It's loss aversion. Any loss is valued as more important than any gain. Not saying that we're hard-wired that way. Not saying we can't acknowledge that instinctive patterns of behavior can't be changed. Just saying that there's a reason we act the way we do, beyond "men are evil and women are good." Honestly, it's more of a "humans are assholes thing." But we are capable of changing our behaviors.
Feminism didn’t teach me to hate men, but it did teach me to stop prioritising them over women.
And it turns out a lot of men think that’s the same thing as hatred.
I said it once and I’ll say it again. Instead of claiming to not hate men, think about why so many people think you do.
This is literally an explanation of why.
Men grow up in a world where men are always more important than everyone else. Refusing to go along with this and actively prioritising women feels like hatred to men who conflate their unearned position of power with their identity.
Maybe instead of obediently supporting the status quo, you should put some critical thought into why so many men get irrationally angry when women want to be treated fairly.
Watson: Holmes, I don’t think you have any. We used them all on the last case.
Holmes: well, there you have it. I have no fucks to give.
The opening of basically every interview Sherlock Holmes grants to people requesting his help. (Usually after a few minutes he finds some spare fucks in the couch cushions.)
Watson then usually looks disapproving until Holmes finds them, then neglects his practice/wife/life while he helps.
This is also quite true.
WATSON! HOLD MY FUCKS!
Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Missing Fucks by Sir Arthur “Here’s another fucking Sherlock Holmes story, ffs” Conan Doyle.
Chalk up a major win for global health: according to the World Health Organization, Africa has been free of wild cases of Polio since July. This comes down to a dedicated vaccination campaign that has advanced the continent towards zero cases.
I emailed my state and national congress-folks, to let them know that, as a voter, I support Planned Parenthood. One of the ones that emailed me back said that he's going to continue supporting Planned Parenthood because cutting support for them would actually result in more abortions.
I REALLY want to keep this guy around.
Senate Democrats are targeting three vulnerable GOP senators from New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania who voted to defund Planned Parenthood and with good reason. Check out the top lines from polls conducted in the three states.
• 66 percent of New Hampshire voters oppose defunding Planned Parenthood’s preventive health services, including 72 percent of Independents.
• 65 percent of Ohio voters oppose defunding Planned Parenthood’s preventive health services, including 59 percent of Independents.
• 69 percent of Pennsylvania voters oppose defunding Planned Parenthood’s preventive health services, including 69 percent of Independents.
In addition, about three quarters of voters in each state disapprove of the idea of shutting down the government to defund the organization.
Republicans picked this fight, Mitch McConnell fast-tracked the vote in the Senate and Sens. Kelly Ayotte (NH), Rob Portman (OH), and Pat Toomey (PA) voted for it. Thank you.
So we’ve made progress. And we’ll keep at it. But let’s be clear: the issues raised over the past year aren’t new, and they won’t be solved by policing alone. We simply can’t ask our police to contain and control issues that the rest of us aren’t willing to address—as a society. That starts with reforming a criminal justice system that too often is a pipeline from inadequate schools to overcrowded jails, wreaking havoc on communities and families all across the country. So we need Congress to reform our federal sentencing laws for non-violent drug offenders. We need to keep working to help more prisoners take steps to turn their lives around so they can contribute to their communities after they’ve served their time.
Noting the recent anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, President Obama focused in this morning's weekly address on the past year of protests and frustrations, suggestions for improved community policing, and future changes that need to be made to the entire criminal justice system to make it operate more equitably.
He ticked off some progress he deemed worthy of acknowledging, most driven by the recommendations of the task force he convened in the wake of Ferguson: more departments are sharing data with the public (and thus fostering more accountability), leaders are exploring alternatives to incarceration, and body cams are becoming more common. Other task force recommendations are still waiting to be implemented, but even once adopted, the president said, there is more to be done. And that means looking at a bigger picture outside of the specific law enforcement and justice system.
More broadly, we need to truly invest in our children and our communities so that more young people see a better path for their lives. That means investing in early childhood education, job training, pathways to college. It means dealing honestly with issues of race, poverty, and class that leave too many communities feeling isolated and segregated from greater opportunity. It means expanding that opportunity to every American willing to work for it, no matter what zip code they were born into.
To read the transcript in full, check below the fold or visit the White House website.
I do not know what makes people creepy. If I did, I would offer classes. However, I do spend a lot of time behind convention tables and I get great fans and normal fans and socially awkward fans…and occasional creeps.
The socially awkward fans are creeps much, much less often than you’d think. Creepy is not a function of being socially awkward, any more than it’s a function of being ugly. (I get ugly fans. I get hot fans. I get attractive fans, which is a category that really has very little to do with the first two. Again, if I knew what made that work, I would offer classes…) Socially awkward is just that–socially awkward, and I have been doing furry and comic cons long enough to know it a mile off, and, seriously…it’s fine. I have seen a lot of variations. There’s I-am-so-excited-I-am-talking-very-fast and that’s fine. There’s I-rehearsed-what-I-was-going-to-say-because-I-am-so-nervous and that’s fine, and when we go off script, which always happens immediately, they usually relax and deal. There’s I-am-just-really-bad-at-social-interactions, too. Yeah, sure, it gets a little painful when I have to deal with somebody with Asperger’s so bad that they can’t make eye-contact and apologize for everything immediately, but that’s only because I feel bad for the person who is so obviously distressed. (There was also the guy who would say something, and then run away. And then return a few minutes later. And say something. And run away. I felt terrible for him, I wanted to say “Stick around, it’s okay!” Otter suggested that he probably had a social anxiety issue and kept getting overloaded and having to go talk himself down, and she was very likely right.)
But these are minor concerns. I have had fans who have taken four years of commissioning me every year to be able to make eye contact with me when they do it, and y’know, it works out. We manage.
Creepy is something else.
If I could quantify it, I would. About all I can say is that there are levels of intimacy we achieve with each other as people over time, and when you try to jump the queue, that’s definitely creepy. (I think this is part of the problem with the big romantic gestures off the bat. You earn the right to those. Those are not a given.) If you have ever attempted to ingratiate yourself with someone by displaying knowledge of them gleaned from outside research–perhaps in some misguided belief that your friends know this, and I know this, ergo we must be friends!–oh sweet god creepy. (Remind me to tell you about the internet weirdo I inherited some time…)
It should probably go without saying that if you say you’re not trying to be creepy, you have just failed spectacularly.
There’s also something about eye contact and body language in there too, but bugger if I can nail it down for you, except that I know it when I see it. (Too much eye contact is as bad as too little, but probably all I’ve done now is make people who aren’t creepy in the first place worry about their eye contact patterns, so don’t sweat it.)
Please note that at no point in there did I say anything about being hot. Yes, pretty people do sometimes get away with more in this world, that’s the reality we live in and I will tell you no lies–but that’s not the case here. I have known many, many people that I did not find hot, and they were most of them good and decent people, and I have known people who were devastatingly attractive while also having been beaten with the ugly stick–I am dead serious in this, I swear by Ganesh and his rodent handmaidens–and I have known people who had reasonably symmetrical features and who probably took a good photo who were oh-my-god-do-not-want-run-away.
That’ s life. If people find you creepy rather than charming, do not assume it is because they are shallow and want someone who looks like a movie star. Trust me.
Creepy makes you unattractive. Not the other way around.
Don't even see what other words you can make with the letters that form black on black crime.
It is the dumbest, most ridiculously racist phrase used to describe crime in the world right now.
Have you ever heard anybody talk about white on white crime? Have you ever seen any white folk march about white crime, have conferences or gatherings focused on white on white crime? Don't lie—you know you haven't.
Almost all crime in America is committed intra-racially. That is to say, the overwhelming majority of crimes are committed by a racial group against that same group.
Yet, the only race-based phrase to ever describe crime is black on black.
Whites are 6 times as likely to be murdered by another white person as by a black person; and overall, the percentage of white Americans who will be murdered by a black offender in a given year is only 2/10,000ths of 1 percent (0.0002). This means that only 1 in every 500,000 white people will be murdered by a black person in a given year. Although the numbers of black-on-white homicides are higher than the reverse (447 to 218 in 2010), the 218 black victims of white murderers is actually a higher percentage of the black population interracially killed than the 447 white victims of black murderers as a percentage of the white population.
In fact, any given black person is 2.75 times as likely to be murdered by a white person as any given white person is to be murdered by an African American.
You didn't know that. Fox News doesn't tell you that type of truth because it doesn't fit their agenda. The only reason the phrase black on black crime even exists is in some racist attempt to make it some like black folk have some unique problem with committing crimes against each other that other folk don't have.
It's just not true.
And when you say it, you are a part of the problem.
“This song is a vessel. It carries the unbearable anguish of millions. We recorded it to channel the pain, fear, and trauma caused by the ongoing slaughter of our brothers and sisters. We recorded it to challenge the indifference, disregard, and negligence of all who remain quiet about this issue. Silence is our enemy. Sound is our weapon. They say a question lives forever until it gets the answer it deserves… Won’t you say their names?””
- Janelle Monáe on the #BlackLivesMatter “Hell You Talmbout" protest song
“Professors give warnings of all sorts that, when not explicitly entangled in the national politics of political correctness, amount less to coddling than to minimizing chances of disengagement with material. “Block off more time this weekend than you usually do, since the reading for Monday is a particularly long one,” for instance, is a reasonable way of reducing the number of students who show up unprepared by issuing a warning. “Today we’re discussing a poem about rape, so be prepared for some graphic discussion, and come to office hours if you have things to say about the poem that you’re not comfortable expressing in class,” meanwhile, is a similarly reasonable way of relieving the immediate pressure to perform in class, which stresses out so many students… If you take away the media hysteria surrounding trigger warnings, you’re left with a mode of conversational priming that we all use: “You might want to sit down for this”; “I’m not sure how to say this, but…” It’s hardly anti-intellectual or emotionally damaging to anticipate that other people may react to traumatic material with negative emotions, particularly if they suffer from PTSD; it’s human to engage others with empathy. It’s also human to have emotional responses to life and literature, responses that may come before, but in no way preclude, a dispassionate analysis of a text or situation.”
it frankly baffles me that I’ve almost never seen people recognizing that “hey, here’s a preview of what we’re going to discuss next week” (’trigger warning’ buzzword optional) is good pedagogy, and so many of these professors who are very Defensive about being emotionally harmful to their students have a disproportionate sense of self-importance (and a really bad idea of what education is about). the material teachers use is not a surprise to be inflicted upon their students; classrooms are not places for them to “blow their students’ minds.”
A trigger warning is not a request to shut down the conversation: it is a bellwether for how well-received and active the conversation will be. When I want to talk about something “socially inappropriate”–like, for example, a very bad period–I will usually say “Where’s your TMI?” to the people I want to talk to. If someone says “I am queasy right now,” I may postpone the complaint for later. Most of the time I get “it’s okay, what’s wrong?” from the people I care about enough to ask this.
What fascinates me is how I’ll go “Where’s your TMI?” to people, indicating I want to speak about something squelchy and/or personal, get a positive response, and then, when I say “I am having such bad cramps,” will get a “WAIT EW NO GROSS STOP WARN A GUY” from some of the same people who complain about “excessive” trigger warnings.
Janelle Monáe Made a Powerful Rallying Cry for #BlackLivesMatter
This song is a vessel.
It carries the unbearable anguish of millions.
We recorded it to channel the pain, fear, and trauma caused by the ongoing slaughter of our black brothers and sisters. We recorded it to challenge the indifference, disregard, and negligence of all who remain quiet about this issue.
Silence is our enemy. Sound is our weapon.
They say a question lives forever until it gets the answer it deserves …
"The defendant rolled down the window and said 'I know why you stopped me.' The defendant then made reference to the events in Ferguson, Missouri," according to the criminal complaint.
Joseph Parker, 34, in a wild rant, threatened to kill police, then pounced, police said. He punched 57-year-old Lt. Jeremian Goodwin, knocking him out.
From the overnight scene to lockup, Parker allegedly injured seven officers. The police chief says the man battled, nearly breaking the metal detector.
In all of those cases, and in hundreds more like them, unarmed African Americans who posed no physical threat to police were killed by law enforcement.
Yet this man, Joseph Parker, injured seven police officers and sent two to the hospital?
I have to admit, it terrifies me that they're doing this. BLM does NOT need any more martyrs.
Black Lives Matter activists cut a Jeb! event short on Wednesday evening in Nevada. Jeb! was getting some tough policy questions and decided to pull the plug early, reports Seema Mehta.
Bush, responding to a woman's query about the disproportionate number of minorities killed by police and their treatment in the criminal justice system, said there was no question that racism still existed in the United States and that leaders needed to engage in communities that felt disenfranchised. He then turned to his education record as Florida's governor, saying that achievement scores among minority youths rose during his tenure.
“I have a record of empowering people in communities that” were told “they had no chance,” Bush said, ending the town hall. He did not deliver a closing statement, as he typically does, and quickly made his way to an exit, greeting supporters along the way.
Behind him, a few dozen protesters raised their fists and began chanting, “Black Lives Matter!” A few Bush supporters turned toward them and chanted, “All Lives Matter!” and “White Lives Matter!” Two women -- a protester and a Bush supporter -- stood a few feet from the candidate with their middle fingers extended in each other's faces.
BLM activists have said they are prepared to press all the candidates and that appears to be true. Stay tuned ...
For the first time, the federal government has complied and released information on Obamacare enrollments coming in the special enrollment period. These are the people who have had major life changes that forced them out of their previous insurance—losing a job, getting divorced, etc.—and who had the opportunity to get new coverage right away. In fact, fully half of the people enrolling this year on the federal insurance exchange—467,385 of them—fall into this category.
According to a report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, half of the 944,000 new enrollees on the federally run exchanges in 37 states between Feb. 23 and June 30 signed up because they'd lost their previous coverage. The agency doesn't have data for states that fully operate their own marketplaces.
Losing health coverage is one of the qualifying events that allows individuals to access the exchanges outside of the regular yearly sign-up through what's called a special enrollment period, or SEP.
People who left jobs with health insurance previously had the option of paying the entire cost of their insurance on their own under COBRA, a proposition that is way too expensive for many people. If they were impoverished enough, or qualified, they could potentially go on Medicaid. But Obamacare has created the real safety net of providing more affordable insurance options.
That has created much more flexibility for people in their work lives. People, particularly those with children to care for, have the option of voluntarily working part-time. Entrepreneurs have the chance to quit their jobs and start news businesses, without having to worry about being uninsured. In other words, the law is working the way it was supposed to for the consumer.
While it may be inconvenient for people attending a rally when they are forced to hear about causes that matter to African Americans instead of hearing from their favorite political candidate, several prominent members of the Congressional Black Caucus strongly disagreed. Speaking to The Hill:
“They really are speaking to the issues, and we're really long overdue responding to those issues,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said in a phone interview. “They've been pointed, nonviolent and strong, and I'm not offended.
“They're asking for nothing more than to lift up a system to treat them with justice.”
Rep. Hank Johnson, who has been outspoken on police brutality in America, also expressed his bold support for the practice:
“For Black Lives Matter activists, the issue is literally a matter of life and death as evidenced by the continued killing of unarmed Black men and women by police officers across the nation,” Johnson said in an email. “When presidential candidates fail to acknowledge how the current criminal system detrimentally impacts Black lives, they [the activists] resort to disruptive tactics to force attention to the issue.
“While disruption is uncomfortable, it does result in candidates acknowledging and addressing the issue with policy proposals,” he added. “When that happens, the need to protest is abated.”
Personally, I concur with Rep. Johnson.
Black folk aren't interrupting speeches because it's cool. It's not cool. It's damn uncomfortable for everybody, but what's worse is the reality that police brutality and racial injustice in this nation are on the rise and little effort to combat it is being seen on the national level.
If this is what it takes to force the issues into the forefront, so be it.
Senate Democrats are targeting three vulnerable GOP senators from New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania who voted to defund Planned Parenthood and with good reason. Check out the top lines from polls conducted in the three states.
Ever.
This is the definition of white privilege.
Black Lives Matter activists cut a Jeb! event short on Wednesday evening in Nevada. Jeb! was getting some tough policy questions and decided to pull the plug early, reports Seema Mehta.
For the first time, the federal government has complied and released information on Obamacare enrollments coming in the special enrollment period. These are the people who have had major life changes that forced them out of their previous insurance—losing a job, getting divorced, etc.—and who had the opportunity to get new coverage right away. In fact, fully half of the people enrolling this year on the federal insurance exchange—467,385 of them—fall into this category.
While it may be inconvenient for people attending a rally when they are forced to hear about causes that matter to African Americans instead of hearing from their favorite political candidate, several prominent members of the Congressional Black Caucus strongly disagreed. Speaking to The Hill: