These two little fluffballs were shared by LakesBecky on flickr.
And some lovely scenery from McCurtain County, Oklahoma, shared by amy_b. WITH BONUS OTTER.
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
I am soliciting ideas for a thread I want to start over at Rationalia to educate about rape culture.
I’m embarrassingly ignorant as well, but I have read just about everything on the subject here, or linked here (Meet the Predators – wow great stuff..)poked around following links and now I’m so overwhelmed with too much information, I don’t know where to start!
Any thoughts or ideas you have would be greatly appreciated.
maiforpeace, I’m not sure that starting such a discussion there while you’re feeling overwhelmed by new information is the best timing? Giving yourself time to synthesise and integrate the new information into some consistency/coherence for you might be a good idea to concentrate on first.
Sadly, there’s no rush. The pushback against rape culture will be a long-term, incremental endeavour. At the moment one push for relevant change that many feminists are engaged in is advocating the adopting of AHPs in non-corporate conference/meeting environments – this is not confined to atheist/skeptic meet-ups, although you wouldn’t know it from the way that certain anti-AHP folks are behaving in atheist/skeptic discussions. The goal is to make more people aware of how a status quo where hostile/intimidatory conduct is trivialised (can’t you take a joke/grow a thicker skin etc) acts as a silencing/excluding mechanism for marginalised groups generally. It’s also necessary to educate on how it’s the cumulative effect of micro-aggressions that tends to do the most effective job of burdening the marginalised, not just the most blatant examples e.g. women objecting to being groped. All these factors feed into the rape culture of trivialising women’s reports of their own experiences of sexual coercion, so it’s one avenue of attack on the foundations.
This recent post on the Ada Initiative website about harassment at hacker conferences might help you with the broader perspective on AHP advocacy and give you some more background reading.
[this comment has been lightly edited to improve grammar/clarity]
There’s also increasing activism against street harassment. A student documentary film made in Belgium has galvanised debate proposing anti-street-harassment legislation across Europe.
Good luck with whatever you do, maiforpeace – but I would second what tigtog says and figure out your own thoughts on rape culture first, because it can be hard to get your head around fully!
I am celebrating one week of sleeping in my new house – and after long days cleaning, moving and unpacking boxes, I am finally at the stage where most of my stuff is in its place and life can start returning to normal. I love it here though – it’s only 7km from the CBD, but there is a possum who visits us nightly, several bush turkeys, and I wake up to the magpies warbling in the morning, rather than truck rushing past. It’s quite lovely.
You are right – how about if something comes up that you think is particularly interesting that I should read let me know? Perhap we can figure out a way to get it to me without cluttering up this thread.
I am enjoying day two of a nose running like a tap cold. Hopefully if it goes as they usually do tomorrow I will wake up stuffed up but not needing to stuff tissues up my nose (dead sexay). I feel like all I have done lately is whinge about being sick. At least this time I feel much the same as usual, just with the aforementioned running nose. Once that is fixed I should be fine. Which will be good because I am feeling the need to spring clean…
Today would have been my father’s birthday, he would have been 85 years old.
Tich Trong Dao, Memorial.
Tich Trong Dao – Ascension Into the Light
(if it gets too boring for you to watch all the way through, skip to 6:06 – the photos have an interesting air to them)
I miss my Daddy so much with these reminders. It’s hard to believe he’s been dead for six years now.
I’m so sorry about your father, Mai. I am feeling very aware of how much my father is aging right now, but I admit I still can’t really imagine him not being here.
Starting to hear speculation that the shooter at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin might possibly have been one of those clots who doesn’t know the difference between Sikhs and Muslims.
Of course a group of Muslims worshipping peacefully would not have deserved to be attacked either, but this level of massive (purported) ignorance adds an extra layer of poignancy to these deaths.
One does wonder though TT if the fact that they weren’t Christian was enough for this horrible act. The shooter is believed to be dead to so they can’t ask what the motivation was. No doubt mental illness will get blamed again, despite the millions of people living with mental illness who do no harm to anyone.
I missed the weekend on the net due to one of those nose-like-a-tap colds and in the flesh socialising. Mai, I also recommend spending time adjusting to ideas like rape culture before you lead a debate in a place that’s likely to be hostile. If you can, find existing debates you can join to practice (Freethought blogs seem to have a new one regularly).
Findings | Harper’s Magazine
Guessing game time!
This is a gaming forum thread into which I posted a bit of slacktivism, so expect the usual mess of trolls. Guess which one is me. There may be a reward, although since this is pretty much shameless feminist cookie fishing on my part, I’m hoping that the reward goes to me.
Wiat, does it still count as shameless cookie begging if I pretend I’m posting it so that others can be inspired by my work?
Gah! I left a character out of place again, didn’t I?
[moderator note: you just forgot to close the a tag - FIFY]I’m moving into my new sharehouse this weekend! So why did I decide to build and paint my own bookshelves? At least the stress hormones soaking into the wood will make them extra shiny.
Does anyone have any tips for moving cats? All I’ve read is to make sure everything is set up and unpacked before the beast is unleashed, but I was wondering if anyone had experience?
tAK: I don’t have experience with moving with cats, but I do have recent experience with assimilating abused rescue cats into a new household. I set them up in the laundry for the first three days, with their open carrier (with Feliway spray on the bedding), other comfy spots to sleep and hide, litter tray, food bowls, etc. I went in and sat with them several times a day, sometimes reading aloud. The third day, they were allowed out, and there they were curling up on my bed near me. It took longer to get them and the dog used to each other, but within a month things were fine (baby gates helped!), and within three months they were more or less friends. (Now, they voluntarily sleep together on the same mat.)
Starting him out in the laundry is a great idea! Roast Beef’s pretty chilled, but he’ll be going from a multi-cat house and garden to a single-cat flat, which is a pretty hefty change in lifestyle. Thanks!
When we have moved cats before we have put them in one room for a few days with some familiar stuff in with them, and their moving crate, so that they have somewhere to acclimatise to plus food litter tray etc. Puss will probably miaow for a while because it is all new but if you go and see him every now and again he should settle fairly quickly. Once he feels that the space is his he will be happy to investigate, especially if you are nearby. He will probably be under your feet for a while but soon he will be ruling the roost again I’m sure.
Yes, keep the cat in one room with familiar things for a few days. Make sure you spend quite a bit of time in there with it until it’s settled, then let it explore further.
We also added new cats (two who knew each other) to an existing cat household that way. “Second stage” they got half the house while the previous cat got the other half, separated by a sliding door. They could reach paws under the door and had a few boxing fights that way, but it seemed to be a really good way for them to get used to each others’ smell etc without being able to get into any full-on fights. We’ve found that if one cat only has a carrier or small cage, they can get stressed by not being able to retreat from the others when they need to.
Definitely agree with moving the cats last. Although last time I moved I took one of the cats for a visit for a few hours to the new (empty) house a few days before the move. Don’t know if that was a good or bad thing.
Previous moves I’ve only kept my cats in one room for a few hours with food and kitty litter so they establish somewhere safe and then let them loose to explore the rest of the house. Not allowed outside for at least few weeks but mine are mostly indoor cats anyway.
Since your cat is going from multi-cat place to only cat, might want to look out for signs of loneliness/boredom.