Pro Homo

Marine life artwork over the past year :)

UH WHAT

This might have been the bit that hit me hardest, actually:

it would be easy to misinterpret the following scenario as a standoff between two partners: Imagine that your partner asks you to pay the electric bill, and you say to yourself, “OK, I have time to do that today.” But when you sit down to do it, you keep getting distracted. The ADHD brain needs higher stimulation in order to complete this rote task with minimal payoff. Your ADHD brain says, “That task is way too boring, and I refuse to focus on it. Find something that interests me more, which offers me a bigger dopamine reward, and I’ll work with you.” It doesn’t matter that you know you should pay the bill as promised; if your brain won’t engage, it’s an ugly standoff. Perhaps, after a day of procrastination — when your partner will be home in 20 minutes and the bill is still unpaid — there may be enough of an adrenaline rush from a sense of crisis that your brain will engage and you pay the bill.

The ADHD brain and its owner are at odds with one another. It’s difficult to compel a disengaged brain to engage by force of will. In fact, much of the treatment for ADHD involves learning to psych out the brain, so that it will attend to necessary, low-stimulation tasks.

Appreciating the tug-of-war within that pits intellect against neurobiology increases compassion and acceptance for one’s hidden struggle.

I feel SEEN. OTZ

Now, think of the happiest things. It’s the same as having wings.

Having a friend over to share some soup.

Proff: What’s the first step to solving any problem? Class: Don’t panic. Proff: And why is that? Class: Because we know more than we think we do.

“Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman told the crowd at Saturday’s Women’s March in downtown Los Angeles that she experienced what she calls “sexual terrorism” as a 13-year-old after the release of the film The Professional.

Portman described her pride and excitement in releasing the film, only to encounter sexually explicit messages both directed toward her and made about her.

”I excitedly opened my first fan mail to read a rape fantasy that a man had written me,” she recalled. “A countdown was started on my local radio show to my 18th birthday, euphemistically the date that I would be legal to sleep with. Movie reviewers talked about my budding breasts in reviews.”

The experience, she said, changed the way she expressed herself publicly, in order to limit the ways she could be objectified by others.

”I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually, I would feel unsafe,” she said. “And that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort. So I quickly adjusted my behavior. I rejected any role that even had a kissing scene and talked about that choice deliberately in interviews. I emphasized how bookish I was and how serious I was. And I cultivated an elegant way of dressing. I built a reputation for basically being prudish, conservative, nerdy, serious, in an attempt to feel that my body was safe and that my voice would be listened to.”

please take a moment to really appreciate the argument of why "most cops don't live in the cities they oversee" needs to be addressed

Yusuf Abdul-Qadir: what percent of the police live in the city?

mayor: about 5% or so

Yusuf Abdul-Qadir: 5%, so 95% don’t live in the city.

mayor: yes.

Yusuf Abdul-Qadir: so when you say that the vast majority of the percentage goes towards salaries, et cetera, fringe benefits, that means that they take their money on 81, go to outside the city, pay taxes in those communities that have some of the best schools while we have an underfunded school district--

someone else: $60 million up.

Yusuf Abdul-Qadir: so i just want to put into context what we’re talking about, because it’s really easy to say, mayor-- and with all due respect, i like you. but that was a very politician answer.

mayor: sorry, what specifically?

Yusuf Abdul-Qadir: the, “we will consider, and we will look.” what we’re saying is we’re not interested in considering and looking. what we’re saying is, actually, there’s $50 million. commit to $20 million cut, because we’re sending money-- as the mayor of Syracuse, when you don’t have a tax base, you’re sending money out of Syracuse. and not just for 30 years-- for the rest of their life because their pensions, their health insurance, their families. so we are funding for other people’s communities to have the promise of the American dream while we are denying it in our community. that’s the context that you, as the mayor, have to look at this under.

so when we talk about renegotiating union contract, what we’re saying is you can’t play around with, “maybe, um, we will--” no. y’all got to go, because you don’t provide a service that is beneficial to the community, that is meaningful to the community. the services that you provide criminalize our community, impoverish our community, reallocate resources to suburbs. we are actually funding the suburbs, both in our police departments and in our schools.

At some point during the game, the team’s general manager Connie May tweeted a picture of the players standing during the national anthem. The tweet tagged Donald Trump, declaring, “Everyone respecting the FLAG!”

According to the New York Times, the team returned to their locker room after the game to find a bunch of texts and notifications about the picture, which was posted without their knowledge or consent to promote a political message they say was not their intention.

May’s implication is that by standing for the anthem, the team is showing opposition (or at the very least, indifference) to the Black Lives Matter movement, making it a sort of anti-protest protest in itself. And the team made it clear they were not okay with that message.

Only two of the team’s 18 players are black. Kelsey Stewart (featured in the header image) didn’t play in Monday’s game and was the one to send a screenshot of the tweet to her teammates, along with the message: “I am not going to ever be a part of this organization whatsoever.” Kiki Stokes led the walkout after May doubled down on the tweet after the game.

The Undefeated’s Sean Hurd writes:

"When May was brought into the locker room following the game, players expected an explanation. According to Stokes, May instead tried to justify what she had posted and described how uncomfortable she had felt. When May then mentioned the phrase “All Lives Matter,” Stokes had heard enough and walked out of the locker room."

Stewart and Stokes were backed up by the entirety of their team.

“Moments later, her teammates took off their jerseys and followed her,” writes Hurd. “According to Stokes, every player in the locker room was done after that moment. They would no longer play for May or the Scrap Yard organization.”

“The more we talked about it, the angrier I got, and I finally just said, ‘I’m done, I’m not going to wear this jersey,’” Cat Osterman told the Times. “We were used as pawns in a political post, and that’s not OK.”

Additionally, the USSSA Pride, who the Scrap Yard Dawgs played in Monday’s game, has suspended the rest of their planned games in solidarity. (The two were the teams on each other’s schedules, so presumably, this means the USSSA is refusing to win by default.)

These players are sacrificing a lot to take this stand. Natasha Watley, the first Black player to play with USA Softball at the Olympics, told The Undefeated, “It’s powerful that not one of them stood back and said this doesn’t really affect me, I’d rather play,” adding, “We’re already getting paid pennies and now we’re going to get paid nothing to stand up for this. That’s how much it matters.”

The now-former Scrap Yard players have said that May’s statements don’t represent them and they’ve crafted a statement to explain what they do stand for.

“This is us,” it reads, via a series of images the teammates have posted to their personal accounts. “Awareness. Empowerment. Unity.”"

https://www.themarysue.com/softball-team-quits-over-tweet-to-trump/