“La célébrité, c'est un nom imprimé cent fois.”

people of the earth, their faces and sometimes their words

[pomegranates-and-photos]

A Palestinian boy throws a rock during the first intifada

[nowinexile]

His name is Ramzi Abu Redwan. During the time the picture was taken he was 8 years old. Today he is 36 and has become a world-class solo musician and composer, playing the Oud, Buzuq, Violin and Viola. 

He was discovered by a Palestinian musician who recognized his natural talent at the viola, and later received a scholarship to study at a conservatory in France. He could have stayed there and lived a comfortable life in Paris, but instead, he chose to return home and give back the gift of music by openning music schools in Palestinian towns and refugee camps.

[sherryzade]

he’s got a spotify btw!! if you’ve never heard a oud, i def encourage listening to his work. it’s a beautiful instrument from a beautiful people ❤🖤🤍💚

here’s my personal fave of what i’ve heard so far from his top 5

[plasma-noise]

Louis Armstrong draws a trumpet on the head of a French punk, 1961

[destinyrush]

A hero without a cape

[nyshadidntbreakit]

Her name is Theresa Kachindamoto, and she is a senior chief - political leader of a region with a population of about 900,000 people.

She didn’t run for election; she was appointed, without her knowledge, while she was living and working in a completely different part of the country. She just received a call one day telling her to come back to her childhood home, because she was in charge now.

So she did; and when she arrived, she discovered widespread sexual abuse of children. She browbeat 50 uncooperative local leaders into accepting her decision to annul all the marriages. She then fired four of them when they continued to allow children to be married off in their areas. She still faces widespread opposition from parents who consider it their right to sexually abuse their daughters if they want to; but Kachindamoto very evidently does not give a fuck, and is continuing to use political and legal means to protect children in the region.

She’s not just an anonymous do-gooder; she’s an effective political leader despite incredibly difficult circumstances. Theresa Kachindamoto.

[mershelle9]

Go Theresa!!

[captaincrusher]

Nichelle Nichols has passed away. 

Martin Luther King once convinced her to continue on as Uhura when she was about to quit. He told her how she was a role model for so many people and had to stay on. He rightfully recognized her as a trailblazer and the inspiration she continued to be. 

(Second picture is Nichols participating in a recruitment program for NASA in late 70s/early 80′s, aimed at women and people of color. The third picture is Nichols onboard the stratospheric observatory for infrafred astronomy in 2017, as one of the first non essential personell to be able to do so) 

[kafk-a]

Mpho Tutu

[rob-pattinson]

Many of the political attacks on trans people—whether it is a mandate that bathroom use be determined by birth sex, a blanket ban on medical interventions for trans kids or the suggestion that trans men are simply wayward women beguiled by male privilege—carry the same subtext: that trans people are mistaken about who they are. “We know who we are,” Page says. “People cling to these firm ideas [about gender] because it makes people feel safe. But if we could just celebrate all the wonderful complexities of people, the world would be such a better place.”

Page was attracted to the role of Vanya in The Umbrella Academy because—in the first season, released in 2019—Vanya is crushed by self-loathing, believing herself to be the only ordinary sibling in an extraordinary family. The character can barely summon the courage to move through the world. “I related to how much Vanya was closed off,” Page says. Now on set filming the third season, co-workers have seen a change in the actor. “It seems like there’s a tremendous weight off his shoulders, a feeling of comfort,” says showrunner Steve Blackman. “There’s a lightness, a lot more smiling.” For Page, returning to set has been validating, if awkward at times. Yes, people accidentally use the wrong pronouns—“It’s going to be an adjustment,” Page says—but co-workers also see and acknowledge him.

Whatever challenges might lie ahead, Page seems exuberant about playing a new spectrum of roles. “I’m really excited to act, now that I’m fully who I am, in this body,” Page says. “No matter the challenges and difficult moments of this, nothing amounts to getting to feel how I feel now.” This includes having short hair again. During the interview, Page keeps rearranging strands on his forehead. It took a long time for him to return to the barber’s chair and ask to cut it short, but he got there. And how did that haircut feel?

Page tears up again, then smiles. “I just could not have enjoyed it more,” he says.

ELLIOT PAGE for TIME Magazine › 2021 interview by Katy Steinmetz, photography by Wynne Neilly

[iblamealex]

“When Dean first met Brando, in 1949, he told him he was ‘his biggest fan’ and the two kissed” (xx)

[luminoussea]

The Sea Women of South Korea

photographs by Hyung S. Kim

“For hundreds of years, women in the South Korean island province of Jeju have made their living harvesting seafood by hand from the ocean floor. Known as haenyeo, or sea women, they use no breathing equipment, although a typical dive might last around two minutes and take them as deep as ten metres underwater. Wearing old-fashioned headlight-shaped scuba masks, most dive with lead weights strapped around their waists to help them sink faster. A round flotation device called a tewak, about the size of a basketball, sits at the surface of the water with a net hanging beneath it to collect the harvest. Some use a sharp tool to dig conch, abalone, and other creatures from the crevices on the seafloor. … “For me, the photos of the haenyeo reflect and overlap with the images I have of my mother and grandmother,” Kim says. “They are shown exactly as they are, tired and breathless. But, at the same time, they embody incredible mental and physical stamina, as the work itself is so dangerous; every day they cross the fine line between life and death. I wanted to capture this extreme duality of the women: their utmost strength combined with human fragility.” ”

read more at the New Yorker

[endangered-justice-seeker]

Urban legend!!! This is fucking dope!

[mittenfoot]

damn good for her. I can’t imagine how much extra she went thru bc of her name

[asundergrowth]

Own your bullshit like Dr Marijuana Pepsi Jackson

[shesnake]

a few days late but happy 50th birthday to legendary icon Lucy Liu!

[botanyshitposts]

one of the most important things ive learned from upper level biology education so far is that dna isnt the god-like all-powerful beacon of similarity between all living beings on the face of the earth as high school science textbooks will lead u to believe but actually is, in fact, the molecular equivalent of a smoldering dumpster fire that’s in a constant state of chaos and cellular scandal like some highlights: 

-the parts of dna that just casually detach on a physical level from the main strand, do some sick skateboard tricks in the cytoplasm, and land somewhere else with 43552342 copies

-the parts that would do A Thing if they wern’t physically spooled up so tightly that the Make Thing Happen machinery couldnt get to them

-the dna thats in ur mitochondria bc the mitochondria used to be a bacteria that our bigger, buffer cellular ancestors just vored in the primordial ooze 

-the dna that’s in chloroplasts in plants for the same reason

-rna….bitches be crazy like what is she gonna do next?? o she gonna act like a protein now and do shit?? im on the edge of my seat 

-sometimes u just gotta make more chromosomes man like sometimes u just be hanging out and u gotta make ur genome 64 sizes larger and then change ur mind only 100,000 years later and delete half of it and thats just how it is on this bitch of an earth

-random shit from like 5 BCE is just casually left over everywhere like no susan i told u to leave that gene alone we might need it to fight dinosaurs again u just never know!!!!!

dna is earth’s biggest and brightest train wreck and honestly i wouldnt trust a dna molecule to water my plants let alone run my body but here we fucking are 

[copperbadge]

I am feeling physically very unstable after reading this. 

[pineapplesquid]

I’m a genetics professor and everything here is true.

There’s a fern that has 1,260 chromosomes. That’s 630 pairs of chromosomes. No, we don’t know why.

[pineapplesquid]

Oh, and everyone should know that the person who first presented evidence for endosymbiosis (the official name for cells eating each other and then turning into mitochondria or chloroplasts instead of being digested) was this woman, Lynn Margulis, in 1967: 

 Her paper where she presented the theory was rejected 15 times before it got published. Over the next decade, her work was mocked and ignored. Now every biologist knows that she was right.

The bits of DNA that move around (“jumping genes”) were discovered by this woman, Barbara McClintock, in the 1940′s: 

Her work on them was ignored and derided for about two decades before some people started to take it seriously. In 1983 she won a Nobel Prize for it.

Something of a derail, but I feel strongly about talking about the contributions of these two women.

[mikkeneko]

it’s never not the time to learn about cool women in science

[ithelpstodream]

During this #WomenHistoryMonth, as Mattel is turning Frida Kahlo into a Barbie-doll, we remember the queer, feminist, communist activist and artist that she was until the day she died.

[niggazinmoscow]

Every day I learn something new about queer history.

[thetrippytrip]

We should be more pro-active or we’ll see more of such sad fates of honest people.

[fluffmugger]

And the utterly ironic thing is I’ve seen repeated tumblr posts of that iconic photo absolutely slagging the shit out of Peter Norman as “lol white guy so uncomfortable”   “Why the fuck isn’t he supporting them”, etc etc.

[vagueplague]

[oldschoolbeauties]

Carrie Fisher in the trash with a bottle of wine, 1977

[ziraseal]

Truth coming out of her well to shame mankind

[jieunology]

171225 SBS Gayo Daejeon Cr: 연다한