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Kanye West’s Patronus

is Kanye West.

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The Shape of Ideas

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Black Men Magazine Photoshoot (2010)

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Rules to learning English

1. their our know rules

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‘when you spot the person who stole your shoes’ GIVE THIS AN OSCAR

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So my mom is shopping in a supermarket, wearing a full hijab and jilbab (commonly misnamed as a burka) and the whole time she is there, this kid is staring at her. Won’t stop staring. Just looking with wide-eyed shock. The lil feller isn’t any older than four. She doesn’t think much of it, she is used to far worse than just a few stares. Until the very end when the kid and his mom are behind her in the checkout, and he leans up and whispers loudly: “I LOVE YOU BATMAN”

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By Erin Kavanagh

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Force of Nature: Mother Nature Furiously Spins the Earth

Italian sculptor Lorenzo Quinn sculpted his project Force of Nature I and II, after being a witness to the devastating destruction of hurricanes in Thailand and in the Southern United States. Constructed from bronze, stainless steel and aluminum, the work reflects nature’s perceived powerful energy, which is unpredictable, beautiful, yet dangerous. By omitting Mother Nature’s face, Quinn reminds us that there is no sense of security or protection from the Earth itself. We are not in control, sudden destruction awaits at any time. 

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just do it

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what do you make of house elves being better off left slaves because they wanted to be? it made me feel weird that there was a species MEANT to be slaves.

but that’s not canon at all.

a lot of people believed this throughout the series, including sympathetic and wise characters like Hagrid, but they were wrong. Rowling lets good people be wrong and doesn’t chastise them in the text for it. She doesn’t bother spoon feeding readers social justice, but the message that “even good people can condone awful things” is one of the strongest themes of the story. the house elf situation is a perfect example of why you can’t just read the surface text of Harry Potter and assume the author is speaking through the characters when they say slaves love being slaves and change the subject.

like, look at hermione’s SJW phase. the surface read on that? she tried to fix something that wasn’t broken, and she failed hilariously and gave up because nobody cared, even the elves.

except no. she was right about house elves. ideologically, she was seeing something Wizard culture was blind to, and she was 100% right.

but in her SJW phase, she wanted to fix this enormous and culturally accepted horror by trying to force the house elves to make choices that conformed to her notion of what was best for them.

she tried to free elves without their consent, she lectured them about their situation from her position of almost total ignorance, she ignored their wishes at every turn, and she tried to control their liberation and make it be on her terms, and it didn’t work. time and again, no one listened. humans didn’t really mind having slaves, it turns out, and because the house elves she met had never known anything but a world where their lot is servitude, why should they give a fuck about a 14 year old human child’s notion of social justice? she expected the world to change on the strength of her moral outrage, and she failed utterly

this storyline was not meant to impart the message that Hermione was wrong all along. it was meant to represent the vast chasm between meaning well and doing well. even very clever, kind people fuck up a whole lot, and there’s no one cleverer or more kind than Hermione Granger to demonstrate this point.

of course the house elves don’t want to be freed! they’d been abused, degraded and indoctrinated to see “freedom” as a threat. being good at servitude is the only value they’ve ever been permitted to hold since birth! a choice between this familiar, unhappy servitude and the shame of being cast out into the world with no skills, no friends, and no support system is not a choice most people could ever make.

Hermione was instructing victims to stop being victimized on her say-so, and she was offended when they didn’t jump at the chance to throw out what little safety they could count on in life in favor of a freedom that was basically meaningless to them.

She didn’t learn some shitty moral lesson about how house elves are better off as slaves. she learned that paternalism and a massive savior complex are terrible reasons to start a movement. she learned that putting the burden of changing systematic injustice on the oppressed and superimposing your own cultural beliefs on them with no regard for their own feelings is insulting and degrading. 

she learned that absolutely everyone will tell you to fuck off if you pull condescending SJW shit on them, even if it’s in their best interests to do what you want them to do.

and Hermione took this lesson with her when she finished school. she became a House Elf advocate within the Ministry. She used her influence and power to enter the system and stop the fuckery from the human side instead of telling slaves to stop being so slavey and being annoyed when they stayed oppressed.

you think a genius like Hermione Granger couldn’t figure out with a little bit of experience that systemic change has to come from within the ranks of the powerful? man, not even. 

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art history meme: (1/5) movements - The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelites were a group of English painters, poets, and critics that were founded in 1848. The group’s intention was to reform art by rejecting what it considered the mechanistic approach first adopted by Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo.

Lady Godiva by John Collier, 1897

Lady of Shalot by John William Waterhouse, 1888

Hylas and the Nymphs by John William Waterhouse, 1896

God Speed! by Edward Leighton, 1900

Ophelia by John William Waterhouse, 1889

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Me too, Bucky. Me too

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by Jessica Warrick