DREAMINGSPACE

I am R, a college-aged human being machine. This is my thought depository, i.e. the place where I collect shit I think is meaningful, in the manner of an overly philosophical, bibliophilic magpie.

[inothernews]

Reblog this if you love "Community" and want NBC to keep one of their -- and indeed, TV's -- few quality shows on the air.

[dreamingspace]

[adoctorworld]

[pleasures]

[dreamingspace]

Photoshop In Life.

[justonesyllable]

gpoyw: the adventures in packing edition; alternatively known as i could lie & say i’ve packed all my books, but…

[dreamingspace]

Nelle, you have excellent priorities. ♥

[dreamingspace]

This is an intelligent, clear-sighted article. It's one of the few I've read that discusses cultural difference in a value-neutral way, pulling shit apart without falling into the traps of useless generalisation, essentialising, political correctness, or hysteria. There's definitely an awareness of cultural capital, the significance of community as a value (and as something that drives values), and the problematics of assimilation. "If it is true that they are collectively dominating in elite high schools and universities, is it also true that Asian-Americans are dominating in the real world? My strong suspicion was that this was not so, and that the reasons would not be hard to find. If we are a collective juggernaut that inspires such awe and fear, why does it seem that so many Asians are so readily perceived to be, as I myself have felt most of my life, the products of a timid culture, easily pushed around by more assertive people, and thus basically invisible? The failure of Asian-Americans to become leaders in the white-collar workplace does not qualify as one of the burning social issues of our time. But it is a part of the bitter undercurrent of Asian-American life that so many Asian graduates of elite universities find that meritocracy as they have understood it comes to an abrupt end after graduation."

[qwehlo]

[dreamingspace]

heysammy:

WEEPING ANGEL, YOU ARE DRUNK.

[peripatetia]

[dreamingspace]

peripatetia:

[whoeverineedtobe]

"The Conservatives are like Nickelback. I don't know anyone who likes them, but they always seem to do well."

[dreamingspace]

[remap]

[drbrevity]

[uncomfortablesoul-deactivated20]

[gyzym]

Okay, what the hell, no. No. No. No. No.

So here’s the deal—I’m sure that this has been true for people. I’d go ahead and bet it was true for whoever made the graphic, and you know what, if that person had used “I” instead of “a woman” I would be just fine with this. If, for her, for anyone, the act of getting a haircut is a “clear gesture of defiance, dissatisfaction or despair,” that’s fine for them.

However, the idea that all women and the choices that they make about their bodies are reflecting this same emotional concept? That, incidentally, revolves around men? Yeah, no. Fuck that very much. No.

When I was in high school I cut 8 inches off my hair on a whim one day because I woke up and it felt heavy; I started growing it out when I left college because someone tried to tell me that “grown women keep their hair cropped.” It’s been blonde and..er, well, darker blonde, red for that one season, maroon, briefly, once, and I don’t make the decisions about what color I put in it based on how men feel either. It’s what looks good to me and what doesn’t. It’s what feels right and what doesn’t. It’s what I want or don’t want, because it is part of my body, and I am the only person who has the right to make a decision about it.

So, from where I’m standing, this should really read:

When a woman cuts her hair off, it’s not really about men at all, no matter what anyone says. Women know their own bodies better than anyone else does, and so when they cut their hair off, they are effectively making a decision that no one else has any right to judge. Whatever their reason, it’s a clear gesture of whatever they want it to be—whether it’s defiance, despair, dissatisfaction, or just that they’ve decided they want shorter fucking hair.

Don’t let anyone tell you the right way to be a girl—to be a person—ever. However you’re doing it is just exactly the way it’s supposed to be done. 

[aeide-thea]

reblogged for commentary.

[dreamingspace]

YES. I'm probably going to have to cut my hair soon, I might even lose all of it, because one of the medications I take for my rheumatoid arthritis is making it fall out, and about three-quarters of it is gone. Do you why methotrexate hair loss is hard? It's not just the knowledge that you're poisoning your body, or the fact that it's a reminder, a physical marker of the losses you have to endure because of illness. It's because of the shitty, violent aesthetics -- expressed in images like this one -- which surround and oppress women's bodies, teaching them to internalise shit like, you have to titillate the male gaze to have worth, you have to be beautiful, you have to be sexy, and you have to do it in the ways we tell you to. According to these aesthetics, women must have hair. If they don't, out come the judgments, the assumptions. And so a medication side effect that might just be a nuisance, if I were male, is going to cause me grief. Not to mention cause me to hate myself a little for not being strong enough, for being unable to just say fuck it and not care what people think. So -- seriously, fuck this image, fuck this attitude.

[irinasof]

[dreamingspace]

The iPod has changed the way we listen to music. And the way we respond to it. "At the same time, modes of listening seem to be moving toward the (apparent) opposite of micro-differentiation: a total pluralism of taste. This has become the most celebrated feature of the iPod era. "I have seen the future," Alex Ross, music critic of The New Yorker, wrote in 2004, "and it is called the Shuffle—the setting on the iPod that skips randomly from one track to another." Here the iPod, or the digitization of musical life it represents, promises emancipation from questions of taste. Differences in what people listen to, in a Shuffled world, may have less and less to do with social class and purchasing power. Or, better yet, taste won't correlate to class distinction: The absence of taste will. As certain foodies score points by having eaten everything—blowfish, yak milk tea, haggis, hot dogs—so the person who knows and likes all music achieves a curious sophistication-through-indiscriminateness."

[ilovecharts]

[dreamingspace]

An absolutely beautiful article about how paratext works when applied to online reading (and what web designers should do about it). The author is eloquent, compelling, and very obviously in love with reading & books; my inner bibliophile made a tiny noise of joy when I finished reading this. "Think of your first encounter with a book. You look at the cover to get a sense of it, then perhaps flip to the back or the flaps to skim the publisher’s copy. Opening the book, you might glance at the title page, or quickly run your eyes over the table of contents. Maybe you peek into the back to check the page count, or casually assess the weight of the book in your hand. If it’s a hardcover, you might take the dust jacket off, lest it get in the way. Most readers engage in at least one and usually several of these behaviors—they’re a kind of pre-reading ritual, part of the culture of books. And yet they serve an important purpose as well, in that they ease the transition between looking and reading. They help the reader establish interest, and they serve as an invitation to reading, setting the stage for the act that follows. Similar behaviors can be found on the web."