"...the real secret of magic is that the world is made of words."

The Whole "Veronica Mars" Gang Is Coming Back For A New Web Series: "When Play It Again, Dick — a web series revolving around Ryan Hansen’s fan favorite Veronica Mars character, Dick Casablancas — was announced in January 2014, creator Rob Thomas described the project like this: “The web series will have more in common with Party Down tonally, but it will be about Ryan Hansen, or at least a version of Ryan Hansen, deciding to capitalize on the current Veronica Mars heat to get his own series on the air. He’ll try to pull his actor pals into the venture with varying degrees of success.” In the subsequent seven months, Thomas has been silent on the series. But with filming on the eight-episode series recently completed, BuzzFeed can now reveal the actors who will join Ryan Hansen — who plays Dick Casablancas and a fictionalized version of himself — in the super-meta series."

Making economics interesting by discovering the obvious.  Prostitution and the internet: More bang for your buck | The Economist:

 "Appearance matters a great deal. The customers who reported encounters to the website we analysed clearly value the stereotypical features of Western beauty: women they describe as slim but not scrawny, or as having long blonde hair or full breasts, can charge the highest hourly rates (see chart 3). Hair that is bleached too unconvincingly to be described as blonde attracts a lower premium, but is still more marketable than any other colour. For those not naturally well endowed, breast implants may make economic sense: going from flat-chested to a D-cup increases hourly rates by approximately $40, meaning that at a typical price of $3,700, surgery could pay for itself after around 90 hours. The 12% share of women featured on the site who are described both as athletic, slim or thin, and as being at least a D-cup, suggests that quite a few have already taken this route." 

  

Ron the Brawler:

"Now if you think you do have rights, one last assignment for you. Next time you're at the computer, get on the internet, go to Wikipedia. When you get to Wikipedia, in the search field for Wikipedia, I want you to type in "Japanese Americans 1942" and you'll find out all about your precious fucking rights, Okay?" - George Carlin

Flickr: manitou2121's Photostream:

Huh, it's almost as if people are biologically hardwired to find certain traits attractive and beautiful.  Nah, that can't be right.  I mean you have different looking people from all over the world who...  Oh.  Wait.  Nevermind.

So close. 

 Still funny.

  

RAWIllumination.net: RAW, from anarchism to libertarianism: " I'm not an anarchist any longer, because I've concluded that anarchism is an impractical ideal. Nowadays, I regard myself as a libertarian. I suppose an anarchist would say, paraphrasing what Marx said about agnostics being "frightened atheists," that libertarians are simply frightened anarchists. Having just stated the case for the opposition, I will go along and agree with them: yes, I am frightened. I'm a libertarian because I don't trust the people as much as anarchists do. I want to see government limited as much as possible; I would like to see it reduced back to where it was in Jefferson's time, or even smaller. But I would not like to see it abolished. I think the average American, if left totally free, would act exactly like Idi Amin. I don't trust the people any more than I trust the government."

RAWIllumination.net: Zine interview with RAW: "The underlying theme is that there are a lot of available realities, and you don't have to live your life in the one your parents bought. There are plenty of  hucksters out there selling alternative realities, and you can buy any one you want for yourself. Or, you don't have to buy any of them -- you can look at them all as an anthropologist does. Or you can rent them and go from one reality to another, trying various ones out, until you find one you like best. Or  you can keep on moving forever without tunneling in any of them."

Training - "Hooked on a Feeling."

8/8 - pullups

The key to matching a PR is, apparently, to bust your ass for an attempt, fail... have a beer, then try again.  23 pullups, matching what I hit last summer, and 15lbs heavier now, so we'll call that 'progress'/getting stronger. Pretty happy with that, considering my numbers dropped down to 17 reps during my bulking "eat all the things/drink all the beers" experiment. For the form nazis, my metric the last few years has been 'chin over the bar/minimal kipping' so take it for what it's worth. Decently satisfied with today's effort. I promise no more self-aggrandizing, attention-whoring pullup videos until I hit 25 reps. Then 30... then 35... Onwards! Also, Guardians of the Galaxy/"Hooked On a Got a Feeling" FTW. 

 Mary Dietz- NPC Figure Competitor

  

  

Ray Bradbury Wins.

"I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room." - Ray Bradbury, via Richard Kadrey's Damn Tumblr

The Stories We Tell Ourselves | Mark's Daily Apple: "Think for a minute about the stories that you tell yourself – about you. Not necessarily the narrative you would like to tell about yourself (some meticulously crafted testimonial or eulogy). In fact, brush away all the public posturing and cocktail party introductions we all end up doing to some degree at least in certain situations. What is the real narrative you live each day when it’s just you and you. In other words, what inner tape ends up playing? What lens gets applied to the outer circumstances? What’s your role, and what characteristics describe this figure you walk around in each day?"

Nuthin' ta fuck with.  Wu-Tang Clan Goes the Full Nine Rappers For 'Daily Show' Performance | Billboard: 

'via Blog this'  

The Daily Show

Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

I came, I saw, I conquered:

dean trippe | moonbase one (Two Sentences): "I read a review of #GotG that said the movie didn’t have a plot, or that it was inexplicable without understanding of the Marvel Comics source material. As someone who has NEVER given two damns about the cosmic stuff in the Ol’ 616 until now, and was able to follow along fairly well, I figured I’d take a swing at breaking it down in two sentences. 

1. Cosmic Hitler hires Space Bin Laden to retrieve a powerful weapon in exchange for wiping out SBL’s enemies, who have recently signed a peace treaty with SBL’s native world. 

2. Five misfit criminals attempt to thwart the plans of these genocidal monsters, for selfish reasons at first, but through teamwork and friendship, find hope, heroism, and happiness. 

Whew. One draft. Didn’t even break a sweat...

Second point, though: SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT 

The same reviewer said the reveal of the present at the end was predictable and cheap, lacking in emotional heft. So, okay, no. Every screenwriting book in the history of screenwriting books would have made that a gift from Peter’s father. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. They set it up the whole damn movie, with big flashing lights, that OH SHIT THAT’S GOING TO BE SOMETHING FROM HIS SPACE DAD, because, every Joseph Campbell-regurgitating Hollywood mofo wants their hero’s journey to be about his dad. How many times do we have to hear about what good men Dr. Thomas Wayne and Jor-El were before someone gives Batman and Superman’s moms something to do in a movie? Yeah, well you know what Peter wanted? THAT GIFT. It’s the best emotional payoff I’ve seen in a film this year. The amount of bullshit studio notes that any other studio would’ve lobbed at the simplicity of that reveal would bury the Milano. Hugs and high-fives to Gunn and Perlman from another kid with a great mom."

  

Blame World War I For Whistleblower Persecution—And So Much More - Reason.com: "...the Obama administration, after bringing charges against Edward Snowden, "has used the Espionage Act more to go after whistleblowers who leaked to journalists not just than any previous administration, but then more than all previous administrations combined." The claim was subsequently endorsed by PolitiFact as "true." That's a shocking use of government power to punish those who would call government officials out for their misbehavior, but hardly an unaccustomed role for for a law passed during World War I and quickly used to muzzle critics of official policy...

In fact, the "war to end all wars" left a legacy of government dominance and intrusive power in its wake that officials still exploit, and from which the country continues to suffer. In its original form, the Espionage Act was used to prosecute Robert Goldstein for producing a movie about the American Revolution. The U.S. having recently allied itself with Britain against Germany, Goldstein's historically rooted portrayal of British soldiers as the bad guys was considered an attempt to hobble the war effort. He served three years in prison for his cinematic labors."

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:

 
whedonesque: "pirrips: When the actors are, actually, their characters"

 

What I Learned about Atheists from God’s Not Dead: "If there’s one thing religion does well, it’s teach people to do as they’re told en masse. There’s so much I could say about suffering through this glorified youth group skit turned feature length film.  Much has already been said by friends of mine and I could add far too much more myself.  It’s like the gift that keeps on giving (just like heartburn).  Even during my Christian days I’m certain I would have been nauseated by this terrible movie’s wooden dialogue, forced drama, and two-dimensional characters."

Training - "I would be so mad."

8/7 - squats, leg xt, hip xt, pullups, chins - stretch - pushups

Bodybuilding.com - Body Transformation: Danny Figueredo Sliced His Weight In Half!:

  

 I came, I saw, I conquered.

Bas Rutten - My buddy Jens Grau started MMA at 38 and is now...: 
"My buddy Jens Grau started MMA at 38 and is now fighting his first pro fight, weighed 245 pounds when he came, I told him he "Needed to lose that" and fights now at 205 and is 43 years old. He did this interview for Legacy FC, the show is the 28th this month"


Jens “The Sandman” Grau | Legacy Fighting Championship: "Many people feel that after a certain age you shouldn’t start training mixed martial arts, let alone compete in it, but not Grau. “I was thirty-eight when I started MMA. I feel like I’m 25 now. I can give and take a beating. In the beginning you take a beating; you think that the sport is all about muscle, but it’s only later that you realize that you need to relax, and you relax into what you are doing.”"

The world is not an illusion, but it is a process of abstraction of the human nervous system.

The human mirroring of the outside process that is occurring. 

Language Creates the Illusion of Reality. Here's How: "...philosopher and mathematician Alfred Korzybski explains how reality as we know it is not an illusion, but an abstraction of the mind. His explanation is quite literally mind blowing. Korzybski explains that reality works the way a fan does. When a fan is stationary, its blades all appear individual and separate. However, when the fan begins to rotate, the individual blades now appear as a rotating disc. The disc is not an illusion, says Korzybski, but an image abstracted by the senses. In other words, the mind fills in the blanks. When we look at an apple, says Korzybski, we do not see the particles and processes that produce the object. Like the individual fan blades that appear to become a disc, we see instead a solid red piece of fruit that we agree looks like something we call an apple. We create the apple–in Korzybski’s words, the apple is “man made.”"

Don't Cheer Obama's 'Ban' on Torture | Freedom of the Press Foundation: "...isn’t banning what’s already illegal just kind of a suspenders-and-a-belt thing? A bit of emphasis, an arguably redundant exclamation point? No, it’s not. Purporting to ban what is already illegal is in fact terribly insidious. And here’s why, in two axioms. 1. What fundamentally makes something a law is that if you violate it, you will face punishment. 2. What one president can prohibit, another can permit. Put these two concepts together, and what do you get when a president reacts to governmental law-breaking by: (1) not prosecuting anyone involved; and (2) instead “banning” what they did?  What you get is not a proscription of law, but a policy of choice.  And this is why Obama’s notion that he has the power to “ban” torture, and his failure to prosecute anyone who ordered it, is so insidious, so caustic to the rule of law (and note that Obama hasn’t even “banned” all torture—only some!). Obama is cementing in the mind of the public the notion that torture is not a crime, but merely a policy choice." 

Jim Jefferies, better than the bible.  

This is why Liberia can't have nice things.  ‘God is angry with Liberia,’ local religious leaders say, blaming Ebola on ‘homosexualism’ - The Washington Post

I Love Cosplay:

The sun is good for you.  ChAoS & PAIN: Fuck the Treadmill- I've Got A Real Warmup For You #2: "Like most things that people have considered to be a part of normal, everyday life for the entirety of human history, like drinking, eating red meat, putting salt on food, and having promiscuous sex, the powers that be have warned against sun exposure for the last 30 years as if sunlight was some new and horrible emission from space humanity had never faced.  While any thinking person would conclude that the hysteria about exposure to sunlight was, rightly, naught but the produce of gibbering, pants-shitting insanity, the slower ruminants among us have seen fit to slather themselves with opaque glop in an effort to prevent a single ray of sunlight ever reaching their epidermis.

Again, thinking persons should find this hilarious- after all, what the fuck do these cattle think they're rubbing on their skin?  Natural botanical oils?  Not bloody likely.  Instead, these blubbering halfwits are slathering themselves in carcinogens to offset the extremely highly unlikely onset of melanoma- yeah, that's right... EXTREMELY UNLIKELY.  According to the editor of Reuters Health, less than .3% (three tenths of one percent) developed melanoma, even in people who use tanning beds frequently (Oransky).  So, in an effort to avoid something that's less likely than a woman dying during childbirth in North America, people are soaking themselves in oxybenzone, which has been linked to hormone disruption and cell damage that might cause skin cancer, and retinyl palmitate, which "may speed the development of skin tumors and lesions when applied to the skin in the presence of sunlight" (Dellorto, Problem).  Think you're dodging that bullet?  you're likely not- according to the Environmental Working Group, only "Twenty-five percent of 800 tested sunscreens are effective at protecting your skin without the use of potentially harmful ingredients" (Dellorto).  In other words, your odds are not good when using sunscreen.

Oh, but consumer genius doesn't end there.  When they douse their disgusting fat bodies in carcinogens, they don't just expose themselves to an increased risk of cancer- the same people who slather themselves with sunblock are the ones who go out of their way to avoid sun exposure in general, which is awesome because that limits their Vitamin D production.  Studies have shown that melanoma patients with more sun exposure have an increased rate of survival over patients without intermittent lifetime sun exposure, that "intermittent sun exposure had a tendency to be inversely associated with the risk of death from melanoma" (Rosso), and that people with the highest concentrations of Vitamin D in the blood had the thinnest melanomas (making them easier to treat), greatest survivability of melanoma, and least incidence of melanoma (Caini).  In short, getting a tan is considerably healthier than looking like Casper the Friendly Ghost."