Songs They Won't Play On The Radio

DAILY VIOLET: What happened with my Security BSides talk

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 09:37:28 +0100

DAILY VIOLET: What happened with my Security BSides talk:

It had been decided months ago that I would give a talk at Security BSides San Francisco. The subject of my talk was up in the air until just before the conference started, and the organizers were okay with that, but to not inconvenience or surprise the organizers, I decided to present the same…

Women being bullied and silenced by mainstream white feminists: still happens way too often to WoC, now also happening in the community I call home.

Thank you, all the amazing women of colour I follow whose writing has given me positive role models for how to speak up against essentialism and other fuckery of that nature. Thank you for your stories and lived examples that have shown me when to stop cutting bullshit any more slack and let the perpetrators have it with both barrels. Thank you for being consistent and making sense. Listening to you has made me braver and stronger. I look forward to using these gifts you’ve given me, in your service as well as in my community’s. I will always be in the process of learning what that means, but I hope as long as I keep on listening, and check myself if y’all say I’m not helping, I’ll be headed in the right direction.

Esoterica: I hope y’all aren’t expecting petitions & social media outrage to send...

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 20:38:30 +0100

Esoterica: I hope y’all aren’t expecting petitions & social media outrage to send...:

karnythia:

I hope y’all aren’t expecting petitions & social media outrage to send Zimmerman to jail. The fact that he’s claiming self-defense after he stalked & harassed & killed this kid says a lot. He’s not going to jail, there is no justice coming from the same system that thinks we all deserve to die….

This is entirely true, but that said, social media outrage could pump up a legal fund to the point where a civil suit for wrongful death would grow legs.

karnythia: super-eklectic1: little Jamaican girl going off...

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 04:09:38 +0100

karnythia:

super-eklectic1:

little Jamaican girl going off ahahahahaaaaaaaaa

her accent is better than joel’s too

joel stay failin man smh

I love angry kids. Love them.

Kid’s got a great vocabulary on her. Of course, with a father (I assume) who refers to blood pressure in conversation with her, that’s not too surprising.

creolesoul: And there ya have...

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 01:24:02 +0100

creolesoul:

And there ya have it.

graham-bailey:

roropcoldchain:

busteebecky:

#Word!

Welpington.

That.

sirmitchell:

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:15:30 +0100

sirmitchell:

So this happened

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:39:38 +0100

My Dad: *driving me and my mom home from the airport*
My Mom: I was thinking when your sisters are here we could all go see the Muppets movie.
Me: I've heard some really good things about it, but I've also heard there's some really racist parts in it.
My Mom: Oh? Like what?
Me: *explains the whole business with the Moopets*
My Mom: Oh. Well, I don't think we should support that, then.

skullkidtookmyocarina: This is my friend Chelsi. She’s one of...

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:03:54 +0100

skullkidtookmyocarina:

This is my friend Chelsi. She’s one of the sweetest girls you’ll ever meet, and she’s got family, loads of friends, and a boyfriend who are all worried for her. She went missing yesterday, and she’s now classified as a runaway.. Which is insane because she’s definitely not that type of person..
I’m not going to guilt you into reblogging this. I’m going to ask. If you could take 4 seconds and hit reblog, it could cause the right person to see this and bring her home. You’d want this to spread too, if this was your friend, or your sister, or your daughter.
Please just reblog this. I promise it won’t hurt your blog’s reputation. We just want her home. Thank you.

Point, click, and shoot they asses It’s the only way to...

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:06:15 +0100

Point, click, and shoot they asses

It’s the only way to get the truth to the masses

Starry Eyed Futurist #4: I know it's a cliche, but mobile IS the future

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 01:54:02 +0100

theimaginaryhackathon:

I absolutely love Growington, a platform for swapping homegrown vegetables. Now, it was only launched a few months ago but quite a few people are using it (in the Greater London area, anyway.) I really hope it takes off. I agree with the Growington when they say our food system is broken. But I also have a vague feeling that this sort of network is a glimpse into a not-so-distant future.

Read More

This post is brilliant, and ties into some thoughts I scribbled down the other night about the future of work and need to tie into a proper post when I am not packing for an intercontinental flight.

Special Agent Boss Lady: Reblog if you have ever cried at an episode of Doctor Who.

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 23:22:08 +0100

Special Agent Boss Lady: Reblog if you have ever cried at an episode of Doctor Who.:

ktempest:

maevele:

thefremen:

timeladychancellor:

sue-beats-chuck-norris:

curlyhairedchildofthetardis:

omchbella:

“My name is Rose Tyler, and this is the story of how I died”

“I was gonna be with you. Forever”

“You Watch Us Run”

”Kazran!”

^ none of that

only this

“To me Van Gogh is the finest painter of them all….

Exactly. None of the Rose Tyler bullshit, but that episode had me crying almost the entire time.

Yup. The Van Gogh ep, K9’s sacrifice, and Donna’s end story all gave me tears. Doctor’s wife, OMG, CRYING. Parts of Amy and Rory’s EPIC LOVE give me sniffles. I’ve cried over River Song multiple times. I shed not a tear over any part of Rose’s plot. I was way more attached to Van Gogh after one ep than I was Rose after however many seasons she was on.

I wasn’t as big a Rose fan in the end, but I cried when she left. I cried more the moment the Doctor realized she was gone than the scene on the beach because Rose’s hysterical crying made me side-eye her hard as hell.

I cried at the end of Father’s Day.

Love & Monsters made me cry a bit. And K9 in School Reunion had me, too.

Last of the Time Lords had me bawling. Especially when I realized Martha was leaving him and I was all OH THANK YOU, GO GURRL.

And yes, what happened to Donna was like half the tissue box because it was so terrible.

I cry all over “A Good Man Goes To War” though mainly because it was the last episode Len and I ever watched together. We were so looking forward to “Let’s Kill Hitler”. :(

Dear #occupymumbai

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:56:05 +0100

rebelrebelbatcat:

jaded16india:

I know that you are preoccupied (no pun intended) with ‘saving’ slum dwellers, with ‘saving’ poor third world women workers — yes that’s who they are in your eyes, nothing more, nothing less — and with the new fad of “occupying” things, you just want to #occupy mumbaislums; let’s just pause to think how bad an idea this is. I was at the meeting when people of the #occupymumbai movement (a few mumbaiites and many westerners) devised the plan to ABANDON SWEATSHOP LABOUR!11!11 by persuading women in the Dharavi slums to stop working, because such imperialist exploitation should come to an end now!11!!

I was only present at your meeting because I work with a collective that works with the workers you are trying to ‘save’. It was pathetic to see you go on and on about how the leather industry from the Dharavi slums is booming and that most of it is exploitative sweatshop labour, because the point isn’t shutting down businesses, it is to fight for wages that will help the workers to earn more than just subsistence money. Leaving jobs is not their option, boycotting the products they manufacture will just put them out of work.

Relegating all discourse around slums to be one of violence, exploitation, abuse is nothing but a form of erasure, of painfully re-drawing, re-framing these workers in solely the victim narrative. Yes, these are their realities. So are networks and connections among most women workers, them organising and forming a trade union, links between the main hub of Mumbai slums (i.e. Dharavi) to other slums. Sure, they don’t have a manifesto or pamplets, don’t even try to pretend their work is worth any less than what it is — a powerful network of labourers all across Mumbai, don’t you see, they are already ‘saving’ themselves? If you want to help, go to *their* meetings, don’t invite a member of the English-speaking collective working with these women to be your bridge to them. Engage with them, they have so much to say and teach you.

I know a few of you read this blog, this open letter isn’t to snide or snark at you. I hope you will listen and engage wisely.

You know who I am.

Reposting because THIS IS REAL and needs to be listened to. This is what I’m talking about when I’m talking about how the Occupy movement needs to engage with, respect and not bulldoze over already-existing community organizing and then act like they’re reinventing the fucking wheel (ESPECIALLY when there is a dynamic wrt privilege in the members of the Occupy movement vs. relative lack of privilege in the communities they’re attempting to address).

Evidence for interbreeding with Neanderthals, only Africans pure

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:55:40 +0100

Evidence for interbreeding with Neanderthals, only Africans pure:

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

alexandraerin:

Prepare for the whiplash as suddenly Neanderthals become seen as the great and noble innovators of history, lifting primitive man out of the dirt.

I LITERALLY just fucking had this conversation with my parents. Like “oh now that white people are more related to neanderthals, new info is gonna be found that neanderthals were all as smart as einstein!!!!” or some other bullshit.

I’m curious what effects this will have on the Neanderthal hypothesis of autism, actually. The numbers for autism and other spectrum disorders are apparently about the same cross-racially in the US, but I haven’t been able to find numbers for Africa generally. (I should start looking at individual countries.)

That awkward moment when you’re explaining to your cat that tomorrow you’re leaving the...

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:49:13 +0100

That awkward moment when you’re explaining to your cat that tomorrow you’re leaving the country for three weeks and you’re not sure if he understands you.

getoutoftherecat: get out of there cat. boxes are not blankets....

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 15:07:35 +0100

getoutoftherecat:

get out of there cat. boxes are not blankets. you are a horrible blanket chooser.

ktempest: karnythia: soydulcedeleche: note-a-bear: soydulcedeleche: and can i LOL again at...

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 04:50:02 +0100

ktempest:

karnythia:

soydulcedeleche:

note-a-bear:

soydulcedeleche:

and can i LOL again at people TRULY and seriously tryina argue that words do NOT change meaning from one context/code to another? that whatever white folks said it means, is what it is, regardless of whether its standard american english or AAVE or whatever else?

i mean…are ya srsly srs?

srsly?

no…

srsly? lol

real talk tho: Growing up I heard heiffa, trifling heffa, and all manner of variation. And I can hardly think of a situation where it was intended as a reflection on someone’s weight. Like, I think I can maybe sorta understand where people are coming from, on a very technical level but….

uh…I only ever heard white people use any variation of “cow” as a dig on someone’s weight. I always heard heiffa/heffa used more like….I dunno, I suppose “fool” or “asshole” replacement, if that makes sense.

wooorrrd. to this day i have YET to hear somebody who speaks AAVE and actually uses the term “heiffa” use it to refer to size or weight in any way…at all. havent seen it yet. for real. i cannot think of one single instance. and im goin on 3 decades on this planet, living among hood POC. :|

If someone asks me not to call them heffa I don’t but for us it has always been a term of endearment & a way to say someone is on that bullshit. The idea that black POC wouldn’t have their own inner community language with different meaning is rooted in the American obsession with being monolingual.

I don’t get how that even works in an American context seeing that even white folks have all kinds of different ways of talking and code switching, though they might not call it that. Do people who argue this never leave their home state? Having lived in 5 now, I notice significant differences in the way words are used based on region. Not even just talking about dialect.

I kinda get the impression a lot of them don’t, actually. I don’t know how representative a sample my sociolinguistics students at UI were with respect to the rest of the country, but code switching was a GIANT MYSTERY OF THE UNIVERSE to easily half the white midwestern kids I taught. Which still confused me, because it’s not as if the midwest has no dialects but the majority one!

You were in Iowa long enough to notice some of the dialect features — do you remember how long it took you to adapt? You’re from NY originally, right?

queer indigenology: you know what irritates the fuck out of me?

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:26:40 +0100

queer indigenology: you know what irritates the fuck out of me?:

queerindigenology:

non-native people using the term two-spirit to mean trans* identified (or using the term to identify themselves). it’s not. really, i promise, it’s that simple. for the record two-spirit is an pan-indian (pan means all, yes virginia there is more than one type of indian) term that was agreed upon at a conference of native QTBLG people as a term to idenitfy one’s self as native and queer. why is this important? because modern sexuality can and often is a colonizing force (read settler homonationalism by morgensen). in addition, sexuality does not happen in isolation it is within our experiences as indigenous peoples who exists as in nations that continue their imperialistic actions, policies, and violence.

example, me as a queer native woman could use the term two spirit. i am cis, femme identified, and light-skinned; it is still appropriate for me to use the term and not be offensive. i don’t use it cause i have some issues with pan-indianism being new to it cause i’m tlingit from alaska and it’s different up there.

so end story, if you’re white and talking about how you want to use/identify with the term two-spirit, it is wrong and offensive. Additionally, it’s even worse if you start spewing romanticized bullshit about two genders in one body, opposite gender in another body, more than one gender, etc… why? because although some tribes and nations (oh yeah, btw, there’s a lot of us and we’re different. we’re not just all indians) did have different ways of conceptualizing genders and models that could reflect current trans* narratives and discourses that could reflect that line of thinking; that’s just it, it was a different way of conceptualizing gender. so by continuing to impose colonial sexuality conceptions upon it, you’re continuing to erase indigenous identities, our varied and different cultures, and the fact that we are different people and nations.

to my indigneous peeps, let’s have fun with the term and continue to enrich it with our own amazing and different experiences of being queer/LBGT/fabulous/non-heterosexual/gender fucking/basically being our sweet native selves.

(oh, and DO NOT even think that admiring us and saying how it’s all sunshine and fucking daises with native communities in regards to queerness and how you like the term so much because of the above logic.) if you like it cause it’s awesome to not have a term that is not occurring in isolation or upholds a single identity politic, go for it, cause it is pretty fucking awesome.

/finally putting my degree to use.

As an alternative to “two-spirit” for non-indigenous folks who identify with (some ratio of) two genders in one body, might I suggest adopting my favourite gender and chemistry pun, racemic?

(Yes yes yes, I know optical isomerism and cis/trans isomerism are not the same thing, but the notion of a racemic mixture does map rather nicely onto many descriptions of non-binary gender, including my own experience, no points for guessing that last one.)

if you are truly triggered by being yelled at, it is in your own best interest to not be an oppressive douchebag.

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 20:46:05 +0100

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

alexandraerin:

stogu:

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

feministjenn:

via dumbthingswhitepplsay

Okay now you all know that I’m the first person to say that marginalized groups have a right to be angry.

BUT

I have a problem with this. So just because I mess up and say something stupid one day, I deserve to deal with being triggered?

I don’t think so.

Like, do you understand how ableist that is? This is my biggest problem with the online social justice community, and it’s not something that has gone away over my time spent learning and reflecting and becoming aware of my own privileges (and trust me, I have changed a lot). Yet people still actively support this ideology.

So every person with PTSD, or panic attacks, or anxiety, or social anxiety, AT THE VERY MINIMUM, can’t participate in social justice communities? Really?

I know I’m going to get flames for saying this but honestly I’m sick of seeing shit like this float around. I will be the first person to get angry and justify others getting angry at someone who is “not getting it.” But I will not sit here and support triggering people. Nope. People are going to mess up. We need to allow for mistakes. No one’s perfect. I’m not saying that it’s an excuse for bigoted remarks and behavior. However, the process of being an ally and becoming aware of your own privileges involves making mistakes.

It is not ableist. It really isn’t. Because the fact is? You might’ve triggered OTHER PEOPLE with your oppressive comments. And whose fault is that? It’s YOUR fault. Why should other people be denied because YOU were ignorant? They shouldn’t. Several people are tortured by their marginalizations and have become mentally ill because of their treatment. There is a LOT of work going towards the mental illness that black people suffer as a result of their shit treatment in society.

It’s not about supporting triggering people. It’s about realizing that if getting yelled at (and some people claim to be triggered by anger from others) triggers you, you damn well need to avoid being oppressive or—guess what—you brought your trigger on yourself. Some triggers are triggers that cannot be catered to; people being angry and yelling at you is one of those, and twice as such if you’re an oppressive asshole.

And people DO often allow for mistakes. I’ve allowed a million mistakes to go by. But what if you trigger someone else with your oppressive comments? Are they supposed to suffer to cater to you, the privileged, oppressive douchebag? No. Hell no. And FUCKING HELL NO.

My question is, what if they wrote that in innocence? I think that restraining yourself to ‘this is offensive’ and not adding in the ‘you fucking whatever’ wouldn’t be too much to ask, honestly. You can tell them it’s offensive, you can tell them they’re an -ist, but you don’t have to add in the hurtful language unless they continue being an ass.

It’s okay to be angry. It’s not okay to use that anger to hurt others.

May I just ask what constitutes writing something in all innocence? The man who proposed the recently publicized ban on interracial couples at a small church says that he’s not racist and his motivations aren’t racist, so is he acting in innocence? People routinely preface or follow up incredibly and blatantly racist remarks with “I’m not racist” or (since those words have now lost all meaning) “I am the least racist/most anti-racist person you will ever meet.”

So who judges “innocence” in all this? We’re a nation of innocents. Few people allow themselves to consider that they might have any guilt or responsibility when it comes to racism… racism is something that other, explicitly evil and villainous people do.

And this is also a great point.

And the fact is, I save my passes for people I know in real life. I face homophobia, misogyny and transphobia from FAMILY every single day. Anything I was gonna tolerate from other people they already took. Yell at them for running down my patience so that there was no more when it got to you. Educate others so that they don’t cross my dash with shit that makes me loses patience before I get to you.

This bolded part here, all of it, a million times over. Network effects, people, network effects.

I had no idea this happened...

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 23:52:15 +0100

abaldwin360:

nonplussedbyreligion:

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Regan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985).

I’ll blame it on being 8 and more tuned in to He-Man and The Ewoks cartoons, than politics at the time. I did study Reaganomics in college but still didn’t know about this happening. (It was actually Economics but my professor thought the sun rose and set out of Reagan’s ass) In the interest of fairness, I guess I could have researched what the face of the Taliban looked liked in 1985 before posting this. Maybe I’m missing the full picture here. Then I remembered their religion and decided to save myself the time. For those of you who already knew about this; Wow. For those just reading this for the first time like I am; Wow. I love history, or rather the recording of it. ~ Kim

Something else Reagan lovers conveniently forget is the uproar surrounding his comments about Nazi solders being victims after he laid a wreath at a cemetery that held the graves of 49 members of the Waffen-SS, an elite wing Hitler’s Nazi Party.

Well, you know, Reagan’s VP’s dad only kinda made bank off the Nazi rise to power.

snowdarkred: spastasmagoria: sokorra: clanaty: kellyjeannejel...

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 06:28:04 +0100

snowdarkred:

spastasmagoria:

sokorra:

clanaty:

kellyjeannejellybean:

mistressmabel-allthekidsagree:

The Nude Theory Project.

I consider that I success.

The Pink Seinfeld Project hahaha

The Purple Pianist Project :D

The None Unforgettable Project.

The Magenta Steven Fry Project aww yeah

….The Rainbow Doctor Project

The Black Pony Project. I am not ashamed.

mistlezhou: WHAT DO THEY MEAN JFWIW this is a great way to get...

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 06:26:34 +0100

mistlezhou:

WHAT DO THEY MEAN

JFWIW this is a great way to get your elbow broken if you are the grabby motherfucker.