Afternoon Tea 4.29.21 - Patterned Expectations

Regression to the Mean is a comforting idea after a period of poor performance.

April 29, 2021

Facebook’s bugs help Modi our arms deals continue, how to motivate yourself to change yourself, Cuomo COVID stuff is worse than they admitted (told ya’ll), antisemitism en Español spread across Miami, Zoom Teaching sucks, and abuse to boys isn’t fake. It’s Thursday, April 29th 2021, and this is the Tea.

As Indians Face A COVID-19 Crisis, Facebook Temporarily Hid Posts With #ResignModi (BuzzFeed.News) A mysterious bug resulted in posts calling for the Modi to resign. Somehow in the most important market to Facebook, the world’s reigning autocrat currently losing a national battle to COVID-19.2 managed to have the same priorities of a bug that happened to sweep Indian FB on Wednesday.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office hid New York's COVID-19 nursing home death toll for at least 5 months, report says (Yahoo! News) Are there any provincial town charters from the colonial era that allow the governor to be put in the stocks?

Louisiana Lawmaker Argues Schools Must Teach ‘Good’ Of Slavery (Forbes) The embedded tweet verifies some idiot really did say that schools need to teach the “Good, Bad, and the Ugly” of slavery.

Antisemitism rises among Hispanic Miami’s right wing (Forward) I cannot imagine how much misinformation we’ve missed over the last decade because it was pumped over 100% Spanish media.

White millennial families made huge strides between 2016 and 2019, and they now lag previous generations of white families by only about 5%. Between 2007 and 2019, however, Black millennials fell further and further behind — not just compared with white millennials, but compared with previous generations of Black Americans. While white millennials trail the wealth of previous generations of white Americans by only 5%, Black millennials trail previous generations of Black Americans by 52%. The typical Black millennial has $5,700 less in net worth than counterparts in previous generations.

At 100 Days, Grading Biden’s Progress Toward a More Responsible US Arms Trade Policy (Just Security) There are a lot of things Biden doesn’t have control over. One thing he could put his thumb on the scale for?

Lessons From the Disaster of Zoom Teaching (Current Affairs) Anyone who is even adjacent to academia will tell you this is right in spades. Zoom Pedagogy is ludicrous.

How to motivate yourself to change (Psyche - A Guide) While less useful for neurodivergent folks like myself, this is a wonderful place to get started if you’ve never been given this plan of action by a therapist or a particularly progressive parent.

What Every Parent of a Boy Needs to Know (InBetween.CA) Deeply important interview about a book written by an investigative journalist parent. This bit will stick with me for the rest of my life...

What shocked me the most is actually what I started the book with, the sexual victimization of boys, which is something I had not thought about to be honest. I certainly didn’t understand how common it is. Girls and women are definitely disproportionately affected by sexual violence but there are studies that suggest one in six boys will be sexually assaulted by the time they are 18. It’s an overwhelming number. A lot of times our minds jump immediately to scandals involving older men preying on boys, like the Catholic Church and boy scouts, but data showed me that that’s only part of the problem and boys are also assaulted by their peers and sometimes by older women. It’s such a hidden problem because boys feel great shame in reporting it. I think we as adults carry around so many assumptions about boys, one of which is that they can’t really be victims in the same way as girls. And it’s just not right. But this makes it hard for us sometimes to see what is really going on.

Song of the Tea: DJ Food is good, his remix of Nepalese Bliss is better. Let this chill help you ride out the remaining gray.

So close, don’t stop.

Yours,