How The Power Of Imagination Can Shape And Redefine Society

Hulu’s newest cartoon is a lesbian fairytale for children — and its shattering conventions

Rosaline follows a young maiden on her trip through the woods to deliver a basket of treats to her sweetheart. It’s standard fairytale fare, in all ways but one: Rosaline’s sweetheart is a woman. The cartoon, which debuted in the midst of LGBT Pride Month, is the second queer love story brought to Hulu.

The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato. Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies

What If We Treated All Consent Like Society Treats Sexual Consent? (via Everyday Feminism)

The Easterbunny Comes to NGC 4725 

At first called “Easterbunny” by its discovery team, officially named Makemake is the second brightest dwarf planet of the Kuiper belt. The icy world appears twice in this astronomical image, based on data taken on June 29 and 30 of the bright spiral galaxy NGC 4725. Makemake is marked by short red lines, its position shifting across a homemade telescope’s field-of-view over two nights along a distant orbit. On those dates nearly coincident with the line-of-sight to the spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices, Makemake was about 52.5 astronomical units or 7.3 light-hours away. NGC 4725 is over 100,000 light-years across and 41 million light-years distant. Makemake is now known to have at least one moon. NGC 4725 is a famous one-armed spiral galaxy.

Credit: Bob English

The star of “Grey’s Anatomy”, Jesse Williams, was presented a Humanitarian award at the BET Awards on Sunday, June 26. It’s a well-deserved win since Jesse has been fighting for equal rights for Black people and supporting the Black Lives Matter for a really long time.

If you happened to miss it, watch the full speech here.

#BlackLivesMatter   

#BETAwards

Inside the new MTA K-9 training center in Stormville, New York

At a sprawling campus north of New York City, a 3-year-old German Shepherd named Johnny frantically sniffed through seats and luggage bins on an out-of-service commuter rail train trying to catch a whiff of hidden explosive.

When Johnny found a black bag with the faint scent of C-4, commonly used to blow up buildings, he sat statue-still at attention, alerting handler Kevin Pimpinelli of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority police to his discovery. In return, Pimpinelli rewarded him with a prized chew toy.

“In the real world, he can find the explosive before it gets on the train,” Pimpinelli said. "Our job is to try to prevent that device getting in.”

Johnny is one of 50 of the transit authority’s police dogs being trained at its $13 million, 72-acre training center in Stormville, New York, about 70 miles (113 km) north of New York City.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority operates subways, buses, and railroads in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and provides more than 2.7 billion trips each year to travelers, according to the agency’s website.

The canine training center, the biggest facility of its kind in the United States, begins full operations on June 8, 2016,  and will train dogs used by police across the nation.

Amid attacks including the March bombing of a Brussels train station and airport, which killed 32 people, U.S. police agencies see highly trained dogs as key to maintaining security in large public spaces.

Their sharp sense of smell exceeds the ability of humans and machines to detect explosives and track suspects.

“The importance of this facility is growing daily because we get more threats daily,” said MTA Police Lieutenant John Kerwick, who oversees the agency’s police-dog training operations.

The dogs are carefully selected. Only about one in 30 dogs assessed at breeders are chosen for the canine police force. The dogs are mainly German Shepherds like Johnny or Belgian Malinois, high-energy breeds known for a strong desire to work.

HIGHLY TRAINED SNIFFERS

Those handpicked few are trained to detect threats such as explosives or contraband including narcotics, said David Ferland, who heads the United States Police Canine Association (USPCA).

The MTA dog training facility includes rooms modeled after classrooms and bus stations, 26 kennels and a veterinary clinic. Outside, there are nine buses, ponds and train cars at the end of a retired Metro North railroad track. All are used to train the dogs.

While there is no central database tracking the number of police dogs in service in the United States, the USPCA estimates the figure at about 10,000.

Ferland said interest in training police dogs has risen dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, evidence of a sense of urgency in combating similar threats.

“Before 9/11, there were only a handful of these training sites,” Ferland said. “Now, there are training facilities an hour’s drive from every major city in the U.S.”

The Stormville facility will offer initial 12-week courses where dogs learn to detect explosives and the refresher courses that dogs are required to take each month.

The canines are exposed to heights, loud noises, fumes, moving vehicles and other distractions they would face on the job.

Typically they work until about the age of 10, after which they normally go on to live as pets in their primary handlers’ homes.

“They’re like family,” said Officer Keith Flood with his three-year-old black Shepherd-Malinois mix named Doc, after finishing a training exercise. (Reuters)

See more images of the K-9 training center on Yahoo News!

#KnowYourHistory: #Stonewall

7 High-Tech Period Products You Had No Idea Existed

Asexuality is an orientation in which a person does not experience sexual attraction to any sex and/or gender. They do not feel an intrinsic desire to make sex a part of their relationships with other people. However they may still be able to experience other types of attraction, and desire relationships with other people.

Check out the following websites to learn more about asexuality, join in on the community, and/or help increase asexual visibility and education.

Asexual Visibility and Education Network

International Asexuality Conference (Worldpride Toronto 2014 Affiliate Event) (June 28, 2014)

Asexual Things (asexual vis/ed tumblr blog)

Frequently Asked Questions

Asexuality Websites/Blogs/etc