Another Cog in the Murder Machine

May 17

[video]

May 16

“Real love takes little effort to feel and has no affiliation with pain, drama or stress. Enjoy it!!!” — (via thetaoofdana)

[video]

May 15

“Dudes. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?
Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.
This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.
Now, once you’ve selected the “Straight White Male” difficulty setting, you still have to create a character, and how many points you get to start — and how they are apportioned — will make a difference. Initially the computer will tell you how many points you get and how they are divided up. If you start with 25 points, and your dump stat is wealth, well, then you may be kind of screwed. If you start with 250 points and your dump stat is charisma, well, then you’re probably fine. Be aware the computer makes it difficult to start with more than 30 points; people on higher difficulty settings generally start with even fewer than that.
As the game progresses, your goal is to gain points, apportion them wisely, and level up. If you start with fewer points and fewer of them in critical stat categories, or choose poorly regarding the skills you decide to level up on, then the game will still be difficult for you. But because you’re playing on the “Straight White Male” setting, gaining points and leveling up will still by default be easier, all other things being equal, than for another player using a higher difficulty setting.
Likewise, it’s certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn’t change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.
You can lose playing on the lowest difficulty setting. The lowest difficulty setting is still the easiest setting to win on. The player who plays on the “Gay Minority Female” setting? Hardcore.” — John Scalzi tells it like it is. (via neil-gaiman)

(via chaos-rampant)

May 13

tastefullyoffensive:

[via]

(Source: midnightcode, via chaos-rampant)

buddhistintraining:

Share happiness!

(Source: pixieintrippyland, via chaos-rampant)

[video]

May 11

theatlantic:

In Praise of Single Mothers

A lot has been said about single mothers. Most of it has been less than flattering.

In a notable nugget former Sen. Rick Santorum said at a town hall meeting, “We are seeing the fabric of this country fall apart, and it’s falling apart because of single moms.” Not long after that, in a public appearance in Erie, Pennsylvania, he accused single mothers of “simply breeding more criminals.” This past fall, he argued that single mothers voted Democrat because their lives were so hard and urged Republicans to “build two parent families” in order to “eliminate that desire for government.”

This Mother’s Day I confess that I am very proud to be from what some would call a broken home. Not because it was easy watching a young woman struggle to be a mother on her own after ending a violent marriage, but precisely because it was so very hard. And “hard” seems to be a word we now avoid, disparage, and devalue in our insta-everything culture.

In other words, the very values that Santorum and so many others say these solo moms undermine are just the values I learned from mine — and the community of women like her I grew up with outside Washington, D.C. What did we learn from these women who worked one or more miserably paid jobs while battling domestic turbulence, hunting for child support, hustling to pay rent, and forcing us to do our homework all on their own? 

Everything.

Read more. [Image: Gayle Tzemach Lemmon]