Hello everyone, recording live from somewhere....

laughingsquid: Star Wars Filibuster, Animated Version of Patton...

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:26:31 -0700

laughingsquid:

Star Wars Filibuster, Animated Version of Patton Oswalt’s ‘Star Wars: EpIsode VII’ Plot Proposal

thefrogman: The first casualty of the buyout.

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:27:46 -0700

thefrogman:

The first casualty of the buyout.

LAUGHING AT MY NIGHTMARE: Welcome Yahoo!

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:18:33 -0700

LAUGHING AT MY NIGHTMARE: Welcome Yahoo!:

laughingatmynightmare:

My name is Shane Burcaw. I’m in a wheelchair. This is my blog.

I’m not sure if David remembered to mention it during your meeting today, but I have an arrangement with Tumblr where they send me a check for $34,000,000 at the end of every week. Just want to make sure there are no hiccups in my…

I remember when he told you this.

mr-derp-herpin: blua: What the city is missing: Thierry...

Mon, 20 May 2013 09:23:34 -0700

San Francisco

Paris

Tokyo

Los Angeles

Hong Kong

Rio de Janeiro

New York City

mr-derp-herpin:

blua:

What the city is missing: Thierry Cohen photographs cityscapes and then photographs deserts at night, combing the two to show us what our cities would look like with the lights off. The stars are not enhanced, they are actual photos from relative latitudes that would expose the same starry sky view if it weren’t for light pollution. Click on each photo to see which city it is.

Light pollution and pollution in general

introduce a little anarchy: Tumblr. + Yahoo! = !!

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:32:54 -0700

introduce a little anarchy: Tumblr. + Yahoo! = !!:

yahoo:

I’m delighted to announce that we’ve reached an agreement to acquire Tumblr!

We promise not to screw it up. Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO. The product roadmap, their team, their wit…

Welp.

casualcynic: So my mom and I have been working the same...

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:20:30 -0700

casualcynic:

So my mom and I have been working the same waitress job for 5-6 years now. She had been waitressing years before, but this is recently. Anyway, about… 15 minutes ago this guy she waited on left and told her to take care. Just that. Prior to this she had talked to him about Italy. Her people are from Florence, this and that, and she said she’s never been. She’s got 8 years of art education and she’s working a waitress job. It’s pretty… Sad and disappointing, I guess. Her and my father divorced 6 years ago and she hasn’t had a real job ever. Just been stuck in a small town she’s not from.

This man who we have never seen before tipped her 1000 dollars for a trip to Italy. Walked out, not another word.

…you know. Just when I start to lose faith in humanity….Hm.

nbcnews: Vowing ‘not to screw it up,’ Yahoo buys...

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:17:29 -0700

nbcnews:

Vowing ‘not to screw it up,’ Yahoo buys Tumblr

(Photo: Twitter)

Yahoo and Tumblr made their wedding vows Monday with the stumbling Web search giant publicly announcing its promise not to “screw up” the relationship.

Read the complete story.

Interesting.

thedailymeme: What my sister taught me about black folk.

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:15:15 -0700

thedailymeme:

What my sister taught me about black folk.

Shocking IRS Witch Hunt? Actually, It's a Time-Honored Tradition | Mother Jones

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:04:08 -0700

Shocking IRS Witch Hunt? Actually, It's a Time-Honored Tradition | Mother Jones:

justinspoliticalcorner:

On Monday, President Obama weighed in on the alleged targeting of conservative nonprofit groups by the Internal Revenue Service, calling for a full investigation into what he said would constitute “outrageous” conduct. That’s one way to put it. Here’s another: depressingly normal. For much of the last century, abuse of the IRS for political ends has been the rule, not the exception. Under Republican and Democratic presidents alike, the IRS has gone after communists, students, black activists, young conservatives, and mainstream political rivals. Here are some prime examples:

Franklin D. Roosevelt: According to libertarian historian Burton W. Folsom’s New Deal or Raw Deal, Elliott Roosevelt, the president’s son, noted that FDR “may have been the originator of the concept of employing the IRS as a weapon of political retribution”—most notably against former Louisiana governor and senator Huey Long. (The famously corrupt Long, in fairness, was kind of asking for it.) Rep. Hamilton Fish, a New York Republican, alleged that Roosevelt’s IRS had gone after him on trumped-up charges—and when that failed, handed the investigation over to the FBI instead. Roosevelt’s longtime Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau Jr., admitted that the administration had deliberately targeted his Republican predecessor, Richard Mellon, on trumped-up charges of tax evasion.

Dwight Eisenhower: The FBI’s counterintelligence program, COINTELPRO, relied heavily on the compliance of the IRS to go after members of the Communist Party. Per a 1976 Senate report, “In its efforts against the Communist Party, the FBI had unlimited access to tax returns; it never told the IRS why it wanted them, and IRS never attempted to find out.”

John F. Kennedy: In 1961, Attorney General Robert Kennedy teamed up with United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther to produce the “Reuther Memorandum,” which proposed curtailing the influence of far-right groups in two ways. The first was the enforcement of the Federal Communication Commision’s “Fairness Doctrine,” to limit their use of the airwaves. The second was the IRS, through an initiative called “The Ideological Organizations Audit Project,” which explored the political activities of conservative nonprofits. The program eventually expanded to the other of the side of political spectrum, but according to the 1976 Senate investigation, that was mostly a facade of nonpartisanship.

Richard Nixon: The godfather of “Nixonian tactics” believed he’d been a political target of the agency in the Truman administration—not that he needed an excuse to use the Internal Revenue Service as a tool with which to dispatch “enemies.” Under Tricky Dick, the IRS created the Special Services Staff (SSS) to investigate thousands of perceived enemy groups and individuals. (Nixon aide Pat Buchanan feared that groups like the Ford Foundation and Brookings Institution were acting essentially as Democratic organs.) White House counsel John Dean testified that the administration pushed the IRS to audit reporters who wrote stories critical of Nixon, such asNewsday’s Robert Greene. Nixon himself wanted the SSS to focus on political adversaries like 1972 presidential challenger George McGovern, student groups, and civil rights organizations like the NAACP. When the IRS audited Billy Graham, a Nixon ally, the president responded with force: “Get the word down to the IRS that I want them to conduct field audits of those who are our opponents, if they’re going to do in our friends.”

Jimmy Carter: Republicans accused the born-again Christian president of an “unconstitutional regulatory vendetta” against religious institutions after his IRS director, Jerome Kurtz, introducednew regulation to end the tax-exempt status of Christian schools. Kurtz ultimately had to retain Secret Service protection after a wave of death threats from supporters of religious education.

Ronald Reagan: This one hit close to home. Mother Jones had been around for six years when, in 1981, Ronald Reagan’s IRS tried to shut it down. The agency concluded that the magazine was not living up to its tax-exempt motives and instead functioned like any other publishing house, with the goal of making as much money as possible. That was weird, given that Mother Jones had to that point never made a profit. The timing was also suspicious—a half-dozen or so other left-of-center publications came in for the same scrutiny by the agency. MoJo eventually won—but not until it had burned hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Bill Clinton: The conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which filed a string of lawsuits against the administration centering on public records, alleged that it was in the crosshairs of the Clinton White House—along with a dozen other groups and individuals that had gotten on the president’s bad side. The list of of audited parties in the Clinton era included Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick, the Heritage Foundation, and the National Rifle Association. Documents later released by the IRS during the Bush administration revealed that high-ranking Democrats, including a half-dozen members of Congress, had written to the IRS requesting an investigation into Judicial Watch’s nonprofit status. One IRS official allegedly told the group, “What do you expect when you sue the president?”

George W. Bush: The NAACP experienced an unwelcome case of Nixon Nostaliga in 2004, when it found itself under IRS scrutiny after the group’s chairman, Julian Bond, told attendees of its annual convention to oust Bush. (The president had been invited to the convention but declined.) After a two-year investigation, the IRS backed off.

h/t: Tim Murphy at Mother Jones

soulbrotherv2: The People Could Fly: American Black...

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:53:08 -0700

soulbrotherv2:

The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales told by Virginia Hamilton and illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon

“The well-known author retells 24 black American folk tales in sure storytelling voice: animal tales, supernatural tales, fanciful and cautionary tales, and slave tales of freedom. All are beautifully readable. With the added attraction of 40 wonderfully expressive paintings by the Dillons, this collection should be snapped up.”

O_o

Fri, 17 May 2013 09:34:13 -0700

O_o

laughingsquid: Creative and Ridiculous Ways to Open a Beer

Fri, 17 May 2013 09:21:36 -0700

laughingsquid:

Creative and Ridiculous Ways to Open a Beer

khymeira: cometcloud: Oh Japan. These all look like...

Fri, 17 May 2013 09:03:15 -0700

khymeira:

cometcloud:

Oh Japan.

These all look like re-enactments of Shingeki no Kyojin. The anime adaptation is a total mind fuck; it’s the first series in years that has successfully and emotionally immersed me. I would recommend it to anyone.