Black Fathers Talk About Losing Sons to Police Brutality

Each of these men, like all Black father figures, fights against the still pervasive stereotype of the absent Black father. It’s a notion that gained currency in the 1960s as the political advancements of the civil rights movement failed to translate into economic and social progress for everyday Black Americans, and social science research turned away from structural explanations for inequality toward a search for behavioral causes. In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an assistant secretary of labor, delivered a report to the Johnson White House, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, arguing that the plight of Black American communities was in decline due to a simple factor: the crumbling of the family unit and, in particular, children being raised in fatherless homes.

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Mosi Secret — GQ

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Why is writing therapeutic?

Some ten years ago I used to write very frequently on my blog. These were mostly small articles related to things happening to and around me. It felt good to create something from scratch. Once in a while, there were messages of appreciation from readers. These messages made the effort worthwhile. They pushed me and motivated me to write better.

But then, the frequency of my writing started dropping. Lack of time and motivation were the main reasons. But, I also knew deep within me that these reasons were false. Once the rhythm of writing breaks, it is difficult to get back on track. I never got back on track and a decade passed.

There are many thoughts inside the mind. One thought leads to another and it goes on and on. Writing forces you to catch hold of one thought and express it clearly on a sheet of paper. It goes through a distillation process when it flows through your pen on the paper. Being a social animal, we need to communicate our thoughts to others. Thoughts are abstract. Making someone feel the same emotions we are feeling through some black smudges on a white background is magical.

At the end of a good day of writing, you feel lighter in your head and heart. This week an old friend reached out. We spoke of old times when both of us wrote blogs. We missed those times. Those restless times, when the urge to find expression dominated our decisions. Things have changed for both of us now.

Or is it just another excuse?

‘Wonder Wo-MENA’

BRAZEN BANKER

“There is no limit to what we, as women, can accomplish.”
— Michelle Obama

The time has come!

The recent announcement about ‘equality’ in terms of wages and salaries in the private sector in UAE marks a solid step towards empowering women in the work space and strengthens the country’s regional and international status for upholding gender equality.

“Congratulations to all the women working in the UAE private sector.” – Sheikha Manal bint Mohammed bin RashidAl Maktoum,Twitter

Stepping up, the trend in the number of women turning into entrepreneurs bears an acclivity. Women have been proactively engaged at this front due to a number of reason – to enable them to advance their careers quickly, to align their family needs with their passion or to simply to ‘raise’ their ‘dreams’. Women have re-established themselves as ‘creators’.

Women of MENA have come a long way

Statistically speaking, in the MENA…

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Audible’s assault on leisure time

“My writing time needs to surround itself with empty stretches,” the poet Maxine Kumin once wrote in an essay about how caring for her horses made her work possible, providing “the mindless suspension of doing simple, repetitive tasks—mucking out, refilling water buckets, raking sawdust—that allows those free-associative leaps out of which a poem may occasionally come.” The “empty stretches” are enforced by busyness but uncompressed by the pursuit of efficiency; farm work has “no beginning and no apparent end,” and within it the poet’s “contentment in isolation” can expand. I don’t have a barn full of horses, but I’m attempting to take more dog-walks in silence. Instead of doing chores, I’ve been listening to audiobooks while lying in bed—which takes far longer than silent reading, especially when my thoughts wander and I have to rewind. Right now, that torpor is what I like most. I think it’s good for me to waste some time.

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Nora Caplan-Bricker — The Baffler

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Tears

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Why do we weep? And why don’t most other mammals?

Problem the first: There’s no reason for Nature to have designed us (by way of evolution) to use leaky eyes or a heaving chest simply to “process” any of our emotions. In fact, as a general rule, emotions aren’t the kind of thing that need to be “processed” at all — as if they were industrial byproducts that needed to be discharged from the thinking factory. Emotions (and their expressions) aren’t mere side-effects of something else — they’re purposeful unto themselves. They evolved because they put our brains and bodies (technically, those of our ancestors) into a locally-optimal state for dealing with specific problems or circumstances. If evolution devised to make our bodies do something, then the action is unlikely to be a meaningless side effect. There has to be a point to it.

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Kevin Simler — Melting Asphalt

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It is far from clear that requiring payments for data makes sense

Should we get paid for our data?

Herein lies the insight: to the extent that having consumers not be paid for their data is an indication that they value the use of their data by the network, by forcing the network to pay for that data, the consumer can be made worse off because they can no longer just give the data to the network. Thus, the whole analogy with slavery or the supply of pure labour breaks down because the consumer may want to encourage the network to make use of more of its data. Requiring the network to pay subverts that process.

In order for the notion of regulating payments for data makes sense, you have to believe that consumers do not gain utility by giving additional data to networks. Some (and perhaps many) consumers do give their data freely to networks now. Thus, it is entirely possible that they will be made worse off it networks are required to pay them for that data because those networks may structure themselves to no longer make use of the data rather than pay for it.

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Joshua Gans — Digitopoly

On Being an Arsehole: A defense

The arsehole, writes philosopher Aaron James, is someone who “allows himself to enjoy special advantages in social relations out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people.” At the other end of the spectrum is the fully cooperative person who recognizes others as equals and therefore acts respectfully. From my perspective I was being respectful to the archaeologist: the real disrespect, it seemed to me, lies in assuming your interlocutor needs to be treated with kid gloves. And if I broke the no-follow-up rule, well, that was down to a failure of self-control rather than an entrenched sense of entitlement: This is where the fun begins, I wanted to exclaim. Looking around the room, however, it was clear that I had already pooped the party. I had spoken out of turn, but more importantly I seemed to have revealed myself as the kind of person who is willing to embarrass a colleague to make a trivial point.

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Jonny Thakkar — The Point Magazine

A gang of teen hackers snatched the keys to Microsoft’s videogame empire. Then they went too far.

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Pokora reveled in the perks of his success. He still lived with his parents, but he paid his tuition as he entered the University of Toronto in the fall of 2010. He and his girlfriend dined at upscale restaurants every night and stayed at $400-a-night hotels as they traveled around Canada for metal shows. But he wasn’t really in it for the money or even the adulation of his peers; what he most coveted was the sense of glee and power he derived from making $60 million games behave however he wished.

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Brendan I. Koerner — Wired

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BOYCOTTING CAPTAIN BOYCOTT

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Have you ever wondered the origins of the word “boycott”?

With the rural poor dying from starvation, the Irish Nationalist Land League decided to make an example of Boycott. He was shunned by his neighbors, and many dozens laid siege to his farm in late 1880. They convinced Boycott’s laborers to join them or frightened off those who wouldn’t. Local shops also refused to serve him. He was essentially isolated with his family, three loyal staff, and a handful of guests.

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Matthew Wills — JSTOR Daily

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The Feynman Technique: The Best Way to Learn Anything

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It is always good to ask ourselves, once in a while, “Have I learnt anything, lately?”

There are two types of knowledge and most of us focus on the wrong one. The first type of knowledge focuses on knowing the name of something. The second focuses on knowing something. These are not the same thing. The famous Nobel winning physicist Richard Feynman understood the difference between knowing something and knowing the name of something and it’s one of the most important reasons for his success. In fact, he created a formula for learning that ensured he understood something better than everyone else.

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Farnam Street

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