Plato's Cave Paintings

rayraymoo: perfumefragrance: Labels.:"Labels are devices for...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:25:58 -0700

perfumefragrance:
Labels.:"Labels are devices for saving talkative persons the trouble of thinking."
I just can’t stand how much hate gets these kunoichis. I surfed on some Naruto forums and it really dissapointed me -.- They judge this girl about something which they aren’t…useless…weak…talentless…they had shown the opposite of negative labels!
Sexism, man. In a show like Naruto that is basically about ninjas and explosions and other stereotypical ‘guy show’ things, female characters have to be twice as good as anyone else to be given half the credit.

But if too many female characters are too strong, then it would be ‘unrealistic’. Like, really dude? Because this show has a giant talking fucking slug as one of it’s main characters.

"Unwed white girls who became pregnant in the postwar years were considered psychologically disturbed..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:51:51 -0700

“Unwed white girls who became pregnant in the postwar years were considered psychologically disturbed but treatable, whereas their black counterparts were presumed to be biologically hypersexual and deviant. Historian Rickie Solinger demonstrates that in the 1950s an unwed white girl who became pregnant could go to a maternity home before her pregnancy showed, deliver the baby and give it up for adoption, and return home to her community with no one the wiser. (White parents concocted stories of their daughters being given the opportunity to study for a semester with relatives.) She could then resume the role of the “nice” girl.

Unwed pregnant black girls, on the other hand, were barred from maternity homes; they were threatened with jail or termination of welfare; and they were accused of using their sexuality in order to be eligible for larger welfare checks. Politicians regarded unwed pregnant black girls as a societal problem, declaring—as they continue to declare today—that they did not want taxpayers to support black illegitimate babies, and sough to control black female sexuality through sterilization legislation”

- Leora Tanenbaum, Slut!: Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation (via janersm)

"Later, after Trek was on the air, the producers used the network’s concerns about sexuality to their..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:17:30 -0700

“Later, after Trek was on the air, the producers used the network’s concerns about sexuality to their advantage — they would deliberately put sexy stuff into episodes for the network to freak out about, so the censors wouldn’t notice other things. For example, in the episode “A Private Little War,” the producers deliberately put in a scene of Kirk having an open-mouth kiss with a half-naked woman, so the network could throw a fit about that — and not notice the blatant Vietnam allegory.”

- 10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About The Original Star Trek (via mediahascookies)

THIS IS WHAT STAR TREK IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT

(via bookishbutcorruptible)

When JJ Abrams decided that he didn’t like the “philosophy” of Star Trek, this is some of the stuff he was knocking.

(via grouchythefish)

Nichelle Nichols (born Grace Dell Nichols on December 28,...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:43:46 -0700

Nichelle Nichols (born Grace Dell Nichols on December 28, 1932)

“For the first time on television we will be seen as we should be seen every day – as intelligent, quality, beautiful people who can sing, dance, but who can also go into space, who can be lawyers, who can be teachers, who can be professors, and yet you don’t see it on television – until now….” - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr to Nichelle Nichols

thescienceofreality: What Happens To Women When They’re Denied...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:08:53 -0700

thescienceofreality:

What Happens To Women When They’re Denied Abortions?

A first-of-its-kind study tracks the health of women who are denied abortions.

[Image via The New York Times.]

“Plenty of research has examined how getting an abortion affects women’s mental health. (In short,it doesn’t, though individual circumstances vary enough that universal statements about women’s reactions can be misleading.)

But what about those who want an abortion, but can’t get one? Like S., a woman the New York Times Magazine interviewed. S. was 24 when she first found she was pregnant and decided to get an abortion. Click the link to read about her attempts to get the procedure, including one unwitting visit to a clinic where a nurse gave her an ultrasound and told her, “Look! Your baby is smiling at you.”

Ultimately, as is the case with most women who are turned away from abortion clinics, S.’s 20-week-old pregnancy was too far along. The opening sequence ends with S. set on a certain road:

She was out of gas money, hadn’t eaten a decent meal in weeks and resigned herself to the fact that, no matter what she wanted or how it would affect her life, she was going to have a baby.

Strangely, researchers have never followed American women who, like S., couldn’t get the abortions they wanted, the New York Times Magazine reported. That’s about to change. The magazine reported on a study, led by Diana Greene Foster, a demographer and professor of ob-gyn at the University of California, San Francisco. Foster’s study is the first to track American women like this over a longer period of time—and the first in the world to compare those women with peers who successfully received abortions.

Although her study is ongoing, Foster already has some answers. Compared to their peers who received abortions, women who can’t get the abortions they want have poorer health and are more likely to live in poverty two years on, even though they qualified for government assistance programs as new moms. Meanwhile, everybody in the study, whether they got abortions or not, generally had the same levels of depression and anxiety.

With time, Foster’s study will be able to assess how well mothers like S. bond with their children, how well those babies fare, and how well their mothers fare financially in the long term.

Whether Foster’s results will budge the beliefs of those on either side of the abortion debate remains to be seen. There’s nothing in the study to address the concerns of people who find abortion immoral—in fact, that’s a question science simply can’t answer.” [via POPSCI.]

Read the full New York Times Magazine article here.

oxboxer: Bows and bullets, bullets and bows!

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:34:46 -0700

oxboxer:

Bows and bullets, bullets and bows!

itswalky: craziesun: youeatadvillikeitscandy: “In fact, by...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:00:58 -0700

itswalky:

craziesun:

youeatadvillikeitscandy:

“In fact, by using her wits a seemingly defenseless pony can be the one who outsmarts and outshines them all.”

CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW THIS IS A KIDS TV SHOW WHERE THE ENTIRE MORAL OF AN EPISODE WAS THAT BEING FEMININE DOES NOT MAKE YOU WEAK

did you guys know that mlp isn’t feminist? a brony told me so.

This was the kid who kept using the phrase “the female” to refer abstractly to girls as if he were writing about the legendary unicorn, right?

ceratopian: Last AB pic: Uncle Iroh! In front of Teavana!...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:25:58 -0700

ceratopian:

Last AB pic: Uncle Iroh! In front of Teavana! haha…

Didn’t take as many pics as I wanted to but that’s per the norm now. :<

vmthecoyote: maslab: timeandbananas: VM. He’s like,...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:03:16 -0700

vmthecoyote:

maslab:

timeandbananas:

VM.

He’s like, several hours’ travel away by now. Otherwise I’d already have stabbed him.

(It’s okay. My knife isn’t actually sharp enough to break the skin. I mostly use it as a pencil sharpener and box opener.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AMn-7qalgw

ijustwantedadragonageurl: perfectedflaw: butthole-spaghetti: g...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:51:50 -0700

ijustwantedadragonageurl:

perfectedflaw:

butthole-spaghetti:

gracie-geek:

crazeace:

fuzzlesan:

fuckyeahspookyshit:

Last year, I spent six months participating in what I was told was a psychological experiment. I found an ad in my local paper looking for imaginative people looking to make good money, and since it was the only ad that week that I was remotely qualified for, I gave them a call and we arranged an interview.

They told me that all I would have to do is stay in a room, alone, with sensors attached to my head to read my brain activity, and while I was there I would visualize a double of myself. They called it my “tulpa.”

It seemed easy enough, and I agreed to do it as soon as they told me how much I would be paid. The next day, I began. They brought me to a simple room and gave me a bed, then attached sensors to my head and hooked them into a little black box on the table beside me. They talked me through the process of visualizing my double again, and explained that if I got bored or restless, instead of moving around, I should visualize my double moving around, or try to interact with him, and so on. The idea was to keep him with me the entire time I was in the room.

I had trouble with it for the first few days. It was more controlled than any sort of daydreaming I’d done before. I’d imagine my double for a few minutes, then grow distracted. By the fourth day, however, I could manage to keep him “present” for the entire six hours. They told me I was doing very well.

The second week, they gave me a different room with wall-mounted speakers. They told me they wanted to see if I could still keep the tulpa with me in spite of distracting stimuli. The music was discordant, ugly, unsettling, and it made the process a little more difficult, but I managed nonetheless. The next week, they played even more unsettling music, punctuated with shrieks, feedback loops, what sounded like an old school modem dialing up and guttural voices speaking some foreign language. I just laughed it off; I was a pro by then.

After about a month, I started to get bored. To liven things up, I started interacting with my doppelganger. we’d have conversations, play rock-paper-scissors, I’d imagine him juggling or break dancing, or whatever caught my fancy. I asked the researchers if my foolishness would adversely affect their study, but they encouraged me.

So, we played and communicated, and that was fun for a while…and then it got a little strange. I was telling him about my first date one day and he corrected me. I’d said my date was wearing a yellow top, and he told me it was a green one. I thought about it for a second and realized he was right. It creeped me out, and after my shift that day I talked to the researchers about it. “You’re using the thought-form to access your subconscious,” they explained. “You knew on some level that you were wrong, and you subconscious corrected yourself.”

What had been creepy was suddenly cool. I was talking to my subconscious! It took some practice, but I found that I could question my tulpa and access all sorts of memories. I could make it quote whole pages of books I’d read once, years before, or things I was taught and immediately forgot in high school. It was awesome.

That was around the time I started “calling up” my double outside of the research center. Not often, at first, but I was so used to imagining him by now that it almost seemed odd not to see him. So, whenever I was bored, I’d visualize my double. Eventually, I started doing it almost all the time. It was amusing to take him along like an invisible friend. I imagined him when I was hanging out with friends, or visiting my mom; I even brought him along on a date once. I didn’t need to speak aloud to him, so I was able to carry out conversations with him and no one was the wiser.

I know that sounds strange, but it was fun. Not only was he a walking repository of everything I knew and everything I had forgotten, he also seemed more in touch with me than I did at times. He had an uncanny grasp of the minutiae of body language that I didn’t even realize I was picking up on. For example, I thought the date I brought him along on was going badly, but he pointed out how she was laughing a little too hard at my jokes and leaning towards me as I spoke, and a bunch of other subtle clues I wasn’t consciously picking up on. I listened and let’s just say that the date went very well.

By the time I’d been at the research center for four months he was with me constantly. The researchers approached me one day after my shift and asked me if I’d stopped visualizing him. I denied it and they seemed pleased. I silently asked my double if he knew what prompted that, but he just shrugged it off. So did I.

I withdrew a little from the world at that point. I was having trouble relating to people. It seemed to me that they were so confused and unsure of themselves, while I had a manifestation of myself to confer with. It made socializing awkward. Nobody else seemed aware of the reasons behind their actions, why some things made them mad and others made them laugh. They didn’t know what moved them…but I did, or at least I could ask myself and get an answer

A friend confronted me one evening. He pounded at the door until I answered it and came in fuming and swearing up a storm. “You haven’t answered when I called you in fucking weeks, you dick!” he yelled. “What’s your fucking problem?”

I was about to apologize to him and probably would have offered to hit the bars with him that night, but my tulpa grew suddenly furious. “Hit him,” it said, and before I knew what I was doing, I had. I heard his nose break. He fell to the floor and came up swinging, and we beat each other up and down my apartment. I was more furious than I have ever been, and I was not merciful. I knocked him to the ground and gave him two savage kicks to the ribs, and that was when he fled, hunched over and sobbing.

The police were by a few minutes later, but I told them that he had been the instigator and since he wasn’t around to refute me, they let me off with a warning. My tulpa was grinning the entire time. We spent the night crowing about my victory and sneering over how badly I’d beaten my friend.

It wasn’t until the next morning, when I was checking out my black eye and cut lip in the mirror, that I remembered what had set me o ff. My double was the one who’d grown furious, not me. I’d been feeling guilty and a little ashamed, but he’d goaded me into a vicious fight with a concerned friend. He was present, of course, and knew my thoughts. “You don’t need him any more. You don’t need anyone else,” he told me; I felt my skin crawl.

I explained all this to the researchers who employed me, but they just laughed it off. “You can’t be scared of something that you’re imagining,” one told me. My double stood beside him and nodded his head, then smirked at me.

I tried to take their words to heart, but over the next few days I found myself growing more and more anxious around my tulpa, and it seemed that he was changing. He looked taller and more menacing. His eyes twinkled with mischief, and I saw malice in his constant smile. No job was worth losing my mind over, I decided. If he was out of control, I’d put him down. I was so used to him at that point that visualizing him was an automatic process, so I started trying my damnedest to not visualize him. It took a few days, but it started to work somewhat. I could get rid of him for hours at a time, but every time he came back, he seemed worse. His skin seemed ashen, his teeth more pointed. He hissed and gibbered and threatened and swore. The discordant music I’d been listening to for months seemed to accompany him everywhere. Even when I was at home; I’d relax and slip up, no longer concentrating on no seeing him, and there he’d be, and that howling noise with him.

I was still visiting the research center and spending my next six hours there. I needed the money, and I thought they weren’t away that I was now not actively visualizing my tulpa. I was wrong. After my shift one day, about five and a half months in, two impressive men grabbed me and restrained me, and someone in a lab coat jabbed a hypodermic needle into me.

I woke up from my stupor back in the room, strapped into the bed, music blaring, with my doppelganger standing over me, cackling. He hardly looked human any more. His features were twisted. His eyes were sunken in their sockets and filmed over like a corpse’s. He was much taller than me, but hunched over. His hands were twisted, and his fingernails were like talons. He was, in short, fucking terrifying. I tried to will him away, but I couldn’t seem to concentrate. He giggled and tapped the IV in my arm. I thrashed in my restraints as best I could, but could hardly move at all.

“They’re pumping you full of the good shit, I think. How’s the mind? All fuzzy?” He leaned closer and closer as he spoke. I gagged; his breath smelled like spoiled meat. I tried to focus, but I couldn’t banish him.

The next few weeks were terrible. Every so often, someone in a doctor’s coat would come in and inject me with something or force-feed me a pill. They kept me dizzy and unfocused, and sometimes left me hallucinating or delusional. My thought-form was still present, constantly mocking. He interacted with, or perhaps caused, my delusions. I hallucinated that my mother was there, scolding me, and then he cut her throat and her blood showered me. It was so real that I could taste it.

The doctors never spoke to me. I begged at times, screamed, hurled invectives, demanded answers. They never spoke to me. They may have talked to my tulpa, my personal monster. I’m not sure. I was so doped and confused that it may have just been more delusion, but I remember them talking with him. I grew convinced that he was the real one and that I was the thought-form. He encouraged that line of thought at times, but mocked me at others.
‘
Another thing that I pray was a delusion: he could touch me. More than that, he could hurt me. He’d poke and prod at me if he felt I wasn’t paying enough attention to him. Once, he grabbed my testicles and squeezed until I told him I loved him. Another time, he slashed my forearm with one of his talons. I still have a scar; most days I can convince myself that I injured myself, and just hallucinated that he was responsible. Most days.

Then, one day, while he was telling me a story about how he was going to gut everyone I loved, starting with my sister, he paused. A querulous look crossed his face, and he reached out and touched my head. Like mother used to when I was feverish. He stayed still for a long moment and then smiled. “All thoughts are creative,” he told me, then he walked out the door.

Three hours later, I was given an injection and passed out. I awoke unrestrained. Shaking, I made my way to the door and found it unlocked I walked out into the empty hallway and then ran. I stumbled more than once, but I made it down the stairs and out into the lot behind the building. There, I collapsed, weeping like a child. I knew I had to keep moving, but I couldn’t manage it.

I got home eventually; I don’t remember how. I locked the door and shoved a dresser against it, took a long shower, and slept for a day and a half. Nobody came for me in the night, and nobody came the next day or the one after that. I twas over. I’d spent a week locked in that room, but it had felt like a century. I’d withdrawn so much from my life beforehand that nobody had even known I was missing.

The police didn’t find anything. The research center was empty when they searched it. The paper trail fell apart. The names I’d given them were aliases. Even the money I’d received was apparently untraceable.

I recovered as much as one can. I don’t leave the house much, and I have panic attacks when I do. I cry a lot. I don’t sleep much, and my nightmares are terrible. It’s over, I tell myself. I survived. I used the concentration those bastards taught me to convince myself. It works, sometimes.

Not today, though. Three days ago, I got a phone call from my mother. There’s been a tragedy. My sister’s the latest victim in a spree of killings, the police say. The perpetrator mugs his victims, then guts them.

The funeral was this afternoon. It was as lovely a service as a funeral can be, I suppose. I was a little distracted, though. All I could hear was music coming from somewhere distant. It was discordant, unsettling stuff that sounds like feedback, shrieking, and a modem dialing up. I hear it still – a little louder now.

Oh my god…

…I…

…I’m generally not into creepypastas but holy shit…

………

Holy shit what the hell did I just read

the scary part is that this is an actual thing. you can actually have a tulpa. it is a theory that slenderman among other myths are tulpas or thoughtforms (something created by collective thoughts of one or more individuals).
it’s so terrifying to think of what your mind can create.

Holy tits…

WHY IS THIS BACK

cyaziris: Islamophobic: their Koran permits them to beat their wives…Me: Yes it does but...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:34:00 -0700

cyaziris:

Islamophobic: their Koran permits them to beat their wives…
Me: Yes it does but could you tell me what with?
Islamophobic: …
Me: A blade of grass, I don’t know the last time you tried to beat someone with a blade of grass but it is pretty damn impossible, you must look at the people the Qur’an was revealed to, the Arabs at that time (just like most of the world) would beat their wives brutally. To tell them they couldn’t beat their wives would have caused rebellion, so Allah (swt) being the greatest of planners, revealed it in a way that was so clever. It permitted them to beat their wives (as not to cause rebellion) however only with a blade of grass (which we all know to be impossible). Then the most beautiful line came saying but surely it is better for you to forgive, do you see now that the Qur’an does not permit the brutal beating of wives which in that time would have saved the lives of many women.

That sounds like a pretty big oversimplification. Lets do some research.

http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Wife_Beating_in_Islam

In summation, we find in the Hadiths:

Muhammad provided tacit approval of wife beating by not scolding Muslims for beating their wives

Muhammad referred to women who spoke-out against abuse as “not the best among you”

Muhammad forbid Muslims from questioning men who beat their wives

Muhammad allowed others to hit his wives (the very women whom all Muslims adore and refer to as “the Mother of believers”)

Three of the four Rightly-Guided Caliphs beat women

Muhammad reaffirms the command of wife-beating in his parting sermon

Muhammad himself struck his wife in the chest

It is clear from all of the above that wife-beating has been an accepted part of Islam since its inception. Muhammad was not against domestic violence and indeed permitted wife-beating in Islam.

Later on I found this translation:

Ayyub, peace be upon him, got angry with his wife and was upset about something she had done, so he swore an oath that if Allah healed him, he would strike her with one hundred blows. When Allah healed him, how could her service, mercy, compassion and kindness be repaid with a beating So Allah showed him a way out, which was to take a bundle of thin grass, with one hundred stems, and hit her with it once. Thus he fulfilled his oath and avoided breaking his vow.

Ayyub
Tafsir Ibn Kathir

A bundle of a hundred blades of grass can actually do a lot of damage and hurt a lot.

I don’t think that Islam is a bad religion anymore than Christianity is - but arguing that the Qur’an is not a product of its time is silly. You can laud it for encouraging moderation in beating women, but don’t claim that it was some pinnacle of equality and progressive thinking.

terminus-est: Every time my Legion text-alert goes off, my mom...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:17:16 -0700

terminus-est:

Every time my Legion text-alert goes off, my mom laughs at it. She just doesn’t know how awesome Legion is.

animal-e: PLEASE HELP US!!!!!! REBLOG THIS!!!! Additional...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 10:00:46 -0700

animal-e:

PLEASE HELP US!!!!!! REBLOG THIS!!!!

Additional information:

http://theweek.com/article/index/245757/the-20-cent-revolution-everything-you-need-to-know-about-brazils-massive-protests

http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/salad-revolution-reasons-brazilians-protesting/story?id=19426559#.UcHiseez9Mt

rayraymoo: mrpandragon: america-wakiewakie: Putting money...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 09:43:37 -0700

rayraymoo:

mrpandragon:

america-wakiewakie:

Putting money into the language of time worked… Yes, the working class is long overdue for a raise.

Gallons of milk here are 6 bucks. o_o

Where are you from?? A gallon of milk here is like $2.50

lastglimpsetheatre: a-high-functioning-time-lord: seriously, why does no one talk about this...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 09:09:31 -0700

lastglimpsetheatre:

a-high-functioning-time-lord:

seriously, why does no one talk about this movie?

it’s

a

pure

gold

cinematic

master

piece

Clue is one of the funniest films I have ever seen. I make it a point to rewatch it every so often and I always laugh.

anaisforthewin: shapeshiftandtrick: ryan-aniki: shapeshiftandtrick: how does one tell a boy that...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 08:34:35 -0700

anaisforthewin:

shapeshiftandtrick:

ryan-aniki:

shapeshiftandtrick:

how does one tell a boy that one likes him

I am a boy and have a foolproof plan for this:

text them and start playing one of those 20q games

if they start being a dodgy fella drop em

if they ask “You like anyone?”
reply Yeah, you.

If they give you a negative reply sayin they dont like you back then just correct yourself to “*Yeah, you?”

dude that is genius

slow clappin’ it out.

serenity2132: thefingerfuckingfemalefury: mrsbenevolent: kaitg...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:26:14 -0700

serenity2132:

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

mrsbenevolent:

kaitg:

Reason #1,324,789 of why I love this show.

This was a casual side conversation between Bashir and Sisko about a fellow crew member, completely unrelated to the episode’s plot, and its just so sweet.

It’s nice to know that if you’re a pregnant father-to-be on DS9, your buddies Julian and Miles will build you a hatchling pond, buy you baby clothes, and throw you a shower eagerly attended by the station’s commanding officer (who was practically beaming with joy when he found out that you were expecting).

How wonderful.

And they speak of it so casually with no judgement! Love this!

DS9 was my actual favourite out of all the Star Trek shows :D

I loved the early stuff for its potential: stuff like this, the exploration of an alien culture besides the “Alien of the Week” style, but it just got overshadowed and dulled away.

marcovicci: people who call themselves “angry trans* people” and “hateful queers” continue to be...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:51:47 -0700

marcovicci:

people who call themselves “angry trans* people” and “hateful queers” continue to be some of the nicest people i have ever known

meanwhile, a group of people called “Nice Guys” are mean and entitled

the internet continues to confuse me

NO BUT SERIOUSLY

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 18:17:43 -0700

jamietheignorantamerican:

WHY DOES NO ONE TALK ABOUT THE QUETZALCOATLUS?!

I MEAN, JESUS F. CHRIST.

PTERODACTYLS AIN’T SHIT NEXT TO THESE MOTHER FUCKERS. QUETZALCOATLUS FUCKING ATE BABY DINOSAURS FOR BRUNCH.

LITTLE-FOOT, NOOOO!!!

JUST IMAGINE SOMETHING AS TALL AS A MOTHER FUCKING GIRAFFE

SOARING THROUGH THE SKIES AT 80 MILES PER HOUR, AND THEN SWOOPING DOWN AND FUCKING EATING YOUR FACE OFF.

FUCKING QUETZALCOATLUS

Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can mobilize an entire society in violent hate against me.

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:43:42 -0700

sheresists:

Language is never neutral.