Mikhail Nesterov - The Empty Tomb, 1889
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he wasn't even looking at me and he found me

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we're not kids anymore.
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Mikhail Nesterov - The Empty Tomb, 1889
Twitter is fun
The Taking of the Temple at Delphi (1885) - Alphonse Cornet
#MondayMotivation
“In The Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde rails against the imperative to optimism and happiness that she found in the medical discourse surrounding breast cancer. “Was I really fighting the spread of radiation, racism, woman-slaughter, chemical invasion of our food, pollution of our environment, the abuse and psychic destruction of our young, merely to avoid dealing with my first and greatest responsibility - to be happy?” Lorde writes. “Let us seek ‘joy’ rather than real food and clean air and a saner future on livable earth! As if happiness alone can protect us from the results of profit-madness.”
Maggie Nelson - The Argonauts
What's going on with Iran?? $400 million dollars?
It was Iran’s money (from before the Iranian Revolution) and they wanted it back, just like we wanted our people back. We didn’t pay a ransom. The money was going back to Iran anyway, and as the President noted, it’s not like we could write them a check or wire the money since the sanctions we’ve placed on Iran bans them (and us) from engaging in any banking transactions.
I think President Obama should give an Oval Office speech where he starts off by saying:
“First, let me say I take full responsibility for my own actions and for those of my administration. As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities. As disappointed as I may be in some who served me, I’m still the one who must answer to the American people for this behavior. And as personally distasteful as I find secret bank accounts and diverted funds - well, as the Navy would say, this happened on my watch.
Let’s start with the part that is the most controversial. A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages.”
And then he looks closely at his speech and says, “Oops…this is Ronald Reagan’s speech from 1987 when his Administration traded military weapons to Iran for hostages and then diverted the money for the weapons to Nicaragua to fund anti-Communist forces at the direct contradiction of Congressional legislation. Guess who didn’t do that?” The he could just drop the mic and walk out because he’s in the IDGAF part of his Presidency anyway.
Uh wow.
Shit people have forgotten about the Bush Era:
Free Speech Zones, which were a real thing and not a plot element in a particularly ham-handed dystopian novel.
The phrase “hidey hole.”
Watching a budget surplus become a massive deficit that was bigger than it even looked because the White House was just like, “Okay, we’ll just not put the wars on the books and just ask for more money for those every few months.”
The sheer number of times Alberto Gonzalez said, “I don’t recall,” to Congress regarding war crimes and human rights violations.
“…now watch this drive.”
Mission Accomplished.
“The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence,” “yellowcake uranium,” Condoleeza’s “mushroom clouds” fearmongering, and all the other bullshit we were fed to get into Iraq.
The President of the United States said so many stupid things that there were one-a-day calendars consisting of an individual quote for each day of the year. They didn’t all have the exact same quotes.
“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
And then we went to war.
“Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms; creating or implanting embryos for experiments; creating human-animal hybrids; and buying, selling or patenting human embryos.” - George W. Bush, 2006 State of the Union
Okay, that’s the best one.
Bush watched that Batman Beyond splicing episode and had nightmares for a week
was it hidey-hole? i thought it was spider-hole.
Yeah, it was spider-hole
I think my favorite was how we un-ironically referred to a whole set of countries as the “Axis of Evil” as if that phrase gives us some kind of meaningful understanding of their geopolitical role and isn’t borrowed straight out of a mediocre made-for-TV superhero movie.
And then there was:
We literally got a terrorism forecast on the news every morning like it was pollen. So many of the things that happened, if they were in a dystopian novel, people would be like, “That’s way too goofy and ridiculous to actually happen in real life,” and yet they did.
THE LAST ONE’S REAL?
Yeah https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeland_Security_Advisory_System
Not only was the terror threat system real, but it was often raised and lowered based entirely on how panicked they wanted us to be. Famously they raised the level for no reason during the 2004 election.
Also, “Free Speech Zones” looked something like this:
It was literally a cage.
I genuinely forget that people, even within my own age group, has forgotten the Bush era since they were teenagers and below the voting age at the time, and so forgot how fucking horrifying it was.
I always reblog this reminder
The terror levels were often raised before elections, with “reports” of “terror plans discovered and destroyed.” Fear is the best tool to control the populace. Make us afraid of the other and compelling us to vote for “safety” and the status quo.
Freedom fries, people.
the more things change the more they stay the same
Pretty sure I’ve said “come out you bitch I’ll maul you” word for word
voter registration deadlines
Alabama 10/24/2016
Alaska 10/9/2016
Arizona 10/10/2016
Arkansas 10/10/2016
California 10/24/2016
Colorado 10/17/2016
Connecticut 11/1/2016
Delaware 10/15/2016
District of Columbia 10/11/2016
Florida 10/11/2016
Georgia 10/11/2016
Hawaii 10/10/2016
Idaho 10/14/2016
Illinois 10/11/2016
Indiana 10/11/2016
Iowa 10/29/2016
Kansas 10/14/2016
Kentucky 10/11/2016
Louisiana 10/11/2016
Maine 10/18/2016
Maryland 10/18/2016
Massachusetts 10/19/2016
Michigan 10/11/2016
Minnesota 10/18/2016
Mississippi 10/8/2016
Missouri 10/12/2016
Montana 10/11/2016
Nebraska 10/21/2016
Nevada 10/8/2016
New Hampshire 10/29/2016
New Jersey 10/18/2016
New Mexico 10/11/2016
New York 10/14/2016
North Carolina 10/14/2016
North Dakota - No voter registration
Ohio 10/11/2016
Oklahoma 10/14/2016
Oregon 10/18/2016
Pennsylvania 10/11/2016
Rhode Island 10/9/2016
South Carolina 10/8/2016
South Dakota 10/24/2016
Tennessee 10/11/2016
Texas 10/11/2016
Utah 10/11/2016
Vermont 11/2/2016
Virginia 10/17/2016
Washington 10/10/2016
West Virginia 10/18/2016
Wisconsin 10/19/2016
Wyoming 10/24/2016
everything you need to know about voting: including how to vote early in 37 states and how to vote absentee
As some have pointed out in the reblogs, Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota and Wyoming have election day (aka same-day) registration. Also the online vs mail registration deadlines may be different. Here are details by state
My favorite thing in the world is that all advertisements for gyros are from 1991 and are starting to turn blue due to direct sunlight.
Who I’m voting for and why
As far as election years go, 2016 feels different, to say the least. But the bulk of what I read in the papers and online is sensationalist and not that useful to anyone. Sure, a presidential election is important, but the reams of paper and servers of “information” devoted to it are not commensurate. Twenty-four hour news is a pox. We don’t need or deserve twenty-four hours of news. We certainly don’t know what to do with it. And I don’t know if things are worse now than in previous eras, but confirmation bias is as encouraged as ever these days and most “news” or (vomit) “content” is aimed to make you feel what you already feel, just harder. Plus you choose what news or analysis to consume, from a wide array of choices, and if you’re like me, you choose to get it from places that congratulate you on feeling the thing you already feel.
A side point on whether things are worse today than they were on the yesterday or yesteryear of your choice: I tend to think things are not worse as I’m not optimistic or pessimistic about mankind’s journey; I don’t think we’re “going to hell in a handbasket.” I think hell is already here on earth, as is heaven, and things will always be both wonderful and terrible, and to a large part our experience is determined by which we choose to focus on.
There’s my preface for delving into how I’ll vote in the US presidential election in November, and why I’ll vote that way. I wrote that preface to warm up my own brain and to hopefully offer some insight into my decision making process. My hope is that if I’m as honest and as clear as I can be, you can decide whether to think further about what I’ve written or dismiss it out of hand as the scribbling of a moron. Or maybe some combination of the two. It’s up to you.
I’ll also say that I’m almost a single-issue voter. I’m not, but my thinking about government and elected officials and what their purposes are begins and ends with how they approach health care. My thinking certainly visits all the other issues along the way (or a few of them anyway; I don’t have to have an opinion on everything as I’m not running and never will run for president) but number one among all the issues for me is health care. My reason for that is that I believe that you can’t really effect positive change in any other area if your body (or your child’s body, or your partner’s body) is sick or not working. Nor can you effect change if you’re struggling to pay for - or even get – vital medicine for yourself or a family member. Nor, again, can you effect change in areas you care about if you’re in significant debt for medical care you’ve already received. You can even have a hard time effecting change in the political issues you care about if you merely live with the specter of not being able to access or pay for medical care for yourself or your family. I, and so many millions of Americans, speak from experience. Your health sits near the bottom of the pyramid of your hierarchy of needs, according to psychologist Abraham Maslow. Air, water, food, clothing and shelter are the only things below it, but we needed those things before we ever invented government, so physical health is where I start thinking politically. I wouldn’t fault anyone for starting lower on the pyramid with things like the climate, or housing for those who don’t have it, but I believe that it’s difficult for a society to care about those things for others when they are not physically healthy themselves. You put on your own oxygen mask first, so to speak.
For some time now, there have been two major political parties in the United States. You don’t have to like it (I don’t) but that’s how it is. You can try to change it (I do) but that’s how it is, right now. I’m not saying you have to vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in November; you don’t. You can vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson or you can write in Channing Tatum. Some people will tell you a vote for Jill Stein would be a vote for Donald Trump. It isn’t; it’s a vote for Jill Stein. Same with Johnson and Trump. Who am I to tell you how to vote? Who is anybody? The best I can do is tell you how I’m voting and why. It so happens I’ll vote for Hillary Clinton in November. I’ll do so because I consider her plans for health care superior to those of Donald Trump. Almost certainly due to pressure from Bernie Sanders, the guy I voted for in the primary, Hillary says she’ll reintroduce the “public option,” a government-run health insurance agency that would compete with other private health insurance companies within the United States. She’d also reduce the Medicare enrollment age to 55, which is good because… most people live well past 55. She’d also “incentivize” the states that haven’t yet to expand Medicaid. That’s vague but she can either fill in the details at some point or not; the states that didn’t initially expand Medicaid when the Affordable Care Act rolled out have been doing so one by one anyway. Even Louisiana just expanded Medicaid. Poor people deserve quality health care, do they not? Clinton’s plan would appear to acknowledge this.
Trump’s health care proposals, on the other hand, literally include HSAs or “health savings accounts.” In 2016. He says he isn’t a fan of George W. Bush, but that’s a sweet nod to him right there. Fun fact: Bush signed Health Savings Accounts into law in 2003, the same year he invaded Iraq. (“Hmm, rather than save for my kids’ college, or retirement, I’ll take advantage of tax incentives to save for the… dialysis I might one day need?”) Man, Bush was not a good President in at least 75 different ways.
To wrap up my thoughts on health care: we’re all born rotting. Our bodies will fail, by design, at one point or another. That’s not something to be ashamed of and it’s not something to be penalized for, especially in the United States of America, in 2016. Even if you’re a greedy captain of industry, you can make more widgets and be in business for longer if your workers are healthy. And if you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, you can have the freedom to invent the new Google or Tesla or whatever if you’re not bound to work for the above widget maker via an employer-provided health care plan.
And to put a final, finer point on it, Americans kill themselves because of medical debt. When I tell that to people in the UK where I’ve lived for work for the last two years, they are understandably aghast.
None of this changes the fact that a single-payer health care system, a la Britain’s NHS, would be vastly superior to Obamacare, even with Clinton’s proposals. But that’s not what this particular piece is about. It’s about who I’m voting for and why. And Clinton’s plans for healthcare are much better than Trump’s.
One other thing I’d like to remind people is that the next president could nominate up to four Supreme Court Justices. I know that’s not a sexy issue and it doesn’t tend to dominate the headlines, but it really, really should. Whatever issues you’re passionate about (voting rights, access to abortion, campaign finance, health care, etc.) the Supreme Court wreaks massive influence on them all. The Court is composed of a mere (usually) nine people who together decide things like whether you should be able to vote in Alabama if you’re black or if you should have to drive 300 miles to get an abortion if you’ve been raped. So in the coming weeks and months you have to decide if you’d like Hillary Clinton to nominate the people who make those decisions for you or if you’d prefer Donald Trump to do that. To illustrate, Donald Trump could substantively influence critical decisions your granddaughter has to make about her reproductive health care, long after you’re dead. And that’s not a silly thought exercise, that’s an elementary understanding of how the Supreme Court, whose Justices are appointed for life, shapes American lives through law.
So my hope in writing all this is that somebody might read it and move past the cult of personality nonsense that makes up the bulk of election “news” and think about what matters to them, on an issue-by-issue basis and vote based on that.
Finally, I’m massively encouraged by Sanders supporters across the U.S. To them I say “Keep on truckin.’” I am utterly blown away by the number of people in this country who want single payer health care, affordable housing, college without debt, Wall Street reform, and everything else. I only want all that stuff more the older I get and I’ll continue to vote for it and volunteer for campaigns that are working towards it. And we’ll need energized citizens young and old to counter and defeat whatever it is Trump is brewing. Because although he won’t win the election, his support and his fans won’t magically evaporate when he loses. What will they do? I’m guessing they’ll serve as the victims of the next multi-level marketing scheme he cooks up with Roger Ailes. That’s what his campaign seems to me to be; a rehearsal of sorts, that or he views the Americans who support him as “Glengarry leads” he’s grooming or paving a deeper access path to for some godless purpose. He doesn’t seem to want to be President anyway. I guess that’s one thing he and I have in common.
To wrap this burrito up:
1. Consider that people’s health affects their ability to make any/all other changes. Maybe look at the issues you care most about through that lens for a minute.
2. Think about who you’d like to nominate four Supreme Court justices. Remember that you’ll live with the consequences for longer than two presidential terms.
3. Don’t be discouraged; stay engaged and involved, especially on the local level.
4. Tell me to stick this incredibly long post up my ass.
5. Vote.
I saw Aliens first, I saw it on HBO, and I guess I took the idea of a movie involving killer aliens slaughtering motherfuckers lightly. I remember thinking the movie was going to end when the drop ship lifted off (I didn’t really have a concept of how stories worked, I was a child.) and when the pilot turned around and saw an Alien right behind her, and then got shredded, the drop ship crashes, and Bill Paxton starts kevtching, I remember saying “oh no….” Like, I had no faith that these people would make it off this planet, so I hid underneath my shirt for a good quarter of the movie.
And the Alien, the Xenomorph (thanks wikipedia) is just so fucking GAH, so fucking creepy. Like, I always like to think about how people fainted when they saw the 30′s Dracula movie. Like, it touches sensations that you spend your life avoiding, especially at age six. I didn’t recognize all the sexual shit, but I sensed that this was going into dark places that I wasn’t fully prepared to confront. The first three movies are like six hours of a Tarantula crawling up your sleeve. And an entire planet filled with these goddamn things was almost too much.
At the same time, Ellen Fucking Ripley man. Like, I never saw ANYTHING like Weaver’s performance in a space monster sequel. She’s amazing in a way that you can’t quite acknowledge when you’re a child, but you knew that there was something special to it. Like, how many movies do you watch where the lead character’s emotional bravery is just as big as her physical feats, like damn, she is so wounded the entire time, and at the same time she has the presence of mind to confront goddamn ALIENS, PTSD, a general state of panic amongst her crew, while STILL finding time to form a maternal relationship with an orphan child who lost fucking EVERYTHING. It all leads up to that “Get away from her you bitch” line towards the end. Like think about how silly that could’ve sounded in the hands of a less talented actor. But like, I remember getting jolted from that in the same way I was jolted by fucking space creatures ripping out of a goddamn human chest.
Either way, the entire experience of watching Aliens again is something i’ll save for like… Honestly I couldn’t imagine watching it again (I’ve seen it like 15 times, but I havent’ watched the full movie since college). It’s emotionally exhausting, and seeing the thing brings back memories of how much I HATED Alien 3. Like a technically brilliant movie that just felt wrong in so many ways.
Anyway I’m high and I need to go to sleep, sorry for this rant.
dude this was beautiful
Pistol Shrimps Radio has been as fun for me as anything could be. Most Tuesday nights, I spend an hour trying to corral the brilliant and absurd mind of @mattgourley while also trying to call a @thepistolshrimps basketball game. Oh, occasionally, I say some jokes and also Matt doesn’t know anything about basketball, and I don’t know much more.
It started as such a dumb idea, and has blossomed and grown beyond anything I ever could have imagined. Fan-inspired art. Letters. A documentary film. A feature on the iTunes Podcasts main page. It’s been a hell of a ride.
If you’re listening, thank you. If not, you might like it. Check it out. Go to iTunes and look for a picture that looks just like this.