Only in the Philippines: Ace Hardware selling baseball bats as self-defense weapons : Philippines
Titania McGrath on Twitter - "The police are so bigoted that even their horses are homophobic. #EqualityNotEquinity"
If Tough Anti-Drug Laws Are 'Racist,' Blame Black Leaders - "In the '80s and '90s, many black leaders supported tough anti-drug laws. Facing an inner-city explosion of gang activity, violent crime and a crack epidemic, black politicians pressured Congress to pass these laws.The Rev. George McMurray was pastor of Harlem's Mother A.M.E. Zion Church in the '70s, a time when New York City faced a major heroin epidemic. He favored life sentences for convicted drug dealers. "When you send a few men to prison for life, someone's going to pass the word down, 'It's not too good over here,'" McMurray said. "So instead of robbery and selling dope, (they'll think) 'I want to go to school and live a good life.'"When President Ronald Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 into law — the law that punished crack cocaine dealers far more harshly than powder cocaine dealers — Harlem's Rep. Charlie Rangel stood right behind Reagan. Crack dealers, many of whom were black, got harsher sentences than those who dealt powder cocaine, many of whom were white. And Congressional Black Caucus members pushed Reagan to create the Office of National Drug Control Policy.Then came the massive 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which included longer sentences for first-time offenders. An influential group of black pastors wrote to the Congressional Black Caucus, "While we do not agree with every provision in the crime bill, we do believe and emphatically support the bill's goal to save our communities, and most importantly, our children." The black mayor of Baltimore, Kurt Schmoke, said: "I believe the crime bill ... is part of the answer, and the crime bill should be supported by us. We do need to send a signal throughout our communities that certain types of activities will not be tolerated, that people will be held accountable and that if there is evil manifested by actions taken by individuals who choose to prey upon our residents that that evil will be responded to quickly and correctly."The majority of the Congressional Black Caucus supported Congress' final bill... President Donald Trump challenged the kneeling NFL players to give him names of those who have been "unfairly treated" by our criminal justice system. He promised to set up a process to review their cases and either pardon them or commute their sentences.It's a heck of an offer and should be a no-brainer. Given Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players' assertions of institutional/systemic/structural racism, Trump should soon be deluged with names of worthy candidates. If, as alleged, cops bust blacks for reasons of "racial profiling" and if, as alleged, blacks are wrongfully convicted and sentenced, how can the NFL players turn down Trump's offer?"
I've always loved fried chicken. But the racism surrounding it shamed me - "Growing up as a black kid in England’s white West Country, a car trip east to the busier, more exciting parts of the country meant one thing: KFC on the way back... The cheap chicken shops, fronted with happy cartoon chickens, were always concentrated in poorer areas, ones with a bigger black population. I’d muse that if only someone opened a shop serving southern fried chicken, but using free-range birds, they would make a killing.And so it came to pass.Shops serving “ethical” fried chicken started popping up all over the place, selling an experience marketed as superior to the neon-lit shops serving food in red-and-yellow cardboard boxes. They boasted about the happy lives their chickens enjoyed, and how they honoured them with 24-hour buttermilk baths and shiny, homemade glazes.There was almost always a boneless option, too, presumably catering to an audience for whom the skeleton is an unwelcome reminder that what they were eating was once alive. That’s not to say the chicken was not good. Sometimes, it was. But there was always something so far removed from the dish’s origins. It lacked soul.In the end, I, too, would make a living out of fried chicken, but not southern fried. It was karaage, the Japanese iteration, made with boneless (I know) and skinless chicken thighs marinated in soy sauce, mirin, ginger and garlic... Karaage sat comfortably because I perceived in it a refinement I overlooked in its deep south counterpart. It contained ingredients I could source only in specialist shops. And, ultimately, it was Japanese, from the same nation of sushi and sashimi, of culinary refinement and gastronomic precision.Back then, I was not even conscious of the racist baggage fried chicken came with in the US. But it was seeping into my subconscious, and I felt it.As with most things, what happens in the US winds its way over to the UK. Including, it turns out, racist tropes. In my day job as a writer on a national newspaper – my supper clubs then were still a hobby – I sat next to someone who would often crack the same joke when I stood up to go for lunch. “What you getting?” he’d grin. “Fried chicken?”... Historically, chickens held special importance for enslaved black Americans, being the only livestock they were allowed to keep. Black domestic workers would cook fried chicken for their masters and, later, their employers. And then, after emancipation, women known as “waiter carriers” would hawk trays of fried chicken and biscuits to travellers through open windows as their trains stopped in stations.But while these black cooks and homemakers effectively invented what would become known as southern food, their contribution was erased. The white folk took the credit for its creation, while black people were mocked and parodied merely as greedy consumers. It’s one of the most outrageous examples of cultural theft.The racist 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, widely touted as the first blockbuster, attempted to paint black people as aggressive, disorganised and untrustworthy... while the US was trying to unpick the racist issues surrounding fried chicken, the UK’s Conservative government was stoking the flames. The Home Office’s decision to put anti-knife crime messages on fried chicken boxes perpetuated yet more racist stereotypes about knife crime and chicken shop customers.It all feeds into that same shame. During a recent podcast recording, I was asked what my final supper would be. As I said “fried chicken”, I couldn’t help hearing an imagined, knowing, “Of course!” in response."
Should we sanction black people who perpetuate "harmful stereotypes"?
Sounds like the author is projecting his issues onto other people, as well as jettisoning his Caribbean heritage to roleplay as an African American.
Apparently asking an avowed lover of fried chicken if he's going to get fried chicken for lunch is racist
Seoul anti-suicide initiative backfires, deaths increase by more than six times
Why Do French and Italian Tomatoes Taste So Damn Good? - "The combination of tomatoes and olive oil is my favorite breakfast—just sliced tomato on toast with a pinch of salt and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. It’s what I ate every single morning on a recent two-week trip to France and Italy.I would do the same more often at home in North America, but it’s not the same experience. Tomatoes here just don’t have nearly the same flavor as their European counterparts. Ask anyone that has tried European tomatoes and you will find a very consistent response: They are heaven. And once you have tasted European tomatoes, it’s hard to go back... Europeans insist on taste first and foremost, whereas North American growers have succumbed to market pressure for bigger, perfectly shaped fruit. Harry Klee, a horticulture professor at the University of Florida, told Julia Belluz, of Vox, that industrial tomatoes “have been bred for yield, production, disease resistance. The growers are not paid for flavor — they are paid for yield. So the breeders have given them this stuff that produces a lot of fruit but that doesn’t have any flavor.”On my recent trip, I met a French chef named Benjamin, who confirmed Klee’s conclusion. He took me shopping at a local farmers market, where I saw the difference. The tomatoes had erratic shapes and many had small black blemishes—imperfections I easily forgave the moment I tasted them.In North America, we want tomatoes all year, and not just during local growing seasons. As such, tomatoes are grown far away and shipped before they fully ripen. They lack the sugar and water content of fully ripened tomatoes. Additionally, our consumers have been conditioned to demand aesthetic perfection, perfectly shaped fruit and vegetables, without blemishes, and without considering flavor."
Mahyar Tousi on Twitter - "These lefties managed to call me a curry munching Indian and an Arab terrorist while defending their anti-racism campaign all at the same time in Twitter thread Talk about multitasking.
FACT CHECK: I’m a British freedom lover from south London with a Persian background."
Facebook - "To say that sometimes the woke left "overreaches" is a euphemism. What's present on the woke left right now is a set of systematically authoritarian practices for thought policing. These practices are ideologically grounded and viciously defended against criticism. They are the tip of an authoritarian iceberg of beliefs and attitudes.It took me a long time to understand this as I was initially blindsided by the authoritarian left while in the atheist "freethinkers" movement. I just thought that my fellow atheists, who I assumed shared my rationalist and liberal values because of all the talk about critical thinking and freedom of religion, were just overzealous when they behaved like bullies. I figured if I just pointed out how this behavior was inconsistent with our commitment to freedom of conscience and freedom of thought that they would understand. I was met with ideological justifications for authoritarian approaches to discourse over and over again.Spending years deep in the social justice movement and a year or two immersed with socialists on Facebook when I was supporting Bernie, I came to realize that the authoritarian left of old, the one that wound up responsible for communist atrocities the world over, is back with a vengeance. There is an entire worldview motivating the active silencing efforts, the purges, the public humiliations, the censorship, the hostility to debate, the ANTIFA instigated violence and rioting, the demonization of everyone to the right of AOC as a fascist, the vigorous attempt to politicize every institution, the dehumanization of people guilty of privilege, the cultish demand that people sever family ties over politics, the hostility to private property, and the demands for loyalty oaths and for submission, etc., etc..There are some just causes the left is rightly upset about. But the authoritarians on the left are increasingly dangerous to free conscience in America. The left controls almost the entirety of elite media, elite academia, and Hollywood and the young maoist cultural revolutionaries are only getting more and more aggressive and effective in demanding that these institutions become purer and purer. This portends a chilling era for freedom of conscience."
Mizzes Vanity on Twitter/a> - ""To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to disagree with or criticize." ~ Voltaire
Facebook - ""Go find the eggs!"
kelly on Twitter - "when you need to kill me during the race war i will forgive you. you’re just doing what needs to be done"
Google is really annoyed you're using Microsoft Edge - "Google, from its very beginning, thought it was so clever. It's never really stopped thinking that. And when it discovers competition -- from what it deems an unworthy source -- Google can become irritable... this Edge was smooth and sprightly. Which could be something to do with the fact that it's based on Google's Chromium platform. Google seemed miffed that Microsoft had created a functioning browser. It told users Edge isn't secure. Which is odd coming from a company that's just been sued for allegedly tracking users' private browsing activity... when users suddenly log on to their Gmail accounts from a new device -- via the strange browser that is the new Edge -- they get the standard security alert email message.But a large part of it is now a slightly stroppy suggestion that they should use Chrome instead.It reads: "Make the most out of Windows 10 with the Chrome browser. Chrome is a fast, simple, and secure browser, built for the modern Web."Does this mean that Edge is a slow, complicated and insecure browser, built for Caxton's paper klaxon?... When you're the market leader, it's best not to acknowledge your lesser rivals. True, Google doesn't specifically mention Edge here. Yet the fact that it feels so needy -- this is a security alert, after all -- as to remind any GMail-loving Edge users that Chrome exists shows more than a hint of insecurity."
ian bremmer on Twitter - "I am stunned at how many people believe “rural working class whites” = racist and that it’s acceptable to mock the entire group accordingly. This from people that would never consider making such generalizations about blacks or hispanics or muslims. This. Has. To. Stop."
Meme - "LOLLLLLLLLL YOU HAVE NEVER FUCKED A PRETTY GIRL. E V E R"
MOFA: Joint Communique of the Government of Japan and the Government of the People's Republic of China - "The Government of the People's Republic of China declares that in the interest of the friendship between the Chinese and the Japanese peoples, it renounces its demand for war reparation from Japan... The two Governments confirm that, in conformity with the foregoing principles and the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, Japan and China shall in their mutual relations settle all disputes by peaceful means and shall refrain from the use or threat of force."
Tessica Brown Gets Gorilla Glue Out of Hair, Video of Surgery - "Tessica took up Bev Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Michael Obeng on his offer to perform the $12,500 procedure for free"
Tessica Brown Donating $20k of GoFundMe Haul to Reconstructive Surgery Org - "Tessica plans to keep $1,000 of the GFM cash to pay for the emergency room visit she made in Louisiana before flying to the West Coast ... according to her manager. She also incurred travel expenses.That's not to say she really needs much of it anymore -- we're told Tessica's made a small fortune lately by hawking merch related to her experience, and she's doing just fine."
Another TikToker Has Put Gorilla Glue In Their Hair Despite Warnings - "Tessica Brown made headlines recently when she used Gorilla Glue spray to set her hair, causing it to get stuck for more than a month, but her situation did little to prevent Avani Reyes from gluing her own hair... She set up a GoFundMe page so people could ‘help with [her] Gorilla Glue situation’, saying she might undergo surgery to remove the substance... In the wake of a plea for help to her followers, Reyes later announced that she’d received enough donations to fund a surgery to remove the glue. One generous person donated $3,000, after which Reyes responded to say thank you."
The Gorilla Glue Saga, Laid Edges and the Trauma of Black Beauty Standards - "For a group that deals with the pressures of racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism, beauty standards in the community are deeply rooted in oppression in the past and present.Never being able to come close enough to the Eurocentric ideals of beauty, including white skin, straight hair and slim features, Black aesthetics are constantly undervalued. Even in online dating, the Black community faces racial discrimination and Black women were rated “less attractive” than women of other races in an OKCupid study from 2014."
Someone who can get you fired from your job just for disagreeing with them is neither oppressed nor a victim. ~Yeyo"
*Alien in Easter Bunny cotume*"
When a white person hates white people so much
White people are the only people it is good (let alone acceptable) to be racist too
"Could be said about any dude who ever fucked you lol"
"Why are you so full of hate for people you don’t even know?"
From 1972
So much for all the Chinese bashing Japan on reparations. They can blame Mao Zedong
Also so much for China refraining from the use or threat of force
When you incentivise stupidity, you get more of it
Minorities are like children and have no agency