Tag Archives: OddBox

How La Raza became invisible, Part 1: Grandma Coyota

This is the story of how La Raza Became Invisible. A series of five articles explores the different ways Mexican and Pueblo land was treated under U.S. law after the invasion of 1847 and the consequences on intercultural relations

This is the story of how La Raza Became Invisible. A series of five articles explores the different ways Mexican and Pueblo land was treated under U.S. law after the invasion of 1847 and the consequences on intercultural relations in…

Houston Cop Charged in Capitol Riot After Photos He Thought Were Deleted Placed Him in the Building

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What do you call a person who commits a crime, lies about it, comes clean after getting caught in the lie and then makes up a lame excuse for committing the aforementioned crime? Would you call them a criminal? A hooligan? An undesirable member of society? Well, in this instance, the thing to call said person is “Mr.…

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‘Nobody’s afraid anymore’. How planned protests against the jailing of Alexey Navalny hijacked Russian TikTok, and what it means for expected turnout on Saturday

Almost a week ago, Alexey Navalny flew home to Russia, surrounded by a phalanx of journalists. Large crowds of cheering supporters awaited him at the airport, but his most important welcome party was a group of police officers who promptly arrested him after his plane landed. Since Monday, January 18, Navalny’s home has been an isolation cell at Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison. Meanwhile, upcoming protests in support of Navalny, planned for tomorrow, January 23, have become one of the main trending topics on TikTok in Russia. Videos about Navalny have been viewed more than 200 million times, and Russia’s federal censor has ordered TikTok to remove “content calling for minors using the social network to participate in illegal mass protest events.” Meduza looks at how content creators are using the protests to gain followers, and whether TikTok can serve as an effective protest tool in Russia.

The DeLorean Might Be Coming Back As an Electric Car

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: The DMC DeLorean has been out of production for almost 40 years, but now we’ve learned that the iconic vehicle might be coming back as an electric car. In 1995, Stephen Wynne bought the company’s old inventory and trademark to relaunch the brand based in Texas. At first, the plan was to bring back the same vehicle with more modern technology in low volume. For the past 5 years, the company pushed for the adoption of new rules for low volume vehicle production with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). These new rules were finally recently adopted, but the delay was so long that it complicated DeLorean’s plans. The engine that they plan to use is not going to be compliant with emission standards starting in 2022 and the landscape has changed significantly.

In a new blog post, the company is now hinting that going electric with the DeLorean: “That said, with EV’s becoming more mainstream, we’ve been considering switching to an all-electric as the future. It certainly makes for an easier path through emissions maze which still looms large over any internal combustion engine. While an electric Cobra or Morgan may be a little extreme for their potential market, we’ve already seen that an EV DeLorean — as we displayed at the 2012 New York International Auto Show — is not such an ‘out there’ idea.” The company hints at being in the process of looking to secure financing to bring an electric DeLorean and says “stay tuned.”

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Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Police arrest Navalny’s associates in Moscow ahead of planned opposition rallies

Following widespread reports of police officers issuing warnings to opposition figures and activists across Russia, law enforcement officials in Moscow have arrested several of Alexey Navalny’s closest associates. This comes ahead of countrywide protests opposing his detention planned for Saturday, January 23. On the evening of January 21, police detained the opposition figure’s press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, as well as Anti-Corruption Foundation employees Lyubov Sobol, Georgy Alburov, and Vladlen Los. Similar arrests have also been reported in three other cities so far.

Amanda Gorman: The Hill We Climb

The rhetorical highlight of the Biden/Harris inauguration was Amanda Gorman reciting her poem, The Hill We Climb — I thought it was fantastic. It begins:1

When day comes we ask ourselves: where can we find light in this neverending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice. And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming President, only to find herself reciting for one.

You can read about how Gorman composed the poem in the NY Times:

“I had this huge thing, probably one of the most important things I’ll ever do in my career,” she said in an interview. “It was like, if I try to climb this mountain all at once, I’m just going to pass out.”

Gorman managed to write a few lines a day and was about halfway through the poem on Jan. 6, when pro-Trump rioters stormed into the halls of Congress, some bearing weapons and Confederate flags. She stayed awake late into the night and finished the poem, adding verses about the apocalyptic scene that unfolded at the Capitol that day.

The Times also has a lesson for students about Gorman and her poem. And from NPR:

Gorman is no stranger to having to change her work midstream. Like Biden, who has spoken openly about having stuttered as a child, Gorman grew up with a childhood speech impediment of her own. She had difficulty saying certain letters of the alphabet — the letter R was especially tough — which caused her to have to constantly “self-edit and self-police.”

Her delivery was amazing — powerful and lyrical. Brava!

  1. An official transcript has not yet (to my knowledge) been made available, so all punctuation, lack of line breaks, and errors are mine. I’m not a poet!

Tags: Amanda Gorman   poetry   video

Incoming, trolls. Thousands of suspicious accounts target Russian opposition figures linked to Alexey Navalny on Instagram 

Instagram and Apple stop this trolling and these bots or the government will end up doing it for you!

Thousands of suspicious Instagram accounts have begun following Russian opposition figures linked to jailed anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny. This comes after his Anti-Corruption Foundation published a major investigation about a billion-dollar luxury mansion built for Vladimir Putin on the Black Sea. The same bots are also targeting the accounts of independent Russian media outlets en masse, in what appears to be an attempt to get them blocked from Instagram ahead of the rallies in support of Navalny planned for this upcoming Saturday.