ThePrettiestOne

kyleehenke:

mirainomemes:

i hope kyleehenke doesnt do anything problematic or anything comes up about her. i believe in her.

here’s the thing though: I’m human, and I’m gonna screw up. it happens. you can’t put these ridiculously unattainable expectations on people, no matter how much you may or may not look up to them. humans make mistakes! and you can’t let your faith be utterly shattered at the first sign of imperfection. putting individuals on pedestals is dangerous.

but on that note: if I DO screw up, please know it is never my intention to hurt anyone or be ignorant. instead of instantly losing all faith in me, give me a heads up and HELP ME UNDERSTAND what I’ve done wrong! I may be able to correct the behavior or the erroneous way of thinking. don’t believe in my ability to never screw up, believe in my ability to learn!

whatever you do, please, please don’t expect someone to never be problematic ever. it’s an unfair standard that is impossible for anyone to live up to, no matter how saintly.

twistedingenue:

cardozzza:

metapianycist:

pro tip: if you’re with people whose understanding of a movie or show is benefited by captions or subtitles and you’re about to watch a DVD that has captions, it makes you a huge asshole to tell them “but captions are annoying!!”

it’s pretty fucking annoying to not understand what’s being said in the movie because some asshole refused to turn on captions

And it might be a good idea to be proactive about it–casually ask ‘hey does anyone need captions on?’ I know I get really anxious asking people to put captions on, especially since I’ve had people who know I have hearing problems get nasty about it.

As a hearing person who benefits from captions, I appreciate people who ask because I hate having to beg for them.

I a) have trouble distinguishing male voices, and b) become UNREASONABLY ANGRY when people talk over my TV.  Unless the captions are on.  Then I can just read my show, and everything is dandy.

I have at least one friend who can never be invited to one of my birthday parties, because we sit around and watch Disney movies for hours, and there would be so much yelling if someone thought it was funny to talk through the movie.

Sanders is many things, but he is not perfect, or close to perfect, or even anything other than a politician. In fact, Sanders and his plan to save blacks through redistributing wealth to narrow the wealth gap are deeply flawed, because the principle which serves as the scaffolding for his plan is deeply flawed. Sanders—like many other liberals of his race and age—believes that capitalism is inherently evil, and so that all evils can be ascribed to those of capitalism, and so in the idea that economic injustice is the root of all injustice. Racial injustice, in this reading, is treated as a side effect or function of economic injustice; concomitantly, racial inequality is treated as having the same causes and therefore the same solutions as economic inequality. If wealth is redistributed, the idea goes, then poor people of all races will have more money; then something else will happen; then racism will not matter or be healed altogether. I, and many in Black Lives Matter, and other people, too, believe that this line of theorizing has things backward.

I, and other people, too, tend to believe that racial injustice is different from economic injustice; that black Americans are poor because of racism, more than that racism is the result of black Americans being poor; and, further, that racism is the driving force behind the capricious and fluid idea of race. It is racism that has led to layers upon layers of policy that keep blacks as a social underclass being conceived and executed; racism that has led to policies like redlining, which still exist, in various forms, today; racism that has led to things like segregated neighborhoods and schools; racism that has led to millions upon millions of minorities today being corralled in ghettos; and racism that has led to the average white household having 16 times the wealth of the average black one in 2015. Black people aren’t systemically oppressed because they don’t have money; they don’t have money because they are systemically oppressed, because the American voting public is in favor of them being so.

This is also—at least according to one line of argument—why blacks are being lynched by the state, every single day, multiple times a day, in 2015. And if you credit this line particular line of reasoning, it’s hard not to look at Sanders’ proposed policies and sneer, because as well-meant as they are, they don’t address the fact that even if he wins, there’s still going to be racism and everything that comes with it, with blacks and browns and poor whites maybe—maybe—having a little more money to throw around before they get arrested and/or tased and/or beaten and/or shot to death. This is to say that Sanders’s best-case scenario is certainly a better situation than exists now, but not a good situation, and not one that seriously addresses state violence as an expression of the public will.

Sanders’s philosophy talks around racism by explaining, or suggesting, that it is mainly a function of economic imperatives, which can be addressed by changing the laws that create those imperatives. This is part of why he is beloved, and why he has surged, and why he has captured the support of those who want to support the best or at least least-bad of all semi-serious presidential candidates: We would all like to think that the worst problems in our society are fixable if people of good will address them rationally. It’s also part of why blacks are aggrieved, even as record crowds flock to him. (On Sunday, 28,000 showed up in Portland; earlier this week, 27,500 more showed up in Los Angeles). Sanders may be the least-bad candidate for everyone who holds to some progressive concern, and the candidate who best represents a chance of getting racial injustice talked about in Democratic debate; but he still falls short. And whether or not he does, he shouldn’t be immune from critique. There is a long history of well-intentioned liberals failing to adequately or accurately address the nature of causes of racial inequality, and each one who intends to do so should be challenged, if only to challenge other candidates in turn.

Photo via Getty Images

---

Because let’s address another reality: Even though Sanders is the best candidate, he definitely won’t win the Democratic nomination, and will never, ever win a general election. This is no knock on him; no socialist would have a shot. Even if he were to win—and again, he won’t—he wouldn’t be able to pass any real or magical panacea that fixes or lessens racism, because our racial caste system is an ingrained and vital aspect of American life, and anyway, he’s coming at it from the wrong angle. Though infinitely less bad, he is as popular and as much of a fringe candidate as Donald Trump. In all likelihood, nothing Sanders is saying will matter this time next year, unless his policy causes Hillary Clinton to say something about battling white supremacy that she’ll be held accountable for down the road.

Which brings us back to Black Lives Matter. All candidates should be challenged on race; blacks are being killed right now, today, just as they were yesterday, and just as they will be tomorrow and the next day and the next and the next, ad infinitum; and Sanders’s speeches and the large, mostly-white crowds they attract represent an opportunity for those who are currently fighting to end the ongoing lynching of blacks by the state to address those who view this violence as an accident, rather than an end. Taking those as priors, how does it not matter that what Black Lives Matter has to say is much more relevant and more important than what Sanders has to say? Taking as a given that they could protest people who are far more enthusiastic about the ongoing oppression of American citizens, what is the purpose of protest that doesn’t piss someone off? And who better to push and to sharpen than thousands upon thousands of white, left-leaning Americans who, like Sanders, claim they’re here to help?

mysecretorigin:

Okay.

So, we either need to, as a society, decide that it is no longer important or useful to ask high school students to do literary analysis* or STFU about symbolism.

As in that “the curtains were fucking blue” meme.

Because, you know, symbolism is a valid literary element, and it is worthy of discussion and analysis, and I’m tired of defending it and feeling defensive about it.

And symbolism in literature is real, and your English teacher really didn’t just make it up.

I promise.

*This idea deserves a longer post of its own, which I might get to someday. One of my problems with being a high school English teacher has to do with the fact that I think high school English teachers are asked to do way too much. I could divide what I was expected to teach in high school English into like four different classes.

retrogradeworks:

buzzfeed:

17 Graphs That Will Speak To You If You’re An Introvert

If I’m with people I enjoy, I can last a lot longer without needing to gtfo.

We do “people math.”

My top “I am having a good time” number is about eight.  But some people are neutral people (my friend Sarah, for example), and do not “add.”  So with her, I can have nine, and not care.  Other people are negative people, in a good sense, and their presence actually subtracts from how many people I feel like I’m around.  Add vixyish to a situation and she subtracts two people.  So Vixy + Sarah + eight more people = I’m really only dealing with six people.

vaspider:

When I was ten years old, a dog bit the back of my head. The doctor said, within earshot but out of sight – he didn’t think I could hear him – that had the dog’s teeth been a little longer, they could have gone in under my skull. Hit my brain stem. Killed me, crippled me.

I don’t know whether or not he was right. All I know is that for a decade and a half after that, I harbored a complete and unreasoning terror of dogs. It didn’t matter how big they were, or how tame, or how kind. Someone else could assure me that they were the best dog in the world, that they knew the dog, that he would never hurt anyone, and it didn’t matter, because I was convinced that any dog could suddenly turn on me, bite me hard enough to kill me.

There were two dogs I slowly learned to trust during that time period. And, eventually, I learned to understand dogs again, to understand their body language, to like them again, because my husband convinced me to get a puppy, to raise a dog from when it was small, that this would help me get over my fear.

No one ever told me I was crazy or irrational for not wanting to be around dogs after I’d been attacked and nearly killed by one.  No one. For fifteen years, it was understandable that I would be afraid – terribly, unreasoningly afraid – of dogs. A dog attacked me. I bore the traumatic scars. I found dogs terrifying, unpredictable. I could not trust any of them – no matter how kind they’d been to my friends, no matter how well-recommended they came or how well they’d been raised – not to turn on me and injure me.

When I was fifteen, I was raped.

Do I even need to finish this?

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anguisettesnakedtruth:

So there was this kid at school being bullied all the time and they ignored it. Ignoring it didn’t do much, so they decided to tell the bullies they were not being nice. The bullies kept bullying. The kid decided the best course of action would be to avoid the bullies, so they played in another area, but the bullies kept coming over to that area and bullying this kid.

The kid decided to create their own little cubby in the bushes at the back of the yard, it feels nice and safe there. They let other kids who feel bullies into the cubbie but when the bullies try to come in, the kids tell the bullies they can’t come in. They don’t want to be bullied.

The teacher found out and told the kids they had to let the bullies in, or they too were bullying.

The teacher also punished the kid because they made the bullies sad when they told them they weren’t being nice.

How fucked up is that?

That’s exactly what women experience. So please stop being such asshats. We’re allowed our safe spaces without it being ‘sexist to men’. We’re allowed to call out men’s crap behavior without it being ‘sexist to men’. If you can’t comprehend that you need to remove your cranium from your rectum pronto.

vicanlp:

goddamn nerd

Janelle Monáe and Jidenna Lead Philadelphia March Against Police Brutality

‘”Today, Janelle Monáe and Jidenna led a march protesting police brutality in Philadelphia, Billboard reports. Jidenna tweeted that the event was a “Black Joy Celebration Demonstration”. Monáe carried a sign featuring the words “Black Girl Magic”. Find some footage and NBC Philadelphia’s report on the march below.

Watch the videos here

fight-against-feminism:

waffleguppies:

rubitsart:

Waffles: i’m just reading about how this Egyptologist came across jars full of honey
so naturally they started eating it

Me: haha
science!

Waffles: then one of the party remarked on a hair in the honey he was dipping bread in
they found more hair and pulled on it and ‘the body of a small child appeared, in good state of preservation, with all limbs intact and well dressed, with ornaments’

Me: GOOD LORD

Waffles: it is not recorded if any of the party ever ate anything ever again

Me: bluagh guahg
so it was a child in a big jar of honey? 
they were really going at it?
not just tasting huh

Waffles: yeah they must have been really nomming it

Me: the messed up adventures of winnie the pooh

OH BOTHER

I AM SLAIN

On Tuesday, renowned genre writer Anne Rice took to her Facebook page to address what she calls “the new era of censorship,” joining the well-established ranks of public figures who legitimately feel that political correctness—AKA being sensitive to how your actions affect marginalized groups—is a societal ill.

Rice specifically addressed the controversy surrounding For Such a Time, Kate Breslin’s romance novel about a relationship between a Nazi concentration camp commander and a Jewish prisoner. For Such a Time was published in 2014 (and nominated that year by the Romance Writers of America for Best First Book and Best Inspirational Romance), but has gained attention online recently after a reviewer wrote an open letter condemning the book’s nominations.

According to Rice, the book’s recent attention has led Internet users to abuse Amazon’s review system:

Rice, (who has a bit of a history with “internet mobs,” herself) went on to explain that she personally has yet to read the book, but that its subject matter should be irrelevant:

I’m certainly not going to deny that the Internet can create a scary group mentality (sometimes on both sides of debates), but it’s exhausting to see influential figures continuing to get on the nonsense podium to conflate political correctness with censorship.

I understand why Rice thinks readers should at least engage with a piece of media before condemning it (although I sympathize with people who elect not to, especially with For Such a Time), but giving an ill-informed opinion about a book is not censorship; and to characterize it as such, particularly while using the phrase “lynch mob,” is ridiculous and irresponsible.

Say it with me: criticism is not censorship, even if it feels that way. And, although this obviously doesn’t need to be said, “people demonstrating understandable concern about power dynamics in a questionable romance novel” is not a lynch mob.

(via Mediaite)

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betthearm:

invisiblelad:

revolutionarykoolaid:

Last Night in Ferguson (8.11.15): Shit continues to be fucked up. The police continue to outright assault protesters and make indiscriminate arrests. A year later, the police are also no better at de-escalating tensions. And then, the Oath Keepers showed up… who the fuck and why?! Overall, nearly 150 protesters were arrested yesterday in Ferguson/St Louis. #staywoke #farfromover

If you ever want evidence of what it is to operate in a police state; where suppression of journalists, squelching of public assembly and peaceful protest are shrugged off and or encouraged by “tyranny fearing” armed militiamen who help do it… this is American dystopia. 

The human rights nightmare that was bad enough the first time. Now its just obvious that nothing whatsoever has changed. 

The police are not here to help you. At all. ever.

We need to hear from the Good Cops. Where are the Good Cops who are going to publicly stand up against this sort of thing?

ucbcomedy:

“Okay listen, cuddling is just a part of life. And if you’re gonna have an adult, sustainable relationship, you just have to come to terms with that.”

Trying - Bed

if you haven’t been in a long term relationship or marriage here is the thing: this is accurate

“I’m glad that Sanders is running. A good way to bring important ideas and facts to people. His candidacy might also press the Dems a little in a progressive direction. In our system of bought elections he has scarcely a chance of getting beyond the primaries, and even if by some miracle he were elected he wouldn’t be able to do anything, lacking any congressional representatives, governors, etc. As far as I can see he’s a thorn in the side of the Clinton machine, which is not a bad thing.”

- Noam Chomsky

buzzfeedceleb:

Felicia Day’s totally awesome guide to getting famous on the internet. 

I love this.

animatedamerican:

apprenticebard:

kiranwearsscienceblues:

animatedamerican:

summer-wolf:

shrineart:

crow-feathers:

polykins:

stop the phrase “tattle-tale”. stop indirectly telling kids that if they speak up about someone that’s bothering them, they’re doing something bad. stop contributing to the culture of abuse.

seriously though this NEEDS to stop. my mother. a grownass woman of 59. had to ask me over and over again if I was sure it wasn’t ethically dubious for her to go to her employer and report harassment and terror tactics from a coworker because she didn’t “want to be a tattler.” stop teaching kids not to be “tattle-tales” because they will not grow out of it. 

This this this.

I hope this is okay to add but in addition to the above it can create immediate and dangerous problems for children, with other children.

When I was six years old, one of my first grade classmates bullied me relentlessly for a long time. When I tried to tell the teacher that he wouldn’t stop touching me, she told me that I was being a tattle-tale and disrupting the class. So he got worse and worse. Before I knew it, he was telling me that I had to let him destroy my school supplies because his daddy told him that women have to obey the word of men. The bullying culminated in him and his friend waiting until the teacher and all the other kids left at the end of the day, cornering me at my desk, then threatening to bring his dad’s gun to school and shoot me if I didn’t stop wearing my favorite boots.

I didn’t tell the teacher because that would have been ‘tattling’. I didn’t tell my parents until they asked why I was upset that night. I wound up talking to the principal with my dad, and the principal was shocked that I had been too scared to report a shooting threat.

I know that a lot of people might think a kid would definitely report something like that, but I didn’t. A lot of kids don’t. Please, please give kids the chance to tell you if something is wrong, don’t brush them off, make sure they know that they can come to you for help. Don’t make them think they’re a burden or a ‘tattle-tale’.

The only context in which it is even remotely appropriate to rebuke kids for “tattling” is if they are deliberately trying to get other kids in trouble for something that does not harm anyone else (e.g. chewing gum in class, dress code infractions, failing to do the homework).  Because that kind of thing can be a form of harassment in itself, and should be discouraged.

But if you’re going to rebuke that kind of “tattling”, you need to make it clear to the kid that this does not apply to cases where someone is harassing or hurting them or anyone else.

When you shut kids down for telling you that someone is harassing or hurting them, what you’re telling them is that you don’t care and don’t want to be bothered with it, and that they have no right to ask for help.  Combine that with the near-certainty that they’ll be punished if they take matters into their own hands, and what you’re telling them is that they have no recourse at all and no choice but to continue being hurt.

Abuse culture in a nutshell, in other words.

apprenticebard, the addition by animatedamerican sounds exactly like what you were talking about in your tags :D 

THAT IT DOES. Reblogging again for extended commentary.

The tags in question:  tru i mean i understand that kids often complain about frivolous things that is a thing that happens but they often can’t tell the difference between something they need to let go and something very serious so i tend to think we have to actually teach them the difference? teach them how to make that determination for themselves? and not just have a blanket condemnation of going to authority for help idk i mean it is a hard skill to learn it can be subjective and it can be really annoying but i feel like dismissing comparatively small injustices done to children is going to lead to dismissing larger injustices when those children grow up and it’ll make it harder for them to believe us when we say that they can tell us things idk but it’s something to think about

I think this is actually different from what I wrote, and important in a very different direction – the notion that there are things that kids may be genuinely upset about but nonetheless need to learn to deal with on their own, and that we need to teach them what those are.

The difference between frivolous or trivial complaints and malicious complaints, where a kid is actively trying to get another kid in trouble, is that the latter really should be just dismissed and the kid should be told that that kind of complaint is not okay.  With the former type of complaint, especially with very young kids, the adult should still take the complaint and the emotion behind it seriously.  You can validate a kid’s feelings of frustration and unhappiness even while explaining that no, this is not something that calls for your intervention.

america-wakiewakie:

Oath Keepers Turn Up at Michael Brown Protests in Ferguson, Missouri

This is called white privilege. 

Immediately thought of importantbirds and couldn’t help myself.

coelasquid:

I’m a puff baby that can dance like a man
I can poop on your couches I can poop on your hand
I’m a seed eating baby who will peck all your buns
Peck all your buns, I will peck all your buns
If there’s water on the floor I will splash there for fun

😍😍😍😍😍😍

dynamoe:

fairy-wren:

Glossy Starling has a problem with you 

• via #@&&%!!! | Flickr
  

Well it’s not MY fault someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today, don’t look at me like that, you grumpy featherbutt

Photo credit: Luke Massey


Photo credit: Luke Massey


Photo credit: Luke Massey

guardian:

Diary of an urban falcon | See full gallery

In Chicago, wild peregrine falcons take advantage of tall buildings as pseudo cliffs – inaccessible from humans and perfect for nesting. These rare images chart their entire nesting cycle from brooding to hatching and finally fledging from their tower block home – with the Chicago skyline as a stunning backdrop.

ehlonnastar: Photo my mom took of a juvenile bluebird in our backyard

mod: hello darling!! 😍😍😍

unicornempire:

If you’re representing a business, and that business did something illegal and a person is threatening to sue, but then the person is willing to come to an amicable and friendly agreement that works out for all parties- it’s typically not a good idea to insult them. Like, the lack of sense dealing with these companies is just mindboggling sometimes. Is it really that hard to have a little bit of tact and politeness?

…oh, humans.

Breastfeeding moms who want to travel are faced with unpleasant choices like pumping and dumping, or attempting to bring a suitcase full of frozen milk through airport security. Overnight shipping service Milk Stork provides a better solution.

Read more...

In Yokohama, anyway. To celebrate its four millionth visitor, the Cup Noodle Museum in Yokohama, Japan is serving up ramen-flavored ice cream. It comes in two flavors, soy sauce and curry, and toppings include ramen standards like shrimp, green onions, potatoes, and carrots.

Read more...

"When people show you who they are, believe them." —Maya Angelou to Oprah Winfrey

That quote from Maya Angelou is painfully appropriate when we consider the crisis of police brutality in America. The police clearly are showing us who they are, but not only that, our federal government also cares so little about this issue that it really cannot produce even the most basic data on how many people are police killing in our country.

“It’s a national embarrassment,” said Geoffrey P. Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminology professor who often consults with the Justice Department on its studies. “Right now, all you know is what gets on YouTube.”

More than 20 years ago, Congress ordered the Justice Department to collect national data on excessive force by police. But as demonstrated by the recent survey’s inability to properly measure any use of force, that obligation has been virtually impossible to meet, in large part because of the difficulty of collecting reliable data from the nation’s roughly 18,000 state and local police departments.

I don't know if you missed that, but Congress ordered reliable data on police brutality when Bill Clinton was president. We're waiting, still, for this to happen because it's not a priority.

Here's how bad and far off the numbers from the federal government are:

The last official estimate from the FBI was that about 400 people per year are killed by police. We actually crossed 400 people killed by police on May 3 with seven months of the year yet to tally.

In other words, agents of the FBI, which stands, if you may recall, for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have no idea what they are talking about in this matter. If they've honestly investigated it, we're all in trouble.

Campaign season often starts with a group of starry-eyed candidates who quickly find they don't have what it takes, the money dries up, and they drop out in fairly short order. Think of someone like Democrat Bill Richardson in '08 or Republican Rick Perry in 2012. But for Republicans this year and their 17 candidates, the shakeout might not come as quickly as they would hope. Why? Because the unlimited amount of cash flowing through the super PACs might keep many of their candidates in the mix long past their "sell by" dates.

That's already proving true for Rick Perry and Rand Paul, who have made incredibly weak showings, reports Politico:

Unlike previous cycles, the tiering of the 2016 Republican presidential field appears unlikely to result in the quick exit of the GOP laggards. That’s because each is the beneficiary of super PACs that in many cases have raised orders of magnitude more than the campaigns themselves. The PACs, in effect, become a bridge to viability, sustaining struggling candidates who may genuinely believe they can surge or who simply want to stick around long enough to amass delegates and wield clout with the eventual nominee.

“I don’t think there’s any incentive to drop out as long as you can put gas in the truck and there’s PAC money out there,” said Sam Clovis, an Iowa adviser to the Perry campaign, who said Perry’s as upbeat about his chances as ever. “There will be some adjustments, but again it’s just a matter of resetting the stride.”

Republican activists say that Perry’s staff problems, in an earlier time, might’ve been the prelude to an early withdrawal from the race. Instead, he can put his campaign on autopilot while his affiliated super PACs — helmed by Mississippi operative Austin Barbour — deploy a $17 million haul, enabling Perry to regroup and hope for a revival later.

The extended campaign life of flimsy candidates could really be a brilliant unintended consequence of Citizens United this campaign cycle. The longer it takes for the GOP to separate the wheat from the chaff, the harder it will be for the party to coalesce around one candidate. Let's keep that field diverse and fractured. Long live Rick Perry!

Where does Bernie Sanders stand on the issues?:

“Think of FeelTheBern.org as the Wikipedia of Bernie Sanders, only more beautifully-designed and more thoughtfully-written, leveraging the viral power of videos and infographics, and written in an entirely FAQ-like conversational format. If knowledge is power, this site could be hugely empowering to many voters — especially given so many Americans still don’t even know who Bernie is (!).“

I got to meet Senator Sanders earlier this week, and I got to spend about an hour talking with him about the election and why he’s running. I’m as excited to support him as I have ever been about any candidate, and if you’re wondering why, take a few minutes to look at where he is on important issues that affect all of us in America who aren’t billionaires. He has a fifty year history of fighting for the things I believe in, he tells the truth, and he wants to instigate a political revolution that will take power away from the Koch Brothers, who have completely taken control of the Republican party, and empower actual working Americans to make the American Dream a reality.