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Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error - error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die.
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— George Ryan, former Illinois Governor
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No story lives unless someone wants to listen, so thank you, all of you.
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J.K. Rowling, speaking at the premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 2.
Instant tears.
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Rape culture is telling girls and women to be careful about what you wear, how you wear it, how you carry yourself, where you walk, when you walk there, with whom you walk, whom you trust, what you do, where you do it, with whom you do it, what you drink, how much you drink, whether you make eye contact, if you’re alone, if you’re with a stranger, if you’re in a group, if you’re in a group of strangers, if it’s dark, if the area is unfamiliar, if you’re carrying something, how you carry it, what kind of shoes you’re wearing in case you have to run, what kind of purse you carry, what jewelry you wear, what time it is, what street it is, what environment it is, how many people you sleep with, what kind of people you sleep with, who your friends are, to whom you give your number, who’s around when the delivery guy comes, to get an apartment where you can see who’s at the door before they can see you, to check before you open the door to the delivery guy, to own a dog or a dog-sound-making machine, to get a roommate, to take self-defense, to always be alert always pay attention always watch your back always be aware of your surroundings and never let your guard down for a moment lest you be sexually assaulted and if you are and didn’t follow all the rules it’s your fault.
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truly i am saddened for the life of these rapists of an 11-year-old girl (via 3liza)
I was just talking to a couple of my guy friends about this the other day. Rape culture is something girls live with every damn day, even if we don’t know the name for it. The boys I was talking to thought I was being paranoid and crazy. They’re good guys, but of course they don’t understand. When it’s late at night and I have to do a carry-out for a male customer, all sorts of scenarios pass through my head. “He doesn’t really need this carry-out, he just wants to get me alone. The parking lot is practically empty. He could rape me right here.” When I walk home from class at night, I’m aware of every man around me and the possible dangers they present.
But you know what the worst part of rape culture is? You can do everything “right” and it’s still the men you know, the men you think you can trust, who are the biggest threat. The stranger is an easier villain, an easier story to tell people, but being taken advantage of by a man you know is the far more likely scenario and how the hell do you guard against that? And how do you speak up— let alone report it— if you are raped by a “friend?”
(via monkeyknifefight)
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You’re a terrible person.
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Me to him. Him to me.
This is how we say “I like you.” We’re… special.
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All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. … But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not.
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Nick Hornby (via whenthecamerasoff)
This may be true, but I still need to get around to reading all my books. I feel guilty about all the unread books sitting on my bookshelf. I feel like a phony (and, no, that’s not a Catcher in the Rye reference. I hated that book.)
(Source: popcultureinfatuation)
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Nearly one in four Americans under the age of 18 have at least one immigrant parent[.]
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Save Us, Millennials
It’s funny that I’m a part of that statistic because when I hear people talk about immigration, I know they aren’t talking about my Canadian mom. The New York Times isn’t talking about her, the left isn’t talking about her, the right isn’t talking about her. Because she’s white. Because I’m white. The fuss over immigration is just a way to mask racism and a fear of white people becoming a minority in this country. Horror of horrors.
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He persuaded his advisers to let him exceed the maximum course load, then proceeded to take 62 credits a quarter, roughly three times the normal limit…He graduated in two years with a degree in English and a GPA over 3.5. He wrote a novel as his honors thesis…As soon as Franco finished at UCLA, he moved to New York and enrolled in four of them: NYU for filmmaking, Columbia for fiction writing, Brooklyn College for fiction writing, and—just for good measure—a low-residency poetry program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. This fall, at 32, before he’s even done with all of these, he’ll be starting at Yale, for a Ph.D. in English, and also at the Rhode Island School of Design.
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San Francisco, the third most densely populated city in the Americas, has no viable inter-city public transportation. BART just goes to Oakland and MUNI buses…don’t make us laugh. Go to a MUNI bus stop past commute time and tell us how it goes. Good luck waiting for that messiah. Then there’s taxis, which exist, but just as a hypothesis, like Schrödinger’s cat.
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A nugget of truth from Why There are No Girls in San Francisco
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve decided not to go somewhere just because I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back safely when whatever event was over.
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Go after her. Fuck, don’t sit there and wait for her to call. Go after her because that’s what you should do. If you love someone, don’t wait for them to give you a sign because it might never come. Don’t let people happen to you…don’t let me happen to you, or her. She’s not a fucking television show or a tornado. There are people I might have loved had they gotten on the airplane or run down the street after me or called me up drunk at four in the morning because they need to tell me right now and because they cannot regret this and I always thought I’d be the only one doing crazy things for people who would never give enough of a fuck to do it back or to act like idiots or be entirely vulnerable and honest and making someone fall in love with you is easy. And flying 3000 miles on four days notice because you can’t just sit there and do nothing and breathe into telephones is not everyone’s idea of love but it is the way I can recognize it because that is what I do. Go scream it and be with her in meaningful ways. Because that is beautiful and that is generous. And that is what loving someone is. That is raw and unguarded and that is all that is worth anything, really.
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