"Wearing a hijab isn’t inherently liberating – but neither is baring one’s breasts. What is liberating is being able to choose either of these things. It’s pretty ludicrous to think that oppression is somehow proportional to how covered or uncovered someone’s body is. Both sides of this argument present a shallow understanding of women’s empowerment, which only drowns out the substantive challenges facing all women – issues that cannot be encapsulated in a debate about a piece of fabric."
—
Sara Yasin, Is the Hijab Worth Fighting Over?
(via lesilencieux)
Tom Hiddleston: Big Questions (x)
Tom Hiddleston (Thor, The Deep Blue Sea) discusses writing plays as a child, the moment he realised he could be an actor, and why he will always love Disney’s The Jungle Book.
(via omgtomhiddleston)
The Amazing Underwater Forest of Lake Kaindy
What makes Lake Kaindy truly remarkable is that it contains an underwater forest. Visible on the lakes surface are the tall, dried-out tops of submerged Spruce trees that rise above the water’s surface like the masts of sunken ships. They are the only sign of the amazing frozen forest below the water’s surface.
The water is so cold (even in summer the temperature does not exceed 6 degrees) that the pine needles remain on the trees, even after a hundred years of being submerged. During the winter, the lake freezes and becomes a popular spot for ice diving.
The lake is 400 meters long and is located in Kazakhstan’s portion of the Tian Shan Mountains, about 129 km from the city of Almaty. The lake was created after an earthquake in 1911 triggered a large landslide blocking the gorge and forming a natural dam.
(via fortmacattack)
A water tower atop a neglected building in Chelsea hosted a discreet nightclub for adventurous guests who had been given a mysterious timepiece.
…
And for the record, this was every bit as magical and mysterious and unexpected as you might imagine. The night we were there, the bass-and-accordion band recognised Amanda and told her they knew Missed Me. So I sat in a secret watertower nightclub while she sang and was perfectly happy.
"
When was super depressed, I wasn’t working—I was always too depressed. Hemingway did his best work when he didn’t drink, then he drank himself to death and blew his head off with a shotgun. Someone asked John Cheever, “What’d you learn from Hemingway?” and he said “I learned not to blow my head off with a shotgun.” I remember going to the Michigan poetry festival, meeting Etheridge Knight there and Robert Creeley. Creeley was so drunk—he was reading and he only had one eye, of course, and had to hold his book like two inches from his face using his one good eye. But you look at somebody like George Saunders—I think he’s the best short story writer in English alive—that’s somebody who tries very hard to live a sane, alert life.
You’re present when you’re not drinking a fifth of Jack Daniel’s every day. It’s probably better for your writing career, you know? I think being tortured as a virtue is a kind of antiquated sense of what it is to be an artist.
"—
In an interview with The Fix, Mary Karr debunks the toxic mythology that it is necessary to be damaged in order to be creative. My own vehement defiance to that mythology is what led me to choose Ray Bradbury – the ultimate epitome of creating from joy rather than suffering – as the subject of my contribution to The New York Times’ The Lives They Lived.
Pair with Karr on why writers write.
(via explore-blog)
(Source: , via neil-gaiman)
If Earth Had Rings
First off, they would be really pretty to look at. They would also dominate the sky in both night and day at exactly the same place as they would never rise nor set. And at night you would see the Earth’s shadow swing across the rings, like in the 4th photo here.
However, life would be very different on Earth if this were the case. Nocturnal animals would have a hard time being nocturnal, as the light reflecting from the rings would illuminate the night.
Because we are closer to the Sun than Saturn is, the rings would be more rocky than ice, making them less bright but still pretty bright. In fact, you would see far less stars at night (living anywhere other than the equator or the arctic circle) because of the light pollution and not to mention ruin most meteor showers because of that.
During the day the rings would block sunlight in certain regions of the planet creating wild weather cycles and effecting plant life as well. So basically, they would be definitely pretty to look at but they would also make a whole lot of things screwy.
Illustrations by Ron Miller // io9
— Click the photos for captionsDANGIT EARTH! WHY YOU NO HAVE RINGS!
(via semigetsbored)
Benedict Cumberfish
He looks like a fish breathing.
THAT IS THE BEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN.
JUST KEEP CUMLBR’ING, CUMBL’RING, CUMBLR’ING WHAT DO WE DO WE CUMBL, CUMBL. HA HA HA HA HAAAA HOO I LIKE TO CUMMMMBLRRRRRRRR.
But I thought for a moment that he’s chewing gum
(Source: watsonwarrior, via ellieelephant)
