Image Of Russian Gay Couple Wins World Press Photo Of The Year For 2014

Via the Associated Press:

An atmospheric image of a gay couple in Russia by Danish photographer Mads Nissen was crowned the World Press Photo of the Year 2014 on Thursday. The intimate image of Jon and Alex is part of a larger project by Nissen called "Homophobia in Russia" that highlights how life is increasingly difficult for sexual minorities in Russia. Nissen said he sees the image, shot in St. Petersburg, as "a modern-day Romeo and Juliet story" about two people in love but facing outside forces who want to deny them their feelings. Its sensitivity also appeared intended to act as a counterpoint to gruesome photographs and video spread by terrorists that increasingly come to dominate the news. "Today, terrorists use graphic images for propaganda. We have to respond with something more subtle, intense and thoughtful," said World Press Photo jury member Alessia Glaviano.

Nearly 100,000 images from over 5700 photographers were submitted for the contest.  See many more of the top-ranked photos here. (Tipped by JMG reader Cricket)

2014: The Hottest Year On Record

Via the Washington Post:

It is official: According to both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the year 2014 was the hottest ever measured, based on records going back to the year 1880. It now surpasses all past scorchers, including 1998, 2005, and 2010. Indeed, except for 1998, says NASA, the 10 hottest years recorded have all occurred since the year 2000. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the new record is that it occurred even though 2014 was not an El Niño year, of the sort that usually powers the already up-trending global average temperature to new highs. The two agencies released a joint announcement this morning, following a careful collaborative effort in which experts closely compared analyses. Last year, NASA and NOAA also collaborated on an analysis of 2013, which wasn't as warm but still ranks within the top 10 hottest years on record.

An atmospheric scientist weighs in:

“If you are younger than 29-years old, you haven’t lived in a month that was cooler than the 20th century average. That’s a new normal that is a result of human activities on top of the natural varying climate that has global temperature trends moving very quickly towards a 1-2 C increase. While that may sound insignificant, it’s best to think of it as the difference between a low-grade fever and one just a few degrees higher that can have an impact on the body.”

Today On World Net Daily

Via World Net Daily:

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has been a prolific conservative legislator despite strong resistance from establishment Republicans, including leaders of her own party, and despite the considerable challenge of passing legislation without cooperation from an obstructionist Senate controlled by Democrats. And, despite an outgoing personality and political boldness demonstrated by her willingness to go in front of the cameras to champion the causes in which she believed, over the years WND has found Bachmann to be a genuinely humble and modest public servant who has shied from public praise and honors. That was evidenced when, informed she had been awarded WND’s “2014 Lawmaker of the Year,” Bachmann simply replied, “What an honor!” The firebrand from the snowy state is retiring from Congress, but has been a reliably conservative voice in Congress over her eight-year tenure, most recently ranked by the Heritage Foundation as having the 42nd most-conservative voting record among 535 lawmakers, the 435 members of the House of Representatives and 100 senators.

During her final term the Lawmaker Of The Year introduced 15 bills. All of them failed except one. And the people of Cold Spring, Minnesota are very proud of their renamed post office.

Top Porn Search Terms For 2014

Montreal-based PornHub has compiled their traffic stats for 2014 and created numerous infographics. They report over 78 billion videos views for 2014, which comes out to 11 videos for every person on the planet. The top search term for both the United States and the United Kingdom: lesbian. Hit the link for much more. Alexa ranks PornHub at #73 in its list of the 100 most-popular sites in the world.

Ted Cruz: Horse's Ass Of 2014

Via Right Wing Watch:

Congratulations to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has won this year’s Equine Posterior Achievement Award, People For the American Way’s annual prize for the country's most extreme right-wing politician. Cruz won by a 21-point margin in a poll of PFAW members and Right Wing Watch readers, repeating his 2013 victory, when he beat out the likes of Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin for the coveted award. The Texas Board of Education came in second place this year, emerging as a serious contender as a result of another round of historical revisionism, denial of climate change science and flirtation with Creationism.

Cruz ended the year by embarrassing himself when he pulled a stunt that backfired badly. The Texas senator and Tea Party darling hoped to humiliate President Obama and congressional leaders by challenging a bipartisan budget bill as a way to show his anger with the president’s recent executive actions on immigration.Instead, Cruz’s maneuver was easily defeated, but it did give Senate Democrats the opportunity to put several judicial and executive nominees up for a vote before Republicans took control of the chamber, delighting Democrats while fomenting anger amongst Cruz’s fellow Republicans.

Happy New Year, JMG Community!

Yet another eventful year has come and gone for this here website thingy, which hit the decade mark back in April. In 2014 we saw about 28 million pageviews on about 7000 posts on which you crazy kids left over a million comments. As I mention in this post every year, blogging is like a homework assignment that is never done, but is always due. Nevertheless, you all make it a lot easier with your emails, your story tips, and your encouragement.

Last year I noted that 2013 would be remembered as one of the most momentous years in our movement's history due to the fall of DOMA, Prop 8, and the advance of marriage equality into several more states. While we saw no such landmark rulings in 2014, the nearly unbroken avalanche of pro-equality decisions that swept the nation will certainly put this year into the history books as well.

I thank you all for your robust opinions and for making the JMG comments section the most lively in the entire homo-blogosphere. I'm happy to have met so many of you at JMG meetups and look forward to meeting many more of you over the next year. Tonight, I'll be raising my glass to each and every one of our flying monkeys. I'll be raising it a lot!

Porno Pete Has The 2014 Sadz

"The year 2014 in America saw an unprecedented overreach by the judiciary, with federal judges - contemptuous or at least dismissive of the people's clearly-expressed will - striking down as 'unconstitutional' popular state ballot measures preserving the age-old definition of marriage as between husband and wife. Only an 'evolving Constitution' could countenance so-called rights and 'marriage based on sexual deviancy. Legislators, not courts, change the law, and well into the 20th Century most states had laws on their books banning homosexual sodomy-once known as the infamous 'crime against Nature.'  We are now a biblically-illiterate nation; only a morally 'dumbed down' society would allow a concept as depraved and inane as homosexuality-based 'marriage' to be taken seriously." - Porno Pete LaBarbera, via press release.

JMG Top Ten For 2014

For the second year in a row, my favorite track of the year is by out and openly HIV+ singer/songwriter John Grant, whose collaboration with Hercules & Love Affair spawned a gorgeous modern dance video interpretation of Grant's tale of coming out positive to a lover. Culled from my Spotify playlists, here's my top ten for 2014.

1. John Grant - I Try To Talk To You
2. The 2 Bears - Not This Time
3. Duke Dumont - I Got U
4. Perfume Genius - Queen
5. Royksopp & Robyn - Monument
6. SBTRKT - New Dorp, New York
7. Clean Bandit - Rather Be
8. Dave Aude w/Andy Bell - Aftermath
9. Le1f - Boom
10. Bright Light Bright Light - I Believe

My 2013 list is here, my 2012 list is here. Let us know what your favorites for 2014 have been.

MORE FAVORITES:
Sufjan Stevens - A Little Lost
Erasure - Elevation
Aphex Twin - Minipops 67

US Census: Population Is 320M

Via Reuters:

The U.S. population is seen at 320.09 million people as of Jan. 1, up 0.73 percent from a year earlier, the Census Bureau said on Monday. The Census Bureau said in a statement that the figure represents an increase of about 11.35 million people, or 3.67 percent, since the last population count on April 1, 2010. "In January 2015, the U.S. is expected to experience a birth every eight seconds and one death every 12 seconds. Meanwhile, net international migration is expected to add one person to the U.S. population every 33 seconds," the Census Bureau said. It said the combination of births, deaths and net international migration would add at least one person to the U.S. population every 16 seconds.

The Census Bureau estimates the current world population to be 7.2B, an increase of 80M over this time last year. That's about two Californias in the last 12 months.

Most "Drudged" Of 2014

Via the National Journal:

Don't doubt the influence of Matt Drudge. According to Quantcast, the Drudge Report sees a steady stream of more than 2 million unique visitors daily. For publishers, the distribution power of the Drudge Report—just like other content streams such as Facebook and Twitter—is hard to write off as trivial. Those 2 million daily visitors are sent around the Web via the news links that Drudge feels are most worthy of their attention. Get a top link on the Drudge Report, and your site will have a steady stream of thousands of eyeballs. So we wondered: What is Matt Drudge directing his massive following to read about?

After Yahoo News, Matt Drudge's most-linked site this year was Breitbart. Of course.

Viral Video Of The Day

3.8M views for this year's news bloopers.

Salt Lake Tribune Names Marriage Plaintiffs "Utahns Of The Year"

Via the Salt Lake Tribune:

These six people put their names to the lawsuit challenging Amendment 3. They stood up, stood together and helped history along. Through 2014, they rode the legal roller coaster — to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld Shelby’s ruling, and onto the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a stay on the ruling. In October, the high court declined to hear appeals from Utah and four other states. In essence, the denial made same-sex marriage legal in those states. Because of these Utah plaintiffs — who bravely made public their most private lives — the state took an unlikely position among the vanguard in the biggest civil-rights movement of the day. Forever, their names will be associated with a tidal wave of change that swept the country. fFor that, Derek Kitchen and Moudi Sbeity, Karen Archer and Kate Call, Laurie Wood and Kody Partridge are The Salt Lake Tribune Utahns of the Year.

Queen Elizabeth Delivers Holiday Speech

MAP: Our Historic Year For Marriage

Embiggen the above map from Freedom To Marry and marvel at this year's progress. As seen in the graphic below, even more action is coming early in 2015.

Final Cut: Movies Of 2014 Mashup

(Via Towleroad)

Who Is The Horse's Ass Of 2014?

People For The American Way and its affiliate Right Wing Watch invite your votes for the 2014 Equine Posterior Achievement Award. We can think of oh-so-many write-in candidates: Brian Brown, Scott Lively, Porno Pete, Mat Staver, Matt Barber, Tony Perkins, Josh Duggar, Linda Harvey, Phylis Schlafly, Monica Cole, Christopher Doyle, Franklin Graham, Austin Ruse, and on and on and on. How to choose, how to choose.

People Are Awesome 2014

Pop Danthology 2014

1.3M views on the first day.

Google: Year In Search 2014

(Tipped by JMG reader Daddy Ray)

Merriam-Webster's Word Of 2014: Culture

Via the Associated Press:

A nation, a workplace, an ethnicity, a passion, an outsized personality. The people who comprise these things, who fawn or rail against them, are behind Merriam-Webster's 2014 word of the year: culture. The word joins Oxford Dictionaries' "vape," a darling of the e-cigarette movement, and "exposure," declared the year's winner at Dictionary.com during a time of tragedy and fear due to Ebola. Merriam-Webster based its pick and nine runners-up on significant increases in lookups this year over last on Merriam-Webster.com, along with interesting, often culture-driven - if you will - spikes of concentrated interest. In the No. 2 spot is "nostalgia," during a year of big 50th anniversaries pegged to 1964: the start of the free speech movement, the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the birth of the Ford Mustang and the British Invasion heralded by the landing of the Beatles on U.S. soil for the first time.