kalanggam

So, I like to write simple notes, journaling, to-do lists, or essays/fiction with a fountain pen whenever possible, and I'm trying to find a good journal or planner to use. My Pilot and Diamine inks feather a lot on the paper I'm currently using, and that's really the main problem I want to address.

What brands or products would you recommend? What kind of paper do you like best?

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Potent new anti-obesity drugs can reduce body weight by 15-20%. However, regulation and costs limit who can take them. In America, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved just one of the new drugs, Wegovy, for weight loss—and only for patients with a body-mass index (BMI) above certain thresholds. The cut-off is 27 for people with weight-related illnesses, and 30 otherwise. For someone 1.7 metres (5’7”) tall, these correspond to 78kg (172lb) and 87kg. People with lower BMIs can try to get a prescription anyway. However, insurers rarely cover such “off-label” use of the $1,000-per-month drugs.

BMIs vary between racial groups. According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, run by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Asian-Americans aged 18-75 have an average BMI of 25, compared with 29 for whites, 30 for Hispanics and 31 for black people. As a result, few Asians meet the FDA’s criteria.

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The social platform, created by ex-Twitter employees Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell and DeVaris Brown, has garnered online buzz in the last week, with Black celebrities including musician Questlove and actor Keke Palmer counted among its recent members. By Monday, after Musk limited the number of tweets users can see, Spill began to climb the rankings of Apple’s App Store.

The recent boost in popularity comes amid constant discourse among Black Twitter, an informal digital enclave noted for its meme culture and political activism. Many within the community have voiced concerns about inadequate moderation of hate speech on Twitter, arguing that the app has become an increasingly “toxic” space under Musk’s leadership.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ninja/post/49635

Book vendors selling to Texas public schools, ranging from national sellers like Amazon to local bookstores with eight employees, must now rate all the books they sell based on sexual content, according to new legislation signed into law on June 12.

If the book vendor fails to comply with state library standards that will be in place by January 1, 2024, they’d be barred from selling to Texas public schools.

• Nearly seven in ten (67%) say it is a serious problem that individuals treat Black, Latino, Asian, and Native Americans worse than white Americans. Two-fifths (39%) say it is a very serious problem.
• Three-fifths (63%) say racism makes it more difficult for people of color to succeed in America.
• Nearly half (49%) of Americans believe that racism is both a problem of how society works and how individuals treat each other. A quarter (26%) say it is mostly a problem of how individuals treat each other. These findings are similar to when asked in June 2020 (48% and 28%, respectively).

Alt text:

A three panel meme of someone riding a bike.

• First panel: Someone riding on a bike. "Reddit is imploding, quick let's get on Lemmy"
• Second panel: The bike starts to tip over on its own. "Oh shit there's too many of us, we're being defederated?"
• Third panel: They've fallen on the ground by the bike, holding their knee in pain. "Fucking Beehaw"

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/572828

The US supreme court has ruled that Native American children can continue to be protected under federal law against being removed from their tribal communities for fostering or adoption, rejecting a petition from a white couple who argued that the provision was a form of racial discrimination.

Ostensibly The Cleaners is about the outsourced workers that these companies use to determine whether photos and videos that have been shared online should be allowed to stay there. The film tracks a handful of people based in Manila that spend their days looking at terrorist videos, political propaganda, self-harm videos, and child pornography, breaking them into binary categories: “ignore,” where they let the post stand, and “delete,” where the imagery is removed for violating community standards.

This is an old article about an older documentary, but I thought it would be interesting to kick up a discussion about how people in Manila (and other places in the Global South) are often the ones left to deal with the worst impacts of social media - including on the moderation side of things.

“We are not seen as people who are central to the American story. We are seen as the supporting cast, like this inconsequential supporting actor," Tobar said. He points out that it is Latino labor that keeps the country functioning and that is essential to industries such as construction and agriculture — and that it was largely Latino workers who built the infrastructure of the American southwest.

As he strives to illuminate the Latino experience, he acknowledges that the construct of “Latino“ is artificial and complicated.

In 2021, then-Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, a Democrat, authored a bill to form a task force to examine and develop reparation proposals for the harms of slavery on Black people in California. It is the most ambitious effort in the country to address redress for the impact of slavery on Black people, with task force members saying they want to create a reparations blueprint for the country.

The California Legislature will then have all the power. Lawmakers will review the recommendations and will have the authority to adopt, dismiss or adjust them . Whatever they decide must be approved by both houses before it would be presented to Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign into law.