A school district which fired a cheeleader for cussing out of school violated her first amendment right to free speech. The Supreme Court issued its ruling today in an 8-1 decision, with weirdo justice Clarence Thomas dissenting.
B. L. posted two images on Snapchat, a social media ap-plication for smartphones that allows users to share temporary images with selected friends. B. L.'s posts expressed frustration with the school and the school's cheerleading squad, and one contained vulgar language and gestures. When school officials learned of the posts, theysuspended B. L. from the junior varsity cheerleading squad for the up-coming year. … While public schools may have a special interest in regulatingsome off-campus student speech, the special interests offered by the school are not sufficient to overcome B. L.'s interest in free expression
She won her case two years ago, but the Mahanoy School District wanted a kicking from the top. It's not a clear win: Tinker's limits on off-campus speech that "significantly disrupts" school activities still stands. But the standard of "significant disruption" is now higher than, well, this:
"fuck school fuck softball fuck cheer fuck everything," to quote the magnificent B.L., but most of all fuck the Mahanoy Area High School for trying to silence its students off-campus.
Governor Greg Abbott has vetoed a law that hardened Texas laws against dog abuse, a move that suprised lawmakers from both parties who had passed the bill overwhelmingly in both the state Senate and House. Abbott said that the law, which bans using heavy outdoor chains and other restraints that frequently injure dogs, was unnecessary and the fines excessive.
"I have to hand it to the governor. 'Anti-voting rights, pro-animal cruelty' is a bold re-election message," tweeted Julián Castro, a former Democratic presidential candidate, who included animal rights in his policy platform, and former mayor of San Antonio.
In his order, Turner also canceled a planned trial in the case, which was set for January. At a press conference Tuesday, Planned Parenthood North Central States Director of Public Affairs Jamie Burch Elliott said the law was "medically unnecessary and harmful" and would have effectively put abortion access out of reach for many people.
"Once again, the court righted a legislative overreach related to abortion care, and the court's decision means access to safe and legal abortion in Iowa remains unchanged," Elliott said.
Content warning: this footage of a prisoner trying to flee a courtroom in Adelaide features his butt cleft, yawning due to the exertion of the attempted escape. The man, according to 7 News, had just learned he was going to jail.
Track star Christina Clemons, 31, wore Cool Ranch Doritos earrings to her qualifying performance Sunday for the Tokyo Olympics later this summer: a spectacular and bizarre example of what marketing people call "earned media", presuming they're not paying her to wear them. "I made the Olympic team wearing a bag of @Doritos on my ears," she later declared.
Until Quake, state-of-the-art first-person shooter games on PC generally used 2.5D graphics techniques to simulate height and depth while usually restricting player movement to a two-dimensional plane. Quake broke the mold by introducing a fully 3D polygonal universe populated with 3D objects and monsters, giving players six degrees of freedom in an immersive virtual world. Unlike 1993's Doom, you could look around freely (and even jump) in Quake.
"It was an obvious progression from Wolfenstein's three degrees of freedom to Doom's four degrees of freedom, to Quake's six degrees of freedom," Quake programmer John Carmack told How-To Geek. "Some Doom clones experimented with a shearing look up/down for five degrees of freedom, but if you are going to support arbitrarily oriented polygons, you might as well get all six."
I remember the Quake billboards all over London in '96, convincing me that yes, it was time to buy a Windows PC. I can't find a single photo of those looming nightmare announcements online, which is strangely unsettling, but I did find this amusing magazine ad from Germany at about the same time.
"I just wanted to take a quick moment to say that I'm gay," Nassib said. "I've been meaning to do this for a while now but finally feel comfortable getting it off my chest. I really have the best life, the best family, friends and job a guy can ask for.
Here's the trailer a movie about a white suburban woman, literally named Karen, who hassles her new black neighbors with microaggressions, then officious nastiness, and ultimately outright racist menace (delivered with the help of her evil cop brother.) Perhaps there's a brilliant twist to all of it? Everyone behaves like they're in a 1990s TV movie, but talks like they're in a Jordan Peele one. Yet even from the trailer it seems to have no idea how Get Out's surface materials relate to its deeper impact, or the nuance with which it was accomplished.
For example, here's a soap dispenser with a Confederate flag on it.
There's not a lot going on at Amazon Prime Day unless you're after last-gen gadgets or dog DNA kits, but I found some a few good money-saving picks for artists, photographers and other folks who like making stuff.
Huion graphic tablets and displays (such as the Kamvas Pro 24" and its smaller sibling) are going for a song. They're among the best-known and most widely-reviewed alternatives to Wacom gear (which is not discounted today) and vastly less expensive even at normal prices.
Attention sewers! The Singer Heavy Duty is $25 off for prime day. I own one of these and, I have to admit, I don't like it all that much: it's clunkier than an everyday model but not really all that heavy duty, and has trouble with heavy/layered denim amd leather. But it is a very well-reviewed and respected model and a deal is a deal.
Last, but not least, here's a great deal on Corel Painter 2021, normally $429 but $229 for Prime Day. It's still my favorite natural-media painting app, though I'll admit I'm yet to get familiar with Clip Studio.
Mr. Carlson, a proud traitor to the elite political class, spends his time when he's not denouncing the liberal media trading gossip with them. He's the go-to guy for sometimes-unflattering stories about Donald J. Trump and for coverage of the internal politics of Fox News (not to mention stories about Mr. Carlson himself). I won't talk here about any off-the-record conversations I may have had with him. But 16 other journalists (none from The Times; it would put my colleagues in a weird position if I asked them) told me on background that he has been, as three of them put it, "a great source."
"In Trump's Washington, Tucker Carlson is a primary supersecret source," Smith quoted Wolff as writing in a new book of essays. "I know this because I know what he has told me, and I can track his exquisite, too-good-not-to-be-true gossip through unsourced reports and as it often emerges into accepted wisdom."
… One "reporter for a prominent publication who speaks to Mr Carlson regularly" said: "It's so unknown in the general public how much he plays both sides." Another said: "If you open yourself up as a resource to mainstream media reporters, you don't even have to ask them to go soft on you." Smith said he would not reveal the contents of his own off-record chats with Carlson.
Smith explains that mainstream journalists won't go after Carlson the way they nailed Glenn Beck:
Mr. Carlson's comfortable place inside Washington media, many of the reporters who cover him say, has taken the edge off some of the coverage. It has also served as a kind of insurance policy, they say, protecting him from the marginalization that ended the Fox career of his predecessor, Glenn Beck, who also drew a huge audience with shadowy theories of elite conspiracy.
Carlson has even cowed the New York Times itself into not covering him by spreading lies about a reporter assigned to the story, who could not complete it due to the resulting death threats and publicity.
When a freelance writer and photographer for The Times began working on an article about his studio in rural Maine last year, Mr. Carlson pre-emptively attacked the two by name on the air and characterized one as a political activist, which Erik Wemple of The Washington Post called a "stunning fabrication." The planned article, a light feature that was nowhere close to publication, became impossible to report, after threats and a menacing incident at the photographer's house, according to The Times's media editor, Jim Windolf.
Politico also spiked a story it was going to run about sleazy ads on Fox News to avoid Carlson's wrath, Smith reports: "Before any story could be published, Mr. Carlson went on the offensive, airing a segment attacking Politico's partnership with a Hong Kong newspaper, and he demanded that [reporter] Mr. Schreckinger answer for it."
"This is probably the worst hot tub I've had to work on," says Miles the hot tub cleaner. "There's literally slugs, spiders, the water's black, the smell's just disgusting."
The Queer Games Bundle on itch.io has already raised $83,372, which goes directly to support the people creating the games therein. There are 200 DRM-free titles in the set, ranging from zines and visual novels to art games, RPGs and shooters. The ask is $60, but you can pay what you want.
If we had 1/3rd of the budget of an AAA game, we could give every solo developer a livable wage for a year and every single team a massive funding boost. Imagine what the developers and artists in this bundle could create a year from now if they weren't worried about starving or how to pay their rent this month.
I've tested this, and it works in Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. It's trivial to defeat this technical protection mechanism if you're handy with developer tools – but I guess those aren't the people who are printing off the entire Internet.
Fun tricks. Instead of using CSS (or javascript for that matter) to hide stuff, use it to show/insert stuff the person printing (or copying) the document won't realise is there unless they closely inspect the document/paste afterwards. "Perhaps I am a plagiarist" for example, or "Leaked from the workstation at 192.168.1.155."
Best Electronics offers a unique and startlingly extensive range of genuine Atari parts, the result of proprietor Bradley Koda's canny purchases of warehouses full of then-worthless gear during the company's decline and demise. But for the enthusiastic buyer, Vice reports, he is a "temperamental dragon" guarding a hoard, happy to have it all and in no rush whatsoever to part with it: Don't Piss Off Bradley, the Parts Seller Keeping Atari Machines Alive.
Among Atari fans, Best is almost as famous for ignoring and blacklisting badly behaved customers as it is for selling Atari parts. A first attempt to buy from Best Electronics is a sink-or-swim proposition: learn the rules, or accept your fate. Every purchase from Best Electronics requires personal interaction with Koda [who] complains bitterly when made to write up more than two invoices for a single buyer. … Koda will not handle large orders [but] will not accept PayPal orders under $50. Failure to find a happy medium quickly enough can scuttle a sale.
But if you do enter the dragon's favor, it will be delivered in a box with genuine vintage Atari packing tape. How's that for service, decades after the fact!
Punditry about pundits is about the worst thing on the internet, but I didn't believe this tweet from Ben Shapiro was real and feel that it's worth a post. It reminds me of his famous "just sell homes inundated by rising sea levels" remark ("Who to, Ben, Aquaman?") in that it suggests a personal reality that only fleetingly matches the consensus.
10% of Profits from sales of the Destiny Toaster will go to St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital (R) Free Sandwich Holder with Purchase! Pre-orders will instantly receive a free Destiny 2 In-game emblem "Burnt Edges"
Springfield police Officer Amanda Rosales ran over gunshot victim Eric Cole and likely killed him or contributed to his death. Police Chief Lee Graf insists it was an accident — the man was lying prone in the street and Rosales was responding to his own 911 call — and released dashcam footage from two angles. The victim's family says they're weren't told what happened, or why the incident wasn't mentioned in the police report, and have demanded accountability.
Wilson asked Graf why she was not told "that she ran over my son."
"I want the officer held accountable just like if they get the suspect, they will hold him accountable," Wilson said.
Police and city officials were also criticized Wednesday because an incident report did not mention the cruiser's running over Cole. Officials said that was because a report about the shooting was separate from a report about the on-duty vehicle accident, which is being handled by the Highway Patrol.
The man was shot, crawled out of his house and called 911, and the last thing he saw was the lights of the cop car about to crush him.
Possession of marijuana will be legal in Connecticut beginning July 1, with retail sales to follow next year. State Senates voted 16 to 11 Thursday to approve recreational weed; Gov. Ned Lamont has already promised to sign the bill.
"The war on cannabis, which was at its core a war on people in Black and Brown communities, not only caused injustices and increased disparities in our state, it did little to protect public health and safety. That's why I introduced a bill and worked hard with our partners in the legislature and other stakeholders to create a comprehensive framework for a securely regulated market that prioritizes public health, public safety, social justice, and equity," Lamont said in a statement. "I look forward to signing the bill and moving beyond this terrible period of incarceration and injustice."
Enjoy this mesmerizing video of a single vulture processed with After Effects' "time echo" filter by Jesse Rockwell. There was a time I might have shared this on social media as "VULTURES CONTROLLED BY 5G" but times, sadly, have changed.
The McCloskeys pointed guns at marchers who strayed close to their property during last year's George Floyd protests, earning instant fame and, at first, more serious charges: they were indicted by a grand jury in October with unlawful use of a weapon and evidence tampering, both felonies.
But after becoming conservative media stars and launching political careers on the back of the incident, they'll now lose only $2700 in fines and the two guns they pointed at protestors. Mark McCloskey emerged from the courthouse boasting that he'd do it again. Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has already said he would pardon the McCloskeys irrespective of what they are convicted of.
The McCloskeys, both of them lawyers in their 60s, wore blue blazers and spoke calmly in answering questions from Judge David Mason during Thursday's hearing. Mason asked Mark McCloskey if he acknowledged that his actions put people at risk of personal injury. He replied, "I sure did your honor."
"I'd do it again," he said from the courthouse steps in downtown St. Louis. "Any time the mob approaches me, I'll do what I can to put them in imminent threat of physical injury because that's what kept them from destroying my house and my family."
