"You know what? I'm gonna make you a mix tape. You like Phil Collins?"

"I've got two ears and a heart, don't I?"

Phil Collins Joins Middle School Band for First Public Performance Since 2010, Is Awesome | BroBible.com: "Last week, Phil Collins nonchalantly joined a middle school band in Miami to reprise some of his greatest hits. The former Genesis frontman and hero to all hadn’t rocked out in public since 2010, probably because he was waiting for the perfect gig."

NSA can't find any emails from Snowden, then it can (convenient, no?) - Boing Boing: "Yesterday, the NSA released an email from Edward Snowden to his superiors asking about the legality of NSA spying, claiming it was the only evidence they had that he ever tried to go through channels before turning leaker; on its face, this is pretty damning. But there's one problem: six months ago, the NSA claimed that they had no emails of the sort from Snowden, and then this one happened to turn up just in time to counter Snowden's allegations on US TV that he'd tried to blow the whistle from inside."

This ‘How Often People Masturbate’ Chart Seems Just a Touuuuuuch Inaccurate | BroBible.com: "Goddamn. You learn something new everyday. Even if what you just learned is off of a chart comprised of stats compiled from an ocean of lies. You heard me, LIES." 

Here's Every 'Song of the Summer' For the Last 100 Years: "How DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s smash hit, “Summertime” isn’t on this list of every song of the summer for the last 100 years is beyond me. The news of this might actually be the travesty of my day."

 

Police Filmed Wrongly Arresting Libertarian Gubernatorial Candidate - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Minneapolis police are backpedaling after wrongly arresting, citing, and injuring Minnesota Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate Chris Holbrook yesterday. According to a local ABC affiliate, Holbrook and "party members [were] sorting literature and getting ready to get signatures for his upcoming campaign"—their sixth consecutive day doing so—when "park patrol approached them and said they were violating a park ordinance and they had called the police." Officer Brian Woodfill told the candidate that he needed a permit to be petitioning, told him stop filming the cops, and then cited him for allegedly violating Park Board Ordinance PB2-15, "use of parks, parkways and waters for financial gain." Petitioning is not actually within the scope of this ordinance...  Park Police Chief Jason Ohotta personally apologized to Holbrook, dismissed the citation, and today announced that an internal investigation will take place."

Toddler Bounkham Phonesavanh Severely Burned After Georgia SWAT Team Tosses Stun Grenade In Crib: "A 19-month-old toddler, Bounkham Phonesavanh, was seriously injured early Wednesday morning during a SWAT team raid on the Georgia home his family was staying in... Officers were looking for Wanis Thometheva at the home in Cornelia, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Thometheva sold methamphetamine to an undercover police officer on Tuesday evening, authorities said, and they visited the home to arrest him. But at the time of the raid, Thometheva wasn’t home. "

SWAT Team Reportedly Throws Flash Bang, Burns Toddler During No-Knock Raid - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Bounkham Phonesavanh, a nineteen month old toddler, is in a medically-induced coma after reportedly suffering severe burns when a SWAT team from the Habersham County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia threw a flash grenade into his home during a no-knock raid apparently over a drug purchase made there earlier in the week. Sheriff Joey Terrell said officers asked the informant who directed them to the house whether there were any children and were told there weren’t so there was nothing they could have done to prevent it...

Whether the sheriff’s office should be executing no-knock warrants on homes because they can find informants to buy drugs from there seems like something Terrell, the GBI or the DA could “look at.” Unless the social media activists launch the right hash tag to end the war on drugs, Bounkham Phonesavanh is unlikely to be its last child victim. No one thinks of the children when cops get to play commando."

When Drug Warriors Burn a Baby, Who's the Terrorist? - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Habersham County, Georgia, Sheriff Joey Terrell feels bad that his deputies horribly burned a toddler by tossing a "distraction device" (a.k.a. a "flash bang" grenade) into the playpen where he was sleeping during a drug raid on Wednesday morning. "The baby didn't deserve this," Terrell concedes in an interview with AccessNorthGa.com. "The family didn't deserve this. This family was displaced from another home down here and apparently just moved in...

But it turns out Terrell does have an answer: 'The person I blame in this whole thing is the person selling the drugs. Wanis Thonetheva, that's the person I blame in all this. They are no better than a domestic terrorist..'

Terrell sees nothing wrong with sending a heavily armed SWAT team into an alleged meth dealer's home in the middle of the night, which inevitably endangers not only the dealer but anyone else who happens to be there. In Terrell's mind, that is not an act of aggression. It was Wanis Thonetheva who attacked first by agreeing to sell speed to people who wanted it. Hence Thonetheva is a "domestic terrorist," harming an innocent child because all he cares about is making money. Terrorists, of course, are usually motivated by politics rather than greed. And it was not Thonetheva who sent Alecia Phonesavanh's 19-month-old son, Bounkham, to the hospital with severe burns. One of Terrell's deputies did that, in service of a political ideology that says people may not alter their consciousness in ways that are not approved by the government. "He is in a medically induced coma and he is paralyzed," Phonesavanh told WSB-TV, the ABC affiliate in Atlanta. "I hope he's not going to remember this. I know his sisters, his mommy, and his daddy will never forget this. Our kids have been through enough this year. This is just more trauma that they didn't need, and I just wish there was something better I could do to make it better for him. Wrong place, wrong time."

That place is America, and that time is a period during which police believe it is their duty to launch military-style assaults on civilians who sell politically incorrect drugs, knowing full well that there is bound to be "collateral damage" like this from time to time. After Bounkham recovers from the injuries inflicted by his government and becomes old enough to ask what happened that night, is there any explanation that will make sense to him?"

Sheriff in Burned Baby Raid Wants Your Prayers; Target of Warrant Could Be Charged For Injuries to Toddler - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Terrell has insisted his officers and those of the local police department did nothing wrong and blamed the target of the warrant (not found at the house that was invaded) on the attack on the toddler. A chief assistant district attorney for the county, J. Edward Staples, says the target of the warrant could in fact be charged for the injuries the sheriff's deputies caused the toddler. In an obvious attempt to immunize himself and his office from liability, the sheriff has claimed the situation was unavoidable even as he attempted to offer reassurances that his SWAT team would be more diligent in the future. He told CNN that his officers "obviously would have done things different" (IF they knew there was a child in the home), like go in through a side door or not use a flash bang. Until using violence to crack down on non-violent "crimes" becomes politically untenable for "public servants," it won't matter how much ass-covering law enforcement does after the fact, these kinds of incidents will continue to happen."

Drug task force that burned a toddler this week also killed an innocent pastor in 2009

 

Training - "I want to bring honor to my clan, but I have reasonable expectations..."

5/30 - squats, calf press, neck n/r/harness, shadowbox, heavy bag, rnc/grappling dummy

Just when you thought Anthony Bourdain couldn't get more bad-ass, he takes up BJJ at age 57.  Outstanding.  Meet the Bourdains: Anthony and Ottavia on MMA, radioactive monkey colons, In-N-Out vs. Five Guys, the world's best beef, and 'bro-food' - SBNation.com: "At the age of 57, Bourdain has already earned the first stripe on his white belt under the tutelage of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, Renzo Gracie. It's actually a very impressive accomplishment considering his hectic travel schedule. His wife, Ottavia, has been an avid jiu-jitsu practitioner for several years under Gracie and maintains a highly active schedule on the competition circuit. It was her passion that inspired Anthony to pick up the discipline seriously, and he too hopes to take part in an age appropriate division competitively...

How often do you two roll together now?  

Ottavia: I let him use me as his grappling dummy, and we drill. We don't really roll because we had a bad experience [laughs]. Anthony: No, we had two, and both rolling experiences have ended really, really badly. I caught an elbow to the face the first time, and I did something to her shoulder the second time. I'm too clumsy and large, and she's too dangerous. It's just a bad mix. Ottavia: We can drill techniques, but we learned our lesson with trying to roll...

When I spoke to you last year, you told me jiu-jitsu wasn't for you, that you weren't youthful enough physically to take up such a challenging activity on a regular basis. What changed your mind from then to now? 

Anthony: Ottavia bribed me and a few friends into doing...I don't know, it was some knuckleheaded article [laughs]. Whatever it was, she bribed me—I won't say with what exactly—but it was fair compensation for what I thought was going to be a pretty unpleasant experience.  I went in, and I did an hour private, and I guess this happens to a lot of people. I came out of it thinking, ‘I suck, but I didn't suck that horribly.' I started thinking about it a lot afterward. I was proud of myself, and other than the pain part initially, I felt pretty good. I just kept thinking, ‘How could I do that better?' I figured, ‘Okay, let me try another one.' I enjoyed that one and it went a little bit easier for me. I just kept doing it, and now I'm hooked. Today was the hardest session I've had by far, but there's a big difference as far as cardio goes. I had to take minimal breaks today, and they were short ones at that. I'm pretty happy with it. It's weird, I find myself in bed falling asleep, thinking about kimuras. I certainly didn't see that coming.

Ottavia: He used to complain about me watching the instructionals for hours on end, and now he's right there with me, mesmerized. 

Anthony: Nobody has been more surprised than me. I've really been enjoying it. I try not to be annoying about it at home, because everybody else is obsessed with it, but the fact is, I'm thinking about it a lot more than I ever could have anticipated...

Who do you want having your back in a dark alley fight, Ottavia or hired security? 

Anthony: Gee, I don't know. In a bar fight, I'd definitely like my wife around, because no one would see it coming, and all she would have to do is get within arm's reach, and it's pretty much over. A woman in seven inch heels slipping up behind you...yeah, definitely in a bar fight, if someone takes a swing at me, I'd like to have Ottavia around [laughs]. In a back alley, I'm a big believer in bringing a bazooka to a gun fight...

Are you feeling and seeing the results of your training physically, aside from not coughing up a lung? 

Anthony: Absolutely. It feels good, and I'm having fun. It's a family affair, a togetherness thing. I'm liking it, but I'm trying to be reasonable about it. My wife is serious about it. She's a competitor. I'm not. I'm a dilettante. I want to bring honor to my clan, but I have reasonable expectations. Let's put it that way."

And of course, since it's Bourdain, you get this -- 

"Tell me about the time you took Alton Brown to the strip club. 

Anthony: That was one of my prouder moments. I managed to convince Alton to come out to the Clermont Lounge in Atlanta. It's not just a strip club, it's the lost luggage department of strip clubs. It is truly an amazing place, so I'm really proud of that moment [laughs]. I think the average stripper's age was like 55 or something. His discomfort was exquisite."

Buffyshot - @fitspovate:

"Take a look. It's in a book."

Star Trek Impressions For Patrick Stewart: "Watching Michael Fassbender And James McAvoy do impressions of their future selves in the X-Men movies right in front of the magnificent actors who play said future selves, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, is WONDERFUL."

Levar Burton wins all of the internets forever.  LeVar Burton Reading Rainbow Kickstarter Return Interview : People.com: "After 23 years of introducing kids to the power of the written word, Reading Rainbow's final episode aired on November 16, 2006 – but now the childhood favorite is making a big comeback. On Wednesday, host and executive producer of Reading Rainbow LeVar Burton announced the brand's next chapter on Kickstarter. "Bring Reading Rainbow Back for Every Child, Everywhere" is an online campaign started by the Roots actor and his Reading Rainbow team to transform the company's impressive collection of books into an interactive digital library accessible to every child. The project's beginning goal was to raise $1 million in 35 days, with all donations going to help make this virtual Reading Rainbow a real program available free to schools, especially those in need. In less than 24 hours, Reading Rainbow reached its initial goal amount thanks to thousands of backers, and the pledges continue to pour in. Currently, the campaign has garnered over $1.8 million; the donation period continues through July 2. "

 Bring Reading Rainbow Back for Every Child, Everywhere. by LeVar Burton & Reading Rainbow — Kickstarter: "Hi. LeVar Burton here. You may know me as Kunta Kinte, from ROOTS, or Geordi La Forge, from Star Trek: The Next Generation.  You also may have grown up with me on Reading Rainbow.  It was my mother who taught me that, by picking up a book, I could "go anywhere" and "be anything." Ever since Reading Rainbow began in 1983, I have dedicated myself to fostering a love of reading in children, just as my mother did for me.  Over the past year, I have watched Kickstarter bring communities together to support artists and inventors. Again and again, I have been inspired by watching like-minded people team up to accomplish impossible dreams, and to change the world.  Now, I am hoping you will join me on my mission: to bring Reading Rainbow back for every child, everywhere."

Levar Burton's reaction to reaching $1 million - YouTube

Steven Pinker: US women's rights movement made lawmakers treat rape seriously - The Times of India: " The rampage shootings in the US are less readily explained. Three things go into them - mental illness, low status that triggers a desire for revenge and a desire for fame, even posthumously, killing innocent people the only way of becoming famous. In that way, rampage killers overlap with suicide terrorists."

Elliot Rodger's 'War on Women' and Toxic Gender Warfare - Reason.com: "For one thing, "misogyny" is a very incomplete explanation of Rodger's mindset, perhaps best described as malignant narcissism with a psychopathic dimension. His "manifesto" makes it clear that his hatred of women (the obverse side of his craving for validation by female attention, which he describes as so intense that a hug from a girl was infinitely more thrilling than an expression of friendship from a boy) was only a subset of a general hatred of humanity, and was matched by hatred of men who had better romantic and sexual success. At the end of the document, he chillingly envisions an ideal society in which women will be exterminated except for a small number of artificial-insemination breeders and sexuality will be abolished. But in an Internet posting a year ago, he also fantasized about inventing a virus that would wipe out all males except for himself: "You would be able to have your pick of any beautiful woman you want, as well as having dealt vengeance on the men who took them from you. Imagine how satisfying that would be." His original plans for his grand exit included not only a sorority massacre he explicitly called his "War on Women," but luring victims whom he repeatedly mentions in gender-neutral terms to his apartment for extended torture and murder (and killing his own younger brother, whom he hated for managing to lose his virginity)...

 "Some have argued that hating other men because they get to have sex with women and you don't is still a form of misogyny; but that seems like a good example of stretching the concept into meaninglessness—or turning it into unfalsifiable quasi-religious dogma...

Of course, four of the six people Rodger actually killed were men: his three housemates, whom he stabbed to death in their beds before embarking on his fatal journey, and a randomly chosen young man in a deli. Assertions that all men share responsibility for the misogyny and male violence toward women that Rodger's actions are said to represent essentially place his male victims on the same moral level as the murderer—which, if you think about it, is rather obscene. And the deaths of all the victims, female and male, are trivialized when they are commemorated with a catalogue of often petty sexist or sexual slights, from the assertion that every single woman in the world has been sexually harassed to the complaint that a woman's "no" is often met with an attempt to negotiate a "yes."

...A common theme of #YesAllWomen is that our culture promotes the notion that women owe men sex and encourages male violence in response to female rejection. (It does? One could much more plausibly argue that our culture promotes the notion that men must "earn" sex from women and treats the rejected male as a pathetic figure of fun.) Comic-book writer Gail Simone tweeted that she doesn't know "a single woman who has never encountered with that rejection rage the killer shows in the video," though of course to a lesser degree. Actually, I do know women who have never encountered it. I also know men who have, and a couple of women who have encountered it from other women. I myself have experienced it twice: once from an ex-boyfriend, and once from a gay woman on an Internet forum who misinterpreted friendliness on my part as romantic interest. There was a common thread in both these cases: mental illness aggravated by substance abuse...

Yes, virtually all spree killers are male, though there are notable exceptions such as Illinois mass shooter Laurie Dann and Alabama biology professor Amy Bishop; but the number of such killers is so vanishingly small that a man's chance of being one is only slightly higher than a woman's. As for the more frequent kind of homicide feminists often describe as expressions of murderous misogyny—such as killings of women by intimate partners or ex-partners—the gender dynamics of such violence are far more complex. If patriarchal rage and misogynist hatred are the underlying cause, how does one explain intimate homicide in same-sex relationships without resorting to tortuous, ideology-driven pseudo-logic? How does one explain the fact that some 30 percent of victims in such slayings are men (excluding cases in which a woman kills in clear self-defense)? What feminist paradigm explains the actions of Clara Harris, the Houston dentist who repeatedly ran over her unfaithful husband with a car (and got a good deal of public sympathy)? Or the actions of Susan Eubanks, the California woman who shot and killed her four sons to punish their fathers, apparently because she was angry about being "screwed by men" after her latest boyfriend walked out?

...Defenders of #YesAllWomen say that the posts in the hashtag do not target all men. Maybe not; but they push the idea that all women—including women in advanced liberal democracies in the 21st century—are victims of pervasive and relentless male terrorism, and that any man who does not denounce it on feminist terms is complicit. They wrongly frame virtually all interpersonal violence (and lesser injuries) as male-on-female, ignoring both male victims and female perpetrators, and express sympathy for boys only insofar as boys are supposedly "raised around the drumbeat mantra that women are not human beings." And sometimes, they almost literally dehumanize men. A tweet observing that "the odds of being attacked by a shark are 1 in 3,748,067, while a woman's odds of being raped are 1 in 6 … yet fear of sharks is seen as rational while being cautious of men is seen as misandry" was retweeted almost 1,000 times."

I am only Foreign Service Problems adjacent, but I've done all these, at least.

 Anthony Bourdain, SHUT UP AND EAT: "A frequent comment on food websites is that I should avoid discussion of politics or social conditions and concentrate on the food. My host, serving me a humble but tasty Lao style laarb could be missing three out of four of his limbs but God forbid I ask the question: “Hey there, fella…what happened to your arm and legs?” The answer might intrude on someone’s vicarious eating experience...

So there should be much rejoicing in chowland that this Sunday’s episode of PARTS UNKNOWN is “all about the food.” Ironically enough, it takes place in one of the most politicized environments on earth: Thailand—where, it seems, every time we go, there are civil actions, military coups, changes of government. I’d like to say that the politics of Thailand are just too complicated, too fast changing, too impenetrable for me to ever understand much less explain, hence my focus on food and drink. I’d like to say it was because the latest military takeover happened after we were there—rather than just before—or during. But that wouldn’t be true.

Fact is, I chose to focus on eating—and specifically drinking in Northern Thailand around Chiang Mai simply because I was fortunate enough to go there with a uniquely qualified guide. Chef Andy Ricker of Portland and New York’s “Pok Pok” restaurants. He may be a farang, but he’s been moving back and forth between Thailand and America for 20 years or more and…well…just eat his food sometime and you’ll know what I’m talking about.  Basically, it’s an entire hour of prolonged bender, an increasingly addled tuk-tuk ride from place to place shoving delicious things into my face, washed down with (variously) Thai “whiskey”, moonshine, and beer. Naturally, things ended badly...

Northern Thailand, by the way, offers some of the best reasons for why, when traveling at least, a vegan might consider suspending their restrictions. Because to experience the place without trying the splendiferous variety of pork products would be sad enough. To ignore the end result of a heavily protein based cuisine shaped, over centuries by influences Lao, Chinese, Burmese and Indian, a missed opportunity. But to avoid the deep, ubiquitous, mysterious funk of the local shrimp pastes would be to turn one’s back on the totality of human endeavor.  I say this without malice. "

 Empty-Brooke (B. Void) on deviantART

They've tweaked Cap's uniform for Avengers II.  Which is good, because it looked off in the first Avengers...

By then end of The Winter Soldier they'd gone back, basically, to the WWII outfit, which is the sharpest imho.

Though the 'SHIELD Stealth' uniform was pretty cool.  Man... I'm a geek.

Training - "To conquer frustration, one must remain intensely focused on the outcome, not the obstacles." - T.F. Hodge

5/29 - dips, chins

Bodybuilding.com - Body Transformation: Jareem Maduro Is The Master Of Shred Success!

P90X3 - Timeline Photos: " Emily K. is a busy student with an hour commute each way, busy class schedule, and spends her days off at work. She only had #30minutes to workout, so she chose P90X3, followed the classic schedule and lost 27.2 pounds in 90 days! "

Under the Ropes - Timeline Photos

anextrascoopforcunning Hi there, everyone! My...: "Hi there, everyone! My name is Sara, and this is my transformation. 110 lbs GONE, never to return. I went from morbidly obese to studying for my personal training certification in a year and a half, and I could not be happier. Sorry about the photo quality, by the way… I’m a bit camera shy and these are some of the best photos I have. Haha. My favorite advice to give everyone in regards to working out is to find something you LIKE doing. Exercise shouldn’t always be grueling and miserable. Personally, I’ve fallen in love with boxing and weight lifting, so I look forward to doing those things every day. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact me, I love talking to people!  Stats: Height- 5’6” Highest weight- 250 lbs  Current Weight- 140 lbs"