Our first meeting using Google Hangout instead of Skype, now that we are officially split across the country (Providence RI, New Orleans LA, Portland OR).
Please excuse the goofy faces. Or not. Whatever. You wish your meetings were this fun.
My hat says “DUBSTEP” but my heart says “an independent publication for the arts”
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So I know that it may not hold a lot of meaning to you, but Backspace is a Portland All-Ages Coffee Shop/Venue/Internet cafe, and they have recently been told by their landlord that if they don’t have $10,000 by the first of January that they need to basically GTFO. Backspace is not just a venue, though, it’s a pivotal part of the local community, I have numerous personal friends who have had the opportunity to play shows thee, and to lose it would be crushing for so many people. They don’t just have concerts, though, they have monthly art shows, and the biggest weekly poetry slam on the west coast. It’s a place of art, a place for people of all ages to expose themselves to culture which, in Portland, can be hard for people under 21 to find access to.
Honestly, if you want to know exactly what this place means to the local community, just read the comments on the campaign, hell read the campaign at all.
I know it’s the holidays and money is tight for a lot of people, but if people could give ANYTHING at all it would help to save a place which means so much to so many people, and even if you can’t give monetarily, reblogging and getting the word out can help just as much.
Thank you all <3
dudes! get on it
I’ve only been here a few months, but in that time I’ve been to three mind-blowing concerts at Backspace. I doubt anyone from PDX reads this regularly, but fuck, I’d be crushed if they went out of business.
The Westboro Baptist Church is back in the news? Check. Christmas approaching? Check. Cue shameless plug: read or re-read my dumb e-zine, Space Bigots.
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Hey, they finally made that “DISLIKE” button you wanted! And it’s a self-inking stamper so you can go around your house frowning, stamping it on peoples’ pictures, stamping it inside of books you own, stamping it on your television screen.
Stamp it on your elderly grandmother. “Get me some Ensure.” Dislike.
Stamp it on your receipt. I can’t believe these prices. Dislike.
Stamp it on the entire Earth. We’re destroying everything, accelerating our demise through greed, hatred, ignorance, and fear. Until we evolve, every successive generation will be worse, feel worse, know less, and have less. And we won’t evolve. This is it, this is as far as we get, and we all know it. Dislike.
(via disastrid)
Half-a-nightmare: Marijuana dispensary owned by evangelicals hands out Bibles with their weed (To read the story, click image or here; For a related post, click here http://christiannightmares.tumblr.com/post/19584898808/baby-jesus-bong-found-at-the-blog-of-matthew-paul)
I think there’s a code somewhere which dictates that I’m obliged to reblog this
Hey Neil deGrasse Tyson! Here’s some cool facts:
1) The Mayan culture *still exists*. There are an estimated 7 million people who consider themselves Mayans still living in Central America, with their own unique culture, languages and traditions2) Mayans never predicted the end of the world was going to come in 2012. Claims that they did were pretty much invented by people who didn’t understand their culture and wanted to sell shit. Perpetuating it is based on ignorant imperialist ideas.
3) A LOT of religions nowadays still practice animal sacrifice, including Hinduism and Islam. These alone take up approximately 40% of the world’s population. The contributions made by people of these religions to science in general have been immense. Dismissing an entire culture’s achievements because they perform animal sacrifice is bigoted, ignorant and gives an incredibly distorted view of the world
4) The wheel is not a mark of a “worthwhile” culture. It appears that the wheel was actually invented in one place and then spread throughout Eurasia and Africa, rather than being invented in multiple places, meaning by your metric it’s “hard to take science cues” from near every culture ever. Mesoamerican cultures had wheel-like objects but it’s likely they never developed it further because there were fewer uses for the wheel, as there was a lack of domesticateable animals that the wheel would be useful in conjunction with.
5) a) How could you *know* they didn’t predict their own *empire*’s (not culture) demise? We know virtually nothing about what people at the time thought and have too few examples of their writing to know. b) No empire ever has predicted its own demise as a mainstream view. What an absurd standard to hold
In conclusion, your comments are highly insulting and perpetuate racist myths about the Americas before the advent of European colonisation as well as the Native American populations today. Maybe do some research before you comment on these things again
Wow fuck you dGrasse Tyson
everyone fucks up
I’m very disappointed in you, NDT.
i am disappoint
and herein lies the problem with the meme-ification of “science.” It promotes the fallacious thinking that somehow “modern” society (better yet, the construction of modernity) is an epitome of progress, thereby allowing such dismissive assumptions of other cultures, histories, and groups of people
hahahaha, awful. smug positivism all over my life.
Neil man come on, don’t be dismissive of indigenous cultures just cause some turquoise-wearing wankers are appropriating their culture to sell their self-published e-books COME ON MAN you KNOW tumblr has a field day with shit like this
GHOST-MODERNISM: I’M VENTING MY PERSONAL BEEFS IN RAW UNTRAMMELED POEMS.I’M PRACTICING... -
I’M VENTING MY PERSONAL BEEFS IN RAW UNTRAMMELED POEMS.
I’M PRACTICING STARTLING RHETORICAL KARATE MOVES IN THE OPEN AIR OF THE CONTEMPORARY.
MAKING HORRIBLE SOUND EFFECTS. NO I”M NOT. YES I AM. no i’m not
THE HEADS OF THE TOWN ALL BAFFLED AND SILENCED BY MY POWERFUL PDF’S AND FEEBLE LITTLE…
I’m honor-bound to reblog anything Chris types in all-caps.
That last LPJ story was TRUE!!!!! -
A little bit of Google-sleuthing has revealed that two kids did in fact die when their boat went over Niagara Falls in June 1913.
Niagara Falls, NY Two Youths Drown, June 1913
NIAGARA RAPIDS WHIRL TWO BOYS TO THEIR DEATHS.
LADS ARE AT MERCY OF RUSHING WATERS WHEN ROPE, ATTACHED TO SCOW, BREAKS NEAR FALLS.
YOUNGSTERS SHAKE HANDS WHEN FATE IS REALIZED.
FRANTIC CROWDS, HELPLESS ON BANK, WEEP AND PRAY AS BODIES DISAPPEAR IN WHIRLPOOL.
Niagara Falls, N.Y., June 22. — DONALD ROSCOE, 10 years old, and HUBERT MOORE, 9 years old, both of this city, went to their death in a small boat late this afternoon in the Whirlpool Rapids, while hundreds of men watched helpless from the shore.
The boys were playing in a flat bottom scow, half a mile above the rapids, when the rope holding the boat broke and they were carried out into the stream and down the river.
Up to the time the boat reached midstream it made little progress. After it passed the bridges the current carried it rapidly toward the rapids.
The bridgemen did not see the boat until it was close at hand. Then they called fire headquarters and two companies of firemen were sent to save the lads if possible. Hundreds swarmed to the river banks in a vain effort at rescue.
The boys, realizing their fate, stood up as the boat neared the edge of the roaring whirlpool and shook hands in farewell. A second later they were engulfed by a freak wave in the rapids. The boat shot out of sight. One of the boys was seen for a moment struggling in the rushing waters and then disappeared.
Never at any time was there a chance to save the boys. The firemen could do nothing. There were scores of passengers in the cars along the Gorge route and they watched the hopeless struggle of the boys. The hundreds who had gathered at the waters edge could offer no aid. Men became hysterical in their powerlessness and women passengers on the cars wept and prayed in distress at the plight of the lads, who were standing in the boat calling for help.
As the boat neared Swift drift, the first breaking of the river from the calm upper reaches to the rapids, it began to rock. The boys sat down to keep from tumbling into the stream.
Then, caught in Swift drift, the boat went racing under the cantilever bridge. Whatever hope the boys had of rescue was lost. Yes, they knew the fight was now all their own, as no one could help them.
As they passed under the bridge they ceased their cries for help. The two mates turned toward each other and calmly shook hands, then with the boat in the tumbling waters thew themselves on the seats of the scow and clung with all their strength.
The craft held to its course until it encountered a huge wave which crested at a height of forty feet. It seemed to dive into the very middle of the wave and when it came again to view it was bottom up. A second or two later, a little head was seen bobbing on a wave below for a moment and then was seen no more.
The bodies of the boys are in the whirlpool and may never be recovered. There was a quantity of driftwood whirling there this afternoon and the bodies may be beaten to a pulp, as were those of Mr. and Mrs. Eldridge Stanton of Toronto and Burrell Heacock of Cleveland, the victims of the ice bridge tragedy of Feb. 4, 1912, which were battered by cakes of ice.
The point where the boat broke loose is about a half mile from the beginning of the rapids. If drifted down in about twelve minutes, passing under the lower steel arch bridge at 4:55 o’clock.
The ROSCOE boy’s mother is very ill and was not told of the tragedy. The boys were member of well-known families of Niagara Falls. They had been chums for several years. Just before dark tonight watchers on the bank saw the bodies in the rapids, but could not reach them.