Tag: maybe there’s hope after all

into-the-weeds:

veliseraptor:

Ms. Marvel #17 (2017) | w: G. Willow Wilson, a: Takeshi Miyazawa

I can’t do a real image description because I can’t parse the visuals well enough, sorry, but here’s the narrative text:

[So why is it so hard to be kind? Why does being nice feel so…embarrassing?

Why can’t we just say, “hey, it could’ve been me. I’ve sent those emails. I’ve taken those selfies. I’ve tried to hide stuff from my parents. It could’ve been me, so I’m gonna help you through it. I’m gonna stand with you through the waves of mortifying embarrassment. And it’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay, because we’re gonna make it okay.”

Imagine what would happen if compassion were normal.

Imagine how many people would still be here.

Imagine that.]

i tried to find guidelines for formatting comic pages, but couldn’t find anything for multiple-panel comics.  Hope this works. ❤ 

[TEXT: So why is it so hard to be kind? Why does being nice feel so…embarrassing?

IMAGE: a white girl with blonde hair stands at her locker.  she is taken by surprise as a girl in a hijab hugs her from behind. A smiling girl with dark skin and hair is walking behind them.  

TEXT: Why can’t we just say, “hey, it could’ve been me. I’ve sent those emails. I’ve taken those selfies. I’ve tried to hide stuff from my parents.

IMAGE: the girl with dark hair joins the hug, as a white girl with blue hair and a black boy in a trilby watch from across the hall.

TEXT: It could’ve been me, so I’m gonna help you through it. I’m gonna stand with you through the waves of mortifying embarrassment. And it’s gonna be okay. 

IMAGE: The girl with blue hair energetically joins the hug, as the boy hangs back looking dubious.

TEXT: It’s gonna be okay, because we’re gonna make it okay.”

IMAGE: The boy in the trilby reluctantly joins the hug, looking over his shoulder and announcing “long, dramatic sigh.”

TEXT: Imagine what would happen if compassion were normal.

IMAGE: several more students of various races and genders join in the hug, which has moved to the middle of the hall with the white girl in the middle of the group.

TEXT: Imagine how many people would still be here.

IMAGE: the girl with dark skin and hair is smiling happily in the middle of the crush of people.  

TEXT: Imagine that.

IMAGE: The boy in the trilby pokes his head up, raises his hand, and says, “okay, I’ve used up my feels. let me OUT please!”]

probablygobletrpgideas:

inkskinned:

inkskinned:

dear universe;

hello. i am writing to let you know you did good job on the stars, and also on cats.

yours respectfully,
me

dear universe,

in the original post of this, it says “dogs” where it now says “cats”. i do not know when (or how) it got changed, but i am glad that someone loved cats enough to do that, because i love my dog and i also love my cats and i felt bad about not mentioning it that first time. i’m also glad for all the tags where people told me what i should have added (like libraries and waffles and maple syrup) and i am glad for all the comments about how much they love their pets (and some people have such cool pets!)

i kind of think, universe, if we are your children, this is our macaroni art. see, see, see, you gave us a little bit of the stars, and we’ve made our own constellations. we tried to give back to you by making art and music and books and bad poetry and our laughter and our love and our tv dramadies. we took pictures of the night sky and pictures of sunsets and pictures of dew, we fell in love with space and the rivers and the rain. i personally have my desktop background as a picture of one of your nebulas. your hair looked great that day.

i think…. you did a good job, universe, on the stars, and what the stars became, because you put us together and yes, yes, things might be terrible – but good gracious did we make so many things worth loving, worth writing to you about, worth telling you – thank you, i’m taking the spark you put in me and using it to be kind, to be alive, to be wildly fierce about our gardens and gentle about our pets.

so hello. i amend my previous memo. i am writing to let you know you did a good job on the stars, and on my dog and my cats and the lizard i kept illegally in my apartment. and universe, i hope you’re watching, because some of the people you made? they’re great, universe, and they’re full of love, just endlessly capable of loving. and they give me hope.

and through them, universe, that’s you. that’s how the stars sing.

yours respectfully,
me

This is a great post to read at 10 PM

Powerful Hollywood Women Unveil Anti-Harassment Action Plan

nextwavecinema:

                                 *~* NEW YEARS 2018 *~*

Driven by outrage and a resolve to correct a power imbalance that seemed intractable just months ago, 300 prominent actresses and female agents, writers, directors, producers and entertainment executives have formed an ambitious, sprawling initiative to fight systemic sexual harassment in Hollywood and in blue-collar workplaces nationwide.

The initiative called TIME’S UP includes:

  •  A legal defense fund, backed by $13 million in donations, to help less privileged women — like janitors, nurses and workers at farms, factories, restaurants and hotels — protect themselves from sexual misconduct and the fallout from reporting it.
  • Legislation to penalize companies that tolerate persistent harassment, and to discourage the use of nondisclosure agreements to silence victims.
  •  A drive to reach gender parity at studios and talent agencies that has already begun making headway.
  • And a request that women walking the red carpet at the Golden Globes speak out and raise awareness by wearing black.

Powerful Hollywood Women Unveil Anti-Harassment Action Plan

alexkablob:

alexkablob:

Everyone keeps saying “this is the first time a Democrat has won a senate race in Alabama since 19–”

And I’m like

No.

No you don’t understand.

The last Democrat to win a Senate race in Alabama was Richard Shelby.

The other current Senator for Alabama.

Who is now a Republican.

Because the Dixiecrats jumped parties from the Democrats to the Republicans.

This is the first time the White Supremacist Southern Establishment Dixiecrat lost in Alabama since fucking Reconstruction.

Doug Jones is not a Conservative Democrat like John Bel Edwards or Joe Manchin.

Doug Jones is a bog-standard mainstream liberal Democrat.

Doug Jones is pro-choice and pro-LGBT rights.

Doug Jones personally destroyed the Alabama KKK.

Doug Jones is the Senator-Elect from the State of Alabama.

pyrrhiccomedy:

catwinchester:

evieplease:

iamthebadwolf85:

taste-like:

nem sirok csak 65ezren belementek a szemembe

A crowd of 65,000 sings ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ perfectly while waiting for a Green Day concert

THIS. IS. PERFECTION.

@catwinchester

Amazing! 

1. how the fuck did Green Day follow that

2. you know, we have fun here, with the word “meme,” but according to meme theory, which is an actual thing pioneered by reptilian human impersonator Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, most of what we call memes are very unsuccessful memes. A meme, in the scientific sense – if one is generously disposed to consider memetics a science on any particular day – is an idea that acts like a gene. That is, it seeks to replicate itself, as many times as possible, and as faithfully as possible.

That second part is important. A gene which is not faithful in its replication mutates, sometimes rapidly, sometimes wildly. The result might be cancer or a virus or (very very very rarely) a viable evolutionary step forward, but whatever the case, it is no longer the original gene. That gene no longer exists. It could not successfully reproduce itself.

The memes we pass around on the internet are, in general, very short lived and rapidly mutating. It’s rare for any meme to survive for more than a year: in almost all cases, they appear, spread rapidly, spawn a thousand short-lived variations, and then are swiftly forgotten. They’re not funny anymore, or interesting anymore. They no longer serve any function, and so they’re left behind, a mental evolutionary dead end.

This rendition of Freddie Mercury’s immortal opera Bohemian Rhapsody is about the most goddamned amazing demonstration of a successful meme I’ve ever seen. This song is 42 years old, as of 2017. FORTY TWO YEARS OLD. And it has spread SO far, and replicated itself across the minds of millions of people SO faithfully, that a gathering of 65,000 more or less random people, with nothing in common except that they all really like it when Billie Joe Armstrong does the thing with the guitar, can reproduce it perfectly. IN PERFECT TIME. THEY KNOW THE EXACT LENGTH OF EVERY BRIDGE. THEY EVEN GET THE NONSENSE WORDS RIGHT. THEY DIVIDE THEMSELVES UP IN ORDER TO SING THE COUNTER-CHORUS. 

“Yeah, Pyrrhic, lots of people know this song.”

Listen, you glassy-eyed ninny: our species’ ability to coherently pass along not just genetic information, but memetic information as well, is the reason we’re the dominant species on this planet. Language is a meme. Civilization is a collection of memes. Lots of animals can learn, but we may be the only animal that latches onto ephemera – information that doesn’t reflect any concrete reality, information with little to no immediate practical application – and then joyfully, willfully, unrelentingly repeats it and teaches it to others. Look at how wild this crowd is, because they’re singing the same song! It doesn’t DO anything. It’s not even why they showed up here today! If you sent out a letter to those same 65,000 people that said, “Please show up in this field on this day in order to sing Bohemian Rhapsody,” very few of them would have showed up. But I would be surprised to meet a single person in that crowd who joined in the singing who doesn’t remember this moment as the most amazing part of a concert they paid hundreds of dollars to see.

And they’re just sharing an idea. It’s stunning and ridiculous. Something about how our brains work make us go, “Hey!! Hey everybody!! I found this idea! It’s good! I like it! I’m going to repeat it! Do you know it too?? Repeat it with me! Let’s get EVERYBODY to know it and repeat it and then we can all have it together at the same time! It’s a good idea! I’m so excited to repeat it exactly the way I heard it, as loudly as I can, as often as possible!!”

This is how culture happens! This is how countries happen! Sometimes a persistent, infectious idea – a meme – can be dangerous or dark. But our human delight at clutching up good memes like magpies and flapping back to our flock to yell about them to everyone we know is why we as a species bothered to start doing things like “telling stories” and “writing stuff down.”

“That’s a lot of spilled ink for a Queen song, Pyrrhic.”

Man I just fucking love people.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

How the town of Whitefish defeated its neo-Nazi trolls — and became a national model of resistance

scholvin:

As pleasing as it is to see Richard Spencer get hit in the face over and over and over on my dash tonight, he actually suffered a far more humiliating and important defeat earlier this week. 

Remember how he called for an armed march against the tiny Jewish community in his hometown of Whitefish, Montana for last Monday? Yeah. About that:

The rabbi’s voice began to break. For several seconds, the park was silent, save for the sound of Roston sniffling. “You let us know that we are not alone,” she finally said. “You let us know that our community, that our amazing magnificent town of Whitefish, is not only protected by great, divinely formed mountains of earth — this town is protected by a wall of humanity that refuses to be quiet or sit still in the face of bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia or anti-Semitism.”

TL;DR – the entire town rallied around their neighbors. They got unequivocal, strong, bipartisan support from state officials. Reinforcements arrived from around the country. And the nazis fucking bailed. They never even showed up.

That article needs editing, but it’s worth a scan for the lessons in it. The one I’m holding onto is that we can never give these clowns power they don’t actually have, especially the nameless online assbags. We can’t cede an inch. If we care about each other, and just show up, they will lose every. fucking. time. 

How the town of Whitefish defeated its neo-Nazi trolls — and became a national model of resistance

charlietheskonk:

charlietheskonk:

charlietheskonk:

charlietheskonk:

in my preschool class we’re holding “class president of the day” elections this week.  we already elected our first female president on monday, even though one of the boy’s campaign promises was to “bring jewels” to the classroom.

tuesday: we talked about the real election happening today. one child says she hopes hillary clinton wins and all of her classmates chime in with sober agreements. one boy says voting for the drumpf “would not be a very good idea.”

they elected the other female candidate today in our mock election, so she won over the jewels boy and the other boy, who said he would make bracelets for the entire class. my students are surprisingly practical, seeing as they voted for the candidate who would clean the school and help them with their work.

once president, she did do those things, but also punched one of her constituents into the sandbox, so, i mean … she’s sort of a typical politician i guess

wednesday: the children announced tensely to me that trump won the real election. one boy said, “i still don’t like him, but we can’t say we hate him, because then we would be saying we hate the president.”

i said that was true, and that saying we hate him sounds a lot like something trump would say. they nodded and continued to help the toddler class students get their snack plates to the table without dropping their apple slices.

they elected one of the girls again, so she served her second term by helping her friends button their art smocks before we made our galaxy paintings. (because if you think i’m gonna create an art lesson plan to focus any more attention on this shitshow of an election, you are wrong.)

neither of the boy candidates have stood much of a chance in this race so far. one of them came to me and said he was rethinking his campaign promises, and could he make a new poster

he got a paper and wrote a huge list of ways that he would help keep all the children safe, including reminding them to use walking feet and not to touch broken glass. then he volunteered to work in the toddler room and cleaned up all of their messes, and moved all the shelves in my room so he could clean behind them.

i’m feeling so hopeless right now, but these children remind me that there is a future and they. are. it.

thursday: today i was very pleased. our president today is the little boy who made changes to his campaign promises. he also wore tyrannosaurus rex foot slippers. when the voters were shaking his hand to congratulate him on his victory, one said, “good job, and thank you for having monster feet”

he watched everyone like a hawk to make sure they were being safe, and then spent the morning writing in his journal about how much he loves all of us and his bicycle.