"Don't let the darkness get to you. Either inhabit and enjoy it, or turn up the lights and wait for dawn, because it won't be too far away." - Warren Ellis
The Bells The Bells | MORNING, COMPUTER: "Years feel like they get tired and grim. January 1 feels like a clean slate and a fresh start, as if we’ve been released from prison with all the charges wiped from the record. This, we say, will be a better year. We’re climbing the walls on December 31, wondering if this horrible fucking year will ever end, waiting for the bells to dispel its ghostly miasma. New Year’s is a story we tell ourselves, of course. It’s absolute bullshit. We all know it. But it’s a good story, so we keep on telling it. Every year, on and on. And who’s to say that, one golden year, it might not come true? It’s a terrible thing to do to ourselves. How long do you have to tell a story before it somehow, alchemically, comes true? Just because we’ve been wanting it, all of us, for so long? Who knows? This might yet be the year."
North Korea/Sony Story Shows How Eagerly U.S. Media Still Regurgitate Government Claims - The Intercept: "It’s tempting to say that the U.S. media should have learned by now not to uncritically disseminate government claims, particularly when those claims can serve as a pretext for U.S. aggression. But to say that, at this point, almost gives them too little credit. It assumes that they want to improve, but just haven’t yet come to understand what they’re doing wrong. But that’s deeply implausible. At this point - eleven years after the run-up to the Iraq War and 50 years after the Gulf of Tonkin fraud - any minimally sentient American knows full well that their government lies frequently. Any journalist understands full well that assuming government claims to be true, with no evidence, is the primary means by which U.S. media outlets become tools of government propaganda. U.S. journalists don’t engage in this behavior because they haven’t yet realized this. To the contrary, they engage in this behavior precisely because they do realize this: because that is what they aspire to be. If you know how journalistically corrupt it is for large media outlets to uncritically disseminate evidence-free official claims, they know it, too. Calling on them to stop doing that wrongly assumes that they seek to comport with their ostensible mission of serving as watchdogs over power. That’s their brand, not their aspiration or function."
YES. Kung Fu Monkey: LIBRARIANS #105 "Apple of Discord" Answer post: "The Library-verse is one where multiple magical realms overlap with a secret pulp history of the world. There is not one conspiracy, or secret organization, or secret struggle. All of them are happening. All of them are true, and probably not exactly the version you've read about. We retain the right to remix pulp culture."
Stephen Amell Releases Trailer For Dudes Being Dudes in Wine Country - Bleeding Cool : "One of the things Stephen Amell did after Arrow took off was to open a winery with his friend Andrew Harding called Nocking Point. Now Amell and Harding are doing a new webseries called Dudes Being Dudes In Wine Country. And they have released a trailer for the series that launched in March. If nothing else it looks like these two are having fun and in the series we may learn about making wine."
Life Lessons From Highly Successful People - Business Insider: "...both Marcus Aurelius, an emperor, and Epictetus, a slave, both subscribed to the idea of stoicism. You can't predict pleasure or pain. You can only strive for knowledge and giving and fairness and health each day."
Guy Who Attacked Female Worker Is a 'Hulking Brute.' Oh Wait, He's a Cop? Nevermind. - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "...the stark differences between the two make clear the incredible double standard of reporting on the public's misdeeds vs. reporting on police misdeeds. Many in the media possess an overriding presumption that everything the police do must be justified—even when police actions would be considered horrifying if carried out by anyone not wearing a badge."
