This is fucking horrible. Also, my family has been helped by a very similar non-profit center, and reading about the kinds of services they provide made me so swamped with waves of anger and sorrow for the victims and their loved ones I could barely breathe:
It is one of 21 regional centers run by nonprofits across California. According to the California Department of Developmental Services, the centers provide a range of services for individuals with disabilities and their families, including counseling and genetic counseling, family support, assessment and diagnosis, referrals to other agencies, early intervention for at-risk infants, training and education, legal and civil rights advocacy, and help connecting with community resources.
Its website was down on Wednesday afternoon, but its Facebook page said that the agency hopes to “help provide each individual with a service system that helps identify and eliminate barriers for individuals with developmental disabilities and their families so they can closely live a typical lifestyle.”
There was also a shooting in Savannah.
The story about the Dothan County cops systematically planting evidence on young black men is absolutely horrifying, and I’m impressed by the whistleblowers:
Several long term Dothan law enforcement officers, all part of an original group that initiated the investigation, believe the public has a right to know that the Dothan Police Department, and District Attorney Doug Valeska, targeted young black men by planting drugs and weapons on them over a decade. Most of the young men were prosecuted, many sentenced to prison, and some are still in prison. Many of the officers involved were subsequently promoted and are in leadership positions in law enforcement. They hope the mood of the country is one that demands action and that the US Department of Justice will intervene.
The group of officers requested they be granted anonymity, and shared hundreds of files from the Internal Affairs Division. They reveal a pattern of criminal behavior from within the highest levels of the Dothan Police Department and the district attorney’s office in the 20th Judicial District of Alabama. Multiple current and former officers have agreed to testify if United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch appoints a special prosecutor from outside the state of Alabama, or before a Congressional hearing. The officers believe that there are currently nearly a thousand wrongful convictions resulting in felonies from the 20th Judicial District that are tied to planted drugs and weapons and question whether a system that allows this can be allowed to continue to operate.
Noted murderer and paranoid racist Oscar Pistorius has been recognized as such on appeal, and it is good (thank you so much to the literally seven Toasties who emailed or texted me the news so when I woke up, I could scramble for my laptop to update the roundup):
South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the lower court did not correctly apply the rule of dolus eventualis – whether Pistorius knew that a death would be a likely result of his actions.
The minimum sentence for murder is 15 years but judges can apply some discretion.
South African law does not make provision for someone to be placed under house arrest for more than five years, so Pistorius will be going back to prison, reports the BBC’s Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg.
Anthony LoFrisco had been waiting almost 70 years to find another 1,000-pound provolone. He just didn’t think he’d have to make the seven hour, 673-kilometre drive from Wilton, Connecticut, to Ottawa to get it.
“It’s incredible beyond belief,” said LoFrisco, who arrived in Ottawa on Monday night with his son, Anthony Jr., to get a glimpse on Tuesday morning of the 1,000-pound provolone that came by boat from northern Italy and was delivered by truck to Nicastro’s Italian Food Emporium on Merivale Road. It took six men to unloaded it.
In May of 2008, the style blogger Michael Williams posted a few dozen scans of an obscure 1965 Japanese photo collection called “Take Ivy” to his Web site, “A Continuous Lean.” The images documented a golden age of Ivy League campus life—young American men strolling across the quad, eating hot dogs in dining halls, and studying for finals in libraries. Most importantly, the students dressed in the pinnacle of classic Ivy League style: madras cotton blazers, oxford-cloth button-down shirts, khaki Bermuda shorts, and patinaed penny loafers.
The photos went viral and, two years later, the Brooklyn publisher powerHouse released “Take Ivy” for the first time in English. The book sold over fifty thousand copies worldwide and helped usher in a wave of neo-Ivy style. Ralph Lauren and J. Crew stores proudly displayed copies of “Take Ivy” on their shelves, while magazine editors and retailers championed looks taken straight from the photos. Yet even at the height of “Take Ivy” mania, few asked why exactly a group of Japanese men travelled to Ivy League universities in 1965 to make a photo collection of campus style.
Friend of The Toast Lyette Mercier made a Hamilton Gift Guide and it’s A+++++
Matt Zoller Seitz recently linked to an older piece of his on what would now have been his late wife’s 45th birthday, and I cried AGAIN, because there’s so much here about love and marriage and loss:
Some of Jen’s things, our things, I’ve revisited with gratitude, affection and joy. Others I’ve engaged with reluctantly and emerged on the other side unhappy but unscathed.
Others are radioactive, and I haven’t gone near them because I’m afraid they’ll contaminate an otherwise happy, functioning life.
I can’t see the Disney logo without thinking of Jen, or watch a Jackie Chan film, or attend a musical. The associations don’t destroy any possibility of enjoyment — the acclimation process has gotten easier and quicker with time — but they’re still a psychic speed bumps that I have to get over. Sometimes it’s easy. Other times it’s impossible.
I took my daughter to see Tim Burton’s film version of “Sweeney Todd” at the local multiplex on opening weekend. I thought it was imaginatively directed and did not disgrace Sondheim, despite casting performers that were better actors than singers. But I still couldn’t wait to get out of there.
I had a large mug of hot water with lemon to start my day yesterday, and I honestly feel like I am now the world’s healthiest woman. I woke up so early that no one else saw me drink the water, and it’s killing me to have done something so Gwyneth without an audience to approve of me.
Also, at least twice a week, I google to see if I can watch Crimson Peak on iTunes/Amazon/a projector screened on Tom Hiddleston’s back yet, even though I know I can’t.
I am excited to tear into Buzzfeed’s 24 best (fiction) books of the year.
ohhhh right i hate holiday parties:
A HOLIDAY PARTY. Because that’s just what you need in chilly mid-December, more than anything else. You need to choose between three or four weak-sauce holiday parties all happening on the same night. You need to hire a fucking babysitter or worse yet, drag your kids out of the house with you, just so you can stand around sipping mulled wine and nibbling stale cookies and smiling a pained smile as you watch some little kid in a green velvet dress twirling and twirling and twirling by a Christmas tree. You need to smash some Brie onto a tasteless cracker and break the stupid cracker and then shove the whole mess into your mouth in the middle of a strained conversation with some dipshit from your friend’s office whose lackluster baritone drone blends seamlessly with Perry Como’s baritone crooning of “The Little Drummer Boy,” so that you can’t make out a single dipshitty drummer-boy word.
Yesterday the Diocese of Oxford published a blog post on creating a “man-friendly” service for Christmas Eve. It remarks on the fact that 30% of the average Anglican congregation is made up of men, and that Christmas Eve is one of the times when that proportion will change. There is a list of tips to ensure church services are suitable for men.
Let’s go EXTREMELY light to close:
Something I did the other day because there is no light at my house from November to March (we are in a canyon) was get into my car, put “Zadok the Priest” on loop, and drive around aimlessly drinking coffee and imagining that I was being crowned Queen and was also married to Chris Hemsworth. I had not thought I would be inheriting the throne bc I had a younger brother, but the succession rules changed and so I had to give up my exciting career as a director (I made the Daniel Craig* Bond movies and the Avengers movies and also Sherlock and Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and since Chris and I were dating at the time, I gave him the chance to bail out, bc being the royal consort is kind of a shit job, but he loved me so much he still wanted to get married. I did this for…forty minutes? Thank you. You can imagine he looked INCREDIBLE kneeling before me and pledging his fealty, which is a thing your spouse has to do when you are made Queen.
If you, too, spin elaborate grandeur fantasies, please share them at this time.
*Nicole, why not marry Daniel Craig, then? I am not going to marry a DIVORCED MAN, I am the MOTHERFUCKING QUEEN, you gotta have protocol boundaries even in fantasy. Obviously, in this scenario, Daniel and I had a lot of really tense, charged moments, and he was in love with me, but ultimately acquiring a large Australian husband briefly invigorated the flagging popularity of the monarchy in Australia and also he’s very convivial, whereas Daniel seems a trifle melancholic?
