I bet there is a huge job market for this. Think about all the different cultures we have here in the states and how each person (shit even regional now that I think of it. I still think it is funny when people look at me funny for saying I want a pop) could make crossword puzzles that they....NEW YORK (AP) — It started a couple of years ago when Juliana Pache was doing a crossword puzzle and got stuck.
She was unfamiliar with the reference that the clue made. It made her think about what a crossword puzzle would look like if the clues and answers included more of some subjects that she WAS familiar with, thanks to her own identity and interests — Black history and Black popular culture.
When she couldn’t find such a thing, Pache decided to do it herself. In January 2023, she created blackcrossword.com, a site that offers a free mini-crossword puzzle every day. And Tuesday marked the release of her first book, “Black Crossword: 100 Mini Puzzles Celebrating the African Diaspora.”
It’s a good moment for it, nearly 111 years after the first crossword appeared in a New York newspaper. Recent years have seen an increasing amount of conversation around representation in crossword puzzles, from who’s constructing them to what words can be used for answers and how the clues are framed. There’s been a push to expand the idea of the kinds of “common knowledge” players would have to fill them out.
“I had never made a crossword puzzle before,” Pache, 32, said with a laugh. “But I was like, I can figure it out.”
And she did.
Made ‘with Black people in mind’
Each puzzle on Pache’s site includes at least a few clues and answers connecting to Black culture. The tagline on the site: “If you know, you know.”
The book is brimming with the kinds of puzzles that she estimates about 2,200 people play daily on her site — squares made up of five lines, each with five spaces. She aims for at least three of the clues to be references to aspects of Black cultures from around the world.
Pache, a native of the New York City borough of Queens with family ties to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, had a couple of goals in mind when she started. Primarily, she wanted to create something that Black people would enjoy.
I’m “making it with Black people in mind,” she said. “And then if anyone else enjoys it, they learn things from it, that’s a bonus but it’s not my focus.”
She’s also trying to show the diversity in Black communities and cultures with the clues and words she uses, and to encourage people from different parts of the African diaspora to learn about each other.
“I also want to make it challenging, not just for people who might be interested in Black culture, but people within Black culture who might be interested in other regions,” she said. “Part of my mission with this is to highlight Black people from all over, Black culture from all over. And I think ... that keeps us learning about each other.”
What, really, is ‘general knowlege’?
While on the surface if might just seem like a game, the knowledge base required for crosswords does say something about what kind of knowledge is considered “general” and “universal” and what isn’t, said Michelle Pera-McGhee, a data journalist at The Pudding, a site that focuses on data-driven stories.
In 2020, Pera-McGhee undertook a data project analyzing crossword puzzles through the decades from a handful of the most well-known media outlets. The project assessed clues and answers that used the names of real people to determine a breakdown along gender and race categories.
Unsurprisingly, the data indicated that for the most part, men were disproportionately more likely than women to be featured, as well as white people compared to racial and ethnic minorities.
It’s “interesting because it’s supposed to be easy,” Pera-McGhee said. “You want ... ideally to reference things that people, everybody knows about because everyone learns about them in school or whatever. ... What are the things that we decide we all should know?”
There are efforts to make crosswords more accessible and representative, including the recently started fellowship for puzzle constructors from underrepresented groups at The New York Times, among the most high-profile crossword puzzles around. Puzzle creators have made puzzles aimed at LGBTQ+ communities, at women, using a wider array of references as Pache is doing.
Bottom line, “it is really cool to see our culture reflected in this medium,” Pache said.
And, Pera-McGhee said, it can be cool to learn new things.
“It’s kind of enriching to have things in the puzzle that you don’t know about,” she said. “It’s not that the experience of not knowing is bad. It’s just that it should maybe be spread out along with the experience of knowing. Both are kind of good in the crossword-solving experience.”
The raids have triggered outrage and accusations of voter suppression in a state with a long history of discrimination against its citizens of Mexican descent, which gave rise to LULAC in 1929.
“There’s a reason Joe Biden brought people here illegally,” Paxton said on a radio show earlier this month. “I’m convinced that that’s how they’re going to do it this time, they’re going to use the illegal vote. Why were they brought in, why did he bring in 14 million people? He brought them here to vote.”
Paxton falsely claimed that immigrants were being given Social Security numbers at the border as part of the scheme, too. There’s no evidence of that, or that noncitizens cast ballots in any significant numbers.
In the release announcing the raids, Paxton said his office would have no further comments on the investigation. NBC News reached out Friday and has not received a response.
But the release did state that the raids were the result of a two-year investigation based on allegations of voting and election violations from Audrey Gossett Louis, a district attorney for five area counties.
Latino leaders have called on the Department of Justice to investigate and are alleging the raids are a political move to suppress Latino votes. A Justice Department spokesperson said they are aware of the matter but declined to comment.
“It is disgraceful and outrageous that the state of Texas, and its highest-ranking law enforcement officer, is once again using the power of his office to instill fear in the hearts of community members who volunteer their time to promote civic engagement,” said Gabriel Rosales, Texas state director of LULAC, which focuses on Latino economic, political and civil rights.
“I have been contacted by elderly residents who are confused and frightened, wondering why they have been singled out. Attorney General Paxton’s actions clearly aim to suppress the Latino vote through intimidation and any means necessary to tilt the electoral process in favor of his political allies,” he added.
Cecilia Castellano, a candidate for state House District 80, said she was served a search warrant for her phone just after 6 a.m. on the same day as the others. Medina is working on Castellano's campaign.
“I was still asleep and I was woken up by my doorbell and then a hard knock,” she told NBC News later. “I went to the front [door] and I have these flashlights flashing into my home.”
The officer shared a copy of the search warrant with Castellano and left with her work phone.
Castellano said she felt the search was political intimidation, adding that she’d been told two other people who had volunteered for her campaign were been served warrants. She said she’s never helped people to register to vote or vote by mail, and wasn’t sure for what she was being investigated.
Nine armed officers at the door
Up early as usual to water her plants, Martinez answered a knock at her door at 6 a.m. and in walked a group of armed men and women with police badges and riot shields and a search warrant, she told NBC News.
Still in her nightgown, Martinez asked to change clothes. Instead, she said she was forced to sit in her dining room answering questions while the agents rummaged for four hours through just about everything in her two-bedroom home. Two of the officers stood guard over her.
“They searched everything. My underwear, my brassieres, my nightgowns, everything,” said Martinez, a 35-year LULAC member. “They went into my garage. They opened up my car. They went through my whole car, my whole garage, my refrigerator, my kitchen cabinets, everything.”
At the news conference, Martinez said that for about half an hour she was made to stand outside her home, still in her nightgown, where neighbors could see, while the officers searched her dining area.
She said they would not tell her what they were looking for, and questioned her for four hours, asking her about Manuel Medina and when she joined LULAC.
They left with her appointment book, cellphone, laptop, blank voter registration cards and her certification for completing a voter registration course.
At the news conference, Martinez said nine people had shown up at her door to execute the search warrant. She said her family asked her to stop her volunteer work with LULAC, as well as any voter registration efforts, because they're afraid she'll go to jail.
"I grew up on the west side of San Antonio. My dad had two grocery stores and he taught us the right to vote," said Martinez, a San Antonio native. She added she had five brothers who served in the armed forces, including one who was killed in Vietnam and earned the Silver Star. Martinez is a commander with the American Legion.
"They're trying to stop us from registering voters, and helping, especially the seniors," she said.
"If I don't go out there, and their voter registration is expired, some of them are in wheelchairs. They don't have a way to be going to the elections office" to get registration forms, Martinez said.
Mary Ann Obregon, mayor of Dilley, about 71 miles south of San Antonio, said her dogs' barking alerted her to two officers who showed up at her home and demanded her phone when she went outside. She said on Monday she wasn't shown a search warrant until after they followed her in while she retrieved her phone.
After they left, "I got very emotional," she said. "I was crying."
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Latino voting rights group called Monday for a federal investigation after its volunteers said Texas authorities raided their homes and seized phones and computers as part of an investigation by the state’s Republican attorney general into allegations of voter fraud.
No charges have been filed against any targets of the searches that took place last week in the San Antonio area. Attorney General Ken Paxton previously confirmed his office had conducted searches after a local prosecutor referred to his office “allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting” during the 2022 election.
Some volunteers whose homes were searched, including an 80-year-old woman who told her associates that agents were at her house for two hours and took medicine, along with her smartphone and watch, railed outside an attorney general’s office in San Antonio against the searches.
“We feel like our votes are being suppressed,” Roman Palomares, national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said Monday. “We’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
The investigation is part of an Election Integrity Unit that Paxton formed in his office. Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment. The federal Justice Department declined to comment.
At least six members had their homes searched, Palomares said. They included Manuel Medina, a San Antonio political consultant, who claimed his home was searched for several hours while agents seized documents, computers and cellphones. Medina is the former head of the Bexar County Democratic Party and is working on the campaign of Democratic state House candidate Cecilia Castellano, whose home was also searched.
Nine officers also entered the home of volunteer Lidia Martinez, 80, who said she expressed confusion about why they were there.
“They sat me down and they started searching all my house, my store room, my garage, kitchen, everything,” Martinez said, and interrogated her about other members, including Medina.
The search warrant ordered officials to search any documents related to the election and to confiscate Martinez’s devices.
“I’m not doing anything illegal,” Martinez said she told agents. “All I do is help the seniors.”
Voter fraud is rare, typically occurs in isolated instances and is generally detected. An Associated Press investigation of the 2020 presidential election found fewer than 475 potential cases of voter fraud out of 25.5 million ballots cast in the six states where Trump and his allies disputed his loss to Democratic President Joe Biden.
Paxton starting his voter suppression and voter intimidation BS.......he's already starting his crap to in the Houston area as well......
When I scrolled through it to find the part to timestamp it, you can see they clip it and started the coloring book there so anyone watching this 'episode' on this site will not see the history that we have swept under the carpet here in the states. I have no idea why they did it, but it is pretty interesting that was the only part that was removed, which makes me curious what they are editing out in their other videos that they spam with their propaganda titles.
So was looking for clips of Dana Bash on MSNBC from last night because she is writing a book on the post 1867 reconciliation years that we as a nation allowed black men to vote and thousands were elected in the south (it was at the end of the sept 3 Alex Wagner show), and found one that looked really really familiar.
View attachment 5422670
I checked and yup, followed the same trend of removing old videos with coloring books.
When I scrolled through it to find the part to timestamp it, you can see they clip it and started the coloring book there so anyone watching this 'episode' on this site will not see the history that we have swept under the carpet here in the states. I have no idea why they did it, but it is pretty interesting that was the only part that was removed, which makes me curious what they are editing out in their other videos that they spam with their propaganda titles.
View attachment 5422673
lol yeah this was a new one to me, got trolled with it a couple weeks back. I can't find the exact video to post a pic of atm (ill edit it in later), but yeah this is a better breakdown of the troll on people:
Luckily I didn't fall into this trap when it came up, but that was because I realized it was a easily categorized troll (based on social media, do you have a family member with > calc 2, and another family member who has been programmed to disregard education), but it was close.
lol yeah this was a new one to me, got trolled with it a couple weeks back. I can't find the exact video to post a pic of atm (ill edit it in later), but yeah this is a better breakdown of the troll on people:
View attachment 5424132
They are intentionally doing the math incorrectly. But with people who didn't put in the practice to ingrain the rules of how math is done it is easy to miss the mistakes they are purposefully doing to get to fucked up numbers that confuse people. But he does a ton of math on this account, so it must be true.
A lot of it comes down to how to use powers and how you can and cannot (the part they screw up) do the steps to ignore -1.
My bullshit guess of why they are doing it this way is to play with the language we use to describe numbers.
Because as soon as you are in the heat explaining this to someone you care about, and figure out what they are saying, and start to explain why they can't do it you can easily fall into a trap of using the word 'Imaginary number', which then just blows up the conversation and the person who is duped into believing this con can feel like they scored some bullshit point.
Luckily I didn't fall into this trap when it came up, but that was because I realized it was a easily categorized troll (based on social media, do you have a family member with > calc 2, and another family member who has been programmed to disregard education), but it was close.
I did learn during this that these folks have also been programmed to trigger at Neil Degrass Tit...whatever his name is, this guy:
Anyways here is the full Q&A that somehow Terrance Howard turned into some propaganda about how he is being silenced for standing up to the new truth he is trying to teach people if you buy his book. lol what a fucking scam.
I watch a lot of documentaries about hidden aspects of colonization and the history of slavery. My boys mother is native and a victim of the 60s scoop where her and her older sister ages 6 and 8 were removed from their birth family from a reserve in New Brunswick and raised by white Catholics in a small town in southern Ontario. It's really opened my eyes about why she was as messed up as she was/is and never came back from a visit out there in '92 leaving me with the boys when they were 7 and 9. Generational pain that is still affecting our grandkids and will likely affect their kids on down the line.I really don't remember learning anything about reconstruction. At least not outside of what white southerners have painted it as in propaganda in movies like the above one. There was a good podcast (40 acres and a mule I think was the name) that uncovered examples of freed slaves actually being granted land only to have it ripped out from under them after only a couple years and nobody in their families ever knew, even though they lived in the town that it happened in fall these generations later.
I do find interesting about this report (there is not a date that I found on it, but the latest footnote was for something written in 2016), is how it talks about how post civil war the black wealth build up over a billion dollars and they had entire towns. But then it jumps to the 60s and ignores the destruction of this wealth when angry white men burned down the towns that the freed slaves built up.
I just wonder how much of this history being pulled back up is thanks to the HBO series Watchmen.
Not much black content on those puzzles and they're very simplistic. Took me 2:14 to do the Sunday one. I started doing crosswords back in the late 70s to have something to do while sitting around in my taxi waiting for trips. Those Sunday New York Times puzzles could last for days. Very US oriented with lots of sports and pop culture which stumps me big time as I don't follow that stuff.I bet there is a huge job market for this. Think about all the different cultures we have here in the states and how each person (shit even regional now that I think of it. I still think it is funny when people look at me funny for saying I want a pop) could make crossword puzzles that they....
never mind, I just thought of a way that I could just a.i. that shit. Would have been fun though. User generated content crossword puzzles that could then be analyzed based on how people 'talk' online/have clicked on and generate the puzzle off those (insert timeframe) events.
That guy's a freaking idiot. Why aren't those people calling him out on any of his BS? A third grader knows more math than that guy.lol yeah this was a new one to me, got trolled with it a couple weeks back. I can't find the exact video to post a pic of atm (ill edit it in later), but yeah this is a better breakdown of the troll on people:
View attachment 5424132
They are intentionally doing the math incorrectly. But with people who didn't put in the practice to ingrain the rules of how math is done it is easy to miss the mistakes they are purposefully doing to get to fucked up numbers that confuse people. But he does a ton of math on this account, so it must be true.
A lot of it comes down to how to use powers and how you can and cannot (the part they screw up) do the steps to ignore -1.
My bullshit guess of why they are doing it this way is to play with the language we use to describe numbers.
Because as soon as you are in the heat explaining this to someone you care about, and figure out what they are saying, and start to explain why they can't do it you can easily fall into a trap of using the word 'Imaginary number', which then just blows up the conversation and the person who is duped into believing this con can feel like they scored some bullshit point.
Luckily I didn't fall into this trap when it came up, but that was because I realized it was a easily categorized troll (based on social media, do you have a family member with > calc 2, and another family member who has been programmed to disregard education), but it was close.
I did learn during this that these folks have also been programmed to trigger at Neil Degrass Tit...whatever his name is, this guy:
Anyways here is the full Q&A that somehow Terrance Howard turned into some propaganda about how he is being silenced for standing up to the new truth he is trying to teach people if you buy his book. lol what a fucking scam.
It really is a mind bender to think about how hard it is to really ever know one another, and how those moments we interact with one another can be drastically different in one anothers' minds.I watch a lot of documentaries about hidden aspects of colonization and the history of slavery. My boys mother is native and a victim of the 60s scoop where her and her older sister ages 6 and 8 were removed from their birth family from a reserve in New Brunswick and raised by white Catholics in a small town in southern Ontario. It's really opened my eyes about why she was as messed up as she was/is and never came back from a visit out there in '92 leaving me with the boys when they were 7 and 9. Generational pain that is still affecting our grandkids and will likely affect their kids on down the line.
At least to be able to recognize it when they see it so that they can make the best decisions they can if/when it creeps into their lives.Kids need to be taught about this stuff in school. Not to make them feel bad about themselves if they are white but to make sure they are aware of how things got as messed up as it is so it can stop.
I really like his stuff too, which was why I was surprised his name was brought up in such anger. I am guessing it might be something like being personally offended by the stuff he says debunking the propaganda that they want(?) to be true for their position to make sense. But yeah lol Howard is out there. I would be curious if he is going Kanye, or if Kanye is going Howard?That guy's a freaking idiot. Why aren't those people calling him out on any of his BS? A third grader knows more math than that guy.
Tyson has some pretty amazing videos and explains a lot of complex topics so a layperson can understand what's going on with the universe. I'd take his word about how totally wrong that Terry Howard goof is without a second thought.