GO PRO Can’t hit the slopes this winter? Enjoy them vicariously via Bobby Brown and Go Pro.
One way down.@GoPro pic.twitter.com/ZZ4tqpLk3H
— Bobby Brown (@BobbyBrown) February 19, 2019
SKETCHBOOK Artist Jeff Deka’s sketch of Death from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series from DC Comics, at c2E2.
RAPP SHEET Anthony Rapp’s response to trolls?
CAPTAIN MARVEL VERSUS MISOGYNY The movie isn’t even out yet and Captain Marvel has received misogynistic comments on Rotten Tomatoes. Says HypeBeast: “Comments such as “Brie Larsen did a lot of political statement, so my political statement will be not to see this movie,” as well as “As a white male I don’t think Brie would want me watching this movie,” and “Why Marvel decided to cast a very vocal racist and sexist aimed at white males, I’ll never know.”
“The comments follow Larson’s interview for the March 2019 issue of British Marie Claire, in which the Academy Award-winning actress spoke on the film critic industry being ‘overwhelmingly white male’ represented, as said by Stacy Smith, founder and director of the Inclusion Initiative. The backlash relates more directly to Larson’s comments at the Women in Film Crystal and Lucy Awards, where the actress said, ‘I don’t need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work about A Wrinkle in Time… It wasn’t made for him! I want to know what it meant to women of color, biracial women, to teen women of color. Am I saying I hate white dudes? No, I am not… What I am saying is if you make a movie that is a love letter to women of color, there is an insanely low chance a woman of color will have a chance to see your movie, and review your movie.'”
GRATUITOUS From My New Plaid Pants.
I am five minutes into the gay soccer movie MARIO and this Aaron Altaras dude will be the death of me I swear it pic.twitter.com/y9Rh4AxYot
— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) October 25, 2018
PRESSING MATTERS A new company will press your ashes into a working vinyl album. “If you have the money you can press your ashes into a vinyl record, at the rate of a teaspoonful per disc. The company providing this offbeat service is And Vinyly. It was formed in the Noughties by music producer Jason Leach from Scarborough, England. A combination of family accidents involving “cremains”, a sense of his own advancing years (he’s middle-aged) and his mother working in a funeral home helped Leach come to the conclusion that vinyl was the answer. “It was not intended to be a business,” he told the BBC in 2017. “It was the result of having a bit of fun with what at the time felt like a shocking and disconcerting inevitability,” according to The Vintage News.
“As the name suggests, And Vinyly takes a light-hearted approach to the Grim Reaper. Their slogan is ‘Live on from beyond the groove!'”
HAS ADDICTION GONE VIRAL? Sandra Sing Loh says so on The Loh Down on Science over at NPR. “Retroviruses like HIV make us sick by inserting their genes into our cells. Usually, these genes cause cells to make new copies of the retrovirus. But occasionally, the genes mutate and can’t make new viruses. Five percent of human genes are mutated retroviruses that are passed down generation to generation! Could these genes be harmful? Scientists have long thought so. But, they haven’t found much in the way of evidence. Enter Gkikas Magiorkinis from the University of Athens. His hunt for harmful retroviruses led his team to some of the less touristy neighborhoods of Athens. There, they collected DNA from hundreds of intravenous drug users. Pouring over this genetic data, Magiorkinis honed in on a specific gene linked to addiction. What did he find? People addicted to drugs were TWICE as likely to have retroviral DNA mucking up their addiction gene!”
THREE BILL BOARDS IN CHINA Homosexuality was only decriminalized in 1997 in the People’s Republic of China. So it’s no surprise that Gay Conversion Therapy has taken root there. “Globally, such therapy has been discredited by a host of major health organizations and denounced by most of mainstream society, but its existence and growth in China hasn’t garnered much critical attention. According to a research conducted by several LGBT rights organizations in China, as of 2017, there were around 112 institutions across the country that publicly advertised their services of conversion therapy. A 2014 study by Beijing LGBTQ Center found out that of 1,653 respondents, 151 of them said they had contemplated seeking such therapy, mostly because of pressure from their families and people around them” according to Sup China?
In order to raise public awareness bout the unchecked proliferation of conversion therapy, “three Chinese men, artist Wǔ Lǎobái, curator Zhèng Hóngbīn, and policeman Lín Hè, together launched a crowd-funded campaign letting three trucks hit the road, each one bearing a message: on the first, “Cure a disease that is nonexistent”; on the second, “The Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders still has sexual orientation disorder”; and, lastly, “It’s been 19 years. How come?” The three messages are quotes from Lin’s diary, in which he wrote about his frustration and struggles as a gay man.”
They were influenced by Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
TRUMP’S PLAN TO END HIV Isn’t going to work in Oklahoma. Stigma around HIV and AIDS and around being gay runs deep in parts of Oklahoma, says Dr. Michelle Salvaggio, medical director of the Infectious Diseases Institute at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in Oklahoma City. The institute is one of two federally funded HIV clinics in Oklahoma; the other is in Tulsa, the second-largest city in the state reports NPR.
Dr. Michelle Salvaggio holds one of the medicines she prescribes to her patients with HIV.
“In Oklahoma, as in much of the U.S., black gay and bisexual men have the highest riskof HIV infection. Other groups with elevated risk in Oklahoma include Latinos, heterosexual women and Native Americans. Salvaggio applauds the goal of ending HIV transmissions within 10 years, but says she doesn’t think it’s feasible in Oklahoma. The plan fails to recognize the particular ways different populations experience the epidemic, she says. Native Americans in Oklahoma, for example, can’t count on the anonymity of a large health clinic. Even if Native Americans have access to HIV care at the clinic, she says, “they are literally in fear of being outed.”
“When they go into an Indian Health Service clinic, it is possible that they will see their cousin behind the desk, and their cousin’s brother-in-law working in medical records, and their niece’s boyfriend working in the pharmacy,” Salvaggio says. Even if Native Americans have access to HIV care at the clinic, she says, “they are literally in fear of being outed.”
SOLO ARTIST Will Sam Smith win at the BRIT Awards?
CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS is coming to The Arrowverse this year. Who will live and more importantly who will die is the subject of this Comic Book Resource’s (CBR) debate.
LOVE DON’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE Soulja Boy and Blac Chyna have called it quits after a week reports DListed. Meet Tiona Fernan.
VARIETY Choice of Gwyneth Paltrow for their Oscar cover is getting a lot ribbing being called, “equal parts amazing and ridiculous.”
WE RESIST Day number 762. “One of the difficulties in resisting the Trump administration, the Republican Congressional majority, and Republican state legislatures (plus the occasional non-Republican who obliges us to resist their nonsense, too, like we don’t have enough to worry about) is keeping on top of the sheer number of horrors, indignities, and normalization of the aggressively abnormal that they unleash every single day. So here is a daily thread for all of us to share all the things that are going on, thus crowdsourcing a daily compendium of the onslaught of conservative erosion of our rights and our very democracy.” SHAKESVILLE
WITH A NATION WIDE BLIZZARD arriving today–we yearn for poolside days.
