Centering gender and sexual politics and discussion on the people most strongly affected is absolutely the right thing to do, but I think it’s still useful to be aware that this spectrum exists and literally everybody is somewhere on it (that’s why it’s a spectrum). This is important for a number of different reasons. The first is simply that I’m pretty sure that it’s true. It’s good to believe true things. The world makes more sense that way. This model of how people are behaving is (as far as I can tell) extremely consistent with both the data and many many quiet conversations I’ve had with friends about their experiences. The second is that I think it is extremely helpful to people to understand this about themselves, especially if they are in a boundary area. Stressing about the question “Am I bisexual or am I just faking it?” seems to be an almost universal bisexual experience, and that’s not surprising given this dynamic! When most of what you hear is from people whose sexual identity is burned into their very soul, “I don’t know what’s going on but sometimes I feel like it might be nice to be able to kiss boys??” feels fake in comparison. It’s also useful from a political point of view. There is strength in numbers, and understanding that the range of experiences includes a much more broad base of people who would experiment if given the option significantly increases our numbers. I’d much rather describe my sexuality as “Look over there!” followed by dropping a smoke bomb and escaping in the confusion, and my decision to identify as bisexual instead is in no small part a political one. I suspect there are quite a lot of others out there who could usefully do the same. [...] When most of what you hear is from people whose sexual identity is burned into their very soul, “I don’t know what’s going on but sometimes I feel like it might be nice to be able to kiss boys??” feels fake in comparison.

"They've been defeated. They have fled terror in their home country only to be welcomed to this country with more terror," Garcia said. "What the government is doing is accomplishing what the cartels never could, which is separating these men from their families." Philabaum says prison staff have also kept faith leaders from visiting men who've requested their presence. According to ICE's own "detention standards," immigrant detainees must be granted at least some weekend visiting hours from family members, faith leaders, or legal counsel. Those standards also grant detainees free calls to legal counsel, along with a list of free legal aid programs they can call. The detained men have been denied all of these rights. [...] "It's important to remember, the law never required these men be detained. The law never required these men be separated from their families," said Philabaum. "And the law definitely never required they be placed in a federal correctional institution."

Renee Gladman is the author of ten works of prose and poetry, most recently *Calamities*, a collection of essay-fictions. Her first monograph of drawings, *Prose Architectures*, was published by Wave Books in 2017. She lives in New England with the poet-ceremonialist Danielle Vogel.

‘The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’ and its contemporaries are sensory soothing software several decades in the making.

I made this green tea ice cream on June 10, 2018 and it turned out really well!

American culture allowed Eminem to freely negate any kind of identity he wanted to, as was his inherent privilege. But, as the critic Hilton Als wrote in his 2003 essay “White Noise,” it didn’t matter to Eminem. “Mathers never claimed whiteness and its privileges as his birthright because he didn’t feel white and privileged,” Als wrote. It’s interesting, though, that Eminem never negated his masculinity or heterosexuality, two identities that were and, more or less, remain intrinsic to the success of male rappers. His privilege meant that he could shed his racial signifiers and become a ghost, a psychopath, a loving father, a bigot, a clown. So why do fans believe any of this? Why, when they listened to Eminem rip his vocal cords open and disconnect from reality and mimic slitting the throat of his wife while he screams at her to “bleed, bitch bleed” do they take him so seriously?

The harm is that telling people to “assume good intent” is a sign that if they come to you with a concern, you will minimize their feelings, police their reactions, and question their perceptions. It tells marginalized people that you don’t see codes of conduct as tools to address systemic discrimination, but as tools to manage personal conflicts without taking power differences into account. Telling people to “assume good intent” sends a message about whose feelings you plan to center when an issue arises in your community. [...] If you want to build a culture of “assuming good intent,” start by assuming good intent in marginalized people. Assume that they already tried being nice. Assume that their feelings are valid. Assume that, after a lifetime of practice, they are responding to harmful behavior in the way that is safest for them. Prioritize that safety over the momentary discomfort people feel when they realize they’ve done something hurtful. Culture-setting documents like your code of conduct and corporate values should be designed around protecting marginalized people from harmful behavior. Leave out “assume good intent.” Instead, create a culture that recognizes and pushes back against the ways that marginalized people are dehumanized. Expect people to demonstrate their good intent by treating people with respect.

Undercounting injuries is a symptom of a larger problem: Tesla has put electric car manufacturing above safety concerns, former safety experts say.

Myth 2: The racial homeownership gap is the “driver” of the racial wealth gap. "Among households that own a home, white households have nearly $140,000 more in net worth than comparable black households. While the wealth ratio between whites & blacks may narrow somewhat among those who own a home, a 6-figure wealth differential remains." Primarily, Sandy & Darrick seem to take issue with the causal implications here. "By definition, homeownership/home equity is a component of wealth. Hence, the statement that 'homeownership drives wealth' is equivalent to saying that 'wealth drives wealth.'" "The idea that homeownership creates wealth simply may put the relationship backward. Rather than homeownership creating wealth, having family wealth in the first place leads to homeownership, particularly high equity homeownership." [...] TL;DR - WE NEED REPARATIONS

Brand playlists are advertisements, even if Spotify strives to imbue them with so-called editorial integrity. Such uncompensated advertorial playlists are harmful in that they offer artists no option to opt-out, but also because they undercut what can sometimes be a valuable source of revenue for artists. If brands can align themselves with artists without having to pay specifically for individual tracks or artist appearances, what do we think they’ll do? Can we at least give people the option to sell out if they want?

In juxtaposition, Sullivan’s and Coates’ pieces provide a miniature history of how a certain variety of self-congratulatory openness to inquiry is in actual fact a barbed thicket of power relations. What Sullivan depicts as a “different time” when “neither of us denied each other’s good faith or human worth,” is, in Coates’ understanding, a time where he was required to “take seriously” the argument that “black people are genetically disposed to be dumber than white people” as a price of entry into the rarified heights of conversation at the Atlantic. The “civility” and “generosity of spirit” that supported “human to human” conversation is juxtaposed to Coates’ “teachers” who didn’t see him “completely as a human being.” What was open and free spirited debate in Sullivan’s depiction, was to Coates a loaded and poisonous dialogue where he could only participate if he shut up about what he actually believed.

The series had its clandestine début, in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, on New Year’s Eve in 2016. Bell critiqued the Times’s coverage of the death of Mike Brown, in 2014, in which the paper ran side-by-side profiles of the victim and his killer, Darren Wilson, under the joint headline “Two Lives at a Crossroads in Ferguson.” Bell and many other readers felt that the framing of equivalence, and of tragic coincidence, diminished what had happened that August afternoon. Bell erected a diptych of her own, with Wilson’s profile whittled down to read, simply, “Officer Darren Wilson fatally shot an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown.” The second panel bore the new headline “A Teenager with Promise,” I noted last year, when I interviewed Bell.

The melodramatic style of dance music was born alongside the European Union’s utopian vision. But how does it fit into the Continent’s current wave of political and social upheaval? [...] The boutique hotel in Ibiza called Ushuaïa is located on a stretch of the beach that is less a tribute to the Mediterranean island’s storied dance history and more a feudal system of investment properties. Competing bass kicks from the poolside bars of adjacent hotels ping-pong between buildings, creating syncopations of privilege. Packs of day drinkers lounge a few yards away from African immigrants in knockoff Yankees caps, standing just far enough away in the sand to avoid being seen as interlopers. There are waist-high red ceramic cats holding serving trays in the entrance to the lobby, and chairs that look like well-toned butts. And up on the rooftop bar, Armin van Buuren is ushering in the sunset with a short DJ set.

The man who played the alien in ‘Alien.’

It is not Nori and Chicago’s essential personhood that prompts West to nurture them, but their relationship to him: one in which he is both role model and custodian, dream giver and disciplinarian. West cherishes the attendant control. Even in his attempt to share a realization that affects how he will now treat a sizable portion of the population, West once again centers himself. [...] West pays particular attention to the contours his daughters’ bodies may develop in the future, referencing his wife’s famously enhanced curves in the process. He threatens hypothetical future boyfriends, then imagines a scenario in which a battered daughter comes racing back to him. The lines are disturbing, reminiscent of how Donald Trump speaks about his eldest daughter, whom he has called “hot” and whose sex life he often alludes to. On an album full of references to a president whom West has received no shortage of criticism for defending, “Violent Crimes” stands out for the perverse intimacy with which it links West to Trump. The two men’s arrogance may be staggering, but the ease with which they discuss—and seek to control—women’s bodies is just as striking. Both men draw from deep reservoirs of entitlement; when trained on girls and women, that potent mixture of shielding and possession can grow much more pernicious.

Across ye’s seven tracks, Kanye digs his heels in — no apologies, no regrets or introspection, just barely coherent thoughts and barely complete songs. In fact, its single most original idea, and the only one I hope seeps into the culture is its brevity, though even that is wielded unsuccessfully.

As West sells it, ‘ye’ is an album devoted to the stand-off between visceral self-loathing and baroque levels of narcissism, further complicated by mental illness and a recent opiate addiction. Listening to ‘Killing You,’ it’s unclear whether West’s violent thoughts are directed at his wife or towards himself, or if he even means it at all: maybe a homicidal fantasy is just another badass way to start an album, an inverted “Ultralight Beam.” It is the work of a broken man, whatever the case. But to meet West on his terms here feels impossible. In his world, self-expression justifies itself, and speaking your most twisted thoughts out loud is an act of bravery, one that makes ‘I Thought About Killing You’ not just a fine thing to write and share, but a work made from a place of love. Art, then, is a way of existing beyond reproach, an excuse for everything.

Japan made itself rich in its industrial era by selling things like cars, TVs, and VCRs, but it made itself loved in those Lost Decades by selling fantasies. Hello Kitty, comics, anime, and Nintendo games were the first wave—“the big can-opener,” as the game designer Keiichi Yano put it. Now those childhood dreams haven given way to a more sophisticated vision of a Japanese life style, exemplified in the detached cool of Haruki Murakami novels, the defiantly girly pink feminism of kawaii culture, the stripped-down simplicity of Uniqlo, the “unbranded” products of Muji, and the Japanese “life-changing magic” of Marie Kondo. That these Japanese products are so popular, not only in America but in developed nations around the world, may indicate that we’re all groping for meaning in the same post-industrial haze.

Rahawa Haile considers how, by sliding between the real and unreal, Black Panther frees us to imagine the possibilities — and the limitations — of an Africa that does not yet exist. --- How then does one criticize what is unquestionably the best Marvel movie to date by every conceivable metric known to film criticism? How best to explain that Black Panther can be a celebration of blackness, yes; a silencing of whiteness, yes; a meshing of African cultures and signifiers — all this! — while also feeling like an exercise in sustained forgetting? That the convenience of having a fake country within a real continent is the way we can take inspiration from the latter without dwelling on its losses, or the causes of them. Black Panther is an American film through and through, one heavily invested in white America’s political absence from its African narrative. When Killmonger goads a museum curator early on in the film, calling out a history of looting, it is condemnation that falls squarely on Britain’s shoulders. Rarely must the audience think about the C.I.A.’s very real history in Africa. The fact that viewers were steered, at any point, into rooting for Martin Freeman, a British actor playing an American C.I.A. operative who attempts to purchase stolen resources from a white South African arms dealer, means that even a cinematic turducken of imperialist history gets a pass. [...] The convenience of having a fake country within a real continent is the way we can take inspiration from Africa without dwelling on its losses.

The spectres are textural. The surface noise of the sample unsettles the illusion of presence in at least two ways: first, temporally, by alerting us to the fact that what we are listening to is a phonographic revenant, and second, ontologically, by introducing the technical frame, the unheard material pre-condition of the recording, on the level of content. We're now so accustomed to this violation of ontological hierarchy that it goes unnoticed. But in his Wire piece, Simon refers to the shock he experienced when he first heard records constructed entirely out of samples. I vividly recall the first time I went into studio and heard vocal samples played through a mixing desk; I really do remember saying, 'It's like hearing ghosts...'

A new study suggests that one reason seniors are more conservative politically than younger cohorts of Americans is that poorer people don’t live as long and suffer from health conditions that inhibit voting and other forms of political activity.

The singer and actress reflects on her two decades of silence and looks ahead to the new generation discovering her legacy.

i put out a Baths record called Romaplasm last year that i’m still real proud of!! i had to kill like 30 mins and i thought it’d be fun to mention some of the easter eggs (?) in it that people may have missed 😬✨

In 1761 Benjamin Franklin was in London representing the Pennsylvania Legislature to Parliament. Franklin was very interested in music: he was a capable amateur musician, attended concerts regularly, and even wrote a string quartet! One of the concerts Franklin attended was by Deleval, a colleague of his in the Royal Academy, who performed on a set of water tuned wineglasses patterned after Pockridge's instrument. Franklin was enchanted, and determined to invent and build 'a more convenient' arrangement. Franklin's new invention premiered in early 1762, played by Marianne Davies—a well known musician in London who learned to play Franklin's new invention. Initially Franklin named it the 'glassychord', but soon settled on 'armonica' as the name for his new invention—after the Italian word for harmony "armonia". Apparently Franklin built a second instrument for Ms. Davies, as she toured Europe with hers, while Franklin returned to Philadelphia with his own.

Tina Fey and Rachel Bloom are changing the way female comics engaged with male gatekeepers. [...] That might be what’s most remarkable about these interviews: Despite their candor, these female comics aren’t cold or unavailable or uninteresting. They’re almost actively carving out a “third way”: not playing along and not charging toward confrontation. That doesn’t mean they withhold the kinds of intimate disclosures that make conversations like these worthwhile: Fey breaks down talking about her father, and Bloom is frank about her fears of becoming a parent. But both firmly decline to participate in the standard insider dynamic. The takeaway, for those tuning in, is that these conversations aren’t about showcasing the camaraderie of those onstage or behind the mic. Rather than affirm her links to Letterman against an audience that doesn’t “get” her sketch, Fey talks to them—and shows she’s listening, and that her frame of reference is bigger than the usual club of two.

Here in late capitalism, our only real power is as consumers, en masse. We need organizing forces like #MuteRKelly. But can a company that is still making money off the person they are protesting ever really play that role?

Which brings us to journalists’ general silence when Trump and his lackeys say cruel things about Muslims, Mexicans, and immigrants. Journalists believe they must remain mum, lest they appear biased. God forbid one has a bias against racism; that must be an enormous handicap in performing journalism in a nation that is projected to not have a racial or ethnic majority within the next four decades. The same night that Wolf made her true statements at the correspondents’ dinner, Trump supporters at a Trump event booed the mention of “Hispanics,” literally condemning an entire ethnicity — for the second time in a single week. I suppose reporters do what they must to get the stories they can. But I’d encourage them to avoid signaling to the American people that you either don’t realize or don’t care that we are being lied to every day, that we can’t trust you to recognize authoritarianism and fascism when you see it, that you are so far removed from the life of “citizen” in your pursuit of information of these elites that when they’re separating us into Childless Unmarrieds and Women Deserving of Respect, you’re not going to sit by quietly, unable to speak out, lest you show “bias” that inhibits your ability to claim an EXCLUSIVE! SCOOP! handed to you by officials who have decided they’re okay with that information getting out.

Bullying happens along a gradient of existing power and reiterates it. That’s the difference between bullying and a fair fight: The bully is bigger and stronger and safer, and wields those advantages over someone smaller and weaker and more vulnerable. Michelle Wolf got off some zingers at Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s expense at an ultra-exclusive social event entirely filled by people whose livelihoods Sanders holds in her hands. Beyond that, as a basic function of her job, Sanders enjoys access to the water main of American political consciousness unmatched by pretty much any living person not named Donald Trump—a privilege she uses only and entirely for the purpose of pumping poison into it, aided by a healthy plurality of the people in that room but not by Michelle Wolf. I doubt there is a forum in existence in which Wolf could do anything that would qualify as “bullying” the press secretary of the President of the United States, but even if there is, the fucking White House Correspondents’ Dinner isn’t it.

What is an emotional man (I know, even writing that feels hideous) that isn’t consigned to the lower echelon of masculinity such as the “weepy horny beard guy” or the too-eager hyperactive type. How does one fight the stigma of being emotional without succumbing to the very stigma itself. How does one live righteously while suppressing a majority of feelings every day. I’m not sure. I buckle under a wave of stoicism exerted by a history of fathers every day.

This is a list of compact disc albums with tracks hidden in the pregap of the first track.