Pye came back, and this time I got the glare which translates to “Oh. I remember you. Annoying.” He did allow me many shots today though. And his permission helped me to defocus on the crazy making pain of the torn muscles/cracked rib/wtfever I’ve done to myself. Click for full size!
Early this morning, I noticed my favourite Grackle was back, Pye, who is leucistic. Pye is extremely touchy in the presence of a camera, so it’s not easy getting a photo. I do know how to get him to show up though, Pye has a serious weakness for any type of baked goods, so I baited the tray with muffin and waited. He finally showed, and hasn’t become more tolerant of shutter noise. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
^That is Vantablack, a ferocious matte black which absorbs 99.96% of the light that hits it, and no matter what’s underneath Vantablack, it looks flat and completely empty. Vantablack was extremely exciting in artist’s circles when the news first broke, but it had barely broken before Anish Kapoor brokered an exclusivity deal. That didn’t go down well among artists. The world’s blackest black, and only available to one artist? Stuart Semple, another British artist, fought back with the World’s Pinkest Pink, and the Most Glittery Glitter, available to everyone except Kapoor. Now Semple has come out with Black 2.0, his answer to Vantablack 2.0:
Before anyone starts scratching their heads over this, wondering WTF, yes, artists are rather obsessed with black, and in particular, a matte black which will eat light. It’s a thing, what can I say?
Black 2.0 is available to all, except Kapoor.
Now, with the recent release of Vantablack 2.0, which is the world’s newest blackest black, Semple has released his own newest blackest black. Called Black 2.0, Semple calls it “the most pigmented, flattest, mattest, black acrylic paint in the world.” Much like Vantablack, it’s able to turn 3D surfaces into flat-looking holes, but it’s not quite got the staring-into-the-abyss qualities of the original. (Or the laser-eating capabilities of Vantablack 2.0, which the researchers at NanoSystem have said is “so black that our spectrometers can’t measure it!”)
You can read all about the blackest of black wars here.
Tulsa police officer Betty Shelby (Photo: Tulsa PD).
Remember Betty Jo? She’s the cop who murdered Terence Crutcher, who had his hands up. I’ve posted three times prior about this case: one, two, three. The third post was about her first attempt at a defense, “auditory exclusion”, claiming she was so stressed, she went temporarily deaf, and didn’t hear back up arrive. There were many problems with that so-called defense, not the least of which is how she missed the taser dot on Mr. Crutcher, aimed by her back up. Now Ms. Shelby has shown up on 60 minutes, where she woefully claimed that she was the victim, and she’s had a lynch mob after her.
In an interview with 60 Minutes aired Sunday night, Betty Jo Shelby both insists that her killing of Terence Crutcher was justified and portrays herself as the real victim in this saga. After a video snippet of protesters calling for her resignation, Shelby likens the Tulsa community’s accountability demands to “a lynch mob.”
“My situation was no different than — I don’t know whether I should say this — than a lynch mob coming after me. And I had those very threats,” said Shelby.
Lynch mobs kill people. Betty Shelby still has a job. She faces at most four years in prison in the statistically unlikely event that a jury decides her killing of Crutcher was unlawful manslaughter rather than justifiable police action.
It is unusual for someone accused of manslaughter to go on national TV to discuss specifics of a case before a jury has heard it. Potential jurors will now likely have seen both raw videos of Shelby killing Crutcher, and CBS’ tight repackaging of the Shelby team’s narrative of what the videos do and do not show.
This is beyond disgusting. It’s bad enough to have a bigoted, homicidal cop roaming about, and it’s already clear there won’t be justice for Terence Crutcher in this case. The charge is manslaughter, and even if convicted, which is doubtful, the maximum sentence is four years. That’s not much for gunning a person down in cold blood.
Shelby insists that implicit racial bias played no role in her decision-making that day.
[…]
She agreed with Whitaker that Crutcher’s death was “avoidable” but ultimately lays the blame on the dead man.
“If he would have communicated with me, if he would’ve just done as I asked him to do we would not be here,” Shelby said.
Right. Shelby isn’t a bigot at all, and Terence Crutcher is dead because Terence Crutcher. The depth of racism white people in uStates carry around is deep and ever present, and it’s past time that everyone else keeps turning a blind eye to it. That said, I have no faith the jury in this case will do the right thing.
Full story at Think Progress.
Some people have had enough, and just can’t take it anymore. The Wallace Global Fund can’t take it anymore, and have fired their lawyers, Morgan Lewis, for their role in allowing Trump to continue in his constant corruption and fraud.
The Wallace Global Fund is sick of pretending.
In a scathing letter, the investment fund fired its elite law firm, Morgan Lewis, for its role in enabling Donald Trump to use the presidency to line his pockets.
In January, Morgan Lewis partner Sheri Dillon publicly signed off on Trump’s plan to maintain ownership of his business empire while president. Instead, Dillon established a variety of measures that fell “well short of the steps recommended by the Office of Government Ethics.”
[…]
The Wallace Fund also blasts Morgan Lewis for largely ignoring the Constitutional prohibition on presidents receiving payments from foreign governments. Trump will purportedly donate the “profits” from foreign governments spending money at his hotels, a step that has been widely dismissed as insufficient and unenforceable.
A business partner of Trump’s in Las Vegas recently revealed that Trump is not taking steps to segregate profits from foreign governments.
The letter ticks through the “ethical carnage” that has piled up since Morgan Lewis blessed Trump’s plan: the doubling of initiation fees at Mar-a-lago, Trump’s private club; the courting of foreign governments at Trump’s D.C. hotel; and his numerous financial entanglements with the Chinese government.
“America deserves a President of undivided loyalty. Your firm has denied them that. We cannot be complicit in that,” the letter concludes.
Full Letter from Wallace Global Fund. Full Story at Think Progress.
From Kestrel, click for full size!
© Kestrel, all rights reserved.
From Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
From rq, click for full size!
© rq, all rights reserved.
House Finch, click for full size.
© C. Ford.
MSNBC host Joy Reid, Donald Trump — (MSNBC screenshots).
Oh, that photo! I’m by no means a sportsball person, but that doesn’t look like a pitch, more like a convulsion. Joy Reid had a fun time reporting on the “best baseball player in New York State when I was young”, and his avoidance of tossing out the first pitch of the season. I expect any “scheduling conflict” has to do with the Tiny Tyrant spending yet another weekend golfing or off to Florida or whatever, at taxpayer expense.
The AM Joy host explained that there is a long tradition of presidents tossing out the first pitch while making the point that Trump had previously said at one time he was the best baseball player in the state of New York.
“Baseball season officially kicks off today, followed by a dozen match-ups on Monday. including the home opener for the Washington Nationals, the team that asked Donald Trump to throw out the ceremonial first pitch,” Reid began. “It’s tradition, after all. Every sitting president has thrown a first pitch at least one major league baseball game since President William Howard Taft threw out the first ball for the Washington Senators in 1910.”
“Trump declined on Tuesday to step up to the mound because of, quote, ‘scheduling issues,’ ” she continued. “But we can’t help to wonder if that’s the real reason why, especially because Trump actually played baseball.”
Noting a 2014 interview in which Trump boasted, “I was the best baseball player in New York when I was young,” Reid an eyebrow before comparing him to youthful contemporaries Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees.
Full story here.
Then-Bishop Vincenzo Paglia appears in an “erotic” net in his cathedral mural clutching another semi-nude man.
A mural in a cathedral-church has gotten much attention, of the “blasphemous, disgusting, and demonic” kind. It is deliberately erotic, which is what has so many uptight knickers in a knot. Why, you can even sort of see Jesus’s tarse, oh no! Naturally, this isn’t just about the mural, it’s about Paglia’s oh-so-debased nature in designing a sex-ed class which was decried as “thoroughly immoral,” “entirely inappropriate,” and “quite tragic.”
Personally, I don’t see a problem with depicting people in a body-based manner, we are our bodies after all. When it comes to Christian thought, the idea is that while people might strive to overcome their carnal nature, this doesn’t happen until after death, and you get to heaven or wherever, yada, yada. In that sense, the mural would be accurate. Anyroad, this is being dragged into the limelight again, because Paglia has been promoted in the church.
Paglia commissioned homosexual Argentinean Ricardo Cinalli to paint the cathedral mural in 2007. It depicts Jesus carrying nets to heaven filled with naked and semi-nude homosexuals, transsexuals, prostitutes, and drug dealers, jumbled together in erotic interactions.
[…]
Dr. Ward questioned Paglia’s recent appointments to influential posts within the Vatican given his artistic sensibilities.
“Given that Archbishop Paglia is in the net of erotic figures going to heaven, and given that he discussed every detail with the painter, the question has to be asked by parents worldwide why was this man put in charge of a prototype of sex education aimed at Catholic children throughout the world?” he said.
“Catholic parents must look at the scale of evil [that has infiltrated the Church at the highest levels]. They have to wake up to what is going on: It’s a moral nuclear wasteland,” he added.
Christine Vollmer, president of the Latin American Alliance for the Family as well as a founding member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, called the mural “disgusting.”
[…]
Wilson said it is “incomprehensible” that Pope Francis appointed Paglia not only as head of the Academy for Life but also as the Grand Chancellor of the Saint John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family. She also called it “scandalous” that he was selected to oversee the launching of the Vatican sex-education course for teens, a course that she said is “repulsive and destructive to the innocence of children” as well as “contrary to the true teachings of the Catholic Church.”
[…]
Catholic artist and author Michael D. O’Brien criticized the mural for giving the viewer the “false message” that “all sexual activity, regardless of how depraved, is blessed by God.”
You can read much more here.
Mr. Tweet has made another appearance, this time touting the “love and strength” in the republican party. All I can think about are the Ministries.
Anybody (especially Fake News media) who thinks that Repeal & Replace of ObamaCare is dead does not know the love and strength in R Party!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2017
Anybody (especially Fake News media) who thinks that Repeal & Replace of ObamaCare is dead does not know the love and strength in R party!
Talks on Repealing and Replacing ObamaCare are, and have been, going on, and will continue until such time as a deal is hopefully struck.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2017
Talks on Repealing and Replacing ObamaCare are, and have been, going on, and will continue until such time as a deal is hopefully struck.
Sweet Zombie Jesus, it’s painful to type those out. Once again, note that Donnie uses his personal account, not the POTUS account. Anyroad, upon seeing the latest from Mr. Tweet, all I could think about, again, was Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, specifically, some of the ministries:
The Ministry of Love (or Miniluv in Newspeak) serves as Oceania’s interior ministry. It enforces loyalty to Big Brother through fear, buttressed through a massive apparatus of security and repression, as well as systematic brainwashing. The Ministry of Love building has no windows and is surrounded by barbed wire entanglements, steel doors, hidden machine-gun nests, and guards armed with “jointed truncheons”. Referred to as “the place where there is no darkness”, its interior lights are never turned off. It is arguably the most powerful ministry, controlling the will of the population. The Thought Police are a part of Miniluv.
The Ministry of Love, like the other ministries, is misnamed, since it is largely responsible for the practice and infliction of misery, fear, suffering and torture. In a sense, however, the name is apt, since its ultimate purpose is to instill love of Big Brother—the only form of love permitted in Oceania—in the minds of thoughtcriminals as part of the process of reverting them to orthodox thought. This is typical of the language of Newspeak, in which words and names frequently contain both an idea and its opposite; the orthodox party member is nonetheless able to resolve these contradictions through the disciplined use of doublethink.
The Ministry of Truth is the propaganda ministry. As with the other ministries in the novel, the name Ministry of Truth is a misnomer because in reality it serves the opposite: it is responsible for any necessary falsification of historical events.
As well as administering truth, the ministry spreads a new language amongst the populace called Newspeak, in which, for example, “truth” is understood to mean statements like 2 + 2 = 5 when the situation warrants. In keeping with the concept of doublethink, the ministry is thus aptly named in that it creates/manufactures “truth” in the Newspeak sense of the word. The book describes the doctoring of historical records to show a government-approved version of events.
In Newspeak, the ministry is known as Minitrue.
The Ministry of Plenty (in Newspeak, Miniplenty) is in control of Oceania’s planned economy. It oversees rationing of food, supplies, and goods. As told in Goldstein’s book, the economy of Oceania is very important, and it’s necessary to have the public continually create useless and synthetic supplies or weapons for use in the war, while they have no access to the means of production. This is the central theme of Oceania’s idea that a poor, ignorant populace is easier to rule over than a wealthy, well-informed one. Telescreens often make reports on how Big Brother has been able to increase economic production, even when production has actually gone down (see § Ministry of Truth).
The Ministry hands out statistics which are “nonsense”. When Winston is adjusting some Ministry of Plenty’s figures, he explains this:
But actually, he thought as he readjusted the Ministry of Plenty’s figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of time you were expected to make them up out of your head.
I’m also reminded of this particular quote, from chapter 3:
The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy — everything.
We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science.
There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.
Via Raw Story.
Mona Haydar, a Syrian Muslim-American poet and activist, released her first-ever single and rap music video in honor of the world’s first-ever Muslim Women’s Day on Mar 27 … all while she’s pregnant.
Given the current rise of Islamophobia around the world, Haydar wanted to fight the hate. And what better way to do that than with music?
“This song is a party,” Haydar wrote in a Facebook post.
After the song went live, some people began shaming Haydar and the other hijabis in the video for having fun, as they sing and dance away.
“So even if you hate it – I still wrap my hijab!” the lyrics say in anticipation of the hateful remarks.
But, Haydar did not let the hate ruin the moment, and instead kept on celebrating.
You can read more here. I think it’s a grand song!