Gallandria

And here we are, cheerfully playing along, sounding reasonably competent — but everyone, when they have the attention to spare, is keeping an eye on the tuba players. They don’t come in for the first eight measures or so, and then when they do come in, what we see is:

[stifled giggling]

[reeeeeeally deep breath]

[COLOSSAL FOGHORN NOISE]

The entire band stops dead, in the cacophonous kind of way that a band stops when it hasn’t actually been cued to stop. The band director doesn’t even say anything, just looks straight back at the tubas and makes a helpless sort of why gesture.

In unison, the tuba players defend themselves: “THERE WERE FOUR F’S.”

Jesse Williams on Michael Dunn Case: ‘This is Not a Black Problem, This is a White Problem’ - Atlanta Black Star (via 5feetoffury)

"It is not a Black problem. It is a white problem."

THANK YOU.  Parents with non-white children should not have to fucking coach them on how to behave around racists so they don’t get hurt or killed.  How about white people STOP SHOOTING PEOPLE and teach their white children to NOT SHOOT PEOPLE.

This is not a “black problem.”  This is our fucking problem.  ~JJ

9 Reasons You Defend Spanking Your Kids (and why you’re wrong)

Why Does Everyone Pretend There is a Spanking Debate? (because there’s no “debate”)

Why stop at spanking?  Why not stone them? 

And finally one of my favorite quotes about hitting kids: “I stand on the moral side of the spanking issue that says putting hands to people who cannot defend themselves or fight back is wrong.  If we find ourselves threatened by the morality of non-violence, perhaps we should consider why were are complicit in violence against children.”  ~Barrel of Oranges

I understand your feeling, and the feeling is real and important, but our gut feelings are often incorrect.

Like, to give you an analogous example: I feel like I am going to die every time I get onto an airplane, but this gut feeling I have is wrong. Maybe I will someday die on an airplane, but if I need to go to Los Angeles for some reason, I am statistically far safer flying than I would be driving, so if one of my big goals is not wanting to die (and it is!) then I should fly, even though I feel less safe than I would if I were driving.

Similarly, you are much more likely to be murdered if you have a gun in your home than if you don’t have a gun in your home. So you may feel more safe, but statistically you are much less safe.

More importantly: Due to Stand Your Ground laws, more people are dying than would otherwise die. We know this with almost total certainty. So even if the Stand Your Ground law were providing your family some protection from a hypothetical home intrusion, I fail to see how this would justify the deaths of hundreds of non-hypothetical human beings. 

See, we have this concept called “bodily autonomy.” It’s this….cultural notion that a person’s control over their own body is above all important and must not be infringed upon. 

Like, we can’t even take LIFE SAVING organs from CORPSES unless the person whose corpse it is gave consent before their death. Even corpses get bodily autonomy. 

To tell people that they MUST sacrifice their bodily autonomy for 9 months against their will in an incredibly expensive, invasive, difficult process to save what YOU view as another human life (a debatable claim in the early stages of pregnancy when the VAST majority of abortions are performed) is desperately unethical. You can’t even ask people to sacrifice bodily autonomy to give up organs they aren’t using anymore after they have died. 

And here’s another point: When you say that “rape is the exception” you betray something FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN about your own argument.

Because a fetus produced from sexual assault is biologically NO DIFFERENT than a fetus produced from consensual sex. No difference at all.

If one is alive, so is the other. If one is a person, so is the other. If one has a soul, then so does the other. If one is a little blessing that happened for a reason and must be protected, then so is the other. 

When you say that “Rape is the exception” what you betray is this: It isn’t about a life. This isn’t about the little soul sitting inside some person’s womb, because if it was you wouldn’t care about HOW it got there, only that it is a little life that needs protecting.

When you say “rape is the exception” what you say is this: You are treating pregnancy as a punishment. You are PUNISHING people who have had CONSENSUAL SEX but don’t want to go through a pregnancy. People who DARED to have consensual sex without the goal of procreation in mind, and this is their “consequence.” 

For God’s sake, the man was trying to teach people about photosynthesis when asked what his favourite colour was. That’s a man that ADORES science and absolutely loves teaching people.

Bob Ross is the Mister Rogers of art

and Mister Rogers is… well, Mister Rogers