J.J.A Richardson

newyorker:

“Still, the uproar has forced people to recognize once again the importance of the policies set by technological platforms—such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Supreme Court justices, presidents, prime ministers, and dictators for life will decide much of the future of free speech. But so will smart people with big glasses and purple shirts in Silicon Valley conference rooms. Free speech laws and policies change slowly. Companies can reset standards quickly. It’s useful for them to be reminded how much these issues matter as they balance business interests, reputation, and morals.”
-Nick Thompson writes about why Twitter isn’t evil: http://nyr.kr/zxugmR

“Still, the uproar has forced people to recognize once again the importance of the policies set by technological platforms—such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Supreme Court justices, presidents, prime ministers, and dictators for life will decide much of the future of free speech. But so will smart people with big glasses and purple shirts in Silicon Valley conference rooms. Free speech laws and policies change slowly. Companies can reset standards quickly. It’s useful for them to be reminded how much these issues matter as they balance business interests, reputation, and morals.”

-Nick Thompson writes about why Twitter isn’t evil: http://nyr.kr/zxugmR

@3 hours ago with 44 notes

"I enjoy nightclubs less than I enjoy eating wool."

Charlie Brooker (via letmeeatpears)

(via bigmouthedwoman)

@3 hours ago with 25 notes

"
The famous ‘going beyond’ Marxism in an idealistic and humanitarian direction is a joke and an idle dream. It is impossible to ‘go beyond’ Marx, for he himself carried his thought to its extreme logical consequences. The Communists have a solid logical basis for using lies and violence. …

All I ask is that, in the midst of a murderous world, we agree to reflect on murder and to make a choice. After that, we can distinguish those who accept the consequences of being murderers themselves or the accomplices of murderers, and those who refuse to do so with all their force and being.

Since this terrible dividing line does actually exist, it will be a gain if it be clearly marked. Over the expanse of five continents throughout the coming years an endless struggle is going to be pursued between violence and friendly persuasion, a struggle in which, granted, the former has a thousand times the chances of success than that of the latter. But I have always held that, if he who bases his hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circumstances is a coward. And henceforth, the only honorable course will be to stake everything on one formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions.
"

Albert Camus, The Self-Deception of the Socialist (via fuckyeahemergence)

(Source: whakatikatika, via fuckyeahexistentialism)

@4 hours ago with 140 notes

"We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (via moreofamore)

(Source: reluctantbuddha, via smtwhfs)

@5 hours ago with 2473 notes

photojojo:

Wittner Fabrice has perfected the tricky art of light stenciling.

He shot these photos in Hanoi and Christ Church, New Zealand. Check out his behind the scenes shots under Enlightened Souls at his site!

Light Stencils in Hanoi & New Zealand

@5 hours ago with 1512 notes

occupyonline:

Socialism for big business,
capitalism for the poor.
A state and corporate partnership
of endless debt and war.

(via myheadisweak)

@5 hours ago with 112 notes

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

liquidnight:

The Velvet Underground

“Femme Fatale”

From The Velvet Underground & Nico

@6 hours ago with 114 note and 287 play

"
You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.

And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.

And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.

And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.
"

Aaron Freeman “You Want A Physicist To Speak at your Funeral”

(source: npr)

(Source: lonelyheartsdeathmetal, via bigmouthedwoman)

@3 hours ago with 1303 notes

crookedindifference:

Sam, the Rhesus monkey, after his ride in the Little Joe-2 (LJ-2) spacecraft

A U.S. Navy destroyer safely recovered Sam after he experienced three minutes of weightlessness during the flight. Animals were often used during test flights for Project Mercury to help determine the effects of spaceflight and weightlessness on humans. LJ-2 was one in a series of flights that led up to the human orbital flights of NASA’s Project Mercury program. The Little Joe rocket booster was developed as a cheaper, smaller, and more functional alternative to the Redstone rockets. Little Joe could be produced at one-fifth the cost of Redstone rockets and still have enough power to carry a capsule payload. Seven unmanned Little Joe rockets were launched from Wallops Island, Virginia from August 1959 to April 1961.

@3 hours ago with 48 notes

"There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do. It’s all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain’t nice, but that’s as far as any man got a right to say."

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (via human-voices)

(Source: predatorywaspobserver, via bigmouthedwoman)

@4 hours ago with 58 notes

ianbrooks:

Film vs. Type by Christian Petersen

Prints available at etsy. It’s two of Christian’s passions: movie quotes and typography clashing in these amusing arts.

Artist: tumblr / twitter / wordpress

@5 hours ago with 97 notes

Dying Immigrant Denied Kidney Transplant Because He Is Undocumented

jonathan-cunningham:

thepoliticalfreakshow:

Jesus Navarro, a dialysis patient who will die without a kidney transplant, has private insurance. He has a donor to provide the needed kidney. But because he is an undocumented immigrant, hospital administrators at UC San Francisco Medical Center are refusing to allow the procedure, saying that there is no guarantee Navarro will receive the necessary follow-up care because of his immigration status. Now, Navarro is stuck in an “ethical gray area” for the hospital. “It puts the doctors in a very awkward and torn position,” said Arthur Caplan, a bioethics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “You come into this trying to do good and find yourself stuck in the middle of a fight about immigration.”

For eight years, Navarro has used a home dialysis machine to cleanse his blood after his kidneys began to fail. He reached the top of the waitlist for a kidney in the spring, but doctors called off his transplant when they discovered his immigration status. Even after his wife offered her kidney for the transplant, administrators still refused to allow the surgery. Reece Fawley, executive director of transplantation at UC San Francisco, said in a statement that the hospital considers socioeconomic stability for all patients, including immigration status.

Navarro’s situation highlights a dilemma for hospitals when it comes to organ transplants for immigrants, especially if their undocumented status threatens their continued access to insurance:

Though no data are available, anecdotal evidence suggests clinics sometimes perform organ transplants on illegal immigrants, especially when the patients are young. In one high-profile case, UCLA Medical Center gave an undocumented woman three liver transplants before she turned 21.

But health administrators also reject patients because of their immigration status, though that usually happens when the patients lack insurance. Bellevue Hospital in New York attracted attention last year when it refused to transplant a kidney between brothers because they could not pay for the operation. […]

Some bioethicists say the hospital should have performed the surgery because Navarro would not be taking resources away from other patients or putting his wife at serious risk.

After all, many legal residents fail to follow their post-surgical plan.

Some lawmakers would even want hospitals to check the immigration status for all patients. The Arizona legislature considered a bill that would require that, and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) said in November that it would not be going “too far” to have hospitals ask patients about their immigration status.

But in the meantime, Navarro’s private insurance from his job would cover the transplant and follow-up care, but he lost job last month after an immigration audit and his insurance could run out. If he is unable to extend his insurance and ends up in California’s Medi-Cal program, his problem would worsen because Medi-Cal would not cover the immunosuppressive drugs that prevent organ rejection after a transplant. “We don’t know what to do,” his wife said. “It’s like we’re on a ledge — we can’t go here or there.”

The only real thing Republicans have to fear from ‘death panels’ would be a panel stopping them from letting immigrants, people of color, and the poor die like this.

It’s such clear racism, too, that’s what kills me. Immigrant haters defend actions like this by pointing to the letter of the law being broken, as if that makes letting the poor man die any less heinous. I wonder if they’d want doctors to let a jaywalker die if he got hit by a car, or leave people in burning cars to die if they were speeding when they crashed- of course not. It’s only because these people come from a foreign culture and don’t speak their language that they are denied basic human rights, and for no other reason.

@6 hours ago with 115 notes