This Picture Has Been Circulating All Over Social Media And I Have More To Add:

One of my students asked me this the other day. I don't think they fully appreciated the implications of my reply when I said "Jedi liason to Starfleet."

Darker Than The Dark Ages

No doubt about it

And, of course, there is that whole thing that Jesus supposedly said about NOT praying in public and going to pray in private...

“The story the right tells about Kennedy is one of a humble, pious coach who wanted only to engage in private prayer after games — “a brief prayer of thanks,” as his lawyer put it — and was persecuted by his employer as a result. That story is a complete distortion of the facts in this case. But it’s a common one, in which conservatives claim that if they are not allowed to impose their religion on others, then they have been victimized and the Constitution must bend to accommodate them. In 1962, the Supreme Court ruled that school-sponsored prayers, even vague, nondenominational ones, violated the establishment clause’s prohibition on the establishment of state religion, even if they were supposedly “voluntary” for students. This decision was one of the most controversial in the court’s history, and to this day some conservatives blame it for for a range of societal ills from births out of wedlock to school shootings. Then in 2000, the court addressed whether it was permissible for a school to allow student-led sectarian prayer during events such as graduation and football games; the court said no. Students and faculty are free to pray on their own and gather to do so; the question is whether those prayers are official in any way. In this case, the coach’s prayers were not private or individual at all, no matter how many photo shoots he does portraying himself as a solitary figure communing with his god. They were not only public but also clearly a performance meant to attract the maximum attention possible; if you’re praying for yourself, you don’t go to the 50-yard-line at the conclusion of the game to do it.”

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The Supreme Court’s threat to the separation of church and state

I am an atheist. For my entire life, I’ve been told that I MUST respect people who believe in a narrowly-defined version of the Christian god, even though America is explicitly non-religious in our Constitution. And I have done my best to just live and let live, even when they are being reprehensible, cruel, aggressively in my face about everything, based entirely on a belief I do not share.

And I’ve just had enough. I’m done playing nice with people who are doing everything they can to force me and others to live our lives according to their religious beliefs. I’m done being tolerant of intolerance.

I’m done being polite. I’m done respecting someone’s bullshit and quietly minding my business. If these Evangelical Authoritarians are going to push America even deeper into Theocracy, I’m done being polite. I’m going to punch back and I’m going to punch back HARD.

If someone wants to believe in a story and use that story to guide their lives, that’s awesome. Go nuts. Worship all you want, privately, where nobody can tell you what to do. Do it in public, even, AND ACCEPT THAT NOBODY HAS TO LISTEN TO YOU, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS. Freedom OF religion means nothing without freedom FROM religion. 

Fuck these people. Fuck their bullshit invisible sky ghost who tells them what to do, and fuck them for doing everything they can to force me and anyone else to live in the same fear and authoritarianism they embrace.

I was real happy to just live and let live, and that wasn’t enough for the authoritarian evangelicals. Because, for these people, this is entirely about control and white supremacy. No matter how they try to dress it up, that’s who they are. All of them.

And I’m done tolerating them and their bullshit.

(via wilwheaton)

Sheer brilliance.

when I become an eccentric billionaire I'm going to buy every house in 10 square blocks of unremarkable suburb. I will have them all furnished and decorated except for (and this is key) one house in the dead center. this house I will put up for sale at a ridiculously reasonable price for the area. once it sells, and the new owner/couple/family moves in, the plan will spring into action.

every single house besides the one in the center within my 10 square blocks will remain uninhabited. I will put all the lights inside on timers so that it appears that people are living in there, I will have lawns mowed when I'm sure everyone in my victim house is at work/school, I will have decorations put up during the holidays and cars moved there and parked in driveways when I'm sure that the owner/couple/family in the house at the center is not there to witness it happening. I will produce all the superficial trappings of life without a single person actually being there.

who knows how long it'll take them to realize that something is wrong? when their kids are playing in the yard, and they notice they've never seen another child around here even once, despite the four-bedroom family homes all down the street? after a few weeks, when they realize the lights in the house across the way click off at exactly 9:45, on the second, every single night? when they've been living there for a month and a half and they realize they've never seen a single car park in front of another house? when they want to greet their neighbors and not a single house in the whole neighborhood opens its door?

when they do realize that they're completely alone here, what would they do with that fact? what would you do if all at once, as you stood in a crowd, you realized that every single person around you was a mannequin? it's unnerving, sure, but enough to warrant a move? how long will they live in this idyllic ghost town before it gets to them? can a person survive in a dollhouse? Thank you. *I wave to the crowd as I walk offstage at my ted talk. one person gives a halfhearted round of applause from the back. a talk about sustainable ecosystem management was scheduled for right now and no one knows how I got up here.*

They are not endangered. There are millions of them. They (and more importantly, their fusion-powered cities, space stations, lunar colonies, and antimatter-powered spacecraft) keep well-hidden, thanks to their advanced cloaking technology.

The moon landing also got to him. He teared up as he watched Apollo 11 safely touch down on the Moon.

And the rest of the story! Broadcasting School at ASU is named after him. The "Huntley Brinkley Report" was another no hold bar News Reporting. Fact put out there you decided what they meant. But that was when we could think for ourselves! We still can, but have gotten to lazy to do it. Just like everything else

It's nice to see the Tri-City. I saw a lot of movies there in the early 80s.

The last picture show, Steve Fitch

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Think of an activity you love to do. Get the image firmly set in your mind. There will come a day when you do that activity for the very last time. Odds are you will not realize it is for the last time. How would you view it differently if you knew?

Semiconductor Architectural Standards of the Pre-Carboniferous

Funerary Traditions of Ancient Scythian Tiktokers