“The Oxford English Dictionary accepts both pronunciations. They are wrong. It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.” — Steve Wilhite, the creator of the GIF, chiming in on the pronunciation of the word. (As everyone knows, choosy memes choose “jif.”) Wilhite, a former CompuServe employee, created the format in 1987 and is to receive an award for his creation tonight. (via shortformblog)
With all due respect to Mr. Wilhite, he is wrong, regardless of whether he created it or not. The “g” stands for “graphic,” which, last I checked, is not pronounced “jraphic” (which is not to be confused with “giraffe fic,” one of the more disturbing subgenres of erotic fan fiction).
“The fact remains, it is a slap in the face to not only an audience seeking representation by having more persons of color inhabit the main cast, but to Gene Roddenberry’s central beliefs. In creating Star Trek, Roddenberry sought to show a future where people from all over the world (and beings from all over the galaxy) were brought together by a mission of exploration and diplomacy. And for those who wonder why a villain would be a preferable slot to fill with a non-white casting, we hasten to remind readers of all the attractive, intelligent, and memorable villains that have inhabited the screen. Either we love to hate them, or love to love them straight up, but villainy often gets its own fanclub. Additionally, the intelligent, charismatic villain whose cause the audience nearly sympathizes with is a facet of villainy rarely offered to actors of color.” — Star Trek Into Darkness Goes, and Goes, Just Not Very Boldly, a Review (via themarysue)
(via themarysue)
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When I was a kid, I used to go over to friend’s houses and notice that their parents never seemed to bully them or hit them. I assumed this was just because they had a friend over, and that their parents terrorized them all the time when I wasn’t around. I didn’t identify my situation as abuse or reach out to a teacher or counselor because I thought everyone had to live through this. I was probably twenty by the time I realized that some families really don’t humiliate and belittle their kids, ever.
I wish someone had gotten that through to me. I wish instead of saying vaguely and uncomfortably “you can talk to the counselor if you have problems at home,” my teachers had said flat-out “it is not normal to be afraid of your parents, and not normal to be unhappy whenever you’re at home, and you can ask us if you’re not sure if something’s okay or not.” I wish someone could have taught me that wanting to be safe was human instead of selfish.
And I’m probably going to make a whole post about this so I won’t belabor the point right now, but this is why feminists care about media and memes that normalize rape. (Or that stigmatize the words “rape” and “rapist,” but enthusiastically normalize the act of forcing sex on people, as long as you don’t call it that.) Because it tells people that rape is normal, that it’s a popular and accepted way to express romance and/or dominance, and we can’t assume that everyone absorbing this culture knows “of course that’s not how it really works.”
” —The Pervocracy, Everyone else is doing it… right? (via slutwalksignideas)
!!! I wish someone could have taught me that wanting to be safe was human instead of selfish.
(via newmodelminority)
wow i know these feelings so, so well.
(via missvoltairine)
(via missvoltairine)
[video]
(Source: thefortnightly, via geektresses)
Why isn't New Orleans Mother's Day parade shooting a 'national tragedy'? -
“American tragedies don’t occur on the southside of Chicago or the New Orleans 9th Ward. They don’t occur where inner city high school kids shoot into school buses or someone shoots at a 10-year old’s birthday party in New Orleans. Or Gary, Indiana. Or Compton. Or Newport News. These are where the forgotten tragedies happen and the cities are left to persevere on their own.”
(Source: daughterofalkebulan, via postcardsfromspace)
“The first time I read ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ I was sitting in 10th grade English class. But there is one image that stays with me. The description of crops going unharvested even as workers are eager and willing to pick the food. He writes:
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the time, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.
And the smell of rot fills the country.
He wrote those words more than 70 years ago, yet the conditions he describes still ring true for 50 million Americans living in food insecure households today… . Hungry families do not have enough food… [but] not because of scarcity. Every year 40% of food produced goes uneaten. That’s 20 pounds of food per person per day. And that is the twisted irony of hunger in America today. What Steinbeck called that crime that goes beyond denunciation, landfills brimming with rotting food while 15% of households don’t have enough to eat.”
— Melissa Harris-Perry [x] (via mswyrr)
(via kittenunderwear)
CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY THIS WAS FORCED UPON US
Sure, let’s go.
I’m your music teacher. I see what’s going on in the public schools — I see that your other teachers really only want you to learn math and reading, because that’s what’s tested under NCLB, and really even then if they could cut it to one of those subjects, they would.
But I’m different. I see that you’re an individual. I want you to understand the world, because you’ll be out in it some day, and I want you to understand the parts of it that aren’t explained by numbers or words. You need to understand how the world feels, how people feel, what they mean when they express themselves, or even what the greater universe at large means when it expresses itself through nature, or sounds, or any number of things too big to list in a Tumblr post.
That is the end goal of arts education.
To get there, from a musical perspective, you need to understand the basics first. You couldn’t read this if you didn’t understand letters, how would you understand that Brahms wrote four symphonies about the pain of not being with the woman he loved if you don’t know what a pitch is? Your music teacher understands better than anyone that learning happens through creation and imitation. The recorders are cheap (so your parents didn’t have to put down a couple thousand on a violin — do your parent’s have that? Mine didn’t) and easy (so that literally everyone in the classroom can master it, even the kids that might have problems in the regular classroom suddenly have a very easy tool that they can be successful with). Also, they sound quite beautiful if you’d quit blowing so hard.
But no, by reblogging this, apparently you’d rather lose the ability to understand art and the world around you. Fine, more for me.
sometimes i’m all about mad pride but sometimes i just hate mental illness, i hate being crazy, i’m miserable and i feel like i make other people miserable even when i don’t mean to and i want to cry all the time.