Just a Grain of Salt

rougemarionette: juvjuvychan: The Women of Miyazaki When...

Thu, 23 May 2013 03:59:35 -0500

juvjuvychan:

The Women of Miyazaki

When people say movies, shows, books, etc, with female leads can’t sell and/or don’t have a market in mainstream media I simply shake my head and think of Miyazaki. I think of his movies and how a majority of them, over the course of many years, have all starred female leads and are considered classics.

Some people seem to think that women want the world when asking for female characters in mainstream media that aren’t; stereotypes, love interests, or sex objects. These people seem to believe we’re asking some sort of impossible task and yet again I’m left thinking about Miyazaki and his amazing movies starring these amazing women.

It’s not impossible, and we’re not asking for the world. We’re asking for women, in our fiction, to be characters, to be presented as people. Not as the love interest, not as the prize the male hero wins at the end of his struggles and rides off into the sunset with, not as a collection of body parts contorted to be sexy for the male gaze. We’re asking for women to be good, to be bad, to be gray, to be heroes and villains, and morally in between. We’re asking for women to be people. To be shown as such.

When I watch Miyazaki’s films starring these women I see that. I see women, or young girls, being strong, weak, capable, hurt, upset, smart, powerful, cunning, dreaming, struggling, women who are able to drive their own stories, make their own decisions, and be the heroes of their own tales.

I see women who are presented as people.

If you need an outline on how to write women, well, take some notes from these films and learn something.

I just want to add that when I saw Hayao Miyazaki at SDCC when Ponyo came out, one of the questions he received was from a girl who asked why the main characters in his stories were female.

He smiled and responded with, “Because women are strong and beautiful.”

rosalarian: pleasestopbeingsad: Street harassment is not a...

Wed, 22 May 2013 21:39:29 -0500

rosalarian:

pleasestopbeingsad:

Street harassment is not a compliment.

Finally someone made a comic about my exact feelings

cosumosu: Project for one of my classes @w@;)

Wed, 22 May 2013 19:46:24 -0500

Whether it's a cute ensemble for a fun day

or a cute lil black dress for a party

gym wear too!

swimming suits, undergarments, even being flat out nude is never an "invitation" for assault, it's the assaulter's fault.

cosumosu:

Project for one of my classes @w@;)

blu3rsx: 16-Year-Old Egyptian Scientist Finds Way to Turn...

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:32:20 -0500

blu3rsx:

16-Year-Old Egyptian Scientist Finds Way to Turn Plastic Waste Into $78 Million of Biofuel

What Azza proposes is to break down the plastic polymers found in drinks bottles and general waste and turn them into biofuel feedstock. (This is the bulk raw material that generally used for producing biofuel.) It should be noted that this is not a particularly new idea, but what makes Azza stand out from the crowd is the catalyst that she is proposing. She says that she has found a high-yield catalyst called aluminosilicate, that will break down plastic waste and also produce gaseous products like methane, propane and ethane, which can then be converted into ethanol.

Read more.

aknightofdoom: afternoonsnoozebutton: mr-cappadocia: You...

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:04:25 -0500

aknightofdoom:

afternoonsnoozebutton:

mr-cappadocia:

You didn’t think too deeply about this did you? Of course not. If you were prone to thinking deeply about things… you probably wouldn’t be a Feminist, now would you?

I’m screaming “THAT’S THE POINT THAT’S LITERALLY THE POINT YOU JUST MADE THE EXACT POINT” at my computer screen right now.

Lewis’s law in action!
~~~ h o w m a j e s t i c ~~~

astronomy-to-zoology: Palawan Peacock-Pheasant (Polyplectron...

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:57:05 -0500

astronomy-to-zoology:

Palawan Peacock-Pheasant

(Polyplectron napoleonis)

is a pheasant of the family (phasianidae). they can be found on a single island in the Philippines, Palawan island (thus the name). they are a medium size bird growing up to 50cm long, their most distinguishing characteristic is their plumage, as they have highly iridescent blue feathers on their backs and with peacock like ocelli on their tail feathers (thus the name peacock pheasant. females are smaller than the male and are less colorful. (as the male uses his plumage for mating). due to habitat loss, hunting and limited habitat range they are listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN.

Phylogeny

Animalia-Chordata-Aves-Galliformes-Phasianidae-Argusianinae-Polyplectron

thepoliticalfreakshow: 16 Minutes…The Amount of Time You Have...

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:28:39 -0500

thepoliticalfreakshow:

16 Minutes…The Amount of Time You Have To Save Your Life From A Tornado

Time Magazine published a preview of its cover on Tuesday for a special edition on the devastating tornado that wreaked havoc in Moore, Oklahoma.

The tornado, which was confirmed as “a top-of-the-scale EF-5 twister” with winds between 200 and 215 mph, flattened multiple houses and buildings, including two elementary schools. In the early hours of the devastation on Monday afternoon, law enforcement officials feared the tornado could have killed up to 91 individuals, including 20 children. Officials lowered the death toll on Tuesday to 24 individuals, which included 9 children.

According to the National Weather Service, a warning went out 16 minutes before the tornado touched down just before 3:00 p.m. local time. Time featured an ominous photograph of the tornado with a headline that read, “16 Minutes.” A subtitle followed, “That’s how much time you have to safe your life. The story of the Oklahoma tornado.”

Time described the new issue, which will hit stands on Friday, as “dedicated to covering the devastation that followed the pivotal 16 minutes between when sirens first alerted Moore residents and when the tornado touched down.”

the-science-llama: If Earth Had Rings First off, they would be...

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:11:00 -0500

Guatamala

Washington, DC

Quito, Ecuador

Polynesia The Earth's Shadow appears on the Rings at night

Arctic Circle The Rings are barely visible

the-science-llama:

If Earth Had Rings

First off, they would be really pretty to look at. They would also dominate the sky in both night and day at exactly the same place as they would never rise nor set. And at night you would see the Earth’s shadow swing across the rings, like in the 4th photo here.

However, life would be very different on Earth if this were the case. Nocturnal animals would have a hard time being nocturnal, as the light reflecting from the rings would illuminate the night.

Because we are closer to the Sun than Saturn is, the rings would be more rocky than ice, making them less bright but still pretty bright. In fact, you would see far less stars at night (living anywhere other than the equator or the arctic circle) because of the light pollution and not to mention ruin most meteor showers because of that.

During the day the rings would block sunlight in certain regions of the planet creating wild weather cycles and effecting plant life as well. So basically, they would be definitely pretty to look at but they would also make a whole lot of things screwy.

Illustrations by Ron Miller // io9
— Click the photos for captions

unhistorical: May 21, 1979: The White Night riots begin. On...

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:49:58 -0500

Moscone and Milk

unhistorical:

May 21, 1979: The White Night riots begin.

On November 27, 1978, Harvey Milk - San Francisco’s first and one of the country’s first openly gay elected officials - was shot and killed by San Francisco supervisor Dan White (also killed in the attack was Mayor George Moscone). White and Milk had served together (and often clashed on issues while serving together) on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors under Dianne Feinstein for around ten months before White, citing his disgust at the corruption of city politics and his need for a higher salary, resigned his position as supervisor. After Moscone declined his request for re-appointment to his position at Milk’s (and others’) urging, White assassinated both men at San Francisco City Hall.

White’s trial officially began on May 1, 1979. The jury announced its verdict three weeks later after 36 hours of deliberation — White was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to seven years in prison; his defense team had successfully argued that, because of White’s spiral into depression (as evidenced by his change in diet from healthy foods to junk food), he would have been unable to premeditate murder, therefore making it impossible for him to be charged with first degree murder. Instead, White’s assassination of Milk and Mayor Moscone was defined as third degree murder, a “heat of passion” crime, and the least severe conviction White could have managed to leave the courtroom with, despite the fact that White had admitted to planning the assassinations of Carol Ruth Silver and Willie Brown.

The “White Night riots” began in the Castro District (where Harvey Milk began his work as a gay rights activist) as a gathering of several hundred people, mostly members of the Castro’s LGBT community. Enraged over White’s light sentence, thousands of protesters erupted into violence, and riots broke out near City Hall. By the end of the incident, during which policemen indiscriminately attacked rioters and vice versa, sixty-one policemen and around 100 protesters were hospitalized. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, tensions between San Francisco’s conservative elements and its growing minority populations increased as the latter groups gained political and economic influence - this hostile divide was apparent within the Board of Supervisors, in the conflict between White (who was relatively conservative) and Milk, and in the White Night riots, which pitted the city’s police department, which had raised money for White’s defense, against the city’s gay community, which had been revitalized under Milk’s leadership and by his election.

In 1985, Dan White committed suicide. Harvey Milk was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

yourfutureleader: Trip to Verdun 01: Memorial to the German...

Tue, 21 May 2013 00:28:55 -0500

yourfutureleader:

Trip to Verdun

01: Memorial to the German soldiers who died in Fort Douaumont

02: Memorial to the French soldiers who died in Fort Douaumont

03: Entrance to one of the French tunnels underneath the Butte de Vauquois

04: From inside one of the craters on top of the Butte de Vauquois

05: Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery, the largest American military cemetery in Europe

06: Various items found within a 5 mile radius of Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, on display in the Romagne 14-18 Museum

07: Damaged wall of Fort Froideterre

08: Memorial at Mort Homme

09: Ruin of the church at Montfaucon, as seen from the Montfaucon American Monument

10: View from a trench at the Butte de Vauquois

the-science-llama: Butterfly and Moth Wings

Mon, 20 May 2013 23:32:54 -0500

the-science-llama:

Butterfly and Moth Wings

allthingslinguistic: Morphological Typology (illustrations from...

Mon, 20 May 2013 20:42:53 -0500

allthingslinguistic:

Morphological Typology (illustrations from SpecGram)

Descriptions adapted from The Lingua File:

Analytic languages: also known as isolating languages because they’re composed of isolated, or free, morphemes. Free morphemes can be words on their own, such as cat or happy. Languages that are purely analytic in structure don’t use any prefixes or suffixes, ever. However, it’s rare to find a language that is purely analytic or synthetic since most languages have characteristics of both. Morphological typology is like a spectrum in which languages fit in somewhere from analytic to polysynthetic (a subtype of synthetic languages we’ll get to in a moment).

Mandarin Chinese and Vietnamese are good examples of analytic languages. […] English, on the other hand, is one of the most analytic Indo-European languages, but is still usually classified as a synthetic language. […]

Types of synthetic language (i.e. languages that have prefixes/suffixes):

Agglutinating Languages:With these languages, morphemes within words are usually clearly recognizable in a way that makes it easy to tell where the morpheme boundaries are. Their affixes usually only have a single meaning. Turkish,Korean, Hungarian, Japanese, and Finnish are all in this group.

Fusional Languages: Similar to agglutinating languages, except that the morpheme boundaries are much more difficult to discern. Affixes are often fused with the stems, and can have multiple meanings. A prime example of a fusional language is Spanish, especially when it comes to verbs. In the wordhablo ”I speak”, the -o morpheme tells us that we’re dealing with a subject that is singular, first person, and in the present tense. It’s difficult to find a morpheme that means “speak”, however, since habl- is not a morpheme. Fusional languages can be tricky!

Polysynthetic Languages: These languages are undoubtedly some of the most difficult to learn. They often have verbs that can express the entirety of a typical sentence in English, which they do by incorporating nouns into verbs forms. For example, the Sora language of India has one word that means “I will catch a tiger”. Many Native American languages are polysynthetic.

hominisaevum: A seventeenth-century pomander and chain A...

Mon, 20 May 2013 20:14:34 -0500

hominisaevum:

A seventeenth-century pomander and chain

A parcel-gilt silver pomander, made in Italy in the 16th century; features a niello inscription

Pomander, gold filigree, enclosing a ball of ambergris. 1600-1700

Gold and Silver Pomander, 16th Century

***Pomander - a ball made of perfumes, such as ambergris (whence the name),musk, or civet. The pomander was worn or carried in a vase, also known by the same name, as a protection against infection in times of pestilence or merely as a useful article to modify bad smells. The globular cases which contained the pomanders were hung from a neck-chain or belt, or attached to the girdle, and were usually perforated and made of gold or silver. Sometimes they contained several partitions, in each of which was placed a different perfume.

Children’s Illustrators: Kay Nielsen Born in Denmark in 1886,...

Sun, 19 May 2013 02:46:50 -0500

Children’s Illustrators: Kay Nielsen

Born in Denmark in 1886, Nielsen was inspired by Art Nouveau and Eastern influences in his illustrations, and adopted many practices of Japanese woodcuts, such as asymmetrical composition, large vacant areas, sinuous linework, and flattened perspective.

killette: “How will your tattoos look when you’re old?!”Pretty...

Sat, 18 May 2013 03:46:21 -0500

killette:

“How will your tattoos look when you’re old?!”
Pretty fucking bad ass apparently.

ladyogrady: My thesis project, Dom & Sub, a.k.a. why I’ve...

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:03:52 -0500

Instigation

Negotiation

Play

Post-Play

Aftercare

ladyogrady:

My thesis project, Dom & Sub, a.k.a. why I’ve been such a bad tumblr-er/bad friend/etc. My artist statement:

Dom & Sub is a body of illustrative work in digital media that attempts to humanize practitioners of BDSM and offer a representation of kinky sex that not only refutes negative stereotypes but informs the audience that sadomasochistic play is done best between happy, healthy, and consenting adults. I portrayed the couple in the work not only engaging in S&M play but also building a “scene” together and nurturing one another after the play has concluded; these are moments often left unconsidered or completely ignored in visual representations of S&M. I believe it’s important to see how kinky scenes are crafted with care, commitment to safety and enthusiastic consent in order to limit those times when sadomasochistic play is used to abuse or dehumanize other human beings. It is my hope that my audience will learn from the illustrations that sadomasochistic play is not always dark or scary, and that fellow ‘kinksters’ can enjoy tender representations of S&M that do not ridicule or pathologize them. I’ve designed the work to engage sadomasochistic imagery, material and theory with an ethical conscience.

fairytalemood: “The Little Mermaid” by Ileana Surducan

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:49:54 -0500

fairytalemood:

“The Little Mermaid” by Ileana Surducan

theartofanimation: OrangePopFox

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:21:36 -0500

theartofanimation:

OrangePopFox

Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Racism & Prejudice

Fri, 17 May 2013 17:53:30 -0500

Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Racism & Prejudice:

ikenbot:

There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

“Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood,” he said.

Controversy ahead

The findings combine three hot-button topics.

“They’ve pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics,” said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. “When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it’s bound to upset somebody.”

Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience.

“The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this,” Nosek said, referring to the new study. “It’s not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists.”

Brains and bias

Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism and racism were measured.

In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks, defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words. Average IQ is set at 100.

Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as “Family life suffers if mum is working full-time,” and “Schools should teach children to obey authority.” Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as “I wouldn’t mind working with people from other races.” (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson’s work can’t speak to this “underground” racism.)

As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.

People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races.

“This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice,” said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.

Full Article: Recommended Full Read

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

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:32:30 -0500

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