BOOSTED
While I am always a little hestitant of things that seem to put the safety of the person on the person who is NOT the one inflicting the harm... taking care of ourselves its hella important
Tens of thousands of people around the world are now using a free personal-safety mobile app that allows friends to virtually walk you home at night.
The Companion app, created by five students from the University of Michigan, enables users to request a friend or family member to keep them company virtually and track their journey home via GPS on an online map.
Although they can do so, the friend or family member does not need to have installed the Companion app. The user can send out several requests to different phone contacts in case people are not available to be a companion or not with their phones at the time.
Those contacted then receive an SMS text message with a hyperlink in it that sends them to a web page with an interactive map showing the user walking to their destination. If the user strays off their path, falls, is pushed, starts running, or has their headphones yanked out of their phone, the app detects these changes in movement and asks the user if they’re OK.
If the user is fine, they press a button on the app to confirm within 15 seconds. If they do not press the button, or a real emergency is occurring, the Companion app transforms the user’s phone into a personal alarm system that projects loud noises to scare criminals from the scene, and gives you the option to instantly call the police.
(Source)
[Dominant groups don’t see privilege as a problem…] because they think it’s just a personal problem. They think individuals usually get what they deserve, which makes the trouble just a sum of individual troubles This means that if whites or males get more than others, it’s because they have it coming - they work harder, they’re smarter, more capable. If other people get less, it’s up to them to do something about it.
Allan G. Johnson, Privilege, Power, and Difference (via wretchedoftheearth)
Apparently this is “The clearest photo of Mercury ever taken.”
why isnt everyone getting so excited about this, it is literally another planet look at how beautiful it is stop what your doing and look at how alien like this planet is what is living there oh my god mercury
You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.
Adrienne Rich (via quotemadness)
Milky Way and Aurora over Antarctica : It has been one of the better skies of this long night. In parts of Antarctica, not only is it winter, but the Sun can spend weeks below the horizon. At China’s Zhongshan Station, people sometimes venture out into the cold to photograph a spectacular night sky. The featured image from one such outing was taken in mid-July, just before the end of this polar night. Pointing up, the wide angle lens captured not only the ground at the bottom, but at the top as well. In the foreground is a colleague also taking pictures. In the distance, a spherical satellite receiver and several windmills are visible. Numerous stars dot the night sky, including Sirius and Canopus. Far in the background, stretching overhead from horizon to horizon, is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. Even further in the distance, visible as extended smudges near the top, are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, satellite galaxies near our huge Milky Way Galaxy. via NASA
js
“In short, Sesame Street was founded to help low-income kids keep up with their more affluent peers. That is literally why it exists. It succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. And now it is becoming the property of a premium cable network, so that a program launched to help poor kids keep up with rich kids is now being paywalled so that rich kids can watch it before poor kids can.
“That in itself is not a tragedy or an injustice. Tragedy is the devastating funding cuts that Head Start has suffered in recent years, affecting tens of thousands of young children. Injustice is the nationwide lack of subsidized high-quality child care and universal pre-K. In this context, relocating Sesame Street to the gated community of HBO—even if that community’s gates swing wide at nine-month intervals—is only to be expected. There could be no more cruelly perfect metaphor for the ultra-efficient sorting processes of socioeconomic privilege.”
Sometimes others need to do this to us.
Sometimes we need to do this to others.
Sometimes we need to do this to ourselves.
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