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dostoyevsky-official
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Big Retail Chains Are Manufacturing a Shoplifting ‘Crisis’
theappeal.org
As The Appeal wrote in June, data does not back up claims of a nationwide shoplifting “surge.” According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) data, the number of reported shoplifting offenses dropped 18 percent between 2019 and 2020, the last year for which full data is available. That decline may be an aberration due to the COVID-19 pandemic — though supporters of the “crime wave” narrative say retailers have stopped reporting theft to police because prosecutors aren’t punishing it harshly enough. But there is perhaps a simpler explanation than an unreported shadow-wave of stealing: While the average value of shoplifted items has ticked up over the last decade (likely due to a confluence of factors), the actual number of shoplifting incidents in America is falling. The FBI reported in September that overall larceny rates across the U.S. have plummeted to lows not seen since the 1960s.
This contradictory data hasn’t stopped big retail chains and their law enforcement allies from pushing the theft-surge narrative. Stories about shoplifting are generally sourced from major retailers themselves. And while media outlets tend to treat these corporations as neutral arbiters of information, retailers have a vested interest in the policy debate that stems from these stories. Many of these companies have long lobbied to keep people locked up for as long as possible. Safeway, one of the multiple companies that has complained this year about a shoplifting surge, also backed a California ballot initiative in 2020 that would have locked up people who shoplift for longer periods of time.
Cops also benefit from this narrative of supposed lawlessness. How could we defund police or lessen the U.S.’s harsh penalties for retail theft when there’s a crime wave afoot?
One such targeted media campaign came to Arizona in May, when Home Depot fed shoplifting footage to the Phoenix CBS affiliate in order to push state lawmakers to pass House Bill 2383. That legislation would have created a statewide “organized retail theft task force” with its own full-time prosecutor and multiple investigators, but the bill died in the Senate after making it through the House.
Efforts in other states have been more successful. In September, Illinois created an Organized Crime Task Force that partners directly with major corporations. And in California, a recently enacted law is set to bolster the California Highway Patrol’s existing retail crime task force, after receiving unanimous support in the legislature. That bill comes as shoplifting rates across California are at their lowest levels since the state officially began tracking the statistic in 1975.
Perhaps most notably, San Francisco Mayor London Breed this year expanded an  “organized retail crime initiative” and beefed up the number of city cops assigned to retail theft issues — seemingly in response to claims that a shoplifting wave was sweeping her city. The issue came to a head in October when Walgreens stated that rampant shoplifting had forced the multibillion-dollar international corporation to close five stores in the city. Predictably, the specter of widespread crime in left-leaning San Francisco set right-wing media ablaze: Here again, they said, was a Democrat-dominated city with a “woke” prosecutor falling into supposed lawlessness and decay.
But Walgreens’ own statements have since been called into question. Last month, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that some of the Walgreens stores slated for closure had reported fewer thefts than city averages. The data did not support Walgreens’ explanation that the closures were due to “organized, rampant retail theft,” the Chronicle wrote, later concluding that they were more likely due to other factors. (As others have also noted, the press was not similarly enraged when Walgreens agreed to pay $4.5 million in November 2020 to settle claims it had been stealing employees’ wages for years.)
Any such context was entirely absent from the hearing on Capitol Hill last week. Instead, Dugan’s testimony served as the crowning achievement of a years-long push by major retailers and local police to manufacture a narrative that crime is increasing when it isn’t.
In his testimony, Dugan painted a dire picture of the threat CVS Health faces from $200 million in losses due to shoplifting each year. What Dugan didn’t mention is that his company still sold $91 billion in goods and posted a $7 billion profit in 2020 — an increase from the year before. While everyday Americans are hurting after two years of a crushing pandemic, CVS seems to be doing just fine.
nahuyayarodilsa
malglories
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malglories

for all you writers out there:

donjon has tons of generators. for calendars. for demographics of a country and city. for names (both fantastical and historical) of people, nations, magics, etc.

this site lets you generate/design a city, allowing you to choose size, if you want a river or coast, walls around it, a temple, a main keep, etc.

this twitter, uncharted atlas, tweets generated maps of fantasy regions every hour.

and vulgar allows you to create a language, based on linguistic and grammatical structures!!! go international phonetic alphabet!!!

nahuyayarodilsa
brandonshimoda
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brandonshimoda

R.I.P. (Rest in PDFs), Part II

in progress …

Part I (A-M) is here.

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Naomi Murakawa, The origins of the carceral crisis: Racial order as “law and order” in postwar American politics

Natasha Ginwala, Maps That Don’t Belong

Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero. Translated by Sherif Hatata.

Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary

Nick Estes, Liberation, from Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance

Occupy Poetics. Curated by Thom Donovan

ON Contemporary Practice PDF Archive

Osip Mandelstam, The Noise of Time. Translated from the Russian by Clarence Brown.

Oswald de Andrade, Manifesto Antropofago (Cannibal Manifesto). English translation by Leslie Bary.

Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment

Patrick Chamoiseau, School Days. Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale

Patrick Wolfe, Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native

Pëtr Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

Phil Cordelli, New Wave

Phil Cordelli, Tidal State

Power of Words Handbook: A Guide to Language about Japanese Americans in World War II: Understanding Euphemisms and Preferred Terminology

Reece Jones, Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right To Move

Richard Powell, Black Art and Culture in the 20th Century

Rinaldo Walcott, The Problem of the Human: Black Ontologies and “the Coloniality of Our Being”

Rizvana Bradley, Aesthetic Inhumanisms: Toward an Erotics of Otherworlding

Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman, from CEDE; [Truesse, Unknown Worker, Charles]; Chaos and Rectification

Roberto Tejada, In Relation: The Poetics and Politics of Cuba’s Generation-80

Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

Robin D.G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression

Roger Caillois, Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia

Roland Barthes, Image Music Text. Translated by Stephen Heath.

Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse. Translated by Richard Howard.

Roland Barthes, Mythologies. Translated by Annette Lavers.

Roland Barthes, The Neutral. Translated by Rosalind E. Krauss and Denis Hollier.

Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text. Translated by Richard Miller.

Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes. Translated by Richard Howard.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Fatal Couplings of Power and Difference: Notes on Racism and Geography

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Forgotten Places and the Seeds of Grassroots Planning 

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Globalisation and US prison growth: from military Keynesianism to post-Keynesian militarism

Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California

Saidiya Hartman, The Plot of Her Undoing (Notes on Feminisms)

Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America

Saidiya Hartman and Frank B. Wilderson, III, The Position of the Unthought: An Interview

Samuel Delaney, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue

Saniya Saleh, Seven Poems. Translated from the Arabic by Robin Moger.

Saniya Saleh, Seven Poems. Various translators

Sarith Peou, Corpse Watching

S*an D. Henry-Smith, Flotsam Suite

Sembene Ousmane, Xala

Shosana Felman & Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History

Simone Browne, Introduction, and Other Dark Matters; Notes on Surveillance Studies; Branding Blackness (from Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness)

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace. Translated by Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr

Simone Weil, The Iliad, or the Poem of Force. Translated by Mary McCarthy

Simone Weil, Oppression and Liberty. Translated by Arthur Wills and John Petrie

Simon Leung & Marita Sturken, Displaced Bodies in Residual Spaces

Solidarity Texts: Radiant Re-Sisters

Sophia Terazawa, I Am Not A War

Sora Han, Letters of the Law: Race and the Fantasy of Colorblindness in American Law

#StandingRockSyllabus, compiled by NYC Stands with Standing Rock Collective

Stefano Harney & Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study

Steve Biko, Black Consciousness and the Quest for True Humanity

Sukoon Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 2, Winter 2017

Susan Briante, Neotropics: A Romance in Field Notes

Susan Sontag, On Photography

Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others

Suzanne Césaire, 1943: Surrealism and Us; The Great Camouflage (from The Great Camouflage: Writings of Dissent (1941-1945)

Sylvia Wynter, “No Humans Involved:” An Open Letter to My Colleagues

Sylvia Wynter, Novel and History, Plot and Plantation

Tamara K. Nopper, The Wages of Non-Blackness: Contemporary Immigrant Rights and Discourses of Character, Productivity, and Value

Tavia Nyong’o, Racial Kitsch and Black Performance

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. (eds. Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa)

Thom Donovan, “In The Dirt of the Line”: On Bhanu Kapil’s Intense Autobiography

Timothy Yu, 15 Chinese Silences

Tina Campt, The Lyric of the Archive

Tiqqun, Raw Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl

Tongo Eisen-Martin, Cut A Hand From A Hand

Tongo Eisen-Martin, Three poems

Toni Morrison, The Future of Time: Literature and Diminished Expectations

Toni Morrison, Memory, Creation, and Writing

Toni Morrison, Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature

Trinh T. Minh-ha, Documentary Is/Not a Name

Trinh T. Minh-ha, Lovecidal: Walking With the Disappeared

Trinh T. Minh-ha, The Walk of Multiplicity

Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism

Võ Nguyên Giáp, People’s War, People’s Army

Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project. Translated from the German by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin

Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction

W.E.B. Du Bois, The World and Africa: Color and Democracy

We Charge Genocide Again! A Curriculum for Operation Ghetto Storm: Report on the 2012 Extrajudicial Killings of 313 Black People by Police, Security Guards and Vigilantes. Prepared by Tongo Eisen-Martin

Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity

Wendy Trevino, Brazilian Is Not A Race

Wendy Trevino, narrative

Will Alexander & Janice Lee, The Transparent As Witness

Winona LaDuke, Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Environmental Futures

Yanara Friedland, Abraq ad Habra: I will create as I speak

Ye Mimi, eleven poems

Yerbamala Collective, Our Vendetta: Witches vs Fascists

Yi Sang, The Wings. Translated from the Korean by Ahn Jung-hyo and James B. Lee

You Can’t Shoot Us All: On the Oscar Grant Rebellions

Youna Kwak, Home

Yūgen, edited by LeRoi Jones & Hettie Cohen (1958-1962), #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Yuri Kochiyama, The Impact of Malcolm X on Asian-American Politics and Activism

Yuri Kochiyama, Then Came the War

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Note: If you see your work on here and prefer that it not be made freely accessible, please email me at: brandonshimoda@gmail.com, and I will remove it. Thank you.

nahuyayarodilsa
objetpetita
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objetpetita
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Mental Illness Can Make It Hard to Read. Here’s Why — and What You Can Do
For a long time, I was a self-professed bookworm. Until suddenly, I wasn’t.
www.healthline.com

I know it sounds cliche, but as a crazy bookworm, books have (literally) saved my life. As my mental health kept escalating from panic attacks to long-lasting depressive episodes, PTSD, and dissociative disorders, I’ve always blamed myself for that terrifying feeling of not being able to connect and feel the words of a book. That I’m getting old, that I’m becoming stupid, that I’m not trying enough. And that was a hard pill to swallow.

This article really helped me to understand those mental mechanisms and how I need to stop beating myself and actually focus on a different, more self-compassionate approach; the need to deal with unprocessed traumas and toxic behaviors that have been anchored within me. They are the problem, not me. Period.

nahuyayarodilsa
bronzyglow
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bronzyglow

food doesn't hold moral value and diet culture sucks

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bronzyglow

I've seen a lot of you missing my point here so if that's you or if you want further information about what I meant, here are a few readings.

https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-we-eat-morality-and-the-dinner-table/

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What We Eat: Morality and the Dinner Table
We humans enjoy dividing things into categories. Doing so helps us form cognitive shortcuts and organize large sets of information. Our cate
Psych Central

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jul/17/clean-eating-dirty-burgers-food-morals-julian-baggini

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Clean eating and dirty burgers: how food became a matter of morals
The British have long associated delicious food with depraved indulgence, and now we have virtuous meals that are good for the soul. Is eith
the Guardian

https://www.google.com/amp/s/more-love.org/2017/12/13/food-is-not-a-moral-issue/%3famp

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Food is not a moral issue | More-Love.org
Articles and resources about eating disorders for parents
More-Love.org

https://medium.com/fattitude/food-does-not-have-moral-value-41a157fe5be6

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Food Does Not Have Moral Value
Can we stop pretending that it does?
Medium

https://www.thetemper.com/the-link-between-food-and-morality-was-a-huge-part-of-my-eating-disorder/

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The Link Between Food and Morality Was a Huge Part of My Eating Disorder | The Temper
There's no relationship between being good and being thin—but I've met a lot of people in my life who've told me otherwise.
The Temper
nahuyayarodilsa
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nahuyayarodilsa
chaoticum
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chaoticum

I believe in free education, one that’s available to everyone; no matter their race, gender, age, wealth, etc… This masterpost was created for every knowledge hungry individual out there. I hope it will serve you well. Enjoy!

FREE ONLINE COURSES (here are listed websites that provide huge variety of courses)

IDEAS, INSPIRATION & NEWS (websites which deliver educational content meant to entertain you and stimulate your brain)

DIY & HOW-TO’S (Don’t know how to do that? Want to learn how to do it yourself? Here are some great websites.)

FREE TEXTBOOKS & E-BOOKS

SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES & JOURNALS

LEARN:

1. LANGUAGES

2. COMPUTER SCIENCE & PROGRAMMING

3. YOGA & MEDITATION

4. PHOTOGRAPHY & FILMMAKING

5. DRAWING & PAINTING

6. INSTRUMENTS & MUSIC THEORY

7. OTHER UNCATEGORIZED SKILLS

Please feel free to add more learning focused websites. 

*There are a lot more learning websites out there, but I picked the ones that are, as far as I’m aware, completely free and in my opinion the best/ most useful.

nahuyayarodilsa
superlinguo
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superlinguo

Linguistics and Language Podcasts

Looking for podcasts about language and linguistics? Here’s a comprehensive list with descriptions! I’ve also mentioned if shows have transcripts. If there are any I missed, let me know!

Linguistics

Lingthusiasm A podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne (that’s me!). Main episodes every third Thursday of every month, with a second bonus episode on Patreon. (Transcripts for all episodes)

Because Language Every week Daniel, Ben, and Hedvig cover the news in linguistics and tackle a particular topic. (previously Talk the Talk)

The Vocal Fries Every episode Carrie Gillon & Megan Figueroa tackle linguistic discrimination in relation to a particular group. (Transcripts for some episodes)

En Clair A podcast about forensic linguistics from Dr Claire Hardaker at Lancaster University. Episodes released monthly, with a range of topics from criminal cases to literary fraud. (Transcripts for all episodes)

Accentricity From Sadie Durkacz Ryan, a lecturer in sociolinguistics at Glasgow University. Season one has six episodes.

Field Notes Martha Tsutsui Billins interviews linguists about their linguistic fieldwork.

Toksave – Culture Talks A podcast from the PARADISEC Archive, where the archived records of the past have life breathed back into them once again.

Hooked on Phonetics Maxwell Hope provides an introduction to phonetics, chatting to Geoffrey “average Joe” Farris and interviewing other phoneticians.

History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences sub-30 minute episodes about the history of linguistics from James McElvenny, with the occasional interviews.

The Language Revolution Changing UK attitudes to languages.

Linguistics After Dark Eli, Sarah and Jenny answer your linguistics questions in hour-ish long episodes.

Distributed Morphs An interview-based podcast about morphology, from Jeffrey Punske.

Lexis A conversation about linguistics with a topical UK focus, from Matthew Butler, Lisa Casey, Dan Clayton and Jacky Glancey.

Word to the Whys a podcast where linguists talk about why they do linguistics. Created by TILCoP Canada (Teaching Intro Linguistics Community of Practice).

The Weekly Linguist An interview podcast about the languages of the world and the linguists who study them from Jarrette Allen and Lisa Sprowls.

Language

The Allusionist Stories about language and the people who use it, from Helen Zaltzman (Transcripts for all episodes) (my review).

Grammar Girl Episodes are rarely longer than 15 minutes, but they’re full of tips about English grammar and style for professional writing, and more! (Transcripts for all episodes).

Subtext A podcast about the linguistics of online dating.

Canguro English A podcast about language for people learning languages.

America the Bilingual Dedicated to the pursuit of bilingualism in the USA.

Words & Actions A podcast about how language matters in business, politics and beyond.

Subtitle A podcast about languages and the people who speak them, from Patrick Cox and Kavita Pillay. For those who miss Patrick’s old podcast, The World in Words.

The Parlé Podcast from Canadian Speech-Language Pathologist Chantal Mayer-Crittenden.

Slavstvuyte! A podcast for everyone who is fascinated by Slavic languages from Dina Stankovic.

Conlangs

Linguitect Matt, Rowan and Liam explain linguistic topics and talk about how to build them into your conlang.

Conlangery Particularly for those with an interest in constructed  languages, they also have episodes that focus on specific natural  languages, or linguistic phenomena. Newer episodes have transcripts.

Dictionaries

Word For Word From Macquarie dictionary, with a focus on Australian English.

Fiat Lex A podcast about making dictionaries from Kory Stamper & Steve Kleinedler. One season.

Word Matters From the editors at Merriam-Webster, hosted by Emily Brewster, Neil Serven, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. 

English

The Black Language Podcast Anansa Benbow brings you a podcast dedicated to talking about Black people and their languages.

Unstandardized English Interview-based podcast. Disrupting the language of racism and white supremacy in English Language Teaching.

History of English Meticulously researched, professionally produced and engaging content on the history of English. (My reviews: episodes 1-4, episodes 5-79, bonus episodes).

Lexicon Valley Hosted by John McWhorter, with a focus on English.

That’s What They Say Every week linguist Anne Curzan joins Rebecca Kruth on Michigan public radio for a five minute piece on a quirk of English language.

A Way With Words A talk-back format show on the history of English words, cryptic crosswords and slang.

Why is English? A podcast about how the English language got to be the way it is, from Laura Brandt.

Words/etymology

Something Rhymes With Purple Susie Dent and Gyles Brandreth uncover the hidden origins of language and share their love of words. 

Word Bomb Hosts Pippa Johnstone and Karina Palmitesta explore one word per week, using particular words for a deep dive into linguistic and social issues. (Transcripts for all episodes)

Words for Granted In each episode Ray Belli explores the history of a common English word in around fifteen minutes.

Very Bad Words A podcast about swearing and our cultural relationship to it.

Lexitecture Ryan, a Canadian, and Amy, a Scot share their chosen word each episode.

Wordy Wordpecker Short weekly episodes from Rachel Lopez, charting the stories of English words.

Animology Vegan blogger Colleen Patrick Goudreau uses her love of animals as a starting point for exploring animal-related etymologies.

Bunny Trails Shauna and Dan discuss idioms and other turns of phrase.

Science Diction a podcast about words—and the science stories behind them. Hosted by Johanna Mayer, this is a production from WNYC Science Friday.

Translation

Speaking of Translation A monthly podcast from Eve Bodeux & Corinne McKay.

LangFM Stories of people from the world of language, including interpreters, translators, dialect coaches and many more.

Troublesome Terps The podcast about the things that keep interpreters up at night.

Se Ve Se Escucha (Seen and Heard) Language justice and what it means to be an interpreter, an organizer and bilingual in the US South, from the Center for Participatory Change.

In Languages other than English

War of Words A Spanish language podcast about linguistics from Juana de los Santos, Ángela Rodríguez, Néstor Bermúdez and Antonella Moschetti.

Parler Comme Jamais A French language podcast from Binge Audio.Monthly episodes from Laélia Véron.

Språket A Swedish language podcast from Sveriges Radio about language use and change.

Back catalogues and Odds & Ends

There are also a number of podcasts that have only a few episodes, are no longer being made, or are very academic in their focus:

This is an updated listing from December 2019. I’m always excited to be able to add more podcasts to the list, so if you know of any linguistics/language podcasts not here, please let me know! (I usually wait until a show has at least 3 episodes before I add it to the list)