literallybeorn

i put “All I Want for Christmas is You” through a MIDI converter, and then back through an mp3 converter

Here’s links to every episode (so far) of HammockVlog/Hangin’ with Elisabeth in one convenient location! I do this because I care about That Hammock Life as well as watching my face shape change as I gain and lose weight over the course of 18 months.

Growth has been the main object of development for the past 70 years, despite the fact that it’s not working. Since 1980, the global economy has grown by 380%, but the number of people living in poverty on less than $5 (£3.20) a day has increased by more than 1.1 billion. That’s 17 times the population of Britain. So much for the trickle-down effect.

Orthodox economists insist that all we need is yet more growth. More progressive types tell us that we need to shift some of the yields of growth from the richer segments of the population to the poorer ones, evening things out a bit. Neither approach is adequate. Why? Because even at current levels of average global consumption, we’re overshooting our planet’s bio-capacity by more than 50% each year.

In other words, growth isn’t an option any more – we’ve already grown too much. Scientists are now telling us that we’re blowing past planetary boundaries at breakneck speed. And the hard truth is that this global crisis is due almost entirely to overconsumption in rich countries.

Economist Peter Edward argues that instead of pushing poorer countries to “catch up” with rich ones, we should be thinking of ways to get rich countries to “catch down” to more appropriate levels of development. We should look at societies where people live long and happy lives at relatively low levels of income and consumption not as basket cases that need to be developed towards western models, but as exemplars of efficient living.

In the US, life expectancy is 79 years and GDP per capita is $53,000. But many countries have achieved similar life expectancy with a mere fraction of this income. Cuba has a comparable life expectancy to the US and one of the highest literacy rates in the world with GDP per capita of only $6,000 and consumption of only 1.9 hectares –right at the threshold of ecological sustainability. Similar claims can be made of Peru, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Tunisia. 

Even if we look at measures of overall happiness and wellbeing in addition to life expectancy, a number of low- and middle-income countries rank highly. Costa Rica manages to sustain one of the highest happiness indicators and life expectancies in the world with a per capita income one-fourth that of the US. 

Well, starting tomorrow, it’ll be a hundred thousand times worse.

Here’s how this fucking disaster is gonna look (it’s the one on the right, but you probably guessed that already, I mean, just look at that fuck-up):

Questions about all this? Keep reading for the answers…

FAQ

I know the damage is done here already, once a company has had meetings about a thing they get attached, and there’s about one hundred million more important things in the world than this, but

it’s just such a bad idea. there’s an opportunity to actually look at people’s responses and instead of taking the corporate “people are resistive to change, they’ll learn to love it” angle instead say “oh hey the people here hate this, you know what, no big deal, let’s not do this”

THAT OPPORTUNITY IS THERE

I get heavy memories of working in hospital environments about this – they do it every six months or so, there’ll be a meeting and the director will say “we’re implementing some changes, we want to ask you to give them time before just saying you liked it better the way it was” and all the nurses go “wait but no, we actually do all the work on the floor, if these are changes in how we do the work then probably our opinions are really important? to the welfare of the whole operation?” except that after you’ve been doing it a couple years, you learn better than to say that out loud, they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do, they had an earlier meeting, you weren’t invited, it was decided that the system you were using didn’t appeal to them

notes lassi, “no one can know exactly why or how the young wolf and bear became friends, but i think that perhaps they were both alone when they were young and a bit unsure of how to survive alone. it seems to me that they feel safe being together.”

Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye (via vintageanchorbooks)

The Shot Glass Heard Around The World

In 1969, the Stonewall riots – precipitated when the NYPD burst into the famed gay bar and started being their usually abusive selves – defined the modern gay movement.

Among the first to physically resist the police was Marsha P. Johnson, the now infamous transgender rights activist who co-founded S.T.A.R. (Street Transgender Action Revolutionaries) with Sylvia Rivera in the ‘70s.

At 1:20 in the morning on Saturday, June 28, 1969, four plainclothes police officers entered Stonewall Inn and announced “Police! We’re taking the place!“ 

Officers forced the customers to form into two lines divided by perceived gender and show them their genitals to confirm if it matched the gender on their identification card.

At some point during the raid, Marsha Johnson proclaimed, ’I got my civil rights!’ and then threw a shot glass into a mirror, adding on to the tension and creating an atmosphere of resistance. Some witnesses and historians believe her action is what instigated the riot.

Patrons began to refuse to produce their I.D. and police decided to arrest everyone still at the bar. Those who were not arrested gathered outside the bar and quickly drew a crowd of over 1,000 queers. As rumors spread through the crowd that those inside were being beaten by cops, they began throwing pennies, beer bottles and other items at police.

A drag queen who was shoved by an officer in front of the crowd responded by hitting him on the head with her purse as the crowd began to boo.

Soon after, an unidentified lesbian was hit on the head with a billy club after complaining that her handcuffs were too tight. She faced the bystanders and shouted, ”Why don’t you guys do something?“

Police threw her into the back of a patrol wagons, at that point the crowd became a mob and collectively resisted the police.

—–

Along with Sylvia Rivera, the two transgender revolutionaries created S.T.A.R. and STAR House in which they housed, fed and clothed homeless drag queens and trans* youth by hustling in the streets of NYC so that their children didn’t have to.

Marsha P. Johnson is often credited for inciting the Stonewall Riots, yet she receives close to no recognition by mainstream Gay Organizations and the queer community. I have no doubt that the erasure of Marsha’s participation in the riots and the Gay Liberation Movement is due to her being a black, transgender radical. Had she’d been a white gay cis-male, her name would be permanently embedded in every queer’s mind.

I know Marsha as a courageous queer revolutionary, a queen of Queens, a Stonewall Veteran, a dedicated activist, a mother of S.T.A.R. and a personal idol. She deserves more than anyone I know, to be recognized by the queer community.

In July 6, 1992, Johnson’s body was found floating in the Hudson River off the West Village Piers shortly after the 1992 Pride March. Friends of Johnson claims she was harassed near the spot where her body was found. The police disregarded this and ruled her death a suicide without any evidence. However, in November 2012, the NYPD re-opened the case.

#FeeltheBern #BernieSanders #JamesAdomian #FunnyorDie

But then it stopped. You know why? I grew up. It only happened during my childhood, a time when adults assumed they had the right to tell me what to do. But it happens to grown women all the time.