Ruqaiyah's barbaric yawp

helloyoucreatives: A reader’s project Musicians have a hard...

Thu, 23 May 2013 09:53:32 -0400

A reader’s project

Musicians have a hard time remembering what they played when they’re in the “groove”, which makes transcribing original music a tedious and difficult task. No one wants to interrupt a good jam session by writing every note they play as they go, which is why we created Mozart: a phone app that simplifies the song writing process by automatically writing the tabs for you as you play. Simply place your phone by your guitar, bass, or piano, and watch Mozart do its magic with yours.

The idea behind Mozart is to allow for musicians of any skill to create easily-understood notations of their music without the need of any additional effort (other than employing the app, that is). The user simply has to select the instrument they will be using and touch “Record” upon being prompted to do so. Using the phone’s mouthpiece as a microphone, the app utilizes its note-recognition feature to transcribe each note that’s played to it into tablature (tabs) and standard musical notation. A file containing both “sheets” is generated at the conclusion of the recording, and the user is given the ability to share, store, or save for editing later.

The availability of both tabs and standard notation is reflective of our hopes of Mozart being used as a tool for musical education and accessibility around the world. Tabs are easily read even by non-musicians, relying on simple and direct instructions to tell the musician what to be play. Complementing these tabs with their standard notation may allow users to become more comfortable with both.

haaaaa-leluJAH

theclearlydope: DIG IT: R2-D2 Domino’s Pizza box from...

Thu, 23 May 2013 09:50:19 -0400

theclearlydope:

DIG IT: R2-D2 Domino’s Pizza box from Japan.

via @scottspizzatour / 8tokyo

I LOVE IT

the-uncensored-she: mommapolitico: Hmmm…correlation??? Uh,...

Thu, 23 May 2013 09:48:33 -0400

the-uncensored-she:

mommapolitico:

Hmmm…correlation??? Uh, yeah, maybe so!!!

And guess who makes up the majority of those incarcerated? It’s a war on Black, Brown and poor people.

It’s slavery. Especially when you consider how companies like Starbucks, Boeing and dozens of others defray manufacturing and production costs by using prison labor. They pay PENNIES on the dollar. Address this when you talk jobs.

fyeahpocredcarpetfashion: Solange Knowles, at the 2013 Cannes...

Thu, 23 May 2013 09:08:58 -0400

fyeahpocredcarpetfashion:

Solange Knowles, at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, in Stéphane Rolland

Solange is a fashion ICON! this chick does the damn thing.

bashko: porn-cakes: Sketch from sketchbook colored! She eats...

Thu, 23 May 2013 09:07:43 -0400

bashko:

porn-cakes:

Sketch from sketchbook colored! She eats men who abuse their wives.

Fucking awesome.

frank-e-fighting-words: frank-e-fighting-words: super-eklectic1...

Thu, 23 May 2013 09:06:59 -0400

frank-e-fighting-words:

frank-e-fighting-words:

super-eklectic1:

the slide…

I’m not going to lie, I can look at this all night.

this can go back on the front of my blog now

his album is pretty fawesome.

westcoastchris: TLC, May 1996 I always imagined me and Tboz...

Thu, 23 May 2013 09:05:57 -0400

westcoastchris:

TLC, May 1996

I always imagined me and Tboz were the best of friends. She was my favorite.

hardscum: female-only: wow! where is that from? Harlem knows...

Thu, 23 May 2013 09:02:55 -0400

hardscum:

female-only:

wow! where is that from?

Harlem knows what’s up. :) I walk past a mural with this gem regularly and thought I’d share.

vixxe: Marie Ninja (x) okay. word? love.

Wed, 22 May 2013 21:27:53 -0400

vixxe:

Marie Ninja (x)

okay. word? love.

thatladydownthestreet: afro-khaleesi: gailsimone: sourcedumal:...

Wed, 22 May 2013 21:26:15 -0400

thatladydownthestreet:

afro-khaleesi:

gailsimone:

sourcedumal:

authorsofcolor:

The above graphic is from Erika Alexander’s website http://www.erikaalexander.com/.

Black people write and consume Science Fiction and Fantasy genres. Anyone who says otherwise is a racist. Erika Alexander, Maxine Shaw from “Living Single” is producing a graphic novel series with Dark Horse called “Concrete Park”.

If you love horror and speculative fiction and would like to read some done by African American authors, Brandon Massey has collaborated with dozens of writers to produce three horror anthologies. This is a great way to discover authors.

Dark Dreams

Voices from the Other Side

Whispers in the Night

YES!

YES!!!!!

YESSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Want this.

How in the world did a white person look at a Black person and proceed to tell them what the 14 million Black people in this country do and don’t like? I can’t. It’s generalizations like that that contribute to representational issues. But this science fiction lovin Black girl is 1424238297318932% ready for this graphic novel *___*

Yes yes yes!

Reblog if your tumblr picture is actually you.

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:07:23 -0400

mosoli: im still laughing at this

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:58:30 -0400

mosoli:

im still laughing at this

nevver: Moore, Oklahoma

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:11:45 -0400

nevver:

Moore, Oklahoma

chiffon-ankh: Bless this post.

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:49:33 -0400

chiffon-ankh:

Bless this post.

zuky: thesmithian: …[some] may not remember what made...

Fri, 17 May 2013 07:24:00 -0400

zuky:

thesmithian:

…[some] may not remember what made Iran-Contra such an extraordinary scandal. The Reagan administration “raised money privately” by selling weapons to a sworn enemy of the United States. Why? Because it wanted to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua. And when I say “illegal war,” I mean that quite literally—Congress told the Reagan administration, in no uncertain terms, that Reagan could not send money to the Contras. Period. The Reagan administration, unrestrained by laws and the Constitution, did so anyway, and much of the president’s national security team ended up under indictment.

more.

Reagan knew everything. However, I bet this Time magazine piece doesn’t get into the juiciest part of Iran-Contra, which is that in the 1980s the CIA put into operation a crack cocaine pipeline to import narcotics from Central and South America and distribute it in US inner cities. This is not a “conspiracy theory”, this is a documented conspiracy, most rigorously researched and reported by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Gary Webb, whose series in the San Jose Mercury News and subsequent book “Dark Alliance” literally got him killed. To me, that’s the story of Iran-Contra: not that Reagan sold weapons to Iran, but that the US government imported and sold crack to Black America, as part of an arms and drugs trade which funded war in the Third World and which devastated lives and filled prisons in the USA.

i really dig this

Thu, 16 May 2013 19:33:57 -0400

i really dig this

anarcho-queer: Obama Deports More Immigrants Than Any Other...

Thu, 16 May 2013 19:26:37 -0400

anarcho-queer:

Obama Deports More Immigrants Than Any Other President In History

The statistics don’t lie: Barack Obama has become the deportation president.

The number of people thrown out of the U.S. for lacking proper immigration documentation started growing from the late 1990s through the 2000s, but it hit a peak during the Obama years. As the New York Times reported:

In four years, Mr. Obama’s administration has deported as many illegal immigrants as the administration of George W. Bush did in his two terms, largely by embracing, expanding and refining Bush-era programs to find people and send them ~~home~~ back. By the end of this year, deportations under Mr. Obama are on track to reach two million, or nearly the same number of deportations in the United States from 1892 to 1997.

The Obama White House defends its record, claiming that rather than a general crackdown, the Department of Homeland Security under Obama has just been highly successful in making “[deportation] of criminal aliens the top priority,” according to the Times. The message is that the federal government is focused on getting rid of the “bad guys.”

In fact, immigrant rights activists point to studies showing that the government is still deporting huge numbers of people whose only “crime” was to enter the country without documentation. Even among deportees with a criminal record, the offense was minor in many cases. In a report last year, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency admitted that over one-quarter of “criminal immigrants” deported from the U.S. in fiscal year 2011 had been convicted of traffic violations.

But the case of Santos Reyes shows why the Obama’s administration deportation injustices extend even to immigrants with felony convictions.

Santos was finally freed from prison this year after spending 15 years behind bars as a victim of California’s draconian “three strikes and you’re out” law. He was convicted of a minor and completely nonviolent offense—taking a California drivers’ license test in the name of his cousin to help him get a license—but because he already had two felony convictions, he got a 26-years-to-life sentence.

This year, Santos finally won his long struggle against the cruel three-strikes sentencing law and was ordered released. But he then suffered another injustice—on March 28, ICE agents were waiting for him at the prison when he was released, to deport him to Mexico immediately because he was undocumented.

This society owes Santos the many years he spent unjustly imprisoned. Instead, the federal government is kicking him out of the country.

what’s even crazier is the other side of that coin: how many people have actually immigrated to the US from Mexico in the last year?? ZERO.

sinidentidades: The Racial Wealth Divide: Why Housing...

Thu, 16 May 2013 19:19:12 -0400

sinidentidades:

The Racial Wealth Divide: Why Housing Matters

It can hard to see wealth. Sure, there are markers of it everywhere: homes, jobs, cars. But the true indicators of wealth, like home equity, retirement savings, and a family’s investments aren’t usually on public display. Now, a new infographic from United For a Fair Economy is trying to expose just how deeply divided our nation’s wealth is along the lines of race. And those divisions have grown even starker since the economic recession began in 2008.

“This infographic draws attention to the intersection of housing as both a globally-recognized human right and as a commodity in a global stock market controlled by the wealthy,” wrote Mazher Ali, the organizations communications coordinator. “We urge readers to acknowledge the history behind the long-standing racial wealth divide and to consider the interplay between federal housing policies and risky financial practices and their impacts on the divide.”

View the full infographic here

yarrahs-life: THIS is me!!!!! I NEED THISSS

Thu, 16 May 2013 12:51:32 -0400

yarrahs-life:

THIS is me!!!!!

I NEED THISSS

Qayaq Co-Op Campaigns on Kickstarter for $25K To Build High-Tech, Indigenous Boats

Thu, 16 May 2013 09:50:02 -0400

Qayaq Co-Op Campaigns on Kickstarter for $25K To Build High-Tech, Indigenous Boats:

nitanahkohe:

More than 10,000 years ago, Eskimos constructed the first kayaks from stitched seal and other animal skins by stretching them across a wood or whalebone-skeleton frame. Called skin boats, they used them to hunt on the inland lakes, rivers and coastal waters of the Arctic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, Bering Sea and North Pacific Ocean.

Today, kayaking is one of the fastest growing sports in North America, with nearly 8 million active participants in the U.S. alone, up from 3.5 million just 10 years ago, according to the National Sporting Goods Association. With its rising popularity, David Michael Karabelnikoff (Aleut/Athabaskan) noticed kayaking equipment was primarily being mass-produced. So, in August 2012, Karabelnikoff established Qayaq Co-Op with co-founders Julian Jacobes and Martin Leonard III.

The Co-Op’s mission is twofold, Karabelnikoff explains: To inspire a movement in Southeast Alaska to revitalize canoe building and paddling, while encouraging youth to learn science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and to produce top quality kayaks that elite athletes would seek for their own use on the water. While the nonprofit embraces traditional Native craftsmanship, it also updates the kayaks, canoes, and skin boats with digital manufacturing and fabrication technology.

Karabelnikoff explains that the first aim, “is to provide high quality digitally fabricated and individually customized Qayaqs. We do this by providing high school and college apprenticeship programs to be mentored by master boat builders in digital fabrication and traditional boat building, which will help in placing jobs for the apprentice.” These apprentices, or young Qayaq builders, measure the person who will be using the boat with a biometric model produced with a 3-D printer. This allows the apprentice to produce a digital fabrication. After this digital fabrication has been created, the apprentice selects materials and constructs the Qayaq according to the measurements gathered. According to Karabelnikoff, this process provides rich opportunities for learning in all 4 STEM areas.

In addition to working with young apprentices, the company provides kits to schools so that students can assemble their own Qayaqs. Learners can use the process of designing and modeling, as well as the construction of materials, to develop STEM skills. Providing kits to schools also encourages the revitalization of cultural skin boat skills. Karabelnikoff says he wants to match the level of traditional skin boat revitalization that he says is taking place in Greenland.

Karabelnikoff, 31, is focused on helping young people harness their future success. “We provide a culturally relevant context to digital fabrication,” he says, “which improves apprentices’ self-esteem, and establishes a basis for long-lasting success. By learning the skills needed to build a Qayaq, the apprentice will earn the pieces needed to build his or her own skin boat - the skeleton pieces, the paddles, and the skin. We provide the opportunity for building on a long line of successes.”

Qayaq’s second core mission develops equipment suitable for top-tier elite kayakers. Qayaq’s Bio-Metric personalized kayaks will allow the company to compete for elite customers willing to pay top dollar. He claims his Qayaq’s are not only customized to the buyer’s size, they are also socially responsible because they engage young people in positive work, and are environmentally responsible because kayaks encourage traditional boating.

While young people in local schools and who work as apprentices have benefited from association with Karabelnikoff’s non-profit, Qayaq Co-Op has put together a Kickstarter campaign to train at-risk youth, especially Alaska Native youth. With funding from the campaign, Karabelnikoff wants to develop a culturally relevant social enterprise. This initiative would provide workforce development training and digital fabrication training for at-risk youth, particularly those who are Alaska Native. As is the case with Qayaq Co-Op, this Kickstarter campaign also aims to demonstrate a positive image of Alaska Native cultures to the broader community.

In addition to targeting at-risk youth, Karabelnikoff wants to jumpstart the development of an Anchorage-based maker space, a community-oriented, physical place, where people can collaborate on Native projects. He also needs to purchase digital manufacturing tools and secure space for prototyping and fabrication. With these initiatives in place, Karabelnikoff hopes to generate support for building community-based businesses related to kayaking. Currently, Qayaq’s Kickstarter campaign, which ends Friday, May 18, is about $20,000 short of its goal.

Karabelnikoff says, “Apathy is a difficult one to overcome, especially in meager beginnings. The cynical say that there are not enough young people interested in our traditional skin boats, that aluminum skiffs with power motors are the only thing youth are interested in.”

The Qayaq Co-Op is determined to show the world how hungry urban Alaska Natives are for culture and a connection with the technological understandings of their ancestors. Karabelnikoff says the Qayaq Co-Op is about more than business. “Aleuts are Survivors. We are descended from one of the longest lasting civilizations on the planet, spanning thousands of years. In less than 50 years the population went from 20,000 to 2,000. Now we stand in the doorway between oblivion and revitalization; at times I do feel that the place where I come from doesn’t exist anymore. Then I hear the call from the future generations and answer it with the only prayer I know, one to be guided by my ancestors.”