Maria. Twenty-eight. Mom of two boys. Filipina. Born and raised in NYC and now living in the Motherland. I have a lot of skeletons (and clothes) in my closet.
In a sentimental mood.
Woke up feeling some kind of way, wrote two really emotional/heartfelt letters, and now feel utterly drained. It’s raining relentlessly. The kids are asleep. Now would be the perfect time to catch up on my query letter writing/job hunt.
… But all I want is to buy chocolate cake and hot cocoa and watch Grey’s Anatomy.
Am I the only one who has a problem with the fact that Fanny Serrano BB Cream, a makeup made by a Filipina makeup artist for Filipino women, only comes in two shades? And that both shades are for fair women, despite the fact that Filipinas come in every shade of skin tone there is? And that the two shades are called “Mestiza” and “Chinita”?
Caitlin Moran’s article on Blachman
There is an extraordinary television programme broadcasting in Denmark at the moment. Called Blachman, it features the eponymous host and a friend sitting in a darkly lit room. On their command, women are ushered in and take off their robes.
Fifteen rape victims have formed martial arts movement and are prepared to confront abusers if no one listens to their complaints…A GROUP of women are fighting back against the sickening culture of rape which they say infects India. Fifteen determined females – all victims themselves – have trained in martial arts and are prepared to hand out rough justice if no one listens to their complaints. And the movement, called the Red Brigade, is growing rapidly following the gang rape and murder of medical student Jyoti Singh Pandey that horrified the world.In a nation where a woman is reportedly raped every 20 minutes, the group’s leader Usha Vishwakarma said: “We are fighting back – and the boot is now on the other foot.” Member Sufia Hashmi, 17, said: “We’ve caught a lot of men recently. I joined because men always used to pass comments on me and touch my body but now we beat them and they run.”Like the other members in the northern city of Lucknow, 25-year-old Usha has first-hand experience of the daily dangers women face in the huge nation – a teacher tried to rape her when she was 18. She said: “He grabbed me and tried to open my trousers. I kicked him in the crotch and ran.” Usha complained to staff but they told her to forget it and allowed her attacker to carry on teaching. She said: “Many parents tell girls to quit school so there will be no sexual violence. But we said no – this has to stop. We decided to form a group to fight for ourselves, not just complain.” MOREThe Red Brigade is up there with badass all female groups like the Ukrainian Asgarda and India’s Gulabi Gang.
ALL THE YESS IN THE WORLD
Please tell me there’s a group like this in the Philippines!
I recently had a conversation on FB with someone who kept on saying that a woman should “know better” than to go outside by herself if she’s wearing provocative clothing. I told him that he was basically saying that lone women who bare skin are complicit in any sexual assault they may experience. He kept on insisting that he’s not blaming the victim, that he was only saying that women should use their “common sense”, and that if women don’t use their “common sense”, they are at least partially responsible for whatever may happen.
Dude is a close friend, too. I caught lots of feels from realizing this is his perspective.
(via kiskolee)
The popular film trilogy, The Matrix, presented a cyberuniverse where humans live in a simulated reality created by sentient machines.
Now, a philosopher and team of physicists imagine that we might really be living inside a computer-generated universe that you could call The Lattice. What’s more, we may be able to detect it.
In 2003, British philosopher Nick Bostrom published a paper that proposed the universe we live in might in fact really be a numerical computer simulation. To give this a bizarreTwilight Zone twist, he suggested that our far-evolved distant descendants might construct such a program to simulate the past and recreate how their remote ancestors lived.
He felt that such an experiment was inevitable for a supercivilization. If it didn’t happen by now, then in meant that humanity never evolved that far and we’re doomed to a short lifespan as a species, he argued.
To extrapolate further, I’d suggest that artificial intelligent entities descended from us would be curious about looking back in time by simulating the universe of their biological ancestors.
Read the whole article: http://www.livescience.com/25589-are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation.html
Curiouser and curiouser… we live in strange times.
Also, an opinion piece on New Scientist about all of this: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628950.300-the-idea-we-live-in-a-simulation-isnt-science-fiction.html
I was a philosophy major in college, and if I had a dollar for every time a student mentioned The Matrix, I could easily pay for a semester of nursing school.
(via infiniteparadoxloop)
I’m mad at myself because two screws on the storm door have lost their tread and even after trying all the ways online to remove them, they’re still stuck.
Discipline and the unruly child.
Micah is at that stage where he’s testing his boundaries. And by that, I mean he’ll be doing this for the rest of his life and will probably be the kid that pushes my buttons the hardest because that’s who he is and what he does.
Do you have a pet peeve? Something that annoys the hell out of you? Do you really not want him to climb onto the table? Would you really like him to eat vegetables? Then: No. No. No. No. No. No. No…
So, what do I do? I look him in the eye and tell him ONCE what he should do. Then I let him do whatever the hell he wants.
Some things, like food, I will not budge on. This means, if you don’t eat your broccoli, you’re going hungry, kid. (But sure, you have that option, oh ye of little adherence to rules.)
Other things, like climbing onto every dangerous surface in the house, I’m fine with. (Get thorns in your ass. Have weeks when your face looks like you just stepped out of the ring after several rounds with Pacquiao. Just don’t bleed too much. We don’t have medical insurance yet.)
If you let him do his thing within set parameters, he’ll eventually do just as you want him to do. Then you praise the heck out of him and watch him continue acting the way that you’d like.
He’ll be two in 3 months, and already I play mind games with him like he’s a tween.
One of my future daughters.
(via kiskolee)
