Flickr just launched a new look. Not only do you get to upload photos at full resolution, but everyone gets a free terabyte of photo storage!
this is what im talkin about!!! its tight
I will have to start using my flickr again.
I was just about to post something about this! My faith in Yahoo has been restored. Things were looking up when they launched their iPhone app, changed their layout, and when folks left Instagram for Flickr – briefly – due to Insta’s TOS snafu, but things were quiet for a while. Too quiet.
The new layout is gonna take a little getting used to, but I really like where it’s going. Shit, I might start using my Rebel and Powershots again!
I was worried at first because I just renewed my Pro account. For me, 1 TB storage basically equals unlimited storage (which is what you get with Pro). However, you still need Pro to be ad-free, and I will definitely pay to avoid the ads, so it all works out!
Star Trek Into Dark: Let me tellya something, Benedict Cumberpatch and Leonard Nimoy had the TWO biggest punchlines in the whole movie. Wanna know why? because when Elder Spock called Harrison Khan by his full name, I just laughed. I really did. That man is named Khan? Really? what’s his history? cultural background? Oh ya’ll had to be really vague and confuse people no familiar with Star Trek? Oh, okay. It’s hilarious how even by dumbing down/ white-washing Star Trek’s progressive message, JJ Abrams’ still manages to waste a $100 million budget & still not have time to explain how a very very pale white guy is named Khan. Ain’t it funny. It was to me. I laughed in the theater. More on this tomorrow
(via polisyfyjesus)
Holy shit I had not even considered this aspect. It was fine to suspend disbelief that Nimoy Spock would recognize his former crewmates as played by new actors when the casting followed precedent in terms of race and ethnicity. But as if Nimoy Spock wouldn’t look at Khanberbatch and not say, “Who the fuck is that?”
(Also, full disclosure, I still have not seen the movie, I’ve just been picking up spoilers as they are presented to me, because I just don’t care.)
Star Trek: Into Darkness
So… in the alternate timeline, the even-numbered movies suck.
Got it.
This mermaid isn’t what she appears to be at first look, much like the legends claim.
Sold on Etsy.
anybody else notice that “to boldly go where no man has gone before” got changed to “where no one has gone before” because they wanted to be more inclusive
of aliens
alien rights make me tear up inside
Er, also of, you know… women.
Holy fuck what is it with Trek fans being so abysmally clueless these days.
Imagine a World Without Colonialism: yellow-turbanfacing: You know-We don’t just hate things like... →
You know-
We don’t just hate things like whitewashing, yellowface, redface, blackface, brownface, etc because they depict and promote horrible stereotypical representations of us and the way you think we look,
We don’t just hate them because they are the remnants of horrifically racist practices that were legalized and condoned,
We don’t just hate them because they are systematic ways of purposefully excluding us from being represented in the media,
We don’t just hate them because people STILL defend their use on grounds of ‘authenticity,’ whatever that means,
We don’t just hate them because people STILL think we look like that,
We don’t just hate them because they mean that we STILL live in a White world, where we’re all the deviations from the norm, the weird ones,
We don’t just hate them because their mere existence means that you will never see us for who we are but only for the commodified version of what you think we are,
We hate them because they promote the idea that no matter how high we rise, no matter how good we are at what we do and how well we represent ourselves, there will always be a white person who can do anything we can do better than we can- there will always be a white person that can depict us better than we can depict ourselves.
We hate them because when we do get in, when we finally get to show ourselves to the world, who we are is horrifically warped and neatly packed into a simplified, stereotyped version of us.
We hate them because they continue to exist and continue to be promoted and supported by the media and legions of racism apologists.
THAT’S WHY WE HATE THESE THINGS.
WE DON’T HATE THEM JUST BECAUSE OF THEIR PAST,
WE HATE THEM BECAUSE OF WHAT THEY MEAN IN THE PRESENT-
THAT WE’RE STILL, DESPITE WHAT PEOPLE THINK, NOT PAST RACISM,
THAT WE’RE STILL BEING UNFAIRLY TREATED AND REPRESENTED,
THAT WE STILL LIVE IN A WHITE WORLD IN WHICH WE ARE STILL INCAPABLE OF REPRESENTING OURSELVES
AND THAT ALL OF THIS
IS
STILL
GOING
ON
AND
IS
STILL
BEING
ENDORSED
BY
THE
MEDIA.
Don’t apologize for things like whitewashing, yellowface, redface, blackface and brownface.
HELP END THEM.
The Book of Right-On - May 16, 2013 by Jenny Henkelman on Mixcloud
“you’re khan? are you sure? you look like a baiganbharta cucumberraita to me”
I was sitting on a bench when a girl around 5 yrs old, in a fancy party dress, looked me in the eye & said “Why do you look like a monster?”
And I was like….
If there’s one thing that most fans of Star Trek will agree on, it’s the fact that Gene Roddenberry’s vision for the show — and, more optimistically, for human society — was predicated on the idea that all life is valuable, and that the worth of a person should not be judged by their appearance. Much of this was done through the old sci-fi trope of using aliens to stand in for oppressed groups, but Star Trek didn’t rely on the metaphor; it had characters who were part of the ensemble, important and beloved members of the Enterprise crew, who were people of colour. It had background characters who were people of colour. And, here and there, it had anti-heroes and villains who were people of colour … one of whom, Khan Noonian Singh, became well-nigh iconic.
Image 1: “Who is your favorite villain?” ; Actor John Cho (Lt Sulu) answers.
Image 2: TOS Khan looking at a watercolor of himself. Yes, he’s wearing a dastar (Sikh turban)
Image 3: Cumberbatch and Montalbán (as Khan)
And who is now being played by white actor Benedict Cumberbatch in the new JJ Abrams reboot movie, Star Trek: Into Darkness.
We’re all cynical and jaded enough to know the standard dismissal when it comes to matters of media representation: Paramount Pictures and most film studios are not interested in diversity or visibility, they only care about the bottom dollar. Star Trek as a franchise is too much of a juggernaut to affect with boycotts. There are too many people who love it, who love those characters and that world, and will go to see the movie. And for some of these people, this devotion to the idea of a future where even South and East Asian men get to pilot a starship and love swashbuckling, where Black women make Lieutenant on the Enterprise and actually get the boy, will be trivialized and eroded and whitewashed when the most formidable and complex Star Trek baddie becomes a white man named Khan.
It wasn’t perfect in the 60s when Ricardo Montalbán was cast to play Khan (a character explicitly described in the episode script of Space Seed as being Sikh, from the Northern regions of India). But considering all of the barriers to representation that Roddenberry faced from the television networks, having a brown-skinned man play a brown character was a hard-won victory. It’s disappointing and demoralizing that with the commercial power of Star Trek in his hands, JJ Abrams chose not to honour the original spirit of the show, or the symbolic heft of the Khan character, but to wield the whitewash brush for … what? The hopes that casting Benedict Cumberbatch would draw in a few more box office returns? It’s doubly disappointing when you consider that Abrams was a creator of the television show Lost, which had so many well-rounded and beloved characters of colour in it.
Add to this the secrecy prior to release around Cumberbatch’s role in the film, and what seems like a casting move that would typically be defended by cries of “best actor for the job, not racism” becomes something more cunning, more malicious. Yes, the obfuscation creates intrigue around and interest in the role, but it also prevents advocacy groups like Racebending.com from building campaigns to protest the whitewashing. This happened with the character of the Mandarin in Iron Man 3, as well as ‘Miranda Tate’ in The Dark Knight Rises, who ended up being Talia al Ghul but played by French actress Marion Cotillard. This practice is well in effect in Hollywood; and after the negative press that was generated by angry anti-oppression activists and fans when Paramount had The Last Airbender in the works, studios are wising up. They don’t want their racist practices to be called out, pointed at, and exposed before their movies are released — Airbender proved that these protests create enough bad feeling to affect their bottom line.
So the studio has now found a way to keep it secret and underhanded. Racebending.com was there for most of the production of The Last Airbender, and were even able to correspond with Paramount Pictures about it. This time, for Star Trek: Into Darkness, their hiding and opaque practices has managed to silence media watchdogs until the movie’s premiere.
As I said, this racist whitewashing of the character of Khan won’t affect how much money this Trek movie makes. And I’m happy that the franchise is popular, still popular enough to warrant not only a big-budget reboot with fantastic actors but also a sequel with that cast. I’m happy that actors I enjoy like Zoë Saldaña and John Cho are playing characters who mean so much to me, and that they, in respect for the groundbreaking contributions by Nichelle Nichols and George Takei in these roles, have paid homage to that past.
But all of that will be marred by having my own skin edited out, rendered worthless and silent and invisible when a South Asian man is portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch up on that screen. In the original Trek, Khan, with his brown skin, was an Übermensch, intellectually and physically perfect, possessed of such charisma and drive that despite his efforts to gain control of the Enterprise, Captain Kirk (and many of the other officers) felt admiration for him.
And that’s why the role has been taken away from actors of colour and given to a white man. Racebending.com has always pointed out that villains are generally played by people with darker skin, and that’s true … unless the villain is one with intelligence, depth, complexity. One who garners sympathy from the audience, or if not sympathy, then — as from Kirk — grudging admiration. What this new Trek movie tells us, what JJ Abrams is telling us, is that no brown-skinned man can accomplish all that. That only by having Khan played by a white actor can the audience engage with and feel for him, believe that he’s smart and capable and a match for our Enterprise crew.
What an enormous and horribly ironic step backwards. For Star Trek, for media representation, and for the vision of a future where we have transcended systemic, racist erasure.
(via RaceBending)
THIS IS PISSING ME OFF
Star Trek: Into Whiteness by JJ Abrams
Former NASA Engineer Awards Kiera Wilmot Scholarship to Space Academy →
As a show of support, former NASA engineer Homer Hickam awarded Kiera a scholarship to attend the United States Advanced Space Academy (ASA), a branch of the famous Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama!YESSSSSSSSS!
That’s what I’m talking about dammit!
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Beautiful justice. <3 to infinity.
Capitalism would have us believe that we only deserve to be here because of what we produce, and even in our counter- cultures, even in our movements we reproduce the same idea. We only deserve to be here because of what we can produce that other people will buy with their money, time or attention. Our experience of our own lives is secondary, it is only the means of production, it is the products that matter, and unless we make ourselves into both factories and widgets we are not valuable.
i have no problem with pointing out that anyone of any gender can be an abuser, rapist, pedophile etc because that’s absolutely true.
but the problem with always emphasizing “yes but it happens to everyone, not just women (or people of colour, or trans* people, etc)!” is that it depoliticizes the issue.
violence is not an accident, it is reflective of social power relations that permeate society at every level
