April 2011
sarantium:
Anyone have any experience with National ADAPT’s Youth Summit?
I need more information to decide if I should go; those dates have become a logistical nightmare. On the other hand: disability activism! Other disabled people! And I want to be a better activist in my communities.
If so, please send me an email (avendya at gmail dot com) or use my ask box.
(Signal boosts also very...
Peter Bouckaert at Foreign Policy: The Vulture... →
André, Tim, and Iwere members a close-knit, but informal brotherhood — I half-jokingly call us the Vulture Club, as we usually convene only when the blood is flowing. Bonds forged in war run deep. Many of us have known each other since the bloodshed in the Balkans in the 1990s, although there are a few older ones around who still think of us as “the kids” (and we tease them...
this ain't livin': In the Garden: Veggies! And,... →
I also have plans to do carrots, but in a container, because holy shit, people, if my dad’s is Club Med for gophers1, my house is, I don’t even know, Hedonism for gophers? I’ve got a bounty out on their heads and the neighbourhood cats still can’t keep up. I was lying on the porch reading a book the other day and one of them had the audacity to pop up, look at me, and then disappear. About 30...
Robert Krulwich at NPR: Nature's Living Tape... →
When James the bird decided to woo Mrs. Wilkinson, he built a mound in her backyard, stood on top of it, and sang. Mrs. Wilkinson, naturally flattered, invited some human friends to listen.
According to those who were there, on one occasion James sang for 43 minutes. Because James was a superb lyrebird (that’s what they’re actually called), his songs included sounds he had...
Chelsea Long at Boulder Weekly: The Elephant in... →
Boulder votes Democrat. It’s a People’s Republic tradition. But when it comes to the University of Colorado’s student government, that tradition may have to be amended. In its recent election, CU students showed up in record numbers to elect a new set of representatives. And in a sweeping victory, one ticket took every seat it ran for.
That ticket was INVEST, and that ticket was...
Kate Giammarise at Pittsburgh City Paper: GOP... →
As City Paper reported in December, many advocates say the process of applying for assistance such as food stamps is onerous enough already — with lengthy paperwork requirements and a DPW too understaffed to properly process applications.
Demand for the department’s services has increased during the recession — 50 percent more Pennsylvania households receive food stamps,...
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this ain't livin': Guest Post From Andrea: Estate... →
This has led me to the conclusion that you can handle your estate in one of three ways: you can hire a lawyer to be your executor, you can saddle the person you most dislike in the world with the duty, or you can set things up such that whoever does it does not end up with a burning desire to resurrect you just so they can choke you. It’s the third one I want to tell you about; there’s some very,...
Samantha Power at Vue: Closed door policy →
Sozan Savehilaghi, a member of No One is Illegal, a grassroots migrant justice organization, points to Kenney’s attempts to appeal to different ethnic communities as chameleon-like and misrepresentative. “Kenney has drastically expanded slave-like temporary worker programs, under which migrant workers are exploited as cheap labour without basic rights,” says Savehilaghi....
“I want to live in a world where little girls are not pinkified, but where little...”
– s. e. smith, “Get Your Anti-Femininity out of my Feminism” (via roxanneritchi) (via elonjames)
I feel like Elon James reblogging someone quoting me is pretty much an automatic reblog since it’s a recursive web of awesome.
Bitch Magazine: Grand Rounds: Dissecting Grey's... →
Spoilers!
Scott Wittkopf at Isthumus: Michigan-style... →
After “financial martial law” was enacted in Michigan in the midst of the Wisconsin protests over Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union agenda, questions started bubbling as to whether or not similar legislation was in the works for the Badger State. The Michigan law allows the state’s governor to declare a “financial emergency” in municipalities that fail a ...
Dave Devine at Tucson Weekly: Government in Action... →
Gov. Jan Brewer proposed the cuts and wrote: “This budget recognizes the need to comprehensively reform our state Medicaid (AHCCCS) program.”
On the other hand, University Medical Center spokeswoman Katie Riley declares of the budget-reduction impacts on the health-care industry: “It’s a triple whammy.”
The financial savings come from a dozen expenditure cuts...
this ain't livin': Every Animal Has A Story →
Personalising institutional violence is a way to make people feel good. It turns it into a small, digestible thing that is easy for people to cope with because they don’t need to think outside themselves. They can send money to the appeal or talk about how sad it all is over brunch and then forget about it. For animal welfare advocates, who work with cases like this on a daily basis, who...
Joe Eskenazi at SF Weekly: Who Owns The Castro... →
By rough count, that was only the sixth time the flag has been lowered to half-mast since it was first hoisted in 1997. Other honorees include John Cook, the first openly gay San Francisco police officer to be killed in the line of duty; Castro Patrol Special Officer Jane Warner; Trevor Hailey, who was instrumental in the flagpole’s installation; and lesbian rights pioneer Del...
Gregory B. Hladky at Hartford Advocate: Medical... →
Connecticut legislation on medical marijuana and decriminalization of small amounts of pot breezed through the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee earlier this month. Those approvals came despite complaints from some lawmakers about inadequate controls and “sending the wrong message” on smoking dope. State Rep. Bruce V. Morris of Norwalk is one of the few Democrats to vote against the...
I Fry Mine In Butter: What's Your Dream Movie/TV... →
You have unlimited access to the production budget at your favourite studio and you get to assemble the cast and crew. Sky’s the limit (dead talent is not ruled out!). Anything you want can be adapted to film or television, and, what’s more, they’ll do it right. None of this butchering a beloved text in the name of ‘making it more interesting for general audiences.’ Or maybe you want to switch...
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Claire Lawton at Phoenix New Times: SB 1070 Has... →
In the past year, images of Arpaio and Brewer have been pasted on walls, stenciled onto posters, and shaped into piñatas and masks. Artist Jesus Barraza turned an image snapped at a rally by a Phoenix schoolteacher into an iconic poster. And street artist Lalo Cato declared “Invasion!” with his flying-saucer sombreros, spray-painted on a wall at The Hive, a gallery on 16th...
Lucy Jockiel at Honolulu Weekly: The Foreclosure... →
Some of Hawaii’s homeless say living on the beach is their preferred lifestyle, choosing to call themselves “houseless” rather than “homeless.” But for many of the 52,000 local Bank of America mortgage holders who have lost–or could lose–their houses due to the bank’s nationwide frenzy of mortgage foreclosures, the possibility of being houseless is terrifying.
Criticism is also directed at...
Trevor Scott Howell At Fast Forward Weekly: He... →
“The idea is to replace the culture of entitlement that thrived under the previous government and give Canadians good, clean government.” — Prime Minister Stephen Harper, May 26, 2006
The only difference between the Harper-led government and the previous Jean Chretien/Paul Martin-led Liberals governments, says Duff Conacher, co-ordinator for Democracy Watch, is that the Conservatives...
I feel like I'm encountering a lot of queer femme...
therotund:
cabell:
And I just want to shake some of these people and say “HAVE YOU LOOKED AT MY SHOES, ASSHOLE? TAKE A NANOSECOND TO THINK BEFORE YOU DISMISSIVELY SNARK ALL (QUEER) WOMEN WHO DON’T MEET WHATEVER THE HELL YOUR INTERNAL STANDARD IS FOR ‘ACCEPTABLE QUEERNESS’ I DON’T EVEN CARE.”
It’s not even really disapproval so much as erasure. That is, people aren’t really explicitly...
Linda Falkenstein at Isthmus: Greenius at work!... →
American ingenuity. Amateur inventors are eager to improve life for themselves and others. They experiment in home workshops, weld gadgets in garages and write computer code between classes. If a need is unmet, they figure, why wait around for somebody else to meet it?
Do-it-yourself-ism is thriving, and at no time has it been easier to perform technical work flying solo. The vast library...
this ain't livin': Notes From the Urban/Rural... →
This is a place, with people in it, and they are contributing things of value to society. We are not bumpkins, hayseeds, rednecks. That guy down the road with the jacked up truck and the gun rack? Yeah. You call him a redneck, but he’s a poet with a very lengthy list of publications in very, very prestigious places. So, you tell me: Do you still think rural people have ‘nothing to contribute’...
Gustavo Arellano at Orange County Weekly: Ruben... →
Imagine if Vives didn’t have wealthy people to help him become legal? He’d be a DREAM Act student spinning his wheels, waiting vainly for politicians to give him and others who only know this country the opportunity they earned long ago. Vives came here from Guatemala as a seven-year-old, the exact age a dear friend of mine who graduated with a degree from Long Beach State in...
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this ain't livin': Glee: Born This Way →
And that’s definitely been the message projected throughout the show, that it’s bad that she’s crazy and she needs to be cured. This was reinforced in the therapy scene where the therapist basically suggests that she needs to be cured 1 to ‘find herself,’ which is a rejection of the way some people feel about their mental illnesses. This is not to say that all people with mental illness reject...
Paul Constant and Jen Graves at The Stranger:... →
Oh. No. The “news” is that Blue Scholars are raising that money for themselves. And all of a sudden, a bunch of feelings I had been subliminally courting about Kickstarter bubbled up in my brain. Like the best ideas, Kickstarter is pretty simple: An artist or organization explains a project on the site, and if enough people pledge donations within a certain window of time, the...
Things that I did today
Sat down for half an hour to draw up a very large document titled ‘you’re going to need this if I’m dead’ with a detailed breakdown of my financial accounts/property/utilities/etc. with account numbers, contact information, and so forth, for the benefit of whatever poor sod gets to scrabble through the crumbs of my estate and sort it out. (Well, actually, I know which poor...
Jordan Green at Yes! Weekly: Upside down →
Room U-19 of the Guilford County Courthouse where Assistant Clerk Terri Lawson hears foreclosure cases three times a week might be the most somber in the building.
Unlike the new courtrooms on the first floor where the lion’s share of misdemeanors are funneled, or the chambers upstairs where small claims and family cases are heard, even the superior court rooms where assault cases are...
Nate Seltenrich at East Bay Express: The Cruel... →
At more than five hundred acres, little-known Knowland Park is Oakland’s single largest parcel of open space. It’s also of immense ecological value, environmentalists say. The oak and riparian woodlands and perennial grasslands on Knowland’s rolling hills host an array of native plants and animals, some of which are rare, endangered, or otherwise protected. But 56 acres of...
Bob Doran at North Coast Journal: Mr. Dave →
He can tend toward the cranky side and is prone to obtuse humor. His garish outfits have earned him the nickname “The Prince of Polyester.” He fits the Fargo description, “kinda funny lookin’.” He favors instruments you’re probably not familiar with: the caz, the Weissenborn lap guitar, cittern, gumbu, charango and zither. But, most important, David Lindley can play — like a mad man.
He...
this ain't livin': What If PETA Threw An Ad and... →
So, what if PETA threw an ad and nobody came? What if we collectively agreed, as a community, that we were going to ignore the next ad the organisation puts out, and the next? What if we decided that rather than dignifying an ad clearly intended to offend with a response, that we would give it the cold shoulder? Do you think PETA might be forced to adjust their strategy?
Because I think they...
Joel Frank at Charleston City Paper: Is Good Radio... →
I got into commercial radio in late 2002. I was the last generation of radio people that could walk in the door, get a job from the ground up, and learn every department. I went on sales calls and cleaned toilets. Drove a van and did overnights. Chauffeured musicians and nursed their hangovers. Produced a morning show and ran errands for office supplies. Then the world changed, and we as an...
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Leah Sottile at Pacific Northwest Inlander:... →
Al Hadlock was scared. Things were falling apart around him. His wife kicked him out. He lost his job. And he knew if he did this — if he robbed this bank — it would only get worse. But he was numb. Confused. Desperate. And so Hadlock walked through the doors of BankOne.
He approached the nearest teller and lifted his shirt, exposing a gun tucked in his waistband. He was too nervous to...
Daniel Setiawan at Texas Observer: The Sheepish... →
Connie Scott doesn’t know why anyone would be interested in her story. “I’m a nobody,” says the freshman representative. She speaks with a soft Texas twang, while her hands flutter uncertainly. Three months into her first term, the Corpus Christi Republican is still reconciling her quiet disposition with her new public role. She can get lost navigating the subterranean Capitol...
Margot Harrison at Seven Days: Print Versus Pixels... →
When it comes to measuring the green value of e-readers, Ingenthron says, the key figure is the “volume that gets read through them. If you buy books, there’s a secondary market for books. But if you have an e-reader and you don’t read, the environmental cost is going to be enormous.”
That’s because “hard-rock metal mining is by far the most horrible polluting activity by man on the...
this ain't livin': Internships and Exploitation →
This is a serious problem. Most unpaid internships offer college credit as compensation. Which is great if you, one, are in college, and, two, can afford to support yourself without additional income. The number of people who meet these two criteria is actually not very high, limiting internship opportunities to college students with some money behind them. In other words, upper middle class and...
Neil Morris at Indyweek: Career Award winners... →
Although Stern and Sundberg attended Dartmouth College at the same time, they did not know each other. Stern then spent a year at UNC-Chapel Hill, where she was in the actors training program at PlayMakers Repertory Company.
The two finally met while working on the Vermont set of Where the Rivers Flow North, a 1993 feature starring Rip Torn and Michael J. Fox. Sundberg soon followed Stern...
Anastasia Pantsios at Scene: Paper Jam →
Five years before Cuyahoga County Recorder Pat O’Malley resigned in May 2008 — one of the first dominoes to fall in the county’s ongoing shame game — he quietly closed a deal that garnered little interest at the time. It was a pact with Data Trace, a California company that specializes in snapping up title and tax documents, then customizing and re-selling the information.
Ohio...
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