Currently sitting in seat 33J of an American Airlines 767 on my way from New York to Los Angeles. I’m over seven miles above the Earth’s surface and on Tumblr at the same time. We’re over eastern Nebraska, and there’s a powerful line of thunderstorms about 50 miles off our right wing. There’s a cloud layer below us, but the thunderstorm clouds stick up through the layer and tower even higher than our aircraft. As we smoothly fly past, the storm clouds light up with flashes of lightning. The lightning strikes every few seconds at most, sometimes only split-seconds apart. I can’t make out the individual bolts, since they’re embedded in the cloud, but instead the whole cloud lights up from the inside.

Nature’s just awesome sometimes, in the literal sense of the word…

I can think of some folks who follow me that might enjoy this…

(Somewhat NSFW, especially if you expand the image.)

thedailywhat:

This Is All Kinds Of Wrong of the Day: Florida courts continue to show a bass-akward way of dispensing justice — 31-year-old Marissa Alexander has been sentenced to a 20-year bid for firing “a warning shot” to her husband, who was attacking her during a 2010 incident. Rep. Corrine Brown said the failure of the Stand Your Ground act is based on race:

How many times have they accepted Stand Your Ground if the person that was asking for it was black? You tell me.

Alexander next will appeal the court’s decision, with Brown’s aid.

[floridatimesunion]

Okay, two things that you need to know before passing judgement on this case.  First, the reason why her sentence is so long has nothing to do with being black.  It’s because Florida law requires the following: you pull a gun while committing a crime, you get at least 10 years.  You fire a gun while committing a crime, you get at least 20 years.  You injure or kill someone with a gun while committing a crime, you get 25 to life.  I agree that these sort of mandatory minimums are generally a bad idea,  and they certainly resulted in a disproportionate punishment in this case, but she’d have gotten the same sentence if she were white - that’s the point of “mandatory.”

Second, the “stand your ground” principle does not give you a blanket right to use a firearm.  It gives you the right to use lethal force if you reasonably believe that lethal force is about to be used against you.  Firing a gun to ward off an attacker is a Very Serious Thing - so serious, in fact, that you are only legally permitted to do so if you feel you are in imminent danger of being killed.  Pretty much every court ever has agreed that if you have time to fire a warning shot, that proves you weren’t in imminent danger of being killed.  If you were in imminent danger, you’d have shot to kill.  That’s why the Stand Your Ground defense was rejected - the very nature of a warning shot proves to the court that the level of danger needed to invoke that defense was not present.

TL;DR - mandatory minimum sentencing laws are stupid; if you’re going to shoot at an attacker, either shoot to kill or don’t shoot at all.

coffeethulhu:

muffystopheles:

coffeethulhu:

coffeethulhu:

Ok. I’ve seen a lot of “friend zone” posts floating around the internet lately and I have to say, they’re as much a bullshit broad generalisation as the term itself. Do petty assholes who are upset that the object of their affection doesn’t reciprocate feelings complain about…

Totally agree. I tried to address your example at the beginning of my post. There are a lot of pricks out there. It’s a kind of subconscious chauvinism that seems to have been bred in to the culture. By the same token, there are also a lot of “flirts” who will play someone interested in them for attention or whatever…

Valid points - most people flirt because they want something : sex, money, attention, making someone else jealous… the list goes on. 

I myself am incredibly flirtatious by nature, but try to make sure that whomever is on the receiving end is aware it’s my nature, and that they are aware of my relationship status. This obviously will determine whether or not they decide to continue flirting in return….

There is one other factor to consider as well, and that is the person voicing the complaint. These are the people that tend to not make the first move, the shy ones that are a little put off by romance, and it’s a vicious cycle….

One other thing that I think is worth noting… Maybe I’m using “friendzoned” in an overly broad sense, but I think there’s a difference between “she friendzoned me, she sucks” and “she friendzoned me, that sucks.”  Coffee talked earlier about cases where there is romantic interest but one partner decides to break it off for some trivial reason.  But I think it’s legitimate to grouse about being friendzoned even by someone who (it turns out) has no interest in you, as long as you’re expressing frustration at the situation as a whole and not at the individual.  There’s nothing wrong with being frustrated or generally upset that someone doesn’t reciprocate your interest - just remember that you can’t blame them for not doing so.  And of course, try to get over the frustration quickly and move onto the next “target.”

(Disclaimer - thinking of people as just targets not recommended, but vocab unit of brain is still booting up at 7:15 am.)

andwhispers:

every book you’ve ever read is just a different combination of 26 letters

Every living thing that has ever existed is just a different combination of four “letters”/nucleobases.

my-mind-is-a-darkroom:

a strong, innate desire to rove or travel about.

This is part of why I’m training to become a pilot.  Relevant pilot aphorism:

A mile of road gives you a mile of road.  A mile of runway gives you the world.

booksbymybed:

lol

I like how this poem is one of the most persistently misinterpreted ones in the popular canon.  Lots of folks think that it’s about striking out on your own path, blazing your own trail, not being trapped by what society expects of you, etc.  But let’s look at the actual poem, shall we? (Italics mine.)

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same…

And a couple stanzas later…

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 

So really both roads are equally worn and equally used.  It’s just that when Frost looks back and retells the story, he’s going to exaggerate it into some profound decision that shaped his entire life by choosing the uncommon path.  ”The Road Not Taken” isn’t a poem about individualism, it’s a poem about how people rewrite their own history to fit the narrative they want.

muffystopheles:

teal-deer:

oncelerswaifu:

what if we explained polyamorous stuff like sandwiches you got a bunch of sandwiches and you love them all the end　

and some people are big eaters and they eat a lot of sandwiches

and some of us really only need one sandwich

and both of these things are totally cool 

I have all the feels about this post. 

And some people like to eat the sandwiches, while others are perfectly fine with just cuddling/caring for the sandwiches… wait, I think I may have screwed up that metaphor somewhere.

theanonymousalien:

acyanrust:

runawaypenguin:

Ian, The Fiery Maniac.

INNO. LOOK. The machines agree with you.

Inno, The Blessed Captain.

jesus fuck

Wait…am I Michaela, The Holy Singer or am I Kaela, The Terror’s Healer?

This is an important question, people!

I got Joshua, the Omniscient Engineer.  So apparently I’m God, or something like that.

o3k64:

““I know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos. That makes me want to grab people on the street and say: ‘Have you HEARD THIS?””

— Neil DeGrasse Tyson (Happy National Physics Day!)

Reminds me of a part from a Lawrence Krauss lecture (he’s an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona):

Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. The atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. You are all stardust. All the things that matter for evolution and for life weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars. The only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.