MY HEAD JUST EXPLODED
(via wilwheaton)
A tour of the International Space Station by NASA astronaut Sunita Williams (via Kottke).
Lawmakers are scrambling to strike a deficit reduction deal before the end-of-year deadline, and in a press conference today, President Obama called the failure to get a deal done “mind-boggling.”
The dysfunction is even more mind-boggling when you consider just how close both sides were before the talks collapsed. House Republicans and the White House had been gradually giving ground and getting closer to a broad deficit reduction package. As the chart above shows, the last offers from the Republicans and the White House were extremely close, off by only a few hundred billion on either side of the ledger. One or two more rounds of negotiations may have sealed it.
Instead, the House Republican caucus revolted, Speaker John Boehner walked away from the talks, and we find ourselves here, three days from the deadline with only flickers of hope that an agreement will be reached in time.
Here’s what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you’d expect he would be. He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn’t want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn’t show up to that. He came in and played “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage — I’m sitting right in the front row — comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it — then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That’s how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don’t want him to be all cheesin’ and grinnin’ with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise. So that was a real treat. -President Barack Obama
(Source: painted-in-a-corner, via suitep)
The Vulture recaps the season finale of The Newsroom →
All this talk about Will being a Keith Olbermann character before Newsroom premiered obscured his real doppelgänger until last night. A Republican who believes conservatism has lost its way, that the military should be small, that Sarah Palin has hijacked the party with her lies, and that religion has no place in the public sphere? He’s Andrew Sullivan. Just less British.
(Source: ludicriss, via pleatedjeans)
Wainwright giving a talk on deep space object imaging. (Taken with Instagram)
Dustin Curtis on the competitive position that Twitter finds itself in →
The solution Twitter has taken is to barricade the walled garden, keep the valuable tweet data inside Twitter, and remove all incentives for people to move to other, similar platforms.
“Hey, I wonder what heterosexual, white men think about this. We never hear from them.” — everyone (beginning of time - present)
Fuck Mike Huckabee, and every single person who stands with him.
Two times.
My collection of vintage Bond grows, thanks to Valerie Wainwright. (Taken with Instagram)
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