“Videri quam esse” (“To seem to be, rather than to be”)
I'm strange but i like to be a good strange, My name is Clarence, born in 1988, Pisces and I'm a student of Sociology and the child of the internet. I usually feel like my life has no meaning and i want to die but sometimes it seems like life is worth living for and i love everything in it. If it seems odd to read think what it might be like living it. I like reading philosophy, fiction and tech news.
This Blog is where i collect all the the weird and interesting links from around the net, its not meant to be that serious and just fun. If you stop by here you can enjoy comics, tech, current events, sociology, a little pornography (or erotica if you prefer to call it that) and more weird stuff. Please feel free to tell he what you like and dislike about the site and more of what you want to see.
Please feel free to talk to me by letter in my ask or by following me on other social networks but please just throw me a message WHO YOU ARE.
By the By it goes without saying you should make sure children don't read most of this.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
They came in armoured vehicles and there were some tanks. They shot five bullets through the door of our house. They said they wanted Aref and Shawki, my father and my brother. They then asked about my uncle, Abu Haidar. They also knew his name.
My mum yelled at them. She asked: ‘What do you want from my husband and son?’ A bald man with a beard shot her with a machine gun from the neck down. Then they killed my sister, Rasha, with the same gun. She was five years old. Then they shot my brother Nader in the head and in the back. I saw his soul leave his body in front of me.
They shot at me, but the bullet passed me and I wasn’t hit. I was shaking so much I thought they would notice me. I put blood on my face to make them think I’m dead.
The United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria and the Netherlands have expelled top Syrian diplomats in the wake of government-sponsored killings in the Syrian province of Homs; more than 100 people killed by pro-Assad thugs, including scores of children.
(Source: inothernews)
NY TIMES: "Friday should have been Facebook’s day to shine — and Nasdaq’s as well. Instead it became a problem-filled market session that raised questions about how Facebook’s stock price ended the day as well as how the nation’s second-biggest stock market and the underwriters handled the trading debut. The Securities and Exchange Commission said that it would review the day’s trading, which included an unexpected delay, missing trade execution messages and at one point, having to fill orders by hand."
NASDAQ to switch Facebook’s ticker symbol from “FB” to “LOL.”
NYPD Loses OWS Trail After Video Evidence Proved They Made False Arrests
Hundreds have been arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests, but photographer Alexander Arbuckle’s case was the first to go to trial – and after just two days, the Manhattan Criminal Court found him not guilty.
Arbuckle was arrested on New Year’s Day for allegedly blocking traffic during a protest march. He was charged with disorderly conduct, and his arresting officer testified under oath that he, along with the protesters, was standing in the street, despite frequent requests from the police to move to the sidewalk
But things got a little embarrassing for the NYPD officer when the defense presented a video recording of the entire event, made by well-known journalist Tim Pool.
Pool’s footage clearly shows Arbuckle, along with all the other protesters, standing on the sidewalk. In fact, the only people blocking traffic were the police officers themselves.
His lawyers said the video proving that testimony false is what swayed the judge, and the verdict a clear indication that the NYPD was over-policing the protests.
Weird.
If you’re shocked, you’re not paying attention.
Facebook Privacy Policy Change Paves Way For Off-Facebook Advertising - Forbes
In case you missed it, Facebook has revamped their “data use policy” to make it clearer that it can use information about you to display ads to you outside of Facebook.
What’s in a Twinkie?
Great infographic from Newsweek, which accompanies the article This Is Why We’re Fat! by Gary Taubes. It’s a provocative article challenging the conventional wisdom on how we should fight the obesity epidemic. Click through the image to embiggen.
Mmmm. Just the look of that sodium acid pyrophosphate gets my mouth watering.
(Source: thesoapboxschtick)
![theatlantic:
What the U.S. Can (and Can’t) Learn From Israel’s Ban on Ultra-Thin Models
On March 19, the Israeli parliament passed legislation ubiquitously known in the country as the Photoshop laws. The new regulations on the fashion and advertising industry ban underweight models as determined by Body Mass Index and regulate Photoshop usage in media and advertising. Abroad, the laws have opened new discussion on a government’s right to intervene in these two industries.
The legislation focuses on two elements of the fashion industry that have long drawn criticism for their effects on women and, especially, girls: ultra thin models and the use of Photoshop to make women appear impossibly thin in advertisements. The measure has been controversial within Israel for raising the question of where free speech bumps up against the fashion industry’s responsibility — and its possible harm — to its customers’ psychological wellbeing. It has also raised the question of whether other countries might consider similar measures to address what many activists consider a root cause of an epidemic of anorexia and other eating disorders.
Read more. [Image: AP]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3rb5orKQc1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
What the U.S. Can (and Can’t) Learn From Israel’s Ban on Ultra-Thin Models
On March 19, the Israeli parliament passed legislation ubiquitously known in the country as the Photoshop laws. The new regulations on the fashion and advertising industry ban underweight models as determined by Body Mass Index and regulate Photoshop usage in media and advertising. Abroad, the laws have opened new discussion on a government’s right to intervene in these two industries.
The legislation focuses on two elements of the fashion industry that have long drawn criticism for their effects on women and, especially, girls: ultra thin models and the use of Photoshop to make women appear impossibly thin in advertisements. The measure has been controversial within Israel for raising the question of where free speech bumps up against the fashion industry’s responsibility — and its possible harm — to its customers’ psychological wellbeing. It has also raised the question of whether other countries might consider similar measures to address what many activists consider a root cause of an epidemic of anorexia and other eating disorders.
Read more. [Image: AP]
My America is gone, it’s unfortunate but it’s over, and short of God intervening, I don’t see any turnaround…
…One of the primary reasons is because women are taking over. They’re in high, so-called powerful positions, they’re running companies, they’re making decisions…
…There are SOME, a few logical women, who can make sound decisions, but most CANNOT. And the unfortunate thing is they’re in powerful positions…The one thing I know for sure without a doubt is that women cannot handle power…
…I think that one of the greatest mistakes America made was to allow women the opportunity to vote.
Some excerpts of Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson tirade about how equality for women destroyed America
THIS IS NOT SATIRE. This was real and from the heart of a conservative piece of shit, who is a Tea Party activist and frequent guest of Fox “News”
He then continued to…
- Call Sandra Fluke a “slut” who has no “shame”
- Compare women who get abortions to baby murderers
- Lament that men have lost so much power that they “allow women to run wild and screw up everything.”
- Claim women are “voting in the wrong people… evil people… this is how evil is coming in. It’s coming in through the women.”
- and why stop at woman bashing when you can throw in some homophobia, right? He did that too… “look at every place that a woman is in control… you see nothing but confusion. There is no good in it at all, none. This is how homosexuality came to the forefront, now they have this gay marriage thing coming to the forefront. It just blows my mind to see how evil is working its way through.”
NY TIMES: Facebook sets IPO price range from $28 to $35 per share for possible valuation of $86 billion
This is an example of
- False modesty;
- The Internet Bubble, Part 2, Whether Or Not You Want To Admit It.
Your Tweets Can Be Subpoenaed - The Atlantic Wire
A judge in New York ruled Monday that since tweets are public information owned by a third party social media site, prosecutors don’t need a warrant to subpoena them. The ruling came in the case of Malcolm Harris, who was arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge last year during an Occupy Wall Street protest.
What does this mean for journalists? For one, it’s a reminder that your tweets are public information.
![theatlantic:
53% of Recent College Grads Are Jobless or Underemployed—How?
More than half of America’s recent college graduates are either unemployed or working in a job that doesn’t require a bachelor’s degree, the Associated Press reported this weekend. The story would seem to be more evidence that, regardless of your education, the wake of the Great Recession has been a terrible time to be young and hunting for work.
But are we really becoming another Greece or Spain, a wasteland of opportunity for anybody under the age of 25? Not quite. What the new statistics really tell us about is the changing nature, and value, of higher education. […]
As the AP notes, recent graduates are now more likely to work as “waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined.” This is a problem for any number of reasons, but here are two big ones: First, a degree is more expensive than ever, and students are piling on debt to finance their educations. It’s much harder to pay back loans while working for tips at Buffalo Wild Wings than when you have a decent office job. Second, when college graduates take a low-paid, low-skill job, they’re probably displacing a less educated worker, For every underemployed college degree holder, there’s a decent chance someone with just a high school diploma is out of work entirely.
So is a college education simply less valuable than in the past? In some respects, yes. According to the Census, the number of Americans under the age of 25 with at least a bachelor’s degree has grown 38 percent since 2000. Not nearly enough jobs have been created to accommodate them, which has resulted in falling wages for young college graduates in the past decade, as well as the employment problems we’re now seeing.
That said, not all degrees are created equal. The AP reports that students who graduated out of the sciences or other technical fields, such as accounting, were much less likely to be jobless or underemployed than humanities and arts graduates. You know that old saw about how college is just about getting a fancy piece of paper? Not true. For an education to be worth anything these days, it needs to impart skills.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2y5oepXGh1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
53% of Recent College Grads Are Jobless or Underemployed—How?
More than half of America’s recent college graduates are either unemployed or working in a job that doesn’t require a bachelor’s degree, the Associated Press reported this weekend. The story would seem to be more evidence that, regardless of your education, the wake of the Great Recession has been a terrible time to be young and hunting for work.
But are we really becoming another Greece or Spain, a wasteland of opportunity for anybody under the age of 25? Not quite. What the new statistics really tell us about is the changing nature, and value, of higher education. […]
As the AP notes, recent graduates are now more likely to work as “waiters, waitresses, bartenders and food-service helpers than as engineers, physicists, chemists and mathematicians combined.” This is a problem for any number of reasons, but here are two big ones: First, a degree is more expensive than ever, and students are piling on debt to finance their educations. It’s much harder to pay back loans while working for tips at Buffalo Wild Wings than when you have a decent office job. Second, when college graduates take a low-paid, low-skill job, they’re probably displacing a less educated worker, For every underemployed college degree holder, there’s a decent chance someone with just a high school diploma is out of work entirely.
So is a college education simply less valuable than in the past? In some respects, yes. According to the Census, the number of Americans under the age of 25 with at least a bachelor’s degree has grown 38 percent since 2000. Not nearly enough jobs have been created to accommodate them, which has resulted in falling wages for young college graduates in the past decade, as well as the employment problems we’re now seeing.
That said, not all degrees are created equal. The AP reports that students who graduated out of the sciences or other technical fields, such as accounting, were much less likely to be jobless or underemployed than humanities and arts graduates. You know that old saw about how college is just about getting a fancy piece of paper? Not true. For an education to be worth anything these days, it needs to impart skills.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]
