Liv Tyler in The Lord Of The Rings
About once a month I like to reread Sophie McDougall’s New Statesman article “I Hate Strong Female Characters” because it’s one of the best pieces of writing about female representation I’ve ever come across. Read the rest
Artist Janusz Grünspek, based in Kleve, Germany, brings 3D line drawings of everyday objects into the physical world using dowels and glue. Read the rest
[HuffPo] In an unprecedented move, the Boy Scouts of America’s New York chapter has hired an openly gay Eagle Scout as a summer camp leader.
The decision to hire Pascal Tessier, an 18-year-old Eagle Scout from Maryland, is a direct challenge to the Boy Scouts’ existing ban on openly gay adult participants,
Board member Richard G. Mason praised Tessier, who has been an outspoken advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues, as an “exemplary candidate” for the counselor role, and said members “did not want our policy of non-discrimination to be affected by the national policy”.
"New York City and New York State law clearly prohibit employers from excluding qualified men and women from employment based on sexual orientation," he noted, and said he and other board members welcomed Tessier and "look forward to his participation in our camp program."
i truly hope that this does lead to a change for BSA at the national level and a reversal on a discriminatory, ignorant, and hurtful ban.
and bravo to pascal tessier for his courage and general awesomeness.
by uaiHebert
dedicated to uaiHebert for the (countless) submissions
Luke.stirling"And I'd have thought that vast majorities see an important distinction between a business turning away gay patrons—which would certainly prompt me to boycott—and declining to cater a gay wedding."
I feel like this article completely misses the point. While I feel conflicted over these incidents where internet shaming and boycotts have ruined businesses, I don't think the distinctions about the context of bigotry really matters. If we stop for a second and substitute mixed race weddings for gay weddings, I think the hypocrisy that this is somehow an acceptable form of discriminatory behaviour we should overlook pretty much evaporates.
While I agree that the public shaming and boycott campaigns can be hugely powerful blunt instruments that can be stupidly ruinous to small businesses, I do not think that necessarily makes small catering companies exempt from being called out for discriminatory behaviour. I know it's impossible to take an emergent phenomenon like internet outrage and apply some kind of graduated response model to it. But despite that seeming insurmountable hurdle, I do think that's where the debate lies, not in what kinds of bigotry should be overlooked.
Les deux compères moscovites Dasha & Olya réalisent de somptueux cinémagraphes, cousin germain du GIF animé. Le procédé est simple, lorsque l’une prépare à manger, l’autre photographie et force est de constater que l’alchimie fonctionne tant leurs créations ouvrent l’appétit.
If you think that posting nude pictures of your ex is somehow an acceptable response to your breakup, take a lesson from Kevin Bollaert. He's been sentenced to 18 years behind bars (he could be eligible for parole after 10) for operating 'yougotposte...
theheadphonesmeanidontwanttotalk:
This came into my work today and it made me really happy, because it’s so perfect and there needs to be more of this.
Just think of the little blind kid who’s just learning to read Braille and they find this and think for the first time that something was made special for them, with them in mind, and here it is telling them that there are others like them and that you don’t need to see to still experience all the joys and beauties of the world. That color can be smelt and heard and felt as much as seen. That you are not experiencing the world in a lesser or incomplete way, but just differently, and difference is beautiful.
Bless this children’s book author from the bottom of my heart. Bless.
ar…
Our submitter, Lee, says he recently went to the library in search of some subjects for drawing practice. While browsing the botany section, he flipped open a particularly old and musty book when suddenly…OH, SNAP!
related: Pages missing (all)
i think a lot of us, when we’re growing up, we learn kind of the opposite of self-care. a kind of self-disregard, if that makes any sense.
especially those of us who have invisible disabilities, we needed extra rest or extra help or something different from other kids, but not only did we not get it, we were made to feel greedy or lazy for needing it. so we internalized that, and we grew up with this feeling that having needs is weakness.
hands up if you were shocked to discover that not everyone goes through life being exhausted and hungry and strung out all the time. o/
for the longest time i just thought everyone else was better than me at hiding the fact that they were constantly in pain and sleep deprived.
Photo by Jovell Rennie
As the story goes, the original owner of this unwieldy building located in Willow, Alaska built his house shortly after a forest fire with a clear view of Mount McKinley and Denali National Park. As the surrounding trees recovered, the pristine view was obscured and the owner decided to add few more stories, eventually spending a decade adding floors until it reached the 12-ish story tower you see today. Not surprisingly, locals refer to the building as the “Dr. Seuss House” as the design so closely mimics structures you might see in Theodor Geisel’s illustrated storybooks.
While the tower sat abandoned for a while, the Dr. Seuss house apparently has a new owner who is currently working on renovations. Photographer Jovell Rennie and Alaska Aerial Footage recently stopped by to capture some of the images and video you see here. (via Jeroen Apers, Unusual Places)
Greta Christina has followed up on EbonMuse’s challenge to theists, listing the kinds of evidence that would convince them that their beliefs were true.
If I’m such an open-minded atheist — if I really am an atheist because I think the God hypothesis is unsupported by the evidence — what evidence for God would I accept? What would it take to change my mind?
I’m going to take a rather different approach: I’m going to tell theists to not bother.
It’s not that I’m unwilling or unable to change my views, or that I think I’m absolutely right about everything (I already know I’m not). Physicists, for instance, frequently explain things to me that make me toss out a lot of preconceptions. It’s just that I know theists are wrong. I’ve been through these arguments many times before, and I know what they’re about, and I know what approaches the true believer will take, and I’m not going to accept any of their arguments, so we might as well not waste time with them.
Basically, I have a set of simple prerequisites that theists can’t meet — their beliefs fundamentally contradict any reasonable expectations. Here’s what I would demand:
They must accept the evidence of the natural world. What that means is that the first thing they have to do is acknowledge the validity of scientific explanations, because they are based on empirical knowledge. You don’t get to advance your hypothesis about how the universe works by throwing out the entire body of accumulated human wisdom!
They have to accept that they don’t know any more than I do about the nature of entities outside this universe. Deities and afterlives and all that crap are outside human experience; you don’t get to sashay in and announce that you personally have direct knowledge of the mind of god that I am not allowed to have. We have to restrict ourselves to information that is universally accessible. Which, of course, means that most theists claims are bogus, because they are unknowable.
They have to recognize that extant religions are all false. We know enough about the history of religion to recognize their idiosyncratic and human origins. If you can see that Scientology and Mormonism are frauds, then you should be able to see that Christianity and Islam are similarly the product of deluded human minds. Don’t waste our time trying to persuade me that debunked beliefs are really true.
They must define their god or supernatural property clearly and unambiguously. Inevitably, every faith-head fails on this criterion: go ahead, try to get a Christian to give a consistent description of Jesus’ role in their life. I guarantee you that every time an atheist tries to pin them down on something concrete, they’ll rapidly fall back on Karen Armstrong-style platitudes, which are all empty noise. “God is Love” is utter bullshit.
I think that even asking for things like miracles and prophecies and consistent holy books and deities manifesting on earth is conceding way too much — it’s treating their claims of the kind of phenomena that would validate their faith as reasonable forms of evidence. They’re not. Those are the things theists tell each other to “prove” their beliefs, and they’re bogus — they’ve never demonstrated anything.
Break the cycle of lies. Stop framing atheist questions in theistic terms.
