Eyes Wide Open

Music, design, humour and everything in between.

[humansofnewyork]

“Nobody was prepared for this. There are now 700,000 people trying to figure out how to survive in the middle of nowhere. A few months ago, this entire area was a national forest reserve. It was covered with trees. But the refugees had nothing when they arrived, so they started cutting the trees for fuel. Then they moved on to shrubs. Now they’ve dug up all the roots so there’s nothing left but loose soil. It’s too dangerous for them to go home so we’re trying to make the best of the situation. Almost all the refugees are living in plastic tents right now. They’re extremely vulnerable. So we’ve designed sturdy bamboo houses and we’re building them as fast as we can. We want to finish as many as possible before the monsoon season arrives.” —————————————— This week I’m sharing a series of first hand accounts from Rohingya refugees. Alongside these stories, we’ll meet a few of the wonderful people who are working to make the situation better. This is Immad– a construction coordinator for the humanitarian organization OBAT Helpers BD. Immad is a hero of our tale because he designed the bamboo houses that we are currently raising money to build. Our campaign has raised over $500,000 so far. That’s enough to build nearly 800 houses. Because each house can hold a family of six, that’s enough to shelter nearly 5,000 people. A pretty remarkable achievement, but there are still nearly a million refugees without homes. So if you haven’t already, please consider donating here: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm

[humansofnewyork]

“This is my older sister’s business. I’m just helping her out. I barely knew her for most of my life. We come from a village, and she moved to the city when I was a baby. She supported our whole family. Everyone depended on her. She sent us money every month, but I barely knew her. I only spoke to her on the phone. A few years ago I followed in her footsteps and moved to Jakarta, and now we’ve become very close. I can finally witness the sacrifices that she’s made for us. She works all the time. She owns this small restaurant and runs a furniture business out of her home. Even though she’s a woman, she does all the marketing and negotiating herself. She wakes up early in the morning to search for wood in torn out buildings. When she comes home at night, her body is so tired that she goes directly to sleep. I want to become like her so she can rest. But I’m afraid I’m too naïve. When I watch her, I feel like she can do anything.” (Jakarta, Indonesia)

[theonion]

MENLO PARK, CA—Saying it was mind-boggling that people continue to log on day after day, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted Monday that he was unsure why anyone still uses Facebook. “The fact that anyone still thinks it’s a good idea to have a Facebook account is a complete and utter mystery to me,” said Zuckerberg, adding that he simply could not fathom how “that awful, awful site” receives 2 billion monthly users despite being specifically designed for optimizing profit in a way entirely unrelated to any of their needs. “Maybe every once in a blue moon the algorithm will allow a somewhat relevant post from an acquaintance or even an actual friend to slip through, but for the most part, it’s all just sponsored post after sponsored post from some vendor that exploited users’ personal data to create chintzy hyper-targeted T-shirts. People think of Facebook as a single portal to pretty much all they want from the internet, but it’s really just an unending parade of glitchy autoplaying videos from pages they don’t subscribe to, all served up with some of the most miserable functionality in online history. I mean, why the fuck am I still in business?” Zuckerberg went on to say that he had often thought about deactivating his own account but couldn’t for the life of him figure out why he hadn’t followed through.

[micdotcom]

Heather Heyer’s mom gives heartbreaking yet stirring funeral speech

[the-movemnt-deactivated20170912]

Charleena Lyles called 911 for help, police shot her dead

A black, pregnant mother of three in Seattle called police to report an attempted burglary at her apartment on Sunday. But when two white Seattle Police Department officers arrived, they reportedly shot and killed the knife-wielding woman in front of her children.

She has been identified by relatives as 30-year-old Charleena Lyles. Her family is distraught, the Seattle Times has reported.

Police confirmed the shooting happened Sunday morning, after officers responded to Lyles’ Seattle apartment. They’d had previous contact with Lyles, who was alerted to the responding two officers as a “hazard,” the Times reported.

The shooting is being reviewed by SPD’s Force Investigation Team and its Office of Professional Accountability, police chief Kathleen O’Toole said. The local prosecutor’s office will also review the incident, the Times reported. Read more (6/19/17)

[inspirationmobile]

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (via inspirationmobile)

[inspirationmobile]

The most impressive people I know spent their time with their head down getting shit done for a long, long time.

Sam Altman, Y Combinator (via inspirationmobile)

[inspirationmobile]

Design cannot rescue failed content.

Edward R. Tufte (via inspirationmobile)

[the-future-now-deactivated20170]

A sharp memory doesn’t make you smart. Our brains are actively trying to forget things.

It might be good to forget some things.

A recent study from Canada shows that our brains are typically trying to forget. It suggests that the “goal” of our memory is to dump extraneous details and hold onto the important ones — meaning that we don’t want to remember everything.

“If you’re trying to navigate the world and your brain is constantly bringing up multiple conflicting memories, that makes it harder for you to make an informed decision,” Blake Richards, an associate fellow with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research’s Learning in Machines and Brains Program, said in a release. Read more (6/21/17)

follow @the-future-now

[hexaviolet]

honestly… i don’t think metric has ever produced a bad song 

[the-movemnt-deactivated20170912]

Colorado mosque vandalized as suspect throws rocks, Bible through glass doors

Police in Fort Collins, Colorado, are looking for a person caught on surveillance video throwing rocks and a Bible through the glass doors of a local mosque, the Denver Post reported.

The incident took place at roughly 4 a.m. Mountain on Sunday at the Islamic Center of Fort Collins, roughly a one-hour drive north of Denver.

“[We] would urge state and federal law enforcement authorities to investigate the possibility of a bias motive for this attack on a house of worship,” Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement. Read more (3/27/17 12 PM)

follow @the-movemnt

[micdotcom]

This 13-year-old girl was afraid of getting dress-coded — so her sister took action

[the-movemnt-deactivated20170912]

Legal adviser Stella Tsantekidou spoke out for immigrant rights and compassion at a protest in London’s Parliament Square on Monday.

[micdotcom]

Arizona man breaks into mosque to rip up 130 copies of Quran

On Tuesday, the Islamic Center of Tucson shared on its Facebook page that an unknown man broke into and vandalized the center, ripping up over 130 the mosque’s copies of the Quran, the Islamic holy book. 

The Tuscon, Arizona, mosque shared pictures of pages ripped out of the Quran and strewn all over the center’s prayer room rug. 

Local KOLD reporter Maria Hechanova shared close-up pictures of the shredded Qurans on her Twitter. Read more. (3/15/2017 2:00 PM)

[neil-gaiman]

You say to finish things...but I can't even start. I was a writer as a kid, and I finished and started things constantly. My confidence slowly shattered as a teen. I'm now in my 20s and I'm a nervous wreck. I long to write, but the thought of it makes me so anxious. I've created a legitimate fear. How might I overcome this?

I’d suggest two different ways, very different from each other.

You could tell yourself it doesn’t matter, and start finding out how to write for fun again. Give yourself an hour a day to write in: no phone, no internet, no reading books or talking to people, no Tumblr, just time to write in. And in that time, write whatever you want, or don’t. A poem. A description of someone. A memory. A sea-shanty for seven morose pirates and a raccoon. Anything. Just give yourself time to write and find that writing can be fun again.

Or else…

Join a writing group. The kind of group, online or in real life, where you have to produce work to be read by the other people in the group. Where not writing will have consequences, even if the consequence is that people will be disappointed. So there’s enough external push to conquer the anxiousness on your part.

[the-movemnt-deactivated20170912]

Rihanna shows how to use celebrity and wealth for good (x) | follow @the-movemnt

[micdotcom]

A reported 56% of men believe sexism is over. “Over,” you say? Really?

In 2015, Cosmopolitan surveyed 2,235 women between the ages of 18 and 34 and found one in three had suffered sexual harassment on the job. 

That same year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission dismissed 52% of sexual harassment claims. 

That might help explain why, in a 2013 YouGov/Huffington Post poll, 70% of participants who said they had been sexually harassed at work also said they never reported the behavior.  

It’s not just the U.S. that has the problem.

A study from August found that 52% of U.K. women had been sexually harassed at work. 

The European Union estimates that between 40% and 50% of women “experience unwanted sexual advancements, physical contact or other forms of sexual harassment at their workplace.”

A 2014 Pew Research study on online harassment indicated that women were more likely to be sexually harassed and stalked online.

Twenty-five percent of women between the ages of 18 and 24 reported having been sexually harassed, against 13% of men in the same age bracket; 26% reported having been stalked, to just 7% of men.

In Australia, the digital security firm Norton surveyed 1,000 people in March. 

Almost half the female participants reported having been harassed online — which is to say, they’d received unwanted contact, rape and/or death threats or had simply been trolled.

Women under the age of 30 seemed to shoulder more abuse, with 76% of participants in that age bracket reportedly having been the victims of cyber harassment.

An October 2016 report by the National Partnership for Women and Families showed that, on average, women nationwide make 80 cents to men’s dollar.

Adding another layer of badness to the equation, that higher education women are more likely to have doesn’t seem to be getting them anywhere.

In 2015, there were more CEOs named John than there were female CEOs of all names, according to Payscale. 

That makes sense given that, according to Forbes, just 4% of Fortune 500 companies have women at the helm.

A recent study found men are granted promotions to first-tier managerial positions 30% more often than women.

That confirms the results of a separate study that found women do actually ask for raises as often as men do — it’s just that they’re more likely to be told “no.”

In 2013, the World Health Organization declared violence against women “a global health problem of epidemic proportions.”

 The report that spurred the statement found that 35% of the world’s women were victims of “physical or sexual violence." 

Additionally, 38% of women who were murdered worldwide were murdered by their intimate partners, while 42% of women who’d been physically or sexually abused by their partners sustained injuries.

A study by New York City Department of Consumer Affairs found that products "for women” cost an average 7% more than their male counterparts,

Sexism, totally over! Read more (2/16/17 2:40 PM)