Yuck, Another Blog

Hello! I know this is a departure from your usual programming but I hope it makes your day! I am an african-american actress, writer and producer in LA. I have recently debuted my web series about five girls who mysteriously get powers and have to learn to deal wit them and each other. It’s an ALL poc cast featuring Vyvy Nguyen as one of our wickedest witches!

I hope you enjoy! If you do please share with the community!

Opinion: Idaho gag law hides horrors of ag industry

State violates free speech rights by selectively banning documentation of animal cruelty at factory farms

Housing The Homeless Saves Money—Here’s The Research That Proves It (via fastcompany)

The city of Los Angeles recently released a list of “initiatives” for “cleaning up” Skid Row. In LA, roughly a quarter of a million people experience homelessness every year. The $3.7 million proposal would alleviate this by - wait for it - adding 10 trash cans to the area, cleaning the streets 12 times a year instead of 4-6 times a year, and “valet cart storage” where homeless people can “check” their grocery carts and belongings.

It’s a fucking insult, is what it is. Los Angeles has enough space to house everyone. And now we have (more) data that prove it’s cheaper to just do that than all of these shitty band-aid solutions. Homeless people need homes, not a cart check.

WAKE FOREST, N.C. — Janette Simon has four chicken legs and five kids to feed. Her freezer is bare.

And her latest trip to the food pantry yielded little else for dinner this night: a bag of day-old croissants, a box of Corn Flakes, and some canned goods.

She slathers barbecue sauce on the chicken, slides the pan in the oven, and begins her nightly ritual of distracting her five children from hunger. The 44-year-old single mother often skips dinner herself. She hides Ramen noodle packets in her closet to ration food.

She tells her two youngest kids to play outside “so they ain’t thinking about eating.” “That’s what I have to worry about,” she says. “I gotta look at these kids with their sad faces and no food.”

On the 13th of every month, she has counted on seeing a $600 payment on her food-stamp debit card. But now, that payment is a month late. Simon and thousands like her in North Carolina had enough to worry about before a computer glitch began to fray this basic part of the social safety net. Last July, government computers across the state repeatedly crashed, preventing caseworkers from processing food stamp applications and recertifications for weeks.

Eight months later, North Carolina officials are still scrambling to clear the resulting backlog.

After hiring dozens of engineers and programmers from tech industry giants like Google and Oracle, the federal government largely fixed problems with the health-care website in about two months. But many states have taken much longer to fix computer errors with welfare programs. Colorado’s troubled system for food stamps and Medicaid has been plagued by glitches and delays for the past decade.

“Almost everyone using the Obamacare website was not poor,” Super said in an interview. “In contrast, technology that serves the poor has gotten less and less attention and has been working badly for many, many years.”