"The missile hits, and after the smoke clears there’s a crater there and you can see body parts from the people. [A] guy that was running from the rear to front, his left leg had been taken off above the knee, and I watched him bleed out.
These guys had no hostile intent. In Montana, everyone has a gun. These guys could have been local people that had to protect themselves. I think we jumped the gun."
Former drone operator Brandon Bryant, on his first drone strike.
Bryant quit the drone program after realizing its disregard for life and how numb strikes made him feel, saying he “couldn’t do it anymore.”
(via hipsterlibertarian)
eastling replied to your post: Thinking about how Belmont was out of brisket last…
Wait, you’re at Belmont? My cousin/roommate is transferring there in August!!
Belmont House of Smoke - restaurant here in Norfolk, VA.
"The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely."
Lorraine Hansberry
Thinking about how Belmont was out of brisket last night and my heart’s breaking all over again.
The major sea change in media discussions of Obama and civil liberties | Glenn Greenwald
“Leave to the side how morally grotesque it is to oppose rights assaults only when they affect you. The pragmatic point is that it is vital to oppose such assaults in the first instance no matter who is targeted because such assaults, when unopposed, become institutionalized. Once that happens, they are impossible to stop when - as inevitably occurs - they expand beyond the group originally targeted. We should have been seeing this type of media outrage over the last four years as the Obama administration targeted non-media groups with these kinds of abuses (to say nothing of the conduct of the Bush administration before that). It shouldn’t take an attack on media outlets for them to start caring this much.”
(Source: romanticbohorocker, via dagnyrearden)
Serious roommate conversations.
Repeat after me:
You don’t have to feel responsible for the actions of anybody who isn’t you.
The color of your skin should not dictate how you’re treated.
If you feel some sort of obligation to let people be unpleasant to you because you’re more privileged than them, you are not compassionate, you are a doormat.
(via feministsaresexist)
@meowallie impersonating a turtle.
Washington gets explicit: its 'war on terror' is permanent
Glenn Greenwald: Senior Obama officials tell the US Senate: the ‘war’, in limitless form, will continue for ‘at least’ another decade - or two.
(Source: 21st-century-classical-liberal, via benevolentoverlord)
Camille Saint-Saëns’ setting of Calme des nuits (from Deux Choeurs), sung by the Monteverdi Choir (John Eliot Gardiner, conductor).
(Source: Spotify)
Fifth-grader suspended at overnight nature camp for bringing Swiss Army knife - Utah CCW Carry
In early April, Braden Bandermann’s class set off on Garden Gate Elementary School’s annual, week-long pilgrimage for fifth-graders to Marin Headlands, just north of San Francisco.
Before leaving, Braden did what any Silicon Valley 10-year-old faced with the perils of nature might do: He packed his trusty Swiss Army knife. As any camper knows, the multi-tool device is nothing if not versatile. Braden’s particular model contains a can opener, tweezers, a toothpick, a nail file, a tiny pair of scissors and a small blade.
The little blade landed the boy in big trouble.
“They called me,” explained Tony Bandermann, Braden’s father. “They said, ‘You have to come and get him. He has a weapon. He needs to be suspended or possibly expelled.’”
#Carousel at @VaOpera & @VaArtsFest.
