In an age in which education is a commodity accessible only to the wealthy, requiring degree-level education for police officers is indistinguishable from the property qualifications required for membership of the yeoman dragoons in the 19th-century: a private standing army of the respectable upper-middle class, wielded by political elites to violently suppress the struggles of poor citizens for democratic rights.

bakasara:

leeshajoy:

animatedamerican:

patrickat:

jhameia:

kiriamaya:

kakaphoe:

priestessamy:

vaspider:

atalantapendrag:

shrewreadings:

dignitywhatdignity:

ravingliberal:

cipollakate:

punkpuppydragon:

the-mad-march-hare42:

jungle-plastic:

furikomaru:

ask-bot:

Without revealing your actual age, what something you remember that if you told a younger person they wouldn’t understand?

Staying up late waiting for the really good shows to come on is more emotionally rewarding than being able to watch whatever you want whenever you want.

Having to be on Channel 3 to play videogames.

Rewinding a VHS tape and watching the characters jump about crazily in reverse to rewatch a show, instead of restarting like a DVD.

Begging your parents to get cable so you can watch high school musical on disney channel and stop being a social outcast at school

Not being able to watch Doctor Who because BBC America only showed the specials and SyFy only played Series 4 on a loop, so having to watch it in pieces on YouTube quickly before YouTube found it and took it down.

Being able to fill my tank for $5.

Passive-aggressive AIM away messages.

Also? Napster. So much Napster.

Not being able to watch Doctor Who because PBS was running a FUCKING PLEDGE DRIVE, and they moved it to 0200 Monday from 1600 Sunday.

Getting hooked on All Creatures Great and Small (and Peter Davidson as Tristan) as a consequence.

Only being able to watch cartoons on Saturday morning – that animated opening for Soul Train meant they were over for the week!

Missing an episode of a show and not knowing when or even if it would be repeated.

Video rental stores with $50 annual membership fees (on top of rental fees).

Friday Night Videos.

The excitement of being connected to the Real Internet and not just a local BBS.

The feeling of talking to your crush on AIM when someone else in the house picks up the phone :l

Waiting for that song to come on the radio with your fingers over the play and record buttons of the tape deck, just hoping that asshole didn’t talk through the ending.

Having to mess with the turntable speed switch to get music to play right.

Those cool binocular-like things with little discs of images, you hold it up to the sunlight to see the pictures, and press a little lever to change the image.

Turning a dial on the TV to change the channel and there were only 13 of them.

ASCII art.

Carrying files to and from campus on ZIP Disks.

NRRROOOOOOO BEEEEEEEEE BHROPPP – EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE – BREP BREP BREP BREP BREP BREP – EEEEEEEEEEHHR HROOOOOOOOOOO EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Red Rover. Grass clipping houses. The wax man. Party lines. Not seeing Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving. Directory Assistance.

The satisfaction of unkinking the long spiral handset cord to the wall phone in the kitchen and getting all the curls to spin in the same direction.

denugis:

themegalosaurus:

denugis:

@the-megalosaurus replied to your post: Dear World, I am both pleased and anxious to…

careful or you’ll be living hitchcock’s The Birds but with turkeys

Turkeys seem to be peaceable creatures. It’s the flocks of geese by the river that worry me. And there is a growing population of swans. White feathers, black hearts.

This is a work of genius and terror. *looks nervously out window at dark outlines of roosting turkeys*

Turkeys seem to be peaceable creatures.

You obviously haven’t heard the story of The Man Who Shot Tom the Turkey: A Murder Most Fowl. (Start at 12:59)

dendroica:

Ex-Hill Staffers Put A Spin On The Tea Party Playbook In Anti-Trump Guide

In an online guide made public Wednesday night, a number of those onetime Hill staffers say that the best way for individuals to derail the policy agenda of Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is to organize locally and badger their own congressional representatives to vote against individual pieces of legislation.

The guide argues that, like the “Tea Party patriots” who found common cause in their unified loathing of President Barack Obama, progressives who oppose Trump should stand against him before all else rather than try to articulate a policy agenda that has no hope of advancing while the GOP controls all three branches of government.

“We believe that the next four years depend on citizens across the country standing indivisible against the Trump agenda,” the authors write in the guide, which is formatted as a live Google document. “We believe that buying into false promises or accepting partial concessions will only further empower Trump to victimize our fellow citizens. We hope that this guide will provide those who share that belief useful tools to make Congress listen.”

One of the authors, Ezra Levin, wrote in a Wednesday Facebook post that the guide was compiled to correct the “misinformation” about how to influence Congress that he said has circulated since Election Day.

The guide contains tips on getting members of Congress to listen to their constituents’ voices, such as showing up in groups to town hall meetings and looking “friendly or neutral” to ensure staffers will call on them and allow them to ask pointed questions. The authors also recommend flooding lawmakers’ offices with calls on specific issues and targeting weak Republican candidates ahead of local elections.

The emphasis is on consistent, coordinated, grassroots action that focuses on nitty-gritty policy specifics and individual elected officials.

Here is the guide.

Source: dendroica

House GOP Quietly Closes Flint, Mich. Water Investigation

Well, I suppose that this means that Gov Snyder has successfully avoided any responsibility in the mess, despite the fact that it was his appointed Emergency Manager – usurping all local government control over this decision and disenfranchising Flint voters – who made the decision in the first place.

From the linked article:

While the Republican chairman signaled the apparent conclusion of the inquiry — Congress ended its two-year session last week — the panel’s senior Democrat insisted the investigation should continue and accused Michigan’s Republican governor of stonewalling the committee over documents related to the Flint water crisis.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, senior Democrat on the oversight panel, said he wants Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to produce key Flint-related documents within 30 days. Cummings said Snyder and his administration have obstructed the committee’s investigation into the Flint crisis for a year, refusing to provide — or even search for — key documents.

Snyder’s intransigence has thwarted committee efforts to answer critical questions about what he knew as the crisis unfolded and why he didn’t act sooner to fix Flint’s water problem, Cummings said.

Fascism Watch, December 15

welkinalauda:

s-leary:

Fascism Watch, December 15

Trump

“it’s been very obvious for leaders in Washington on the Republican side that the Russians have been undermining our democracy.”

Trump attacks the editor of Vanity Fair after a scathing review of his restaurant is published. This is not normal.

“Carrier is using the $16.5m investment in the Indiana plant to automate it, which will lead to more layoffs.”

Obamacare repeal = tax cut for…

View On WordPress

[I usually do a separate post just for Tumblr, but I’m traveling this morning, and link posts are unbearably tedious in Tumblr’s mobile app. Just click through today!]

The agency that certifies voting machines was hacked.

This chart from TPC shows how average incomes would change under ACA repeal. You can see that incomes for low-income Americans (the left half of the chart) go down slightly, while incomes for high-income Americans go up pretty significantly as they face fewer taxes.

From Vox: 12/15/16

since1938:

The Force is strong in his binky. Happy Halloween!

Source: since1938

laughingsquid:

Kid Uses a Hoverboard and Shovel to Create a Surprisingly Effective Makeshift Snowplow

Eric Garland’s Game Theory Thread

akumakawa:

On twitter yesterday Eric Garland, a former intelligence analyst, went on a wild and inspiring rant about the Russian involvement in our election, how we got here, what we can do, and how no one is just sitting on their asses allowing this to happen and things are going on under the surface.

As well, this isn’t going to be the end of us. America is built of stronger things than this and we have survived worse and will survive this.

Yesterday, I had this idea that we are Ukraine right now. Manafort got a Putin puppet elected and now we need to rise up and protest this new ‘closer relationship’ to Putin. It’s not just Trump but half of his Cabinet and Advisors with the other half being Goldman Sachs or Generals.

So the question became, what would be our Crimea? What would be sacrificed as payment for getting rid of the Putin puppet? Alaska? Something else?

For now, read these tweets and be inspired.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

Part 12

Part 13

Part 14

Part 15

Part 16

Part 17

Part 18

Part 19

Part 20

Part 21

Part 22

Part 23

Part 24

Part 25

Fired up and ready to go?

Here is Linda Tirado’s tweets on Eric Garland’s tweet storm.

Part 1

Part 2

Now for Linda Tirado’s tweets on patriotism.

Part 1

Part 2

Resist.