Daily U.S. Snow Depth 1950-2015

KENYA. Nairobi. Jockey Club. 1988–Stuart Franklin

Waking up this morning to the news about the shooting at Pulse in Orlando, and the predictable flowering of ignorance and hatred around it, so let’s be clear: This is the deadliest mass shooting in US history. It took place at a gay club filled with a diverse crowd, including numerous people of colour. It took what should have been a playful sanctuary and turned it into an abattoir.

This has nothing to do with the race or religion of the perpetrator.

This has everything to do with the systematic homophobia and transphobia built into the very fabric of US society, from state-mandated sexual education curricula telling youth that queerness is a ‘choice’ or 'abhorrent lifestyle’ to legislation banning transgender women from using the bathroom to outdated and unscientific FDA guidelines barring men who have sex with men from donating blood for at least one year after their last sexual encounter. This is about homophobia spouted left and right from legislators who refuse to crack down on hate crimes, about tolerance for hate at the highest levels of government.

This is about out systemic inaction on gun control, and the tired expression on the president’s face today as he tried to articulate, yet again, that the country needs to do something. It is about the hundreds of hypocritical, vile legislators and candidates who proudly trumpeted their thoughts and prayers while knowing full well that they voted down assault weapons bans and other checks on gun ownership. It is about the presidential candidate who took to Twitter today to congratulate himself on being 'right on radical Islamic terrorism’ and insisting that the president 'resign in disgrace.’

You’re killing us, America. The choices that you are making are killing us. And now, you want to pit us against our Muslim brothers and sisters, labeling this an act of 'Islamic terrorism’ because it happened to be committed by a Muslim man. You think that you can distract us from your institutional homophobia and transphobia by evoking a bogeyman, and it’s not going to work. I stand with all my queer and trans siblings today, and I stand with all my Muslim siblings, including those who are queer and trans. I stand against hatred, against this country’s refusal to engage with its gun problem. I stand with the as yet unknown number of people who are waking up this morning facing acquired disabilities and lengthy stays in rehab because a homophobic man decided to come shoot up their safe space.

I stand for a world where I don’t have to write things like this anymore.

It's a Zatoichi kind of day....

Daily Graphic

The state of global nuclear power five years after the Fukushima disaster

Guardians of the Galaxy by Tom Whalen

and here we go: all current Flight Rising dragon breeds, all together! I used the average sizes for each breed, which is is as follows (in order from left to right in the second image):

Imperial: 21m

Ridgeback: 18m

Guardian: 15m

Snapper: 5m

Pearlcatcher: 5.65m

Mirror: 5.7m

Wildclaw: 5m

Tundra: 3.48

Skydancer: 5.66

Spiral: 3.25

Fae: 1m

and again, the human silhouette is 1.83m/6’. this was a fun project and I think I can get back to actual arts now, and while I enjoy having this reference, I also still take dragon sizes with a big grain of salt (and don’t even get me started on wingspan & weights ok)!

you can also nab a larger size (2500x1185 pixels) of the second image over here on dA, and you can check out my tag #drag size chart for individual size charts of each breed (with smallest, largest & average).

And in winter?

Work by Vinie Graffiti

U.S. Space Hardware - Today and Tomorrow. Illustration from New York Mirror Magazine, 1963.

Source: http://i.imgur.com/m00afMX.jpg

Hong Kong’s “Cubicle Dwellers”: Exposing Life in One of the World’s Most Densely Packed Cities

In light of the current political protests in Hong Kong, showcasing a project from the Hong Kong-based Society for Community Organization (SoCO), a non-governmental and human rights advocacy group, seems fitting. SoCO has organized community social actions and civic education programs to encourage political participation since 1972, and it recently brought attention to the unacceptable living conditions of many of the city’s poorer inhabitants in a disturbingly illuminating ad campaign. “Cubicle Dwellers” shows the tiny apartments, averaging only about 40 square feet and too small to be shot from anywhere but above, that over 100,000 people occupy. In these spaces, individuals and families must rest, cook, and store all their personal belongings. Due to Hong Kong’s lack of buildable space, the city has come to be one of the world’s densest, resulting in increasingly tall, tightly-packed dwellings. Indeed, thirty-six of the world’s 100 tallest residential buildings are in Hong Kong, and more people live or work above the 14th floor than anywhere else on Earth, making it the world’s most vertical city. The project highlights how the disparity between industrial growth and human needs can rapidly transform environments, and how an imbalance in the way we distribute our energy resources can paradoxically create places of enormous wealth and widespread poverty.