the longer i wait to post these the more they multiply ;_;

'Kupo, motherfuckers' by sarcasticKatt.

Also on the topic of assault rifles, here's Paul Constant at The Stranger (emphasis his):

And I hate that President Obama's statement after the shooting dared to use the word "shocked."

Of course he was "saddened." We were all saddened. But can you even say you're "shocked" anymore in America when a young man murders and injures dozens of people in a matter of minutes? We've all lived through this before, dozens of times. The scale is always different, but the crime is the exact same. There's nothing shocking about it anymore. I bet you the cable news networks have protocols and procedures written out in memos for this sort of thing happening. Because it happens all the fucking time. That's the opposite of shocking. It's a recurring problem. And rather than try to come up with solutions to this recurring problem, we mutter and mumble about being shocked and saddened, and we accuse each other of politicizing a tragic event.

Cracked.com on the end of the Nolanverse:

Don't get me wrong, we've had some good non-Nolan superhero movies. The Avengers, for its occasional silliness, was loads and loads of fun. It wasn't important in the way that Nolan's films are important, but who gives a shit, it was a buttload-and-a-half of fun, and as a moviegoer, all I really want is something fun. [...]

But, at the end of the day, I left The Avengers saying, "That was fun and worth my money," and I left The Dark Knight saying, "That was perfect and important and makes me excited about filmmaking in ways that few movies do." Nolan's Batman movies are simply in a different class. [...]

The thing that made every great superhero movie great was Christopher Nolan, and he's not going to be making a superhero movie for a looong time. It'll be neat to watch other great directors try, but the great days are over, for the time being.

For jobhunters, QualityDigest on Why Good People Can't Get Jobs. No, wait, this is for everyone, please please read it, it is some serious What The Fuck Has Gone Wrong examination. "...in 1979, young workers received an average of two and a half weeks of training per year. By 1991, only 17 percent of young employees reported getting any training during the previous year, and by last year, only 21 percent said they received training during the previous five years." Yeah. Then there's Are Millenials The Screwed Generation? from The Daily Beast, which is almost entirely rehash of stuff I've posted here already (ie. yes? duh? why the fuck is this even a question) but it did contain this new and incomprehensible-to-me detail:

But it’s delusional to believe millennials don’t desire the same things as previous generations, note generational chroniclers Morley Winograd and Mike Hais. Survey research finds that 84 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds who are currently renting say that they intend to buy a home even if they can’t currently afford to do so; 64 percent said it was “very important” to have an opportunity to own their own home.

And where do millennials see their dream house? According to research at Frank Magid Associates, 43 percent describe suburbs as their “ideal place to live,” compared with just 31 percent of older generations. Even though big cities are often preferred among college graduates in their 20s, only 17 percent of millennials say they want to settle permanently in one. This was the same percentage of members of this generation who expressed a preference for living in rural or small-town America."

now, I can more or less wrap my head around the idea of people still wanting to own their own place (I'm considering it myself, what with my bizarre financial situation and the housing bottom) but I am still confused by this 83% of Americans who do not want to live in cities. What's not to want? Do they just, idk, not like other people? what.

re. dead horses, from Laurie Penny at the New Statesman, Lara Croft and rape stories; breaking down the bitch:

It’s almost as if sexual assault were understood as an immutable part of human culture, painful but inevitable, rather like a young man’s first experience of heartbreak – unfortunate but ultimately benign and probably a learning experience for everyone. What makes a woman develop as a person? Sexual violence, of course! What makes her a believable, empathetic character? Rape! Women can’t just be born tough and cocksure – that has to be fucked and beaten into them, female violence as a response to and reflection of male violence.

^this is one of those great bits of commentary that makes you go 'yes, yes, YES' the whole way through, which made the HDU!!! comments even more loltastic. Do not read the comments, ever.

ETA: I forgot this one; it's an FS comment so will take a while to load, but it's thorough and brilliant:

Sure, there's F.E.A.R. 2, but as mentioned, that's female/male. The vast majority of men who sexually assaulted are assaulted by other men. Where is that, in the industry? Can you think of any examples? I sure can't.

This is particularly striking because the places were grown men are mostly likely to be victims of sexual assault crop up so very often in video games. In prison. Under torture. In the military.

How many military shooters do we have where there isn't so much as a whisper, an allusion, of this going on? All of them, so far. So much for "keeping it real". Why? Because that's not part of the fantasy. It's very real, but it would shatter the illusion of empowerment these fantasies provide, and for a lot of men, it would not be fun to play. It would genuinely frightening. Because it is real.

From FixedWingHeart, Your Essential Grocery List - we got talking there about how to eat healthy on a low income. I am a great believe in making delicious healthy fud for less than $3 a plateful, so this is awesome.

seventhe on the OTW:

I want to want to help, but there's just some weird disconnect: come on in, says the concept, we're building fandom island!, but in between every single line all I can hear is the water's fucking freezing and we only have half a life raft and oh, there are sharks!* And I – I can't decide whether it's a cry for help, please come in and help us build this life raft, we need you, or if it's a warning sign: here be teeth and frozen toes. No lifeguard, enter at your own risk.

I kind of just look from my carefully preserved distance, and I feel no inclinations to step any closer, even to formally criticize or engage or discuss. I just feel really weird about the OTW.

Kiya Nichol on Holidays of the State:

Here in Massachusetts (and in Maine, which as formerly Massachusetts shares a few historical quirks), there is a holiday called Patriots’ Day on the third Monday in April. The original observance was 19 April, the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, which were the first in the American Revolutionary War. It is a day off for a lot of people; the Red Sox always play at home, and there has at least been an attempt to time the baseball game to get out around when the Boston Marathon – also held that day – is going through Kenmore Square.

There is (or was, I haven’t heard anything from them for a while but I hope they still exist) a Greek reconstructionist group who considered Patriots’ Day a holy day, and would thus process, garlanded, from the State House down to the Public Garden and pour libations at the feet of the statue of George Washington, honoring the heroes of the Battle of Marathon, the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Menotomy, and the victorious athletes of the marathon race (and occasionally, when appropriate, the Red Sox). Sure, this isn’t a date on the Athenian calendar so often used by Hellenic reconstructionists – but Boston was the polis that they lived in, and this was clearly the day that the entire polis of Boston was celebrating its hero cult, in traditional Greek fashion with contests of athleticism, even.

Also from Kiya Nichol: Execration Via Small Child. Read this, it is improbably adorable.

From Daisy's Dead Air: The War Over Sally Ride: Do you believe this stuff? ANYTHING to avoid the facts, that the first US woman in space was a lesbian.

The Money-Empathy Gap from New York News & Features. Lots of interesting research into how rich people behave less morally than poor people. Related, Vanity Fair has a Mitt Rmoney/Cayman Islands article called Where The Money Lives.

Spoiled Rotten from the New Yorker - lots of interesting qualitative research into childrearing and wtf is wrong with American parenting.

From Shortpacked, Imagine; and also the following reaction shot.

The Olympics have coincided with Ramadan, so here's Mohamed Sbihi on not being able to fast, and another interesting article on the topic.

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from youknowyourebritishwhen: