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Girl BORN With Black Face Mark Was Called ‘UGLY’
I stumbled over this story, and thought some Soylentils might appreciate it.
It’s not easy living in today’s world if you are one who is attempting to live up to other people’s expectations. It’s an unhealthy way to go through life. For too many young women around the world, the imperfections they find can be damaging to them, especially when others are so willing to point them out.
Tthere is at least one Brazilian model who refuses to go along with the hype, and has instead, turned her ‘imperfection’ into a prized part of herself.
The 24 year old model, Mariana Mendes, knows all about imperfections, as she’s reminded of it every day in the mirror. Born with a black hued birthmark that covers a large portion of her face, the mark is medically termed congenital melanocytic nevus, and for most of her life, she was told that it was ugly.
But Mendes doesn’t see it that way. She is well aware the the mark is there, and she knows that many view her as different…Yet she instead believes that the mark makes her unique.
At the age of 5, because her Mother feared that Mendes would be bullied throughout her life, she underwent multiple surgeries to attempt to lessen the color of her birthmark. Yet, after enduring a year of medical procedures, Mendes decided she wanted to stop any treatment.
“My mom was worried. She didn’t want me to suffer any bullying, but I don’t remember ever having any problems in school. When I was 6, she asked me if I wanted to continue with the birthmark removal procedures that I did in Sao Paulo. I told her no.”
It was the very same birthmark on her face the pushed her to embrace it. She wasn’t going to let a mark define her, and instead sought to be an example to people everywhere to accept themselves, and find their self-confidence as she has.“I feel more beautiful and totally different from other people because I have a nevus. Having a nevus that is as large as mine is not common, so of course there are many people who stare and who don’t like it, but I don’t care.”Mendes often will come across people that mistakenly assume that her mark is makeup. “A lot of people ask me about my birthmark, sometimes they think it’s makeup or a tattoo but I don’t mind and explain it to them.” Even though she is not without the average instigators in life – you know, those people whose only pursuits seem to be making others as miserable – Mendes has learned to just brush them off:
“I’m proud of having a nevus, it’s a part of who I am and how I learned to like myself…I find living with a facial nevus very easy because I like it a lot and I want others to feel as confident as I do about their nevi.”All of us have our own imperfections that are totally out of our control. Embrace them, or lean to deal with them. Learning to live with the things you have no control over can be a refreshing, and liberating way to live one’s life.
Click the link, to see some photos of her. It took a moment for my eyes to decide that the blemish is hers, and not an artifact of a crap camera or photoshopping. But, she's quite pretty!
http://joeforamerica.com/2017/05/girl-born-black-face-mark-called-ugly-not-anymore/
Video of a photoshoot here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR7w_Vhv95E
I Just Subscribed To Soylent News
I'm no longer homeless - I've been in a subsidized apartment for a year.
The program is called "Permanent Assistive Housing". That means I could live here for the rest of my life without paying a dime. Ultimately the cost is borne by the American Taxpayer through the Federal Housing And Urban Development Administration.
However I have a really good consulting client. I cancelled my food stamps a couple months ago. I no longer have Medicare - last month was my first month of paying for Obamacare.
Because my income is very uneven, the agency which got me the housing - Community Services Northwest is waiting until August before I'm responsible for paying the rent.
Should I be out of work again, the American Taxpayer will pick up the tab.
I presently have five grand in the bank. I figured I'd spread the love by subscribing here. I'm also going to subscribe to Radio Paradise.
I expect to donate some to the Portland homeless shelters that kept me out of the rain and snow, but haven't decided yet how much to give them.
Unfortunately I've got to find a new shrink. Molina's health insurance won't pay for CSNW's Program for Assertive Community Treatment. My understanding is that the PACT Team is for the extra-special crazies. I've always wanted that feeling of belonging to something.
I expect Molina will cover a once per month visit to a psychiatrist. I'm doing well these days; once per month for a medication adjustment should be just fine.
German "Fight Clubs" Infiltrated by Russians
Fight club: Russian spies seek EU recruits
Russian intelligence services are using martial arts clubs to recruit potential troublemakers in Germany and other EU countries, security experts have warned.
The number of clubs is higher than previously reported and the “sleeper cells” could stage violent provocations ahead of the upcoming German elections, they said.
[...] The martial arts clubs, which teach an offensive style called “systema”, all have “direct or indirect” links to the GRU military intelligence or FSB domestic intelligence services in Russia, according to Dmitrij Chmelnizki, a scholar of Russian espionage who lives in Berlin.
Polyamorous Polysaturation on TV
It's Polyamorous Polysaturation — Unconventional Relationships Abound On TV
Listened to a bit of it on the radio, found the text version.
Would you buy a Huawei laptop?
Huawei Matebook 2017 Launch Live Blog: Starts 2pm CEST (8am ET)
Huawei Launching Two New Clamshell Laptops: The MateBook X and the MateBook D
Huawei Launches the MateBook E 2-in-1: The Next Generation (compare to Surface Pro 5)
Or at the extreme end, would you only buy Purism? Or this thing?
Church of England Fund Sees "Stellar" Returns
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39993739
The Church of England's investment success has pushed it into the top ranks of the world's best performing funds of its type last year.
The fund made a 17.1% on its 2016 investments, more than double the 8.2% it made in 2016, according to the Church Commissioners annual report.
[...] "While this is only around 15% of the Church's overall income - most funding comes from the extraordinary generosity of parishioners - we are delighted to be able to play our part."
The Church's ethical investment policy dictates that all investments should be compatible with Christian values and "recommends against investment" in companies which make more than 3% of their income from pornography, 10% from military products and services, or 25% from other industries such as gambling, alcohol and high interest rate lenders.
However, in 2013 it emerged that the Church had invested indirectly in payday loan firm Wonga. It was a particular embarrassment for the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Justin Welby, who had pledged to try to put Wonga out of business by helping credit unions compete with it.
Second Life Bunnies "Starve to Death"
Thousands of 'Second Life' Bunnies Are Going to Starve to Death This Saturday
Any bunny who is Everlasting will continue to function, as he or she does now: without cost.
Any bunny who is not Everlasting will be unable to eat and will hibernate within 72 hours."Hibernate" is a very kind word for it, considering that these bunnies are unlikely to ever be revived. In essence, every mortal rabbit in Second Life is going to starve to death on Saturday morning.
Cloud Computing Wins Horse Race
Fox 5 DC and Seth Rich Allegations
I deleted these Seth Rich submissions and threw them here with some updates.
The Washington Post reports:
The family of slain Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich refuted Fox News reports that he had leaked work e-mails to WikiLeaks before he was fatally shot last year in the District.
The reports, which gained traction on social media, said an FBI forensics examination showed Rich transferred 44,053 DNC e-mails and 17,761 attachments to a now-deceased WikiLeaks director.
[...] Several federal and local law enforcement authorities also said Tuesday they were not aware that Rich sent any DNC information to WikiLeaks. "There is nothing that we can find that any of this is accurate," said Dustin Sternbeck, the chief spokesman for D.C police, which is leading the investigation into Rich's death.
[...] The allegations were reported by Fox News, including WTTG-TV, the District's Fox News affiliate. The reports cited a private investigator, Rod Wheeler, who Fox said was hired by the family and had previously worked for D.C. police. He also has been an on-air contributor to the Fox-5 news station. Fox also cited an unnamed federal official who said Rich had transferred thousands of emails to a WikiLeaks director. Fox's source asserts those emails were transferred between January 2015 and May 2016.
Also at MarketWatch, Fox News, and Washingtonian. Original Fox 5 DC story which now includes details of Wheeler backtracking on his claims multiple times during the week:
On Wednesday, just before our newscast, Wheeler responded to our requests via a telephone conversation, where he now backtracks his position and Wheeler characterizes his on-the-record and on-camera statements as "miscommunication."
And here is a reddit thread about some new "evidence".
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A federal investigator who reviewed an FBI forensic report -- generated within 96 hours after DNC staffer Seth Rich's murder -- detailing the contents Rich's computer said he made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time.
"My investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks."
- Rod Wheeler, former DC homicide investigator
"I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks," the federal investigator told Fox News, confirming the MacFadyen connection. He said the emails are in possession of the FBI, while the stalled case is in the hands of the Washington Police Department.
The revelation is consistent with the findings of Rod Wheeler, a former DC homicide detective and Fox News contributor and whose private investigation firm was hired by a third party on behalf of Rich's family to probe the case.
A report on Monday evening claimed to find links between slain DNC staffer Seth Rich and WikiLeaks. But Rich's family told BuzzFeed News, "[W]e see no facts, we have seen no evidence, we have been approached with no emails."
[...] Wheeler told CNN he had no evidence to suggest Rich had contacted Wikileaks before his death.
Wheeler instead said he only learned about the possible existence of such evidence through the reporter he spoke to for the FoxNews.com story.
[...] Wheeler himself admitted he had "never seen the emails directly." Furthermore, his claims of "evidence" were based on the fact that an unnamed federal investigator had told him he saw the emails between Seth and WikiLeaks but that when he went to the police with concerns, he had been "shut down" and the investigation was being impeded by "a high-ranking official at the DNC."
additional coverage:
- Media Matters for America
- Infowars
- Heavy
- Washington Times (earlier story from 1 May)
- Breitbart News
- Breitbart News
- Breitbart News
- Washington Times
- The Guardian
- Mic
- Newsweek
- The Independent
- Right Wing Watch
- 1011 News
- The Week
previous story:
WikiLeaks Announces $20k Bounty For Murderer(s) of DNC Staffer
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Sanctuary Bills Faced a Surprise Foe: Legal Immigrants
Sanctuary Bills in Maryland Faced a Surprise Foe: Legal Immigrants
ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — When lawmakers in Howard County, Md., a stretch of suburbia between Washington and Baltimore, declared their intention to make the county a sanctuary for people living in the country illegally, J. D. Ma thought back to how hard he had worked studying English as a boy in Shanghai.
Stanley Salazar, a native of El Salvador, worried that the violent crime already plaguing Maryland’s suburbs attributed to immigrant gangs would eventually touch his own daughters.
Hongling Zhou, who had been a student in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square uprising, feared an influx of undocumented immigrants, and their children, would cripple the public schools.
At first blush, making Howard County a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants had seemed a natural move: The county has twice as many Democrats as Republicans and a highly educated population, full of scientists and engineers. One in five residents was born abroad.
But the bill met stout opposition from an unlikely source: some of those very same foreign-born residents.
In passionate testimony before county legislators, and in tense debates with liberal neighbors born in the United States, legal immigrants argued that offering sanctuary to people who came to the country illegally devalued their own past struggles to gain citizenship.
Some even felt it threatened their hard-won hold on the American dream.
Their objections stunned Democratic supporters of sanctuary here and helped bring about the bill’s demise in March. A similar proposal for the state collapsed this month in the Maryland Senate, where Democrats also hold a two-to-one advantage. Some of the same immigrants spoke out against it.
The failure of the sanctuary bills in Maryland reveals a potentially troublesome fissure for Democrats as they rush to defy Mr. Trump. Their party has staked out an activist position built around protecting undocumented immigrants. But it is one that has alienated many who might have been expected to support it.
What follows are the stories of four immigrants in Maryland who oppose sanctuary status — people whose voices have rarely been heard in the long debate over how to fix the nation’s immigration system.
Some supporters of sanctuary had dismissed them as white-collar professionals whose personal struggles could not compare with those of undocumented people now facing possible deportation.
But anyone who thought their journeys were easy, these immigrants said, has never walked in their shoes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/08/us/legal-immigrants-who-oppose-illegal-immigration.html?_r=2
Please, click the link, and read their stories.
