For the majority of white people, race is something that happens to other people. Whiteness is a default that needs no name — all deviations must be categorized and given a "race." If race is always something that happens to other people, how are you able to see the part you play in the system?

An essay by Ijeoma Oluo (previously, previouslier) for Scenarios USA.
posted to MetaFilter by divined by radio at 1:01 PM on July 9, 2015 (71 comments)

Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in Mozart's 40th Symphony. Second movement. Third movement. Fourth movement. The famous chromatic bit at the start of the development of the fourth movement. Program notes written for a performance of the piece by Redwood Symphony.
posted to MetaFilter by Rustic Etruscan at 7:22 PM on July 7, 2015 (6 comments)

After seeing a young friend struggle with body image and depression, Florida-based photographer Natalie McCain was inspired to start the Honest Body Project, a series of portraits of mothers showing their beauty and imperfections to their children, paired with their stories in their own words. “My goal with this project is to help mothers everywhere learn to love their bodies and wear them proudly in front of their daughters,” McCain says. “Stop calling yourself fat. Stop shying away from being in photos. Stop body-shaming. Learn to love your body, and in turn, set a good example and start conversations with your children about how women really look.” A small number of images may be NSFW or triggering. Further details within.
posted to MetaFilter by zarq at 1:53 PM on July 7, 2015 (6 comments)

My boyfriend and I have been together 3 years, and we’ve recently reached that awful are-we-breaking-up-or-are-we-fighting-for-this moment. The main issue, as far as I see it, is that he is self-absorbed, which causes me to feel disappointed and disconnected from the relationship.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Anonymous at 3:16 PM on May 31, 2015 (41 comments)

A friend and I travel together frequently. What are some interesting questions we can ask one another while we're hiking for hours on end?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by buckaroo_benzai at 12:32 PM on May 16, 2015 (20 comments)

Leonard Bernstein conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in Johannes Brahms's First Symphony. Second movement. Third movement. Fourth movement. Listening guide to a Bernstein performance with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1983, two years after this one. Tom Service writes about the piece in The Guardian.
posted to MetaFilter by Rustic Etruscan at 6:18 PM on July 6, 2015 (16 comments)

Letter to My Son, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, July 4, 2015: "I came to understand that my country was a galaxy, and this galaxy stretched from the pandemonium of West Baltimore to the happy hunting grounds of Mr. Belvedere. I obsessed over the distance between that other sector of space and my own. I knew that my portion of the American galaxy, where bodies were enslaved by a tenacious gravity, was black and that the other, liberated portion was not... And I felt in this a cosmic injustice, a profound cruelty, which infused an abiding, irrepressible desire to unshackle my body and achieve the velocity of escape."
posted to MetaFilter by roomthreeseventeen at 5:17 AM on July 5, 2015 (31 comments)

Leonard Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic in Antonin Dvorak's Ninth Symphony ("From the New World"). Second movement. Third movement. Fourth movement. Bernstein talks about the piece for a Book of the Month Club "appreciation record." Tom Service writes about it in the Guardian.
posted to MetaFilter by Rustic Etruscan at 11:21 AM on July 5, 2015 (7 comments)

Leonard Bernstein conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in Mahler's Fifth Symphony. Starting from the second, third, fourth, and fifth movements.
posted to MetaFilter by Rustic Etruscan at 7:20 AM on July 4, 2015 (18 comments)

Last March, activist Asam Ahmad posted a critique of call-out culture, arguing that public call-outs for bad behavior on social media are an ineffective as well as toxic method of furthering social justice. Instead, he advocates Ngọc Loan Trần's concept of calling-in, which emphasizes compassion and kindness while holding people accountable for their actions. While call-out culture is often criticized based on its effects on more privileged people, it can also have negative consequences for marginalized groups. For example, language policing can stifle discussion about social injustice.
posted to MetaFilter by sciatrix at 2:33 PM on July 1, 2015 (69 comments)

It's weird for me to post one of these about my own FPP. But I have noticed a pattern of every post that discusses weight loss/obesity/medical issues (regardless of the context) devolving into people talking about how yeah, bad stuff happens, but you really should lose weight, you know! And then people describing why no, really, they can't or have trouble, and being generally disbelieved, and it all goes downhill. This is a pointless and unpleasant discussion. But we always end up there instead of discussing the underlying political/sociological issues or what have you. I think there's a lot to be said about healthcare, sexism, and how we treat fat people and fatness in that post. But...that's mostly not what happened.
posted to MetaTalk by emjaybee at 2:50 PM on June 28, 2015 (337 comments)

I saw a sports doc for recurring issues with my calves, feet, and possibly the Achilles tendon. I'm going for PT on Tuesday but I'd like to look into local classes with exercises that target these issues in the meantime. Details below the fold.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by onecircleaday at 3:12 PM on June 27, 2015 (13 comments)

Here's what happens when a man eats nothing but food made for women. When I began my exploration of gendered food items, I was hoping for a dramatic payoff.... Instead, I got a pile of cardboard packaging and confirmation of my thesis: marketing something as “for women” -- the pinks and purples, the low-calorie labels, the suggestions that life is just sooooo crazy and women need to take a break with a thumbnail-sized brownie -- is the dumbest gimmick in food marketing.
posted to MetaFilter by katie at 2:59 PM on June 25, 2015 (109 comments)

Can you pretty please recommend me some music you think that I would like based on the stuff I've linked below the fold that I'm really into at the moment?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Quilford at 3:27 AM on June 25, 2015 (36 comments)

I need help quieting my brain and body, especially at night. What are some things I could do? Complicating factor: ADHD.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by altopower at 9:17 AM on June 25, 2015 (21 comments)

My old computer is wrecked and for the next two months or so I will be exclusively relying on my HP TouchSmart Notebook with a Celeron Processor. What can I do to make the computer go as far as possible for me in terms of speed and letting me perform all these activities without too much lag or delay as I switch from tasks to tasks, delays which can be very annoying after a while.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by RapcityinBlue at 1:51 AM on June 24, 2015 (4 comments)

Richard Siken (previously) published his second book of poetry, War of the Foxes, in April. Supernatural fans thought it was fanfic - specifically Wincest - and have used many lines to fuel their own slash. Meanwhile, Siken himself has become involved in Sherlock slash. The Awl's Adam Carlson interviews Siken about all this and more, including I Can Haz Siken.
posted to MetaFilter by Athanassiel at 5:14 PM on June 23, 2015 (14 comments)

Will frozen veggies and rice work with higher-end rice cookers?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by johnnydummkopf at 1:46 PM on June 19, 2015 (5 comments)

What are some of the questions you've asked of total strangers that get surprising, interesting and engaged responses? How can you MeFi socialites guide someone to talk about what they want to talk about?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by thebotanyofsouls at 9:46 AM on June 19, 2015 (42 comments)

“Etsy seems to be only targeting those items of a pagan/occult nature while allowing items of certain faiths traditionally used for protection like St. Christopher medals, to still be marketed,” said another vendor in an email. “Personally I think it's probably unintended ignorance and failure to consider and think through what banning all spiritual, energetic and magickal claims will really mean.”

Witches are furious at Etsy for banning the sale of spells (Previously)
posted to MetaFilter by griphus at 11:23 AM on June 19, 2015 (159 comments)

USA: All 50 states fall short of international standards on police use of lethal force. An Amnesty International report today highlights that all US states fail to meet both international standards and often US constitutional standards. Additionally, nine states and the District of Columbia have no laws on the use of lethal force (Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming). Key findings (pdf, 45kb). Executive Summary (pdf, 500kb). Guardian report.
posted to MetaFilter by biffa at 1:16 PM on June 18, 2015 (13 comments)

Bernie Sanders on income inequality
posted to MetaFilter by HuronBob at 10:02 PM on June 17, 2015 (124 comments)

What does it mean to be black if you're a cop? Or Lupita Nyong’o? Or in the STEM fields? Or in the UK? Or China? Or simply black-ish?
posted to MetaFilter by Brandon Blatcher at 7:33 PM on June 16, 2015 (29 comments)

The New York Times reports that the Dominican Republic will begin deporting thousands of undocumented migrant workers, most of them Haitian, later this week. The Washington Post provides historical context. In The Nation, Greg Grandin reports on the imminent event. Last week, he characterized the effort as "a vicious, anti-black pogrom.” In Harper’s, Rachel Nolan has a detailed letter from the Dominican Republic explaining the situation at length.
posted to MetaFilter by Rustic Etruscan at 7:14 PM on June 16, 2015 (15 comments)

What Ten Years in Kenya Have Taught Me
posted to MetaFilter by infini at 9:55 AM on June 14, 2015 (11 comments)

The fantastic Cornell Lab of Ornithology offers two ways to identify that bird you saw, if you were bird watching in North America, with Merlin. You can download the free app for Android or iPhone and go through a series of prompts to ID that bird, or upload a photo from your desktop, note where and when you took the photo, tag the tip of the beak, the eye and the tail of the bird and like magic (and with use of the eBird database), you can learn about the birds you see.
posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief at 11:52 AM on June 11, 2015 (45 comments)

I'm looking for those "Wowza!" gourmet dishes and touches that impress guests, but in the summertime BBQ category. What are your tricks for easily making a BBQ fancy, different or impressive, instead of the same old burgers and dogs?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by agregoli at 5:54 PM on June 10, 2015 (59 comments)

How do you handle conversations with strangers (specific ones) without offending - snowflake details inside.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Mnky197 at 12:21 AM on June 9, 2015 (33 comments)

White ignorance refers to

the connection between privilege, ignorance and denials of complicity. It is Charles Mills, however, who has drawn special attention to the epistemology of ignorance. Mills’ work is guided by the question, ’How are white people able to consistently do the wrong thing while thinking that they are doing the right thing?’

posted to MetaFilter by eviemath at 5:12 PM on June 3, 2015 (5 comments)

I read a lot of books and papers about self-organization in physics, computer science, statistics, AI, evolutionary and systems biology, social networks, genetic networks, Internet networks, linguistic networks, formal computational networks and such. I'd like to read more.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by curuinor at 11:13 AM on June 3, 2015 (1 comment)

Since Aug. 9, 2014, when Officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson Police Department shot and killed Michael Brown, Mckesson and a core group of other activists have built the most formidable American protest movement of the 21st century to date. Their innovation has been to marry the strengths of social media — the swift, morally blunt consensus that can be created by hashtags; the personal connection that a charismatic online persona can make with followers; the broad networks that allow for the easy distribution of documentary photos and videos — with an effort to quickly mobilize protests in each new city where a police shooting occurs.

posted to MetaFilter by the man of twists and turns at 8:58 PM on June 2, 2015 (20 comments)

Scores of low-flying planes circling American cities are part of a civilian air force operated by the FBI and obscured behind fictitious companies, The Associated Press has learned
posted to MetaFilter by hydropsyche at 3:50 PM on June 2, 2015 (101 comments)

The vote of 67 - 32 will move the measure to President Obama's desk. Previous reports suggest that he will sign it immediately.
posted to MetaFilter by mr_bovis at 2:12 PM on June 2, 2015 (42 comments)

Scientists in Queensland have discovered two new species of carnivorous marsupials, and raised another from subspecies to species status. Unfortunately, the little guys are at risk from climate change and habitat loss. Also: the males are screwing themselves to death.
posted to MetaFilter by kanewai at 2:36 PM on June 2, 2015 (19 comments)

I'm an adult in my 30s and have just been positively screened for Autism. I'm actually really happy, because a lot of things in my life now make a lot more sense. I'd like to read on the internets stuff that autistic adults have written about their own lives. I'm interested in personal blogs and stuff that has been more formally published. Can you help?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Anonymous at 5:23 AM on June 2, 2015 (15 comments)

The New Mexico Law Review just published an issue dedicated entirely to Breaking Bad. It features eight articles that analyze the illegal acts committed on the show, their real-world parallels, and the consequences attached:

Given the array of legal issues raised, our editorial board was excited to take the opportunity to present analysis of Breaking Bad by scholars and legal practitioners. In April 2014 we issued a call for papers requesting abstracts on topics including the application of the Fourth Amendment to drug crimes under the New Mexico and/or U.S. Constitutions; the War on Drugs; ethical duties of lawyers; drug-offense sentencing; drug enforcement in rural, urban, and/or Tribal areas; and substance abuse and the law.

Some of the greatest legal minds in New Mexico (and the country) came together to examine how Walter White would look to a jury, how the war on drugs affects peripheral citizens like Skyler, and whether Heisenberg could have stayed legit by fighting for his stake in Grey Matter in the courts. [via]
posted to MetaFilter by Room 641-A at 8:17 PM on May 19, 2015 (24 comments)

There's been a lot of great cartoons on TV and the web lately. In the recent the Simpsons couch gag post (the one about Rick and Morty), signal made a list of favorite current cartoons that MeFites regard as great, and we've been kind of adding to it.
posted to MetaTalk by JHarris at 2:23 AM on May 18, 2015 (77 comments)

When Birds Squawk, Other Species Seem to Listen by Christopher Solomon [New York Times]

A professor’s hunch is that birds are saying much more in warning of danger than previously suspected, and that other animals have evolved to understand the signals.

posted to MetaFilter by Fizz at 1:35 PM on May 18, 2015 (28 comments)

A study has shown that in contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, men and women tend to have equal influence on where their group lives and who they live with. The findings challenge the idea that sexual equality is a recent invention, suggesting that it has been the norm for humans for most of our evolutionary history. Mark Dyble, an anthropologist who led the study at University College London, said: “There is still this wider perception that hunter-gatherers are more macho or male-dominated. We’d argue it was only with the emergence of agriculture, when people could start to accumulate resources, that inequality emerged.”
posted to MetaFilter by byanyothername at 11:18 AM on May 17, 2015 (43 comments)

The Intercept investigates the Mexican government's account of the September 26, 2014 disappearance of 43 students of the Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos, also known as the Ayotzinapa Normal School. Part One. Part Two.
posted to MetaFilter by Rustic Etruscan at 7:11 PM on May 15, 2015 (6 comments)

On the heels of renewal through its 28th season, a perennial contract dispute (with a twist) has at long last claimed one of The Simpsons' foundational cast members. Harry Shearer, the versatile artist behind such indelible characters as Ned Flanders, Mr. Burns, Smithers, Principal Skinner, Kent Brockman, McBain, Dr. Hibbert, Rev. Lovejoy, Dr. Marvin Monroe, Otto-man, Lenny, and dozens of others will be departing the show at the end of the current season. Of course, the show must go on.
posted to MetaFilter by Rhaomi at 3:00 AM on May 14, 2015 (89 comments)

The Ecotourism Industry Is Saving Tanzania’s Animals and Threatening Its Indigenous People. "With much of the natural world in the Global North already past the point of no return, and with the effects of climate change multiplying yearly, more and more of the Global South is being cordoned off in service of a global patrimony that has little relevance to the lives of the people closest to the land. The collateral social damage of these conservationist policies presents a conundrum, a Sophie's Choice. Whose rights are preeminent—those of nature or those of the people who have always lived closest to it?"
posted to MetaFilter by infini at 6:24 AM on May 13, 2015 (16 comments)

I like going to cemeteries when I travel ... so when I had a few free hours in London two years ago before leaving to go home, I went to Highgate. It almost didn’t happen; my friends were too bushed to come along, it looked like rain, and when I read the guidebook I realized that if I’d wanted to go to the cemetery’s gorgeous crumbling older half, I should have booked a tour before I even got on the plane. But the newer, eastern side seemed nice enough. Karl Marx was there, the guidebook said. So was George Eliot. And wait—wait. So was Douglas Adams.

This is how I ended up stealing a pen from a dead man.

Jess Zimmerman: I Stole A Pen From Douglas Adams’ Grave
posted to MetaFilter by jazon at 2:48 PM on May 12, 2015 (41 comments)

It’s getting to be summer, when a young man’s thoughts turn inevitably to aw yiss summer jams. But I’ve been hearing awesome US summer jams for nigh 40 summers now, and I would like exposure to non-US summer jams. I’ve applied my sun block, packed my beach towel, and I want you to take me on a summer jam journey around the world.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by Admiral Haddock at 11:25 AM on May 12, 2015 (13 comments)

Transitioning out of academia, considering trying to rebrand myself as a "data scientist," wondering if a boot camp or certificate program would help. Snowstorm inside, but there's basically two issues. One: Is a program like that a good way to deal with having background and skills that don't show up on my resume? Two: Is a program like that worthwhile for someone who… let's just say "won't fit in culturally or demographically at tech industry networking events"?
posted to Ask MetaFilter by nebulawindphone at 12:51 PM on May 11, 2015 (14 comments)

"I don't think they're all necessarily horrible people..." In an impressive display of solid intelligence tradecraft, the IC Watch project has released the Transparency Toolkit, whereby social media sites were mined for keywords, project names, employers, and locations known or suspected to be associated with the U.S. Intelligence Community.
posted to MetaFilter by Emperor SnooKloze at 11:01 AM on May 11, 2015 (72 comments)

A Journey Into the Mind of P. [YouTube]

A documentary, written & directed by Donatello Dubini & Fosco Dubini, mostly on the authors [Thomas Pynchon] reclusivness, how it's been dealt with by some hysterical fans, old friends, critics... containing some interesting interviews & speculations on the themes of Gravity's Rainbow & how they relate to the historical realities of the american fifties & sixties, the paranoid politics of cold war logic, megalomaniac experimental psychology, the callous mindset of military engineering, & so on...

posted to MetaFilter by Fizz at 7:11 PM on May 10, 2015 (6 comments)

In Japan, people applying to work at Nintendo are given an amazing company guide (2015), bursting with color, that they remake every year. 2014 - 2013 - 2012 - 2011 ( via Simon Carless [Twitter], thnx)
posted to MetaFilter by JHarris at 2:54 PM on May 10, 2015 (10 comments)

Bill Simmons -- ESPN columnist, creator of sports and pop culture site Grantland, co-creator of the documentary series 30 for 30, and perpetual pain in his corporate masters' asses -- has been unceremoniously let go by the Worldwide Leader.
posted to MetaFilter by Etrigan at 9:59 AM on May 10, 2015 (78 comments)

I need summer fashion role models.
posted to Ask MetaFilter by triggerfinger at 6:43 PM on May 8, 2015 (9 comments)