gravity, avoirdupois

realfakescientist:

batoolbox:

Let me teach you a great way to check sources for pictures.

(this post was inspired after I came across a falsely-captioned photo on my dashboard)

Let’s say you see this post on your dashboard. You aren’t sure whether it’s entirely accurate, and decide to see for yourself. 

If you’re using google chrome, all you have to do is right click the image, and select ‘copy image URL’ (or alternatively you can just open the image in a new tab, and copy its URL. you just need to get the URL of the image)

Now go to images.google.com.

Inside the search bar, to the right, there is a small blue camera icon. Click on it.

Past the image URL you just copied, and hit ‘search’.

take a look at your results.

Oh wow! It says ‘Iraq War Victims’, while the original post says ‘Syria’. Aren’t you happy you didn’t reblog it?

Use this handy feature in the future. Trust me, it’s useful.

one of your resident scientist’s number one tips- GTS: google that shit!

(Source: )

The Leak in the Palace

lot1699:

Last year, for BERSIH2.0, Sharon made a series of awesome posters. This year she was too busy — so you’ll just have to settle for something by little old me. Prepare to be underwhelmed.

~~~

THE LEAK IN THE PALACE

Shortly after he was installed, our new di-Pertuan Agong moved his royal person, his royal family, and all the offices of his royal court and household into the new National Palace.

The new National Palace wasn’t precisely new. It was completed last year. But our previous ruler – now once again merely the Sultan of Terengganu – had refused to take up residence there.

“What is wrong with the old palace?” he’d asked. “I’m happy where I am, and it’s such a bother to move.”

Perhaps someone had told him how much the new National Palace cost, and our former majesty had balked at the figure, which contained eight zeroes. He was widely reputed to be a frugal man, where his own money was concerned; and a good enough man, when it came to the tax money of his subjects.

Our current Yang di-Pertuan Agong was also reputed to be a good man. Royalty can have no other kind of reputation. Daulat Tuanku! He was just a good man in a different way.

Read More

Rushdie on Censorship

inwhichidigress:

Salman Rushdie writes ‘On Censorship’ in The New Yorker:

The creative act requires not only freedom but also this assumption of freedom. If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today. If he is afraid of the consequences of his choice of subject or of his manner of treatment of it, then his choices will not be determined by his talent, but by fear. If we are not confident of our freedom, then we are not free.

And, even worse than that, when censorship intrudes on art, it becomes the subject; the art becomes ‘censored art’, and that is how the world sees and understands it. The censor labels the work immoral, or blasphemous, or pornographic, or controversial, and those words are forever hung like albatrosses around the necks of those cursed mariners, the censored works. The attack on the work does more than define the work; in a sense, for the general public, it becomes the work. For every reader of Lady Chatterley’s Lover or Tropic of Capricorn, every viewer of Last Tango in Paris or A Clockwork Orange, there will be ten, a hundred, a thousand people who ‘know’ those works as excessively filthy, or excessively violent, or both.

The assumption of guilt replaces the assumption of innocence. Why did that Indian Muslim artist have to paint that Hindu goddess in the nude? Couldn’t he have respected her modesty? Why did that Russian writer have his hero fall in love with a nymphet? Couldn’t he have chosen a legally acceptable age? Why did that British playwright depict a sexual assault in a Sikh temple, a gurdwara? Couldn’t the same assault have been removed from holy ground? Why are artists so troublesome? Can’t they just offer us beauty, morality, and a damn good story? Why do artists think, if they behave in this way, that we should be on their side? ‘And the people all said sit down, sit down you’re rocking the boat / And the devil will drag you under, with a soul so heavy you’ll never float / Sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down / You’re rocking the boat.’

LouSalome#1850

Sorry, beloved bookshelf. Diablo 3 will consume my time until further notice. Childhood flashback here I come.

PS: my Witch Doctor is coming along nicely I think.

PPS: Lou who?