Michael McCarthy: You’re the face of SPC ECO today, being that you’re the only one pictured in the promo photos and such. Were there always photos of you ever since SPC ECO started or did you prefer not to be seen initially? If you deliberately weren’t pictured early on, at what point did you decide to change that and what prompted the change?
Rose Berlin: I’m in the photos because dad didn’t want to be in them. Dad is old and fat now so probably best he stays in the shadows..lol!
“As Krikorian notes, the Department of Labor has vast administrative power in the immigration process, helping to certify guest worker visas and, depending on the discretion of the secretary, working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Under Obama, the Department of Labor hasn’t co-operated with ICE on enforcement—nor is that likely to change under Puzder, who sees immigrants as having a vital role in the economy. The deeper concern among Trump’s hardcore fans is with the president-elect himself. He campaigned on a promise not to sell out grassroots Republicans at the behest of big donors, as the party establishment has done for years. One such betrayal was the willingness of Senate Republicans, the notorious Gang of Eight, to work with Obama on immigration reform. To those disillusioned Republicans, Trump said: I’m wealthy, so I can’t be bought, and will remain true to my word. But now that Trump is president-elect, he’s appointing a cabinet full of wealthy donors…. It’s too soon to know whether Trump will sell out his base. There was always a good chance that he would disappoint the immigration hawks, given that the Republican Party is beholden to corporations like CKE Restaurants that thrive on cheap labor. And working with Sessions, Trump could still appease this particular faction with symbolic gestures, like ramped up public raids on undocumented immigrants. But overall, Trump’s cabinet picks suggest he could become Coulter’s worst nightmare: an orange, obnoxious Jeb Bush.”
Hey Californians, did you know that we’re voting on the death penalty in this election? (I didn’t realize it was on the ballot until I sat down and actually read all the measures, so I thought I’d mention it here.) Not only that, but we’re voting on it twice with Prop 62 and Prop 66 but each Measure does something drastically different!
PROP 62 – DEATH PENALTY. INITIATIVE STATUTE. – Repeals the death penalty in California – Changes death penalty sentences into life imprisonment without possibility of parole sentences – Applies retroactively to existing death sentences (I’m voting YES on 62 because I think the death penalty is wrong and expensive.)
PROP 66 – DEATH PENALTY. PROCEDURES. INITIATIVE STATUTE. – Limits petitions for people with death penalty sentences (petitions = appeals) – Gives prison officials more freedom to develop execution methods – Basically, makes it easier to kill prisoners faster (I’m voting NO on 66 because I think death penalty is wrong and expensive and lots of people have been exonerated from death row because of new evidence discovered during appeals.)
There are a lot of other important measures to vote on this year too – give yourself plenty of time to read thru everything!
“I’m very angry. I’m angry that Bobby Newport would hold this town hostage and threaten to leave if you don’t give him what he wants. It’s despicable. Corporations are not allowed to dictate what a city needs. That power belongs to the people. Bobby Newport and his daddy would like you to think it belongs to them. I love this town. And when you love something, you don’t threaten it, you don’t punish it. You fight for it. You take care of it. You put it first. As your City Councilor, I will make sure that no one takes advantage of Pawnee. If I seem too passionate, it’s because I care. And if I come on too strong, it’s because I feel strongly. And if I push too hard, it’s because things aren’t moving fast enough. This is my home, you are my family, and I promise you, I’m not going anywhere.”
Vampires don’t like sunlight but moonlight is actually also sunlight
Tell that to the werewolves.
Moonlight is only about 14% reflected sunlight, with a different spectrum (some wavelengths gets more absorbed than others, some more reflected, etc). If the two spectra of moonlight and sunlight were compared side-by-side with no mention of their origin, they basically appear as two completely different light sources, one peaking at the yellow wavelengths and the other peaking at the blue-green wavelengths.
To summarize; moonlight is not sunlight, it is reflected sunlight with a lot of its information lost or altered.
Does this mean that, with the right set-up, you could make light sources which mimicked moonlight accurately enough that it sets off someone’s lycanthropy? I’m not sure what such a device would be useful for, but it’d be neat nonetheless.
Technically, yes. In practice, whether it’s simple to do so or not will depend on the exact mechanisms that causes the transformation. I suspect the easiest way would be to get a lamp that mimics sunlight and shine it onto a surface of lunar regolith trapped behind a thin layer of transparent material to protect against oxidation.
this is amazing thank you
Okay but consider that the moon and the earth drift apart juuust a little bit each year—assuming that one’s lycanthropy is triggered by the AMOUNT of moonlight since what lore I know of consists of transformation on the full moon—eventually we’re going to be far enough away from the moon that the symptoms of lycanthropy will disappear forever
Actually no! I just heard a bit on NPR about this two days ago :3
The Moon is slowly drifting away, but it’ll eventually reach a static orbit and stop; it’s not going to fly off into space. What will happen though is kinda weird. When the Moon stops drifting away, the Earth-Moon system will become tidally locked. After that point, only one side of the Earth will ever face the Moon again. So it won’t be that lycanthropy will disappear forever; it’ll just only happen on half of the Earth :] :] :]
That raises another question though; will having the full moon always out, even during the day, mean that lycanthropes will always be shifted, or will the direct light of the sun overpower its effects during the day :?
HOLYSHIT, TIDALLY-LOCKED LYCANTHROPY PLANET
THIS IS THE BEST HIGH FANTASY KINGDOM DIVISION IMAGINABLE
THE KING OF ALL WOLVES!!!! A BORDER WITH BORDER CONFLICTS AND ROGUES WITH DUAL IDENTITIES!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH
I am gonna be so sad if I cannot see the moon any more one day
The moon is a beautiful lesbian I want to be able to gaze up at her on cloudless nights
What I took away from this is that Moonlight is basically pirated art that a new artist put through Photoshop and put their own watermark on
“Original moonlight, do not steal”
Not to hijack, but my favorite novel ever, for ever and ever, concerns a world that no longer rotates, where magic rules the night and science the day.
All of tis is beyond amazing and @lies I would love to have the name of that novel.
You guys helped raise over $5,000 so quickly we had to announce our next cast member! Ashley will be simply perfect, can’t wait for you guys to see who’s next!
At the moment I’m sitting in front of an ExxonMobil station in Burlington Vermont waiting to be arrested and feeling, frankly, a little silly.
But I’m doing it because I want people to read and share two news stories, and I figure this small gesture might be enough to move a few people to do so. The stories come from teams of reporters at the Los Angeles Times, the Columbia Journalism School, and the Pulitzer-Prize winning Inside Climate News, and they demonstrate—exhaustively, undeniably, and appallingly—that ExxonMobil, the biggest and most powerful company on earth, knew all about climate change in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The company had sophisticated computer models demonstrating exactly how fast the globe would warm, and its highest levels of management were clearly aware that this would be a severe problem for the planet. They even used this knowledge to bid on oil leases in the rapidly melting Arctic.
But they didn’t tell anyone. Instead, they lied—they helped fund institutes devoted to climate denial, and bankrolled politicians who fought against climate action. Their CEO—who had overseen much of the research—told Chinese leaders in 1997 that the globe was cooling and that they should go full-steam ahead with fossil fuel.
This is not just one more set of sad stories about our climate. In the 28 years I’ve been following the story of global warming, this is the single most outrageous set of new revelations that journalists have uncovered. Given its unique credibility—again, it was the biggest corporation on earth—ExxonMobil could have changed history for the better. Had it sounded the alarm—had it merely said ‘our internal research shows the world’s scientists are right’—it would have saved a quarter century of wheel-spinning. We might actually have done something as a world before the Arctic melted, before the coral reefs were bleached, before the cycles of drought and flood set fully in.
Instead, their silence and their lies—driven by nothing more than the desire to keep making money—helped disrupt the earth’s most critical systems. When people ask, how could our species have wrecked our planet, the memos and internal documents uncovered by these reporters offer a huge part of the answer. We wrecked the planet, in no small part, because we were lied to by the most powerful institutions on that planet.
And so here I sit. I don’t have any great hope this action of mine will change anything practical. I fear that no one is likely to prosecute Exxon—they’re too big and too powerful. And for that matter it wouldn’t undo the damage. I know that we can’t rally enough Americans to boycott Exxon to make more than a token dent in their endless profits, and that even if we did those profits would flow to some other oil giant whose deeds are yet to be uncovered. Indeed, I know that most of the gas stations that say Exxon or Mobil on the sign aren’t even owned by the company. I know that none of this is the fault of the local franchisees—I gave the folks who run this station a hundred bucks before I sat down in hopes that my small protest won’t cost them too much in income.
I also know that there are clever and cynical people who will wave off these stories by saying, ‘of course, we knew that all along. That’s just how the world works.’ Or they will say, ‘it’s not Exxon’s fault; we all use fossil fuels.’ These clever people are the cousins of the cynics who worked at ExxonMobil; their knowingness is a cover for inaction. Exxon didn’t act when its actions could have changed the course of history; that’s not true of the rest of us.
My only real hope is that this gesture of mine will lead a few more people to read these pieces of reporting before they disappear into what my wife correctly and despairingly called the overwhelming clutter of our digital culture. I don’t want you to sign a petition, add your name to a mailing list, send money to a kickstarter. Just to read. I guess I figure that some people will say: if it’s important enough to someone to get arrested, I can spare ten minutes to read the story.
Perhaps this understanding will lead more people to join in the movement for fossil fuel divestment, or to oppose giant new oil projects, or to take away government subsidies from dirty energy. That would be good—I’ve spent much of my life on those battles, and will keep at them with my colleagues at 350.org and throughout the climate justice movement. It would help in every battle that matters if the Exxons of the world had less credibility and less power.
But even if these stories simply lead to more understanding without any practical consequence, that seems worthwhile. People are dying already around the world from the effects of climate change, people who never burned a gallon of oil in their lives. Everyone who comes after us will inhabit a planet much less vibrant than the one we were born into. My daughter graduates from college this spring, and she inherits this world that Exxon did so much to break. They—and all of us–deserve at least to know the truth.
what is that supposed to mean?? That when you’re over 20 your imagination is supposed to run dry?? Oh sweet summer child, you don’t want to challenge the power of imagination of a twentysomething… thritysomething… fortysomething. It gets mor colorful than your wildest dreams.
I have the feeling that someone might have told the OP that she was too old to still be writing fic. Pfffft. Let me tell you something. Once you start writing and reading fanfiction, YOU NEVER STOP.
You will pry fic from my cold, dead, mid-20s aged hands.
Once you go fic, you never go back. I’ll be 26 next week. B)
33 and reading. How could you stop, when you realize that fanfic is superior to so many published novels our there AND FREE?
ok, shit, i guess i have to do it. I am over 40… I still don’t believe it myself. And I have never written/read as much fic as I have in the past year.
Always remember that our culture discourages adult women from doing things for their own enjoyment. Adult women are meant to spend their leisure time caring for men and children and doing labour to make themselves look more attractive.
Reading and writing fanfiction is something women do only to please themselves. Adult women pleasing themselves is dangerous to a society that relies upon the unpaid labour of women.
I am 42.
Reading and writing.
I’d go so far as to characterize fandom for adult women as a kind of rebellion. For the most part, society allows men to play with their fannish loves their whole lives–whether that means collecting comic books or painting themselves team colors and game day. Women, however, are supposed to “grow out of” purely having fun–particularly when that fun is primarily created and consumed by and with other women.
Also, fandom is a leisure pursuit where women of all ages frequently interact (whether we know it or not)–which is too rare. We openly admit to *just goofing off* in order to enjoy ourselves – and do you realize how rare that is for women to speak about in our culture, much less embrace? Even in social media posts about being lazy, we’re supposed to be putting ourselves down, to some degree, but in fandom, spending the whole day writing or reading fic is something to be celebrated. It’s awesome.
Oh, and I’m 45.
Twice 20 and then some. I only discovered fanfic recently!
