mfs:
Courses:
Coursera
EDX
Udacity
University of RedditBooks:
Bartleby
Gutenberg
Librivox
Poem HunterVideos:
Academic Earth
C. G. P. Grey
Crash Course
Khan Academy
Minute Physics
The New Boston Tutorials
TED
Unplug the TVDocumentaries:
Documentary Heaven
Top Documentary FilmsLanguages:
BBC Languages
Busuu
Dou Lingo
Live Mocha
MemRise
VerblingMusic:
How to Play Piano
Justin Guitar
Music Theory
Play Bass Now
TeoriaProgramming:
Code Academy
Coding Bat
HTML Dog
Learn Code the Hard Way
Ruby Monk
TrypythonDIY/How-To:
Howcast
How Stuff Works
Instructables
The Daily Miscellany
Wiki How
Wonder How-ToMath:
Math Run
Project Euler
Wolfram AlphaCooking:
Cooking for Engineers
Cooklet
How2Heroes
Reluctant GormetThis is a great list but I want to add two more informative websites to it:
- sixtysymbols (physics and astronomy)
- numberphile (“videos about numbers and stuff”)
Reblogged for the cause.
Also: Learnzillion.com
Julie D’Aubigny was a 17th-century bisexual French opera singer and fencing master who killed or wounded at least ten men in life-or-death duels, performed nightly shows on the biggest and most highly-respected opera stage in the world, and once took the Holy Orders just so that she could sneak into a convent and bang a nun. If nothing in that sentence at least marginally interests you, I have no idea why you’re visiting this website.
One of the most badass human beings ever produced by France was born in 1670 into a life of wealth, privilege, and one-percenter opulence that meant she could have just spent her entire life chilling out Real Housewives style without ever so much as having to shank a single human being in the eye in a hellacious fit of rage, but, as we shall soon see, that sort of malaise really wasn’t this chick’s bag. Her father was the Grand Squire of France, meaning that he was pretty much the number-one dude responsible for training King Louis XIV’s pages and maintaining the Royal Stables, and this guy wasn’t really the sort of hard-drinking drill sergeant motherfucker who was going to let his little daughter grow up without learning the finer arts of dishing out knuckle sandwiches to her enemies or running would-be suitors through the small intestines with the pointy end of a rapier. This French R. Lee Ermey trained young Julie the same way he trained the King’s Squires, and as a young woman she learned the finer points of necessary life skills such as horseback riding, horse maintenance and repair, drinking excessively, gambling, fistfighting, avenging your honor, and stabbing people in the fucking face when they don’t have the good sense to step off when you’re threatening them. Growing up surrounded by tough men, this tall young beauty with the dark auburn hair and piercing blue eyes was forged into an instrument of badassitude.
Julie D’Aubigny got started early on her career of banging and/or killing everything in sight when, at the age of sixteen, she started having an affair with her father’s boss. The young Mademoiselle D’Aubigny soon proved herself way too hot for that guy to handle, however, so before long he gave her father a promotion, then got her married off to some spineless jackass-non-gratta known only as Monsoir Maupin so that she would leave him alone. Maupin was a Count or Viscount or Demi-Count or some shit, and he lived in one of the colonies across the sea and rarely spent time in France, and since this chick wasn’t about to move out to bumfuck nowhere and be a quiet little housewife in some malaria-infested corner of the world she rarely saw him and he doesn’t factor into her life story in any appreciable manner at all. The only real thing this guy provided was a title, some money, and a wedding ring, all of which allowed Julie to use her marital status as a way of being able to do promiscuous shit she wouldn’t have been able to get away with as an unmarried woman.
So, while her husband was off doing god-knows-what in Africa or India or wherever the hell he was, Julie D’Aubigny moved to Marseille and started hooking up with a badass fencing master who just so happened to be on the run for murder after he stabbed some dude to death in an alley outside Paris. The homicidal fugitive swordsman trained D’Aubigny in the finer arts of fencing for a while, but as soon as she realized the student was now the master she ditched his broke ass and started giving sword exhibitions across Marseille to hone her skills and make a little extra dough. Basically it worked like this – she’d pull out her sword, sing a song or two, and challenge anyone in the audience to battle her in a duel. If someone stepped up, she’d sing a humiliating song about them, then make them look like assholes who couldn’t tell the difference between a sword and a limp piece of linguine. Her skills were so lights-out gonzo that one time some jerkwad in the crowd called out that she wasn’t really a woman, but was some badass cross-dressing cavalier musketeer motherfucker who was ripping everyone off. She responded by ripping open her blouse and telling the audience to “judge for themselves”.
Oddly enough, kicking peoples’ asses for money eventually led to a completely unrelated job prospect – a career as the star attraction of the Paris Opera. Apparently, while this chick was singing songs to humiliate her enemies in the dueling circle, some powerful record execs were in the audience, and they were so impressed by her melodious contralto voice that they decided she should be doing better shit than stabbing people in the balls for spare change. In the span of a few months, the woman known in Marseilles only as “La Maupin” (meaning “The Mapuin”) went from a completely untrained street performer to the lead actress in the world’s most respected Opera, playing roles of badass Classical chicks like Pallas Athena, Medea, and Dido. In addition to her flair for the dramatic and innate musical talent, it also helped that La Maupin had a near-photographic memory and rarely needed to read her lines more than once before committing them to memory.
Of course, her fiery temperament in love and combat meant that she slept with or swordfought with most of the men and women in the opera at various points during her career. Like, one time some jackass doucheface pretty-boy actor was being overly-aggressive while talking to one of Julie’s actress friends, so La Maupin told that asshole to take a chill pill and show the lady some respect. He told her to fuck off and mind her own bitch business. Later that night, as he was walking home, he found La Maupin standing in the street, weapon drawn, challenging him to a duel for honor. When the guy refused to pull his sword, she fucking beat his ass with a wooden cane, stole his pocketwatch, and left his dumb ass in an alley. The next day, the dude came to work with a couple black eyes, and when people were like, “WTF is up with your face,” he told them he got jumped by three big black dudes armed with hammers and baseball bats. As soon as he said this, La Maupin pulled out the dude’s pocketwatch and called him out a lying liar from Douchebagville. Then, to make matters more humiliating, she then forced the dude to kneel and beg forgiveness in front of all his co-workers before he could get his shit back.
La Maupin was also kind of a hardcore bisexual, and some of her tales of badass awesomeness dueling over female lovers and seducing chambermaids read like they were perpetrated by musketeers or pirates or some other ultra-daring swashbuckling male heroes of eighteenth-century literature. Of course, being a woman, Julie D’Aubigny could pull off some feats of romantic badassitude that most men could only dream of. The most notable example of this was the time that she became a nun just so she could hook up with one of the sisters in the convent. The story goes like this: One time the Mademoiselle D’Aubigny got some super-hot lusty blonde to fall in love with her. When the blonde’s parents found out their daughter was a lesbo, they had their “ravished” daughter put into a convent, totally unaware that this wasn’t going to be nearly enough to deter La Maupin – D’Aubigny took the holy orders, entered the convent as an initiate, created a diversion by setting the fucking convent on fire, and then kidnapped the blonde nun, snuck her out of there, and shacked up with her for like a month. Are you kidding me with this?
Of course, this chick was a lover as well as a fighter, and sometimes she was actually both at the same time. Like, one time a trio of drunk assholes were giving Julie shit while she was performing her songs in a rowdy tavern, so the star of the Paris Opera took all three of them out into the grassy courtyard, and when they all jumped her at the same time with their swords she drew her blade and made sure every single one of them was suffering from multiple stab wounds before she went back to the tavern. The next day she felt kind of bad about stabbing the fucking ass out of one of the dudes, so she went to his room to see how he was doing, and then ended up seducing him and getting busy with him relentlessly for like three weeks straight. You know you’re a fucking baller chick when you can shank a dude through the abdomen with a rapier and then still get it on with him. I mean, guys are easy, but they ain’t that easy.
On another occasion, La Maupin was at a Royal Ball in the palace of King Louis XIV, attending as the guest of Louis’ brother, Prince Philippe of France. She showed up to the party dressed as a man in a scarlet tunic and immediately started dancing with all the hot bitches, showing up all the young dudes looking for hot young wives. This was fine and all, but when La Maupin had the audacity to tongue-kiss a particularly fine-looking blonde marquise right in front of the entire Royal family, three jackass noblemen got a little bent out of shape about it and told Maupin she needed to start acting like a lady and stop macking on all the hot babes. La Maupin offered to take it outside, defeated all three men in three consecutive duels, then came back to the party while the trio of poseurs were still lying bleeding in the street like dogs. This event drew a little heat on the Maupin, so while she waited for things to cool down she decided to go to Brussels for a while and have an affair with the German Prince who happened to be the guy in charge of ruling over the Spanish Netherlands (no biggie).
Julie D’Aubigny, La Maupin, the most badass swashbuckler of 17th-century France, did eventually settle down a little, returned home to Paris, reunited with her husband, resumed her career as the star attraction of the Paris Opera. She died in 1707 of unknown causes at the age of 37, living fast, dying young, and leaving a good-looking corpse.
The woman who made your Wifi working.
Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-born American actress. Max Reinhardt called her the “most beautiful woman in Europe” due to her “strikingly dark exotic looks”.
Mathematically talented, Lamarr came up with an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping, necessary for wireless communication from the pre-computer age to the present day.
The Kiss, today (23/10/2012) in Marseille, France.
Two young women kissed in front of anti same sex marriage/adoption protesters.
I will judge my followers if they don’t reblog this
I love all the faces in the background
this is perfect
A Politician Loses It On The State House Floor, Says What All Of Us Are Thinking
NEW BFF OMG
The deadening effects of inequality in our country…tax avoidance is the cause.
by Paul Buchheit
1. Only THREE PERCENT of the very rich are entrepreneurs.
Over 90 percent of the assets owned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), personal business accounts, the stock market, and real estate. Only 3.6 percent of taxpayers in the top .1% were classified as entrepreneurs…the great majority of entrepreneurs come from middle-class backgrounds, with less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs coming from very rich or very poor backgrounds.
2. Only FOUR OUT OF 150 countries have more wealth inequality than us.
The U.S. has greater wealth inequality than every measured country in the world except for Namibia, Zimbabwe, Denmark, and Switzerland.
3. An amount equal to ONE-HALF the GDP is held untaxed overseas by rich Americans.
Between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden offshore, untaxed. With Americans making up 40% of the world’s Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, that’s $8 to $12 trillion in U.S. money stashed in far-off hiding places.
4. Corporations stopped paying HALF OF THEIR TAXES after the recession.
After paying an average of 22.5% from 1987 to 2008, corporations have paid an annual rate of 10% since. This represents a sudden $250 billion annual loss in taxes.
For every dollar of workers’ payroll tax paid in the 1950s, corporations paid three dollars. Now it’s 22 cents.
5. Just TEN Americans made a total of FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS in one year.
That’s enough to pay the salaries of over a million nurses or teachers or emergency responders.
That’s enough, according to 2008 estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN’s World Food Program, to feed the 870 million people in the world who are lacking sufficient food.
6. Tax deductions for the rich could pay off 100 PERCENT of the deficit.
Another stat that required a double-check. Based on research by the Tax Policy Center, tax deferrals and deductions and other forms of tax expenditures (tax subsidies from special deductions, exemptions, exclusions, credits, capital gains, and loopholes), which largely benefit the rich, are worth about 7.4% of the GDP, or about $1.1 trillion.
Other sources have estimated that about two-thirds of the annual $850 billion in tax expenditures goes to the top quintile of taxpayers.
7. The average single black or Hispanic woman has about $100 IN NET WORTH.
The Insight Center for Community Economic Development reported that median wealth for black and Hispanic women is a little over $100. That’s much less than one percent of the median wealth for single white women ($41,500).
Other studies confirm the racially-charged economic inequality in our country. For every dollar of NON-HOME wealth owned by white families, people of color have only one cent.
8. Elderly and disabled food stamp recipients get $4.30 A DAY FOR FOOD.
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) has dropped significantly over the past 15 years, serving only about a quarter of the families in poverty, and paying less than $400 per month for a family of three for housing and other necessities. Ninety percent of the available benefits go to the elderly, the disabled, or working households.
Food stamp recipients get $4.30 a day.
9. Young adults have lost TWO-THIRDS OF THEIR NET WORTH since 1984.
21- to 35-year-olds: Your median net worth has dropped 68% since 1984. It’s now less than $4,000.That $4,000 has to pay for student loans that average $27,200. Or, if you’re still in school, for $12,700 in credit card debt.
With an unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds of almost 50%, two out of every five recent college graduates are living with their parents. But your favorite company may be hiring. Apple, which makes a profit of $420,000 per employee, can pay you about $12 per hour.
10. The American public paid about FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS to bail out the banks.
That’s about the same amount of money made by America’s richest 10% in one year. But we all paid for the bailout. And because of it, we lost the opportunity for jobs, mortgage relief, and educational funding.
Bonus for the super-rich: A QUADRILLION DOLLARS in securities trading nets ZERO sales tax revenue for the U.S.
The world derivatives market is estimated to be worth over a quadrillion dollars (a thousand trillion). At least $200 trillion of that is in the United States. In 2011 the Chicago Mercantile Exchange reported a trading volume of over $1 quadrillion on 3.4 billion annual contracts.
A quadrillion dollars. A sales tax of ONE-TENTH OF A PENNY on a quadrillion dollars could pay off the deficit. But the total sales tax was ZERO.
It’s not surprising that the very rich would like to fudge the numbers, as they have the nation.
read in full http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/19-3
CHING MOTHERFUCKING SHIH
This lady was such a badass, I can’t count the ways, but let’s try.
She got married to an already successful pirate, Zheng Yi, and took over when he died. She was crazy strict to keep an iron fist over her fleet of pirates, and the punishments for stepping out of line were brutal. If you stole or looted from a town that provided assistance or tribute to the pirate fleet, Ching would chop your fucking head off with a battle axe and dump your lifeless body in the ocean. If you stole from the pirate treasury, or she thought you were stealing from the pirate treasury, Ching would chop your fucking head off dump your lifeless body in the ocean. Raping any captured female prisoners was punishable by immediate death. Fuck, if you had consensual sex while on duty you got your head chopped off and the woman was chucked off the boat no matter where they were at. Ching wasn’t fucking around, and she wanted to make damn sure you weren’t fucking around when you should have been working.
Two years after she took over, she got so notorious for ransacking towns and taking taxes on them that she pissed off the entire Chinese government, and sent out a massive fleet to bring her in line. Most pirates probably would’ve said this was out of their pay grade and taken off to hide out or ransack some other country.
Ching Shih said fuck that.
She not only faced them head on, she wiped the floor with them, killing hundreds and capturing sixty-something ships from the Imperial Fleet. Prisoners were given the choice of joining up or being executed on the spot. The Admiral of the Chinese navy, Kwo Lang, was so afraid of being captured by her or going back to admit he’d been beaten by her that he committed suicide.
For the next two years, Ching Shih not only kept on pirating, she fought off Chinese forces as well as Dutch and British warships that the navy called in to help. Finally the government gave up and offered her amnesty as well as amnesty for her then SEVENTEEN THOUSAND crewman. Ching Shih got to keep all her plunder, so she retired to the countryside where she opened up a brothel and lived until she was 69.
tldr: I’ve come to terms with the reality that I’ll never be as terrifyingly badass as this woman was.
