Snap! is a German Eurodance group formed in 1989 by producers Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti. The act has been through a number of lineup changes over the years, including American singers, songwriters, and rappers Thea Austin, Turbo B, Niki Haris, and Penny Ford. Their best-known hits are "The Power" and "Rhythm Is a Dancer", both of which took the #1 spot in multiple countries. SNAP! - Rhythm Is A Dancer (Official Video)
Boy howdy. This week's No Such Thing As A Fish goes from ridiculous American blue laws and "American cheese" - two of their favorite misunderstood topics - to straight up insulting Americans, including an out-of-the blue cheap shot by @neilhimself at American pharmacists. Jesus, guys. What gives?
@neilhimself If you can answer, can you please say the budget for sandman per ep? since google shows 15m an ep and you refuted that. And did S2 budget go up a lot? estimates are fine. Thank you.
Mah juxtaposes the petrochemical industry’s destructive corporate worldviews with environmental justice struggles in the US, China, and Europe: multiscalar activism—a form of collective resistance that spans local, regional, national, and planetary sites and scales and addresses the interconnected issues of #EnvironmentalJustice, #climate, #pollution, health, extraction, land rights, workers’ rights, systemic #racism, and toxic #colonialism
I have not read this yet but looks like a LOT of resonance with #OilBeach. "Most large petrochemical facilities are located in coastal regions, near to ports, for access to shipping lines. Tightly enclosed behind security gates, they resemble cities with tall towers and giant cylindrical storage tanks. They flare and steam and crackle. How do these petrochemical plants relate to the ports? How are they regulated? Who are the main global corporate players? Who are the biggest polluters?"
Oh wow. It was absolutely stunning! An incredible translation of the novel, with so many extra elements which couldn’t have worked in any other medium except live #theatre.
If you have a chance to see it wherever it’s playing next, don’t miss it; it’s a hell of a show!
As we all hopefully know, everything @neilhimself touches turns to magic, like a less cursed King Midas!
Listening to @neilhimself talking about the history of bagels (based in Polish anti-semitism, I did not know) on my favorite trivia podcast while all the other UK-based hosts are politely like "Lox is what...?" and just being reminded again at how much some of the "traditional" foods for me are unusual/unknown even among... people who know things for a living.
My old friend (and for almost thirty years my family's doctor) Dan Johnson has a charity he started in memory of his son, Alec, who was drowned in 2014. One of the projects they are supporting is helping a couple who work in Haiti with abandoned children (and aren't part of the Haitian "orphanage industry"). The couple are raising funds to buy the compound they and the children are in, and I'm helping Dan by linking to https://cultivating-community.org/
Watch the video and share the post...
Alec was my younger brother. He was a brilliant applied mathematician, changing how we use computers to understand magnetic reconnection. This work helped us to understanding better how the earth's magnetosphere interacts with solar wind, something that sounds esoteric until you realize that the stability of our power grid and satellite navigation depend on an accurate understanding. It will also be essential if we ever achieve power generation by nuclear fusion.
He wasn't just brilliant, though. He cared deeply about others, and always in meaningful and concrete ways. Shortly before he died, he was telling me excitedly about his plans to visit his friends Pierre and Natalie in Haiti, whom he had helped financially for years in their work, rescuing and rehabilitating so-called "orphans" who were mostly abandoned. Pierre knew about this intimately, because he himself was abandoned by his living mother, disowned by his living father, and abused as a restavek (literally, "stay-with") child-slave.
If this makes you more curious about the backstory for this project, the long version with more details is here:
@CoastalCoasting@neilhimself There's a lot of horror. If you want more horror, read the LUMOS report itself. It's a hard read. ☹
There has been a lot of "missions tourism" to Haiti, with good intentions. Many individuals have built relationships and helped others. But also many relationships have been abused. There is a difference between visiting and working to help and investigating to identify wrongdoing. Most of the "orphanages" are local facilities, locally staffed, receiving western aid money. Not "under the care of missionaries" typically. Not all the orphanages maltreat the children. But even the best orphanage is not the same as being placed in a family, and this is true around the world, not just in Haiti.
I am not an expert on Haitian law or law enforcement, so I can't go into detail on what legal remedies and resources might theoretically be available. However, if you've been following recent news about Haiti, you will have seen there is a lot of lawlessness. The US Department of State has Haiti on its most restrictive level, "Do Not Travel," as a result. You can read about it here:
"Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and poor health care infrastructure. On July 27, 2023, the Department of State ordered the departure of family members of U.S. government employees and non-emergency U.S. government employees. U.S. citizens in Haiti should depart Haiti as soon as possible by commercial or other privately available transportation options, in light of the current security situation and infrastructure challenges. U.S. citizens wishing to depart Port-au-Prince should monitor local news and only do so when considered safe..."
It's a sad and hard situation. One Gift, One Child isn't fixing it all, but it's showing a different way to care for abandoned children than institutionalization of any sort, regardless of whether it is abusive.