mappemunde

communityandresistance:

boyprincessdiaries:

• You have inherent worth. You don’t have to do anything to prove it, just existing is enough.
• You deserve love, support and respect all the time. Not just when you did something particularly agreeable, not just when the person is in a good mood or physically and mentally well or is treated by others respectfully; you deserve to be treated well ALL THE TIME.
• You deserve to freely express your emotions and speak your own realities without fear of retaliation or shame.
• You deserve to be able to tell someone why you don’t like how they’re treating you and a) not fear retaliation, intimidation, violence or emotional manipulation because of it, and b) actually have that person listen, take it to heart, and then change their behavior accordingly.
• You deserve autonomy over yourself. You deserve to think, feel, say, wear, do, and associate with what or whomever you want without any outside pressure or control. [Clearly you aren’t free to infring on the rights of others or treat them oppressively, but pretty much everything else is up to you and your best judgement.]
• You deserve to put yourself first. You deserve to have your life be about you. Everyone else can come after.
• You deserve space when you need space.
• You deserve to reach out to whoever you want for support.
• Your emotions and experiences are valid.
• You are important.
• You deserve to defend yourself and fight tooth and nail to ensure that the above points are acknowledged and respected.

Feel free to add to this if you think I’m missing anything.

alladis.

this is some fucked up bullshit. why on earth? education is a basic human right. also, student debt already is a form of indentured servitude.

tjjourian:

June 14, 2012, 12:28 pm

By Richard Kahlenberg

The New York Times—the most valuable real estate in journalism—devotes its op-ed space today to an argument by University of Chicago professor Luigi Zingales to “eliminate government subsidies” of college students (by which he apparently means all Pell Grants and federal student loans). He would replace this system with one in which venture capitalists invest in promising students and in return, receive “a fraction of a student’s future income,” or, better yet, “a fraction of the increase in her income that derives from college attendance.”

This proposal is worth discussing not because there is much danger that it will literally come to pass but because it shines sunlight on the mind-set of many conservatives, exposing a way of thinking that does in fact result in many policy decisions that are hurting American higher education.

Read more.

fuckyeahneuroscience:

Neuroengineers at MIT have created a implantable fuel cell that generates electricity from the glucose present in the cerebrospinal fluid that flows around your brain and spinal cord. In theory, this fuel cell could eventually drive low-power sensors and computers that decode your brain activity to interface with prosthetic limbs.

The glucose-powered fuel cell is crafted out of silicon and platinum, using standard semiconductor fabrication processes. The platinum acts as a catalyst, stripping electrons from glucose molecules, similar to how aerobic animal cells (such as our own) strip electrons from glucose with enzymes and oxygen. The glucose fuel cell products hundreds of microwatts (i.e. tenths of a milliwatt), which is a surprisingly large amount — it’s comparable to the solar cell on a calculator, for example. This should be more than enough power to drive complex computers — or perhaps more interestingly, trigger clusters of neurons in the brain. In theory, this glucose fuel cell will actually deprive your brain of some power, though in practice you probably won’t notice (or you might find yourself growing hungry sooner…)

Original paper here.

james-bliss:

there’s a subgenre of white people, the punks/anarchists/artists/etcs, whose whole mystique is based on minimizing the existence of their internal bureaucracy.

for example:

• ‘we had a show in an abandoned warehouse’ can be translated as follows: ‘chad called and rented a warehouse for the night.’
• ‘the cops shut down the party’ can be translated as follows: ‘simeon promised we’d be more quiet, and in the 15 minutes of relative quiet that followed, everyone fell asleep or left.’
• ‘we don’t need the State’ can be translated as follows: ‘enough of us are independently wealthy such that the rest of us can be housed, clothed, and fed.’

if you act like there isn’t a ‘how’ to the bacchanalian excesses of ‘radical’ whites, then sure, your late-teens to mid-twenties are an expression of the potential of the human spirit unchained. otherwise, you know how to work a telephone and be white at the same time, which is radical too, right?

racismschool:

Do you remember the first time that someone called your life a “Cause?” How about when you found out your life was considered a “Political Issue?” Isn’t it fun to not be human? To be a cause or issue. Something people can so easily separate themselves from when it’s convenient. Something people can claim to want to “Help” when it’s in fashion.

Ever had someone say any of these things to you?

“If you treat people like that, no one is going to want to help you with your cause.”

“If you talk to people like that, you aren’t going to get anyone on your side for your cause.”

“You aren’t going to get people to help your cause if you aren’t nice.”

Ever seen any of these things when someone has said something sick and sub-human and you’ve pointed it out?

“This is why I don’t get into politics.”

“You aren’t going to win any votes if you keep talking like that.”

“Keep your politics out of (Insert fandom/movie/book/etc here)”

“This has nothing to do with politics. Stop making it about (Race/Orientation/ect)”

If you have, you are not alone. You have encountered a bigot. Bigots are weak willed and loathsome people who can’t see beyond the tip of their own nose. This person has no interest in knowing that their life is not the same as everyone else’s. This person has a narrow world view and will not tolerate the idea that their view isn’t the right one. Hell, they won’t tolerate the idea that there view isn’t the ONLY one.

Here’s the good news: They are beneath you. In every capacity. They are either in for a rude awakening or a long slow road to willful ignorance forest. Either way, they are limited thinkers and limited beings. They are lacking a brain, a heart and courage. They are weak. They represent what is wrong with the world and we can only hope that they will soon be banished fromEmeraldCity.

You are not a cause.

You are not a political issue.

You are not a movie of the week.

You are not alone.

If this happens to you, please contact the Pop In The Mouth Aversion Therapy Committee.