It is -20° F. Cold. Very cold. I don’t like cold.
© C. Ford.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
It is -20° F. Cold. Very cold. I don’t like cold.
© C. Ford.
Remember Olek? An amazingly talented artist, specializing in crochet. Olek got a bit explosive this time around. There’s a video, and it is a very powerful one, and it might well trigger some people, so read first, and then decide if you want to watch.
In the Blink of an Eye consists of a 19th-century Swedish home crocheted by Olek and a team of assistants that was literally blown to pieces before it was shown to the public. No one but Olek and her team witnessed what the pre-destroyed building looked like, although the artist produced a video of the building while it was still intact and filled with crocheted furniture, decorations, and light fixtures, leading up to the moment of pure explosive destruction.
Olek isn’t a nihilist or looking to make a statement of artistic disownment by burning her own works…In fact, the artist didn’t originally intend to blow-up the work at all. “I had originally intended to just recreate a traditional Swedish home. It was the summer of 2015 and the refugee crisis had started to explode,” Olek explains to The Creators Project. “Since I always work with assistants, I asked the museum to help me get connected with refugees who might need work.”
This proved to be a turning point in the artist’s project: “After a couple days of crocheting, sewing, and listening to music from various countries and audiobooks, me and the refugee assistants broke ice and a conversation started that changed me forever. It is one thing to read about the events in those parts of the world, but it is something totally different to actually look in the eyes of those women who lost everything while running from the war,” the artist reveals.
“These women not only lost their physical home due to the war conflict, but also lost the feeling of home as their families got separated. The idea of exploding the house became clearer and clearer to me,” Olek adds. “Lama’s husband, who had been helping us quite often, brought me a folder with many photographs from their hometown, including their own house and other homes before and after explosions, which served as a source of inspiration for me.”
The Creators Project has the full story.
Just the highlights here, head over to Alternet for all the gory details.
1. Calling for an investigation of NBC instead of the Russian hacks.
2. Making personal calls instead of doing his friggin’ job.
3. Accepting Julian Assange’s word over 17 intelligence agencies.
4. Admitting he duped his no-nothing voter base on the border wall, then lying again.
5. Lying about having a hand in every job-saving deal.
6. But refusing to take credit for job losses.
7. Calling Democratic senator Chuck Shumer a ‘clown,’ then saying we need to unite 9 minutes later.
8. Throwing Obama’s political ambassadors and their families out on short notice.
9. Scheduling a news conference to distract from his appointee hearings.
10. Still publicly smarting about being dissed by all the cool-kid pop stars for his little inauguration thing.
Pretty sure that’s barely the top layer of lies, it’s harder and harder to keep up, what with all the lies, obfuscation, and never ending tantrums.
Source: GunPolicy.org
If America were to do the unthinkable, and grow the fuck up, there are a number of places we’d do well to emulate. Basically, America has become the bad example for everyone else. Everything here is done ass backwards, and that’s supposed to be some point of pride. Why that is, I don’t know.
Japan has one of the lowest rates of gun crime in the world. In 2014 there were just six gun deaths, compared to 33,599 in the US. What is the secret?
Imagine that, 6 whole deaths, and I’d be willing to be that Japanese people think that’s 6 too many. Don’t miss that whopping 33,599 gun deaths here in uStates, and that was in 2014. That number has gotten higher, especially since cops all over have decided shooting someone to death for any infraction is a nifty way to deal with problems, rather than actual policing.
If you want to buy a gun in Japan you need patience and determination. You have to attend an all-day class, take a written exam and pass a shooting-range test with a mark of at least 95%.
There are also mental health and drugs tests. Your criminal record is checked and police look for links to extremist groups. Then they check your relatives too – and even your work colleagues. And as well as having the power to deny gun licences, police also have sweeping powers to search and seize weapons.
That’s not all. Handguns are banned outright. Only shotguns and air rifles are allowed.
The law restricts the number of gun shops. In most of Japan’s 40 or so prefectures there can be no more than three, and you can only buy fresh cartridges by returning the spent cartridges you bought on your last visit.
Police must be notified where the gun and the ammunition are stored – and they must be stored separately under lock and key. Police will also inspect guns once a year. And after three years your licence runs out, at which point you have to attend the course and pass the tests again.
I can only imagine the howling of all the gun fondlers here in uStates attempting to cope with that.
“Ever since guns entered the country, Japan has always had strict gun laws,” says Iain Overton, executive director of Action on Armed Violence and the author of Gun Baby Gun.
“They are the first nation to impose gun laws in the whole world and I think it laid down a bedrock saying that guns really don’t play a part in civilian society.”
People were being rewarded for giving up firearms as far back as 1685, a policy Overton describes as “perhaps the first ever gun buyback initiative”.
1685. There are people who decided to do the sensible thing straight off. And it’s paid off, because they have an actual civilization, where citizens do not need to be afraid of people with guns.
Japanese police officers rarely use guns and put much greater emphasis on martial arts – all are expected to become a black belt in judo. They spend more time practising kendo (fighting with bamboo swords) than learning how to use firearms.
“The response to violence is never violence, it’s always to de-escalate it. Only six shots were fired by Japanese police nationwide [in 2015],” says journalist Anthony Berteaux. “What most Japanese police will do is get huge futons and essentially roll up a person who is being violent or drunk into a little burrito and carry them back to the station to calm them down.”
Yet another society which emphasises de-escalation. What does America do? Militarize the cops, and more or less authorize them to use lethal force any old time.
“People assume that peace is always going to exist and when you have a culture like that you don’t really feel the need to arm yourself or have an object that disrupts that peace.”
How incredibly nice that is, peace. That will never be America until Americans grow the fuck up and stop acting like being armed is the most important thing ever.
Henrietta Moore of the Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London applauds the Japanese for not viewing gun ownership as “a civil liberty”, and rejecting the idea of firearms as “something you use to defend your property against others”.
I’ll join in the applause, and add disdain for the whole “guns = civil liberty and the defense” bullshit. That’s all it is, shit, and extremely juvenile shit, too.
A music video with Saudi women is challenging restrictive gender norms in the country — and it’s quickly going viral.
“Hwages,” by director Majed al-Esa of 8ies Studios, a production company based in Riyadh, shows the women skateboarding, playing basketball, dancing, driving bumper cars, and even bowling with a set of pins with men’s faces taped on them. It was first posted two weeks ago and already has over 3 million views.
Loosely translated as “concerns,” Hwages is based on an older Arabic song, and some of the lyrics include “May all men sink into oblivion” and “If only God would rid us of men.”
[…]
There are also scenes with Donald Trump, who in the video is leading the “House of Men.” You can probably interpret that how’d you like — it could be referring to Trump’s history of sexual assault, his degrading language towards women, the way his offensive rhetoric about Islam actually helps Muslim extremists, or just simple comedy.
Many have already commended the video, including Saudi Arabian daily Al-Bilad. Amera al-Taweel, the ex-wife of Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal also shared the video with her 1.39 million followers on Twitter.
They did a great job capturing the creepiness that is Trump; they did a great job with the whole video. There’s true resistance and courage.
Via Think Progress.
From Giliell, click for full size! 4, 6, and 7 have my heart.
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
From rq, click for full size! In order, Rhododendron, Apple, Black Currant, Pear, Rose, Rowan x Aronia, Blueberry (foreground), and Russian Almond (background).
© rq, all rights reserved.
From rq, click for full size!
© rq, all rights reserved.
Dark-eyed Junco, male. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
As most people should be aware by now, the scum-sucking assholes who will be in charge just can’t wait to kill off “Obamacare” for absolutely no reason whatsoever. Oh, except for spite. Pretty soon, a whole lot of people are going to find themselves without healthcare, and they’ll be looking at dying much sooner than they planned, because that’s what happens when you don’t have healthcare. The republican thugs want you to believe it’s about saving money, but that really couldn’t be further from the truth. They have no replacement plan, and dismantling the ACA will be costly.
An analysis by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Budget reveals that repealing the Affordable Care Act will likely cost the federal government at least $350 billion, and that doesn’t include the cost of replacing it.
“Repealing the entire ACA would leave no funds available for ‘replace’ legislation, and in fact would require further deficit reduction to avoid adding to the debt,” the report notes.
The analysis also focuses only on the net cost to the federal government and doesn’t consider the economic burden (which CNBC calls “the far bigger economic impact”) that will face insurers, hospitals, doctors, drug companies, and others in the existing health system. And of course, it doesn’t include an estimate of the financial impact on the 23 million Americans who will lose their health coverage if the ACA is repealed and not replaced.
© C. Ford.
© C. Ford.
CREDIT: Department of Energy (DOE).
Clean energy. It’s the only possible way to go right now, and there’s more promise in clean energy than anything else, but Pendejo-elect Trump is making sure that America will not only miss out on all the money clean energy can bring, but the millions of jobs which go with it. No, much better to commit to filthy energy, which can stuff a few select, already overflowing pockets with more money, making sure that the environment gets destroyed, and to keep on denying climate change. Oh yes, that’s just so much better, by golly, that will make America great again, you betcha. :insert near-fatal eyeroll here.:
A few days ago, Joe Romm at Think Progress had an article up about the clean energy, and how it will be a $50 trillion industry, and how Trump has determined that the U.S. will not be a part of it.
The best charts of 2016 reveal the clean energy revolution is unstoppable. At least, it is unstoppable globally.
But if the United States makes a historic blunder and shifts its focus back toward dirty energy just when the rest of the world has made a $50 trillion (or higher) commitment to a carbon-free future, then it won’t reap the vast job-creating benefits of the remarkable ongoing cost reductions shown in chart above.
That article is here.
Today, there’s an article about all the jobs created by clean energy.
Renewable energy jobs in select countries (excluding large hydropower). CREDIT: IRENA.
China is preparing to go big on the only major new source of sustainable high-wage employment in the coming decades.
Beijing’s newest 5-year energy development plan invests a stunning 2.5 trillion yuan ($360 billion) in renewable generation by 2020. Of that, $144 billion will go to solar, about $100 billion to wind, $70 billion to hydropower, and the rest to sources like tidal and geothermal power.
The Chinese National Energy Administration said in a statement Thursday the resulting “employment will be more than 13 million people.”
China is already doing way better than the U.S. in this regard, and President-elect Trump’s commitment to opposing clean energy will not make things any better. As the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) reported last year, China already has over 40 percent of all jobs in renewables, globally, while the U.S. has under 10 percent (see chart above).
We know clean energy jobs are the only major new source of sustainable high-wage employment in the coming decades for several reasons.
If you’re one of those Americans who fell for Trump’s “jobs!” bullshit, perhaps you should look into moving to China, I hear they are hiring. The full article is at Think Progress.
