boom towns

I know what you are thinking... BOOM as in a Boom Town! Many victims of these crimes are already members of vulnerable or marginalized groups, including rural women, Indigenous populations, and young people.

Oil, Gas, and Crime: The Dark Side of the Boomtown is the result of about a decade of interest from Ruddell.
READ

Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet - Part 1 (Featuring Run the Jewels)

Clint Watts #ShakeUp

A former FBI agent Clint Watts kicked it up even further, saying, “Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words. America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America.”

here we are...

dignity in dying: Death Doulas

At 80 years old, Farley founded an organization called Doulas to Accompany and Comfort the Dying. The program taught doulas how to listen and relate to the dying person, as well as do more practical things like helping with a living will.

WATCH: http://leaderpost.com/news/local-news/death-doulas-bringing-death-dying-and-grief-out-of-the-shadows-and-into-the-light

AND:

What Does a Death Doula Do?

Houston after Hurricane Harvey - Fault Lines

pick a number

from 1- 50 then do this:

50 Easy Pay it Forward Day Kindness Ideas:

Pay it Backward: buy coffee for the person behind you in line.
Compliment the first three people you talk to today.
Send a positive text message to five different people right now.
Post inspirational sticky notes around your neighborhood, office, school, etc.
Tell someone they dropped a dollar (even though they didn’t). Then give them a dollar.
Donate old towels or blankets to an animal shelter.
Say hi to the person next to you on the elevator.
Surprise a neighbor with freshly baked cookies or treats!
Let someone go in front of you in line who only has a few items.
Leave a gas gift card at a gas pump.
Throw a party to celebrate someone just for being who they are, which is awesome.
Have a LinkedIn account? Write a recommendation for coworker or connection.
Leave quarters at the laundromat.
Encounter someone in customer service who is especially kind? Take an extra five minutes to tell their manager.
Leave unused coupons next to corresponding products in the grocery store.
Leave a note on someone’s car telling them how awesome they parked.
Try to make sure every person in a group conversation feels included.
Write a kind message on your mirror with a dry erase marker for yourself, your significant other or a family member.
Place a positive body image notes in jean pockets at a department store.
Smile at five strangers.
Set an alarm on your phone to go off at three different times during the day. In those moments, do something kind for someone else.
Send a gratitude email to a coworker who deserves more recognition.
Practice self-kindness and spend 30 minutes doing something you love today.
Give away stuff for free on Craig’s List.
Write a gratitude list in the morning and again in the evening.
Know parents who could use a night out? Offer to babysit for free.
Hold up positive signs for traffic or in a park for people exercising outside!
Return shopping carts for people at the grocery store.
Buy a plant. Put it in a terracotta pot. Write positive words that describe a friend on the pot. Give it to that friend!
Write a positive comment on your favorite blog, website, or a friend’s social media account.
Have a clean up party at a beach or park.
While you’re out, compliment a parent on how well-behaved their child is.
Leave a kind server the biggest tip you can afford.
When you’re throwing something away on the street, pick up any litter around you and put that in the trash too.
Pay the toll for the person behind you.
Put 50 paper hearts in a box. On each cutout write something that is special about your partner or a friend. Give them the box and tell them to pull out a heart anytime they need a pick-me-up.
Everyone is important. Learn the names of your office security guard, the person at the front desk and other people you see every day. Greet them by name. Also say “hello” to strangers and smile. These acts of kindness are so easy, and they almost always make people smile.
Write your partner a list of things you love about them.
Purchase extra dog or cat food and bring it to an animal shelter.
Find opportunities to give compliments. It costs nothing, takes no time, and could make someone’s entire day. Don’t just think it. Say it.
Take flowers or treats to the nurses’ station at your nearest hospital.
Keep an extra umbrella at work, so you can lend it out when it rains.
Send a ‘Thank you’ card or note to the officers at your local police or fire station.
Take muffins or cookies to your local librarians.
Run an errand for a family member who is busy.
Leave a box of goodies in your mailbox for your mail carrier.
Tape coins around a playground for kids to find.
Put your phone away while in the company of others.
Email or write to a former teacher who made a difference in your life.
When you hear that discouraging voice in your head, tell yourself something positive — you deserve kindness too!

Top of the Lake 2: BBC Two

My blogger friend FILMMAKER Paul recommends it:

TOP OF THE LAKE 2: CHINA GIRL (2017)
Screened earlier this year on the BBC, the follow-up finds Elizabeth Moss, now back in Sydney, tracking down the killer of an Asian prostitute while battling illegal adoption rings and all manner of sexist-pig-men. Like the original it pulls you in with its richly drawn characters and brilliant cast all committing to the lurid and quirky plotlines. Moss is always reliable and does the brooding, melancholic and troubled cop perfectly, while Nicole Kidman is brilliant as the middle-class academic out of her depth with the emotions of her adopted daughter. The sinister beta-male-nemesis Puss portrayed by David Dencik was a great rendition of spurious masculinity while it was great to see Gwendoline Christie out of her Game of Thrones armour, as a naïve rookie cop assisting Moss’ detective. (Mark: 8.5 out of 11)

Knot you

Scientists are teaming up with Andean locals to solve the enigma of a mysterious form of writing that involves knots:

Discovering a narrative khipu that can be deciphered remains one of the holy grails of South American anthropology. If we could find such an object, we might be able to read how Native South Americans viewed their history and rituals in their own words, opening a window to a new Andean world of literature, history, and the arts.

Ice carousel Finland!

Amber Tamblyn, "Dark Sparkler"

Annie's speech

2017 winner Annie Proulx gave one of the best speeches in recent memory, maybe because her conclusion was so gleefully ironic, and her gloom so well grounded in a year that truly does, on so many levels, suck.

Here it is in full:

Although this award is for lifetime achievement, I didn’t start writing until I was 58, so if you’ve been thinking about it and putting it off, well…

I thank the National Book Award Foundation, the committees, and the judges for this medal. I was surprised when I learned of it and I’m grateful and honored to receive it and to be here tonight, and I thank my editor Nan Graham, for it is her medal too.

We don’t live in the best of all possible worlds. This is a Kafkaesque time. The television sparkles with images of despicable political louts and sexual harassment reports. We cannot look away from the pictures of furious elements, hurricanes and fires, from the repetitive crowd murders by gunmen burning with rage. We are made more anxious by flickering threats of nuclear war. We observe social media’s manipulation of a credulous population, a population dividing into bitter tribal cultures. We are living through a massive shift from representative democracy to something called viral direct democracy, now cascading over us in a garbage-laden tsunami of raw data. Everything is situational, seesawing between gut-response “likes” or vicious confrontations. For some this is a heady time of brilliant technological innovation that is bringing us into an exciting new world. For others it is the opening of a savagely difficult book without a happy ending.

To me the most distressing circumstance of the new order is the accelerating destruction of the natural world and the dreadful belief that only the human species has the inalienable right to life and God-given permission to take anything it wants from nature, whether mountaintops, wetlands or oil. The ferocious business of stripping the earth of its flora and fauna, of drowning the land in pesticides again may have brought us to a place where no technology can save us. I personally have found an amelioration in becoming involved in citizen science projects. This is something everyone can do.

Every state has marvelous projects of all kinds, from working with fish, with plants, with landscapes, with shore erosions, with water situations.

Yet somehow the old discredited values and longings persist. We still have tender feelings for such outmoded notions as truth, respect for others, personal honor, justice, equitable sharing. We still hope for a happy ending. We still believe that we can save ourselves and our damaged earth—an indescribably difficult task as we discover that the web of life is far more mysteriously complex than we thought and subtly entangled with factors that we cannot even recognize. But we keep on trying, because there’s nothing else to do.

The happy ending still beckons, and it is in hope of grasping it that we go on. The poet Wisława Szymborska caught the writer’s dilemma of choosing between hard realities and the longing for the happy ending. She called it “consolation.” Darwin: They say he read novels to relax, but only certain kinds—nothing that ended unhappily. If he happened on something like that, enraged, he flung the book into the fire. True or not, I’m ready to believe it. Scanning in his mind so many times and places, he’s had enough with dying species, the triumphs of the strong over the weak, the endless struggle to survive, all doomed sooner or later. He’d earned the right to happy ending, at least in fiction, with its micro-scales.

Hence the indispensable silver lining, the lovers reunited, the families reconciled, the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded, fortunes regained, treasures uncovered, stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways, good names restored, greed daunted, old maids married off to worthy parsons, troublemakers banished to other hemispheres, forgers of documents tossed down the stairs, seducers scurried to the altar, orphans sheltered, widows comforted, pride humbled, wounds healed, prodigal sons summoned home, cups of sorrow tossed into the ocean, hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation, general merriment and celebration, and the dog Fido, gone astray in the first chapter, turns up barking gladly in the last. Thank you. VIA

Art Friday: Kameelah Janan Rasheed

art makes you THINK

Rasheed’s latest installation, in the proper direction: forward/ also the ache of (perceived) velocity.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed, in the proper direction: forward/ also the ache of (perceived) velocity continues at Printed Matter (231 11th Ave, Chelsea, Manhattan) November 25.

The Last Leonardo da Vinci – Salvator Mundi

otipêyimsiw-iskwêwak kihci-kîsikohk | why a.i. is danger and racist #podcasts

In Season 4, Episode 5 of otipêyimsiw-iskwêwak kihci-kîsikohk, Métis in Space, Molly and Chelsea head to the Generation Energy Conference in Winnipeg to interview Erin Bow (physicist, author, and poet), Dr. Eric Bibeau (Associate Prof of Mechanical Engineering and NSERC/Manitoba Hydro Industrial Research Chair in Alternative Energy), and Dr. John Hepburn (Vice President of Research and International at University Of British Columbia and Vice-President of Research for CIFAR) about the future of energy, dys/utopias, and most importantly, SCIENCE.
Chatting with @erinbowbooks, Dr. John Hepburn, and Dr. Eric Bibeau was super flippin fun! We learned about why AIs are racist, why the grid is a social issue, and why scientists are both bleaker and more hopeful about the future than you might expect.
— Métis In Space (@Metis_In_Space) November 11, 2017