Things Brown/south Asian Tumblr Will Probably Never Address:

5 Myths About Men with Eating Disorders

By Jason Deng–In his song with Lil Wayne, “Nothing But Trouble,” Charlie Puth sings, “These Instagram models are nothing but trouble.” The song’s about the dangers of judging a book by its cover (i.e. judging someone by their IG pics). It’s about the unhealthy emphasis our generation places on physical appearance. And it’s primarily about women.

But men also struggle with looking “attractive.” Whether that’s trying to be a thin “hipster” or a sculpted “jock,” it’s a legitimate struggle. And sometimes, that struggle comes with hours obsessing over your reflection in a car window, counting calories only to spit them back out, feeling uncomfortable in your skin but wanting nothing more than to retreat into it. That’s how it was for me.

Unfortunately, when eating disorders come up in the news, it’s rarely about men. But men DO struggle with EDs, and when they do, it sucks every bit as much as it does when a woman struggles. It’s important that people are aware of this. Here are five common myths about men with EDs to help clear the air:

1. Anorexia is a girl’s disease.

No, it’s not. A 2012 GQ article noted that recent studies suggest that 20%—even 30%—of anorexics are male. Framing EDs as a female-only disease is the quickest way to isolate men with EDs and prevent them from getting help.

2. Men don’t/shouldn’t care about how they look.

Because of all the pressure on women to look “pretty,” people automatically assume that men don’t care about how they look. Worse yet, that assumption enforces a notion that men shouldn’t care about how they look, or that at least their attractiveness should be effortless. But it isn’t.

3. Dieting is something only women do.

While I was struggling with my body image, one feeling that I acutely got was that only women are allowed to care about eating healthy. Men are supposed to be “chill” with eating pizzas three times a day, seven days a week. Going on a “diet” to become healthy is “unmanly.” This simply isn’t true, and anyone can tell you that pizza all day every day is the quickest way to clogging your arteries. Men, like women, can and should care (within reason) about what they eat.  

4. The manly way to lose weight is to exercise.

This goes hand-in-hand with myth #3. While men may be criticized for dieting, they can only be praised for exercising. Sayings like, “be a man,” not only hinder a man’s emotional capacity but also suggest to him that as long as he is a “strong man,” then he is doing something right. But overexercising can not only leave you injury-prone, it can even result in organ failure.

5. It’s possible and healthy to look like fitness models.

It doesn’t take long to find the fitness models on Instagram. Terms like “dedication” and “willpower” dominate the captions, and if you buy this supplement, then you TOO can look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Unfortunately, the fitness industry is full of lies. Most male models can only look the way they do by turning to drugs, even though none will ever admit it, since it’s more profitable to say their physique is the result of purely “hard work.” It’s no wonder that “bigorexia,” also known as muscle dysmorphia, is becoming increasingly prevalent.

Charlie probably wasn’t thinking of EDs when he wrote those lyrics, but he did get a couple of things right. The emphasis on physical appearance is trouble. It’s literally killing us: women AND men.

Solitude matters, and for some people, it’s the air they breathe

Susan Cain (via fyp-psychology)

Chicago task force releases landmark report, calls on Police Chief to acknowledge racism in police force

Yesterday, Chicago’s Police Accountability Task Force released its final report. Historically, the report called on the newly appointed Chicago Police Superintendent to acknowledge the force’s “history of racial disparity and discrimination.” Many believe the report, which many believe forced Mayor Rahm Emanuel to publicly acknowledge the Chicago Police Department’s continued issues with racism and to consider dismantling the city’s widely criticized Internal Police Review Board.

The task force was established in response to the public outcry in the wake of the death of Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times while running away from a Chicago Police Officer. The task force “dug deeper into the complaints of so many about the callous and disrespectful way in which they had been treated by some officers” within the CPD, and recommended sweeping changes to what it described as “systemic problems in CPD.”

The source of the current state of mistrust and animosity between the public and the CPD, it found, was the result of 

racism

a mentality in CPD that the ends justify the means 

a failure to make accountability a core value and imperative within CPD

a significant underinvestment in human capital

Below are the recommendations of the task force:

How We Propose to Empower People.

Create a Community Safety Oversight Board, allowing the community to have a powerful platform and role in the police oversight system.

Implement a citywide Reconciliation Process beginning with the Superintendent publicly acknowledging CPD’s history of racial disparity and discrimination, and making a public commitment to cultural change.

Replace CAPS with localized Community Empowerment and Engagement Districts (CEED) for each of the city’s 22 police districts, and support them accordingly. Under CEED, district Commanders and other leadership would work with local stakeholders to develop tailored community policing strategies and partnerships.

Renew commitment to beat-based policing and expand community patrols so that officers learn about and get to know the communities they serve, and community members take an active role in partnering with the police.

Reinvigorate community policing as a core philosophy and approach that informs actions throughout the department.

Evaluate and improve the training officers receive with respect to youth so that they are prepared to engage in ways that are age-appropriate, trauma-informed and based in a restorative justice model.

Require CPD and the police oversight system to be more transparent and release to the public incident-level information on arrests, traffic and investigatory stops, officer weapon use and disciplinary cases.

Host citywide summits jointly sponsored by the Mayor and the President of the Cook County Board to develop and implement comprehensive criminal justice reform.

Encourage the Mayor and President of the Cook County Board to work together to develop and implement programs that address socioeconomic justice and equality, housing segregation, systemic racism, poverty, education, health and safety.

Adoption of a citywide protocol allowing arrestees to make phone calls to an attorney and/or family member(s) within one hour of arrest.

Implementation of citywide “Know Your Rights” training for youth.

How We Propose to Address the Inadequate Emphasis on Accountability

Create a dedicated Inspector General for Public Safety, which would independently audit and monitor CPD and the police oversight system, including for patterns of racial bias.

Replace the Independent Police Review Authority with a new and fully transparent and accountable Civilian Police Investigative Agency, which will enhance structural protections, powers and resources for investigating serious cases of police misconduct, even in the absence of sworn complaints. The new CPIA should ensure an accessible, professional and supportive complaint process.

Implement a data-driven, best-in-class Early Intervention System for CPD to identify officers with problems before they become problems for the community.

Fundamentally change provisions in the collective bargaining agreements that are impediments to accountability, such as allowing for anonymous complaints, eliminating the ability to change statements after reviewing video and removing the requirement to destroy complaint records.

Fully implement the first-in-the-nation written video release policy for officer-involved shootings.

Expand CPD’s body cam pilot program.

Require that all disciplinary information be provided online so that citizens can track complaints and discipline histories.

How We Propose to Address Other Systemic and Longstanding Problems

Establish for the first time in Chicago a Deputy Chief of Diversity and Inclusion in CPD.

Implement policies to dismantle the institutionalization of the police “code of silence,” including substantial changes to the collective bargaining agreements between the police and the City, ending command channel review, reforming the role of CPD supervisors and pattern and practice analysis.

Establish a smart 911 system for OEMC, allowing residents to pre-enter information on mental health or other issues that would be instantly available to OEMC operators.

Create a multi-layer co-responder system where mental health providers work with OEMC and CPD to link individuals to treatment.

Expand significantly the Crisis Intervention System for CPD and other first responders.

Create a “Mental Health Critical Response Unit” within CPD that is responsible for mental health crisis response functions, training, support, community outreach and engagement, cross-agency coordination and data collection.

Create a hotline for CPD members, whether civilian or sworn, to lodge complaints, and develop a third-party system for the processing and follow-up of all comments and complaints reported to the hotline.

What If We Treated All Consent Like Society Treats Sexual Consent? (via Everyday Feminism)

From “The World Set Free“ episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey:

Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about Augustin Mouchot and his role in the history of solar power.

Constellations and the Calendar

Did you recently hear that NASA changed the zodiac signs? Nope, we definitely didn’t…

…Here at NASA, we study astronomy, not astrology. We didn’t change any zodiac signs, we just did the math. Here are the details:

First Things First: Astrology is NOT Astronomy…

Astronomy is the scientific study of everything in outer space. Astronomers and other scientists know that stars many light years away have no effect on the ordinary activities of humans on Earth.

Astrology is something else. It’s not science. No one has shown that astrology can be used to predict the future or describe what people are like based on their birth dates.

Some curious symbols ring the outside of the Star Finder. These symbols stand for some of the constellations in the zodiac. What is the zodiac and what is special about these constellations?

Imagine a straight line drawn from Earth though the sun and out into space way beyond our solar system where the stars are. Then, picture Earth following its orbit around the sun. This imaginary line would rotate, pointing to different stars throughout one complete trip around the sun – or, one year. All the stars that lie close to the imaginary flat disk swept out by this imaginary line are said to be in the zodiac.

The constellations in the zodiac are simply the constellations that this imaginary straight line points to in its year-long journey.

What are Constellations?

A constellation is group of stars like a dot-to-dot puzzle. If you join the dots—stars, that is—and use lots of imagination, the picture would look like an object, animal, or person. For example, Orion is a group of stars that the Greeks thought looked like a giant hunter with a sword attached to his belt. Other than making a pattern in Earth’s sky, these stars may not be related at all.

Even the closest star is almost unimaginably far away. Because they are so far away, the shapes and positions of the constellations in Earth’s sky change very, very slowly. During one human lifetime, they change hardly at all.

A Long History of Looking to the Stars

The Babylonians lived over 3,000 years ago. They divided the zodiac into 12 equal parts – like cutting a pizza into 12 equal slices. They picked 12 constellations in the zodiac, one for each of the 12 “slices.” So, as Earth orbits the sun, the sun would appear to pass through each of the 12 parts of the zodiac. Since the Babylonians already had a 12-month calendar (based on the phases of the moon), each month got a slice of the zodiac all to itself.

But even according to the Babylonians’ own ancient stories, there were 13 constellations in the zodiac. So they picked one, Ophiuchus, to leave out. Even then, some of the chosen 12 didn’t fit neatly into their assigned slice of the pie and crossed over into the next one.

When the Babylonians first invented the 12 signs of zodiac, a birthday between about July 23 and August 22 meant being born under the constellation Leo. Now, 3,000 years later, the sky has shifted because Earth’s axis (North Pole) doesn’t point in quite the same direction.

The constellations are different sizes and shapes, so the sun spends different lengths of time lined up with each one. The line from Earth through the sun points to Virgo for 45 days, but it points to Scorpius for only 7 days.  To make a tidy match with their 12-month calendar, the Babylonians ignored the fact that the sun actually moves through 13 constellations, not 12. Then they assigned each of those 12 constellations equal amounts of time.

So, we didn’t change any zodiac signs…we just did the math.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Read A Profoundly Beautiful Letter Einstein Wrote To His Daughter About The Universal Force of Love

Brilliant physicist Albert Einstein wrote a tender and intellectual letter to his daughter describing the universal power of love. Believe it or not, the prolific scientist fiercely believed that love was the answer for the survival of the human species. Read the letter he penned to his beloved daughter below.

Keep reading

We just got an unprecedented look at a black hole ripping apart a star

For the first time ever, astronomers got a close-up peek at a black hole ripping apart a star, a rare event that results in some of the star’s material getting ejected out into space. To research this phenomenon, astronomers used data from a tidal disruption that happened 3.9 billion years ago. Studying tidal disruptions like this one is revealing new information about how black holes behave.

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#KnowYourHistory: #Stonewall