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Irrational fears

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24 Nov, 2009

Irrational fears by

ISBN: 9780981784649 I have a lot of fears. I’m a big fan of Ursula Vernon’s Digger comic, but I’ve never actually bought any of her stuff before. Tut tut. But when she announced that her first ever comic was to be...

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by Kate Elliott

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  • The scariest fact about the Disneyland measles outbreak

    fandomsandfeminism:

    wocinsolidarity:

    randommomentsdevida:

    You don’t get vaccinated just to protect yourself. You do it to protect others.

    Six of the cases were in infants too young to have been vaccinated.

    Six of the cases were in infants too young to have been vaccinated.

    Six of the cases were in infants too young to have been vaccinated.

    Six of the cases were in infants too young to have been vaccinated.

    "The measles vaccine is not licensed for use on babies younger than 12 months. That means that, for the first year of life, babies depend on the fact that everybody else around them gets vaccinated. This essentially creates a firewall: if other people are vaccinated, they won’t catch the disease — and won’t spread it to young children who cannot get protection.

    This is what scientists call “herd immunity,” and its a huge reason we get vaccines in the first place. The shots aren’t just about protecting ourselves from measles, mumps, the flu, or other diseases. They’re about making it really hard for those who are medically frail (like the elderly) and those who can’t get the vaccine (often babies and pregnant women) to catch a disease that could be devastating to them. The vaccinated people form something like a fence around the vulnerable people, making it extra hard for the disease to come in.”

    This is why everyone who CAN safely be vaccinated NEEDS to be vaccinated.

    Not vaccinating for religious reasons, or because of misleading, debunked, ableist “concerns” about the “safety” of vaccines is horrific, unethical, and dangerous to everyone who comes in contact with you.

  • Oklahoma. This was a place where Kathryn’s workplace had a cussing jar, a quarter per swear, and the words written on it, “Let Go and Let God.” Here, Christianity was the religion — Tracy and Kathryn were believers — and Oklahoma football was the religion — Tracy and Kathryn were believers — and people could be decent and kind and judgmental, sometimes all at once, which was why, when Tracy told some Rotary Club friends that she and Kathryn were getting married, she kept her eyes planted above their heads so she wouldn’t have to look at their faces.
    "I don’t want you to hate me, and I don’t want you to disown me. - Metafilter

  • For nearly as long as the antifeminist culture war known as Gamergate has raged across the internet, a microcosm of the battle has taken place on Wikipedia. Should Gamergate defined as a push for ethics in gaming journalism, or a paranoid campaign against women in gaming? This week, Wikipedia’s highest court made a major decision in favor of the former.
     
    […]
     
    If the phrase “Wikipedia’s highest court” surprises you, you’re probably not alone. Theoretically, the free encyclopedia is a purely democratic operation—anyone can edit Wikipedia, after all—but there is a byzantine and largely unseen hierarchy that governs disputes among editors, culminating in a Supreme Court-style panel called the Arbitration Committee. The committee’s latest decision: to punish a group of five editors who fought to maintain a Gamergate page that presented the “controversy” largely as an assault on women—that is, who fought to present Gamergate as it actually is.
     
    Mark Bernstein, a blogger and Wikipedia editor, notes that the so-called “Five Horsemen” were not only barred from contributing to Gamergate articles, but from any articles relating to “gender or sexuality, broadly constructed.” By contrast, the only pro-Gamergate users punished by the committee, Bernstein writes, were “disposable accounts created specifically for the purpose of being sanctioned.”
     
    The episode punches a neat a whole in the idea that Wikipedia is a neutral and democratic platform. The Wikipedian community is something like 90 percent male, and if Bernstein’s numbers are correct, its highest ruling body has a similar demographic makeup. That the world’s seventh-most popular website would look at Gamergate and decide that what’s needed is a silencing of feminist perspectives is depressing, but it’s hardly surprising.

    Wikipedia Purged a Group of Feminist Editors Because of Gamergate. (via wilwheaton)

    I think it’s time I stopped using Wikipedia, no matter how useful as quick research it may be.  Who’s with me?

    (via fluffyfemme)

    Wikipedia has always been pretty useless when it comes to politically charged subjects such as Gamergate because of crap like this. You can still use it for random bits of specific trivia, but not to get uniased information on a current topic that talk about oppression.

    (via a-little-bi-furious)

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