Luke.stirling

karnythia:

Literally the only reason people think the past was all white is racism in Hollywood. All the images of the past that you think are accurate from TV shows & movies produced during Jim Crow are actually fictional representations of what racists wanted the world to be like instead of their reality. That’s why you have people arguing that Egypt isn’t in Africa and that Cleopatra looked like Liz Taylor. That’s why you have period pieces set in London with none of the Black Victorians, Chinese sailors in Limehouse, or Jewish communities. That’s why you don’t see the drag balls that were common in New York, Chicago etc. You don’t even see the diversity of Roman citizens or the Moorish Empire. Next to nothing about women of color at any point in history, despite them being inventors, pioneers, and artists who changed the world. Gee, it’s like media representation has an impact across time. Like, maybe producing media that isn’t inclusive contributes to ignorance, erasure, and perpetuating racist, sexist, homophobic propaganda. If you’re still producing these bland historically  inaccurate shows in 2015 that’s not about historical accuracy, that’s about your internalized bigotry. .

OOP

addictinginfo:

Perfectly said.

Hovertext: Language is a social construct that you REALLY suck at.

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It’s hard to see someone you love hurting. My first instincts are to fuss, trying to make everything as easy as possible, but when you’re dealing with mental illness, you may as well be a butterfly fluttering against a concrete wall.

I have to remind myself that more often than not, the best help I can give is to sit, and be quiet, and provide pats, as the people I love have done for me. We can’t solve the problem of someone being unwell. We can’t fix their brains or make them better. But we can be a presence.

How that looks is different for everybody. Me and mine, we do well with passive physical contact and light patting. Pat pat pat.

Make editor Caleb Kraft shows you how to build an "incredibly dangerous" flame-shooting ukulele for your Mad Max Fury Road LARPing adventures, inspired by the Doof Warrior bungee-lashed flaming guitar-playing character. Read the rest

the-gasoline-station:

Cabins 

by Marie-Laure Cruschi aka Cruschiform

-teesa-:

5.26.15

Oh, CNN. Dog the Bountyhunter? Really? Do you even news anymore?

More people died in World War II than in any other conflict in history, yet it can be hard to conceptualize that massive loss of life. Read the rest

Prefer to appreciate fine art in bed? You are in luck: Carsten Höller's latest installation features two motorized beds that slowly travel through London's Hayward Gallery over the course of the night.

Read the rest

earendils:

i already loved catherynne valente, but then she went on a twitter rant about the social construction behind poison being seen as a coward’s weapon and now i love her EVEN MORE

deanprincesster:

I just lost 6 followers for pointing out that there aren’t a lot of women in lord of the rings. I lost more followers than there are speaking female characters in the nine hours of lord of the rings

For such a quiet tech show, this week's Computex in Taiwan may have been a watermark moment that will affect nearly every PC, phone and tablet you'll see in the next few years, if not decade. The new USB Type-C port may have debuted on flagship devic...

Daycare | Kent, England, UK

(I’m a secretary/receptionist for a nursery. I’m dealing with a VERY upset parent whose husband has just left her. Another parent approaches my desk to pay, hears what’s going on and backs up to give the first parent some privacy.)

Parent #1: “I don’t know what to do. He just packed his stuff, said he ‘didn’t want to do it anymore,’ and left. I don’t know how I’m going to pay you.”

(The more she spoke, the more she cried. I buzzed for the owner and she took the parent into her office. The second parent then approached the desk again:)

Parent #2: “Oh my goodness, that poor woman. Anyway, I need to pay [Son]’s bill for the month, please.”

(I told her how much and she writes a cheque. She then hesitates a little.)

Parent #2: “Could I pay her bill as well?”

Me: “Pardon? You want to pay another person’s bill?”

Parent #2: “Yes. She needs all the help she can get right now.”

(I tell her it’s almost double her bill but she insists. Just as she’s finished writing the cheque the owner and the first parent come out. The woman has calmed down a bit and rushes to pick her son up.)

Parent #2: “Excuse me, [Owner], could you do something for me? Would you give this to her, please?”

(She’s holding a gift card for a supermarket.)

Parent #2: “I’ve been putting £50 a month on it since January; there’s £500 on it now. They’re going to need it a lot more than we will.”

(I and the owner stared at her for a moment, completely taken aback by her generosity. The owner took the card and the parent went to get her son. That’s when I started crying. I was so overwhelmed by what had just happened. Two days later, when the first parent brought her son in, the owner greeted her and asked her to come to the office where she gave her the card and told her the bill had been paid. I could hear her crying through the door. That was the best day at work and probably the kindest thing I’ve ever seen.)

dumb-boshie-stuff:

kittens are painful;;

4gifs:

Maru becomes a bendy bus. [video]

Jurassic World on a budget. (photo via blick2k)

ratherbookish:

sushinfood:

reeferkitten:

king-faded:

angelclark:

Historic Black and White Pictures Restored in Color

1. Women Delivering Ice, 1918
2. Times Square, 1947
3. Portrait Used to Design the Penny. President Lincoln Meets General McClellan – Antietam, Maryland ca September 1862
4. Marilyn Monroe, 1957
5. Newspaper boy Ned Parfett sells copies of the evening paper bearing news of Titanic’s sinking the night before. (April 16, 1912)
6. Easter Eggs for Hitler, c 1944-1945 
7. Sergeant George Camblair practicing with a gas mask in a smokescreen – Fort Belvoir, Virginia, 1942
8. Helen Keller meeting Charlie Chaplin in 1919
9. Painting WWII Propaganda Posters, Port Washington, New York – 8 July 1942
10. Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge ca 1935

This is awesome.

Not something I’d typically reblog but I like.

This is bloody fantastic.

Honestly seeing old photos in color makes the past so much more tangible.

theinturnetexplorer:

And here’s the thing: it’s not just kids. Nearly every time I post something on Facebook about treating people like human beings, a dogpile of people with no empathy whatsoever come along and make me weep for humanity.

Example: I x-posted a thing from Tumblr about a teacher who was in trouble for giving food to kids at her school who didn’t have money to pay for lunch. The school’s policy (which I find abhorrent) is to warn kids — because, you know, it’s their fault when they’re in elementary school — and then give them one slice of cheese between two white hamburger buns, with some milk. As their lunch.

So set aside the humiliation these kids are going to feel, through no fault of their own, and think about the lack of nutrition they’re getting. Think about how that lack of nutrition prevents them from learning to their full potential. Consider that these ARE CHILDREN WHO ARE HUNGRY and the option was to just throw food away, instead of giving it to them, or give them this fucking cheese sandwich thing.

Now consider that our politicians want us to take it as an article of unimpeachable faith that America is THE GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH FULL STOP DO NOT EVER QUESTION THAT.

Okay. If that’s true, why do we, as a nation and a culture, decide that it is acceptable for children to be hungry and underfed in a public school that we, as a community fund, but it’s entirely acceptable to make sure billionaires keep as much of their money as possible? Where is the fucking empathy for the poorest children and their families?

Every time this comes up, someone gets onto comments and goes on a rampage about Personal Responsibility. Some guy today went into full-on internet argument mode because this policy was supposed to SEND A MESSAGE TO THE PARENTS TO JUST STOP BEING POOR ALREADY AND BE MORE RESPONSIBLE.

I wonder what that guy would do if he actually had to face one of these hungry children. Would he get down on one knee, look that child in the eye and say, “hey, this is about teaching your parents a lesson about personal responsibility. Deal with it.” Or would he actually, you know, have some fucking single shred of human compassion and decency, and give the child a regular lunch?

That I don’t know the answer to this question — really, genuinely don’t know — makes me seriously ashamed of my country. There are tons of people in America who would let a child go hungry to make a point, and they’d feel really good about that.

And those people are all over the Internet, setting examples for the future about what’s acceptable behavior and what it means to be American.

…maybe this doesn’t make sense, and maybe I’ve constructed a fallacy I can’t see at the moment because I’m really goddamn emotional about all this stuff.

But I feel like this enormous swath of our population has no sense of humanity and empathy, and that’s profoundly upsetting to me.

I’ve been talking with some friends about the increasing belligerence, toxicity, and general shittiness of the Internet lately. It seems like it’s just exploded in a logarithmic curve in the last week or so, and websites I generally enjoy browsing, like Reddit and Fark, and social networks I’ve always liked, like Tumblr and Twitter, seem to be overrun with real dickwagons.

“It’s like somone pushed a button, and unleashed a horde of … angry … children …” I said, the reality dawning on my as the words came out of my mouth.

“Oh god. It’s summer vacation and the children are online, unsupervised, all day.”

I’m going to sound like an old man now, but fuck it: I’m genuinely concerned by the lack of basic empathy and kindness I’m seeing online from the damn kids today. Maybe they’re not like that face to face, and maybe they don’t think that being online is “real”, but the cruelty and bigotry and misogyny that I see blithely spouted all over the place online worries me. Are we letting an entire generation grow up believing that behaving like the whole world is [whatever]chan? Is that healthy? The Internet has always had awful people on it, but the farther away I get from my 20s, the worse and worse it seems.

Maybe it’s because I’m a parent, and I know how hard I worked to help my own children develop empathy and kindness, so I have an observational and confirmation bias … but I’m genuinely starting to feel, for the first time in my entire life, like I don’t want to interact with people online. I don’t mean that in a flouncy, goodbye cruel world I’m leaving this forum forEVAR way, either. I mean it in a “man, what happened to this neighborhood? It used to be so great,” kind of way.

I’m looking at websites and networks and communities that I’ve been part of for close to a decade or more, and I hardly recognize them. Is that because I was just less touchy about people being shits back then? Or is it a real and meaningful change in the culture? For the sake of the damn kids today, I really hope that this is just me feeling touchy and overly-sensitive. Because I’m trying really hard to make the world a better place for this generation, and if the behavior I see online from them is indicative of their norm, I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.

blodwymm:

secondalto:

gameboygirl:

allinternationalnews:

Colorado Lunch Lady Fired for Giving Kids Free Meals Says She’d Do It Again http://ift.tt/1JoLWZu

from the article:

…“I would have kids start crying when I told them they didn’t have money in their account because they were terrified of getting the cheese sandwich.”

The district’s policy is to give a student a hot meal and charge the parent’s account the first three times they forget lunch money, communications director Tustin Amole told ABC News today. The fourth time, the student is given a cheese sandwich – a single slice of cheese on a hamburger bun – and a milk.

…Curry felt she could not stand by and keep letting it happen.

“It’s not nutrition. It’s not healthy,” she said. “It’s wrong on so many levels, and I hated to see food go to waste. I hated to see food thrown away that could’ve been given to these children that are hungry.”

Curry was supposed to take the students’ food, throw it away and replace it with the cheese sandwich and milk if a student had exceeded the $7.60 debt limit, she said. Instead, she would cancel the transaction and remind the student to bring their lunch money.

Curry acknowledged that her actions went against the district’s policy and when asked why she did it, Curry said, “Because it was the right thing to do and sometimes doing what is right is not what is easy.”

once again, under capitalism, noncompliance with immoral rules means the employee loses her livelihood. and less children have food.

This woman is a hero.

I wanna know what heartless ass snitched on her so I can glare at them for the rest of their days.

For fuck’s sake, America. Maybe put your fucking gun down for a second and turn off Fox News and listen to me: if we, as a nation, think it’s okay to let fucking CHILDREN GO HUNGRY because they are poor, we are a completely fucking failure of life.

Greatest fucking country on Earth my ass.

edwardspoonhands:

lunate:

for all the shitheads continuing to throw a tantrum over Caitlyn Jenner being called a hero when “soldiers are the real heroes,” lemme throw some numbers at you real quick: during the deadliest war in American history (the Civil War), U.S. soldiers had a 1 in 15 chance of dying [x]. currently, trans women have a 1 in 12 chance of being murdered, or 1 in 8 for trans women of color [x]. it is currently MORE DANGEROUS to be a trans woman in the U.S. than it is to have fought in the deadliest war in our history. let that sink in as you sit down

Our society is not a welcoming place for trans people. It can sometimes be a dangerous place for trans people. But a statistic like “1 in 12 trans women will be murdered” is not just wrong, it’s terrifying. Specifically, it is terrifying to trans women. 

That statistic is made up and it’s been spread around a lot. It was made up in order to emphasize and highlight the difficulties of being trans in America (of which there are many) and to get people angry enough to fight for their rights. That’s a noble goal, but in my experience the biggest impact it’s had is scaring young trans people into wanting to continue to hide themselves from the world. By far the largest danger to trans people is suicide, and telling them the world hates them so much that they’re more likely to be murdered than to roll two sixes in craps is not helping. 

What will help is knowing that society enthusiastically accepts trans people, which is the society that we all need to help build together right now. And, of course, another huge help is the trans lifeline a trans-help phone line that is run and answered by transgender people that you can and should call if you are facing these difficulties and you need someone to talk to.

I had not realized it was so easy. But Dylan Saccoccio, author of The Boy and the Peddler of Death (The Tale of Onora #1), has discovered the formula and is well on his way to notoriety.

First step: write a book. It doesn’t matter how good it is.

Second step: find a negative review.

Third step: meltdown online.

See? Anyone can do it.

Here’s the demonstration. Someone named Cait read Saccoccio’s book, and did not like it. Then she dared to state her negative review on GoodReads.

This was just…so unnecessarily wordy and pretentious. I just did not enjoy it at all. … So how did I loathe this so entirely from page one? I don’t know.

The fun begins. Sacoccio responds to the review.

This review is not good for my business, so unless your desire is to ruin my dreams, it would mean a great deal if you could remove this review from my work and forget about it. But if it’s your desire to hurt me financially and ruin my business, then it’s understandable why you would post such a harmful review.

Yes. The only reason one might dislike a book is personal animus against the author, and a desire to snuff out his dreams and crush him economically. His reaction is to assume Cait hates him.

It escalates rapidly. Not only does Cait hate him, she is an evil person.

Do you have empathy? Do you know what it’s like to make something for a living? Are you human? Or do you just look at other people like they’re automatons that you can slander as though your actions don’t manifest consequences? Trust this. Me confronting someone that defaces my work says nothing about me other than the fact that I address it when someone goes out of his/her way to do so. But you left a 1 Star review on someone’s life’s work, someone who is trying to warn people what’s going on in this world so that they can protect themselves and help others, and think that is a moral action. 400,000 children go missing each year in the US alone. Do you know where they’re going? Do you know who’s behind it? Do you know why the media is silent about it? Do you know how much a person risks to confront the evil that’s running amok in this world? YOU don’t know right from wrong. And that’s what a review like this says about the person that wrote it.

To leave a one-star review of Sacoccio’s writing is to demonstrate that you are not human, and is just like someone who abducts a child. Who abducts 400,000 children.

It’s not just Cait. Everyone who agrees with her is waging war on the consciousness of humanity.

I’m not embarrassed at all. And all of you who are taking Cait S’s side, what you’re doing in the bigger picture is waging war on the consciousness of humanity. The end. If this interaction prevents you from reading my work, it’s okay. I’m not offended. I don’t want your money, nor do I want you having a bad experience by reading my books. What bothers me is when people that operated at a low level of consciousness defame the work of people that are trying to help humanity, and no one helps humanity better than artists.

Time to break out the random capitalization.

NO. I don’t want you to do anything because you’re immoral. Leave this up so that every person henceforth can see ALL OF YOU for what YOU ARE. DESTRUCTIVE to consciousness and humanity. What you’ve done to me, you do to YOURSELF, because if you KNEW anything about anything, you’d know we were all connected to each other, and instead of destroying each other’s work, you’d be supporting each other, which is why I will NEVER behave like ANY of you immoral people, and I won’t go seeing what you’ve written or done in the world so I can destroy that. No, I will only defend my work against EVIL.

And today, all of you see why EVIL IS KICKING HUMANITY’S ASS, and why the human condition is SLAVERY.

THAT’S what The Tale of Onora is about, and if you can’t grasp that, then BE GONE!

But now Saccoccio brings out the big guns. The reviewer called it wordy and pretentious, and loathed it from the first page…so he posts the first page of the book to prove that she is totally wrong.

“To you, that you may awaken to understand that the whole universe is a dance of energy, and that energy is God, and that energy is you. You are something that the whole universe is doing, that God is doing, just as a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing. The real you, the energy, the soul, is not a puppet that life pushes around. The real you is the whole universe. The real you is God, destined to follow no one, destined to ignite the ether and experience life from an individual perspective and take part in the creation. So this is for you, my fellow creators, my fellow gods, and my fellow selves, that coincidence may never disguise itself with the mask of fate and torment you, that every moment be meaningful, and that no experience be lost.”

I gave up at the first sentence.

But his strategy was successful. Look, Dylan Saccoccio is now a FAMOUS AUTHOR.

Of course, no one is going to be interested in reading his books, but he’s famous.