Friday, June 19

Tag: black

Fortnite’s black hole teases the future of entertainment
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VIDEO GAMES

Fortnite’s black hole teases the future of entertainment

As audiences have embraced on-demand video services, algorithmic feeds, and an ever-growing number of digital “things to do,” our collective attentions have become hyper-fragmented. Yet we know that audiences actually love shared live experiences. Jeopardy is more fun watched with others. Movies are funnier in a packed theater. It’s hard to enjoy sporting events that happened hours earlier The durability of this appeal spans generations: Boomers watched the moon landing together, Generation X witnessed the end of M*A*S*H, and millennials recently collectively viewed (and complained about) the ending to Game of Thrones. Each generation might prefer different content, but we all love to watch it together and live. There’s no better proof of these two points than the recent #FortniteBlackout...
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TECH

Black Friday just came early for the smart Instant Pot with Wi-Fi and Alexa

Well what do we have here, bargain hunters!? If you’ve been toying with the idea of getting an Instant Pot or you have an old model in desperate need of an upgrade, today is definitely your lucky day. The Instant Pot Smart Wifi 6 Quart Multi-use Electric Pressure Cooker is pretty much the cream of the crop, offering all the cooking modes you love as well as Wi-Fi connectivity so you can control it with an app on your smartphone or even with Alexa. It’s worth every penny and more at its normal price of $150, but it just got the biggest discount we’ve ever seen! Here’s the key info from the product page: REPLACES UP TO 8 KITCHEN APPLIANCES: Combines 8 kitchen appliances in 1 with 13 smart programs to save you space, including: pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice/porridge cooker, yogurt ma...
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TECH

Xiaomi Black Shark 2 review: An affordable flagship gaming phone

Gaming phones are an ancient idea. Nokia released the N-Gage, which was like a phone built into a game controller, in 2003. And it didn’t do very well. But the concept has made a resurgence recently thanks to devices from Razer, Asus, and Xiaomi. Now, Xiaomi has launched its second-generation gaming phone called the Black Shark 2. The Black Shark 2 has a suite of features that make it a great way to play games on the go. It’s also affordable, starting at $420 for the version with 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM. But I’m less convinced than ever that anyone really needs a gaming phone even if this a great example of the form. What you’ll like Nice design for smartphone gaming I used the Black Shark 2 to play a variety of games, and it was comfortable relative to other smartphones. And a...
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VIDEO REELS

Outrage in US as photo shows police leading black man by a rope

Critics demand dismissal of officers involved in 'racist' incident saying Texas police chief's apology was inadequate. An NAACP official says the police have an obligation to explain the officers' actions to the public [Courtesy: Adrienne Bell/Twitter] Outrage has erupted across the United States after a photo of two white police officers mounted on horseback walking a handcuffed black man by a rope - recalling the long history of violence, slavery and racism against African Americans during the era of segregation - went viral. Vernon Hale, the police chief of the US city of Galveston in Texas state, issued an apology following the incident, but his statement drew more criticism for being "weak". Hale said the black man in the photo, Donald Neely, who was ...
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AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES

How This Black Entrepreneur Went From Homelessness to Housing Others

With help from a business incubator, Tyrone Poole created a platform to help people on low incomes find housing. Collapse and regeneration are experiences Tyrone Poole knows intimately. There was that period back in 2006 when he was homeless—that moment when, on crutches and in excruciating pain, Poole found himself staggering into the bus station in Portland, Oregon, where he collapsed on a bench and threw up. That was how a policeman found him that night and later took him to the YMCA homeless shelter, where he got a cot on the gym floor. Everything he owned was in a bag under the bed. What had led to Poole’s downslide was medical debt. He’d completed his associate degree at Portland Community College and was training to be a firefighter when he suffered a debilitating i...
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VIDEO REELS

Chicago cops acquitted of cover-up charge in black teen’s killing

Relatives of Laquan McDonald, killed in 2014, call ruling step backwards for black community's fight for justice. Reverend Marvin Hunter: 'To say that these men are not guilty is to say that Jason Van Dyke is not guilty' [Noreen Nasir/AP] Activists and relatives of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager in the United States who was killed by a white police officer more than four years ago, have decried a court ruling that acquitted three current and former Chicago officers of conspiring to protect a white colleague by lying about the circumstances around the fatal shooting. The October 2014 killing of 17-year-old McDonald, which was captured on police video, triggered months of protests and became emblematic of long-standing police abuse in Chicago, the country...
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VIDEO REELS

US exhibition brings to light historic bombing of black church

A black church in Birmingham was bombed 55 years ago, killing four children and triggering violence around the US. An exhibition in the United States is trying to bring new perspective to an event that proved to be a turning point in the struggle for civil rights. Fifty-five years ago a black church in the southern city of Birmingham was bombed, killing four African American girls and unleashing a wave a violence in many parts of the country.   Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi reports.
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VIDEO REELS

Will Congressional Black Caucus challenge the establishment?

The Congressional Black Caucus is holding its annual conference in Washington, DC, as it faces questions about its role from grassroots candidates who claim it supports the status quo. In Washington, the Congressional Black Caucus is holding its annual conference. The coalition of African American legislators is facing criticism for appearing to want to join the political establishment rather than challenge it. Polls indicate that fear of US President Donald Trump is not sufficient to get voters to the polls and grassroots campaigns have argued that the CBC is failing to support candidates who offer real alternatives that appeal to voters and of supporting legislation that harms minority communities. As the US midterm elections approach, can the ...
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His Traveling Museum Is Bringing Black History to a Town Near You
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AMPLIFYING DIVERSE VOICES

His Traveling Museum Is Bringing Black History to a Town Near You

As a social studies teacher in Detroit in 1994, Khalid el-Hakim used African American artifacts he collected to supplement information about Black history he found lacking in middle school textbooks. It was a charge, el-Hakim says, by Minister Louis Farrakhan at the Million Man March in 1995 to men to go back to their cities and “join a community organization and try to make some type of contribution to our community,” that was the catalyst to start a mobile museum. El-Hakim went from having tabletop displays at meetings of the local organization he joined to setting up exhibits for various organizations and institutions—first throughout the city and then across the state and nationwide. His Black History 101 Mobile Museum travels throughout the year from coast to coast sharing Africa...
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