Your week in review in haiku.
1.
Kelly to White House
staff: Semper Fidelis! To
the Mooch: Ciao for niao.
2.
To lose a Shepard;
the rightest of stuff, a fool
for love in heaven
3.
Mueller breaks news in
the grandest of ways, with the
grandest of juries
4.
Workshopping band names:
Leaky McLeakerson and
The Future Felons
5.
Summer dream trip! Two
sun-drenched Mooches spent on a
yacht six Comeys long.
Wishing you a dreamy weekend!
On Point
| EA Sports to include every WNBA team and player in NBA Live 18 |
| Well here’s some good news, sports fans. It looks like the outstanding athletes of the WNBA are being recognized for their multi-platform appeal in an update to the franchise expected later this year. "We are delighted to collaborate and make history with EA as NBA LIVE 18 becomes the first video game to feature the WNBA's full roster of teams and players," said WNBA President Lisa Borders. This isn’t the first time EA Sports has pulled a power move for inclusion. Two years ago, they added twelve women's “soccer” teams to the biggest football video game on the market. (Thanks to raceAhead fave @emarvelous for the tip.) |
| New York Daily News |
| St. Louis chapter wants national NAACP to reverse its travel advisory |
| In June, the NAACP issued a strongly worded advisory in response to recent legislation signed into law that makes it more difficult for Missouri residents to sue for housing or employment discrimination. "Individuals traveling in the state are advised to travel with extreme CAUTION," the advisory warns. "Race, gender and color based crimes have a long history in Missouri." The local chapter also disavows the legislation, but is concerned that the advisory will negatively impact the very people the organization is chartered to support."The people hurt by the travel advisory are the members of our NAACP community who work across our state in hospitality industry jobs and who have played no role in this legislation," St. Louis County NAACP President Esther Haywood said in the statement. |
| CNN |
| Were there black folks in Roman-era Britain? |
| Some notable historians and philosophers engaged in a particularly sharp-elbowed online debate this week, prompted by a cartoon. Specifically, the re-release of an old BBC cartoon-documentary about ancient Britain that depicted a fictional Roman Britain family with a black father heading a mixed race family. Cue the drama. The fighting began when Infowars editor, Paul Joseph Watson, tweeted, “Thank God the BBC is portraying Roman Britain as ethnically diverse. I mean, who cares about historical accuracy, right?” The tweet prompted a "well, actually..." rebuttal from Cambridge classicist Mary Beard, then a refutation of the rebuttal by philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb, followed by some big talk from the peanut gallery about DNA and some name calling. It’s probably still going on. Click below for the story and cartoon, the Twitter thread is here. |
| Blavity |
The Woke Leader
| On being transgender on Christopher Street today |
| Some fifty years have passed since the LGBTQ movement was born on and around Christopher Street, a movement in which trans women of color played important leadership roles. While the initial uprising was in response to a 1969 police raid of a local gay bar, The Stonewall Inn, Christopher Street has remained a symbol of pride and civil rights ever since. But, as Janet Mock explains in the introduction to this gorgeous photo essay by Mark Seliger, times have changed. “As the neighborhood has gentrified, attitudes among some residents toward the trans and queer people who still frequent the area have soured,” she explains. “Class and race tensions have risen.” And the police are back, there to serve the needs of the well-heeled. “My community is being seen and heard at unprecedented levels, yet we are still being scapegoated,” says Mock. “The presence and visibility of trans people challenges every one of us.” |
| New Yorker |
| Saying good-bye to the communal rinse cycle |
| The public laundromat, once a staple of urban living, is on the decline. According to the Census Bureau, the number of do-it-yourself laundry emporiums has dropped 20% since 2005. One major factor are the cities themselves: As wealthier renters relocate to find their fortunes in cities like Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, developers have been adding amenities like washer/dryers to their units. As a bellwether of changing times, it largely impacts the mom-and-pop owners of coin-operated laundry facilities, which brings in some $5 billion a year -- a figure that's dropping. But it also impacts the low-income residents who use them. "We have large families and you have to walk three or four blocks to go do your laundry,” says one San Francisco resident who is fighting to keep his local laundromat from being rezoned into an apartment building. “You also lose that sense of community. The laundromat was a family affair growing up.” |
| CityLab |
| Advocating for your culture at work |
| Jaclyn Roessel grew up on the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona and has worked from an early age to build cultural bridges between the two nations she calls home. Her work as an entrepreneur and director of public programs for an American Indian art and cultural center have taught her the importance of including outside voices in important conversations. She offers five excellent tips, but number three really hit home: Sometimes your ideas are going to slow things down. “When I worked at the museum, I consistently provided feedback to other departments about their language and visual choices for ads,” she said. Occasionally, big changes had to be made. That’s not ideal, particularly when time and resources are scarce. Speak up anyway.“[I]n the end, it gave us all the space to think through what we were communicating,” she says. Now, my question to leaders – how do you build an organization that responds well to that sort of feedback? |
| Jopwell |
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