ThePrettiestOne

Studies of Americans’ unconscious beliefs shows that most people — white and black — think black people are dangerous and both average folks and police are quicker to shoot black than white people.

Where does the cognitive belief that black people are dangerous come from?

Partly, it comes from the media. A new study by Color of Change found that, while 51% of the people arrested for violent crime in New York City are black, 75% of the news reports about such arrests highlighted black alleged perpetrators.

Meanwhile, when people of color are arrested, they are more likely to be portrayed in ways that make them seem threatening than white people. This happened this week:

See also, portrayals of Mark Duggan and Mike Brown.

Each time we see a black person on TV who is linked with a violent crime or portrayed as a criminal, the neurons in our brain that link blackness with criminality fire. The same for people of other races. The more often a link is triggered, the stronger it becomes. Disproportionate reporting like the kind captured in this study make the neural links in our brain — it’s actual physical structure — reflect the racism inherent in the reporting itself.

These associations, unfortunately, are pre-conscious. Those neurons fire faster than we can suppress them with our conscious mind. So, even if we believe in our heart-of-hearts that these connections are unfair or untrue, our unconscious is busy making the associations anyway. Biased reporting, in other words, changes the minds of viewers, literally.

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.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

sandandglass:

The Creative Act of Listening to a Talking Frog

Kermit the Frog gives a talk on creativity and creative risk-taking

“There is a small, but vocal, minority of comics readers. People who had been courted by an industry their whole lives and are now starting to feel unimportant. People who don’t like change, who believe that by adding diverse creators and characters, it’s somehow taking away something from what they enjoy. But comics isn’t a zero-sum game. As a brown woman, my gain isn’t a white man’s loss. I truly believe that diverse comics, comics that reflect the messy, complicated, all-shapes-sizes-sexual orientations-colors world we live in, make comics better for everyone.”

- Diversity: There’s Plenty of Room in the Comics Sandbox (via imamandanelson)

silkktheshocka:

thesaltgod:

urnaturalbae:

trebled-negrita-princess:

micdotcom:

Watch: This is the talk that could save a young black man’s life

my chest is hurting

Currently crying outside of class

😢😭

Heard my
Mom give this speech to my nephews when they were about 8 and 9 my heart is so heavy I resisted the urge to cry at work when I saw this

While the ’50s is famous for its family-friendly attitude, the number of hours that parents spend engaged in childcare as a primary activity has been rising ever since:

The driving force behind all this focused time is the idea that it’s good for kids. That’s why parents often feel guilty if they can’t find the time or even go so far as to quit their full-time jobs to make more time.

This assumption, however, isn’t bearing out in the science, at least not for mothers’ time. Sociologist Melissa Milkie and two colleagues just published the first longitudinal study of mothers’ time investment and child well being. They found that the time mothers spent with their children had no significant impact on their children’s academic achievement, incidence of behavioral problems, or emotional well-being.

Quoted at the Washington Post, Milkie puts it plainly:

I could literally show you 20 charts, and 19 of them would show no relationship between the amount of parents’ time and children’s outcomes… Nada. Zippo.

Benefits for adolescents, they argued, were more nuanced, but still minimal.

These findings suggest that the middle-class intensive mothering trend may be missing its mark. As Brigid Shulte comments at the Washington Post, it’s really the quality, not the quantity that counts.

The findings also offer evidence that women can work full-time, even the long hours demanded in countries like the U.S., and still be good mothers. Shulte points out that the American Academy of Pediatrics actually encourages parent-free, unstructured time. Moms just don’t need to always be there after all, freeing them up to be people, workers, partners, and whatever else they want to be, too.

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.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

broliloquy:

gundamdick:

thepioden:

hair-old-styles:

harrystyies:

What if oxygen is poisonous and it just takes 75-100 years to kill us?

My science teacher said he thinks that’s true actually

Yeah this is actually pretty much exactly what is going on. It’s why anti-oxidants are such a big deal. Bonus fact: oxygen oxidizes stuff in your cells or, in other words, it’s not toxic, just setting you on fire very very slowly.

What if there are aliens out there but they subsist on entirely different substances and they’re just scared as shit of us and our crazy ass hell planet? Once in a while some alien anthropologist type suggests checking out the people on this inhabited planet out towards the galaxy’s edge. The other aliens just look at the naive academic with horror. No!! We do not go to that world. That is where the DEATH BREATHERS live. They recreationally consume poisons and are more or less composed of biological fire. Their atmosphere is made of rocket fuel. We must leave the DEATH BREATHERS in peace. Do not go there. Do not.

The White House has made preventing sexual assaults on college campuses a priority, The Hunting Ground documents extensive institutional denial and malfeasance, the Department of Justice finds that one in five college women are assaulted, research shows that 1 in 25 college men is a serial rapist, and students at almost 100 campuses have filed federal complaints against their schools.

Yet, according to a study of 647 college presidents, only a third (32%) believe that sexual assault is prevalent on college campuses in general and only a tiny minority (6%) think it’s prevalent on their own campus.

This is stunning. Never before in history has the problem of sexual assault on campus been better documented. The media has never covered the issue so thoroughly, frequently, and sympathetically. We are in a moment of national reflection. Under these circumstances, a quarter of college presidents claim that sexual assault isn’t prevalent anywhere and 78% deny that it’s prevalent on their own campus.

These were confidential surveys, so impression management can’t explain these numbers. Those 94% of college presidents who don’t think that sexual crimes are prevalent at their schools either think the numbers are wrong, think their own institutions are exceptions, or think that one in five isn’t fairly described as “prevalent.” Or maybe some combination of the above.

No wonder faculty are frustrated and students around the country have felt forced to turn to the federal government for help. It’s clear. College presidents are either recklessly ignorant or willfully in denial — that, or they simply don’t believe women or don’t care about them.

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.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

thenymreaper:

SAFETY TIP! If the bridges you’ve burned are lighting your way that means that you are about to cross a bridge that is on fire. This is a very bad idea. Revise your plans.

chauvinistsushi:

baelgrave:

kedreeva:

baelgrave:

tetraghost:

i wish birds brought ME presents

No, but think about this.

The crows she feeds obviously have their own little lives. They go about their business, and they spot *pretty thing* or /unique thing/ in question. What gets me is that the *first* thing on their minds as recipient of this thing is the little girl that feeds them.

They spot a thing, and immediately must think, “that nice girl with delicious foodstuffs must have this to show my gratitude.”

It’s actually more than that, though, if you read the articles or watch the videos. This has taken place over YEARS- it started with these birds following this little girl around because she was a messy eater and it has turned into a ritual for the family. They have a water station and food stations where they daily set out things for these birds and sometimes (but not always), these birds leave ‘payment’ behind for the food.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE

These birds are not just taking food and leaving shinies. These birds are watching over this family now. Their lives have become involved. These crows are keeping track of this girl and her mother even when they are out of the yard. How do we know?

One of them is a photographer, and one day while she was photographing some stuff on a bridge, she dropped her camera’s lenscap over the edge. There was no way she could get it back, so she left it. When she got home, the lenscap was sitting on the edge of one of the feeding stations, waiting for her.

Not only were the birds following and watching over her, they were smart enough to realize she dropped an Important Thing and cared enough to bring it back to her.

I could not have asked for more

BRING ME A BOOK

You work hard at your craft, painstakingly layering spells or mechanical traps. Layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of doom. Your fingers cramp, your back aches, your breath smells like a ghoul’s soup.

It is so very late. You are so very tired. This is all so very hard.

“Why all the detail,” your voice cracks in the first intelligible sound you have made in… gosh, hours. “Will anyone notice all this work?”

The darkness hears, the darkness answers with a soft voice born on a coldly comforting wind. “Yes. Of course.”

Another voice from beyond sight, from the abyss itself, chimes in, “Some will fall prey to the surface layers.”

A third, deeper voice, “And some will not notice anything at all. They will glance at your work and move on. Or fall sightlessly to your wicked ways, or maybe that of another. Irrelevant.”

“But you will continue,” the voices sync, “because others will take notice and gaze in horror, in wonder, in awe. Most will only see slivers of detail, but each pair of eyes brings a different perspective. Different slivers of detail. Catching some, missing most.”

“You will continue,” the first voice follows the second, “because you care.”

The third voice finishes, “You will continue, and finish, because you, and only you, can craft this particular expression of perfect doom.”

This story from Daily Kos has been quickly circling through the left portion of the Internet. The headline reads:

American police killed more people in March (111) than the entire U.K. police have killed since 1900.

Let’s assume that the numbers are accurate.*

The author, Shaun King, writes:

Don’t bother adjusting for population differences, or poverty, or mental illness, or anything else. The sheer fact that American police kill TWICE as many people per month as police have killed in the modern history of the United Kingdom is sick, preposterous, and alarming.

But let’s bother adjusting, anyway.

The U.S. has a much larger population, and it has more police officers:

…but even adjusting for that, the U.S. killings by cops dwarf the U.K. figure.**

Adjusting for the number of cops, U.S. cops killed 8 times as many people in a single year as U.K. cops did in 115 years. But before we conclude that U.S. law enforcement is “sick and preposterous” and dominated by homicidal racists, we might look at the other side – the number of cops who get killed. The entire U.K. police force since 1900 has had 249 deaths in the line of duty. The U.S. tally eclipses that in a couple of years.

In this century, 25 U.K. officers died in the line of duty. The figure for the U.S., 2445, is nearly one hundred times that. Adjusting for numbers of officers, U.S. deaths are still ten times higher.

My guess is that what accounts for much of the U.K./U.S. difference is guns. Most British cops don’t carry guns. Last August, I posted a video of a berserk man wildly swinging a machete in a London street (here – it’s gotten over 25,000 page views ). The police come, armed only with protective shields and truncheons. Eventually, they are able to subdue the man. In the U.S., it’s almost certain that the police would have shot the man, and it would have been completely justifiable. More cops with guns, more cops killing people.

But more civilians with guns, more cops getting killed. Since 2000, six U.K. cops have died from gunshots; in the U.S., 788.  We have 11 times as many cops, but 130 times as many killed by guns. (The other two leading causes of police deaths are heart attacks and car accidents.)

(I did not include the yearly data for the UK since it would not have been visible on the graph. In most years, total cop deaths there ranged between 0 and 2.)

Thanks to the ceaseless efforts of gun manufacturers and their minions in legislatures and in the NRA and elsewhere, U.S. cops work in a gun-rich environment. They feel, probably correctly, that they need to carry guns. If that man in London had been wielding an AR-15 (easily available in many states in the U.S. – in the U.K., not so much, not at all in fact), the cops could not have responded as they did. They would have needed guns. There would probably have been some dead civilians, perhaps some dead cops, and almost certainly, a dead berserker.

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog.

—————-

* We don’t have a good source of data on how many people the police kill. An unofficial source since 2013 is KilledByPolice.net.

** The denominator for the U.K. – the number of police officers over the last 115 years  – is my own very rough estimate.

Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog or on Twitter.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

randomhatthief:

spookyscaryfrog:

I have headcanons about what vampires should be.

and they are perfect

“Two-thirds of the women interviewed, and two-thirds of the women surveyed, reported having to prove themselves over and over again – their successes discounted, their expertise questioned. “People just assume you’re not going to be able to cut it,” a statistician told us, in a typical comment. Black women were considerably more likely than other women to report having to deal with this type of bias; three-fourths of black women did. (And few Asian-American women felt that the stereotype of Asian-Americans as good at science helped them; that stereotype may well chiefly benefit Asian-American men.)”

-

The 5 Biases Pushing Women Out of STEM - HBR

(via

brutereason

)

And this is why focusing on ‘getting more girls interested in STEM’ is a wrongheaded approach. Girls ARE interested in STEM, but the douchebags who make up the majority of STEM fields are not interested in acknowledging our humanity, intelligence, and capability. Funny how they assume that’s somehow our fault too, and we must just not be interested or dedicated enough.

(via australopithecusrex)

Your toys aren’t being taken away, your mom just told you that you have to share them and now you don’t want them anymore because they have cooties on them. 

I dunno man, you might actually have to try relating to a character that doesn’t look like you at some point. And you happen to be part of the one group that has really not in recent memory been called upon to do that. So you’ll excuse me if I don’t feel all that bad for you? 

David Sedaris once wrote that he often asks people waiting for his autograph questions like, “If you saw a leprechaun on the toilet would you run away or know that he meant you no harm?” and now that question haunts me.

Personally, I’d be pretty sure that anyone standing on the toilet meant to harm me because why else is he waiting to jump me in the bathroom, but I think I’d still stay because when else are you going to get the opportunity to hang with a leprechaun? Even if it murdered you it would be awesome. Not for you, I guess, but for your descendants. “DEATH BY LEPRECHAUN” it would say on my death certificate. I’d star in our family legends for decades.

The problem is that I don’t actually know what death by leprechaun looks like, and you never see a leprechaun fingered for murder so I suspect no one would know the magnificent sacrifice I made. My guess is that leprechauns just make your death look like a heart attack. We’re probably spending all this reasearch money on heart disease when really we should be focusing on leprechaun prevention.

In fact, my grandmother might have died from leprechauns. They said she died from hepatitis but who’s to say she didn’t get that hepatitis from a leprechaun? Who knows where diseases come from? Flu, hantavirus, yellow fever, leprosy, anthrax…we might have gotten the whole lot from infected toilet leprechauns.

That’s probably why my mom always made me put toilet paper on the seat before sitting on a public toilet. Because you never know how many infectious leprechauns just came out of it.

I’d like to think David Sedaris and I would be friends. Or that he’d put a restraining order on me.

Either way, we’d have a real connection, and that’s all that matters.

PS. Spellcheck is trying to tell me that “leprechauns” isn’t even a real word.  Nice try, leprechauns.  I don’t know how you infiltrated spellcheck but I’m not falling for it, assholes.

atmidnightcc:

We carved out 10 plots for our favorite Hashtag Wars entries, but only one of these will be Tweet of the Day! Watch tonight’s show to see which wins!

knitmeapony:

funny-pictures-uk:

“Would consider going back”

tag from itoldmanymanypeople: in yelp reviews as in all things eliot spencer is tough but fair

I NOW WANT A SET OF YELP REVIEWS FROM ELIOT

“Floor to ceiling windows give an open ambiance but very little cover from sniper fire. Creative appetizers and a limited but well selected wine list. Excellent prices. Four stars.”

“Production values at this theater are very high and the classic 1950s construction makes it very easy to contain hand to hand combat in a hallway.  They give back to the community and host amateur theater productions all winter long.  Five stars.”

“Unflappable staff members are friendly and ready with a book suggestion or a pressure bandage, even right before closing.  Free coffee is a nice touch.  Sorry about the armchair.  Four stars.”

animatedamerican:

skunkoon:

radracoon:

are u fucking kidding me

I googled.  It’s not photoshopped.  This is an actual product.

Somebody actually thought this was a good idea, and not one person in the entire line of decision-makers between concept and sale floor said “hang on, maybe let’s not.”

“Not all girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice. Some girls are made of sarcasm and wine and nothing is fine.”

- that one aunt with facebook (via behindtheperception)

deductiontoseduction:

mutantkitten:

stunningpicture:

I was at a horse race yesterday when some kid lost his balloon…

ascend

bye bye lil sebastian

Here's a brief article in Science that a lot of us should keep a copy of. Plenty of journalists and investors should do the same. It's a summary of what sort of questions get asked of data sets, and the differences between them. There are six broad data analysis categories:

1. Descriptive. This is the simplest case, where you're just summarizing a data set and describing the totals in it.

2. Exploratory. The next step - you search through the descriptive analysis looking for trends or relationships, with which to develop new hypotheses. No guarantees, of course - you'll have to confirm these with more work.

3. Inferential. This one looks at an exploratory treatment and tried to determine whether those trends are likely to hold up. As the authors say, this is probably the most common statistical workup in the literature - better than randome chance, or not? But it can't tell you why something is happening, of course.

4. Predictive. An inferential study is necessarily done on a large sample (well, it had better be, at any rate, if you're going to infer with much confidence). A predictive analysis uses some subset of the data to predict how individual cases will go. The example from drug development would be the use of biomarkers to predict whether a given patient in a trial will respond to some new investigational drug.

5. Causal. At this level, you're trying to see what the magnitude of changes are across the system when you start changing things - what often gets called the "tone" of the system. What are the most important variables, and what has little effect on the outcome?

6. Mechanistic. With the information at the causal level available, now you can really get down to the nuts and bolts. Change A causes effect B, through this detailed mechanism. We don't see this as much with anything involving biology - there always seem to be exceptions. This is more the realm of engineering and physics, although a lot of time and money is going into trying to change that.

It's only at the causal and mechanistic levels that you can start doing detailed modeling with confidence. That's where everyone would like to be with computational binding predictions, but we don't understand them well enough yet. And think how far we have to go to get predictive toxicology to those levels! We can do that sort of thing on a small scale - for example, saying that a compound that (say) inhibits angiotensin-converting enzyme, to this degree, and with that average half-life in vivo, will be expected to lower X% of a random population's members blood pressure by at least Y%. That's after decades of experience and data-gathering, keep in mind.

But that's not aeronautical engineering. Those folks don't tell you that wing design A will provide at least so much lift on a certain percentage of the airframes it gets bolted on to. Nope, those folks get to build their airframes to the same exact specifications, not just take whatever shows up at the factory needing wings, and those airframe/wing combinations had better perform within some very tight tolerances or something has gone seriously wrong. This is just another way of stating the "built by humans" difference I was talking about the other day.

So some of that data analysis hierarchy above is, well, aspirational for those of us doing drug research. The authors of the Science article are well aware of this themselves, saying that "Outside of engineering, mechanistic data analysis is extremely challenging and rarely achievable.". But that level is where many people expect science to be, most of the time, which leads to a lot of frustration: "Look, is this pill going to help me or not?" We should remember where we are on the scale and try to work our way up.

thebroodingatheist:

And then you ask why people are angry

Head Trip comic for Monday, April 6, 2015

sourcedumal:

offgloss:

FACTS!!!

OKAY!

And explain why there are 13462645 restaurants on every corner but we can’t get to a decent store with fresh fruit and vegetables unless we go to the white folks neighborhoods

ursulavernon:

somehowfurious:

My frustrations with the clothing industry can be summed up in this one wailing lament.

Listen, industry, I’m not the one at fault here. I like my squishy body just fine, or at least I’m working real hard at getting there. And that’s a good thing. So I’m not gonna play your game anymore and get mad at myself because I can’t find anything that fits when I shop for clothes. Why should I be mad at myself for your failure to provide me with the one thing you’re supposed to provide? That seems like an unfair portion of blame ending up on my shoulders. That seems like I’m carrying the blame couch upstairs all by myself and you’re just touching it with one finger and pretending to carry it. It’s your couch, friend, pull your weight! But don’t worry - we can fix this. We can get rid of the need for blame altogether with this simple solution:

MAKE IT IN MY SIIIIIZE.

See, here’s thing: it can be cute, affordable and right in front of me, but if it’s not in my size then it may as well be the emperor’s new clothes (though at least those would definitely fit me). If it’s not in my size, I’m not going to buy it. If I don’t buy it, you don’t get my money. You know who gets my money? Me. I have more money, and you have less money. That sounds like a pretty bad business plan, huh? But if you made it in my size then I would buy it, you would have more money and we’d both win! See how easy it is?

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that you’re a disaster and I hope the couch falls on your foot.

There was a time, owing to some interesting medicinal side effects, when I was suddenly skinny with triple D boobs.

“Great!” sez I. “I have achieved the thing society has been telling me I am supposed to look like! The fact that I can only eat three bites of food at a stretch is troublesome, but by god, now I can buy the wardrobe I have never been able to buy!”

And I went out.

And Not A Damn Thing Fit.

I cannot tell you how pissed I was. I was conforming! I was doing the thing I was told to do! I looked like I was supposed to want to look! And STILL there were no clothes?!

I uttered many curses and when I finally went off those meds (which, since I had dropped so much weight, had made my blood pressure so low that I kept graying out when I stood up–I am overweight again now, but my blood pressure has always made angels weep with envy, and it’s still way on the low side) I no longer felt bad that clothes didn’t fit. They hadn’t fit when I was exactly what I was told to be, so clearly it was the designer’s fault, not mine.

Screw it. Is there any other product on earth where if something fails utterly to work, we blame ourselves instead of the product? If the mechanic puts the transmission in wrong, it’s not because my car didn’t want it enough. If my travel mug leaks, I don’t blame water for being so revoltingly liquid. If my copy of Dragon Age freezes on every third cutscene, I have a lot of things to say about the company, but somehow I do not scream at my thumbs that their position on the controller must be at fault and jeez, maybe if I just had better thumbs I wouldn’t have to keep rebooting and fiddling with the settings.

We have seriously been sold a bill of goods on this one.

“If you want to place the responsibility for ISIS on Islam, that’s fine with me– as long as you also credit Islam for the people who are fighting ISIS. For while it is true that ISIS are Muslims, it’s also true that so are the tens of thousands who are battling them, and the tens of thousands of victims of ISIS. They’re all Muslim too.”

- Reza Aslan perfectly explains what Islamophobes are getting wrong about ISIS
(via salon)

• So i lived the town over from my high school, and had to catch the bus like an hour and a half every day to and from
  
• (a movie. thats a fucking movie, every day, twice a day)
  
• (I WAS TWELVE)
  
• (commuter tragedy)
  
• and because we were all stuck together for so long for like six years, we followed the natural inclination of teenagers to be fucking idiots at every chance
  
• and we formed this group of bus kids
  
• forged by ridiculous travel times
  
• bonded in suffering the ridiculous rule of
  
• our bus driver.
  
• our bus driver was an old, old lady called jeannine
  
• (nickname: the grinch, due to the time we were singing christmas carols and she got annoyed and declared that christmas was canceled.)
  
• (CANCELED.)
  
• (we put up a sign written in texta that said ‘NO CHRISTMAS - SIGNED, THE GRINCH’)
  
• (she did not find it funny)
  
• jeannine had been driving the bus since time immemorial
  
• (and may have of, in fact, been one of the Old Ones)
  
• (never confirmed)
  
• (but i have my suspicions)
  
• Jeannie ran a tight ship.
  
• the tightest ship
  
• jeannine was the generalissimo of bus drivers
  
• she played this talkback radio station over the speaker system
  
• and when we were being too loud or she was jut annoyed with us she would turn it up to deafening levels
  
• and we would all block our ears, and then having gotten our attention she would turn it down and shout at us
  
• when we were REALLY TERRIBLE
  
• (like those two weeks after high school musical premiered and we used to have breaking free singalongs)
  
• (yeah)
  
• (I would have turned the radio up on our asses too)
  
• she would park next to the city graveyard
  
• (always the graveyard?)
  
• (i dont know why)
  
• (mental conditioning?)
  
• (subliminal messgakng?)
  
• and walk/hobble
  
• (she was pretty stooped over)
  
• (basically she was your standard old crone)
  
• (potentially witch)
  
• up and down the aisle tellin us how terrible we were
  
• so anyway, one year jeannine goes on a two week break for surgery
  
• (what surgery? We never found out. Various sources claim knee, hip or shoulder replacement)
  
• (could have been a stay at a lazarus pit)
  
• (stay woke)
  
• and we get a replacement driver.
  
• we called him nickelback because he played a nickelback cd over the speaker,
  
• on repeat
  
• every bus trip
  
• EVERY.
  
• TRIP.
  
• how the hell’d we wind up like this?
  
• so free from the reign of terror that was jeannine, we get a bit wild.
  
• and by ‘wild’ i mean we:
  
• talk above speaking level,
  
• eat our food in the ooen,
  
• someone busts out a guitar anyway here’s wonderwall
  
• its one of these days,
  
• that the Great Apple Fiasco happens.
  

Read More

A list of favorite things about Eliot/Hardison/Parker, in no particular order: 

• How accepting they are of each other, and actually I lied, the rest of these aren’t in any particular order but this one is for sure number one, top dog, most important thing. These are damaged people (I mean, all people are damaged people, but still), with strange quirks and hard limits and rough histories, and within this little family they’ve built it’s finally okay for them to just be themselves. They give each other shit, they push each other to expand their horizons, they snipe and snap and roll their eyes at each other, but at the end of the day there is nothing beneath that but acceptance. No judgement, no harbored resentment for the people they’re not, no expectations, no trying to change or mold them into somebody different: just acceptance. It’s okay that Parker prefers to have the option of climbing into the ceilings! It’s okay that Eliot sometimes needs to hit some bad guys! It’s okay that Hardison would rather fish inside than outside! IT’S ALL OKAY. THEY JUST FIGURE OUT HOW TO WORK WITH OR AROUND EACH OTHER’S NEEDS, and at the end of the day, that’s what love is. Nothing frilly or fancy, just people who accept each other as they are, warts and all, and do the best they can for them and by them. 
  
• LET’S TALK ABOUT HOW HARDISON 100000% BOUGHT THAT BREWPUB FOR ELIOT, I bet he spent like a whole afternoon (which is a long damn time for a brain like Hardison’s) researching what type of restaurant has the hardest menu to plan because he knows Eliot likes a challenge and something he can really heartily bitch about. And probably at some point Parker leaned over his shoulder and was like, “Oooh, are we building an Eliot trap?” and Hardison was like, “Yeah, but don’t tell him,” and Parker was like, “Obviously, he’d never get trapped in it if he knew it was a trap, duh.” And like seven years later, when the brewpub has a Michelin star and Eliot can’t even pretend he doesn’t totally love everything about it most days, Parker and Hardison are like, “MUWAHAHAHA YOU FELL INTO OUR ELIOT TRAP,” and Eliot is like, “Damn it, Hardison! You two are idiots.” (But secretly he guessed years ago, and very secretly he is touched to have been right, because part of him was always like, “Don’t be stupid, Eliot, people don’t do things like that for other people,” and it’s nice to know he was wrong.) 
• Ha ha ha ha I was just telling febricant yesterday that I bet that Eliot takes Parker fishing (Hardison is never going fishing outdoors again) and they just sit there in silence for a while, enjoying that there is no talking in fishing, until fish start floating to the surface because Parker electrocuted the lake. (“What? Why are you mad? I thought the point was to kill as many fish as possible! Look at all these dead fish, Eliot!”) 
• GROUP CAMPING TRIPS, where Eliot has to set up the tent and Hardison’s always brought at least one thing he ordered from Skymall and Parker hides in the trees and makes zombie noises because it’s fun to watch her boys jump and then swear up at the canopy.
• I bet Hardison has HORRIBLE BURIED ALIVE NIGHTMARES (Alec my bb I’m so sorry that happened to you, I know you’re fictional but I’M SO SORRY), and when it was just him and Parker he would just wake up with Parker staring at him in the darkness, and they’d just breathe quietly together, maybe with their fingertips pressed together, until he calmed down. But then Eliot starts sleeping in the bed with them, and the first time Hardison wakes up screaming “Let me out!” Parker’s the one next to him, and Eliot’s on the other side of her, but he just gets out of the bed and walks around to Hardison’s side and slides back into bed and wraps Alec up in his huge arms, hand behind his neck, like the horizontal version of exactly what he did when Hardison got out of the coffin. and it SHOULDN’T help, because really it should just make Alec feel trapped again, but it helps so much that it’s almost pathetic, that he can’t even bring himself to talk to Eliot about it, and so he never finds out that Eliot did it (and continues to do it) on pure instinct, and was terrified that first time that Hardison was going to make fun of him for it.  
• Relatedly: I bet both Parker and Eliot also have horrible nightmares but neither one of them wants to be touched after (which is why Parker never touched Alec after his, though after Eliot starts doing it sometimes they like, sandwich cuddle him, whatever I know my id is showing and I DON’T CARE). And Alec’s the hardest sleeper by far, so usually just Parker will wake up for Eliot’s nightmares, and just Eliot will wake up for Parker’s, and they’ll go and sit out on the front steps together and wait for the sun to come up, or for Hardison to wake up alone in the bed, realize what’s happening, and come herd them back into the house. And they always have the same conversation, which is that the person who didn’t have the nightmare says, “You wanna talk about it?” in a very sarcastic tone and the person who DID have the nightmare gives them an exhausted sort of look, and then maybe threads their fingers together, and holds on a little too tight. 
• This is not even remotely the post it set out to be at the beginning is it, it has turned into a headcanons post, WHAT A SHAME that I am entirely out of fucks to give 
• Another recent conversation with febricant has lead us to the conclusion that Hardison probably makes them all like, really elaborate costumes for the kinky roleplaying sex they must have so much of. And also that they must have had to make a rule, after the first few times it happened, about Eliot not being allowed to rip any clothes Hardison actually made off of anyone, because Alec gets sO MAD and it ruins the mood. 
• ELIOT AND HARDISON HAVE A LITTLE TWO-PERSON BAND FOR WHOM PARKER IS THE ONLY AUDIENCE IN WHICH ELIOT PLAYS THE GUITAR AND HARDISON PLAYS THE VIOLIN. They play a lot of Kansas and Nickel Creek, and they’re actually pretty good. If asked, Alec’d say he only does it because Eliot needs the practice, and Eliot’d say he only does it because it’s literally the only way to shut Hardison up, but Parker has a video of the two of them playing Carry On My Wayward Son and grinning like giant assholes, so she knows they’re both full of shit.
• REMEMBER THAT EPISODE WHERE ELIOT BUYS PARKER AND SOPHIE PERFECT PRESENTS AND PRETENDS THEY WERE FROM HARDISON AND NATE, well I bet once the OT3 are together Eliot totally does that shit all the time, like, buys Parker a present and is like “This is from Hardison” or buys Hardison a present and is like “This is from Parker” and they’re totally wise to him but they let him get away with it because they have secretly agreed it’s pretty adorable. 
• Hardison totally goes out of his way to make friends with a doctor — maybe Chicken Parm from that one episode — so that when Parker and Eliot get hurt he can just ~casually invite his buddy over~, no big, don’t even worry about. Because honestly, between the two of them he’s going to have a heart attack before he turns thirty, which’ll be better than them, who are probably going to die of GANGRENE or some shit because they won’t go to the hospital. (In fairness, it’s really only Eliot who won’t go to the hospital; Parker’ll happily go once you get her to admit she’s sick or injured, but good fucking luck with that one.) 
• PARKER IS THE NUMBER ONE COMMENTER ON SEX SWINGS ON AMAZON. After a while she makes Hardison make her some dummy handles because she’s getting a reputation and people are sending her creepy messages; then she’s numbers one, two, three, four, and seven.
• Oh here’s a thing that isn’t a headcanon but is an actual canonical favorite thing about them, aka what you actually asked for: that episode where that creepy film director is obsessed with Parker, and Eliot and Hardison both notice it, and both work to get him the hell away from her (even as she steals his credit card, lol). GOD I LOVE IT SO MUCH. I love that they all protect each other and take care of each other and give each other space when they need it and teach each other things and sdjkfhsdkfhjdsfhsd
• MAN, I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT THESE BEAUTIFUL WEIRDOS. That’s it. That’s the truth. They’re beautiful weirdos, and I love everything about them. 

sexxxisbeautiful:

lindsayetumbls:

arielvioletgillooly:

A post that brilliantly explains why “Men’s Rights Activists” are misguided and why the oppression that men face in our culture is not a result of “misandry” but of misogyny.

“You’re fighting for the right to contain and control misogyny, and direct it back at women, where you think it belongs.”

And there it is.

Damn.

imagineagreatadventure:

I just thought this set of tweets was really important.