So I learned my new favorite history fact in my AP US class today. It’s hilarious and goes a bit like this
In 1989, President Bush sent troops to Panama to capture the dictator and drug lord, Manuel Noriega. But Noriega had fled to (I had to look up the full name) the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See. The troops couldn’t exactly get in, so they surrounded the place and has to wait him out, or somehow force him out.
And it’s crazy how they did it.
The literal United States Navy SEALs did this
And it is real history
They blasted rock and roll music for days until he gave up
Apparently, Noriega only liked opera, so this annoyed him.
But it gets better.
The playlist was not only obnoxiously loud and obnoxiously American, it had a sense of irony.
Here are some highlights:
Danger Zone
Freedom Fighter
Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down
Give It Up
I Fought the Law and the Law Won
If I Had a Rocket Launcher
Nowhere to Run
Panama
Paranoid
Prisoner of Rock and Roll
Rock and a Hard Place
Stay Hungry
They’re Coming to Take Me Away
This Means War
Wanted Dead or Alive
And my personal favorite, and a thing that actually happened:
Never Gonna Give You Up
I just…
Imagine the board meeting
“Huh, how are we going to force this guy out of hiding?”
“Oh, I have an idea! Why don’t we blast loud rock music?”
“That just might work! And we should do it with a sense of irony, just to make it funnier!”
You know what the Green Heron is basically the best heron because it is like 90% neck so when it is all folded down it looks like a giant head with wings and legs
“I THINK WE’VE GOT A BIOLOGICAL LIFE-FORM HERE.” Kit Parker, Bio-Engineer at Harvard University told Popular Mechanics.
Robots have advanced an enormous amount over the past few years, in both hardware and software, and the next few years promise even more advancements. It’s exciting, but we’re nowhere close to the efficiency and capability of animals, and it’s going to be a while before humans are able to create anything to match their level of elegance, especially when it comes to powered motion.
One way to avoid playing catch-up with animals all of the time is to simply steal everything you can from them as directly as possible.
Ref: Phototactic guidance of a tissue-engineered soft-robotic ray. Science (8 July 2016) |DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf4292 | PDF (Open Access)
ABSTRACT
Inspired by the relatively simple morphological blueprint provided by batoid fish such as stingrays and skates, we created a biohybrid system that enables an artificial animal—a tissue-engineered ray—to swim and phototactically follow a light cue. By patterning dissociated rat cardiomyocytes on an elastomeric body enclosing a microfabricated gold skeleton, we replicated fish morphology at Embedded Image scale and captured basic fin deflection patterns of batoid fish. Optogenetics allows for phototactic guidance, steering, and turning maneuvers. Optical stimulation induced sequential muscle activation via serpentine-patterned muscle circuits, leading to coordinated undulatory swimming. The speed and direction of the ray was controlled by modulating light frequency and by independently eliciting right and left fins, allowing the biohybrid machine to maneuver through an obstacle course.
dear bisexual / pansexual women and political lesbians,
you need to immediately disclose to any woman you plan on dating if you are, in fact, a lesbian, or if you are something else. some lesbians are open to dating bi / pan / PL ladies. some are not. withholding this information is harmful, deceitful behavior that can make lesbians feel unsafe and devalued.
picture it: you’re a lesbian, looking to start a relationship. you meet a woman who claims that she, too, is a lesbian. this signifies that you have, at the very least, a shared sexuality, and you can bond about your experience as a woman who is attracted exclusively to women, which is outside of the patriarchal, heterocentric structure of the vast majority of societies.
now, imagine that you, a lesbian who is incapable of being attracted to men, get a confession from your girlfriend: she discloses to you that, yeah, actually, she could possibly be with a man and feel emotionally and sexually fulfilled. she, as a bi- or pansexual, is capable of thinking about having sex with a man and not feeling revulsion. your initial feeling of intimacy and security related to the sharing of a sexuality – one of the most basic aspects of your being, which is essential to you – is gone.
wouldn’t that hurt? wouldn’t that make you feel insecure? wouldn’t you get angry, if you were put into that position?
You know what would hurt me?
If I was in a relationship with a lesbian and her finding out I am bi was some sort of horrific secret that must be confessed like some shameful pox.
The fact that bisexual women are seen as being dirty or alien because we have or feel the capacity to be in intimate relationships with men is HARMFUL. It is biphobic and it is disgusting.
The entire notion that bi women are less valuable and less desirable as partners because we have and/or have the capacity to be intimate with men is so blatantly biphobic and bigoted that I can’t believe I even have to explain it.
How about THIS: Biphobic lesbians who would feel betrayed and insecure because of a bi partners identity have an OBLIGATION to disclose that they are biphobic assholes when they enter into a relationship, in case any bi woman they are interested in was unaware of what an asshole they are.
What always floors me about attitudes like this is there seems to be this misconception where people think we want to date biphobes. I don’t want to date a biphobic person of any gender.
I don’t feel any better dating someone who treats me as contaminated than someone who fetishizes me for their threesome, constantly treating me as available for sex… but not for love.
How dare OP compare being bi and pan with political lesbianism???
The Cursed Child, Parts I & II, to debut on July 30 at London’s West End Palace Theatre, will be the continuation of the final book’s epilogue. It will focus on Harry Potter’s youngest son, 11-year-old Albus Severus, who is about to embark on his first year at Hogwarts. But don’t expect as much pyrotechnics as the movies.
