What I didn’t know at the time was that this is what time is like for most women: fragmented, interrupted by child care and housework. Whatever leisure time they have is often devoted to what others want to do – particularly the kids – and making sure everyone else is happy doing it. Often women are so preoccupied by all the other stuff that needs doing – worrying about the carpool, whether there’s anything in the fridge to cook for dinner – that the time itself is what sociologists call “contaminated.”

I came to learn that women have never had a history or culture of leisure. (Unless you were a nun, one researcher later told me.) That from the dawn of humanity, high status men, removed from the drudge work of life, have enjoyed long, uninterrupted hours of leisure. And in that time, they created art, philosophy, literature, they made scientific discoveries and sank into what psychologists call the peak human experience of flow.

Women aren’t expected to flow.

Brigid Schulte: Why time is a feminist issue

Well! This is interesting. 

(via jillianpms)

Oh my god this is exactly what I try to explain to my husband and he never gets it. 

(via magesmagesmages)

And even if you have a good partner who is supportive, it doesn’t help as much as you might think. This sort of thing is baked into the cultural expectations of being female. 

(via gothiccharmschool)

lizardywizard:

I haven’t seen the original article because it wasn’t linked, but I think the choice of pictures for the header makes my point well enough.

Which is: ever noticed how all art about “the evils of the modern world” focuses on smartphones and fat people?

I’d be the first to speak up and say there are plenty of things wrong with modern industrialized society. Like, oh, I don’t know, climate change. Cops murdering with impunity. Species going extinct. The way the US government has practically been taken hostage by corporate interests. An emphasis on throwing away and replacing rather than repairing. Schools teaching to the test and crushing creative thinking. Mass unemployment and poverty. Fox “News”.

I can think of ten dozen more, and smartphones and fat people aren’t even close to making the list. If we lived in a world where our biggest “problems” were people being fat and people having computers in their pockets, we’d be in damn near utopia.

So why do so-called “cutting-edge”, “countercultural” artists insist on repeating those two images over and over again?

If I had to venture a guess, it would be that the artist’s original target audience is older generations who don’t understand technology (fear of the unknown/misunderstood) and in some cases lived through rationing/times when physical activity and slimmer bodies were more prevalent than today (longing for their past heyday and rose coloured views of lean times, metaphorically speaking).

These things that are more pressing threats to our world (climate change, cops, etc…) are things that currently benefit those older generations or are what bloated their wealth and opportunity. So they’re not bandied about as societal ills like things unique to millenials and younger generations are.

ryanpanos:

The Camouflaged Military Bunkers of Switzerland | Via

Switzerland is a politically neutral country, yet it has a strong military. All across the Swiss alps are military installation and bunkers carefully hidden so as to blend into the surrounding landscape. Some of them are camouflaged as huge rocks, others as quiet villas or barns that could open up in the event of an emergency to reveal cannons and heavy machine guns that could blow any approaching army to smithereens. Enormous caverns are dugout on the mountain side to function as ad-hoc airbases with hangars. Every major bridge, tunnel, road and railway has been rigged so they could be deliberately collapsed, whenever required, to keep enemy armies out. Highways can be converted into runways by quickly removing the grade separations in between the lanes.

The country has nuclear fallout shelters in every home, institutions and hospitals, as well as nearly 300,000 bunkers and 5,100 public shelters that could accommodate the entire Swiss population if required. Switzerland also has one of the largest armies on a per capita basis, with 200,000 active personnel and 3.6 million available for service. Every male citizen under 34 years old (under 50 in some cases) is a reserve soldier. Soldiers are even allowed to take all personally assigned weapons to home. If anyone were to invade Switzerland, they would find a nation armed to the teeth.

In his 1984 book, La Place de la Concorde Suisse, acclaimed New Yorker author John McPhee quoted a Swiss officer as saying: “Switzerland doesn’t have an army, Switzerland is an army.” Indeed, Switzerland’s powerful citizen army has helped preserve the country’s neutrality and keep neighboring countries from invading Swiss territory. The country hasn’t been involved in any military conflict for 200 years.

eviltessmacher:

micdotcom:

micdotcom:

Now it appears Michigan’s governor and other officials may be more guilty than previously thought.

UPDATE: Things are not getting any better in Flint, Michigan. In fact, the state of emergency has gotten so bad, Gov. Rick Snyder has called in extra help that hasn’t been used since 2012. 

This is way beyond disaster.

This is criminal negligence and charges should be filed.

There is nothing wrong with celebrating his works outside of harry potter. But you didn’t go after the fans of the character he played in that to do it. They are mourning too.

You’re right, I didn’t go after fans of Snape. I simply said(maybe in a rather blunt way) that there would be a heavy saturation of tribute posts that mourn him through edits and stuff related to his role as Snape, and in some cases, inextricably tie the man and the character together. 

And so I wanted to add something that completely side stepped all of that. Because I feel like concentrating solely on that one character works towards erasing a lot of the other things he did. Because I feel like there are probably a lot of people here who are made deeply uncomfortable by that character, and the heavy emphasis on that role could affect their ability to grieve for a man they may miss for any number of other reasons. 

Yeah how dare I focus on non-Harry Potter stuff he did. How dare I link to charities he supported. 

Also I am entirely unsure why him having serious acting chops in Harry Potter is an argument against my decision. It’s not like saying Snape was a deeply flawed character is the same as saying that Alan Rickman was deeply flawed(he wasn’t). 

In short:

A List Of Alan Rickman Things That Have Nothing to Do With Severus Snape

I had a sneaking suspicion that the Snape apologists would be out in full force today, and that all of Rickman’s tributes would be Snape-centric. My first reaction was that I should spend the day adding the critical whale to those sorts of posts, but then I figured that this list would be more productive.

theotheristhedoctor:

songsofeldar:

Always.

Fun principle behind this: you can recognize sounds very easily, but it’s much harder to reproduce them. Think of all the sounds you know the meanings of: car alarms, the music introductions to programs, etc. You can identify them and what they mean very quickly. However, learning to make those sounds is much harder. The basic reason (and this is very basic) is that your ears are designed to pick up different sounds, so it’s only the audio part of your brain that has to learn what each means. By contrast, to make a sound face, tongue, vocal, and memory all have to work together.