July 5, 2016
“I think this is a time for us as black and brown people in this country to really understand what it means to be part of the democratic process.”

Vann R. Newkirk II on The Black Lives Matter Movement’s Political Moment:

With the 2016 Democratic and Republican conventions approaching, America’s mood is perhaps not quite as tense as it was after the anti-black violence of the 1964 Freedom Summer or the fear and destruction of the 1968 King riots. But it is still characterized in part by anger from black activists. Donald Trump’s campaign has fomented protests from black organizers across the country, and his racist posturing has led to renewed calls for protests against the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Black Lives Matter, a movement that dominated headlines last year in protests against police violence, has always been political, but the conventions provide much more direct avenue to electoral politics. Black activism could be a major force in shaping or disrupting the agendas of both parties.

(Photo credit: Chris Keane/ AP)

2:37pm
(Notes: 47)
  
Filed under: black lives matter martin luther king jr civil rights activism donald trump 
July 5, 2016
“We just did the hardest thing NASA’s ever done.”

Adrienne LaFrance on Juno’s Triumphant Night: 

Even before tonight, however, Juno had already made history. It is the fastest human-made object ever built; at a speed of 165,000 miles per hour, it’s five times faster than New Horizons, seven times faster than Apollo 11, and 122 times faster than the Concorde. In January, Juno broke the record to become humanity’s most distant solar-powered envoy. “Prior to Juno, eight spacecraft have navigated the cold, harsh under-lit realities of deep space as far out as Jupiter,” NASA wrote at the time. “All have used nuclear power sources to get their job done.”

Now, planetary scientists on Earth will wait for Juno to complete a 53-day orbit, after which the probe will begin to transmit a heap of data about what it observes. Juno is set to orbit Jupiter 37 times in just under two years. “So much about the environment that we’ll have to withstand is unknown,” said Heidi Becker, an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a video created by the agency. “Nothing’s really certain about what’s going to happen.”

(Photo credit: Lockheed Martin) 

11:17am
(Notes: 171)
  
Filed under: juno jupiter jet propulsion laboratory NASA spacex 
July 1, 2016

Throwback: The men most responsible for making American foreign policy in the last three decades no longer think that policy successful, or no longer think it honorable, or no longer think it can be successfully defended. They are still in place, “but they are mostly immobilized,” says the author of this article. And that is  why a dismal silence afflicts the American scene. — Daniel P. Moynihan, “How Much Does Freedom Matter?” July 1975 Issue

For more on Daniel P. Moynihan, read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration

6:34pm
(Notes: 22)
  
Filed under: freedom 4th of july indochina diplomacy 
July 1, 2016
Scientists already know that Jupiter’s auroras are caused by more than just solar storms. The planet’s gigantic magnetosphere also brightens the otherworldly lights with a constant stream of mega-intense charged particles. And all this is happening...

Scientists already know that Jupiter’s auroras are caused by more than just solar storms. The planet’s gigantic magnetosphere also brightens the otherworldly lights with a constant stream of mega-intense charged particles. And all this is happening on a huge scale. Think of it this way: If Jupiter’s enormous magnetic field were visible to the eye, scientists say, it would appear from Earth to be the same size as the sun—even though it is five times farther away. –– Adrienne LaFrance, Jupiter Puts on a Light Show For Juno

(Photo credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble)

6:31pm
(Notes: 164)
  
Filed under: jupiter juno NASA outer space 
June 28, 2016

The Jihad Will Be Televised 

Simon Cottee on the sinister narcissism of ISIS:

ISIS has revolutionized jihadist propaganda by creating a visually distinct pornography of pain that combines high production values with intimate atrocity. Unlike its predecessor al-Qaeda in Iraq, whose signature production was the IED mash-up video, ISIS has become notorious for staging obscenely graphic, high-definition atrocities. These theatrical events drastically narrow the distance between the viewer and the victim, bringing the latter squarely into the foreground. ISIS doesn’t just want to show the viewer the spectacle of a tank or truck exploding; ISIS wants to show the viewer the spectacle of a human body being savaged, up close. It is precisely this quality of horrifying intimacy that is the new element in ISIS propaganda—and a key to its global dissemination. This is the primordial secret, no longer well kept: The killing act is a spectacle people want to see. 

(Image: Maciej Toporowicz / Getty)

6:35pm
(Notes: 46)
  
Filed under: isis propaganda facebook jihad 
June 23, 2016

Roger Steffens is many things: father, veteran, actor, writer, broadcaster, and an expert on all things reggae. He first picked up a camera during the Vietnam War, but not as a photographer — as a witness. “My grandfather and mother had a keen sense of history,” he said. “They both instilled that sense in me that there were things going on around us that would be looked back upon as historic.” Steffens went on to take some 400,000 images during the height of 1970s counterculture, capturing his growing family, spectacular strangers, and the celebrities he came across. “The kids never knew who was going to be knocking on the door,” he said. “I’d say ‘Come out and meet Burning Spear,’ and they’d say ‘Dad I gotta do my math.’”

View the entire gallery A Family Album on Acid. 

8:02pm
(Notes: 145)
  
Filed under: Electric acid kool-aid test ken kesey lsd 1970s 
June 23, 2016
Kind and Usual Punishment in California

Throwback Thursday: Jessica Mitford broaches the incongruences of California prison reform in the March 1971 issue:

But these features of prison existence, disheartening, degrading, and dangerous though they are, pale in importance, say the former convicts, beside the total arbitrariness of the bureaucracy that rules every aspect of their existence. One former inmate summed it up: “Don’t give us steak and eggs; get rid of the Adult Authority! Don’t put in a shiny modern hospital; free us from the tyranny of the indeterminate sentence!”

The convicts see themselves trapped in a vise between, as one put it, “the punitive nineteenth-century guard and the 1984 headshrinker.” Most prison authorities still regard “protection of the public” and “deterrence” (meaning lockup and punishment) as the primary functions of the penal system, the traditional rigors and privations of which the prisoner must endure. Overlaid on these are the modern “therapy” and “treatment” goals. The offender must not only pay his debt to society in the old-fashioned way of “doing his time,” but in addition he must prove that the modern treatment method was worked, that he is cured, rehabilitated, and ready for parole. 

7:40pm
(Notes: 39)
  
Filed under: prison reform criminal justice justice reform justice system 
June 22, 2016
The Real Star Wars

The Growing Risk of a War in Space

One of the most ominous implications of co-orbital anti-satellite warfare is the difficulty of determining what is—or is not—a weapon. Indeed, as military journalist David Axe has written, “It’s hard to say exactly how many weapons are in orbit … With the proverbial flip of a switch, an inspection satellite, ostensibly configured for orbital repair work, could become a robotic assassin capable of taking out other satellites with lasers, explosives or mechanical claws. Until the moment it attacks, however, the assassin spacecraft might appear to be harmless.” This raises the prospect of long-duration sleeper weapons already in orbit, their actual military purpose yet to be revealed. They are weapons-in-waiting.

(Photo credit: NASA/The Atlantic)

6:44pm
(Notes: 50)
  
Filed under: NASA jupiter star trek star wars 
June 21, 2016
What do we mean by intelligence?

David H. Freedman on The War on Stupid People:

We must stop glorifying intelligence and treating our society as a playground for the smart minority. We should instead begin shaping our economy, our schools, even our culture with an eye to the abilities and needs of the majority, and to the full range of human capacity. The government could, for example, provide incentives to companies that resist automation, thereby preserving jobs for the less brainy. It could also discourage hiring practices that arbitrarily and counterproductively weed out the less-well-IQ’ed. This might even redound to employers’ benefit: Whatever advantages high intelligence confers on employees, it doesn’t necessarily make for more effective, better employees. Among other things, the less brainy are, according to studies and some business experts, less likely to be oblivious of their own biases and flaws, to mistakenly assume that recent trends will continue into the future, to be anxiety-ridden, and to be arrogant.

(Illustration by Edmon de Haron)

Read the entire story here.

6:39pm
(Notes: 146)
  
Filed under: stupid intelligence fetishization 
June 21, 2016

After a fatal shooting involving teenagers in her Brooklyn neighborhood, the photographer Cassandra Giraldo remembers how the media described them: “‘Thugs,’ ‘hooligans,’ ‘gang members,’” she recalled. “It was insulting for me to read.” Giraldo also knows better; the New York City-based photographer has been documenting urban youth culture since 2011 on Instagram as part of “The After School Project.” 

View the entire project here. 

4:30pm
(Notes: 272)
  
Filed under: photography brooklyn spotlight after school 
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