Your week in review in haiku:
1.
Eventually!
But at a later date, in
some form and such as
2.
Canada? The one
With all that extra health care?
Don’t pick fights with them.
3.
For one hundred days,
the button brought Coke, not nukes.
Now, hide the remote?
4.
Casa de Vida.
When judgment day comes for you:
Sanctuario.
5.
Can we all agree
to just stop asking Tyrese Ilie
Any more questions?
Have a refreshingly rhythmic weekend.
On Point
| A crime prediction tool for the 1% |
| The good people at The New Inquiry, an online cultural non-profit magazine, have done the world a service by flipping the tables on the world of predictive algorithms. Using industry-standard predictive policing technologies typically used in communities of color, they’ve created an application that predicts white collar crime of the high tone financial variety. Click through for their research paper on the project and their handy mapping tool, White Collar Risk Zones. I was shocked SHOCKED to discover that not a wingtip’s throw away from Fortune’s own HQ there is a high likelihood that executives are committing crimes like defamation, failure to supervise, breach of fiduciary duty, age discrimination, and various trading irregularities. Chilling. |
| The New Inquiry |
| A prisoner denied water dies of dehydration. Who is to blame? |
| An inquest this week into the horrific death of a prisoner held in solitary confinement in the Milwaukee County Jail is raising necessary questions about who should be held responsible. Terrill Thomas, a mentally ill 38-year-old man, was found dead on his eighth day of confinement; jail personnel had shut off the water to his cell for a week as punishment for bad behavior. The cause of death was ruled “profound dehydration” - and a homicide according to the medical examiner. The man on the hot seat is Milwaukee’s Sheriff David Clarke, a "Blue Lives Matters" tough-talking Trump surrogate. |
| Washington Post |
| Report: Anti-Semitic incidents up sharply in the first quarter of 2017 |
| A new report from the Anti-Defamation League says that reports of anti-Semitic attacks and threats in the U.S. have increased by 86% in the first three months of 2017, as compared to the same time period last year. It’s a continuation of an alarming trend. Incidents of harassment, assault, and vandalism increased 34% in 2016 from the previous year. And this time, it’s personal: A recent report by the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University showed an overall drop in attacks on Jewish people in other countries around the world in 2016. |
| Los Angeles Times |
| With the release of a new Black Panther installment, a new comic writer prepares to take a bow |
| What's it like to bring a historic Marvel character back to life? That is the subject of this fascinating interview with journalist Rembert Browne, who was one of a handful of comic-writing newcomers tapped by Ta-Nehisi Coates to write an installment of Marvel's The Black Panthers. Browne's first foray, Black Panther: World of Wakanda #6, has just been released. Though Black Panther debuted in 1966, his story had gone fallow until Coates got on board in 2015. “I didn’t feel like I was jumping on the diversity train,” he tells WNYC’s John Hockenberry of the resurrection. “There was a lot of action still on the table… and there were a lot of parallels between the characters and myself.” But would an existing Marvel fan base read them? As a writer for Grantland and New York Magazine, “I have a lot of experience writing for non-black people," he says with a laugh. “I’ve embraced writing for all eyes.” |
| The Takeaway |
The Woke Leader
| A 103-year-old lexographer is the caretaker of one of India’s oldest languages |
| Nikhil Sonnad grew up in Michigan, and in addition to English, speaks Spanish and Mandarin. But he never learned Kannada—the dominant language of Karnataka, a rural state in southern India. It's one of the languages spoken by his father, who still lives there. Sonnad and his father set out to learn more about the ancient tongue he never learned, their quest brought them to Ganjam Venkatasubbaiah, a 103-year-old scholar who has been tracking the ancient language for nearly a century. GV, as he is known, is also the author of the first Kannada dictionary, a project which took 54 years. So much has changed about the way the language is written and spoke, he said. "Even the English words are being dumped into Kannada." |
| Quartz |
| Anne Thériault on the selflessness of staying alive |
| Anne Thériault is a writer, a good one, and a constant, honest presence on social media. One of the things she talks about is her struggle with suicidal ideation, which is the subject of this wrenching and deeply personal piece. In it, she turns the idea of the “selfishness” of suicide on its side. “On a societal level, we rarely, if ever, acknowledge all of the thankless work that people who wrestle with suicidal ideation pour into staying alive — labor that they engage in not for themselves, for the most part, but because they know how much their deaths would devastate family and friends,” she writes. She ticks through her day - as a partner, parent, cat caretaker and worker – a “don’t die daily routine” that is pleasant when she’s well and agonizing when she’s not. “Staying alive as a suicidal person is one of the most altruistic things you can do.” |
| The Establishment |
| Maurice Sendak on the inner lives of children |
| The lives of children are filled with dark and special dangers. “How do you prevent being eaten or mauled by a monster? I still worry about it.” In a lovely video that uses animation to bring his words to life, Maurice Sendak, the author of Where The Wild Things Are, reflects on what it was like to be the frightened child of struggling immigrant parents. He also shares his lifelong respect for deep resilience of children, and the many monsters they face. “They want to survive. They want to SURVIVE,” he says. Bring tissues. |
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