I was cleaning out my Firefox tabs when I realized that I never got around to writing about the September 28 "Heart of the Hood" column about something that seemed tailor-made to piss hettie_lz off ( Read more... )

A surprising bit of news from my home town of St. Petersburg came across my Twitter feed this afternoon.

According to the Fontanka online newspaper, the Krasnogvardeyskiy neighborhood court convicted married couple Ilya Vasil'yev and Yulia Semkina of robbery. Which in on itself wouldn't be big of a deal. But these two didn't just rob anyone. They ( Read more... )

This hasn't been a good week for police/community relations in United States.

On Tuesday, Alton Sterling was shot in Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana. The details are still hazy, but we know that there was a call alleging that he was waving a run around, two officers were sent to investigate, they tackled him to the ground and shot him. ( Read more... )

To be honest, I wasn't sure whether to write anything. I didn't think I really have that much to say that other people haven't said better. But I kept having a nagging feeling that I should write something... So here we are.

At this point, everybody at least knows the basics. If you don't, BBC has a decent summary for the English-speakers, and ( Read more... )

Ever since I discovered made_of_fail_pc... almost six years ago at this point, I've subscribed to a whole bunch of podcasts. Whenever I hear episodes I particularly like, I tend to plug them on Twitter. But it occurs to me that a lot of people reading this probably don't follow me on Twitter. Or see every single tweet I ever put out. So I decided to put together ( Read more... )

I didn't watch Eurovision this year. To be honest, I didn't realize Eurovision aired on May 14 until I saw mysticowl's tweets a day later. Which is kind of shame. From what I gathered, voting got pretty close at times, so there was lots of tension, and we got the kind of spectacle we've come to expect from Eurovision. Plus, I would have loved to see the ( Read more... )

I was looking at the Livejournal front page, and I saw that omonatheydidnt had not one, but two posts about social attitudes toward lesbians in South Korea.

First, nana_the_dwarf posted a KoreaTimes article about how an online drama series depicting a lesbian romance earned an ire of ROK regulators.
( The repost of the article under the cut )

Last Wednesday, while my mom was watching an (actually pretty interesting) historical documentary, I was covering a community meeting in Chicago West Side’s Austin neighborhood. I figured the meeting would be about regular community stuff , but it would up being more interesting than I could’ve ever hoped.

When the temperatures plummet, the number ( Read more... )

On Friday morning (US Eastern time), the Supreme Court did something that was, honestly, long overdue, and ruled that any and all same-sex marriage bans in United States illegal. The reaction has been, understandably, fairly mixed. But the ruling did get an endorsement from the last person I would expect - a prominent United Russia MP.


( Read more... )

A few days ago, pauluskp posted a bit of news that was as disappointing as it was predictable. Ukrainian human rights activists decided to hold a gay pride rally (officially known as the March for Equality) in Kiev on Saturday. And Right Sector responded by promising to beat up the protestors, describing them as "enemies from within ( Read more... )