The Daily What

The Daily What

Afternoon Snack

Posted: 13 Apr 2012 01:21 PM PDT


Three-year-old Kirsten refuses to take her bowl to the sink.

“I can’t do it!”

Sobs.

“I’m not big enough!”

More sobs.

“It’s too heavy!”

Hysterical wailing.

Spoiler alert: Kirsten’s headed for a nap.

[sayomg]


Tagged: Afternoon Snack

Nazi Party Lobbyist of the Day

Posted: 13 Apr 2012 12:42 PM PDT

- Nazi Party Lobbyist of the Day


Just what the capitol needed — a lobbyist from the American Nazi Party. John Taylor Bowles, the National Socialist Movement’s presidential nominee in 2008, registered this week to lobby for “political rights and ballot access laws,” according to the registration form, which also lists as “general lobbying issue areas”: accounting, agriculture, clean air and water, health issues, the Constitution, immigration, manufacturing, retirement, and civil rights.

Ummm… civil rights? Really?

[death+taxes]


Tagged: lobbyist, nazi party

Lunchtime Links

Posted: 13 Apr 2012 12:20 PM PDT


Today on The Daily What Geek: R2-D2 becomes a sound effect-laden cake

Elsewhere Around the Internets:


Tagged: Lunchtime Links

Great Escape of the Day

Posted: 13 Apr 2012 11:38 AM PDT

In a daring escape caught on film, a young steer took his life into his own hooves Tuesday when he fled from the New Jersey slaughterhouse where he faced certain death. After crossing a river and surviving an urban roundup, complete with police cars and a tranquilizer gun, the lucky steer has found a permanent home with a volunteer from Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary (with the blessing, of course, of the slaughterhouse owner).

[arbroath]


Tagged: video

Follow-Up of the Day: Internets Revolt as Facebook Backs CISPA

Posted: 13 Apr 2012 10:32 AM PDT

- Follow-Up of the Day: Internets Revolt as Facebook Backs CISPA


Facebook (and also Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T, Intel…) has come out in support of CISPA — SOPA's evil twin that essentially would obliterate online privacy — and the wrath of the web has reached a fever pitch.

What’s the best way to fight back?

Sign the petition by Demand Progress:

“Internet users were able to push GoDaddy to withdraw its support of SOPA. Now it’s time to make sure Facebook knows we’re furious.”

And/or share your opposition on Facebook, natch.

[knowyourmeme]


Tagged: CISPA, Facebook, SOPA

Abortion Joke of the Day

Posted: 13 Apr 2012 09:58 AM PDT

- Abortion Joke of the Day


Sarah Silverman has joined the fight against the GOP’s ongoing “War on Women,” posting (obviously fake) before-and-after abortion pics on Twitter. Inappropriate? Nah. Point made, and made well.

[crushable]


Tagged: sarah silverman, war on women

Weekend Read of the Day

Posted: 13 Apr 2012 09:43 AM PDT

- Weekend Read of the Day


Esquire columnist Stephen Marche investigates how Facebook and social media have made us more densely networked — and more lonely — than ever.

Within this world of instant and absolute communication, unbounded by limits of time or space, we suffer from unprecedented alienation. We have never been more detached from one another, or lonelier. In a world consumed by ever more novel modes of socializing, we have less and less actual society. We live in an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are. We were promised a global village; instead we inhabit the drab cul-de-sacs and endless freeways of a vast suburb of information.

[atlantic]


Tagged: Facebook, weekend read

Inspirational Motivational of the Day

Posted: 13 Apr 2012 09:25 AM PDT


Barry West was paralyzed from the chest down — which means he lost the use of his arms and legs — in a car crash in 1996. He was struggling to adapt to his new life in a wheelchair when he ran into a paralyzed pal who said something that got him thinking.

“He told me that he had just done a skydive. I was gobsmacked.”

Since that fateful encounter, West, 35, has taken up paragliding, scuba diving, skydiving, ­mountaineering, kayaking, and skiing (don’t miss the pics), and he plans to scale Africa’s highest peak, Mount Kilimanjaro, next year. And, of course, he will be an Olympic torchbearer in July as the torch makes its way to London.

What’s next? West wants to ride a horse: “I don’t mean just sitting on it, but riding it properly around a paddock without anyone holding the reins.”

[arbroath]


Tagged: barry west, Inspirational Motivational

Downton Abbey Parody of the Day

Posted: 13 Apr 2012 09:13 AM PDT


Downton Abbey gets the Jimmy Fallon treatment in “Downton Sixbey,” which has just enough Fallon — and Dowager Countess — to knock “Downton Arby’s” off its best-in-parody throne.

[latenightwithjimmyfallon]


Tagged: downton abbey, Jimmy Fallon, parody of the day

This Seems Like All Kinds of Wrong of the Day

Posted: 13 Apr 2012 08:49 AM PDT


“How much would you pay for the universe?” asks Neil deGrasse Tyson, in this impassioned breakdown of the underfunding of NASA “day we stopped dreaming.”

But more importantly: “Do you realize that the $850 billion bank bailout — that sum of money — is greater than the entire 50-year running budget of NASA?”

[mentalfloss]