Untilted

I'm super good at tumbling. I tumbl like all the time. Srs.

[emilyscartoons]

Who’s in

[thesnadger]

I will, until I am blue in the face, defend any adult’s right to enjoy whatever silly, all-ages thing they like without being hassled for it.

But there’s a flip side to that right: As adult fans it is absolutely our responsibility to make sure our enjoyment of that thing does not interfere with a minor’s ability to enjoy the same thing in a safe space.

That means putting warnings on fics that have adult themes, that means not posting porn in the main tags, and it absolutely positively means not having any inappropriate interactions with minors you meet on this website, even if it’s their idea.

This is the basic price of admission every adult has to pay for entry into an all-ages fandom.

[postcardsfromspace]

yes

[sterek-merthur-hunter]

People wondering about the Thor Ragnarok Logo. 

[ithelpstodream]

A month ago, when 49 people were slaughtered in a gay club, we were told the blame lay at our feet, because if only everyone were allowed to carry a gun, we’d be safe.

Today, after a black man was held down, shot at close range and murdered, and we’re told he would have been safe if only he hadn’t been armed.

Which is it?

[rainsuggestion]

dont forgive people who arent sorry for what they did

[geebzofficial]

jesus did….im just saying

[rainsuggestion]

do i look like jesus to u

[erisonline]

Also like, christendom in general and the bible in particular both make a big deal about acknowledging and atoning for sins? “Forgive them for they know not what they do”≠“forgive them because making them feel bad would be mean.”

How many times in scripture does Jesus grab some wrongdoer by the shirt and go “are you fucking sorry?” Dude wasn’t nice about that shit.

[jamiemortara]

reaaaaall. so much respect bb.

[geekandmisandry]

Wow, this is long but well worth the read.

[wetwareproblem]

This desperately needs transcription, and I’m terrible for it. It’s important; I want to see it hit as wide an audience as possible. Is anyone up to the task?

[queerrussetpotato]

[a Facebook status by Emily Brill]

- november 2013: i am hired by the press of atlantic city as a copy editor and told by the copy desk chief that the desk has a “hands-off” culture. “we pretty much just fix spelling and grammar errors and design the pages.” i dont want to take the job but i want to move away and to do that i need money.

- december 2013: i change the label over a photo of people placing poinsettas onto church pews from “preparing for the coming of the lord” to “preparing for christmas services” & my coworker ignores my edit & says she doesn’t see the difference.

- spring 2014: disciplined for changing a headline about kara walker’s sphynx from “purely sweet homage to black labor.” disciplined for calling out the fact the press ran “real mother” in a headline about adoptive kids meeting up w/ their birth mothers.

- august 2014: lay out nation & world page day after ferguson protests; take a lot of time making sure the page includes historical & social context; (middle-class, white, suburban) copy desk chief pulls article on police militarization & writes on the proof “that dead horse has already been beaten,” then goes on to redo the entire page. throughout that month i continually reword “riot” as “protest” or “demonstration” & change “was shot by police” to “police officers shot [x],” subsituting the name of the officer whenever i had it.

- spring 2015:an article comes to the copy desk about a man named philip white who died in police custody in vineland. the story is vague. its only source is the police department’s press release. (“white, ~30, died in police custody after being arrested for disorderly conduct. no further information is available.”) the next few paragraphs were philip white’s arrest record (he was arrested last year for stealing baby formula from wal-mart). that was the entire thing. outraged, i google him to *at least* get a quote from his friends or family or more information about him for the photo caption. the google search results for his name are 12 pages long.

it turns out the vineland cops set their dogs on philip white and they ripped out his throat in front of witnesses, and there’s cell phone footage. he was unarmed, in his early 30s, a dad. hot fury engulfs me. i call every editor i need to & tell them we’re changing this story. i’m rewriting the headline and the lede and the first five paragraphs and i’m taking his arrest record out and there’s nothing you can do to stop me, i’m sorry, i will actually walk out right now over this if i have to. all the editors say ok, yes, and the next day i hear that the reporter complained i shouldn’t have “messed with” his story, that he had “reasons” for not talking to witnesses. YEAH?

have you ever read an article on an arrest and thought, “this is actually just a rewritten press release from a police department”? how about an article on a “clash between protestors and police” (note that language) that relies only on police department sources, not acknowledging that the officers are active agents in the “clash”? have you ever thought, “the only reason police officers release people’s criminal records after they kill them is to try to demonize and blame the victim, to absolve themselves of responsibility, to say, “he was dangerous, he had it coming”? have you thought about how disproportionate the policing of black and white communities is? how “disorderly conduct” is a charge that could mean anything (same with “resisting arrest” and a literal suitcase of other charges)?

have you thought about how fucked up depictions of women and minority groups in the mainstream media are, how all of this serves to uphold & maintain a toxic & destuctive [sic] white supremacist heteronormative patriarchal status quo? how trauma is collectivized? how last night my boss told me to “bump up the drama” on a label over a photo of two people who were shot and killed at work yesterday? “try ‘slain on camera’ instead of ‘virginia shooting.’” how, also last night, we had to get “his side of the story” after a boxer punched his child’s mother six times in the face, getting her airlifted to the hospital? and then we quoted him - saying “it’s not that serious” - before her? oh, but we always have to “consider both sides”! have you thought about the precedent that sets?

i’ve thought about this – all of this – every day for two years.

i can’t decide if i’ll remember copy editing at a newspaper as the worst thing i’ve ever done to myself or the best. i will never stop believing that these changes need to be made. copy editing /is/ political. it’s the most political thing there is. as a copy editor, as a journalist, every day you make an active decision to either uphold or subvert the status quo. don’t tell me it’s not a decision. don’t tell me you’re just being led around by the newspaper-voice and your editors and you just /have/ to quote that press release, don’t you? the police are the /official/ source. you /have/ to listen to them, yeah?

you don’t. ask yourself: why? why? why? you aren’t a mouthpiece for power you’re a fucking human animal and you need to care about what other people are going through. broad-brush depictions of groups of people as they come through the newspaper affect people’s perceptions and as a result they fuck with people’s daily lives and well-being. even if it is in the most miniscule way: as a copy editor, you have the power to change this. don’t act like it’s just spelling and grammar.

becky and i got into an argument once about i don’t even remember what but in it she said, “it’s not the words that matter, it’s the attitude behind the words. changing that word doesn’t matter.” she’s right and wrong. it is the attitude behind words that matters – that is exactly why we change the words.

i’m leaving my job september 4 to move to los angeles. i don’t know if i’ll ever work at a newspaper again but i am proud of myself for showing up every day. i’m proud of myself for the changes i was able to make. i will never stop believing this is important.

at the journalism program at my college we were taught “objective,” we were taught “stay out of it.” if you are reading this and you haven’t figured this out, i want you to know: there is no “objective.” there’s only the shit history has given you. you’re either upholding the status quo or disrupting it, but the status quo is not and has never been neutral.

[singingpool]

Tolerance without respect is this sick sagging weight.

I think, to a degree, we should hear things we don’t completely get, we should tolerate views we’re skeptical about, ones that we’re not sure if we’ll fully respect. That’s how we grow, how we understand more, is by trying to be respectful of stuff that’s not how we understand things.

But people take pride in having ongoing relationships with people they disagree with, when that disagreement is a very smug and intractable view on who is a person. A part of being midwestern and polite is having nice conversations with people who hate everything about my life and the people I care about, just because they are neighbors. People stay friends with men who spit talk in their faces whenever there’s a hint of disagreement, people stay friends with me even when they become sarcastic and dismissive to the point that they’re not listening in the slightest when we have a disagreement. Why? What is the point? And you inevitably defend them, and wind up saying ‘he’s a good guy, he just doesn’t get it’ to the people your friend belittles, the people who feel threatened by your friend, the people your friend makes drunken tirades about, and you’re proud of yourself for not being one of those people who doesn’t lose friends over political stuff, and you roll your eyes goodnaturedly at his increasingly fixated resentment, and sigh disappointedly at your friends who can’t coexist with him, who are taking these things too personally.

[cinexphile-deactivated20190801]

[erisonline]

Spoilers I guess:

People who complain about Kylo Ren being unmenacing are people who have encountered entitled, emotionally-uncontrolled young white men, and had the privilege of not recognizing that they are terrifying.

[singingpool]

The thing about that girl from Texas suing to end affirmative action because she didn’t get into her first choice is, she’s wrong. Affirmative action did not let in so many people with worse applications than hers that it made it impossible for the college to recognize the strength of her application.

But if she were right? If a college were letting in people who didn’t have strong SAT scores or as good of an academic record, because the college wanted to encourage people from different backgrounds to apply, because the college values diversity of experience to bring something of the real world into the academic discussions between children of mostly identical backgrounds? If a college were providing a pathway to success to students from underfunded schools, from marginalized families, people who are set up to fail by the school system, if Affirmative Action were lifting people out of generations where no one in their family had the opportunity for higher education, isn’t that worth a few mediocre white applicants maybe having to go to their second choice? 

[erisonline]

Anybody else find it weird that they still use footage of tiny-little-kid TNT in the opening credits when he’s grown 200% since then

[singingpool]

They call poc discourse oversensitive and reactionary, but even bringing up privilege as a concept to white people is more trying than managing a class of 30 toddlers

[singingpool]

In 2008 when Athens burned in riots protesting a kid being shot by police/guards, it easily could have come to pass without so much evidence suggesting those officers were spoiling for a fight, that they hunted down a kid well after they had confronted him. It could have happened without evidence that it was petty violence on behalf of the officers, it could have happened that they might shoot someone the public would find more of a real threat (even unarmed) rather than a preppy fifteen-year-old child. 

People say ‘just wait for the truth to come out’ but the truth never comes out, there’s only statements and evidence, and those are always open to interpretation. In the Oscar Grant case and other “I thought it was my taser” defense cases, officers come off as being too normal and decent to murder a defenseless person for no reason–but there’s no hard evidence differentiating them from the officers in Athens in 2008, just circumstances that raise questions. I’m not waiting on some accidental confession where an officer admits to hunting and killing a citizen in a fit of petty rage, but in any case as it develops, I wonder if the victim will seem sympathetic enough or the police seem abusive enough that it will resonate with a broad swath of society–and even then I’m not anticipating reform.

[theslaybymic]

If hair braiding isn’t taught in beauty schools, why does the government force black women to go (and pay thousands) to get a cosmetology license? What’s worse is not doing so could result in a $10,000 fine and a year in prison. Since the 1990s, the Institute for Justice has been fighting for hair braiders — and a new legal showdown in Iowa could be their biggest yet.

[misandry-mermaid]

Gentlemen! Let’s play a little game. I call it “Creep or Normal Guy?” The way you play is you have less than a second to decide whether a man you don’t know is a threat or not. If you identify a normal guy as a threat you could get called a bitch; if you identify a creep as a normal guy you could end up dead. This is fun, isn’t it? Now play it every day, with nearly every man you see, in nearly every situation you’re in, from the time puberty hits to … well, I turned 38 this week. Can someone tell me when I can stop playing?

Wild tells the story of every woman’s least favorite game: ‘creep or normal guy?’ (via oeste)

[aquaristlifeforme]

[ittybittyrecluse]

I WAS NOT READY FOR THIS.

[erisonline]

Aaaand back to sleep.

[badkidsjokes]

A Head

​why do we have a head

because we need to kiss