Richard Feynman (above) Included A Poem In His Address To The National Academy Of Sciences:

Bathrooms should be a safe and comfortable place for all. Don’t harass or attacks trans or gender nonconforming people for accessing a basic need. For more on this issue, check out episode 17 of the Sex Law Podcast (also on iTunes here).

And follow SexEdPlus for more graphics about gender, sexuality, and more. Like THIS ONE about gender identity!

Self Care: Sleep

How To Cope with Nightmares

How to Keep a Dream Journal

Making a Dream Journal

Sleep Meditation Music

Teas for Insomnia

Natural Sleep Remedies

Medication Interactions Checker (Make sure you’re okay to take sleep aids before doing so!)

DIY Bubblebath

Foods that can help/harm sleep

Cheap Pillows

Aromatherapy

Guided Meditation

Gaycation - “USA”

وجمعة مباركة للجميع

While these may be controversial & provocative, Muslims have no right to be offended by it. What’s offensive is that atheism is punishable with the death penalty in Saudi Arabia & many other Muslim-majority countries both in the middle east & outside of it. Not all Muslim-majority countries have the death penalty, but there are other punishments like prison, lashes, annulment of marriage, loss of child custody & family inheritance, seizure of property, loss of employment, & others.

Even if these laws didn’t exist, atheists still experience oppression from society. Most will not come out to their families for fear of being disowned, kicked out, or even worse, killed. If the apartheid laws weren’t bad enough, you still have to worry about how your family, friends, & neighbours will react to your lack of faith. So these pictures aren’t offensive, they’re resistance against oppression & apartheid. When you oppress a group of people so much & take away their right to live, expect the frustration to be released one way or another, even if it pisses off your oppressors.

While one can try to argue that the death penalty has nothing to do with Islam, the politicians & clerics who advocate the law use Sharia, verses from the Quran, & hadiths to support it. Only a tiny minority of clerics & fiqh experts oppose it, & they are constantly being accused of apostasy themselves.

Thirteen countries punish atheism with the death penalty. These are Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Somalia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Qatar, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, & Sudan. All are Muslim-majority & use Sharia to varying degrees, except for Nigeria but the death penalty only applies in certain Muslim-majority states in the north.

Until these laws no longer exist & atheists can finally live, Muslims have no right to be offended by legitimate resistance & our response to oppression.

Testimonies from Saudi atheists I personally know:

“It’s hell. Religion is always pushed down our throats. We’ve worked so hard to get rid of the brainwash we’ve been receiving all our lives just to put on a mask every fucking day in front of people. A socially acceptable mask. It’s like we’re in a zombie apocalypse & we’re disguising as zombies to not have our brains eaten. You MUST agree with them. You MUST wear that mask every fucking day of your life. You start to get less & less chances in life of taking that mask off & relaxing for a bit & the more you wear that mask the more painful it gets because that fucking mask is poisonous. But you wear it anyway because the alternative is getting killed.”

“The first thing I’d start with is how hard it is to live a double life. Religion & the place I’m living in are some of the reasons why I’m suffering from severe depression. Religion haunts me. I’m always having nightmares that I’ve been caught & will face beheading. My life is in danger 24/7.”

“In Saudi Arabia, god is your judge, jury, & executioner. God is not in the sky but on the ground in the form of long bearded men with evil in their eyes. God wanted me dead but now god can’t reach me (thanks to getting asylum). How godly of him.”

“Being an atheist single mother is terrifying. I’m always paranoid someone will find out & take my son away from me because I’m an “unfit mother”. It breaks my heart that I have to lie to him about god & religion because he’s too young to realize how dangerous speaking the truth is.”

“I can’t think of anything that would describe it better than hell. It’s way too risky to say anything.”

“I seriously don’t want to think about this shitty place we live in becuse I’m already depressed as fuck.”

Poignant Dog Food Ad Tackles Race, Highlights What Pups Can Teach Us About Unconditional Love

Turns out our pups can teach us a lesson in being our fellow man’s best friend.An ad from dog food company Pedigree calls attention to race relations by illustrating an interaction between two pet owners.

Watch how dogs truly have no prejudices in the full commercial here. 

Things brown/south asian tumblr will probably never address:

Antiblackness that actually involves the input of black south asians & black people in general

Ignoring the fact that South Asia is comprised of 8 countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, India, Maldives, and Sri Lanka.

Lack or complete ignorance of north east indian culture and peoples.

Cultural hegemony India tends to have over representing South Asia

Discussion of caste which doesn’t reduce it down to an old practice that doesn’t actively shape an individual’s life in a variety of ways that are not exclusive to socioeconomic struggles.

How the discussion of the South Asian diaspora focuses mainly on those living in the West.

Hindutva

Steve McCurry making a name for himself off of the exploitation and exotification of South Asian faces and bodies (see: Sharbat Gula: known globally merely as “The Afghan Girl”

Ignorance of the issues Adivasi peoples face across South Asia.

Exploitation of the bodies of South Asian women for surrogacy by Westerners.

Savarna appropriation of Avarna arts redeeming it anew with culture now that it’s been mutilated by forward castes. (ie: Appropriation of Sadir into modern day Bharatnatyam)

The creation of good and bad brown/south asian dichotomy in the West Post 9/11 (ie: Indian peoples are characterized/seen as intelligent spiritual peaceful people while Pakistani and Afghani peoples are characterized/seen as violent terrorists or oppressed women who are labeled under islamophobic terms such as “radical muslim”

The lack of discussion about the South Asian diaspora in the Caribbean and South America.

Discrimination against Black African students living in South Asia.

Portrayal of Hinduism & Buddhism as peaceful religions while Islam is portrayed as violent and backwards.

Complete ignorance or writing off of Southern & Northeast Indian cultures by North Indians and Northern South Asians alike as not being authentically Indian or only discussing it when talking about the different regions of India.

Shadeism

How Bollywood has stolen, appropriated, and made racist caricatures of Indians and Non-Indians who are not Savarna North Indians. (See: Chennai Express, blackface meant to represent native Hawaiian peoples seen in the Hawa Hawai song in Mr. India, Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen, etc)

Misogyny and sexual violence against Dalit women.

Erasure of brown skin in South Asian media, replacing brown skinned South Asian women with extremely light skinned South Asian or white women calling them the ideal faces of South Asian womanhood and beauty.

Feel free to add to this

Orphaned children and the abandoned dogs they love

In Bangladesh, an Australian photographer finds a tight-knit, motley family

it is very very important for boys to know that:

you’re allowed to express your discomfort and hurt

you’re allowed to speak up and defend yourself

your emotions are valid

you’re not a bad person 

you’re not ugly

you don’t have to laugh at sexist jokes just because everyone is laughing

you’re not inferior to girls

you are loved

the stereotypes that mainstream media portray you as are untrue

only you know what it’s like to be you, everyone else is just looking in from the outside

you’re not a bad person, and people are going to try and make you feel like you are, but you’re not

Six facts you didn’t know about the Sun

With summer on our doorstep, we thought it would be a good time to get to know the star that we so actively seek out at this time of year. The importance of the Sun in relation to the Earth has been recognized from time immemorial, but in recent years we’ve started to harness the Sun’s power, making it work for us by producing energy. Here we have six scientific facts about the Sun that you probably don’t yet know.

A solar hot water heater is over three times as efficient as solar cells (photovoltaic devices).

The Sun can supply all the people of the Earth’s yearly energy needs in one hour.

A solar cell cannot absorb low energy light rays (radiation) but can absorb high energy. To put in perspective, you wouldn’t be able to catch a ball if it were thrown extremely softly at you (it wouldn’t reach you); however, if the ball were thrown with a greater force towards you, you’d be able to catch it. This is the miracle of quantum mechanics.

The Sun can be used for air conditioning to make a house cooler by using a solar chimney.

A new type of solar energy device called a Solar (Power) Tower can trace its roots back to Leonardo da Vinci who envisioned the hot air rushing up a chimney could turn a pig on a spit.

It is possible to run a coal-fired power plant with solar power by using the Sun to make steam.

Image: Solar Flare by skeeze. Public domain via Pixabay.