The Afghan Girls Robotics Team Was Denied Entry To US. They’ll Watch Their Robot Compete Over Skype

They call you a monster with a sneer on their lips like just the thought of you is bitter. They say it with a grin of fake fondness, a joke that you’ve never laughed at. They say it and it doesn’t bother you. Nothing bothers you anymore.

You were a child once. You were a child with golden hair and wide, hazel eyes full with excitement and wonder. Once you wore a smile on your mouth that wasn’t twisted by madness; it was easy and joyful because the world hadn’t crumbled in on you yet. You were sunshine and warmth before they stripped you of your youthful innocence and left you raw and hurting.

You think about how you’ve always had more tears on your cheeks than a smile gracing your lips. You think about how you know the taste of blood in your mouth, the crunch of your own broken bones, the raw flame of being torn apart from the inside out. You wish you could forget.

You’ve been screaming since you were small and you’ve never stopped.

They think it’s a war cry and you don’t tell them differently.

You’ve torn yourself into pieces to try and keep people who don’t want you. You’re used to the ache of broken promises, familiar and old as time. You do not break your promises. You expect others always do.

You were gentle once. A baby bird had fallen from a tree and you placed it in a shoe box. You couldn’t leave it because it’s helpless cries reminded you too much of yourself. You stroked its tiny head and nursed it back to health and set it free. It flew away and you were jealous. You’d been wishing you had wings for years.

You are too much and the world hates it. You hate it too. There’s too much feeling in your chest for your brother, for your cousin, for two boys who trust you to protect your lives and all you can think is “I will do for you what I cannot do for me”.

You keep your promises and you bury your pain. You let them call you monster because it’s easier. You let them call you soulless because it’s easier. You would much rather see their hatred than the pity you know would come in it’s stead.

-you’re not a monster, you’re a shield, c.k.b.

Rosa Californica.

Illustration taken from ‘The Genus Rosa’ by E. A. Willmott. Illustrations by Alfred Parsons. Published 1914 by John Murray. London.

Harvard Botany Libraries.

archive.org

Reblog if Black Lives Matter to you

Where are those woke white people at!?

reblog to have this spoopy dancing ghost on ur blog

Self care is eating incense sticks while summoning Satan at 3 in the morning

bisexuality aesthetic

september is bisexuality awareness month, so this is your reminder that bisexuality is valid and beautiful. 

Candela Obscura Libations for the Circle of Needle and Thread!

Ok, so now I just need to find a gay infj

pros & cons of the mbti-types: ENTP

pros:

- always ready to party!!

- sarcastic lil shit

- “so what it´s rock and roll!”

- flirty and attractive personality

- has the combined charisma of 20 000 people

- mischiveous

- patrick from the perks of being a wallflower

- sirius black

- will make any infj swoon

- THEY ARE WONDERFUL OKAY

cons:

- may bottle up their feelings

- what are the cons of these beutiful people anyways???

The suck button.

My band’s drummer, John, is also a sound guy; for several years before we hooked up musically, he had been doing sound for other bands I was in, as well as for touring acts I booked shows for. He’s very good at what he does, and has a pretty massive rig. Anyway, he’s the nicest guy in the world at band practice, at Burger King, or at a gig we’re playing, but when he’s running sound for other bands, he can be pretty crabby. Very little patience for bands who start late or end late. Even less patience for bands who take an encore when they’re the second band playing out of five. Very little patience for singers who ask for more vocals in the monitor while cupping the microphone ball in both hands (feedback, anyone?) In general, just an altogether grouchy sound man. For example, he ran sound once for this seven- or eight piece ska band. One of the trombone players said he needed two mics: one for his horn and one for his backup vocals. Normally at this venue (a 120-seater), John didn’t bother to mic horns at all. Rolling his eyes, John put up a Shure Beta 58 and some AKG condenser mic. “This Shure is for your vocals, and this AKG is for your horn, OK?” he said. “Don’t blow your horn into the vocal mic, because your horn is about 30db louder than your voice and I’m going to have everything mixed properly.” Horn player nods his head. During the second song of the set, apparently this trombonist was set to get a solo. Right before his solo starts, he grabs both mics and pushes them close together, so that the capsules are actually touching. He then blows this fortissimo opening note into BOTH mics. I was sitting at a table in back, by the sound board, at the time. John’s limiters caught most of it, and I STILL had ringing in my ears for two days. At the end of the song, John mutes both of the guy’s mics (and leaves them mute), and basically threatens to ream out the guy’s plumbing with his own horn if he ever pulls that shit again. John does this through his talkback mic, which is clearly audible over the monitors. The crowd bursts into laughter, and the horn player goes bright red in the face.

At any rate, for years I had heard John threaten bands with the “suck button.” Bands who were taking too long to set up, or whose members repeatedly refused to follow reasonable directions (please keep that vocal mic away from the monitors!), would be threatened. “Pull that shit again, and I’m gonna hit the suck button on you guys!” I took it to mean that he would intentionally make them sound bad, but he never followed through on the threat, so I took it as a vague general warning.

So anyway, a little while back he’s running sound on a four band show. The second band, a Matchbox 20/Train kind of band, has him running 20 minutes behind before they even play a note because their lead guitarist was late. Their allotted set time is 40 minutes, but their last song runs over and by the time it’s done, they’ve played for almost 45 minutes. John says quietly over the talkback mic, “Hey guys, you’re done.” The lead singer says loudly over the vocal mic “Sound man says we gotta get off the stage. We got one more song for you!” as they kick into another soupy jangle-rock tune. John shakes his head at me. Then, the most amazing thing happened. After their “encore,” this band kicks straight into ANOTHER song without announcing it, apparently in the hope that John wouldn’t notice it was a different song.

John leans over to me to be heard over the PA and asks, “Hey, wanna see the suck button?” “Sure,” I replied. I figured he was going to muck with the levels or just turn them off or something. Instead, he reaches to one of his racks and starts scrolling through patches on his trusty DigiTech unit. Sure enough, he gets to a patch titled SUCK BUTTON. He engages it, and all hell breaks loose onstage. The lead singer and the lead guitarist (who was singing backup), immediately start to sing WAY off key. They try to get back in tune, fail, trail off in mid-line, try again, and start glaring at each other. The guitarist is so distracted by this that he starts muffing the chord progression. If not for the drummer, I think the whole song would have derailed. For the entire four minute duration of the song, I was treated to this asshole band sounding like crap and getting madder and madder at each other. John explained the patch to me; basically it pitch shifts all tracks from the vocal submix up one step, BUT ONLY IN THE MONITORS. So the audience, out in front of the mains, was treated to the sound of two guys trying to get in tune, only to be utterly confused. If they got it sounding right in the monitors, they could tell that something was grossly wrong in the mains. And each of the singers thought it was the other guy who was singing out of tune. I just about died laughing.