Relaxed Focus: Today's Internets - "Pain is important..."

"Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it." — Audre Lorde via fuck yeah yoga

This little sub-plot was one of my favorite things... - APE IN A CAPE:

"This little sub-plot was one of my favorite things in my Wonder Woman run. It was inspired by stories of kindness I had read as displayed by character actors at Disneyland, of all things. There had been several stories of the actors who play Peter Pan, the various princesses, and other characters showing extraordinary kindness and humanity to attendees who showed signs of being in crisis. When one attendee with suicidal thoughts and a substance abuse problem was cheered up by one of these actors, the actor took them aside and told them firmly, “It’ll be all right if you stop now." And it made a big difference in that person’s life, that a stranger cared enough about them to risk their job to speak to them directly like that.

Those stories of kindness have really stuck with me. I’ve seen many of these actors say remarkably kind, loving things…I understand that it’s a job, but some seem to go quite beyond their ‘duty’ to encourage people who are down in some way. In this story, Dinah is at a meeting in Hollywood on business, but when she realizes that one of the lawyers present has a drinking problem and is depressed, she forgets all selfish pursuits and speaks to the woman alone, and her quote is a direct quote from that Disneyland cast member story. “It’ll be all right if you stop now." I think Superman and Batman are wonderful, I love them. But I’ll take Wonder Woman’s compassion any day of the week."

They're going to rise up and kill us all one day, you know - Acrobatic robot with parkour moves - Boing Boing:

"The University of Pennsylvania's RHex robot is an all-terrain walker that has been in development for a decade. The robot's inventors have been programming obstacle-traversing strategies derived from parkour, getting it to do "double jumps, flips, and, through a combination of moves, even pull-ups...""

Coffee literally gives you a reason to live - Coffee drinking linked to 50% lower risk of suicide:

"Go ahead and add this to the "Pro" column on the ever-growing list of reasons to either avoid coffee or guzzle it down wholesale: new research out of the Harvard School of Public Health concludes drinking several cups of coffee a day could reduce the risk of suicide in men and women by about 50%."

The 90's were different.

Carb-Loaded: A Culture Dying to Eat by Lathe Poland & Eric Carlsen — Kickstarter:

"A documentary film examining the reasons behind the enormous spike in diabetes and obesity over the last three decades. Carb-Loaded: A Culture Dying to Eat is a documentary film being produced by Lathe Poland and Eric Carlsen. The film will explore the exploding diabetes epidemic. Not by coincidence, Lathe was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 2010. He always thought of himself as a healthy eater. He rarely ate sweets, never drank soda, and had no family history of diabetes. Why would a seemingly healthy thirty-something like Lathe get a disease like this? The misconception that he had, like many people, was that diabetes is either hereditary and it’s not your fault, or you eat junk food like it’s going out of style and you end up diabetic."

"According to The Journal Pediatrics, pre-diabetes and diabetes cases in children ages 12-19, grew from 9% in the year 2000 to 23% in 2008." Is our lifestyle, culture, or food ecosystem enabling the sky-rocketing increase in diabetes and obesity? Or is it the catalyst? More importantly, can this wave of momentum be reversed? These are the questions that will be answered in the film Carb-Loaded: A Culture Dying to Eat. Leading nutrition scientists, doctors and researchers will weigh in on this unparalleled epidemic. Additionally, the film will explore our connection to a food culture that may be responsible for the most expensive healthcare crisis in modern memory."

Most. Transparent. Administration. [Gods, I hate them so much] - Obama Promises, Including Whistleblower Protections, Disappear From Website:

"Amid the Obama administration's crackdown against whistleblowers, Change.gov, the 2008 website of the Obama transition team laying out the candidate's promises, has disappeared from the internet. The Sunlight Foundation notes that it last could be viewed on June 8, which was two days after the first revelations from Edward Snowden (who had then not yet revealed himself) about the NSA's phone surveillance program. One of the promises Obama made on the website was on "whistleblower protections:

Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.

The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment on why the page was deleted."

You can't convince me this doesn't happen often, or that officials don't tacitly condone it - Undercover Informant Plants Crack Cocaine in Smoke Shop, Business Owner Saved by Tape - Hit & Run : Reason.com:
"They sent an informant, someone facing jail time of their own, to, er, “investigate.” Here’s what happened, via the local NBC affiliate, WNYT: The second time, [Donald] Andrews's attorney Kevin Luibrand does play by play that appears to show the informant planting, then photographing crack cocaine that led to Andrews arrest. "He comes in," Luibrand narrated over video shot on in-store surveillance cameras. "Places the crack on the counter. Crack, which under federal sentencing guidelines, would get him 4 years in jail. Under New York State law would get him 2 to 7 years in jail." There are seven cameras in plain view in Andrews small store. Andrews was arrested until he was able to show police the surveillance video exonerating him. WNYT reports the county sheriff admitted procedures were not followed and blamed the informant, who has apparently gone missing."