My Bedroom Wall:

fastcompany: The Takeaway: Don’t let critics destroy a great...

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:07:35 -0500

The Takeaway: Don’t let critics destroy a great idea.

The three women behind the THINX, a fashionable underwear line designed for a person’s menstrual cycle, wanted to launch an untested idea in a field dominated by corporate giants like Hanes, Fruit of the Loom, and Victoria’s Secret.

After a few years of perseverance and research, THINX products are beginning to hit store shelves, and early sales have already eclipsed this year’s projections.

Here’s the scoop.

This is awesome!

Discovery, Animal Planet, and History Channel exposed for killing animals for profit

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:00:08 -0500

Discovery, Animal Planet, and History Channel exposed for killing animals for profit:

ikenbot:

jtotheizzoe:

climateadaptation:

These channels are failing the spirit of conservationism and education. They are failing inspiring awe in young people. Failing much needed inspiration in a very confused and conflicted world.

These shows are failing their core values, their main purpose, which is leadership in environmentalism and cultural education. Far worse, they are failing millions of young people - millions - who look up to them.

Please join me in asking Discovery, Animal Planet, and the History Channels to stop, apologize, and correct.

That’s an important read up there, folks. These “reality” shows are feeding an outdated and unscientific view of predator species. These are channels founded on principles of education and conservation (TLC, of course, left the building years ago). Are they willing to sacrifice that for what appears to be gratuitous bloodsport?

Like any media, you can vote with your eyeballs. And if you support any kind of rights for wild animals and natural spaces, you can not support these programs. If the account above is true, shame on these networks.

It speaks to part of a larger issue with nature films. The amazing footage we see in shows like Africa, Planet Earth, and Frozen Planet is rarely the result of serendipity. It involves years of careful research and preparation to maximize the chances of capturing nature’s majesty on camera, and what is captured is highly edited to create story, drama and emotion. These are uniquely human interests, and nature doesn’t include them in her original script.

That’s not to say we are being fleeced all the time. People like Sir David Attenborough take these concerns very seriously, and constantly strive to find the balance between entertainment and true nature in every varying instance. What we watch is real. But is it REAL?

I wonder how many people realize that, for instance, the famous polar bear birth scene from Frozen Planet was filmed in a zoo? Disney’s adorable Chimpanzee movie was not a documentary, but rather spliced together to create an emotional tale of adoption. Jason Goldman put together a great collection of opinions on the matter.

How far can we take allowances to deliver good edutainment before we are delivering bad science? The “reality” shows surely fail the test. But the others? What do you think?

Damn, I mean considering these are the same dudes putting out irrelevant series after another it feels like their purpose is to flood the brains of anyone watching with mindless, pointless bullshit.. this comes to no surprise. Still pretty damn fucked up though.

Photo

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:58:22 -0500

"Yes, false rape accusations happen. Run the protocol anyway. I’ve heard that perhaps the military..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:55:02 -0500

“Yes, false rape accusations happen. Run the protocol anyway. I’ve heard that perhaps the military has the highest number of ‘em. True or not, RUN THE PROTOCOL ANYWAY. Because in 15 years of investigating rape accusations, I can count those that panned out as false on one hand. Meanwhile, the one time I almost skipped the protocol, the one time I almost didn’t believe a petty officer, because I was naive as an investigator and a young woman, because her commanding officer described her as “a party girl, always late, always out drinking, don’t bother with this one”, she turned out to be the victim of one of the most brutal assaults I’ve ever investigated. She shouldn’t have still been -alive-, let alone up and making the accusation. So let me repeat: five false accounts in fifteen years. And one time I almost failed a woman ‘cause of the bullshit way it’s normal to talk about us. Take your shipmates’ word, and then run the protocol. Every. Single. Time.”

- - JAG lawyer, speaking to my husband’s plant during Sexual Assault Prevention Month. (via circusbones)

Rape culture means being more worried about a handful of men being accused of a crime and then proven innocent than helping hundreds and hundreds of actual rape victims over the course of 15 years.

(via justplainsomething)

i-o-u-an-assbutt: iamaproudsuperwholockian: counting-to-one-hundred: APPARENTLY ACCORDING TO CBC...

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:52:25 -0500

i-o-u-an-assbutt:

iamaproudsuperwholockian:

counting-to-one-hundred:

APPARENTLY ACCORDING TO CBC NEWS TUMBLR IS KNOWN FOR “Foul language and nude photos”

REALLY? THATS ALL? WHY NOT THE AMAZING ARTISTS? THE SOCIAL JUSTICE? EVEN THE PHOTOGRAPHS ON THE SO CALLED “HIPSTER BLOGS”

WE ARE MORE THAN JUST FOUL LANGUAGE AND NUDE PHOTOS. WE ARE SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT

Are we?

yes we fucking are now shut your dirty whore mouth you lil shit

aquamarinist: apple-str1der: alan-ashby-is-my-ginger-princess: ...

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:42:34 -0500

aquamarinist:

apple-str1der:

alan-ashby-is-my-ginger-princess:

letmelickyournipples:

i dont understand why youd want this

This is sickening

im going to throw up

fun fact: this is a fake image.

and i don’t understand why it was made

but i think i might understand one possible reason why it should be seen

it’s shocking, right? you think “why would anyone want fake cuts just for the looks, that’s disgusting, people go through real pain”

so if we can think that, how come when we see real ones, what we think is “they’re just doing it to look cool. all they want is to look like an emo kid and to get attention”?

some people’s attitude towards scars from cutting is just as shockingly inhuman as the attitude presented in this image.

if anything, this is a good refresher on why sensitive issues like this should be treated as such, and not with the blunt prejudice used here.

The hilarious double standard "Mexicans are lazy, and too stupid/can't be bothered to learn English" and "Mexicans are taking all our jobs". So, you're saying that you lost your job to a lazy person who doesn't speak English, how bad at your job were you?

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:40:02 -0500

malanga-coco:

queennubian:

sourcedumal:

feverishlycool:

searchingforknowledge:

stargazingeyes:

OH SNAP!

HAHAH

YOOOOO

i say gaddamn! lol

israelfacts: A Health Ministry inspector poured bleach over...

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:39:07 -0500

israelfacts:

A Health Ministry inspector poured bleach over pots full of food in a Sudanese restaurant in Tel Aviv Sunday night.

The inspector, from the ministry’s district office for Tel Aviv, was participating in a raid by police and municipal inspectors on illegal businesses owned by African migrants. Altogether, the raid shut down 10 businesses in the city’s Neveh Sha’anan neighborhood, confiscating their equipment and welding the doors shut. The equipment was then loaded onto vans by other African migrants who had been hired as contract workers.

Many diners saw the inspector pouring bleach on the food, and one, asylum-seeker Aladin Abaker from Sudan’s Darfur region, posted photos of the incident on his Facebook page. He also described his feelings of humiliation.

“Everyone − except the destroyers − was in tears from the humiliation,” he wrote. “The waitress told us, ‘I’ve seen very harsh things in my life, like torture in Sinai, but this humiliated me more than what happened to me in Sinai.”

Abaker accused the inspector of “insensitivity to people and their culture, which sees food as a sacred thing that must be respected,” and said the raid was aimed at “embittering our lives so we’ll return to Africa ‘voluntarily.’”

Altogether, he said, more than 200 kilograms of meat, chicken and fish and over 500 prepared meals were destroyed.

The inspectors said they didn’t know where the meat came from and therefore feared for the diners’ health, Abaker wrote. “We told them: But this is the only place we’ve eaten all our meals for four years now, and none of us ever had stomach problems. Even whites eat here.”

The Health Ministry responded that inspectors had discovered “deplorable sanitary conditions, food stored under unsuitable conditions and temperatures, and food from unknown sources. In order to preserve the public’s health and that of the diners themselves, it was decided to destroy the food immediately. As part of the process of destroying the food, chemicals suitable to this purpose are used. It should be noted that this was a routine process of food destruction that is no different from other destructions of food/meat.”

Tel Aviv’s deputy city manager, Ruby Zelof, said the raids were carried out “to eradicate the undesirable phenomenon of businesses operating illegally, with sanitation and safety problems and illegal connections to electricity and water, and sales of alcoholic beverages without permits.”

Haaretz | Photo credit: Aladin Abaker

Israel is deporting Africans and also planning to put tens of thousands into detention camps.

Knesset Member Miri Regev — a member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud Party — called the refugees “a cancer in our body” and Danny Danon — also a Likud Knesset Member — wrote on his Facebook page referring to the Africans as “infiltrators”. Interior Minister Eli Yishai said the African asylum seekers threaten “the Zionist dream,” adding, “Jobs will root them here.”

See also:

Why is the birth rate in Israel’s Ethiopian community declining? Ethiopian women who immigrated to Israel were coaxed into agreeing to injections of long-acting birth control drugs, or told they would not be allowed into the country

Israeli woman has her photo taken with Africans, titles the Facebook album: “Late night tour of the Tel Aviv Safari”, captions the photo: “There are no signs forbidding taking pictures with the animals. There were no signs that forbid feeding, but we passed on that.”

“Officer Grayson” by 穀雨

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:34:09 -0500

“Officer Grayson” by 穀雨

Why aren't more people freaking out about the new Venezuelan labor law?

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:31:49 -0500

monetizeyourcat:

dancepunksnotdead:

You know, the one that gives housewives/full-time mothers a pension— wages for housework?

It’s ONLY A HUGE VICTORY FOR FEMINISM, SOCIALISM, AND WOMEN OF COLOR. Not a big deal or anything. Tumblr is mysteriously silent about this.

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2013/05/venezuelas-new-labour-law-best-mothers-day-gift

holy shit!

viria: universe-juice: chocobo-strider: the-disney-words: SHA...

Sun, 19 May 2013 12:58:40 -0500

viria:

universe-juice:

chocobo-strider:

the-disney-words:

SHARE TO SAVE TUMBLR!

- Let’s try and get 100k notes

True shit

A review by one of the folks sums it up perfectly:

“What worries me about Yahoo! buying Tumblr is how it would choose to incorporate the website into its email and homepage features. One of the reasons why Tumblr is so unique is because it’s a niche market. By adding more users who don’t fit into this niche, it would make it more difficult for communities to develop within Tumblr, and Tumblr would have to change to accommodate these new users. Tumblr as a website is not the kind that you can sign up for in a day and be on your way. It is a website crafted so that you can immediately post but must spend several weeks, sometimes even months, to build a community. With new users who would not be willing to spend time growing a community, Tumblr would have to be changed, which would alienate its current users. Those users have spent time and effort to make Tumblr what it is today, and they are the ones who spend time on the website daily. A user who is checking onto Tumblr because it’s attached to their homepage is not going to be as strong of a user nor as dedicated. By changing the website to suit this new user, you would lose the strong users while building an undedicated usership.

To any website that would think of buying Tumblr, they must understand that it is a website that cannot be changed to make it more user friendly to a casual blogger. I think that many Tumblr users would be less worried about a buy-out if they were promised that their communities and ways of using Tumblr would not be changed. No one is going to mind Yahoo! buying the website and gaining a few extra million dollars per year from the minimal advertising; what we will be upset with is if a company like Yahoo! then changes the website to increase casual users and decrease dedicated users. Yahoo! would gain nothing by losing this “cool” group of bloggers in an age group they so desperately want to reach, so they must cater to these individuals by leaving the website exactly as is.” - houseoftombombadil

As much as is does sound like a load of bullshit for someone to buy Tumblr, it’s a possibility. I Personally think it should stay independent and I hope David Karp keeps a hold of it like his own child. Or we make enough noise to where such major changes (if bought) will not happen. I would hate to see Tumblr turned into an advertising dump.

We’re not a ‘hip fad group’ to be marketed to. I hate the fact that’s all we look like to businesses in the end.

reblogging again for this ^

Drifting from One Obsession to Another: MEN IN SKIRTS (YELLS)

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:59:25 -0500

Drifting from One Obsession to Another: MEN IN SKIRTS (YELLS):

nightrevelations:

lights-of-antarctica:

kapooyah:

“but give me an example of men actually wearing skirts/dress-like garmets in everyday life!”
ok i would be MORE THAN HAPPY TO
get ready for eternal enlightenment

Read More

I honestly can’t believe men in skirts seems…

Scholars against Scientific Racism

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:18:59 -0500

Scholars against Scientific Racism:

latinosexuality:

Please enter your information below if you would like to sign this statement against scientific racism.

Open letter from scholars opposed to scientific racism

We are a group of 72 scholars (and counting) opposed to scientific racism - the use of science or social science to argue that a racialized group is inferior. Jason Richwine’s dissertation is an example of scientific racism and this work has no place in twenty-first century academia.

In 2009, Jason Richwine successfully defended a dissertation at Harvard University where he wrote that Hispanic immigrants have a substantially lower I.Q. than the white native-born population and that, because of the hereditary nature of I.Q., this fact should be taken into consideration when designing immigration policy. In May 2013, Richwine’s views came under public scrutiny after he co-authored an immigration policy report for the Heritage Foundation.

Richwine’s dissertation is problematic for three reasons: 1) it is part of a tradition of scientific racism; 2) it is based on discredited ideas of intelligence testing; and 3) it relies on an unscientific relationship between racialized categories and genetic makeup. Ideas of racial inferiority have been used justify slavery, forced sterilizations, the Holocaust, and all forms of contemporary racism and sexism. These ideas have no place in 21st century social science because of their historical use to justify genocide and mass sterilization and their lack of scientific rigor.

Richwine makes a connection between the genetic makeup of Hispanics and their I.Q. However, there is no genetic basis for racialized differences. And, Hispanic is an ethnic category made up of people of every racialized category. A Hispanic is a person with roots in Latin America who lives in the United States. Their ancestry could include people from any continent. The claim that Hispanics share a genetic makeup that could differentiate them from white Americans is not debatable; it is untenable.

Intelligence testing is also deeply flawed. Stephen Jay Gould points out that the primary error in intelligence testing is that of reification – making intelligence into something by measuring it. Intelligence tests attempt to measure a wide range of abilities. The score on these tests is named an “intelligence quotient” or I.Q. Gould contends that these tests are flawed and do not meet their stated goal of measuring innate intellectual ability.

To the extent that it is true that Hispanic immigrants score lower on these tests than white Americans, this is a result of unequal educational opportunities, not genetics. Diego von Vacano, a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School, points out that

“the rudimentary statistical analysis of the kind that Richwine carried out ignores the important interface between social realities and genetics. … [I.Q. scores] reflect the intertwining of some aspects of mental capacity with education, life experiences, socioeconomic status, and other contingent contexts.”

Despite the fact that this perspective is widely accepted among scholars, Richwine chose to rely on the scientific racism tradition of his discredited predecessors, such as Charles Murray and J. Philippe Rushton, and attributed the differences to genetics. His argument that I.Q. scores should inform immigration policy hearkens back to the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century – during which time about 60,000 people were forcibly sterilized in the United States, on the basis of their purported intellectual unfitness.

As academics, we find it appalling that, in 2009, three professors at Harvard University were willing to guide and approve a dissertation in this academic tradition. There are three central problems with Richwine’s work that should not pass muster in any dissertation committee: 1) the argument that I.Q. scores are an indication of innate intelligence; and 2) the assertion that I.Q. is a genetic trait; and 3) the presumption that Hispanics, as a group, share a genetic makeup. All these ideas have been discredited and all are linked to an unfortunate history of scientific racism.

The idea that I.Q. scores could be a reflection of a heritable trait is one of the pernicious ideas that led to the Holocaust as well as eugenics programs and restrictive immigration policies in the United States and elsewhere. Apart from its ugly history, scientists do not have a clear understanding of the extent to which intelligence may be a heritable trait. Even if some aspects of intelligence are based on heritable traits, there is no doubt that environmental factors shape one’s ability to score highly on an intelligence test. Nevertheless, in his dissertation, Richwine eschews this evidence and argues that “the low average IQ of Hispanics is effectively permanent.”

It is clear that Richwine’s dissertation is thin – with weak statistical analyses and a literature review that relies too heavily on racist and substandard publications by Charles Murray, Richard Herrnstein, and Philippe Rushton. But, this dissertation should never have been written in the first place. Before Jason Richwine began the work that was to be his dissertation, he would have had to consult with scholars in his department to ask them if they would be on his doctoral committee. At that point, they should have explained to him that this work carries on the tradition of scientific racism, and has no place in twenty-first century scholarship. Instead, three scholars - George Borjas, Richard Zeckhauser, and Christopher Jencks - agreed to supervise this scientifically racist dissertation and approved granting him a PhD degree from Harvard University.

Dean Ellwood at Harvard Kennedy School takes the position that this dissertation is part of an academic debate. We are not against academic freedom. However, there is no academic debate on whether or not Hispanics as a group are less intelligent than native-born whites. There are debates on whether or not Hispanic is a pan-ethnic, ethnic, or racialized category. There are debates on how and whether or why we should measure intelligence. There are debates on the extent to which intelligence is a heritable trait. But, there are no debates on whether or not Latino immigrants have the intellectual caliber to be part of the United States. Those kinds of debates happen in nativist and white supremacist circles, which have no place in academia, which prizes arguments and debates based on valid constructs and scientific evidence.

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Thu, 16 May 2013 12:40:32 -0500

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rlottery: sashayed: gq: Ellie Kemper Asks: Can Men Be...

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:43:26 -0500

rlottery:

sashayed:

gq:

Ellie Kemper Asks: Can Men Be Funny?

“Reading a chapter from Warren Buffett’s Tap Dancing to Work the other day, I was surprised to find myself chuckling out loud. Now this guy is kind of funny, I thought to myself as I turned the page and grabbed another Danish. This guy is kind of making me laugh. And those thoughts that I had quietly, in my head, to myself, made me realize just how rarely I do have those thoughts in my head. And that thought led me to another thought, which was: why is that? Why, on the whole, are men just not that funny?”

Read On: Can Men Be Funny? A scientific-y investigation

“Guys, do you want to know a secret? You don’t have to be funny in order to attract us. Believe us, between your scalps and your calves, you’ve already got us. Your narrow, decrescendoing hips, and your soft, very hairy thighs leave us breathless. The truth is, there is no evolutionary cause for you to have to be funny. And precisely because your ancestors, and your ancestors’ grandparents, and your ancestors’ grandparents’ grandparents, and so on and so on, had no procreative need to cultivate a sense of humor and performance, you literally do not have it in your DNA.”

no one touch the comment section it’s so perfect

"Let’s stop policing ourselves and each other. Gender is one game that you don’t have to play by..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:40:25 -0500

“Let’s stop policing ourselves and each other. Gender is one game that you don’t have to play by anyone else’s rules. The real danger in this ‘gender is a social construct’, ‘abolish gender’ crap is that in gendertopic spaces, anyone who is not subversive enough, or is seen as ‘gender normative’ already fails. We (and I’m guilty of this too) assume that they are being ‘duped’ or buying into gender norms. What the fuck? Are we fighting for gender liberation so that we can tell people how to express themselves? You have no idea where someone else is coming from, or what gender journey has led them where they are today.”

- Gender Fuck is My Boyfriend (Polyamory is My Girlfriend)

Lovin’ this zine.

(via genderqueer)

YES THANK YOU YES

(via lunardust)

(Posted as a reminder to myself and others cause I’vee pulled this shit before myself and it’s not cute)

~empathy~ hello

(via rebirthcycle)

Basically why I don’t get behind most movements in which if you are not subversive enough for the group then you’re automatically cast as the enemy.

(via thegoddamazon)

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Thu, 16 May 2013 09:50:41 -0500

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Wed, 15 May 2013 21:10:43 -0500

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gardensoftherighteous: I strongly dislike this idea that progression in countries is measured by...

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:23:45 -0500

gardensoftherighteous:

I strongly dislike this idea that progression in countries is measured by their imitation of western society.

What's this so-called "sex superbug" everyone is talking about?

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:22:46 -0500

think-progress:

Forget the dire headlines that “it’s worse than AIDS.” Here’s everything you need to know.