I am SO honored to included in this dope-ass project!!

criticalminded.org presents:

“Liner Notes: A Critic’s Notebook”

led by Shamira Ibrahim and available for download here: criticalminded.org/downloads/CRIT…

Wanna see a STACKED roster of culture writers (i don’t count LOL) ???

Today, Abdul El-Sayed will be practicing shamwow law because he is on his way to clean up the Senate 🧼

“If the weight is a gift, it is a blessing to be tested. If the gift has weight, it is our purpose to address it”: @missjillscott and @nateburleson share the beautiful process of writing poetry together. cbsn.ws/4j13Asj

When being just and honest comes at a price, pay it. When forgiving seems like a defeat, forgive. When everyone tells you to think of yourselves first, do not be afraid to put yourselves in the last place. Be willing to give up time, money, comfort and plans to serve others. May those who see you find themselves asking: “Why do they live in this way? Where do they get this freedom? Why do they love one another so much?” #ApostolicJourney #Uruguay

LA’s new Mayor Nithya Raman is a Harvard and MIT-educated public planner—and it shows ✨

Microsoft has filed a patent for an AI system that could rewrite what people say during livestreams in real time. It could change words depending on who's watching, taking into account their age, location, and language.

The idea is to clean up broadcasts by removing filler ng, or even replacing certain words.

The AI could also adjust the speaker's lip movements so viewers wouldn't notice anything had been changed.

Former Washington Post columnist and editor @KarenAttiah says she has decided that she will NOT be returning to the Post.

An independent arbitrator recently ruled that the Post had no just cause to fire Attiah and ordered the Post to reinstate her and compensate her with back I have decided not to return to what The Washington Post has become.”

Full Piece: bit.ly/4AdskDw

do people in Mississippi understand there are people on the New York City Subway right now going, “pick another protein? Sheeeeiiiiiii”

🤣🤣 My pops passing on 'Soul Train' was a generational wealth fumble for sure. But in my pop's defense, he was a civil rights journalist and Don Cornelius made this ask near the end of the 1960s. At that point my pops had spent 20 yrs covering every black atrocity you could name. Imagine you are a civil rights journalist, and you have spent the last twenty years of your career covering. MLK & Malcom Assassinations, riots in Watts, Detroit, Chicago, Soweto Riots, Zimbabwe/Rhodesian civil war, Emmitt Till, Little Rock Nine, the Freedom Riders, the March on Washington, Bloody Sunday. Four little girls, Medgar Evers and some deep voice negro walking to your office talking about “let me hold a stack so I can create a TV show where black people dance all night, I'll make you a producer." All my pops knew was pain. He couldn't even fathom a world where happy Black people would be viewed as a commodity. So of course he loaned Don the money because he wanted to support him, but he never truly saw the vision and chose to be reimbursed on his investment before the show ever took off.
It remained one of his biggest regrets until he died. We weren't even allowed to watch Soul Train in my home. We could only watch Solid Gold. My pops was a proper hater. 🤣

RT @ISASaxonists: So a surprise arrived in the mail this week. @DocDre and I were two of a few case studies in this new book. I think both…

RT @ISASaxonists: @DocDre DMing us lol

Anyway you can support Dr. Stanfill's work and def tell her to write one on all the archival mater…

That reminds me

We also need to get rid of confederate license plates

I’ve had orgasms that have lasted longer than the confederacy - fuck that flag

VA passed a bill recently and GA should follow suit

This is by far the most diabolical thing I’ve ever seen done in an MMA fight 😭😭😭

Why should Congressional Democrats investigate corporate America if their mandate is to deliver real economic change? Because investigations are a key catalyst for securing reform and legislation. For much of the last century, Congress used to be the main institutional player working to secure an economy that serves working people. A key tool was oversight. Lawmakers routinely investigated complex markets and major corporations, identifying problems and exposing wrongdoing. A major goal of these investigations was to learn what was driving certain problems and figure out how to fix them.

After Democrats took back the House during the first Trump administration in 2019, I joined the House Judiciary Committee as a staffer on the Antitrust Subcommittee. Under the terrific leadership of @RepJerryNadler and then-Rep @davidcicilline, we pursued an 18-month investigation into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, securing key evidence of how their business practices were undermining competition and harming people, setting the basis for both lawsuits and proposed legislation.

A few lessons from that experience:

1. The quality of legislative oversight depends on the staff and the support of top members to confront power. Committee and Subcommittee Chairs that are focused on getting answers and unafraid to take on powerful corporate interests will make the difference between oversight that doesn’t surrender to their evasion tactics and oversight that aims low or flames out.

Even a relatively small number of dogged, talented lawyers ready to dive in can make a big impact. In the 1930s a single congressional lawyer, Ferdinand Pecora, helped reshape our entire banking system by subpoenaing records and interrogating top financiers, including J.P Morgan. The investigation exposed self-dealing, market manipulation, and tax avoidance, and laid the groundwork for foundational New Deal legislation, including the Glass-Steagall Act and the Securities Exchange Act.

2. Eliminating bottlenecks to moving investigations forward is key. For example, the House should make sure that Subcommittee Chairs can issue subpoenas rather than needing the sign-off of the full Committee or its Chair. A credible threat of sending subpoenas is critical for credible oversight.

3. Ensuring that members can develop the muscle to effectively interrogate CEOs requires investing in real preparation. In the lead up to the hearing with Bezos, Pichai, Cook, and Zuckerberg, the Antitrust Subcommittee spent months reviewing millions of documents collected from the firms, interviewing affected parties, briefing members on key evidence, and conducting practice hearings. Members came into the hearing deeply informed and able to rebut and call out CEO dissembling. The result was some of the most effective member questioning of executives we’ve seen in decades. @TheProspect wrote up a great overview: prospect.org/2020/07/30/tri…

4. For decades, institutional capacity in Congress has been extremely weak. Much of this traces back to the Gingrich Revolution, which was effectively the 1995 DOGE-ing of Congress. Republican leadership fired over 600 professional staffers, eliminated the Office of Technology Assessment, and gutted research capacity. None of that capacity was ever meaningfully restored.

As a result, members have way fewer resources to develop serious expertise or go deep on a new topic. Members should start rebuilding that capacity so the institution can fully play its Article I role, where Congress can again do serious policy development and legislating and serve as a real check on the executive and judicial branches.

5. AI markets should be high on the list of investigations. The business decisions of the major AI firms have huge public ramifications, yet the public is at a severe informational disadvantage when it comes to how these markets work and the choices these firms are making. A congressional investigation will help ensure future legislative action is based on a more complete view of what is going on rather than selective and partial corporate disclosures.

Alabama didn’t get the invite 🙂‍↔️🙂‍↔️🙂‍↔️

The fine waist bead and crystals joints gon SHOCK YOU with some very questionable politics 😭

RT @afrosypaella: 🥹🥹🥹

Democrats in the 120th Congress will hold every Pacific coast seat and southern border seat from Brownsville, Texas to Bellingham, Washington

Lincoln would sneak out of the White House and into his son’s mausoleum so he could cradle his dead body

Mary Todd hired people to hold seances in the White House so she could speak to her children

(people were not okay)

Me and my homegirls outside the taco bell/pizza hut/sex change/abortion clinic combo signing people up for they/them sports leagues

we will, thanks!!!