Help I Am Tumbling!

Holder: We've Droned 4 Americans, 3 by Accident. Oops. | Danger Room | Wired.com

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:15:42 -0700

Holder: We've Droned 4 Americans, 3 by Accident. Oops. | Danger Room | Wired.com

jeffhammett: I went to a new bar in town tonight. I went to the bathroom, the urinal was normal....

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:14:14 -0700

I went to a new bar in town tonight. I went to the bathroom, the urinal was normal. There was a mirror on the wall next to the door, just like you’d expect. But below that where the sink should be was just a wooden table with a sink shaped hole and a bottle of hand sanitzer. It was really funny.

My first visit to Toronado, shortly before their grand opening five years ago.

Video

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:00:21 -0700

I’m actually, sort of, looking forward to ads in the Tumblr dashboard stream because I think...

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:45:52 -0700

I’m actually, sort of, looking forward to ads in the Tumblr dashboard stream because I think there is a lot of potential for culture jamming with fake ads and spoofs. Nearly all of the Tumblr ads I’ve seen so far have done a pretty good job trying to blend in content wise with the other things one might see on Tumblr. With the exception of the small “sponsored” icon they’re not nearly as intrusive as a lot of other advertising.

But because of this I think that fake ads, that are critical of the company or product that they are supposedly advertising, have a good chance (if well done) of gaining exposure through reblogs, etc.

Where Tumblr Came From - Anil Dash

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:39:18 -0700

Where Tumblr Came From - Anil Dash:

LiveJournal is and was the most seminal social networking platform that’s ever existed, and almost nobody had captured the addictive, expressive environment of its friends list as well as Tumblr’s dashboard did.

Maybe it was the time in my life when I used LiveJournal, or the fact that I had never experience anything even remotely like LJ before, but I have to say I agree with this. LiveJournal probably was the best social network I have ever used.

Harper rocking the backwards cap on Flickr.

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:04:23 -0700

Harper rocking the backwards cap on Flickr.

Bedazzled (at Old Town San Diego State Historic Park)

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:46:38 -0700

Bedazzled (at Old Town San Diego State Historic Park)

"“We learned so much about regulation with Google Health. It turns out, the government has rules..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:33:20 -0700

“

“We learned so much about regulation with Google Health. It turns out, the government has rules about health records, and that people care about these rules for some reason. So we began looking around for ways to avoid regulation. For example, government regulation meant it was much easier to experiment with white space in Kenya than in the United States. So we started thinking: What if the entire world looked more like Kenya? Or, even better, Somalia? Places where there are no laws. We haven’t adapted mechanisms to deal with some of our old institutions like the law. We aren’t keeping up with the rate of change we caused through technology. If you look at the laws we have, they’re very old. A law can’t be right if it’s 50 years old. Like, it’s before the Internet. Here, put on these glasses.”

I did, and suddenly, my vision was filled with tentacle porn.

“Go ahead, watch” said Page’s Being. “I won’t judge you, I never have. I merely document, filter and suggest. Based on your history, we know you are interested in cephalopods. This is just a new direction. Enjoy yourself.”

”

- Welcome to Google Island

‘Come Sail Away’ by Styx is my new jam.

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:33:00 -0700

‘Come Sail Away’ by Styx is my new jam.

Residents of Naco, Arizona join residents of Naco, Mexico for a...

Thu, 09 May 2013 08:35:57 -0700

Residents of Naco, Arizona join residents of Naco, Mexico for a volleyball match during the fourth “Fiesta Bi-Nacional” at the fence that separates the U.S. (left) and Mexico (right), on April 14, 2007. (Reuters/Jeff Topping)

Does that mean the Tecate tent in the background is binational?

(via On the Border - In Focus - The Atlantic)

Israeli bombing of Syria and moral relativism | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Tue, 07 May 2013 11:30:06 -0700

Israeli bombing of Syria and moral relativism | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk:

As Rudy Giuliani put it when asked if waterboarding is torture: “It depends on who does it.” Today’s version of that is: Israel and the US (and its dictatorial allies in Riyadh and Doha) have the absolute right to bomb other countries or arm rebels in those countries if they perceive doing so is necessary to stop a threat but Iran and Syria (and other countries disobedient to US dictates) do not. This whole debate would be much more tolerable if it were at least honestly acknowledged that what is driving the discussion are tribalistic notions of entitlement and nothing more noble.

"And let’s just for a moment try to imagine their perspective, because that red line, if you will, I..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 20:37:09 -0700

“And let’s just for a moment try to imagine their perspective, because that red line, if you will, I think in some ways has backfired in terms of having the Syrians look up to and admire and support the West. Because let’s say you live in one of these villages, let’s say your family and your extended family live in the village in the area immediately around it. You know, in 2011 the village may have been occupied, if you will, by the Syrian army, there may have been checkpoints around it, and the Syrian army and security forces were in the eyes of local people preying upon the local people and taking some of the young men, and from your extended family maybe a few young men were arrested. Gradually, as the war deepened, there is fighting. And as the fighting intensified, your village started to get shelled. And the shelling then led with time to the occasional airstrike, and the shelling continues to this day. And in your extended family you’ve had several losses, several people have been killed - not just fighters, not just people inclined to be fighters, but women, children, the elderly. Several, a few - but it’s enough. And then you’re listening to this argument that says, ‘Now if chemical weapons are used, the world would be so concerned and so outraged that they would take action.’ And you start to think, ‘So my life isn’t what you care about. It’s the nature of my death.’ So if I die by high explosives, if I die by a bullet, if I die by disappearance because I’m rolled up at the checkpoint, never seen again, that’s OK. That’s a green line? And a SCUD missile’s OK? An airstrike’s OK? But chemical weapons, that’s not OK. I mean there are, according to, you know, the most recent estimates as many as 70,000, maybe more than 70,000, people who have been killed in this conflict. And to the Syrians, they say those don’t count? But if someone, you know, takes the cork off some chemical weapons - even a few - that suddenly does count?”

- C.J. Chivers talking to Terry Gross about the war in Syria. (via iheartgoatmeat)

Photo

Wed, 01 May 2013 13:24:19 -0700

nprfreshair: The strange and magical place that is Los Angeles....

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:53:39 -0700

nprfreshair:

The strange and magical place that is Los Angeles. Photo taken in Venice, California.

BBQ hummus anyone?

- Heidi

Source: wolfives

Awesome! But I still prefer Greek Sombrero for my Mediterranean/North American fusion needs:

"It is a surreal and difficult-to-explain dynamic. Americans seemingly place an inordinate fear on..."

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:30:29 -0700

“It is a surreal and difficult-to-explain dynamic. Americans seemingly place an inordinate fear on violence that is random and unexplainable and can be blamed on “others” – jihadists, terrorists, evil-doers etc. But the lurking dangers all around us – the guns, our unhealthy diets, the workplaces that kill 14 Americans every single day – these are just accepted as part of life, the price of freedom, if you will. And so the violence goes, with more Americans dying preventable deaths. But hey, look on the bright side – we got those sons of bitches who blew up the marathon.”

- Why does America lose its head over ‘terror’ but ignore its daily gun deaths? | Michael Cohen | Comment is free | The Observer

Why does America lose its head over 'terror' but ignore its daily gun deaths? | Michael Cohen | Comment is free | The Observer

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 05:45:14 -0700

Why does America lose its head over 'terror' but ignore its daily gun deaths? | Michael Cohen | Comment is free | The Observer:

So for those of you keeping score at home – locking down an American city: a proper reaction to the threat from one terrorist. A background check to prevent criminals or those with mental illness from purchasing guns: a dastardly attack on civil liberties. All of this would be almost darkly comic if not for the fact that more Americans will die needlessly as a result. Already, more than 30,000 Americans die in gun violence every year (compared to the 17 who died last year in terrorist attacks).

Russia's response to the boston marathon bombings | New Republic

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:15:32 -0700

Russia's response to the boston marathon bombings | New Republic:

What he means is, Russians don’t see terrorists as having national identities, really. Their only identity is terrorist, their only allegiance—terror. “The U.S. actively supported Al Qaeda in the struggle against the USSR, and then bin Laden began to kill Americans; it supported terrorists in Libya, and then they killed the American ambassador; it supported Chechen separatism, and now these terrorists are beginning to blow up Americans,” Sergei Markov, another loyalist hawk, pointed out.

U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes - NYTimes.com

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 11:30:22 -0700

U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes - NYTimes.com:

A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.

Cola free?

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 10:39:53 -0700

Cola free?

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Lost and Found : The New Yorker

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 05:45:19 -0700

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Lost and Found : The New Yorker:

The toxic combination of round-the-clock cable television—does anyone now recall the killer of Gianni Versace, who claimed exactly the same kind of attention then as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did today?—and an already exaggerated sense of the risk of terrorism turned a horrible story of maiming and death and cruelty into a national epic of fear. What terrorists want is to terrify people; Americans always oblige.