December 18, 2015
Get it together, Stoner Sloth!
Passport Power
"Now that we've settled it, OP should probably delete this thread."
At the age of 43, Kelly Slater has done just about everything a professional surfer can do, and done it more than once. After eleven world championships, (he was both the youngest (at 20) and oldest (at 39) to be ranked #1) he's the all-time win leader, and the first surfer ever to earn two perfect waves at Tahiti Pro. He romanced Nicole Eggert on Baywatch. According to Slate you should be worshipping him. Now his greatest achievement is at hand. [more inside]
Micromanaging the Model
France, which made being an "ultra-thin" model illegal this past April, just recently passed legislation making it illegal to hire such models. [more inside]
Alcohol production and sales during Prohibition: For Medicinal Use
The National Prohibition Act, known informally as the Volstead Act, was enacted to carry out the intent of the Eighteenth Amendment, which established prohibition in the United States. There were three key exemptions: wine for sacramental purposes, 200 gallons per calendar year for a household in which two or more adults reside, and liquor or alcohol prescribed by a physician for medicine. The U.S. Treasury Department authorized physicians to write prescriptions for medicinal alcohol, but everyone knew what the whiskey was really for. [more inside]
The Magic Wand Throughout Art History
Over the last year or so, a tumblr improving famous paintings by adding more overt elements indicating women's pleasure has emerged, offering us The Magic Wand Throughout Art History. Interviews with the artist have offered slightly varying mission statements, with
Bustle and
Mic noting his intentions to celebrate and destigmatize female masturbation by marrying the image of the iconic Hitachi Magic Wand vibrator with recognizable works of art, and Unicorn Booty notes that he simply wants to put two great things together and have fun.
solo intimacy DIY
It's All Relative
Everyone on Earth is actually your cousin. Tim Urban discusses genealogy and pedigree collapse as one more reason we should all try to get along.
Also, talk to your grandparents. They have stories too.
Juniper systems hack
Firewalls from Juniper Network have been revealed as having a back door which permitted system-level access and the ability to read VPN traffic. Juniper has released emergency patches to fix the vulnerability. The affected equipment is heavily used by the US government.
Rossi Ruiz
There is no purse for the Lehigh Valley Health Network Via Marathon. But 2014’s 114th-place finisher will bank $100,000 if he can recreate his result. [more inside]
Where "schools aren’t a place to learn, they’re a place to fear."
In 2007, the Pinellas County, Florida School Board abandoned integration, joining hundreds of US school districts in former Confederacy states that have resegregated since 2000. The Board justified the vote with bold promises: Schools in poor, black neighborhoods would get more money, more staff, more resources -- none of which happened. This past August, the Tampa Bay Times published an exposé, revealing how district leaders turned five once-average schools into Failure Factories. [more inside]
“real” programming languages
"So when I started programming in 2001, it was du jour in the communities I participated in to be highly critical of other languages. Other languages sucked, the people using them were losers or stupid, if they would just use a real language, such as the one we used, everything would just be better.Contempt Culture, Aurynn Shaw (The Particular Finest)
Right?"
familiar to cat-owners
If not a thing as old as time, joke dollar is a thing as old as 2006.
Joke dollar is not for prepared material. It is for the bon mot, the right remark at the right time, which is why so few joke-dollar anecdotes are funny in print. You had to be there. … It is the gestural equivalent of understatement: I do not have time to explain how much I loved you in the moment after you said that thing about mermaid sex, so here’s a dollar.
Star Wars: The Pencil Game
"When I was a kid, my uncle taught me this pencil and paper game he called Star Wars." "I have no idea who originally invented it." "Basically you draw two bases on opposite ends of the paper. Each base gets a mothership and two flanking defensive (immobile) turrets. Players wage war on each other by launching fighters from their motherships, then attempt to blast away their opponent's base. [...] To launch fighters, move, and fire weapons, players place their pencil tip on the selected unit's cannon. Then they must hold the pencil in position with a single index finger pressing down on the end of the pencil. Finally a player fires by pushing down on the pencil forcing the tip to draw a line outward. " [more inside]
Run, Hide, Tell
BBC: "[UK] Police have released a video telling people to "run, hide, tell" if they are caught up in a terrorist gun attack.
The four-minute video advises on how to evacuate a building, where to hide, and what information to tell police.
The video says people's first reaction if they hear gunshots should be to run - as long as it will not put them in greater danger - and not to let others' indecision "slow you down"."
Political Gambling in 2016
"As a gambler, I’ve noticed that Americans might also be obsessed with predicting their presidential races, but they often rely on pundits whose name recognition far outstrips their accuracy. Gamblers can’t afford to be wrong that often: Political prediction is a genuine game of skill, with serious research going into the effort—and serious rewards for the gambler who gets it right." [more inside]
(Almost) Everything I Know About Hell I Learned From "Buffy"
I would feel bad about this pop theological education, except I'm not alone. As part of Sojourner's series on God in sci-fi and fantasy (in honor of Star Wars Week), Rose Marie Berger discusses Hell as a trope and a reality.
“Perhaps the next time you hear from me I’ll be dead,”
Dead Air: The Philippines is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist, especially if you’re in talk radio. [The California Sunday Magazine] By Saul Elbein Photographs by Jes Aznar
When Elgin Damasco’s radio talk show was over, his bodyguards would hustle him out of his fortified studio and into his car. They would drive him through the leafy streets of Puerto Princesa, capital of the western Philippine province of Palawan, and bring him home. There he would hunker down until morning. Police had warned him that men had been casing his house. “I don’t even have the freedom to go to the mall,” Damasco told me. Inside the cinder-block walls of his studio, the cherubic 32-year-old felt safe. His sonorous voice was hooked into the most powerful transmitter on Palawan island. He was charging forth, as his station ID went, “to defend the weak and criticize the corrupt.” From 4:00 to 5:30 weekday afternoons, no one could shut him up.
A scam like this is going to take years to investigate
Rather than a simple scam, Vyapam appears to be a vast societal swindle—one that reveals the hollowness at the heart of practically every Indian state institution: inadequate schools, a crushing shortage of meaningful jobs, a corrupt government, a cynical middle class happy to cheat the system to aid their own children, a compromised and inept police force and a judiciary incapable of enforcing its laws.Aman Sethi writes in the Guardian on the so-called Vyapam scam—allegations of high-level and systematic corruption in the administration of the state professional examinations that determine entry into medical schools, state colleges, and entry-level civil service jobs within the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The scandal has been connected with 48 suspicious deaths involving people implicated in or investigating the scandal. The Indian Express has a timeline of events, while the Times of India has an extensive archive of further coverage.
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