drifting into the sea*

What kinds of different/fun hair colour do you think one could get away with in a professional...

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:05:33 -0400

What kinds of different/fun hair colour do you think one could get away with in a professional setting? Or should I stick to thinking about more natural-looking hair colours?

sansaofhousestark: arianne—martell: Every time I think of the black market, I actually imagine a...

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:12:33 -0400

sansaofhousestark:

arianne—martell:

Every time I think of the black market, I actually imagine a market, with little stalls selling illegal things like nuclear weapons and organs.

I need to dye my hair, and I don’t know what I want. All I know is that blonde is a no-no.

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:02:21 -0400

I need to dye my hair, and I don’t know what I want. All I know is that blonde is a no-no.

I really want Cheetos, damnit.

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:42:17 -0400

I really want Cheetos, damnit.

"We are the generation of nostalgia. We grew up in the age of transition. From hand-written letters..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 09:36:18 -0400

“We are the generation of nostalgia. We grew up in the age of transition. From hand-written letters to electronic mails. From film to digital. We were fascinated by new things, neglecting the way we spend our afternoons. Cupcakes and tea. Play-Doh and Polly Pockets. Young and naive. Technology completely changed the way we waited and we grew up too fast. The simple things in life seems more meaningful now. We grew up in the age of transition and have become the generation of nostalgia.”

- This is the best/truest thing I’ve read in so long (via thesleepingfawn)

But this explains the 90s kids

(via thebbcisslowlykillingme)

"Why is there very little utility to women’s clothing? Why don’t we get pockets which actually open?..."

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:38:46 -0400

“

Why is there very little utility to women’s clothing? Why don’t we get pockets which actually open? Why do we have to put up with the ‘false pockets’ that are frequently sewn onto women’s jackets and pants to give visual interest without ruining the ‘line’ of the garment? Why, when pockets are actually present, are they so rarely large, stable, or loose enough to accommodate a phone or a wallet? And why, given this is the case, do women go on to cop so much flack for carrying handbags around with them?

Oh wait. Is this one of those double standards which we feminists are always going on about; one of those innocuous little things which everybody just accepts because it is the norm?

Women carry handbags. It is known.

But why? I have watched my male friends get ready to go out. They slip their wallet into one pocket, their keys into another, their phone into a third pocket, and some of them even still have spare pockets large enough to carry a novel for the journey. Those of my friends who wear women’s clothes, though, face an entirely different situation. If they are wearing the right jeans or jacket, they may have up to two usable pockets (not at all guaranteed). However, in most cases they won’t have any pockets at all. Utility and style rarely meet in women’s fashion, so they grab a bag.

Contrary to all the jokes, most women don’t ‘have’ to leave the house with everything they pack in their day-to-day handbag. Most of the items in a woman’s everyday handbag are in there because, if she’s going to have to carry it anyway, she might as well make it worth her while. Excuse us for making use of the one useful item we find in our wardrobes.

”

- Kara, “The Feminist and the Handbag” (via athenasaurus)

Oh lord, don’t get me started on this. This is a little thing that highlights a big equality problem between men and women. We need the same supplies as men to do the same job. When I stocked shelves it was impossible to find pants that would hold my wallet, my box knife, my badge, my keys, my gloves (I worked dairy/frozen) and my phone. I actually ended up not carrying my wallet or keys at all. Fuck if I’m carrying a purse *ever* but that certainly wouldn’t have helped on the job.

My husband? He holds all of that plus his insulin, packets of honey in case his blood sugar drops (or a vial of glucose tablets), glucometer, headphones, markers, and pencils. With plenty of room to spare. I’ve even seen him slip paperback books into empty pockets.

When we bought sweatpants together so we could start working out? I had zero pockets. He had four. Four. When we wanted some boots for added protection working around 1.5-ton pallets and slippery surfaces, he was able to go to the nearest store and buy steel-toed, non-shock, no-slip boots in his size, no problem. I had to look online to find mine. Because women don’t work dangerous jobs. I hate shopping for clothes in general, but when it has to be online it really sucks because you never know if they will actually fit or be decent quality. Especially because, guess what, women’s sizes are far less standardized than men’s.

I’m going to guess this is all some remnant from the “women should be in the kitchen, not out in the world doing practical things” days that has held over and made it harder for us to…you know, do practical things, even nowadays. If I ever end up working a job like that again, I’ll probably just buy men’s pants and hem them for my 5-foot-tall frame, because I deserve the same supplies for my job that men do. And no, I don’t care if the men’s jeans don’t highlight the curve of my ass superbly. Do they hold up under tough conditions? Do they carry what I need carried? Practicality and efficiency only in my wardrobe, please.

(via solluxisms)

I remember watching I think it was Project Runway and the contestants had to design a new uniform for female postal workers. The one designer put utilitarian pockets on her design, and the judges yelled at her for it. They said something about it not being flattering, because you know, the key part of any uniform is not that it works for the job, but that it shows off your body in the best light possible.

(via jetpuffedmarshmallowsandsunburns)

unfollower: no see lesbians are not more accepted than gay men they’re more sexualized please do...

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:27:00 -0400

unfollower:

no see lesbians are not more accepted than gay men they’re more sexualized please do not get those 2 things confused

I tried explaining this to a coworker when we were talking about the potential stupidity I’d possibly encounter with some of my family if I ever got married (I don’t know how a lot of them would feel about it, mostly because conversations like that don’t happen much).

Basically, she said “Gay women are more socially accepted than gay men, so I’m sure you’d be fine.” and I tried to say “but no, fetishism/sexualization” and she just kind of looked at me.

tastefullyoffensive: [extrafabulouscomics]

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:02:50 -0400

tastefullyoffensive:

[extrafabulouscomics]

The Racist Origins of Modern Clown Makeup (or, just one more reason to hate clowns)

Wed, 22 May 2013 17:17:37 -0400

ianthe:

This post was asking about a potential link between the afro-style wigs and big, painted lips of the modern clown and racist caricatures, so I decided to do what any good theatre history student would do - I did some research.

SPOILER ALERT: YUP, IT’S RACIST AS FUCK

From Janet M. Davis, The Circus Age: Culture & Society Under the American Big Top:

Some circus programs contained portraits of clowns in literal blackface, with huge red mouths and bulging eyes, strumming energetically on a banjo, but often the auguste clown’s blackface was metaphorical. He created his racial identity through the act of ‘‘whitening up’’ with thick pancake.

His greasy whiteness and exaggerated bodily zones—huge red mouth, lolling, paint-encircled eyes, big fake nose, ears, and feet—made his look strikingly similar to blackface. Showmen played upon this visual connection by arguing that African American men literally were clowns because of their supposed aﬃnity for clowning and the circus. The Ringling Bros.’ route book from 1895 and 1896 contained a section, ‘‘The Plantation Darkey at the Circus,’’ which imagined—in almost orgasmic language—black men as minstrel characters.

[…]

Proprietors further conﬂated the African American man and the clown by arguing that both were completely controlled by their emotions, not reason.

Superlative examples of white manhood—the big cat tamer, the wire walker, and so forth—demonstrated little emotion during life-threatening acts. The clown, by contrast, howled in mock fear when he saw a mouse, or shrieked in pain at a mosquito bite. Showmen characterized male African American spectators in a similar vein as giddy and superstitious.

[…]

Actual big-top acts made this rhetorical relationship between the clown and the African American complete. In 1888 Eph Thompson trained the elephant John L. Sullivan at the Adam Forepaugh circus. Wearing a boxing glove at the end of his trunk, the elephant sparred with Thompson in the ring and frequently ‘‘punched’’ him so hard that Thompson went ﬂying over the ring bank.

Unlike the white trainer who dominated powerful animals, Thompson played a clownish coward—constantly vanquished by the boxing pachyderm—and consequently remained unthreatening to Euroamerican audiences. Yet Thompson still had a diﬃcult time ﬁnding employment with American shows. As a result, he moved to Europe where his career ﬂourished.

In line with the tenets of nineteenth-century romantic racialism, show-men’s portrayals of black men and clowns reﬂected contemporary representations of white women: late-nineteenth-century scientists argued that ‘‘excessive’’ emotionalism deﬁned women, racial ‘‘savages,’’ and children of all races. The German Darwinist Ernst Haeckel and the Americans Edward Drinker Cope and G. Stanley Hall were all proponents of recapitulation theory, positing that every organism repeats the life history of its ‘‘race’’ within its own lifetime, evolving through the less developed forms of its ancestors on its path to maturity. They contended that Euroamerican women and ‘‘primitives’’ remained mentally and emotionally ﬁxed in lower ancestral stages of evolution. Accordingly, only white boys were physiologically and mentally capable of reaching the highest stages of racial and gender development as fully evolved men. This line of thought used pseudoempirical phrenological evidence to claim that African American men were perpetually emotional and juvenile, just like the clown.

The painted clown acted out childish behaviors and infantile pleasures. He reveled in dirt, cried freely, openly adored the serious ‘‘adult’’ acts, and played physical pranks on everybody, from ringmaster to the audience. If playing a hobo (popularized most fully by Emmett Kelly’s ‘‘Willie’’ tramp character during the Depression, when at times nearly one-quarter of the American workforce was unemployed), the auguste clown’s persona was deﬁned by dirt. Laughing loudly at the clown’s antics perhaps transported audiences back to the unrestrained pleasures of their own collective infancy and childhood.

More than a ‘‘low Other’’ who simply represented a tantalizing version of what they were not, the unfettered clown symbolized what clock-bound, alienated adult Euroamerican men perhaps felt they had lost.

Even the red noses have their origins in racist stereotypes.

From Mikita Brottman, Funny Peculiar: Gershon Legman and the Psychopathology of Humor:

While the Native American plains tribes had their own various manifestations of the Trickster figure, the main clown type of non-Native Americans was not the August, as it was in Europe, but the character clown… After the [Civil War] ended, however, one particular style of character clown came into prominence: the Hobo.

Eric Lott describes how the Hobo figure was originally based on the blackface minstrel clowns (hence the exaggerated white mouths) who portrayed the figures of African Americans made homeless by the ravages of the Civil War.

Lott explains that the Hobo character clown is a distinctly American invention, with his tattered hat, huge white mouth, three days’ growth of beard, torn clothes, and cartoon alcoholic’s big red nose. […] It seems ironic that such mawkishly appealing personalities had their roots in the miseries of poverty and oppression and the disfigurements of alcoholism and venereal disease.

chloridecleansing: When I was confused I convinced myself I wasn’t attracted to women bc I don’t...

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:02:21 -0400

chloridecleansing:

When I was confused I convinced myself I wasn’t attracted to women bc I don’t look at them and instantly begin to sexualize them but then I realized that’s not an attraction to women thing that’s a male gaze thing.

French Kids Do Have ADHD, And French Psychiatry Is A Disgrace

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:38:45 -0400

French Kids Do Have ADHD, And French Psychiatry Is A Disgrace:

truth-has-a-liberal-bias:

On March 8, a family therapist named Marilyn Wedge, PhD published an ill-informed and poorly researched blog post, Why French Kids Don’t Have ADHD.

In the United States, 5% of school-aged children have been diagnosed with ADHD, and are taking pharmaceutical medications. In France, the percentage of kids diagnosed and medicated for ADHD is only .05%. How come the epidemic of ADHD—which has become firmly established in the United States—has almost completely passed over children in France?

She argued that it was the superior, holistic approach of French psychiatry, combined with superior French parenting techniques, that accounted for the difference. In a later post, I’ll tackle the claim of “superior French parenting”.

I left the following comment:

Marilyn Wedge, I am appalled by your naive approval of the state of child psychiatry in France. It is dominated by the outdated theories of Freud, and the post-Freudian Lacan. The disgraced and discredited Bruno Bettleheim is a hero to the French child-psychiatry establishment. […]

"Participants rated their sexual orientation on a 10-point scale, ranging from gay to straight. Then..."

Sun, 19 May 2013 19:12:27 -0400

“

Participants rated their sexual orientation on a 10-point scale, ranging from gay to straight. Then they took a computer-administered test designed to measure their implicit sexual orientation. In the test, the participants were shown images and words indicative of hetero- and homosexuality (pictures of same-sex and straight couples, words like “homosexual” and “gay”) and were asked to sort them into the appropriate category, gay or straight, as quickly as possible. The computer measured their reaction times.

The twist was that before each word and image appeared, the word “me” or “other” was flashed on the screen for 35 milliseconds — long enough for participants to subliminally process the word but short enough that they could not consciously see it. The theory here, known as semantic association, is that when “me” precedes words or images that reflect your sexual orientation (for example, heterosexual images for a straight person), you will sort these images into the correct category faster than when “me” precedes words or images that are incongruent with your sexual orientation (for example, homosexual images for a straight person). This technique, adapted from similar tests used to assess attitudes like subconscious racial bias, reliably distinguishes between self-identified straight individuals and those who self-identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.

Using this methodology we identified a subgroup of participants who, despite self-identifying as highly straight, indicated some level of same-sex attraction (that is, they associated “me” with gay-related words and pictures faster than they associated “me” with straight-related words and pictures). Over 20 percent of self-described highly straight individuals showed this discrepancy.

Notably, these “discrepant” individuals were also significantly more likely than other participants to favor anti-gay policies; to be willing to assign significantly harsher punishments to perpetrators of petty crimes if they were presumed to be homosexual; and to express greater implicit hostility toward gay subjects (also measured with the help of subliminal priming). Thus our research suggests that some who oppose homosexuality do tacitly harbor same-sex attraction.

”

- New study indicates homophobia is often a result of repressed homosexual feelings, validating what Freud posited in his concept of “reaction formation,” in which we lash out against others’ expressions of what we loathe in ourselves. (via explore-blog)

Yahoo bought Tumblr pass it on

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:31:15 -0400

mrsmosby-wannabe:

relright:

thecouscousqueen:

kenyabenyagurl:

thinksquad:

Announcement coming Monday

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN

I smell ads coming if this is true

I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT

I’m still skeptical as to whether this is even a real thing.

If it proves to be true, as much as I believe it will bring nothing but awfulness, what if they insisted on the implementation of all those changes most tumblr-ers want?

Photo

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:14:51 -0400

Photo

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:19:26 -0400

The IRS and the Real Scandal

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:21:49 -0400

robertreich:

“This systematic abuse cannot be fixed with just one resignation, or two,” said David Camp, the Republican chairman of the House tax-writing committee, at an oversight hearing Friday morning dealing with the IRS. “This is not a personnel problem. This is a problem of the IRS being too large, too intrusive, too abusive.”

David Camp has it wrong. There has been a “systematic” abuse of power, but it’s not what Camp has in mind. The real scandal is that:

The IRS has interpreted our tax laws to allow big corporations and wealthy individuals to make unlimited secret campaign donations through sham political fronts called “social welfare organizations,” like Karl Rove’s “Crossroads,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and “Priorites USA.”

This campaign money has been used to bribe Congress to keep in place tax loopholes like the “carried interest” rule that allows the managers of hedge funds and private equity funds to treat their income as capital gains, subject only to low capital gains taxes rather than ordinary income taxes, and other loopholes that allow CEOs to get special tax treatment on giant compensation packages that now average $10 million a year.

Despite a growing number of billionaires and multi-millionaires using every tax dodge imaginable – laundering their money through phantom corporations and tax havens — the IRS’s budget has been cut by 17 percent since 2002, adjusted for inflation. To manage the $594.5 million in additional cuts required by the sequester, the agency will furlough each of its more than 89,000 employees for at least five days this year.

Finally, all of this, coming at a time when the Supreme Court has deemed corporations “people” under the First Amendment and when income and wealth are more concentrated at the top than they’ve been in over a hundred years, has enabled America’s financial elite to further entrench their wealth and power and thereby take over much of American democracy.

This is the real scandal and the real abuse, Congressman Camp. Your indignation over the IRS’s alleged “targeting” of conservative groups is a distraction from the main event.

manicmundane: thedailywhat: Coming Soon of the Day: Neil...

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:14:53 -0400

manicmundane:

thedailywhat:

Coming Soon of the Day: Neil Degrasse Tyson Will Host the Sequel of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos

Though it’s been quietly in the works since 2011, Fox has officially confirmed that Carl Sagan’s monumental 1970 sci-ed miniseries Cosmos: A Personal Voyage will be getting an updated sequel next year, which will consist of 13 episodes produced by Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane and hosted by one of the Internet’s most celebrated astrophysicists, Neil Degrasse Tyson. Fox is hoping the show will have as much as of cultural impact as Carl Sagan’s original series, which still remains one of the most watched PBS series in the world to this day.

(Image by Richard Davies)

—not sure how I feeeeeel about this—

scarymerry: you-should-be-studying: norsegays: astrolope: Peo...

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:17:38 -0400

scarymerry:

you-should-be-studying:

norsegays:

astrolope:

People being angry about ~dem gays~ on Target’s Facebook.

I just want to give my two cents on this and tell you a story.

A couple weeks ago, I was hired at Target. I have a job at Target. Not a big deal right?

It is a big deal because i’m a transman.

It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that it’s hard for me, my brothers, and sisters to get a job. There are legal restraints regarding the job and if you don’t pass, it’s hard to be taken seriously at a job interview.

Right on the application, it asks what your preferred name is. It also asks if there is anything that target should know. I put the fact that I am a transman, expecting not to get a call because usually when you put that down, people will throw out the application. I got TWO interviews.

At the interview, they asked me about it. I told them I am on hormones and they told me that they didn’t care. Not in the sense that they don’t emotionally care, but that it didn’t matter. I was male and that’s all that mattered. They also told me that they give sex same couples benefits in states that do not recognize them as a married couple.

At my job orientation, I was not misgendered once. Even my supervisors who weren’t sure of my gender avoided pronoun use, which I found only happens when you’ve had pronoun training. They gave me a name tag with my preferred name and didn’t ask questions. I felt safe and respected, which is huge for a trans* person.

TLDR: Target is amazing not just for the LGB, but also the T. Shop there for the rest of your life.

I’ve been contemplating for a while whether or not it’s worth it to spend my money at Target, since all I do is waste time and money buying a bunch of useless crap and junk food there.

Totally worth it. I’m happy to support any business that treats its employees and customers that well.

I get my shoes almost exclusively there and this makes me feel better about spending money there.

I’ve become quite a fan of onion in foods since I’ve been cooking for Jessica. Also, I...

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:28:06 -0400

I’ve become quite a fan of onion in foods since I’ve been cooking for Jessica. Also, I never realized how much I like pepper in cooking, either.

tedx: Michael McDaniel & Jared Ficklin are designers at...

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:17:04 -0400

tedx:

Michael McDaniel & Jared Ficklin are designers at frog design, a firm in Austin, TX responsible for a multitude of products, from ovens to compost systems to apps to breast scanners. At this year’s TEDxAustin, the pair introduced their plan to re-invent urban mass transit through flying cars: high-flying gondolas running via cables stretched over cities — a little bit like ski lifts.

How would this crazy idea work? From their talk:

What if I told you — in the whole area of mass transit, there is one industry that competes on the basis of how many people they can carry per hour without a schedule? Further, they do it moving only 1 to 6 people at a time.

I’m talking about the ski industry: the Zillertal ski area in Austria — they hold the record for lift capacity. They have a system of 174 chairs and gondolas that can move 298,000 people per hour. So if you ran that on a 24-hour cycle, that would be 74 million people a day,and if they weren’t skiing down, and you were carrying them down, that’d be 14 million people per day. That’s a lot of people. And to put those max capacity numbers into perspective, the New York City subway only has to carry 5.3 million people on a given weekday…

Now we’re not exactly saying chairlifts are the best solution for urban transit — there would be a lot of dropped iPhones — but if you were looking for inspiration on how to move a lot of people without a schedule, the ski industry is an excellent place to start. And one innovation you’re going to find there is called the high-speed detachable gondola.

Now these are essentially 4-6 person cars that cruise along at about 12 to 15 MPH attached to a cable supported by towers. For all practical purposes, they are flying cars. So they’re called “detachable” because as they come in through a station, they actually let go of the cable — release from the cable — and slow down to just below walking speed (about 2 MPH) as they glide through the station. Now this allows people to easily load and unload off the cars across a flat, level platform. Then the cars essentially accelerate back up and to line speed and reattach to the cable.

Now, the operation is continuous — it doesn’t stop — so you catch the first available car as it drifts through the station. Some of the other advantages of it being a detachable car is that, essentially, we can add and remove vehicles to the line in real time. Now this really eases maintenance, cleaning, and also helps us save energy by matching peak demand…All of this together forms a new form of mass transit for cities called urban cable.

The Wire is our vision for a user-centered, practical mass transit system for cities like Austin...The Wire can cover the exact same routes as [urban light rail], but it can go places surface rail simply can’t go.

…Imagine flying into Austin, and catching The Wire at the airport. The stop could be located right on top of the attached parking garage, so you would simply walk and roll your luggage right on the first available car and fly out. There’s not waiting and no schedules because it’s constantly in motion…there’s no stoplights in the air; these things run constantly…The ability to put [stations] in the air means they can sit on top of parking garages or they could be over the top of intersections…You could have one that had a rooftop pocket park, or one integrated with retail.

With all these possibilities, it creates new opportunities for public / private partnerships. You could even envision a stop integrated into the lower floors of an existing high-rise building. This means more ways to share costs. It encourages smart growth. It allows us to build community around commuting.

For more information on urban cable and The Wire, watch Michael and Jared’s entire talk, “A mass transport system in the sky” from TEDxAustin 2013.