Interesting Concept, Think I'll Give It A Go...

I'm throwing all of my money at the screen but nothing is happening, halp pls.

Check out the announcement trailer for Civilization: Beyond Earth

Finally, a sci-fi/future themed Civ game! You know how in every Civ game, you’re blowing through time periods and then you get to “the future”, where all you have left is a few generic futuristic upgrades and then you’re researching “Future Tech” until someone wins? Not this game.

I don’t even want to write a review of “Top Gun: Maverick” honestly, I’ve seen 1,500+ movies and I’ve never finished one that left me more depressed about the future of this country. I just want to stop thinking about it

“So if little girls experience their menstrual cycle in 5th grade or 4th grade, will that prohibit conversations from them since they are in the grade lower than sixth grade?” asked state Rep. Ashley Gantt, a Democrat who taught in public schools and noted that girls as young as 10 can begin having periods.

“It would,” McClain responded.

Unbelievable. Link to article.

"Mum... Dad... we need to talk"

"What is it Timmy?"

"I've been thinking a lot for the last few weeks and I've come to a conclusion... I... I... I think I'm Chinese"

Drug Rape Prevention: DrinkSavvy Color Changing Drinkware

The problem is that date rape drugs are odorless, colorless, and tasteless once they’re in your drink.  We all know not to leave our drinks unattended, but the reality is it’s impossible to keep an eye on your drink all night.  So what’s the solution?  With the help of Dr. John MacDonald, a professor of chemistry at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and with the help of Contract Researching Organizations, DrinkSavvy is developing material that will immediately change color to warn you if a drug is slipped into your drink.

Great!  But it doesn’t stop there.  Together, DrinkSavvy will have the funding necessary to fully develop the material and drinkware directly from this material, such as, Plastic Straws and Stirrers, Plastic Party Cups, and Glassware.        

That means discrete, 100% effortless, and continuous drink monitoring throughout the night, because the same drinkware that you are drinking with…is also the color changing material that makes invisible drugs visible.

While DrinkSavvy’s initial goal is to perfect our design to make our products available online and free to select rape crisis centers, DrinkSavvy’s ultimate goal is to use the success of this campaign to convince bars, clubs, and colleges to make DrinkSavvy the new safety standard and eventually make drug-facilitated sexual assault a crime of the past.  So please, back DrinkSavvy to be a part of something that will change the world for the better.  Back DrinkSavvy to be a part of something that has never been done before, and back DrinkSavvy to prevent someone you care about from possibly being the victim of drug-facilitated sexual assault. Thank you all so much in advance, and remember, when you’re out drinking, drink smart, drink safe, DrinkSavvy.

CONTRIBUTE NOW!

Day Five - List of things I fancy doing

To some extent, this is my 'bucket list'

See the earth from space (Bill Bailey: Conveniently missing out 'become an astronaut')

Visit Australia

Learn to Drive

Fly faster than the speed of sound

Get Married & Have kids

Have more money than I know what to do with

Go Zorbing!

Learn to play an instrument

Finally finish working on my RPG system that I started six months ago

Play an MMO to completion (Max Level and do all the end content)

Learn Japanese

Stand at the summit of a mountain

See a tiger in the wild

be chokeslammed by The Undertaker

I dare say there are more things that should go on this list but that's all I can think of.

Nik

Day Seven - The Arts

Of all the subjects so far, this is one of the ones I've looked forward to least. I'm not really a big person for art - I can't draw, I despise dancing in all but a few cases and I'm not in the slightest bit musical, so my interest in the arts is more from a consumer point of view. Seeing as I know next to nothing about painting, the obvious choice is music.

I've grown up listening to quite a wide range of music - from early to late 90's pop music (thanks to local radio and television) to Blues and Rock music (thanks to my father's influence) to Classical music (thanks to my maternal grandfather).

Ever since I was small, the majority of the music that my father would play in the house was Blues and so it was obvious that my tastes would start there, my enjoyment of this genre was cemented by my dad's performances in multiple local bands, appearing in various venues through the south of England and being roadied for (more than a few times) by yours truly.

My interest in pop music tailed off to near nothingness in the late nineties when I began to notice just how similar each song was becoming, I started to see just how corporate pop music had become and how it almost seemed production line based.

I've had a love hate relationship with Classical music since I was young - at first it just felt like lift music - tinny noises in the background that were more to be ignored than admired, but in the following years I've grown to see it as a pure art-form in itself, capable of being just as soothing as modern music and just as rousing and energising as any rock music.

Thanks to a few of my friends, my real passion in music over the last few years has been rock, it seems I found bands like Evanescence, Fightstar, Within Temptation, Paramore, Nightwish and The Foo Fighters (to name but a few) at exactly the right time in my life in order to provide relief and some guidance.

...well that's sort of a potted history of my musical tastes - can't really say I feel like I've done a good job on this one, feels like I've rambled again, but what the hell, right?

Tomorrow you get to watch the fun as I attempt to write a poem... yay

Nik

As a leftist Jew who believes strongly in the cause of dignity and freedom for the Palestinian people, and that Israel has abused them, I am begging fellow leftists to understand that real life is not a comic book. A government being “the bad guy” in a situation does not automatically make anyone who opposes it “the good guy”.

Hamas denies the Holocaust. Hamas disseminates the Protocols of the Elders of Zion—the conspiracy theory it paints is what they mean by “Zionist”. Hamas forbids foreign aid educators from teaching human rights to Palestinians, and claims that even teaching that the Holocaust happened is a war crime. Hamas has written the aim of annihilating Israel (the country and its people) into its charter—the mass slaughter and violent expulsion of 7 million Jews from the land is written into its laws.

There is no crime any state could ever do that would justify any of that; there is no act of state repression that could ever make it acceptable to side with the organization spreading Nazi pamphlets and Holocaust denial.

Oppose Bibi Netanyahu. Oppose Israel’s far-right, authoritarian government. Oppose its apartheid policies. Oppose its violent abuse of the Palestinian people. That isn’t antisemitic. But Hamas is—verifiably, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to its core—antisemitic. Its portrayal of Israeli Jews as blood-thirsty, child-killing master manipulators that control international media and finance is antisemitic. Its insistence that Palestinian freedom necessitates the death & expulsion of Jews from the land is antisemitic. Its redefinition of “Zionism” as a pejorative to mean genocidal Jewish/Israeli Supremacy is antisemitic.

Supporting the Palestinian people in their plight is a noble and loving goal; please never stop that. But do not let Hamas co-opt that into excusing or denying their rampant antisemitism and war crimes.

Bit of a Rant... don't mind me

While I respect the democratic rights of every person who voted against AV in the recent referendum, I have to wonder what the hell they were thinking. The Government said "Would you like a better chance of the people YOU want being elected to office?" and overwhelmingly the populous shouted "No thanks, we'd rather just get shat on".

With AV a party only needs 30% of the vote to get elected, so that means that 70% of the electorate can vote against someone, yet they still get in? how is this really democracy?

Honestly? We had the chance to turn democracy from "the opportunity to vote for the candidate you dislike least" into an actual choice and yet people turned it down, what the hell?

Admittedly, AV is slightly more complicated than FPTP's "Hurr Durr I puts my X in this little box thing and then I walks away" but it would have meant that we'd actually get the people we voted for rather than the people we voted for instead because you have to vote tactically or otherwise your vote doesn't count.

Granted, FPTP got us where we are to day, but then turn over that statement for a few seconds and then look where we are today, is this really such a good thing?

I've heard it mentioned (as a serious anti AV argument) that "AV means that the second choices of the BNP supporters will get considered too" Well so what? they're still human, twisted perhaps but they live in the same democracy we do, perhaps AV would have given them the opportunity to vote for a more grown up second choice that would have actually made a difference.

All in all, I am actually disappointed in this country, we had a golden opportunity to change things but the whole campaign was a total farce - the anti AV argument was based entirely on lies and the yes campaign was so whimsical that it's not really a surprise that nothing has changed.

Bad country, back in your box.

The "if you voted for Trump unfollow me" posts are returning, but given then general makeup of your average tumblr user I think there's a different message I'd like to give.

If you didn't vote because "both parties are the same" or "it won't make a difference" or because Kamala wasn't the pure and perfect leader that you wanted or you "didn't want blood on your hands", honestly whether or not you follow me doesn't make a damned bit of difference. But I want you to look. Take a good look at the despair around you right now. And every godforsaken thing that follows I want you to fucking look. Look and know that you could have helped prevent it. We still haven't recovered from his last four years, the world hasn't fucking recovered, and now we're staring down the barrel of god knows how many more years and a river of fucking blood to come along with it.

But your pride and your principles were more important to you than the actual real fucking world we live in.

I hope, if nothing else, that you can take this in. I hope you learn. I hope you grow. I hope you find it in you to realize that in this country they soak our hands in blood the second we take our first breath and the only thing that matters then is what you fucking do with them. What you fight for. Who you fight for. Who you defend.

I hope you wake up. And you step up. And you fucking fight.

But until then. Don't you fucking dare look away.