It’s time once again for news and views that you can peruse. It’s time once again for your regularly scheduled Weekly Reader! Got some hot links, blog posts, or articles from a local paper you’d like to share? Head over to the comments and let us know.
I Work In A Coffee Shop In Montana. Anti-Maskers Have Made My Job Hell. (from the Huffington Post): “During one particularly exhausting morning of maskless customers, I checked in with a friend who had been waiting tables at a popular downtown restaurant throughout the pandemic. She described customers being escorted out by management, tables of people putting up a fight, diners purposely leaving masks behind as they walked to the bathroom.
“I’ve become fucking frigid,” she texted.”
Eric Lander Is Not the Ideal Choice for Presidential Science Adviser (from Scientific American): “Despite this slate of diverse leadership, we can’t help but notice that the recently announced nomination of presidential science adviser Eric Lander fails to meet the moment. His nomination does not fill us with hope that he will shepherd the kind of transformation in science we need if we are to ensure science delivers equity and justice for all. We had high hopes that the Biden administration would continue its pattern of bold nominations when envisioning a newly elevated cabinet position of science adviser. There was certainly no shortage of options, with a deep bench of qualified women and Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) whose expertise and experience can transform the place of science as a tool for justice.”
Just Move: Scientist Author Debunks Myths About Exercise And Sleep (from NPR): “So it turns out that I think we’ve kind of demonized sitting a little falsely. It’s not unnatural or strange or weird to sit a lot, but it is problematic if, of course, that’s all you do. As I started to explore the literature more, I was fascinated because most of the data that associates sitting a lot with poor health outcomes turns out to be leisure-time sitting. So if you look at how much time people spend sitting at work, it’s not really that associated with heart disease or cancers or diabetes. But if you look at how much people sit when they’re not at work, well, then the numbers get a little bit scary.”
‘Blame Trump’ defense from alleged Capitol rioters dovetails with Democrats’ impeachment case (from CNN): “Meanwhile, defense attorneys for some alleged rioters are tacitly making the Democrats’ case.
At a recent hearing, a lawyer for Emanuel Jackson blamed Trump while arguing that he should be released before trial. Jackson, 20, of Maryland, was charged with five crimes, including assaulting law enforcement, after he was seen on bodycam footage hitting officers with a baseball bat.”
The battle inside Signal (from The Verge): “But Signal’s rapid growth has also been a cause for concern. In the months leading up to and following the 2020 US presidential election, Signal employees raised questions about the development and addition of new features that they fear will lead the platform to be used in dangerous and even harmful ways. But those warnings have largely gone unheeded, they told me, as the company has pursued a goal to hit 100 million active users and generate enough donations to secure Signal’s long-term future.”
The Absurd Backlash to Nia Dennis’ Viral Floor Exercise (from Slate): “The astounding sensitivity among so many observers to the mere mention of the word Black in the context of praise for a stellar athlete who just debuted an entire exercise celebrating Black culture is a reflection of life in a country where it’s still somehow controversial to opine that Black lives matter. Sadly, if usefully, these reactions reveal just how disproportionately present such attitudes are within the gymnastics world—and it’s long past time the whole sport did something about it.”
Pixar’s Troubled “Soul” (from the New Yorker): “Pixar’s “Soul” is, in fact, the latest in a long tradition of American race-transformation tales, each of which finds a pretext—a potion, a spell, a medical treatment, or simply makeup—to put a white person in a black body (or vice versa). One strand of the genre—which encompasses films like “Change of Mind,” “Watermelon Man,” and “Soul Man”—is obviously the legacy of minstrel productions like the 1927 film “The Jazz Singer.” But even recent, more ostensibly race-conscious works (see again “Watchmen” and “Lovecraft Country”) play with this theme in sometimes disturbing ways, as though unable to resist making white people the hero of blackness. The white desire to get inside black flesh is absolved as an empathy exercise. Blackface gets a moral makeover. It’s telling that, in most race-transformation tales, the ideal is presented as a white soul in a black body.”
Disneyland to make the Jungle Cruise more inclusive after years-long complaints of racism (from the Los Angeles Times): “The Jungle Cruise, with its ties to the park’s patriarch, is likely to be viewed with a more protective lens by the company’s vast fanbase. Yet the ride has also been one under near-constant evolution since its inception. Its early influences were Disney’s own nature documentaries and the 1951 film “The African Queen,” a favorite of early Disneyland designer Harper Goff.
Its initial conception as “The Jungle Rivers of the World” leaned slightly more educational than today’s more humor-driven take. The ride’s unsavory tribal depictions, largely inspired by images from Papua New Guinea, were added in the years after its opening. These vignettes essentially depict Indigenous people as tourist attraction, attackers or cannibals.”
A car thief threatened to call the police on a mom who left her child in the back seat of the car he stole (from CNN): “When the suspect saw the child, he returned to the mother and reprimanded her, threatened to call the police on her and then drove away in her car, Beaverton Police Spokesman Officer Matt Henderson told CNN.
“He hopped in the car, drove it, realized there was a 4-year-old inside, and drove back and ordered her to take the child out of the car and then drove away again,” Henderson said. “We’re thankful he had the decency to bring the little one back.””
Dressing for Dinner When Dinner Is in a Frigid Curbside Yurt (from the New Yorker): “Asked for her own coat’s origin story, Kamali said that, one cold night, she’d been camping by the Delaware River (“I was a little bit hippie-dippie”), when nature called. “I wrapped myself in my sleeping bag, and as I was walking I thought, I’m gonna put sleeves on this when I get home.” The original iteration of Kamali’s coat, chic and slouchy-shouldered, teems with adventure: Kamali recalled that, in 1983, when her staff collected testimonials for the coat’s tenth anniversary, “many people said they made love in them, many people said their cat had kittens in them. One guy said he stole eyeliner from Bloomingdale’s in his coat.””
On that note, we’ll pause things for the time being. But I’ll be back again with more articles that you didn’t know you had to read. Until then, have a great rest of your week, stay safe, and happy reading! ❤
Iacon East 