Mostly lemon based

Day: February 24, 2016

  • What to do when you’re not the hero any more

    What to do when you’re not the hero any more

    professorfangirl:

    bookgeekgrrl:

    thewinterotter:

    The rage that white men have been expressing, loudly, violently, over the very idea that they might find themselves identifying with characters who are not white men, the very idea that heroism might not be particular to one race or one gender, the basic idea that the human story is vast and various and we all get to contribute a page – that rage is petty. It is aware of its own pettiness. Like a screaming toddler denied a sweet, it becomes more righteous the more it reminds itself that after all, it’s only a story.

    Only a story. Only the things we tell to keep out the darkness. Only the myths and fables that save us from despair, to establish power and destroy it, to teach each other how to be good, to describe the limits of desire, to keep us breathing and fighting and yearning and striving when it’d be so much easier to give in. Only the constitutive ingredients of every human society since the Stone age.

    Only a story. Only the most important thing in the whole world.

    The people who are upset that the faces of fiction are changing are right to worry. It’s a fundamental challenge to a worldview that’s been too comfortable for too long. The part of our cultural imagination that places white Western men at the centre of every story is the same part that legitimises racism and sexism. The part of our collective mythos that encourages every girl and brown boy to identify and empathise with white male heroes is the same part that reacts with rage when white boys are asked to imagine themselves in anyone else’s shoes.

    Read more

    “…because when you’ve been used to privilege, equality feels like prejudice.”

    and also

    “Capitalism is just a story. Religion is just a story. Patriarchy and white supremacy are just stories. They are the great organising myths that define our societies and determine our futures, and I believe – I hope – that a great rewriting is slowly, surely underway.”

    ^^^^ YES. This whole thing is glorious.

  • A couple of USland thoughts

    It’s funny living here, because I am gradually coming to understand why Amazon sells food. In the UK it made no sense to me. I mean, very very occasionally I’d find something that I couldn’t get locally, but it was pretty rare. But of course, as I’m coming to realise, I lived in Bristol. Bristol is a food city. There is such a phenomenal range of foods available there (and the quality!). And unlike the US which seems stymied by the fact that chain superstores are everywhere with their pathetic range of foods, but their simultaneous ability to be convenient to the point that shopping anywhere else seems like a lot of hassle… in Bristol there are a lot of small, independent grocery places in close proximity, meaning that when you decide you want Spelt flour there’s a whole bunch of shops that have it, and that are no hassle at all to get to. And to be honest, even Sainsbury’s had it, as I recall.

    The massive range of the shops around them forced the supermarkets to adapt and broaden their range. I mean, we still have the same problem here that we had in the UK, that there are 480 varieties of frickin’ tomato sauce mix. Lots of choice in the things that everyone (theoretically, for them) buys. But no actual range.

    So here, we want Spelt flour? Amazon. I’m thinking that the food co-op might have it, but none of the stores near us carry it. We want rosehip tea? Amazon. I am hoping that as I get to know the stores around here better (and spend less time doing circuits of blocks because I’ve missed the turn, or was in the wrong lane) I might start to find the smaller shops, weirder shops, that carry the things we never realised were obscure.

    Secondly, I’m listening to a lot of vinyl. Really a lot. Because it’s the only music I’ve got on hand. And I’m pleased to say the Technics SL-6 is doing okay. One of the pleasing things about it is that because it’s servo-tracked, when the records are scratched (which is the case with some of my battered old vinyl) it happily tracks correctly. Indeed, some of the skips I’ve got used to hearing have disappeared.

    I did wonder if I’d miss the stylus-on-record part of the process, and I kinda do, and I kinda don’t. While I’m using vinyl as my primary means of listening to music, the convenience of closing the lid and pressing play is quite nice.

    Thirdly, I am missing Bristol’s vegetarian range of foods. Most cafés / restaurants have a really limited range of vegetarian dishes. It kind of feels like the UK did 10 years ago. Most places have something, but not necessarily something good or interesting. The thing is, good vegetarian food can be awesome, it can have complex, layered flavours and interesting textures.

    Most places here seem to feel that some kind of basic cheese based dish covers the veggie base, and that’s all they need to do. Which is a real shame.

    Thankfully, cooking at home covers a lot of that, because we’ve been cooking a long time and can rustle up some pretty ace foods :)

  • Untitled post 10064

    justice-turtle:

    hatey-mchaterson:

    timemachineyeah:

    a-spoon-is-born:

    funoftheday:

    You don’t say.

    For the record, she actually abandoned the movement BEFORE they all got whooping cough, but abandoned it too late. There’d been a breakout of measles in her area that caused her to reassess, and she and her doctor had already drafted and started a catch-up vaccination schedule, but her kids caught whooping cough just before it could be started. Then she wrote a blog post for The Scientific Parent explaining how she and her husband had come to wrong decisions in the first place, how they changed their mind, the consequences they suffered as a result, and asking other parents to please vaccinate their kids. And now she’s an activist for destroying the misinformation of anti-vaxxers, and reaching out to anti-vaxxers because she’s understands their fears but knows their kids deserve better. 

    She was trying to the best for her kids and just didn’t know how to interpret the validity of information or its sources, an actual skill that can be actually difficult and that is under-taught and a necessary first step to being able to trust vaccination research, so chose no action over taking an action she wasn’t sure of. She kept looking into it with family and friends and even eventually came to the right conclusion before her kids became sick, but it was still too late.

    Honestly it was pretty brave of her to publicly admit she was wrong. She could have just quietly vaccinated her kids and not become a national news story, but instead she spoke out, even saying “I’m writing this from quarantine, the irony of which isn’t lost on me.” and also “I am not looking forward to any gloating or shame as this ‘defection’ from the antivaxx camp goes public, but, this isn’t a popularity contest.  Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear.  I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk.”

    She understood the consequences and still put herself and her story out there. 

    You know what, it does take a big person to admit they were wrong so publicly and work to undo the harm. I believe I made fun of her in the past, but timemachineyeah changed my mind.

    Interpreting validity of information and what sources to believe is fucking hard. I was never taught it. Literally nobody that watches Fox News unironically – and that’s a good forty percent of Americans – was ever taught it. It is drastically under-taught, and it’s the first step towards being able to make well-researched decisions.

    in brief this commentary is a good and yes thank you

  • micdotcom:

    Watch: The way the country reacts to black actors in previously white roles only makes this worse.

  • Senate Republicans will not allow any Obama nominee a hearing

    solarbird:

    The GOP have gone with the nuclear option – they will allow no Obama Supreme Court nominee a hearing. Since the current Senate will expire before next elections, that does mean in fact that they are refusing a Constitutional duty. This is, in fact, unprecedented.

    I don’t think it’s unreasonable to call this a constitutional crisis, even if it’s one that will play itself out on a timer. It rather combines with the “religion exempts you from law” line that the Republican party is pushing at state levels to become something akin to the nullification crisis of the 1830s to me.

    It should also put the stake into any last remnants of the idea that the GOP recognises the idea of a “loyal opposition,” or has any interest in governing with anything less than absolute power. The “permanent majority” party is still the “permanent majority” party; if the people are foolish enough to elect someone else, that doesn’t count, isn’t legitimate, and will not be allowed to function. And a republic cannot work that way.

  • tinierpurplefishes:

    master-bruce-wayne:

    Bernie is losing momentum due to less and less young voter turn out. Nevada would have been ours but the young voter turn out was very low. I hope people actually go out and vote rather than just offering social media support. This is such a pivotal moment in American politics that it would be a huge disservice to the world to not go out and vote in the primary.

    VOTE! Primaries matter!

  • little bad memory things :)

    shadesofmauve:

    tinierpurplefishes:

    melchiorgabor:

    • not knowing if you said something out loud or if you only thought it
    • “did i already ask you that?”
    • “what did you say”
    • raising your hand and putting it down multiple times in class because you can’t remember your question/comment
    • pausing in the middle of simple tasks because you can’t remember what you’re doing
    • “where is my [object i had in my hands literally 30 seconds ago]?”
    • not knowing someone’s name even though it’s the 5th time you’ve met them
    • rereading/rewatching books/movies because you can’t remember basic plot details
    • forgetting to look at the list of things you need to remember
    • forgetting the end of your sentence before you even start it/trailing off

    also trying to remember if something actually happened or it was just a dream

    “where is my [object i had in my hands literally 30 seconds ago]?” is basically the reason my remodeling project took over two years. How do you lose a caulking gun, self? Or a giant freakin’ saw?

    That is not your fault. Occasionally when you put things down they slip through the cracks between dimensions, appearing in alternate realities and startling other individuals. You know those moments when you’ve found something wildly out-of-place? That is someone else’s item, which just happens to look a lot like yours, and it’s fallen through those same dimensional cracks.

    At some point, whatever it was that slipped through those cracks will get moved, and slip into another, possibly even it’s original dimension. Which is why you suddenly find you have 47 rolls of sellotape, when last week you couldn’t find any.