Hosted by pumpernickel bread.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
A Man Is Dead; Everyone Is Less Safe
[Content Note: Racism; guns; police brutality.]
Earlier this week, John Crawford, a 22-year-old black man in Ohio was killed by police after another customer called 911 to report a man waving an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle at Walmart, though it was actually a BB/pellet rifle which is sold at the store.
"He said he was at the video games playing videos, and he went over there by the toy section where the toy guns were," said LeeCee Johnson [who has two children with Crawford and another on the way]. "The next thing I know, he said, 'It's not real,' and the police start shooting, and they said 'Get on the ground,' but he was already on the ground because they had shot him."Well, that last quote is certainly interesting, isn't it? It only makes sense if John Crawford was actually a man carrying a weapon the express intent of using it to harm other customers, but doesn't make a whole lot of sense if John Crawford was himself just a customer holding an air rifle sold at the store. In the latter case, "the quick response of officers" failed utterly to minimize the risk to customer John Crawford.
"I could hear him just crying and screaming," Johnson said. "I feel like they shot him down like he was not even human."
Ohio's attorney general, who was asked by Beavercreek police to investigate the case, confirmed Crawford was holding a MK-177 (.177 caliber) BB/Pellet Rifle when he was shot to death.
The former Marine who called police said Crawford looked to be attempting to load the black air rifle and ignored police commands to drop the weapon.
"He looked like he was going to go violently," said Ronald Ritchie. "If he would have dropped the weapon, he could have came out with his life, but unfortunately, he didn't."
The department's chief, Dennis Evers, said officers Sean Williams and David Darkow acted appropriately.
"The officers gave verbal commands to the subject to drop the weapon," Evers said in a statement. "The subject … was shot after failing to comply with the officers' commands. The quick response of officers was instrumental in containing this situation and minimizing the risk to customers."
And, frankly, they increased the risk to other customers by opening fire on a man who had zero intent to harm them.
Tasha Thomas, who drove Crawford to the store and was in another aisle when the shooting occurred, says he was not armed when he entered the store. And Walmart's website shows that they carry the MK-177 air rifle Crawford was holding.
Again, as in previous cases we've discussed of people of color being killed or harmed by police after failing to respond quickly in a moment of panic, like Jonathan Ferrell and Jessica Klyzek, it's easy (and shitty, and victim-blaming) to say, "If only he'd complied, he'd still be alive," instead of imagining how many people might say, "It's not real"—how many people might attempt a reasonable appeal to the police before immediately hitting the ground, might assume that it's important to establish that the rifle is not the killing machine they presume it to be.
I would probably do that. I think it's a perfectly understandable instinct, during a chaotic moment. The thing is, no one would call the police on me for holding an air rifle at a Walmart, and the police probably wouldn't shoot me if I failed to fall to the ground wordlessly in a single instant.
We can't keep peddling this lie that it's even possible for every person to have the composure to defer to police orders while they're frightened, no less someone who has every reason to expect the police are primed to approach someone like him in bad faith.
A "quick response of officers" doesn't work out great for innocent people.
And this kind of response doesn't work out great for communities, either. Especially if those communities have among their residents people who don't want to get someone about whose behavior they're suspicious killed by police if they're wrong about what they're seeing.
I don't want police to take my word for something; I want them to investigate. I want them to use caution in assessing whether there's any real danger before they take action. I don't want anyone killed because I made a mistake.
And I understand, totally, why police officers say that they don't have time for caution when someone has a gun. (A real gun.) Which is, you know, why we need fewer guns. Some cops are aggressive, dangerous, impetuous shitlords who are just looking for an excuse to pull the trigger, but some cops make honest fucking mistakes because of the proliferation of guns and regret it the rest of their lives. I don't want that, either.
This situation is untenable. None of us are safer. And gun proponents continue to bray that the solution is more guns.
They are dead wrong.
My profound condolences to John Crawford's family and friends.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Rape culture; misogyny; description of sexual assault at link.]
"In some ways it all comes down to this: for all the regressive belief still lingering in our culture that women are sentimentally attached to the tropes of victimhood (and why not anyway, when there are so few central roles for women to play out in their lives that don't cast them as a side-part?), if you don't actually want this role—and I don't actually want this role—its continual resurfacing in your life is a source of infuriation. Big male Great American Writer infuriation, which would probably be taken seriously if one of Roth-Mailer-Updike Great Male Narcissists wrote it down. Burning, uncontainable anger that—for all you've tried to do, for all you've tried to achieve, for the hours and hours you have worked and worked, the whole languages you have taught yourself—a man can still humiliate you with sexually predatory behaviour, embarrassingly clichéd, 70s Philip Roth-style 'come on baby, take it like a good girl' misogyny, and reduce you back to the role of victimhood—which, if you articulate, would apparently just make you 'unprofessional' anyway."—An anonymous female journalist, documenting being sexually assaulted by a male journalist she respected, and the personal and professional aftermath. I strongly recommend reading the entire thing, if you can.
[H/T to Shaker rosenleaf.]
Your 50x Film
Last night, Iain asked me: "What film would you watch 50 times in a row for $100,000?" I laughed for a hundred years, and then I set to thinking about what film I could possibly withstand watching 50 times in a row for any amount of money.
Would it be the shortest film I could think of? A film I loved, knowing the distinct possibility of ruining it for myself forever after extended submersive viewing? How even to decide?
Eventually, I figured I'd pick a film I'd watched so many times as a kid that I could recite it line by line already anyway, and wouldn't mind terribly if I never wanted to watch it again at the end of 50 consecutive viewings: Some Kind of Wonderful.
I still don't know if I'd make it, though, even if in some bizarre reality there was a weirdo with money to burn who was going to offer me an exorbitant sum to try.
So: Would you even make the attempt, if such a strange offer came your way? And, if so, what film would you choose?
Daily Dose of Cute
Ooh, someone's gonna get it. The Queen is displeased.
(Actually, she was just intently watching something that caught her eye in a nature documentary on the TV, lol.)
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Nope
[Content Note: Privilege; racism; classism.]
Not long after I posted my earlier piece on risk assessment, I saw this piece about two young white people, a man and a woman, who have developed an app called SketchFactor, which advises people how to avoid "sketchy" neighborhoods.
The developers, who are "already finalists in a $20,000 startup contest," promise us they're not racists—but the term "sketchy" doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's a word with a very particular use, especially among young white people, to describe neighborhoods that are typically inhabited by poor people of color.
I always understand exactly what a white person says when they describe a neighborhood as "sketchy"—and what they mean is that they've seen evidence of poverty and that they've seen people of color, usually black people, and/or lots of business signs in a language other than English, usually Spanish.
I've written before about how I lived in Rogers Park for the entire decade I lived in Chicago, and I routinely heard from other white people that I lived in a "sketchy" neighborhood, whether they were asking me wasn't I worried about living in "sketchy" neighborhood or telling me they'd never risk living in such a "sketchy" neighborhood.
The thing about Rogers Park is that it was then (and may still be) the most ethnically diverse neighborhood in Chicago, which is still an incredibly segregated city. And, although certain parts of Rogers Park are gentrified now, it was then generally not a neighborhood in which wealthy people lived.
When I bought my flat in Rogers Park, one of my then-bosses asked me, "Don't we pay you enough that you can afford to move out of that neighborhood?"
Because it was "sketchy."
That's not to say there was no crime in Rogers Park; there was. And it is not to say I was never approached by a man who wouldn't let me politely extricate myself from his company; I was.
But I got approached by men like that on the way to and from my then-job in a building on Chicago's Magnificent Mile, too. And no one described that as a "sketchy" neighborhood.
The makers of this app are saying their software will allow people to document incidents of racism, sexism, harassment, etc. Which, if nothing else, merely reveals they are ignorant to the reality that, if it's only the existence of such incidents which mark a neighborhood as "sketchy," then every neighborhood is sketchy.
Bias and harassment aren't limited to certain neighborhoods. I have noticed, though, that the designation of "sketchy" certainly is.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
Kenny Loggins: "Footloose"
This week's TMNS have been brought to you by songs about dancing.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: War; death. Covers next two paragraphs.] President Obama has authorized "two operations in Iraq—targeted airstrikes to protect our American personnel, and a humanitarian effort to help save thousands of Iraqi civilians who are trapped on a mountain without food and water and facing almost certain death. ...To stop the advance on Erbil, I've directed our military to take targeted strikes against ISIL terrorist convoys should they move toward the city. ...We intend to stay vigilant, and take action if these terrorist forces threaten our personnel or facilities anywhere in Iraq, including our consulate in Erbil and our embassy in Baghdad. We're also providing urgent assistance to Iraqi government and Kurdish forces so they can more effectively wage the fight against ISIL. Second, at the request of the Iraqi government—we've begun operations to help save Iraqi civilians stranded on the mountain. ...I've, therefore, authorized targeted airstrikes, if necessary, to help forces in Iraq as they fight to break the siege of Mount Sinjar and protect the civilians trapped there. Already, American aircraft have begun conducting humanitarian airdrops of food and water to help these desperate men, women, and children survive."
Meanwhile: "Paul Wolfowitz, a former senior George W. Bush administration official and one of the chief Iraq War architects, said on Tuesday that the U.S. 'won' the war in Iraq. When asked his thoughts about the current situation in Iraq and whether the war was a mistake, Wolfowitz replied, 'We have won it—in 2009.'" This fucking guy.
[CN: War; death] In Israel & Gaza: "Israel launched air strikes on Gaza on Friday morning after Islamist groups there refused to extend a ceasefire and resumed rocket fire. At least 35 rockets were fired from Gaza towards Israel after a 72-hour ceasefire expired at 8am local time. Several more had been fired during the night. By noon there were reports of air strikes in the north and east of Gaza and several audible explosions in Gaza City. There appear to have been some casualties, though details were unclear."
[CN: War on agency] This piece by Texas activist Andrea Grimes is great: "Davis vs. Goliath: What Followed Wendy Davis' Bid for Texas Governor."
[CN: Homophobia] Just like Jesus would do: A Florida church abruptly cancelled a man's funeral "after the pastor learned the deceased was gay and his obituary listed a surviving husband."
[CN: Climate change] Scientists believe the giant holes in Siberia may have been caused by climate change: "Russian researchers who have explored the crater sites now believe the long-frozen Siberian permafrost thawed due to increased temperatures, collapsed and let free methane gas trapped beneath, the team told the science journal Nature. The team tested the air near the bottom of the holes and discovered an unusually high concentration of methane." Terrific.
This weekend in the skies [video may begin playing automatically at link]: "Sky observers in the Northern Hemisphere will get a special treat this Sunday as a 'super moon' and meteor showers are expected to happen at the same time. The annual meteor shower, Perseid, will light up the night sky with as many as 100 shooting stars an hour. The prolific Perseid will be joined by a 'super moon,' which occurs when the Earth is at its closest distance to the moon. The meteor shower will peak between Aug. 10 and Aug. 13, and is expected to last for a week after its peak. 'The best time to see the showers will be at around 2 a.m. in the morning,' Tony Berendsen, an outreach astronomer and founder of Tahoe Star Tours told ABC News today."
[CN: Fat bias] Allison Tolman continues to be awesome: "While I know that me saying something to [people engaging in fat shaming and body policing] on the Internet and sassing somebody back doesn't actually do anything to them—I don't think I'm going to change anyone's mind, obviously—but I'm hoping that if that's part of the conversation, people saying nasty things to women, maybe we can also make part of the conversation women saying back, 'It's really none of your business, shut up.'"
And finally! Here is an adorable video of a Rottweiler who loves her weekly shower. Awww!
Different Perspectives, by Necessity
[Content Note: Fear/threat assessment; harassment; privilege.]
In my previous piece, I linked to my essay "On Sitting with Fear," which includes this passage:
Women live a life of sustained fear. Which is not to say that most women exist in a state of heightened anxiety at all times, but is to acknowledge the reality that our lives are fundamentally different from men's because of a real threat of rape/violence at the hands of men, mostly men we know. (And because we are stupidly and wrongly tasked with its prevention.) Men's and women's lives are very different in that way.Recently, I had an experience that perfectly highlighted this difference.
Iain and I had just finished dinner at a restaurant and were walking across the parking lot to our car, which was parked on the edge of the lot near the sidewalk, which runs alongside a busy four-lane road. Most times, after we finish a meal, we like to stand by the car, just hanging out and chatting, let our meals settle, maybe having a cigarette if one or both of us is off the wagon.
This particular evening, however, when Iain suggested standing for a bit, I said, "Let's just get in the car; otherwise, that guy's going to keep us here forever." I opened the door and was in the car before Iain had finished saying, "What guy?"
The man about whom I was speaking had been making a beeline for me, and, once I made myself unavailable, he turned direction and headed straight for Iain, trapping him in a conversation for what seemed like forever, asking for whatever he thought Iain might have to offer—money, cigarettes—and ignoring Iain's first few attempts to politely extricate himself.
I just waited in the car. It was going exactly how I knew it would go.
When Iain got in, he grumbled a sort of mild complaint about how difficult it was to get away from him. "That's why I got in the car quickly," I explained. Iain replied, "I didn't even see him before he started talking to me."
I knew this, too. Which is why I had warned Iain to get in the car. Because, as we were walking across the parking lot, continuing our languid conversation begun at the table, I had, without any effort or distraction, noted the man ambling down the sidewalk, noticed him noticing us, calculated that he was exactly like a hundred other men who have approached me with faux friendly overfamiliarity in the hopes of extracting something from me, and assessed that he would be likely to ignore any attempt to draw a boundary, and in fact was likely to get increasingly more aggressive the more I tried to get away.
I knew how long it would take him to reach us, the route he'd take to try to conceal himself behind other cars as long as possible, that he'd go for me first instead of Iain, and exactly the spot in which he'd intercept us if I didn't ever so slightly quicken our pace.
All of that happened within seconds. In a part of my brain that barely penetrates my consciousness until the conclusions have been made and recommended course corrections been established, just buzzing around in the background of my daily movement.
Meanwhile, Iain hadn't even noticed him at all, until he was right there.
I observed this disparity to Iain, and he acknowledged it. And then he added, not in a diminishing way, "Well, he was harmless anyway."
That, too, is a difference in the way we experience the world. The man who was, indeed, perfectly harmless if a little annoying to Iain might not have been harmless to me.
Maybe he would have. Or maybe he would have been one of the men, multiple men, who have approached me in precisely the same way, but wouldn't leave me alone. No matter how polite I was. No matter how long I listened to them tell me a rambling story. No matter if I gave them money or a cigarette or part of the sandwich I was eating or whatever. One of the men who clung and stayed and got closer, and maybe started touching me, as I tried to move away, as I told them I needed to go now, I'm sorry. One of the men who escalated into rageful shouting, because who the fuck did I think I was, anyway, fucking bitch.
Men who people dismiss as "crazy" or "drunk," and who may well be people with mental illness or addiction, but do not approach Iain, or other men, in the way they approach me, or other women. Which seems rather more important.
There are people who will be very keen to not understand what I'm saying who will believe that I'm racist, or fearful of homeless people, or stingy. And I won't be able to convince them otherwise, even though, as it happens, this man was white and didn't appear to be homeless, and I happily give whatever I've got to spare to most people who approach me.
This is about how, by necessity, I have learned, like many women learn, to move through the world with a heightened awareness; to move through our daily lives in a way that most privileged men never will.
It's important to note this difference, because it's a cost to women. It's a cost to us, to expend this sort of psychological energy, in an effort to keep ourselves as safe as we can, in whatever ways are within our control.
And it's important to note in order to underline the difference in perspectives, to ask men to consider that men who look harmless to them may look very different to women, not because women are weak or mean or unjustifiably paranoid or "profile men," but because those men are actually not harmless for us.
And because privilege allows a certainty of safety and freedom for fear that some men—George Zimmerman, Michael Dunn, Theodore Wafer—turn into justification for killing anyone who they assert interrupts their physic tranquility, even for a moment.
Other people sit with fear, and/or heightened awareness, our whole lives. And we manage not to harm people who make us uncomfortable, or annoyed, or even afraid.
Something That Looks a Little Bit Like Justice
[Content Note: Murder; guns; misogynoir. Video may begin playing automatically at link.]
Theodore Wafer, the 55-year-old white man who shot and killed Renisha McBride, a 19-year-old black woman, when she knocked on his door seeking help following a car accident, has been found guilty on all counts: Second-degree murder, manslaughter, and felony firearm. He now faces life in prison, with the possibility of parole.
McBride's mother, Monica McBride, shook back and forth after the verdict was read, while some of her other family members wept. "She was a beautiful young lady. She had things going for her," McBride's father, Walter Simmons, said. The prosecutors "had the facts, they had the evidence, they did their job, and they did it well. And we appreciate it."I am just so relieved. I am relieved for Renisha's family and friends. It's not that guilty verdicts in cases like these ease the pain of loss, so much as they do simply not exacerbate that pain. And this was the just verdict. The jury did a good job.
The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for less than ten hours over two days after closing arguments were heard Wednesday.
Comprehensive justice for Renisha McBride and the people who love her would include this: Meaningful reconsideration of Stand Your Ground laws and a serious public conversation about how being afraid, for a moment, doesn't give you the right to kill someone; about how reflexively wanting to kill someone who makes you afraid is a terrible, harmful, destructive instinct; about how feeling unsafe doesn't necessarily mean you are unsafe; about how to sit with fear and be okay with that long enough not to kill someone "by accident."
Programming Note
I've got a bunch of stuff to do today, some not-fun stuff and one fun thing yay, so I'm taking the day off, and I will be back tomorrow. See you then.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker masculine_lady: "What is something weird that happened in your life recently? You may define weird however you wish."
Photo of the Day
The craggy landscape of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko,
photographed by Rosetta's OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on August 3.
Rosetta is a spacecraft which is now traveling at 34,000mph alongside the comet, 60 miles distant, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, about 250 million miles from Earth—and the story of how it got there is pretty incredible:
Rosetta has flown a long way to get to this moment. It blasted off from Earth in March of 2004, and has followed a convoluted and looping path through the solar system before finally meeting up with the comet 10 years later. Along the way, it picked up three gravity assists from the Earth, one from Mars, and passed through the asteroid belt twice. All told, the spacecraft has flown 4 billion miles so far. And yet, in some ways, its work has just begun.The above photograph—about which Holger Sierks of the Max Planck Institute in Germany says, "We have never seen anything like this before in such detail."—is only the start of a mission that Sierks estimates will "revolutionize cometary science." Cool.
Other spacecraft have made comet flybys in the past, but a mere flyby is not what Rosetta is after. The ambitious mission first concocted in the 1970s and approved in 1993, entails not only escorting the comet along part of its orbit, but actually landing on it as well. To that end, Rosetta is carrying a lander called Philae that the ESA hopes to send down to the comet's surface in November.
"Arriving at the comet is really only just the beginning of an even bigger adventure, with greater challenges still to come as we learn how to operate in this unchartered environment, start to orbit and, eventually, land," said Sylvain Lodiot, ESA's Rosetta spacecraft operations manager in a statement.
Jesus Didn't Use a Smartphone!
[Content Note: Catholic Church-based prejudices.]
Our old pal Pope Francis has some important advice for the kids today:
Pope Francis has urged 50,000 German altar servers not to waste time on the Internet, smartphones and television, but to spend their time on more productive activities.I hope he makes this wisdom available on his Twitter account.
"Maybe many young people waste too many hours on futile things," the Pope said in a short speech to the altar servers – young people who help the priest during religious services – who had come to Rome on a pilgrimage.
"Our life is made up of time, and time is a gift from God, so it is important that it be used in good and fruitful actions."
Activities cited by the Pope as futile were: "chatting on the Internet or with smartphones, watching TV soap operas, and (using) the products of technological progress, which should simplify and improve the quality of life, but distract attention away from what is really important."
See, here's the thing about setting "what is really important" and "good and fruitful actions" in mutually exclusive opposition to spending time on the internet: Many of the people who are most demonized by the Catholic Church (and certainly not only the Catholic Church) find community on the internet. Find validation. Find acceptance. Find salvation from despondency and isolation.
Especially young people, who may be stuck in communities with very little or no support.
For an awful lot of people, the internet does improve their quality of life, by a sizable margin, because what they find in the world outside the internet is hostile garbage that tells them, often with the claim of god's very own stamp of approval, that they are less than.
It's neat that Pope Francis thinks it's more important to tell young people to stay off the internet than it is to provide the love and acceptance they find there inside the doors of the Church.
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelda the Watchdog is watching with her Serious Face.
(In the background, Dudley the Not-Watchdog chills out, because Zelda's got this.)
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
Quote of the Day
"If Mitch McConnell were a TV show, he'd be Mad Men—treating women unfairly, stuck in 1968, and ending this season."—Democratic candidate for US Senate in Kentucky Alison Lundergan Grimes, during a speech (2:55) at the 134th annual Fancy Farm picnic.
The entirety of her speech (as well as the speech of her Republican opponent Senator Mitch McConnell) can be viewed here. I've tried to locate a transcript, but have been unable to find one. If anyone happens to find one, please feel encouraged to drop a link in comments.
[H/T to Amy McCarthy. Previously on Alison Lundergan Grimes and her garbage opponents.]
