Unlikely simultaneous historical events

summercicada:

seasonsmayklaine:

quantumblog:

jkottke:

A poster on Reddit asks: What are two events that took place in the same time in history but don’t seem like they would have?

Spain was still a fascist dictatorship when Microsoft was founded.

There were no classes in calculus in Harvard’s curriculum for the first few years because calculus hadn’t been discovered yet.

Two empires [Roman & Ottoman] spanned the entire gap from Jesus to Babe Ruth.

When the pyramids were being built, there were still woolly mammoths.

The last use of the guillotine was in France the same year Star Wars came out.

Oxford University was over 300 years old when the Aztec Empire was founded.

Pablo Picasso died the year Pink Floyd released “Dark Side of the Moon” (1973) 

Prisoners began to arrive to Auschwitz a few days after Mc’Donalds was founded. 

Coca-Cola is only 31 years younger than Italy. 

Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth II were born in the same year. 

The Ottoman empire still existed the last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.

WEIRD

10 Things They Won’t Tell You About the Flint Water Tragedy. But I Will. | MICHAEL MOORE

funnyinseconds:

africanmelanin:

dmc-dmc:

feelingwomanish:

Really. You should read this.

@dmc-dmc you should REALLY read this

This is pure evil. @feelingwomanish i don’t even know what to say.

Anyone who sees this PLEASE READ and fill out the petition!!!!!

  1. While the Children in Flint Were Given Poisoned Water to Drink, General Motors Was Given a Special Hookup to the Clean Water. A few months after Governor Snyder removed Flint from the clean fresh water we had been drinking for decades, the brass from General Motors went to him and complained that the Flint River water was causing their car parts to corrode when being washed on the assembly line. The Governor was appalled to hear that GM property was being damaged, so he jumped through a number of hoops and quietly spent $440,000 to hook GM back up to the Lake Huron water, while keeping the rest of Flint on the Flint River water. Which means that while the children in Flint were drinking lead-filled water, there was one — and only one — address in Flint that got clean water: the GM factory.
  2. For Just $100 a Day, This Crisis Could’ve Been Prevented. Federal law requires that water systems which are sent through lead pipes must contain an additive that seals the lead into the pipe and prevents it from leaching into the water. Someone at the beginning suggested to the Governor that they add this anti-corrosive element to the water coming out of the Flint River. “How much would that cost?” came the question. “$100 a day for three months,” was the answer. I guess that was too much, so, in order to save $9,000, the state government said f*** it — and as a result the State may now end up having to pay upwards of $1.5 billion to fix the mess.
  3. There’s More Than the Lead in Flint’s Water. In addition to exposing every child in the city of Flint to lead poisoning on a daily basis, there appears to be a number of other diseases we may be hearing about in the months ahead. The number of cases in Flint of Legionnaires Disease has increased tenfold since the switch to the river water. Eighty-seven people have come down with it, and at least ten have died. In the five years before the river water, not a single person in Flint had died of Legionnaires Disease. Doctors are now discovering that another half-dozen toxins are being found in the blood of Flint’s citizens, causing concern that there are other health catastrophes which may soon come to light.
  4. People’s Homes in Flint Are Now Worth Nothing Because They Cant Be Sold. Would you buy a house in Flint right now? Who would? So every homeowner in Flint is stuck with a house that’s now worth nothing. That’s a total home value of $2.4 billion down the economic drain. People in Flint, one of the poorest cities in the U.S., don’t have much to their name, and for many their only asset is their home. So, in addition to being poisoned, they have now a net worth of zero. (And as for employment, who is going to move jobs or start a company in Flint under these conditions? No one.) Has Flint’s future just been flushed down that river?
  5. While They Were Being Poisoned, They Were Also Being Bombed. Here’s a story which has received little or no coverage outside of Flint. During these two years of water contamination, residents in Flint have had to contend with a decision made by the Pentagon to use Flint for target practice. Literally. Actual unannounced military exercises – complete with live ammo and explosives – were conducted last year inside the city of Flint. The army decided to practice urban warfare on Flint, making use of the thousands of abandoned homes which they could drop bombs on. Streets with dilapidated homes had rocket-propelled grenades fired upon them. For weeks, an undisclosed number of army troops pretended Flint was Baghdad or Damascus and basically had at it. It sounded as if the city was under attack from an invading army or from terrorists. People were shocked this could be going on in their neighborhoods. Wait – did I say “people?” I meant, Flint people. As with the Governor, it was OK to abuse a community that held no political power or money to fight back. BOOM!
  6. The Wife of the Governor’s Chief of Staff Is a Spokeswoman for Nestle, Michigan’s Largest Owner of Private Water Reserves. As Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein: “Follow the money.” Snyder’s chief of staff throughout the two years of Flint’s poisoning, Dennis Muchmore, was intimately involved in all the decisions regarding Flint. His wife is Deb Muchmore, who just happens to be the spokesperson in Michigan for the Nestle Company – the largest owner of private water sources in the State of Michigan. Nestle has been repeatedly sued in northern Michigan for the 200 gallons of fresh water per minute it sucks from out of the ground and bottles for sale as their Ice Mountain brand of bottled spring water. The Muchmores have a personal interest in seeing to it that Nestles grabs as much of Michigan’s clean water was possible – especially when cities like Flint in the future are going to need that Ice Mountain.
  7. In Michigan, from Flint water, to Crime and Murder, to GM Ignition Switches, It’s a Culture of Death. It’s not just the water that was recklessly used to put people’s lives in jeopardy. There are many things that happen in Flint that would give one the impression that there is a low value placed on human life. Flint has one of the worst murder and crime rates in the country. Just for context, if New York City had the same murder rate as Flint, Michigan, the number of people murdered last year in New York would have been almost 4,000 people – instead of the actual 340 who were killed in NYC in 2015. But it’s not just street crime that makes one wonder about what is going on in Michigan. Last year, it was revealed that, once again, one of Detroit’s automakers had put profit ahead of people’s lives. General Motors learned that it had installed faulty ignition switches in many of its cars. Instead of simply fixing the problem, mid-management staff covered it up from the public. The auto industry has a history of weighing the costs of whether it’s cheaper to spend the money to fix the defect in millions of cars or to simply pay off a bunch of lawsuits filed by the victims surviving family members. Does a cynical, arrogant culture like this make it easy for a former corporate CEO, now Governor, turn a blind eye to the lead that is discovered in a municipality’s drinking water?
  8. Don’t Call It “Detroit Water” — It’s the Largest Source of Fresh Drinking Water in the World. The media keeps saying Flint was using “Detroit’s water.” It is only filtered and treated at the Detroit Water Plant. The water itself comes from Lake Huron, the third largest body of fresh water in the world. It is a glacial lake formed over 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age and it is still fed by pure underground springs. Flint is geographically the last place on Earth where one should be drinking poisoned water.
  9. ALL the Children Have Been Exposed, As Have All the Adults, Including Me. That’s just a fact. If you have been in Flint anytime from April 2014 to today, and you’ve drank the water, eaten food cooked with it, washed your clothes in it, taken a shower, brushed your teeth or eaten vegetables from someone’s garden, you’ve been exposed to and ingested its toxins. When the media says “9,000 children under 6 have been exposed,” that means ALL the children have been exposed because the total number of people under the age of 6 in Flint is… 9,000! The media should just say, “all.” When they say “47 children have tested positive”, that’s just those who’ve drank the water in the last week or so. Lead enters the body and does it’s damage to the brain immediately. It doesn’t stay in the blood stream for longer than a few days and you can’t detect it after a month. So when you hear “47 children”, that’s just those with an exposure in the last 48 hours. It’s really everyone.
  10. This Was Done, Like So Many Things These Days, So the Rich Could Get a Big Tax Break. When Governor Snyder took office in 2011, one of the first things he did was to get a multi-billion dollar tax break passed by the Republican legislature for the wealthy and for corporations. But with less tax revenues, that meant he had to start cutting costs. So, many things – schools, pensions, welfare, safe drinking water – were slashed. Then he invoked an executive privilege to take over cities (all of them majority black) by firing the mayors and city councils whom the local people had elected, and installing his cronies to act as “dictators” over these cities. Their mission? Cut services to save money so he could give the rich even more breaks. That’s where the idea of switching Flint to river water came from. To save $15 million! It was easy. Suspend democracy. Cut taxes for the rich. Make the poor drink toxic river water. And everybody’s happy.

Link to petition

Guys if ur gonna scroll past this at least read number 5. I haven’t seen stuff to confirm this but i just looked it up and it’s true, and they didn’t even warn the community that they were going to be doing military testing. This is unprecedented torture by the government.

10 Things They Won’t Tell You About the Flint Water Tragedy. But I Will. | MICHAEL MOORE

Unlikely simultaneous historical events

marzipanandminutiae:

historyofromanovs:

seasonsmayklaine:

quantumblog:

jkottke:

A poster on Reddit asks: What are two events that took place in the same time in history but don’t seem like they would have?

Spain was still a fascist dictatorship when Microsoft was founded.

There were no classes in calculus in Harvard’s curriculum for the first few years because calculus hadn’t been discovered yet.

Two empires [Roman & Ottoman] spanned the entire gap from Jesus to Babe Ruth.

When the pyramids were being built, there were still woolly mammoths.

The last use of the guillotine was in France the same year Star Wars came out.

Oxford University was over 300 years old when the Aztec Empire was founded.

Pablo Picasso died the year Pink Floyd released “Dark Side of the Moon” (1973) 

Prisoners began to arrive to Auschwitz a few days after Mc’Donalds was founded. 

Coca-Cola is only 31 years younger than Italy. 

Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth II were born in the same year. 

The Ottoman empire still existed the last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series.

The first wagon train of the Oregon Trail heads out the same year the fax machine is invented.

Nintendo was founded at the same time Jack the Ripper was on the loose.

We put a man on the moon before we put wheels on a suitcase.

Oreos were invented the same year the Titanic sank.

The Mongols fought the Crusaders and the Samurais at the same time.

Cleopatra lived closer to the moon landings than she did to the building of the Pyramids of Giza.

dental floss was invented two years after Jane Austen died

House on the Rock Day

aerylon:

itsybitsytiny:

clockways:

fool-errant:

neil-gaiman:

nashscribblings:

Soooo many pictures. Too many for the Twitters, so I’m dusting off the ol’ Tumblr.

In anticipation of next season’s American Gods, my girlfriend and I visited the House on the Rock. It’s a little hard to explain, but here’s the short version: an architect/engineer climbed up a rock and built Frank Lloyd Wright’s worst nightmare. It struck Neil Gaiman so deeply he included it as a critical location in American Gods, and it’ll be featured in season 2 of the Starz series.

So we went. Behold.

This was what greeted us when we pulled up: a ¾ full parking lot, and a big one at that. I was a little surprised; Gaiman’s descriptions of the place gave me a seedier, hole-in-the-wall vibe, but this looked like some mid-level theme park entrance. Hmm. 

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We started the tour and ventured around … and I was starting to think we came to the wrong place. Sure, the statue in front was kind of iffy, and some of the rooms looked a little retro, maybe gauche … but not the mindfuck I had anticipated.

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Then … then we came to the Infinity Room.

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… um. Okay. Hey, there’s a glass floor at the midway point, what’s under ther–

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What are those, bushes? Wait … treetops?

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HOLY FUCK YOU BATMAN IT’S AN UNSUPPORTED ROOM HANGING OUT OVER A FUCKING CLIFF YOU GO JUMP UP AN ASSHOLE

(It also creaks and sways. I thought it was just an old house, not a FUCK YOU CLIFF OF DOOM.)

Once back on solid ground, we found a door.

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After that, shit got … weird.

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I call this the Impractical Rejected Weapons from Fallout 3 collection.

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Including a literal HAND CANNON. What the what?

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Um.

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This is getting unsettling.

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The pooping dog piggy bank’s eyes won’t stop following me.

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Ooohhhkay … hey, look!  Another one of them doors!

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I wonder what’s behind this–

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… well, I would have never guessed “replica American Main Street inside a house.” You win this round.

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“I wish I was BIG.”

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And because why the hell not, he’s a goddamned carnival pipe organ.

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Then we came to this sign.

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What? Bullshit. Bullshit you have a whale in this house. I will *shit myself* if you have a whale in th–

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OH FUCK YOU MATE.

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NO FUCK YOU THAT IS A THREE STORY TALL WHALE.

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THAT IS A THREE STORY TALL WHALE FIGHTING A GIANT SQUID IN YOUR HOUSE YOU HAVE TOO MANY DRUGS

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YOU PUT A FUCKING MOTORBOAT IN ITS MOUTH WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU

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THIS DUDE GETS IT.

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“I have seen some shit.”

And after the whale was just menagerie after menagerie of random audacious bullshit.

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“Hello, I’ll be waiting in your closet tonight.”

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“YOUR SILENCE GIVES CONSENT.”

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Okay, this made me smile.

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Fun fact: Burma Shave ads were the precursor to WTFIWWY.

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Wait, where is that noise coming fro–

Oh yeah! There’s a HUGE assortment of these weird mechanical music machines assembled from real instruments, electronics, pneumatics, and madness.

But it doesn’t stop there.

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Then we stumbled on the “Abominations in the Sight of God” section.

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And at the very end … this. If you’ve read American Gods, you know *exactly* what this is. If you’re only watching the show, consider this spoilers for season 2.

Then we went outside, and there was a kitty.

I petted the kitty.

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The end.

Bonus: Here is a machine that perfectly replicates the sound of Steve Martin falling down a flight of stairs.

Never doubt me again…?

@cucubert – I smell ROADTRIP!

So I’ve been there. It lives up to this post so very much. See we went up to busy my brother who lived in Madison at the time. He decided we should go see a Frank Loyd Wright house. We… ended up here instead so that was a bizarre mistake.

On top of that the current owners collected Santas. And it was sorta winter time so all the Santas when on display. Thousand of them. On all surfaces. Those main living areas? Covered in Santas. Yeeep.

We all agreed an amazing mistake on my brother’s part.

I took my kids this summer, they are 4 and 6. I thought it would be fun for them to half remember when they are older and question if it was all just a dream.

One thing that’s missing is the exit from the carousel room is a demon’s mouth. The room beyond I like to refer to as the boss fight.

putting this on my bucket list