Category Archives: Bunn

Here Is a Photo of President Obama Holding a Koala

by Aileen5637 Posted on November 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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President Obama and other world leaders are in Australia for the G20. They spent the day doing world leader things like talking about climate change and tourist things like holding koalas.

President Obama holds a koala before the start of the G20 Summit in Brisbane, Australia.

A photo posted by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on Nov 11, 2014 at 2:19pm PST

Also, via Mother Jones’ Senior Australian correspondent James West, the Daily Telegraph has had better days:

Our friends at the Huffington Post have a whole gallery of heads of state passing koalas around like they’re going out of style..

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Here Is a Photo of President Obama Holding a Koala

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I Found Another Video of Super Mario Hurting People and It’s Even Better Than the Last One

by DaniellHkc Posted on November 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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I have been to the Oscars, to Cannes, to Sundance, and speaking for myself only, at this particular juncture in time—I retain the right to change my mind in the future; maybe I’m going through some stuff right now; maybe I’ll regret this—these Super Bad Mario videos are the most entertaining things I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

The bit with the television presenter on the boat in this one is art.

Have a nice weekend.

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I Found Another Video of Super Mario Hurting People and It’s Even Better Than the Last One

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Check Out Yoav Litvin’s "Outdoor Gallery" of New York City Street Art

by BIBSeanvrq Posted on November 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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NDA’s work is “fantastic and gruesome,” Litvin writes. All photos from “Outdoor Gallery,” by Yoav Litvin.

Yankees caps, tattooed children, cartoonish women, men riding lions, Nazis in gas masks, dragons in hats: All of these figures decorate the buildings of New York City, and photographer Yoav Litvin’s new book, Outdoor Gallery, is the fulfillment of his mission to bring their vibrant shapes, colors, and lines to a larger public audience. “I learned a visual language spoken by a thriving community of artists that interact with each other, their environment, and a diverse public,” Litvin writes on what inspired his glossy tome on Big Apple street art.

Yoav Litvin, a New York-based writer and science researcher at Rockefeller University, started taking photographs of street art two years ago when he was recovering from a rugby injury. After the ill-fated match, Litvin was left to walking for exercise. The daily walks turned into a project to document what he saw–art work that most New Yorkers typically breeze by without much notice. Before that, he spent years studying the brain and later giving talks on “progressive, creative, and nonviolent causes.” His talents, creativity and attention to detail elevate his photographs and give him a platform to explore the racial, social, and political conversations going on between artists and their communities.

Many of the New York City’s graffiti artists, according to Litvin’s book, started around the age of 10, and thrive on the city’s culture of free expression. Litvin’s book captures the lives and work of 46 artists, whose reasons for painting and backgrounds often diverge, despite their commitment to working with a freedom and openness that’s seldom possible in stuffy indoor galleries. “It seemed like the natural place for art to be,” says Chris Stain, whose portrait of a woman with her young children appears on Brooklyn’s Lafayette Avenue—some of the “common people” he so often paints. Stain tells Litvin he’s been arrested, threatened, and nearly provoked into fistfights during his work sessions. But that’s all part of the process, and the thrill: “There is more drama on TV than what I have to offer.” Now he’s working on a degree in arts education, so he can teach as he continues to paint.

Many of the artistic messages are familiar: give peace a chance, women are treated like objects, death is inevitable. The subjects of race, social struggle, and politics often go hand in hand with the rebellious nature of painting illegally. It’s the variety and personality, the crazy and the unique, in Litvin’s portraits that make his book special: Each artist has a distinctive voice and style. They help shift the graffiti dynamic away from mere vandalism, and become like characters in a street novel—each portrait a new chapter.

My favorites are the strange, absurd, and mystical portraits that are sufficient to make New Yorkers pause from their bustling to ponder for a few seconds. And while some of the art is in that classic bombing style consisting of colorful, jumbled letters—channeling the defiance of leaving your mark on a place—far more compelling are the odd, yet oddly cohesive, works.

Consider QRST’s portrait on Brooklyn’s Troutman Street of a a man with a ram’s head. Naked and cross-legged, he holds a lantern and a bird cage with cardinals inside, all while floating on a broad pink flower. It’s weird and thought-provoking. Why a ram? Why cardinals? Is that peace I see in the ram’s eyes, or a foreboding fortune? And why does ASTRODUB, who graced a wall in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg with a sexy, terminator-esque woman, orange skulls, pink birds, and the words “Love hurts so good” say that she “can’t really identify as a street artist?” How does NDA manage to combine cartoonish elements of children’s books—big yellow faces with pickle-sized noses, purple flowers, dogs—with macabre skulls, dragon snouts, and rap lyrics, and still inspire joy and melodic rhapsody? The book is full of mysteries. And that’s the best part.

Here are some of Litvin’s favorites:

Bunny M pastes her intricate, often mythological, figures all over Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Chris Stain and Billy Mode produce evocative neighborhood murals.

Cope2 and Indie184 specialize in classic graffiti.

“I love this picture a lot,” Litvin says. “Here, I am serving as the photographer whereas Dain’s artwork is my model.”

Hellbent uses abstract colorful patterns and texture for a striking effect.

Kram, a transplant from Barcelona, combines humor and technical skill in his popular work.

“Mimi” appears in many pieces by Shiro, which embody hip-hop and street culture.

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Check Out Yoav Litvin’s "Outdoor Gallery" of New York City Street Art

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Two Charts That Show How the US Is Shortchanging the World

by Antony9244 Posted on November 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Tim McDonnell

This morning, the New York Times reported that President Obama is poised to announce a pledge of $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund, a United Nations-administered account to help poor countries deal with climate change. That’s the biggest single pledge of any country so far (see chart above); it doubles the total size of the fund and is a major step toward the UN’s target of raising $15 billion before next month’s climate talks in Lima, Peru. Other notable carbon emitters, such as the UK, are expected to announce contributions by the end of next week.

But viewed in a different context, the US contribution looks much less impressive. The idea behind the fund is to reconcile one of the cruel ironies of climate change: Many of the nations that will be hit hardest by global warming—countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands, for example—have done very little to cause the problem. Bangladesh was recently ranked as the country that is most vulnerable to climate change, but its per-capita carbon dioxide emissions are 44 times smaller than the US’s per-capita emissions, according to the World Bank. So the fund is meant to bridge the gap between the rich countries whose carbon pollution causing climate change and the poor countries that are suffering from it.

As the chart below shows, the US’s contribution to the Green Climate Fund looks a lot smaller when it’s adjusted to take into account America’s extremely high emissions:

Tim McDonnell

Cumulatively since 1980—the earliest year for which consistent data from the Energy Information Administration is available—the US has emitted more carbon than any other country, including China. (In 2008, China overtook the US as the leading annual carbon polluter). So it’s probably fair to say that the US is more to blame for global warming than any other single country. And yet Obama’s pledge to the Green Climate Fund only translates to about $17,100 per million metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted from 1980 to 2012—placing it ninth among the 13 countries that have announced pledges. That’s a bit like crashing a friend’s car and only offering to pay to fix the steering wheel. By contrast, Sweden’s pledge equates to $292,000 per million tons of CO2 emissions—17 times greater than the US pledge.

It’s great and necessary that Obama is willing to help poorer countries adapt to climate change. But I think it’s fair to say the US is getting away pretty cheap.

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Two Charts That Show How the US Is Shortchanging the World

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Big Mayo Wants You to Know There’s Only One Way to Make Mayo, Dammit

by WallyValliere Posted on November 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Last Friday, the Anglo-Dutch mega-conglomerate Unilever, owner of Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, filed suit against the vegan upstart Hampton Creek, maker of egg-free Just Mayo, citing “false advertising and unfair competition,” and whining claiming that “Just Mayo already is stealing market share from Hellmann’s.”

Unilever, which long ago swallowed Ben & Jerry’s, Breyer’s, Lipton, Mrs. Filbert’s, Slimfast, Close-Up, Noxzema, Q-Tips, Vaseline, and hundreds of other brands into its multinational maw, argues that “Hampton Creek’s materially false and misleading Just Mayo name, packaging, and advertising has caused and unless restrained will continue to cause great and irreparable injury to Unilever.” That irreparable injury—for which Unilever requests that Hampton Creek change the name, remove all jars from shelves, and pay Unilever three times damages, plus attorney’s fees—comes because Hampton Creek is trying to pass off its eggless goop as mayonnaise, which “damages the entire product category, which has strived for decades for a consistent definition of ‘mayonnaise’ that fits with consumer expectations.” The FDA, Unilever correctly points out, defines mayonnaise as including an “egg-yolk containing ingredient.” Hampton Creek has fired back that, duh, that’s why they call their product mayo, not mayonnaise. But this seems a little shifty, considering that on their website they’ve referred to Just Mayo as “an outrageously delicious mayonnaise.”

Read our past coverage of the hackers trying to make fake eggs better. Ross MacDonald

Mayo 101: Oil and water hate each other. Shake them up in a bottle, and they’ll retreat to their respective corners as quickly as possible. But sometime in the 1700s, some proto–molecular gastronomist discovered that if you add an egg to the mix, its unique lipoproteins will run interference, forming a thicket of long molecules that trap the oil droplets and prevent them from coalescing and rising to the surface. Sauce Mayonnaise was born, and quickly swept the Continent. That was pretty much the end of innovation in the mayonnaise sector, until recently, when Hampton Creek hit upon a method of tweaking yellow pea proteins to act like egg proteins. Just Mayo was born. And quickly sued.

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Big Mayo Wants You to Know There’s Only One Way to Make Mayo, Dammit

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Thanks to Victoria’s Secret, We Now Know Models Get Sad With Body Envy Too

by ZaraOZATndf Posted on November 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Following the backlash to their “The Perfect Body” campaign, Victoria’s Secret appears to be attempting a bit of damage control with a new video that actually shows it’s still as tone-deaf to body image concerns as ever.

The video, posted on Instagram, features model Sara Sampaio explaining that even beautiful models know what it’s like to long for the bone structure of others—in this case, Candice.

But Sampaio knows that “not in a million” years could she have the body of Candice. The post cuts out to her looking dejected, while forming the shape of Candice’s magical derriere. It’s a sad day when we have to remind Sampaio she is in fact stunning, but at least we now have the comfort of knowing all ladies can relate to body hating.

Don’t stress about what someone else has—love what u got! @sarasampaio #VSFashionShow #KnowYourBody #ModelTalk

A video posted by Victoria’s Secret (@victoriassecret) on Nov 11, 2014 at 8:12am PST

(h/t Jezebel)

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Thanks to Victoria’s Secret, We Now Know Models Get Sad With Body Envy Too

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Will This New GMO Potato Take Off? McDonald’s Has Spoken

by ZacTzbnwtiujmn Posted on November 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Would you be excited to pluck a bag of precut, gleaming-white potato slices from supermarket produce bin—fresh not frozen, and ready to throw in the pan or the FryDaddy?

Your answer may decide the fate of the “Innate” potato, which has been genetically engineered to resist browning and to contain less of the amino acid that turns into acrylamide—a probably human carcinogen—when potatoes are fried at high temperatures. Developed by the agribusiness giant J.R. Simplot, a major player in the $3.7 billion American potato market, the product won approval last week from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). The reason you can currently only buy frozen precut potatoes is that they turn brown quickly. The Innate solves this, uh, problem.

To understand why the success of the new potato will hinge on your desire for convenience, a little background is in order: Simplot is one of the three massive companies (alongside ConAgra and McCain Foods) that buy potatoes from farmers, process them into French fries—as well as tater tots, spiral fries, and wedges—freeze them, and distribute them to companies ranging from fast-food giants to supermarket chains.

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Will This New GMO Potato Take Off? McDonald’s Has Spoken

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Study: White People Think Black People Are Magical Unicorns

by butter Posted on November 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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A new study featured in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science concludes white people may possess a “superhuman bias” against black people, and are therefore likely to attribute preternatural qualities to black people.

Jesse Singal explains at the Science of Us:

In a series of five studies, some involving so-called implicit association tests in which words are flashed on a screen quickly enough to “prime” a subject with their meaning but not for them to consciously understand what they have seen, the researchers showed that whites are quicker to associate blacks than whites with superhuman words like ghost, paranormal, and spirit.

This image of a magical black person, someone holding extraordinary mental and physical powers, has long persisted through American culture, whether it be through cringe-worthy movie roles or literature.

And the damage of such a potential bias is significant. While it’s easy to understand why most clichés are both dangerous and destructive, the study suggests white people’s tendency to cast a black person as a magical being—a stereotype that on its face some might claim is positive—is actually just as detrimental as say the image of the angry black woman, absent father, etc.

The superhuman image may be able to explain matters such as why young black men are perceived to “be more ‘adult’ than White juveniles when judging culpability,” write researchers Adam Waytz, Kelly Marie Hoffman, and Sophie Trawalter. If true, such a perception could outline the overwhelming racial disparities seen in prison systems throughout the country.

This bizarre phenomenon could even have contributed to the immense hope Americans placed on President Barack Obama in 2008. As the Boston Globe recently pointed out, back in 2007 David Ehrenstein described Obama’s campaign as such:

Like a comic-book superhero, Obama is there to help, out of the sheer goodness of a heart we need not know or understand. For as with all Magic Negroes, the less real he seems, the more desirable he becomes. If he were real, white America couldn’t project all its fantasies of curative black benevolence on him.

Republicans later even attempted to make light of the stereotype with CD’s featuring a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro.”

Although the trope has been criticized for some time, researchers behind this recent study say it’s the first “empirical investigation” into the matter.

(h/t Science of Us)

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Study: White People Think Black People Are Magical Unicorns

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"I Could Krushchev You": 9 Shocking Allegations From the Don Blankenship Indictment

by WVTJoannevapufa Posted on November 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was indicted by a federal grand jury on Thursday, more than four years after an explosion at his company’s Upper Big Branch Mine killed 29 coal miners. The four-count indictment alleges that Blankenship “conspired to commit and cause routine violations of mandatory federal mine safety standards” in order to “produce more coal, avoid the costs of following safety laws, and make more money.” (Blankenship was also indicted for allegedly making false statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission.)

Blankenship, characteristically, is not backing down. In a statement, his attorney, William Taylor, said that “Mr. Blankenship is entirely innocent of these charges. He will fight them and he will be acquitted.” Taylor called Blankenship “a tireless advocate for mine safety” and argued the prosecution had been triggered by Blankenship’s “outspoken criticism of powerful bureaucrats.”

But the 43-page indictment tells a different story—in which Massey employees devised secret codes to thwart safety inspectors, and workers risked drowning while laboring in flooded mines that lacked even the minimum safety precautions.

Here are some allegations from the indictment:

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"I Could Krushchev You": 9 Shocking Allegations From the Don Blankenship Indictment

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3 Ways Obama’s Immigration Executive Action Changes Everything (and One Way It Doesn’t)

by eltonwagner4653 Posted on November 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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The details of President Barack Obama’s much-rumored, much-debated executive action on immigration have been leaked to the press, and the broad outline, according to Fox News and the New York Times, includes deportation relief for upwards of 5 million people.

Republicans are already lining up to block the White House’s plans, and Obama’s successor could go ahead and reverse course in 2017, anyway. Still, here are three reported provisions that could have a dramatic impact on the lives of the United States’ 11 million undocumented immigrants:

1. Expansion of DACA, the program for DREAMers: Back in 2012, a Department of Homeland Security directive known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) extended deportation relief to those young immigrants who came to the United States before their 16th birthday and went on to graduate from high school or serve in the US military. As Vox‘s Dara Lind has reported, the program has been a success for the roughly 600,000 immigrants who received deferred action by June 2014, although just as many are eligible but haven’t yet applied. According to the Fox News report, Obama’s executive action would move the cutoff arrival date from June 2007 to January 1, 2010, and remove the age limit (31 as of June ’12); a Migration Policy Institute (MPI) report from September detailed how changes to the initial plan could make hundreds of thousands of immigrants DACA-eligible:

“Executive Action for Unauthorized Immigrants,” Migration Policy Institute, 2014

2. Relief for the undocumented parents of US citizen children: According to the Times, a key part of the executive action “will allow many parents of children who are American citizens or legal residents to obtain legal work documents and no longer worry about being discovered, separated from their families and sent away,” a move that would legalize anywhere from 2.5-3.3 million people. The Huffington Post reported in June that more than 72,000 parents of US-born children were deported in fiscal year 2013 alone; of those, nearly 11,000 had no criminal convictions. (One 2013 report estimated that 4.5 million US-born kids have at least one undocumented parent.)

3. Elimination of mandatory fingerprinting program: Under Secure Communities, or S-Comm, immigrants booked into local jails have their fingerprints run through a Homeland Security database to check their legal status. (If they’re unauthorized, they can be held by local authorities until the feds come pick them up.) The program, which began under President George W. Bush and was greatly expanded under Obama, has long come under fire for quickly pushing people toward detention and potential deportation, as well as for contributing to racial profiling and even the detention of thousands of US citizens. According to one 2013 report, S-Comm led to the deportation of more than 300,000 immigrants from fiscal years 2009 to 2013.

There are other parts to Obama’s plan, including hundreds of thousands of new tech visas and even pay raises for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. Still, given this year’s border crisis, it’s notable that the president’s plan seems to make little to no mention of the folks who provoked it: the unaccompanied children and so-called “family units” (often mothers traveling with small kids) who came in huge numbers from Central America and claimed, in many cases, to be fleeing violence of some sort.

The administration has been particularly adamant about fast-tracking the deportation of those family unit apprehensions, whose numbers jumped from 14,855 in fiscal 2013 to 68,445 in fiscal 2014, a 361 percent increase. Meanwhile, ICE has renewed the controversial practice of family detention (a complaint has already been filed regarding sexual abuse in the new Karnes City, Texas, facility) and will soon open the largest immigration detention facility in the country, a 2,400-bed family center in Dilley, Texas—just as Obama starts rolling out what many immigration hardliners will no doubt attack as an unconstitutional amnesty.

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3 Ways Obama’s Immigration Executive Action Changes Everything (and One Way It Doesn’t)

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