eclectic ladyland

began here and was released 25 years ago today.

Singer/songwriter Justine Skye poses as face of Spring ‘17 F21xMusic festival clothing collection for Forever 21.

Okorafor recently took to Twitter to share an experience of whitewashing from her days as a new writer. Right before The Shadow Speaker was set to come out in 2007, she discovered that the publisher, Hyperion/Disney, had changed the ethnicity of the main character on the cover. It showed a white woman in the middle of an African desert, even though there were literally no white characters in the novel. Even worse, Okorafor didn’t get to see the cover until the advance copies had already been sent out and it was being featured on Amazon, as she revealed in an interview with io9.

“How did I feel? Shock, a sinking feeling in my belly, fury, and ‘O-M-G, it’s happening. To me!’” Okorafor told io9. “I started writing science fiction because I wanted to see Africa in the future... This cover erased a lot of that in one stroke. Plus, it was a lie.”

The celebrity arms race between the cellphone companies is getting very expensive.

Page Six has learned that Mark Wahlberg has signed a massive eight-figure deal with AT&T to be its new spokesperson and create original content for the mobile network.

Brief reminder of his baggage which accompanies a history of mayhem on the artist formerly known as “Marky Mark” from the Boston Globe.

To those who watched Mark Wahlberg transform from a skinny Dorchester delinquent to a Hollywood leading man, the actor deserves a pardon for beating a man outside a convenience store in 1988.

But to some who remember the havoc he wreaked in Boston almost three decades ago, the disclosure this week that Wahlberg is asking the state to erase his teenage offenses from the record is infuriating.

Nam Pham, executive director of VietAID, a Vietnamese community organization in Dorchester, said Wahlberg should first apologize directly to Thanh Lam, a Vietnamese man Wahlberg beat with a stick more than a quarter century ago. Wahlberg also screamed obscenities and racial epithets.

"If I were him I would want the scar on my record erased,” Pham said of Wahlberg. “But I would also ask if I could help erase the scars on the victim."

In a separate episode, some from a class that was harassed in 1986 by a group of teens that included Wahlberg were not impressed with his request for a pardon.

In 1986, Kristyn Atwood, then 9, and a black classmate were on a school field trip at Savin Hill Beach when three boys began following them. They yelled racial slurs, according to court records, then began throwing rocks. One hit Atwood’s forehead.

One of the boys was Wahlberg, according to court records. The state's attorney general filed a civil complaint against him and his friends. The complaint was dismissed in 1987.

"When people talk about racism in Boston, I always remember that," said Atwood, now 38 and living in Georgia.

Atwood was not aware that one of the teens who harassed her and her classmate was Wahlberg.

He assaulted Lam, the Vietnamese man he encountered outside the convenient store, in 1988.

"For him to try to get it overturned and make it seem like it never happened? I don't think that's fair," she said, referring to his request for a pardon.

Although his appeal for gubernatorial leniency was dropped in Sept. 2016, it's patently ridiculous seeing him never take responsibility on his actions and then landing an eight-figure spokesperson deal. Two hate crimes, one rising to the level of attempted murder and it all gets chalked up to [white] boys will be boys? I've seen actors of color get swiftly blackballed off hit TV shows for less (oh hi, Isaiah Washington👋🏾).

Vivienne Malone-Mayes. Jane Hinton. Jessie Price.

You may have never heard of these Black female scientists, but one woman is looking to bring their images back to life.

With the help of Twitter, Hilda Bastian (@MissingSciFaces) has worked for the past two months to uncover pictures and stories of prominent, but under-represented scientists.

With the tales of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson made famous by the recent book and movie Hidden Figures, Bastian hopes to spread the untold stories of many others.

So far, Bastian and the network she's created have uncovered more than 20 pictures. She's currently working on a larger list of scientists — of all minority backgrounds — whose photos and stories remain largely unknown.

Bastian's inspiration came after editing various scientists' Wikipedia pages. She began to notice there were few to no pictures of Black female scientists, and if images did exist, they would be of the same few figures whose stories were already known.

Bastian decided to dedicate Black History Month in February to finding one image of a Black female scientist per day. "But after a couple of days I realized that it was going to be impossible to find 28 quickly," she said.

So Bastian's work continued, with late nights scanning a variety of online databases, articles and obituaries. At the end of the month, she published a blog post of her progress, and watched as interest grew. After writing a guide on finding images and avoiding copyright infringements, Bastian began to crowd-source help for her project.