A collection of potentially useless things

world-shaker:

I know where I’ll be watching movies from now on.

AMC Theaters, however, is making an exception for the documentary Bully, which the Weinstein Company announced yesterday would be released this Friday unrated after the MPAA refused to lower its R rating for the film. Today, AMC decided it would allow ticket buyers under the age of 17 to see Bully — with permission. “AMC will be presenting Bully…as not rated,” said the theater-chain in a statement. “Guests younger than 17 can see the film if they are accompanied by a parent or adult guardian, or if they present a signed parental permission slip.”

That permission slip will be available on Wednesday at this link on AMC’s website. The film opens at the AMC Lincoln Square 13 in New York, and the AMC Century City 15 in Los Angeles on Friday, and expands into other theaters nationwide over the coming weeks. (A rep for the company declined to comment on the Parent’s Television Council’s statement that screening Bully at AMC’s theaters “threatens to derail the entire ratings system.”)

ladyatheist:

1. Thou shall not attack the person’s character, but the argument. (Ad hominem)

2. Thou shall not misrepresent or exaggerate a person’s argument in order to make them easier to attack. (Straw man fallacy)

3. Thou shall not use small numbers to represent the whole. (Hasty generalization)

4. Thou shall not argue thy position by assuming one of its premises is true. (Begging the question)

5. Thou shall not claim that because something occurred before, it must be the cause. (Post Hoc/False cause)

6. Thou shall not reduce the argument down to two possibilities. (False dichotomy)

7. Thou shall not argue that because of our ignorance, claim must be true or false. (Ad ignorantum)

8. Thou shall not lay the burden of proof onto him that is questioning the claim. (Burden of proof reversal)

9. Thou shall not assume “this” follows “that” when it has no logical connection. (Non sequitur)

10. Thou shall not claim that because a premise is popular, therefore it must be true. (Bandwagon fallacy)

mooglets:

[I put the majority of this under a cut for discussions of abortion, harassment, and anti-choice activists. Article from Jezebel.]

Todd Stave has the unenviable position of being the landlord of a building in Germantown, Maryland, which he leases to an abortion provider…

cozyknitten:

thisisbraedynsworld:

I’ve tried knitting three different times now. I GIVE UP. I heard about how easy and fun it was. My first row comes out loopy and messy looking EVERY TIME. I’ve watched a hundred different tutorials. I do exactly what they do. And it turns out crap.

All I wanted to do…

Alright, so first row issues. There are several reasons this could happen, 1. When you’re knitting, you’re pulling too hard on the stitches, or 2. you’re slipping or dropping stitches by accident. There could also be an issue with the tension on your stitches.

Of course, neither of these things can really be “fixed” by watching a tutorial, the best you can do is get more practice, and hopefully understand what’s going on. I don’t know who this person you are knitting for is, but I am more than sure that they will appreciate that you learned a new skill just to give them a gift. You could also find a hat that doesn’t mind having a loopy rim.

Best knitting tip I ever read: when you slide your needle into your next stitch, right before you wrap the yarn around and make the stitch, pull your yarn snug (not super tight, just enough to take up your slack from the previous stitch). Managing your tension becomes second nature with enough practice. ALSO it is possible to even out stitches after they are knitted. They will even out some as your knit your next row, but once you understand how the stitches interlock, you can take up slack in stitches that are too big/loose by using a knitting needle to loosen up the neighboring stitches across the row.

womenaresociety:

In February, after embarrassing himself by saying he was “not concerned about the very poor,” Mitt Romney explained that the government’s safety net would take care of them, and he promised to repair any holes in the net. That promise didn’t last very long. On Thursday, House Republicans approved, on a party-line vote, a disastrous new budget that would leave millions of struggling families desperate for food, shelter and health care — and Mr. Romney has embraced it.

The budget, developed by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, would cut $3.3 trillion from low-income programs over 10 years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, even more than the $2.9 trillion in Mr. Ryan’s first disastrous budget last year.

“It’s an excellent piece of work,” Mr. Romney said. (Rick Santorum said it didn’t cut enough.)

The biggest of the cuts would be to Medicaid, the joint federal and state program that is already gasping for money in many states that put a low priority on health care for low-income people. Mr. Romney often talks casually about turning the program over to the states entirely and simply writing a check to dispose of a half-century federal commitment. The Ryan budget exposes just how paltry that check would be: a cut of $810 billion through 2022, one-fifth of current spending, which would lead states to drop coverage for an estimated 14 million to 28 million people.

By eliminating the expansion of Medicaid in the health care law, cutting $1.6 trillion, it would leave another 17 million low- and moderate-income people uninsured.

Just as revealing is the acceptance by Mr. Romney and the other Republican presidential candidates of the Ryan plan to cut food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The budget would cut 17 percent of the SNAP budget, or $133.5 billion over a decade. As the center points out, there are only two ways to achieve that savings: Mr. Romney could simply take the benefits away from 8 million of the 47 million who now receive them, or he could cut everyone’s benefits. For a struggling family of four, that would mean a loss of $90 worth of food a month.

Already, most people who get SNAP benefits use them up in the first two weeks of a month, and many turn to food banks by month’s end. Cutting benefits so sharply would lead to a significant increase in hunger, particularly among children, which would quickly create dangerous ripples through the health and education systems.

At the same time, though, those families would find themselves unable to pay for health care, and they would also face reductions in housing assistance, job training and Pell grants for college tuition, all of which Mr. Ryan wants to cut, with Mr. Romney’s approval.

In all, 62 percent of the budget’s cuts come from low-income programs, and that’s on top of the substantial cut in spending already in place from last year. But the Ryan budget does contain a substantial tax cut for the rich, which is one of the reasons Mr. Romney said he was “very supportive” of the plan.

“It’s a bold and exciting effort,” he said, “and it’s very much consistent with what I put out earlier.” It is also consistent with his stated lack of concern for the very poor.