing prodigy, drives up to the start line. Jenin is home, and this is her turf. It was here that she first beat out most men to place in the top ten. Eyes closed, she whispers a passage of self-encouragement from the Koran. Her fingers chart the course in the air that she is tracing in her mind, that she has been doodling in the pages of her course books for days, that she has been seeing in her sleep. It loops and weaves. It seems to never end.

But she knows it now. She’ll find her way.

Marah is not alone. Brought together by a common desire to live life on their own terms, several determined Palestinian women have taken on the street car speed test circuit of the West Bank—competing against each other for the title of fastest woman, for bragging rights for their home city, and to prove that women can compete head on with men in Palestine and beyond. Together they have been acclaimed as the first all-women motor racing team in the Middle East—the “Speed Sisters.”

Continue reading on good.is

Instead of Fast and Furious 6, can there be a movie about the “Speed Sisters” instead?

usnatarchives: “Scott Levins, the Director of the National...

Mon, 27 May 2013 11:23:59 -0400

usnatarchives:

“Scott Levins, the Director of the National Personnel Records Center, recently received a letter of thanks from the folks at JPAC, mentioning the names of 32 men missing since the Korean War who had been identified, thanks to the efforts of this center, and could now be sent home for burial.

Some of the names listed were the names of young men whose records I had processed.

Sometimes, I take a quick look at the ages of the men and women whose records I am working on. I realize that most of them are less than half my age. I’ve had a good life so far. Sometimes, their lives ended just when it should have been beginning.”

—excerpt from Why I Do What I Do, by Michael Pierce, preservation technician at the National Archives at Saint Louis.

Our mission is to preserve, protect, and make available the records of the Federal government, and this includes the millions of files of veterans, living and deceased.These records are housed at the National Personnel Center in St. Louis, and can be accessed by veterans to received benefits, or by families and researchers.

To learn more about these records, watch this video.

Image: A grief-stricken American infantryman whose buddy has been killed in action is comforted by another soldier. In the background a corpsman methodically fills out casualty tags, Haktong-ni area, Korea. August 28, 1950. Sfc. Al Chang. (Army, 111-SC-347803)

This picture.

americasgreatoutdoors: Today we remember those countless brave...

Mon, 27 May 2013 11:20:53 -0400

americasgreatoutdoors:

Today we remember those countless brave men and women who gave their lives so we could live in freedom. Let’s hold all our fallen heroes in our hearts today and everyday.

Photo of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial by Richard Paige

Memorial Day.

nevver: The New Yorker Remember them.

Sun, 26 May 2013 12:16:10 -0400

nevver:

The New Yorker

Remember them.

You spin me right round, baby.

Sun, 26 May 2013 12:14:05 -0400

You spin me right round, baby.

30 Indispensable Writing Tips from Famous Authors by Jack...

Sat, 25 May 2013 11:55:08 -0400

30 Indispensable Writing Tips from Famous Authors by Jack Shepherd on Buzzfeed

Advice from some seriously awesome writers.

smithsonianmag: Happy 130th to the Brooklyn Bridge! When it...

Fri, 24 May 2013 14:02:03 -0400

Photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge Across the East River, 04/1974. ARC ID 55572

Pedestrians on the upper deck promenade of Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, ca. 1910 ARC Identifier 541908

smithsonianmag:

Happy 130th to the Brooklyn Bridge!

When it opened on May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Designed and built by German-born John A. Roebling and his son, Washington A. Roebling, the bridge connected New York and Brooklyn. The remarkable design used Roebling’s patented system of steel wire cable construction. Its graceful limestone and granite towers, pictured here, took 5 years to build.

Photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge Across the East River, 04/1974. From the EPA’s DOCUMERICA Series

Plan of One Tower for the East River Bridge, 1867

Pedestrians on the upper deck promenade of Brooklyn Bridge, New York City, ca. 1910

via: todaysdocument

inothernews: A TALE OF ONE CITY Sarah Dick read a Dr. Seuss...

Thu, 23 May 2013 11:00:19 -0400

inothernews:

A TALE OF ONE CITY Sarah Dick read a Dr. Seuss book to her 3-year-old daughter, Jadyn, in her driveway in Oklahoma City on Wednesday. Her house was destroyed in the tornado. Officials say at least 24 residents died in the storm. (Photo: Rick Wilking / Reuters via the Wall Street Journal)

Heartbreaking but hopeful.