Firecracks:

I think there are some really important discussions to have about why disclosing aspects of personal identity can be challenging but important for all kinds of people, why the concept of “coming out” has appealed at times to a wide variety of groups (including people who are poly or kinky, sex workers, people with HIV, atheists, and people with mental illness), and why other groups using that language can be harmful to people in the LGBT and queer communities. But it’s going to take me some time to really be able to address all that.

In the meantime, I also think it’s worthwhile to focus specifically on the coming out experiences of people who are LGBTQIA. Of course, these experiences can vary a lot too. There are some differences between coming out about sexual orientation and coming out about gender identity, for example. And even two people who identify the same way may face pretty different challenges in their individual lives. I do believe, however, that there is a certain commonality shared specifically by these groups.

If a director wants to make a film against bullying, it is not for a committee of MPAA bean-counters to tell him what words he can use. Not many years ago, the word rape was not used in newspapers, on television—or in the movies, for that matter. But there is a crime, and the name of the crime is rape, and if you remove the word you help make the crime invisible.

Roger Ebert (via hannahhorvath)

Me: *Removes my cat from my lap to do something else.*

My cat: Father is...evil? Father is unyielding? Father is incapable of love? I am running away. I am packing my little rucksack and going out to explore the world as a lone vagabond. I can no longer thrive in this household.

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

⁂

Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

And now here is a collection of the cutest cats on the internet to be used as an aid to calm everyone’s tits.

Pun intended. 

meempoweringme:

Isn’t this just precious.

Seems like a good first post. I would so watch this Disney movie.

One: So true.

Two: I'm not allowed to make those comments about people on the news, even if it is a slow news day.

Does anyone else make sarcastic comments out loud when watching a TV show or film even though you’re completely alone?

ao3 is down. what am i supposed to do?? continue writing my own fic??? HA you almost got me!! absolutely not. u can't fool me ao3. i'm not falling for that trick.