This is Angel. “How do you get this open?” There’s a constant parade of girls trying to figure out this doorknob business, which is why it looks a mess, in spite of being cleaned every day. There are boys on the other side of the door, y’see. Yes, I keep it locked. Just in case. (They do manage to unlock it now and then.) Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
A quick way to chop 10 apples up for the rat crews. :D Also had some fun with photos.
© C. Ford.
Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
Lady Mourning Dove, click for full size.
© C. Ford.
The substantive impact of Steve Bannon’s exit from the NSC on foreign policy remains to be seen. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters.
Seems that Breitbart has lost its way, no longer able to whip hateful, conservative bigots into a convenient froth anymore. They now find themselves playing defense, and it is not working out for them. I, I … just can’t seem to conjure up a tear.
This year was supposed to be a time of triumph for the “alt-right” website Breitbart.com and its readers. The website’s CEO Steve Bannon became one of the most powerful men in the country, a senior White House adviser with a reputation for ruthlessness in the name of forwarding his white nationalist ideology.
However, according to Vanity Fair‘s Tina Nguyen, Breitbart.com has been racked by internal struggles in recent months and is seeing its once-plentiful traffic numbers take a steep dive.
[…]
“Just a few months later, the numbers have a different story to tell,” said Nguyen. “As of May 26, 2017, according to Alexa.com—the same web-ranking analytics company that Breitbart drew its numbers from in January—Fox News is the 64th most-trafficked site in the country. Huffington Post is at 60. Buzzfeed is at 50. The Washington Post, on the strength of a series of eye-popping scoops, is at 41.”
“Breitbart,” she said, “is in 281st place.”
Web analytics can be a woolly discipline, Nguyen noted, but across the board, Breitbart’s numbers are suffering. “ComScore estimated that Breitbart had nearly 23 million unique visitors during the month of November 2016, but only drew 10.7 million in April 2017, a 53 percent drop. Last month, the site had fewer visitors than it did in April 2016, when 12.3 million people visited the site.”
[…]
Breitbart.com has walked the line of the acceptable, spewing out thinly-veiled hate pieces about feminists, people of color and anyone deemed to be “politically correct.” But now, with its enemies purportedly routed and their nominee in power, Breitbart doesn’t know what to do with the inchoate rage that it has inculcated among its users.
Screen Grab. Playable video at link.
The willful blindness of some people never ceases to baffle me. I’m not much a one for taking things on faith, and I never take any politician on faith of any kind. Politics being what they are, an arena for game playing, with rewards for lying and other duplicitous behaviour, it strikes me as pure folly to rely on faith in the words of any politician, and in particular when it comes to someone like Trump. I’m not overly inclined to being sympathetic to Trumpholes, but it’s difficult to not have compassion for those who feel betrayed as result of their blind faith in a person who did not deserve it in any way. The best they can do now is to get damn active in The Resistance, and try to atone for boosting the Tiny Tyrant into place.
An upstate New York man who sold many of his possessions last year to fund a months-long tour playing music at Trump rallies now regrets his vote for the Republican candidate.
“I had everything riding on the fact that he was going to make things better,” Kraig Moss told the Associated Press. “He lied to me.”
Then-candidate Donald Trump looked Moss in the eye at one rally in Iowa and told the grieving father he would help end the drug epidemic that had claimed his 24-year-old son, whose ashes accompanied the truck driver to 45 rallies.
“He promised me, in honor of my son, that he was going to combat the ongoing heroin epidemic,” Moss said. “He got me hook, line and sinker.”
Post-election analyses found that Trump over-performed in Rust Belt counties ravaged by public health crises — such as drug and alcohol addiction and suicide — but the president’s budget released this week slashes funding for addiction treatment, research and prevention.
Medicaid funding would shrivel under Trump’s 10-year plan, which could devastate coverage to an estimated three in 10 adults addicted to opioids.
[…]
Trump promised during the campaign and after his election to help families suffering from the opioid epidemic — but his voters feel betrayed by the president’s focus on tax cuts, military spending and border security.
“I didn’t see this coming,” said Paul Kusiak, of Massachusetts, who told Trump the candidate about his sons’ successful battles with addiction. “I’m trying desperately to have hope and take the president at his word.”
[…]
“Inside I’m screaming,” said Sandra Chavez, of Sacramento, whose son died from an infection related to drug use. “We’re going backward with Donald Trump’s plan.”
Trump has proposed cutting funds for addiction research, prevention programs, drug courts and prescription drug monitoring, as well as eliminating support for training of addiction professional.
Justin Butler, a 36-year-old Trump voter from Cleveland, fears he will be back on the streets, using drugs and selling them, if Medicaid stops paying for addiction treatment.
“He’s turning his back on people,” Butler said. “He’s a liar.”
It’s one hell of a harsh lesson, and none of these people, in spite of voting for Trump, deserves to be tossed aside like so much trash. None of us deserve that. That said, as noted earlier, being sorry isn’t enough. Regretful Trump voters need to channel that disappointment and betrayal into working for The Resistance, and to now work to get the Tiny Tyrant unseated.
Via Raw Story. There’s a similar story, about a Trump voter who is completely dependent on SSI, finding out she most likely will not have that anymore under the Tiny Tyrant.
Greg Rucka said Wonder Woman’s queer identity was important to the narrative. Photograph: Frank Cho/DC Comics.
Time to get drunk on tears once again. Some screenings of Wonder Woman have had a Women Only night, and all the dudes are upset.
“Wonder Woman” may be a feminist icon, but some male moviegoers aren’t happy about some scheduled women-only screenings of the film.
The controversy began when the famous Alamo Drafthouse cinema in Austin, Texas, announced it would be hosting a screening of the new movie, which stars Gal Gadot as the superhero.“Apologies, gentlemen, but we’re embracing our girl power and saying ‘No Guys Allowed’ for one special night at the Alamo Ritz,” the announcement read. “And when we say ‘People Who Identify As Women Only,’ we mean it. Everyone working at this screening — venue staff, projectionist, and culinary team — will be female.”
That didn’t go over well with some men, judging by the comments on the theater’s Facebook page.
“Apparently ‘equality’ is only selective nowadays,” one person wrote. “How about a ‘men’s only’ showing of a movie or is that not how equality works?”
Why no, that is not how equality works, you crybaby of a cupcake.
The Alamo responded to many of the negative comments, pointing out that they have hosted screenings for select groups before, including veterans for military films, and that it’s about a celebration of the Wonder Woman character.
Hmmm, I’ll just bet there wasn’t any leaking of man tears over a veteran’s screening. So, cry some more, dudes, cry enough for us all to get drunk!
Full story at CNN, beware autoplay. Hat Tip to Saad.
Credit: Imzy.
Imzy, the “nice Reddit” has been laid to rest, and is being mourned by its users. It would seem that nice has little place on the ‘net, and has once again been chased into small pockets here and there in the netverse.
After a long bout of illness and injury sustained from battling racism, misogyny, and general depravity, Imzy — the last hope for human decency on the internet — has died. It was 2 years old.
Imzy, the “nice Reddit” created by Jessica Moreno and Dan McComas, two former Reddit executives who left the company in 2015 amid intense controversy over their anti-harassmentpolicies, will officially shut down June 23.
The reason? There’s no room for a platform that promotes basic politeness in the social media market.
In a blog post announcing the impending shut down Wednesday, McComas wrote “it is time for us to shut down the site” as Imzy couldn’t find a “place in the market.”
[…]
Imzy’s sunset isn’t just a loss for users, who regarded it as a place of belonging, it’s also a sign that the worst things about human interaction — bullying, harassment, forums dedicated to promoting racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia, unsolicited photos of genitalia, beheading and other snuff videos, child pornography — are likely permanent fixtures on the internet, and by extension in society.
[…]
Maybe this is what life on the internet is supposed to be. After all, the internet is just a mirror of the society it serves and a product of the biases and blind spots of a technology’s creators, so why would we expect it to be any different? Why should the internet somehow be better than the casual and blatant nastiness people experience every day?
It seems that belief in duality persists, this idea that online is distinct and separate from ‘real’ life. Yes, the ‘net is societies, writ large, often in crayon and spray paint. There’s a whole lot of ugly in human societies, so it should not be a surprise that ugly rears up on the ‘net. There’s a whole lot of kindness and creativity in human societies too, and that also shows up on the ‘net. It’s true that nice, fun, and kind don’t garner the same attention as ugly and malicious; we are all attracted to the worst excesses of humankind, if for no other reason, to tsk and be shocked that people could do such a thing. I’ve done my own tiny experiments here on Affinity, with doing nothing but art / photography / nice and fun stories in a day of blogging. When I do that, my stats take a serious hit. Blog about politics, assholes, bigots? Much better for my stats. I try to strike a balance, but it’s not always easy to do.
I am not a social person, at my keyboard, or away from it. I find socializing to be exhausting, and can only handle it in limited amounts, so for someone like me, the internet is ideal, because I can wander away when it all becomes too much. That’s why I don’t indulge in social media much, because being involved with social media means being involved with people, and all the consequent obligations to those people. I don’t think there is any particular reason nice can’t thrive on the ‘net, there are pockets of it all over the place, if you go looking. PZ has written about Mastodon a couple of times, and seems to enjoy it. If you’re trying to be a massive media giant, maybe it doesn’t work so well, I don’t know. Imzy had a great deal of money in October, $8 million. I won’t pretend to understand why it’s now being considered a failure, and those in charge don’t seem to want to explain it fully. Perhaps if there was less focus on the money, nice would thrive better on the ‘net, I don’t know. Seems to me that greed and nice don’t go hand in hand, but what do I know?
U.S. President Donald Trump looks up during a meeting about healthcare at the White House in Washington, U.S., March 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque.
Oh, the Tiny Tyrant, Fucking Idiot in Chief, is busy spewing stupid all over Europe, and making enemies out of everyone. In this particular instance, the focus is on how absolutely evil Germans are, because cars. Yep. Oh my, someone else is better than Grate Amerikkka™ at something, they must be squashed!
Donald Trump is ready to fight Germany in an auto battle according to Germany’s Der Spiegel.
Trump got a chilly reception at the NATO summit in Belgium after attacking fellow members. But he was caught pledging a battle with German automakers as part of his anger with “back dues” he feels the country owes to NATO. As CNN’s Jake Tapper noted Thursday, “Trump seems to think it’s like a country club.”
In a discussion about the country’s trade surplus, Trump said. “The Germans are evil, very evil.”
“Look at the millions of cars they sell in the US, and we’ll stop that,” sources told Der Spiegel.
According to the report, EU Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker took up for Germany explaining that “free trade is good for all.”
According to a report from the “Süddeutsche Zeitung,” the EU allies were horrified by the willingness of the Americans to view global trade with such a lack of awareness. Trump’s economic consultant Gary Cohn was said to have chided German auto trade during a discussion between the US and Germany and the USA and Belgium. Trump had previously attacked them during another conversation.
Via Raw Story.
Archive Dreaming from Refik Anadol on Vimeo.
Archive Dreaming, a stunning project, and one I hope becomes a reality before I die, because it would be an amazing experience! You can read all about this, and see more at The Creators Project.
Minutiae Photos.
There’s a new app in town, but it’s not like other social media in any way. This one is to document entirely mundane moments of your life, and you don’t get to do it at any given time.
Thus was born Minutiae, an anonymous photo-sharing app that, unlike uber-serious photography apps, encourages people to embrace the boring and mundane instead of meticulously sculpting the digital replica of their everyday lives.
Once a day, at random, all participants receive an alert to take a photo simultaneously, regardless of time zone. After taking the photo, the user is paired with a random stranger somewhere in the world who also just took a photo, and they are given 60 seconds to browse their chronological timeline or that of the stranger with whom they were matched. When the minute expires, the app shuts down, and the users must wait for the next alert to use the app again. Beyond the anonymity and its focus on the quotidian, Minutiae also prevents users from following anyone.
Despite Minutiae being a fully functioning app, Adolfsson and Wilson agreed that it should really be an artwork in and of itself. As Wilson tells Creators, it helped that they had a bit of a Swedish Arts Council funding instead of venture capital, so they were able to make what they see as a collective embrace of global mundanity.
“Our thesis is not that social media is ‘bad,’ just that it ends up making us look at the world, and documenting our experiences, in a very particular way,” says Wilson. “Through our use of Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat, etc., we are in the continuous process (often unconsciously) of refining filters that determine how we capture our lives… Minutiae frees us from this pressure to perform since you no longer have the option to choose what you are documenting—connections are singular and random.”
Another way Minutiae frees users, according to Adolfsson, is by restricting the time spent on the app to one minute per day. This flies right in the face most apps, which are designed to keep users locked in for as long as possible, or returning again and again like an addict.
“The app is a tool to help participants document their own in-between moments of life,” says Adolfsson. “The type of moments that we usually don’t think of as important enough to capture.”
You can see and read more at The Creators Project. Minutiae.
Metalliferous Streams from Eric Bellefeuille on Vimeo. All I have is WOW.
Paris at night by Roberto Estupinián.
From Charly. That first photo, makes my heart ache, it does. In a good way. Click for full size!
© Charly, all rights reserved.
Giliell’s budding artist does some street art, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.