Hit photo editing app Prisma has gained offline support, addressing one of the most common criticisms about the tool that uses artificial intelligence to manipulate images with artistic styles. Launched back in June, initially only on iOS but subsequently for Android users too, Prisma takes advantage of a neural network to analyze photos and then apply different filters to them, … Continue reading
By Candace McDuffie
This post originally appeared on Revelist.
I’ll always remember the day I found out I’m adopted. I was 7 when my mother revealed the news. I had a distinct routine that I followed every day after school: I would go to my room, immediately replace that day’s school clothes with pajamas, and get started on my homework. But on this particular occasion, my mother called me to the kitchen table — and it wasn’t for dinner.
She spent what seemed like an eternity explaining how much she loved me, how important I am to her, and how nothing would change my role in our family, before finally dropping the bombshell: She actually didn’t give birth to me. Young, naïve, and easily distracted, I didn’t understand the weight that news carried.
However, the tears streaming down her face showed me the heaviness of this information. In that conversation, she emphasized that being adopted might change how other people viewed me, but would never change the way she felt about me.
Now that I’m older, I realize she’s absolutely right.
I still feel an elusive uneasiness when I look back on that day. The uneasiness resurfaced when an NBC anchor adoption-shamed Simone Biles, a record-breaking Olympic gold medalist. NBC gymnastics commentator Al Trautwig bullied the 19-year-old Black teenager online for being adopted and raised by her maternal grandparents.
After a woman on Twitter suggested that Trautwig refer to Nellie and Ron Biles as Simone’s parents on-air, he responded: “They may be mom and dad but they are NOT her parents.”
“My parents are my parents and that’s it,” Biles graciously responded in an interview with US Weekly.
Even though the all-around champion had the perfect retort, she also made me face one of my greatest fears: My status as an adoptee being used to disrespect and dehumanize me. It’s a feeling that I would never wish on anyone, especially since I’ve experienced it multiple times.
Child-rearing came up frequently during my time as a preschool teacher. My coworkers often commented on how cute the students were, which hinged on physical traits they inherited from their parents. I found this practice slightly annoying, but I chose to work with young children, so I had to deal with the commentary that comes with the territory.
I even engaged in some of the banter — some kids are irresistibly cute. But one particular conversation with a coworker left me disheartened. I asked her if she would consider adopting a child since her doctors told her she’d have high-risk pregnancies.
“No,” she replied coldly. “I would never adopt a child. It just wouldn’t be the same as having my own.” As an adoptee, this stance saddens me because of the palpable disdain some people have toward people who take in a child that needs a loving home.
Granted, there can be barriers to adoption such as costs, waiting lists, and birth parents changing their minds at the last minute. Yet, these factors aren’t mentioned when I encounter people, like my former co-worker, who don’t consider adoption an option.
The adoption process can be daunting, complex, and mentally draining. However, my adoptive mother decided that I’m a risk worth taking — even after learning my backstory.
I am a boarder baby, meaning my biological mother, who battled drug addiction, abandoned me in the hospital right after she gave birth. I stayed in the hospital for several months until my adoptive mother — afraid that she would be unable to physically carry more children of her own — decided to foster me. I legally became her daughter a year later.
Although I had a happy ending to my story, I still rarely discuss the fact that I’m adopted.
I don’t share this information for a pretty straightforward reason: It’s emotionally taxing. Adoption is a sensitive subject and is frequently mentioned callously by those who aren’t affected by it directly. I haven’t disclosed being adopted to anyone since high school. My high school classmates responded with disdain when I shared my background.
I don’t share this information for a pretty straightforward reason: It’s emotionally taxing. Adoption is a sensitive subject and is frequently mentioned callously by those who aren’t affected by it directly. I haven’t disclosed being adopted to anyone since high school. My high school classmates responded with disdain when I shared my background.
I remember a friend responding with pity and condescension when I told her. “That is so sad — I can’t believe your mom didn’t want you!” she professed with such dramatic flare that I thought she’d rehearsed her response and merely waited for the right time to say it.
She also seemed visibly uncomfortable with the idea that a single parent could effectively raise an adopted Black girl and said how ‘lucky’ she felt to have the biological family that she has.
Once I went to college, I decided that I wouldn’t tell anyone, even the guys I dated, that I’m adopted. It made attributing the characteristics of my physical appearance a little tricky. However, I quickly learned to arbitrarily assign my inherited skin tone or height or shoe size to whichever family member I wanted to at that particular moment. Often, the fascination with my family ended there.
There were never any real consequences for keeping my adoption to myself; I never felt like I owed anyone an explanation. Although I talk about my family all of the time, I just consider it easier to omit my adoption.
The circumstances of my adoption often leads to questions I’m not always comfortable answering: How does it feel to be given up for adoption? Do you ever think about finding your biological family? Do you ever wonder what it would have been like to be raised by them? These questions force me to reevaluate my feelings after I’ve spent so much time fully accepting why my biological mother gave me up for adoption.
My feelings have ranged from shame to sadness to apathy to denial, but not talking about being adopted has made it easy to dodge the invasive and ignorant questions as well as the unwanted pity. In a way, my silence has been my coping mechanism. I’m not sure if I will ever fully accept being adopted — there are some days where it’s overwhelming, especially when considering the stereotypes around it.
People who choose to adopt are often seen as having outrageous savior complexes; those who are adopted must be poor souls that are destined to live a life of emptiness and inadequacy because they are being raised by people who aren’t biologically related to them.
None of that is true.
The thought of adoption makes some people cling harder to the superficial promise of traditional, nuclear households. In fact, less than 50% of children today live in a ‘traditional’ family. As it turns out, adopted children who live in these unconventional households do just as well as the general population — it just isn’t publicized.
I will admit my mother mired in emotional austerity and financial distress, but it wasn’t a consequence of her decision to adopt four children. It’s a byproduct of a system that constantly overlooks and fails black women. A system that stigmatizes us, keeps up in ghettos, limits our access to education, and further devolves perception of Black women in America.
These stereotypes manifest into harmful narratives around Black children being adopted. The most prevalent myth is that Black children are inexpensive to adopt. Not only is this statement debasing, racist, and offensive, it is also untrue.
Adoption fees vary in cost and have different variables including whether or not a person goes through a public or private agency, home study expenses, and legal fees. Of the 400,000 children in foster care, only 100,000 of them are able to be adopted.
Black children are the second largest group in the system at 40%. While a family decided to foster and adopt me, all children aren’t that lucky: 23,000 children age out of foster care without finding a permanent family. Having that stability is crucial for that child’s advancement in all areas of their life — and can be helped by people being more interested in fostering and adopting.
Studies have shown that children who are adopted physically, educationally, and psychologically develop just as well as children who aren’t. Yet, it is hard for adoptees to explain why we don’t want to be defined by our familial ties, but also consider them the crux of who we are.
These notions, combined with the misconceptions surrounding what it means to be a Black woman, has made discussing my adoption seem more cumbersome than seamless. Bars are set lower for adoptees. Our behaviors are scrutinized at every turn and we are constantly reminded of our unique origins.
No matter how much criticism I receive, I am extremely proud of where I come from, what I’ve accomplished, and the mother who raised me. It’s just taken me a little time to say it.
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Avra Siegel, formerly Deputy Director of the White House’s Office of Women and Girls, has a scoop that’s garnered a lot of social media attention: Pregnancy entails unpleasant physical side effects that can make working hard. Really, she wants you to know, there’s this horrible thing called “morning sickness” but in fact it can make women feel nauseous all day! Another shocker from her recent article entitled “The Brutal Truth About Being a Pregnant Worker in 2016: It’s Pretty Awful”? Sometimes pregnant ladies get tired. And not just a little tired, but really, really tired!
Part of the hubris of youth is believing you’re inventing the world anew. Having dismissed the experiences of everyone who went before them, the young tend to believe they are making novel discoveries as they enter each new stage of life.
Yet it’s not exactly news that pregnancy can be physically grueling and make working tough. And the solutions that Siegel offers — especially paid leave — have been long debated. Public policymakers have been arguing about the costs and benefits of mandating that all employers must provide workers with paid sick leave for decades. And while Siegel instinctively sees the mandate’s upsides, empathizing with lower-income pregnant women who can’t afford to take a sick day, for example, she appears not to have considered the substantial downsides of how a mandate might impact those women’s job prospects and take-home pay. As we’ve seen with the minimum wage, such government interventions help some workers, but others end up losing their jobs entirely when businesses cannot afford higher employment costs.
Siegel also insists that businesses should be more sensitive to the needs of pregnant employees. Most employers already recognize this and are trying to offer the very flexibility that Siegel recommends. In fact, Siegel’s numbers paint a skewed picture of the availability of paid leave in America today: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 80 percent of full-time civilian workers have paid sick leave. Most employers already know it’s in their interests to treat employees fairly, whether they are suffering with morning sickness or cancer. Replacing someone who quits requires a costly search for candidates, interviews, and a training period. Basic decency as well as this business reality — not any legal requirement — are why most employers try to work with their employees when they have an illness or a new baby.
Yet businesses have other considerations too, which include keeping the business afloat and being fair to other employees. Siegel details her personal health problems during pregnancy, concluding, “That’s been my life for 9 months — and it doesn’t leave a lot of room for being productive at work.” Is she suggesting that it would really be fair, then, to other employees for her to be paid in full for those nine months even though she wasn’t up to doing her job?
Siegel may be newly attuned to the struggles of pregnant workers, but she should also try to put herself in the shoes of those who are childless, especially women who aren’t childless by choice. They’d point out that society does plenty of celebrating of new parents, showering them with attention and admiration, and those parents get a baby to love and be loved by as well. In the meantime, people without kids are expected to uncomplainingly pick up the slack at work and not receive any extra credit compared to those taking months-long leave from work. That doesn’t exactly feel fair to them either.
In a few months, Siegel will likely find herself inspired to pen another article about her surprising discovery that new moms often feel conflicted about the prospect of returning to work. Women are loathe to give up their hard-earned positions but also mourn the potential lost time with a baby who grows and changes so quickly. She’ll be in good company. Most working moms wish that we had two lives, so we could both focus fully on racing up the career ladder and yet not miss any of our kids’ milestones or scraped knees. Siegel may be full of recommendations for how to solve this conundrum, but in reality, no set of public policies is going to eradicate the fundamental challenge of the human condition: Time is finite, which means that we all have to do our best to set priorities and find whatever balance makes the most sense for us as individuals.
Workers and employers need true flexibility so they can find work situations that work for them. People value different aspects of compensation, and those preferences tend to change over time. In fact, Siegel may find that her priorities change a lot with the new baby. These are tricky issues that all of us working moms have been grappling with for some time. Welcome to motherhood — and the great work-family balance debate — Avra.
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The world keeps getting warmer, and maybe the thought of a summer day spent camping is ruined by the promise of triple-digit temperatures. The solution? In the future it may be a portable air conditioner like Zero Breeze, which in this case also functions as a Bluetooth speaker and a night light. The device looks something like a large handheld … Continue reading
The Latino virtual reality experience may just be a prototype but it should help everyone see the community a bit more authentically.
The hilarious but fictional device is the subject of a recent Flama video, the new technology offers users a Latino perspective that is very different from what many non-Latinos might expect.
“I think I finally captured the real Latino experience, just like you asked,” Carlos, the creator of the Latino virtual experience, tells his non-Latino boss in the video which was posted Tuesday.
The first simulation takes him to room with a briefcase, the boss expects to find drugs or money inside but instead finds immigration paperwork.
“Where are the Cuban mobsters? Where are the war lords?” he asks Carlos, who assures him a Cuban lawyer is about to enter the room to help him get a green card.
And when his boss insists on experiencing a stereotypical version of Latino life ― “Where are the parties? Where are the women?” ― Carlos gives him a true dose of reality.
Watch the real Latino virtual reality experience in the video above.
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You know that Margaret Mead quote that half your friends have below their email signature line: The one about how a small group of thoughtful committed citizens are the only way to change the world? It has become a bit of a cliché but when it comes to keeping gun sales off of Facebook, it’s not only theoretically but actually true. You can do it. And if you don’t do it, no one will.
It matters. It truly does. Just ask Kate Ranta. Kate, whose story is featured in our latest full-length feature Making a Killing: Guns, Greed, and the NRA, was severely wounded when her estranged husband barged into her home and shot her in front of her pre-school age son. Police had taken away his first arsenal in response to Ranta’s domestic violence restraining order but, as we know all too well, there are still innumerable ways for dangerous people to get guns if they want them.
That’s why Brave New Films has put together a detailed “how to” video and web tutorial to help crowd source Facebook’s gun ban enforcement.
We walk you step-by-step through how to find people trying to sell guns on Facebook and how to report them to get the sale halted. It is not difficult but there are a few tricks of the trade that are worth learning — like where they gun sellers have migrated to since they are shut out of open commerce and what code words to use in the search function to track them down.
We should shut down all private sales, period. Law enforcement should have the tools they need to know who has deadly weapons at any given time. Congress should take the lead. But so far, they are still too in the thrall of the gun company’s and their sales and marketing team, the NRA, to take even baby steps toward keeping us safe. I, for one, am not holding my breath.
Until that changes, it’s up to all of us. We hope this helps.
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Melissa Gilbert, who played Laura Ingalls Wilder on the “Little House On The Prairie” TV show as a child and who launched a congressional bid last year, won’t be working under a big rotunda anytime soon.
On Monday, an election board in Michigan approved the removal of Gilbert’s name from ballots. The actress withdrew from the race in May for health reasons, yet still won the Democratic primary earlier this month because she ran unopposed.
Suzanna Skhreli, a Macomb County prosecutor, has replaced Gilbert in the race.
Republicans in the state contested the election board’s decision, arguing Gilbert hadn’t proved that her ailments would prevent her from taking office. Under a 1929 law, candidates can only withdraw if they move out of state or are “physically unfit” to continue campaigning.
In a letter obtained by the Detroit Free Press, Jason Hanselman and Gary Gordon, lawyers representing the Michigan Republican Party, urged the election board to keep Gilbert on the ballot because she hadn’t “adequately proved that she would be physically unfit to serve in Congress.”
Gilbert experienced a string of accidents in 2012 that now require surgery, she told People Magazine in May after withdrawing from the race. She suffered a concussion during an appearance on “Dancing with the Stars,” and was also hurt when a house’s balcony fell on her head.
“I was standing under the back balcony talking to my kids and it detached from the house and it collapsed on my head,” she recalled. “I have numbness in my right hand, shooting pains in my right arm and numbness in my neck… my neurologists are sending me to a neurosurgeon because I need to have another spinal surgery.”
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Millions of people grit or grind their teeth as they sleep. They bite down hard; they grit or grind their teeth back and forth; they clench their teeth. And whatever they do goes on night after night. Technically it is called bruxism. Sleeping with someone who bruxes can make it hard to sleep. What can a person do who can’t fall asleep or can’t stay asleep because of a partner’s grinding or gritting teeth?
Wake Your Partner Up
Some of the people I interviewed for my book Two in a Bed who had a partner who bruxed said that it sometimes helped to wake their partner up. They might push at the partner or lightly shake the partner. One man woke his wife up when he couldn’t sleep because of her clenching and grinding her teeth by yelling out “That’s enough!” She would usually stop grinding her teeth for a few minutes, even if she didn’t wake up, and that often gave him enough time to fall asleep.
Maybe a Dentist or Oral Surgeon Can Help
Grinding teeth can be quite painful. Many people who grind teeth at night have sore jaws during their waking hours. Many have aching or cracked teeth, or they break the fillings or crowns in their teeth. Some have chronic headaches. The pain itself can be quite unpleasant. Plus when they get that sore they can find it extremely painful to eat, yawn, or do other things with their jaw. At some point, many people with bruxism are driven to a dentist or oral surgeon by the pain. And a worried spouse or lover (who may also be losing sleep because of the bruxism) may push their bruxing sleep partner to get that kind of help. And in fact, many people who grind their teeth at night only know that they do that because their sleeping partner tells them about it.
A dentist or oral surgeon may help. Many people use a dentist-fitted night-time mouth guard, a cushioning device shaped for their mouth, that protects the teeth and reduces or eliminates the grinding. Some people have had jaw surgery, which doesn’t necessarily eliminate the grinding but helps to reduce the pain that has developed in the jaw joint.
Sleep Apart
Some couples sleep apart some or all of the time so that the partner of the person who bruxes can get to sleep more easily and stay asleep. Of course, that means they lose the many advantages of sharing a bed–the intimacy and safety, the sexual access, the possibility of night time conversations before falling asleep, and so on. And sleeping apart only works if there is a decent sleeping place elsewhere in the house and if it’s far enough away from the bruxer so that the partner who has fled the bruxer can’t still hear the bruxing.
Tension Reduction May Help
Sometimes the bruxing develops because of specific tensions in a person’s life, and if those tensions can be ended or at least managed differently, the bruxing will stop. For example, in one couple I interviewed the woman’s bruxing started when their adult son, his wife, and their baby moved back home. The adult son and his wife were constantly arguing and the baby was often crying. The woman said that is when her bruxing started, and sometimes the only way she could get away from the constant squabbling and crying and to give her husband a chance to sleep free of her bruxing was to go to the backyard and sleep on the trampoline. But eventually she just told her son and his wife to move out, and they did. And then the woman stopped bruxing.
Some people find ways on their own to reduce tensions that underlie their tooth gritting and grinding. Some are helped by a psychologist or other therapist to deal with underlying issues in their lives, anything from how they let work get to them to how they deal with their children or other family members to, well, almost anything. Some learn relaxation techniques, including yoga, meditation, self-hypnosis, exercise, and how to change how they think about the stressors in their lives.
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With its time in the White House winding down, the Obama administration plans to add yet another executive order to its list on Wednesday ― one that will bar companies from receiving federal contracts if they recently violated labor laws.
Known as the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order, the new regulation is meant to reward good actors and punish bad ones, encouraging employers to take the high road if they want government money. It’s part of the White House’s broader strategy, pushed by labor groups, to use federal contracting power in order to improve workplaces in the broader economy.
“This rule affirms the notion that contracting with the federal government is a privilege, not an entitlement,” said Labor Secretary Tom Perez, whose agency was tasked with developing the rule. “The contractors who are doing the right thing should not have to compete for contracts with those who don’t.”
The rule has been in the works since 2014 and has just now been finalized. On a call with reporters, administration officials said different provisions of the rule will gradually be phased in, in order to give contractors time to adjust. They also said that they took feedback from contractors into account before crafting the final rule.
That will probably be little consolation to business groups, who vehemently opposed the regulation and lobbied to have it watered down or spiked. Along with Republicans in Congress, they have dubbed it the “blacklisting rule,” claiming it would add more red tape and unfairly prevent firms from securing federal contracts.
Under the rule, companies that want to bid on contracts will have to disclose to the government whether they ran afoul of laws covering workplace safety, workplace discrimination, labor organizing rights, or minimum wage and overtime during the previous three years. The necessary disclosures would include an official finding by a federal agency, a judgment from a court or an award from an arbitrator.
Juanita Allen, who works inside a Pentagon cafeteria, said companies that skirt the law shouldn’t be eligible for federal contracts. She said she had been interviewed as part of a Labor Department investigation into whether her contractor had illegally underpaid her. The agency confirmed the investigation but would not comment further.
“They shouldn’t be able to get [contracts],” Allen, 33, said of companies that break the law.
Officials noted that the new regulations cover only “the most egregious” violations. For instance, if an employer had been cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, it would have to disclose a violation deemed “serious” or “willful,” but not the more common, run-of-the-mill violations that tend to pop up through inspections. The administration estimates that less than 10 percent of contractors will run into problems because of the provisions.
“Our primary goal is to do what’s best for taxpayers,” said Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White House’s council on domestic policy. “Businesses that do the right thing are being underbid by companies that skirt the law.”
Companies that benefit from taxpayer money have long been held to a higher standard than other private-sector actors ― or at least, they are supposed to be. There is a long history of presidents using contracting power to raise workplace standards, stretching back to when Franklin Delano Roosevelt outlawed racial discrimination among defense contractors.
The current president has used the tactic often ― from instituting a $10.10 minimum wage among contractors to requiring that contractors provide employees with basic paid sick leave, among other moves. Those reforms came at the behest of labor unions and low-wage workers, and the latest regulation is no different. One of the most prominent backers of the new rule is the Change to Win labor federation, which includes the Service Employees International Union, the driver behind the Fight for $15 campaign.
The president’s previous rules impacted federal contract workers most directly. But the new disclosure rule could benefit workers throughout a particular company that seeks federal contracts, said Mary Kay Henry, SEIU’s president.
“Companies are incentivized to play by the rules thanks to the way this is written,” Henry said.
According to Congress, companies that have broken labor laws have continued to secure government contracts for years. Senate Democrats issued a report in 2013 showing that 49 contractors with serious labor violations enjoyed $81 billion in federal contracts in 2012 alone. “Almost 30 percent of companies receiving the highest penalties for violations of federal labor law are also federal contractors,” the report found.
OSHA violations, in particular, tend to come with meager fines, which critics say leaves employers with little incentive to improve safety. Perez said he hopes the new rule gives contractors more motivation to make sure workplaces are safe and workers are always paid what they’re owed.
“I don’t think our existing laws provide a sufficient, credible deterrent,” he said.
Republicans may well try to block the rule ― or portions of it ― from going into effect through the appropriations process, though Democrats likely would not go along with that. They could also try to invoke a rarely successful maneuver through the Congressional Review Act in the hopes of blocking it.
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), ranking Democrat on the House committee overseeing labor issues, said he thought the final rule was modest enough that it wouldn’t draw objections.
“I think it’s a reasonable order,” Scott said. “It’s hard to know what the other side of the argument would be.”
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His blue face and blank stare suggest a look of despair or simply disbelief. Yet, the snub-nosed monkey above and 37 other similar species just got their genomes sequenced. This one monkey, though. He seems sad as hell about it.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
