…up to 200,000 people angry with high costs and poor public services took to the streets. Protesters in Rio de Janeiro burned cars and looted buildings as police attempted to disperse them with teargas and rubber bullets. Aerial images showed thousands of people attempting to storm the congress building in Brasilia. The rallies…are some of the biggest ever seen in the country…
more.
(via realworldnews)
Hidden away - #Asheville #streetart #avlrad #avlrad #avlgraf #graffiti
1st Rough Draft sans rhinestones - commissioned piece. #sacredheart #steampunkheart #artistsoninstagram #artistsontumblr #heartart #gears #watchparts #upcycledart
The Greenland Whale from Whales by Robert Hamilton (1843)
What Mr. Hamilton had to say:
Bulky as the whale is, and clumsy as it appears to be, it might be imagined that all its motions must be sluggish, and its greatest exertions productive of no great celerity. The fact, however, is the reverse. A whale extended motionless at the surface of the sea, can sink, in the space of five or six seconds, beyond the reach of its human enemies. Its velocity along the surface, and in other directions, is the same. I have observed, says Scorseby, a whale descending, after I had harpooned it, to the depth of about one-fourth of a mile, with the average velocity of seven or eight miles an hour. The usual rate, however, at which these whales swim, when on their passage from one situation to another, seldom exceeds four miles an hour. They are capable, however, for the space of a few minutes, of darting through the water with the velocity of the fastest ship under sail; and of ascending with such rapidity, as to leap entirely out of the water. This feat they sometimes perform apparently as an amusement, to the high admiration of the distant spectator; but to the no small terror of the inexperienced fisher. Sometimes the whales throw themselves into a perpendicular position, with their heads downwards, and moving their tremendous tails on high in the air, beat the water with awful violence, which, cracking like a whip, resounds to the distance of two or three miles; the sea is thrown into foam, and the air filled with vapours. This performance is denominated “lob-tailing.” (p83-84)
(via scientificillustration)
“Surrender to a logic more powerful than reason.” — J.G. BallardDrawings: Mark A Reynolds
“If you could give one piece of advice to a large group of people, what would it be?”
“Take those phones you’re on, shove em’ up your arses, and go to work.”
Happy Monday!
57 6Cruel Policies
What’s going on? Republicans took over and started enacting severe, cruel policies against the poor and minorities, while giving tax cuts to the rich and businesses. As The Nation explains in “Protesters Shake Up North Carolina Legislature With Moral Monday Demonstrations,”
In 2010, Republicans took control of the state House and Senate for the first time since Reconstruction. With their firm majority, the GOP redrew district lines for state Senate and House seats, securing an even more solid majority in the 2012 election. Voters also elected a Republican governor, the former mayor of Charlotte, Pat McCrory. Many assumed that his big-city background would make him a moderate, but McCrory quickly appointed Art Pope, the money behind many of the state’s Tea Party candidates, as budget director, and the legislature went to work.
Some of the severe measures already passed include:
- Cutting the payroll tax credit for over 900,000 poor and working people
- Slashing state unemployment benefits and rejecting federally-funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation to 170,000 laid-off workers
- Rejecting federal funds to expand Medicaid to cover 500,000 North Carolinians without health insurance
They are preparing to pass more, including:
- Restarting the death penalty and repealing the Racial Justice Act which had exposed that the death penalty was applied in a racially discriminatory way
- Reducing preschool for poor children
- Privatizing public schools with “vouchers”
- Rolling back early voting; banning Sunday voting (so churches cannot organize voting drives); implementing voter ID to keep poor and minorities from voting; not allowing parents to get a $2,500 child tax credit if their children vote
- Codifying anti-labor language in the state constitution
And this is not because of budget problems. More proposals include:
- Reducing the business franchise tax
- Cutting the corporate income tax
- Lowering the personal income tax
Clergy, Citizen Groups Respond
In response, clergy, the NAACP and progressive organizations organized Moral Monday protests at the state capitol. Rev. William J. Barber is president of the North Carolina conference of more than 100 NAACP Branches, and leads the NAACP’s ‘Moral Mondays’ campaign in Raleigh. Writing at The Guardian in “Our message to North Carolina’s GOP: ‘Moral Mondays’ are here to stay,” explains,
When far-right extremists took over the Grand Old Party and turned it into a joyless, humorless, mean-spirited vehicle to line the pockets of the super-rich, we already had experience bringing people to Jones Street, where the state capitol is located, and advocating for the poor and vulnerable. It is not surprising, then, that a couple of months ago, when we called for moral witnesses based on Gandhi and Dr. King’s brilliant examples of nonviolent direct action, we had 17 ministers and other leaders answer the call and participate in the first inaugural “Moral Monday”.
(Source: satanic-capitalist, via realworldnews)
14 7
‘Sachi’
Kumi Yamashita
Taking roughly four months to complete, Yamashita wrapped one long piece of black thread around hundreds of nails until she created a photorealistic portrait of a woman. Because each of these works takes so long to complete, Yamashita only makes a few of them each year.
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