Time Well Spent @keithek - Tumblr Blog

an incapable of grasping irony tract.

If you also read “Mao” as “MAD” - the effect us remarkably repeated. Less everyone accordion folding their rear covers in the sketch. The guy in black looks like Alfred E. Newman too. #MADMAOMAGAZINE

awesome-picz

#happyStPsDay

explore-blog

British illustrator Helen Green celebrates David Bowie’s birthday with this brilliant visual tour of his many permutations. Peek into the influences and inspirations behind them with Bowie’s reading list of all-time favorite books, then see the psychological foundation them all in Bowie’s answers to the Proust Questionnaire.

robertreich

At Stake in 2016: Ending the Vicious Cycle of Wealth and Power

What’s at stake this election year? Let me put as directly as I can.

America has succumbed to a vicious cycle in which great wealth translates into political power, which generates even more wealth, and even more power.

This spiral is most apparent is declining tax rates on corporations and on top personal incomes (much in the form of wider tax loopholes), along with a profusion of government bailouts and subsidies (to Wall Street bankers, hedge-fund partners, oil companies, casino tycoons, and giant agribusiness owners, among others).

The vicious cycle of wealth and power is less apparent, but even more significant, in economic rules that now favor the wealthy.

Billionaires like Donald Trump can use bankruptcy to escape debts but average people can’t get relief from burdensome mortgage or student debt payments.

Giant corporations can amass market power without facing antitrust lawsuits (think Internet cable companies, Monsanto, Big Pharma, consolidations of health insurers and of health care corporations, Dow and DuPont, and the growing dominance of Amazon, Apple, and Google, for example).

But average workers have lost the market power that came from joining together in unions.

It’s now easier for Wall Street insiders to profit from confidential information unavailable to small investors.

It’s also easier for giant firms to extend the length of patents and copyrights, thereby pushing up prices on everything from pharmaceuticals to Walt Disney merchandise.

And easier for big corporations to wangle trade treaties that protect their foreign assets but not the jobs or incomes of American workers.

It’s easier for giant military contractors to secure huge appropriations for unnecessary weapons, and to keep the war machine going.

The result of this vicious cycle is a disenfranchisement of most Americans, and a giant upward distribution of income from the middle class and poor to the wealthy and powerful.

Another consequence is growing anger and frustration felt by people who are working harder than ever but getting nowhere, accompanied by deepening cynicism about our democracy.

The way to end this vicious cycle is to reduce the huge accumulations of wealth that fuel it, and get big money out of politics.

But it’s chicken-and-egg problem. How can this be accomplished when wealth and power are compounding at the top?

Only through a political movement such as America had a century ago when progressives reclaimed our economy and democracy from the robber barons of the first Gilded Age.

That was when Wisconsin’s “fighting Bob” La Follette instituted the nation’s first minimum wage law; presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan attacked the big railroads, giant banks, and insurance companies; and President Teddy Roosevelt busted up the giant trusts.

When suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony secured women the right to vote, reformers like Jane Addams got laws protecting children and the public’s health, and organizers like Mary Harris “Mother” Jones spearheaded labor unions.

America enacted a progressive income tax, limited corporate campaign contributions, ensured the safety and purity of food and drugs, and even invented the public high school.

The progressive era welled up in the last decade of the nineteenth century because millions of Americans saw that wealth and power at the top were undermining American democracy and stacking the economic deck. Millions of Americans overcame their cynicism and began to mobilize.

We may have reached that tipping point again.

Both the Occupy Movement and the Tea Party grew out of revulsion at the Wall Street bailout. Consider, more recently, the fight for a higher minimum wage (“Fight for 15”) and in the battle against police brutality – “Black Lives Matter.”

Bernie Sander’s presidential campaign is fueled by some of this same zeal. (Donald Trump bastardized version draws on the same anger and frustration but has descended into bigotry and xenophobia.)

Surely 2016 is a critical year. But, as the progressives learned more than a century ago, no single president or any other politician can accomplish what’s needed because a system caught in the spiral of wealth and power cannot be reformed from within. It can be changed only by a mass of citizens pushing in the opposite direction from the outside.

So regardless of who wins the presidency in November and which party dominates the next Congress, it is up to the rest of us to continue to organize and mobilize. Real reform will require many years of hard work from millions of us.

As we learned in the last progressive era, this is the only way the vicious cycle of wealth and power can be reversed.

wilwheaton

Bernie Sanders is the only candidate running for president in 2016 who will do everything possible to ensure that America breaks this cycle.

awesome-picz

The Cutest Bunnies Ever

keithek

Yup, I remember having a porcelain bunny covered in fake fur. I remember putting it in my chest pockets and petting it’s head and ears. The fur was worn off of those parts I recall. This is a fever dream of mine come to life. Nice work! #canhazears #nobunnytesting

sagansense

Discovery Channel Is Finally Breaking Up With Bad Science

Probably the best headline I’ve seen in years, and it’s no joke.

This previous summer @endeavorist published a ridiculously thorough post on the anti-science programming of @discovery and the uncertain future in front of it with the January 2015 announcement of the network undergoing major restructuring and regime change. A new @motherjones interview between James West (senior editor of Mother Jones) and John Hoffman (director of documentaries at Discovery Channel, @animalplanet, and Science Channel) reveals what Hoffman cites as a “dramatic shift” to “bring more science” and “elevate the scientists in the films.”

Continued from the interview:

That sentiment didn’t always rule at Discovery. Just three years ago, the lavish and popular seven-hour series Frozen Planet, a co-production with the BBC that aired on Discovery, was widely criticized for shortchanging climate science and being skittish about the politics of the climate debate. The series producer for the BBC, Vanessa Berlowitz, told the New York Times at the time that she didn’t include scientific theories behind climate change because it “would have undermined the strength of an objective documentary.”

With Hoffman’s entrance, that may soon change. As his first big act on the job, Hoffman acquired Racing Extinction, a film from the Academy Award-winning director of The Cove, Louie Psihoyos. The film launches simultaneously on December 2 on Discovery channels around the world—in 220 countries and territories. At the heart of this gorgeously shot nature documentary about the next mass extinction is a precise and unflinching explanation of climate change and its devastating effects on the planet (along with some thrilling undercover stings of illegal animal traders). “Humans have become the asteroid,” the film notes grimly.

“Racing Extinction sends a big message to a lot of people about how we’re now doing business— not only to our viewers, but to the opinion makers in this country, to the entertainment community, to the directors that we want to come in our doors and bring us ideas.”

“Pretty pictures only go so far,” said Hoffman’s boss, Rich Ross, the new president of Discovery, Animal Planet, and Science Channel, when I met him after watching the film. At the same time, “activism without focus loses its power.” The film is designed to coincide with the early days of the high-stakes UN climate summit, which begins on November 30 in Paris, where leaders will attempt to forge a new global deal to limit greenhouse gases.

Launching alongside the film is an environmental advocacy campaign, #StartWith1Thing, which asks people to say one thing they’ll change in their lives to save the planet, and then pass it on. (Hoffman’s own pledge is to power-down all his devices overnight.) It’s “a film which is actually a movement,” said Fisher Stevens, a producer of the film, at an industry screening.

So, again, what is the future of Discovery Channel? That remains to be seen as the coming years develop. However, this is a fantastic first step for a variety of reasons: (1) television broadcasting needs an injection of educational programming since the masses are still consuming it and DC has long been their source of edutainment; (2) the American public cannot rely solely on the American school system to educate their children, and as communicated in the above piece, DC and others are attempting to lead by action/example for the rest of the entertainment industry, which is in desperate need of an overhaul regarding scientific accountability and honest journalism.

Discovery Channel is no savior of science communication, but in light of recent events over at @nationalgeo, DC is the next major science broadcasting outlet next to @bbcone, so this is a good sign of things to come during an era of fogginess pertaining to our future as a culture and a species awash with rapidly accessible information in the form of evidence/data, and passionate science communicators seeking to be the necessary conduits to fill the gap between ignorance and knowledge.

World, keep up the fight to promote #goodscience. The pendulum is swinging and we must act as the force behind it.

sagansense

I don’t have the time or patience to engage the fearmongerers and conspiracy theorists peddling scare tactics about the Space Act 2015 bill (H.R. 2262) regarding how horribly wrong they are. Unless you know the men and women who have sought to see this bill through and understand their long term directive for pursuing resources in space, I suggest you either get to know them, attend space conferences where you can engage with the investors, entrepreneurs, and teams behind these companies, or do your homework on the last few centuries. This is nothing new. Science fiction writers like Asimov, Heinlein, Clark, and space moguls like Von Braun envisioned this course of action long before we even went to the moon. Here’s the raw deal. I’m just as much of an advocate for NASA as any, and I would love to see its budget increased significantly as well as adjusted with inflation; however, it’s not going to happen. Inflation adjustment is the best we can hope for. There will be no Kennedy speech, nor a Sputnik moment. The future of human spaceflight and frankly, the preservation of our species far into the future begins and ends with us, right now. And regardless of the naysayers, cynics, and pessimists who proselytize doom, gloom, and Illuminati rhetoric, private industry will go ahead, for the purpose of securing our future. This is happening. And if you’ve been paying attention, private industry means anyone with the capability to get out there and capitalize on the frontier of space. There’s money to be made from space resources, yes. However, the difference between the Industrial Revolution/Gold Rush and this new Space Rush, is that before we were dealing with finite resources. Now, we’re talking an infinite supply, poised to usher in an era of abundance for humankind. Does that mean we’re going to eat through every resource out there, pillaging the cosmos with reckless abandon? No. Why? Aside from the reality that space is too vast (and resources between the light years are receding away from us), because those with the capability to get out there will be led by teams of dedicated scientists, researchers, engineers, programmers, and ultimately, people who understand the vision of those science fiction writers. They’re thinking about the future, and generations to come. They aren’t in this for short term profit, and in fact, they’re the newest, most committed environmentalists our culture has ever seen, to put it another way. Calm down and buckle up. We’re living amidst a time when we have the capability and the dedicated pioneers amongst us who understand how significant our existence is, and are striving to enable our spacefaring future. You don’t have to support it, but if you’re not going to contribute, clear the launch zone. Because this ship’s taking off.

crossconnectmag

Gareth Halliday Collage Art

Gareth Halliday aka @mozzplast is an emerging British collage artist.

His unorthodox career has taken an intriguing path since he graduated from the University of Northampton in 2000 with a degree in Visual Arts. After losing faith in the commercial art community the artist removed his work from the public eye and began working as a full-time postman, dabbling with the idea of developing personal projects on the side. It wasn’t until 2009 and years of reoccurring nightmares of arriving at his own exhibition to find nothing but one, lonely second-class postage stamp on display that Halliday decided to pursue creating art again.

Talking about his work, Halliday denotes:

My work tries to capture and handle the mediated depictions of reality that are thrown at us from the mass media. Through the process of collecting and reassembling found and forgotten images I hope to create new compositions which are often subjective, as my own interpretations of the world around me. via

Become a treasure hunter. Check out our archive.

posted by Margaret

Cross Connect is a partner of the Minuscule community network.

You’re probably wondering what is Minuscule? The answer is here and then here.

archatlas

Famous Artists’ Studios

exotericenvironmentalism

Four great transport/cycling related quotes.

louderfastersexier

Get out and ride!

nevver

Delft, Livia Marin

keithek

As a breaker-of-cups, this is dreamy to me.

archatlas

3D Pavement Graffiti

Disney unveiled this week a 3D pavement graffiti under Southwark Bridge in London, depicting the Trench Run scene from Star Wars (top image). As a SW fan and child at heart what better time for a little 3D pavement graffiti fun?

Images via + via