Randoms

[usullusa]

• Canvasing is making me hate everybody ever. Grassroots Campaign is currently working on behalf of the ACLU and one of the pulls that we use is "Do you have a minute for gay rights?"
  Do you know what I get at least half the time from people?
  "No, I'm fine."
  NO YOU'RE FINE? NO YOU'RE FINE? I KNOW YOU'RE FINE. BUT I'M NOT. I am so happy to hear that while millions of people are being treated unfairly at best and beaten and murdered at worst because of their sexual orientation, you are fine. Do you know what I hear when I hear "No, I'm fine."? I hear "I've never had to worry about being discriminated against because of who I love a day in life, so no I don't really care. I am so comfortable in all my cushy privilege and that's all that's really important to me."
  Jesus christ rage.
  
  
• The "Top Kill" plan, which involved pumping some kind of sludge into the pipes to block the flow of crude oil has failed. In case anybody had any doubts, the explosion was caused by negligence and BP willfully cutting corners, in the name of saving money of course.
  
  
• A college education with a private university is increasingly becoming a luxury. It boggles my mind that something as basic as an education is a luxury only for the very rich or those willing to drown in debt. Is this how America rewards its young people for working hard? By making college inaccessible?
  I am one of the lucky ones. Although a degree from NYU is far beyond my means or that of my family, my father's employer happens to have a program which pays for part of my tuition, on top of some other lucky breaks my family has caught. Basically, somebody like me from a middle to upper-middle class family is only able to attend a private university through sheer luck.
  
  
• Is the Malawi Couple Gay? via rm. This is really important. The couple in Malawi that was sentenced to 14 years of hard labor for being openly gay is not actually a gay couple. Tiwonge Chimbalanga is a trans woman and this fact has simply been erased by our news sources. No no no, they are not gay. Tiwonge Chimbalanga is a woman. This doesn't make what happened to them any less appalling, but it also makes our reporting on the issue appalling.
  
  
• After rigorous scientific scrutiny, I have come to the conclusion that this man is a real live wizard. What the shit. This is so cool and yet terrifying.
  
  
• sparkindarkness has a really great entry on how DADT is damaging the ability of the United States armed forces to work cohesively with other countries' troops and how it makes even soldiers from other countries feel unsafe.
  
  
• SO TIRED OH GOD MY JOB SUCKS