“are you really going to tear a friendship apart over different opinions??”
listen, I got tons of friends who like pineapple on their pizza, but once you reach that “you, your community, or other marginalized communities don’t deserve basic human rights or even perhaps the right to live” level, you should just accept that it’s your fault no one wants to be your friend.
More accurately, no one really breaks up friendships (or families) over differences of “opinion”, but they will do so over differences of fundamental issues of morality.
The fact that large numbers of people think that “moral positions, often about issues that are literally life and death” and “personal opinions” are interchangeable concepts is a large part of what’s wrong with society.
this really put into words something i’ve always struggled to articulate, especially the last paragraph.
Tag: important
Pretty sure “money can’t buy happiness” is meant to actually mean “don’t neglect emotional health and caring for the people in your life in the pursuit of more wealth than you need”, but instead middle-class and rich people use it to tell poor people “don’t strive to have financial security even though I have it”.
can we all please just assume by default that no artist is okay with having their art reposted unless they state otherwise instead of the other way around
reposting: saving an image to your computer and uploading it as a new post
reblogging: clicking the reblog button to add it to your blog
we love it if you reblog our work; we really hate it if you repost it
i just really hate when deliberate cruelty is interpreted as “life is unfair”
that is not life being unfair; that is a person being unfair. that is a person being malicious. no one is under obligation to treat people like shit just to prove that life is unfair!!! if it’s unfair, then try to make it fair! Help people! Be kind! Try to make things better! don’t just sneer and say “that’s just how life is”!
do not make life worse for people and excuse your actions by saying they would have been treated badly anyway!
The “life is unfair” excuse to me feels like a grown-up version of the “but everyone is doing it” excuse that we’re told doesn’t excuse our behavior as children.
As an educator, I hate the bell curve system, but I really hate teachers who say, “You won’t get an A in my class.” It’s not just because it causes students to begin the semester with a feeling that they will fail the course: it’s because it is the teacher admitting to their own failure to teach.
We are literally paid to teach a full curriculum. “I don’t give out A’s” to me translates to “I cannot 100% do my job.” There is no reason a good teacher can’t give you an 80-100% understanding of what is in the course. It’s our job to make sure you understand as much as we can.
A class average of 50 is isn’t a statement of how hard the material is. It’s a statement that the teacher cannot complete 50% of their job.
My grandfather was a professor and he always felt this way. He had colleagues who were very proud of their failing statistics and he always said that if students were failing, the teacher was failing. Your job is to teach them to understand the subject matter.
Guys, the first images of Irma’s level of devastation are coming out of Barbuda and it’s heartbreaking. The President of Barbuda says that 90% of the island is uninhabitable, upwards of 60% of the TOTAL population are now homeless because the hurricane destroyed virtually every building and home on the island, and that the estimated damage is valued at no less than $200 million dollars. That’s money a small island like that doesn’t have. They’re saying it’s going to take years to rebuild and Hurricane Jose is right behind Irma on the same path which means they could be hit twice. This is just one of the islands being affected.
Please, show up for the Caribbean like you did for Houston. There is no safety net for any of these islands including mine. They’ll rely entirely on foreign aid. Find local charities or global trustworthy charities
(NOT the Red Cross)and make a donation asking them to aid the Caribbean. There’s whole countries being turned into rubble with no financial means to repair their infrastructures. They’re going to need help.For the hundreds of people replying or in my inbox asking “Why not the Red Cross?!”:
- Google is free.
- Why The Red Cross Faces Backlash on Harvey Relief Efforts [Washington Post]
- Red Cross Built Exactly 6 Homes For Haiti With Nearly Half A Billion Dollars In Donations [Huffington Post]
- Red Cross Exec Doesn’t Know What Portion Of Donations Go To Harvey Relief [NPR]
- Report: Red Cross Spent 25 Percent Of Haiti Donations On Internal Expenses [NPR]
- Seriously, guess where I found all of those in two solid minutes of searching? Google. Even better, they didn’t charge me a penny for it.
Stop wanting things to be spoonfed to you. While you waited for someone to link you to sources, you could’ve done it yourself and already donated to people who desperately need it.
Because people are also asking where to donate instead of the Red Cross:
- MercyCorps [89% rating on Charity Navigator]
- Heart To Heart International [97% rating on Charity Navigator]
- Direct Relief [100% rating on Charity Navigator]
- Habitat For Humanity [83% rating on Charity Navigator // Because with islands like Barbuda 90% destroyed and French St. Martin said to be 95% destroyed then people are going to need homes built]
- Catholic Relief Services [90% rating on Charity Navigator // For those who would want to donate to a religious organization]
If there is a note or comments section on their donation page please do let them know that you would want your money to go to their Caribbean relief efforts. Houston and Florida have the US government backing them in whatever they will need but these islands will have very little except for these charities to fall back if they have any hope of rebuilding what seems to be entire countries in some cases. For the people who lost everything even a few bucks will go a long way.
For the most part I would suggest staying away from privately launched GoFundMes unless you know the person directly. Ultimately, you just never know where those funds are going to end up and if your money will be used wisely. Sure, the same can be said for charity organizations but at least there is a better shot at possibly helping through them. The five listed above are world known and have been studied by charity oversight organizations. It’s as close to perfect as we’re going to get.
Shoutout to all American media for sending a clear message: you don’t care about 3.5 million Americans in Puerto Rico. While you obsess about the possibility of #Irma making landfall in Florida, tomorrow Puerto Rico will suffer the effects of a category 5 hurricane with winds of up to 185 mph. And yet, these facts are mere footnotes on your stories after you spent all summer fetishizing Puerto Rico pasito a pasito.
Also, shoutout to all my Latinx friends for expressing concerns about my friends and family back home. ❤
I feel the mountains burn inside 