sonder
n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
Snow White isn’t the traditional Snow White that you might imagine when you think of her. She’s not a Disney Snow White, she likes to go out there and kick some ass. Did you enjoy bringing that element to the role?
Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.
This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.
Now, once you’ve selected the “Straight White Male” difficulty setting, you still have to create a character, and how many points you get to start — and how they are apportioned — will make a difference. Initially the computer will tell you how many points you get and how they are divided up. If you start with 25 points, and your dump stat is wealth, well, then you may be kind of screwed. If you start with 250 points and your dump stat is charisma, well, then you’re probably fine. Be aware the computer makes it difficult to start with more than 30 points; people on higher difficulty settings generally start with even fewer than that.
As the game progresses, your goal is to gain points, apportion them wisely, and level up. If you start with fewer points and fewer of them in critical stat categories, or choose poorly regarding the skills you decide to level up on, then the game will still be difficult for you. But because you’re playing on the “Straight White Male” setting, gaining points and leveling up will still by default be easier, all other things being equal, than for another player using a higher difficulty setting.
Likewise, it’s certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn’t change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.
You can lose playing on the lowest difficulty setting. The lowest difficulty setting is still the easiest setting to win on. The player who plays on the “Gay Minority Female” setting? Hardcore.
John Scalzi tells it like it is. (Go and read the whole essay, then read the comments.)
(via imogeneestermont)
And you thought you’d seen it all.
just some of my thoughts on allies in movements… primarily white allies, I’d love to hear fedback, I think I’m just trying to talk my way through some of the stuff that’s ben bothering me on tumblr about activism and/or allies voices.
“Allies have good intentions but are completely missing the point. We are teaching our youth and white youth in particular that everybody is equal, however the system we base it all on doesn’t do those things. So we have white people saying ‘equality for all, equality for all’ that includes them as well.
Because white people being told they can’t be a part of something isin’t a thing white people have experienced as a concept.
When they are told “you’re stamping out my voice / this isn’t your movement” they’re not necessarily understanding that’s what they do because they have not been taught exclusion, what they have been taught is equality and activism and movements includes them because all the faces that represent these events look like them.
When white people do stand up in POC movements, they speak from privilege without meaning to and they stamp out the voices they are trying to uplift and uphold. even if what they’re saying is the exact same thing as what the POC said, their voice is the one that will be heard which turns the movement into a white movement, which in our soceity, just looks like a movement.
Imagine if you look at activism as a single file of line and you have POC or women or whatever minority is waiting on line, someone from the majority group comes along & wants to be heard, what they don’t realise is they have a fast-track pass because they are from the majority so they go to the front of the line and when a whole bunch of people from the majority joins the line, suddenly the whole line is 50-FT deep of just the majority
Minority gorups dont want someone to speak for them or evn on behalf of them. Allies’ role is to be a back seat not a spokesperson.
So instead of reblogging a POC post and putting in your own 2cents or paraphrasing something a POC said, just reblog it, dont add to it, let it be their voice. Let it move through you instead of come from you because as soon as you put any words to it, it becomes your work, your voice. People no longer see it as something that POC said but now as something you hold the opinion of.
POC voices dont feel are heard because white people will say the same thing but they are completely taking over the whole movement.
Thoughts? I would like to heard from you
You have articulated in 5mins everything that goes through my mind in a non-screaming fit way. I love you, you are perfect. Reblog for ever.
CISPA Update of the Day: CISPA, the Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act that passed the House in April, likely is headed for a Senate vote in early June.
To drum up opposition to the legislation, which would create “a ‘cybersecurity’ exemption to all existing laws,” Fight for the Future, Democrats.com, The Liberty Coalition, and the Entertainment Consumers Association have created a new website called Privacy Is Awesome. The site outlines the top five ways to help defeat CISPA:
- Call your senators and tell them to oppose the Lieberman-Collins bill (CISPA), and ask for a constituent meeting during the Memorial Day recess to help change their mind.
- Email senators offices about CISPA, expressing your opposition.
- Keep calling senators until they plan a constituent meeting.
- Donate to anti-CISPA organizers — the same teams that helped defeat SOPA/PIPA.
- Share your opposition online — Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is spearheading opposition to the legislation, concluding a recent Senate floor speech with:
I believe these bills will encourage the development of a cyber security industry that profits from fear and whose currency is Americans private data. These bills create a Cyber Industrial Complex that has an interest in preserving the problem to which it is the solution.
Watch the full video here. It’s terrific.
Andrea. 17. Lives in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Loves HP, Pokemon, Comics, Human rights, Kittens <3 and TV.
