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My sociology professor had a really good metaphor for privilege today. She didn’t talk about race or gender or orientation or class, she talked about being left-handed.
A left-handed person walks into most classrooms and immediately is made aware of their left-handedness - they have to sit in a left-handed seat, which restricts their choices of where to sit. If there are not enough left-handed seats, they will have to sit in a right-handed seat and be continuously aware of their left-handedness. (There are other examples like left-handed scissors or baseball mitts as well.)
Meanwhile, right-handed people have much more choice about where to sit, and almost never have to think about their right-handedness.
Does this mean right-handed people are bad? No.
Does it mean that we should replace all right-handed desks with left-handed desks? No.
But could we maybe use different desk styles that can accommodate everyone and makes it so nobody has limited options or constant awareness that they are different? Yes.
Now think of this as a metaphor. For social class. For race. For ethnicity. For gender. For orientation. For anything else that sets us apart.
WHY DOESN’T THIS HAVE MORE NOTES?
Because I posted it about 90 seconds ago, calm down.
(via fuckingconversations)
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#fightforfacts
Snopes is struggling due to mounting legal fees and they are a crucial organization for the fucked up, anti-truth time we’re currently living in, so I’m donating what I can and also writing drabbles* in exchange for any level of donation.
If you donate $50+, I am also willing to update the WIP of your choice lol
Just donate & send me a screenshot and a prompt/pairing.
*in this case, drabbles means at least 100 words; they will likely be more because i have no restraint or good sense
Here’s the letter from the Snopes page describing the issue:
November 1, 2019 by David Mikkelson, Organizer
Dear Readers,
We wish we had better news, but they have filed another appeal. This time they’re appealing our successful defense of our First Amendment rights.
Parties suing us — including newly minted CEO of Salon.com, Chris Richmond — have spent years filing losing motions, asking for continuances, changing legal counsel, and appealing adverse rulings.
It is all part of a scheme, our counsel wrote, “to ‘bring legal hell’ on Snopes employees in retaliation for terminating Snopes’ contract with Proper Media.”
Even the court described their tactics as “hostile.”
With the truth on our side, we have foiled their attempts so far. But now the case will drag on even longer and legal fees will continue to drain our revenues, threatening Snopes’ existence.
But even while they try to drag us down, we are showing up to make Snopes work better for you.
Soon we will bring you two major new developments:
A membership program that will reward sustaining Snopes supporters with special features and exclusive content.
And Snopes News, a feed without the falsity, where you can find headlines of the day curated by fact-checkers and editors you know you can trust. Sign up for updates here.
So long as we have your support, we will not give up.
Make a contribution today to defend Snopes.
Truthfully yours,
Team Snopes
I’d like to add Snopes is one of THE most trusted sources out there, and if it goes we will lose a great deal(via digitaldiscipline)
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sci-fi jobs that must exist that i find inexplicably amusing:
- space customs
- tow trucks except they’re towing illegally parked spaceships
- for that matter, spaceship thieves, if only for how much more effort i imagine that would take
- irs agents who have to find tax evaders who went 2 or 3 galaxies over
- literally everything about the concept of the space version of the dmv
- imagine being the person who teaches hapless 16 year olds how to fly a spaceship
- people who analyze Old Earth media for a living the same way people now analyze shakespeare or beowulf, aka a bunch of scholarly and serious academics writing papers arguing the true meaning of Mean Girls and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and A Very Potter Musical
- cruise spaceships. you’re taking a slow tour of saturn’s rings and people are still complaining about you running out of cocktail sauce
feel free to add more
- Space cartographer. Some poor sucker’s gotta literally count the stars in order to chart ‘em. Did you think computers made the maps??
- Gas station attendant, but in space. You thought earth truck stops were liminal? Try pausing to refuel on an asteroid hurtling though the middle of inky-black nowhere. You’d see some interesting folks pass through, though
- Imagine working at a space hotel, for that matter
- Traveling Salesman
op, back again, with more
- IT workers who deal with tech that can communicate across the multiverse, rearrange people’s molecules, and communicate with ancient eldritch gods…….and 9 out of 10 problems can still be fixed with “read the instruction manual” or “did you turn it off and back on again”
- let’s players. people’s love of video games and screaming profanity at said video games transcends galaxy and species lines
- the post office. bravest people in ‘verse. though they did have to change their creed. it’s now: “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor black holes nor meteor showers nor solar flares stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds…”
- also, food delivery peeps. all the above danger + dealing with more drunk aliens.
- SPACE UBER
- tourist traps. “welcome to the galaxy’s biggest ball of yarn. yes, it’s this one, not the one on mars. the martians are filthy liars and they’ve always been jealous of our superior attraction.”
- science museum tour guides. the museums have gotten…….very big. it’s a very exhausting job, but it’s so worth it when the field trips full of kids from various galaxies get all excited
- space drug dealers
I think maritime law would come closer to reality than traffic law in space. Things like: a boat that breaks away from moorings and washes ashore is free to claim by whoever finds it.
(via atlinmerrick)
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People go to Walmart because it’s cheap and Walmart can replace humans with machines. Also if you do the math, Walmart can not afford to pay their works a $15 an hour wage.
Anonymous
Well, let’s do the math.
Walmart has approximately 1.5 million employees. Now not all of are getting minimum wage, but just for argument’s sake, let’s give all of them another $7.25 an hour. Full time (which they all very aren’t.)
7.25 * 40 * 1,500,000,000
That’s 4.35 billion dollars.
That’s an insane amount of money.
Best reports show that Walmart’s annual gross profit for 2019 was $129.104B, a 1.7% increase from 2018 [*]
So DOUBLING their entire minimum wage staff, and giving everyone else an extra $7.25 would costs them 3.3% of their profits.
They.
Can.
Afford.
It.
As for medical benefits, Walmart has enough employees that they could start their OWN medical insurance company, solely for their employees, and get deals good enough that they could undersell almost everyone.
And if you don’t think they haven’t considering their own medical insurance company, think again - last year they were looking into buying Humana.
They.
Can.
Afford.
It.
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A tree on fire after a lightning strike
I think you mean “the model design for the next gas fireplace I own”.
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Heartbreaking scene from the film
Schindler’s List (1993)
OK LEMME TELL YOU STRAIGHT UP ABOUT OSKAR SCHINDLER.
Everyone knows the story, right? His protected workers? How none of his ammo worked? The full story is a lot more complex and a hell of a lot more breathtaking.He wasn’t a saint. in fact, he was a bit of a douche, all things considered. Whored around on his wife, worked for the Abwehr, he was a member of the nazi party - not a particularly devout follower, but because he was a big fat remora fish who realised this particular shark could give him business opportunities, and if he wined and dined the upper crust that scored him even better ones. He realised very quickly he could make an absolute killing on the black market and dove in headfirst with the profiteering. Hell, he initially hired Jews in his factory because nazi strictures made them much much cheaper labour than hiring normal Polish labourers.
But the thing is, once you start surrounding yourself with a particular, persecuted demographic, you begin to notice things. You hear things, things you aren’t insulated from. You begin to realise something.
And Oskar Schindler began to dimly grasp what was happening and he realised that it was not something he could countenance. And his whole gameplay changed.
He no longer wined and dined for business opportunities, but to protect his workers. He went flat out fucking balls to the wall to rescue a group of his workers from the jaws of Auschwitz, and built them a “camp” that offered at least the barest of human comforts, right under SS supervision. He moved his entire fucking factory to save his workers, he realised an SS-provided list of names was left with blank spaces and just started filling in more. He blew everything he had made profiteering and scheming to protect 1200 people because he found that there was a fucking line and it had to be drawn. He arranged for three thousand Jewish women to be moved to textile factories in the Sudetenland to give them a chance of surviving the war. He blew all his money, resources and time on feeding, caring for and trying to protect as many Jews as he could.After the war he failed every business venture he tried. He became a raging alcoholic, surviving on donations sent by Schindlerjuden. According to some, he traded the ring gifted to him by his workers for Schnapps. He died in relative obscurity, almost penniless.
He wasn’t a great man, or a saint. He was an average schmuck, and spent most of his time fucking around until he abruptly found himself in a situation where he couldn’t. He almost stumbled into his decency. But once he had, he absolutely took hold of it, and directly because of him 8,500 people are alive today.
Never, ever doubt the ability of a single human to RISE.This guy is Giorgio Perlasca.
He started out a fascist. Right from the beginning. He fought in East Africa during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, and in the Spanish Civil War. He was awarded a diplomatic mission from fucking Francisco Franco.
Then, he starts noticing things he doesn’t like. He doesn’t like how close to Nazis they’re getting. And then, in 1938, racial laws against Jewish people are passed in Italy and that is when he realizes that fascism is a pile of shit, and that he fucked up, but at that point he’s in too deep. He had a duty to his country, he thought, and worked to aid the army. What else could he do?
As it turns out, a lot.
On 8 September 1943, Italy surrenders to the Allied forces. Italians had to choose whether to join the fascist Italian Social Republic or side with the Allies. He chooses the latter and, due to his status as a veteran in the Spanish Civil War, he obtains political asylum at the Spanish Embassy in Budapest, changing his name in ‘Jorge’.
That could have been the end of it for him. He could have stayed safe and comfortable until the end of the war. He did not.
Perlasca worked with the Spanish Chargé d'Affaires, Ángel Sanz Briz, and other diplomats of neutral states to smuggle Jews out of Hungary. The system he devised consisted of furnishing ‘protection cards’ which placed Jews under the guardianship of various neutral states. He helped Jews find refuge in protected houses under the control of various embassies, which had extraterritorial conventions that gave them an equivalent to sovereignty. They could provide asylum for Jews.
When Sanz Briz was removed from Hungary to Switzerland in November 1944, he invited Perlasca to accompany him to safety. However, Perlasca chose to remain in Hungary. The Hungarian government ordered the Spanish Embassy building and the extraterritorial houses where the Jews took refuge to be cleared out. Perlasca immediately made the false announcement that Sanz Briz was due to return from a short leave, and that he had been appointed his deputy for the meantime.
Throughout the winter, Perlasca was active in hiding, shielding and feeding thousands of Jews in Budapest. He continued issuing safe conduct passes (initiated by Sanz Briz), on the basis of a Spanish law passed in 1924 that granted citizenship to Jews of Sephardic origin (descendants of Iberian Jews expelled from Spain in the late 15th century).
In December 1944, Perlasca rescued two boys from being herded onto a freight train in defiance of a German lieutenant colonel on the scene. The Swedish diplomat-rescuer Raoul Wallenberg, also present there, later told Perlasca that the officer who had challenged him was Adolf Eichmann. During 45 days period from 1 December 1944 to 16 January 1945, Perlasca helped save more than 5,000 Jews.
After the war, he returned to Italy and lived a quiet life. He told no one what had had done in Hungary - not even to his wife, who got the shock of her life when a group of Hungarian Jews finally found him in 1987, only five years before his death. When asked why he’d done what he did he just answered - “What would you have done in my place?”
He started out a fascist. He became of one the Righteous Among the Nations.
You don’t have to be a saint. You may have been on the wrong side. You may have made choices that are bad and stupid and just plain wrong. You don’t necessarily have to even be that good a person. But sometimes it comes down to one choice and one choice only and sometimes, despite everything, you just do the right thing.
They are called the Righteous for a reason. Not because they were saints (most weren’t), but because they were able to see wrong in the world where others looked past it, and not only refused to be party to it, but opposed it with their lives.
We are all capable of Righteousness.#Schindler'slist #therighteous
(via melthemagpie)
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An astonishingly useful thread on progressive vs. conservative thought by Jennifer Dziura (text version via ThreadReader):
Wow, that is legitimately horrifying.
I intended to help someone, but it turns out the thing I did kills people. The only moral option is … Doubling down and killing more people.
It all boils down to the different moral foundations people use. For progressives, care, equality and “freedom to” are the main building blocks for deciding whether something is just and moral.
- Does it harm people?
- Does it result in inequality?
- Does it prevent people from engaging in society?As long as the proposed idea (behaviour, policy) clears those two hurdles, it’s good to go for progressives.This type of thinking is super compatible with consequentialism.
For conservatives, there are more foundations to consider - authority, loyalty, fairness, purity and “liberty from”.- Does it violate established social hierarchy? (in this approach, hierarchy is good and beneficial).
- Does it damage in-group bonds? (again, strong in-group loyalties are considered to be good).
- Does it fail to reward contributors and punish wrong-doers? (this is a big one - fairness is about just desserts and consequences for actions, not equality).
- Does it breach the sanctity of the body? (this is a complex one, rooted in cultural notions of disgust and body as a temple).
- Does it force people to engage in actions they disagree with? (this is the freedom from taxation, PC, and so on).Libertarians pretty much care only about Liberty from things, usually the government.
This complex set of values means that the same idea or policy will get different moral evaluations. Let’s take a few examples:
Legalising weed: all fine in terms of the progressive foundations. But it breaches purity (the body is a temple) and to an extent interacts with conservative version of fairness by removing a punishment on what they consider to be morally wrong behaviour.
Universal healthcare: again, all clear in progressive values. This policy will help. But in the conservative value set, the policy fails at fairness by ‘rewarding’ non-contributing behaviour (poverty and illness). Let’s not get into a debate over how this is even classified as behaviour rather than a condition. It also breaches freedom from for people who are mostly focused on being free from government, rather than private insurers. The interesting caveat is that purity should favour healthcare - if the body is sacred, we should as a society value accessible ways to keep it healthy and clean. However, because many health conditions have contributing behavioural factors, it can be considered unjust to help people out of the consequences of their actions - even at a net loss to society.
If anyone is interested, Jonathan Haidt writes a lot about the moral foundations, and while he’s often annoyingly centrist in how he presents the ideas, the research is pretty solid.
(via fuckingconversations)
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The Megalomaniac and the Stock Market
Trump doesn’t want the public to think the stock market has tanked because of Trump’s government shutdown, his trade war with China, and the $1.9 trillion increase in the nation’s debt caused by his tax cut for corporations and the wealthy. (Actually, these are the major reasons for the market’s drop.)
So he’s blaming the Fed and its chair, Jerome Powell, for raising interest rates. And he’s ordered his staff to find a legal rationale for removing Powell. (It’s highly unlikely Trump has legal authority to do this, but like every other illegal thing Trump has tried, it may end up in the federal courts.)
Which is rattling investors even more, because they worry Trump is trying to turn the Fed into his own political tool.
All modern economies depend on public confidence that politicians can’t lower interest rates to serve their own purposes – such as getting short-term growth at the expense of long-term inflation and instability. (Which is exactly what Trump wants to do.)
Adding to the panic is Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who announced today that he called bank executives in order to ensure that markets are functioning properly – an intervention that Treasury secretaries typically make when there’s an economic crisis.
Bottom line: Trump’s ego and his economic team’s incompetence not only threaten the stock market, but could tank the whole economy.
Bob, here’s the thing:
Fuck the economy.
It doesn’t work for 90% of Americans, and that percentage is higher if you think globally.
Late-stage Capitalism is an ouroborous made of cancer, and the sooner it dies, the sooner something healthier and better for everyone can get out from under its gold-plated boot.
In short:
Then those of us the economy doesn’t work for had better start thinking in terms of a famine. Because the first thing that will skyrocket in price is foodstuffs.
Start growing gardens and preserving foods, start buying flour on sale and putting it in the freezer, as well as proteins.
Get your finances in order as quickly as possible. Get fixed interest credit cards or pay them off entirely. Tuck away cash in your home. It’s doubtful that banks will fail, but a bank holiday could be done, and ATMs won’t work if it gets that bad.
(via digitaldiscipline)
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