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RuPaulâs Drag Race All Stars Power Rankings, S2E1
Wow. Just⊠wow. The first episode of RuPaulâs Drag Race All Stars Season 2 was like the summer blockbuster movie of drag: it had tons of flashy effects and big twists, but the ending wasnât much of a surprise. The blockbuster status isnât just because of a cast of 10 mostly-flawless queens, but because the show finally letâŠ
RuPaulâs Drag Race All Stars Power Rankings, S2E1 was originally published on Crushing Krisis
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RuPaulâs Drag Race All Stars Power Rankings, S2 Pre-Season
The second season of RuPaulâs Drag Race All-Stars starts tonight on both Logo and VH1! That means we all get a second glorious run of weekly drag queens this year, only this time its starring 10 season queens we already know and who I largely love. However, not ever All-Star can enter the Hall of Fame.âŠ
RuPaulâs Drag Race All Stars Power Rankings, S2 Pre-Season was originally published on Crushing Krisis
two zoos in two days (and one terrifying capybara)
Eâs sister Jenny has stayed with us many times since weâve lived in this house and theyâve all been pretty boring. This is completely paradoxical, as Jenny is a professional museumologist (I should probably ask her what the real word is) and world traveller who loves nothing more than a zoo â or, even aâŠ
two zoos in two days (and one terrifying capybara) was originally published on Crushing Krisis
Review: Netflix's Stranger Things, Season One
As with the release of any of Netflixâs âbing it all at onceâ television seasons, this weekend my social feed went from a stray mention of Stranger Things on Friday to a steady stream on Saturday as more and more people began to sample the eight-episode thriller. I didnât want to be a late adopter thisâŠ
Review: Netflixâs Stranger Things, Season One was originally published on Crushing Krisis
Tumblr, I have an important question for you:
How are you reading CK on Tumblr?
I read every post in full!
I read the posts I enjoy, including the "Read More."
I mostly just skim them as I scroll through my follows.
 pollcode.com free polls
Thanks for your feedback! I'm concerned that Tumblr simul-posting might be hurting my Page Rank on some topics, but I also like being able to share things with you here where you spend most of your time. I don't want to make any big decisions without more data to back them up.
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This is not a review of Ghostbusters and I don't like things that are funny
Last night Jake, Ashley, and I enjoyed an acoustic rehearsal on Ashleyâs roof deck (sans Zina, whose drums would never make it up the four flights of stairs) followed by a band trip to see Ghostbusters! Long story short: Ghostbusters was a slightly better-than-average summer blockbuster. Almost entire unrelated to that fact: I loved it. I thinkâŠ
This is not a review of Ghostbusters and I donât like things that are funny was originally published on Crushing Krisis
New Collecting Guide: Marvel's Cloak & Dagger (and an explanation of who they are)
Iâm happy to share The Definitive Cloak & Dagger Collecting Guide and Reading Order! It includes every Cloak & Dagger appearance ever published â both together and apart â with notes on trade-reading order and the importance of guest appearances. I know what most of your reactions will be â âWho the hell are Cloak & Dagger?â Theyâre notâŠ
New Collecting Guide: Marvelâs Cloak & Dagger (and an explanation of who they are) was originally published on Crushing Krisis
Cover songs or originals - which are easier to play?
We held an unusual rehearsal in our dining room today â three hours of running through the Smash Fantastic cover song repertoire, but as fronted by my Arcati Crisis co-writer and BFF Gina.
An incredibly rare, one-of-a-kind shot of the first time Gina and I performed music together on stage (also the first time I sang solo in public!) This was in 1997 at Masterman, peforming âSharks Canât Sleepâ by Tracy Bonham. From left to right: me, Joanna, Lucy, and Gina.
The strange arrangement is the result of being asked to play a big benefit show during a week where Ashley will be on vacation. Itâs a fun show and we love donating our time to it, so Ashley gave her blessing for us to play it with a fill-in vocalist.
Despite you all knowing Gina primarily for her amazing songwriting and intuitive harmony vocals, she is an awesome interpreter and karaoke veteran. It helps that the rest of the band â Jake, Zina, and I â is the same for both Smash Fantastic and Arcati Crisis.
It was a rollicking rehearsal full of surprises â for example, after over 20 years of friendship I found out that Gina loves âBecause The Nightâ as much as I do, but she does not quite know how to sing Queenâs âSomebody To Love.â We also played a rare pair of our own âHoly Grailâ and âBetterâ with Gina on vocals but not on guitars!
The most interesting part for me was the conversation while we packed up. As we were coiling wires, Gina mentioned off-handedly that she found getting the cover songs right to be much more challenging than playing in an original band.
That took me by surprise! Gina is a confident, experienced singer â I would never expect she would be stressed by cover songs. In fact, I invited her to fill in because I thought sheâd find singing two hours of covers a relief in comparison to the stress of shredding through our own songs. However, her reasoning resonated: when youâre covering a song, thereâs an existing standard to be held to. As great an interpreter as you may be, youâve got to get the lyrics right and hit the expected high notes before people will even begin to consider if your performance is any good.
I know thatâs the reality, but Iâve never considered it that way. For me, cover songs are a fun vacation from the intense challenge of playing original music.
With cover songs, you simply have to capture the spirit of a song people know well. While Jake tends to hew closely to the real basslines of songs, Zina and I approximate their drum fills and guitar riffs. Itâs about verisimilitude. If you give a crowd a hint of the real thing, they donât notice all the elements you leave out.
That works in our favor on songs for which we canât quite assemble all the elements of a recording, but it also works in our favor â our covers of âBang Bangâ and âUptown Funkâ dress up the more bare originals considerably with additional passing chords, while even on a classic like âThe Way You Make Me Feelâ Jake has installed a more propulsive bassline that is only implied in the original.
The first time Gina and I played guitar together in front of people! This was in 1998 at Masterman, playing U2âs âWith Or Without Youâ for the departing senior class. Psychedelic water damage courtesy of my Sophomore year apartment.
By contrast, playing originals is terrifying! The only context the audience has are the notes coming from the stage. There is no earned good will or existing song that will put a smile on their face. And, even when youâre in top shape with a set of good songs, itâs impossible to know when theyâre good enough.
Itâs like doing yoga â you can always challenge yourself to sink deeper into a pose. I have songs that are nearly 20 years old that I still havenât mastered playing; I found extra harmony on one just a few weeks ago that makes it sound more like itself than it ever has before.
Gina doesnât have that anxiety. To her, an original song is something entirely under her control not only to interpret, but to shape and transform. The entire point of the thing is that it belongs to you and it might continue to evolve. Thatâs nothing to be afraid of â itâs a joy.
I was so intrigued that as best-friends and co-writers Gina and I could differ on this point, but it explains a lot about our relative comfort over the years as performers. Thereâs no disputing that Iâm more vivid and energetically myself on stage in Smash Fantastic, just as Gina is obviously transfixing in Arcati Crisis when she settles into playing an original like âSong for Mrs. Schroeder.â
It will be an interesting eight weeks of getting 30 songs ready for this cover gig, but I think Iâm even more intrigued by what Gina and I will know about ourselves afterward when we turn our attention back to originals for the first time in three years.
Cover songs or originals â which are easier to play? was originally published on Crushing Krisis
our supersized supermarkets
Iâve been thinking about groceries, scale, and the American way.
Last night, while our daughters napped under Jâs watch, Lindsay and I absconded to Wegmans for a quick shopping trip slash PokĂ©mon catching session. Yes, you read that right â we had an hour to ourselves and we went grocery shopping for amusement. To be fair, Wegmans is definitely like an amusement park for hungry adults recovering from five hours swimming in a lake with two boisterous young ladies.
You could fit an entire French supermarket into this Wegmanâs photo. Photo by Flickr User Seuss. 2008, some rights reserved.
I know Iâm a little late to coming around to Wegmans â heck, Lindsay grew up shopping at one! Even as I marveled at how Wegmans has every possibly thing (Six different kinds of raw shrimp to choose from! Three different kinds of Tahini! Every single organic vegetable! Liquor and Beer!), I also reflected on the very middle/upper-class American condition of being excited to visit a grocery store thatâs as much about leisure as it is about subsistence.
My grocery situation as a small child was all about subsistence. For deli and packs of cigarettes, we had a tiny Vietnamese bodega on our corner, and for other groceries a smallish Stop and Save and Shop or Something on the next block that accepted our food stamps. I remember being mystified by the cheap brands of frozen foods like waffles or steaks that I had never heard of before â because they didnât advertise on TV.
When an Acme was installed on 80th street it was big news, and the long aisles full of expanded cereal choices and real meat counter seemed like luxuries â likely combined with the fact that we had graduated from welfare with my mom getting her degree and could more readily afford such things.
In college we alternated between a newly-opened Fresh Grocer, which was like a slightly watered-down Whole Foods, and a local Thriftway that Lindsay, Erika and I re-christened âTheftwayâ for its sometimes-shady customers and peculiar aisle arrangement. Theftway was great for getting cheap name brands, but for anything special, fresh, or healthy weâd take the four block walk to Fresh Grocer.
On our honeymoon the tiny Paris apartment E and I were renting had an impossibly small miniature refrigerator, which meant we needed to restock our food options every other day. That wasnât so unusual, and the local grocery store reinforced that â it was no bigger than a suburban Wawa and didnât contain a single super-sized portion of anything. Juices topped out in half gallons, and paper towels came in a max three-rolls-per-pack. When it came to wide varieties, the selection focused on fresh things like cheeses, breads, and juices rather than 100 different kinds of cereal.
We loved it. Bigger doesnât always have to be better.
Now my local haunt is an impossibly large Giant, which has nearly put our local Acme out of business â it looks dismal by comparison. Not coincidentally, itâs now completely devoid of the upper-middle-class suburban shoppers that used to clog its aisles. After all, Giant has not one but two aisles of healthy and gluten-free foods!
Thatâs not meant as a knock on GF stuff, since itâs a requirement in our household â more an acknowledgement of the kind of choices that become important to you when youâre not looking for the foods that your WIC check will cover. Recently EV and I had a long wait behind a couple who were trying to figure out what they could cover with WIC checks and what they needed to pay in cash.
After they were finished, the cashier fixed me with a grimace and apologized for the wait. I responded, âNo worries, I remember what that was like.â
She gave me a puzzled look in return and started ringing my groceries.
These were my thoughts as Lindsay and I wandered through the stadium-sized Wegmanâs. Do we need all of this super-sized choice to be satisfied as consumers? How lucky are we that buying our meals is an act of amusement and convenience? How lucky are we that we can buy them at all?
our supersized supermarkets was originally published on Crushing Krisis
Marvel Now! 2016 â a book-by-book break-down
Itâs that time again!
July brings us the October comic solicitations, and thatâs the month Marvel uses each year as their launchpad for a new wave of books. Thatâs the result of an increasingly network television influenced strategy for Marvelâs comic publishing, which sees volumes of books as seasons of a show that it makes sense to renew regularly â sometimes each year.
With their 2016 Marvel Now! initiative, Marvel has so far announced 62 titles, including a stunning 33 new launches or limited series (and thatâs with only one X-Men title so far on the slate!). This post covers every single title, detailing what itâs replacing, the creators, how hyped I am, and what it will be about â plus, it points you to the collection & reading order guides where each title will be recapped.
Basically: this is your one-stop resource for all things Marvel Now! 2016.
If a title isnât on the Now! list, is that a smoking gun that itâs cancelled without a replacement? Thatâs unclear. For example, Moon Knight releases issue #7 in October, but the issue listed for Now! is #10 â so, these new jumping-on points will be staggered. It could be some of the unlisted books are mid-arc and didnât make sense to label as Now, or it could be theyâre due for a relaunch in the new year. Of course, I expect some of them will simply wrap up in the three months of Now launches.
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Monsters and Maps (both digital and physical)
Yesterday EV and I visited The Academy of Natural Sciences for the first time together!
A T-Rex skull, as shot by EV!
Despite Phillyâs bevy of museums, The Academy has always been a sentimental favorite of mine due to its dinosaurs. As an adult, I realize that it represents much more than that as our cityâs Science Museum, but as a kid I was less focused on the âscienceâ part and moreso on the part where I could stand next to a full-size T-Rex skeleton. I still get a special thrill every time I visit, although in recent years that been only for trips to the Philly Geek Awards.
The current special exhibit at the museum is called âDinosaurs Unearthed,â and it gave me one of my first âkids these days!â shaking-of-old-man-cane experiences directly related to parenting EV (because, as they relate to kids in general, Iâve been having those moments since I was six). Thatâs because this exhibit presents about a half-dozen animatronic dinosaurs at actual scale, and in some cases kids can direct their sounds and movements via a console of light-up buttons.
As an adult whose love for the museum is rooted in seeing fossils, I wasnât enamored with this brief experience fill with lights and motion. Granted, it was packed with educational content â with more placards to read to EV than appeared with the displays in the rest of the museum. Despite that, I couldnât help feeling that it was more of a theme park feature than a museum exhibit. Maybe thatâs because as an adult I donât need to see moving dinosaurs to pique my interest in the creatures â I would have probably been more interested in information about the science of how the animalectronics were built!
A more lifelike adolescent T-Rex, which EV was not eager to spend too much time standing in front of.
Yet, I canât deny the allure for younger kids who arenât old enough to appreciate the magnitude of seeing casts of million-year-old bones. Maybe this is just anecdotal, but Unearthed seemed to trend pretty heavily towards toddlers through first or second graders compared to the rest of the museum.
Yesterday also marked a week of living in a world of Pokémon Go. Visiting the Academy also gave me a chance to experience the phenomenon in the city and oh my glam the urban play environment is a totally difference from our barren suburbia (or, apparently, from black neighborhoods, which are measurably underrepresented when it comes to gyms and PokeStops).
I first opened the game during one of EVâs intense dino-button-pushing sessions in the special exhibit (yes, I appreciate the irony)Â to discover that the Benjamin Franklin Parkway was exploding in a rainbow of gyms and lured PokeStops.
While I didnât want to spend our time in the museum catching creatures, I was interested to see how many people were doing so given articles about how the National Holocaust Museum was pleading with visitors to refrain from playing out of respect. While there were a few other parents idly playing while kids interacted with exhibits, I never saw a critical mass of gamers. Maybe thatâs more about the age-range of kids at this museum or its content.
(It did raise some questions for me about how institutions in the physical world have the right to opt in or out of their participation on digital maps. While a museum like The Academy certainly wouldnât have the types of objections to play that the Holocaust Museum does, they might have other requests â like making certain exhibits a PokeStop or Gym, or even having certain creature-types spawn in the museum.)
It was when we stepped out onto the street that the app exploded into constant vibrations signaling new encounters. I could barely make it a half block without the chance to capture another critter. We were absolutely besieged with them when we stopped for lunch at Mamaâs Vegetarian (another EV first!) and a treat at Shake Shack.
(I sorely miss the food options of working in Center City every day, but not the corresponding money expenditure or caloric intake.)
We eventually made it down to Rittenhouse Square, and it was there that I finally experienced Pokémon Go as a social phenomenon. The park was teeming with obvious trainers orbiting a lured stop in the middle of the park. It was so visible that I felt the need to finally clue EV in to what I have been doing on my phone all week by way of explanation. When EV and I stopped to catch a Horsea in one of the fountains (our first water creature!), folks started chatting us up about where we typically hunt and what sort of creatures we find there.
Despite the allure of digital monsters in the park, I was charmed when EV tugged on my sleeve and demanded not to catch another PokĂ©mon, but to return to The Academy of Natural Sciences to push a few more dinosaur buttons despite being visibly exhausted and in need of a nap. Iâm not usually one to accede to every toddler demand, but that was one I was very happy to fulfill.
(Iâm sure a facet of that is the fact that we donât do any electronic button types of toys in our house, but thatâs a post for another day.)
Monsters and Maps (both digital and physical) was originally published on Crushing Krisis
Kickstartered: Steve Lichman by Dave Rapoza & Dan Warren
Given that my to-read pile of graphic novels is currently a nine-month backlog and my to-play pile of new games is at least six boxes deep, I thought it might not be a terrible idea to highlight things I receive from Kickstarter as they roll in, rather than whenever I get around to reviewing them.
Steve Lichman, Vol. 1 arrived a few weeks ago, and I must admit I had completely forgotten it existed since the Kickstarter campaign closed in October.
It only added to my confusion that the padded envelope I opened contained a cloth-bound hardcover book the size and heft of a novel with a skeleton debossed onto the cover in gold foil. Had I pledged to support a horror anthology?
In fact, this tome was a graphic novel â quite literally the nicest graphic novel I think Iâve ever received out of my collection of thousands of books. It has all of the external trappings of a beautiful signed-and-numbered 1st edition novel (mine is #5,518) and the paper and reproduction quality of a professionally produced comic collection â all for less than Marvel charges for a crap-quality six-issue trade paperback.
That means creators Dave Rapoza & Dan Warren self-published a literal 250 pages of comic all in one go. Given that the history of Kickstarter is littered with the failed projects of similarly ambitious creators, the quality of this project (and it hitting 1000% of its funding goal) makes more sense when you learn that Rapoza is a professional illustrator who works with client IP like Bethesda (Fallout, Elder Scrolls), Hasbro, and Blizzard (Warcraft), and on concept art for films like the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Itâs hard to explain exactly what itâs about. I guess itâs Itâs sort of like Seinfeld if Jerry was a Lich and George was Dracula and their apartment was a dungeon? I donât know, Iâm an old, you can probably think of a better sitcom analogy than that after you read a lengthy preview of Steve Lichman on Rapozaâs site. Hereâs their Kickstarter video:
As for how I found about this project or why I pledged⊠Iâll get back to you on that one. It literally doesnât ring a single bell, and I canât find mention of it on any of the comic sites I frequent. This might have literally been a blind pledge from browsing the Kickstarter comics section, and it could not have possibly turned out to be a better choice!
Hereâs another pair of photos of their marvelous book! Iâve loved the humor first few pages and the illustrations are consistently great, so Iâm looking forward to digging into this further when I dig deep enough into my to-read pile.
 Kickstartered: Steve Lichman by Dave Rapoza & Dan Warren was originally published on Crushing Krisis
Using Pokémon Go for interval training (or, how I went from Couch to 5k in one day)
I just ran five miles.
The last time I ran five miles was NEVER. The longest run Iâve ever been on (even with a generous definition of ârunâ) was The Color Run 5k â and that was with Allie as my personal pace car.
The last time I ran 5k was last night.
I had no pace car these past two days â just PokĂ©mon. I return to you accomplished, sore, sweaty, way more knowledgable about PokĂ©mon Go and with four more levels to show for it, but still not much more of a PokĂ©mon fan than I was two nights ago.
How did mobile game I donât even love get me from couch to 5k in one day, and from 5k to 5 miles the next?
The first step was deciding I was playing â and running â for efficiency. I generally only have an hour to play at night after EV heads to bed if I expect to have time to do anything else before passing out. With limited time to play, I wanted to maximize my level gain and cover a lot of physical ground to try to collect a lot of stuff â both PokĂ©mon and items â since Iâm way too weak for my local PokĂ©mon Gyms.
New Collecting Guide: Doctor Strange (plus, 5 suggestions for new fans)
Iâm happy to share The Definitive Doctor Strange Collecting Guide and Reading Order! It includes every Doctor Strange issue ever published with notes on trade-reading order and guest appearances.
Agamatto-eyed readers may have spotted it last week, but as of today the guide is officially out of its beta-release phase and ready to help you collect Marvelâs most-famous mystic.
This is the first of several new and revised collection pages Iâll be highlighting over the next few weeks; you can already see several of them in action in Crushing Comics.
Doctor Strange was one of Marvelâs original Silver Age heroes, debuting in 1963 in Strange Tales, a title he split with Nick Fury. He is a brilliant-but-prideful surgeon whose career is ruined when his hands are injured in an accident, and in his quest to repair them he stumbles into the world of mysticism.
Like Fury, he was one of the few freshly-invented Silver Age solo heroes not to be hoovered up by The Avengers. This was exploited by his inclusion in The Defenders, a team of relative outcasts that also included The Hulk, Namor, and Silver Surfer.
Aside from a brief blip at the beginning of the 70s, Strange starred in an ongoing book in continuous publication through 1996, when his third volume was cancelled with no replacement.
Unlike fellow hot-in-the-90s hero Ghost Rider, Strange got no ongoing revival in the 00s, although he was finally absorbed by the Avengers under Brian Bendisâs tenure (partially due to his participation in The Illuminati).
After playing a critical (some may say âstarringâ) role in Jonathan Hickmanâs Avengers mega-story that began in 2013, Doctor Strange finally found his way back into an ongoing title from Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo in the fall of 2015 in anticipation of his big screen debut in 2016.
Iâve always had affection for the good doctor, but I did some foot-dragging on giving him his own guide due to his relatively low profile in past years. However, with his movie coming up this fall, it was finally time to attack his guide â no small feat, since heâs had over a dozen series and one-shots to call his own plus a starring role in most incarnations of The Defenders.
Pokémon Go through the eyes of a newbie trainer
I am lying in the middle of my living room floor, likely creating a puddle of sweat beneath my back, and itâs all because of PokĂ©mon Go.
Letâs back up a few days.
Pokémon Go is an augmented reality mobile game that was released last Wednesday across the United States by Niantic Labs (formerly of Google; now an independent company). In it, you run around in the real world while throwing virtual digital balls imaginary fantastical creatures. Oh, and apparently you go to church. A lot.
Okay, okay, I know a little more about PokĂ©mon Go than that, but only through the past few hours of firsthand experience. Honestly, I only understand what PokĂ©mon even are in the vaguest of terms. I was just aging out of spending my money and time on stuff like games, cards, and comics by the middle of the 90s, so I wasnât even aware of the existence of Pokemon until I met Eâs little brother in 2002.
Even then, I only understand it as an execution of several geeky archetypes â characters who collect things, summoning of creatures, opposing elements in a fighting game, and evolving creatures. I have no concept of how any of the games play or the story behind them.
As reports from seemingly every single person I have ever met about their PokĂ©mon Go play experiences began to crop up over the weekend, a familiar urge began to bubble up inside my gut. Yes, it was the special brand of agita created by OCD Godzilla. There were people out there playing a game about collecting things, and if I didnât start playing it right now I might miss content and experiences that would never be available again.
On the other hand, there is no part of PokĂ©mon Go that particularly interests me â not the IP, nor the augmented reality. Plus, Iâm never aimlessly walking around other than with EV, who I categorically prevent from fussing with screens, digital games, and IP other than Marvelâs. (Sorry, Iâm weak.)
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Design vs Experience (or: when digital maps rule our physical world)
EV refers to the voice of Google Maps as, âThe Map Lady,â and sometimes The Map Lady and I have a disagreement.
Case and point:Â to get to the zoo from my house, The Map Lady has me turn off of what is effectively the suburban version of Market Street to get onto Chestnut Street â which makes total sense â but then has me turn off of three-laned Chestnut almost a mile before a crucial left turn to return to sluggish one-laned Market.
On those occasions, I turn to EV during a stop at a red light and say, âThe map lady is very confused, today.â
User Design versus User Experience, one of my favorite visual analogies from my time in start-up land. (Walkers have elected to cut through the grass rather than round the corner and walk on the pavers.)Â Photo by felixphs
Is she really? Computerized directions arenât about a route thatâs seemingly more direct or that has a higher speed limit. Theyâre taking into account a quantity and quality of factors that never occur to we humans as navigators ⊠or even to the city planners who designed the streets in the first place!
Even though I call her confused, The Map Lady has found ingenious short-cuts to get me around Delaware County, like skipping a long chain of turn-only lights by cutting a three-quarter circle through a neighborhood with stop signs.
This amplifies the typical tension between User Design vs User Experience not only because of the sheer magnitude users, but also because the reality of their actions can transform the landscape itself.
This was exemplified for me by an article last month in Washington Post, âTraffic-weary homeowners and Waze are at war, again. Guess whoâs winning?â A residential suburban neighborhood suddenly became a busy thoroughfare due to its status as a slightly more-efficient detour to construction than the route that was officially marked. Understandably, home owners who wanted to live in a quiet area arenât too pleased with the increased traffic and noise.
While commenters castigated the home ownersâ sense of entitlement (streets are public, after all), I couldnât help but sympathize with them. Iâve only once lived on a block Iâd consider a âthru-streetâ that delivered regular traffic from one destination to another. I find the noise distracting to everything I do, from recording to sleeping. When we bought this house, part of the search criteria was to find a street that more or less lead nowhere in an enclosed neighborhood. (Not a development; just a neighborhood that has no single street that starts on one side and continues out the other.)
Yet, during recent construction, SEPTA busses were detoured through the street perpendicular to ours; it was the only north-to-south way to avoid the construction for a mile in either direction. I was aghast â I had never in a million years assumed weâd be living adjacent to a bus route. Luckily, the change lasted on a few days. Had it been longer, I would have been legitimately agitating to move.
I ponder these things as The Map Lady steers me through previously unexplored territory to get to familiar places. Sheâs doing more than getting me there faster, or annoying another solitude-loving homeowner: sheâs changing my use of physical infrastructure.
Is a tiny residential street built to handle occasional traffic able to endure the volume of âa vehicle every two seconds,â as was the case in that WaPo article? Are the driveways designed so that residents may safely exit into âa backup dozens of cars deepâ? Should parking rules be changed, permits issued, stop signs turned to lights, or dotted or solid lines added to the road faces? The innards of historical cities like Philadelphia and Boston have long since wrestled with these dilemmas, but computerized mapping has made them relevant to every street in the country.
The rule of digital cartography can have impacts beyond rerouting traffic. Fusion details how a digital mapping company called MaxMindâs act of assigning unplaced IP addresses to the geographic center of the United States made life a nightmare for renters at an isolated Kansas farm. These people made absolute certain their street wouldnât be mistakenly re-purposed as a thoroughfare when they rented their house, but didnât plan for the ire of scores of scammed internet users landing on their front lawn â or for their personal information to be shared across the internet in misplaced retaliation.
Alternately, perhaps you live in a converted church and have suddenly discovered you are a Pokemon Gym courtesy of augmented reality game designer Niantic:
Living in an old church means many things. Today it means my house is a Pokémon Go gym. This should be fascinating.
â Boon Sheridan (@boonerang) July 9, 2016
This is what Iâm a little leery of. People pulled up, blocking my drive way as they sit on their phones. pic.twitter.com/WpRbilk6g6
â Boon Sheridan (@boonerang) July 10, 2016
In all three of these examples â Waze, MaxMind, and Niantic â the affected residents were none the wiser of their propertyâs sudden change in status until they began to suffer the deleterious effects of the situation via the behavior of others. Worse, none of the three have an obvious avenue to protest their designation â Waze, by its nature, is crowdsourced and behaving as expected; it took inquiries from Fusionâs writer Kashmir Hill for MaxMind to make a change after a decade of ignorance to the problems they were causing; so far, Niantic offers no publicized process for property owners to opt out of their PokĂ©mon Go mapping.
That is terrifying. The nature of our connected world is allowing private companies to effectively create their own geolocated âwatch listsâ that may soon begin to affect property values or put lives at risk without even the basic requirement of an appeals process.
Also, note the aspect of privilege associated with these three cases. The Waze neighborhood waged war through the app and were covered by the Washington Post. The Pokémon Church Guy immediately caught on and his good-natured response turned his plight into massive Twitter exposure.
What about the residents of the Kansas farm? They arguably experienced the worst harm, âvisited by FBI agents, federal marshals, IRS collectors, ambulances searching for suicidal veterans, and police officers searching for runaway children,â and having their personal details spewed across the internet in a series of doxxings. Until Ms. Hill found them all they got was a sign posted in their yard by the sheriff that said to leave them alone and call him with questions.
I wonât re-invade that shared personal information to find out their personal demographics, but even if theyâre a third white male in this example the demographics of their location (and of the propertyâs owner, and 82 year old woman) combined with the length of their suffering speaks volumes.
Digital cartography is no longer simply describing or annotating our physical world â itâs having a reciprocal impact that is invisible until itâs unavoidable â and, even when it is unavoidable, its true nature is frequently gated by the technological access and savvy of the afflicted.
For me, that begs the question of which geography represents the truth â the one we can experience solely through the physical, tangible world, or the one that is exclusively digitally accessible? As with history, I think the truth will be determined by the victors, and in many cases that wonât be the unsuspecting residents like the people living in one of the houses in this story.
Design vs Experience (or: when digital maps rule our physical world) was originally published on Crushing Krisis
28 COMMON RACIST ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS
(By Jona Olsson)
Below is a list of 28 common racist attitudes and behaviors that indicate a detour or wrong turn into white guilt, denial or defensiveness. Each is followed by a statement that is a reality check and consequence for harboring such attitudes.
1. Iâm Colorblind.
âPeople are just people; I donât see color; weâre all just human.â Or âI donât think of you as Chinese.â Or âWe all bleed red when weâre cut.â Or âCharacter, not color, is what counts with me.â
REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:
Statements like these assume that people of color are just like you, white; that they have the same dreams, standards, problems, and peeves that you do. âColorblindnessâ negates the cultural values, norms, expectations and life experiences of people of color. Even if an individual white person could ignore a personâs color, society does not. By saying we are not different, that you donât see the color, you are also saying you donât see your whiteness. This denies the people of colorsâ experience of racism and your experience of privilege.
âIâm colorblindâ can also be a defense when afraid to discuss racism, especially if one assumes all conversation about race or color is racist. Speaking of another personâs color or culture is not necessarily racist or offensive. As my friend Rudy says, I donât mind that you notice that Iâm black.â Color consciousness does not equal racism.
2. The Rugged Individual, the Level Playing Field and the Bootstrap Theory.
âAmerica is the land of opportunity, built by rugged individuals, where anyone with grit can succeed if they just pull up hard enough on their bootstraps.â
REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:
These are three of the crown jewels of U.S. social propaganda. They have allowed generation after generation to say, âIf you succeed, you did it, but if you fail, or if youâre poor, thatâs your fault.â Belief in this propaganda is founded on a total denial of the impact of either oppression or privilege on any personâs chance for success.
Attacks on programs like affirmative action find rationalization in the belief that the playing field is now level, i.e., that every individual, regardless of color or gender, or disability, etc., has the same access to the rights, benefits and responsibilities of the society.Â
The rationalization continues: since slavery is ended and people of color have civil rights, the playing field has now been leveled. It follows, then, that there is no reason for a person of color to âfailâ (whether manifested in low SAT scores or small numbers in management positions) EXCEPT individual character flaws or cultural inadequacies. These âfailuresâ could have no roots in racism and internalized racism.
3. Reverse Racism.
A. âPeople of color are just as racist as white people.â B. âAffirmative action had a role years ago, but today itâs just reverse racism; now itâs discriminating against white men.â C. âThe civil rights movement, when it began, was appropriate, valuable, needed. But itâs gone to the extreme. The playing field is now level. Now the civil rights movement is no longer working for equality but for revenge.â Or D. âBlack pride, black power is dangerous. They just want power over white people.â (Include here any reference to pride and empowerment of any people of color.)
REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:
A. Letâs first define racism with this formula:Â
Racism = racial prejudice + systemic, institutional power.Â
To say people of color can be racist, denies the power imbalance inherent in racism. Certainly, people of color can be and are prejudiced against white people. That was a part of their societal conditioning. A person of color can act on prejudices to insult or hurt a white person. But there is a difference between being hurt and being oppressed. People of color, as a social group, do not have the societal, institutional power to oppress white people as a group. An individual person of color abusing a white person â while clearly wrong, (no person should be insulted, hurt, etc.) is acting out a personal racial prejudice, not racism.
B. This form of denial is based on the false notion that the playing field is now level. When the people with privilege, historical access and advantage are expected to suddenly (in societal evolution time) share some of that power, it is often perceived as discrimination.
C+D. C is a statement by Rush Limbaugh. Though, clearly he is no anti-racist, both c+d follow closely on the heels of âreverse racismâ and are loaded with white peopleâs fear of people of color and what would happen if they gained âcontrol.â Embedded here is also the assumption that to be âpro-blackâ (or any other color) is to be anti-white. (A similar illogical accusation is directed at women who work for an end to violence against women and girls. Women who work to better the lives of women are regularly accused of being âanti-male.â)
4. Blame the Victim.
âItâs their fault they canât get a job, or be manager.â Or âWe have advertised everywhere, there just arenât any qualified people of color for this job.â Or âIf he only worked harder, applied himself more, or had a stronger work ethic.â Or âIf she just felt better about herself â internalized racism is the real problem here.â OR âShe uses racism as an excuse, to divert us from her incompetence.â Or âIf he didnât go looking for racism everywhereâŠâ (As if racism is so hidden or difficult to uncover that people of color would have to search for it.)
REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:
All âblame the victimâ behaviors have two things in common. First, they avoid the real problem: racism. Second, they take away from the picture the agents of racism, white people and institutions, who either intentionally perpetuate or unintentionally collude with racism.
This is similar to agent deletion in discussions of rape. Statements referring to a woman being raped, many by focusing on her clothing or behavior at the time of the rape and delete the male rapist from the picture.)
As long as the focus remains on people of color, white people can minimize or dismiss their reactions, and never have to look directly at racism and the whitesâ own responsibility or collusion.
5. The White Knight or White Missionary.
âWe (white people) know just where to build your new community center.â Or âYour young people (read youth of color) would be better served by traveling to our suburban training center.â Or âWe (white people) organized a used clothing drive for you; where do you want us to put the clothes?â
REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:
It is a racist, paternalistic assumption that well meaning white people know whatâs best for people of color. Decisions by white people, are made on behalf of people of color, as though they were incapable of making their own. This is another version of âblame the victimâ and white is right. It places the problems at the feet of people of color and the only âappropriateâ solutions with white people. Once more the power of self-determination is taken away from people of color. Regardless of motive, it is still about white control.
6. Lighten up. (Lighten? Whiten?)
âBlack people are just too sensitive and thin-skinned.â Or Indians should get a sense of humor. Weâre just kidding around.â Or âI didnât mean anything racist; itâs just a joke.â
REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:
Here are racism and agent deletion in partnership again. The problem and perpetrators are exonerated, because the rationale declares that humor isnât hurtful. This form of denial serves most to trivialize the pain and reality of daily racism.
7. Donât Blame Me.
âI never owned slaves.â Or âI didnât vote for David Duke.â Or âNone of my family joined the Klan.â Or âI taught my children that racism is wrong.â
REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:
Often white people hear blame whenever the issue of racism is brought up, whether or not blame has been placed on whites. As beneficiaries of racism and white privilege, you sometimes take a defensive posture even when you are not being individually blamed. You may personalize the remarks, not directed personally at you. It is the arrogance of your privilege that drags the focus back to whites.
When whites are being blamed or personally accused of racist behavior, this defensiveness and denial further alienate you and may preclude you from examining your possible racist behavior.
8. BWAME.
âBut What About Me. Look how Iâve been hurt, oppressed, exploitedâŠ?
REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:
This diminishes the experience of people of color by telling our own story of hardship. We lose an opportunity to learn more about the experience of racism from a person of color, while we minimize their experience by trying to make it comparable or less painful than ours.
9. We Have Overcome.
âWe dealt with racism in the 60s with all the marches, sit-ins and speeches by Dr. King. Laws have been changed. Segregation and lynching are ended. We have some details to work out but real racism is pretty much a thing of the past.â
REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:
The absence of legalized, enforced segregation does not equal the end of racism. This denial of contemporary racism, based on inaccurate assessment of both history and current society, romanticizes the past and diminishes todayâs reality.
10. The End Run, Escapism.
âOf course, racism is terrible, but what about sexism? Or classism or heterosexism?â or âRacism is a result of classism (or any other oppression), so if we just work on that, racism will end, too.â
REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:
I agree with Audre Lordeâs statement, âThere is no hierarchy of oppression.â I would not establish a rank order for oppressions. At the same time, we cannot attempt to evade recognition and responsibility for any form of oppression.
Statements like the ones above divert attention from racial injustice to focus on some other form of oppression. They are usually said by white people, (women, working class people, lesbians, gay men or others) who experience both white privilege and oppression in some form. Whites are more willing and more comfortable decrying their oppression than scrutinizing their privilege. Oppressions are so inextricably linked that if whites allow their fear, guilt and denial to constantly divert them from confronting racism, even while we work to dismantle other forms, no oppression will ever be dismantled.
11. Due Process.
âLady Justice is color blind.â White parents who tell their children, âThe police are here to protect you. If they ever stop you, just be polite and tell the truth.â Then when a black teen is beaten or killed by police, those same parents say, âHe must have been doing something wrong, to provoke that kind of police response.â
REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:
White peopleâs belief that the police, courts, the legal system and social services work without bias; that due process, fair trials, juries, judges, police officers and case workers have everyoneâs, including people of color, best interest at heart. Or at least, no less than they do for white people. This belief clouds reality. Whites tend to look at isolated incidents rather than the patterns of institutionalized oppression.
12. The Innocent by Association.
âIâm not racist, because⊠I have Vietnamese friends, or my lover is black or I marched with Dr. King.â
REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:
(Perhaps, if all white people who say they marched with Dr. King actually had, the current situation would look different!) This detour into denial wrongly equates personal interactions with people of color, no matter how intimate they may be, with anti- racism. There is an assumption that our personal associations free us magically from our racist conditioning.
13. The Penitent.
âI am so sorry for the way whites have treated your people.â Or âI am sorry for the terrible things that white man just said to you.â
REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:
While there is probably no harm in the âsorry,â if it is not attached to some action taken against racism, it is most often just another expression of white guilt. Being an ally to people of color is not limited to an apology for other white peopleâs behavior, it must include anti-racist action.
14. The Whitewash.
âHeâs really a very nice guy, heâs just had some bad experiences with Koreans.â Or âThatâs just the way Uncle Adolf jokes. Heâs very polite to the black janitor in his building.â
REALITY CHECK + CONSEQUENCE:
Weâre trapped by another version of white guilt response. Whites attempt to excuse, defend or cover up racist actions of other white people. White people are particularly prone to this if the other person is close, family or friend, and if we feel their actions reflect on us.
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