CULTURE – Page 7

Bans To Benefits On The Outside, Ex-Prisoners Are Going Hungry Amid Barriers

2Jun

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CULTURE

Bans To Benefits On The Outside, Ex-Prisoners Are Going Hungry Amid Barriers

Around 600,000 people are released annually from the U.S.‘s sprawling prisons network. Many face considerable barriers as a result of their convictions when it comes to essentials in life, like getting a job or a home. It can even be harder to feed themselves. Formerly incarcerated people are twice as likely to suffer food insecurity as the general population, with 1 in 5 ex-prisoners finding it difficult to obtain regular, nutritious meals. A 2013 survey of recently released prisoners came up with an even more stark finding: More than 90% were food insecure. Of the more than 100 formerly incarcerated people included in that study, 37% reported that they did not eat anything for a whole day at one point in the previous month. Lifelong ban on benefits Compounding the problem is that some ...

Police Body Cameras Can Invade People’s Privacy But Help Monitor Police

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CULTURE, Journalism, VIDEO REELS

Police Body Cameras Can Invade People’s Privacy But Help Monitor Police

In the course of their work, police officers encounter people who are intoxicated, distressed, injured or abused. The officers routinely ask for key identifying information like addresses, dates of birth and driver’s license numbers, and they frequently enter people’s homes and other private spaces. Police see some difficult scenes; body cameras can record those and make them public. Tony Webster via Flickr, CC BY-SA With the advent of police body cameras, this information is often captured in police video recordings – which some states’ open-records laws make available to the public. Starting in the summer of 2014, as part of research on police adoption of body-worn cameras within two agencies in Washington state, I spent hours riding in patrol vehicles, hanging out at police stations, ...

A Place For Trans Youth To Find One Another And Explore Coming Out Was Created By The Early Internet

25May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CULTURE, LGBTQ

A Place For Trans Youth To Find One Another And Explore Coming Out Was Created By The Early Internet

Follow coverage of trans issues, and you’ll hear some people say that teens who change their gender identity are participating in a fad, and that social media is the culprit. As one proponent of legislation that would restrict access to care for trans teens claimed, social media platforms are where trans youths are falsely “convinced” that their feelings of identifying as a gender other than the one assigned to them at birth – known as gender dysphoria – are valid. These fears of Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok as breeding grounds for instilling gender dysphoria in young people recall other moral panics over new media, from the Victorian-era paranoia that serialized stories called “penny dreadfuls” were going to incite a youth crime wave to 20th-century anxiety over children’s exposure to v...

21May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CULTURE

When The First Baby Is Born In Space

When the first baby is born off-Earth, it will be a milestone as momentous as humanity’s first steps out of Africa. Such a birth would mark the beginning of a multi–planet civilization for the human species. A permanent Moon colony could become a reality in a few decades. NASA/Dennis Davidson/WikimediaCommons For the first half-century of the Space Age, only governments launched satellites and people into Earth orbit. No longer. Hundreds of private space companies are building a new industry that already has US$300 billion in annual revenue. I’m a professor of astronomy who has written a book and a number of articles about humans’ future in space. Today, all activity in space is tethered to the Earth. But I predict that in around 30 years people will start living in space – and soon afte...

The Sex Scene, It’s Simply Shifting From Clichéd Fantasy To Messy Reality – It Isn’t Disappearing

20May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CULTURE, VIDEO REELS

The Sex Scene, It’s Simply Shifting From Clichéd Fantasy To Messy Reality – It Isn’t Disappearing

Writing during what seems – in retrospect – to have been the wildly carefree summer of 2019, Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday lamented that “sex is disappearing from the big screen.” Fast forward two years, and, improbably enough, it’s conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat who’s pleading for “sex and romance [to] make a comeback at the movies.” Both commentators blame this sexual stagnation on what they see as an abstinence-only policy in Hollywood, fueled by the Weinstein effect on one hand and family-friendly franchise fever on the other, where libidinal energy has been sublimated into buff-yet-sexless superheroes. To Hornaday and Douthat, sexual prudence seems to be tipping into prudery. Hornaday and Douthat are correct that the traditional sex scene – a tasteful...

The Discomfort We Have Over Hearing Our Voices

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CULTURE, Journalism

The Discomfort We Have Over Hearing Our Voices

As a surgeon who specializes in treating patients with voice problems, I routinely record my patients speaking. For me, these recordings are incredibly valuable. They allow me to track slight changes in their voices from visit to visit, and it helps confirm whether surgery or voice therapy led to improvements. Yet I’m surprised by how difficult these sessions can be for my patients. Many become visibly uncomfortable upon hearing their voice played back to them. “Do I really sound like that?” they wonder, wincing. (Yes, you do.) Some become so unsettled they refuse outright to listen to the recording – much less go over the subtle changes I want to highlight. The discomfort we have over hearing our voices in audio recordings is probably due to a mix of physiology and psychology. For o...

Know The Different Types Of Astrology Services

24Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CULTURE

Know The Different Types Of Astrology Services

Most of us often feel bad about things not getting in place and something or the other happening to us which are not good. We wonder why such things happen to us. I know a friend of mine who was suffering from acute illness. Her family almost sold everything they had to meet the hospital expenses. Today, she is well, but she often recalls those hospital days and asks me why such bad luck came to her and her family. My best friend's dad is an astrologer and he tells bad luck come to us because of faults in our horoscope. However, his dad says astrology can resolve all kinds of problems be it financial, personal, marriage related or job issues. Astrology is a science that involves studying of positions of the sun, moon and the stars at the time of your birth. An astrologer closely studi...

Changing How People See The World – Netflix’s Big Bet On Foreign Content And International Viewers Could Upend The Global Mediascape

7Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CULTURE, VIDEO REELS

Changing How People See The World – Netflix’s Big Bet On Foreign Content And International Viewers Could Upend The Global Mediascape

As a kid growing up in Italy, I remember watching the American TV series “Happy Days,” which chronicled the 1950s-era Midwestern adventures of the Fonz, Richie Cunningham and other local teenagers. The show, combined with other American entertainment widely available in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, shaped my perception of the United States long before I ever set foot in the country. Today, I call the U.S. home, and I have developed my own understanding of its complexities. I am able to see “Happy Days” as a nostalgic revival of an ideal, conflict-free American small town. “Happy Days” was a product of Hollywood, which is arguably still the epicenter of the global entertainment industry. So recent news that the streaming service Netflix is opening an Italian office and will begin massive...

Thanks To Pop Culture Space Force Sounds Like A Joke – That Could Be A Problem For An Important Military Branch

16Mar

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CULTURE

Thanks To Pop Culture Space Force Sounds Like A Joke – That Could Be A Problem For An Important Military Branch

The U.S. Space Force has a serious role to play in the modern world. Its stated mission is to train and equip personnel to defend U.S. interests in space. Given the increasing military and economic importance of space, the USSF is likely to grow in importance. But a quick internet search shows that for most people, the Space Force is more a meme than a military branch. It has been the subject of jokes on “Saturday Night Live,” and Netflix was working on a comedy show before the service was officially formed. None other than Captain Kirk himself, actor William Shatner, has weighed in, arguing for the use of Navy ranks over Air Force ranks in the Space Force – after all, he wasn’t Colonel Kirk. Given this relationship between science fiction and the USSF, few people take it seriously. Mode...

The Cultural Obsession With Six-Pack Abdominals

15Mar

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

CULTURE

The Cultural Obsession With Six-Pack Abdominals

The cultural obsession with six-pack abdominals shows no signs of abating. And if research into male body image is to be believed, it will likely only grow, thanks to social media. Today, there’s an entire industry centered on obtaining – and maintaining – chiseled abs. They’re the subject of books and social media posts, while every action movie star seems to sport them. Pressure is also mounting on women to sport six-pack abs as body ideals for athletic women have evolved. All of this raises the question, when did the six-pack craze start? It may seem like a relatively recent phenomenon, a byproduct of the fitness culture boom in the 1970s and 1980s, when Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rambo reigned, and men’s muscle mags and aerobics took off. History proves otherwise. In fact, Western c...