ThePrettiestOne

tkingfisher:

You know, seen from a certain point of view, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” is a song about a really weird game of Telephone.

The Night Wind tells the Little Lamb about a star.

The Little Lamb, understandably freaked out by the fact that the sky is talking, runs to the Shepherd Boy going “The sky is talking! It’s got a big voice!” (and, based on what I know of sheep, probably also “Will it eat me?!” and “Can I eat it?”)

And then it goes off the rails. The Shepherd Boy stomps off to tell the Mighty King (and how well connected is this kid, anyhow? He just shows up at the palace, waves to the guards, walks on in) that there’s a child shivering in the cold and we should bring him silver and gold (We? Does this kid have silver and gold on hand, too? Which…might explain the ease of getting an audience, actually…)

At no point does the Shepherd Boy mention that his source of information is a possibly delusional sheep, which, okay, I might not bring that up to begin with, either. But how does the Shepherd Boy know any of this? The Lamb is still back in the field babbling about a voice in the sky talking about stars. Where did the child come from? Did the Shepherd Boy make a detour and find all this out? Why even bring the Lamb into it, in that case? And why is the Mighty King going “Whoa! One of my peasants just waltzed in to tell me about a disadvantaged child? THIS MEANS PEACE AND LIGHT!”

Honestly, if you’re that easily impressed, you have to figure that a new faith gets founded in the kingdom practically daily. “Your Majesty, the washerwoman’s here and she says there’s a fish in the stream with a–” “ALL HAIL DAGON!”

Look, I know it’s a Christmas carol, I am just saying that the narrative does not follow logically from the Night Wind talking about stars to the King informing the populace that there’s a new religion in town. There are some gaps.

…yes, I am also really, really annoying to sit next to at movies.

coltre:

it’s so nice when toxic people stop talking to you it’s like the trash took itself out

beautifullyundressed:

therapeuticsweets:

bashing-moran:

You’re wrong.

If a dancer sprains their ankle they’ll just wrap it and smile through the pain as they do crazy-ass jumps and turns and shit on it. Like, how even, Id be crying and falling over but they look like fucking deities

Theater kids rehearse for hours every day. HOURS. Like, 8+ hours on a SUNDAY for gods sake I don’t see no football player doing that tbh

Don’t even get me started on music kids. Not only do they have to have SUCH A HIGH TOLERANCE FOR BULLSHIT but reeds are fucking hell and strings fillet your fingers into little strips of flesh. Ew, I know.

And like the art kids (painting and sculpting and that shit) holy hell
do they have patience. Anyone else who stares at a canvas for 6 hours consecutively would probs go
insane and commit mass murder. And holy hell batman paint hurts like a soda can up your ass when it gets in your eyes like nooooo

Makeup artists have to deal with your ugly ass faces and somehow (probs by using black magic) turn trashcans into gods.

Then there’s photographers who will literally sometimes crawl down drainpipes or fall head-first out
of trees to get a nice picture. I wouldn’t do none of that shit wasted as fuck, let alone sober.

Conclusion: Art ppl= hardcore as peaches

and then theres animators who sit in front of a computer frying their brains out for a 2 minute short

That’s fucking right

emmavonskulltaker:

dollsahoy:

robotsandfrippary:

dollsahoy:

blood-tea:

dollsahoy:

I grew up in a poor area, where we poor people all thought we were middle class and the actual middle class people were perceived the ‘rich’ ones, because there were no genuinely rich people around.

I feel like this has pretty much become the entire united states? (with the exception of the uber rich)

Like, I genuinely felt (once my fiance was earning 12$ an hour and we could afford food + had money in the bank) that we were middle class. Then this year, I found out we were literally only a few hundred dollars away from being below the poverty line that year. It fucking blew my mind.

Which made me think that a LOT of those “MIDDLE CLASS AMERICANS CAN’T EVEN AFFORD FOOD WHILE POOR PEOPLE EAT LIKE KINGS ON FOOD STAMPS” posting assholes… Are actually poor and either don’t realize it or won’t admit it.

I don’t think I know anyone who would count as “middle class” (except for MAYBE my fiance’s dad? but he’s working 2 jobs and his wife is also working so… I’m not sure.)

I never considered it before, but, yeah, that could be a big part of it–that lots of people don’t realize that they’re not middle class. (Unfortunately,  this extends to people who are on the “low end” of rich–sure, they bring in half a million a year in an area with a moderate cost of living, but…but…that’s not enough to afford the life they really want to/think they deserve to live…  *sigh*)

I was a kid in the 1970s/80s/90s, for the record, living in rural (but not too far from the highways, so had easy access to More) Indiana.

depending on where you live you can be making enough to be considered above the poverty line and still not be able to pay all your bills or just barely able to make it.  We should be miles above it, but we still struggle to save or have money left over because rent in the entire bay area is so high. It isn’t a matter of living beyond our means, even a studio here is about $1700 a month.  

*nods* That’s why I made sure to mention cost of living–what can seem like a huge amount of money in one part of the country can be barely enough to get by in other parts, and it does seem like that gets left out of the conversation a lot. ($15/hour in NYC is not as much as $15/hour someplace rural, in terms of cost of living.)

We recently had an inspection at our work (this thing was a BIG DEAL, everyone was preparing for months and the application was several binders of paperwork).

One of the things the inspecting committee looked at was wages. Now, we are right smack in the middle of Silicon Valley. The zookeepers make less than almost everyone else in the entire organization. 80% of the keepers live 40+ minutes away, because we can’t afford the rent near our place of work.

The inspectors were from tiny zoos deep in the heart of rural America. Nebraska, Wyoming, Iowa. We were told they can’t help us, because our entry level keepers make more than the curators of their zoos.

The trappings of poverty (and hence the things people may get weird about) also vary wildly.  I grew up dirt-poor in California: fresh fruit and produce were always plentiful, even when we could barely afford soap.  (Ironically, this is less true today, because most of the fruit stands and “we sell the ugly stuff” places have shut down.)  My girlfriend grew up poor in a dairy state: real butter was standard, and margarine was a sign of financial distress.

Climate and cost of living and culture all change the “poor experience” so much, and half the time it feels like no one wants to take that into account.

mradilbert:

Hugging

continueplease:

penfairy:

My favourite thing is when people read classic romances for the first time and realise how different they are to the way popular culture represents them. Mr. Darcy isn’t some handsome, perfect hunk. He’s a socially awkward loser who writes embarrassingly long, eloquent letters to the girl he likes because he can’t speak two words to her face without colossally fucking up. Mr. Rochester is a creepy bigamous liar who keeps women in his attic. Heathcliff’s a terrifying fucking psychopath who abuses kids. JULIET WAS THIRTEEN.

THANK U

watsons-solarpunk:

meloromantics:

sixth-light:

leighalanna:

proudheron:

socimages:

Luxury and the consumption of labor.

By Lisa Wade, PhD

I came across this fascinating poster advertising tea at The Coffee Bean in Irvine, CA. The ad features tea leaves balled up into small tea “pearls” and spilled into a person’s palm. It reads:

Three minutes to fragrant perfection.

It takes a full day to hand-roll 17 ounces of our Jasmine Dragon Pearl Green Tea.  But in just three minutes you can watch these aromatic pearls unfurl gracefully into one of the world’s most soothing and delicious teas.

This ad suggests that others’ toil should enhance one’s experience of pleasure.  The fact that it takes a significant amount of human labor to “hand-roll” tea leaves into balls — an action that is in no way asserted to change the taste of the tea — is supposed to make the tea moreappealing and not less.  We are supposed to enjoy not just the visual, but the fact that others worked hard to produce it for us.  A whole day of their labor for just three minutes of curly goodness.

This is a rather stunning value pervading U.S. culture.  Luxury may be defined not only as pleasure, or as the consumption of the scarce, but as the “unfurling” of others’ hard work.  What could be more luxurious than the casual-and-fleeting enjoyment of the hard-and-long labor of others?

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College and the co-author of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

i saw this post like five years ago, and i still think about it weekly, literally, if not more often. luxury as the knowledge - and delight in the knowledge - that you’re undoing someone’s work.

I recently read “Consider The Fork” by Bee Wilson (excellent book, something I really recommend) and this topic came up a lot. The book is a history of cooking utensils, essentially, looking out circumstances shaped them, and how they in turn shaped what we eat.

And there’s this very persistent theme – that there are always a handful of dishes that go out of style once technological innovations turn up that make them simple to create. The evolution of the balloon whisk wrecked everyone’s taste for a “Dish of Snow” (basically egg whites whipped for a day until stiff by other people) in the seventeenth century and the
food processor meant that all of the popularity of molded mousses evaporates overnight in the eighties.

Especially in the case of food, we seem to love the suffering of other people and find it not just an addition to our pleasure, but in many cases the entirety of it.

There’s also the thing where people view food made with difficulty as more “authentic” - I have a recipe book which suggests hand-whipping egg whites for a pavlova. Spoiler: I did this, one Christmas in America, because I didn’t own an electric beater, and it was a bitch and a half and I never did it again and also my arms fell off. It didn’t taste any better, of course. But the book suggests - playfully, I think, but there all the same - that doing it that way is more “real”. Even when modern technology or methods get better results, it’s often seen as cheating. And I think this is also about class, in some ways, because when you’re poor you just don’t have the time to do things the “proper” way. 

this is also why white europeans eat bland food—up until the 17th century european elites were eating meals with complex and contrasting flavor profiles due to the heavy use of very expensive spices. but starting around 1700, the growth of european colonialism meant that sugar and spices entered europe in huge quantities, making them much cheaper. 

then all of the sudden, when everyone could have spices, they weren’t special anymore. the french especially pulled back hard from the prolific use of spices and pursued simpler, “elegant” flavor profiles.

[this info is basically a very condensed version of this fantastic npr article which also goes into detail about the influence of religion as well!]

I think this is very important to look at and critique both in fiction and in activism.

just-shower-thoughts:

People expect the secret message to change when playing the camp game “telephone,” but they have absolute faith that religious texts, translated and copied thousands of times over multiple centuries, are perfectly correct.

I used to

But people have a lot of things to say about a lot of things and posting garbage opinions on the internet doesn’t make ‘em any less wrong so

moonblossom:

vivelafat:

boredpanda:

Mind-Bending Photos That Seem Fake But Are Actually Real

It’s so much cooler when it’s real

Man, the rendering glitches in this game suck.

ofwhichiamtheworst:

a male feminist walks into a bar

because it was set so low

When others get weirded out by your special interest.

uncensoredsideblog:

We evac’d 18 sols into a 31-sol mission. Which means we’ve go 13 sols worth of experiments and research left to do, so… [x]

tastefulheels:

me: *sets the bar really low*
a man: *slides right under it*

piper-chap:

what mens rights activists really sound like

guardiandruid:

guanshiyin:

shizukadoumeki:

Ppl who wear glasses: How do you keep them clean because holy shit

We don’t.

We really don’t

peterjqsonquill:

I saw the end of the world. I could feel all this death.

berlynn-wohl:

✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:* @(◕‿◕)@  *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Friendly reminder that the plot of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope is not really so much “Farm boy who dreams of bigger things discovers that he’s a Jedi and learns the ways of the Force.”

The plot is actually more like: “Teenage girl puts her life on the line becoming a revolutionary, and when the male protagonists learn of her mission, one by one they all put aside their personal priorities and assist her because they understand that her agenda is the most important one.”

Then the rest of the trilogy is this young woman proving herself to be a competent and resourceful leader with expertise in asymmetrical warfare tactics, whose admittedly trope-y romantic relationship is nonetheless built on a growing mutual respect and a common cause, and does not define her or her motivations in any way.

✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:* @(◕‿◕)@  *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

vanvelding:

mradilbert:

Boys

Oh, hey yeah. Throwing dudes a bone can save lives. Isn’t that worth a little discomfort? Isn’t that worth just taking time to humor them and lead them on so they have some hope for the future even if you instantly know you’ll never be interested in them? C’mon, it can even prevent terrorism!

So straight dudes, don’t hesitate to give your numbers out to gay dudes if we ask. Just chat us up, even if you’re 100% straight. Frontal lobes. Hope for the future. Love hugging.

It might not just save our lives, but it could also stop that legion of violent gay suicide bombers which have been plaguing America since–

goddesscru:

sandandglass:

The Nightly Show, December 10, 2015

Thank you, Larry Wilmore hitting the goddamned nail on the head.

People should learn that antislavery does not necessarily equate with being pro-black. I’ve said before that there were really three main reasons why a white person during the 18th and 19th centuries would be antislavery: moral/spiritual (slavery is wrong because it degrades black people and offends God); racist (slavery is wrong because it brings black people to America and keeps them there); and political (slavery is wrong because it gives to the South too much power).

“Comics are so often seen as the province of white geeky nerds. But, more broadly, comics are the literature of outcasts, of pariahs, of Jews, of gays, of blacks. It’s really no mistake that we saw ourselves in Doom, Magneto or Rogue.”

- Ta-Nehisi Coates (via wearewakanda)

knitmeapony:

just-mindy:

In response to a controversial rumor that Idris Elba will be playing a canonically white main character in the new Dark Tower adaptation.

BLESS.

Bernie Sanders Has Stuck To The Same Message For 40 Years:

I’m voting for someone who hasn’t needed to “evolve” on the issues I care about, because he has cared about them the way I do for almost as long as I’ve been live.

I love Hobbes. (photo by semma333)

jennylewren:

cream-and-stars:

mia-the-wonder-slut:

mothernaturenetwork:

Free birth control causes U.S. abortion rates to plummet
Free birth control could prevent 1,060,370 unplanned pregnancies and 873,250 abortions a year in the U.S., according to a study.

No way. Wow. That’s so surprising and unexpected. Birth control actually helps women not get accidentally pregnant? Wow.

It’s like women knew all along what they needed to protect their bodies from unwanted pregnancy…

OMFG NO WAI~~

I just read this article in the post. Typically for every 1,000 sexually active teens 34 of them deal with unwanted pregnancy. In the control group using freely provided birth control (their choice of pills, injections or surgical implants) that number drops down to 7. Again for every 1,000 sexually active teens there typically results in 20 abortions. In the control group given free birth control, that number drops to 4. FUCKING 4.

Obviously if you’re anti-abortion you’d be pro-birth control but apparently that’s just not the case. 

Autism problem: when you get your social scripts completely confused and end up saying “yes please” to someone who asked you how you were doing.

fat-birds:

naamahdarling:

elodieunderglass:

ursulavernon:

funnywildlife:

Gossamer Wings by William Dalton on Flickr.

Legends say that hummingbirds float free of time, carrying our hopes

for love, joy and celebration. Like a hummingbird, we aspire to hover

and savor each moment as it passes; embrace all that life has to offer

and to celebrate the joy of every day. The hummingbird’s delicate

grace reminds us that life is rich, beauty is everywhere, every

personal connection has meaning and that laughter is life’s sweetest
creation. –Papyrus

I…Ah…hmm.

Look, it’s a great photo. The photographer kicked butt. They should be very proud of this photo.

But hummingbirds are not carrying your hopes for joy around. I am sorry. Have you met hummingbirds? Hummingbirds believe strongly that they should be eighteen feet tall and have flamethrowers. They are a half ton of pugnacious wrapped up in a half ounce of feathers. Given the choice, hummingbirds would fly around with “Ride of the Valkyries” blasting out of tiny speakers on their wings, putting the eyes out of their enemies.

They do not fear humans, but if they learn that humans will provide feeders, they will become very demanding. They are fiercely territorial. They are…kind of jerks, actually.

Also, there are papers indicating that female hummingbirds engage in what can only be termed “nectar-based prostitution” where they trade sexual favors to males in return for access to particularly rich nectar sources. 

If your hopes for love involve nectar and your hopes for joy involve crushing your foes, seeing them driven before you, hearing the lamentations of their nestlings, etc, then possibly the hummingbird may carry them around, otherwise…uh…have you considered vultures? Vultures are very pleasant, affectionate, and social birds. You should probably give them your hopes and dreams. They would be better at it. 

Did I mention it’s a great photo?

VULTURES, NOW.

this is Jack.

Jack (full name: Jack Sparrow) lives at the Hawk Conservancy. (He’s missing some toes because he was rescued from Vulture Smugglers.)

When you interact with Jack, you can tell he’s at about the level of … something between a ferret and a dog. Funny short little attention span, and a weird face to look at, but a human reads him as curious, friendly and interested in people.

When you meet a working vulture, you realize that they are definitely a wild predatory animal and very instinctive, but with a consciousness that extends to interest in their surroundings; like, he’s very much focused on THE SNACK, but before and after the SNACKTIME he also wants to have a chat about your day and look at your face and peer into your camera and ask to look at the pictures you took and then say “hey now take one where I’m doing duckface” and you’re like “ok Jack go ahead”

Contrast with owls, which are typically pretty, but which are basically as interactive as a pop-up ad. They exist to land on things and eat them. They are not complicated. Vultures are hey-whatcha-doin. They’re yeah I’m a psychopomp but my real hobby is DJ-ing. They’d like to couchsurf next time they’re in town. You’d let them.

I would give Jack my dreams to carry. He would hold them well, in his big black lovely inky eyes, in his broken gentle feet.

Why is the last line making me tear up?

What a sweet vulture.

This is the best thing I have read today tbh