Let’s agree this year has been a total mess full of tragic events that got us all thinking “Can we have a damn break?”. Sadly all the bad stuff tends to bring us all so down that we forget about the good stuff. However, I want to remind you all of the incredible things that happened this year.
Diversity was the night’s winner at SAG Awards in pointed counter to Oscars.
The US Justice Department sued Ferguson to force the city to adopt police reforms negotiated with the federal government.
Beyoncé told us to get in Formation.
“Formation” is more than just a music video, it’s a siren call, a hymn that addresses discrimination and racism.
Jay Z’s Tidal donated $1.5 million to Black Lives Matter and other non-profit organizations.
The funds were raised during the October 2015 Tidal X concert at the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn. Performers included Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj and Usher.
Beyoncé killed it at the Super Bowl 50 Halftime Show…
…and then blessed us with Lemonade…
…which introduced
Leah Chase who is also the prototype of Tiana from “The Princess and The Frog”.
Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther stole the show in ‘Captain America: Civil War’ and his character got his own movie that will be coming out in 2018.
Rihanna announced the launch of the Clara Lionel Foundation which will provide scholarship to international students that plan to continue their education in the US.
She said: “To be able to give the gift of an education is actually an honor. Higher education will help provide perspective, opportunities and learning to a group of kids who really deserve it. I am thrilled to be able to do this.”
Actress and playwright Danai Gurira won the Black Girls Rock Star Power Award.
Jesse Williams was presented a Humanitarian award at the BET Awards and delivered the most powerful speech.
Dark skin
beauty pageant titleholder and lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve
Deshauna Barber became Miss USA 2016.
Black teens continuously made us proud!
As well as Black women 👑
Imran Yousuf saved dozens of lives at the Pulse night club.
Now this is still making my heart ache, I don’t think anyone will ever get over what happened that night. But I think we need to honor Imran again, he is a true hero.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that Harriet Tubman will appear on face of the $20 bill.
We witnessed the blackening of CNN’s Don Lemon.
Colin Kaepernick took a knee during national anthem…
…and reminded us of our rights at the Know Your Rights Camp.
Ben & Jerry’s declared support for Black Lives Matter.
Solange blessed us with ‘A Seat At The Table’
8-year-old Jalen Bailey set up his own baking company to buy a house for his mother.
Black athletes made US history at the summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
Ava DuVernay has become the first African American woman to ever direct a film with a budget over $100 million.
The US Army Corps of Engineers announced it won’t grant easement to cross Lake Oahe for DAPL.
Three Victoria’s Secret models of color went short and natural for the fashion show.
Honey Bun Baby.
Cicely Tyson, Diana Ross, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Michael Jordan were awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The confirmed cast of the upcoming Black Panther is lit.
And lastly just a huge shout out to Black Twitter and just Black people everywhere for coming up with the funniest jokes and memes even though you are not credited enough!
I’m not even sorry this turned out to be such a long post. I just wanna say that Black people, we’re gonna keep on rocking next year and every year after. Stay real, stay strong and feel free to add whatever made you proud in 2016 🙌🏾
Thousands of scientists in Germany, Peru and Taiwan are preparing for a new year without online access to journals from the Dutch publishing giant Elsevier. Contract negotiations in both Germany and Taiwan broke down in December, while Peru’s government has cut off funding for a licence.
“It’s very unpleasant,” says Horst Hippler, spokesperson for the DEAL consortium of state-funded universities and research organizations, which is overseeing negotiations in Germany. “But we just cannot accept what Elsevier has proposed so far.”
1. You as a taxpayer pay for the salaries of academics, and among those who are scientists, their labs. This is as it should be.
2. But then scientific research and academic papers are enclosed by private corporations like Elsevier behind pay walls and sold back to the public (public and university libraries, individuals, etc.) that paid for the labor behind these papers in the first place.
As a result…
3. The transmission of knowledge is slowed down. One way this happens is common practice of imposing 6 month to 12 month ‘embargoes’ that limit access to journals. If your library or institution can’t afford the high rates that these companies charge, you may have to wait a full year to access any number of journals.
4. Access to information becomes another source of inequality.
5. Students and even academics everywhere are unable to access information they need.
6. This might very well slow the pace of research in various areas, including urgent medical research.
7. The exorbitant fees charged by these academic publishing companies drain scarce university and public resources.
And for what purpose?
Basically none. Everything a company like Elsevier does could be done by the public sector at lower cost and done in such a way as to eliminate the castle walls that limit access to knowledge.
The for-profit academic publishers really exist for no other reason than to parasitize public wealth for private gain.
4. Access to information becomes another source of inequality.
4. Access to information becomes another source of inequality.
4. Access to information becomes another source of inequality.
Everything about this, from Carrie’s viscerally presented and excellent point, to the pun, to the look on Stephen’s face like he just fell in love. Everything is so, so good.
This is my favorite thing from Carrie, ever. And I have a lot of favorite things.
Oh oh my god now Morse code actually makes SENSE when you lay it out like that
Awesome!!
This is also nice, if you want to decode morse code quickly.
that avl tree though
That’s not a coincidence! Naturally, it’s less work to transmit shorter sequences of dots and dashes, so we try to use up all the shorter sequences first. Basically, this means that we fill in all the branches at one level of this tree before moving onto the next. The result is a perfectly balanced decoding tree.
The placement of the letters is also far from arbitrary. Here are all the letters in English ordered from most common to least common:
ETAOINSRHLDCUMFPGWYBVKXJQZ
Notice something? The shortest morse code sequences were assigned to the most common letters. This makes the common letters easier to remember, and makes messages as short as possible in the average case.
Numbers are sort of an exception to this. All numerical symbols are encoded with 5 dots and dashes. But there’s a pretty clear pattern to these as well.
1 = .—-
2 = ..—
3 = …–
4 = ….-
5 = …..
6 = -….
7 = –…
8 = —..
9 = —-.
0 = —–
So if the listener hears a series of 5 dots and dashes, they immediately know it’s a number. To decode it, they count the number of dashes. If the dashes came before the dots, the number is 5 + the number of dashes. Otherwise, the number is 5 - the number of dashes.
Ahhhhhh! Bringing them together and then LEAVING! :,(
@jenna221b up your street!
Given that Mycroft stands in for Mofftiss though, it really works quite well
Ahhahahaha!!! omg, I’ve decided this means either Mycroft is secretly a Doctor Who fan, or that the Doctor really exists and Mycroft has not only met him, but idolizes him. Either that or he just ninja-raided his wardrobe.
Someone else on tumblr pointed out that PASSENGERS might have been a more
meaningful movie if it was about just THE ONE person dealing with being
alone on the ship for the rest of their life. And if, to cope, they go
through and make it a point to learn everything they can about all of the other
people on the ship.
And I just keep thinking about this idea.
There are
4999 other people on that ship and what if the protagonist spent the
remainder of their life (and they do live their full life) learning about each of them.
They took an
interest in their hobbies so that they could have some sort of
connection to them.
As their sanity flexed in an effort to cope, they could have had these really involved
imaginary conversations with the crew about their interests. And by the end
of their natural life they will have known everything they could have ever known
about these other 4999 people.
…
AND THEN THE REST OF THEM WAKE UP. And they have some
90 odd years of security footage of this one crew member talking to each of them in turn. And it goes far beyond ‘I have figured out how to cook that one dish you were struggling with’ or ‘I have readTHE SILMARILLION at your suggestion and Jesus Christ I have thoughts about it.’
They actually start making connections between all of the crew.
Like ‘You like bugs! You should totally talk to Cindy! She’s an entomologist!’
Or ‘Did you know that you and Said’s grandfathers were both in the same infantry?’
Or ‘You and Jamie are both avid bee keepers and I think you need to meet.’
Or ‘I know you’re really struggling with this, but Aneesha said she went the exact same thing and I think talking to her can help.’
And because all of these crew members are watching the videos that have been individually addressed to them (Because why not? They’re colonizing. There’s not a lot yet available by way of entertainment) they sort of start talking to each other at the Protagonist’s suggestion. And within a year they are THE MOST unified interconnected colony of any of the colonies because this one crew member broke the ice for them a lifetime ago.
Several of them are engaged.
Two are about to have children named after the Protagonist.
…
AND BECAUSE EVERYONE KNOWS EVERYONE NOW they notice when one week a crew member isn’t out and about and no one can get in touch with them. So finally somebody goes to check and they find them huddled in a ball and mourning.
Because Protagonist is dead.
And the other people are like: ‘Yes. We know. This is literally the first thing we knew about them.’
But Mourner is like: ‘You don’t understand. I got to the end.’
And then everyone realizes that the mourner has basically been BURNING through all of the videos Protagonist has addressed to them and got to the last one they made to them before they died. And Protagonist left a final message for each of them.
Suddenly everyone’s having a real frank conversation with themselves about how fast they’re going through their videos and if they’re prepared to keep going at that rate and get to the end, or if they should put it off indefinitely.
And one by one, in time, each of them realizes they can’t put it off. Not only are they invested in the end, but they care enough about Protagonist to really acknowledge their death.
Each crew member does this at their own pace. It becomes a rite of passage of sorts. And Protagonist is given some sort of proper memorial so the colonists all have a place to go when their time comes to grieve.
…
BUT BEFORE EVERYONE GETS TO THE END, someone has started noticing how Protagonist treated the robots on the ship over the years. And surprise, surprise, Protagonist named all the robots too and treated them like individuals depending on their quirks. So now someone has finally solved the mystery of why droid 808 insists on being called ‘Bob,’ and why 239 knows ASL, and why the auxiliary robots are so salty about nobody ever being able to tell them apart.
Not only that, but security logs shows that the robots were about 19% more efficient when Protagonist was alive than they are now. And THE VERY SECOND the rest of the crew starts observing the same habits Protagonist used in treating these robots ALL OF THAT EFFICIENCY COMES RIGHT BACK.
Because they missed Protagonist too.
…
And things settle. Everyone thinks they’ve reached the end of Protagonist’s surprises.
…
THEN THEY ARE FINALLY ABLE TO START TRANSPORTATION BETWEEN THEMSELVES AND THE OTHER COLONIES.
And a visiting party shows up.
The visitors are surprised to see HOW WELL everyone on this colony is getting along, because, wow, people are civil where they come from but GODDAMN.
And one of these visiting members is really excited to see their sibling.
And ‘Oh, that’s so nice! Who is it?’
And then the visiting member says a name every single person on this colony knows.
The colonists have to tell them what happened to their sibling, Protagonist.
But they also HAVE to tell the sibling what knowing Protagonist MEANT to them. And what Protagonist knowing THEM, meant to them.
And it’s sad.
The colony pretty much wholesale adopts Protagonist’s sibling as a part of their family because they don’t know what else they can do to fill that void. But just in case, they give the Protagonist’s sibling THE ENTIRETY of Protagonist’s security footage. Because there is 90 years of it and that way they can carry their sibling with them for the rest of their life even if only in video.
And then the colonists think:
‘This. This was the end of Protagonist’s story. And this was a good a proper way to observe it.’
…
AND THEN ONE DAY A SHIP SHOWS UP THAT IS NOT LIKE ANY SHIP THE COLONISTS HAVE EVER SEEN.
And the people driving it aren’t human.
They speak English and passable French. They can chicken scratch Urdu, Mandarin, and Swahili.
Everyone is stunned and wants to know ‘why…?’ and ‘how…?’
And the aliens are just, like, ‘Oh. Protagonist. We ran into them while you were in space. They told us you’d be settling here and asked that we check up on you whenever we were rolling by this quadrant next.’
‘They were really nice. Taught us English. Gave us the files on a couple of your other popular languages as well just to be safe. How’s the colonizing going anyway?’
And everyone thinks back to THAT ONE MONTH of security footage where Protagonist was NIGH IMPOSSIBLE to find. And when they finally did come back to their normal routine they were really quiet and thoughtful for about a week before really getting back to themselves.
The linguists all suddenly remember that IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THAT REALLY WEIRD MONTH, Protagonist had a new coded language saved to their personal affects and was very insistent that they LEARN IT. ‘FOR REASONS.’
And very quietly, the entire colony makes peace with the fact that Protagonist established a very successful first contact while they were all asleep.
