Buffer Festival is fast approaching! We are hard at work finishing Gilded Lily and cannot WAIT to premiere it at Buffer at the end of next month! Here’s a little sneak peek to get you excited.
We also wanna let you know that we will be closing our BackerKit this week! This is your last chance to get our Kickstarter posters or to see the short right after it premieres at Buffer. Head on over and get the goods while you still can!
Each spring, remote areas in Oregon’s sagebrush steppe attract scores of Greater Sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) for elaborate mating rituals. These areas – called leks – provide Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wildlife biologists a golden opportunity for census taking, as they host the largest annual gathering of male and female sage-grouse.
Since the males are in full display – strutting their uniquely shaped pin-like tail feathers, inflating and deflating distinctive golden throat sacs, and cooing and clucking a range of sounds – they standout in the landscape and are more easily identified and counted.
This counting is critical. The BLM and its partners are taking steps to protect the Greater Sage-grouse and more than 350 other species that rely upon the sagebrush landscape for their survival, and these annual censuses, called lek counts, provide vital information about Sage-grouse
population health.
I think one of my favorite things about this ship, these characters, is that Tormund specifically likes her because she could 100% break him in half and not break a sweat doing it.
Yesss
If you can’t kill a bear with your bare hands and take down the Hound in single combat, Tormund’s not interested.
“As the sense of responsibility is always strongest, in proportion as it is undivided, it may be inferred that a single man would be most ready to attend to the force of those motives which might plead for a mitigation of the rigor of the law, and least apt to yield to considerations which were calculated to shelter a fit object of its vengeance. The reflection that the fate of a fellow-creature depended on his sole fiat, would naturally inspire scrupulousness and caution; the dread of being accused of weakness or connivance, would beget equal circumspection, though of a different kind.”
“To see why pardoning Arpaio would be so exceptional – and so bad – you have to start with the sheriff’s crime. Arpaio wasn’t convicted by a jury after a trial for violating some specific federal statute. Rather, he was convicted by a federal judge on the rather unusual charge of criminal contempt of court. Specifically, Arpaio was convicted this July by Judge Susan Bolton of willfully and intentionally violating an order issued to him in 2011 by a different federal judge, G. Murray Snow.
The order arose out of a civil suit against Arpaio brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, accusing him of violating the law by detaining undocumented immigrants simply for lacking legal status. Snow issued a preliminary injunction that ordered Arpaio to stop running so-called saturation patrols – police sweeps that essentially stopped people who looked Latino and detained those who were deemed undocumented. The basic idea was that the profiling, warrantless stops and detention were unconstitutional.
Yet despite the federal court’s order, Arpaio kept running the unlawful patrols for at least 18 months, and publicly acknowledged as much. Federal judges don’t much like it when their orders are flouted. Snow held extensive hearings in November 2015, and in July 2016 he issued a lengthy opinion finding Arpaio in civil contempt of court. Snow didn’t mince words. He wrote that the department’s “constitutional violations are broad in scope, involve its highest ranking command staff, and flow into its management of internal affairs investigations.” Crucially, Snow found that Arpaio’s violations had been intentional.
But a civil finding of intentionally violating a court order can also trigger a separate proceeding for criminal contempt of court. That’s what happened to Arpaio. To ensure that the judge whose orders were flouted wouldn’t be judging Arpaio criminally, the criminal contempt charges went to a different federal judge.
Judge Bolton convicted Arpaio of criminal contempt. She found he had “willfully violated” the federal court’s order “by failing to do anything to ensure his subordinates’ compliance and by directing them to continue to detain persons for whom no criminal charges could be filed.” And she held that Arpaio had “announced to the world and to his subordinates that he was going to continue business as usual no matter who said otherwise.” This is the crime that [redacted] is suggesting he might pardon: willful defiance of a federal judge’s lawful order to enforce the Constitution.”
“Inspired by Bollywood movie Mughal-e-Azam’s Jab Pyar Kiya to Darna Kya set, Sanjay Leela Bhansali recreated that Aaina Mahal for Bajirao Mastani to also recreate that magic back again. More than 20,000 mirrors were used to make that palace an Aaina Mahal.
There is one angel that reflects in all 20,000 mirrors which makes a jaw-dropping view. After Mughal-e-Azam, this Aaina Mahal holds place of the most expensive set in history till date. There is one shot in Deewani Mastani where Deepika Padukone is highlighted into all those mirrors.”
