Really good piece on assisted dying, giving fair due to potential problems and to the race/class/disability dimensions of the debate, while still making clear that it needs to be allowed in some form
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I feel extremely vindicated by this
"An escalator that carried 12,745 customers between 8.30 and 9.30am in a normal week, for example, carried 16,220 when it was designated standing only."
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"Carol‘s director, Todd Haynes, who was also snubbed by the Academy for the first time this awards season, not only refused to center on masculine experience...; he also made the bold decision to allow Carol‘s audience to laugh at men." Autostraddle
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The mishmash Native American decor and stuff at Spur has always occurred to me as both bizarre and extremely problematic. But it turns out that they actually decided that this theme was *more* racially sensitive than what they had before! Just... wow
"When the first Spur restaurant opened in Cape Town in 1967, during the depths of apartheid, it had a “Western” theme, with a cowboy spur as a logo. This changed to a “proud American Indian chief” logo in the mid-1980s, Van Tonder said, to “signal” to a changing South Africa that people of all races were welcome at the restaurants."
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"Note to the Academy: Please for the love of all that is holy, give Leonardo DiCaprio an Oscar so that he can start playing attractive people in movies again. I have had it with him growing beards and panting and urinating into long rows of bottles. It is a much rarer talent to be charming on camera than people seem to realize, and we are forcing this charming man to grow awful beards and go galumphing through the woods like an enraged opossum. Enough." Washington Post
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"Like many of this city’s businesses, sleep vendors are both highly organized and officially nonexistent. In Mr. Khan’s neighborhood, four quilt vendors have divided the sidewalks and public spaces into quadrants, and when night falls, their customers arrange themselves into colonies of lumpy forms. Some have returned to the same spot every night for years." NY Times
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"But if you ask that same 22-year-old American about some of the most pressing problems in a place like Uganda — rural hunger or girl’s secondary education or homophobia — she might see them as solvable. Maybe even *easily* solvable.
I’ve begun to think about this trend as the reductive seduction of other people’s problems. It’s not malicious. In many ways, it’s psychologically defensible; we don’t know what we don’t know." Medium
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Good piece on an elderly couple who took a well-informed, reasoned decision to end their own lives together.
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"At some SAPS stations, “riotous behaviour” is the go-to charge for officers without other cause for arrest. In our experience it is most commonly applied in the wealthy and upper-middle class suburbs and business districts of South African cities where officers use it to detain car guards, the homeless, sex workers, and other vulnerable people perceived as disruptions to the order they seek to bring about. Too often however, as appears to have been the case with Grebe, it is simply used to punish those deemed disrespectful of SAPS authority." Daily Maverick
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Apparently Tinder calculates an internal "desirability score" for every user. Would you want to know yours?
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Legal trolling, feudal-style
"Some villagers also found they didn't have right of way into their properties, as Mr Roberts was claiming ownership of grass verges, and they ended up paying him for access. In one case, a resident paid £15,000 for land next to his house."
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"Communities report that photographers are often sent to take photographs without being accompanied by reporters to interview them.
Activists from poor communities report that they only get media attention when they go to extremes, such as causing damage. Protesters told researchers that when they called the media to cover their issues, they were asked if “anything is burning”. If nothing is burning, journalists don’t come and don’t report." The Conversation
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"...as we started asking people about their actual experiences — “What did you say the last time someone asked to have sex with you?” — the differences were a lot smaller. Close to half of the time, women are saying yes to these experiences. We have a paper under review that says there are no differences between men and women if you control for two factors: pleasure, which we define as how capable they perceive their partner to be, and stigma, which we define as someone believing you’re a bad person for engaging in casual sex. I like to think of my research as trying to rule out alternative explanations in a way that evolutionary psychology doesn’t bother to do." NY Mag
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The continuing struggle between democracy and religious authoritarianism in Iran
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Annoying anthropomorphic sexism from the farmer, but ignore him and focus on the awesome honey badger!
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""May you live in interesting times" is an English expression purported to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. Despite being so common in English as to be known as "the Chinese curse", the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced." Wikipedia
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It's great to hear this story from a first-person perspective
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Great piece explaining why it is so much more difficult to pull off (and get away with) a heist than it used to be
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"one of the many ways in which medieval thought paved the way for what we should recognise as scientific study of the universe was in making this distinction between the manipulating of spiritual agencies and the manipulating of invisible forces; prohibiting the one made more space for the other." New Statesman
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So Google uses an implementation of delegative or 'liquid' democracy among employees for certain kinds of internal decisions.
>>><<<
I feel extremely vindicated by this
"An escalator that carried 12,745 customers between 8.30 and 9.30am in a normal week, for example, carried 16,220 when it was designated standing only."
>>><<<
"Carol‘s director, Todd Haynes, who was also snubbed by the Academy for the first time this awards season, not only refused to center on masculine experience...; he also made the bold decision to allow Carol‘s audience to laugh at men." Autostraddle
>>><<<
The mishmash Native American decor and stuff at Spur has always occurred to me as both bizarre and extremely problematic. But it turns out that they actually decided that this theme was *more* racially sensitive than what they had before! Just... wow
"When the first Spur restaurant opened in Cape Town in 1967, during the depths of apartheid, it had a “Western” theme, with a cowboy spur as a logo. This changed to a “proud American Indian chief” logo in the mid-1980s, Van Tonder said, to “signal” to a changing South Africa that people of all races were welcome at the restaurants."
>>><<<
"Note to the Academy: Please for the love of all that is holy, give Leonardo DiCaprio an Oscar so that he can start playing attractive people in movies again. I have had it with him growing beards and panting and urinating into long rows of bottles. It is a much rarer talent to be charming on camera than people seem to realize, and we are forcing this charming man to grow awful beards and go galumphing through the woods like an enraged opossum. Enough." Washington Post
>>><<<
"Like many of this city’s businesses, sleep vendors are both highly organized and officially nonexistent. In Mr. Khan’s neighborhood, four quilt vendors have divided the sidewalks and public spaces into quadrants, and when night falls, their customers arrange themselves into colonies of lumpy forms. Some have returned to the same spot every night for years." NY Times
>>><<<
"But if you ask that same 22-year-old American about some of the most pressing problems in a place like Uganda — rural hunger or girl’s secondary education or homophobia — she might see them as solvable. Maybe even *easily* solvable.
I’ve begun to think about this trend as the reductive seduction of other people’s problems. It’s not malicious. In many ways, it’s psychologically defensible; we don’t know what we don’t know." Medium
>>><<<
Good piece on an elderly couple who took a well-informed, reasoned decision to end their own lives together.
>>><<<
"At some SAPS stations, “riotous behaviour” is the go-to charge for officers without other cause for arrest. In our experience it is most commonly applied in the wealthy and upper-middle class suburbs and business districts of South African cities where officers use it to detain car guards, the homeless, sex workers, and other vulnerable people perceived as disruptions to the order they seek to bring about. Too often however, as appears to have been the case with Grebe, it is simply used to punish those deemed disrespectful of SAPS authority." Daily Maverick
>>><<<
Apparently Tinder calculates an internal "desirability score" for every user. Would you want to know yours?
>>><<<
Legal trolling, feudal-style
"Some villagers also found they didn't have right of way into their properties, as Mr Roberts was claiming ownership of grass verges, and they ended up paying him for access. In one case, a resident paid £15,000 for land next to his house."
>>><<<
"Communities report that photographers are often sent to take photographs without being accompanied by reporters to interview them.
Activists from poor communities report that they only get media attention when they go to extremes, such as causing damage. Protesters told researchers that when they called the media to cover their issues, they were asked if “anything is burning”. If nothing is burning, journalists don’t come and don’t report." The Conversation
>>><<<
"...as we started asking people about their actual experiences — “What did you say the last time someone asked to have sex with you?” — the differences were a lot smaller. Close to half of the time, women are saying yes to these experiences. We have a paper under review that says there are no differences between men and women if you control for two factors: pleasure, which we define as how capable they perceive their partner to be, and stigma, which we define as someone believing you’re a bad person for engaging in casual sex. I like to think of my research as trying to rule out alternative explanations in a way that evolutionary psychology doesn’t bother to do." NY Mag
>>><<<
The continuing struggle between democracy and religious authoritarianism in Iran
>>><<<
Annoying anthropomorphic sexism from the farmer, but ignore him and focus on the awesome honey badger!
>>><<<
""May you live in interesting times" is an English expression purported to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. Despite being so common in English as to be known as "the Chinese curse", the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced." Wikipedia
>>><<<
It's great to hear this story from a first-person perspective
>>><<<
Great piece explaining why it is so much more difficult to pull off (and get away with) a heist than it used to be
>>><<<
"one of the many ways in which medieval thought paved the way for what we should recognise as scientific study of the universe was in making this distinction between the manipulating of spiritual agencies and the manipulating of invisible forces; prohibiting the one made more space for the other." New Statesman
>>><<<
So Google uses an implementation of delegative or 'liquid' democracy among employees for certain kinds of internal decisions.
