Dude, you need to chill. Have some weed or a glass of wine or something. The pot legalisation will work itself out over time. Once enough rich people realise how much cash is in it, it'll become an industry with lobbyists. Maybe Snoop should start a super PAC.

Gators are relatively chill compared to crocs, so it was either protecting a nest or felt threatened by this dinkus getting to close to it in his truck.

It be feelin' like the life that I’m livin' man, I don't control
Like every day I’m in a fight for my soul
Could it be that my medicine’s the evidence
For pigs to stop and frisk me when they rollin' round on patrol?
And ask “why you’re here?”
I just tell 'em cause it is what it is
I live here and that’s what it is
He chimed “you got a dime?
I said “Man, I’m tryin' to smoke and chill
Please don’t lock me up in front of my kid
And in front of my wife
Man, I ain’t got a gun or a knife
You do this and you ruin my life
And I apologize if it seems like I got out of line, sir
Cause I respect the badge and the gun
And I pray today ain't the day that you drag me away
Right in front of my beautiful son”
And he still put my hands in cuffs, put me in the truck
When my woman screamed, said “shut up”
Witness with the camera phone on
Saw the copper pull a gun and
Put it on my gorgeous queen
As I peered out the window
I could see my other kinfolk and
Hear my little boy as he screamed
As he ran toward the copper begged him not to hurt his momma
Cause he had her face down on the ground
And I’d be much too weak to ever speak what I seen
But my life changed with that sound

Get out, get out, get out, get out
Feeling this, feeling this too early
Get out, get out, get out, get out
Feeling this way, feeling this way
Feeling this, feeling this too early
Feeling this, feeling this early

It be feelin' like the life that I’m living man, I don’t control
Cause every day I’m in a fight for my soul
All hands below, high seas in a rickety boat
Smoke o’s, so the kid might cope
You want cash or hope, no clash, matter fact get both
Go without get turnt to ghosts
You know that's the law, deal done by the shake of claws
It ain't a game if the shit don’t pause
And I find you odd, so convinced in the truth of y’all
That the true truth’s truly gone
And yes there's a they, any time a man say there's not
Then you know that he lost the plot, what can I say?
Truth’s truth when denied or not, like its true crews ride the cock
Fair enough, the way that the beat bump do sound tough
I made it in the dark like Civil War surgery
Woke up in the same air you huff, early
By twelve o’clock the whole Earth felt dirty
Street Lamps stare when you walk watch the birdie
They’ll watch you walk to the store they’re recording
But didn’t record cop when he shot, no warning
Heard it go pop, might have been two blocks
Heard a kid plus pops watched, cop make girl bleed
Go to home, go to sleep, up again, early

Hedges' latest article on surveillance and snitches includes pure gold in the form of Solzhenitsyn quotes.

It's been 12 years since I read the Gulag Archipelago and I haven't spent a single thought on it throughout this entire chain of surveillance revelations. The corrosive effect permanent surveillance has on you - the stool pigeons are a wonderful illustration of it.
Even those who acknowledge the chilling effect often qualify it as less corrosive than full-blown "Zersetzung", as if there were a clear-cut line between the two. Dragnet surveillance is Zersetzung.

Anyway, loved this one:

A remarkable fresh breeze was blowing! On the surface we were prisoners living in a camp just as before, but in reality we had become free—free because for the very first time in our lives we had started saying openly and aloud all that we thought! No one who has not experienced this transition can imagine what it is like!

And the informers … stopped informing.

Wow... I honestly got a quick chill up my spine at:
"I also know that Freddie Gray will never be back, and that those windows will be".

That, to me, is as poignant a one-liner as any found in some of the great and famous speeches that can still resonate strongly with us today, years after they were initially given. Big salute to Mr. McKesson, and middle-finger salute to Mr. Blitzer for apparently completely missing the legitimacy and gravitas of those profound words.

@ChaosEngine

"at least Hilter had a decent performance" ..wtf... really?

You sound like Comic book guy, with an even greasier ponytail.

Chill out bruh

DAMN YOU DIRTY A... whoa, chill dude.

I love it when the Spectre logo shows up and then you hear those brass notes. chill down the spine.

Is this part of a series of fan shorts? I love how they depict Spawn. Chilling and truly demonic. I do, however, wish there was more solidity, like a feeling of more weight, once Spawn solidified from his demon essence.

I spent some time pouring over a couple trades when I was a kid, but never really got into him. Art style is mesmerizing for sure. But... all of my friends who were REALLY into Spawn (like really) into Spawn when the comics first started making the buzz -- all of these super Spawn fans were also really into Insane Clown Posse. So... they had the Violator action figures, you know the demonic clown villain.

I just didn't get why they identified with that guy. They secretly wanted Spawn to fail? Laughing inside about that poor soul never seeing his wife again...

How indeed.

Draghi's ECB has just made a move and I don't understand why. Come Feb 11th, they will no longer accept Greek bonds as collateral, effectively cutting off one of Greece's last two sources of credit. What remains is the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) provided to the Greek Central Bank, through which the entire banking system must now get most of its credit.

Why did they do it? Why now? I don't think it has something to do with the Advocate Generals opinion piece the other day, declaring the ECB's membership in the troika to be a conflict of interest and that fiscal policy is not to be used as a tool to influence poltical decision-making.

Could it be pure idiocy like the time they pulled to plug on Cyprus only to backpeddle shortly after? Or might they be trying to force a move on part of Germany and Greece? "Stop messing around and get your ducks in a row NOW." -- that sorta thing? Is it mere posturing of sorts, a shot across the bow of Greece?

-------
Edit #1

I really don't like this. It looks like disaster, smells like disaster and tastes like disaster. And it's entirely too close for comfort. Are they truly going to turn Greece into a failed-state over principle? The way they casually discuss the lives of nearly 11 million people, and the future of the European Union as well, is bone-chilling.
-------


In the meantime, Schäuble's meeting with Varoufakis went just as expected, reports indicate. Schäuble won't budge a bit. Negotiations with the troika are mandatory, and fiscal waterboarding must be resumed at once. There will be no compromise, not with him in charge. He'll push Greece off the cliff without blinking even once. Convictions worthy of a Templar, that one. Worth remembering that he admitted taking 100k in bribes from an arms dealer in '94 and still managed to become Minister of Finance. A living legend, just not the kind I'd prefer.

With regards to hyperinflation, most folks over here seem to have forgotten, or maybe they never learned, that Chancellor Brüning's austerity regime led to deflation in 1930-32, pushing unemployment to 23%. What followed was a massive influx in membership and infuence for parties at both ends of the political spectrum, similar to Greece. Except in our case, it wasn't the left (KPD) who won the elections in '32...

Brilliant post. Thank you for sharing!

Fantastically chilled!

Well that's fucking ridiculous! Should we do that for every sift that doesn't work? Chill out. People come through, see a sift doesn't work, and mark it dead. That's pretty standard procedure here.

Me and my dad had the exact same dream, with all the exact same details, a few days after a very difficult loss. We were all hugging each other, together - like when we were younger - and we both agreed on our positions, things that were 'said' (felt), everything. As he kept telling me details that i also had written down, i was getting chills down my spine. It felt like nothing i'd ever experienced before.. i even woke up feeling positive, like nothing was really wrong and it was all going to be ok.

I always went through life certain that nothing profoundly mysterious would ever happen; i understood a lot about the world and i thought i knew how to make sense of anything that happened given time. I felt like life was about getting to know someone, growing to love them and need them, only for them to be stripped away and never be known again, and for me to live on carrying that pain until eventually i was released from it. And that single experience changed my mind on all of those things, giving me a feeling of passion back... which in a way, to me, confirms that it was real - even though he passed, he somehow managed to enrich me and give me a reason to carry on. But that experience is something unique to me and my understanding of things, and no one else could or should be convinced by it.

I accept that no one else will be able to believe that what i know happened really did happen, and there will be people who would say it's coincidence. Yes it looks like one, no i can't prove it, but i feel differently about it than you do, and you weren't there.... and that's all i can say with any certainty to another person. If there IS some kind of god, or some kind of life after death, and our loved ones are waiting for us, then why would the evidence BE scientific and provable? Why should it be scientific instead of unscientific evidence, just because THIS world is scientific?

I don't believe in mediums, ghosts, tarot cards or any hocus pocus - none of that will be proven. But that doesn't mean that sometimes, perhaps, when you love someone so much, the distance between is not so great. All i can be sure of, about death, is that absolutely anything can happen, and there is no reason to assume it will be anything like what we know now.

I believe you bob. I wouldn't have before that happened, but i do now... it's just that perhaps we disagree on what it means. Which is ok, cos your guess is just as good as mine.

Worried about fake trailers popping up since the last one..., but This one gave me chills.

Putin was interviewed by a German public broadcaster. A video of it can be found here, but it's in Russian/German, unsurprisingly. As of now, RT is the only source I found for a proper English translation of the entire interview.

Anyway, it is quite disturbing to once again see just how different it sounds from what is being reported about him. The press make him sound like a power-crazed looney, yet of all the heads of state, this old spook is just about the only stable, calm, composed and diplomatic entity in the entire discussion. They call him out for an apparent unwillingness to talk, yet there he is, offering one olive branch after another.

Poroshenko is talking about getting ready for total war, yet to the media, and to folks like Abbott and Cameron, everything bad about the situation can be traced back to Putin.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: the way the press and some state officials are pushing for an open conflict with Russia, a century after the start of the First World War, 75 years after the start of the Second World War, sends chills down my spine. It is pure madness on a scale I thought we had overcome by now.