May 2010
55 posts
How increased internet use has changed our brains... and not necessarily for the better. →
wired.com
Eeeck!
When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. Even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain.
“[In England] The party that lost is working with the party that won. They’re not accusing them of being bolshevik zulus out to destroy Magna Carta. Because the English are grown-ups, including their conservatives, who enjoy a wonderful luxury conservatives on the side of the pond do not. They’re allowed to be sane. They don’t have to cater to creationists and anti-intellectuals. Only in this dumb country do liberals and conservatives argue over things like evolution and climate change and whether sick people should be left to die in the street.”
—Bill Maher (via goodreasonnews)
Play
“It is said an eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words, “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!”
—Abraham Lincoln (via psychotherapy)
Prepping for a forty day trip to Wisconsin
…and revisiting my deeply rooted hate of packing.
Play
“Yes, Heaven is a Drive Shaft gig: altogether now, “You all, everybody!”
—Lost ending: the final episode reviewed
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2010/may/24/lost-ending-final-episode-reviewed
Play
Are You an 'Asker'or a 'Guesser' →
guardian.co.uk
Theory of why some of us suck at saying ‘no,’ and why other just don’t care.
I’m such a ‘guesser.’
Courtyard People
There is a special breed of people in the world. At the moment I refer to them as ‘Courtyard People,’ in college I liked to call them ‘Hall People,’ in the future I will probably simply call them ‘Annoying People.’
These are the people who liked to have fun and be rowdy on weeknights, but do so in a public place that is in close proximity to bedrooms (courtyards, front steps, corridors etc). In college I usually knew the ‘Hall People,’ or if I didn’t they were younger than me so I felt no guilt or fear in telling them just how I felt about my being awake because of their noise. But now…
Now I live in an apartment building in a city. I don’t know these ‘Courtyard People,’ I have no age advantage and they are most likely on a drunken holiday and thus have little regard for my desire to sleep and function before noon tomorrow.
What’s a girl to do (and sleeping isn’t exactly an option)?
Play
Is it strange that I am terrified by men in uniform?
I am a thermal vampire.
10 Days In a Carry-On →
nytimes.com
This may have just changed my life.
Heather Poole, a flight attendant from Los Angeles, demonstrates how to pack enough for a 10-day trip into a single standard carry-on.
Travel porn!
The law discriminates against rape victims
The law discriminates against rape victims in a manner which would not be tolerated by victims of any other crime. In the following example, a holdup victim is asked questions similar in form to those usually asked a victim of rape:
“Yes.”
“Did you struggle with the robber?”
“No.”
“Mr. Smith, you were held up at gunpoint on the corner of 16th and Locust?”
“He was armed.”
“Then you made a conscious decision to comply with his demands rather than to resist?”
“Yes.”
“Why not?”
“No. I was afraid.”
“I see. Have you ever been held up before?”
“No.”
“Did you scream? Cry out?”
“Yes, of course–”
“And did you do so willingly?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Have you ever given money away?”
“Listen, if I wanted–”
“Never mind. What time did this holdup take place, Mr. Smith?”
“About 11 p.m.”
“Well, let’s put it like this, Mr. Smith. You’ve given away money in the past–in fact, you have quite a reputation for philanthropy. How can we be sure that you weren’t contriving to have your money taken from you by force?”
“Just walking.”
“Just walking? You know it’s dangerous being out on the street that late at night. Weren’t you aware that you could have been held up?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“You were out on the streets at 11 p.m.? Doing what?”
“Let’s see. A suit. Yes, a suit.”
“An expensive suit?”
“Well–yes.”
“What were you wearing at the time, Mr. Smith?”
“Look, can’t we talkin about the past history of the guy who did this to me?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Smith. I don’t think you would want to violate his rights, now, would you?”
“In other words, Mr. Smith, you were walking around the streets late at night in a suit that practically advertised the fact that you might be a good target for some easy money, isn’t that so? I mean, if we didn’t know better, Mr. Smith, we might even think you were asking for this to happen, mightn’t we?”
(via naomiwaxman)
(via waifsworld)
(via sexismandthecity)
(via earlyfrost)
(via directactioniswitchcraft)
(via iisabelle)
(via jordanwednesday)
(via shakepaper)
(via skirtonfire)
(via sluthaditcoming)
“I find it so funny that we commend our culture for allowing women more freedom then in other cultures; but at the same time, hold the same anti-woman views. We praise our culture for not forcing women to cover themselves; but if they don’t and they are raped, they were acting “irresponsibly”. We shake our heads in disapproval when we hear of women in the middle east who are not allowed out of their homes without a male escort and yet if women are assaulted for being out alone, they are accused of being “irresponsible”.It’s all the same misogyny and it is all restricting a woman’s right to be a full human being. We should be writing articles and blogs for men about THEIR RESPONSIBILITY to not rape (which isn’t done). Instead we get article upon article about things women can do to not be raped and surprise surprise, we still have a rape problem.”
—
Una Fraser, awesome comment on Ben Roethlisberger Doesn’t Want to See Your Stamp Collection | The Daily Get Up
The author of the column responded by saying (paraphrasing), “Your right to be fully human includes a caveat: you still have to worry about how much skin you show, or some dude’s going to shit all over your full humanity by raping you to remind you just how not fully human you are.” Of course, she meant that in a good, pro-woman way. *brain explodes*
(via robot-heart-politics)
(via ekswitaj)
(via jadedhippy)
(via waifsworld) (via naomiwaxman)
'The Story of My Illegal Abortion' →
alternet.org
Why are we threatening to keep putting women through this?
Lies Teachers Tell
If you type ‘Google’ into Google you’ll break the internet.
‘I said astrology was rubbish and we got a record number of complaints from stupid people.’
::Brian Cox
“Still to come, an interview with Brian Cox… he’s like a walking, talking Stephen Hawking.”
—Jimmy Carr on Channel 4’s Alternative Election Night
“
Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice … you don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.
They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying … lobbying, to get what they want … Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want … they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that … that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.
That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin’ years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers … Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your fuckin’ retirement money.
They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it … they’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fuckin’ place. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in The big club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy.
The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people … white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means … continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you … they don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you at all … at all … at all, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. It’s called the American Dream cause you have to be asleep to believe it …
::George Carlin
” —
“Allow me to play your psychiatrist. You like to be a great man. And great men surround themselves with greatness. But you’re coming to the realization that Lost isn’t great—it has too many tics to be exceptional. You’ve invested six years in this not-great-but-maybe-good TV. Now, you feel tarred by association. And so you rage against the show—constantly asking it to be something that it is not. When Lost first debuted, the show had tremendous potential. It could have been a network version of The Wire. Morally ambiguous characters, sprawling backstories, and an existential theme—these are the elements of Great Television. But as the show nears a close, I think it’s time to stop trying to mold Lost into some version of the Great American Novel. It’s a genre show. It can be good; it can be bad. But it can never be what we thought it might be: great.”
—
Slate’s Chadwick Matlin’s well-put summary on coming to terms with LOST
(via allthethingsiwishiwrote)
Lessons Learned
Listen to Richard.
Hands up if you're skint?
*both hands up*
Still contemplating applying to a €12,000 grad program. What am I thinking?
*hand up*
“
Doctor: You must have a killer immune system, otherwise this would have flared up into something much worse much sooner.
Me: Thanks, but if it’s that ‘killer,’ shouldn’t it have killed this mere irritation of a virus much much sooner?
” —My lovely trip to the walk in clinic… €60 to be told I’ve had a minor virus for a month and that’s why I feel not so great.
Hedgehog's dilemma →
en.wikipedia.org
The hedgehog’s dilemma, or sometimes the porcupine dilemma, is an analogy about the challenges of human intimacy. It describes a situation in which a group of hedgehogs all seek to become close to one another in order to share their heat during cold weather. However, once accomplished, they cannot avoid hurting one another with their sharp quills. They must step away from one another. Though they all share the intention of a close reciprocal relationship, this may not occur for reasons which they cannot avoid.
The hedgehog’s dilemma suggests that despite goodwill, human intimacy cannot occur without substantial mutual harm, and what results is cautious behavior and weak relationships.
