Savannah. Salem, MA.
poly/queer girl faking it til I make it.
also trying to figure out how to get these trashy porn blogs to stop fucking following me........
Hazel Scott playing two pianos at the same damn time with ease
Hazel Scott was a musical sorcerer and a civil rights hero. She:
was admitted to Julliard at 8.
was performing in top venues by 16.
pioneered “swinging the classics” and made the equivalent of a million dollars a year doing it.
was the first person of color to have their own national TV show.
went to Hollywood but refused to be cast as a “singing maid.” Demanded and got control over her casting, her wardrobe, and how footage featuring her was cut.
refused to perform in segregated venues and led charges for integration in several northern cities, notably Spokane.
She was brought down by the House Committee on Unamerican Activities, and has been largely forgotten. But she was a sorcerer, and a hero.
Cruises may sink when they collide with something, but there is a place in the world where this works the other way around. Venice is sinking under the destructive effects of these giants.
Venetians have repeatedly thrown themselves into water to try and stop cruises like the one in the picture above from reaching their city. They have been fined for doing so. But they keep doing it. By the way, that picture is not photoshopped.
Every day, up to 60,000 tourists roam through the streets of this city, which only has 55,000 inhabitants. It is not surprising that UNESCO has expressed concern over the “exceptionally high tourism pressure on the city of Venice”.
About 30,000 of those tourists come from cruises.
When each of these cruises arrives to Venice, it looks like a remake of Godzilla, with a huge monster emerging from the sea to make its way through the city. If you have been there, you might have asked yourself “What if one of the maneuvers of that big ship went wrong?”.
But that’s not the reason why Venetians are taking to water to stop these ships. You would assume they are fed up with tourists - which is true, they definitely are - but there’s more than that.
As you might imagine, these cruises are a huge source of pollution. But pollution is not even the main problem here.
The problem is that Venice is sinking. With global warming and the rise in sea level, amidst ever more frequent and intensive flooding, it is clear that this city cannot look to the future optimistically.
Venice won’t be there forever. But it can be helped, we can protect it and if we can’t save it, we can at least make this process slower.
Nature itself seems to try to protect it. This lagoon has always been filled by large watery mud-banks covered with vegetation which acted as a natural barrier from tides. Now this natural barrier is disappearing. A cruise can displace up to 90,000 tonnes of water, this stirs up the lagoon’s sediment, completely changing its seabed and making this city vulnerable to the sea.
If you care about this unique city, if you want to preserve its beauty and let future generations enjoy it as well, please don’t buy a ticket for one of those cruises.
Billionaires have enough money to completely end hunger, homelessness, and medical debt, and still be wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. They literally have the power to choose who lives and who dies. And we’re supposed to consider them “charitable” whenever they let one person live.
It’s Qahera, the hijabi superhero, and misogynists and Islamic-bashing Western feminists had better head for the hills.
Born of the Arab Spring and created by an Egyptian blogger and artist
called Deena, Qahera’s popularity is growing in the Middle East. While
initially the audience consisted of Muslim girls who could relate to
Qahera, fans have come to include girls from around the world, as well
as comics buffs.
In one of the comics, Qahera swoops in to save a woman from a gang of
men who are harassing her. In another, she attacks a group of Femen
women who claim Qahera’s hijab is keeping her from being a free woman.
All perpetrators end up dangling awkwardly from poles that line the
streets, alive but humiliated.
Our superhero was born into a time when Egyptian women—and men, though they may not know it—seem to need her most.
Sexual harassment rates in Egypt are staggeringly high. According to a
2008 survey done by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, 83 percent
of Egyptian women reported experiencing sexual harassment at least once,
and nearly half of the women said they experience it daily. And 98
percent of the foreign women surveyed reported similar treatment in
Egypt. Wearing a veil did not appear to lessen a woman’s chances of
being harassed. About 62 percent of Egyptian men admitted to
perpetrating harassment.
two prominent white feminists come forward to defend their white male friend from rape allegation and discredit the black woman who came forward against him
When people tell stories about how their parents beat them, it’s always interesting to see their face change because they expected me to say “me too lol” but I instead say “I’m really sorry. You didn’t deserve that”
Last time a co worker who also has West Indian parents was telling me in a joking way how he remembers being beaten with a belt because lied about his report card. As he was laughing it off and saying he deserved it, I just said “wow that’s awful hun. You didn’t deserve that.” And his whole face changed. Like it hadn’t occurred to him that it’s messed up that a part of remembering his childhood is remembering how badly it hurt to be beaten so badly at such a young age.
Another time I had a friend, non West Indian parents, who talked about how she made a mess on a dress that her parents got her. It was really expensive apparently and she spilled red juice on it. She talked about how she was ordered to take the dress of and was beaten with a belt too without any clothes on. And she was laughing and said “I was a bad ass kid lol” and I said “no hun you were just a kid”. And she looked at me and immediately stopped laughing and just sat there like “yea…I was just a kid. I don’t know why they did that to me”
My mom was raised in a household where she was beaten so badly….I just don’t understand how she is so loving now growing up in a home where she got so little love. They called it discipline, but once she became a social worker she began to see that it was abuse. That she grew up terrified of her parents, although they thought it was respect that my mom felt. It was fear.
We have to get comfortable challenging what is often seen as cultural norms. We have to be a generation of people who are not ashamed to say “I would never beat my child”.
