As the population ages, the demand for high-quality carers rises. By 2026 it’s predicted that the UK will need around 420,000 more carers, but with the current vacancy rate high and the amount of those showing interest in the care sector diminishing, it’s important that technology is utilised in order to help fill the gaps and… Continue reading How can bots improve social care?
As much as I have accumulated a lot of stuff throughout the course of my life (mostly books and DVDs), I don't actually spend my pay-check on everything I couldn't easily afford last month, nor do I ever feel like a 'day of shopping' is a day of fun. It's a day of wasted time,… Continue reading How to Be a Minimalist in Mauritius – D. K. Waye
When I announced to my previous employers that I was leaving them to work in a library, their response wasn't, "Congratulations," but, "Aren't libraries dying? What do librarians even do? Won't that be boring?" And I was both incredibly irked and flustered. I didn't know what to say other than I'LL DIE BEFORE I LET… Continue reading What do librarians even DO anymore?
Thinking about going veggie but, ugh, you just love meat too much? Here are 5 ways to help you change your approach and make the transition easier. These five steps helped me change my thinking and, eventually, change my daily life. P.S. I assume you're here because you already want to change. This ain't a… Continue reading 5 Steps to Transition into Vegetarianism
I didn't need convincing that climate change is real—it is the sole reason I committed myself to be vegetarian last year—but after watching Climate Change: The Facts, I am shaken. There are two things that shocked me: We are on a trajectory for causing animal extinction. If we lose a few species of insects or… Continue reading Climate Change: Turn Your Death into New Life
Mass Effect is a great game series but it failed to create a non-gendered alien race, let alone a matriarchal one. To be honest, I struggle to realistically imagine the full depth of what a matriarchal society would look like. In the context of Mass Effect, it means looking at the evolution of humanity without men, let alone… Continue reading Mass Effect: What Would A Matriarchy Look Like?
The purpose of the Thai commercial embedded below is for a communication technology that is hoped to improve living conditions across Thailand. However, when I watched it, as a UK citizen who only has to pay about £11 tax for unlimited health care, this ad made me appreciate the NHS even more. Watch the commercial… Continue reading A World Where Our Family Must Die
For many young people and immigrants in particular they were heartbroken when the UK voted to leave the EU. 49% of the population who bothered to vote chose to remain. What's more, many were shocked the leave vote actually won. Don't trust the polls. There was an air of complacency. "We'll never vote to leave, besides,… Continue reading Remember the EU Referendum and What it Means for the General Election
I want to have a genuine discussion with you, dear reader. This isn’t an angry post. In particular, I want to focus on the recent jibes so many politicians are making about “increasing taxes won’t fund Labour policies.”
Let’s be honest. The ‘magical girl’ trope used to suck when I was a kid, especially when girls are taught to hate themselves because ‘femininity = weakness,’ and gosh are magical-girl-shows ALL ABOUT showy associations of girliness. As such, the magical girl trope only pleased young girls who hadn’t yet learnt to think ‘girliness is… Continue reading Magical Girls: Internalised Misogyny and Genre Rebirth
Another reblog this morning. This time it’s a little bit of motivational talk to keep you writing where everyone else would tell you to stop.
At first this will sound ridiculous. Then you’ll feel irritated. Then you might feel riled and want to say: “YES I HATE MEN AND THEY MUST ALL BECOME SOYLENT GREEN.”
But the truth is, I don’t hate men. I just think I am awesome – too awesome for my life to be decided along the lines of what someone else thinks is appropriate to my gender. Too awesome to go around cringing over the fact that I am woman-shaped and have woman interests and woman-y inside-bits.
The people who accuse feminism of hating men have a very fragile, narrow idea of being a man – they’re something like a fluorescent tube. They are worried that any change will shatter them. Feel sorry for them, but not too sorry: like the rest of us, they will probably be OK.
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There is so much about Foz Meadows’s blog that I love and find comforting to see addressed. Her entire blog is a big stress relief for me, but I’m reblogging this particular post because it is something I struggle with constantly when around my family.
Explaining that sexist/racist jokes are STILL sexist never sits well with them. They will always tell me, in a derisive and offended tone, that I need to ‘lighten up’ or, my favourite (not), ‘get off my high horse’ and learn to ‘take a joke’ or explain to me that they’re being ‘ironic’.
I suppose they dislike it that I scowl at belittling and sexist/racist jokes because, for them, they would have to completely alter their way of thinking about humour. They would have to address that they’ve just said something that either reveals a little bit of their internalised misogyny, or that they are bigoted and not aware of it.
Changing how one thinks about humour does require effort, but only in the beginning, like all things. If they TRIED to be conscious of the ‘ironic sexism’ that they’re perpetuating, they might find it easier not to give into the mindless rhetoric that bigotry is funny. It’s easy to just laugh rather than to think, but the effect this keeps having on the way we subconsciously treat people continues to have negative results.
To quote Meadows’s opening paragraph: ‘All too often, gross remarks – be they racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise abusive and vile – are excused or condoned on the grounds of irony; that because they were meant to be humorous, they can’t possibly be offensive. And if somebody is offended, then they’re either oversensitive or incapable of laughter – either way, though, the problem is with them, not the joke-teller.
Except that, no: it’s not.’
All too often, gross remarks – be they racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise abusive and vile – are excused or condoned on the grounds of irony; that because they were meant to be humorous, they can’t possibly be offensive. And if somebody is offended, then they’re either oversensitive or incapable of laughter – either way, though, the problem is with them, not the joke-teller.
Except that, no: it’s not.
Generally speaking, there are two reasons why people make ironically offensive jokes: either they think we live in such a post-racist, post-sexist, post-discriminatory world that the act of mimicking historical abuses cannot possibly reinforce those abuses, on account of how they no longer really exist; or they secretly think the stereotypes which underlie offensive jokes have some basis in reality, and are therefore funny because they’re true. The former person can be anything from genuinely well-intentioned but oblivious to belligerently convinced…
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A discussion on whether Hollywood films "invariably reinforce Western ideological values" and to what extent. As Hollywood was the leading film industry during the development of early cinema, it is not that surprising that it still dominates the market. The culture it portrays is over-saturated in European cinema, in the sense that its stereotypes are… Continue reading Hollywood and Western Ideology
Before we can explore the discourse surrounding the theme of religious reformation in the videogames Final Fantasy X (Square, released in Japan 2001) and Dragon Age II (BioWare, released universally in 2011), it is important to define what is meant by 'reformation'. The Collins dictionary definition is, '1. improve 2. reconstruct - vi. 3. abandon… Continue reading Religious Reformation in Dragon Age II and Final Fantasy X
This has to be the best "Fifty Shades" marketing pun out there. That's it, they don't get better or more tongue in cheek than this. Now stop. But I'm not posting this to rage about marketing puns, or Fifty Shades of Gray. I want to share with you a new book. A fantastic book. A… Continue reading Fifty Shades of Feminism
Willow H. Wood 