Friday Cat Blogging – 9 July 2010

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TGIFCB. To celebrate, today we have action cats! I just wanted to prove that Inkblot and Domino do indeed occasionally wake from their slumbers and actually motivate themselves around the homestead.

BTW, over the last few months I’ve been fiddling around with Photoshop a little more aggressively than before, and today is a testament to what can be done with it. The original picture of Domino was hardly more than a black smudge. But a few minutes of diddling around with the lasso tool and a variety of settings turned it into quite a passable picture. It’s pretty amazing. Below the fold I’ve put both versions of the photo (reduced to identical size) so you can see for yourself.

But enough about boring computer software. How about some more cats instead? Hooray! First, courtesy of my sister, who keeps close tabs on the pet-loving British press, here’s an adopted seagull who thinks it’s a cat. The cats it now lives with apparently think it’s a cat too. And second, courtesy of Rich Lowry (reaching across the aisle to us lefty cat lovers), here’s the story of three Marines in Afghanistan who adopted some kittens so adorable there probably ought to be a law against it. Enjoy!

Here are the original and Photoshopped versions of this week’s Domino picture:

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From the desk of Mother Jones CEO, Monika Bauerlein...

Newsrooms can be funded in many ways. One of the most controversial (and volatile) ways is by a for-profit corporation or a billionaire owner. We see it across the headlines on a weekly basis: the claw backs in public media, the gutting of The Washington Post, the bending over backwards to appeal to Trump and his allies.

But not here.

When Mother Jones first started publishing 50 years ago, our founders made a critical decision: to be a reader-supported nonprofit. They knew that no corporate owner would be interested in a muckraking newsroom; they also knew that no muckraking newsroom would be interested in following the agenda of a corporate owner.

And so, we’ve been reader-funded for half a century. We rely on contributions from our readers—readers like you—whether it’s $50, or $15 a month, or whatever fits your budget. People give what they can, and every donation makes a difference for our newsroom, which has grown tremendously—in size and reach and renown—since its inception in 1976.

You may be wondering: What does it take to publish an investigation? And what does my donation actually fund? The answers are one and the same: It takes people, resources, and time. And that’s what your donation funds directly.

Every donation Mother Jones receives from readers fortifies our newsroom, whether we’re covering underreported scandals out of Washington, DC, or the most important news of the day. And right now, each donation will be doubled because of our $50,000 match. So when you make a donation—$5, $50, any amount—it’ll go twice as far.

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