RelentlesslyOptimistic

Good question. Let me Google that for you...

via www.epicponyz.com

"first make sure that you are not...surrounded by assholes

via afternoonsnoozebutton.com

Black Like Me, 50 Years Later

In 1959 John Howard Griffin (left in photo below) darkened his skin in order to pass as black, and then traveled through the deep South. Smithsonian Magazine looks at the book he wrote about his experience.

"Fifty years ago this month, Griffin published a slim volume about his travels as a “black man...Black Like Me, which told white Americans what they had long refused to believe, sold ten million copies and became a modern classic."

“If a white man became a Negro in the Deep South,” he wrote on the first page of Black Like Me, “what adjustments would he have to make?” Haunted by the idea, Griffin decided to cross the divide. “The only way I could see to bridge the gap between us,” he would write, “was to become a Negro.”

I read this book in 1968 while living in Hampton, Virginia and attending a segregated school. As a child of fairly progressive parents in a military family, living in integrated military housing, I'd glimpsed some of the contrasts, but this book opened my eyes to how diffficult whites could make life for blacks.

via www.smithsonianmag.com

License Convenience

via wins.failblog.org

Understanding Computerphilia

via fuckhappiness.com

"To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up"

To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up- Oscar Wilde

via afternoonsnoozebutton.com

If a Creator exists...

via crimesagainsthughsmanatees.tumblr.com

Here's an old pic of me

via joannecasey.blogspot.com

Surreal Picture Break: Wedding photographers are such pranksters!

via okay-me-too.tumblr.com

If this is class warfare, we're losing!

• "from 1980 to 2005, more than 80 percent of [the] total increase in Americans' income went to the top 1 percent"¹
• "income distribution in the United States is more unequal than in Guyana, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and roughly on par with Uruguay, Argentina, and Ecuador"¹
• "the path of income inequality over the twentieth century is marked by two main events: a sharp fall in inequality around the outbreak of World War II and an extended rise in inequality that began in the mid-1970s and accelerated in the 1980s [emphasis added]"²
• "Income inequality today is about as large as it was in the 1920s"²

Elizabeth Warren explains in clear and simple terms why taxing the rich at higher rates is not class warfare.(at :50)³

Meanwhile, Republican John Fleming of L.A. explains how hard it is to get by when he ends up with only $400,000 of the $6 million his businesses gross each year to invest in more businesses.⁴

And there's this chart that I posted last week showing that most people believe that income is distributed more equally than it actually is, and want a far more equal distribution.

Sources:

1. Paul Krugman in Slate
2. The Library of Economics and Freedom
3. thedailywh.at
4. ThinkProgress

New lego set available for pre-holiday looting

via fuckyeahdementia.com

Science: Your mother

via worldofbarbee.tumblr.com

Cool picture break: Child’s Skull Showing Both Baby and Adult Teeth

Hunterian Museum at The Royal College of Surgeons of England in London has this fascinating medical specimen on display that shows what a child’s skull looks like when its adult teeth are waiting in the wings.

via laughingsquid.com

Gasp! Dwarf porn star suicide by badger story is a fake!

Yeah, we all knew it was too good to be true. When I first encountered the story I sent it to a friend with the subject line: "I want to believe!"

Vince Mancini, the author of the story at FilmDrunk, one of the first outlets to pick up the tale from Sunday Sports, said that: "I noted at the time that the report seemed a little suspicious...[it was from] a tabloid with headlines like 'World War 2 Bomber Found on Moon'"

Mr. Mancini argues, though, that the professional writers at Sunday Sports deserves big props for the story. He notes that they:

• "found a dwarf who looked like Gordon Ramsay, and decided that wasn’t juicy enough, so they cooked up a story about him being a porn star."
• Created a terrific quote: "Dwarf lookalikes are as rare as hen’s teeth and so can command top dollar. I’ve already ordered a new BMW and a diamond encrusted Soda Stream"
• "waited three weeks to kill off their star, and when they did, they did it in style, with badgers and poison gas, with all the intrigue of a possible suicide, brought on by the pressures of the celebrity-look-alike dwarf-porn industry."

He finished with this compliment: "Because anyone can write some crazy story, it takes a professional to weave it into a narrative."

You stay classy, Sunday Sports. Not every newspaper can aspire to reach the heights to which you have soared.

via filmdrunk.uproxx.com

Playing Dummy

via www.bizarrocomics.com