The intermission has begun! Mill about!

C A L M A T O ~

[niktipolos]

Medusa lost her beauty—or rather, it was taken from her. Beauty is always something you can lose. Women’s beauty is seen as something separate from us, something we owe but never own: We are its stewards, not its beneficiaries. We tend it like a garden where we do not live. Oh, but ugliness—ugliness is always yours. Almost everyone has some innate kernel of grotesquerie; even fashion models (I’ve heard) tend to look a bit strange and froggish in person, having been gifted with naturally level faces that pool light luminously instead of breaking it into shards. And everyone has the ability to mine their ugliness, to emphasize and magnify it, to distort even those parts of themselves that fall within acceptable bounds. Where beauty is narrow and constrained, ugliness is an entire galaxy, a myriad of sparkling paths that lurch crazily away from the ideal. There are so few ways to look perfect, but there are thousands of ways to look monstrous, surprising, upsetting, outlandish, or odd. Thousands of stories to tell in dozens of languages: the languages of strong features or weak chins, the languages of garish makeup and weird haircuts and startling clothes, fat and bony and hairy languages, the languages of any kind of beauty that’s not white. Nose languages, eyebrow languages, piercing and tattoo languages, languages of blemish and birthmark and scar. When you give up trying to declare yourself acceptable, there are so many new things to say.

What If We Cultivated Our Ugliness? Jess Zimmerman. (via kuanios)

[equius]

HFDGHJCJCJCJCJJCJCDJGJGJ

[huesofjadeharley]

[thenewinquiry]

You Probably Think This Bot Is About You

Where you seek patterns, you will find them. In humans, we call this apophenia: seeing a face in a cloud, hearing voices in white noise, or divining cosmic significance from a chance meeting with an old friend.

Machine learning algorithms, which are used by computers to identify relationships in large sets of data, echo our pattern-seeking tendencies, since pattern recognition is what they’re designed for. When seeking to program learning algorithms with human intelligence, we inevitably include our peculiarities and paranoias. Like the human brain, machine learning algorithms arrive at shallow, inappropriate conclusions from ingesting sprawls of data.

But when it comes to machines, paranoid assumptions about the world are mutually reinforcing: When they see the false patterns we see, they validate the faults of our own pattern-seeking tendency through the illusion of computational rigor. Seeing our own judgments reflected in the algorithm, we feel more confident in its decisions.

The New Inquiry’s Conspiracy Bot condenses this recursive symbiosis. Just like us, our bot produces conspiracies by drawing connections between news and archival images—sourced from Wikimedia Commons and publications such as the New York Times—where it is likely none exist. The bot’s computer vision software is sensitive to even the slightest variations in light, color, and positioning, and frequently misidentifies disparate faces and objects as one and of the same. If two faces or objects appear sufficiently similar, the bot links them. These perceptual missteps are presented not as errors, but as significant discoveries, encouraging humans to read layers of meaning from randomness. If a “discovered” conspiracy finds some “true” reflection in the “real” world, such as linking two politicians that are actually colluding—and due to the sheer number of relationships it produces, it’s statistically likely—then the bot’s prediction appears more valid to the viewer, heightening the plausibility of its other predictions. Thus the nauseating cycle loops once more. First as news, then as fake news.

View the Conspiracy Bot here

[harryedward]

this is so funny asjfdifjajsdfj

[onlytwitterpics]

[the-future-now-deactivated20170]

An audience member stopped World Science Festival host Jim Holt from speaking over physics professor Veronika Hubeny

follow @the-future-now

[syntheticorange]

From Marilee Talkington’s post:

So, after thinking about this over night, I’ve decided to share something that happened at the WORLD SCIENCE FESTIVAL yesterday afternoon in NYC that changed me. Or rather made me step into who I am in a larger way.

As some on my feed have seen, I was live-feeding the beginning of the panel discussion on FB. That panel was made up of some of the greatest and most famous minds in the world in Inflationary Cosmology, String Theory, Cosmology and Physics based Philosophy. The panel was made up of 5 men and 1 woman. And the moderator was a science writer and journalist for The New Yorker.

In the first hour of the panel discussion you can see clearly, if watching the video, that Veronika Hubeny, the only woman on the panel is barely given any opportunity to speak. And the Moderator, Jim Holt even acknowledges this.

In the last 20-30 minutes of the 90 minute discussion Jim Holt finally pushes the conversation to Hubeny’s field of expertise, string theory, and this is what ensued:

He asked her to describe her two theories of string theory that seem to contradict one another.

And THEN, without letting her answer, proceeded to answer for her and describe HER theories in detail without letting her speak for herself.

We could clearly see that she was trying to speak up. But he continued to talk over her and dominate the space for several minutes.

I should say that this panel was taking place in a large auditorium as it is an extremely high-profile and always sold-out event. And the panel discussion was being live-streamed across the world and they say that millions of people watch these videos after they are made public. (Which they already are).

So at this point, after seeing very clearly that she was not going to be given space to speak and in fact having her own theories described to the audience by the moderator, I am in full outrage. My body is actually beginning to shake. The sexism is beyond blatant. It is happening on stage and NO ONE, not a single other physicist or panelist is stepping in to say anything about it. And I can hear other audience members around me, both men and women becoming more and more agitated with what is happening. Jim Holt, even at one point, asks Veronica a question and she laughs because he has been answering his own questions about her work…and he makes fun of her for ‘giggling’.

So at some point while he is Still talking about Her theories, I just can’t handle it any longer.

With my hands shaking,

I finally say from my seat in the 2nd row of the audience, as clearly, directly and loudly as possible;

“Let. Her. Speak. Please!”

The moderator stops.

They all stop.

The auditorium drops into silence.

You could hear a pin drop.

And then the audience explodes with applause and screams.

Jim Holt eventually sat back, only after saying I was heckling him And he let her speak. And of course, she was brilliant.

———————–

So, the panel discussion ends.

My hands are still shaking. I’m still upset by the incredible sexism that has been demonstrated this afternoon. But I also realize that I just spoke up in an auditorium full of people that are listening to people that are considered gods in the international science world. I was just overwhelmed by it all

We get up to leave.

And then it happens.

Person after person come up to me. Both men and women.

The first woman, right behind me, reaches over and embraces me and says, “Oh my god. what you said was the most important thing that was said all day. Thank you. Thank you.”

And then people start filing out of their aisles and wind their way over to me:

“Was that you? Thank you so much for speaking up. Thank you.”

“Was that you? Oh god, what he was doing was horrific. Thank you. I wanted to do something but didn’t know how”

“Was that you? I wish I had the courage to say something, thank you! Thank you so much”

“Was that you? You said what everyone here was thinking. Look I had even been writing in my notebook what you eventually said (shows me his notebook with ‘let her speak’ written over and over.) But you said it. You said it. Thank you.”

“Was that you? Thank you! I felt so powerless to do anything.”

And on.

So we were all thinking this.

—- So I walked out. And my friend who was sitting about 8 rows behind me, came up to me with a huge grin and said “That was you, wasn’t it? Of course it was. YES!!!!! I will be telling this story for years.”

And the whole time, my hands are still shaking. And I’m felling light-headed. And I just want to scream out into the lobby “WHY IS THIS SEXISM STILL HAPPENING? WHY, does someone like me, with No status in that room, have to be so extraordinarily bold and speak up? And why was it so frightening to do so?”

And I’m thinking. “God, please god let this be an opening for those that were here today and the tens of thousands that watched the live-streaming of the panel yesterday and the hundreds of thousands that will watch the video this year- to speak up when we see this happening. And please let me not be afraid to do this again …and again …and again” Because it was scary.

Please keep giving me courage.

[de-la-poussey-deactivated201812]

[daniellesylvan]

Spirited Away will always be one of my favorite movies of all time. 

Prints available on Etsy and Storenvy.

[imurmotherinlaw]

minseok out and abt at hongdae maybe gift shopping for jongdae who knows

[gotitforcheap-deactivated201611]

[cartnsncreal]

Super disgusting! People are FUCKED UP. 

It’s racial discrimination to treat someone less polite than someone else would be treated in the same circumstances, because of race. We can’t ignore the case of blatant racism. We MUST draw public attention to such cases. We must ensure that racists are identified and socially discredited. There are no reasons or excuses for racism. It’s just disgusting.

[locohost]

from the KTLA news article:

When Suh said she would report the action to Airbnb officials, the host replied: “It’s why we have Trump.”

Suh said that comment made her painfully aware of how threatened minorities have become under the Trump administration.

“For me personally, to now have someone say something racist to me and say it’s because of Trump, it was my fears coming true,” Suh said. “That people who held these racist beliefs felt emboldened.”

The host went on to say she would “not allow this country to be told what to do by foreigners.”

Suh is an American citizen who has called the U.S. home since she was 3 years old.

“If this is my experience as a light-skinned Asian woman, what is it like for people who have darker skin than me or are Muslim?” Suh wondered aloud. “What is it like for people who are undocumented or not U.S. citizens yet?”

[charizord]

BLESS HER FOR BEING VOCAL ABOUT THIS DO PEOPLE REALIZE HOW REAL THIS IS YET!?

[reybanz]

Sick I can’t believe this

[the-movemnt-deactivated20170912]

this is true love y’all (x) | follow @the-movemnt

[screengeniuz]

😂

❤️

[enchantechante]

pls let this be the start of a trend

[warbutt]

retweet this and your dream job will come into your life

[coffeeforcollege]

i cannot

[wordsnquotes]

Never tell all you know—not even to the person you know best.

Agatha Christie | The Secret Adversary

(via conceptvals)

[artinair]

Yuri is only trying to show that he's the best at kabedon too

[memorian]

Little kids recreating “Honor to Us All”. It is the cutest thing you’ll see today! THEY DO THE GRANDMA!

[darq-draws]

An imagining of canon!time elementary that took me hours.

[thequotejournals]

You have your whole life ahead of you. Be smart. Study hard and be independent…You must rely on yourself. No matter what else people may steal from you, they will never be able to take away your knowledge. The world is changing. You must make your own life outside this home.

Adeline Yen Mah, Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter   (via wnq-writers)