Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 85

Female firefighters defy old ideas of who can be an American hero

AP

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Five women graduated from New York City’s Fire Academy on April 18, bringing the number of women serving in the Fire Department of New York to 72 — the highest in its history.

The FDNY’s 2018 graduating class also includes the first son to follow his mother into the profession. She was one of the 41 women hired in 1982 after the department lost a gender discrimination lawsuit and was ordered to add qualified women to the force.

When Matthew Fiorito graduates to probationary firefighter, he will be following in the footsteps of his mother, Marianne Monahan, who was in the first FDNY class to include women in 1982 #FDNYWomen #InspiringNextGen #FDNYMom #LikeMotherLikeSon #FDNYFamily https://t.co/j1omz77R6s pic.twitter.com/Lk1ayuZDxL

— FDNY Women (@FDNYWomen) April 16, 2018

Despite these milestones, women still make up less than 1 percent of New York’s 11,000 firefighters. The city trails Minneapolis, San Francisco, Seattle and Miami, where in recent years fire squads have been more than 10 percent female. The national average hovers around 5 percent.

Approximately 10,300 women nationwide worked as full-time firefighters in 2016, according to the most recent data available from the Department of Labor. In 1983, there were just 1,700.

These women are on the front lines, fighting fires, helping victims of natural disasters and combating terrorism.

I interviewed over 100 female firefighters for an academic study of women in traditionally male industries. My research reveals how women are changing firehouse culture and transforming how Americans see heroism.

Two centuries of service

Women have been putting out fires in the U.S. for 200 years.

In 1815 Molly Williams joined New York City’s Oceanus Engine Company No. 11. Williams was a black woman enslaved by a wealthy New York merchant who volunteered at the firehouse. Williams would accompany the merchant to the station to cook and clean for the all-white, all-male crew.

One evening, the alarm rang at Oceanus No. 11. The men were incapacitated by the flu, so Williams grabbed the hand-pumped hose and answered the call alone. Her strength so impressed the men that they offered her a job.

In 1926, 50-year-old Emma Vernell became New Jersey’s first female firefighter when her husband, Harry, a volunteer fireman in the town of Red Bank, died in the line of duty.

Many more women took their husbands’ places in America’s volunteer fire service during World War II. By the mid-1940s, two Illinois military fire departments were “manned” entirely by women.

But the profession really opened up to women after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made it illegal for employers to discriminate against applicants based on sex, race, religion or nationality.

Strong, brave and invisible

Despite this history, I still hear claims that affirmative action for female firefighters is diluting standards and putting communities at risk.

Even my liberal colleagues have asked me whether women can really carry an unconscious victim out of a fire while wearing 100 pounds of gear.

The answer is yes.

In 2008, almost 70 percent of all aspiring female firefighters passed the national Candidate Physical Abilities Test, which tests for endurance, strength and cardiovascular health. The same year, 75 percent of male applicants passed.

Female success rates rise when departments offer specialized preparation programs for women to work out together, get hands-on experience with firefighting equipment, and follow individualized strength-training routines.

Critics have suggested to me that there aren’t more female firefighters because women are not interested in such a dangerous and “dirty” job.

Yet women are much better represented in fields that require a comparable level of strength and stamina, including drywall installation, logging and welding — though they remain minorities.

Women have also made more inroads in other historically male-dominated careers like aerospace engineering and medicine. Today, some 150 years after the first American woman entered medical school, in 1911, almost 35 percent of doctors are women.

Fear of change

So why are just 5 percent of firefighters female?

Based on research on gender integration in the U.S. military, I believe the main obstacle facing women in firefighting is its traditional culture.

Like soldiers, firefighters are viewed as proud warriors working on dangerous front lines. That image comes with powerful stereotypes about who’s best suited to do the work. Female soldiers and firefighters both challenge a cultural standard that men are heroes and women are onlookers, even victims.

The military first added women to its ranks in 1948. In December 2015, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter lifted the ban on women in combat roles — “[a]s long as they qualify and meet the standards” — despite opposition from the Marines.

Today, women still account for just 15 percent of active military personnel.

Firefighting too is a traditional field. Over the past decade, numerous departments have been found guilty of discriminating against applicants of color and ordered to retool entrance testing that had a disparate impact based on race.

Women are in some ways even more disruptive newcomers to firefighting because they entirely upend societal gender norms.

Workplace harassment

Interviewees have told me they face severe harassment on the job.

One found her oxygen tank drained. Another confided that her male colleagues are so hostile she fears they’ll leave her alone in a fire.

Female firefighters also contend with ill-fitting gear. The long fingers of male gloves affect their grip, they report. Boots and coats are too large. Oversized breathing masks push their loose helmets forward, blocking their vision during fires.

Station houses often lack of private spaces for women, including bathrooms, changing areas and dormitories.

In 2016, 34 years after women joined New York City’s fire department, the city boasted that . For three decades, some of New York’s bravest went to the bathroom in neighborhood diners. Many others just went ahead and used the men’s room.

Women winning

Female firefighters are succeeding anyway.

Several hundred have risen to the level of lieutenant or captain. Another 150 hold the highest rank, fire chief. That includes Chief JoAnne Hayes-White, whose historic 2004 hiring made San Francisco the world’s largest urban fire department led by a woman.

Meanwhile, these women are transforming how Americans imagine heroism.

One Wisconsin firefighter said people are surprised when her all-female crew pulls up to a blaze. But, she told me, “No one cares if you’re a woman when their house is on fire.”

A woman in San Francisco said she intentionally stands outside the station during down time so that neighborhood children realize that black women can be firefighters.

“You have to see it to be it,” she said.

Lorraine Dowler, Associate Professor of Geography and Women's Studies, Pennsylvania State University

Meet the world’s smartest baby monitor

Historically, baby monitors have been designed to point out the unpleasant, like loud noises when your little one is trying to sleep or crying coming from their crib when they’re teething. But parenting is about monitoring the good with the bad, and when you’re away from home, it’s reassuring to see the giggles that outweigh the tears. Invidyo’s baby monitor uses comprehensive Artificial Intelligence Technology to keep you more involved in your child’s day that a standard baby monitor would allow.

Invidyo calls itself the World’s Smartest Baby Monitor, and it has the credentials to back it up. Facial recognition technology recognizes your baby’s face and alerts you to unfamiliar faces, so you’ll know who is around your child. It recognizes facial expressions and snaps a photo whenever your baby smiles, saving it to a private Smile Album that you can share with family and friends. Other milestone moments are collated into a two-minute highlight reel every day, or you can receive notifications when they happen, so you won’t have to wade through hours of footage to see an exciting first.

Get as close to home as you can and experience the fun moments you’d otherwise miss with Invidyo: The World’s Smartest Baby Monitor. Pick it up for $169 (34% off the retail price).

Celebrate the new Han Solo Movie with these ice molds

For millions of light years, May 4th was just another spring day. But on May 4th, 1979, Margaret Thatcher took office as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and her political party placed a newspaper ad saying “May the Fourth Be With You, Maggie. Congratulations.” It was an odd beginning for what is now known as Star Wars Day, but it was a beginning nonetheless, and now Star Wars aficionados all over the world celebrate their fandom every year.

Star Wars fans are also no stranger to collectibles, and Millennium Falcon Ice Molds are a great way to show your allegiance to Han Solo and Chewy just in time for the release of Solo: A Star Wars Story on May 15th. The dual silicone mold creates two perfect frosty replicas of Solo’s speedy ship, so you can enjoy a cocktail with a fellow Rebel Alliance member (no Storm Troopers allowed).

Whether you’re throwing back cocktails on Corellia or sipping whiskey on your home planet, the Millennium Falcon Ice Molds keep your drinks cool and let you clink glasses with fellow fans on May 4th and beyond. They’re available for $9.99 — that’s 33% off the retail price of $14.99.

The March for Science was in fact a march for evidence

AP Photo/Sait Serkan Gurbuz

This article was originally published by Scientific American.

The March for Science in April 2017 was a unique demonstration of concern about the role of science and engineering in society and government. More than a million people in cities and towns around the world gathered in streets, made placards and banners, and heard speakers extoling the relevance and beauty of science — and also warning of diminished influence of science in policymaking. Some have dismissed the marchers as just another interest group advocating for more government funding for their work.

But the March, as I saw it and took part in it, represented something more: a significant change in how scientists see themselves and their work. This change had been slowly developing over recent decades and is now reaching a crescendo. Plans for another March for Science tomorrow indicate that the change among scientists is real, and that last year’s march was not simply a flash in the pan.

Scientists and friends of science are excited about recent progress in almost every scientific discipline. Whether it be observations of neutron star collisions, new findings on intergenerational epigenetic changes, macroscopic quantum entanglements, or human behavior, unprecedented scientific advances abound that will improve our future. Science marchers point to science as central to improving the human condition. At the same time, they are concerned about weakening public understanding and support of scientific research and the widespread neglect of scientific evidence. These concerns brought marchers to the streets in 2017 as much as pride in scientific accomplishments.

Signs, speeches, and chants at the 2017 March for Science demonstrated concerns about climate change, reduced environmental regulations, repeated failure of the government embrace and employ scientific findings, unpredictable research funding, and exclusion of scientist advisors from policy councils, among other issues. It was evident that marchers want more than recognition of great scientific advances and support for useful applications.

They want others in society — those who are not scientists, those who make public decisions — to recognize the power and effectiveness of evidence-based thinking. The marchers, most of whom have worked in science or related technical fields where collection, verification, and analysis of unbiased evidence is the principal goal, are frustrated by public decisions based on ideology or wishful thinking rather than verified evidence.

My experience at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general science membership organization, coincides with my observations about the March for Science. In addition to publishing journals of research, science news, and perspective and hosting programs of science in education, law, human rights, international affairs, and public policy, AAAS has for more than 150 years been an advocate for integrating good science into public life, society, and government.

In the past few years, we have engaged in more forceful and frequent advocacy, rephrasing our motto from “the voice for science” to “the force for science,” and after decades of slow decline in membership, our rolls have turned around dramatically. Our new members, who like our longtime members clearly value Science magazine, now say that they value even more our public advocacy and efforts to fully integrate science and engineering into society and government.

In short, we are seeing around the world — in marches, in scientific society membership, in civic participation — scientists joining with each other and turning outward. More and more scientists are leaving their cloistered labs and observatories, at least occasionally, and taking a constructive attitude toward seeking improvements in public health, environmental protection, education, and evidence-based policymaking.

What is the significance of the March for Science? It is scientists and friends of science saying they can, they should, and they will step into the public square. Previously that was unheard of. It is scientists in large numbers demonstrating to themselves and to others that engaging in public discussion is both appropriate and necessary. They are speaking up for science and evidence like never before.

That bossy GPS voice isn’t actually necessary for navigating

AP/Eric Risberg

This article originally appeared on Massive.

In Montreal, we have two seasons: winter and construction. And winter is nearly over. As road closures make our winding one-way streets even more difficult to navigate, it’s sometimes hard to imagine the days before apps like Google Maps helped recalculate your route. But if your iPhone is dead, it’s useful to remember: you’ve got a built-in backup for getting where you need to go. It’s called a cognitive map, and it is encoded deep inside your brain.

Long before we carried computers in our pockets, scientists were curious about how our brains process our surroundings in order to tell us where we are, and how to get to where we want to go. The concept of the cognitive map, a mental representation of our physical environment, was introduced by Edward Tolman, a professor at UC Berkeley, in 1948. He suggested that this allows us to make flexible decisions about navigating our environment, which is why it’s sometimes referred to as our “internal GPS.” When we encounter an obstacle, like streets closed for construction, our brains refer to our cognitive map to quickly adapt an alternate route on the fly. But new research published in Science suggests that how the brain represents distance within our cognitive map is more malleable than anyone previously realized.

In the early 1970s, John O’Keefe, a neuroscientist at the University College London, began recording the electrical activity of neurons in a region of the brain called the hippocampus. These recordings consist of a single neuron’s action potentials, the electrical signals that neurons use to communicate. (They sound like a series of popsof varying frequency — imagine making popcorn, or the finale of a fireworks display.) By using this technique to essentially eavesdrop on the hippocampus, O’Keefe discovered that some of the cells were pretty much silent most of the time.

But as rats moved through a maze, these quiet cells started to fire rapidly, each apparently linked to a specific geographical place. O’Keefe found that each of these many cells was only active in a separate location in the environment, which he called a place field. He hypothesized the place fields of these many neurons would represent every part of the animal’s environment; working together, they construct the animal’s cognitive map.

The next step was to establish how these place cells knew where and when to fire: O’Keefe still wanted to learn how the brain uses information from the world to establish and orient the cognitve map. In 1996, O’Keefe was briefly joined in his lab by May-Britt and Edvard Moser, then a pair of graduate students interested in learning how to make recordings of neurons from the hippocampus. The Mosers would soon return to Norway to begin their own laboratory. It was there, in 2005, that they discovered the medial entorhinal cortex — an area that is thought to send information to the hippocampus — also contained cells that seemed to encode spatial information.

Unlike place cells, which fire only in one specific place, each of the cells the Mosers discovered fired in multiple places. When the researchers increased the size of the rats’ arena, a pattern emerged: These new cells fired in a regular, hexagonal pattern as rats moved through the entire enclosure. The lattice-like firing pattern of these neurons led the Mosers to name them grid cells, and the Mosers thought that they might be providing the data that helped place cells determine when to fire as the rat moved into its place field in the cognitive map. (O’Keefe and the Mosers were jointly awarded the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine in 2014 for their discoveries.)

Initially, the scientists believed that grid cells’ rigid firing pattern was essentially an internal coordinate system, giving the cells the ability to assign a neural representation of any environment an animal might encounter —essentially providing the cognitive map its latitude and longitude. That’s in part because grid cells were originally only recorded in rats tested in standard, symmetrical environments like a large square or circular arena. But recently, Juilja Krupic, a researcher working with O’Keefe, found that irregular environments, like those we encounter in the real world, can actually change the way grid cells fire.

When a rat is moved from a square enclosure into a trapezoidal one, for example, the irregular shape of the environment effects how the rat’s grid cells fire, especially when the animal is close to the non-square walls. When the animal returns to squared intersections, the grid cells go back to a fixed, hexagonal firing pattern. This suggests that, in contrast to what was previously believed, the firing pattern of grid cells is actually malleable and responds to changes in the environment.

These new results also indicate that the information encoded by grid cells may be more complicated than a one-size-fits-all system used to assign distances. In turn, this raises questions about the relationship between place and grid cells. In fact, cells that respond to environmental borders like maze walls (aptly named ‘border cells’) may be playing a previously underappreciated, but important, role in controlling how grid cells fire.

These new rat studies provide insight at a cellular level about how we are able to navigate the world without Google Maps, but O’Keefe’s lab has also since made the translational jump into human research. An engineer, for example, removed all the guns and enemies from the first-person shooter video game Duke Nukem, creating a virtual environment for human test subjects to navigate while their brain activity was being monitored using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The results show the hippocampus — the same region of the brain that generates place signals in rats — is also active while human subjects navigate this virtual environment.

To move these findings out of video games and into the real world, Eleanor Maguire, a colleague of O’Keefe’s, studied the hippocampi of London taxi drivers, who need to pass a rigorous exam memorizing more than 25,000 streets in order to get their license. Maguire found that the prospective drivers’ hippocampi actually grow as they learn to navigate the streets of London. This supports the idea that, like rodents, our hippocampi are involved in constructing and maintaining our cognitive map, both of which can change as we learn about our environment.

The hippocampus is much more than just a part of our “internal GPS” — it is also intricately linked with how we form and store memories. (The hippocampus consolidates declarative memories, like facts or personal experiences, for long term memory storage.) Importantly, the hippocampus is also one of the first regions to be affected by neurodegenerative diseases. So researchers hope that continuing to learn how neurons — including grid cells, place cells, and border cells — interact to process spatial information may aid in the early detection of neurodegenerative disease.

The more we learn about this part of the brain, the more we’ll understand about how our brains process and respond to the ever-changing environment around us.

Sexbots aren’t the answer to misogynist incel rage

Getty/Fred Dufour

It's not because they're lonely. It's not because they can't get laid. It's the misogyny, stupid.

The last several days have brought a renewed rise in questions about incels — people who identify as "involuntary celibates" — after Alek Minassian, the suspect in a deadly April van attack in Toronto, was linked to the community. On the day of the attack, he posted on Facebook, "Wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan.... The Incel Rebellion has already begun! ... All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!" That was a reference to the shooter who killed four people in Isla Vista, California in 2014.

In a YouTube video before the carnage, Rodger had stated, "I've been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires all because girls have never been attracted to me. Girls gave their affection, and sex and love to other men but never to me."

Ask any female to talk about an experience she's had with male entitlement, and she'll likely be pressed to name just one. It manifests in that guy who goes from catcalling you to calling you an ugly bitch in the span of three sidewalk steps. It's the repulsive dudes who fancy themselves pick up artists, and believe in creeds like "Diss Fatties Bang Hotties." It's the manager at work who says you should smile more. And on the grand scale, it's the men so enraged that women may not choose to have sex with them that they kill them. So no, Ross Douthat, I don't think your fanciful case for sex robots is the answer here.

Loathe as I ever am to invoke Douthat's brand of singular not-getting-itness, his New York Times column this week — followed by a doozy of a tweet-splain thread — merited special eye rolling. In his Wednesday plea for "The Redistribution of Sex," Douthat made a weary proposal for "sex robots" and asked, "If we are concerned about the just distribution of property and money, why do we assume that the desire for some sort of sexual redistribution is inherently ridiculous?" Because it is.

Grotesquely, the inspiration for this dystopian vision was "the recent terrorist violence in Toronto, in which a self-identified 'incel' — that is, involuntary celibate — man sought retribution against women and society for denying him the fornication he felt that he deserved." First of all, I feel like maybe Douthat doesn't fully understand the meaning of fornication in this context. Second, whaaaaaat?

He went on to cite Amia Srinivasan's recent London Review of Books essay that asked, "Does anyone have the right to sex?" and noted her discussion of "groups with whom The London Review’s left-leaning and feminist readers would have more natural sympathy — the overweight and disabled, minority groups treated as unattractive by the majority, trans women unable to find partners and other victims, in her narrative, of a society that still makes us prisoners of patriarchal and also racist-sexist-homophobic rules of sexual desire."

It's really something the way Douthat can barely hold his nose to mention the monstrous "left leaning and feminist" among us, but it's outstanding that he can then go on to leap from "the overweight and disabled" to internet trolls.

You want to have a conversation about sexual agency for marginalized groups, I am there for it. Surrogacy, self-pleasure, community: awesome. We are all entitled to healthy, safe, consensual sexual expression. But (grudgingly hoists megaphone): YEAH, THESE GUYS DON'T WANT THAT.

This isn't rocket science. Men who idolize mass murderers do so because they hate women. They feel they have a right to their bodies. It enrages them when women do not behave in a sexually conciliatory way toward them. It enrages them that other men can obtain what they cannot, because they don't see sex as a mutually pleasurable experience but as a reward they have been deprived of. They see themselves apart from the "Chads and Stacies" and "normies" — their version of the popular kids — and take comfort in posting memes about evil females and their precious man spaces. Oh, no, you've got us all wrong, they argue, I just want a nice girlfriend, and why can't these ungrateful bitches understand that?

Douthat's willful ignorance is telling. He hilariously believes that "The sexual revolution created new winners and losers, new hierarchies to replace the old ones, privileging the beautiful and rich and socially adept in new ways and relegating others to new forms of loneliness and frustration." Because nobody wanted to screw good-looking people before disco and the Pill were invented. He sees the sexual economy in blanket terms, ignoring that the perpetrators of mass violence are generally not, say, women in wheelchairs. He visualizes "commerce and technology . . . harnessed, as already in pornography, to address the unhappiness of incels." My dude, these guys don't want to BUY sex. They want to be GIVEN sex. A big part of the incel mindset is a revulsion of women who are sexually independent. As Jennifer Wright noted recently in Harper's Bazaar, "There’s a lot of slut-shaming." No hypothetical robot is going to cure that.

Not content to let one dumpster fire of a column be sufficient word salad for the week, Douthat then followed up his thoughts on Twitter, magnanimously offering to explain his ideas in a manner "less amenable to misinterpretation." According to Douthat, "The 'incel' phenomenon isn't just reducible to its toxic violent misogynistic form; there's a large sexless population (not just young and male but female, older, gay, etc.) caught in a psychic vice btw the culture's obsession w/sex and its absence from their lives."

2. This means the "incel" phenomenon isn't just reducible to its toxic violent misogynistic form; there's a large sexless population (not just young and male but female, older, gay, etc.) caught in a psychic vice btw the culture's obsession w/sex and its absence from their lives.

— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) May 3, 2018

Pokemon Go was a "phenomenon." This is not that. And remind me the last time an elderly lesbian committed a mass murder because she felt lonely? Just please go take a look at what these guys are actually talking about, in any of their sad little internet hidey-holes. Look at their fury at women. Their distrust of them. Their rage that women don't respond to them in the manner they want.

It's fair to say that a great portion of the adult human population finds itself at one time or another going through what we used to call back in the day "a dry spell." The frustrated longing for companionship, for partnered sexual pleasure, is such a universal desire that it's the plot of roughly half of all movies. But mentally healthy people — whatever their age, size or physical abilities — figure out how to deal with it in appropriate ways.

In much the same way that the story of the Golden State killer suspect quickly became a tale of how a breakup with his fiancée spurred ten years of multiple rapes and murders, the story of men like Alek Minassian and Elliot Rodger has already been perverted to one in which gender-based terrorism is indicative of what Douthat tellingly calls "our widespread isolation and unhappiness and sterility." Hot take: Women, especially when they're setting boundaries around unstable, dangerous people, don't make men turn into mass murderers.

Plenty of rapists and sexual abusers have wives and girlfriends. Violence that is based on animosity toward women is not about desire or loneliness. It's about power and control. Access to a body — human or not — doesn't fix deep rooted pathology. And if it were just one overpaid New York Times blowhard who didn't understand that, maybe it wouldn't matter so much. But this notion that if we just accommodated these fellows, just understood them and were nice to them and gave them what they demand, is part and parcel of a little something we like to call rape culture. And sex workers, porn stars, all the Stacies in the world and even assembly line sexbots are not responsible for or to pathetic, angry men.

The emotional labor of being a Kanye West fan is not paying off

Getty/Dimitrios Kambouris

Kanye West is a longtime champion of offering up “new ideas,” as he raps in his newly released single “Ye vs. the People.” The Chicago rapper has proven to be outspoken throughout his career, growing more and more free with sharing his ideas over time. Celebrities' public opinions more often than not don’t come packaged with a line of reason, but Kanye’s most recent reemergence on Twitter has still left many puzzled.

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve watched one of the rap game’s top provocateurs reemerge on Twitter after a year-long hiatus. He started with show-and-tell, posting photos of his most recent line of Yeezus apparel and news of upcoming production credits, including the release of his album. Then his tweets became erratic. Less than a week after his return, West praised YouTuber Candace Owens, an African-American Trump supporter who regularly criticizes the Black Lives Matter movement. In his latest frenzy of tweets, he’s also professed his love for President Donald Trump, claimed Yeezus’ success has outpaced that of Jordan Brand and bashed former President Barack Obama for the perceived shortcoming of not fixing all of Chicago’s problems while he was in office.

Lately, the rapper’s public journal entrees seem to serve no other purpose than trolling those most invested in his career, particularly the African-American community.

Many fans who have paid attention to key moments in his personal life, such as his nearly fatal car accident, the death of his mother and his marriage to Kim Kardashian, have, up until this point, continued to forgive Kanye for his failings. He was the crazy cousin we still loved from a distance, and we remained invested in his narrative as we attempted to understand each stage in the evolution of his new ideas.

Now, though, the relationship has shifted — we’ve gone from parsing groundbreaking concepts to having emotional labor forced upon us. This time, however, we have found ourselves unprepared to shoulder the burden of helping Kanye manage his feelings and answer what is perhaps a cry for help in managing his celebrity status, which has been compounded by his marriage to the internet-shattering Kim Kardashian.

It’s not Kanye having a new idea that offends us, it’s his adoption of a colonized way of thinking that appears to employ his celebrity and marriage to the Kardashians as an excuse for wearing a “white mask,” as philosopher Frantz Fanon calls it, attempting to adopt not only the identity but the language of the oppressor as well.

Kanye didn’t always wear the mask. For a long time he was still “a nigga in a coupe,” a man who had obtained material status and wealth but remained somewhat relatable. In 2005, about four days after Hurricane Katrina left New Orleans devastated, West, frustrated by the government’s failure to help the city’s most vulnerable victims, looked straight into a TV camera and boldly stated what so many felt: “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” He also memorably stormed onto the VMAs stage in 2009 while Taylor Swift was giving the acceptance speech for her victory in the Best Female Video category, saying, “Yo Taylor, I'm really happy for you, I'll let you finish, but Beyoncé has one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!"

These controversial outbursts were, at their heart, expressions of advocacy for his community. Throughout the years, Kanye has also used his platform to create opportunities and visibility for other black artists, including Chance the Rapper, Vic Mensa and Teyana Taylor.

So Kanye wearing a red Make America Great Again hat in public and professing his love for Trump, a president whose policies and commentary have proven to be anti-black, comes across as not just a betrayal to his black fans but to his historical self, too.

As the Kanye backlash continues, some fans have unfollowed him, while fellow celebrities like John Legend have reached out to help. A flood of memes and gifs memorializing the old Kanye — who once rattled off lines like, “I know that the government administer AIDS” — followed. This switch of political allegiance left fans begging for answers — perhaps ones we are not owed, but feel entitled to nevertheless, because we have invested so much of ourselves into his story, and we want Kanye to bring these thoughts full circle and fully flesh them out, the way he does with his verses.

Earlier this week, Kanye attempted to offer some clarity on his provocative tweets in a nearly-two hour radio interview with The Breakfast Club’s Charlamagne tha God. During the discussion he opened up about his mental health, family and his art. He explained how Trump represents to him the idea that anything is possible. He also suggested that he uses anyone around him, including his Twitter followers, to hash out his thoughts, instead of a therapist.

Following his talk with Charlamagne, he then showed up at TMZ headquarters, where he said, "When you hear about slavery for 400 years . . .  For 400 years? That sounds like a choice." He went on to say, "you were there for 400 years and it's all of y'all. It's like we're mentally imprisoned."

Here Kanye sounds, ironically enough, like nothing so much as unbridled white male privilege, presenting a distorted mirror image of Trump’s Twitter-Commando-in-Chief style of leadership. His comment was ahistorical and devoid of cultural sensitivity, as if he was turning his back not only on the African-American community but on his own blackness. This “new idea” can be perceived as anti-black emotional labor.

While Twitter is a great place to try out new ideas, it’s unfair for Kanye to expect his fans in the African-American community to shoulder the burden of this unpaid and thankless emotional labor. We constantly have to absorb the emotional labor placed on us by people with poor mental health hygiene. Brash commentary, unrealistic demands, egotistical claims — there is often an unspoken expectation that someone will devise a workaround to these behaviors. Kanye has resources — both financial and creative — to deal out his “new ideas” in a less intrusive and more productive manner, and yet he's dumping his problems in our laps like an irresponsible coworker.

His expectation that we'll just allow him to troll us with cutting words and actions without considering us or his historical self is unrealistic. We've given him numerous chances to explain himself. He has crossed the line in a way many aren't equipped or willing to handle this time, and he might find himself canceled instead of understood.

Forget sustainable farming — regenerative agriculture is the new frontier

Peter Byck

“This Farm Is Medicine,” about Murray Provine, a businessman who turned to progressive farming after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, is another thought-provoking chapter in director Peter Byck’s “Soil Carbon Cowboys” documentary series, which is breaking new ground, getting the word out about the regenerative farm movement.

You can watch the full documentary "This Farm Is Medicine" on Salon Premium, our new ad-free, content-rich app. Here's how. 

Salon spoke with Byck before, about “One Hundred Thousand Beating Hearts,” and here we talk about this brave new farming world with adaptive-multi-paddock grazing expert Allen Williams, who is featured in “This Farm is Medicine.”

Please explain what you do as a consultant to those of us who doesn't know the first thing about sustainable farming.  

I am a partner in three different businesses — Soil Health Consulting, LLC; Joyce Farms, Inc.; and Standard Soil. All three inter-relate in many ways. In our consulting business, we work with farmers and ranchers, branded food companies, processors, NGO's, conservation groups, consumer groups and others to teach regenerative agriculture principles and practices, soil and ecosystem health, and how to produce high attribute foods. We do this through a combination of individual consulting, academies, workshops, conferences, webinars, films, etc. In working with producers, we help them first change their minds — an important first step as you cannot change your practices without first understanding what has been going wrong. We then present the principles and foundation, provide very practical step-by-step methods of transitioning their operations to regenerative practices, enhance their marketing and improve quality of life. In short, we start by giving them hope.

What are the short and long term costs for a conventional farmer switching over to sustainable farming?

The short answer to this is that "it depends." The costs for transitioning are variable, depending on where they are at currently. Everyone starts at a different place. The first cost that has to be recognized and dealt with is the human dynamics. Farmers and ranchers can be very traditional and conventional, and they exert moderate to extreme peer pressure on each other. Even within families. This peer pressure causes many to "count the costs" of making the transition. Their neighbors, or own family members, may make fun of them, call them idiots, environmentalists, tree huggers, etc. They may even be ostracized. This is the first cost and the hardest hurdle to get over. The financial costs are actually far easier to handle than the human dynamic costs. Done right and in a step-wise fashion, the costs of transitioning are minimal, and many can improve net margins within the first one to three years.

On a national and/or local level, can you describe the popularity of sustainable farming? 

I will talk in terms of regenerative farming. Sustainable farming simply means maintaining status quo. Why would we want to do that? It does not make sense to maintain an already degraded resource. The interest in regenerative ag is rapidly growing, not just in the U.S., but globally. We have seen exponential growth in the past 10 years. It is growing so rapidly that we simply cannot keep up with demand for consulting and speaking. That being said, we are still only reaching 5 percent of the total farming population. To reach more, we need to be able to effectively train and equip others to work directly with farmers to do some "hand holding" during the transition process.

How would you describe Murrary Provine as a client?  

Murray has been a model client. He latched on to our adaptive management principles very quickly and was determined to make significant changes on his farm. He has been a quick study and a pleasure to work with. He has made amazing progress and made very positive changes.

How'd you feel being filmed by Peter Byck?  

This film is one of several that I have been a part of with Peter. Peter does a fantastic job with filming people. He makes everyone feel at ease and understands how to guide folks towards what really needs to be filmed. I have been a part of numerous films and interviews, so the process is not new to me.

Are you a documentary fan? Can you name a few of your favorites? 

I enjoy well-made, impactful documentaries. “The Soil Carbon Cowboys” series has been very good, as have others such as “Sustainable,” etc. The most impactful have actually been videos by the leaders in this space such as Gabe Brown, Greg Judy, Ray Archuleta, Dave Brandt, Ian Mitchell-Innes and many others.

Check out one man’s back-to-the-land movement toward a better life in “This Farm is Medicine,” on Salon Premium, our new ad-free, content-rich app.

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Judge to Mueller: You’re using Manafort to get to Trump

AP/Andrew Harnik

The courtroom was tense on Friday during the hearing for Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's former campaign chairman who is being charged with bank fraud, among other crimes.

According to CNN, presiding Judge T.S. Ellis III expressed “deep skepticism” over the bank fraud case against Manafort. Judge Ellis went as far as to question Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s motives, claiming that he’s using Manafort as a pawn in his plan to oust President Donald Trump from office.

“You don't really care about Mr. Manafort's bank fraud," Ellis said to prosecutor Michael Dreeben, who is also deputy solicitor general.

While struggling to tamp down his temper (according to CNN), Ellis reportedly continued to claim that prosecutors were going after Manafort because of the opportunity it could bring to provide materials that would end in Trump’s “prosecution or impeachment."

"That's what you're really interested in," Ellis said.

"We don't want anyone in this country with unfettered power. It's unlikely you're going to persuade me the special prosecutor has power to do anything he or she wants," Ellis continued. "The American people feel pretty strongly that no one has unfettered power."

Dreeben reportedly answered Ellis’ question “about how the investigation and its charges date back to before the Trump campaign formed,” according to CNN, to which Ellis then fired back: "None of that information has to do with information related to Russian government coordination and the campaign of Donald Trump."

According to CNN, Ellis ordered Mueller's prosecutors to hand over an unredacted version of an August 2 memo, the one in which Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein described the criminal investigations Mueller is authorized to investigate.

Manafort has been indicted in two different venues — in Washington, DC, in October, and on additional charges in Virginia from February. Today’s hearing was for the Virginia case, in which Manafort is facing counts of filing false income tax returns, failure to report foreign bank and financial accounts, and bank fraud.

Manafort and his former business associate, Rick Gates, are also facing 12 criminal charges, including conspiracy against the United States, money laundering, failure to register as a foreign agent and knowingly making false statements under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The indictment report alleges that more than $75 million moved through offshore accounts that Manafort and Gates established during the time Manafort was Trump’s campaign manager during the summer of 2016.

The Washington Post corroborated the tensions in a separate report about the hearing:

Ellis said the government wanted Manafort ... "[to] sing.” The judge put it another way, saying the special counsel set out to “turn the screws and get the information you really want.

According to the Washington Post, Ellis is “known to be tough on attorneys in court.”

“Judge Ellis has high expectations from counsel on both sides of any issue,” Timothy Belevetz, a former prosecutor in the Eastern District now with the firm Holland & Knight, told the Washington Post. “His interactions with counsel in the courtroom do not necessarily reflect where he’ll end up coming out, because he’s a thoughtful judge who takes into account and carefully analyzes what’s presented to him. But in the meantime, he probes counsel and does so thoroughly.”

Ellis was appointed by President Ronald Reagan. However, Trump has been making an effort to appoint more federal judges; the Los Angeles Times reported that he is is ranked sixth among 19 presidents who have appointed the highest number of federal judges in their first year of presidency.

Meet the 20-year-old Republican with an environmental agenda

YouTube

This post originally appeared on Grist.

Benji Backer had just entered hostile territory. But the 20-year old conservative environmentalist walked through the University of California, Berkeley radiating such sunny confidence that he could have powered a solar panel. When Backer announced that he would be speaking at the school in April, Twitter denizens considered shutting down his talk. That wasn’t long after several conservative speakers were greeted in Berkeley by protesters — some armed with molotov cocktails.

If speaking loudly about his conservatism over coffee at the Free Speech Movement Cafe caused Backer any apprehension, he hid it well. Backer’s grin seemed tailor-made for a toothpaste commercial, and every strand on his blond head remained unruffled.

Backer is the founder of the American Conservation Coalition, a group of youngsters who aim to give conservatives an environmental vision to rally around. He runs it while attending college at the University of Washington. It’s a crucial moment for organizations like this: The Trumpian Republican party is in the messy stage of metamorphosis where the caterpillar turns to goo before reassembling. Many uncertain Republicans are looking to younger people to tell them what’s coming. Conservation is what’s coming, said Backer.

There’s a reason that Backer was so comfortable at Berkeley while saying things like “I see myself as a Mitt Romney conservative.” He’s spent the last decade expressing unpopular opinions. While growing up in Wisconsin, Backer declared himself a conservative at the age of 10, and was soon scrapping with his teachers over Governor Scott Walker, then in the middle of a battle with with teachers’ unions. An article he wrote about these classroom clashes got him an invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (better known as CPAC), which, in turn, launched him into the constellation of conservative rising stars. He found they weren’t much like the old guard.

“I would bump into the other young people at CPAC and these other meetings, and they all had a couple things in common: None of them really wanted to talk about gay marriage,” Backer said, “and they all really cared about the environment.”

Republicans used to lead on conservation. Think of Teddy Roosevelt a century ago, or even Richard Nixon, the greenest president ever, according to Greenpeace and the Union of Concerned Scientists. “How did that get lost? Why didn’t the conservative movement focus on the environment,” Backer asked.

This idea that Republicans could find a new North Star in conservation is spreading. Backer’s coalition has 32 people organizing across 21 states, and 38 of the 50 state College Republican chairs have signed on to his organization’s vision. Backer is talking with people at the Republican National Committee in hopes of changing the party’s platform and collaborating with several Republican campaigns around the country. In just the past year, he’s been to Trump’s White House, the Department of the Interior, and the EPA to talk with officials about how best to promote a conservative environmental agenda.

That agenda involves a lot of discussion about innovation and clean energy, but unlike the Students for Carbon Dividends, another conservative group, the American Conservation Coalition rejects big government solutions for climate change. It’s just too polarizing, Backer said.

“If you try to talk about climate change you are going to lose 80 percent of conservatives,” he said, “because when they think of climate change they think of the far left, and Al Gore, who they hate.”

Backer once supported a carbon tax, but the American Conservation Coalition has been strictly neutral on that policy. Still, Backer’s flirtation with the idea was enough to garner a rebuke from anti-tax absolutist Grover Norquist, on Twitter.

The latest "conservative" group pushing a carbon tax is @ACC_National.
Reminder: raising taxes isn't free market or conservative.

— Grover Norquist (@GroverNorquist) October 9, 2017

So far, Backer’s efforts on conservation have drawn ire and praise from the right and a shrug from the left. The protesters who had promised to shut him down on Twitter didn’t show up at his talk in Berkeley last week. But when conference attendees heard that the next panel was just a bunch of conservatives talking about climate change, half the room stood up and walked out.