Dr. Allen Frances says in speculating about Trump’s mental health, we are doing a disservice to those who do suffer from mental illness. In a series of tweets, he explained why he doesn’t think Trump is a narcissist — and how harmful it can be for us to keep assuming that he is.
Sometimes good posts are made by annoying people so I’ll help out
These are Safe Shorts. They were made by Sandra Seilz after someone attempted to rape her. If the fabric is torn, an alarm will be sounded.
This is the Rape-aXe, invented by a South African doctor by the name of Sonnet Ehlers. After interviewing a rape victim who wished she had teeth down there, she made this. If someone’s penis is inserted and pulled back out, the teeth will sink in, and can only be removed by a doctor.
The Killer Tampon (couldn’t find a site for it), made by retired anaesthetist Jaap Haumann. When penetration takes place, the sharp end will slice the offending appendage.
The Anti-Rape Belt (also couldn’t find a site), made by a group of Swedish teenagers led by Nadja Björk. It requires two hands to undo.
Anti-Rape Underwear/Bra (once again), as made by a group of Indian students. Will deliver an electric shock when met with unwanted advances, as well as sounding an alarm.
Undercover Colours. Made by 4 male undergraduates at North Carolina U, they change colours when in contact with chemicals or drugs that cause unconsciousness. Used in case you’re wary that your drink has been roofied.
These are just tools to help, but in addition to being mindful of your situations and staying safe, they can help when the worst happens.
Stay safe.
ok, those are all kind of awesome. i wish they weren’t needed, bit still…awesome solutions.
I feel more comfortable reblogging this version
RapeAxe has a gofund me up that barely has 700 dollars. I feel like the inventions that havent even been funded yet should be linked to the page you can support them at.
wish this wasn’t necessay, but this could save someone. please reblog!
Undercover Colors changed their product to something you can attach to your keychain or the back of your phone and put some drops on it to test your drink, it isn’t nail polish they switched their product plan.
-FemaleWarrior, She/They
other parents: how did you do that?
Me:do what?
Other parents: your teenager is eating a salad..
Me:i never forced him eat, now he will pretty much eat anything…except chicken casserole which we both agree is gross
Other parents:we don’t get it.
Me: our only rules are bed at eleven on a school night and don’t hack any important government agencies.
Other parents: you don’t restrict screen time?
Me: you know 95% of kids will self regulate, given the chance?
Other parents: thats not true
Me: have you tried it?
other parents:…but, now he’s reading 1984
Me: he has had a university reading level since he was 12, what am i going to do censor his reading material?
other Parents: what if he reads something you don’t approve of..
Me: i fail to see your reasoning…
Me: you know he cooks too..it’s our mother/son time, we talk about his friends…
other Parents: he talks??
That “he talks??” bit gets me
Yeah, kids talk. If your kid doesn’t talk to you, it’s because of one of two reasons:
Kids are not stupid, not at any age level. They pick up on shit and they remember and then when they grow to be teenagers, they know who they can talk to about stuff and who they can’t.
My 13 year old nephew is not particularly affectionate with his mother and he rarely talks to her about anything important, but there are times I can’t get that kid to stop hanging off me and he has those serious conversations with me, like when we discussed his friends coming out to him as bisexual.
It’s not even that hard to make a kid feel loved and welcome. I don’t even know what my nephew is talking about half the time with his games, but they’re important to him, so I let him talk and I make appropriate noises of shock and sympathy when they are needed.
He watches a lot of YT channels, so we’ve discussed the importance of regulating your media, because I don’t want motherfuckers like PewDiePie shaping his world view.
He reads anything from Stephen King to manga and he does that because I’ve been reading him books since he was a baby. I do it with all of my nieces and nephews; when they get school-aged and old enough to read on their own, our “us” time is going to the bookstore and letting them pick out a drink and a book.
Because reading is important to me and I want it to be important to them, too. Now, it’s not something I suggest, it’s something that my nephew asks for.
“I finished my book, Aunt [Dessie], when can we go to the bookstore again?”
And when I tell him a date, I make sure to keep it.
Saying, “You can talk to me about anything” and “you can rely on me” is all well and good, but words are just words. You have to mean it and you have to show them that you mean it.
Otherwise, when it gets to those important moments in their life, they’re gonna shut you out rather than let you in.
Back in early high school, I knew a girl - we were kinda friends by virtue of having multiple friends in common, but in hindsight, she never much liked me - who had this purebred dog. I’d met him at her place, and he wasn’t desexed, which was pretty unusual in my experience, so it stuck in the memory. And one day, as we were walking across the playground, this girl - I’ll call her Felice - said to me, “Hey, so we’re going to start using my dog as a stud.” And I’m like, Oh? And she’s like, “Yeah, we’ve been talking to breeders, we’re going to get to see his puppies and everything,” and I made interested noises because that actually sounded pretty interesting, and she went on a little bit more about how it would all work -
And then, out of nowhere, she swapped this sly look with another girl, burst out laughing and exclaimed, “God, you’re so gullible. I literally just made that up. You’ll believe anything!”
And I was just. Dumbfounded. Because I was standing there, staring at them, and they were laughing like I was an idiot, like they’d pulled this massive trick on me, and all I could think, apart from why the fuck they felt moved to do this in the first place, was that neither of them knew what gullible means. Like, literally nothing in that story was implausible! I knew she had an undesexed, male, purebred dog! It made total sense that he be used for a stud! And it wasn’t like I was getting this information from a second party - the person who actually owned the dog was telling me herself! And I felt so immensely frustrated, because they both walked off before I could figure out how to articulate that gullible means taking something unlikely or impossible at face value, whereas Felice had told me a very plausible lie, and while the end result in both cases is that the believer is tricked, the difference was that I wasn’t actually being stupid. Rather, Felice had manipulated the fact that she occupied a position of relative social trust - meaning, I didn’t have any reason to expect her to lie to me - to try and make me feel stupid.
Which, thinking back, was kind of par for the course with Felice. On another occasion, as our group was walking from Point A to Point B, I felt a tugging jostle on my school bag. I didn’t turn around, because I knew my friends were behind me, and my bag was often half-zipped - I figured someone was just shoving something back in that had fallen out, or had grabbed it in passing as they horsed around. Instead, Felice steps up beside me, grinning, and hands me my wallet, which she’d just pulled out, and tells me how oblivious I was for not noticing that she’d been rifling my bag, and how I ought to pay more attention. This was not done playfully: the clear intent, again, was to make me feel stupid for trusting that my friends - which, in that context, included her - weren’t going to fuck with me. As before, I couldn’t explain this to her, and she walked on, pleased with herself, before I could try.
The worst time, though, was when I came back from the canteen at lunch one day, and Felice, again backed up by another girl, told me that my dad had showed up on campus looking for me. By this time, you’d think I’d have cottoned on to her particular way of fucking with me, but I hadn’t, and my dad worked close enough to the school that he really could’ve stopped in. So I believed her, a strange little lurch in my stomach that I couldn’t quite place, and asked where he was. She said he’d gone looking for me elsewhere, at another building where we sometimes sat, and so I hurried off to look for him, feeling more and more anxious as I wondered why he might be there.
I was halfway across campus before I let myself remember that my mother was in hospital.
I felt physically sick. My pulse went through the roof; I couldn’t think of a reason why my dad would be at school looking for me that didn’t mean something terrible had happened to my mother, that her surgery had gone wrong, that she was sick or hurt or dying. And when my dad wasn’t where she’d said he would be, I hurried back to Felice - who was now sitting with half our mutual group of friends - only to be met with laughter. She called me gullible again, and that time, I snapped. I chased her down and punched her, and the friends who’d only just arrived, who didn’t know what had happened or why I was reacting like that, instantly took her side. Noises were made about telling the rest of our friends what I’d done, and I didn’t want them to hear Felice’s version first, so I ran off to the library, where I knew they were, to tell them first.
I walked into the library. I found our other friends. I was shaky and red-faced, and they asked me what had happened. I told them what Felice had done, that I’d hit her for it, that my mother was in hospital for an operation - something I’d mentioned in passing over the previous week; multiple people nodded in recognition - and how I’d thought Felice’s lie meant that something bad had happened. And then I burst into tears, something I almost never did, because it wasn’t until I said it out loud that I realised how genuinely frightened I’d been. I sat down at the table and cried, and a girl - I’ll call her Laurel - who I’d never really been close to - who was, in fact, much better friends with Felice than with me - put her arm around my shoulders and hugged me, volubly furious on my behalf.
And then the other girls showed up, and Laurel said, with that particular vicious sincerity that only twelve-year-olds can really muster, “Prepare to die, Felice,” and I almost wanted to laugh, but didn’t. A girl who was a close friend, who’d come in with Felice, took her side, outraged that I’d punched someone, until Laurel spoke up about my mother being in hospital, and everyone went really quiet. Which was when I remembered, also belatedly, that Laurel’s own mother was dead; had died of cancer several years previously, which explained why she of all people was so angry. I have a vivid memory of the look on Felice’s face, how she tried to play it off - she said she hadn’t known about my mother, I pointed out that I’d mentioned it multiple times at lunch that week, and she lost all high ground with everyone.
Felice never played a trick on me again.
Eighteen years later, I still think about these incidents, not because I’m bearing some outdated grudge, but because they’re a good example of three important principles: one, that even with seemingly benign pranks, there’s a difference between acting with friendly or malicious intent; two, that ignorance of context can have a profound effect on the outcome regardless of what you meant; and three, that getting hurt by people who abuse your trust doesn’t make you gullible - it means you’re being betrayed.
And I feel like this is information worth sharing.
okay, i don’t hate kids. i think they’re sort of funny. i like that you can talk to them like an adult and they’ll make sounds like they understand. i taught one kid “phosphorescence” and he looked at me and said, “they could just call it glowing if it means something that glows.” the kid undid the entire science community in one sentence.
but i hate kids.
or really, i hate how they’ve always been expected from me.
when i was five i was given “babies.” i hated the hardness of dolls, disposed of them for dramatic stories between stuffed animals. i knew how to wrap, feed, and care for a baby before i could spell my last name. when i was nine i was already “watching the kids”. i was only four years older than my cousins were. i wanted to go out and play. instead i was expected to have responsibility. by the time i was thirteen all of my friends had told me about how many children they were going to have in their twenties.
my hips were “child-bearing” hips. my brother was a scientist, or a fireman, or a steamroller. i was going to make a good housewife, or mom, or nanny, or mom, or mom, or mom.
and when my body hurt, i was told it wasn’t really my body, not really, it belonged to my future children. i couldn’t cut or snip or tie anything; i was trapped by the potential energy that hung above me. a boulder, threatening. i couldn’t get tattoos, because what would i tell my children? i couldn’t kiss a girl, because what would i tell the children? i couldn’t be risky or wild or anything but a lady, because what about the children?
and when i said “i don’t want children” - not biologically, at least, not when cancer and depression and a whole other host of terrible things lives inside me - do you know what they said? “it’ll change, wait and see” “it’s not bad” “you’ll get used to it” “when you meet the right man” “you don’t want to be lonely”.
i don’t hate kids. i’m great with them.
but then i’m told again that my life will be forfeit to them - something in me snaps angry. “wait until you have kids” “you should travel before you have children” “you’ll be more happy.”
i hate kids! i’ve snarled. i don’t mean it at all. but god. please, leave me alone. i don’t want to be a biological mom.
it’s like we’re born with a uterus and told “this is your whole life. your singular purpose. your job.”
i want to be my own purpose. not here for the sake of passing genes on.
This sums up everything I’ve ever felt about societal expectation of motherhood.
Exactly.
Shoutout to the U.S. embassies in Austria, Chile, India, and South Korea who have directly ignored orders from the Trump administration in flying the pride flag
They’ve found really clever workarounds, as they were banned from flying the pride flag on the flag pole.
They aren’t ignoring orders: they are obeying the orders to the exact letter.
Malicious compliance
Also in Mexico City they couldn’t fly the flag but they didn’t said anything about a picture of a flying flag ❤️
THIS IS SOME GOD TIER CHAOTIC LAWFUL EVIL STUFF
If there was a way to run SUPER MEGA AD BLOCKER on this website I fucking would
“Please oh please open up your computer to a porn virus! If you don’t you’re evil!”
Freeloader Comin’ through!
We didn’t start this war internet users have with ads - We might have moaned about banner ads, but it was only when they started making noises when we might be listening to music or a podcast or whatever, causing two sound sorces at once, that we started trying to block ads universally rather than just a specific type of ad (pop ups).
And since then ads have gotten worse - Actual malware rather than merely breaking one of the fundamental sins of web design - though shalt not autoplay anything with sound. And the more aggressive a website is with ‘please turn off adblock’ the less I trust it to bother to vet ads and advertisers to make sure they’re not installing malware.
Not to mention that the idea that avoiding ads is “freeloading” is hilariously backward. Advertisement is a transaction between the platform and the advertiser, the user has no obligation to provide the views/clicks the platform has promised. Using an adblocker isn’t freeloading in the same way that leaving the room to get a snack during a commercial break isn’t cheating the tv network.
Ok y’all, I work as a web developer and I’m here to tell you that you are 100% right and that it’s shit. SO I’m going to tell you how to get around websites that block you from using their website if you’re using an adblocker.
Every website uses a language called JavaScript; long story short it’s a website language that allows developers to do the crazy shit you see on websites. Now the easiest thing to do is to disable JavaScript to stop them from knowing you have an adblocker:
Oh no! I’m blocked from viewing the website. It would be a terrible shame if I were able to right click and select the “inspect” feature
Click the three dots in the top right and open the “Settings” Menu
And then scrolled down to “Debugger” and checked the “Disable Javascript Option”
And then just refreshed the page
there are several posts going around about how to best help if you witness an ICE raid/arrest as a (white) citizen. many of them are filled with extremely bad, LARP-y advice such as screaming at agents and getting physically close to them. in most cases, this is just going to make things worse for everyone at risk (including yourself). you need to stay calm, and avoid getting someone accused of resisting arrest.
to be clear: most of these fascists dont care about the law. “illegal” is not a magic word you can say to make them stop. and, being a white citizen is not an impenetrable shield. you can still be arrested, so be prepared for that. you are, however, less likely to be arrested, and MUCH less likely to be killed or held extralegally.
record, and make sure your phone auto-backups to a cloud. streaming can be problematic because its best to have lawyers look over the footage first. be aware they might also grab your phone, even without a warrant. if they’re grabbing it out of your hands, try to lock it. make sure you have a pin lock, not pattern or fingerprint. here’s some other ways to protect your phone from cops.
if you are able to film, and have determined it won’t escalate the situation, make it obvious you are doing so, because secretly recording is illegal in several states. narrate any violation of rights you see. here is a Q&A about filming ICE.
stay several feet back from agents, because they can claim you’re impeding them. if you’re recording and they claim this, take several steps back, and announce it as you’re doing so, if you’re filming.
ask if they are free to go, if someone is being approached. if ICE insists on the person asking for themself, and they speak spanish*, tell them “por favor repita: ‘am i free to go?’” (this just means “please repeat”) if the agent says yes, tell them “usted puede dejar”. if not..
calmly inform people of their rights if they are being arrested. they do not have to speak at all to agents, answer any questions without a lawyer, or sign anything. they do have to show their paperwork if they have it, but do NOT have to hand over the paperwork/passport, or consent to a search of themselves/belongings, without a judicial warrant (not administrative! here’s the difference). it is crucial that they give as little information as possible to ICE.
if you speak spanish, list their rights in spanish as well, and translate what the agents are saying. if not, keep the google translate app on your phone – it’s not perfect, but it’s quick/accessible and can download languages for offline use. you can also memorize this sentence: “no tiene que responder/dar su consentimiento” - “you dont have to respond/consent”
get their lawyer’s contact info, if they have one and are being taken away by ICE. many people carry a card with emergency contact info on it, including childcare info and loved ones, so you can offer to call those numbers for them.
call for legal help. do not call the ACLU or other big organizations for immediate help, call your local immigration help center (for New York State, contact IDP at 212-725-6422. for California, call the TRUST hotline at 844-878-7801). United We Dream is an immigrant-lead organization that provides aid nationwide, and can be reached at 844-363-1423. please save these numbers in your phone!
know the ICE rapid response network in your town, and keep their number on hand. if there isn’t one close to you, here’s how to make one.
finally, here are some useful toolkits:
comprehensive ICE response guide
know your rights posters for in-home raid readiness, community flyers, and informative videos
ACLU videos explaining what to do in various situations with ICE
*of course not every immigrant speaks spanish; people from south america are being targeted en masse right now, but may speak many indigenous languages as well as portuguese. so ask if you dont know what language someone speaks, and see if google translate can help.
electricdream
