Ok, this is a hell of an idea, and I haven't seen shared enough, and it seems so simple...
You’re telling your own story: You graduated college and you’re a grown-ass woman now. Tina Fey is your hero; Beyoncé, your preacher.
You know how to take care of you. You’ve learned self-defense. If any man ever hit you, you’d rip his eyes out. You’ve seen Mad Men, and if anyone ever sexually harassed you at work, you’d tell him to fuck right off, throw your coffee in his face, and wave two middle fingers as you marched out the door.
You get your first internship. You get your first credit card. You get to walk into Nordstrom, where your mom would never take you, and congratulate yourself with one fabulous black leather skirt, and the heels to match.
Your car? It’s the car of a college student. You get a lease, graduate from the rusted Civic to last year’s Accord.
You get your first student loan bill, and look at all those numbers.
Your life turns into a stock photo tagged “young professionals”: you and your new work friends, hanging out at the bar across the street from the office. The cocktails cost twice as much as you paid when you still measured time by semesters and nights by cans of PBR.
The college boyfriend gets serious. You move into his place, spruce it up by buying your first coffee table together. Ikea lets you put half on your newest credit card.
Your internship ends before you find a permanent job. You pay minimum payments, then max out your cards again buying two days’ worth of groceries and filling your gas tank half way.
Your bank app upgrades to a new feature that combines all your balances — the shiny Nordstrom card with the Visa and the Chase Freedom you were only supposed to use for emergencies — and tells you that somehow you owe people seven thousand dollars.
Your boyfriend offers to cover the rent for a while. You get a job a few months later, but you’re that many loan payments behind. Your first paycheck feels like a breath of air that gets sucked right out of your lungs.
Your new boss, who seems nice, calls you in his office, shows you a picture of his kids. He jokes about his son, then as you’re laughing, he puts his hand on your arm, gives you a little squeeze. You smile it off.
You wait to pay the electric bill while you’re gathering up the half you owe, and the lights go out. On your phone you see the email about the $50 late fee. Your boyfriend asks how you could be so stupid. “I am not stupid,” you say. You would never be with someone who called you names, but you would never be able to make first, last, and deposit right now, either.
You say yes to payday P.F. Chang’s with your new co-workers, because you want to make friends, your turkey sandwich sounds boring, and what’s one more charge? You buy a halter dress you know you can’t afford, because it makes you look like the successful young woman you want everyone to think you are.
Your boss tells you that you look nice in that dress, asks you to do a spin. Just to get the moment over with, you do.
Your boyfriend asks you how much you paid for it, says it makes you look chubby. You lock yourself in the bathroom until he bangs on the door so hard you think he must have hurt himself. After he falls asleep, you search Craigslist for places, and can’t believe how expensive rent’s gotten around town. You erase your Internet history and go to sleep.
A few weeks later, your boss calls a one-on-one in his office, walks up behind you, and stands too close. His breath fogs your neck. His hand crawls up your new dress. You squirm away. He says, “Sorry, I thought…”
You know what to do. You’re just shocked to find you’re not doing it. You are not telling him to fuck off. You are not storming out. All you’re doing is math. You have $159 in the bank and your car payment and your maxed out credit cards and you’ll die before you ask your dad for a loan again and it all equals one thought: I need this job.
“It’s ok,” you hear your voice saying. “Just forget it.” You scurry out of the room, survey the office half full of women, and wonder how many of them have secrets like the one you’re about to keep.
At the apartment, your best guy friend calls. After you hang up, your boyfriend says you laugh too much with him, that you’re flirting with him, probably sleeping with him. You say it’s not like that. You yell, he yells. You try to leave, he blocks your way. When you struggle to get by, he grabs your wrist in the exact way they pretended to in self-defense class, and you know to go for the eyes, but you don’t know how to go for his eyes. He yanks you back until you fall and crack the coffee table.
He seems so sorry, cries, even, so that night you lie down in the same bed. You stare up at the dark and try to calculate how long it would take you to save up the cash to move out. Telling yourself that he’s sorry, convincing yourself it was an accident, discounting this one time because he didn’t hit you, exactly, seems much more feasible than finding the money, with what you owe every month. The next time you go out as a couple, his arm around your shoulders, you look at all the other girlfriends and imagine finger-sized bruises under their long sleeves.
Wait. This story sucks. If it were one of those Choose Your Own Adventures, here’s where you’d want to flip back, start over, rewrite what happens to you.
You graduated college and you’re a grown-ass woman now. Tina Fey is your hero. Beyoncé, your preacher.
If any man ever hit you, if anyone ever sexually harassed you, you’d tell him to fuck right off. You want to be, no, you will be the kind of woman who can tell anyone to fuck off if a fuck off is deserved, so naturally you start a Fuck Off Fund.
To build this account, you keep living like you lived as a broke student. Drive the decade-old Civic even after the fender falls off. Buy the thrift store clothes. You waitress on Saturdays, even though you work Monday through Friday. You make do with the garage sale coffee table. It’s hard, your loan payments suck, but you make girl’s night an at-home thing and do tacos potluck.
You save up a Fuck Off Fund of $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, then enough to live half a year without anyone else’s help. So when your boss tells you that you look nice, asks you to do a spin, you say, “Is there some way you need my assistance in the professional capacity or can I go back to my desk now?”
When your boyfriend calls you stupid, you say if he ever says that again, you’re out of there, and it’s not hard to imagine how you’ll accomplish your getaway.
When your boss attempts to grope you, you say, “Fuck off, you creep!” You wave two middle fingers in the air, and march over to HR. Whether the system protects you or fails you, you will be able to take care of yourself.
When your boyfriend pounds the door, grabs your wrist, you see it as the red flag it is, leave a post-it in the night that says, “Fuck off, lunatic douche!” You stay up in a fancy hotel drinking room service champagne, shopping for apartments, and swiping around on Tinder.
Once your Fuck Off Fund is built back up, with your new, better job, you pay cash for the most bad ass black leather skirt you can find, upgrade to the used but nicer convertible you’ve always wanted, and start saving to go to Thailand with your best friend the next summer.
Yes, that’s a better story.
It’s a story no one ever told me.
It’s the kind I’d hope for you.
Paulette Perhach has been published at Salon.com, The Journal, and various other newspapers and magazines. She collaborated with the Hugo House writing center to produce The Writer’s Welcome Kit, an online course that helps new writers figure out where to start. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook if you’d like.
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Bugs Bunny could singlehandedly defeat Thanos by dressing up as a TSA agent and setting up a metal detector in the middle of the battlefield saying that all metal objects must be removed if you want to pass on through now stick around for my 2,000 word essay on just how effectively he would convince The Mad Titan to comply
“For shame, doc! Dontcha know we got other folks waiting?”
(Thanos looks behind him and sees dozens of Bugs Bunnies dressed as angry yelling travelers with huge bags of luggage. Thanos rubs his neck guiltily and begins sliding off the gauntlet)
I felt compelled
Is Bugs Bunny some kind of trickster god? Is he an Old One? Who is he
This is a video of a newly recognized species of bird-of-paradise (the Vogelkop Superb bird-of-paradise) from Papua, New Guinea trying to impress a lady with a fancy dance and his iridescent plumage. Admittedly, those were some solid dance moves. The female is not impressed though and flies off. I can't say I blame her, the iridescent plumage on his face makes him look like some sort of creepy phantom bird. And who wants to raise a family with a ghost bird? Why are you raising your hand?
Keep going for the video.
El 6 de agosto de 1991 Tin Berners–Lee, ahora Sir Tim Berners–Lee hacía pública la primera página web. Era parte de un proyecto suyo propuesto en marzo de 1989 que tenía como objetivo poder compartir información entre grupos y personas que utilizaban distintos sistemas, incompatibles entre sí.
Competía con otros sistemas con objetivos parecidos como Gopher, muy popular en aquella época. Pero a diferencia de éste, por el que la Universidad de Minesotta decidió empezar a cobrar en febrero de 1993, el 30 de abril de 1993 el CERN, que es dónde trabajaba Tim Berners-Lee entonces, anunció que la web y sus protocolos asociados pasarían a ser del dominio público.
Y el resto, como suele decirse, es historia, hasta el punto de que para muchas personas la web es Internet… aunque hoy en día el mismísimo Tim Berners–Lee opina que la web está en peligro.
In this comic, artist Julia Lepetit from Dorkly takes a look at what getting a new game was like back when we were younger vs how it is now that we’re adults.
César Hidalgo, docente chileno del MIT con vasta experiencia en el manejo de datos, ha hecho noticia, entre otras cosas, por desarrollar el proyecto DataChile, una moderna plataforma que integra, visualiza y distribuye datos públicos chilenos. Ahora, otro proyecto en una dirección parecida quiere sustituir a los políticos por modelos de inteligencia artificial.
Tal como se lee. El físico de la UC está trabajando en una tecnología que permita que la participación política sea a través de una inteligencia artificial. En una entrevista dada a El Mercurio, Hidalgo comentó que trabaja en una suerte de político “avatar”:
Imagínate un futuro en el cual cada persona tiene un senador personalizado, pero ese senador personalizado no es una persona, es un software, un agente de inteligencia artificial, que toma datos sobre tus hábitos de lectura, sobre tus interacciones en redes sociales, tu test de personalidad, información que tú le provees a esa persona virtual para que te represente cada vez que una ley o una legislación se va a votar.
Esta IA tendrá la capacidad de analizar los datos de la persona y cruzarla con las legislaciones. De esta forma, se tendrá un veredicto más acertado, “suprimiendo” las interrogantes o ambigüedades que pudiesen presentar los políticos de carne y hueso. Hidalgo también quiere que en un futuro esta IA tome decisiones automáticamente por nosotros.
Uno puede llegar a un mundo donde se pueda tener una participación directa que incluya al 100% de las personas, si es que uno sacrifica ese supuesto de que los representantes tienen que ser de carne y hueso.
La propuesta, se lanza en un momento donde entidades como Cambridge Analytica han hecho estragos con los sistemas democráticos. Y no solo en Estados Unidos o Reino Unido; en Chile, el marketing político y el uso del big data para manejar las elecciones, también es un hecho. Recordemos el caso de Instagis y el electo Sebastián Piñera.
En cualquier caso, se abren interrogantes sobre los alcances del término “político” para el proyecto. Así mismo, entran a colación temas como la verdadera efectividad del voto electrónico y la “capacidad” actual de las inteligencias artificiales, cuyo concepto de inteligencia se ha cuestionado. ¿Crees que sería viable un proyecto de este tipo?
Allways wondered why I feel embarassed when I did some little stupid thing (stupid for others, not for me), and now I see it was not for me, it was for others.
Honestly something that bothers me more than most things is having my compassion mistaken for naivety.
I know that another fish might eat this bullfrog right after I spend months rehabilitating it.
I know that turning a beetle back onto its legs won’t save it from falling over again when I walk away.
I know that there is no cosmic reward waiting for my soul based on how many worms I pick off a hot sidewalk to put into the mud, or how many times I’ve helped a a raccoon climb out of a too-deep trashcan.
I know things suffer, and things struggle, and things die uselessly all day long. I’m young and idealistic, but I’m not literally a child. I would never judge another person for walking by an injured bird, for ignoring a worm, or for not really caring about the fate of a frog in a pond full of, y’know, plenty of other frogs.
There is nothing wrong with that.
But I cannot cannot cannot look at something struggling and ignore it if I may have the power to help.
There is so much bad stuff in this world so far beyond my control, that I take comfort in the smallest, most thankless tasks. It’s a relief to say “I can help you in this moment,” even though they don’t understand.
I don’t need a devil’s advocate to tell me another fish probably ate that frog when I let it go, or that the raccoon probably ended up trapped in another dumpster the next night.
I know!!!! I know!!!!!!! But today I had the power to help! So I did! And it made me happy!
So just leave me alone alright thank u!!!!
THIS.
I heard a story about this, a parable I guess.
There was a big storm and a ton of starfish were washed onto the beach, stranded much further up than they could get back and beginning to bake in the post-storm sunshine. A little girl was walking down the beach, picking up starfish and throwing them back into the sea. Some guy comes up and asks her what she’s doing. “Saving the starfish,” she says.
He looks around at the huge beach and the hundreds of starfish, and says “You can’t possibly save them all. I’m afraid you’re not gonna make much of a difference.”
She throws another starfish back into the ocean, and replies “It made a difference to that one.”
Yeah, I mean, we know we can’t change all the things. But have you ever noticed how much better life is when you’re around people who change things when they can?
Kindness is a choice. Even if it’s small, it’s worth it.
This is what I’m talking about, when I say that kindness and compassion do not equate with ignorance, stupidity, or naivety. Being cynical does not make someone more intelligent or more worldly.
Kindness is not weakness.
Kindness is brave. Especially when you also know that your kindness might not be returned, may even be met with anger or cruelty. It’s reaching out with an open hand, knowing that it’s just as likely to be bitten as it is to be held.
Kindness is hard. If you can’t find it in yourself to be kind, then fine. But don’t make it more difficult for those that can.
Kindness is a discipline, a skill like anything else. Don’t think you can simply be nice the odd time and call yourself kind. Kind takes work, ethic, perseverance. It must be pursued even in the darkest of times. Mercy is for those who deserve it the least and vows are for the times when it is most difficult to withstand.
If you aren’t pursuing it every day, then you’re not kind. You’re occasionally nice.
When you are deeply addicted to drugs or alcohol, you pretty well know how the craving and yearning for getting intoxicated overpower your senses. At some point in time, you want to give up your addiction, break the shackles and get back to life, but to no avail. This is what the chronic nature of substance abuse does to you; it just takes a turn for the worse – a condition called “relapse”. In simple words, the term relapse refers to a person stopping the use of drugs or alcohol for a period of time and then starting to use again.
On the face of it, conquering substance abuse seems difficult and challenging, but it is certainly not impossible. With the right kind of treatment, support and direction, you can defeat addiction along with self-help and determination. If you have already tried and failed to overcome substance abuse, don’t think there’s no way out. However, the road to recovery is not that easy either; but with a sheer willpower and a strong resolve you are bound to succeed.
Here are some powerful ways to overcome chronic substance abuse:
Understand your cravings
Being aware of your craving and knowing how to manage it is a constructive way to stay on track with your recovery from addiction. During the process of recovery, many people assume that cravings are a sign of relapsing. The truth is you only relapse when you revert back to using a substance to ostensibly cope with life stress and demands. It is quite natural that you feel that strong desire of getting intoxicated from time to time. The effort of eliminating cravings, therefore, is futile, rather you should recognize when your craving cycle begins and curb it before it pulls you in a downward spiral. Typically craving cycle works in three phases – trigger response, obsessive thinking, and full-blown craving. However, powerful these symptoms might be, the craving cycle is definitely not beyond your control. The key is to nip it in the bud the moment trigger response begins.
Find an alternative source of pleasure
There are many reasons why people turn to drugs and alcohol, and all of them can be fulfilled with other activities. So you can still experience your life’s blessings without abusing substances. Since everyone wants to feel good and changing societal norms have become such that one naturally gets drifted towards mind-altering substances, so you have to understand that there are other ways of enjoying life. Drug and alcohol intake encourage your brain to release dopamine; however when the substance abuse becomes overwhelmed with time, the release of dopamine becomes less and less, and you become deeply indulged. As a result, cravings get harder to handle. Therefore, you need to fill your life with a wide variety of fun and engaging activities that will make you feel satisfied and happy.
Seek professional intervention
Quitting drugs and alcohol cold turkey is often very difficult; therefore it is better to look out for professional intervention. The National Council on Alcoholism and drug dependence defines intervention as a “professionally directed education process resulting in face-to-face meeting of family members and friends along with the person in trouble with drugs and alcohol. When you find the best interventionist, it will be easier for you and your family through the initial recovery process and finally bring about positive change. Since quitting cold turkey might exacerbate side effects and relapse, medical supervision will be the best bet for you. The different treatment options available in the intervention are: rapid detox, inpatient/outpatient treatment, and drug/alcohol rehab. In addition to that, counseling is also very important part of substance abuse treatment.
Change your lifestyle
If you have determined to overcome your drug/alcohol addiction once and for all, you need to change your lifestyle for better. You have to overhaul everything from your daily routine to the way you handle daily stress and down to the family and friends that you rely on for support and guidance. To that effect, following a healthy routine is very important for you to give a new lease of life to yourself. Apart from that, physical activity and exercise can prove highly effective ways in fighting substance abuse and getting back to life. You should focus on both cardiovascular exercise and strength training.
Stay away from high-risk situations
In order to overcome your cravings, you need to distance yourself from people and situations that encourage addictions. You have to say no to your former drinking buddies, and instead surround yourself by the people who have a positive influence on you. If you are fighting chronic alcoholism, just avoid social gatherings and stopping by bars, while staying connected to friends who don’t drink. You need to eliminate those people, places, and things that are triggered for relapse. The reason for this is simple: you need to make it as easy on you as possible to stay sober.
Final Words
Overcoming substance abuse is difficult and there are not doubts about that, but taking proper steps and availing right kind of support will help you defeat your cravings. Sincerely follow the above five steps and you will see the results.
Los cambios de temperatura nos rodean constantemente. Grandes o pequeñas, las fluctuaciones térmicas forman parte de nuestro día a día: son, pese a los esfuerzos de los científicos, una enorme fuente de energía sin explotar. Hasta ahora que un equipo de investigadores del MIT parece haber encontrado la forma de sacarles jugo.
Este sistema podría usarse para alimentar sensores o cacharros "de la nada". Han conseguido extraer energía de oscilaciones naturales como las del día a la noche y, solo con eso, podríamos mantener pequeños dispositivos en funcionamiento durante años.
Una enorme cantidad de energía a nuestro alrededor
No es la primera que se intenta generar energía a partir de los cambios de temperatura. Se han utilizado otros métodos, pero ninguno dado resultados satisfactorios. La clave estaba en aumentar la efusividad térmica. La efusividad es una combinación entre capacidad para conducir el calor y capacidad para almacenarlo. Normalmente, cuanto mejor conducen el calarlos metales, menor calor pueden acumular.
Con una combinación de materiales (que, por cierto, incluye el grafeno) han conseguido el nivel óptimo de efusividad y crear un "resonador térmico": un dispositivo que captura calor en un lado y lo irradia en el otro. Mientras ambos lados intentan alcanzar un equilibrio, el dispositivo captura esa energía
“Básicamente, inventamos este concepto de la nada. Hemos construido el primer resonador térmico” explicaba Michael Strano, uno de los investigadores. Este sistema no solo es el más eficiente que hemos encontrado, sino que permite adaptarse a periodos específicos de variación de temperatura.
Es cierto que no se generan grandes cantidades de energía, pero sí las suficientes para mantener en funcionamiento pequeños dispositivos en casi cualquier sitio en el que haya cambios térmicos. Eso lo convierte en una herramienta muy útil para lugares poco accesibles, pero también en una pieza clave en la exploración planetaria.
by Andrew Liszewski on Sploid, shared by Hudson Hongo to Gizmodo
How many arduous slideshows of your friends’ trips to Iceland have you had to sit through? Too many, right? After watching this stunning collection of timelapses that Martin Heck captured while briefly touring the country, I’m officially drawing the line and raising the bar when it comes to Icelandic vacation videos…
If you’ve had unprotected sex and are afraid of possibly being at risk for HIV, please go to the emergency room and ask about POST EXPOSURE PROPHYLAXIS.
Works for up to 48 - 72 hours after exposure to HIV.
BOOST!
I wouldn’t need this but this is actually really cool and I’d like to share it in case anyone might need it.
If you see this on your dash REBLOG REBLOG REBLOG!!!! You could save a life
SAVE A LIFE 🔃🔃🔃🔃🔃🔃🔃🔃
There’s a FDA approved daily medication called Truvada, or the PrEP treatment, that is 92-99% effective in preventing the contraction of HIV.
Private insurance and Medicaid cover it. You can also get it for free in a lot of high risk cities like Atlanta, NY, and San Fransisco.
It’s the same cocktail they give to medical professionals who have had contaminated needle sticks/blood splashes from potentially infected blood. Very effective.
BOOST !!!!!
Please boost. You may think you’ll never need it, but you never know what might happen in your life
Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval, uno de los más grandes e influyentes poetas (anti) de la literatura universal e hispanoaméricana, falleció este martes 23 de enero de 2018 a los 103 años de edad. El nacido en San Fabián de Alico en la Provincia de Ñuble en Chile, hermano mayor de Violeta, de Roberto, de Lalo, de Caupolicán, de Elba, de Tony Canarito e hijo de Nicanor y Rosa Clarisa Sandoval, nos dejó imaginariamente como uno de sus textos más célebres.
En 1933 Nicanor Parra entró a estudiar al Instituto Pedagógico de Chile, donde cursó Matemáticas y Física. Gracias a una beca otorgada por el Institute of International Education, en 1943 viajó a Estados Unidos para estudiar un posgrado en mecánica avanzada en la Universidad Brown.
Volvió Nicanor a Estados Unidos entre 1945 y 1946, como físico especialista en indeterminación y relatividad, y fue profesor titular de Mecánica Racional en la Universidad de Chile. En 1948, fue nombrado director interino de la Escuela de Ingeniería de dicha casa de estudios, cargo que ocuparía durante veinte años.
En 1949, gracias a una beca del Consejo Británico, se fue a estudiar cosmología por dos años a Oxford, Inglaterra, con el connotado científico Edward Arthur Milne.
Premio Nacional de Literatura en 1969 y Premio Cervántes en 2011, nunca recibió un Nobel por su anti-obra y sus famosos artefactos.
NICANOR PARRA, YO SOY EL INDIVIDUO
No es menester de este redactor contar más de la historia de Nicanor Parra, más bien la admiración profunda por su obra simplemente me hace escribir estas líneas y preparar una antología tan breve como significativa de lo que fueron sus palabras.
Porque Nicanor, tus 103 años en este anti-mundo no pasaron desapercibidos, más bien transformaste la ironía y el lenguaje popular en arte.
Fueron tus artefactos ingeniosa muestra de tu vida en la tierra, esa mirada risueña y malhumorada a la vez, esa contradicción permanente.
NICANOR PARRA Y SU ANTIPOESÍA
Nicanor Parra le habló al espacio y a Yuri Gagarin con este poema, y por acá iniciamos un gran viaje:
Las estrellas se juntan alrededor de la tierra
Como ranas en torno de una charca
A discutir el vuelo de Gagarin.
Ahora sí que la sacamos bien:
¡Un comunista ruso
Dando de volteretas en el cielo!
Las estrellas están muertas de rabia
Entretanto Yuri Gagarin
Amo y señor del sistema solar
Se entretiene tirándoles la cola.
Pero hay otras frases que simplemente dejan a Nicanor Parra en el olimpo de la palabra. Acá fragmentos escogidos.
SOLILOQUIO DEL INDIVIDUO
Yo soy el Individuo.
Formas veía en la obscuridad,
Nubes tal vez,
Tal vez veía nubes, veía relámpagos,
A todo esto habían pasado ya varios días,
Yo me sentía morir;
Inventé unas máquinas,
Construí relojes,
Armas, vehículos,
Yo soy el Individuo.
Apenas tenía tiempo para enterrar a mis muertos,
Apenas tenía tiempo para sembrar,
Yo soy el Individuo.
Años más tarde concebí unas cosas,
Unas formas,
Crucé las fronteras
y permanecí fijo en una especie de nicho,
En una barca que navegó cuarenta días,
Cuarenta noches,
Yo soy el Individuo.
Luego vinieron unas sequías,
Vinieron unas guerras,
Tipos de color entraron al valle,
Pero yo debía seguir adelante,
Debía producir.
Produje ciencia, verdades inmutables,
Produje tanagras,
Di a luz libros de miles de páginas,
Se me hinchó la cara,
Construí un fonógrafo,
La máquina de coser,
Empezaron a aparecer los primeros automóviles,
Yo soy el Individuo.
Alguien segregaba planetas,
¡Árboles segregaba!
Pero yo segregaba herramientas,
Muebles, útiles de escritorio,
Yo soy el Individuo.
Se construyeron también ciudades,
Rutas
Instituciones religiosas pasaron de moda,
Buscaban dicha, buscaban felicidad”
SINFONIA DE CUNA
Muerto de la risa
Dije good bye sir,
Siga su camino,
Que le vaya bien,
Que la pise el auto,
Que la mate el tren.
Ya se acabó el cuento,
Uno, dos y tres.
ES OLVIDO
Nada es verdad, aquí nada perdura,
Ni el color del cristal con que se mira.
Hoy es un día azul de primavera,
Creo que moriré de poesía,
De esa famosa joven melancólica
No recuerdo ni el nombre que tenía.
Sólo sé que pasó por este mundo
Como una paloma fugitiva:
La olvidé sin quererlo, lentamente,
Como todas las cosas de la vida.
EL HOMBRE IMAGINARIO
El hombre imaginario
vive en una mansión imaginaria
rodeada de árboles imaginarios
a la orilla de un río imaginario
De los muros que son imaginarios
penden antiguos cuadros imaginarios
irreparables grietas imaginarias
que representan hechos imaginarios
ocurridos en mundos imaginarios
en lugares y tiempos imaginarios
Todas las tardes tardes imaginarias
sube las escaleras imaginarias
y se asoma al balcón imaginario
a mirar el paisaje imaginario
que consiste en un valle imaginario
circundado de cerros imaginarios
Sombras imaginarias
vienen por el camino imaginario
entonando canciones imaginarias
a la muerte del sol imaginario
Y en las noches de luna imaginaria
sueña con la mujer imaginaria
que le brindó su amor imaginario
vuelve a sentir ese mismo dolor
ese mismo placer imaginario
y vuelve a palpitar
el corazón del hombre imaginario
Y para terminar, ese epitafio propio que tanto representa el mundo de la dualidad humana, ese camino científico, esotérico, racional, espiritual, de risa, de vino tinto, de Las Cruces y La Reina, de la Violeta y de su longevidad eterna de agradecimiento en los corazones de los millones de embutidos de ángeles y bestias que somos sus seguidores.
EPITAFIO
De estatura mediana,
Con una voz ni delgada ni gruesa
Hijo mayor de un profesor primario
Y de una modista de trastienda;
Flaco de nacimiento
Aunque devoto de la buena mesa;
De mejillas escuálidas
Y de más bien abundantes orejas;
Con un rostro cuadrado
En que los ojos se abren apenas
Y una nariz de boxeador mulato
Baja a la boca del ídolo azteca
-Todo esto bañado
Por una luz entre irónica y pérfida-
Ni muy listo detonto de remate
Fui lo que fui: una mezcla
De vinagre y aceite de comer
¡Un embutido de ángel y bestia!
“If autism isn’t caused by environmental factors and is natural why didn’t we ever see it in the past?”
We did, except it wasn’t called autism it was called “Little Jonathan is a r*tarded halfwit who bangs his head on things and can’t speak so we’re taking him into the middle of the cold dark forest and leaving him there to die.”
Or “little Jonathan doesn’t talk but does a good job herding the sheep, contributes to the community in his own way, and is, all around, a decent guy.” That happened a lot, too, especially before the 19th century.
Or, backing up FURTHER
and lots of people think this very likely,
“Oh little Sionnat has obviously been taken by the fairies and they’ve left us a Changeling Child who knows too much, and asks strange questions, and uses words she shouldn’t know, and watches everything with her big dark eyes, clearly a Fairy Child and not a Human Like Us.”
The Myth of the Changeling child, a human baby apparently replaced at a young age by a toddler who “suddenly” acts “strange and fey” is an almost textbook depiction of autistic children.
To this day, “autism warrior mommies” talk about autism “stealing” their “sweet normal child” and have this idea of “getting their real baby back” which (in the face of modern science) indicates how the human psyche actually does deal with finding out their kid acts unlike what they expected.
Given this evidence, and how common we now know autism actually is, the Changeling myth is almost definitely the result of people’s confusion at the development of autistic children.
Weirdly enough, that legend is now comforting to me.
I think it’s worth noting that many like me, who are diagnosed with ASD now, would probably have been seen as just a bit odd in centuries past. I’m only a little bit autistic; I can pass for neurotypical for short periods if I work really hard at it. I have a lack of talent in social situations, and I’m prone to sensory overload or you might notice me stimming.
But here’s the thing: life is louder, brighter and more intense and confusing than it has ever been. I live on the edge of London and I rarely go into the centre of town because it’s too overwhelming. If I went back in time and lived on a farm somewhere, would anyone even notice there was anything odd about me? No police sirens, no crowded streets that go on for miles and miles, no flickery electric lights. Working on a farm has a clear routine. I’d be a badass at spinning cloth or churning butter because I find endless repetition soothing rather than boring.
I’m not trying to romanticise the past because I know it was hard, dirty work with a constant risk of premature death. I don’t actually want to be a 16th century farmer! What I’m saying is that disability exists in the context of the environment. Our environment isn’t making people autistic in the sense of some chemical causing brain damage. But we have created a modern environment which is hostile to autistic people in many ways, which effectively makes us more disabled. When you make people more disabled, you start to see more people struggling, failing at school because they’re overwhelmed, freaking out at the sound of electric hand dryers and so on. And suddenly it looks like there’s millions more autistic people than existed before.
“…disability exists in the context of the environment.”
La idea detrás de LoliStraw es bien sencilla: reemplazar las pajitas de plástico por pajitas de un material biodegradable que realice la misma labor. De ese modo al desecharse no llegan al mar y contaminan las aguas, dejándolo todo asqueroso y peligroso para el medio ambiente.
La solución es utilizar unas algas que son comestibles – algo así como las de la comida japonesa. El material de esas algas se compacta en forma de pajita para que cumpla su función durante 24 horas desde que se sumerge en cualquier líquido – y normalmente se usará mucho menos tiempo.
Estas algas son respetuosas con el medio ambiente; de hecho absorben CO2. Cuando se han usado se pueden comer (0 calorías) y las hay en seis sabores/colores distintos. También se pueden compostar y en 60 días se integran con otros materiales orgánicos.
Según calculan sus creadores en países como los Estados Unidos se utilizan 500 millones de pajitas de plástico cada día, lo que unido a otros plásticos se convierte en 8 millones de toneladas de material contaminante y que no-biodegradable que acaba en las aguas de los océanos. Aunque su precio es bastante más caro que el de las pajitas de plástico –aunque no está muy claro todavía cuál es exactamente– dicen que resulta competitivo con el de otras alternativas. De momento ya han conseguido la financiación en Kickstarter para la primera fase, así que habrá que ver qué tal aceptación tienen cuando se pongan a la venta.
Oh, I so hope he's going to do something lithium-related!
Fuimos muchos los que nos quedamos con las ganas de ver la presentación de JB Straubel, cofundador de Tesla Motors en la última versión del FIIS. Y ahora, nos enteramos que la otra cara de Tesla está en Chile: el mismísimo Elon Musk.
Según confirmó la Policía de Investigaciones a La Tercera, el ícono de las energías renovables y la eletromovilidad está de paso por el país, aunque se desconocen los motivos específicos de su viaje. Pararelamente, personajes públicos han confirmado su arribo.
Welcome @elonmusk to Chile, the Saudi Arabia of lithium, a potential “solar country” and a leader of world economic freedom. Looking forward to travel SCL-LAX in 30 minutes in SpaceX. https://t.co/revwjfwWVw
Recordemos que Chile es uno de los países con mayor riquezas de litio, material fundamental para la fabricación de baterías, además de tener el desierto más árido del mundo, elementos que podrían haber gatillado su viaje. La obtención de materias primas para compañías como Tesla podrían ser relevantes en un futuro.
Paralelamente, la compañía mantiene el colosal proyecto Tesla Gigafactory, una planta energética gigantesca edificada en el desierto de Nevada para fabricar baterías de iones de litio. ¿Es posible que Musk haya venido a Chile para crear un nuevo Gigafactory?
Sumado a la oleada de especulaciones por redes sociales, Musk ya ha recibido invitaciones para incluir en su misteriosa agenda.
Recordemos que Musk también es fundador de SpaceX, una empresa estadounidense de transporte aeroespacial, que realiza servicios de lanzamientos espaciales y ha creado los famosos cohetes reutilizables Falcon. ¿Será que Musk planea un tour por los observatorios nacionales?
This is a video of a newly recognized species of bird-of-paradise (the Vogelkop Superb bird-of-paradise) from Papua, New Guinea trying to impress a lady with a fancy dance and his iridescent plumage. Admittedly, those were some solid dance moves. The female is not impressed though and flies off. I can't say I blame her, the iridescent plumage on his face makes him look like some sort of creepy phantom bird. And who wants to raise a family with a ghost bird? Why are you raising your hand?
Keep going for the video.
Bienvenido a #Chile Elon Musk. pic.twitter.com/byV3DcprRU