Dan Jones

chaotically-neutral:

Cultural appropriation is real and can be very harmful, but Tumblr en masse has grossly misdefined it. Here are some examples of what isn’t cultural appropriation:

- Eating food from another culture
- Properly practicing a religion from another culture.
- Listening to music from another culture
- Reading literature from another culture
- Learning a new language
- Respectfully wearing clothing from another culture in an appropriate setting, such as overseas, at a cultural event, wedding, etc.
- Buying crafts from local craftsman.
- Respectfully participating in cultural activities such as yoga, dreidel, and belly dancing
- Respectfully wearing or using non-sacred icons or art from another culture, such as Chinese pottery or in some cases, henna.
- Trying out instruments and tools from another culture, such as chopsticks or traditional writing instruments

Many people from other cultures are actually offended when Americans try to fight “cultural appropriation”. For example, many Japanese people thought that criticism of Avril Lavigne’s video was laughably ignorant at best and racist at worst. Also, in many countries, Americans who refuse to partake in cultural activities or traditional dress out of fear of appropriation are seen as snobbish and entitled. Additionally, many religions actively encourage evangelization. Saying that religions traditionally practiced by non-white people cannot freely spread has some very racist implications.

Being culturally literate actively fights racial prejudice or ignorance. Taking the time to learn another culture’s history, values, perspective, and traditions makes people better citizens. For example, understanding how various cultures and religions view illness will help me be a better nurse. Cultural competence can only help society, and it prevents genuine, offensive cultural appropriation.

There are definitely some gray areas when it comes to cultural appropriation. Some Christians find non-Christians using crosses in fashion offensive, while some do not, for example. Intent can also carry some significance. For example, someone may fully understand the sacred meaning of the ankh and feel a strong spiritual connection to it. Another person may just think it looks cool. Both wear an ankh ring, but one would definitely not be appropriating while the other has entered a gray area.

Some cultural practices overlap as well. Tattooing has been practiced around the world by many cultures that didn’t come into contact with each other, for example. Meditation has also been practiced around the world. Buddhist mediation is arguably the best known, but nearly every culture and religion has one or more varieties of it. (I personally like the method practiced in Ancient Ireland best, because it’s the only one I personally know that allows one to think exclusively in words. It’s not physically possible for an NLDer to “turn off” verbal thinking, so most other forms of meditation are inaccessible.)

Historically, separating cultures often leads to cultural incompetence, xenophobia, discrimination, stereotyping, and racism. Cultural appropriation is bad, but that doesn’t make cultural segregation good.

Last September, we announced our plan to remove NPAPI support from Chrome by the end of 2014. This change will improve Chrome’s security, speed, and stability as well as reduce complexity in the code base. Over the last few quarters, we’ve been encouraged to see an overall 12.9% drop in per-user instantiations of NPAPI plug-ins and declining usage of the most popular NPAPI plug-ins:

Deprecation has proceeded as scheduled. As of September 23rd, 2013, the Chrome Web Store no longer accepts NPAPI-based Apps and Extensions. Webpage-instantiated NPAPI plug-ins have been blocked by default since January 2014 using the infobar UI. NPAPI support was removed from Linux in Chrome 35.

To further prepare users and developers for complete removal, we’ll be making two more updates in the coming weeks. Starting today, the Chrome Web Store will no longer show NPAPI-based Apps and Extension on the home page, search results, and category pages. In Chrome 37, webpage-instantiated NPAPI plug-ins will be blocked using the harder-to-bypass page-action blocking UI.

Most use cases that previously required NPAPI are now supported by JavaScript-based open web technologies. For the few applications that need low-level APIs, threads, and machine-optimized code, Native Client offers the ability to run sandboxed native code in Chrome. To help ease the transition from NPAPI, NaCl recently exposed two new Pepper APIs for media playback and processing. The MediaStreams API enables low latency multimedia playback, and the Hardware Decode API enables efficient video decoding.

For more information, please see the developer NPAPI deprecation guide. We look forward to the transition to a safer, more mobile-friendly web.

(via Pleated Jeans)

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This post originally appeared on  Interpreter a journal of Mormon Scripture In 1921, a committee of five apostles who had recently

My purest form.

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This is the Fridayest link of all time: Morgan Freeman talking while on helium.

I'm not even gonna Kottke this up by explaining why helium makes your voice all high. Just sit back and enjoy this perfect Friday nothing. (via @DavidGrann)

Back in January, an astronaut on the International Space Station took this photograph of the Korean Peninsula, which shows the stark difference in nighttime light levels in North Korea compared to the neighboring countries of South Korea and China.

I remember seeing a satellite photo several years ago, thought it was fake, then heard it had been photoshopped to accentuate the darkness, and dismissed the whole thing as a hoax. I can't believe the whole country is that dark. (via in focus)

Some important reading for today's strip.

Celebrate Batman’s 75th Anniversary with the Best of Batman on Texts From Superheroes

wordsofdiana:

So we ran this joke on Texts from Superheroes about a year and a half ago.

And then we went to Winter Soldier and saw Cap’s “To Do” list.

Nailed it.

We’ve all been there before…stuck at a singles linger-longer wondering when we can stop making small-talk with the weirdo and instead

Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing and Make Magazine recently published Maker Dad, a book full of father-daughter DIY projects. I haven't dug too far into my copy yet, but the projects seem appropriate for kids and parents of all genders.

As the editor in chief of MAKE magazine, Mark Frauenfelder has spent years combing through DIY books, but he's never been able to find one with geeky projects he can share with his two daughters. Maker Dad is the first DIY book to use cutting-edge (and affordable) technology in appealing projects for fathers and daughters to do together. These crafts and gadgets are both rewarding to make and delightful to play with. What's more, Maker Dad teaches girls lifelong skills-like computer programming, musicality, and how to use basic hand tools-as well as how to be creative problem solvers.

Projects run the gamut from "Easy and Quick" to "Challenging" and include silkscreening tshirts, a lunch box guitar, custom rubber stamps, and programming in Scratch.

For the next 14 days, you can back Apex Rising on Kickstarter. It’s been live for less than 2 hours, and we’re already over $100! (because someone already bought the reward level of choosing a name in my upcoming series, but hey, a victory is a victory)

Please go check it out, and make sure to watch through the end of the video to see Bear the actor dog.

Apex Rising has its own website, too, if you want to read a little more about the world (in Appendix A & B).

Thanks for being awesome!

EDIT: Remember that one time that I said we were over $100? Well, only 4 hours in and we’ve hit 60%. I’m feeling a lot more confident now than I was 5 hours ago. Thanks everyone!