ikenbot:

thescienceofreality:

“Kiera Wilmot made an honest mistake, but the police were trying to throw away her life with a felony.  After the community stood up for the girl, the charges were dropped, and she was allowed to move on with her life.   Well, her greatness is really starting to shine, as she was recently granted several extraordinary opportunities through scholarship offers she has received.

Dr. Christopher Emdin, a professor of education at Columbia University, says that the schools are now very similar to prisons in terms of how they are structured, and how the inhabitants are treated.   Kiera overcame her situation, but there are thousands of kids across the country who aren’t so lucky.  Maybe it’s time to attack the system that is attacking us.

Check this out from Gawker: 

“Kiera Wilmot, the 16-year-old honor student expelled from her high school after she allegedly ignited a chemical explosion on school property, received a full scholarship to the U.S. Space Academy, courtesy of a NASA veteran who, as a teenager, was accused of starting a forest fire during a science experiment.”

The lessons here are simple:  Black kids have potential, and we can’t allow this system to destroy them.  Also, hard work always pays off, especially when it comes to education.  Dr. Boyce Watkins and Minister Louis Farrakhan recently held a forum called “Wealth, Education, Family and Community:  A New Paradigm for Black America.”  In the forum, Dr. Watkins and Min. Farrakhan both agree that African Americans are going to have to think differently when it comes to deciding what it means for your kids to be educated.”

Read more…

Just when I feel like all hope is lost :) may she grow up to become another awesome woc scientist, we need more of those too.

desidere:

• My problem is not people trying to make money off of fanfic. A.) bc that already happens, and B.) because it should be happening more.
• That is to say, fanart is a widely accepted and respectable medium other fans will pay for and to me, it is no different from writing. Both include work, talent, effort, creativity, and skill to do. Fanartists can do work as gifts for friends just as much as they can take commissions from people for money. 
• A few years back Wired Magazine put out a special larger issue that I honestly wish I could re-purchase because the article in it was that good. It was an issue about Japan and how it (especially Manga and Anime) influences American culture and vice-versa. I went looking for the Article in question: Japan, Ink: Inside the Manga Industrial Complex. 
  
  Let me just pull some quotes for you:
  
  

Fans and critics complain that manga — which emerged in the years after World War II as an edgy, uniquely Japanese art form — has become as homogenized and risk-averse as the limpest Hollywood blockbuster. Pervading the nation’s $4.2 billion-a-year industry is a sense that its best days have passed.

Which ought to make what’s happening here at Comic Ichi — a manga market the size of several airplane hangars that will attract some 25,000 buyers — so heartening. The place is pulsing with possibility, full of inspired creators, ravenous fans, and wads of yen changing hands. It represents a dynamic force that could reverse the industry’s decline.

There’s just one hitch, one teensy roadblock on the manga industry’s highway to rejuvenation: Nearly everybody here is breaking the law.

[…] 

The violations at Super Comic City were so brazen and the scale so huge — by day’s end, some 300,000 books sold in cash transactions totaling more than $1 million — that just about any US media company would have launched a full-metal lawsuit to shut the market for good.

[…]

“The dojinshi are creating a market base, and that market base is naturally drawn to the original work,” he said. Then, gesturing to the convention floor, he added, “This is where we’re finding the next generation of authors. The publishers understand the value of not destroying that.” And as the manga weeklies falter and decline, new talent is more important than ever. Meanwhile, Takeda said, the dojinshi creators honor their part of this silent pact. They tacitly agree not to go too far — to produce work only in limited editions and to avoid selling so many copies that they risk cannibalizing the market for original works.

- go read the whole thing, seriously

What this tells me is six years later in 2013, Corporate America is finally trying to figure out fan culture but blatantly has no idea what the fuck they’re doing because they’re largely clueless to the fact that it already happens, at least regarding art. 

Here’s what’s wrong with how Amazon is trying to do this:

• Corporate Hollywood is trying to foster a system that ensures anything highly popular in fanfiction can be immediately adapted from the author without compensation.This sucks for two reasons: It means they can undercut Hollywood writers with unions — in favor of stealing from fans with no unions, no money, and all their copyrights already signed over to the company in question. That’s bullshit for all writers, professional or otherwise. It does not foster the next generation of writers, it just screws them over. 
• As the article points out, the whole point of the remix culture with doujin is often to write scenes or scenarios that are sexual and/or would never happen between two characters otherwise. (Please, let me be amused for approximately forever that they used doujinshi that pair Roy Mustang and Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist as an example of fans fantasizing sexual relationships that don’t exist into comics.) 
• Please keep in mind this is also cheap and free market research for Corporate America when you sign up. 
• The manga industry as of 2007 did not attempt to control the doujinshi industry by dictated what could and couldn’t be written according to whose copyright licenses are already paid for and whose aren’t.

And let’s be honest, the quote from this article:

The official versions and the remixed versions weren’t side by side. But they were for sale perhaps 10 yards away from each other. In the same store. Think about that in a US context. You walk in to Barnes & Noble and walk out with a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — as well as an unauthorized remix of a May-December romance between Hermione Granger and Professor Minerva McGonagall. Our American IP lawyer is starting to get woozy again.

Tells you how much has changed in the last few years, because nowadays, Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments series is sold in the same bookstores are Harry Potter, and Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey are often placed side-by-side If you liked this, read this… 

and if you think Amazon isn’t trying to give publishers a way to make sure that the next 50 Shades is all going to be their money and profit and not yours you have another think coming. 

This isn’t the read/write/remix culture I asked for, this is just a corporation trying to make money off of me for free, for something I already do, for free at my expense. And that’s some kind of bullshit. 

petaq:

Strictly TOS: poodlepants: I’ve been harping on this subject a lot lately, but I…

poodlepants:

I’ve been harping on this subject a lot lately, but I feel like somebody has to. The fact that Khan has been changed to a white man is quietly being accepted, and the performance lauded. I’ve seen people trying to say JJ did a good thing by taking color out of the equation, and that they are tired of POC being cast as the villains. 

Do people not realize the history that was made when Khan appeared on network television? Let’s look at what was going on around the time Khan made his debut on network TV.

• June 11, 1963: The head of the Mississippi NAACP is murdered outside his house.
• August 28, 1963: 20,000 blacks and whites gather at the Lincoln Memorial to hear speeches against racism; among them is Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream.”
• June 12, 1963: Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers is gunned down outside of his home. His killer is not convicted until the year 1994.
• Summer 1964: The Mississippi Summer Freedom Project begins; civil rights workers help blacks register to vote. 3 are killed and many black churches and homes are burned in retaliation.
• August 4, 1964: Civil rights workers James E. Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan.
• March 7, 1965: Martin Luther King Jr. leads a 54-mile march to support black voter registration. They marched from Selma to Montgomery.
• June 12, 1967: Interracial marriage is ruled unconstitutional by Supreme Court.
  
• July 1967: More race riots occur in Detroit and New York; they are the worst riots in US history and result in 43 Detroit deaths.
• April 4, 1968: While outside his home, Martin Luther King Jr. is murdered by James Earl Ray; riots broke out in 125 cities in response.

 

“Space Seed” premiered on television in February of 1967, right smack dab in the middle of all this. Before Khan, Star Trek included a black woman, and Asian man, and a Russian character as main parts of the crew on the Enterprise. All three had vitals roles on the ship, and Captain Kirk looked to them for answers, and trusted them to help him complete his mission.

Do you not realize how huge this was? This was something people had never seen before, and to date, still don’t see it all that often. This broke the ground for so many of the actors and actresses we all know and love. This was history being made.

Then came Khan. While Ricardo Montalban was not a man of Indian descent, he was still a man of color. He was a man of color, playing a character that rivaled Captain Kirk. He was a character that commanded respect and admiration from those around him, because he was smart, cunning, charismatic, and powerful. 

Khan Noonien Singh was a man that could out think and out muscle any person on the Enterprise. To state it more simply, a man of color was more powerful and more intelligent than all the other men and women aboard the Enterprise. Without Marla McGivers help, Kirk would not have been able to stop him.

A man of color would have defeated the crew of the Enterprise were it not for a guilty conscience and the use of a club. Khan’s strength could have easily overpowered Kirk’s, and it would have, had he not hit him over the head with a heavy tool. 

This is what makes Khan more than the stereotypical POC villain. Khan is super human. He is created to be stronger, faster, smarter and better than a normal human being. He rises above the stereotype because he is BETTER than all aboard the Enterprise. 

On top of that, a white woman falls in love with a man of color. In 1967. She gives up everything she’s known to be with him. The fact that Khan was a POC, and he was far more powerful and far more capable than all the others makes him stand apart from your stereotypical role POC are given when they play the part of the villain.Khan is an icon of television for being a groundbreaking character in the middle of our Civil Rights movement, just like Uhura and Sulu are. 

Would you be okay if someone changed the race of Uhura or Sulu? I can’t see how you could be. There would be outrage from here to the moon if anyone tried to cast either of them as anything other than an Asian man, and an African American woman.

Yet with Khan, because he’s the villain, people think it’s okay to erase what he was because of what we’ve gone through over the past decade or so. Don’t you see? It’s because of that that Khan should have been cast as a man of Indian descent, as his biography clearly states he is. I know Ricardo was not Indian, as I’ve stated before, but back then getting POC on TV in roles that were main parts of the story wasn’t as easy as it is now. That’s why this is even more inexcusable. There is nothing to stop Paramount or JJ Abrams from casting any person from any ethnicity on the planet, and they chose to take one of the most iconic roles that belonged to POC, and give it to a white man. 

It’s like taking the history of Star Trek, taking all the things it did to pave the way for so many people by refusing to stick to what was accepted, and throwing it in the mud. Everything about Star Trek was promoting acceptance of those different than ourselves, whether those people were green skinned aliens, or African American, or Asian. 

Look at all the POC on TV or in movies today. Who do you think started the path to stardom for them? Who do you think started chipping away at those barriers that would have prevented them from becoming big name stars in the media?

Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Gene Roddenberry, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, and Ricardo Montalban. 

Now, after reading all of this, if you can look me in the eye and still tell me you see nothing wrong with the fact that a white man is playing the role of Khan, well then, I guess that’s the opinion you’re going to stay with.But my hope is that maybe, just maybe, you can see why there are people out there who are so upset, and why the silent acceptance of this casting choice needs to be stopped. 

missvoltairine:

tooyoungforthelivingdead:

A study into whether physical activity alleviates the symptoms of depression has found there is no benefit.

Research published in the British Medical Journal suggests that adding a physical activity intervention to usual care did not reduce symptoms of depression more than usual care alone.

This contrasts with current clinical guidance which recommends exercise to help those suffering from the mental illness, which affects one in six adults in Britain at any one time.

I thought this was true and all - fuck yeah, randomised controlled trials!

i’m waiting for the study that proves that yoga at sunrise actually makes depression worse

angelicpity:

angryqueercommunist:

hey can cis people not make “preferred pronouns: [something bizarre]” jokes because its really not funny

also friendly reminder that if you are cis and see a trans person making a “preferred pronouns [something bizarre]” jokes, it’s not your place to say anything 

boyprincessftw:

The femmes who long to be femme if only it didn’t mark them as targets

To the femmes who keep getting bras and dresses they can’t even look at without feeling dysphoric

To the femmes who can’t afford makeup or clothes and wouldn’t feel safe enough to wear them even if they could

Here’s to the femmes who are not just invisible, but terrified of being seen because of just how much it might cost them

The femmes who reblog glitter and heels and then criticize themselves for not “really” being femme because the world has made femme too dangerous for them to know they could survive it

Here’s to the femmes who feel like cowards, but who are alive

To the femmes I wish I could reassure that survival is brave in its own right

Here’s to the femmes who feel utterly fake, because it’s easier to deny an identity than to feel so completely unable to embrace it

gyzym:

two millennials are barreling towards adulthood at 95 miles per hour. one of them has been coated with the most extravagant paint money can buy, but their steering apparatus is locked up until that coat’s paid off; the other’s breaks have been ripped out mid-trip, the thief yelling, “what, did you think you were entitled to these?” over their shoulder. half the tracks have been torn away to build second, third, and fifth garages for trains that are no longer running. solve for x. 

tell me again how the song goes — i’m so inadequate i might forget. if we’re not informed enough then we’re apathetic morons, but if we’re too informed we’re oversensitive reactionaries; if we think we deserve more then we’re narcissistic cutthroats, but if we’re happy where we are then we’re passionless layabouts. if we’re making money then we’re materialistic automatons who only care about stuff and don’t value the important things in life, but if we’re broke then we’re disgusting, spoiled children who expect everything in life to be a handout. if we spend too much time with technology then we’re antisocial, soulless zombies who spell the end for human interaction as we know it, but if we spend too much time together we’re a dangerous, unstable element who should get real jobs already. we’re a disgrace; we’re a embarrassment; we’re a mistake; we’re a disappointment; we’re not what you wanted, however you slice it, and all of it’s our fault, right? right? oh, god, am i getting the melody wrong?

here’s what i propose, everyone who wants to open their twenty-four-hour news cycles or their pork-barrel mouths, who wants to use their filthy fucking hands to tear this generation a new one: you try it. you come up with a picture of the generation you seem to want: one that’s neither apathetic nor engaged, one that’s neither ambitious nor content, one that’s neither rich nor poor, one that’s neither technologically connected nor interpersonally involved. don’t forget to factor in the variables — the years of economic instability; the globalization of everything from communication to art; the hugely stratified individual experiences we’ve had based on things like race, sexuality, gender, and socioeconomics, on things that come with whole histories of systemic bullshit; the overwhelming burden of student debt that so many of us face; the fact that hindsight is 20/20. you write the formula for the millennial that will shut you the fuck up about all the things we should be and aren’t, about all the ways we’ve failed you, and then you bring it to me. i promise you, i will try it. anything for a little peace and quiet, right? anything to stop hearing it everywhere i go: that voice saying that, at twenty-three, i might already have flunked out of life. 

(both millennials crash, spectacularly and yelling for help, into the station that never built a platform for them to pull into. onlookers stand by and shake their heads, wondering about the deplorable state of trains today. that’s what happens when nobody does the fucking math.) 

siuilaruin:

siuilaruin:

tw: descriptions of panic and anxiety attacks, discussions of coping mechanisms, general mental health warning

So, after about the 5th person I’ve messaged back-and-forth while they were panicking or having an anxiety attack or otherwise suffering from being triggered or a disorder-related reaction, I thought I should make a post about the coping strategies that I’ve discovered over the years that actually work for me (and most people I tell them to). This isn’t some “Count to ten” bullshit that your therapist tells you to do. And its not stuff I pulled out of my ass either. Some of it I learned while undergoing Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). But that shit is expensive, and not available to everyone, so I thought I should share this stuff. If it even helps ONE person, then its worth making the post.

I personally have experience with both panic attacks and anxiety attacks. My panic attacks are much more frequent than anxiety attacks, and they are both triggered by different things. But here are solutions I use for both of them:

1. Sensory -

• Cold: in general instant ice packs are best if you can afford them. You can carry a few boxes of them with you everywhere, keep one in your purse, backpack, car, several in your house or apartment, etc. An alternative to this is backs of frozen vegetables kept in a freezer, which limits the amount of places you can have them, but they’re cheaper. I usually hold whatever ice pack I’m using in my hand, and they help me focus on the present and stop the cycling of negative ideas and thoughts that can happen during a panic attack. What is also really helpful is if you can find a shape that is comfortable to you, and freeze something in that shape. Circles are often comforting for some reason, so people freeze various different sized citrus fruits and that works well. For me, large oranges are the best because they are the size of softballs and trigger comforting muscle memories.
• Warm/Hot: Warmth and heat don’t generally work for me, but I’ve heard that they can work for some people. Its the same idea as the cold, but with the main goal being comfort instead of focusing. Click here to find out how you can make heat packs that can be heated in a microwave.
• Smell: If there is a particular smell that comforts you and might be helpful, find a way to keep something that smells like within reach at your office, home, school, etc. It might be a lotion that smells like vanilla (which adds the extra sensory stimulator of the lotion being rubbed onto your skin, which can help you focus), or even a spice jar filled with cinnamon or curry powder. Whatever comforts you. I particularly like rosemary, and if I can, I have someone bring me a little jar of it to smell while I’m panicking.

2. Breathing -

• I promise this isn’t “Count to ten and breathe!”. What you should try to do is either breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, or in through your mouth and out through your nose, whichever is more comfortable for you. Focus on the breaths. Maybe count them if it helps you. I like to imagine that they are connected in a figure-eight loop, and visualize it.
• Patterned breathing, like when people are going through labor can also help. It can especially help if you are prone to hyperventilation, because it focuses your mind on the pattern you have to follow. (Warning, that link is cis-normative and uses “women” in place of “people” when discussing pregnant individuals. Sorry about that.)

3. Focus -

• Look around the room you are in, and pick 5 objects to focus on. Spend five seconds looking at each object, and notice a unique or interesting feature about it, then look at the next object. Then close your eyes and state the characteristics you noticed about them. This engages your memory and focuses your mind.
• If you have someone with you who understands what is going on, then they can do this next one with you, but you have to explain it to them before hand. The person should start directing you to look at objects around the room while using a quiet and purposeful voice. This increases your mindfulness of the space around you and helps you focus, breaking the cycle of negative thoughts.
• If you can think of a song, sing it, or recite the lyrics from memory. This sounds stupid, I know, but its actually worked for me a few times.

That’s all I have for right now, but if anyone has anything to add, feel free to do so in the comments, or message me and I’ll reblog with the additions.

reblogging for the morning crowd

postpunkwesleycrusher:

my favorite is when someone accuses me like “WHY DON’T YOU HAVE A DEGREE YET WHY DON’T YOU HAVE A JOB WHY DO YOU STILL LIVE AT HOME” and i try to calmly explain that there are reasons outside my control and then they go “YOU’RE JUST MAKING EXCUSES”

like

i’m sorry was i supposed to

is there

is there a job tree somewhere

do i have to use my bootstraps to climb the job tree and grab a delicious ripe job from a branch, is that how that works

have i just missed the forecast every time the clouds opened up and jobs poured out

are they somewhere drifting in this mysterious ABSOLUTE ISOLATED VACUUM THAT APPARENTLY NEITHER LIGHT NOR BROADER SOCIOLOGICAL CONTEXT CAN PENETRATE 

like, wow, yeah, you’re right, i love being unemployed and in my 5th year of college, being powerless and trapped with no social mobility is the best wow dang

and this ocean of guilt and self-hate i’m swimming in is great, totally,

pass me those goggles im going to see if there are some magical fucking ocean unicorn jobs in a fucking trench down there or something

chisagi:

Argentina JUST PASSED a groundbreaking gender identity bill!!!

From now on, people will be able to change the name and gender on their ID without needing psychiatric permission or any body modifications. Furthermore, anyone who does want hormones or surgery will be able to access them for free through the public and private health system.

It was passed unanimously today by the Senate

UNANIMOUSLY

Argentina is just getting more awesome by the year. Countries that aren’t Argentina need to take note.

thepeoplesrecord:

The troubling viral trend of the “hilarious” Black poor person
May 7, 2013

Charles Ramsey, the man who helped rescue three Cleveland women presumed dead after going missing a decade ago, has become an instant Internet meme. It’s hardly surprising—the interviews he gave yesterday provide plenty of fodder for a viral video, including memorable soundbites (“I was eatin’ my McDonald’s”) and lots of enthusiastic gestures. But as Miles Klee and Connor Simpson have noted, Ramsey’s heroism is quickly being overshadowed by the public’s desire to laugh at and autotune his story, and that’s a shame. Ramsey has become the latest in a fairly recent trend of “hilarious” black neighbors, unwitting Internet celebrities whose appeal seems rooted in a “colorful” style that is always immediately recognizable as poor or working-class.

Before Ramsey, there was Antoine Dodson, who saved his younger sister from an intruder, only to wind up famous for his flamboyant recounting of the story to a reporter. Since Dodson’s rise to fame, there have been others: Sweet Brown, a woman who barely escaped her apartment complex during a fire last year, and Michelle Clarke, who couldn’t fathom the hailstorm that rained down in her hometown of Houston, and in turn became “the next Sweet Brown.”

Granted, the buzzworthy tactic of reporters interviewing the most loquacious witnesses to a crime or other event is nothing new, and YouTube has countless examples of people of all ethnicities saying ridiculous things. One woman, for instance, saw fit to casually mention her breasts while discussing a local accident, while another man described a car crash with theatrical flair. Earlier this year, a “hatchet-wielding hitchhiker” named Kai matched Dodson’s fame with his astonishing account of rescuing a woman from a racist attacker. But none of those people have been subjected to quite the same level of derisive memeification as Brown, Clark, and now, perhaps, Ramsey—the inescapable echoes of “Hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wife!” and “Kabooyaw,” the tens of millions of YouTube hits and cameos in other viral videos, even commercials.

It’s difficult to watch these videos and not sense that their popularity has something to do with a persistent, if unconscious, desire to see black people perform. Even before the genuinely heroic Ramsey came along, some viewers had expressed concern that the laughter directed at people like Sweet Brown plays into the most basic stereotyping of blacks as simple-minded ramblers living in the “ghetto,” socially out of step with the rest of educated America. Black or white, seeing Clark and Dodson merely as funny instances of random poor people talking nonsense is disrespectful at best. And shushing away the question of race seems like wishful thinking.

Ramsey is particularly striking in this regard, since, for a moment at least, he put the issue of race front and center himself. Describing the rescue of Amanda Berry and her fellow captives, he says, “I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms. Something is wrong here. Dead giveaway!”

The candid statement seems to catch the reporter off guard; he ends the interview shortly afterward. And it’s notable that among the many memorable things Ramsey said on camera, this one has gotten less meme-attention than most. Those who are simply having fun with the footage of Ramsey might pause for a second to actually listen to the man. He clearly knows a thing or two about the way racism prevents us from seeing each other as people.

Source

Now that you know this is a thing, please stop sharing these memes. Poor Black people speaking candidly about various serious incidents isn’t a hilarious joke.

afrosinspace:

white people do some basic shit like catch a cat falling out a tree and they’re hailed as a hero. Black man saves 3 women and he’s a fucking internet meme. see how that works?