“[Obama’s] words will be little consolation for 8-year-old Nabila, who, on Oct. 24, had just returned from school and was playing in a field outside her house with her siblings and cousins while her grandmother picked flowers. At 2:30 p.m., a Hellfire missile came out of the sky and struck right in front of Nabila. Her grandmother was badly burned and succumbed to her injuries; Nabila survived with severe burns and shrapnel wounds in her shoulder. Nabila doesn’t know who Mr. Obama is, or where the Hellfire missile that killed her grandmother came from.” — The Forgotten Victims of Obama’s Drone War (via theamericanbear)
(via devotedtoloveandart)
“I remember once imagining what my life would be like, what I’d be like. I pictured having all these qualities, strong positive qualities that people could pick up on from across the room. But as time passed, few ever became any qualities that I actually had. And all the possibilities I faced and the sorts of people I could be, all of them got reduced every year to fewer and fewer. Until finally they got reduced to one, to who I am.” — The Weatherman (via headandstomachached)
Conceptualizing organisms (including ourselves) as dynamic molecular systems rather than discrete objects “containing” some ethereal “life-force” is made difficult by our social conditioning (re: “souls,” etc). People seem to think that scrutiny of living systems, e.g. the reduction of an emotional reaction to its physiological components, somehow threatens the beauty of the system. But I have yet to find anything in biology that loses its beauty just by being examined.
(via headandstomachached)
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Murren and valley view from Mannlichen (by Ed Coyle Photography)
(via lunaxvx)
Nineteen mosquito bites and counting.
(Source: sittingovation, via basedlainexvx)
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