ThePrettiestOne

drst:

deeeeaaan:

feng-huang:

tastefullyoffensive:

Life and Donuts by Pablo Stanley

I need to say this is one of the most uplifting things I’ve seen.

well that’s my existential crisis sorted out

seriously though its nice to have that kind of comfort written out like that

"What connects us to life?"
"Right now? I’m going with donuts"

Next time you're at the gym working out, meeting someone new, or out for the first time in a new outfit, remember that most other people are preoccupied thinking about themselves, so they're not paying attention to you and your worries.

Read more...

Cats Welcoming Soldiers Home [via]

Previously: Cats Giving High Fives

Okay.

First off, you can be using three forms of protection, and still have an unplanned pregnancy. Birth control is not flawless. It helps, of course, but no matter how responsible someone is being, they can find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy. 

"Well if you choose to have sex you have to be responsible for and accept the possibility you might get pregnant and have a baby. You shouldn’t have sex if you don’t want a child!"

Whether someone gets pregnant when theyre on three forms of birth control or gets pregnant from completely unprotected sex, repeat after me:
Children are not a punishment for sex.

Children are not a punishment for sex.

CHILDREN ARE NOT A PUNISHMENT FOR SEX.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting are not punishments for sex!!!

We don’t deny smokers cancer treatment because they accepted the risk by smoking, we don’t deny people who got in car accidents medical attention because they took the risk by driving, hell, we don’t even deny criminals who shoot others, and OD on drugs medical attention, so we sure as hell can’t deny a pregnant person medical attention because they took the risk by having sex.

Adoption is a great option, but it only solves the problem of not wanting/being able to parent a child. Not the problem of being pregnant.

Pro-lifers seem to forget that pregnancy and childbirth itself, even if adoption follows, can ruin a person’s life, and is extremely transformative, be it in a positive or negative way. You are never going to be the same once going through that. It changes your body, your hormones, your emotions. Many people experience crippling sickness and complications, causing them to lose their job, lose their home, have to drop out of school, etcetera. Prenatal care is not cheap. Mothers who fall pregnant may struggle to feed their already living breathing feeling children and lower their quality of life if forced to carry a fetus they don’t have the means to provide for or deal with. 

And it all comes down to the fact that people cannot and should not be made to sacrifice their bodies for a pregnancy they do not want, for whatever reason they do not want or can not have it. We have an awesome thing called bodily autonomy. Meaning nobody can use our bodies without our consent. Even when we are DEAD. If you and I got in a car crash, and I died, and you desperately needed one of my organs to survive, you STILL couldn’t take that organ, even though it is of no use to me, to save your own life, unless I had consented when I was alive to be an organ donor. Therefore, claiming that a fetus has a right to use a pregnant person’s body for 9-10 months, has the right to take over all the pregnant person’s organs and body chemistry, has the right to change their body forever, not only does it give a fetus more rights than anyone else in the world, it also gives the pregnant person less rights than a dead body.

There is also a major flaw in your argument, which is “Except in cases of rape,” because in that statement, you are proving that it really isn’t about the fetus. If you truly believed that fetuses had rights, were sentient souls deserving of a chance at being born, it wouldn’t matter whether they were conceived through rape or not, would it? Fetuses that result from rape and fetuses that result from loving relationships are biologically the same, so why does one deserve rights in your opinion, and the other not? Perhaps you have internalized misogyny which causes you to believe that females deserve to be punished with unwanted pregnancies because they had sex.

I am pro-choice because I am pro-pregnant person. I am on the side of the living, breathing, loving, crying, feeling, struggling people who find themselves carrying a pregnancy when it is not convenient, and I am pro-giving them the option to protect themselves, their jobs, their goals, their bodies, and their pre-existing families, by supporting their access to a safe and legal abortion with no judgement. 

“"The Republicans have a pretty simple philosophy: they say if those at the top have more — more power for Wall Street players to do whatever they want and more money for tax cuts than somehow they can be counted on to build the economy for everyone else. Well, we tried it for 30 years and it didn’t work. In fact the consequences were nearly catastrophic."”

- Sen. Elizabeth Warren

queerintersectional:

earliar:

Mellody Hobson: Color blind or color brave?

[X]

This is a brillant video about how to address social inequalities based on ethnicities and race.

“With Black Friday just about a week away, Walmart workers organizing mass walkouts, strikes and protests for higher wages and better conditions also took their grievances to Capitol Hill.
At a Senate briefing Tuesday, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) promised the workers to keep pushing Congress to pass three key bills: to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour, make companies give workers more predictable schedules, and ensure women and men are paid the same rate for the same work.
As someone raised by working class parents, Warren called the issue “deeply personal.” When she was 12 years old, her father lost his job selling carpet when he took time off to recover from a heart attack. “Like a lot of families, we had no money coming in. We lost our car. We were right on the edge of losing our home,” Warren said. “So my mother, who was 50 years old and had never worked outside the home, pulled on her best dress, put on her lipstick and walked to the Sears to get a minimum wage job. But here’s the key: it was a minimum wage job that would support a family of three. That minimum wage job saved our family and our home.”
Today, said Warren, even a single full-time worker can’t pay the rent on the current minimum wage. She has noted previously that today’s minimum wage would be $22 an hour if pay had kept pace with increased productivity over the past several decades.
Warren acknowledged that these three bills–some of which have already been repeatedly blocked by Senate Republicans, will be even more difficult to pass once the GOP takes control of the upper chamber in January. “Change is not easy. We may not pass these three bills right away,” she said.
And for workers like Cantare Davunt, a customer service manager at a Walmart in Apple Valley, Minnesota, those measures won’t be nearly enough. At the congressional briefing, Davunt thanked Senator Warren for her efforts, but said she and other workers will keep fighting for $15 an hour, full-time schedules, and the right to protest working conditions without retaliation.”

- (via alexsegura)

smallrevolutionary:

trungles:

shorterexcerpts:

styro:

salon:

Ronald Reagan pretty much ruined everything for millennials.

fuckin’ ronnie

I try and bring up how he ruined free in state tuition in the name of hippie bashing when he was California’s governor often, but don’t exactly have the biggest platform.

"Worst of all, these students’ sense of the future is constrained by planning for and then paying down their student loans, often for decades. Economists are waking up to the fact that when young Americans enter the workforce burdened with over a trillion dollars in cumulative debt, they become risk averse, unwilling to move, less able to make major purchases, and slower to become homeowners. Not coincidentally, they don’t feel safe enough to register any major protests against the society that’s done this to them.”

Damn.

i am reblogging again because….. fuck ronald reagan forever and ever and ever and ever.

gadaboutgreen:

celestialallegorist:

thinkinghurts321:

celestialallegorist:

Okay but check out this on-point campaign my schools starting
((Lone Mountain is one of the buildings on campus and there’s a ridiculous set of stairs to get up to it))

Um whoa, how cool. The school is seriously doing this? This makes me want to visit again haha. 

Do you know what started it?

I’m actually not sure, but the posters say it’s a couple professors from the psych department, design department, and school of management working together on it. The posters should be up next week, I’m stoked

cesarconacento

BREAKING: 10 Ways Police in Ferguson May Be About to Break the Law:

drst:

thepoliticalfreakshow:

Here’s what the Ferguson police are likely to do to undermine the rights of protesters when the Michael Brown verdict is announced.

When the Michael Brown verdict is announced, people can expect the police to take at least ten different illegal actions to prevent people from exercising their constitutional rights.  The Ferguson police have been on TV more than others so people can see how awful they have been acting.  But their illegal police tactics are unfortunately quite commonly used by other law enforcement in big protests across the US.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution promises the government will not abridge freedom of speech or to prevent the right of the people to peaceably assemble or to petition to the government for the redress of grievances.

Here is what they are going to do, watch for each of these illegal actions when the crowds start to grow.

1) Try to stop people from protesting. 

The police all say they know they have to let people protest. So they usually will allow protests for a while.  Then the police will get tired and impatient and try to stop people from continuing to protest.  The government will say people can only protest until a certain time, or on a certain street, or only if they keep moving, or not there, not here, not now, no longer.  Such police action is not authorized by the US Constitution.   People have a right to protest, the government should leave them alone.

2) Provocateurs. 

Police have likely already planted dozens of officers, black and white, male and female, inside the various protests groups.  These officers will illegally spy on peaceful protesters and often take illegal actions themselves and encourage other people to take illegal action.  They will even be arrested with others but magically not end up in jail.   Others inside the groups will be paid to inform on the group to the government.  Comically, when undercover police are uncovered they often claim they have a constitutional right to be there and try to use the constitution they are violating as a shield!

3) Snatch Squads. 

Police will decide who they do not like or who they think are leaders.  Then they will use small heavily armed groups to knife into peaceful crowds and grab people, pull them out and arrest them.

4) False Arrests. 

The police will arrest whoever they choose whenever they choose and will make up stories to justify the arrests.  If people are breaking glass or hurting others, those arrests are legal.  However, the police will arrest first and sort out who they arrested later.  Police in Ferguson have already wrongfully arrested legal observers, a law professor, and church leaders.

5) Intimidation. 

As they have shown many times in Ferguson and all over the country, once the protests heat up, police will show up in full riot gear, dressed like ninja turtles (big flashy guns, plastic shields, big batons, shin guards, gas masks, flex cuffs) and act like they are military warriors protecting people from ISIS invasion.

6) Kettling or Encircling. 

The police will surround a group and pen them in and not let them move.  They will either arrest all or force them to leave in one direction.  This, as the police know fully well, always sweeps up innocent bystanders as well as protestors.  NYPD did this with hundreds on Brooklyn Bridge and at many other protests.  Sometimes they deploy orange plastic nets or snow fencing, sometimes just lots of police.

7) Raids on supportive churches, organizations or homes. 

Often the police make illegal pre-emptive raids on places where volunteers are sleeping, cooking or parking their cars.  They lie to locals and accuse the protesters of links to violent organizations.

8) Pain Noise Trucks. 

Police will also use LRAD noise trucks (Long Range Acoustic Device).  First used in Iraq now used against peaceful protesters in the US.  The trucks blast bursts of sound powerful enough to cause pain.   Never approved by any court, this intentional infliction of pain is another sign of the militarization of the police.   Police also use MRAPs Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles – heavily armored trucks which look like tanks but roll on wheels not treads.   This is part of the intimidation.

9) Arresting reporters. 

When the police are feeling the heat of public view, they will force journalists away from the protesters.  Those who insist on engaging in constitutionally protected activity and returning to the scene will be arrested.

10) Chemical and other weapons. 

When the police get really desperate and afraid, they will try to disperse the entire crowd with pepper spray, tear gas, and other chemical weapons, rubber or wooden bullets.  If this happens the police have just about lost control and are at their most dangerous.

Dozens and dozens of different police forces which will be surrounding the protesters in Ferguson when the Michael Brown verdict is announced.  There will be federal FBI agents, Homeland Security, US Marshalls, State Police troopers, County Sheriffs, and local city cops from the dozens of little towns in and around St. Louis.  Perhaps this will be the time when the peoples’ constitutional rights to protest are actually protected.  We can only hope.  But in the meantime, look for these common police tactics.

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. He is also a member of the legal collective of School of Americas Watch, and can be reached at quigley77@gmail.com.

Source: Bill Quigley for Alternet

PLEASE STOP REFERRING TO THIS AS THE MICHAEL BROWN VERDICT.

MICHAEL BROWN IS DEAD. THIS IS NOT HIS TRIAL.

AND DARREN WILSON IS NOT ON TRIAL. THIS IS NOT A VERDICT. THIS IS A DECISION WHETHER OR NOT TO INDICT HIM.

Constantly referring to this as the “Michael Brown verdict” 1) implies that someone has actually been charged with a crime and is being prosecuted, which has not happened and b) treat this as if the dead black unarmed teenager is on trial here, not the white cop who shot him 6 times mostly in the back.

nabulungicunningham:

the-spooky-slytherin-princess:

sapphicnymph:

"I’m the only one that cares about you"

when you hear those words, you turn tail and run as fast as you can. you run before it’s too late. These words are an abuse tactic

you are worth the world, and never, even in your darkest, believe that this one person is the only one who gives a shit. I have seen the kindness of strangers and friends alike, and you are not unloved. do not believe them.

LISTEN TO THIS
LISTEN

buzzfeed:

This photo series of brides seeing their brides for the first time might make you cry in the best possible way.

duthion


oyvind tangen


paul lee


john weller


steve nichol


walter huber


youri loof

cameoappearance:

nubbsgalore:

striped icebergs form as meltwater refreezes in crevasses atop glaciers before air bubbles can become trapped in the ice later calved into icebergs, or when supercooled seawater freezes inside cracks beneath an ice shelf, which then becomes visible when the iceberg breaks off and flips. 

over time, the weight of accumulated snow contorts and curves these blue bands of ice, as does erosion from waves and wind. dust and volcanic ash falling on the iceberg can can darken the ice, while dissolved organic compounds entering from below can shade it towards cyan. 

accumulated snow also compresses air bubbles trapped in the iceberg, thus preventing them from otherwise interfering with the passage of light. and because water absorbs photons from the red end of the visible spectrum much better than the blue end, bubble free ice takes on a blue colour. 

photos by (click pic) duthion, oyvind tangen, steve nicol, john weller, youri loof, paul lee, walter huber

stripesbergs

lookhereiam:

Something that was bothering me that I had to draw. 

Lisa Hix has written a really nice story, “Why Black Dolls Matter,” for Collectors Weekly. The history of the topsy-turvy doll really caught my interest. The one below is characteristic. Believed to be from the 1870s, it is the head and torso of a black and a white doll, sewed together in the middle with a long skirt. The doll can be flipped from one side to the other.

The general consensus seems to be that these dolls were primarily for enslaved children, but the purpose of the dolls isn’t clearly understood.

Hix quotes one of the founders of the National Black Doll Museum, Debra Britt, who says that the dolls enabled enslave children to have something forbidden: a doll that looked like them. “When the slave master was gone,” she explained, “the kids would have the black side, but when the slave master was around, they would have the white side.”

At wikipedia, though, the entry for the dolls cites the author of American Folk Dolls, who makes the opposite claim.

It has recently been suggested that these dolls were often made for Black children who desired a forbidden white doll (a baby like the ones their mothers cared for); they would flip the doll to the black side when an overseer passed them at play.

Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, author of Mammy: A Century of Race, Gender, and Southern Memory, suggests that the dolls might not have been disallowed at all. Since enslaved black women often cared for their own children and the children of their white captors, perhaps the doll was designed to socialize young enslaved girls into their future roles as mothers to children of both races. According to Historical Folk Toys, the black doll sometimes was dressed in a headscarf and the white doll in antebellum-style dress, supporting Wallace-Sanders’ theory that the idea was to socialize girls into their role.

And, of course, we have even less of an idea of how the children themselves thought of these dolls or where their imagination led 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)

greencarnations:

kingunderthemountain:

teratomarty:

cleoselene:

the tipped minimum wage is one of the most vile things in American labor tbh

Yooo this is a feminist issue: service industry workers are overwhelmingly minorities, women, and in fact, minority women (who I am sure are already aware of this dynamic). 

Holy shit that sort of minimum wage is vile and disgusting.

That is also why NOT tipping your servers 15-20% in America is considered not just cheap, but incredibly unkind. And 15-20% is the BARE MINIMUM. Tipping less is justified if the server’s, like, super incompetent and totally unapologetic about it, or incredibly, impossibly, unarguably rude or something. That should happen to you, like, maybe twice in your life, unless you’ve got shit luck. Tip your FUCKING SERVERS.

thehomosexuals:

hi can we stop equating periods with girls because not all girls have a period and not everyone who has a period is a girl

white man: well, if male privilege and white privilege exist, then how come my life isn't perfect? checkmate

gabbysilang:

gaysweater:

ktempest:

werewolf—barmitzvah:

ktempest:

gabbysilang:

after mentioning my quest to find non-whitening deodorant in the philippines, i got a couple replies of “whitening deodorant?? from dove?? so i snapped a few pics at the supermarket today of whitening products from brands that should be familiar to americans. this is obvs not an exhaustive list of intl brands that make skin whitening products. not even of what’s in my local supermarket, since i quickly got shy about snapping pictures of products in a busy aisle. 

I’m staring at this in horror because WHAT.

Whitening deodorant, because your armpits are not pale enough? Jesus Fucking Christ.

how can anyone feel okay about their body when even the fucking armpits have to conform to ridiculous, white supremacy-based beauty standards of nonsense??

Whitening underarm products are made because when you regularly shave your underarms, they can become a slightly grey-ish black color and some people are insecure about that so they use these products to get rid of that, if you wax you don’t get the shadow under your pits. These products are not meant or geared towards POC to lighten their skin, it’s geared towards people (especially really pale people like me) who don’t like the underarm after shadow effect.

These products are not meant to permanently change the color or melanin of the skin which is why you have to keep buying them. Also people who have hyper pigmentation from acne and sunspots on their face use this stuff.

LOL, no. I took these pictures in Alabang, in the Philippines. These are sold in Asia (south and south-east to be specific) and marketed in conjunction with moisturizers and other creams that are also whitening, as pictured above. They are not marketed in majority-white countries, they are not for your lily-white ass or pits or face. They’re part of a centuries-long history of colorism that was further inflamed by centuries of white colonialism. They have nothing to do with your acne. 

How hard is it to just listen to Gabby? HOW HARD?!?!!

justinejoli:

theartofanimation:

Alexander Joseba

Neat

amaditalks:

Respectability politics are deadly garbage no matter what form they take.

sevensneakyfoxes:

usedkarma:

why posting a negative confession in the darcy lewis tag super-hero-confessions ?

I mod blogs and I don’t do that and yes, i run fuckyeahdarcylewis, it’s the first internet etiquette to follow, don’t tag your hate, even when you run a confessions blog, that’s rude. It’s the second time you did this.

Okay, I keep seeing this shit everywhere.  CAN SOMEONE PLZ EXPLAIN THE CRITERIA BY WHICH DARCY - IN CANON - IS A MARY SUE?  Talking about her portrayal in fandom is one thing, but I don’t get how she’s a mary sue in the movies.

NEWSFLASH: EVERYONE ELSE IN THE FUCKING MOVIES IS A MARY SUE.  If we’re going by “idealized or perfect character”, yeah, I don’t see it for Darcy.  She’s pretty normal and weird.  And I doubt the three fucking dudes that scripted her were writing her as a self-insert.  I feel like as soon as there’s a female character that isn’t terribly flawed or downright awful, people are like MARY SUE MARY SUE OMG MARY SUE.  Shut up.

In fact, I’d argue that Darcy is probably the least mary sue out of all of those fuckers.  She is easily the only one who is even remotely normal and not idealized.  Jane’s been filled by an infinity stone and not died (AND IS A BRILLIANT ASTROPHYSICIST TO BOOT), Thor is a god, Steve got cooked in a Barbie Beefcake Machine and is Dude-flavoured Apple Pie Perfection©, Bruce turns into the jolly green giant, Natasha is the most perfect creature to ever fucking live, and IDEK WTF Tony is but he definitely should be dead by now considering how many times he’s been slammed into a wall while wearing a completely unpadded metal suit.  (Besides being a genius billionaire with a reactor in his chest who builds himself a giant robot suit to fight crime.  OH NO, THAT’S NOT IDEALIZED OR UNREALISTIC OR FANTASY FULFILMENT FOR DUDES.)

In fact, Clint and Darcy?  ONLY TWO NORMALS OF THE LOT.  Except Clint uses a bow and arrow to fight supervillains.  HOW IS HE NOT DEAD AGAIN?

Here’s another thought: maybe she’s one dimensional because she gets 30 lines in each movie?  JUST A THOUGHT.  I’m not sure how she’s supposed to be a fully developed character when she gets 10 minutes of screen time.  SHE IS MEANT TO BE A FOIL FOR JANE.  People like her because she’s fun and entertaining and because PEOPLE JUST FUCKING LIKE HER.  Writers and fandom also like her because she’s very flexible as a character with little canon.  Basically, it’s like when people write AUs: you can imagine her lots of different ways.

I never hear this shit about Coulson and before AOS, he was exactly as one dimensional, but fandom looooooooooooved him.  That’s the thing of it though…

like a male supporting character: omg, he has so much potential!  SLASH HIM WITH EVERYONE.

like a female supporting character: WHAT A FUCKING MARYSUE!  YOU JUST LIKE HER BECAUSE YOU WANT TO BE HER.

On TV and in film, we're seeing a lot of properties get developed that we never thought would have a chance. In some cases, we're seeing single properties stretched to into whole universes. Why do this when there are two worlds, by the same author, which are perfectly suited to this kind of adaptation?

Read more...

Ronan the Accuser may not be a particularly fun guy, but Lee Pace, who plays Ronan in Guardians of the Galaxy, can be a goofball when the occasion demands it. And in this outtake from the film, Ronan has a very surprising response to Star-Lord's silly battle proposal.

Read more...

“A racist woman is not a feminist; she doesn’t care about helping women, just the women who look like her and can buy the same things she can.

A transphobic woman is not a feminist; she is overly concerned with policing the bodies and expressions of others.

A woman against reproductive rights — to use bell hook’s own example, and an issue close to your heart — is not a feminist; she prioritizes her dogma or her disgust over the bodies of others.

An ableist woman is not a feminist; she holds some Platonic ideal of what a physically or mentally “whole” person should be and tries to force the world to fit inside it.”

- An Open Letter to Caitlin Moran by Nyux (via jizeru-jueru)

Workers clear a mosaic depicting the nine Muses

The Zeugma excavation project conducted by Oxford Archaeology and supported by Packhard Humanities Institute and the Ministry of Culture of Turkey has recently unearthed three ancient Greek mosaics in the Turkish city of Zeugma. Zeugma had received some press and support in 2000 after flooding caused by construction began to bury and damage artifacts in the region.

The mosaics, created in the 2nd century BC, are constructed of boldly colored glass and are being covered for protection until excavation is complete. The head of the project, Professor Kutalmis Görkay, recently gave the Hurriyet Daily News more details about the plan for the future of the excavation.

From now on, we will work on restoration and conservation. We plan to establish a temporary roof for long-term protection. We estimate that the ancient city has 2,000-3,000 houses. Twenty-five of them remain under water. Excavations will be finished in the Muzalar House next year.

The muse Thalia

Ocean and Tithys

The Centro di Conservazione Archeologica created this video about the flooding and excavation projects at Zeugma.

photos via Greek Reporter

via Greek Reporter

iwriteaboutfeminism:

Activists react to Governor Nixon declaring a state of emergency.

Part 2 of 2

Part 1

Monday, November 17th

“If you haven’t read any of Pierce’s books, stop reading this article and immediately go get the first book set in the medieval fantasy world of Tortall, “Alanna: The First Adventure.” Imagine Game of Thrones, but if there were several different series set in Westeros and they all had amazing female protagonists, including two lady knights, a WOC demigod who can speak with animals, a spy master, and a slum cop. Oh, and she wrote them ten years before Westeros was even a glimmer in GRRM’s eye.”

- Tamora Pierce On The Reason Her Brilliant Books Haven’t Been Brought To The Screen (Yet) | The Mary Sue | tamorapierce