"If you read one thing today, you should probably read more things." -- Paul Fidalgo, 2013-12-19
"So many books, so little time." -- Frank Zappa (b. 1940-12-21, d. 1993-12-04)
A blessed solstice to all who celebrate it as a holy day, and a secularly nifty one to all who merely observe it as an astronomically interesting one (and for nitpickers, it's at 12:11 EST / 17:11 UT).
"The best relationships I've been in were on their own terms, not what everyone else thought they should be. Sometimes that's hard, but for me it's always been worth it." -- Robot Hugs, 2013-12-09
"One thing that people don't seem to acknowledge (and in part it's due to American culture's absurd stubborn insistence that we're all the same in every way all the time) is that we change our speech depending on who we're with because THAT'S HOW LIFE IS. I don't call my mother by her first name or by the same language I use to talk to my friends because that would be rude. Why do I think I automatically get the privilege to call out-groups by their own in-group terms?" -- Ari Schwartz: Dark Lord of the Snark, 2013-12-13
Sometimes joy just shows up naturally, but sometimes it's
hard work. Sometimes you have to chase down joy and club it
repeatedly to subdue it and drag it back to your lair." --
![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
mrissa,
2013-12-13
(thanks to
![[info] - personal](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redbird
for quoting
it first)
"Why does everything close earlier in winter? The colder and darker it is, the more I feel the need to go out, personally. In the summer, I want to be out during the day! In December it's all dark anyway so might as well work late and go out at midnight." -- Vi Hart, 2013-12-15 ( two tweets)
From "TERF Battles" by Cristan Williams in OutSmart, 2013-12-01:
Clements-Nolle, et al, studied the predictors of suicide among over five hundred transgender men and women in a sample from San Francisco, and found a prevalence of suicide attempts of 32 percent. In this study, the strongest predictor associated with the risk of suicide was gender-based discrimination that included "problems getting health or medical services due to their gender identity or presentation." According to Gorton, "Notably, this gender-based discrimination was a more reliable predictor of suicide than depression, history of alcohol/drug abuse treatment, physical victimization, or sexual assault.
"These studies provide overwhelming evidence that removing discriminatory barriers to treatment results in significantly lower suicide rates."
Healthy cats in southern Ontario needing new home due to human-cancer.
From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-11-25:
"We are all bathing in ignorance. It is an integral part of life. Guess what, that is not a bad thing at all. It is the unknown that has driven humankind for eons to explore and discover our environs. Most Americans, actually many across the globe, have no clue who Sikhs are. And, believe me, there are many people and things I have no clue about either. Ignorance is not the problem. It is what we do with ignorance, our ensuing actions, that create real moments in life. Would I love to see everyone on this planet know who Sikhs are, not make us targets of hate, leave us alone and do a better job of targeting someone else? Hell no. I want a world where we can embrace each other despite our ignorance, in celebration of our differences." -- Vishavjit Singh, a Sikh cartoonist, who spent a day in New York City dressed as Captain America in a turban.
[<a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/11/18/what_i_learned_as_captain_america_in_a_turban/</a> http://www.salon.com/2013/11/18/what_i_learned_as_captain_america_in_a_turban/ </a>]</p></blockquote><p>(submitted to the mailing list by Bob Bruhin)</p>
"When do we want it?
It doesn't matter!
Time travel!
What do we want?"
-- smut clyde,
2013-11-19
[
thanks to
realinterrobang for quoting this earlier]
"Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change." -- Megyn Kelly, 2013-12-11
"Actually, I think that's the official slogan of oppression. 'Oppression: just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change.'" -- Jon Stewart, 2013-12-12
[To my friends who are observing the fast of Asara B'Tevet, may you have an easy fast.]
"Edible math. It's the best kind." -- Rebecca Pahle, 2013-12-09 ( via @jenlucpiquant)
"Anything guitarists say while leaning back to back during a solo is protected by law like confession or attorney client privilege." -- @ceejoyner, 2013-12-05
"The irony surrounding the first three myths on this list is they are generally perpetuated by people who would be outraged if bureaucrats were making medical decisions for them instead of their doctors. These same people, however, are perfectly fine with the public making health care decisions for transgender people instead of actual doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists." -- Brynn Tannehill, "Myths About Gender Confirmation Surgery", 2013-12-08
"You don't manage people, you manage things. You lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership. It might help if we ran the MBAs out of Washington." -- Rear Admiral Grace Hopper (b. 1906-12-09, d. 1992-01-01)
"Obviously, it was a very negative thing for me to lose such a good partner. He was very good. He was a very strong and beautiful and protective force for me. But his words and his music are still here. It will still affect people. And that's the only thing they knew, anyway, when he was alive. So that's the fate of an artist. It's not a bad one. As long as you are what you have created, and what you wanted to share with the world, it's still there." -- Yoko Ono (b. 1933-02-18), talking about John Lennon (b. 1940-10-09, d. 1980-12-08), in Esquire, interviewed 2010-07-29, published 2010-12-08
[I should maybe also have a quote from Jim Morrison (b. 1943-12-08, d. 1971-07-03) today ... but I'll just leave this parenthetical comment here instead.]
From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-10-10:
life is hard for kids today
they have to program everything
dude, they have to use computers
just to sing
-- Christopher Ewen and Stephin Merritt, from their song Keep Your Children In A Coma, recorded by their band Future Bible Heroes.
(submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach)
From "Lessons of the Montreal Massacre: Why women must fight to be what they want" by Catherine Porter, 2009-12-05:
"At the time, I thought to be a feminist meant you had to be militant," says [Nathalie] Provost, who today is overworked and feeling skittish as the anniversary approaches. She was the young woman who, from her hospital bed a couple days later, urged Canadian girls to not be frightened by the event and to pursue engineering careers. She was also my introduction to feminism in life, not just theory. And to the concept that the personal is political.
"I realized many years later that in my life and actions, of course I was a feminist. I was a woman studying engineering and I held my head up."
"There'd never been a more advantageous time to be a criminal in America than during the 13 years of Prohibition. At a stroke, the American government closed down the fifth largest industry in the United States - alcohol production - and just handed it to criminals - a pretty remarkable thing to do." -- Bill Bryson
"We had some really strange conversations, with her explaining what these composers were trying to do and me trying to explain what consciousness was; but it was surprising how often the two completely different things came together and turned out to be related. The neat thing about ideas is the way they keep doing that." -- Owen Griffiths, narrator/protagonist of Very Far Away from Anywhere Else by Ursula K. LeGuin (1976, Antheneum Publishers, New York, NY; ISBN 0-553-20081-X)
"The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own." -- Eric Hoffer
From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-01-16:
"It turns out, of course, that there are some limits to possibility; but childhood seems the right time not to know this. Books confirm at the least anyone's right to dream." -- Carl Phillips, from Another and Another Before That: Some Thoughts on Reading.
(submitted to the mailing list by Kathleen Magone)
"The supreme trick of Old Scratch is to have us so busy decorating, preparing food, practicing music and cleaning in preparation for the feast of Christmas that we actually miss the coming of Christ. Hurt feelings, anger, impatience, injured egos -- the list of clouds that busyness creates to blind us to the birth can be long, but it is familiar to us all." -- Edward Hays, A Pilgrim's Almanac, 1989
[To all who are marking today as the start of Advent, may you have time for reflection as well as time for shopping.]
"I have always wondered why the saying was 'let sleeping
dogs lie' when disturbing a sleeping cat was so much more
exciting." --
martianmooncrab,
2013-11-17 (thanks to
realinterrobang for
quoting this earlier)
From "Nine ways journalists can do justice to transgender people's stories" by Lauren Klinger, 2013-11-11:
"There was a time in the 1970s and 80s when every story about a gay person was the coming out narrative," Nick Adams, associate director of communications for GLAAD, said in a phone interview. But, he added, "with trans stories we're still in that period."
[...]
By concentrating on the coming out narrative, journalists may ignore other issues that affect the transgender community. With the Manning story, [Janet] Mock said, "it took days to get to the media to talk about healthcare and rights for prisoners, and those are the bigger issues. [Journalists] were hung up over 'he, she, Bradley, Chelsea' " instead of focusing on the question of how we should treat people when we incarcerate them.
"I have never felt that anything really mattered but the satisfaction of knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed and had done the very best you could." -- Eleanor Roosevelt (b. 1884-10-11, d. 1962-11-07), My Day (newspaper column) 1944-11-8
[To everyone celebrating Chanukah and/or US Thanksgiving today, I wish you a good holiday!]
"You know what would fix congress? Putting a couple first grade teachers in charge. They would fix that shit NOW." -- Princess Bitchykins (@SamuraiKnitter), 2013-11-26
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar Left, and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." -- John Ehrlichman (b. 1925-03-20, d. 1999-02-14), interviewed by Dan Baum, collected in The Moment: Wild, Poignant, Life-changing Stories (Harper Perennial, 2012, ed. Larry Smith) [found here after being quoted on a local-to-my-ISP newsgroup]
"As a kid I liked to read through my dad's Reason newsletters. One topic I remember was a search for new pronouns, similar to how some feminists have embraced the gender-neutral 'ze'. The Libertarians, however, wanted pronouns that did not assume human or animal existence. Instead of 'he' or 'she', they suggested 'e' as a sort of ur-pronoun that assumed neither gender nor humanity.
"At the time, I was fascinated by the science-fictional overtones of 'e'. I imagined conversations with intelligent robots, or aliens, using this new pronoun: a language of the future! It wasn't until years later that I realized the real aim. While the language appealed to my love for science-fiction, the point was actually just to help normalize the idea that 'corporations are people'."
-- commenter
Atheist at Alicublog,
2013-11-09 [thanks to
realinterrobang
for
quoting this earlier]
From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-11-22:
"In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience - the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men - each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient - they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul." -- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), U.S. President, from his book Profiles in Courage.
(submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach)
"As a server, I did an experiment tonight, I was saying basically only Doctor Who quotes to my tables, some understood, others did not. These are a few of the phrases and people's reactions:
[...]
"[Offering desserts (to the kids)] 'You could have a slice of Triple Chocolate Strada for only $6.99 which I personally think is a bit steep. But then again, it's your parent's cash and they'll only waste it on boring stuff like lamps and vegetables. Yawn!'
"I actually sold every table the dessert I offered when I offered it this way. Few got the reference, the ones who understood 'Hi I'm The Doctor' were completely losing their shit at this point in the meal, as I'd been dropping references all dinner."
-- strangeronbakerstreet, 2013-07-25
"[T]he media needs to show our humanity, and not to constantly exploit us. I know that there is a tremendous amount of work to be done, to help reduce unemployment and harassment of trans people -- but the media can help bring this change about by altering the narrative. I want to see a trans person on a TV show whose gender identity is as unremarkable as anyone else's. I want to see a show that simply shows that being trans is just one more way of being human." -- Jennifer Finney Boylan, quoted in "11 Transgender Stars Weigh In on Trans Images in Entertainment", The Wrap, 2013-11-15
"Suicide rates for trans people are a likely underestimate[d], and probably unavoidably so. There's no way of measuring how many people chose to die before they ever figured out why everything hurt so much." -- Lauren Zinnia Jones (@ZJemptv), 2013-11-21 ( two tweets)
"W/ so many complex identities under the trans umbrella, how do we become allies to ourselves?" -- @JMaseIII, 2013-11-19
"Allies to ourselves? By recognizing that our diversity is our strength; we should hold each other up, not tear each other down. Patriarchy, white supremacy, & mass incarceration don't parse our differences, just our difference, which = dangerous." -- @arjunagreist, two tweets) 2013-11-19
Transgender Day of Remembrance, to remember and mourn the way-too-many transgender people (mostly trans women of colour) killed for being who they were.</p>
In the US, 53% of all anti-TLBG murders of trans women (and 73% of anti-LGTB murders were of non-white victims). Race and age and other factors insulate me somewhat[1], but it still comes down to the fact that every few days somebody is killed for being trans like me.
Obviously, for me this issue is personal. And I know that at least some of my cisgender friends take it personally too, because of me or because of other transgender friends and relatives. Of course, one doesn't have to take these murders personally to care that they happen, that the victims, too often treated as disposable in life, deserved better -- deserve to be remembered. That this should not be "just how the world works."
[1] I've been beaten once and threatened several times (not counting mere taunting and insults) simply for being visibly gender-nonconforming, despite being subject to a lot less risk of that crap than many other trans people. So OT1H I know this affects me, and OTOH I know it affects many of my sisters a whole lot more.
"Debugging someone else's code is something that happens in
one of the outer circles of Hell and Dante inexplicably forgot to
include it in his descriptions. Even if it is code written by
someone who is meticulous, a fair programmer, and a good commenter
in general---there's always the vague sense of trying to force
your thoughts to flow through or conform to someone else's neural
pathways, which is just as uncomfortable as wearing gloves
micro-tailored to someone else's hands." --
silmaril,
2013-11-14
[Happy birthday to
aliza250!]
"[...] The issue of gay and lesbian rights was always a cash cow, because there was much fear and misunderstanding about gays, a tiny and often invisible minority at the time. AIDS only exacerbated that, as the right exploited a panic over the epidemic and further stigmatized gays as diseased, dirty and disgusting. Radical right groups promoted fear and ignorance, putting money in their coffers for the larger ideological battles they were waging against women's right to choose, secular society, free speech and what they saw as widespread sexual immorality -- battles that have re-energized them over the years and which they are still waging, sometimes with alarming success (as evidenced by recent anti-abortion legislation in the states), using the Republican Party to do it.
"Today, with Hawaii on the verge of becoming the 16th state to pass marriage equality, and with gays much more visible, conservative ideologues are having a harder time on the issue, including trying to raise money around it. But it doesn't mean they're any less ferociously focused on taking away the rights of gays -- or women, or Muslims, or atheists or any other group that doesn't fit their Christian theocratic worldview.
"Enter transgender rights, the newest potential cash cow for the extremist right. [...]"
-- Michelangelo Signorile, "What the National Organization for Marriage's Shift to Trans-Bashing Means", 2013-11-12
From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-11-13:
"If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all." - Michelangelo Buonarroti, sculptor, painter, architect, and poet (1475-1564).
(submitted to the mailing list by Patsy Wang-Iverson)
"One joy scatters a hundred griefs." -- (listed wherever I got it from as simply, Chinese Proverb)
"Watching my 4yr old daughter play by herself renews my faith in my own creative process. Must. Think. Like. Child." -- Tim Neufeld (@timneufeldmusic), 2013-10-18
"When I'm lonely I stand in the corner and play my saxophone and feel sorry for myself. I would ask you to accompany me on the piano, but if I did that I wouldn't be lonely, would I? And what's the point of a saxophone if not to celebrate despair?" -- Jarod Kintz
"good night
sleep tight
don't let the patriarchy steal your basic human rights
-- tumblr user toasteraffairs, spotted on imgur
[thanks to
realinterrobang for
quoting this yesterday]
(Speaking of rights, congratulations to Hawaii!)
"Dreamwidth could not have existed were Maryland not a
civilized state. If I hadn't been able to convert my COBRA
coverage into the state group health plan, I wouldn't have been
able to leave my job with Six Apart. Or if I had, I would have had
to pick up another job that offered health insurance benefits.
Because Maryland did have that program, I was able to buy decent
coverage, with prescription benefits, for $275 or so a month. It
was a $1000 deductable yearly before benefits kick in, and July
(the month my deductable resets) was always a bit of sticker
shock, but having that coverage saved my bacon in more ways than I
can count: multiple monthly prescriptions, frequent doctor visits,
two surgeries, and an assload of various therapies later, I'm less
disabled than I otherwise would have been without being able to
treat my disorder. Some days I'm more disabled than others, but on
the whole, I'm able to lead a productive life because I can treat
the condition I have.</b> --
synecdochic,
"what the affordable care act means to me", 2013-10-18
[Three quotations today, which tie together around the holiday. I think they reinforce each other.]
"If I didn't learn anything else from war son I truly did learn how to love. I can walk into a forest and sit next to a tree and observe all of nature's wonders for I have seen Napalm burn the jungle. I can love a child's laugh because I have heard their screams. I can love the freedom you have today to go out into the world and choose what you want to do because when I was your age I was deprived of my freedom, my youth, and my innocence, while I was supposed to be making this a better world for you to live in. I do feel I have played a small part in making this a better world for you to live in, not because I have fought and killed but because I cried out in anger and told you the horror and reality of warfare. I pray to God that none of you ever have to rest your head on a pillow at night and try to sleep with the memories that the men carry with them that landed at Omaha beach, Inchon or the Ashau Valley. But I want you to realize that they are why you have the freedom to read this letter." -- xinloi at Daily Kos, 2013-11-06
"[...] the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations [...] the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples." -- from concurrent resolution of The United States Congress passed 1926-06-04
"There's commemorative cannon-fire outside my office right now, and I'm more disgusted than moved. Yet more artillery fire seems to me to miss what should be the point." -- Jacob T. Levy, 2009-11-11
Fom the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2013-11-07:
"As it is now constituted, the House Intelligence Committee will never decry, deny, or defy any spy. They see eye-to-eye, so they turn a blind eye. Which means that if we rely on them, we can kiss our liberty good-bye." -- Alan Grayson, U.S. Congressman (D-Florida), writing in the Guardian.
[ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2
013/oct/25/nsa-no-congress-oversight ] (submitted to the mailing list by Jeff Copeland)
"Even for a wizard there will often come times when someone close to you, perhaps your spouse, criticizes your habits by comparing them to those of animals. This is distinctly unfair to the animals, who have far better habits than we in many areas. When, for example, have you seen a frog collecting taxes or a squirrel running for electoral office? Present arguments like these to those people who criticize you. If they still do not see the wisdom of your ways, you may then feel free to bite them." -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume IX
[Actually a start-of-chapte fake-quote from A Malady of Magicks by Craig Shaw Gardner (1986, The Berkley Publishing Group, New York)]
"Some people underestimate how erotic it is to be understood." -- Mary Rakow
"That's one thing that's always, like, been a difference between, like, the performing arts, and being a painter, you know. A painter does a painting, and he paints it, and that's it, you know. He has the joy of creating it, it hangs on a wall, and somebody buys it, and maybe somebody buys it again, or maybe nobody buys it and it sits up in a loft somewhere until he dies. But he never, you know, nobody ever, nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Paint a Starry Night again, man!' You know? He painted it and that was it." -- Joni Mitchell (b. 1943-11-07)
"'Let us not kid ourselves,' Professor Vladimir Nabokov reminds us. 'Let us remember that literature is of no practical value whatsoever. ... ' But practical value isn't the only kind of value. Ours is a mixed economy, with the gift economy of the arts existing (if not exactly flourishing) within the inhospitable conditions of a market economy, like the fragile black market in human decency that keeps civilization going despite the pitiless dictates of self-interest." -- Tim Kreider, 2013-10-26
[I was going to pair this with another quotation, about the joy and glory of making art for art's sake but an artist still needs to eat and pay the rent ... but I can't find that other quotation now. Whoops.]
"When you put it like that, you're actually making pretty good use of your limited time on this Earth. And by 'limited time on this Earth', I mean that we're all going to become immortal space-robots." -- Vi Hart, 2013-10-22, "Doodling in Math Class: Dragon Scales" (last part of a three-part video, so you might want to look at part 1 and part 2 first ... and then go watch or re-watch all of her other videos just because)
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