The History of Us

Via thisisnthappiness.

Photo of the Day

You know, just some regular ol' tourists out for a Segway tour of Spain.

Interesting Stuff

Transparent solar cells could make solar power a lot more usable.

This is how to protest, and back it up, Olympian style.

Caterpillar has record profits... and is celebrating by trying to force a six-year wage freeze on employees.

Chick-fil-a continues to confound me by being dickish while simultaneously making the most delicious chicken nuggets in the world.

Kevin Drum provides the rant of the day discussing a study on pre-K education:

The investment return on these two things is probably astronomical. Unfortunately, like all good things, they cost money and require rigorous execution, something that's nearly impossible because one of our major parties will never consider shifting money out of K-12 and the other is run by nihilists who are unwilling to spend money on anything other than national defense. So instead we twiddle our thumbs, doing nothing until the evidence in favor of these child-centered programs is literally bulletproof, something that might take a while since social science evidence is, by its nature, almost never bulletproof. 

In the meantime, though, there's plenty of bipartisan support for ethanol subsidies. Welcome to America.

And here is a great Rolling Stones song with a hilariously silly 80's video.

Kindly Cease and Desist

I've never been much of a Jack Daniel's fan, but the company gets kudos for this:

That is managing your brand in more ways than one.

Confusing the Uninformed

Because if you were intent on imposing Shariah law on the U.S., you would definitely start with the Tennessee state Department of Economic and Community Development...

“To date, the Haslam Administration has displayed an unfortunate ignorance to the threat of Shariah,” Kookogey said in an email to TPM. “They seem willing to accept the claims and defense of the Muslim Brotherhood at face value, refusing to even consider that, perhaps, those bent on destroying Western Civilization might just be infiltrating our institutions. … It is not like this has never happened before. The Muslim Brotherhood is following the blueprint of the Communists, who infiltrated the highest levels of government and society in the 1950’s. Shariah, however, is an even greater threat, because it has cloaked itself under the auspices of a religion, thus confusing the uninformed.”

Thank God there are well-informed citizens like Kookogey to beat back the specter of things that don't actually exist. And to do it while being rather poetically named Kookogey.

Royals Life

Even the Royals section at the Target can't get its act together...

The Greatest of All Time

The number one reason I should have gone to the celebrity softball game...

Rickey Henderson!

Friday Song Day

This one takes us all the way back... to 2010 (re-released in 2012). But is sounds so much older, and is impossible not to tap your foot to. Courtesy of J.D. McPherson.

Climate Change Give-in

Look, I normally like to argue that the mountain of scientific evidence in support of climate change is what the  98% of us in the world who want to do something about it should use to sway to the 2% of the world who happen to be in control of a lot of the interests who would prefer it not be real (or are conservatives in the United States). But I just saw an article the other day that said people rated hot weather, as opposed to global climate measurements, as the more convincing evidence of global warming. If that means you, then, you win and here you go:

Every red dot on this map shows a record high temperature in the U.S. in the month of June.

Science schmience.

Homelessness

So all politics aside, there are a lot of people struggling. Rolling Stone has a very moving story about some of them:

Then she stood alongside the road and held up the sign. The day was so windy it was hard to hold on to. "I was like, 'Please hire me,' and everybody's flying by, trying to ignore you, but this one guy drives up, looks at my résumé, looks at me and goes, 'Very effective. I'll take one of those.' I said, 'Thank you, I really appreciate that,' but I never heard from him. And then a homeless guy came up to me and goes, 'Wow. That ain't gonna work.' I didn't want to talk to him about it. I just wanted to stick my sign out there – I didn't have any more cardboard. And about halfway into it, I just started crying and I couldn't stop. I was so embarrassed. It was incredibly humiliating. You know how a lot of women hold their hand over their mouth when they cry? I started doing that, and that's when I raked in the money. I was sort of scared because there were so many cars that I was boxed in, and I was holding this gigantic sign and I was saying, 'I'd rather work, I'd rather you take my résumé, please help,' and I'm crying and the dollars just started coming out of the windows." But finally she cried herself out, and people stopped giving. She made $12 in three hours, all of it drawn by tears.

The piece features a couple of other formerly middle class families as well. No matter who you intend to vote for this year, you should let them know that you think this a a very real problem that needs very real solutions.