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ourtimeorg: We’ve been talking a lot about the cost of college...

Wed, 22 May 2013 20:17:03 -0400

We’ve been talking a lot about the cost of college recently. John Green puts it best.

(H/t Upworthy for the image)

archiemcphee: These awesome photos are from the 2013 Weston...

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:10:51 -0400

These awesome photos are from the 2013 Weston Sand Sculpture Festival on the sandy shores of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, England. Each year the festival has a different theme and this year’s theme is Hollywood.

“Since the festival started in 2006, themes have included Fairy Tales, The Continents of the World, Under the Ocean, Great Britain, and The Jungle. What began with two Dutch sand sculptors building a giant King Kong from 30 tonnes of sand has now turned into a world famous get-together of some of the niftiest hands in sand sculpting.

More than 20 of the world’s greatest sculptors from nine different countries are working away using 4,000 tonnes of sand from the beach.”

The festival opened on Good Friday and runs through the end of September.

Visit Dailymail.co.uk to view more of the awesome sand sculptures from this year’s Weston Sand Sculpture Festival.

[via Free York and Dailymail.co.uk]

The Inconsolable Secret: nerdfighter13812: ohanameansfandom: Whenever anyone argues against...

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:08:11 -0400

The Inconsolable Secret: nerdfighter13812: ohanameansfandom: Whenever anyone argues against...:

nerdfighter13812:

ohanameansfandom:

Whenever anyone argues against marriage equality because of their religious views as a Christian I just want to hit them over the head repeatedly with a Bible whilst yelling

ADULTERY ISN’T ILLEGAL!!

LYING ISN’T ILLEGAL!!

DIVORCE ISN’T…

"For what it’s worth: it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you’re..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 23:41:48 -0400

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you find you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start over again.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald (via yasodhara)

Living Fearlessly

Mon, 20 May 2013 20:11:53 -0400

I could jump out of a plane and sky dive without blinking.

I have chosen to fall in love over again until I found the one my soul needed.

I can walk up to any stranger and talk to them.

I challenged the ones I love when I thought they were making poor decisions.

I’ve said no.

I have changed majors, moved cities, redefined friendships, spoken loudly, and sang off-key. All of these things could make others afraid, but they don’t scare me. I thought that made me fearless. All it really means is that I have a wider comfort zone than most people.

I’m embarking on a personal quest this summer, and I hope I am courageous enough to see the mission through. I want to live fearlessly, and that means I must confront the biggest fears I have.

They’ll probably sound small to you, but to me facing them is an undertaking.

My Projects:

1. Finishing a writing project and sending it off for publication. This implies that I am somehow good enough. I am afraid that I am not good enough.

2. Finishing projects I started in High School but never finished. One of these require me to believe in the honesty of people, something I was convinced is a myth.

3. Call myself a writer. This means people might call me naïve behind my back.

4. Conquering my body. This means that I will have to face every hateful thing done to me in my childhood, every joke at my expense, every look of judgment because I am a nerd learning to be healthy. I am breaking the self-made stereotype for myself and allowing myself to be consistent in that.

5. Beating math. Because it is my weakness, and because I have allowed my proficiency in it to dictate my future and the way I see myself. Because I am afraid I am more than I am allowing myself to be.

I guess what I’m saying is, overall I want to be radical enough to believe that I’m better than I’ve allowed myself to be. I want fear to not restrain me anymore, and I want to free fall into the future that could exist through God and fearlessness. Because that is what He called me to.

“But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” Revelation 21:8

"How did a man born of Eastern descent, a man who called himself the Prince of Peace, a man whom the..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 15:10:07 -0400

“

How did a man born of Eastern descent, a man who called himself the Prince of Peace, a man whom the sacred writings describe as eating with prostitutes and providing wine at weddings and healing the sick and ignoring any political plot, a man who wants us to turn the other cheek and give all our possessions if we are sued, become associated with—no, become the poster boy for—a Western moral and financial agenda communicated through the rhetoric of war and ignorant of the damage it is causing to a world living in poverty?

My only answer is that Satan is crafty indeed.

”

- Donald Miller (via blakebaggott)

tastefullyoffensive: Headline of the year.[latimes]

Mon, 20 May 2013 15:08:13 -0400

tastefullyoffensive:

Headline of the year.

[latimes]

Nothing

Sun, 19 May 2013 15:17:23 -0400

is quite as scary as looking at a plate full of food and not knowing exactly which thing could kill you.

BTW I’m an epi totin’ woman. Hear me roar.

Healthy Eating

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:48:13 -0400

Healthy Eating

picadorbookroom: In honor of Children’s Book Week, here’s a...

Mon, 13 May 2013 22:07:51 -0400

picadorbookroom:

In honor of Children’s Book Week, here’s a photo of an awesome kid.

wilwheaton: in which nathan fillion sweeps anne wheaton off her...

Mon, 13 May 2013 22:06:40 -0400

wilwheaton:

in which nathan fillion sweeps anne wheaton off her feet
When I finished one of my photo ops in Ottawa, Nathan Fillion was doing one of his in the photo…
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georgetakei: Let’s hope she doesn’t planning on cheating...

Mon, 13 May 2013 22:03:56 -0400

georgetakei:

Let’s hope she doesn’t planning on cheating either.

mleigh91: Seriously? I LOVE her.

Thu, 09 May 2013 09:30:12 -0400

mleigh91:

Seriously? I LOVE her.

grasswidows: A reminder.

Thu, 09 May 2013 09:20:27 -0400

grasswidows:

A reminder.

inconsolablesecrets: blakebaggott: thepeoplesrecord: The...

Wed, 08 May 2013 13:35:54 -0400

inconsolablesecrets:

blakebaggott:

thepeoplesrecord:

The troubling viral trend of the “hilarious” Black poor person
May 7, 2013

Charles Ramsey, the man who helped rescue three Cleveland women presumed dead after going missing a decade ago, has become an instant Internet meme. It’s hardly surprising—the interviews he gave yesterday provide plenty of fodder for a viral video, including memorable soundbites (“I was eatin’ my McDonald’s”) and lots of enthusiastic gestures. But as Miles Klee and Connor Simpson have noted, Ramsey’s heroism is quickly being overshadowed by the public’s desire to laugh at and autotune his story, and that’s a shame. Ramsey has become the latest in a fairly recent trend of “hilarious” black neighbors, unwitting Internet celebrities whose appeal seems rooted in a “colorful” style that is always immediately recognizable as poor or working-class.

Before Ramsey, there was Antoine Dodson, who saved his younger sister from an intruder, only to wind up famous for his flamboyant recounting of the story to a reporter. Since Dodson’s rise to fame, there have been others: Sweet Brown, a woman who barely escaped her apartment complex during a fire last year, and Michelle Clarke, who couldn’t fathom the hailstorm that rained down in her hometown of Houston, and in turn became “the next Sweet Brown.”

Granted, the buzzworthy tactic of reporters interviewing the most loquacious witnesses to a crime or other event is nothing new, and YouTube has countless examples of people of all ethnicities saying ridiculous things. One woman, for instance, saw fit to casually mention her breasts while discussing a local accident, while another man described a car crash with theatrical flair. Earlier this year, a “hatchet-wielding hitchhiker” named Kai matched Dodson’s fame with his astonishing account of rescuing a woman from a racist attacker. But none of those people have been subjected to quite the same level of derisive memeification as Brown, Clark, and now, perhaps, Ramsey—the inescapable echoes of “Hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wife!” and “Kabooyaw,” the tens of millions of YouTube hits and cameos in other viral videos, even commercials.

It’s difficult to watch these videos and not sense that their popularity has something to do with a persistent, if unconscious, desire to see black people perform. Even before the genuinely heroic Ramsey came along, some viewers had expressed concern that the laughter directed at people like Sweet Brown plays into the most basic stereotyping of blacks as simple-minded ramblers living in the “ghetto,” socially out of step with the rest of educated America. Black or white, seeing Clark and Dodson merely as funny instances of random poor people talking nonsense is disrespectful at best. And shushing away the question of race seems like wishful thinking.

Ramsey is particularly striking in this regard, since, for a moment at least, he put the issue of race front and center himself. Describing the rescue of Amanda Berry and her fellow captives, he says, “I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms. Something is wrong here. Dead giveaway!”

The candid statement seems to catch the reporter off guard; he ends the interview shortly afterward. And it’s notable that among the many memorable things Ramsey said on camera, this one has gotten less meme-attention than most. Those who are simply having fun with the footage of Ramsey might pause for a second to actually listen to the man. He clearly knows a thing or two about the way racism prevents us from seeing each other as people.

Source

Now that you know this is a thing, please stop sharing these memes. Poor Black people speaking candidly about various serious incidents isn’t a hilarious joke.

I was just thinking about this the other day.

I honestly did not know that Antoine Dodson had saved his little sister. I don’t think I’ve seen the originals of any of these videos. #shamed

That said, I don’t think that this has that much to do with race. Maybe that’s just me being naive, but I can think of several equivalent viral videos of people acting out, regardless of race or wealth or sincerity.