No Surrender: Donald Trump Wants the Republicans to Go Fuck Themselves...Slowly

Never got to this earlier, and could save it for the inevitable link-dump, but I do quite love this picture of Donald Trump having signed one of the bullshit pledges to the RNC (was the extra copy in case he didn't like the way his signature looked on the first try ?).  The make-me-look-smarter reading-glasses à la Rick Perry...the appropriate distance down his nose...The green tint that may or may not be an accident of white-balance...The unreadable savage blur of a signature coinciding with the almost Comic Sans. of his 'print' writing...The insane, 'I'm-not-balding' dead-animal-on-my-head comb-forward...And then...that look...

This is not the look of capitulation, Rand.  (Here, I'll sign ya shitty little piece o' paper...if, it'll make y'feel better...)  This is the look of a privileged and pampered sixty-nine-year-old teahadist maniac getting to live out a childhood fantasy at the expense of probably the entire world as his aging brain melts.  And we, in the media, the blogosphere, and social media, celebrate this lunacy at the possible expense of the survival of our own species

<Checks name of this blog>  Oh yeah...we're all fucked anyway !  Go for it Donnie ! Wha'the'hell ?!!

The Awesomest Thing Ever

This new picture of the International Space Station against the Moon is the awesomest thing ever, right ?

Wait, that's actually from 2010.  Oh, right, here we go...

No, sorry, that's from 2014.  How about...

Nope, 2011.  How about...

Nope, 2009.  Maybe...

2014 again.  Surely, the next one...

Yer fuckin with us now arsehole...  Okay, okay...for realsies:

Seriously, not to be an asshole about it.  Just that I see this kinda shit in the news* all the time, think, hang on a minute, are you sure no-one has never shot that before, and...

The picture is awesomely cool...even if it's not the first.


* Not sure if that was one of the sites I was thinking of, because a certain mobile browser lost all my tabs...again.

Etheldreda Laing

Janet Laing in kimono c. 1914. Source: Getty

Iris Laing (left), aged around 11, and her sister Janet, aged around 16 c. 1914. Source: Getty

Iris Laing around age 7 c. 1910. Source: Getty

The Telegraph had a piece on Etheldreda Laing, an amateur photographer who started taking colour (Autochrome) photographs back in 1908.  Unfortunately, the Telegraph doesn't really do galleries...or full size images.*  These are excerpted instead from the slideshow (of 19) here: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/etheldreda-laing.  Not bad for a hundred years ago.


* One other thing the Telegraph doesn't do is check their links. 'www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk%29', Really DT ?  One-click, that's all it takes.

Think of the Children

So some paparazzo takes (very boring) pictures of Paul Weller and his teenage daughter out shopping in LA with Weller's twin babies in a pushchair or stroller.  So the Daily Mail publishes some of these pictures, misidentifying Weller's daughter as his wife.  The Weller family sues the Daily Mail, wins damages, and now Weller's wife is pushing for a law in Britain criminalising the publication of non-pixelated potentially recognisable pictures of childrens' faces without their parents' consent.  Common-sense measure to protect children or slippery slope ?

Personally I think it's rather pathetic that there's a market for such pictures in the first place, and the world would be a much better place without paparazzi scum harassing and stalking individuals who happen to be celebrities or friends and relatives of the same.  But must we really legislate everything to this degree ?  Would the measure apply only to newspapers ?  What about street photography ?  And why, if we're going down this road, shouldn't adults be entitled to the same protections ?

In a sane world, surely we'd agree that publications that engage in or encourage this type of activity should be shunned, and that would be that.  But ooh, look...they got pictures of Brangelina at the beach, ooh look at that actress without makeup, doesn't she look old !  Oh look, evidence of space aliens in Hitler's bunker.  I'll just add that to my basket at the checkout and have a nice read later over tea.