What's happening at the center of the Trifid Nebula? Three prominent dust lanes that give the Trifid its name all come together. Mountains of opaque dust appear near the bottom, while other dark filaments of dust are visible threaded throughout the nebula. A single massive star visible near the center causes much of the Trifid's glow. The Trifid, cataloged as M20, is only about 300,000 years old, making it among the youngest emission nebulas known. The star forming nebula lies about 9,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Archer (Sagittarius). The region pictured here spans about 10 light years. The featured image is a composite with luminance taken from an image by the 8.2-m ground-based Subaru Telescope, detail provided by the 2.4-m orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, color data provided by Martin Pugh and image assembly and processing provided by Robert Gendler. via NASA https://ift.tt/2GhrD71
A man walks into an early voting location in Fayetteville, North Carolina.Alex Wong/Getty Images
On Saturday, Alamance County sheriff’s deputies and city police pepper sprayed a crowd of about 200 people who were peacefully marching to the polls in Graham, North Carolina without warning and on slim reasoning. Graham police claimed that protesters didn’t have the adequate permits to close off the road, while the Alamance County sheriff’s office said that the march was shut down out of “concerns for the safety of all.”
If it is at all difficult to understand how a police department could act so heinously—particularly when children and elderly community members are present within the crowd— then it’s important for one to grasp the context that the law enforcement operates within.
This is the second time since 2016 that Alamance County has made national news for its treatment of voters. In 2017, 12 residents, most of whom were Black and on parole or probation for felony charges, were charged for illegally voting in the 2016 election. If someone is convicted of a felony in North Carolina, they lose their right to vote for the entirety of their incarceration and until any parole or probation has concluded—another key method of voter suppression in the state.
“There is no doubt that in North Carolina’s history, felony disenfranchisement legislation was enacted by legislators as a way to keep African Americans from voting and participating in democracy,” Orville Vernon Burton, a Judge Matthew J. Perry distinguished professor of history at Clemson University, told WRAL in July.
While it’s up to the local district attorney to bring charges in these cases, police—particularly sheriffs, who wield an astounding amount of power within their jurisdictions—have a critical role in setting the tone for the prosecutions.
Voter intimidation is an omnipresent concern in North Carolina, a state that has tried to prevent Black and brown voters from casting ballots with “surgical precision” since Reconstruction. During the late 1800s, a high-level white supremacist campaign in North Carolina went to extreme acts of violence—including massacring Black residents in Wilmington—in order to regain political power within the state. Less outwardly violent voter suppression tactics have cropped up in the state following the Supreme Court’s weakening of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby v. Holder, such as North Carolina’s infamous voter I.D. law and gerrymandering so precise that every district in the state had to be redrawn.
Prior to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Black people across the South were at risk of being arrested by police on Election Day for minor crimes by officers hoping to deter voters from casting ballots. In recent years, there have been complaints about suspiciously timed arrests and traffic stops involving Black residents on Election Day.
In North Carolina, “the sheriff’s office is a creation of the state constitution. The sheriff’s office is on the same hierarchical tier as the governor’s office,” explained Dawn Blagrove, executive director of the Carolina Justice Center, to WUNC in May. “So you need to know what they think, where they stand policywise, and what type of culture they’re going to create in your county.”
Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson, who has held the position for almost 18 years, has a record defined by racism and intimidation. As the 2004 general election approached, Johnson announced that he would send deputies to the homes of all new registrants with a Hispanic-sounding name to investigate whether they were citizens. He claimed that undocumented people were registering to vote at local DMVs with falsified documents. (The Justice Department sent election monitors to Alamance in 2004, 2008, and 2012.)
Johnson has a history of making incredibly racist statements about immigrants—including egregious, nonsensical claims that it’s socially acceptable to sexually assault underage girls in Mexico. The sheriff has been vehement about incarcerating “criminal immigrants,” or “taco eaters,” who are coming into the country to “victimize our children, our citizens, with drugs, murders, rapes, robberies, you name it.” In early 2019, he told the Alamance County Board of Commissioners that undocumented “criminals” were “raping our citizens in many, many ways.”
Beyond his rhetoric, Johnson has used his office to wreak havoc on immigrant communities in Alamance. The sheriff’s office was sued by the Justice Department for an alleged pattern of abusive enforcement against Latinos, including charging Latino drivers with traffic violations at least 6 times as often as non-Latino drivers. (A district court dismissed the suit, and it was then settled in lieu of an appeal, with the sheriff’s office agreeing to implement a “bias-free policing plan” and other reforms.) Johnson has also advocated for higher policing budgets in order to crack down on immigration, and used money from the $3.6 million the county received from housing ICE detainees in 2019 to give out bonuses to his staff.
Sean Connery attending the 2017 U.S. Open.Clive Brunskill/Getty Images
Legendary actor Sean Connery died in his sleep Friday night or Saturday morning at the age of 90. Connery, the first actor to play James Bond in a feature film, translated Ian Fleming’s secret agent to the screen with a charm and physicality that launched one of the most successful film franchises in history. He went on to craft an impressive second act after Bond, starring in movies as varied as The Man Who Would Be King, The Russia House, and The Untouchables, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Connery’s career spanned six decades—he announced his retirement from acting in 2006—and his co-stars, friends, fans, and fellow James Bonds are mourning him on social media. Here’s what people are saying.
Only a few weeks ago I was wishing Sean all the best for his 90th birthday. Now, I’m very sad to be condoling with his family and friends. Of course, Sean Connery as James Bond inspired me personally but seems to have encapsulated an age, the Sixties. I met Sean a couple of times and I was pleased he’d given my Bond film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, his seal of approval. He was going to do my film many times and felt it was the best of the Fleming tales. But, to me, the most important thing was his work went far beyond Bond: into charity, into family, into politics and into golf. A man after my own heart. A great actor, a great man and underappreciated artist has left us. My thoughts are with Lady Micheline and Sean’s children and grandchildren. Only love, George XXX
The family of Roger Moore, who died in 2017, saluted Connery on his behalf:
In a statement to the New York Times, Timothy Dalton said, “Sean was a wonderful presence. A great leading man.”
Sir Sean Connery, you were my greatest James Bond as a boy, and as a man who became James Bond himself. You cast a long shadow of cinematic splendor that will live on forever. You led the way for us all who followed in your iconic foot steps. Each man in his turn looked to you with reverence and admiration as we forged ahead with our own interpretations of the role. You were mighty in every way, as an actor and as a man, and will remain so till the end of time. Your were loved by the world, and will be missed. God bless, rest now, be at peace.
It is with such sadness that I heard of the passing of one of the true greats of cinema. Sir Sean Connery will be remembered as Bond and so much more. He defined an era and a style. The wit and charm he portrayed on screen could be measured in megawatts; he helped create the modern blockbuster. He will continue to influence actors and film-makers alike for years to come. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones. Wherever he is, I hope there is a golf course.
Connery’s friend and fans from outside the world of 007 also weighed in, starting with his Man Who Would Be King co-star Michael Caine:
Sir Sean Connery, through his talent and drive, left an indelible mark in cinematic history. His audiences spanned generations, each with favorite roles he played. He will always hold a special place in my heart as Indy’s dad. With an air of intelligent authority and sly sense of comedic mischief, only someone like Sean Connery could render Indiana Jones immediately into boyish regret or relief through a stern fatherly chiding or rejoiceful hug. I’m thankful for having had the good fortune to have known and worked with him. My thoughts are with his family.
Former President Barack Obama speaks during a drive-in campaign rally for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at Northwestern High School on October 31, 2020 in Flint, Michigan.Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Former President Barack Obama was out campaigning with Joe Biden on Saturday. But a video of the basketball-loving president casually nailing a 3-point shot after a campaign stop in Flint, Michigan is likely to garner more attention than anything he said on the stump. “That’s what I do!” Obama said as he walked away. The video quickly went viral on social media and it was later posted to Obama’s own Twitter account. LeBron James took to Twitter to comment on the former president’s shot: “Now you just showing out now my friend!! That’s what you do huh?? Ok ok I see. All cash!”
Obama and Biden held drive-in rallies in Flint and Detroit on Saturday as part of an effort to boost turnout in the key state that Donald Trump won in 2016. “Three days until the most important election of our lifetime—and that includes mine, which was pretty important,” Obama said. During the rallies, Obama harshly criticized Trump not only for his handling of the pandemic but also made things more personal, mocking the way the president seems obsessed with the size of his campaign rallies. “Did no one come to his birthday party when he was a kid? Was he traumatized?” Obama joked. “The country’s going through a pandemic. That’s not what you’re supposed to be worrying about.”
Obama repeatedly criticized Trump’s style of doing politics and used it to contrast with Biden, whom he called his “brother.” Trump “hasn’t shown any interest in doing the work or helping anybody but himself or his friends or treating the presidency as anything more than a reality show to give him the attention that he craves,” Obama said. “But unfortunately, the rest of us have to live with the consequences.”
The former president also seemed aghast that Trump was complaining that the media focused too much attention on the pandemic and blasted the president’s baseless allegations that doctors are somehow personally profiting from claiming that deaths are due to the coronavirus. “He’s jealous of COVID’s media coverage. And now he’s accusing doctors of profiting off of this pandemic,” Obama said. “He does not understand the notion that somebody would risk their lives to save others without making a buck.”
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Voters arrive at a polling place on October 31, 2020 in Yadkinville, North Carolina.Brian Blanco/Getty Images
Around 200 people took part in a march to the polls Sunday in Graham, North Carolina. But what was supposed to be an effort to encourage people to vote ended in chaos and arrests as law enforcement officers suddenly began pepper-spraying participants, including children, after they held a moment of silence for George Floyd. Police apparently told the crowd of people to move to the sidewalk after the moment of silence but soon began spraying pepper spray, reports the News & Observer.
Participants say police began unleashing the pepper spray for no apparent reason and several children in the crowd were hit. A reporter with the Burlington Times-News who was pepper sprayed said they did not hear any warning before the police took action. Video showed a woman in a motorized wheelchair apparently suffering an adverse reaction from the pepper spray. “They didn’t warn us or anything,” one participant, who alleged her 3-year-old great-nephew started throwing up from the pepper spray, said. “We were just sitting on the wall.” Another woman who participated in the rally said her 5-year-old and 11-year-old daughters were pepper-sprayed shortly after the moment of silence ended.
After the spraying stopped, the marchers were able to get together in the town square to take part in a rally with a stage and speakers. But after 45 minutes, the police seemed determined to end the rally and sheriff’s deputies told the crowd to disperse even before the speeches ended. Reports claim the police just started arresting people, including at least one person who was apparently just listening. A video posted on social media appears to show police arresting two people, including a child who seems to have been thrown to the grown and handcuffed before he was taken away. Floyd’s niece was scheduled to speak but was not able to.
At least 12 people were arrested, including a reporter for the Alamance News newspaper. Although some who participated in the march did end up making it to the polls, others didn’t in what was the last day of early voting in the keys tate. “I think it was their intention, from the moment this march was announced, that we don’t get to the polls in numbers,” one rally participant said. North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein characterized the events as “troubling.”
The Graham Police Department issued a statement that said the marchers didn’t have the appropriate permits to close the road. “Those plans detailed that the blocking of a roadway by participants was a prohibited activity that would be strictly enforced,” the statement said. Protesters had knelt in the street for 8 minutes and 40 seconds in honor of Floyd.
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An election worker guides voters in cars at a mail ballot drop-off site at NRG Stadium on October 7, 2020 in Houston, Texas. Voters can also cast their ballots at a drive-through voting site.Go Nakamura/Getty Images
Texas Republicans have asked a federal judge to throw out at least 117,000 ballots cast in Harris County, a heavily Democratic area that has experienced an unprecedented surge in early voting this month. The brazen effort to undo legally cast ballots in a diverse, populous county is an eleventh-hour attempt to diminish Joe Biden’s chances of carrying the swing state on Nov. 3. Republicans claim that Harris County’s use of drive-through voting violates the U.S. Constitution, requiring the judge to throw out every ballot cast this way—more than 117,000 as of Friday. This argument is outrageous and absurd. But the case landed in front of U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, one of the most notoriously partisan conservatives in the federal judiciary. Democrats have good reason to fear that Hanen will order the mass nullification of ballots as early as Nov. 2, when he has scheduled a hearing.
Because Texas strictly limits mail-in voting, Harris County—which has a population of over 4.7 million people—has sought to make in-person voting safer during the pandemic. Harris County Court Clerk Chris Hollins, who runs the county’s elections, established 10 drive-through voting locations for the 2020 general election. Drivers pull into a large tent, where election officials confirm their identity then give them privacy to vote. The process has proved wildly popular.
Harris County raised the idea of drive-through voting in June, and Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs promptly approved it. The county tested it in July, and approved it in August. Yet Republicans did not contest drive-through voting in court until Oct. 15, two days after the start of early voting. On that day, the Harris County Republican Party, joined by several GOP operatives, asked the Texas Supreme Court to halt drive-through voting. The court, which is entirely Republican, refused, over a single dissent. Republicans then went back to the Texas Supreme Court, asking it to toss out every ballot cast via drive-through voting. The court is currently considering that request, though it seems unlikely to side with the plaintiffs given its previous decision.
So Republicans ran to federal court. On Wednesday, they asked Hanen to declare drive-through voting unconstitutional and void every ballot cast this way. They relied upon a radical theory that is quickly gaining popularity among conservative judges. Republicans alleged that the state legislature has sole authority over election law under the U.S. Constitution. They also claimed that the legislature never approved drive-through voting. As a result, they argued, the procedure is an unconstitutional usurpation of the legislature’s power, meaning every ballot cast via drive-through voting is illegitimate.
There are so many flaws in Republicans’ argument that it’s hard to know where to begin. The GOP operatives probably don’t have standing to challenge a voting procedure that merely makes it easier and safer to vote. But leave that aside and look at the merits. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the legislature doesnothave sole authority over elections. To the contrary, it has held that different parts of the state government can regulate voting procedures. Thus, the lawsuit’s chief claim—that Harris County has infringed on the legislature’s constitutional rights—is simply false.
But even if it were true, the lawsuit would still fail, because the Texas legislature has authorized drive-through voting. State law explicitly allows counties to create temporary polling locations “in any stationary structure,” including a “movable structure.” Drive-through voting takes place in large, stationary tents that obviously fit this definition. Indeed, other Texas counties have set up stationary tents at walk-in polling locations to provide extra booths to early voters. No one seriously argues that it is illegal to use tents for walk-in voting. So why are they illegal to use for drive-through voting?
Republicans’ chief claim is simplyfalse.
Republicans cannot provide an answer because there is none. That’s why Texas’ Secretary of State approved drive-through voting, informing Harris County election officials that they could use it for the general election. Republicans are trying to conflate drive-through voting with curbside voting, a separate procedure subject to a different slate of regulations in Texas. They are lying. Harris County’s drive-through voting is fundamentally distinct from curbside voting; it more closely resembles traditional in-person voting, with voters entering a polling place in their cars instead of on foot.
As a back-up claim, Republicans also alleged that Harris County ran afoul of the equal protection clause, as interpreted in Bush v. Gore, because officials in that county offered a way to vote that other counties in Texas did not. Because Bush v. Goreis not precedent, this argument is utterly frivolous. If Bush v. Gore were precedent, the argument would still be frivolous, because that decision never said counties within a state could not provide different voting procedures. The nuts and bolts of voting varies widely between counties within states, and no court has ever suggested that a county violates equal protection when it makes voting easier in compliance with state law. Bush v. Gore involved vote counting, not vote casting. No SCOTUS precedent supports the proposition that voting procedures must be uniform across an entire state. Some smaller, rural counties in Texas, in fact, have a much easier time voting by mail because of a Republican-implemented rule that allows just one ballot drop box per county.
There are two more reasons why the lawsuit should fail. First, Republicans brought this case nearly four months after Harris County announced its intent to provide drive-through voting this fall. Yet the Republican officials only brought their lawsuit on Oct. 28, as early voting neared its end in Texas. More than 117,000 eligible voters have taken advantage of it, and will be disenfranchised if the lawsuit succeeds. Under a doctrine known as laches, litigants cannot wait to bring a claim until the last minute, then ambush their opponents with a surprise lawsuit. Republicans’ four-month delay in suing Harris County should be enough, on its own, to doom their case. Second, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly warned lower federal courts not to alter voting procedures shortly before an election. Republicans are now asking a federal court to shut down drive-through voting just before Election Day, when it is in the highest demand, in addition to a request to invalidate votes that have already been legally cast. That request is precisely the kind of pre-election challenge that SCOTUS has forbidden.
And yet there is good reason to worry that Republicans will prevail, at least initially. Hanen, the federal judge overseeing the case, is a rabid partisan. During the Obama administration, Hanen attempted to dox more than 100,000 immigrants living in the U.S. and chastised the Justice Department for declining to prosecute an immigrant mother. His behavior on the bench radiated partisan bias. Now Hanen holds the fate of more than 117,000 ballots (and counting) in his hands. Alarmingly, he scheduled a hearing in this case for Monday morning—without even giving Harris County a chance to file a response brief. It is possible that Hanen is rushing to throw a wrench into Texas’ election, purporting to void a vast number of votes in a critical battleground state.
However Hanen rules, his decision will be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. Thanks to Donald Trump, the 5th Circuit is one of the most extreme and partisan appeals court in the country and an avowed enemy of voting rights. Its members may be eager to seize upon this case to prevent Joe Biden from carrying Texas. At that point, only the U.S. Supreme Court could end Republicans’ mischief. And SCOTUS’ ultraconservative bloc has already expressed its zeal to throw out as many Democratic ballots as possible under the theory that only legislatures get to run elections.
The 2020 election is entering dangerous territory. Harris County is key to Biden’s Texas strategy, and its residents have already voted in record-shattering numbers. It is heavily Democratic, which makes it a prime target for GOP voter suppression. Republicans think the federal judiciary will thwart a Biden victory in Texas. If they prevail, they will have stolen an election in broad daylight.
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Michael Stanley is administered a COVID-19 test on October 30, 2020 in New York City.David Dee Delgado/Getty Images
Four days before the presidential election, the United States broke the world record on the number of COVID-19 cases recorded by any country in a single 24-hour period as it passed the 100,000-mark. The country confirmed 100,233 COVID-19 cases on Friday, according to Reuters. Others have a slightly different count with CNN saying 99,321 new COVID-19 cases were reported on Friday while NBC News puts the number at 98,583. Regardless of the exact figure, the number breaks the previous record that had been held by India, which reported 97,894 cases on September 17. Overall, some 9 million people have contracted the coronavirus in the United States, amounting to almost 3 percent of the population as the number of dead approaches 230,000.
The new daily record comes as President Donald Trump continues to insist that the country is “rounding the corner” on the virus. Yet even as the president and his allies continue to claim that the high number of COVID-19 cases merely reflects increased testing, the fresh record comes as hospitals in six states report having the most patients with the virus since the pandemic started. As of the end of the week, hospitalizations in 18 states reached records when the seven-day average is taken into account, with states in the West and Midwest particularly affected.
Experts say the death tolls will soon start to surge as well. “The 100,000 cases yesterday two weeks from now will start to translate into massive numbers of deaths,” Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine at George Washington University, told CNN. “So we’re going to see not just cases continue to escalate but we’re going to see perhaps 2,000 deaths per day two or three weeks from now.” Donald Trump Jr. claimed Thursday that COVID-19 deaths had dropped to “almost nothing” and said those who are talking about a new surge are “truly morons.” Yet experts say there’s no disputing the data. “We’re at a point where the epidemic is accelerating across the country. We’re right at the beginning of the steep part of the epidemic curve,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner, told CNBC. Gottlieb predicted a likely surge around Thanksgiving and said that “December’s probably going to be the toughest month.”
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Supporters of President Donald Trump cheer at a campaign rally at Oakland County International Airport on October 30, 2020 in Waterford, Michigan.John Moore/Getty Images
Four researchers at Stanford University’s Department of Economics joined forces to study whether President Donald Trump’s rallies led to a surge in COVID-19 infections. Their answer? An unequivocal yes. According to their research, 18 rallies held between June 20 and September 22 led to more than 30,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19. The researchers also concluded that the rallies “likely led” to more than 700 deaths, although not necessarily among those who attended the events.
In order to carry out the study, researchers analyzed data from 18 counties where Trump held rallies, and compared it to similar counties where the rallies did not take place. Three of the rallies took place indoors, while the rest were held outdoors. The rallies “increased subsequent confirmed cases of COVID-19 by more than 250 per 100,000 residents,” the researchers write. Even though they don’t know whether all the COVID-19 deaths were among those who attended the rally, the researchers conclude that “the communities in which Trump rallies took place paid a high price in terms of disease and death.”
This is not the first time there’s an effort to examine whether Trump’s rallies led to a surge in infections. CNN, for example, recently carried out an analysis of data from 17 rallies that took place between August 17 and September 26. It concluded that 14 of the 17 counties saw increased rate of new COVID-19 cases a month after they hosted the president. Of the 14 that saw increases, six were already seeing increased rates of infection but at the end of the day in 10 counties “the new rates of infection were growing faster than the overall rate for the state.”
Health authorities had already been expressing concern about the potential for Trump rallies to become superspreader events. Anthony Fauci, for example, said earlier this month that the decision to hold large rallies was “asking for trouble.” The Gaston County Health and Human Services Department issued a statement Thursday warning that two people who attended Trump’s October 21 rally in Gastonia, North Carolina had tested positive for the coronavirus. The health authority was sure to note that there was not enough evidence to say definitively whether the attendees had contracted COVID-19 at the rally. During the rally, Trump said that the pandemic was “rounding the corner.”
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Robert Kardashian as hologram.http://twitter.com/@KimKardashian
So it turns out that Kim Kardashian whisking her friends and family off to a private island in the middle of a pandemic was only the second craziest thing about her 40th birthday celebration. On Thursday, Kardashian revealed what her husband, Kanye West, got her the birthday gift at the top of every woman’s wish list: her very own hologram. And not just any hologram: It was a so-called holographic resurrection of her late father, Robert Kardashian, who died in 2003. Kaleida, a “multimedia hologram company,” published a page to its website taking credit for the creation (Kardashian and West have not yet confirmed the hologram’s origins). Reached by Slate, Kaleida director and producer Daniel Reynolds declined to discuss any specifics of the Kardashian hologram, but agreed to speak about the company and its technology more generally. How exactly do you order a hologram of a late relative? Sadly, our conversation, which has been condensed and edited, took place hologramlessly on the plain old telephone.
Heather Schwedel: How did you get into the hologram biz?
Daniel Reynolds: We as a company started six years ago to produce a fully holographic show that we toured around Europe. After producing that show, we started getting a lot of commercial inquiries, and we’ve kind of grown from there. The first few years we were really just investing in the technology, R&D–ing, you know, seeing what’s possible, experimenting. Over the last two-and-a-half years, things have really started to take off. A lot more people are interested in holographic technology and its uses. We’ve done quite a few quite famous people. Now, especially in COVID times, we’re getting different sorts of inquiries, holograms as a communication tool primarily, and then obviously projects like the Robert Kardashian hologram. Prior to COVID, we were starting to do a lot more large-scale event holograms, not just for in-person experiences, also for live-streaming for TV broadcasts, for press campaigns and the like.
Have you done a lot of these holograms where you bring someone’s loved one back to life?
We’ve only done these in the last year and a half, and we’ve done five. It’s not necessarily always a loved one, but it is a re-creation of somebody who’s no longer with us.
What do you mean?
We did a hologram of a political leader delivering a very famous speech. I can’t really give that name. That was actually the current prime minister’s father, but it was done for a country. And so a loved one, but not as intimate as one as the one we’ve just done. It can be a musical performer that someone wants resurrected, which, depending on rights, would be private or for public consumption.
How much does something like this cost?
The technology is becoming more accessible, so you can do this on a small scale for tens of thousands, but if you want to do it properly, you’re looking at hundreds of thousands.
Can you tell me how the process works?
The strange thing is it’s not necessarily high-tech. The crucial elements are your traditional sort of filming and performance development. So it is a combination of visual effects, machine learning algorithms, but also physical choreography, and a bit of sound synthesis. But the key element to the production is really the performance. It’s very much a human element, delivering a physical performance rather than just relying on VFX.
The way we approach a project like this is first casting the right person, so that person has to have physical similarity to the person you’re resurrecting. The next part is obviously understanding that person, their behaviors, their tics, their movements, how they express themselves, and kind of learning that so you can deliver that performance when we’re filming.
Is it similar to hiring a stunt double?
I wouldn’t describe it as a body double. I mean, technically, that’s what it is, but you’re hiring someone to deliver a performance. You can have the best hologram in the world, but if that performance is not right, it’s just going to fall flat. I mean, obviously it depends on the context as well. If it’s a holographic resurrection of someone’s loved one, then you really have to get the performance right. The physicality is super important.
How is filming a hologram different than shooting a movie or TV show?
Filming a hologram requires a very specific lighting setup to create dimensionality. It uses the same tools as a normal film shoot. It’s just that the arrangement is very, very specific. So you need to have a very, very good [director of photography]. As holograms become more accessible, you’ll see a lot of different holograms online. A lot of them are very low-quality. They look very flat. The reason they look flat is they haven’t got a very good DP.
What comes after filming?
Once we capture the footage, that’s when the VFX artist gets to work. You have the machine learning algorithm, which is learning—the person you are resurrecting as a hologram, it needs to learn how they express themselves, how they speak, their facial movements. There are different programs out there. People call it different things online. Deepfake becomes the kind of catch-all term, but really what the algorithm is doing is trying to match as many facial similarities between the subject and between the person you’re creating as a hologram. It’s studying all of those similarities.
The quality that you get is dependent on the quality of data that is available: videos, images, et cetera. The better data you have, the better end result you have. So that can oftentimes present something of a challenge. If there just isn’t good high-quality video assets, or there isn’t good vocal recordings, you’re going to run into problems, but that’s really kind of the easy part. The next part is in traditional VFX skills. Let’s say the footage you’re using was filmed in the 1980s, very different look, different kind of feel to that. You can’t just replicate that and present it as a human being in front of you, because you’ve got all that grain, the noise, the distortions, the colors, they’re all different because of the nature of the cameras at the time.
So that’s where having a very, very good compositor comes in, turning that algorithm-generated face into the person you want it to be. That’s bringing up the hairline, making sure the color tone is right, that it matches with the other parts of the hands and neck. It’s quite a lot of work to get something that looks realistic.
Does it work about the same with re-creating a voice?
For voice, the AI will work very similarly. Again, it’s really dependent on amount of data and quality of data. What it’s going to generate is going to be a very flat, sort of unemotional version of that person’s voice. The sound engineer will be playing around with that, distorting it and creating the range that you need. It’s pretty labor-intensive.
What else do you need to do to display the hologram?
The next element is the staging side. Now you have your content—how are you going to create that hologram in a location? There’s a lot of traditional staging elements to the showmanship. So when you enter the room where the hologram is being played, you need to have the right lighting setup, you need to create a sense of expectation, and you need to present the hologram in the right way. In this project, we used a technology called Holonet, which is a holographic gauze. It used to be that a lot of holograms were made on Pepper’s Ghost, the projection onto a 45-degree reflective surface. That is quite time-consuming to set up. It’s very inflexible in terms of where and how it works. You have to be viewing straight on; if you move too far to the left or too far to the right, the image will disappear. Whereas with Holonet, it’s very transportable, portable, it’s very bright, and it gives you a wide range in terms of viewing capability.
Is this how all the hologram companies do it?
The technology we’re now using I don’t think has been used in this context by anyone else. There are other ways that people create holograms of deceased people that might be using a lookalike, or it might be, using VFX tools and creating a 3-D model like the Tupac hologram. Or it might be that you will VFX the subject’s face onto the body of an actor. Each has their own problems in delivering that lifelike form. Using machine learning algorithms is relatively new. It does deliver a much more realistic hologram.
The words or message that a hologram delivers—would they typically be coming from the person who’s paying for the hologram … i.e. did Kanye write what this hologram said?
Could be or could not be, it depends. As a creative house, we might be tasked with creating the text. Each project is different.
You mentioning performers and rights earlier made me wonder, if I came to you and asked you to do something like re-create a dead musician’s performance for my private use, would you be allowed to do that?
Probably not. No.
So you have an ethics policy or certain things you wouldn’t do?
We do. It’s not written down; we don’t have a constitution. Whether it’s a question of who we work for, whether that’s governments, countries, etcetera, also companies, if the key people in the company are not comfortable with something, for whatever reason, we might say no. I’m aware of these discussions that are in the public domain about holographic resurrections. There are obviously people with strong feelings. It’s a legit conversation, but as a company, we’re kind of in a lucky position where we can act with a conscience and decline work if we want.
What sorts of occasions have other holograms you’ve done been for?
Anniversaries, dates of historical importance, or just because they could, no real date in mind. You have people who’ve been looking at this for years and years, maybe they’ve seen different holograms and thought, “Is the technology where I want it to be?” What they’ve been asking for hasn’t been possible previously. Before the techniques we’re using today, it just wasn’t going to produce a high-quality result and therefore, there was no point to do it.
One trend that we see at the moment is a lot of actors and musicians wanting themselves documented as holograms before they actually die. By documenting themselves before they’re deceased, they’ll have high-quality hologram data available should they need to use it in the future. We’ve been working on this one big project in the Middle East where this is the goal. When you’re bringing back deceased pop stars, you often face the same challenges, like what data do we have available, how well known were they, do the public have a very clear memory of what they looked like? You have stars from before we had HD cameras where you can’t really bring them back. That’s bad, because there is demand for that.
At the end of the Kardashian hologram, there was sort of a dissolve into glitter. Do all your holograms end that way?
It depends how you want to present the hologram. It’s not just at the end; you might want to do it at the beginning, like have the person beamed in. The question is who is the audience, and what are their expectations, and what are you really trying to present? You have hologram shows where people are buying live tickets to a performance and they’re going there because they want to feel that that person was really alive and was really there. That has to be complete fidelity. You’re not really producing a hologram; you’re trying to produce a live performance, enabling the audience to pretend that it’s real, even though they know it’s not. The moment that you start dissolving or flickering is the moment that you’re saying this is not really real.
In different contexts, you can present a hologram and you can present it in a very stylized way, kind of like the Princess Leia way. You kind of say to your audience, “We know you know this isn’t real; we’re not trying to pull wool over your eyes.” So it being beamed in, it’s got that glitter, that glitchy aspect to it, you’re bringing people in at the start rather than present something as being real that obviously isn’t.
It’s all about the context. In this instance, it’s a loved one. At the end, you don’t need to do a walk-off. You need to end the content somehow. We’re going to dissolve into stardust, glitter particles, what have you. It just kind of makes sense from an audience perspective.
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Philadelphia police officers line up to defend a precinct from protesters.Gabriella Audi/Getty Images
On Monday afternoon, two Philadelphia police officers gunned down a 27-year-old Black man in front of his family. The killing was captured in video, which widely circulated on social media and ignited several nights of unrest in the city.
His family called 9-1-1 several times throughout the day seeking assistance with Walter Wallace, Jr. who his family says was having a mental health crisis. His mother said that she had called for an ambulance, not the police. When officers arrived, Wallace was reportedly wandering out of the house carrying a knife.
“I understand he had a knife,” the Wallace family’s lawyer Shaka Johnson said during a press conference yesterday, “that does not give you carte blanche to execute a man.”
In the following days, the city was gripped with upheaval reminiscent of last summer’s uprising in the name of another Black man who died at the hands of officers, George Floyd. This week, hundreds of protesters took to the streets demanding justice for Wallace. The mayor briefly instituted a curfew to try to stem looting and vandalism.
The shooting of Wallace didn’t surprise Mike Africa Jr., a local activist and member of the Black liberation group MOVE. “I’m never surprised when a Black person is shot by police. I’m not surprised when excessive force is used either,” he said in an interview. “Police treat Black people like Black people are not important—the racial divide and the prejudice is so apparent.”
Wallace’s death provided the spark for this latest uprising, but the Philadelphia police have provided plenty of fuel over the years. Law enforcement and the Black community in the city have a long, troubled history.
Last year an investigation by the Plainview Project revealed roughly 3000 racist Facebook posts made by over 300 city police officers. And a year earlier, a video of two Black men being arrested for sitting in a Starbucks in a tony neighborhood without ordering went viral.
Between 2010 and 2019, the city paid out nearly $40 million to settle civil suits alleging false arrest, false imprisonment, prosecutorial misconduct and overturned convictions.
These recent instances of violence and discrimination can be traced back nearly to the creation of the police department. According to a PhiladelphiaInquirerhistorical deep dive into police brutality, in 1838, when the PPD was a mere eight years old, officers stood by and watched while a white mob ransacked a meeting of slavery abolitionists. But in the modern era, the escalation of a violent and racist policing culture can be traced back to former mayor and police commissioner, Frank Rizzo.
To many in Philadelphia, Frank Rizzo is an icon of systemic racism. The controversial former mayor and police commissioner was hugely influential during the 1960s and 1970s. His style of law enforcement is remembered as particularly violent, especially in the Black community.
Rizzo started as a rank and file officer, but quickly rose through the ranks. He became top cop in 1967. “The way to treat criminals is spacco il capo,” he said in 1977, Italian for “break their heads.”
In one instance, his officers forced members of the Black Panther Party to strip naked before handcuffing them. “They’re a little angry. They were humiliated. We took their pants off them, to search them,” Rizzo said in a 1978 documentary, Amateur Night at City Hall: The Story of Frank L. Rizzo.
His disconcerting practices did not go unchecked. The federal Department of Justice filed a civil suit against the Philadelphia Police Department in 1979 for brutality against citizens, singling Rizzo out for initiating brutality as commissioner, and ensuring that his tactics were continued as mayor. Charges included shooting nonviolent suspects; Stopping pedestrians and motorists without probable cause, then physically abusing them they protest; and physically attacking handcuffed detainees.
Recently the city has begun to reckon with his legacy. Last summer, a downtown statue of Rizzo was removed, and a mural portrait of him in the Italian Market was painted over.
“The Frank Rizzo statue represented bigotry, hatred, and oppression for too many people, for too long. It is finally gone,” Mayor Jim Kenney said last June.
In the decades since Rizzo, Philadelphia police have maintained a reputation for using brute force, particularly against Black citizens—most dramatically on display in 1985 when the department bombed an entire block in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Their target was the home of 13 members of a black liberation group, MOVE. The explosives killed 11 MOVE members and razed 61 other homes. (The Wallace family lives just a few blocks from the site of the MOVE bombing).
“Those wounds haven’t healed,” civil rights attorney David Rudovsky said. “The protocols and regulations are better but there is a real sense that [the Black community’s] being over-policed and under-policed,” that is, the police are quick to crack down on Black residents, but slow to protect them.
Africa lost several family members in that bombing, including an aunt and a cousin, and both of his parents were incarcerated from the time of his birth until 2018, both for alleged involvement in the death of an officer. Africa himself was born in a jail cell. His family history informed his path of activism.
“The system is pushing people towards revolt,” he said. “Even if you don’t want to be a revolutionary the government is pushing you towards that.”
Philadelphians have called for police oversight and reform, with mixed results. A prime example: Rudovsky’s firm and the ACLU have been in litigation with the city over its use of the “stop and frisk” policing tactic for a decade.
“The quality of stops has improved, based on what has been reported,” Rudovsky said, meaning that there have been fewer stops without justifiable cause. However, “the racial disparities have not moved.”
According to Rudovsky and the ACLU’s most recent report, Black people comprised 71 percent of all stops by police during the second half of 2019, despite making up only 44 percent of the city’s population. Further, Black residents were 50 percent more likely to be stopped without reasonable suspicion than their white counterparts.
Rudovsky said that last summer city officials agreed that these numbers represent documented racial bias. What this means for reform is unsettled, but Rudovsky said that more information should be ready to be released soon.
Since last summer, city council has passed several policing reforms including a ban on chokeholds, and a ban on tear gas against protesters—which Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said she supported. This week, a bill was introduced aimed to curb vehicle stops for “driving while Black.”
Both Mayor Kenney and Commissioner Outlaw have vowed to turn the department around. “Outlaw has said the right stuff, as has Kenney,” Rudovsky said. “But it will be a few more months until we know what kind of reforms will be implemented.”
To Africa, the movement is just starting to take off. “I think the uprisings are going to continue,” he said. “Change ain’t going to come unless people fight for it.”
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President Donald Trump gestures onstage at a rally at Oakland County International Airport, on October 30, 2020, in Waterford Township, Michigan.MANDEL NGAN/Getty Images
President Donald Trump appears convinced. Doctors, according to the commander in chief, are misattributing deaths to the coronavirus because they get more money out of it for some reason. The president cites no evidence or even really explain how it works but it’s something he has said before and repeated it again Friday at a rally in Michigan. “Our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID. You know that, right? I mean our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say ‘I’m sorry but, you know, everybody dies of COVID’,” he said. Trump claimed doctors are paid “like $2,000 more” for deaths attributed to the coronavirus.
According to the president, that’s what separates the United States from other countries that count COVID-19 deaths differently. “In Germany and other places, if you have a heart attack, or if you have cancer, you’re terminally ill, you catch Covid, they say you die of cancer, you died of heart attack. With us, when in doubt choose Covid. It’s true, no, it’s true. Now they’ll say ‘oh that’s terrible what he said,’ but that’s true,” Trump said. Experts have said that if anything the deaths attributed to COVID-19 are likely undercounted and the real number is higher than what is being reported.
This is not the first time Trump has made the claim without citing any evidence. During a rally in Wisconsin last weekend, Trump said “doctors get more money and hospitals get more money” if they put a death down to the coronavirus.
Doctors had already been pushing back against the allegations on social media and on Friday the American Medical Association joined in releasing a statement that blasts the conspiracy theory without ever actually mentioning Trump. “Throughout this pandemic, physicians, nurses, and frontline health care workers have risked their health, their safety and their lives to treat their patients and defeat a deadly virus,” AMA President Susan Bailey said. “The suggestion that doctors—in the midst of a public health crisis—are overcounting COVID-19 patients or lying to line their pockets is a malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided charge.” Instead of “lobbing baseless charges at physicians” the country’s leaders “should be following the science and urging adherence to the public health steps we know work—wearing a mask, washing hands and practicing physical distancing,” Bailey added.
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At this point in the election cycle, you’ve probably gotten plenty of pleas urging you to vote. They come in the form of phone calls, text messages, yard signs, stickers, PSAs from celebrities, reminders from brands, encouragement from friends, and even light messaging from bracelets, luxury necklaces, and face masks. It’s also possible you have even received some very pointed messages on a dating app, from someone appearing to be a person interested in getting to know you, but who in actuality is there to talk to you about why Joe Biden is the best person to lead our country, and do you have a plan to cast your ballot yet?
Dating app-based attempts at political persuasion are not necessarily new. People were documented canvassing on Tinder for Bernie in 2016, and for Elizabeth Warren on Bumble earlier this year. Now they’re messaging daters and hoping to turn them into voters, for Biden. On her Instagram, Molly Kawahata, who has experience reaching out to voters through traditional mediums, is sharing instructions for anyone with the app who wants to help out. It’s her platform of choice because it allows users to set their location to swipe on people anywhere in the country—for these purposes, a swing state—without paying for the app.
After you match with someone, the task is simple: say a quick greeting, and then immediately ask your not-actually-prospective-boyfriend who they plan to vote for. “Sometimes they’re like, ‘woah straight to business,’” says Andrea Vallone, who is also reaching out to voters on Hinge. (While Kawahata has worked in politics before, neither is employed by the Biden campaign.) If the message-ee is taken aback by the abrupt politics talk, she’ll reply with something that justifies bringing up dating on an app: “voting is really important to me.”
screenshots via Molly Kawahata
If this sounds a little awkward, Vallone and Kawahta maintain that it’s worth it. Catching strangers unaware to talk up Biden has felt much more fruitful than phone-banking or text-banking, they say. Hardly anyone answers the phone anymore, now that so many calls are robo-calls. And “in text banking, I just don’t get responses,” says Vallone. “This is a bit more humanizing,” she says of the experience of Hinge-banking. People not only respond—they’ll have a conversation with her over the course of a few days. “To get ahold of a voter in a battleground state who’s willing to talk to you when they’re undecided is a huge deal,” says Kawahata. So what if they match with a Trump supporter—is it just a days-long discussion? Not exactly. In that case, Kawahata recommends that you “respect their decision and move on.”
Might part of the secret to Hinge-banking be that the people they’re chatting with think that they might eventually get a drink or something out of this? Sure, it seems like it. But having an earnest conversation about the election hardly registers as an abuse of the platform, given that lots of people are on apps just to lurk, gawk, and kill time. While canvassing on a dating app is perhaps technically against the terms of service (at least a couple people have been kicked off Tinder for doing so), as to why you use the app, Hinge’s terms of service specify only that you must be “seeking a meaningful relationship.” Then again, aren’t they? The meaningful relationship may not end up being between the two people in the conversation, but everyone deserves a better relationship with their president.
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When you’ve voted, donated, volunteered, and screamed into the void, what’s left? Leading up to Election Day, Slate is offering a series of Low-Stakes Debates as brief respites for your all-consuming anxiety.
This time: Is it “ghosting” to decline to respond to someone after you’ve gone on one date?
Shannon Palus: What’s everyone’s immediate answer? I’m a firm: No. It is not ghosting if you don’t bother to respond to a follow-up text after one date.
Rachelle Hampton: Also a no.
Daniel Schroeder: It’s an obvious yes.
Rachelle: I really feel like there is a gender line here. Most (straight) women I know don’t think it’s ghosting, perhaps because we chafe at owing a man anything after one date.
Shannon: I hadn’t thought of it in that light, Rachelle, but that makes sense. I just think that the first “date” with someone you’ve never met isn’t really a date. If you’re really on the apps, you’re going on so many of them, these casual meet-ups. It’s not a formal enough interaction to send a formal rejection.
Daniel: Once you have met somebody in person for a one-on-one date interaction, cutting off contact without telling them is ghosting.
Shannon: Is it really “cutting off contact” if they follow up the date with one or two texts, and you don’t answer?
Daniel: Well, the decision not to respond is a choice to end that contact even if the person on the other end is unaware of it.
Rachelle: I agree with that Shannon. So many of app first dates are basically just vibe checks: Are you the person in your photos? Can you hold a conversation? Are you pushy? I just feel like ghosting denotes some kind of emotional connection that you’re severing. Not following up after a coffee with some dude you talked to for 45 minutes doesn’t deserve the term.
Shannon: Yes. I will say that if you’ve been texting back and forth furiously for weeks, and then you meet in person and hang out for hours, and then after the other person keeps reaching out, and you go silent—that is ghosting.
Rachelle: Yeah, I’d agree with that.
Shannon: But all first “dates” should be 45 minutes anyway. That should be the standard.
Daniel: See, but you’re already making exceptions! These are very small parameters for not using the word “ghosting” and makes me think there’s too much tied up in the feelings around that specific term.
Rachelle: Though I don’t think it’s technically ghosting, I do normally send a “Thanks for taking the time; this isn’t for me” text, but that is purely to avoid the situation where someone texts you “Hey, what’s up?” every month.
Shannon: Oh my god, those guys are awful. Take a hint.
Rachelle: Do we need to Merriam-Webster the term “ghosting”?
Shannon: Look it up!
Rachelle: According to Wikipedia, “Ghosting is a colloquial term used to describe the practice of ceasing all communication and contact with a partner, friend, or similar individual without any apparent warning or justification and subsequently ignoring any attempts to reach out or communicate made by said partner, friend, or individual.”
I think this gets at what Shannon and I are saying, which is that ghosting is for someone you’ve established some kind of relationship where you’ve agreed to be accountable to each other. And I don’t like the idea of owing that kind of accountability to every guy I go on a first date with, since too often, they expect too much anyway.
One time a guy I ghosted texted me asking “Are you dead?” I was so tempted to reply with“yes.”
Daniel: But I think taking the teeth out of the term will take away that feeling of owing accountability. Ghosting is something we’ve all experienced, and it can suck, but there’s freedom in becoming a ghost and realizing everybody else is one too. We don’t need to get caught up in those messy feelings of guilt or anxiety if we just accept ghosting as the norm. I’ll say it: Ghosting is fine! We should expect people to ghost, and be pleased when someone doesn’t. You should leave every date thinking your date might have died by the time you got home.
Rachelle: I think the issue here is that there needs to be another word for what you’re describing, which is not following up after a first date. What the term “ghosting” gave voice to was the specific feeling of someone disappearing after you established some kind of relationship. Which you should feel guilty over doing! That’s shitty behavior!
Shannon: I agree. The negative connotations of “ghosting” hold people accountable when they rightly need to be held accountable.
Daniel: How can you hold a ghost accountable, though?
Shannon: Well, in your head, in your friend group. You can shame other people in the world into not ghosting in the first place.
Rachelle: Basically, to be a ghost, you need to have been a person in someone’s life, and no one is really a person after one date. You’re still basically an idea that someone’s projecting onto. But, say, you went on a first date with a friend, or someone you knew beforehand. If you didn’t follow up, then that would be ghosting.
Shannon: Or if you had sex.
Daniel: Lol, no, you can ghost after sex. That’s like prime ghost time.
Shannon: Wait, Daniel, are you in FAVOR of ghosting?
Daniel: I have ghosted and have been ghosted after sex, and honestly it’s better than receiving a “sex with you was not good” text.
Shannon: There are so many things in between never following up and saying that!
Daniel: Well I think we’re getting to the gender divide again. Sex is a much more casual activity for me, so I don’t think I put the same weight in it. One time a guy I ghosted texted me asking “Are you dead?” I was so tempted to reply with “yes.”
Shannon: Regardless of seriousness, I do think after you’ve seen someone naked you need to follow up. Unless no one follows up, which is fine.
Daniel: So it’s fine if you’re both ghosts.
Rachelle: Mutual ghosting is the best ghosting.
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To get advice from Prudie, send questions for publication to prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.) Join the live chat every Monday at noon. Submit your questions and comments here before or during the live discussion. Or call the Dear Prudence podcast voicemail at 401-371-DEAR (3327) to hear your question answered on a future episode of the show.
Dear Prudence,
I have been dating a man now for eight years who is a loving, awesome person in many ways. He adores me, and he treats me like a queen. The problem is that I don’t want any of it anymore. He struggles with alcoholism and anxiety, cannot hold down a job, and still lives like a college student just scraping by, despite being in his 40s. I decided four years ago that he’s not what I’m looking for, as a divorced mother of two, despite his many good qualities. But because of all these issues, mainly that he has no money, he still has not left my space.
He lives in denial and treats our relationship like we are mutually involved when he knows exactly how I feel. I want him to move out, and it always comes down to the fact that he has no money and really can’t get another place in our ridiculously expensive town. I don’t have the heart to throw him out on the streets, and he does not have a single friend who would let him move in due to his history with drinking. He goes to a therapist, and he says he understands and doesn’t want to hold me hostage in this relationship, but it just does not stop. I don’t want to live with resentment and anger toward a dependent person who obviously cares more about his own self-preservation than releasing me from the relationship I no longer wish to be a part of. I have said and done everything short of changing my locks and physically restraining him from my home (which I just cannot do). What can I do to finally initiate change?
—Roommates Forever
You have things backward, I fear. You say you can’t kick him out because then he’d be completely helpless, when I think he’s completely helpless because he knows you will never kick him out. You do not need him to “release” you from this relationship, because breakups do not require a unanimous vote. Presumably he managed to keep body and soul together before you two started dating, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe that he’d find a way to continue living if you two ever really broke up. If you really want to move on, you’ll have to let him solve his own problems again (or fail to solve his own problems, or find another girlfriend to solve them for him, as the case may be). But that will require letting go of the fantasy that he’s absolutely dependent upon you, that you’re the only thing standing in between him and the streets. He’s proved fairly ingenious at finessing his way into a rent-free living arrangement with his ex-girlfriend for the last four years! You must give him at least a little credit for resourcefulness. I wonder, if he’d applied some of that resourcefulness elsewhere, if he might have found one or even two possible alternatives, even in your very expensive city (or a less expensive city).
You can even offer to front him first and last month’s rent, if you just want to throw money at the problem. I do worry that once you start giving him rent money, you’ll never stop, but you’re already paying his rent now, and at least in that scenario you get to have your bedroom back to yourself. Another option is to consult local tenant laws, then evict him. If you can’t bring yourself to change the locks, hire a locksmith to do it for you, a moving company to put his stuff neatly into storage, and a claim ticket so he can pick it up at his earliest convenience. If that sounds as daunting as trying to walk to the moon, consider attending a few Al-Anon meetings to see if you can find solidarity and support there. But there’s nothing cruel or unusual about telling your ex-boyfriend he can’t live with you forever. Your distress and concern are readily apparent, and I am sorry you’ve been suffering over this decision for so long, but you already know that nothing about this situation is going to change until you decide to do something different. If you simply can’t bring yourself to kick your ex out, then prepare yourself to live with him for the rest of your life. He seems perfectly content to be your roommate and your dependent, forever.
Help! My Wife Is Too Stupid to Home-School Our Kids.
Danny M. Lavery is joined by Violet Allen on this week’s episode of the Dear Prudence podcast.
I have had an on-again, off-again fling with an older man for about a year and a half. Right now, we are at a place of hooking up once every few months. He likes to be rough, and for the past few times, it’s been a problem. He likes to have anal sex, and he’s the only person I’ve done it with. He doesn’t want to use lube, and so every time, I’m left sore and sometimes bleeding for a few days afterward. One of the last times, it hurt a lot, and I said no, but he didn’t stop for a few seconds, until I started crying. The next time, he was very apologetic when I told him he hurt me. But a couple of nights ago, he told me he still wants to have anal sex because that’s pretty much what he thinks about when he thinks about me. I kept saying no and resisting all night. But it got to the point where giving him a blowjob really messed with my gag reflex, and he told me anal sex would make him come faster. I agreed, but it was again painful, so I said no, and he again didn’t pull out immediately, saying, “Just a second more.” The whole thing left me feeling frustrated and angry at myself that I didn’t enforce respect for my body. I kept telling him he needed to respect me, and I don’t think he took it that seriously because he said I had always enjoyed anal in the past (I didn’t). He also said he likes the feeling of me being helpless under him, which I told him feels creepy. He’s also told me on multiple occasions that I’m fat and I don’t try hard enough because I don’t shave my body hair. I hate that I keep letting him come over. I guess I just need validation that this might be an abusive situation with sexual assault, and that I absolutely should not give him another chance. I wish I could handle anal. I wish I could be cool about the rest of it. But I can’t.
—Not Just a Bad Date
It’s not that you can’t “handle” anal sex—it’s that this man enjoys hurting you and wants to see you in pain, self-conscious, insecure, and as confused about whether he heard your last “no” as possible. He’s sexually assaulted you repeatedly. You do not have to be cool about that. You did not invite or deserve his assault, and you shouldn’t have to think of a date as a minefield where you have to be constantly on high alert, vigorously defending and enforcing your boundaries from a hostile agent bent on undermining you. If someone says to her date, “You’re hurting me, and you need to respect me,” and he ignores her, tells her what she really likes, and continues hurting her, the fault is not hers for being hurt, but his for deliberate cruelty.
I don’t want you to berate yourself for letting him come over. You wanted to have sex with the man you were seeing, and you hoped to be treated with basic respect and kindness when you slept with him; you wanted to believe he was willing to listen and take your needs into consideration. You have nothing to be ashamed of on that front. He does not deserve another chance from you. He did not hurt you on accident, or because he was confused, or because you were insufficiently respectable, but because he wanted to and because he liked it. Remember that you do not have to do anything you don’t want to, but you do have options available to you, up to and including pressing charges. If you don’t yet feel prepared to turn to your friends for support but you need someone to talk to, you can always call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.
Dear Prudence,
“C,” my grandfather’s second wife (who was 26 years younger than him) died recently from coronavirus while in residence in a nursing home. Her daughter and other family members made the decision to move her near them about eight years ago so they could visit her more easily. My aunt, the youngest of my grandfather’s five children, took it upon herself to publish the official obituary of her stepmother in the original city where we all come from and also posted it on Facebook. The problem lies in the fact that there is no mention of the woman as a stepmother. My aunt listed all her sisters and brothers as C’s progeny, despite the fact they all are either the same age as C or older. She also listed every one of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren as being related to C. Needless to say, several people in the family are very upset and have asked for her to rewrite the obituary. She did mention C’s biological daughter and grandchildren in the obit, but the wording put much more emphasis upon the large family she married into, rather than C’s biological family. Are we wrong to think the information is false and misleading?
—Frustrated Over Finalities
You may not be wrong to be annoyed at an obituary that doesn’t distinguish between biological parents and stepparents (especially if C married your grandfather after his children were mostly grown and out of the house), but I wonder if there’s an opportunity to let something go here. You don’t say anything about your own relationship with C, whether you were close or indifferent, whether you liked her or found her a nuisance, whether you visited her in the home before she died or preferred the distance of the last eight years. I imagine there might be some clues there!
Some of your relatives have already asked your aunt to rewrite the obituary to be more clear. If she agrees, then that’s all there is to be said on the subject. If she declines, one of you might decide to write one of your own (even just an unofficial one on Facebook). But in the grand scheme of things, C will still be dead, and everyone who knew her will still be perfectly aware of whether she gave birth to them, or raised them, or married their father when they were in their 30s, or whatever their relationship happened to be. It doesn’t sound like your aunt was demanding her siblings all call C “Mother” at the funeral, simply that she wanted to acknowledge their blended family without distinction. If you all collectively decide to let this one go, nothing will happen. No one will be forced into a relationship with C that they don’t want to have, and no one will be confused about their own parentage or disinherited. Most people will never read this obituary, and those who do will quickly move on to the business of living—a sad, but in this case convenient, fact about death.
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Classic Prudie
I live in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, but on one of the more “modest” streets—mostly doctors and lawyers and family business owners. (A few blocks away are billionaires, families with famous last names, media moguls, etc.) I have noticed that on Halloween, what seems like 75 percent of the trick-or-treaters are clearly not from this neighborhood. Kids arrive in overflowing cars from less fortunate areas. I feel this is inappropriate. Halloween isn’t a social service or a charity in which I have to buy candy for less fortunate children. Obviously this makes me feel like a terrible person, because what’s the big deal about making less fortunate kids happy on a holiday? But it just bugs me, because we already pay more than enough taxes toward actual social services. Should Halloween be a neighborhood activity, or is it legitimately a free-for-all in which people hunt down the best candy grounds for their kids?
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Episode Notes
Felix Salmon, Emily Peck, and Anna Szymanski discuss the effect of the U.S. president on the economy, dual interest rates, and whether Petsmart and Chewy should split up.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her son, Jim.Courtesy of Jim Ginsburg
When Jim Ginsburg decided to leave law school after a year and half in 1991 to run his classical music label, Cedille Records, full time, he knew he might turn some heads at home. His was a family of lawyers: His father, Martin D. Ginsburg, worked as a law professor. His sister, Jane, had graduated from Harvard Law School nearly a decade before. And his mother, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was then a judge on the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.
But over the years, his mother came to understand. Her love of classical music, particularly opera, might have had something to do with it. She liked to say that “James,” as she called him, “was a lively child”—putting it politely. But when his mother sat him down to listen to classical music, Jim “stopped running and actually sat up and listened,” he recounted.
Ruth, who ascended to the Supreme Court a few years after Jim founded Cedille in Chicago, had filled her son’s childhood with music. She took him to Little Orchestra Society concerts at Hunter College, which happened to be across the street from their apartment in New York City. They also went to the Young People’s Concerts of the New York Philharmonic, which were then conducted by the now–internationally renowned conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. Soon after, Jim was attending productions at the New York City Opera and the Metropolitan Opera.
The Ginsburgs had a good record collection, stocked with recordings like Beethoven’s symphonies conducted by Arturo Toscanini and Mozart’s operas The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, conducted respectively by Austrians Erich Kleiber and Josef Krips. Those two Mozart operas were his mother’s favorites—which one she preferred depended on the day. By the time he was 7, Jim was going to record stores himself and collecting on his own. He took piano lessons, but he didn’t exactly love them. He didn’t want to be a musician. But he eventually began to imagine a career on the other side of the studio glass.
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In 1980, he moved from New York to D.C., when his mother was nominated and confirmed to serve for the appeals court post (or, as his father put it, “because my wife got a good job”). They lived in the Watergate complex, which happened to be across the street from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. There, he’d attend performances of the Washington National Opera and the National Symphony Orchestra, sometimes accompanied by his mother. When it came to opera, they always agreed on a few of the core composers: Mozart, Verdi, Puccini. They regularly attended performances together throughout her life.
Jim had a musical epiphany at 16, when he attended a concert of the National Symphony Orchestra in a program of the work of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich. It featured the composer’s first cello concerto, second piano concerto, and sixth symphony. Shostakovich labored for years under the brutal regime of Joseph Stalin, where artists were censored, imprisoned, and even killed if they were seen by the regime as divergent. “You could feel the suffering,” Ginsburg said. “You could feel the anguish.” He had never experienced anything like it before. And this was before he knew more of the history behind Shostakovich’s music. “For me,” Jim told me, “I think more than anything else, it just introduced a potential, the raw power of music, in a way I hadn’t felt it before.”
During his undergraduate years at the University of Chicago, Jim worked at the campus radio station, eventually directing classical music programming there. After college, he briefly lived in New York again for two years, but he soon came back to the University of Chicago to begin law school. Once back, he, like many classical music lovers here, was an avid listener to classical radio station WFMT. And he started to notice that there were many great local musicians he’d hear in local concerts and broadcasts, without much local investment in recording them. Back in the 1980s in Chicago, if classical records got produced, the primary focus was on the big-ticket act in town: the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its famous maestro, Sir Georg Solti.
Jim Ginsburg’s Cedille Records started as a local outfit in Chicago but has become known worldwide.Photo illustration by Slate. Images by Jeff Schear/Getty Images for the Recording Academy, Joyce Naltchayan/AFP via Getty Images, and iStock/Getty Images Plus.
While still in New York, Ginsburg had heard broadcast tapes sent to him by his friend (and now longtime Cedille engineer) Bill Maylone. They were of the Russian pianist Dmitry Paperno. He and Maylone soon recorded Paperno and then quickly found a distributor. The record was highly regarded, and Ginsburg, by then in law school, thought to himself that maybe he should keep that going. By mid-1991, he’d left law school to build Cedille Records.
What started as a local project came to be known around the world. With Cedille Records, Ginsburg built a label that placed a premium on production standards audiophiles could admire while curating a broad but particular repertoire of classical music. By the beginning of 1994, the label, as was Ginsburg’s goal, was securely controlled by a not-for-profit corporation, setting up different priorities and abilities than a for-profit label might have had. Today it’s one of the most-respected labels in the space, with six Grammy-winning records and 18 Grammy nominations.
“Mom could really lose herself in watching aperformance.”— Jim Ginsburg
The label has had a commitment not only to boosting local artists and musicians but artists and musicians of color. One Cedille regular has been the Chicago Sinfonietta, which is the most diverse orchestra in the United States. Paul Freeman, who served as the orchestra’s director for 24 years, was a longtime promoter of composers and musicians of color, as well one of the most prominent Black conductors in the classical music world. Cedille Records has featured the orchestra with Freeman on multiple recordings, including a three-volume African heritage symphonic series.
One of Cedille’s Grammy winners, recording artist David Skidmore and his group Third Coast Percussion, said the label had earned a unique reputation with artists. “They’re paying for you to be in the best studios with the best producers,” he said, “taking care of all of the stuff that you’d have to take care of, the business side of things, to put out a great recording so that artists only have to focus on the music.”
Skidmore said Jim’s success with the label is simple: “There are no blank checks.” “One of the reasons I think he is so successful is that he curates his record label,” Skidmore told me. The label works as an intimate dialogue between artist and producer, and that dialogue sometimes means the music simply isn’t a fit.
Despite its global success, Cedille remains also very bound up in Chicago. What makes Chicago the perfect place for an independent classical musical label? Jim Ginsburg noted first that the city is a great musical center, featuring one of the world’s greatest opera companies, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and one of the world’s greatest orchestras, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. But that’s hardly all. “What we didn’t have when I started,” he said, “was a record label. So, you see, this is the perfect confluence. There are places like New York or San Francisco or L.A., which also have major music scenes, but they have record labels covering it. And then other smaller cities really don’t have that pool of artistic talent that Chicago is able to boast. So this was the perfect place to start a label.”
With its geographical isolation and cultural ambition, Chicago can engender a special kind of independence in many of its artists and musicians. It also affords artists and musicians the space—and relative affordability—to forge that independence. So, really, it’s been the perfect home for a label like Jim Ginsburg’s Cedille Records.
Jim’s parents’ influence on his work is also clear. His label now hands out the Martin D. Ginsburg Award, awarded in earlier years by Ruth. Speaking to me after her death, Jim kept returning to her love of music. In 2012, after a Glimmerglass Festival performance of Kurt Weill’s Lost in the Stars, a musical tragedy about Apartheid-era South Africa, he recalled how he found her weeping by the end of it.
Listening to him, I couldn’t help but think about how her work demanded all-consuming intellectual rigor, and how, in music, by contrast, she might have found a refuge of beautiful directness and expressive immediacy, full of sound and emotion, away from her life with the law. “Music just speaks so directly to the heart,” Jim told me. “Things you just simply can’t express in words. Mom could really lose herself in watching a performance, especially musical performance, in a way that was really an escape for her.”
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