Acculturation

brooklynmutt:

California, USA: All-Alaskan Pig Racing

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images guardian.co.uk

huffingtonpost:

According to the report, three major factors have been present in the handful of mass extinctions that have occurred in the past: an increase of both hypoxia (low oxygen) and anoxia (lack of oxygen that creates “dead zones”) in the oceans, warming and acidification. 

State Of The Ocean: ‘Shocking’ Report Warns Of Mass Extinction From Current Rate Of Marine Distress

I did a paleontology project on mass extinctions my sophomore year. As Immortal Technique would say, we’re close to the “point of no return” on this one. (PS Huffington POST, I love the romantic walk on the beach picture, but is it really the most appropriate for this article? Is there some sort of commentary going on here?)

(Source: The Huffington Post)

Traditional Barbie, she says, “is what I was acculturated to like as a little girl.”

Between the two bloggers on this site, we owned 7 of these dolls. American Girls nurtured our interests in fashion, history and, of course, crafting narratives about scrappy youngsters who ate raw eggs to survive after they ran away from the orphanage (is that twisted for 8 year olds?).

(via joyengel)

Even though student loans are framed as an “investment in the future” there reaches a tipping point where the extreme cost of higher education outweighs its diminishing benefits. If tuition hikes and unregulated borrowing continue unchecked, education will become a forgotten dream for anyone not of the affluent elite. Eventually, there will be few doctors, lawyers, teachers, or researchers because no one will be able to pursue the necessary advanced degrees – whose debt statistics make undergraduate student debt look modest.

Default: The Student Loan Documentary via the Nation

Peter Funch’s composite photos of NYC

#homesick

rachelfershleiser:

It’s a nonfiction nerd’s fantasy: a database of nearly 30,000 feature stories, meticulously organized, sleekly presented, and fully searchable — by author, by publication, by topic.

Byliner.com, which launches today, wants to be the Pandora of narrative nonfiction. It offers users a recommendation service that suggests new authors they might like, as well as automatic Facebook updates whenever a favorite writer publishes a new story. It also offers writer profile pages that gather their long-form stories from across the web together with links to the Amazon pages of their published books.

The site is already large and impressive. It has the “follow me down the rabbit hole” appeal of Wikipedia (one page leads to another, and suddenly you’ve spent an hour on the site), paired with the ambience of a gentleman’s club: elegant design, good service, a certain tone — like the rustle of electronic pages as Serious People Read.

(via A discovery engine for narrative nonfiction: Byliner.com launches with high hopes and a sleek site » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism)

hipsterpuppies:

mango muttered something about auto emissions and then flicked a second cigarette butt into the woods

[via sunshine]

Phewf, bet my Mom is glad I chose to study abroad in a country where they don’t violently overreact to sports games. 

(Source: unntitled)

Today in modern art

This is just so wrong. And, can we agree, kind of funny?

 Aelita practices “automatism” and “accidentalism”, branches surrealism extensively practiced by Salvador Dali and Picasso.

“As well, Aelita approaches the canvas with a precise (traditional) ‘intentionality’. She will verbally announce what she is painting as she is doing it (dripping lines accross the canvas and saying “daroga” - the Russian word for “road”). 

In other words Aelita combines ‘non-conscious’ techniques anddiscernable intended abstract depictions of  reality/objects.  From the ‘cosmic’ depiction of nebulae (after watching BBC space documentaries) to ‘ariel color mapping techniques’, through to the microscopic - paintings of ants etc. Her style and subject matter is eclectic and wide ranging.”

I don’t have a problem with many things about this. Not the fact that people are paying money (thousands of dollars) for a 3 year old’s paintings. That’s fine. Where you spend your money is your choice. But the fact that THIS is the way her parents write about their child? Really? And the painting up there? It’s called “Eagle Nebula.” Really?

This is going on my list of questionable/gross parenting practices right after people who put videos of their babies on the internet for the consumption of procrastinating college students and creepy internet old men everywhere. 

ratsoff:

Charlotte’s Weblog by David Schwen

#shamelessly adorable, #fictional pigs + new media, #<3

(Source: dschwen, via interweber)

librarianista:

The littlest library advocate

Ada Xie, 9, holds a petition calling on Mayor Michael Bloomberg not to cut library funding. (photo: Ian Duncan)

CUTE! MOVING! ADVOCACY, LITTLE ADA

(via housingworksbookstore)

AMY POEHLER: There’s a lot of women in comedy right now that are actually our age. It’s the same kind of thing, really strong women … all similar age. I don’t know what that means.
TINA FEY: That we’re not alone being in that position.
AMY POEHLER: All our mothers took a very interesting drug when they were pregnant.

(Source: lotfortyeight)