Eh... not so much

bitchcakesny: #goodmorning #amnewyork! I’m in the paper today!...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:30:32 -0400

bitchcakesny:

#goodmorning #amnewyork! I’m in the paper today! #citibike (at Grand Central Terminal)

First she’s the Queen of Grand Central Terminal. Now she’s the public face of Citi Bike!

valerieagotlib: I want this for my office.

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:35:47 -0400

valerieagotlib:

I want this for my office.

vpbiden: you know, half of the Catholics in the US are pro-choice, yet the only person in the US...

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 15:06:04 -0400

vpbiden:

you know, half of the Catholics in the US are pro-choice, yet the only person in the US government who’s consistently called a fake Catholic and Satan for being pro-choice is Nancy Pelosi, even though tons of male Catholic politicians are pro-choice as well

sexism much?

Reblog if it's okay to befriend you, ask questions, ask for advice or just have a nice chat.

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:58:51 -0400

"Americans hate terrorists and love our kids, right? So you might be shocked to know that..."

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:57:50 -0400

“Americans hate terrorists and love our kids, right? So you might be shocked to know that preschoolers with guns have taken more lives so far this year than the single U.S. terrorist attack, which claimed four lives in Boston. This is admittedly tongue-in-cheek, but one has to wonder if the NSA’s PRISM program would have saved more lives had it been monitoring toddlers – or gun owners – rather than suspected terrorists.”

- AZspot: Toddlers Killed More Americans Than Terrorists Did This Year

One of my favorite of “Society’s Theories” that I like to rebuke is the one that states, “We’re all born with an innate sense of Right and Wrong”.

We’re not.

We’re born with instincts; survival instincts, but we’re not born knowing what’s “right” and what’s “wrong”.

Look at any toddler. Look at them. They behave like alcoholics. “Up” one minute, writhing about on the floor of the Mall in tears of protest the next. They will slap you in the face just to see what happens after and push your favorite breakable object on the floor to see the outcome. Humans do NOT come into this society “knowing right from wrong”. Stop kidding yourselves. PEOPLE ARE TRAINED. Every single one of you was trained to understand the values and morals of this culture.

You wouldn’t know anything otherwise.

(Incidentally, I took this position when I got this prompt on my SAT test last year and I know they docked me points because I took this unfamiliar/unpopular position.)

dontbearuiner: riotingfeminist: ungyo: (x) Saw the video...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 11:01:05 -0400

dontbearuiner:

riotingfeminist:

ungyo:

(x)

Saw the video floating around so I gif’d it for anyone who doesn’t wanna actually watch it haha.

the last one though. so accurate.

Reblogging for Antheia.

Those little girls rule.

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:30:21 -0400

Those little girls rule.

dontbearuiner: towritelesbiansonherarms: scruffythegodofthunder...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 19:54:14 -0400

dontbearuiner:

towritelesbiansonherarms:

scruffythegodofthunder:

Kaiser, a police dog, being saluted as he walks to be laid to rest after being diagnosed with severe kidney disease.

this is so sad oh my god I am about to fucking cry fuck you god dammit

i just shed a manly tear

He got an honor guard, you guys.

Also, accurate GIF is highly accurate.

gublernation: wig-less View more Matthew Gray Gubler on WhoSay...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 19:41:30 -0400

gublernation:

wig-less

View more Matthew Gray Gubler on WhoSay

Goddamn. This is a gorgeous man.

"I’ve said this before but conservatives often perceive liberal attachment to diversity as a..."

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 09:30:38 -0400

“I’ve said this before but conservatives often perceive liberal attachment to diversity as a kind of “everyone’s a winner” cuddle party, where we sit around exchanging rice-cakes and hating on the military. But the great strength of diversity is it forces you into a room with people who have experiences very different from your own. It’s all fine and good to laugh at Sherrod Brown dancing to Jay-Z. But dude is outside his lane and he’s learning something. M.C. Rove should be so lucky.”

- To Stop Being the Party of Stupid You Must Stop Being Stupid - Politics - The Atlantic

Double Standard In America: Black Woman Gets 20 Years for Firing Shot at Wall; White Man Gets 0 Years for Shooting Man in the Back 3 Times, Killing Him

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:30:31 -0400

Double Standard In America: Black Woman Gets 20 Years for Firing Shot at Wall; White Man Gets 0 Years for Shooting Man in the Back 3 Times, Killing Him:

thepoliticalfreakshow:

The insane double standard of stand your ground laws.

A man in Florida shoots a man he finds having sex with his wife, killing him. A woman in Florida shoots the wall to scare off an abusive husband, harming nobody. Guess which one was acquitted? Guess which one was convicted?

On March 10 of this year, around midnight, Ralph Wald, 70, of Brandon Florida, got out of bed to get a drink and found Walter Conley, 32, having sex his wife, Johanna Lynn Flores, 41, in the living room. He immediately went back into his bedroom, grabbed his gun and shot Conley three times. Conley died. Wald claims that he thought Conley was a stranger who had broken in and was raping his wife – despite the fact that Conley lived next door, had been his wife’s roommate and lover, and had his wife’s name tattooed onto his neck and arm. During a 911 call, when the dispatcher asked Wald if the man he shot was dead, Wald responded, “I hope so!” Wald never used the word rape in later reports to police, opting instead for “fornicate.” And while the fact that the two were lovers doesn’t imply consent, Flores has never accused Conley of rape — nor do prosecutors buy that that’s what Wald actually thought was happening. They say that Wald, who suffers from erectile dysfunction, killed Conley in a jealous rage. Flores admits that she and Conley had sex regularly before and after her marriage to Wald. While testifying, Wald explained that his erectile dysfunction and his wife’s reluctance to have sex with him made them compatible: “In fact, she would joke a lot with me … that we were a perfect couple… She didn’t want to do it, and I couldn’t do it.” On May 30, after deliberating for two hours, a jury found Wald not guilty. After the verdict was announced, Wald continued to show no remorse: “If the same thing happened again, I would do the same thing.”

On Aug. 1, 2010, Marissa Alexander, a 31-year-old mother of three, with a Master’s degree and no criminal record, was working for a payroll software company in Jacksonville. She was estranged from her abusive husband, Rico Gray, and had a restraining order against him. Thinking he was not at home, she went to their former house to get some belongings. The two got into an argument. Alexander says that Gray threatened her and she feared for her life. Gray corroborates Alexander’s story: “I was in a rage. I called her a whore and bitch and . . . I told her… if I can’t have you, nobody going to have you,” he said, in a deposition. When Alexander retreated into the bathroom, Gray tried to break the door. She ran into the garage, but couldn’t leave because it was locked. She came back, he said, with a registered gun, which she legally owned, and yelled at him to leave. Gray recalls, “I told her… I ain’t going nowhere, and so I started walking toward her…I was cursing and all that… and she shot in the air.” Even Gray understands why Alexander fired the warning shot: “If my kids wouldn’t have been there, I probably would have put my hand on her. Probably hit her. I got five baby mommas and I put my hands on every last one of them, except for one …. I honestly think she just didn’t want me to put my hands on her anymore so she did what she feel like she have to do to make sure she wouldn’t get hurt, you know. You know, she did what she had to do.” And Gray admits Alexander was acting in self-defense, intending to scare and stop but not harm him: “The gun was never actually pointed at me… The fact is, you know . . . she never been violent toward me. I was always the one starting it.” Ultimately nobody was hurt. Nobody died. On May 12, 2012, it took a jury 12 minutes to find Alexander guilty of aggravated assault. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Both defendants used the defense of “Stand your Ground,” a Florida law that holds that a person has “no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm.” The man who shot his wife’s lover to death was successful and walks free. The woman who shot at a wall to scare an abusive husband failed and sits in jail.

These disparity between these outcomes should be shocking. But, sadly, it’s not, once you take into account the fact that Wald is white and Alexander is black. The Stand Your Ground law is notorious for being applied in a biased and inconsistent way. The Tampa Bay Times found that defendants claiming “stand your ground” are more successful if the victim is black. Seventy-three percent of those who killed a black person faced no penalty. Only 59 percent of those who killed a white person got off. The Urban Institute determined that in Stand Your Ground states, when white shooters kill black victims, 34 percent of the resulting homicides are deemed justifiable. When black shooters kill white victims only 3 percent of the deaths are ruled justifiable.

In light of these trends, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights voted to investigate whether “Stand Your Ground” laws are racially biased. Twenty-four states have Stand Your Ground laws. The statutes, which are backed by the National Rifle Association and the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, garnered national attention in February 2012 after George Zimmerman shot the unarmed African American teenager Trayvon Martin to death, in Sanford, Florida. The police decided not to arrest Zimmerman, citing Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. After this impunity sparked a pubic outcry, the police charged Zimmerman — now he’s sitting in court on trial for murder. Zimmerman waived his right to a Stand Your Ground pretrial hearing, during which a judge could have dismissed the case under the statute. (Benjamin Crump, the attorney for Trayvon Martin’s family,believes Zimmerman did this to avoid taking the stand.) But it is likely that Stand Your Ground will come up during the actual trial. If it does, we will have to see whether the defense is successful. Will Zimmerman end up a free man, like Wald? Or in jail, like Alexander?

Ethically made clothing

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 09:30:23 -0400

Ethically made clothing:

I’ve been on an ethically made clothing quest for about six months. This means, that I am trying to not buy any clothes from “sweatshop” countries, instead purchasing things second hand from thrift stores, ebay and from brands/stores that I’ve researched. After reading the great article about the Bangladesh disaster this weekend, I’d like to crowdsource for brands that are made in the USA or first world countries and also brands that treat their workers ethically and work to improve work shop conditions.

"My life’s an open book,” people might say. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”..."

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 19:06:47 -0400

““My life’s an open book,” people might say. “I’ve got nothing to hide.” But now the government has large dossiers of everyone’s activities, interests, reading habits, finances, and health. What if the government leaks the information to the public? What if the government mistakenly determines that based on your pattern of activities, you’re likely to engage in a criminal act? What if it denies you the right to fly? What if the government thinks your financial transactions look odd—even if you’ve done nothing wrong—and freezes your accounts? What if the government doesn’t protect your information with adequate security, and an identity thief obtains it and uses it to defraud you? Even if you have nothing to hide, the government can cause you a lot of harm.”

- Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’ - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"Can’t innovate anymore my ass!"

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 18:35:25 -0400

“Can’t innovate anymore my ass!”

- Phil Schiller at today’s WWDC 2013 Keynote. (via minimalmac)

Phil won the WWDC with this one.

DANG, will you check out Ms. Cicely Tyson, 88 years old,...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 12:04:21 -0400

DANG, will you check out Ms. Cicely Tyson, 88 years old, first-time Tony nominee, and she won Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play (A Trip To Bountiful).

Congratulations!!!

"The United States, upholding to our beautiful Bill of Rights, has survived (albeit on a sometimes..."

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 11:01:10 -0400

“

The United States, upholding to our beautiful Bill of Rights, has survived (albeit on a sometimes bumpy road) two world wars, the Cold War and innumerable challenges without a massive, all-inclusive destruction of our civil rights. Keep in mind that the Founders created the Bill of Rights, point-by-point, specifically to address the abuses of power (look up the never-heard-from-again Third Amendment) they experienced under an oppressive British government. A bunch of angry jihadis, real and imagined, seems a poor reason to change that system. Prior to 9/11 we did not have a mass-scale terror act (by foreigners; American Citizen Timothy McVeigh pulled one off.) Since 9/11 we have not had a mass-scale terror attack. We can say 9/11 was a one-off, an aberration, and cannot be a justification for everything the government wishes to do.

[…]

…despite all this intrusion into our lives and violations of the Fourth Amendment, the system completely missed the Boston bombers, two of the dumbest, least sophisticated bro’ terrorists in the world.

”

- A Child’s Guide to Why NSA Surveillance is Bad (via wilwheaton)

Reblogging last sentence for TRUTH.

sinshine: If you’re unemployed, it’s not because there isn’t...

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 10:09:20 -0400

sinshine:

If you’re unemployed, it’s not because there isn’t any work.

Just look around: A housing shortage, crime, pollution; we need better schools and parks. Whatever our needs, they all require work. And as long as we have unsatisfied needs, there’s work to be done.

So ask yourself, what kind of world has work but no jobs? It’s a world where work is not related to satisfying our needs, a world where work is only related to satisfying the profit needs of business.

This country was not built by the huge corporations or government bureaucracies. It was built by people who work. And, it is working people who should control the work to be done. Yet, as long as employment is tied to somebody else’s profits, the work won’t get done.

Forever reblog.

queensimia:

oldmanyellsatcloud:

Hmmm. Keeping that.

Make sure you read past the headline.

theblacksymphony: If this is your husband, I have just endured...

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 16:05:06 -0400

theblacksymphony:

If this is your husband, I have just endured a 2 hour train ride from Philadelphia listening to this loser and his friends brag about their multiple affairs and how their wives are too stupid to catch on. Oh, please reblog the shit out of this…

Photo

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 18:39:37 -0400

countfruit: Kiss! OMG. Lust explosion.

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 09:30:31 -0400

countfruit:

Kiss!

OMG. Lust explosion.