Today's Mighty Oak


Alright, let’s see what we have today, little bit of a video heavy one, but let’s go with it!

For Star Wars Day, Heathrow added flights to destinations in the Star Wars galaxy to their boards.

In good news, Ireland is looking to prosecute practitioners of gay conversion torture.

The trailer for POSE looks so good:

Spoilers for Infinity War, but here’s a great break down of the real villain.

In that vein, want to see if you survived the final events of Infinity War?  Click here.  Spoiler, I didn’t make it.

Also related: straight people shouldn’t write about gay ‘culture’ if they don’t know what they’re talking about.  Bad NYTimes.

The music video for Deadpool 2 is amazing:

It’s a little heavy handed, but good on AIG and the All Blacks for these awesome new jerseys!

Two classic Mega Man games are being re-released….on cartridges!

I ran the marathon a few weeks ago and had a blast!  I talked with the guy filming this, but we didn’t make it in, but still a really cool video!

Required reading: Dan Savage eviscerates a gay republican and it’s so perfect.

Also, conservatives are sad because people don’t like them.  If I wasn’t busy trying to save the world, I still wouldn’t give a shit.

Arrested Development is coming back for season 5, and I’m so, so excited:

That’s it for now (hopefully these video links work, Youtube was acting strange for me), have a great one!



Short update today, but I’ll be back with more soon.

First up, today was the day Prop 8 was argued at the Supreme Court.  The New York Times has a nice flowchart as to what the outcome will be.

And if you didn’t read it, there is a great article over at The Stranger about acceptance, love and bigotry.

And finally, this really cool desk made from a piano:



Happy New Year to everyone!  I hope you had a wonderful celebration bringing in 2013.

Now, first up, I’ve talked about this before with some friends, and we all still have a problem believing that it’s a thing.  The Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve was robbed of $18 million worth of syrup.  Go ahead and read that a few times and just let your mind be blown.  Only in Canada.

The NYT has a great, long-form piece about the avalanche at Tunnel Creek.  It’s a great story, and the way it is presented is just amazing as well.  Some people are saying the ads break it up too much, but I didn’t find them that intrusive, honestly.

The gun control debate (hopefully) continues.  I don’t agree with the NRA’s idea of putting armed guards in schools (there’s also no evidence that that would work, case in point, the fact that everyone at Fort Hood had access to guns and the massacre still happened, the police department at Virginia Tech and the armed guards at Columbine).  But here’s a new angle I never thought of:

And as always, violent video games aren’t to blame.  Otherwise we’d have a much, much larger problem.

And this is scary, the Los Angeles gun buy back program produced two rocket launchers.

That’s it for right now, but I’ll be back with more soon, have a great one!

The Guardian and Information is Beautiful teamed up to look at that data for the end of the world, which, in case you weren’t aware, didn’t happen.

 



Update for everyone, here we go:

First up, the new video from the British Heart Association:

Copyranter covers a Big F’in sale in Japan.  Really.

Possibly the most inane correction ever:

 

Joho covers the reaction to “Free Hugs.”  There are two, but the image posted is just awesome.

This video has been making it’s rounds, check it out:

Copyranter showcases this shower curtain.  I kind of like it, but could never see anyone actually paying money for it:

 

Unplggd takes a look at various types of light bulbs and their energy consumption.

And I Heart Pittsburgh finds this amazing cut map on Etsy:

 

That’s it for now, back soon with more!



This story is for all who love Randall, and if you haven’t, make sure you check out his horoscope hotline, a bunch of us call it every morning at work.  And by the way, Honeybadger doesn’t give a shit, just in case you forgot.

Remember the shooting spree at the summer camp in Europe?  Check out this string of text messages between a girl on the island and her mom.  Touching and amazing.

It’s a little late at this point, but here’s the Border’s closing bingo!

BuzzFeed has a collection of Harry Potter Tributes, (and  a list of HP inspired drinks) check them out, here’s a favorite:

 

Awesome hidden library hack for those with lofts.

Myths Retold is pretty awesome, although each one is long, so I sadly don’t read it as much as I should.  But here is one of my favorites, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Here’s a cool time-lapse of the front page of the New York Time’s webpage through the years:

Nook Books do this, but check out this cool trailer for a children’s book.

And winner of irony goes to this story.  I haven’t done much on Google+ because not many of my friends are on it yet, but this just makes me want to hug everyone at Google.

 



Hey everybody, quick update here.

The New York Times is finally getting around to some big coverage of the Uganda “Kill the Gays” bill.  And it appears to have garnered some real attention.  Which is a good thing since it appears that work from US politicians and lobbyists have brought about a law that would enable a nation to perform state-sanctioned genocide.  Good comments from Dan Savage here (not his first mind you, but some more recent ones).

Two big questions still loom in my mind.

1. If this were a different minority, say something racially motivated, or religiously motivated, would we not have heard the outcry?

2. If it “wasn’t the intent” of US politicians to draft a bill that would execute people based on who they are and who they love, then what exactly was their intent?  What other end did they expect to see from going into Uganda and stirring this up?

PittGirl is getting a second blog!  Always exciting!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
The Best F**king News Team Ever – Tiger Woods’ Faith
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political Humor Health Care Crisis

And of course, check out Dan Savage on Countdown, or his piece here on Slog:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR7EPk-f-Lo

Still writing 09 on your checks?  I’m actually not, although I think it was 2004 where the whole year, I just never got the hang of it.  The whole year, I was off.  Terrible waste.

Andrew Sullivan checks in here about Iran.  The picture is amazing, of course.

I don’t like to write about work.  Aside from the occasional mention, mostly due to my schedule, I just don’t care to blog about it.  The same goes for work, I do not care to discuss sex, religion or politics, it’s rude and really has no place at work, it will just inevitably make someone mad.  The few times I get dragged into a conversation, I find the nearest exit to the conversation and then physically leave so I’m not pulled further in, I would rather have solid, productive, working relationships with everyone there, and those kind of discussions never help.  However, every now and then, something happens that I just have to write down, lest I forget it, and lest my anger subside.

Cue the vagueness (and flashback sequence, I’m thinking like how they used to on Roundhouse, using a bunch of cast member’s waving arms with the camera walking through them): some time ago a bunch of us were eating lunch.  And people were talking about their schedules and it was mentioned that we have Martin Luther King, Jr. day off, but not President’s day.  The President’s day holiday was moved to Independence Day to make it a four day weekend.  However, one of my co-lunch-eaters started to make a comment about that fact.  And that person had that look on their face, and that tone to their voice.  But thankfully, said person stopped themselves before they made the extremely racist comment that was bubbling just below the surface.  Because, you know, Dr. King was only probably the greatest advocate of civil rights and equality we have ever had in this country.

Now, I typically give everyone the benefit of the doubt, to a fault, and to no end.  But I have also sat in that lunch room and been told that inter racial marriages should not be legal.  Not because a certain person was racist, no no.  Because it is unfair to the child.  “Those marriages never last and it isn’t fair to the child.”  So you’ll have to excuse me if I have lost my patience for some of my coworkers, at least when it comes to what will come out of their mouths.  I’ll keep reading at lunch, and exit whenever I need to, self defense and all.

So maybe that person held their tongue because of me, I’ve chirped up a few times when I think things get out of control or offend me.  So maybe I’ve had a positive impact on some people, making them think a bit before they speak.  But who knows.  So excuse the rambling, I do apologize, but I wanted to make sure I remembered that comment, seems somewhat indicative.

That’s it for now, at least I think.  I have more to write up, but I’ll work on it another time I think, have a great one everybody!



Tech Crunch is reporting on a video from 1981, discussing daily newspapers foray onto the Internet as a distribution method.

It’s a common misconception that newspapers are simply late to the Internet game. As this video shows, some of them (including some of the major ones now failing) have been thinking about this stuff for 28 years.

Over and over again we repeat that newspapers are dying, and that citizen journalists are stepping up to fill in the void of local news.  The article talks about the new Kindle coming out and the deal they have with daily newspapers The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal (and rumored deals with The Boston Globe and The Washington Post).  Is the Kindle the electronic medium that will save the newspapers?

This week on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s podcast, “Tech Talk,” they discuss that idea.  And while they don’t think the Kindle will be the savior to the newspaper industry, the feeling is that it could hold them over until they get a grasp on a business model that will be profitable.

But in the meantime, we have citizen journalists.  And while newspapers have large staffs and are able to cover all the news, the beauty of citizen journalism is that each person may cover one or two specific topics, but in those topics, find the passion that they need to dig deep, sometimes deeper than professional journalists have the luxury to.  Citizen journalists may not have distribution deals with the Kindle, but with the growing popularity of netbooks and Internet-enabled phones, and entire cities now being blanketed with wireless Internet, there certainly is room for both to work with one another, complimenting each other’s strengths and filling in each other’s weaknesses.

Make sure to head over to Tech Crunch to read the article and watch the video, and count your blessings we now have 21st century technology.

Update: Maybe I’m jumping into this story at just the right moment, but two more stories on this subject grabbed my attention this morning.  First, yesterday’s “Culture Gabfest” from Slate and secondly the Financial Times reports on the story as well.  Also a correction above adding The Washington Post.

(h/t to PR Junkie)

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