From Vice, “The Massive Police Database of Information on Black Torontonians Should Be Destroyed“:
For at least a decade, Toronto’s police force has been quietly building a massive database of the black residents it is supposed to serve. This is not a catalogue of convicted criminals—most black people in the database are not suspected of any crime, at least not in any official sense. Police simply document us in case they ever need to identify us later.
In Toronto we use the term “carding” to describe the police practice of stopping civilians who are not suspected of a crime, and documenting their personal information. For years, this practice was a secret; now we know it exists, and that it has excessively targeted Toronto’s black residents. The retention of information collected in such a dubious and discriminatory manner is an insult to black residents. Yet police plan to not only continue carding, but to keep the information from millions of individual contacts in a database for years to come—just in case.
Guys, I feel a particular sort of way about DVS and maybe you don’t and if he’s not for you I don’t think we have to have a Talk about it but just check out the diary he’s leaving at Enormous Eye and see if it doesn’t change your mind:
4:40 pm
I feed my monthlong obsession with the Tom Waits song “Come On Up To The House”. This blood-soaked death march of a song never gets old, and like every time I get a song under my skin, I try to listen to every cover of it i can find until the original writer and performer fades into the background and the song starts feeling like a natural phenomenon that has always existed.
The only cover worth shit is Allison Stone’s, which is beautiful, everyone else misses the point hardbody.
Tom Waits has always been a heavy hitter to me for multiple reasons (oh really? oh you like the popular musician? you like The Beatles too? Whoaaaa. You really not afraid to make the unpopular choice, huh? what about “delicious candy”and getting your dick sucked? You like those too? You’re a real iconoclast you piece of shit. Get the fuck out of my office). OK BUT IF I COULD CONTINUE THO. THANK YOU. ANYWAY.
Besides being the patron saint of sounding like you drink boiled broken glass (I’m like the…Comptroller of that), Tom Waits always reminds me of my brother. When I was real young and my father had just died, I got one of those Big Brothers you always hear about in early 90s sitcoms. For years, every weekend we’d meet up and run around doing semi-wholesome shit while he taught me Philly slang and educated me on old SNL. One year he enrolled us in some kind of talent show. His idea was that we pretend to be washed up lounge singers and perform “Yesterday Is Here,” a Tom Waits banger off “Franks Wild Years”, a concept album Waits recorded under the guise of embodying a young Frank Sinatra. I was maybe 9 or 10 and the inherent comedy of this idea was completely lost on me so I backed out. In retrospect, this is fucking hilarious and I’m wild mad I did that.
I also feel a type of a way that one day I hit this guy up like “uhhh matter fact? I think i’m good on having a brother. I’d like to have weekends instead”. This is the kind of coldhearted you can only be as a child, but I can tell this lowkey shattered him. Whiiiiiiich…iunno man…you’re grown. Kids are idiot monsters. I feel like this is a fairly well known fact? After some time he tried to reach out and reconnect and I ignored him because, again, monsters. As a result, I can’t listen to Tom Waits without coming to terms with one of the 3 and a half human feelings I own.
***
Here is a beautiful stop-motion sand animation of Franz Schubert’s “Erlkönig.” I feel like I have maybe shared this before? But whatever, you are not so AWASH in beautiful sand animations that you can afford to ignore this one, man.
I refuse to hear anything other than UNALLOYED EXCITED about this guy who yelled “HEY BUDDY!” to the trucker towing his car away, then driving out of the clamp. No, I don’t care that the link came from Someecards, either. You’re so nit-picky today.
Please share your VICTORIOUS TALES OF PROMPOSALS HERE. Or like, something good you did at a dance one time, or tell me some good opera, because I want to listen to some more good opera but I don’t know much about it.
Merryl Tengesdal (that’s Lt. Col. Merryl Tengesdal to you) is the only African-American female pilot to man—or, rather, woman—the U-2 spy plane, a highly complex aircraft that captures that kind of valuable imagery.
LT. COL. MERRYL TENGESDAL, THEN.
Awesomely Luvvie is recasting the new remake of The Wiz, so if you can bear to look, go check it out.
*deep inhale*
JANNNNEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLE
YOOOOOOGAAAAAAAAAA
BABY BEND OVER
“A thousand-year-old medieval remedy for eye infections which was discovered in a manuscript in the British Library has been found to kill the superbug MRSA.
Anglo-Saxon expert Dr Christina Lee, from the School of English, at Nottingham University, recreated the 10th century potion to see if it really worked as an antibacterial remedy. The ‘eyesalve’ recipe calls for two species of Allium (garlic and onion or leek), wine and oxgall (bile from a cow’s stomach). It describes a very specific method of making the topical solution including the use of a brass vessel to brew it, a strainer to purify it and an instruction to leave the mixture for nine days before use.
None of the experts really expected the concoction to work. But when it was tested, microbiologists were amazed to find that not only did the salve clear up styes, but it also tackled the deadly superbug MRSA, which is resistant to many antibiotics.”
Mmm, I feel like you guys must have expected it to work a LITTLE, or else you definitely wouldn’t have mixed up some garlic gloves with cow solution and fling it into brass pots before jamming it into your eye, but if you want to play it off like that, I won’t tell anyone.
