Blu3RSX

tamburina:

Amanda and her cousin Amy by Mary Ellen Mark
North Carolina, USA, 1990

In 1990, Peter Howe at Life magazine sent me to North Carolina to photograph a special school for children with problems. The school was a very strange place because all of the twenty or so children were in the same classroom and their problems ranged from mild behavior instability to severe schizophrenia.

Nine-year-old Amanda was the most interesting child in the class. She was my favorite child. Amanda was very intelligent and very naughty. One day I followed her home on the school bus. When the bus stopped at her house, she dashed ahead of me and ran into a nearby wooded area. I continued to follow her into the woods and eventually found her sitting in an old stuffed chair having a cigarette. She thought that I would reprimand her since I was an adult. But I said nothing.

The following Sunday, I spent the day at home with Amanda and her mother. Amanda totally controlled her mother. She constantly gave her orders and proceeded to put on her mother’s nail polish and makeup. Amanda smoked openly in front of her. Her 8-year-old cousin Amy was coming over, and she was very excited. All day long, Amanda and her cousin played like children. Every forty-five minutes or so, Amanda would take a break to have a cigarette. Her mother could say nothing; Amanda was the boss.

Just before I left, I looked for Amanda to say good-bye. I found her and Amy in the backyard. They were in a children’s inflatable pool. Amanda was taking her regular cigarette break.

(via needapenny)

ryandonato:

Pieter Hugo, The Hyena & Other Men

+1 for the Texas t-shirt. ^_^

omnivincitamor:

thepeoplesrecord:

Monsanto’s GM seeds contributing to farmer suicides every 30 minutes
October 28, 2012

In what has been called the single largest wave of recorded suicides in human history, Indian farmers are now killing themselves in record numbers. It has been extensively reported, even in mainstream news, but nothing has been done about the issue. The cause? Monsanto’s cost-inflated and ineffective seeds have been driving farmers to suicide, and is considered to be one of the largest — if not the largest — cause of the quarter of a million farmer suicides over the past 16 years.

According to the most recent figures (provided by the New York University School of Law), 17,638 Indian farmers committed suicide in 2009 — about one death every 30 minutes. In 2008, theDaily Mail labeled the continual and disturbing suicide spree as ‘The GM (genetically modified) Genocide’. Due to failing harvests and inflated prices that bankrupt the poor farmers, struggling Indian farmers began to kill themselves. Oftentimes, they would commit the act by drinking the very same insecticide that Monsanto supplied them with — a gruesome testament to the extent in which Monsanto has wrecked the lives of independent and traditional farmers.

To further add backing to the tragedy, the rate of Indian farmer suicides massively increased since the introduction of Monsanto’s Bt cotton in 2002. It is no wonder that a large percentage of farmers who take their own lives are cotton farmers, the demographic that is thought to be among the most impacted. Dr. Mercola, an osteopathic doctor that has been educating the world about natural health for many years, recently saw the destruction of traditional Indian farmers first hand. Dr. Mercola found out about the notorious ‘suicide belt’ of India, where 4,238 farmer suicides took place in 2007 alone.

Many families are now ruined thanks to the mass suicides, and are left to economic ruin and must struggle to fight off starvation:

‘We are ruined now,’ said one dead man’s 38-year-old wife. ‘We bought 100 grams of BT Cotton. Our crop failed twice. My husband had become depressed. He went out to his field, lay down in the cotton and swallowed insecticide.’

In India, around 60 percent of the population (currently standing at 1.1 billion) are directly or indirectly reliant on agriculture. Monsanto’s intrusion into India’s traditional and sustainable farming community is not only concerning for health and wellness reasons, but it is now clear that the issue is much more serious.

Source

fuck you Monsanto FUCK YOU VERY MUCH!!! >.< 

I can’t even…

(via sambamlovebug)

itsraininglocusts:

diarrheaworldstarhiphop:

crookedindifference:

Ethiopian kids hack OLPCs in 5 months with zero instruction

What happens if you give a thousand Motorola Zoom tablet PCs to Ethiopian kids who have never even seen a printed word? Within five months, they’ll start teaching themselves English while circumventing the security on your OS to customize settings and activate disabled hardware.

The One Laptop Per Child project started as a way of delivering technology and resources to schools in countries with little or no education infrastructure, using inexpensive computers to improve traditional curricula. What the OLPC Project has realized over the last five or six years, though, is that teaching kids stuff is really not that valuable. Yes, knowing all your state capitols how to spell “neighborhood” properly and whatnot isn’t a bad thing, but memorizing facts and procedures isn’t going to inspire kids to go out and learn by teaching themselves, which is the key to a good education. Instead, OLPC is trying to figure out a way to teach kids to learn, which is what this experiment is all about.

Rather than give out laptops (they’re actually Motorola Zoom tablets plus solar chargers running custom software) to kids in schools with teachers, the OLPC Project decided to try something completely different: it delivered some boxes of tablets to two villages in Ethiopia, taped shut, with no instructions whatsoever.

They just left the boxes there, sealed up, containing one tablet for every kid in each of the villages (nearly a thousand tablets in total), pre-loaded with a custom English-language operating system and SD cards with tracking software on them to record how the tablets were used. Here’s how it went down, as related by OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference last week:

“We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He’d never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android.”

ETHIOPIA STRONG

This is fucking fantastic.

This is great on several different levels…it speaks volumes about human ingenuity but also how successful the GUI (graphic user interface) is at conveying information while remaining intuitive especially for a person who hasn’t seen such technology.

It’s really fascinating to read this!

(via needapenny)

vesperwood:

The editors of The New York Times Sunday Review asked eight artists to draw a monster that embodies their deepest or most irrational fear — a creature that belongs not to the monsters of history but to their private horrors.

Both my parents have had cancer. The possibility of being betrayed by my own genetics, secretly, gradually, is terrifying. You can see the entire series here.

Happy Halloween.

(via 30casterlyrock)

it8bit:

Retro Arcade Photographs

Photos taken by Ira Nowinksi documenting various arcades in the Bay Area from 1981 to 1982, which are now available for your viewing pleasure (around 700 photos in total) at Stanford University Libraries.

via: kotaku

That guy is in SERIOUS Centipede-warrior pose.

(via pacalin)

bbook:

10 Psychological States You’ve Never Heard of-And When You Experienced Them

fotojournalismus:

Palestinian students rode swings at the Al-Bashir amusement park on the outskirts of Gaza City on October 18, 2012.

[Credit : Majdi Fathi/Zuma Press]

We’re all humans.

(via yanorayanora)

hlmp:

wow, looks like everyone used to have veedubz

I just finished reading Engines of Change and, in retrospect, find the circumstances which helped to make VW a prolific and popular manufacturer in the United States both puzzling and intriguing. 

We had gone to war with Germany and it was only within a generation’s time that VW began to resurge. The first of the cars to hit American shores was the Beetle and it’s presence represented a counter-culture to the horsepower wars between the Big 3 automakers. Mustangs and Camaros were loud, full of bravado; the Beetle, smart, quaint, and had personable traits. So much so, it spawned the Herbie franchise which was something the Mustang and Camaro had not achieved as such. They were different beasts altogether.

So, how strange is it that the “People’s Car” company, born of Nazi blood, was so successful in America, a country that was a sworn enemy? 

It’s a great question and also wonderful that where democracy failed, our mutual love of cars eventually brought us together.

postarcadenp:

Is FIFA Soccer13 ruining your relationship?

According to a new survey, roughly 12% of all break ups in the United Kingdom over the past month were caused by one person in the relationship playing too much digital footie.

No, really.

Read the full story in Digital Spy.

You know, whenever I read stories like this I can’t help but wonder what life was like before video games.

Spouse 1: “I have just one more match to play!”

Spouse 2: “IF YOU PLAY ONE MORE GAME OF CHESS I’M LEAVING!!!1!”

Spouse 1: “oooh…eeeeh…..e4 c5!”

Spouse 2: (door slams)

taiora:

spooky-buggy:

onlylolgifs:

Girl Teaches Goat To Jump

THE EARS.

I want a goat so bad.

(via daenerys-catgaryen)

(via needapenny)

“Meet Casey And Brutus: The Man/Bear Bromance”

Naturalist Casey Anderson adopted a grizzly bear named Brutus and brought him home. Now, the two are best friends, and Brutus has become part of the family.

____________________

There ARE good humans on Earth.

#JustDontFallInTheGravy

dynamicafrica:

HASSAN HAJJAJ: KESH ANGELS

British-Moroccan artist Hassan Hajjaj captures the unique atmosphere and upbeat rhythm of north-African street iconography with great warmth and humour.

In this new solo show of photographs and installations, he pays tribute to the biker culture of the young women of Marrakesh – the ’Kesh Angels. Directing them in theatrical poses with their scooters, motorcycles and colourful outfits, he creates images that reflect their strength, style and street-smart attitude. In veils and djellabah, the ‘Kesh Angels respect a certain tradition, but their presence is defiantly modern. Hajjaj then juxtaposes these portraits with ephemera from the Medina in unique, handmade frames and bright, Pop-Art colours.

The highlight of the exhibition is an installation of Hajjaj’s customised motorbike, “881-Motobecane”: covered in fashion logos and kitscheries, it is the perfect symbol of the youth, independence, fun, sociability and sunshine of Morocco.

Hassan Hajjaj was born in 1961 in Larache, Morocco and moved to London in 1975. He now works in between London and Marrakech. He has established an international following for his photography, and was shortlisted for the Jameel Prize 2009 at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

He has had numerous solo and group shows in the UK and internationally, and also designs clothing, album covers (for Momo, Blur and Pino Daniele); hotels (Riad Yima, Marrakesh, 2006); bar-restaurants (Andy Wahloo, Paris 2003); and installations. His work is in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

(source)

(via yanorayanora)

“Fire football popular in East Java boarding schools”

The beautiful game is on fire in Indonesia - literally.

A ‘ball’ that is actually a flaming coconut, is used in a friendly kick-about amongst students in Indonesia. 

The coconut is soaked in kerosene for two days before it is lit. The kick-about lasts for about 60 minutes and between four to six coconuts are used in total during the match.

____________________

Wasn’t there an episode of Friends about Joey and Chandler doing something kind of like this?

And, yes, setting stuff on fire is more fun.

#UntilYourAssGetsBurnt