information addict

When I started making those weird voices, a lot of people told me how whack it was, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ they’d say. ‘Why do you sound like that? That doesn’t sound sexy to me.’ And then I started saying, ‘Oh, that’s not sexy to you? Good. I’m going to do it more. Maybe I don’t want to be sexy for you today.‘

- Nicki Minaj (BlackBook Magazine)

(Source: youwantsum)

Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.

- Derrick Jensen Forget Shorter Showers-Why Personal Change Does Not Equal Political Change  (via monkeyknifefight)

(Source: nataliesamhain)

If we teach women that there are only certain ways they may acceptably behave, we should not be surprised when they behave in those ways.

And we should not be surprised when they behave these ways during attempted or completed rapes.

Women who are taught not to speak up too loudly or too forcefully or too adamantly or too demandingly are not going to shout “NO” at the top of their goddamn lungs just because some guy is getting uncomfortably close.

Women who are taught not to keep arguing are not going to keep saying “NO.”

Women who are taught that their needs and desires are not to be trusted, are fickle and wrong and are not to be interpreted by the woman herself, are not going to know how to argue with “but you liked kissing, I just thought…”

Women who are taught that physical confrontations make them look crazy will not start hitting, kicking, and screaming until it’s too late, if they do at all.

Women who are taught that a display of their emotional state will have them labeled hysterical and crazy (which is how their perception of events will be discounted) will not be willing to run from a room disheveled and screaming and crying.

Women who are taught that certain established boundaries are frowned upon as too rigid and unnecessary are going to find themselves in situations that move further faster before they realize that their first impression was right, and they are in a dangerous room with a dangerous person.

Women who are taught that refusing to flirt back results in an immediately hostile environment will continue to unwillingly and unhappily flirt with somebody who is invading their space and giving them creep alerts.

People wonder why women don’t “fight back,” but they don’t wonder about it when women back down in arguments, are interrupted, purposefully lower and modulate their voices to express less emotion, make obvious signals that they are uninterested in conversation or being in closer physical proximity and are ignored. They don’t wonder about all those daily social interactions in which women are quieter, ignored, or invisible, because those social interactions seem normal. They seem normal to women, and they seem normal to men, because we were all raised in the same cultural pond, drinking the same Kool-Aid.

And then, all of a sudden, when women are raped, all these natural and invisible social interactions become evidence that the woman wasn’t truly raped. Because she didn’t fight back, or yell loudly, or run, or kick, or punch. She let him into her room when it was obvious what he wanted. She flirted with him, she kissed him. She stopped saying no, after a while.

-

Harriet J on Another post about rape (via archenemies)

Oh my god, this. All of this.

(via one-bite-at-a-time)

But here is a secret. If your users, as a group, are repurposing your site to their own ends, they are not using it wrong. You just did not fully predict the purpose your site would serve for them. Which you can’t anyway. It’s emergent – it builds on itself, and on the culture of the existent userbase.

That’s why, when you notice your users jumping through technological hoops to accomplish something on your site – when you see those “deer paths” being stamped though a usability wilderness, when your userbase’s shared intent is strong enough to get them around the fact you never designed for, let’s say, one on one conversations – what you do is you make the process easier for them! You look at how they are hiking bear country to get themselves from point A to point B and what you do is you build them a proper fucking road!

- odditycollector: 3 NICE THINGS, AND WHY YOU CANNOT HAVE THEM ON TUMBLR

It is ironic that those po­lice of­fi­cers who are bust­ing up the Oc­cupy pro­test­ers are them­selves vic­tims of the same so­cial ills the demon­stra­tors are com­bat­ing: cor­po­rate greed; the slack­en­ing of es­sen­tial reg­u­la­tory sys­tems; and the ab­ject fail­ure of all three branches of gov­ern­ment to safe­guard civil lib­er­ties and to pro­tect, if not pro­vide, basic human needs like health, hous­ing, ed­u­ca­tion and more. With cities and states strug­gling to bal­ance the bud­get while con­tin­u­ing to de­liver pub­lic safety, many cops are find­ing them­selves out of work. And, as many Oc­cupy pro­test­ers have pointed out, even as po­lice of­fi­cers help to safe­guard the power and prof­its of the 1 per­cent, po­lice of­fi­cers are part of the 99 per­cent.

- Lessons of a Police Chief: Militarization is a Mistake | NationofChange

I’m a liberal, so I probably dream bigger than you. For instance, I want everybody to have healthcare. I want lazy people to have healthcare. I want stupid people to have healthcare. I want drug addicts to have healthcare. I want bums who refuse to work even when given the opportunity to have healthcare. I’m willing to pay for that with my taxes, because I want to live in a society where it doesn’t matter how much of a loser you are, if you need medical care you can get it. And not just by crowding up an emergency room that should be dedicated exclusively to helping people in emergencies.

-

Daily Kos: Open Letter to that 53% Guy (via redcloud)

THIS, omg.

Trigger warning for partner consent issues, rape

At first, I didn’t know what she meant. She spoke so softly I had to lean across the table to hear her. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” she said, “but sometimes I really don’t want to have sex. Sometimes I do, but not as often as you want it. And sometimes I want to tell you ‘no,’ but I can’t bring myself to do it. So I try and send you signals, hoping you can just tell how I’m feeling. But that doesn’t work, so it’s… it’s just easier to say ‘yes’ or just say nothing at all.”

My face flushed. I felt nauseated. I thought instantly of the previous night, where we’d grabbed what I thought was a hot half-hour when my roommates were both gone. Katie had seemed so passionate when we’d been making out, but then gotten very quiet once all our clothes were off. I’d told myself she wanted to have one ear cocked for the sound of a key in the door. I hadn’t considered—or hadn’t wanted to consider—the more obvious possibility: she was trying to tell me that she didn’t want to have sex.

I looked out the window. I couldn’t meet Katie’s eyes. My gaze fixed in the distance, my voice trembling, I asked what seemed the only possible question: “Are you trying to tell me I raped you?”

I was in my first women’s studies course, and just the previous week we’d been reading about sexual violence and the law. In class, where I was one of only three men, I’d felt rage thinking about all of those cruel assholes who didn’t understand that “no means no.” But now a dark and unseen possibility was opening up: not every “no” could be spoken. Maybe, I realized, sometimes even a quiet “OK” could be a “no” in disguise.

Katie started to cry. “Oh God, Hugo. No. Not rape. It’s just… I wish you could tell the difference between when I really want you and when I’d just rather be held.” She began to cry harder. “Fuck. It’s all my fault,” she wept. “I can’t expect you to be a mindreader. I’m so sorry.”

-

The Accidental Rapist — The Good Men Project

So much of the activism against sexual violence posits rapists as a subspecies of human, deliberately malicious, a separate breed that - if eradicated - will solve all our problems. Yet how often do we look into ourselves to see if we are part of the problem?

Perhaps when we consider the idea that we could be abusers too - want it or not - we can start coming up with more solutions that don’t assume Good/Bad splits, that don’t force assumptions of “They can’t have done that, they’re a GOOD PERSON!”, that doesn’t also end up finding fault with the victim because they weren’t perfectly innocent.

(via creatrixtiara)

I wish I had the courage to have this conversation. 

(via darkjez)

This. This. This. This. And also this.

‘You have to think of a different kind of menu,’ says Alice [Waters, owner of Chez Panisse and organic Slow Food guru]. ‘You eat dried fruit and nuts. You make pasta sauces out of canned tomatoes … you’re eating different kinds of grains—farro with root vegetables … Turnips of every color and shape! Carrots that are white and red and orange and pink! … Cabbages!’

Basically, you can eat like a fucking Russian peasant, is what she’s saying. I don’t know if that’s what they want to hear in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or Buffalo. And what about the healthy, pure, wholesome, and organic foods that Alice says I should be buying—particularly if I have children? If I’m making an even average wage as, say, a sole-providing police officer or middle manager? Regular milk is about four bucks a gallon. Organic is about twice that. Supermarket grapes are about four bucks a bunch. Organic are six. More to the point, what if I’m one of the vast numbers of working poor, getting by in the service sector? What should I do? How can I afford that?

Asked this question very directly, Alice advises blithely that one should ‘Make a sacrifice on the cell phone or a third pair of Nike shoes.’ It’s an unfortunate choice of words. And a telling one, I think. You know, those poor people—always with their Nikes and their cell phones. If only they’d listen to Alice. She’d lead them to the promised land for sure.

What else should we be doing? Alice says we should immediately spend 27 billion dollars to ensure every schoolchild in America gets a healthy, organic lunch. More recently she added to this number the suggestion that fresh flowers on every lunchroom table might also be a worthwhile idea. This is, after all, ‘more important than crime in the streets. This is not like homeland security—this is actually the ultimate homeland security. This is more important than anything else.’

Which is where Alice really loses me—because, well, for me, as a New Yorker, however quaint the concept, homeland security is still about keeping suicidal mass murderers from flying planes into our fucking buildings. And organic school lunches might be more important to you than crime in the streets in Berkeley—but in the underfunded school systems of West Baltimore, I suspect they feel differently. A healthy lunch is all fine and good—but no use at all to Little Timmy if he gets shot to death on the way to school. In fact, 27 billion for organic food for Timmy seems a back-assward priority right now—as, so far, we’ve failed miserably to even teach him to read. What kind of dreams can a well-fed boy have if he doesn’t even have the tools to articulate them? How can he build a world for himself if he doesn’t know how to ask for—much less how to get—the things he wants and needs? I, for one, would be very satisfied if Timmy gets a relatively balanced slab of fresh but nonorganic meatloaf with a side of competently frozen broccoli—along with reading skills and a chance at a future. Once literate, well read, and equipped with the tools to actually make his way in the world, he’ll be far better prepared to afford Chez Panisse.

As of this writing, not too far from Berkeley, just across the bridge, in San Francisco’s Mission District, they line up every Tuesday for the $1.99 special at Popeye’s Fried Chicken. They don’t stand in the street waiting for forty-five minutes to an hour because it’s particularly healthy chicken, or organic chicken, or conscientiously raised chicken. They do it because it’s three fucking pieces for a dollar ninety-nine. Unless we respect that reality, Alice? We’re lost.

-

Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and People Who Cook

Bourdain devotes an entire chapter of his book to decimating Alice Waters, who has been lauded in a 60 Minutes puff piece as “the Mother of Slow Food” (which is a bullshit claim). He admits that he was perhaps overdoing it when he called her “Pol Pot in a muumuu” in an interview — but only barely (he also called saccharine blonde Semi-Homemade host Sandra Lee “the hellspawn of Betty Crocker and Charles Manson” and called her Kwanzaa Cake “a war crime on television”, so Waters is far from alone). Bourdain selects his targets for a reason, and Waters is a highly suitable stand-in for the growing ranks of white, privileged, socially ignorant eco-food ideological stick-wavers whose contempt for communities of color and for the poor ooze out through their self-righteous evangelism.

In a typical move, Waters wrote an open letter to the newly elected president Obama warning that “the purity and wholesomeness of the Obama movement must be accompanied by a parallel effort in food”. She appointed herself onto an advisory committee to help the Obamas select “a person with integrity and devotion” as White House Chef, adding “I cannot forget the vision I have had since 1993 of a beautiful vegetable garden on the White House lawn” — apparently oblivious that they already had a chef of “integrity and devotion” and a vegetable garden. This, from someone who has boasted that she hasn’t voted since 1966. Nevertheless, the Obamas were cool and invited her to the White House to throw a series of dinners and help expand the garden. As an example of her sustainable, locavorian ways, she flew in big-name chefs from all over the country for a five-hundred-dollar-a-plate gala, as though there are no qualified chefs in Washington fucking DC. This is why I appreciate what Tony Bourdain does. His targets usually deserve it. He’s a linguistic assassin, and sometimes that’s just what’s needed. And yeah, it feels good too. Plus, say what you want but I dig Popeye’s.

(via zuky)

It was at Popeye’s that I discovered what country biscuits are. I doubt I shall ever get enough of them.

(via jhameia)

Excellent.

(via quixotess)

One of the things that makes me most upset about PUA manuals is the idea that you should become your own hard salesman. Because selling, really, is manipulation–and a lot of sales techniques are designed to get the customer to buy something they don’t want. That’s not a moral thing to do to a prospective partner. It’s not the right direction to head in. It can work on a transactional level, just like at Best Buy and TGIFriday’s, but it’s demeaning and inferior.

- Piny’s comment @ Question #116: How do I seduce women? (Yes, this was an actual question). « CaptainAwkward.com

Fuck Gratitude.

Or to be more precise fuck the socially mandated expressions of gratitude (Not nearly as catchy). Fuck the idea that people should ever have to bow and scrape for the simple necessities of life. For a safe place to live or food to eat. Fuck the idea that when we “help” them get those things that they are entitled to that we deserve anything in return.

- Fuck Gratitude — Feministe