Luke.stirling

Story link.

Link to multiple translations of quoted verse.

That’s the least of it.

Why not become a Patron of the Blasphemous Arts? Book shop here

ageekyfemmeforeveringlasses:

attndotcom:

Agreed.

Basic thoughts. For an ignorant institution.

tamorapierce:

fandomsandfeminism:

wocinsolidarity:

randommomentsdevida:

You don’t get vaccinated just to protect yourself. You do it to protect others.

Six of the cases were in infants too young to have been vaccinated.

Six of the cases were in infants too young to have been vaccinated.

Six of the cases were in infants too young to have been vaccinated.

Six of the cases were in infants too young to have been vaccinated.

"The measles vaccine is not licensed for use on babies younger than 12 months. That means that, for the first year of life, babies depend on the fact that everybody else around them gets vaccinated. This essentially creates a firewall: if other people are vaccinated, they won’t catch the disease — and won’t spread it to young children who cannot get protection.

This is what scientists call “herd immunity,” and its a huge reason we get vaccines in the first place. The shots aren’t just about protecting ourselves from measles, mumps, the flu, or other diseases. They’re about making it really hard for those who are medically frail (like the elderly) and those who can’t get the vaccine (often babies and pregnant women) to catch a disease that could be devastating to them. The vaccinated people form something like a fence around the vulnerable people, making it extra hard for the disease to come in.”

This is why everyone who CAN safely be vaccinated NEEDS to be vaccinated.

Not vaccinating for religious reasons, or because of misleading, debunked, ableist “concerns” about the “safety” of vaccines is horrific, unethical, and dangerous to everyone who comes in contact with you.

Measles is the reason I have astigmatism.  (Well, measles promptly followed by chicken pox.)  Got `em before I could get vaccinated and now I wear corrective lenses all the time.

People want to forget that these are diseases that can have permanent, negative effects on others, because “oh, vaccination is my choice.”  Well, you’re not just choosing disability, disfigurement, and possible death for your children.  You’re choosing it for the children of others.

Cut it the fuck out.

Mars
2015

WWW.MDORF.COM

goddesscru:

writingwithcolor:

Common Micro-aggressions: African Americans and/or
Black People

Anonymous said: What are some common micro-aggressions that a black american will regularly have to deal with?

Behold this masterpost of common micro-aggressions towards African Americans and/or people in the African Diaspora, several of which may be applicable to other PoC. Micro-aggressions can be perpetuated by White people as well as fellow Black people and People of Color.

This is just to give a thorough understanding of some of the things a Black person (often in America) deals with. Don’t run forward and jam-pack your Black character with every one of these experiences, though I can say I’ve personally experienced every one of these or know someone who has.

General Micro-aggressions

• People excusing blackface.
• Having our grammar and annunciation corrected.
• "I don’t see you as a Black person/ I don’t see colour.”
• Calling Black people ghetto, thugs, rachet, sassy, urban…
• People debating why they should be allowed to say the n-word.
• Then saying the n-word anyway.
• Whispering, spitting, or stumbling over the word “Black” as if it’s a curse.
• Refusing to pronounce your name right, or just calling you by a different name that’s easier.
• Alternatively, “jokingly” calling you a "ghetto" name.
• Constantly mixing up unrelated and not even resembling Black people, because you know.. ‘Black people all look the same’.
• Dismissing our experiences as “just overreacting,” defending the wronging party, or using our plight to talk about one’s own experience (e.g. “well as a gay man i’ve got it rough…”).
• Telling racist jokes and calling you sensitive when you don’t find it funny.
• ”______  is the new civil rights movement!” Black folks are still fighting for their rights so…

Media

• Fox news (xD)
• Caricatured depictions of Black people on TV.
• Casting calls for Black people only tailored for “race roles.”
• Media treating white criminals and killers better than Black victims (see these headlines).

Stereotypes

• Assuming you only listen to rap/hip-hop/r&b.
• Assuming you love chicken, Kool-aid, and/or smoke weed.
• Assuming you’re good at sports.
• Assuming there’s no father in the picture in Black families.
• Assuming all Black people (see: young girls) have children.
• Calling Black people who don’t conform to one’s image of Blackness, “less black,” acting white or “oreo.”

AAVE

• Non-Black People mimicking/imitating AAVE.
• People falling into AAVE when talking to Black People.
• “Why don’t Black people speak real English instead of ‘ebonics’?”

Insults/doubting intelligence:

• You’re so articulate!”
• “You take advanced classes?!”
• "How did she get into that [prestigious school and/or program]?”
• "They only got x because they’re Black/Affirmative action.”
• Assuming a Black person (usually male) attends college because of a sports scholarship.
• Counselors discouraging Black students to take prestigious coursework, assuming it’s too difficult for them.

 Respectability politics:

• "You’re a credit to your race."
• “I’m glad you’re not like those other Black people. You’re not ghetto or listen to that rap stuff..”
• Tone policing: dismissing someone’s reaction/argument/etc. because they are too “emotional.” Thinking that we need to be calm in order to be taken seriously. 
• Pitting African immigrants against African Americans, especially those coming to America for education, aka “Good Blacks.”

Beauty Standards and Dating

• "You’re pretty for a Black girl."
• "You’re pretty! Are you mixed?"
• "I don’t usually date/aren’t attracted to Black people.”
• Calling attraction to Black people “jungle fever.”

Fetishization/Othering

• People asking you what you are or where you’re really from.
• Referring to Black people or our features as “exotic.”
• Referring to Black people’s skin as chocolate or other foods.

Black Women/Misogynoir

• Saying Black women are “strong, independent and don’t need no man.”
• Calling Black women “sassy" or angry if she shows passion/emotion.
• Referring to white and non-black women as “girls” and “women” while calling Black women “Females.”
• [White] males who apply courtesy to white women (holding doors, giving up seat) but don’t apply the same to Black women.
• Referring to Black women on government assistance as “welfare queens” (While ignoring that white people get more government assistance than Black people in the USA).
• "Black women All woman are beautiful.” (Stop. That. Please.)

Hair.

• People touching/petting your hair without consent.
• “So is that your real hair? Are those extensions?”
• Calling natural black hair unprofessional.
• White people appropriating Black hair styles (dreads, twists, etc) and being praised as edgy, while it’s “ghetto, unprofessional, and unclean” on our own heads.

Poverty Assumptions:

• “Do you live in the ghetto?”
• “Can you afford that?”
• “Here are the value prices of this product…”

Racial Profiling + Criminalization:

• Crossing the street to avoid passing Black men/people.
• Following in stores, assuming Black people are stealing.
• Moving aside when we pass, clutching purse, locking doors.
• Asking Black people for I.D. when paying with card (while white people are not asked).
• Being pulled over + arrested at astonishingly higher rates than white people.

For a fuller understanding of micro aggressions and the effects it has on individuals overtime, please see this: “These incidents may appear small…”

~Mods: Colette and Alice

This is important.

(via gifsboom)

fuckyourgenderid:

dannydecato:

cyberdesert:

shoot me

Compare these maps to determine whether or not your boss is invited to your gay wedding

^^^ this is v important

sandandglass:

Producer Harvey Weinstein on the Good Will Hunting script

(laughing softly) We used to do this for the amusement of our BS&P lady, before Hanna-Barbera became Cartoon Network. Good to see the tradition’s not dead. :)

Ever since I began my Tropes vs Women in Video Games project, two and a half years ago, I’ve been harassed on a daily basis by irate gamers angry at my critiques of sexism in video games. It can sometimes be difficult to effectively communicate just how bad this sustained intimidation campaign really is. So I’ve taken the liberty of collecting a week’s worth of hateful messages sent to me on Twitter. The following tweets were directed at my @femfreq account between 1/20/15 and 1/26/15.

Content warning for misogyny, gendered insults, victim blaming, incitement to suicide, sexual violence, rape and death threats.

Tuesday, January, 20th

Wednesday, January 21st, 2015

Thursday, January 22nd, 2015

Friday January 23rd, 2015

Saturday, January 24th, 2015

Sunday, January 25th

Monday, January 26th

The Kochs have raised $889M from conservative millionaires and billionaires to spend in the 2016 election, which, thanks to Citizens United, can be used to buy effectively unlimited political advertising to support policies that will make more money for the donors. Read the rest

NO ONE INTERRUPTS BIRD

The Peruvian TV show "Harassing Your Mother" performs secret makeovers on the mothers of habitual catcallers, then uses hidden cameras to record catcallers shouting sexual remarks at their own mothers, who furiously upbraid them in the middle of the busy streets of Lima. (more…)

Last year, beginning about Halloween, thousands of juvenile auklets started washing ashore dead from California's Farallon Islands to Haida Gwaii (also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands) off central British Columbia. Since then the deaths haven't stopped. Researchers are wondering if the die-off might spread to other birds or even fish.

"This is just massive, massive, unprecedented," said Julia Parrish, a University of Washington seabird ecologist who oversees the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST), a program that has tracked West Coast seabird deaths for almost 20 years. "We may be talking about 50,000 to 100,000 deaths. So far." 

By comparison, not one of the five largest U.S. bird mortality events tracked by USGS since 1980 is estimated to have topped 11,000 deaths. In Europe, according to the U.K.-based Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the worst die-off on record occurred in 1983, when 57,000 guillemots, razorbills, puffins, and other seabirds perished in the North Sea and washed up on the British coast.

"You get some of this with seabirds every year," said David Nuzum, with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. "You get so many juveniles out there, and they've got this steep learning curve for feeding after being separated from their parents, so you always get a die-off in winter. But I've never seen anything like this, ever, and I've been here since 1985."

Wikileaks has issued a furious denunciation of Google after it learned that the company turned over its staff email to the US Government in March 2012 without notifying it. Read the rest

Adorable moment of tenderness. Seals are so much like dogs, it seems very natural to see them be so sweet with each other. (more…)

Google is launching a new, Youtube-branded streaming music service, with the cooperation of the Big Four labels, who got to negotiate the terms of their participation -- unlike the indie musicians, who have been told that they will be exiled from Youtube altogether unless they make it their most-favored-nation distribution service, without the possibility of holding back tracks for backers on services like Kickstarter or Patreon. Read the rest

Wikipedia is preparing to throw the last bits of their credibility down the waste disposal. In a long running and contentious internal debate between feminists and a flurry of throw-away gamergate accounts, an arbitration panel made up almost entirely of men has decided to prohibit anything but the gamergate position. Mark Bernstein has an excellent summary.

First, this is the end of the Wiki Way. We have a blueprint now that shows how any decently-funded group with a modicum of access to the media – which is to say any group (unlike GamerGate) not patently criminal – can take control of any part of Wikipedia it pleases. You need a PR agency with a few offices in different cities and a phone – resources whose lack complicated GamerGate’s position.

Worse, the decision is so egregiously bad that it may well permanently discredit not only Wikipedia but the entire open Web. If a mature and well-funded site like Wikipedia can’t distinguish between reason and perfidious slander, if it punishes volunteers who enforce its own policies against libel, then who will trust any publication that doesn’t bear the brand of ABC/Disney, Reuters, or Al-Jazeera?

I already struggle with Wikipedia in the classroom — it’s such a mess that I do not allow students to cite it in their work, ever. If they see something in the wiki that they’d like to use, they have to go to an original cited source instead.

But my problem has been the superficiality and spottiness of Wikipedia. Now you’re telling me I also have to deal with overt bias, and that the reputed independence of the editors is easily swayed by PR campaigns by even a gang of idiots?

Nope. Done. In my writing classes, I’ll be telling students to not trust Wikipedia at all, and to steer completely clear.

Of course, it still has one use: when I suspect students of plagiarism, the first source I compare their text to is Wikipedia. Wikipedia: the go-to resource for lazy, incompetent people. And now with extra added bias!

I’m not the train expert here on TBB, but I do know a few things about micro and setting up small scale micro dioramas, and this build by Galaktek is simply divine:

I love the use of the raised track and the nice 45 degree angle. But what really steals the show for me is the amazing train. The engine is what microscale is all about – using existing pieces in completely different fashion. In this case using the familiar spring loaded cannon base for the little blue engine that could.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron demanded that ISPs opt their customers into "adult content" filters (and now Sky is opting in everyone whose account predates this announcement), ignoring all the people who correctly predicted that these filters would block important sites. Read the rest