davidcho:

sophomorenyc:

The real Coachella line up via @someoddrubiesny (Taken with instagram)

ZING!!!!!!!!!!!!11

cognitivedissonance:

In this photo from The New York Observer, Former Philadelphia police Captain Ray Lewis, sits in zip cuffs after being arrested today in conjunction with the Occupy Wall Street protests. Another photo of Lewis protesting can be found here.

Drew Grant of The Observer writes: “There is simply nothing more bizarre than looking at images of a man in police uniform arrested and handcuffed by people wearing lower-ranking NYPD garb.”

Lewis’ arrest was caputured on video:

Lewis knew his arrest was a possibility. In a rousing speech last night, Lewis criticized the NYPD and its use of force, along with New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. An excerpt:

“You should, by law, only use force to protect someone’s life or to protect them from being bodily injured. If you’re not protecting somebody’s life or protecting them from bodily injury, there’s no need to use force. And the number one thing that they always have in their favor that they seldom use is negotiation – continue to talk, and talk and talk to people. You have nothing to lose by that. This bullrush–what happened last night is totally uncalled for when they did not use negotiation long enough.

“They complained about the park being dirty. Here they are worrying about dirty parks when people are starving to death, where people are freezing, where people are sleeping in subways and they’re concerned about a dirty park. That’s obnoxious, it’s arrogant, it’s ignorant, it’s disgusting.  

[The NYPD], they’re trying to get me arrested and I may disappear OK? But as soon as I’m let out of jail, I’ll be right back here and they’ll have to arrest me again. All the cops are, they’re just workers for the one percent and they don’t even realize they’re being exploited.”

Capt. Lewis truly understands what it means to protect and serve the people, and for that sir, I thank you. 

(via soupsoup)

nedhepburn:

Oh no. Ohhhhhh no.  

Lol^1000000

(via chrismohney)

slackmistress:

wellthatsadorable:

thedailywhat:

Cutest Call To Action Ever of the Day: On October 5, the container ship MV Rena ran aground on Astrolabe Reef, resulting in an oil spill that is already being regarded as the worst environmental disaster in New Zealand’s history.

Clean up efforts are underway, but the danger to local wildlife remains high. A raft of Little Blue Penguins has already been negatively impacted by the spill.

The Kiwi yarn store Skeinz has put out a call for penguin sweaters — an adorable-sounding but very necessary accessory that helps keep the birds from preening their feathers and ingesting the oil.

Skeinz has posted knitting instructions for anyone willing to lend a hand.

[skeinz / grist.]

EVERYONE PUT DOWN WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND GET STARTED ON THESE GODDAMN ADORABLE AND USEFUL PENGUIN SWEATERS OH MY GOD THE WORLD NEEDS IT I NEED IT WE NEEEEEEED ITTTTTT!!!

YES PENGUIN SWEATERS.

If I could knit, I’d so do this.

(via scandalous)

thedailywhat:

Reality Check of the Day: Based on recent polls, Republican frontrunner Gov. Rick Perry currently holds a double-digit lead over GOP understudy Mitt Romney. Rep. Michele Bachmann, who trails them both, is in desperate need of a quick fix to boost her flagging numbers.

Enter: HPV.

Human papillomavirus — the most common sexually transmitted infection, according to the CDC — is responsible for almost every new case of cervical cancer diagnosed in the US. Luckily, hard-working scientists have developed a vaccine that prevents the types of HPV most commonly associated with cervical cancer.

Backstory: In February of 2007, Gov. Rick Perry approved an executive order that required young girls to be vaccinated against HPV before they enter the sixth grade.

The order was easy enough to opt out of — parents were given the option of signing a form objecting to the vaccination — but social conservatives saw it as controversial nonetheless. Their main argument: Vaccinating against a sexually transmitted disease would encourage sexual promiscuity. Perry offered his critics a highly rational retort: “If the medical community developed a vaccine for lung cancer, would the same critics oppose it, claiming it would encourage smoking?”

The order was overturned by the legislature a few months later.

Since then, RP65 has come up a few times when Perry was in the hot seat, but at last night’s GOP debate, Michele Bachmann put Perry in her sights and launched an all-out anti-vaccination campaign.

“I’m a mom. And I’m a mom of three children,” Bachmann said, “And to have innocent little twelve-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong. That should never be done. It’s a violation of a liberty interest.”

She then went on to claim that the HPV vaccine was a “potentially dangerous drug” and claimed Perry was merely kowtowing to the demands of drug company donors. Later, Bachmann told Fox News she had met an audience member whose daughter allegedly became “retarded” after received the vaccine.

As mentioned above, Perry’s executive order had an explicit opt-out for parents. More importantly, any claim that receipt of the vaccine led to mental disability is entirely anecdotal. In its HPV Vaccine Safety FAQ, the CDC lists “pain at the injection site, headache, nausea, and fever” as the most serious side effects directly linked to the vaccine.

After Bachmann claimed on this morning’s Today show that “mental retardation” as a result of HPV vaccination was a “very real concern,” the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a highly unusual move, felt it necessary to issue a press release on the matter.

“The American Academy of Pediatrics would like to correct false statements made in the Republican presidential campaign that HPV vaccine is dangerous and can cause mental retardation,” said AAP president Dr. O. Marion Burton. “There is absolutely no scientific validity to this statement.”

The release goes on to stress the importance of administering the HPV vaccine “around age 11 or 12” when it is likely to produce “the best immune response in the body.”

“In the U.S., about 6 million people, including teens, become infected with HPV each year,” the statement concludes, “and 4,000 women die from cervical cancer. This is a life-saving vaccine that can protect girls from cervical cancer.”

To put into perspective just how far to the right Bachmann’s dangerous, conspiratorial, anti-science scaremongering is, on his show today Rush Limbaugh said “[t]here’s no evidence that the vaccine causes mental retardation,” and lamented the fact that Bachmann “might have jumped the shark.”

[newyorker / cdc / wapo / cnn / msnbc / npr / thehill.]

Whoa.

The phrase “People never cease to amaze” is an understatement.

It’s people like this that sometimes makes the idea of living in a foreign country for a few years seem more and more appealing.

alaskamiller:

Steve Jobs.

Around fall of 2006 the Marine Corps handed me papers to go home. Having done my time in the Carolina swamps freshly minted at 22 as a combat engineer that wasn’t sure if I could pair detonator to dynamite they told me go home after denying my first—of many—attempts to go to war. Slot’s full, they said, wait for the next cycle. Don’t worry, war will always be there they chuckled. Glad that became true.

So I took the ticket out and slunk back to whence I came up, the quiet burbs of Cupertino. Back to my old room with the bunk bed, my stoner buddies, back to my old life, drifting around. I had cachet though, I recalled. I’m a United States Marine. That meant something anywhere but where I was.

The overachievers roundly finished college and found exciting jobs being cube drones. Back then, before Y Combinator validated, before the tipping of nerd being chic, before startupping was trend du jour, before all of that society told us being desk drones was the best outcome. It didn’t even matter what you did as long as there’s a desk, a chair, internet, and a paycheck. 

Despite knowing that’s not what I wanted, that was why I dropped out of college, I somehow ended up doing the same thing. Living at home, in front of a desk, sitting on a chair all day, hooked on the internet, making no money, and dreaming about war. My mum nagged me all day to get a job so I did. I went down the street and picked a drabbly death star looking office building and walked in.

——

Apple chose an medium-grade industrial walk-up back in 1976 in Cupertino because it was convenient. It was orange orchards everywhere back then, fertile land for planting dreams. There was a windmill that locals took their grains to for grinding down the block. It’s now a Chinese bank building.

Back then only nerds walked in and out asking for jobs. That’s just what a garage startup in Silicon Valley was like. If they were smart they got to keep coming back and help out. Apple was a small fry fighting to convince the world worked through mail and telephones that the average joe blow deserved a $666.66 computing machine on their desk. Woz had no problem designing the computer but Steve had a tough time belying he’s capable of turning his cadre of misfit super nerds into a corporation.

I didn’t know any of this as I tailgated the random guy past the security doors. I just knew Apple was finally in exciting times again. Every empty commercial space in town has been snatched up. Every empty factory now have motor pools everywhere. Badgers walked wandered to every Yelp reviewed spot within walking distance during lunch. Times are a-changing, Macs are hot, and a new generation of users won’t have to live in shame like I did, spending my school time recess on the yard arguing over which was better: PC or Macs. 

The building I chose happened to house the support arm of the company. Across the street was finance and legal. Engineers and the higher ups had the reserved luxury of working in the mothership. It didn’t matter, I was okay with anything. So I asked people I saw and met about work. They looked at me like I was crazy. Then I figured out what was wrong, they were too young. I readjusted fire.

The nice lady looked trendy and amazing for the silvering she’s been up to. A framed letter thanking her for the 25 years she’s put in and signed by Steve Jobs was on her desk. She was a lifer. She smiled, perhaps reminded of the garage days, when I told her what I wanted and handed me a laptop she pulled from the Steelcase cube drawer. Fix all the HTML in these files so she can prepare them to be uploaded to a CMS. I nodded and sat in the cube of the guy on vacation.

At the end of the day I emailed her the files. She told me to come back in the morning. Then the next. Then next. I managed to cheat my way into becoming a cube drone at the soon to be most influential company in the world.

——

I loved exploring Apple’s campus at night with my badge. For every red horrendous beeps there was a green light openings doors somewhere. I was like a rat sniffing around every inch, I waltzed around different departments and studied cube decorations, took in the complexity of ideas and thoughts left over on whiteboards. 

Some desks had red PCB motherboards strewn about, some desks had vintage Apple posters, some desks were cluttered with broken iPhones collected for support engineering testing. To a kid that grew up in Silicon Valley, to a nerd that obsess about computer, to someone that marveled at how radically technology changes lives, this was where the magic happened. And it was all just so normal work place, where people integrated systems, designed products, wrote software, and made business deals—a corporation.


One late night while working on QA-ing help content for new iLife products I stepped out of the sterile lab I was in and took another walk. You hear the thud of the doors every now and then as late night bachelor badgers finally it quits and go back home but no one ever bothers you.

I was on the fifth floor of IL1, the atrium that you walk past the main entrance, overlooking the massive product ads when he walked by.

I’ve heard that happens. I’ve seen it happen before, during lunch once. He wore the same mock turtleneck and jeans, tapping on his iPhone, followed by three little girls eating cookies from the cafeteria. People open up the sidewalk and just let him on through, like a Mose parting the pedestrian seas.

He nodded and I nodded, unsure of what to say. Or if I should even say anything. Scuttlebutt was that the top floor of IL1 is forever Steve’s universe. He has a show room built so he can practice his presentation, have demos, and get things done. I imagine it to be much like what John Lasseter does at Pixar, endless hours of tweaking great things to greater things.

Great things, though, are done by irrepressible people. So I was shocked at the rusty and cramped words that came out of my mouth, “how, how do I get all this?”

He paused in walking away from me, turned around, and inspected. “What,” he must be wondering if it’s worth talking to me—and he sure took awhile before deciding. “You chase. Every day. And sometimes you’re lucky to do the right things.” Chasing I’ve heard of but it’s the sometimes that scared me straight.

You see I believe Steve lives in a different world from you and I. He chased his entire life to make his world controllable through good design, good products, and good technology. If I know anything about luck it’s that it’s not something that just happens, you chase it, and when you’re a great master of the universe you make it.

As a business hacker Steve made his luck, he made his chips to leverage, he made deals happen like Gaza depends on it. It was a fault many thought flawed, that the obsession tarnished what he made but great things are done by irrepressible people.

Every moment a constant struggle between two mentalities in my mind, thinking that either life is controllable or not. Some days I’m overwhelmed by what little I have control of but when I’m empowered by amazing technology my life is filled with watch cat videos, find cheap eats, look up how to get lost, record every aspect of every major moment of my life, and channel otis redding soul through two Chinese handmade earbuds at any moment then I’m powerful. And still thankful, as much as I take it all for granted now. By god, you remember when you were stuck with a StarTAC for a burner? Eww.

Namaste, bro, you’re pretty rad.

(via chrismohney)

nickdouglas:

sucking at something