[citysnow]

[bobschofield-deactivated2018101]

In college I had a physics professor who wrote the date and time in red marker on a sheet of white paper and then lit the paper on fire and placed it on a metallic mesh basket on the lab table where it burned to ashes. He asked us whether or not the information on the paper was destroyed and not recoverable, and of course we were wrong, because physics tells us that information is never lost, not even in a black hole, and that what is seemingly destroyed is, in fact, retrievable. In that burning paper the markings of ink on the page are preserved in the way the flame flickers and the smoke curls. Wildly distorted to the point of chaos, the information is nonetheless not dead. Nothing, really, dies. Nothing dies. Nothing dies.

Nicholas Rombes, The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing (via dinglehoppersaplenty)

[blossomfully]

He gets mad when I cross the road without looking left. He says, for Christ’s sakes stop drinking caffeine have a tea instead. He walks to my house in the dark when I’m crying and he stands outside in the pouring rain while I pick myself up. He gathers all my loose strands of hair and calls me a lion. He laughs with me when I am clumsy (which is often). He says hugs are better than kisses because you use your whole body and I would tend to disagree, except his arms feel so much like home. When he’s sad he rests his head upon my shoulder, when I make him sad he’s quiet and hurt, but never cold. When I make him laugh I think the sun was modelled on his smile, I’ve been in Winter but he feels a lot like Spring. You’ll ask me what love feels like and I’ll say ‘safety’. You’ll say, how do you know when you’re in love? and I’ll say ‘you just do.’ You’ll exclaim, that’s not enough! I still don’t know! But the truth is it’s not important. If you find someone worth writing poems about, don’t let them go.

Sue Zhao (via blossomfully)

[abeauutifulpatience]

And of everything We have created pairs. Heaven and earth. Night and day. Sun and moon. Shore and sea. Light and darkness. Her for him.

“And We created you in pairs.” - Holy Qur'an 78:8. (via abeauutifulpatience)

[ghostbrother2]

if this 5000 year old tree isn’t too old to realize that its trans neither are you

[rupikaur-deactivated20170926]

paris. beirut. baghdad. japan. mexico. 

[micdotcom]

Watch: This is just further (incredible) proof that the scientific community stands with Ahmed.

[niqabisinparis]

movie poster idea: me and a puppy. the title says “forbidden friendship.” my local imam is in the background yelling hadiths at me and trying to rub sand on my hands. I refuse to let go of the puppy. far in the distance, there’s a Maliki sheikh coming to my rescue. 

[angryafricangirlsunited]

African forehead/facial adornments

[I want to make it clear that this post isn’t directed to Africans who have Southern/Southeast Asian ancestry]

Stop using the phrase “African bindis” because it erases ours cultures it also paints Africa as a monolithic society. The term Bindi is not a universal term for forehead adornments. It’s lazy to just insist on calling them bindis because that’s the only term we know in the West. As someone who comes from a culture where they incorporate forehead adornment as part of their cultural customs as well as bindis I’m offended when people call certain forehead adornments bindis. I’ve seen people also use the term “African bindi” to justify their appropriation (and they didn’t have Desi ancestry). Stop attributing our cultural customs and heritage to other people. 

If you don’t even now which African cultures incorporates bindis or even the names of the forehead adornment then you shouldn’t be talking about it because you lack that knowledge. Making generalised statements and homogenising thousands of African cultures just to justify cultural appropriation is disrespectful. Stop using the argument that “Africans have forehead/facial adornments that are similar to bindis” or “somewhere in Africa they wear something like that” when you have no knowledge of the culture you’re referring to, If you don’t know the name of the forehead adornment don’t talk about it, it’s best to not comment, the best thing to do is research (if you’re actually interested in learning about it) and also don’t call it a bindi because that term isn’t a universal term for forehead adornments. 

Also the “African tribal marks” thing is disrespectful and rude, putting random white dots and lines on your face doesn’t make it African. Also that term doesn’t make sense because it implies that Africa is a monolith society 

Yes there are African cultures out there who wears bindis (and that is because they have South and Southeast Asian ancestry/cultural influences for example Swahili people (Waswahili) from the Swahili Coast and they’ve been adorning themselves with bindis since the middle ages. But just because they adorn themselves with bindis it doesn’t mean that every African has the right to do so. Africans should respect each others cultures and not appropriate them. 

Bindis worn in the Swahili Coast/Indian Ocean (You can find people all over the Swahili Coast/Indian Ocean who adorn themselves with bindis because it’s part of their culture and has been for hundreds and hundreds of years). The cultures of the Swahili Coast even though fundamentally Bantu has been influenced by Persians, Arabs, Southeast Asians and Southern Asians because during the middle ages trade was established between in the Swahili Coast and those regions in Asia/Asian ethnic groups. Also many people from those areas migrated to the Swahili Coast and intermarried with the local Bantu population and many of their descendants still strongly identify with their Afro-Asian today. 

Comoros (Coast of Southeast Africa, Swahili Coast, Indian Ocean)

Mayotte Island, Comoros Archipelago ( Swahili Coast, Indian Ocean) One woman adorned with a bindi and another with m'zinzano

Mauritius (Coast of Southeast Africa, Indian Ocean)

Chaouia women from Algeria with facial adornment (find out about what they’re called and they’re meaning  here)

Mangbetu women from the Democratic Republic of Congo (read more here)

Wodaabe people (who are a sub group of the Fulani) most common one called Alluwaaje you can read more about it in “Nomads who Cultivate Beauty: Wod̳aab̳e Dances and Visual Arts in Niger” by By Mette Bovin

Swahili people (Waswahili)/ Swahili Coast with wanja and m’zinzano/m’sidzanou

I just wanted to give people a few examples and didn’t want this post to be too long. There are literally thousands of different types of facial and forehead adornments in the African continent. If you want to find out about different types then please do your research.

I’m tagging reclaimthebindi because they might be useful to them

[duskanaragemother]

Do you have something against drag queens?

no of course not why would i have anything against cis gay men dressing up as women and illegitimizing my identity? Its not like because of them my mom can’t see me as anything other than one of them because their presence overshadows actual trans women’s lives. Its not like they actively erase trans women’s identities like that of Marsha P Johnson and claim they were drag queens. its not like they get to wear my identity as a dress when they want to and not experience any of the struggles of trans women, again illegitimizing my identity. 

I fucking hate drag queens lmao.

[pure]

Honesty, where do I begin with this tragedy. I’m not going to include the rest of the comments because they’re ugly and I’m tired. 

I need you white women, you white queers, to understand the history of drag before you decide to decry it. You all clamor about “protecting ~poc~ at all costs” but rarely do you ever critically engage with our histories, which can be seen here and in the white feminist/queer demonization of drag culture in the west.

Drag is not intrinsically an attack on your identity as a woman, as a white person. I hate to break it to you, but the world does not begin and end on the backs of white identity. The drag culture you know absolutely nothing about was primarily pioneered by working class black and latin@ gay and transgender people as early as the 1940′s and earlier. It was, and still is, and will continue to be, despite all of your ahistorical rage, a space and a practice that served self expression, safety, and a form of self-employment for these communities since it was impossible for black and latin@ lgbt people, especially black and latina trans women, to maintain typical jobs. Storme Delarverie, the black lesbian Stonewall veteran, used to perform in drag as an entertainer to produce a living for herself since she was in poverty. Marsha P. Johnson, the black trans woman you and the rest of your detached white queer ilk liken yourselves to in the most grotesque, self-serving and voyeuristic ways possible as though she’s your personal political pawn and not someone who threatened the white supremacist LGBT hegemony you all exhibit every single day, made a living performing in drag shows and being a drag queen as she was homeless. Read up on her history before you invoke her name to support your historical revisionism and your anxious attacks on black and latin@ history.

It’s a testament to white queer selfishness that you can get up on your little tumblr platform and proclaim how you hate drag queens while ignoring how mainstream Gay Inc had pilfered the lives and bodies of black and latin@ people who pioneered drag in this part of the world. Critiquing the transmisogyny, misogyny, and so on of drag queens like RuPaul and others who have stolen drag from its origin and have turned it into mainstream Gay Inc fanfare is fine, but the fact that you all believe that this is the entirety of drag culture and therefore demonize it based upon that erroneous assumption is a repulsive display of the white supremacist onslaught upon black and latin@ gay & trans female history. 

In other words, get your shit together before you open your mouth, Becky.

[lisa-rayner-deactivated20151211]

(via Tintu-Mon added 11 new photos)

“Respect to Nature.”

Humans adapting themselves to nature rather than forcing other species to adapt to us. This is what we must do in the Anthropocene. Trees are the most important three dimensional structures of many ecosystems, and they are the central design features of most permaculture gardens. They provide many products and services to other species, from housing to food (acorns, insects, pollen), shade and shelter from the wind. We ought to respect their importance.

[meeko-mar]

THIS IS WHAT LIFE SHOULD BE  AM SO FUCKING ABOUT THIS

[minadabislam]

[xiaobaobabe]

This body is not me; I am not caught in this body, I am life without boundaries, I have never been born and I have never died. Over there the wide ocean and the sky with many galaxies All manifests from the basis of consciousness. Since beginningless time I have always been free. Birth and death are only a door through which we go in and out. Birth and death are only a game of hide-and-seek. So smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye. Tomorrow we shall meet again or even before. We shall always be meeting again at the true source, Always meeting again on the myriad paths of life.

No Death, No Fear Thích Nhất Hạnh (via xiaobaobabe)

[ethereal-business-cabaret]

From the Facebook account of Marci Tarrant Johnson, shared with permission: 

OK…here it is… I’m going to try to keep this as brief as I can, but I’ve been asked by several people about Central Booking today, so I’ll give you guys the shocking highlights. As much as I’d like to, I can’t describe the particulars of some of the more egregious arrests, due to attorney/client privilege issues, but I would like to describe the Civil Liberties violations, and the deplorable conditions which people have had to endure. As many of you know, more than 250 people have been arrested since Monday here in Baltimore. Normally when you are arrested, you are given a copy of your charging documents and then you must see a commissioner within 24 hours for a bail determination (“prompt presentment”) and given a trial date. If you are not released after the commissioner hearing, you will be brought before a judge for a review of the bail set by the commissioner. None of this was happening, so we sent some lawyers to Central Booking yesterday to try to help. I heard, however, that only 2 commissioners showed up, and the correctional officers only brought about 9 people to be interviewed because the jail was on a mysterious “lock-down”. Today we were divided into two groups. Some of the lawyers were assigned the task of actually doing judicial bail reviews for as many folks as they could get interviewed and docketed. I was assigned to the other group. We were the “habeas team”, and we were to interview folks that we felt were being illegally detained, so we could file writs of habeas corpus. Governor Hogan had issued an executive order, extending the time for prompt presentment to 47 hours. We believed that this order was invalid because the governor has no authority to alter the Maryland Rules. As a result, all people who were being detained for more than 24 hours without seeing a commissioner were being held illegally. Knowing all of this, I was still not prepared for what I saw when I arrived. The small concrete booking cells were filled with hundreds of people, most with more than ten people per cell. Three of us were sent to the women’s side where there were up to 15 women per holding cell. Most of them had been there since Monday afternoon/evening. With the exception of 3 or 4 women, the women who weren’t there for Monday’s round-ups were there for freaking curfew violations. Many had not seen a doctor or received required medication. Many had not been able to reach a family member by phone. But here is the WORST thing. Not only had these women been held for two days and two nights without any sort of formal booking, BUT ALMOST NONE OF THEM HAD ACTUALLY BEEN CHARGED WITH ANYTHING. They were brought to CBIF via paddy wagons (most without seat belts, btw–a real shocker after all that’s happened), and taken to holding cells without ever being charged with an actual crime. No offense reports. No statements of probable cause. A few women had a vague idea what they might be charged with, some because of what they had actually been involved in, and some because of what the officer said, but quite a few had no idea why they were even there. Incidentally, I interviewed no one whose potential charges would have been more serious than petty theft, and most seemed to be disorderly conduct or failure to obey, charges which would usually result in an immediate recog/release. The holding cells are approximately 10x10 (some slightly larger), with one open sink and toilet. The women were instructed that the water was “bad” and that they shouldn’t drink it. There are no beds–just a concrete cube. No blankets or pillows. The cells were designed to hold people for a few hours, not a few days. In the one cell which housed 15 women, there wasn’t even enough room for them all to lay down at the same time. Three times a day, the guards brought each woman 4 slices of bread, a slice of american cheese and a small bag of cookies. They sometimes got juice, but water was scarce, as the CO’s had to wheel a water cooler through every so often (the regular water being “broken”.) My fellow attorneys and I all separately heard the same sickening story over and over. None of the women really wanted to eat 4 slices of bread 3 times a day, so they were saving slices of bread TO USE AS PILLOWS. Let me say that again. THEY WERE ALL USING BREAD AS PILLOWS SO THAT THEY WOULDN’T HAVE TO LAY THEIR HEADS ON THE FILTHY CONCRETE FLOOR. Interviewing these women was emotionally exhausting. Quite a few of them began crying–so happy to finally see someone who might know why they were there, or perhaps how they might get out of this Kafka-esque nightmare. These women came from all walks of life. We interviewed high school students, college students, people with graduate degrees, people with GED’s, single women, married women, mothers, the well-employed, the unemployed, black women and white women. Almost all of them had no record. Those that did, had things like dui’s and very minor misdemeanors. Our group didn’t interview any of the men on the other side, but my colleagues reported very similar situations. On the men’s side there were journalists and activists, as well as highschool kids with no records, barely 18 years old. As we were getting ready to leave, we heard that many of these folks might be released without charges, after being held for 2 days. When we returned to the office, our amazing “habeas fellow”, Zina Makar, single-handedly filed 82 habeas petitions. That is when we heard that 101 people were released without charges. I’d like to think that the amazing legal response to this injustice played a large part in their release, and I feel privileged to have been a part of it. They may be charged later, but I’m guessing most of them won’t based on how minor their alleged infractions are. There are still over a hundred folks in there that need to see a commissioner and/or a judge, but hopefully we have thinned the ranks a little, and we will keep fighting until everyone has received due process. (We are concerned about these folks potential bails, as we are hearing about bails in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for misdemeanor charges). I’ll wrap this up by reminding everyone that all lives matter. We are all human beings. And we are Americans, and as such we are afforded protections under the law, the guilty and innocent alike. If one person is denied due process, we all suffer. If one persons rights and freedoms are trampled on, it’s not only a reflection on all of us, but it puts our own liberty at risk. The moment we view some individuals as more important than others, we cheapen ourselves. At the very essence of our democracy is the right to question and stand up to authority. During these trying times, we should all keep that in mind. I’ll leave you with a beautiful picture that was taken today of one of the women who was released without charges. Her husband had been waiting outside CBIF trying to find something…ANYTHING out about when she might be charged or released. This was taken moments after she walked out the door…..

[cheminsdudesir]

I know I keep reblogging posts about this, but Nepal is in serious need of help.

3,700 people are already confirmed dead and they are still in search and rescue phase.  They are still unable to reach many remote areas and don’t even know the status of whole villages.

Tens of climbers and sherpas are still stranded on Makalu, Dhaulagiri, and Everest.  Frequent aftershocks make descending too risky and heli evacuation is needed.  22 people are dead and there are still more than 200 people missing in Everest base camp where the largest avalanche hit.

They are still experiencing large aftershocks which are expected to continue for the next month. There was a M-6.7 aftershock today.  People in Kathmandu have said aftershocks are occurring every 5 minutes, many of them in mid-M-4 range.  Many people are scared to go in what buildings remain and are living in tents.

This is the start of the monsoon season, which has difficulties of its own.  Among other things, monsoon rains cause landsliding and slopes are now particularly unstable.  Existing landslides may dam water which then releases catastrophically.  Landslide dams need to be torn down in advance to prevent this but that requires resources they do not currently have.

Water and food supplies are very low.  They are worried in Kathmandu that supplies will run out by end of week.  Many areas do not have access to water and some have resorted to drinking pool water.  Disease outbreak is a very real concern.  Foreigners are unable to get out of the country to alleviate the need for supplies.

Nepal is on the UN list of poorest countries in the world. Short term recovery will require a lot of aid, but long term will also.  Tourism is a large source of the country’s income; 3 of the country’s 4 world heritage sites have been destroyed and it looks like this year’s outdoor expeditions will be largely shut down.  Many believe fewer people will visit for outdoor pursuits in the coming years.

Here are some reputable charities taking donations for Nepal.

Please, please consider donating to a charity organization if you are able, and if not please signal boost and keep Nepal in your thoughts.

[cutieebebe]

Always need to double check

[fakewoke]

yeah this shit started at 3. schools are literally 5 minutes away from mondawmin were just letting out

[iwriteaboutfeminism]

High school students in Baltimore staged a walkout and the police showed up with a SWAT team.