edwardspoonhands:

He was a total dork and nobody liked him, but my mom thought he was pretty cool so she encouraged me to hang out with him and I did and we got along and had a lot of fun together. We were in Boy Scouts together and went to the same church and in the end, it turned out we had a lot in common and built up a little core group of friends that (of course) imploded upon our introduction to the social weirdness of High School (we went from a middle school with about 800 students to a high school with about 3000.)

But he and I got along. 

It was clear to me that his family didn’t have much money. Their house was run down, their cars were ancient, they lived in a not-great part of town. This had no influence on how I felt about them. My family has always been well-off and my parents never wanted me to only hang out with kids that were like me. But it did strike me as weird that his dad had a cell phone. 

This was the early 90s or late 80s, so a cell phone was a huge extravagance. Seeing a cell phone in his 70?s VW made no sense. It was like seeing a farmer with a Rolex. So I brought it up with my mom one day. I don’t know how it came up, but I told her the dad was stupid for wasting money on a cell phone when they didn’t have much money to go around for the family. 

She gave me a Mom look. A fiery, terrifying, majestic Mom look that immediately terrified me.

“Why do you think he might have a phone?”

“For calling people and stuff.”

“He has a phone for work. His work pays for it, they need to get a hold of him quickly.”

She told me that his job was repairing broken stuff for movie theaters and restaurants which don’t want to wait around for next Tuesday before the refrigerator turns back on, so he was pretty much always driving around and always on call.

“Think about that next time you judge a person who has less than you. You never know everything about other people’s lives.”

It was really unpleasant. It was one of those moments when my mother could have decided to go easy on me and to be kind and understanding and think “Well, he didn’t know, so why make him feel bad.” Instead she was like, “You need to feel bad now. Feel bad, child, because otherwise why will you ever change?”

So thank you to my mom for always helping me be better…every day of my life so far.

edwardspoonhands:

I just saw a Tumblr post that referenced phone call anxiety and I suddenly remembered that when I first started doing the adult thing I would freak out before EVERY SINGLE PHONE CALL. I’m not even a terribly anxious person, it’s just a weird way to communicate and I felt weird about it. I would get scared before calling Dominos for chrissake.

This is weird because I now talk on the phone an average of several times per day and the idea that it would freak me out is completely foreign. Sometimes I’ll have a phone call with someone who is obviously anxious and it can be difficult to remember that I was once that person. I feel like, in time, I would have forgotten that thing about myself completely and would probably think “kids these days with their weird anxieties…who would ever be anxious about a PHONE CALL!” 

The world is weird…

whitehouse:

“If our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could; it’s just that it would require everybody saying, ‘this is important; this is significant.’ And, that we don’t just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns, and we don’t just pay attention when a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped, but we’re paying attention all the time because we consider those kids our kids.” —President Obama on the situation in Baltimore

thebrainscoop:

birdandmoon:

It’s that time of year again! Time to watch out for our handsome salamanders, especially on roads where they travel heavily (though you should never put yourself in danger while driving). Also, it’s time to think about culverts and other ways to help animals cross streets in style.

important PSA.

thebrainscoop:

birdandmoon:

It’s that time of year again! Time to watch out for our handsome salamanders, especially on roads where they travel heavily (though you should never put yourself in danger while driving). Also, it’s time to think about culverts and other ways to help animals cross streets in style.

important PSA.

clarknokent:

blacksnobbery:

seemeflow:

It is not often that this MadMan is taken aback .. especially by something I already suspected/knew…  but sometimes seeing the proof or having it validated can still render shock, disgust and in this case grief.

I always wondered about the high rates of cancer and diabetes in my neighborhood, and in other Black neighborhoods.  These diseases are not inherent in people of African descent.

What makes it worse is that every elder in my family has died at the mercy of one of these diseases.  My mother passed from cancer at the young age of 59… as did every other elder on my floor in the co-op building we owned in Harlem.  I long believed environmental factors played a huge part in the mortality rate of my beloved Harlem residents… so to come across this  … as you can imagine, floored me and left me speechless.

There is a part of me that says “this can’t be true”, but the larger part of me, having grown up in the area, having seen the bad food sold to us ..(even the more affluent of us in Harlem) .. I have no choice but to acknowledge what I have known for years has been validated.

and no one cares…

The only thing I can do as an individual is share the knowledge and information.  If we get MAD enough collectively, raise our voices.. eventually we will be heard.  I hope.

http://themadmanchronicles.com/2014/01/26/radiated-milk-sold-in-black-neighborhoods-the-art-of-slow-genocide/

Wow. I always new something was funny with that school milk; I never used to drink it

Wtf?!

I can’t actually find any source on this outside of that same video links on the above site… and there are a lot of things wrong with the science of that video – like the fact that irradiated (or radioactive, for that matter) milk wouldn’t cause diabetes, for one. That’d be cancer instead. Not irradiated milk either. For that matter, cows living near safe nuclear plants wouldn’t have ‘radioactive milk’.

If they were producing radioactive milk, I think you’d be seeing far worse problems, given that New York City itself is less than 60 km away from a major set of nuclear power plants that is known to have a less-than-stellar safety record.

We’ve done some horrible things to people due to racism, including a bunch of experimentation on people of minority status. We still do a bunch of this crap, and that is definitely wrong. This doesn’t pass the smell test though – too many incorrect facts in that sole source.

homestuckandqueer:

actual-aranea:

The best part about this photoset is the knowledge that that girl is five years old and autistic

Her name is Iris Grace, and she is amazing .

“…She has sold paintings to private art collectors here in the UK and all over the world, in Europe, America, South America and Asia.

All profits from the sales of her art go towards more art materials and her on going private therapists – Occupational therapy, speech therapy, Yoga, Music therapy and her future.” – source 

homestuckandqueer:

actual-aranea:

The best part about this photoset is the knowledge that that girl is five years old and autistic

Her name is Iris Grace, and she is amazing .

“…She has sold paintings to private art collectors here in the UK and all over the world, in Europe, America, South America and Asia.

All profits from the sales of her art go towards more art materials and her on going private therapists – Occupational therapy, speech therapy, Yoga, Music therapy and her future.” – source 

homestuckandqueer:

actual-aranea:

The best part about this photoset is the knowledge that that girl is five years old and autistic

Her name is Iris Grace, and she is amazing .

“…She has sold paintings to private art collectors here in the UK and all over the world, in Europe, America, South America and Asia.

All profits from the sales of her art go towards more art materials and her on going private therapists – Occupational therapy, speech therapy, Yoga, Music therapy and her future.” – source 

homestuckandqueer:

actual-aranea:

The best part about this photoset is the knowledge that that girl is five years old and autistic

Her name is Iris Grace, and she is amazing .

“…She has sold paintings to private art collectors here in the UK and all over the world, in Europe, America, South America and Asia.

All profits from the sales of her art go towards more art materials and her on going private therapists – Occupational therapy, speech therapy, Yoga, Music therapy and her future.” – source 

homestuckandqueer:

actual-aranea:

The best part about this photoset is the knowledge that that girl is five years old and autistic

Her name is Iris Grace, and she is amazing .

“…She has sold paintings to private art collectors here in the UK and all over the world, in Europe, America, South America and Asia.

All profits from the sales of her art go towards more art materials and her on going private therapists – Occupational therapy, speech therapy, Yoga, Music therapy and her future.” – source 

homestuckandqueer:

actual-aranea:

The best part about this photoset is the knowledge that that girl is five years old and autistic

Her name is Iris Grace, and she is amazing .

“…She has sold paintings to private art collectors here in the UK and all over the world, in Europe, America, South America and Asia.

All profits from the sales of her art go towards more art materials and her on going private therapists – Occupational therapy, speech therapy, Yoga, Music therapy and her future.” – source 

homestuckandqueer:

actual-aranea:

The best part about this photoset is the knowledge that that girl is five years old and autistic

Her name is Iris Grace, and she is amazing .

“…She has sold paintings to private art collectors here in the UK and all over the world, in Europe, America, South America and Asia.

All profits from the sales of her art go towards more art materials and her on going private therapists – Occupational therapy, speech therapy, Yoga, Music therapy and her future.” – source 

homestuckandqueer:

actual-aranea:

The best part about this photoset is the knowledge that that girl is five years old and autistic

Her name is Iris Grace, and she is amazing .

“…She has sold paintings to private art collectors here in the UK and all over the world, in Europe, America, South America and Asia.

All profits from the sales of her art go towards more art materials and her on going private therapists – Occupational therapy, speech therapy, Yoga, Music therapy and her future.” – source 

homestuckandqueer:

actual-aranea:

The best part about this photoset is the knowledge that that girl is five years old and autistic

Her name is Iris Grace, and she is amazing .

“…She has sold paintings to private art collectors here in the UK and all over the world, in Europe, America, South America and Asia.

All profits from the sales of her art go towards more art materials and her on going private therapists – Occupational therapy, speech therapy, Yoga, Music therapy and her future.” – source 

homestuckandqueer:

actual-aranea:

The best part about this photoset is the knowledge that that girl is five years old and autistic

Her name is Iris Grace, and she is amazing .

“…She has sold paintings to private art collectors here in the UK and all over the world, in Europe, America, South America and Asia.

All profits from the sales of her art go towards more art materials and her on going private therapists – Occupational therapy, speech therapy, Yoga, Music therapy and her future.” – source 

ultrafacts:

It is called the Osborne Reef, located off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, FloridaIn the 1970s, the reef was the subject of an ambitious expansion project utilizing old and discarded tires. The project ultimately failed, and the “reef” has come to be considered an environmental disaster—ultimately doing more harm than good in the coastal Florida waters.

(Fact Source) Follow Ultrafacts for more facts

Welcome to Florida and its history of “fixing” things. :(

ultrafacts:

It is called the Osborne Reef, located off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, FloridaIn the 1970s, the reef was the subject of an ambitious expansion project utilizing old and discarded tires. The project ultimately failed, and the “reef” has come to be considered an environmental disaster—ultimately doing more harm than good in the coastal Florida waters.

(Fact Source) Follow Ultrafacts for more facts

Welcome to Florida and its history of “fixing” things. :(

ultrafacts:

It is called the Osborne Reef, located off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, FloridaIn the 1970s, the reef was the subject of an ambitious expansion project utilizing old and discarded tires. The project ultimately failed, and the “reef” has come to be considered an environmental disaster—ultimately doing more harm than good in the coastal Florida waters.

(Fact Source) Follow Ultrafacts for more facts

Welcome to Florida and its history of “fixing” things. :(