Update:
The medical insurance company finally got back to my family. They’ve sent a modest check that doesn’t even cover a 1/4 of the bills my parents have to pay. Apparently, this is only an initial amount while they continue looking into the claim. They didn’t give any designated time for when this will be done. We don’t even know if we’re getting more than this, which is frightening to say the least.
I’ve gotten some pretty terrible anonymous asks recently, which is why anonymous is now off. I don’t know why people think it’s easy asking for money. It’s not. I honestly would rather help my family by working, but I still haven’t found a job, and it’s been months. I honestly hate doing this even though I realize that my family needs help, and this is all I can really do.
So, if you can help my family out, please do so by clicking the link above or visiting my page for the button at the very bottom that reads “Donate.” There, you’ll also find a link right below the button that gives some background info about my dad’s cancer.
If you can’t donate, please reblog and signal boost. Thanks.
Drones have replaced Guantánamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants; in his 2010 guilty plea, Faisal Shahzad, who had tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square, justified targeting civilians by telling the judge, “When the drones hit, they don’t see children.”
[…]
William M. Daley, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff in 2011, said the president and his advisers understood that they could not keep adding new names to a kill list, from ever lower on the Qaeda totem pole. What remains unanswered is how much killing will be enough
“One guy gets knocked off, and the guy’s driver, who’s No. 21, becomes 20?” Mr. Daley said, describing the internal discussion. “At what point are you just filling the bucket with numbers?”
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Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will Does anyone see a never-ending conflict here? (via mohandasgandhi) Let’s not forget, the DOJ has moved to make the Secret Kill List, or whatever you want to call it, a state secret and thus not subject to judicial review. Let’s just think for a moment about how sickening and terrifying that is. (via humarashid) This is something that’s always important to talk about because of the legal precedent it sets. This article talks a great deal about the legal approaches Obama used in fighting the “War on Terror” that I found absolutely fascinating. The article seemed to indicate that Obama took the steps he did so he couldn’t be criticized by Republicans and Dick Cheney, of all people, who bemoan reading terror suspects their rights and “treating them like Americans.” Whatever happened to being the shining beacon of democracy and extending the same rights to the “bad guys” as is done with others? I mean, we tried the Nazis. We can’t do the same with terror suspects? Obama seems to usher in these new legal policies to avoid criticism from the right in an effort to gain or preserve political points - all of this for political points. Obama didn’t want to be accused of being soft on terrorism so he maneuvered these new hard-lined policies through highly contested means. I just find it unbelievable that he’d rather move his policies further and further right, even desecrating the Constitution he used to teach, rather than fight back politically and play hardball with the Republicans. The Obama administration traded part of the U.S. detention program in for drone strikes. So what? The legal tricks that were used to justify such have unprecedented consequences and let’s not forget:
(via mohandasgandhi) |
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Head of the CIA’s counterterrorism division to The Washington Post in 2011. That’s American political vocabulary for you. Describing unidentified Muslims as “sons of bitches.” Any Muslim resentment or rage against this is classified as “hating on our freedoms.” (via mehreenkasana) |
I’m confused. I don’t know what to think of this article:
You might actually want to go see “Men in Black 3” after you read Will Smith describing why he let’s his daughter do anything she wants with her hair.
Parade Magazine asks Smith about Willow hair:
“We let Willow cut her hair. When you have a little girl, it’s like how can you teach her that you’re in control of her body? If I teach her that I’m in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she’s going to replace me with some other man when she goes out in the world. She can’t cut my hair but that’s her hair. She has got to have command of her body. So when she goes out into the world, she’s going out with a command that is hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives.”
For the record, Riot Grrrl is an underground feminist Punk rock movement. Riot Grrrl bands often address issues around emotional and physical abuse, sexuality, racism, patriarchy, and female empowerment.
| — | Anaïs Nin (via dailystendhalnitesaudade) |
It has been fun running this blog and getting a taste of what the science community on Tumblr is like. It’s a fascinating world. Unfortunately, my time with this community has come to an end. Instead of deleting my blog, I’ll leave my blog up so, for whatever reason, you can still go through my archive.
I leave you with some links:
- My personalized list of science links
- It’s Okay To Be Smart (aka my all time favourite blog)
- Holymoleculesbatman
- Science On! Tumblr
- Scinerds
Also…
- Source everything that isn’t yours (including photos)
- Stop copying and pasting articles onto your blog
- Read through the entire article before believing what the headline claims
Thanks for following me for as long as you have. Stay brilliant and remain curious.
It doesn’t matter if it’s Twitter being blocked in Pakistan or social media sites taken down in China or Iran, domains blocked in India, or even filtering of information that happens in the United States of America. This little app helps a lot.
Have (unblocked) fun surfing.
TOR is a lot of fun and it gets you out of trouble. Highly recommended.
Note: TOR has many honeypot nodes (nodes that are run by governments that monitor all incoming and outgoing data), so make sure to encrypt everything you do on Tor and read the ENTIRE documentation information pdf thingy provided on torproject.org
And don’t be a dumbass.
