"No Child Left Behind sets up a whole high stakes testing regime and holds schools to various standards, one of which enables politicians, school boards, etc., to declare schools “failing.” But the phrase has been made generic, and the term is, importantly, politicized. Politicians run on the basis of fixing the failing schools."

"Shelby Knox, feminist activist."

to go through

II

I

so many good thoughts. amazin' eighteen:
"Scavenging is basically always keeping your eyes peeled. If there’s something on the curb, it’s almost always worthwhile to check out. My friends and I have gotten so many ridiculous things for free this way. There’s a culture of free boxes around here, where folks just put stuff on the curb with a sign, and usually it’s all cleaned out come next day. There’s also a transient student population because West Philly is connected to several college campuses. The trash is plentiful, especially when the U Penn students move out in May. Good lord. We call that Penn Christmas. My housemate makes about $2,000 easy every year just from selling their old thrown-out textbooks.

"As for the stigma attached to re-use, that’s some bullshit rich people made up to control the non-affluent. Like back in feudal days when the starving peasants living on the king’s land couldn’t shoot a deer to eat because it already 'belonged' to the king. It really all goes back to power dynamics and maintaining control over the oppressed. Why can’t I eat the day-old dumpster food that is going to a landfill? It’s because it fucks up capitalist order and power dynamics. It’s about maintaining the made-up idea of scarcity so a few motherfuckers can stay in control.

"And let me just say that I am no crust punk. I listen to disco music and R&B and wear Mickey Mouse sweatshirts. It’s a shame that crust punks are the face of dumpstering, because I feel that a lot of people depend on the discarded world—they just don’t brag about it."

via Anna: "Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee drew cheers at the Women in the World summit Friday morning, telling the crowd, “It’s time for women to stop being politely angry.”

JUAN GONZALEZ: On Monday, El Libro-Traficante is set to launch a small caravan to bring carloads of ethnic studies books into Arizona that were banned by public school officials in Tucson after the city suspended its acclaimed Mexican American Studies program due to a state ban on the teaching of ethnic studies. The banned books include Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson; Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire; Occupied America: A History of Chicanos by Rodolfo Acuña_; and Chicano: The History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement by F. Arturo Rosales.
...
TONY DIAZ: Evidently, he wanted to replace Mexican-American studies with a real, live class on doublespeak, because that’s all doublespeak. Huppenthal knows that Americans would not tolerate a direct ban on literature. So he has actually taken oppression and updated it. At the end of the day, yes, there is actually a law, America, in Arizona, to prohibit courses in high schools. Let that sink in.

Jessica Hopper's sumup: "There are many parts of this conversation that almost made me cry, for so many reasons. Ms. Hampton talking about what young girls accept as normal behavior from boys. Too $hort realizing, at 45 years old, that his idea of how to turn a girl on is actually to assault her and that he has never been told any different. Too $hort, 20 years into his career, being honest that he knew the money was in being nasty, not in being honest. Too $hort’s sadness on the version of masculinity he has been sold, and insisting he is not to be forgiven for this, for profiting on women’s pain. It’s all heavy, heavy shit."

"You have nothing but a dead carcass left on your hands."

packet-sniffing software

AMY GOODMAN: Ah, Billy Bragg.

"Maybe we should be using this interview for a site for people who don’t like the internet or something."

"[Laughs] Like a site where you have to write a letter to somebody and they’ll print it out."

audible smiles

BLVR: There’s that Tom Petty line “Think of me what you will, I’ve got a little space to fill.” I always think that’s great, because, truly, he’s probably just filling space.

JS: “You Don’t Know How It Feels”? [Singing] “Let me get to the point: let’s roll another joint.” Another great example of simple.

"I thank you for playing the ... clip of Congressmen Issa explaining that I was not an appropriate witness. I can’t think whose voices would be more appropriate than the women who are affected by this policy."

self-deprecato'brien

Enemies of the People

distracted driving

CHRIS WOODS: Even CIA agrees that it’s killed at least 50, and perhaps as high as 60, civilians. Their figures and ours are very different, and I think that’s based on how they interpreted "civilian." But nevertheless, CIA agrees that they’ve killed 50 to 60 civilians. There’s not been an investigation into a single one of those civilian deaths, and there’s not been a cent of compensation ever paid to anyone who’s been killed accidentally in Pakistan. And that’s a problem. When you have a covert intelligence agency running a military campaign, your accountability effectively collapses. And I think it’s worrying.

the singularity

lawnmower jokes & q&a hahas

people over grammar

cosmic *~*~****

重信 scoop

via Andrew: "Cleaning is the ultimate Sisyphean task; you sweep the motes of dust into the air, where they fall back down to the ground. It makes me feel like a cartoon character to sweep, like I am a Sim-person sweeping Sim-dust."
this guy just summed up my everything about household dusting.

AVC: Do you think your condition gets more attention than your music?

DJ: Yeah. In the film, that's true. It's more like Hard Copy. [Imitates Hard Copy theme.]

rockstar philosopher in crowd echo mic system..

scary