July 31, 2022

Summer Pasta With Zucchini, Ricotta and Basil

Fresh Ricotta Turns a Simple Pasta Dish Sublime

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017463-summer-pasta-with-zucchini-ricotta-and-basil

https://archive.ph/D4xAM



YIELD 4 to 6 servings

TIME 30 minutes



A summer pasta should be simple and fresh, ideally made with vegetables straight from the garden or market. Look for the best artisanal ricotta; top-quality ingredients make all the difference here.







snip

July 31, 2022

St. Germain Cocktail

https://www.wellplated.com/st-germain-cocktail-recipe/















snip

July 30, 2022

A Republican poll has Beasley up 2.4 points over Budd in the North Carolina US Senate race

https://boltonsuperpac.com/pdfs/crostabs_07282022.pdf

July 30, 2022

Breaking: Biden has tested positive for COVID again (per MSNBC)

rebound positivity

July 30, 2022

Lis Smith Says the Path to Trouncing Ron DeSantis Is Straight Through Right-Wing Media

The veteran political adviser and memoirist on how she’d kneecap Ron DeSantis, and how Dems can deploy the Trump taint in the midterms. Plus: Smith name-checks her party’s next superstars.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/07/hive-podcast-lis-smith-ron-desantis



This week, Inside the Hive cohost Joe Hagan talks to Lis Smith, Democratic campaign veteran and author of the new memoir Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story, which details her journey, the public one and the private one, through Democratic campaigns over the past 17 years, for candidates as varied as Jon Corzine, Barack Obama, Pete Buttigieg, and, most infamously, former governor Andrew Cuomo, whose lurid political demise she details down to the last moments of his time in office. A savvy political operator, Smith trains her sights on stubborn problems like Florida governor Ron DeSantis, and what to do about President Joe Biden, who, despite his abysmal poll numbers, she says is preparing to come out swinging in advance of the midterms.



“If the [midterms] are a referendum on Democrats, we will be screwed in November,” says Smith, but if Biden and his surrogates can effectively target Trump-tainted election deniers and antiabortion Republicans, “that’s a terrain we can win on. And that’s a switch that we need to flip—we need to flip that switch pretty soon. And we have the opportunity to now.” Smith, who helped take Buttigieg’s star to the national level, is now working with Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow, who went viral with a searing counterattack on anti-LGBTQ+ Republicans. Smith puts McMorrow on a short list of candidates, along with Kansas City mayor Quinton Lucas, to form the future of the party.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lis-smith-says-the-path-to-trounce-ron-desantis-is/id1232383877?i=1000570606045



snip

July 30, 2022

Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (Full Album) (Rolling Stones' Greatest Rap Album Ever)

Label: Columbia – 489843 1, Columbia – COL 489843 1
Format:
2 x Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: Europe
Released: 1998
Genre: Hip Hop, Funk / Soul
Style: Conscious, Contemporary R&B






















How 'The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill' Taught Me To Love Blackness

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/07/1013351060/how-the-miseducation-of-lauryn-hill-taught-me-to-love-blackness





So, I'm going through a bit of a nigrescence. You heard of it? It's a thing. My sister, a psychology professor, has diagnosed me as being in "the process of becoming black." William E. Cross developed the theory to account for "the identity transformation that accompanied an individual's participation in the Black power phase (1968-1975) of the Black Social Movement." His model has since been applied to other minorities, like African and Caribbean immigrants to the United States. I'm that newer kind of nigrescent: I'm a Zambian who moved to Maryland in 1989. Growing up, I often worried I wasn't black enough — because my father's white, because I wasn't American.

This is in fact quite American of me. Americans of all races tend to judge blackness this way. Depending on your background, you either are or you aren't: "black," "authentic," "real," or "street" enough. But this relies on genes or geography when, actually, nigrescence is a cultural process: "the metamorphosis of a Eurocentric world view into an Afrocentric one." Blackness, Cross says, "is a state of mind, not an inherited trait," and one that is best "explained by dynamic rather than static paradigms." Being black is always becoming black, a movement that entails contradiction, tumult and as Cross puts it, "a multitude of ideas and ideologies," as well as "considerable effort."

At the start of nigrescence, "the Negro" has been "socialized to take for granted the white perspective on life." They then experience an "encounter" that ignites an intense transformation: "glorification of African heritage, either/or thinking, Blacker-than-thou attitudes, unrealistic expectations concerning the efficacy of Black Power, a tendency to denigrate white people and white culture, and a preoccupation with proving that, as seen by 'others,' one is Black enough." This stage is marked by a range of turbulent emotions, including "rage, euphoria, tenseness, guilt, anger, love, oceanic pride, intense commitment, and lack of fear." In Cross's description, this stage feels like an adolescent "phase," and indeed, it often takes place in college or shortly after.

I'm 40 and this is where I'm at. My nigrescence is manifesting in stereotypical fashion. I want to listen to only black music, read only black literature, watch only black movies, experience only black art, learn only about black history and ideas, write only about blackness. I moved to Harlem, wilfully ignoring the voracious gentrification eating away at the Black Mecca. I see racism everywhere — its forms of exclusion, rejection and destruction, both insidious and violent — and it fills me with rage. It's gotten so that, as Toni Morrison once said, "when I say people, I mean black people."

snip

July 30, 2022

A Trump-Backed Veteran Ran Hard to the Right, Only to Be Outflanked

Joe Kent, a decorated retired Green Beret and House candidate in Washington State, is discovering just how far the modern far right will go.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/25/us/politics/joe-kent-house-trump.html

https://archive.ph/5JXC7



Joe Kent, a square-jawed Trump devotee running for a House seat in Washington State, is in a bit of a pickle. Kent has campaigned as a “Stop the Steal”-style candidate on Donald Trump’s “America First” platform, positions that apparently caught the eye of the former president, who has endorsed him.

Kent insists the 2020 election was rigged, and has rationalized the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, by claiming that an otherwise peaceful crowd was infiltrated by Deep State agents provocateurs. In September, he spoke at a rally in Washington, D.C., in support of people accused of storming the Capitol, urging the release of what he called “political prisoners.”

But in recent weeks, far-right figures led by Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who has spoken admiringly of Adolf Hitler, have started an online drumbeat claiming that Kent, a retired Green Beret and C.I.A. paramilitary officer who has a fistful of Bronze Stars, is actually a deep-state denizen himself.



Kent’s wife, Shannon, was a targeting specialist for the National Security Agency who was killed by a suicide bomber in northeast Syria in 2019 while fighting the Islamic State. After her death, he wrote about how his experiences in the Special Forces had made him more skeptical of “pointless or unwinnable wars.” On his arm is a tattoo inscribed with the date of her killing, along with an image of the World Trade Center aflame after the Sept. 11 attacks.

snip

July 30, 2022

'Paper Girls' Could Be the Next 'Stranger Things'

The cast of the Amazon series breaks down the ’80s nostalgia, the power of strong friendships, and popular graphic novels that inspired the show.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/amazons-paper-girls-could-be-the-next-stranger-things



If you were 12 years old and had to cast an older version of yourself for a TV show, which celebrity would you choose? It’s a question the cast of Paper Girls had to ponder as the show spans across three decades—the ’80s, the ’90s, and today’s time—meeting their older selves, like the movie 13 Going on 30 but with a Stranger Things twist.

You’ll be reminded of both, as well as a handful of other sci-fi, coming-of-age classics, as you tune in for the first season, which launches Friday on Amazon. A quartet of the most adorable, snarky newspaper delivery girls meet on one fateful morning after Halloween as they run their routes—only to discover a mind-boggling portal to another world. They hate each other. They love each other. They tolerate each other, because they need to if they want to make it back to the ’80s again.

Paper Girls stems from Brian K. Vaughan’s comic books of the same name, which rose to fame after a handful of glowing reviews with its 2015 release. Just a few months later, Netflix unveiled the wildly popular first season of Stranger Things, which is certainly comparable to this new series. So, before these gals reach Millie Bobby Brown levels of fame—the fashionistas are already on their way—we had to chat with them about what it feels like to be 13 Going on 30-ed. Jason Mantzoukas, who plays the evil overlord “Grandfather” in the back half of the new series, tells me he’d select Michelle Obama to play an older version of his younger self. “Just because that’s a compelling answer,” he says. “A valiant challenge. I’d like to see it.”



There’s a bit I’ve cut out here, though, because his evil villain co-star Adina Porter selected the former first lady a beat before him. “Bring in Michelle Obama!” the actress demands. “I have this idea that I would become wise like Michelle Obama. If you can just throw out anybody, then sure!”

snip

July 30, 2022

Betsy DeVos and the GOP's Plan to Destroy Public Schools

“School choice” is a rhetorical dodge. It’s actually all about entrenching right-wing power, control, and Christian nationalism.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/betsy-devos-and-the-gops-plan-to-destroy-public-schools



“Republicans are trying to dismantle public education which educates 90% of American kids. That’s the end game, folks,” I recently tweeted upon hearing billionaire Betsy DeVos, Trump’s former Secretary of Education, admit: “I personally think the Department of Education”—which she used to run—“should not exist.” The comment shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s been following the GOP’s 70-year crusade to dismantle and privatize our public education system.

https://twitter.com/WajahatAli/status/1551399521934082049
After Brown v. Board of Education ruled that segregation was unconstitutional, white supremacy ignited the right-wing culture war that burns across the nation in 2022 with battles over textbooks, critical race theory, school boards, mask mandates, and diversity initiatives. But instead of deploying the overtly racist tactics of the mid-20th century, the GOP now filters its agenda through racially neutral Trojan Horse slogans such as “school choice” and “parental choice.” The latter helped Republican Glenn Youngkin win the governorship of Virginia, and suburban parents have been successfully weaponized by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ efforts to ban books, punish teachers, and help kids avoid “liberal indoctrination” by ignoring the existence of gay people.

DeVos was simply being true to form when she made her recent remarks at a Moms for Liberty summit, a training site for conservative activists to learn how to create majorities on local school boards. For years, she has zealously spent her millions on “education reform” and created the blueprint for Republican state legislatures. Specifically, she has been an evangelist for “school choice,” arguably the main policy focus of the 2020 Republican National Convention—which famously had no platform except to “enthusiastically endorse” Donald Trump.



School choice advocates like DeVos want to funnel public funds and resources to private schools and charter schools and away from public schools, which educate the majority of American children. Although Republicans claim their pursuit of “school choice” is to help the children, one should be wise enough to know by now that Republicans—who oppose the child tax credit, gun control, and food stamps—only care about the pre-born. Once you’re out of the womb, you have to pull yourself up from your bootstraps and run for your life to avoid mass shootings.




snip

July 30, 2022

'Pegging' Sets the Internet Alight, Just in Time for the Weekend

Take one gossip item about an alleged royal’s bedroom activities, a sex act that Dan Savage first helped coin a name for 21 years ago, and watch the internet catch light.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pegging-sets-the-internet-alight-just-in-time-for-the-weekend



The world, we are all acutely aware, lost its innocence some time ago. As soon as something is new, it is consumed by us human jackals online and off, talked about endlessly, new angles and snark devoured in a matter of minutes in the manner of piranha discovering a fresh human leg. Adam and Eve couldn’t say no to that damn apple, and here we are.

Until this week! This week, where once there was ignorance there are the collective, bright, shining eyes of discovery. The world has apparently found out about “pegging”! Pegging has united people in a moment of “Oh, that’s what that means”—unless you’re Dan Savage or a reader of his or someone who has been pegging away happily enough with their partner/s, in which case you’re rolling your eyes at the basic-ness of it all.

“What term, from this day forward, will be the commonly accepted slang for a woman fucking a man in the ass with a strap-on dildo?” Savage asked his “Savage Love” readers 21 years ago. “Pegging” came forth the answer.

The neologism has returned to the public square as the sexual act at the center of a widely shared blind gossip item posted on DeuxMoi. The item claims an unnamed, heterosexual member of the royal family is into this particular sexual activity. The blind gossip item says this royal’s extramarital affair is an “open secret in London and amongst the English aristo set, and is the talk of every party and newsdesk.” How very Bridgerton, and Lady Whistledown!

snip