That's What SHE Said: a girls youth organization inspired by the Black Pathers, the nasty truth about what's living in your hotel room, the racial bias in drug abuse, putting a dozen kids through college, and more

Here are some things I read this week that made me think.  (These are just snippets - click on the title to read the whole thing.)


Berets, badges, Black Lives Matter and social justice: the youth group for activist girls of colour from The Guardian

"Dressed in berets and uniforms, the Radical Monarchs show us the neighbourhood where the Black Panther movement was born and meet veterans of the struggle against racism. The group was started by parents concerned that their daughters were being denied access to a fuller understanding of the issues affecting mostly black and Latino communities. The group, open to girls aged between eight and 12, aims to provide the same fun as other girl groups, while also building their pride in being young girls of colour and teaching respect for everyone else."

I’m Raising Them to Leave Me from Christen at ForEveryMom

"Then it hit me…
teachers are not given the freedom to teach these days,
their hands are often tied, and parents are constantly breathing down their necks.

We need to get out of the way and let teachers teach."

Invert. Always Invert! from Mr. TFR with 10! Ten Factorial Rocks

"Inversion doesn’t work everywhere, especially if the original question has only one or very few correct answers whereas the inverted question has many possible answers, which by process of tedious elimination, you finally arrive at the one answer which you would’ve easily got to by answering the original question. It also doesn’t work well in some “why” questions where the correct answer is an undisputed scientific fact. However, in many social, economic or managerial problems that have many interacting variables, inversion can be a very helpful tool to help us make the right decisions."

Infographic: The Dirtiest Surfaces in Hotel Rooms by Jake at Mental_Floss

The next time you’re traveling, you may want to try and avoid some of these germ-ridden hot spots. (Disclaimer: Hypochondriacs probably shouldn’t read any further.)

For a more detailed report of the study's findings, click here to read the full article.

10 Ways You’re Making Your Life Harder Than It Has To Be from Tim at Thought Catalog

"I have a bad habit of fast forwarding everything to its worst possible outcome and being pleasantly surprised when the result is marginally better than utter disaster or jail time. My mind unnecessarily wrestles with events that aren’t even remotely likely. My sore throat is cancer. My lost driver’s license fell into the hands of an al-Qaeda operative who will wipe out my savings account.

Negativity only breeds more negativity. It is a happiness riptide. It will carry you away from shore and if you don’t swim away from it, will pull you under."

The Media Treats White Drugs Users Like Angels Who Lost Their Way and Treats Black Drug Users Like Demons Who Must Be Returned to Hell by Son of Baldwin via Medium

"It’s like a scene out of a zombie movie, a horrible scene,’ said Brian Arthur, 38, who watched three people collapse as he made his way to work in the morning and began live-streaming the episode on Facebook. ‘This drug truly paralyzed people.’”

But when discussing any drug issue in white communities, care and empathy for white people are the driving forces.

You can almost hear the violins playing as they write about white drug users as though they are protagonists in some romance novel. White people are always afforded their humanity."

How I made sure all 12 of my kids could pay for college themselves from Francis Thompson via Quartz

"My wife and I had 12 children over the course of 15 1/2 years. Today, our oldest is 37 and our youngest is 22. I have always had a very prosperous job and enough money to give my kids almost anything. But my wife and I decided not to.....

Here’s what we did right (we got plenty wrong, too, but that’s another list)."

Source: That's What SHE Said: a girls youth organization inspired by the Black Pathers, the nasty truth about what's living in your hotel room, the racial bias in drug abuse, putting a dozen kids through college, and more