SacTown Innovators

An excerpt from SacTown Magazine -

Local eye-care company launches new line of fitness-tracking spectacles
BY HILLARY LOUISE JOHNSON

Step into The Shop, the midtown innovation lab for local eye care giant VSP Global, and you’re in nerd heaven, a place where kids who were called “four-eyes” in high school exact sweet revenge by changing the world through technology. Take Level, for instance: a new line of fitness-tracking glasses developed by The Shop and tested by 300 individuals through USC’s Center for Body Computing.

The project was conceived four years ago, but was so ahead of its time that the team had to wait for chip technology to get smaller and more economical. “It could be no more expensive than any other pair of glasses," says the lab’s co-director Jay Sales. "On top of that, it had to be fashionable—as elegant as it is effective.” Level’s sleek $270 frames currently come in three styles, named after innovators Nikola Tesla, Marvin Minsky and Hedy Lamarr.

http://www.sactownmag.com/Style-Watch/2018/Level-up-with-VSPs-new-fitness-tracking-eyewear/

On the List of Things To Do

An excerpt from ProPublica -

The FBI — ‘Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity’ — Still Working on Diversity
The nation’s top federal law enforcement agency is overwhelmingly white, and its top officials acknowledge that’s “a huge operational risk.”
by Topher Sanders

For the FBI, the longstanding failure to diversify its ranks is nothing short of “a huge operational risk,” according to one senior official, something that compromises the agency’s ability to understand communities at risk, penetrate criminal enterprises, and identify emerging national security threats.

Indeed, 10 months before being fired as director of the FBI by President Trump, James Comey called the situation a “crisis.”

“Slowly but steadily over the last decade or more, the percentage of special agents in the FBI who are white has been growing,” Comey said in a speech at Bethune-Cookman University, a historically black school in Daytona Beach, Florida. “I’ve got nothing against white people — especially tall, awkward, male white people — but that is a crisis for reasons that you get, and that I’ve worked very hard to make sure the entire FBI understands.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-fbi-fidelity-bravery-integrity-still-working-on-diversity?utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter

Good From Evil

From the Washington Post -

I posted a huge note for the thief who stole my bike. Then my doorbell rang.
By Amanda Needham

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2018/03/16/i-posted-a-huge-note-for-the-thief-who-stole-my-bike-then-my-doorbell-rang/?utm_term=.1b18bbde70f7

#NeverAgain

#WhatIf we could go to school without fearing for our lives? Join us on March 24th and visit https://t.co/SrCltJsrBH #NeverAgain pic.twitter.com/iXmCNFOrVj

— David Hogg (@davidhogg111) March 16, 2018

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STEM is a Necessity

An excerpt from the Huffington Post -

Mae Jemison: Diversity In STEM Isn’t A Nicety, It’s A Necessity
The first African-American woman in space discusses her agricultural science initiative.
By Taylor Pittman

Dr. Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, knows firsthand the importance of exposing kids to STEM topics early. She also knows the significance of having kids see themselves in movies, on TV, and in certain careers.

“It means making sure that people get those images that show they have those things available to them,” Jemison told HuffPost.

Jemison is collaborating on “Science Matters,” an initiative to encourage kids of all ages and backgrounds to pursue agricultural science from pharmaceutical and life science company Bayer and youth development organization National 4-H Council. Jemison, a physician and chemical engineer, knows the field of agricultural science can sound intimidating, but she and Jennifer Sirangelo, CEO and president of the National 4-H Council, have set out to change that.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mae-jemison-diversity-in-stem_us_5aa820ade4b001c8bf147eae

Looking for a job? Highlight your ability, not your experience | Jason Shen

The guide book that helped black Americans travel during segregation

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Liberal Redneck - Ex Tillerson

Respectful

Back in the day when our Secretary of State was treated with respect.

A post shared by Pete Souza (@petesouza) on Mar 13, 2018 at 8:23am PDT

Target Lovers

From the Huffington Post -

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hilarious-tweets-for-parents-who-love-target_us_5a904ee8e4b03b55731be2e8

Building Ancient Robots in Switzerland

NatGeo Admits Racist Coverage

An excerpt from the Associated Press -

National Geographic acknowledges past racist coverage
By JESSE J. HOLLAND

WASHINGTON (AP) — National Geographic acknowledged on Monday that it covered the world through a racist lens for generations, with its magazine portrayals of bare-breasted women and naive brown-skinned tribesmen as savage, unsophisticated and unintelligent.

“We had to own our story to move beyond it,” editor-in-chief Susan Goldberg told The Associated Press in an interview about the yellow-bordered magazine’s April issue, which is devoted to race.

National Geographic first published its magazine in 1888. An investigation conducted last fall by University of Virginia photography historian John Edwin Mason showed that until the 1970s, it virtually ignored people of color in the United States who were not domestics or laborers, and it reinforced repeatedly the idea that people of color from foreign lands were “exotics, famously and frequently unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages_every type of cliché.”

For example, in a 1916 article about Australia, the caption on a photo of two Aboriginal people read: “South Australian Blackfellows: These savages rank lowest in intelligence of all human beings.”

https://apnews.com/52098332431c4ef1be3046487451684e

Back & White Twins

From the National Geographic -

These Twins, One Black and One White, Will Make You Rethink Race
Marcia and Millie Biggs say they’ve never been subjected to racism—just curiosity and surprise that twins could have such different skin colors.
By Patricia Edmonds

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-twins-black-white-biggs/

Marcia (left) and Millie Biggs, both 11, say people are shocked to learn that they’re fraternal twins.
Marcia looks more like their mother, who’s English born,
and Millie looks more like their father, who’s of Jamaican descent. 
PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBIN HAMMOND

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Wakanda Forever

From Slate -

Black Athletes Have Started Celebrating Their Victories With the “Wakanda Forever” Salute from Black Panther
By MATTHEW DESSEM

https://slate.com/culture/2018/03/black-athletes-have-started-celebrating-their-victories-with-the-wakanda-forever-salute.html

Why Cats Follow You to the Toilet

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/194TLQ

Hilarious Golden Retriever Really Wants To Race But.. First Things First.

Playcousin to the Rescue

An excerpt from the Root -

How My Playcousin Stopped a Mass Shooting and Disproved the Myth about Good Guys With Guns
By Michael Harriot

To understand this story, you must first know the hierarchy of the Black family tree. There are black people across this country who have blood relatives they don’t know about, including sisters, brothers and sometimes parents. Ranking higher than any DNA-based relationship is the earned honorific of “playcousin.” A playcousin is a defacto sibling. It is more family member than actual family.

When I was growing up, my mother’s best friend had four children. She was as much my aunt as any of my mother’s sisters. Her husband was one of the scant few in-house fathers in my neighborhood, and he was a hulking figure of a man who still calls me “professor.” Like my family, they had three girls and only one of their children was a boy. His name was Heyward Jackson, Jr. but in most black neighborhoods, birth names are as malleable as DNA and often give way to nicknames.

We call him “Junie Poonie.”

https://www.theroot.com/how-my-playcousin-stopped-a-mass-shooting-and-disproved-1823669955

An Open Letter

From the Root -

An Open Letter to Kenya Barris Begging Him to Leak the Banned Episode of Black-ish
By Michael Harriot

https://www.theroot.com/an-open-letter-to-kenya-barris-to-begging-him-to-leak-t-1823681303

The Perfect Crime

From Now I Know -

http://nowiknow.com/how-a-nearly-perfect-crime-became-perfect-again/

True Diversity

An excerpt from the NY Times -

Black Kids Don’t Want to Read About Harriet Tubman All the Time
By DENENE MILLNER

I’m pretty sure I hadn’t even wiped the sonogram goop off my belly before I rushed off to pick out dresses and books for my unborn child. I was on a mission: My daughter was going to need all the pink dresses and all the books with brown babies.

Finding adorable dresses was easy. Finding children’s literature with pictures of children of color was not.

Books with white children and, like, ducks, were de rigueur, which I guess was fine for parents who were having white babies or ducks. But this was not going to work for my brown baby, who would spend a lifetime looking for her image in a pop cultural landscape that all but ignored children who looked like her. I wanted — needed — her to see her beautiful brown self reflected in the music and stories I hoped to feed to her as consistently as food. In my house, she would be visible.

Eventually, a friend helped me track down Ezra Jack Keats’s “The Snowy Day,” and the lovely “ ‘More More More,’ Said the Baby.” And my stepson gave his copy of Nikki Giovanni’s “The Sun Is So Quiet” to his baby sister. I eventually discovered the treasure trove that is Just Us Books, and works by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Eloise Greenfield. Still, the pickings were slim.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/children-literature-books-blacks.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

http://justusbooksonlinestore.com/index.php

She Knew

An excerpt from the NY Times -

Melania Knew
By Charles M. Blow

Dear America: Come on, you can’t be serious.

The ongoing saga over a president, a porn star and a payoff is so lewd and tawdry that it can’t simply be added to the ever-expanding list of horrible misbehaviors of a womanizing misogynist.

It’s not even the infidelity that most bothers me. I view that as an issue between spouses and with the other person involved. I contend that we on the outside never really know what understandings may exist in a marriage, unless the two parties within reveal it.

In this case, Melania knew exactly the kind of man she was getting.

When Donald first meets Melania, they are at a New York Fashion Week party to which Donald has been invited by the wealthy Italian businessman who brought Melania to America on a modeling contract and work visa. According to GQ, sometimes, to promote his models, the businessman “would send a few girls to an event and invite photographers, producers, and rich playboys.”

Trump is on a date with another woman that night. He is also in the process of divorcing Marla Maples, his second wife, with whom he had had an affair while still married to his first wife, Ivana Trump.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/11/opinion/melania-trump-stormy.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Spot On?

From Business Insider -

8 things science says predict divorce
By Shana Lebowitz

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-know-if-your-marriage-will-end-in-divorce-according-to-science-2017-10

Is Facial Recognition Software Racist? | The Daily Show

Mona Haydar - Hijabi (Wrap my Hijab)

The Harlem Hellfighters | History

What's Old is New Again

An excerpt from the Washington Post -

Meet the latest tourist attractions: Abandoned factories
By Rebecca Powers

Trip-planning multiple choice:
a) Mountains b) Sand c) Surf
d) Factories.

If you picked the last vacation option, you’ve got company.

“We’re finding a hunger,” says Michael Boettcher, an urban planner and industrial-history buff. “Everyone has been to Disney World, and it’s like, what else you got?”

In Japan, it’s popular to take nighttime boat cruises past glittering industrial superstructures. In Germany’s Ruhr industrial powerhouse region, bicyclists meander a landscape that has turned recreational. And in Canada, 1920s wooden grain elevators, dubbed the Five Prairie Giants, draw sightseers to the Manitoba plains.

The appeal? “It gives you a sense of where we’ve been and how that has made us who we are,” Boettcher says.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/industrial-deevolution/2018/03/08/50d57022-1cdc-11e8-9de1-147dd2df3829_story.html?utm_term=.1b3c45c41132&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1

Brain Damage

An excerpt form the Boston Globe -

Nearly half of Patriots on first 3 Super Bowl-winning teams report brain injuries
By Bob Hohler

Some 42 of about 100 Patriots who were members of New England’s first three Super Bowl title teams have alleged in a landmark class-action concussion suit against the NFL and the helmet maker Riddell that they have experienced symptoms of brain injuries caused by the repetitive head impacts they absorbed in games and practices.

In all, more than 340 former Patriots or their estates have sued the NFL and its former helmet manufacturer. The Globe, using the team’s official all-time roster, has for the first time compiled and analyzed a list of the Patriots who allege they suffered brain injuries on the job since the franchise was founded in 1960.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2018/03/10/nearly-half-patriots-first-super-bowl-winners-report-symptoms-brain-injuries/aXvjJscYPy5Gsjwqc8jdYL/story.html?et_rid=606374700&s_campaign=todaysheadlines:newsletter

Black Girls Code

http://www.blackgirlscode.com/what-we-do.html

Last Chance School

An excerpt from the Huffington Post -

Uncharted Territory: Inside New York City’s School Of Last Chances
At a charter high school in a high-poverty area of Brooklyn, New York, many kids don’t graduate in four years. Seeing their achievements requires looking beyond the data.
By Rebecca Klein

Howard’s students attend New Visions AIM Charter High School I, a charter high school near the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn. The school was created in 2012 under a different name with different management, but with the same audacious mission: to educate the students whom other schools had failed. These are the toughest of students, the kids who have either been in jail, become homeless or live in foster care.

Some kids have experienced all three.

Students who attend AIM I are 15 to 21 years old, the oldest age that a student can attend a public school in New York, by law. Every matriculated child has been held back for at least one grade, and oftentimes has faced insurmountable obstacles in their personal lives.

Last year, with a school of about 200 students, only about 30 graduated, and many had taken more than four years. This number, while representing a huge increase from previous years, falls far short of goals set by state education leaders. While these numbers may paint a picture of failure, the reality is so much more complicated.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-visions_us_5aa2e6dae4b07047bec66970

Too Good at Goodbyes (Violin Version) Sam Smith | DSharp

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Great Women Who Were Overlooked

From the NY Times - 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&src=me&WT.nav=MostEmailed

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He Needed a Break

An excerpt from the Verge -

Burger-flipping robot takes four-day break immediately after landing new job
Robots, they’re just like us
By James Vincent


Good news if you’re worried about a robot taking your job: it turns out even mechanical laborers need a break.

Only a single shift into its career at the CaliBurger restaurant in Pasadena, California, this week, Flippy the robot burger-flipper is going on hiatus, reports USA Today. The bot, created by startup Miso Robotics, made its debut earlier this week assisting in CaliBurger’s kitchen by flipping patties on the grill. According to reports, the robot did its job well but was such a hit with customers that Miso Robotics is giving Flippy time off over the weekend for some upgrades.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/8/17095730/robot-burger-flipping-fast-food-caliburger-miso-robotics-flippy

Penguin Selfie

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2018/03/08/these-penguins-found-a-camera-in-antarctica-and-captured-a-surprisingly-good-selfie/?utm_term=.d059e49b7b9d

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Rethinking Prisons

An excerpt form the NY Times -

Turn Prisons Into Colleges
By ELIZABETH HINTON

Imagine if prisons looked like the grounds of universities. Instead of languishing in cells, incarcerated people sat in classrooms and learned about climate science or poetry — just like college students. Or even with them.

This would be a boon to prisoners across the country, a vast majority of whom do not have a high school diploma. And it could help shrink our prison population. While racial disparities in arrests and convictions are alarming, education level is a far stronger predictor of future incarceration than race.

The idea is rooted in history. In the 1920s, Howard Belding Gill, a criminologist and a Harvard alumnus, developed a college-like community at the Norfolk State Prison Colony in Massachusetts, where he was the superintendent. Prisoners wore normal clothing, participated in cooperative self-government with staff, and took academic courses with instructors from Emerson, Boston University and Harvard. They ran a newspaper, radio show and jazz orchestra, and they had access to an extensive library.

Norfolk had such a good reputation, Malcolm X asked to be transferred there from Charlestown State Prison in Boston so, as he wrote in his petition, he could use “the educational facilities that aren’t in these other institutions.” At Norfolk, “there are many things that I would like to learn that would be of use to me when I regain my freedom.” After Malcolm X’s request was granted, he joined the famous Norfolk Debate Society, through which inmates connected to students at Harvard and other universities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/opinion/prisons-colleges-education.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&src=me&WT.nav=MostEmailed

Girls Ruling the World

From the Huffington Post -

16 Girls Who Changed The World
Proof you’re never too young to make an impact.
By Caroline Bologna

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/16-girls-who-changed-the-world_us_5a8f4f09e4b01e9e56b9e26c

The Wire Cast - Where Are They Now?

From Complex -

Ranking the Careers of 'The Wire' Cast, 10 Years After the Series Finale
BY KHAL, DRIA ROLAND, FRAZIER THARPE, BRANDON JENKINS, KIANA FITZGERALD, SHAWN SETARO, ANGEL DIAZ

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2018/03/the-wire-character-career-ranking-after-series-finale/

Blacks Leaving White Churches

From the NY Times -

A Quiet Exodus: Why Black Worshipers Are Leaving White Evangelical Churches
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

Black congregants — as recounted by people in Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Fort Worth and elsewhere — had already grown uneasy in recent years as they watched their white pastors fail to address police shootings of African-Americans. They heard prayers for Paris, for Brussels, for law enforcement; they heard that one should keep one’s eyes on the kingdom, that the church was colorblind, and that talk of racial injustice was divisive, not a matter of the gospel. There was still some hope that this stemmed from an obliviousness rather than some deeper disconnect.

Then white evangelicals voted for Mr. Trump by a larger margin than they had voted for any presidential candidate. They cheered the outcome, reassuring uneasy fellow worshipers with talk of abortion and religious liberty, about how politics is the art of compromise rather than the ideal. Christians of color, even those who shared these policy preferences, looked at Mr. Trump’s comments about Mexican immigrants, his open hostility to N.F.L. players protesting police brutality and his earlier “birther” crusade against President Obama, claiming falsely he was not a United States citizen. In this political deal, many concluded, they were the compromised.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/us/blacks-evangelical-churches.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Why Literally (Almost) Every Price Ends in 99 Cents

Key & Peele - Country Music

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Meet the Man Who Built His Own Power Plant

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Prison Reform

Demanding Less

An excerpt from the Washington Post -

Hundreds of Canadian doctors demand lower salaries. (Yes, lower.)
By Amy B Wang

In a move that can only be described as utterly Canadian, hundreds of doctors in Quebec are protesting their pay raises, saying they already make too much money.

As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 700 physicians, residents and medical students from the Canadian province had signed an online petition asking for their pay raises to be canceled. A group named Médecins Québécois Pour le Régime Public (MQRP), which represents Quebec doctors and advocates for public health, started the petition Feb. 25.

“We, Quebec doctors who believe in a strong public system, oppose the recent salary increases negotiated by our medical federations,” the petition reads in French.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/03/07/hundreds-of-canadian-doctors-demand-lower-salaries/?utm_term=.722bfe351051

Whoopi's Shoes

From Buzzfeed -

https://www.buzzfeed.com/morganmurrell/whoopi-goldberg-insane-shoe-collection?utm_term=.wwbqYN9K1G#.kawQrYLovG

Best Burger Joint

From Business Insider -

We put In-N-Out and Five Guys to the test in a battle of the burger chains — and the winner surprised us
By Melia Robinson

http://www.businessinsider.com/review-in-n-out-versus-five-guys-showdown-2018-1

Deion Sanders couldn’t believe his eyes by this deceptively fast and sneaky athletic defensive back pic.twitter.com/1BfDrV4Q9N

— Laces Out (@LacesOutShow) March 5, 2018

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White Parents Who Raise Black Children

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Ottawa’s Rideau Canal is the World’s Largest Ice Rink | National Geographic

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The Token Ones

From the Undefeated -

From ‘Dawson’s Creek’ to ‘Buffy’ to ‘Frasier’ to ‘Seinfeld’ — what happened to those lone, ‘token’ black actors?
Eight talents tell stories of offensive scripts, stunt people in blackface and the heartbreak — and hope — of portraying Thug No. 2 and the dope dealer’s girlfriend
BY KEITH MURPHY

https://theundefeated.com/features/90s-token-black-actors-phil-morris-bianca-lawson-kim-coles/

Malcolm Gladwell Teaches Writing | Official Trailer

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Racial Fluidity

Liberal Redneck - The Right to Bear Harm

The Music Hall That Algorithms Built