These three creatures illustrate the harm that could come from the loss of protections, which the Trump administration announced Monday.
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Intro Video
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Cicely Tyson joins cast of Ava DuVernay series on OWN
Cicely Tyson will join the cast as a series regular in Ava DuVernay’s new romance anthology series on OWN, “Cherish the Day.”
The network said Tuesday that the 94-year-old legend will play Miss Luma Lee Langston, a star of stage and screen in decades past. She joins previously announced leads Xosha Roquemore and Alano Miller.
The series, which premieres in 2020, will chronicle the lives of one couple per season, with each episode spanning a single day. It’s DuVernay’s second series on OWN since the creation of “Queen Sugar.”
Roquemore plays Gently James, Luma’s live-in assistant who is encouraged by Miss Luma Lee to strike up a romance with Evan Fisher, played by Miller. DuVernay is the creator and executive producer.
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Movie Review: Shark sequel to ’47 Meters Down’ is a toothsome success
At the beginning of “47 Meters Down: Uncaged,” a quartet of young women are given some pretty good advice before going out to sea: “Don’t get eaten by a shark.” It’s advice, as you might expect, not all take.
Which of the four makes it out alive fuels this absolutely satisfying sequel to “47 Meters Down,” this time with a new cast and set in some ancient underwater labyrinthine tunnels in Mexico. Forty-four years after “Jaws,” there’s still a shark thriller that makes your heart pound.
Director and co-writer Johannes Roberts returns to dangerous waters after the surprising success of his “47 Meters Down” in 2017, which was made for just $5 million and earned $62 million. That one starred Claire Holt and Mandy Moore as sisters whose shark cage diving experience in Mexico, shall we say, did not go as planned. Sorry, again, Mexican tourism industry. (Not to rub salt in the wounds, much of it was filmed in the Dominican Republic anyway.)
Four young actresses — half with famous parents — have jumped into the aqua this time: Sophie Nélisse, Corinne Foxx (daughter of Jamie), Brianne Tju and Sistine Stallone (daughter of Sylvester). There’s a “Mean Girls”-like vibe to the setup and none of the actresses are given enough to become three-dimensional, but at least their chatter isn’t about boys. The film manages to pass the Bechdel Test, unless the sharks are male.
In terms of plot, like its predecessor, “47 Meters Down: Uncaged ,” is pretty tidy: Our quartet of high school students — including feuding step-sisters — foolishly go exploring in a submerged Mayan city that they are unaware contains — you guessed it — sharks. Massive blind sharks. Massive blind sharks that are hungry.
Roberts — who with Ernest Riera co-wrote both films — follows a similar slow wind-up, including echoing opening scenes, and is a little too fond of showing our heroines cavorting in bikinis. But once submerged, he has intense skill combining light, water, bubbles and shadow. We sometimes see sharks before our heroines do, but they still sneak up on us, even though we know they’re coming.
The dialogue may be banal — “This place is insane, right?” and “We can’t give up!” — yet there is an unpredictability to Roberts’ action sequences, both nodding to the conventions of shark thrillers and subverting them. (No sharks were harmed making the film — they’re all computer-generated.)
There are little in-jokes throughout. In a film set in Mayan tunnels, we hear a song by Aztec Camera. The girls all attend the Modine International School for Girls, a play on Matthew Modine, who played the boat owner in the first film. The tossing of buckets of chum in the second film is a callback to the use of it in the first.
Roberts has clearly been given a bigger budget and it shows in the nicely realized submerged city the poor young women must navigate. He’s saddled with a terrible film title — 47 meters was the depth of the ocean floor in the first film — but none of that matters once the air tanks and masks go on. He’s like one of his sharks: Shaky on land but a master in the water.
“47 Meters Down: Uncaged,” an Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures release, is rated PG-13 for “creature related violence and terror, some bloody images and brief rude gestures.” Running time: 89 minutes. Three stars out of four.
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Oprah Winfrey reveals why she was moved to tears when Tarell Alvin McCraney pitched her ‘David Makes Man’
David Makes Man has been on our radar ever since theGrio had the pleasure of visiting the show’s set several months ago. In January, we watched as the show’s executive producer, Michael B. Jordan discussed the series alongside its stars, (Phylicia Rashad, Alana Arenas, and Akili McDowell and showrunner Dee Harris- Lawrence and shared snippets of the beautifully authentic series.
Just last week, theGrio sat down with Oprah Winfrey and the show’s creator, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and a handful of journalists to find out how this groundbreaking show came to be.
“From the very first time I heard the pitch, I sat in the room, I closed my eyes and I was doing everything I could not to cry during the pitch because it’s kind of unprofessional,” Oprah admitted.
“I knew if he was able to do a portion of what the pitch represented, that we would have something that would be, in its own way, a phenomenon.”
That may be the perfect word to describe what David Makes Man stands to be when it premieres on OWN this week. Visually, it’s as stunning as McCraney’s Oscar-winning film, Moonlight, and conceptually, it has never been done before.
Tarell Alvin McCraney, Phylicia Rashad, and Akili McDowell dish on ‘David Makes Man’
“First of all, most of the stories I read growing up were always about Black girl stories…So, sitting in the room with Tarell was the first time I thought, ‘Wow. I really don’t know much about Black boys, nor have I ever actually thought very much about Black boys.’ I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about Black boys so I thought the series and the way he pitched it would offer the rest of the world an opportunity to see inside a world that we rarely get to see,” Oprah explained.
“I believe that what he and the team have done, what he and Dee [Harris-Lawrence] have done, what everyone has collaborated to create is this series that validates the Black boy.”
From the very beginning of the first episode, McCraney invites viewers inside the heart and mind of one Black boy, David, or D.J., or Dae, depending on who’s around. The title character is flawlessly portrayed by Akili McDowell.
“It’s really about finally being able to see myself and get that validation of self and seeing characters, reading characters–I read Tar Baby and I know Tar Baby is the one that no one likes to talk about, but when I read Tar Baby it was one of the moments where I was like, ‘I know this southern boy. Oooh, I know him so bad. I know wanting after a person so wonderfully.’ And then to sort of turn around and see Florida life in a way that I hadn’t seen since Zora Neale Hurston, I thought to myself, ‘Well, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll reach into my pocket, my corner of the world, and show it as best I can,'” McCraney said.
“And so I’m grateful for that legacy. I’m terrified of it,” he continued. “You want to be noble you want to stand up in front of it. But you also know, in order to truly do it, you have to bare yourself, flaws and all. There’s no way to really be a part of that legacy or add to it unless you show your full self. That means the warts and all. And that’s the terrifying part of it.”
Tarell Alvin McCraney, Michael B. Jordan, Phylicia Rashad preview ‘David Makes Man’ at Sundance
It’s hard to believe there could be anything terrifying about unveiling this masterful project to the world. It’s beautifully shot, expertly cast, and magnificently written, inviting viewers into a world so many will identify with. The show is rooted in highlighting the intentional and unintentional ways Black folks “adjust” or code-switch to navigate their every day lives. It also examines trauma, and its effects, in a way we have never seen; forcing us to confront so many of our own demons through the fascinating and complex characters McCraney has created.
“I didn’t use the word ‘trauma’ in the pitch. I view it as turning points, moments of awareness. What are the moments where you are made most aware?”
“One of the things that as really necessary for me in telling the story was talking about how David, as a child, how we, metabolize these moments,” he said.
Oprah knows how to spot something special, and this show may be her most valuable find yet.
David Makes Man premieres August 14 on OWN.
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How a 'NULL' License Plate Landed One Hacker in Ticket Hell
Why Trump’s MAGA muppets Diamond and Silk are calling Democrats the party of white supremacy
Donald Trump has long relied on the shucking and jiving of two of his most prized puppets Diamond and Silk to get his hateful messages across and now the distastrous duo are slamming Democrats.
—John Legend and Rihanna call out Donald Trump over El Paso and Dayton mass shootings—
Trump reposted a video by the two messy vloggers who defended his hateful rhetoric by calling the Democrats the “party of white supremacy,” The Daily Mail reports.
“You know we hear these people calling our president ‘white supremacy.’ But guess what? They represent the party that created white supremacy right here in the United States,’” Lynnette Hardaway, who goes by Diamond, told Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs on Friday night.
The two were responding to the onslaught of criticism Trump has received after two mass shootings occurred within hour of each other in El Paso and Dayton. Many have blamed Trump for inciting the racist acts with his refusal to condemn white supremacists and for inciting supporters at his rallies.
Diamond said Democrats “demean and demonize the President of the United States.”
Silk said she was tired of white men calling another white man, Trump, a racist and said she was sick of them playing the “race card more than Black people.”
“You know, as a black woman I know what racism do look like. But it’s really funny to me to see another white man call another white man a racist when they never experienced racism. That’s disgusting to me.”
—African American museum in Baton Rouge vandalized after beloved founder’s murder—
.@DiamondandSilk on @LouDobbs talking about who’s really playing the “Race Card” pic.twitter.com/y6Wv2ZyK1E
— Diamond and Silk® (@DiamondandSilk) August 12, 2019
And Diamond even took a shot at 2020 candidate Joe Biden who was recently called out for defending a segregationist saying:
“And who they need to look at is Joe Biden because he’s the one who said he reached across the aisle to work with segregationist – he didn’t have to reach far. It’s not going to be long before he tells us how he used to sit down with KKK members as well.”
The MAGA muppet show continues.
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African American museum in Baton Rouge vandalized after beloved founder’s murder
A month after Baton Rouge’s Louisiana’s founder of the African American history museum was killed, city leaders were shocked again to learn that the historic landmark had been vandalized.
—White man posing as ‘Black homosexual’ online gets arrested for violent article comment—
Sadie Roberts-Joseph, the 75-year-old founder of the Odell S. Williams African-American Museum and a well known community activist in the Baton Rouge area was murdered just three miles from her home last month.
An arrest was quickly made but now local police are investigating the destruction of the Odell S. Williams African-American Museum which was vandalized and has been left in shambles with damage to its windows and other structures, The Advocate reports.
Facebook images show the extent of the damage by vandals with broken chairs and garden equipment and windows smashed, looking like the aftermath of a hurricane.
Roberts-Joseph body was found in the trunk of her car last month and police arrested her former tenant, 38-year-old sex offender Ronn Jermaine Bell for the murder. Police allege that Bell was behind $1,200 for rent and owed the money to Roberts-Joseph.
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Former NBA star loses it after being sentenced to nearly four years in prison for gun and drug charges
On Monday former NBA player Sebastian Telfair was sentenced to 3 ½ years after police found firearms, a semi-automatic rifle, ammunition, a ballistic vest and marijuana inside his vehicle in 2017.
—Georgia high school football team investigated after bloody bullying incident caught on video—
Although Telfair avoided a 15-year max prison sentence, the lighter sentence still apparently wasn’t good enough as he performed in the courtroom and broke into an unhinged rant, the NY Daily News reports.
“God still sits on the throne,” he said.
“My kids gonna think I hurt somebody,” he shouted out at another point.
“They’re going to give you everything you need to destroy yourself,” he said quoting Tupac Shakur.
“Please don’t take me from the society right now. I’m 34. I can go play in China for another six years, take care of my family,” he pleaded at another point.
Telfair was a first-round draft pick back in 2004. He began his career with the Portland Trail Blazers. He also played for the Boston Celtics, Minnesota Timberwolves and other teams before ending his career in China in 2014.
He also ranted about his daughter saying she’s “sick because I wasn’t around her, literally got sick, mental illness because I wasn’t around,” he said about his 14-year-old as Judge John Hecht sat patiently and listened to his outbursts in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
The judge explained that he had to render the decision by law.
“I’m not going to say very much, I’ve observed you throughout the trial,” Hecht said. “I don’t think the people disagree… the judgement in this case sir, is what the jury convicted you of … You’ve achieved greatness in your life and this case doesn’t take that away.”
—People keep stealing ‘Old Town Road’ street signs in Massachusetts—
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Alex Rodriguez’s jewelry and personal items stolen from rented SUV
A-Rod was robbed.
Yankees legend, and J. Lo fiancee, Alex Rodriguez reportedly had an estimated $500,000 in electronics and jewelry stolen from his rented SUV on Sunday.
A-Rod was reportedly in San Francisco working as a broadcaster at the San Francisco Giants game against the Philadelphia Phillies for ESPN.
—Why Jennifer Lopez and fiancé Alex Rodriguez went to strip clubs ahead of her stripper movie role—
TMZ reports that a camera, camera equipment, laptop, jewelry and miscellaneous electronics were boosted from a rented a black Nissan sport utility vehicle.
The vehicle was reportedly three blocks from where A-Rod was working but the robbers broke it while A-Rod and staff members were having dinner after work, The SF Chronicle reports.
Rodriguez has released a statement about the theft:
“I am saddened that several items that were of a personal nature and irreplaceable with sentimental value were taken. I am encouraged that local law enforcement has security footage of the crime and are doing all they can to get the items back.”
ESPN also released a statement:
“It’s an unfortunate situation,” ESPN officials said in a statement. “We are working with local authorities to address it.”
—Morehouse creates fund to help eliminate student loan debt—
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VIDEO CONFESSION: T-Pain on going from $40 million to being so broke he couldn’t buy his kids burgers
T-Pain has felt the pain of being broke after he earned millions.
The rapper sat down with The Breakfast Club and opened up about his financial struggles and the lessons he’s learned going from really rich to financial ruin.
—WATCH: T-Pain bounces when hit with beach ball during concert for youth group—
“So now I know what the high end is and what the low end is,” he told Charlamagne tha God, DJ Envy, and Angela Yee. “I’ve been mega-rich, you know, I’ve been super broke, right in the middle of thinking I was mega-rich, and then got rich again, and you know learned how to really give a s— about money.”
The Florida native has been on both sides of the financial spectrum. At one point he said he had $40 million in the bank and then the next he recalls a time when he had to beg for a few bucks to buy his kids a burger, PEOPLE reports.
He explained, “I, like, had to borrow money to get my kids Burger King.”
Oh he was BROKE, broke!
The singer admits that he was irresponsible when it came to his spending so much so that his he “almost” lost his $6 million Atlanta home.
Also last year, T-Pain revealed that his brother was suffering from a mystery illness and he paid bills for his medical treatment totaling $1,402,977.
But he now says he’s financially back in the green.
“Once you give a s— about the money you’re making, then, you know what I’m saying, you feel much better about your accomplishments, you feel much better about what you’re doing, you start paying attention to your work that makes you money,” he said.
He’s also gearing up to make more records.
“There’s a lot of s— that comes with it,” he continued. “When you put out records, you gotta do the right things, you gotta, you know, you gotta go through the motions and really give a s— about it.”
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Lil Nas X’s viral song sets more records on Billboard charts
Lil Nas X is galloping his way to two new records on the Billboard charts thanks to the massive success of “Old Town Road.”
The song that beat out Mariah Carey and “Despacito” to become the longest-running No. 1 hit in the history of the Hot 100 chart has now set records on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop songs and Hot rap songs charts, respectively.
“Old Town Road,” which features Billy Ray Cyrus and is spending its 19th week at No. 1, surpasses the record set by Drake’s “One Dance” on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop songs chart. Drake’s track spent 18 weeks at No.1.
On the Hot rap songs chart, where Lil Nas X’s county-rap tune is also spending its 19th week on top, the 20-year-old beats the record set by Drake’s “Hotline Bling,” Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” and Missy Elliott’s “Hot Boyz.” The latter three songs each spent 18 weeks at No.1.
Last month Lil Nas X’s viral song became the most successful No. 1 song of all-time when it reached its 17th week at No. 1 on the all-genre Hot 100 chart — Billboard’s main chart for singles — surpassing the 16-week record held by Carey and Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day” and Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber’s “Despacito.”
“Old Town Road” is now spending its 19th week on top of the Hot 100 chart.
Lil Nas X’s song, which has achieved most of its success through audio streaming, was originally a solo song but he added Cyrus to the track. The song also has remix versions featuring Diplo, Young Thug, Mason Ramsey and BTS, and Billboard counts the original song and its remixes as one when calculating chart position, thus helping “Old Town Road” stay on top.
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Missy Elliott will receive MTV Video Vanguard Award
Missy Elliott, one of the most iconic players in the history of music videos, will receive the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards.
MTV announced Monday that Elliott will also perform on Aug. 26 at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
Since her debut video for “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” in 1997, where she sported an inflated trash bag with confidence and charisma, Elliott has been a powerhouse on the music video scene with an oddball, eccentric and creative style that’s inspired generations after her.
Her upcoming performance on the VMA stage will mark her first since 2003.
Elliott became the first female rapper inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame earlier this year.
The post Missy Elliott will receive MTV Video Vanguard Award appeared first on theGrio.
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Joshua Akinotanhe plays several instruments and looks set for stardom.
INTERVIEW: Chaunte Wayans brings the laughs on ‘Tiffany Haddish Presents: They Ready’
Tiffany Haddish is doing her best to bring some of her fellow, female comedians on her ride to fame in her new Netflix special, Tiffany Haddish Presents: They Ready. In it, she features six female comedians she has gotten to know and love over the years.Haddish hosts and executive produces the series along with Emmy-nominated Wanda Sykes and Page Hurwitz.
One of the hilarious women you’ll meet on the special is Chaunte Wayans, a less-famous (for now) member of the infamous Wayans family. We caught up with the comedian to find out how she has navigated the comedy world with such a famous last name, and what it’s like to put her sexuality on full display.
Some folks may recognize Chaunte Wayans from Wild’N Out, but she certainly hasn’t reached the level of fame as many of her family members.
“I think in the beginning it was a little bit, more of I was adamant about starting a name for myself. When I first started my stage name was New York. It was so corny. It was about not having people feel like things were coming to me because I am a Wayans. It was like, ‘No, I’m really funny,'” she explains.
“There’s always pros and cons. When I first started I only had five jokes or less and people would use me to get people to come to their shows. I would be doing five minutes and they would have me on the billboard above the headliner. It was like, ‘What is happening right now?’”
Tiffany Haddish apologizes to fans after comedy show falls flat
Chaunte is the daughter of Elvira Wayans. In one of her first jokes of her set, Wayans jokes that she comes from the “poor” side of the Wayans family.
“They got five kids a piece and all this stuff so they give us opportunities and give us money here and there but they can’t take care of a family of a trillion people and still have money themselves,” she says of her super successful uncles that include Marlon Wayans, Keenan Ivory Wayans, and Marlon Wayans. “My mom and my other aunts and uncles didn’t ‘make’ it. They weren’t famous.”
She also discussed her journey as an openly lesbian comic.
“Being a Black woman and a lesbian has made it a harder road for me. I get a lot of men, even in the gay world, who tell me I should show a little cleavage, or maybe let my hair out or wear some heels. If people saw me wear heels I would probably set myself back further. People have this image of what they think you should look like and the problem with that is people start looking the same,” she says.
“My whole career, I always felt like I will make it if I just stay true to myself. At a certain point, I learned that you could build a real fanbase that believes in your journey and will fall in love with you without you having to change. I tried to get a little sexy and it was very awkward. My jokes didn’t land the same.”
“I get a lot of people that come up to me after my set, even pastors who say ‘ I don’t really believe in what you’re doing but that was funny.’ It’s a way to start a conversation. A lot of people are afraid of things. You’ve got people getting killed or committing suicide because of their identity and so when you are able to connect to somebody else through laughter, that opens up a conversation that hopefully brings new ideas out so these tragic things don’t have to happen,” she continues.
“Being black and being LGBTQ and even being a woman are all things that are important to represent. It allows you to have a voice. That is my main purpose, to be able to show there are different sides to all of us.”
Check out the trailer:
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FGM ‘no longer just an African problem’
Black-Owned Allstate Franchises are in ‘Good Hands’
Kevin “Scooby” Hutchins, owns three Allstate franchises in Wichita, Kansas. Allstate Insurance was founded in 1931 and it continues to be a proven leader in the competitive field of insurance and financial services. It is consistently ranked among the Fortune 100 companies, and franchise owners say that Allstate is unique among all other insurers because the franchisee owns the economic interest in their business.
Hutchins spoke about running successful Allstate franchises in this exclusive interview with Black Enterprise.
Black Enterprise: Let’s start with how you got into the business.
Hutchins: I worked for several major corporations such as Sears and MCI, and frankly, I got tired of losing my job due to no fault of my own. I could be a top performer and give the company everything I had, but still wasn’t immune to downsizing or businesses closing. I wanted to have more control over my life, and I knew owning my own business, while not easy, would give me that control.
So, that started me on the path. My first stop was Edward Jones to study securities. I didn’t even know what a security was—outside of the one that stood outside of the mall. That didn’t quite work out, and I moved on to health insurance, obtaining my health and life certifications. I started working at Western & Southern Life Insurance but quickly realized that I could be earning a lot more.
What made you land on Allstate Insurance as the right investment for you?
During my research, I determined that Allstate had the earning structure I was looking for. While the investment is significantly higher than some of the other franchise brands ($100K in accessible, liquid capital), I knew that whatever I built belongs to me. As an Allstate agency owner, you own equity in the business you build and earn repeat revenue from policy renewals. That’s not the case for most insurance agencies.
Owning your own book of business opens up a world of possibilities. Allstate has bonus opportunities of 3%-4% of your book size, as well as many other great sales incentives. And of course, if you choose to sell your business, you have a valuable asset that can be sold to a qualified buyer.
But it’s even more than just that. I recently leveraged my book of business to purchase the entire building that we were leasing office space in.
It’s not necessary to invest in a franchise to get into insurance sales, right?
True. But the behavior of most people isn’t to seek out an insurance broker, and that’s where strong name brand recognition can make all the difference. Almost everyone is familiar with the Allstate tagline “You’re in good hands”; and that’s very valuable in establishing trust.
You opened your first office in 2006 and grew to three offices and a book of business worth close to $8 million. How have you been able to be so successful?
When I first started, I just wanted to make enough money to cover my $70K salary I made at MCI. Once I got into the business and realized I hit that $70K number in the first six months, I had a completely different mindset. After that, sales increased incrementally, and rather than paying myself more in a salary, I reinvested that money back into the business.
I opened my second location two to three years later, and my third location in 2010. But with expansion, I had to make some changes. Rather than working in the business, I had to shift to working on the business. It wasn’t easy because I really enjoyed sales, but in order to grow, you have to shift your mindset. This meant hiring a sales manager, a service manager, and several reps that focus on new sales and those that handle policy services. Insurance has an 85% retention rate, so that’s where you want your focus to be—customer retention. We realized we could do twice the volume if had specialized teams—one doing one thing and the other doing another.
Where do you see your business headed?
While we’ve done well, I have my eye toward being a top performer in this business. We have a model where we’re looking to reach $20 – $30 million in sales. That’s what’s really nice about being a part of a franchise like Allstate. I can achieve that goal without having to reinvent the wheel. I’ve been able to speak with and learn from top performers and implement some of their processes as well as some of my own that I learned along the way. Having worked in a corporate environment, I’m able to use what I liked about that world and avoid the things I didn’t like.
What advice do you have for people looking to get into the Insurance field and/or business in general?
Well, specifically for the insurance industry, you have to know that you’re working for the residual income. You have to look at it as selling over a long period of time—that’s your paycheck.
I call the first 90 days the “peanut butter and jelly” stage, as that’s what you need to be prepared to be eating. Because I wanted to really focus on building my niche in the business, I paid all of my bills for the business, in advance, for 90 days. I didn’t want to be selling out of desperation. This lowered my stress and allowed me to be genuine with potential customers.
My other advice would be that when you hit bonuses or exceed revenues in the first three years of your business, use that money to reinvest. Once you get past year three, you should be at a certain revenue level that allows you to ease up a bit and possibly do other things. Insurance is a teeter-totter business; as your sales drop, your residuals kick in.
What makes a good Allstate Insurance owner?
You must be comfortable speaking with people you don’t know, and you have to genuinely care about people. Having worked in telemarketing, I know that there are good people that take pride in doing their jobs, and those that will do anything for a dollar. In this business, your ability to care about people and their families is what is going to get you in business and keep you in business.
Because insurance is not a tangible product, customers have to believe that you’re selling them what they need. When I first started my business, a majority of it came from consumers that had terrible damage from hail and freeze storms the prior year. When they went to file a claim with their carrier, I ended up getting referrals for customers that had bad experiences with other agents. While Allstate has its motto, I have one as well: I take care of every customer like I would my mother.
Black Enterprise Contributors Network
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New type of electrolyte could enhance supercapacitor performance
Supercapacitors, electrical devices that store and release energy, need a layer of electrolyte — an electrically conductive material that can be solid, liquid, or somewhere in between. Now, researchers at MIT and several other institutions have developed a novel class of liquids that may open up new possibilities for improving the efficiency and stability of such devices while reducing their flammability.
“This proof-of-concept work represents a new paradigm for electrochemical energy storage,” the researchers say in their paper describing the finding, which appears today in the journal Nature Materials.
For decades, researchers have been aware of a class of materials known as ionic liquids — essentially, liquid salts — but this team has now added to these liquids a compound that is similar to a surfactant, like those used to disperse oil spills. With the addition of this material, the ionic liquids “have very new and strange properties,” including becoming highly viscous, says MIT postdoc Xianwen Mao PhD ’14, the lead author of the paper.
“It’s hard to imagine that this viscous liquid could be used for energy storage,” Mao says, “but what we find is that once we raise the temperature, it can store more energy, and more than many other electrolytes.”
That’s not entirely surprising, he says, since with other ionic liquids, as temperature increases, “the viscosity decreases and the energy-storage capacity increases.” But in this case, although the viscosity stays higher than that of other known electrolytes, the capacity increases very quickly with increasing temperature. That ends up giving the material an overall energy density — a measure of its ability to store electricity in a given volume — that exceeds those of many conventional electrolytes, and with greater stability and safety.
The key to its effectiveness is the way the molecules within the liquid automatically line themselves up, ending up in a layered configuration on the metal electrode surface. The molecules, which have a kind of tail on one end, line up with the heads facing outward toward the electrode or away from it, and the tails all cluster in the middle, forming a kind of sandwich. This is described as a self-assembled nanostructure.
“The reason why it’s behaving so differently” from conventional electrolytes is because of the way the molecules intrinsically assemble themselves into an ordered, layered structure where they come in contact with another material, such as the electrode inside a supercapacitor, says T. Alan Hatton, a professor of chemical engineering at MIT and the paper’s senior author. “It forms a very interesting, sandwich-like, double-layer structure.”
This highly ordered structure helps to prevent a phenomenon called “overscreening” that can occur with other ionic liquids, in which the first layer of ions (electrically charged atoms or molecules) that collect on an electrode surface contains more ions than there are corresponding charges on the surface. This can cause a more scattered distribution of ions, or a thicker ion multilayer, and thus a loss of efficiency in energy storage; “whereas with our case, because of the way everything is structured, charges are concentrated within the surface layer,” Hatton says.
The new class of materials, which the researchers call SAILs, for surface-active ionic liquids, could have a variety of applications for high-temperature energy storage, for example for use in hot environments such as in oil drilling or in chemical plants, according to Mao. “Our electrolyte is very safe at high temperatures, and even performs better,” he says. In contrast, some electrolytes used in lithium-ion batteries are quite flammable.
The material could help to improve performance of supercapacitors, Mao says. Such devices can be used to store electrical charge and are sometimes used to supplement battery systems in electric vehicles to provide an extra boost of power. Using the new material instead of a conventional electrolyte in a supercapacitor could increase its energy density by a factor of four or five, Mao says. Using the new electrolyte, future supercapacitors may even be able to store more energy than batteries, he says, potentially even replacing batteries in applications such as electric vehicles, personal electronics, or grid-level energy storage facilities.
The material could also be useful for a variety of emerging separation processes, Mao says. “A lot of newly developed separation processes require electrical control,” in various chemical processing and refining applications and in carbon dioxide capture, for example, as well as resource recovery from waste streams. These ionic liquids, being highly conductive, could be well-suited to many such applications, he says.
The material they initially developed is just an example of a variety of possible SAIL compounds. “The possibilities are almost unlimited,” Mao says. The team will continue to work on different variations and on optimizing its parameters for particular uses. “It might take a few months or years,” he says, “but working on a new class of materials is very exciting to do. There are many possibilities for further optimization.”
The research team included Paul Brown, Yinying Ren, Agilio Padua, and Margarida Costa Gomes at MIT; Ctirad Cervinka at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, in France; Gavin Hazell and Julian Eastoe at the University of Bristol, in the U.K.; Hua Li and Rob Atkin at the University of Western Australia; and Isabelle Grillo at the Institut Max-von-Laue-Paul-Langevin in Grenoble, France. The researchers dedicate their paper to the memory of Grillo, who recently passed away.
The work was supported by the MIT Energy Initiative, an MIT Skoltech fellowship, and the Czech Science Foundation.
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Want to Pay Less Taxes? Hire Your Kids!
Are you a business owner? Have you ever considered hiring your child to work for you during summer vacation, winter break, or after school? Not only will your child gain valuable work experience, but you’ll benefit from a smart tax-savings strategy.
The Tax Cuts & Jobs Act brought many changes to the tax world, including the standard deduction amounts that enable taxpayers to enjoy a certain amount of tax-free income. Prior to tax reform, the standard deduction for single filers was $6,350. That means the first $6,350 that a person earns is not taxed. Starting with the 2018 tax year, single filers hit the jackpot with a standard deduction of $12,000, almost doubling previous exclusion amounts.
This increased standard deduction isn’t just for working adults. It is applicable to kids, too. If you hire your child to work in your business, you can compensate your child up to $12,000 in wages without incurring income taxes and other taxes that kids under 18 are exempt from paying. The salary you pay your child can be deducted as a business expense from your business income, subjecting you to lower tax liability.
“Building generational wealth is about getting the right information and using it,” says Dr. Lynn Richardson, celebrity financial expert and author of The Symphony: A Guide to Creating and Balancing Multiple Streams of Income. “Getting a $12,000 tax deduction per child minimizes your taxes by thousands, allows you to get back more money, and exposes your child to entrepreneurship at an early age. This is the single-largest game-changer that many people don’t know about.”
There are different rules for different types of businesses, so make sure you talk to a trusted tax professional and CPA to map out the best plan for you. Hiring your child can be a huge business benefit, but you need to make sure you do it correctly to avoid the IRS spotting any red flags.
Here are some things to consider to get you started:
Determine the Best Job Description
If you are the sole proprietor of your own business, consider employing your child (under the age of 18) for certain tasks. Start by writing a list of all the things you may need help with for your business. Next, identify ways that you can use your child’s natural gifts and strengths to advance your business needs and goals.
In Richardson’s latest book, she shares a list of job ideas for your child. For example, your child can help with social media, event planning, or customer service. If you have a younger child, you can use them as a model in still photos to promote your business! Once you’ve found a match between your child’s skills and the needs of the business, you can successfully create an appropriate title and job description.
Maintain Appropriate Records
You want to think about creating an employment contract, onboarding documentation, timesheets, and tax forms to ensure you remain compliant with the IRS.
“Work with your CPA to put your kids on the payroll and [to] keep you abreast of the amount of money you can pay your child before their income reaches higher tax brackets,” says Jeff Wilson II, author of The Lies Our Parents Were Sold and Told Us and principal CPA at The W2 Group accounting firm.
Documentation is key. You also want to have the right professionals by your side to ensure you have the right documentation to support your child’s work.
Create More Opportunities for Your Child
It’s not just about reducing your taxes and giving your kids income to use now. It’s about teaching your child business and money strategies that they can use to create a financially successful future.
Encourage your child to save their money in a retirement account or contribute cash directly to the account. For example, if your child contributes money to a Roth IRA, they are saving for retirement and can use the money (without penalty!) toward qualified educational expenses or for a down payment on a home if needed. Creating smart savings and investing strategies now can help your child accumulate $1 million before they reach 50!
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Georgia high school football team investigated after bloody bullying incident caught on video
A Georgia high school has launched an investigation into a locker room fight caught on video by members of a football team after a mother complained her son was bullied.
—Black father and son chased by white man on horse draped in confederate flag and carrying a rope—
A concerned mother reached out to a local station to report that her son, a football player at Roswell High School, had suffered a black eye and a concussion after being bullied into fighting a fellow teammate.
The mother of the boy seen in the video, who asked to remain anonymous, told WSBTV her son was attacked in the Roswell Hornets locker room.
“When he turned around I noticed that he had a black eye,” the mother said. “I asked him what happened, and he said he was surrounded in the locker room and forced to fight.”
The video appears to show two boys surrounded by a group of other players who appear to be egging them on to fight as they scream obscenities.
“Once I saw the video and him egging him to hit him again, calling my son names … putting a camera in my son’s face, a bigger kid was pushing my son,” she said. “My son’s face was very bloody and nobody cared about stopping the fight and just stood there and continued to want the boy to hit on my son.”
She said the fight followed weeks of her son getting bullied by and teased by classmates. The victim’s mother said her son suffered a concussion and since the ordeal, she said her son is afraid to return to school for fear of retaliation.
—Black father shot dead by white man after white supremacist rant—
She said her son now is abandoning off his dream to play professional football.
“If you were to ask him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he’d say NFL player,” she told WSB. “His favorite player is Julio Jones and he wanted to be just like him.”
The Fulton County School system released a statement which was forwarded from Athletics Director, Steven Craft:
“Fulton County Schools is aware of an incident that occurred between two athletes last week at Roswell High School. We are currently investigating the incident. Fulton County Schools will continue to hold our student athletes to the highest standards, and we expect them to always promote great sportsmanship towards their teammates and opponents. We expect our athletes to be leaders on the field, in the classrooms, and in our communities. Failure to comply with these expectations will not be tolerated, and we will continue to hold our athletes accountable to the highest standards.”
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Tissue model reveals role of blood-brain barrier in Alzheimer’s
Beta-amyloid plaques, the protein aggregates that form in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, disrupt many brain functions and can kill neurons. They can also damage the blood-brain barrier — the normally tight border that prevents harmful molecules in the bloodstream from entering the brain.
MIT engineers have now developed a tissue model that mimics beta-amyloid’s effects on the blood-brain barrier, and used it to show that this damage can lead molecules such as thrombin, a clotting factor normally found in the bloodstream, to enter the brain and cause additional damage to Alzheimer’s neurons.
“We were able to show clearly in this model that the amyloid-beta secreted by Alzheimer’s disease cells can actually impair barrier function, and once that is impaired, factors are secreted into the brain tissue that can have adverse effects on neuron health,” says Roger Kamm, the Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor of Mechanical and Biological Engineering at MIT.
The researchers also used the tissue model to show that a drug that restores the blood-brain barrier can slow down the cell death seen in Alzheimer’s neurons.
Kamm and Rudolph Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, are the senior authors of the study, which appears in the XX issue of the journal Advanced Science. MIT postdoc Yoojin Shin is the paper’s lead author.
Barrier breakdown
The blood vessel cells that make up the blood-brain barrier have many specialized proteins that help them to form tight junctions — cellular structures that act as a strong seal between cells.
Alzheimer’s patients often experience damage to brain blood vessels caused by beta-amyloid proteins, an effect known as cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA). It is believed that this damage allows harmful molecules to get into the brain more easily. Kamm decided to study this phenomenon, and its role in Alzheimer’s, by modeling brain and blood vessel tissue on a microfluidic chip.
“What we were trying to do from the start was generate a model that we could use to understand the interactions between Alzheimer’s disease neurons and the brain vasculature,” Kamm says. “Given the fact that there’s been so little success in developing therapeutics that are effective against Alzheimer’s, there has been increased attention paid to CAA over the last couple of years.”
His lab began working on this project several years ago, along with researchers at MGH who had engineered neurons to produce large amounts of beta-amyloid proteins, just like the brain cells of Alzheimer’s patients.
Led by Shin, the researchers devised a way to grow these cells in a microfluidic channel, where they produce and secrete beta-amyloid protein. On the same chip, in a parallel channel, the researchers grew brain endothelial cells, which are the cells that form the blood-brain barrier. An empty channel separated the two channels while each tissue type developed.
After 10 days of cell growth, the researchers added collagen to the central channel separating the two tissue types, which allowed molecules to diffuse from one channel to the other. They found that within three to six days, beta-amyloid proteins secreted by the neurons began to accumulate in the endothelial tissue, which led the cells to become leakier. These cells also showed a decline in proteins that form tight junctions, and an increase in enzymes that break down the extracellular matrix that normally surrounds and supports blood vessels.
As a result of this breakdown in the blood-brain barrier, thrombin was able to pass from blood flowing through the leaky vessels into the Alzheimer’s neurons. Excessive levels of thrombin can harm neurons and lead to cell death.
“We were able to demonstrate this bidirectional signaling between cell types and really solidify things that had been seen previously in animal experiments, but reproduce them in a model system that we can control with much more detail and better fidelity,” Kamm says.
Plugging the leaks
The researchers then decided to test two drugs that have previously been shown to solidify the blood-brain barrier in simpler models of endothelial tissue. Both of these drugs are FDA-approved to treat other conditions. The researchers found that one of these drugs, etodolac, worked very well, while the other, beclomethasone, had little effect on leakiness in their tissue model.
In tissue treated with etodolac, the blood-brain barrier became tighter, and neurons’ survival rates improved. The MIT and MGH team is now working with a drug discovery consortium to look for other drugs that might be able to restore the blood-brain barrier in Alzheimer’s patients.
“We’re starting to use this platform to screen for drugs that have come out of very simple single cell screens that we now need to validate in a more complex system,” Kamm says. “This approach could offer a new potential form of Alzheimer’s treatment, especially given the fact that so few treatments have been demonstrated to be effective.”
The research was funded by the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund and the JPB Foundation.
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Serena Williams breaks down and leaves match after suffering from back spasms
Serena Williams was forced to retire her match due to unrelenting back spasms that brought the tennis icon to tears.
—Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka top Forbes list of highest paid female athletes—
On Sunday, Williams was only 16 minutes into the finals match in Toronto against Canadian Bianca Andreescu when she took a medical timeout and made the difficult decision to stop.
Andreescu was ahead 3-1. A ref announced that Williams would retire, rendering a decision that gave Andreescu the Rogers Cup win, a first for Canada since 1969, but her second WTA Premier title this season, The Daily Mail reports.
During an emotional moment for Williams, Andreescu walked over to her and knelt down and held her hands to comfort Williams as she wept.
“I watched you your whole career. You’re a f–king beast.”
Serena Williams had to retire from the Rogers Cup with an injury, and her opponent Bianca Andreescu came over to comfort her. Respect 🙏
(via @Sportsnet) pic.twitter.com/GX9NDMaNrk
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) August 11, 2019
“Serena, you made me cry,” Andreescu told the 23-time Grand Slam winner.
“I know how it is to pull out of tournaments, it’s not easy.
“This wasn’t the way I expected to win. You are truly a champion.
“I’ve watched you win so many times, you are truly a champion on and off the court.
“I’m speechless right now. This has been a dream come true.”
Williams said thank you to her Toronto fans for the support.
“I’m not a crier, but, thank you guys,” Williams said during her acceptance speech for second place.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do it today. I tried but I just couldn’t do it.”
—Serena Williams invests in Black start-up that could save lives of expectant mothers—
You are still magic Serena. Know that.
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Black father shot dead by white man after white supremacist rant
A beloved North Carolina barber and father of three was shot dead after a confrontation with a man spouting racial slurs.
—Black home buyer finds Ku Klux Klan application during showing of cop’s house—
On August 6, Julius “Juice” Randolph Sampson Jr. was killed outside the BJ’s Restaurant & Brewhouse, in Winston-Salem after a fight broke out inside with Robert Granato and spilled outside the facility where gunshots erupted, The Winston-Salem Chronicle reports.
When the Winston-Salem Police arrived, Sampson was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to reports, Granato spouted white supremacist views and got into a heated argument and an altercation inside the brewery with Sampson before taking it outside and brandishing a weapon before discharging it, killing him.
After the killing made headlines, the #JusticeForJuice hashtag went viral for Sampson who was a well-known barber at the Supreme Legacy Barbershop.
Sampson had reportedly recently married and was a father of three.
Sampson’s wife said in a statement on Facebook, “I want the world to know the amazing young man that was senselessly snatched away from me and our family. I want awareness and justice for my husband. My husband wasn’t an animal that deserved slaughtering.”
—Family of Black man whom white cops led with leash, says he is mentally ill —
Granato’s social media accounts revealed the 22-year-old’s support of white supremacist groups and one photo shows him with weapons while another shows him with a shirt that says ‘Murica’ while flashing the infamous white power symbol.
Granato is being held without bond and charged with first degree murder. He is also charged with carrying a concealed handgun after consuming alcohol.
According to WFDD, Police Chief Catrina Thompson stated at a press conference, that what investigators have found so far doesn’t warrant a hate-crime charge.
“Detectives have found no evidence to indicate that this crime was motivated by race,” she said. “Should any evidence to the contrary be developed, detectives and prosecutors will review that evidence and the appropriate charges that evidence would support.”
More than 100 people took part in a vigil in the restaurant parking lot where Sampson died.
Mayor Allen Joines released a statement on the shooting.
“On behalf of our entire city, I offer sincere condolences to the family of Mr. Julius Randolph Sampson Jr.,” he said. “Please be assured that the city is fully investigating this terrible tragedy. While we are uncertain as to the totality of the crime, please be assured that we will investigate all aspects of the persons involved and take any and all appropriate action as a result of the investigation.”
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Black father and son chased by white man on horse draped in confederate flag and carrying a rope
A Black man in Texas driving along a road was chased down by a white man who had a rope in hand while riding on horseback draped with a Confederate flag.
SHOCKING: Black man in Texas led by white police officers on horses with leash
The same week two white Texas cops on horseback came under fire for walking a Black man to jail while tied to a leash, a copycat incident pops up with James Ragland who said he and his son Judah endured a “terrifying experience – a terroristic threat from a white man with a rope.”
On August 5, Ragland, a former columnist for the Dallas Morning News, wrote on Facebook that he was antagonized by a man later identified as Grant Williams after he left a relative’s home near Marshall, Texas, The Daily Mail reports.
Ragland said after he and his son were on their way to drop his nephew off and encountered two adults and two kids on horseback. He was in his car and proceeded to drive along a road toward them but Williams instead trotted his horse in the middle of the road, blocking his path.
The other family members road their horse past Ragland’s car, he said. But Williams, “just stopped in front of our car and glared at us.”
“Then, he turned the horse sideways to more completely block the road, and he turned to face us down – I kid you not – like a gunman in the Wild West,” Ragland said.
Ragland said it was a disturbing moment that got even more concerning.
“I’m perplexed, but not yet alarmed. But then the guy guides his horse to the driver’s side and stops. I glance over and he’s just staring me down. I roll the window down, thinking he had something to say, but he just sizes us up. I finally say, “Nice horse.”
‘”Thank ya,” he says back.
He then says, “These are Texas roads.”
“These are TEXAS roads,” he said even louder,” Ragland wrote.
The man then made mention of the out of state tag and plates.
‘”It’s a rental,” I shot back. And without missing a beat, the guy declared loudly again, “BUT THESE ARE TEXAS ROADS!”‘ Ragland wrote.
“What the eff does that mean?” Ragland finally asked the man.
Ragland explained that he finally pulled off after the man seemed to reach back for something that he assumed was a gun. As he sped away, Raglan said the man was “still yelling and making threatening gestures.”
Once he dropped his nephew off, Ragland said he returned down that same old town road and encountered the crazy man again. The next time, Williams said he “charges from his property on the north side and runs right out to our car, and for one frightening moment I thought he was going to dart in front of us.”
—Family of Black man whom white cops led with leash, says he is mentally ill —
“But as I sped up to avoid him, he pulled alongside our car and chased us for a mile while yelling and throwing the f… you sign initially before reaching for something on his right side,” Ragland said.
He son was scared and yelled for Raglan to drive faster to get away from the “angry white dude on horseback in full pursuit.”
Ragland said he contacted the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office to tell them about the disturbing ordeal, but after promising to send officers to Williams home, he said the police department hasn’t done much.
“I’ve learned a lot in short order about how injustice manifests itself culturally and institutionally. Since the #HarrisonCountySheriff’s office won’t do its job, I will take other legal steps to protect the public, and hold an untruthful and unrepentant #GrantWilliams accountable,” Ragland wrote.
Ragland posted a picture of Williams and who was on his horse with a Confederate flag.
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Beaver Works Summer Institute concludes its fourth year
Nearly 1,000 students, instructors, and guests packed into MIT's Johnson Ice Rink on Aug. 4 to kick off the final event for the 2019 Beaver Works Summer Institute (BWSI). It was a full day of competitions and demonstrations — the culmination of four weeks of hard work and dedication from the students and staff. The event, held at various locations on MIT campus, was a fitting end to what many of the students described as a transformational experience.
Now in its fourth year, the BWSI offers hands-on STEM learning to rising high school seniors, and now to middle school students, through project-based, workshop-style courses. The program is run jointly by MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the School of Engineering and this year admitted more than 250 students from 27 states and more than 130 schools. This year's BWSI featured 10 courses — Autonomous RACECAR Grand Prix, Autonomous Air Vehicle Racing, Autonomous Cognitive Assistant, Medlytics: Data Science for Health and Medicine, Build a CubeSat, Unmanned Air System–Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAS-SAR), Embedded Security and Hardware Hacking, Hacking a 3-D Printer, Remote Sensing for Crisis Response, and Assistive Technology — plus one middle school RACECAR class.
At the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics Building 31, teams of students from the UAS-SAR course were challenged to create an image of a covered space with a hidden pattern underneath. To do this, the teams each flew a small UAS around an enclosed room. The UAS was equipped with a radar that the students had built and tested during the course. Afterward, the teams answered visitors' questions and gave informal presentations about their radars.
"In addition to obtaining more hands-on experience, the people that I have met and bonded with made this program a moment in my life that I will never forget," says Swanyee Aung, a student in the UAS-SAR class from the Bronx High School of Science in New York.
Fiona McEvilly, a teaching assistant (TA) for the course, took the UAS-SAR class in 2018 and was excited to return and participate in a different way. "This year I was able to help BWSI grow and expand, and I'm still learning more as a TA this year," she says. “BWSI is such a great opportunity.”
Meanwhile, students from several of the courses displayed their work with posters and demonstrations in the MIT Stratton Student Center (Building W20).
Shuen Wu, a homeschool student from Minnesota who took the Medlytics course, explained his team's work, which was to design a prototype web application that would help physicians and patients identify disease from symptoms and then recommend treatment. The Medlytics course focused on the intersection of data science and medicine, allowing students to apply advanced machine learning and data mining to real-world medical challenges. "I really like the fact that we spent a lot of time actually working on projects," Wu says. "The best way to learn coding and statistics is to just do it."
One team of students from the Build a CubeSat course designed and constructed a prototype of a CubeSat called SLOOP that would inform people responding to oil spills about how to take action quickly and efficiently. "We learned a lot about how spacecraft and satellites are built and got to experience building something faithful to an actual spacecraft," says Kemal Pulungan, a student from Troy High School in New York.
Back in the Johnson Athletics Center, two floors above the ice rink, students from the Autonomous Air Vehicle Racing class completed an obstacle course race made of bridges and rings hanging at different heights in the air. Each team developed algorithms that allowed an Intel drone to autonomously navigate the race course. The winning team completed the course in one minute and 32 seconds.
In the afternoon, the BWSI students, staff, and guests gathered again in the Johnson Ice Rink to watch the RACECAR grand prix. RACECAR was the very first course offered in BWSI — and remains the largest course, with 57 students enrolled this year. For this event, the ice rink was converted into a racetrack with obstacles such as a graveyard, car wash, and giant windmill. Students programmed RACECARs (Rapid Autonomous Complex Environment Competing Ackermann-steering Robots), designed by MIT and Lincoln Laboratory, to navigate the track by using inertial sensors, lidar, and cameras.
This year was the first that middle school students were admitted to a modified version of the RACECAR course. Their course is based on the high school version, with students learning software coding and controls for programming their own RACECAR vehicles.
"This was a real opportunity for middle school students to be exposed to the basics of programming, computational thinking, computer vision, and robotics," says Sabina Chen, the middle school RACECAR instructor and an MIT graduate student. "Throughout the program, students were encouraged to think critically and work as a team to complete complex coding challenges. BWSI RACECAR Middle School may be one of the few programs that currently exist to teach not only computer programming, but also computer vision and autonomous driving, to students at this age."
In his opening remarks, Robert Shin, the director of Beaver Works and head of the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance and Tactical Systems Division at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, challenged the outgoing students to keep the ball rolling by becoming mentors to the next generation of engineers. One goal of BWSI is to continue expanding to bring the program to more and more students across the country and the world. In line with this goal, this year's program included teams from Mexico participating in the RACECAR and CogWorks courses and a team from Nauset High School on Cape Cod competing in RACECAR. In addition, the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea provided TAs to several BWSI courses and plans to adopt the BWSI curriculum next year.
"I know it’s a cliché to say that BWSI was a transformational experience, but that's honestly the best description for my time here," says Emily Amspoker, a student in the Embedded Security and Hardware Hacking course from Kent Denver School in Colorado. "Before I started the online part of my course, I knew very little about the subject. Fortunately, throughout both the online and in-person class, I've learned more about embedded systems and cybersecurity than I could have fathomed just a couple of months ago. More importantly, I feel like I've grown to become a better teammate and person by collaborating and overcoming problems with students from across the country who are also passionate about STEM."
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Star Wars News: But Really, What Are Sith Troopers?
African Champions League: Mamelodi Sundowns lose in Congo
White comedian says she lost movie role over old blackface comedy sketch
Funny girl Sarah Silverman just confessed that she got blowback from wearing blackface for a comedy sketch for her now cancelled show—and it cost her a role in an upcoming film.
—Leslie Jones lands Netflix standup special to kick off in D.C.; warns Trump not to come—
Silverman revealed on The Bill Simmons Podcast that back in 2007, on The Sarah Silverman Program, she wore blackface and regrets it. And she’s now feeling the backlash over that decision.
“I recently was going to do a movie, a sweet part, then at 11 p.m. the night before they fired me because they saw a picture of me in blackface from that episode. I didn’t fight it,” Silverman admitted to Simmons, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
But Silverman said the reality of that choice stung, while using the moment to shade the person who replaced her.
“They hired someone else who is wonderful but who has never stuck their neck out. It was so disheartening. It just made me real real sad, because I really kind of devoted my life to making it right.”
Silverman criticized the corrective nature of comedy culture now, calling it a “dangerous place” for comedians who have erred in the past with questionable material.
“I think it’s really scary and it’s a very odd thing that it’s invaded the left primarily and the right will mimic it,” Silverman said.
She added: “It’s like, if you’re not on board, if you say the wrong thing, if you had a tweet once … everyone is, like, throwing the first stone. It’s so odd. It’s a perversion. … It’s really, ‘Look how righteous I am and now I’m going to press refresh all day long to see how many likes I get in my righteousness.'”
—Robin Thede wants Black women to feel seen on ‘A Black Lady Sketch Show’—
“It’s OK to go, ‘Wow, look at this back then. That was so fucked up looking at it in the light of today of what we know,’ but to hold that person accountable if they’ve changed with the times, like for me … I held myself accountable. I can’t erase that I did that, but I can only be changed forever and do what I can to make it right for the rest of my life,” she said.
Silverman said a comedian shouldn’t be defined by their jokes of the past.
“If I look back on my old self and don’t cringe, there’s something wrong. Because if you’re putting yourself out there, it’s not going to be timeless,” she said.
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Kamala Harris says Trump enjoys inciting hateful speech, actions
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said Friday that President Donald Trump “seems to derive joy” from provoking some Americans to hateful speech and actions, and she says that goes to issues deeper than whether the president is a white supremacist.
“I’ve not said this out loud, but I think it and I feel it,” Harris told The Associated Press during an interview traveling across Iowa. “He seems to derive joy from the response he gets when he talks this way. It seems he derives some element of joy in inciting people around, around outrageous and hateful rhetoric.”
Trump’s recent series of racist remarks toward women of color in Congress, as well as the ties between his anti-immigrant rhetoric and the deadly mass shooting in El Paso, have sparked a debate in the 2020 Democratic field over whether the president is a white supremacist.
Harris, like former Vice President Joe Biden and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, has stopped short of using the label. Meanwhile, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg have said it applies.
Harris, on a weekend-long campaign trip to the early caucus state, said that debate misses the point.
“It literally oversimplifies the issue, because it’s almost that the conversation begins and ends with that,” Harris said on her tour bus traveling across rural northwest Iowa. “The lens through which I think about it is so much broader than a label.”
Harris cited Trump’s 2017 ban on travelers from six largely Muslim countries, his 2018 order banning transgender individuals from serving in the armed forces except under limited circumstances, and his constant degradation of immigrants entering the U.S. from the Southern border. She said they are part of a pattern Trump has followed to feed his own psyche instead of encouraging acceptance at a time of increased hate crimes.
By ascribing personal motives to Trump’s rhetoric, Harris’ comments go further than most candidates, who have not shied from connecting Trump’s rhetoric and the El Paso shooting Saturday, when 22 people were killed by a man who admitted to police he had targeted Mexicans.
“Democrats have spent every moment trying to overturn the election of 2016,” Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said. “So now they’ve moved on to calling (Trump) and his supporters racist. Those are the real divisive tactics.”
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Ferguson: 5 years after Mike Brown police shooting, racial tension lingers nationally
Michael Brown’s death at the hands of a white Missouri police officer stands as a seismic moment in American race relations. The fledgling Black Lives Matter movement found its voice, police departments fell under intense scrutiny, progressive prosecutors were elected and court policies revised.
Yet five years after the black 18-year-old was fatally shot by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson on a steamy August day, racial tension remains palpable and may be even more intense. From the march on Charlottesville to President Donald Trump’s tweets attacking congressional Democrats of color and Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling at NFL games, the country often seems more divided than ever.
Ferguson “drew attention to the practices of police violence and a lot of the stereotypes and viewpoints that people had about black Americans,” said Adia Harvey Wingfield, a Washington University sociologist and expert on race relations. “I wish I could be a little more optimistic about its overall implications, but I am not sure yet that there is too much reason for optimism. I think that we’re in a place where we kind of see some progress coupled with some steps backward.”
The suburban St. Louis community has changed, though to some, not fast enough. The government for the city of 21,000 is now more reflective of its populace, which is two-thirds black. Four of the six City Council members are black, compared with just one in 2014. The police force that was overwhelmingly white in 2014 is now far more diverse.
The town has seen sweeping changes in the way the Police Department and municipal court operate. An ongoing agreement with the Justice Department requires even more reforms, and the monitor overseeing the agreement wants the pace to accelerate.
Behind all of that, a father still grieves.
“We share the same name,” Michael Brown Sr., 41, said of his son. “We have the same blood. He has no voice. I have the voice for him so I have to keep pushing.”
The cascade of events on Aug. 9, 2014, began with a chance encounter on the street.
Wilson had just left a home after a call about a sick baby when he drove by Brown and a friend, who were walking in the middle of Canfield Drive, a busy two-lane street. Wilson told them to use the sidewalk.
Words were exchanged, then Wilson noticed a pack of cigarillos in Brown’s hand. A radio dispatch had just reported the theft of cigarillos from a market. Wilson confronted Brown, who was unarmed.
The situation escalated in a flash. Brown reached into Wilson’s SUV, and a fight began. Wilson’s gun went off. Brown ran. Suddenly, the 6-foot-4, 290-pound teenager turned back toward Wilson, who later told investigators that Brown looked “psychotic” and “hostile.”
Wilson fired several shots, but Brown kept coming, the officer said, until the final shot to the head felled him.
Some people in the Canfield Green apartment complex initially said Brown had his hands up in surrender, stories that quickly spread on social media. Brown’s bloodied body lay on the street in the August heat for four hours, inciting even more anger.
The next night, as thousands attended a prayer vigil on Canfield, a much larger and angrier crowd gathered on nearby West Florissant Avenue. A QuikTrip convenience store was set on fire and soon, dozens of other businesses were looted, damaged or destroyed. Rocks and bottles were hurled at police officers. Police were so outnumbered they could only stand and watch.
Subsequent protests were met with a far larger police presence. Officers from throughout the St. Louis region showed up in armored vehicles, wearing riot gear and carrying military-style weapons.
Chris Phillips, a filmmaker who lived in Canfield Green at the time, was among many whose livestream video captured images of police using pepper spray, tear gas and batons in their clashes with protesters.
“I just think that the big presence of heavy artillery, with that kind of response, really upset people,” said Phillips, now 38.
Several months later, on Nov. 24, 2014, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch announced that a grand jury had declined to indict Wilson, and the violent protests started anew.
The anger in Ferguson went much deeper than Michael Brown’s death. Racial tension that simmered for decades began to boil.
Few metropolitan areas have suffered worse “white flight” than St. Louis. As white residents moved farther out, northern suburbs — known locally as North County — became increasingly populated with African Americans.
By 2014, two-thirds of Ferguson’s 21,000 residents were black, but the city’s leadership was virtually all white. The police force had just three black officers among 53 officers on the force. Black residents were far more likely to be pulled over and arrested than whites, and far more likely to face burdensome fines and court costs.
The following spring, in March 2015, the Justice Department also declined to indict Wilson but issued a report citing racial bias in Ferguson’s policing. The report also found that the municipal court used ticketing and court fees to generate revenue. Police Chief Tom Jackson was among the top leaders who resigned.
A year later, the City Council reached an agreement with the Justice Department requiring massive reforms overseen by a court-appointed monitor. That process is ongoing.
Among the changes: About half of the police force is now made up of black officers, and they’re led by a black chief, Jason Armstrong.
The problem is finding enough officers. Ferguson has 13 vacancies. Many departments across the country face similar shortages, but Mayor James Knowles III said the challenge is especially daunting in Ferguson, where police remain under a microscope.
“There are a lot of people, especially some of the best and brightest, who might have thought they may want a career in policing,” Knowles said. “They’re going to ask themselves the question, ‘Do I want to go through this, put my family through this?'”
Ferguson has seen a spike in homicides — nearly 30 in the past five years in a town where killings were once uncommon. Knowles believes criminals have become more brazen knowing police are hesitant to make traffic stops — the so-called “Ferguson effect.”
“When you’re not pulling people over, you’re not getting these guns off the street, you’re not seizing contraband and illegal weapons,” Knowles said.
Not everyone is sure that Ferguson is embracing change. Many black residents were angered when the longtime finance director, Jeffrey Blume, was appointed interim city manager earlier this year. The Justice Department report singled out Blume’s role in encouraging traffic fines as a revenue source.
“As a community we hear you loud and clear: You don’t care,” Felicia Pulliam, 54, told the City Council last month.
Knowles believes the agreement with the Justice Department sometimes hinders, rather than promotes, progress. He said the city has paid out more than $600,000 in monitor fees, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on legal costs would be better spent on improving policing.
“Instead of spending money on a $300-an-hour law firm, why shouldn’t I be spending that money on sending those officers to additional training?” Knowles asked.
The city’s monitor, Boston attorney Natashia Tidwell, gave Ferguson mixed reviews in a June report. She lauded the city for implementing a police use-of-force policy and cited progress in use of body-worn and in-car cameras. The review also gave generally high marks for municipal court reforms.
But Tidwell cited “sluggish” progress in community policing, officer training and data collection.
Ferguson is starting to look different. On West Florissant, the burned-out QuikTrip is long gone, replaced with a new $4 million building housing the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater St. Louis is building a teen center nearby, and a large new health care facility is also planned. Still, vacant lots and empty storefronts abound.
Susan Ankenbrand and her husband moved their family to Ferguson 44 years ago, at a time when other whites were heading the other direction, because they wanted to raise their kids in a diverse community. She acknowledged that the events of 2014 drove a racial wedge through the heart of Ferguson, leaving a wound that’s a long way from healed.
“We need to be able to talk to each other,” said Ankenbrand, 76. “So tell me how to do that.”
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