Why You Should Actually Be Terrified Right Now

the-moon-in-the-water:

lastxleviathan:

staneclectic:

raedusoleil:

It’s what happened to Jews in Germany in 1938 when their passports were declared invalid. That is what is beginning to happen here, now, to Hispanic citizens along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Oh, is it bad to compare the GOP to Nazis? Well, if members of the GOP do not like being compared to Nazis, they should consider not behaving exactly like Nazis.

Hispanic U.S. citizens, some of whom were in the U.S. military, are not being allowed to renew their passports. This is reportedly happening to “hundreds, even thousands” of Latinos, according to a report in the Washington Post. They’re getting letters from the State Department saying it does not believe they are citizens. The government claims their citizenships are fraudulent. “I’ve had probably 20 people who have been sent to the detention center—U.S. citizens,” Jaime Diez, an attorney in Brownsville, told The Washington Post.

The Washington Post also reports on ICE officials coming to citizens’ homes and taking their passports away. This is an escalation from a few months ago, when Americans were detained by ICE officials just for speaking Spanish to one another.

The administration is currently launching an effort to take citizenship from people who they suspect of fraud in obtaining it. Fraud in these cases is exceedingly rare. The last time the government tried to strip people of their citizenship was, according to Columbia Professor Mae Ngai, during The Red Scare of the 1950s. As Ngai remarks, McCarthyism is not typically remembered as a good period in American history.

There is good reason to believe that this could portend still worse things to come for the U.S. Hispanic population, unless people begin to speak out loudly, and fast.

First, they came for the Hispanics and I did nothing.

Then they came for (fill in the blanks) and I did nothing.

Then, when they came for me, there was no one to do nothing.

GUYS.

SILENCE IS COMPLICITY.

IT WILL HAUNT NOT ONLY YOU BUT YOUR CHILDRENS CHILDREN.

DONT BE SILENT. PASS THIS AROUND. Let everyone know it’s happening!

Never again.

sweetbonbonqueen:
“Reblog to have something good happen at 1:42 tomorrow
”

sweetbonbonqueen:

Reblog to have something good happen at 1:42 tomorrow

itsbetterthananal:
“it blows my mind when high school teachers think college professors are super professional when this is a literal email i got from my stat professor an hour ago
”

itsbetterthananal:

it blows my mind when high school teachers think college professors are super professional when this is a literal email i got from my stat professor an hour ago

munirastudies:

smilesandvials:

Science communications has to change.

It does. It’s important that we change now. We should have done it before. 

And I don’t know what changes need to be made but I do feel like science communications and outreach has a few really glaring problems.

1. We mostly talk to children. That’s fine. They are the future. But they aren’t the now and when we don’t get their parents engaged to, we’re asking them to clean up a mess when they’re old enough. And when I say children, I really mean children. I don’t know the last time I was at an outreach event that focused on high schoolers or was made for a high school audience. 

2. We’re mostly talking to people who will already be fairly well educated. That’s fine to. But we’re missing people who either have little interest in actively investing in education and people who don’t have access to it. We’re mostly getting contact with people who are already in school. 

3. We are talking to people who already agree. We are preaching to the choir. That makes sense – they are who shows up. I don’t know how to talk to people who already think I’m wrong or a waste of tax payer dollars but I would love to find out. Negin Farsad might have some tips, though.

4. We exclude people. We do. We often implicitly exclude religious groups. We often implicitly exclude people who don’t have a higher education. My mother, even, was nervous about having dinner with my undergraduate advisor because, “[she doesn’t] have a doctorate, [she doesn’t] know how to talk to somebody that smart.” I don’t know how to stop that impression but I would love to. 

5. Maybe, too many of us are career scientists. That’s fantastic – we have a job we are passionate about. But…then it is a little easy to write off our excitement. I’m not always that impressed by how cool math is when a mathematician gets excited about it. But if my barista got excited about a proof – wow, that must be a really cool proof, right!?

6. We don’t always have the communication skills. This is obvious because the seminars I go to are not as exciting to me as a TEDTalk, even if the subject matters to me more. We need to hone those skills. For me, I’m hoping to take improv classes. Write more. Try different things. But we need to include professional communicators or theater departments or artists in our efforts.

I am 23. I am not a seasoned science communicator. I might not even be a seasoned communicator. I can’t find the answers to all of these but I know they are problems. 

On this note:

There’s a whole academic journal (open source, free to subscribe to) called “Communicating Astronomy to the Public” (CAP) that’s worth checking out. I also recommend the @ realscientists twitter account if Twitter is your thing. Lots to learn!

ladies-n-germs:

greatjaggi:

A sword that screams whenever you swing it, and the volume is directly tied with how fast its swung

Finally, a good post

gnarlygnat:

one time at a wax museum i thought one of the tour guides was a wax person cuz they were just standing there not moving so i go up to them like “who the fuck is this supposed to be” then they just looked at me and laughed

invaderxan:

Heard some important information on Twitter today, and thought I’d post it here for anyone who may not have heard it. This is actually a thing, devised by human rights organisation called Karma Nirvana.

Reblog to save a life?