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Tuesday, November 27, 2018

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

Donny Hathaway - This Christmas

What Is Quantum Computing? | Mach | NBC News

Artist Transforms Bubble Wrap Into An Impressionist Painting

Why Don't We Ever Call White Extremists Terrorists? (HBO)

Why Are College Textbooks So Expensive?

Round-the-Clock Church Services

An excerpt from the Huffington Post -

Church Holds Continuous Worship Service To Prevent Family’s Deportation
Dutch police aren’t allowed to enter churches during services. So a Netherlands church is worshipping 24/7 to protect a family of asylum-seekers.
By Carol Kuruvilla

After hearing that a refugee family faced imminent deportation, a Netherlands church sprung into action ― and members have continued stepping up for over one month.

Bethel, a church and community center in The Hague, has taken dramatic steps to protect the Tamrazyans, an Armenian family of five asylum-seekers who have lived in the Netherlands for nine years. The government has reportedly denied the family’s asylum request and approved them for deportation ― even though there’s a law in place that allows children who have lived in the country for over five years to be eligible for a residence permit, if they also fulfill other requirements. The Tamrazyans applied for a permit under that law and were denied, according to Bethel.

Knowing that Dutch law prevents police officers from entering houses of worship during religious services, church members decided to hold a nonstop worship service at Bethel that would allow the Tamrazyans to take shelter in the church.

The continuous worship service started on Oct. 26 at 1:30 p.m. ― and it hasn’t stopped since.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/church-worship-service-continuous-asylum_us_5bfd636ae4b03b230fa72d08




The Classic Taste of Pigs Feet in Jelly

Ion drive: The first flight

Saturday, November 24, 2018

Mahershala Ali Reveals Real Name

Inspired and Inspiring Reader


Ex NFL player Martellus Bennett says his biggest splurge is books — and he has 3,500 of them from CNBC.

1921 Tulsa Race Riot Survivor Dies

An excerpt from the AP -

1 of the last survivors of 1921 Tulsa race riot dies at 103
By KEN MILLER

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Olivia Hooker, one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race riots and among the first black women in the U.S. Coast Guard, has died. She was 103.

Hooker was 6 years old when one of the worst race riots in U.S. history broke out and destroyed much of a Tulsa neighborhood known as “Black Wall Street.” She hid under a table as a torch-carrying mob destroyed her family’s home, she told National Public Radio in an interview this year.

She recalled hearing the mob use an axe to destroy her sister’s piano. For a child, she said, it was horrifying trying to keep quiet.

“The most shocking was seeing people you’d never done anything to irritate would just, took it upon themselves to destroy your property because they didn’t want you to have those things,” said Hooker, who died this week at her home in New York, according to her goddaughter.

The number of deaths from the riot was never confirmed, but estimates vary from about three dozen to 300 or more. The violence began after a black man allegedly assaulted a white woman in an elevator in Tulsa.

https://apnews.com/5834f70be49645669f4aae2a4570d242

Friday, November 23, 2018

The Lion King Official Teaser Trailer



How Great Thou Art

Smoking vs Juuling

Best way to open pomegranates

Fantasia - What Christmas Means To Me

Ne-Yo - I Want To Come Home for Christmas

Mario - Someday At Christmas

Rami Malek was a bad, bad boy | The Graham Norton Show | BBC America

If You Only Knew: Bill Maher

Press Conference With Baby Steph Curry and Baby LeBron

Allen Stone - Taste Of You (feat. Jamie Lidell) (Live at Sound Emporium)

Vince Guaraldi Trio - Christmas Time Is Here (Instrumental)

Cory Henry - Love's In Need of Love Today (Stevie Wonder cover on Harpejji)

TĂș Me Acostumbraste featuring Omara Portuondo (En Manos de Los Macorinos)

Why Cuba’s Streets Are Filled With Classic Cars

A Clueless Clown

An excerpt from the Washington Post -

Trump is not a champion of human rights. He is a clueless clown.
By Eugene Robinson

In Riyadh, they must be laughing at President Trump. In Pyongyang, too, and in Tehran. In Beijing and, of course, in Moscow, they must be laughing until it hurts. They look at Washington and they don’t see a champion of freedom and human rights. They see a preening, clueless clown.

Trump’s reaction — or non-reaction — to the Saudi regime’s brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a holiday-season gift to autocrats around the globe. It shows them that if you just shower Trump with over-the-top flattery, feed him some geopolitical mumbo jumbo and make vague promises to perhaps buy some American-made goods in the future, he will literally let you get away with murder.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-not-a-champion-of-human-rights-he-is-a-clueless-clown/2018/11/22/979a1342-edd7-11e8-8679-934a2b33be52_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b8d4ef2aef5a

Thursday, November 22, 2018

How the screens inside movies build fictional worlds

Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance - Sheku Kanneh-Mason - Hall...

Where babies in movies come from

Shape Of You - Ed Sheeran by Ndlovu Youth Choir and Wouter Kellerman (fl...

The most feared song in jazz, explained

Tonina Saputo - Historia de un amor (Berklee Mediterranean Music Institu...

Aunt Vivian's Sweet Potato Pie

PJ Morton feat. YEBBA How Deep Is Your Love ‘Gumbo Unplugged’

Powerful

An excerpt from the Atlantic -

Letters: ‘I Want to Grow Up to Be Someone That Fights for Families Like Yours’
Teenagers in California respond to the story of a mother and son separated at the border.

‘The Separation Was So Long. My Son Has Changed So Much.’

In September, Jeremy Raff reported on the story of Anita and Jenri, a mother and her six-year-old son. Anita and Jenri fled Honduras and crossed the Rio Grande on a raft near McAllen, Texas, in mid-June; they immediately turned themselves over to Border Patrol and asked for asylum. In accordance with Trump administration policy, agents separated Anita and Jenri; they were detained 25 miles apart from one another for a month before a lawyer helped them reunite.


Christsna Sot, an eighth grade teacher at Impact Academy of Arts in Hayward, California, showed Raff’s video to his students, who wrote letters to Anita and Jenri. Here is a selection of those letters.

https://www.theatlantic.com/letters/archive/2018/11/eighth-graders-respond-story-family-separation/574024/

A Quiet Impact

An excerpt from the New York Times -

How a $15,000 Movie Rallied a New Generation of Black Auteurs
By Reggie Ugwu

It’s not so hard to find them now. But nearly 10 years ago, when they appeared in “Medicine for Melancholy,” the first film by the “Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins, characters like Micah and Jo’ — young, black, financially overdrawn but rolling in polished pop culture references — were, if not exactly unicorns, a protected species, rare enough to be worthy of tapping the person next to you and spreading the word.

Aimless and anxious 20-somethings in popular culture were nothing new, of course. But they tended to be monochromatic, as if early-onset ennui and the shallow comforts of art snobbery were the exclusive inventions of white people.

So cinephiles at the time took note when, seemingly out of nowhere, came a convincing counternarrative in the form of “Medicine.” It followed Micah and Jo’, a would-be couple whose one-night stand stretched fitfully into two, as they walked and biked around an artfully desaturated San Francisco, waxing on about indie rock and Barbara Loden in one breath, and black identity, the politics of interracial relationships and gentrification in the next.

~~~~~~~~~~

With Jenkins’s third film, “If Beale Street Could Talk,” due next month, the people who made “Medicine” as well as prominent admirers — including Lena Waithe (“Master of None,” “The Chi”), Justin Simien (“Dear White People”) and Terence Nance (“Random Acts of Flyness”) — discussed its outsize legacy and quiet influence.




https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/movies/medicine-for-melancholy-black-auteurs.html

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Allowance by App

An excerpt from the New York Times -

How Parents Teach Smart Spending With Apps, Not Cash
By Ann Carrns

Jonathan and Erin Kraftchick started out by paying their two children’s allowance the old-fashioned way, using paper money.

“I tried the cash thing,” said Mr. Kraftchick, an accountant and financial-literacy advocate in Raleigh, N.C. First, they used glass jars, then switched to a system that involved slipping money for different purposes into separate paper envelopes, for each child.

But keeping up with multiple envelopes became unwieldy.

“It’s a lot of hassle,” Ms. Kraftchick, an artist, said with a laugh.

So when Mr. Kraftchick read about a “smart” debit card called goHenry earlier this year, he quickly signed the family up for an account.

~~~~~~~~~~

“We got tired of having a drawer full of dollars,” said Brandi Tzonev, a sales manager and personal trainer in Lawrenceville, Ga., who uses goHenry with her 15-year-old son, Alex, and 10-year-old daughter, Gabriella.

Some banks have long had accounts aimed at children and teenagers, and many families use prepaid debit cards — rather than traditional debit cards, linked to a checking account — as a way to help children manage money. But the newest generation of “smart” debit cards are managed by advanced mobile apps that give parents detailed control over how much the young people spend — and even where they spend — with a few taps on a phone.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/business/children-allowance-apps.html?action=click&module=Discovery&pgtype=Homepage

Carry-On Packing Hacks

In praise of tater tots

Zoe Devalia, music-loving student and peer mediator at her school | Cana...

The Dance Troupe Inspiring Beyoncé

Maurice Ashley - Reveling in the Ultimate Thinker’s Game as a Chess Gran...

How Bamboo Bikes Are Helping This Community

Sunday, November 11, 2018

Ariana Grande | thank u, next | Jeremy Green | Viola Cover

Joshua Radin - I Missed You (Official Music Video)

Joshua Radin - I'd Rather Be With You

What Would He Think

An excerpt from the Washington Post -

I was Pat Tillman’s wife, but I can’t speak for him. Neither can you.
By Marie Tillman

I think that patriotism is complex, like Pat himself. It is not blind or unquestioning. And it’s a fool’s errand to argue over who’s allowed to claim sacrifice. Many of the kneeling athletes say they are protesting as American patriots who want the nation to be better than it is. When I look around at the vitriol aimed at them for expressing their beliefs, and at the compulsion to simplify complicated issues to pit people on opposing sides, I want to kneel, too. Because I believe we are at our best as Americans when we engage in constructive dialogue around our differences with the goal of understanding one another.

This mind-set is where change happens, progress is made and bridges are built. I believe that in our hearts we are all the same: We all want our children to be healthy and safe and to have opportunities. We may have significant differences in how we think we should get there, but divisive rhetoric will only deepen the chasm and make us forget all that we share.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-was-pat-tillmans-wife-but-i-cant-speak-for-him-neither-can-you/2018/11/08/18374652-d8a0-11e8-83a2-d1c3da28d6b6_story.html?utm_term=.6b244a1f165c

Kane Brown - American Bad Dream (Audio)

Saturday, November 10, 2018

Luke Bryan - Most People Are Good

This Punk Band is Made Up Entirely of Robots

How Hard It Is To Drive A Firetruck

The Very Hungry Caterpillar - Animated Film

He’s America’s First Hotel Concierge

Where Dads Learn to be Dads

The Rise And Fall Of Barnes & Noble

Artist Went From Bankruptcy To Viral Sensation

Getting Into Harvard

An excerpt from the NY Times -

Getting Into Harvard Is Hard. Here Are 4 Ways Applicants Get an Edge.
By Anemona Hartocollis

Harvard gives advantages to recruited athletes (A’s); legacies (L’s), or the children of Harvard graduates; applicants on the dean’s or director’s interest list (D’s), which often include the children of very wealthy donors and prominent people, mostly white; and the children (C’s) of faculty and staff. ALDCs make up only about 5 percent of applicants but 30 percent of admitted students.

While being an A.L.D.C. helps — their acceptance rate is about 45 percent, compared with 4.5 to 5 percent for the rest of the pool — it is no guarantee. (One of those rejected despite being a legacy was the judge in the federal case, Allison D. Burroughs. She went to Middlebury College instead.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/us/getting-into-harvard.html

Talking to a Jacka**

Friday, November 9, 2018

What Gay Conversion Therapy Is Really Like

Finding Peace at the Spot



https://bittersoutherner.com/why-am-i-on-this-stage-ray-christian-storyteller?utm_source=The+Bitter+News&utm_campaign=3fa05c3f0f-97s_2018_11_09&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8269ec3593-3fa05c3f0f-92175213&goal=0_8269ec3593-3fa05c3f0f-92175213&mc_cid=3fa05c3f0f&mc_eid=0b6dd8ed2d

Calling It Like It Is

An excerpt from the Atlantic -

America's Problem Isn't Tribalism—It's Racism
Only one of America’s major political parties relies on stoking hatred and fear against those outside its coalition.
By Adam Serwer

In the fallout from Tuesday’s midterm elections, many political analysts have concluded that blue America and red America are ever more divided, ever more at each other’s throats. But calling this “tribalism” is misleading, because only one side of this divide remotely resembles a coalition based on ethnic and religious lines, and only one side has committed itself to a political strategy that relies on stoking hatred and fear of the other. By diagnosing America’s problem as tribalism, chin-stroking pundits and their sorrowful semi-Trumpist counterparts in Congress have hidden the actual problem in American politics behind a weird euphemism.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/racism-not-tribalism/575173/

Don't Be This Guy

They Do It Better

An excerpt from CNN -

10 things the UAE does better than anywhere else
By Manar Al Hinai

The United Arab Emirates is famous for its relentless sunshine, its golden dunes that roll on for miles and some of the most ambitious, opulent building projects of modern times.

But it's not all super-tall skyscrapers and shifting sands. The country founded just 47 years ago by the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan is now home to more than 200 nationalities and a world pioneer in many sectors.

Each year, we welcome millions of tourists from around the world to explore the rich and diverse experiences that our Arabian gem has to offer.

Here are 10 things that make the UAE special when you travel here:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/uae-reasons-to-visit/index.html

From FAMU to the Daily Show

An excerpt from the Tallahassee Democrat -

Roy Wood Jr. of 'The Daily Show' grew into comedy at FAMU
By Mark Hinson

"The Daily Show with Trevor Noah" LIVE Election Night coverage
Getty Images

Stand-up Roy Wood Jr. was a student at FAMU in the late ‘90s when he took the Greyhound Bus from Tallahassee to do the opening spot at an Atlanta comedy club.

He bombed. Stunk up the joint. Tanked.

“They rattled their keys at me,” Wood, 39, said on the phone and chuckled from Manhattan recently. “The worst part of them rattling their keys is that they do it under the table. You can’t tell who is rattling and who is not.”

Instead of leaving, Wood stuck around to learn from other comics performing that night. Maybe he could get a few pointers. That is when a server walked up to his table.

“There is a two-drink minimum at this club,” she said.

“But I’m talent, I did comedy earlier tonight,” Wood said.

“No, you didn’t,” she said, offering a withering critique.

Wood ordered two bottles of water and then took the bus home. Chalk it up to tough lesson learned. He has never forgotten the trip.

https://www.tallahassee.com/story/entertainment/2018/11/07/roy-wood-jr-daily-show-comedy-central-famu-trevor-noah/1905991002/

Winners in Texas




An excerpt from Upworthy -

19 black women ran for Texas county judge posts. Every single candidate won.
by Leo Shvedsky



Tuesday night’s midterm elections had a series of historic firsts, including a record-breaking year for female candidates across the nation. but the results out of one Texas county may be the most feel good story of the year.

In Harris County Texas, 19 black woman ran for judge posts. And guess what? Every single candidate won their campaign.

https://www.upworthy.com/19-black-women-ran-for-texas-county-judge-posts-every-single-candidate-won?c=upw1

This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

"A Change is Gonna Come" Brian Owens and Thomas Owens

How a black woman took down one of America's most notorious mob bosses

This Black Man Had His Own Car Company 100 Years Ago. | Frederick D. Pat...

British Airways - Kingdom Choir On Board Performance

HBCU!

An excerpt from the Huffington Post -

The Candidates Embracing Their Black-College Roots
Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams are part of a wave of black politicians who are playing up their HBCU bona fides, and in turn raising the profile of the beleaguered institutions.
By ADAM HARRIS

Another, perhaps unforeseen renaissance, however, has been the rise of black politicians who graduated from these colleges. In addition to Gillum, Stacey Abrams, a gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, and Mandela Barnes, a candidate for lieutenant governor in Wisconsin, both attended historically black colleges. The prospect of so many black-college graduates being elected to statewide office in the same year is unprecedented, Keneshia Grant, an assistant professor of political science at Howard University, told me.

Now, of course, there are HBCU alums across all levels of government. Senator Kamala Harris graduated from Howard University, and the mayors of Atlanta, New Orleans, and Birmingham—all of whom were elected in 2017—also attended HBCUs. And there have previously been governors who attended black colleges: In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the governor of Virginia and the first elected black governor in the United States. In the 1870s, there was P. B. S. Pinchback, who very briefly served as the governor of Louisiana. These candidates—Abrams, Gillum, and Barnes—are continuing that black political tradition.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/11/gillum-abrams-and-blue-wave-hbcu-politicians/574921/?utm_source=feed

VOTE!

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Barbra Streisand Carpool Karaoke

Maryland Zoo Made A LEGO Wheelchair For An Injured Turtle

Kobe opens up about LeBron, Shaq, Jordan and others | NBA Sound

The importance of civics lessons

SHUT UP AND DRIBBLE (2018) Official Trailer | LeBron James SHOWTIME Series

Comfortable in His Skin

An excerpt from HuffPost -

Andrew Gillum Is At Home With His Blackness
Florida’s Democratic nominee for governor is black in a way that is commonplace in real life but basically nonexistent in high-level American politics.
By Julia Craven

See, it’s homecoming, y’all. And Gillum is a fixture of FAMU’s homecoming parade. They love him here, not in the way that fans love a celebrity or adherents love their leader. It’s simpler than that — something like a mother doting on a long-lost son. Except that Gillum is at home here. He served on the Tallahassee City Commission from 2003 to 2014 before he was elected mayor, a position he has held since. He’s a Rattler, having graduated from the university in 2003. This is his element.

Around here, Gillum needs no introduction, and he don’t meet no strangers. These are his talents. He is at home everywhere, and everywhere he is loved like someone who finally came home.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/andrew-gillum-florida-governor-race_us_5bdc8bc1e4b09d43e31ec713

A Grim Education: 72 Years of School Shootings





http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/school-shooting-survivors.html

Three Little Birds