In a society that labels poor people as thieves for wanting government assistance, people who panhandle or who ask for donations on their blog should be praised for looking for voluntary assistance instead of using taxpayer money. But they’re not. They’re hated for being annoying, even though anyone who doesn’t want to give them money can easily just ignore them. Some places even have laws against panhandling.
In a society that labels poor people as thieves for wanting government assistance, adults who live with their parents should be praised for being fiscally responsible and not wasting money they don’t have on housing. But they’re not. They’re labeled as failures.
It’s almost as if they already hate poor people, and “taxation is theft” is just a bullshit excuse.
if you’re offline or away and i message you something (like a link to a meme or a picture or w/e) honestly just assume that i’m just leaving it there for when you get back and not expecting you to answer straight away. i don’t need you to respond with “hey, sorry, i wasn’t at the computer!” or anything. i was leaving u a gift for later.
you’re allowed to tell people not to hug you, not to hold your hand, not to kiss your cheek, not to play with your hair, not to put their hands on you in any way without your permission. you’re allowed to be uncomfortable with these kinds of touching, to tell people that, and to have those boundaries respected. just because a touch isn’t sexual doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to have a problem with it.
you’re allowed to create boundaries about what happens with your body and what other people do with it, regardless of those people’s motivations or their relationship to you. it isn’t only sexual touching people need your consent for and it isn’t only sexual touching that you’re allowed to revoke your consent for. people should not be touching you when you don’t want them to no matter what kind of touching it is.
in 10 days ireland is having a referendum to hopefully repeal the 8th amendment, which equates the life of a foetus to that of an adult
abortion is currently 100% illegal in ireland with a penelty of up to 14yrs (rape is 7yrs, if even that) and up to 10 people travel to england to access abortion every single day
if you’re irish, remember go to vote Yes on May 25th. if you’re not irish but have irish friends, remind them to go vote Yes
“…they could embed commands directly into recordings of music or spoken text. So while a human listener hears someone talking or an orchestra playing, Amazon’s Echo speaker might hear an instruction to add something to your shopping list.”
“My assumption is that the malicious people already employ people to do what I do”
Blast from the past: Crinoids like this one are living fossils. They’ve been in our ocean for almost 500 million years!
Don’t let their plant-like appearance fool you: crinoids are invertebrates, and are relatives of sea stars and sea urchins. This one was photographed in Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.
Bladeless wind turbines generate electricity by shaking, not spinning
Scientists hope to hugely reduce the cost of wind energy by removing the blades from wind farms, instead taking advantage of a special phenomenon to cause the turbines to violently shake.
Vortex, a startup from Spain, has developed the tall sticks known as Bladeless — white poles jutting out of the ground, that are built so that they can oscillate. They do so as a result of the way that the wind is whipped up around them, using a phenomenon that architects avoid happening to buildings and encouraging it so that the sticks shake.
They do so using vortices, which is where the company gets its name from. The bladeless turbines use special magnets to ensure that the turbines are optimised to shake the most they can, whatever speed the wind is travelling at.
As the sticks vibrate, that movement is converted into electricity by an alternator.
They leave off the important note that when the wind rises, each pole makes a sound like a hundred vuvuzelas roaring at once. In the post-apocalyptic world of the future, villagers will speak in hushed tones about the Roaring Plains, and caution adventurous travelers to stay well away.
hot take: the capitalist cultural construction of “humans are naturally greedy and self-centered” is just an attenuated version of the feudal christian construction of “humans are inherently sinful”; both are designed to make people internalize cultural problems and externalize morality.
building off that hot take: western individualism (the American Dream, meritocracy, “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality) is actually a hopelessly sentimental cultural fantasy that stems from this toxic capitalist conceit, and it’s high time we start admitting in our personal lives and in our public policy that humans actually live in dynamic and overlapping webs of inter-dependency
wow, what a gorgeous month to remember autism isn’t a disease and there’s no “cure for autism” and there shouldn’t have to be one just because allistic people can’t get the hell over themselves and realise other people experience the world differently and have different needs and require different accommodations. terrific.
Think of it this way. 83% of computers (laptop and desktop) use Windows. 13% use Mac. The vast majority of software is developed for windows, with another significant fraction developed for or adapted to mac, because that’s what most people use and it’s all most people understand.
Now imaging you’re one of the 1.4% of computers are running Linux. This doesn’t mean you’ve got a windows machine with a virus, it doesn’t mean your computer is broken, it doesn’t mean it needs to get replaced with a more common operating system. It’s not quite as good at some things most people take for granted, but it’s significantly better at a bunch of other things. But if you have a problem with your computer, the vast majority of people won’t have any idea what you’re talking about. They’ll give advice for how to deal with a similar issue on their own computer, and it will be worthless. The only people with any idea what you’re going through are going to be on linux forums. And you can mostly muddle through all the things everybody else can do with improvisation and lots of WINE, but it sure would be nice if the devs of that video game you were looking forward to would like, acknowledge the existence of your demographic.
Now imagine that on top of all that, the primary linux support system had been taken over by a bunch of assholes who’ve never so much as looked at a command prompt in their lives. but who have declared themselves the Voice of Linux Users and keep spending millions of dollars on campaigns “educating” everybody about how using linux makes you a fundamentally bad and stupid person so your laptop needs to be burned immediately to force you to get a correct computer.
A 16-year-old transgender girl in Connecticut has been incarcerated in an adult men’s prison for nearly a month — and she still hasn’t been charged or convicted of a single crime.
“Jane Doe"was living in a home for traumatized youth when authorities claim she attacked a staffer. But no criminal charges are even pending against her.
Instead, the teen has suffered in SOLITARY CONFINEMENT for weeks without treatment or educational training — and instead of letting her go, the Department of Correction wants to send her to a men’s prison where she’ll be at high risk of abuse and sexual assault!
Please, join us in calling on Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy to release “Jane Doe” from prison and return her to state custody, placing her in a juvenile facility with kids of her gender if the state still plans to press charges!
PETITION TO GOV. MALLOY: Release “Jane Doe” from prison and return her to state custody, placing her in a juvenile facility with kids of her gender if the state still plans to press charges
Just so everyone remembers, this girl is a multiple rape victim who has been physically and sexually abused not only by her own family, but also by staff in DCF group homes. She “assaulted” a male staffer who GRABBED HER FROM BEHIND, a male staffer who has since been fired.
DCF lied to the court to get authorization to put this girl in prison, claiming that the staff she assaulted were “seriously injured” when the police report in fact says there were only minor injuries. And now DCF – not Corrections, but DCF – is petitioning to put her in a men’s prison.
The men had simply been waiting for another person to arrive before they ordered, their lawyer said. A Starbucks manager phoned the police.
In a widely circulated video of the incident, at least two people who were present verbally defended the two men and questioned why they were being arrested and handcuffed.
“This is ridiculous,” said one white man to a police officer in the video. “What did they get called for? Because there were two black guys sitting here meeting me? What did they do?”
“They didn’t do anything, I saw the entire thing,” a woman can be heard saying. At least five police officers were present during the arrest, the video shows.
Police have not named the men, and the pair’s attorney, Lauren A. Wimmer, also declined to name them “at this time.”
The two men had gone to the Starbucks to meet Andrew Yaffe, the white man who can be seen in the video questioning the police officers, according to Wimmer.
Yaffe could not immediately be reached for comment, but Wimmer told BuzzFeed News he is a friend of the two men. He runs a real estate development, investment, and management firm, and the men were meeting with him “to discuss potential residential and commercial real estate opportunities in Philadelphia,” she said.
The two men had not ordered immediately upon arriving, as they were still waiting for Yaffe. While they waited for him, “a white female manager who was on duty at the time” asked them to leave, said Wimmer.
When they said they were just waiting for another person to arrive before ordering, she phoned the police, Wimmer said.
“How many times have we sat in Starbucks minding our own business, waiting for a friend to come, and then we order?” Wimmer said.
When Yaffe arrived and found the two men being arrested, he called Wimmer, whom he is also friends with, she said.
The two men were arrested around 5:30 p.m., and were fingerprinted and photographed by police.
Police told Wimmer they had arrested the men for “defiant trespassing.”
theres a new product by verzion called “hum” that allows your parents to track your car and places you go, if your parents are controlling like mine please check under your steering wheel to make sure that they havent installed this
you can read more about it here, and here- this excerpt sums up what information Hum will send:
“a car’s owner will be able to get notified on their phone when the vehicle leaves a pre-determined area or drives faster than a set speed… [Hum] will enable location tracking and a driving log, which measures travel times, engine idle times, and average speeds.”
To add to this nightmare, I’ve just heard of a thing called ForceField where people get to monitor and block internet sites that you’re going on if they don’t approve.
It tells the user what sites/apps you’re going on, for how long you’re on them, and WHERE YOU ARE ON AN UPDATING MAP.
So you know if you’re in an abusive household and use sites like tumblr to escape and talk to friends, you could be cut off from that.
They say “it’s not spyware” but it sure sounds controlling and creepy to me.
Life 360 is another tracker. My parents have used it on me, not allowing me to delete it from my phone, and sometimes even demanding selfies to prove I was where the map said. (As if I’d go anywhere without my phone)
