Black Santa

From Upworthy -

Everyone is falling in love with the Mall of America's first black Santa.
By Robbie Couch

Star Tribune

Uh, not everyone.

Unfortunately, Santa's skin color still seems to ruffle some people's feathers. An editor at the Star Tribune, for instance, says the paper had to turn off its comments section due to nasty feedback on its article about Santa Larry. And the debate over Santa's race has been known to fire up a few talking heads in the 24-hour cable news world.

http://www.upworthy.com/everyone-is-falling-in-love-with-the-mall-of-americas-first-black-santa?c=pop

Google Questions

From the Daily Dot -

Google autocomplete reveals exactly what people think of your state
By Elijah Watson

http://www.dailydot.com/unclick/google-map-what-people-ask-your-state/

Good Advice From Abroad

Bowel Habits

From Stumbleupon - 

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/Ao1h9Y/:1MTFqrKFO:6utJZsMK/health.good.is/articles/how-normal-is-poop-infographic

Why all world maps are wrong

Why blackface is still part of Dutch Christmas

Jamie Does Marvin

From the AVClub -

Jamie Foxx to produce a limited series about the life of Marvin Gaye
By William Hughes

http://www.avclub.com/article/jamie-foxx-produce-limited-series-about-life-marvi-246677

Black Love

From The Undefeated -

http://theundefeated.com/allday/j-crews-latest-cover-is-adorable/

He Ages Before Our Eyes

From The Huffington Post -

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/barack-obama-aging-gif_us_583e67b0e4b0ae0e7cdadb83

The Birth of TV Dinners

An excerpt from National Geographic -

How Leftover Turkey Launched The TV Dinner
by Rebecca Rupp

In the fall of 1953, the frozen-food company of C.A. Swanson & Sons of Omaha, Nebraska, was left with what must be a record in turkey leftovers: ten railroad cars packed with 520,000 pounds of turkey.

Swanson had massively overestimated the number of birds Americans planned to purchase for Thanksgiving, and so now was stuck shuttling a trainload of spurned turkeys back and forth between the Midwest and the East Coast in order to keep the electricity on in the refrigerated cars, thus keeping the turkeys safely cold.

At its wit’s end, the company put out an all-points bulletin to employees, asking for solutions to the turkey problem. The winner was salesman Gerry Thomas, who proposed that Swanson turn the turkeys into frozen dinners. Thomas suggested that the meals be packaged in a three-compartment aluminum-foil tray—a version of the trays then used to serve in-flight meals on airplanes— and sold as TV Dinners, in colorful boxes designed to look like television sets, complete with screens and tuning and volume knobs.

http://theplate.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/26/how-leftover-turkey-launched-the-tv-dinner/

Rudolph Delivering Pizza

My America

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/21/us/21raceinamerica.html?emc=edit_rr_20161125&nl=race-related&nlid=38867499&te=1&_r=0

Black Vets

An excerpt from The New Yorker -

THE TRAGIC, FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF BLACK MILITARY VETERANS
By Peter C. Baker

“We do so much in this country to celebrate and honor folks who risk their lives on the battlefield,” Stevenson told me recently. “But we don’t remember that black veterans were more likely to be attacked for their service than honored for it.” To be a soldier is to receive training in weapons, in organizations, in tactics: the skills of self-assertion. It is also to lay claim to the reverence that America sets aside for its former warriors. For these reasons, the return home of black soldiers after war has infuriated and terrified white America, setting the stage for reactionary aggression.

When the Civil War broke out, the Union was reluctant to let black soldiers fight at all, citing concerns over white soldiers’ morale and the respect that black soldiers would feel entitled to when the war ended. But, as the Union death toll increased, the skeptics relented. By war’s end, almost two hundred thousand black men had enlisted. This is widely known today, thanks in large part to works of art like the 1989 film “Glory.” Unfortunately, less cultural bandwidth has been devoted to what happened to those black troops after the fighting stopped. Few high-school or college students, when they learn about military history, learn about the lynching of black veterans.

In 1867, when Reconstruction ended, black veterans living in Southern states quickly became targets for white violence. White newspapers spread rumors of black soldiers assaulting white police. States across the South prohibited blacks from handling weapons. Compared to those who had not served, former soldiers were disproportionately assaulted, driven from their homes, and, in the most extreme cases, lynched in public. “Targeting Black Veterans” traces this trend in coolly objective prose, occasionally detailing shocking examples. “At Bardstown in Nelson County, Kentucky, a mob brutally lynched a United States Colored Troops veteran,” we learn. “The mob stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and then cut off his sexual organs. He was then forced to run half a mile to a bridge outside of town, where he was shot and killed.”

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-tragic-forgotten-history-of-black-military-veterans

Flag Designs

https://portlandflag.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/2013_gfbf_final_web.pdf

The iron gets completely reinvented.

Confessions = Good for the Soul

An excerpt from The Root -

Confessions of a Bad Dad on the Eve of His 2nd Child
Sometimes, I’m just not good at my job.
By Corey Richardson

As my wife and I careen into the last few weeks of her pregnancy and prepare for life with our new little girl, it’s beginning to dawn on me just how bad a job I’ve been doing as a parent for our first daughter. Four, almost five, years into the game, and I’m finally coming to grips with the fact that, as a dad, I’m not very good at my job sometimes.

So, in the spirit of clearing the slate for this new life to come, I feel like I owe it to my eldest to confess my sins and seek something like forgiveness for being a s–tty, although involved, dad. So, in the spirit of Usher Raymond, these are my parental confessions (although imagine me as DMX on the cover of Flesh of My Flesh) laying myself bare for your judgment.

I’ve exploited my child’s illiteracy for my own gain. Throughout my life, I’ve had to use a variety of ruses as tools to get my way, get what I want or get out of a jam. Most of the time, when I had to run game, I was dealing with adults with some modicum of education who required a lot of thought to pull off a con.  Then, God gifted me this little person, who came into this world knowing essentially nothing. But most importantly, this lil bama doesn’t quite know how to read yet.

Man, is that liberating. Driving down the street and you see a sign for a fast-food place she recognizes? I tell her that the sign says it’s closed and she just can’t read it. At the store and she’s getting ready to get her Ezell on for some cookies or some chips? Flip that bag over and tell her, “Oh no, these say they’re spoiled,” then keep on truckin’.  And then there’s my favorite move–when she pulls out that long-ass bedtime story to try to prolong the magic and keep from going to sleep (bruh, there’s this book that’s called Grandfather Ghandi that’s like the goddamn Odyssey for children), I skip pages and make up a new story on the spot. What’s she gonna do; stop you? She can’t read and I know the jig is gonna be up any day now, so I might as well get it in while I can.

I’m pretty sure I’m gonna pay for this when she gets a neck tattoo that I’m forced to read for the rest of my life. I’m sorry.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/11/confessions-of-a-bad-dad-on-the-eve-of-his-2nd-child/

Meet the Patels Official Trailer 2 (2015) - Documentary HD

What's in a Name?

An excerpt from Stumbleupon - 

How to Tell Someone’s Age When All You Know Is Her Name

By Nate Silver and Allison McCann

Picture Mildred, Agnes, Ethel and Blanche. Perhaps you imagine the Golden Girls or your grandmother’s poker game. These are names for women of age, wisdom and distinction. The median living Mildred in the United States is now 78 years old.

Now imagine Madison, Sydney, Alexa and Hailey. They sound like the starting midfield on a fourth-grade girls’ soccer team. And they might as well be: the median American females with these names are between 9 and 12 years old.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/7ulsc8/:VJ4AVMRQ:qSkh93vz/fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-tell-someones-age-when-all-you-know-is-her-name

Ingenious

From Stumbleupon -

20+ Brilliant Dad Hacks That Make Parenting So Much Easier
BY MUSTAFA GATOLLARI

Have him "paint" a fence with water.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2SNQir/:1u9u85m41:noOAyTD8/distractify.com/humor/2016/11/29/dad-time-filling-hacks

Flying Safety Tips