always true to my heart

[my-dark-happy-place]

I wanted to talk about these because apparently a lot of people outside of germany and the surrounding countries don't know about these. And with the rise of right wing politics in parts of the western world it is important to talk about the victims of the Holocaust.

These are called Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) because while you go about your day to day life you literally "stumble" across these. These stones are on the ground, where everyone walks, in the middle of hundreds of cities all over Germany and a few neighboring countries.

They are in front of the last residencies of victims of the Holocaust. Every single stone is dedicated to one person. They always say "here lived -name-" then their birthday and what we know about what happened to them.

For example this one says:

"Here lived

Georg Rosenberg

Year 1886 (which is the year he was born in, the exact birthday isn't known)

Arrested 1939

Deported 1943

Murdered in Auschwitz"

These are there so that we will never forget what happened and that even when you're doing mundane chores you might stumble across these and remember the victims. This is especially important now that the last survivors, who can tell their stories first hand, are dying.

Every year people get together to clean the Stolpersteine, so that they stay intact and readable.

Remembering and being reminded of the horrible things that happened and remembering the victims is one of the most important parts in preventing something like this from happening again.

So if you ever come to Germany or if you actually live here and have never noticed these, maybe take some time to look down and read about these people's fates

[my-dark-happy-place]

Today marks 77 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, so I thought I would reblog this again, because I think it's important.

[playfulpanthress]

Are there plans to protect these stones, from the elements or people? I feel like over time they'll be harder to read.

[my-dark-happy-place]

Every year on Holocaust remembrance day people go out and polish the stones. So most of them stay readable for a long time. If they get too damaged or unreadable they are replaced

[fred-erick-frankenstein]

Also, if you know about a person not yet remembered by such a stone you can also write the non-profit organization that organizes the making of the new stones etc. And if you want you can become "godfather" to one of the stones and care for it preservation.

According to Wikipedia the Stolpersteine are also in 29 other European countries.

For more infos

[thefloatingstone]

Still watching this youtube channel about what I can only describe as "Dark Classical art" and this one absolutely floored me because I was unaware of it and I want to share it because it changes my perspective on this artist completely.

You might be aware of Louis Wain. If not by name then by his art. He's the artist behind that series of cat drawings that slowly became more and more abstract and bizarre.

This series of paintings of cats are often labelled as a visual representation of Wain's deteriorating mental illness and schizophrenia. Even more so often labelled as "a tragic display of a painter's failing battle with schizophrenia."

The paintings look like this and were painted around the very early 1900s.

Ok got all that?

So here's the thing.

Although Wain did suffer from a mental illness that was strong enough for him to be institutionalized, his mental illness was never diagnosed with clear certainty. Although "Schizophrenia" is so heavily applied to him based purely on how his series of paintings LOOK, despite actual specialists widely disputing this. On top of this, although he did paint the kaleidoscope cat portraits during this time, it was not the only things he painted, and he was quite capable of painting "normal" pictures of cats.

The Kaleidoscope Cat portraits are more images of him experimenting with colour and shapes, something the Smithsonian themselves state on their website.

Wain had actually made his entire living painting whimsical images of cats, often for product adverts, before he was incarcerated and was actually a very beloved artist at the time. When his friends learned of his incarceration, they started a collection of donation money to help transfer Wain to the Bethlam Royal Hospital instead, one of the best mental health facilities of the time. Even the Prime Minster of the time donated, and they raised a large amount of money across England to help him.

4 years later, Wain drew this as his final image which he released publicly

I knew all about "the Schizophrenic cat Guy" but he had always been presented to me as some tragic case of an artist going mad and his skills and work unraveling as he went insane.

Which is why I wanted to share this information which was new to me. And because I think it's important.

[fuckingconversations]

Whenever I see art that people claim was made by someone

- on drugs (often of a hallucinogenic implication)

- insane (or with a mental illness that includes hallucinations)

I immediately doubt their word.

This is because art is hard.

The more complex a piece is - the more intricately applied the colors and lines - the harder it is. It also means the artist spent a ton of extra time planning it and executing it.

I can pull a cute, charming cat drawing out of my ass while nearly blackout drunk and fumbling my own body.

Even at my most focused, most driven, that geometric monstrosity would take me HOURS AND HOURS of single-minded focus.

Cute cats are SEVERAL MULTITUDES easier to draw than that geometric sprawl of precise and mirrored shapes.

Complex, delicately detailed, and especially geometric designs says:

- this artist had a very careful and deliberate plan

- this artist sustained that careful plan through HOURS AND HOURS of single-minded focus on executing it

- this artist’s coordination over long periods was incredible.

The brightly colored and highly geometric “psychedelic” style of art is done by people who are sober. It is made FOR people who are high, or inspired by a prior high - created by people who are not high.

This is because most hallucinogenic drugs (like mushrooms and LSD) really fuck with your ability to focus on things, remember things, and especially to coordinate yourself to make coherent images that other people can enjoy.

Studies connecting LSD and art generally have several people on-hand to keep the tripping artist focused on creating art - otherwise they wander off and contemplate their thoughts instead of drawing. That inattention does not lend itself to intricate geometry or precise application of color.

Studies have been done on artists with or without mental illnesses - including schizophrenia. Again and again, they have concluded that there is no significant difference in the artworks when judged by formal elements like line work, composition, use of color, etc.

Subject matter may stand out, but only when the artist has been instructed to portray a specific thing, or says they are portraying a specific thing, but there are additional symbols and objects in the image to show where their perception and ours do not match.

In conclusion:

When you see cool and wild art like this, stop calling “skill, focus, and an intricate plan” … drugs or mental Illness.

It’s just art.

There are incredibly skilled artists with schizophrenia who draw normal-ass cityscapes all day.

There are entirely neurotypical people who like to draw twisted-up multi-dimensional alien-angels devouring all Walmarts.

Don’t assume that your own mind is the limit of human imagination & creativity.

[probablyasocialecologist]

[tallahasseemp3]

i don’t think humans are inherently bad i just don’t. once i posted about how i can’t ever get poached eggs right and someone took time out of their day to send me tips on how to make them. they used their finite time on this planet to teach me how to poach an egg with no motivation other than helping a stranger have a better breakfast and if that isn’t proof humanity is worth saving i don’t know what is

[physticuffs]

was crying to a friend at a bar about leaving my academic program and this random woman came up to me and was like, “is it about a boy? tell me where he is. i’ll beat his ass.” and i was like omg no you’re so kind but it’s much weirder than that, i recently quit academia and i’m feeling extremely conflicted about it. she was nice but i fully expected her to leave because that’s a very niche thing and like hey, she was hanging out with her friends.

she sat down and spent the next several minutes telling me how it was all gonna work out and she knows my life is gonna be better now. just wait five years and i’ll see she’s right.

and i felt better about my specific problem, but i also felt better about a world where someone will see a stranger crying at a bar and her deepest instinct is to reach out and help.

[himbos-hotline]

The last time I was in the hospital to stay in. There was a lady in my ward who, when she overheard me talking to the doctor about Judaism, sat and woke up whenever I did and told me stories about her family and how they celebrated different Jewish holidays. She held my hand when I had to have different IVs.

When I saw spring awakening for the first time, the lady who sat on my row paid 58 pound on a cab to get me home because she saw me have a panic attack and didn't want me hurt.

Humanity exists to breed humanity. The world is good sometimes.

[thekadster]

Last semester, I had a science teacher who played music before class. I asked her what the name of the song was, and along with giving me the title, she also gave me the whole playlist where the song was from. It also had other songs she played before.

She's not teaching in our school anymore, but when she emailed us our grades, she thanked me for being interested in her music taste and offered to give me recommendations if I needed it. She didn't have to go or do that far, she didn't even have to give me the playlist.

It feels nice; the playlist she sent me feels like I have a little piece of her.

[sage-nebula]

The night before I left my study abroad in London, I ended up in the ER with a UTI. That was bad enough, but the real issue I was struggling with was that I was stressed to the max about how I was going to get to the airport the next morning, because the tube maps were still confusing to someone as directionally challenged as I am, and heaving suitcases up and down the stairs in the tube stations was difficult. This is relevant because, in the 6 or so hours that I spent in the waiting room for my test results, I befriended an elderly couple that was also there, and it turns out that their son was a cab driver. They promised me that he would be waiting outside my flat the next morning to take me to the airport. And you know what? He was. I got to the airport with time to spare and he helped me with my luggage and everything.

Another time, back in my home city, I was in danger of not being able to continue my schooling if my financial aid didn’t go through. Problem was, my university’s financial aid office is cruel and uncaring, and refused to return any of my calls or emails. I finally went to the office in person to ask them if my request for continued financial aid had been accepted, and they said, “Eh, we don’t know, we’ll get back to you.” Completely defeated, I found an out of the way hallway to cry in. 

Only, it wasn’t as out of the way as I thought. Another student saw me crying, and came over to ask what was wrong. I explained the situation to her, and her face hardened. “Come with me,” she said, and she marched me back into the financial aid office and demanded the clerk actually go look at my file to see if my request had been submitted. Once they went and retrieved my file, she patted me on the shoulder, said, “Good luck,” and left. I never saw her again after that, though I wish I could have bought her a coffee at least. She went out of her way to help me and I never even learned her name. (My request had been accepted, btw. Weeks prior. They just didn’t feel like telling me.)

There really is goodness and kindness in the world, but it doesn’t stop with us in these moments. We always have to remember to pay it forward, however we can. If you ever have an opportunity where you can be kind, or you can turn the other way, be kind. Always choose to be kind.

[lordtraco]

Kindness is even in the little gestures! So often strangers will see someone taking a photo or selfie of friends and offer to take it for them. People will hold open a door out of courtesy, wish you well when you sneeze, leave room for you while driving, and cut in line at a store.

People create things for free, just to make others happy. People build upon patterns, make improvements, offer solutions, write up tutorials, everything! The human urge to create and to help is really beautiful to me.

[beckettmariner-deactivated20200]

You ever invite your coworker to watch you give birth just to spite a racist

[linguisticparadox]

Okay howmst the fuck has a ship doctor in the far future never handled a birth without the father present? Are sperm donors and gay couples and trans women no longer a thing in the bajillionth century CE?? :/

[thatoldantique]

I while understand the frustration with erasure sometimes it helps to look at things through the cultural context of when something was made. Star Trek the Next Generation was made in 1987, this particular episode I believe aired in 1988 a time when a future where the husband was always present for the birth would have been amazing to many of the people watching the show as men had only been allowed to be present for the birth of their children for 10/15ish years at that point in the US.

Women (and many men) fought for decades with hospitals to even have men allowed in the delivery room during the early stages of labor, which can last for several hours, and hospitals only began to give in to their requests in the 1960s but even then they would be kicked out of the room by hospital staff before the actual birth took place. So many of the couples watching the show would have had to go through labor without having/being allowed to support their spouse regardless of their wishes. Having the child’s father present for the birth only began to happen in the 1970s and 1980s. Which means most people watching this show either went through birth without the support of their spouse, were not allowed to support their spouse during the birth of their child, or their own mother’s went through that during their birth.

A future where the husbands were always present for the birth was still a little crazy to consider in the late 1980s. A good kind of crazy for the people living in that time, it showed a future where the wishes of the couple were finally consistently listened to by medical professionals as a result of the actions of people during their or their parent’s lifetimes. And it does that by also subverting it in allowing Data to step into the role of the father when the father was unknown and/or unwilling/unable to fill that role (I’ll be honest my knowledge of Next Gen is a bit spotty and I have not seen this whole episode, just a piece of it at family Thanksgiving). The woman’s desires as to how she would give birth are listened to and respected, something that still doesn’t happen in many hospitals now and would have been seen as even more revolutionary then. So while it isn’t perfect I think this scene was actually fairly impressive for its time and cultural context and shows a future that many people of that time would have seen as ideal.

[cannon-fannon]

I think this kind of contextual understanding and analysis is really important because things that look antiquated now were revolutionary then. I remember reading that the mini skirts in Star Trek TOS were legot just in fashion (about 64’ ish), one of the actresses (the one that played Rand) requested they be in the show and both her and Nichelle Nichols said they didn’t see them as demeaning but liberating in that time and context. Where as NOW it looks like ‘sexy male gaze’ but then it wasn’t.

[elfwreck]

Miniskirts are comfortable and easy to move in - unlike longer bulkier skirts, which had previously been required for “modesty.” And unlike the approach of “we’ll just put them in pants,” miniskirts made a statement that women crew-members weren’t being treated like men. Miniskirts were a way to say “I can be an attractive woman, wear comfortable clothes, and still look professional and do a serious job.” 

The clothing for that message today would be different. 

[prismatic-bell]

This is also why the bridge crew of TOS may seem “tokenistic” today. When it came out, the Cold War was in full swing and “Soviets” were maligned and hated, Black people could not count on their right to vote being honored, and mixed-race people (like Spock) were called horrible things like “half-breed” and “zebra.” A white man was in charge of the ship, but Gene Roddenberry was fully aware that a chunk of the viewership read him as queer, and did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DISCOURAGE THAT READING, at a time when “homosexual activity” was illegal in the United States!

By today’s standards, “one of everything? How tokenistic.” In 1966? “A Black woman, a Russian, a man from multiple cultures, and a man who loves differently, all top of their fields, all working together and finding common ground to learn, grow, and help where they can? What a wonderful future!”

[charismat1c-megafauna]

Also I’m sorry but like. A show also featuring a Japanese man who isn’t a stereotype but part of the crew, having a Scottish character be a part of the central cast (idk if I need to get into why this is important, but considering how England has continuously tried to erase Scottish culture and identity, and the stereotype of Scots as bumbling bumpkins, etc, its kind of nice to see a Scotsman who’s the best of the best at his job).

Moreover, a lot of kids watched this show. MLK himself contacted Nichelle Nichols and asked her to stay on the show when she was considering leaving, because “you don’t have a Black role, you have an equal role,” and there wasnt many Black role models on tv. I can only imagine how Black kids, Asian kids, and mixed race or mixed culture kids felt seeing people like them on tv. Hell, seeing Uhura on screen is what inspired Whoopi Goldberg as a little girl.

Also, yeah, its easy to look back and say ‘damn, fathers weren’t there in the delivery room? What assholes’ but no like they legitimately were not allowed in there.

[gayahithwen]

Tiny correction: while George Takei is Japanese, and while Sulu thus looks like what we in the 20th-21st century consider to be an ethnically Japanese man, Hikaru Sulu was Pan-Asian by design. His last name is not Japanese. And Roddenberry designed him like that intentionally, because while there was a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment in the US at the time (I mean, hell… George Takei himself spent years in Japanese internment camps during WW2), there was also a lot of other anti-Asian sentiments, and Roddenberry intentionally put ALL of it on the character of Sulu.

Like, all the years of anti-Chinese racism in the US? Sulu. Anti-Japanese sentiments left over after WW2? Sulu. Korean War in 1950-52? Sulu. The Vietnam War, with Johnson in 1965 (a year before TOS started airing) choosing to start sending American troops into the conflict? Sulu.

Sulu was Roddenberry’s desperate attempt to show all Asian people as inherently worthy, inherently human, and yeah, he probably put kind of too much on Sulu’s shoulders, but it was the 1960s and Roddenberry fucking cared about representation, so he did what he could.

Just, you know… a little bit more historical Star Trek context

[gholateg]

Also to hammer this home?

Scotty was third in line for the captain’s chair. The only non-Kirk who had the con more then him was Spock.

He was smart, he was a *ranked* crewmen, he was a gentleman, he wasn’t a skirt chaser, and he was capitol L loyal. The only time he got into a fight was when someone both went after his Captain, AND his Ship.

And he was Scottish. 

That’s so above and beyond the typical Scottish stereotype even TO THIS DAY.

[earhartsease]

Dr Polaski was coded as something of an arse just so they could make their valid points about equality and bigotry using her as a foil. Yes it was kind of clumsy from a modern perspective, but it was also kind of groundbreaking (not least because you didn’t usually get arses being played by women)

[aqueerkettleofish]

I am hard-coded to put this on any post that mentions MLK and Nichelle Nichols.

Also, it’s very worth noting that the “token minority character” label doesn’t apply in any way to these characters.

Tokens are there to present the appearance of diversity. Whereas Roddenberry created a diverse cast in an era where there wasn’t even a need for the appearance of diversity. Roddenberry didn’t put these characters in because he wanted to look diverse– he put them in to BE DIVERSE.

[hjarta-deactivated20260124]

just learned that magnolias are so old that they’re pollinated by beetles because they existed before bees

[scienceoftheidiot]

They existed *before beetles*

[somethingaboutsomethingelse]

[spacedandelions]

Why is this sad? Why am I sad?

[ignescent]

https://xkcd.com/1259/

Bee Orchid

[sepdet]

This is how I feel about Joshua Trees. They and avocado trees produce fruit meant to be eaten and dispersed by giant ground sloths. Without them, the Joshua Trees' range has shrunk by 90%.

(my own photos)

Not only they, but the entire Mojave ecosystem is still struggling to adapt since the loss of ground sloth dung. their chief fertilizer.

Many, many trees and plants in the Americas have widely-spaced, extremely long thorns that do nothing to discourage deer eating their leaves, but would've penetrated the fur of ground sloths and mammoths. Likewise, if you've observed a tree that drops baseball or softball-sized fruit which lies on the ground and rots, like Osage Oranges, which were great for playing catch at my school, chances are they were ground sloth or mammoth chow.

You can read about various orphaned plants and trees missing their megafauna in this poignant post:

The Trees That Miss The Mammoths - American Forests

Trees that once depended on animals like the wooly mammoth for survival have managed to adapt and survive in the modern world.



[mesogeios]

I throw my passport in the sea, And name you my country. I throw all my dictionaries in the fire, And name you my language.

— Nizar Qabbani

[inkskinned]

there is no such thing as sexism but here are the places you can bite a boy if he hurts you, here is where you can kick back and find a soft place on his body, here is how to shove keys between your fingers like they were tiger teeth, here is how you take a hit so you can deal a hit, here is the number you call if he ever hits you, here is how to pack your bags if he ever hits you, here is how to feel whole after he hits you, here is how to stitch up your friends when they come to you covered in blood, here is how you stitch up yourself again, here is how to tell if your drink has something in it, here is how to take another girl home if her drink has something in it, here is how much to drink so you still have your wits about you, here is how to take brightly lit streets home no matter how sober you are, here is how to check the back seat of your car, here is how not to get pregnant because you know your boy is the type to abandon you, here is how to be okay if he only loves you for giving him kids, here is where to go if you’re pregnant and alone, here is where to go if you’re pregnant and don’t want to be, here is how to hold your head up when you walk through the crowd who calls you a murderer, here is how to respond when the person who touches you is your boss, here is how to respond when the person who touches you is the person you love, here is how to react when they hang out of their windows to honk at you, here is how to react when you are approached in a bar and he won’t leave you alone, here is how to react when you are approached in a library and he won’t leave you alone, here what you say if he tells you how you dress means you are asking for it, here is what you say if he tells you that how you dress means you’re not a girl suddenly, here is what to say if he tells you your sex determines your gender, here is what to say if he tells you his sex could turn you straight, here is what to say if he puts a slur about your skin into your name, here is what to say when he tells you that all women are the same, here is how to be able to cook for when he expects you to, here is how to be able to order take-out if you cannot, here is how you balance a checkbook and a baby on your hip, here is how to poison him if he ever suggests being a mother isn’t work, here is how to get work, here is how to stay thin, here is how to stay sane while trying to get thin, here is how to be beautiful - ‘but what if i don’t wanna be beautiful, what if i just wanna do beautiful things?’ - here is how you do both, here is how you vote to keep the rights to your body, here is how you protest when you do not have the rights to your own body, here is how you include everyone in the term ‘feminism,’ here is how to feel like a dragon when you’re too scared to breathe, here is how you kiss a girl and mean it, here is when not to kiss a girl just because he asks for it, here is how to avoid kissing him, here is how to curl your hands into fists, here is how to keep your voice even, here is how to keep your voice even when he says women are only imagining how bad it is, here is how to shrink down on subway systems, here is how to take up less and less space, here is how to get good grades, here is what to say when he tells you that your good grades are because you slept with the teacher, here is what to say when he calls you overly emotional, here is what to say when he calls you frigid, here is how to succeed even though they expect nothing of you, here is what you say if he declares his opinion is hurting no one - you tell him this whole list, baby, and then some.

“I hate sexism.” /// r.i.d (inkskinned)

[littl3red]

Why vegans should use honey instead of agave nectar

Okay, so I might get a lot of hate for this, I might not. I don’t particularly care either way, as long as word gets out about this, because it’s extremely important to me.

As I’m sure most people know by now, bees are disappearing at alarming rates. Simply put, our entire species could not survive without them. This is due to a syndrome called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

Many vegans opt to use agave nectar instead of honey, because agave nectar is plant based. But harvesting of agave nectar is threatening the existence of two other endangered species: Mexican long-nosed bats (who live strictly off of nectars - primarily agave nectar) and the Jaguarundi (a solitary feline who basically looks like a love child between a jungle cat and a ferret.) Approximately 113,126 acres of these animals’ habitat were destroyed from 1991 to 2000, and more has been destroyed since.

On the other hand, beekeepers are essential to increasing bee populations. They monitor the bees’ health and help protect them from dangerous parasites and pesticides that are suspected to cause CCD. In addition, well-kept bees never need to use the amount of honey they produce; Honey is made by the bees to consume only when there is not enough food for them outside the hive. In the care of a good beekeeper, this will only happen during the winter months, and the keeper will leave enough honey for the bees to thrive until it’s spring again.

It’s best to buy local, organic honey if at all possible. Local beekeepers will not use dangerous factory-farming methods, and it helps maintain your local bee population! If you want to help bees in a more active way than buying local honey, you can plant a bee garden or even become a small-scale beekeeper! (I don’t have a link for this, it’s best to check out local resources. Maybe even ask the person selling honey at your farmer’s market!)

[trampledmoth]

This is great info that I never knew about!!

[aphony-cree]

Eating local honey also helps people who suffer from seasonal allegies

[from-student-to-teacher]

[adventuresinlearning]

and we are still fighting over minimum wage

[cookiemonstahz]

And america tries to act so high and mighty. America needs to sit down and learn a thing or two from these other countries.

[ophiliae-deactivated20150324]

YOUTH PARLIAMENT?! HECK YA!

[jenniferrpovey]

I like the youth parliament idea, implemented at the local level. A youth county board, as it were. Give kids a say in their own community and they might actually be able to improve it.

I also think it might be an interesting idea for every school board to have a student representative, high school age.

[johnskylar]

Oh, I think I know the reason!

Nearly everyone is white and everyone benefits from a history of colonialist exploitation

Nearly everyone is white and everyone benefits from a history of colonialist exploitation

Return to #1.

Plus they have a lot of refineries for Russian and Norse oil.

Literally these countries are SO white that they don’t even track the percentage of ethnic and racial minorities because the numbers are too small.

When you’re a monoculture it’s a hell of a lot easier to pretend your politics are about helping others, because everyone is like you.

I’m so tired of tumblr holding up Scandinavian countries as utopias.

[kettu-kettu]

Ex-fucking-cuse me.

“Nearly everyone is white and everyone benefits from a history of colonialist exploitation.”

Research wouldn’t hurt.

You might want to know that up until 1917, Finland was not a country of its own but fully under Russian rule. Before that, under Swedish rule. Before 1860, the year we were made mostly autonomous, we were basically a colony ourselves with no right to govern our own regions, collect our own taxes or have a say in Sweden’s or Russia’s politics. Our language and culture was looked down upon. The ethnically Finnish population was poor, oppressed and pretty much entirely without say in anything regarding our own country. Up until 1902 Finnish wasn’t even an official language in Finland, and even after that Russian was the official language of our parliament until we finally became independent.

And if you want some slavery and strife, of course there have been things like Isoviha: Russians invaded Finland (which belonged to Sweden at the time), slaughtered tons of Finns and shipped about 20 000 of us off to become slaves. For contrast, our population was only 350 000 at the time. The Swedes just sorta shrugged and went “Not our problem”, since, you know, we weren’t Swedes. Then Pikkuviha, another period of Russian invasion. How about the first and second Sortokausi? Even the name means “era of oppression”. The Russians decided that Finland had it too well and started to forcefully suppress Finnish nationalist movements, shipping people off to Siberia, replacing Finnish officials with Russian ones, making Russian the only official language in Finland - basically trying to destroy the Finnish culture and fully integrate Finland into Russia.

So I’d hardly say that we benefited from colonialist exploitation.

So yeah, sure, we’re white. But it doesn’t fucking matter because we never have lived in a country where whiteness was ever of any benefit. In Finland (and most of Europe anyways) being oppressed has always had everything to do with your ethnicity instead of the colour of your skin. We never had a single colony, we never invaded a single country, slavery has always been illegal here - even when we were a part of Russia where slavery was common. Sure, we have less than 1% of PoC - but please tell me why the fuck does that matter? It didn’t save us from being a god damn colony.

And of course I left out shit like the eradication of our native religion but hey, we’re white so it doesn’t matter anyway right?

It must be lovely to sit on your high horse there in the USA and think you know a single thing about the racial and/or cultural dynamics in Europe. Just because the crackers of your precious country fucked up doesn’t mean that you get the right to shit on minorities (population of Finland: 5 000 000. Contrast that with the USA) and ignore the rapid developement of Finland from pretty much nothing, a country 100% dependent on agriculture and wood, to one of the world’s most educated, most liberal, most egalitarian and most technologically advanced countries in less than 100 years. And all of this without benefiting from “third-world” countries or colonies, without wars or conquest, without aggressive foreign policies. Unlike the fucking USA.

Fuck you & do your research.

[theroseandthebeast]

#BREAKING NEWS: AMERICA SHOCKED TO LEARN THAT ENTIRE WORLD AND ITS SOCIOPOLITICAL STRUCTURE AND HISTORY DOES NOT REVOLVE AROUND THEIRS #JOIN US AT 7 WHERE WE UNVEIL EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE OF A BALD EAGLE SCREAMING WITH CONFUSION (dyfm)

[curlycherie-blog]

As Americans, we have this naïve assumption that people all over the world are struggling and way behind us. They’re not. Sweden and South Korea have more advanced high speed internet networks. Japan has the most advanced trains and transportation systems. Norwegians make more money. The biggest and most advanced plane in the world is flown out of Singapore. The tallest buildings in the world are now in Dubai and Shanghai. Meanwhile, the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

10 Things Most Americans Don’t Know About America [x]  (via assivore)

I don’t think this is an assumption, though. It’s a political and social cultural expectation. Americans are literally conditioned to think this. There’s a reason why “we live in the greatest country in the world” is so often repeated here, and it’s basically a form of brainwashing. A lot of Americans literally believe that we ARE the greatest country in the world, and we’re kept delibrately oblivious to how the rest of the world is doing because if we actually knew this shit we wouldn’t be able to cling to our notions of American exceptionalism. That’s just one reason why our news is almost exclusively NATIONAL and not INTERNATIONAL. Think it’s funny Americans don’t hardly know where to find any other country on a damned map? It’s true, but it’s definitely not funny. We have multiple 24 hour news stations and it’s still extremely difficult to find any sort of actual international news, particularly if you want news that is simply NEWS, and not Americentric propaganda. (We can get BBC World News and Al Jazeera and things like that, but they’re a lot harder to find than your 20 channels of CNN). Every time we as a nation have a discussion about something like health care systems, or queer people serving in the military, or whatever else, we have that discussion in this strange limbo as if none of these things have ever been done before and no other country in the world exists. And as individual, everyday Americans, they want us to stay like that, because it makes us a lot more malleable to the kind of bullshit politics that happen here. If we’re blind to all the things the rest of the world is doing right, we’re also in a lot of ways blind to the staggering number of things our country is doing wrong.

(via thewinterotter)

[pansymandy-blog]

[ay-taytherich]

pansymandy:

This practically made me cry. How could this ever be okay?

[Image: An illustration is labeled as a “partial birth abortion". It shows a person performing an intact dilation and extraction, which is described at the bottom of the image: “The surgeon pulls the fetus into the breech position. He forced scissors into the skull, removes them and inserts a suction catheter through which he suctions out the skull contents.“]

I’m going to tell you a story that my tenth grade biology teacher told me. 

So, my teacher had a friend. She was happily married, a Christian, and pregnant. She and her husband were extremely excited about the pregnancy and they couldn’t wait to be parents. She was pretty far along - probably about 7 month in. She went to get a check-up, and her doctor checked out the fetus. Well, it turns out her fetus had hydrochephalus. In this particular case, the fetus’s head had not and would not form enough to even hold the brain inside the skull. If the woman continued the pregnancy, she would give birth to a dead baby, and that’s if it didn’t die in utero and possibly cause sepsis before she had the opportunity to give birth.

So, and this was before the “partial birth abortion ban” was enacted (not when the story was told, but when it took place), the woman opted to get an intact dilation and extraction procedure (since that’s the proper medical term, “partial birth abortion" is a made up term and has no medical relevance). 

Do you know what that allowed her to do? What that allows a lot of uterus-bearers in the same predicament to do? 

She was able to hold her dead, intact fetus and mourn for it.

Now, she would have to get a procedure that literally rips the fetus apart, since apparently anti-choicers looking for a means to chip away at Roe v Wade think that this is a better alternative to the described procedure above. As the law currently stands, it is now impossible for people like the woman I described to have their fetuses aborted intact so that they can hold them like they wanted to. It is impossible for women like the one I described to have a body to mourn over. 

So good job. Because you’re too ignorant to actually know why uterus-bearers get late-term abortion, specifically intact D & X procedures, you’ve essentially made it much harder for those that are experiencing the difficult choice to end a wanted pregnancy to mourn and move on. 

But hey, go ahead and continue to consider yourself compassionate. I guess ignorance really is bliss, especially when you can hold up illustrations of medical procedures you don’t understand and hide behind them as if they have any meaning in the face of the reality that you refuse to acknowledge.

[sunflower-mama]

^^woah

[jackpowerx]

Daily reminder that pro life people don’t actually care about pregnant people.

[rcmclachlan]

If you know me, you know that I have two loves in life: red lipstick and space (and cheese, but that’s neither here nor there). 

Two months ago, I gave away a whole smorgasbord of red lipstick, and now I’m back to give away my favorite eyeshadow palette–which happens to be space-themed!

BH Cosmetics’ Galaxy Chic baked eyeshadow palette is amazing. There’s a shade in it that will work for everyone (I personally like to combine Mercury with Meteor for a neutral shade with a little bit of a pop), the shades can go on wet or dry, the colors are super pigmented, AND IT’S SPACE-THEMED. Like, where’s the downside? (Trick question. There isn’t one.)

In addition to the palette, I will also be giving away a Urban Decay’s famous eyeshadow primer (travel size).

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

I’m not giving away just one palette and primer. I’M GIVING AWAY TWO. That’s right! Two lucky people will each receive a Galaxy Chic palette and travel-sized UD primer. 

DEM’S DA RULES:

Only one reblog will count, but please share far and wide. 

I will be selecting the winners at random. If you are chosen, I will notify you both in a post in which I will tag you AND I will message you. If you do not get back to me in 24 hours, I will choose someone else.

You do not need to be following me to be eligible.

THE CONTEST WILL END AND THE WINNERS WILL BE CHOSEN ON JUNE 20th. So, you’ve got yourself a month to decide whether or not you want the best eyeshadow palette ever made (hint: you totally do).

Like all my previous giveaways, I will ship anywhere in the world at no cost to the winners. 

That about does it, I think. Keep your eyes on the sky and see y’all in June!

[adambparrish-archive-blog]

[stepintomyworldbaby]

yeah, it’s been a while since i’ve been in the field solo.

#jemma voice: #poor silly fitz #have you ever even /been/ in the field solo?

[micdotcom]

#AliveWhileBlack is the heartbreaking response to #CrimingWhileWhite

The hashtag #CrimingWhileWhite became a platform to illustrate what often happens when white people engage in criminal activity. It was a powerful moment, as white people openly acknowledged that they don’t face nearly the same punishment or brutality experienced by their black counterparts. But despite the good intentions of those who participated, many others felt like the hashtag detracted from conversations about the value of black lives.

In response to that first trending hashtag, Jamilah Lemieux, senior digital editor for Ebony magazine, started #AliveWhileBlack.

[whydontyoucomeintomyhead]

I am a white woman. I am standing beside a black woman. We are facing a group of white people who are seated in front of us. We are in their workplace, and have been hired by their employer to lead them in a dialogue about race. The room is filled with tension and charged with hostility. I have just presented a definition of racism that includes the acknowledgment that whites hold social and institutional power over people of color. A white man is pounding his fist on the table. His face is red and he is furious. As he pounds he yells, “White people have been discriminated against for 25 years! A white person can’t get a job anymore!” I look around the room and see 40 employed people, all white. There are no people of color in this workplace. Something is happening here, and it isn’t based in the racial reality of the workplace. I am feeling unnerved by this man’s disconnection with that reality, and his lack of sensitivity to the impact this is having on my cofacilitator, the only person of color in the room. Why is this white man so angry? Why is he being so careless about the impact of his anger? Why are all the other white people either sitting in silent agreement with him or tuning out? We have, after all, only articulated a definition of racism.

 This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress, leading to what I refer to as White Fragility. White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium.

Read the rest here  !!

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

(via quietlyexhale)

[revolutionarykoolaid]

Grand Juror Sues McCulloch, Says He Mischaracterized The Wilson Case

By CHRIS MCDANIEL

A grand juror is suing St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch in an effort to speak out on what happened in the Darren Wilson case. Under typical circumstances, grand jurors are prohibited by law from discussing cases they were involved in.

The grand juror, referred to only as “Grand Juror Doe” in the lawsuit, takes issue with how McCulloch characterized the case. McCulloch released evidence presented to the grand jury and publicly discussed the case after the grand jury decided not to indict Wilson, then a Ferguson police officer, in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African American.

“In [the grand juror]’s view, the current information available about the grand jurors’ views is not entirely accurate — especially the implication that all grand jurors believed that there was no support for any charges,” the lawsuit says. “Moreover, the public characterization of the grand jurors’ view of witnesses and evidence does not accord with [Doe]’s own.”

“From [the grand juror]’s perspective, the investigation of Wilson had a stronger focus on the victim than in other cases presented to the grand jury,” the lawsuit states. Doe also believes the legal standards were conveyed in a “muddled” and “untimely” manner to the grand jury.

In the lawsuit filed Monday in federal court, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri argues that this case is unique and that the usual reasons for requiring the jurors to maintain secrecy should not apply.

In this specific case, “any interests furthered by maintaining grand jury secrecy are outweighed by the interests secured by the First Amendment,” the lawsuit says, adding that allowing the juror to speak would contribute to a discussion on race in America.

As the grand juror points out in the lawsuit, the Wilson case was handled in a very different manner than other grand juries. Instead of recommending a charge, McCulloch’s office presented thousands of pages worth of evidence and testimony before the grand jury. At one point, McCulloch’s spokesman characterized the grand jury as co-investigators.

“From [Doe]’s perspective, although the release of a large number of records provides an appearance of transparency, with heavy redactions and the absence of context, those records do not fully portray the proceedings before the grand jury,” the lawsuit says.

McCulloch has done several interviews since the grand jury decision was announced on Nov. 24, but the grand jurors have been prohibited from speaking about the case. The county prosecutor admits that some of the witnesses were lying, but said the grand jurors were aware.

The 12 people who could say for sure are currently sworn to secrecy.

Although the county released redacted transcripts of witness and expert testimony, the grand jurors deliberated without a court reporter or member of the prosecutor’s office present.

READ MORE

[revolutionarykoolaid]

The level of incompetency and flat out misconduct by Bob McCulloch is both baffling and disturbing. Hopefully this renews the call for a special prosecutor in the case against Darren Wilson for the murder of Mike Brown. #staywoke #farfromover