Latest Posts by redinkstone168 - Page 5

Photography Through Empathy: An Interview with Brittani Sensabaugh

Most artists are known to be empathetic, capable of feeling everything, both good and bad, in their surroundings. Some see it as a curse driving them to madness. Brittani Sensabaugh chooses to see it as a gift.

The Department of Education will send letters to 387,000 people they’ve identified as being eligible for a total and permanent disability discharge, a designation that allows federal student loan borrowers who can’t work because of a disability to have their loans forgiven. The borrowers identified by the department won’t have to go through the typical application process for receiving a disability discharge, which requires sending in documented proof of their disability. Instead, the borrower will simply have to sign and return the completed application enclosed in the letter. If every borrower identified by the department decides to have his or her debt forgiven, the government will end up discharging more than $7.7 billion in debt, according to the department. Yu commended the collaboration and applauded the announcement, but she said she wished it went one step further by automatically stopping collections and garnishment on borrowers the government identified as eligible for a disability discharge. The department may struggle to reach some borrowers because they don’t have their most updated information on file, she noted. In addition, some borrowers who qualify for discharge because of a psychological reason – such as an Alzheimer’s patient – may not be capable of understanding the materials they receive, she said.

Why Obama is forgiving the student loans of nearly 400,000 people (via shinyandloud)

just so you know

the US minimum wage that we all agree is too low to live on ($15,080/yr) is far more than many legally disabled people receive in benefits

the maximum SSI for a single person is $8,796/yr if a disabled person marries another, each drops to a max of $6,600/yr

while you’re fighting for 15 maybe look at that too

april fools song #7 Ying Yang Twins Feat Adam Levine - Live Again

THIS SONG IS EVERYTHING. the ying yang twins are trying to illuminate what they imagine are the difficulties in the lives of a stripper. adam levine shows up to croon in a heartfelt manner about the same topic.the only singer not credited is the woman singing as the stripper. there is a moralistic rap about how our country has gone wrong because people turn to rappers for moralistic lessons. (sad, ain’t it.) the whole thing is designed to be very serious and tug at heartstrings and it is just flat out hilarious. according my my itunes, i’ve listened to it at lest 55 times. i also know all every word. I LOVE THIS SONG.

This, too!

LEGO vintage space cosmic fleet voyager set 6985 (complete) http://ift.tt/1S7QXoy

No, way! I always wanted this growing up!

1983 Vintage Lego Space Galaxy Commander 6980 100% complete - no box http://ift.tt/22xJ3w5

LEGO SPACE/VINTAGE LEGO SPACE/complete no box with instructions http://ift.tt/22VLKex

via @icanbakecakes

Damn it! Seriously pisses me off. I could say shit about people in China and other Asian countries who are responsible for the slaughter of the totoaba and the byproduct of the slaughter, the vacates. Fuck this.

Excerpt (story from Captain Oona Layolle, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society):

It is high season for totoaba poaching. In response to the Asian black markets and their demand for the totoaba swim bladders, illegal fishermen, despite all our efforts in removing nets and working with the navy, are hitting the vaquita population hard. Asian countries need to take measures to curtail the import and demand for endangered species.

We found a third dead vaquita on March 24 at 17h36, position 31º03.2513 N – 114º49.0371 W. The beaches of San Felipe are littered with hundreds of dead totoabas with only their swim bladders removed. On March 27, we retrieved a net with 15 dead totoabas in it. Poaching activity continues to increase. Finding three vaquitas in three weeks is finding one dead vaquita per week. If we look at the rate the vaquita population has been killed, and the intensity of illegal activity at night, there are very likely fewer than 30 vaquita left. If we continue losing the vaquita at this rate it will be extinct by this December.

Dead totoabas floating on the sea surface. Their bladders are missing, on their way to China and other countries in Asia for meals. Totoabas are also endangered.

This video tells the story. The fucking sad story.

Giant Australian cuttlefish by RemcoVanDerMeide Giant Australian cuttlefish at Whyalla, South Australia.

Welcome to Walachia (aka Romania), 1835, where life is nasty, brutish and … brutish. Welcome to the land of “Aferim!” — a place where the social practices are as harsh as the dusty, desolate landscape in which this Romanian-language picture is set.

Keep reading

Carpathian Mountains Karpaty Ukraine, Vintage Soviet Travel Postcards, Full set of 8 postcards (1967), USSR republics, soviet postcard set http://ift.tt/1ohG4sI

Long exposure picture I took of the Atlas V launch last night (March 12, 2015) in Satellite Beach, Florida. [x-post from /r/nasa]

Source: http://i.imgur.com/LkLkrcM.jpg

U.S. Space Hardware - Today and Tomorrow. Illustration from New York Mirror Magazine, 1963.

Source: http://i.imgur.com/m00afMX.jpg

1970-1979 Camilo José Vergara’s New York

By Night in LA: Photos by Camilo José Vergara Photos of empty buildings at night illuminated by electric lights, from shops covered with text to a solitary church lit by a streetlight. Vergara gives voice to the struggles of the absent inhabitants of these overlooked communities by presenting their environment as a straight document instead of exploiting their image.

(Continue Reading)

Detroit by Night: Haunting, Desolate Streetscapes by Camilo José Vergara

For more than four decades, Camilo José Vergara has photographed the poorest and most segregated communities in urban America. Both a sociologist and a photographer, Vergara is probably best known for his photos of urban blight in 1970s New York. But  for over twenty five years he has also pointed his lens at Detroit, to document not just the city’s decline but the quiet resilience of its people and its urban landscape. 

1) Former Michigan Central Rail Road Station, Detroit, 2013

2) View East along Temple St. from Cass Ave., Detroit, 2013

3) Looking inside, Livernois Ave. at Ellsworth, Detroit, 2013

4) Fellowship for Christ, Hamilton at Tuxedo, Detroit, 2013

5) The commercial street and the residential street, 6407 Gratiot Ave., Detroit, 2013

Camilo José Vergara Documents Camden New Jersey’s Crumbling Economics

Camilo José Vergara’s 40-year project, “Tracking Time,” chronicles urban transformation in some of the poorest and most segregated communities in the Northeastern United States. In Camden, New Jersey, one of the poorest cities he regularly visits during his documentation, he captures what he calls “Paired Houses”: two dwellings that share a wall, one of them occupied, the other empty. Because each dwelling is part of the same building, Vergara is able to capture the stark contrast between deteriorated and maintained habitats, reflecting the declining state of Camden’s housing market. For some of the photographs, Vergara returns to a building he’s previously documented in order to chronicle the absence of formerly dilapidated buildings.

(Continue Reading)

Feminist Friday

Stamp design commemorating International Women’s Day, March 8th China (1959) [Source], [Source]

It’s the last Friday of March, so I’m highlighting stories of straight-out feminists–women making a difference through activism and socially conscious business. Stay tuned!

Both higher-density suburban counties and lower-density suburban counties had faster population growth than urban counties in 2015, and the gap between suburban and urban county growth was larger in 2015 than in 2014. In short, suburbanization accelerated in 2015. While population growth in urban counties has clearly recovered from the housing bubble, during which urban counties lagged for many years and even lost population in 2006, the rebound in urban population growth was brief. Urban counties outpaced all other areas only in 2011, and urban growth in 2015 slowed to its lowest level since 2007.

Population growth in the suburbs is picking up even as population growth in dense urban centres is falling. In retrospect, the population growth in dense urban centres was a transitory thing during the recession while mortgage availability dipped for a bit and renting didn’t seem so bad. Well-off college-educated white millennials want to believe our trajectory is nothing like previous generations, but empirically that’s not accurate at all.

Green Mall in Osaka, Japan [730x980]

Source: http://i.imgur.com/oKBen.jpg

Snoop Dogg Accidentally Made This Tiny Romanian Village Famous

The rapper put Romania on the map, by mistake.

No, really, you should http://visitbogata.com/ and so should Snoop D.O. double G.

One interesting note about the temperature record set last month - it was a record in both surface and satellite measurements. This video discusses the different measurement techniques and why some people prefer one to another.

Liechtenstein press about Hamlet on 21 March 2016:  Liechtensteiner Vaterland and Volksblatt.

Incredible anamorphic artwork covering almost 50 buildings

 Created by street artist eL Seed in Cairo, this script lettering aligns when viewed from a point on the Moqattam Mountain. Designed for the community of Zaraeeb, the Arabic script is in a style the artist calls ‘Calligrafitti’:

“Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eye first.” ‘إن أراد أحد أن يبصر نور الشمس، فإن عليه أن يمسح عينيه’

“Zaraeeb – Moqattam Mountain – EgyptIn my new project ‘Perception’ I am questioning the level of judgment and misconception society can unconsciously have upon a community based on their differences. In the neighborhood of Manshiyat Nasr in Cairo, the Coptic community of Zaraeeb collects the trash of the city for decades and developed the most efficient and highly profitable recycling system on a global level. Still, the place is perceived as dirty, marginalised and segregated. To bring light on this community, with my team and the help of the local community, I created an anamorphic piece that covers almost 50 buildings only visible from a certain point of the Moqattam Mountain. The piece of art uses the words of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, a Coptic Bishop from the 3rd century.”

David Scott taking in the view during an EVA from Command Module Gumdrop, seen from docked Lunar Module Spider, 1969 [4400 x 4600] x-post /r/HI_Res

Source: https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/581/21315606974_1e27e70ef1_o.jpg

Oceania Week / Feminist Friday!

Indian women on the beach at Suva Fiji (before 1906) [Source]

Women in working clothes as indentured labourers Fiji (undated) [Source]

Students with teachers at the Dudley School Fiji (undated) [Source]

When we talk about Asian immigration to Oceania, the predominant narrative is male. Women didn’t go on long voyages to do hard manual labour and make their fortunes, they say…

But they did. Not many, in some cases–an 1861 survey of Australia counted 38,337 men and only eleven women–but in other cases, plenty. 

When I wrote about the Indo-Fijians, I noted that the Brits encouraged women as well as men to immigrate to stabilise the Indian population. These women were young widows, sex workers–and, according to writer Suresh Prasad, victims of kidnapping, some of them children.

And yes, they were abused in their labour. But, as journalist Gaiutra Bahadur has documented in her book Coolie Woman, they sometimes fought back:

Another immigrant, indentured in Fiji in 1906, recounted what happened to an overseer who told an Indian woman that he wanted her: “She asked him to wait till the next day. This woman, with two other women, devised a plan. When he came the next day, two of the women remained at a distance. When he approached the one he had spoken to the previous day, she asked him to take off all his clothes; when he lifted his shirt to take it off, all three women jumped on him and beat him up and threw him into a drain.” In 1916, a male schoolteacher who ended up indentured in Fiji told the tale of how he attacked an Indian driver who procured women for a European overseer. The ex-schoolteacher described what happened when the overseer came to the driver’s defense, with a gun: “The women of the lines, whom I called mother or sister and who treated me well, took up their hoes. He retreated, pleading to the women not to hit him, moving backwards he landed in a sewer pit. The women then threw shit on him. The overseer ran away.”

Women typically worked together in the same gang, plucking weeds in the cane fields, so they were already organized in a group by the plantation. Examples abound of overseers who took liberties being set upon by the women’s gang. According to the Fijian historian Vijay Naidu, “they would strike him to the ground and thrash him as well as do other more nasty things. In one incidence, they pinned the overseer to the ground and took turns at urinating on him. On another occasion, they made a line and walked over the overseer until his excreta came out.”

There’s a graphic account on that page of an overseer named Walter Gill, but the male gaze is a bit overblown there so it reads weirdly.

Of course, the road to gentrification had already started–in fact, I was originally going to do this post about Hannah Dudley, a British missionary who founded girls’ schools in the Indo-Fijian community from 1897 onwards.

Hannah Dudley with students Fiji (c. 1900s) [Source]

But rebellious coolie women makes for a much more interesting story. :)

Masao Saito, “Heart Eggs”

From Masao Saito’s Food Illustrations (1988)

Oysters make pearls so they can feel better. When a grain of sand or debris gets stuck in their bodies, they ease the pain and irritation by coating it with multiple layers of nacre, the mineral that lines the inside of their shells, and pearl begins to form. Basically, pearls are like blisters, only much prettier. Source