Black Superheroes

From The Root - 

Why Do All the Superheroes Have to Be White, and All the Thugs Black?

Michael B. Jordan pushes back against critics of his colorblind casting as Johnny Storm in the Fantastic Four and encourages the Internet trolls to look beyond stereotypes.

BY: KIRSTEN WEST SAVALI

Posted: May 27 2015 11:42 AM

 

Actor Michael B. Jordan LOIC VENANCE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

It seems as if some white people have had a deep investment in the “white superhero” since the creation of blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus, and now that noxious narcissism has spilled over into pushback against Marvel’s Fantastic Four.

Michael B. Jordan, who rose to fame portraying 22-year-old Oscar Grant in 2013’s Fruitvale Station,has been tapped to play Johnny Storm (“the Human Torch”) in the popular film franchise. Since the news broke, racist trolls, mostly white men, have come out of the woodwork in comment sectionsand on social media, decrying the lack of “authenticity” of a black Storm. He must remain blond-haired and blue-eyed, or else. Because, clearly, no little white boy feverishly reading his comic books under the covers with a flashlight dreams of one day being a powerful black man, right?

There is little doubt that forced diversity can potentially weaken a story when it’s a clear departure from that story’s truth. This is not the case, however, with director Josh Trank’s “contemporary reimagining of Marvel’s original and longest-running superhero team.” Drawing inspiration from his own multiracial family, Trank's goal is to normalize that representation in film, a medium that traditionally relies on a racially homogeneous family structure that no longer reflects America. This makes sense. Still, so-called comic book purists are actually upset because Storm, a fictional teen who transports to another galaxy and gains superpowers through cosmic radiation, thus arming him for an epic battle against Dr. Doom, is no longer white.

Yeah ... no. That’s not how any of this works.

Jordan responded to criticism with a forthright essay in Entertainment Weekly, writing in part the following:

Sometimes you have to be the person who stands up and says, “I’ll be the one to shoulder all this hate. I’ll take the brunt for the next couple of generations.” I put that responsibility on myself. People are always going to see each other in terms of race, but maybe in the future we won’t talk about it as much. Maybe, if I set an example, Hollywood will start considering more people of color in other prominent roles, and maybe we can reach the people who are stuck in the mindset that “it has to be true to the comic book.” Or maybe we have to reach past them.

To the trolls on the Internet, I want to say: Get your head out of the computer. Go outside and walk around. Look at the people walking next to you. Look at your friends’ friends and who they’re interacting with. And just understand this is the world we live in.

Unfortunately, the world we live in breeds the criticism Jordan is receiving. Some mainstream media outlets seem hell-bent on amplifying the parallel myths of white superiority and black inferiority. African-American men in particular are primarily packaged as “thugs,” wrapped in pathology so stifling that even when the opportunity presents itself, mainstream media won’t let them breathe. They don’t get to be heroes.

This dogged determination to negatively stereotype black people—first in Ferguson, Mo., then in Baltimore—has become craftier in recent weeks. In the Waco, Texas, “Wild West” shootout between rival biker gangs, esteemed outlets such as CNNwent out of their way to profile one African-American biker out of 170 men arrested, the vast majority of them white. When the federal government raided medical facilities (“pill mills”) that illegally sell and distribute prescription pain pills in a concerted effort to “crack down on prescription pain-drug abuse,” NBC featured the arrests of African-American medical professionals—despite 280 arrests being made over 15 months, and despite recent research by Recovery.org that found that white men are overwhelmingly the face of prescription-drug addiction.

That dedication to privileging and protecting whiteness is also evident in film, making Jordan one of only a few black actors to ever be placed in the barrier-breaking position he now finds himself. Typically, Hollywood executives will find a way to make a character white—accuracy be damned. We’ve seen it with Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart, Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatraand the whitewashing of the Exodus cast, because who cares about geography when there is a prime opportunity to paint black characters as the thugs of Mesopotamia.

In both fantasy and reality, what is seen as power when wrapped in whiteness is often viewed as threat when wrapped in blackness. This sets the stage for a daily fight in which black people in this country often struggle to be acknowledged as human beings. That being the case, Michael B. Jordan’s playing Johnny Storm, a black man with superhuman powers, in a predominantly white and historically racist genre is bound to be framed as “controversy” instead of what it really is: good ol’ boys rebelling against the slow dethroning of the “white savior.”

What has become more and more clear is that the myth of white superiority partly relies on the perpetuation of white supremacy in dark movie theaters, where prejudices and biases can hide behind overpriced popcorn and Twizzlers.

Michael B. Jordan is simply turning the lights on.

Maps That Tell Our Story

It's not pretty.

http://www.vox.com/2015/5/27/8618261/america-maps-truths

Brown Ballerinas: Inside the Dance Theatre of Harlem | Mashable

App Guides Kids in Making Good Choices

This app is kinda pricey at $6.99, but it looks like it could be a lifesaver for some kids who need help in getting things done.

https://appsto.re/us/u2V-C.i

Next Step For Lifelong Friendships?

Welcome To “Bestie Row”: Lifelong Friends Build Row Of Tiny Houses In The Middle Of Nowhere.

By Lighter Side Staff  |  Read More

Some friendships last forever. You hear of lifelong friends often living in the same towns just so they can socialize whenever they wish, be a part of each other’s family lives, and finally grow to be the grey-haired besties who rock on the porch and talk about the “good ol’ days”.

Four couples who had been best friends for 20 years decided they were going to trump living in the same town. No way were they going to let the business of life keep them from enjoying that special connection that they’d grown to love. So they decided to literally create their own “Bestie Row.” They all were fans of the tiny house movement, and decided to build their own little compound based around that idea.

Because when you can say, “We’re going to be grey-haired friends,” you know you’ve found a bond that can only strengthen.

They employed the assistance of architect Matt Garcia to make their dream come true.

Via Alexander Stross

They purchased land along the Llano River, just outside of Austin, Texas.

Via Alexander Stross

At first they considered one large house. However, they realized that personal space is necessary for even the closest of friends.

Via Alexander Stros

Still, they wanted a space to commune together. So they built a 1,500 sq. ft. community building with a kitchen, dining area, and space for guests and activities.

Via Alexander Stross

Their individual homes are 400 sq. ft. cabins, running around $40,000 each.

Via Alexander Stross

Their community, dubbed “Llano Exit Strategy,” was designed to handle the harsh, arid Texas climate.

Via Alexander Stross

These buildings were designed for low environmental impact, and sustainability.

Via Alexander Stross

The solar heat is dramatically reduced by galvanized metal siding and spray foam insulation, which also helps keep heat in during the winter.

Via Alexander Stross

The roofs are sloped to angle rainwater runoff into water catchment tanks. In this kind of climate, every drop counts!

Via Alexander Stross

The “Hill Country” terrain is a beautiful place for raising families.

Via Alexander Stross

The interiors of the homes are designed to look like a cross between modern and rustic. The corrugated sheathing gives the modern feel.

Via Alexander Stross

The rustic, cozy feeling comes from barely treated wood which shows off all it the grainy details.

Via Alexander Stross

The 400 sq. ft. cabins have no trouble containing the needed living space and bathroom. A little creative space management goes a long way in making a tiny home comfortable.

Via Alexander Stross

After seeing a “Bestie Row” like this, I won’t be surprised to see more popping up in the near future!

Via Alexander Stross

The Guilt of Preferential Treatment

This article caught my eye because I could relate to the experiences shared here.  

I, too, have received preferential treatment because I'm African-American.

True confession - on the one hand I feel bad about it, but on the other, it's a rare experience that I've appreciated.  

The same is true when I given special considerations as a woman.  I feel bad about being able to walk up to the front of a line that snakes around a room with scores of men, but I appreciate being able to do it.

Is this what white privilege feels like? 

OK, now I feel bad.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From The Root -  

Being Black in Thailand: We’re Treated Better Than Africans, and Boy Do We Hate It

Black expats in Thailand and Australia describe the guilt they feel living fairly privileged lives in comparison with the discrimination that African immigrants and Aborigines face.

BY: DIANA OZEMEBHOYA EROMOSELE

Posted: May 26 2015 3:00 AM

In all fairness, the Thai police officer was absolutely right for approaching the swing set and telling Stephanie Stew’s friend—a grown woman in her 30s—to get off the swing. 

Even though Jane (for anonymity, we changed her name) was swinging next to her young daughter, the swing set was intended for young children, and the added weight of an adult could pose a safety risk.

But when the officer issued his request to Jane—a black woman he might have assumed was Ghanaian or Nigerian, living and working in Thailand—and she responded with her black Americanaccent, he immediately switched gears and insisted that it wasn’t a problem.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the Thai officer said. “You can stay.”

When he realized that she was a black American, Stew explained to The Root, the officer didn’t want to inconvenience Jane.

Stew—a 38-year-old black American who moved to Thailand last August with her husband and 3-year-old daughter—says that’s just one of the many examples of how African-American expats practically have the red carpet laid out for them in the Southeast Asian country and are treated like gold, especially when compared with the black African immigrants who live and work in Thailand and are treated like, well, less than gold, and at times like s--t.

“That’s not the first time,” Stew explained, “that someone has mistaken us for an African” and then dropped their attitude or condescension once they realized that Stew and her crew were, in fact, American.

“We’re treated better. ... We’re treated better,” Stew said twice, as if it’s an idea that she still can’t comprehend, or a guilt that’s just too hard for her to swallow.

‘We’re treated better. ... We’re treated better,’ Stew said twice, as if it’s an idea that she still can’t comprehend, or a guilt that’s just too hard for her to swallow.

Stew recalls the time an African hair-braiding stylist was trying to get up to a hotel room where Stew’s sister-in-law was staying so that she could braid her hair. The hotel receptionist would not let the African woman get past the lobby, thinking that the hairstylist was a prostitute—even though the woman was older and not dressed scantily—because what could an African woman possibly be doing in such an establishment? (Stew says the hotel was not that fancy.) Stew’s sister-in-law had to come down to the lobby and escort the hairstylist up to her room.

Tomasina Boone is experiencing something similar in Australia.

Boone—a 45-year-old black American who has been living Down Under with her husband and two daughters for eight years—immediately picked up on the way white Australians treated her, as opposed to the way they view and treat Aborigines—the country’s brown-skinned indigenous people who are perhaps more comparable to Native Americans of the U.S.

“It’s the craziest thing in the world. Australians do not view us as they view their Aboriginals,” Boone said. It’s a reality that bugs her because Aborigines view their treatment as comparable to the racism that black Americans experience in the U.S.

“I’ve never experienced racism here as a black American,” Boone put it plainly.

‘I’ve never experienced racism here as a black American,’ Boone put it plainly.

Stew and Boone are two black Americans living fairly privileged lives because of their ethnicity and nationality. Living—dare I say—like many young and middle-aged white Americans live in the U.S., since, on one hand, they’re not contributing to and certainly were not the perpetrators of the ethnic hierarchies in Thailand and Australia—hierarchies that place black Americans on a level several notches higher than that of Africans and Aborigines.

But while they certainly didn’t cause the discrimination, boy, are Stew and Boone inadvertently benefiting from it—and, at times, feeling awfully conflicted about that.

Stew described how she used to give the universal black-people greeting—the nod—to Africans she saw out and about in Thailand, but unfortunately the gesture wasn’t reciprocated.

“They don’t like African Americans,” Stew said matter-of-factly. She described how the Africans “look away” when she tries to make eye contact with them or when she tries to establish that quick bond that black people often form when they are among the few brown faces in a sea of white ones.

Stew says it’s a “weird feeling” because she wants to get to know the Africans but can’t, because “they don’t want to be bothered with us.”

Boone is not sitting back and taking comfort in the privileges she’s afforded. She is working to make sure that the Aborigines’ social standing in Australia improves. Fortunately for Boone, the Aborigines she has encountered are much more welcoming to African Americans (as opposed to what Stew is experiencing in Thailand) and are extremely impressed and inspired by the civil rights movement in the U.S.

“[The Aboriginals] call themselves black,” Boone said enthusiastically. She and other organizers held a viewing of the film Selma earlier this year to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Aborigines’ civil rights movement. Boone also takes her daughters to events and initiatives that advocate on behalf of aboriginal culture.

Both Boone and Stew point to “anti-immigration” as the type of “anti-black” racism present in both Australia and Thailand. It stems from the economic anxiety and concern that immigrants are coming into European and Asian countries and taking low-paying jobs from working-class communities.

That kind of discrimination is not reserved for Africans; it’s also directed at other groups.

“[The Australians] discriminate against the Asians, the Lebanese, the Greeks,” Boone said. “It’s about, ‘We don’t have a lot of pieces to this pie, and they’re taking our pie,’” she explained.

Stew echoed that analysis of how race relations take shape, although she noted that the black immigrants seem to get the worst treatment, presumably because of their race.

“The racism [in Thailand] is against Africans first. And then with the [non-Thai] races who are here: the Burmese, the Filipinos,” Stew explained sadly.

It’s on “another level,” she added.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/05/black_in_thailand_we_re_treated_better_than_africans_and_boy_do_we_hate.2.html

Another Cool Gadget

This gizmo turns your iPad into a mini-production studio.

As seen on USA Today -

I Love His Definition of Being Biracial

From NPR Code Switch - 

Novelist Mat Johnson Explores The 'Optical Illusion' Of Being Biracial

Growing up in Philadelphia, Mat Johnson lived mostly with his mother in a black neighborhood. The son of an African-American mother and an Irish-American father, his skin was so light that he might have passed for white. But being biracial meant only one thing back in the '70s: "Um, it meant: black," Johnson says with a laugh. "There wasn't a lot of ambiguity there. I didn't hear the world biracial or didn't think of myself as biracial. And when I did hear that, I reacted to it defensively. I thought it was just black people of mixed heritage who were just trying to run away from blackness."

Johnson was born three years after Loving Day — the historic 1967 Supreme Court decision which made interracial marriage legal. His new novel, Loving Day, is a funny, sometimes absurd look at what it means to be mixed race in this country.

These days, Johnson has a more nuanced way to describe his racial identity. He says he is a mixed person of African-American descent. But he also uses another, more loaded word, to describe himself: mulatto.

"A lot mixed people hate that word," Johnson says. "People in general hate that word. A lot of times they think it references mule, but it's a lot older than that. It has Arabic roots. And historically that's been the term often used for African Americans, first generation, who are mixed. So to me, it connects me to my past. But I think those identities — mixed identity and African-American identity — can co-exist."

Johnson has a lot in common with the main character in his novel. Warren Duffy is also of Irish-African descent. He also grew up in Philadelphia, lived with his mother in a black neighborhood and like Johnson, Warren is very light skinned. Early in the book, he calls himself a "racial optical illusion."

The people who see me as white always will, and will think it's madness that anyone else could come to any other conclusion, holding to this falsehood regardless of learning my true identity. The people who see me as black cannot imagine how a sane, intelligent person could be so blind not to understand this, despite my pale-skinned presence.

As the book begins, Warren is confronted by a teenage girl who turns out to be his daughter. Tal was raised by her Jewish mother who has since died and her grandfather can no longer take care of her. Tal has never thought of herself as racially mixed, much less black. To help her to explore her new racial identity Warren enrolls his daughter in a school which turns out to be more like a mixed race commune.

"A kind of bi-racial militant separatist group is the quickest way to define it," Johnson says. "It's all people of European and African heritage, first generation who are kind of violently — not violently, but emotionally violently — trying to get this balance between their African-American heritage and their European-American heritage."

Melange, as the commune is called, is full of odd characters and misfits all trying to come to terms with their racial identities. The "oreos" are white on the inside and black on the outside. The "sunflowers," including Warren, are white on the outside, black inside. Ideally they're supposed to learn to accept both sides of themselves. In reality, they follow a great American tradition when it comes to race: self-segregation.

Balance is incredibly difficult. Balance is walking along a fence in bare feet and trying not to fall off.
- Mat Johnson

"The fact that they're already pulling into gangs basically shows how well it's going," Johnson says. "This idea — we all should have balance in our lives and the balance is incredibly important and often times the key to some sort of serenity. However balance is incredibly difficult. Balance is walking along a fence in bare feet and trying not to fall off."

Warren does manage to steer his daughter into understanding what it means to be a mixed race woman — and he also manages to fall in love, with a woman who challenges his own ideas about racial identity.

Most African Americans, Johnson says, do have some white heritage though no one really wants to talk about that. But he says there is a growing movement of people who do want to talk about what it means to be bi-racial.

"Most people of mixed heritage they grow up minorities in their own house," he says. "Unless they have many, many siblings, they are the only or one of the only people of their exact ethnic makeup. And so, to me, this idea with Loving Day was a chance to explore a group identity, because most of the work that has been done on mixed experience just focuses on the 'I.' And so I think the one thing I really wanted to do with this book was focus on the 'we' and what does that 'we' mean."

Writing this book was scary, says Johnson, because it felt like he was publicly coming out as "mixed identified" and he knows some people won't get that — and some won't like it. But he says needed to do it ... for himself.

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/05/24/408791207/novelist-mat-johnson-explores-the-optical-illusion-of-being-biracial

Smartphone Breathalyzer

I would file this next item under "things I don't need."

It's a portable smartphone breathalyzer.  Since I don't drink, I don't need this, but I think it could be very beneficial for those who do.

As seen on The Grommet -



Alcohoot AHT101 Smartphone Breathalyzer, Black

Sizzling!

It was 106 degrees at 10:00 this morning!

The saving grace was the breeze, hot though it was.

Here's to cool thoughts.

Where Unreadable Mail Lands

From Atlas Obscura - 

Since the world has not yet invented a robot capable of reading crappy handwriting, a team of the finest postal workers in the United States toils day and night in an effort to deliver the most indecipherable of mail.

Tucked away in a nondescript parking lot on the outskirts of Salt Lake City is the United States Postal Service Remote Encoding Center. All day, every day, workers inside sit at specialized stations as monitors present scanned pieces of correspondence with questionable addresses scrawled on their envelopes.

Shifts last eight hours, and employees are trained to take ten seconds or less with each piece of mail as it whizzes by on their screen. It’s their job to make an educated guess as to the intent of the sender before shuffling the once questionable piece of mail along on its route of delivery.

In an age of declining penmanship, over five million pieces of mail pass under its roof every day. It seems absurd that this would be the only place in the nation where unreadable mail is deciphered, yet all but one of these specialized mail centers have closed over the years. This makes the Salt Lake depot the last hope for postal customers with shoddy handwriting.

Put simply: if you have poor penmanship, all your mail passes through here without exception. Maybe consider clearly addressing a thank you note to the folks inside one of these days?

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/usps-remote-encoding-facility?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura&utm_campaign=8e795da78d-Newsletter_5_22_20155_21_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_62ba9246c0-8e795da78d-59905913&mc_cid=8e795da78d&mc_eid=866176a63f

Fix His Plate?

At first blush, my answer was a firm no.

Now, it's OK . . . maybe.

Certainly if this gesture is reciprocated, this goes a long way in my attitude toward it.  But we should be willing to do anything to smooth over the fragile ego of our fathers/brothers/sons/etc., right?

What do you think?

~~~~~~~~~~

From The Root - 

The Problem With the Debate Over Fixing Your Man’s Plate 

She Matters: Meme sparks fierce discussion about a black woman’s role.

BY: DEMETRIA LUCAS D’OYLEY

Posted: May 22 2015 3:00 AM

The melee started, it seems, with a meme. The photo was of an innocuous scene, one that many are anticipating this Memorial Day weekend: hamburgers and hot dogs on a grill. It was the caption that set everything off.

It read: “Soooo you are at a barbecue. Your man is hungry. He lets you know he is hungry, but you are not the kind of woman to go around fixing plates for a man, so you ignore him. A random woman hears this and says, ‘I will fix his plate.’ She sashays away and comes back with a plate for your man. Do you have any problems with this?”

The answer should have been simple: Yes, this is a problem. One, why is a hungry, fully functional grown man acting incapable of fixing his own plate? Two, why is he acting like his plate is his woman’s job to tend to? Three, who is this crazy woman who doesn’t know him or me from Adam and Eve, who takes it upon herself to do something as intimate as fix his plate?

Maybe the conversation started off civil, but by the time I stumbled into it, all hell had broken loose. In 2015, social media devolved into a full-fledged debate over whether it was a woman’s duty to fix her man a plate. ... And a surprising number of the answers were “yes.” 

Black women’s new mandatory requirements: Stay black. Die. Fix a man’s plate.

Ummm ...

Much like the alleged mommy wars over whether it’s better for a mom to stay home or work, the plate war fixated on the same shaming. Women who fixed plates were anointing themselves better than women who did not. They declared those non-plate-fixin’ women would be single forever or, if married, divorced soon. So the logic (and meme) went: If you don’t fix his plate, another woman will. Food—and not just making it but serving it, too—was being upheld as the way to a man’s stomach and heart.

Women who didn’t fix plates derided those who did as “weak” and still in the Stone Age before the feminist movement of the ’70s.

Really, people?

Personally, I don’t mind fixing my husband’s plate. Sometimes.

I don’t do so out of some archaic sense of womanly or wifely duty; it’s not a big deal and it’s usually just convenient. The food is in the kitchen. The kitchen has the plates. If I’m in the place with the food and the plates, and I’m headed to the place with the chairs and the table where we eat and I’m making my own plate, then yeah, I make him one, too, and carry two plates out to said table. I don’t really think about it. One of the reasons I don’t is that if my husband is in the kitchen under similar circumstances, he will do the same thing.

When it’s not so convenient to fix a plate—like, say, we’re visiting friends or relatives or some such—I’ll ask my husband, “Hey, you want me to fix your plate?” Yes, he’s a grown man who can do it himself, but sometimes he likes his ego stroked—and yeah, when I do it in these circumstances, that’s exactly what fixing his plate is about: his ego.

He usually says no if we’re visiting my parents, because my mother looks at me like I’m crazy. (I wasn’t raised to fix a plate.) That, and my husband really likes my mother’s cooking, and he wants to overload his plate.

With the friends, he typically says yes. His friends tease us with, “Awww! Look at the happy couple!” I roll my eyes. He smirks. That’s his ego. He says “Thank you” when I hand him the plate. That’s his manners. When my glass runs low at any point in the evening, he’ll appear with a full one. That’s reciprocity. It’s why I don’t mind stroking his ego from time to time.

But that’s just me and mines. If you fix a plate for your jump-off/man/husband/whatever, great for you and God bless. But shoving plate fixin’ as a duty on other women?

And what’s worse is self-righteous women acting as if they’re better than another woman for, really, being subservient to a man. Seriously? If you didn’t buy or cook the food that another woman may or may not serve, then your opinion on whether or not she should put it on a plate that she hands to a man is completely irrelevant. Completely. Just be thankful you have food on your stove over which to have this silly debate and stay out of other folks’ kitchens.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/05/should_you_fix_your_man_s_plate_meme_sparks_internet_debate.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr%3Acontent%26

Portable Jump Starter

I think this is a must have.

Available at Amazon for $95.  The link for it is below.

CORRECTION:  The link is not for this product, but a similar one.  SORRY!

Seriously, I should have been in advertisement.



PowerAll PBJS12000R Rosso Red/Black Portable Power Bank and Car Jump Starter

As seen on The Grommet.

https://www.thegrommet.com/junojumper?utm_campaign=20150522&utm_content=21263&utm_medium=email&utm_source=CC&trk_msg=FS31KJ0M8U2KT9GO680L7OSJGC&trk_contact=6PJ17299EJ5SLGM27119G0AQ7K

Hi-Tech Sprinkler

This gadget uses the local weather forecast and soil saturation levels (or something like it) to determine when to water your lawn.  It's available at Amazon for $199.

No.  I'm not getting paid for the plug, but I should be.

~~~~~~~~~~

From Wired.com -

REVIEW: BLOSSOM

• AUTHOR: JASON CIPRIANI.by JASON CIPRIANI

A crop of connected sprinkler system controllers hit the market in recent months that claim to reduce consumption and lowering water bills. Rachio Iro, Sky Drop, and now Blossom each offer varying approaches to keeping your yard green while cutting back on how much water you use. And for the last two weeks, I’ve been putting Blossom through its paces, hoping it would do exactly that.

Installing Blossom was a simple process, yet one I let intimidate me before I even started. I know next to nothing about wiring a sprinkler system; I’ve always hired someone to install and troubleshoot issues.

Blossom, however, claims anyone can install it without issue. So I put that claim to the test and—for the most part—I found that to be the case.

Inside the box is a nondescript grey square about the size of a wireless router, otherwise known as the Blossom controller. The unit is void of any buttons or screens, with a flower-like indicator light being the lone source of information on Blossom.

Additionally you’ll find a set of four screws, a Powerline adapter and ethernet cable (more on that in a minute), an instruction manual, and stickers to use in aide in identifying various wires.

The entire install process, starting with removing my old control box, placing the mounting bracket on the wall, and connecting roughly six wires to Blossom took about 10 minutes. The only issue I encountered was when I stripped one of the mounting screws the instant I squeezed the trigger on my electric drill. I ended up spending five minutes trying to remove it and ultimately had to replace it was a screw of my own.

I was genuinely surprised at how easy the install was. I now realize how much unwarranted credit I gave to the complexity of sprinkler systems.

Once I had the unit on the wall, I needed to connect it to the internet. With Blossom you have two options. Option one: You can use the included Powerline adapter. For those unfamiliar, Powerline adapters convert the existing electrical wiring in your home into a pseudo-ethernet system.

You connect the Powerline adapter found in the box into an outlet near your modem, with an ethernet cable connecting the two. The Powerline unit then transmits and receives data over your power grid, connecting Blossom to the internet. I would have loved to use this connection method, but unfortunately I already have a Powerline system setup in my home and the Blossom system isn’t capable of connecting to another Powerline network.

So instead of running two Powerline networks, I opted to connect my sprinkler system to the internet via WiFi. The versatility of having two different methods for connecting Blossom to the outside world is invaluable, especially for those control boxes either outdoors (you can mount the unit outside without fear of weather causing damage) or tucked away in a garage.

With the unit connected to the internet, I was tasked with answering a few questions about the four different zones I had connected to it by the iOS app (an Android version is also available, with a web app coming soon). I gave each zone a name, indicated if it was a yard or garden, and then adjusted a slider to my desired watering level on a scale of dry to wet. Due to having just fertilized my yard, I moved the slider toward the wet end of the spectrum.

Once setup is complete, Blossom will use weather forecasts and what the company calls “sophisticated soil models” to determine how much water your yard needs. For the first few days, I let the system run on its own, coming on once each morning a couple hours after sunrise. You’re able to pick the time, if you desire, but letting Blossom’s system decide is part of the novelty.

The app itself is intuitive and minimal, yet when it comes to managing zones and viewing the schedule, I was frustrated with the process of manually turning on the system. As it is now, you have to select each zone and set the run time, zone-by-zone. A select all option would be greatly appreciated.

To be honest, short of the lone interaction of manually activating the system, I’ve all but forgotten about Blossom—which is not a bad thing. A sprinkler system is supposed to make our lives easier. Even so, a basic model will fail you when weather conditions affect the schedule.

This set-in-stone approach can lead to over-watering, or rain-delaying your system and forgetting to turn it back on days after the fact. Once, after three days of heavy rain, I’d come to realize my system didn’t come on for the next two days. Meaning for five straight days, my sprinkler system sat dormant, ready for action once Blossom deemed it necessary.

In my distrust, I manually turned Blossom on… likely over-watering a bit and wasting some resources, but it was that easy to choose when I wanted to override Blossom’s schedule.

Blossom claims it will lower your water bill by up to 30 percent, but I’ve had the unit long enough to support that claim. What I can tell you is our water consumption has gone down and our grass remains green.

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/review-blossom/

Valuable Tool

From their website - 

BlackChildBooks.com features the most complete, comprehensive collection of black-oriented children's books sold by Amazon.com (but not through its independent sellers).  This site organizes almost all of the African-American-oriented children's books scattered on Amazon.com.  

College Essays

These kids were courageous enough to tell their story, whatever it might be. Check out the bold (mine) paragraphs.  They are especially poignant.

~~~~~~~~~~

From The New York Times - 

Essays About Work and Class That Caught a College’s Eye

By  RON LIEBER

Of the 1,200 or so undergraduate admission essays that Chris Lanser reads each year at Wesleyan University, maybe 10 are about work.

This is not much of a surprise. Many applicants have never worked. Those with plenty of money may be afraid of calling attention to their good fortune. And writing about social class is difficult, given how mixed up adolescents often are about identity.

Yet it is this very reluctance that makes tackling the topic a risk worth taking at schools where it is hard to stand out from the thousands of other applicants. Financial hardship and triumph, and wants and needs, are the stuff of great literature. Reflecting on them is one excellent way to differentiate yourself in a deeply personal way.

Each year, to urge them on, we put out an open call for application essays about these subjects and publish the best essays that we can find. This year, we chose seven with the help of Julie Lythcott-Haims, the former dean of freshmen at Stanford whose new book, “How to Raise an Adult,” is coming out next month. You can read the full essays at nytimes.com/yourmoney.

The essays that came over the transom were filled with raw, decidedly mixed feelings about parents and their sacrifices; trenchant accounts of the awkwardness of straddling communities with vastly different socio-economic circumstances; and plain-spoken — yet completely affecting — descriptions of what it means to make a living and a life in America today.

The single most memorable line we read this year came from an essay by Carolina Sosa, who lives in Centreville, Va., and will attend Georgetown University. In writing about her father’s search for a job, she described the man named Dave who turned him away.

“Job searching is difficult for everyone, but in a world full of Daves, it’s almost impossible,” she wrote. “Daves are people who look at my family and immediately think less of us. They think illegal, poor and uneducated. Daves never allow my dad to pass the first round of job applications. Daves watch like hawks as my brother and I enter stores. Daves inconsiderately correct my mother’s grammar. Because there are Daves in the world, I have become a protector for my family.”

Vanessa J. Krebs, assistant director of undergraduate admissions at Georgetown, who reads about 1,400 essays year, told me that when she first received my interview request, the phrase “the Daves” immediately jumped out of her memory bank.

Though Ms. Sosa might easily have become embittered by her encounters with the Daves, Ms. Krebs said that she was moved by the fact that the essay concluded with the desire to pursue a career in public service, even if she wasn’t exactly sure where that desire would take her.

“This is a starting point, and she is still figuring that out,” Ms. Krebs said. “A lot of people think they need to have all the answers already. Or they feel like they do have it all figured out.”

Other memorable moments emerged in an essay by Martina Piñeiros, a Chicago resident who will be attending Northwestern University.

“Fatigue and two jobs had ruined who both my parents used to be, and I began to value the little time I had with my mother more than ever before,” she wrote. “This little time could not make up for the time I spent alone, however, nor could it assuage the envy I had of the little girl my mother looked after. She, though not my mother’s daughter, had the privilege of having my mother and her delicious cooking all to herself; I would always get the leftovers. She also had the privilege of having my mother pin her silky blonde hair into a pretty bun before ballet classes while my dad wrestled with the hairbrush to pull my thick brown hair into two lopsided ponytails before dropping me off at the bus stop. But I couldn’t blame the girl for depriving me of my mother; her parents had also been consumed by their jobs.”

It is rare that any teenagers write well about what it is like to have more money than average. Most don’t even try, for fear of being marked as privileged in a world where some people resent those who have it or are clueless about it. Yorana Wu, who lives in Great Neck, N.Y., and will attend the University of Chicago, wrote about her father, who spends much of the year in China, where he opened a canned fruit factory when Ms. Wu was 8 years old.

“That was the first year a seat at the dinner table remained empty and a car in the garage sat untouched,” she wrote. “Every dollar comes at the expense of his physical distance.”

While she has her tennis and music lessons (and expresses mixed feelings about the affluence that allows for them), she speaks to him in five-minute phone segments when he is away.

“He is living the American dream by working elsewhere,” Ms. Lythcott-Haims, my fellow reader, observed. “There is a cost to this choice.”

We published a pair of essays about what it means to navigate two worlds simultaneously. One, by Annabel La Riva, who is also the subject of a video feature, discusses the distance (in more ways than one) between her Brooklyn home and her Manhattan church choir, where her love for singing began.

In another, Jon Carlo Dominguez of North Bergen, N.J., discusses his choice to turn right out his front door, toward the prep school he attends, instead of left, toward his neighborhood school. When the two schools meet on the football field, he writes, some of his classmates shout, “That’s all right, that’s O.K., you’ll be working for us someday.” His response is to tutor his local friends with his used test-preparation books, share guides to lucid dreaming and pass on tips he learned from Dale Carnegie.

Both the essays and the comments tell us a great deal about class in America, especially about the powerless and hopelessness and struggle...

In order to write about your class, you have to be aware of the drawbacks of your class compared to the upper class. Paradoxically, it is...

Sadly, I am not sure colleges any longer have much that is honest to say about the realities of economic and social class. Regardless of how...

“Every single day he is making a choice, and he is conscious of the costs and the benefits on both sides,” Ms. Lythcott-Haims said. “The way that he addresses it is beautiful. He’s trying to bridge that world and be that bridge.”

One of the 10 or so essays that Mr. Lanser, the associate dean of admission for Wesleyan, read about work this year was set at a Domino’s Pizza store in Forestdale, Ala. Adriane Tharp, who will attend the university in the fall, is the author, and her rendering of the lineup of fellow misfits who were her colleagues there is something to behold.

There is the pizza maker from Pakistan who looks like Bob Dylan and sings folk songs from his homeland; the part-time preacher who also delivers pies; and Richard, the walking “Star Wars” encyclopedia. One woman has worked for pizzerias for over 25 years and is about to apply to college.

“The point of the essay is not to tell us that she needs work or doesn’t,” Mr. Lanser said. “What she wants us to learn from this is that she is able to embrace difference and learn quite a bit from those differences.”

I offered him the opportunity to disabuse overeager parents of the notion that admissions officers at competitive colleges devalue work experience, and he laughed. “We think there are valuable life skills and people skills to be gained in the workplace,” he said, adding that he personally believes that everyone should work in the service industry at some point in their lives.

Rob Henderson’s service was to his country, and his essay was ultimately about what the United States Air Force did for him.

Of his time as a foster child, he wrote, “I was compelled to develop social skills to receive care from distracted foster parents.” He was finally adopted, but his parents quickly divorced (the adoption came up in arguments prior to his father cutting off ties) and eventually found stability with his mother and her partner, at least until her partner was shot. An insurance settlement led to a home purchase, which ended in foreclosure.

After high school, he enlisted. Eight years later, he’s still deciding where he’ll attend college in the fall. “I’ve accomplished much over the last seven years because the Air Force provides an organized setting that contrasts with the chaos of my upbringing,” he wrote.

Ms. Lythcott-Haims felt herself rooting for him, and she added that his essay was a good reminder that the United States military is a beacon for many young adults, even with the high risks that may come with their service. “This is one way you make a life in America,” she said. “It’s more common than we realize. And he is self-made.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/your-money/essays-about-work-and-class-that-caught-a-colleges-eye.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Just For Guys

You're welcome.

https://youtu.be/tMj2s1WL0hs

Another Puzzle

This Math Puzzle For 3rd Graders Is Deceptively Simple. Can You Solve It?
The Huffington Post |  By Nick Visser

Get ready for your brain to hurt. Again.

A math teacher in Vietnam challenged his third-grade class (read: 8-year-old students) to solve this seemingly simple arithmetic problem.

Apparently you're supposed to plug in the numbers 1 through 9, using each digit once, in each of the blank spaces. Using the identified operations and the inserted values, a correct answer would lead to a solution of 66 (those double dots stand for division, by the way). 

Sound easy? Try it.

Teacher Tan Phuong gave the puzzle to his students in the town of Bao Loc, according to local outlet VN Express. He said he also sent the exercise to a person with "a doctorate in economics with mathematics" who has yet to return with a solution, The Guardian reported.

So, what's the answer?

Click here to find out.

The Guardian's Alex Bellos has promised to upload a solution "later," but if anyone has an easier approach, leave it in the comments.

Phew.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/20/vietnamese-math-puzzle_n_7346332.html

I Love This Guy, Part 2

From Slate's Gentleman Scholar: Answers For Modern Men -

What do you do if you have a lady friend whom you've been seeing for a while and all the female friends you introduce her to are women you've slept with? I mean, this is going back 10 years: Some of them are married now; some are close friends.

Thank you for your question.

The duty is to show respect to all women involved. The challenge is to speak to your current lady friend with due candor without saying anything that would embarrass an ex. The thing is to be nonchalant.

There are two levels to this situation, right? The first involves the plain, yes-or-no disclosure that your friend was once a lover. There’s no need to bring it up, and there’s no need to respond to a gentle inquiry in that direction with anything more elaborate than, “Oh, we used to date.” No problem, unless your lady friend is the jealous type—and I somehow get the sense that’s not the type you go for

The second level here involves the revelation of emotional and sexual intimacies. Here’s the general principle: If your current lady friend fails to heed the internationally-recognized Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy on exes, then you should invoke the Gentleman Scholar’s Don't Kiss and Tell Shield Law of 2015. It’s a variation on the Golden Rule: Do not tell unto a lady what other ladies have done unto you.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/gentleman_scholar/2015/01/advice_for_modern_men_talking_about_exes_keeping_greeting_cards_rejecting.html

Check Out These Closets!

Amazing, right?

See all 16 in the article below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/19/dream-closets-photos_n_7307718.html

I Will Guess Your Age!

No me.  The clever person who came up with this.

Childbirth vs Getting Kicked in the Balls

You know the CORRECT answer to this one.

He Can Do Anything

I didn't see the movie "Whiplash," about a sadistic music teacher who is brutally intense with one of his students, but this music video is a parody of that movie.

You might recognize Keegan-Michael Key as President Obama's Anger Translator.  He's also one half of the Key & Peale duo on Comedy Central.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/05/17/moving_to_brussels_music_video_key_and_peele_s_keegan_michael_key_spoofs.html