He-Gassen (屁合戦): Fart Battle.

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Over 150 years ago a group of anonymous Japanese artists created a 34-ft long scroll titled He-Gassen (屁合戦), literally: “Fart Battle.”

The scroll, which was created during the Edo Period (probably around 1846) in Japan, consists of roughly 15 different scenes depicting people directing their farts at other people or objects. There are people farting at each other. There are people farting through objects. There are people combating farts with fans. There are bags of farts being released. Trees and cats get blown away by farts. And the scroll culminates with a divine gust of flatulence knocking over a ceremony and causing complete and utter chaos.

The scroll in its entirety was digitized by Waseda University and can be seen in hi-res format by accessing their database.

Via Spoon & Tamago.

The Mystery Superhero In Wonder Woman Is…

EUGENE BRAVE ROCK

EUGENE BRAVE ROCK

Eeeeeeeeeeee, much excitement!

Eugene Brave Rock is the mysterious Native American hero in the highly-anticipated Wonder Woman movie to be released in 2017. But who will he be playing? Sadly, we still don’t know because Brave Rock isn’t allowed to tell us…at least not yet.

[…]

Back in March, ICTMN revealed a key moment in the Batman vs. Superman movie in which Bruce Wayne sees a photograph on his computer with Wonder Woman standing next to a mysterious Native American man (and three other soldiers) in an image from World War I. (See :57 seconds into below video)

To date, there is little to no information online about the character. We can only speculate that he might be one of the the characters either Apache Chief or Lone Shadow which has appeared in Justice League comics and cartoons.

Eugene Brave Rock spoke with ICTMN, and shared one bit of information. “I am only allowed to say I was in London for five months filming the Wonder Woman movie. That is all I am allowed to say,” said Brave Rock. He does add, “It was an amazing experience.”

That’s it. No spoilers, no character name, no insider news … that’s all Eugene Brave Rock could tell us. He says everything about his part is top secret. “When I was auditioning, they didn’t even tell me it was for Wonder Woman.”

Brave Rock did say that director Patty Jenkins — the first female director of a major DC franchise movie — and DC Comics were extremely respectful of Brave Rock’s Native heritage.

“DC really let me have a voice. Usually movies have a lot of do’s and dont’s and they tell you you have to do things a certain way, but in this case, even with wardrobe, it was awesome. In the end, they let me decide a lot about my character. Previously, movies have even told me how I had to braid my hair, and you don’t have a choice – but this was not the case.”

Vincent Schilling at ICTMN has the full story.

Please meet Courtney and Nariya.

Courtney Mike-Wilson and daughter Nariya -- via GoFundme

Courtney Mike-Wilson and daughter Nariya — via GoFundme

A black single mom, along with her foster daughter, are being forced from their Pennsylvania home following a series of hate crimes, including soaking her front porch in gasoline while she wasn’t home.

According to WTAE, local police in Pitcarin have called in the FBI to help with the investigation that began with a racial slur painted on the side of  Courtney Mike-Wilson’s car.

13363309_1469968449.2653_funddescription

A few days later, she discovered dodge-balls her foster daughter Nariya plays with slashed with a knife and left on her doormat.

“That morning they were popped in front of my door just so I can’t miss them. I think that’s what scares me right there is you have no problem coming on my front porch,” she said.

On Wednesday, the stalker struck again, dousing the front porch and her daughter’s toys with gasoline, with a note left behind reading: “Now we’re done.”

Despite the police and FBI investigation, Mike-Wilson has moved her daughter in with family members while she looks for a new place to live, saying she fears for their lives.

“I stay to myself, I go to work, and I come home. I’m a foster parent, so I really don’t have time for anything,” she said. “She [Nariya] can’t walk to the park anymore. She can’t go to the day care. I don’t tell her what’s going on. I’d rather she not be scared, but it’s hard to come up with first and last month rent so quickly, especially when you think you’re going to be somewhere for a while.”

There’s a Go Fund Me for Courtney and Nariya, if you can, please help. I can’t, due to being dire broke, but I can boost the signal. If you’re like me, and don’t have money, but are able to signal boost, please do.

Via Raw Story.

Cops: now we DEMAND IT!

Shutterstock.

Shutterstock.

Boston cops are very unhappy, and have drafted a long letter of complaint and demands. They want more weapons, more ammunition, more body armor, and no accountability. Boston is about to implement a body cam program, and the cops are absolutely against it. This is only a 6 month pilot program, and they are still adamantly against it. You really have to wonder why this is such a problem for Boston cops. If, as the letter states, they are truly frightened every moment for their lives, I’d think they would be enthusiastically in favour of body cams.

“You can sing cumbia (sic) ’til the cows come home, but that won’t stop a Rifle Round Aimed at a Police Officer’s Chest,” the letter stated. “We live in a world where a sitting President has basically ‘fanned the flames of Police hatred’ with political rhetoric and now a sitting Governor is politically afraid to speak.”

The letter, which was signed by the presidents of the Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society, Boston Police Superior Officers Federation, and Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, demands not only an increase in department staffing but the issuing of long guns with “ample ammunition” for use by patrol officers, as well as ballistic shields and helmets and “extra-loaded” magazines.

The full, 3 page letter can be read here (pdf). This is yet another example, like the ‘blue lives matter’ bills, which clearly demonstrates that all the majority of cops want is unquestioning obeisance, a cowering fear in the face of their well-armed authority, and complete respect, without ever having earned that respect. When you’re busy bristling over wanting more weapons and refusing body cams, the implications are quite clear.

Via WFXT, WCVB, and Raw Story.

SFPD: All Labs Matter.

Photo: Michael Noble Jr., The Chronicle.

Photo: Michael Noble Jr., The Chronicle.

The union representing San Francisco police officers published a photograph of two dogs in its monthly newspaper that critics say belittles the Black Lives Matter movement and raises questions about the police force’s commitment to repairing its relationship with communities of color.

The picture, which appeared on the back page of the August issue of the San Francisco Police Officers Association Journal, shows a pair of Labrador retrievers, one black and one white. The black dog has a sign around its neck reading, “Black Labs Matter,” while the white dog sports a sign reading, “All Labs Matter.”

[…]

The dog photo “once again shows a severe lack of understanding,” said Sgt. Yulanda Williams, president of Officers for Justice, an organization within the San Francisco police force representing African American and other nonwhite officers. “It’s so inflammatory, and they still don’t get it. They still choose to inflame situations, and it’s just really insulting.”

Union officials did not immediately comment to a request for comment on the journal photo, but Union President Martin Halloran pointed to a radio ad put out by the union about the recent attacks on police officers.

“In light of the rising violence against police officers, we hope everyone can start to turn down the volume,” Halloran says in the ad. “Anti-police rhetoric has been cited as a contributing factor to the violence against police officers. I think we can all do better and the police will do our part. We will continue with our best efforts to build bridges of communication and understanding between us and the community that we serve.”

The headline of the lead article in the August issue of the union journal reads, “Persevering the violence and blame: America’s cops have been there before.”

The union published the photo amid questions about whether the department has a systemic problem with racism, following the emergence of two separate sets of racist text messages exchanged between officers. Halloran has repeatedly said no such problem exists, calling the department one of the most culturally and racially diverse in the nation.

The U.S. Department of Justice is in the midst of a collaborative, top-to-bottom review of the police force that was launched after officers shot and killed a stabbing suspect, Mario Woods, in the Bayview neighborhood in December.

Mario Woods was shot more than 20 times by cops.

A panel of retired judges, assembled by District Attorney George Gascón to investigate potential police misconduct and bias, has questioned whether the union holds too much power in the department, and many activists have accused the union of standing in the way of reforms.

[…]

Anand Subramanian, executive director of the panel of judges investigating bias, also criticized the publication of the dog photo, saying, “It shows a severe lack of judgment and empathy for the real and justified pain and outrage that black communities are feeling.”

Sgt. Williams, who drew ire from the union when she testified before the judges’ panel about racism she experienced in the Police Department, said the photo demonstrated “blatant unwillingness to speak up for black lives.

“The POA is as good at sticking their foot in their mouth as Donald Trump,” she said. “So much for reform, that’s what that looks like. Reforms aren’t going to happen until you get them to concede that they’ve been doing things wrong, and this does not look like a concession or even an understanding or a desire to understand.”

Full story is at SFgate and Raw Story. Cops keep managing to demonstrate just how bigoted they are, and also how determined they are to stay that way, making every narrative all about them. Sorry, stormtroopers, you want respect? Fucking earn it.

Real NDNZ Re-Take Hollywood.

NDNZ

In an effort to dismantle the film industry’s historically stereotypical portrayal of Native actors in buckskin, feathers and painted faces, Los Angeles-based media professional and photographer Pamela J. Peters (Navajo) has created a series of photographs entitled Real NDNZ Re-Take Hollywood, in which contemporary Native American actors recreate classic Hollywood portraits of movie stars such as James Dean and Audrey Hepburn.

[…]

The seven Natives involved in the project include actors from the Dakota, Cherokee, Crow, Blackfeet, Shoshone, and Seminole nations. They are Noah Watts (Crow /Blackfeet), Shayna Jackson (Dakota / Cree), Deja Jones (Shoshone), Kholan Studie (Cherokee), Krista Hazelwood (Seminole), JaNae Collins (Dakota) and Brian Vallie (Crow).

“All participants have a passion to work in the film industry, but they also have ties to their tribal communities and enjoy sharing their respective backgrounds with each other,” says Peters.

“I would like people to think critically about my photos, and hear the young performers’ stories about how they navigate an extremely competitive field of entertainment.  Furthermore, I want society to know that we are many nations, with many stories, and that we can make a conscious choice to reshape perceptions of modern Indians today.”

The showcase will take place at These Days LA at 118 Winston Street, Los Angeles, 90013 from Aug 4th to 7th from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Information about the show can be found online. Her exhibit will showcase 24 images and a short video of her project. On Saturday, Aug 6th live art and drumming will be held from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

More information about Pamela J. Peters can be found on her website: www.PamelaJPeters.com.

Via ICTMN.

Oscars Diversity: 5 Natives Invited.

According to an announcement by Sundance, five of the institute’s Native American and Indigenous Program alumni have been invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

This is a positive change for Oscars diversity as the Native artists become a part of the nominating and voting body of the Oscars, each within their own branches and on larger voting sections for the awards.

The five artists and program alumni – as well as a few of their production credits – are listed on the Sundance Institute website:

Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur D'alene)

Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur D’alene)

adam-beach-by-thosh-collins

Adam Beach (Saulteaux of Dog Creek First Nation)

cliff_curtis

Cliff Curtis (Te Arawa, Ngāti Hauiti)

heather_rae-001

Heather Rae (Cherokee)

taika_waititi

Taika Waititi (Te Whanau A Apanui)

ICTMN has the full story.

On Following the Sun.

LadySun1P

© C. Ford.

At dawn, whole fields of sunflowers stand at attention, all facing east, and begin their romance with the rising sun. As that special star appears to move across the sky, young flowers follow its light, looking up, then over and westward, catching one final glance as the sun disappears over the horizon.

At night, in its absence, the sunflowers face east again, anticipating the sun’s return.

They do this until they get old, when they stop moving. Then, always facing east, the old flowers await visits from insects that will spread their pollen and make new sunflowers. Those flowers too, will follow the sun.

The wonderful magic of sunflowers, it’s always a grand thing when this is explained to kids, who have their minds blown at the idea of a flower following the sun. It’s a great way to get in a dose of science.

It’s heliotropism, and sunflowers are not the only plants that track the sun. But until now, how sunflowers do it has been a mystery.

In a study published Friday in Science, researchers revealed that the sunflower’s internal clock and ability to detect light work together, turning on genes related to growth at just the right time to allow the stems to bend with the arc of the sun. The research team also showed that when fully grown, as tall as people in some cases, plants that always face east get a head start, warming up early to attract pollinators.

To get to the bottom of sunflowers’ pursuit of the sun, Stacey Harmer and Hagop Atamian, plant biologists at the University of California, Davis, and their colleagues studied sunflowers in fields, pots and growth chambers.

[…]

The fact that sunflowers switch directions at night to face east again, with no apparent cue, suggested an internal clock at work. The researchers put sunflower plants in a room with lights rigged to mimic the sun’s path on different light and dark cycles. The plants behaved as expected on a 24-hour cycle. But during a 30-hour day, they were confused. And when plants that had learned a 24-hour cycle outdoors were placed under a fixed light indoors, they continued to bend from east to west for a few days, as if following the sun. This meant that a 24-hour circadian rhythm was guiding the sunflowers’ movement. But without muscles, how did they move?

The answer was in their stems. Like those of other plants, the stems of young sunflowers grow more at night — but only on their west side, which is what allows their heads to bend eastward. During the day, the stems’ east side grows, and they bend west with the sun. Dr. Atamian collected samples of the opposite sides of stems from sunflowers periodically, and found that different genes, related to light detection and growth, appeared active on opposite sides of the stems.

You can read the rest of this fascinating story here. It’s nice to know how it all works with Sunflowers, and they remain wonderfully majestic and magical. Hat tip to Kengi for this one.

White Nationalists Loving Trump.

2White Nationalists Supremacists haven’t kept their love of Trump a secret, but they are now jubilant over Trump & Co.’s attack on the Khan family.

The Daily Stormer is an anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi hate site that’s endorsed Donald Trump. Editor Andrew Anglin repeatedly smeared the late Capt. Khan and his family as terrorists and called on them to be deported. From his post:

So, an Islamic terrorist from Pakistan infiltrates the US military, with the intent of getting high-quality training to use in his jihad against Whites, and also perhaps for the purpose of sabotage, and accidentally gets his dumbass killed.

And now, the Jews tell us we’re supposed to celebrate him as a hero? Just because he’s dead?

No dice, kikes.

[…]

I am hereby calling for the Khan family to be immediately deported to Pakistan. What’s more, I want their terrorist son’s body dug up and shipped back with them.

This terrorist filth has no more right to rot in our ground than he had to walk on it. [Daily Stormer, 7/31/16]

Daily Stormer writer “Tharru Larbi” praised “God Emperor Trump’s rightful criticism of St. Khizr Khan’s flailing remarks about ‘muh constitution’ and ‘muh muslim patriot son.’” The writer concluded:

If Trump wants to point out the hypocrisy of the Democrats parading a Muslim father of a Muslim soldier while his wife sits quietly, and submissively, by his side — so be it. Of course, the Democrats and Jewish media don’t have an issue with this since what they want for all goyim is quiet submission.

[…]

Yes, goyim! This is what you should strive to be like. Look how patriotic and happy those two Muslims are. They’re so American

No thanks. I’ll take a beautiful Aryan woman any day over these two ugly troglodytes and I’ll happily retweet Iron Ann when she rightly calls out the Democrats.

[…]

It’s too bad a traitor like McCain can continue to cite his military career as a prop for his political career despite the record of his many transgressions. Even the people he served with and was jailed with as a POW hated him.

Sad! [Daily Stormer, 8/1/16]

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls video blogger Paul Ray Ramsey (aka Ramzpaul) a white nationalist who “has emerged as the hottest right-wing video blogger this side of former Klansman David Duke.” The pro-Trump racist pundit made a YouTube video attacking Khan and praising Trump for not apologizing:

RAMZPAUL: I think he responded good. And God bless Donald Trump. He didn’t apologize, he didn’t grovel. He’s kind of like Sidonius, the guy in that story. He’s a man, he stood firm. But like the story of the Roman time and Sidonius, our troops, our army, our empire is now starting to be flooded with mercenaries like this guy from Pakistan. He may be an American citizen, but he’s not of the founding stock. He’s not of the white, European Christian that made this country. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 8/21/13; YouTube, 8/1/16]

Leading Hate Website Leader Don Black: Trump’s Khan Attack “Proves To Me That Trump Is The Real Thing.” The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Don Black as a “former Klan state leader and long-time white supremacist” who “is best known for creating Stormfront.org, the first major Internet hate site.” During Stormfront’s radio program, Black said Khizr Khan is a “professional Muslim” and praised Trump for his attacks against the Khans. Black said the episode “proves to me that Trump is the real thing. He really is, I think, sincere in what he’s doing even though he’s of course obviously ego-driven.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed 8/2/16, Rense Radio Network, Stormfront, 8/2/16]

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes VDare.com as “an anti-immigration hate website” with a white nationalist ideology. The website’s Twitter account responded to Republicans defending the Khan family by writing, “And at the very moment when the tide turns, the GOP starts cucking. All these ppl need to do is just shut up.”

https://twitter.com/vdare/status/760155770767839234

[Twitter, 8/1/16; Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed 8/2/16]

Eric Hananoki has the full story at MediaMatters. It’s bad enough, the re-normalisation of virulent bigotry enabled by Trump, but the  putrid re-blossoming of these white supremacist groups, after they had been pushed to the fringe, is damn scary. All thinking people should be scared.

Cool Stuff Friday

[Photo: Kirk Morales via Unsplash. Illustrations: NYC MTA/ tovovan via Shutterstock]

[Photo: Kirk Morales via Unsplash. Illustrations: NYC MTA/ tovovan via Shutterstock]

Sick of the Subway? One of those people happy grouching over the Subway? Welcome to Brand New Subway, a game where you get to design a subway.

New Yorkers frustrated by the high fares, cramped commutes, and long walking distances to the nearest stop have long loved indulging in the city-wide pastime of playing armchair design critic to the MTA. But is it possible to design a more efficient New York subway system? Like SimCity for subways, Brand New Subway is a new web game that lets you give it a shot—and it just might give you a newfound appreciation for the efficiency of the MTA.

Based upon an accurate map of New York City, the goal of Brand New Subway is to design your own subway line. You do so by putting icons representing existing MTA lines onto the map, with the computer automatically connecting stations into lines by calculating the optimal path between them. Crossovers can also be manually assigned, so that multiple lines form a citywide network.

Where things get interesting is that when you drop a station on the map, Brand New Subway automatically pulls in local data from a variety of sources, including information about population, jobs, transportation demand, taxes, and so on. It then calculates how successful your subway is based on a couple of metrics: how many people it can move on an average weekday, and the cost of a single-ride MetroCard for the network.

You can read more about the game here. Brand New Subway.

Furenexo wants to make assistive tech.

Would you purchase a basic digital camera connected to a 22″ LCD monitor for $3,000?

How about a GPS unit to announce your location for $800?

Unfortunately, a hugely overlooked segment of the population has no choice but to pay these prices for outdated technology – namely, people with disabilities.

furenexo-graph

We at Furenexo believe it’s time for Makers to become advocates, and recently launched our Kickstarter campaign to develop low-cost, highly accessible assistive technology using open source hardware and software. We see an amazing opportunity to empower Makers to become “enableists”, and make better things — and things better — for our world.

Why Make Assistive Devices?

– Because advances like Arduino, 3D printing, and object/face/voice recognition are making concepts that were only pipe dreams a few years ago possible.
– Because the challenges faced by people with disabilities have been ignored for so long and any progress could have a deep impact.
– Because nobody needs an “Uber for dry-cleaning” or yet another disco light set-up for Burning Man.
– Because engaging with disability at any level could be a personal challenge outside your comfort zone.
– Because around 49 million Americans (3.8 million of whom are veterans) are affected by some physical or sensory impairment. The economic impact of even slightly reducing some of these challenges people with disabilities face could be profound.
– Because just making something to help a neighbor could earn you a smile and thank you to light up your day, and every day.

There’s much more at Make Magazine. Furenexo’s website.