Late Night Task Force

inothernews: squidkitten: sushiandpie: fuck FUCK crying o...

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 00:38:32 -0500

squidkitten:

sushiandpie:

fuck

FUCK

crying

o hmy gOD

I haven’t laughed this hard in about two weeks. YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.

Oh yeah! Look at all the cool stuff my sister gave me for my...

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 22:41:00 -0400

Oh yeah! Look at all the cool stuff my sister gave me for my birfday!

I love the papa bubble mix bag!

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 18:29:06 -0400

I love the papa bubble mix bag!

"But why do mothers have so many abortions in the first place? Jones co-authored a qualitative study..."

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:40:06 -0400

“But why do mothers have so many abortions in the first place? Jones co-authored a qualitative study titled “I Would Want To Give My Child, Like, Everything in the World: How Issues of Motherhood Influence Women Who Have Abortions,” which found that most mothers who abort say they are doing so to protect the kids they already have. As Jones points out, that rationale is tough to demonize politically, especially when you consider that most women making this choice are contending with some combination of low income, unemployment, and a lack of health insurance, or are struggling to raise kids on their own.”

- Most surprising abortion statistic: The majority of women who terminate pregnancies are already mothers. - Slate Magazine

That’s why people tend to focus on the “dirty slut who couldn’t keep her legs shut” angle or they simply accuse the mothers of being irresponsible, making poor choices, and therefore deserving of any economic punishment they (and also their children) receive for carrying a pregnancy to term. The key to so many pro-life arguments is shame and punishment. Shame them for being dumb or loose enough to get pregnant in the first place, then argue if society punishes them with a baby, it’s no less than they deserve. Warped, but that’s how it works.

(via robot-heart-politics)

via britoholic:

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:10:21 -0400

via britoholic:

Tonight’s MDS is bought to you by pink eggs, artichokes,...

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 18:56:19 -0400

Tonight’s MDS is bought to you by pink eggs, artichokes, and tuna fish!

imageoscillite: Alice In Wonderland Test Footage Walt Disney...

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 00:02:43 -0400

imageoscillite:

Alice In Wonderland Test Footage

Walt Disney often filmed actors as models for his animated features. What’s surprising is that the audio from this crude footage for “Alice in Wonderland” is the actual audio used in the film. When Ed Wynn was brought back in to the recording studio to re-do his lines, the reading was not as good as the reference tests, so the test audio was used for the film.

I’ve synched up the test and the released film. with black placed where edits were made.

via drawnblog, who adds:

I forgot how much I enjoy Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. It seems every modern adaptation dispenses with the nonsense and silliness in favour of something dark and gritty.

risingtensions: David Bayus

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 23:41:37 -0400

risingtensions:

David Bayus

Scariest comic I've ever read in my life. And it's short. Click.

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 23:33:06 -0400

Scariest comic I've ever read in my life. And it's short. Click.:

whydoihaveablog:

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. I screamed and shut my laptop. You’re welcome and I’m sorry.

somerset: macguffin: corwood: I could watch them dance all...

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 23:01:38 -0400

somerset:

macguffin:

corwood:

I could watch them dance all day. A scene from the 1943 movie Stormy Weather featuring the Nicholas Brothers.

From Wikipedia:

Fred Astaire once told the brothers that the “Jumpin’ Jive” dance number in Stormy Weather was the greatest movie musical sequence he had ever seen. […]

One of their signature moves was a “no-hands” splits, where they went into the splits and returned to their feet without using their hands. Gregory Hines declared that if their biography was ever filmed, their dance numbers would have to be computer generated because no one could duplicate them. Ballet legend Mikhail Baryshnikov once called them the most amazing dancers he had ever seen in his life.

Yeah but did of any of these people see Black Swan?

procrastinating!

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 00:48:48 -0400

procrastinating!

superamit: Two weeks ago I got a call from my doctor, who I’d...

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 22:07:56 -0400

superamit:

Two weeks ago I got a call from my doctor, who I’d gone to see the day before because I’d been feeling worn out and was losing weight, and wasn’t sure why.

He was brief: “Amit, you’ve got Acute Leukemia. You need to enter treatment right away.”

I was terrified. I packed a backpack full of clothes, went to the hospital as he’d instructed, and had transfusions through the night to allow me to take a flight home at 7am the next day. I Googled acute leukemia as I lay in my hospital bed, learning that if it hadn’t been caught, I’d have died within weeks.

—

I have a couple more months of chemo to go, then the next step is a bone marrow transplant. As Jay and Tony describe below, minorities are severely underrepresented in the bone marrow pool, and I need help.

A few ways to help:

If you’re South Asian, get a free test by mail. You rub your cheeks with a cotton swab and mail it back. It’s easy.

If you’re in NYC, you can go to this event my friends are putting on.

If you know any South Asians (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, or Sri Lanka), please point ‘em to the links above. Thank you.

jayparkinsonmd:

My friend Amit Gupta founded my favorite photography site Photojojo. A few weeks ago, he was diagnosed with leukemia. Amit is one of the nicest, most genuine, most creative people you could ever meet. Prior to founding the awesome Photojojo, he also co-founded Jelly in 2006 in NYC, a coworking community, that’s now spread to 60 cities across the world and helped spark the coworking revolution. It looks like Amit will need a bone marrow transplant quite soon. We can help him with that.

tony b:

Unlike blood transfusions, finding a genetic match for bone marrow that his body will accept is no easy task. The national bone marrow registry has 9.5 million records on file, yet the chances of someone from South Asian descent of finding a match are only 1 in 20,000.

This is where we come in. We’re going to destroy those odds.

How? By finding and registering as many people of South Asian descent as we possibly can.

Tests are easy– a simple swab of the cheek. If you’re a match, the donation involves an outpatient procedure. It’s not fun, but it’s not dangerous either. And doing it could save a life.

We are encouraging anyone of South Asian descent to take a test to see if you’re a match.

You can get a free test by mail, or, if you’re in New York, you can join us Friday, October 14th for a special party to rally support.

We’ll have test kits on hand at the party, as well as music, booze, and maybe even a photo booth. It will, for the first time, combine a House 2.0-style party with a New Work City-style party, and if you’ve ever been to either, you know they are always something special.

Please spread the word and please do everything you can to help Amit beat leukemia. He’s a superstar.

Much thanks to Tony and pals for organizing this event, and EVERYONE who’s been tweeting and reblogging.

Please help get the word out any way you can. My life quite literally depends on it.

just trying to get some hw done, but there’s all these...

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:25:00 -0400

just trying to get some hw done, but there’s all these people chanting outside.

Breakfast of champions

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 10:58:17 -0400

Breakfast of champions

"Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about..."

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:35:36 -0400

“Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt they can’t afford the time to think. Tuition fee increases are a “disciplinary technique,” and, by the time students graduate, they are not only loaded with debt, but have also internalized the “disciplinarian culture.” This makes them efficient components of the consumer economy.”

- Noam Chomsky (via cultureofresistance)

Yo

(via februaryy)

apsies: lickypickystickyfree: Glamour chicken by Clay Walker...

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:31:36 -0400

apsies:

lickypickystickyfree:

Glamour chicken by Clay Walker

At The Middlesex Jail, Simple Gestures Help Keep The Peace

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 21:54:23 -0400

At The Middlesex Jail, Simple Gestures Help Keep The Peace :

It’s an old story that the state’s jails are jammed to the point of bursting, and that many of them are falling apart. Tension and trouble often follow overcrowding — that’s well reported, too. But how jailers and corrections officers treat and manage inmates can make a surprising difference. Simple gestures can have surprisingly positive consequences.

First there’s the human heat, as Superintendent Scott Brazis explained. “The place was built for 160,” Brazis said. “We have a court order of 200, and as I said, today we’re at 375. As of last Monday we were at 411.” In a building considered beyond repair the elevators often don’t work and the electrical and plumbing systems are bad.

But here’s the worst of it: “There is no air conditioning from the 17th floor going the way up and you will notice that as we start to walk through the facility,” Brazis said.

In the short run, the superintendent has come up with a way to manage the seemingly unmanageable — it’s the gesture of Popsicles. Yes, Popsicles.“I’m worried that people are going to think I’m either naive or being ridiculous, talking about the importance of Popsicles,” I told Brazis.“Well, people think that I was an ultimate liberal,” Brazis said, “but we came up with this idea a number of years ago. We had a staff meeting and it was unbearably hot up here, and besides fans we were thinking, ‘What could we ever do to make sure that the population know that we know how hot it was up there? And what could help?’

“These Popsicles are three cents a piece. We hand them out after lunch and after dinner, and on the really hot days — a couple weeks ago when temperatures got to be 100 — we handed them out again at night at 10 p.m.”

backeis: (Taken with picplz.)

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 20:49:17 -0400

backeis:

(Taken with picplz.)

LSAT to Nursing Moms: Need Time to Pump? Tough Titties!

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 20:41:45 -0400

LSAT to Nursing Moms: Need Time to Pump? Tough Titties!:

This summer, our sister organization,MomsRising, contacted us about one of their members, Ashley (she prefers that we use only her first name), a new mom who was planning to take the LSAT in October. Ashley had asked for additional break time so that she could pump breast milk for her 5 month old son during the test. (It typically takes half an hour to pump, but the LSAT only has one 15 minute break during the test). Her request was denied — when she initially called to request this accommodation, she was told she would either have to take the test under standard procedure, wean her baby in time for the October 1 test date, or opt to take the test at a later time when she was no longer breastfeeding. Seriously.

When we looked into her case, we learned that LSAC has a blanket policy of refusing such requests from women who are breastfeeding, because they are not considered “disabled.” This puts breastfeeding women at a significant disadvantage. Babies typically eat every two to three hours; if moms are away from their babies and aren’t able to empty their breasts on the same schedule, it causes pain, possible infection, and reduction in milk supply. Without sufficient time to pump, Ashley, and other moms in her position, will become increasingly uncomfortable as the test progresses—a serious distraction that could lead to a lower score, not to mention the health risks.

Because the LSAT is one of the gateways to law school admission — it is universally used by U.S. law schools as a primary admissions criterion — this policy creates a barrier to women’s entry into the entire legal profession. And law is not the only profession with this problem in its testing system. A few years ago, a woman in Massachusetts had to get a court order so that she could pump during the Medical Licensing Examination.

"Because the extra weight put so much strain on the train body (which was never designed to handle..."

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 20:30:40 -0400

“Because the extra weight put so much strain on the train body (which was never designed to handle suchloads) trainsets suffered excessive wheel wear, cracks in the yaw damper and brake rotors, and other problems which can probably never be completely fixed. Whereas the original contract called for trains to run 400,000 miles between equipment failures, the Acela can barely manage 20,000 miles.”

- How the FRA is Regulating Passenger Rail Out of Existence

I lived in NYC and traveled to Boston a lot when they were building the Acela, I remember being so excited for a high-speed train like the ones I had ridden in Europe for that route.

When the Acela actually launched it was slow and broke down a lot. I always thought that it was Amtrak that just messed it up, interesting to see that it was actually some obscure bullshit goverment agency.

You can’t compete against the world with your hands tied behind your back.

(via siminoff)