Is this guy being kicked off the plane because the Southwest ground operators are racist?

Southwest Airlines has a history of treating its passengers like suspects. In this latest example, a Black man is banned from boarding a flight because he gets upset when a White woman cuts ahead of him in line.

Did these Southwest employees handle the situation correctly? Would they have done the same if the man were White? You decide.

I love TED Talks like this. Here’s an academician explaining a cognitive bias that is very basic knowledge for any good marketer as if it’s an amazing psychological revelation.

I’m curious… Is this “dilution trick” new to you?

Richard III by William Shakespeare

ACT I

SCENE I. London. A street.

Enter GLOUCESTER, solus

GLOUCESTER

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up,
About a prophecy, which says that ‘G’
Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here

Clarence comes.

This is pretty cool: Google recently announced AI-based technology that will replace the dubbing of movies into foreign languages. I don’t know how many people make a living dubbing, but I do know that many fledgling actors rely on these jobs to pay the bills. No more.

Read about it here.

In this video, Jack Black gives you a few useful tips on learning Spanish…

I don’t know what is scarier: the Biden tax proposals themselves… or the obvious fact that this woman doesn’t seem to have the faintest idea how capital gains taxation works! (It is embarrassing to watch her pretend she understands Romney’s questions.)

This guy sent two innocent people to jail for 15 years.

In 2000, Richard “Rick” Jackson, then a Dallas County assistant district attorney, got convictions for two men on trial for murder: Dennis Allen and Stanley Mozee.

Both men claimed innocence, but both were sentenced to life in prison. They were eventually exonerated when it was proven that Jackson had withheld important exculpatory evidence, and were released.

Fifteen years for a crime they didn’t commit.

Click here for the full story.

On Monday, I told you how Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, blames the city’s crumbling economy, high unemployment, and huge spike of violent crime on “systemic racism,” even though more than 90% of the city’s commandants and bureaucrats are Black.

ED, a reader, wrote in to challenge me: “I don’t believe she said that. Please cite your source.”

Before I could get to that, Mayor Lightfoot took her craziness to a new level. She called a press conference to announce that she was going to spend about $10 million in federal COVID relief on fighting Chicago’s greatest health threat. Yes, you guessed it: systemic racism.

“At almost every point in our city’s history, sadly, racism has taken a devastating toll on the health and well-being of our residents of color, and particularly those who are Black,” Lightfoot said, standing in front of an exhibit honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. “That’s why I am declaring racism as a public health crisis. Because we can no longer allow racism to rob our residents of the opportunity to live and lead full, healthy, and happy lives.”

The $9.6 million will go towards opening up six “Healthy Chicago Equity Zones” that will “create community-based stakeholder coalitions charged with dismantling historical inequities.”

What are the odds that some of her cronies are going to be in on that money?

Meanwhile, gangs in Chicago continue their reign of terror. Since Lightfoot’s press conference, there have been more than 100 shootings, including at least a dozen deaths –innocent men, women, and children – all Black.

This is what happened in Chicago over the Memorial Day weekend:

And if you haven’t seen enough, here are two more clips that will give you a taste for Chicago 2021:

Michael Reif – founder of The Fine Art Society of Los Angeles and an expert in early 20th century avant-garde art – wrote a nice review of our book Central American Modernism.” 

This is some of what he said:

Mark Morgan Ford and Suzanne Brooks Snider shared a unique vision, a book project that had never been seriously contemplated let alone accomplished. In doing so, they have laid a cornerstone of commonality for the seven small and varied countries of Central America. This regional camaraderie is expressed through art. Not the academy-type, conservative work of the 18th and 19th centuries, but in the only genre possible – the paradoxically unifying impulse of 20th Century Modernism.

Central American Modernism is a hefty, well-illustrated hardcover that has been long overdue. This volume is a synthesis of knowledgeable essays and well-chosen Central American art that unveils historically important modern paintings and sculpture by the most celebrated artists of these vibrant countries. It goes even further, by identifying up-and-coming younger artists that will undoubtedly someday “carry the torch.” Through high-quality images and concisely written text, a regional Modernist tradition is revealed, with obvious relevance to Latin American art as a whole. This documentation is needed! Though in my sizable personal library, Central American Modernism stands alone. Hopefully others will follow.