Down-sizing

NEWSFLASH: The only time the term "fresh off the boat" isn't offensive is when you're talking about seafood.

Fri, 24 May 2013 15:26:03 -0400

Happy Friday. Have a baby cuddling with a cadre of puppies.

Fri, 24 May 2013 07:07:03 -0400

Happy Friday. Have a baby cuddling with a cadre of puppies.

Severus Snape Does Not Deserve Your Pity | Tor.com

Thu, 23 May 2013 07:08:42 -0400

Severus Snape Does Not Deserve Your Pity | Tor.com:

happyhealthyhopeful:

vastderp:

whataboutthemenses:

insidethemindofamormon:

kayleemb:

Severus Snape Does Not Deserve Your Pity

This!

Holy crap, all of this and then some.

“And that’s not real love—caring for someone without considering their happiness is the exact opposite of love, in point of fact.”

absolutely this. I’m so sick of people treating Lily like she had two options in life - James or Severus. Snape yelled the equivalent of racial slurs at her and sold her family to a psychopathic mass murderer. His story and his character have value, but if you’ve boiled that value down to unrequited love then you’ve missed the point of that character.

This times ten thousand. Snape did an incredibly heroic thing, but he was a twisted, abusive creepazoid.

I think the article has a small factual error, though: he didn’t know the prophecy referred to Harry’s family at all when he passed it on to Dumbledore. He intended to have the infant child of someone he didn’t know assassinated, but when Lily and James died instead of the Longbottoms, he had Epic Sads and Turned Good. (In the movie version, add “cuddling her corpse and ignoring her injured baby to scream and cry in the wreckage of the house staring at the dead bodies of its parents until someone else showed up” to the action).

Snape fucking sucks. He’s petty and bullying and he is regularly used by Rowling to stymy Harry by using his special power, Wall Of Adult Obfuscation. He gets a sick pleasure out of denying Harry things. During occlumency lessons, this grown ass man invades Harry’s mind for hours, looking into his most painful memories, and what does the abuse and neglect he witnesses there do? It makes Snape smug. Then Harry spies on one of his painful memories, and Snape flips the fuck out and throws him out of lessons.

Oh WEH, Snapey, your hidden pain is soooo much more special and private than Harry’s! Definitely don’t treat his abuse history with respect or anything. Keep up a running commentary on the stuff you see happen, and then wonder why he doesn’t respect your boundaries!

Everyone’s like “You have to go demand he take you back for more lessons!” because obviously it’s Harry’s job to appease to a smirking sadist for the greater good.

Sometimes C/YA lit’s beloved trope of writing the adults to be mysteriously dumb and emotionally unavailable so the kids can save the world gets very frustrating for me.

The Casual Vacancy is a wonderful eye-opener for how Rowling sees people. She does not like to write nice folks being harmless. She likes jerks who try to do their best and still fuck each other over.

A good read

Bingo. OP and above commentary nailed it.

youkilledmyfatherpreparetopie: peachfaerie: I am excited to...

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:21:44 -0400

youkilledmyfatherpreparetopie:

peachfaerie:

I am excited to release a rough version of my children’s storybook on trans*gender and gender neutral kids. Since I am cisgender I would much appreciate some feedback to anything I’m doing wrong. I really want to do this right. I want this to be stepping stone book for children and parents to talk about this.

this is beautiful.

I would love to have books like this in my potential future offspring’s library.

wtfsexism: wheretheoscarwildethingsare: thenewwomensmovement: trashprincesss: trashprincesss: I...

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:39:43 -0400

wtfsexism:

wheretheoscarwildethingsare:

thenewwomensmovement:

trashprincesss:

trashprincesss:

I want nothing to do with a feminism that excludes trans* women. Go be a cisterhood without me.

135 notes and counting. Faith in world semi-restored ♥.

Feminism must be intersectional and inclusive or it is bullshit.

dismantle the patriarchy, don’t create a new one

commentary ^

vegansanfrancishet: So, I paint my nails pretty regularly these...

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:35:43 -0400

vegansanfrancishet:

So, I paint my nails pretty regularly these days. I also work as a barista/cashier pretty regularly these days. A few weeks back, I had a customer come in, a fairly typical, sheltered, suburban soccer mom, and she ordered a latte from me. She saw my brightly colored nails and said, “Wow, you’re so brave! My son asked me about painting his nails, and if it’s okay for boys to do that. Now I’ll tell him there’s a cool guy who does it too!” It was a nice moment, very cute.

Then, last week, she came in again, and said, “Hey, I’m so glad you’re here! I want you to meet someone!” She then brings her son forward, and says, “Okay sweetie, show him what you did!” And he throws his hands up, showing off his bright, sparkling blue nails. He shows them off, and I show mine off to him. He smiles. We fist bump.

Guys, I’ve only wanted to cry once at work before, and that was when someone ordered a large dry soy cappuccino on ice.

This time, though. This was a good cry.

Aww! <3

So this morning I woke up to mixed news. Bad news: a young woman at my alma mater was murdered by a...

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:03:32 -0400

So this morning I woke up to mixed news. Bad news: a young woman at my alma mater was murdered by a home intruder. Good news: a friend currently deployed overseas saved two children after a car crash. And the world spins on.

Ever have one of those moments where you sit back and go "Wow, I really have all my shit together?"

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:52:54 -0400

Me neither. But I’m at the point where I have like 51% of my shit together and I am taking that as a win.

6 Tips on How to Avoid Being Screwed by a Non-Profit

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:32:29 -0400

stfuconservatives:

youngist:

By Jade(d)

So you’ve just graduated from college and you want to change the world. Good for you. The non-profit sector seems like a natural place for a justice-minded person such as yourself, and nonprofits are almost always hiring because the turnover rate is so high. But you may find the social justice industry to be… a little unjust. Here are a few tips and tricks for how to avoid being exploited by a nonprofit.

Don’t work at one. Seriously. Working at a non-profit generally involves at least some level of exploitation. (When was the last time you saw a non-profit with a union?) If this doesn’t deter you, figure out what you’re willing to give up: Is it sleep? Weekends? Seeing your friends? Most non-profit workers do not work 9-5. Working nights and weekends is common. Paid overtime is not. Non-profits tend to make you feel like if you are not willing to work 24/7 then you are not “down for the cause.” That’s bullshit. Don’t ever let anyone make you feel like you’re not “down enough” because you are not willing to sacrifice your well-being for “the movement.” People who don’t take care of themselves burn out and often become jaded and bitter. You can’t sustain “the movement” if you don’t sustain yourself.

Read More

I’ve seen a lot of people sharing this on social media today. I imagine a lot of my followers are interested in nonprofit work, so I wanted to pass it along.

This is pretty solid advice. I ran a small nonprofit basically on my own for about five years, and while it was deeply rewarding and not something I would change, it was also a huge drain on my emotional resources. Working at a nonprofit is more than just a job, and that bears consideration.

queenbliss: “Hang the eucalyptus upside down by tying it to...

Thu, 16 May 2013 10:48:00 -0400

queenbliss:

“Hang the eucalyptus upside down by tying it to your shower head with twine. When you run your shower, the steam will rise up towards the eucalyptus, filling your bathroom with the most refreshing, relaxing scent. Plus, the added greens are lovely on the eyes. You’ll definitely feel a little closer to nature.”

This also works with other woody herbs like lavender, some mints, and rosemary. Just make sure you only leave them there for a day or that lovely herbal smell will be replaced with some pretty gross ones.

"I rang the literary editors of a few ‘respected’ papers and asked them how much space they were..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 07:39:01 -0400

“

I rang the literary editors of a few ‘respected’ papers and asked them how much space they were giving to women writers in their ‘review’ sections. Perfectly predictable response. They all said the allocation was fair. One said it was equal, and one prominent editor went so far as to say women are dominating the reviews!

… What happened when I asked who was doing the talking in mixed sex conversations? Well, it was the women of course. And then when you get to measure it you find that women get to talk about 10-20% of the time in conversations with men. A woman who talks about a third of the time is seen to be dominating the talk.

And what happened when I asked teachers who got their attention in class? Well, it was all equal, wasn’t it? No preferences there. And you measure it and find that girls get about 10-20% of the teacher’s attention. Any more, and the boys think it unfair - and go into revolt.

So what do you think I found with the reviews?

I would have predicted about 10-20% of the space went to women’s books. Well, it is less than 6% of the column inches. And the reasonable editor who thinks that women are getting more than their share is one of the worst offenders. Poor boys! It really tells you something when they think only 94% of the review section is not enough, doesn’t it? When 6% for women is too much you get some idea how much men think they are entitled to - as a fair deal.

”

- Dale Spender, correspondence, in Dale and Lynne Spender, Scribbling Sisters (Camden Press, 1986), pp. 31-32 (via radtransfem)

Further proof that outspoken women are not compared to outspoken men - we are compared to silence.

I really hate it when people are negative towards psych meds

Thu, 16 May 2013 07:34:33 -0400

soultired:

One big reason I really hate it when people are negative towards psych meds (as a generality) is that the majority of the mentally ill people I’ve talked to have had their lives fucked up by either putting off trying meds for way too long, or worse, going off their meds for a really bad reason.

I don’t mean that the side effects sucked, or that they couldn’t afford the meds, or that their doctor was shitty to them for getting refills. I mean we are constantly told that we should not be on meds long term, that we should just use them to get over a hump, that we never actually needed them in the first place, that they’re making us worse. So we stop taking them and our lives fall apart, even if we do it under a doctor’s supervision.

I don’t want to get into exact stories because a lot of it occurred in confidential settings, but people think they’re being helpful by stopping people from using psych meds right away and protecting them from lazy doctors and Big Pharma, but that’s not really what they’re doing. There definitely are doctors that will give you meds and send you on your way with barely a glance, but rather than tell people that meds are bad we need to tell them to do research and advocate for themselves, whether it’s for or against meds, with accurate information about the benefits and drawbacks and no moralizing about whether or not you’re weak.

For me, talk therapy was pretty much pointless until I got meds that worked really well. I was too afraid to talk to my therapist about important things, and too depressed to care about getting better. Why would you want someone you love in that position, rather than have them try out some medications?

I’m happy to contribute my story to this. Mental illnesses run in my father’s family, so it’s pretty screwed up but I feel lucky to “only” have depression and anxiety from PTSD. I have been cycling through varying degrees of depression since I was 12, and I’m 24 now.

My boyfriend, who I’ve been with for almost 6 years (holy crap) has been very supportive every step of the way. Because of the mental illness in my dad’s family, my mom had ample opportunity to stigmatize any efforts to improve one’s mental health while I was growing up. So it was a big deal that boyfriend was supportive when I finally made the decision to go to counseling in college. A couple years of talk therapy helped me a lot, but it could only take me so far. After college, I lost my access to low-cost services and wound up in a job that was the absolute worst for me; for six months I came home from work crying almost every day, and that was compounded by the fact that I was living with my abusive parents. Long story short, I quit the job, moved about 400 miles to live with C, and eventually found a therapist my insurance covered, who, after a few months, suggested antidepressants. I was reluctant at first, but after researching on my own and talking through all my options with her, I decided to go on them.

They changed my life. I stopped having panic attacks almost completely, and when I felt one coming I was lucid enough about my own mental health to prevent them. My worst fears, that I would lose my creativity or my sense of self, never came true - in fact, freed up from the most severe symptoms of my PTSD, I feel more creative and more “me” than I have in a long time.

oftheforest: grimsperation: Michele Caragher Embroidered...

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:54:07 -0400

oftheforest:

grimsperation:

Michele Caragher

Embroidered details in Game of Thrones

‘Michele Carragher is a London-based Hand Embroiderer and Illustrator who has been working in costume on film and television productions for over 15 years. She studied Fashion Design at The London College of Fashion, where the course incorporated design, pattern cutting, garment construction, embroidery, millinery and illustration. At the same time she attended a three year evening course in Saddlery at Cordwainers College learning skills in leatherwork.

After leaving college Michele worked in Textile Conservation, repairing and restoring historical textiles for private collectors and museums, specialising in hand embroidery. She then moved into a career in costume for film and television, initially working as a Costume Assistant/Maker on productions such as the BBC’s Our Mutual Friend, ITV’s David Copperfield and Mansfield Park. She soon gravitated towards the decoration and embellishment of costumes, using skills in hand embroidery and surface decoration, taking inspiration from the many historical textiles she had encountered working as a Textile Conservator.

The first production that saw her undertake the role of a Principal Costume Embroiderer was for HBO’s 2005 Emmy Costume award-winning production of Elizabeth 1. Her most recent work has been on HBO’s 2012 Costume award-winning television series Game of Thrones, working on all three seasons.

As a Costume Embroiderer Michele specialises in hand embroidery and surface embellishment, using traditional hand embroidery techniques, smocking, beading and surface decoration. She works directly onto the completed garment or starts with motifs and textures on silk crepeline/organza, which are applied to the costume and then worked into once on the actual garment. She also works on existing machine embroidery designs that are not too dense, adding some hand stitching and beading to give a more authentic, hand-finished look.

Michele finds hand embroidery has more flexibility and diversity than that of embroidery created by machine, as there is a greater variety of thread choice and colours to use. It is also possible to work more easily on garments that are already constructed. However, machine embroidery in combination with hand work can be very useful when completing many repeats by creating light outlines or a less dense machine stitch, work can then be completed by hand and again can be carried out on a finished garment.

Michele is a highly creative Costume Embroiderer, producing original designs as well as working closely to a costume designer’s brief to create their desired look.’

Text and images from http://www.michelecarragherembroidery.com

God, that embroidery is so gorgeous! I had no idea that third dress was so detailed after seeing it on the show… Amazing work.

We are unworthy to stitch in the garden of her turbulence.

"You mean the generation that paid three times as much for college to enter a job market with triple..."

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:51:37 -0400

“You mean the generation that paid three times as much for college to enter a job market with triple the unemployment isn’t interested in purchasing the assets of the generation who just blew an enormous housing bubble and kept it from popping through quantitative easing and out-and-out federal support? Curious.”

- When comments are better than the article, Atlantic edition (“The Cheapest Generation: Why Millennials aren’t buying cars or houses, and what that means for the economy”)

NAILED IT.

doulaness: neuromorphogenesis: Out of sync with the world:...

Wed, 15 May 2013 07:29:02 -0400

doulaness:

neuromorphogenesis:

Out of sync with the world: Body clocks of depressed people are altered at cell level

Finding of disrupted brain gene orchestration gives first direct evidence of circadian rhythm changes in depressed brains, opens door to better treatment

Every cell in our bodies runs on a 24-hour clock, tuned to the night-day, light-dark cycles that have ruled us since the dawn of humanity. The brain acts as timekeeper, keeping the cellular clock in sync with the outside world so that it can govern our appetites, sleep, moods and much more.

But new research shows that the clock may be broken in the brains of people with depression — even at the level of the gene activity inside their brain cells.

It’s the first direct evidence of altered circadian rhythms in the brain of people with depression, and shows that they operate out of sync with the usual ingrained daily cycle. The findings, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, come from scientists from the University of Michigan Medical School and other institutions.

The discovery was made by sifting through massive amounts of data gleaned from donated brains of depressed and non-depressed people. With further research, the findings could lead to more precise diagnosis and treatment for a condition that affects more than 350 million people worldwide.

What’s more, the research also reveals a previously unknown daily rhythm to the activity of many genes across many areas of the brain – expanding the sense of how crucial our master clock is.

In a normal brain, the pattern of gene activity at a given time of the day is so distinctive that the authors could use it to accurately estimate the hour of death of the brain donor, suggesting that studying this “stopped clock” could conceivably be useful in forensics. By contrast, in severely depressed patients, the circadian clock was so disrupted that a patient’s “day” pattern of gene activity could look like a “night” pattern — and vice versa.

The work was funded in large part by the Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Disorders Research Fund, and involved researchers from the University of Michigan, University of California’s Irvine and Davis campuses, Weill Cornell Medical College, the Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology, and Stanford University.

The team uses material from donated brains obtained shortly after death, along with extensive clinical information about the individual. Numerous regions of each brain are dissected by hand or even with lasers that can capture more specialized cell types, then analyzed to measure gene activity. The resulting flood of information is picked apart with advanced data-mining tools.

Lead author Jun Li, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the U-M Department of Human Genetics, describes how this approach allowed the team to accurately back-predict the hour of the day when each non-depressed individual died – literally plotting them out on a 24-hour clock by noting which genes were active at the time they died. They looked at 12,000 gene transcripts isolated from six regions of 55 brains from people who did not have depression.

This provided a detailed understanding of how gene activity varied throughout the day in the brain regions studied. But when the team tried to do the same in the brains of 34 depressed individuals, the gene activity was off by hours. The cells looked as if it were an entirely different time of day.

“There really was a moment of discovery,” says Li, who led the analysis of the massive amount of data generated by the rest of the team and is a research assistant professor in U-M’s Department of Computational Medicine at Bioinformatics. “It was when we realized that many of the genes that show 24-hour cycles in the normal individuals were well-known circadian rhythm genes – and when we saw that the people with depression were not synchronized to the usual solar day in terms of this gene activity. It’s as if they were living in a different time zone than the one they died in.”

Huda Akil, Ph.D., the co-director of the U-M Molecular & Behavioral Neuroscience Institute and co-director of the U-M site of the Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Disorders Research Consortium, notes that the findings go beyond previous research on circadian rhythms, using animals or human skin cells, which were more easily accessible than human brain tissues.

“Hundreds of new genes that are very sensitive to circadian rhythms emerged from this research — not just the primary clock genes that have been studied in animals or cell cultures, but other genes whose activity rises and falls throughout the day,” she says. “We were truly able to watch the daily rhythm play out in a symphony of biological activity, by studying where the clock had stopped at the time of death. And then, in depressed people, we could see how this was disrupted.”

Now, she adds, scientists must use this information to help find new ways to predict depression, fine-tune treatment for each depressed patient, and even find new medications or other types of treatment to develop and test. One possibility, she notes, could be to identify biomarkers for depression – telltale molecules that can be detected in blood, skin or hair.

And, the challenge of determining why the circadian clock is altered in depression still remains. “We can only glimpse the possibility that the disruption seen in depression may have more than one cause. We need to learn more about whether something in the nature of the clock itself is affected, because if you could fix the clock you might be able to help people get better,” Akil notes.

The team continues to mine their data for new findings, and to probe additional brains as they are donated and dissected. The high quality of the brains, and the data gathered about how their donors lived and died, is essential to the project, Akil says. Even the pH level of the tissue, which can be affected by the dying process and the time between death and freezing tissue for research, can affect the results. The team also will have access to blood and hair samples from new donors.

Image:The researchers used gene expression patterns to try to predict the time of death for each person in the study (inner circles), and then compared it with the actual time of death (outer circles). The two matched closely in healthy people, as shown by the short lines between the two points in the left diagram. But in depressed people, the two were out of sync, as seen at right. Credit: University of Michigan.

This explains so much.

Science explaining what folks with depression have known forever.

jillthompson: im-a-kittycat: “So my amazing daughter, Emma,...

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:55:48 -0400

jillthompson:

im-a-kittycat:

“So my amazing daughter, Emma, turned 5 last month, and I had been searching everywhere for new-creative inspiration for her 5yr pictures. I noticed quite a pattern of so many young girls dressing up as beautiful Disney Princesses, no matter where I looked 95% of the “ideas” were the “How to’s” of how to dress your little girl like a Disney Princess…We chose 5 women (five amazing and strong women), as it was her 5th birthday but there are thousands of unbelievable women (and girls) who have beat the odds and fought (and still fight) for their equal rights all over the world”

- Jaime Moore, Not Just a Girl

This is awesome!

Chills up my spine. This is awesome, this mom is awesome, these women are awesome, and this little girl is going to rock the world.

dressingtheforce: aurorahermione: geekyglamorous: More cute...

Mon, 13 May 2013 19:49:09 -0400

dressingtheforce:

aurorahermione:

geekyglamorous:

More cute new ladies Star Wars apparel from Her Universe! This line will be exclusively available at Disney’s Hollywood Studios as part of Star Wars Weekends May 17th - June 9th, 2013.

OMG WANTTTTT~

That X-Wing one shall be mine.

I WILL PAY YOU COST+SHIPPING+UNICORNS FOR R2 AND HAN.

stfufauxminists: feministsaresexist: dita von teese’s...

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:53:00 -0400

stfufauxminists:

feministsaresexist:

dita von teese’s life

oppressionnnn

“One Time Men Picked Up An Umbrella For A Conventionally Attractive White Lady: An MRA Manifesto”

AKA “Patriarchy created clothing too restrictive to function in normally, further reducing women to objects rather than actors, and when some guys are decent enough to help out women in non-functional clothing, other guys blame it on the women instead of the freaking patriarchy.”

"If you think that the nice guy ranting only happens on the internet, you’ve never had to deal with..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 10:34:03 -0400

“

If you think that the nice guy ranting only happens on the internet, you’ve never had to deal with your thoroughly drunken friend shouting about how no girls would go out with a nice guy like him, even though he’s surrounded by single women he ignores because they aren’t attractive enough for him.

If you think guys getting pissy and escalating matters because you told people to stop making sex jokes is a feature of the internet, well, you’ve never asked anyone to stop making jokes that make you uncomfortable.

If you think that inappropriate comments and requests for sex are an internet thing, you’ve never tried to stop a coworker or boss from hitting on you repeatedly, or a head of security, or the guy at the convenience store across the street.

If you think that being shouted at and asked to show people your tits just because you present as a woman only happens in chat rooms and online games, you’ve never walked past a frat house, or, unfortunately, through the main thoroughfares of either university I’ve attended.

If you think unasked for commentary on a woman’s looks only happens because girls post pictures on internet forums (which probably means they’re asking for it), you’ve never been at a bus stop, or the city square, or a mall, or… well, anywhere, really.

If you think insecure men trying to drive women out of activism only happens in online male-dominated communities, you’ve never paid attention politics. Or Fox. Or CNN, sadly.

If you think the reaction to rape victims is bad on twitter, try sharing that experience in person. Or try even standing up for a rape victim. Count how many minutes until someone points out “but men can be falsely accused! The woman just changed her mind! You just can’t believe those drunk *insert varying level of insulting reference to gender*!”

”

- It’s Not Just the Internet. It Never Has Been.

(via loveyourrebellion)

Today’s workout: breaking down wooden pallets so I can build a new composting bin.

Sun, 12 May 2013 12:44:29 -0400

Today’s workout: breaking down wooden pallets so I can build a new composting bin.