I couldn’t quite figure out why Japanese listeners had come to appreciate and savor the blues in the way that they seemed to—lavishly, devotedly. Blues is still an outlier genre in Japan, but it’s revered, topical, present. I’d spent my first couple of days in Tokyo hungrily trawling the city’s many excellent record stores, marveling […]

via How the Blues Conquered Tokyo — Longreads

The legal cannabis industry is responsible for the creation of an estimated 123,000 full-time jobs in the United States, according to data provided by the online content provider Leafly.com. Authors analyzed state-by-state economic data to draw their extrapolations. They estimated some 58,000 full-time jobs in states where both the medical and social use of cannabis […]

via Legal Marijuana Industry Has Created 123,00 Full-Time Jobs In U.S. — The Oily Guru!

Cultural Conflicts, Embodied: On Being Transgender, and Unsure

I love this.

Longreads

I don’t know that I’ll ever cross over the threshold into a true or authentic self, that I’ll ever pass as male or feel like a singular entity, rather than split. Being in a female body, being dismissed, patronized and emotionally abused in the ways women so often are, has shaped my understanding of human beings, of the ways we interact and exert control. I don’t want to become what I hate, to embody the monstrousness latent in masculinity, growing an extra layer of tissue separating me from my emotions and impairing my compassion for others in the process. I don’t want to be anything like my father.

A trans man I’ve become friends with describes his psychological state before starting testosterone, the inner chaos that rendered him absent from his own life, and the peace hormones brought him, a newfound balance due even more to neurochemical recalibration than bodily…

View original post 99 more words

My tattoo

This is my first tattoo. I had gotten my first dab of ink onto my skin, when I was freshly 18. This tattoo is located on my right arm, on my wrist. It is the Aries symbol. My zodiac.

It symbolizes my personality type. Fire, anger, quiet but kind.

I plan to have my entire right arm covered in tattoos one day. People tell me it’s a bad idea but I believe in freedom of expression.

Even with just two tattoos and I feel the discrimination when going into a job interview. Sometimes a meeting as well.

I have an eyebrow piercing. I used to have two. I had my nose done as well as my lip.

Body mods are a form of expression which should not be discriminated against.