I'm A Stranger Here Myself

Student of Neuroscience, Religious Studies, and other things I'm not cut out for. "And no one likes Americans. We've got this language barrier, internal stuff that's scarier." Jay Brannan, The Spanglish Song

[basementdemo]

colors // halsey

[chicagosugarbitch]

I don’t…. I don’t think these are the lyrics…

[basementdemo]

they are

[zodiyactus]

His Jorts: Aries, Cancer, Capricorn, Pisces

His Jants: Leo, Virgo, Scorpio, Sagittarius

His Japris: Taurus, Gemini, Libra, Aquarius

[enthymemememes]

[fag]

me as a twitter social activist: Men Are uh….*looks at smudged writing on hand*…Bad…..Woman good

me: Time for those retweets to pour in *rubs hands maniacally* >:)

[hplyrikz]

[treebystream]

[theunitofcaring]

When all witnesses agree, it might be because they're all correct - or because there's something other than the truth influencing their statement. If the process is biased, even slightly, then unanimous agreement will actually be evidence against the position unanimously agreed-upon.

Under ancient Jewish law, if a suspect on trial was unanimously found guilty by all judges, then the suspect was acquitted. This reasoning sounds counterintuitive, but the legislators of the time had noticed that unanimous agreement often indicates the presence of systemic error in the judicial process, even if the exact nature of the error is yet to be discovered. They intuitively reasoned that when something seems too good to be true, most likely a mistake was made.

In a new paper to be published in The Proceedings of The Royal Society A, a team of researchers, Lachlan J. Gunn, et al., from Australia and France has further investigated this idea, which they call the “paradox of unanimity.”

…

The researchers demonstrated the paradox in the case of a modern-day police line-up, in which witnesses try to identify the suspect out of a line-up of several people. The researchers showed that, as the group of unanimously agreeing witnesses increases, the chance of them being correct decreases until it is no better than a random guess.

In police line-ups, the systemic error may be any kind of bias, such as how the line-up is presented to the witnesses or a personal bias held by the witnesses themselves. Importantly, the researchers showed that even a tiny bit of bias can have a very large impact on the results overall. Specifically, they show that when only 1% of the line-ups exhibit a bias toward a particular suspect, the probability that the witnesses are correct begins to decrease after only three unanimous identifications. Counterintuitively, if one of the many witnesses were to identify a different suspect, then the probability that the other witnesses were correct would substantially increase.

[kingjaffejoffer]

 Tragic: A raccoon accidentally dissolving his cotton candy in water

[nutfertiti-deactivated20160504]

They ain’t have to do my mans like that

[volkswagonblues]

obi wan kenobi dramatically disrobing, a timeline

[scawtt]

white male atheist comedian: I, a progressive comedian, am going to make fun of religion because I, a progressive,

[mynewcave-deactivated20171218]

Infographics are neat

[eiregirl05]

[youwoketheworldinsideofme]

I love that this exists

[rachol]

[blanketforyourshock]

you know ive hit quality blogging when i post a picture of 16 vicars riding oblivion

#oh my god

That’s what they said

[roseforthethorns]

I love how many of them are praying

[heaven-and-hale-deactivated2015]

man that one in the front right corner just does not give a fuck

[vassraptor]

And by looking at that picture, you can experience the roller coaster… vicariously.

[cumaeansibyl]

even better than the one in the front right corner: the one in the front middle who’s like HELL YEAH HELL YEAH HELL YEAH

[oradianto]

😂

[quantumstarlight]

Wait but there are more! 

[alixabethmay]

Now this is the sort of quality religious content I want to see on my dashboard

[mishasminions]

SEEMS LIKE A HELL OF A RIDE

[thedeepwalrus]

HOLY WATER SLIDE

[bandtshirt]

best one yet

[lesbianshepard]

STAR WARS PREDICTION: 

you know how snoke is a big projection? in the last movie rey and finn and everyone are going to go and face him and while he’s monologue bb-8 is going to go roll off to the side and pull down a curtain to reveal jar jar binks talking into a microphone

[necromancer-feminist-deactivate]

[thatfilthyanimal]

Say that at 18 I slap down enough money so I could have my whole body covered head-to-toe in tattoos, piercings all over myself, a mountain of cigarettes, plastic surgery, and plan to have like 20 babies… but if I try at all to safely make it impossible for me to breed for the sake of my health suddenly its like WOAH THERE SLOW DOWN MISSY YOU’RE NOT READY FOR THIS KIND OF COMMITMENT YET

[theonewholovesbooks]

I have stage III Endometriosis, which means I have to get my uterus removed because I literally have terrible cramps ALL THE TIME and not just when I’m on my period. Now, I’ve always said I don’t want any children for personal reasons and I don’t need my uterus, really. I am not worried about that surgery and I don’t feel any kind of nostalgia over an organ I won’t ever use. 

The thing is, my doctor is a ‘man’. This ‘man’ told me I had to get pregnant right now before it’s too late. I told him I didn’t want to get pregnant and explained the multiple reasons but what, do you ask, did my doctor have to say about this? ‘Well, better have a kid now because just imagine how depressing it must be being a thirty-something woman without children and a husband?’

I was diagnosed a year ago. I should have gone through surgery six months ago and I still can’t find a doctor that will perform the surgery without trying to force me to have children first. Basically, if you’re a woman you don’t have a say in what can and cannot be done to your body without a shitload of people getting in the way AND I’M FUCKING SICK OF IT.

[doodlyood]

A dear friend of mine wanted to have her tubes tied.  She was about to give birth to twins and the doctors wouldn’t consent because she wasn’t 21 yet.  She had already had children and they still refused to let her have the procedure.

[rcmclachlan]

My friend got a vasectomy a week after asking his doctor for one, no problem. He was 25.

Me? I’ve asked 4 different doctors for some kind of permanent sterilisation—tubal ligation or Essure or whatever—and I get a pat on the head and a “You’d regret it if you did.”

Oh, DIDN’T REALIZE YOU HAD A DIRECT LINE TO MY BRAIN.

[bidyke]

This is horrifying.

[heidishartrandnewell]

It is real, the horror of women being unable to police their own bodies. 

In all states, there are special consent forms for all women undergoing publicly funded sterilization. A few states have special consents for all women seeking sterilization. Medicaid-funded sterilizations require a 30-day waiting period between consent and the procedure (except in the special circumstances of premature delivery or emergency abdominal surgery in the setting of prior consent) and that the patient be at least 21 years old and mentally competent.57There are no such restrictions for male sterilization. [X]

[gladlyboastingmyweaknesses-deac]

Some states also require you to meet with a psychiatrist/psychologist before making the decision AND MAKE YOUR SPOUSE/SO GO IF YOU HAVE ONE. My mother, at age 30, when she just had her FIFTH biological son, asked about it and they told her “you should let yourself think it over. Talk to your minister and husband too”

[lemonfucker007-deactivated20170]

I’m so afraid that my uterus won’t be big enough for an IUD and that I’ll be confined to pills and condoms because someone else has a staunch conviction that there MUST be a child from this particular person, indefinitely. Me. I need to have a child. I’d love to see the look on a doctor’s face after I spoke with a psychologist and he’s like “Yes, please, PLEASE sterilize her. Please. For the good of mankind.” Wish me luck!

[lesbianwisdom-deactivated202102]

I’m worried about this. I want to get this procedure done as soon as I legally can, and I’m so worried that no doctor will take me seriously.

[captainblogit]

I lack the vocabulary to string together words which will capture just how sad and angry this reality makes me. 

[orlansky]

Seen in Times Square.

[gospelofthekingdom]

“Liberation theology begins with the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the outcast, and the disenfranchised.  To do liberation theology is to do it with and from the perspective of those whom society considers as nobodies.  Incarnating theological thought among those who are dispossessed roots liberation theology in the material as opposed to simply the metaphysical.  Within the Eurocentric context, the primary religious question concerns the existence of God.  Among most liberationists, the struggle is not with God’s existence per se, but with God’s character.  Who is this God whom we say exists?  What is the character of God?  Whoever God is, God imparts and sustains life while opposing death.  Wherever lives are threatened with poverty and oppression, God is presente–present.  The God of the Gospels is offended by the dehumanizing conditions in which the marginalized find themselves.

Through Jesus, this God knows what it means to suffer under religious and politically unjust structures.  Because Jesus–in the ultimate act of solidarity with all who continue to be persecuted today–carries the wounds upon his feet, hands, and side, God knows what it means to exist in solidarity with all who are being crucified on the crosses of sexism, racism, ethnic discrimination, classism, and heterosexism.  Those who suffer under oppression have a God who understands their suffering.  Because Jesus suffered oppression on the cross, a divine commitment to stand against injustices exists, a stance believers are called to emulte.  In short, to know God is to do justice.  To stand by while oppression occurs is to profess nonbelief, regardless of any confession given privately or publicly.”

— Miguel A. De La Torre, Liberation Theology for Armchair Theologians, Pg. 49-51

[thecatranimal]

Raise your hand if you started off as an overachiever and now you’re fighting off crippling anxiety and depression as you watch people catch up and surpass you while you watch your own grades slowly slip