Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalUkraine flag projected on Russian embassy -- Russia tried to respond and hilarity ensued
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, residents of Washington, D.C. have been using their own tactics to show their displeasure with Russia's unprovoked attack. Wednesday night, activists took it up a notch and targeted the Russian Embassy.
Last month, activists replaced the street sign outside of the embassy with one saying "Zelensky Way." In 2018, D.C.'s city council voted to rename a section of the street officially. Instead of Wisconsin Avenue, it became Boris Nemtsov Place. Nemtsov was a critic of Putin's who was murdered three years before.
On Wednesday night, activists projected the Ukrainian flag onto the Russian Embassy building. The embassy has been cloaked in the Russian flag's white, red and blue stripes. Then the small Ukrainian flag appeared. The staff apparently rushed to try and wash out the projection with a white spotlight, and that's when things got funny.
The video shows the pro-Ukraine projection moving around the building as the Russian spotlight appears to chase it. It ended up looking like a cat-and-mouse game emblematic of Russia's struggle to bring down Ukraine.
https://www.rawstory.com/rusian-embassy-ukraine-flag/
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GREAT video in article! Nothing like public trolling!
Staying quiet about Brittney Griner hasn't worked
For the past two months, people around Brittney Griner and the WNBA have been low-key. The idea was that any loud calls to have the basketball star released from her Russian prison as Vladimir Putin launched an assault against Ukraine would only upset the authoritarian, and so the wise course was to work quietly and behind the scenes to release her.
It hasn’t worked.
Accused of having cannabis oil in her luggage at the airport on Feb. 17, Griner faces 10 years in prison in Russia. Her detention however, also serves as an undeniable flex of Putin’s power. The American and Olympian embodies many characteristics that he has tried to suppress in Russia, such as any discussion of untraditional gender expectations.
Griner, who came out in 2013 and has often spoken about how misunderstood she has felt over the years, stands at 6-foot-9 and has a raft of endorsements, including Nike. She is impossible to ignore even if she wanted to be invisible. She’s too famous, too tall, too uniquely Griner to be mistaken.
https://deadspin.com/staying-quiet-about-brittney-griner-hasn-t-worked-1848790481
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Brittney Griner is a political prisoner. Period.
This child integrated his school in 1914. The case is gaining recognition a century later.
All Francisco Maestas wanted was for his children to get a quality education. When his local school district in Alamosa, Colorado, insisted he send his kids to the so-called Mexican School, Maestas fought the district in court and won.
The Maestas case was decided in 1914. Experts say it was one of the country’s first successful school desegregation cases — and the earliest known one so far involving Mexican Americans.
For over a hundred years, this story of Latino parents fighting for their children’s education was lost to history — until recently.
A three-dimensional sculpture depicting the Maestas children will be installed Thursday in the State Capitol in Denver in honor of the 108th anniversary of the decision in the case. The statue then will tour other parts of the state.
“This case lay dormant for a century, and it took some strong efforts by academics to bring it to light,” said Ron Maestas, a retired educator and descendant of the Maestas family. “To me, Francisco Maestas gives us a lesson in courage, a simple man standing up against inequity. He stood up for his kids, because he wanted safety and education for them.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/latino-history-buried-colorado-marks-forgotten-fight-school-equity-rcna21207
'The lunacy is getting more intense': how Birds Aren't Real took on the conspiracy theorists
In early 2017, Peter McIndoe, now 23, was studying psychology at the University of Arkansas, and visiting friends in Memphis, Tennessee. He tells me this over Zoom from the US west coast, and has the most arresting face – wide-eyed, curious and intense, like the lead singer of an indie band, or a young monk. “This was right after the Donald Trump election, and things were really tense. I remember people walking around saying they felt as if they were in a movie. Things felt so unstable.”
It was the weekend of simultaneous Women’s Marches across the US (indeed, the world), and McIndoe looked out of the window and noticed “counterprotesters, who were older, bigger white men. They were clear aggravators. They were encroaching on something that was not their event, they had no business being there.” Added to that, “it felt like chaos, because the world felt like chaos”.
McIndoe made a placard, and went out to join the march. “It’s not like I sat down and thought I’m going to make a satire. I just thought: ‘I should write a sign that has nothing to do with what is going on.’ An absurdist statement to bring to the equation.”
That statement was “birds aren’t real”. As he stood with the counterprotesters, and they asked what his sign meant, he improvised. He said he was part of a movement that had been around for 50 years, and was originally started to save American birds, but had failed. The “deep state” had destroyed them all, and replaced them with surveillance drones. Every bird you see is actually a tiny feathered robot watching you.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/14/the-lunacy-is-getting-more-intense-how-birds-arent-real-took-on-the-conspiracy-theorists
Herschel Walker Claims to Own Companies That Don't Exist
Former NFL star Herschel Walker has made millions in business ventures since he retired in 1997, and he claims to be worth more than $29 million today.
But despite that success, the Republican Senate hopeful and longtime friend of Donald Trump has, for whatever reason, chosen to dramatically inflate his business record, according to a Daily Beast investigation. In doing so, Walker has established a parallel record of demonstrably false claims, many of which appear to bear no resemblance to reality whatsoever.
While Walker’s business record has been picked over before—including in an Associated Press review of “exaggerated claims of financial success”—The Daily Beast has reviewed documents and other records that shine new light on previously unexamined, and particularly egregious, false claims.
Those claims include running the largest minority-owned food company in the United States; owning multiple chicken plants in another state; and starting and owning an upholstery business which was also, apparently, at one point in his telling, the country’s largest minority-owned apparel company.
While the chasm between Walker’s vision and reality often appears staggering—and applies not just to business but to multiple dimensions of his personal life as well—he might be playing fast and loose with the concept of “ownership.” But it’s unclear whether he transposed this fanciful structure onto his candidate financial disclosure, which claims a net worth of between $29 million and $65 million, and which, according to a Georgia Public Broadcasting report, merits further scrutiny.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/herschel-walker-claims-to-own-companies-that-dont-exist?ref=home
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This guy...
Why jobs are full of inane busywork
When employees are on the clock, most managers expect them to keep busy through the workday. This may mean either completing tasks within their remits, or finding ways to make sure their hands are in some work-related project. Even when workflows deliver some downtime, the message from management is generally clear: find a way to keep working.
If workers appear to twiddle their thumbs, some managers step in with ‘busywork’ to keep their employees occupied. “Busywork is something that doesn't have a purpose,” says leadership and development trainer Randy Clarke, based in Indiana, US. “It doesn't lead towards reaching any goals, it doesn't improve the person, the operation or the culture.”
Examples of busywork might include compiling a pointless report, colour-coding a spreadsheet or proofreading a presentation that has already been checked. One 2016 study of 600 knowledge workers showed they spent just 39% of their workdays doing their actual jobs, with the rest dedicated to meetings, emails and busywork such as writing status reports for managers.
In the office, managers might assign busywork based on a quick visual check of what employees are doing. But the switch to remote work during the pandemic has changed that, as many managers can no longer easily monitor their employees. While studies suggest many remote employees are significantly more productive, they are also working significantly longer hours. Does this mean that managers are assigning more busywork? And would it really be so bad if employees took a break when there was nothing to do?
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220411-the-managerial-obsession-with-busywork
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Reminding you that school was too, until you got to college
Man arrested in Brooklyn subway attack charged with terror
The man arrested Wednesday in the shooting of 10 people on a Brooklyn subway was charged with a federal terrorism offense, a day after the attack on a crowded rush-hour train.
The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Breon Peace, announced the charge against Frank R. James, 62, at an afternoon press conference. James was taken into custody in Manhattan’s East Village neighborhood shortly beforehand.
Law enforcement located James after police received a tip about his whereabouts.
James is accused in the Tuesday attack in which five people were in critical condition after the morning shooting, but all 10 gunshot victims were expected to survive. The charge against him carries a sentence of up to life in prison and pertains to terrorist or other violent attacks against mass transit systems. There is no indication that James had ties to terror organizations — international or otherwise — and the motive remains unclear, Peace said.
https://apnews.com/article/police-hunt-brooklyn-subway-gunman-8b4e1efee5d08c06050c7b09172829d3
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I said elsewhere this morning that his actions were terroristic and therefore he was a terroist and I actually had people disagree with me
My Son Asked Me How Two Men Have Sex. My Reaction Surprised Me.
As my 10-year-old gets ready to enter middle school next year, he’s been getting increasingly curious about bodies, puberty, and of course, s-e-x. He’s not interested in having sex, he’s quick to inform me ― in fact, the first time I explained the physical machinations of intercourse, his initial response was, “I don’t know, I’d rather play video games.”
But he is interested in understanding sex, a circumstance that has led to a series of increasingly difficult-to-answer queries along the lines of “But what does semen look like?”
We’ve looked at a diagram of the inside of a penis together. We found out that the hole on the tip of the penis is called the “urinary meatus.” I finally convinced him that a man doesn’t pee inside a woman to make a baby. It’s been a wild time.
I try to answer his questions as honestly as is age-appropriate while using the clinical and appropriate terms for body parts and sex acts. Sometimes, I get a little stumped or tongue-tied by questions I didn’t anticipate, like when he asked me how old you have to be to have sex. (I came up with: “There’s no set age, but you want to make sure you’re emotionally mature enough to handle it, that you’ve found someone you trust enough to take that step with, and that you have the necessary information to do it safely. Also, sex should never happen between children and adults.”)
While it’s not always easy or comfortable to have these conversations, I love that my preteen feels comfortable with himself and unashamed to approach me with any and all questions about sex and sexuality. (Although I did have to tell him recently that it’s not necessary to inform me every time he has an erection.)
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gay-lgbtq-inclusive-sex-education_n_624dee6fe4b0d8266ab4a458
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Long and really thoughtful article. Not a question my kids asked me, but.....
Coach Attacks Youth Baseball Umpire, Who's Taken Off Field On A Stretcher
A youth baseball coach in The Colony, Texas, became so enraged by a call at the plate and being ejected that he shoved the umpire to the ground, viral video shows. (Watch it below.)
The Colony police awaited the signing of an arrest warrant for the coach on a charge of misdemeanor assault to cause bodily injury, police spokesperson Rick De La Cruz told HuffPost on Wednesday.
The coach, whose name was being withheld by law enforcement as of Wednesday afternoon, was banned from further tournaments.
“The worst thing was the kids having to see this,” L’Erin Hampton, whose 24 Sports organization ran the competition, told HuffPost on Wednesday.
The umpire, Sam Phelps, told Fox 4 that his neck snapped from the impact. A witness, Ryan Walke, said Phelps was on the ground for 10 to 15 minutes before being taken to the hospital on a stretcher.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/youth-umpire-sam-phelps-shoved-texas_n_6256e5dae4b0723f801412b7
Wave of union victories suggests union-busting consultants may have lost their sway
The nation’s anti-union consultants and lawyers – who have made millions of dollars fighting against union drives – have just been through some of their worst weeks ever as unions racked up wins at Amazon, Starbucks, REI, the New York Times, MIT and other places.
These consultants and lawyers – often called “union busters” – have done so poorly that John Logan, a professor who has studied “union avoidance” efforts for two decades, says their anti-union kryptonite seems to have suddenly lost much of its power. “For decades, the consultants have seemed almost invincible. Many firms have boasted victory rates of over 95%,” said Logan, a professor at San Francisco State. But in Staten Island, “the Amazon Labor Union turned the tables on the company’s anti-union consultants” and showed they may have been “more of a liability than an asset”.
Logan said anti-union consultants are often no longer as effective because workers and their attitudes have changed: workers, especially younger workers, are braver about speaking out, they’re using social media to outmaneuver the consultants, and they’re embracing highly effective strategies, like worker-to-worker organizing and interrupting so-called captive audience meetings, where consultants discuss the supposed evils of unions. Logan said workers often used to be far more scared to stand up to anti-union consultants, and one reason workers are less frightened is that the low jobless rate makes it easier for workers to find another job if they get fired for supporting a union.
“They survived the pandemic, and they’re no longer so fearful,” Logan said. “The pandemic was such a frightening experience that workers have recalibrated their sense of risk about what they’re prepared to do in their lives. They’re more prepared to join a union campaign. They feel they’ve repeatedly been disrespected while their employers were making billions of dollars.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/13/union-victories-busting-consultants-amazon-tactics
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