From Ice Swimmer. Beautiful birds! Click for full size.
All the photos were taken with a cell phone on the Midsummer Day 2016. The birds are a black-headed gull (Choirocephalus ridibundus) and a Eurasian jackdaw (Corvus monedula). The place is the quay of Helsinki Market Square.
© Ice Swimmer. All rights reserved.
Exquisite photos from D. Gregory. That last photo pushes all my buttons, in the best way. Click for full size.
© D. Gregory. All rights reserved.
Female Cowbird. Click for full size.
© C. Ford. All Rights Reserved.
Hat tip to rq for this one.
President Aleksandr Lukashenko said at the latest ‘all-Belarusian peoples gathering’ in June: “You know what to do, how to do it, and what goals to achieve. Everything is simple. Innovations, IT technology, privatizations, etc. – it’s all clear, we’ve done it.
“But all our life is in simple things: we should get [undressed] and work”.
In all probability, the president meant “Develop and work,” as the words sound very similar, ‘razviVAtsa’ and ‘razDEvatsa’, but who cares now?
This somewhat confusing comment led to the Belorussian equivalent of the hashtag #getnakedandgotowork trending in the country, and people did just that.
Most comments went along the lines: “The leader says, we should.” We must say the Belorussian people do look good!
Stop by, read, and say hello to few of our new bloggers:
Gestaltz | A slight change in focus can produce a profoundly different understanding.
SecularVoices on FtB | Be Rational. Be Outspoken. Be Heard.
Stderr | fprintf (stderr,”Oh no…
Couldn’t resist. The Black Pepper Jelly Beans are utterly divine, I must find a huge bag of those. Rick moaned over the awfulness of earthworm and dirt, but I quite liked those. I’m not brave enough for rotten egg. Oh, and the grass isn’t grassy enough.
A Black Lives Matter demonstrator (Shuttershock)
On Monday, Pew released the results of a survey showing that, eight years after Barack Obama was elected president, 61% of black people and 45% of white people say that race relations in America are “generally bad.” That’s compared with 59% and 34%, respectively, who had negative impressions of race relations in July 2008.
If you’re wondering why things have gotten so tense, Pew has also released a report that offers a possible explanation: namely, black people and white people see black people’s struggles completely differently.
The survey shows that black people overwhelmingly blame lower-quality schools and discrimination for why “some blacks have a harder time getting ahead than whites.”
A majority of white people, meanwhile, said that “family instability” and “lack of good role models” were chiefly responsible for the problems facing black communities. Only 36% blamed discrimination, and just 45% said that a “lack of jobs” was holding black people back.
In other words, while most black people think that higher levels of poverty and lower levels of economic mobility in their communities are the fault of America’s legacy of systematic racism and under-investment, more white people are content to blame black people themselves.
Here’s the key chart:
There’s much more at Fusion, including the chart which shows that Republicans say there’s actually too much discussion about race in America.
This is mind-numbingly disheartening, that more and more, white people are simply turning their backs and declaring there’s no problem, really, if people would just stop making a thing out of race, well, no probs.
GNU Image / MGN
AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas Supreme Court has sided with a family accused of not teaching its children anything while waiting “to be raptured.”
Laura and Michael McIntyre began homeschooling their nine children inside the family’s El Paso motorcycle dealership more than a decade ago.
Officials say the family did not have to teach state-approved curriculum or give standardized tests.
However, problems started when a relative told authorities that he never saw the children reading, working on math, using computers or doing anything educational besides play music.
He said he heard one of them say that learning wasn’t necessary because “they were going to be raptured.”
[…]
The couple argued that school district officials violated their 14th Amendment rights by attempting to verify that their children were learning.
The case then headed to the state’s Supreme Court, where the justices made a 6-3 ruling on technical grounds in favor of the McIntyres.
But it didn’t answer larger constitutional questions about whether home-schooled children must be properly taught.
Justices remanded the case to lower courts, saying its constitutional questions weren’t educational policy matters. But they didn’t issue an opinion on the overall constitutionality.
Considering how long people have been waiting on Jesus to come back and fetch them home, it would seem to at least be prudent on the part of Texas to institute some sort of educational standard, as it won’t be all that long that these nine children will be nine adults, who know absolutely nothing.
Via KFOR.
Bill Donohue speaks to CNN (screen grab)
Oh my, poor ol’ Bill. He has been betrayed by none other than his high holiness Francis. Bill is now sputtering his upset all over the place at the mere idea of considering the notion that queer people are…people! Oh no.
Catholic League President Bill Donohue, who has been a crusader against LGBT rights, insisted on Tuesday that Pope Francis’ call for Christians to apologize to gay people did not apply to him.
[…]
On Tuesday, CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked Donohue if he planned on following the pope’s advice and apologizing to LGBT people.
“No,” Donohue replied. “As a matter of fact, I want an apology from gays. I’ve been assaulted by gays. I’ve never assaulted a gay person in my entire life.”
“The idea of a blanket apology because you are a member of some demographic group, I mean, I don’t know what church teaching is it that you have a problem with that maybe the church should apologize for?”
I’ll just bet Bill knows that old saying, “it will be a cold day…”. That’s when you’ll get your apology from this queer person, Bill.
“Why did you spend so much energy on this?” the CNN host wondered. “Why is so important to you?”
Donohue suggested that CNN was to blame for repeatedly interviewing him about his anti-LGBT views.
“Your producers only want to talk about LGBT,” he charged. “I don’t care what gay people do. I don’t want to have a lifestyle thrusted in my face though. That’s a different kind of thing altogether.”
“What do you mean thrusted?” Cuomo asked. “How are they putting their gay on you?”
Donohue explained that businesses should only be allowed to discriminate against LGBT people to provide services for a “wedding ceremony.”
[…]
“You know you have a hostility and an animus toward these behaviors,” Cuomo noted. “You might as well own it.”
“Show me where Jesus said we should spent time saying we should not let people be who they are?” the CNN host pressed.
“There are mobster lifestyles,” Donohue quipped.
“A mobster is not a gay person,” Cuomo shot back. “A terrorist is not a gay person.”
“I just want the apology,” Donohue concluded. “They could send it by Fedex.”
It has been spotted in the most unusual of places… on pieces of toast, bits of plasterwork and even patches of mould.
So perhaps it is not all that surprising that the face of Jesus has now been identified on a beach pebble.
The stone was spotted on Cromer beach, close to the pier, by a local resident.
The woman, who wants to remain anonymous, picked up the stone after the extreme whiteness on the other side caught her eye.
It was her boyfriend who suggested the image looked like Christ, although bearded characters have also been suggested.
Some, for instance, have detected a likeness with Karl Marx, the Communist thinker, and larger-than-life actor Brian Blessed.
Jim Morrison, the late lead singer with The Doors, has also been suggested. Others claim to have seen the face within the profile of a bear’s head.
Full story here. I continue to be baffled as to how this sort of thing becomes news.
Laurence Sessou, in Women with Tattoos. All photographs: Eleni Stefanou
Eleni Stefanou’s photographs of women with tattoos disrupt our ideas of gender and beauty – and challenge ideas about the types of bodies that may be displayed.
Full article here.
Theodore Roosevelt. Whitehouse.gov.
When Theodore Roosevelt took office in 1901, he already had a long legacy of animosity toward American Indians.
Seventeen years earlier, Roosevelt, then a young widow, left New York in favor of the Dakotas, where he built a ranch, rode horses and wrote about life on the frontier. When he returned to the east, he famously asserted that “the most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian.”
“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are,” Roosevelt said during a January 1886 speech in New York. “And I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
[…]
Roosevelt’s seven and a half years in office were marked by his support of the Indian allotment system, the removal of Indians from their lands and the destruction of their culture. Although he earned a reputation as a conservationist—placing more than 230 million acres of land under public protection—Roosevelt systematically marginalized Indians, uprooting them from their homelands to create national parks and monuments, speaking publicly about his plans to assimilate them and using them as spectacles to build his political empire.
Courtesy aimag.com
The new Full Throttle Saloon’s plans call for construction of 400 cabins and RV hookups shown in the aerial photo at the base of Bear Butte.
The fight for the sacred grounds of Bear Butte has not gone well, and now the biggest asshole of biker assholes is planning on wholesale desecration. White people, so darn thoughtful and stuff.
Tribal leaders fear that Bear Butte, one of the seven traditional sacred sites of Northern Plains tribes in or near the Black Hills, is in serious danger of further moral and environmental degradation after a local planning board recommended that Meade County commissioners grant full approval for construction of the “world’s biggest biker bar” on a campground practically at the base of the butte.
Applying for the plot approval is Michael Ballard, whose original Full Throttle Saloon, east of Sturgis, was widely hyped to be the “World’s Largest Biker Bar.” He hopes this new Full Throttle Saloon will be even more successful than the original, which burned down last September. Ballard has obtained unanimous preliminary approval from the Meade County Planning Commission on April 18 and from the Meade County Commission on May 11.
Rosebud Sioux Tribe, President William Kindle, reached in his office Wednesday, said the tribe continues to explore every option to prevent further desecration around “Mato Paha,” and stood by his May 25 statement to the planning board, in which he said his tribe had “grave concerns because this would additionally impact an area that is already stressed by those outsiders who feel the need to develop additional adult entertainment/play spaces, which are located in close proximity to our place of prayer, Bear Butte.
“Not only would this bring additional people imbibing in alcohol, and obnoxious revelry near our sacred site, there would most likely be a serious impact to the water and the ecology of the area.” In addition to a new Full Throttle Saloon, Ballard’s plans call for construction of 400 cabins and additional RV hookups for an adjacent campground — to be named The Pappy Hoel Campground.
