January 2012
13 posts
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Plant Hunters →
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft is one of the most powerful tools in the hunt for extrasolar planets. The Kepler team’s computers are sifting through the data, but we at Planet Hunters are betting that there will be planets which can only be found via the remarkable human ability for pattern recognition.
This is a gamble, a bet if you will, on the ability of humans to beat machines...
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Imagine a world where people don't think 'lesbian'...
vogine:
“…or male identified female bodied people”
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This Girl Snuck Into a Russian Military Rocket... →
Her name is Lana Sator and she snuck into one of NPO Energomash factories outside of Moscow. Her photos are amazing, like sets straight out of Star Wars or Alien. Now the Russian government is harassing her.
It was easy to get in. She just went there, jumped over the fence and got right into the heart of the complex through a series of tunnels and pipes, which was very surprising. After...
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Unda by Faun
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http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/12/stunning-time... →
December 2011
5 posts
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“Highways, office blocks, faces and street signs are perceived as if they were...”
– J.G. Ballard
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How would Horatio Alger handle this situation?:... →
bubonickitten:
Please, please be nice to retail workers, especially around this time of year. Everything is hectic and confusing and overwhelming, and oftentimes we’re just as frustrated as you are when the lines are long and the store is crowded. And if you can’t find something, or…
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Graduation and sex stuff
I graduated recently and according to my chancellor, this means I have both the privilege and the burden of shaping Australia’s future. My jaw kind of dropped because this statement came after some elitist bullshit. Stuff about us being a special bunch of people and well, basically being the elite. I scratch my head. Do people seriously measure someone’s worth by the privelege of...
November 2011
15 posts
Wealth distribution
There’s this thing called the gini coefficient (distribution of family income). It measures inequality of wealth. A country with perfect wealth equality would have a gini of 0. Therefore, the further from 0 you get, the more unequal the distribution of wealth is. The US has a gini of 45 (2007). That’s a greater unequal distribution of wealth than Iran of 2006 (44.5), China of 2007...
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Technology Computer recognises emotion and... →
A computer system that can recognise the emotional state of the person communicating with it, and could then be taught to respond accordingly, has been developed.
The system is hoped will make the communication between computers and humans more intuitive by allowing the machine to respond to the emotional cues it is picking up from the user and then tailoring its responses to them. For example,...
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“On a quest for life, through the sable skies
What a show! behold!
The dawn of...”
– Dawn of a million souls from the album, Universal Migrator Part 2 which is part of the Ayreon project by Arjen Anthony Lucassen.
This whole album is fucking awesome. Will be happily getting my hands on more of Arjen’s work.
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King of the Fairies, cover by Waylander.
Its folk...
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Architecture at the Breaking Point →
The call-for-submissions for Bracket 3 has been announced—and it sounds awesome. “What new landscapes, networks, and urban models might emerge in the wake of destabilized economic, social and environmental conditions?” the issue asks. Specifically, Bracket 3 “will examine architecture, infrastructure and technology as they operate in conditions of imbalance, negotiate...
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“I am not your eyes anymore -
I am not your heart to explore -
You got a life...”
– The Healer by In Legend.
Argh. This is very much what I think I am watching play out between two of my friends at the moment.
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Trigger warning: mild mention of domestic violence, blood, vandalism
My neighbour’s windows got smashed on the 2nd of November. It looked pretty violent. Glass on the drive way. Blood on the drive way. Cardboard taped against the holes with cloth tape.
The windows are getting replaced today.
Holy fuck, did everyone need windows replaced at the same time or something? I had honestly...
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RE: Blessed realm / This world is sacred: Ableism →
swanson-goldwater-rand:
brighid2010:
Trigger warning: Ableism within video games. Bet you didn’t see that coming! (she says dryly).
I’m sure this has been said a thousand times before but but but why the heck does a leader have to be “mad” (crazy) in order to do bad things? Neurotypical people have a long and bloody history of…
Because when you have an easy reason to dislike a villain...
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Tasmanian prison
Last year, a report from former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer warned conditions at the prison “can only lead to further deterioration and a likely occurrence of serious riot and disorder”.
Mr Palmer said the prison suffered from a lack of effective leadership, a serious lack of commitment to workplace health and safety and a lack of respect for prisoners by...
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Ableism
Trigger warning: Ableism within video games. Bet you didn’t see that coming! (she says dryly).
I’m sure this has been said a thousand times before but but but why the heck does a leader have to be “mad” (crazy) in order to do bad things? Neurotypical people have a long and bloody history of killing people who didn’t/don’t “conform” (ie. people...
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Fable 3
My second foray into Fable 3 is proving more successful. So here be screen caps and whatnot, the usual thing I do when I foray into games.
Image Description: A brunette man burps in front of a blond toddler. They are standing in a snowy village. A border collie stands between them and watches the man burp. They both look delighted. In the foreground is a person holding out their hands.
...
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trigger warning: ED its been on my mind quite a...
iamwhoiamandidontgiveadamn:
mostly because lately my life revolves around this conundrum.
And I would really like to talk about it a wide audiance, kinda to get the conversation going, and because I could honestly use the feed back.
I wanna talk about body love and eating disoders.
Read More
Heeeey sweetness … I can’t come at this from a personal level* but from my...
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State of Air →
Here, though, we clearly see the value of also adding literature on the politics of this atmospheric phenomenon—the spatial politics of governmentally regulated and maintained spaces of filtered air—as if, again, we might someday recognize a space of Chinese state sovereignty not through such things as armed security teams or surveillance cameras, but through the quality of the air being...
October 2011
13 posts
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Fail at the BlizzCon 2011 →
Trigger Warning: heterosexism, gay slurs, suicide
(Sorry, the page break button has vanished.)
Some dude and his band are endorsed by Blizzard to get up and sing about how awful Alliance is. They do this through the use of heterosexist slurs, one phrase is encouraging gay kids to kill themselves.
Well, at least I don’t have to wonder whether or not I want to play World of Warcraft over...
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The Mother: Mass Effect & Dragon Age
Just met the rachni queen in ME1. It was like the Mother/broodmother all over again. I would accuse Bioware of being unimaginative if the two mothers don’t come backed up with psychoanalytic theory ie. the semiotic all over again! Y’know, mothers are part of the pre-language/semiotic stage so we get music and rhythm/the chora. Yupyup, the theory I’ve been learning this...
YAWP!: Alright, there needs to be some SERIOUS... →
iamateenagefeminist:
I love liberals, okay? I love them because I am one.
I hate Walmart and love organized labor. I wish the tobacco industry didn’t have such a stronghold on the American government. I wish McDonalds would go away and everyone ate healthier.
However, my fellow liberals…
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TW: Misgendering
Misgendering and cissexism. Growl.
I refuse to listen to the lecture on feminist criminology, because judging from the lecture slides my professor is STILL misgendering RW Connell, despite the fact that he has been called out on this by his first year students. (I hear that in another lecture, professor put up before and after pics of Connell. Group of students called him out, his explanation...
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Cyborgs
It will be extremely interesting to find out how it feels to have the ability to sense the world in ways that other humans cannot. Kevin Warwick ‘Cyborg morals, cyborg values, cyborg ethics’ 2003
Uhhhmmm Mr Warwick sir? This already happens. One does not need to ponder this difference through cyborgs. The addition of technology to the body will be adding new ways of being because...
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TW for depression, eugenics and ableism.
Apparently I can’t reblog my own post. Anyways! Someone brings up social construct, someone else says depression is a social construct. I’m not sure if they explained themselves well. (?)
The process in which something is decided as unhealthy is a social process. A group of people make a decision. The group look at changes in appetite,...
YAWP!: whatfreshhellisthis: youarenotyou:... →
whatfreshhellisthis:
youarenotyou:
thefremen:
eateroftrees:
thefremen:
youarenotyou replied to your post: the point is is that in the communities in which virginity is considered a big deal it isn’t a ‘social construct’ at all. its very physical and very…
Are they trying to get at how various stats show health is socially patterned?* Or attitudes around health is a social...
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This particular tutorial has had to have been one of the worst I have been in. Cissexism, Islamophobia, body policing and what not. I feel like I’m back in first year and when I was struggling with my own privilege. Most of my peers are in their third year, some of them have majored in gender studies (first year gender studies we talk about Islamophobia, appropriation, cissexism etc). It...
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September 2011
16 posts
4 tags
“Hello darkness my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again”
– Simon & Garfunkle … incoming mention of depression and self harm.
(Depression is back, my arm is looking like a bit of a mess.)
“Four years of grave digging with a nice volume of poetry or a book of philosophy...”
– Charles Simic (via theparisreview)
The person I reblogged this from is beautiful.
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Tasmania and gay marriage →
TASMANIA’S parliament has become the first [state] in the country to support gay marriage, in a move gay rights activists say will push forward the national debate.
State Labor MPs in the lower house this afternoon backed a Greens’ motion calling on the Gillard government to change the federal Marriage Act to allow for same sex couples to marry.
eeeep!