Sophianotloren

In class today, I was very pleased to expose another classroom of students to the amazing film Where Are My Children, from 1916. This pro-birth control, anti-abortion film (the two issues are connected through the lovely topic of eugenic marriages) is basically amazing, filled with all sorts of commentary about sexuality and women in the 1910s. From the acting (not only the crazy dramatic posing of the silent film but Tyrone Power–Senior!!!) to the ways that hats are used to signify the selfish frivolity of middle class women who use illegal abortion as birth control rather than breed at their husband’s will to the entire set of scenes where the wife’s brother seduces the housekeeper’s daughter, gets her pregnant, and then she dies in a botched abortion to the insane domestic violence in the slums scene, this is one jaw-dropping 65 minutes of silent film. I have been a loud advocate of this film for years. And it is available on YouTube and you should watch it. Because it makes me happy with Progressive Era weirdness.

onlinegf:

"How would you describe your internet friends?"

dollsahoy:

derinthemadscientist:

mister-boss:

fake-tumlbr:

vice-of-virtue:

doctormemelordmd:

fangirling-so-hard-rn:

nowyoukno:

Now You Know (Source)

Crows are scary
They

• use tools
• Can be taught to speak (like parrots)
• Have huge brains for birds
• like seriously their brain-to-body size ratio is equal to that of a chimpanzee
• They vocalize anger, sadness, or happiness in response to things
• they are scary smart at solving puzzles
• some ravens stay with their mates until one of them dies
• they can remember faces
• SIDENOTE HERE BECAUSE HOLY SHIT.  They did an experiment where these guys wore masks and some of them fucked with crows.  Pretty soon the crows recognized the masks = douchebag.  But the nice guys with masks they left alone.  THEN, OH WE’RE NOT DONE, NO SIR crows that WEREN’T EVEN IN THE EXPERIMENT AND NEVER SAW THE MASK BEFORE knew about mask-dudes and attacked them on sight.  THEY PASSED ON THE FUCKING INFORMATION TO THEIR CROW BUDDIES.
• They remember places where crows were killed by farmers and change their migration patterns.

Guys I’m really scared of crows now.
(q) 

Yeah but have you seen this 

YEAH! THEY ALSO PLAY FOR NO EVIDENT REASON OTHER THAN FUN AND THEY LOVE THE SNOW!
Crows are seriously the coolest birbs ever.

well, feeling the need for entertainment also kinda indicates intelligence, so. 

btw i have seen them playing in the snow for no reason many times. i loved it when they found a slope covered entirely in ice and started sliding down it together repeatedly.

I want 30 crow friends. How do I attract them to my house?

Give them food. Boom, crow friends.

My Mom once wanted to decorate the orchard kinda like a fairly land, which involved one spot of iridescent glass marbles scattered around a statue at the base of a tree.  A few months later, we discovered that the local crows had been picking up the shiny marbles and poking them into holes in a nearby dead tree.

sgdevaom:

Creepy party by DAV-19

This … this is ADORABLE.

I mean, I guess? But not really. Here’s a few things about when people say stuff like “cis het guys are fucking disgusting.”

1. When it comes to harmful comments, being told that cis heterosexual guys are shitheads is the bottom of the barrel.

Do you know why it doesn’t really bother me when I hear shitty things about cishet guys? Because on the wide fucking spectrum of gender and sexuality, we have it easiest by a fucking MILE.

We have the most privilege and the least resistance in a LOT of things. We never have to deal with our actions being called into questions and we’re allowed a stupid and ridiculous amount of wiggle rooms with ideas like “boys will be boys.” 

We can do things women would get crucified for doing. Sleeping around doesn’t make us “slutty,” it makes us “studs.” Spending a lot of time focusing on our look and style doesn’t make us “shallow,” it makes us “classy,” even though neckbeard fedora MRA dickheads have ruined that word.

So if a woman wants to call cishet guys gross, it’s kinda like calling a white dude a cracker. You can’t be racist or sexist to the people who are in power, because it’s an institutionalized thing.

2. Here’s the thing. Straight guys are kiiiinda the worst.

I’m sorry, but have you SEEN other dudes? Jesus christ, we’re fucking awful.

It’s gotten so bad that literally like 80 percent of the time I’ve begun to talk to a new girl through the internet, dating sites, tumblr or texting, they seriously make a point to say something like “holy fuck I’m so glad you can have an actual conversation.”

When I see screenshots of dudes texting it’s so fucking terrible. This “what would u do if I was there right now lol” bullshit is so disgusting, charmless, lame and fucking pathetic, it reminds me of me when I was like 18 and I fucking hate 18 year old me. He’s a sexist and a dipshit.

And that’s not even the worst of it. This isn’t even touching the sort of hatred and hostility that a LOT of men have when it comes to rejection. I’ve SEEN conversations women have had with men where, once the woman rejects the guy as politely as she can, he immediately turns on her.

As soon as he has to fathom the idea of a woman not wanting him to shove his terrible dick inside her for 20 seconds, he gets fucking furious. He insults her weight, appearance, anything he knows she might be insecure about. It’s horrible and disgusting.

This is just a SMALL part of the shitty things that cishet guys are capable of because we’re taught to think of ourselves as kings who, if the women are lucky enough, will bestow our kingly dick and balls upon them.

This isn’t even TOUCHING the dangerous ideas of the friend zone or how dehumanizing and manipulative it is, but I’ve talked about that before, mostly because I used to be one of those white knight dudes and I feel horrible about it to this day.

3. The most terrible thing to men? IS MEN.

Somehow, MRAs got this idea that feminism is about killing men and taking their place or something. That just goes to show why feminism has to exist, because somehow men’s rights activists took a movement about women and made it about them.

But here’s the thing. The terrible shit that happens to men? We pretty much do all of it to ourselves.

First of all, there’s the idea of toxic masculinity. We raise boys to believe that they have to be tough. “boys don’t cry,” we try and tell them. And because of this, they feel pressured to be tough and to feel nothing, so they’re emotionally stunted and filled with anger.

Second of all, we throw out dangerous ideas that grant them more freedom to be shitty to each other. “boys will be boys,” we say as we write off bad and violent behavior. 

Let’s look at that mixture. We’re telling young boys that they aren’t free to express their emotions in the natural way, so they end up bottling up everything. Then, we grant them the freedom to be physically and verbally aggressive to other people.

That’s a dangerous mixture.

Even beyond that, MRAs are so quick to shout “things are bad for men too” at so many things, then when presented with those ideas, they write them off as invalid.

Whenever we talk about the statistics of women who are raped and how it’s a problem and a crime of aggression, men are so quick to say things like “Men get raped too!”

But if you look on Facebook, as soon as someone posts an article about some 35 year old teacher who raped a 17 year old boy, it’ll literally only be the men who say things like “heh, that boy is so lucky” or “wish I had a teacher like that!”

do you know what it means to claim that men are also raped, and then immediately joke about how lucky it is for a man to be raped by a woman?

It means that you don’t give a fuck about other men. It means that you don’t give a fuck about other human beings. It means that literally the only reason that you said it, without caring about the men who are hurt in those crimes, is because you want to take attention away from the VASTLY higher number of women who are raped and make it about you.

That is why women need feminism.

And that is why I don’t mind seeing jokes about straight(ish) dudes like me on tumblr.

nitatyndall:

mercurialgurl:

kuvira-is-my-bae:

wonkistan:

Reader Chris passes along an article about differences in American Sign Language usage between white and African-American signers. Researchers investigating what they call Black ASL found significant variations in signs, signing space, and facial cues. They explain:

Black ASL is not just a slang form of signing. Instead, think of the two signing systems as comparable to American and British English: similar but with differences that follow regular patterns and a lot of variation in individual usage.

They hypothesize that these differences began in segregated learning environments, and continue to evolve in Black social spaces. The whole article is worth a read.

Thanks, Chris, and remember — you can submit Wonk-worthy links through our ask or via email!

ETA, 9/24/12: Many of you have brought up the use of the word “mainstream” in this infographic. Better choices definitely exist, since this word rings of othering. We appreciate your nuanced and attentive readership!

This is really cool!

this is awesome i was not aware of this

If you want more information, Dr. Joseph Hill has it: He’s Deaf himself and has a PhD in Linguistics from Gallaudet University, too, and created a really informative video about the history and structure of Black ASL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7ooYqdEdUY

(turn on Closed Captionings to understand the signs) 

vaspider:

genderfuckedover:

thewomanfromitaly:

i-am-river:

So, i read this awful article using bathroom “scare tactics,” which was claiming that trans women are potential rapists. “Men” who dress as women to gain access to women only spaces and force them self on women. This really upset me and i had a bit of a Twitter rant. They were read by others and i was urged to post them in other media also, so i am posting them here. (Edited together in easy reading format from top to bottom.)

This is the link in the first tweet about how there are no cases of a trans woman attacking a cis woman in public restrooms: Link 1.

This is the link in the second tweet about the cases where trans people are assaulted in the bathroom by cis people: Link 2.

if you’re cis and you follow me i’m gonna need you to reblog this

don’t care if you’re cis or trans, this is important.

Be an ally. Police the bathroom police.

wreckingbally:

Jeffrey Cranor on the Anti-Vaccines Nonsense

“The class-action lawsuit featuring more than 700 civilly committed sex offenders, many from Moose Lake, will go to trial in a St. Paul courtroom beginning Monday after a judge denied the state and its defendants a summary judgment earlier this week.”

Link to article

maliciousglamour:

Thierry Mugler, circa 1990’s
Model: Beverly Peele 

I’m visiting my sister and her baby 

[X]

femfreq:

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

On January 19th, I met a young man on the street named Vidal, and I asked him to tell me about the person who had influenced him the most in his life. He told me about his principal, Ms. Lopez, and he explained how she had taught him that he mattered. Over the next two weeks, I learned the story of Ms. Lopez and her school, Mott Hall Bridges Academy. By hearing the stories of MHBA students and educators, my eyes were opened to the unique challenges facing a school in an under-served community. Ms. Lopez taught me that before a student is ready for academic training, they must be made to understand that they deserve success. And that can be the hardest battle in education. Ms. Lopez always said that there was no place her students did not belong. Recently we received an invitation that proved just that.

“I was in technical school when it happened, and I was only three months from graduating. I was going to be an HVAC repairman. Then one day these two older kids asked me to come with them to Manhattan. They told me they were going to do something, and they needed a lookout. Honestly, it was just something to do. We didn’t talk about money or anything. We drove to the place and they told me to stand on the corner. There weren’t even cellphones in those days, so I don’t even know what I was supposed to be doing. The two guys went into a store, and after about five seconds I started hearing shots. They came running back out, and somebody was chasing them, shooting at them. So I ran straight home and I turned on the TV. And I saw the faces of the two guys I was with. It said they were wanted for double homicide. A couple days later, two detectives came and arrested me in front of my entire family. My mother was screaming. I didn’t think that I’d done anything wrong. The first time I met with my lawyer, she told me that she could get me life without parole, like that was a good thing. It didn’t feel real.”

“I grew up as a nerdy kid. I was a Jehovah’s Witness. People were always making fun of me. Then on the first day of high school, three older kids came up and tried to rob me and my friends. My friends ran away, so the kids knocked me to the ground and beat me badly. On that day I decided that being nerdy wasn’t working for me. I realized that being smart and intelligent wasn’t going to protect me. So I decided to stop being me. I started engaging in things, hanging around guns, stuff that I knew was wrong. I felt like the only way to survive was to not isolate myself from the pack.”

“10 years, 2 months, 7 days. It’s the only tattoo I have on my body. I was the youngest person in prison, so I withdrew into myself, and I started writing in a journal every single day. That journal became my world. I used it to figure things out, and one of the first things I realized was that I’d stopped being me. It wasn’t so much the crime that had landed me in prison. It was that I had decided to stop being me. And I needed to find that nerdy, intelligent kid that I’d once been. So I started studying in prison. Then one day I got a letter from Principal Lopez. And she told me: ‘I grew up with you. And I know that you aren’t the person they say you are. So the moment you get out of prison, you are going to come speak to my kids, because I want them to learn from your experience.’ And I immediately started crying in my cell. And sure enough, two days after I got out, she called me on the phone, and asked: ‘Why aren’t you here yet?”

Last year, 12-year-old Mikia Hutchings was faced with expulsion from her Georgia middle school and possible felony charges by the local sheriff’s department.

Her crime: writing the word “hi” on a locker room wall.

Her white friend graffiti’d even more words on the wall, yet the school handled their punishments quite differently. Mikia’s friend paid $100 in fines to the school and was suspended for a few days, but since Mikia’s grandmother couldn’t afford to pay the fine, the girl had to attend a disciplinary hearing with school administrators, spend a summer on probation and complete 16 hours of community service.

Her family has now filed a complaint with the Department of Justice, citing a violation of the Civil Rights Act.

Stories like Mikia’s are not uncommon.

A pioneering study just released by the African American Policy Forum and Columbia Law School’s Center for Intersectionality and Policy Studies shows that, when it comes to doling out punishments, school administrations are way harder on black girls than their white counterparts. Titled Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected [pdf], the study delves into the blatant racial disparities that result in black girls being more likely to fall behind in their education.

Black feminist law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, the lead author of the study, said in a statement:

As public concern mounts for the needs of men and boys of color through initiatives like the White House’s My Brother’s Keeper, we must challenge the assumption that the lives of girls and women—who are often left out of the national conversation—are not also at risk.

The study reveals many alarming statistics on how overpolicing and “zero-tolerance” policies lead to girls of color dropping out, going into low-wage work and, in some cases, ending up incarcerated.

As the chart above shows, black girls are suspended at a rate six times that of white girls (black boys are suspended three times more than white boys). The gap becomes even wider in the public school systems of major cities: In New York, black girls are suspended at 10 times the rate of white girls, while in Boston they’re suspended 11 times more. When it comes to expulsion, black girls in New York were expelled 53 times more than white girls and in Boston, 10 times more.

In the study, young girls of color often saw their zero-tolerance schools as “chaotic environments in which discipline is prioritized over educational attainment.” They were more likely to become detached from their education and less likely to earn a high school diploma.

In conjunction with the release of the study, the AAPF hosted a webinar on the criminalization of girls of color that had #BlackGirlsMatter and #WhyWeCantWait trending on social media Wednesday.

In their recommendations, the study’s authors address the dearth of research and advocacy surrounding black girls, and they urge schools to question punitive policies that ultimately lead to the detriment of black girls, their families and their communities. Policies should let black girls know that they belong in school, not out of it.

 Photos courtesy of the Black Girls Matter press kit

kellylugosisdead:

theeverydaygoth:

Beautiful.

"Regalienne"

Photography: Pascal Bunning

Styling: Elias Moussa

Makeup: Bastien Caerou

Hair: Momo Sabah

Model: Sonja Wanda

(Source: http://www.creatricemondial.com/2013/04/26/a-conversation-with-elias-moussa-fashion-designer/)

rifa:

cosrnos

:

lifeofdavo

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kierenwalkerpds:

monobeartheater:

absorr:

ultrafacts:

Source
For more posts like this, CLICK HERE to follow Ultrafacts

 Some of you are reblogging because you think its funny that programmers would talk to ducks. I’m reblogging because I think its funny picturing a programmer explaining their code, realizing what they did when they explain the bad code, then grabbing the strangling the duck while yelling “WHY WAS THE FIX THAT SIMPLE!? AM I GOING BLIND!”

AS A PROGRAMMER I CAN TELL YOU THAT THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU FUCKING DO WE HAD TO BAN THE DUCKS FROM MY CLASSES BECAUSE EVERYONE WOULD FLIP THE DUCK OR THROW IT AT A WALL OR SOMETHING WHEN THEY FIGURED OUT THE PROBLEM IN THEIR CODE

so that’s the function of a rubber duck

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I work at a startup and part of the onboarding package you get when you first start working here now includes a rubber duck. We also have a bigger version of the duck for the extra hard problems. Sometimes one duck doesn’t cut it and you need to borrow your neighbors to get more ducks on the problem. One time we couldn’t figure out why something wasn’t working right so we assembled the counsel of ducks and by the grace of the Duck Gods were we able to finally come to a solution. These ducks have saved many lives and should be respected for the heroes they are.

In my life as a technical writer/editor, I have sat down with developers, handed them a toy monster, and said "Now explain the process to the monster. I will take notes". You would be AMAZED how much clearer documentation becomes when you do that.

I’ve also handed out toy monsters as prizes for being the first person to send in feedback on a document. There is nothing quite like the sight of a tester turning to a developer, shaking a toy monster at them, and saying “I’m better than yoo-uu!”

el-hotel-bella-muerte:

twit light, the dark and mysterious story of Lord Byron

Horrible Histories is truly a blessing to British tv..

"No, I’m just a really pretentious poet."

So, when I go to the spa later this afternoon, do I want to take the novel about Lord Byron actually being a vampire? Or do I want to take the novel about Lord Byron dealing with vampires? (For those who want titles: Lord of the Dead vs. The Stress of Her Regard.)

shihlun:

Walead Beshty’s FedEx Sculptures series (2005 - present).

Walead Beshty constructs glass vitrines that are the exact dimensions of a FedEx box, and he then places the glass boxes into a FedEx box and ships it to the exhibition site. The glass sculptures then show the wear and tear of its travels through “space and time.”. This cracked surface is supposed to represent a record of the sculpture’s “hidden life” as though the sculpture were an exposure of a photograph. The FedEx boxes the sculpture is delivered in then becomes the base for the artwork. Beshty then gives the sculptures a title which consists of a record of the journey the box took to arrive at the exhibition.

To many of you, this may look like just another building created in the popular “Café Corner” style. But to those of us that were creatures of the Eighties, it’s immediately recognizable as Flynn’s, the videogame arcade featured in the 1982 pre-cyberspace pre-Matrix movie TRON.

Using fluorescent bricks and black light, Joel Baker has managed to impart his creation with the neon look and feel of the original. It has a complete interior featuring all manner of vintage arcade machines, and even the secret doorway that appeared in the 2010 follow-up TRON Legacy.

“ALERT! Roads are still closed. Still investigating suspicious package @75/85. Northbound traffic is being diverted at North Ave and Southbound traffic off 17th St.” (photo via City of Atlanta Police Department/Facebook.)

The Atlanta Police Department shut down a major traffic artery in midtown on Monday after an art project by Georgia State University (GSU) students sparked a bomb scare.

The art device, a pinhole camera fashioned from a soda can and duct taped to the 14th Street bridge over interstates 75 and 85, was spotted by a passenger in a passing car just before 2pm on Monday. The man, who wished to remain anonymous lest drivers who were ensnared in the ensuing traffic jam seek revenge, immediately called 911. Atlanta Police deployed a bomb squad to the scene, and the tin can camera was exploded.

“I felt bad for the student, because this was his art project,” the man told local NBC affiliate 11Alive. “I hope he at least got an A.”

An example of a pinhole camera fashioned from a tin can (photo by denialpolez/Flickr) (click to enlarge)

The person who most likely won’t get a passing grade after this debacle is the unnamed GSU art professor in charge of the students who installed 18 pinhole cameras around the city as part of a photography assignment. Another of the class’s DIY cameras, this one affixed to a pedestrian bridge, caused a similar police operation in the south Atlanta suburb of Hapeville.

“They totally stopped all the traffic both ways,” local business proprietor Ardina Pierre told WSB-TV. “They even stopped the train.”

In a statement posted on Facebook, GSU apologized for the misunderstanding:

Georgia State University sincerely apologizes for the traffic problems resulting yesterday from the mounting of a student camera at the 14th Street Bridge. The camera was one of 18 used by students in an art project and deployed at various locations in the city. Georgia State Police are closely cooperating with the Atlanta Police Department in the removal of all of the cameras.

The Atlanta art bomb scare of 2015 joins a proud lineage of art projects that have set off similar police deployments, from Geoffrey McGann’s overly sculptural (and therefore suspect) watch to the two University of Washington art students who set up a detonator-like box beneath a Seattle bridge.

Just great — thanks to what is possibly the greatest pull-quote ever, I’m now required to love 2/5 of ‘N Sync:

In the “Keep it 100″ portion of the show, in which panelists are asked uncomfortable questions and urged to be completely honest, Wilmore asked certified Russian cosmonaut Lance Bass the following question:

“You have an offer to do a corporate event, and if you do, they’ll pay your way into space — but the sponsor’s Chik-fil-A. They’re not trying to get rid of you, by the way, they just want you to have an awesome gay space adventure. Do you do it?”

“I’m about to be a 100 right now,” Bass replied. “Yes, I’d do it, because the first out gay in space is way bigger than hate chicken.”

Originally posted 2015-02-04 16:03:30. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Vicki Chase V for Vicki source: droolingfemme.

As many of you are already aware, California is having something of a public health crisis, due to the fact that the personal belief exemption for vaccination has been used by large numbers of people, mostly affluent, well-educated believers in “natural” child-rearing to drive immunization rates well below herd immunity levels in certain areas. The result has been epidemics of whooping cough, measles, and other totally preventable diseases.

For a couple of months now, I’ve publicly challenged any state legislator in California to put forward a bill eliminating the personal belief exemption. And now someone has:

Alarmed by the spread of disease as some parents decline to vaccinate their children, two three state lawmakers [Senator Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) and Senator Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) – and now joined by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego)] plan legislation aimed at increasing the number of youngsters who have been immunized when they start school in California.

They will propose restricting parents’ ability to obtain a “personal belief” exemption from immunization shots required in California, said people knowledgeable about the plan but unauthorized to speak publicly.

This restriction amounts to a total elimination of the personal belief exemption (hat tip to Ilissa Gold for the clarification), as you can see below:

It’s good to see state legislators bite the bullet and go for bold, progressive legislation, especially with issues where there are powerful forces who will viciously counter-attack (the problem with affluent, well-educated people is that they’re good at fighting change). So it’s incumbent on us as activists and writers to promote this effort, support Senators Pan and Allen and Assemblywoman Gonzalez and anyone else who signs onto this bill against the storm of crazy that’s about to descend on them, and push back against the inevitable anti-vaxx backlash.