"To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world..."

"...an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control." - Martha Nussbaum

fuck yeah yoga: 

"Life is hard, and then you realize, it isn’t. Today, drop the chatter, take a breath, and enjoy the ease."

"We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph." - Elie Wiesel

Fred On Everything: "It is curious: Though I have spent a lifetime in journalism, I do not read a newspaper, not the New York Times nor the Washington Post nor the Wall Street Journal. Nor do I have television service. Why? Because, having worked in that restaurant, I know better than to eat there. The foregoing media are quasi-governmental organs, predictably predictable and predictably dishonest. The truth is not in them. Within the news racket, this isn’t news. More interesting is that a large part of the intelligent population agrees. We now have a press of two tiers, the establishment media and the net, with sharply differing narratives. The internet is now primary. The bright get their news from around the web and then read the New York Times to see how the paper of record will pevaricate. People increasingly judge the media by the web, not the web by the media...

The major outlets (this will not be a blinding insight) as always are in near-lockstep—that is, controlled.  Reporters understand the rules perfectly. You do not, not ever, criticize Israel. You don’t say anything remotely interpretable as racist. Women are sacrosanct. Do not offend the sexually baroque. The endless wars get minimal coverage and almost nothing that would upset the public. Huge military contracts get almost no mention. None of this is accidental. It is well and slickly done. We have all heard Lincoln’s dictum, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” Being a pol, he didn’t add the crucial, “But you can fool enough of the people enough of the time.” Here is the secret. You don’t need to ban unwelcome books, because the only people who read them already agree with them. You don’t need to kick in doors at three in the morning to seize forbidden typewriters. People might revolt against that sort of thing. Just keep prohibited topics off the networks and out of the papers. It is enough...

This system is breaking down under the onslaught of the internet. Papers are losing both credibility and circulation. So are the networks...

The future? Good question. A reasonable guess: We will see growing global intellectual electro-Balkanization. Declining circulation of newspapers as fewer see any reason to read them.  The separation of people and state. Television becoming even more of a cultural slum, if that is possible. Decreasing ability of the guberno-media complex (I actually said that, didn’t I?) to control opinion. Because of lateral communication, growing ability of voiceless groups to realize that they are numerous and have interests in common. It’s a new ball game"

The more things change the more things stay the same.  Pryor told ya'll 35 years ago.  "Police got a choke hold they use out here... did you know that?  Niggers going 'Yeah, we knew.'  White folks are 'No, I had no idea.'    [Also, who's better at standup than Richard Pryor?  It's a short damn list, I'll tell you.] 

And N.W.A. told you in '91.  N.W.A – Appetite For Destruction Lyrics | Genius: "Cops put a hurtin' on your ass, man, you know, they really degrade you. White folks don't believe that shit, they don't believe that cops degrade you [Imitating white person] 'Oh come on, those people, those people are resisting arrest.'"

We Called the UK Ejaculation Police to Find Out Why Squirting Vaginas are Illegal and Jizzing Cocks Are Fine | VICE | United Kingdom: "As any connoisseur of British-made porn ​now knows, the Audiovisual Media Services Regulation 2014 that came into effect yesterday now means British pornographers are banned from depicting the following: fisting, spanking, aggressive whipping, verbal abuse ("Cor blimey, you ain't 'alf a crap shag"), caning and strangulation. That sort of thing. Pack up the camcorder and the lube-proof tarpaulin, lads. Fun time is over. Put the cane away, Linda. Not now. Not any more. As many have pointed out (you can read a ​more ​in-depth article here), the new law is pretty sexist. Men are allowed to jizz where, when and in whatever high, arcing trajectory they like, but for some reason female ejaculation is now outlawed in case someone confuses it with an especially loud, screaming piss. Face-sitting is forbidden but face-fucking is A-OK. The dividing lines between what is and isn't an OK thing to get off to seem arbitrarily drawn and really moral judgement-y...

Why can't two consulting adults have a big, sexy wee together on camera? Who are you to stop them, EUROPE? It's not like the outlawed sex acts are even especially weird. Bondage is now banned, despite 52.1 percent of women and 46.2 percent of men having ​fantasised about it before. Same goes for spanking and whipping, which 23 percent of women and 39.6 percent of men have fantasised about. "

 

  

Gender pay gap: The familiar line that “women make 77 cents to every man’s dollar” simply isn’t accurate.: "How many times have you heard that “women are paid 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men”? Barack Obama said it during his last campaign. Women’s groups say it every April 9, which is Equal Pay Day. In preparation for Labor Day, a group protesting outside Macy’s this week repeated it, too, holding up signs and sending out press releases saying “women make $.77 to every dollar men make on the job.” I’ve heard the line enough times that I feel the need to set the record straight: It’s not true...

The official Bureau of Labor Department statistics show that the median earnings of full-time female workers is 77 percent of the median earnings of full-time male workers. But that is very different than “77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.” The latter gives the impression that a man and a woman standing next to each other doing the same job for the same number of hours get paid different salaries. That’s not at all the case...

Goldin and Lawrence Katz have done about as close to an apples-to-apples comparison of men’s and women’s wages as exists. (They talk about it here in a Freakonomics discussion.) They tracked male and female MBAs graduating from the University of Chicago from 1990 to 2006. First they controlled for previous job experience, GPA, chosen profession, business-school course and job title. Right out of school, they found only a tiny differential in salary between men and women, which might be because of a little bit of lingering discrimination or because women are worse at negotiating starting salaries. But 10 to 15 years later, the gap widens to 40 percent, almost all of which is due to career interruptions and fewer hours. The gap is even wider for women business school graduates who marry very high earners..."

5 Feminist Myths That Will Not Die | TIME: "MYTH 5: Women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns—for doing the same work. FACTS: No matter how many times this wage gap claim is decisively refuted by economists, it always comes back. The bottom line: the 23-cent gender pay gap is simply the difference between the average earnings of all men and women working full-time. It does not account for differences in occupations, positions, education, job tenure or hours worked per week. When such relevant factors are considered, the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing. Wage gap activists say women with identical backgrounds and jobs as men still earn less. But they always fail to take into account critical variables. Activist groups like the National Organization for Women have a fallback position: that women’s education and career choices are not truly free—they are driven by powerful sexist stereotypes. In this view, women’s tendency to retreat from the workplace to raise children or to enter fields like early childhood education and psychology, rather than better paying professions like petroleum engineering, is evidence of continued social coercion. Here is the problem: American women are among the best informed and most self-determining human beings in the world. To say that they are manipulated into their life choices by forces beyond their control is divorced from reality and demeaning, to boot."

Wage Gap Myth Exposed -- By Feminists | Christina Hoff Sommers: "The AAUW has now joined ranks with serious economists who find that when you control for relevant differences between men and women (occupations, college majors, length of time in workplace) the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing. The 23-cent gap is simply the average difference between the earnings of men and women employed "full time." What is important is the "adjusted" wage gap-the figure that controls for all the relevant variables...  The AAUW notes that part of the new 6.6-cent wage-gap may be owed to women's supposedly inferior negotiating skills -- not unscrupulous employers. Furthermore, the AAUW's 6.6 cents includes some large legitimate wage differences masked by over-broad occupational categories. For example, its researchers count "social science" as one college major and report that, among such majors, women earned only 83 percent of what men earned. That may sound unfair... until you consider that "social science" includes both economics and sociology majors. Economics majors (66 percent male) have a median income of $70,000; for sociology majors (68 percent female) it is $40,000."

"I never thought I'd be more afraid of police in America than in South Africa.  Kind of makes me a little nostalgic for the old days back home."

  

Training.

12/8 - press, chins, dips, curls, laterals, shadowbox, stretch.

 Bodybuilding.com - Body Transformation: Champions Aren't Built On Excuses:

 

Just awesome.  Double bodyweight deadlifts and one armed pushups.  Aging is a choice.  This 77-year-old grandma can lift more than you: "Most grandmothers, especially those reaching 80 years of age, can be counted on for cozy hugs, surprise gifts, and gray hair. So you may be surprised when you meet Willie Murphy, a 77-year-old grandmother who can do one-handed push-ups and deadlift 215 pounds. The 105-pound senior started with 5-pound weights a few years ago, after seeing a sign about a weight-lifting competition at her local YMCA. She asked a Y employee if she could participate. "Go for it, granny," he said. She took his advice with a vengeance. In addition to lifting more than twice her weight, Murphy can do one-handed pull-ups, one-handed pushups, fingertip pushups, and the pushups where you put your fingers in diamond formation and press your nose all the way to the floor."  

This 77-year-old grandma can lift more than you: ""They see I'm old and I'm not being pushed around in a wheelchair," she said with a laugh. "I can shovel my own snow. And I can push my car if it gets stuck in the snow... I'm almost 80 years old and I am still living life.""

"Imposition of Order = Escalation of Chaos."

"People who think that things are real are as stupid as a cow... people who think things are not real are even more stupid." ~ Saraha, Indian Mahasidda, 8th Century

Harley Quinn Variants Invade DC's February 2015 Solicitations - Comic Book Resources:

Make Everything Illegal, Create More Eric Garners - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "...police brutality has many underlying causes. One of them is undoubtedly racism; black people are disproportionately arrested and imprisoned. An encounter between a cop and a civilian is more likely to be unpleasant if the civilian is black. In fact, it's more likely to occur in the first place if the civilian is black, because many cops racially profile suspects. Another cause is the police incentive structure. Police have far more legal protections than non-police. They can get away with so much more. Indeed, while the cop who killed Garner evaded indictment, a civilian who recorded the incident on his phone was indicted on a separate weapons charge.  It's difficult—often impossible—to punish police for bad behavior, which gives the bad apples free rein to abuse people. You know what's also a cause? Overcriminalization. And that one is on you, supporters of the regulatory super state. When a million things are highly regulated or outright illegal—from cigarettes to sodas of a certain size, unlicensed lemonade stands, raw milk, alcohol (for teens), marijuana, food trucks, taxicab alternatives, and even fishing supplies (in schools)—the unrestrained, often racist police force has a million reasons to pick on people. Punitive cigarette taxes, which disproportionately fall on the backs of the poorest of the poor, contribute to police brutality in the exact same way that the war on drugs does. Liberals readily admit the latter; why is the former any different?

A well-meaning liberal who doesn't want people to smoke but also doesn't want the government to kill them for doing so has plenty of other options, by the way. There are countless organizations and products dedicated to helping people quit cigarettes voluntarily. But anybody who wants it to be a matter of law must accept that resistance will be met with fines, prison, and death. As Bloomberg View columnist and law professor Stephen L. Carter put it: It’s not just cigarette tax laws that can lead to the death of those the police seek to arrest. It’s every law. Libertarians argue that we have far too many laws, and the Garner case offers evidence that they’re right. There are many painful lessons to be drawn from the Garner tragedy, but one of them, sadly, is the same as the advice I give my students on the first day of classes: Don’t ever fight to make something illegal unless you’re willing to risk the lives of your fellow citizens to get your way."

Understanding Kickstarter.

"Sensitivity is more important than truth.  Feelings are more important than facts...  Children are more important than people.  Safety is more important than fun."

"It is sort of politically incorrect just to be male in this country now.  Look at television.  Look at any sitcom.  The wife is always brilliant and ethereal and right about everything and the husband is always a dumb fuck who's lucky to have found her."

The UVA rape hoax story is everything that's wrong with modern reporting and sexual politics.  If you threw in race and law enforcement corruption you'd be full circle to the Duke Lacrosse case.  Rolling Stone Retracts Key Part of UVA Rape Story - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Virtually all details of the horrific gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity detailed in an engrossing Rolling Stone article last month are now either disputed our outright debunked. A terrific Washington Post investigation—which includes an interview with Jackie, the accuser—casts serious doubt on the narrative Jackie told to Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author of the original Rolling Stone piece. In light of these developments, Rolling Stone is no longer standing by its story."

 Key elements of Rolling Stone’s U-Va. gang rape allegations in doubt - The Washington Post

Rolling Stone apologizes over account of UVA gang rape - CNN.com: "Rolling Stone magazine apologized Friday for discrepancies in an article about the alleged gang rape of a University of Virginia student, after friends of the victim expressed doubts about the woman's account and the accused fraternity chapter denied key details. Rolling Stone editors [...] "In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced," Rolling Stone said...

According to the magazine, Jackie, who at the time had just started her freshman year at the Charlottesville school, claimed she was raped by seven men at Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, while two more gave encouragement, during a party. However, the University of Virginia's Phi Kappa Psi chapter did not have a party the night of September 28, 2012, the date when the alleged attack occurred, or at all that weekend, the chapter said in a statement Friday. The chapter's lawyer, Ben Warthen, told CNN email records and Inter-fraternity Council records are proof. Warthen said there were other discrepancies in the accuser's account. For example, the accused orchestrator of the alleged rape did not belong to the fraternity, the fraternity house has no side staircase, and there were no pledges at that time of year."

Rolling Stone’s Botched Account of a UVA Gang Rape Does a Disservice to Rape Victims - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "By failing to make basic efforts to check the facts of its attention-grabbing story about an alleged gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house, Rolling Stone has done a tremendous disservice to rape victims. Now, when victims tell their stories, and when journalists or advocates report on those stories or share them publicly in any way, those inclined to disbelief will have a prominent example of a shocking, horrific story that was reported as if true, and that was initially defended by its reporter and editor even when significant questions were raised about the strength of the reporting."

This looks hilarious.

This kid wins life.  Tesco Stops Gendering Superhero Toys After Image Of Disapproving Little Girl Goes Viral | The Mary Sue:

 

Training - Leg Day.

12/5 - squats, knee/leg raise, lunges, steam room, stretch

#TheStruggleIsReal #TheDayAfterLegDay

Awesome shirt.

Ahnald.