On benefiting from the “ethnic casting craze”:
Until recently, Hollywood offered only a handful of roles to actors of color. The majority of my opportunities have fallen into two categories: Scary Black and Funny Black. The scary parts are when I’m asked to become people my grandmother told me to avoid when I was growing up: generic cameos usually named “Thug #1” or “Gang Member #3.” These names tell me they’re not characters but criminal stereotypes lined up by the number. And on the comedy side, for some reason, there is one significant black comedy star every decade. Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle is a great representation of this. In the 1987 film, there’s a scene in which 10 actors are waiting to audition for the part of “an Eddie Murphy type.” They’re literally dressed as Murphy, practicing his laugh, repeating the phrase “Murphy-esque” to themselves. It’s a hilarious indictment especially because the life of black actors today is not so different from that scene. Everyone is asked to approximate how that famous actor would play a role while also being asked to “be yourself.”
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The Food Babe takedown we have all waited for:
Vani Hari, a.k.a. the Food Babe, has amassed a loyal following in her Food Babe Army. The recent subject of profiles and interviews in the New York Times, the New York Post and New York Magazine, Hari implores her soldiers to petition food companies to change their formulas. She’s also written a bestselling book telling you that you can change your life in 21 days by “breaking free of the hidden toxins in your life.” She and her army are out to change the world.
She’s also utterly full of shit.
I am an analytical chemist with a background in forensics and toxicology. Before working full-time as a science writer and public speaker, I worked as a chemistry professor, a toxicology chemist, and in research analyzing pesticides for safety. I now run my own blog, Science Babe, dedicated to debunking pseudoscience that tends to proliferate in the blogosphere. Reading Hari’s site, it’s rare to come across a single scientific fact. Between her egregious abuse of the word “toxin” anytime there’s a chemical she can’t pronounce and asserting that everyone who disagrees with her is a paid shill, it’s hard to pinpoint her biggest sin.
VIDA (after listening) now incorporating the stats for authors who are WOC into their annual project, and it is, of course, depressing as balls.
Lovely thing by Jane Marie.
Half of residential use is outdoors, primarily lawns, Ms. Cooley said. “And what Californians see as beautiful,” she said, “has been a lawn that has been the standard for front yards and backyards.”
Now, with utilities paying people to replace thirsty traditional grass turf with water-sipping native plants and other drought-tolerant shrubbery, long-held aesthetics are shifting. “This will change what Californians see as beautiful,” she said.
But even a significant drop in residential water use will not move the consumption needle nearly as much as even a small reduction by farmers. Of all the surface water consumed in the state, roughly 80 percent is earmarked for the agricultural sector.
This is exactly what happens when you put a trans woman in a men’s prison, and just one of the many, many reasons this should never happen.
I woke up at three am to breastfeed, and started casually re-reading my favourite fic (Mystrade but gender-swapped) that Rainbow Rowell THAT FUCKING BITCH MONSTER told me to read originally and then I literally could not go back to bed, I had to read the whole thing again. Ugh, you have to read it, it’s literally the best gender-swapped Mystrade fic you will ever read, and I usually strenuously object to any gender-swap that makes fic het.
Jaya is rockin’ over at The Hairpin for the rest of the month, make sure to give her your pageviews!
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