I Used To Be a Neo-Nazi. Charlottesville Terrifies Me. When I was a skinhead, living in the Los Angeles area in the 1980s, I remember watching a favorite video with my fellow extremists. It was footage of the 1979 Greensboro massacre, when Ku Klux Klan members shot and killed five people at a workers’ demonstration in North Carolina. A group of cars pulled up. KKK members jumped out of the vehicles, killed a group of communists, then drove away. We laughed at it. Story Continued Below This past weekend, the news from Charlottesville brought back that memory—of being surrounded by fellow white supremacists in my old house, watching our odd choice of Friday-night entertainment. I gave up being a skinhead years ago.
But there’s one huge difference: These newer offshoots have been far more successful than we could ever have dreamed. I recognize so much of myself in those hate-filled faces from Charlottesville. I was not recruited into white supremacist groups. But what really radicalized me was jail. I sank deeper and deeper in. The_depressive_and_the_psychopath. Five years ago today, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered their classmates and teachers at Columbine High School. Most Americans have reached one of two wrong conclusions about why they did it. The first conclusion is that the pair of supposed "Trench Coat Mafia outcasts" were taking revenge against the bullies who had made school miserable for them. The second conclusion is that the massacre was inexplicable: We can never understand what drove them to such horrific violence. But the FBI and its team of psychiatrists and psychologists have reached an entirely different conclusion.
They believe they know why Harris and Klebold killed, and their explanation is both more reassuring and more troubling than our misguided conclusions. The first steps to understanding Columbine, they say, are to forget the popular narrative about the jocks, Goths, and Trenchcoat Mafia—click to read more about Columbine's myths—and to abandon the core idea that Columbine was simply a school shooting. The Sad Truth: Nauseatingly profound illustrations of what the world is turning into. ISIS New Years Eve Terror Plot Story Is Totally Bogus. Another major holiday, another sensational ISIS terror plot the FBI takes credit for preventing. This time, the case splashed across the news is that of Emanuel Lutchman, a 25-year-old panhandler in Rochester, New York who allegedly plotted to attack a restaurant on New Years Eve.
All major network broadcasts led with the story and it was breathlessly featured everywhere from the New York Times to CNN. There’s only one problem: the story is wildly inaccurate and in many ways factually false. Like many 11th-hour FBI terror busts, the only thing the media has to go on is a DOJ criminal complaint that’s released to the press. Let’s run down some of the key claims made by the media and why they’re either factually incorrect or misleading. Claim: The plot was directed by ISIS. While the FBI's public statements to the media imply Lutchman was having discussions with real ISIS recruiters, the actual court documents are careful never to make this specific claim, only saying “Mr. Mr. These Photos Will Make You Want To Put Your Phone Down Forever. It looks like smartphones really have killed the concept of "idle time. " Last year, photographer Babycakes Romero captured an array of images showing people glued to their mobile devices when they could otherwise be having a conversation, enjoying dinner or simply staring into space.
The series, titled "The Death of Conversation," was published on Bored Panda and ultimately led to a TEDx Talk this Tuesday. In the time that's passed since he first published the photo series, Romero says the smartphone problem -- as he sees it -- has only gotten worse. "As smartphones encompass more and more of people's lives everyone is turning to them more and more as every aspect of their existence has been digitized and made accessible to them 24/7," Romero told The Huffington Post via email. You've probably noticed something like this in your own life: You're at dinner with someone, there's a lull in the conversation, and suddenly both of you are checking your smartphones. According To This Sleep Expert, Work And School Shouldn't Start Until After 10am. Sleep is money for the brain, and young adults are accruing as much as 10 hours of sleep debt each week.
According to sleep expert Paul Kelley, a sleep-deprivation crisis is burdening young adults in today's world. “This is a huge issue for society,” Kelley, who works for the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford, told the Guardian. “We are generally a sleep-deprived society but the 14-24 age group is more sleep-deprived than any other sector of society.
This causes serious threats to health, mood performance and mental health.” For school children, Kelley advocates age-based start times: 8:30 a.m. for eight to 10-year-olds, 10 a.m. lessons for 16-year-olds, and 11 a.m. starts for 18-year-olds. While this might sound drastic, his approach does have scientific backing. Despite this, in 42 American states more than 75% of schools start before 8:30 a.m., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
If You're White, Married, or College Educated, There's a Good Chance You Just Got Poorer. Library of Congress Are you white? Or married? Or do you have a college degree? If you answered yes to any of these questions, there's a good chance that you got poorer last year. The US Census Bureau released its annual report on income and poverty today, and it's the latest reminder that the economic recovery hasn't really brought about any recovering for large segments of the population. A deeper dive into the data reveals trends that could have ramifications for the presidential election. White people are getting poorer: While the overall median income remained unchanged between 2013 and 2014, some demographic subgroups fared worse than others. Educated and married people are getting poorer: The percentage of people living below the poverty line (about $20,000 a year for a family of three) has remained stubbornly unchanged at 14.8 percent—2.3 percent higher than it was in 2007.
US Census Bureau. The Truth Behind Those Amazing Instagram Pics – Our Need To Impress. Disclaimer: The content on www.the-open-mind.com is information based on the opinions and scholarship of the authors. This site is intended for educational and commentary purposes only, both of which are strictly protected by Free Speech. The Open Mind is not responsible for the opinions or content written by its writers.
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All the pictures and information shown on this blog are the property of their respective owners. After 75 Years of Alcoholics Anonymous, It's Time to Admit We Have a Problem. For much of the past 50 years or so, voicing any serious skepticism toward Alcoholics Anonymous or any other 12-step program was sacrilege—the equivalent, in polite company, of questioning the virtue of American mothers or the patriotism of our troops. If your problem was drink, AA was the answer; if drugs, Narcotics Anonymous. And if those programs didn’t work, it was your fault: You weren’t “working the steps.”
The only alternative, as the 12-step slogan has it, was “jails, institutions, or death.” By 2000, 90 percent of American addiction treatment programs employed the 12-step approach. In any other area of medicine, if your doctor told you that the cure for your disease involved surrendering to a “higher power,” praying to have your “defects of character” lifted, and accepting your “powerlessness,” as outlined in the original 12 steps, you’d probably seek a second opinion. The latest salvo comes from Dr. Dodes doesn’t pull his punches. These 21 Brilliant Illustrations Summarize Everything Wrong With Society.
John Holcroft's thought-provoking illustrations depict everything wrong with the modern world. Credit: John Holcroft “Satire is fascinating stuff. It’s deadly serious, and when politics begin to break down, there is a drift towards satire, because it’s the only thing that makes any sense” – Ben Nicholsan. John Holcroft is a talented British illustrator known for his ability to merge retro-style illustrations with satirical commentary concerning topics that matter. Using drawing inspiration from the 1950’s, Holcroft has created thought-provoking depictions of everything wrong with the world today. From society’s dependence on technology to the devaluation of the workforce, his quirky, satirical works convey uncomfortable messages in a loud-and-clear manner.
In the past, the artist has worked with The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Ecomoist, The Independent and Reader’s Digest – to name a few. What are your thoughts? Are Americans Still Puritan? “I THINK I can see the whole destiny of America contained in the first Puritan who landed on those shores,” the French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville wrote after visiting the United States in the 1830s. Was he right? Do present-day Americans still exhibit, in their attitudes and behavior, traces of those austere English Protestants who started arriving in the country in the early 17th century?
It seems we do. Consider a series of experiments conducted by researchers led by the psychologist Eric Luis Uhlmann and published last year in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. In one study, they investigated whether the work habits of today’s Americans reflected the so-called Protestant work ethic. Martin Luther and John Calvin argued that work was a calling from God. Don't Thank Me for My Service. U.S. Marine in Zaranj, Nimroz province, December 30, 2011. (Photo: Cpl. Bryan Nygaard / U.S. Marine Corps) I do not want to appear disrespectful or ungrateful, but should we meet on the street one day, do say "Hello," or "Fine day" or other such nicety, but please do not thank me for "my service" as a United States Marine.
I make this request because my service, as you refer to it, was basically, either to train to become a killer or to actually kill people and blow shit up. Now, that is not something for which a person should be proud nor thanked. In making this request not to be thanked for my service, I am, of course, expressing only my opinion, and, perhaps, my idiosyncrasy, and I make no claim to be speaking for other veterans. First, what was accomplished by your sacrifice and by the waste of lives and treasure in Vietnam, in Iraq and in Afghanistan?
Make some demands. Everyone blames mental illness for mass shootings. But what if that's wrong? It seems like there's one thing everyone agrees on after a mass shooting: The shooter must have been mentally ill. President Barack Obama said as much in his reaction to the Umpqua Community College shooting on Thursday: "We don't yet know why this individual did what he did, and it's fair to say that anybody who does this has a sickness in their minds, regardless of what they think their motivations may be. " But what if the assumption is wrong, or at least misses the nuance of the issue? Jonathan Metzl, a professor of psychiatry, sociology, and medicine, health, and society at Vanderbilt University, argues that mental illness is often a scapegoat that lets policymakers and the public ignore bigger, more complicated contributors to gun violence.
For example, some studies have found that people with schizophrenia are more likely to commit violent acts. But the focus on mental illness after mass shootings lives on. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Justin Sullivan/Getty Images. Texas Students Mock Gun Law By Pledging to Open-Carry Sex Toys. From the Campus (Dildo) Carry Facebook group. So far in 2015, there have been more mass shootings in the United States than days in the year. But instead of pursuing gun control laws that save lives, some states have been making it even easier to carry guns wherever you want. This June, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill known as the “campus carry” law that allows gun license holders to carry a concealed handgun on university campuses starting Aug. 1, 2016. A similar law in Oregon which forces universities to allow guns on campus gained national attention this month after a horrific mass shooting at Umpqua Community College.
Last week, Jin started up a protest called #CocksNotGlocks. 9 Ways We Can Make Social Justice Movements Less Elitist and More Accessible. In my first year of college, I stopped calling myself an activist. It took attending just a few meetings of the campus queer group for me to realize that I didn’t fit in with everyone else. Despite that the fact that I was definitely queer – a pre-transition trans woman at the time – I could tell immediately that I wasn’t “queer enough” to fight for social justice alongside these university-educated revolutionaries who spoke with such confidence and rolled their eyes every time I opened my mouth.
I didn’t know what “trigger warnings” or “intersectional systemic oppression” were. I didn’t dress in ripped denim and black leather, or have a colorfully dyed, asymmetrical haircut. I wasn’t white, like most of the people in the room. I didn’t even know who this “Judith Butler” person that everyone seemed to love so much was. Simply being racialized, a trans person, and survivor of abuse had apparently not prepared me to talk or think about racism, transphobia, or trauma in any valuable way. 1. Famous suicide notes - dying words of famous people. Volunteer for Social Change. Io9.gizmodo. Stop watching TV! (and check out Timothy Leary's "Brain Manual") | Yoism.
6 Terrifying Ways Crows Are Way Smarter Than You Think. Mankind has a long and checkered past with crows and ravens: They have been feared as symbols of death, because they're all black and scary, revered as creators of the world because, well, it was either them or the seagulls, and worshiped as trickster gods, because of their baffling intelligence.
Intelligent enough, in fact, for us to start worrying ... #6. They Can Remember Your Face Next time you see a group of crows, look closely. Try to remember which one is which, and see if you can tell the difference between them the next time you pass. Odds are good that you can't; they're crows, which makes them all big black birds. OK, so the scientists weren't just playing out horror movie fantasies -- they were testing whether the crows could recognize human faces or not. "Wow. Pretty soon, every single crow on the campus knew which masks meant trouble, and wanted the guys wearing them dead. Oh, and also none of the scientists were ever seen again. #5. . #4. One. They'll be back any minute now. The Confessions. Brain Scans Reveal What Dogs Really Think of Us.
Why Adorable Puppies Can Make You Feel Violent. Topeka, Kansas City Council Considers Decriminalizing Domestic Violence To Save Money. Seven Sins of Our System of Forced Education. 5 Reasons You Hated School (That You Were Right About) 6 Terrifying Ways Crows Are Way Smarter Than You Think. 23 Very Famous Quotes You Probably Have Wrong. Bisexual VS Pansexual. 10% of the Brain Myth. The Vigilant Citizen Forums. TO TRAIN UP A CHILD. Why Do Cockatoos Dance? | Animals - mom.me. Things are getting crazier in America. The Six Things Americans Should Know About the Second Amendment, by Richard W. Stevens. Everyone blames mental illness for mass shootings. But what if that's wrong?