The Sum of Its Parts

shrugaholic

girlfriendluvr

shows nowadays always try to be clever with “metaphors” for racism and homophobia and whatnot. but back in 2004, static shock just said the shit outright. they had multiple episodes about combating racism and discussing static’s issues he encounters being a black superhero. they had episodes about combating homophobia. static’s best friend was canonically gay and they actually said the word gay, IN A KIDS CARTOON IN 2004. richie foley was the first gay character i ever saw on tv. why are shows nowadays so tiptoey about it? theyll have gay characters but bever actually have the characters talk about being gay or use the word “gay”.

static shock was super ahead of its time and is still to this day one of my favorite cartoons ever… im so excited for the live action static shock reboot thats in production, static has always been my favorite dc hero!!

Source: girlfriendluvr

assbaka

kropotkhristian

The entire canon of American folk music was written by IWW anarchists, lesbians, and socialists lmao.

Imagine living in a country where literally your entire musical culture, from the ground up, was entirely developed by black people, and the one exception to that was oops, entirely anarchists and socialists, and then still being a racist conservative lmao

Source: kropotkhristian

assbaka

michaelmoore.com

10 Things They Won’t Tell You About the Flint Water Tragedy. But I Will. | MICHAEL MOORE

feelingwomanish

Really. You should read this.

@dmc-dmc you should REALLY read this

dmc-dmc

This is pure evil. @feelingwomanish i don’t even know what to say. Anyone who sees this PLEASE READ and fill out the petition!!!!!

africanmelanin

While the Children in Flint Were Given Poisoned Water to Drink, General Motors Was Given a Special Hookup to the Clean Water. A few months after Governor Snyder removed Flint from the clean fresh water we had been drinking for decades, the brass from General Motors went to him and complained that the Flint River water was causing their car parts to corrode when being washed on the assembly line. The Governor was appalled to hear that GM property was being damaged, so he jumped through a number of hoops and quietly spent $440,000 to hook GM back up to the Lake Huron water, while keeping the rest of Flint on the Flint River water. Which means that while the children in Flint were drinking lead-filled water, there was one — and only one — address in Flint that got clean water: the GM factory.
For Just $100 a Day, This Crisis Could’ve Been Prevented. Federal law requires that water systems which are sent through lead pipes must contain an additive that seals the lead into the pipe and prevents it from leaching into the water. Someone at the beginning suggested to the Governor that they add this anti-corrosive element to the water coming out of the Flint River. “How much would that cost?” came the question. “$100 a day for three months,” was the answer. I guess that was too much, so, in order to save $9,000, the state government said f*** it — and as a result the State may now end up having to pay upwards of $1.5 billion to fix the mess.
There’s More Than the Lead in Flint’s Water. In addition to exposing every child in the city of Flint to lead poisoning on a daily basis, there appears to be a number of other diseases we may be hearing about in the months ahead. The number of cases in Flint of Legionnaires Disease has increased tenfold since the switch to the river water. Eighty-seven people have come down with it, and at least ten have died. In the five years before the river water, not a single person in Flint had died of Legionnaires Disease. Doctors are now discovering that another half-dozen toxins are being found in the blood of Flint’s citizens, causing concern that there are other health catastrophes which may soon come to light.
People’s Homes in Flint Are Now Worth Nothing Because They Cant Be Sold. Would you buy a house in Flint right now? Who would? So every homeowner in Flint is stuck with a house that’s now worth nothing. That’s a total home value of $2.4 billion down the economic drain. People in Flint, one of the poorest cities in the U.S., don’t have much to their name, and for many their only asset is their home. So, in addition to being poisoned, they have now a net worth of zero. (And as for employment, who is going to move jobs or start a company in Flint under these conditions? No one.) Has Flint’s future just been flushed down that river?
While They Were Being Poisoned, They Were Also Being Bombed. Here’s a story which has received little or no coverage outside of Flint. During these two years of water contamination, residents in Flint have had to contend with a decision made by the Pentagon to use Flint for target practice. Literally. Actual unannounced military exercises – complete with live ammo and explosives – were conducted last year inside the city of Flint. The army decided to practice urban warfare on Flint, making use of the thousands of abandoned homes which they could drop bombs on. Streets with dilapidated homes had rocket-propelled grenades fired upon them. For weeks, an undisclosed number of army troops pretended Flint was Baghdad or Damascus and basically had at it. It sounded as if the city was under attack from an invading army or from terrorists. People were shocked this could be going on in their neighborhoods. Wait – did I say “people?” I meant, Flint people. As with the Governor, it was OK to abuse a community that held no political power or money to fight back. BOOM!
The Wife of the Governor’s Chief of Staff Is a Spokeswoman for Nestle, Michigan’s Largest Owner of Private Water Reserves. As Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein: “Follow the money.” Snyder’s chief of staff throughout the two years of Flint’s poisoning, Dennis Muchmore, was intimately involved in all the decisions regarding Flint. His wife is Deb Muchmore, who just happens to be the spokesperson in Michigan for the Nestle Company – the largest owner of private water sources in the State of Michigan. Nestle has been repeatedly sued in northern Michigan for the 200 gallons of fresh water per minute it sucks from out of the ground and bottles for sale as their Ice Mountain brand of bottled spring water. The Muchmores have a personal interest in seeing to it that Nestles grabs as much of Michigan’s clean water was possible – especially when cities like Flint in the future are going to need that Ice Mountain.
In Michigan, from Flint water, to Crime and Murder, to GM Ignition Switches, It’s a Culture of Death. It’s not just the water that was recklessly used to put people’s lives in jeopardy. There are many things that happen in Flint that would give one the impression that there is a low value placed on human life. Flint has one of the worst murder and crime rates in the country. Just for context, if New York City had the same murder rate as Flint, Michigan, the number of people murdered last year in New York would have been almost 4,000 people – instead of the actual 340 who were killed in NYC in 2015. But it’s not just street crime that makes one wonder about what is going on in Michigan. Last year, it was revealed that, once again, one of Detroit’s automakers had put profit ahead of people’s lives. General Motors learned that it had installed faulty ignition switches in many of its cars. Instead of simply fixing the problem, mid-management staff covered it up from the public. The auto industry has a history of weighing the costs of whether it’s cheaper to spend the money to fix the defect in millions of cars or to simply pay off a bunch of lawsuits filed by the victims surviving family members. Does a cynical, arrogant culture like this make it easy for a former corporate CEO, now Governor, turn a blind eye to the lead that is discovered in a municipality’s drinking water?
Don’t Call It “Detroit Water” — It’s the Largest Source of Fresh Drinking Water in the World. The media keeps saying Flint was using “Detroit’s water.” It is only filtered and treated at the Detroit Water Plant. The water itself comes from Lake Huron, the third largest body of fresh water in the world. It is a glacial lake formed over 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age and it is still fed by pure underground springs. Flint is geographically the last place on Earth where one should be drinking poisoned water.
ALL the Children Have Been Exposed, As Have All the Adults, Including Me. That’s just a fact. If you have been in Flint anytime from April 2014 to today, and you’ve drank the water, eaten food cooked with it, washed your clothes in it, taken a shower, brushed your teeth or eaten vegetables from someone’s garden, you’ve been exposed to and ingested its toxins. When the media says “9,000 children under 6 have been exposed,” that means ALL the children have been exposed because the total number of people under the age of 6 in Flint is… 9,000! The media should just say, “all.” When they say “47 children have tested positive”, that’s just those who’ve drank the water in the last week or so. Lead enters the body and does it’s damage to the brain immediately. It doesn’t stay in the blood stream for longer than a few days and you can’t detect it after a month. So when you hear “47 children”, that’s just those with an exposure in the last 48 hours. It’s really everyone.
This Was Done, Like So Many Things These Days, So the Rich Could Get a Big Tax Break. When Governor Snyder took office in 2011, one of the first things he did was to get a multi-billion dollar tax break passed by the Republican legislature for the wealthy and for corporations. But with less tax revenues, that meant he had to start cutting costs. So, many things – schools, pensions, welfare, safe drinking water – were slashed. Then he invoked an executive privilege to take over cities (all of them majority black) by firing the mayors and city councils whom the local people had elected, and installing his cronies to act as “dictators” over these cities. Their mission? Cut services to save money so he could give the rich even more breaks. That’s where the idea of switching Flint to river water came from. To save $15 million! It was easy. Suspend democracy. Cut taxes for the rich. Make the poor drink toxic river water. And everybody’s happy.

Link to petition

funnyinseconds

Guys if ur gonna scroll past this at least read number 5. I haven’t seen stuff to confirm this but i just looked it up and it’s true, and they didn’t even warn the community that they were going to be doing military testing. This is unprecedented torture by the government.

Source: feelingwomanish

sparklecritter

Here’s the Dealio

a-dinosaur-a-day

A group that is defined as the most living common ancestor of all living members of a group, and all of that ancestor’s descendants, is a crown group. So the most recent common ancestor of all modern birds, plus all of that ancestor’s descendants, is crown birds. This includes extinct things, but they’re closely related to living birds.

A group defined as a living group (such as birds) and all creatures more closely related to that group than to any other group, is called the total or pan group. So all animals more closely related to birds than to any other animal are pan birds.

The group of creatures that aren’t in the crown group but are in the pan group are the stem group. So all animals more closely related to birds than to anything else, but aren’t descended from the most recent common ancestor of living birds, are stem birds.

So, “traditional” dinosaurs are stem birds. You can call them birds, if you want. “Birds” is a more accurate name for them than any other at the end of the day. They aren’t crocodiles, because they aren’t in pan-crocodiles. They aren’t lizards, because they aren’t in pan-lizards. They are reptiles, but birds are reptiles too (the group that includes all things that we call reptiles also includes birds because birds are descended from that most recent common ancestor too). Birds is the most specific name for dinosaurs.

And we call pan-crocodiles crocodiles. Like, we have a real trend of calling all members of the pan-crocodile group crocodiles. And stem-crocs got really, really freaking weird. So there is a precedent for it.

So: non-avian dinosaurs are in a group that has birds in the name. Birds is the most specific name we can give them.

All birds are dinosaurs.
Are all dinosaurs birds?

note: this is a philosophical discussion. at the end of the day non-avian dinosaurs are stem-birds and pan-birds but they aren’t crown-birds. But most of them if you saw them in the street you probably wouldn’t call them a bird (only the ones really close to birds, like Velociraptor, would probably get called a bird). But traits we ascribe to birdhood - beaks, feathers, warm-bloodedness, flight, etc. - all appear in, or are even universal within, dinosaurs.

For more about this silliness check my “#bird political spectrum” tag.

Source: a-dinosaur-a-day

bryankonietzko

TO EVERYONE INTERESTED IN AUDITIONING FOR THE LIVE-ACTION AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER SERIES ON NETFLIX:
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We greatly appreciate your interest and enthusiasm, but we are not yet at that stage in the production.
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There will be an OPEN CASTING CALL, likely sometime later this year. When that happens, we will publicly share the information for how to *officially* apply.
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Until then, please refrain from tagging, commenting, DMing, etc. your auditions — I don’t check that stuff and no one else at Netflix does either. We’re not casting via social media and I don’t want anyone wasting their time and energy. Put it towards working on your audition instead. Good luck!
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Thanks, Bryan

bogleech

bogleech

itsaresonancecascade

sandersstudies

I don’t want to be rich, I just want to be comfy.

Want to have one really nice set of plates and silverware for company and Thanksgiving.

Want to be able to buy a new outfit and a good bra at least a couple times a year.

Want to be able to give “just because” gifts.

Want to burn incense and candles in my home daily, and have nice soaps.

Want to be able to donate to charity frequently and without worry.

Want to buy hardcover books to read and put on a shelf for my kids to read someday.

Want to have candies in bowls for people who visit.

Want to be able to take my young siblings and cousins to a movie and let them get the big popcorn they won’t finish, because there’s magic in just having it.

Want to have a linen closet or at least a linen shelf.

Want to go see live local theater several times a year.

Want to have a bottle of wine or champagne in the house for when I suddenly need to celebrate.

Want to have a kitchen with basic baking supplies so I can bake bread on the weekend, and pies for special occasions.

I just want to be comfy.

theactualcluegirl

That is my definition of ‘wealth’, as contrasted with ‘excess’. As my mother in law put it – if I can see a little something in a store that I know a friend would love, and just BUY it for them without having to worry about whether I can afford it in the budget, that means I’m well off. And that? That is what I want.

For everyone.

Everyone.

Source: sandersstudies

itsaresonancecascade

Source: catchymemes

risingape

ultimaromanorum

The view from the future is now clear enough that I think I can say for sure what went wrong with cyberpunk: for all the self-conscious anticapitalist pessimism, the cyberpunks thought the world is orderly, and they didn’t understand the implications of interconnectivity.

The digital dystopia in fiction is too simple. The antisocial freedom fighters take on the faceless megacorp or oppressive government in a straightforward conflict. Technology reduces the distance between actors and speeds up everyone’s decision loop, but results are predictable. Cyberpunk predicts cases like this pretty well: the arms race between Chinese dissidents and the Great Firewall admins, or Iranian hackers trying to blow up an oil refinery in Saudi.

The problem is that that really isn’t how the battle space looks. Cause and effect is no longer straightforward: in the physical world, you can’t drop one ten-ton bomb on Baghdad and end up nuking Tel Aviv off the map, but you can on the internet. No one (no not even FVEY) has a complete picture of which boxes are connected to which other boxes. No one is in charge, least of all any of the megacorps. With rare exceptions, you don’t know who’s hitting you until days later. Technology hasn’t just reduced distance: it’s totally scrambled our understanding of spatial relationships and directionality. The cyberpunks imagined a world where everyone might be on the front line, but it turns out there isn’t even a line, front is meaningless, and for the moment we can neither forecast effectively nor react rationally.

Anyway install your software patches in a timely fashion and use a password manager.

Source: ultimaromanorum

shrugaholic jadesandslash

sapphixxx

Hey guys I know Spider Gwen has a really cool design and all but please remember she’s a middle schooler. If you sexualize her I’m gonna have to repossess your teeth.

Source: sapphixxx

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

10 Things They Won’t Tell You About the Flint Water Tragedy. But I Will. | MICHAEL MOORE

Here’s the Dealio

All birds are dinosaurs. Are all dinosaurs birds?

All birds are dinosaurs.
Are all dinosaurs birds?