Do Not Go On The Steven Universe Wiki Right Now.

Officially at my lowest low. The kids and I are in a homeless shelter. I am not in the mood to make a long post honestly I feel pathetic. Please donate if you can. This isn’t where I wanna be. I can go into the program they offer without having cash aid which can take months and months to get. I’m still going to apply but I’ll need help in the meantime. If you can, please please donate. https://www.youcaring.com/evea-king-430790

“Defensive architecture” aimed at the homeless as a deliberate, considered kind of cruelty.

By Lisa Wade, PhD

I encourage everyone to go read this very smart and very sad essay from Alex Andreuo at The Guardian. It’s a condemnation of defensive architecture, a euphemism for strategies that make the urban landscape inhospitable to the homeless.

They include benches with dividers that make it impossible to lie down, spikes and protrusions on window ledges and in front of store windows, forests of pointed cement structures under bridges and freeways, emissions of high pitched sounds, and sprinklers that intermittently go off on sidewalks to prevent camping overnight. There is also perpetually sticky anti-climb paint and corner urination guards, plus “viewing gardens” that take up space that might be attractive to homeless people:

The examples above and below are from a collection at Dismal Garden. Here’s a picture of anti-encampment spikes featured at The Guardian:

This is to discourage urination:

This is to take up space so people can’t camp on the sidewalk:

Andreuo writes of the psychological effect of these structures. They tell homeless people quite clearly that they are not wanted and that others not only don’t care, but are actively antagonistic to their comfort and well being. He says:

Defensive architecture is revealing on a number of levels, because it is not the product of accident or thoughtlessness, but a thought process. It is a sort of unkindness that is considered, designed, approved, funded and made real with the explicit motive to exclude and harass. It reveals how corporate hygiene has overridden human considerations…

If the corporations have turned to aggressive tactics, governments seem to simply be in denial. They offer few resources to homeless people and the ones they do offer are insufficient to serve everyone. Andreuo continues:

We curse the destitute for urinating in public spaces with no thought about how far the nearest free public toilet might be. We blame them for their poor hygiene without questioning the lack of public facilities for washing… Free shelters, unless one belongs to a particularly vulnerable group, are actually extremely rare.

He then connects the dots. “Fundamental misunderstanding of destitution,” he argues, “is designed to exonerate the rest from responsibility and insulate them from perceiving risk.” If homeless people are just failing to do right by themselves or take the help available to them, then only they are to blame for their situation. And, if only they are to blame, we don’t have to worry that, given just the right turn of events, it could happen to us.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College and the co-author of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

a PSA for sea witches

please do not buy anything with sea horses in them, they are going extinct because of the craft, food, and medicine trade.

if sea horses mean a lot to you and in your craft, please look at alternatives to celebrate them. paint a picture, crochet one, do what i did and get a tattoo of one! 

or: 

If you love sea horses, then maybe you’d like to adopt one through a sea horse charity!

Or you can get a few prizes for adopting a seahorse and paying a little more!

You could even make it apart of your craft as a dedication to the ocean to make a single or monthly donation to one r two of these ocean/sea horse charities,

Project Seahorse

The seahorse trust

The Minnesota aquarium

seahorse hawaii

ocean conservatory 

The person I reblogged this from deserves to be happy

I tried to scroll past this. I really did

do you like call of duty?

no

reblog if you at least vaguely remember this

IVE MET A SEX OFFENDER ON THE APP TINDER AND IM WARNING EVERYONE IN AND AROUND AUSTIN TEXAS OF THIS MAN. I CONTACTED TINDER AND THEY REFUSE TO TAKE ANY FURTHER ACTION. PLEASE REBLOG THIS SO THAT OTHER GIRLS CAN STAY SAFE FROM THIS MAN. HES TERRIBLE.

Attention all pre-health students! This Chrome extension, Medical Translator by Iodine.com, is effin amazing!  It identifies medical jargon and does a quick translation in parentheses right beside the word, then allows you to hover over the word (which it underlines) and gives a super legit and simple definition.  This is just a simple example, but it works really well with even the most complicated terms. 

I am so disgusted and appalled right now. This young lady has posted a video of her abusing a cat. She is throwing a kitten against a wall. Each and every time it crawls away (using only its front legs because I am fairly certain it’s back legs are shattered and it is most likely paralyzed). https://twitter.com/weloverobdyrdek/status/625504543644651520 Here is the video if you need to see it for yourself. I threw up watching it so be warned. Please signal boost so police and authorities take away her animals and hopefully find this cat unless it is too late. She lives in Kansas.