Reblogged measureoutpace
This is a really neat historical gif. Also yeah, for heaven’s sake, don’t pretend we’re not a genocidal empire like so many others. I love my country, but willful ignorance is not patriotism, Marco Rubio.
Reblogged
What am I gonna do today? by RegularJOE
==
WEEKLY WRITING CHALLENGE #31: Write a story that begins and ends with the same sentence. (CONTRIBUTE HERE)
What am I gonna do today? Well, my baby’s car’s still reversing out the driveway, might as well stay here until it’s out of sight. Have...
Huge kudos to whoever comes up with these writing prompts. There are so many useless writing prompts out there; I’ve actually been using these!
Reblogged measureoutpace
Why #gamergate is important
Fun fact: Morgan Ramsay, founder of the Entertainment Media Counsel, did an objective study of how much of gaming journalism talks about sexism or social justice.
To do this, he downloaded 130,524 articles from 37 RSS feeds of 23 outlets, including The Escapist, Rock Paper Shotgun, CVG, Edge Online, Eurogamer, Gamasutra, Game Informer, GamePolitics, GamesBeat, GamesIndustry International, GameSpot, GamesRadar, IGN, IndieGames, Joystiq, Kotaku, Massively, MCV, NowGamer, PocketGamer.biz, Polygon, Shacknews and VG24/7, published over a period of twelve months. He then did a search on how often these games articles mentioned sexism, feminism, or misogyny.
The result? Over a period of one year, 0.41% of 130,524 articles referenced feminism, feminist, sexism, sexist, misogyny, and misogynist explicitly.
That’s less than half of one percent.
So next time you hear someone whining that “feminism is taking over video games journalism”, what they’re actually whining about is that feminism exists in video games journalism.
fancies (stitchy REmix): http://www.hitrecord.org/records/1682099
10/10 would buy this and hang it on my wall.
Reblogged whatbigotspost
33 year old Indiana woman Purvi Patel was just sentenced to 41 years, 20 of them in prison, 10 suspended, remainder probation, FOR HAVING A MISCARRIAGE (no abortion drugs were found in her system, no evidence of her buying abortion pills exists other than a message of her inquiring about them, no actual proof the fetus was alive at birth, yet she was convicted for both feticide and child neglect even though those two charges are completely contradictory). They’re saying feticide laws were made to protect women. It is clear now they were actually made to punish them. Yet no word on most mainstream media about this - do we really have to wait for a white woman to become a victim of this witch hunt for it to finally matter?
REMINDER: The judge in Patel’s case, Elizabeth Hurley, was the first superior court appointee by Indiana’s conservative governor, Mike Pence. Judge Hurley allowed the jury to view a video of police interrogating Patel in post-operative recovery, despite defense arguments that Patel’s Miranda rights were ignored and she was recovering from sedation and severe blood loss during the questioning (she was questioned right after receiving medical help).
Source: actionables
Reblogged
I looked up what SJW meant and the first link to come up on Google was from Urban Dictionary. I'm thoroughly convinced that Urban Dictionary is run by people who want to nit pick and bring others down. They're not funny! What's so wrong with being a social justice warrior? We should want to see people treated equally. Why does Internet douchebaggery waste time on trying to spread more hate. Keep being you. I see some of the mean things people write you. Don't listen. You're awesome
I agree…and I’m actually totally fine being called a SJW. Thank you :)
HAWP did this super awesome video on how silly the phrase Social Justice Warrior is as a putdown: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQZZ_jggk7Y
Reblogged whatbigotspost
1. Women get interrupted more than men. Both men and women interrupt women more often than they interrupt men, according to a paper published earlier this year in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology. In that study, two researchers at George Washington University...
Holding on to this for reference.
Reblogged
I've been told the book I'm writing is an ambitious project. I never know whether to take that as good or bad criticism. As a professional writer, what would your opinion be when being told that?
What’s wrong with an ambitious project? Better to attempt something ambitious, and succeed (or fail), than to do something inoffensive and modest that thousands of people have already done, surely?
As long as you keep writing and love doing it, it doesn’t matter the size of the project.
But if you want to finish and publish more, shorter pieces can take less time to write. In my own experience, I learn more about writing by completing and polishing a short piece than by attempting something large that I’m (personally) not as likely to either finish or polish.
Reblogged
I dropped out of uni twice, 1st bc my mom died & I couldn't afford tuition after, & the 2nd is complicated. Now I'm 20, an aspiring writer. Do I need a degree to live a 'fulfilled life' / what can I do to become a successful writer? Thank you! <3 xx
I never went to university. I wrote, instead. Last week I went to the funeral of Professor Sir Terry Pratchett, one of the bestselling and best-beloved authors of the last quarter of a century, and he didn’t go to university either. What you mostly need to be a successful writer is to write things that people want to read.
No amount of degrees will make people turn the page to read something that they aren’t interested in; and no publisher who loved your novel is ever going to decide not to publish it because you don’t have a degree.
Yes, but it’s extremely difficult to get a day job (writing-related or otherwise) without a degree.
And a writing degree is a fantastic opportunity to spend your time writing instead of flipping burgers to make rent, to utilize the resources of teachers and fellow students, and build a network so you have a better chance of publishing. It’s much harder to write when your day job isn’t in writing, and it’s hard to get a writing job if you don’t have a degree.
Reblogged
The interviewer at the Neil Gaiman event kept trying to get him to say that trigger warnings are over sensitive or whatever but he said “I am one hundred percent in favor of people being able to choose not to read things they know they won’t be able to handle”
He also made a point of saying “people with penises” and “people with vaginas” when addressing a question about feminist themes in his writing
I’m so happy about him tbh
Well, yes.
I am so so happy to see this post, because I LOVE Neil, but was really put off by the introduction to the book, which I was concerned sounded too flippant about trigger warnings. I have encountered a great deal of backlash against trigger warnings in academia, from teachers who think trigger warnings are some kind of censorship, rather than a life-and-death necessity for people who rely on them.
People like to pretend mental illness is not a real physical illness, but of course it is, and trigger warnings can help people will various kinds of mental illness in the same way that hearing aids help the deaf and crutches help those who cannot walk. Sure, you can muddle through without in some cases, but not without serious consequences. If my legs hurt one day, I’ll be glad of the handicap ramp, but that doesn’t mean I really understand how vital a handicap ramp can be. In the same way, if I’m sensitive to a topic, it’s nice to be able to skip a well-labeled story if I don’t feel up to it, but that doesn’t mean I understand what it would be like to be a rape victim who accidentally comes across a vivid rape story.
Reblogged whatbigotspost
The hypocrisy of #JeSuisCharlie is loud and clear.
Reblogged
I find you amazing as a writer, (I don't know you personally to say as a person) but supporting Neo-nazis in any way is antisemitic. I don't care if you think it's funny to let them march just to trick them into donating for something good. They're still horrifying, antisemitic, homophobic and racist. If you support a group of people so vile then you need to rethink some things, idc what your intentions are.
Okay. Let’s try this one more time, because I’m obviously not getting my point across. I don’t support neonazis. I don’t support any group whose ideas I disagree with, and I disagree with Nazism more profoundly than I disagree with any other group. They killed my family.
I’ve linked here, many times, to http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-icky-speech.html — it’s a long blog essay on why I think the First Amendment is important, and why I’ve given a lot of my time and a lot of money over the last quarter of a century to defending freedom of speech. It comes down to the statement that:
The Law is a blunt instrument. It’s not a scalpel. It’s a club. If there is something you consider indefensible, and there is something you consider defensible, and the same laws can take them both out, you are going to find yourself defending the indefensible.
I’m not quite sure what you are using “support” to mean, here. Yes, I think they have to right to be alive, to think wrong, evil things, to not be imprisoned simply for their beliefs. If this is supporting them, then I support every group in the world, including many who would, if they achieved power, want me killed or imprisoned.
I believe people have the right to think and say the wrong things. (And I believe that marching peacefully is a form of speech.) I believe our remedy for that should be to argue with them or to ignore them or to march against them. We have the right and the ability to mock them, to vilify them, to speak out against them, to expose them or to cut them out of our lives.
I believe that you, whoever you are, as a human being, have the absolute right to think things that I find offensive, stupid, preposterous or dangerous, and that you have the right to speak, write, or distribute these things, and that I do not have the right to kill you, maim you, hurt you, or take away your liberty or property because I find your ideas threatening or insulting or downright disgusting. You might will think some of my ideas are pretty vile too.
I believe that if you give the state powers to limit free speech, there is no guarantee that you will find yourself on the right side of what speech is permitted. That laws used to clamp down on one set of political groups, religions or ideologies can also be used against others, ones you identify with, like and really do support.
From where I stand, it’s the Nazis that burn the books, that burn the people. We’re better than that.
I do think it's problematic to be supporting free speech above all as a response to the terrorist attacks in France on Charlie Hebdo. This response ignores the religious intolerance that was the reason for the attack, it ignores the religious intolerance faced every day by ordinary innocent Muslim people in France, and it ignores the hate crimes committed against Muslim people in France in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack. Free speech is important, but the real problem is systemic islamophobia, and hatred by extremist Muslims against the West. Even if you think people have a right to hate speech, it's generally indicative of a larger problem not limited to speech.
Reblogged
humblebundle-deactivated2019111
Humble Weekly Bundle: Je Suis Charlie 100% benefits the Freedom of the Press Foundation
The Humble Weekly Bundle: Je Suis Charlie runs for a week before ending on Thursday, January 29, 2015 at 11 a.m. Pacific time.
Boycotting this. Humble Bundle, how about "freedom from hate speech" or "promote religious tolerance"? This isn't just about free speech; hate crimes are being committed in France because people don't know the difference between mainstream Islam and extremist terrorism.
Reblogged
I have been trying to write for a while now. I have all these amazing ideas, but its really hard getting my thoughts onto paper. Thus, my ideas never really come to fruition. Do you have any advice?
Write the ideas down. If they are going to be stories, try and tell the stories you would like to read. Finish the things you start to write. Do it a lot and you will be a writer. The only way to do it is to do it.
I’m just kidding. There are much easier ways of doing it. For example: On the top of a distant mountain there grows a tree with silver leaves. Once every year, at dawn on April 30th, this tree blossoms, with five flowers, and over the next hour each blossom becomes a berry, first a green berry, then black, then golden.
At the moment the five berries become golden, five white crows, who have been waiting on the mountain, and which you will have mistaken for snow, will swoop down on the tree, greedily stripping it of all its berries, and will fly off, laughing.
You must catch, with your bare hands, the smallest of the crows, and you must force it to give up the berry (the crows do not swallow the berries. They carry them far across the ocean, to an enchanter’s garden, to drop, one by one, into the mouth of his daughter, who will wake from her enchanted sleep only when a thousand such berries have been fed to her). When you have obtained the golden berry, you must place it under your tongue, and return directly to your home.
For the next week, you must speak to no-one, not even your loved ones or a highway patrol officer stopping you for speeding. Say nothing. Do not sleep. Let the berry sit beneath your tongue.
At midnight on the seventh day you must go to the highest place in your town (it is common to climb on roofs for this step) and, with the berry safely beneath your tongue, recite the whole of Fox in Socks. Do not let the berry slip from your tongue. Do not miss out any of the poem, or skip any of the bits of the Muddle Puddle Tweetle Poodle Beetle Noodle Bottle Paddle Battle.
Then, and only then, can you swallow the berry. You must return home as quickly as you can, for you have only half an hour at most before you fall into a deep sleep.
When you wake in the morning, you will be able to get your thoughts and ideas down onto the paper, and you will be a writer.
I forgot for a minute that Neil was my hero, then I got this reminder. xD
Reblogged measureoutpace
Close up of the NORTHERN PYGMY-OWL… Keep in mind this bird is just about 6’ tall #birds #Utah #utahbirders
This bird is SIX FEET TALL?!
Reblogged
Tumblr Tuesday: Miniatures
Gotta Sculpt ‘Em All (gottasculptemall) In the process of sculpting all 151 OG pocket monsters. Small enough to fit in even the tightest pockets.
A Miniature Gratitude Journal (kboyington424) A lot of little gratitude.
Daily Mini Veggie (dailyminiveggie) Petite parsnips, small sweet potatoes, and wittle watermelon radishes.
Paintings for Ants (paintingsforants) Some may say that ants don’t need paintings, that they can’t appreciate art at all. Others would agree. Let’s find out what ants have to say.
Daily Tiny (dailytiny) Either they’ve got a lot of tiny things or a lot of giant quarters. You decide.
Cape batis by paintingsforants
My uncle does a lot of tiny paintings too! (And big ones also.)
https://aaroncaycedokimura.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/apple-of-my-eye/
Source: gottasculptemall
Reblogged measureoutpace
"I bring word from the swamp prince, the old pacts shall be honored, muster your forces at first light…"
Reblogged
I saw a post about someone having a panic attack induced by a rape joke, although they have not been sexually assaulted. They inquired whether their reaction could be considered as being "triggered." Feminist psychologists Maria Root and Laura Brown have developed the theory of "insidious trauma" which is "traumatogenic effects of oppression that are not necessarily overtly violent or threatening to bodily well-being at the given moment but that do violence to the soul and spirit"(Brown).
Hmm, interesting. Several people commented on that post that yes, it’s also a trigger even if you haven’t had a trauma assocaited. Regardless, thanks for sharing this term too!
Reblogged
We asked you to submit your worst Neil Gaiman-esque writing, and Holy Gaiman did you guys deliver. Here, read by neil-gaiman himself, are the worst entries we received.
They are Bad. I mean BAAADDDDD…
I gotta write me one of these.
Reblogged measureoutpace
angieismymom-deactivated2015030
"dick is abundant and low value"
"dick is abundant and low value"
"dick is abundant and low value"
That's a cruel and dangerous notion, because it suggests that all reproductive organs might be "abundant and low value." There are lots of vaginas and penises in the world, both, and they (and the people attached to them) are all of value. The lie is that one is inherently better than the other.