Source: detroitsomethingMy name is Ray Stoeser. I am a high school teacher living and working in Detroit. Below is a testament to the power of Tumblr and social networking. Most importantly it is about how 554 complete strangers helped change the lives of my Detroit students.
The Power of Tumblr. The Beauty of Strangers.
I did a modified version of this with the planting dates by week on cards clipped onto the seed packets - especially helpful in March where something new goes in every week.
…due to head trauma causing C.T.E., chronic traumatic encephalopathy (a form of dementia) in all the players. Both links brought to my attention by John Gruber of daringfireball.net.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/19/091019fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all
C.T.E. has many of the same manifestations as Alzheimer’s: it begins with behavioral and personality changes, followed by disinhibition and irritability, before moving on to dementia. And C.T.E. appears later in life as well, because it takes a long time for the initial trauma to give rise to nerve-cell breakdown and death. But C.T.E. isn’t the result of an endogenous disease. It’s the result of injury. The patient, it turned out, had been a boxer in his youth. He had suffered from dementia for fifteen years because, decades earlier, he’d been hit too many times in the head….
…Beta-amyloid is thought to lay the groundwork for dementia. Tau marks the critical second stage of the disease: it’s the protein that steadily builds up in brain cells, shutting them down and ultimately killing them…. all sixteen of the ex-athlete brains that McKee had examined—those of the two boxers, plus the [ex-football players] that Nowinski had found for her—had something in common: every one had abnormal tau.
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7559458/cte-concussion-crisis-economic-look-end-football
The most plausible route to the death of football starts with liability suits. Precollegiate football is already sustaining 90,000 or more concussions each year.
Basically, we’re killing these people slowly for our entertainment. Will society do anything about it? (Although this problem may add new money from sports to the search to stop the brain damaging effects of the tau protein.)
“What would Atlanta’s rail map look like if voters approve?” This new map, created by Citizens for Progressive Transit, shows the prospective rail routes that would be approved if the T-SPLOST one cent sales tax for transportation projects vote succeeds in July.
(via misskittyfantastico)
Source: cfpt.org
Nor is the correct response to decide that you can be saner. This is tricky, because trying to be saner when “being saner” means “behaving in a way one specific individual wants you to behave” is cuckoo for cocoa puffs ludicrous. It’s also really difficult. That’s not to say it can’t be done. It’s doable! But it’s going to require never expressing a single genuine emotion, sizing up every word or action before you express them and frankly, perfecting a good natured smile while people say things you find unbelievably stupid or offensive. Keep in mind – it is extra hard to do these things when someone is behaving in a way that makes you frustrated, or angry, or sad, or insecure, or whatever other emotion has been labeled as “crazy.” Trying to uphold this person’s conception of “sane” will turn you into the emotional equivalent of a smiling, well dressed lithopedion. Everything that animates you and makes you a person will get submerged, until you become utterly pleasant and undemanding and utterly brittle.
It’s not just men who do this… but society sets women up to be the targets.
Source: maymayThis past weekend, I had the good fortune of participating in the Third Annual Five College Queer Sexuality and Gender Conference. Sadly, I’d been working myself to the bone and, as a result, I didn’t feel like I had as much energy for the conference as I wanted to have, but I still really enjoyed my time there.
While without a doubt the highlight of the conference was Rev. Irene Monroe’s inspiring and challenging keynote on the intersection of racism and homophobia (video to be published soon, I hope!), another highlight actually came at the end of the day, when one of my friends ran up to me with this card in her hand and said, “Maymay! Have you seen these?”
I hadn’t, so I took a look. It’s a yellow card, about the size of a standard business card, whose front reads:
Rain Check
At the present time, one or more of us is unable to give consent. However, at a later date, we may be interested in sucking face (among other things to be discussed at said later date)….
On the back, the text reads, “I’ll take a rain check…”, and is followed by two empty lines whose labels prompt you to write down a name and a phone number.
My eyes lit up. “Oh my god, I am so totally going to use this,” I told my friend.
“Right‽” she exclaimed. “There’s a whole stack of them! Take some!” She handed me a pile.
I love these because they’re a simple tool to make something that’s frequently invisible visible. Frequently, saying “no” in-the-now is often interpreted as a permanent rejection forever, even when that’s not actually what’s being conveyed. I think this tendency to project the current state of things into the future is part of what makes it difficult for some people to say “no” in the first place.
The fear, at least some of the times, at least for me, is that if I don’t say yes right now, I’ll never get the chance to enjoy “sucking face” at a “later date.” Moreover, as a man, the societal pressure to be getting laid all the time makes it extremely difficult, or at least socially illegible, for me to say no when I’m propositioned for sex. I’d be surprised if I was unique or even atypical for running into this problem from all sorts of angles. So, along with my actual business cards, these now reside in a pocket in my shoulder bag, my jacket, and my jeans.
Thinking further, it also occurred to me that these could also be used by someone who’s “pursuing,” rather than only by someone who’s being pursued. (Even though, y’know, that whole pursuer/pursued paradigm is problematic.) What if, before asking someone out on a date, or asking if someone wants to have sexy time with you, you handed them one of these, encouraging them to use it whenever they feel they need to? In so doing, you’d effectively be giving them a literal “out” and, in the process, helping model behavior that supports safer sex, and of course, enthusiastic (and ongoing!) consent.
What do you think? Would you use these “Rain Check” cards? Would you like others to?
Source: sassylesbianluka
ok lets see if that thing with glasses chicks suddenly becoming super weird feminine when they whip off their glasses works
woop
well that was anticlimatic wait
wait
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON
What that is dumb and does not happen.
Look,…
Amazing how some of these “don’t get above your station, woman!” ideas are still in effect.
Don’t imagine everybody is looking at you.
Don’t go out after dark without a male escort.
Don’t let your golden hair be hanging down your back.
Don’t discuss bloomers with every man you know.
Don’t appear in public until you have learned to ride well.
Albert Einstein called her the most “significant” and “creative” female mathematician of all time…. She invented a theorem that united with magisterial concision two conceptual pillars of physics: symmetry in nature and the universal laws of conservation.
A brave poem on abortion, delivered stunningly by an Oklahoma poet.
The 15 minute rule would make so much of my life better.
^ YES
If only some of the people in my life would read this
The 15 minutes is a thing? An introvert thing? I’m not just a weirdo?
(via tea-inthetardis)
Source: planetofthefakes
