charles is angry and temple-touchy

Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Originally posted by kazbaby at Mississippi Personhood Amendment
Originally posted by [personal profile] gabrielleabelle at Mississippi Personhood Amendment
Okay, so I don't usually do this, but this is an issue near and dear to me and this is getting very little no attention in the mainstream media.

Mississippi is voting on November 8th on whether to pass Amendment 26, the "Personhood Amendment". This amendment would grant fertilized eggs and fetuses personhood status.

Putting aside the contentious issue of abortion, this would effectively outlaw birth control and criminalize women who have miscarriages. This is not a good thing.

Jackson Women's Health Organization is the only place women can get abortions in the entire state, and they are trying to launch a grassroots movement against this amendment. This doesn't just apply to Mississippi, though, as Personhood USA, the group that introduced this amendment, is trying to introduce identical amendments in all 50 states.

What's more, in Mississippi, this amendment is expected to pass. It even has Mississippi Democrats, including the Attorney General, Jim Hood, backing it.

The reason I'm posting this here is because I made a meager donation to the Jackson Women's Health Organization this morning, and I received a personal email back hours later - on a Sunday - thanking me and noting that I'm one of the first "outside" people to contribute.

So if you sometimes pass on political action because you figure that enough other people will do something to make a difference, make an exception on this one. My RSS reader is near silent on this amendment. I only found out about it through a feminist blog. The mainstream media is not reporting on it.

If there is ever a time to donate or send a letter in protest, this would be it.

What to do?

- Read up on it. Wake Up, Mississippi is the home of the grassroots effort to fight this amendment. Daily Kos also has a thorough story on it.

- If you can afford it, you can donate at the site's link.

- You can contact the Democratic National Committee to see why more of our representatives aren't speaking out against this.

- Like this Facebook page to help spread awareness.




Originally posted here. Feel free to comment there using OpenID if you don't have an account.|comment count unavailable comments
wee kitty loves shoes!

Signal Boost: Return of the DDoS

Originally posted by deathpixie at Signal Boost: Return of the DDoS
For those wanting to know more about the recent DDoS attacks, yes, it looks like it was the Russian government trying to shut down the dissidents again.

As I said last time, while it's frustrating not to have access, LJ is a lot more than a social network platform. From the article:

"LiveJournal isn’t just a social network. It’s also a platform for organizing civic action. Dozens of network projects and groups mobilize people to solve specific problems — from defending the rights of political prisoners to saving endangered historic architecture in Moscow."

So while I know many are considering the move over to Dreamwidth and other such sites, supporting LJ is a way we can help support those who use it for more than a writing/roleplaying/social venue.


Also, as a FYI, LJ is giving paid users effected by the outage two weeks of paid time as compensation.


wee kitty loves shoes!

(no subject)

If anyone wants a heavy but fascinating read on an alternate theory of autism, specifically that there are two types of empathy and autism follows as a natural consequence from a deficit in one but not the other--

who am I kidding, if you don't actually have aspergers or autism you're not going to click this link.

It's awesome, though.

The Empathy Imbalance Hypothesis of Autism


ETA: On further reading, if you have contact with autistic people (kids especially) this is probably the most useful conclusion:

If the EIH is correct, then the emotional status of other people can be expected to influence the behavior of children with autism. Indeed, displaying positive emotion in consistent and predictable ways could be one of the most therapeutic techniques that caregivers might employ. It might reduce the frequency of avoidant, stereotypic, or challenging behavior in people with autism.

He has plenty of evidence for this (and all the rest), I just haven't copied it.
wee kitty loves shoes!

(no subject)

Jeez you guys, I just on a whim looked something up on the Wayback Machine... I would like to introduce you all to the site I lived on when I was 13.

It doesn't go back far enough in time but I was still frequenting it when this was what it looked like: StargateSG-1.com.

To join this site was to "join the SGC" and you got a rank, games to increase rank, and under the heading of "Report For Duty" this was what we used as a chatroom. You had to refresh this manually to see the new comments, and I learned to touchtype entirely so I was fast enough to not miss whole pages of discussion while I was typing messages. I recognise all of those people. And no, I can't find a version that actually has me on it.

BRB, dying of nostalgia. I think I frequented this site for a solid five years.

EDIT: OH OH WAIT. I'm pretty sure one of the names on that page... actually was me. OKAY NO I AM NOT TELLING YOU WHICH ONE. I WAS 15. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY. I had like ten accounts anyway.
merlin has a giggle

(no subject)

I kind of want to see a Temeraire crossover, where Arthur is an aviator and he discovers Merlin living rough, in this bizarre love-hate relationship with a wild dragon named Kilgarrah. Is that super weird? I just want to somehow combine them, okay? Haha.
wee kitty loves shoes!

Con or Bust NOW taking requests for July-September cons!

Originally posted by kate_nepveu at Con or Bust NOW taking requests for July-September cons!
Con or Bust is pleased to announce that as of this very moment, and through May 31, fans of color/non-white fans may request assistance to attend SFF cons in July, August, and September 2011.

Because there was no advance notice that we'd be taking requests, please repost and link to this post far and wide so that people know that assistance is possible. I will announce the precise amount after WisCon, once the T-shirt sales are counted up and I hear from some cons I've contacted, but a minimum of $600 will be available to help fans of color attend cons for the next three months, plus two memberships to Renovation, the 2011 WorldCon, generously donated by Renovation itself.

Read this post for how to request assistance. Donate con memberships by e-mailing knepveu@steelypips.org. Donate money with a PayPal account or credit card with this button:



Or learn more about Con or Bust generally. And thank you for your help in spreading the word!

wee kitty loves shoes!

Cake!

Prefix: gyzym did an awesome essay-post-thing on bisexuality. You should read it!

ANYWAY.

Today Yvette says, I want cake! And I said, but we have no eggs? And then I set about finding a recipe that would work with what little we had in the house. (Dude, I didn't even have ordinary white sugar. I made this thing with raw sugar.)

So! Vegan-ish cake, if anyone is interested and has very little in the house!

1.5 cups flour
1/2 cup oil
1 cup sugar
1.5 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup milk (vegan options suggested are soy milk/rice milk/water)

I took a suggested option of swapping a bit of milk for the juice of a lemon, and I had really good quality olive oil, so the end result tastes surprisingly olive oil-y.

Mix it all together and bake at 190C for 30 minutes.

I now have a light, fluffy, olive oil-lemon cake (the lemon isn't particularly strong, it could go for more), which wasn't particularly sweet, so (continuing the theme of having the wrong ingredients) I made icing out of brown sugar, butter and milk. It works awesomely. Don't go overboard with the icing.

Yay cake!
  • Current Mood
    CAKE
wee kitty loves shoes!

LIVING in the FUTURE

In today's living in the future news, this is apparently what one uses to make TEA in the FUTURE:

TEEEEEEA

The new managing director has purchased one of these for the office (it's worth $300, wtf) and bought no less than 19 fancy loose-leaf teas from T2. Which we can now brew at precisely 80 degrees for precisely 3.5 minutes, should we so desire.

Am in tea-induced heaven. We LIKE new boss.

Which is the farthest-cry-possible from the old managing director, with his "NO you cannot have a $30 sandwich press!! Who will clean it?! NOT A TOASTER, EITHER. A TOASTER WILL SET THE KITCHEN ON FIRE."

The office practically had a party in the kitchen when they discovered this this morning. A TEA party.