Required reading

• After noting shortcomings in New York Times mini crosswords, Juliana Pache created hers for free »black crosswordwith hints and clues related to black culture, Huffington Postby Taryn Finley writes:

Pache creates each daily puzzle herself, which she says is the most fun part of the job. Many who do crossword puzzles draw inspiration from generic word lists, but Pache builds her own, recognizing that many of the terms she wants to use would not be on those lists or have definitions she wanted to change.

“Another crossword maker might say that red is a primary color; I would say Detroit Red for Malcolm X,” she told HuffPost. “But even outside of those words, we might be able to assign different meanings to them. There are also so many words that they don’t use at all, or don’t use like we do, like “edges.” So while I know some of these words can double up in other places, I’m like, let me put all of these terms in one list so that when I complete these puzzles, I have more to work with.

• For Quartzwriter Julia Malleck delves into the New York City socialist activism that gave rise to International Women’s Day:

The socialist movement in New York inspired a German feminist and communist named Clara Zetkin, who in 1910 attended a meeting of the Socialist International in Copenhagen, Denmark. There, she proposed the establishment of an international women’s day.

The first JIF was held the following year on March 19, 1911, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Paris Commune, a revolutionary government that had briefly taken power in France. Around 1 million people across Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland marked the occasion, holding rallies to demand equal rights for women to work, vote and run for office. .

• Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff writes in the New York Times on his visit to some of Jamaica’s community-based tourist hotels, providing an important window into the fight against the country’s notoriously harmful tourism industry:

Getting out of your comfort zone is a must: taking the easy options won’t get you to the communities that will really benefit from the money tourism can bring in. It is up to us as tourists to seek them out, to move through them with an awareness of our relative privilege and to remember the human stories behind their enterprises. Some working-class Jamaicans have made great sacrifices to try to bring about a new kind of tourism.

• Jon Stewart’s recent interview with Conservative politician Nathan Dahm sparked a flurry of backlash online, but Laura Wagner is of the opinion for Defector that our perpetual shock at conservative hypocrisy misses a big point:

Highlighting so-called right-wing hypocrisy might make the crowd watching Jon Stewart feel superior to his political foes, but it does nothing to actually build a movement that can overcome them. In fact, it does worse than nothing; its smugness serves to flatter the sensibilities of its liberal viewers while obscuring how political power is constructed and used in this country.

• We know representation won’t save us, but Suzy Exposito of Los Angeles Time celebrates another small victory in the media: the tongue-in-cheek Latina, inaugurated by Aubrey Plaza and Jenna Ortega:

I distinctly remember when Plaza, who is Puerto Rican in real life, delved into her heritage in a 2009 episode of “Parks” titled “Sister City.” It was when a delegation from Caracas — and their fearless leader, played by Fred Armisen — visited the cast in Pawnee, Ind., that Plaza took the opportunity to flex his dry humor into a brand of Spanish. overly robotic.

“My mom is Puerto Rican,” she says in the episode, flat like an open box of Jupiña left out in the sun. “That’s why I’m so alive And colored.”

• As the Oscars approach this weekend, Mathew Rodriguez reports for Them on the status of shows moving (or not) to non-sexist actor categories:

Indeed, several talented performers are already excluded by the practice of recognizing actors only in distinct, binary categories that presumably have an anatomical basis. As recently as 2020, non-binary actress Emma Corrin won a Golden Globe Award in the actress category for her performance on Netflix. The crown. At the time, Corrin used his pronouns, but has since gone non-binary and said in 2022 that they “hope for a future” when these bodies give gender-neutral awards. Corrin’s story, and the fact that more than 1.2 million adults identify as non-binary, portends a world in which binary categories can present more problems, unfairly forcing performers to show up in categories that actively misrepresent them if they want industry recognition.

• This personal essay by journalist Samhita Mukhopadhyay in the Cut is a must-read, in which she shares a nuanced reflection on her experience with weight-loss and fat-busting drugs in a time when “Ozempic face” is a phrase people say out loud:

But after many appointments and many questions, I decided to go on the drug. I knew I needed some kind of intervention to help stabilize my body and my health while I figured out why I ate my feelings, why I even struggled to go for a walk, and why I thought good health and self-care was only about sacrifice. I had to ask myself why I thought I deserved to be sick because I couldn’t “control” myself, but I couldn’t afford to keep getting sick while I did.

• People love reviews on just about anything, but often can’t tell the real one from the fake one online. NPR‘s Paddy Hirsch talks to researchers about a study looking at this phenomenon:

Finally, the study authors wanted to see if there was a certain type of person who was more likely or more able to detect counterfeits. So they selected participants who matched the Big Five personality types: extraversion, agreeableness, open-mindedness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. It turns out that people who are open-minded and tend to be adventurous and intellectually curious are better at spotting fake reviews than other personality types. Extroverted people, on the other hand, have a harder time identifying a fake review.

• It can be hard to keep up with JK Rowling’s constant transphobia, so Voice‘s Aja Romano traces the author’s long history:

Since Rowling started airing her opinions, her community, especially online where many of these conversations are taking place, is now filled with like-minded people who share her transphobic beliefs. For example, Rowling is friends with many anti-trans activists, including Helen Joyce, who has made alarming transphobic statements calling for a “reduction” in the number of trans people. She tweeted public support for anti-gay and anti-trans activist Caroline Farrow. These connections are part of a social network echo chamber of trans-exclusive radical feminists, or TERFs (sometimes called “radfems” or the “gender-critical” movement). In Rowling’s native UK, TERFism has acquired a unique hold on some particularly vocal and ostensibly liberal feminists like Rowling.

• Glen Greenwald try to go after Jerry Saltz 🙄: