The Wind-Up Nerd Chronicle

strandbooks:

buzzfeed:

First Lady Michelle Obama, giving her last speech as FLOTUS.

#FlotusForever 

(via cocoku)

therealduckandpenguin:

invisiblelad:

gehayi:

heylookitsarevolution:

wikdsushi:

iammyfather:

ayellowbirds:

northcoastbear:

straightallies:

haydrion:

straightallies:

I hope one day that history looks back on ronald reagan as one of the 20th century’s most vile and disgusting serial killers

may i ask why

Remember when like 6 Americans had ebola and it was an international emergency, and Obama flew out to meet survivors?
Here is a list of things the United States government did in response:
-Increasing the number of Ebola testing labs throughout the U.S. that can quickly and safely screen a potential Ebola specimen -Educating more than 150,000 health care workers on how to identify, isolate, diagnose, and care for patients under investigation for Ebola -Developing countermeasures — including the first Ebola vaccine to progress to Phase 2 testing — to prevent and treat Ebola -Converting at least 10 of the Ebola Treatment Centers into long-term Regional Ebola and Pandemic Treatment Centers for long-term readiness for years to come -Helping state and local public health systems accelerate and improve their operational readiness and preparedness for Ebola or other infectious diseases
Source: https://whitehouse.gov/ebola-response

When the Reagan administration was faced with tens of thousands of gay men dying, they did nothing. They made jokes. They laughed. They caused an epidemic that killed 40 million people, because they hated gay men and thought we deserved to die.

There is so much more to it.  There is a myth perpetuated by Reaganites that he was an historically significant  President, in some positive sense.  If you are old enough to have voted in 1980, you probably know differently.  If you were born after 1980 you have been raised on this myth.  He sold Americans a fable about a Hollywood movie-like exceptional past and destiny, and led ordinary people around with portrayals of that mirage while his reactionary robber-baron friends set about dismantling 50 years of progressive advancements for working men and women, on their way to returning themselves to the position of unfettered economic domination they held between the Civil War and the Great Depression.  He was a union buster.   He gave us Scalia – need I say more?  He tried to give us Robert Bork (does anyone under 30 even know who he is?).  He lied about Iran/Contra.  He avoided dealing with AIDS.  He sealed the political sham-show between right wing capitalist kings and the evangelical thought-control snake-oil salesmen.  Americans don’t want to hear that they are ordinary citizens of the world, and they don’t want to hear that the aren’t anointed by some deity to lead the world to salvation.  They lapped it up, and they continue to do so.  

I have to wonder how the response of a more competent presidency to the AIDS crisis might have changed even the global impact of the disease. Where might we be today? How many millions of people would be alive and not suffering? Yes, Reagan was historically significant—for fucking things up in a globally devastating way.

When you hear how he slashed Income taxes, he did on the Wealthy, but he increased the lowest tax rate from 10% to 15%.

His campaign was funded by Christian radicals, whose entire goal was to dismantle Roe vs. Wade and see American women relegated once more to back alleys and dirty knives.  He opened the door to religion in politics in a way the postwar McCarthyists never dreamed possible.  Now, 36 years after his election, maybe a third of American medical schools offer proper access to even first-trimester abortion training (in an era where that should mean a pill or vaginal suppository), and there are currently fewer doctors trained to perform late stage abortions for the entire US than there were pre-RvW (when such operations were only performed as a heroic measure).

And no one has even touched on his legacy of racial
hatred, deliberate destruction of black communities and establishing of COONTELPRO to destroy the lives of black panthers and black activists, his actual murder of black activists and more. He was actually a demon.

If you want to know how many lives could have been saved if the Reagan government had just fucking BUDGETED for AIDS research instead of telling AIDS researchers that they had to beg, borrow or steal any money for AIDS from other programs–then read And The Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, 20th-Anniversary Edition by Randy Shilts. And be prepared to have your heart broken at the unadulterated and wildly irresponsible waste.of time and human lives. 

Other shitty things Reagan did:

1) He almost tripled the National Debt. And you need to see the difference with zeroes:

When Reagan took office in 1980: $909,100,000  owed.(909.1 billion)

When Reagan left office in 1988:  $2,601,300,000,000 owed. (2.6 trillion)

2) He raised taxes on the middle class and the poor ELEVEN TIMES while in office. 

3) Unemployment soared after Reagan passed his tax cuts for the rich, and it took decades to get back down again.

4) He turned the U.S. into an illegal weapons dealer.

5) He funded terrorists, helping create the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. From NewsOne:

After Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981, U.S. funding of the mujahideen increased significantly and CIA Paramilitary Officers played a big role in training, arming and sometimes even leading mujahideen forces.

The CIA trained the mujahideen in many of the tactics Al Qaeda is known for today, such as car bombs, assassinations and other acts that would be considered terrorism today.

6) When his economic policies began wreaking havoc on the government, Reagan stole from Social Security–to the tune of 2.5 TRILLION–treating it for eight years as the private slush fund of himself and his rich friends. 

7) [T]he Reagan administration demonized opponents of apartheid, most notably the African National Congress, as dangerous and pro-communist. Reagan even vetoed a bill to impose sanctions on South Africa, only to be overruled by Congress.

They called him the Teflon president for a reason. All this shit–and none of it stuck to him. He got away clean every single time.

Reading up on Nelson Mandela I caught wind of that fact a few years back. The standing President of the US was more than a little ok with not condemning Apartheid even as a symbolic gesture. 

That coupled with all of this and it speaks to an impossibly gross legacy. Of course the Neocons of the Republican set look at him as some sort of Conservative Jesus, so none of this would get actual traction with them.But email scandals are beyond the pale…

OH HELLS YES ANTI-REAGAN MASTERPOST Also let’s not forget about how he created and/or dramatically enhanced the homeless problem in America by closing the California state psychiatric hospitals (except for the ones for the criminally insane) and tossing all the residents out into the street.

(via stupiduglyfatcunt)

lagonegirl:

Sistah! #BlackGirlMagic 

(via girlonthegowithafro)

qilliananderson:

David Duchovny by Rex Rystedt.

(via foxanddana)

sparklesandchalk:

Michelle Carter won Olympic Gold in the shot put, becoming the first American woman to medal on the event since 1960. She is the first American woman to win gold in the event. Carter is a professional makeup artist and is nicknamed the “Shot Diva”. She followed in her father’s footsteps as he earned an Olympic silver medal in the shot put 32 years prior. (x)

(via geneshalitsmoustache)

wholesomeobsessive:

ndelphinus:

I once got into a grudging Nice Off with a neighbour.  This crotchety old bastard had moved in across from my grandma and within a week became legendary for his sniping about every tiny thing.  Kids sitting on their front steps weren’t respectful.  Someone’s cat got into his yard.  The mailman stopped in front of his parking space for two seconds.  The man was impossible.

So I baked him a cake.  Not like a Duncan Hines box cake either.  I made an angel food cake with whipped cream and strawberries between the layers and lemon buttercream frosting entirely from scratch.  I was and still am crap at cake decorating, but pale yellow frosting with star shaped sprinkles on top looks pretty good no matter how uncoordinated you are.  Then I put on my nicest clothes, marched over, and apologised for not welcoming him to the neighbourhood sooner.

He slammed the door in my face.  Then the next day he came over with cookies.  I offered to mow his lawn.  He told me he wouldn’t pay me then invited me in for lemonade.  I took him cupcakes I had “accidentally” made too many of.  He loaned me a book on Irish history.  I read him the newspaper.  He (rudely) told me how to improve my English presentation.  I raked up his leaves.  He told me stories about his time in Korea.  Eventually the fucker gave in and actually started being half-way pleasant.

#people always think being a slytherin is about revenge and cruelty#really manipulating someone into liking you is so much more effective

(via amaluelmwood)

estelliagoespolitical:

shychemist:

In recent days, jihadists killed 41 people at Istanbul’s bustling, shiny airport; 22 at a cafe in Bangladesh; and at least 250 celebrating the final days of Ramadan in Baghdad. Then the Islamic State attacked, again, with bombings in three cities in Saudi Arabia.

By Tuesday, Michel Kilo, a Syrian dissident, was leaning wearily over his coffee at a Left Bank cafe, wondering: Where was the global outrage? Where was the outpouring that came after the same terrorist groups unleashed horror in Brussels and here in Paris? In a supposedly globalized world, do nonwhites, non-Christians and non-Westerners count as fully human?

“All this crazy violence has a goal,” Mr. Kilo, who is Christian, said: to create a backlash against Muslims, divide societies and “make Sunnis feel that no matter what happens, they don’t have any other option.”

This is not the first time that the West seems to have shrugged off massacres in predominantly Muslim countries. But the relative indifference after so many deaths caused by the very groups that have plagued the West is more than a matter of hurt feelings.

One of the primary goals of the Islamic State and other radical Islamist groups is to drive a wedge between Sunni Muslims and the wider world, to fuel alienation as a recruiting tool. And when that world appears to show less empathy for the victims of attacks in Muslim nations, who have borne the brunt of the Islamic State’s massacres and predatory rule, it seems to prove their point.

“Why isn’t #PrayForIraq trending?” Razan Hasan of Baghdad posted on Twitter. “Oh yeah no one cares about us.”

Hira Saeed of Ottawa asked on Twitter why Facebook had not activated its Safety Check feature after recent attacks as it did for Brussels, Paris and Orlando, Fla., and why social media had not been similarly filled with the flags of Turkey, Bangladesh and Iraq. “The hypocrisy is the western world is strong,” she wrote.

Continue Reading.

Never forget that over 80% of the victims in terrorist attacks by groups like Daesh are MUSLIM.

https://fas.org/irp/threat/nctc2011.pdf

“In cases where the religious affiliation of terrorism casualties could be determined, Muslims suffered between 82 and 97 percent of terrorism-related fatalities over the past five years.”

That’s from a 2011 report.

Things have not changed.

Muslims still account for the majority of the casualties in terrorist attacks, as they have for over ten years at least.

Never forget.

(via geneshalitsmoustache)

signs as untranslatable foreign words

lilastrobabe:

Aries: Schadenfreude. German – the feeling of pleasure derived by seeing another’s misfortune.

Taurus: Cafuné. Brazilian Portuguese – The act of tenderly running one’s fingers through someone’s hair.

Gemini: Verschlimmbessern. German – to make something worse when trying to improve it.

Cancer: Mamihlapinatapei. Yagan/Tierra del Fuego – The wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start.

Leo: Kjæreste. Norwegian – A gender neutral term for girlfriend or boyfriend. It literally translates as “dearest”.

Virgo: Wabi-Sabi. Japanese – “a way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and accepting peacefully the natural cycle of growth and decay.”

Libra: L’ésprit d’escalier. French – is the feeling of finding the perfect retort too late, though it literally translates to “staircase wit.

Scorpio: La douleur exquise. French – the exquisite pain that comes from loving someone who will never love you back.

Sagittarius: Fremdscham. German – Embarrassment you feel on behalf of someone who is too dumb to know they’ve done something they should be embarrassed by.

Capricorn: Geborgenheit. German – the feeling that, when with a certain person or in a certain place, that nothing could ever harm you.

Aquarius: Koev halev. Hebrew – Empathizing with someone else so deeply that it causes your heart to ache.

Pisces: Goya. Urdu – the transporting suspension of disbelief that can occur in a good storytelling.

Just love these words.

(via paletadearrozz)

(via teawitchie)

pudgebug:

Some favourite outfits/selfies of 2015! 

(via dharma-swan)

the-witchy-academic:

brooklynboobala:

Sun love.

Omg Nox sleeps with both of his paws hooked on the screen like this in the morning!

(via the-witchy-academic)

justinspoliticalcorner:

Via @meganeellison: Nader Atassi nails it on the ‪#‎ParisAttacks‬ and the Islamophobic backlash to the events.

(via pudgiegal)