Good Reads

Fantastic piece in The Atlantic about American freedom of religion laws and why Scalia was a cunt:


At 1 First St NE, this small dispute ran into a brash new justice, 54-year-old Antonin Scalia. He shared the general concern that the law of religious freedom was unstable. But unlike many other judges, he was sure he personally, without help from anyone, could right the top with one firm shove.

Without notice to parties or anyone else, Scalia persuaded his fellow justices to change the issue from a real question of “unemployment compensation” to an imaginary one of crime. All Smith and Black had asked for was their unemployment. Scalia blandly asserted that the two men were criminals. Smith and Black, he wrote, “urge us to hold, quite simply, that when otherwise prohibitable conduct is accompanied by religious convictions, not only the convictions but the conduct itself must be free from governmental regulation.” This was a bald-faced invention: In fact, Smith and Black asked, “quite simply,” for their unemployment compensation. The state of Oregon had never charged them with any crime. There was, in fact, a great deal of question whether peyote use was unlawful at all; anyway, under Oregon law, violations of criminal law were explicitly irrelevant to unemployment compensation.

Scalia, however, used the rewritten “facts” as a means to do away with the Sherbert test for good and all. As long as a law did not intentionally single out religion, he now wrote, the free exercise clause did not protect those whose practice was “burdened”—or even outlawed entirely. Dissenters could beg the legislature for relief; but the courts weren’t open to them. “It may fairly be said,” Scalia admitted, “that leaving accommodation to the political process will place at a relative disadvantage those religious practices that are not widely engaged in.” But that was an “unavoidable consequence of democratic government.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/the-strange-career-of-free-exercise/476712/
 
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Poet Taylor Steele captures the problem with appropriating Black slang.

In her poem “AAVE” (which stands for African-American Vernacular English) Taylor Steele explains why appropriation of Black slang is the worst.

African-American culture is being popularized on a daily basis and while Black people are judged and mistreated for using something they came up with ages ago, White people come off as cool and original when they use it.


Full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFgoiJ6udq8
 
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After twenty seven years of police lies, political cover up and Murdoch press scumbaggery, an inquest found that the police were totally responsible for the deaths of ninety six football fans in Sheffield in 1989. This is a fantastic piece by a survivor:

http://www.theguardian.com/football...uest-survivor-adrian-tempany?CMP=share_btn_tw

ESPN did a 30 on 30 piece, 2 hours worth on Hillsborough. I knew there was a massive coverup, but that was above and beyond.
 
I'm going to AJ-Spam the post below into this thread too....I posted it in the Weight Loss thread but I know a lot of folks had the thread starter on ignore.

Major article (10,000 words) on obesity in the New York Times yesterday.

After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

Longitudinal study on how virtually everyone who appeared on the reality show "The Biggest Loser" eventually ended up gaining a lot of their weight back.

It's an admittedly small-ish sample with no control group, but it has proven to be a gold mine of data for scientists who study obesity.

The key takeaway: your body has a pre-determined set point when it comes to weight and will fight you literally every step of the way when you try to go below it. There are five hormones in your body that sense/deal with weight loss (primarily Leptin) that do everything in their power to prevent weight loss and get you back up to this weight by downgrading metabolism and increasing hunger sensations.

Scientist are finding if you keep Leptin within a strict range (BUT they're not sure what that range is exactly yet) AND exercise 9 hours a week AND get a good night's sleep every night weight loss can be controlled.

This theory runs counter to the prevailing fat-shaming wisdom of "A calorie is a calorie. Eat less, lose weight. Hurr Durr!" Some of the Biggest Loser constestants were eating 1200 calories LESS than their "maintenance calorie goal" and gaining weight...because their metabolism was down-regulated.

The article is worth a read but it's very long.
 
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Warsan Shire - Nine Quotes


I have my mother’s mouth and my father’s eyes; on my face they are still together.

Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself - what you’re wearing, who you’re around, what you’re doing. Recreate and repeat.

At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before.

My alone feels so good, I’ll only have you if you’re sweeter than my solitude.

His eyes were the same colour as the sea in a postcard someone sends you when they love you, but not enough to stay.

Don’t assume, ask. Be kind. Tell the truth. Don’t say anything you can’t stand behind fully. Have integrity. Tell people how you feel.

You are terrifying and strange and beautiful, someone not everyone knows how to love.

Perhaps, the problem is not the intensity of your love, but the quality of the people you are loving.

But sometimes your light attracts moths and your warmth attracts parasites. Protect your space and energy.



Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet and writer. In 2014 she was appointed the first Young Poet Laureate for London.
 
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See that state in the red there? The one in Mexico? That is Puebla. The state where a great victory was won on May 5, 1862. You see, the French thought they had it made, that a swift takeover was imminent based on their army of 6000 soldiers. They were wrong. An army of INDIGENOUS folks gathered to fight back. On May 5, (yes that means Cinco de Mayo) the French sent troops in to attack the city of Puebla de Los Angeles, but were met from the North by the indigenos who would not be intimidated or taken down. When the fight was over and the French retreated, they had lost over 500 men. Puebla lost less than 100. Cinco de Mayo isn’t a day to get wasted and dress up as a racist stereotype. This day is a celebration to remember the Indigenous Resistance that took place, and the victory that seemed impossible. Indigenous resistance continues to this day, from the top of turtle island to the tip of South America. We fight imperialism and colonialism with pride. Please do not trivialize the important celebration of La Batalla De Puebla by reinforcing racist tropes. And don’t you dare tell Mexicans “Happy Mexican Independence Day!” you’ll look like an ignorant jackass. #cincodecultura

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I remember being teased relentlessly throughout my childhood and my teenage life where people would say that because of my skin I’ll never be beautiful enough, they would even recommend skin bleaching products. So as a child I quickly realised that as a dark skinned girl I was not considered beautiful enough… At that time I didn’t know that it was the negativity from the people around me that was causing me to hate my skin and myself for that matter. I remember a time during school photos where a girl shouted “she’s too dark! You won’t see anything on her ID but her teeth!”, of course everyone laughed it out… And so did I…. Because I didn’t want to make it seem like I was offended… Their feelings felt more important than mine… After all growing up I was always reminded of how unlikely I was of ever being beautiful or finding someone that found my darkness beautiful…..

As a 19 year old today I sit here and say “I never gave in to skin bleaching”, “I was constantly reminded of how ugly I was but that only made me love myself even more….. I began considering myself as someone different, someone beautiful and out of the ordinary.”

Your skin no matter how dark it is that when you smile you can only see the glow of your teeth is worthy of love, your skin is that of a goddess and you should never feel anything about your skin but self love. I write this to all of the people that have gone through similar and worse, you don’t need to learn to Love your skin, the love is already there… You just gotta unleash it.

I would like to hear some stories of yours if you’ve ever gone through the same thing…. Message me on Instagram.

IG: YoungNubiie


http://beauafrique.tumblr.com/post/143961944467/i-remember-being-teased-relentlessly-throughout-my
 
You Can Still Be Transgender If You Don’t Feel Physical Dysphoria – Here’s Why

May 5, 2016 by Ronnie Ritchie

Has anyone ever implied that you’re “faking” being transgender because you don’t feel like you’re “born in the wrong body?”

The narrative of feeling like a person of one gender “trapped” in another gender’s body is true for some, but it doesn’t apply to all trans people. If you don’t experience physical dysphoria, that doesn’t mean you’re “not trans enough.”

But it hurts to be excluded based on this narrative, so here’s a comic to help you get through it. This explains the origins of the myth that trans people must experience physical dysphoria – and exactly what this misconception gets wrong.

With Love,
The Editors at Everyday Feminism


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http://everydayfeminism.com/2016/05/transgender-without-dysphoria/
 
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What Happens When You Don't Wear a Bra? My Week Of Living Bra-lessly in New York City

GABRIELLE MOSS

September 9, 2014 LIFESTYLE

At age 12, adolescence hit me like a kick in the tits. After spending years demanding training bras, and then stuffing them with anything that seemed even remotely breast-shaped (knee socks, Wiffle balls, the occasional gourd), my actual breasts finally turned up, growing so quickly that my chest ached. My vast collection of Disney Princess T-shirts was rendered creepy instantly.

The cartoonish D cups blooming on my tiny tween body, however, did not magically transform me from a fragile nerd into Kelly Kapowski. Instead, they turned me into a fragile nerd who was now also being constantly ogled by older teenage boys and given the side-eye by popular girls. I hated everything about my breasts, and wished that I could trade them in for store credit like the crappy birthday present they were.

So naturally, I refused to acknowledge that I might even be a candidate for any bras, training or otherwise. Instead, I hunched over and drowned my lovely lady lumps in flannel and size XXL Alice in Chains T-shirts. (Hey, it was the '90s.)

But somewhere around my junior year of high school, things changed. Exposure to '70s feminist ideology (and being felt up by some very attentive teenage guys) changed my attitude toward my body. Suddenly, I decided I loved my breasts. I now dedicated myself to the cause of shoving them in everyone's faces in a variety of kooky halter tops and shirts with weird mesh panels. (Hey, it was still the '90s.)

After years of hiding, the freedom of running around boobs a-bouncing felt joyfully confrontational. I was also shocked to find that, now that I was feeling in charge of my breasts, fewer men seemed to give me looks like I was some helpless bunny that they wanted to devour. I felt like I now controlled the narrative of my body: My boobs, and I, were in charge.

I kept a near-perfect braless streak until graduating from college, when I realized that wearing a bra was apparently more important than having successfully earned a bachelor's degree when it came to landing an office job. So I let an elderly woman in the Nordstrom lingerie department feel me up, purchased a half-dozen bras that looked like back braces, and proceeded to be miserable at an office job like a true grownup.

But now that I've traded in my life of "professionalism" and "not lying around in your pajamas all day" for the wide world of freelancing, I wondered if I could reconnect with my old passion for the braless lifestyle. Would I poke someone's eye out if I let my breasts roam free? Would they get caught in door hinges or something? I decided to find out. Here's what I learned during my week of living bra-lessly.


Read: http://www.bustle.com/articles/38775-what-happens-when-you-dont-wear-a-bra-my-week-of-living-bra-lessly-in-new-york
 
Gods of Egypt is a critical and box office failure

Awful reviews and criticism of whitewashing seem to have hurt Gods of Egypt in the long run. The $140M film is projected to make as little as $12 million over the weekend. While Hollywood whitewashing is a huge issue, one tweet highlighted the silver lining for people of color here.


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For the final nail in Gods of Egypt's coffin (or more appropriately tomb), we turn to Variety's Justin Chang.

"With its burnt-yellow cinematography, its excessively gilded production design, and its blinding flashes of sunlight, Gods of Egypt at times doesn't suggest a movie so much as a giant cinematic tanning salon — all the better, perhaps, to darken the pearlescent skin tones of most of the actors on display."


http://mic.com/articles/136404/the-gods-of-egypt-reviews-are-in-and-the-whitewashing-hasn-t-gone-unnoticed?utm_source=policymicTBLR&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social#.hukSfpK8g

My ancestors were pharaohs, and I'm so white I'm the standard for teeth whiteners. White is a state of mind, a high level of intelligence, and no tolerance for the bull shit coloreds love so much.
 
Elizabeth* is 35. She grew up in the South, currently lives in Brooklyn, and has been married for two years. After a previous miscarriage at 10 weeks, she was overjoyed to find herself pregnant for a second time. At 31 weeks, she found out that the baby boy she was carrying wouldn’t be able to breathe outside the womb and would not survive. And at 32 weeks, she flew to Colorado to get a shot that would start the process of a third-trimester abortion; she then flew back to New York to finish the delivery. We talked on the phone two weeks into her recovery.

http://jezebel.com/interview-with-a-woman-who-recently-had-an-abortion-at-1781972395
 
Elizabeth* is 35. She grew up in the South, currently lives in Brooklyn, and has been married for two years. After a previous miscarriage at 10 weeks, she was overjoyed to find herself pregnant for a second time. At 31 weeks, she found out that the baby boy she was carrying wouldn’t be able to breathe outside the womb and would not survive. And at 32 weeks, she flew to Colorado to get a shot that would start the process of a third-trimester abortion; she then flew back to New York to finish the delivery. We talked on the phone two weeks into her recovery.

http://jezebel.com/interview-with-a-woman-who-recently-had-an-abortion-at-1781972395

Poor fucking woman.
 
http://www.citymetric.com/politics/...hy-cities-need-start-planning-women-mind-2123

Last year, councillors for the city of London, in Ontario, Canada, spent 90 minutes discussing a 12 word addition to a document. The contentious sentence read, “Consider a gender lens during the development and execution of new policies”.

Harmless sounding, perhaps, but some of the male politicians felt the line impugned their honour. Bill Armstrong, representative of Ward 2 since the 90s, accused Maureen Cassidy, the councillor who introduced the offending line, of “questioning the integrity of our administration and suggesting they were doing practices that would be discriminatory”.

That, he said, was simply not the case, and “I’ve been there long enough to know” – a reference perhaps to his opponent’s more recent assumption of office. “Plain and simple,” he concluded, “all people are treated equally, so it doesn’t have to be said.”

The thing is, while Armstrong’s sentiment may be admirable, treating people equally has a long rap-sheet when it comes to achieving equal outcomes. That is to say, treating people equally often translates as treating people like men.
 


Nonstop Flight: How The Frigatebird Can Soar For Months Without Stopping
June 30, 2016


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(NPR) Frigatebirds, seagoing fliers with a 6-foot wingspan, can stay aloft for weeks at a time, a new study has found. The results paint an astonishing picture of the bird's life, much of which is spent soaring inside the clouds.

Frigatebirds are unique among aquatic birds. Their feathers are not waterproof, so they can't rest on the waves...

...apparently, frigatebirds soar ... and soar ... and soar.

In one case, for two months — continuously aloft...

...One of the tagged birds soared 40 miles without a wing-flap. Several covered more than 300 miles a day on average, and flew continuously for weeks. They are blessed with an unusual body. No bird has a higher ratio of wing surface area compared with body weight — something called "wing loading."


More...





 
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No quote, just if you ever felt kinda sorry for him, and didnt know why, this be the answers.

Fine, starting quote.
We were beefing with these guys called the Puma Boys. It was 1976, and I lived in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and these guys were from my neighborhood. At that time I was running with a Rutland Road crew called the Cats, a bunch of Caribbean guys from nearby Crown Heights. We were a burglary team, and some of our gangster friends had an altercation with the Puma Boys, so we were going to the park to back them up. We normally didn’t deal with guns, but these were our friends, so we stole a bunch of shit: some pistols, a .357 Magnum, and a long M1 rifle with a bayonet attached from World War II. You never knew what you’d find when you broke into people’s houses.​
 
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An extraordinarily good piece by Laurie Penny of the New Statesman. It reads like something out of a William Gibson novel but, scarily, it isn't.

I’m With The Banned




I run into a British writer from the Spectator, a moderate right-wing magazine, who takes the opportunity to apologise for being mean to me on the internet. He thought that was just how you’re supposed to do Twitter. We become, briefly, allies on foreign soil. A certain school of spiteful camaraderie, of bloodless political jousting before dinner, has long been the form of political discourse in Britain, where the mainstream media is dominated by private school graduates who were trained to debate as if it were a bloodsport in which empathy is a handicap. London media wonks routinely treat one another as sparring partners and drinking buddies despite their political differences: after all, aren’t we all on the same team really? Aren’t we playing the same game?
I have never understood this game. That’s why I’ve always refused to debate Milo in public. Not because I’m frightened I’ll lose, but because I know I’ll lose, because I care and he doesn’t—and that means he’s already won. Help and forgive me, but I actually believe human beings can be better than this.
My new Spectator friend is as bewildered as I am by the way Americans take Milo and his ilk seriously, by their willingness to take pride in performative bigotry and call it strength. It works. It sells. It’s the unholy marriage of that soulless debate culture that works so well in Britain, transplanted to a nation with no social safety net and half a billion guns. It works, in part, because of the essentially cult-like nature of U.S. culture and the structured ignorance that accompanies it. America is a nation eaten by its own myth. The entire idea of America is about believing impossible things. Nobody said those things had to be benign.

They ventriloquise the fear of millions into a scream of fire in the crowded theatre of modernity where all the doors are locked, and then they watch the stampede, and they smile for the cameras.

https://medium.com/welcome-to-the-scream-room/im-with-the-banned-8d1b6e0b2932#.1lfroxttn
 
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http://www.thespec.com/news-story/6...al-marital-mess-just-latest-city-controversy/

Dianne Haskett (1994-2000)

Just a year into her mayoralty, Dianne Haskett refused to officially acknowledge London's Gay Pride week in 1995. The move led to a formal complaint and ruling from the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which laid a $10,000 fine against the city and the mayor. Haskett went on to win a second term. *she refused to campaign and still got re-elected, very conservative town in many ways, shameful*

A history of municipal missteps

London, Ont. Mayor Matt Brown took the mayor's seat in 2014 vowing to restore integrity at city hall. A look at the mayors that preceded him:

Joe Fontana (2010-2014) *crooked bastard*

Joe Fontana stepped down as mayor in June 2014 after he was convicted on fraud-related charges for spending $1,700 in public money on his son's wedding. A judge sentenced him to four months of house arrest and probation over the matter. An Ombudsman report also found he often conducted city business in the backrooms of restaurants with a few select councillors.

Anne Marie DeCicco-Best (2000-2010) *dipshit husband cost us a damn good mayor*

The husband of former mayor Anne Marie DeCicco-Best was sentenced to six months in jail after being found guilty on impaired driving charges. Best was arrested in 2009. The next year, DeCicco-Best lost the election to Fontana after serving 10 years as mayor, the longest reign in the city's history.

Dianne Haskett (1994-2000)

Just a year into her mayoralty, Dianne Haskett refused to officially acknowledge London's Gay Pride week in 1995. The move led to a formal complaint and ruling from the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which laid a $10,000 fine against the city and the mayor. Haskett went on to win a second term.

London, Ont., is feeling a sense of déjà vu with news that Mayor Matt Brown is temporarily stepping aside after admitting a brief "inappropriate personal relationship" with the deputy mayor. Brown, who took office in 2014 along with a mostly fresh-faced city council, ran on a promise to restore integrity to the embattled southwestern Ontario city hall.

His win came after a string of mayors became embroiled in various controversies, most notably his immediate predecessor Joe Fontana, who was convicted on fraud-related charges.

*fucking politicians! or their husbands*
 
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