Hoop. Click for full size.
© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Hoop. Click for full size.
© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
A gunman opened fire in a Fort Myers, Florida nightclub early Monday morning, killing two and wounding at least 16 others. Many of the victims were teenagers.
According to local reports, an unidentified person started shooting at Club Blu around midnight, when the venue was shutting down. Police arrived at the scene shortly after. Sixteen people, aged 12 to 27, were brought to the Lee Memorial Hospital, where at least one person perished.
A woman who watched the shooting unfold and tried to help the victims told ABC News that the venue was full of young people.
“It was a young teen event. There were kids. The kid I was holding in my lap, he was 14 years old that got shot,” Tatianna Nouhaioi said. “And then there was a little girl who also got shot and she was 13. One of the security guard’s daughter got shot, so I mean there was kids 13, 14, 15, 16. It was a young kids event.”
A second woman who lives in the area of the night club reported that she heard multiple guns fired at once.
Club Blu responded to the shooting on Facebook, saying the gunman was not a young person at the event.
“We are deeply sorry for all involved. We tried to give the teens WHAT WE THOUGHT WAS A SAFE PLACE TO HAVE A GOOD TIME. Ages 12-17. There was armed security as well as full security, inside and out,” the club said. “As the club was closing and parents were picking their children up…..that’s when all this took place. There was nothing more we could of done az you see it was not kids at the party that did this despicable act.”
Most of the victims have been released from the hospital, but two remain in critical condition. No arrests have been made, however police detained three people of interest.
More despair. How much more has to happen before people in this country wake the fuck up? Another awful thing? I find myself assuming the two young people who died were persons of colour, because they are being described as men, not teenagers, not young men, not kids.
Via ThinkProgress.
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© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
From Kengi. Click for full size.
© Kengi. All rights reserved.
From Lofty:
While winter storms have ravaged the state, Spaceship Lofty sends its antennae into the canopy and Venerable Fence Post guards it from the city. Within its protective field the White Camellia gets ready to unfurl its petals.
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© Lofty. All rights reserved.
From Lofty. These gorgeous flowers! Click for full size.
© Lofty. All rights reserved.
Black-headed Grosbeak. Okay, everybody, Sing! Click for full size.
© C. Ford. All rights reserved.
This weekend, BiNet USA launches the Bi Stories project with a panel at Comic-Con in San Diego, a project that invites bisexual community members (including those who identify with labels like pansexual, fluid, queer, polysexual, and other terms that denote attraction to people of more than one gender) to share our stories. The project focuses specifically on bisexual people’s experiences with discrimination, and the journeys of our family members toward embracing our identities.
As the larger LGBTQ community continues to gain visibility and see their stories represented in every arena from television to political campaigns, bisexual people’s stories still aren’t being told. We are still too often rendered invisible in LGBTQ spaces and represented in stereotypes that suggest our identities aren’t real or valid.
It is no surprise then, that bisexual people suffer major disparities when compared to our lesbian, gay, and non-LGBTQ peers — we are sicker, poorer, and more prone to mental illness and suicidality. Bisexual youth are dying by suicide at alarming rates and have lower levels of social support than their gay and lesbian peers.
Bisexual youth and adults need to see stories of people like us. In the face of these challenges, they need to see the incredible diversity of the bisexual community, hear of how other bisexual people have overcome biphobia and discrimination, and see how our families have come to embrace and even celebrate us.
We need to be empowered to tell our stories on our own terms, and the BiNet USA Bi Stories project gives us a place to do just that. The panel at Comic-Con this weekend, Sunday, July 24 at 3 p.m., “Bisexuality and Beyond: New Frontiers in Popular Culture,” sponsored by the BiNet Bi Stories Project and Prism Comics will look at how bi stories are changing and becoming more prominent in popular culture, and we hope these stories will inspire others to share theirs.
Share your stories of experiencing discrimination as a bisexual person at binetusa.org/bistories and follow along with the panel on social media using the hashtag #bistories.
Full story at The Advocate.
Last Saturday, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) posted an Instagram photo featuring Capitol Hill interns with the caption, “I think this sets a record for the most number of #CapitolHill interns in a single selfie.”
That may be true, but people took note of the photo for a different reason — almost everyone in it appears to be white.
Some Twitter users noted the lack of diversity, posting about the photo with a #GOPSoWhite hashtag.
A few days later, interns working for Congressional Democrats decided to respond. Audra Jackson, an intern working for Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), decided to take her own selfie — one showcasing the diversity of interns on her side of the aisle.
My intern Audra Jackson led Democratic Interns in their own selfie 2day showing #DemInternDiversity #DemInternSelfie pic.twitter.com/83UcIOKS5s
— US Rep E.B.Johnson (@RepEBJ) July 19, 2016
Pictures, worth thousands of words. Via Think Progress.
Credit: Processon.
The Trump campaign made efforts to broaden the GOP presidential nominee’s appeal last night. As unmoored from reality as it was, Ivanka made a case her father would be a champion for women. During his own speech, Trump made an appeal to the LGBT community, despite providing little indication to date he’d actually do anything on their behalf.
Trump’s base, however, continues to be white men. An ABC News/Washington Post poll released early last month showed Trump with a huge 60 percent to 26 percent advantage among that demographic. It might not be enough for Trump to secure a general election victory — thanks to his unpopularity with others groups, Trump trailed Clinton overall in that same ABC poll — but it was enough to secure the Republican nomination.
During a CNN interview this morning, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) acknowledged the Trump phenomenon for what it is — identity politics for white men.
While opining about Trump’s RNC-closing speech, Duffy said, “There’s a viewpoint that says, ‘I can fight for minorities, and I can fight for women,’ and if you get that, you make up a vast majority of the voting block and you win. And white males have been left aside a little bit in the politics of who speaks to them.”
White males have been left aside. Really. How about if we shift back to reality land here, and tell the truth – white males have been on top of the pile of humanity just about everywhere on this planet for…all time. It is unfuckingbelievable how whiny white males can get over being “a little bit left aside”, when the reality is they are not at all left aside, because as usual, every damn thing is about the poor white men. I’ll try to work up a tear. If you white men feel so hurt and upsetty about that, could you possibly take it just a teeny bit further, and try to imagine what it has been like for minorities and women for fucking centuries?
Via Think Progress.
So much fun stuff!
Aquaman is lookin’ rather hot.
I don’t want to see this, I hated King Kong when I was a kid, and here we go again, Giant ape, guns, explosions, napalm, all that shit. But, Tom Hiddleston…
Suicide Squad – Comic-Con First Look.
Waiting, waiting waiting. So looking forward to this one.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – Comic-Con Trailer.
Oh, I am such a sucker for this kind of thing.
YES! Yes, yes, yes.
Aaaaaaaaaaand, a sequel to The Blair Witch Project (we’re going to pretend that 2nd flick never happened):
And PZ picked up one I missed: Marvel’s Luke Cage!
Oh, those naughty Republicans, consorting with demon-Gods already! Tsk.
Yesterday, American Family Radio host Bryan Fischer criticized the Republican National Convention for allowing Sajid Tarar of American Muslims for Trump to deliver a closing prayer on the second day of the convention.
“The Republican Party last night allowed a demonic power to be invited into its building,” he said.
Fischer said Republicans at the event “collectively committed the sin of idolatry” by observing the prayer and committed a “dangerous” act by inviting “a demon-God into its party.”
“Multiculturalism, ladies and gentlemen, is simply a six syllable words for cultural suicide,” he continued, pleading with the party to “clean up this mess” by asking a Christian preacher to pray over the event.
Other assorted Christians are making noise about how Donald somehow left God out of his speech, except for a god bless at the end. Pity no one bothered to think before they rushed to crown the new emperor.
Via Right Wing Watch.
From Kengi, who relates a common photographic problem – you spend ages stalking an elusive critter, finally get that shot, and afterwards, they all show up in force.
After two weeks of not being able to get a shot of the one, they can’t stop posing for me now. You know how that goes. Part of it is, that for those two weeks, there was only one cicada hawk around. Then there were four. This morning there were at least six or more.
They are definitely just like hummingbirds. They spend more time and energy chasing each other around than they do feeding. A giant field of flowers, but they all want the same corner. They were all buzzing around me as I took the pictures.
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And, a bonus video!
© Kengi. All rights reserved.