HOLY SHIT WHEN YOU HOLD DOWN ALT AND CLICK REBLOG
HOLY SHIT„„„„
option on mac. I mean, it’s not like, mindboggling but it’s pretty cool.
(via inothernews)
![thedailywhat:
On Kony 2012: I honestly wanted to stay as far away as possible from KONY 2012, the latest fauxtivist fad sweeping the web (remember “change your Facebook profile pic to stop child abuse”?), but you clearly won’t stop sending me that damn video until I say something about it, so here goes:
Stop sending me that video.
The organization behind Kony 2012 — Invisible Children Inc. — is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called ”misleading,” “naive,” and “dangerous” by a Yale political science professor, and has been accused by Foreign Affairs of “manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes.” They have also been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureau’s standards.
Additionally, IC has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they won’t let their financials be independently audited. That’s not a good thing. In fact, it’s a very bad thing, and should make you immediately pause and reflect on where the money you’re sending them is going.
By IC’s own admission, only 31% of all the funds they receive go toward actually helping anyone [pdf]. The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization, to pay for their travel expenses (over $1 million in the last year alone) and to fund their filmmaking business (also over a million) — which is quite an effective way to make more money, as clearly illustrated by the fact that so many can’t seem to stop forwarding their well-engineered emotional blackmail to everyone they’ve ever known.
And as far as what they do with that money:
The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. These books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.
Let’s not get our lines crossed: The Lord’s Resistance Army is bad news. And Joseph Kony is a very bad man, and needs to be stopped. But propping up Uganda’s decades-old dictatorship and its military arm, which has been accused by the UN of committing unspeakable atrocities and itself facilitated the recruitment of child soldiers, is not the way to go about it.
The United States is already plenty involved in helping rout Kony and his band of psycho sycophants. Kony is on the run, having been pushed out of Uganda, and it’s likely he will soon be caught, if he isn’t already dead. But killing Kony won’t fix anything, just as killing Osama bin Laden didn’t end terrorism. The LRA might collapse, but, as Foreign Affairs points out, it is “a relatively small player in all of this — as much a symptom as a cause of the endemic violence.”
Myopically placing the blame for all of central Africa’s woes on Kony — even as a starting point — will only imperil many more people than are already in danger.
Sending money to a nonprofit that wants to muck things up by dousing the flames with fuel is not helping. Want to help? Really want to help? Send your money to nonprofits that are putting more than 31% toward rebuilding the region’s medical and educational infrastructure, so that former child soldiers have something worth coming home to.
Here are just a few of those charities. They all have a sparkling four-star rating from Charity Navigator, and, more importantly, no interest in airdropping American troops armed to the teeth into the middle of a multi-nation tribal war to help one madman catch another.
The bottom line is, research your causes thoroughly. Don’t just forward a random video to a stranger because a mass murderer makes a five-year-old “sad.” Learn a little bit about the complexities of the region’s ongoing strife before advocating for direct military intervention.
There is no black and white in the world. And going about solving important problems like there is just serves to make all those equally troubling shades of gray invisible.
[kony2012.]
GREAT, now I just don’t know what to think anymore. Even when I try to do good in the world, as little as an impact as I can have, and although it isn’t about me, this makes me not want to get involved with anything, or anyone because of cynicism. Is there anything, or anyone, or anybody doing 100% good work anymore? If so, please send me THAT video. @coketalk mentioned Doctors Without Borders. I shall look into that.
Basically, this sends me the message that everyone is full of shit, that the internet can’t help solve anything, that it’s simply entertainment for cat GIFS and trolling and making fun of the Kardashians, and we should all just keep waiting for our Coachella passes in the mail and doing “us” because in the end it doesn’t matter. It’s all smoke and mirrors. I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know who to trust. I’m going to have a cigarette.
I feel like a fool. I feel like I don’t know how to feel.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0iyiw3Jv01qzpwi0o1_r1_1280.jpg)
Friends,
Another Follow Up of the Day: The National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) has sided with the MPAA in its decision to reject The Weinstein Company’s request to lower the rating of the film studio’s bullying documentary from an R to a PG-13 so it could be used as an educational aid.
Bully received an R rating from the MPAA for “some language.”
If The Weinstein Company makes good on its threat to set aside the rating system, NATO’s President and CEO John Fithian said in a statement, “I will have no choice but to encourage my theater owner members to treat unrated movies from The Weinstein Company in the same manner as they treat unrated movies from anyone else.”
The would mean branding Bully an NC-17 movie, prohibiting anyone under the age of 18 from viewing it.
Responding with its own statement, The Weinstein Company called the treatment of Bully as an NC-17 film “unconscionable, not to mention unreasonable.”
The statement continued: “In light of the tragedy that occurred yesterday in Ohio, we feel now is the time for the bullying epidemic to take center stage, we need to demand our community takes action.”
A petition posted to Change.org by a teenage victim of bullying calling for the MPAA to reverse its decision has racked up over 100,000 signatures since it was launched a three days ago.
[deadline.]
I would just like to take a moment to say that if anyone can BULLY (pun intended) the MPAA to change it’s prehistoric, archaic ways of rating films, it’s BIG BAD Harvey Weinstein. Say what you want about good ol’ Harv. Once in a while, he does something so touching and magical that you almost forget he’s nearly killed his own executives for less than nothing.
I would like everyone to reblog this. Tweet it. I am in tears at work after watching this.
Call for Submissions: What’s Your Favorite Tumblr?
At TIME.com, we’re working on a guide to the best Tumblrs out there. But we want to know what you think first.
What Tumblr can’t you live without? (Aside from ours, of course.) Whether it’s news, photography, design or just cat videos, we want to know what you follow — and why.
Reply to this post (and include the URL) with your picks. We’ll mark popular suggestions as “Readers’ Choice” in our final list, which should come out by the end of January.
Ned Hepburn: "If the bullet was made of pizza."
I said “I love you” tonight to a woman I’ve known for a number of years. Not that that matters, but I said it, and it came out the same way that I might perhaps ask someone for a Diet Coke.
It had been a long time coming. To be fair, though, I suppose, when you put yourself out there like that –…
Ned, this was great. Los Angeles misses you.
Always tell girls you love them, especially girls that have been there for you. Tell people what you feel. Say what you mean and mean what you say.
