Links. Love, Liv

positivity, practicality, and power  from every nook and cranny. brief distillation from my overactive Facebook page.

[oliviak4me]

justin bieber exclusive interview, shoot and video: the teen idol comes of age in spectacular style | read | i-D

After growing up as an icon to his adoring audience, what's it really like being Bieber?

“Under clever management, he bided his time. "Scooter is probably one of the smartest people that I have ever met," he says. "Very, very, very strategic. Always on. Always thinking of more things to do and more things to accomplish. He keeps me driven, for sure. Because the artist always wants to chill. Like, 'I made my money. I just want to chill'. But he figures out ways for me to get excited about what I want."If he is to stand up to an adult market, the point at which Bieber crosses from man to role model has to be renegotiated. He understands that if he wants to play with the big boys he needs to own his behavior, to make himself accountable. "The reality is that people are human and people mess up and people go through trials and tribulations. It made me, myself, be more human to people." A biological coincidence helped smooth the transition musically, as his singing voice dropped a pleasing register. An incredibly smart business operator, he is never one to miss a potential demographic spike. "I think it's more relatable now. When I had that young voice it was hard for people to connect. Dudes can listen to it now and say, 'Yeah, I like that new Bieber song'."

[oliviak4me]

Clarion University forced to cancel play over actors’ race

Student actors and the stage crew at Clarion University arrived Tuesday evening for one of the final rehearsals before next week’s campus opening of “Jesus in India” only to learn the off-Broadway production they had spent months on had been canceled. The reason they were given was race: theirs. Three of the five characters in the production are Indian, but on the mostly white state university campus, two of those characters were to be played by white student actors and a third was being portrayed by a mixed-race student. Lloyd Suh, the playwright, told the university through his literary agent Monday that he was uncomfortable with any notion that he supported Caucasians portraying Indian characters in his play, said Bob Levy, chairman of the visual and performing arts department at

From the Author:

"You should know that what you are doing is connected to a very painful history of egregious misrepresentation and invisibility, and is incredibly hurtful. Hurtful to a community for whom opportunity and visibility is critical, and also extremely hurtful to me personally as a flippant denial of Asian heritage as a relevant and valid component of one's humanity. It hurts me to my core. I couldn’t stop myself from crying when I saw the photos and realized what was happening. It is embarrassing, humiliating, and demoralizing to be so casually disregarded. I therefore insist that you immediately (1) recast the play with ethnically appropriate actors, or (2) shut down the production entirely."

[oliviak4me]

'Political Correctness' Is a Demand For Equal Treatment

Students from Yale to the University of Missouri are protesting the one-sided definition that has excused offensive behavior for years.

[oliviak4me]

Tifa - Lyrically Educated / Nah Play Wid It | Official Video | September 2013 @Crushroad876

Tifa - Lyrically Educated / Nah Play Wid It - Official Video Tifa - Lyrically Educated / Nah Play Wid It - Official Video Tifa - Lyrically Educated / Nah Pla...

[oliviak4me]

Prisons that withhold menstrual pads humiliate women and violate basic rights | Chandra Bozelko

Stains on clothes seep into self-esteem and reinforce powerlessness. That’s why wardens keep sanitation just out of reach

[oliviak4me]

Race and the Free-Speech Diversion - The New Yorker

The deflection of the controversies at the University of Missouri and Yale with free-speech arguments is simply victim-blaming with a software update.

[oliviak4me]

One morning, when I was 10 years old, I woke up to find my normally sleepy suburban town covered in swastikas . They were on mailboxes, they were on businesses, they were in front of the home of our local rabbi. The perpetrators, as if to remove even the slightest whiff of ambiguity from their message, scrawled slogans like “Final Solution” and “Hitler’s Children” alongside their work. It was the day before Yom Kippur—the holiest day of the year for Jews.

"There was no backlash when Jewish groups asked Schapiro to do more to combat anti-Semitism on campus. No paeans to free speech appeared in the media in defense of the swastika, suggesting Jewish students needed to toughen up in the face of bigotry.

Here is what happened in my town in the wake of our swastika spate: Local officials and police condemned the actions and vowed to find those responsible. A nearby college led an anti-racism march in support of the Jewish community. Newspaper columnists expressed their outrage and their demands for justice.

It took only a few days to track the culprits down. They were charged with 26 counts of malicious destruction of property and two counts of civil rights law violations. They faced 10 years in prison, though they eventually received much lighter sentences.

The length of jail time didn’t matter. The entire region had sent them – and me – a message: Acts of hatred and bigotry won't be tolerated. The fear and alienation I felt was immediately quelled in this wave of support. Yet in Missouri it took a student hunger strike and a football protest to achieve a fraction of the support my community was given without question."

[oliviak4me]

Over half of Brooklyn one-bedrooms cost over $2,000/month

Want to live alone in a one-bedroom apartment, like some kind of royalty? You're gonna have to get paid like royalty to do that in Brooklyn.

[oliviak4me]

Aziz Ansari: Men Need To Pay Better Attention To Women’s Experiences

"What I’ve learned, as a guy, is to just ask women questions and listen to what they have to say."

"He said that an important part of being a man is to listen to the experiences of others, especially women's. "What I’ve learned, as a guy, is to just ask women questions and listen to what they have to say," Ansari said. "Go to your group of female friends and ask them about times they’ve experienced sexism at their job, and you’ll get blown away by the things they tell you. You’ll think, 'What the fuck? This is way darker than anything I’d imagined.'"

[oliviak4me]

Here's how to use Facebook's tool to check if people you know in Paris are safe

Facebook has a tool to let you check whether or not people you know in disaster areas are safe. Here's how to check who you know in Paris is safe.

Important feature, hopefully we’ll be able to use things like this even better.

[oliviak4me]

More Than 1,000 March for Free Tuition, Living Wage

Related

“Nearly 1,500 students marched through UC Santa Barbara’s campus on Thursday, joining more than 100 campuses nationwide in the Million Student March, a movement demanding free tuition, the elimination of student debt and a $15 minimum wage.

“Our goal was to start a conversation regarding all these issues: free higher education, $15 minimum wage and no student loan debt,” Garcia said. “We have the right to be able to live and prosper and be happy, and we have a right to graduate without student loans and invest in our own future.”

[oliviak4me]

Plans for new development in the Bronx brings gentrification worries

It happened in Harlem, then it happened in Brooklyn ... could the Bronx be next? We're talking about gentrification and a new development planned for the Port Morris area in the South Bronx has res...

This one is just a quick blip, not a think piece.

[oliviak4me]

Gentrification Through the Eyes of Yelp Reviewers

In a relatively white part of Brooklyn, longtime restaurants are considered “cozy” and “authentic.” In a relatively black one, reviewers were happy to see such places disappear.

“Bed-Stuy was framed very differently. The reviewers’ descriptions were more conflicted, and many depicted the neighborhood as transitioning from “bad” to “good.” In sharp contrast to Greenpoint, there was little desire to preserve the neighborhood’s culture or history—reflecting what the authors refer to as a “neo-imperialist” perspective. “We are happy to witness a changing neighborhood,” wrote one reviewer. “The divide between who was in the café and the dominant population of the neighborhood speaks volumes,” another put it. Various reviewers used the words “dangerous,” “gritty,” “sketchy,” “hood,” and “ghetto” to describe the neighborhood. A number of reviewers expressed feeling unsafe, and one even warned of the “dark alleys of Bed-Stuy.” These reviewers saw gentrification as a good thing for the neighborhood and had more favorable views of new, trendy restaurants, with a reviewer describing one of these restaurants as “the kind of place Bed-Stuy needs.” The study casts Bed-Stuy as a much more “contested terrain” of gentrification as opposed to the “imagined homeland” of Greenpoint.When it came time to rate Bed-Stuy’s traditional, black-owned restaurants, many—if not most—reviews were negative and often reflected the same stereotypes that are noted above. These reactions lie in opposition to reviews of the cozy, authentic restaurants in Greenpoint. In this way, the study points out, “Yelp reviews mobilize racialized biases to effect a discursive redlining of majority-Black districts.””

[oliviak4me]

Erykah Badu Will Take Your Man If You Troll Her on Twitter

Never doubt her magical powers.

[oliviak4me]

White House to announce $118 million public, private effort to improve the lives of women and girls of color

An all-day summit will look at the challenges faced by women and girls of color.

To those who say that Obama doesn’t care about black people...do we think that any other president would do this? It’s okay if you don’t think it’s enough but never forget that everything he is doing is monumental. 

[oliviak4me]

Day of mourning in Lebanon after deadly Beirut bombings

Twin explosions in the capital kill at least 43 people with ISIL claiming responsibility.

[oliviak4me]

Finding grants specifically targeted to African-American women can be challenging. A better way to begin searching for start-up funds is to look for funds targeted to minorities and women. When ...

Huggies Mom-inspired Grant

Business Owners' Idea Café Small Business Grant

Federal Grants