Someone please come to the beach and visit me
I’m lonely and my house has no internet connection
The Vibrant Patterns of Portuguese Men-of-War
Photos © Aaron Ansarov
Aaron Ansarov experienced some depression after retiring from his post as a military photographer in 2007. But, one of the things that made him happy was walking in his backyard with his son, pointing out beetles, salamanders, praying mantis and other creepy crawlies. “One day, he just said, ‘Daddy, let’s take pictures of them,’” says Ansarov. “That just never occurred to me. That’s when everything changed.”
Ansarov, who lives in Delray Beach, Florida, has three children: a 12-year-old, a 3-year-old and a 2-year-old. He transitioned from photojournalism to commercial photography and fine art, and in the process, he says, he has followed one simple rule—to look at things through the eyes of a child.
“It is very tough as adults, because we get bored. We see things over and over and they are no longer as fascinating to us as they were when we were a child,” says the photographer. “All I try to do is to force myself to see things freshly.”
After exploring his backyard (National Geographic is featuring his “My Backyard” series in a four-page spread in its June 2013 issue), Ansarov turned to the beach, about a mile from his home. There, he became captivated with Portuguese men-of-war.
Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.
Hashtag of the Day: #NSAKidsBooks
On Saturday, Twitter user @Darth asked his followers to submit parody titles of children’s books incorporating the NSA’s domestic surveillance scandal with the hashtag #NSAKidsBooks. After more than2,800 mentions of the hashtag over the weekend, @Darth used the best submissions as his inspiration for a series of children’s book cover illustrations (shown above).
"If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever."
Lord Alfred Tennyson (via sleepypsychedelia)
Hacker who outed Steubenville rapists could get more jail time than Steubenville rapists
Meet Deric Lostutter, a 26-year-old cybersecurity consultant who also goes by the moniker “KYAnonymous.” Lostutter obtained and published tweets and Instagram photos in which members of the Steubenville High School football team joked about an incident in which a 16-year-old girl was raped.
Lostutter’s actions inspired a group of people to take justice into their own hands. A hacker called “Bobcat” vandalized the Facebook page of the Steubenville football team. Other hackers took similar action.
It’s unclear if Lostutter participated in any hacking shenanigans, but if he’s indicted and found guilty of any, he faces 10 years in jail. By comparison, the Steubenville rapists received one- and two-year sentences each.
true life of everyone that lives on the outskirts of Baltimore
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one nation under control
Bradley Manning’s Trial Starts Today
On Saturday, nearly 2,000 supporters of Army Private Bradley Manning drove or took the bus from all across the country to march in defense of the soldier on the eve of the first day of his trial for leaking military documents to Wikileaks—including charges of aiding al Qaeda—and could bring Manning a life sentence in jail.
Antiwar activists, veterans, LGBT rights advocates, and journalists were heavily represented within the gathered Manning supporters over the weekend. The march was one of hundreds of rallies in support of the 25-year-old former intelligence analyst from Crescent, Oklahoma, since he was first put in pretrial confinement over three years ago. Some have been coming to Fort Meade near Baltimore off and on since preliminary hearings began there in late 2011; other events happened were happening this weekend in cities from Seoul to Santa Cruz.
During the course of the military trial that starts today, army prosecutors will argue that Manning aided al Qaeda terrorists by taking sensitive military information and sending it to the antisecrecy website WikiLeaks. Manning started uploading intelligence about the Iraq and Afghan wars to WikiLeaks in 2009, and just a few months later he found himself even more distressed when he was picked up by authorities at his base outside of Baghdad. Manning has already pled guilty to ten of the 22 charges against him, spending one-fourth of his time since arrest in isolation, but he not to the most serious charges, including aiding the enemy, which could land him a life sentence in prison.