Facebook, Oh Facebook XV.

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A days-old argument between two groups of people that escalated on Facebook led to a shooting Allen Tuesday night.

The Allen Police Department said that disagreement was between nine people from South Dallas and seven from Allen.

Sergeant John Felty said the Dallas group drove to a home on Hawthorne Drive near South Jupiter Road in Allen for a confrontation. He said it was about to end peacefully when someone fired shots.

“Well I can’t imagine what would be so important that it would end like this. It is a tragedy,” he said.

Four people were shot and taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Officers detained eight of the nine from Dallas and the other, who police believe fired the shots, is in custody.

“The good news is… if there is any good news in this… is that the people that are responsible for this are detained or in custody,” he said.

The fact that the shooting stemmed from a Facebook argument was not lost on authorities.

“We’ve had social media disagreements for quite some time but never to this degree where it turns into a shooting,” said Fenty.

Oh good. Great Americans are going to drag their guns out over FB arguments now. If this shit continues, there won’t be all that many people left to worry about, will there? I know how infuriating people can be, who doesn’t know that? Even so, grabbing a gun is not a good idea because someone on the internet pissed you off. If we start killing people on that basis, there really won’t be anyone left.

Via WBAP.

Word Wednesday.

Minatory

adjective.

1: menacing; threatening.

1525-35; from Late Latin minātōrius, from Latin minārī to threaten. “Expressing a threat, 1530s, from Middle French minatoire, from Late Latin

minatorius, from minat-, stem of minari “to threaten”.

“Now Molly put an arm about its neck, and she kissed it again, this time on the long flat cheek, and yet again, on the heavy supraorbital bone, and she looked up and past it, and into Yattuy’s face, and her expression slowly changed from the utmost tenderness that she had shown to the Beast, to a grim minatory glare; gone was the fond lover, and in her place was this stern and vengeful queen.” – Throne of Darkness by Douglas Nicholas.

A Most Colourful Labour of Love.

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In Afghanistan, several men are at work in a smoke-blackened room. They sit between buckets of thick grey paint, working on benches made of dark grey stone. Lonely beams of white light shine through skylights in the vaulted ceiling onto stacks of clay tiles coated with a fine layer of grey dust. Monochromatic as the scene may seem, these men have one of the most colourful jobs in the world: making tiles for Herat’s Jama Masjid (Great Mosque).

This is an amazing story, and an astonishing labour of love and art, and the saving of living history. You can read and see much more at BBC.

Looking for Lunch.

A male Sharp-shinned Hawk flew by the front windows in pursuit of a sparrow, and missed, so retreated back to the pine. I got one bad shot, standing up on the shelf in front of the windows, then he took off in pursuit once more. Saw him flying a couple more times, then couldn’t see him anymore. I waited a while, and the sparrows weren’t coming back. The chickadees were messaging, but not willing to come down to the deck. Waited some more. A couple of chickadees made the mad dash, grabbed a seed and took off. A couple of sparrows landed high in the side pine. Two Downy woodpeckers showed, and slowly, more birds were coming back. Then the Downy made a panic move, and froze. Absolutely still. Minutes ticked by, not a movement. I kept scanning the side pine, but couldn’t see anything. By the time four minutes had gone by, I knew that hawk was there, because that’s an extremely long time for a bird to stay absolutely still. I opened the window, not so much as a tremor from the Downy. I climbed onto the windowsill, and finally spotted the hawk. Half crouched on the window frame, in subzero temps, I’m trying to shoot the damn thing. In the 5th photo is where you can see that I finally got his attention, and in spite of the fact I’m much larger than he is, that’s creepier than fuck. Click for full size.

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© C. Ford.

Let’s Compare, Shall We?

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Credit: fourever.eu

Looking at America today, we have repubs going nuts over porn; the active dismantling of ethics and ethical oversight in favour of open corruption; and Donny “Pendejo” Trump waging twitter war with Kim Jong Un, because nothing screams “Greatness!” like two sociopaths with all the maturity of a toddler in full meltdown. And nukes, can’t forget the nukes.

Meanwhile, in Sweden, there’s a move to break the consumer cycle of “buy, it breaks, toss it out, buy another.”

Sweden’s Minister of Financial Markets and Consumer Affairs Per Bolund says we need to change that mindset.

“Part of that is making it more affordable and economically rational to stop the buying and throwing away, instead repairing your goods and using them for a longer time,” says Bolund.

He’s trying to push people in that direction through tax breaks; he’s spearheading a 50-percent tax cut for Swedes to repair items like clothes, shoes and bicycles. The new rule takes effect on Jan. 1, 2017, with a goal of decreasing waste in the world’s landfills, which are filling up at an alarming rate.

This idea — not just discarding stuff — it’s not exactly revolutionary.

A 50% tax break. I just bet that wouldn’t get the attention of Americans, nooooo. [Serious, deadly sarcasm there.]

And in Finland, they are breaking out a guaranteed universal income pilot program.

Giving people money regardless of whether or not they’re working seems to defy common sense about personal responsibility and how to boost productivity. But supporters of UBI have argued that it just makes sense as public policy, for several reasons. First, in the long run, it might be simpler and cheaper for the state to give people money than to oversee a complicated welfare bureaucracy. And it looks as if technological advances might level industries that may have seemed impervious to automation, such as truck driving: driverless vehicles will soon be out of the experimental stage, journalist Gwynne Dyer has noted.

So, America: bowl full of rotten apples.

“A lie, is a lie, is a lie.”

Dan Rather speaks to 'All In' host Chris Hayes on July 11, 2016. (MSNBC).

Dan Rather speaks to ‘All In’ host Chris Hayes on July 11, 2016. (MSNBC).

An actual journalist has weighed in on The Wall Street Journal’s declaration of not calling a lie a lie. Dan Rather did not mince words, and I am so thankful.

On Facebook, Rather blasted Baker by opening with “A lie, is a lie, is a lie.”

“Journalism, as I was taught it, is a process of getting as close to some valid version of the truth as is humanly possible. And one of my definitions of news is information that the powerful don’t want you to know,” Rather wrote.

“It is not the proper role of journalists to meet lies—especially from someone of Mr. Trump’s stature and power—by hiding behind semantics and euphemisms. Our role is to call it as we see it, based on solid reporting. When something is, in fact, a demonstrable lie, it is our responsibility to say so,” he continued. “As I have said before and will say as long as people are willing to listen, this is a gut check moment for the press. We are being confronted by versions of what are claimed to be ‘the truth’ that resemble something spewed out by a fertilizer-spreader in a wind tunnel. And there is every indication that this will only continue in the Tweets and statements of the man who will now hold forth from behind the Great Seal of the President of the United States.”

Rather concluded by warning news consumers, “You as the paying, subscribing public, can use your leverage and pocketbooks to keep those who should be honest brokers of information, well, honest. ”

Thank you, Mr. Rather.

Via Raw Story.