My Writing My Society

What it says on the tin

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youeatadvillikeitscandy:

“In fact, by using her wits a seemingly defenseless pony can be the one who outsmarts and outshines them all.”

CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW THIS IS A KIDS TV SHOW WHERE THE ENTIRE MORAL OF AN EPISODE WAS THAT BEING FEMININE DOES NOT MAKE YOU WEAK

(via otakuhostess)

Filed under sociology feminism women in media female characters writing writing female characters pro-femininity I'm telling you man MLP is where it's at MLP:FIM My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

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Things that tick me off royally

emysabath:

So, sometimes when I have a headache, my brain does math at me instead of letting me sleep it off.  Today, my brain wanted to talk about inflation, wage stagnation, and the ballooning cost of tuition.

First of all, inflation. Inflation is basically the rate at which the value of currency drops.  A slow, steady inflation rate is fairly normal, and nothing to be concerned about by itself, but is important to understand for the rest of the discussion.  For the sake of ease of understanding, I want to use nice whole numbers, but I have double-checked my sleepy brain’s calculations, and welcome you to do the same.

In 1970, $1 could buy 6 apples; today $1 can buy 1 apple.  This is inflation.

Now, onto wage stagnation. In 1970, minimum wage was $1.60, but for nice round numbers I’ll go with $2.  Current minimum wage is $7.25, so I’ll go with $8.  Back to our apples - working for 6 hours in 1970 would get you enough money to buy 72 apples; to buy 72 apples today you would have to work 9 hours.  Inflation is the value of the dollar going down; wage stagnation means the value of time has gone down.

Finally, tuition.  Tuition has increased at roughly 4x the rate of inflation.  What does that mean, especially when combined with wage stagnation?  Well, in 1970, one semester at a state university cost roughly $100.  At $2/hr, this would be 50 hours of work, or roughly two weeks at a standard part time job.  Inflation alone would have brought tuition to $600, and 4x that puts us at $2400 (this is actually an underestimate in my experience, but again, nice whole round numbers).  So, one semester’s tuition, $2400, at $8/hr, puts us at 300 hours of work, or roughly three months. 

Again, that is a state university, not a private institution, and that’s just tuition, not fees, books, or housing. 

This is how one generation could work their way through college on minimum wage jobs, and a couple decades later college students are averaging tens of thousands of dollars of debt when they graduate.  This has been an episode of things that tick me off.

Filed under tuition wage stagnation inflation inequality

18,527 notes

wolveswolves: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WOLVES AND RAVENS Ravens and wolves form social attachments with each other and take huge advantage of each other. Both animals eat meat. When wolves killed a prey, ravens eat from the left over cadaver and scavenge it. Also, ravens lead wolves to preys or cadavers. The ravens fly and the wolves follow. Ravens also alert wolves to dangers. They also play with each other. For example the ravens dive at the wolves and then speed away or peck their tails to try to get the wolves to chase them, or wolf cubs chasing after teasing ravens. Dr. L. David Mech wrote in ‘The Wolf: The Ecology and Behaviour of an Endangered Species’: “It appears that the wolf and the raven have reached an adjustment in their relationships such that each creature is rewarded in some way by the presence of the other and that each is fully aware of the other’s capabilities.” Also very interesting: Bernd Heinrich wrote in ‘Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds’: “Ravens can be attracted to wolf howls. The wolves’ howls before they go on a hunt, and it is a signal that the birds learn to heed. Conversely, wolves may respond to certain raven vocalizations or behavior that indicate prey. The raven-wolf association may be close to a symbiosis that benefits the wolves and ravens alike. At a kill site, the birds are more suspicious and alert than wolves. The birds serve the wolves as extra eyes and ears.” Some videos: - Raven Dances with Wolf Pup - Ravens taking a bath in the snow after stealing food from wolves- Crow teasing a wolf (Picture by Michael S. Nolan)

wolveswolves:

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WOLVES AND RAVENS

Ravens and wolves form social attachments with each other and take huge advantage of each other.

Both animals eat meat. When wolves killed a prey, ravens eat from the left over cadaver and scavenge it. Also, ravens lead wolves to preys or cadavers. The ravens fly and the wolves follow. Ravens also alert wolves to dangers.

They also play with each other. For example the ravens dive at the wolves and then speed away or peck their tails to try to get the wolves to chase them, or wolf cubs chasing after teasing ravens.

Dr. L. David Mech wrote in ‘The Wolf: The Ecology and Behaviour of an Endangered Species’: “It appears that the wolf and the raven have reached an adjustment in their relationships such that each creature is rewarded in some way by the presence of the other and that each is fully aware of the other’s capabilities.”

Also very interesting: Bernd Heinrich wrote in ‘Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds’: “Ravens can be attracted to wolf howls. The wolves’ howls before they go on a hunt, and it is a signal that the birds learn to heed. Conversely, wolves may respond to certain raven vocalizations or behavior that indicate prey. The raven-wolf association may be close to a symbiosis that benefits the wolves and ravens alike. At a kill site, the birds are more suspicious and alert than wolves. The birds serve the wolves as extra eyes and ears.”

Some videos: 
- Raven Dances with Wolf Pup 
- Ravens taking a bath in the snow after stealing food from wolves
- Crow teasing a wolf

(Picture by Michael S. Nolan)

(via do-you-have-a-flag)

Filed under real life animals characters about my characters Forest Cory

8,208 notes

For all the women I have loved who were dragged through the mud

harbek:

platoapproved:

aiffe:

I’ve read a lot of great essays about how fandom is female-majority and creates a female gaze and a safe space for women and etc. But spend five minutes in fandom and you’ll have an unsettling question.

Why does a female-majority, feminist culture hate female characters so much?

It’s not a question of if it happens. You know it does. You can go into any fandom and see it. Some fandoms are worse than others, but it’s always there. Scroll down the Tumblr tag for any show, movie, book, comic, whatever, and you’ll see nothing but love for the men, and a lot of unjustified hate for the women, maybe with a few defenders here and there insisting on their love for the women in the face of all that hate.

To be clear, we’re not talking about female villains. Male villains get just as much hate. It’s fine if you hate Bellatrix Lestrange or Dolores Umbridge, you’re supposed to. (I personally stan for Bella, but I realize that wasn’t the authorial intent.) This is about people hating Hermione, Ginny and Luna, but loving Harry, Ron and Neville. This is about how ambiguous male antiheroes, like Snape, Zuko, or pretty much any male vampire protagonist can get away with walking that fine line between good and evil and not only remain sympathetic, but be even more beloved for how ~tortured~ he is, but when a female character is morally gray that bitch has to die.

So you can’t tell me it’s okay that you hate Sansa because you also hate Joffrey and he’s a dude. They’re not comparable. It isn’t even comparable if you pick a female antihero. Let’s do this apples to apples, here.

We all know that fandom does this. We all know that it’s fucked up and symptomatic of internalized sexism. What’s really fucking weird about it, though, is that the women doing this hating often aren’t ignorant. These are feminists. These are women who can go on meta-analyses of the writing. Some will hide behind pseudo-feminist reasons for their hate—oh, it’s the writing, we just aren’t given strong female characters! (I saw this used for the women of AtLA: Katara, Toph, Azula, et al. This was about when I just backed away slowly because I know a lost cause when I see it.) I’ve seen women who denied being sexist, but couldn’t name a single female character they liked. And it’s always that the female characters aren’t good enough, even when they obviously have a double standard, and they’re measuring women on an impossible scale full of contradictions and no-win binds, while the men are just embraced and loved pretty much for existing.

The reaction nearly every time one of these women is called out is not to say, “Huh, you may have a point, I should examine the way I judge and process women’s actions more closely,” but an insistence of their feminism, followed by a more detailed description of why that particular woman is terrible and she hates her, as if the whole point were not that fandom is already oversaturated with that kind of hate, and as if the person doing the calling out were not already 110% done with that bullshit.

Particularly telling is that male-dominated corners of fandom do not have this problem. They fetishize, they objectify, they ignore. They don’t hate like this.

We know it happens. What I want to know is WHY.

Theories follow below the cut.

Read More

This is long and wonderful and logical and important and you should all read every fucking word of it.

Why fandom hates female characters, and what we can do to make it better.

Read it. Really. It’s amazing. A bit close to home sometimes, but that’s a good thing, as many of these are things I’ve been guilty of and still work on.

(via eggs-ter-min-nate)

Filed under writing reading sexism female characters women in media fandom suuuuuuuch a good analysis

14,726 notes

lovenerdeen:

The Last Meals Of Innocent Men

An emotional new ad campaign from Amnesty International asks its viewers to stomach a hard truth — images of the last meals of wrongly executed American prisoners.

As part of an initiative to abolish capital punishment completely, the influential human rights group has highlighted the unintended consequences of imposing the death penalty by focusing on a handful of prisoners who were eventually presumed innocent after they were executed. Since 1973, 142 death row inmates have been exonerated of the crimes for which they were sentenced to die, the Death Penalty Information Center reports. Some of those people spent decades in prison before their innocence was proven.

Meal 1: Ruben Cantu (Texas) was charged with capital murder at 17 years old for shooting a man during a robbery. The one witness to this crime admitted later on that he was pressured by police to identify Cantu as the criminal. He told the police twice that Cantu was not the shooter. However, Cantu was still executed in 1993.

Meal 2: Leo Jones (Florida) was charged with the murder of  a police officer in Florida. Although he said that said he was coerced into confession after hours of interrogation. The police officer and the detective involved in his case, were forced out of uniform for ethical violations a few years after his’ conviction.

Jones was executed in 1998.

Meal 3: Claude Howard Jones (Texas) was sentenced to death in 1989 for shooting and killing Texas liquor store owner. However, the recent DNA tests on the strand of hair that was used as the only physical evidence against him was proved not to belong to him.

“Knowing that these DNA results support his innocence means so much to me, my son in the military and the rest of my family. I hope these results will serve as a wake-up call to everyone that serious problems exist in the criminal justice system that must be fixed if our society is to continue using the death penalty,” - Jones’ son, Duane Jones

Jones was executed in 2000.

Meal 4: David Spence (Texas) was charged and sentenced to execution for the murder of three Texas teenagers. There was no physical evidence against him and both the homicide detective and police lieutenant that were on his case did not believe Spence to be the criminal. The prosecution solely relied on the testimony of other prison inmates in their case against Spence,

He was executed in 1997.

Meal 5: Cameron Willingham (Texas) was convicted of murdering his three children in a 1991 house fire . Four national arson experts have concluded that the original investigation in the case was flawed, while an independent investigation into the case concluded that the prosecution centered its argument on arson theories that have since been repudiated by scientific studies.

Willingham was executed in Texas in 2004

(via socialformsandsocialtypes)

Filed under sociology criminology wrongful imprisonment wrongful execution criminal justice system

8,354 notes

strawberreli: agrand: youarenotyou: abellandapomegranate: grrspit: theuppitynegras: graphitetroll: alienpornz: missyankovic: super-dike: ricksantorum-2012: whats-inside-a-girl: ricksantorum-2012: kaijisan: Okay… There is no way he believes this? Nobody could possibly believe this…? Prove me wrong. Do it. i was not created by a white man. Unless you were conceived in a bathtub full of kool-aid or something, modern day conception procedures come from Europe. This is probably the most racist comment I’ve seen in a very long time Firstly, I’m with the person right above me.  That’s an incredibly racist comment.  I would say you should be ashamed, but I know you won’t listen. Now on to proving you wrong. Chocolate chip cookies were invented by Ruth Wakefield (x). Liquid paper was invented by Bette Nesmith Graham (x). The square-bottomed paper bag was invented by Margaret Knight (x). The dishwasher was invented by Josephine Cochrane (x). The windshield wiper was invented by Mary Anderson (x). Kevlar was invented by Stephanie Kwolek (x). Potato chips were invented by George Crum (x). The carbon-filament lightbulb, which was actually more practical than Edison’s paper-filament bulb, was invented by Lewis Latimer (x). The blood bank was invented by Charles Richard Drew (x). The protective mailbox, the precursor to today’s public mail boxes, was invented by Philip B. Downing (x). The gas mask was invented by Garrett Morgan (x). The birth control pill was invented by Luis Miramontes and two other scientists (x). The magnetic compass, porcelain, gunpowder, the mechanical clock, and paper money were all invented by the Chinese (x). The condom, high heels, paper, and the pen were all invented by the Egyptians (x). There.  Done. Oh, and re: “modern day conception procedures,” I believe the word you’re so clumsily dancing around is “sex.”  (Don’t worry, typing it won’t hurt you.)  I have to burst your bubble on that one, too.  The first humanoid beings were Australopithecus, and they lived in Africa (x).  (The map’s down a bit on the page.) I think I’ve thoroughly proven you wrong enough by now.  I’m going to get some sleep.  Laterz. YOU ARE MY HERO.^^^ LET ME BARE YOUR CHILDREN BUT WAIT KIDS THERE MORE: The traffic light Peanut butter Open heart surgery Homo sapiens The light switch The real McCoy engine Spoken word poetry Rock n Roll Hell pretty much every genre of American music since we got to this bitch And that’s just the top of my head. TAKE IT AWAY NEXT REBLOGGER: Agriculture. Writing. The fucking wheel. Fucking civilization. The domesticated chicken in the sandwich I’m eating. The tea I’m drinking. The concept of “zero”, as in the OP is a total fucking zero. Ooh ooh! Apples.  Bred from a wild ancestor fruit in central Asia. Bread.  Also Egypt. Beer and wine.  Near East/Egyptian inventions. Distilled alcohol.  Arabs. The triangular sail, which revolutionized navigation:  also Arabs. Beekeeping and therefore cultivated honey.  Also Egypt. Pet cats and dogs, meticulously domesticated in the Near East and Asia respectively.  Also domestic cattle, Africa and South Asia.  Computer programming.  Ada Lovelace. Spread-spectrum and frequency-hopping communication technology, which is to say, the wifi my computer is using right now.  Hedy Lamarr. The novel.  Japan!  Unless you count Apuleius’ Metamorphoses/”The Golden Ass,” in which case, Africa. Randomized controlled trial, completely essential to the basis of modern medicine:  Ibn Sina. Edible corn, potatoes, and nightshades, which form the bulk of at least most Americans’ diets:  the brilliant breeding, cultivation, and agricultural experimentation practices of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec civilizations respectively. Indoor plumbing.  India. Lenses.  Assyria. The written word.  Oh, that’s right:  Phoenicia, Africa, and, independently, China and Mesoamerica.  Yes, yes, we know:  runes and ogham.  Very impressive, Norse and Irish, nicely done, welcome to the show. Oh, and the printed word.  China again. Really, astronomy, chemistry, geography, physics, optics, botany, and surgery as we know them. Oh—and that bathtub you want to fill with Kool-Aid.  Brown folks invented that, too. Oh, hell, do some homework: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_inventors_and_scientists http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African_scientists,_inventors,_and_scholars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Puerto_Rican_scientists_and_inventors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_contributions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventions_in_medieval_Islam Go do some Googling like a grownup. haha. white people have never invented anything, they steal everything they can from POC and take the credit I don’t know if these were mentioned and I’m missing them, but the people of Mesopotamia (according to google where modern Iraq is) were the first known people to use irrigation. Also Ancient China in addition to a shitton of the awesome things above invented noodles/pasta, for which I am eternally grateful as it is the basis for a lot of Italian cuisine, food of my culture. China also had the first automated clocks, I don’t know if that was mentioned. You can also just do your own research at websites like these: http://www.black-inventor.com/Lonnie-G-Johnson.asp There’s also this really informative series of posts that have been going around tumblr: http://hamburgerjack.tumblr.com/post/43237040943/pipercarter-black-history-month-fact-15-711There’s also chocolate, one of the most awesome foods ever, it’s initial form was invented by Mesoamericans and actually used in their rituals before white people came and appropriated that up as a fancy people drink.So, basically OP, we as white people owe essentially all the awesome shit around us to people of color.In other words, the folks above are correct. far as I can tell the only thing we’ve invented was stealing other people’s shit and taking credit for it while making out that the creator of said good shit should be thankful to us for inventing this cool thing. We’ve also been pretty great at perpetuating systems of oppression based on this model. But let’s be honest, we probably didn’t even invent stealing shit and taking the credit. So yeah, you’re probably a troll at least I hope you are because that was straight up absurdly wrong. But in case you aren’t, I just wanted to contribute some inventions I didn’t see mentioned. Arabs invented coffee, the pinhole camera, cheques, fucking physics, man. My forever favourite is soap. Your white ass did not know how to BATHE until we showed you soap. You sat in yr own filth and thought water would KILL YOU. 

strawberreli:

agrand:

youarenotyou:

abellandapomegranate:

grrspit:

theuppitynegras:

graphitetroll:

alienpornz:

missyankovic:

super-dike:

ricksantorum-2012:

whats-inside-a-girl:

ricksantorum-2012:

kaijisan:

Okay…

There is no way he believes this?

Nobody could possibly believe this…?

Prove me wrong. Do it.

i was not created by a white man.

Unless you were conceived in a bathtub full of kool-aid or something, modern day conception procedures come from Europe.

This is probably the most racist comment I’ve seen in a very long time

Firstly, I’m with the person right above me.  That’s an incredibly racist comment.  I would say you should be ashamed, but I know you won’t listen.

Now on to proving you wrong.

  • Chocolate chip cookies were invented by Ruth Wakefield (x).
  • Liquid paper was invented by Bette Nesmith Graham (x).
  • The square-bottomed paper bag was invented by Margaret Knight (x).
  • The dishwasher was invented by Josephine Cochrane (x).
  • The windshield wiper was invented by Mary Anderson (x).
  • Kevlar was invented by Stephanie Kwolek (x).
  • Potato chips were invented by George Crum (x).
  • The carbon-filament lightbulb, which was actually more practical than Edison’s paper-filament bulb, was invented by Lewis Latimer (x).
  • The blood bank was invented by Charles Richard Drew (x).
  • The protective mailbox, the precursor to today’s public mail boxes, was invented by Philip B. Downing (x).
  • The gas mask was invented by Garrett Morgan (x).
  • The birth control pill was invented by Luis Miramontes and two other scientists (x).
  • The magnetic compass, porcelain, gunpowder, the mechanical clock, and paper money were all invented by the Chinese (x).
  • The condom, high heels, paper, and the pen were all invented by the Egyptians (x).

There.  Done.

Oh, and re: “modern day conception procedures,” I believe the word you’re so clumsily dancing around is “sex.”  (Don’t worry, typing it won’t hurt you.)  I have to burst your bubble on that one, too.  The first humanoid beings were Australopithecus, and they lived in Africa (x).  (The map’s down a bit on the page.)

I think I’ve thoroughly proven you wrong enough by now.  I’m going to get some sleep.  Laterz.

YOU ARE MY HERO.^^^

LET ME BARE YOUR CHILDREN

BUT WAIT KIDS THERE MORE:

  • The traffic light
  • Peanut butter
  • Open heart surgery
  • Homo sapiens
  • The light switch
  • The real McCoy engine
  • Spoken word poetry
  • Rock n Roll
  • Hell pretty much every genre of American music since we got to this bitch

And that’s just the top of my head. TAKE IT AWAY NEXT REBLOGGER:

Agriculture. Writing. The fucking wheel. Fucking civilization.

The domesticated chicken in the sandwich I’m eating. The tea I’m drinking.

The concept of “zero”, as in the OP is a total fucking zero.

Ooh ooh!

Apples.  Bred from a wild ancestor fruit in central Asia.

Bread.  Also Egypt.

Beer and wine.  Near East/Egyptian inventions.

Distilled alcohol.  Arabs.

The triangular sail, which revolutionized navigation:  also Arabs.

Beekeeping and therefore cultivated honey.  Also Egypt.

Pet cats and dogs, meticulously domesticated in the Near East and Asia respectively.  Also domestic cattle, Africa and South Asia. 

Computer programming.  Ada Lovelace.

Spread-spectrum and frequency-hopping communication technology, which is to say, the wifi my computer is using right now.  Hedy Lamarr.

The novel.  Japan!  Unless you count Apuleius’ Metamorphoses/”The Golden Ass,” in which case, Africa.

Randomized controlled trial, completely essential to the basis of modern medicine:  Ibn Sina.

Edible corn, potatoes, and nightshades, which form the bulk of at least most Americans’ diets:  the brilliant breeding, cultivation, and agricultural experimentation practices of the Maya, Inca, and Aztec civilizations respectively.

Indoor plumbing.  India.

Lenses.  Assyria.

The written word.  Oh, that’s right:  Phoenicia, Africa, and, independently, China and Mesoamerica.  Yes, yes, we know:  runes and ogham.  Very impressive, Norse and Irish, nicely done, welcome to the show.

Oh, and the printed word.  China again.

Really, astronomy, chemistry, geography, physics, optics, botany, and surgery as we know them.

Oh—and that bathtub you want to fill with Kool-Aid.  Brown folks invented that, too.

Oh, hell, do some homework:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_inventors_and_scientists

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African_scientists,_inventors,_and_scholars

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Puerto_Rican_scientists_and_inventors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_contributions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_inventions_in_medieval_Islam

Go do some Googling like a grownup.

haha. white people have never invented anything, they steal everything they can from POC and take the credit

I don’t know if these were mentioned and I’m missing them, but the people of Mesopotamia (according to google where modern Iraq is) were the first known people to use irrigation.

Also Ancient China in addition to a shitton of the awesome things above invented noodles/pasta, for which I am eternally grateful as it is the basis for a lot of Italian cuisine, food of my culture.

China also had the first automated clocks, I don’t know if that was mentioned.

You can also just do your own research at websites like these: http://www.black-inventor.com/Lonnie-G-Johnson.asp

There’s also this really informative series of posts that have been going around tumblr: http://hamburgerjack.tumblr.com/post/43237040943/pipercarter-black-history-month-fact-15-711

There’s also chocolate, one of the most awesome foods ever, it’s initial form was invented by Mesoamericans and actually used in their rituals before white people came and appropriated that up as a fancy people drink.

So, basically OP, we as white people owe essentially all the awesome shit around us to people of color.

In other words, the folks above are correct. far as I can tell the only thing we’ve invented was stealing other people’s shit and taking credit for it while making out that the creator of said good shit should be thankful to us for inventing this cool thing. We’ve also been pretty great at perpetuating systems of oppression based on this model.

But let’s be honest, we probably didn’t even invent stealing shit and taking the credit.

So yeah, you’re probably a troll at least I hope you are because that was straight up absurdly wrong. But in case you aren’t, I just wanted to contribute some inventions I didn’t see mentioned.


Arabs invented coffee, the pinhole camera, cheques, fucking physics, man.

My forever favourite is soap. Your white ass did not know how to BATHE until we showed you soap. You sat in yr own filth and thought water would KILL YOU. 

(via eggs-ter-min-nate)

Filed under race racism white privilege whitewashing ignorance