Magnificent Trees Around The World

If you aren’t totally quaking in your boots at the news of millions of bees dead, yet again, you’re nuts.

Do yourself a favor. Learn to code. Here's how.

I’ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It’s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur. Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code and now that man is making his first mobile application.

Learning to code elevates your professional life, and makes you more knowledgeable about the massive changes taking place in the technology sector that are poised to have an immense influence on human life.

(note: yes I realize that 3/5 of those links were Google projects)

But most folks are intimidated by coding. And it does seem intimidating at first. But peel away the obscurity and the difficulty, and you start to learn that coding, at least at its basic level, is a very manageable, learnable skill.

There are a lot of resources out there to teach you. I’ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here’s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:

Novice

Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won’t get into the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry about it for now:

Dash - by General Assembly

CodeAcademy

w3 Tutorials (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)

Intermediate

Now that you’ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it’s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I’ve found these resources to be solid:

Khan Academy

CodeAcademy - Ruby, Python, PHP

Difficult

If you’re here, you’re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You’re ready to start making real stuff take shape. Here are some different types of resources to turn you from someone who knows how to code, into a full-fledged programmer.

Programming problems

Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren’t how to make a language do a task, but just how to do the task in general. Like how to find an item in a very large, sorted list, without checking each element. Here are some resources for those types of problems

Talentbuddy

TopCoder

Web Applications

If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I’d highly suggest the tutorial - it’s one of the best I’ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.

Django Tutorial

I’ve never used Rails, but it’s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I’d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.

Rails Guide

If you know PHP, there’s an ocean of good stuff out there for you to learn how to make a full-fledged web application. Frameworks do a lot of work for you, and provide quick and easy guides to get up and running. I’d suggest the following:

Cake PHP Book

Symfony 2 - Get Started

Yii PHP - The Comprehensive Guide

Conclusion

If there’s one point I wanted to get across, it’s that it is easier than ever to learn to code. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.

If you know of any additional, great resources that aren’t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer.

Best of luck!

Writer: There Was Only One Bed…

Smut fans: *gasp!!!!!*

Writer: So They Spooned All Night And The Brooding One Allowed Themselves To Feel Vulnerable For The First Time In Years And The Chirpy One Got Some Quality Snuggles

Fluff fans: *GASP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*

KU JOURNALISM MAJOR SHREDS “CASE” AGAINST MIKE BROWN

Shelby Lawson is a student at the University of Kansas, majoring in Journalism and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Lawson posted the following to her Facebook page: 

“Alright y’all. I’d like to clear a few things up. This is a general address to the long list of misconceptions and inconsistencies and abuses of power that exist surrounding the killing of Mike Brown. I have researched these points and provided sources in case you wish to do some reading of your own.

-The most common misconception I’m hearing is that Mike Brown was significantly larger than Officer Wilson. This is incorrect. On page 198 of the official grand jury transcript, you can see that Officer Wilson testifies he is 6 ft 4 and weighs 210 lbs,the same size as Mike Brown.

(source)

-Mike Brown was NOT stopped because he was a suspect in crime. He and his friend Dorian Johnson were stopped for jaywalking, as Darren Wilson testifies to on page 208 of his grand jury testimony.

-Mike Brown WAS fleeing from Officer Wilson when he was fatally shot. Wilson confirms this on page 281 of his grand jury testimony.

-Officer Wilson broke police self-defense protocol, which teaches to disarm and incapacitate rather than kill and teaches officers to go for body shots. Officer Wilson shot Mike Brown twice in the head, after he shot him four times in his arm and torso.

(source)

-Ferguson Police ignored protocol and refused to interview or take a statement from the eyewitness present from Officer Wilson’s initial contact with Mike Brown until his death.

(source)

-The forensic examiner broke protocol by failing to take crime scene photos. On page 95 of the grand jury transcript, she claims that this was because her camera had died, however, she goes on to describe how she immediately followed Wilson to the hospital in order to photograph his “injuries.”

-Forensic investigators broke protocol by failing to test Officer Wilson’s gun for fingerprints, since Wilson claims that Brown grabbed his gun and caused it to misfire. Page 39, grand jury transcript.

-Darren Wilson was then allowed to break protocol by washing the blood off of himself before it could be photographed, making it impossible to analyze blood spatter patterns and determine what position Mike Brown was in when Wilson first shot him. Wilson recounts this on page 10 of his official police interview.

(source)

-While Officer Wilson’s story of what happened that day has changed at least three times, six separate eyewitnesses, four of whom have never met each other, all have identical accounts of what happened. They were never interviewed by police.

(source)

-These eyewitnesses all agree that Darren Wilson was the aggressor and that Mike Brown was shot while surrendering, with his hands in the air and that his last words were “I don’t have a gun. Stop shooting.”

-This is backed up by Mike Brown’s autopsy, which suggests that Mike Brown would have had to be in the hands-up position for the bullets to enter his hand and arm the way they did.

(source)

-Furthermore, in a press conference, the coroner who performed Mike Brown’s autopsy relays that there was no trace of gun shot residue anywhere on his body, proving that Wilson’s claim that Mike Brown grabbed his gun, causing it to misfire, is impossible and untrue.

(source)

-Ferguson Police lied about the distance Mike Brown was from Officer Wilson when he was killed. They reported it was 35 ft. but it was in fact 148 ft.

(source)

-Owner of Ferguson Market states that he did not call police to report a theft of cigars, that the theft had nothing to do with Mike Brown, and that the man on the security footage is not Mike Brown.

(source)

-The prosecuting attorney for the case against Darren Wilson has helped raise $600,000 in donations for Darren Wilson, creating a clear conflict of interest.

(source)

-The police department that Officer Wilson worked for prior to coming to Ferguson was disbanded after multiple instances of racial profiling.”

(source)

Source

Do armadillos actually roll?

actually, the three-banded armadillo of south america is the only armadillo that actually rolls when in distress!

the larger and more common nine-banded armadillo of central and north america actually has too many bands in its shell to form a proper sphere, so what they do instead is... perform a three-foot vertical leap to startle an attacker and run like hell once they hit the ground, trusting their armor to protect them from attacks from the rear!

and for an animal completely covered in bone armor, they can sure pull a high rate of giddyup if they have to!

nyoom

This is for those who are curious and you all out in Ferguson. I’m going to be attaching some info graphics (one may seem needless due to circumstances but I’m adding it anyway.) I have some more info I’d like to put into a better to use format ( alot of them are screen grabs and I’d like to put in clearer and slur free language.) If you want me to send anything I got or any info I have ( I’m a Criminal Justice student) don’t hesitate to ask. 

I have seen a few of these but a post with them compiled may help more. I will be editing these as I get it all prepared I’ll use the Ferguson Protest Aid tag for any updates I do. Stay safe everyone.

Dumpster diving tip: What to do with more than you need

Well I’m at it again. From one dumpster diving haul from a single pet store I will be able to feed 4 dogs for a month.

Pictured above is 2 dog food containers, each with about 60 pounds of kibble, and another bag of dog food at 30 pounds. Yes, out of 1 haul I got 150 pounds of perfectly edible dog food. This waste is inherent to capitalism, especially the late capitalism we’re living in now, and even in the middle of a pandemic.

For 4 years now I have been feeding my dog for free, not just with freegan kibble but with meat, eggs, and veggies saved from being thrown away from households, restaurants, and retailers.

But more often than not I come across way more food than I need, and it’s not always shelf stable kibble. So what now? Take a portion and leave the rest to rot? Well, you don’t have to!

If you find yourself with the time and enthusiasm, a dumpster full of perfectly good potatoes can quickly become an empty dumpster, but how do you disperse this much food? First, try to find a Buy Nothing Project near you, see if your city has a free store, a food rescue project, or if you need to get your precious perishables to a fridge ASAP, donate to the closest homeless shelter (they’re usually open 24/7, but make sure to call ahead first). But if it can wait, food banks do take “expired” food, and are always in dire need of bulk donations.

Whichever method you choose, always make it a point to connect with people, dive and donate regularly if you can, and most importantly, get organized. Because when you donate what you don’t need, you’re taking direct action, and you are more powerful together.

Dumpster diving safety

Dumpster diving legalities

Go dumpster diving, y’all

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