Link Archive 1/21/14 – 2/28/14

It’s strangely exciting watching the dystopian sci-fi you read as a kid slowly becoming reality in one of our own states. Michigan Legislature Wants to Pass Bill To Fine Citizens Up To $1k Per Day For Picketing

Omega-3s. Did McDonalds cause the decline of violence in America?

A question. The Vogons show up and bulldoze Earth to make way for their intergalactic highway. For the purposes of this question, the only place humans can now live is in the Vogons’ “Human Preserve Parks”, where we’re raised in captivity and then hunted for sport once we’re too old to reproduce.
Is this preferable to extinction? Or would the human race just be better off completely wiped out than stuck in that sort of existence?
Hunting of Rare, Exotic Antelopes Now Limited
One rancher commented: “Since we can’t hunt and eat them anymore, the ranch I work on will now be forced to stop its breeding program and exterminate the remaining stock as feral pests.”

Good News Everyone!
Today’s college grads are ashamed to take jobs at Wall Street, and are too embarrassed to tell their friends/family when they do. The top talent from the most prestigious colleges are steering away from finance and going into tech fields instead!
/cackles with glee

Remember when I said 50 years from now christianity would be trying to take credit for leading the charge for gay rights (like they claim it was Christianity that brought down slavery)? Looks like I waaaaaay undershot it. They’re starting already.

Great article on the premise that eCurrency came first, and cash was a recent invention.
…“Cash is a 100% anonymous and untraceable payments technology. It is like a weapon of mass destruction launched against law enforcement,”
…”there appears to be no authentication mechanism associated with cash payments or transfers, let alone one that matches modern security standards. Once someone has gained physical control of your ‘bills’, they are free to spend or use them as they wish and there is no way to reverse the transaction, stop them or even identify who has stolen them.”
(and more!)

Urban-scapes from a skyscraper, and urban-scapes being re-wilded.
(although I’m not sure I’m using the term “re-wilded” correctly)

US airman stands his ground in Florida, sentenced to 25 years
Three things:
1) He probably should be in jail. He’s not Zimmerman bad, but it’s bad. Don’t bring a gun to a fistfight, m’kay?
2) He *could* get off. Stand Your Ground laws are complete lunacy. Why bother even having laws against murder at all??
but biggest of all:
3) Stand Your Ground laws are selectively enforced. If this kid was a middle-aged white guy, he’d be free right now. Probably promoting his upcoming boxing match with DMX. I really wish we could take humans entirely out of the law-enforcement equation.

Remember: This Valentine’s Day, you should report anyone who’s wanking to the church. It’s like being a war hero, and you’re fighting Nazis. Only the Nazis are Satan?
(note – the video keeps getting taken down, and then someone else puts it back up. If this one is down by the time you click it, just search YouTube for Mormon Anti-Masturbation)
As others have mentioned, the smoldering look the two guys give each other at the end is THE BEST

How Obama Officials Cried ‘Terrorism’ to Cover Up a Paperwork Error
“This is the most transparent administration in history,” (quote not from story, just an old Obama quote for the lulz)

Key & Peele: Cunnilingus Class. Super hilarious, and good advice. :)

Aladdin came out at the perfect time for me to have these five seconds forever seared into my memory of adolescence (in a good way). Turns out Melissa never noticed.

The U.S. conservative movement is a failed eugenics project. Here’s why it could never have worked.
“Incapable and obsolete organizations, whose upkeep costs have exceeded their social value, should die in order to free up room for newer ones. Where there is immense controversy is what should happen to people when they fail, economically.Should they starve to death in the streets? Should they be fed and clothed, but denied health care, as in the U.S.? Or should they be permitted a lower-middle-class existence by a welfare state, allowing them to recover and perhaps have another shot at economic success? The Social Darwinist seeks not to kill failed individuals per se, but to minimize their effect on society. It might be better to feed them than have them rebel, but allowing their medical treatment (on the public dime) is a bridge too far (if they’re sick, they can’t take up arms). It’s not about sadism per se, but effect minimization”

What I learned from six months of GMO research: None of it matters
“The debate isn’t about actual genetically modified organisms — if it was we’d be debating the individual plants, not GMOs as a whole — it’s about the stories we’ve attached to them. Both sides have agreed that this thing, this rhetorical construct we call GMOs, will be used to talk about something bigger. It’s the setting for a proxy war, like the one in Afghanistan during the 1980s.”

The Most Unfortunate Design Flaws in the Human Body. For the creationist in your life. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this many compiled in one place and edited for ease-of-reading.

via Alonzo Fyfe:
“It looks like we are going to have a litmus test of organizations interested in informing its readers and organizations eager to distort facts for the purpose of serving a political agenda.
The Congressional Budget Office released a report estimating that, because of Obamacare, about 2 million people who currently have to work in order to get medical insurance will likely quit their jobs since they can get insurance through Obamacare. (Thus, freeing up 2 million jobs that others can take.)
However, a number of propaganda machines are reporting that the Congressional Budget Office is reporting a loss of about 2 million jobs.
The second option is a flat-out lie.
Look for it. And where you find it, you can know that your news source is one that is more interested in politically useful fiction than fact.”
I enjoy predictions! Which news outlets do you think will go with the “lie” version? How much are you willing to bet on that? It’s calibration time!

I haven’t commented on the MRA article re women with short hair that’s been going around, cuz Trolls Gonna Troll. But it did provide the opportunity for a few great articles, like this one.
“I am regularly asked whether I think that feminism ought to be “rebranded” in order to threaten men less, because anything a woman does … must appeal to men first, or it is meaningless.”

Fascinating fic – The Last Christmas. An Engineer named Charles is given the role of Santa, ala Tim Allen’s “The Santa Clause”
“I want Li Xiu Yang to be given a gift that will leave her permanently physically healthy, uninjured, and with a mental state that is within three sigmas of normal for her age, gender, and culture. I want her to be free from any disability or degradation of any of her senses, organs, or other body parts. Whatever solution you give should age her at the normal rate until her twentieth birthday, at which point she should cease to age.”
The elf gave him a funny look, then began to shape the ball of grey goop. Three minutes later, he presented Charles with a small pebble.
“This is it?” he asked. “And it won’t turn her into some kind of monster, or cause her unbearable pain, or anything like that?”
The elf sighed and took the pebble back, then after a few moments of reconstruction handed it back to Charles.
“Well, that certainly inspired confidence,” he said dryly.

Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was True. Still amazing we didn’t nuke ourselves to oblivion.

Apple and Google CEOs stole $9 Billion from the working class.

All I want for Christmas is an abortion
…I’m 36. I’m married. I have two kids already. I don’t want and can’t afford another kid…another car…a bigger apartment. I was on the most effective and foolproof birth control method available. I WAS DOING IT RIGHT.
And when we talk about abortion, we talk about the hand wringing. The indecisiveness. The longing to keep the baby.
…But fuck that narrative. It’s bullshit. It robs women of their right to be viewed as fully actualized human beings.
…I was fortunate. I didn’t need to have an abortion because the pregnancy terminated itself. But I can’t tell you how ready I was to have one. I have the family that I want. I have the family that I planned. I have the family that I’ve budgeted for. I have as much family as I can emotionally handle, all with special needs. I hate pregnancy. I hate newborn-hood. I do not want another baby.
…We need to change the way we talk about abortion. We need more women to understand that knowing, unequivocally, that abortion is the only right decision for you does not make you less of a woman. We need more women to understand that not wanting to be pregnant is not a moral flaw. We need more women to understand that abortions are good and safe and they save lives.

A great set of photos from, surprisingly, Google Street View. The images are of all sorts of places where the road ended for the streetview vehicles.

For everyone living in our consumer culture:

Advice for surviving long work weeks.

“In Israel, Godwin’s Law isn’t just a law, it’s a law.”