I was not feeling the internet or being online much this week, and everything I consumed felt extremely disparate. Highlights: Sherrilyn Ifill, Jessica Lynne in Montana, “how to apply makeup,” Ukraine, suing Hertz, Euphoria, Love is Blind, Casual Geographic, and PBS Eons.
1. Time: Why Sherrilyn Ifill Fights for Gender Equity in Civil Rights Battles
Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, is stepping down on March 14 after nine years in the position. During her tenure, “Ifill oversaw a huge expansion of LDF, nearly tripling the staff, and she cemented it as an essential player in battles over voting rights, police reform, criminal justice, and more—hoping to ensure the 81-year-old organization stays as influential in this century as it was in the last.” She approached her position from a “gender-equity lens.” I’m very interested to see both what Ifill will do next, and what path incoming NAACP director Janai Nelson will take.
2. Oxford American: In Montana
One of my best friends is from Montana and often tells me tales from the state. This friend is white and is the only person I talk to about Montana, which is notoriously white. I’ve heard tales of the state from a Black perspective.
In 2018, art critic Jessica Lynne went on a road trip with her father to Montana for the 40th anniversary of his high school graduation in Great Falls. Montana “had been a home of great significance to my family,” Lynne writes, but it “had been almost thirty years since either one of us last visited the state.” Lynne’s family had “long since moved back South, so I want to experience as an adult the allure of this place that seemed a utopia to my relatives.”
This essay is dreamy as Lynne moves between narrating her own familial history and that of Black people in the West.
3. Guernica: How to Apply Makeup
Following the structure of a makeup application tutorial, Nicole Shawan Junior writes about their dermatillomania, a disorder of chronic skin-picking. Dermatillomania can cause permanent scarring, showing a physical manifestation of a mental illness. In high school, they “never got pimples. My friends envied my skin.” At Smith College, however, they write of how they “[hated] myself and [squeezed] blood-tinged pus from tiny bumps, swollen cysts, scruffy scabs, or any minor imperfection that my fingers find,” and started to wear make-up. This moving essay describes the writer’s relation to this compulsion, from adolescence into adulthood, and how it intersects with being a Black femme and their career as a lawyer.
4. The Guardian: They are ‘civilised’ and ‘look like us’: the racist coverage of Ukraine
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, people have been increasingly critical of how it is covered by western media. In addition to videos and reports of Black people in Ukraine being barred from transportation, western journalists and politicians continue to make racist statements implying that “war is a natural state for people of color, while white people naturally gravitate toward peace.” Many of these statements have compared Ukraine to the Middle East (specifically Iraq and Afghanistan), with one journalist saying “now the unthinkable has happened to them. And this is not a developing, third-world nation. This is Europe!” This coverage “extends beyond our screens and newspapers and easily bleeds and blends into our politics” and it has very real effects on people’s lives.
5. BuzzFeed: The Internet’s Response To Ukraine Has Been Peak Cringe
Since much of the present internet discourse is centered around Ukraine, it is getting weird on Twitter: “People have been posting some of the most cringeworthy, inappropriate, strange, or hilariously out-of-touch content that I have maybe ever observed.”
This article is centered around an American experience of being online. The US is exceptional at commodifying everything, and “sellers on Etsy are even getting in on the action. On the platform, you can buy mugs with Zelensky’s face on them surrounded by the colors of the Ukrainian flag, a T-shirt with a quote from the president in flowery script, another with Zelensky’s face on the famous Barack Obama ‘Hope’ logo, or one that reads ‘President Zelenskyy, my hero.’” Along with profiting off a war (outside of the expected ways arms dealers and huge corporations and others profit off of war), people are also posting slews of tweets and TikToks, several of which are linked in this article, to gain virality. But “everyone who spends a lot of time posting content on the internet should use this moment to take a step back. What do they want to put out into the world? Is it helpful, or is it not? And maybe, just maybe, this is a time to keep your thoughts and opinions to yourself.”
6. Yahoo: If you’ve rented a car from Hertz, there could be a warrant out for your arrest
The car rental company Hertz is facing a class-action lawsuit from 230 plaintiffs suing the company for “false arrest and in some cases prosecution.” Court documents show “Hertz admitted it files an average of 3,365 police reports about stolen vehicles involving its customers each year. That means over the past seven years since false theft report cases have been known to occur, theft charges have been levied against more than 23,000 people. How many of them were innocent paying customers is unknown.” Hertz is denying these claims and attempting to use its bankruptcy as a cover.
One plaintiff is now a convicted felon, even though he legally rented a car: “A local employee said they couldn’t find any issue with the rental,” and he submitted “a rental agreement and bank statements where his debit card had been charged” at his trial. There are many stories like this, and “the lawsuits against Hertz allege a pattern of missing inventory in which Hertz, instead of conducting internal investigations to locate vehicles or correct records, files police reports immediately and pushes the issue to the courts.”
7. Instagram: Euphoria Finale Support Group [s2e8 chat]
The finale of Euphoria’s second season aired last Sunday and it was a lot. Although a lot of people, including myself, are highly invested in the show, Twitter has come to a consensus that the second season was poorly written.
Host of QueerWoc the Podcast, Montiniquë has been reviewing this season via Instagram Live. Here, she reacts to the final episode in this casual review, engaging with other community members on Instagram. Montiniquë is also a licensed marriage and family therapist, having earned a PhD in the field, and contextualizes some of the characters using her expertise—highlighting some of this season’s MANY plot holes—which is much needed in a show like Euphoria.
8. Decider: 27 Things We Learned from the ‘Love Is Blind’ Season 2 Reunion
Netflix dropped the reunion episode for the second season of Love is Blind on Friday and to say that it was messy and chaotic—yet predictable—would be an understatement. The episode was predictable in that the season’s villain, Shake, showed his entire, terrible ass, forcing many viewers to agree with Shayne, a gaslighting white man, and his criticisms of Shake. Shake’s behavior was so deplorable that the show’s hosts, Nick and Vanessa Lachey, got in on the dragging. Deepti, Shake’s ex-fiancee, however, cemented her place as a fan favorite for choosing herself over him, but no one was expecting Kyle to declare his love for her.
Casual Geographic, narrated by Mamadou B. Ndiaye, posts informational nature videos discussing some of the world’s most unique animals. Ndiaye got his start on TikTok, and I’ve seen these videos across social media platforms for years. This week, Casual Geographic finally made it to my YouTube algorithm and I was in a rabbit hole. I’ve always been a person who can watch nature documentaries for hours on end, so it isn’t out of the ordinary for me to find respite in learning some of the most extreme animal behaviors.
Similar to Casual Geographic, the PBS Eons channel came up in my YouTube algorithm this week and further extended my nature video rabbit hole. Hosted by Hank Green, Kallie Moore, and Blake de Pastino, the show “journey[s] through the history of life on Earth. From the dawn of life in the Archaean Eon through the Mesozoic Era — the so-called ‘Age of Dinosaurs — right up to the end of the most recent Ice Age.” This channel perfectly dovetails with Casual Geographic and my brain was making a lot of (possibly unfounded) evolutionary connections between the animals discussed on both channels.
The idea of a master narrative and the Eurocentric bias of earlier editions of this text have been pressured, and forced to make room for multiplicity and inclusivity. The history of graphic design appears here fresher, livelier, and more relevant.
As America deindustrialized, John Waters and his keen observations of Baltimore's decadence have become a chief export. What more content can be extracted? Refined?
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This weekend, September 12-14, indulge in your lit-love with the return of the Baltimore Book Festival. With over 80 authors and six stages, the sheer number of events, readings, and panels on the itinerary could fill a library in itself. Here are a few recommendations from our team.
