(More) Accessible Guide to Backing Up Your Hard Drive (for Mac-Users)

*Cross-posted on Fat Gold Watch and my Tumblr.*

Preface: I say this guide is “(More) Accessible” because I know it’s far from the height of accessibility; for example, I’m sure people would benefit from a YouTube video that visually walked you through the process of backing up your hard drive, but that’s not what I’m offering here. Also, this guide is devoid of explanations for why you perform certain steps—I’m sure those would be helpful, too, but I can’t provide info I don’t know myself!

Two observations:

• It’s cruelly ironic that two of the most popular ‘everyday’ guides to making various topics more accessible to people have to use ableist slurs in their names. (If this article were one of those, it would be called [Ableist Slur]’s Guide to Backing Up Your Hard Drive or Backing Up Your Hard Drive for [Ableist Slur]s.)
• All ‘tech people’ know how important it is to back up your hard drive, and also know that although many ‘less technologically proficient people’ know it’s important, too, they don’t do it because they don’t really know how to. However, my extensive research yielded very few accessibly written guides to backing up your hard drive—most assumed quite a bit of technological fluency.

What is this guide? 

A ‘barebones,’ step-by-step walkthrough for one of the most basic ways to back up your hard drive if you are using some kind of Mac computer.

What does ‘backing up your hard drive’ mean?

As far as I can explain it, it means taking the entirety of what’s on your computer—not just the files and applications, but the entire ‘operating system’ that allows those files to be stored and those applications to run—and putting it on an external hard drive. (A small device that can store a lot.)

Why should you back up your hard drive?

If your computer crashes, having an up-to-date back-up will allow your computer to be restored to where it was before it crashed. It will also allow you to recover files you have misplaced or deleted.

Let’s go!

Preliminary steps:

1. Click the ‘apple’ icon in the top-left corner of your screen.
2. Click “About This Mac.”
3. Towards the bottom of the box that pops up, click “More Info…”
4. The largest section of the new box that appears should be titled “Hardware Overview.” Three lines beneath that is “Processor Name.” To the right of that, read whether your computer uses an Intel or PowerPC processor. Keep note of this for later!

Glisten Up!

Cross-posted on my Tumblr!

*Trigger warning for discussion of ableist and queerphobic language*

NOTE: This is sort of an Oppression 103 post—perhaps confusing for the very beginners, and dull for the old-timers. Sowwy! ❤

Tonight, while having dinner with two of my best friends and my favorite teacher from high school, a former student of said teacher came over to our table to strike up some conversation about the good ol’ days and what’s become of the other students in his class. One, he said, is engaged, though he can’t imagine why, as you’d have to be “blind, deaf, and retarded” to want to marry him.

Rather needless to say, I was perturbed. This is an extreme example of the ableism that permeates our daily discourse, which goes all the way from “love is blind” and the “paralyzing snowstorm” to “you’re crazy” and “how idiotic.” All these mobilizations of disability in the service of things unrelated to disability (whether purportedly ‘negative’ or ‘positive’) are harmful to people with disabilities and mask the omnipresent ableism of our society.

Of course, it’s not only ableist language that’s damaging. Racist, misogynist, and queer- and transphobic language (for starters) also remain large challenges for anti-oppression activists to address. GLSEN—the Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network—gets this, to some extent or other. That’s why they launched their campaign “Think B4 You Speak” a few years ago, with the goal of eliminating phrases and words such as “that’s so gay,” “fag,” and “dyke” (their examples) from the lexicon of high schoolers. Focusing particularly on “that’s so gay,” they seem to be taking aim at the casual denigration of non-heterosexual identities that many believe don’t truly have any negative impact.

While I want to applaud them for all of this, of course I can’t. When they encourage you to “sign the pledge” to stop saying “that’s so gay,” they give you the opportunity to offer alternative suggestions following “that’s so…” While most of these suggestions aren’t overly condemnatory (“that’s so fetch,” “that’s so salty,” “that’s so spendiferous,”), which ones are? What’s an appropriate alternative to a homophobic slur? Ableism, duh! “That’s so lame.” (‘Madness,’ ‘quackers,’ ‘wacky,’ etc.) Although I might not blame high schoolers for reproducing the ableism of the ableist society they’ve been raised in, GLSEN definitely has no excuse. In combatting one oppression, they make no efforts to fight another fully enmeshed with it, and thereby perpetuate that other oppression.

Not to mention the obvious: I might be talking about ‘queerphobia’ and ‘transphobia,’ but GLSEN definitely is not. As always, they invoke the horrible horrible horrible ‘LGBT’ acronym in this campaign, even though they make no effort to educate anyone around the many additional forms of verbal harassment experienced by queer and trans folk. Furthermore, they perpetuate cissexism in their definitions of ‘gender identity’ and ‘transgender’ (“a person whose gender identity does not correspond to their biological sex”), naturally make no effort to actually make the concept of ‘queer’ more accurate or accessible, and erase all sorts of non-heterogender identities with their very name and calls for high schools to form “Gay-Straight Alliances.” (Note that the straight folk are never left out, and are invited to be allies to “LGBT students”—because, you know, the LGB and T people are already on the same terms of total and mutual understanding, and can be treated identically by the straight [and cisgender, not that we can label them with such a scary word!] people.)

Did I really just state the obvious for five paragraphs? Maybe. But it’s out of love—momentarily setting aside my own identification as a pansy faggot, etc., I think it’s important to acknowledge that the language GLSEN targets really does perpetuate oppression and marginalization, making the goals of their campaign important ones. And that’s just another reason it’s so important we unite against all the many entangled oppressions keeping us down, instead of replicating them each against the other.

Because that? Is sooooo spendiferous.

So I Got a Question: Is Ke$ha Talented? (Part 3 of 3)

In the first parts of this series, I discussed Ke$ha’s music videos and live performances and found both to be lackluster and, ultimately, tedious. (Also, be sure to check out our recent podcast discussing Ke$ha’s sustainability as a musician!)

The few times she has sung without AutoTune in live performances reveal her voice is atrocious or—at best—nothing special.

Her meager attempts at playing the keyboard or guitar in those same performances indicate she has little instrumental skill.

But the question remains: Is Ke$ha talented?

In a word: Yes.

The Sexualized Desexualizing of Adam Lambert

Here’s an argument simple to follow:

1. Adam Lambert is a raging homo. Proof:

2. Adam Lambert isn’t afraid to bring out this aspect of his sexuality in his live performances. Proof:

3. In his music videos, Adam Lambert is being desexualized / pseudo-sexualized / heterosexualized. His true sexuality is being replaced with either a generic romantic and asexual longing or a sexuality marked with no genders, many genders, or women. Proof:

For Your Consideration: Shakespeare, John Travolta, and more of TIME‘s top 10 lists

Alright, so today’s “For Your Consideration” is a little late. But that just means you get two in less than a day — the more the merrier, right? Anyways,I’m continuing with a few trends, as in those started by Tennis.com’s “The Last Word” articles and TIME‘s “Top 10” lists for the year. There are other links as well, so stay tuned!

Ever wondered how many of Shakespeare’s monumental plays made it into films (and how well)?

Ever since his Saturday Night Fever stint (and perhaps before), John Travolta’s sexuality has been questioned through and through, but do others have the right to declare what he chooses not to?

What do the ATP and WTA tours’ respective No. 20 and 19 — Maria Kirilenko, Marcos Baghdatis, John Isner, and Aravane Rezai —  have in store for next year’s season?

In other Time news, what were the popular magazine’s top 10 TV series, TV series’ episodes, albums, and songs for the year?

Yummy Like a Cat in Heat (or, My iPod, Part 1)

While I’ve had “Hollaback Girl” and “Wind It Up” on my iPod for a while now, I’ve recently made two exciting additions I thought I’d share with you.

First is “What You Waiting For?,” which I heard described recently as quite possibly one of the best pop songs of the last decade. I have no comment on that, but I can certainly say the song is amazing, and the full video is quite a sight!:

In a sign of just how big Lady Gaga is at present, a friend to whom I showed this video called it “Gagaesque,” both in length and content. However, this video was made in 2004, when the Lady was only 18 and four years away from her breakout hit, “Just Dance.” Additionally, much of the content of the video is based on imagery from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, which decidedly predates all of these popstars.

For Your Consideration: Natalie Portman (again!), (female) binge-drinking, and LGBT youth

What were some of the scientific achievements that mattered most in 2010? The New Yorker‘s Michael Specter has 7 of them.

“Who’s White? Who’s Black? Who Knows?”

Are LGBT youth punished more harshly than their straight friends, and is “fat” bullying still prevalent?

Has the “Other Swiss” Stanislas Wawrinka peaked at No. 21 on the ATP rankings chart? And can Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova improve her head-to-head record against top players to move beyond the 21st spot?

Does Natalie Portman already have that “Best Actress” Oscar in the bag? (For more of Time‘s film-related reading, check out its Top 10 Movies and Top 10 Movie Performances of 2010.)

Are women really heavy binge-drinkers? And what did the vacillating banter between female celebrities Bristol Palin(?), Chelsea Handler, Margaret Cho, and Kathy Griffin have to say about the gestures of female friendship?

For Your Consideration: More “Top 10” Lists, Helena Bonham Carter, and the LGPA

So, can you narrow down the top directors of film from this year to just five?

Will Helena Bonham Carter’s queenly roles fail to appeal to Academy voters?

Why is No. 22 good and bad for Estonia’s tennis player Kaia Kanepi, and what are 10 ATP-related questions to ponder for 2011?

What does the LGPA tour’s rescinding of its “female at birth” requirement mean for transgender athletes?

Do Salon.com and The New Yorker agree on their best-and-worst-films-of-2010 lists? (If Salon.com’s list is too extensive, check out Richard Brody’s comprehensive yet manageable “The Best 25 Films of 2010”)