~Ambrose Bierce

utnereader:

“As you come over the hill, a sprawling mass of structures beckons. The roofs are a bright sky blue, the walls the drab hue of concrete, and yards of razor wire glisten in the sun like a mangled crown. Here, amid fences and steel doors, a group of male inmates quilt for charity, attempting to repair a fraction of the damage they caused.”

How do people do things like this? Start from nothing and make *something*. Such talent.

(Source: moreia)

Selling Out

The Misconception: Both consumerism and capitalism are sustained by corporations and advertising.

The Truth: Both consumerism and capitalism are driven by competition among consumers for status.

Beatniks, hippies, punk rockers, grunge rats, metal heads, goth kids, hipsters – see a pattern forming here?

It goes back farther than these examples, the baton of counter culture – the mantle of anti…whatever the mainstream is doing – it gets passed from generation to generation.

Whether you lived through Freedom Summer or “Jem and the Holograms” – somewhere in your youth you started to realize who was in control, and you rebelled. You started to discover the paradigms of censorship and consumerism – and they repulsed you.

You needed to self actualize, to find your own way, and you sought out something real, something with meaning. You waved your hand at popular music, popular movies, and popular television. You dug deeper and disparaged all those mindless sheeple who gobbled up pop culture.

Yet, you still listened to music and bought shirts and went to see movies. Someone was appealing to you despite your dissent.

If you think you can buy your way to individuality, well, you are not so smart.

Since the 1940s, when capitalism and marketing married psychology and public relations, the market has been getting much better and more efficient at offering you something to purchase no matter your taste.

See the punk rocker up there? Yeah, he bought all of those clothes. Someone is making money off of his revolt.

(Source: youarenotsosmart.com)

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Ribbon Culture is a brilliant little book. Drawing on her doctoral research, Sarah Moore, a research assistant at the University of Kent, provides a cogent analysis of the ubiquitous ‘awareness-raising’ ribbon and its more recent offspring, the wristband. What do these things represent, she asks, and why do so many people wear them? The answers are revealing and disturbing.

Cover illustration by
Jan Bowman

‘Since its emergence in 1991, the awareness ribbon has achieved the kind of cultural status usually reserved for religious symbols and big-brand icons’, notes Moore in her introductory chapter. Fewer than two decades on from the launch of the red AIDS-awareness ribbon, which Moore credits with starting this trend, one can buy ribbons in every colour, to ‘show awareness’ for a ‘staggering’ range of causes:

‘… the Oklahoma bombing, male violence, censorship, bullying, epilepsy, diabetes, brain cancer, myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), autism, racial abuse, childhood disability, and mouth cancer, to name just a few.’

As there are clearly more causes than there are colours, a particular coloured ribbon could denote a number of different things that the wearer could be seen to be raising awareness of. Not that this potential confusion matters all that much: as Moore remarks, a few of her ribbon-wearing interviewees had to be reminded which causes their ribbons represented, while one teenage collector of wristbands proudly described to her ‘a gold anti-poverty band, a particularly rare wristband that he had given to his girlfriend as a present’:

“The ribbon ‘appears to signal concern for others, but in fact prioritises self-expression’, says Moore”

‘When I asked him whether he thought it a little contradictory that an anti-poverty wristband should be gold, he was genuinely surprised at the observation; absorbed in the task of locating rare bands, choosing which to display and which to give as gifts, he hadn’t given consideration to the meaning of the objects he collected.’

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Today marks the first day of my going “shampoo-less”. My hair is baby fine and won’t hold a style. I used to wash my hair every day to rinse out the oils and blow dry it opposite the direction of hair growth (trying to get some body) - not anymore. (At least, not for a while. I’m still going to wash it every day (or every other day), but no more shampoo or conditioner. Some people use baking soda and apple cider vinegar - I’m forgoing it all. Let’s see where this takes me!

artlove:

winter time by ~amytorrente on deviantART

Rarely does this type of art move me. This is one of those rare pieces.

(via myemotionaltumblr-deactivated20)

Henry David Thoreau

(Source: successdemandsaction.net)