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‘I can’t believe I found my dad. … My mom would be so happy.’”
In photo of a 9-year-old girl, a Houston man found his daughter — and a new life.
Kenyon Saylor White was driving down a Tennessee freeway on Feb. 25 when a friend sent him the picture that would immediately recast his life.
Dogs and Beer in Fargo
If you were putting together a list of the most loved things on the planet, dogs and beer would be right up at the top of it. So when I tell you a brewery has put out a limited edition six-pack featuring the faces of adoptable dogs, I don’t want you to be embarrassed about how excited you get. (Set adblocker on maximum, this is Pleated Jeans)
The Communist Pleasure Activism Helping Erase Medical Debt in Appalachia
Mutual Aid Lube, a “vegan plant-based lube made by queers for queers,” partners with RIP Medical Debt, an organization committed to buying up and forgiving medical debt all across the country. So far, they have been able to help forgive $55,000 of medical debt in Appalachia.
"It's a health issue, an environmental issue, a child care issue..."
Too many American have no vacation days, or very few, or they are not paid enough to enjoy them properly. Too many Americans work hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime, or are forced to choose between parenthood and employment. Too many Americans are spending their twilight years in front of a cash register because they can’t afford a real retirement. But it doesn't have to be this way. The Leisure Agenda : a set of policy platforms designed to decrease overwork and increase personal time. Agenda in brief. Related: " 4-Day Workweek Without A Drop In Pay Boosted Workers' Productivity By 40%, Microsoft Japan Says." Previously
The Wrong Goodbye
This is a pretty severe case of mistaken identity. But it happens more often then you’d think.
Pro Publica writes about Freddy Williams and Raheme Perry.
Why Not Go to the Police?
In Unbelievable and Know My Name, sexual assault survivors confront the profound injustices of the justice system.
Unbelievable, released on Netflix in September, is an eight-episode drama based on the true story of an 18-year-old in Washington state who reported a rape, then recanted when police officers told her they were skeptical of her story. (She was only vindicated after her rapist attacked five more women.) Know My Name is a new memoir from Chanel Miller, formerly known as Emily Doe, whose victim impact statement was widely read on BuzzFeed after her assailant, Brock Turner, was sentenced to six months in county jail for sexually assaulting her while she was unconscious. Viewed as companion pieces, the series and the book make a powerful statement about the ways the justice system betrays its promises to protect victims, putting their own character and credibility on trial when they try to speak up about someone else’s crime.
Considering the wishes and rights of the dead
[On Oct. 18, 2019], Prince’s estate surprise-dropped an acoustic demo (YouTube) of a 20-year-old Prince singing a sparse version of “I Feel For You,” the song Chaka Khan would later turn into a comeback hit in 1984 (YT). [...] Is the recording good? Undoubtedly. [...] What’s less clear? Whether we should have access to this recording, an early unfinished work by a notoriously private artist, at all. Reckoning with the Ethics of the Ever-Unfurling Prince Vault -- The demos, b-sides and rarities keep coming. How should we feel about listening? (Katie Cameron for Paste Magazine) Related: Rights of the Dead, a legal article by Kirsten Rabe Smolensky (full article PDF).
A man who sits at his computer and makes a MetaFilter post.
Japan's Best Boring Halloween Costumes [Kotaku]
“...at this annual event in Japan, participants are trying to do something far simpler—boring, even. This event is called “Jimi Halloween” (地味ハロウィン), with jimi (地味) meaning “mundane,” “plain,” or “subdued.” [...] Here are some of the best mundane costumes: Someone who cannot get a seat at the food court in the mall. The costume of a person wearing black clothing that has played with a cat. This woman is dressed as a person who is taking a photo of a meal. The person who cleans the escalator’s handrail. Someone about to win Old Maid. This man is dressed as a right-handed person. A person who is drinking a hot beverage. This is a costume of a person who would get mistaken as store staff at an eyeglasses shop. A person who has just purchased an umbrella the moment it stops raining. A guy who can’t find where his seat is at the baseball stadium.”
dying isn’t just about the one person doing the dying
A Woman’s Work: Till Death Do Us Part: Carolita Johnson considers the emotional and physical labor required of women as their loved ones die.
[Longreads] "I’ve come to understand [...] dying isn’t just about the one person doing the dying. It’s an undertaking woven by and around many people, and this has a certain beauty."
Here among the flowers I lie/Laughing everlastingly.
India's Roopkund is a lake filled with hundreds of skeletons. Previous study had concluded that everyone had been killed by a catastrophic hailstorm, but new research indicates that the skeletons are not all from the same time period or even the same geographic area. What killed the visitors to Skeleton Lake?
Ohio court offers human trafficking victims recovery, not punishment
Ten years ago, Judge Paul Herbert [...] noticed a trend. He was seeing lots of women who were abused and forced into sex work, but they were being treated like criminals. "The sheriff brings the next defendant out on the wall chained up," Herbert says, "and it's a woman and she's all beat up, she's looking exactly like one of these victims of domestic violence except she's in handcuffs and a jail suit. I look down at the file and it says prostitute." Herbert realized the law didn't recognize these women as victims of human trafficking. So he pitched the idea of a courtroom dedicated to recovery, not punishment. It's called CATCH Court, which stands for Changing Actions To Change Habits. A Pioneering Ohio Courtroom Helps Trafficking Victims Find Hope (NPR)
Democracy At Work
“This is the most ambitious plan on corporate ownership ever put out by a presidential candidate,” Peter Gowan, with the Democracy Collaborative, an economic inequality-focused research institution, said. “[This is] giving real bones to Sanders’ vision of democratic socialism.” Bernie Sanders’s plan to reshape corporate America, explained (Vox)
meehkweelimankwiki myaamiaki aancihseeciki
"173 years ago this week, the United States government began the forced removal of Myaamia people from our historic homelands in the Wabash River Valley. On October 6, 1846, Myaamia people boarded canal boats near Iihkipihsinonki ‘the Straight Place’ (Peru, Indiana) and on the next day loading concluded near Kiihkayonki ‘Fort Wayne, Indiana.’ All told, in just over a month of forced travel, over 320 Myaamia people were moved via canals and rivers to Kanza Landing (Kansas City, Missouri) in the Unorganized Indian Territory. At least seven Myaamia people died on the journey and many more died over the following winter."
cat-proofing (ha) an upholstered bench
I have a very nice piano bench which I use daily. Our cats also use it daily and have done an impressive job of ripping apart the upholstery. I'm getting it reupholstered, understanding that nothing will be impervious to cat claws what are my longest lasting best looking material options? Suede? Rawhide? Microfiber?
Yes. The sandwich is good.
“In press releases and interviews, fast-food corporations don’t call consumers “customers”; instead, they’re “fans.” Meanwhile, these gimmicks do nothing to ameliorate the larger issues surrounding the fast food economy, from environmental degradation to union-busting. According to PayScale, the average Popeyes employee makes $9.15 an hour. With this sandwich frenzy, they’ll be overworked with no increase in compensation.” The clamor over Popeyes’ new chicken sandwich is just the latest example of how fast-food marketing infiltrates our lives. (Outline) 'I was working like a slave': Exhausted Popeyes employees describe a harrowing situation amid chicken-sandwich chaos, including working 60-hour weeks and shifts with no breaks (Business Insider) “The fast food industry is the most unequal in the country, with employees occupying the position of the lowest-paid American workers, while the CEOs are some of the highest paid.” Could we imagine a Democratic Socialist fast food system? (Jacobin)
Back At It Again...This Time in Canada
Someone in Oxford County, ON has made off with $187,000 worth of cheese, after they used forged documents to steal the shipment.
The Woman With 200 Kids
Over the past 30 years, Cindy Stirling has fostered runaways, orphans, teen sex workers, abuse victims and cancer patients. Portrait of a supermom. (Luc Rinaldi, Toronto Life)
more weird and magnificent mustelids
The greater grison is Central America's answer to the honey badger. (It is largely greater in relation to the lesser grison, which lives a ways further south.) Grisons have been difficult to study on account of small heads and thick necks, making radio-collars especially difficult. Unusually for a mammal, the grison seems to be mostly diurnal. They are said to be relatively tameable as pets, and are undeniably adorable when young.
Cat dandruff
Mrs. Beasley has dandruff. Omega-3 supplements see to be the way to go. However, I positively hate the smell of fish. Do you have experience treating cat dandruff with a product that won't make me gag? Cat tax. (Yes, she is staring into your soul.)
Joy in Mudville
Mud is not a lucrative business. This might seem simultaneously self-evident and strange: It’s mud, but it’s an essential piece of a multibillion-dollar business, a feature without which an official baseball game cannot be played. Mud Maker: The Man Behind MLB’s Essential Secret Sauce
A penny sawed is a penny earned
Canadian artist Micah Adams uses a jeweller’s saw to surgically disassemble coins into tiny clippings, collages and collections. More at designlines.
"That has to be addressed…because pain is complicating recovery."
He’d been kept alive with breathing and feeding tubes, and until a month before his birthday party in January 2016, he’d been known only as “Sixty-Six Garage.” That was the name on his hospital bracelet, the name on the door to his room, the name on the sign above his bed, the name the state of California used to pay the nursing home for his care. It’s the name he probably would have been buried with if Ed Kirkpatrick, director of the Villa Coronado Skilled Nursing Facility, hadn’t let me into Room 20 — Garage’s room.
Joanne Faryon in the LA Times: Who is he, and is it possible he's conscious? (via)
Joanne Faryon in the LA Times: Who is he, and is it possible he's conscious? (via)
how have I made it this long without knowing about this instrument?
Senegalese musician Salliou playing the cas cas, Gorée Island, Dakar, Senegal. January 5th 2018. The instrument is made by connecting two small, bean-filled gourds with a string. Another video of Salliou, also filmed for the Music of Senegal documentary. (via)
#29Leaks
“But the most important stories that will gradually be yielded from these materials will concern the looting of public resources, which institutions across the West have continued to facilitate despite the incalculable damage that results to entire populations. In 2016 Bullough summarized the Yanukovych affair – and much else – as follows: “If it was difficult for a Brit to discover that a registered address at 29 Harley Street was meaningless, it was even harder for a Ukrainian… investigative journalists in Kiev could see that a piece of state-owned land in a forest outside the capital had been illegally privatised, but they did not know who by.” This London Firm Helps The Wealthy Hide Assets - Or Steal Them. Thankfully We Have 15 Years Of Their Client Communications
Do More Than Vote
Shit’s Totally Fucked: A Mutual Aid Explainer (7:45) How to help in the current crisis beyond voting or calling your representatives via community bail funds, immigration support networks, labor donation, and more.
My Brother's Keeper, lliterally?
This was/still is me, now I'm back for another question regarding my brother this time.
“When he smiles at the camera, it’s almost impossible not to smile back”
Silent film clip appears to show Louis Armstrong as a teenager
according to jazz historian James Karst, writing in 64 Parishes. The magazine has uploaded the eight-second clip to YouTube. Gwen Thompkins writes about the footage for The New Yorker in the short essay
An Eight-Second Film of 1915 New Orleans and the Mystery of Louis Armstrong’s Happiness.
lightweight non-sweater-y cardigans
I have a few cardigans that are my workday staples, but they're ancient. My three favorites are sort of a jersey-like polyester fabric (sort of like a technical/wicking fabric, but no need for actual athletic performance). A bit fitted/tailored (generally wear over short sleeve or sleeveless tops), not super loose and drapey. Can you help me find new ones (more inside)?
How to give my wonderful renter my house after I die .
I have an income property i want to know how to deed the house to the long time renter, What is the best way to do this without letting her know until after I've given up the mortal coil , I qualify for SS now and the income from rent has been a huge help , the house is completely free and clear, is there a particular trust deed that can make this happen twenty years from now.
My closest family member already has a dozen houses .
Best budgeting apps
I’m looking for a budgeting app. I’m currently trialling YNAB but am not completely satisfied with it. I need something that:
The 10 levels of jazz guitar
Young Swedish guitarist Lucas Brar shows how to play Summertime by Gershwin in 10 different ways. Starts at 0:28. Full Channel here.
Stopette: industrial design, and interpretive dance
Jules Montenier was a cosmetic chemist who improved antiperspirant, making them less irritating to the skin, and developed a new squeeze-bottle applicator with the product name of Stopette (Cosmetics and Skin). He became sponsor of What's My Line? (Old Time [Radio]), as seen in this collection of ads. But wait, one of them is not like the rest. That would be Dorothy Jarnac's Stopette pantomime. She's more than the Deodorant Dancer -- Miss Jarnac started out as an exponent of the classical ballet, but her sense of humor got the upper hand and she gained some small renown for interpretive dance (Periodically Vintage).
#OurHouseisAlwaysFullofLaughter
You've probably seen the video of comedian DJ Pryor discussing the season finale of Empire with his earnestly babbling son Kingston. Denny's used the two of them in a Father's Day ad, and Chris Cuomo interviewed them for CNN. Here's more Kingston, and here's the family's Facebook page.
Chump protest sign, UK edition
I work in healthcare and I have a small baby. We'll be marching against Trump tomorrow in London. Can you help me with some suggestions for a sign (or two)? I'd like to especially address the wretched anti-choice, anti-child, and anti-immigrant policies currently being enacted by the US government, but open to other suggestions as well! Thanks in advance!
Presidential politics at-a-glance
I’m looking for a source that provides all (!!!) of the 2020 presidential candidates’ positions on key issues in one place. If it’s somehow in a chart format that would be great, but straight text is fine. Any ideas?
"Everybody feels free here"
Much has happened in the past 30 years to try to give disabled people a life that looks the same as for anyone without special needs. People who would have at one time been institutionalized are living in group homes. Sheltered workshops are closing as people are moving into integrated workplaces that embrace what’s called the “neurodiversity” movement. And social opportunities are growing to include specific dating sites, cruises and proms. But adults with disabilities, like Jones, yearn for more opportunities to socialize. Club 1111 is unique for how often it is held — once a month — and for how many people it draws. Local, state and national advocates are not aware of another event like it anywhere in the country.
What to expect when you're aging
As I age into my retirement years (I'll turn 65 by the end of the year), I'm finding that there's a lot of adjustments involved. I could really use some help knowing what to expect and what challenges I'll confront as this happens. I don't really have people in my social circle I could ask about that. But I think of you folks as solons who have so much wisdom to share if I can only ask the question precisely enough.
Solidarity Is a Force Stronger Than Gravity
"Our great task today — your task and my task, is to build a labor movement for this new century — a labor movement for all of America’s workers — a labor movement as big and bold as America itself "On May 10, 2019, Association of Flight Attendants president Sara Nelson gave a speech to the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America’s annual Eugene Debs–Lucy Gonzalez Parsons–A. Philip Randolph Dinner. We reproduce the speech here in full, lightly edited for online publication. (Jacobin) "When I mention Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA), to people in the labor movement, the response is usually something like: “I would follow her to the gates of hell.” Sara Nelson Is Not Afraid To Strike Back (The Nation) " A few hours of training is not a just transition. The transition needs to begin before the jobs go away. A just transition must ensure pensions and healthcare are protected for workers who spent their lives powering our country in the fossil fuel industries." The Green New Deal Needs Labor’s Support. We Asked Sara Nelson How To Get It. (In These Times)
Straight from the CAT-alogue!
The Library of Congress has released a set of free to use cat images selected by LOC staff experts.
We Are Still The 99%
“Occupy was in many, many ways a shit show,” Nicole Carty, a Brooklyn activist who was a facilitator at Occupy, told me. “But it deserves props, it really does, for unleashing this energy.” Occupy Wall Street was seen as a failure when it ended in 2011. But it’s helped transform the American left.
sights and sounds of a soaked city
The New York Times' Past Tense Blog put together a series of photos of vintage New York in the rain, paired with soundscapes by Craig Henighan. When a hard rain descends on New York, the whole city feels it. Traffic stands still, puddles get deceptively deep and even the most intrepid of us cowers in the wakes of passing cabs. Any object an unsuspecting pedestrian is carrying quickly becomes a makeshift umbrella, and actual umbrellas quickly become hazards themselves, catching the wind or flipping inside out. "When it rains, it’s a whole different scene. Things happen. People forget about you. If they see you, they don’t go putting on airs. They’re the way they are.”
“I want to apologise.”
The subreddit r/iwanttoapologize catalogues video clips of gaming world glitches that lead to bizarre, absurd and highly amusing moments. In Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V, for instance, a protagonist invites you for a drink and then immediately rams their car into a gas station and explodes. In Bethesda's Oblivion, a sorcerer wishes you a jovial “Farewell”, before a rising floor crushes him in a spike trap. In Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts, Donald Duck waddles to take cover from a snowstorm. “The snowstorm can’t get us here,” he says – then quack-screams as it promptly blows him away. These clips, which players either engineer or come across by chance, are bizarre, silly and gleefully illogical. [via: Wired]
In Kākāpō breeding season news…
Kākāpō (previously on MetaFilter) are having a record breeding season: more than 76 chicks have hatched from 49 out of the 50 breeding females. Since there are only 147 adult Kākāpō on the planet (so few that Wikipedia lists every one of them by name) this is a very big deal. And in breaking Kākāpō news, Solstice just laid another 3 eggs last night - her third nest this year!
Free reign on global trade is what corporate titans hope for
“Much of the modern economy, pioneered by Walmart, is reliant upon increasingly complex supply chains that push production costs down onto subcontractors, giving them incentive to wring every cent of profit out of workers and protecting large corporations from responsibility. This must end. Companies claim they cannot patrol their supply chains but this is a choice. They do a great job of controlling for cost and quality, yet when it comes to labor standards, they plead ignorance. That is not acceptable. If a Walmart supplier refuses to pay its workers the minimum wage, then Walmart is responsible for that by choosing that contractor. Holding Walmart financially accountable for its supply chains through U.S. courts would alone raise global workplace standards.” The Democrats’ Yawning Silence on Trade (Boston Review)