Blogaround

Links not related to that felon:

1. Fan.tasia (2016, via) Wow, this is incredible. It's a mashup of scenes from Disney cartoons, mostly Disney Renaissance, and the way they're all cut together is extremely well-done. Amazing.

2. Will Market Shake Up Smooth the Road for Takeout Couriers? (April 30) "At the same time, JD announced plans to recruit 100,000 full-time couriers and provide them with social insurance, a potentially major shift in an industry that currently relies on a freelance, uninsured workforce."

Also from Sixth Tone: Starting Today, Rules Against Prepaid Rip-Offs Take Effect in China (May 1) I hear about this kind of thing all the time in China. People join a gym and pay for a yearlong membership, and then suddenly the gym closes, and it's impossible to get in contact with anyone to get a refund. Or people buy a package of 50 classes for their kid to do some kind of sport or extracurricular activity, and suddenly, without any notice at all, the place closes and there's no way to get your money back. So what you have to do is, first of all, DON'T prepay for things like that, and second, try to only buy classes/memberships from companies that have existed for a long time and are unlikely to suddenly disappear.

So I'm glad to see that China is making laws to protect customers in these kinds of cases.

3. Debate and Switch - The Trope That Ruins Stories (March 28, via) 33-minute video. It's about stories which set up a really interesting moral conflict, where the villain points out some problem, or presents some idea which could potentially be a good idea, and it could be a really cool story if that conflict was explored. But nope, it doesn't get explored, it gets totally ignored because then the villain randomly kills a bunch of people, or something, and so we all see that the villain is bad and must be defeated, and nobody ever comes back to the insightful points the villain had brought up in the beginning.

---

Links related to that felon:

As always, you don't have to read all the news if it's too stressful. Instead, DO SOMETHING. Protest. Contact your congress people. Donate money. Check on the immigrants in your life and see if they need help.

You don't have to be up-to-date on everything! Better to find 1 issue you care about a lot, and fight for that. Better to do that than just be paralyzed and overwhelmed.

1. Mohsen Mahdawi — the Columbia student arrested at his citizenship appointment — speaks (April 29) "I see the risk, I see the opportunity, and I want the American people to see this, too. To see this level of injustice. That I am doing everything legally, that I have prepared and studied for the Constitution and that I went willingly and respected the law, did everything the way how it's supposed to be done."

2. Trump is jailing immigrant families again. A mother, father and teen tell of ‘anguish on a daily basis’ (April 24) "Gabriela and Jason struggled to find the words to help their daughter. 'Imagine seeing your child sad because they can’t go to school. And you can’t even say, ‘Let’s go to the corner. Let’s go get ice cream. Or some chips,’' Gabriela said. 'How do you explain any of this to a child? Your mom can’t do anything for you, your dad can’t do anything.'"

3. RFK Jr. to require placebo-controlled studies for new vaccines (May 1) Well this is a bad idea.

4. Education Department stops $1 billion in funding for school mental health (May 1) "To be able to provide those [mental health] services and then have it ripped away for something that is completely out of our control, it's horrible,' Fialkiewicz says. 'I feel for our students more than anything because they're not gonna get the services that they need.'"

5. Trump-appointed federal judge blocks use of Alien Enemies Act for Venezuelans in South Texas (May 1) "Other courts have sought to block the Trump administration from deporting anyone under the act. But this is the first time a judge has ruled that the act cannot be used against people who are alleged gang members invading the United States."

6. DOJ Proposes Giving Legal Advice to Immigrants in Cases It Oversees (May 1) "'[Families are] being asked to trust the government that harmed them to tell them how to move forward in the best way for them,' said Sara Van Hofwegen, managing director of legal access programs at Acacia Center for Justice, which has provided the services for the past year. 'The government hasn’t shown them that they have their interests in mind.'" Yeah this is extremely suspicious.