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Earlier this year, the owner's of the NFL approved ejection standards to go along with the new helmet contact rule, intended to decrease the risk of injury during tackles. How The NFL's New Helmet Rule Could Change Football As We Know It
comment posted at 9:06 AM on Jun-28-18

Bitter Southerner's site has gotten a little wonky lately but their album list is very interesting anyhow. Scroll on down to find the list. There ought to be a picture and maybe a soundcloud sample beside each album but it didn't show up for me. However, just reading the list gives you a good idea of each album and recommends some rewarding listening.
comment posted at 9:47 PM on Dec-21-17

Hal Holbrook is still alive, but has decided to end his 63-year run as Mark Twain in a one-man show Holbrook created and has toured around the world. Mark Twain Tonight! won Holbrook a Tony in 1966 and an Emmy nomination in 1967. Holbrook was scheduled to tour the show again this fall until he abruptly announced its end, cancelling the remaining performances.
comment posted at 8:32 AM on Sep-18-17

SpaceX have announced the first space tourism mission to the Moon, launching next year. The two private citizens will be flying in the new Dragon 2 spacecraft and launched by the Falcon Heavy, which will undergo testing this summer. With the launch of a Falcon Heavy priced at $90 million, the mission as a whole will likely cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
comment posted at 2:24 PM on Feb-27-17
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comment posted at 2:31 PM on Feb-27-17

After what should have been routine spinal surgeries, Texas neurosurgeon and entrepreneur Christopher Duntsch left a horrifying trail of maimed humans and bodies.

Anyone close to me thinks that I likely am something between god, Einstein and the antichrist. Because how can I do anything I want and cross every discipline boundary like its a playground and never ever lose. But unfortunately, despite the fact I am winning it is not happening fast enough.

On Tuesday, after just four hours of deliberation, a Dallas County jury convicted Duntsch of aggravated assault for deliberately maiming his patient. He faces life in prison.
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"I can’t say I’ve ever covered a scene quite like the one that played out last weekend at LAX and other airports across the country. ... If the rush to enact the order and the outraged response from protesters seemed similar in their freneticism, which may well be the default tone of this administration, what was new about the airport demonstrations was the way they used urban space — specifically, how they used what we think of as airports’ architectural deficiencies and turned them to their political advantage."
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comment posted at 11:12 AM on Feb-7-17

Voting Should Be Mandatory "The evidence is mixed on whether compulsory voting favors parties of the right or the left and some studies suggest that most United States federal election results would be unchanged. But all that misses the point because it overlooks that compulsory voting changes more than the number of voters: It changes who runs for office and the policy proposals they support." - Waleed Aly, New York Times
comment posted at 9:40 AM on Jan-23-17
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"So, if 2016 left you feeling crappy, you can turn to our music for solace and inspiration. We hope you find both inside this list, and we expect you will." (SL Bitter Southerner)
comment posted at 9:38 AM on Dec-6-16
comment posted at 9:31 AM on Dec-7-16

The Sinking of El Faro: On October 1, 2015, the container ship El Faro sailed directly into the path of Hurricane Joaquin. When it sank it took the lives of all 33 aboard, including eight New Englanders. Rachel Slade wanted to know what happened and why. You will not soon forget what she found.
comment posted at 10:01 AM on Oct-24-16
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comment posted at 12:10 PM on Oct-24-16

Artist Jon Rafman (previously), who works primarily with digital art and the Internet as his medium, has been keeping a dream journal. He's been illustrating those dreams with low-fidelity 3D animations, and posting them to Facebook. Despite the amateurish quality, they capture the disconcerting, shifting, surreal nature of dreaming very well. 13 June 2016, 12 May 2016, 6 April 2016. Content Warning: violence, some risque themes, unsettling imagery.
comment posted at 8:15 AM on Sep-15-16

The bizarre rise and fall and resurgence of tiki bars and cocktails is an interesting history that starts with two men, Donn Beach and Victor Bergeron, who traveled to the South Pacific and brought back some "island culture" to the United States with them in the 1930s, continuing on with the craze really booming after WWII vets returned from tours overseas. With the ebbs and flows of popularity, the cultural appropriation in "Tiki culture" has often been overlooked, as to the Māori mythology and meaning behind Tiki carvings and imagery and Hawiian culture of leis and luaus. Let's talk Tiki bars: harmless fun or exploitation. [Soundtrack: Les Baxter's Ritual Of The Savage ( 1951) and Martin Denny's Exotica (1957)]
comment posted at 12:42 PM on Sep-9-16

Most of the media focus on Transgender rights up until now have been on "Bathroom Bills" that are being presented across the country, yet in doing so, we are, as Chase Strangio, Staff Attorney for the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project states, ...ceding the terms of this conversation to the people who want to expel trans people from public life and write us out of existence."

But is that really happening? Are there people who want to write trans people out of existence?
comment posted at 11:39 AM on Aug-26-16
comment posted at 11:59 AM on Aug-26-16

The twitter account Soviet Visuals is on vacation in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone of Alienation aka the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. You can follow along on Twitter (where they are semi-consistently using the #LiveFromChernobyl tag) or Facebook. And don't worry: "the radiation exposure inside the approved itinerary @ exclusion zone is equal to roughly 1hr of transatlantic flight [...] and this is over 1 whole day of being in the zone."
comment posted at 4:04 PM on Jul-21-16

“We decided to do an action during the parade because Pride itself is political." (slBuzzfeed)
comment posted at 10:41 AM on Jul-6-16

Baylor University has fired football coach Art Briles and demoted university president Kenneth Starr upon receipt of an independent report detailing how the football program concealed rape, sexual abuse, and domestic violence accusations against Baylor football players. The announcement has come as a shock, as it had seemed that Starr would be the scapegoat for the scandal, with his demotion used to protect Briles, the most successful coach in the school's history. However, increased media scrutiny due to the 2016 campaign season bringing up Starr's role in the Whitewater investigation, drawing greater attention to what happened at Baylor.
comment posted at 11:47 AM on May-26-16
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comment posted at 2:33 PM on May-26-16

The epic uncool of Philip Seymour Hoffman.
comment posted at 1:18 PM on Feb-4-16

Ever wish you could watch the Super Bowl Big Game with your favorite sketch comedy artists? This Sunday, you'll get your chance as Key & Peele have announced that they will host a live video broadcast during Super Bowl L Super Bowl 50 the Big Game. Due to legal restrictions, however, the duo are not allowed to say any of the players' names or mention the game at all. Technically an ad for Squarespace, the stream will mostly consist of the duo riffing and "talking around the game." (Key and Peele previously.)
comment posted at 12:07 PM on Feb-3-16
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In chronological order from Bert Williams to Amy Schumer, Vulture lists the 100 jokes that shaped modern comedy.
comment posted at 12:02 PM on Feb-1-16

The Best Southern Albums of 2015 (slTheBitterSoutherner)
comment posted at 9:51 AM on Jan-13-16
comment posted at 12:21 PM on Jan-13-16

In death, Millar unleashed his biggest prank ever — a last will and testament that was basically a giant social experiment. By promising a vast sum of money to the Toronto family that could have the most babies in a 10-year period, Millar set off a race to give birth the moment he died.
comment posted at 11:10 AM on Dec-11-15
comment posted at 2:13 PM on Dec-11-15

The Philadelphia 76ers are the worst team in basketball, by design. Under general manager Sam Hinkie, the team has been unabashed in stockpiling players they hope will one day be great while barely even trying to win games in the meantime, since worse teams get better draft picks. (Previously) But those days may be over, as it seems the NBA itself has effectively forced the Sixers to hire an executive who will at least try to build a winning team. It's a rare, if not unprecedented, instance of a professional sports league stepping in to save a theoretically independent team from itself.
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