October 3, 2017

Tom The Dancing Bug Toon - The NRA provides a solution to the North Korean Nuke Problem

October 3, 2017

Mourn the Las Vegas shooting, we're told. But don't ask why it happened

By Richard Wolffe



After the Las Vegas massacre, we’re told we cannot talk about politics. At times of public mourning, we must maintain some dignity that is otherwise entirely absent from our politics: we must pray, reflect on the nature of evil, but never debate what to do next.



Because what we’ll do next is mourn the next mass murder in the United States.

There is a strange exclusion zone around white gun violence by second amendment fanatics. Mass murder by Muslims (or foreigners who may have come from majority Muslim countries) is not subject to the same kind of hushed grieving. Gang warfare in Chicago receives no such respect.



And to be clear, a white liberal gunman – as Stephen Paddock was initially rumored to be, at least by some on the far right – would prompt no outpourings of concern about human nature and the need for national unity.



more

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/03/mourn-las-vegas-shooting-gun-control

October 3, 2017

Tuesday Toon Roundup 3 - The Rest

Storm









Cabinet




Resources







Monuments




Spain

October 3, 2017

Tuesday Toon Roundup 2 - Golden Turd

October 3, 2017

Tuesday Toon Roundup 1 - The Issue that always returns, because we do nothing

October 2, 2017

Bill O'Reilly Calls Las Vegas Mass Shooting the "Price of Freedom"

"The Second Amendment is clear that Americans have a right to arm themselves for protection. Even the loons."
Bill O'Reilly weighed in on the mass shooting in Las Vegas and the topic of gun control in a message posted to his official site Monday, calling the deadly attack "the price of freedom."

In the note, O'Reilly said that government regulations "will not stop psychopaths from harming people."

He added, "Public safety demands logical gun laws but the issue is so polarizing and emotional that little will be accomplished as there is no common ground."

The No Spin News host called the mass murder the "downside to American freedom," citing the Second Amendment and Americans' right to bear arms. "Violent nuts are allowed to roam free until they do damage, no matter how threatening they are," he wrote.


more
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/bill-oreilly-calls-las-vegas-mass-shooting-price-freedom-1045007

Try saying that to a relative of one of the dead. Just try, o brave one.

October 2, 2017

Google admits citing 4chan to spread fake Vegas shooter news

Google News took the unusual step of confirming its use of the imageboard site 4chan as a news source on Monday. The admission followed Google News' propagation of an incorrect name as a potential shooter in the tragic Las Vegas shooting on Sunday night.

A reporter from tech-news site The Outline posted the full text of an e-mail he received from an unnamed Google representative. Reporter William Turton said that he had not discussed any "attribution terms" before receiving Google's e-mail, which confirmed that the Google News service was bombed into automatically reposting a false shooter's name.

The incorrect shooter's name, which Ars Technica will not repost to reduce any further robo-aggregated hits, began appearing on 4chan's "pol" board, which is infamous for pushing intentionally inflammatory content. The named appeared on the board when its members began looking through people connected to names that had been mentioned by Las Vegas investigators. One of those people—a sibling of a person of interest who was later cleared by Vegas police of wrongdoing—had social-media attachments to left-leaning subjects such as MoveOn.org and MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show. Both 4chan and right-wing misinformation sites like Gateway Pundit began spreading the false name as a suspect while calling the person a "far-left loon." (GP's article has since been removed, but a Google Cache of it still exists.)

Google News' statement claims that these false reports landed on the service's "Top Stories" feed due to a burst of activity for a name that had never received many search attempts. "When the fresh 4chan story broke, it triggered Top Stories, which unfortunately led to this inaccurate result," the statement reads.


more
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/google-admits-citing-4chan-to-spread-fake-vegas-shooter-news/

October 2, 2017

Explosive bursts of methane helped ancient Mars keep liquid water flowing, study finds

In a drying time, Mars may have been kept warm enough for liquid water to remain stable on the surface thanks to explosive bursts of methane gas, a new study finds.

The simulations, described in the journal Nature Geoscience, could explain how Mars managed to sustain a series of lakes in a climate that at first glance seems too cold and arid to have done so.

Since landing on the Red Planet in August 2012, NASA’s rover Curiosity has discovered that 96-mile-wide Gale Crater held a series of lakes around 3.5 billion years ago. The rocks it has drilled and X-rayed and lasered have also revealed environments that would have been potentially habitable for Earth-like life.

Keep in mind, however, that Mars’ wettest period was likely the first billion years of its 4.6-billion-year life, the Noachian period, when it had a thicker atmosphere that would have been better able to keep liquid water stable on the planet’s surface.

more
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-mars-methane-tilt-20171002-story.html

October 2, 2017

Some Memes for today

October 2, 2017

Trump tweets "warmest condolences" to victims of Las Vegas mass shooting

Last Updated Oct 2, 2017 8:14 AM EDT

President Trump issued a brief statement Monday morning in response to the shooting in Las Vegas that has left at least 50 people dead and more than 200 people injured.

Mr. Trump said that he was delivering his "warmest condolences and sympathies" to the victims.

My warmest condolences and sympathies to the victims and families of the terrible Las Vegas shooting. God bless you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 2, 2017

This marks the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Authorities have identified 64-year-old Stephen Paddock of Mesquite, Nevada, as the shooter who was killed by police on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino after he went on a shooting rampage at a music festival across the street.

more

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/las-vegas-mass-shooting-trump-tweets-condolences/